#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

[erinwantstowrite]

the past couple of days i was doing a lot of stuff but mostly deep cleaning our house and something i noticed while listening to my mom's true crime videos was that you can rarely find a channel that doesn't add stupid fucking music to the background like it's a horror movie- or even more inappropriate cheerful music.

and that REALLY bothers me because these are people's REAL lives we're talking about here... when i watch true crime anything i have to go out of my way to find channels that don't sensationalize it or disrespect the victims in any way. recently, one of the channels i watch has started showing signs of leaning towards this kind of content, when previously they hadn't done so. and it's disappointing. i'm a big believer in music elevating a story but it just feels gross to put it here. or to keep doing moments like "but this horrifying secret will come to light later", etc etc

[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.

[hello-there]

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[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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[ladyalienist]

I thought I’d just give the quick answer but no. You actually sent me such an idiotic ask that I will elaborate and that is a threat. Not because of you, but because there’s other people who may benefit.

So first of all: let’s start with your wording. “It’s gross of you”, you say, and I cannot help but wonder what you think mental illness looks like in real life. Working in healthcare, at every level, means dealing with quite a lot of things that might just fall under the definition of grossness, like cleaning up bodily fluids such as vomit, shit, piss, blood, and dealing with quite a lot of unpleasant situations. If such was not the case, we’d have no reason to work. The fact that you cannot deal with the ✨grossness✨ of me describing a problem, in the gentlest possible way without outright lying, tells me a lot about you and let me tell you that: it’s not that you are a kind soul worrying about the welfare of people.

Second thing, tied to the first: people who have problems will not act in the most perfect way. I do not know, again, what you think mentally ill people look and act like, but I can assure you that they need help because they act in problematic ways, incredible, I know: if you manage to function consistently in your daily life and avoid any bad reaction to things, you do not need a therapist, let alone a psychiatrist.

Third thing: not being able to describe the problems and the various conditions people may suffer from in a blunt way is a huge issue in psychology/psychiatry. Because of people like you, who think that kindness means, somehow, never ever dealing with the ugly side of things, never ever describing reality, because reality is upsetting and imperfect and complex and, in your words, gross.

Now let’s move to an elaboration of the previous post:

1) in the original post you refer to I deliberately chose a few examples of behaviours I’ve seen or have been told about, from people I know in my real life, out of here. You know what the criteria for the choice was? That they were pretty tame and believable for someone who has never witnessed actual mental illness before. Every single person I’m talking about could and would do, in fact has done, absolutely worse things. This being said, if we put the car affair aside (and I swear to God I’d rather bail her out for arson a thousand times than having to deal again with other things she’s done) and look at all the rest… I thought it was pretty self evident but it wasn’t:

All of the shit I described stems from an incredibly deep and virulent self-hate. The same feeling that makes these people cut themselves makes them seek destructive relationships and destroy whatever “good” happens to them. When your mind is dead-set on the path of self-destruction it will stop at nothing, and yes, hurting people you love to punish yourself can and will become part of the pattern. One can learn to cope with the pain in different ways, but first you need to be able to define the pattern and where it needs to break. This doesn’t make you an abuser (in fact I think I specified that many of these people were victims of abuse), but it makes you treat your friends and lovers in horrible ways.

2) when you reach a certain level of suffering you cannot actually wrap your head around that, and of course it’s not deliberate nor wanted (that is why self-harm happens in secret), and of course it’s the least important side to this topic, but… in the kindest possible way, self-harming harms people who love you, too.

What do you think it feels like to love someone and deal with their self-harming? Loving someone and disinfecting self-inflicted wounds, cleaning up the blood? Loving someone and having any loving words and compliments being replied to with something along the lines of “well you don’t really mean that” or “well you make shitty choices in friendships”, over and over and over again? Loving someone and having to worry anytime they are out of your sight, because you don’t know what they might do and what might happen?

Again, when the mind is that set on the path of self-destruction it will not matter to the self-harmer, who will probably not even realize that other people are worrying or suffering, but it is a consequence, an inevitable one. And do you think that someone who cannot manage to realize that others are worrying/suffering about them will care if their direct actions are damaging said others?

That is why there are therapeutic interventions also for parents/relatives/spouses/friends of people with mental distress. Because it never affects only one person.

3) one thing I didn’t stress hard enough, apparently, is the presence of very risky behaviours such as substance addictions, reckless driving, hypersexuality, you name it.

Now, risky behaviours aren’t risky solely for the person who acts them out.

You drink and drive because who cares if I kill myself? You are putting at risk everyone who might encounter you on the road.

You start doing hard drugs because I don’t want to feel the pain anymore? I will at some point talk about addiction, but I think it might reach unbearable levels of ✨grossness✨ (at least to you) so it will be for another day; let me just tell you, it’s not a nice thing to deal with.

You have unprotected sex every night with someone different because being a slut is all I’m good for? Here you are, exposing other people (and yourself) to quite dangerous risks, such as pregnancy or STDs.

Again, the one thing that is incredibly clear from your ask is that you have absolutely no clue what mental distress looks and feels like in real life. And it possibly scares you and grosses you out.

But the thing is, you don’t know this reality, but I do. I live in it.

And it’s not people like me who make suffering individuals be ashamed and afraid to seek help. If anything, it is people who are so scared and grossed out by the tamest possible description of dysfunctional patterns that they feel the need to distinguish that from their polished image of a suffering person, who clearly only self-harms in silence with no inconvenience for anyone else.

I think I might just be talking to someone like that.

I think it’s gross of you to equate self-harmers to people who set cars on fire and are violently abusive. Attitudes like that are why so many people are ashamed and afraid to get genuine help.

If you don't think self-hate and hatred for others can coexist, and that one person can be violent towards oneself and others alike, then I do not know what to tell you. Maybe you're the one who does not understand how much humans can be complex, and maybe you're the one who lacks the nuance that is necessary to deal with such complexity.

People are ashamed to seek help, that is true. But it's not because someone calls a spade a spade and straight up says that setting cars on fire and self-harming are both wrong ways to deal with pain, even when it's always the same person acting on it.

Especially if that someone is a perfect stranger on the internet.

[theokusgallery]

Hiiii I saw you say you have Notes on your Remus and Janus designs 👀👀?

Could we see/hear some tidbits?

FOR SURE !! Here's what the original doodles for their designs look like, first off, (I know you didn't ask for Virgil but I did these three at the same time)

When I drew this I had just finished an exam and had to wait another hour until I could leave the classroom, so I wrote down enough notes that I had to flip the page instead:

Virgil:

- Virgil has light brown hair that he dyes black (badly). It is essential that the dye job look like shit. It looks artificial, his roots are showing, there's patches where the color didn't take, etc etc.

- He also has blue eyes, which I decided on mostly because it makes it even more clear that his hair isn't naturally black.

- He wears earrings, but his ears aren't actually pierced — they're fake little little clip-on things.

- He wears black nail polish at all times, but it's always chipped because he gets the cheapest stuff he can get his hands on.

- His hair (especially his bangs) get very long at times because he gets too socially anxious to go to the hairdresser. Back in middle school, he used to have Janus cut them for him (Remus could have done a better job but trusting him with scissors would have been a mistake). Now he mostly cuts it off by himself — it looks about as good as his dye job.

- Virgil's purple hoodie is a leftover from Remus' fashion design endeavors that Remus thought didn't look weird enough.

Janus:

- He has naturally strawberry blonde hair. The length is very important to him — he started growing it towards the end of middle school. (He allows Remus to experiment with hairdos sometimes as long as he doesn't cut anything off. I need to draw that sometime)

- I'm not entirely settled on his eye color. I know at least one of his eyes is a very pretty brown, but I have half a mind to give him a yellow glass eye for his left side — I'm not sure it'd make any logistic sense for his situation, though

- He got his ears actually pierced when he was 16.

- He also may or may not have a forked tongue. Not sure how I'd ever be able to show that off — but if he does have one, then Remus definitely was the one to encourage him to do it.

- His fashion style was definitely influenced by being around Remus (who may have used him as a mannequin/dummy because he's small.) so much. Remus also attempted to make clothes for him, but Janus is very fancy and picky, so he doesn't wear those clothes very often (though he might accessorize with stuff Remus made for him occasionally).

Remus:

- He has naturally very dark hair. He uses temporary/surface level dyes a lot, but if he's using permanent or semi-permanent dyes, he's usually limiting himself to the grey streak — it's kind of a sample strand, since it's already bleached. He 100% copied his hairstyle from Roman's.

- He (and Roman, of course) has greenish blue eyes.

- Janus paid for him to get his ears (and eyebrows) professionally pierced because otherwise he was just going to do it himself with a sewing needle.

- He has a lot of very shitty stick-and-poke tattoos he made/makes on himself. They're almost always hidden by his outfits.

- Speaking of which, Remus makes most of his outfits costumes himself. The quality of the work may vary, but they are always way too over-the-top for casual wear, because he stands out anyway, so... in for a penny, right. (As I said in the tags of a post: he is very creative and has no shame or social anxiety at all, so he had his whole aesthetic ("overdramatic green") figured out by the time he was 13)

- He also has SH scars, but, again — they're hidden by his outfits 99% of the time. He's a slut who never shows an inch of skin

[bitchy-peachy]

Learn what actual "proship" means before coming at me with stuff that just tells me that you don't know what proship is.