#OCD doesn't decide when I talk about it

[crayonurchin]

Wretched healthy treatment and realising self care occasionally means doing stuff you really dislike and letting go of comforts in the pursuit of better things

But really, spaghetti bolognese is always a healthy coping strategy

[guided-by-stars]

Siffrin deals with his anxieties (both rational and irrational) by performing rituals and compulsions. These rituals can become obsessive, especially in times of heightened stress, and often focus around either checking things, or numbers. They also deal with intrusive thoughts, with such frequency and intensity that it impacts their ability to function. Those...are all symptoms of OCD.

Let's define some terms, before we go into examples. What are obsessions in this context? This often refers to obsessive thoughts/anxieties/mindsets. These are prevalent, reoccurring, sometimes disturbing, often irrational fears. Intrusive thoughts are one example of this, though not all obsessions are intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are specifically unwanted and very distressing and often graphic thoughts or images in one's mind. An example of such is this:

Next, are compulsions and rituals. Compulsions are actions that one takes to break the obsession spiral. These either soothe the root fear (though usually temporarily), or quiet the disturbing thought or image. Rituals are "safe" compulsions, decided as such either by repetition or irrational logic. The wording that Siffrin uses when questioned about obsessive checking of pillars is as follows:

One of the most common mental justifications for compulsions is "But what if?". The perceived cost of performing a compulsion is often weighed as nothing against the potential of something truly awful happening. "What if?" carries a lot of weight for people dealing with OCD- often one knows that both the fears and the compulsions are irrational and logically one cannot control the Universe by tapping a certain amount of times on a table, checking for the tenth time if your alarm was set, or repeating a phrase multiple times in your mind. However, the weight of the potential fear is just so great that one cannot take the chance, even knowing that. This paradoxical position of both awareness and delusion that many with OCD have is called "OCD with insight" (1)

This post became....much longer than I planned, so the rest will be under the cut. Please read the rest though!!! There's so much more to it! ☆

The diagnostic criteria for OCD in the ICD (2) and the DSM (3) are relatively similar (though the DSM focuses a lot more on ruling out other causes for similar behavior like anxiety disorders and delusional disorders), and focus on the obsessions being self-sustaining and the rituals being often time consuming and frustrating to have to do. However, not all compulsions are even notable enough to the person to cause any frustration or discomfort, nor are all of them consciously done with any sort of logic behind them. It's quite common for people to perform compulsions without even having a reasoning for why (4).

Hey, weren't we talking about Siffrin ISAT? What's with all this research paper bullshit? Can't you just show me where in the game my blorbo shows signs of mental disorders???!?

Well, one example of rituals that Siffrin engages in is repeating phrases, either out loud or in their head. The number they tend to come back to, again and again, is three. This is shown when they are explaining Wish Craft, and despite the fact that the specific number of repetitions of your wish genuinely doesn't matter, just that it's repeated at all, they instinctively say to repeat your wish three times, before catching themselves and correcting their error.

...When Loop explains their Wish to Siffrin, they say it three times as well. "I wished it could be over. I wished I could get out of here. I wished for someone to help me."

Whenever Siffrin wants something to go right, throughout the game, he also almost always repeats his desired outcome three times.

It's a noticeable enough habit that his party members mention it, when in the trap room. They've noticed the ritualistic mumbling that he does whenever he wants something to go right.

It's not just when they want something to go right that they're doing it though. They repeat things three times when they're panicking, too, to calm themselves down. When they loop back after beating the king:

It's not even just thinking or saying things either, they take actions in threes too, to soothe themselves. After Kingquest:

You can see both thinking things in threes and acting in threes here. It's everywhere. If you look through the game again, you won't be able to help but notice how often they do things in threes.

Speaking of the coughing though, that's another one of the compulsions they do. Covering their mouth, coughing, gagging, they do all of those when trying to banish disturbing memories or thoughts from their mind.

After looping when refusing to try to say the name of their country when the King asks.

Notice again, they repeat "You know" three times. Like I said, you'll start seeing that EVERYWHERE now.

To note, if you try to say it once and try not to say it another time, you'll get this instead:

Three breaths, here.

I could go on, but I don't think I need to.

Another important factor when considering OCD is the need for control. People with OCD not only report a lower level of perceived control over their thoughts and actions, and not only tend to need a higher level of control than the average person to feel safe and comfortable, but also, the less control over their environment they have, the more that OCD symptoms often intensify. (5)

Siffrin is in a paradoxical position here, in regards to control. When they first realize they're in a timeloop, they're absolutely ESTATIC. The first bathroom break monologue exemplifies exactly WHY he's so euphoric at this point:

He's euphoric with CONTROL. No matter what happens, he can always try again. He's safe. He can keep everyone he loves safe. He has SO MUCH CONTROL.

When the illusion shatters, after he's dragged back when they beat the king, that's when he realizes how little control he actually has. Sure, he can decide when he loops (most of the time) but he can't decide to STOP looping. He's trapped. The more he tries to escape, the less control he seems to have (Eg, what happens to Bonnie). After that, we can see him start to have intrusive thoughts, engage in more ritualistic behavior, and end up in more unhealthy anxiety spirals.

...And, we see him lean into the little control he DOES have (looping) more. Any time he's in a stressful situation? Any time that the control he has over a situation starts slipping away? Is Bonnie yelling at him with tears in their eyes and telling him to die? Is Isabeau pulling away from their shaking grip on his collar? Is Odile confronting him on his suspicious behavior? Are things OUT OF CONTROL? ...Control is taken back. Forcefully. He can't handle loosing more control, not when he already feels so helpless and trapped.

Talking about the bathroom scenes, there's another one I want to point out. The first Friendquest run. It's the perfect example of delusional anxieties and compulsions used to quiet the distressing thought, rather than soothe them.

...Yeah.

Siffrin is suddenly overcome with the anxiety that the simple act of believing that his plan could work will somehow make it not come true anymore. This is an example of "magical thinking", or a belief that defies the scientific or culturally accepted laws of causality (eg. "If I step on a crack, my mother's back will break"). It's specifically an example of TAF, or "Thought-action fusion", which is the belief that one's mere thoughts can cause completely unrelated actions to happen in the real world. This is an essential part of how compulsions can genuinely relieve anxiety, and is actually one of the differences between those with other anxiety disorders and those with OCD. Magical thinking is essential to OCD. (6)

This exchange also showcases an example of how compulsions done to quiet rather than to soothe can sometimes involve self harming behaviors to "shake" the thought out of one's mind. In this case, him hitting his own head and focusing on the pain rather than on the thought. Most definitely not a healthy way to deal with it! But what else do we expect from Siffrin, honestly.

Another example of a self-harming compulsion being used to "shake" out a distressing and unwanted thought, also including a more minor example of magical thinking:

Researchers and psychologists have often attempted to divide OCD into subtypes. This has usually been done because different types of obsessions often demand different treatment plans. (7) The actual divisions have varied from researcher to researcher, but one type that consistently comes up, is harm OCD/moral OCD. (Of note, one person usually, but not always, fits into multiple subtypes. I personally think Siffrin fits into multiple) Harm OCD is characterized by a fixation on believing one is a bad person and causing harm to others, often despite others expressing the contrary. This often comes along with very intense self-criticism and judgement.

After repeating a Friendquest route multiple times:

Mal Du Pays fight:

Siffrin specifically is fixated on the worry that the knowledge that they gained by looping gives them an unfair power dynamic with their party, and taking any action informed by that knowledge means that they're taking advantage of them or forcing them to do what he wants. This is despite the fact that, no matter what he chooses to do, they are still autonomous beings who do what they want. He has less control than he thinks.

Also from the Mal Du Pays fight:

("You should've died for me. You should've died to protect me. You should've died to protect me.", "You can wish and wish and wish all you want.", "They'll forget you. They'll forget you. They'll forget you.")

And what of Loop? They're also a Siffrin, right? Examination of the self from an outside perspective has given them time to introspect a bit more. They directly name and point out one of Siffrin's rituals. @dormont pointed this out, in one of his posts. (8)

Loop says, here:

They understand why Siffrin is doing this. Siffrin is afraid that he'll forget again. There was no warning, before the Island vanished from everyone's mind. The coin is a physical reminder that he forgot his first family, that he can't forget this one too. He often rolls it in his pocket, but sometimes grips it tightly, or flips it. In his mind, touching it will prevent him from forgetting again.

Now this is fascinating when thinking about One Hat, because in that eventuality Siffrin, after failing to find Loop at the Favor Tree, leaves his coin where Loop used to sit. This shows that he's doing better mentally, in Act 6. That he trusts himself more to remember, that he doesn't need the coin anymore.

Throughout the game, Loop keeps the comedy mask glued tight to their starry face. Because of that (and the fact that we don't see inside of their head), we don't get to see much of their own obsessions or compulsions. But there is one time where their mask slips. During Two Hats.

When they start becoming more and more distressed, they fall back into repetitions of three:

And if they win the fight....

And after the fight...

But of course, it's not all in distress. What was I saying, at the start of the post? The other reason why Siffrin repeats things in threes? When he wants something to go right, right? When he has a desired outcome, when he's sharpening his knife, when he's carving a figure. "Please be sharp, please be sharp, please be sharp."? At the end of it all, as Loop is fading away:

"I'll see you again soon, I promise! I super promise! I super duper promise!"

And Siffrin understands exactly the intention and desire that they pressed into that repetition. After Loop is completely gone, they mirror their actions.

("You flip it once, twice, three times.")

("You will see each other again.")

Additional resources:

1: Taylor, E. (2020). Discordant knowing: A puzzle about insight in Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder. Mind & Language, 37(1), 73–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12301

(About the concept of insight in irrational cycles in OCD! Very interesting)

2: ICD 10: The complete official code set. Internet Archive. (2017).

(ICD 10, Account is needed to read the full thing)

3: American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.)

(DSM 5, for reference)

4: Starcevic, V., Berle, D., Brakoulias, V., Sammut, P., Moses, K., Milicevic, D., & Hannan, A. (2011). Functions of compulsions in Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 45(6), 449–457. https://doi.org/10.3109/00048674.2011.567243

(Article about reasonings behind compulsions. Honestly I think a lot of the "other reasons" categorized here for compulsions are just...different manifestations of reducing anxiety. But it's still helpful to show how sometimes compulsions are done subconsciously)

5. Moulding, R., & Kyrios, M. (2007). Desire for control, sense of control and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 31(6), 759–772. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-006-9086-x

(Article around OCD and the need for control)

6. Kingdon, B. L., Egan, S. J., & Rees, C. S. (2011). The illusory beliefs inventory: A new measure of magical thinking and its relationship with obsessive compulsive disorder. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 40(1), 39–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1352465811000245

(Article about magical thinking/TAF/history of the other studies done on the importance of them in OCD & creating a better framework to assess them)

(7) McKay, D., Abramowitz, J. S., Calamari, J. E., Kyrios, M., Radomsky, A., Sookman, D., Taylor, S., & Wilhelm, S. (2004). A critical evaluation of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder subtypes: Symptoms versus mechanisms. Clinical Psychology Review, 24(3), 283–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.04.003

(Critical overview of the concept of OCD subtypes and what their purpose is)

(8)

(Eve's post :]. Check the replies for more elaboration!)

[wriothesleybear]

A True Angel Amongst Us

~warnings: Some angst but ends with fluff, insecure Sunday, slight story spoilers, fem!reader, 1.9k words.

~a/n: I've been wanting to write for Sunday for a while now and the first thing I write has angst ;-; I've been having trouble coming up with ideas for him, but after the 2.1 patch, I've wanted to write fluff for him and about his insecure side because I feel like he sort of has one deep down. Angel just needs some love.

Sunday has been tenser than usual lately. The stress from the loss of his dear sister, the struggle of finding her murderer, and the stress from the possibility of a traitor being amongst The Family and the pressure from his master being the main cause of his tension. He puts on a mask and pretends that everything is fine to ensure that The Family's image isn't tarnished, but behind closed doors is different. When he's alone, he just stares off into space, lost deep in the sea of his endless thoughts. Even with you, his dear wife, he puts on a mask sometimes. He doesn't want to worry you and show you the strong leader that he is, who is capable of overcoming any obstacles and who will deliver righteousness when the day comes.

But no matter how much he tries to hide his weaknesses, you can see beyond his mask. You notice in the way his shoulders are always tense, his hands in fists, the frown that lingers on his face when he thinks you aren't looking, and the way he's less talkative during your limited time together. You hate seeing your husband this way, knowing he's bottling everything up inside. It's only a matter of time until it all bubbles up and he eventually snaps.

You decide to visit him in his dreamscape mansion office. You hadn't seen him all day due to him being busy with work. You weren't even able to see him off this morning as his side of the bed was already empty and made up. Knocking on his door, he tells you to come in. "What brings you here my dear?" He says with his masked emotions. Your eyes survey his office, noticing how it's a bit messier than usual even for Sunday's standards. He usually has everything in perfect shape given his ocd. Nothing was ever out of place for him unless something was wrong, further proving your suspicions. He notices how your eyes survey his office, the look of concern on your face is apparent. "I wanted to check in on you, my love. I wanted to make sure you were doing okay." You offer him a gentle, kind smile. "Of course I'm doing well. Why wouldn't I be? As head of The Family, it is my duty to be competent to fulfill my role." He gives you a smile, but it's not a real one. It's one of those fake smiles he puts on for show when out in the public eye.

"Sunday. I know something's bothering you. Please, just talk to me." His smile falters, his fake smile fading as he contemplates your words. You had been worried about him ever since the death of his sister. As the caring wife you are, you've been by his side, making sure that he was doing alright. Bless your soul, but with all the questions and pity stares, he couldn't help but get disgruntled. He knows you meant well, but his insecurity couldn't help but get the better of him. He thought you saw him as weak. I mean, he couldn't protect his dear sister for god's sake. It's his duty to protect those he cares about and he failed. He surveys your face while lost in his thoughts. His train of thought is broken by your calls of his name. He plasters on his fake smile.

"Dear, there's no need to worry about me. Or do you truly believe I'm just that weak?" You're taken aback from his accusation. You gather your courage and try to shut down his allegation. "Of course I don't. You're the strongest person I know, Sunday. It's just.. I can tell you're undergoing a lot of stress lately given the loss of your sister and work. I want to help you." By now his fake smile has fallen completely, replaced with a emotionless look. Turning away from you, his back faces you, making you unable to see the pain on his facial features. "I'm fine. You should leave, dear.." You could hear the coldness in his tone. The emptiness in his words sending slight shivers down your spine. You try to protest and get him to open up to you, but he cuts you off. "Don't let me tell you twice." He says in a strict voice, void of emotion. You hesitate but respect his wishes. You turn to leave without another word said. He doesn't even notice the breath he was holding until the door shut behind you.

~

Later that night, you lay wide awake in bed. Thoughts of your earlier event with Sunday replay in your head. After you left Sunday's office, you thought everything would be okay by dinnertime, but he never showed. You tried not to take it to heart too much, taking in consideration what he's going through right now, but when it got to midnight and he still hadn't arrived home, you began to feel worse. You've known Sunday for years. You knew how he was raised to become the perfect leader to represent The Family. He was a strong leader who believed in righteousness, in helping those in need, and caring for the people of Penacony. You know he's the kindest and most compassionate person with many strengths, but you also knew that he had many insecurities. He was scared that others would see him as weak and he was worried that everything he worked so hard for would be taken from him. Getting tired of wallowing in your thoughts, you finally decide to find him and try to get him to talk to you one way or another.

Arriving to his office once again, you knock on the door and patiently wait for an answer. "Sunday? It's me. Can I come in?" No answer. Maybe he was shunning you, but you weren't one to back down and walk away. You weren't going to give up on your husband. "Sunday. I'm coming in." Grabbing the door knob, you push the door open and are welcomed to a dark office. The only faint light coming from the windows in his office. Even with the limited lighting, you were able to see that Sunday's office was a bigger mess than earlier. Papers and books were thrown about the floor, the miniature display of Penacony in ruins. Worried, you continue to scan the room until your eyes land on the man slumped over his desk. Walking over to him, you observe his appearance. His clothes are in disarray, coat thrown recklessly on the chair, his wings and hair disheveled. "Sunday.." You hesitate for a second before resting a hand on his head. He tenses from your touch, causing you to withdrawal your hand. "Darling? What happened?" You ask in the most gentlest voice you could muster while trying not to push him too hard to talk. He doesn't reply to you. He keeps his head down on his desk, not willing to move an inch.

You quietly sigh. "Sunday. I understand if you don't like me pestering you with worries and questions. I'm your wife and I care about you. I'm only trying to be there to support you. I am here to support you. For anything. I'm here." Silence. You didn't expect him to reply but you wanted him to hear you out. "I'll give you your space, but just know, I'm here for you with open arms when and if you need to talk." You turn to walk away but suddenly, you're stopped in your tracks by a hand grabbing your wrist. Turning your head back, you see that Sunday is finally looking at you. You can see the pain in his eyes and by how his hand slightly shakes. Without saying anything, you turn your body to fully face him and open your arms wide, silently welcoming him into your arms.

He doesn't waste another second and wraps his arms around your waist, burying his head into your chest. Wrapping your arms around him, you feel his body slightly shaking as you hold him close. "It's okay Sunday. You don't need to hide from me. I won't judge you. Please, don't push me away. I'm here for you." You gently whisper as you stroke his hair. He doesn't speak, all that's heard is his deep, shaky breaths as he tries to control his emotions. It's taking all his willpower to not breakdown crying right there.

"Can you look at me darling?" He's hesitant, but eventually pulls his head away from your body without releasing his hold around your waist. He looks up at you. You notice the painful expression that graces his beautiful features. His golden eyes water as he tries to prevent the tears from falling. He hates showing weakness let alone looking weak in front of you. You cup his cheeks as you search his eyes, giving him a gentle smile. "It's okay to show weakness sometimes, my love. You're the strongest person I know and nothing will change the way I feel about you. I will always see you as the strongest, most caring leader and husband."

Without realizing, tears have begun to fall from Sunday's eyes as he listens to your reassuring words. Your thumbs move to wipe his tears. "I'm...I'm sorry...for pushing you away." He quietly says, his voice slightly cracking. "There's no reason to apologize, Sunday. I know you didn't mean to. I don't blame you." He feels guilty and embarrassed as he tries to move away so you don't see him cry, but you stop him. "It's okay to cry my love. Let it out if it'll help you feel better." He can feel the love through your words and the look you give him, causing more tears to fall. All you do is give him a comforting smile and continue to rub his wet cheeks as he lets his emotions out. You lean down and press a kiss to his left cheek. He gasps, surprised by your sudden action. You switch to his other cheek and continue to kiss his tears away. You leave one final kiss on his forehead and pull his face into your chest. "We can stay like this for as long as you want my angel." He buries his head further into you, wrapping his arms around your waist as you comfort him.

You can feel his body relaxing as he continues to bask in your comforting hold. "Thank you, my love. You are the true angel amongst us." You giggle and continue to hold him close for as long as he needs, occasionally giving him words of comfort and gently stroking his hair and back. You'll wait as long as it takes until he's ready to talk to you, but he understands now that he has you to catch him when he falls and he'll never push you away again.

[what-if-i-just-did]

What about.. aliens and neurodivergents?

Like, they find out about body language, and facial expressions, and sayings, and all of that stuff. And the amount of poisons we drink for fun. And they're weirded out. And the humans don't know how to explain it, because they don't know any other.

Then the aliens meet neurodivergents. And at first they're like, wtf there are humans who don't understand humans? But then they realise, oh wait, these 'weird' humans can explain the 'normal' ones. And they start calling the neurodivergents 'h-w', 'humans weird'. So they talk about neurotypicals. And someone bring up how we poison ourselves for fun. And the neurodivergent is like, "Oh yeah, caffeine doesn't work on me, and I need like a whole wine bottle to get even tipsy and like six sigarettes for the nicotine to work but I had weed once and I got like wicked high instantly" and the alien is like wtf you're h-w you're supposed to be normal by galactic standards???

And say, the Kgrifu ship Hashalaiy has eight humans, which is almost the permitted maximum of ten, and only one of the eight are neurodivergent, and they tend to mask in public, even if the other humans aren't around. They usually turn down human applications but then they get one that states 'h-w, strong by human standards, frequently non-verbal' and they decide yes, let's hire this one, they're h-w, and if they're strong by human standards, they must be wicked-strong by galactic standards.

And this human, Bridge they call themself, introduces themselves to the other humans. The aliens look on with intrigue. Bridge keeps their eyes on the ground, talks softly, and fidgets with their sleeves. Seven of the other humans look them up and down, frown, and don't give them a second thought. The other h-w, though. Earth, her name is. She looks at them with curiousity, and exitement. When Bridge is done talking, Earth slowly walked towards them. She doesn't make eye-contact, like she usually does. "Autistic?" She asks in a soft voice. Bridge looks up, nods enthusiastically. Earth breaks out in a large grin. "ADHD with a side of OCD, on my side." The aliens don't know what those words mean. Then Bridge's expression changes slightly, and it isn't an expression any of the Kgrifu's know, but Earth immediatly replies verbally by saying "It's Earth."

The aliens observe Earth and Bridge interact the next few weeks. They're almost always around eachother, and barely talk to communicate. When they do talk, it's usually Earth- Bridge has said maybe a total of 20 sentences while around Earth, and usually they only really use one word. Rather than words, they use the 'body language' Earth claimed not to know, a few words from something called 'sign language' (an entire language of hand-movements!), simple noises such as hums, and, suprisingly.. touch. Earth will tap Bridge's right shoulder twice, or Bridge will run their fingers through Earth's hair (humans only have fur in four or five places on their bodies, and the fur on their heads are ridiculously long), and the both of them will recognise this as communication.

One time, ensign Ririfé sees/overhears (pretty much the same thing for xe's species) one of the 'normal' humans, Pietro, xe thinks his name is, look at such a non-verbal conversation with annoyance. Earth hums a specific melody, something best written as 'hmm-hmm-hmm-hhhhhhhh-hmm?', and then Bridge cocks their head to the left. Earth responds by doing a kind of half-shrug with one shoulder and saying "Tomorrow". Bridge thinks for a second before shrugging. Pietro calls out, saying: "Hey! Talk out loud, would ya!" This gets an identifiably 'angry' look from Earth, pointedly directed at Pietro, whereas Bridge, a large, muscular human, basically shrinks into themselves. Earth angles her head towards the door and looks back at Bridge. Without words exchanged, they leave. Pietro looks even more annoyed and goes over to his 'friends' (a human word for a non-biologically related pack consisting of humans (or other, sometimes!) of the general same age). Ririfé rushes to go tell the captain.

Alternatively, the aliens brand neurodivergents as the normal ones, and neurotypicals as the oddballs. The neurotypicals do not know how to handle this. I don't feel like writing a whole story for that right now but if you like the idea you should tell me.

Feel free to add on to this btw!

[helpfandom]

BTAS Riddler and Clock King (separate) with a reader whose dad works at Arkham Asylum and visits sometimes much to the father’s dismay.

(Y/N) is polite with the inmates and seems completely oblivious to how dangerous the inmates truly are

If reader is oblivious, then they are likely younger, so I'll go with a ten year old. I would love to do this as a fic format, but as I said, not specified will be HCs.

Riddler likely took to you as it's a young mind he can shape, a mind he can challenge, a mind he can change in Gotham. Clock King on the other hand, took to you because he simply had a horrendous day and needed routine, so to see someone kind, someone he can rely on and understand, he quickly takes to.

Clock King was just a man with OCD turned sour, so if he looks forward to your visits, he insist that you do them on a regular basis, basing it off of a common schedule to make his mind better, something that the employees unfortunately insist you do, much to your father's dismay.

Riddler, says that he is mentally stimulating to argue that he should be around you, and as such, he forces his way to you, cutting time with other villains short, like Mad Hatter, [although maybe in a general we shouldn't put a young, naive child near him...] throwing a tantrum at the guards if they separate him and you, whereas Clock King is far more willing to hang back and watch, although a little cautious if they attempt to bring Croc or Bane near you, Clock King often moves himself in front of you and crouches next to you when that happens.

Riddler is a needy individual, glaring at others cutting time with you short and if it's an inmate, often treating them lesser than he was already, going to greater lengths to mess with them, and taking delight in their frustrations.

Clock King is a understanding individual, but a rigid one, so he doesn't take kindly to the childish way of constant change, usually getting mildly upset when you decide to play something different, or when you don't understand what he may be talking about.

[derangedbookworm]

ok guys, here are some of my marauders headcanons. they're pretty modern (mentions of modern artists, technology, and media), and are not hogwarts/canon specific. i think the only ships i directly mention are dorlene, marylily, jily, and rosekiller, but they also aren't specific to any ship. i'll also add picrews of how i imagine each of them.

also, hey! if you don't agree with some of these, that's ok! please do not come into my tags or ask box hating just bc you don't agree! thank you!

(tw: colleen hoover mentions 😔)

~marlene: -lesbian -irish (galway or derry) (she and peter grew up together, and were childhood best friends) -i also love filipino marlene (i literally cannot decide anything) -very blonde hair -has hetechromia (one blue eye and one green eye) -she has cystic acne (dorcas thinks it's so hot) (me too dorcas) -LOVES messy buns with her entire being -cannot sing for the life of her -girl in red -renee rapp -5'8 -she and dorcas like to match outfits -her favorite color is orange -most septum piercing to ever septum pierce

~mary: -pansexual ~colombian (she speaks spanish) (her and james talk shit all the time) ~black (her skin is really dark) -has rosacea (you can't really see it bc her skin is dark, but when it gets hot she gets RED) -she likes wearing her natural hair (in the summer she gets protective styles though) -hazel eyes -showtunes and chappell roan -5'7 -waitress and wicked are her favorite musicals (she thinks glenda and elphaba should have been lesbians) (doesn't everybody?) -loves experimenting with makeup -yellow is her favorite color -wants to wear a yellow sun dress and go frolic in a meadow (real)

~lily: -bisexual -has curtain bangs for sure -scottish or irish (probably scottish) (and she speaks gaelic) -cheek dimples -she's a ginger so she freckles super easily (they're mary's favorite physical attributes of lily's) -anne of green gables (gilbert and anne are such a jily varient) -ambidextrous -she can sing really well -5'6 -PLUS SIZED LILY MY LOVE (i feel very strongly about this) (she's my baby) (i love her so much) -green eyes -six, waitress, and ride the cyclone are her favorite musicals -olivia rodrigo and maisie peters -loves experimenting with makeup -wears very boring clothes (never wears graphic tees or anything like that) (dresses like a beige mom most of the time) (it's ok though) (we forgive her) -her make up always eats (it has not missed once) (her eyeshadow and eyeliner skills are unmatched) -chappell roan

~dorcas: -lesbian -has a very wide nose (marlene worships it, so i had to give it an honorary mention) -5'10 -sza -wears a few different styles, but box braids are her favorite -doesn't actually wear that much makeup (probably just does mascara and eyeliner) -eyebrow piercing -BILLIE EILISH -very dark brown eyes (almost black) -lets pandora try different makeup looks on her and dress her up all the time -naturally very clear skin (marlene is jealous)

~pandora: -pansexual/queer/demisexual (i literally cannot choose) -probably polyamorous as well (she just loves) -black (lightskinned) -she and evan both have vitiligo -5'5 -blonde dreads (her and evan both) -loves those star and heart shaped pimple patches (she wears them even if she doesn't have a pimple) -pink doc martens and those valentines converse -either pheobe bridgers, penelope scott, gracie abrams, or ppcocaine, meg thee stallion, nicki minaj (and there's no in between) -sza -strawberries are her favorite food (she LOVES them) (wears clothes with strawberry patterns, watched strawberry shortcake growing up, strawberry flavored candy is her favorite) -refuses to wear wireless earbuds (1. she's scared one would fall out and she'd lose it) (2. she likes the aesthetic of wired ones better) -autism -light brown eyes -tooth gap (😍) -rock collection

~evan: -gay/asexual (i can't decide) -vitiligo -ocd -i love trans evan as well as cis evan -5'10 -black (lightskinned) -he and pandora have matching jewellery and he wears it all the time -the best brother EVER tbh -would literally kill someone who looked at panda wrong -snake bite piercings (he got them as a dare but ended up loving them) (barty also loves them) (they're so bad for your teeth though 😔) -his favorite color is pink but he pretends it's light blue (he's fooling no one) -blonde dreads -light brown eyes -deviated septum (he hates it but barty loves it) -nirvana, korn, and slipknot

~barty: -pansexual or unlabeled -italian -mullet (the underside is died neon green, and the top is black with some green highlights) -6'2 -raised catholic -BLUE eyes (seriously, someone get this man some brown contacts) -wears those collar chokers unironically (evan secretly loves it) -piercings everywhere (eyebrows, bridge, septum, tongue, ears)(evan won't let him get an albert though) (he's afraid it would get infected/heal wrong) -his favorite color is dark forest green -black clothes (he doesn't own any other color istg) -graphic tees and wife beaters -ripped black skinny jeans -black doc martens but he colors the yellow lining in with sharpie bc he doesn't like it -low-key kind of emo -metalhead but secretly enjoys all genres of music -ethel cain (was raised queer and catholic) -mother mother -mama's boy -him and evan are so fucking freaky (it's actually insane)

~regulus: -gay -autistic (got the good at school autism) -chronic insomnia -5'9 -loves oscar wilde -him and remus DESPISE colleen hoover (me too) -wireless headphones (probably beats bc he's rich) -half-deaf in his right ear, and no one knows why or how -left-handed but was forced to write with his right so he uses his right

-the original sad boi poetry writer -french -gray eyes -gets hot super easily and turns red -but has poor circulation in his hands (he's so me) -hozier -paris paloma (no one knows, don't ask) -ethel cain -loves greek mythology (his favorites are icarus, and pyramus and thisbe) (he just loves doomed love) (i may be projecting a little) -evan and barty have asked him for a threesome at least once -on earth we're briefly gorgeous, the picture of dorian gray, the song of achilles, and a good girl's guide to murder

~james: -pansexual -bpd -adhd or audhd -6'1 -desi (monty) and latino (effie) (i couldn't decide so now he's both ❤) -only wears gold jewelry -speaks spanish -listens to traditional music and abba -taylor swift and hozier -super smart but got burnt out by the time he was 13/14 -bluey and paw patrol (tell me i'm wrong) (this man would eat up paw patrol) (marshall and chase would be his favorites) (and everyone loves bluey) -has the best singing voice of the group -a singular lobe piercing -his favorite color is red -VERY long lashes (the girls are so jealous) -scared of deep bodies of water and abandonment (omg reggie?) -prettiest hazel eyes you've ever seen -can dance really well -red converse -big pants, little shirt typa guy

~sirius: -bisexual or demisexual -french -gray/blue eyes -anxiety disorder and seasonal depression -cptsd -5'8/5'9 (he's shorter than regulus) (i have decided it) -freckles that only come out in the summer -poor circulation in his feet -left-handed -black converse and doc martens -draws on his converse -has a tattoo of the leo constellation on his chest (right above his heart) (☺) -is math and science smart -can't write for the life of him -pheobe bridgers, boygenius, conan gray, and olivia rodrigo -hozier -metallica and dream theatre -band t-shirts and ripped black skinny jeans -leather bracelets -double lobe, septum, and lip piercings

~remus: -gay -welsh -dyslexic -very tan skin and freckles -scared of heights -english and history smart -colleen hoover's biggest hater (real) -6'4 -scoliosis -chronic migraines -ren (go listen to him rn, he's amazing) -david bowie -brown eyes (hazel or dark brown, depending on his mood) -hates red velvet cake but loves chocolate (?) -greek mythology (likes medusa, and achilles and patroclus) -grandpa sweaters and cardigans -levi jeans and fuck-boy pajama pants -sleeper build -awkward as hell -fucking loser (and we love him for it) -bde -song of achilles, they both die at the end, the fault in our stars, the invisible life of addie larue, the picture of dorian gray, and the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

~peter: -omnisexual/straight/unlabeled -irish (galway or derry) -or german -learning disability -anxiety disorder -5'7 -plus sized -his hair is almost brown but still kinda dirty blonde -green/hazel eyes -favorite color is yellow or orange -probably listens to basic white girl music, or rap (idk which one😭) -like, he's either listening to taylor and ariana or he's listening to kendrick and tupac (i don't make the rules 🤷) (both are great anyways so it doesn't really matter) -wears button up shirts and khakis (his parents were super religious and proper growing up, and he hasn't been able to kick the habit) -loves christmas but hates new years -would be fantastic in american football (trust me on this one) (he's a little short but he'd do great) -he's an only child, but he grew up in a more suburban area, so he had lots of neighbors (marlene) -his parents struggled to conceive, and he was a rainbow baby after 2-3 miscarriages (he and james are kinda similar in that sense)

[gryfflepuffinthetardis]

Sweet Jane Part One — Campbell Bain x Reader

Summary: Y/n was admitted to Saint Jude's hospital in Glasglow soon after her eighteenth birthday when she developed a case of psychogenic/traumatic mutism; there she meets a talkative, optimistic, idealistic, hyperactive nineteen-year-old boy with Manic depression who dreams of becoming a DJ, follow them through their story and learn what happened to Y/n.

Series Warnings: Past Toxic Relationship, Manipulative Ex, Mentions of Past Rape, Mental Health, Discrimination against the Mentally Ill/Neroudivergent, Traumatized Reader, Abusive Parents, Mentions of deceased family members, Stalking, Suicide, Reader doesn't handle men touching her well, Mentions of Sex, Bad Caretakers, Implied Non-Scottish Reader, Implied Short Reader, Campbell Bain's Dad is Terrible

Chapter Warnings: Reader refuses to speak; Loving Campbell Bain, Traumatized Reader, Selectively Mute Reader, PTSD Reader, Psychogenic Mute Reader, Traumatic Mute Reader, Manic Depressant Campbell Bain, Bipolar Campbell Bain, Schizophrenic Furgus, OCD Rosalie, Reader Developed Selective Mutism as a Coping Mechanism, Reader may have an intense type of anxiety caused by trauma, Reader is implied to not be Scottish or at least from Scotland (I am American but just add where you're from), Reader is implied to be shorter than the six-foot Campbell Bain

“You are a mystery to me, yet so familiar. Like a song I’ve never heard before, and a tune I’ve known my entire life.”

Y/N hadn't spoken a word since she was eighteen and long before that something had changed. Her parents finally decided enough was enough and sent her to Saint Jude's hospital in Glasgow.

Campbell had literally crashed into the new girl during his excitement at hearing that the Saint Jude's radio station would be reopened.

The girl screamed as he collided with her and she started screaming and kicking due to his body weight on her.

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." He said, hurriedly, getting off of her and holding a hand out to help her up but she just stared at him, terrified, "I'm sorry. Uh..." He realized he didn't recognize her, as far as he knew he was the youngest patient at Saint Jude's and this girl was around his age. This was exciting! "Are you new? I'm Campbell Bain, I'll be the bane of your life until one of us is discharged." He chortled at his own joke before he realized she was still of the floor, "Oh, let me help you up." He crouched down and took her hand, helped her up.

She stared at him with a confused look on her face but she didn't pull her hand away yet more out of shock than anything. Campbell offered her a smile before she ripped her hand out of his grip and ran off, leaving Campbell very confused.

He asked the nurses about the girl but none would give him proper answers, until he got to Stuart the orderlie, who should've been a patient instead but... you know, life.

"She's a looney." He said, blankly.

"Ai, yes. Yes. Yes. I know that much but what's her name? What's her deal?" Campbell prodded.

"Y/N." Was all he said.

--

A few days later, Eddie McKenna arrived to be the DJ for Saint Jude's, with assumption that he'd be able to tell the difference between the staff and the patients.

He had an interaction with Stuart and assumed he was a patient but found out that he was a nursing assistant. Well, that couldn't be good.

Then he met Campbell, who seemed perfectly friendly and nice before realizing he was a patient himself.

Campbell and Y/N were on better terms, now that she had stopped bolting on the other direction when he tried to talk to her. And they listened to Eddie's show as Y/N read Narnia.

Soon after the show, Eddie heard Campbell playing and singing, Summertime Blues on his guitar which was only slightly out of tune, which Eddie had played on his show. He saw Y/N correcting Campbell's finger placement on the guitar as he whined that it hurt his hand.

Campbell enthusiastically praised Eddie and explained on his poor timing and the patient’s dependence of television.

Y/N caught sight of something moving outside the window and she threw a guitar pick at Campbell, making him pout in her direction before seeing her pointing and they ran to window as he said, “Hang on, you’re not boring me or that, but I’ve just seen a friend of mine flying past the window.”

Y/N and Campbell leaned out the window to see the hospital’s Schizophrenic who despite the schtick his disorder stereotyped him as he was just the most gentle soul you’d ever meet, if a little eccentric, grappling down the side of the building.

“Fergus! What’re you doing!?” Campbell shouted after him as Eddie joined them, “you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

“Shall I get a nurse?” Eddie asked and Y/N shook her head.

“Fergus! You’re gonna miss your cocoa, you know!”

“I know.” Fergus told him.

“Can Y/N and I have it, then?” He asked.

“Help yourselves.” He told them.

“He’s escaping.” Eddie said, surprised how calm both of them were being so calm about this

“He’ll be knocking on the door in an hour or so. He always does.” Campbell reassured Eddie, “annoys the hell out of the staff but makes this one smile.” He nodded at Y/N as she sat on Campbell’s bed with his guitar, the look of fascination in Campbell's eyes was not lost on Eddie.

Campbell returned to his enthusiastic and impulsive idea-planning, the first being to bring up a story when a student nurse accidently gave everyone in the ward a laxative, making Eddie and Y/N look at him oddly and the only problem he saw with it was where he’d get that many laxatives.

“What about a request show?” He asked Eddie.

“I already thought of that. I haven’t enough records.” Eddie shot down that idea… well, he’s never disagreed with Campbell Bain before.

“So?”

“So? When folk request something, they usually like to be able to play it.”

“We just make them keep requesting until they hit something we actually have.” Campbell said, “‘if you can guess a record that we actually have in our library, then we will play it for you with a special dedication’.” He did a playful punch in the air, “who could resist?”

“It’ll never work.”

Y/N who had been playing with Campbell’s guitar, then played a jingly tune.

“You’re right, Y/N!” He declared, enthusiastically with an enthusiastic pointed finger at her and then he ran his hand through his light auburn-brown floppy hair, “We’ll need some jingles.” Y/N looked up when Campbell sang a jingle, “Hospital radio, Saint Juuuuude’s.” He smiled at Eddie, “that sort of thing.”

“You need singers to record jingles.”

Campbell picked up his guitar from Y/N and sat next to her, “and what exactly is sitting here before you?”

“A lunatic!” Eddie declared, making Y/N softly giggle.

“Aye, a singing lunatic!” Campbell agreed, enthusiastically. “We could record them in the station, aye?”

“Aye…” Eddie submitted.

“Brilliant!” Campbell exclaimed, going back to Eddie, “Now give me the key.” He held out his hand.

“What key?” Eddie asked.

“To the station.” Campbell said and ran to the door, looking out, “look, I’ve gotta start. Writing the jingles, rehearsing the singers, cataloging the albums.”

Eddie looked at Y/N as she looked back down and realized he hadn’t gotten her name, having been distracted Campbell’s… Campbell-ness and Fergus escaping. “Uh, ma’am… what’s your name again?” Eddie asked, making Y/N look up from a piece of paper she was now writing on, she gave him with a blank deadpan look at being called “ma’am”. She was only eighteen.

“That’s Y/N.” Campbell said.

“What’s your favorite album?” Nothing. She just looked at him, “can you sing?” She blinked twice and he turned back to Campbell, “what’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, she doesn’t speak. She hasn’t said a word since she got here.” Campbell said, “and there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just looney like me!”

Eddie walked closer to him and asked as gently as he could, “Campbell, how exactly are you here?”

Campbell paused in which he faltered, knowing how his own father felt about his disorder before smiling, “Can you not guess? I’m manic.” Y/N looked up and smiled at him, making his eyes dart to her and a more genuine smile appeared on his lips before he reassured Eddie, “but don’t worry. The drugs I take make me completely stable. Except for headaches, of course.” He blinked in pain as he focused back on the painful headaches and he squeezed his eyes shut before blindly grabbing onto Eddie’s shirt who could sense a scene coming up as could Y/N who looked up to be amused by Campbell, “I get these headaches. I just comes over me and I cannae…” He flopped on his bed, next to Y/N and shouted out in pain, “ah, the bells! The bells!”

Y/N reached over and went to place her hand on Campbell’s back before stopping, hesitating to do so, not sure if they were close enough or if she wanted to admit that they were close enough and then suddenly Campbell’s mood shifted back to near manic and he shot himself up to look at Eddie, making Y/N pull her hand away, blinking briefly in surprise, “And I want my own show, by the way.”

“What?” Eddie asked.

“Well, after all this work, I think it’s only fair, don’t you?” He questioned.

“Campbell, I cannae just give you your own show.” Eddie protested, “you need training on the equipment.”

“So? Train me!” Campbell pleaded, eagerly. “I’ll take Friday nights.”

“Will that not clash with Brookside?” Eddie questioned.

Y/N looked at the window where they had gone to to shout after Fergus.

—

The next day, Campbell and Eddie were in the common room with Eddie standing shyly while Campbell did the opposite and shouted through a party megaphone while Y/N sat with Fergus, writing down something for him to read. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have an important announcement to make!” He spotted Fergus and Y/N and narrowed his eyes, “Fergus, stop flirting with Y/N.”

Y/N rolled her eyes and went to the couch rather bored now and put her headphones on.

Campbell and Eddie had announced the request show, while admitting that they had limited records. Eddie went to talk to Nana while Campbell stared at Y/N, feeling nervous to approach her since he worried she hated him with how scared she got when he interacted with her.

Then Fergus clapped him on the back, making him stumble and look at him, unamused before approaching the silent H/C-haired girl.

"Hey, Y/N," Campbell said, kindly, walking up to the silent girl but she didn't seem to hear him as she was listening to her Walkman. He tapped her shoulder, making her jump and stare at him with wide eyes just as she had when they first met. He gestured to her headphones, silently asking if he could take them off and she slowly nodded and he gently slid them off and could vaguely hear Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover by Sophie B. Hawkins.

"Hey, we're doing a request show. You have any requests?"

She looked at him for a good while before getting up and leaving. Campbell frowned and his spirits were diminished before leaning forward and face planting his face into the couch cushion, groaning.

—

Campbell showed Eddie the radio station now cleaned and useable thanks to him, Y/N, and Rosalie and as he left Eddie questioned Campbell about Nana and Campbell answered in his own hyperactive way before Eddie questioned him about his obvious crush on Y/N.

“The silent girl, uh… M/Y/N.” (Mispronunciation of Your Name)

“Y/N.” Campbell corrected, automatically in a slightly defensive tone.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Campbell’s cheeks burned as they reddened and his heartrate quickened, “No. No. No. She’s new actually. Been here about a week. She… she’s a mystery.” He gave out a dreamy smile, “One I’d like to solve but…” He shrugged like, what can you do? —

Campbell was snoring when he was awoken by a friendly smack in the head. He woke up, groaning with confusion before turning on his light, illuminating Y/N who smile sweetly at him as she held something behind her back.

"Jesus, Y/N." He groaned, "what you do that for?" She just looked at him and he nodded, remembering who je was talking to, "right. Uh, what is it?"

Y/N brought a custom record sleeve out from behind her back and he slowly began to realize what she was trying tell him.

"Oh, you want me to play one of these songs during the show tomorrow, er… today?" He asked.

She nodded and sat on the edge of his bed, making him kick around spazzily and awkwardly before sitting up, trying to make room for her as his heart pounded and he looked down at her, feeling her body heat up against his but forced himself not to think about that as it was a bit of a creepy thought to have at two in the morning as she showed him the songs on the back of the vinyl which was also handmade, she pointed at the first song: a cover of The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies.

"Is that your favorite song?" He asked and she nodded. "Wait, these are all from different bands, how'd you get this?"

She pointed to herself, "you made it?" He gathered, "Who made the record?" She pointed to herself again and he just smiled at her impressed and enamored by her. "You are one mystery, Y/N L/N. You may be my favorite mystery.”

She smiled, telling him that she liked the idea of being a mystery to him and kissed his cheek, near the corner of his lip, nearly making him melt with a loud dreamy sigh before running off. He looked after he with a starstruck look of awe on his face before flopping back on his pillow, groaning.

—

The next day, Y/N shared a smile with Fergus before listening in on the radio to the show, standing and watching Campbell through the window.

“Good evening! This is Ready Eddie.” Eddie introduced, “and on my left is my right-hand man…”

“Campbell Bain.” Campbell introduced, not seeing Y/N watching him and the smile on her lips.

“And you’re listening to the first ever Ready Eddie Radio Request Road Show.” He gave Campbell a thumbs up and the nineteen-year-old pushed a button, making a jingle play.

“Ready Eddie’s road show. Ready, Eddie, go.”

“That’s right. This is the premiere. This is the first. And you can tell everyone that you were there. You heard it! You saw it!” Campbell said, enthusiastically before joking, “And they’ll tell you, it’s all part of your illness.”

Y/N giggled at his antics before realizing this and she zipped her leather jacket up over her shirt with the sarcastic quote on it.

“We’re playing requests from Ward Eleven this evening. This one is for Francine. I hope you’re listening, Francine.”

Campbell then teased, “I hope anyone’s listening.” He then saw Y/N watching him and let out an audible smile that melted his insides.

“Is anybody listening?” Eddie asked, “Is anybody out there?”

Then Help! By the Beatles started to play and soon the patients came out and Campbell ran out of the station to dance with some patients before more came out, including Fergus. He gave Y/N a smile and thumbs up as he flashed the part of the television he had removed.

Campbell ran back to Eddie and pulled his earphone off so he could talk to him, “the television’s broken, Eddie! There is a God!”

Eddie nodded in the direction of Y/N and Campbell’s face lit up and he ran to Y/N and taking her hands, trying to ease her into dancing. She shook her head before starting to shuffle awkwardly to the music before Campbell took her hands and pulled her against him so she danced with him to the beat of the music. She then giggled up against him and he smiled, triumphally.

He was about to comment on how beautiful her laugh when there was a BANG! And the music stopped, making them all exclaim in disappointment before Campbell and Y/N ran back to the station to see what was wrong.

“What’s wrong?”

“The mixing desk.” Eddie said, trying to fix it with his limited knowledge.

“Do something!” Campbell exclaimed.

“What can I do? I can’t even turn on the bathroom light without shocking myself.” Eddie remarked.

“Well, check the plug. Maybe it’s the fuse.” Campbell suggested as Y/N looked up at Fergus and gestured for him to come.

“It’s not the fuse.” Eddie sighed.

Campbell ran his hand through his floppy hair, “I cannae believe this. I’ve just had the world’s shortest career as a disk jockey.”

Fergus took out a screwdriver and headed inside to help and started to unscrew the screws of the mixing desk.

“Fergus, what are you doing?” Campbell asked.

“I’ll just have a look.” Fergus reassure him.

“No, don’t!” Eddie shouted, “don’t have a look there.”

Y/N helped Fergus lift the plate of the mixing desk as Eddie continued to try and stop Fergus and Y/N, “Fergus, Y/N, I’m asking you. Please, leave it alone”

“He’s gonna blow it up.” A patient said.

“He’s not!” Campbell protested.

“I think I know what the problem is.” Fergus told Eddie.

“He’s blowing it up.” Another patient said and the others started to chant Fergus’ name.

“Fergus, don’t, okay!? Just leave it alone. It’s all we’ve got.” Eddie pleaded and Y/N smacked Eddie’s shoulder when Stuart literally pushed her out of the way, making her squeak and stumble before Campbell caught her and glared at Stuart.

“Oi, watch where you’re going!” He shouted.

Stuart aggressively grabbed Fergus holding him in a near chokehold and Y/N tried to go forth to help but Campbell held her back, knowing she’d just be pushed away again, if not sedated.

“He’s not causing trouble, is he?” He asked Eddie and Y/N shook her head, frantically at Eddie.

“No, he’s just helping me, get the mixing desk going again.” Eddie muttered.

“Him? He couldn’t get his brain going again.” Stuart spat and Y/N scoffed, implying that she felt that better described Stuart than Fergus.

“Leave it, Stuart.” Isabella, the more kind nurse said, “it’s all over.”

Stuart let Fergus go and sulked out of the room, clearly upset that he didn’t get to hurt someone as Y/N gave him the middle finger.

Fergus closed the plate of the mixing desk and Y/N flipped the switch, making the light come back on.

“You two are geniuses.” Campbell gasped.

Y/N shook her head and pointed at Fergus like, no, he’s the genius.

“YOU’RE GENIUSES!” Campbell shouted and he slammed the door shut and got back to the microphone, “Sorry about the technical problems, folks. We’re now back on the air and we hope to keep it that way. Our next request is for Y/N and dedicated to her by me.” He chortled as he looked at her and clicked his tongue as he winked.

The cover of Sweet Jane played, making Y/N smile as Eddie looked at Fergus, giving him an apologetic and thankful smile as Fergus perpetually scowled before his lips curved into a gentle smile.

Later, Y/N helped Campbell clean up the hallways before they bumped into each other.

“Uh… so how did you know how to help Fergus?” He asked.

She took out her wad of paper and wrote: Learned. Taught.

He nodded, taking what he could get, “I always knew you were smart.” He said, honestly and he hesitated before leaning towards her to kiss her cheek like she had done the night, she shifted, conflicted as she could see the pure gentless in Campbell's personality, in his actions, in his eyes, and she could feel it in his cheek kiss. He had hesitated, not wanting to overstep boundaries and he was still nervous about his decision but before she could react Eddie ran out of the room, making them break apart and move out of the way before he rammed into them.

*This is a series from my Wattpad, so I'm moving in to Tumblr and Archive of my Own. There is an entire subplot later on of stalking and the cause of the reader's muteness or mutism (which ever is the correct term). Am I the only one who feels like Campbell Bain might also have ADHD or is it just because of his Bipolar/Manic Depression. I'm usually good at this but I'm having a hard time differentiating the two or maybe it's just David Tennant.

[carlyraejepsans]

i was thinking about that ask i received the other day and how uncharacteristically upset the topic had made me when i usually just think "mh. gross!" and move on, and after mulling it over a while i realized it wasn't about the topic at all, it was the ask itself that freaked me out. i've mentioned sporadically before (for obvious reasons lol) that i used to be involved in fandom discourse when i was younger and that!! fucked me up quite a lot. between exacerbating my ocd and straight up getting cyber stalked (i almost feel guilty using that word, like i don't deserve it but. yeah that is 100% what happened to me), the topic is something I have very complex and personal opinions on but that i hate talking about in public because it still sets off my fight or flight response.

i know some people in the fandom are like "let me know if i ever rb someone who wrote/drew gross stuff" and that's entirely their choice and i respect it. but for the record, i am not one of these people. please, for the love of god, i am asking this genuinely do NOT come into my DMs about this, I don't want to know. assume I'm either living in blissful ignorance or my blacklist already covers me quite nicely & i wanna keep it that way. i vastly prefer the discomfort of stumbling into something unprepared and deciding what to do about it on my own, to the utter pit of dread i get whenever i open a message that starts with "hey just so you know-". i have blocked multiple people in the past over it. i WILL block more. be warned.

[note. this doesn't apply to people who have either hurt or behaved inappropriately with other members of the fandom, or spread bigotry and discrimination like racists and transphobes. please do let me know in those cases]

does this make sense? idk I'm kinda feverish you guys figure it out. I'm going to sleep.

[echoweb2]

a lot of people talk about how horrible tumblr is for people with moral ocd, paranoia, or other illnesses that could make, "IF YOU DON'T REBLOG, YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON AND HAVE NO HEART" or "heyyyy, just a lil' friendly reminder if you do x you're a horrible pos who should die :)))))" absolutely detrimental to your mental health. WHICH IS TRUE. but. tumblr is geniunely NOTHING compared to tiktok. the guilt shaming is 10x stronger, these types of posts are a 100x more common, and probably the worst aspect of it is that because how algorithm-centered tiktok is, if you give into the compulsion on every post you see, eventually your entire fyp just become videos like this. (and if you don't know already, like 80%-90 of your time will be spent on this fyp, unlike tumblr's dashboard where atleast in my experience, most of my time is searching through tags.) the app your *supposed* to be leisurely scrolling on becomes literally a compulsion/ritual fulfilling minefield, and it gets to the point you honestly fear opening the app because you know as soon as you do, you'll just be flooded with millions of posts where you know you can't ignore (without freaking tf out) but acting on the compulsion doesn't help, because the next post will start the cycle all over again.

I've honestly decided to soft-delete the the app, which for me is just not using it at all because despite everything, I enjoy using the app when it's not like this and I still have tons of memories saved on there. but just. god.

[cinderella-ish]

How Labeling Characters "Good" or "Bad" Misses the Point of Fruits Basket

A few years ago, I decided to remove the words "good" and "bad" from my vocabulary as much as possible.

Why? Because I have OCD, and I was struggling with something called "splitting," more commonly known as "black-and-white thinking."

Beyond the benefits it would have for my mental health, I wanted to challenge myself to be more precise with my commentary, whether appreciative or critical. "Fruits Basket is soooo good!" may be a true statement (in my completely objective, unbiased opinion lol), but it doesn't actually say anything meaningful about what makes the story so "good." I'd rather say how it affected me, why I think it's absolutely worth watching or reading, what it made me think about, etc...

Something I see in a lot of Furuba fan spaces is a desire to label characters or relationships as "good" or "bad," and letting that be the focus of the commentary. This even happens without necessarily using those exact words; people will talk about whether Akito "deserved" redemption/forgiveness, whether certain relationships or even crushes are "okay," whether a certain character was "abusive," etc... and sometimes even more subtle ways of labeling characters "good" or "bad," but I think this entirely misses the point of the story, and beyond that, it's just not a helpful way to go about discussing media in general.

The thing that prompted this post was one of those much more subtle cases: a comment I saw claiming that it was out-of-character for Tohru to support Arisa and Kureno's relationship. My first reaction was, "are we talking about the same Tohru here?" because the Tohru I saw in Fruits Basket would absolutely support Arisa and Kureno's relationship. But my next thought was to wonder why that commenter would feel that way, and here's where I've landed on that:

In that commenter's mind, Tohru is "good," and the relationship between Arisa and Kureno is "bad," so it doesn't make sense that a "good" person would support a "bad" relationship.

But what a wildly simplistic take! It's one that misses so much nuance of Tohru's character; her personal history, her ways of relating to her friends, etc... To me, there's absolutely no way Tohru as she's written would ever not support that relationship, and here's why:

First, Tohru is rarely assertive, and when she is, it's in situations where one person is clearly being hurt and it must be addressed immediately. She almost seems to run on instinct in those situations. I'm thinking of when she pushed Akito away from Yuki, or when she told Akito to stop hurting Momiji, or when she told Kyo she would go against her mother, or when she chased after Saki and expressed a desire to remain friends.

On that note, with regard to Arisa and Kureno, the thing that stood out to Tohru was Arisa's heartache. She wanted to do whatever she could to soothe her friend's heartache, and that meant reuniting her with the man she'd fallen for.

It's also unclear whether Tohru knows Kureno's age, but even if she did, her own parents had a massive age gap, and she doesn't seem to be aware of the problematic power dynamic between them whatsoever. If anything, she seems to romanticize her parents' relationship.

Additionally, Tohru is basically the least judgmental person alive. I don't think she would have strong convictions about whether age gaps are "okay" even if her parents hadn't had a similar gap. Again, her primary concern would be whether her friend was happy, and if not, what she could do to make her friend happy.

In short, Tohru is not one to label things as "good" or "bad" and use those labels as a guide for her actions, but is more likely to try and understand people's motivations and work toward their happiness. This is central to her personality as an Enneagram SX 9w1/INFP.

And that last point is honestly the approach I think is most useful when it comes to critique and discussion of fiction. Rather than trying to delineate what's "good" or "bad," I find it much more meaningful to try and understand the creator's reason for depicting something a certain way, and how those creative choices support their overall creative vision (or don't).

So, with that in mind, I guess I'm going to start a series looking at the "why" behind the characters and relationships who are most often called "problematic," "bad," "abusive," or "not okay." Feel free to request topics!

[gayleviticus]

I didn't really notice this before but it's interesting how in the dispute over whether Jesus is casting out demons because he himself is on the devils payroll in Matthew 12 - there's the famous bit about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which lots of people get hung up on (and understandably so, esp if you struggle w scrupulousity and OCD - very inflammatory thing to put in the Bible @ God).

but Jesus then goes on to talk about good and bad fruits, and this line struck me: "Either make the tree out to be good and its fruit good, or make the tree out to be rotten and its fruit rotten; for the tree is known by its fruit."

you can kinda sense his frustration here. "make up your minds! either I'm doing something wrong or I'm not; can we not try to claim that I have some evil hidden ulterior motive that makes all the good things I'm doing secretly bad."

now sure, there are circumstances where people can do or support good things for bad reasons (nazis using anti Zionist sentiment as a dogwhistle; terfs making a song and dance about feminism - altho id argue neither of these groups are particularly 'doing' good things just hijacking them, but there are also just homophobic conservative churches that do run soup kitchens and food banks and yet that doesn't counterbalance the bad they do) or do bad things for what they perceive to be good reasons. but seems like what Jesus is talking about is again his old maxim of judge trees by their fruit; don't decide a priori that since X person is wrong therefore everything they do is tainted with wickedness.

blasphemy of the Holy Spirit happens when people see God at work doing good things and decide, in order to preserve their preconceived ideas about the way things are and what's good and bad, to call good evil.

and I think the reason that's an 'unforgivable' sin isn't necessarily because it's a particularly heinous one, but because it fundamentally warps your ability to interpret the actions of God. If you see God's goodness and mercy and grace at work in the world and decide well actually that's the Devil - how are you supposed to ever break out of that and truly recognise God? it's like when someone is hyped up on flat earth, creationism, anti vaxxer, protocols of the elders of Zion conspiracy theories; they've kinda destroyed their ability to even consider any alternative simply by loudly insisting any counterpoint is propaganda, any evidence to the contrary is fabricated, science itself is a hoax. blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the same; people have destroyed any external benchmark (such as the harm and suffering being created) for judging their interpretations of scripture and faith.

and I can't help but think a bit on queer christians (as usual; I need to start finding other topics to get on my soapbox about), bc when we offer the fact that gay relationships or gender transition cultivate love and joy and peace and kindness and goodness, we get very much the same answer as Jesus' critics gave. "Pff. It's the work of the Devil." People a priori reject the good and life giving things we find in queerness because they don't want to deal with the implications of that. and so we get people insisting that bad trees can bear good fruit.

now in fairness they often do try for consistency and insist that actually this good fruit is a hollow lie and truly LGBTQ people are suffering underneath from living against God's will. but I think this view is losing its power bit by bit bc people understand it's asserting ideology over reality. it's a hard sell and not an intellectually serious position. either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad

[skittlespizza]

i know you get asked this often but how are you yourself without being scared

After a while you get really tired masking who you are. It was exhausting for me to pretend like I was just an average Asian girl with normal hobbies. At a young age I was into stuff like WoW and Champions Online and being a girl at the time along with wanting to seem normal I didn't talk about this stuff. I know it seems ridiculous but at the time I was in elementary school and girls were supposed to like the color pink and boys liked video games and sports.

That is to say I haven't always been confident. I also had a mean girl phase where I got into fights and no one liked me because I got tired of being a nice soft girl. I went the WRONG direction don't do this ^

Anyways in middle school I said fuck it and decided to cosplay Daniil Dankovsky from Pathologic and wear his ugly ass outfit to school. My beloved friend went "aw man now i need to be friends with that guy." The next day I was back to my more refined, quiet self (my OCD was so bad at the time that I wore gloves 24/7 and cringed at the thought of a Bad Interaction) BUT I MADE FRIENDS BECAUSE I WENT TO SCHOOL IN COSPLAY

AND WHEN you have maybe 3-4 good friends, appeasing everyone doesn't matter as much because you know that your friends like you no matter how weird or freakish you are. TL;DR do weird shit and someone will have to find you interesting enough to be your friend and once you have your Friends you wont feel the need to appease everyone.

[identityarchitect]

because im a nosy bitch who has distaste for current plural culture I'd love to hear your thoughts on current plural culture

(for me. the amount of information thats acceptable and expected to be shared will be the DEATH of my sanity)

Oh, jesus, where do I even begin. This got unexpectedly long so I'm going to put it under a cut.

Like you said, the amount of information shared is scary. Both because there are like 13yo recently discovered plurals who get this idea that it's a good or necessary thing to share as much information as possible about ones system, and nobody ever uses the privacy features on PK. It's one thing to keep track of info about headmates and another thing entirely to be posting a whole list of front triggers in a headmate-intros discord channel.

Speaking of headmate intros, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the complicated description templates. On the one hand, I do like it when stuff is pretty. But on the other hand, there's a lot of kind of casual ableism/sanism in the plural community, as much as we'd want to pride ourselves on being relatively free of it. Fancy description templates, typing quirks, special characters in headmate displaynames, are all inaccessible to people using screenreaders or anyone with issues reading. And I try to be understanding to people with typing quirks because we have a few headmates with interesting ways of communicating and I get it, but like, you've really gotta provide a translation.

There's also just the way people interact with each other? Consistently using tons of tone tags, not asking about you& preferences (which tbf, in an ideal world preferences on you& are part of a generic introduction like preferences on headmates/alters/sysmates/parts and system/plural/etc). Trying to tag for every single possible trigger.

A lot of very large plural spaces (and frankly any large space that tries to account for triggers) end up with this issue where at some point, the trigger list is just too long. People aren't going to remember it, so anyone who is anxious about censoring correctly (which is everyone, because current plural culture has this way of making anxiety significantly worse) is going to be double-checking the list every five seconds, or just decide participating in conversation outside of more lax areas, like tw- channels, isn't worth it.

So they have to make a choice between cutting down the existing list, examining things and deciding if they're a common enough trigger (or bad enough, or if the user is in the server enough, or whatever the metric is) to remain on the list: or, they simply continue expanding the list and try to make it easier for people to censor or reference the list. But if they cut down on the list you inevitably have people who are like "wait, why is fires on there but not birthday parties? there's only one person in the server who's triggered by fires but five who are triggered by birthday parties", or "why did [obscure, situation-specific trigger] get removed? isn't it just as serious?" and etc.

And then there's moderation teams, which are... ok, let me make a venn diagram.

(No shade to teenagers. There are probably good teenage mods out there. I just haven't met them.)

Speaking from personal experience here, a lot of plural discord moderation relies on the current plural culture, which skews itself towards being extremely polite and nice and understanding so as to avoid unintentionally upsetting other people. (This is another one of the ways in which plural culture can and often does end up exacerbating anxiety & anxiety-adjacent behaviours/disorders like OCD.) So you have this discord server that doesn't really need moderation aside from admin stuff like adding channels or bots and pinning messages that regular users don't have the permissions to do. Then some person comes in and they're regularly talking about triggers out of the blue, acting aggressive towards other users, and because everyone wants to be polite and accepting, this user doesn't get dealt with for a very long time, especially because the mods just have no idea how to actually moderate. They don't have the confidence to make verdicts and use the power they have, and kick/ban users when necessary.

In essence, current plural culture wants to treat and trust every stranger like a close friend. You can run a discord server with little to no rules and give everyone admin permissions and whatever the hell: it's just got to be a closed friend discord server full of people that you know well enough to trust. And not only does this make plural spaces vulnerable to bad actors, it also makes them very uncomfortable to be in, as an aplatonic person who really doesn't want randos on the internet acting like we're childhood besties.

In that same vein, is it just me or does everyone and their mother seem to want a partner system? It's been actual years atp since I've been in a plural server that's actually active but there's this weird romantic overtone where any other system could be a potential partner system if you become emotionally close enough to them. Then if you're aro, or romance repulsed, or just not looking to date, or in a relationship already and not poly (which also, I get that dating as a system is a vastly different experience from dating as a singlet, but not everyone is poly), it feels like they just switch to a QPR instead of a romantic relationship? IDK, maybe that's me projecting since I'm QPR-repulsed. But it feels like the primary assumption for 'emotionally close' is 'romance or QPR' in plural spaces, in a way that feels different from regular amatonormativity. IDK it probably is just regular amatonormativity. But you'd think plurals would have deconstructed it even a little bit, right, since dating as a plural is such a vastly different experience. Whatever.

And canonmates. God. Ugh. Ughghhghj,. Look I get the inherent loneliness that comes with being an introject that has strong exomemories, but the resolution to this is not "try and start a relationship with a stranger who you only share one quality with (i.e remembering the same things from source)". Dear god. I have a not very good relationship with canonmates, since an ex of ours would in essence use them against us, but like. Augh.

And spiritual systems. The other day I saw a post on the plural subreddit that was like "Does anyone else live a double life?" and it was this introject describing the disparity between their IRL life and their in-headspace life. But they didn't clarify that it was in headspace and not like, an alternate world or something, so there was a comment being like "Uh, this is a dangerous lack of source separation." FUCKING source separation. I always get so mad at source separation.

I hate to label ourselves but our experiences most closely align with the general idea behind spiritual systems (this is as close as we will get to a concrete label). And it really seems to me that people will bring up spiritual systems as a gotcha against sysmeds and anti-endos, since the DSM technically validates spiritual systems by explicitly excluding them from the diagnostic criteria, and then turn around and act like spiritual systems either don't exist, or are delusional. (This is what I was thinking about earlier when I said the plural community has something of a sanism problem.)

Everyone assumes that in order for an introject to be healthy, they must have a degree of source separation, must be able to go "Yes, I know I am not my source, I recognise I will never be my source, etc". And if an introject can't, it's inherently dangerous and bad for them and the system must (even potentially against the introjects' will) make efforts to separate them from their source.

But even aside from all the sanist implications there, this completely falls apart when you think about spiritual systems. What about gateway systems, who do have headmates come from outside of the body? What about soulbonds, who are that character in their own universe? What about systems who don't want to prove that they're spiritual enough to be exempt from this 'if you think of yourself as your source in any way you are delusional and must be treated' BS?

Our V1 is literally V1 the robot from Ultrakill. This has never caused issues for it, or for us. I don't predict that it's going to.

Like, wasn't the general narrative around introjects "they have differing amounts of separation, differing opinions, and differing connections to their source. above all else, you should treat introjects like people, and ask them if you have questions about how they want to be treated!"? For ages it feels like that was the narrative, and now it's "introjects should be separated from their source, although they're allowed to have whatever opinion on it. in order to treat an introject like a person, you must acknowledge they're not literally a fictional character every fucking pictosecond".

There is definitely a lot more that I probably have to say on the topic but that's all I can think of right now.

Oh wait ok hold on I'm back because I remembered roles and origins and got mad again. Origins my most beloathed.

I could talk about the traumagenic/endogenic binary and how it's complete BS and even when we could be considered traumagenic we still had headmates that weren't traumagenic in origin, and how endogenic systems of all kinds can and often do have trauma that does and doesn't impact their system functioning, and trauma impacts systems in so many more ways than just if Sonic the Hedgehog showed up because you were being abused or just for the sake of being there, and 90% of the apparently well-meaning endo-ok sysmeds that talk about the necessecity of separate traumagenic and endogenic spaces are actually talking about disordered and nondisordered systems and EVEN THEN it's STILL a fake binary, but people more eloquent than me have probably gone over that.

I hate the assumption that every system has origins. We don't, and we're never going to. Even with the general idea being "nobody needs to tell you their origins and if you pressure them you're a dick" there's this expectation of knowing or labelling your origins. If you know your origins, you should be able to label them. If you don't know your origins, there are labels for that. What if someone doesn't give a shit? And again, what about spiritual systems, who don't have origins for other reasons?

Ok, I also just went and found some DMs with a friend so here's me quoting myself:

"it feels to us like the plural community doesnt strictly expect or want noncomplex plurality or a noncomplex relationship to ones plurality, but that these are sort of entry requirements to plural discord servers and other similar spaces"

"it feels like theres a collection of behaviours that you havr to perform like being in plural discord servers has always felt close to masking for us"

AGH AND PROBLEMATIC INTROJECTS. FUCK I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT.

Roles are kind of similar to origins, imo, where it's this very simplistic and false structure and there's a pressure to box oneself and ones headmates into it. Like even when people acknowledge roleless systems, it feels like that's all they acknowledge, y'know? Like in their head there's systems where every headmate has a specific purpose and performs it to a T, and there's systems where this isn't the case. When it's so much more complex than that. For example: us! We're primarily roleless, and the things each headmate does is more like a volunteer job than a role, y'know. Except for this one headmate who found a role on Pluralpedia and went "that's me" and now it has a role.

It also feels like there's a specific set of roles each system should have, right? Like there's this idea that even if a system doesn't label or have roles, they still have the protective headmate who gets righteously angry on others' behalf, and the stressed and overworked caretaker, and the littles who use uwu-speak, and the serious and scary gatekeeper, and it's the nuclear family isn't it. They've recreated the nuclear family. One father and one mother and two and a half kids and the 'friendly' neighbourhood cop. Jesus. (The host can be the grandparents.)

And more than that there's... okay, right, how do I word this one.

Let's think about layers. Layers are distinct areas in headspace where different groups of headmates tend to reside. Beyond the base assumption that everyone has a consistent, laid-out, easily accessible headspace, there's this weird overtone that a system without layers is like, a system without layers yet, right? Like the two types of system are "systems that have layers" and "systems that don't have layers, but could" and there's no space for "systems that can't have layers". I think that's kind of what I'm getting at with the origins and roles bit, right? People nominally accept systems that don't have origins or roles, but there's this sense that what they're actually accepting is "systems that have origins" and "systems that have origins, just not public ones" or "systems that have roles" and "systems that have roles, and just don't label them".

This ties into the spiritual system bit, I think. It's not "psychological systems" and "spiritual systems" (which is still a false binary), it's "psychological systems" and "systems that believe they're spiritual systems" or "psychological systems whose spiritual beliefs impact their systemhood". Even when mentioning and talking about gateway systems and soulbonders people don't seem to be able to take those people at face value, regardless of their own personal beliefs on the matter. Maybe we're just hanging out in the wrong places.

The true originless roleless headspaceless spiritual system (i.e, US AGAIN) is a nonentity. There is no space for us to exist in the plural community because the predominant plural culture simply cannot comprehend that we exist.

Problematic introjects ... Like, how can you insist introjects must be treated like people, and must feel and consider themselves to be a distinct, separate entity from their source, and then also call them problematic? I hate the word problematic anyway but even moreso when the label is applied to every introject of whichever fucking minecraft youtuber turned out to be an abuser this time. Can't we just leave introjects alone? Fucking hell.

Anyway yeah. It sucks here.

[sniffanimal]

I think something the self diagnosis discourse has missed the forest for the trees. There's something I've basically never seen come up in posts discussing the pros and cons of self diagnosis that I think is actually rather integral to the whole thing! That being: labeling your lived experience matters far less than your lived experience.

What I mean by this, is that labels like ADHD, Autistic, BPD, Depression, etc can feel comfortable, and can *help* you find resources or a community. But at the end of the day, the thing that actually matters is if that resource or community actually helps you or not.

And, disclaiming right up front, this isn't a post about if you should or shouldn't self diagnose yourself. I'm not a psychologist! I have no clue what's going on with you. And I know there's barriers for many reasons on if someone can or desires to seek a professional diagnosis. That's not the point here. The point here is what do you do once you've got that diagnosis (self-determined or otherwise).

More nuance+resources+sources on some stuff below the cut.

I'm going to talk mostly from the point of view about ADHD/Autistic experiences since I think that broadly covers a larger part of the whole thing that this is about, and is also included in my lived experience, as well as the people I support and work with for my job. But all this can also apply to people with personality disorders and mood disorders, and probably some other stuff.

I personally think "Do I have ADHD?" is a useless question. It can be really relieving to have something to explain why you experience things, or why your brain works a certain way. But ultimately "How do I manage this symptom/behavior/emotion/etc" is the much better question. If you watch a video that says "if you are constantly forgetting to do the dishes even though you can see the full sink right there you might have ADHD", and you think "gosh, I do that, do I have ADHD?" try thinking about it instead about like, "How can I remember to do the dishes more frequently?"

I guess I will agree that from there you can be more in tune to future ADHD posts, and maybe consider looking into ADHD resources, etc. But that's exactly the point I'm making here, the resources and things you do to manage your mental health is infinitely more important than what you call it. If you benefit from ADHD resources, it doesn't matter if you *do* have ADHD or not, you are using resources to manage your mental health! Congratulations!

And you know, maybe I'm just like, experiencing the symptom of not understanding subtext, and maybe this was something people meant when they talk about pro- or anti- self diagnosis, but it's nothing I've really noticed. All people seem concerned about is whether or not a doctor agrees that the combination of symptoms you have match the generally agreed upon combination of symptoms. Like, that's all this discourse seems to be. No one really brings the idea of *working on* your mental health into any of this! Or if they do, they bring up some boogeyman like "finite resources" for people (as in, "if you don't really have autism, you're taking up resources for actual autistic people" etc.)

So what are these resources that can help you even if you don't have a diagnosis, a doctor, medication, a therapist, etc?

This (the Job Accomodation Network) is my favorite place to point people to for a starter on what kind of assistance they could benefit from. The idea of this site is for determining what reasonable accommodations someone might ask for in the workplace (usually provided they have a medical diagnosis), but it's also good to investigate ideas for things that might help you!

For example, if you click on ADHD and scroll down, it has a list like this

You don't need a diagnosis to try out and decide if these kinds of things could work for you. Lets look at another one. This is from the list of possible things for OCD regarding non-compliant behaviors (which is job speak for "not able to do the task the way we want")

If you think you could have OCD, maybe try out some of these things, like a white noise machine, to see if they help. They might not! But it's something to consider!

You don't need to have OCD to benefit from a white noise machine helping you focus. You don't need Autism to find sensory toys soothing and grounding. You don't need depression to go on walks to get extra vitamin D. You don't need BPD to ask your friends to check on you once in a while. If you benefit from something, that's what matters the most!

I guess what this is ultimately coming to is there's no boogeyman of finite resources being used up by self-diagnosers. And if you are pursuing self-diagnosis, consider to yourself how useful the label is, and if looking into actually how to manage it is more useful.

Please be niceys in the notes so i dont have to turn off reblogs ok. Goodbye and I love you and I want the best for you!

[hello-nichya-here]

How do you feel about Monica and Richard's relationship? Do you think he was her soulmate instead of Chandler?

I think they were a pretty great, adorable couple (Richard trying to find a neurosis of his own to make Monica feel better about her OCD lives rent-free in my head), had a lot of things in common, did their best to work through their relationship issues and the actors had fantastic chemistry. Richard was THE perfect guy for Monica in my eyes... until I saw her fall in love with, date, and marry Chandler, her actual soulmate.

Now, I know a lot of people are creeped out not just by their 21 year age gap, and, more importantly, by the fact that Richard knew her since she was a child because was best friend's with her father (they even say they're like brothers, and at least here in Brazil she'd have absolutely grown up calling him UNCLE Richard).

However:

1 - They're not real, so who cares?

2 - I'm a degenerate and I'm into it.

3 - They did spend years without having any contact (to the point that he doesn't even recognize her at first) and it's very clear that Richard only ever started feeling attracted to her when she was an adult - and not in a "He was waiting to get on her pants the very second she turned 18" kind of way, but rather as "She's literally 27-years-old, she's been a fully grown, adult woman for a LONG time."

And even though Friends, like any sitcom, is known for having the characters in very unrealistic situations for the sake comedy, drama or both (and that's a feature, not a bug) the way Richard and Monica's age difference was handled was pretty realistic.

Monica clearly likes that Richard is this suave, cool older man - but unlike with the rich guy she dates after him, it's obvious that she actually does like him for who he is beyond the superficial stuff, and isn't just giving this relationship a shot because she wants to get married and have kids, and needs a guy to achieve that. I felt soooooo sad for Richard when he was feeling like "one of the guys" then Joey and Chandler let slip that they like hanging out with him because their DADS were not as cool, and Monica was super sweet to him after.

The entire episode of her parents finding out about them on her dad's birthday was freaking amazing, mainly because the writers took full advantage of literally every opportunity for a good joke. Monica is asked if she'll tell them that night, and replies with "Yeah, for my father's birthday I decided to give him a stroke." Their mother asks if they thanked Richard for the ride, innocently just acting like a mom making sure her kids are being polite to their father's friend, and Ross just says "I'm sure Monica thanked him for the both of us." And, of course, everyone awkwardly singing happy birthday right after they had a falling out.

And that episode was also an exemple of Friends, a show that both fairly and unfairly described as very sexist, actually being pretty ahead of it's time when it comes to pointing out the full on misogyny that people often give themselves permission to engage on the very second a girl dates someone much older.

All of the guys are talking about Richard banging a younger woman (that they don't know is Monica) in a really gross way, with her own father even comparing it to the time he bought a cool, expensive car to deal with his mid-life crisis, and, much to both Richard and Ross's horror, suggesting they trade for a day. Sure, it's painting Richard as at least a bit of a loser for dating a younger woman after a long marriage that ended in divorce, but they're still expecting him to brag about it, seeing it as something cool and worth envying him for, and quite literally treating the "mystery younger woman" as an object instead of a person that genuinely cares about him, and that he cares for as well.

The women at the party aren't any better either, making wild assumptions about how Monica is probably just a stupid slut with nothing to offer, and that maybe she's even ugly and the only reason Richard is into her is because she is "Just young enough that everything is still pointing up." They literally know nothing about her beyond "She's younger than him, met him after he got divorced and started dating him" and are all still acting in such a spiteful way that, hearing one of them talk without any context, people could easily assume something like "Oh, she was with Richard first, and this story about him meeting this younger girl after the divorce is bullshit. He met while he was still married, had an affair, filled for divorce, and now the ex-wife hates this girl"

Even Monica's own mother gets all condescending the second she hears her daughter say the word RELATIONSHIP. It all makes for great television because it's a conflict that is not at all forced, makes you really root for the characters' romance to last, and, again, the writers took ALL the opportunities to make jokes about it.

But more importantly, when it was time to make their age gap be the real why they broke up, they didn't do it by turning Monica into an immature moron that was not good enough for him, or retconning Richard's characterization to make him all condescending, arrogant and assuming he knows better just because he's older - or worse, adding a cheap twist that he actually IS a creep that only liked her because she was an adventure/trophy, would cruelly toss her aside the second he got bored, and that he had secretly been screwing younger girls all the time behind his ex-wife's back. NOPE! None of that.

Instead the writers did the smart thing and acknowledged that both Monica and Richard wanted to get married and have kids... but Richard already did it. He got married, had kids, had grandkids, and then got divorced. If he marries Monica now, even if she turns out to be the love of his life and his absolute soulmate he is simply not gonna do all of that again just for her sake, nor should he, because he is in a different state of life and just wants someone to grow old with. It would not be fair of Monica if she tried to force him to have kids again - and it would not be fair of Richard if he expected her to just skip a whole stage of life that she had been super excited for, all because HE already got to have it, enjoy it, and reach the stage where HE was done with it.

And sure, during the drama when Chandler is pretending he will never be interested in marriage and kids, just to surprise Monica with a proposal, they kind of retcon that a bit by having Richard say he regrets that decision and WANTS to have children with her, but I accept that writing choice because:

1 - Literally no one else could fit that role as Chandler's rivals for that storyline without it feeling completely, and it was one of highlights of the last seasons of Friends, aka part of why I'll defend said seasons forever despite the drop in quality.

2 - Richard doesn't seem to have had a truly serious relationship with anyone after Monica because he's clearly not over her, so the pain of seeing her happy with someone else could easily make him start seeing the absolutely correct, but still very difficult choice he made in the past look like THE biggest mistake of his life. When he hear of him later he is not becoming a dad again, so I'll just choose to headcanon that once he found the right person he realized he dodged a bullet when Monica chose Chandler.

3 - Monica did, in fact, choose Chandler. Over Richard. The guy he had been all insecure about, for good reason because Monica would have clearly married him if it wasn't for the not having kids thing, and they had lingering feelings for each other for a looooong time. Her being given the perfect chance to go back to him, and not doing so, is the best way to show to the audience that no, she's not just settling for Chandler because she couldn't have Richard.

4 - Chandler and Richard's talk in which Richard agrees that he already had his chance and that he needs to step aside now because what he is doing isn't fair, Chandler calls him a good guy, and Richard then brags about AND says he hates that is adorable and very funny.

So there you have it. Richard is not Monica's soulmate, but in an AU in which she never met Chandler, or in which they remained purely platonic forever, Richard would be the ONLY acceptable endgame for her because That. Storyline. Was. So. Fucking. Good.

[mukuberry]

spill the beans.

ooooooooookey dokey boss, i dont have any pictures of them though :( just some pages in my phone notebook..... I'll do my best to summarise them!! i probably wont ever do any proper ocgram thingy with em so ill just spill their secrets hehe... theres 13/14 so ill put them under a cut!!

001! most of them dont have names yet lol i hate picking names 😔 but he's wonderful.... he's 11 and he's a lil silly ^^ he grew up with a single mother who began dating a very abusive man and then they both started abusing him, so he's extremely distrusting of adults. she got pregnant and he realised he needs to protect his siblings, but knows he cant hope to fight back against his parents, so instead he decides to secretly kill the baby after theyre born to prevent them for suffering. He's done this 3 times! He has alot of angelic imagery since he views himself as a saviour. Uhmmm OH his cover songs are Cosmic Rendezvous-> Psychogram-> Mirai Yo. Im not super happy with the picks tbh so they might change...

002! She's 43 and her first name is Yukino :) no last name yet.... she's based on a Kazui theory i saw when Cat came out that's definitely not true and was talked about in a pretty discriminatory way, so ive decided to steal the idea and make it better. She craves violence/abuse and has a gore kink, but has done her very best to repress those feelings and live a normal life, believing herself to be a monster for having these feelings and thoughts. She definitely has OCD. She has a daughter and had a husband, but abandoned them both after seeing her child do the same things she did as a child when her interest in violence started building, thinking that its her influence that caused it and that her child will be normal without her around. Also because if she's got no one tieing her down, she can maybe indulge in her fantasies instead of living a proper life. Her husband, not being able to handle the abandonment + knowledge that the one he loved was fantasing about him suffering the entire time + not being able to look after a child alone, takes his own life.... im not too happy with the murder tbh i might change it later......... she's great though i love her. Her cover songs are Hibana -> Animal -> Mosquito!

003! No name but he's baby. Actually he's 16 but to me he's baby. The first thing he does in milgram is demand a lawyer and tell the warden his murder was self defence (it wasnt). He forces all the other kids into doing his study club while they're in there... he's very 'proper' yknow. He's kinda like Nervous from the first novel if uve read it, went to middle school and became so anxious with being mistreated by his classmates and the adults that he tried to be perfect... and it worked! Until he entered high school, and there's this one girl in his class who is just slightly better than him..... so he pushes himself more and more, secretly hating her and himself for not being good enough. One day, late at night, she finds him on his own, at a pier. She tries to befriend him, since she's just like him, and wants to help him with his burdens and for them both to drop the perfect act...... unfortunately for her, he (again) hates her and cannot comprehend that someone could see through his act and would still love him, has a slight mental breakdown and beats her to death with debris near by, and dumps her body in the water. He gets to be perfect again yayyyyy ^_^ he's the most developed in terms of milgram routes, but I'll maybe talk about them another time.... his cover songs are Angel Hair-> Antibeat-> Theory Of Negativity

004! Kanae ♡ she's a complete hermit! A childhood schizophrenic (18 now) who was neglected by her family and outcasted at school, she's completely dependent on her psychosis, as it gives her companionship and purpose she doesn't have elsewhere. She's aware that she's schizophrenic, but has no intention of getting better. Upon entering milgram her psychosis has come to a (temporary) stop, so she spends most of her time in the prison with 010, since 10 (Kanami) never shuts up and is fine with Kanae not saying much in return. She can't stand silence. She had a younger sister (10ish?) who she was expected to look after since her parents aren't home much, however considering her mental state she can't really look after a child... so after not being fed in awhile, said child tries to make herself food! Only for Kanae to leave her room for the first time in days and finding her sister dead from accidentally poisoning herself;; oops! Her cover songs are Nocturnal Kids -> Liar Dance -> MKDR

005! Probably my favourite ♡ he's one of 3 explicitly queer characters, canonically being in love with his victim and being trans-coded... not explicitly trans but damn can u read his story as a trans story!! He's 17, popular, pretty, rich, has a loving family, his grades aren't perfect but they're still good, and he's genuinely pretty nice to people... he's living his best life! He doesn't know why he's in milgram, he hasn't killed anyone, he swears! A kid went missing in his class sure, but they weren't close, he knows literally nothing about that! Atleast thats what he says ^_^ teehee.... i wanna keep his murder a secret its more fun that way... he's probably the 3rd most unforgivable person in here :) his cover songs are Cinderella-> Secret Feast-> Ghost Rule

006! Haruki :) a lil shy but really nice! She's 28, but when she tells people they don't believe her since she acts kinda childish... she's also a system! But she thinks she's a spirit medium since she keeps introjecting dead people... her system has 6 alters in total, maybe 7 depending on what happens in the prison... but the story only really focuses on 4/5 of them. She lives in a shitty apartment and mostly lives of the money her grandmother sends because she can't hold a job (she tries her best!), her victim is her closest (and only) friend, they met a few years back at an old job and have been inseparable since.... they spend most of their time together. This friend however has lived a very difficult life and struggles alot with suicidal thoughts, basically only staying alive for her sake. She's learned to not tell people about how she's basically 'possessed by ghosts' after growing up being treated like a freak for it, but watching his mental state get worse and hearing him talk about how he wants everything to stop, she decides to tell him the truth. Both because he's important to her and wants him to know this very personal thing about her, and because it's basically like saying "hey when you die you don't actually stop existing, so you should just stay alive 😁". Unfortunately, he hears this and thinks "wow if i die i get to be a part of my favourite person 24/7???? hell yeah" so he convinces her to help him kill himself ^^ she refuses at first, but eventually gives in and watches him get hit by a train. And thus, she gains another alter...... her cover songs are Two Breaths Walking -> Zombies -> Undead Alice!

007! He's a bastard. He's sarcastic, blunt, rude and thinks everything sucks forever. He's 24. He's also based on a kazui theory! Mine from t1 thats definitely no longer canon... so ive taken it and made it much worse!! But from an outsiders POV it looks more like fuuta's story, with it being centred on toxic online groups,, he lived a very normal and good life! He was popular in school, graduated with top marks, went to a good college, graduated, went to a good uni, graduated, got into a good job, got a girlfriend- and surely he'll marry her and have kids and move into a big house and watch his kids grow up and die. That's what he's been told to do, that's what everyone does! Except for some reason he can't comprend, he feels completely dead inside. Theres a ball of dread in his chest and its building everyday until he can't ignore it. Everything feels empty and numb outside of this feeling. So he looks for answers, and while he doesn't find any, what he does find is a group of people on social media who feel exactly like he does. They don't try to lie and say everything's fine and that he needs to just power through, everything sucks and they're the only ones admitting it. They don't encourage eachother to get better, they help eachother get worse, because life is terrible so why shouldn't you just do what you want? And 007 gets sucked in completely. He quits his job, cuts off his girlfriend and friends, and moves back in with his parents, to their dismay. That was 6ish months ago. He's obsessed with social media and will do anything to feel alive in this terrible world. So, of course, when one of his online friends tells him she wants to die, why wouldn't he wish her luck? Life is terrible, he's kinda jealous that she can actually do it while he can't. And then he wakes up in the milgram prison ^_^ his cover songs are Chimera-> Otome Dissection-> Rabbit Hole!

008! She's even worse ♡ actually when writing this i kinda had a better idea for her story, but since its just came to my head I'll have to think on it a lil more.... uhm for now though she's 32 and also thinks life sucks but she's (kinda) over it now. She's used to being at the bottom of society but takes out her feelings by looking down on people even lower than her. Until i figure her out more thats all i can say TT her cover songs are Psuedo-hope Syndrome -> Delusion Tax -> Mono Poisoner!

009! Taisei Furukawa... he's the second one i made so he has a full name yay :] he's my second canonically queer character, he's gay and has had one boyfriend basically his entire life! They met as kids in the same elementary school, his bf came from a very shitty family and Taisei was the first person to treat him kindly and stick by his side no matter what. Unfortunately, his boyfriend kinda sucks, and is lowkey highkey abusive, isolating Taisei from everyone so they both only have eachother. Taisei only realises just how much his boyfriend had ruined his life at 25, and he's pissed ^_^ he knows he can't just break up with him, his boyfriend definitely won't let that happen, and he has no one to turn to for help. So the logical thing here to do is to turn the tables on his bf and try to convince him into a double suicide. Taisei doesn't have much desire to live after being worn down for so long, and he needs to make sure his bf won't just find and abuse someone else once he's gone, so a double suicide is the best option. Sure, he could do a murder homocide, but after how long he's suffered, he kinda wants his bf to feel how he feels... and it works :) the both jump of their apartment building, his boyfriend dies and Taisei wakes up in the milgram jail with a fucked up leg, needing crutches to walk. He's kinda antisocial and grumpy in t1 for understandable reasons (though he helps the kids with the study group at times), but if he's forgiven he becomes alot warmer and friendlier :) there's alot of art symbolism in his story... his cover songs are Turret Of Justice-> 118-> Shinkai Summit!

010! Kanami Shimizu!!!!!!!!! The girlie ever!!!! And the 3rd and final canonically queer character, she's a trans lesbian. She's 23 and so full of life and love and she's so so kind and energetic and kinda annoying but she's just so happy to be in jail with everyone!!!!!!!! She's the first one i made... however i kinda scrapped her murder awhile back since i didn't like it, but i don't have a new one yet :( but whatever her murder is, her personality and ideals remain the same! She's been hurt alot in life, and when she looks around she realises that everyone is the same. She can't live in the real world, it'd crush her, she knows this, so she wants to make a paradise where everyone can be happy forever... and milgram is the perfect place for it!!! So you have to forgive everyone for her ok ^_^ if you don't she won't forgive you. She won't let you ruin this for everyone. Her cover songs are Home -> Please Show Me -> Hedgehog!!

011.... doesn't exist!!! Not anymore i killed him sorry. I didn't like his story that much, but I'm too commited to following the og milgrams male/female prisoner pairings to just leave it at 11 prisoners, so I'll just wait for a new guy to appear in my mind.........................

012! She's 12! No name! My most recent one (except for the former 011 rest in peace). She's being a nuisance for everyone in the prison, she has alot of rage and she will make sure everyone hears it!!!!! She's friends with 001 and she tolerates Taisei but everyone else is her enemy and she WILL fight them if they cross her, which would be scary if she wasn't like 5ft. Her murder is just teenage rebellion went a lil too far........ she doesn't fit in at her new school and acts out, but all the adults in her life don't really get involved, just saying it's a phase she'll grow out of. This only makes her act out more, and more, and more, until it gets out of hand and someone dies. She didn't want any of that to happen, but in milgram she insists she's happy about it and is very very evil and scary so you should listen to her before she kills you as well. She has alot of animal (specifically bear) imagery :) her cover songs are Parasite -> Aitai-lians -> Lonely Shit!

The warden! Our beloved Es he's such a loser. He enters the prison not really taking any of this seriously, and does his best to be as annoying as possible to everyone, he's convinced he's the biggest freak here and he will prove it. Unfortunately for him he is definitely not the biggest freak here and by the start of the second trial he's learned this the hard way. He's an efficient warden despite everything, knowing what to say to rile the prisoners up so they spill information, however he quickly starts losing control of everything and it's kinda pitiful....... his cover song is Salamander!

Jackalope! She fucking hates the warden ^_^ she's secretly a lil fond of him but she'd never admit it. She's very no-nonsense and constantly lectures him to do his job properly, and usually ends up cleaning up after him.... she's not a very good Jackalope, she gets attached to everyone too easily, even if she pretends to be aloof. Jackas dont have cover songs, very very sad....

Mmmmmmmm thats everything!! That was alot more than i thought i wont blame u if u dont read everything.... was fun to infodump about though, thanks for asking lol. Im gonna screenshot everything i just wrote incase tumblr eats it like it did last time,,