#with other people who are going to have similar experiences to them wrt this kind of thing

[starswallowingsea]

every time i hear about anyone screaming and crying about sex ed for children all i can think of is the sex ed i got when i was 8 years old which was literally just "these are your swimsuit parts and if someone touches you here and makes you uncomfortable you should tell a trusted adult about it"

[pollyanna-nana]

Thinking about Thistle’s potential character dynamics with the others.

He and Marcille have so much in common I bet after the initial awkwardness they’d have so much to talk about wrt feeling out of place and being scared of watching loved ones die before you.

I think he and Chilchuck would squabble a lot but in the “oh this is a punk ass teenager” kind of way. Ultimately though Chil’s a dad he can’t hold it against him.

I bet he’d be rly annoyed by Laios’ monster infodumping but secretly be fascinated and love listening to it. Probably gets called out for it at least once and is extremely embarrassed while Laios is oblivious (as always).

Senshi I actually think they’d get along well upon realizing that they both have a lot of experience thinking about and tending dungeon ecosystems but from different directions (as dungeon dweller and dungeon lord). Plus he would absolutely try to get Thistle to eat more.

Izutsumi I can see them clashing because their backstories actually have a lot of similarities except with very different reactions to the circumstances (Izutsumi hating her captors/the people who bought her and Thistle desperately wanting to please them) but in reality I think if they ever got over that they’d be terrifying together. Absolutely unhinged potential sibling energy if I’m being honest.

Falin would mother hen him into the ground but that’s a given. I can foresee him having to hide from the Falin-Senshi tag team “you need to take better care of yourself!” duo on a regular basis lol.

Mithrun. lol. Obviously Thistle hates his guts for (mostly) irrational reasons but I think hilariously Mithrun has a lot of respect for him. Bc like. He had a really good reason to become dungeon lord comparatively and we all know Mithrun’s favorite thing is talking about how much of a lil bitch he was prior to getting his desires eaten.

Kabru I’m not sure but I think there would be hostilities. Thistle I think would call him out for being fake immediately and with Kabru’s Elf Baggage™️ it might not go well at least at first.

Basically. Give him the found family he deserves.

[bandtrees]

AAHHHH!!! AAHHHHHHHH DIALTOWN AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay i've had a night to sit on the evil route and put my thoughts together and holy shit dude. ALL OF IT- all of it was so good but i'm obviously (being the callum and gingi guy) going to focus on the callum and gingi stuff. spoilers ahead if you have not done the evil route gooo do it!!!!

i think looking at the worst end of the evil route is best to view through the lens of "the literal opposite of ch3" and also "knowing who milt and marla and all of them are" because - for starters - i think the approach dogman has taken, out of universe, is genius. i know milt and marla aren't ingame mostly for writing constraint reasons, but the specifics of their lives (milt's especially, being basically erased from history) not being something you ever get is really really good because history just... does not remember them!

milt committed suicide but according to dogman that's not even public knowledge, as far as anyone in-universe knows he just disappeared and all of the turmoil that took place is kind of lost to time. and i think knowledge of his name, much less what happened to him, being something you have to dig through paratext and get an easter egg of a fuckin tie-in web quiz to learn, is... probably the experience you'd more or less have in-universe. he's someone you only really know if you're really into the subject.

and to be honest i dont think i would have it any other way, because what the dlc does to you if you're one of those who know is MADDENING. it's everywhere. the hat motif. i have very strong feelings on evil route peter essentially having the exact role marla must have - the conversations gingi has with the narrator, with roger, is soooooo gooooood. it's a subtle background puzzle you get to piece together that (i reckon) also would hit hard for any player who doesn't Know(tm).

(and that also segues into a general feeling i have about the dlc, being that i am not a dsaf guy at all, i was into dialtown first and i have no interest in dsaf i'm sure its great but just not something i think i'll ever look into: for a bit before this dlc i was worried if it would be enjoyable as someone who's not into dsaf or has context for any cameo characters or references - but it was and is :D the characters all exist perfectly in dialtown and the references that exist still have merit on their own and are funny/etc on their own even without whatever added context im sure dsaf gives. which is good and i love it.)

all of that to say, i really really love what this dlc did for so many characters, but especially gingi and callum (and the narrator!) - i love how, as seems to be callum's destiny with maladjusted people, gingi only sees him as an incomplete and biased ideal to strive for. we simultaneously get so much weight and nuance to callum through seeing gingi go down a similar path, but also get so little of it because the only thing gingi cares about wrt callum is him being the "greatest salesman ever" and completely discarding the parts of him that made him anything but an industrial supervillain.

i think it wouldv been easy for it to just be "phonegingi is basically becoming (the worst parts of) callum and so, when they're working with mingus, finds some degree of kinship in the pictures etc of him" but the fact they're completely dismissive of mingus and her family history in every way, demanding the pictures of him be taken down, making a jab at him being "forgetful", staining and ruining them, etc, is even MORE telling of what they've become. much like callum was, they've found success and don't really think about how they got there or who helped them get there!

(see: mingus having marla's hat, which gingi takes from her when they execute her - you could say that hat symbolizes the genuine good that callum did despite his mixed legacy, and the love that he had for his wife and those closest to him: and that's something gingi is completely ignoring in favor of having it be another symbol of their (and callum's) power :D)

also the space ending. You're telling me gingi became wildly successful and then in an act of innovation-induced hubris, locked themself in an inescapable box, alone? Good god man. callum is INESCAPABLE in this route its so fucking good. elements of him and what happened to him and the path he went down are everywhere - even in other routes, there's roger's amnesia, there's gingi making other people suffer for their mistakes: it's so horrifying when you realize what's happening but in retrospect the signs were always there. roger's plant is literally crown mechanics. no wonder that man's juices are all over the goddamn place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also gingi getting a cat tail in the bad ends is genius. 10/10 design choice. really good dlc. this is not a coherent ramble but i'm hopped up on being insane about what iv witnessed this weekend and also we have like no food in the house rn. we dont even have fucking milk iv had to make pb&js with this strangely tasting strangely textured squeeze bottle jelly and not even have milk with it. roger is the only thing keeping me stable

and roger himself is like... god, i dont even know what to say about him really? i adore him so much. he's a brilliantly written character. it's to the point where i cant even like analyze anything i just kind of have to point at him really hard and hope you understand. i related to him a lot as i'm sure a lot of people did. inexperience and "stupidity" and forgetfulness are traits that often get flattened into either completely sympathetic non-flaws or completely unlikable annoyances and i think how the dlc touched upon those traits of roger's - funnily a lot of the time, yet very respectfully and sympathetically when the time came for it, while never letting you forget the genuine harm it was causing to the people around him - was reaaaaally good. you love roger but you understand why others might not - but even then, like the rest of his workers, you still care about him first and foremost, not what he can accomplish.

and i think that duality being present in the good/evil routes is really good: roger's good ending is one where he flubs the presentation and hands the reins over to someone he trusts more to fix up the place, and he acknowledges his workers love him as a friend more than they do a leader. and the evil ending is the one where he has a wildly successful, energetic presentation that people love, and he's getting praise and is saving the plant and everyone's so excited, because not only is he promoting an underhanded shitty scam, but it's not him. he IS, like gingi, becoming a HORRIBLE version of himself: the point where good intentions or even ignorance begin to matter less and less in the face of actual harm being done. again, much like callum!!!!!

i also love peter. oh my god peter. in his marla crown era

i 100% had more to say but i'm beginning to lose it. oh yeah THE FUCKING INSULIN SCAM IS CRUEL. that part had me with my hand over my mouth and my eyes just agape at how fucking grim it was. the reveal that peter's wife is also diabetic makes it go from "pretty fucked up!" to "actively devastating". truly gingi at their worst. both it and the blowout argument they have with the narrator afterwards are done excellently. taking advantage of peter's tendency to worry about roger, roger's not wanting to upset peter, peter's fucking diabetic wife, is so so cruel and i love it. really really gets into the weight of what you're doing and how fucked up scams are, we are out of the realm of silly jokes about crypto and in the realm of ruining peoples' lives. it's so good.

anyway. really good dlc. i will surely have so much more to say and create about it. it maddens me that it's only five dollars because i dont think i will ever be the same again after that to be quite honest with you!!!! literally my only gripe is the way it's kind of carried on dialtown's general problem with its non-main female characters but that's something people have talked about more and articulated better than me.

good dlc. really good dlc. cough up the five dollars because it is truly worth so much more i havent even been able to touch upon here. and if you havent played dialtown cough up the eight dollars and then cough up the five dollars. its real good.

[transthadymacdermot]

i would like to hear more about the relationship between mary and eoin if that is alright! it seems like it might be a little complicated?

Yeah. god. so, they've known each other since they were very small, and been very close since childhood, because their parents knew one another and so they were raised side by side. they weren't each other's only friends growing up -- Mary had Kathleen and Eoin had Kathleen AND Donal -- but they represent for each other pretty much the only person either of them has ever met who shares the sense of profound alienation from 1) 'normal' expected behaviour, and 2) their own actual personalities, which they both feel like they have to repress to be accepted in society, in Eoin's case because anti-autistic ableism won't stand for him making weird noises and in Mary's case because she's expected to perform femininity flawlessly to "count" as a woman. additionally, they've had similar experiences wrt the violence of the british empire on their families & communities at large, so generally both of them feel like the other one understands them in a way no one else does AND like therefore the other one is the only person they can truly be themselves around. and obviously there's the fact that they're extremely physically attracted to one another. that too.

Anyway on this basis their relationship evolved pretty quickly from Just Friends to "well, you're the only person I can ever talk to and I feel like no one else understands my situation so obviously I want to make out about it." in an ideal world I think they would at least try to get married and either way live together and probably jump at the opportunity to adopt any children which might appear to have a family together. HOWEVER, the spanner in the works is the fact that Eoin leads the local anti-landlord anti-british sectarian gang, and Mary does NOT approve on several levels. first, she objects to the mere essence of, like, being in a paramilitary that kills people (including people they know. whenever Eoin kills an informer she stops talking to him for a little while), but also she thinks (rightly!) that there's a very high chance he dies or is arrested or is transported or is executed or suffers some sort of live changing injury which would take him away from her and complicate both of their lives severely. as such she refuses to get romantically or sexually involved with him until he leaves the gang. Eoin, for his part, takes issue with her taking issue, because he feels like it's a necessity for him to take up arms in defence of the people and also has constructed a whole complex around not being able to be a "good person" and therefore why should he even leave the gang. Mary is conflicted over how the sweet and silly man she loves could also torture people to death. Eoin feels like it's the only way he can protect the woman he's obsessed with. both of them think omfg why can't they understand it from my point of view it's so obvious. etc

The result of the situation is that Eoin kind of resents Mary for refusing to get with him until he leaves his gang and Mary REALLY resents Eoin for refusing to leave the gang and get with her because she really really really wants to sleep with him but is going for the olympic medal in catholic-ly denying herself the pleasures of the flesh until he does what she wants. they love each other more than anything in the world and would both probably kill everyone else and then themselves if the other died but also both think the other is stupid and unreasonable and Just Doesn't Understand. [derry girls voice] "mammy we come as a set" type situation BUT they hate each other's life choices even if they understand them BUT they also both absolutely have said each other's names while in bed with someone else before BUT they disagree fundamentally on probably the most important political issue that impacts their lives BUT if they were cats you couldn't adopt them separately BUT

[iridescentscarecrow]

self indulgent semi critical stream of consciousness thoughts on p2 & csm's writing style --

re: the comedy point: i do say this a lot but fujimoto uses the same tension for both comedy & horror -- the punchline of a Joke disrupts just as a rupture of tension -> horror occurs. & this is why i appreciate the writing last chapter, personally. the crassness/hilarity to it almost contributes to how i'm reading it. he hates his body/the body becomes a point of comedic objection. this kind of relies on being able to see how this meshing of telling & character overlap: which i find q. compelling re: how sexual trauma works, the way it kind of deprecates, lessens your sense of self. it's a story very lived in & deeply Felt wrt how all its characters are written (the butt of the joke refuses to simply Be that, if it makes sense. kobeni's distress in the family burger chs is hilarious but its also a haunting, empathetic, portrait of corporate/family violence; comedy further built on the hollowness of what the CSM being there/going through This Motion means.)

this for sure won't work for every reader, tbh, & i understand this because it's a fine line to tread between portraying this effectively & it just coming off as insensitive. i'm personally very interested in genres & working within genres|how horror/comedy/character presentations conflict, intersect so i'm enjoying it... but it's true that p2 often feels hollower of a story than p1 & this isn't Bad, per se: i think what fjmt is trying to say is a lot more ambitious, a lot more immersed in technique - that it often takes away from some of the contemplative rawness (which does, by contrast, feature in some of p2's more widely loved chapters) that fills p1. p2's ruptures of tension are more at the forefront, a lot of the frame behind it is *so* based on minimal technical nuance that it doesn't really nestle onto you in the same way, if that makes sense? i'm mostly positive about plot elements on main but i've been eyeing the asa erasure with skepticism for a while. it's really a much weaker story without her, no matter what thematic point that i think is being made here. i mean, perhaps because when you deplete the asa to the story you're left with denji - who is mostly *passive*, doesn't produce narrative (unlike asa/makima) which writes the story for you. denji's brilliance is in spurts, contrasted/set against other character's selves - often in refutation of them - in a desperate kind of <proof of life>, of having been imbued with thus written experience, of this being so deeply felt - & this is what gets to fans too, i feel. his life as visible through <written> form/against, caught within structure & other's wants. this is also why i think those nayuta chapters (as an extension of mkm) were so great because of what it did for nayuta & denji. you see him through her eyes, & then you see *him.* i think the issue with asa is that a large amt of her character also has like a (similar to denji) self hate, a repression which makes itself known very well when we're inside her head but atp rn we can't see that at all, because she's modelled herself (& i think this is rlly cool narratively) around the idea of the CSM she's meant to work as an extension of. & this self modelling paired w. being Out of her head makes her feel (to me) awfully flat. & this is upsetting, because i really like asa!

but at some levels i appreciate the ambition to p2's greater story that i can forgive individual characters being diluted in the fray. but this isn't true for everyone | shouldn't even be because csm is a story *felt* through its characters, within its absurdity... the reason most people like it is because aspects of it resonate with them. & this kind of jarr is pretty much fjmt's biggest writing issue - it's what i've personally criticised / seen others criticise w. p1 (power's character's writing towards the end) & it's why i see people rightfully criticise p2.

this is already a very self indulgent thread so i'm also going to bring up *why* i like characters such as reze, makima, togata: their character presentation compels enough to really intertwine with the flesh of them in ways that are... kind of hard to ignore to fully receive the story. if that makes sense: their surface is so much condensed trope.. in fact, this is true of even aki who i think i'd argue is the best written character in p1 functioning outside the (makima-denji) centre w. the revenge trope.

anyway: it's kind of also because of these reasons that i feel that p2 will just *work* better when read as a whole,, because of the frame fjmt has himself set up it becomes a little difficult to resonate w. it in individual moment, chapter to chapter, because atp you have to either be (a) incredibly aware of this larger structure which is... difficult to do for a weekly release at least to sustain a good amt of immersion or (b) recognise the narrative that emanates from trauma reltd. mechanism & since this is more personal: it's harder to find yourself here & it becomes.. disconnected, frustrating moment after moment where it becomes not just a <character work> but a <one character work>. & i find this hits in these instances w. people who empathise w. denji as do i! but i find little discussion of this as Implication rippling into story structure (although fjmt's story is built on/into his main character as it was in p1)... it's Hard without a writing force like mkm to make denji cohere into a largely invisible narrative.

honestly could talk more about this for ages:: even wrt. my issues with like... a large amount of the back half of Fire Punch which don't come from a place of thematic incoherency at all. i legit feel fujimoto needs a frame for his story to work <within instance> & i see him trying to bring in katana etc. here (& other male characters) in order to deploy what he's saying but their framings don't.. linger enough to really grip into you as Story imo. the single family callback into p1 makima shook me far more.

wishful thought but i think asa's head would be interesting to get into because we *have* yuko there as meaningful setup in order to really direction... i loved the yuko dialogue use in 165 but her ghost feels. Almost too subtle rn, imo. this is just like,,, a small portion of my thoughts regarding p2 & its criticisms rn;; bear in mind, i really like/hold bias towards the themes p2 is playing with [concurrs a lot w. my interests] but i also really enjoy going on & on about storytelling technique LMAO. i'm looking forward to seeing how this arc concludes.

[trillscienceofficer]

Hi! I saw your tags on that post & I thought I'd send you a question about B7 that I'd love to hear your thoughts about :) Quick disclaimer: I haven't seen the last few seasons of Voyager & I've only *heard* about Picard so if I'm missing anything that's probably why. Having said that - if we assume that B'Elanna & Seven dated during the events of Voyager & came back to the alpha quadrant together, what is your favourite post-Voyager version of events regarding their relationship? Thank you & take care!

Thank you so much, this is a REALLY good question!

I find myself going back and forth on various versions of this canon-divergent post-Voyager scenario, and I find it hard to settle on one in particular. Would a relationship between them implode in the abrupt transition to life in the Alpha Quadrant, since it was something that started in the relatively isolated environment of Voyager, or would it survive the change? I think it ultimately depends on how that relationship between them developed, and when. Most of the time in my writing I assume B'Elanna and Seven get together in late season 5 or early season 6, and that would mean they had around two years to figure things out about each other and themselves before being faced with leaving behind the life they've known for so long. However, I wouldn't describe the dynamic of a relationship between them as stable, either.

Both because I'm a hopeless romantic and what compels me most about this relationship is the potential for growth and self-discovery it could spur in both B'Elanna and Seven, I really would love to see them working it out in some way, and remain together. I think a relationship still wouldn't cancel out their restlessness, though. Honestly, I think B'Elanna would hate a Starfleet-type job, and I don't see either of them settling down unless it was for a short-lived, unsuccessful experiment. I think it would be fun for them to have the kind of elastic bond that would allow them to work and travel across the Quadrant doing their own thing while periodically seeing each other whenever they have time, and sometimes going on wild tangents together (honestly if Seven still got in the Rangers or a similar organization, I see them working together pretty often trying to make old, banged-up starships fly again!)

Another important question to me is, would that relationship allow B'Elanna and Seven grow in such a way that they'd be able to face their future in a less dysfunctional way? Again I think it depends on how you look at it, but my favorite interpretation of this ship is a resounding yes! It's no secret that I think Seven on the Picard show is not doing very well and is not getting particularly better, but the way in which she's not doing well is very interesting. I think Seven's main problem on Picard is that she's avoidant, both wrt her own needs and feelings and wrt the people who care about her. All this sound to me like... she's essentially taken on a lot of the issues B'Elanna had on Voyager. Simply put, I think that wouldn't had happened if she and B'Elanna had been closer and had stayed close. Not that I think that they are particularly good at recognizing each other's issues, but they would certainly have more experience with dealing with them because, again, I think some growth has happened to allow them to stay in each other's life.

As for B'Elanna... we know nothing about her post-Voyager so far, but I really would love to see her forging her own path in the Alpha Quadrant, no strings attached, while still having a partner that she can be sure she can trust (however tumultuous her relationship with Seven is) and won't force B'Elanna to shrink herself into someone she's not. I want her to have the freedom that comes with that kind of partnership, even if it would probably take time for her to realize that not settling down doesn't mean that she's failing.

tl;dr my fave version of post-canon b7 is that with some growing pains they remain together in an elastic and informal arrangement, and still see each other when they're not having wild adventures (and maybe even have some adventures together)

[purpleheartskies]

For now, I'm going to include a note in some of my posts asking that people not reply or reblog with comments or tags that do things like:

insult the writers

claim "bad writing"

say things like "the show is dumb", or "we're not supposed to see it that way", or "it happened off-screen [even though we have no proof]" (if there's no proof that something happened off-screen, it's not canon)

say that s5 was rushed and not written properly and/or the s5 finale is the "real ending" because the writers thought that the show wasn't going to be renewed (which the writers have outright refuted and which is illogical given their decisions for the plot, characters, and characterizations in s5)

say that the writers are too afraid of the majority of the fans to have the story in s6 go any way that might upset these fans, or that Netflix is affecting the writers' decisions or forcing them to give fan service. (I know there's usually politics involved with networks and production companies wrt show runners having creative agency, but the consistency in the storytelling style and characterizations indicates that the writers still have the same level of the creative agency as in early seasons.)

any dismissive statement about the writing of the show

These types of comments and tags minimize the contents of a post and effectively shut down conversations about important topics related to the characters and their character journeys.

I enjoy healthy conversations and debates, and I'm used to certain CK fans dismissing my opinions and posts because I'm a "Robby fan". But, most of my interactions with fans after s5 just have me tired of not being able to talk about the story itself and the storytelling without people minimizing what I'm saying with their negativity and condescension towards the writers and the writing.

I know a lot of people are upset with how the story has gone so far. I'm also not happy with a lot of the narrative decisions. I've also mentioned before that I'm not happy with a lot of the messaging so far. However, the nuance in the storytelling is still there. It's been pretty consistent since the start. The characterizations have been consistent too. So when people say "bad writing", I disagree. I think of bad writing as gaping plot holes, inconsistent characterizations, incongruous timelines, etc. I don't think of narrative decisions that I don't like as bad writing. I recognize how the story is framed, but framing is just one aspect of the story and is a tool for storytelling. The context, subtext, and a lot of what we have in the story itself tells us so much that is in contrast to the framing. This show has some of the best indirect storytelling I've seen in a show. I find the storytelling and characterizations to be really interesting, and I hope to keep discussing Robby and his story without my posts being dismissed.

And tbh I wonder where people's imaginations are. This is a fictional story, and a lot of things can still happen. For example, I actually don't think the baby plotline is meant to continue. If you take the time to analyze the story, it's pretty obvious that the baby was used as nothing more than a plot device this season for a few negative reasons, and this new "family" itself isn't meant to be a/the "happy ending". That's all I'll say about this plotline in this post. I'll see how some of my new posts do before I share my full thoughts on this plotline in a later post about how and why I think things may go a certain way. In general, I want to keep talking about the story as if it's a story.

Robby and his journey represent certain people in society and the traumas and struggles they experience. So far, the story and other characters haven't been too kind or sympathetic towards Robby, and sadly, the world and society irl aren't too kind or sympathetic towards many people who have similar situations to Robby's. I think his story is important, and I want to keep talking about it. I want to keep the conversation going about the important topics being explored in Robby's story.

[sugurushimura]

May I ask why you headcanon Midou as a trans woman? I always headcanonned Higuchi as trans out of all the Yotsubas (FtM though, not MtF) and I'd really like to hear your reasoning!

oh man, this is one of those headcanons that i've had for so long that it's kind of just cemented itself in my brain... the idea was actually my boyfriend @teethrotter's first, so what initially sparked it lies in his mind alone. i'm not sure if he even told me anything specifically other than "hey, i think it'd be neat if mido was a trans woman" so we tried it out for a while and it just stuck... i'm not sure when exactly that was, maybe 2016 or 2017? over 5 years for sure.

by this point, it's not even a decision i actively make, i just see mido and she registers immediately as a woman with my brain. seeing her he/him'd in canon feels wrong... although i am obviously not arguing that trans mido is even vaguely implied, she's just such a minor character that headcanoning her as a closeted trans woman doesn't change literally anything.

the headcanon does play into my own interpretation of mido pretty heavily, and it works well with how i perceive her canon personality. imo, mido is someone who is very resigned with her life. she was born into a high-status family that placed a lot of weight on her shoulders wrt being a Good Member Of Society. she went to an elite college, got a law degree, and went on to become a bigwig at the yotsuba group. she clearly excels at her job, but according to htr, she actually hates the division she works in. she's well-liked amongst her colleagues -- better than any of them except ooi, in fact -- but in turn seems to like very few of them. her social skills are quite good, but she seems... disengaged, to say the least, at the model party.

pretty much every facet of mido's life, except her fencing hobby, is spent doing things she hates and interacting with people that she dislikes. and yet she shows absolutely no signs that she's interested in changing it -- hell, she doesn't even bother speaking out against the kira murders, which seem to weigh on her conscience. of course, there's a real threat of death if she does that, but it isn't as if she simply abstains from the meetings; she's an incredibly active participant!

all this plays into the greater feeling that mido is resigned to her own misery even when she really doesn't have to be. i think she developed this tendency mainly because of her family, but eventually it became such a habit that to change now feels to her like she'd have wasted all that pain and effort. sunk-cost fallacy, you know? at times, too, i think she's prone to romanticizing her own pain in a sort of "oh, woe is me, i'm such a dutiful son and such a productive member of society, look at how much i've sacrificed for the sake of the status quo, how tragic am i..."

her gender identity, too, is a reflection of that. gender is such a fundamental part of how we perceive ourselves and others; i think it ties everything together to have mido, who is really and truly a woman, lock it up inside herself and just go along with the way she was raised to present because, even despite the misery it causes her, it would be troublesome to change it all now and would damage the image she's spent so long cultivating. besides, if she changed this now, that would open a lot of doors. what else about her life would she be happier if she changed?

my own experiences with gender are somewhat similar. there was a time when i was younger where i realized that i was a trans man, but thought it would be too much of a hassle to come out and completely change who i am publicly. i had more or less resigned myself to living the rest of my life that way, and it was only thanks to my boyfriend's encouragement that i changed my mind. i'm very glad i did, and it's probably no coincidence that i also imagined myself getting a business degree at that point in my life...

i love mido and i'd like for her to reach self-actualization, at least to some extent. in most lighthearted AUs, i default to writing her as out of the closet and fully transitioned -- albeit still working a job she hates. it's also very important to me that she comes out to shimura after the kira case. after being put through such a stressful situation and realizing that she really could have been killed (...oops), i think she realizes that, at the end of the day, she needs someone else to know. it might as well be shimura, who shows her so readily that he's been wrestling with the horror of their situation more frantically than any of them, who still shows compassion after everything they've done.

also, mido has the trans haircut. you know, the ambiguous "it's just short enough that mom won't say anything" look.

(as an aside, i think i've heard trans man higuchi brought up before! not for several years, though, and only briefly, unless i'm forgetting something. although it personally isn't a headcanon that i share, he's such an envious person and focuses his own identity so intensely on other men that i could see it being written in a very compelling way. the whole "i want him AND i want to be him" thing, however in denial he is about it, is very real... i would love to see that concept explored more! i am probably not the person to do it, though.)

[talkethtothehandeth]

hi, i hope it's okay for me to bring up something in your carrd to warn you about. it's a really bad idea to put the usa suicide hotline up as a resource because i and other mentally ill people have been hurt by it. anyone who reaches out for help will be very unpleasantly surprised by the operator actually sending the cops to your house despite not seemingly intending to in order to "make sure" you go to the hospital just for contemplating thoughts of self-harm alone. we have been traumatized by being kept at wards involuntarily, especially wrt the painfully unsafe and uncomfortable furniture, as well as abusive staff who punish(ed) us for being scared and wanting help... or, y'know, actual treatment. maybe this is just me and my bias as an anti-psych activist but i'm speaking from my own, as well as others', experiences (and i can only imagine how physically disabled people are treated with disrespect). also, i apologize but i don't have any good alternatives to replace the link with instead, so i hope you don't discard my criticism. i simply don't want this to happen to anyone else who might wish to reach out through your well-intentioned advice. please take this message in good faith and have a good night.

TW suicide/suicidal ideation

Howdy!

You’re absolutely not overstepping by sharing this and the negative experiences/feelings you have regarding the subject of using a hotline. Though my blog focuses more on physical disabilities, I am diagnosed with multiple mental disorders that aren’t my autism and adhd, including bipolar type two, anxiety— which might be OCD, and a different personality disorder which I don’t talk about much due to demonization and stigmatization of it, it also isn’t something I’ve fully accepted myself, but that’s another post. I hear you and recognize the harm that psychiatrists/institutions have inflicted on people. I also am aware that these resources, regardless of the negative aspects (which, let’s be honest, there are a lot) are some of the only options that people have.

My psychiatrist/therapist’s [I’m forgetting the exact word for the building] has a crisis line, and the second thing I was told when the number was given to me, the number that can be reached whenever, was that if they think I’m in immediate danger, they would send the police to my house. I’ve come very close to getting into a ward, but I’ve never been forced into one. I am incredibly thankful for that as I know I probably wouldn’t receive adequate pain care there, but just because I haven’t been forced into one doesn’t mean that others haven’t, as you said.

I’ve kept it there because it should be an option still, I’ve had to call multiple times before and I’ve had some good interactions and some not good interactions, I am scared that they will do the same, which is allowing cops into a situation they are not adequately trained for. However, through this, I know that this hotline has still helped people, and has the crisis text line. I don’t want to take it away, but I think I should try to figure out a way to like, explain the potential risks. Everyone is allowed to make the choice for themselves about whether they want to seek outside help in order to aid in their times of distress. I text the crisis line, but many a times, especially during the late nights, they do not answer. Some of them are not helpful, but others are and it’s at times enough to just talk about things. I tell people I have suicidal thoughts, but not a plan, because no matter how much my brain tries to convince me I want to be dead, I understand that this is part of my disorder. There have been times when I’ve tried to take my life, too.

I hear you, and do not devalue your criticism based on your personal experiences, or the experiences of others. It seems to be a “hit or miss” kind of thing when it comes to psychiatric care, and I feel it is similar to us who are also physically disabled. Even though I’ve had some very bad experiences and have been mistreated (to say the absolute least) I’ve still found physicians and nurses who do treat their patients with dignity and respect. And just because I’ve had a few good experiences, it doesn’t mean that suddenly my medical trauma is wiped away.

It is saddening to know how rare it is to have these good encounters, especially with someone whose job it is to help care for something as significant as mental illness. And I feel the same for doctors being horrible about physical disabilities. Additionally, and rewording what I mentioned just in the other paragraph, these options should still exist for people to have the choice of pursuing a hotline, a doctor, or any sort of health care treatment. They can decide if they want to try, just as others can decide that it isn’t for them, whether it be from personal or outside experiences.

My page is welcome to criticism, I keep my anon and messaging open that way those who want to say something can. The one and only time I dismiss “critics” is when people send in nasty messages (like suicide bait). You are not wrong or bad for defending/supporting your position, and I never will take away the validity of other’s experiences just because mine have been different.

TL;DR: I absolutely agree that the mental health field is not as it should be, I agree it can be just as rotten and misguided (those are understatements) or even worse than how doctors who treat physically disabled patients. However, I do believe that keeping these resources can also be beneficial to a person, who is ultimately making a decision whether or not to utilize what is available. I do not support the incorporation of police in mental health situations, and I firmly believe that improper psychiatric care, just as physical care, can be detrimental to people. I understand the negative impacts, and as you mentioned, you (generalized) don’t have a good alternative. Until I am able to find one, I keep this in my carrd.

[girlvinland]

This is a little bit of a personal post, but something I kinda wanted to share because I'm happy about how it's been going. I'm putting under a read more just bc of a potential tw though. I didn't mean for it to get long, but it was hard to figure out how to make it short lol.

So like, over the past couple of years with the pandemic going on, I was one of those people who started drinking more to cope with anxiety and isolation. It was never to the point of full-blown issue that needed treatment or anything, but I can definitely recognize that it was problematic. I didn't really drink during the week, but there would be weekends where I would absolutely go overboard with it. I don't think that's too unusual, given how normalized drinking alcohol is. But I was starting to see that I'd say or do really foolish or hurtful things when I was under the influence, and really all it was doing was making my anxiety and desire to isolate even worse. And tbh, since I have been recovered from an ED for over ten years now, I feel like it's somewhat easy for me to look at a behavior and be like, hm. That's not good. Maybe I need to stop that and find a better way to approach what's bothering me.

Admittedly, last year was a difficult one due to a lot of personal stress. In December though, I finally decided I really wanted to stop drinking (or at least take a break and see how long I could go without it). I got one of those counter apps because I wanted to keep track of it, and I read a lot about how alcohol actually messes with brain chemistry (it helps me a lot when I can understand things more from a medical or scientific perspective, especially when so much "stop drinking" stuff is more spiritual or religious in nature, which are things that I am not). Right now it has been eight weeks since I've had anything, and I feel a lot better wrt my anxiety and everything. Still bad days now and again because of general life stuff, but not like it was, and it's more manageable. It's just crazy that like...even just drinking that one day a week would make me feel so bad sometimes.

I feel kind of weird/scared sharing this, but I also feel like sharing it is a good thing, because I don't think people talk about it enough. When we think of anyone who has a problematic relationship with alcohol it's usually elderly men with PTSD or wine moms in denial or maybe frat boys at university. I don't often see people like myself (I think I've spoken to like, one other person who had a similar experience and I only approached them because they were open about it on their own blog, otherwise I would have never known I wasn't alone). When I have seen other people who are like 20s or 30s quitting drinking or taking breaks from it, it usually ties back to some kind of religious reason or being "straight edge" or making it an identity. I don't care about any of that for myself, and I don't want to shame anyone who might have the same problem or approaches it from a different way. But I do think it's important to speak up when you are struggling with something and find out what helps you. And I think it's bad that the entire thing is so shamed because we know the rates at which people have been drinking over the pandemic have risen greatly and we know how normalized it already is anyway. It really shouldn't be shameful to talk about these things in the open, because then more people are likely to open up and help one another.

Anyway. I just wanted to write about it in case anyone else related, and because actually stopping has been really nice.

[fursasaida]

fucking hell

Ed Yong, bless him, just published a long form piece on brain fog (re: long COVID, but appropriately situated wrt other conditions as well - chemo brain, ME/CFS, etc).

Early in the piece, in describing one patient's experience, he includes the line: "For Davis, it has been distinct from and worse than her experience with ADHD." This is it. This is the only mention of ADHD in the article. Which is fine, because it is about brain fog and not about ADHD. Let us note that the line is clearly conveying one person's subjective experience.

And yet. There are dozens of ADHDers in the twitter replies going full "I AM UNCOMFORTABLE WHEN WE ARE NOT ABOUT ME???", claiming that this is "dismissive," that it "denies any similarities," that it "invalidates my experience." This is because brain fog affects executive function (....no shit), and I guess they think they own executive dysfunction. Never MIND that if anybody's "invalidating" anybody's expérience, it's them invalidating that patient's experience--and mine, for that matter; both she and I deal with both issues, and it is clear from their comments that they've never had brain fog. [points, yells, OWN VOICES!! OWN VOICES!!! FLAG ON THE PLAY!!!!] Never MIND that overlapping life impacts is not the same as shared symptoms, aetiologies, or sensations. Never MIND that there was nothing dismissive about any of this until they showed up. Never MIND that their evident refusal (even when challenged) to reason about the possibilities that might exist for brain fog to share impacts with ADHD while remaining distinct shows that they are just reacting without thinking it through at all. We are here!! To yell!!!!

I just really hate everyone (except for Ed Yong). I can understand this kind of behavior from people with ME/CFS because that illness is so widely dismissed and understudied, and they absolutely have to advocate for themselves relentlessly. There are occasions when I think their "but what about my thing" reactions are misplaced, but I understand why that happens and I'm sympathetic. It's an inevitable, ancillary aspect of the appropriate response to their situation. This, though--it's not like ADHD is venerated or extremely well understood, but people broadly agree it exists and there are medications, treatments, dozens of books and podcasts, just way more resources. (Yes, many of us have people in our lives who will dismiss something as a consequence of ADHD and insist we're just lazy. It is not the same thing. Not everything that sucks is the same as everything else that sucks! Sorry about it!!) I just do not see any justification for this besides "you said it's not ADHD but then you mentioned my stuff and I can't be bothered to think of any reason why that would be other than that you are discriminating against me. And it's MY stuff, MINE."

Like, god, all of this is made up. (INB4: I'm not saying symptoms are imaginary or that there are no physiological aetiologies, I am saying the diagnostic system for sorting, grouping, and explaining them is constructed and varies by time, place, culture, etc, DO NOT START.) It is a higgledy piggledy pseudo-taxonomic pile of overlapping buckets. It has the structural coherence of Gormenghast castle and the rational planning of an unreconstructed medieval town. No bucket holds anything exclusively--not a symptom, not a feeling, not an effect on one's life. There can be many reasons why someone is unable to walk, but this is does not mean that talking about amputees is invalidating or neglecting people with paralysis. It's not like it's news to me that people over-identify with diagnoses and use the medicalizations and reifications involved in those diagnoses to make it everyone else's problem, but once again, with especial feeling this time: Shut up. SHUT UP.

[stillness-in-green]

The Spinaraki in me is screaming but the Villain society stan in me is disappointed that Spinner doesn’t seem to think more about his fellow mutants.

It certainly does make for a curious confrontation in the making with Shouji (my assumptions, let me show you them), anon! In this corner, a guy who’s always kept his head down and lived behind a mask! In this corner, a guy who just wants to get his boyfriend out from under the thumb of his controlling dad! And behind the scenes, a bunch of people who are definitely all-in on this confrontation, but have a bunch of ideology gumming up the clarity of the message! Truly, are there any heteromorphic people out there who just want to speak their own truths?!

Well, maybe, maybe not.

I don’t think Spinner doesn’t think about his fellow mutants, really; he just has other priorities. Spinner, despite his early feints otherwise, has never been an ideologically motivated villain, and I don’t expect him to become one now. As he told us himself, he was never really into Stain because of the content of Stain’s antisocial ideology, just the fact of Stain having an antisocial ideology. Even that, Spinner’s long outgrown.

As @codenamesazanka lays out here (in response to an extremely silly anon), none of the League are really societal reformers or principled anarchists who want to make the world a better place.(1) And for the most part, I think that’s fine. I’m perfectly happy to continue passing out Stan the MLA propaganda for all my principled villain needs, especially since they’ve gone ahead and provided me with a specific sub-group who very much are thinking about their fellow mutants. I also don’t think it’s such a bad thing that Shouji has mostly kept his head down and Spinner’s got more pressing concerns; both of those are perfectly realistic responses to real-life experiences of bigotry and oppression, especially from people who, having grown up with it, may well have grown jaded about trying to change it long ago.

My trouble is and remains that the story desperately needs to find someone who a) can speak to heteromorph problems with intellectual honesty and rigor and b) isn’t going to get stomped flat in the first hero fight they come up against and get thrown in prison where no one has to think about the points they were making anymore. The closest people we have to that right now are Shouji—who has problems with the intellectual honesty department—and Average Woman Heteromorph Gal, whom Horikoshi has still not even seen fit to name.(2)

I very much do not like the current set-up, in which no one with active involvement in that plotline is just there because they believe it, without some kind of outside cause/manipulation. I quipped somewhere once that the heteromorphs need a Tsukauchi Makoto, and I stand by that. Sadly, I don’t think we get characters that well-spoken in history and law and social analysis outside of Vigilantes, because Furuhashi Hideyuki is, himself, either more interested in or freer to explore those things than Horikoshi Kohei.

Thanks for the ask! Let's hope for the best together, anon!

----

1: Dabi and Compress probably come closest; Compress might even still get there, if he deigns to someday give us a proper explanation of exactly what his motivations were wrt to the League, but I think at most he and Dabi are probably in a similar place of “Burn out the rot and what’s left, no matter how shit it is, will still be better than what we have now.”

2: I was and remain unbelievably salty that someone with as much importance-relative-to-bit-characters as she has didn’t even get a name on her goddamn volume compilation character page, while the small fry villain chump who lived and died in two pages, just long enough for ShigAFO to crash through his living room wall and try to pass New Order off to him, got named upon his introduction. That’s a crock of shit, Horikoshi. Give her a name.

[arcyrus]

HI cyrus or colress please if you like ... for quastions 1 9 10 18 maybe <3

oh MAN [cracks knuckles] i am literally going to do answer all of these now i hope you know what can of worms you opened here. putting it under a readmore in case it gets too long LOL

anyways starting with cyrus.

favorite things about the character: genuinely my favorite aspect of him is how much of a fucking hypocrite he is. "get rid of human spirit and denounce emotion" my ass, when he's out here being the most spirited and emotional character in the whole game. the kind of person who thinks he's emotionless or can trick people into thinking that but in actuality feels way too much and Hates it. i want to drown him in lake verity specifically. also i love the entire galaxy / sun / etc aesthetic with him and team galactic (<- biased astrophysicist moment)

9. favorite headcanon: i'm going to use this as an opportunity to talk about why i gave cyrus a volcarona in my au stuff LOL. his parents gave him a larvesta as his first pokemon (quite uncommon and hard to train) and it goes with their high expectations of him... he holds his larvesta to the same standards that he does himself, and pushed it very hard to live up to his parents' expectations - and it ended up evolving quite quickly relative to most volcarona....

10. who do i ship with this character: i crossed the event horizon of accretionshipping too long ago to seriously consider anything else honestly. i have chosen this rarepair as my hill to die on and it is entirely worth it. who cares if cyrus and colress have never interacted in canon and likely never will, it's my city now and i make the rules!!

that being said i do respect cyrus / cynthia as a ship, i like the dichotomy and whatnot but personally i just like them as a very complicated (former) friendship than romantically.

18. what i associate this character with: hooooo boy this is a loaded question. some of it is a bit more towards my particular story stuff that sits in my head but here's some of it:

the sun - easy answer, but true. center of the solar system, incredibly important, yet scorching and unforgiving. there's an icarus / moth too close to the flame parallel i can make here wrt the legendary stuff he gets involved with too

a black hole - this is just an upgrade to the sun theme really and is also because i am biased towards them in the astrophysical sense. but still similar to the sun stuff ultimately just on a bigger scale... a supermassive black hole is at the galactic center and influences the entire galaxy around it even if it's not "active". they do weird things to time and space that are honestly just ridiculous

various pokemon types - dark and flying obviously (seems like the kind of person to wish he could fly), but also fire and dragon. the former tying in with the sun thing, passion, etc, and dragon because legendaries lol

i'm going to stop now for the sake of how long this is getting but let it be known i think about this way too much.

ok colress time

favorite things about the character: somehow colress is genuinely the only fictional character ever to make me experience cuteness aggression. sometimes i draw him and it makes me want to strangle him. anyways my actual favorite thing about him is his complete lack of care for like, anything other than the pursuit of knowledge? to the point of possible apocalypse? i love that he really is gray and is open to all possibilities as answers to whatever questions he has. i don't know he's just really great and i like him.

9. favorite headcanon: colress cynthia lusamine family truther. colress and cynthia are about the same age while lusamine is decently older, so he's actually somewhat closer to his cousin cynthia than his sister lusamine. i like to think that cynthia also has an interest in his primary research question of "how to bring out the power of pokemon" so they bond over strategies for this and whatnot. i've had this headcanon for so long that i've honestly forgotten it's not canon LMAO

10. who do i ship with this character: see above!!! i cant say how much i think about these two honestly its a problem LOL. i'll take this question as an opportunity to say that like with the previous one i understand why people ship antigrav in this case but personally it's not my thing. i like ghetsis but i am too rarepairpilled to ever consider it myself ahaha

18. what do i associate this character with: here we go again!

mercury: this one is entirely based on my own au but i don't care. mercury as both the planet closest to the sun (simultaneously scorched and freezing), and as the liquid element that was used for all sorts of things and poisoned people before they knew what they were dealing with

various pokemon types: steel of course, but also psychic very heavily bc he gets up to more stuff related to this in my au than canon HAHA. ice as well, both because of the kyurem stuff and to contrast cyrus :P

i honestly would have put some more but i need to go leave for a thing now hahaha. i am absolutely always willing to elaborate on any of this at any time

[goodbyenorthernlights]

I think I've mentioned before that I RP Rezo on dreamwidth sometimes, and the RP community on dreamwidth does a lot of ooc/meta chat on a second website called plurk. I keep my plurk account private (and I do not particularly recommend plurk as a site, tbh, I'm just there because it's where other people are) so. Figured I'd repost some of the stuff I've written about Rezo for the 1.5 people on tumblr who might be interested.

Here's a meta post about Rezo and Zelgadis's relationship that I wrote 9 months ago, featuring some commentary (in italics) from the Zelgadis-mun I was playing with at the time.

Gonna ramble a bit about my take on Rezo and Zelgadis's relationship, so, uh, CW: Child/familial abuse and general dysfunctional family stuff.

This need to ramble inspired by a tumblr post I saw along the lines of "does turning your grandson into a chimera count as physical abuse."

Now idk how one would classify that because obviously nobody in the real world has been able to do such a thing. Although I'm sure there's a precedent for people doing nonconsensual medical experiments on their children, which would probably be the closest analogy?

Anyway, after a bit of thinking I kind of picture that Rezo would have been like. A mixture of psychologically abusive and neglectful.

wrt the neglect I also think a lot of it would have been cultural- like WE'D consider a guy letting the teenager in his care go on dangerous raids against bandits to be a blatant act of supervisory neglect but in the Slayers 'verse nobody really bats an eye at Lina, the teenage protagonist, going around getting into zany adventures.

And this is headcanon but I imagine Rezo started working as a healer at a similar age. So if anyone called him out on that he'd just be ???? and think they were like. Smotheringly overprotective.

But based on the way we see flashback!Zelgadis behaving, I do think Rezo was generally pretty good to him as a kid. I can see him being distant, and/or leaving a lot of Zelgadis's actual care up to other people, but I don't think he hit Zel or insulted him or anything like that.

I think the abuse started very suddenly and rapidly got worse, basically.

Basically, imagine you've been raised by your grandfather. He runs a nonprofit and is very busy with it, so he isn't around as much as you'd like, but he's always been kind to you and you also know the people he works with and they're always kind to you as well, and life is generally okay.

But then when you're fifteen he drugs you out of nowhere and you wake up missing a kidney, and after that he just keeps getting colder and more distant and starts getting involved in crime and makes you help him out and it all comes to a head a few years later when somebody finally fucking shoots him.

And then you're just left there like ????? well i'm gonna need a fuckton of therapy after all that.

Also, as Zelgadis's player, the fact that it was a revelation made him wonder how much of Rezo's prior actions were less about 'I love my grandson' or 'I have an obligation to this kid' and more 'I have a hidden agenda'.

Yeah, it's a wonder Zel is capable of trusting anyone at all after that happened. I imagine there might have been warning signs that Something Is Wrong With Rezo but 1) Rezo was doing his level best to hide them, and 2) Zel was a kid, not fuckin' Psychologist Sherlock Holmes, so from Zel's perspective it came entirely out of nowhere.

I mean, I assume it's why he stuck with Rezo because you get the sense that he honestly didn't believe anyone else would believe him over Rezo. He was shocked Zolf and Rodimus sided with him when he did defect

Yeah, I can imagine that the adults Rezo was interacting with were more "Hmmm" about him, it just kind of varied on where they went with that "Hmmm"

I think Zolf and Rodimus probably went "Wow okay so he's ACTUALLY a bastard" especially after he cursed Zel, whereas Eris went "oh no...... poor little meow meow......."

i do not know what to conclude about dilgear and noonsa although it is interesting to me that they're both nonhumans.

[kipandkandicore]

wrt our last reblog, we feel like we need to make a post about faking and fakeclaiming culture.

fakeclaiming is a serious issue that affects all kinds of disabled people, and systems with did/osdd/any other dissociative or personality disorder are no exception! fakeclaiming is incredibly common in system spaces, and it poses serious risks to systems struggling to figure themselves out and learn more about themselves.

according to the did research website, the number of individuals actually faking did may fall anywhere from 7-14%. that means anywhere from 1 out of 20 to 1 out of 10 individuals with symptoms of did do not actually have the disorder. we checked out this article, which has some information on faking, statistics, what faking may look like, and common misdiagnoses. we think it’s important to note that often when someone seems like they’re “faking” did, they very well may just be presenting similar symptoms of a personality disorder, and claim to be a system because that terminology works for them while they figure out what’s going on.

the article explains that determining whether or not someone is faking did is a task for the individual’s therapist. random people on the internet are not going to understand what’s going on in a particular individual’s mind. there is no way for us to fully understand someone’s trauma history, background, lived experience, or what the inside of their mind is like. therefore, it is impossible for someone who is not an individual’s therapist to determine whether or not they’re faking.

below the cut we will put common reasons fakeclaimers give for insisting someone is faking their plurality, and our responses to why these reasons are baseless and cause more harm than good.

“but they claim to have symptoms that don’t make sense!”

many symptoms of did “don’t make sense.” emotional amnesia, inner worlds, introjects, post-traumatic psychosis, and even switching were all things that didn’t make sense to us, a medically recognized system, as we were coming to terms with our plurality. hell, many of the things we experience and had been experiencing still don’t make sense to us. with such a complex disorder as did, it is only natural that some symptoms may manifest in one system that another system does not have to deal with. this is an indicator of the complexities of the disorder, however, and is not proof that an individual with “weird” or “unorthodox” symptoms is faking.

“but they weren’t acting like this/didn’t claim to have did a year ago!”

dissociative disorders are often covert. that means they try to camouflage, disguise, or otherwise hide themselves from the individual with the disorder along with those they interact with. many people who have did actually aren’t made aware of their disorder until they are well into adulthood. the host of our own system wasn’t aware of our plurality until we were 24! once an individual realizes they’re plural, however, they may undergo some substantial shifts as they attempt to learn more about their system and give their headmates agency. if someone you know has recently received a did diagnosis or suspects that they may have the disorder, it makes sense that they would experience some personality changes as they grapple with this new realization.

just like how an autistic person may see a new burst of autistic symptoms after they’ve received their diagnosis, the same could be said for an individual with did or any other neurodiversity. it comes with self exploration, unmasking, and learning how to heal while being your authentic self!

“but they insist that they don’t have trauma!”

one huge factor of did is that it puts up dissociative barriers around early childhood traumatic events. many systems with did/osdd go through life without ever realizing they were traumatized as a child. that doesn’t mean that they weren’t ever traumatized, and it also doesn’t give anyone else the right to insist that an individual has trauma. again, this is an issue for that individual and their therapist.

many systems may think they have did, when in fact they formed consciously or unconsciously without trauma at all. in other words, they may be endogenic systems, and use did terminology to describe their experience because they don’t know enough about plurality and how it may manifest. again, it is not your, our, or anyone else’s responsibility to berate these people for “faking a serious disorder!” we should be open, respectful, and kind in our interactions and push for proper education rather than ridicule and harsh words. this can lead to more systems having the proper language to describe their experience, and will ultimately lead to less non-did systems in did specific spaces.

“but they’re afab/use neopronouns/have xenogenders/are alterhuman/do this one thing that makes me uncomfortable!”

this is an argument we see quite often in defense of fakeclaiming, and to us it makes the least amount of sense. someone’s assigned gender at birth has little to no impact on whether or not they will develop did. traumatized individuals are more likely to have complicated relationships to gender and identifying as a human. these sorts of baseless claims can be ableist, transphobic, racist, or otherwise bigoted in nature. it is incredibly harmful to fakeclaim someone just because you don’t approve of or understand their way of life.

so how about, instead of claiming that everyone with a disorder whose experience doesn’t align with yours is faking for attention, we devote our time and energy to uplifting the voices of other systems, advocating for more plural research and representation in media, and attempting to understand the lives of systems everywhere! fellow systems will always have more in common with each other than they ever will with singlets. it’s better for us to band together to fight institutional ableism than to waste our time trying to root out the “fakers!”

if you’re still unconvinced, we’d strongly encourage you to take a look at the article did myths and misconceptions by beauty after bruises. and as always, we are more than happy to answer any questions or facilitate dialogue/discussion. we’d love to hear other systems thoughts and ideas on this subject!

thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!

[pluviophile-imagines]

Could I ask what your sexuality headcanons are? I love comparing mine with other peoples’!

Ok second half of this; this is just like. non-students who i Actually have thought about HJBAFV not at all a comprehensive list. Again disclaimer i write all these chars as bi in my fics, also i am bi myself so the vast majority are also bi, and also leaving a lot of these vague so u can imagine ur favorite ship or urself or w/ever

ok lets start this off with Aizawa. I think....... hes another one who's rlly unlabelled, doesnt super care to think it through and define it, but calls himself gay bc his interest in women is very, very rare and it's just way easier to say than explain all that. Definitely do buy into the idea that he had a crush on Oboro in hs but i do NOT buy into the easermic agenda sorry. Definitely not someone who goes looking for dates, but doesn't say no if someone asks him and hes interested (also im not gonna give her a whole section but i saw a hc a while back that the Ms. Joke stuff is literally that shes a lesbian and hes gay and shes fucking with him and i love that so much i just wanted to put it out there)

on the topic of the erasermic agenda: Hizashi's pan and knew it before HS, had a sudden & intense crush on Aizawa for the first month they knew each other and then immediately got over it in favor of a similar sudden, intense, and then immediately fading crush on Midnight. Hizashi and Aizawa r just rlly good friends imo; maybe they messed around for a bit in their twenties but it never went anywhere serious. He dates around a lot, not even necessarily to settle down just to have some fun

Midnight is aro/ace but does get in qprs & gravitates towards women wrt that. Most people dont read vigilantes but theres a woman in that, Kazuho, who i imagine she's been in a long-term qpr with; her relationship with aizawa and hizashi leans a little more towards a qpr than a normal friendship, too, but it's not rlly defined that way

All Might is married to justice queer but v much not interested in relationships. He and that one guy from the first movie are ABSOLUTELY exes and i won't hear otherwise; it's the only relationship he's ever had, and they broke up bc he had to go back to japan. He was heartbroken but did eventually get over him; his lack of romance afterwards is from genuine disinterest and not being hung up on his past. I can see him finding someone else in his later years, after he's retired. Definitely feels like he's not worthy of it tho

Hawks is bi but unfortunately didn't get to figure that out until like Now in the timeline...... if youll let my dabihawks history shine through i think dabi was the reason JHBASFGJHB he was basically brainwashed by the commission to become a hero so he didnt have time to Figure That Shit Out; he knew he was into women bc that was easy & what the commission expected from him but then he started this undercover assignment and met dabi and realized Oh...... Fuck. Hawks is hard tbh, bc i think between the control that the commission has over him and his own convictions as a hero he doesn't pursue any romance (tho he does get crushes or find people attractive) and most of his flings are done to keep up his prettyboy act, not out of genuine interest in being a fuckboy. Can't imagine him having a relationship until well after canon but I do see him being interested eventually

Onto the villains, Shigaraki is unlabelled but probably would call himself queer if asked. Definitely admires women more but isn't very interested in romance; AFO actively encourages him to pursue the things interested in so imo if he were he'd talk abt it more lmfao. I kinda see him as demi as well, not the type to fall immediately but requiring a friendship beforehand; tho unlike Bakugo as i said in my last post I dont think it happens suddenly but rather slowly. Y'all know im a big fan of shigaraki being absolutely whipped for his s/o so i do thing hes a big piner, tho he's also pretty bold and unashamed of his affections. I'm a big fan of him falling for a member of the league or a civilian; definitely can't see him falling for a hero unless the hero was already halfway to turning sides already. I think he's also attracted to intelligence and someone who pushes him to think more abt his ideology...... maybe im just projecting at this point JSHDFBVAJKSHD but my point is that the gender of his partner is definitely the least of what he considers/notices

Dabi is bi and, here's my bold take, demisexual; not interested in sex unless its with someone he loves. Absolutely doesn't even think abt romance for most of the years where he's on his own. He's got revenge to plan. By the time he joins the league that hasn't changed much, and he's demi so he's not interested in sleeping around, plus he rlly denies any attachment to people at all. As I said in that other ask tho I do rlly like the idea of him with Magne, so I think they have a fling for a bit before her death :( it's one of the things that leads him to isolate himself further, unfortunately, even from Jin and the other League members with whom his relationships aren't romantic. I can see him dating someone post-canon bc i think hes gonna be redeemed lol. It could be someone he knew before but they probably didnt date again bc he was v guarded; i think magne was rlly the only person he dated

Magne is pan and heres the kicker: I think shes t4t, which led to a little moment just before she and dabi got together where he was like "she wouldnt be into me :/" but she was into him anyway so all was good. She got around in her circles, mostly casual stuff tho she yearned for something more serious.

Spinner's bi & trends towards women but does occasionally get things for men and they're almost always intense. He thought he was straight for a while even once he joined the league and then suddenly got a crush on Shigaraki (around the time of MVA) and realized otherwise LMFAO he's definitely a hopeless romantic type, the whole mutant prejudice thing makes it rlly hard for him and i can see him being rlly happy with another mutant-type; i feel like as he matures he starts to gravitate towards them

Toga is canonically pan to my understanding, iirc her interest in Uraraka and Deku is the same (and romantic) in canon tho i might be wrong. Poor girl just needs therapy. I like the idea of the two of them becoming her friends over her being involved with them but i totally can get behind her having a thing with Uraraka (and maybe Tsu) at some point post-canon (presuming she gets redeemed), tho I think a qpr between the two/three of them would be longer lasting. And again presuming she gets therapy i can see her settling down with someone, gender irrelevant

Jin is unlabelled bc he hasn't much thought abt it, definitely had a thing for dabi and for hawks which does make me sad on both counts. I think he likes women slightly more abstractly/aesthetically and gets crushes more on men,. The dabi thing fades as they get closer and start to view each other as brothers. In his later years he doesn't rlly care about romance, I think he enjoys the experience of crushing but doesnt like dating people; his found family in the League is far more important to him. But i can see him falling head-over-heels for someone quite suddenly and having a bit of a whirlwind romance. Also someone for whom gender isn't much of a factor

Mr Compress is also queer and also hasn't rlly thought abt it. Definitely leans more towards women; he's like 30 but i like to think he also goes for older partners, 10 or 15 years his senior KJBADSJFHB idk he just has that Vibe with the way he calls himself an old man etc. A lot of the league i cant see sleeping or dating around much, i feel like they prioritize each other, but I do think mr compress gets around more than the others. i can see him having a bit of a fuckbuddy who he catches feelings for

Kurogiri is fun; as Oboro I do think Aizawa's crush was reciprocated, tho he wasn't around long enough for them to act on it :( he's bi, tho kurogiri isn't supposed to have personal interests. I like to imagine the brainwashing isnt as good as AFO wants it to be tho so I like the idea of him falling for someone anyway. I also like the idea of the heroes managing to undo the nomufication and I 100% can see him, aizawa, and someone else (someone he was involved with as Kurogiri) ending up in a triad as a result of aizawa and the third partner helping him through the aftermath of all that shit

Lady Nagant is a manga-only minor character but im in love with her so imma talk abt it. Shes bi and leans VERY heavily towards women, probably spent years questioning whether she was rlly bi or a lesbian before finally having a fling with a guy that she genuinely enjoyed. Has only ever been in long-term relationships with women and I v much think she has a gf at home who stayed even when she was arrested 🥺

Finally imma talk abt Natsuo bc i love that boy. He's one of the few unmarried chars with a love interest and he canonically has a gf. I do see him as IDing straight in canon ngl, but the kind of straight where he might actually be bi but his preference leans so heavily towards women and he grew up in a bad home so he just doesnt rlly think abt it bc hes v happy with women anyway. In shiganatsu thoughts shigaraki is the first man he has a thing for; i rlly can see the two of them in a triad with a woman specifically, who helps the two of them find each other and is the one who initiates bc its definitely a weird situation for natsuo