#Started playing it during one of the most mentally unstable periods of my life. Lets just say the influence was strong

[sepiamestus]

Octo expansion (2018) save me......... Octo expansion......... Save me octo expansion (2018)

[walkingshcdow-a]

((Tomorrow is my birthday and it’s a milestone year. I’ve been really unstable and scared for the last week, crying every day and having panic attacks that I have to time so that way they don’t interfere with my day to day functioning. It’s been INSANE.

And then yesterday, the gifts started rolling in.

During my morning class, one of my seniors, who I’ve known since she was a freshman, took me aside to tell me that I am the reason she wants to be an English teacher and she wanted to let me know that I made her love reading, even though it’s “hard” for her, that I’ve taught her that it’s worth analyzing books and poems and stories because once you get it, it’s fun and it opens your eyes to new ideas and she wants to do that for kids one day. 

I had to sit through an impromptu meeting about student misconduct and I walked the girl who reported the perpetrators upstairs, talking about musical theatre until she calmed down and the gratitude in her eyes when she thanked me for protecting her from the students who would have made her life hell warmed my heart.

I still managed to get most of my conference period to finish my lesson plans (a gift I gave myself) and to type out my Curse of Strahd notes (a gift I give my party every week... and a gift that our DM gave us by writing one of the most gut-wrenching scenes of desolation since the heroes of “Mulan” stumbled across the devastated village in the 1998 film. But more on him in a minute.)

I found out my parents are probably not taking their fancy overseas trip because of the Pandemic (which doesn’t surprise me), but also that Clare is still excited to spend the holidays with me, even if it’s now my parents and me. My mom even made Clare a Christmas stocking, like she does for anyone who joins our family. I’m going to be surrounded by people who love me and whom I love for the holidays and even though I would have been regardless, it warms my heart to know they’ll be near. 

And then we played my birthday D&D game. 

I hired my Curse of Strahd DM, Guthrie, who has become a good friend over the last eight or so months, to run a game for us. Last month, I gave him an absolutely WILD Google document, filled with inspiration texts for the session. It’s something like five typed pages with a supplement document Clare and I wrote together and a required reading list of disparate parts that made sense to me for a D&D game, but that I was certain Guthrie would be agitated about. When I tried to apologize for it (every single time I tried to apologize for it), he ensured me I gave him exactly what DMs want: a roadmap to the kind of session their players would enjoy. I didn’t fully believe him, especially as the last two weeks waged war on my physical and mental health. I was excited to spend the evening with my friends, but fairly sure my unhinged melancholy would haunt the night.

Instead, Guthrie took that five page document and breathed life into it. I can feel the echoes of Arthurian legend I wanted in there for Clare’s amusement as the ghosts of fabled knights roam the halls of the locale. The melancholy of Wuthering Heights that I wanted Marty to have ample opportunity to mock looms large in the manor halls. We were greeted by an ominous Fae-Cursed Undead to speak to Madi’s Fae sorcerer and given a battle immediately as we entered the scene. Michelle’s rogue was allowed to plunder. And my dhampir bardadin rolled more Nat 20s than I’ve seen in my life, while being a snarky, charming, deeply confused creature of the night. We were given magical gifts that were oddly perfect for each character. 

And miraculously, he found a way to work in the Muppets I’d passingly mentioned in the document as a joke, or perhaps as a challenge. We’re trying to schedule a follow-up game.

And the thing about my friends? They bring out my most charming self, my funniest self, and the self that loses her shit laughing in unadulterated glee. They remind me that even when being alive is scary, it’s worth it. They make me want to be creative and fun and kind and clever and generous and good because they are.

And then after getting exactly three hours of sleep, my mother called to announce that she was on her way to join me for the rest of my birthday weekend. She hugged me and made me hot cocoa and tamales for breakfast. I took my dog to the vet. We’re going to go to the museum to look at dinosaurs. She brought me more presents than I’ve ever gotten for my birthday since I was a very small child. More than that, though, we’ve been talking about work - specifically my students and some wonderful things they say and do and the work they’ve done that I’m proud of - and my mother, who is a veteran educator, is proud of me. I’m doing good work with my kids and she sees it and she respects me as a professional and admires me as a person. I know most adults don’t hang their self-worth on their mother’s opinions, but do you know how good it feels to be told by your role model that what you do is meaningful, important, and well-done? Indescribable. 

It’s weird. I always thought that I would die before I turned thirty and I know I have 24 hours to go, but this year, I have felt more loved, cherished, seen, and valued than ever before and I’m beginning to think I might actually be more alive than I’ve been ever before.

I’ll be on mobile and only half-around as I celebrate this weekend, but if you read this, I hope you know that I love you and want to thank you for being part of my journey. I also want you to feel this same warmth and worthiness I’m feeling right now. It’s the best gift anyone can receive.))

[thebigqueer]

This isn't necessarily pernico cus uhhh weird age gap but since we never really got to see things from Nico's perspective, I always wondered what Percy was like in his eyes. Like what were the specific things that made him fall so devastatingly hard?

anon, you are so correct about literally everything (i mean everything) you said.

i think that is such an important thing to think about, especially considering that nico is from a different time period and, as sad as it is, he probably absolutely hated himself for loving percy. he hasn’t ever really seen two guys be allowed to fall in love with each other. and i’m definitely sure that he probably could not sleep at night knowing that if he had been living in italy during that time, if anyone had known about his attraction for guys, he could have been given a death sentence.

that must weigh on him a lot. 

TW: homophobia & internalized homophobia ahead

i don’t think he entirely realizes he’s gay until he meets percy (just cuz he’s a little young when we meet him, but of course that is NOT to say that you can’t know you’re queer when you’re 10/11 years old. some people do, and i am absolutely not trying to invalidate anyone. also, if you don’t know you’re queer at a young age, that is absolutely valid as well. identity can be really fluid; are we ever one thing for our whole life? would we even be considered human if we never changed?).

when he does figure it out though, he’s just. shell-shocked. how dare he think this way? doesn’t he know how disgusting he is?

i think nico really really hated percy for making him feel this way. but at the same time, he hated himself, too. because how could he like a boy?

but it didn’t really matter to his heart, did it? because here is this boy, eyes as riotous as the ocean, an unstable force completely able to destroy anything in his path. headstrong. has anger issues but loyal to the end. gorgeous, graceful. 

Percy Jackson. Son of Poseidon. How could he not fall in love?

i’m about to project a little here, because i have also fallen in love with presumably-straight people (lmao they’re not so straight anymore LKSNDFLKJSDLFJK [they know who they are] but the point still stands) and i have also had a bout of internalized homophobia, so just bare with me because i think this is one place where i really deeply can relate to with nico. i’m probably gonna just assume some things because of things that i’ve personally felt when i was in love with my crush at the time i liked them. this is not to say that everything i’ve felt is absolutely universal for every queer person, of course.

nico saw percy stay loyal to his friends. i think something to consider is how nico has had most of his family members gone. he’s alone. and here he sees percy, pushing his friends aside and taking the pain for them. 

nico wants that. he wants to feel protected, to have someone have his back like that. he wants percy to be that person for him. he just wants his attention, to feel like he’s worthwhile to someone. he’s lost so many people already. can’t he just have percy? why must he be so out of nico’s grasp?

he doesn’t even need to like nico. he just... nico just wants percy to be his friend. it’s going to hurt a lot, but in the end, all nico wants from percy is his attention and his friendship.

he just needs someone. and percy is older than nico. he can protect nico, can’t he? he can tell nico that it’ll turn out alright.

because percy is a magnetic force. he draws people into him, like moths to a light, and he doesn’t even realize. he plays with people’s feelings, and he doesn’t even realize. he’s a gorgeous being in this universe, and he has no idea what kind of earthquakes he creates in people’s lives.

and the fact that percy is self-conscious about himself as well. that makes him human. that makes him a little more like nico. because at first, nico sees him as some kind of absolute god - but when he remembers that percy is insecure, tired, mentally exhausted... well, nico just basks in the idea that they are alike in this way.

nico wants to be as cool as percy is. he wants to attract the same attention. 

fuck, nico just wants to be percy. the son of poseidon is everything he’s always wanted to be. maybe that’s why he loves him so.

and this leads to hate towards percy, too. not just because nico hates himself for loving percy, but also because he’s so much more liked. he steals people’s attention with just a word, just a touch, just a movement. he hates him he hates him he hates him. 

but are love and hate so different?

i think the worst part about nico’s feelings for percy, though, is that percy never really even looks at him. so why does nico keep insisting on doing these favors for that asshole that’s stolen his heart? why does he insist on breaking himself up to pieces just so he can get a little attention from percy?

maybe because that little sliver of attention means absolutely everything to nico. even a little slice of percy’s gaze, of his acknowledgement of nico sends nico in a frenzy. because there’s a chance that if he keeps doing percy favors, maybe he’ll pay more attention. maybe he’ll hang around nico a little longer. maybe he’ll start being friendly with him. 

every piece of kindness nico gives him is another chance for nico to get closer to percy. 

he has no one. but if he has just a little bit of percy... just a little bit of his time... maybe that’s what nico needs.

now, in no way is this post saying that love is what would fix nico. i absolutely do not like percico, either. i just think that this is something that nico was thinking as a young kid. he was lonely. he just wanted someone. 

percy would definitely not fix nico. but nico could fool himself into thinking that maybe percy could have. because, again, nico is young. he was lonely. he just wanted to feel something stable in his life. he didn’t know any better than to think that just maybe a little love, a little affection could fix him. i know i felt like that at some points in my life.

i think a lot of his attraction towards percy was a result of a sense of vulnerable dependence.

but nico grows. he falls out of love with percy. and he learns that no one can fix him for him - only he is in charge of making things better for himself.

slowly, he lets go. he doesn’t need percy. 

letting go of him is probably the best thing he’s ever done for himself. 

thank you so MUCH for this ask!!! as you can see i went on like a huge-ass rampage over this (most of it being projection oOPS) but like. i don’t know. i have a lot of feelings about this. so thank you so much again. 

[myfandomrambles]

Adora, Catra & Trauma (pt 4)

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

Full Show

An Analysis of the way Catra & Adora are affected by their respective traumatic experiences.

Identity Formation and Core Beliefs

Adora

Adora’s core beliefs are centred around the world being unsafe and the idea that making it safe is her responsibility. This is due to her disorganized attachment born from childhood abuse and trauma. Her cognition is anchored to these ideas and the ability to detach herself from this deep responsibility is lacking. Core beliefs of instability and lack of safety leave Adora with underlying anxiety and dysregulation.

Adora’s sense of self generally just never fully formed, it’s destabilised, detached and dependent. Along with this she lacks full autonomy and has deep codependency on others for any continuity of self. Adora also has very little self-worth not attached to her ability to succeed in being a hero to others, which causes her to objectify herself. Her thoughts often become wrapped around helping others and a drive to always “fix it”. This leaves her with little sense of self and tendencies to give to much of herself to others to the point of self-harm.

In season one we see how she switched from having her sense of self is based on being Force Captain to being based around being a good enough She Ra in Sword pt 1/2 (1x01-2). When Adora is scared she automatically runs her belief of the world as unsafe and unstable activated. This fear causes her to go to Madame Razz, someone she doesn’t even know, to ask for help not just practically but is begging to know who she is now that she is She Ra. (Razz, 1x03)

In Flowers For She Ra (1x04) Adora's identity issues and self-doubt are triggered by the behaviour of the residents of Perfuma's kingdom. Adora is scared to live up to being the She Ra of the past and doesn’t want to show her face as Adora believes herself to not be enough.

During No Princes Left Behind (1x09) and The Beacon (1x10), we see how Adora has structured her sense of self as being a hero and giving herself to others. She is filled with guilt and confusion, the core structures she built her world around is damaged when she can not successfully play her role of being an object used by others.

In Promise (1x11) we see how this concept started in her childhood having been set up to have to act like the protector to others to not lose those she loves and to not lose the attention of her mother. The core beliefs of the world being fundamentally unsafe were set up by the violence of her mother and the focus on war. The memories show that her identity was driven by her connections to others and how hard Adora worked to gain any self-esteem. Her need to be a hero is also present in how she did act as the protector for Catra as a child multiple times and continues to want to be the hero to Catra now though not always conscious.

We also see the current dilemma she has in this fight being torn between the idea of becoming She Ra and her attachment to Catra and her past. This is partially born from manipulations past and present which adds layers to her identity issues going forward. Adora doesn’t know what she wants and can’t balance her love of Catra with her newly constructed self as She Ra. I think we can also infer she is also torn in a more normal sense between her new friends and her old ones.

With Light Hope we see her begging for answers as to how to fix it and how to save Glimmer, which she blames herself for. This guilt is exacerbated by the guilt that was built into her schemas from childhood. Adora’s need to fix it, guilt and fear become manipulated by Light Hope who tries to convince her to cut herself off from her friends to save them. Adora rejects some of the self-isolation but is still basing her core belief of self on She Ra missing part of Swift Wind’s comment about her friends being there not because she’s She Ra, but because they care deeply for Adora as a whole person. An issue of basing worth of being useful to others that is deeply part of Adora’s identity. (Light Hope 1x12)

In The Battle of Bright Moon (1x13) we see Adora both separate her selfhood from She Ra making a dissociated self-concept but also put her value on rather she could save everyone on her own.

Adora: I don't want you risking yourselves.

She-Ra can do this alone. This is what she's for.

Bow: Not even She-Ra can take out

an army on her own.

Adora: Then what good is she?

Throughout Ties That Bind (2x02), we see Adora struggle with feeling like she is worthwhile and feels the need to prove that she can be a better She Ra then Mara. Adora’s identity and self-esteem and schemas are tied up with being She Ra and being the proper person others need. Feelings of deep confusion and guilt as well drive obsessive behaviours throughout her attempts to fix the tower. She gains a bond with Swift Wind through this crisis which serves her well going forward, another moment where being able to connect with others grounds Adora.

During roll with it Adora’s hypervigilance, panic, control issues are triggered when her core belief of the world being unsafe and dangerous are activated. Her Identity is tied up with this fear and hypervigilance, making the dysregulation run very deep. (Roll With It 2x04 )

During The Price of Power (3x01) t he identity Adora had tried to build up throughout season 1 & 2 and some of the stability she had gained is broken down when she learns about her history and her status as a First One. While she had never learned to separate herself from how she can serve others, this revelation still breaks a degree of stability of her connection to others. We see her bolt and look for answers from Light Hope to re-ground herself and try and lessen the dislocation and dissociation of her identity.

Adora gains some distance and boundary in her self concept in her interaction with Catra in (Portal 3x06)

Catra: Let’ face it all of this is your fault. If you hadn’t gotten captured your sword wouldn’t have opened the portal. If you hadn’t gotten the sword and been the world’s worst She Ra, None of this would have happened. Admit it Adora, the world would still be standing if you had never come through that portal in the first place. You made me this. You took everything from me. You broke the world and it is all your fault.

Adora: No it’s not. I didn’t make you pull the switch. I didn’t make you do anything. I didn’t break the world, but I am gonna fix it. And you, you made your choice. Now live with it.

However, this gained boundary from Catra is paired with a reinforcement of Adora having to be the saviour of others and to protect others. It also lines up with her need to follow her density to build a structure of self and try and soothe her deep fears.

Angella: And you’ll come back too right? [From removing the sword to save the dimension]

Adora: I have to do this. It’s my destiny.

Angella: Oh, Adora, no. This is not it.

Adora: But...this is the only way to fix things.

.-----

Angella: You inspired us. You inspired me. Not because it was your destiny, but because you never let fear stop you. And now I choose to be brave.

Adora: No your majesty. Angella.

Angella: Take care of each other. (Portal 3x06)

[In this scene we see Angella gives Adora kind physical contact, something powerful for Adora from a guiding and maternal figure. Adora has to watch Angella die, a re-traumatizing event]

This interaction is a similar situation to what we see at the end of the show with The Heart. We see how Adora acts self-sacrificial to suicidal when giving the idea she must fulfil the needs of others. This event compounds how she sees herself as a hero and martyr, an issue that lasts. It’ also important to note how Adora turns Angella words of “take care of each other” to “take care of you [Glimmer ]”(The Coronation 4x01)

Adora continues to struggle with her identity due to her history and her attachment of identity to her status as She Ra and a hero. Her continued habit of trying to give more than she has to others gives her a lot of stress (season 3-4). Adora also tries to get answers from Light Hope on this issue and with questions about the weapon Mara had and what She Ra means. Adora never fully gets these answers (Protocol 4x05).

Adora also seeks answers from Mara. Adora has attached her identity to Mara making this deeply core to how she handles the stressors of her life. This attachment starts with her understanding of Mara as someone she needs to be better then and transitions to someone she has to carry on the legacy of. This displays how she attaches her identity to others, which started with Shadow Weaver & Catra, and how she lacks a core self so she is structuring everything from the ground up. (Seasons 2-5)

Adora seeks answers during her struggle with how to save others from the heart and Light Hope from Madame Razz (Hero 4x09). Her identity constructed Adora being a hero and her connection to She Ra as the saviour of Etheria is part of what disrupts Adora’s relationship to Glimmer (Fractures 4x10). A feeling of not being able to live up to what She Ra needs to be and how to be this hero is brought out by the influence of the degraded tech on Best Island. Fears of not being enough some of her strongest fears and stressors (Beast Island 4x11).

Her fight against The Heart in Destiny pt 1/2 (4x12-13) is driven by this need to break her identity from being the one who would hurt Etheria. These actions shatter her status as She Ra for a period of time something that causes Adora severe distress. This loss of being the most heroic of her group causes her to be too rash and causes herself bodily and mental distress (Hore Prime & Launch 5x01-2).

When Adora regains her ability to be She-Ra she accepts this back strongly working to be able to access her again. We see a lot here of how she is both attached to being She Ra as part of who she has to be to save others but also sets this part of her apart from her. Holding She-Ra as a dissociated part of self, I believe this is due to seeing herself as not fully worthy of being She-Ra. Adora internalised how others originally separated herself as former horde member from being the proper hero of Etheria. (Stranded, Save The Cat, Taking Control, Return to the Fright Zone 5x04-6, 5x10).

When Adora learns that she might have to give up her life Adora is willing to accept this. This is based on her tendency to place her worth on being able to serve others. Her identity disruption causes her to put herself through stresses and fail to be able to see her wants. We see Catra notice this in the end and try to get Adora to see this, Glimmer and Bow try and at least get her to not give in to dying and Shadow Weaver continues to reinforce this behaviour and schema. Her ability to give herself fully over to saving others and rejection of what she wants and needs in life colours her ability to save others. Her willingness to give herself over and structure identity on this pushes her to save others; it also deeply weakens her. (Failsafe, 5x11)

We see Adora breakdown and turn to something very close to suicidal her identity shattered and becoming warped with a dysregulated state and confused objectification. A battle of autonomy and self versus objectification is seen in Adora’s conversation with herself in the form of Mara.

Adora: I’m going to save Etheria, no matter what it takes. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain, I promise.

Mara: But at what cost? I never wanted to die. I sacrificed myself so you would never have to. Why are you doing this Adora?

Adora: It’s better this way. My friends will be safe. They’ll be happy.

Mara: And you? What do you want when this is all over.

Adora: I...It doesn’t matter. I’m She-Ra. This is what I'm supposed to do.

Mara: You are worth more than what you can give to other people. You deserve love too. (Heart pt 1, 5x12)

The question of what she wants is a version of the question Catra has been asking and the ideas of her having love is what her friends have been trying to tell her. However, she can not ground herself in these ideas and is too scared and hurt to be able to see this at the time.

Her core belief of having to earn love and lining her identity outside sources almost gives the planet to Horde Prime. Catra and Adora lose their mother at this point and this along with Adora trying to force Catra away weaken Adora further.

Being able to see her future and ground herself to Catra's love gives her the will to push against Horde Prime. This is hard due to Adora being unable to see the future as safe from her core belief that the world is scary, but Catra can finally pull Adora back their attachment and love being strong. Only the ability to imagine herself as worthwhile and believing Catra loves her gives her the strength to save the planet. (Heart pt 2, 5x13)

A keynote throughout the series is that Adora is most able to ground, build her self concept, shift negative schemas and break her dissociated self-concept when she connects with others. Her connection to others also serves her in health overall and pushes against her tendency to deal with anxiety, depression and dissociation. And when the opposite happens and she loses her healthy attachment to others all of her symptoms of trauma worsen and her ability to make healthy decisions suffers. (In the Shadows of Mystacor, The Battle of Brightmoon, Ties That Bind, Roll With It, Pulse, Protocol, Mer-Mysteries, Boy’s Night Out, Hero, Fractures, Horde Prime, Launch, Stranded, Save The Cat, Failsafe, Heart pt 1/2, 1x07, 1x13, 2x02, 2x04, 4x04-10, 5x01-2, 5x04-5, 5x11-12)

Catra

Catra’s identity issues and negative core beliefs stem from her childhood of abuse and trauma. These identity issues and core beliefs include; being second best, of the word being scary, of her worth being based in others, of punishment being inevitable and life being unfair. Her survival instincts tend towards copying abusive behaviours instead of forming healthy attachments. Catra also struggles to not internalize what others think she ought to be even when she plays the rebel.

Catra’s Beliefs of the world as unsafe and self-concept are primarily based on Adora & Shadow Weaver’s perception of her. However, others like the cadets and Hordak’s opinions also affect her self concept. ( Sword pt 1/2, Razz, The frozen Forest, Signals, Light Spinner, Reunion, 1x02-3, 2x01, 2x03, 2x06-7) We can see the start of these structures in what Shadow Weaver tells Catra about her worth in their childhood.

Shadow Weaver: You have never been anything more than a nuisance to me! I've kept you around this long because Adora was fond of you, but if you ever do anything to jeopardize her future, I will dispose of you myself. Promise (1x11)

This set’s her very worth as a person in the way Adora’s was “fond of you [catra]”. We can see how Catra internalised this view and continues to believe this throughout her life. (Remember, The Portal, Princess Prom, Princess Scorpia 1x08, 3x05-6, 4x06). she believes that her self worth and worthiness to even live is based on rather Adora wants her or not (Corridors, Save The Cat, Taking Control, Failsafe & Heart pt 1, 5x03, 5x05-6& 5x11-12)

Catra also bases a great deal of her self worth for much of her life on Shadow Weaver’s ability to value her. Catra is deeply hurt that her mother never really cared for her. And tends to fight between believing that she needs Shadow Weaver and doesn’t need her all at the same time. But either way her self worth is based in Shadow Weaver. (Razz, The Beacon, Light Hope, The Battle of Bright Moon, signals, Light Spinner, Reunion, Once Upon a Time in The Crimson Waste, Failsafe, 1x01-13, 2x03, 2x06, 3x03, 3x06-7,5x11)

A belief of value as based on power and how much control she can have permeates her actions. She views the world as a power struggle and this affects her ability to see herself holistically. The only thing that starts to matter is how much power she can have. This is due to living in a culture that is built on fear. If Catra shows weakness she fears not only losing her sense of self but also of being hurt. Her schemas of fear permeate all of her actions and perceptions. (Promise, Light Hope, Light Spinner, Signals, Reunion, Once Upon a Time in the Waste, Moment of Truth, Princess Scorpia, Boys' Night Out, Fractures, Destiny pt1&2, Horde Prime, & Launch, 1x11-12, 2x03, 2x06-7, 3x03-4, 4x06, 4x08, 4x10-13, & 5x01-2)

Along with the core belief of the world being unsafe and afraid she also carries the belief that the best option is to be cruel back. If the world is going to constantly hurt her then she ought to hurt the world back. She is scared and angry and has internalized the feelings of terror, anger, hurt confusion and loss as who she is not emotions she has. This is worsened by her dysregulation. Catra’s struggles with depression also reinforce her negative beliefs of worthlessness and abandonment. (The Beacon, Promise, Light Hope, The Ties That Bind, Signals, White Out, Light Spinner, Reunion, The Price of Power, Once Upon A Time In The Crimson Waste, Moment of Truth, Remember The Portal, The Coronation, Pulse, Princess Scorpia, Boy’s Night Out, Fractures, & Destiny 1/2, 1x10-12, 2x02-3, 2x05-7, 3x01, 2x03,6, 4x01, 4x04, 4x06, 4x08, & 4x10, 4x12-13)

Catra’s locus of control is malformed, she views herself as lacking much ability to effects everything and sees the world as persecutory towards her. One key moment is during the portal arc. We see it in Once Upon A Time in The Crimson Waste (3x03) when she learns what shadow weaver did, she blames Adora telling her that everything is because of her. During their battle in the collapsing dimension, Catra tells Adora that it is all her fault and that Adora made her into this version of a person, struggling angry person who wants to hurt herself and others.

Catra: Let’ face it all of this is your fault. If you hadn’t gotten captured your sword wouldn’t have opened the portal. If you hadn’t gotten the sword and been the world’s worst She Ra, None of this would have happened. Admit it Adora, the world would still be standing if you had never come through that portal in the first place. You made me this. You took everything from me. You broke the world and it is all your fault.

But interestingly this moment that is the height of Catra’s struggle with viewing the world as out of her control, persecutory and without any locus of control is challenged by Adora.

Adora: No it’s not. I didn’t make you pull the switch. I didn’t make you do anything. I didn’t break the world, but I am gonna fix it. And you, you made your choice. Now live with it. (The Portal 3x06).

[This conversation is accompanied by Catra assaulting Adora, a show of violence and power even as she renounces her responsibility of the catastrophe but Adora turns this around landing a knockout blow on Catra.]

Throughout season four we mostly see Catra basing her self concept and self-worth on her ability to complete the mission she set for herself. She is seeing herself as the abuser that Shadow Weaver wanted her to be. While she has gained a sense that she can truly impact the world and the confidence to stand up to Hordak she has completely walled herself off. Her connection to Scorpia, a grounding force has been destroyed. This loss worsens her anxiety, paranoia and depression. She is paranoid about how others see her while degrading them which worsens their opinions of her. She is still wanting to be strong and still has the schema of the world as a dangerous place as well as that she ought to be cruel back. (The Coronation, The Valley of the Lost, Flutternia, Pulse, Protocol, Princess Scorpia, Boys' Night Out, Fractures, Destiny pt 1 4x01-6, 4x08, 4x10, 4x12)

However, we do start to see her struggle with the actions she has taken dealing with, guilt, depression and flashbacks. The triggers of abandonment and stress cause her to suffer from enacted implicit memories of complete paranoia. This suffering has her falling apart. (Flutternia & Boys' Night Out 4x03 & 4x08)

We see her sense of self shatter almost completely under the weight of failure, depression, rage and pressure from the actions of Hordak and Double Trouble in Destiny pt 2 (4x13).  

Double Trouble: ...I finally figured out your character. You try so hard to play the big, bad villain, but your heart’s never been in it, has it?

Catra: What--? What are you? Stop. Stop it.

Double Trouble: People have hurt you, haven’t they? They didn’t believe in you. They didn’t trust you. Didn’t Need you. Left You. But did you ever stop to think maybe they’re not the problem? It’s you. You drive them away wildcat.

Catra: Why are you doing this?

Double Trouble: It’s for your own good, darling. We both know this is never what you really wanted.

[Double trouble invades Catra’s personal space and uses their shapeshifting skills to make their words even more destabilizing for Catra]

This interaction with Double Trouble along with the invasion of Horde Prime breaks down Catra and allows her to start rethinking what it is she wants [something she asks of Adora to help her later]. However, it also worsens her depression and has her starting to outwardly believe she is broken and worthless. We do see her natural survival instincts kick in and she continues to try to play the villain but it is never something she can stick to. Catra is afraid and confused and doesn’t want to be dragged around. Her ability to bond with Glimmer shows she still can form an attachment to others and a sign that she cares about Etheria and Adora. (Horde Prime & Launch 5x1-2)

Next, we see Horde Prime try to use Catra’s survival instincts against her, pulling on the strings of pain to attempt to get her to give him the information she wants. He uses her leftover connection to Hordak and the threat of physical and spiritual assault to reinforce this survival instinct. Glimmer latches on to Catra’s attachment to Adora and confusion to help get her to make the proper decision asking her

Glimmer: Please Catra, Do one good thing in your life

Catra’s C-PTSD symptoms are triggered badly during this episode as well. She has multiple vivid memories and flashbacks and we see her flipping between multiple arousal states. The first memory scene starts with the aftermath of Catra hitting Lonnie and Adora trying to get her to explain why and apologize offering to protect her. When Adora asks her to apologise triggers her attack response and she scratches Adora’s face. We see a second memory that offers us an insight into the enmeshment between Adora and Catra along with how and why she gained the feeling of never saying sorry.

Adora: It’s [dinner] the grey kind tonight. I know it’s your favorite.

Catra: What are you doing?

Adora: Well if you're missing dinner, then I am, too.

Catra: Just go! Eat with your new best friend, Lonnie!

Adora: Is that why you hit her?

Catra: I know you like her better than me. You’re supposed to be my friend.

Adora: I am your friend, Catra. I’m always going to be your friend. --- You should say sorry to Lonnie. And then we can all be friends.

Catra: [grunting] No.

Adora: Come on, Catra.

Catra: I’ll never say sorry to anybody, ever.

[We see Catra start by getting a protective stance. When Adora tries to approach at first catra pushes her away with her body showing extreme fear. Then as Adora offers comfort we see Catra’s approach memories activate and she snuggles up to Adora. But when she is suggested to apologize and share the attachment and friendship of Adora her fight response kicks in pushing her friends over and running away]

This memory shows that as a child saying sorry already triggered anger and fear in her. Something that we can connect to shying away from attachment and finding admitting fault and weakness scary. Her protective anger is present as well as seeing all of this relational rupture with Adora based in fear of abandonment and loss of Adora. This memory triggers flashbacks in Catra and the past bleeding to the present. Adora’s friendship has her remember her promise to it always being “me and you” and she realises her lack of saying sorry has always been protective, and a cause of problems.

Then Catra makes one of her most important decisions and a huge change in how she perceives herself and interacts with others choosing to save Glimmer, apologizing to Adora and offering herself up for assault, abuse or murder. (Corridors 5x03)

Catra is spiritually and physically abused by Horde prime and her mind is violated. This offers a huge shift in her identity. Catra’s deep self-belief of worthlessness and weak identity is what Horde Prime uses to try and have her believe she wanted the assault and manipulate Adora. However, she pushes back through with Adora’s help (Save The Cat, 5x05). 

Following this Catra protective states of self try to rear their head as her fear of the world and worthlessness has been bolstered and her identity weakened. Adora’s boundaries and kindness, however, remind her why she wanted to shift to vulnerability and having an identity-based in connection and self-worth. She opens up to Adora and her stable identity is reinforced so is an outlook of being there for others versus acting as the abuser she was taught to be. (Taking Control, Shot in the Dark, An Ill Wind, & Return to the Fright Zone, 5x06, 5x08-10)

During Failsafe (5x11) we see her be able to remember that question of what do you want trying to get Adora to see it, but her thoughts of being fundamentally unwanted and worthlessness still get in the way of her being connected to Adora and others. Her connection to Adora and ability to question what she wants and how her identity and needs matter can break through Adora’s dissociated objectified self and suicidal thoughts and save everything with their attachment and love. (Heart pt 1/2 5x12-13)

[champagnecall]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until the following exchange:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[gothamstreetcat]

Please share your thoughts based of the bingo cards below because I wanna know 👀

i am absolutely going to be talking about all things controversial below the cut: ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʳᵉᵃᵈ ᶦᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃ ᶠᵃⁿ ᵒᶠ ᵇᵃʳᵇᵃʳᵃ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗᵃᵇᶦᵗʰᵃ 

season one

there isn't much I think is super controversial in season one, but I will definitely be talking about selina, the batcat kiss, and the overall season itself

on selina i have to say i was a little nervous before the show aired. it’s silly but also understandable for me because i always find myself getting nervous whenever someone new takes on a character I love. but honestly, i think camren is the best selina kyle we could have asked for. there is just always something about each catwoman/selina kyle i didn’t like, but with camren i think we get the most true and genuine portrayal because gotham shows her childhood—a obviously important part to selina’s character. it’s a side of her we never get to see much of in the comics or in films, and i just find it a very important part to her character. 

sometimes I think people are too drawn into making selina something more (holy tim burton, batman! she’s got cat powers!). and I hate to throw tim  under the bus with this, but over time the whole cat powers thing really pissed me off because part of what I loved about selina was how she was a regular person. she didn’t need cat powers to be great or special. it also kinda makes me sad when people compare cam’s selina so much to pfeiffer’s because a. camren is her own selina and shouldn’t be put under that kind of pressure and b. I really can’t see someone as tough as camren’s selina becoming some old man’s assistant with “corndogs” as a (cat)chprase(?) 

i know it’s silly, but another thing about cam’s selina is how much i just love her. i just grew up wanting to be her and be like her. i wanted to be hardened by city streets and i know it’s dumb but i don’t think i have to explain why i feel such a strong way about her. we all have our favorite characters. **more of this hot mess in the tags

moving into the batcat kiss i was initially really uncomfortable and disappointed with it. david and cam were young at the time, therefore, so were bruce and selina, and i just honestly feel like it was too soon. however, i know in an interview they talked about it and were okay with it—cam saying how she was able to separate herself from the character—so I have grown to be more tolerant of it (is it dumb to say i was a little embarrassed for them because that’s how i would feel if it was me?) i am also not innocent because i did make a gifset of the kiss but it was also paired with selina asking for bruce’s consent, and i only made it because i liked the parallels (queue a young me making gifs on makeagif.com) Now, I will highly advocate for that gifset because to me it really shows how much selina went to get bruce’s ‘okay’ before she kissed him. i feel as though we are always advocating so much when it comes to a woman’s consent but never when it is a man’s and both are equally as important but we’ll get into that later in this post. 

another thing i want to add, is how i’d like to believe i have some idea as to why they did the kiss in the first place. i want to believe it had something to do with the trauma of the day, or the fact that bruce is a boy who showed selina genuine kindness when she is clearly someone who has gone without. god forbid it only to be seen as ‘cute’ but perhaps, because selina wanted to know what it felt like to be touched in that sort of way. by someone like Bruce (who was innocent and had never been kissed) maybe it was some sort of way to thank him or a parting gift, to which i’m sure people would say that’s wrong but i feel with selina’s background it makes sense. as if it was a way for bruce to remember her by. now, i personally wouldn’t know what any of that feels like so maybe that throws all my credibility out the window but these are just my ideas.

the season overall i hold onto dear, i know we all have our favorites and this isn’t controversial, but you can’t beat the first. sometimes, i do feel like shows lose their way and loose that little spark when they first got started. and to be honest, i did feel that a little with gotham. not only that (and i’ve said this before so i’m sorry if i’m a broken record) but with gotham it gaves us these characters we are so used to seeing a certain way. the show took these seeming monsters and turned them human and we as watchers related to them. edward nygma was a nerd working at the gcpd. oswald was a guy holding an umbrella, turned dishwasher who then became the king of gotham. poison ivy was just a kid. everything was so new and fresh and exciting. so yeah, i think that’s a wrap on season one

season two

the only thing i am really going to talk about from this season was ‘babitha.’ again, i am sorry for anyone who follows me, is reading this and is a fan of them but in all seriousness: their relationship was toxic as hell. first off, i really didn’t like barbara nor tabitha before hand. barbara always felt whiny and needy while tabitha was played like some ditzy woman for her brother. together they were highly annoying, and i almost hate say that because independently tabitha was a really strong character. i still didn’t like her but i see and appreciate her without her brother. 

going into that i really think there where times barbara dragged her down. times where barbara was unstable, power-hungry and it just seemed like tabitha was not enough unless she had more. barbara also didn’t seem to like the idea that butch had a special place in tabitha’s heart (and then later killed him). i mean this is a funny way, but barbara can come off like that kid who was never told ‘no’ in her life.

not to mention when tabitha died and barbara went and fucked jim for the sake it of, i guess. i know everyone grieves differently and holy batgirl, batman! but it doesn’t seem right.

i wish i had more to say on them with better examples, but i honestly have way more to say regarding the sirens so i’m gonna let you read that instead.

honorable mentions include: bridgit pike deserving better because that girl could never catch a break. and the true ending of herself and karen jennings meeting, falling in love, and leaving gotham together. it honestly makes me sad i made up this ship and it feels like i’m the only one keeping it afloat. 

season three

again, i have my issues regarding the siren’s team up, so i was unhappy when they decided to make tabitha galavan selina’s mentor. i personally would not want to pair someone as vulnerable as selina with someone who physically and mentally abused her, but okay gotham. so that is where my ted grant comment came in, i assume you’ve read the comics and know that ted was one of the few who originally trained selina before becoming catwoman. therefore, i was disappointed they didn’t use him as i find him a better canidate for a mentor but also such an important person in her story. he would have been a great addition to the show. 

of course my first honorable mention must go to the batman returns scene because you’re only hip if piggy-back off of tim burton. as i mentioned above i don’t like how much cam’s selina is compared to pfieffer’s. i don’t understand why they had to re-create something i already think is over hyped when gotham is already a great show on it’s own, it would have been redeeming if they had not done the ‘cat power’ thing in season five but thankfully they didn’t really use it.it really pisses me off how much they really tried to make that scene frame for frame. 

my second honorable mention is going to be given to selina not knowing five was bruce because of his scars & alfred and maria respectively. i could talk a lot about why i love maria and alfred--i understand why people don’t like her and they’re right to do so, however, i do think they are right for one another. they both have jaded pasts, and yeah, the show was teasing love-interests for alfred a here and there but how can you not be happy for him when he saw selina’s mom? i think people should be redeemed and i honestly think maria was at least changed by her time at wayne manor and if you want i wrote a fic about alfred and maria but it’s totally bad writing wise so don’t read it. also. i’m sorry it’s dirty and i couldn’t go through with it. it’s kinda bad

as for selina and five i think there is something imamate about selina knowing bruce’s scars (not gonna lie,i was honestly going to talk about this but i’m too tired and don’t think i have anything meaningful to have)

season four

this is probably going to be the hardest season for me to talk about. and the only two things i’m going to cover are the toxic manipulation and abuse between the sirens team-up, as well as the sexual abuse bruce endured.

on the sirens i just wanna say i hopefully plan in the future to make a master-post involving this trio. i want to be as clear as possible and include the episodes but in case i don’t i’m just going to try my best. keep in mind i made this post regarding this topic a long time ago if you want the quick version. if you do check it out it’s been a while since i read it so it is probably messy and ugly. i also want to point out i’m going to try and talk about how much of the adults in selina’s life failed her. barbara and tabitha hit this mark pretty hard since at least barbara was there in the beginning stages of her life, and the trio themselves were made to appear as some sort of strong power-house.

i get on a surface level why fans like the barabra/tabitha + selina team-up (because girl power i guess), but i honestly can’t get over the abuse selina endured to even get to the point of being in a group. much of their relationship seemed more about tabitha and barbara loving to have her rather then love her, period. there were times during their involvement that it was clear selina was not an equal, and times where being with them made selina weaker (speaking about when she called upon them for help in that one episode where she was trapped, yet you’re telling me this is the same girl who took out that guy’s eyes from season one?) several times, selina appeared to be talked down to and treated as though she couldn’t handle tasks, yet has been homeless her whole life and has broken in and out of prison. 

the interaction between barbara and selina from season one haunts me a great deal for the way barbara spoke to selina and was objectifying her. i made a long-post/ask about it here which i encourage you to look at. this is particularly hard for me to talk about for the simple fact of selina being a child of the streets and barbara speaking to her like she’s trying to pimp her out *for lack of a better way of saying it* i just don’t think this is something an adult should be saying to selina because the truth is that barabara is the adult and should do better. her and tabitha even dressed her up for that club commercial (in which selina was clearly unhappy) and had her running a club full of underage kids developing a drinking problem and one very small boy being taken advantage of. 

people hate it when alfred slapped selina but when tabitha punched selina unconscious and kidnaped her for barbara it’s no big deal

and the episode “to our deaths and beyond” hits deepest and is a clean sign of manipulation when they both tricked selina into bringing bruce so they could mutilate him for his blood. even when he was crying and panicking barbara help him down and tabitha held selina back from helping him. 

here is a gifset about the scene and *lex i’m sorry for using your set if you happen to see this (but please don’t see this because i don’t wanna make anyone feel bad and i just want to speak freely about what i believe) 

again, not treating selina with respect, and when she straight told them she would have not brought bruce BECAUSE HE IS HER FRIEND, tabitha got defense and questioned her loyalty. first off, you are an adult and should know how to act better. she knew selina wouldn’t have brought bruce otherwise because they knew what they were doing was wrong. they knew how much bruce meant to selina and for them to try to guilt her is awful in itself. tricking and manipulating bruce is awful. mutilating him is awful. and holding selina back from helping her friend after you lied to her is awful--this is honestly one of the most sickening things for me to watch *not to mention why you would not want selina to be friends with bruce when he’s clearly a great guy* (but the gifset is pretty no question. shout-out to lex for being so talented)

in addition to this, the entire selina getting shot storyline is right up there too. i understand the writer’s didn’t have enough time to flesh everything out but it wasn’t even mentioned once that barbara and tabitha went to visit her. i believe tabitha might have mentioned it but it was only to get revenge over jeremiah, but they never visited her or checked on her, and she tried to kill herself and still nothing. 

now, i’m not trying to be all biased for bruce wayne because he was there for her every singe day and never left her side. nor would i ever mention that idea of bruce physically helping selina care for her own body when she couldn’t. how he got her that medicine to heal her pain and held her while she screamed that she wanted to die. all the while doing everything he could to help her not feel that way again.

you can say a lot of things about bruce wayne. people love to talk shit about him. but at the end of the day you can never say he was a bad friend, because he was the best. and you can’t say that for barbara and tabitha (not only to add how all the abuse was never brought up nor apologized for)

now, onto something that i am a big advocate for and particularly boils my blood. bruce’s alcohol problem and constant physical abuse by the adults in the show. 

i am mainly speaking about ivy (peyton list) however, while reading a reddit thread someone said that grace’s actress as twenty-one years of age, also kissing david (who i believe was sixteen at the time). someone else, also said that it wasn’t really illegal but i honestly do not care. if the roles were reversed and it was a young girl vs an older man, people would be in outrage and i don’t think that should change be it david.

the scene with peyton particularly bothers me because she is substantially older, and while you could argue it might not be david based off how the scene was shot, i highly doubt it. it’s wrong no matter how you slice it and it particularly bothers me because the abuse surrounding men/boys is taken so lightly. i’m not trying to put presidency over female abuse, as i believe both are equal in how awful they are, but there is evidence behind males being mocked. something that is at a higher volume, and it makes me wonder the number of rapes that go unreported or those who can’t talk about it because they won’t be believed. i’ve already seen it but i would be lying if i said i wasn’t worried for david to be conditioned to think what happened to him was fun or cool.

on top of all the kissing in the club scene followed by waking up in bed with the two girls--i would not hesitate to think he was taken advantage of in some way. i also can’t even think of his drinking days and not think of all the people who potentially abused him.

i obviously can’t speak for david and perhaps i’m grasping at straws but this is something that bother me and no one talks about enough.

season five

nothing to add here except while i did miss cam in the final and it wasn’t complete without here, i very much respect her for her choice to walk away. i think it shows a high level of intelligence and integrity (something i wish i had). and i most admire her for passing on the torch when she felt she wasn’t ready, which i think speaks volumes of her and her character. again, selina one selina will always be my favorite so i love the idea of my favorite staying a young girl before she was ready. i don’t think the show was ready. and as much as i would have loved for her to have a cameo like david did, it isn’t here or there and she said she favorite scene was on the staircase. so as far as i’m concerned, that’s the best place to leave on (even though that wasn’t the last scene but we’re ignoring that)

i hope this wasn’t too wordy or long!

[rushingheadlong]

Okay, so here’s some longer ramblings about my Thoughts on Brian’s use of Queen songs in his solo tours… focusing mainly on the Back to the Light tour here because by the time Brian toured for Another World he had a VERY different opinion about and relationship with Queen (in that I think he had reached a much healthier place with regards to the band than where he was in the early 90s).

Also specific tour info and setlists are all mainly from QueenConcerts.com, I’m not citing anything specifically in-text this time, sorry.

So I’ve talked about some of this before, but basically two big things to keep in mind here are that:

Back to the Light was Brian’s first solo album and first solo tour. (The Star Fleet Project doesn’t count, as he never toured with it, never recorded it with the intention of releasing it, and the album liner notes literally say that it’s not a solo album.) While obviously he had experience touring with Queen, touring solo was an entirely new experience for him with challenges he hadn’t really faced before.

Brian really wanted nothing to do with Queen after Freddie’s death and not just in an immediate, “I’m grieving and we need to figure out how the band is moving forward,” sort of way either - Roger and John were the ones to start sorting out the remaining tapes to make Made in Heaven because Brian refused to help at first. (Yes some of that was because of the BttL tour, but he started helping between tour legs in 1993… there was no reason he couldn’t do the same in 1992 except he just didn’t want to.)

And because of both of those things I think Brian was caught in this place of needing to distance himself from Queen (to give himself space to grieve, to find himself as a solo musician, to build a new identity for himself in the wake of everything that happened in the late 80s/early 90s…) and also recognizing that he couldn’t do that for a wide variety of reasons.

For one thing, Brian didn’t really have enough solo material to fill out an entire setlist. Take a look at a typical setlist from the BttL tour:

23 songs (+ the band introduction) and a 2-song encore. Of those 23 songs, 8 were Queen songs, though not always the full song. The remaining 15 songs included 3 separate solos (not counting Last Horizon) and two cover songs (1812 overture and Since You’ve Been Gone). The encore is another cover song and a Queen song.

(Of the BttL songs that he didn’t play regularly on his tour, Rollin’ Over is technically a cover to begin with, Nothin’ But Blue and Just One Life are both slower songs which Brian seems to have limited in his setlist, and the last is I’m Scared which he may have had trouble adapting to be able to play it live, given the “Chaos Karaoke” section in the middle.)

The point being, that Brian really didn’t have enough solo material to flesh out an entire 1.5-2 hour concert and at this point he didn’t even have enough covers ready to perform like he would for Another World. Picking Queen music to supplement his setlist was the most logical choice to go with.

Brian also would have been in the position where he was simply known best for his work with Queen, and there’s some evidence that he struggled with getting enough recognition for the early legs of the BttL tour. The South American leg in 1992, for example, was only 5 concerts and then for portions of 1993 Brian was actually touring in support of Guns N’ Roses rather than headlining the shows himself. (The first North American leg in early 1993 was also apparently rather poorly promoted.)

So Brian may very well have realized that he needed to lean into the Queen fans who had followed him over to his solo career, at least to some extent - and this in itself might have put him in a difficult position because not only did he not want to tie himself to Queen at this point in time but he probably also had to tread carefully to make sure that he wasn’t seen as trying to “profit” from Freddie’s death or music that was by-and-large considered to be Freddie’s in origin.

And he seems to have handled that by choosing to play songs that he wrote himself. Love of My Life is an obvious exception but he clearly acknowledges during concerts that he’s playing it for Freddie, and even so that song had morphed into a Brian-and-Freddie song over the years anyway just by virtue of how it was performed live over the years. He also plays a snippet of Bohemian Rhapsody, but everything else from Queen on that “typical” setlist are his songs. Even one-off Queen songs are generally his, or else just small snippets of someone else’s song (like the Mustapha clip). No one can say that he’s trying to “profit” off of Queen and Freddie if he’s technically still playing only his own music.

(If we want to veer off into absolute baseless wild speculation for a moment... I do wonder if Brian might have had legal concerns about playing Queen’s music. I don’t know anything about Roger’s work with The Cross, but the BttL tour took place before any of Roger’s true solo tours so this would have been the first time the question of playing Queen music after the “end of Queen” came up. And, unfortunately, it does happen that when groups disband that there are sometimes legal restrictions put in place on who can play what songs on solo projects.)

(I’m not saying that this was something that happened with Queen and, frankly, I don’t think Roger or John would have cared if Brian had wanted to play “their” songs... but I can see Brian, who was already in a very unstable place with regards to his mental health, building this up to be an issue in his own mind and letting his anxiety and depression run wild with it, and ultimately deciding to head off any issues by only playing “his” songs instead.)

Stepping back into things we have proof for, for the most part Brian chose songs of his that were faster and heavier and put them in places in his setlist where he can “power through” them without needing to pay them any special attention or really acknowledge that these are Queen songs to begin with. This lets him keep the energy of his concerts up in general (important for gigs where he was the support act) but also lets him trade on Queen fans’ recognition of songs like Now I’m Here and Hammer to Fall - these songs are known in a way that his solo work wasn’t (and still isn’t), so people who came to his shows to see “Queen’s guitarist” get moments strategically interspersed throughout the concert where they’re given high-energy songs that they know and can enjoy.

And the placement of the Queen songs is very strategic. Brian doesn’t go more than three songs (or 3 songs and a solo) without playing a Queen song, and he ends his concerts with the upbeat and well-recognized Hammer to Fall so even if people had felt “meh” about his solo work they get to leave the concert with a favorite Queen song fresh in their minds instead.

I also think that despite his feelings about Queen and the fact that Brian very clearly struggled with how to handle his obligations to the band in the wake of Freddie’s death, there was probably some amount of comfort in playing familiar songs during this period of time - not only as a way of dealing with his grief, but also to give himself moments where he needed to be less “on” because he already knew these songs so well after years of playing them (and simply by virtue of the fact that he wrote them himself).

If you watch enough of Brian’s solo concerts you can start to notice that there are moments where he tends to forget that he is the lead singer now. He starts wandering the stage during the guitar bits and almost doesn’t make it back to his mic in time to sing again, especially during the Queen songs. And I think for Brian there might have been a feeling of needing his solo songs to be “perfect” because (in his eyes) that was going to make-or-break his career as a musician after the end of Queen, but he could be lax with Queen’s stuff because that’s who he was and he knew the fans would be happy enough to hear him nail the Hammer to Fall guitar solo that it wouldn’t matter if he almost missed singing the next verse.

And, like I mentioned before, these early tours were difficult. He was touring with a new band, he was a support act again instead of the headliner (which meant adjusting his set to fit the limited time he had), he had technical difficulties, he was touring with a new and probably temporary guitar tech… As much as he wanted to stand on his own, I’d imagine these tours were probably incredibly stressful especially in the beginning, and having a few moments to just play music that he knew like the back of his hand was probably a godsend for him.

But at the end of the day, Brian still had an incredibly conflicted relationship with Queen at this time. His cover of God (Dream Is Over) is literally about the ending of Queen and includes the line, “I don’t believe in being Queen anymore, I just believe in me - just you guys and me.” He very strongly felt that Queen was over and he wasn’t in a position where he could handle any obligations to the band, and he was deeply mourning not only his friend’s death but the loss of something that brought him immense happiness over the last 20 years of his life.

On the one hand, the very specific and calculated ways in which Brian incorporated Queen songs into his solo tours is reflective of his attempt to distance himself from the band - but at the same time, Brian has said that returning to touring was like “therapy” for him after Freddie’s death, and I do think that by trying to be strategic about how he used Queen in his solo shows he inadvertently created a situation where he could work through his feelings about the band in an extremely controlled and positive environment.

Rather than being left to flounder and find a way forward on his own, he could go out and perform a carefully curated selection of Queen tracks to crowds that would respond positively and remind him that this music was still loved. He could play Love of My Life for Freddie and get it sung back to him and share his pain and grief with others so he wasn’t alone with it. He could give it his all performing his new music and then take a step back with a Queen song and just breathe and recognize everything that was good and was working for him in those moments.

And I think the fact that the tours were a source of healing for him is a large reason why he started working with Roger and John on Made in Heaven in the fall of 1993, even though he continued touring through mid-December, especially considering that he didn’t join them between tour legs earlier in 1992-1993. Granted, he probably would have eventually joined them regardless but I definitely think that if the BttL tours hadn’t been as therapeutic as they were he would have joined them later, and we probably would have gotten a very different album for Made in Heaven than what the final product did end up being.

(As a final sidenote, it’s worth noting that during his Another World tours Brian had roughly the same ratio of Queen songs to other material, except the bulk of Queen songs were played in one large chunk in the middle of his shows rather than strategically spread throughout the setlist. It seems like rather than building his concerts so slower songs were bookended by faster/heavier songs, he chose to put Queen songs in the middle surrounded by his solo material and covers - possibly because he didn’t feel like he needed to rely on Queen’s material to get him through a show, but he still wanted to acknowledge that music and that chapter of his life especially now that he was in a better place at least in terms of his relationship with Queen.)

[valehirvas]

Hi! I need help understanding what Is gender dysphoria from a transsexual perspective because I'm confuse at my own experiences and the doctors I've seen viewerd dysphoria as only wanting to/believing you are the opposite sex and nothing more

I’m not an expert on this obviously, all I’ve got is just my own experience.

For me, it’s primarily a strong desire and a feeling of “should be” about male sex characteristics. As a child, I would often cry in my bed looking forwards in my life thinking it was already over because I wasn’t a boy, not because being a girl to me was bad in itself - I didn’t view it as limitating or see myself as lesser in any shape or form, I just didn’t feel like my body was as it should have been and the thought of never physically becoming a boy was crushing to me. This came along with various stupid childish misadventures like trying to learn to pee like a boy to feel more comfortable: let’s just say that one ended up in a disaster. I also quite classically tried to explain to my mother how I felt - that I wasn’t like a “girl girl”, I was more a boy girl. Something like that.

I didn’t have social dysphoria at this stage, because I’m very privileged in the sense that my parents and most adults around me allowed me to be exactly who I was, and those who found me disagreeable and too boyish never explicitly made it a gender issue, so I was blissfully unaware of the idea that girls weren’t supposed to act the way I was acting. I was very much a tomboy, but I was never made to feel like this was a bad thing, it was just who I was. I was in a lot of minor trouble often because of how active and curious I was as a kid, but nothing worse than doing what other adventurous kids were getting up to. For example, we liked breaking into the sewer system to chase frogs. Our parents HATED it, for obvious reasons. Things like that. But these were hardly things that only boys got into, and my friend group was rather equally split between the sexes at the time, so yeah, no, my social dysphoria did not exist at this time.

With puberty, things got a lot rougher. It’s tough to tell how much of it was because of dysphoria and how much of it was because of abuse in my life; I was targeted by a school teacher who made my life hell and triggered my depression at the ripe old age of 11, and ever since things were just really difficult for me.

I was still struggling with wanting to be a boy; I only had male role models, only male ideals of what I wanted to grow up to be, in terms of media and idols. I desperately wanted facial hair. Meanwhile, I was being raised by a single mother, and my experience with men was dreadful, and puberty chased off my male friends so I was left living in an all-female bubble, pretty much. I didn’t feel separate from it, but I was certainly different. My friends went down a more traditionally feminine path while I was a clusterfuck of alternative fashion and obscure interests.

My biggest “oh” moment was when I was about 12 years old and for the first time approached my mom to buy my own set of clothes - I’d secretly wanted to dress up as one of the boys for a long time, but this was the first time I really got to try it out. Being a skater was in because this was the early 2000s, so I bought a large t-shirt and a pair of skate shoes, and yes, a skateboard, and when I looked into the mirror like that, I felt like I was in heaven. I felt like things were finally going right and that this was who I wanted to be, that this was who I was supposed to be.

When I was 14, I met my first trans person. I had a terrible crush on him, he was a couple years older than me and identified as an FtM. The year was, what, 2005? I knew instantly that I was the same as him, but it scared me so badly I swore off ever thinking about it again, and that I’d just live as a woman like I was meant to be, because he was extremely suicidal and abused alcohol and drugs, and I didn’t want to die like that. It just seemed like the worst outcome - I knew I was like that, too, but I didn’t want that future. I was afraid if I’d accept how I felt, I’d end up killing myself like he’d tried to do so many times already. So I went DEEP into the closet.

I struggled a lot with relationships, being viewed as a girlfriend and treated as such, like my partners telling me they loved how I looked, touching my body, appreciating it as a female body. I told my first love that I wanted to go by the name of Gabriel, and that I felt like a boy inside, but that was as far as I went. I was 15 at the time. Around the same age I got sent to a group home because the social services were struggling with me (I wasn’t attending school due to my depression and various other mental disorders, and they needed to get me off their books asap). There, I was assigned men’s deodorant because they were out of women’s, and I never went back from there. Little things like that just made me feel so much better in my own skin. Now I at least smelled like a guy. It felt heavenly. In this same place, my supervisor was a nice young woman who borrowed me movies to watch. One of them was Boys Don’t Cry. Let’s just say I was pretty badly traumatized by that, and went ever deeper in the closet, because once more I knew that I was exactly what was portrayed on the screen but the reality of it was... well, I’d either kill myself or be murdered. Nobody wants that. So yeah, there.

Afterwards I went hyperfeminine but also became incredibly toxic because of how bad I felt in my own skin - I was extremely unstable, but at least I was playing my role right, right? I was suppressing how I really felt and trying to force myself into some weird caricature of a woman to spare myself from a painful death.

I used to do a lot of larping as an older teen and a young adult. When I was 18, one of my girlfriend’s characters was transsexual, and I went looking for information about the condition, you know, having the excuse of just “doing research”. That was the turning point. It was so comforting to know that I wasn’t alone, that this was something other people had gone through, too. That I didn’t have to live like this forever.

The things that bothered me most were the fact that I couldn’t grow facial hair, and my chest, which has always been very large. I’ve never had particularly bad dysphoria about the shape and size of my body, and I coped with genital dysphoria by packing, but the fact that I couldn’t grow a beard was the worst thing in the world to me. I went through a year of self-searching and research, during which my girlfriend left me because, duh, she’s a lesbian and I’d just come out as a trans man and it just wasn’t working out anymore, but she stuck by my side to help me become who I wanted to be, and fuck if it wasn’t working. Embracing the way I’d felt and doing the things that helped me feel better - like wearing the kinds of clothes that gave me that sense of comfort and rightness, and binding my chest - helped me to such a big degree that I stopped being completely fucking awful as a person. I stopped flipping out at the smallest of triggers and slamming doors and shouting and being an absolutely unbearable piece of shit, and my ex has repeatedly told me how good it felt seeing me become so much happier before her eyes. I practically changed as a person when I started my transition, first socially and then eventually medically, I became a very calm and difficult to irritate kind of an individual instead of the mess I’d been the years before. And I don’t mean “changed as a person” like I adopted a different personality, just that I stopped being blinded with anger and self-hatred at all hours of the day and lashing out at anyone who dared to love me as I was because I couldn’t.

Starting medical transition scared the shit out of me, because I’ve always been afraid of permanent changes. I nearly ran out of my tattoo appointment last minute because the idea of being marked forever killed me, and I only have one piercing that I can take out without leaving a visible scar for that reason. So obviously, taking that step was horrifying to me, but after doing my time looking into my soul and reflecting on my needs and desires for a year, attending some councelling and in general looking into what I really wanted from my life, I finally entered the diagnostic process, which here took at the time six months at the very least and included a lot of more thorough examinations like a psychological evaluation, chromosomal check and even an IQ test to make sure I was capable of consenting to the treatments.

Testosterone was a gift from gods in how much it eased my dysphoria. I ended up quitting it eventually because of how much it messed with my mental disorders like anxiety, and worsened my psychosis, but in terms of how much more at ease I became with my body, I can’t thank it enough. Seeing my body grow more hair on it, even some of that facial hair I’d always wanted, was blissful. Having my voice drop was comforting and comfortable, and I was excited to practice it and get back my range for singing and speaking, and that whole period of changes was just so good to me. I can’t describe it any other way. My dysphoria’s never come back since I stopped, because the changes that happened were those that I’d so desperately needed the whole time. I never got top surgery because of weight limitations placed on it, and this was an enormous source of pain for me for a long time, but I’ve learned to cope with it now. I’m getting along with my boobs because they’re just a part of my body, that is, unless they start growing cancer which does run in the family, and I’m never not suspicious of them for that reason.

It’s just, it’s hard to describe the story of my dysphoria without telling you all of this. It’s not just one or two things, it’s a history of a lifetime, little things that are good and this grand shadow that follows you around and makes everything more painful and difficult to endure because it’s already weighting you down. The terror of realisations and going back in the closet, but also the unmatched comfort and feeling of finally being how you were meant to be when you see yourself more akin to the picture in your head.

There’s a lot that I’ve left out, and not much of this is probably very helpful, but it is what it is.

[kenkamishiro]

20190318 Translation of Ishida and TK from Ling Tosite Sigure’s interview

I wasn’t expecting another interview with Ishida, since there will already be a bunch with him and the artists in the TG compilation album, but here we are. Very interesting discussion on Ishida and TK’s creative processes, so I highly recommend reading it!

If I’ve made a mistake or mistranslated something, please let me know.

Original interview can be found here.

Ishida × TK from Ling Tosite Sigure - Everyone is suffering and fighting against something

[Tokyo Ghoul AUTHENTIC SOUND CHRONICLE Compiled by Sui Ishida] Interview text by: Kaneko Atsutake Editing by: Yajima Yukako (CINRA.NET Editorial Department)

The Tokyo Ghoul anime reached its conclusion late last year after being broadcasted over 4 cours. The compilation album "Tokyo Ghoul AUTHENTIC SOUND CHRONICLE Compiled by Sui Ishida" that assembles the theme songs from the anime sets itself apart from the typical anime soundtrack. As the phrase "Compiled by Sui Ishida" implies, the author of the original work Ishida Sui himself was responsible for directing and curating the songs used in the anime. From the lineup of recording artists including TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, People In The Box, österreich, amazarashi, Cö shu Nie and Ziyoou-vachi, Ishida's ideas and Tokyo Ghoul's view of the world are conveyed in a distinct manner.

What each of these artists have in common are, to borrow Ishida’s words, “the impression that they are fighting against something,” and to borrow TK’s words, “scraping away a part of themselves to give birth to their creations.” As Ishida states during the interview, he projected himself too much onto his protagonist Kaneki Ken, and during the serialization of his manga he physically and mentally drove himself into a corner. However, it may be safe to say that the intensity of confronting oneself in a way that only creative works can possess is what led to Tokyo Ghoul becoming such a huge hit.

I asked Ishida and TK, who provided the two songs “unravel” and “katharsis” for the anime, to speak about each of their creations and their approach when it comes to confronting themselves.

When I heard about the compilation album, I was reminded once again that it’s rare for an anime to have theme songs that clearly reflect the vision of the original author.

Ishida: At first I didn’t know much about how anime theme songs were decided. I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “The partner company is here, let’s work with this artist,” but when the anime was green-lit, I just kept repeating, “This is what I like, I want to work with this artist.”

TK: I think what’s unique about Tokyo Ghoul is how well its musical appeal can be expressed. I don’t know how it works, it might just be nothing more than conveying what you love, but it’s probably surprisingly rare for the music and the original work it was derived from to be linked in such a genuine way.

What’s more, that musical appeal of Tokyo Ghoul has been conveyed worldwide. There’s a ton of cover songs uploaded on YouTube after all.

“unravel” (opening theme of the TV anime “Tokyo Ghoul”) placed 3rd on “Most Played Songs of Domestic Artists Overseas in 2018″ presented by Spotify.

Ishida: TK-san, have you seen the cover videos on YouTube?

TK: They get sent to me if it stands out. Sometimes they’re already up only a day after the original song is released. A pretty amazing feat even if it’s just replicating the song (laughs). Whenever I see that, I can really feel just how much of an influence and pull Sui-san has.

When I was asked if I could listen to the album, I felt that the lineup was very consistent with Sui-san’s feelings, despite each band having their own different philosophy. Ling Tosite Sigure and People In The Box (hence referred to as “People”) are completely different. People and Ziyoou-vachi are completely different, but I can tell that Sui-san felt something from them. It’s because you can see the work and the people behind it, that I became interested.

I’m not really interested in omnibuses, after all (laughs). If the selections aren’t made with a clear intention in mind, it just becomes a jumbled mess.

Ishida: I agree.

TK: But when I think about how your manga was born and grew together with these songs, I can listen to the flow of them in great depth. I thought it was fascinating how it feels like these songs embody Tokyo Ghoul from beginning to end.

Sui-san, did you have some sort of criteria when deciding which artists you wanted to participate?

Ishida: At first I was thinking of a “person who looks like they’ve suffered, with an androgynous voice” kind of image...but that went out the window because of groups like Cö shu Nie...a serious disposition then? As if they’ve been fighting against something. I have that feeling inside me too, so I feel like this is my way of empathizing with them.

TK: When I’m listening to an album, it feels like a part of themselves is being scraped off no mater what song I’m listening to. Even though Ziyoou-vachi’s sound is very upbeat, you can feel how delicate Avu-chan’s (Ziyoou-vachi’s vocals) voice is. You can definitely hear it in each song, whether it be fighting or suffering.

TK: It seems like this time you’ll be talking with various people (the CD booklets contain conversations between Ishida and all artists participating in the album. The conversation with TK contains a different version than the one shown in this interview). I’m sure you’ll be talking a lot about creative works and music with the others, so I thought I’d talk about something else, are you fine with that? (laughs) I think even the people who love Tokyo Ghoul don’t know anything at all about Sui-san as a person...though I’m not in a position where I can talk about people (laughs).

Ishida: Yeah. I want to hear about you instead (laughs).

TK: But I’m worried about you. Didn’t you mention once before that you were only eating chicken tenders?

Ishida: Yeah, I remember. There was one time where I didn’t take in any carbohydrates and only lived off of chicken tenders. And recently I’ve been eating paprika raw.

TK: You’ve on a whole new level now (laughs).

Ishida: And after, something like celery. I began thinking I needed to eat more vegetables, but because cooking is such a hassle, I’ve been eating anything that looks nutritious raw like celery or paprika. It’s not like I’m eating a ton of it, I’m just standing around for a bit munching on paprika every now and then (laughs).

TK: Munching on paprika every now and then, what kind of life is that? (laughs)

Ishida: I’m sitting down all day since I’m writing, drawing, and doing menial tasks for long periods of time. So the stimulation from standing up and walking around eating something reduces my stress and passes some time.

TK: Do you complete your work in your studio?

Ishida: I wouldn’t call it a studio, but yes, when I shut myself in there I do. When I was serializing my manga weekly I wouldn’t have any time to go out, so I’d move around as much as possible inside the house, or even walk a block around the neighbourhood for a few minutes. That was my life.

Between when your manga was being serialized and now, your pace of life must have changed as well.

Ishida: It’s completely changed. I have so much free time now (laughs).

TK: Have your thought patterns changed? Yesterday I just completed my next song “P.S. RED I” but while I was working on it I was constantly thinking, “What do I do about the lyrics? How can I arrange the instrumentals while I’m doing the mixing?” That song took up most of my brain space, but when I’m not doing anything creative my thought patterns drastically change.

To me it feels like serialization goes on forever, so my concern is about the thought patterns during that period. Plus when that suddenly comes to a stop, would you be struck by a sense of emptiness, or the contrary, where the next thing you want to work on will appear right in front of your eyes? I wonder which one it would be.

Ishida: I was emotionally unstable every day soon after my series ended. The moment I finished I was like, “Is it over?” and I was in bewilderment for half a day or so until it finally sank in and the next day I was thinking, “I did it! It’s really over!” Instead of feeling accomplished, I felt free because I didn’t have to draw anymore (laughs).

But that feeling lasted for a few days, and after I became scared since I didn’t have anything to do now. “Huh? What am I supposed to do now?” While I was serializing my manga I was so sleepy that if I laid down I could pass out in two seconds. But now that it was over, I couldn’t sleep because I was so tired, and I ended up having insomnia for about a month.

TK: So your next idea didn’t come to you right away.

Ishida: That’s right. Rather, I came up with concepts during my serialization. The busier I was, the more I wanted to do something else, the more I wanted to draw another manga. While my manga was serialized in Weekly Young Jump, I’d say weird things in my head like, “I wonder if this can’t be serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump?” (laughs) I might have a hot idea and think, “I want to build more on this,” but once your serialization ends, that incredible feeling disappears.

TK-san, how do you feel once you’ve finished a piece?

TK: That I’ll never be able to make another one again. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since the second album (released in 2007). Since the title of that album is “Inspiration is DEAD” (laughs).

Ishida: Really!? (laughs)

TK: I’ve started thinking about it again recently, but it’s something that I’ve always thought about for a long time. But now I’ve come full circle and started to think the contrary, “What if it [inspiration] might not be dead?”

But I think it’s true that it’s when you’re chasing after something that inspiration really hits you. Since my mind is moving at a lightning speed right before finishing a piece, it’s during those last moments that I find lots of things I didn’t notice before. And because I can’t bring myself to overlook them, I end up saying, “Give me another hour.”

Ishida: I totally understand. I always end up noticing or adding in new things right before the deadline.

TK: Every time I think, “Why didn’t I notice this in the beginning?”, but it’s never noticeable then. There’s certain revelations that unfortunately only come at the very end.

Ishida: It is unfortunate.

In the beginning we talked about having “fighting against something” in common, and Sui-san said, “We don’t know what we’re fighting against.” But if you think about it, I wonder if it can be phrased as “fighting against ourselves” or “confronting ourselves”. What do you think, TK-san?

[T/N: This wasn’t mentioned in this interview, so they may have been talking about this during the other Ishida x TK interview that will be in the TG compilation album.]

TK: I don’t think there’s anything like that inside of me.

Ishida: Oh really?

TK: “Can I create music from within my empty self?” That’s where I’m starting from.

I mentioned earlier about how once I’ve finished creating a piece, I think about how I won’t be able to do it again the next time. But by then I’ve dug deep down into myself, deep down to the very bottom, grabbed everything I can, and after coming back up to the surface, I’m in a state where I’m devoid of anything inside me. I’ve been gradually digging deeper, digging in different places, and just barely writing new pieces. It feels like I’ve dug all the way to Brazil once I’ve finished digging (laughs).

Ishida: You’re gonna split Brazil in half (laughs).

TK: If I’m given a story based off an anime like now, I can just throw myself out there because the story already exists. But when I’m making my own creation starting from scratch, I have to confront my empty self and start asking myself, “What do I want to create?”

That’s why I’m so happy once I’ve grabbed onto something, and the moment I think, “This might be it,” I feel like I’ve been saved. That’s when I’m truly able to feel that I still have something I want to hold on to.

Can Tokyo Ghoul also be considered a work that you’ve dug deep into yourself in order to draw?

Ishida: Tokyo Ghoul is a work that almost has a “me, myself and I” kind of mentality. I should’ve just tried drawing an ordinary manga from the start. Like an average everyday manga (laughs).

I didn’t know much about manga, I just wanted to start my manga right away without any self-reflection. But when I started drawing it, I had to face myself a lot more than I expected. I found it very tiresome, not understanding the nature of my roots, not being able to draw unless I dug into myself in various ways.

TK: What volume were you on when you realized that?

Ishida: I think it was a bit before OG volume 7? I was very conscious of it in volume 7, so I decided that I had to suffer. I came up with the idea of torturing Kaneki, and because I thought I wouldn’t be able to draw it if I didn’t do the same to myself, I drove myself into a corner.

How did you do that?

Ishida: To put it simply, by just not sleeping and working non-stop. At the time, I slept so little that I’d lost my sense of taste. But I thought that by doing that I’d get closer to Kaneki, so I continued to step it up, letting it become a part of me more and more, until I was no longer in the right state to draw manga. Actually, there was a time where I was just barely drawing for a while. That was the first time I thought that creating was dreadful.

TK: To me it feels like what you experienced up to your sixth volume is similar to my experience with my first album. For my first album, because I was drawing on a blank canvas, I could create freely without a thought. Because at first there was definitely something on the canvas that I could see, it could take form if I placed something there.

However, once you’ve got something down in the middle of the canvas, when you start drawing on it again, it’ll depend on my choices as to how to expand the canvas, where I should draw.

Ishida: I see.

TK: There was this one moment where although Kaneki had looked in front of him until now, he could no longer see what he wanted to do because he had retreated deep into himself. I think that’s close to how I felt regarding my second album.

After all, it’s really difficult to continue on from there. In my case, it’s whenever I’m writing a new album, but in the case of manga, when I think about how you have to write a new chapter every week...it leaves a weird taste in my mouth.

This may be hasty to ask, but now that it’s been a while since your series has ended along the anime having concluded, how are you thinking about the concept of your next work?

Ishida: I won’t have an easy time starting it if I don’t have a firm objective in mind. I know it’ll be difficult for me to get started, so I need a really good reason and some degree of preparation.

Isayama Hajime of Attack on Titan also says something similar in “Jounetsu Tairiku”.* He said, “But I probably have to start over again,” and I thought, “Is that so, that sucks.” (laughs) So right now I’m in the middle of searching for a reason, the significance of it, my next motivation.

[T/N: “Jounetsu Tairiku” is a documentary. Isayama had an interview with them back in November 2018 which included talking about Attack on Titan’s final arc.]

TK-san, once you made your first album and felt empty for the first time, what did you find was important to help you move on and start your next work?

TK: It’s really tough for me since I have to scrape off a part of myself when creating something, but I feel very strongly that I only exist in my songs or during live concerts. I’ve got the sense that I really might disappear if I quit, so I can’t stop.

Even if I say I feel empty, if my empty self disappears, then I truly will disappear. I think it’s also different from motivation, but it’s because I feel that way at a cellular level that I can continue to keep making my next piece.

End of the interview.

[rowxngreen]

18 years old from tucker, atlanta and has lived in atlanta for 18 years . currently working as a computer repair person/staff at his family’s store in marietta [ kit , 25 , mst ] | @atlanta-rpg​

tw: self harm, depression, sexual assault, substance use

Age: 18

Gender: Transmasculine, he/him

[Boxcar - Jawbreakers] - “Uhhh, shit, I guess if I had to pick a theme song it’d be Boxcar. I like the whole vibe of it, like, calling out punk purists. Punk should have no room for purism. If you say you’re a punk and you’re not a nazi, cause in the words of Dead Kennedys ‘nazi punks fuck off,’ you’re welcome. That’s what the whole point of punk was, dude. It’s the ultimate counter culture movement ‘cause it welcomes fucking everyone unlike mainstream culture.”

D.O.B: February 14, 2001

“Why the name Rowan?”

“So, like, originally I was named Hannah. Which is totally a bullshit name and when I met my forever family I decided to give myself a new name and I wanted it to be all nature-y because they all had nature names. They like helped me look and I found Rowan and read this folklore about how a rowan tree was where the devil hanged his mother and I knew right then. That was my name.”

Ethnicity: Half white, half mestizo

Enneagram: 8

Relationship Status: single - “Single and definitely not ready to mingle. If it happens it happens but I sure as hell ain’t seeking it out and I don’t think it’s gonna happen anyways so it don’t fucking matter.”

Sexual Orientation: Unsure  “Yeah, I don’t really wanna think about sexy shit. I was raped as a kid, I’m not especially into remembering it. And all this sexual orientation shit makes me remember it.”

Appearance:

Height: 5’0

Build: Smaller than he looks from far away. He’s actually really tiny. And he hates it.

If he wasn’t so intimidating he could be cute. With a small stature, high cheekbones, a cocky swagger and big brown eyes he is definitely attractive. But the scowl that takes over his features whenever he’s around someone he doesn’t trust and the aggression that seems to exude from every pore disguises that attractiveness pretty well.

Ripped flannels paired with crop tops and t-shirts layered with fishnets are among Rowan’s signature looks. There’s something decidedly sexual about how he dresses but he doesn’t seem to register that. He just wears what he likes and hopes will scare people. He displays his self harm scars like a badge of honor – or insanity. They seem to warn: I AM UNSTABLE, DON’T FUCKING TALK TO ME.

Look at Rowan the wrong way and at the very least he’ll gnash his teeth at you. At the most he’ll pull a knife on you and threaten to gouge out your eyes if you ever look at him again. He claims he tried to once but that’s unlikely. He would be in jail if that was the case. …right? Better not to risk it.

History:

Rowan was born to a teenage mother in an abusive household.

When Melissa Webber got pregnant at only age 15 she knew she would be in trouble. Her father, Frank, wouldn’t approve. Melissa kept it from the man as long as she could. Eventually, of course, he found out. Frank was livid. Melissa was banned from leaving their little trailer, she was banned from seeing her friends, and she was even banned from seeing her boyfriend of just over a year and the father of her baby.  She was to be homeschooled for the rest of her high school career so, in the words of Frank, she could no longer “be a slut.”

Her baby was born on Valentine’s Day in a house with no love left. Melissa’s mother had died when Melissa was only 11, and it often felt like she took any warmth and care that had been lingering in the corners of rooms, hidden among the shadows with her. How funny then that Rowan, initially named Hannah Jane, was born on Valentine’s day.

Frank’s anger and the isolation he forced on Melissa eventually pushed the girl to run away. Rowan was only 6 months old. She initially swore she would be back for her baby when she had a safe place to stay. She never came back. Before Melissa left, Rowan had been largely ignored by Frank. Now, however, he became the scapegoat. Melissa hadn’t left because she was isolated from the world. Nor, apparently, had she left because of the intense abuse she faced. Instead, according to Frank, she had left because the baby had ruined her life.

Frank turned this rage on the baby. Rowan’s earliest memories involve him being tied onto a tiny children’s chair for hours because Frank didn’t want him to make a mess in the house; Frank coming into the bedroom at night to ‘visit’ with him in a way that, to this day, has left Rowan extremely anxious about sex and sex repulsed; Frank holding his hand against a hot burner to 'teach [him] a lesson’ (Rowan was never told what the lesson was); having his face pushed under water in the bath to stop him from crying; and other acts that could only be described as torture. Rowan lead an extremely isolated life for the first several years of his life. He was homeschooled, like his mother, and besides Frank and a handful of Frank’s friends he was largely alone. Most of his socialization came from the television. Frank justified this by saying school was how Melissa got pregnant so he wouldn’t “make the mistake of sending another one there to be a slut.” Instead rowan was kept inside the house during school hours.

It had been noted that Frank was capable of abuse and neglect when Melissa was little (she had spent several months in the system when she’d come to school with visible bruises as a child), however, for the first 7.5 years of Rowan’s life, overworked and under-competent social workers consistently overlooked the abuse in the Webber household. Eventually one of the social workers noticed and cared enough to go through the proper procedures to get Rowan out of that living situation. She reported it to her supervisor and a full scale investigation was launched. The abuse was soon discovered through talking to and examining Rowan and Rowan was removed from the situation. For the first time in his life, he was safe – though Rowan did not know what ‘safe’ meant or felt like yet.

Rowan was given a temporary placement in the Green household, because, at the time, the Greens were acting as an emergency house for children who had just been taken away from their parents. He was only supposed to be with them a week but the Green adults fell in love with the skittish, self reliant child they had taken in. They asked for him to stay with them and began the process of adopting him soon after.  It took a long time for Rowan to realize he was safe and he was loved. For months he put up with people touching him because he was afraid that if he spoke out he would face some sort of punishment. For months he distrusted everyone in the Green household despite how much they loved him. He was always wary, always waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him to be hurt again. He was placed into therapy when he was young and has gone off and on since.

The Greens are a stereotypical homeschool family. Rowan was kid number 11, they own their own business and they bake their own bread. Mr. Green is a carpenter and Mrs. Green runs the little gift shop + bakery in Marietta. There were so many siblings that the older ones had to help care for the little ones when the younger ones were little. To this day the entire family is very close knit and the older siblings constantly rely on the younger ones to watch their children.

The Greens practice a form of schooling called unschooling. It is a child-led education where children get to decide what they study and when. Additionally, they’re what’s called whole-life unschoolers and the green parents take a stance on parenting where they don’t give their children orders. They talk to them and treat them as if they are capable of making their own choices and decisions, except when it is something that puts their health at risk.

Rowan thrives with that educational setting. He learned to read so he could use his brother’s computer, he learned math while cooking and found it fascinating so he learned it more in depth, he learned how to build robots and how to break into the coding of popular websites well enough that he even figured out how to monetize it when he was 12 (he tests websites for weaknesses and when he finds them he points it out and gets paid to do so). He learned how to play keyboard and guitar and began recording and publishing his music on Soundcloud and Youtube.

Within a few months of living with his new family, his new dad built him a beautiful, fully enclosed, treehouse in the large tree in their backyard. Rowan loved it so much he lived in it for almost a year only coming in to use the bathroom or on the most sweltering days when his family insisted he stay cool inside. He took his baths in the kiddie pool since he lived “outside in [his] own house now.”

Around this time he got a pirate costume and a knight costume. He changed his name to Rowan and began to trade off between wearing those two costumes. When he was in the knight costume he insisted on being called Brave Sir Rowan. When he was a pirate he insisted he was Cap’n Ro.

For a period of Rowan’s life you wouldn’t know he went through the abuse he went through. He seemed happy, healthy, well adjusted.

And then puberty hit.

With puberty came deep gender dysphoria. Suddenly his body was changing in ways he hated. He was developing curves and stopped growing. All the mental illness his family thought they had under control resurfaced along with a large new helping of self-loathing triggered by dysphoria.

Rowan began to self harm. It started small. He would lie in bed and fantasize about cutting off the parts of him that didn’t look right when he saw himself in the mirror. One night, he crawled out of bed and grabbed a kitchen knife and tried cutting his breasts just to see if it was possible. The scratch was so small it didn’t bleed. But, relief flooded through him. He was able to breathe and the crushing weight of dread had let up just a bit. He stopped crying and crawled back into bed and slept well for the first time in weeks.

Whenever he was upset he began to run to the sharp sting of a blade. He stole a pocket knife and a pack of razors and hid them in his treehouse. His family discovered the harm almost a year after he started. By then the little scratches had turned into proper injuries. He was immediately sent back to therapy and was diagnosed with gender dysphoria soon after. 

Rowan socially transitioned. It helped a little bit but pandora’s box was open. His brain had tasted self destruction and it was hooked.

The last several years have been a slow but steady spiral downwards. He made friends with other sad, breaking kids and they broke together. They began to experiment with alcohol and substance use young, Rowan would swear he’s fine but whenever you put alcohol in his hands he binge drinks to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. Whenever there’s a chance for him to get high off something new he takes it, barring only the most stigmatized of drugs.

Somewhere during this spiral he realized the easiest way to make people leave him alone was to scare them. So he began dressing in ways he thought would scare them and carrying himself like at any moment he could snap.

Personality:

“Sometimes I wonder what his life could have been if he had come to us as a baby and if we had known about his gender. You should have seen him when he was little. He was such a cute kid and was so passionate about, well, everything. And he’s so smart it’s intimidating. But then he hit puberty and we all lost what little stability he had. Last time I talked to mom, I heard he set a trashcan in the park on fire while he was drunk or high or both and it breaks my heart because I know he’s a good kid underneath it all. He’s just a good kid who’s really struggling right now. I hate it because I can’t even trust him to be alone with my kids anymore. What if that comes out around them and he hurts my crew?” – Clay Green, older brother.

“Rowan likes to act like he’s tough shit but he’s not. He can’t sleep unless he has his favorite stuffed animal with him and once I saw him crying over the sounds sloths make. The tough guy act is just that. An act. I mean, look at his cat. He only has the thing because he saw it was scared and got gentle with it. And now he’s the only person that cat tolerates and he has it perched in his tree house half the time so you can’t even go up there if you’re not him. Which, like, not cool when your little brother is practically sprinting to a drug addicted future and you really should be making sure he doesn’t have the worst of it in your parents house.” – Rosemary Green, older sister.

At first interaction it’s easy to think Rowan is all rough and ready to fight. And that’s exactly what he wants you to think. His fighter persona is designed to scare anyone who would hurt him away. Give him some time and a little patience and it becomes obvious that Rowan is much more complex than that. Rowan is confusing. There are so many elements to him that it’s hard for any one person to get a full picture of him.

There’s his brash fighter side – the part of him that stabbed a child for being mean to his sister once. There’s the sweet side of him that takes lost animals and lost people under his wing and cares for them when they can’t seem to care for themselves.

There’s the engineer part of him that builds useless robots constantly just because he’s bored. There’s the witch part of him that has an altar in his bedroom and that celebrates every pagan holiday he knows about so none of the gods feel left out.

There’s still a childlike part of him that hangs out in the tree fort his dad made him as a kid and still holds conversations between his stuffed animals. There’s the teenage part of him that’s looking for any substance to numb the pain of becoming an adult coupled with the pain of his past.

There’s the creative part of him that comes up with bizarre ideas for robots, off the wall pranks (like leaving loaves of homemade bread all over someone’s living space) and interprets almost every song he likes into his own version. And then there’s the part of him that named his cat “Cat.”

Rowan is nothing if not complicated and confusing. He doesn’t mind that though. He’s used to being the smartest person in any room he’s in but he doesn’t make it a big deal. He just watches everyone else and works on mentally figuring out how to fix the coding of whatever website he’s working on at the moment.

He doesn’t love easily but when he loves he loves deeply and unconditionally. If you find yourself lucky enough to be one of Rowan’s chosen few know you will have him on your side for life. He’s ride or die with everyone he cares about.

Hobbies:

Robotics

Singing (he actually has a really good voice)

Collecting stuffed animals

Programming

Baking (he works at a bakery but he also just enjoys it)

Sloths. They’re his favorite thing in this world and he is almost obsessive in his quest to see sloths, collect sloth mementos, and learn sloth facts.

Trivia:

Rowan has a car named Bloody Mary. It’s an old fashioned VW Beetle he spray painted black and red. He got a beetle because he “wanted to inspire violence in children.”

He’s really good with anything that uses his hands. Baking, playing guitar, building robots, etc. If it’s a hands-on, kinesthetic task Rowan excels at it.

He is terrified of butterflies and giraffes.

He collects stuffed animals so intensely that it can be hard to walk in his bedroom because there are so many stuffed animals lying around. He sleeps with a build-a-bear every night who he’s named Floyd and a stuffed animal of the Peanuts character Woodstock (who he has named Oscar).

Health:

Rowan downplays how he’s feeling most of the time. The physical abuse and neglect he faced as a child left him with chronic pain. He doesn’t mention it very often. He doesn’t want to admit to any weaknesses. If you watch him closely enough you’ll notice him rubbing his joints or squirming in his seat. Those are his biggest tells with his pain.

At 7 he was diagnosed with dyslexia and he still struggles to read and code (coding is worth the struggle, reading is not). At 13 he was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Besides changing his pronouns he doesn’t seem too interested in transitioning (he’ll tell you he doesn’t see a point but in reality he’s afraid of the medical procedures involved). At 15 he was diagnosed with mood disorder not otherwise specified. He was given medication that he promptly threw out but he still attends weekly therapy sessions to try and help.

He doesn’t think it’s doing anything but sometimes it’s just easier to go along with the things expected of you.

Connections:

Bandmates: Rowan can either be the lead singer, guitar or bass/keyboards but the band should definitely be punk/post-punk influenced. I’m super broad within that. Want a sound closer to Pale Waves? Cool, sounds good. You into The Smiths and want that dance depression? kk, you got it. you into old school punk and want melvins vibe? coolcoolcool, love to live hard dude

Friends: Rowan might be a little shit but he’s a little shit who has a handful of friends. Because he’s the youngest sibling in his household, he gets along with older people really well.

Mentors: This lost teen needs people to look up to. It takes a lot to break through to him but he needs someone who’ll try.

Adversaries: These are people who rowan Does Not get along with. This can be for personality reasons or just simply because they try to keep him out of trouble and he wants very much to be in trouble.

Biological Dad: I love the idea of Rowan’s dad watching from the sidelines and watching Rowan grow up but not being able to legally reach out until Rowan is an adult. NOTE: Rowan’s dad needs to be hispanic. Rowan himself is half hispanic and it’s not on his mom’s side bc I wasn’t about to make the brown people abusive and add to that stigma.

Reluctant Romance: Rowan doesn’t want to date. He really doesn’t. BUT! I love the idea of him falling for someone and someone falling for him. I’m even down for an uncomfortable age difference so long as that’s acknowledged in plot. ;)

[brittnee-nicole]

2:23 am

my inability to being mentally strong when I’m sleepy and vulnerable, laying in bed late I get all these insane type what if thoughts. when I can’t shut my brain off it goes to all the places it probably shouldn’t. I mostly lay here and think about everything connecting day in and day out, good or bad, through personal experiences or what I see and hear displayed through different peoples character and relationships. it is strange you can either be handed this life of peace and happiness, you could have worked really hard for it, yet you simply will never be true and defrosted until forgiveness from you to you and the person(s) who dug deep to hurt you. I probably sound like a broken record. but after numerous failed relationships and friendships there are many things I should talk about regarding how I handled my understanding with the anger and betrayal that weighed on me. Was all of this intended? one of my biggest regrets is knowing true love & letting my (at the time) unaddressed mental issues dictate the direction of the entire thing. I fell in love with my best friend, like every human we had our flaws, toward the end my friends would sit back and watch him manipulate because he had the advantage. I was weak, unstable, could hardly work, I never wanted to go anywhere unless it was with him, I started to feel insecure around him which is something I had never in a million years thought that I would feel or had experienced prior to the fall out. I’m not mad at how he treated me in the last year; we were both confused, hurt, and desperate for God or someone/anyone/anything to lead us into the right direction. for me, forgiveness played a huge role in the outcome & today is why it’s so important to me. I am not a mean person, I never want to see you fail, I never want to see you have a bad day, I never want you to feel confused, I never wanted you to feel inadequate. I lost myself so deeply throughout this entire thing that I became someone I wasn’t. I was trying to mend broken pieces while I wasn’t capable. during what felt like 100 hour miserable and lonely days, I’d pick up a book to read for every word I traced back to him. I remember I would do a load of laundry and, not to be dramatic, fall to my knees with the towel I was folding on my face... weeping tears into it. It sounds silly, looking back. but I’ll never forget realizing that day; you cannot and will not EVER force a person to love you.

sounds so simple, right? this is when I became angry with myself for participating in a chase. trying to prove something to someone who was supposed to know my heart. that wasn’t me but that’s what I felt like I was worth. we know there’s heartbreak, that’s inevitable. when people ask me why I talk about it, “why do you still care?” “ARE YOU NOT OVER HIM?” yes. why do I care? Because I always will. I will always take that period of my life and learn and grow from it. for me, it was for the longest because I blamed myself. I replayed every word in every conversation, tried to analyze literally everything before realizing I was excusing their actions that they were too afraid to admit to. I think I said earlier we were both flawed. they say closure is important, I don’t buy it. remaining cordial with people that have burned you and vice versa is where it needs to begin again and end. when I was about 15, my parents divorced after a 22 year marriage. my mom was crying on her bed one night, didn’t know I was in there but from the cracked door I said to her, “I thought you were stronger than this.” and maybe this was my karma because I thought I was too.

My point being: it is crucial that we acknowledge all of the times in our lives where we felt we were on our slipperiest slope, falling into the pitch black hole with nothing to grab onto, under the heaviest rock. guilt and the way you allow yourself to grieve can sculpt your entire future. when I love you, I love you big and I don’t want to waste another second thinking about, after all that has happened in between then and now, what I should have done and what would have happened if I did. in the midst of the chaotic messy times I remember he always used to say, “everything happens for a reason” to the point of it pissing me off. tonight, however, and most days recently, I find myself thankful that was stamped on my life during that hell. it’s been almost a year and mentally I have come a long way. although I still have a long way to go, I have some really important people to thank for seeing some terrifying parts of me and sticking around. find friends who listen and want the best for you... not just a little but all the way. If you want to find a man, find one that knows your cracks but is with you because he wants to be there to witness the foundation become a little less shaky, not take advantage of it. & I don’t care how close you are —

your. mom. ALWAYS. knows best.

I’m learning to forgive, with boundaries, more and more each day. I have forgiven my past mistakes and people for how they reacted to them. We do incredibly questionable things when we are upset, angry, and in weird places of our lives. I have accepted my questions that will go unanswered for the rest of my life and that’s fine at this point. I want everyone, even you, to sleep well at night and remember that each day God wakes us up to new opportunities. I am focusing on myself and watering the relationship I am in & the friendships that I have. It turns out, everything does happen for a reason you just don’t know it when your head is buried in your hands. find your purpose, live your truth, be honest with yourself and most importantly: forgive.

#x #personal #honest #journal #diary #new

[patfkimatl]

Graduation

Dear to whomever this may concern,

I’m sitting on my laptop, awake at 3:38 AM, at the age of 26, writing a post about my journey through college. I’m writing about my life, not because it was the best time of my life but because college was the hardest time of my life. Often times I wonder how I’ve made it this far in life because not many people can say they went through what I persevered through. 

Rewind way back to when I was about five or six years old, a beautiful day in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. I was one of the brightest or even the smartest kid in kindergarten class. I attended a school filled with tons of White people and not to be racist but I definitely stood out from the rest. To be one of the most intellectual kids in my class was a great feat. My teacher would always let me in on the prizes for completing all my assignments first or getting the best scores in class. But one day all that came to a halt.

One day, I was going to feed my Korean Jindo (a breed of dog/wolf) which was untamed and sitting outside our chilly Poconos house to fend off bears. As I was going to feed him, he picked me up by neck and slammed my head on concrete. Next, the Jindo began to dig his teeth inside my bare skin and began to eat at my flesh. With my own will, I was crawling away screaming for help and asking my mother or father to come and save me from the reckless pain I was experiencing as I was practically dead meat. I was eventually able to crawl out of the concrete onto the grass as the Jindo was piercing his teeth, feeding on its’ prey. I was covered in blood as my mom finally came into the picture, she took me to the shower as I was being showered in blood and water. I remember vividly that I was screaming and crying to my mom and asking her if I was going to make it out alive. 

It’s funny because when I look back at myself throughout my life, I was that one devoted Catholic kid who was able to breakdance at many social events, dance competitions and for entertainment industries. I personally don’t want to brag about my skills but I was definitely a good breakdancer who had a huge ceiling filled with potential. After some injuries came into play, I decided that dancing wasn’t for me and eventually wanted to play basketball. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t the best and I was mediocore at best during high school.

Fast forward to college where I’m experiencing party life at around 18,19 years old and I first experience my taste of college parties, drugs, girls and the whole shenanigans of college culture. It all started with what we call the gateway drug of today, marijuana. I began smoking and drinking for the first time and eventually found myself indulging in drugs like cocaine. I’m a basketball player for the Korean Team at my school in Atlanta, Georgia and I’m actually improving a lot on my basketball skills. I enjoyed it, and began to love the game just as much as I used to love dancing. I played everyday, ended up working many different jobs and managing all types of club events and so forth. 

Eventually, I wasn’t able to do all that. One day out of the blue, I found out one of my closest friends passed away from a drug overdose, my aunt died from cancer and another friend of mine died of the same drugs I was taking. Food for thought for somebody who doesn’t know about hard drugs but cocaine can be common in party settings. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t exposed to just simply cocaine. My few encounters with the drug ended up going from somebody cutting my cocaine with meth, somebody handing me crack or fentanyl instead of cocaine and me snorting lines of meth and crack overdosing twice throughout my college years. Both times were tragic and as somebody who was expecting a simple high ended up playing with the devil. If I had known I was doing those drugs, I would have never done them respectfully.

That’s not the crazy part tho. I experienced what people like to say as withdrawal during my first overdose. I ended up withdrawing and next thing you know I’m leaving my college classroom and I’m in my bed internally screaming louder than the roar of a lion. The feeling I’m about to describe to you is unpleasant so feel free to stop reading here. I mentally, physically and metaphysically was feeling bugs crawl all over my body while my soul was leaving my body and floating above me. I was all conscious while this was happening so if you can only imagine the pain one goes through with bugs crawling all over their body and their soul cringing, clinging onto death.

After my first overdose, I ended up in a Las Vegas rehabilitation center because why? My mom thought I was just stressed and overworked from school and serving at a restaurant. She decided to take me to California to go hiking and attend prayer services during these hard times. I’m going psycho at some point on the way to California and my mom sends me to the hospital. As I’m going through the stretcher at the hospital, I get taking to a certain room. I get out and ask where my mother is to the worker and next thing you know I’m handcuffed in my stretcher and I completely blackout. I blacked out for a good eternity and ended up in a different part of the hospital. I woke up in a confused, retarded state as the workers grabbed me when I tried to escape and eventually gave me a shot to put me down. I woke up, paralyzed, and having a hard time speaking as I slur my speech.

There were was a point for about a week where I was in so much pain and could not function and I was having a seizure. I cried as I was partially paralyzed in my hospital bed wondering if I’ll make it back to see my friends and family in Georgia.

I know this all sounds like a movie because it was. I slowly started recovering to health and eventually I was walking, talking and was even playing sports again at the rehab facility.

Now picture this, hopping from psych ward to psych ward across America as you’re this unstable, mentally ill person. I didn’t just attend one psych ward, I must have attended at least 4 different ones, a total of 6 times. I was even in a psych ward in Alabama at one point. Roll Tide, right?

Fast forward to now and here I am, travelled around America, travelled to my home country of South Korea and I’m writing this story of success as I am finally graduating from college and working for a top three live cryptocurrency company. Some may not consider the trials and tribulations I went through as a success story but I consider it a miracle. Every day I ask God, why didn’t I die when I was mauled by a wolf-like dog? Why am I still alive today? I question God’s existence and even wonder if I’ll make it till tomorrow. I’m writing all of this because I had times where I didn’t have clean water to drink because I was living in a broken down house, homeless for a short period of my life. I’m writing this story because I had points in my life where I experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I’m writing all of this so that one day, somebody will read my story and not say damn, he went through a lot or that his pain was greater than mine. I’m writing this to let others know that even in darkness, there is light. I’m writing this because even when you feel like there is no point in living and crying to yourself at your middle school track field, praying to God that one of your closest friends would come back to life, you choose to live. I’m hoping that you choose to live life to the fullest and not to be perfect but to know that you are worthy, loved and appreciated even when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. 

All praise be to God.

Sincerely,

Patrick F. Kim

[wayward-marvel-sommer1196]

Mentally Unstable

Pairing: Jensen x reader (platonic till the end), Jared x reader (platonic)

Trigger warnings: mental illness, slight depression, anger outburst, language, very little spn canon violence, self loathing (I guess. Basically the reader doesn’t like herself), bad traffic (yes that’s a warning), reader being bitchy

Word Count: 3131

Summary: You wake instantly knowing you are going to have one of your “bad” days meaning your emotions are going to be a mess. Sure enough angry outburst start your day when you nearly kick the crap out of a guy in traffic and nearly bit off Jared and Jensen’s heads. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like this will be going away any time soon. How are you supposed to keep it hidden from people who are practically your family and how will this affect the major scenes you must shoot? That’s right you are an actress on Supernatural, but can you keep your emotion in check long enough to get through the day?

A/N: Hey y’all first I want to say I have no fucking Idea where this came from. It wasn’t planned at all. It’s basically word vomit on a page because I had a really crappy day in which some of the things in the story actually happened to me. So, I guess writing some fluffy J2 helped me get over my shitty day. I also wrote the reader based off myself in a way because these emotional issues are ones I face and today was one of the “bad” days for me. Literally wrote this between the times of 8pm and 4am so there’s barely any editing done and I apologize for any mistakes. Its currently 4:30 and I have no ambition to check. Any who, I know I had more to say but I forget, oh well enjoy. P.S. This is my first RPF so be easy on me please. As always feedback is appreciated and wanted and hate will not be tolerated.

***Italics are scenes being shot for the show***

“Damn it!!!!” You screamed as you burnt your hand on your hair straightener for the third time this morning. It was now 8 am and you had to be on set in an hour. You were barely half ready and it took you 45 minutes to get to set.

The whole morning just wasn’t going your way. From the moment you woke up you knew, just by the mood you were in, that it wasn’t going to be a particularly good day. You really didn’t need a cycle of bad days right now, but it looked like your head had other plans.

It started with your damn neighbors at 1 o’clock this morning banging on the walls and their furniture skidding across the floors. You could only assume they were fucking their brains out. However, their two hours of bliss really cut into your sleep time. If that wasn’t bad enough your alarm decided to not go off this morning. Which made you an hour late getting ready.

Now here you were hair half done, make up barely applied still in your PJ’s and having to leave in like 10 minutes.

“Fuck it!” you said as you threw the straightener down on the counter and through your hair in a messy bun. The little make up you had on, you wiped off and headed to your closet. Noticing all your jeans were dirty, you huffed and grabbed a pair of sweats, an oversized t-shirt, put your converse sneakers on, and grabbed your sunglasses to head out the door.

While driving to set, of course you’d have the good fortune to run into traffic. These idiots simply didn’t know how to drive. It was really starting to piss you off. Cars were weaving in and out of lanes, stopping abruptly, and paying no mind to anyone else around them.

“Are you fucking kidding. Thanks for cutting me off you idiot,” you shouted to the black Prius that decided it was ok for them to cut in front of you. This prompted them to flick you off after which you had to take a dozen deep breaths to stop yourself from getting out of your car and beating the shit out of them.

After the horrendous traffic, you finally made it to set at 9:05. Five minute late. You went to run to your trailer when you ran into a huge solid figure and fell on your ass muttering “Shit” to yourself.

“Hey there speed racer. Why the rush? Jensen said as he gave you a hand to help you up.

“Oh, you know running late,” you responded with a bit of anger in your tone.

“Damn (Y/N), you look like crap.”

“Why, thank you Jensen. That’s what every girl wants to here in the morning,” you said with a scowl on your face and a viciousness in your voice.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean- “

“Let me stop you there. I don’t have time for this right now. I have to drop my stuff off in my trailer and go to straight to hair and make up to get this mess figured out.”

“(Y/N), what’s up with you this morning. I’ve never seen you act this way before?”

“Having a bad morning,” and with that you turned away and went to your trailer.

That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. You tended to go through periods of good days and periods of bad days. Your mental health was a bit unstable to say in the least. It’s been like this since you were in high school and you have just kind of dealt with it since then. Although, it’s been getting harder to hide. Usually your bad days started around hiatus or right before a long break, but now it’s happening more often during filming.

You had been working on Supernatural for two years now. You loved it. Your character’s name was Natasha and when she first met the boys it was right after the events of season 8, so the beginning of season 9. She was badass and could fight better than the boys most the time. However, she was a demon, which proved to be troublesome with Sam getting possessed by Gadreel and all. Her issue was she wanted the boys to cure her from being a demon. So, it led to an interesting story line.

Working with Jared, Jensen, Misha, and even Mark was the highlight of your life. You loved them like your family, hell they were your family. You didn’t have anyone else. Your parents died when you were young and you had no siblings so you were pretty much on your own. Until now. That’s what made keeping this secret so hard. The only person that knew was Jared and that was only because he caught you in the middle of a breakdown on one of your particularly bad days. He sat and talked with you telling you his experience with mental illness. You begged him not to tell a soul, and even though he disagreed with your choice he promised to keep your secret.

That brings us back to the present. You were in the hair and make up trailer, with Janine the stylist, with your hair just about done, when Jared walked in with a concerned look on his face.

“Hey (Y/N). How are you feeling this morning?” Jared asked.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” you replied with anger filling your voice.

“Easy there. Don’t bite my head off. Jensen came to me and said you acting a bit off and basically chewed him out. So, I thought I’d come check on you.”

“Sorry Jar, it’s just been a hell of a morning and I didn’t get much sleep.”

“And it’s one of your “bad” days.”

“Yeah that too. I’ll apologize to Jay later it’s just today I’m more off than usual. Like I’m tired, depressed, pissed, and annoyed all at once and it’s making my head spin.”

“I get it. You know I do. That’s I think you should tell the others, especially Jensen.”

“I can’t Jar.”

“Yes, you can. I did and actually helped a lot and still does.”

“I want to tell him and the others. I really do. I just…. I just don’t know.”

“Look, I think you should, but I’m not going to pressure you. It’s your choice. Do what’s best for you and that pretty little noggin of yours. Just know, I’m always here if you need to talk, no matter what.”

“Thanks Jar. Really, it means a lot.”

“Look, I heave to head back to set to finish a scene with Jensen, but at least think about it. Love ya. See you soon,” he said as he kissed the crown of your head, earning him a scowl from your hair artist, and out the door he went.

Janine finished your hair quite flawlessly considering what she had to work with and quickly applied your make up, Natasha didn’t wear much so it was always quick, and you headed to wardrobe.

For this episode, they had you back in your all black demon style. For a bit, there you were in relaxed jeans and a flannel like the guys, but this episode had you facing off with some old demon buddies. So, you had to look the part with the skinny leather biker pants, leather biker jacket, lace up combat boots, and even a bullet belt as if you couldn’t look any more badass. Despite the result of the outfit, which was always hot as hell, it was a major pain in the ass to put on. Leather tends not to cooperate or breathe, if you know what I mean. But, none the less it was now on and you headed to Stage 3 to do your scene with the boys.

“Hey (Y/N), about earlier, I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes. I didn’t mean t- “Jensen started to say but you cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it Jay. It’s good. Like I said it’s just been a really rough morning and you just caught me in a bad time that’s all,” you replied with a slight smile on your face.

“You feelin’ better now, (Y/N)?” Jared asked as he came running over.

“Yeah, a little. You, on the other hand, better be careful and not mess up that hair or you won’t be once Janine’s done with you.” Jared laughed shaking his head knowing you weren’t kidding. Janine would get so frustrated with him because he could never sit still for her to finish his hair and then 10 minutes later it was all messed up.

“Alright places people. We need to start the next scene. We’re wasting precious minutes here,” Bob singer shouted and you all ran to your marks. “And ACTION!”

“Look Dean, I know these guys. You could say we were chummy back in the day. I know how they operate,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, well, you were “chummy” back when you were still a demon, but now you’re not.”

“They don’t know that.”

“What do they think you’ve been up to?”

“Treason to the king maybe, but they’d never expect this. So, I just play the part. Act like I used to.”

“What happens when they throw their demon powers at you and realize you can’t throw back?”

“Then I fight. I haven’t lost my skills. And let’s not forget who kick both yours and Sammy’s ass just three days ago.”

“CUT!” Singer screamed. “(Y/N), sweetie, I need more emotion from you. Need more snark and that last line I need that famous snarky grin that you do so well.”

“Got it boss,” you quickly replied.

“Alright let’s pick up at ‘Then I fight…’ and ACTION!”

“Then I fight. I haven’t lost my skills. And let’s not forget who kick both yours and Sammy’s ass just three days ago.” You said nailing your grin.

“Yeah, well I still don’t like this plan. Too many unknowns. It’s dangerous.”

“DUHH!! It’s dangerous. Everything we do is dangerous. It’s the job. And since when do you care about unknowns? That’s like your calling card ignoring all the unknowns and kick down doors.”

“It’s not gonna be easy Tasha.”

“Never said it would be Dean-o.”

“You sure about this?”

“Yeah totally. Like 90% sure. OK like 85%. Maybe 70%. Stop me now it’s not getting any better.”

Just then Sam walked through the motel door and said, “There here.”

“CUT! Awesome job guys. Take five while we set up for the next scene,” Singer said.

“That was great (Y/N)!” Jensen said.

“Yeah you did good,” Jared agreed.

“Plus you look totally hot in all that leather so that helped,” Jensen said with a smirk on his face.

“Dude, really?” Jared said.

“For real Jay, I think your Dean is showing,” you said making both men laugh.

“You may be right, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Jensen said.

“Well, Dean is a notorious liar, so is it?” you couldn’t help but smile at yourself for that one. Jared even gave you a half hug for that.

“I can’t win, can I?” Jensen sarcastically asked.

“Nope. It’s best you learn that know, Ackles. The woman always wins,” you responded. At that time, you were all being called back to set for the big demon fight scene. You weren’t going to lie, you were nervous. This scene had you doing a lot more stunts then you’ve done in the past. Also, you’ve never been on one of your “bad” days for a big fight scene so that just added to the problem.

You finished the fight scene, which took two hours longer to shoot than it should have. You kept messing up and making dumbass rookie mistakes. Every time you messed up you’d have to start over. With every screw up, it made you angrier and angrier at the same time depressing you. After a while Jared and Jensen started to goof off to try and make you feel better and while you appreciated the effort that only put you further behind and made you more upset. But, finally after 5 painstaking hours, yes 5, you finished and you were all fake bloody.

Next up was your emotional scene with the boys but more focused on Dean than Sam. You weren’t sure you were going to be able to get through it but you had no choice.

Natasha laid in the corner of the room, beaten, bloodied, unable to move. Dean went running towards her and laid her in his lap.

“Tasha, hey, come on, open your eyes,” Dean said.

“D-Dean,” Natasha sputtered. “Sometimes I wish I was still a demon. This would hurt a lot less,” Natasha said with a smile forming on her face.

“Really?? A joke? Right now? I don’t think this is a time for jokes Tasha.”

“Hey, lighten up will ya? It’s not like I haven’t died before. I mean technically I’m 540 years old. So- “Natasha started coughing up blood.

“That’s not funny. You’re human now. I knew this show down was a stupid idea. Look at you. I don’t even know where to press down because your bleeding from everywhere,” tears started to roll down Deans face. “What are we going to do without you? What am I going to do without you? I need you here.”

With those words coming out of Jensen’s mouth and the fake “real” tears pouring out of both of your eyes, you lost it. You don’t know what happened but your fake tears became real signaling the “bad” day intervening again. You couldn’t stop it so you got off Jensen and apologized to the rest of the cast and crew and ran to your trailer with the tears still flowing.

You were sat in the corner between the couch and TV with your legs folded to your chest, when you heard a knock on your door. “Not now Jay,” you said.

“It’s not Jensen, it’s me and I’m coming in,” Jared said as he entered your trailer and sat next to you. “What’s going on in that confusing head of yours?” he asked.

“That’s just it Jar, I have no fucking clue. And the fact that I have no clue makes it even worse.”

“I know but think something had to have set you off.”

“All I know is that I was looking into Jensen’s eyes as he was saying Dean’s words to Natasha and suddenly the fake tears weren’t so fake anymore.”

“That’s what I thought. I’m sure you’ve noticed, because I have, that these “bad” days, as you call them, are happening more frequently.” You just nodded your head. “Well, I’m thinking that the stress of keeping this a secret is what’s provoking it to happen more.”

“I guess that makes sense. But I just don’t understand how I go from majorly pissed of one moment to crying my eyes out the next.”

“That’s the human brain for ya sweetie. No one can really explain why it does what it does.”

“Your right. It’s just this fuck up of a day has had me reeling on edge and got in my head.”

“Happens to the best of us. So, you gonna tell him?” You nodded yes. “Good because he’s waiting outside. Jensen come in!”

You mouthed a thank you to Jared as he walked out the door and he gave you that ‘don’t mention it’ face he always does.

Jensen came and sat next to you. “What’s going on?” he kindly asked.

“Look Jay, there’s something you don’t know about me. Well more like a few somethings that have a lot to do with what going on with me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, when I was a kid my parents died so my grandparents took care of me and after a few months they started to notice a change in me. I guess losing my parents messed with my head so much that it kind of left me mentally unstable.”

“OK, what exactly does that mean?”

“It means that I have these periods of bad days and periods of good days. I’m usually able to keep them hidden from most, but lately it’s been happening more and I guess it got to be too much. Thus, the angry outbursts and out of nowhere crying.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because I’m embarrassed by it and honestly its usually something that sends a person running for the hills. Anytime someone says ‘mental illness’ or ‘mentally unstable’ people assume the worst and actually make them worse. So, it’s always been in my best interest to keep it hidden.”

“I get it. But you do realize you are in the one place where no one would care? We would all support you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I just am ashamed I guess, but I can’t hold it back anymore because that’s making it worse.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all support you. I support you. It’s gonna take a lot more than a mental illness to send me running for the hills.”

“I really appreciate that Jay. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“No problem. And look you can come and talk to me anytime you need. Any hour of any day. Call if you must. I’ll pick up. Your health is more important.”

“Thank you.”

“Your welcome. But I have a question. How come Jared knew?”

“Because he found me in the middle of one of my break downs about 6 months back and I swore him to secrecy.”

“That sounds like you,” Jensen said with a smile on his face. “Now why don’t we go and finish this scene and kick it in the ass and then grab a couple beers to top the night off?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Jensen helped you off the ground ad you both returned to Stage 3 and knocked that scene out of the park. You both portrayed that raw emotion with such intensity it was hard to believe it wasn’t real. Those were Bob Singers words not yours. Turns out Natasha didn’t die, right before she drew her final breath Cas swooped in and healed her mostly because he still had a little wear and tear. But she lived and spoiler alert her and Dean ended up together. Many times that night, in fact, much to Sam’s annoyance. So, a good episode.

After that you did go out and get those beers with the guys and had a wonderful rest of the night. Cracking jokes telling stories, it was a hell of a time. Maybe a little too wonderful considering you woke up in Jensen’s bed with his t-shirt on and him wearing nothing but boxers. 

@jensen-jarpad 

[newstfionline]

Japan’s extreme recluses are coming together to create a newspaper for social outcasts

Isabella Steger, Quartz, March 25, 2017

Tokyo--For most of his twenties, Naohiro Kimura was a recluse who often spent days shut inside his apartment. Since emerging from his reclusive state last spring, though, he has become the editor of a bi-monthly newspaper serving Japan’s community of social recluses, and hopes that through it he can draw some of them out--and change the Japanese public’s perception of them.

Kimura launched Hikikomori News in November, after 10 years of being a hikikomori on and off. The 32-year-old holds editorial meetings twice a month in a neat, cozy apartment in Tokyo’s Sangenjaya neighborhood. On a recent rainy day, six hikikomori gathered in the apartment and talked over bottles of oolong tea and chips. Stacks of the March edition of the paper--which focuses on the topic of employment--sat in the doorway. A4 pieces of paper printed with story ideas were stuck on one wall.

For some, physically getting to these meetings is in and of itself a hugely difficult task.

“When my hikikomori is severe, I can’t physically move. I am inside my futon all day. It’s so difficult, even to go to the toilet,” said Vosot Ikeida (not his real name), a 54-year-old contributor to the newspaper who has been suffering from depression for over two decades.

But once there, the hikikomori seemed to revel in having a purpose and being among understanding friends. “We can be honest here,” Ikeida said.

Hikikomori can refer both to the person and to the condition, but being a hikikomori is not necessarily contingent on a psychiatric diagnosis. According to research by two American psychiatrists in 2010, hikikomori is a “culture-bound syndrome” rather than a “new psychiatric disorder,” but mental health professionals have in the past evaluated some hikikomori as suffering from anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or schizophrenia, among other diagnoses.

“In a society where it is highly stigmatizing to use words like clinical depression, let alone schizophrenia, the term hikikomori has broad appeal as a socially acceptable term,” wrote the authors of the paper.

According to a paper published by the Japanese government Cabinet Office in September, the number of hikikomori between the ages of 15 to 30 in Japan in 2015 numbered some 540,000, and marked a decrease of about 150,000 from 2010. Kimura, however, said that the survey understates the severity of the problem as it excludes those above the age of 40.

Kimura’s team took the government to task in the inaugural issue of Hikikomori News in November. An article headlined “The painful cry of those in their 40s” lambasted the government for downplaying the problem, and attributed the supposed decrease in hikikomori to red tape.

One commonly used figure is that there are as many as a million people living in a state of hikikomori in Japan--a number proposed by psychologist Tamaki Saito who coined the term. Saito--who treated Kimura--identified the phenomenon in the mid-1980s, when young men with symptoms like lethargy and social isolation started showing up at his office, according to the New York Times.

The Japanese government’s official definition of hikikomori is people who haven’t left their homes or interacted with others for at least six months. The writers at the newspaper, however, emphasized that hikikomori come in many different forms, and that the stereotype of a young male confined to his bedroom, playing video games with next to no contact with the outside world is not a representative one.

28 year-old Yumiko Uno, for example, who draws cartoons for the newspaper, does not fit the government’s definition or the conventional stereotype--she teaches part-time at a tutor center and is talkative. She said she experienced a few separate stages of hikikomori, the first time after she dropped out of nursing school and lost her voice due to psychological issues. She said she was jolted out of that period of hikikomori because of the shock of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Yuka Naruse, 40, a hikikomori for two decades and a writer for the newspaper, said that she has met many female hikikomori at support groups who became withdrawn only after they got married, because of pressure from society, their husbands, and their in-laws. Naruse herself has been diagnosed with OCD and has never worked full-time. The January issue of the newspaper dedicated itself to issues relating to female shut-ins.

The government paper highlighted two worrying trends among hikikomori--like Japanese society at large, they’re graying. The data show that among hikokomori surveyed, those who became withdrawn at between 35 to 39 doubled to 10.2% in 2015 compared with a 2010 survey. People are also remaining in a state of hikikomori for longer--those who said they were withdrawn for over seven years in the latest survey stood at 34.7% compared to 16.9% in the 2010 survey.

The problem of aging hikikomori has been one of the main areas of focus for Kimura and his staff, who said they want to use the newspaper to communicate with the family members of hikikomori--many of whom have been caring for their children for decades and are themselves approaching death, making the question of what happens to their withdrawn children after they are gone an increasingly pertinent one.

In November, the bodies of an elderly couple and their 43-year-old son, who was said to be a hikikomori, were found in a house in Gifu prefecture, according to local media reports. The son’s body showed signs of starvation, and the family were said to be behind in their rent.

Kimura said that he emerged from hikikomori by slowly rebuilding human relationships, for example by joining a running club and attending photography classes.

“It was very important when I was asked by a woman I met on Twitter to take a photo of her,” said Kimura. “When you feel that somebody needs you, you want to make an effort for that person”--especially when it’s a person of the opposite sex, he added.

Kimura also taught himself Adobe InDesign in the months following his emergence from hikikomori last year. He said he modeled his publication on a newspaper in Japan, Futoko News, which focuses on another group of misfits--futoko, or people who refuse to attend school because of anxiety. He began by recruiting writers at hikikomori gatherings last fall. Fifteen people showed up to the first editorial meeting.

Kimura became a hikikomori after he failed his law school exams, and described the following period as a time when he lived as a ronin, drifting aimlessly in life. When he went out, he made sure it was in the morning when his neighbors were asleep, and returned only when it was dark, rotating between venues such as family restaurants and libraries. His mother once called the police to ask them to protect her from him, said Kimura, without elaborating. He noted that there is a widespread perception in Japanese society that hikikomori are unstable or prone to violent acts, and said that one of the reasons he started the newspaper was to address those views, which only serves to push the shut-ins “further into a corner.”

While acknowledging that hikikomori-like phenomena exist elsewhere in East Asia, Kimura and others spoke of the intense pressure in Japan to conform to the mold of having a stable job and making money, and the stigma felt by those who don’t attain these ideals.

A study in 2012 found that many shut-ins come from middle class families, who typically place higher expectations on their children, and who are also able to support their children if they become hikikomori. “Toshi”, a 35 year-old hikikomori who writes for the newspaper, emphasized that the phenomenon emerged during the high-pressure years of the bubble, or “baburu,” economy, when Japan’s economy was booming in the 80s.

Kimura’s media venture won high-profile support from Kazumi Ieiri--one of Japan’s most famous internet entrepreneurs as well as a recovered social recluse--who welcomed Kimura’s team to his office in February, and later tweeted about the experience of being a hikikomori.

“I think hikikomori is a situation where the knot is untied between you and society,”Ieiri wrote. “No need to hurry; you can tie small knots, little by little.”

[minglerblog]

Postpartum Depression

Ting MIng Ler J1602144

ABSTRACT

Depression is and has always been a serious mental issue in society . People always speak of I have depression in a joking manner . In some point, depression will not be taken serious, the reason of choosing Postpartum Depression is due to the fact I have someone close that have experienced this mental issue and left a impact in my life.

The purpose of this project is to spread awareness about Postpartum Depression, to let the public know more about this mental issue that has been haunting pregnant women, and its victim . Helping them overcome this painful process.

 WIDE CONTEXT  

People feel sad, moody or low from time to time, some people experience these feelings intensely, for long periods of time (weeks, months or even years). But depression is more than just a low mood, it's a serious condition that affects physical and mental health.

  The sign of depression is feeling sad, down or miserable most of the time, or have lost interest or pleasure in usual activities for a long period. Behaviour will change significant, such as not going out anymore, not getting things done at work/school, withdrawing from close family and friends, relying heavily on alcohol and sedatives not doing usual enjoyable activities, and unable to concentrate. During a depression state a person will be flowing full of negative thoughts sadness disappointed and self-doubt. For the physical side of symptoms tired all the time, sick and run down, headaches and muscle pains, sleep problems, loss or change of appetite, significant weight loss or gain. All experience some of these symptoms from time to time, and it may not necessarily mean you're depressed. Equally, not everyone who is experiencing depression will have all of these symptoms.

 Depression and grief is different, being sad does not equal depressed. Grief is a painful feeling come in waves and intermixed with positive memories, throughout this stage self-esteem is usually maintained. Compare to major depression, mood and interest for the victim is decreased, the feeling of worthlessness and self-loathing are common. For some people, the death of a loved one can bring on major depression. Losing a job or being a victim of a physical assault or a major disaster can lead to depression for some people. When grief and depression co-exist, the grief is more severe and lasts longer than grief without depression. Despite some overlap between grief and depression, they are different. ( Identifying and Managing Preparatory Grief and Depression at the End of Life, Vyjeyanthi S. Periyakoil, James Hallenbeck,  March 1, 2002).  Depression can affect anyone even for a person  live in ideal circumstances. Serval factor play a role in Depression, Biochemistry, Genetics, Personality and Environmental factors. In the cases of, Biochemistry differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression. Genetics also play a part in depression . For example, if one identical twin has depression, the other has a 70 percent chance of having the illness sometime in life. People who have low self-esteem, can be easily overwhelmed by stress, or who have negative thought  are more likely to experience depression. Continuous exposure to violence, neglect, abuse or poverty may make some people more vulnerable to depression. Depression has different types, Major Depression, PPD postpartum depression, SAD seasonal affective disorder. In the case of Major Depression, there is different categories. First of all is Melancholia during this depression state victims will experienced all the symptoms of depression, having slow movement and losing pleasure in everything. Psychotic depression is also one of the major depression, it causes hallucination or delusion, making the victim believing they are bad, and the most importantly they will feel being watch, followed and paranoid.       

  SPECIFIC CONTEXT 

 The topic for my specific context research is postpartum depression (PPD).  Postpartum depression is one of serious depression that women will have while pregnant, after birth. Estimated that 14%-23% of pregnant women experience depression during pregnancy, and 5%-25% experience depression postpartum. postpartum depression is linked to chemical, social and psychological change with a baby. Victim of depression postpartum usually is new mother due their lack of experience to take care of baby and the physical changes to their body. Carrying a baby in no simple task. The symptoms include difficulty of sleep, appetite change and accompanied with symptoms of major depression. In some serious case Postpartum depression can lead to the Thought of death and suicide or thought of hurting someone else in this case it will mostly be the new born baby. If depression isn’t treated during pregnancy, it can lead to postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a serious condition that can last for months after giving birth and can affect the way a mother bonds with her baby.

People usually confuse Postpartum depression with baby blues. Baby blues is a mild form of postpartum depression that most new moms will experience. It starts one to three days after the birth, and it usually won’t last long. With baby blues, many women have mood swings, they’re happy and suddenly crying the next. They may feel anxious, confused, or have trouble eating or sleeping. The baby blues is very common, up to 80% of new moms have it, and it will go away on its own.

About 13% of new mothers experience postpartum depression, which is more serious and lasts longer. It can start up to a few months after childbirth. (Postpartum Depression and the Baby Blues, Melinda Smith, May 2019 ) . If you have a family history of depression or have suffered from depression before, you’re more at risk. Postpartum depression is treatable. But if is not treated, children will be affected also.

Depression can also cause issue such as financial or marital problems, or a very stressful life event.

Depression can lead mothers to be inconsistent with the way they care for their children. They may be loving one minute and withdrawn the next. They may not able to respond at all to their children’s behaviour and they may respond in a negative way. Depending on the age of the children , they will be affected by their mother’s depression in different ways. (Paediatr Child Health. 2004 Oct; 9)

   THE WORK 

 The objective of the infographic and the art installation is to tell the story of PostPartum Depression victim and tell the target audience about PostPartum Depression how did it happen and the progression of recovery , treating PPD victim with patient and love. Before this project, an interview has been conducted with PostPartum depression victim.  Through the data gathered PostPartum depression victims felt paranoid, unstable emotion, and some even has violent behaviour.   People often misunderstood depression with grief, both do share similarities and yet different from another. Depression and grief both has the same trait that is feeling of sad and powerless , but depression lasted longer. Similar with PostPartum depression , it takes a long time to recover , in some cases PostPartum depression never recover. The envision idea of the art installation is to connect with the target audience through the visual and let them understand more into the dark side of PostPartum depression, help those who in need, feel more empathy instead of feeling sympathy .Knowing and understanding the situation that the victim felt and giving them love and care, instead of telling them “everything will be fine” ,helping them navigate through the stormy ocean , make them felt warm and give them courage again.    The infographic used simple four colour black ,white,and red , each colour has their own story. Three specific story from real life interview was chosen for the infographic. Each colour represent the story white will represent fear, black paranoid and red is violence. The white will show a silhouette of a black colour demon looking creature to play with the space in order to show the powerless mother against her own fear. The colour black will tell the story of a mother being paranoid, to create the empty space and loneliness. Red will be more straight forward, telling the story of the mother violent side while dealing with Postpartum depression. Each colour is a symbol and its tells their story.       For the art installation , is to create something feminine ,peaceful, yet harsh looking. The first idea was to have the audience interact with the art piece, and form there came out the idea of sculpture. In order to create the harsh looking ,reference from barb wire was taken to create the shap , pointy and desperate look. But the barb wire design is too intense and will not suit the final outcome .The barb wire design was improvise to a more feminine wire sculpture of a women’s hand holding the baby , while still maintain the pointy edges to show the emotion of pain , irritation and fear of the mother. The wire sculpture of the hand was taken real reference form a real life human hand in order to create the accurate human hand size, and it has a more mechanic look to it. The main piece will be a wire sculpture and cover with fabric to make it like a baby. In the final outcome the hand will be the stand of the baby to simulate a mother holding a child. The story will be shown through fabric print , to show each different stage of Postpartum depression until the recovery.     

 THE PRATICE/DESIGN RATIONAL

 For this project the colour of choice is pink, black , white , grey and red. Each colour symbolize a different stage of PostPartum depression . Pink is  a delicate color that means sweet, romantic, charming, feminine, and tenderness, is associated with bubble gum, flowers, babies, pink is also the color of universal love of oneself and of others , it represents friendship, affection, harmony, inner peace, and approachability. Pink is the more sweeter and peaceful side of the red. While red brings up the passion, aggression, and dramatic action. Red, the color of blood and fire, is associated with meanings of love, passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance, joy, strength, leadership, courage. But for this project the red will represent rage, anger, danger, malice, wrath, stress, action, vibrance, radiance, and determination The overuse of red is to show the  temper, agitation, anger, and overbearing, demanding, and oppressive behaviors  for the stage where the “mother “will have more a violent behaviour, and to have a more dramatic visual. The colour of black is often associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression mostly towards the negative side. The colour black in this project represent the overwhelming emotion of fear and sadness that slowly corrupt the mind of the victim. The white symbolize innocence and to form a contrast between the black. Lastly the colour grey associated with loss or depression, it shows the affects of the mind and body by causing unsettling feelings.(Colour Meaning, Jennifer Bourn ,November 2010)

The visual in the fabric printed artwork is design by different shape and illustrated by a semi cartoonish style , by using the theory of character design. A visual message has to be clear to be effective and exploring a character's silhouette in an early stage of the design , the overall shape will speak for a character's personality. Curved and circular shapes are the friendliest due to they have no sharp or dangerous corners. Circular shapes mostly represent a character of being soft and harmless , a more harmony design. Triangles will relate to diagonal and strong, fine lines and are the most dynamic of the three shapes. Evil is often associated with the sharp edges shape etc Disney Maleficent and Transformer Megatron .Triangular concepts, as they appear  sinister and has showed the most aggression . It is the circle's  opposing shape and often used for antagonists. The shape of a character has the ability to visually communicate to the audience, but the visual communication becomes more effective when placed in relation to another character: A small character that is posed with a big character will make them seem even bigger and smaller. When creating visual, opposing characters, or a team, it is important that they look good together, by adding  contrast in proportions and body shape it is possible to create visual interest while also revealing something about the character's personality and telling the story. Character design depends from realism to idealization  the silhouette of a human character will different depends on how stylized a character, a design or a game is. A stylized Design for example will have more creativity, exaggerated shapes and proportions when it comes to creating, designing a character through a recognizable silhouette. Proportions can be altered in many ways and  are especially useful to create many different human-based characters: A character with a small head and a large body will communicate in a different way compared to a character with a small body and a large head, adding personality to the character.( How Can a Character's Personality be Conveyed Visually, through Shape, Hanna Ekström.)

    REFERENCES

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression/what-causes-depression

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression/types-of-depression

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression/signs-and-symptoms

http://www.drplace.com/Identifying_and_Managing_Preparatory_Grief_and_Depression_at_the_End_of_Life.16.28112.htm

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/postpartum-depression-and-the-baby-blues.htm?pdf=13028

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724170/

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/babyblues.html?WT.ac=p-ra

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/postpartum-depression-and-the-baby-blues.htm/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/postpartum-depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20376617

http://primarypsychiatry.com/can-postpartum-depression-be-predicted/

https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/25/2/131/1504969

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/517795

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:637902/FULLTEXT01.pdf%E2%80%A8

https://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-pink/

[ultrageekydesigner]

My Bipolar Journey

It has been five years since I was diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder. I was 24, which from what I am told is about the median for the age of onset for most people diagnosed with this disorder. It took me those long five years to get stable enough to where I can function in society and not be terrified all the time. It has been a long road and I feel that it is time that I reflect on that road and share my story so that others may not feel so alone. First let me tell you about me. I haven’t quite told my story on this blog yet and in order to understand where I have come from we need to start at the beginning. I was born in Portland, Oregon. My dad was a pastor most of my life and as some of you may know it is not fun being a pastor’s child. You are expected to be the perfect well behaved child and heaven forbid you should ever speak out of turn or do anything “unholy.” I’m not saying I had a bad childhood, I am just saying that Organized Religion can produce some very cruel and judgmental people, especially in small towns. Most of my childhood was spent in Ely, Nevada, as small of a town as you can ever get. Everyone knew me and my brothers and we couldn’t get away with squat. Heck, it was so small that my mom was my teacher’s aide in third grade. But, with all of Ely’s faults, with the judgmental church people and the minimal amount of freedom, I loved that town and I hated when we had to move. In 1998, when I was ten years old, my dad finally decided to quit pastoring and he packed us all up and moved us to Reno, Nevada and that is where things started to go downhill. One year after we moved to Reno my parents divorced. It seemed like the worst day of my life at the time but there was more to come. Shortly after my parents divorced my mom married her second husband. I turned 14 and started having my periods and that’s when it all started. I don’t know if he thought that it was ok to do it because I had “become a woman” but my mom’s second husband molested me from the ages of 14-17, when I ran away. The man did everything he could to isolate me from anyone I could tell what was going on. He kept me out of school, claiming mental problems were to blame, that I was too mentally unstable to go to school. Maybe I was, but lying to the psychiatrists and  having them put me on meds that made me feel drugged up is not the way to go about making me stable. He banned me from seeing my best friend, claiming that she was a bad influence on me. He tried to discredit me by saying I was telling lies and stealing money from his money collection. He succeeded too. My own mother didn’t believe me when I tried to come forward with the truth of what was happening. I was hospitalized 2 times because I had suicidal thoughts and plans. I was too afraid to say anything. So, I had to run away. Here’s how things played out that day. He found a rather unflattering picture of me and said he was going to put it on the fridge for everyone to see. I took it off the fridge and said I didn’t want it up there. He ordered me to put it back and I refused. He told me to get out of his house so I went to my room, packed up the most important things I had and I left, just like he told me to. I walked six blocks to my best friend’s house and she put me up for the night. I called my dad and he immediately bought me a ticket the next morning on the bus to Elko, Nevada where he was living, and my best friend’s family helped me get to the bus stop. My mom had called the cops and reported me as a runaway so when I got to Elko there were six cops at the bus stop waiting to take one scared 16 year old girl to Juvenile hall for running away. I got to Juvenile hall and they were going to send me back to Reno so I told them everything about what my mom’s second husband had done to me. I filed a police report, talked to the detectives and nothing was done. We did not go to court, I did not testify against him, it never made it that far. Partly because my dad had gotten a job up in Canada and we moved up there. We were up in Canada for a year and when I came back the police said that they couldn’t convict him because he couldn’t take an accurate lie detector test because of his heart condition. That’s where it ended, I tried to move on but that didn’t happen till we found an article on line saying he died in 2011. After Canada we moved to Las Vegas and got into one of those “pay by week” motel/apartment things. My dad ended up getting pulled over because the tags on my older brother’s car were expired. And of course they ran dad’s driver’s license and it came up that he had a warrant for his arrest in Elko County for a traffic ticket that his former company was supposed to have been taken care of. He was in Jail for 2 weeks. By the end of it, we had no money for the rent, we were low on food. We had to call my mom and her current husband to come pick up my younger brother who was still a minor at the time. My older brother had a place to stay with one of his gaming buddies but I had nowhere to go. I called my online boyfriend at the time and he bought me a ticket to Indiana to stay with him and his mom. I barely knew him, we met through an only Star Trek RPG site. I had only met him once before when he came up to Canada to see me. But, like always, I was head over heels for him and I excitedly moved out there. I started going to school at Purdue University-Calumet in Hammond, Indiana and everything was fine, until his mother started snooping into my bank account. We got into a huge fight over it at the end of the Semester and I ended up calling my mom for help. Luckily my ex paid for my ticket to Phoenix, Arizona where I went to live with my mom. And here is where the Bi-Polar sets in… Everything was fine for about a year until my very best friend, who means the world and beyond to me, introduced me to her then boyfriend. Around Valentine’s Day of 2009 she ended up dumping him and he came to me for help. We started talking and got a good connection going. After about a month of talking I, again, fell head over heels for him and around May he asked me if he could come visit, and a few weeks later, before he came to visit, he asked me to come up to Canada and live with him. This moment is the most manic I have ever been. I jumped at his offer. I dropped all my classes, had a huge argument with my mother and her partners about it. Ended up having my younger brother come pick me up so I could get a place to stay with my dad and him in Vegas. I even called the police on my family because they were refusing to give me my belongings. It was the most stupid and ridiculous move of my life and I regret it immensely. He came to visit me in June, around my birthday, for a day and he proposed to me in front of the Bellagio fountains during “I hope you dance.” I moved up to Canada when he came back in July. On, September 21, 2009 we married on the Capillano Bridge in Edmonton. It was just a small ceremony with just his family and only my very best friend, my maid of honor, for my side. Even now I still consider it one of the happiest days of my life. Things were great until we ran into some financial trouble and we had to move in with his mother. Our relationship was strained for the second year and in June of 2011 he told me that it was time I returned to the states. I later found out that he was cheating on me with a girl from his work but the divorce wasn’t all his fault. I now recognize the bipolar moments that I had been exhibiting that may have pushed him away. I didn’t help to clean our room or do the dishes. I just sat there and played video games all day. I spent money that we really didn’t have on things like pizza. But that didn’t mean he had to cheat. On June 22, 2011 I flew back down to Phoenix. Afraid that my family would still be mad at the way I left in 2009. They weren’t at all. They helped me figure out what was going on with me. I ended up getting a Job at Michael’s and it was the best job I ever had. I could work at my own pace and they didn’t need me to interact with customers too much. In January of 2012 my step dad found out that he was being relocated to Reno. With all the stress of moving and trying to transfer my job to a Michael’s in Reno, I ended up having the mother of all breakdowns. I actually felt like I wanted to hurt my younger siblings… That alone scared me and I told mom that she needed to take me to the hospital. I called work and told them what was going on and they let me go. I ended up in Banner Behavioral Health in Scottsdale, Arizona. That is when I was first diagnosed with Bipolar. They put me on Lithium and released me. We moved to Reno and I started getting services at Norther Nevada Adult Mental Health Services (NNAMHS). We adjusted my meds here and there and I tried to work at several jobs and I failed at all of them. I couldn’t keep a job more than a year and I kept having panic attacks at work. After about three or four trips to NNAMHS’s mental ward for work related anxiety they told me I couldn’t work and I filed for disability, six months later I was approved without a fight and I have been working on getting stable ever since. January of 2015 they started me on a new drug called Latuda and it made a world of difference.  I was calmer, less argumentative and prone to anger. I actually started helping out around the house without being told. But the Anxiety was still there. I was still skittish about going to new places or social events. I switched mental health providers to Mohave Behavioral and they put me on a drug called Propanolol. It is actually a blood pressure medication that they use to treat Anxiety. It also has made a world of difference. I am more social now. I look forward to going out and doing things. I’m not as introverted as I used to. I missed my own high school reunion because of my anxiety last year but this year I am going to the reunion of the class after me where most of my high school friends came from and I am so excited about it. I have returned to school and am actually making good enough grades to warrant an honor society’s attention. I am currently attending Truckee Meadows Community College for an Associate’s Degree in Graphic Communications and I am going to start going to school half-time next semester. I am doing great things for myself and if you are like me and you struggle with this disorder just know that you can do great things too, no matter what is in your way in the past or the present.