#some people for some fucking reason: reinforces the mental illness in ways never thought possible

[kkoct-ik]

i dont think i will ever forgive what the internet did to DID because please explain to me how "your sense of self is so torn apart you think youre multiple people" turned into "youre actually multiple people"

do you understand what i mean? please understand what i mean

[trials-of-a-spirit-worker]

MORE Things I Want Y’all To Know

So I try to make it very clear that I make mistakes. As far as we all know, I’m only human (people have suspected I am an alien of some sort, idk why... my squidilly splooch is just the same as everyone else's, goddamnit) and I would like people to learn from my mistakes and then not do them. You know? Do better. 

Read more- Witch History, Basic witch practices, read up about other culture and all that. It took me a hot minute on my journey to start doing it and I regret it. Its like rejecting the tutorial like oh it’s all the same and having to revisit the settings and control menu again and again. 

Just focus on a couple things at a time- This is admittedly one of my biggest issues, because I’m like Well I want to learn about this and this and this and this and this and--you see where it gets bad. Calm thy nipples, Herfeffine Heferfefer! (If you understand that names reference, I like you.) You’ll get to learn what you want eventually. Have patience and learn to be well acquainted with a couple things before moving on to the next. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

There is not one way to read tarot- This is beyond learning meanings that your neat little booklet that you get with a deck. Not only should you try and focus on neutral meanings for each card and not associate them with good or bad meanings, but also how your intuition is working with what you see. Your cards are there to help you illustrate what a possible answer or path may be. Treat it as such. I’ve heard people say go through it as if it were a story being told and I really like that method. Tarot is a tool for your intuition and a tool of divine communication. It is an extension of the mind and methods to see become as individual as you are. 

Just because you feel  like you’re ready to move on, doesn’t mean that you are- Sometimes we get a little overzealous and that's fine. We’re excited, we want to learn, get better, wiser, stronger, etc. But just....hold your damn horses. Don’t force yourself to try and catch up with other witches that you may see. You’re gonna have a bad time if you’re more focused on being on someone else's level instead of just working within and focusing on yourself. I guarantee you, the witches we look up to suffered the same slow grind as you did. Respect that power crawl boo. We all go through it.

Not everything is a lesson or a point from the universe. - Be able to see the difference between a strange occurrence and coincidences and actual lessons. If you’re like me who thought damn near everything was some karmic lesson you’re gonna end up a paranoid mess trying to decode and decipher EVERYTHING. Whooo, just thinking back to it makes me tired. Relax some weird shit happens. The world is weird. Sometimes, you can even catch someone else’s karmic lesson, doesn’t mean you need to get involved, it just means you see some shit. And that's okay. Sometimes you just see a lot of shit and as long as you’re not seeing things you’ll be okay.

Your Health Takes Priority- Self explanatory. Mental and Physical damnit. Your mentor shouldn’t be draining you every time you’re with them. You do not need to harm yourself for a spell like Hollywood loves to do sometimes. Here, lemme supernatural style gash my fucking hand open for a spell that requires six drops of blood. NO. I swear to all that is holy and not I will bap you with rolled up magazines.  Just...be reasonable. I generally trust the lot of you, but there are reasons certain warnings exist you know? Also, I cannot stress this enough. Witchcraft does not have to be 24/7 I swear. You can take breaks. You can back out of things. Relax and recoup when you can. You owe it to yourself. Just fucking take care of yourself mkay!?

NEVER EVER be afraid to ask for help- Some of us (*cough cough* Me included *COUGH*) can be super prideful and stick with our problem like its fine when we know good and well we’re ill-equiped for whatever the fuck just happened. Swallow it and ask for help. Hell, I can tell you about a time where I was dealing with some awful spirit I had no experience with and was like I handled some growly bastards like this before and then it turned out to be nothing close to what I experienced before and got my ass handed to me before I limped back to a mentor like a dipshit. Don’t be like past me. Don’t be a dipshit. Just. Get. Help. Even if it’s just advice, just fucking do it. Whatever it is, take the L and get some reinforcements. Learned this the hard way. Learn from my mistakes please.

That’s all I have for you. Please be safe out there, love yourself and others and don’t do stupid shit.

[capriccio-con-espressione]

N(oona) C(raving) T(endencies)

This is my 3k words of analysis of NCT members who I think are likely to have a noona kink based on the ask. Enjoy!

Disclaimer:

By this I am not saying that other members not mentioned here don't have any possibility to date an older female/enjoys referring to their dommes as noona, it's just like the tendency/preference isn't that clear or obvious in my opinion. Do not send in rude comments just because you disagree though I will appreciate some feedback.

Warning: Sub!Taeyong, Sub!Jungwoo, Sub!Mark, Sub!Xiaojun, Sub!Jaemin, Domme!Reader, Femdom, Noona kink, Degradation, Whipping, Spanking, Pegging, Public humiliation, Role-play, Oral sex, Sex toys, Dry humping, Dildo riding, Mentions of mental health issues/negative emotions

Taeyong

This boi is insufferably kinky and subby

In Baby Don't Like It he stated he likes it rough

In Whiplash he literally emphasized again how much of a painslut he is

And his ideal type is “Someone who can teach me, lead me, and make up for my flaws.”

To conclude this, Tyongie may be craving for a strong, mature female's guidance when he's lost and insecure, a noona domme who can heal all the anxiety, stress and inner guilt he's been through by her ruthless discipline, plus, the age hierarchy implied in the title will allow him to sink into his headspace even more.

He's such a sucker for this torment that, with one stern look from you, he will automatically strip naked and ready himself in the humiliating positions assigned by you before without any spoken command, and obediently waits for the first slap/whip while trembling in both anticipation and thrill

I can totally picture him begging his noona for more punishment, though already red, sore and sobbing

"...Ahhh noona I'm sorry... *sniffles* please punish me more for being a bad, ill-mannered boy...don't stop mmmff-"

However, that being said, if that noona domme is actually younger than him, he may be down for the added humiliation due to the role reversal

Imagine that younger domme dismissively orders him to call her "noona" in public, and commands him to use honorifics to speak to her, the exact type and wording that make him sound humbled…

He will be turned on by that while people around you shoot puzzled gazes toward you as they wonder why the hierarchy dynamics aren’t in the right place, making Taeyong feel embarrassed as well as aroused

By the way, some role-plays can be added to spice up your sex lives as well, e.g. CEO x employee, professor x student, guard x prisoner, to name a few, as long as you are in power and makes sure to beat the naughtiness and disobedience out of him

Though being intensely kinky during the session, aftercare for this precious boy has to be really fulfilling as well

So you have to be able to play an attentive caring role just like a noona (a little bit maternal figure as well, I have to admit)

Make sure the process is all intimate and brimming with praises, reassuring the broken figure that the "bad boy" is "forgiven" to thoroughly sew up his wounds

Bubble bath, scented candles with calming aroma, sensual massage with essential oils of his favorite scent and texture, or having some good quality snacks while cuddling, are all good options for aftercare because all of them can reinforce the idea that he’s “worthy” of anyone’s love and attention due to the physical contact and interactions allowed in them 

So steamy and sensual that if done correctly, Taeyong may be in the mood for another round of vanilla sex to get an extra gratifying orgasm again

Jungwoo

A clingy little pup that will follow you around and will cutely pout when not given enough attention or skinship

Loves to be babied and taken care of, so he would love the accompany of a sweet caring noona to make him feel at ease (borderline mommy kink as well)

Remember that Valentine's Day Facetime vid where he just referred to the viewer insert as "noona"? That probably implied his preference for an older female figure

Will do anything to please you since he's very love-starved and doesn't want you to feel uncared for because he knows too well how much that sucks, he will shower you with the same amount of affection he expects from you as well

Anxious and always worries about if he's still "needed", so that's why he will opt for a perspicacious noona to counsel him for his delicate soul to rely on, and shower him with the adequate amount of love then pamper him 

Melts at cute pet names such as pup, angel, prince, little fairy, snoopy or any endearing terms because they make intimacy upgrade to another level

May act a bit playful or even borderline bratty from time to time, mainly to spice things up and get some sexy punishment to release his excess nervousness

But hardcore stuff definitely isn't for him, since the soft boy can't tolerate much pain. 

Light impact play on his erogenous zones is fine, but he enjoys the feelings of vulnerability and exposure more rather than the pain itself

The type to let out loud moans even when just getting his underwear peeled down because the instant when the air hits his flesh is a huge turn-on for him, so much to the extent he is yearning to beg you to fuck him just from getting naked

Very sensitive, literally gasps, squirms and grinds every time when you caress or slap his sweet zones and will beg you to stop though you know he's enjoying it too much

Will repeat your title like a mantra as if it's the only thing that can keep him sane

Be wailing like "Hnnngh noona pretty pleeaase stop spanking me ahhh noona no I'll be a good boy pleaseee it stings noona I'm sorryyy hahhh" but the way how his hips rock against your lap will betray his words, giving you more reason to torture him

Loves being pegged and used, or getting his all possible sensitive spots stimulated and stuffed at once because he just lusts after every inch of his body being thoroughly pleasured inside-out, and drown in the depths of overstimulation and hedonistic ecstasy to feel completely loved and secured

Edging is really suitable for this delicate boy because of the enhanced experience after prolonged denial, which makes the orgasm more earth-shattering than ever

Though he will be a teary puddle and begs you to end the ordeal, the uncertainty and feebleness associated with edging will turn his mind into a soaring frenzy state even more, enabling him to release all his pent-up frustrations and negativity while finally allowed to empty his balls

Likely to get emotional and will hold on to you very tight during post-climax aftercare due to the intense sensation that just washed through his mind and body, feeling extra fragile and really needs to be thoroughly cared for

Petting his head, kissing his tears away with "I love you"s constantly coming out of your lips is a must, as he drifts to sleep like a fallen angel nestled in his safe space, which is the warm spot between your chest and your arms

Mark

An easily flustered mess when it comes to straightforward proactive girls 

Having left his family and devoted himself to the industry at such a tender age, he may want to be the more passive, dependent one in a relationship to make up for his lost adolescence

So he's probably looking for someone who he can rely on and takes the initiative in bed, while all he has to do is to close his eyes and enjoy himself

When he finds you, to whom he trusts enough to pour his doubts and perplexion about life, and is always guaranteed to receive some really thoughtful response, he sees you as someone very valuable.

But more than that, you are a woman who seems to have endless fuel of passion, the exact type with whom Mark can replenish his strength when he got engulfed by the abyss of stress

Also, you are notably witty with words that sometimes aids his lyric writing process, but that means he can never win against you in any friendly bickers as well, especially when you cite some of his lyrics to roast him that renders him speechless.

Yet somehow, he gets hooked to the feeling of being a powerless flustered bundle in front of you

Gradually it develops into dirty imagination of you manipulating him into a mindless mess

And you are exactly the burning blaze that will scorch his body with vehement desires, make him so depraved yet still internally demand more

Never did he realize that being obedient for a noona figure will feel this good until he met you, his ideal match

You will guide him how to touch himself properly like a big sis, then demonstrate it yourself followed by some edging, as he whimpers at the sense of loss every time his build-up is ruined, pleading you with those big puppy eyes

And when you get to peg him, he will love the feeling that he's completely owned by you, getting his ass spanked while fucked also serves as a good reminder of who he belongs to

Doesn't talk much during sex to indulge fully. Expect some incoherent moans and weak chants of your title from him instead

But the boy also knows how to reciprocate when he's ordered to. He knows how to work that rapper tongue too well even if his brain is not fully functioning

His tongue can do wonders to your folds and is guaranteed to perform great with your strap in his mouth, looking up at you with those pretty doe eyes all the time to see if you like how he's doing

Will probably require some time and space for himself to just chill and cool down during aftercare instead of being very clingy, all you need to do is to make sure he’s comfy, or place a glass of drink he likes beside him while he’s organizing his thoughts or doing anything that fits his mood. 

No extra words or skinship is needed at this moment because based on your understanding and observations of him, he’ll be fully recharged when you decide he is most of the time

Xiaojun

A sensitive, sentimental bub that ponders a lot about lots of things

Passionate about music, and perhaps some classic literature or philosophy

So he may want his partner to share the same interests so he can love the way she wanna talk even more

Likely to crumble for a woman who’s sophisticated, cultured and speaks in a refined manner, and is often willing to discuss some profound matters with him, to the extent sometimes Xiaojun cannot keep up easily and may feel a bit flustered, but is secretly admiring her wits deep down while she’s patiently explaining some new art concepts or ideas to him

Hence, when he finds you, who is capable of playing that role and opening up new worlds to him, he is not only delighted but also excited and intrigued, anticipating every chance to talk to you more but when he finally seizes the opportunity, he will appear to smile shyly, avoiding your gaze all the time but whenever he slightly peeks at you, his eyes will be glittering with dreamy haze of enchantment

Because to him, knowledgeable women seem to have boundless potential that makes them distinctively mysterious as well as alluring, and he’s all about succumbing to that vast endearing wilderness, with you being the compass controlling his every move (lowkey sapiosexual I guess)

The fact that you are the embodiment of versatility, artistic grace, and mellow charisma, yet all cordial to him just like a jiě jie (noona in Mandarin) next door will flutter his heart as he falls for you even more

So once you finally end up in bed, he will be very enthralled and eager to please, and will literally subserviently worship every inch of your body as if you are a Goddess while complimenting you all the time

Yet not long after he will be amazed by another fact about you, that is, you are the definition of the saying “Sweet in the streets, freak in the sheets”

Xiaojun will soon find himself restrained while bent in compromising positions, with toys he never imagined a sweet person like you will ever own torturing his body and lust-crazed soul, as you whisper nasty degrading things to him, skewing and corrupting some classic literary works during the process, which makes him intoxicated in another sinfully imaginative aspect of your mind

Since he’s a sucker for anything about you, neglect play is a perfect way to torment him. 

Chain him up and place a toy on him, which can be either a vibrator or a prostate massager, before leaving him untouched, and watch him writhe and moan helplessly in unsatisfied heat, with his distinctive brows furrowed, eyes glossy with plead and need, a beautiful image perfect to be ruined

Open to lots of kinks since you are able to make them gratifying and mind-blowing every time as he becomes closer to your ideal notion of subby boy toy with every progress

Will still remain a blushy mess when ordered to beg or admit something humiliating even after getting fucked multiple times, though he likes it so much 

Something simple and lewd like “jiě jie please come in and fuck my slutty hole” “My pathetic dick only exists to be ravished by jiě jie” works well for him as he finally climaxes

This precious pretty boy is not all passive when receiving aftercare. Instead, he will sensually plant kisses all over your body while telling you how good you made him feel and how deeply he loves you

Melts and buries his face into the crook of your neck or sheets later on when you say the same back to him and praise him for taking you so well

Few moments of silent bliss will pass between you before you guide him back to reality again 

Jaemin

Another little painslut that wishes to be tamed and roughed up

His tolerance of pain may not be as high as Taeyong, but he likes the humiliation as much as the older does

Being an idol is stressful and suppressing, so he desperately needs to find some release through some pleasurable pain for the endorphin rush

Preferably receiving it from a noona-like figure who definitely knows what she’s doing, and again the hierarchy from her title will enable him to feel floaty and more deserving of the punishment

He’s the type to be horny really often and does barely anything to hide it, qualifying him as a very communicative, responsive and expressive sub

So he acts up all flirty and bratty in front of females who he deems as potential targets, to evaluate who’s probably sadistic enough to cater to his needs judging from their reactions, and of course, your dismissive attitude and sharp chastisement on his behavior intrigue him

Then he will make a further approach to gain your attention, from unsolicited winks and aegyo to cheesy pick-up lines, even going as far as some skinship that you are smart enough to know how intentional it is, all screaming brat demeanor that gets you irritated and riled up

Once he finally successfully gets you to bare his bottom and bend him over your lap, he’s a mesmerized moaning mess while enjoying basking in your tauntingly degrading words, admitting he’s noona’s dimwitted slut even before you ask him that

But of course, a sound spanking is still not enough to quench his submissive needs, he will literally shamelessly beg for more

In a provocative way

He will blatantly seduce you, from inappropriately touching you to straight-up humping you until you lose it to punish him for being obnoxiously needy, tying him up and dishing out toys or other implements that can deliver even more intense pain

At first, he will feign reluctance by pouting or complaining how much it hurts even though it’s still far from what he is able to take, in order to infuriate you and provoke more out of what you can give him

Being insatiable as he is, after some pain inflicted on him, he will reveal his true masochistic self and directly asks you to punish him harder just like Taeyong will do, but Jaemin’s self-degradation will be much more hardcore and a bit creative

“Noona please do it harder! Ahh- I’ve been badder than that! Make your naughty indecent-minded whore cum just by paddling me because I’m that pathetic mmmff-”

When you are dicking him down, he will beg you to destroy his hole and be really graphic about it, making his intentions of wanting you to abuse him like a fucktoy utterly clear to drive you wilder, with that iconic blissful smile plastered on his pretty features

He will be obsessed with your powerful strength while ramming into him so much that he will masturbate by riding a dildo while moaning loud enough for you to take notice and break into the room

After you are pissed that he’s playing with himself without your permission, he will be all like “But I missed noona’s big mighty cock so much that I can’t wait hnnnghh noona please come punish my horny hole and make it so swollen and sore that it won’t whore up ever again pleeaaseeeee”

You will definitely be so sexually active and satisfied with him as your sub because of his neediness and salacious talk to ignite your dominant desires

Even though he enjoys getting fucked all over to earn some revival to his work-drained soul, and appears to recover really quickly after orgasms, even capable of engaging in some playful conversations with you, it’s still likely for him to feel hollow and internally worn out due to the drastic neurochemical change but he won’t make it obvious

So you will need to be really observant and keep reassuring him for his well-being because all the excessive stress he’s been struggling through that makes him this submissive is stemmed from his desperate needs for praise and recognition

That’s also one of the reasons why I think he will be into a noona domme because approval from superiors is relatively more rewarding

But with proper aftercare, he’ll stay hooked to you and continue to pleasure both himself and you with matching kinky desires

[trikruheart]

Bellamy Is The Abusive One, Not Octavia: A Rant/Meta

There’s two main “reasons” that people give when they claim that Octavia is abusive. That she beats up Bellamy after Lincoln’s murder, and that she has him put in The Fighting Pits.

Let’s start with the old discourse; Bellamy did get Lincoln killed, not Octavia. Bellamy is the person who got Pike into power, the person who stood by him even after seeing + being told multiple times by people he supposedly cares about that Pike was instituting facism and going to get everyone killed. Bellamy knowingly decided to be a Nazi even though he had other options and was aware of them. And, no, Nazi is not an exaggeration, Bellamy was 100% willing to wipe out an entire race just for being that race including putting them in concentration camp-like conditions to die.

Octavia is not at fault just because she didn’t accept Bellamy’s last minute “help”, he had given her absolutely no reason to trust him so it’s not her fault she didn’t. If my brother was fhe right-hand man of a fascist leader then I wouldn’t have trusted him that after he belittled my concerns several times and stopped me from escaping, he’ll get my boyfriend out of the camp he put him in to begin with. Octavia had no obligation to trust Bellamy after he did everything in his power to destroy her trust.

So, yes, Octavia beats up Bellamy. If I had just saw and heard the love of my life be murdered at the hands of the man that my own brother knowingly put in power then I probably would beat him up to. Especially if my brother had already been abusing me my whole life.

Side note: Let me also just point out that Bellamy was never adequately redeemed for that whole being a Nazi thing, everyone just pretended it never happened. Octavia herself even calls him out “You didn’t turn on Pike because you thought what he was doing to the grounders was wrong.” and he AGREES. Bellamy 👏 never 👏 earned 👏 redemption, because men in this show don’t need to be held accountable for their actions while women (mainly Octavia and Clarke) have to supplicate themselves to men and be dragged through the dirt mercilessly for every wrong breath they take.

The Fighting Pit issue is an even weaker example because Octavia didn’t put Bellamy in there because she was angry or wanted to (although she had every right to be) she did it because Bellamy publicly broke several laws and she would have completely undermined her own authority (and given special treatment, making her a poor leader) if she let him get away with treason, child endangerment, murder, and attempted assassination. Bellamy getting put in the fighting pit was a consequence of his own actions, one that he was well aware of. Octavia wasn’t being abusive, she was being a fair leader.

Now that that BS is out of the way, here’s a list of why Bellamy is abusive to Octavia:

1.) Bellamy has had all of the power in their relationship from day one. Octavia was literally trapped in a room and only able to interact with two people for sixteen years, Bellamy came and went as he pleased. Octavia was essentially a captive, she couldn’t have possibly been more powerless during the entire time their relationship was developing. Then when they get on the ground, Bellamy is almost instantly put in a position of power which he uses to isolate and control Octavia. There’s also the age difference, I think a lot of people forget that Bellamy is way older than all the other Skaikru. Bellamy is 23 at the start of the show and everyone else is under 18 (except Raven is 18). So, we’re talking about a barely 17-year-old girl, one who grew up extremely isolated so is even more immature than most kids her age, and a 23-year-old man who lived most of his life relatively normally.

The power difference entirely favors Bellamy. Octavia has no power over him at all pre-Blodreina (which we’ll get to that) so the idea that she could possibly abuse Bellamy is pretty absurd. Abuse is a habitual pattern of controlling and belittling behavior by someone with more (actual or perceived) power over another, Octavia had no power over Bellamy at all; Bellamy had an insane amount of power over her that he constantly abuses to isolate and control her.

2.) Bellamy supposedly goes to the ground to “protect” Octavia but his means of doing so are abusive and controlling. In season 1 alone; Bellamy uses physical intimidation and manhandling against Octavia several times, he terrorizes a harmless teenager (remember how he’s a grown ass adult? Yikes...) to keep him away from Octavia who was enjoying his company, then he tortures a man in front of her while she begs him to stop because he doesn’t care about her opinions (more in 4) and he’s the leader of The 100 so he can.

3.) The whole “my sister, my responsibility” thing that everyone thinks is so cute? Yeah, that’s emotional abuse. A figure of authority repeating to a child that they are a burden for existing is disgusting and so, so harmful. That phrase is a reinforcement of the more vicious things Bellamy has said “Mom was floated for having you, she’s dead because you’re alive!” and “My life ended the day you were born!”

4.) Bellamy is constantly belittling, dismissing, and patronizing all of Octavia’s opinions and identity.

“You turned this place into a story from your childhood. I mean, the red queen? It’s a joke.”

I’m not saying that Blodreina was a positive identity for Octavia, but it was something she was forced (remember, she didn’t seek power like Bellamy and Clarke did) to become to survive. Octavia was a mentally ill teenage girl with very limited exposure to the world who has never had any power in her entire life, and suddenly she was responsible for saving the human race. How fucking dare Bellamy mock her for basing her leadership off of stories WHAT THE HELL ELSE WOULD SHE BASE IT OF OFF???

Bellamy had a job and a life on The Arc, Octavia never left her room and had no way of seeing the outside world except through stories. She has literally no reference for ruling, or anything else, except those stories and her brief time with the Grounders. Fuck you and your privilege, Bellamy.

On top of that, Octavia actually did save the human race. That “joke” kept humanity alive.

“It is time to stop playing Grounder before you get yourself hurt.”

Yes, how dare she identify with the only people who have ever accepted her and treated her like a human being. How about you stop “playing” Nazi before you get us everyone killed. Seriously, Octavia is not allowed to disagree with Bellamy without him grabbing her arm and talking down to her like she’s a toddler throwing a tantrum.

5.) As soon as Octavia is in a position of power, one she didn’t even ask for, Bellamy’s abuse gets progressively crueler because he’s trying to regain control. He starts actively using Octavia’s mental illness against her and literally suicide baits her several times.

There is NO excuse. None at all. To tell someone who is severely mentally ill, traumatized, and an active suicide risk that “I wish you were dead” and “you’re already dead”. Trying to push someone to suicide and using someone’s mental illness to hurt them, let alone your own sister, is one of the most evil things you can do. The fact that so much of the fandom ignores this genuinely makes me sick.

Bellamy chooses those words because he knows that is what will hurt Octavia the most and he wants to hurt her. Bellamy has heard Octavia say that she’s already dead when she’s at her lowest points, he knows that those are the words that haunt her and drive her to want to kill herself, and that’s why he uses them as a weapon. Notice that he says them multiple times and at very purposeful times, this is not something he yelled once when he was angry; we see him calmly make the choice to say these things to her several times when he is losing control and wants to break her back down to the helpless little girl who was always happy to see him because of her Stockholm Syndrome.

6.) I think trying to MURDER Octavia THREE FUCKING TIMES deserves its own point. Bellamy poisons Octavia, he suicide baits her and let’s her go through with it (someone else stops her, Bellamy makes no move to), and then he leaves her to die with a lovely extra “My sister is dead” for the road.

7.) Octavia spends most of season 6 groveling and trying to “earn” back Bellamy’s love and we see clearly that “earning” Bellamy’s love means being utterly powerless and subservient. Bellamy loved Octavia when she was a captive little girl but suddenly he can’t produce an ounce of human decency towards her? And don’t give me some “but she’s Blodreina” like Mr. Nazi has any room to judge Octavia for becoming a dictator out of desperation when she didn’t know what else to do and she was forced in a very, very difficult leadership position that she never wanted and all of humanity relied on.

My point is basically that Bellamy’s love is conditional, he holds it over Octavia’s head like a fucking dog treat. He wants “his sister” back but what does that mean? He wants back the scared little girl who couldn’t leave one room and was entirely dependent on him. It’s Octavia having autonomy that Bellamy hates, not her being “evil” because Bellamy is 500x as evil as Octavia and I will die on that hill. You’re telling me that Bellamy of all people is soooo upset that his sister was forced to kill some people in the context of war and keeping humanity alive? As if Bellamy isn’t a mass murderer who has killed way more people for way less. Give me a fucking break. “Octavia is dead” because Bellamy’s victim is dead and he can’t handle that.

But, please, do tell me again how two isolated incidents over six years apart from each other that are both the direct consequences of Bellamy’s autonomous choices make Octavia “eMoTiOnAllY AbUsIvE tO pOoR WitTlE BeLl”.

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Top Ten Books Read In 2018

1) The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

I picked this up at a book fair, read the summary, and figured I'd surprise myself with this author I'd never heard of before. It's about the friendship between DQ, a guy with terminal cancer dealing with his complicated feelings for his estranged-but-conciliatory family, and Pancho, a guy who's biding his time until he can get revenge on the person who's killed one of his family members. I like that both boys are raw and real and people—Pancho obviously has messed up emotions, but DQ can be plenty bitter and angry too: he's not an Inspirational Cancer Patient stereotype.

2) The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Girl moves into her uncle's old ancestral house sometime during the 18th century and gets immersed into the past lives and loves of the ghosts that thrived there during the days of the Revolutionary War, their paths often crossing each other's. I swear I have never seen more delightful ghost characters in my entire life.

3) The Unbound by V.E. Schwab

So by the time I'd picked this up, I was having mixed feelings about V.E. Schwab – on one hand, she'd always written worlds that engage me almost instantly with their creativity. On the other hand, I'd just recently been horribly disappointed by the ending to what's been her most popular series so far: I thought her final Shades of Magic book did a most spectacular job on dropping the balls on everything good about it. Up to reading it, I'd thought the author's hype was deserved. But after, well…

So when I picked this up, it was with much trepidation. I'd loved the previous book, The Archived: the big old house setting, the grim closed-off girl/sweet sunny boy dynamic the lonesome warrior setup, all were like catnip to my id. I didn't want it ruined by a bad sequel. Fortunately, this book took everything I loved about the book and turned it up to eleven. It upped the stakes, it intensified the relationships, and it also added a mental illness angle that I personally found very meaningful.

The author is still kiiinda on notice so I'm not sure I want a third book. If there is one, dear God, please be good. *crosses fingers*

4) Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

I remember thinking, as I was reading this: this is really, really working for me but will it work for someone neurotypical? 2018 was hell and I was just so desperate for the people in my life to get it, and so I kept hopping on trains of thought like this.

Anyway, this book was spot on in what goes on in the wirings of my anxious brain. Green's usual turns of phrase took an incredibly frenetic turn at times, which, I know, is exactly what it's like to have a mental illness. This is not a book about "this is what to do" it's about how it IS or how it can GET.

I'm still really grateful for that quote about the spiral – how it tightens, but also how it eternally widens. When I first saw the cover, I thought it was kind of blah; now I look at that spiral and see something different. I see the hope of creating a new 'normal'.

5) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This was so readable it surprised me. I thought I'd go slow on it because: war story where it's a foregone conclusion that it ends tragically for the leads? Yeah, I'm not in a rush to reach the end of that. But I blazed right through this book. There's something really addictive about Madeline Miller's storytelling and how she brings her characters together and follows their blossomings and downfalls through the years. And then, the course of the Iliad and the inevitable sadness for Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis was more like the slow turning of the tide rather than getting hit with a tidal wave. Anyway, not only was it readable but I'm finding myself eager to re-read it.

6 ) The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Part of my Read Everything Robin McKinley Writes mission that began last year. I'd liked the sheer escapism and the desert setting in The Blue Sword, but that whole white savior thing kinda put me off from enjoying Harry and the book more fully than I would've liked.

It was not so for this book, thankfully! Who knew that reading about the nitty-gritty of slaying big scaly beasts could be so satisfying? That's classic Robin McKinley, as I'm learning – you love what the protag loves. And then I really dug how the dead dragon's ghost haunting Aerin acts as a metaphor for mental illness.

(As I continue to wrestle with my diagnosis, I continually appreciate all the depression/anxiety metaphors I encounter in media. Maybe one day I'll make a post about it) AND ALSO: a love triangle that's actually well done and that serves our heroine's identity and character rather than taking away from it? Yes. Yes, thank you.

7) A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Yeah so, this book killed me. It's about two twenty-something ghosts with unfinished business who find themselves in the bodies of two teenagers whose souls appear to have completely vacated theirs. They find themselves falling for each other and trying to find out what happened to their 'hosts' and what went on in their past lives. They also find themselves battling to survive the hostile home lives that their 'hosts' left behind. It's all very beautiful and kind of twisted and also a love letter to words and probably my most unexpected book of the year. And I have NO idea to rec it to people. "Read this, it's kind of fucked up but gorgeous but also can get triggery so step warily?" Uh.

8) Deerskin by Robin McKinley

See warnings above. Oh God. But really, I totally respect Robin McKinley for going full-out faithful to how utterly fucked up fairy tales can be while still creating a survival story. I'm not just talking about Lissar surviving spoilers incestual rape and miscarriage (indeed, I'm not qualified to talk about it) but how hers is a story of healing: by surviving the elements, by nursing living things back into life, by building herself up into a legend without even knowing it.

9) Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

Just an incredibly satisfying ending to a duology that at the same time echoes that quote from Michael Ende's The Neverending Story: "but that is another story and shall be told another time." I love when something ends with that sense of: "there are even more stories and adventures for our beloved characters out there than you can possibly fathom, and you are now free to make up them yourself."

10) Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

I was intrigued by the premise: a half-Jewish guy and a Mormon guy fall for each other over the course of a writing class. And upon starting it, I could tell straight (heh, straight) away that it was going to be a favorite. It's an unabashedly kilig romance about falling for the wonderfulness in each other,and both mains are fucking adorable, and made me want to give them both a ton of hugs. Oh, and this book further reinforced my belief that the key to first-person writing is having a good voice.

Another thing is, I basically never see YA books that deal with growing up in a religion and actually-loving it and having it be an inextricable part of your identity… and then having to deal with the darker, prejudiced sides that you really wish would be excised from it altogether especially if they are opposed to who you are. To deal with it sensitively and touchingly, not only in a YA book but in an m/m romance? Well done.

honorable mention!

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I was reading this on the bus on the way home to the province for Christmas and I could not stop laughing and I had no idea to explain to my very curious sister that it was because half the protagonists were high as a kite at the funeral of the friend that they all killed and one of them had just very noisily killed a bee in the church vestibule and it made the loudest sound on the planet and they're all gonna have to ~aesthetically grieve and pallbear now even though THEY killed their friend and w o w it's like Nuwanda from Dead Poets Society was cloned five times.

Sometimes "pretentious people murder someone and somehow it is hilarious" is just exactly my cup of tea.

and a couple of series binges!

Almost 10 years ago (god, what the hell), I had a "YA Paranormal Romances I Might Actually Like" list, and the two trilogies below were on it. There's something gratifying about finally crossing off books on your TBR that have been there for ages:

-The Shade Trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, Shift, Shine) This series came out on the tail of the Great YA Paranormal Romance boom and I really wish I'd picked it up then (I also really wish some of the covers it got weren't so damn off-putting. It's like Animorphs all over again) because it's such cut above so many of the books that were being churned out in those days.

The premise is: what if there was a global paranormal event that left the portion of the population born after a certain year with the ability to see ghosts? I really like that the author thought this out thoroughly – it's not just a oooh spooky ghosties gimmick. Everything is affected: the educational system, the police force, politics, technology, travel, you name it.

The heroine was smart and truth-seeking and had nuancedrelationships with lots of female characters (bff, mentor, aunt who raised her, mom who died… ), the Betty love interest was a total sweetheart who also didn't seem too good to be true and who was capable of making major teenage fuck-ups, and the Veronica love interest was a rock-and-roll ghost who had the post-life character arc that I sadly wish Maggie Stiefvater had given Noah Czerny. I kind of loved them all a lot and one of the reasons I wish I'd read these books as they came out was so I could've been un-jaded just a little bit about Those Pesky Love Triangles.

(Someday I…really ought to make an analysis about why I dislike love triangles in general and what exactly was up with the ones that DID work for me.)

-Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater

I read the whole series toward the year's end. It was precisely the cold-weather binge I was craving. I may have my quarrels with some of her writing decision, but really few people can do atmospheric, poetic writing the way Maggie Stiefvater does. The romances were a bit too YA for me in this one, but I ended up really sympathizing with every single POV character anyway. And I mean, cold and poetry and family and books and wolves-as-family*.

(*One day, I'll have the emotional armor to watch Wolf's Rain again. )

[buffernie]

Become a Mental Health Advocate in Ten Seconds or less

On some kind of social media that I’m not sure what it is, someone named Madison (aka @https_mads) wrote the following:

“Stop dropping the suicide hotline every time someone commits. People who are depressed don’t want to talk to a random stranger they want your support and love. We know the hotline exists. It’s a Google search away. If you really care you’d fucking check on your friends.”

Original post seems to have been penned on 6/5/18 at 8:25 PM

I originally saw a picture of this post on facebook and was eager to see the comments but quickly became dismayed to discover how little people understood. For whatever reason they had, they were calling quote selfish, self-focused and several other things. Losing courage, I called my mom for a pick me up only to discover that she felt the same way as those who were against Madison’s brilliant post. My mom believes very much in family—which is great—but believes that once someone is IN a relationship, especially if they have kids, I am to assume their friendship “commitment” to me is to lessen as they have other, new priorities. I was really upset and here are my concerns.

1. PROFESSIONAL CARE IS NEEDED, YES, BUT DOES NOT PROVIDE THE TENDER TOUCH

2. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder: WHATEVER THE ISSUE IT IS REINFORCED BY ISOLATION

3. AM I QUALIFIED TO HELP

WHAT PROFESSIONAL HELP CAN’T DO

You might be wondering why I’m so “stuck” on this as my mom would say. Here’s why. I’ve got possibly the best therapist I’ve ever had at this point (I’ve been super blessed that way) and I have a doctor who is very good and cares marginally about my well being. Why isn’t that enough? Easy: Partially because I am paying them. It is like hiring an escort and feeling loved. Unlike an escort, my therapist can’t hold me while I cry. My doctor isn’t available on long nights when the voices are telling me to take my own life. BUT YOU—the one who works odd hours? Could totally field a call and just listen or even talk for a sec about yourself and make me laugh. YOU—who has your kids all day—could totally invite me over for tea or coffee while your kids run amok around the house. YOU—who has a really shitty band with a great name—could try to get me out of the house even just for your practice. YOU—who has a dog and knows I love them—could recommend a play date for our pups. YOU—who works at a bakery— could bring me three left over bagels because you know how hard it is for me to eat breakfast. YOU—who loves the outdoors—could invite me for a short walk. YOU—who ANYTHING—all day at any time could do anything to let me know you care. I told a “friend” a few years ago I was depressed and she promptly informed me that she wouldn’t be able to be in my life. I was heartbroken. But what I told her was there are so many ways to reach out to a friend who is hurting. It is as simple as sending a cute meme to make me smile. Literally. That simple. It says: Hey, I thought of you, I know your heart hurts and I want to make you smile. SO SIMPLE. Not difficult. Not time consuming. But you just did it you magnificent asshole. You just ministered to a mentally ill person. Look at you, soaring far above the blindness of society about this horrific group of illnesses by doing nothing more than sending a text (which you’re doing every day, anyway).

AM I QUALIFIED TO HELP?

Hell to the yeah you are. We all are. “But I don’t know anything about ______”. Oh yeah? Here’s an idea. If you care about your friend as much as you say you do PICK UP A FUCKING BOOK. That simple. Trouble reading due to time? No problem! There’s this great tool called the internet and it’s not too difficult to discern sites that are reputable. Even better, sit down with your friend. Ask them to tell you what they are feeling. Do they feel like meds are helping? Do they need help finding a doctor? What are they scared of the most right now? BOOM. YOU JUST WENT FROM STUPID TO ADVOCATE IN LESS THAN 20 SECONDS. If I were there I’d put a pin on your lapel.

DISEASE OF ISOLATION

Much like addiction, those with mental illness struggle with isolation whether self-imposed or societally-enacted. We’ve all heard the general list of things that are hard to do when you’re depressed like showering or other self-care, getting out of the house, etc. etc. Every time I’ve been suicidal and started making a plan to end my life, 9 out of 10 situations involved me being lonely. Of thinking no one cares. That I am a drain on society. And that both the national budget and my friends would be happier if I were gone. At 34, I’ve finally come to believe that some of my friends really do love and value me; that they would be upset to lose me. Use of semi-colon on purpose. Because that has been a real game changer. But I was diagnosed at 17 and never believed it until now. So now when I think about suicide I cry because of how I know it would make them feel, but in those moments, the pain is so intense, my desire to escape it is very real.

TL;DR SYNOPSIS: it takes less than ten seconds to be there for someone who is hurting.

[theworstassassinever]

So I’m just going to put this here because I need to shout into the void? It is going to be long and ranty and personal, so whatever. 

There’s a possibility that the people this is referring to will see it, and like if that’s the case, so be it. If you do see this, know that I still care about you and whilst I’m angry now about everything, I’m not going to hold onto this resentment and I will forgive you. You’re not a bad person.  I’m hoping that putting this out there will finally get this shit out of my head. Because I’ve been going though phases of being fine, and the suddenly remembering and it’s shitty.  It is going to talk kinda in depth about someone else, and this will refer to some of their personal struggles because the whole incident revolves around that. But basically the story starts with having two friends who are very, very, very fucking sick. Like, one of them cannot stay out of hospital that’s how sick they are. I am going to refer to them as R and K.  I’ve been that kinda sick before, to a slightly lesser degree. It’s not fun. I get that it fucks with your brain, and you at your sickest is not who you really are as a person. And that’s why even though I am angry, I’m not going to hold on to my anger. Because I know deep down, this isn’t you. 

R is autistic, recently diagnosed. Now this friend has a habit of clinging to things they identify as and kinda making that the core of their personality. It’s been a few different things over the years, however they will pick an identity and then get very mad at anyone who they perceive as attacking them for it.  I’m not sure why they do this, but I think it’s because they are ill. See, mental health is like a house that you’re building. It takes self-care and attention to build the house, and whilst others can help you and will help you at the end of the day they can’t build the house for you. Houses are built on a foundation, however if you do not have a strong foundation (identity, self worth, sense of who you are) then anything you build on top of that foundation is going to crumble down at the slightest knock. And R? I don’t think they have a foundation, let alone a stable one.  And R used to message me a lot, mostly consisting of ‘This has happened to me, this is shit, I want someone to know about it’ and like whilst I care, sometimes they message me this when I am in a really bad place. Like last time they messaged me.  See I’d been going through a lot of personal things around this exact same time and I was already upset for various reasons. And then out of the blue I get R messaging me telling me how bad they’ve been treated by these people and how awful everything is, and it’s just like I get that you’re upset, but damn dude I’m already on a bloody downer myself I don’t think I can cope with anything else. Like I was feeling pretty depressed myself and like hearing someone else tell me about how bad things can get and how awful you are treated when you’re that bloody depressed and at the hospital isn’t something that I can deal with all of the time. It’s a lot.  And R told me that a health care professional said something about them, saying that they should speak up for themselves instead of having someone else speak for them. Which like, whilst I can understand the health care professional’s point and where they are coming from, I don’t think it was right for them to say it within the patient’s earshot and in a situation where you’re looking after an incredibly sick person who isn’t going to tell you what is wrong, it’s probably for the best if someone else speaks up and says what it wrong. However, I do not think that that the person themselves should not try to speak up.  Because I said that, R messaged me saying that it was against autistic people, that it was ableist and neurotypical standard that they should not be forced to uphold. And I was like, wait what. And I stated that I disagreed with their statement, that I did not think that someone saying that R should attempt to speak for themselves and not let someone else speak for them all the time is inherently ableist. However I did say that I thought the context in which the statement was said was extremely unprofessional and should never have happened.  R stopped replying to me, and like I knew instantly they were pissed at me. However, I thought this would be something that we’d get over and move on from and that R just needed some time to cool down. This was the last direct interaction I had with R. About two days later I got a long message from R’s girlfriend, K. Now K is someone who at the time, I would have considered a very close friend. I care a lot about K, and they haven’t had the easiest run in life. Like K is someone who has lived with me and my mum a few times because their own home is pretty unbearable.  This message started with them saying that they’d spoken to R, and wanted to hash some things out with me. The whole message felt very condescending, and it was very much of the tone ‘you know nothing about autistic people’. A direct quote from K’s message is “I think things need to be explained so people who aren't autistic, or aren't around autistic people a lot can understand.”  And that kinda made my blood boil. For some back context, I realised that neither K or R asked me how I was doing or anything about myself around about April? And I was curious to know weather this was just be being too sensitive to something or not realising, or if it was an actual thing that was happening. So I made a conscious decision to not offer information like I used to, and to wait until they asked me about my life, or what I was doing and that kind of thing.  And part of what annoyed me the most, was that for the past few months I had been unofficially seeing / casually dating someone. And the person who I was seeing was autistic.  Now again their autism wasn’t the main focus of our relationship (fucking obviously) but I did do quite a bit of research into finding out more about it and like talking to this guy about things and just in general spending most, if not all of my time, around this guy.  So for K, who I considered one of my closest friends, to basically talk down to me about autism and say that I clearly didn’t understand it or spend a lot of time around people with autism (also, another member of that same friend group is autistic might I add) really like offended me.  K didn’t know this about my life, and I connected the dots and realised that K didn’t know a lot of things about my life anymore that hurt because I always asked K about things, how uni was doing or R and other stuff because I cared. Everyone in my life knew about the guy I was casually seeing, and I realised that neither K or R did, because they never asked and i started to think that maybe they do not care.  I even asked this guy himself, told him what had gone down and asked if I was being ableist and I even asked a few different people who I knew to see if i had done wrong and just couldn’t see it. Some people didn’t word their responses kindly, but the consensus was, wtf?  I was stuck in this conversation, feeling like I was being talked down to, realising that these people did not actually know really about my life, not being able to disagree with them on a certain point, and i thought to myself, this isn’t healthy. I was being told that I cannot speak on the issue, that what I think doesn’t matter because I wasn’t autistic. I don’t get to decide what is and isn’t ableist, however wouldn’t anyone who was accused of such a thing try to defend themselves? Especially if they wholeheartedly believed that the statement wasn’t true.  K messaged me to explain and defend themselves for speaking up and telling the mental health professionals things about R and that was fine. And it is fine, K had every right to do that. Just like I have every right to tell someone that, hey I do not agree with you and i think you are wrong.  And fundamentally I realised that I could not disagree with R, and in turn that meant K.  K also told me that ‘Yes autistic people can learn to change how they communicate but why should they? Why should an individual constantly distress themselves and tell themselves they aren't good enough to learn to communicate how "normal" people do’ And my response to that is, no one is telling an autistic person that they are not good enough. No one has said such a thing. I think that maybe R is insecure about being autistic, that they feel bad about it when it is not something to feel bad or ashamed of at all. Autism is not something that will hold you back from achieving anything, it may mean that it takes you longer to do certain things, that you need more help and patience and support whilst doing things, but I do not believe that it excludes you from doing those things either.  No one is telling themselves that autistic people are not good enough, because they are good enough. Some of the sweetest, kindest, most intelligent people who I have met in my life have been autistic. They are good enough to learn to communicate.  I think it is good for them to push themselves to use words and speak to people, because especially when coupled with social anxiety you can create a fear of speaking to people in your head and by not even attempting to speak, you are reinforcing this fear in your head.  The only way you are going to get better at communicating is to practice doing it. Again I do not think that being autistic gives you an excuse to not try to speak or do anything. I do not think that is problematic. I just do not. I may be wrong in thinking that, but I do not feel as if I should be made out to be a bad person for having that point of view.  I should be able to disagree with my friends without it turning into a massive blow out and completely breaking up a friendship. 

So I composed a long messaged.  Now I am not going to lie, this message was harsh.  I told them that I understood a fair amount about autism, more than they believed I did anyway. I told them that I spent time around people with autism. I stated that whilst I understood everyone was different that I did not understand why they expected everything to change for them, and that they seemed to expect these changes to happen overnight whilst the world does not work like that.  Change happens gradually over time, and other people need time to get used to things. You cannot just force things upon other people, because the more do you that, the more someone tries to reject that viewpoint.  I said in regards to R and how they are treated, everything is awful and nothing is ever good enough. Everything seemed to be awful, and problematic, and everything was derogatory and bad and no one ever seemed to be kind to R or say anything that wasn’t directly attacking them.  I stated that I was scared to speak my opinions, tell them things about my life or say things that I truly think because I believed they would just brand me as ‘toxic’ or ‘problematic’ and that a disagreement would become a big issue.  I told them that I believe both K and R, but R especially, victimises themselves and takes everything as a personal attack even when they don’t need to. That everything is doom and gloom and going to hurt you or attack you, when if you look at the world from a much healthier mindset that it isn’t the case. (again, going back to the strong foundation, which neither R or K have because they are sick).  I stated that they only see the world like that because of their illnesses, and that it is easier to focus and blame other people for what is wrong and what is going on, because especially when you are that sick it is harder to focus on your own issues or what is going wrong with you.  Calling everyone else ‘problematic’ because they do not agree with you, isn’t healthy. Taking everything as a personal attack on your and your character, isn’t healthy.  K and R need to reflect on why they feel like that, realise that those patterns of behaviour are not healthy and are just making them feel even more sick. It’s a downward spiral that they are never going to climb out of until they break it. They need to focus inwards and internally, fix themselves and help themselves and put on your own goddamn oxygen mask before they go out and try to fix the world.  I stated that if someone else was constantly in the wrong, that they did not have to examine their own behaviour and look at what they were doing, I told them that if someone was hurting you and attacking you, that you feel powerless to stop them and you do not do anything. You absolve yourself of power, when in reality you have more power over that situation than you ever realise.  I said that their world views were very skewed because of how sick both K and R are. R will happily walk around with fresh self harm cuts and burns with them out on display, and not realise how harmful or triggering that could be to anyone else. They used to have the saying that implied self harm wasn’t bad because it stopped you from attempting suicide, which is an awfully dangerous and super unhealthy mindset to have.  Both of them together create a toxic environment, where one negative thing leads into another. Where R is constantly telling K how bad things are, how awful the world is and when K is hearing them things constantly, K is going to start believing that and it will in turn make K worse.  With both of them together, feeding into the same cycle, neither will get better. And it breaks my heart because when both of them are healthier, they are amazing extraordinary people who I care for a lot.  But when they are sick? It is awful. I told them that every conversation we had revolved around R’s illness, because it did. Every single conversation any of us had ended back to that. I pointed out that they didn’t know anything about what I had done in the past year, that they had never asked and did not seem to care. And it fucking hurts when you care about someone more than they care about you. It’s awful. I said that neither of them seem to care about anything other than themselves or their illnesses, that it was unhealthy and it was too much for me to deal with because being in that one-sided relationship where you are constantly providing support and care but getting nothing back would drain even the most selfless of people. It creates a negative impact on your mental health, and when you are already feeling bad and like depression is trying to drag you down into the abyss, the last thing you need is someone telling you how awful everything is and trying to claw you down as well. I told them that I deserved better than a one-sided friendship, that I deserve friends who I can disagree with without being made to feel like a bad person, I deserve friends who ask how I'm doing and know things about my life and actually care about me.   I’m not wrong there. I do have friends like that, other friends and I love them.  I ended the message by saying that even though I cared about both of them, I needed a break and to be away from them because it was negatively impacting my own mood. I had to put on my own oxygen mask, and help myself before I could help anyone else. Because at the end of the day, I am the only person who can fix me. And they can only fix themselves.  The message I got was a ‘if that’s how you think and feel, then that is that, if you need space and time away do that, I’m not going to write a long message back’. And like, in a way I could understand it but it also broke my heart. I felt like K did not care enough to fight or put effort into our friendship that we’d had since we were 14. It felt like one disagreement, and they were just ready to throw it all away and that hurt like a bitch.  They stated that they were not even going to say anything, not try to sort out any of the issues with me or communicate. It was just radio silence.  However I decided that, maybe it was for the best and what I wanted. I was willing to leave things at that for a while.  UNTIL TWO HOURS LATER. I got a message, from a friend of K and R’s who shall be named S.  S messaged me saying how me saying that I’d be better off without R and K was very triggering, how S would never call them selfish because R cared about other people and their animals, how knowing one autistic people didn’t mean that you understood autistic people (not hypocritical at all...), how S disagreed with me saying that they viewed themselves as a victim, how S witnessed a different side to things and how S didn’t want me to lose a friendship over a disagreement.  Well guess what S? Your message was the reason why I decided to terminate the friendship.  I have never spoken to S before in my life. I didn’t even know S was someone who existed. However I felt violated that K had not only shared the message I had sent, but twisted the words.  I never said that I would be better off without K or S, I said that I deserved better friends who cared about me and that I needed time away from them to look after myself because they were a lot. I never called anyone selfish.  And it was the fact that my words got twisted in such a way, that S had been told so much and decided to message me, that K couldn’t say anything to try and fix our relationship but was more than happy to rant about how awful I was to S? That the message had been shared with R, and they too had been ranting to S and other mutual friends.  That was too much, especially after I said that I needed time away and that I needed space. I was made out to seem like such a bad and awful person, however none of this was said to me.  I messaged S asked them to never speak to me again, but then at 3am when I was upset and angry and hurt I send a long message back which I when through their points. I unfriended both K and R, because I didn’t like the idea of someone who was so willing to say shit about me behind my back and be so unwilling to talk things through with me or say it directly to me being labelled as a ‘friend’.  I said what I needed to say directly to K, knowing that R would read it. So much awful things have been said about me behind my back and not to my face. I blocked R on facebook, because I did not want them to contact me (i also sent a link to a taylor swift song containing the lyrics ‘did you think i wouldn’t hear all the things you said about me?’ because i was angry and petty as fuck). However, the line for K to talk to me is still open, because I still care about K and whole fucking lot.  R went on to message a mutual friend that I had said awful things about autistic people, painting me in an bad light and the mutual friend even messaged me to get my side of the story knowing that I would never deliberately be that malicious.  Which upsets me, why talk shit about me to a mutual friend when you are not willing to say anything directly to me?  But no, I’m the bad person who got a whole entire facebook status written about them. I’m the person who gets told ‘screw you’ by K even though before this incident, I fucking cared about K so much and would do pretty much anything for them. But no, I’m awful and screw me. It is a lot.  And I want this to be over with.  I want to stop hurting about my ‘friends’ doing this to me. If they truly knew who I was, they would know that I’m not malicious or vindictive or someone who hates another person because they are autistic.  Sure, especially when I am hurt or in a bad place I am harsh and blunt but does that make me bad? No. If they knew me at all, they would know that.  It hurts to care about someone, and then realise that evidently they do not give that much of a fuck about you. It hurts that someone is so willing to trash you to mutual friends and try to turn them against me just to make themselves feel better.  It hurts, but I’m stronger than that hurt. And here is the thing. I’m upset, I am angry. I don’t think that I explained myself the clearest or did everything right. I am not always right.  However, I am not a bad person. I know who I am, and I know who I am not.  I don’t blame you for being hurt, I don’t blame you for being angry. I do think you treated me awfully, and should take a long hard look at yourself and your actions and not do it to someone else.  I think once you get past the stage of hating me and writing screw you messages, maybe you will be able to realise that I’m not the awful person you think I am.  K, if you want to talk or sort things out, that door is open for when you are not angry and when you do not hate me anymore. If you never want to talk or do not get to that point, it is fine, but if you do you know how to contact me. I still care about you a lot and wish you well. Your actions have hurt me, but it isn’t anything I won’t come back from.  You’re a good person, and you need to look after yourself and take some time away from the whole situation, from everyone involved including me and R and work on yourself. You are stronger than your issues.  I don’t know what else to say. I’ll forgive both of them eventually, because holding on to the hurt and the anger is only hurting me. It’s something that I will get over, and i hope by sending this out into the void and getting this off my chest that maybe I’ll be able to forget about it and move on. For now, peace out. x 

[golbatgender]

The thing I don't see talked about in regards to people who claim to be triggered by ships or the word "queer": if you're repeatedly exposed to an innocuous trigger (in other words, a trigger that didn't literally cause the trauma in the first place but is merely associated with it), it usually becomes less triggering. Meanwhile, acting like it's a deliberate insult or assault every time you accidentally encounter it makes it worse. So does displacing the fault for the trauma onto the trigger coincidentally associated with it instead of connecting it to the actual cause or perpetrator.

People should get to control their own trigger exposure. Other people should endeavor to help them to a reasonable degree. However, this is not always possible, or in some cases the measures necessary to avoid the trigger actively harm others, as opposed to mildly inconvenience. Additionally, for any of this accommodation to do anything but cause you develop secondary triggers at the mere thought of your primary triggers, you have to want to get better. You have to want to desensitize yourself to the triggers that are so pervasive or intrusive that they impede functioning or make it so you can't be in the presence of people just living their lives. You have to learn to ground yourself and say "No this is not actually harming me," instead of reinforcing your avoidance of the thing. You have to keep doing this because you know it will get easier. You're allowed to take a couple years to decompress after a bad thing, but you don't get to inflict it on innocent bystanders and pursue them if they try to escape the toxic offload, and after that you have to, have to realize that you have years of life left to live and you need to go on and go about living in a way that will long-term be less miserable, because being triggered by everyday phrases or subjects or household objects is an extremely miserable way to live, especially if you intend to continue living for several decades, and your brain can change those associations or make them less bad with enough time, motivation, and practice. Some of them, at least. The ones that occur as a part of everyday life, definitely.

And this is not some "neurotypical bullshit." This is "I have two mental illnesses that cause trigger formation and one of them means I form triggers more easily than most other people in response to distressing situations, and I had to figure out how to deal with that somehow so I could hug my friends or function in the vicinity of Halloween decorations or keep a job or even do the fucking dishes." It works. And your right to ask people to modify things for your access ends where it threatens to undo decades of queer liberation or control people's sexualities without their consent, or involves accusing people of crimes they didn't commit and never would commit just because the flashback logic says something is similar. How dare you be that self-centered. Why not just get a cold and deliberately sneeze on people, if you want to make your problems an excuse to hurt people for your own comfort? Learn how to deal, because, though you may not agree with me now, you do have a future and you will have to live with the consequences of your current actions, and you need to make that future worth living, for the sake of everyone around you, but most of all for you.

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman #40

Previously in Geoff Johns’ Jobs-For-Mates Charity Program: James Robinson was trying to half-ass his way around a new Silver Swan origin story, reinventing Vanessa Kapatelis as a Tragic Cripple Turned Evil by the technology that was supposed to help her walk again; yes, that’s how far we’ve sunk.

Also, Jason is still around, more’s the pity. But last issue ended with Swanessa slashing his throat, so there is always hope.

Oh, and just some forewarning, this story continues to be ableist as fuuuuck.

Diana: Jason? Brother? Please don’t be dead.

Please be dead.

Please, please, please be dead.

(Sidenote: Man, I miss Jodi Wynne’s lettering on this book. Everything about Saida Temofonte’s lettering work feels so loud and awkward and unnecessarily busy, particularly after Wynne’s gorgeous, subtle work, with her fine attention to detail.)

Sadly, Jason is not dead. Nevertheless, he’s landed right where he belongs.

Jason: “Over here. I fell in the garbage.”

Pity he’s not gonna stay there.

There’s yet another wall-of-text conversation in which Diana recaps everything that happened in the previous issue, then they engage in a pointless discussion about how they both have accelerated healing and, hey, where do you think that came from? Their father? Diana says that she “like[s] to think Demeter also had a hand in it”, which I think is Robinson’s clumsy way of trying to reconcile Diana’s Rebirth origin story (wherein Diana’s powers were a gift from Themsycira’s patron gods) with the New 52 version (wherein Diana and Jason inherited their powers from their father, Zeus).

Not only does this not work, it mostly just serves to highlight the fact that Diana currently has no cohesive origin story (mostly because fuckwads like Geoff Johns keep trying to track their New 52 shit through Rebirth).

Eventually they remember that they ought to go after the violently disturbed metahuman who just tried to kill them. Diana wishes her boyfriend were here to tell her what to do.

“I’m a warrior more than a planner, I admit, so it’s time like this… I wish I had Steve around.”

Speaking of Steve, he and the Oddfellows (who, if you’ll remember, are embarrassing caricatures of the supporting cast of the Wonder Woman movie, poorly adapted for the modern-day DCU) are fighting the Female Furies for reasons too boring to mention. Steve condescendingly calls Lashina “sweetheart” and Charlie och-aye-bonny-wee-haggis-thass-no’-how-ye-make-porridge-me-lads all over the place.

At the hospital, Diana and Jason discover that Swanessa has been on a murder rampage. The first responding police officer tells Diana that Swanessa used the nanites in her blood to infiltrate the hospital computers and, through them, all other medical databases, deleting every piece of data about the medical procedures that created her. All information, btw, that this police officer could not feasibly know, but god forbid Diana actually figure anything out for herself in this comic without having it spoonfed to her.

Oh, and apparently the reason Swanessa did this is so that she remains ~special~ and ~unique~. Boooo.

Cut to Swanessa, still talking in third person and thinking in emo purple prose.

Vanessa was weak. She looked up to Wonder Woman. She thought her a friend. I am not Vanessa, and the moon reflects the cold silver of my dead heart. Wonder Woman, other the other hand — her heart is the warm sun of a foreign shore. It can be broken.

I don’t think even she knows what the hell she’s on about.

Swanessa flies to Diana’s house and tries to kill Jason, only to be stopped by— whaaaa? Wonder Woman is here too? But how? And why?? What possible reason could she have for going to her own house??? THIS IS SO SHOCKING AND UNFORESEEN.

Swanessa: How did you know I’d be here?! Diana: BITCH I LIVE HERE

So, blah blah, another boring fight with more “I’m sorry, Vanessa”/“VANESSA IS DEAD”, etc. At one point, Diana compares Swanessa’s situation to Barbara Minerva’s, which only highlights the fact that this story has been done before, and done better, less than two years ago.

Eventually, Diana heroically gets through to Swanessa by… holding her underwater until she runs out of oxygen and falls unconscious.

No, really, that’s it. She damn near drowns the girl to knock her out, then walks out of the water announcing triumphantly, “I did it, Jason... I got Vanessa back” as though she’s actually managed to achieve something.

The next we see of Swanessa, she’s comatose and contained in ARGUS H.Q.

The not-evil-but-villainously-named Dr Peril introduces Diana to the not-villainously-named-but-evil Dr Carne, ARGUS’s psionics specialist.

Carne explains that Swanessa’s violent rampage was the result of “schizophrenia induced by shock”. Never mind that in reality people with serious mental illnesses are more often the victims of violence than the perpetrators, nahhh, it’s easier just to say that she killed those people cos she’s ~cRaZy~.

Peril laments the fact that Swanessa destroyed the science that “repaired her crippled body”, science that would be “a prize for millions of people on Earth similarly handicapped” — again, reinforcing this story’s message that people with mobility loss are tragic cases and objects of pity. Yes, Swanessa was a monster, but, crucially, she was “a monster who could walk”, and isn’t that far preferable to being a fulfilled and productive member of society who needs mobility aids.

And… shit, I’ve just noticed something else.

Throughout this debrief, nobody, not one person, suggests that the experimental nanite treatment that gave Swanessa her powers may have also influenced her mind or her actions. Swanessa is ~tragic~ etc., but nobody really considers that she might be a victim as well. Even when Diana suggests the destruction of the science may be for the best, it’s not because of what the technology may have done to Swanessa, but what Swanessa did with the technology. “Vanessa created a monster,” Diana says.

Certainly nobody’s asking any questions about where the hell this nanite treatment came from, or how it is that somebody was able to inject a teenage girl with some untested experimental nanotech. They’re all too busy salivating over their plans to study her comatose body and use their findings to ‘save’ all the ‘poor cripples’ of the world.

Oh, and one last thing.

Dr Carne FUCKING PSYCHO FUCK: Don’t worry, if she does over her eyes… I’ll be there.

As if Robinson hasn’t fucked up Diana’s rogues gallery enough already, CARNE IS DOCTOR PSYCHO GOD FUCKING DAMMIT

As an epilogue, Jason leaves Diana a note to tell her that he’s leaving to find himself, then promptly gets abducted by an evil purple tentacle cloud. Yawn.

[caesurabywriting]

 DRABBLE-ish.  pairing: tom & emma   v: pregnancy au  + pregnancy POV sentence starter 

❝  I just wanted to wait to tell you, I wanted to know for sure I was keeping it. ❞   bonus: she’s crying

( for @ravenpuff-writes )

         He can't pretend he didn't hear her.

         He doesn't want to pretend.

         But the admission alone is not what immediately halts Tom’s aimless room-to-room drifting. Before she had even broached the subject, she does so all on her own.

         The amount of sway the sight of her has almost knocks the air from his lungs.

         It's something he hadn’t ever really given much thought to --- Emma in distress. Doing so always seemed like a waste of energy to envision, too draining a concept to entertain when his conduct in her presence was always driven by one specialized intent: to coax out a reaction that landed on the polar opposite end of the spectrum. To take nothing and propel it upward into high realms of joy and versions of ecstasy that weren’t obtainable at a price out of the pocket of a stranger. Letting the pendulum of their lifestyle habits swing downwards was never a goal. Scarcely was it ever thought possible that he could inflict pain upon her that outlived the short span of their imbecilic tit-for-tat arguments. Those rare times nothing but a temporary blemish on an otherwise open and vibrant landscape that was theirs for the taking, whenever and however they wished, with nothing to dictate their trajectory but what they felt like moment-to-moment. Obligations few and far between. At least, that’s how it had been.

         Emma in genuine anguish was unimaginable. Not for Tom’s lack of creativity to picture such a tormenting what if scenario, but for the theorized instance feeling too unbearable a weight to sustain. It was an experience that would never be real, anyway ( or so he’d once believed ). She had her thriving career and a social life to match; anything she desired at her fingertips with just the right word or glance. She had a home --- technically two --- and someone who could be found frequently occupying both residences, force of habit coaxing him into never straying too far from her location. All was going exceptionally well. 

         He wishes that was still the case. 

         I just wanted to wait to tell you...

         Though it’s what the world at large celebrated as a wondrous milestone beginning, the conditions accompanying her announcement lack all sense of celebration. There’s no mistaking her sorrowful expression, nor the coinciding ache it strikes into his chest. Even at a distance, he can tell by the way the light catches Emma’s features that her eyes too wet; gradually welling up with unshed tears that only her refusal to blink kept at bay. 

        So out of place, part of him wants to immediately cross the room and kiss her. An impulsive action that would have, ordinarily, been his primary attempt at easing any marks of sadness from her face. To get her eyes to close and give her permission to shut everything out, as if that was the magical solution that stood a chance at stopping the momentum of where they were headed. He yearns to consume any lingering trace of melancholy hanging in the air and take it upon himself to convert it into a lighter feeling --- like usual. His inaudible show-don’t-tell means of apology that had always done a decent job at softening the blow of a prank that hit a little too close to home. A joke that went to far. A teasing turn of phrase he delighted in overusing so often, at all hours of the day, he’d end up having a pillow ( among other things ) hurled at him. 

         But this isn’t a joke. 

         This isn’t what was supposed to happen. Not between people like them. Especially to people like them. It isn't a victorious brand new start. Not a balloons and confetti and cake occasion. No. It feels like an ending. An abrupt and cruel change in course. Tying off the loose ends of their limitless range of flyway hedonistic pathways until what was leftover resembled a tight knit tapestry with only one discernible design, vivid and unignorable. An accident far more permanent and transformative than a wine stain. Emma was pregnant. 

         It reins him into a stunned silence, her most recent sentence still ringing in his ears. I wanted to know for sure I was keeping it.

        Tom had never been one to take solemn news suitably. Unofficially dubbed the invented superlative most likely to make a joke at a funeral amongst his peers, old and new. He was the boy unintentionally interrupting silences that were actually deliberately prolonged pauses. The teenager guilty of letting a deviant smirk slip onto his lips during arguments; laughing disrespectfully during an onslaught of stern reprimands. The young adult supplying poorly timed comedic self-inserts that only served to make matters worse. Tom’s track record for misreading or mishandling momentous circumstances was decorated to an unflatteringly dense degree. A bumbling history that was an ouroboros of ill-advised involuntary urges, each bygone nervous gesture and snicker surfacing in the hopes of shattering a moment too tense to cope with in silence. To deviate from a moment heavily embedded with ridicule and bad news --- allowing some fresh air into the exchange, if only for an instant --- before his apparent denial to take anything seriously was taken offensively and reinforced his opposition's original approach.

        It couldn’t be helped. Without fail, it would start to build again: the urge to break composure and forcibly shake off the burden or blame laid before him. A hairline fissure of discomfort that would go on to compromise every fiber of whatever attempted unperturbed facade he’d started out with. Blue eyes wide and utterly guileless, yet darting the room in such eager search of distraction he would end up making himself culpable for further questioning. His time after time excuse, a white flag of surrender that plead the fifth, refusing any of it was ever deliberate: it just happens.

        For a moment, Tom feels trapped under the haze of a similar state. Not in attitude, but in size; reduced to a far smaller version of himself compared to his surroundings. Although, instead of laughter, it’s an excuse he scours his mind to find. To find a reason to doubt her, despite that he’d never done so before. Despite that he never would. As if somehow there was a miraculous piece of missing evidence that could be produced to debunk her word as untrustworthy. It was transient effort, any detectable flaw in her jarring confession rendered void by the two very real and irreversible lines on a stick that supported it. 

        The muted pause that follows is all his own doing, an unanticipated frenzy of inner conflict effectively suffocating his typically faux pas laden self. He knows he wants to ask for more details, but he can’t find the will to pry open that box quite yet. And he also knows he wants to hold her, for if the pulse of his heart had elevated considerably compared to before, he couldn’t imagine the state of hers. Yet --- his decisive sense of direction spun on its axis and set to a disorientating spin cycle --- the idea doing so and the active procedure it took to follow through with it is the limbo Tom finds himself caught in between. He’s a considerable piece to the puzzle of their newfound predicament, sure, but that doesn’t make it any easier to process. 

        Hovering in the doorway, he lingers in the same room as her --- almost as per usual. Emma stands far beyond the much desired arm's length away from him, though this was less by choice and more from the sudden swell of uncharacteristic cautiousness transfixing him in place. He mentally tries to rewind to the stretch of time preceding their current moment. Had there been signs? 

       Fuck. What were the signs?

        He could barely recall the moment Emma had returned home, minutes ago, so quiet that he nearly hadn’t noticed her incoming presence if not for the clicks of two separate doors being opened and shut. Her recognizable footsteps fading a little too quickly down the hall where she would, presumably, then end up locking herself behind the bathroom door. Perhaps that should have been an indicator something was up. It was an evening routine Tom had discounted as normal when it wasn’t uncommon that she needed time alone to detach from the demands of the day and relax. She’d been doing so more frequently as of late, but he hadn’t thought it necessary to press her about it. Being tired had seemed a reasonable excuse. Her level of professionalism and organization were feats beyond him, after all. Tom had stopped trying to understand long ago, content to hear what she willingly shared about what she’d successfully accomplished rather than daring to ask for more information and having to pretend he understood how a piece of fabric could be designed ‘beautifully’ when, to him, it was just a bunch of string sewn into a shape.

        There was also the morning she’d skipped breakfast --- a fleeting moment spent perusing the open fridge before she sighed into cool air and turned around, her disinterest seemingly providing her with a refreshed sense of urgency to vacate the premises. That was a sign. Then, shortly after, there was the Saturday night he’d been late returning home. Having met up with a friend and gotten side-tracked catching up, unsurprisingly, Tom discovered Emma already asleep when he reached the bedside. Strands of hair had been stuck to her cheek, as if she’d dozed off too soon after washing her face. Or crying. That was a sign. And again, he’d brushed it off as nothing more than business-related exhaustion. Just Emma being independent and headstrong Emma. Not Emma dealing with a positive pregnancy test and suppressing it Emma. As Tom retraced each subtle difference in behavior that had once registered on his radar as insignificant, it dawns on him that it meant for multiple entire days she’d been beside him, quietly thinking about whether or not she could let there be a baby in their future. It takes only seconds for him to re-inspect each recent memory and find the aha moment hitherto ignored, driving home the truth even further. All the telltale hints Tom had been oblivious and trivializing toward, in retrospect, now speaking volumes.

       The reality of it coiled even tighter around him, jerking his head out of the clouds and threatening to sink him like a stone. She’s pregnant. She thinks she’s keeping it. Okay. He knows exactly what that means. Still, the explanation paired with her downcast disposition is hardly reassuring. It looked she was in the middle of being torn apart by something, not pleased to allow it with welcoming arms. 

       Tom’s chest feels tight, stomach clenching with what he can only guess is fear, as though he’d taken a leap off a cliff edge and only realized midair that he severely underestimated the height of it. Plummeting down, headfirst and un-helmeted, into the depths of a situation he hadn’t considered possible. For anyone else, fine. Biological clocks are always ticking and all that shit. But for them? It seemed more likely she’d be enthused about getting a tattoo etched into her face than having a baby of her own clutched to her chest.        Nevertheless, against his better judgement, he can’t help but indulgently let his mind wander somewhat. What might it be like to have a miniature version of Emma and him peacefully curled up between them? The supposed concept on its own is so incongruous with the comfortable decidedly non-kid friendly lifestyle they’d slipped into, it was almost laughable. His mouth is too dry to even try. How could something so precious and vulnerable survive under their care? 

       It’s the kind of admission he never saw coming — not from Emma, not genuinely. But here it was. Plain and simple and heartbreakingly honest, landing with strength of a sucker punch deployed by someone triple her size. It makes his breath catch, every inhale and exhale struggling over the anxious lump that had risen at the hollow of his throat, showing no indications of being dislodged soon. 

       Where the revealing news hits him squarely, igniting his bloodstream with a feverish cocktail of uncertainty and alarm, her appearance makes it feel as though his spine’s been doused with liquid nitrogen. 

       She's crying, officially. Two noticeable tracks of tears had finally claimed the territory of her cheeks in an inevitable overflow. The color drains from Tom’s face as he watches. It’s all he can focus on. With whiplash precision, the immense weight of the term pregnancy suddenly disperses into something impalpable in comparison to the violent inner jolt triggered by the devastating sight of her unravelling. From the wet sheen on Emma’s cheeks to the weary way she holds herself --- her usually impeccable posture seemingly deflated by the pressure that came from persevering through an affliction alone. All visible signs suggested that, though she’d had the courage to vocalize her choice in front of him, there was no relief to be found in the wake of it.

       There’s an uncontained way about her, Tom notices, as he watches her hasten to wipe an unsteady hand across her face and mutter something he doesn’t hear. Drawn taut and tense, but unable to hold completely still, she exemplifies a hidden beneath the surface volatility. A kind that hints not that she might explode, but come apart at the seams if not treated with the utmost care. 

       The outer corners of his lips tug faintly downwards, unmistakably asserting his displeasure. Something twinges sharply in his chest, as if a foreign object had planted itself there to infiltrate his arrested system with unbridled energy. Fight or flight. Only one would show how dependant he was on putting Emma’s wellbeing above his own.

       As if to spite his desire to rupture the thick blanketing quiet cast over them, the majority of Tom’s muscles remain stubbornly uncooperative, and the desperation to act without knowing how only succeeds to make his teeth clench tightly. God, he craves to busy his hands. He’d already begun to absentmindedly tug lightly at the hem of his t-shirt’s material in an attempt to satisfy the deep-seated instinct to have something more substantial between his fingers. He needs more air than the room supplied. In particular, however rogue and ill-advised the notion is, to retract faraway and dive for cover where he could indulge in every addictive tendency under the sun. It was an impulse made manifest by the flare up of stress; the unhealthy preference to feel the sting of something real rather than the stifling insurgence of emotion that had hijacked the residence between his ribs. Solution: some smoky or acerbic elixir that was measurable and predictable in its tranquilizing effect on any worry he might have had before imbibing. Like the catalyst of any issue would be banished forevermore if he could forget about it during an even more implicating span of tumultuous under-the-influence hours. Though he knew better than to give in, that noxious go-to option of yesteryear still flickered like an empty gaslight on the fringes of his awareness.

       The burgeoning urge to run from each red flag of insecurity and get an actual adult to tend to her is nearly overwhelming. To forget himself in search of a figure more masterfully steadfast and qualified at doling out proper guidance. As it was, he felt in the throes of an out of body experience. They were two childish childless people, standing in a bedroom, diametrically opposed in demeanor. Tom wished he was less inadequate to handle what baby entailed. God fucking damnit, she needed a better person. 

       Tom might have cursed aloud in frustration at the fact if not for the stubborn strength of the desire to prove he was would be. 

       He couldn’t determine what an unfiltered reaction might be like, if he left the room and let her news hit him without any defenses in place. Undoubtedly, his unwitnessed response would have been enhanced tenfold. It was only in her presence that an honest betrayal of the sort was forbidden, lest he risk heightening the state of her sensitivity.

       He’d caused this. Thereby, he couldn’t break his own rule and run from it --- a rule alternatively known as practically his only personal uncompromisable boundary, that which tidily divided the chaos of his mind back into a rudimentary category of two: Emma happy --- good. Emma sad --- fucking awful. Anything that ever jeopardized the former wasn't allowed to win out, it was to be dealt with and surmounted. Tom would step back, or step up as needed. Just as the desire to abide almost exclusively by her side before anyone else’s had once seemed like a the kind of elevated risk just shy of a death sentence --- at the end of the day, he wanted her all the same. 

       Few things had ever been as undeniable as the person standing in front of him. The woman who could effortlessly turned every impossibility upside down. It was no wonder she ended up pregnant. The chance had been a small one, but apparently the odds of success in spite of slim-to-none circumstances favored them a little too much.

       Tom can barely recall any of it, at present. All the hours they’d happily wasted tangled up in each other, in all respects. Each stable marker of progression that had blossomed between them despite wanting to call it nothing. They had taken for granted the security of having an endless amount of time at their fingertips, knowing just how to reach the other from near or far. Finding entertainment in the littlest things, a shared easygoing amusement that created the foundations for something far deeper than either had ever intended getting involved in. Every soft exchange of affection he’d ( foolishly ) grown accustomed to --- the running his fingers through her hair as she worked; the familiar weight of her head atop his chest; the golden accessories draped around her neck after he kissed it. Together, their half-asleep hands roaming overtop and below blankets for their counterpart; restless lips finding skin in the dark; the push of her forehead, nudging against his shoulder, simultaneously gentle and persistent. Instead, he’s held prisoner by their new normal. Every sharp edged unknown delving into him and urging him to leave what he thought he knew behind and confront the version of themselves they were on the cusp of. Fucking parents. 

       Tom isn’t sure what to say. Awash with emotions he doesn’t want to credit, it takes a fine combing through to really know what deserves to be heard by Emma as opposed to what ought to stay swallowed. The shock and novelty of it all makes him doubtful any amount of preparation would have changed the way it petrified every inch of him. Never had he struggled with not to filling nearly every gap of inactivity with tangents of words or confident actions, rarely allowing himself to be unsure about anything. Always avoiding overanalyzing or questioning the highly charged directionless nature of them as a whole, far preferring to instead wholeheartedly invite in more. At last, his Achilles heel had been hit.

       Being with Emma was an experience he cherished more than he’d ever admit, as utterly thoughtless and carefree as it probably often looked. She had always been a consciously made choice. Perhaps one of the only steadfast commitments he was beyond content to return to regular basis. Her company the primary one he sought, just because. He’d go wherever she went, and that was that. Baby or no baby. Emma had had time to think it over and still decided trying to go through with it was a feasible option. And, hell, if she --- someone with behaviors as mercurial and decadent he --- could come to terms with the only venture that wouldn’t be found on their to do list, surely he could follow suit. Maybe jumping out of a plane and raising a baby would turn out to be a similarly nerve-wracking process. 

       Nonetheless, decisive or not, she was not okay. Just one look at her was enough to sense how evidently shaken up she was, likely the very first time she’d ever spoken those life changing words to an audience.

       Indeed it was, perfectly demonstrating why he adamantly avoided bringing about situations that would negatively impact her, fucking awful.

       With that at the forefront of his mind, although still suspended somewhere between fully absorbing the news and fretting over what would be the right or wrong way to act in accompaniment to her, Tom finally manages to mobilize.

       A couple wide steps is all it takes to advance across the room to stand in front of her, his hands automatically reaching to curl around her empty one before he’s even entirely cognizant of doing so. It’s more than a casual orchestration of contact. Not like his usual offhanded touching-for-the-sake-of-touching, whether that be lightly bumping against her whenever she breezed by or depositing a good morning kiss to the crown of her head. This time, there’s an underlying urgency to the way he holds onto her. His warm featherlight instigation of contact developing almost immediately into a stronger grip until both his hands have one of hers buoyed between them, protective and reassuring, as if it’s the only thing that stands a chance at him --- of them --- maintaining any real sense of gravity.

       The tactile tether brings about a lulling impression of normalcy. A haze of anesthetic calm that envelopes Tom’s cluttered mind, giving him the chance to re-calibrate the volume --- dialled too fucking loud --- of concerns pounding against his skull. Rather than getting swept away by every skeptical train of thought, he’s grounded by the familiarity being close to her invokes. The overwhelming cacophony ( a seemingly infinite list of worries ) fades into indistinguishable static. There’s only one frequency he feels, hears, and sees. A bright glowing meteor that made all the ugly background noise fade to black. Her.

       Tom’s gaze is soft; two coolant pools harbouring a poignancy that attentively survey her face, much of his uneasiness temporarily rendered obsolete by a different all-encompassing motivation. That is, to comfort and console her to the best of his ability and have the blind faith to trust the rest would follow suit and fall into place. 

       He knows he’ll need to convince himself to speak up and deviate from the safety net of non-verbal communication but, for a tender moment, he hopes she can understand the way he needs to move slowly as he adjusts himself to not only knowing about, but believing in their configuration of three.

       Looking down, he finds himself solely focused on the hand of hers still in his possession, thumb delicately tracing each rise and fall of her knuckles as a means to distract himself from the lofty stereotypical promises he’s tempted to let spill with reckless abandon. To say screw you to doubt and outpour what a nervous father-to-be ought to say, even if he didn’t quite mean it yet. A bigger part of him was reluctant to even try posing a promise too bold in case it was received more like a bluff than a pledge. They both knew what he was and wasn’t capable of. Lying had never been his strong suit.        Tom bit his tongue against the loaded rolodex of potentials he’d never said, but heard recited plenty of times. I’ll be a good father. I’ll look after you. I’ll be here, always. It’s an ongoing litany that repeats itself within his head, like a rhythmic heartbeat: I will. I will. I will. Alas, every cautiously optimistic beginning arrives darkly shadowed by a depressingly open-ended opposite --- but will I? 

       Nine months from now, he’d start to know for sure. But, predictably, irrationality now could lead to an unaffordable amount of collateral damage later. There was more than the two of them at stake. A lot could change in nine months. A lot could go wrong. There were at-risk explanations and scenarios that he’d have to watch Emma endure. Implications and scares he’d be helpless to stop. It was already too late; the velocity toward their ultimatum, whether good or bad, was already well underway. The ulterior --- a peaceful, smooth sailing, joyful pregnancy --- seems far too farfetched to get invested in.

       Then again, he’d once addressed the idea of them the same way. The origins of his intimate arrangement with Emma now, borne from a long ago passenger side encounter. It wasn’t supposed to have amounted to anything but a brief and convenient conversation. He wasn’t supposed to know her likes and dislikes, much less strive to memorize them. He wasn’t supposed to be up at 5AM just so her voice would be the first one he’d hear. He wasn’t supposed to look forward to any kind of future with her. He wasn’t supposed to love her. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, Tom had ended up systematically doing the opposite of every item on his to avoid list anyway.

       The pad of his thumb continues to softly strokes back and forth over the back of Emma’s hand as he blinks against the sudden stinging sensation threatening to infringe upon his vision. Quick to divert his attention elsewhere until the recognizable precursor subsided, whether coincidental or giving in to the curious impulse planted at he black of his mind since she’d spoken, Tom ends up staring at her stomach.

       He regrets doing so immediately, inwardly chastising himself for already beginning to look at her differently, with more awe and scrutiny. Like she wasn’t just Emma anymore. Regardless, it was like being told not to look at fluorescent light bulb with the naked eye. He feels all but beckoned to steal a glimpse at her body. It's hard to imagine any area of her protruding so much that he’d one day be forced to stand further away in order to kiss her, no longer being able to snugly wrap his arm all the way around her middle. And that when the bump finally went away, in its place there’d be a something alive to take care of for years. A miniature third party, grasping at their feet with sticky hands, expectantly staring upwards, trying to chew every object and echo every sound --- the world as new to them as they were to the world.

            What was ( quite literally ) growing between them was not only a question of want, it was a question of adeptness. Was he suited to raise a child? Was she? Too fucking late for that conversation. 

       Tom could learn. 

        Scratch that. 

         He would definitely learn. For somethingone a part of Emma was as damn near valuable as Emma herself.

       With an abrupt release of her hand, he raises both his own. Pretending not to notice the nearly imperceptible quiver spurring them forth, he tucks dark strands of hair behind her ears before gently cupping her face.

       Despite having ample time to gather himself, he has only one eloquent thing to pronounce, "Emma," his voice, much to his dismay, wavers over her name --- a considerable tell, for it was unlike him to address her as such with anything but a tone of unsolvable, unremitting affection --- as both his thumbs gingerly swipe over the rise of her tear-streaked cheekbones. His lips remain slightly parted, poised to formulate the much desired supportive response that continues to evade him.

       He wants to say something she’ll not only hear, but listen to. Something she’ll remember when this becomes a then. A distant memory that could end up being looked back at in chagrin over the sheer stupidity of their uncalculated error and their ignorant naivety toward it all. How tactless it would be if he went the cookie-cutter route of staking his undying devotion, like some soap opera television protagonist responded to being wrapped into a troublesome, yet heavily foreshadowed, pregnancy plot twist. But all he can think is ‘Will you be okay?’ closely followed by an all-too revealing, ‘I’m sorry’, and, in third place, ‘are you really sure you want to do this?’ and he sincerely doubts any are the right thing to say. Not now. She might freak out; she might crumble further and reverse over what had already taken great strain to announce. If he couldn’t make her feel immediately better, at the very least he could make a hearty attempt to stabilize her. 

       Letting a moment pass, Tom manages to level his tone of voice, clinging to a thin veneer of composure only to counteract the lack of hers. “Listen to me...”

       With her skin in contact with his, the soothing calm that followed bars his punch-drunk brain from spiralling. Brain synapses no longer turbulently electrified, but finding a familiar circuit to ground into. Emma. Deserving of anything she desired and more. It’s a resignation that impales every frenetic nerve and mutes the pessimistic undertones accompanying the idea of raising a child. He can’t do anything to fight it. No matter which fork in the road chosen follow, if Emma was there, it was the right one.

       Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be a total disaster in the process. 

       The heavy sensation at his chest to begins to lessen, his critical headspace surrendering to a different belief; the soaring ambition of wanting to accomplish something. They still had time. He didn’t believe his unpreparedness could be turned around overnight, but that self-inflicted limitation was nothing but a scratch compared to the bigger wound --- not trying at all. The cold and hard truth of the matter: he was in it for the long haul. 

       If only he could say as much.

       If only he could prove to her with a grand gesture that she had nothing to be afraid of. That the tally of valid reasons to be hopeful were more abundant than the ones to be frightened of failing. That, realistically, their joint parental capabilities ending up landing in an unmarked field between mediocre and average was a goal within reach. That, months from now, it really would feel less daunting and far more rewarding. It had to. It couldn’t get worse. Oh, shit, could it?

       Instead, Tom articulates only what he knows. An admission that arrives partnered with a too-brief appearance of his trademark disarming grin. A lopsided curve which always erred too much on the side of up-to-no-good, yet had a near perfect record of doing the opposite; eventually charming her into defrosting a cold shoulder, the antidote to a poisonous glare deservingly sent his way after he’d struck a nerve. It’s a twitch of lip he can’t help, hastily tacked-on; a manifestation of the incredibly unusual swell of overwhelming nervousness chorusing throughout his body, like it had gotten the best of his younger self on many occasion. It just happens. “I’m in love with you.” 

       Nowadays, it’s a sentiment he’s grown used to divulging confidently without seizing up as if he’d spilled acid on himself. Even so, stirred to life again is the potent swell of fondeness that arose the first time he’d said it clearly instead of murmuring it. Quietly, in accordance to their intimate proximity, he continues, “Y'know what that means, Em? All of you. Every part. Every word, every idea, adventure and accident, smile… every stupid one of these.” With gentle emphasis, he traced a fingertip steadily down her cheek, following the roll of another fallen tear before catching it beneath the slant of her chin. He lets his touch linger there, a perch of two fingers prompting her to look directly up at him. “Sometimes it feels like too much. Like this can't be good --- because it’s too good. But then... out of nowhere, there's always room for more." 

       Whoever said moderation was key clearly hadn't enjoyed a day alongside Emma.

       Relying on body language to fill between the lines, Tom carefully brushed the palm of his hand down over her stomach. Deceivingly flat as ever, but no longer empty. Relatively soon would she bear physical evidence of what was happening. Soon to be full. Soon to be theirs. Another space, made and taken all at once. 

       "This is you too," he murmurs low, words followed by loaded pause of deliberation. This time, Tom thinks she can easily read into what has him stalling. That he’s considering of how best to officially break the good or bad news. Whether it be a painful kicker ( but actually... ) or a cherry on top ( lucky for you… ). Debating against himself exactly what would show the right level of willingness for one in as precarious of a position as Emma. Whether he planned to take the news gracefully or regretfully. Intently studying her features, one hand still caressing the side of face, he knows there’s no future without her in it. Not a worthwhile one, anyway.

       There’s a finality to the way he proceeds. Even if a great result wasn’t truly is guaranteed, where Emma stood on the matter so would he. And that was that. Very soft, almost secretive, into the air between them does he let loose his most important answer. In a single syllable, the sure claim of keeping becomes one jointly made: “Ours.” 

       He leaned in to bestow an adoring kiss to her temple, momentarily resting his forehead against the same spot. In such a position, he can’t help but look down at her stomach again. This time, the wave of trepidation that follows is only minor. "I've always been curious to know more about you,” he says, amounting to little more than a mumble against her skin, “Now there's just more to get to know." There’s another kiss pressed to the side of her head, then his arms shift to wind around her. One palm resting flat between her shoulder blades, the other finding its usual place at the small of her back, he pulls her in for a close embrace.

      It’s hard to say who needs it more.

[juuls]

Facing uncomfortable truths about abuse

This week has been about facing truths, some of which I wish I never had to face, and I know that Mr. Juulna has had to face some pretty harsh truths as I have spoken them to him. Some he has accepted, at least at face value, and some I don’t think he will ever be willing to face, let alone accept.

One of which (is a vast meta umbrella) is that he abused me.

But... it was in a subtle way. Before last Tuesday, July 4th (yes, apparently fate decided to be dramatic with me and its timing), I was unwilling to truly accept that I was abused. 

I wasn’t being physically abused. No, not often. (Yeah, and isn’t that a ridiculous sounding statement.)

But subtle, emotional abuse, is still abuse.

And it took me reading this passage in a fic I was reading, a poly Avengers fic called all this devotion (i never knew at all). It... has some tough topics, especially concerning Tony, a sub, and his former relationship with his dom, Obadiah Stane (the dude Tony killed in the first Iron Man movie). 

[Thank you so much @themonstersoflove for writing this beautiful fic and helping me handle my own problems dealing with abuse. You don’t know how much this helped me.]

Like... okay, fine. Poly and slash and sub/dom isn’t for everyone. The latter is certainly not my usual cup of tea to read, but I don’t mind it at all. I sort of read everything in a ship or fandom I enjoy. And this I very much enjoyed, but for more than the smut. It was an emotional journey, and an important one.

But the point is that, no matter the subject, this following passage has a very important message. And it struck a huge chord within me.

Tony sighs, [...] "You all do better than Obi on that front. What you say or do, you mean. Half the time when he said he was fine, he didn’t mean it."

“Why’d you stay with him?” Steve blurts, then winces. [...]

Tony rolls to face him, and gazes at him with incisive, dark eyes: Howard’s eyes. “I hate that question,” he says after what seems an age.

“Sorry. Sorry, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to-“

“No. I should.” [...] “I hate it because there’s never a good answer. There’s never an answer that satisfies people as to why a smart, wealthy man with all the world before him would choose to stay with someone who hurt him.”

“Any answer you give would be enough for me,” says Steve, and Tony half-smiles.

“So noble. All right. Part of it was that people have this picture of abuse, where it’s a hundred percent of the time someone’s being evil and hitting the victim twenty-four-seven and, I don’t know, threatening their cat until the victim gets mad and burns the bed with him or her in it.”

“I- is that… a real thing?”

Tony laughs. “No, no, it was this awful movie on Lifetime. Sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you. But that’s the thing, is Obi wasn’t cruel ten percent of the time, or even five percent. The times when he would be angry and hurt me were few and far between, and I always believed him when he said he was sorry, that he’d change, because for months or years at a time, he would. You got to remember, Steve, we were together twenty years.”

“So… there were good times?” It seems impossible that someone who owned the things [very cruel and improperly used BDSM implements] Steve saw in that trunk could be kind, could be good.

“Of course,” Tony says, frowning and looking at Steve as though he’s said something exceptionally dim. “I mean, I know it doesn’t fit your – let’s face it – black and white concepts of morality, but he could be nice. Very few people in this world are a hundred percent evil to everything and everyone. He was a great cook,” Tony smiles with the memory, “and he used to make the best breakfasts the morning after scenes and feed me in bed. Or when I was a kid, and my dad and mom were out at charity things that I didn’t go to, he’d come over and we’d tinker together, and then he’d make pizza from scratch. Before I hired Pepper, after my parents died, it was Obi that kept me from self-destructing.”

Tony shrugs, [...] “Which was another reason. I had a lot of good memories associated with him, and if I acknowledged that he was abusive, those memories seemed… devalued. Unreal. [...]”

[...]

“Anyway. I suppose the last part of it was fear. Obi was… the most stable thing I had in my life. Everything else changed, constantly, but I could always go to Obi’s place and know exactly what to do, where to go. Obi said he could make me the perfect sub, could help me get over what the schools did to me, and I thought he could. Even though he couldn’t, even though it hurt, I valued his confidence. His belief that I could be perfect, and not broken. As time went on, he just became-“ Tony gestures, frustrated, “-part of me. I didn’t know how I’d ever find anyone who treated me like Obi did, like I was valuable for something beyond being Tony Stark, and it just seemed easier to stay than to go, restructure the company, possibly be revealed.”

After I read this passage, I sat in my bath and just stared at nothing, trying to process what it was that I was feeling. It was... it was really hard. To see what I was feeling (mostly) put into words that I could read on a page and recognize in a relationship laid out before me on the page, with characters whom I could see this readily happening to, with the way it was explained.

It was terrifying, but it was also freeing.

I’ve finally -- not just with this, but with a lot of things leading up to this -- been able to recognize what happened to me. To accept that I was abused. That I will be experiencing the aftereffects of what I went through for a long time to come.

That just because it wasn’t “as bad” or “physical” like other people experience in abusive relationships, that just because I am strong and have a good support network and came out of this relationship not a complete mess, broken pieces to be glued back together but never to be the same again...

... just because I’m not all of that, does not mean I am any less justified in calling what happened to me abuse.

I was made to feel like my illnesses were a burden; that I should stop complaining about the immense amounts of unrelieved pain I was in. 

I was yelled at and stalked online and told how terrible I was for blogging about what I did, and for writing fanfiction about what I did. That I was a whore, a harlot, a slut. That I was having an emotional affair; that I was cheating on him by writing what I did.

And when he would get extra specially mad, like when I would inevitably push back (because fuck him) -- he would throw things that would break whatever was hit by whatever it was he’d thrown. Or he would punch walls and doors. And more.

One time he was in the car and rammed it into the side of the house.

Very shortly afterwards, he threw his luggage at me.

And then... then he shoved me against the porch wall, his hand around my throat.

All of this was going on while I was being bullied in the reylo and reylux star wars fandom, and it was even going on before and after I was hacked and my fics removed (yes, it could have been him, but he’s terrible at lying and surprising me, and I honestly do believe he didn’t do it... but I still could be wrong). So, I was facing attacks about my fanfiction writing from two fronts, and I felt like I couldn’t receive comfort from him during my time of emotional need... which just led me further from him, and reinforced his accusations of emotional distancing. (Which, yep, were happening... but because of him.)

But... I still stayed with him.

Why?

Like Tony said... it’s hard to come up with an answer that makes sense and will satisfy the person asking.

He did all that stuff to me and more. Most of it was little things here and there that just added up. It got to the point where I was living in fear of him. I was still doing the things he hated (because, again, fuck him), but I was making sure to hide them -- to hide me -- from him so that he wouldn’t get mad.

All the while protesting that he was a good person. That he had his great moments, and great parts to him that outshone the bad. 

That I still believed in him and his ability to change.

And he did change. That’s what made leaving all the harder. The fact that he had changed from how awful he’d previously been, made it harder for me to realize that it just wasn’t going to work out. That I needed more than just his trying better and being better. I needed to not be with him more than I needed him to change to suit me.

Because in the end, I want what’s best for him as well. I want him to realize how fucked up everything became, how fucked up he treated me... but I also want him to have someone who can be what he needs, and what she/he needs.

Despite it all, despite how it sounds, he is a (mostly) good person. Our fighting is part of his development, and a divorce will serve as punishment enough. Because we did have great times. He’s still at fault, he still did me horrible wrongs that I will never forget or forgive, but I have hope he can be a better person for any new people to come into his life, into my former position in his life. I hope for their sake that he’ll have chilled the fuck out by then, though, and maybe he will without me in his life.

But there were a lot of warning signs that I missed -- that I should have seen and pieced together -- because those signs were too small, too far apart, too innocuous at first, for me to realize I was being abused.

And I know that there are many more people out there like me.

Don’t be afraid, ladies and gents, to leave. Leaving is the hardest thing you will do, but after that it gets better, despite the hardship, feelings of being lost, etc.

You have more friends than you know.

Abuse is abuse, no matter if it’s all the time or rarely, or physical or emotional/mental. 

I love you, even if I don’t know you. I’m here for you, as I know you’re here for me.

*hugs and love*

[lcncasters-blog]

hey everyone!!! i’m d, i’m 23, and i use they/them pronouns. super hyped about being here so i’ma just get right into it

so kai is my fave character and kinda notoriously The Worst while also being The Best, so i’m warning y’all before we even go in that he’s actually so sloppy and wild pls proceed w/ caution. i’ve been playing him for over 4 years. that being said, he does have a fuck ton of information, so while the bullet points are going to be as condensed as i can possibly make them, you should really check out the appearance section (or you can just look at my sidebar which is wonderful artwork of kai one of my close friends did for me --- give them love on their art blog nialls ok SO talented) of his STATS FRAMEWORK and then if you really hate yourself i have a DEVELOPMENT TAG too with a bunch of headcanons (feel free to RB the rebloggable ones from me btw)

LOUIS TOMLINSON? no ⏤ KAI LANCASTER, the DEMIBOY is TWENTY-THREE and was born with a GOLD soul, and now has a GREY soul. i would describe HIM/THEM as EXUBERANT + BRAVE, yet CARELESS + IMPATIENT. KAI spends HIS/THEIR time PLAYING AT SMALL VENUES WITH HIS ALT ROCK BAND AND WORKING AS A NANNY and has lived in seattle for TWO YEARS.

TW FOR TERMINAL ILLNESS/CANCER, SUBSTANCE ABUSE MENTIONS, ABLEISM, & MENTIONS OF SELF-HARM/SUICIDE.

kai was born a gold soul into a pretty posh, old-money typea family in manchester, uk. like i’m talking on his mothers side they’re all doctors, lawyers, scholars, etc, etc, and on his dad’s side entrepeneurs. his parents themselves built a fairly large business from the ground up together that now goes by the name of lancaster industries. their current biggest venture and pretty much what they’ve built the whole of their fortune on is a chain of luxury hotels that you can find basically in every major city in the world.

he had 3 younger sisters who he essentially raised considering his parents were too busy to be around during their childhood. only two of them are still living, his youngest sister having passed a couple years ago at the age of 7 from leukemia.

his mother is literally the devil? kai always hated school/struggled in it for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which were his not diagnosed adhd and his dyslexia, which he never got the help he probably needed for. he’s always kinda just thought he was extremely stupid, and that idea was reinforced by the way his mother always used to tell him the very same thing. “think harder, kai. use your brain.” is a phrase that’s essentially been reinforced so many times in his head, he p much hears her voice ringing in his ears every time he gets so much as vaguely confused now.

that being said, despite how he struggled in school, he was always a very vibrant, kind, charismatic, and magnetic young person. he tends to draw people into him with his silly nature and upbeat attitude, and he’s kind of the Eternal Optimist, so he was fairly popular when he was attending. to say he has eccentricities would be putting it lightly, and he’s loud, never seeming to run out of things to say or fail to command the interest of the room.

anyway things with his mum only got worse in his relationship with her when he barely managed to complete his a levels by the skin of his teeth (and with an absurd amount of tutoring), and then refused to go to the university of her choosing. she p much wanted him to “get his shit together” so he could take over the family business someday, but i am not kidding when i say kai would wilt away and probably legit just die if he had to work in a place like that forever – and that’s assuming he even got through business school in the first place.

his father was always a push-over and sort of was absent/bent to her will when he was around, so he didn’t bother to defend kai when his mother decided 2 cut him off from everything and essentially ex-communicate him once she realised he was refusing 2 be manipulated and forced into shit anymore.

that was at age 18, and by that point he had plans to move out and travel to london with his best mate anyway, so he was basically like “peace out” and got the hell out of dodge. he still harbours a lot of guilt for abandoning his younger sisters, particularly so considering his youngest one fell ill so soon after his departure.

he lives, breathes, and sleeps piano. music as a whole is something he’s passionate about, having taken the time to develop his somewhat unorthodox voice, but the way his fingers fly over the ivories is a living art form more than it is anything. it’s how he communicates, how he speaks his deepest truth and just like? put those feelings out there into the world that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to articulate in the common vernacular.

so what he wants to do with his life is to just? talk to people? through his music? to play for them and the be in front of a crowd every night and to feel the energy of them, to command them with his presence and to exist with them in that way. he almost gets high off of it? he’s been playing small shows since age nineteen with his band, but since he moved to america he obvi hasn’t had them and has been on his own.

SORRY I’M REALLY TRYING TO CONDENSE THIS so ok basically he was in love w this girl from the time they were 14. they lost their virginity 2 each other, they were on & off all through HS, & then through to age 20 after he moved away and all that. she was v v ill and struggled with mental illness and kai tried his best 2 take care of her, but he was always in over his head despite his dedication to like making her feel OKAY. she needed help that he could not give 2 her, and they ended up breaking up & him letting her go at the end. she died soon after that, and it remains unclear 2 him whether or not it was a suicide. it was officially ruled as an “accident”, but he knows different and yeah i mean. essentially like.... the most “smudges” on his soul kinda came from his sitch w her bc he was always coming and leaving and dropping her and returning when she needed him and like. he TRIED but he just COULDN’T? anyways

after that he got involved with this boy who was a substance abuser, addicted to H to b exact, and for a while he thought that he was getting better and they were building off of each other, building a healthy life together. the fact he called kai his “new addiction” was probably never a good thing, but kai didn’t recognize that at the time. they got engaged eventually, and kai was 100% convinced that he was the actual love of his life after caro. of course, in the end, it wasn’t built to last, and when it went bad, it went really bad. kai eventually felt like there was a chasm several miles deep between them, and he had no hope of getting to the other side again. he broke it off, broke the guy’s heart, and made his soul even darker.

THIS NEXT ONE IS KINDA AN OPTION CONNECTION OKAY SO IF ANY1 IS INTERESTED PLS PLS LMK!!!

kai has been posting vids on YT of him covering songs on his YouTube for like actual years, and when he was around 20 he met this person via the comments section on one of them. they seemed to be quite the fan of his interpretation of some of the songs he chose to play. they ended up talking more and more as time went on, exchanging contact information, and grew very very very close.

that was the start of the LDR that is what brought him to america/to seattle in the first place. they were together for about eight months and had seen each other in person three times for a total of about 3 weeks before he made the decision to get started on his visa and move to the states. the moment he was able to, he crossed the pond and moved in w them!!

strain on their relationship was created when at first kai was unable to find work and contribute to the bills and the household funds. they lived in a tiny flat, and going from barely seeing each other to having each other all at once and all the time was a lot. on top of that, kai was homesick and restless and felt trapped because that’s what kai does and it’s not okay and it’s totally wrong and he cheated on them soooo there’s another tick against his soul ig. within six months of his arrival, they broke up, and kai moved out.

he couch surfed w some friends he’d met 4 a while, and eventually found a decent paying job as a nanny for a well off family.

he plays live shows at small venues in bars/clubs and still seeks to make a living as a musician but it’s hard out there and plus his soul aint exactly the prettiest to look at any more. i mean he doesn’t have a DARK DARK grey soul, it’s more a lighter grey, not quite silver, but definitely not storm clouds.

he’s still working on getting his full citizenship though he’s v v v close 2 it & has been lowkey getting help from his cousin w paying for the process so!!

THAT’S BASICALLY IT

last but not least IM REALLY FUCKING SORRY  ICOULDN’T MAKE THIS SHORTER I JUST HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS AND fEELIGNSA

SEND ME AN IM OR LIKE IF YOU WANT TO PLOT!

[thelocalrebel]

on emotional neglect and mental health struggles; with a malay-muslim twist

They say life is a series of coping mechanisms, and waiting for just that one mechanism that will finally kill you.

Freaky, right? But as someone who’s managed to ‘keep it together’ despite their internal monologue of screaming (or absolutely nothing, on those numb days) this is how I’d describe my state of existence. 

I don’t have a diagnosis. A lot stops me from getting one: firstly, a family and culture that deems mental illness as a lack of faith, or just “being weak”. Two, knowing that having one likely won’t solve the problem. Three - and the loudest no in my head - is the constant, chafing guilt that I’m not sick enough. That I don’t deserve to seek help because I get out of bed everyday, I get things done, and I have a huge smile on my face. In short, because I appear “normal” and “haven’t suffered enough”. Whatever that means.

Sure, I have days when the Feelings™ smack me with a hammer while yelling “Suffer Time!!”. Days where I forget to eat, where I just want to self-isolate and shut out the world with its never-ending expectations of me. Where it’s like I’m wading through a fog, all the while mindlessly doing things for the sake of doing it and to pass the time. Just to fill the void in my chest, and the incessant voice in my head that insists I’m a shitstain who deserves everything bad happening to me. What’s worse is I can’t pinpoint the trigger for this - it just is, and it’s everywhere. Like clingwrap, but somehow it’s around your throat and your face and someone’s pressing it down on you and you just. Can’t. Breathe. (If it’s bad enough, I shut down. I’ll be conscious, but I won’t be here).

So I bottle. I minimise my feelings and sublime all that toxic energy into other endeavours. Like getting high on sugar, caffeine, or anything that allows me to escape. If I’m lucky, I’ll feel numb again - which, ironically, maxes out the self-loathing. It hurts more as an asexual aromantic, because this just reinforces the stereotype of how I’m still broken for not having feelings. Which is why I prefer to constantly keep myself busy and get things done, because at least that shuts out my thoughts. Usually. And if nothing works, there’s always the perfect go-to fix: sleep.

It’s to sell the facade, see. Besides ensuring that I can still function, it’s to avoid the concerned questions because when it comes to Real Talk, I’ll probably start crying thanks to all repressed emotions all these years. That’s why humour - a mature defence mechanism, even - is an amazing cover. What’s the point of Suffering™ if you can’t laugh about it, right? (It’s to blunt the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness, actually). HAHA. People still get surprised when I tell them I have stage fright. They see the easy-going confidence and calmness - but not the tension in my muscles, my racing heartbeat, and the tunnel vision.

Yet, I still don’t think I deserve the “honour” of putting a name to my struggles, not when other people have it worse than me. That I’m just blowing things out of proportion again, that I’m being hyper-sensitive, that it’s just a phase, that I’m being irrational. But I cannot honestly remember a time when I wasn’t like this, and I don’t know if my inability to remember is because I’m repressing again or I genuinely don’t remember.

It doesn’t help to grow up in a family that - in typical Asian style - throws around you’re imagining things, I did [hurtful thing] because I love you like confetti when I tell them my feelings about their actions. Sure, they support my physical needs just fine, but on the flip side, rarely affirm whatever I do - and definitely voice out when I do fuck up. What’s the end message I got? That my feelings aren’t valid. That what I want or do isn’t worth it. Because if I don’t respond the way they want to, they’ll somehow redirect it to make it my fault. (This is emotional neglect and/or abuse, by the way).

For some reason, collectivism (i.e. “Asian-ness”) demands us to be emotionally unexpressive to not offend others or influence them with our emotions. Plus, in my experience, praise is frowned upon in Malay-Muslim culture in fears of inflating egos and cultivating self-pride because such behaviours are sinful. So what do we get? A community that frowns on affirmation. I don’t remember a time where I was ever praised by family. If I was, it usually was a backhanded compliment, making me wholly resistant to compliments I receive now because I just can’t accept it. I can’t believe that I’m what people describe me to be, because I grew up in an environment that always made me second-guess my worth and right to exist. Yes. What’s the thought that gets hammered in? I’m never enough.

I don’t even want to talk about how religion has influenced how my feelings are trivialised by well-meaning but ultimately harmful statements from family, where I eventually internalised such thoughts to self-minimise my own feelings. The concept of rezeki, or one’s fortune, makes them say things like at least he’s still providing for you when I point out his toxic behaviours towards us, and you should be thankful that you’re not like those people in [impoverished or disaster-stricken area] when I talk about how some aspect of modern life distresses me. “Contentment culture”, as I’d call it, doesn’t do shit for our mental health. Rather, it further reinforces how we don’t deserve to feel the way we do, because “we’re not suffering enough”. Yes, I don’t doubt how helps us stay aware of our blessings, but it shouldn’t be used like a bludgeon to shut down someone’s feelings. You know what’s missing here? Validating what we feel. (Surprise! It’s possible to do both!). It’s exhausting to constantly justify why I feel the way I do, and it’s no surprise when I stop bothering to share and because I came to believe that my suffering will never be bad enough because there’s always someone out there who deserves it more.

What’s the result? Someone who refuses to seek help because they’ve been socialised to be independent - no matter what. Someone who fears responsibility because the fear of fouling up expectations stops them from the start. Someone who has trouble regulating their emotions because they’ve been told and learnt that emotions are Not Welcome. Because to have needs, to “take up space”, is to be a burden. So when emotions do flare up...the bottle breaks. 

Like how a friend put succinctly, it’s tiring. It’s so tiring. It’s exhausting to get up and go about doing the 10001 responsibilities and performances to quell the feelings of self-loathing and self-blame once I don’t meet the unrealistically high standards I’ve imposed on myself - which, at the same time, I don’t hold others to. Because I don’t want to burden them. And of course, the resultant snowballing of consequences and the stress that arises from having to manage them.

But I keep it together. That’s what I do; what I need to be. (I’ve long lost the ability to discern whether this is another expectation hardcoded into my brain, or something I genuinely want). Along the way, when the going gets tough, I have my coping mechanisms - anything remotely mood-altering or escapist...but halal - to force myself into a better state of mind (it works, kinda) while conveniently shutting off my emotional self because it’s too much for me to handle without exploding.

And I sincerely hope that I’ll never find one that’ll kill me.

A/N: I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe it’s for catharsis, maybe it’s the hope that you’ll find comfort in relating to this - because you’re neither broken, nor alone for feeling this way. But I guess I mainly wanted to say: your feelings are valid. If it hurts you, it hurts you. And that should be enough a reason to seek help - professional or otherwise - like I did. Notice how the notion of “deserving help” isn’t in the picture, because that’s a judgement and not a feeling.

It’s not easy learning to love yourself again, but finding unconditional positive support and validation from adult figures or friends helps. So does learning to listen to yourself again, instead of shutting out the most basic part of yourself - your emotions. Most of all, allow yourself the time and space to stumble along the way. 

As an important person in my life told me: 

don’t be too hard on yourself when you think of “your issues”...the last I checked, broken crayons still colour beautifully.

I know it seems impossible, but one day, we will find the peace that we crave.

[the-desolated-quill]

God Johnson - Lucifer (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Remember when I used to write reviews about another TV series called Agent Carter? Its first season was pretty good. It had some good characters, decent writing and it handled its feminist themes reasonably well. Then along came Season 2. Its first episode was pretty bad, and then it was followed by another bad episode and then another and another and so on until about halfway through I realised that I couldn’t take much more. The writing had gotten so insultingly bad that it actually started to undo all the good the show did in its first season. By the time we got to the end, not only did I want to see Agent Carter get cancelled (which thankfully it did), but I also wanted to hunt down every copy of Season 2 and destroy them so that no poor innocent soul would ever have to be subjected to the same pain and anguish that I suffered through.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because I’m slowly starting to get to that point with Lucifer now. Season 2 started off brilliantly with some wonderfully written character driven stories, but then for some strange reason (round about episode 10) the writing seemed to take a downward turn with each episode getting progressively worse, and now it appears we’ve finally hit rock bottom with God Johnson.

So this week’s murder takes place in a mental hospital... and already we’ve hit our first major problem with the episode. The way the show treats and depicts mentally ill people is fucking disgusting! I’ve praised the show in the past for its satirical elements, but this isn’t satirical. It’s not even funny. It’s just offensive. For those of you who don’t know, I suffer from mental health problems so this is a bit of a touchy subject for me. I just sat there open mouthed during the imaginary poker scene. Just... wow. Somebody actually thought this was okay? What the flying fuck? Just to be clear, there’s nothing remotely funny or clever about this. This is just a cheap shot. Using mentally ill people as the butt of the joke. Something I would have thought a show like Lucifer would be above, but clearly I was mistaken. I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I was very fucking offended by this. Call me overly sensitive, but seeing Lucifer egg a bunch of mental patients on like dogs at a Crufts show in order to facilitate his own pathetic escape attempt isn’t what I’d call funny or charming.

And just in case you didn’t get the message that the Lucifer writers clearly don’t give a fuck about the mentally ill, Chloe goes on a date with a doctor who so clearly couldn’t care less about his patients’ right to privacy. While its nice to see Chloe date other people now (hopefully we can scrap Deckerstar permanently now), its a bit hard to stomach watching a doctor so gleefully breach the rules of patient/doctor confidentiality over a glass of fucking champagne. Now this would have been fine if this was part of some satirical point the writers were making about the treatment of mentally ill people, but nope. Clearly we’re supposed to find this guy charming. Well I say this guy can go and fuck himself.

So we’re not off to a great start, are we? What else do they fuck up?

Well the case of the week is kind of crap. Someone dressed in a Santa costume is killing mental patients and at the very end it turns out to be some nurse who wanted revenge against her abusive mum and who now harbours a grudge against all mentally ill people. So... why was she dressed as Santa?

Pretty lame.

What else? Maze was very annoying, and that pains me to say because she’s normally the highlight of a Lucifer episode. For some reason she’s become incredibly clingy with Chloe and... yeah, I don’t get. There’s no real reason for this and she’s never expressed this kind of behaviour before, not even with Lucifer. She just suddenly wants to spend time with Chloe 24/7. Obviously this is yet another load of bullshit the writers pulled out of their arses the day before they were due to start filming. Hopefully the revelation that Lucifer plans to abandon her and go back to Heaven with Mum and Amenadiel will make her character interesting again.

Now let’s see. We’ve talked about Maze, we’ve talked about the rubbish murder case and we talked about the offensive portrayal of the mentally ill. There was something else I wanted to talk about. What was it?

Um...

OH YEAH! GOD IS IN THIS EPISODE!

Well, I say God is in this episode. I think anyone with half a teaspoon of brains could have worked out this wasn’t the real God, even when he trots out the healing powers. And that’s the biggest problem with this storyline by a clear mile. It hinges on you actually believing this guy is God, but you just don’t. The main reason for this is Timothy Omundson. It’s such a stereotypical portrayal of God. All holiness and divinity and forgiveness so overblown that you just know this HAS to be fake. Not to mention it completely stands at odds with what we already know about the character. He’s arrogant and manipulative. He also seems to operate in a separate plain of existence and is treated as more of an abstract concept rather than a living being. Humans cannot understand or comprehend Him and angels only seem to have a vague notion of what His intentions are as He only seems to communicate through images and visions that must be interpreted. All they know is He has a plan. They have no idea what the plan is or if its even a good plan. They just know it exists and trust that God knows what He’s doing. With all of this in mind, do you honestly expect me to believe that this is God? Because if God had the ability to possess a human and voice His intentions so clearly, then why doesn’t He just do that all the time?

In the hands of a clever writer, God Johnson could have been used to explore our own perception of God and compare it to the reality that Lucifer and his angelic brethren live in, but nah! That’s far too interesting! The writers would rather make time for more important scenes, like... God and Mum dancing to pop ballads. Because this is what we want to see, right?

And another thing. I refuse to believe that Lucifer and Mum can be this fucking gullible. Because if we, the audience, can’t possibly be fooled by God Johnson, there is no way Lucifer or Mum could have been fooled by him. The writers must think we’re fucking stupid. Both Mum and Lucifer were sent to Hell for all eternity. It’s been stated numerous times how horrible it is (we even got to see it for ourselves). But God Johnson says sorry and suddenly everything’s cool? Yeah sure he damned them to an eternity of torture and damnation, but it’s okay because he’s sorry. Oh and that divine plan he’s been working on for billions of years? Yeah, turns out he’s more than happy to scrap it and make a new plan with Mum. Really Mum?! THAT didn’t raise a red flag?! You weren’t even just the tiniest bit suspicious? You had to check to see how well he kisses to make absolutely sure? Wow Mum, you’re a dumbass!

Plus it’s just the little things, you know? Like when Lucifer and God Johnson are being held hostage by the killer. At no point did Lucifer think to go ‘hang on a minute. You’re God, aren’t you? Can’t you zap yourself free or something?’

And in the end, how does this interaction with God Johnson affect Lucifer? Did we learn anything new about either of them?

All it does is just reinforce shit we already know. God is an arsehole and Lucifer hates Him. In other words this entire episode has been a gigantic waste of time.

So how did God Johnson come about in the first place? Well turns out he has a magic belt buckle (quick side note, if belts are forbidden due to suicide risk, how did God Johnson manage to smuggle it into the hospital?) that imbues him with all the knowledge of God and healing powers and is actually the missing piece of the Flaming Sword. Oh great! Because this season arc isn’t stupid or contrived enough. I scoffed when Amenadiel said that maybe they need to get a dragon to breathe fire on it because at this point I wouldn’t put it past the writers.

So let me get this straight. In The Weaponizer, Uriel went rogue, stole Azrael’s blade (another quick side note. Is Azrael ever going to show up? Is she curious as to where her fucking sword went?) and planned to kill Mum with it because that’s what he thinks God wants. He also clearly knew this was the Flaming Sword.., somehow, and it’s been established that he doesn’t like Lucifer. So, knowing full well that Azrael’s sword was one piece of the same weapon that Lucifer could use to defeat God, he effectively handed it to Lucifer on a silver platter and then told Lucifer about the second piece, thereby facilitating Lucifer’s scheme to destroy both God and Mum.

...

WHY WOULD URIEL DO THAT?! THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

And once again I’m left to question that if this is all somehow part of God’s bullshit plan and that He actually wants Mum back in Heaven, why is He doing it in such a convoluted way? He’s God, isn’t he? Surely there must be a better way of doing it than giving Lucifer an all powerful sword. Can’t He just beam Her up or something? HE’S GOD!!!

Once upon a time I described Lucifer as the best show on TV and I genuinely meant that. But if this is the quality of the writing we have to to look forward to in the future, I won’t be sticking around for Season 3. The writers can and have done much better than this garbage. God Johnson is the final straw for me. If these next two episodes are anything less than stellar, then that’s it. I’m done with this shitshow.

[trebaolsmovingcastle]

I read and reblogged a quote from this yesterday, and then spent the rest of the night pondering it.

The notion is simple...there’s so many competing facts that it breeds frustration and thus causes people to retreat into their passions and ignore facts.

It’s the old ‘Are eggs good or bad? Last week a report said they were good, this week they’re bad...so fuck eggs, and fuck facts.’

The end result is that if I have a shitty opinion, I can very easily go online and get that shitty opinion reinforced, rejecting any effort in looking at differing or alternate opinions. The inherent work needed to pursue truth is simply too much.

The outcome, we become more tribalist, where we retreat into our familiar groups and reject angrily outside information, driving conflict and leading to the complete downfall of civilization and ruin of mankind's work.

It’s a hip article, looks good, feels pretty good reading it. By the end you’re like...’damn, you’re right we are all gonna die because I can’t accept a Trump supporters point of view, and they can’t accept mine...fuckin...internet man.’

The problem became that the more I thought about it, the more it just seemed like he was angry at human history. When he describes tribalism he in essence is describing culture or social groups themselves. He tries to mean that you basically retreat into your ethnic group to the exclusion and hatred of all others and similar ideas, your ideology takes precedent over all facts and you reject the truth of the world.

I ask you all to take a moment and again ponder when this was never not the case in human history. I vote democrat, because the democrats are the group closest to my ideology, within that I vote for candidates who will advance my ideological viewpoint. My friends and the place I live often are made up of similar individuals. If I was alive in Georgia in 1840 I’d probably have a pretty narrow view of ethnic issues because, my world view was being informed by my passions and the environment I was in. Barring some random event or intervention by a family member or person close to me I would not doubt think chattel slavery was the best possible future for me, and pursuit of land and slaves my lifes goal.

He uses the notion that when he goes online he believes Trump’s cabinet is floundering based on news sites and people he speaks to, but when he hits up breitbart the narrative changes and the polls change too, reflecting an entirely different reality, and because of this society is being sundered. As if this were something new, some new concept that had not previously been the driving force behind politics and civilization up to this point. Returning to the South in 1840, I am confident that if I was able to read and could grab a gazette I would be apt to find vitriolic words of wisdom about the aggression and ignorance of my neighbors to the North. I would in fact be hard pressed to find a publication or person who would not reinforce that the North was all child labor and cruel factory work, while my ma and pa’s land passed down for generations was the honest to goodness paradise described within the bible.

If...if...we were suddenly becoming a new tribalized society, and this wasn’t just a continuation of our behavior and disposition, wouldn’t the left...the group I and many many people are a part of, and which is growing in size, wouldn’t this group in essence not exist. His image of tribalism is special interest groups as pillars of reality. You don’t belong to the left, you belong to white, hetero, men, 25-30, brown hair, with strong feelings about Reservoir Dogs...you see out only news that supports your very narrow world view, you only talk to other Dogheads as they’re called, you only drink Shasta, because there was a reddit joke about it and now everyone in your little internet mental tribe is obsessed with Shasta.

He basically pictures the Homestuck fandom as the grim future of society, ruined by the internet.

The reality of course is more complex than that. We have been ruled by our passions for all of history, just because it was hard to send a letter to Fat King George in parliament, doesn’t mean that we brilliantly filled all that time in between learning all the careful nuance of what reality was and how economics and the philosophy of the day crafted our worldview. No, we died of smallpox and kept slaves under the auspices of Christian charity.

He in essence is now forced to look at the bare ignorance of some people, and tear out his hair over how they got this way...when in the past, before the internet, and before the modern news cycle, he could comfortably go years with a bias and never have to think about it, be confronted by it, or even worry about changing it because it never existed to him in the first place. Just deep down he had a vague dislike of people from towns where the gas station is the tallest building. The internet age now allows him to intimately know the residents of bucolic Haberdash, Arkansas as he is forced to read their comments on the news article he was reading...causing him to frustratedly think of what rubes they are...and by extension drive him more into the arms of people he does not see as rubes.

This would all of course be terrible if, as he points out early on, there is no truth, or that truth simply doesn’t exist in the modern era. However I would argue that truth does indeed continue to exist, we continue not just to have a multitude of truths and realities, we have our competing viewpoints. What our issue is...is that the language and attitudes of our government and media bodies, is lumbering behind the times. We are unsure and mistrustful of government, because the language of government for as long as I have known it, has been disingenuous, it is recognized as double speak, there are no positions held because you try to look like you hold every possible position at once to avoid the scandal of having an opinion.

In this day and age it means that when the public, whichever side of the aisle you’re on, wants reassurance that something is being done, or that they’re hearing the truth, you get instead a rambling response that sounds as if its been read by a robot, who has laced it with nice sounding things...but when you think back on whether you got anything from it you’re left empty handed.

Meaning a blowhard, who declares everything he says true, does not speak that way, and generally acts completely off the cuff, is regarded as a ‘breath of fresh air’ in the stale tomb of the Capitol. Manson’s fear is in reality a fear of the intensity of the vastness of human behavior and experience. If you’d provided all the facts about the ills of slavery to that speculative southerner from earlier, who lived in 1840, would you perform any better than telling a Trump voter today that a Muslim ban would not protect america? No. So what’s the difference? Well now you gotta look at the people you disagree with, you’re already in your niche, you were there before you noticed you were, and changing your viewpoint hasn’t changed none, it’s just now you can’t wrap your head around how dumb some people seem and why they can’t seem to listen to reason. 

What will have to happen, what will happen, is likely a push towards candor. You’ll see politicians either lie outright if they worry about performative action, or you’ll end up with more ‘personalities’ in government, people who have convictions, right or wrong, and will speak them without being afraid of the political fallout, they’ll simply say what they think. The trick is whether the establishment will advance quality personalities, or flounder under a desire to remain true to the establishment and tradition.

But this freaked out ‘we’re fucked’ is just a guy waking up and realizing he lives in a stupid world, but not realizing that it’s always been this stupid, it’s just faster now.