#that’s not even my lack of empathy talking

[american-horror-whore]

tw

my ex-abuser’s new girlfriend (the girl he cheated on me with) is posting continuous photos of them together and i’m genuinely pissed off because this girl clearly doesn’t care he’s an abuser.

[cyrusthedragon]

I swear to god if I ever see another post about how Homelander "isn't growing" and "isn't a good parent" and we're all "being happy for nothing" and "simping over him just because he's just cute" I'm going to eat someone

If there's ONE thing in the world that he, okay, doesn't deserve, but which he NEEDS, as a person, as a living, breathing being - that thing is love. Once. One second of pure love. Let him be LOVED for one miserable second.

And then do whatever you want. Just let him taste it. He can't be human, not because of his DNA. But cause he was never loved. He cannot be human until he's loved.

[deargravity]

my mom will say the gayest shit ever and expect me to walk it off and go back to my life just like that? i remember one conversation we were having about actresses we find attractive and then she sighed loudly and said, “i wish there was a way women could get each other pregnant so we could do away with men entirely, i swear they’re only around for the continuity of the species or whatever. they’re not even attractive or fun to be around, even your dad is so ugly i only married him because he didn’t ask for dowry” and my head still spins whenever i randomly think about this moment. like does she know. does she know?

[doomer-soyjack]

Thought about talking to others about shared interests and immediately got bored and fed up.

[paperlovesadness]

Me seeing all the comments under Glasto-themed posts blaming Alex for being sick and calling off Dublin

I'm barely able to fold that knife though.... And I'm not trusting myself that it'll stay folded.

[jewishbuckley]

"was there a reason you didn't cancel this" honestly I thought I had so no there wasn't a reason but also if clients are going to have Your personal number and reach out to You about canceling (when they Should be reaching out via email per our cancelation policy) then You should be canceling the appt anyway imo. all the other trainers cancel their appointments AND add their appointments to the system 🤪

[dandelionjack]

revolutionary optimism ... wish i had an ounce of it. wish any of it rang true

[gmos]

kind of really sick of being the disabled example people point to when the y dont wanna examine their rude behavior. kind of so fucking tired of it.

[seilon]

kinda wild how you can have almost every aspect of your life deeply intertwined with someone else for years and then have all of that thrown in your face when that person decides none of it meant anything and, in fact, was toxic and purge-worthy

[alchemiclee]

do you ever feel like some people dont understand the difference between pity and sympathy/empathy? (people don't even know the difference between those two, to be fair) giving someone sympathy or having empathy for them is not the same as pitying them. someone trying to reach out and seeking or expecting sympathy from you or wanting empathy isn't wanting you to pity them!!!!!! dont mix the two up 😭

[aly-s0ares]

in fact, i don’t owe an explanation, but i find it extremely difficult to touch people or to flirt with people if i don’t have any pre existing feelings for them prior. trust is big for me and love bombing doesn’t work like it use to anymore.

i’m very anxious, and i never know if i’m safe with someone so i don’t feel comfortable doing anything until i know that i wont be hurt by them. i’ve been through a lot and sometimes that type of attention can trigger that and it sucks and i know nobody likes it. i don’t even like it but it’s what it is now. i need to trust someone. i can’t force myself into a situation that makes me feel uncomfortable just because it’s annoying to someone else who just doesn’t understand it.

[catmask]

tbh when i hear some people talk about 'breaking cycles of abuse', it becomes clear pretty quickly who has come to understand that phrase to mean 'since i was a victim of abuse/neglect by my parents/caretaker/s i will do everything to be nothing like them' and that is all. its not a completely flawed way of thinking either - something that hurt you would very likely hurt someone else; through empathy we learn to understand not to hurt others the way we were hurt too.

but what 'breaking cycles' looks like is more complicated than just not being your parents/caretakers - it's about recognizing how the things that happened to you changed you and how you can heal so you don't hurt someone else in turn. the survival skills you learned in an unhealthy enviroment often translate to poor if not unhealthy interpersonal skills in an enviroment where things ARE safe.

its a difficult pill to swallow for a lot of survivors of abuse (trust me, i know) because we have a tendency to simply want our pain to be recognized. by painting yourself as "absolutely nothing like my abuser" you can abstain from recognizing your own harmful tendencies and live comfortably in the role of victim hood for the rest of your life. it can be tempting to do this especially when so many people will do their best to deny what you experienced - almost like leaning into a stuck door that just won't budge.

the problem with this is if you never recognize that being mistreated made it so you LACK a lot of what other people learned from a loving enviroment, you can hurt people pretty badly even when doing your best just not to replicate what your parents/caretakers got wrong.

this also hurts for victims because, when it comes down to it - it's not FAIR. you were hurt for no reason, and most of us will never hear an apology or even admittance from the person who did it - so why do YOU have to change? why do YOU, the person hurt unjustly, have to put in the work?

and i mean. that's what breaking a cycle is. it means pushing against what's fair and comfortable deliberately so that you can stop something that's been repeating. it's work. its not just recognition of pain, it's the purposeful healing and treatment of it. but thats scary, and it's not fun, so a lot of people fall right back into it. its a lot easier said than done.

[sen-ya]

@beneathtreemomo HEY EXCUSE ME YOU’RE MAKING ME CRY IN THE TAGS??? Oh no you’re gonna make me draw more of this 🥲🥲

Tfw u gotta chase ur bf thru the woods so he doesn’t blow ur cover [op comic masterpost]

[ms-spkhd]

It's not like there's anything inherently wrong with Steve. Just...weird. Odd. A wealth of other various synonyms to describe his decidedly bizarre behavior.

Well, Bizarre's a strong word.

But Eddie's point still stands! Steve's a little to the left and it makes Eddie feel endlessly awkward for noticing. The fact that he's uncomfortable about it compounds his unease over it.

"Wanna talk about it, then?" Jeff asks, riffling idly through the record crate. Of course, the one day off they spend window-shopping in Indianapolis results in Eddie getting the fucking 'let's discuss our feelings about things' talk from Jeff. He wonders how the man isn't green with sickness from therapizing all the goddamn time.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "I'd look like an idiot."

"Would the idiot keep running or confront his problems head-on?"

"This feels like a trap."

"Oh yeah," Jeff says simply.

"Like the ones with the cardboard box and the stick."

"Pre-cisely."

Eddie's shoulders slump in defeat. Better the idiot who speaks, he supposes. "He's very smiley about me being gay."

"Smiley."

"Smiley. As in he's acting like I vomit flowers and shit rainbows." Eddie shakes his head in frustration. "I'm not opposed to the support and everything...it's just that. He's like an octave higher than usual about it."

Jeff purses his lips in thought. "Like, his voice?"

"No--like...like, he's very enthusiastic about my sexuality."

Eddie leans back against the shelf behind him. Steve's a nice guy, really, but the way he goes about his support of Eddie feels like he's trying to compensate for something. A lack of empathy when he was younger, perhaps.

"He always asks if I have a boyfriend, or if I've been hooking up with any guys lately--which, hello, does he not know that queer metalhead nerd isn't a very hot item here?"

Jeff pulls a face but nods in understanding.

"And when I tell him obviously no, he says he can hook me up with his, what? Fucking father's brother's cousin's former roommate? It's like he's begging for a double date with him and his new squeeze, it's goddamn ridiculous." "New squeeze?"

"I'm hyperbolizing." Eddie blows a raspberry and shrugs. "He says it's sad that I don't have someone for how good-looking I am. You're making the face again."'

Jeff snaps out of whatever trance he's in, his drawn eyebrows shooting up to his hairline in surprise. After his gawking mouth clacks shut, he cautiously gestures at Eddie to continue.

"It's stupid," Eddie concedes, "but I really don't understand what changed, y'know? He used to be this cool, confident guy with a dorky side, but now he's just so...I don't know."

Jeff smiles lightly and knocks Eddie's shoulder with his. "I have a theory."

"Go on."

"I think Steve isn't being supportive."

"Uh-huh."

"Far from it, actually."

"Yeah. Whatever you say, chief."

"He isn't smothering you," Jeff points out. "He wants to fuck you."

Eddie blinks. Takes a moment to access and really take in what Jeff just said. "What?"

"Or at least, he wants you in an entirely non-friendly and possibly even carnal way."

"Excuse me?"

"Biblically."

"Dude," Eddie insists. "What. The. Fuck."

Jeff raises his hands placatingly. "Steve clearly likes you. A lot. He probably sees you being gay as an in for him."

"Okay, well, I don't understand. He tries to set me up with randos he knows all the time."

"He called you good-looking."

"While he was trying to set me up with said rando!"

"Guys like him have a really backward way of doing things." Eddie crosses his arms sternly. "Or he's straight," he says.

"Again," Jeff asserts. "Good. Looking. Dude, he's fucking obsessed with you! You said he's an octave higher around you now, right?"

"Because he's a well-meaning friend?"

"Eddie, remember when he crashed band practice last week?"

Oh yeah, Eddie remembers that. The man of the hour randomly parked in Gareth's driveway, leaned against his Beemer with his arms crossed, and watched Eddie play like he fucking hung the moon. Afterward, he'd sung his praises for the band and gave Eddie a yellow guitar pick attached to a sparkling silver chain. "Found the pick a couple of towns south with Robin the other day. Reminded me of you," he said softly. "Since you lost your last one."

It went unspoken where Eddie lost 'the last one'.

Eddie remembers smiling back at Steve with the force of a thousand supernovas, and thinking later in the night that it felt like a scene from a romance movie. Steve's favorite color is yellow, isn't it? It was like he wanted a piece of himself with Eddie at all times, right next to his heart.

Eddie didn't want to give himself that stupid hope. That Steve Harrington wanted in on his heart.

It doesn't feel so stupid anymore.

He looks back at Jeff and says, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

Part two

[tiktaalic]

let's all talk about supernatural. i'll start. in 2009 kim manners told misha collins it was gay to sit on a bed. due to the lack of distance. he was right. and misha collins did it anyway. what followed was 12 years of television subject to different directors writers and actors all with different opinions on the subject of whether or not dean and castiel were gay. because of this rotating list of minds and directions the messages you receive are varied. but crucially. there is groundwork laid in closeups. standing five feet apart in bobby's kitchen filmed as if they're face to face. across the room from each other in tmwwbk but cuts between close up to close up. now you could easily argue that camerawork that rejects this method is trying to convey a different message of less empathy. but. we are not working only with camera work that conveys distance. we're working with a foundation of intimate conversations filmed as intimate closeups . followed by intimate conversations filmed with yards and yards between them. for an amv i was trying to use the s8 talk where cas is sitting on the bed and dean walks over sits down and says talk to me and i eventually had to scrap it because they're never in the same frame. i was going frame by frame in that scene trying to get maybe three seconds where you can see both of them but you never can. in the scene where dean sits a foot away and asks. what's wrong. you can tell me. you can talk to me. and cas proceeds to bare his soul. which is one of two things: bad directing, or purposeful directing. bad directing requires us to operate under the assumption that people who work on supernatural are bad at their jobs (likely). purposeful directing requires us to operate under the assumption that people who work on supernatural are good at their jobs, and given an intimate conversation, looked for ways to dilute the emotion in it, and did so. this is also likely. when supernatural shows me castiel telling dean i love you, and does it with shoddy camerawork, they are practicing tell not show. they are turning to the camera and telling me. this means nothing. disregard this. dont you see how they're a good court length apart from each other. doesn't this distance make you feel like you should interpret this with a platonic lens. but what they are showing me. is castiel telling dean winchester. i love you. which comes across even through the janky disjointed shots. the diluted effect still has an outsized emotional impact. so my takeaway is not. well i guess this means nothing. it is. i see the tricks you are trying to use on me. and they dont work on me because i know how to interpret storytelling and i'm not young and shiny and stupid. my takeaway is . wow. dean and cas., are in love for real, and they put it on my screen, and i am going to plant dynamite in director richard speight's home

[notrebdomine]

The personality of Eric Harris

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Eric Harris was a shy kid who put on a confident front but his diaries revealed a different version when he wrote about hating himself and ragging on people who remind him of himself or look like him. Eric was angry, depressed, suicidal, and homicidal, no doubt about it. He even checked these off on a forum.

When around friends Eric was energetic, jumpy, and funny, showing off and making his peers laugh. He seemed to have sudden bursts of confidence and a persistent personality when it came to girls and dating. He asked Tanya Worlock out ten times.

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He had multiple crushes and asked out multiple girls despite being considered generally attractive, either wasn't the girl's types or he gave off a vibe they didn't appreciate. Eric often drove people away and turned them off because of how he acted in the halls of columbine. Often glaring, scowling, frowning, and making crude jokes and talking about wanting to hurt others. 

Despite all of this Eric was proven to be a loyal friend. He talked about missing his friends in Plattsburgh and wrote an essay about the importance of friendship to him. Eric was also described as being very sweet when he was younger, a good kid. He was fairly active and "normal" playing baseball and soccer. "Harris was just so charismatic, but he was definitely angry. There was just this rage in Harris. You either had to follow him or get away from him."

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THE FBI "DIAGNOSIS"

The FBI concluded that Harris was a psychopath, who exhibited narcissistic traits, unconstrained aggression, and a lack of empathy. Which from my point of view is a diagnosis extremely "disgusting" Although most of the clinicians spoken to at the time agreed that Eric Harris was a ruthless, cold blooded, psychopath because of his journals Eric also speaks in the tapes saying he "wishes he were a sociopath" so he didn't have to feel guilt or remorse but he does. In conclusion the only real and acceptable diagnosis Eric had for sure was depression and possible OCD.

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