#unlearning things is MUCH harder than learning them in the first place and a lot of people grew up in environments that taught them

[sandinmybed]

can i be fr for a minute?? sending abuse to people online for holding different views than you is not activism and in fact actively hurts your cause. most people are not extreme in their viewpoints, you can give them a new perspective if you're willing to spend some time explaining shit. if someone is saying something you disagree with and you rush in there to condescend to them and call them disgusting and subhuman and dont even TRY to explain calmly why their views are harmful, they're going to shut you out instantly and double down on their views.

most people are simply genuinely ignorant to the issues they're talking about - they just pick their views up from the news and the world around them and express opinions because that's what every person does. if you run in there and tell them they're scum for it, what then? if someone does that to you, are you going to think "maybe i should do some research" or are you going to think "this person is an asshole, im blocking them." a lot of you think you're activists and then refuse to do any kind of actual WORK to support your cause.

[ink-flavored]

10-15 for any of your ocs that have pets?? :0

will do! i will talk about Sofía from P&J, and her kitty Marbles

10. If they have multiple pets, do they get along? Are they even allowed to be in the same room together?

She's only ever had one pet, but if she did opt to get more than one cat, Marbles wouldn't be so much "aggressive" as "so so scared and shy and running away forever." It would take some time for him to get used to having a new creature in the house. And having to share Sofía's cuddles.

11. Is their pet considered a “normal” pet that lots of people have, or an “exotic” pet that’s uncommon to find?

Yeah, in America in a city it's really common to have a cat. She adopted him from a shelter among dozens of options.

12. Is their pet considered dirty, dangerous, or otherwise socially unacceptable to keep? How does this impact their decision to have one?

For Sofía specifically, her parents were pretty against having an animal in the house, even if having a cat is socially common. She begged for a kitten throughout her childhood until she was old enough to realize it just wasn't gonna happen. She adopted Marbles almost as soon as she moved out, but kept him secret for a while so it would be harder for her parents to try to convince her to take him back to the shelter.

13. Why did they want a pet in the first place?

She thinks they're cute!! She wanted to the joy of a little guy living in her house!

14. What did they expect when they got their pet(s)? Was it an accurate expectation?

Like a lot first-time cat owners going off pop culture knowledge of cats, she thought she was getting a low-maintenance dog. Cats are easy, they sleep most of the day and eat for the rest! You don't have to exercise them like dogs, you don't have to train them, and they do silly things! Wow!

Marbles was, and continues to be, a very shy cat around people he doesn't know well, which included Sofía in the beginning. She had to unlearn some of the popular myths about cats she'd been inundated with in order to make him comfortable in his new home. Instead of just treating him like a small dog, she put in the work to learn what having a cat actually means. Her expectations weren't very accurate, but she was able to adjust for the sake of taking care of her little guy. And also to stick it to her parents.

15. Have their opinions of animals changed since they got their pet(s)?

Her love of cats has remained steadfast as ever, and she's always thought they were adorable. Now that she knows more about cats, and how to take care of them properly, her love has deepened. She can read Marbles' body language, give him proper enrichment, and understand what's best for his health, as well as thinking he is so so cute and baby 🥺🥺🥺

[try out my ask game about your OC's pets!]

[safety-pin-punk]

Bit of a heavy, long-winded and complex question but you seem like the blog to ask (please bare with me here). For some background... I'm 28, neurodivergent, queer, vegan (though returned to eating meat for dietary/health/accessibility reasons), environmentalist... but here's where the heavy part of my question lies:

I recently had to steer myself away from being groomed into alt-right run centrist spaces over the last several years (eg. the "antifa are terrorists", "BLM are racist hypocrites who purchased mansions", "trans youth are being put on hormone blockers by predators" talk, etc etc you get the picture.) A lot of these views are ones that I have re-examined as of late.

Alongside the shame of knowing I had my views so grossly skewed by these people, I worry about my former misinformation or lack of education potentially keeping me from fully re-immersing into the community because some of the things I'm working to unlearn are the kind of things I'd expect to get a "fuck off nazi/-phobe/-ist" response for. Perhaps this is still a bias I hold, that I'll be met with gatekeeping or feel a major whiplash when realizing just how badly the alt-right tried to recruit me, and the knowledge that I need to unlearn a lot of misinformation feels like a barrier that keeps me from connecting with others.

So... kind of a two part question I guess.

1. How do I find resources to better educate myself on punk history and the misinformation about certain movements, while acknowledging my own former biases?

2. How do I overcome the shame of my previously misdirected leanings, and allow myself to re-approach the punk community without feeling ostracised or excluded?

Thank you so much for your resources and support.

Before I get to you're questions, I'd like to take a moment to point something out to other people reading this. A lot of punks, if you met someone like this on the streets, you wouldn't hesitate to call them a poser. But you would be SO SO SO wrong. This person isn't a poser. This person is a victim. This person is SO much more punk than a LOT of people, just by taking their biases into account and wanting to change. Trying to change. Learning to change. Just keep that in mind for the future, punks don't just emerge from the ground being well versed in all the ideology. They have to learn it from somewhere. And typically, they have to override other ideologies that have been taught to them by either parents or other trusted individuals. Especially in this day and age where the internet is an information shit storm.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, onto your specific questions.

I actually have a very good resource for you to check out for your first question. @bfpnola is a good starting place. The Better Future Program is a non-profit that is working to make the world a better place through education. Their Liberation Library is a GREAT resource for what you are looking for. For learning about punk history, me and a few other bloggers have put together a big list of different media to check out (link to post here). It might act as a good starting point for you.

As for your second question, that one is a bit harder. I'll be the first to admit that not every punk is going to be kind or understanding. Because of that, for a while, it probably will feel weird or excluding no matter what. Its like going from a kiddie pool to a high dive, you are getting VERY out of your learned comfort zone. But... it won't always feel like that. Eventually, you'll find your footing and start to feel more at ease in these spaces. The key is to keep learning and keep growing. The more you are in these spaces, the more you will learn. You might make mistakes, and that's okay, you're only human after all. My best advice for you while you explore these spaces and work on bettering yourself, is to just not get involved in political conversations. If you see or hear something that you don't agree with, take a step back before you do anything and ask yourself if its because of a bias you were taught. And you may not always be sure. That's okay. Its a process.

It does sound like you've gone through a lot, and that you are trying very hard to overcome these biases that you've been taught. There's a lot of emotional work required for that, and I think you are very admirable for your willingness to put in that effort and change. I would recommend looking into a therapist as well. Someone to bounce all of this off of. Discuss coping skills with. You might find that it helps you, and you might not. But there's no harm in giving it a go, you might find it can offer some very powerful tools.

[shopcat]

also something i forgot to go into BUT: suki as someone who maybe struggles to make her feelings on a situation clear and is more of an action orientated person (from what we've seen in the show at least imo, they don't really discuss Feelings so much as share Moments) and ty lee as someone who SEEMS to be someone who is very open and up front with her emotions but tends to hide in the familiar (speaking through her belief in auras and signs etc) and would be used to hiding her true feelings on things/keeping them under wraps, as well as unlearning All those damn fire nation upbringing complexes, and the, like, surface assumption that ty lee would be the more open one of the two causing friction. and again, like with ty lee using her bright personality as a sort of mask to any harder or grittier conversation of confrontation of emotion (which we also see after the beach which is a top 10 ty lee ep to begin with, but even AFTER their very personal conversations with one another she's one of the first ones who sort of snaps right back into place. again, i don't think she's like, inauthentic, but we do know she can hide when she's secretly absolutely personally miserable) which would make things INTERESTING i think, especially thrown in with all the OTHER initial possible dramaticness of their relationship (platonic or otherwise) (obviously otherwise).

i also think suki's pragmatism vs ty lee's optimism and spiritual beliefs could be a possible source of if not actual contention just a funny silly dynamic of butting heads and is a pretty classic tropey thing of sceptic vs believer, scientific minded vs spiritual minded, which goes hand in hand with the previously mentioned assumptions imo. but, i also think suki would probably value this part of her and also obviously isn't someone who FULLY shies away from spirit world Stuff as a whole so it wouldn't be like, a HUGE divide between them, just something fun.

i also think suki as someone who values her role as a fighter and leader but also in her own words A Girl being able to let loose and have fun with someone who values those things and going with the flow has a lot of potential sweetness to it... we all know that what drew her to sokka was also his own silly charming aspects but i would so seriously never once consider sokka someone who is, FIRST AND FOREMOST at least, a "go with the flow, loose" individual... LOL. he learns to indulge in fun and the lighter aspects of life through his character arc and is definitely a fun PERSON but compared to ty lee he may as well be mai, you know? all in all i honestly think suki/ty lee are pretty similar to what draws people in to mailee which i still also love, and ty lee and sokka are actually weirdly similar in some ways. suki shares a lot of aspects and traits with mai and mostly honestly azula, something which we know ty lee is in some way drawn to if not familiar with/knows how to mesh with those things and slot into place.

also think this exact interaction could happen with ty "they're not prettier than us" lee in sokka's place which is just really damn funny.

[redoqs]

Redoqs Rambles

TW: Anxiety

Overthinking has always been a rough thing for me though I never realized it until recently. It’s always had a way of sneaking up on me a lot of the time and by the time I realized that I’m doing it I’m already in deep. I start feeling almost overwhelmingly anxious—the worst of it including me being physically sick and unable to eat or sleep or do anything—and my mood is affected for a while after that until something comes along to pull me out of my funk and even then it only lasts for so long until the cycle starts again.

I’m not typing all this to focus on how bad the overthinking has gotten. I know how it felt when it was at its absolute worst. I know that if I had allowed it to continue it would cause me to harm those close to me and I refuse to let that happen. So after taking a bit to think about it, I took myself to therapy and it’s honestly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Over the course of the past few months the overthinking has gotten a lot better. Of course some days are more difficult than others, I know I still have things to learn and unlearn and sometimes the thoughts have a victory—for example, I had a thought today that got to me but I’m okay now. Proud of myself actually because months ago, a thought like that would’ve had me out of it for the whole day—but I have methods now that I can do that’ll help me ground myself whenever I get caught up in my thoughts. I have things I can do to help ease my mind and help me realize that about 99% of the things I’m thinking are not based on fact but rather assumptions that I’ve made up based on how I believed I felt.

A lot of good has come from it and I’m proud of myself but it’s not easy. The hardest part about all of this, for me, is admitting to myself that it’s all me. The overthinking and anxiety that comes from the thoughts, why I’m feeling the way that I do, how I allow myself to feel all stems from things within myself. No one wants to believe that they’re the problem but the best kind of people recognize their faults and try to fix them. Admitting that I’m the reason why I feel the way I do is daunting but also very freeing in a sense. I guess the first step to recovery is acknowledging that there are issues in the first place. I believe that it really works. Once I recognize what I’m feeling and where it’s coming from I can control it, give it time to run its course, determine if it’s based on fact or opinion and then let it go. It’s easier said than done but it does get easier everyday. This process allows me to control the flow of my thoughts before they get out of hand and focus on the positives rather than negatives that most likely won’t even happen. I want to get better and live my best life and every day I can feel myself getting closer and closer to that.

Like I said, this process hasn’t been easy but I’m getting through it and I’m proud of where I am now versus the beginning of the year. I have a few friends that I can definitely say have been there for me when some days were a little too much and I appreciate them more than they can ever know. I want to say though that there is someone else that I’m entirely grateful for, someone who’s never made me feel like I’m too much or that my personal feelings aren’t important. She’s been great to me, amazing actually. I couldn’t ask for a better person in my life and I wish I could think of something, anything I could do to express to her at least a little bit how much I appreciate all she’s done. This process would’ve been a lot harder without her support so thank you so much for being by my side and helping me, reassuring me and loving me. It means the universe to me and I’ll always cherish you. I genuinely hope you know that.

[sepublic]

Lilith and Hunter (and Kikimora’s?) Redemption Arcs

I find the difference between Lilith and Hunter’s arcs interesting. Both are abused victims learning to break away from the Emperor’s Coven, but there’s the clear differences, beyond the superficial ones like Lilith being a grown adult and Hunter a child and Belos’ favored nephew;

Lilith is someone who came from the outside. She started with an actual support system, she grew up knowing what life outside of the coven is like, what it should be like! We see her debut with full motive from this fact; Lilith wants to cure Eda, and she cares for her sister and wants her back! Lilith is driven by her pre-existing connections to the outside world that the coven has begun to overtake, but it really is a matter of deciding between the two when she’s forced to choose; And we see how Lilith’s episodes with Eda help her remember life before the coven, and understand her sister’s choices. So it’s really only the one person she needs to leave the coven.

Hunter is... different. He’s never known any better. He’s started off as Belos’ nephew and it’s all he knows; He has zero context for the outside world, so unlike Lilith in Covention, he’s crappy at appealing to people who started off living normal lives and getting them to join the coven. Lilith is about remembering but Hunter is about learning (and unlearning); He needs to meet a wide variety of people, and gradually be given avenues to leave Belos and exist away from him. Hence Flapjack, a support system, and even something as simple as a scroll with connection to the internet, a big no-no for isolationist tactics.

Hunter is more difficult because the coven has been his entire life, and so we’re seeing him build this understanding of the world outside of the Emperor’s influence. And that’s why his arc is more drawn-out and involves him meeting different people who continually show him how things are different. He’s finding this stuff out for the first time, so it reasons that Hunter needs a lot more encounters to change his mind; Whereas Lilith still remembers life before the coven, and it’s in fact her driving motive in Season 1, that desire to go back to the past. She just needs to be reminded and it’ll all fall back into place.

But Hunter has only known his uncle and the coven. So it’s an arguably more painstaking, bumpy process for him; He’s a teenager as well, so it’s even harder to make those choices for himself, and unlike Lilith he’s never had the chance to do so either. Hunter needs to consistently be shown that there’s chances outside of the coven, so he can learn to trust and depend on the outside world as a consistent form of support; Compared to the proven security of the coven, which he knows and can rely on to be that way. And I think that’s just fascinating, and it really makes me wonder if Kikimora would’ve gotten a similar exploration on redemption and what she needs, even if it ended with her choosing the coven anyway; Probably in Season 3, but we all know what happened.

With Kikimora, she knows what life outside the coven is... But unlike Lilith, her support system doesn’t seem any better then than it is now. Kikimora’s mother imposes a very unhealthy ultimatum, despite knowing Belos’ power and influence. Which makes me wonder if the key difference between Kiki and Lilith is that unlike Lilith... Kikimora’s family isn’t something she can count on. They weren’t a reliable source of validation, or at least weren’t that much better than the Emperor’s Coven, if even at all.

So when comparing both situations, the EC may as well be a step up because it at least grants Kikimora some authority, right? Kiki could’ve leapt from the pan and into the fire here; So like with Hunter, the coven is all she has... Which makes it all the more tragic that the outside world failed her like this, and THAT’S why she chooses the coven. Kikimora got to know life outside the coven and her frame of reference is flawed. She’s an adult who knows she made her choice and she has no reason to go back, because Kikimora has been taught that the outside world is just as bad via her own experiences growing up.

Which, given how Kikimora is beside the Emperor’s castle in the Season 2 intro, Lilith beside the Owl House, and Hunter square in the middle... It perfectly reflects their standing this season, but also potentially foreshadows how Kikimora won’t get the chance to leave. Or at the very least, will be left with nothing at the end, when the coven is destroyed; An open-ended conclusion to her arc that leaves Kikimora free to find a new life, but we won’t get to see that.

There’s still hope but there’s a reason why Kikimora was last, and only implied at that. Lilith already knows of a fond life outside of the coven and just has to remember; Hunter is learning how life outside of the coven is better; Kikimora already learned that life outside of the coven is worse or just as bad. If we got Kikimora’s arc in Season 3, then it would’ve been a gradually rising scale of difficulty in helping an antagonist learn/unlearn things for their own health, which fits the rising action of a story and all. Each arc more difficult than the last; And this could parallel how on the protagonists’ side, each season follows a member of the main trio... Eda, then King, and finally Luz!

[gentil-minou]

Hey! So first things first: I absolutely love your Senti-Adrien analysises! They are really well written and explain everything clearly:)

So I happened to come across a post which summed up the problems that people had with the theory pretty well, and I wanted to know your opinion about it. (Note that I don't really agree with some of them, but I do understand their concerns).

So one problem they have is that the target audience wouldn't understand the abuse Adrien is going through. What children would see is that Adrien could escape the situation because he is a magical catboy (If he gets a powerup and destroys his limits binding him to his amok). And probably also that the problem never was Gabriel’s “normal” treatment of Adrien (ie him abusing him) in the first place since the sentimonster magic is a hundred times worse. I don't really understand this claim but yeah...

Thanks for thinking of me, anon!

I think I understand the meaning of that post. If I am guessing correctly, the claim is that (1) children will misconstrue Adrien's senti-status as being too complicated and that Adrien potentially breaking his own bonds would be a magical escape? (2) Gabriel's abuse is okay because being a senti is worse?

For the (2) I am gonna go ahead and say, once again, abuse is abuse no matter what it is. Also, if he is a senti than his creation is tied closely with Gabriel's abuse and neglect. Yes, being a senti means that Adrien is more susceptible to being manipulated and controlled, but as we've seen with Felix it is entirely possible to have a senti-kid and not treat them like a perfect obedient princess to lock in a tower. They are the same, to say one thing is the issue but the other is meaningless is completely unwarranted.

As for (1) this I think could be made a legitiamte issue because the question here is would this make a child think there's an easy way out when the reality is much harder? Well to that I say we still don't know how his story would play out if he is a senti. What we can infer, just by how dark the scene with Gabe and Felix in Gabriel Agreste and the scene in Ephemeral, that the show is willing to go darker than we expect. By that I mean I have full faith they aren't going to make it appear easy for Adrien to get his freedom (from both his dad's abuse and his senti-ties) and also that we will likely have some time watching him come to terms with what he is.

But the most important thing is that he will come to terms.

By and by, the hardest thing I have to deal with when working with kids who experience trauma is seeing if they know what they've been through is trauma. To a lot of them, they see it as the way they grew up or in some cases even as their own faults. It is so hard for kids to recognize being abused, especially easier to conceal abuse like the emotional abuse Adrien undergoes. We see it in Adrien all the time, he just wants to please his dad. He doesn't yet see it as abuse, and that's because he thinks it's normal and that it's warranted if he displeases his father.

I wouldn't call Adrien breaking his chains by being a magical cat boy an easy way out. It is going to take a lot to get from point A to point B. In the process, he is going to have to face who he is, accept that he was abused/traumatized, unlearn learned behaviors/fear of his father, find safety with friends and those who do love him, confront his father (not recommended in abuse victims, but we can compare this to a trauma narrative in CBT and it's a better visual cue that 8 months of therapy lol), and finally break his chains and be who he is, free and safe of mind.

That doesn't sound like an escape to me, it sounds like a fight.

The one thing you need when treating a kid who is going through this type of thing is hope. They need the hope that things will get better. Once that is gone, it becomes 100000 times harder. I think Adrien's story if he is a senti has the potential for giving someone hope, and that is why I am 100% in its corner.

[bi-naesala]

Cody gets taken care of

The measure of one's worth can't be measured by how useful they are. Despite the work Cody has put into trying to learn this, some habits die hard. Luckily for him, there are plenty of people that care about him and will make sure that he's well taken care of.

(Also on AO3)

Obi-Wan’s having tea in his quarters, enjoying a rare peaceful day on board of the Resolute, when he hears someone knocking on his door.

“Sir?” a familiar voice says. “It’s Waxer and Boil.”

Hearing that, Obi-Wan has the impression that his free peaceful time is about to be cut short. Knowing their troublemaker tendencies, he can only assume they must’ve done something - either that or they need a place to hide from Cody’s wrath.

“Come in,” he says then, already bracing himself.

 When the two step inside, he understands that his worries might be exaggerated: they wouldn’t be this calm if they actually did something - especially Boil, who always gets angry at Waxer for dragging him into his nonsense.

“Something’s wrong?” he asks.

“Sir,” Waxer begins, “We’d like to talk to you about Cody.”

“What about Cody?” Obi-Wan asks, slightly worried now. Did something happen?

“He’s doing it again.”

“Ah…”

Damn it.

It’s a habit that, as far as Obi-Wan can tell, Cody has always had: he’d get up, one day, and decide that he doesn’t need sleep anymore, taking a workload of datapads and other jobs in the meantime, uncaring of his personal health.

At first Obi-Wan didn’t think it was that bad, but that’s only because Cody, the rascal, had been smart enough not to work when he was around, but as they’ve grown closer, he’s been able to see just how bad this kind of behavior can be.

It’s a reminiscence of Kamino, captain Rex told him in private once: the damned Kaminiise have drilled inside his brain that he will be sent back if he doesn’t make himself useful, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Obi-Wan would never do something like that, less than anything because he’s not useful enough; he’d never dream about quantifying the worth of anyone just based on something like that, and he knows for a fact that there are plenty of people who share this kind of view.

 These last campaigns have taken a toll on all of them; they have suffered terrible losses. Obviously Cody feels responsible for them and feels the need to make amends somehow.

It’s a feeling that Obi-Wan understands well: they both have to deal with it, but he’s not going to let all the work he and the rest of the troopers have done to make Cody unlearn this behavior go to waste, not if he can help it, which is exactly what he intends to do.

He needs to find Cody.

  Thankfully, finding him isn’t hard; Obi-Wan expected to find him at the bridge, and that’s exactly how it goes.

Cody isn’t even doing anything at the moment, just surveying everything with arms crossed to his chest, but there’s one particular that feels weird: he’s wearing his bucket, as if he knows his face doesn’t look that great and that someone would come to him questioning his health if they saw it. He must think he’ll get away with it because he outranks all his brothers, so nobody will dare approaching him, but he hasn’t considered that it isn’t so for Obi-Wan, and that he will approach him.

 “There he is, sir,” Waxer points out, Boil on his trail. “What do we do?”

“Just be ready to catch his bucket, and keep an eye out while the commander rests,” Obi-Wan replies, turning to the trooper and winking at him. “I’ll handle the rest.”

 Despite Cody definitely not being in any condition to sense his approach, Obi-Wan still moves carefully, not making a single sound, then, once he’s close enough, he taps Cody’s shoulder. As soon as he turns around, he immediately snatches the bucket out of his head, tossing it to Waxer, who promptly catches it.

Indeed those are two big bags under Cody’s eyes. He looks like he might pass out at any given moment.

“G-General?” Cody stutters, taken by surprise but such an attack.

“Come on, my dear, let’s go,” Obi-Wan tells him, trying to pull his arm in order to make him follow him - of course, he only pulls just a bit, not wanting to hurt him. “Everything’s taken care of. The ship won’t fall apart just because you’re resting.”

“But--”

Obi-Wan feared that Cody wasn’t going to budge, which is exactly what is happening as the commander has the courage to try and assure him that he’s fine - lie - and well rested - even bigger lie. He needs to do something dramatic, something that will make Cody unable to retort.

He sighs, metaphorically rolling the sleeves of his robes up - if he actually did so they would’ve just rolled down again immediately - and he grabs Cody by the waist, hoisting him up on his shoulder, using the Force to keep himself steady - just because Cody’s wearing his armor, or else he wouldn’t have had any problem at all.

“Sir?!”

Cody’s shouting now, face flushed from the embarrassment - it doesn’t help that a few chuckles are beginning to be heard, only to stop when people realize who exactly they’re laughing at, though Boil seems to be having a hard time keeping his face straight.

“See? Your men will keep everything under control. They’ve got you covered,” Obi-Wan says then.

Despite that, Cody  still tries to kick with his legs in order to break free, but he doesn’t manage to do it. It helps that he also doesn’t want to hurt Obi-Wan, so even his kicks are pretty light all things considered.

“Sir, please!” he tries again then, but Obi-Wan doesn’t let him down. Actually, after bidding goodbye to Waxer and Boil, he begins to walk away.

“Obi-Wan! What the kriff?!” Cody tries again, abandoning all sorts of formality.

Still no answer.

 Obi-Wan gets halfway towards his personal quarters when he finally speaks:

“If I let you down, are you going to follow me, or are you going to run away? Think carefully about your response.”

What’s even the point of escaping now, Cody thinks: it’s not like at least half the ship hasn’t seen them, and knowing how prone to gossip his own men are, it’s safe to assume that everyone in the galaxy will know about this. He would even be willing to bet that someone must’ve also sneaked a holo picture or two - traitors, the lot of them.

Still, Obi-Wan carrying him so nonchalantly is something unexpected but also not unpleasant. It’s making Cody a bit hot all over, actually.

“It depends, will you give me a head start?” he asks then, smirk on his face that becomes something softer when he hears Obi-Wan chuckle. It’s something that rarely happens as of late; well, that’s not entirely true, but Cody is talking about his real laugh, not the fake one he usually forces himself to make.

“You’re incorrigible,” Obi-Wan says, keeping walking, with apparently no intentions of dropping Cody, who is quickly to try to make amends for his mistake.

“I was kidding! Obi-Wan, please!”

That makes the Jedi stop; he must be considering it. Eventually he sighs, letting down Cody, who stumbles as soon as his feet touch the ground. If Obi-Wan hadn’t caught him, he would’ve fallen.

… Ok, maybe he should’ve kept being carried, but it’s too late for that. His pride wouldn’t handle it if he asks Cody to take him in his arms again, no matter how much more comfortable that would be.

 Luckily for him, they’re not too far off the general’s quarters… Wait, the general’s quarters?

“What exactly are we doing, here?” Cody asks, almost panicking. Obi-Wan soothes the worries away by kissing his forehead.

“I’m going to prepare you a bath, getting you all nice and relaxed, then you’re going straight to bed,” he replies.

“A-A bath?” Cody asks, looking at Obi-Wan like he’s suddenly grown a second head. This is new for him.

“Yes, a bath. Trust me, it will help,” Obi-Wan promises as he helps him to his quarters. Baths aren’t something he usually indulges on while he’s on the ship, not wanting to waste this much water, but he figures the rest of the men will forgive him if he does it this time. It’s for their commander after all.

 Once they step inside his quarters, Obi-Wan closes the door behind them, locking it. If there’s any emergency, he’s sure they’d comm him rather than trying to get here anyway.

He helps Cody settle on his bed, so he can rest here while he prepares a bath; the commander looks like he’s going to pass out at any moment, and Obi-Wan would rather have him do it on the comfort of a bed rather than on the ground - that wouldn’t be a pleasant experience at all, he knows it.

“Can you manage to stay awake for another while?” he asks, softly, caressing his hair. He can’t help but to smile at the way Cody leans into the touch.

“I’ve managed until now, I can do for a few more minutes,” he replies then. Still, when Obi-Wan pulls away, he can’t help but to be displeased: he was really getting into it!

“Hush,” Obi-Wan mutters, sensing it, kissing the top of his head, “You’ll get your cuddles later, I promise.”

Cody hums at those words, smiling. Yes, he’d like that very much.

 Once Obi-Wan leaves his view, however, he realizes that keeping his eyes open is getting harder by the second, especially now that there’s nobody paying attention to him and can distract him.

Still, he tries his best to keep himself awake, not wanting to miss what Obi-Wan’s preparing for him. He tries to focus of the sound of running water then, but if anything that has the opposite effect of the one Cody was hoping it was going to have, causing him to get even closer to falling asleep.

His head slowly begins to fall down, only for Cody to snap to attention as soon as he notices it. If he had free rein to leave, he would’ve gotten himself some caf - Obi-Wan insists on keeping only a tea brewer in his room no matter how hard Cody insists on him getting a caf machine as well - but he doesn’t trust himself to walk all the way to get some. Besides, he doubts Obi-Wan would let him leave the room in the first place.

 Thankfully, it’s not too long before he hears Obi-Wan’s steps approaching him.

“Sorry it took so long,” he apologizes, helping Cody up. “Here we go.”

As they step inside the fresher, Cody is immediately greeted by a flowery smell, though he’s not able to discern exactly what caused it.

“What’s this?” he asks then, turning his head towards Obi-Wan.

“The smell?” the Jedi asks. “Oh, just some scented oils I’ve found at the market.”

Despite everything, Cody can’t help but to raise an eyebrow at him. Since when does he go around buying scented oils and such? Well, he supposes anything is better than tea - he already has way too much of that.

“They’re supposed to help with meditation,” Obi-Wan says, but after a pause he can’t help but to admit: “And I was also waiting for a… special occasion to use them.”

Special occasion?

“And you’re wasting them for me?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze softens at those words.

“It’s not a waste if it’s for you,” he mutters, taking Cody’s face between his hands and gently pressing their foreheads together. Cody can’t hold back a smile.

“Alright, then let’s try it.”

 Thanks to Obi-Wan, the undressing process is way less sloppy than it would’ve been otherwise - Cody isn’t doing great in the coordination department right now - and once he’s completely bare, he steps inside the tub.

He’s immediately welcomed by a sense of warm torpor that immediately spreads over his body; a happy sigh leaves his lips as he lets the sensation of contentment wash over him like the hot water is washing over his body. The flowery smell is delightful; Cody feared that it would’ve been too much, but it’s actually the perfect amount to be pleasant, not too much and neither too little. Obi-Wan clearly knows what he’s doing.

Speaking of Obi-Wan, he lets Cody bask in the warmth for a moment, before walking to the tub’s edge, sitting on it. He helps Cody clean himself up, massaging the sore muscles with gentle touch; it’s actually getting harder and harder to stay awake, so much that Cody has forgone keeping his eyes open, knowing that it would be a vain effort; besides, he doesn’t need to see now, he needs to feel.

 Once Obi-Wan’s done, he pours some shampoo on his hands and he begins to gently scratch Cody’s scalp.

He smiles with tenderness at the way Cody leans into his touch; good, it means he’s beginning to relax: he can clearly feel the tenseness leave Cody’s body the more time passes, and he can be only happy about it. He deserves to feel calm and relaxed.

“You know you don’t have to do that, don’t you?” he asks softly, as if to not disturb the quiet intimate atmosphere around them. Even though he feels he might be ruining the moment, some things just have to be said, or else anything would ever be resolved and Cody would keep acting the same.

“I know…” Cody replies, voice soft as well. After a moment of silence, he continues. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Obi-Wan begins to wash his hair, watching the trails of shampoo trickle down Cody’s shoulders. Once he’s done with that, he presses a kiss on the top of Cody’s hair, uncaring of the wet hair.

“We all love and care for you. You don’t need to prove anything.”

“I know…” This time, Cody’s voice is weaker. He’s trying real hard not to make it crack, but Obi-Wan can still sense the effect his words have on him through the Force.

He knows Cody has a lot to unlearn and he knows how hard doing something like that is; it’s exactly because of this that…

“I love you, and I’m proud of you.”

A chocked noise comes out of Cody’s throat, then he raises one hand, taking the one Obi-Wan is still resting on his shoulder in order to bring it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss on its palm.

“I love you too.”

 He helps Cody up from the bathtub and brings him a towel to help him dry off.

It’s good that by now Cody uses to keep a spare set of blacks in Obi-Wan’s quarters, because he hadn’t thought about clothes; to tell the truth, he didn’t think about this too much at all: it’s been more of a following his instincts situation.

 After Cody finishes dressing up, they both get comfortable on Obi-Wan’s bed, secured into each other’s arms.

Obi-Wan can feel Cody’s breathing against his chest; it’s getting heavier and heavier. Just as he thinks that he must’ve fallen asleep, however, Cody speaks, or better, mumbles something:

“Thank you. For everything.”

Obi-Wan smiles, caressing Cody’s hair, leaning closer to kiss it.

“No need to thank me, my dear,” he replies, meaning each and every word of it. He’s just doing what is right. “Rest now, you deserve it.”

[missmentelle]

Hi MM/Bee! I'm a recent college graduate. I always worked hard in school and I matured a lot at college, but I'm realizing how low my self-esteem is. I'm obsessing over the things I haven't done/accomplished, scholarships I never applied for, my body image, my high school days, "not being as successful as my high school class", an old crush who I never talked to (who is already super successful), and some days I feel like I messed up my life beyond repair. How do I work on self-love? Thank you!

For starters, I think it’s important for you to know that you aren’t the only person feeling this way. I get similar questions all the time, often from people who aren’t even out of their 20s yet. It isn’t even remotely true that you need to achieve wild success by age 25 or you’ve wasted your life, but I can understand why so many people feel that way. 

Our culture is dangerously obsessed with productivity, youth and achievement, to the point that it is actively making all of our lives miserable. It’s not hard to understand where people get this idea that they’re failing in life if they aren’t a 20-something well-travelled millionaire - that is the message our culture throws in our faces all the time - and it’s so unbelievably untrue. We compile “top 30 under 30″ lists, celebrate incredibly young performers and entertainers, and hold up extremely high-achieving lifestyles as something that every one of us needs to be striving for, but we don’t - there is no timeline for “success”, there is no one true definition of success, and people will take wildly different paths in life to arrive at the same set of goals. What you think of as your failure is not actually your failure - it’s a cultural failure that so many of us fall victim to. 

I think it’s also important to remember that you haven’t messed up your life beyond repair: you’ve barely started your life yet. Your college years are supposed to be a time of growing and maturing, and that maturation doesn’t end the moment you cross the stage - you’re going to continue to learn and change and grow throughout your lifespan. And growth means you are always going to mess some stuff up - that’s how we grow. All of us have to make mistakes in this life, and all of us have to prioritize rest sometimes; there are always going to be tests we don’t do so great on, social situations we flub, scholarships we don’t apply for, crushes we don’t confess to, deadlines we miss, relationships we let fall apart and goals we don’t achieve. Nobody speedruns life with 100% completion. And that’s okay. Those missteps and mistakes are what teach us to do better next time, or they give us the time to rest and gather energy for the next goal we want to work toward. 

Of course, learning to accept yourself and let go of cultural conditioning is easier said than done. For many of us, it’s a lifelong journey, if not the overarching theme of our lives. I wish there was a simple way to achieve it. I do, however, have some tips that can help you get there:

Unplug from productivity and self-improvement culture. Going online and seeing “Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine, here’s how to maximize your quarantine time” and “here’s how I became a millionaire by age 22″ is not actually that motivating - in all likelihood, it’ll just make you feel bad about yourself. The internet is an absolute firehose of content about how you can do more, achieve more, squeeze more out of your day, and it’s completely overwhelming; honestly, most of us feel better when we stop pointing that firehose straight at our own face. It’s easier to believe that you are enough when you stop consuming content that tells you that you aren’t. Self-improvement culture looks positive on the surface, but we aren’t actually making ourselves better people by obsessing over our work and productivity - we’re just making ourselves miserable. 

Ask yourself “who benefits from making me feel bad about myself?” It’s not a coincidence that we’ve built a culture obsessed with youth and productivity - that culture is making a lot of people very, very rich. Whenever you can be convinced that you aren’t thin enough, not pretty enough, not good enough, you can be convinced to run out and buy things that might fix the problem. That’s how we ended up with a $10 billion dollar self-improvement industry and a $532 billion dollar beauty industry. Content people are harder to sell to. Of course, knowing that people are profiting off your insecurities doesn’t magically make the insecurities go away - but it’s important to start thinking critically and asking yourself “where do my insecurities come from? Is there really something wrong with me, or is someone profiting from making people like me feel this way?”

Do things that make you happy, just for the sake of doing them. Paint a picture. Plant a garden. Learn to play the mandolin. Read cheesy romance novels. Find some things that you enjoy doing just for you - things that you don’t need to maximize, monetize or optimize. You don’t even need to be good at them. If you enjoy doing it, have at it. So many of us are encouraged to suck the joy out of our hobbies by turning them into a “side hustle” or another regimented form of self-improvement. Find some activities that just make your life better and do them, just for the sake of doing them. 

Examine the role of social media in your life. Most of us don’t post a complete, unedited view of our lives on social media - we just post the highlights and keep the tough stuff - the rejections, the times we got ghosted, the bad hair days - to ourselves. And even if you know that cognitively, it still sucks to log onto social media when you’re having a “blah” week and find yourself bombarded with other people’s engagement announcements, med school acceptances, wedding pictures and photos of the new homes people just bought. Social media forces you to compare your “average” to everyone else’s “best”, all the time. And the numbers don’t help - social media lets you do an exact comparison of how many followers and likes you have compared to someone else, and seeing someone get more positive feedback than you can sting. Working on self-love means taking a hard look at the impact social media is having on your self-esteem. How much of your time do you spend on social media? How do you feel after you use social media? Are you following accounts that make you feel better about yourself, or worse? Do you ever feel bad about the number of likes or followers you have? Do you feel like your time on social media is wasted? Do you follow accounts that make you feel better about yourself, or worse? Stepping away from social media for your mental health is an important move for some people - you can still be happy for your friends and loved ones while acknowledging that it’s not good for you to have their achievements broadcast to you 24/7. 

Surround yourself with good, supportive people. If you find that your circle of friends tends to diminish each other’s achievements, be overly critical of each other or go out of their way to one-up each other, that’s probably not a circle of friends that’s going to be good for you in the long run. Find people who are genuinely happy for you, and make you feel supported and loved for who you are. If that means you need to branch out of your current social circles, that’s okay - you can find great friends in surprising places, and it’s worth the initial awkwardness of getting to know a new person. 

Challenge your definition of “success”. Success does not have to look like a high-paying job and a giant house and expensive cars and 2.5 honour roll children. It certainly can look that way, if you feel that those are meaningful goals for you, but it doesn’t have to look that way. A doctor is not necessarily “more successful” than a poet, and a lawyer is not necessarily “more successful” than a stay-at-home parent. The only person who gets to define what a “successful” life looks like is you. It takes time to unlearn the social conditioning that “money and prestige = success”, but it can be done. Success looks different for all of us. 

Set goals that are personally meaningful to you. It’s important for all of us to think critically about what we want, and it’s even more important to think critically about why we want it. Do we want that degree program or that accomplishment or that job because it aligns with our interests? To impress others? To prove someone wrong? Or because we feel like we’re supposed to want it? Try to focus your energy on the goals that you want, that are personally meaningful to you. If that’s law school, great. If that’s selling homemade jam at the farmer’s market, that is equally great. 

Remember that success does not have a deadline. I know this is very hard to believe in your early twenties, but your dreams do not shrivel up and blow away the day you turn 30. Life doesn’t end when your 20s are over. You haven’t missed your shot, and you don’t have to figure everything out right now. Growth and achievement are lifelong journeys - people find their dream jobs, accomplish their goals, finish degrees and meet the love of their life in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. The best book I read this year was “Where the Crawdads Sing” a novel that spent 32 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It also happened to be the author’s first novel, and it came out when she was sixty-nine years old. Your dreams do not have an expiration date. 

Capture the joy and positivity in your life. I think one of the most important ways to feel better about your life is to spend more time focusing on all the good things in your life, rather than focusing on all the ways you could be better. Rather than fixating on whether you could have applied for more scholarships or turned that B+ into an A-, spend more time reflecting on the happy memories you have of your time in college. Again, this isn’t something that will happen overnight - it’s a learned skill that you need to consciously work on. Interrupt yourself when you are starting to fixate on things you could have done better, and make yourself list out three things you enjoyed about college. Connect with old college friends you haven’t heard from in a while. Try to take more notice of good things in your life as they happen to you - take more pictures, keep a journal, make collages, start a scrapbook, keep a box of momentos. You don’t need to have a perfect life to be happy; it’s okay to work on being happy with the life you have. 

Best of luck to you! MM

[skelanonymous]

Song Prompt 2

I basically took this as “think on your mistakes, go forward, it’ll be okay”

@a-weird-tree

Words:4.2k

Song(s): It’s Alright - Mother Mother/Panic Room - Au/ra

Skeleton: Nightmare

-

“I’m here if you need me.” 

Nightmare wished the last words he’d heard didn’t have to be from Dream, even if it made a lot of poetic sense considering the task he was on.

The ashen landscape hadn’t changed in the millenia he’d been gone. Nothing different from the day he left, only a statue no longer standing by her side, even the grass dead and non-growing. Time had left this place, following his brother in its frozen state, though the life of this place hadn’t been returned like it had to Dream.

So many bodies. The lack of time had halted the rot, blood stained dirt muddy and thick near his sneakers. The gentle pull from his soul made him sigh before standing up straight to walk into the mass of buildings off east of the hill.

Walking over the uneven cobblestone (made by hand by an older stonesmith who’d been teaching his son at the time), his eye slid over the multiple empty homes. Shops with goods still lining the shelves, broken glass shattered across the wooden floorboards, countertops in disarray from the frantic fleeing they’d attempted, it fell on his chest like an anvil, breath stolen. He pushed past it to step around behind the counter.

He’d only needed to browse for a moment before finding what he was looking for. He grabbed it with his hands, gathering some provisions in a bag before heading back out to his new home.

From the top of the hill, the field expanded westward for a mile uninterrupted. That’s where he’d have to start.

With a blank face, he forced the shovel into the dirt and hauled out the first of many piles. He couldn’t do a full six feet with his hands, but three would give them rest. No animal could dig them out, all had long since gone, so that’d have to be enough.

The shovel was clumsy in his grasp. His hands ached with the work of it before even the first grave had been dug, not used to ignoring his tentacles, where his strength and power were most potent, but no. They had been laid low by his corruption. If he was to find any sense of recompense in the act, it had to be his own two hands by which he sent them to peace.

Shovelful by shovelful, the dirt to the side grew larger than the hole until the first was done. 

The first was going to be the hardest to get here.

When the idea had first occurred, it’d been before the truce. He had too much to do, his own corruption as valuable an ally in his fight as any of the others, perhaps moreso. Too much was left to fight for that required its defense.

He had brushed the idea aside completely until the truce had been first drafted. But the truce was fresh, easily broken with a word. Animosity did not dissolve within a fortnight, nor did camaraderie grow, even under the promise of fresh sunlight and clean water. He couldn’t send his best soldier home when war could break out at any second. As weary as it made him, he had carried this longer than he had existed at this point, five times more spent in this shadow than under the shade of his mother. The memories were faded and grey at the edges. He could live without them.

Days to weeks, months to years, all of his company had learned to move on. He’d held none back from their progress. The peace in their eyes made his own ache, but he wished them the best. The last had been Dust, his the hardest to truly relieve. Time truly could heal all wounds.

“I think I’m gunna go to Horror’s timeline...Now that’s the shortage is over, it’s pretty quiet there.” Dust had shuffled in the main hall. He looked so uncomfortable, Nightmare trying to pull his own aura back into himself.

“And Horror is there.” Nightmare took a step back, gesturing to the door with a kind bow. “You’ll do well with him. You suit each other.”

Dust blushed purple, eyelights flicking around, before resettling on Nightmare with sorrow in the lines of his face.

“You could come too.” He looked him in the face, desperate. “Being alone isn’t good for people bo-Nightmare.” Dust fiddled with his sleeves.

“I would impede your progress Dust. My part in your life has come to a conclusion, and I am at peace with that.” Nightmare hoped the smile was reassuring. Dust had fought against the psychosis, no sanity came as hard fought as Dust’s, he deserved the rest.  “I have always survived, you don’t have to worry about me.” 

“They ask me about you all the time, you know.” He inched closer to the door. A compromise. 

“And I ask you about them. We spent a long time together.” Nightmare hadn’t seen any of them since they left the castle. He knew his aura was poison to their progress, an ever present reminder of all they tried to move forward from. He missed them more than he could say. “But even now, you can’t help but call me boss. You have fewer nightmares when you sleep in other timelines. You can’t be here, and I can’t go there with you.”

“We would give up all our progress if it meant seeing you not stay here alone for the rest of your life.” Dust’s eyes watered. “We all wanted you to make it out of here. Being the last means that I failed too.”

“You didn’t fail.” Night wanted so badly to reassure him, but he was negativity, his touch would rob the little strength he had to leave. “I don’t know if I can be saved.”  The truth hurt to say. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin. How does one unlearn all that you are?”

“You don’t have enough faith in yourself. Please.” Dust had held out his hand, the other on the door.

Nightmare knew if he reached out, Dust would turn to him and try to save him from himself. But no. Night pulled his hands to his chest.

“Go. He’s waiting for you.” Dust had left with a slammed door.

Then silence. 

Silence for months, nothing but dust and books for friends. He’d kept to his castle, afraid of even glancing at them from portals, of bringing as much misfortune as he had to wherever he touched.

The idea had come back to him on the anniversary of Dust’s departure. He’d sent out a small summon to his brother, who’d come the instant he’d been called, fearing the worst.

“Brother?!”

“I’m right here Dream. I’m not in peril.” He looked up from his book, seated on a bench. Nightmare took to reading in the courtyard most days. He’d gotten through every book once before, this was one of his favorites to reread. “Though I’m thankful for your haste if I was.”

“I mean, yeah! No one’s heard from you in a while. I was starting to think…”Dream shook his head. “So what do you need? Anything I can do to help.” He held out his golden glove to Night. He had taken it so hesitantly, his brother the only person who he couldn’t affect but unused to contact after so long.

“I have things to show you.”

He’d brought him through the castle. He led him to every magical artifact, the secret chambers that hid anything placed within them, and a copy of the key to his treasured library. His entire legacy, every tool, things that could not be replaced.

“I think that’s everything. I’m entrusting this knowledge to you Dream. It felt important you know. The others deserve to not be called upon.”

“I agree but why would I need to call them? It’s your castle. I can just ask you.” Dream looked him over with worried eyes. “Right?” Nightmare sighed.

“No.” He held up a hand before Dream could yell. “I am going to be away from the castle. I do not know for how long.”

“Doing what?! Because telling me about ALL of this means this is a long trip!” Night could see all of Blue’s influence in him, almost professionally assessing him to see what they could work through. He was eternally grateful to Blue for his services but not for the inquisition he’d face for this decision.

“It most likely will be very long.” Nightmare didn’t elaborate.

“What are you planning?” Dream grabbed his shoulders, full brotherly concern on display. Night smiled at him. Dream panicked harder. “Nightmare, please don’t do anything drastic. Everyone really cares about you.” Night chuckled but it didn’t reach his tired eyes.

“Unfortunately, drastic is the only way I know.” He flicked Dream on his crown, nose scrunched up with the twang. “I don’t plan on dying in some corner of the world. I’m not a wounded animal.” Nightmare held the trembling hands in front of him. “I just need to go find something.”

“Well let’s go look toge-”

“Alone.”

“Nightmare.” He pleaded with his eyes. “You’ve been alone for so long already. Who was the last person you saw besides me?”

“Dust.” He didn’t shy away from the shock.

“That was a YEAR ago.” Dream pulled him towards the nearest door. “You just need to-”

“Dream.” He’d never felt so tired. It’d been many moons since he’d pulled this card, he only hoped his brother would understand. “Daydream, please.”

The fight drained from Dream in an instant. His eyes softened to tears, so much younger in that moment than Nightmare had seen since he’d awoken from that statue. Nightmare wiped a few away, meeting his eyes with renewed effort, resigned but ready.

“I need this. You’re the only one I can trust with the multiverse. I need you to carry it for both of us. I’m sorry to set it upon your shoulders.”

And Dream, the kind person he was, didn’t hesitate.

“I can handle it Nighty.” He pulled him into a hug. “So you keep looking until you find what you need to. I’ve got stuff handled here, and plenty of help if I get a little overwhelmed. Just...come back.” He’d waved Nightmare off into his portal with a smile.

“I’m here if you need me.”

The first body was the last. She’d been young, the last child, protected at the expense of the adults around her at every turn. He couldn’t even recall her name now. He found her in the forest, picking up her broken body as carefully as he feasibly could using only his arms. He started the sad march towards the hole.

He laid her in the earth with dignity. He cleaned off her face, finding a dropped toy nearby that felt familiar when he saw it, which he tucked into her arms.

Nightmare reflected on her death.

“The last of those bastards. Any last words?!” She’d only screamed. He cut her down painfully, multiple stabs with sharpened corruption, watching her bleed out to satisfy his own need for vengeance, served a hundred times over before this last death. His body fought his revulsion but he let the feeling flow. He’d been despicable.

A flash of memory from that night. It was gone before he could catch it.

He waited another few moments before taking up the shovel again. He covered her as quietly as he’d dug the grave, slow painful work on his hands that he trudged forward through. After the last bit of dirt had settled, he found a stone and placed it at the head.

Then he walked to the right and started again.

Nightmare managed three graves by the time he could not continue. He’d gotten the two people he’d felled just before the girl. He grieved each, laying them to rest, stumbling and pained, but he wanted to do this the right way.

When he could no longer continue, he pulled an apple from the provisions he’d grabbed.

He put it back.

Nightmare made his home by the tree, laying by her stump. He’d spent so many nights here, but the stars didn’t jog his memory at all. Nothing remained of before, none of what mattered to him. His mother was dead, Dream off running the multiverse, he himself changed, what could he even recognize?

He didn’t recall drifting off, though the nightmares that played across his mind meant he had to have slept. 

Night grabbed a bit of bread, looked up at the unchanging sky, and got to work again.

For weeks, the same pattern: wake, eat, lay the villagers to rest, consider the apple, sleep restlessly. Night’s corruption claimed his mind first, and many lives after. He owed them all the proper burial they’d been denied for centuries now.

Each dream got more vivid. The first taste of corruption, the first few to fall, turning Dream to stone, it got clearer each day. It wasn’t doing wonders to his sanity. Part of him wondered if this was the best chance of recovery, or of losing it completely and killing either the multiverse or himself. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d walk to the river in the forest.

The sound of running water was louder than his thoughts in the silence of the universe. He walked along it with his hands in his pockets and would imagine the castle.

Who accompanied him changed each day. Killer smiled but often made jokes at his expense or that of the dead. Dust’s hallucination acted as his own, egging him on to find more to kill. Horror’s mentioned the feast lying around, endlessly held edible by the lack of passing time. 

Error only visited once, his silence drowning out the brook. Nightmare left early and didn’t finish a single grave.

On a particularly productive day (he’d gotten through five), Dream accompanied him, and that’s when he remembered something from long ago. His voice complained, but he still knew the words.

The old folk song travelled across the world. The villagers had taught them at first, but Nightmare had sung Dream to sleep so much, he looked into so many more songs. He serenaded his phantom Dream from his small walk and slept peacefully for a single night.

The next day, his voice acted on its own.

He hummed while digging. He sang to the dead as he moved them, as an eulogy after their entombment, and went back to humming when he filled them and moved to the next. The silence of the world invited many demons, the lilt of a song brought back warmth of the past he’d long since lost. He remembered telling the others he didn’t sing; whether it was a lie or he truly forgot, he didn’t know.

The amount of graves was starting to stretch out far from the tree stump. He’d been at this for months, and now, the dead left numbered in double digits.

As he reached the last thirty, he leaned back onto the tall stump and realized nothing had blocked him. His unused tentacles had unformed, not needed and no longer reflex. Night breathed a sigh of relief up at the steady sky. Maybe he had a chance after all.

That night, when he considered the apple, he managed to put it up to his mouth. Not bite into, but it was progress, like so much else.

The second to last day ended as usual at first. He’d begun to sing songs he’d heard in other universes, voice strong from use. His hands had gotten so much better at holding the metal handle. His arms had regained strength, and bit by bit, the color was finally starting to leak back into the sky. This universe was healing. It had waited for him to return.

He only had one grave left. The village elder, the first to fall, the leader of the attacks against him. Night had never known his name besides Elder. 

His vengeance should’ve started and ended with him. 

No, that wasn’t the way to think anymore. Night had become what they feared, even if it was at their insistence, and a restless afterlife and the death of all his kin falling on him was punishment enough. He dug into the earth, humming the village tune, when the phantom heckled from behind.

“How dare you sing our song when you forsook us, monster.” Nightmare didn’t rise to the bait. He was not so lost as to not know reality from his own manifestations of guilt.

“Your brother was always the better one. I bet you killed him too.” Purposefully wrong, trying to pull him into this argument, he kept digging. Nightmare knew better than he did then. Young Nightmare had risen to many challenges he needn't be bothered with, but age brings wisdom, his past self having no ability to act out of the script he’d been forced to follow. He finished the grave with a wipe of his forehead.

“What do you think this does? Do you think this makes up for what you took? Our lives are not returned with this worthless ceremony.”

“Nothing will make up for what I took. I can only hope to be better going forward and to give back all that I am able.” Nightmare moved the body, staring directly at the ground, avoiding the phantom’s glares. “This place can move forward, and maybe then I can begin to.”

“As long as you are a monster, your mind will never leave this place, beast.”

“On that, we agree.” Nightmare bowed to his grave before beginning to fill it, the final task of his penance here. “But it can’t be killed easily.” The elder’s phantom considered him, before speaking carefully.

“Things borne of ourselves are the hardest to kill. We often choose to remove outside influences over those within.” Nightmare was struck with the memory of attending the elder’s many sermons. He had been a teacher as well, often giving lessons to the population for free. “But I can see its vice grip on you has loosened. What have you brought to kill it?”

“Nothing but myself and an apple.”

“Then I pray it is enough.” Nightmare finished the grave, dropping the shovel down for the last time.

“Me too.” 

The final headstone set down, he turned towards the tree stump.

Nightmare did nothing in half measures. He’d come prepared to die here if he needed to. So much of the night of the corruption was lost to the sludge, memory melted away by the power, only the spark of his brother’s positivity clear as a direct opposition to his own. But this corruption was magic, and all magic had a counter, an equal and opposite. Much of spellcraft found counters in the reverse, but how does one reverse something as horrifying as that night?

It was crude, but he tried. Night had said goodbye to Dream. He buried the villagers in reverse of the order he’d killed them. Now, he reached into the bag.

One crisp apple. It only took one to be lost.

He took it with trembling hands. It was so easy to raise to his teeth, almost calling for him to bite into the succulent skin. He closed his eye and bit down.

The corruption was acrid in his mouth. It tasted of the poison it was, but its darker temptation of power had made him bite into it again, and again, and again, until nothing remained. Anything to stop the judgement, the finger pointing, the thrown rocks, never having a place except by Dream’s side, and Dream had so many places he could fit effortlessly.

His eye flicked up to his brother, standing just under the tree, full of now blackened apples, his mouth full of the sludge he’d become, a pang of sadness at the horror on Dream’s face.

“Remember me as I was.” Then he’d grabbed the second. By the sixth, the tentacles had come alive on his back, ready to maim that which came to attack, but when he turned around, he was back in the dead world alone. His mind still pulsed with the event as if he’d lived it only a moment ago, and he couldn’t waste this opportunity.

“RAHHHHHH!” His vision blurred on the grass, tentacles furious digging a hole where no bodies lay. His body felt full, stuffed with corruption like a balloon, singeing his nerves from everything that ran black, pouring from his face directly into the hole that now was the right size. With a moment of clarity, he shoved his fingers down his throat.

He wretched endlessly, thick black corruption pouring out of him in heaves, unable to catch his breath while it left his body. It pooled and filled the hole. So much corruption, in such excess of all the magic in Nightmare’s body, his arms shook trying to hold him up. His soul burned raw, so much being torn from his entire being that it threatened to destabilize. He collapsed on his side, still spewing the poison until he passed out, unable to continue.

-

He came to gasping. His hands leapt to his throat instantly to soothe the burn. It stung, but looking forward, there was no liquid in the hole he’d collapsed beside, though what was inside was worse.

One black apple, unassuming in the otherwise empty hole. Night almost didn’t touch it.

When he reached for it, his eyes caught his hand. Pure ivory, matching the ivory arm, visible with both of his eyes.

He was free.

That aided his hand. He grabbed the apple, unafraid. Nightmare would not make the same mistake twice.

A glance around revealed more color than he’d remember seeing in ages. Flecks of green among the grass, the sky bright with a sun he hadn’t seen in eons, and a breeze of wind from time returning after so long gone. The world freed from stone could move forward, and now so could he.

His first order of business was clothes, his own ruined many times over by now. His corruption had held the poor things together, but sleeping on rocks hadn’t been kind to the soft hoodie. 

Picking through the village felt less somber now. These items would wear away with time, and he could use them. He grabbed some boots, loose pants, a purple tunic, and a worn leather bag to wear over his shoulder. Inside, a few provisions, the black apple, and a few books for his collection amongst the village, he had refused to set foot here before now.

Where to go now? He was free from his corruption, but not from himself. Nightmare himself was still an entire project he’d have to work at.

Though with his corruption lifted, it felt invigorating to have a fate of his own again.

First order of business was probably Dream. He’d left him alone for a long time, though the strange flow of time had made him lose track of exactly how much. He pulled on his magic to generate a portal.

“Fuck!” He’d reset himself back to the start. Of course he had little to work with. He’d have to ask Dream for a lift home when he got there. After a quick straightening of his back, he stepped through to wherever Dream was. He’d pulled on their connection to form the portal instead of picking a place. He walked down some sort of hallway he didn’t recognize, reaching the end of it to turn towards the noise.

Lots of eyes on him, he’d walked into a party. Probably Blue’s based on the amount and varying universes of the guests. He waved awkwardly.

“Um, hi.” He heard something shatter.

“Nightmare?” From the crowd, his brother squeezed out, bolting straight for him. Nightmare held his arms open and braced for impact.

“Yes Dream.” He managed to stay standing at his brother’s hug, but only just. He squeezed him hard enough to crack his back. “Be careful, you’re the more powerful one now.”

“I don’t care about that!” He clung to him and sobbed openly, which was really soaking up Night’s tunic, but he owed him this, rubbing his back through the tears. “I was so w-worrieeeeeed!”

“Well now you can stop worrying.” Nightmare chuckled at his over emotional brother. Then he felt the hand on his back.

“Is that really you boss?” Horror’s deep baritone reverberated down through his hand, shaking Night’s more fragile form. He mentally forgave Dream’s reaction when he turned to look at him. His hand rose to rest on Horror’s cheek, tracing under his chin to get a good look at him as he used to. His own eyes watered for the first time in decades.

“You look so well Horror. I’m...so happy...to see you.” He cried through it, holding him tight to feel the now sturdy bones underneath. He missed his boys so much. He didn’t even flinch at the sudden touch to his back, hearing Dust’s soft murmurs.

“We’re happy to see you too Nightmare.”

His soul, full of this feeling of reunion and relief, let loose tension it no longer had to hold. The future held much trial and tribulation, but it held equal amounts of moments like this, bonding and joy over simple celebrations.

Nothing but his own future.

[selkiewife]

Another perspective of the Sansa and Sweetrobin Dynamic

cw: contains mentions of rape, abuse, and sexual assault

@rhaenyra-snow I said I would tag you when I got my thoughts together. I am responding to your meta but also some of the comments and discourse I saw surrounding it. So if I get something wrong, let me know. But like I said, a large part of this is a response to the general discourse about Sansa and Sweetrobin. Obviously, you don’t have to read this, if it doesn’t interest you. It did get kind of long lol. And it’s primarily a Sansa meta. But I wanted to tag you, since you wrote the meta I am referring to. I am honestly not here to stir up any more drama, just offer another perspective of Sansa’s arc in regards to motherhood and her relationship with Sweetrobin.

First off, I completely unequivocally agree that Arya, Daenerys, and Brienne exhibit excellent maternal skills and I loved the parts of the meta that described those scenes. They were so lovely and I agree that it is a deconstruction of the typical “gnc character who isn’t maternal” trope. And I am totally here for that! For Arya specifically, as she is so compassionate and sweet and mature in the books!

And while I do think that it would be perfectly fine- and even very interesting for Sansa not to be maternal, I think it is too soon to tell that because of her age, the abusive situation she is in, and because I actually think that GRRM is doing something different in Sansa’s arc with motherhood than he is doing with Arya, Daenerys, and Brienne’s arcs. 

I think that Sansa’s situation with Sweetrobin is arguably more fucked up than the situations with Arya, Daenerys, and Pod- not their entire arcs (those are incredibly fucked up, poor children!)- just the specific “tasked with caring for a child” situation. Because even though Arya, Daenerys, and Brienne have been sexually assaulted or threatened with sexual assault, Sansa is still currently being sexually assaulted by Baelish while trying to care for her cousin, who she was almost betrothed to, who was breastfed until eight years old by Sansa’s Aunt, who Baelish murdered because she was trying to throw Sansa through the moon door... there are just a lot of fucked up levels to deal with here. There is a lot to unpack.

That being said, I am not blaming Sweetrobin at all for that. I agree that he is also dealing with PTSD. However, in real life, I would never expect a thirteen year old who is currently being sexually assaulted and groomed to be able to competently care for another child who is also dealing with PTSD, grief, etc. And I wouldn’t expect Arya, Daenerys, or Brienne to deal with it well either. If they do, that’s wonderful, but again, I wouldn’t expect it.    

The way I read it, the reason she doesn’t want Sweetrobin in her bed is because he nuzzles her breasts, trying to breastfeed- which is not his fault of course, he is seeking comfort after the death of his mother- but Sansa has a specific trigger because that is where she was groped on her forced wedding night. In the discourse, some fans were saying that Arya would let Sweetrobin sleep with her without any problems. That might be true. But whether or not Arya would allow Sweetrobin to nuzzle her in the same way isn’t really a fair measure of maternal capability because, though she is also an abuse survivor, she may have different triggers than Sansa. Recovery is different for everyone and I would never expect one abuse victim to be okay with a situation just because another abuse victim is.

That being said, I saw in a lot of the comments that people thought Sansa defenders were trying to sexualize breastfeeding. I don’t think that is true. They were saying that Sansa is being triggered. Sexual assault victims can be triggered by things that were not intended to be sexual assault. That’s what sucks about PTSD- it doesn’t care about intent. In fact, even though statistically many mothers who are survivors of molestation and sexual abuse do want to breastfeed in larger numbers than those who don’t- it still can be incredibly difficult and there are support groups and lactation therapy interventions set up specifically to offer support with this issue. That being said, she still allowed him in her room for many nights until she couldn’t take it anymore. And that is because she is compassionate to his situation. 

But even if she did not have that specific trigger, everyone has the right not to be touched if they don’t want to be- even if it is to make another person feel better. I know most people agreed with that. However, even though most fans agree with that, a lot of people were critical of the way Sansa handled getting away from her trigger- saying the way she handled the situation is proof that she is not maternal. 

I also saw people saying that Sansa was being deliberately cruel to Sweetrobin when she had his door locked. I am not going to try to defend that choice. I don’t think it was the right thing to do objectively. However, I can totally empathize with the fact that she is completely out of her depth here and does not know how to handle the situation. And like most people her age, I do not think she thought it through completely. And even then, she does let him back in her room after this incident and he sleeps with her multiple times afterwards:

He cuddled close and laid his head between her breasts. "Alayne? Are you my mother now?""I suppose I am," she said. If a lie was kindly meant, there was no harm in it.

Would Arya have made the same mistake? I agree that she would probably have been more direct. But like I said, I do think that Sweetrobin is a more difficult situation that Weasel, Missandei, or Pod. I can’t imagine any of those three children wanting to be breastfed by Arya, Daenerys, or Brienne. I also don’t remember anything described about them having horrible temper tantrums where they throw porridge bowls at people or threaten to execute people by throwing them down the moon door. I’m not saying that it is Sweetrobin’s fault- it is a result of how he was raised and how frightened and grief stricken he is- But that does make it a bit more difficult for Sansa to do the perfect motherly thing all the time in this situation. It would be hard for an adult woman to be perfect as well. Even though it is more difficult to care for Sweetrobin (through no fault of his own) Sansa is the only person that is able to do it- and people call on her to do so all the time when they can’t manage him- which I think does show that she is maternal:

"If m'lady can talk him out of bed nice," the knight said, "I won't have to drag him out." We can't have that, she told herself. 

and

"Be careful," Alayne told her. "He can hurt you, flailing. You wouldn't think so, but he can." They found a place for him, a cleft in the rock to keep him out of the cold wind. Alayne tended him until the shaking passed, whilst Mya went back to help the others cross.

This shows that she has compassion and understands that it is not his fault he has seizures. It shows that she is willing to stay and tend to him when others back off. She is also able to get him down the mountain when he is understandably terrified. 

He is afraid, she thought, and with good reason. Since his lady mother had fallen, the boy would not even stand upon a balcony, and the way from the Eyrie to the Gates of the Moon was perilous enough to daunt anyone.

"Mya will keep the mules from biting," Alayne said, "and I'll be riding just behind you. I'm only a girl, not as brave or strong as you. If I can do it, I know you can, Sweetrobin."

Alayne took Robert’s gloved hand in her own to stop his shaking.

“Sweetrobin,” she said, “I’m scared. Hold my hand, and help me get across. I know you’re not afraid.”

He looked at her, his pupils small dark pinpricks in eyes as big and white as eggs. “I’m not?”

“Not you. You’re my winged knight, Ser Sweetrobin.”

“The Winged Knight could fly,” Robert whispered. 

“Higher than the mountains.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

She makes him feel safe and she makes him feel capable. This in and of itself is an example of good mothering skills.

I said before that I think GRRM is doing something different with the maternal motifs in Arya, Daenerys, and Brienne versus Sansa. I think that in Arya, Daenerys and Brienne’s chapters the motherhood themes are there to reveal their characters- to show the readers how compassionate they are and establish them as protectors- on this we completely agree. 

I think where we disagree is that I don’t think that the motherhood theme in Sansa’s chapters are there to deconstruct her mothering skills as an individual but more to deconstruct mothering itself. Sansa is a learning character- her arc has a lot to do with unlearning the patriarchal lies she has been raised with while also learning how to survive within those constraints. She fantasized about knights and princes. So she learns the hard way that knights are not always virtuous, that handsome princes can be horrifically cruel, etc. She also fantasized about motherhood. And now she is learning that motherhood is harder than she thought. Yes mothering instinct is one thing- and Sansa’s instinct is to be compassionate to Sweetrobin. But what happens when the child is dealing with grief or has special needs, or you have no real help or you are dealing with traumatic stress yourself? Motherhood is hard as hell even for adult women who chose it, not to mention how hard it must be for girls who are Arya and Sansa’s ages. In spite of that, I do think that Sansa is rising to the occasion- not as immediately as Arya, Daenerys, or Brienne perhaps. But steadily- and I think that fits her arc since her motherhood themes are character development ones instead of character illuminating ones.

Because of this, it kind of reminds me of when people wrongly call Daenerys a bad ruler based on her ruling of Mereen. That pisses me off so much! Because Daenerys is given the most difficult ruling arc in the series. I agree wholeheartedly with the metas I have read that she is the answer to GRRM’s original question about the knitty grittiness of ruling instead of “and he ruled wisely and well.” She is an excellent ruler but her chapters are showing that ruling is fucking hard, even when you are excellent. Just as Daenerys is the answer to “he ruled wisely and well,” I think Sansa and Sweetrobin is the answer to, “she took the child under her wing and was a perfect mother to him.” Given the incredibly difficult circumstances, she is learning to be a truly excellent caretaker of him.

And look, I am not saying that Sansa is perfect! I’m not saying she is not mean spirited or petty at times. I’m also not saying that locking Sweetrobin in his room was the correct way to deal with the situation. I’m not saying any of those things. But what is compelling to me (and what I personally love about Sansa) is that she has done mean spirited things, but also extremely kind things. She is capable of sass and meanness and also true compassion. I’m genuinely not trying to erase her flaws. I know some fans do that. But fans do that with literally all the characters. I personally love her, flaws and all. I mean, I am a Theon fan first and foremost so... it doesn’t bother me when I read about her frustrations with Sweetrobin. I think it’s a realistic reaction and understandable.

And we do see that she is frustrated as hell with Sweetrobin at times, but she never lets it show- she is always sweet and soothing to him after Lysa dies. Real mothers also get extremely frustrated with their children sometimes and they strive to keep the same kind of patience that Sansa does. 

Perhaps we should view her locking him in his room as a thirteen year old abuse victim’s way of dealing with the fact that she didn’t trust herself to be sweet while voicing her frustrations with him. It was the wrong move, but she’s thirteen. Perhaps one of the actual adults in the situation could have stepped in at that point. But they don’t. And in spite of that incident, she does let him sleep with her again. She puts her own feelings aside for his. Which means that she lets him nuzzle her, even though it triggers her. It also means she gets up at night after he has a seizure to change the bed and to clean him up. This shows me that she is striving to overcome her own feelings in order to help this defenseless child. She even says here:

Why not surround him with Winged Knights? She had thought one night, after Sweetrobin had finally drifted off to sleep. His own Kingsguard, to keep him safe and make him brave.

This shows that she is continuing to let him sleep with her and also thinking about ways to protect him and give him a sense of security after he has fallen asleep. Which is incredibly maternal. Sansa is truly rising to the occasion of being motherly to Sweetrobin in spite of her triggers and her own current traumatic stress. But what is so heartbreaking is- she shouldn’t have to! And neither should Arya. They are both abused children that desperately need their own mother. So when they make mistakes with child care, I think we can view those mistakes with compassion. 

Now, I know that all I just wrote might sound ridiculous if you believe that Sansa is knowingly poisoning Sweetrobin. I personally do not take that view. I think it is just as unfounded as people who think that Daenerys will burn Kings Landing. 

I actually think that Sansa is going to eventually break out from Baelish’s manipulation and abuse and save Sweetrobin or at least try to. I think that Little Finger constantly making her an accomplice is similar to Theon with Ramsay and how he eventually saves Jeyne- but that is another meta for another time (which I do intend to write lol) and this has gotten way too long already.

Now, I could be totally wrong about all of this. As I said, this is just my interpretation- but who knows when it comes to GRRM? My faith in him has been significantly shaken based on the end of the TV series and the way he writes the sexual scenes in the books... Perhaps he is trying to say that Sansa is not maternal because she reacts the way she does to being triggered as a thirteen year old, while living in the same household as one of her abusers. But if that is the case, it is deeply misogynistic of him. 

It’s also odd that we even have to have this discussion about children caring for other children as if they were adults. Is it really fair to judge any of these characters about their maternal instincts or how they rise to the occasion of being motherly when they are all children themselves and put in such horrible situations that would be daunting for adult women? This seems to be largely on GRRM’s writing. Also the fact that we never debate how “fatherly” Jon, Robb, Theon, or Bran are, which again, possibly has to do with the writing itself. So perhaps instead of fighting each other over whose interpretation is more misogynistic, we should take a hard look at how misogynistic the writing is in and of itself. Hopefully GRRM can tie this up so that it is not as misogynistic as I fear it might be. (I truly hope so.) But that is a larger conversation to be had. 

[whentherewerebicycles]

i have to wonder if there's an implication that can be drawn the other way around wrt playfulness and stress - not that un-playful individuals experience stress more acutely, but that people who experience stress more acutely become less and less playful. i have intense, disproportionate shame/fear reactions due to Childhood Trauma(tm) and it's inhibiting as fuck - my work with my singing teacher to relax and (though i've never framed it this way) play(!) w/out embarrassment has been (1/3)

one of the most healing things for me... so i think there's this nexus of inhibition & confidence/security & perspective/scale & playfulness & resilience. to be playful you have to be a bit silly and vulnerable and willing to take a risk on doing something "wrong" i.e. not take yourself too seriously, but if you feel chronically unsafe you'll take yourself & everything else too seriously and want to do it "right" so you minimize the perceived risk of harm. going back to my singing teacher (2/3)

the most important thing she did for me was create an explicitly safe, non-judgmental environment where it's not only ok but even desirable to "fuck up" and "look/sound stupid" and to reinforce that message multiple times. so anyway that quote just made me think that "don't take things/yourself too seriously" sits at this interesting intersection between increasing playfulness & coping strategies for emotional damage. sorry to ramble about it in your ask box lol! (3/3)

*

yes I think this is so so true!! all of this, lol, but especially the part about how acute stress can make it increasingly difficult to be playful. i have written a lot about working through internalized shame here in the past, and especially about the ways that shame causes you to both physically and emotionally shut down parts of yourself. (i actually gave a talk about this subject recently! it was like, a layman’s intro to the neuroscience of shame, with a specific focus on how shame responses affect people’s ability to learn & to connect socially with others in learning spaces.) 

i do just want to clarify that the excerpt i posted was from a study that was very narrowly focused on answering the question: “is there a link between playfulness levels and positive/adaptive coping mechanisms in responding to stress?” the study wasn’t designed to answer larger questions about what kinds of life experiences might produce higher levels of playfulness vs. make it difficult to be playful (such as past trauma, not having one’s basic needs for security met, etc.). in the conclusion the authors note that their findings (i.e., that playful people seem to be more able to readily access and use positive coping mechanisms) means that we should be doing more research on how to cultivate playfulness and how to help people unlearn maladaptive coping mechanisms like self-blame. so the point of the study was not to blame individuals or place the responsibility on individual people (“if you could just lighten up, you wouldn’t be so stressed / unhappy / bad at coping!”). it was more like, an attempt to establish that playfulness (as a way of engaging with the world) seems to be associated with all of these positive ways of coping and managing stress, and so we might want to research playfulness more deeply and/or focus on cultivating it in college students.

so i think you are absolutely right that when we talk about playfulness it’s important not to think of it as something that something people just “have” or don’t have (detached from any consideration of people’s backgrounds, lived experiences, etc.). and we also want to avoid pathologizing its absence (“if you don’t have a playful attitude then there’s something wrong/flawed/messed up about you that needs to be fixed”). my research is focused on understanding how we can better create learning environments like the one your singing teacher has created for you -- i.e., spaces where people feel more secure and less vulnerable to scathing or hypercritical judgment; where failures and mistakes are encouraged & normalized as a natural, healthy part of the learning experience; where instructors are modeling self-compassion and deliberately not using shame-based methods; and just in general, where students are getting the kind of gentle, compassionate, consistent messaging you describe receiving from your teacher. basically I’m interested in creating classrooms that provide the stability and consistency people need in order to learn adaptive coping mechanisms that will serve them well outside of those learning spaces.

i think these questions are so important because most college instructors are VERY aware that our students come into our classrooms carrying many different kinds of trauma—whether it’s the more extreme forms that we tend to think of when we think about trauma (childhood abuse, sexual assault, trauma experienced by combat veterans or refugees from warzones), or the forms of pervasive lowgrade trauma associated with financial precarity, racialized stress, etc., or even just the “lighter” or harder-to-classify forms of trauma that rachel naomi remen calls “the cultural shadow” (i.e., the toxic dominant culture that many of us grow up immersed in). and anyone who has taught at the college level (or taught any age level) knows that as a teacher you often have to at least temporarily play aspects of counselor / social worker / person adept at navigating university bureaucracy to help keep students in crisis from slipping through the cracks. (that is obviously NOT ideal, as those roles should be filled by trained professionals! but we have all been in those situations, where you are the first line of support for a student in crisis, or sometimes the last line of support because they have slipped through the giant holes in our country’s social safety nets.)

i think there’s been a shift in recent years towards “trauma-informed pedagogy,” but the slightly watered-down version of this approach many instructors receive tends to be very focused on mitigating harm in the classroom (ie, avoiding certain things or framing material in certain ways so as to avoid re-traumatizing students). this work is obviously HUGELY important (and my own research project is v much informed by it!). but i sometimes feel like these approaches are very damage-centered, ie very focused on understanding how students are “damaged” by their experiences and how we can “prevent further damage” in the classroom space. again, wanting to adopt teaching practices that avoid retraumatizing students is a good thing!!! but i think what i am hoping my work can do is suggest that we can and should strive for more than just limiting damage. to put this another way: i’m looking for ways to go beyond asking “how can we avoid re-traumatizing students in our classrooms?” to thinking more broadly about how we (as teachers, mentors, etc) can design learning environments and learning experiences that help students grow into healthier, happier, more emotionally resilient versions of themselves—and hopefully help build a foundation of social-emotional skills that they will take with them into their adult lives.

play is not the sole "answer” or solution! but i think that for me, it’s been one useful way to think about things like trauma-informed teaching, restorative practices, and social-emotional mentoring strategies, in ways that center a more positive, joyful understanding of what happy and emotionally well-adjusted adulthood can look/feel like. does that make sense?? i think about cultivating playfulness as just one angle onto answering these questions, or as one approach or set of strategies that people could have in their toolkits as they think about how we design learning environments. it won’t work for all students or all teachers or all learning environments, and it won’t solve all of the problems in higher ed (or in a culture where traumatic experiences are so prevalent and yet are so often left unacknowledged and untreated). but i think for me at least it’s been one generative way to reimagine some of the common structures and norms that structure higher ed learning environments.

anyway sorry to use your ask as a springboard into a long “thinking aloud” post!! but i really enjoyed reading your thoughts and i feel like it’s prompted me to articulate some thoughts that have just been sort of murkily floating around in my mind for the last couple weeks. i am also so glad for you that you have a space in your own life (and a trusted teacher figure) where you feel secure & can practice and explore being vulnerable, making mistakes, being silly/playful, etc. it sounds like she is a really wonderful teacher, and it’s so cool too that you are able to describe the ways in which that learning space has felt healing or healthy for you.

[ambrosialips]

I really should be sleeping right now. I've got a ton to do and I need to wake up early, and yet it's 3 am and I'm about to spill my thoughts and feelings in my notes like I'm running some famous self-care blog that focuses on my healing journey. If I'd do that, I wonder what other stuff I'd post? Maybe recipes, top 10 favourite Crystals?? Witchcraft 101 or just best artsupplies for a begginer, if that would even exist, I mean no matter the art supplies a begginer is still a begginer.

I think I'll write about letting go, about releasing people , relationships and parts of yourself that no longer serve you, looking at the strings attaching your heart space to those specific people or feelings, habits or cycles and deciding that you're better off without them, or that the time has come for the two of you to go your separate ways, for your lessons have your learned and journey together ended. Since a few weeks now, I started releasing people, friends I once knew and loved. I guess our journey together ended, or they managed to teach me the lessons that the universe was dying to teach me. It's quite funny actually, it all started with someone I once loved and held in my heart so dearly proving to be nothing than a false person...someone who wished me ill, or just hated me for no concrete reason. Tarot mentioned that they felt frustrated, envious, jealous because my growth has been paying off and I might have been doing better than them, so they lashed out and started sending me negativity. They weren't like that all the time, they never acted like that before, never insulted me for no reason, never tried to pick a fight with me for no reason, never acted negative, at least not in front of me or with me. I am proud of the way that I handled the situation though, I tried my best to stay calm and collected, stand my ground and tried to calmly talk to them. I did get annoyed at one point and made a snarky comment, but for the most part my growth was able to show. In the past I would have started yelling, insulting them back, being negative and hurt, while now, or at least a few weeks ago I tried my best to avoid conflict and be calm.

After the pointless "conflict" I was left hurt. Hurt and angry that someone that I cared for so much proved to be nothing other than guest at a masquarde ball who just so happened to drop their mask at the wrong time. I made sure to make my feelings clear to my friends. Where getting your feelings out is good, I could have been a bit more mature about it, but nonetheless that experience and those feelings have been processed and I wish them well. I wish them good luck on their evolution and love and light, because at the end of the day, we're all on different stages of healing , some more immature who still hold to negative feelings and unprocessed emotions and events, and others who learned to accept what happened and let go, releasing what no longer serves them in their life purpose and who let themselves process and feel their emotions, then release the negative ones as well, and others who are doing that right now(good luck to you guys , I know how hard that is). We can't hate the people on low vibrations for being low vibrational, all we can really do is wish them well and wish them low and wish them healing just like others did to us.

Soon after that, I started looking at my others friendships, even at my group of friends at the time, and slowly understood that the environment and people weren't the best for me. Maybe I've outgrown them, maybe I've healed enough to work on a higher vibrations, or maybe I was just blind to the red flags and didn't see how toxic some of the interactions were, but nonetheless I let them go, I released those relationships because they didn't serve me anymore and kept on wishing them love and light and healing, because all of them deserve to heal and be happy. After releasing them I was quite alone, not lonely though. I slowly started doing better, feeling better, getting into a better mindset. The alone time and release of negativity really helped me focus on myself and growing. Started releasing more toxic habits and mindsets, continued to release toxic and negative people from my life, learned to put boundaries and what I really want in a friendships. I recently found out the reality of 2 connections from my life, these people didn't drop their masks, let's just say that I found out who they were through a little bit of help, a mirror and some magic, and as much as it saddened me, I let them go, still wishing them love and light and happines and good luck in their evolution.

A lot of things happened in almost two months, guess that my full moon releasing really helped. With finding the truth about so many people and connections I've also understood something else that's quite important in my opinion. The idea of revenge. Looking back on how my younger self would have seeked it, wanting to let them know how it feels instead of being the more mature one, wishing them well and trusting the universe that they will get what they deserve kind of saddens me. Revenge feels like such a negative concept now, going your way to hurt somebody because they hurt you, trying to "make it even" instead of understanding the situation and trying to learn and grow from it seems pointless. Why burden yoruself with all that negativity that will only harm you more than try healing.

Over all, letting go and releasing can be a tough thing to do, but also a really important one. It's hard letting go of people that you love because you understood that they no longer had a place in your life, or that they were toxic or only using you for the things that you had to offer, like the best advice for every situation, yes that was a petty exemple from my personal life, finding out that hurt, but it's important to do it so you can progress , heal, get better and live a happier life instead if being stagnant, letting them bring you down or only holding to the connection until it becomes toxic or you have a horrid fallout. Releasing habits and toxic patterns feels even harder, because im order for you release them you have to firstly recognise them. Recognise that you're being toxic to other people or that some of the things you do are self destructive, but that you re too afraid of change to let them go, but yet again, letting them go makes so much room for healing and bettering yoruself and for a better life.

I've had people saying that they relate to these little vents and thoughts and feelings of mine, so for the people that are too afraid to release, or that are struggling to release people and habits and destructive behaviours and patterns, put yourself first. Put your well-being first. Put your happiness first. I know it's hard trust me I do, but what helps me the most is thinking about my goal , thinking about who I want to be, thinking about why I'm doing this. My goal is to heal, to heal my traumas , doesn't matter if it's generational or gained in this life. My goal is to fully love myself and to be happy. My goal is to become the best version of myself, my most authentic self and all I've been doing for the past one or two years is workings towards that. That meant losing people, gaining new ones, letting go of the ones that were negative and toxic and learning to also enjoy time by myself. It meant facing myself and admitting the fact that I couldn't live the way I was living anymore , that I couldn't feel depressed and just wonder if I'll leave until highschool. That meant starting to cry while facing the bathroom mirror because I complimented myself for the first time in years. That meant unlearning all the pain and hurt that others thought me, and teaching myself love and happiness and how to take care of myself.

If you have something to release, remember your goal. Put yourself first and send them love as you continue to grow and mature

[blake-belladonna-defence-force]

Dear Little Me...

Recently, I’ve been struggling. Struggling with the fact that, looking back on my childhood, I was left with more scars than I thought. That it had far more impact on me and who I am today.

I spent a good portion of the other day traversing through my memories and coming to terms with the fact that I was hurting as a child.

Today... I came across this and decided to give it a go. As a way to let go of the past hurt. To validate myself. And maybe even as a reminder, not just to myself but to anyone that might need to remember that we are worthy of love and kindness and gentleness.

So... here it is. A letter to little me... and maybe, some of you can take a message away from it too.

Hey, Kiddo.

So this is me talking. Um… to start off… I’m nonbinary. No wonder we despised the clothes mum got for us, eh?

So… most people call me Defence these days… and yes, by that, I do mean my friends. And before you ask, yes, you find yourself friends one day. Friends that remind you that they care about you. Friends who never make you question whether or not you matter. Friends who see your flaws and your quirks, who see how different you are and still love you.

Do you know why?

Because you deserve it. Just as much as anyone else.

You do, I promise you that you do, hun. I know that you think you don’t. I know you think that the way your peers treat you is normal. I know that you think that the way your so-called “friends” treat you is normal but believe me… it isn’t.

It is not okay for them to question how devoted you are to the group just because you’d rather sit and listen because you just like listening to them talk.

It is not okay for them to make plans in front of you every single day but never invite you, excluding you from things that you so desperately want to be a part of but are too scared to ask for.

It is not okay for them to dangle their friendship in front of you but only let you get so clos, snatching it away when you behave in a way that they don’t like.

No, they’re not obligated to love you. No, they’re not obligated to spend time with you. They don’t have to invite you anywhere. They don’t owe you shit, to be quite frank.

But to make plans in front of you, to ignore you, to shower each other with affection while you’re forced to watch isn’t okay. To make you question why you’re not good enough for them isn’t okay. To slowly isolate you from them instead of being honest with you isn’t okay. To make their friendship, their love, conditional isn’t okay.

And the thing that hurts me now, kiddo, is I know how much that killed you. I know how much it chipped away at your soul and heart every goddamn day. I know how much you wanted to be a part of that. I know that you loved your friends fiercely. And I know that when you finally left the group… you may as well have not even existed. You discovered the truth that day, little one. You discovered that you didn’t matter. That you were nothing to them.

And it happened time and time again. Because you were different. Because you weren’t normal. Because you didn’t match up with what they wanted from you. Because you were a weirdo that spent more time with her nose buried in a book, content to listen to her friends because their happiness made her happy. Because you just didn’t understand social connections like they did. Because it was harder for you to connect to people your age.

And the worst part is… I know what you’re thinking right now. You think that this is okay. You think that this is normal. You think that love and friendship and affection is unobtainable to you. That you’re not allowed to have it. That you don’t deserve it. That you’re not worthy of it.

And it kills me that you’re going to feel this way for 23 years. It hurts knowing that you’re going to get your heart broken over and over and over again.

It hurts knowing that you question why anyone would be friends with you. Why anyone would love you. Why would they even tolerate you.

It hurts knowing that one day… hearing a friend say “I love you” is going to overwhelm you and leave you wondering “why?”

It hurts knowing that you think that you’re better off alone. That you’re meant to be alone.

And dear fucking Christ above, kid. It breaks my heart knowing that you can’t even look at any reflective surface because you can’t stand to look at the girl nobody wants to be friends with. That you hate yourself. That you wonder every single day what you’d done wrong.

It hurts knowing that you believe people when they say that you don’t care enough. That you’re heartless.

But let me tell you this… you didn’t do anything wrong, my love. You might not always know how to show it or maybe the way you show is just different or maybe you’re just not good at emoting… but you have a heart. You do care. You care so much and have so much affection for your friends that it bubbles up inside your chest and you feel like you’re going to explode because there’s just so much. It overwhelms you… but it’s only a bad feeling when you know they don’t even like you. When you know that they care right back? It’s very comforting.

And that love that you think you’re not worthy of? That friendship that you think you don’t deserve? I need you to know that you do. You are so, so worthy of it all. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You’re just different and that’s okay.

And here’s a little secret… one day… you’re going to get a haircut. You’re going to change your hair colour. You’re going to dress how you want to dress… and when you do? You are going to have the biggest, dopiest grin on your face when you look in a mirror and for the first time in your life you’ll like what you see and you’ll say “I feel handsome. I like me. This is good.” And it will be. Because you’ll finally be looking at you, not the person everyone wants you to be.

You’ll make friends who care about you. Friends who you care about you so much. Friends who make you feel wanted and loved. Friends that slowly help you unlearn all of the horrible lessons that your school years taught you. And you’ll help them in return. You’ll support each other. Tease each other. Annoy the utter shit out of each other. Be utter gremlins to each other. Scream at each other when you’re not taking care of yourselves. And it comes from a place of mutual fondness, which is very nice.

I know you don’t believe me. You still think that you don’t deserve it. That you’re too broken to have it. That you’re not allowed to have it. That’s okay. You take your time. Hell, I’m still learning to accept it myself! But there’s something else I want to tell you before I go. Something that has been a long time coming.

Are you ready?

I love you, little me. I do. I love you for your quiet nature. I love you when you get loud and excited and don’t know how to wait your turn to speak because of this really cool thing you learned! I love you when you’re shy. I love you when you just want to sit in your room and read. I love you when you think that no one else does. I love all of your quirks and I love you through your flaws. I love you when you’re being a little shit. I still love you when you fuck up and make mistakes, even when those mistakes hurt people. I love how you learn from them. I love how sensitive you are in a world that demands you to be cold and uncaring and harsh. I love your creativity and how you make dumb jokes just to make other people smile and laugh. I love that you’re clumsy because it’s a part of who you are. I love that you love so fiercely, even though it fucking terrifies you because you know it’s just going wind up with another broken heart. I love your strength that you think you don’t have. I love the bravery that you think you lack.

I love you, kid. I’m just sorry that it took me nearly 24 years to say it to you.

I won’t lie. We’re still hurting. Still healing. We have a lot of bad days. But the good days more than make up for them. I don’t always love myself and sometimes, often, I’m not very nice when I speak to myself. But this is me reaching out to you. This is me taking a step forward. This is me looking back at the hurt and scared little girl I used to be and smiling reassuringly.

Because believe you me, kiddo… we’re going to be okay.

That’s a promise that I intend on keeping.

You’re going to hurt. You’re going to lose people. You’re going to watch somebody very important to you fade away to illness and you’re going to grieve for them. You are going to be so strong and so brave for that, no matter what you think. It’s not easy, this road that we walk. But it’s ours and we’re not entirely alone. We have our family and one day, we’ll have our friends.

Chin up, baby girl. Keep those eyes open. Keep breathing and taking it one step at a time. Take as many breaks as you need to. Because one day… you’re going to make it to my point in the road and you’re going to look back and say “Holy shit. I did it!”

We’re not always kind to ourselves… but I am proud of you. I love you. And I promise that I won’t give up on you.

Promise that you won’t give up on me?

And I know it’s your birthday this month. I know you don’t like your birthday, even less after what happened with mum. But it’s okay to let go. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to laugh and smile and giggle as the people in your life celebrate you.

You deserve it. Because without you, I wouldn’t be in the amazing place I am now.

So… Happy Birthday, little me. You’re more loved than you think you deserve and I can’t wait until you see what’s in store for you.

Spoiler alert; you’re happy. Still sad, still have bad days, still spiral. But you’re happier than you have been for many years. That’s something to look forward to, my dear.

I’ll leave you here… but just know that the future is brighter than you think.

Lots of love,

Older you.

P.s… try shopping in the men’s section. Our non-binary ass will appreciate it 😉

[smallnico]

(Since you said you also struggle with it) Do you have any tips regarding not letting your anxiety-induced control issues making you a bad friend? Or being controlling of others?

sure! sorry for the late response btw, i’ve been swamped and haven’t felt really able to compose the long answer a question like this kind of deserves. as with all advice-based asks i receive, mind that i’m not a professional, i only speak from my own experience and from things i’ve learned during counseling sessions for my own mental health. ultimately, depending on how severely the issues you’re talking about affect your wellness and relationships, you should try to find a professional who can learn more about your personal experiences and guide you on a more personal journey of self-reflection and self-improvement. but i can definitely give some general tips, and will do so!

i think, in order to learn how to keep control issues in check, we all need to understand the nature of control. 

control is something the universe will never let us have in the abundance we need to feel safe. there are things in our lives we can control in certain situations, like what we have for dinner, or what colour our walls are, but there are situations where these things are out of our control too -- say you’re having dinner at a friend’s and they’re making the dinner, or you live in a rent-controlled apartment with a landlord who likes beige on tan. being able to control something in a messy situation gives us a sense of stability and certainty, because no matter what other unpredictable thing happens, at least we know what colour the walls are. at least we know what we’re having for dinner. it’s an anchor in a panic attack. when we feel like the world we know is crumbling around us, at least we have something to hold on to.

of course, with control issues inevitably comes the question of just how much needs to be under control in order for us to feel safe. severity varies. say someone has ocd, for instance, and absolutely needs to check their purse for their wallet and keys 20 times in order to feel control over whether or not they’ll be locked out of the house. say someone has long-developed abandonment issues and absolutely needs to know where their friends are at all times, so they know those friends are coming back. the hardest thing for anyone with control issues to accept, regardless of their severity, is that we cannot have control all the time. to a certain degree, we can’t always control even our own actions, our emotions, our successes and failures. we may gain control, but we will lose it at some point, and it’s scary when that happens, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. it’s just a fact of life, and it’s one that every single person in the world has to deal with, regardless of whether they have control issues. 

control is safety. control is sitting in a chair. losing control is the chair being yanked out from under you, whether by another person, by an earthquake, or by any means. suddenly we’re falling, we don’t know if it’ll hurt, and we’re just scrambling for anything to get us back in that chair, if it’s even still there, maybe injuring ourselves more in the process. but accepting that the chair, by whatever means, is gone, means we land on the ground. we get our bearings, we examine the ground, we examine our own pain -- are we hurt? is it bad? is it fine? -- we learn about where the chair went, and then, if the ground has stopped shaking, we stand up again and figure out where to go from here. losing control is scary, but letting go of the need for control frees us to adapt to new situations, examine new feelings, learn what’s really causing the problems in our lives. after all, if someone pulls a chair out from underneath us, the chair isn’t the problem, the problem is the person. they could’ve asked permission, but maybe they wanted to see us fall.

to wring this extended metaphor dry, say the person does ask for permission before taking the chair. they need it for something, but we’re using it. it’s comfortable. it’s our only chair. but this person is being considerate towards us, they’re asking us to make a sacrifice. remember, the chair is a feeling of control, of safety. how big of a sacrifice are they asking of us? really, it depends on how badly we need the chair. and when we think of control (this time more broadly, we’ve successfully escaped the metaphor) as something inherently temporary, something we don’t absolutely need to find happiness and safety, it becomes a lot less of an ask when our friends tell us to back off a bit. it also becomes easier to conceive of a world where we don’t need stability to make our own certainty. 

and speaking of which, there’s another part of your ask that’s catching me. i don’t know the term of art for it, but when you say “anxiety-induced control issues make you a bad friend”, you’re labelling. the more we call ourselves something, the more we start to identify with it -- the more we insist that a certain bad/flawed action makes us a bad person, the more we identify ourselves as a bad person, and the less agency we assign to that bad/flawed action. if control issues make us bad friends, then being bad friends means we have control issues, etc. etc., and ultimately it becomes harder to separate the bad habits from our self-perception, and those habits then become harder to unlearn because suddenly we’re carving something out of our identity. we won’t be the same person anymore. we don’t know this new person, and the unknown is scary. then, we blame ourselves for our inability to overcome our “””inherent flaws”””, and we’re a bad person, we’re a bad friend, we’re never going to get better, we’re trapped here alone while the world rushes past and forgets us.

i hope i don’t need to tell anyone that that’s a problematic mindset to work oneself into. if i do, it is. and it really may not seem like that slippery of a slope, but once we get used to the holistic paradigm that People Are What They Do, the harder it becomes to forgive and love them in spite of their flaws, and that includes ourselves. making mistakes does not make us mistakes -- it makes us human, and that’s just how it be. not to sound too much like a therapist, because again it isn’t my job and i have no training, but the process of self-reflection and self-improvement becomes a hell of a lot easier when we stop blaming our souls for our behaviour. when we give in to our control issues, we’re acting out of a desperate need to stop feeling afraid, vulnerable. but fear, like all emotions, is temporary. it’s also part of being human. we can’t stop feeling afraid -- and it isn’t our fault that we can’t stop feeling afraid -- but we can, through certain physical and mental actions, be there for ourselves while we wait for the fear to go away on its own. i recommend any material on mindfulness and self-compassion by a woman named Kristen Neff for more on that kind of thing. but i digress.

some more specific situational tips for not lashing out at friends that i’ve personally used in my life:

- accept and then embrace that losing control and lashing out is going to happen every now and again no matter what you do. the pressure to be perfect is so unhelpful in recovery situations that it frequently actively and remorselessly makes those situations worse. again -- making mistakes is okay. you’re still on the right track, and it’s better for the train to arrive slowly after a long and shitty journey than to never arrive at all. - ask your friends to tell you when you’re making them uncomfortable. pick a safeword, something uninflammatory -- mine is “buttercup” -- and the hardest but most necessary part: when your friends use the safeword, don’t punish them for it. it isn’t an attack, they don’t want to hurt you, it’s just your cue to step back and take a nice bath or make a sandwich or wrap yourself in a blanket and practice some deep breathing. trust that the fear will be over soon. - after a lot of practice, you may find yourself recognizing your own behaviour and stepping back automatically. my friends almost never “buttercup” me anymore, because i don’t find myself reaching for control when i’m anxious -- i find myself closing my computer and making some hot chocolate and running a bath. taking a break. exercise works really well here. - this one’s kind of risky because of the self-destructive coping mechanisms a lot of people turn to to solve this problem, so tread carefully and compassionately. if you really need control such that you have to wean yourself off of it, do it like you’re trying to quit smoking. find a nicotine patch -- a smaller thing to control, like cleaning your room, washing a dish by hand, baking a cake, organizing your bookshelves. whatever works for you, just make sure you aren’t hurting yourself. the intention here isn’t to create a new problem for you to solve to distract from the old one, or to test your self-control. it’s specifically to feel a progressively smaller sense of relief to teach yourself just how inconsequential control can be in the grand scheme of things. that it can just be one of many positive feelings. after all, when cleaning your room comes with the benefit of being in a clean room, it’s not all about control, is it? - talk to your friends about the problem. try to ask first if you need to vent -- sometimes people aren’t in a good place to be vented to, and they deserve to be able to say ‘not right now’ without it being a huge deal -- but more importantly than that is that you talk to your friends about control issues when you aren’t actively spiralling. talking about what’s wrong in a considerate, self-compassionate, reflective way is obstructively hard to do when you’re in the middle of it -- at least, until you’ve had practice. don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help practicing self-reflection when your need isn’t urgent and they’re available. - don’t teach yourself to put your head down and deal with a lack of control. if it’s something you hate but put up with, then a lack of control is still, emotionally, a problem that needs solving, only now its presence inspires misery. think of what i said way earlier in this response: we have control way less often than we have it, just naturally. what you do instead of learning to tolerate that, is you learn to appreciate surprises. unpredictability is one of the most fun things about getting to know the world -- you never know what it’s going to do next, which means there’s always something new to explore. by teaching yourself to look for things to love in surprises, mistakes, unforeseen circumstances, not only does it change the world you see into a kinder and more fun place by default, it also provides the contrast you need to recognize when a situation really, actually is that bad, and something needs to be done to fix it. sure a storm knocked the power out and i can’t finish that assignment by the due date, but i know my professor isn’t a total asshole, so i’ll just let them know what’s up and in the meantime, look for ways to pass the time. i don’t know when the power’s going to come back, but now i have lights and heat and a book, so i’m good. the problems i actually have are the food in the freezer and the possibility of flooding. ultimately, we do what we can and accept what we can’t. (plus, it’s a lot easier to find somewhere moderate when you aim high and are okay with not getting there. you’ll probably never go “yay! the inexorable forces of chaos are at it again!”, but you might learn to laugh off missing the bus, which is already pretty great.) - at the very least, appreciate that you’re not responsible for other people’s decisions. ultimately, that’s their call, and accepting their call as their call means you don’t have to feel like their bad decisions are your fault. there are literally no downsides to this. if someone else decides to blame you for their bad decisions, they’re wrong. the only thing you’re responsible for in that situation is how you decide to respond to it. (and again, it’s okay to make the wrong decision. really, it is. all that matters is you be compassionate to yourself, reflect on the damage caused, try to fix what you can, and resolve to learn from the situation.) - look up kristen neff. really, do it. she has a couple of pretty great ted talks on youtube. 

i, for one, find comfort in not knowing all the answers. paradoxically, embracing uncertainty and unpredictability makes me feel more secure, because i know that next to nothing is under my control, and if something unpredictable happens, i’m comfortable knowing i wasn’t responsible for it. i can’t know everything, and trying to know everything is a recipe for a panic attack, because it means i’m going out of my way to pile onto the list of things i have to keep track of or else it’s my fault if they go wrong, regardless of if there’s anything i could’ve actually done. i spend so much energy trying to stay in the goddamn chair that i completely lose track of everything in my surroundings that actually matters. grabbing for a sense of control at all costs completely blinds me to real problems and real contentment, which then makes me feel even less in control than before. it’s a no-win situation. better for us to embrace that control really isn’t worth all the fuss and go on with our lives.

i hope this could help, or at least offer some perspective!

[des-draws]

1-A autistic hcs!

Alright it’s already past midnight here but. I’m still posting this.

Back in my 1-A pride hcs post I also mentioned my autistic hcs, and said I might elaborate on them in April. But because I am a master of procrastination, of course I left it for last minute. 

But either way, here you go; over 3k of projection and infodumping. I’m gonna leave an AO3 link in the replies if it’s easier for you to read there.

(general tw for some mentions of ableism, and specifically tw for ableism/child abuse/ende*vor in the very first bulletpoint)

Todoroki

Ende*vor absolutely refused to believe that there could be something “wrong” with the one supposed to surpass All Might, and so he ignored any and all traits Todoroki would show, punished him for the ones he couldn’t ignore, and chalked up the meltdowns he caused him to Todoroki being a brat.

As such, Todoroki spent a lot of his life masking and hiding and suppressing himself.

Thankfully, much like with everything else, after moving to the dorms he’s starting to unlearn all that internalized shit and instead accept himself for who he is- including indulging in suppressed stims, special interests and other autistic behaviours in a safe, accepting environment. 

He’s found that cold soba is apparently a samefood for him- he knew he liked it enough to eat it all the time without getting bored of it (not that he actually does, since with their hero training a balanced, diverse diet is important), but he didn’t know there was a word for that.

Monotone voice and trouble with facial expressions, you know how it goes. He actually tries to use the “correct” tone and make the “correct” expression, if only so that the people he’s supposed to protect don’t think of him as “aloof”, but he gets easily tired of going back to the masking. He cares, he cares so much, this is just not one of the ways of showing it that comes to him naturally.

Can people please stop talking in metaphors and idioms around him and expect him to know the translation to everything. Thank you.

He’s reluctantly letting himself indulge in his recently discovered special interest on a certain manga series; he’s been buying the volumes, and at some point Sero found him reading one and they started bonding over it. Now Todoroki goes to Sero when he feels like infodumping- though, he has to be careful not to spoil anything. Sero is a way behind since he doesn’t go through the volumes like someone’s chasing him. He has, however, helped Todoroki make a blog where he can infodump about it, spoilers and all. He’s quickly becoming “fandom famous”, Sero says- and even though Todoroki’s not sure what that means yet, he’s very happy to see others as into the series as he is.

Iida gives him stim and fidget toys all the time- Todoroki is reluctant to keep them as the other says, since he could buy them himself, but Iida insists. Todoroki especially likes the tangles. He’s building himself quite the collection.

He’s also invested in some high-quality sound-cancelling headphones. Long overdue, but better late than never.

Favorite stim: TBA, although clenching his fists around his thumbs is something he’s always done- even before he had a name for it, or knew why it was so comforting. 

Midoriya

His special interests are Quirks and All Might (the Hero Persona™ rather then the person)! He can infodump about different quirks and theories on how to use them and “what if x quirk exists how would that work” for hours. He’s spent entire evenings arguing on forums about which of All Might’s hero outfits was most efficient and useful for what was needed. Inko, on more than one occasion, had to lure him out of his room with the promise of a rare comic book so he would eat something.

On that same vein, he is appalled by some of his classmates’ hero costumes. He’s too polite to be that crass about it out loud, but in his brain he’s always going “what in the everloving fuck is this???? Who let a teenager go into battle naked???? Did she just go ‘oh yea give me a pair of gloves and boots and I’m set’ and they let her??? Who agreed to this?? Nothing tracking her vitals, nothing keeping her warm in fucking December????? This is just irresponsible”

So you can imagine the rants he goes into when one of them does ask him for advice on how to update their costume.

He likes visual stims a lot- you know that thing where you shut your eyes and wave a bright phone screen in front of them? He loves that

Having trouble emotionally regulating means lots of crying. Not a bad thing, just. A thing. That a lot of people don’t expect when they first meet him.

Inko has always tried her best to accommodate him, but there’s only so much to do when they’re just getting by. He’s very understanding though. She gets into making DIY stim toys for him, and as he grows up he joins in and it’s a very pleasant pastime for the two of them (to the point that he’d rather keep them as mementos of the time spent together than use them for stimming).

Favorite stim: Hand-flapping and back-and-forth rocking!! Classic and good!

Iida

No volume control we die like men (he’s trying to work on it but a lot of the time he’s louder than he realizes. His friends never fault him for it tough.)

Always loved putting his toys in a line- lines are neat! Don’t you see how tidy everything looks now? This is fun! Unfortunately, kids his age didn’t have the same opinion and just chalked it up to him being a “neat freak”.

The kind to separate his food into sections. He had to get used to eating with company in school, since no one wanted to sit with him during lunchtime before, lest they be subjected to his “bizarre eating habits”.

His family is, thankfully, very supportive and accommodating. They were a little worried when he moved into the dorms, but he reassured them that his classmates are just as accepting and understanding. And besides, he’s not the only “out” neurodivergent kid around anymore!

Has copied the language habits of his parents around Important Customers and never stopped. No one in his family talks quite as formally as he does in casual settings, but hey, better to be too formal than too informal and be considered rude, right?

Owns quite the collection of stim toys. Cubes, squishies, tangles, slime, kinetic sand- you name it, he has it! It’s not so much for himself, since he has a few favorites and sticks to them, but keeps the rest more so for anyone else that might need them.

He’s partial to the fidget pen- he likes fidget cubes too, but they’re usually a little small for his hands and harder to work with.

Doesn’t use memes quite right, but is always eager to learn where they originated from. Kaminari (always good-heartedly) never misses an opportunity to explain them to him, and gets so proud when one of Iida’s attempts lands.

He was kind of worried he’d look out of place on stage in the Cultural Festival, but with his friends reassuring him it’s alright, not only did he go out there, but had lots of fun as well!

Very routine focused. He loses half an hour of sleep and he’s already thinking about re-structuring his entire schedule.

Orange juice is a samefood. That boy need his orang juice

Special interest in the mechanics that go into hero costumes and quirk-assisting gadgets. It’s why he was so eager to accept help from Hatsume during the sports festival (he has mixed feelings about this one), and he’s sure they would work well together if only she stopped trying to make him a test subject.

It’s also something he and Midoriya can spend hours going back and forth about. Iida doesn’t usually lose track of time, but he can’t help it when such an interesting conversation is happening!

Screw “quiet hands”. In this house we wave our hands around intensely enough to almost smack someone (“but not actually smack them!! Always be aware of your surroundings!!”)

Favorite stim: Believe it or not, running! The wind resistance, the stomp of his feet, is all Very Good!!

Kirishima

He used to chew stuff a lot- first as a way to get used to his new, sharper teeth, and then because he just liked how very stimmy it is! But he’d also chew stuff that’s not really supposed to be put your mouth so his moms helped him find healthier stim alternatives, since actual chewelry were either a) not stimmy enough, b) wrong texture or c) destroyed too quickly and he’d just go back to chewing unhealthy stuff.

Since he’s grown enough to not go through chewelry at a breakneck pace, he keeps a couple at hand for when he’s studying- helps him focus! He was kinda embarrassed to bring one to his and Bakugou’s study sessions at first, but after Bakugou admitted that he’s also autistic he started keeping one on his person during them- assuring the other that he’s taking proper care of washing it and everything.

He used to bite on his hands as well- still does when he's under extreme stress (imagine summer camp/AFO showing up at Kamino levels of stress) even though he's grown out of it for the most part.

Hyper-Empathy Station. Makes him good with people (and animals) but leaves him exhausted more often than not.

“Hey don’t you get tired of sticking your hair up like that every d-” “It’s routine bro you can’t just quit it that would be chaos”

Whether he wears it up or not, his hair always seems to be a very good tactile stim, both for him and, surprisingly, Bakugou. When it’s up, the pointy spikes are very satisfying to run one’s hands over, just rough enough to slightly scratch the palm, but just light enough to not completely bring them down. When it’s down, Bakugou doesn’t miss an opportunity to touch it, which works for Kirishima too, since having people run their fingers through his hair is very relaxing to him.

He Cannot handle kinetic sand and most slimes. It either feels grainy and dry or too wet and sticky. The crunchy sound sand makes when it’s cut is like nails on a chalkboard in his head. It’s just not for him.

Gullible. Please be nice to him he just wants to believe in the good in everyone

Special interest on Crimson Riot!! I mean, come on; basing his hero persona on him, naming himself after him? Turning to interviews of his in moments of doubt and uncertainty, finding comfort in media about him? Yeah

Has a couple Comfort Sweaters™ and a single comfort plushie- a shark one, the first gift his Ma got him when she met his mom. It’s been patched and stitched up dozens of times, and barely holds itself together, which is why he never takes it out of its safe place in the closet unless he’s seriously in need for some comfort and has already exhausted all other options.

Bro, We Are Autistic . Its Ok To Stim Around Me . Im Ur Best Friend . I Love You . ... Bro, We Are Infodump ing Now . . No Dont Stop Bro .. Bro ...

Favorite stim: Bumping his hardened fists together!! Sometimes he’ll simply rub his hardened knuckles back and forth together- it’s more discreet, and while not as satisfactory, still good for emotional regulation.

Bakugou

Branded a problem child early on, Bakugou had the majority of his meltdowns called “tantrums” instead. So he decided that if everyone treats him like a brat, he might as well be one.

Even before he started losing his hearing, he had some auditory processing issues- which is why he hates hates hates when Midoriya mutters (and similarly, why he didn’t immediately turn his back to Kirishima- the guy talks loud and clear like 95% of the time. Bakugou can appreciate that, even if he won’t say it).

Face blindness is inconvenient as all hell, which is why he gives people ridiculous nicknames: connecting names to faces is difficult enough, and at the beginning he doesn’t really care to try and memorize them anyway, so he just finds a prominent characteristic to remember each of them by. 

[Insert Smart Guy Meme] “You can’t be deceived by fake politeness and sarcastic compliments if you react aggressively to everything people say to you”

Loves his routine and having everything planned. If you drag him into something out of nowhere and disrupt his schedule he will be mad at you for a week minimum (something his friends found out the hard way)

Prolonged human interaction is absolutely exhausting, more than any quirk training exercise, and he gets cranky at the speed of light when he reaches his limit. As time goes on he does find a few people (first Kirishima and then progressively the rest of the Bakusquad) that aren’t as exhausting for him to be around for longer and longer. He still needs his alone time, but now he knows that he can recharge around them as well, if he feels like having company.

Drumming is Very Good stim-wise. So is spicy food, which is why he likes it so much.

Pressure stims are The Worst for him- weighted blankets, tight vests, anything at all that might constrict him in any way? He Will react like cats do to cucumbers. The only exception is that once in a while, when he’s exhausted but can’t seem to ground himself enough to drift off, he’ll ask Kirishima to just. Lie on him, also like cats do, just until he falls asleep.

This is a No Socks Zone. These foot prisons are absolute sensory hell, and with how sweaty he gets it’s only made worse. 

How Can People Talk About Emotions While Simultaneously Looking Each Other In The Eye This Feels Disgusting I Will Blow Something Up: an autobiography

Favorite stim: Tiny explosions popping in his palms. Sure, grand light shows are fine and all but small ones, just big enough to feel through the roughed-up skin of his palms have a certain calming effect. Sucks that people immediately jump to assuming he’s threatening them when he’s just trying to cool down.

Tsuyu

Very blunt. She doesn’t mean to be rude, but sometimes it comes across like it when she’s only trying to be honest and offer advice.

Raptor hands 24/7. what an icon

Has trouble with physical contact in the sense that she’s??? not really sure how to do it??? She offers hugs and hands to hold left and right but it always feels like she’s just. doing it. Like how one would tie a loose shoelace or button up a shirt. It’s not like she hates it, but her nonchalance when someone does hug her makes people assume she’s being cold- which is not the case at all! She’s just offering comfort in a way she knows other people will understand even if it’s not really doing much for her.

Jelly is a samefood! She likes sour apple jelly the best 

Kind of a black-and-white mind. She’s working on seeing the world in shades of grey though, since she saw how her Absolute thinking can impact her friends.

Low/no empathy. She hates that to some people’s eyes that automatically makes her a bad person. Kindness is a choice, one that she doesn’t need empathy to make every day.

Favorite stim: Her near constant kero-kero-ing is very much a vocal stim, as well as echolalia!

Yaomomo

Makes her own stim toys using DIYs rather than her quirk, and is very eager to make any personalized ones for her friends! 

She also likes experimenting with what kinds of textures she can make using her quirk.

Has a semi-popular account where she uploads videos of her playing with slime and kinetic sand regularly.

Much like Iida, she adopted the more formal ways of speaking from her parents and house staff and has trouble toning it down (not that anyone faults her for it).

Very picky about who touches her. She genuinely does not want to come off as the Snobbish Rich Girl but sometimes when someone touches her with no warning or consent she feels like crawling out of her skin 

In the exact same vein, she was extremely hesitant to admit that the futons at the training camp drove her up the wall with that hellish texture. She didn’t want to be the nitpicky one and make a new one using her quirk, either. If anything good came out of the disaster that was the training camp, it was that she didn’t have to sleep on it another night, she thinks (and then feels terrible about it).

Her special interest is tea! Like, actual tea that you drink. Just look at how she lights up when she gets an opportunity to talk about it, or make some for others!! It’s also a samefood for her- she tries to be diverse, but there are a couple with juuust the right combination of smell and taste that she will always go back to.

Sometimes she won’t even drink any- just the process of making it is extremely comforting.

Favorite stim: Double-sided sequins! Tactile-visual stim combo!

Koda

Largely nonverbal. Talking to people is too stressful 99% of the time. Animals are way better listeners anyway.

No volume control we die like men part 2 (but it’s the complete opposite from Iida, in that he can never seem to raise his voice enough)

Likes his peace and quiet, and can easily go into sensory overload if one too many sounds are happening at once. He wants to invest in some headgear for his hero costume that helps him tune out distracting sounds so he can focus on matters at hand while still being able to hear and help those in need.

A plushie hoarder if I ever saw one. His room is the Ultimate Comfort Corner. 

Favorite stim: Humming to himself. Reluctant to do it in the presence of others, but increasingly comfortable around friends.

Aizawa 

Samefoods with those juice pouches he always keeps around

Permanently exhausted due to having to interact with people

Talks in a monotone and has trouble making expressions

His sleeping bag is very good pressure stim. It’s also very hard for him to replace it, because it has to be Just Right, so by the time he does find one that is Just Right, the old one is practically falling apart.

The only reason he’ll sleep in a bed is if Mic is there to share it with him. Otherwise it’s too cold and exposed and weighted blankets can only do so much.

He kinda misses the time before he got top surgery for the sole reason that binders offered a very comforting pressure stim. However, he acknowledges that it’s for the best he got it, since a lot of the time he’d bind for longer than it’s safe. He was lucky to still have the option of getting surgery.

(this has been a safe binding psa, please don’t do what he did)

He does however, tend to wear a tight, though still breathable undershirt at near all times. 

As much as he complains about Mic’s mustache, he actually likes it. He tried to kiss Mic once when he shaved it for the first time in forever and instantly went “yea no. This isn’t working. Feels wrong and bad, Put It Back™”. Didn’t kiss him again until it grew back.

Everything Happens So Much

He talks back to cats. Like, actually meows back at them. Very good echolalia, makes Mic’s day to walk into a scene like this

Favorite stim: Petting cats! The fur of different breeds offers a variety in texture and when they start purring a very good auditory stim is added to the mix! And when they sit on him and add a pressure stim? Cats are the whole package!!

That’s all (for now?) Thanks for reading!! Hope you had a nice Autism Acceptance Month!!!