#these are INTERPERSONAL ISSUES

[stupid-elf]

And in point of fact, if you think skipping that step is possible then I can almost guarantee you’re ignoring substantial amounts of other stuff that makes the issue complicated. Like how people ended up with different versions of the problem and its history in the first place. Which is kind of important

"This issue isn't 'complex', the only reason it hasn't been solved is because some people don't want it solved" like, yeah, bro, how to get everybody on the same page about what the problem is and how best to fix it is, in fact, one of the complexities in question. A lot of stuff is simple if you skip that step, but the trick is that you can't.

[compositecreature]

That time I drew IT Chapter 2 memes after seeing it in theaters. I will treasure them because I NEVER DO THIS

[fuckedupwizard]

putting my twt thoughts here bc i went into more detail there:

i was never really able to explain why the "yqy adopts sy as his son" or "yqy takes sy as a disciple" or "yqy becomes protective over sy for xiao jiu reasons (they look alike and yqy wants to do right by him this time)" AUs rub me the wrong way until now but i realised: i think it's actually the opposite of what yqy would do, because for one thing it would be way too cruel to shen jiu and yqy recognises that. i feel like it's such an inherent betrayal to shen jiu for yqy to be like "i'm taking in this child who resembles you and has your surname, projecting your child self onto him, because this one hasn't been abused so i can use him as a replacement and pretend it doesn't matter that you were and you turned out like this." i don't think yqy thinks of sj as replaceable or that his trauma can be in any way mitigated or erased for yqy by getting a Do-Over Xiao Jiu - which he also doesn't want because shen jiu is shen jiu and yqy loves him. both of them would rather be stabbed than have sj witness his child self be forgotten/left behind all over again :)

[dailyanarchistposts]

“The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there… Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” — José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia

“I want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance… I want a world where our worth isn’t linked to our desireability, our security to our monogamy, our family to our biology.” — Alok Vaid-Menon

Our Manifesto

Romance is inherently queerphobic

The organisation of queerness around the celebration and pursuit of romantic desires and pleasures reinforces queer oppression

Queer liberation must abolish romance as its long-term goal

[mirrorofliterature]

see the reason why I hold obi-wan accountable, and wish more people did so, for how he raised anakin and completely fucking fumbled it (canonically), is because he was given a child, a traumatised child who gave the jedi everything, gambled upon his own life to get them to coruscant, helped save naboo - and then this confident, precarious, kind child becomes an emotionally unstable, insecure and desperately starved for praise adult

and who was the main adult raising him during that time? obi-wan!

but to back it up... I have small children in my life - younger relatives, who look up and trust me. I have been in a position of authority over other children as a tutor.

and I just look at obi-wan and think:

how could anyone be so unkind to a child as to not cater for their needs?

obi-wan knows, for ten years, that anakin's mum is still enslaved. does shitall to help. he does nothing tangible to prevent anakin from seeing palpatine, or stop the bullying, or meet anakin where he is at and it is just-

callous and uncaring.

obi-wan cared more about his reputation as a perfect jedi than he did anakin. or, at the very least, that is how he acted, that is what anakin thought.

obi-wan is a great jedi, but objectively a shitty friend and mentor. I'd work with him, but I wouldn't befriend him

anyway be kind to children

if compassion defines jedi, as it should but does not in the PT and which is arguably their greatest flaw, anakin would never have become darth vader

[oceangemstone]

therapy resources / schema therapy / dbt/dialectical behaviour therapy / internal family systems / meditation / c-ptsd etc. resources

this is a link to my personal google drive, it has lots of dbt stuff, some random other resources that either i or my friends have found helpful incl. DID/OSDD/dissociation resources, & some handouts from a personality disorder program i did (was aimed at pplwbpd officially but the staff all refer to it as the "personality disorder clinic", fwiw)

bunch of other stuff under the cut including video content if that's more your thing

DBT stuff

this subreddit is a wonderful community, usually helpful with questions & has some resources linked also:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dbtselfhelp/ https://dbtselfhelp.com/

TIPP skills (from dbt/distress tolerance unit but deserves distinction. biochemical benefit > psychological benefit. at least for me)

https://manhattancbt.com/dbt-tipp-skills/ https://in.nau.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/202/TIP-Skills.pdf

also emotional freedom tapping / eft (not a tipp skill iirc but it should be, one of the few things that kinda works for me)

https://www.health.com/emotional-freedom-technique-8399985

SCHEMA THERAPY

"client's guide to schema therapy"

https://disarmingthenarcissist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/clientsguideSchemaTherapy.pdf

(the website name is very questionable but i can't find the pdf for free anywhere else orz. this is a good starting point for schema therapy tho. sorry y'all. i will steal it for my google drive when i have time)

https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/therapies/schema-therapy

^THAT LINK stuff is not free!!! BUT you can find a lot of them with this google search:

[title of worksheet/handout] -site:psychologytools.*

ex. i search the following: "unhelpful thinking styles" -site:positivepsychology.* ...and this pops up, tadaaaa:

https://talkheart2heart.org/resources/unhelpful-thinking-styles/

(i'm just linking the paid site because i cant find them gathered like that anywhere else… dont have time to search each one individually rn lol. maybe another day)

free stuff:

https://positive.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Schemas-Needs-and-Modes-Reference-Sheet.pdf (overview) https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-020-0392-y/tables/1 (more detailed info on each schema) http://www.schematherapy.com/id72.htm (more info on modes) https://positivepsychology.com/schema-therapy-worksheets/ (a few worksheets linked on that page)

if video content is more your thing:

DBT UNITS:

interpersonal effectiveness extras: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPrhSDQ0V_tBg36U3wWZpLopxJBurSsq

"middle path" skills: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPrhSDQ0V_uB2e7Y570ihYBEYd7dK9Sv

"radically open" skills: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPrhSDQ0V_udTjVVHhz5e1wzOSDyVeN2

DBT expanded edition: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPrhSDQ0V_vjlYkkflUDRmfhw_hM13M-

more DBT, videos by Dr. Thomas R. Lynch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkKKzTWUSjRhnRr5Pe2GMA7VDg_E8wBcm

DBT skills animations:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Qw4-tlRJe-T2l5MtFOsLkTIkfZqjobY

--

FAMILY SYSTEMS + ATTACHMENT

Patrick Teahan channel:

(great channel run by a mental health practitioner who has experienced childhood trauma, he gets it. check out the playlists tab. he also has some free resources/worksheets on his website which is linked on his channel iirc)

attachment styles playlist by Jennifer May, Ph.D: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPrhSDQ0V_smHuEjj2CxW4u7J_FozLlS

Crappy Childhood Fairy channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CrappyChildhoodFairy/playlists

(cptsd content mostly, haven't watched much of her stuff but i liked what i did see. she isn't certified but she is someone who experienced childhood trauma as well).

healing cptsd (small channel, few videos but good info iirc): https://www.youtube.com/@healingfromcomplexptsd2767

MEDITATION

(i cannot recommend her channel enough… i don't watch her longer videos/seminar(?) stuff but her meditation videos are like. actually helpful lol? i find a lot of that stuff not helpful at all but something about her is very calming and open and grounding. love her)

--

MISC

Rachel Richards massage channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@rachelrichardsmassage9660/playlists

(she has some great videos for somatic symptoms... some playlists focus on anxiety relief, breathing/relaxation, posture/mobility, sleep, etc.)

-

Dr Daniel Fox channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@DrDanielFox/videos

(cw: ableism/ableist language toward cluster b's is present on this channel, he just has a LOT of videos so i include the link... like if youre looking for something specific to do with pd traits, there's a good chance you can find SOMETHING here. *i have mixed cluster b traits incl. the more demonized ones disclaimer*. but yeah steer clear if that bothers you)

-

Struthless channel:

(mostly adhd/exec dysfunction/motivational advice stuff but i find his videos like actually kinda inspiring/motivating so i'm including it here since not a lot of stuff... feels motivating to me at all ever. but i never regret clicking on his vids! good motivational speaker lol)

-

that's all i can think of rn please lmk if any of the links are broken or like... if you have a question u think i can help w ^-^

[jebiknights]

Sometimes I just remember that oh right it's apparently a slightly controversial opinion that I think if Palpatine hadn't been involved at all that Anakin could've been perfectly happy and fulfilled with the Jedi.

Like just from rots we see Anakin want to follow Jedi ideals, to seek advice and even help from the very Jedi that fandom loves to act like he hates and who hate him in return, and we see the Jedi around him actually have a lot of respect for him! But every time he makes progress Palpatine is whispering in his ear and pulling out the stitches and re-opening the wounds, making it near impossible for him to actually grow as a Jedi and instead he grows closer to Falling. Not to mention the war, which was orchestrated in part to actively challenge the Jedi's morals and make them make bad and questionable choices.

Plenty of Legends canon and even current canon in things like the marvel comics show Anakin actively wrestling and considering Jedi philosophy, the pros and cons, and working through all his trauma and trying to figure out what's right for him and what the Jedi code actually means. People act like he only ever does lightsaber training and that he never picked up a book in his entire padawanship (which not only is just not how the Jedi Order works from what we see but honestly is just a boring take on the character imo).

Like, I just don't think that Anakin is actually incompatible with the Jedi Order! I think he could've thrived there if he wasn't being actively sabotaged and also had more time.

[dykedvonte]

A crazy thing about Mouthwashing is that Pony Express lost communication with one of its freighters for months and didn’t send anyone to check.

A genuinely reputable company, or at the very least a decent one, would have sent someone, something out to check after about two weeks of silence. Two months is when the crew start questioning if they are even being looked for which implies they were already expecting it to take a while cause P.E just doesn’t care.

They don’t care about who they hire. They don’t care about the conditions they place their crew in or how safe the safety measures actually are. They just don’t care, made rules and regulations so they can care less and succeed in getting away with it with how little those ideas are discussed.

[eahtheramblings]

For your rewrite of eah characters, can you do lizzie hearts?

To be honest, there’s not much that I would change about Lizzie from a character perspective, except for one tiny thing that affects her relationship with Maddie: she hates Raven’s guts with a passion for a good long while.

Lizzie is her mother's daughter, she tries her best to fit the image of her mother that she has in her memories and in the cards she left her, and as such Lizzie assumes everyone else is trying to live up to their parents as well. Raven's existence is a near constant threat as far as Lizzie’s concerned, which is why Maddie’s closeness to the Evil Queen's daughter unnerves her. She barely let their friendship slide in first year, relenting only after a cryptic conversation with Raven where Raven disclosed that Maddie saved her years ago and that she is indebted to her (it’s a bit more complicated than that, but honestly Raven's problems with communication could be its own post). Maddie is one of the wisest people Lizzie knows, so between the confrontation with Raven and Maddie's insistence that she would be ok Lizzie backed off for a bit, never accepting Maddie's friendship with Raven but not openly trying to stop it as she did at the beginning of first year. After legacy day however Lizzie makes it a mission to separate the two. Lizzie isn’t a fervent believer in destiny the same way Apple is, but she does believe that following it will eventually bring her a step closer to wonderland being uncursed as there can be no “Alice in Wonderland” without the titular land. And to Lizzie, who idolizes her mom and tries to mold herself in her image, and as such believes the same for others, Raven's refusal to sign feels dangerously similar to her mother disobeying destiny to curse over wonderland. She refuses to believe under any circumstances that there could be a world where Raven’s rebellion and furthermore her friendship with Maddie are anything other than an evil plot to destroy everything just as her mother had planned. She tackles this issue head on with rage and authority the same way she believes her mother would, and it causes strain on her relationship with Maddie. While this issue doesn’t split the Wonderlandians apart for long it does force Lizzie into situations where she has to interact with her Ever After peers more like Daring, Cedar, and Duchess.

Eventually Lizzie does get over this and makes up with Maddie, but it only happens after she becomes somewhat disillusioned with the version of her mother that she built in her head out of memories and nostalgia. She still loves her mother, but much like in the third book she learns that sometimes she needs to follow her heart, and not just the cards.

[thehealingsystem]

i'm watching this video, near the end of it but....yeah, honestly I gotta agree. everything said in here is correct. and I'm kinda disappointed they're correct. I can't necessarily blame myself because most other people fell for it but damn. I really thought this show was more leftist than it actually was and defended it from a leftist perspective. but now I realize that the stupid liberal straight up bigoted opinions people had with this show is not because they're misunderstanding it, but because the show cultivates it. it actually wants people to reach these conclusions. I do love arcane but I loved it more for the leftist potential that it had, not because the show is actually leftist. I recommend giving it a watch all the way through even if you don't agree with some of the things they say. if you're a leftist and watched this show then I think it will be an eye opener, it certainly was for me

[dailyanarchistposts]

Implications of Action

Sometimes we want to kiss our friends. Kissing your friends culturally implies a variety of things: the kisser is a slut, there’s “something” between two people kissing, it’s “more than friends”. Imagine a heterosexual relationship wherein one partner “kisses their friends”, social media commenters would leap across the room to post a comment about inevitable cheating. Essentially buried in this idea is that physical expressions of love, intimacy or care are hard coded to be read as romantic and or sexual expressions. Attached to this is a broader cultural assumption about a variety of behaviors being necessarily attached to various labels applied to relationships: spouses have sex, friends don’t. We lack a deep language or cultural acceptance of expressing affection within a relationship that isn’t sexual or romantic, for talking about a variety of relationships that don’t fit neatly in a cardboard box. Physical affection is forced to be read as romantic-sexual and friendship demands a kind of space not expected of romantic sexual relationships. Yet this dynamic is oppressive both to romantic relationships that don’t desire physical expression and for friendships that find value in physical expression.

If physical affection is culturally allowed it’s between women and viewed by the patriarchy as not threatening to masculine hegemony (the same tired discounting of sapphic love). Conversely, physical affection between men carries stigma as implying homosexuality, weakness, being a sissy. These are constructs from a heterosexist patriarchy that serve to oppress our ability to express genuine feeling towards one another, either by discounting the affection itself or stoking fears behind the expression at all. Even outside the lens of the current cultural hegemony, the hard coding of physical affection as romantic-sexual stifles human expression into rigid categories. If we want the full expression of human connection, we must transcend the borders around physical expression or the lack thereof. Both in that the absence of physical touch implies romantic estrangement and that it’s presence implies romantic sexual relations.

It’s going to be awkward at first, we are products of our culture, the cop in our head is frothing at the mouth ready to interpret any touch as an expression of “fuck me” or “love me”. But what is implied in a touch and what is said in a kiss? Connect these physical expressions to the emotive motivation behind them. Touching, kissing, expresses strong feelings of connection, like, love, camaraderie, not solely sexual desire. These expressions of emotional feeling are taken in our current cultural context to imply both more and less than they ought to. American culture currently doesn’t allow physical expressions to exist independently, we inherently tie it to notions of commitment, larger labels that imply a host of behaviors and feelings. In doing so we rob ourselves of a variety of expressions towards our individually unique relationships.

By transcending expectations that physical affection or a lack thereof implies or negates a greater relationship dynamic we free ourselves to express our emotions more genuinely and uniquely to each particular relationship. We can have relationships that express physical intimacy without having to force them into awkward boxes. We can have relationships without physical intimacy that don’t negate the romantic feeling. If we want to have dynamic, unique and complex relationships that don’t force an artificial compromise to fit a predefined relationship, we must dissociate physical touch broadly from romantic and sexual dynamics. Let physical touch be understood in the specific and not as a road marker for other facets of a relationship.

[heroes-fading]

thinking a lot about how the last of us and andor almost serve as foils to one another, and andor overall just has so much better execution to me. the last of us presents problems as individual and interpersonal. it's a long string of feuds / revenge / back and forth. whereas in andor that element of infighting isn't nonexistent, but it's able to acknowledge that these problems are NOT just individual, but structural!

tlou presents a pretty fascist, authoritarian government that they COULD do a lot of interesting things with. instead, they're more a backdrop that's accepted and shrugged off rather than reconciled with. characters can find happiness in silos, walled off from the rest of the world (bill and frank, jackson) or accept that community living that is open at all has to be authoritarian and brutal in some nature (FEDRA, KC, the Fireflies).

i've been trying to figure out why tlou 2 just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth beyond the tragedy inherent in it. i loved andor, and andor is inherently incredibly tragic! but it's tragic and earned. there are interpersonal fights and struggles, but there is also an understanding of the systems that oppress us that are worth dying to stop.

whereas in TLOU death is mostly either random or vengeful! bites or accidents or revenge quests. they sort of lampshade what COULD be interesting (FEDRA literally rounds people up and kills them, canonically! people call them fascist but do nothing with it!) but they leave it there as if it's the least interesting thing there! but we're meant to believe that suffering is either interpersonal or random!

the fireflies are meant to be our rebels but they're rendered completely uninteresting and without nuance or competence. you don't believe they could make a cure (even if TBTB say they can) and you don't believe they can accomplish much at all because you're not SHOWN any degree of competence from them! you aren't rooting for them! who cares!

whereas in andor what TLOU tries to refer to vaguely and implicitly is made explicit and front and center. the enemy is a fascist, authoritarian government. people love and lose and do everything they can to stop it. it is tragic and worth it and earned. there are individual evil people but also a very evil system that molds them in its shape.

TLOU -- for as much as it claims to be anti-fascist and "oh get it the one functioning society is kinda communist haha" -- has no teeth when it comes to any of this. you shrug at the system. you kill each other. it's all so incredibly pointless. why dream of better? keep your head down and look out for yourself and your own. nothing else matters.

whereas with andor, it actually asks you to dream bigger, to want more, that sacrifices can mean something even if not immediately and it all feels so incredibly earned. there is something bigger, and it's worth it.

[nefelibatat]

If Arcane was going to show us a “perfect world”, an alternate universe where Zaun never sunk (which is already a thing btw!) makes infinitely more sense than implying that Vi's death would fix classism somehow.

[welcometogrouchland]

Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.

Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).

Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**

That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???

I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.

Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.

(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)

*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench

**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious

[prinzessonne]

god i wish i could like cass. i really, really want(ed) to like cass.

to say nothing about cass continuously advocating (in the early episodes) for rapunzel keeping secrets from eugene which is my first major issue with her, challenge of the brave was where i knew i just. was not going to like whatever they did with her.

"a friend wouldn't be so oblivious" like fuck you. not only does she not have proper socialization, you should have been honest about how important this challenge was to you. how is rapunzel supposed to pick up on your "hints" when your hints are (checks notes) lying to her to try and stop her from entering and being snippier with her than usual instead of just fucking telling her how important it is to you and that this is something you want to do on your own to prove yourself

cass being The Way She Is™ is fine, i actually love the sassy sword lesbian vibe she has going. what i don't love is putting all the onus on rapunzel. you're her lady-in-waiting, you've been with her since she got back to the kingdom. you know she's sheltered and struggles with what is and isn't "proper" and figuring out all the unspoken rules of socializing. you've been with her the entire time she's been back, and that's at least seven months. at least. you should know better.

cass repeatedly criticizes both rapunzel and eugene for only thinking of themselves, expecting them to just know and inherently understand her without giving either of them the same respect and it drives me insane

[dykedvonte]

Reading MW takes on Twitter is like reading a summary of the Bible from someone who only watched like a Family Guy family special about it