#I knew I had trauma and dissociation issues. I knew one of my sisters has DID. I did Not expect to b worried I Also have it.

[mosspapi]

In similar news, I just finished Ted Nivison's almost 2-hour all-Barbie-movies deep dive and my brain is entirely fried but not for the reasons you would expect. I think I need a drink.

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: a pool of light, ch. 3

Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn & Wēn Qíng, Niè Huáisāng & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Characters: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wēn Qíng, Granny Wēn, Fourth Uncle, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī, Niè Huáisāng, Niè Míngjué

Additional Tags: Pre-Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Reconciliation, Dissociation, Mental Health Issues, Anniversary, Food, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Found Family, Emotional Constipation, Communication Failure, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín is Bad at Feelings, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín is Trying, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, POV Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, POV Third Person, Podfic Welcome, Food Sex, Friendship, Reconciliation, Psychological Trauma

Summary: A reconciliation, but not the one expected.

Notes: See end.

Part 1 | Part 2

Chapter: 1 | 2

AO3 link

——————

The next morning, Wei Ying’s phone, playing A-Li’s ringtone, wakes them—later than they usually rouse, but they had an emotional evening and a very late night. He hesitates only briefly before answering, not because he doubts her, but because the emotions of yesterday wash through him so powerfully he almost forgets the phone is ringing.

A-Zhan squeezes his hand, and he squeezes back as he answers.

She starts with small talk, clearly hesitant to discuss Jiang Cheng’s actions, but eventually she broaches the subject.

“I didn’t know what A-Cheng was planning, or I would have told him to do it on a different day. I hope it didn’t ruin your anniversary. A-Xuan is going to settle quickly, so Jin Enterprises won’t challenge the suit. You deserve restitution, A-Ying.”

The wording rubs him wrong, like she wouldn’t have told him even if she knew in advance, like she would have let him go through this some other day. He’s not sure if he’s reading too much into her words, if this is his trauma misinterpreting.

Wei Ying can feel himself slipping into a dissociative state, focusing vaguely on his husband’s morning wood against his leg and imagining the glorious sensation of taking it with the remnants of last night’s lube only barely dulling the pain of the stretch.

It takes a moment to drag his attention back to the conversation, and he does his best not to feel guilty about thinking of being fucked by his husband while talking to his sister on the phone.

“Wen Qing is going to reach out to him about Dafan Applications joining the suit on my behalf to make it more, ah… legitimate.”

He can’t help but wince at the word, since it makes it clear Jiang Cheng no longer has the standing alone as his brother to do this—his estrangement from the family had been so terribly ugly and public, after all, and in that time his brother had never reached out, not even when Uncle Jiang had his heart attack. For that matter, Jiang Fengmian has never reached out, either.

A bitter lump settles in his throat, hurt he still carries, and he knows he’ll need to make an appointment with his therapist to unpack this, and then he’ll be nonfunctional the rest of the day—and he’s so tired of having to unpack and process his damn trauma all the time.

A-Li’s pause speaks multitudes, perhaps about her own guilt, and Wei Ying steadfastly refuses to feel guilt about her own guilt, too many emotions bogging down his brain. He can barely manage his own right now, let alone anyone else’s, even Jiejie’s.

“That’s a fantastic idea,” she finally settles on, “and I’m sure A-Cheng will welcome it.”

After some awkwardness, the rest of the conversation turns to tales of little A-Ling and his toddler adventures, which Wei Ying answers with stories of A-Yuan and Turmeric. It ends on a promise to get together soon, “once this unpleasantness is settled,” in A-Li’s words.

When they hang up, he lets A-Zhan draw him close and hold him, settling his head against his chest to hear his heartbeat.

Once, his adoptive sister was someone he went to for comfort in difficult times, but she wasn’t there in the most difficult ones, and now Wei Ying feels like they’re circling around each other, trying to find the shape of a new relationship, but always out of step. Where once he craved her warmth and would bring up her number on his cell and wish he could call her, now it’s hard to look forward to her calls, harder to reach out himself.

He has trouble finding that trust he once had, reminded all too often that she capitulated to demands he be cut off, by her parents and Jiang Cheng, by her husband’s family. He doesn’t even know if she really believed in his innocence. It’s not like he can entirely blame her—they were raised in the same household, and each of them carries the scars of that upbringing.

Wei Ying isn’t sure there’s any going back, and sometimes it feels like she wants to return to what was instead of figuring out where they are now. Compu-Jiang’s motto may be “attempt the impossible,” but too often this seems beyond even that, and he wonders if he’ll always hold her at arm’s length, if this is just another part of his life destroyed forever.

Eventually A-Zhan rises, helps him into a much-needed shower, and tenderly bathes him, the kind of non-sexual intimacy he needs right now. Wei Ying returns the favor, happy to focus on dragging a soft sponge across flesh, on laving away the remnants of their night, massaging shampoo into his scalp and rinsing the suds away. They dry each other, too, and dress in comfortable pajamas.

A-Zhan makes congee and pulls out some of the leftovers from dinner to act as toppings, one of their favorite ways to repurpose leftovers into a hearty breakfast. They’ll probably use some of it for fried rice, and others will be reheated as side dishes for supper.

They have a few hours before Lan Xichen returns with A-Yuan, and neither of them have messages from anyone—which means their son is fine, that Wen Qing is handling the lawsuit issue and doesn’t need their input, and that neither of their numbers have leaked to the press—though they don’t tempt fate by looking at their emails, personal or work.

Which means they’re left with several hours to kill, and after spending the night having increasingly kinky followed by increasingly lazy sex, they’re quite sated and a bit too sore and tired to have another round.

Instead, they let Turmeric out of his hutch so he can hop around the living room while they watch a documentary about Chinese music traditions, one of A-Zhan’s major interests that will also allow Wei Ying to cuddle up and dissociate to music.

Wei Ying hasn’t been able to concentrate on watching anything longer than half an hour since the Jin were arrested and the media converged on them, while A-Zhan requires distraction from his anxiety, so this was the solution they alit on, a way for them to be secure and loved and close while also handling their mental health needs.

The credits (because A-Zhan of course reads those) have just finished rolling when A-Zhan’s phone alerts, the gentle guqin note indicating a text message.

“Xiongzhang would like to know if Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang can accompany him when he brings A-Yuan home,” he says.

The plan has always been that Lan Xichen would bring lunch when he came to drop off A-Yuan, so he’s really asking if he can bring them as guests to lunch. It’s nice of him to ask instead of just doing.

Wei Ying has a suspicion that Nie Huaisang is behind the request, that he wants to reconnect after the takedown of the Jins. He hasn’t seen his old friend since his public disowning and the subsequent blacklist years, but Nie Mingjue’s health had failed due to the stress of the targeted attack against Nie Innovations, and he’d changed phone numbers and email addresses multiple times due to harassment since, so it wasn’t terribly surprising.

A-Zhan is watching him quietly, putting no pressure on him for an answer either way, which means he has no objection either way. It used to be a problem, A-Zhan capitulating to what Wei Ying wanted, but their therapy has helped him voice his desires and made their relationship healthier.

He’s a bit surprised to realize he would like to reconnect with Nie Huaisang, though there’s a painful nostalgia associated. Along with Jiang Cheng, they’d been terrors as kids, pulling all sorts of ridiculous shenanigans, and those memories bubble up with the thought of reconnecting with his old friend, bittersweet now that those days are long behind them, those relationships lost.

“They can come,” he murmurs finally. “We’ll try it.”

And he truly means try—A-Zhan will happily alert his brother if either of them is distressed, and Lan Xichen has not let them down since he returned to their lives after the ugly meeting with Lan Qiren, and he won’t hesitate to usher the Nies out if needed. But if they’re lucky, this lunch will be a little like the dinner that had brought A-Zhan’s brother back into their lives, a chance to heal and find the shape of potentially a better relationship.

After A-Zhan texts his brother, they prepare the apartment for guests, including putting Turmeric back in his hutch, tossing their very used sheets in the wash and tidying up from breakfast; they keep a tidy apartment generally, thanks to his husband, so they’ve also changed out of their pajamas and have tea on by the time their guests buzzed to be let in.

A-Yuan insists on hugs immediately upon entering, which is a nice distraction from their guests, and then he runs past them to greet Turmeric in his hutch, leaving them to awkwardly greet the Nies and Lan Xichen. Nie Mingjue’s regained some of his health since Wei Ying last saw a picture of him, but still has a wasted look about him, and Wei Ying wonders if his and A-Zhan’s troubled years show on them to those they knew before. Nie Huaisang presses an intricately carved wooden box on them, and inside is the sort of teapot one might give at a wedding—Yixing clay, red with intertwined golden dragons, clearly customized and made for a couple.

“Thank you for having us,” is all his old friend says, but the gift is far more than a guest gift.

From the way A-Zhan is handling it and Nie Huaisang’s tastes generally, it’s clearly a very expensive piece. He’s sending a message—in part an apology for distance, for missing their wedding, not that they’d expected him given the sudden collapse of Nie Innovations at the time. Nie Mingjue’s faintly embarrassed expression solidifies that idea.

Just the memory is exhausting for Wei Ying, and his mind distracts him, wondering if at some point A-Zhan would like to renew their vows now that they’re in better times. They’ve certainly managed being there for each other in sickness, and it could be a statement looking forward to healthier times.

Lan Xichen’s comment, something about not talking shop today, brings him back to the present.

“Agreed,” A-Zhan says, his voice doing that thing that implies he will brook no argument.

He’s directing this to Nie Huaisang, who smiles sheepishly and nods, then hides his face behind a fan he unfurls dramatically.

Wei Ying remembers teasing him about his love of collectible fans, and he can almost hear Jiang Cheng asking how many fans one person can have, and Nie Huaisang arguing there is no limit.

“It’s not about how many I can use. If I get enjoyment out of them, even just looking at them, they’re worth having,” he said at the time.

He doesn’t understand the need to collect, even now, having learned young not to get attached to physical things that could be taken away thanks to a combination of foster care and Yu Ziyuan.

The one Nie Huaisang has with him now was one of his favorites back in high school, Wei Ying remembers, and he wonders if carrying it today means something, is some kind of message, then shakes himself out of that line of thinking, knowing that way lies madness. He knows from therapy that he all too often looks for hidden meanings and agendas when he feels on edge, something borne from so many years of trauma even before the corporate espionage accusation thanks to survival mechanisms developed because of Madam Yu, survival mechanisms that are no longer useful and instead lead him to seek patterns where none exist.

“It’s good to see you again,” he finally settles on, a safe thing to say, and effective if the way Nie Huaisang lights up is any indication.

“Ah, Wei-ge, you too—oh, wait, you’re both Wei-ge now, so maybe I should call you Ying-ge and Zhan-ge?”

His hands flutter as he speaks, and Wei Ying can’t help but smile at the frenetic energy he somehow forgot Nie Huaisang exudes in his speech when nervous, how it reminds him of high school and some of their silly shenanigans. He does his best to ignore the flip side of those memories—the punishments he received the times they were caught, and the fact that the last third of their trio is still absent, the weird attempt at apology notwithstanding.

Nie Huaisang just ghosted him, not that he didn’t do the same, afraid to reach out lest he be blamed for Nie Innovations’ woes as well, so this reunion was less fraught, to a certain extent. Jiang Cheng… well, that’s different, involved hurtful words, You are dead to me, he remembers among the worst of them.

“Those work fine,” A-Zhan answers for him, likely noticing he’s become lost in his thoughts, then asks after Nie Mingjue’s health.

The distraction is welcome, and Wei Ying focuses on pouring tea for their guests while their guests answer—recovered, mostly, but under doctors’ orders not to engage in stressful activities. While Nie Mingjue speaks, Lan Xichen spreads the takeout on their lazy Susan, and A-Yuan rejoins them and helps set the table, lured out away from Turmeric by the smell.

They’ve brought Indian from one of the better places in the city, and it smells heavenly—and Wei Ying isn’t ignorant of the fact that a particular container of rogan josh has been set by his seat, meaning it’s extra spicy, just the way he likes, along with several samosas that also must run on the spicy side. He’s not sure whether A-Zhan texted his brother his favorite or if this is somehow Nie Huaisang remembering from years ago his preferred order from takeout during college.

Other dishes on the lazy Susan include more samosas, palak paneer, and mushroom korma, likely made with a spice level the Lans can tolerate, goshtaba, chicken tikka masala, and dhaba goat, which he guesses is likely for Nie Mingjue, though they’ll all share (except him because no one else can handle his spice level). There are plates of paratha and naan, as well, with gajar ka halwa and gulab jamun for dessert. There’s even a plate of the typical raita, pappadum, chutney, and other sides that would be typically served in-restaurant alongside their meals.

As Nie Mingjue discusses his health, with occasional interjections by Nie Huaisang, they all fill their plates with their preferred foods—Wei Ying taking tastes of the mushroom korma, goshtaba, and dhaba goat, but otherwise sticking to his rogan josh.

His maladies are largely heart-related, brought on by extreme stress, which required some major lifestyle changes, they learn. He’s recovered a lot, but is still monitored by doctors and largely uninvolved in the recovery and running of the company, which falls to Nie Huaisang.

“A-Sang is doing a wonderful job running the company, and Xichen’s help is very welcome,” he finishes simply.

Nie Huaisang makes a token protest at being responsible for anything, which none of them buy, and they turn to the task of eating, thankfully saved from difficult conversation as A-Yuan talks between bites about his fun sleepover, taking them through each hour with occasional interjected additions from the Nies or questions by Wei Ying or A-Zhan.

They’ve chosen not to address, by mutual agreement, that Lan Xichen seems to have moved in more with the Nies than his own apartment, with A-Zhan wanting him to finally have space to make his own decisions and decide what to tell others. It’s the sort of independence they’ve started to give A-Yuan with smaller matters, and Wei Ying knows his husband is very aware of the fact that neither of them were ever given that by Lan Qiren, that A-Zhan himself wrested that in his decision to stand by him against his uncle’s wishes.

In many ways, they’re all having to heal from traumas, and Wei Ying thinks that may be why he doesn’t judge Lan Xichen for anything that happened—for someone so lacking in independence, his fight to keep him from being charged despite the will of the GusuLan Tech board and his uncle took incredible willpower. He wants to imagine that maybe Jiang Cheng and even Jiang Yanli are coming from similar places, but he’s too close to it to be able to analyze it in the same way.

Yeah, he can see there’s definitely going to be a very intense therapy session in his near-immediate future.

Lan Xichen cleared A-Yuan meeting the Nies with them in advance, and they okayed it—they weren’t strangers, and he and A-Zhan decided that the gap of time since seeing them last had not made them strangers, which was why he could handle them being here, in their home, instead of meeting them elsewhere as they did with other people trying to reenter their lives. Jiang Yanli still hasn’t been to their home, for instance, and after this morning…

Wei Ying takes a deep breath and mentally drags himself back to the conversation in time to hear A-Yuan talk about all of Nie Huaisang’s fans, which are apparently in some sort of special cabinet with drawers for each one, which he’s guessing he’s had custom-made. The last time he remembers visiting him they were all displayed, which probably means something about how vast his collection has grown.

“How many fans do you have now, anyway?”

Nie Huaisang blushes at the question, which he finds amusing, but Nie Mingjue answers for him with a number that has thousand in it, and he can’t help but laugh at the chagrined look that follows.

“How on earth do you display them all?” he can’t help but ask.

This proves to be a mistake, as they are run through a list of themes and fans until Nie Mingjue shoves a samosa in his mouth—unfortunately one of Wei Ying’s, which leads to the need to get something to quench the fire in his taste buds.

A-Zhan quickly gets a glass of orange juice, which he’s learned through accidents with A-Yuan taking a bite of A-Die’s food without thinking to keep close to the table, and disaster is averted. Wei Ying eats the rest of the samosa anyway, not one to waste good food, but the act feels more weighty than that since it’s something he did in the old days when it was common for them to share food like this, like something important has shifted into place. Somehow the atmosphere eases, and conversation becomes less stilted.

He’ll only really understand it later, when he has a chance to think and talk with A-Zhan, after the Nies and Lan Xichen leave. This winds up being much later in the evening, after Nie Huaisang pouts about the mishap and Nie Mingjue apologizes, laughing still at his brother’s face, red and tear-streaked after the spice. After they finish dinner, they have more tea and dessert, which eases poor Nie Huaisang’s taste buds a bit more. A-Yuan insists they introduce the newcomers to Turmeric, and ultimately they settle in the living room with Dora the Explorer on in the background for chatting and play, Turmeric snuggled on Nie Mingjue’s lap, Nie Huaisang joining Wei Ying and A-Yuan in building a block tower, even, until A-Yuan’s naptime.

Before they leave, Nie Huaisang asks them to come for dinner in the next few weeks, and Wei Ying feels safe enough to agree when A-Zhan glances at him.

Distractions continue in the form of chores to be done and dinner to be made. Despite being mostly leftovers, decisions about how to work Indian cuisine into Chinese cuisine keep their minds blessedly busy. They’re nothing if not pros at compartmentalizing.

It will be nearly bedtime before he and A-Zhan discuss the day and he realizes this is evidence that they don’t have to keep their entire old lives cut off; they can pick and choose who they decided to include in their lives going forward from this time, this opportunity for reconnection. They can decide what role the people they reconnect with will play, and in some ways that’s simultaneously an incredibly freeing but also intensely terrifying prospect.

But the overtures toward such reconnections don’t have to be stressful, like reaching out and actively attempting to bridge the chasm of so many years, or announcing a lawsuit like Jiang Cheng has chosen in an effort to somehow make amends. Their relatively simple decision to allow A-Yuan to come into contact with the Nies via Lan Xichen was likely the impetus that led them to ask if they could come for lunch, leading to this tentative revival of their relationships.

All they have to do is find a way to send out feelers to old friends they may want in their lives again. And that, he knows, is something he and A-Zhan can decide to do together.

Wei Ying still has no idea what to do about Jiang Cheng’s overture, but that can be handled as it comes.

—————

So A-Zhan and Wei Ying’s mental health difficulties manifest in different ways, based partly on my own and how they manifest in sometimes very different ways at different times, and those of friends and family. Wei Ying’s voice and his difficulty focusing because of the mental health is interesting and sometimes hard to write, because it involves a lot of reflection on my part as the writer. One thing to remember is that, because this is written very much in Wei Ying’s mind, as readers you may notice how a sort of paranoia exists around his very close relationships.

I read a Tumblr post not long ago that discussed bullying and trauma and I read it while I was high so that sent me down a weird spiral of thought. Trauma, like with bullying, impacts our sense of safety to the point of needing to hide our full selves because all people are potential threats who cannot know our vulnerabilities. Maybe some, but not all, which means we might show different aspects of our personalities depending on what we feel safe to show. The problem with that is the potential to lose one’s sense of self doing that, so a much smaller group of close relations is the way to counter that.

Basically, Wei Ying is seeing everything through trauma goggles, especially seeing possible betrayal or hints to hunker down again in the NC-zone. He knows this, but doesn’t always see it in his own reactions and what he feels the need to emphasize. Like with Jiang Yanli, where he focused on all the problematic phrases, recognizing at one point that he’s doing it, but ending with another he doesn’t recognize (her use of “unpleasantness” to describe the situation). So this isn’t necessarily her dismissing this event as nothing, or her not also being retraumatized by these events. It’s Wei Ying’s perspective and he can recognize how it impacts his interpretation, but not how it was meant by Jiang Yanli. He’s fucking terrified and it impacts his perception. It’s a bit of a miracle that he’s able to tolerate the Nies in his space for so long, and he should be proud he didn’t dissociate entirely.

That was a ramble but also I am a little high again. Thank goodness for legal states because my chronic pain is eased a bit, as is some of my anxiety.

So with the Yixing teapot… this is some of the highest quality clay used to make teapots in the world. Furthermore, the clay used is harvested from spots with particular minerals that change the composition and color depending, as well as the value. This teapot could be made of hongyi (red) clay, which is a top-quality color. But there’s also a much more expensive possibility, a particular kind called zhuni, which fires especially densely in a way that makes it nearly perfect as a teapot but means most of the pots crack in firing and are useless, leaving a precious few surviving. Which is why it is extremely expensive and requires expert verification on authenticity.

You decide which it is!

Now that I think about it, that very kind of teapot, the zhuni, could have been the one the Nies presented to Lan Qiren during the CQL lecture arc. I don’t know.

I could explain the different Indian dishes, but I figure that’s easy to look up if you’re curious. Basically there’s mild vegetarian dishes for the Lans. Rogan josh is a particular kind of curry that’s known to be very flavorful and spicy. Goshtaba is a yogurt-based curry with mutton meatballs. Ca halwa is a sort of carrot pudding (insert bunny joke). The rest of the dishes are fairly standard fare one might find easily in any Indian restaurant in the US. I used to sleep over at a friend’s house when I was in elementary school, and her grandma used to make what I called “Indian pancakes” for us, which I’m pretty sure was actually paratha. She didn’t speak English, so we couldn’t talk, but I adored her.

I hope you enjoyed this piece in the series. Jiang Cheng really is of the opinion that he’s sent out his overture, and is waiting to see if Wei Ying responds. He’s just as nervous and uncertain as Wei Ying, but shows it differently because he’s an angry grape. His idea of an overture is much different than theirs, of course. It’s more of a crescendo, but that’s kind of him.

I’m doing ok, largely unpacked, but mental health is very difficult and there were some very ugly hiccups that cost money, time, and spoons. Recovering enough that I’m cooking again, which is… I just haven’t had the energy for anything but simple and easy for a long time. Haven’t started a freelance gig yet. It’s hard. And it shouldn’t be, but it is and it sucks.

[tiredheroes]

//Going on hiatus for a currently-unknown amount of time. Sorry. Info below the cut. (tw for mentions of dissociation, D/I/D splitting, and childhood emotional neglect/abuse)

//My mental health started going on a downward spiral a few months ago. I started having flashbacks to some really fucked up trauma my half sister put me through that I don’t know if I’ll be able to press charges for. It made me so unwell, one of my alters took over at work for a few weeks, gods bless his strength.

//Then I got formally diagnosed with P/T/S/D, D/I/D, and re-diagnosed with A/DH/D. The meds are helping but the side effects have been difficult to work with. It really sucks. I had figured about the first one, knew about the second for two and a half years now, and the third, I was diagnosed with as a kid and my caretakers didn’t do a damn thing about it and instead tried punishing my symptoms away instead.

//I’ve also had trouble navigating the mental health system. I currently only have a psychiatrist to give me meds and diagnose me, but she can’t help with the actual trauma work. We have been ready to start that for two months and are having issues. My cousin who was initially helping us has been acting really ableist about my diagnosis because we don’t fit her narrative of how DID looks because of the fact that we actively like and help eachother, so we can’t ask her.

//And, I learned I’m only half of the original host conscience. A traumatic fight with our abuser in 2014 resulted in us splitting in half, and my other half got most of our good childhood memories while I got the bad. It explained why I’m so fucked in the head and obsessed with my trauma; for years, it was literally all I had. 

//Now I’m leaving my life in the hands of my other half--the alter who has our good memories. I’ll be back, I promise. I just don’t know when. 

//I love all of you. All of you are great and amazing writers, with great and well thought through muses. I’m not going to be gone-gone, I’m basically just taking a back seat while my other half handles our life.

//If you read it this far and still want to talk to us and be friends with us, thank you. Here’s our Discord where you can reach us;

The Radio Star#4796

[my-hyperfixation-trash-can]

Hetalia’s Russia and DID/OSDD 1-b

Hey! So @autistic-hetalia your blog said you accept neurodiverse head canons and I thought maybe I could share this one with your blog!

I believe the Hetalia character of Russia has OSDD 1-b (Otherwise Specified Disociative Disorder or possibly DID, being Dissociative Identity Disorder) and this is why.

Just a note,

There is no such thing as an evil alter. Do not demonize people with DID or Other Dissociative Disorders! Those with this disorder are victims of Trauma and are likely to continue being victims of abusers, rarely do they become abusers!

Anyways, -cough cough- I’d love if anyone wants to add to this with more evidence!

1. Russia had a traumatic childhood

He is shown to have had abusive bosses who would punish him. He is threatened by one to invent steam power by the end of the week or be punished. Tartar Yoke mentioned by Lithuania as one of his bosses was also known for his cruelty. So the Authority figured in his youth were often cruel and held power over him.

His environment is cold and unforgiving much like an abusive home. Russia often describes his home as cold, quiet and lonely. He rarely found support from his land and often struggled to get by. The environment and home were harsh with little support. It is also implied he froze to death each Winter, and celebrated the year he didn’t.

This is on top of having to deal with other nations attacking him, making him feel helpless. Many nations “bullied” him in attempts to conquer him. He was mobed and pursed every day by Mongolia. That is exhausting to have everyone around you be a threat. (Lithuania and his sisters were the only nations kind to him in his youth) Early on, he learns that force and strength are what matters.

Next point tw sexual abuse and assault

He also felt a great deal of responsibility to care for his sisters. He was close to them, as they were experiencing similar issues and not violent to him. He had to be the strong one. Belarus and her unhealthy attachment to Russia depending on the age she started her behaviors may have also contributed to his trauma. All of the siblings have unhealthy attitudes towards boundaries with their bodies and the bodies of others, implying another type of abuse. Ukraine and Belarus took victim roles. Russia took on an abusers. Ukraine only ever suggests using her body to get what she wants as if never taught anything else, even as a child that’s what she knows. Belarus I don’t know where to begin, but her staring off is certainly dissociative like, paired with other trust issues. In a diary entry she is stated to have possibly messaged Ukraine’s breasts, once again showing more unhealthy boundaries with attachments to loved ones. Someone taught her that. And Russia, who internalized his abusers, acted out his abuse on others as implied with Lithuania looking distressed dressed as a maid and Russia holding a whip. In another non canon game Himaura worked on, Bulgaria in the bad ending is shown tied up and naked implied to be whipped by Russia as Russia says this is “tradition” or possibly more routine implying this is something he does often.

The idea with dissociative disorders is that the repetitive trauma that happens has to be too much for the mind of that individual child in comparison to the culture they’re raised in, and it conflicts with getting their needs met. And to the countries, all of them know Russia has had a life with far more conflicts in his youth than most, and a great deal of pain.

2. Russia has General Winter (GW for short)

General Winter manifests when Russia is being attacked by other nations in order to defend him, or to be a tormentor to Russia himself (such as freezing him to death each Winter).

This is oddly similar to what is known as a persecutor alter. These alters have the goal in mind to protect the host or body, but they’re a bit misguided in how to do that. They might take on the form of an abuser, or something outside the body, this turns into being an Introject. I’ll post a link to more info on DID/OSDD at the end of the post. The educational videos playlist will have a video on alter roles.

Russia’s bosses often abused him, and if he had an alter like this it would make sense that it would take the form of a general, someone in power who feels so much bigger and stronger than him. A boss who can push him around and make him behave in a way that will avoid further trauma from the real abusers. Winter the season, being another tormenting force of the environment, is another abuser, and it makes sense GW would take that into his identity. Russia feels helpless to it. It is also worth noting that other nations who also had to deal with Harsh winters do not have General Winter as an ally. He only protects Russia.

It would also explain why General Winter protects Russia from others attacking him. He took the ideologies of his abusers to heart, so GW pushes people away and treats them like threats. He feels strong by holding power and fear over others and force. If I can be stronger, no one can hurt me or would dare try, this is the mentality.

I believe GW can manifest as he does because Russia has magic. It’s canon that Russia can do magic or has a strange magic of his own, so whose to say GW can’t utilize it too. Perhaps even to let himself manifest sometimes in his spirit like form. This is more a headcanon or idea though.

Russia himself however is shown to be very passive with his bosses. These are people who hold power over him that he can’t really run away from or fight. So his response is to faun or freeze. This is basically stated in the comics (picture below.) and it’s often that alters have a specific role. Russia’s would be to people please those who he can’t fight. Making General Winter’s job to defend from attack.

3. Russia is shown to dissociate

When he is told to do an impossible amount of work, he just straight up loses himself in a fantasy immediately to escape the reality of the situation. There are other instances too, some in his childhood directly, but this was the most overt. This is from To your Hearts content, Russia!

4. Russia Is Inconsistent

There are times when Russia feels very different from moment to moment.

He goes from open about himself to swiftly sadistic and cold. He has moments of childish behavior to moments of maturity. These, when combined with the rest of my points, are worth noting. He both wants to hurt (possibly destroy) the others, but also be liked by them?

You can’t destroy people and have them like you.

The baltic Trio who lived a substantial amount of time with him still are confused by his unpredictable behavior. Each encounter The Baltic’s have with Russia is marked by a fear of what he might do. And not having certainty, thus they say things without knowing if it’s safe or not.

Even to Lithuania, (Whom Russia often shows Vulnerability to, in moments like bloody Sunday and Sharing his dreams in Outsourcing Sequel)living with Russia feels a strange theme park where he never knew what to expect. Lithuania has been shown to be great in strategy and games of wit, and a commendable leader with great people skills, yet he only has a general idea of Russia’s behavior? He is seen advising Prussia and Moldova that Russia likes it when people laugh or cry easily (This being predictable to Russia and thus easier to navigate social situations with) so it’s not like Lithuania isn’t paying attention. Russia shows moments of vulnerability and his thought process in panels like Bloody Sunday, which is quite telling as to what he believes are his responsibilities, and how the world works.

Now the real question is “why is he like this?”

He only understands the world from the point of view of someone who still lives in the abuse and knows no other options. He never had anyone teach or show him different. His world is ruled by who is the strongest, and if you can obey the strong you won’t get hurt or discarded. “We don’t want children who can’t play nice,” sounds like something an abuser told him frequently in his youth.

Russia just doesn’t have a support system due to his strained relationships with everyone. So he keeps relying on old defense mechanisms, hence letting General Winter step in when something threatens his sense of safety.

Nearly Every time (at least that’s what I noticed) Russia is emotionally vulnerable to someone, he suddenly changes to be sadistic or scary. It successfully pushes the person away and Reestablishes the fear of Russia in the individual, returning him to a state of being feared and alone where none of the other countries can hurt him. Examples below.

France talking to Russia after meetings and asking him personal questions would result in Russia ending the conversation by scaring him with a scsry remark and aura suddenly.

Russia Comforting China after Japan turns on him, he is kind and compassionate at first, but suddenly changes at the end.

The Baltic Trio never knows what to expect. He frequently uses fear and force to keep them.

This behavior seems directly contradictory to wanting friends and having a warm and lively home. So GW still reacts with a trauma response, and Russia reacts in line with his wishes of making friends and having others around him. The Use of force and intimidation is naturally the middle ground between their wishes. Russia believes everyone is his friends, and doesn’t see how his behavior is pushing people away. Other times he seems to want friends to like him back, like when he sent France an anonymously written letter to his radio show. However he has wishes that contradict.

Now, I think he sees friends as people he can keep near him that he enjoys the company of. (This doesn’t need to be mutual or involve trust, just force) but those wants directly contradict.

I think GW is passively influencing him with some of the behavior rather than switching out right, but either option still would have the same effects. Passive influence is when an alter is close to the front, or feels/thinks something strong enough that it affects the person at the front. Making them behave in a way that is ooc for them, but not the other who intentionally or unintentionally influenced them.

This would explain sudden shifts to a cruel threatening position with other nations, something that will most likely always be a threat GW needs to defend against. He is particularly cold and defensive with anyone that has a chance to hurt him, (or tries to look into his psyche) regardless of if they made a move to do so.

More on passive influence can be found in the sources at the bottom under educational playlist.

5. Misc. Points of knowledge

Russia’s character originally was meant to be a cry baby, and only when he drinks, has a complete switch in personality. Frankly I’m glad he was changed to the complex guy we have now. However I think this concept wasn’t fully lost.

His character song, Winter, seems to talk of him experiencing freezing to death each Winter. Further adding to his repetitive trauma.

It is not unheard of for nations to have disorders and conditions. Australia has ADHD, Prussia is Albino, Lithuania has severe anxiety (and possibly PTSD), so who is to say a nation like Russia can’t have a dissociative disorder?

It is stated in one of Russia’s character bios that “General Winter is always with him”, however where? I don’t physically see him, but perhaps we can’t because he’s sharing a body with Russia.

In summary

Russia dissociates under stress

Russia has repetitive traumas and an ongoing history of abuse all his life

Russia has inconsistent behavior and attachments

General Winter could certainly be a separate personality and functions exactly like an introject/persecutor alter would to their host.

Russia acts out and damages relationships, acting in inconsistent ways that might play out his own abuse, and/or reflect his desires to keep others near him.

As a note, I actually have DID, so this could be my projecting, but please don’t yell at me about how I made a “villain” have DID and feed into evil alters and split Stareotypes. I would only like to raise interest and provide an example of what a misrepresented disorder can look like. And the links below are there if you want to make your mind up for yourself and educate yourself if this inspires your portrayal of him! This isn’t meant to be insensitive, I’ve been working on this post for months to word it as sensitive as I could while also acknowledging Russia is still responsible for his and GW’s actions. Saying he has DID isn’t to excuse it, just explain it.

Don’t erase his victims, but don’t erase that he also is one.

(This blog below was also really helpful, but this post covers a lot of Russia’s earlier trauma and his mentality)

https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/175060886956

Research for DID and OSDD 1b below: (along with links to comics)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm56LzW0BA_P7-yL3rK7INZDDozTayJvJ

https://www.hetarchive.net/blog/tag/russia/

http://hetarchive.net/tag/russia/

http://www.hetarchive.net/blog/2013/10/11/blog-entry-1411/

https://hetalia.fandom.com/wiki/Russia

https://www.hetarchive.net/blog/2019/01/29/about-the-fact-that-russias-history-is-too-scary/

Below is for an example of dissociation:

http://www.hetarchive.net/blog/2019/02/28/to-your-hearts-content-russia/

https://youtu.be/ZV3ToVA5BqQ

https://did-research.org/origin/comorbid/dd/osdd_udd/index.html

[bettsfic]

Hello! Betty, I read your new fic and I love it and I was wondering if you have any advice when it comes to writing a character with PTSD?

well first i think it’s important to figure out whether your character has PTSD or C-PTSD which may seem similar but have some major symptomatic differences. with PTSD, a character’s trauma can be pinpointed to one (or several) major events. with C-PTSD, the trauma is/was longstanding. 

for example (and this is a very reductive example for a very complicated thing), if you survive a shooting and have post-traumatic stress after that, you may become hypervigilant in public spaces, and avoid keeping your back to a room. you might be triggered by the sound of popping. you might avoid places with large crowds, or similar places to wherever the shooting occurred. you might develop trust issues. overall, an individual trespass occurred that reshaped your understanding of reality. that’s PTSD.

but let’s say you were in an abusive relationship for five years. every time you spoke up, you were screamed down. maybe you were hit. maybe you were gaslit. that situation is a long-term, ongoing trespass to your understanding of yourself and reality. it turns the ground beneath your feet into sand. 

once, my emdr therapist asked me to focus on my “moment of trauma” as if there were only one and i would be able to recall it. and i had to explain to her that i couldn’t do that, it was just all bad. there was no one thing to point out. that’s what sucks about C-PTSD -- it’s not in the DSM yet (afaik) and the treatment for it is the same as PTSD even though it’s completely different. (the year of your story, btw, is really important, because PTSD was only put in the DSM in the 70s, and as i mentioned, C-PTSD still doesn’t technically exist from a diagnostic standpoint. so if your character seeks treatment, the year is important to consider).

emdr is a super effective therapeutic tool that helped me a lot, but it only helped with one single moment of my life, and didn’t touch on any of the rest. that’s another thing about trauma: it’s not relative. what gives me post-traumatic stress might not affect somebody else at all. it might just roll off them. conversely, what someone else might be hurt by may not bother me in the slightest. for example, my ex-bf pulled a knife on me once. other than thinking about that moment probably more than i should, it didn’t really alter my perception of myself or reality. he was an asshole, i knew he was an asshole, and he was acting in a way that was congruent with the person i knew him to be. moreover, by that point i had way unchecked C-PTSD so my perspective of Good and Bad was totally warped. to me, it made sense that he would hurt me. men hurting me was in line with my beliefs of reality. that’s a situation where earlier PTSD affects the perception of trespasses later on.

but my next boyfriend who never laid a hand on me eventually cheated on me, and that was like a kick in the teeth. it pushed me down and kept me down. i lost all of my confidence, i believed i wasn’t worthy of love, that i was disgusting and worthless. and i think it hurt so much because i had worked so hard to become who he wanted me to be and make him happy (we had a very unhealthy codependent relationship, and i thought it was my duty to conform to his needs in any way i could), and i saw our breakup as a personal failing. more importantly, i never thought he would do something like that. it was a total betrayal of everything i thought he was, and it made me hesitant to trust other people.

that was the memory i chose in one of my emdr sessions, and it helped a lot. it was a single moment i could lock down and attribute to many of my negative self-beliefs. and it was kind of amazing, that i walked into that office still, years later, painfully in love with this dude, and i walked out not caring about him at all.

in another emdr session, i focused on my dad dying. it didn’t help at all, because i certainly didn’t blame myself for his death. what i was struggling with was how much i loved him while feeling guilty for being relieved that he was finally gone. and in a more complicated way, i was also angry at him that he died before he could realize how horrible he treated my mom, sister, and i, and he never managed to apologize. emdr couldn’t begin to touch that knot of confusion. and so, to this day, i’m still trying to work it out.

anyway, back to writing.

the point i’m trying to get at is that to write a character with PTSD, you have to Know them. who they were before the trespass and how it shaped the person they became. if they were abused their entire lives, their development will be completely distorted. they may have trouble understanding right from wrong, especially in regards to themselves (which is why villain origin stories have a lot to do with a major trespass; it can alter your ability to morally reason). they may not know how to love without hurting themselves or someone else. they may believe that love looks like pain. they may have such insidious negative self-beliefs that compliments just slide right off of them. they are probably not self-pitying (although they could be). rather, their incorrect beliefs about the world are simply unshakeable. they might be afraid of everything, afraid of nothing, or afraid of weird things. they might be triggered by something clearly relating to their trauma, or triggered by something so strange and obscure and complicated it’s hard to see it as a trigger. they might fly off the handle when triggered, or they might dissociate for days on end, or both. they might be extremely performative and obsessed with how other people perceive them. they might be constantly attuned to their own body. they might see themselves from outside of themselves, through multiple lenses, in order to craft the image of themselves they want to be seen. they might do this as a safety measure, so as to be agreeable and pleasant and potentially stave off any harm that might come to them. they might be a people-pleaser. they may not have any access to their own emotions and have to find them through alternate means. they may be more prone to hurting themselves and other people, and not realize that doing so is wrong, because to them, pain might be a totally neutral thing. similarly, they may not be sad when people die, because they’ve always seen death as a peaceful escape. they might have drastic mood swings. they might not have moods at all. they might be impulsive and risk-taking. they might be prone to bouts of psychosis, depression, anxiety. they might have had hundreds of hours of therapy and still have not begun to chip through the surface of their trauma. they might not know their own trauma, or they might be acutely aware of it, and regardless, it will affect them the same. they might fixate on their trauma, or they might not be able to remember it. they may have a complicated relationship with memory. they may not have a strong grip on reality, or they may doubt their perception of it. they may easily fall into relationships with narcissists and sociopaths. they might constantly set other people’s needs over their own. conversely, they may be selfish and self-serving when it comes to very specific things. they may not be able to accept good love and affection, and they may sabotage their own health and happiness. they may not see this as a problem.

ultimately, to learn how to write a character with PTSD, you should be watching/reading everything whose characters you admire through the lens of trauma. ask yourself: how have the ways they’ve been hurt shape the person they’ve become? how is their worldview and self-perspective distorted by the negative events that define them? who would they be if those events had not occurred?

hope this helps. thanks for the great question!

writing advice tag | patreon

[inkdheart17]

One thing I hate most is being judged, accused, and/or scolded without being confronted. I know the things I've done weren't always great, but i also know that I've never done anything so bad I would later regret it.

Yet, it seems that more and more people seem to think that my silence means I'm guilty. It definitely doesn't. If I decide not to speak of an event, then it's probably because I was the victim, and I'm still hurting.

The most recent big event that's causing a lot of issues for me is a falling out with a person I used to think of as a best friend. I had trusted this person with... Well, everything. I always went out of my way to help them feel comfortable about who they were and tried my best to boost their confidence. I felt that it was necessary, as a friend. I thought all friends did that to each other. Little did I know that very few did that to me.

I didn't need it as much, thankfully. I have my sister, who's my own personal hype man. My mom also supports me. We may be closer than most families i know, but my mom and I aren't close enough for me to come out to her. About anything, actually. Still, i trust her with most things. So, I never needed my friends to truly be there for me. Except once.

I had just broken up with my first and to this day only boyfriend. I had been extremely cautious on who I accepted to date because I was acutely aware of how toxic people could be. My own father and his family being a prime example of that. I had already given up on trying to date someone when I noticed my feelings for my ex. We went out and after the honeymoon phase, I began to notice how similar he was to my father. I became anxious. I tried to reach out and instead was cut off.

Many of the people around me don't know the details. Not sure if I want to share them anymore either. But I'm writing this to vent and hopefully help someone else that went through a similar experience.

You see, the break up didn't hurt so much because he left. It hurt because I lost so much because of him. I lost his family. Whom I had gotten very close with as he refused to ever visit my family. So, we only ever went to his place. I lost my friends, because some of them refused to interact with me after he left. And I lost my peace. My anxiety was once again in control and I was fighting hard to keep everything together once again.

This was the one time I begged for support from those around me, and I quickly found out who to cut off from my life.

At the time, I had moved in with friend A and coworker B, who was dating another guys friend of mine at the time, C. They all faked being supportive at first. Telling me I should just ignore my ex and forget everything. He was never worth my time. Things like that. I had actually called C the night my ex broke up with me. I thought of C as my brother and all I wanted was for my bro to come over and comfort me. He didn't. He had things to do early the next morning and was in bed with B. So, neither of them were going to be there for me. It was only A who kinda distracted me with a drive, but she was so quick to add venom into me. Almost as if she wanted me to hate my ex. Which I did for a while. But it wasn't until I spoke with my still best friend, J, that I found the support I needed.

While all this was happening, i was struggling to finish my final semester before graduated with two bachelor's degrees. You can imagine the kind of stress I was going through as I was also fighting with the University to keep my scholarships for one last semester so that I could graduate. The funny part is that J knew exactly how I behaved. He knew the difference between the times I kept our talks short because I was busy, and when I kept our talks short because I was in distress. He asked me to hang out with him for a day. A day he could've easily filled up with catching up on school work, or being with family, or even spending time with his girlfriend. I still feel very touched remembering how he decided to try and help me instead. All because I didn't react like usual.

He didn't push me to say anything, but my ex came up in conversation and I had to tell J that we weren't dating anymore. That then spiraled into how pressured I felt with school and how unsupportive my roommates and C were being. I told him how A would react aggressively when were alone. Straight up calling me a bitch for ignoring her when I had homework to finish, but would then cry and say I was the abuser as I had blocked her on everything whenever B and C were around.

I told him how I had turned to B in hopes of getting advice, as she shared a room with A and would probably know what was going on with A. Instead, B had told A about all the negative things I said in a fit of rage and never once mentioned how I did want to fix our relation, but A had really destroyed my trust in her and had (has) yet to apologize. I told him how my ex would ignore me on dates and would only pay attention when we were physical with each other. Which made me want more physical interactions despite my general apprehension due to past trauma. And how my ex unceremoniously texted me that he was done because I got mad he wouldn't pause his game for like 5 minutes just to hear me out during an anxiety attack.

J calmly took all this in and advised that I move out. Not back in with my parents, but that it may be inevitable for me at the time. Then he warned me not to bottle up my hatred for my ex cause it would make me hate men in general. And I tried not to, but that hatred started with my dad. So, when C blocked me out of the blue, with no confrontation what so ever, I lost all the trust I had left. I mean, if the guy I thought of as a brother would rather listen to two women who know nothing about me just cause he's dating one of them, then how low were my standards? Why was it so easy for me to get betrayed? It happened with A, it happened with B, it happened with C.... And now he's happening with another friend, D. Who has yet to respond to any of the text messages I've sent her and has now started to hang out with A.

I once again turned to J. Asking if it was normal to feel hurt when a friend was still friends with someone who hurt you. J agreed it was painful but that ultimately I had to remember that they were their own person and that they were going to make their own decisions on what relationships to keep.

I felt discouraged but knew he was right.

As I type this up, I've had to pause a few times to wipe away tears. I think they sting when you feel a bit if anger when crying. Not sure.

Anyways, all this is to say that you'll never be free of selfish assholes. You'll live with them, you'll work with them, you'll move in with them, you'll befriend them, and nothing I say will help prepare you for the pain you'll feel when they reveal their true colors and destroy some part of you. Still, you should never change because of them.

I've given up on dating and friends because of these new experiences topping old traumas. I've been groomed, molested, raped probably, psychologically and emotionally manipulated and abused, all before entering seventh grade. I can't remember my childhood thanks to dissociative amnesia. So, instinctively, I no longer trust humans. It's a lovely existence and despite having won this battle before, I'm looking at suicide once again and am having to remind myself that I've already been through hardships. That all will be fine again. It's just a matter of time now.

But, fighting suicide is almost impossible without help. Without support. So, if you find yourself stuck with toxic people, with selfish assholes, with treacherous friends, cut them out.

We don't need them. They're a cancer that feeds off your good intentions and then blame you when they've dried your soul. It'll hurt a lot at first, but eventually, all will feel better. You'll find peace again. Maybe you'll connect with an old friend who'll always be there for you, like I did with J. Perhaps your siblings will be your own hype man like mine is. Maybe your relationship with your parents will get better like mine is with my mom. You'll finally start feeling better about yourself and try things that cancer wanted to steal from you. I've just gotten through a job interview and hopefully I'll be working at the office I've been trying hard to get into some time next week. Perhaps you'll also take the next step in your career?

So, to by fellow disappointed-in-humanity victims, sometimes it takes swimming in shit before being able to relax in a healthy mind. Take off those rose tinted glasses. Harden your heart and cut out people you know are hurting you. Don't listen to them, and if they take others with them, know that they also aren't worth your effort.

I would much rather be alone than be with a friend who believes I abused another person without ever talking to be about it. That's a person who'd rather believe your abuser than try and figure out why you would ever dare hurt someone. You don't need them.

I probably should like a bitch. Trust me, I get it. I often feel like I'm too harsh and that I should just unblock people to settle things down again. But you know what? I was very complacent and unmotivated when I had the people I blocked on my life. And now that I cut them out? I'm taking my first steps to establishing a career here in my town. Which is arguably a very hard town to settle in as a non-retiree.

Free yourself. Cut them off before they bleed you out

[champagnecall]

OKAY I was encouraged to post this so I’m gonna <3 

This is just a pretty in detail character study of my portrayal of Hifumi following the latest drama track nobody has to read it or anything! It’s going under a read more due to content warnings for abuse mentions, depression, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation so please be careful when reading !!!

So in the latest drama track we got to see Hifumi’s abuser - who we met in a previous limited edition drama track, though wasn’t 100% confirmed to be his abuser - up close and personal. I’m going to focus mostly on the Hifumi aspects of this track - but I’ll be mentioning the other two members of Matenrō as well due to the relation they have to how Honobono got to Hifumi.

Before this track released we knew very little about how Hifumi functioned with his trauma. We know that he developed his gynophobia in high school - at the very least eleven years before the canon point in the series - and that at twenty years old he became a host to try and get over his phobia.

Becoming a host is what pushed him into creating his host persona via auto-suggestion, as it has been canonically stated that he does not have Dissociative Identity Disorder. The manga artist has drawn a panel with Hifumi’s personalities and their titles - being “Host” ( also commonly called GIGOLO off his MC Name ), “Hifumin”, and “Open Up”. But prior to this drawing, the three personalities were often just split into “Host” “Hifumin” “Phobia”.

So Hifumi has a strong motif of thirds being played into his character. His name is composed of the kanji for 1-2-3 and GIGOLO is actually a pun on that, being “Shi-gi-ro” or more simply...4-5-6. 

This is a sort of both clever and self deprecating play on Hifumi’s part. He has a lot of issues that were very subtly hinted at throughout canon up until this drama track, being that he dislikes who he is without his jacket because he views himself as weak because of his phobia. He doesn’t want to be afraid of women - he wants to interact with them freely - but he doesn’t have control over the events that traumatized him nor does he fully understand why what happened to him happened.

In this track, though, and both of the new songs on this album Hifumi is in, he outright says these things.

“When in despair there is always a desire to be saved / Black darkness and iron bars, a shortage of adrenaline / The world I see is different than what everyone else sees”

“D-Doppo.. I-It’s hopeless... I’m a weak human being.., I... I couldn’t do anything...!”

“I have a phobia that makes my mentality like that of tofu / But when I put on my suit, that of course changes it all”

“Standing aloof, dropping down to sit, even when I’m emotionally unstable / Don’t turn away, get the evidence with your words / But even though the day might be cold and I can’t lend it to you yet, / One day I’d like to gently place this suit jacket over you”

Not to mention, previous lyrics of his combined with what we have now...

“Are you going to stay by my side / Even after knowing my past? / Drunkeness arriving on champagne / Stopping your mouth / Our eyes meeting at length by chance / Can you see the real me?”

“If my spell comes undone / I won't be able to see you again”

“Sorry for being born with all this / With nervousness and panic / My heart won't stop beating fast, my kitten / It'll be fine, come here I'll be all yours until morning”

“Now, sexy girl / Smash my sense of values to pieces / 10,000,000 yen /  100,000,000 yen / 1,000,000,000 yen / 10,000,000,000 yen / I'll give you something that you can't buy with money”

“A spirit that's different from the others / Drawing eyes from all around town / But I don't do relationships / Somewhere, sometime, I want to meet you I want to take off my jacket / So we could love each other mutually / A battle with my past self / I'll end it with a victory... my sorrow”

“With my magic, I'll make your pain disappear / Don't stop the party / I'll stay like this, I won't leave you”

“No pain, no suffering, no worries / I'll make them all disappear, come closer / From heart to body to pores / I'll let you do as you like, so come here / It'll be fine, come closer / I'll envelop everything / And one day, I want to be enveloped too”

Hifumi is a character who tends to objectify himself due to his career. He speaks about people smashing away his sense of values, listing off prices people can purchase his attention for, saying that he’ll let people do whatever they want to him. He sees his host personality as someone who is better than who he is on his own - someone of a greater value, which leads into that pun with 123 being his actual name and 456 being his MC Name and the name people tend to use for his host persona.

When facing Honobono again for the first time since she initially traumatized him - he crumbles out of this persona. The personality he learned to shift into through extreme auto-suggestion as a protective mechanism breaks.

At first, Hifumi is able to hold himself together, despite being on the verge of a panic attack. It’s mentioned that he looks pale, the listener can hear his labored breathing and his hesitation, but his defensive mechanism is working...

Until the following exchange:

Honobono: I came here to see a friend, do I need a reason?

Hifumi: Were friends, if you’re mistaken. All those things you did... 

Honobono: “Those things”? What were they? They were so long ago that I can’t remember~ Ah! Now I sort of remember! But there’s so many things that I can’t grasp too well. Was it about your mother? Or about your sister’s case? Ah right, right! Or maybe even about your case at school!

It’s here Hifumi’s breathing becomes extremely labored until he actually starts screaming. It’s implied he falls over, as the sound of shattering glass alongside a thud follows his screaming all behind the sound of Honobono’s laughter.

Hifumi’s voice changes depending on the personality he’s fronting - going from “Boku” for “Host” and “Orecchi” for “Hifumin” ( more recently we discovered he very rarely uses “Ore” when he lets just his true personality “Open Up” front )

So it’s here that was a shock where Hifumi says “Boku wa...” and then immediately shifts the tone of his voice to his natural one and cries out “Orecchi wa...” signaling that for the first time we’ve ever witnessed it in canon...Hifumi’s suit failed to protect him from his phobia and his protective personality melted away, despite the suit jacket he wears in order to shift personalities still being worn by him.

Whatever Honobono did to him, his mother, and his sister - it was enough to give him a panic attack so bad that the defensive mechanism he developed and has been routinely using nine years prior to this point was broken away from him. Hifumi spends nearly the rest of the drama track - which is around 9~11 minutes - in a screaming, crying panic attack where he sounds like he’s in genuine physical pain, even as all of his pain is just psychological here.

We don’t know what she did to him in high school - and this mention of his mother and his older sister was the first time Hifumi’s family had ever been brought up. But whatever these events were, it was enough to drive him into the most severe panic attack we have ever seen him have - making it all the more extreme that it’s happening in the personality he developed in order to protect himself from his phobia and his anxiety.

It’s here that Doppo is able to enter - which Honobono had purposely tried to keep him occupied by pulling some strings to get him fired - and says the following:

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HIM?! He went through SO much hell during that time! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE HAD TO DO TO OVERCOME THESE PROBLEMS? LIKE YOU WOULD KNOW ANYTHING!!

Hifumi has all too casually dropped a few comments that lead to one assuming that he had mentally hit rock bottom with his depression and anxiety that came out of his phobia developing. He has a line about how even if living is the harder answer in the end, it’s the option you have to chose. Lines about “sinking into the sea of despair”, never really showing fear about the prospect of dying / being killed ( he always puts himself in harms way for other people - pushing away a stalker that was charging Doppo with a knife even if it meant he could get stabbed again ( he had already been stabbed by her on his arm because he moved just enough out of the way when she tried to kill him ), catching the same stalker when she tried to commit suicide and falling out of the window in her attempt with her and turning them over midair so he’d be the one to hit the ground instead, and putting himself in front of Honobono and Doppo when she was threatening him ).

Hifumi also has a lot of lines, however, about valuing his life. He sees his life as something that’s important, he stands up for other people; he pushes people to see the value in their own lives as well.

All of these things combined have led a lot of people, including myself, to believe that in that period between the event that triggered his gynophobia and when he developed his host personality that he did go through a period where he was suicidal - and canonically we know that at the very least, he was severely depressed during this period. 

I still don’t have any head canons or theories on what I think happened to him and his family - but I have a lot of things relating to that that I’m going to continue on with below because it plays heavily into my portrayal of Hifumi.

I think that he was extremely close with his mother and his older sister, and likely had an absent father. I feel like his sister was probably a few years older than him and helped to raise him in part, since his mother would have needed to work to take care of both of her children. I think he probably learned a lot of the things he still enjoys today - sewing, cooking, knitting, etc... - from his mother and his sister both due to an interest in it and a desire to help out around the house.

Whatever happened to his mother and his sister I feel like had to have such a massive impact on him, for the mention of them alongside whatever Honobono did to him in high school being enough to trigger the most severe panic attack he’s had to date, as well as feeding into the roots of his gynophobia. Thus, I really do think he was incredibly close with them.

Hifumi is also someone who seems to struggle a lot with his identity. He’s split his personality into thirds and rarely lets people in to see the real him - someone he isn’t really sure who they are anymore - being that the only time we see that real version of him is in the privacy of his own home around Jakurai and Doppo.

A lot of people agree with me on the fact that he seems to radiate some kind of Gender energy which is nice to see! I do genuinely think Hifumi is a character who struggles with his gender identity. I’m not sure what identity I think fits him, but I’m not sure he really knows either since I feel like his phobia is kind of drawing him back from exploring that properly. Same with his sexuality - given that he has been seen freely flirting with men but vocalizing his desire to freely do the same with women.

Hifumi is a character with a lot of layers but in the end I think he just really struggles with that sense of “self”. He doesn’t know who he is anymore because in all of his struggles to get over his hurt - he left himself behind and walked out as a stranger to his own mind. He’s great at hiding the fact that he struggles with this - that he struggles at all - but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hurt. I think he’s very much a “if I ignore my problems they won’t bother me” kind of person but he can’t...hide that from the people that really and truly know him either.

He can’t hide it from himself, either, even if he doesn’t know who he’s looking for inside himself anymore.

[janiedean]

how is the weirwood dream proof jaime will live?

well, have the entire thing so I’m eviscerating it once and for all.

premise: this entire thing is basically your gateway to 90% of jaime’s issues.

other premise: it’s a weirwood dream so it’s prophetic.

third premise: I’m going off basic dream interpretation symbolism which grrm definitely knows a thing or two about dream interpretation and the likes, and the basis is that your dreams are a wish fulfillment that your subconscious is trying to send you or warnings that your subconscious is trying to send you but that you might censor because you don’t want to face what it is that your subconscious is really telling you, which in this case we have in spades. so, with that stated and going at it from beginning to end. 

He closed his eyes, and hoped to dream of Cersei. The fever dreams were all so vivid …

point one: he hopes to dream of cersei. ie the person he loves/he thinks is his other half/soulmate/that he thought of while imprisoned to find himself a motivation to go on/that he associates with love-comfort-being understood because she’s his supposed half and that’s how it goes. fair enough, he’s had a pretty bad time lately, right? then the dream starts.

Naked and alone he stood, surrounded by enemies, with stone walls all around him pressing close. The Rock, he knew. He could feel the immense weight of it above his head. He was home. He was home and whole.

now, what did we say before about conflicting messages? the basic message here is DANGER DANGER DANGER because he’s naked and alone and surrounded by enemies and walls pressing close which gives a pretty claustrophobic feeling….. but he thinks he’s home. with an IMMENSE WEIGHT ABOVE HIS HEAD. spoilers: his home (casterly) weights immensely on him (with his name attached to it), but he can’t realize that it’s a negative thing because that just doesn’t register - he knows that it should be a good thing so he processes it as such… while his subconscious is screaming danger at him. also surrounded by enemies = pretty much all his life, right? then:

He held his right hand up and flexed his fingers to feel the strength in them. It felt as good as sex. As good as swordplay. Four fingers and a thumb. He had dreamed that he was maimed, but it wasn’t so. Relief made him dizzy. My hand, my good hand. Nothing could hurt him so long as he was whole.

MORE RED FLAGS HERE, as in: he has the right hand. the one he lost before and that he hates to think he’s lost. now, what does he associate it with? sex and swordplay. also: HE HAD DREAMED THAT IT WAS MAIMED. and NOTHING COULD HURT HIM AS LONG AS HE WAS WHOLE. so: his right hand and his swordplay skills are what makes sure he doesn’t get hurt, which is fairly obvious given that jaime’s basic problem solving skill when it comes to anything is trying to kill it and he doesn’t have a flight instinct. also: swordplay = sex, and sex = cersei, so being whole = he has the right hand = he has his swordplay skills = he has cersei = he has his love and he can defend himself = nothing can hurt him. it’s all on the same level.

except that he doesn’t have the hand anymore, not really. but let’s go on. [under the cut because it’s long]

Around him stood a dozen tall dark figures in cowled robes that hid their faces. In their hands were spears. “Who are you?” he demanded of them. “What business do you have in Casterly Rock? They gave no answer, only prodded him with the points of their spears. He had no choice but to descend. Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted him. Jaime tried to halt, but their spears prodded him on. If only I had my sword, nothing could harm me.

now, here we’re in downright creepy territory. he’s just said that nothing can hurt him…. but then he thinks if only I had a sword, nothing could harm me, so it’s not just his right hand now. he needs the sword. he doesn’t have one yet. keep that in mind because that’s half of the point. now, he’s surrounded by dark figures he can’t place who force him to go down instead of up even if he thinks he should go up, and he knows that his doom awaited below, so he knows he’s going straight where something dangerous, dark and terrible lurks there. mind the specific word choice - dangerous, dark and terrible. so even if he thinks he’s whole and safe, he knows deep down that’s not a thing and that he’s being forced to face something that wants him and that’s not a good thing either. which is…… the same kind of split he shows when he thinks that he’s cersei but at the same time behaves the opposite way and knows that she’d hate to see him looking differently from her. also: his doom awaited, which means that he’s sure he’s going to die or that it’ll be his end. and he’s not really processing it, because he still thinks that as long as he has the right hand and a sword he’d be fine. except that no, that’s not the kind of thing you solve by killing it.

“The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. A spearpoint jabbed at the small of the back, shoving him into the abyss. He shouted, but the fall was short. He landed on his hands and knees, upon soft sand and shallow water. There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him. “What place is this?”

“Your place.” The voice echoed; it was a hundred voices, a thousand, the voices of all the Lannisters since Lann the Clever, who’d lived at the dawn of days. But most of all it was his father’s voice, and beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Joffrey was there as well, the son they’d made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.

and here we go.

one: the dark cloaks and figures are the other lannisters before him, who at this point we can deduce symbolize his name/legacy that he feels he hasn’t lived up to and who are basically bringing him down to a trial as they shove him into the abyss. he ends up some place he doesn’t know or remember, and let’s remember that jaime’s preferred coping method for trauma is dissociating, so this is most likely a hint to the fact that he can’t recognize a place that his own subconscious is telling him is HIS place, as in….. where his trauma/issues are rooted.

and who is in this dark, dangerous, terrible place where his doom awaits?

tywin, cersei and joffrey. and more lannisters, but those three are the ones that are named.

also, cersei has a burning torch in her hand.

so… according to jaime’s subconscious, his father, cersei and joffrey are in the dark, dangerous and terrible place where his doom awaits.

sounds to me like said subconscious is entirely aware that tywin was a shit to him, that cersei never gave a fuck about him and that he regrets having had joffrey with her because joffrey is who he is, but let’s go on.

“Sister, why has Father brought us here?”“Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness.” Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go.“Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.” But they were leaving. “Don’t leave me in the dark!” Something terrible lived down here. “Give me a sword, at least.”“I gave you a sword,” Lord Tywin said.It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword.

now, this is even more damning. first thing, he asks cersei why did tywin bring them there, so he’s already putting blame on him rather than assuming that cersei has a hand in anything that might hurt him…. but cersei replies that this is his place and his darkness, while holding the only light in the cavern/the world. so, if it’s his darkness and his place, if she’s holding that light, then we can surmise that the light is jaime himself. and what does cersei do?

she turns and leaves him there.

then he pleads to her to stay with him, and she doesn’t (mind that later the text says that he pleaded with rhaegar to have someone else guard aerys with him and he was told no) and he doesn’t want to be left alone in the dark, and he still doesn’t realize that the terrible thing that lives down there is in fact all three of them, and at the end he asks for the sword…… which is the only thing that can help him be safe as we established before, right?

so: tywin gives him the sword, which is obviously foreshadowing tywin giving him oathkeeper later, so PROPHETIC THING #1. and again, NOTHING CAN HURT ME AS LONG AS I HAVE A SWORD. at this point he has the sword and cersei has the light in her hands, and we established that he is that light, right?

As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand’s breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of the steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. Crouching, listening, Jaime moved in a circle, ready for anything that might come out of the darkness. The water flowed into his boots, ankle deep and bitterly cold. Beware the water, he told himself. There may be creatures living in it, hidden deeps …From behind came a great splash. Jaime whirled toward the sound … but the faint light revealed only Brienne of Tarth, her hands bound in heavy chains. “I swore to keep you safe,” the wench said stubbornly. “I swore an oath.” Naked, she raised her hands to Jaime. “Ser. Please. If you would be so good.”

first thing that happens: the moment he takes up the sword, the sword becomes alight, so the light that cersei has in her hands is currently in his own as well. if he is the light, we can definitely deduce the message that if before he thought he was her and she was his half completely, now he’s starting to take it back from her even if cersei still has some with her, which means he’s starting to detach himself from her. also, the moment he does it, the gloom pulls back. as in: the moment he starts to reclaim himself from cersei, the feeling of doom and gloom momentarily goes away, but he’s still on guard and he’s not really doing too well - there’s the imagery of his feet being deep in cold water and he’s expecting anything to reach up and drag him down. we can add that water is a primal element and has a lot of symbolism attached to it first of all rebirth and cleansing, but in this case it’s not exactly that - usually deep water or a large quantity of it means your emotions and if they’re turbulent or cold or not cleansing it’s there to symbolize your emotional turmoil and if you feel lost in it it means you can’t control your emotions. except that then there’s a splash from behind him as in someone erupting from nowhere and who shows up?

brienne. first he whirls towards her but then goes like ‘oh it’s only her’ so she’s not perceived as a danger, and… she has chains around her wrists, as in, she’s forbidden from doing anything that she wants, same as she’s been all her life and jaime subconsciously knows that. and what does she tell him instead of ‘well I gave you a sword, your business’ or ‘this is your darkness, not mine’?

I swore to keep you safe, ser, and then she’s naked (as in the bath at harrenhal) ie at her most vulnerable same as him, and she’s pleading him to let her keep him safe.

now, we already know (he told qyburn that she’s his protector) that by this point jaime associates her with being safe/protected regardless of how much he might not process it in depth, but she did keep him safe as much as she could, she kept him alive while they were prisoners, she materially cleaned him up/made sure he’d eat as much as she could when they were prisoners and they’ve shared intimate confessions in the bath at the end of which she caught him/washed him/dressed him, and wow, who is that shows up when he feels alone, naked, his family is deserting him and danger is looming on him?

right, brienne. who can’t do anything until he does something about it, though. and what happens?

The steel links parted like silk. “A sword,” Brienne begged, and there it was, scabbard, belt, and all. She buckled it around her thick waist. The light was so dim that Jaime could scarcely see her, though they stood a scant few feet apart. In this light she could almost be a beauty, he thought. In this light she could almost be a knight. Brienne’s sword took flame as well, burning silvery blue. The darkness retreated a little more.“The flames will burn so long as you live,” he heard Cersei call. “When they die, so must you.”“Sister!” he shouted. “Stay with me. Stay!” There was no reply but the soft sound of retreating footsteps.

so: she asks him to let her keep his oath. the moment she does, her chains fall. then she begs for a sword, and in his own subconscious, he conjures one for her from nothing and he gives it to her (same as he’ll give her oathkeeper later) and the moment she puts it around her waist and takes it out, he thinks that she could almost be a beauty/a knight, and let’s remember he’s dreaming that both of them are naked. and what happens the moment he gives her the sword?

the sword takes flame. so both their swords are burning.

what were we saying about what the light symbolizes here? right, that it’s himself. and what happens? the darkness retreats some more. as in: he gave brienne a part of himself or better yet, his subconscious picked her as the person he trusts with that part of himself.

now: cersei is still there but he hears her, he doesn’t see her. she tells her that ‘the flames will burn as long as you live’ and so he must die when they disappear’, and he still shouts at her to stay with him, but she doesn’t and leaves.

now, at this point you could say ‘so we’re talking about his own life’, but let’s remember that this is symbolizing jaime’s worst fears (being abandoned by his family) while at the same time his own subconscious has placed those three plus his legacy in what damns him and what harms him and defined them as *his darkness* that he should try to conquer. but that’s not all there is to it so let’s go ahead.

Brienne moved her longsword back and forth, watching the silvery flames shift and shimmer. Beneath her feet, a reflection of the burning blade shone on the surface of the flat black water. She was as tall and strong as he remembered, yet it seemed to Jaime that she had more of a woman’s shape now.“Do they keep a bear down here?” Brienne was moving, slow and wary, sword to hand; step, turn, and listen. Each step made a little splash. “A cave lion? Direwolves? Some bear? Tell me, Jaime. What lives here? What lives in the darkness?”“Doom.” No bear, he knew. No lion. “Only doom.”

now: this dream brienne, other than having more of a woman’s shape to her, which is already telling re what jaime thinks of her subconsciously, other than asking him if they keep a bear there (prophecy! bear pit!) asks if there are direwolves (the starks) and cave lions (the lannisters), and calls him jaime, not ser jaime or kingslayer, and again, that’s jaime’s head, so he wants her to call him like that. also, he insists that it’s not bears or lions, but just doom. and we haven’t seen all of that yet.

In the cool silvery-blue light of the swords, the big wench looked pale and fierce. “I mislike this place.”“I’m not fond of it myself.” Their blades made a little island of light, but all around them stretched a sea of darkness, unending. “My feet are wet.”“We could go back the way they brought us. If you climbed on my shoulders you’d have no trouble reaching that tunnel mouth.”Then I could follow Cersei. He could feel himself growing hard at the thought, and turned away so Brienne would not see.“Listen.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and he trembled at the sudden touch. She’s warm. “Something comes.” Brienne lifted her sword to point off to his left. “There.”

she looks pale and fierce, more positive attributes thrown at her. and she says she mislikes the place and he says he doesn’t like it either - well, it’s his head, hello jaime’s self-loathing, we had missed you. their swords are both alight, so she’s helping him keep the place not dark. his feet are wet, and remember what we said before about the water. brienne says that he can climb on her to get out, and he thinks ah sure so I can see cersei, gets hard and doesn’t want brienne to see it… so he doesn’t disappoint her? and why? she knows and she’s in his dream, she won’t judge him for it……. but he still hides it from her as if he’s ashamed of it. a moment later she touches him and she’s warm same as in the harrenhal baths. and she warns him that someone’s coming. she’s pretty much keeping him safe as she had sworn. again, this is all jaime’s subconscious. that’s how he sees her at this point.

“He peered into the gloom until he saw it too. Something was moving through the darkness, he could not quite make it out …“A man on a horse. No, two. Two riders, side by side.”“Down here, beneath the Rock?” It made no sense. Yet there came two riders on pale horses, men and mounts both armored. The destriers emerged from the blackness at a slow walk. They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys’s throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord’s eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.“Is it you, Stark?” Jaime called. “Come ahead. I never feared you living, I do not fear you dead.”Brienne touched his arm. “There are more.”

now: he thinks it’s ned coming, and he goes like I didn’t fear you either living or dead…… but didn’t he really, if his judgment hurt him so much that he thinks that’s what he’ll find in the dark, dangerous, terrible place that’s *his darkness*? doubtful, jaime, doubtful. notice how brienne is still touching him and going around him and being supportive. anyway, he’s expecting ned.

he doesn’t get ned.

He saw them too. They were armored all in snow, it seemed to him, and ribbons of mist swirled back from their shoulders. The visors of their helms were closed, but Jaime Lannister did not need to look upon their faces to know them.Five had been his brothers. Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Lewyn Martell, a prince of Dorne. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in mist and grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne.“You don’t frighten me,” he called, turning as they split to either side of him. He did not know which way to face. “I will fight you one by one or all together. But who is there for the wench to duel? She gets cross when you leave her out.”“I swore an oath to keep him safe,” she said to Rhaegar’s shade. “I swore a holy oath.”“We all swore oaths,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, so sadly.

aand we have the jackpot: his doom, along with tywin/cersei/joffrey who left him instead of supporting him through it, is rhaegar and his kingsguard.

because jaime feels still fucking guilty about it, even if he knows he did the right thing and he couldn’t have done much else…. except that his subconscious doesn’t really agree on that. so he’s facing them/his doom and who is with him?

brienne. what does brienne have? a burning sword that’s a part of him that he gave freely to her. what does jaime have? a burning sword that’s the part of him that he reclaimed directly from cersei.

so: he tells them they don’t frighten him, so he sees them as enemies, all of them. and he asks them to duel brienne too, because he knows she would… as she swore an oath to keep him safe, as she says for the third time or so later. like, guys, the fact that jaime is so fixated on brienne’s oath to keep him safe when the entire dream started with him thinking that if he had the right hand then he didn’t need anyone to do it for him speaks volumes about how he sees her subconsciously, because most likely no one actually ever swore to keep him safe from anything (he is the one who keeps people safe/his loved ones safe or that he should do/that he feels guilty for not doing)… except that she did, and she keeps on telling that specific oath…… to every single person that his subconscious sees as dangerous/that he might need to be protected from.

I mean, he’s being fairly transparent here, but let’s go on to the crux of it.

“The shades dismounted from their ghostly horses. When they drew their longswords, it made not a sound. “He was going to burn the city,” Jaime said. “To leave Robert only ashes.”“He was your king,” said Darry.“You swore to keep him safe,” said Whent.“And the children, them as well,” said Prince Lewyn.Prince Rhaegar burned with a cold light, now white, now red, now dark. “I left my wife and children in your hands.”“I never thought he’d hurt them.” Jaime’s sword was burning less brightly now. “I was with the king …”“Killing the king,” said Ser Arthur.“Cutting his throat,” said Prince Lewyn.“The king you had sworn to die for,” said the White Bull.The fires that ran along the blade were guttering out, and Jaime remembered what Cersei had said. No. Terror closed a hand about his throat. Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne’s burned, as the ghosts came rushing in.“No,” he said, “no, no, no. Nooooooooo!”

now: the moment jaime justifies himself for aerys, both rhaegar and his KG brothers start vomiting on him every single thing he has struggled with for his entire life since the kingslaying and that he couldn’t have helped. now, we as readers know that jaime was right, that aerys was dangerous and that he would have never let elia and the children die if he had had a clue, and we also know that it was unfair of them all to leave the seventeen year-old in charge of the entire castle/of the king/of elia and the children. but jaime’s subconscious which has been struggling with it, his issues with his vows and so on for his entire life doesn’t know that, and what happens? the light in his sword (the one that he got from cersei in the passing of the torch) starts going dim every time they bring up what turned him into the kingslayer. it goes dim when rhaegar accuses him of letting elia and the children die and the flames die when his *commander* reminds him he should have died for aerys, and wait, why should he have died for aerys? because he joined the kg. why did he join it? also because cersei convinced him to. what light dies completely? the one in *his* sword that he had been given by cersei…. but not the light in brienne’s sword which is the light *he* gave to her freely.

and then he wakes up and what does he do? goes back to harrenhal to go get brienne.

now: that dream is symbolism for a lot of things including a metaphorical death……. for jaime as the kingslayer/for jaime’s issues/for jaime’s tendency to not deal with his own trauma, not for *himself*, because brienne’s sword is still burning in his darkness and that’s his light as well. it wasn’t just the one that went out.

what happened metaphorically is that cersei rejected him wholly and washed her hands off him as she will do later, he reclaimed himself back kingslayer and all, then he gave brienne some of the light cersei had which still stands for himself and the one he had in his arms that died died when he confronted his kingslaying/his trauma connected to his experience in the kingsguard that he always refused to deal with.

what he did metaphorically is that he took himself back from cersei, gave brienne the best part of him to keep safe and suffered while he had to deal with the fact that he never really got over aerys as he wishes he had.

but that means that when he gets over it fully (and he’s on the good road for it as since he wakes up from the dream other than saving brienne he vows to try to be the person he wanted to be, owns up to his shit, starts detaching himself from cersei and deals with his problems, and if you compare his asos povs with his adwd ones you can see that his emotional maturity [which was about stuck at late teens ngl] has taken a huge damned leap forward) then he’ll have killed/shed his kingslayer persona and probably his kingsguard duties, not that he’s going to die.

because the light in brienne’s sword never went out and that was *his* light, too, and he gave it to her subconsciously in a prophetic dream in which he left behind all the toxic parts of his family/they left him behind as well and had to be without them (mind that neither tyrion nor tommen/myrcella appear in the dream at all) and faced his *darkness* and doom with brienne at his side and she kept the sword with his light burning.

which means he’s definitely going to live.

or at least, he’s going to outlive cersei and die on his own damned terms, but I really think that the dream is about him confronting his trauma and the kingslayer persona he never really wanted, not about his death. because it says nowhere he will die, never mind that the person who says is cersei and his entire storyline is about him distancing himself from her and realizing that she’s completely wrong about the two of them and that he doesn’t want the same things as she and viceversa.

or I mean, that’s my two cents at least.

[system-of-a-feather]

Early Therapy Story Time with Riku

So I was telling my friend a bit about a kind of funny story of what our first few months / year in therapy was like when our therapist was specialized in Autism and Aspergers with little training with trauma / dissociation. It is just kind of a sit down kind of story so if you wanna read some of our experiences and get a laugh or take whatever lesson from our experience you like, feel free to read below the “keep reading”

-Riku (Host)

Back when we first entered therapy I think in like 2016, I wasn’t host (at best maybe co-host but I primarily was only active to be online and occasionally in our high school band) but instead a now-dormant alter we call TA was “host”. I put “ “ around that because while she was technically host, she switched out a lot and there was little organization in our system due to other issues in the past causing dissociative barriers to be higher than ever and making communication hard for most parts besides Lucille and myself. (which back then we were in active denial about DID and having alters so I just thought of him as my ‘smart brain’)

Originally, our family was extremely against therapy as it was a waste of money and “stupid”, but between a mental health related hospitalization of my middle sister, Lucille and I were able to put a plan to use our parent’s love for looking like the perfect parents against them as to get them to let us “get therapy for 13 weeks for Trichotillomania” and then continue using their desire to look like the perfect parents to keep us in therapy. It wasn’t necessarily the most moral way, but at the point we were at in our mental health, we needed it.

At the time, TA was really not handling our life well, was majorly depressed on a daily basis, and loathed existing to dangerous levels. From what I hear from Lucille and the bits I saw from the headspace, she often compared herself to her “online personality that could do everything where she couldn’t even socialize if her life depended on it”. Aderis, at the time, was a very jaded individual who expected for us to k*** ourselves by the time we were 18 and was behaving recklessly and as a persecutor more than a protector. I was going through abuse through a number of toxic co-dependent friendships and was slowly getting majorly depressed and stressed over how I was living. Lucille was the only active fronter that was able to function remotely well at the time, so he pulled me aside to help get us into therapy since I cared about mental health.

Anyways we ended up with a therapist that specialized in autism and aspergers because we had to hide our intentions with the three diagnoses we had before being aspergers (which my mom said we were said to have at a young age but later took it back??), trichotillomania, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Pretty quickly our therapist picked up that TA dissociated a lot and quickly came across how much she hated her existence and hated that our real life was so shit compared to our online life. Like when asked about what exactly she hated about her life / self she often rambled about how useless she was in comparrison to the life I lead online and how she felt she should just give up on life and live online since it made us happier and was better and so on.

My therapist - untrained in trauma and dissociation - did pick up on the symptom of dissociation and (in hindsight) I realize he probably went ‘shit this is larger than i thought’ and did comment “The differentiation you have between your online self and irl self sounds almost like DID but I dont know if that applies if it is online and offline self since people tend to have similar” and we vaguely addressed handling as if it was DID.

My therapist then commented on how it would be best to try to “integrate” the online and offline self, which is kind of a decent step in thought and theory for our situation, but considering he was unexperienced and handling it - it didn’t quite work that way. In therapy we then began to work towards making the online world and real life world meet which did actually get me back to being involved in our real life as Lucille had me pick people I knew irl that I thought I would be comfortable interacting with online. I picked three people and invited them to a party and only one of them stuck, that person being my current fiance.

From there a lot of work was about trying to bring her “online personality” more into the real world so that she could have the skills she developed online and what not, and essentially that didn’t really work in terms of integration as much as it really just forced me to be involved more. Since I was talking to our fiance online, I had to front more to talk to him in person since TA would get uncomfortable pretty quickly around others and she struggled to trust / get comfrotable around him.

Slowly things generally started to involve me in the real world a lot and at some point TA kind of just decided she was done existing and done fronting and dealing with life and kind of went into a slumber which has lasted the past 3 years. When that happened the system just kinda all turned to me and told me life was now my responsibility as both the most socially adjusted alter, the most passing alter, the alter that was most actively involved in our real life on a personal level and everything.

But like... I guess I didn’t tell this in such a funny manner, but like our original therapist didn’t diagnose us with DID - he wasn’t qualified to nor did he think it was ACTUALLY DID - and kind of worked with it as a weird normal level of dissociation and worked with it kind of like an exaggerated description of sorts. I don’t think for a moment he actually thought of us as separate.

I really just kind of find it funny in hindsight how much effort was put into bringing the “online personality” and integrating it and kinda how it both failed and succeeded in the long run.

It is also kind of why a non-specialist shouldn’t try to work with DID, but also to show I guess that working with a non-specialist can be helpful? Since in the end, what my first therapist did was enable and promote a host switch to the most effective potential host and that did our life a large boost considering TA would likely have been unable to maintain a relationship, manage college, or stick to therapy as full heartedly as I.

With that being said, it did put her in a deep dormancy that the entire system has been trying to preserve until we are in a safe enough life / stable enough situation and all that no matter what damage her waking up and coming out of dormancy might cause that we are 100% certain we can handle it well.

But thats just a bit of our story / night time tale of our early therapy days XD Felt like sharing the story so I hope you enjoyed. Any comments or questions regarding this is fully welcome.

[briamichellewrites]

47

The Lakers game. Adam and Ava sat down on the courtside. That gave them the best view of what was going on. There were other celebrities there, including Leo. He was introduced to Ava after sitting by Adam. Where’s Jayde? She was with friends. It was just a special dad and daughter date. He congratulated him on finally settling down. Thanks. Before the game started, they got drinks and snacks. The stadium filled up quickly with fans.

While they were at the game, Jayde hung out with Jon and David. She gave them an update on how she and Ava were doing. It was hard for her at first because she missed her parents and she didn’t know them. It took about a week for her to feel comfortable with them. Since Jayde was in foster care, she knew what she was going through, so they gave her space.

But then, she started engaging more with them. They could tell that she enjoyed having their attention. Was she working during the day? No, after she came to live with them, she became a stay-at-home sister. She didn’t have any projects and she decided not to start working on her new album to be able to be at home. During the day, she got Ava up, took her to school then did housework or errands. Adam and his band were in the studio, so he liked coming home and relaxing.

“I never thought I would like to be a housewife because of my ADHD, but I never run out of stuff to do. If I don’t have time to finish something, I can just leave it for the next day. Then, Adam can come home and not have to worry about a messy house or chores not being done.”

“Why didn’t you think you would like being a housewife”, David asked.

“I thought that because of my ADHD, I would just be bored all day and not have enough to do but I’m constantly finding something to do, even if it’s working in the yard all day.”

Why did she choose to do that? She wanted to be able to be there in case Ava needed her. It was also about being able to be there for her mom. She had power of attorney for her, so she was part of her care team. If there was an emergency, they would call her and she didn’t want to be on tour when it happened. At the time, she had moved her mom into a new care facility and she wasn’t doing that well.

She liked spending her afternoons with her. Even though she was doing a lot better, she still wanted to be available just in case. That made sense. How did she handle her mother on days when she was having a hard time?

“I tell her ‘I’m trying to help you and I don’t like how you are not being very nice to me. Do you want me to stay or do you need time to yourself?’ She has Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I might be talking to her, or I might be talking to her alter. Joanne or Jo is a twelve-year-old girl who sometimes has an attitude problem, so I have to discipline her.”

“What is Dissociative Identity Disorder?”

“It’'s a trauma-related disorder where she has one or more distinct personalities. Jo is the only one she has so far but she might develop more later on. She comes out whenever my mom is going through negative emotions like stress, being upset, or having to talk about her trauma in therapy. It’s how her mind processed the trauma. She also has Borderline Personality Disorder and bipolar disorder.”

They couldn’t imagine taking care of a mother with severe mental health issues than going home and taking care of Ava, and Adam along with the house and chores. It sounded like it had been her decision and not one that Adam made her do. It had to be stressful and they had a lot of respect for her.

It was Rob’s turn to have Cody. Brad was eager to have a week off. He had taken him home after they finished in the studio. Rob had planned a week of fun. They were going to dinner with his parents that evening, so he knew he was going to love seeing his grandparents! They were excited about seeing him! He could tell them all about going potty like a big boy and wearing big boy underwear! Maybe he would tell the whole restaurant!

Oh, well. He was cute. Chester invited Brad to hang out with him. Yeah, he could do that. Was Cody ready to see Mama and Papa? He nodded with a smile! Silly Papa! They laughed. Yeah, Greg Bourdon could be very silly! They said goodbye to each other and Brad kissed his cheek. Bye, daddy!

Ava and Adam had a great experience at the game! He had taken a picture of them together with his phone. She had a big smile on her face! Jayde had given her twenty dollars in spending money, so she bought a plushie for her room with Leo giving her a dollar to cover the tax. She thought it was cute and would remind her of the game. They also bought her a hotdog and soda, both of which she usually didn’t have at home. She put ketchup and relish on her delicious dog!

Leo also shared his popcorn with her. Did the Lakers win or lose? It didn’t matter to her. She had fun regardless and she couldn’t wait to tell her friends at school! They returned home around midnight, so she had to get ready for bed. She first wanted to show Jayde her plushie but she found her asleep. Oh well, she could show her later.

Adam went into the closet and closed the door to not wake her. He found his pajamas and changed his clothes. As he was putting on his boxers, he heard someone in the bathroom. He waited until they were done before opening the door. It was Jayde. She had gotten up to use the bathroom and hadn’t known they were home. How was the game? It was awesome! Did she want to hear about it? He could tell her tomorrow. She was too tired. He didn’t have a problem with that because he was also very tired.

The alarm went off around six-thirty. Time to get ready before getting Ava up. It was the same routine every weekday morning. Jayde liked the routine because it gave her a sense of accomplishment, even though mornings were not easy. Ava wanted to sleep in but she couldn't. Missing one day of school meant having to make it up.

She had to get ready with her clothes on and teeth and hair brushed. If she had time, she liked to put on lipgloss and blush. That was the most amount of makeup she was allowed to put on, according to Adam. It was part of a compromise. He didn’t want her to feel like she had to wear makeup to be pretty and he didn’t want to encourage body image issues. It was because of Jayde, that they reached a compromise. Experimenting with makeup was normal for girls her age, though she did understand his concerns. They would both be conscious if she made any negative comments about her body.

After returning home from bringing her to school, he had her full attention. He told her everything about the game like an excited child. She bought a stuffed animal with the money she had given her, though Leo chipped in for tax. He was there? Yeah, he joined them. She also had a hotdog. Oh my God! He laughed.

“I thought you were the vegan of the family.”

“It was one hotdog and she was on cloud nine. Anyway, we won. We almost went into overtime because we were tied but then, we got the last basket. She had so much fun!”

“That’s adorable! I’m glad you guys had fun. She is going to remember that hotdog for the rest of her life!”

He laughed.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @jovichic-bonjovi4ever @borhap-au @beneathashadytree @duffs-shot-glass @geo-winchester @lokolokong-manunulat

[stupid-jeans]

Well. It’s not fic (not really) but I’m posting this here anyway mostly for me. This is...really heavily veiled RPF. And it’s not relevant to any of my recent fandoms. If you can figure it out um...you get a medal. This is a verse my wife and I wrote in almost nonstop for 10-something years. And I missed it so this is what happened. It’s not the beginning, it’s not the end. *shrug*

CW for mentions of rape/sexual assault/PTSD/flashbacks/disassociating/war related violence, but nothing major.

Matt didn't expect that going back up the Hudson would cause a problem. Why would it? Nothing happened there. And he was fine. He'd been fine for several months now. He almost didn't think about it every day anymore (it helped that he'd left, that his time in the army was done), and things were good.

So he went upstate to visit his brother, because being away, being in a war zone, had made him want to mend whatever was left of the wreckage of bridges he'd burned with his younger siblings. If he was being totally honest, spending so much time in California played just as big of a role as the war had. His siblings didn't deserve to pay for the fact that his mom died. And it had been twenty fucking years already. It was definitely time to bury the hatchet.

Everything went okay until they decided to go to the bar, on a Friday night of a three day weekend. Everything was fine until he'd been brushed up against twenty too many times while playing pool, until Jimmy's buddies were ragging on him for playing a shit game, until some guy with an army-issued buzz cut stumbled into him walking out of the bathroom, and the next thing he knew, Jimmy and two of his buddies were hauling Matt off the guy and dragging him out of the bar. The shock of the cold air snapped him out of it, and then he was shaking and fighting the urge to run and Jimmy just looked worried. Fuck.

"I'm...gonna call Wes?" Jimmy offered, and Matt almost objected, until he thought about the potential damage he could do to his little brother's career over the next 48 hours. So he nodded instead, handing Jimmy his phone. His voice wouldn't work yet, and with how badly his hands were still shaking, there was no way he'd be able to text.

So his brother called his boyfriend and then they walked back to Matt's hotel and Jimmy stood by the door, still looking worried (and also overwhelmingly like their father, and that wasn't something Matt was ready to process right now).

"You can't stand there all night," Matt said finally. Jimmy nodded but didn't move. "I didn't know tonight was going to happen or I wouldn't have come."

Jimmy softened immediately and it was all Linda, Jimmy's mom, and Matt felt a pang of guilt for all the times he'd pushed his stepmother away.

"I don't give a shit about that," Jimmy promised. "Are you okay? I mean, what the hell happened?"

"I can't, okay? I'm sorry." At least he hadn't said it was nothing. A step in the right direction.

"Being over there...it really fucked you up, huh?" Jimmy finally moved to the couch, sinking into it.

"I...guess you could say that," Matt agreed, because it was true. Not the way Jimmy was thinking, because it wasn't the sand or the heat or the bombs that got him. It wasn't patching up bullet wounds or picking fragments of IEDs out of his friends that kept him up at night.

No, as it had turned out, the real enemy had looked just like him. A home-grown farm boy from Oklahoma, just trying to make his family proud. And have a little fun on the side. Whether the other participant was willing or not. And Matt had definitely not been willing.

He was shaking again before he realized.

"Matt." Jimmy's voice was even, quiet, just enough to pull him back. He breathed and unclenched his fists, realizing for the first time that his knuckles were bruised. From decking the guy in the bar. His stomach twisted. "What can I do for you?"

"I don't know," Matt admitted. "Water, maybe?"

Jimmy brought him a plastic cup from the bathroom. "You know I love you, right?"

And that caught him off guard, because Jimmy wasn't exactly the type to get all sappy. Or maybe he was, and Matt had just never been on the receiving end. He was once again struck by how little he knew his half brother.

"Yeah. Yeah, I love you too."

They watched a movie with the volume on low, all the lights on, plenty of space between them, until Wes showed up several hours later. Matt took his first real breath since leaving the bar. The world blinked mostly back into focus, and Matt vowed never to come up here alone again.

A week later, he was only just recovering. Wesley had mandated he go to his therapist, and he had. He was doing all the right things, but this wasn't like medication. It didn't just get better. There wasn't just two steps back, there were fifty, and, though he'd stumbled forward again a bit, now he'd stalled.

There was exactly one number he could call that stood a shot at helping him, but he was wary. Wary because everything was so damn complicated. Wary because, of course the only person he wanted to talk to was his boyfriend's sister's ex. But after pacing the living room for well over two hours, barely keeping a panic attack and an almost guaranteed dissociation at bay, Matt caved and sent Ingrid a text, having no idea if she'd respond or not.

His phone rang less than two minutes later.

"Do you want me to come over?" Ingrid asked. "Are you home?"

"I...yeah. Um, that would be great," Matt mumbled, finally giving up on pacing and sinking onto the couch instead, still tense, still fighting the wave of dread in his chest, but one step closer to winning.

"Okay. Just, do me a favor and unlock the door for me? I'll stay on the phone until I get there, but I need you to do that, okay?" Ingrid said, and Matt flashed back to barricading himself in Wesley's bedroom in California, to Delaney unlocking the door from the outside, which Matt hadn't even known was possible, to resurfacing on the other side of a nasty episode with his hand to Delaney's throat, pinning her up against the wall, and Ingrid there, calmly talking him back to himself somehow, until he'd let go. "Matt." Her voice was just as calm now, gently coaxing him back to reality. "It's okay. We're all okay."

"Yeah," Matt whispered. It had been five years and he still wasn't sure that was true. "Okay, it's unlocked."

Ingrid kept her promise and stayed on the line until he heard the door open. "I'm really glad you called," she said, tucking her phone into her purse. "It's good to see you. Despite the circumstances."

He smiled a little, standing to greet her. "You too. I, um...thanks for coming. I wasn't sure..."

"Look." Ingrid stopped him. "Whatever happened between me and Delaney has nothing to do with me and you, okay? You can always call me and I will always be here for you. Just like you'll always be there for me, right?"

"Yeah, of course," Matt agreed easily.

"You think I can get a hug?"

And honestly, it meant the world to Matt that Ingrid wanted him to touch her at all. He hugged her, more tension ebbing out of him.

"You wanna tell me what happened?" Ingrid murmured once they pulled away.

So Matt did. And even though he'd told the same story to Wes, and his therapist, and his sister, it felt better telling it to Ingrid. Because of all those people, she was the only one who really understood.

"Fucking triggers," Ingrid muttered once he'd finished.

"More to add to the list, I guess," Matt sighed.

"But we're here," Ingrid said. "And they get better."

"Do they?"

"Yeah," Ingrid said. "I mean, the other night, after a show, I went out to a bar with some of the girls. I didn't need my meds, I had a few drinks, I took the subway home alone, and I didn't even notice until the next morning."

"You're a fucking warrior," Matt declared, sliding his arm around her as she leaned against him.

"I know you are, but what am I?" Ingrid teased.

Huffing out a laugh, Matt rolled his eyes. "Let's not wait until the next middle of the night trauma crisis to see each other again?"

"Should be a lot easier now that you're not all the way in fucking North Carolina," Ingrid murmured.

"You should stay tonight," Matt suggested.

"Um, yeah, if you think I'm going home at...3:30 in the morning, you're insane."

"You can take my bed. I'll stay out here." Matt gestured toward the bedroom.

Ingrid glanced at the door and then across the apartment at the other bedroom door. "That bad, huh?"

He hadn't slept with Wes since coming home. It was safer to sleep alone, to avoid the potential for issues. Though Wesley could overpower him much more readily than Delaney. Asking him to wasn’t fair.

"Yeah," he sighed.

"Okay. Will you come lay with me until I fall asleep, then?"

Ingrid had her own set of triggers, and Matt knew well enough that perhaps her biggest was sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. And they'd only just moved into this place when Ingrid and Delaney broke up. She'd been here maybe twice, and never overnight.

He obliged her gladly, sitting up against the headboard while she curled up beside him. "I'd say wake me up if you need anything, but I think maybe you'd be better off waking Wes," he murmured.

"Don't worry. I've been to this rodeo a time or fifty, remember?" Ingrid reassured him sleepily. "G'night, Matty."

"Night, Ingrid."

In the morning, he woke up to Wes making breakfast, talking quietly to Ingrid who was perched on the counter, sipping coffee out of an oversized mug. No nightmares, no anxiety.

He knew the instant Ingrid noticed he was awake, but she didn't acknowledge him. More things she'd learned, about letting him come around on his own. And Matt thought, not for the first time, that he'd never love anyone else the way he loved Ingrid.

"Morning," he greeted, joining them, kissing Wesley on the cheek, lingering against his back a couple of extra seconds. His boyfriend definitely noticed but he, too,kept quiet.

"Wes and I were just discussing the merits of sitting around and watching hockey all day," Ingrid explained, offering Matt her mug, which he took with a smile.

"As long as we stick to hockey," Matt said. "No baseball, no football. Got it?"

Hockey was the only sport they'd all ever agreed on.

Wes' phone went off and Ingrid glanced at it, her mouth twisting as she looked at the display. Delaney.

Wes seemed to figure it out right as Matt did and they both reached for the phone at the same time.

"Let me get it. You know anything in that pan'll burn if you leave it with me." It was enough for Wes to relent. So Matt took the phone and wandered back to the bedroom.

"Hey, Lane, it's Matt."

"What'd you do to my brother? You know what, don't answer that, I don't wanna know." Delaney's typical whirlwind of a conversation made Matt grin.

"Sorry to disappoint you but he's just making breakfast. Didn't really feel like burning the house down so you got me instead."

"You know I like you better anyway. Listen, I'm in the neighborhood so I'm gonna stop by. Bodega requests?"

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea…” Matt said, wincing a little.

“Trouble in paradise? My brother being a dick? You know I’ll come kick his ass if I need to…”

“No, it’s not that. Just...Ingrid’s here.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. If not for the sounds of traffic in the background, Matt would wonder if the line had disconnected.

“Oh.”

“I called her. I needed…” Matt sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Your brother shouldn’t be responsible for all my demons, Lane.”

“I get it. It’s fine. We’re adults, right?”

“Something like that.” He chuckled. It still didn’t feel like he’d grown up at all some days.

“So, I’ll let you have your morning. Tell Wes I said hi. And Ingrid too, I guess.”

“Very adult,” he teased.

“I try. And Matty? I get it. Maybe not exactly, but I understand why you need her. I’m glad you have each other.”

Matt’s chest ached, for himself and how grateful he was for this family that had become his own, and for Delaney and Ingrid, who still loved each other but couldn’t seem to figure out how to make it work.

“Yeah, thanks.” He sniffed and tamped down on his emotions. There’d been enough of those lately. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“We got coffee yesterday, loser,” Lane pointed out, laughing.

“Love you too, jerk.”

“Whatever. Tell my brother to text me.”

And before he could respond, the line was dead. Typical.

When he returned to the kitchen, Ingrid was wiping away tears and the ache in his chest returned tenfold. Wes was comforting her, both of their mugs abandoned, the burner on the stove turned off.

“What happened?”

Ingrid waved him off even as Matt closed the space between them, pulling her into his chest.

“Nothing, it’s nothing. I miss her, that’s all.”

He knew better than to say Delaney missed her too, that the two of them just needed to get their shit together. They were soulmates, and everyone seemed to know it but them.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know she’d be calling…” Wesley mumbled.

“Of course not. You don’t have to apologize for that. This is just...messy, that’s all. I think I’m gonna head home.”

“You don’t have to go,” Wes said. “Stay, have breakfast, watch hockey.”

“You sure?” Ingrid still looked skeptical.

“All this french toast isn’t gonna eat itself,” Matt declared, snatching up a piece off the plate and taking a generous bite.

“Something tells me you’d have no problem devouring every last piece of that with no help from me.” But Ingrid snagged her own piece and smiled. It felt mostly like old times and the tension that had been lingering in him since Hudson slowly ebbed.

After the game ended, while they were waiting on Wesley getting their pizza, Ingrid nudged him, snuggling against his shoulder.

“You should call him.”

“Who?”

“Jimmy.”

“Yeah?” Matt wondered how Ingrid had him so figured out.

“Maybe invite him down. I mean, they have to let them out of there at some point, right?” she teased.

“It’s a school, Ingrid, not a prison.”

“Exactly. So call him. Your territory. A little safer.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Alright.”

He half expected Jimmy not to answer as he nervously paced the living room. He could feel Ingrid decidedly not watching him from the couch, which helped, for some reason.

“Everything okay?” Matt could practically count on one hand the number of times he and Jimmy had spoken on the phone. All of them had been cursory greetings, usually while Matt was deployed, at the behest of Jimmy’s mom.

“Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine.” It felt good not to lie. “Just kinda disappointed our weekend got cut short.”

“Yeah?”

“So, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to come down here? Do a weekend?”

“Like, in the city? Hell yeah.”

He must’ve been smiling, because he caught sight of Ingrid beaming back at him from the couch, and Matt wished he had a pillow to chuck at her.

As it turned out, mending bridges was a lot easier than he’d thought. There was work to be done, but today, it felt doable. That was a victory all in itself.

[gayfrenchtoast]

It was fathers day yesterday

I guess in some places rn it still is

A few weeks ago I told my dad to fuck off. I couldn't take dealing with him anymore, pretending that I liked him and I was fine, for what? His sake? His feelings? Self preservation?

I think the main reason was to be able to see my siblings, be allowed to go up there and see them, but since they've moved I've done that what, once? Because of covid, because they're so far away, because his Fiance hates me for something I didn't do, because I don't want to see him. In a way its fucking incredible that he didn't realise that the problem was him at all until I told him. Though in a way it's also not because he only ever sees what he wants to see. He saw everything was fine, that he had done no wrong, and I saw my life laud out in trauma made by him. He's a fucking asshole and the worst part is he will never see himself that way. His only "flaw" to himself will ever be that he's "too good".

So I decided that the ability to go see my siblings wasn't worth it, because it was just me leaving the door ajar for him to reach in. I decided that sacrificing that would be better for me and maybe, hopefully, would trigger a change that would make life better for my siblings if he knew what he did. I wasn't prepared like I'd wished to be when the moment arrived, he'd called me because I when he dropped my sister off at mh mothers' (where I live currently) I didn't want to talk to him and pretend it was all okay. I decided as soon as I saw him I was gonna start resisting him, not coming at his call and not pretending everything was okay. But the simple act of not wanting to talk to him that day, not pretending, started him asking, poking, he wouldn't take "I don't want to talk to you right now" and after he left he called me, he claimed he wasn't trying to get anything like a confrontation ect but then why did he call asking so adamantly for information? I tried lying to him, telling him I just missed my siblings as my anxiety and dissociation built up, but he just kept pushing until I finally said "it's you. You're the problem." I can barely most of the exact words around that time but I remember telling him it was him so vividly. He then started pushing on that. Asking stuff like "what did I do to you" and I started, while shaking, telling him how he treated me

Then his phone died

And I realised, over phone, hearing his voice, my anxiety and dissociation set off because of it, he had power over me. He could manipulate me in real time while I was in a fragile state because of him, weather he realised it or not. He had pushed me into this before I was ready, so from there on out it was going to be on my terms.

So I texted him, I texted him as vilify as I could explaining myself, he texted my sister to call him using his finace's phone, I took her phone and texted him saying I was texting him and wasn't going to call him. He called me using his finance's phone and I didnt pick up. He called me when his phone got charge, I didn't pick up. All while writing out a message like is said I would. He texted me telling me "he would appreciate me talking to him because I left him wondering what he'd done" as if I hadn't already told him I was messaging him. Finally, finally, I sent the long message off with a small niggling of satisfaction and hope.

The next day he responded. Telling me he was "just trying to be tge best dad he could, he wasn't looking to confront me and its not his fault because kids don't come with a manual! Oh - I've loved you since the day you were born Nd I ditn understand why you think I'm a bad parent!" Like I hadn't already told him in the last message which gave me the hint he wasn't really listening to me "oh what should I do next?"

Well I told him that calling me and pushing me like that was confrontation but go on, you can have a little leniency, it wasn't just because you were confronting me, but because I'm tired of dealing with you and you continuing your shitty ways! In responce to him asking me what he should do next I told him he should probably try therapy and it wasn't my job to walk him through being a good dad. Which I really hoped would get through to him and offer him a chance to get help. How foolish I was. I then gave him not one but two examples of how he'd been a shit dad and hurt me in the past, in a good bit of detail, and then told him I'd like to go low contact and that I hope for a better life for my siblings now he knows.

Now I have been keeping it civil this whole time, I haven't sworn at him, I haven't been sarky, I haven't antagonised him, I have been all around trying to just talk with him, be honest and give actually good information to him in hoped of making him better and more knowledgeable about how he is in hopes of changing him for the better to give my siblings a better life. I have been giving a dramatic, cathartic re-telling of the texts up to this point but I have decided that I cannot encapsulate the amount of absolute bullshit that was sent to me the next day in my own words. So will be a direct copy paste of his message with names censored, any changes I I made or notes added on for context will be in red;

----------------------------

(Me), what has (sister) told you about life here?

I think I am as understanding as I can be around the kids and when they get told off it's in proportion to the offence they caused. It is important that children learn boundaries.

Our children are happy and certainly do not think I'm the monster you do.

It seems you see the situation is so serious I need therapy.

I think perhaps this is the other way round and you need to seek help to address your mental health problems. Your recollections appear to differ from mine, as does your interpretation of my motivations as a parent.

I'm sorry you feel this way. Many children have a hard time at home and do suffer abuse. You were not one of them. Between your mother, grandparents and I you were always (and remain) a much loved child.

If I've been annoyed with you it has only because I want the best for you.

As my first child I had to learn a lot with you but I know you were a happy child who was glad to see me when I picked you up from school and when we played or when I read a bedtime story.

Perhaps our divorce was more of a plausible reason.

I also think it is unfair for you to create all of this and then run away and not speak.

You did this over the cannabis issue, although your actions led to far reaching consequences you didn't care and wouldn't talk about it. You couldn't even apologise; which if you had would have put relationships on an even keel to rebuild. (The "cannabis issue" is a whole other situation but basically his finace's daughter told her mum that I asked her for weed after I'd been in the room when she got a call from someone asking her for weed and his fonace then blamed me when she "got back into drugs". If more elaboration is needed I will make a whole other post)

You can't do this and then refuse to speak, leaving everyone wondering.

I can only respect your request for low contact as you call it, but I love you and always will.

I would prefer if we could rebuild our relationship. I think you are dwelling on the bad times too much and ascribing too much meaning to events I don't recall the same way. It must be difficult only listening to the household you live in.

I have always tried my hardest for all my children and I hope I always will. Does it mean nothing, all the work I have done for you? I have tried to be a good example of a parent and give you, (sister), (little step brother) and (baby brother) what I think you need to go forwards in life in the real world.

I've known you are feeling strange to me for a while but I'm still doing my best to be a good dad.

I have never sought to hurt you (me). I have always thought about how I compared to my father, a good dad. I have not been as strict with or shouted at my children the way I was shouted at. I have been proud of that.

When I've been strict it's because I thought it was to teach you boundaries. When I've been stressed I have shouted. Being a parent is stressful. Being one who really cares is really stressful.

I don't want to become a stranger (me). I know you feel more comfortable with your mum than me and my family. I accept that.

We are different but I have always supported and helped when I could. I have sought to protect you from harm and prepared you to be an adult.

Please don't let the past dominate your feelings for the present. For your sake, find happiness in the here and now. If you have anxiety and depression it will be your choice to recover. If keeping me away will help it's up to you, but I am here when you want me.

-----------------------

So I feel like that speaks for itself, however I am worried that I may hit the charecter limit soon so if it doesn't you can see my, very long, reponce in part 2

If you are wondering why I am doing this and posting it to tumblr, half of it is cathartic and the other half is for record and posterity.

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: this body yet survives, ch. 7

Relationship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Characters: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Lán Qǐrén, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Jiāng Yànlí

Tags: No War AU, Recovery, Trauma, Dissociation, Courtship, Courting Rituals, Near Death Experiences, Attempted Murder, Eventual Happy Ending, Panic Attacks, Vomiting, Siblings, Protective Siblings, Soup, Triggers

Summary: Wei Ying has a panic attack upon waking. Jiang Wanyin makes an unpleasant discovery.

Notes: Life has been busy lately and it might take me longer to write. I get my second Pfizer shot on Wednesday, and I’m expecting it’ll make me useless for a couple days. It’s also nearing the end of the semester, so I’ll be busy with that, too.

Parts 1 & 2

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

AO3 link

---------------

It took a few moments for Wangji to remember where he was when he woke, and then a moment more to place what had woken him before mao shi—quiet sobs and a soft voice murmuring soothingly.

He had taken the bedding on one side of the bed, and his eyes adjusted to the dark quickly. Wei Ying was curled against Jiang Yanli, who had taken the last shift. It was close enough to morning, then. 

“We’re here, A-Xian, and you’re safe,” she whispered, then noticed him sit up. “He had a nightmare.”

Wangji wished his guqin was here instead of the jingshi, that he had asked xiongzhang to bring it last night, that he could play calming music for Wei Ying; instead he levered himself to sit on the bed and hummed ‘WangXian,’ hoping it would remind his zhiji he was loved. 

Wei Ying’s trembling eased slowly, and Wangji kept his movements slow as he reached forward to take his hand, squeezing it lightly. He was relieved when Wei Ying squeezed back.

“S’going on?” Jiang Wanyin murmured blearily, sitting up. 

To his credit, he immediately moved beside his sister when he realized the issue. 

“Hey, hey,” he murmured, trying to be comforting, patting Wei Ying’s shoulder. 

Initiating unexpected touch wasn’t the best idea for someone in the throes of a panic attack—Wei Ying couldn’t quite mask a flinch, and Jiang Wanyin’s hands fluttered in a helpless way before clutching the bedsheet hard enough his knuckles turned white. 

Wangji continued to hum through it, not stopping even when his heart clenched at Wei Ying’s gasped apologies for the reaction. 

“Not your fault,” Jiang Wanyin whispered insistently, clearly trying to keep his own reaction in check for fear of hurting his brother further.

“Not yours,” Wei Ying returned, equally insistent.

“Neither of yours,” Jiang Yanli cut in. “Neither of you should blame yourselves.”

Wei Ying’s breath hitched.

“I hate it,” he whispered. “I hate being afraid all the time. I hate that I can’t stop.”

Wangji couldn’t abide him blaming himself, and paused in humming, rubbing his thumb gently across the back of Wei Ying’s hand. . 

“The past few days have been stressful. Too many events too quickly. Too overwhelming.” 

“And some were unexpected,” Jiang Yanli added, clearly thinking of his talk with Madam Jin and the last minute ceremony. 

“We should have just ditched the banquet,” Jiang Wanyin muttered. “The food sucked. A-Jie’s was better.”

Surprisingly, Wei Ying giggled at that, helpless in his laughter for nearly a minute. 

“Jiejie’s food is way better,” he said when he caught his breath. 

Wangji was relieved that his voice wasn’t tight and shaky anymore. The familiar joke among the Jiangs about Gusu Lan food, and particularly the food in the Cloud Recesses, had eased the panic attack.

Honestly, having enjoyed Jiang Yanli’s cooking, Wangji knew they had a point. 

She reached forward and smoothed Wei Ying’s hair, down and mussed in a way that was unfairly attractive, then poured him a glass of water from the ewer the healer had brought before hai shi. He drank  obediently, likely needing the hydration and something to rinse the taste of stale sick from his mouth. 

When he finished the glass, she poured him another, and then maneuvered him until she could reach his hair. She carded through the tangles gently with her fingers before quickly braiding it and tying the end off with his red hair ribbon.

“How are you feeling, A-Xian?” she asked when she was done. 

Wei Ying’s eyes had fallen shut during the process, and he hummed contentedly in response.

“Better,” he said after a moment.

He seemed to hesitate, as though he was about to say more. 

“Wei Ying?” Wangji asked.

Wei Ying ducked his head and bit his lip. 

“A bit hungry,” he admitted. 

He knew Wei Ying often downplayed his needs, so Wangji translated that to mean he was very hungry. 

“Well, you were sick,” Jiang Wanyin said, frowning. “It’s like you didn’t eat dinner, kind of.”

Jiang Yanli tutted softly. 

“You’re still so thin, A-Xian. I can go ask the healer if they can provide something… Or I could go get something from our quarters.”

She started to rise but was stopped by Jiang Wanyin.

“I’ll go, a-jie. I wouldn’t want you to go alone in the dark, and one of us needs to chaperone.”

The Jiang sect heir turned to Wei Ying.

“I’ll stop by your rooms and grab fresh robes for you while I’m at it,” he said gruffly. “You were sick in those.”

Wei Ying smiled brightly, and Wangji wanted to thank Jiang Wanyin for bringing that light to the surface through his courtesy. If he did, it would undoubtedly fluster him, and he could almost see why his zhiji enjoyed teasing people so much, imagining it.

It was near enough to mao shi, and the purpose of Jiang Wanyin’s break of curfew was to help his brother and would be excused, so Wangji said nothing when he left. 

Jiang Yanli fussed softly over Wei Ying after his departure, helping to straighten his sleep-skewed robes. 

When he shifted on the bed, he nearly knocked Suibian off. Wangji kept the sword from falling and handed it to Wei Ying, who laid it against his thigh. The sword, he knew, was a comfort, despite having been made by the Jiang sect—it represented his ability to protect himself. 

Wangji was content to watch Wei Ying as his sister doted on him, their gentle teasing—Xianxian is three; hmm, I think that’s too old—and the blessed calm that had found his beloved. 

Jiang Wanyin’s expression, when he returned, was stormy. He placed a tray of fruits and osmanthus cakes on the end of the bed.

“A-Cheng?” Jiang Yanli asked. 

He shook his head but looked at Wangji and gestured to the hall. Whatever had him troubled, he didn’t want to say in front of his siblings, which was immediately worrisome.

“Someone put lotuses in our rooms,” Jiang Wanyin said after the door was closed. “Ripped the petals off some and threw them all over.”

Rage filled him, icy and terrifying in what it might lead him to do. 

This confirmed those delivered to Wei Ying’s quarters, the entire reason he had to spend the night in the infirmary due to the fear of qi deviation, the reason he was ill and had panic attacks… It had been intentional. 

The culprit had likely expected them to take Wei Ying to the Jiang quarters in the morning, not expecting… 

“I will wake shufu and xiongzhang,” he said, his voice more forceful than he meant it to be. “The mess will be removed.”

Jiang Wanyin let out a soft sigh, almost one of relief that it’d be handled immediately. 

“I didn’t go to A-Xian’s quarters for fresh robes. And you might want to make sure they didn’t hit your jingshi.”

The rage he had felt dwarfed that which he felt now at the thought of his home being violated, the very place he had finally reached Wei Ying, whose well-being was now threatened by an unknown source. 

That they had dared to harm Wei Ying… He knew not what he would do if he caught the betrayer. 

“I will take care of it,” he said. “Protect Wei Ying.”

Jiang Wanyin blanched a bit, and he wondered briefly if his anger had shown in his face or voice, but he swept that aside, channeling his emotions into energy. 

When Xichen answered his knock at the hanshi, the sleepiness fell from his expression immediately, and he knew his own expression revealed his turmoil. 

“What happened, A-Zhan?”

It took him a moment to find his voice. 

“Sabotage. Lotuses in the Jiang quarters.”

Xichen’s quick intake of air was almost a gasp, and he closed his eyes as he often did when emotionally overwhelmed.

“I will wake shufu,” xiongzhang said after a moment. “Please meet us there.”

Wangji tried to bow, but was kept from doing so by his brother, who instead pulled him into an embrace, one that left his eyes stinging embarrassingly, the emotions that were overcoming him threatening to escape in a way he didn’t want. If he gave in to it, he didn’t know if he would stop until all the grief and anger and helplessness he had felt over the last year was expelled.

It was a relief when Xichen released him.

“We will protect him, didi. We will make this right.”

He could only nod, turning to walk to the Jiang quarters, glad for the dark that hid the emotions he could feel roiling within him.

The Jiang quarters were worse than Jiang Wanyin had let on, though Wangji could now see the reason behind his near-wordless rage. 

A large bouquet of lotus flowers dwarfed the table they had eaten at only hours before. Lotus blossoms were strewn about the room, petals on nearly every surface, and the smell was more than could be accounted for by the blossoms. It smelled as though far too much lotus incense had been burned. It was entirely possible the scent would prove difficult to remove, that the idea of Wei Ying staying with the Jiangs would now be impossible.

Knowing now how lotuses impacted Wei Ying, the smell made Wangji nauseous in sympathy. Had he come with them for breakfast in the morning to encounter this, after his own rooms had been similarly violated… 

They had been here all evening, until shortly before curfew. This had been done after they left, purposefully. 

Which made it clear neither this nor the bouquet left in Wei Ying’s quarters were innocent mistakes.

He dared not touch anything, lest he destroy evidence that might lead to a culprit. 

Wangji felt the decorative silverwork on Bichen’s hilt start to cut into his fingers and forced himself to loosen his grip. He left the rooms, standing on the small patio, breathing in the cool night air and listening to the chirp of crickets in the dark until he felt some semblance of calm.

His uncle and brother arrived shortly thereafter, and the thunderous expression on shufu’s face told Wangji he had reached a similar conclusion.

“Wei Ying is being targeted,” he said, knowing it was unnecessary.

“Return to him, Wangji,” shufu ordered gently. “This will be investigated and dealt with, and he needs you more than we do.”

Truthfully, Wangji was grateful to leave it in their hands.

He felt as though he had been contaminated by the smell and stopped by the jingshi to change lest the odor upset Wei Ying. His home was undisturbed, and he was able to change without incident. He even ran his comb, scented with sandalwood, through his hair a few times to ensure it would replace any scent that had taken root there. He took Wangji with him when he left so he could play for Wei Ying.

He stopped by Wei Ying’s quarters on the way back to the infirmary and was relieved they had not been further adulterated. He selected a set of robes, one with some blue in them, then checked to be certain his hair oil had not been tampered with—still the scent of orange and cinnamon—before taking both it and the comb he had gifted with him.

Wei Ying’s smile was weak when he returned, his face lined with new tear-tracks, and the Jiang siblings were hovering over him. Jiang Wanyin had not kept the discovery from him, and though it hurt him to admit, it was the correct decision. As much as Wangji wished to protect him from this, Wei Ying deserved to know, to make his own decisions. 

“Xiongzhang and shufu are investigating,” he told them as he hung Wei Ying’s fresh robes over a chair and set his guqin down.

He handed the comb and hair oil to Jiang Yanli, though he wished he could comb Wei Ying’s hair himself. It would be improperly intimate, and the courtship was important to show his value. 

He did not offer platitudes, knowing it would not change the way any of them felt. That this had likely originated from his own sect rankled him, and even kowtowing didn’t feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough penance. He had been unaware of negative sentiment toward Wei Ying, had been blindsided by this act of violence against him, had failed him… 

“It’s not your fault, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispered, as though he could sense the guilt he felt.

His zhiji’s words, the love in his voice, saved him from the downward spiral of his thoughts. Wangji sat on the bed and took his hand. 

Though he had not committed the crime, he felt responsible for his failure to protect Wei Ying again. 

“We will be more vigilant,” he said, in lieu of worthless apologies.

Wei Ying offered a sad smile, then shifted closer and hugged him, leaning against his chest and tucking his forehead against his neck. 

Wangji brought his arms around him, held him close, basked in the warmth of his presence, and was grateful when the Jiangs said nothing against it, allowing them this simple comfort.

[2dtacokit-blog]

oh jeez. Coming Back and I guess, Coming Out?

Well it has been over a few years I think since I was last on here and boy has things changed, myself included. I wasn’t planning on coming back on here as it was a horrendous triggering mess, couldn’t stand the bitchiness and toddlers... But my best buddy dragged my sorry ass back. My blog was an unmitigated disaster, I cringed for the longest time and was furious with myself. Mass deleting spree. It’s a long old read, maybe the longest post in the entire universe, but I cannot put this concisely. If you make it to the end, I thank you for witnessing this.

TW for CSA, SA, R, Su, Si. Just tread carefully. Crude, explicit and uncensored. 

If you know me in real life, please please do not reveal this information.

Some things are the same, still parenting, still confused, still in therapy, still fighting the same old demons but a lot has changed. I have grown up for a start, wizened up a bit, got some of my shit together and I am now single. I gave two fingers up to the NHS mental health service after the complete closure of therapeutic services in my area and sought private medical care. I am in private analytic psychotherapy weekly, getting to know myselves. I have now been formally/clinically diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, which has been a tough nut to get my teeth around. An old me, unsure who, used to write about it on here with complete assurance that it was the case and I didn’t recognise that attitude when I came back on. I will now be a lot more cautious with what I write with relation to my mental health because it puts me at great risk. I do not want the whole perimeter for my existence to be based on my mental health anymore... Even though it still governs my existence.

So yes, we are a “system” working towards consolidation of trauma and experiences in therapy and with private specialists, but we are primarily Aly. 

Another biggie to cover, and this will be the first place other than the survivors forum I will post this on, is that I am having serious issues with gender dysphoria. Now this is gonna sound very strange, for most that have known me I have seemed someone who sexualized their female body continually, putting it on display and clinging to it. Well... It came as a shock to me as to anyone I haven’t already come out to (literally 5 people I know in real life?). I will do what I can to explain and make sense of what is an ongoing discovery with my therapist.

Trauma fucks with people in many ways. Sexual and psychological trauma is an insidious beast that disguises themselves in many forms. Now as I have already covered, I have DID. A condition caused by having to adapt to survive severe and repeated complex trauma in childhood. I still have not much of an idea what that is but other me’s do. That is neither here or there for now, that is my business, but what it does is erase chunks of my memory of things I have been unable to process/deal with. 

As a kid, I was abnormal to say the least. A large chunk of that was due to trauma, switching continually and just casually failing my way through anything other than academics. One thing I didn’t understand was how the heck I couldn’t connect to the girls around me. I didn’t understand them, couldn’t get my head around how they worked or how they looked. I was tall, scrawny, long haired boyish thing that was torn between doing what they loved (getting muddy, trashing shit, buying the most ridiculous jeans you can imagine, pummelling people in rugby, pummelling people in the playground ((not proud of it)), studying, hanging out with boys, being silly) and who I felt I should be (cute, girly, into pink, dancers, sweet, gentle). 

That conflict tore my little primary school brain apart. What used to happen at home is a mystery but school was agony. I would go in a dishevelled mess and was a freak, as all and sundry used to make clear. Girls didn’t want me as their friend because I wasn’t like them, and my attempts to emulate them came across desperate, copycat, attention seeking behaviour. But dammit I still tried. Tried the pink, tried the cute stuff, but they were my sisters stuff... Not for me. I loved them but they didn’t look right on me, made me feel worse. My younger sister was an alien to me; a proper real life girl and that highlighted my freakishness. I was being rejected by everyone. Experiencing massive emotional and physical neglect at home, bullied at school, turned away by counsellors and tutors, ofc rejected by the boys and girls I fancied. 

ENTER FROM THE LEFT MY MAGICALLY SHIT DISSOCIATIVE POWERS.

I had a few angry boy personalities about by this time, I didn’t know they were boys until like September last year. I had a mass emergence of parts, all male, that stored these memories like time capsules. Memories I had forgotten due to my dissociative amnesia. Anyway, similarly to how these parts formed and were there early, so came a female personality. One that could preform girl where the rest of us couldn’t. Not very well at this stage, she was a young girl, but she dutifully tried to copy the girls we grew up around. Camouflaging what I guess was early stage dysphoria from myself and those around me. This part felt terror at appearing anything like a boy, because looking like a boy when we should be a girl would get us bullied and rejected again. And we were alone enough. 

Around this time, I think between 9-11, I was visibly changing a lot in photos. Sometimes I would be incredibly tomboyish, othertimes... painfully... a mismatched attempt at what we felt a girl should be. Combine that with the elusive sexual abuse we aren’t clear of yet, we prioritised being sexually attractive over all else. Boys liked girls that had tits. Boys liked girls that liked their tits. My family liked girls that were girls, and tits were a thing girls had, make up were what girls wore. Girls liked girls that looked like girls, and were jealous of girls who looked sexy. Well that is who we will be, couldn’t be cute, so let’s be sexy instead. I wore miniskirts that were obscene, tank tops saying “sexy kitty” on it, and stuffed my croptop to make sure my tiny prepubescent body looked that little bit more adult. That didn’t go how we wanted it to. We looked more like a freak than ever because parts were still clinging desperately to their boyhood, and we looked like a clusterfuck to be honest. A sad one though. Desperately sad and my heart breaks to look back at that confused person in the photos.To be clear though, we were not at this point attaching any of this to gender, boyhood wasn't at this point me saying “LOOK I AM A BOY” but kinda what we really were without connecting the word boy to it. I wasn’t afforded an opinion of my own at this age, raised in the church, within a violent and abusive household in literally one of the whitest, hetero-normative, conservative towns in the UK erases ones ability to discover themselves.

In a final act of madness to solidify that i was a normal girl we went to an all girls school. 

Mistake.

Before we even got to that dam school we watched The Matrix. For the first time we saw someone that looked like a girl but also looked like a boy. We were mystified. We bypassed Trinity, she was a she and we didn’t connect at all, but the blonde one (who died very early on) has short boyish spiky hair. So we took our smol ass to the hairdressers and insisted we got our past shoulder length hair cut completely off. That did not go the way we planned. We looked older, looked somehow more like a freak girl/boy thing, and it was horrifying. We also looked like our mum, which was another problem related to the abuse stuff. We cried for ages because we felt like a freak, didn’t understand why we did it, couldn’t change it and we were about to start at the new, All Girls Grammar school. Shit. 

The first two years at that school was hell. My mum finally kicked my dad out, but we were still having to see him weekly. I was at this point dissociating all the time. I would have three loads of school stuff with me all the time, for reasons i couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand why the other girls had one pencil case when I had 3, had to have 3! How in the heck did these girls carry their stuff not in a bag or a giant tray like I had to?! Well I was catering to the parts that were present without knowing it. Either way I was bait man, freaking bait.

Skinny, tall, covered head to toe in excoriation marks, short tufty hair, looked like a boy, but so desperate to fit in I wore my dam mums make up. I got lost all the time, was crying all the time or having fits where i would smash stuff, steal things, yell for no reason or be very sexually overt. I was torn apart. A website was set up by my old so called friends called The Aly Fan Club, where they took photos of me around school, uploaded them to the net and commented on them, with people (usually men) commenting what they wanted to do to me. I took all this in silence because when i got home, my amnesia would wipe that shit clean from my brain for ages. From one hell to another. 

Coming out as what I thought was gay at this time was another huge problem, like any emo nerd I drew all this trash and put it on dA. In no time at all, most of the school knew I liked girls and there was now something NEW to bully me for. I tried to see this as punishment for my bullying behaviour in primary school to justify it but there was no justification. So much at this point was about punishment.

Punishment for being a freak, for being a loser, for not being like anyone else in this entire dam school. Punishment for looking so gross, for wanting these awful, naughty things, for liking the wrong people, for drawing how i felt... I needed to be punished. So I let it continue. I was an awful person and i needed to be punished.

But here is a thing. Breasts. When mine came in they came in suddenly. It felt like all my prayers had been answered and my ticket to being a girl like all these other girls had been called. I was One Of Them. I hated my body so much because of the hatred I got from others and my own discomfort that when these babies came in I adored them. Not what I anticipate anyone expects to here from someone suspecting they are a trans guy? “if you were truly dysphoric you would have hated them, that would have made it worse!” well for most cases probably. What these fatty parts gave me was attention, which i had been starved from in almost all aspects of my life, family included. What’s more, this attention was positive. I had never experienced such a thing for my body before that wasn’t... locked in another trauma pocket. 

For someone who was ready to kill themselves at age 12 because they were such an unforgivable, wretched, disgusting, freak, that wasn't even a girl, that couldn't stop biting themselves till they bled... The power my newly sexualised and definitely female body gave me was sorely needed. People fancied me now. They wanted to touch me rather than just hit me, or throw things at me. They wanted to pull me not swear at me or spit at me. Survival Aly adapts, it is what we do, so we adapted. But things were still not right. Self harm was a massive problem, so were suicide attempts because we were still... not quite there yet. We ventured online a lot, where older men from across the world would ask for photos, videos and meets. I had no idea this was sexual grooming, but we were also dependant on that to survive. Somehow though, the impact of that, some bullying that was still happening, my everpresent self hatred, confusion and discomfort and increase in abuse in the home led us to attempt suicide in the school toilet when i was 14.

We tried to cut our neck open this time.

A teacher found us and dragged us to student services. My mum as usual was angry as heck and embarrassed. Apologising for my behaviour and the inconvenience. My dad was cloying like molasses creeping into my head. I remember because i bled all over the blouse of Ms Ginsberg, a tutor i fancied since forever. It wasn’t that severe, it was considered a superficial wound, but the amount we were doing and the continual attempts were serious cause for concern. Then my step mom found photos of me being sexually active at 14 and before, my mom found a load of the video files for the other men and I was hospitalised. Something miraculous occurred during this time though, another part came out. One that was confident and proudly female, one that was overtly sexualised but more cunning. She was a chav, an incredible cheemo (idk if anyone remembers this fashion disaster movement thing). She could adapt and fit in to any social situation and essentially helped us waltz out of hospital with no memory of being there for years. 

All memory of confused tomboy/greyspace/whatever the fuck i was me was gone. This me didn’t give a dam and was in it for themselves and to survive, to be adored. And sex was their weapon, they just had to be cunning about it. By this point I was 15 and didn’t really think more about what I was. We were screwing guys now, guys and girls, thought this was something to be proud of. Dismissed the old small group of friends i had for the guys that hung around at the park and girls that used to go out and get drunk. We took naked photos of ourselves and put them online, and paraded ourselves around scantily clad because it made us feel powerful and loved. 

At 16 i was raped. I was again at 17 twice, and this pattern continued beyond being hospitalised for the second time at 20 (the worst 21st birthday ever), beyond getting pregnant which was also conceived through rape. I had been sexually abused and raped a lot during this time, but my dissociative amnesia would wipe the memory. So I would know something bad was happening but was denied processing it by my inbuilt survival mechanisms that kept me alive as a kid. I was unable to get out of the loop or register any danger because the switching would be so automatic, so ingrained, it basically was not up to me to get us out of the situation because another part was there in brace position having dissociated fully. All during this time I preformed female because it was necessary. I didn't have room to question my gender because i was too busy surviving and trying to literally not die. 

Then the pregnancy. I cant relive any of this trauma stuff too much, that isn't the point of this post but during this time, my gender was more apparent than ever before. Drawings we used to do of parts that had male appendages but still looked female started to change. Become more male. The internal distress was so monumental for many reasons; rape pregnancy, the gen father not leaving us alone, fear of my dad, still loosing my mind, desperately trying to be loved my my partner at the time. But there was another distress there. 

I cant be a mum. Women become mums. I cant hold this child in me. This shouldn't be there. 

Everyone was hammering home how much of a glowing woman I was and each time they said it I wanted to die. I tortured my body, got others to torture it too. Despised it, loathed it. It wasn't right to any of my parts. Three parts got us through that pregnancy but we dont know who gave birth. I dont remember it. We destroyed almost every pregnant photo of us. What were we disgusted by aside from the feeling of being broken, used and bred? How undeniably, unquestionably female we were. 

Even so things were happening inside my head and body that made us feel insane. We started feeling like we had a penis, like felt like we could touch it, could feel stimulated by holding an appendage there (tmi i know). We tried in secret without thinking about it, moving our breasts up, down, flat, out of the way (fairly impossible by this point i was a lactating G cup *vomits*). We had glimmers of feeling male... which... felt good. First time we pegged we cried in the toilet with the door locked because it felt real, felt right though we couldn't explain it. So we were too scared to do it again, tried to force feminise ourselves again because that is WHO WE SHOULD BE. I mean look? I have a kid now, i am “mom”. Stopped drawing these mysterious genderconfused parts and forcefully only drew accurately what our body was. Which was agony.

Until September 2017. 

Ploughing through therapy, maturing, making milestones in recovery when we started to talk about childhood trauma, my dad, the first and only time i drew myself fully as a man for my friend, and BAM! Bam! is not overrated it was literally a Bam! moment, because the part emergence I mentioned earlier occurred. And with these male parts came the bloody nail bat of gender dysphoria hitting me in the head over and over till I self harmed for the first time in years. The male parts were terrified and disoriented at first, they had a lot of growing up and catching up to do, some more so than others. They remembered being 15, 13, 10. Remembered the first pegging experience, remembered... things we had no connection to. Now they are mostly my age, helping each other to mature and grow as needed due to being a parent. 

The first used to cry and scream in the mirror, punching walls because the body was wrong. Attacking our breasts like i had done subconsciously for years but this time, because they knew their breasts were wrong. They drew themselves over and over to solidify their gender identity when all else was screaming they were female. We pulled away from our partner, couldn't be touched, couldn't be interacted with because it would be a reminder of our gender. We flinched at being called a woman, a girl, female, and with that came memories of feeling like that as a kid. Fuck me, we were dysphoric as a kid. The first proper realisation.

Up until this point we had NO idea we had ever experienced gender dysphoria. But this is how DID works. It erases traumatic information and stores it in the parts that dealt with it. When the parts properly emerge, this information is leaked out over time. So great. Dysphoria.

Another part came out to implement what I am now starting to think is their cure for this, to ultimately feminise us. Because we needed to be female. Erase the dysphoria and with it that other male part. Nothing feminises me quicker than one of my most terrifying abusers. So guess what bellend got back in contact and re-traumatised the system, this one *points to self in dismay*. Long story short, shit went down, not un consensual shit as before but still shit. That part would routinely draw the male part being hurt by this guy over and over again till they freaked out. 

But wait! The hellscape is not over. From stage right we have another destructive part, hyper-masculine, angry and unempathetic. Grateful to him because his presence pulled us away from that guy (he viewed him as pathetic and beneath him), but now we are just... drinking. Getting wasted in the park, hitting things, smoking up at night again. My specialist had told me to get to know these parts as they are vital for my recovery so we drew what they needed us to draw and goddam these guys are hurt. These are protective parts. They took the shit we couldn’t. And this one, swearing at my partner, exploding all over the place, trying to run away, self harming, kicking the shit out of the wheely bin outside survives threat of physical violence. The one that went to my old abuser survives some of the more extreme sexual violence and torture and the first male part deals with psychological abuse. I can see it in their drawings, their confessions and in our therapy sessions. We have other parts but they dont want to be discussed.

All of these parts are heavily dysphoric because they are all male. Unquestionably so. Their rage at this body is because it isn’t the right one.  So where do I come into it, me being the primary/fronting part, or leader of the twisted UN committee that is my brain?  That has taken longer to figure out, and has been a more agonising journey. 

I am dysphoric too. 

I cannot erase now i have them, the memories of my childhood spent dysphoric. The memories of trying at any cost to be a girl. Which shouldn’t be hard considering genetically I am one. I have had to fight within myself my transphobia i didn't even know was present. We aren’t talking bigotry here, but the genuine terror that i could be transgender. When most of the make up of who I am, and my survival to this day has been formulated by trying to accepted, loved, normal (though i failed at that horribly), not rejected and safe from physical, sexual and psychological abuse... Coming to terms with the fact you are transgender is not a comfortable thought. Not one I welcomed, and one that terrified us. 

The fear of being transgender was so great it made us sick, sent us into crisis, started us self harming again. Trying everything we can to not be transgender because I have been through enough and survival brain is screaming as loud as it can that this will cause serious problems. But we couldn’t. Cant draw myself as a girl at all without wanting to cry or wretch. Cant wear girls clothes because i feel like i am crossdressing?! Cant wear bras, cant do feminine make up, cant do anything I used to do to be accepted anymore. Cant be a girlfriend anymore. 

We started without realising it trying to make ourselves masculine. We would zone out and be drawing on facial hair with eyebrow pencil, tried using vetwrap to bind my chest, do not do this, it bruised us for days. We bought a mans top and a guys jeans and we lived in them exclusively unless family was over. We started wearing boxers, packing (though going to the loo and watching a dam sock fall out your pants makes your dysphoria worse and left us feeling humiliated so stopped doing this). I started drawing me not my parts but me and that me was always always male unless we were trying to force ourselves to draw a female us. 

We reached out eventually to my best friend Ruth, and they encouraged us to get a binder. This provoked fear again. Self harm, self medicating, the usual destructive bs. But now the distress levels were triggering depersonalisation and derealisation; both symptoms of DID survival patterns. We stopped being able to recognise ourselves in mirrors because the damn amnesia was wiping it in an instant. My hands would feel male then flick to female, my body was glitching continually and I tried to get out of buying a binder by talking about my “genuine transgender friends” saying how I couldn't be trans because of their experience, that I am so obviously taking the piss, that I cannot be trans this must all be trauma. But Ruth stuck with me, as did a few other people, and still pushed for me to get a binder just to see how it felt. 

I did and when it arrived and i tried it on the reaction was... well... overwhelming. Much like looking in the mirror seeing what is a very female face with a drawn on beard, i was looking at a body i hated being crammed into something that kinda hurt to put on, and making me look like i had a deformed ribcage. I cried. I dont know what i expected in that moment. Maybe that all the dysphoria will go away and it would be fixed and that would be that. All okay. But no. I felt sad that I was punishing my body for not being right, angry at myself for not being able to just be a dam woman. I MADE A BABY WITH MY BODY THIS SHIT SHOULD BE EASY. 

Standing in a mirror, with a binder on, boxers on and socks stuffed in them trying my best to look like a man, I felt like a freak. 

But then i put a shirt on. And holy heck i could see my feet. I was small, the first time i have ever looked at myself and seen a small body rather than something deformed that i see when i see my breasts. I looked smart, I looked beautiful in that shirt. The tears were still rolling down my dam cheeks, and i was a snotty wreck but I for the first time in 4-5 years I also didn't feel rage at being fat. Because I wasn't fat, not in the slightest. Standing there in shirt and boxers with flat chest, masc make up on, i looked like a guy... just about. And i smiled. I smiled so much. 

I urgently facetimed Ruth and was like “come see how good I look” something I hadn’t genuinely felt in a very long time unless a man thought I was sexy. But here, in my tip of a room, almost dancing on cam for my best friend, showing her how i could bend over and no udders were just dangling there, how i could type and see my hands move... I looked at myself and felt good. I didn't care if anyone else thought i looked good because I felt on top of the world 

This was my first introduction to gender euphoria, that wasn’t related to some obscure masturbatory habits and pegging. That feeling made things liveable for a while. I wanted to chase that feeling because it felt incredible. I was working out before but now I did it to not get thin, to not starve myself but to love myself. I started taking weight training seriously, and whilst the gym was a trigger for my dysphoria (room full of massive dudes who all see you and talk to you as a girl in your skimpy ass gym kit will do that to you) I pushed on. My shoulders are getting broader now, muscle definition starting and i love each of these changes. I eat more than I ever have done but I eat healthily because this male me, this real me that i seem to love I want to treasure, look after and care for. 

I am not gonna wear baggy clothes and cut my hair off to look like a passable cis guy because that feels like punishment, and I have done that enough in my life and been punished by people in ways that have left me unable to walk and bleeding. I want to see my body when i work out because i love seeing the muscle definition, I wince at my breasts but try to imagine it being different. I love my long floppy hair, and I am not gonna change that because men with long hair are stunning. People talk about “the cut”, and I get the feeling of shame that i must be making this all up because i dont want to cut my hair off, but I am not a boy, I am almost 25. I have lived through some shit, I am not a boy. I am... a man. And I like how my hair feels like a lions mane. I associate cutting my hair off with my own lack of control and desperation so i dont want to return to that ever. 

My therapist has been exceptional. He wants me to embrace this because he has seen massive improvement. Yes I am in and out of crisis a lot, there is a lot on my plate and dysphoria is a c*nt when you are already struggling, but here is the dam thing.

For the first time in my miserable fucking life I don’t want to be hurt or punished. I don’t want to be beaten, spat on, assaulted or killed. I don’t want to starve, I don’t want to be anywhere near any of my old abusers or rapists. I don’t want to submit to be liked. I don’t want to preform as a character to be accepted. I don’t want to be dependant on anyone to survive. I don’t want to sexualise myself to be loved. 

The dysphoria will challenge this, oh man it does. My depersonalisation and fear of being trans challenges this. 

Little voices going “you are not really a man. you have tits. you have a baby. you are a mom. you are doing this for attention, all this because you have to be somehow sicker than you already are. It is just trauma. You are making all of this up. You are trying to just not be the snivelling wretch that they made you into. You make a mockery of a very real cause. You are not trying hard enough, a real trans guy would cut their hair. You like your appearance sometimes which means you must not be trans. You are not a man, you are just like literally any of those cases of confused survivors of abuse that you see all over the internet, that is you. You just cant admit it because you are scum. It’s the same as everything, none of this is real, none of this is true. You are nothing like a man. You are a nothing, A NOTHING”.

Those are the voices that send me into crisis. That have me self harming, suicidal, terrified, self hating. Not when I pass as a guy, not when I draw myself as a guy or just... am a guy. The doubt and pull back to my assigned gender is what is killing me. Well alongside the actual traumas and parenting a toddler, alone, with over £2000 in debt. I never want to lie, but unpicking the truth when you are multiple people and have amnesic survival programming to prevent you from uncovering traumatic realities is very hard.

What is amazing though.... which I will cling to when my binder is crushing, when Instagram is full of BS about what is True Transgenderism, when FB is full of trans hate and I am still annoyingly in the closet with my family and most of the universe is this... When my BFF Maddy calls me an amazing, perfect boy, I blush and well up with tears and feel seen. I felt visible. When she sends me gifs of someone snuggling the death out of a tired proud lion, ruffling his mane, I feel seen again I cry with happy relief feels. When she or my friend Ruth says i look handsome, or masculine and I am blushing again forever, that is precious. When I look in the mirror after working out and see my shoulders broader and chest almost flat from the binder, hair swept back, I look strong, i look male, i look right. well almost. When i complete a drawing of how i wish i looked and i get it correct, i feel ready to punch the goddamn sun in its stupid face like LOOK! I EXIST! When I dream of being a guy and being touched by another person as if i am a guy, i feel like i am gonna take off from this planet and leave it in my dust... because not only do they see me, but they accept me and love me for who I am, who I want to be rather than who they want me to be or who i need to be... It makes me put that blade down and walk away. Make a hot chocolate or draw something.

So... I guess this is it. I am a guy. 

A closeted guy for my safety for now. But a guy.

A guy with a shit tonne of trauma. But a guy.

A guy with DID, and female personalities. But I am a guy.

A guy who has a 2 year waiting list before he can talk to a gender clinic about this but still. I am a guy. 

A guy that yes, despite all my best efforts, looks androgynous at best, and uses feminine appearance for protection because they are still too scared to present fully as male. But still a guy.

If this changes in future, well then... whilst living without dysphoria would be just the best... I dont want to loose who I am now i have finally caught a glimpse of them for the first time. It has made me a better person, a better parent, a better friend... Why would I ever give that up? It is gonna be a long old road, it may all change, I may change again, I may legitimately forget all about this. I may be too scared to ever come out to my family. The doubt, fear and dysphoria may actually win the next time I am in crisis. I may just delete this post out of shame but fuck it.

My name is Aly and I am a fucking guy. 

[gurguliare]

do you have any ideas for how a Good version of TLJ might have gone? Assuming TFA stayed the same

Okay here I have summarized a convoluted revised version of TLJ for you, keeping as much of the plot skeleton as possible. What I am proposing is not so much a “Good” version as a “trashy version I would have enjoyed.” I feel comfortable in the knowledge that no one is going to read to the end of this read more.

Rey plot: have the initial focus/mystery be the fact that Luke having voluntarily cut himself off from the Force, and the “darkness” on the island then is some kind of very literal dissociated embodiment of his trauma, or whatever; like, Rey talks to Luke and gets nothing from him, Rey goes to the kelp pit and gets the same traumatic memory projector effect as she got from the lightsaber but x1000. Kelp pit is grief pit. Also instead of the porgs retrieving the lightsaber it would have washed up in the sea cave there, obviously. Also logically the pit should be under the tree/temple/whatever, I don’t know why the pit wouldn’t be under the tree. OH maybe there is no tree and Luke destroyed it years ago lmao. And is like, somewhat sheepish about this, but not that sheepish. Luke gives an actual cogent argument for why the Jedi need to end + a description of what it’s like to be submerged in the Force and be tempted, constantly, by the ‘destiny’ the Force recommends, even after having already failed—he wanted to restart the school! He dreamed of finding other children to replace the dead students! He couldn’t bear the hope, so he cut himself off. Rey: “… it’s nothing like that for me. are you sure that was the Force. btw there’s a mirror underground here and it hates you.” The ROTJ parallel isn’t Luke and Vader / Rey and Kylo, it’s Rey distractedly, bemusedly saving Luke.

(As far as the Kylo backstory goes, uhhhh, my problem is that I really LIKE “Kylo thought Luke was going to kill him” from the Kylo side, it’s a classic fucked-up thing triggers massively fucked-up reaction type scenario, my favorite, but I Just. Cannot. Do It. with any amount of finagling. on Luke’s. And all the stopgaps I’m coming up with are ridiculous. “Snoke makes a projection of Luke attack Kylo, foreshadowing Luke’s projection of himself at the end” “Snoke makes a projection of SNOKE attack Luke, Kylo tries to ‘defend’ Luke and accidentally blows up the temple, foreshadowing his failure to blow up Luke’s projection at the end” These are all so bad. I’m realizing that I cut the Luke-projecting-himself element. Maybe uhhhhhh Luke realized that Snoke had been tampering with Ben’s mind and tried to temporarily cut off Ben’s access to the Force >_ Or asked Ben to close off the Force and Ben interpreted that as a threat, rapidly escalated things into a physical confrontation, pretty much accidentally did serious injury to Luke, and then panicked? I don’t know that’s still pretty shitty but I like the idea of this then leading to the world’s most melodramatic self-punishment on the subject, also could tie into “the vanity of the Jedi, thinking they own the Force!”)

0k that’s my tentative proposition. Luke explains this to Rey in five minutes or less, she’s like, “bye,” jumps down the hole. She is crying the whole time for reasons probably. For the record, I would keep a lot of the stuff with Kylo’s and her minds being bridged, or at least I would keep the fact of them being linked all throughout her time on the island—actually, wait, I got it, Kylo is one of the things waiting on the other side of Luke’s severed bonds, so when she goes to the pit she accidentally picks up on that. BTW the Force speech Luke gives her would be all about “bonds” and would be MUCH more Orson Scott Card as a consequence. So now Kylo’s manipulation to the tune of, When I was a child, the galaxy was so silent. Mother was there, and Uncle Luke was there, and everywhere else, silence. Don’t you know what it’s like to be alone? Imagine if someone had asked you—to shut your ears—and she’s like I STAYED ON JAKKU FOR 23 YEARS and smashes the mirror

Luke, extremely Force-hungover: oh

AND THUS, HUT EXPLOSION.

Then Rey and Luke have some kind of excitable shouted conversation in the pouring rain where Luke is like “he’s looking for me!” “YEAH, HE’S LOOKING FOR YOU.” “no, you don’t understand—he’s looking for me!” “HE’S LOOKING AT YOU RIGHT NOW, ACTUALLY.” “but he wasn’t—he disappeared for years! he did take my advice, in the worst way possible! i feel so connected!” “ARGHHHHH”

luke + rey pilot the millennium falcon resistanceward, she discovers he is also a backseat driver

Finn plot: I assumed in the first five minutes of the movie that the way the First Order was “tracking” the Resistance was through Finn, and I still think that makes the most sense/offers the easiest dramatic tension. I mean it’s cheap but whatever this is still a hypothetical Disney movie we’re talking about. Uh… I don’t know there are a bunch of directions you could take this but like … I guess playing on Rose’s initial hero-worship of Finn, make it a thing where… mm. Finn convinces her that the reason he’s sneaking onto an escape pod is because he’s nobly trying to save the Resistance by removing his implanted tracking beacon from the ship (there is no such device and he’s making this up, to the best of his knowledge); she comes up with the plan to uncouple the devices on-site, if they can sneak aboard the ship, because he’s Finn and it’s so important that he escape finally and for real! he makes up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about First Order security and an expert codebreaker who might be their only hope, planning to lose her on Canto Bight; on Canto Bight, they have some uncomfortable conversation about growing up as slaves and the appeal of the Resistance, Finn maybe assuming that Rose joined for her sister’s sake? wrongly, blah blah extended annoying conversation about how there’s protecting the actual person and then there’s protecting the things that person would want to protect; Lando Calrissian arrests them for parking violations halfway through the conversation, which continues in the prison, where small child jailers throw bones and debris at them; he tries to ditch her in the confusion of the prisonbreak, she catches up to him and is Very Betrayed; then the First Order scoops them up because it turns out they were using Finn to track the Resistance, and the reason they managed to do so even at lightspeed was because Kylo Ren could detect Finn’s force signature. Because of how Force-sensitive Finn is.

Cue tragicomic re-recruitment sequence in which we POSSIBLY meet some of the other Knights of Ren, and also, Phasma is there, “helping.” Phasma: it’ll be just like endurance training! You LOVED endurance training! You did so well on all your diagnostics! Finn: …………………….

Finally Kylo kicks everyone else out and is very casually like hey are you and Rey force-bonded because for some reason she’s stopped talking to me and I’d really love to consult her about somethinggggg, I was wondering if she’d trust me more if I already had your support! Don’t you want revenge? I’m going to kill Snoke. It turns out my uncle loved me!

Finn: should you just say that

Kylo: I’ve been thinking it every day for the past fifteen years so I doubt he’s too worried

Finn: DO YOU NOT SEE THE ISSUE HERE

then unfortunately right at that moment he does actually hear Rey’s voice in his head. Some prior buildup with Rey actively reaching out toward Finn before that and being SUPER FRUSTRATED to constantly get Kylo. Rey: Finn, don’t worry, Master Luke has a plan, we’re coming for you! We’re .… . . crashlanding in the main docking bay and being arrested. Oh my g

I’m basically picturing Luke, like, uselessly draped over several stormtroopers’ unwilling arms because he’s so high on being In Tune With The Force Again, and oh btw the stormtroopers received orders to toss Luke to Kylo but bring Rey straight to Snoke—Kylo: fuck!!! He weirdly ignores Luke, seeming satisfied now that he’s gotten his validation from him. So then Finn and Luke are left alone under guard and Kylo storms off to confront Snoke.

Luke: mmmmmmmm. huh. hello.

Finn: Hey quick q if I’m so fucking Force-sensitive why can’t I read minds and control people’s wills

Luke: [surprised voice] Can’t you? I thought you didn’t want to

Finn: OH MY GOD, I HATE YOU PEOPLE

Luke: Or I could blow up all the electronics in this room, hold on

(later in the chase sequence finn mindcontrols hux and is like “oh god it was so SLIMY like holding an eel”)

Probably some dumb climax where Snoke makes a pitch to Rey re: Luke not training her, which is a true established thing in this version of TLJ, and tells Rey to kill Kylo because he (Snoke) can only afford one apprentice. Rey: are u serious, I actually kind of don’t want to murder him at this point, it seems like a lot of hassle. I want to learn, and you and Luke both suck—Kylo won’t you teach me

(Luke as Finn hauls him across, likely, a catwalk: Do you remember feeling like you couldn’t fit in, like you were always different? The one person you knew who wasn’t part of a whole?

Finn: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Luke: I’ll tell you a secret. That’s because you’re part of something bigger. Something much bigger than your squad, or Hux’s army, or even the Resistance. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Finn: is it the jedi.

Luke: no. NO. i said BIGGER)

To be fair to Rian Johnson, I have no clue how to write a satisfying multipart star wars climax. something something where Kylo explodes grandpa’s lightsaber in order to finish off Snoke, and I guess takes unconscious Rey prisoner, is realistically how I would end this?? The triumphant Lando-restocked Resistance decloaks, but the First Order fleet turns tail and runs after a few rounds? Finn deliberately uses the Force to find Rose and trace a (reluctant, angry) path through the disintegrating star destroyer, goes with Luke and Rose on the Millennium Falcon, having fought off Phasma but sort of in a hurry? Rose maybe killed Hux? Idk what the reasoning for Finn agreeing to leave Rey would be, other than I guess “the awareness that Kylo wants to use him to manipulate her, however ineptly.” Rose probs involved somehow. Rose: It’s still important that you escaped. Finn: I HAVEN’T GOTTEN AWAY ONCE

end scene where Finn has just finished an offscreen argument with Luke about Luke training him in the Force, and therefore comes to Leia

end-end scene where they all hear Rey’s voice at once because she picked up telepathic specialization from Snoke, because it’s traditional that Rey gain wild new Force powers in every movie purely through observation.

end-end-end scene where Luke has an audibly two-sided argument with Anakin’s ghost behind a closed door (“I’m not the last Jedi. I should have been, but I’m not. It’s my duty—” “what duty. it’s been ten years you haven’t answered my calls” “Daaad.”)

Start of the next movie: Kylo: You know, I used our telepathic bond to mislead Snoke. Rey: cool, don’t care. Kylo: It is ironic because of how he used that same bond to manipulate me. Rey: RED MEN ARE GLISTENING

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Poe plot: Can someone else do this one

[hell0mega]

probably meaningless rant lol

my sister has been having a really hard time recently. a local survivors/abuse callout group with 15k followers recently outed a serial abuser (like 40+ women) and it even ended up on the news. she doesn't know the guy but she's posted about the men she's had troubles with in the past on there. but the page suddenly shut down and even deactivated and no one knew what was going on, and this recent guy seemed scary enough to maybe do something to them, so she was worried.

turns out it was internal and a woman that got involved in the organization was an abuser herself. not sexually but in a power and manipulation kind of way. so to save themselves the creator just shut it down. it's been a tumultuous time for online activism, which she says she's had a lot of fun doing, but i don't know if what she experiences should be considered "fun"

she fell headfirst into sexual activism and positivity and Instagram psychology where everything is a "trauma response." she's gone through a lot of trials and tribulations in her life (she's 10 years older than me so completely different world) and the experiences she shared were in fact traumatic.

but it's made me think about how i deal with things from my past, and... I've definitely had traumatic experiences and both my past relationships were toxic as hell. i have an inate aversion to sex on top of my asexuality because of how they treated me. I'm sex positive and I'm theory like sex but initiating makes me scared. you can argue that i was lucky that they didnt push harder, or that i was strong in not giving into their tactics, but it still harmed me. and ive had to deal with it and realize these things still effected me and have talked to my bf about it at length (not exactly many details, but the kinds of things they did or SAID and how it effected me)

but i think im just at a point where i, at the very least CURRENTLY, dont feel burdened by my past. and maybe that's just because im so separated from it, having been quarantined for almost a year now and focusing on school and my home life. i think it helps that my bf is so supportive and is nothing like my exes, while my sister's even-longer bf is having trouble being there for her, which im mad about.

she described something that's been happening a lot lately and it was textbook dissociation. unlike me, who was in a near-constant state of it for a couple months, hers comes and goes, which i almost feel might be worse. it's like a switch turns on and off in her head, usually in response to something she reads, thinks, or does. and i do empathize with her there as i am also one to dissociate as a stress response (not recently, but i did go through a long period like i said) so i was able to give her some good explanations as to what was happening and advice on how to get out of it.

but she also is asking me advice about how to deal with PEOPLE. girl you're the adult here, whomst has had many many jobs and actually likes (or liked, rather, considering the pandemic) traveling and going out to have fun and socialize. i literally had to tell her "i dont really talk to people" when she asked for my input on something. and i just feel so disconnected to that problem and that mindset of WANTING to reach out, wanting to engage in things. and i don't know why.

I'm literally a communications major and i do LIKE to talk to people. i love talking to people and communicating... in real life. the more i think about it the more i realize how much i fucking hate trying to communicate over text. and i don't mean with friends, but it seems like whenever i try to comment on something, or respond to someone, or say just anything, there's someone that takes it out of context, or just doesn't have fucking reading comprehension or something despite me if anything over explaining my point. i hate social media (which is why that WON'T be my degree concentration, I'd rather die) despite me consuming it so often. but i just feel like there's no critical thinking. people need to say what they think the second they think it.

and this might make me sound like a boomer or something but boomers are the worst at this. it might make me soundhippie dippie that I'd rather talk to someone in real life than on Twitter or some shit.

this is where it stopped me from typing lol. as if anyone is reading this. anyway i guess I'm just... weirdly numb right now. and not in a no-feelings depressed kind of way, but in an... unburdened way. like i empathize and I'm not rolling my eyes out being apathetic towards any heartbreak happening that i read. but when i reflect on some things from my past that i feel like i probably havent healed from... i dont feel... anything?

is that my brain protecting itself? do i have enough on my mind already that my brain is making me not dwell on the past? is that a thing? i just feel... nothing when i think about bad past stuff, right now, to the point where i stupidly wonder why people "let" their past effect them. as if my past hasn't ever effected me or changed who i am ultimately.

I'm also weirdly disconnected from my past self. i don't have a lot of memories of my past that i can recall without something to remind me. i don't know how i acted, i don't know how i said things. then i see videos or pictures and I'm... still me. i act the same, talk the same, think the same. my hair is different but I've had the same face my whole life. is this a coping mechanism? I've always been like this

i don't know where i was really going with this. i guess I'm just dealing with a lot, including my sister's emotional issues, which she's never leaned on me before with until now. she called me 3 times in one day... we talked for 2 hours today. i replied to her innocuous message on ig and she called me cuz she saw that i was active on my phone.

I'm fine with it now but I'm worried I'll get to the point where I'll not open her (unrelated) messages or avoid putting stuff in my ig stories in order for get to not know I'm online/not busy. I'm not near that point yet but I've had to do that in regards to other people in the past and it's such a sucky feeling. I've never had to do it to family and i hope i don't feel that way. i hope she feels better from therapy for both our sakes

i don't think I'm gonna read this over so sorry for any spelling mistakes as I'm on my phone and autocorrect be playin