the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
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okay im sorry but just imagine being kageyama tobio. your parents are always working late, your sister quit volleyball years ago and now she's off being an adult and having a career, none of your teammates get why you care so much and the only guy who did, because he cared the same amount in the same way, graduated 2 years ago and also hated your guts. your peers have given you a cruel nickname just so they can reinforce how little they like or understand you, you dont have any friends, you have nothing but volleyball actually, your grandfather is dead and you are clinging to the promise he made you when you were a little kid because if you dont you might just go insane. you are so, so incredibly lonely.
and then, THEN, this scrawny 5 foot nothing kid stares you down outside the gymnasium bathrooms and promises to beat you, and he totally sucks at volleyball. like, he. is. terrible. but he can run, and he has good reflexes, he jumps so high he looks like he's flying, and most importantly he runs headfirst into a wall and then says 'we haven't lost yet' like its the most obvious thing in the world when his teammates ask him why he bothered. and you realise this kid is just like you, the same kind of fucked in the head you are. and youre furious, what the hell has this guy been doing for the past 3 years? your grandfather promised you that someone even better would come and find you are here he is, but you beat his team in less than an hour and you're pretty sure you'll never see him again, despite him promising to take you down, because never once in your life has anyone who was supposed to stick around actually do that. you're angry because you didn't have to be so painfully lonely all these years, you could've had someone who kept up with you, but he just wasn't there, because he sucks and you don't but he doesn't have to and that makes it so much worse than you just being a freak who was completely one of a kind.
and then you go back to your team, back to your last middle school tournament, and you play more games. only this time youre pissed. you know that there's someone else like you now, someone who will. not. stop until the ball has hit the floor and you don't get why your teammates won't just be better, try harder, move faster. and then they abandon you too. you thought you were alone before, but now you have absolutely nothing, not even volleyball. and you didn't get into the school your grandfather went to, and the coach you picked your back-up school for is in the hospital, and your plan for the next 3 years is to essentially bide your time until you get scouted into the v-league because you literally do not have anything left and you are doing everything your 15 years old and incredibly depressed self can because you refuse to let go of volleyball, no matter how lonely it makes you, no matter how much it hurts to cling on.
and then, AND THEN. that same scrawny dumbass from that 2-0 match in middle school is there and he still sucks and he's still the same kind of fucked in the head that you are and you won't give him one of your 'royal sets', not after what happened last time, you can't stop being lonely but you can at least try to not get abandoned again. and he says 'forget all that, i'll be here no matter what', and he spikes the damn set. he shuts his freaking eyes and he trusts you and you have just had the rug pulled out from underneath your damn feet because you understand, maybe better than anyone else, being ready to do whatever it takes to win but who the hell just fully puts their faith in someone else like that and maybe, just maybe, this kid was serious when he swore he'd get better and take you down.
he's invincible as long as youre there and so are you as long as you have him. you ask him if he's prepared to go all the way to the world stage to take you on, because you've never set your sights anywhere else, and he tells you he'll match you every step of the way. he picks up your crown, puts it right back on your head and proves to you that he refuses to leave you just like everyone else did, even at your worst. you tossed and he spiked and he said 'i'm here' and he is.
he is, and he never stops being here for you, chasing after you, making you chase after him, even when he's on the other damn side of the planet. and then 6 whole years after you first met him, first played him, first thought that maybe your grandfather would keep his promise to you, you get to play him again and you realise that he is your someone even better, always has been. actually, they all are. and you're not that lonely tyrant you used to be anymore, youre not that sad, abandoned kid hiding behind anger and obsession, you're doing the thing you love surrounded by people who love it in the same fucked in the head way that he and you do, and the man you love is there across the net from you, playing against you, and he's also there on the court next to you, playing with you, and either way he is here.
you got really, really good at volleyball, and somebody even better came and found you.
he's here.
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There’s just something about the way session 7 ended. Everyone was focused on two of the survivors. The Zombie and the Stars. Everyone forgot about the Sun. No-one noticed the little platform on the sky, having mysteriously been changed.
Except someone did. The Glare. He saw the platform, how it had been changed, realised that the remaining survivor would be up there. However he did nothing with this information, why?
Simple, he wanted to apologise in a way. Apologise for forgetting about him, apologise for getting turned into one of the army. That’s why he let the Sun slip through the cracks, why he let the Zombie and the Sun hide in the base, even protecting them against the hoard.
The Zombie, the Stars and the Sun all survived. To the detriment for the rest of the server. They all failed, because of one man’s loyalty. The Harbinger had been upset for sure, but really what could she do?
The session was over. Sure she could wait for her revenge till the next week, but that’s too long. The Glare had ruined it for everyone else. She had been willing to kill the Stars for the task, why hadn’t he?
The Glare is a loyal man. He would never betray those he called allies unless they did so first. And neither did. The Zombie and the Sun stood by his side until his unfortunate demise to someone who in a past life had been his son.
The Zombie went out the same way, in a hole with that same son. But what about the Sun? He died fighting. Sure his curse had activated, both the Glare and the Zombie dying before him, but he knew that they would be proud. Knew that the first people who had seen his loyalty since the sand had been washed out of his wings, would be proud of him.
Proud of him for staying by their side till the end. Proud for fighting a 3v1 so the Zombie would have some chance of escape. Prions of him for taking a total of 91 hearts from the most stacked team before he died.
Because in the end their only players. Players in this unforgiving game. Cleo, Etho, and Grian were all just victims of these games, coming together to give eachother some form of comfort.
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i was talking about stan and his OCD the other day but i didn't really talk about how the other losers would act about it. so!
please remember that OCD is a varied condition and not everyone with it is like what is depicted in this post!
bill
at first stan keeps his obsessions to himself, he's pretty aware of what is a "typical" thought process and what is his brain being kinda weird
but eventually bill finds him having a panic attack over something seemingly mundane. young stan to me had obsessions that focused on the supernatural and "curses", so something like opening an umbrella indoors throws him into hysterics
and as soon as he realizes what he's doing he's humiliated, because like who the fuck cares? everyone knows that's just a stupid superstition, and he's so worried bill's going to think he's a weirdo or a coward
but bill is like. extremely reasonable about it, i think he's used to georgie getting upset over seemingly nonsensical things (the way kids do), so he's just used to treating things he doesn't understand with severity.
maybe there's nothing scary to him about opening an umbrella indoors, but its clearly upset stan and that's what matters here. he calmly asks him what he's upset about and reassures him that if it upsets him then its important
he gets stan to talk through it, bill brings up how richie always opens his umbrella indoors but nothing bad has ever happened to him because of it, which doesn't help a ton because OCD isn't typically very reasonable, but it helps a bit, and stan calms down enough that bill bringing up richie prompts him to go off on a rant about something stupid richie did at school while bill was gone
eddie
despite not having OCD eddie gets it, especially after he finds out that he isn't actually sick
eddie is the first person stan chooses to tell about the weird circles his brain runs in, because he knows eddie still carries around his fake inhaler
eddie isn't scared of the same things stan is, but he can understand being afraid of something he logically knows can't hurt him. they're pretty good at working each other out of panic attacks because of this
richie
(the things richie says to stan here are things you should never ever say to someone with OCD unless you have their express permission, stan finds it funny and helpful, and as someone with OCD so do i, but many will not, and talking like this could make their mental state worse and is just generally an asshole thing to do!)
on paper richie is an asshole to stan about his OCD, he calls him unreasonable, tells him he makes no sense, he's worrying over nothing, etc.
he frequently makes fun of stan's obsessions, if stan says something he thought because of his OCD richie will repeat it back to him in a Voice
but by some miracle this does wonders for stan
if anyone else was saying this stuff it would make him feel like shit, but because it's richie it's hilarious (not that he shows it)
richie assigning characters to his obsessions has managed to completely discredit some of them, and stan is straight up Not Bothered by some of them anymore because as soon as the thought pops up so does richie's voice and he can't take it seriously
there's the scandalized mother who thinks stan is a horrible person for not appreciating his meals properly or something
there's the conspiracy theorist trying to convince stan curses are real
and there's the high school coach who acts like stan is a one man army and they're going to lose the entire war if stan doesn't fold his sheets properly
stan doesn't want to give richie credit for his improved mental state because the way he did it is ridiculous, but yeah, richie and his voices have definitely helped
beverly
bev is great at Not Talking About It and Being Normal About It
stan will say something extremely concerning (use your imagination, i don't want to provide an example lol), and bev is like "yeah thats fucked up." and then they move on
he never gets the feeling she's brushing him off or anything, she'd definitely Actually Talk About It if he asked, but sometimes he just needs to get the thought out there and then immediately move on
sometimes it is exhausting to actually talk about feelings, sometimes stan just needs to express that he's feeling something, be acknowledged, then move on
"i just thought [insert concerning compulsion he doesn't want to do]" "or we could skip class and build a snowfort before all these other assholes ruin the fresh snow at lunch"
stan never feels judged in the slightest when he's with bev, and it helps free him of some of the judgment in his own mind :)
ben
ben is so so so good at listening, not only is he just the only nice 13 year old stan has ever met, he has one of those faces yknow?
he finds himself telling ben things it took him nearly a decade of friendship to tell bill
ben is clearly confused and concerned, but he never makes stan feel like he's unreasonable
stan usually only tells his friends about his specific obsessions when they've bottled up and are about to explode, or when he's in the midst of a panic attack
but with ben he feels like he can talk about the other stuff that comes with it, the impact his thought processes have had on his life
ben offers suggestions from time to time, not all of them stick, but the ones that do really help stan out
mike
mike finds a way to keep stan from worrying about anything at all
stan could spend all day worrying about something, and then mike shows up and explains some new topic to stan and it's like stan wasn't even stressed in the first place
stan can't even count the number of times mike has gone through an explanation of the history of derry, or what various states are known for, or the tasks mike does at the farm, or the history of some obscure scientific/cultural phenomenon
stan genuinely loves hearing about anything mike wants to talk about, but he also just finds mike to be a really engaging speaker to the point he stops thinking about whatever was bothering him
it is very much a win/win situation
sometimes mike will manage to pull him out of whatever was worrying him and get him to talk about birds and the boy scouts and they always end up having a ton of fun :)
the losers love stan and he loves them <3
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