Fic Title if I had one:
A little piece of me in every body
a one shot
The door opened gently on one of the days he’d preferred silence. Normally, the silence unnerves him, irritates him even, but he feels far too tired to entertain himself with meaningless tunes and jokes.
“Airplane?”
He hums, not looking up from his paperwork, there’s only one person who ever calls him that, and Shen Qingqiu was the one person he didn’t mind listening to on those types of days. He thinks it’s because it’s comforting to be around someone he hadn’t made up in his head. It makes him feel real.
He felt irritated by his king a few times he’d portaled into his office. Eventually, Shang Qinghua had started to make up a mood chart—thing, to which Mobei—Jun had taken note of and respected his boundaries.
Even his martial siblings had noticed which sort of surprised him, he had assumed that they didn’t really care.
He hears some shuffling from wood clinking along wood and soon, the sound of paper flipping every few minutes.
“I’ve noticed something from Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu murmured after a while of quiet.
Shang Qinghua continues reading.
“He’s… well, sensitive sometimes. And clingy and hyperactive.”
“Mn… well, the clingy part might be my fault,” He giggled slightly, “I did advise him to be sticky in order to face your love.”
A deep sigh makes itself known, he knows the man is doing it for dramatic purposes. So he snickers before retuning his focus.
. . .
“Did you project yourself onto him?”
“Don’t all authors do?” He replies genuinely. It earns him an agreeing snort.
“Most authors do,” Shen Qingqiu amended quietly, “but this entire world… feels more like a projection of you more than any other novel.”
Shang Qinghua stops in his tracks, lifting his brush away from the paper, making sure the ink doesn’t ruin the paper, still, he doesn’t say anything.
He hid his eyes under his bangs.
“In most novels, there’s a person of every archetype with each person having a wildly different backstory.”
“My novel has that.” Shang Qinghua muttered.
“I’m getting to that.” He retorted.
“Okay??”
“It’s just that… the backstories of your characters feels like it’s overlapping.”
“Are you critiquing my bad writing again?? I’m not in the mood..”He frowned.
Shen Qingqiu shot him a dry look, “That’s not what I meant. I just meant that there’s a lot story beats that just… looks like a pattern. Parts of the story are so incredibly specific that it makes me think that… this was a part of you that you believed in. Even if 50% of the book was based on popular tropes that is.”
“Okay. And?” He asked, unimpressed, his mood declining the more he spoke. Goodness he thought he could’ve had a break today. He guessed not.
Shen Qinghua looks up at the sound of the other standing up, a weird look present on his face.
“Most of your characters, the main ones at least, have a fear of being abandoned.” He comes closer to Shang Qinghua’s table. “Do you fear that too, Airplane shooting towards the sky?”
“I think that you’re trying to rile me up on purpose,” he growled lowly, trying not to show that he had been affected by what the other man had said. He didn’t really notice. It was kind of unintentional, but now that he’d given him a bit of evidence, he couldn’t stop his mind from whirling with thoughts.
“Yue Qingyuan,” Shen Qingqiu started after a long time of having a staring contest, “was terrified of losing Shen Jiu, to the point thatwhen the man had hated him, despised him and scorned him, he never defended himself because he thought he deserved it. And even if Shen Jiu had no love left for him, Yue Qingyuan was fine with it as long as Shen Jiu stayed.”
“Mm.”
“And as an opposite, Shen Jiu was so incredibly terrified of being abandoned again, he decides to make sure no one could get close to him so that he wouldn’t be abandoned. So that he wouldn’t feel that sinking disappointment and pain when a promise made by a loved one has been broken.”
He wishes he could say that it hadn’t sounded familiar. The longer Shen Qingqiu talked, the more he sank in his chair trying not to tear up.
He wanted to ask why. Why he was torturing Shang Qinghua with this information. He tried not to think of his parents. Of his highschool group mates.
“Mobei—jun with parents who neglected him, someone who would let you hit him so that you wouldn’t ever leave his side ever again. You said that he was so desperate—“
“Okay!? So what??” He finally snapped, getting tired of these questions, and on such a bad day too, he thought the two of their were close friends dammit.
“Airplane.” Shen Qingqiu hissed, “tell me the truth here.”
“What!?” He demanded.
“How much of this was intentional and how much was a reflection of your own life?”
“Why? So you can make fun of me!? Critique my oh so tragic backstory? Tell me, ‘wow he’s such a whiny ass bitch for—“
Shen Qingqiu squeezed his hand out of nowhere, startling him so hard that his mind went blank. “Because you’ve done a lot to help me, so I want to help you.”
“S—So it’s a debt now!?” He scowled, his defenses building itself up very quickly, (channeling his inner shenjiu amirite) trying to push Shen Qingqiu’s hand away, but to no avail, the man was firm in his hold.
“Because you’re one of my best friends and I love you like one of my family, idiot.”
Shang Qinghua sniffled “Evil, you are.”
“Mhm.” The bastard hummed disinterestedly.
Note: sqq’s been trying to approach him for weeks, that’s probably why SQH’s in a bad mood, cuz why is sqq trying to therapise him or something, it should be his job, listening to other people and then doing the work
“I guess— I guess we can start with Zhangmen—shixiong’s part.” He whispered hours later when they’re both on the couch, Shang Qinghua’s head laying on Shen Qingqiu’s lap.
Shen Qing—no, Shen Yuan nodded.
“Obviously I don’t have a super depressing backstory like he does,” He started with a dry laugh, his gaze heavy and sad.
“I’m just... a people pleaser like Zhangmen—shixiong. Unable to say no, especially when it comes to paperwork. I guess it started when my parents started fighting when I was younger. Elementary school, I think? It was subtle. Maybe. I—I don’t remember.”
“My mom was the more emotional one. Had a short temper for all of my childhood. And… my dad was calmer, but just as temperamental.”
He thinks about when he was writing an outline about Yue Qingyuan’s and Shen Jiu’s verbal fights with each other, Yue Qi’s guilt for not being able to do enough even though he had tried. Even though it wasn’t his fault that he’d been isolated for so long without proper encouragement.
Maybe this is where Airplane had split parts of him.
He remembers the time after writing the draft, writing out all of his pent up emotions into his characters, he remembers feeling exhausted. At the time, he had thought it was solely because of the word count. But maybe it’d been because he’d been losing his heart all along.
“Mama was passive aggressive and Baba couldn’t care less. When I turned 13, no one was happy. So I tried to be what they wanted to be, I guess.”
He remembers a few chapters where Lou Binghe had met the parents of some of his wives and how they’d hated his personality. How he’d switched up a more than a few times to make them happy, and for what? In the end, most of his wives had been unhappy anyway. Enraged at her parents that he had to fake his personality to gain their approval. Sometimes it ended badly, sometimes it ended good.
Decades after writing those plots, he thinks now that maybe it’s not just a trope anymore. He thinks he can place himself into the spot of the wife. Trying to please the unpleasable.
“Sometimes it worked and they were happy with me. Mama would buy me desserts I liked, lecture me fondly and gives me a big hug. Baba would actually come hang out with me for once, promise he’ll come back after the divorce and then leave.”
Shen Jiu’s tendency to hide behind a wall of barbed wire. The man was like a rose bush with the spikiest thorns. And Yue Qi was a gardener with no gloves. He’d been waiting for years. Desperately hoping that he hadn’t been abandoned.
“When I turned 20, I saw some picture on the internet. Baba had a new family and he didn’t even come to tell me.” Shang Qinghua finally let out a sob, the first time ever admitting it to anyone.
“It—it’s not like I had a bad life, but—but it sucked being the child stuck in between, so I just gave up.”
Shen Qingqiu lifted Shang Qinghua by the shoulders and wrapped him in a warm embrace.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Mm.” Shang Qinghua sniffled.
—
“For parts of Mobei—Jun’s story I guess I just knew a guy who lashed out a lot. I mean, I was never the type to physically mean, so.” He shrugged, “i don’t know what state I was when I was writing him.”
“My friend didn’t have good parents, had a shitty uncle, I felt bad for using his story. But… he was so quiet, he never told anyone what he was feeling and in the end, I was feeling rage for him. When I said he was created as my ideal romantic partner. I guess it was because I never really knew a healthy relationship up close to write about? That’s why a lot of the wives seemed flat, I guess. Haha, you— you were right about the projection.
“What happened to your friend?”
Shang Qinghua shrugged.
“Became an overseas student I think? I remember seeing his face on the news once so he probably got all popular and got forgot about me. Think he was studying law or accounting.”
—
“I based Liu Qingge and his sister over that friend too actually.”
Shen Qingqiu blinks in surprise when Shang Qinghua has appeared during his lunch break.
“Remember?”
“Ah, yeah, how so?”
—
“Though he hated their parents, him and his sister was super close, kept in close contact always. He was a good big brother. He told me stories about her a few times.”
“So the Xiao Liu…based off of your friends sister?”
“Vaguely.”
—
“How bout you?” Shang qinghua tilted his head.
Shen Qingqiu smiled sadly, “I had two sisters and an older brother.”
“I’m sorry. It must be lonely.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t trigger the choking hazard.”
Both of them laugh at the dark humour.
—
Funnily enough I don’t have any head canons about SY’s family. I guess I like thinking that his eldest bro has a little bit Shen Jiu’s snarky ness and mood temperaments. So he’s a little defensive and a little protective.
And the Youngest sister also loved stories just like him
Youngest sister wanted to be just like Shen yuan, all smart, sassy, and kind
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Hello, I am going to discuss my thoughts on content/trigger warnings as someone living with OCD. I am absolutely open to good faith engagement and discussion on this topic.
Having some thoughts on the idea that adding trigger warnings somehow ultimately harms the person with the trigger. They absolutely can create an easy tool to obsessively control your access to the topics/to avoid them, but I’ve always felt it should be the potentially triggered person’s decision on what they were ready to do about it. Uncontrolled exposure is just as capable of causing obsession as is avoidance, in my opinion.
I think of the (terrible telephone retelling of a) case I heard about while discovering recounts of actual lived experiences with OCD.
—The following example discusses intrusive thoughts about domestic violence.—
A woman had an obsession with being was afraid of hitting her boyfriend. Her compulsion was that she would have to hold her arms stiffly by her side. She recognized this as OCD and sought exposure response prevention. Her therapist told her to try and ignore the compulsion, or potentially do the opposite. The woman became so obsessed with healing she forced herself to keep her hands away from her sides (almost obsessively) and constantly checked whether or not she “still wanted to hit him.” In the end, the ERP just became entangled with her obsessions.
It takes so much strength to face these types of problems and practice the mindfulness and grace with yourself to recognize it. It’s something you really need to be ready for because it’s going to take a lot of effort to do the hard thing when the easy thing is right there.
How can we claim it’s best to “force” exposure on someone else? How can we go around vigilante therapising people we have deemed too ill to do it on their own (or just be left alone)?
This is not to say that anyone is bad if they can’t or don’t want to tag things. More just my thoughts about how pushback against that idea can swing too hard into trying to prove not tagging was morality correct.
Some articles that articulate so much of my experience with OCD:
Having No Cure for OCD Is the Cure
Help! I Have OCD About What’s OCD
In the spirit of bodily autonomy, I think we all deserve agency in our lives no matter how “incompetent” other people may think we are. When you’re ready, you’re ready. There’s no healing to be had sitting around thinking you’re broken or lazy or whatever for not being ready to change. We all owe each other the kindness to do what we can in good faith, too.
I started doing too much table setting in the tags, so I’ll put it under a read more, lol.
I recognize that this isn’t very radically (in the abolition vs reform sense) anti-psychiatry, and I do have a complicated relationship with that idea. I recognize that I have a good deal of privilege (particularly among people with more stigmatized/less understood “disorders”) but this framework is the only one I’ve ever been able to access that gives me any insight into myself at all. That isn’t something everyone can afford to do in several senses.
As a physically disabled person, I just connect my experiences with chronic illness and mental illness (which I think can fall under the umbrella of chronic on its own) more and more these days. What truly was the difference between not being able to do something out of pain versus anxiety? Our brains are organs, too. Our thoughts are chemical and hormonal, too.
One of the fondest memories I have of coming to terms with disability was explaining my experience with an autoimmune condition to a bipolar friend, and he replied that we were “chronic illness buddies.” And I felt so understood as someone who has suffered with various types of anxieties for their entire waking life.
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i've got @charismabee and i's reverse kindergarten au on the brain again so i'm gonna ramble about it <3
essentially, everyone's personality is the opposite of what it is in canon. for example, reverse-cindy is an absolute sweetheart with no interest in relationships; this carla is a goodie two shoes; applegate loves her job, etc. they're all trapped in a time loop, which everyone is aware of but the new kid.
this results in a lot of wacky hijinks as each of the k1 and later k2 students in turn go to kid for help with something. the time loop still ultimately ends whenever the principals' experiments are stopped, but a lot of elements are changed. take the first principal, for example, who still conducts illegal experiments but does it in the name of the "greater good". his son hates him, so he tries to bond with him through drugs (it doesn't work). monty wants to go unseen, so the principal secretly makes something to make him less noticeable, but it goes a little too far and now everyone keeps forgetting monty exists. nugget is being used as a test subject for the antidote. the mp kidnaps billy as an assistant to help with his experiments to avoid the truth getting out.
we planned out every one of the 150+ possible character dynamics in a separate doc. here, have some of the most chaotic lines from them-
Why is his arm broken? Danner blames science.
Billy doesn't care for the blond twins. He has more than enough twin in his life already.
Like it or not, Kid's a danger to the people around him even if Buggs is aware he's just being used, like a knife. And everyone knows bringing a knife to school is the worst idea ever.
Nugget has told Bob that Billy and Lily in particular are just The Worst, so Bob really doesn't like him, scoffing at the fact that Billy couldn't escape a basic kidnapping orchestrated by a mellow, middle-aged man.
Kid is so good at helping, he's gonna murder Felix so well. He loves being told what to do so much [:
Ozzy's like Cindy but dirtier. Lily is about ready to knock him out, only she's unwilling to touch him.
Ozzy doesn't like Bob. He's mean and rude and hits people with cleaning supplies and one time an axe.
Ridiculous! Cindy couldn't even be bullied right.
Monty is uncomfortable with all this love and validation.
the wip is 35000 words long, we have successfully traumatised and therapised everyone in succession, and things are going great :]
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hi i wasnt following u when ted lasso s3 came out so im curious to know what your general thoughts on the season were, i thought there were some rly good moments but i dont think im ever gonna forgive them for half-assing and giving up on ted's depression storyline amongst Many other things
OH MAN, unfortunately my opinion overall is pretty negative. Which, don't get me wrong, can be very good for fandom because the "fix it" impulse to fix what went wrong always gets my fic brain going, but... it really felt half-assed in so many ways, which is a double let-down considering that the whole time it was airing, the production wouldn't commit to actually saying it was the last season, wasn't marketed as such, and it generally felt like the whole show fizzled out vs. having what should have been a well-deserved send-off.
My main gripe is that it felt like... the writers had Points they wanted to hit and didn't care what they wrote as long as they got there. Genuinely all of the characters were paid dust in different ways (nobody more than Roy IMO who got flanderized beyond belief). The pacing was very uneven, so much crammed into the series but at the same time very little that had actual emotional resonance happened; it feels like a sharp downhill from how well-crafted the earlier seasons were, especially season 1. Someone should have really told JSuds "No" at least once or twice or two hundred times.
Strangely enough, the actual final episode was really alright for me, because it was self-referential and #meta as hell but never pretended to serve an actual narrative purpose beyond being a bookend; I much prefer that to the whole middle-of-the-season arc where the show tried to juggle so many plotlines and fumbled everything. I also don't especially care about things I've seen other people get worked up about (Ted's arc / his ending, Dr Jacob, Jamie's dad etc) just because I never expected much from that front to begin with & I don't really want media to teach me stuff — like, I get why someone may be bummed by "bad mental health storyline rep!" but to me it's just another example of bad storytelling to go with all the others. I totally get having a visceral reaction to it, though! But I don't really think any screenwriter sits at a table saying "I'm going to make a show about mental health that handles it correctly." They sit at the table and think about how to fictionalise a story of a guy going through it, using his mental health as a hook, among others. I care way less about characters being therapised and stable and healthy than I do about a story being good, you know? The issue with TDS3 is that it was simply boring. To me.
I will say, I actually liked the season a lot more while it was airing that now that it's over; week-by-week I kept having hope they'd course correct things, I had fun speculating, and I decided what to pick and choose to enjoy from the new episodes. I think S3 is WAY better when consumed in a weekly format than looked at as a whole. Some of my favourite fandom moments were writing fic about an episode that just aired while waiting for the next
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On Gods, The Numinous & The Nature Of Their Existence: My Opnion After A Decade.
In December of 2014 I wrote a little something here titled "The Gods And The Nature Of Their Existence". but it was all over the place and now that I'm older and therapised I can articulate this a lot better. Firstly, i want to say that i think The nature of spirits, gods etc, is mostly if not completely irrelevant, what matters is that they are effectual in your life and in your magic. However it is fun to share personal Theology and cosmology with open and similar minded people in a safe space.
Since receiving my Diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I have thought a lot about this. I have been in therapy a while now, I can see the similarities between integration and spirit working. My alters have needs, and desires, and I have to be sure to tend to them regularly, and the gods and spirits I have relationships with require similar things: foods, beverages, experiences, and my time for veneration and devotion. I have read the words and works of people much more intelligent than myself and I have come to have the following opinion. The closest entry point into the Otherworld is within us, we traverse the inner worlds through trance and deep meditation, it is even within a deeply relaxed state that we receive psychic information and work magic. The Psyche and the otherworld are the same place to me. And the Mind is a place. What I have come to believe about the Otherworldly is that gods and spirits reside in the collective unconscious, Carl Jung himself stated in The Red Book that the Archetypes had consciousness outside of his own.
These Independent Consciousnesses started as formless awareness without identity. We came along and by using cultural stories, beliefs, symbols, and Archetypes etc gave these Consciousnesses form, Identity and potency. Now I would like to back track a bit and say that in my first paragraph I'm not trying to insinuate that experiencing gods and spirits is the same as mental illness, what I'm saying is that they reside in the same place. Also i am not saying that the Gods, Sprits, Geniuses, Numen are figments of imagination. They are real, with their own wants and desires and real world influence.
Most often the Otherworldly is experienced through the psyche, feelings, mental images, dreams, premontons,etc. But incredible supernatural or religious phenomena are rarer. Not that we don't have paranormal experiences, or that we don't have more than the average lay person but even then most experiences are benign or almost unnoticeable. That's because the Otherworldly are subtle powers, not weak but subtle. So blatant displays are not the norm for them. This is why synchronicities seem to occur sometimes as a symptom of liminality and sometimes as a means of communication; it is subtle enough to be doable but pronounced enough to not be missed by those who understand the mysteries.
*** special Thank you to @carbon-heart for liking my old post reminding me and inspiring this update***
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