#psychology rant

[ladyalienist]

What is your position on trauma-related conditions/personality disorders?

Hi! I’m really glad you asked because this is a thing I wanted to make a post about.

So, let’s first start with a bit of general context, shall we? I’ll try to make it as short as I can.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are different in many ways, but they both take care of the same kind of illnesses, distresses and problems, and hence need to communicate between themselves and create a taxonomy of the most common kinds of problems they face. In that taxonomy (DSM, PDM, you name it) it is understood, generally, that people might react to traumatic events in an acute way or in a persistent way (what we usually refer to as PTSD).

In that same taxonomy, personality disorders (PDs) are not seen as trauma responses per se: they are something different. Personality is defined as the unique and fairly consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that distinguish a person from others. When something in the development of personality goes wrong and those patterns become consistently dysfunctional and hurtful to the person and/or to others, we have a PD. There’s currently about 10-15 of them that have a specific label, all with their specific characteristics: I’m not diving too deep into that because else this thing will become a whole essay and I’d have to charge you money to have you read it.

Now, one thing that seems intuitive but apparently was absolutely not to psychiatrists is that thought/feeling/behaviour patterns are not formed in a vacuum, and require a lot of interactions with external influences to be moulded into a specific shape: hence, a thing that isn’t that obvious is that personality disorders come usually (not always, but very often) from a deeply traumatic childhood.

Especially when it comes to the most (in)famous and debated personality disorder: the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which many feminists (me included) view as an evolution of the so-called hysteria psychs would diagnose women with in the 1800s.

It is, on many levels, the very same situation: we have young women who react to horrifying and prolonged abuse by becoming “bad women”, “untamed women”, and hence need to be corrected with sedation and institutionalization.

Many ladies here on Radblr are unwaveringly anti-psychiatry, or at the very least critical of psychiatry and of the BPD diagnosis altogether: they think that it is a pathologisation of natural responses to the horrific treatment little girls go through in way too many cases, and a tool of oppression in the hands of a patriarchal paradigm of health and science.

Now let me be clear: I understand those critiques and they are in many ways grounded and valid. This is a diagnosis that gets often given without an understanding of the personal history of the woman who displays symptoms, or gets given way too soon (PDs should not get diagnosed before adulthood and many women receive a BPD diagnosis when they are still adolescents).

I am myself… not exactly enthusiastic about psychiatrists and colleagues alike, and I do not appreciate the modern paradigm of mental health, but you already know that, for you asked this specific question.

The fact is that in other ways it is a myopic view of a complex and nuanced issue. My first problem with the General-Radblr-Critique-of-Psychiatry is that many many people do not understand a simple fact: psych language is edulcorated as fuck and a competent psych keeps that in mind. When a psych writes “difficulties in keeping care of personal hygiene” (non-political random example of a typical consequence of severe depression) it doesn’t mean “eh, haven’t showered yesterday because I didn’t stink”, it means “this person hasn’t showered in months because they cannot find the energy/they do not want to see themselves naked/they are actively trying to rot while alive and are succeeding”.

Another problem is that many people are not aware that PD diagnoses are actually… not that gendered: while it is true that BPD is more often female and Narcissistic PD is more often male, and socialization brings wildly different levels of destructiveness, there are men diagnosed with BPD and women with NPD, and they are not a statistical rarity!

The third and last problem is a direct consequence of the first: a thing many do not understand is that a PD diagnosis is not given because you’re a moody teen who is angry at misogyny.

It is mostly given when you are a fucking menace to yourself and people around you.

A person should get this diagnosis when they have a consistent pattern of destructive behaviour and uncontrolled emotional responses. These are people who self harm, who have risky behaviours (reckless driving, substance abuse and addiction, violent relationships) and who can and will treat others like shit with little to no reason.

Now, it should not be given to adolescents and this happens. It should not be given without addressing the causes, which often include sexual trauma or prolonged abuse, and this happens. Medication should be prescribed very, very carefully and this doesn’t happen. This is malpractice, and it is way too widespread. I will not deny that.

But here are just some funky tales of things people I know with that diagnosis did:

Set fire to the car of one of her ex BFs. Gleefully told me. The poor guy had done absolutely nothing wrong except leaving her, which was well within his rights. She absolutely could not understand why what she did was unacceptable.

Kept a merry-go-round between three different partners. Two of them were abusive pieces of shit. No amount of telling her that they were pieces of shit would have her convinced that they needed to be excluded from her life and that it wasn’t a good idea to keep fighting with A, calling B for sex and company, fighting with B, calling C for sex and company, fighting with C, calling A, and so on and so forth. This kept going on for years, I cannot stress this enough.

“I only like violent sex” (multiple people, on multiple occasions).

Cheating and then becoming flabbergasted at the partner’s anger, which was seen as cruelty towards them (multiple people, on multiple occasions).

Had a partner who absolutely loved and cherished her. Her response to compliments was, on average, “can you not?”. She would complain that she was ugly and no people would want to have sex with her: confronted with the fact that she did, actually, have at least one person wanting her, she blurted out “you don’t count”. Had the same reply for “I love you”.

Proceeded to find a partner whose opinion apparently counted: you guessed it, an abusive piece of shit. Could not wrap her head around the fact that the previous partner did not exactly want to stay friends.

All of this has to be added to the typical description: labile sense of identity, difficulty in understanding the limits in interactions, volatile emotions, black-and-white thinking, destructive rage, deep sense of void, self-harm and risky behaviour.

Does this look like something that should not be treated as pathological? Does this look like something that can go away with just some more compassion for trauma?

In conclusion: while I do agree that this is a diagnosis that can and does get used as a tool to silence the reality of gendered/sexual abuse on girls and women and it has an ugly stigma to it, I do not entirely discard it as useless either. What I’d like to see is a different paradigm in mental health, where people who have experienced earthly hell can find ways to heal (people can and do get a lot better!) and learn more constructive ways to deal with the world, but in order to do that we need to have a precise frame for the problem.

I hope I did explain myself, and if I didn’t please, let me know. I’ll try to be clearer.

[alexandrarosa]

Normal People

This is going to be yet another rant and I don’t actually know where my train of thought is going to lead me so let’s go.

I heard a lot about Normal People recently and I finally decided to watch it (bc I already have an hbo max subscription and I didn’t know if it’s worth to buy an actual book). And I didn’t make it past the half of the show. But I did read the spoilers online.

First of all the tile was… quite misleading for me. I was assuming I am going to watch a show about, well, normal people. And I don’t think I did.

Calling them normal and therefore their relationship – normal, seems really hurtful. I’m a psychology major, maybe that’s why it triggers me so much but let me state it clearly: their relationship was not healthy nor normal. They behavior was at times problematic. And romanticizing that kind of relationship can have awful consequences.

It’s a sad story about the lack of communication – at least the half I’ve watched. About mistreatment between two people who claim they love each other. About a deep shame about the person they are dating.

I’ve dated a guy like Connell. And I did think that it was very romantic. I was practically addicted to him. The moments when he would decide we can get back together did feel like a great weight was being lifted from my chest. And let me tell you - that relationship destroyed me. Just like it was destroying Marianne.

But the worst thing about that show is that I was actually rooting for them to get together. Like how f*caked up is that? I was in a relationship like that. I’m a psychology major able to identify the incorrect patterns of behavior. And I was still hoping they’ll stay together. Because the way their relationship is shown in the Normal People makes it really hard not to ship them. And that’s also problematic.

For example because upon being in a relationship like that the best thing to do is to get out of a relationship like that. And the viewers hoping they’ll stay together fundamentally accept the toxic and problematic nature of that relationship.

I feel like calling that show Normal People suggests that this kind of relationship is not only acceptable but also, well, normal. So people watching it can assume that the toxic relationship they are in is not to be avoided but rather appreciated.

Don’t get me wrong – the show shows us flaws of the people involved. We know that they are doing poorly and their behavior is wrong. But at the same time is still feels like we are to accept that it’s all a part of life.

In a world that’s hard on its own making it seem okay for a relationship to be hard too – seems just wrong.

Upon seeing the title I thought I was going to see a show about people struggling with life but having a comfort of being together – and facing the normal life together. I was anticipating some cozy scenes and homely feel. And I’m sad I didn’t get that.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Every academic discipline that studies human beings is like this. All of the social sciences have been rife with deeply embedded oppressive bias since their inception. All have substantially improved in this regard at certain points but it’s equally true that they still have a long way to go.

That doesn’t mean that we abandon entire areas of study, though. If psychology were abolished and other disciplines picked up where it left off when it began, we’d be screwed.

Prior to the development of psychology, the things we now study in psychology were considered the purview of philosophers and medical doctors. On the philosophy side, this meant psychological phenomena were talked about speculatively, without regard for empirical data. Philosophers, after all, aren’t social scientists—it’s not their job to collect or analyze data. Though if you abolished psychology, their search for some kind of grounding in reality might cause some of them to gradually turn into social scientists, which is what happened when William James, a philosopher, partially invented modern psychology.

On the medical side, you’d have a lot more reductive physiological explanations for psychological phenomena (like the idea that somatic symptoms are caused by a wandering uterus). Biological determinism galore! More broadly, medical doctors with little or no psychology training just spouting off about their unfounded pet theories would be viewed as the equivalent of the rigorous, peer reviewed research performed by psychologists today.

Guess how we got the idea of drapetomania? It was the unfounded pet theory of a physician, Samuel Cartwright. He was a physician without any particular connection to the nascent form of psychology that existed at that time and from what I can tell, his work (if you can call it that) had zero appreciable influence on what would eventually become psychology. Without psychology we’d be going back to the days when guys like Cartwright could make up diagnoses like drapetomania out of whole cloth and have it considered valid. Psychology came out of efforts to hold such ideas to some kind of standard instead of just accepting the word of the Cartwrights of the world without any data (or even detailed theory!) to support it.

Those efforts often didn’t work. Time and time again, psychologists have engaged in biased research methods that laundered their personal biases into fake science. But sometimes, psychology has been pursued in the right ways. Methods are becoming more rigorous and standards for addressing bias are becoming stronger. We’re also understanding biases themselves better because of psychologists whose subfield of study is oppressive bias, many of them BIPOC psychologists (including some folks I’ve been lucky enough to call my academic mentors).

It’s true that there are serious and highly problematic diagnostic biases that affect people’s lives every day, with disproportionate effects on historically oppressed groups. Often the bias is built into highly flawed diagnoses, inherent in the way they’re framed. But who’s leading the charge to call out these biases? Who backs up their critiques with hard data? Who proposes revisions and replacements so biased diagnoses can be improved or replaced? Psychologists.

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

[tfp-is-my-lifeblood-lol]

Can we talk about this Rescue Bots episode (Spellbound) because I need to appreciate how TERRIFYING it is??? Especially considering it's cannon in the Aligned Universe. This is some A+ horror.

Like damn, some of Griffin Rock's technology is more powerful than even the Decepticon's tech.

Can you IMAGINE if those creepy mind-control cell phones were used in TFP?

Legit mind control that effects humans AND Cybertronians?

And it's SO UNSETTLINGLY subtle, too. The victim's voices sound like their normal selves but just SLIGHTLY off. *shutter* The voice actors did such a good job.

Just IMAGINE that in Prime.

I feel like Optimus would probably be immune (because the Matrix of Leadership is goated) but can you imagine the Jasper Trio getting mind-controlled, and all their guardians + Ratchet know SOMETHING is off, but not what? Then, slowly, the mind control spreads to the Bots? Or vice versa, the Bots go first, and the humans are like: "Something's up with my guardian."

Kinda wild that Invasion of the Body Snatchers shit 100% exists in TFP's world. Felt like I needed to acknowledge that.

Is this gonna be my next TFP headcanons post? Feeling inspired.🤔

[bisexualseraphim]

The whole “your brain doesn’t finish developing until 25” spiel has fucking ruined society I swear. It’s such a gross misunderstanding of the original study it’s laughable, and yet people use it as scientific evidence that infantilising young adults (usually women or people perceived to be women lbr) is ethical actually.

YOUR BRAIN IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING AND DEVELOPING YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. YOU DON’T SUDDENLY WAKE UP ON YOUR 25TH BIRTHDAY WITH ALL THE MATURITY AND KNOWLEDGE YOU NEVER PREVIOUSLY POSSESSED. STOP SPREADING THIS NONSENSE

[anghraine]

I'm trying to redirect my political thoughts from my fandom escape blog again, but I found something interesting enough that I thought I'd talk a little about it.

Occasionally I choose suffering (looking at the more granular 2024 exit poll breakdowns rather than the summaries that I mostly don't trust much at this point). Anyway, I did find something intriguing, if not particularly surprising, in the CNN exit polls, which were done in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin with a sample size of 22,914 voters.

(I mention the specific states forming the sample because this pretty notably excludes any blue states while including some reliably Republican ones.)

Anyway, most exit polls including CNN's let respondents identify their place on the US political spectrum: conservative, moderate, or liberal (reminder that "liberal" in US usage can be a pejorative for "less leftist than me" but also a shorthand for "radical leftist" but also for "anyone who doesn't seek a cishet white Christian ethnostate", but also can be a more neutral synonym for progressives and/or leftists and is often used that way, as here). So you can look at the election results for each of these ideological factions and what share of the overall sample size they represent.

The interesting thing: this "liberal" category accounted for very similar proportions to 2020 of the overall vote in the sample (24% in 2020, 23% in 2024—a difference well within the margin of error of exit polling). There is no need to explain liberals/leftists staying home in 2024: at least in terms of proportions of the overall electorate, they didn't. Just under 1/4 of voters in 2024 were liberals or leftists, just as in 2020.

Okay, if the most leftwards faction of the US political spectrum actually formed a similar proportion of the electorate, then who did they vote for?

Harris. In CNN's own exit polls from 2020, 89% of this faction voted for Biden, and (surprisingly!) a full 10% voted for Trump. God knows what motivated that 10% Trump share after four years of his hellscape of an administration at the height of COVID, but in any case, that support cratered in 2024. 91% of this group voted for Harris and only 4% for Trump. It's an estimate, but it looks like these very peculiar Trump voters had enough of him in 2024 and around half either voted third party this time or for Harris.

So which faction is Trump's victory coming from? Further consolidation of the far right?

In part, yes! 90% of conservatives voted for Trump in 2024, vs 85% in 2020—likely, some conservatives who voted third party or even for Biden in 2020 came "home" this year. However, conservative turnout was actually a little down in 2024, proportionally speaking: conservatives dropped from 38% of the sample in 2020 to 34% in 2024.

But there's one more major faction in all this: "moderates" or centrists. To be clear, we're talking about the US version of centrism, given that this is a US organization polling US voters about US politicians, not "Bernie would be center-right in Denmark" or whatever. This moderate faction jumped from 38% of the overall sample in 2020 to 42% in 2024, and they swung hard towards Trump, though Harris still won a plurality of them. In 2020, 64% of moderates voted for Biden vs 34% for Trump. In 2024, 57% of them voted for Harris vs 40% for Trump—that is, the Democratic lead among centrists dropped precipitously from +30 to +17.

Tl;dr—ideologically speaking, this data suggests that Trump owes his victory to gains among both right-wing and centrist voters rather than some faction of would-be leftists or progressives apathetically staying home or voting third-party or otherwise deserting Democrats (because they're insufficiently radical or for any other reason).

Oh, and if you're curious as to how this compares to CNN's 2016 exit polls, I also checked those! Harris's 84-point lead among the most leftwards faction is a significant improvement from HRC's 74-point lead in 2016. Trump also got 10% of that group in 2016, as in 2020, so it's this campaign—not Hillary's or Biden's—that managed to eat into whatever the hell is going on with that group.

Harris's +17 with moderates is actually a slight improvement on Hillary's +12 in 2016. Biden's jump to a +30 lead among centrists in 2020 represented either a backlash against Trump from centrists, or Biden's own rapport with that group, or some mysterious issue some of those voters had with both HRC and Harris (I wonder what it could be!!), or some combination thereof. Regardless, there are a lot of actual ideologically centrist voters in the USA and not just would-be leftists who haven't heard the good news of Marx yet. And Trump has an iron grip on the right wing at this point: he beat Hillary with conservatives by +65 in 2016, then beat Biden with an even larger margin of +71, then leapt to a 81-point lead over Harris with right-wing voters this year.

[the-therapist-is-ace]

This is really important. Even in psychology it isn't really discussed, even when we HAVE a syndrom that talks about just that. (Even if unfortunately it implies that it's an illness and so something to be cured of...)

The Post-Portum Depression Syndrom (which also implies that it only exist for women and I found it problematic; it's not just the mothers that have that problem but fathers too... But that's another subject.) And it's exactly what it sounds like. A state of deep emptiness, sadness and regret after they gave birth. No special bond or love is suddenly between the mother and the child, and as such the mother doesn't have the "maternal instincts" that society tells every women they have.

And even the DSM-5 says that this syndrom only last a year: but it doesn't. It can last, as the stories above says.

So no everyone. You're not "weird" or "broken" no matter what society (or the DSM-5 and by extension some therapists...) might tell you. Having children is not something that everyone wish for, and would love to, or get once they have kids.

I heard there is a social thesis talking about how this phenomenon might actually be evolution's ways of regulating the population of a specie, alongside the presence of people who cannot reproduce and homosexual people (if you're reading this, you have an ally here ^^). I tend to believe it, because evolution have a tendency to not completely fuck up, otherwise the whole specie is just gone. So if humanity succeed to thrive while always having people who don't want/can't have kids, then they must be here for a reason.

This is so important, stories like this need to be told.  The cultural insistence we have that parenthood is some kind of magical bonding that happens every time without exception does real harm to both parents and children, as you can see from some of these stories:

My father recently told me he never wanted kids, but my mother wanted them. She thought he would love us when we were born.

and

I didn’t realize that a maternal instinct is not universal. You know how you see parents in the delivery room and they are crying tears of joy? I felt nothing. […] My boys are well cared for and I am always here for them, but it feels very unnatural and fake and unenjoyable. It is a bit like a retail job you don’t like where you put on a fake persona and slog through it the best you can. I don’t get to leave this job, though. 

and

I also thought I wouldn’t mind missing out on all the partying and holidays because I would have the ultimate gift, a child.

and

I always said I would never have children. I hate kids..I do. I am just not that type of nurturing person. I was always very careful to make sure protection was in use (condoms, birth control) but I am that .1% and apparently very fertile.  I do not have that natural motherly instinct that all women seem to have, you know..that one that kicks in the moment they know they’re pregnant. I have to work really hard at it and it’s exhausting. I miss my solitude and being able to “check out” of reality from time to time.

and

Because kids aren’t the life completer we believe they are.

Are there people for whom having children completes their lives?  No doubt.  Are there parents for whom the downsides like sleeplessness and loss of personal time are outweighed by the love and joy they feel?  Of course.  Are there people who change their minds about wanting kids once they have them?  Sure.  But that’s not true for everyone.  It doesn’t happen every time, it’s never guaranteed, and the consequences are grievous when people who don’t want children have them anyway trusting that they will love the child and be happy.

We need to dispel the starry-eyed myths around pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage and create more realistic expectations.  Parenthood is too important a choice for people not to go into it with their eyes open.

[ladyalienist]

Gli psicologi non stanno bene. Sono andata da uno per i miei attacchi d‘ansia e terrori notturni e fondamentalmente dopo aver parlato delle cose che mi agitano mi ha risposto con l‘equivalente tedesco di „eh basta non pensarci“. Grazie al cazzo!

Gli psicologi assolutamente non stanno bene. Abbiamo una formazione che è una farsa e purtroppo come un po' tutte le professioni sanitarie è pieno di persone profondamente incompetenti o anche sadiche. Questa cosa è successa anche a me ed è addirittura considerata abbastanza prassi in alcuni tipi di terapia, è ridicolo e mi lascia assolutamente basita.

[floralcavern]

My opinion on the IDF

(Because, yes, despite me being Pro-Israel, I still have ✨thoughts✨)

People need to stop comparing the I/P conflict to the Holocaust. It is nothing like the Holocaust and Israel is nothing like Germany. And you making that comparison really shows how little you actually know about WW2. Read any history book. Read Anne Frank, or Night. In fact, the closest thing to the Holocaust that is happening in this war is what is happening to the Israeli hostages. They are under way more of those conditions. 

No. If we are to ever compare this to any other war, it is more similar to the Vietnam War. 

The IDF is very similar to US soldiers in Vietnam.

Look. We can all agree that US was on the right side of Vietnam. They were helping the Southern Vietnamese from the Northern Vietnamese. So when you hear “They were on the right side/good side” you automatically think they were the good guys. Wonderful heroes. And, yes, Vietnam veterans were heroes. But they did some fucked up shit. 

For example, according to one veteran, one time when one of his friends had been murdered, out of anger, they all burned an entire town down. US soldiers took out a lot of their frustrations and anger onto the Vietnamese. So while we all agree that they are on the right side and are the good guys, they did some fucked up shit. Stuff that cannot be excused at all. 

Another example is in WW2! We all think of the allies as the good guys! They fought against the terrible Nazis and yadada. America was on the good side, they were one of the main sides that took down Germany! So while we acknowledge that America was the right side the be on, we cannot forget the horrible things they did. For example..

They had Japanese concentration camps. 

Bet you didn’t know that. 

The reason for this was because the amount of violence they saw and experienced was involved with Japan. They were traumatized but it is no excuse to do something like that!

America was the right side, but they weren’t the perfect military. 

No military is perfect!!!!!!!!!!!

That includes the IDF. 

But here’s the thing, on the side of the ‘good guys’, usually when there’s extremely violent people in the military, there are usually two reasons for this. 

They have experienced horrors beyond comprehension while fighting on the battlefield, causing them to become jaded and bitter

Or 

2. They were always a violent person and they joined the war to take that out onto others. 

It is the tragic reality that every single military has people like this. It is history. The historical ‘good guys’ did horrible things as well. 

That brings me back to the Vietnam War. 

The soldiers saw so many horrible things that could actually compare very well to what the IDF has seen. 

US soldiers had no way to tell if a citizen was Northern Vietnamese or Southern Vietnamese. 

Usually by the time they learned, it was too late. 

There are stories of US soldiers having a Vietnamese child come up to them, holding something. About to give them a gift! But when they opened their hand, they were holding a grenade. 

That is so similar to what Hamas is doing. They use suicide bombers and child soldiers. Things like that will create an idea of they can’t trust anyone. Anyone could be out to hurt them and there’s the idea of almost animalistic fighting for survival. How can you trust when Hamas could literally send a child out to kill you?!

So, really, if you think about it, the US soldiers of the Vietnam War are very similar to the IDF. 

That sense of they can’t trust anyone, violence due to the trauma and being surrounded by enemies trying to do the same fucking thing (hell, Hamas has been committing terrorist attacks on Israel for years now). Even what the two sides fight for are somewhat similar! 

The US fought to help the Southern Vietnamese and gain freedom from their Northern neighbors. Israel is fighting for freedom from their neighbors who are constantly attacking them and freeing Palestinians from their oppressive government. 

It starts out virtuous and those ideas do carry on for the most part, but it also dissolves into animalistic violence and anger because of the shit they have seen.

Also, the way US Vietnam soldiers were treated in America is actually really similar to how Americans treat the IDF. 

Nowadays when we meet a Vietnam veteran, we comment on how brave they are and how they’re a hero. Back then, though? Ohhhhh boy. Americans hated them. When soldiers would come home, Americans would yell at them, spit on them, etc. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?

So, TLDR;

I support Israel and I support the IDF in the same way I support America in WW2 and the Vietnam War. They’re on the right side and have virtuous intent, but they sure as hell aren’t perfect and have done some fucked up shit. Yknow. Like every other military in the world. The sad reality we live in. Not everything is black and white.

[cherries-in-wine]

Lolita rant because why not:

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE STILL CALL IT A LOVE STORY WHEN THERE'S LITERALLY A PART WHERE DOLORES ASKS FOR THE NAME OF "the hotel where you first raped me" LIKE EXCUSE ME WHAT PART OF A 12 YEAR GIRL GETTING RAPED AND ABUSED IS ROMANTIC TO YOU??

I cannot stress this enough LOLITA IS PSYCOLOGICAL HORROR. Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator that's manipulating and charming YOU into believing it's a love story but it's your responsibility to read in between the lines and realise what's actually going on. How lolita is just a 12 year old girl named Dolores who is isolated, raped and abused throughout the entire book by Humbert Humbert and has no voice in his story.

Even the people behind the lolita movies did not get this they still think of lolita as some sort of seductress which is just disgusting.

I think the reason why people sometimes interpret it as a love story is because of how beautifully it is written. The way Humbert Humbert writes about Lolita is very dreamy and poetic but that's literally the point of the book it's a cautionary tale.

Some people turn Vladimir Nabokov into the villain for writing a book like this when in reality he was victim of child sexual abuse himself. He called lolita his "poor little girl". He wanted the cover of the book to be an American landscape and especially NOT that of a little girl because he wanted lolita to be faceless. It's so heartbreaking to see the author's wishes be blatantly disrespected.

I love psychological horrors/thrillers with unreliable narrators like lolita and killing stalking but they get misinterpreted so often it's sad.

[sozzledjuja]

Mephisto & Praxina - A Relationship Analysis

Because part of me wishes that the twins' dynamic had been more explored in the show, while Mephisto was still "alive".

There are honestly so many scenes, especially in season 2, where you could feel the main underlying issues between them, but they were never actually adressed or explored.

Also, feel free to add your own thoughts, maybe stuff that I missed, or things you disagree with as well.

Let's start with this scene, from Cute As A Doll, which I'm surprised not more people are talking about:

So, Praxina gets hurt by Auriana's blast, and Mephisto immediately stops his chase for Iris to teleport next to his sister, to make sure she's alright.

Aaaaanddd- she yells at him for caring/worrying, telling him to just go after Iris.

LOOK AT HIS FACE BRO. Homeboy was truly worried, but then immediately gets back in the game.

It's easy to just look at the dismissive and "careless" way in which Praxina treats Mephisto most of the time, and rule her off as "heartless". However, this sentiment seems to also be present when HE tries to "connect" or worries about her.

We see this again in Forget You:

She sees attachments and emotions as a sign of weakness and vulnerability, and clearly doesn't allow herself to feel it and lashes out whenever her brother does.

This refusal to accept love and affection is usually born out of an inherent lack of trust in people. It comes from a place of fear. She seems to prefer to remain impartial and formal as much as possible, regardless of how much her brother (or anyone else, for the matter) wishes to get close to her.

When it comes to other people, I believe she simply doesn't trust that the gestures of affection are real/genuine.

Good!Praxina, in Forget You I believe, was less of a "possibly redeemed" Praxina and more of a "blank page" Praxina, as in, what she would've been like had none of the Gramorr or the other bad stuff happened.

Still, let's not forget that Good!Praxina still clearly had some concerning instincts, so some of her less pleasant characteristics like her destructive behavior, lack of empathy, difficulty accepting affection and praise, and connecting with people, were probably already there since the beggining.

Iris said it herself:

Remember, Good!Praxina still didn't like the idea of helping people when the girls first tried to teach her how to be a good person; Only AFTER being exposed to good influences did she actually begin to redirect her energy torwards "good" goals, and I think this proves that, in a different, more positive enviromnent, she would've definetly turned out differently.

But, alas- she didn't, so here I am, writing this big ass psychological assessment. Which is mostly her fault.

Also Mephisto clearly has some issues of his own when it comes to how his sister treats him (which, let's be honest, while I wouldn't call it abusive, she definetly isn't an easy person to care about).

Also the fact that she seems to think he's incapable of doing anything right definetly bothers him more than he lets on.

It's easy to laugh these moments off but there's definetly something much deeper going on.

Again

And again

And again. and this one was fucked up

And in many other times.

Oh- and the fact that she always blames him for everything. Which is another one of Praxina's biggest flaws: an inability to admit fault or take any sort of accountibility. Aaand shifting the blame.

Which he knows, and this is clearly something that he takes and takes, until he snaps.

This moment in If You Can't Beat Them was also really telling on how he actually feels about how his sister never actually shows any appreciation for his contributions, and seems to think he's weaker and less capable of reason as she is.

I genuinely do not know what goes through Praxina's brain to make her do this. I don't know wether she actually genuinely believes he's stupid and fucks everything up or not.

And Gramorr, although he doesn't outright show much preference for Praxina in spite of Mephisto, seems to share the sentiment, given that he appears to be slightly less patient/harsher towards him than his sister.

What I can say is that Praxina definetly believes that he is the weakest link between them (which might seem like it's true at first glance, but I wouldn't be so sure as to state it), which, given the previous statement, might also be a result of Gramorr himself thinking/saying it, since they've probably been training under his wing for quite a long time, which would make her (and Mephisto) easily influenced by his opinion, as an authority figure.

And he might pretend it doesn't effect him, but we all know that deep down it does, and that he's kinda insecure despite all his bravado.

I think Mephisto's always been more sensitive and more "emotionally-inclined" than his sister, even before Gramorr. I believe that both twins have the potential to be good, but Mephisto is definetly more "hardwired" for it than Praxina.

And we already know what she thinks about that: emotion=weakness.

And part of her wants to keep reminding him she's better too. The girl's got a big ego to stroke.

Mephisto also seems to have more morals than his sister.

We can see that throughout the show he's helped the princesses sometimes: Iris, with whom he teamed up with to save his sister in If You Can't Beat Them, in which he even told her he'd be honored to serve her as queen of Ephidea, had circunstances been different, which I truly believe he meant;

And Carissa, in Statue Game, who he ALSO teamed up with to save his sister, and who, let's not forget, he gave the other evil amulet back to, so that the princesses could reverse the spell that turned that human girl into stone.

And when Gramorr got the last gem, Mephisto seemed to actually be horrified by what was happenning.

He clearly wasn't totally fine with enslaving the entire planet.

Praxina, on the other hand, seemed pretty okay with it.

Ecstatic even.

She's relishing in what's happening, that's what she wants. To bend other to her will, to be feared rather than loved, to have power over others.

Maybe not what she needs, but what she WANTS.

Mephisto realizing that is GOLD from a storytelling prespective.

I feel like he looked at her in hopes she'd be as concerned as he was, that they were on the same page about the situation, only to find her- well, laughing. I joked about this being his "oh shit, these people are actually evil" moment, but I think part of him was only surprised with Praxina. Maybe he hadn't realized just how far this "lifestyle" had actually shaped his sister.

We know for sure that Mephisto has higher levels of empathy than Praxina. And common sense. This is why I always disagree when people say that Praxina is smarter than Mephisto. She might be more "logical" and "rational", but neither of those things equate to cleverness. Mephisto seems to be more astute and more intuitive.

Him starting to realize Gramorr was probably not gonna give them shit is a great example of this.

Which Praxina did NOT even think about. She was on a high, thinking about all the power they were gonna have now that Gramorr was free and back in action. Miss girl, you are delusional.

Honestly Praxina's fatal flaws deserve their own separate post.

Because let's be clear: I'm trying to debunk all of the twin's relationship issues, and everytime, it's clear who's actually responsible for everything going badly in the emotional realm.

I love her but she IS the problem. Not saying Mephisto is a poor innocent baby who never did anything wrong his whole life (I'm looking at you, lolirock fandom). He definetly has a lot of flaws and bad traits himself, but he's not the one to blame for anything regarding his and his sister's relationship.

To conclude,

THIS is normal sibling behaviour.

All the rest I showed above this SHOULD. NOT. BE.

This is not me saying they have a bad relationship, but I am saying that they don't have a fantastic one either.

Also, I blame dark magic too. The Team has confirmed it makes them more irritable, so there's that too.

They really care about each other, and I don't doubt that BOTH of them would do anything to keep the other safe. But they got lots of unspoken stuff to talk about.

And are both in desperate need of therapy

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

i love it when bad is very specifically a good roleplayer by giving other people good prompts. like casually bringing up wilbur now to tallulah. or when he put missa in the petting zoo. or all those times he Tormented the Lesbians so they could protect each other from him. its just so !!!! I love watching roleplayers be considerate of other roleplayers and gleefully hand over something they Know the other person's character can react to. i've seen cellbit do it, too (that time he handed his knife to bbh. oh my god). it's not a rare thing, and it's possible to be a good roleplayer without keeping that sort of considerate back and forth in mind, but its one of my favourite things to notice. foolish does it too, sometimes- i haven't watched him much, but i did take note of when he Made Sure to bring jaiden along with him on a cucurucho quest. and basically every interaction he had with bad when the eggs were missing. its just so so good

[ladyalienist]

I'll latch onto this post to add that it has ruined or at least really hindered also every discussion of every other political issue, from environmentalism to class struggle to racism to ableism, and it has destroyed any credibility the field of psychology and social sciences might have.

We cannot discuss mental health because the preschooler cannot be taught responsibility and healthy ways of coping with the world and cannot be told that being destructive and insufferable is not a good thing.

We cannot define the field of study. We cannot talk about deviant behaviour because "it's stigmatizing :(". We cannot talk about societal patterns because the preschooler has decided that he does not live in a society. We annot say that the preschooler is lying or being misled. We cannot even point at him and say "he's a preschooler and he does not know shit about fuck" (this, quite literally). And we cannot critique the behaviour of the parents either, because that's hatred and oppression.

This is a fucking nightmare.

this has been said before and probably better but honestly no one wants to talk about transwomen. seriously. having to talk about transwomen is like... trying to have a college level seminar but there's a preschooler and you have to keep stopping because the preschooler doesn't get what's going on. there is zero joy in having to establish what woman means, what lesbian means, what socialization means, before you can even get to your real ideas, and the preschooler thinks this is all stupid because he wants to be a dog and you can't stop him.

there is no way to talk about women as a class, to talk about women's liberation, if you can't even coherently define what a woman is. and anyway the preschooler's parents are here and they're having you shut down, saying you hate preschoolers.

i'm of two minds, one saying that we need to talk about transwomen because they're eroding women's and lesbian's rights, and the other saying that transwomen are a red herring and it's pointless to argue for plain reality over and over to idiots who've chosen men's reality.

we've been shoved so far backward.

[naffeclipse]

Just realizing that the fact that there exists an “Angel Eyes” Eclipse implies the existence of either a more foreboding or comically innocent version of him called “Devil Eyes”

oh, Lumi, you just unleashed something devasting

As entertaining as a detective Eclipse would be, innocent and way in over his head when it comes to dealing with a mob boss Y/N who just so happens to find him devilishly handsome and too clever for his own good, I'm thinking of something worse than a mob boss.

As a young rookie cop, you are attempting to put out so many fires in the city. The crime rate is abysmal. The politicians are running on fumes and bribes. The police force is barely hanging on through constant corruption. Animatronics are still considered inhuman, unalive, objects to be owned and used, and disposed of. You're hoping that the laws declaring animatronic rights will pass soon.

Murders happen every single day in a city racked with gangs, crime lords, and thieves. You and a few other officers are tasked with dealing with a particular crime scene. It's not unusual for a politician to get assassinated, but there's something particularly brutal about the killing that sits in your stomach wrong—there was blood everywhere.

Then another important person gets knocked off, the carnage grisly and crimson, then another, and another. You can't shake how savage the murders are.

High-ranking officials start having you and other cops stand as bodyguards, taking them where they need to go, standing outside their meeting doors and on the street of their homes at night.

The killings keep happening. You learn of police officers who were standing watch were gutted, too. Slained just as well as the intended target.

You do your job, but you don't like it. You became a cop to help the city. This wasn't what you had in mind, much less babysitting powerful and possibly corrupted individuals that you despise.

That's how you confront him.

Late one evening, sitting in a squad car with a fellow policeman, you two keep each other awake with small talk until you hear the faintest scream. You both take off, and you take the back of the house. When you enter the gauche kitchen, there's a cook animatronic knocked to the ground. You stop to speak to the poor robot, her optics fuzzy until you offer a helping hand and get her back onto her wheels.

Before you can send her somewhere safe, a cold shudder rolls down your spine, as if someone were walking on your grave. You whirl around to find a towering figure at the far end of the room, dark and threatening. Black optics with pinpricks of electric yellow peer at you in judgment. The devilish eyes startle your soul.

You yell out commands to stop but the animatronic—you realize—doesn't head and disappears deeper into the house.

You give chase. You hear a gunshot upstairs and a shout from your partner. When you reach the second landing, you lift your gun to take aim, but a large fist clamp around your own. You fire once, hitting nothing. You're thrown against the wall, dangling by the wrists under the looming killer. Sharp rays, burgundy and royal blue, circle his face plate, splattered in bright blood.

It's too late. It's too late for the politician, it's too late for your partner, and it's too late for you.

He takes your gun and drops it far away. His staggering height gives no hope that you can fight him off, and already, he has you pinned. You simply hope that it will be quick, painless, but your heart sinks when he lifts a hand to your throat. His optics glint. You close your eyes.

A cold, slick finger tilts your chin up. He commands you to look at him, and you aversely obey. The optics scan your face. You wonder if he takes a sick pleasure from causing harm. You loathe that he most likely finds fear in your eyes but you are determined to not make a sound.

"Officer," he says in a cold, dark voice that spears your heart. He studies the badge on your chest, reading your last name etched in brass. You clench your fists, still suspended by his one large hand.

"Who are you?" you demand.

He doesn't answer. He cocks his head with a flash of sharp teeth in a metallic grin. When he drops you, you nearly crumple to the ground. You're aware of the blood underneath your chin where he had touched you. When you try to reach for your handcuffs, he's already down the stairs and out the door, fleeing the murders. Trembling, you fumble for your gun, but you find the clip gone.

The killer animatronic left you alive.

[sickness-stricken]

Y'all ever think about how fucked up it is that you can be prescribed things like anti-depressants or anti-psychotics that can make your life infinitely worse upon taking them and the person that prescribed it is just like "Oh. Oopsie 🥰 Let's try another one"

Keep in mind, it's perfectly acceptable to mock stoners who say "Nah man, you just gotta try a different strain bro just trust" and write off what they're saying as quackery, but telling therapist bootlickers about the terrible experience you had on a specific medication is 9 times out of 10 met with "Well you should just try a different one :)"

Okay, then what happens? The same healthcare professional that prescribed me the first med is gonna do the exact same process again with another med with almost identical effects because they have it in their head what I'm like and what I need. They want me to keep nodding along to whatever brain fog shit they decide to put me on next because it looks good on their stupid fucking papers while they laugh at their new favourite test rat.

I'm so tired.

[sacrificialsheepskull]

You should smash your sheep skull on your head so it makes a cut in your head and rips your brain membrane. I’ve been daydreaming on different ways for you to die or at least leave and not be seen again.

-@dogskahara

that's not how anatomy works at all but get mad for all i care