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sobeautifullyobsessed · 6 months

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how about a healthy serving of Stephen angst to warm you on a chilly autumn night...

14,000,604 ~ ch.four

Stephen reveals one of the most painful aspects of his search for a way to defeat Thanos

"…the initial attack had blasted the whole area down to bedrock, and once Thanos unleashed the full weapon fire from his ship, it cracked the remaining wall of rock that was holding back the lake.” Stephen’s voice had grown ragged, almost hoarse, as he revealed the details of the battle to come. "I’ve lost track of how many times I tried to set all the pieces in place…to marshal my forces so that enough of my fellow sorcerers would be standing ready to hold back that water—but I could never make it work. Moving just one of them away from their battle position changed the course of the overall battle by the littlest bit…“ His hand trembled badly as he held his thumb and index finger together, demonstrating the barest bit of the change that he had dared, ”…but always just enough to throw things off balance, enough that eventually Thanos triumphed—so that it always had to be me to work that spell."

Hope drew a deep breath, her eyes locked on his, and laid her hand against his cheek, like a benediction against the guilt deeply rooted in his soul. She had listened mostly in silence, only speaking up softly when he seemed to lose his train of thought, and patiently urging him to continue only if he felt up to it.

"And that was my last option,” he continued, nearing the crux of what pained him the most, “Only I could keep the battlefield from being flooded—so that the only man on the field who could secure the Stones, and use them to destroy Thanos and all of his forces, would actually have that chance.”

“But he’ll die doing it,” she surmised, “He’s going to die, and you can’t save him…”

Stephen nodded, and then hung his head, “Yes. I’ve tried and tried and tried, Hope…so damn hard…with every power at my command…with every…” He gritted his teeth, exasperated by his own uselessness, “…with every breath I’ve taken since first seeing that outcome…with the full scope of my imagination…to find a solution that won’t cost Tony Stark his life.” Stephen let his shoulders sag, the sting of his shame refreshed as he spoke his failure aloud.

“No,” Hope whispered, clasping both of his hands in hers. "No, Stephen—you have nothing to be ashamed of,” she insisted, her voice growing with conviction, "You’ve done infinitely more than any mortal man could…”

“But it wasn’t enough,” he groaned, shaking his head in denial, “I even explored more than a million outcomes, specifically looking for one where Stark’s fate would fall on me instead—but I could never make it work.” Stephen finally let his tears fall freely, grateful that he was safe in sharing the true depth of his heartache with his ever-gentle confessor. He looked to Hope again, saw only understanding and sweet mercy writ upon her face, and knew he had chosen well to trust in her. "In my old life, I took an oath to do no harm, but when I return to Titan, I’m going to have to save his life, only to ensure that this good man—this father and husband…“

In his mind’s eye, a series of images flickered at the speed of thought, from a newborn baby Morgan in her father’s arms, to her parents joy at each new milestone their child reached, through years of laughter, love, and the challenges of parenthood, and ending with the upbeat farewell that Tony had made to them both, before leaving their secluded haven to head to the Avengers compound in New York. Pepper had calmly kept her tears at bay, not wanting to alarm their precocious little girl; Tony had put on his most casual, cavalier face, but when Morgan tucked her head into the crook of his neck and reminded him that she loved him ‘3,000’, the look he’d exchanged with his wife had devastated Stephen seeing it the first time—and now, just remembering it as well, knowing it was inevitably the last time that Stark would ever hold her.

“…and true hero—will not only craft the method of our salvation, but also die to save the world,” he finished bleakly.

"Oh god,” Hope’s voice cracked with sorrow for his pain. "Stephen, please…please…believe me,” she ran her fingers through the streak of white at his temple, trying her best to assuage him, "You mustn’t do this to yourself…” She closed the little gap between them, drawing his head against her shoulder, sighing hard as she stroked his hair.

“My darling,” she crooned, the first time she had ever used such an endearment for him, “You’ve borne far too much, far too alone, for far too long. If I could just take a little of this burden from you, I’d consider myself blessed.” Through tears of compassion, she repeated his name, “Stephen…my darling, darling Stephen…you mustn’t torture yourself so.”

Soundlessly, he clung to her, his heart grown greedy for the softness she offered by simply being herself. Between this solitary, bitter journey, and the time spent in the loop with Dormammu, Stephen had lived out thousands of years apart from any companionship, let alone understanding and mercy. He had never asked for help or succor in all that time, being only ever focused on protecting and saving lives—nor had he ever expected thanks or any sort of recompense. But for the first time in what felt like an eternity, here was someone who recognized the price he paid to wear the mantle of Master of the Mystic Arts, Time-Stone Wielder and Protector, and guardian of this reality—and often even more.

“Yes, dear,” she murmured, feeling him relax in her arms, while laying the softest kisses he’d ever known on his cheek and near his ear, “Let it go for at least a little while. Know that you’ve done your best, Stephen; that no man could possibly do, or give more, than you already have.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” he husked against the tender flesh of her neck, breathing in her sunshine warmth and the pale, citrusy scent of her skin. Another memory he would be sure to carry with him into the inescapable future.

“I know, darling,” she whispered against his ear, “I know—but trust me in this, okay?”

Stephen nodded and inhaled deeply, feeling her calm start to fill his lungs, replacing a share of his guilt with relief. When he finally felt ready, he sat back in his chair; Hope was quick to smooth the tears from his cheeks, “You are the best man I've ever known, Stephen Strange. Strong. And kind. And good." Words that felt to him like they came straight from her tender heart. She exhaled slowly, and the knot of anxiety and despair that had been lodged in his chest for a thousand years, began to unclench as he read the truth on her sweet face. "Now, my darling, beautiful, Stephen," she continued calmly. Gently. Lovingly. "There’s something you need to remember…something you might not have thought of…okay?”

He cupped one of her hands against his cheek and nodded again, even managing the ghost of a smile in answer to her request.

“Good.” She gave him the same sort of smile back. "Two things, really. First, that because of you, Tony Stark is going to survive Titan, and have those five beautiful years with Pepper and their daughter. From what you’ve described, it sounds like the life they have, the love they share, is something most people never even get to experience.”

"Alright,” he agreed, for she echoed what the small voice in the back of his mind had been insisting for some time now. "And?”

"And…” she informed him firmly, yet with the same gentleness that marked her regard for him at every turn, “…from everything you’ve told me about Tony Stark, I’m absolutely certain that if given the choice, he would step up to save the world for their sake alone. Don’t you think so?”

He had been so exhausted for so long, and so immersed in his guilt and desperation, that such an idea had not really occurred to Stephen. Now he could almost hear how Stark might exclaim it: If the only way they survive—and that Earth survives—is for me to lose…well, hell, I gotta be on board with that. Stephen closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed and steadied, as he shed another share of the guilt that had become his unflagging companion on this ponderous quest.

"Yes," Hope urged him, "Your burden is heavy enough already without piling on the responsibility for the choice which Stark is bound by his own nature, to make."

He nodded, the warmth of her palm against his cheek soothing him in equal measure to the wisdom of her words. "I don't think I realized until just now how much I needed to hear someone say that," he admitted, looking into her eyes once more, and seeing the gentlest of affirmations there.

Hope's brow furrowed a moment, as though she was perplexed, though her voice held no reproach, "You mean I haven't told you this already, in your previous visits here?"

"I never gave you the chance to," he confessed, regretting that choice in light of her merciful, sympathetic response. "I never confided the entire story to you before."

She hummed softly at that revelation, mulling it over. "Okay...I, uh...I guess I can understand that. But, um..." she lowered her eyes and hesitated a moment, "...what makes this time so different?"

Although Stephen was sure that she had already guessed the reason, he knew he owed her the answer. "Because this time, when I go back," his voice broke with the sad truth of it, "It's going to be for good.

Hope nodded and a couple of tears spilled from beneath her lowered lashes, sympathetic tears for the inevitability of his burden. "I kinda figured that was...that was why." When she met his eyes again, hers shone bright with further tears withheld. "I'm so sorry, Stephen. I wish there was more I could do than just...offer you words...I..." she sighed, "I wish you didn't have to face this all alone."

An unexpected sense of peace filled his chest, and spread throughout his body like the warm flow of blood in his veins. "Oh, honey," he promised her, "I won't be entirely alone. Not anymore. Stephen gathered her other hand in his, and lightly traced his thumb back and forth along the heart and life lines on her palm. "That's your gift to me, Hope. I'm here right now because I knew that you could grant me that last little bit...," he gave her a quiet, bittersweet smile, "...of very human, very humane magic. And that's exactly what I've been needing to see me through to the end of this battle."

Her smile at that was sunshine breaking through thunderheads, so lovely and purely for him that his heart felt like to burst with the bloom of love---the seeds of which had lain dormant since his life had been stolen from him in the shadow of that invading spaceship, too long ago for him to even reckon properly now.

Hope bit her lip, eyeing him with curiosity and her ready humor. "So, tell me, Mr. Remarkable---what comes next?"

"Well," he began, grinning at the nickname she had given him on the day they had met, "I was hoping you would stay with me a while longer. Now that I've nearly reached the end, I believe I can afford a little time to just...be. To simply enjoy your company. Maybe we can sit beneath that silver maple in Washington Square Park again, and I can finally breathe air clean of the haze of battle and feel the sun shine on my face after so much smoke and darkness." And death, he might have added, but for the happiness his suggestion had brought to her face. "And I'm going to take a long, hot shower, because it's been literally a thousand years since I had that luxury."

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything," she teased him, "But you might wanna do just that."

Stephen narrowed his eyes, enjoying her return to playfulness, for it was a form of healing that he had prayed to find in her. Cherishing every moment of their now, while his heart stored all of them up for future comfort---for he still did not know what future awaited him, let alone Hope, once the endgame of this epic, universal struggle played out in full.

“Alright then,” Hope concluded, rising and beginning to clear the dishes away, rinsing them quickly before depositing them in the dishwasher, “Whatever the Master of the Mystic Arts needs, I’m more than happy to provide---it’s the very least that I can do for the salvation of the universe.”

Silently, Stephen stood up while she went about her task, fascinated with---and grateful for---her resiliency, and thanking the universe that had seemed to be so unendurably cruel since Bruce Banner had come crashing through the Sanctum roof, for finally giving him a measure of mercy. He took Hope by surprise, sliding an arm around her waist, and turning her to face him. “Just leave the salvation of the universe in my hands, honey. It’s enough for me that you’re seeing to my own.” With that, he kissed her breathless, before they left the Sanctum arm in arm, in search of sunshine enough to ward off the darkness that awaited him once he resumed his dread task.

Read the full story on AO3

tagging: @dutystricken @mousedetective

buy me a ko-fi?☕️

#my writing #ANGST #with a wee side of comfort #14000604 #Doctor Strange #Stephen Strange #Hope Collins #OFC #OC #doctor strange fan fiction #doctor strange fanfiction #stephen strange fanfiction #stephen strange fan fiction #avengers: endgame #Endgame #Strangebatch #My Eternal Muse #Benedict Cumberbatch

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yourwakingnightmares · 1 year

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So, I had a thought about Roy Mustang, and wanted to share. (Please read all the way through, I’m a huge Roy fan, despite how the first half of this post may seem, this isn’t an anti-Roy post, but rather a character study of sorts).

So normally, throughout the show, we see that Roy is calm, cool, and collected. He doesn’t show any emotion really, beyond smugness, or satisfaction at times. It takes the death of his best friend before we actually see some real emotion from him, and even then, he tries to hide it away, with the infamous, “It’s a terrible day for rain.” line.

Compare that -Mustang, sitting in his office with his team, or Mustang interrogating Major Armstrong following Hughes’ death -to what we see when he goes after Lust. When he goes after Envy.

That’s not even cold anger. That’s burning rage. In those two scenes, Roy is legitimately terrifying. He’s cruel.

His words to Lust, for example: “You said I couldn’t kill you, but I’d like the opportunity to prove you wrong. So how many times is it gonna take?” Or with Envy later, “Isn’t it interesting how quickly the tongue can be turned into a mess of boiling grease?”

That’s borderline sadistic, when you think about it. We see other people in the show get angry. Hell, in that same scene, Riza starts shooting, cursing, “You bitch!”. We see Ed -many, many times -lose his cool and start cussing out his enemies.

This is something different, though. This isn’t the desperate anger, a person pushed to the edge, and in emotional turmoil.

Roy in those scenes isn’t conflicted. He’s not in turmoil. He’s not desperate. He’s pissed. This isn’t a righteous fury, or desperation. This is rage.

So how do we fit this into Roy’s character? The man who deeply cares about his subordinates, who tries to protect the two boys under his command as much as he can, the man who’s a ‘lady’s man’, suave, cool, and collected? How does this aspect fit in?

Well, like most of Roy’s character development, we have to go back to Ishval. In Ishval, when a twenty-three year old Roy decided that he’d do what it took to get home, so he could ‘climb to the top of the pyramid’ as Hughes puts it. He’s willing to do whatever he has to, to try and make things right.

So he puts it all aside, tucking it away in that little black box in the back of his mind. The betrayal he feels by his government? Black box. The guilt over what he’s done? Black box. The horror at what he’s seen? Black box. The choices he’s had to make? Black box. As he tells Ed, “We keep moving. Whatever it takes. Even if it’s through a river of mud.”

Roy Mustang is the king of denial, the ruler of suppressing, the undisputed champion of compartmentalization. For a decade, this is how Roy survives. This is how he avoids eating a gun, how he gets up in the morning. He just doesn’t think about it. Shoves it down, and hides all those things away in the deepest parts of himself.

So what we see when Roy loses it? When he brutally tortures Lust and Envy? Roy is letting all that pain, all that self-loathing, all the guilt, the shame, the betrayal all out in those moments. What we see there is everything from Ishval making itself known.

And what makes it worse? Roy knows that this aspect of him exists. He knows what he’s capable of, when he opens that black box and let’s it all come bubbling out, like a volcano finally erupting, destroying everything in its path. We know he knows this... because he tells Riza that part of her job is to be ready to kill him if needed. He knows that each time he opens that box, that he lets himself feel everything he’s kept hidden away, tucked in the darkest corners of his mind, there’s a possibility that he’ll lose it; that he’s dancing along the edge of a knife, ready to topple off.

He knows exactly what he’s capable of. That he could very easily become worse than Kimblee. That there’s a part of him that’s just as broken, and dangerous, as Kimblee is.

Both suave, swarmy Roy and cruel, rage-filled Roy are the same person. He’s able to be suave and collected because of that rage. But that rage exists because he’s forcing himself to be so calm and rational.

These two aspects showcase Roy’s trauma in a heart-breaking way. Neither one of them is the ‘Real’ Roy at this point. The real Roy Mustang -the boy who wanted to protect people, who volunteered, the young idealist boy who told Master Hawkeye he was going to help -died in Ishval.

These two disparate parts of his personality are all that’s left of that boy. The man he so desperately wants to be, and the angry boy raging at the injustice and unfairness of it all.

#FMA:B #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #Roy Mustang #Character Study

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fortunatefires · 8 months

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I'm almost done with pretties and I'm only increasingly convinced that Shay is gay and just very very deeply in the closet. I mean, she fell for David sure. But it seems to me that any queer person deeply in denial could trick themself into thinking they love someone when that person can hand you your freedom. Then when they get to new pretty town Tally even says that the people who can fight the pretty brain rot are people who have secrets, who have guilt, or shame. And who fought through the brain rot all on her own? Shay. Her closeted ass had so much turmoil that she healed her own brain. She's a lesbian. Heavily in denial, but a lesbian nonetheless.

#This is canon for me #Literally nobody can talk me out of this #Pretties #Uglies #Scott westerfeld #tally youngblood #Shay #Lgbt #Lesbian #Dystopian #science fiction #Bookblr #Booktok #booklr #Text #Text post

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lilithfairen · 1 year

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Shit RWDE Says: "Up Yours, Queerphobes" Edition

I've been tempted to do "Shit RWDE Says" posts for a while, but collating such posts seemed like such a expense of time. Until now, where RWDE is giving us the perfect opportunity to see just how deeply they despise a queer relationship for existing in fiction and how much they hate and blame queer people for a cartoon and the romance between two women.

So let us begin the MKRY~

"We kept downplaying the growing relationship between Blake and Yang, while treating every interaction between Blake and Sun as absolute proof of romance, but you're the ones eating scraps."

"How can we insinuate that sapphic women are horrible people for loving each other? Let's pretend they don't care about anyone else just because they care about each other!"

"The worst wlw ships are the canon ones, because what if they actually express love and affection for each other instead of a man?"

"Let's not forget the real victim here: A MAN."

"I am so pissed off over the existence of a sapphic relationship that my brain completely shuts out 99% of the show in order to pretend that the plot is being ignored."

"Those stupid queer folks and their stupid ships, not caring about good storytelling like us folks."

"All fictional worlds must have queer folks angst about being queer. Also it's your fault that tender embraces each other or flat-out tackle-hugging and cuddling or blushing at each other are all things homophobes don't register as 'romantic' when it's between two women."

"I see no problem with comparing a sapphic relationship to this."

"I am so offended by the idea of a sapphic relationship that I fail to listen to a character openly, plainly, and bluntly explaining the circumstances."

"I am the same person who still cannot register something a character openly, plainly, and bluntly explained because I am just that pissed off at two women kissing."

"I cannot stand the idea that the creator of the series planned to include a queer relationship in their story. Who in their right mind would make anything except for what I approve of?"

"I live in a world where saying a creator will do something they obviously never will means that they're going to do that exact thing. Also I am an idiot."

"This relationship is poorly written because Yang doesn't carry a grudge about something Blake already addressed all the way back in V6. Also, as an Adam Taurus stan, I believe Blake should be guilt-tripped and shamed by her love interest." (Really, this comes from an Adam stan. Are you surprised?)

"God, a woman being attracted to another woman? what the fuck."

"I cannot wrap my head around women having romantic feelings."

"Blake rightfully belongs to Sun and the only reason he doesn't get her is the worst part of the fandom, i.e. queer folks!"

"If I ignore Blake and Yang having the hots for each other since V7, then it doesn't count at all! I only register heterosexuality!"

"In reality, I was constantly being brought new courses from the waiters, but ignoring it because I had arbitrarily decided that only one specific course constituted as dinner at this one specific restaurant (but none of the other restaurants I enjoy, mind you)."

"I, who have been whining about Bumbleby and bee fans and how Sun has totally been wronged all day long, am now registering people expressing their glee and delight over the episode in the same fashion that I register all of Blake and Yang's interactions. Which is to say, desperate denial."

"Let us repeat: The real victims here are men at the hands of those awful writers and queer folks oppressing us Blacksun shippers!"

"We who demanded that a woman belong to a man who repeatedly offended her and refused to respect her wishes are now declaring other people to be disrespectful and entitled!"

"No matter how much I claim otherwise, I hate how two women confessed their love to each other and would skip over it in subsequent rewatches to pretend it never happened."

"How dare a woman not give a man who stabbed her in the stomach, cut off her friend's arm, and gaslighted her the trust and respect he's entitled to!"

"I totally don't hate sapphic relationships, but Blake and Yang's relationship clearly received undue focus in V9! Which is to say, any whatsoever."

"I am a blithering queerphobic asshat who genuinely believes no one would ever write a sapphic relationship unless it was purely out of desperation. (And thank goodness the person I sent this ask to doesn't give a shit about that!)"

"People become worse people when they aren't heterosexual!"

"Poor writing is when I cannot register anything characters do other than their queer relationship because I'm so pissed off at them being queer!"

"Me, a person with Real Taste, have ignored literally every element of two characters and their relationship except for their colours."

"Queer people aren't queer unless they loudly and explicitly state that they are queer at the earliest possible time! And no, it doesn't count if they openly express their attraction to each other!"

"THERE IS NO TEXT BIG, BOLD, OR UPPERCASE ENOUGH TO HIGHLIGHT MY DISPLEASURE THAT CREATORS OF A SHOW ARE ALLOWED TO MAKE CONTENT I DISAPPROVE OF AND THEN LET PEOPLE SHOW THEIR LOVE OF SAID CONTENT THROUGH A T-SHIRT OF LESBIANS RIDING A BEE. BECAUSE CLEARLY THE ONLY REASON ANY CREATOR WOULD WRITE A SAPPHIC RELATIONSHIP IS TO SELL T-SHIRTS."

#rwby critics #queerphobia in hatedom #misogyny in hatedom #anti rwde #rwby spoilers

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vmprsm · 1 year

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Arthur Lester is dealing with complicated grief.

Let's break that down.

(Long text post ahead!)

Your first reaction may be: well, duh! But hear me out, 'cause this is fascinating (and also my current study). It's a real term, used by grief therapists, defined, arguably, as "An abnormal grief response that is more intense than normal grief, yet different from clinical depression." It's basically when the normal process of mourning goes way too long, goes sideways, doesn't resolve appropriately. Arthur is a poster child for this grief and I find that to be really amazing writing.

Complicated grief is highly stigmatized, especially in more emotionally strict cultures (a factor of this grief, actually, and oh my gods he's a male in the 1930's, he's repressed by design), and is separated into different sections. For Arthur, I argue he is primarily dealing with 'chronic' (lasting longer than average), 'delayed' (normal grief reactions suppressed consciously), and also 'exaggerated' (heightened, potentially self-destructive reactions) grief, with a little 'masked' (unaware of abnormal behavior being due to loss) grief mixed in, for fun.

I'm going to say right out that grief is a complex beast and does not fit neatly into categories, but we try.

The thing is, grief takes a course. It's not exactly linear, but it has a known pattern. Researchers argue about how to name the steps, tasks, phases, whatever, but the general gist is: accept the loss, deal with it, move on.

So....Arthur got stuck right near the beginning. You can tell by how reluctant he is, how painful it is to even mention Faroe even years later, that he has not accepted the loss. It's not full-blown denial, he doesn't believe that his little girl is alive somewhere, but it's close. Every mention brings fresh grief because he's avoided it, this is one hallmark of chronic grief. But it's taken years to to get to this point, so it's also delayed. In delayed grief, you put it off until you can't, and when the dam finally breaks the grief feels fresh, or, in Arthur's case, even more intense (exaggerated) than it would if it were normal grief. A lot of complicated grief doesn't fit in nice little boxes, and Arthur is a terribly complex case.

Arthur masked his grief during the time he was desperately delaying it in the course of the story: with unusual behavior, physical and mental reactions that he didn't realize was grief (his dogged determination to save the baby, his mood swings at John, etc). The take-away: knowing is not the same as accepting, and you cannot continue with mourning if you don't accept that loss has occurred. You simply cannot.

He helps mercy kill an animal and calls her Faroe. He kills a man and flips out (displacement, anyone?). He has self-destructive impulses via a stunning lack of self-preservation. This man is heavily grieving and doesn't know how to do again, so it's coming out in any outlet it can.

His guilt is out of control, which can deeply stall the grief process, and that's partially because 1) it's mixed with shame, or guilt from outward sources, and 2) he's not reality-testing it. Reality testing is critical to managing guilt in loss. Is Arthur right in feeling some guilt? Yes, but also, the reality is more complicated than that, and he isn't allowing himself to see the multi-faceted truth of it. He has massive survivor's guilt as well, compounded from multiple prior deaths that he probably also did not mourn sufficiently for. The poem about the death of his parents was a very good and healthy step towards mourning that loss, but did he ever complete the process? Did he find a way to relocate his feelings about the deceased and make new, meaningful relationships? Given how easily he destroyed his friendship with James (part 31), I seriously doubt it. Peter was his lifeline, but one man does not a support system make. Arthur purposefully stayed alone to avoid processing his grief because of his guilt.

And compounding factors for the potential for complicated grief? He's got those in spades, let me make a quick list here: multiple prior losses, complex relations with the deceased, early parental loss, negative self-concept, socially negated loss, absence of support, nd that's all I can think of just off the bat. He's fucked.

Frankly, I don't know Harlan Guthrie's relationship with grief, but he's smacked into our hands a classic example of a person who DEEPLY needs grief therapy, who I argue will not resolve his grief on his own without more damage. By the nature of the story he is forced to confront the delayed aspects of his grief, and, expectedly, his reactions are more exaggerated. John has been helping, albeit ineptly and accidentally, with putting Arthur through the process. His nightmare shows that he does, on some level, want to grieve ('you can't help but watch the horror' dream-Larsen says), but his self-loathing makes it difficult to see his grief clearly, and there's really no one else to do it for him. I'm fascinated to see how he evolves as the story progresses, and how he continues in his journey of mourning, no matter how many turns and backtracks it takes.

#malevolent #malevolent discussion #arthur lester #discussion of grief

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noblest-roman-of-them-all · 6 months

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I've been thinking all day about what I'd like to say, it's supposed to be an anniversary thank you letter, and as such it should be mostly about the subject of celebration, namely, The Sanders Sides series.

But the way this series has impacted me on such a personal level makes it hard not to talk about it without talking about myself and that impact that it has had.

I didn't start watching the series until after both parts of Accepting Anxiety came out. It wasn't long after that that my own mental health and anxiety hit a pretty significant rough patch and having Sander Sides as a type of guide in dealing with my anxiety made a world of difference, I was able to be so much kinder to myself because of the modeling of the series.

Tools like recognizing Häagen-Dazs dispersion cognitive distortions and learning to recognize what were my symptoms of anxiety truly did improve my quality of life. That's not to say I do this perfectly every time, but it is a tool that the series gave me years before I'd be able to get into therapy and that really carried me through in a lot of way.

Talking about The Chart still hurts and it would be a few years after this parties video came out before I would understand why beyond knowing how hurt and belittled I felt at being given my own Chart. Being told that your passions aren't important really leaves a mark.

I've always struggled with intrusive thoughts. Being a trauma survivor, I think it's a requirement. I...for a long time was in denial about my trauma, what it was and the impact it left on me. I thought I was cruel and a monster for writing certain traumas into both my original and fan works. No matter what I did to avoid it, the themes kept returning.

Remus being introduced really did a lot to help me. It relieved that burden of guilt and shame that I had been carrying, but it also made me aware that the intrusion thoughts I was having were like a giant flag that my brain was waving and I realized I was trying to process trauma via fiction. And while I know that wasn't something discussed in the video, it is something that I feel I wouldn't have understood as well or when I did without it.

And then came POF. This is the one that made me understand why I had been so hurt by the Chart I had been given. It wasn't until I saw the wounded expression on Roman's face that I realized that that was what I had felt years before, but had shut out, claiming it didn't hurt, that it was fine and reasonable and all these justifications for something that had wounded me deeply.

The conversation that ended with me having my own Chart didn't just cause an emotional wound, it wounded something even more deeply than that. Because this was given to me by someone who had seemingly once supported me and my ambitions, who seemed to have cared about the things I was doing and creating. So being given the Chart, being very explicitly and literally told I wasn't good enough. It felt like a betrayal. And it wasn't until Roman sank out with that look of hurt and betrayal that I realized that that is thr same kind of hurt I'd been keeping burried for years.

Recognizing that hurt. But I've been able now to take steps to address and heal that wound. I really don't think I would have recognized that with such clarity were it not for this series.

The way this series has helped me has been a bit unconventional, but it has also been invaluable. I truly would not be where I am today without it. So thank you.

Thank you @thatsthat24 and Co. You've really made my life so much better.

#birthday and thank you letters #happy anniversary #sanders sides

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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The fat body has long been a site of medical surveillance, and this has not changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Early research focused on linking fatness with more severe disease outcomes, yet many have questioned the strength of this association, including within the pages of this journal.

Fat communities, such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), have contested society’s stubborn generalizations that associate fatness with disease and poor health outcomes, and push back against the assumption that fat people have little regard for themselves or their own well-being. They argue that thinking about obesity as a disease or medical risk (such as for severe COVID-19) contributes to stigma because it positions larger bodies as drains on an already-taxed health care system.

The NAAFA mobilizes the term “fat” in its fight against weight discrimination and fatphobia in all aspects of life, including in employment, health care and education. Similarly, as social scientists, we use the term “fat” rather than the deeply problematic medical term, “obesity,” which causes harm to people under the guise of benign objectivity. Categories can shape how individuals view themselves, as philosopher Ian Hacking has argued; they reinforce judgments about people who do not conform to a norm. Thus, “obesity” is not merely a statistical category, but is rather an evaluation about what constitutes an ideal weight. To “fatten” a category, Mollow and McRuer explain, “means examining it through the lenses of fat studies and the fat justice movement.”

Scholars of fat studies understand fatness as a way of thinking about bodily diversity. This literature maintains that fatness should be uncoupled from pathology, as such framings attach fatness to a sense of moral weakness and failed citizenship, and can fuel stigma in various settings, even health care. Such an uncoupling is increasingly supported by medical and population health research, which suggests that people who are labelled obese are not necessarily unhealthy.

There's a really weird intersection between people who want to shame and scold anti-vaxers - whether COVID or MMR - over "the science," and those who want to celebreate obesity, and deny or outright lie about "the science" and the health impacts of obesity because recognizing scientific reality is "shaming."

Not everything needs to be "destimatized." That doesn't mean people need to be actively harassed. But anti-science, denial of basic human biology, and rejection of objective reality don't need to be "normalized," nor do we need to pretend there are no consequences, no human or financial cost, just because some people prefer to hear a comforting lie over a painful truth. Any more than Flat Earth needs to be "normalized."

People who are obese know they're obese. They carry the awareness and the guilt. And in some cases, it's a symptom of a larger problem, particularly mental health issues, resulting in a feedback loop. "Normalizing" obesity is like normalizing alcoholism. It doesn't help the person, and it hurts them by encouraging them to stay stuck, encouraging the lie that they don't deserve better.

You “empower” people by telling them the truth.

-- The Stoic Emperor

"Fat Studies" is a real - in the sense it exists, not the sense that it's intellectually or academically legitimate - field in the same hypothetical Humanities that houses the other bogus grievance-based "Studies" fields. As with Queer Theory, it spun off directly from Feminist Theory, and closely parallels Disability Studies in asking why we think it's a good idea for bodies to work and people to live long healthy lives without the deleterious effects of excess weight on the body.

It has decided that the only reason people are concerned about obesity is a hatred of fat people, and a worship of an "ideology" it dubs "healthism." Apparently, not being chronically unwell is an ideology.

Health-ism is a belief system that sees health as the property and responsibility of an individual and ranks the personal pursuit of health above everything else, like world peace or being kind. [..] Health-ism judges people’s human worth according to their health. -- Lucy Aphramor, "What is Health-ism"

One supposes that Ms. Aphramor is projecting her guilt in the creation of such hyperbole.

youtube

Let's take a look at excerpts from "The Fat Studies Reader," by Esther RothBlum and Sondra Solovay (TOR).

"As a new, interdisciplinary field of intellectual inquiry, fat studies is defined in part by what it is not.

For example, if you believe that fat people could (and should) lose weight, then you are not doing fat studies—you are part of the $58.6 billion-per-year weight-loss industry or its vast customer base (Marketdata Enterprises, 2007).

If you believe that being fat is a disease and that fat people cannot possibly enjoy good health or long life, then you are not doing fat studies. Instead, your approach is aligned with “obesity” researchers, bariatric surgeons, public health officials who declare “war on obesity” (Koop, 1997), and the medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex that profits from dangerous attempts to “cure” people of bodily difference (more on “obesity” later).

If you believe that thin is inherently beautiful and fat is obviously ugly, then you are not doing fat studies work either. You are instead in the realm of advertising, popular media, or the more derivative types of visual art—in other words, propaganda."

"If you live in, and believe in, an objective reality, you're not doing Fat Studies."

"American culture is engaged in a pervasive witch hunt targeting fatness and fat people (a project that is rapidly being exported worldwide). Although this urge to eradicate fat people continues, it is not only challenging to be fat, but also especially challenging to question any aspect of the witch hunt on fat people (not that it is so very comfortable to be thin during a weight-based witch hunt)."

A "witch hunt," and yet shaming Rebel Wilson, Adele, Jennifer Hudson and Melissa McCarthy for their "betrayal" - their word, confirming an ideological motive - for losing weight is what's socially acceptable. As is usually the case with Critical Social Justice ideologies, this victimhood posture comes from those who hold systemic influence.

"I can definitely relate to feeling betrayed when celebrities do that," [...] "My initial gut reaction is that it almost feels like a hero is no longer a hero," [..] "I was like, 'I love her. She looks like me,'" Baker recalls. Now, she says, "It hurts."

Imagine someone saying this about Adele gaining weight, and then consider who is really conducting the "witch hunt".

The language being deployed here is deliberate: "this urge to eradicate fat people" makes people think of Auschwitz or firing squads or the like, when it means no such thing. It's a postmodernist strategy to adopt attributes as "identity" and then cry "eradication" or "genocide" when they're not needed any more. People leaving Islam is framed as "cultural genocide," although people leaving Xianity is not framed the same way. Helping babies to hear is "cultural genocide" or some kind of bigotry.

We're seeing the same thing at the moment with Queer Theory. Those who subscribe to Gender Ideology oppose exploratory therapy, and demand unquestioned affirmation of a child's internet self-diagnosis. To ask a child why they think they might be "trans" and to figure out what might be the cause(s) - typically, homosexuality, autism, social issues, depression, or regular everyday gender non-conformance - is framed as "Conversion Therapy." Because it means the child might find a more useful, accurate diagnosis and abandon "trans" as a self-diagnosis (identity). As if it's comparable to attaching gay men and women to electrodes and electrocuting them if they don't respond to the opposite sex, dunking them in ice water, or cloistering them away and bombarding them with religious dogma until they conform.

"[The Fat Underground] viewed the effort to eradicate fat people via weight loss as a form of genocide perpetrated by the medical profession. The Fat Underground was influenced both by feminism and by radical therapy, a type of treatment that put the focus of change on society, not on individuals. In the words of Gudrun Fonfa, “By refuting the dogma of the diet industry and rejecting the aesthetics of the patriarchal culture, [we made] activists out of each individual fat woman who liberated herself from a lifetime of humiliation” (Fishman, 2008)."

"The problem is not that I'm overweight, it's that you're not celebrating me." They're totally serious in calling it "genocide" when obese people lose weight and reduce the likelihood of obesity-related health issues. Such as death.

"But to uphold the rigor of the scientific convention limits engagement with meaning making: language is not a neutral tool but rather a powerfully charged political vector. The words that we use here influence our ability to generate possibilities (Lorde, 1984). Rather than locate our writing in the culture of positivism by choosing a relatively static scientific discourse, we have instead chosen to engage poetry as a way of “crafting a praxis-oriented culture” and troubling the status quo (Dorazio- Migliore, Migliore, & Anderson, 2005). In welcoming subordinated poetic voices, around which we have arranged our chapter, we deliberately reject the certainty of positivism (as well as the privilege that it affords us) and plump for a more unruly interface with our readers. We hope that this style presents dominant theories as indefinite, negotiable, situated, and open to query."

"Being limited to reality is confining when you want to invent and promote ideological nonsense, so we're here to convince you that it would be close minded not to consider poetry to be just as legitimate as science."

"In valuing feminist epistemologies the authors acknowledge, as Leahy writes, “that women’s experiences and knowledge have often been marginalized or ignored, often at great cost” (Leahy, 2001, p. 39). Of course, in foregrounding gender we do not wish to obscure axes of ideological bias related to class, race, sexuality identity, age, or disability. Our hope is that this chapter encourages more dietetic theorists and practitioners to take up the notion of a socially integrated feminist science for dietitians, one that refuses to disappear feminist discourses on fat."

That is, science doesn't echo feminist dogma sufficiently. The document actually describes science as: "a masculinist science that purports to be impartial and, denying the interweaving of science with society, sustains dietetics as socially disintegrated and nonfeminist." And therefore proposes an ideologically motivated parallel domain - "feminist science" - that does.

"If Fat Studies scholarship is in its infancy within the United States, it is practically fetal in the United Kingdom, but this may be changing. September 2007 heralds “Bodies of Evidence: Fat Across Disciplines,” an interdisciplinary and international conference at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH). This conference seeks to “examine the obese body as a case study of both the contested nature of evidence and as a site for the construction of interdisciplinary evidence and problem-solving” (2007)."

Zero medical, biological or health scientists. English majors writing pretentious screeds about obesity.

Finnish researcher Harjunen clarifies the need for increased cross-cultural understanding: I do realise that we non-American activists need to bring this issue up. For example the case of health care is very different in the Nordic countries and UK (I mean that it is universal, you are not denied access to medical care because of the weight as in the insurance-based systems), weight loss surgeries are almost non-existent here, but so are services for fat people, as well as the discussion about the politics of fat unfortunately. People believe in medicine, so-called health experts and public health campaigns almost blindly. My doctoral dissertation on fatness will be the first one in this country that comes from the field of social sciences not medicine or health sciences. (e-mail correspondence, 3 May 2006)

"Listen to politically-motivated ideologues with unfalsifiable postmodern hypotheses, instead of those whose work is open to scientific scrutiny."

"If we follow the normal procedures of science, we need to show that there is evidence for our hypothesis before assuming it is true. But in real life, scientific consensus also occurs because a priori assumptions are so seamless that they are not questioned.

One of the a priori assumptions that does not seem to require evidence is the idea that being fat is unhealthy.

[..]

Because people in our culture, including physicians, subscribe so religiously to these assumptions, they have not been subjected to adequate scientific testing."

"Having already rejected science as being legitimate, we'll now pretend to 'correctly' apply science, despite not having any science background, after first baselessly asserting that all science is just 'religiously' supported by 'assumptions,' and claiming no evidence or testing whatsoever exists for the decades of research into obesity."

Obesity is just assumed to be unhealthy. For no reason other than bigotry and oppression.

Xianity does the same thing when they ramble about the laws of thermodynamics and that no evidence exists to support evolution. Or when they call atheism a "religion" or that it requires more "faith."

"If fatness causes health problems, why does it not show up in all fat people? Why do those same health problems show up in thin people? Why do the diseases attributed to higher BMI seem to also be characterizable as diseases of aging or chronic stress?"

"What are statistics and how do they work? I wouldn't know, because my field doesn't use data."

"Like other forms of mother blame, mother blaming in the context of the “obesity epidemic” is as much or more about social anxieties regarding the changing role of women, as well as the changing racial and ethnic composition of the nation, than it is about any real public health “crisis.” Like the social construction of the “obesity epidemic” in general, the blaming of mothers for their kids’ “excess” weight draws attention away from very real structural inequalities in health care, education, and employment that are often felt hardest by women and minorities. [..]

Given the function of the “obesity epidemic” to draw attention away from structural inequality, as well as the ways in which mother blame for childhood “obesity” ties in with other forms of mother blame, one would think that feminists would have taken up the issue of fat rights in the same way they have championed reproductive rights, the rights of working women, and the rights of children. I argue, however, that a general cultural acceptance of the “fat = unhealthy” equation, along with a larger societal fat phobia, in part explains why the “obesity epidemic” is only now beginning to be critically deconstructed by mainstream feminism and social science. This situation strongly makes the case for an interdisciplinary field of fat studies in which scholars and activists can consider the increasing intertwining of sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, and fat phobia, among other issues."

"Pointing out that your kids are overweight is really about hiding racism, sexism and homophobia... somehow."

"That fat and queer people would heartily embrace science and medicine as a solution to their socially constructed problems is redolent of Stockholm syndrome—after all, science and medicine have long been instrumental in oppressing fat and queer people, providing argument after argument that pathologize the homosexual or “obese” individual (whether the mind or the body). Michel Foucault’s work (1980) has shown us that placing bodies under the microscope of science, in the name of liberal projects of self-improvement, in fact reinscribes their deviance and increases their oppression."

The paper simply continues to assert that obesity is a "socially-constructed problem" invented by science and indirectly - through the use of the Stockholm syndrome comparison - invokes False Consciousness, a Marxian concept whereby "oppressed" groups internalize and reproduce the same assertions their "oppressors" use to "oppress" them. The inclusion of language about homosexuality is no accident - Fat Studies regards obese people as being comparable to homosexuals, and insists that messaging relating to obesity and health problems is based entirely on bigotry, and that encouragement to lose weight and get healthy is comparable to insisting gay people should just try to have heterosexual sex (making gay people straight is, by the way, now a crusade of Queer Theorists).

"If you believe that being fat is a disease and that fat people cannot possibly enjoy good health or long life, then you are not doing fat studies. Instead, your approach is aligned with “obesity” researchers, bariatric surgeons, public health officials who de- clare “war on obesity” (Koop, 1997), and the medico-pharmaceutical industrial com- plex that profits from dangerous attempts to “cure” people of bodily difference (more on “obesity” later)."

"We're going to deliberately ignore that weight loss can be achieved inexpensively by making lifestyle changes, such as increasing exercise, reducing caloric intake, reducing portion size and making substitutions, and instead paint concern over obesity as a giant corporate conspiracy and grab for money, blamed on 'Obesity, Inc.,' a parallel to the 'Big Pharma' railed against by anti-vaxers. And just as anti-vaxers ignore 'Big Placebo,' the multi-billion dollar 'alternative medicine' industry, we're going to conveniently ignore the multi-billion dollar industries that promote fast foods, comfort foods and sedentary lifestyles."

"In 2016, the aggregate medical cost due to obesity among adults in the United States was $260.6 billion."

At least "2.8 million people [die] each year as a result of being overweight or obese." In the last three years of the COVID pandemic, there have been 6.6 million deaths attributed to/caused by the virus. This means that as an average over the three years of COVID, obesity is still outpacing COVID deaths.

One of the strongest contributing factors to death resulting from COVID from those under 65 was obesity, but hardly anyone talked about it, at the risk of being scolded about "fat-shaming." The typical activist tactic was, "well this fit, 30 year old runner died of COVID, so I don't have to know what 'contributing factors' means". But ignoring it didn't change that it was there.

Doctors are even being told not to weigh patients, in case they find it "shaming." Which is nothing but denial. Whether you're weighed by the doctor or not doesn't change your weight - you're just refusing to know or acknowledge it.

This, then...

... functions the same as this.

The final word I'll leave to the Fat Studies scholars. This vacuous word salad, again from the Fat Studies Reader, merges crazy from across the social justice spectrum into one rambling, incoherent paragraph of pseudo-intellectual nonsense. We shouldn't be using these people's ideas to guide society.

Imagination nurtures dietetic theory and practice (Berenbaum, 2005), whereas an impoverished imagination glorifies the status quo by silencing and repressing vulnerable, feminist texts (Gingras, 2005b). Poetry is born of the imagination, instigates rather than routinizes, and illuminates alternative ways of telling, knowing, and being a dietitian. Poetics enlivens the emotional capacity of dietetic practice, which buttresses a feminist dietetic ethics because our work is at its core a fundamentally human endeavor. Our intention with this chapter is to bring forward contemporary examples within dietetics where anti-fat, healthist discourse enacts a type of violence; to integrate social feminist theories on the body and gender performativity with dietetic theory, practice, and agency; and finally to offer mindfulness and poetics as reconciliatory discourses whereby difference is not viewed as deviance, and complicity is rarely tolerated.

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dark--whisperings · 1 year

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Obikin Bingo Master Post

Falling For Your Body and Soul

Prompt: 'Morning After'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/44205403)

We thought our actions were innocent, born out of shared need and comfort. Now that innocence is fading, and our ignorance is no longer carefree. We’ve found ourselves thinking about all that we could be, and what our future should be. In which mistakes are made and carefully constructed glass houses shatter. What’s the endgame for you and me? Sequel to ‘Falling Deep Into You’.

___

Suffocate Me (I'm Still Breathing)

Prompt: 'Dive Bar'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/46136356/chapters/116145733)

Grief. Culpability. Anguish. There are many words to describe Obi-Wan’s current existence, but none of them manage to fully encompass the sheer depth of his struggle. He needs an escape, a way to punish himself, one he finds at the very bottom of his downward spiral, alone and apathetic to the consequences. This is how Anakin finds him.

___

out of our hands

Prompt: 'Morning Sex'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/48204940)

Obi-Wan is attached. Dreadfully attached, a blatant violation of the Code and one he is willing to overlook until it almost gets Anakin killed. In his intense remorse and guilt, he pushes Anakin away in a desperate attempt to both protect his former lover and cling to the Jedi Code. He should have known Anakin wouldn’t let that happen.

___

Taste of the Divine

Prompt: 'Orgasm Denial/Delay'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/48927022)

The day had seemed never-ending, filled with meeting after meeting and the infinite responsibilities of a wartime High General. Even Obi-Wan’s evening promised the sweet embrace of unrelenting work. Although, duty was the last thing on Obi-Wan’s mind when he laid eyes on what waited for him in his quarters. Or rather, who.

___

the way you bend, the way you break

Prompt: 'Edge Play'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/48927478)

Anakin has a deeply rooted, shameful fantasy of having power taken away from him, by force. Obi-Wan, the ever sedulous and equally incorrigible partner, shares this fantasy and indulges his lover.

___

White Roses, Black Doves (ART)

Prompt: 'First Kiss'

(https://www.tumblr.com/dark--whisperings/725562060535185408/white-roses-black-doves?source=share)

Post battle, the adrenaline and heightened emotions of having to watch the other part of their soul in danger once again finally overwhelms them, and our favourite Generals are helpless but to succumb to their very first kiss.

___

Those Eyes Like Fire

Prompt: 'Force Shenanigans'

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/49745020)

It was a blatant misuse of the Force, an all out pleasurable assault on his senses. While meditating alone in his quarters, during a night out in the lower levels of Coruscant, on the bridge of the Negotiator… there was nowhere Obi-Wan was out of reach of Anakin’s devastatingly hedonistic touch. Now, if only Obi-Wan could actually bring himself to care about eluding it.

#obikinbingo23 #obikin #obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #star wars the clone wars #star wars prequels #star wars #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfiction by darkwhisperings #art by darkwhisperings #digital fanart #digital art

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wackus-bonkus-maximus · 2 years

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You know, I wonder how Gabriel and Kagami would react if Adrien actually DID manage to break his amok and his Miraculous, erasing both himself and Felix from existence (I'm assuming Lila would only really care about the Miraculous being broken, and most everyone else would just plain be devastated).

Assuming that Ladybug didn't just murder everyone immediately with her powers going out of control, I've got some guesses.

Like, Kagami would be devastated, obviously. But I think that she'd probably wait to start on the grieving process until Lila and Gabriel were dead. Probably anyway? I'm not sure the exact way and thought process she'd have behind blaming Lila and Gabriel for Felix's and Adrien's deaths. I mean, they wouldn't have killed the two of them directly, but their actions would undeniably have led to Adrien taking the step he did.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how she'd view Adrien's suicidal action, either. Like intellectually I don't think she'd blame him for Felix's death - he'd have been the cause, but it's not like he knew that what he was doing would kill him, and Adrien did it specifically while killing himself anyway - but emotionally I think part of her WOULD be angry at him. And it would make for some very mixed emotions that she'd know would be unfair, because really, Adrien's the one who's suffered the most throughout this.

I'd imagine that everyone else mourning Adrien, while Felix would only really be mourned by her and his mother, and maybe Chloe, would also give her quite the mix of emotions.

And then factoring in that she knows that the whole situation Adrien was in was partly due to Felix's actions, as well as inaction due to not wanting to take some better options in order to maintain his own pride...

She'd have a lot of complexity to work through. After she finished beating up and probably murdering Lila and Gabriel, anyway.

As for Gabriel, I'm just wondering whether he'd show regret and remorse for what he put Adrien through after his death. I mean, again, assuming he actually survived Marinette's and Kagami's wrath. The wrath of everyone who cared about Adrien, really (which is a lot of people). He kept on telling himself that this was ultimately gonna be good for Adrien, that it'd all be worth it... but Adrien was willing to kill himself to get away from him. I'm wondering whether that might be enough to finally get through to Gabriel that he fucked up, and lost the one other person he cared about, through his own actions. That it was his own fault. Whether he'd be wracked with guilt, or whether he'd still be in denial, believing that what he was doing was justified. Whether he'd look back at everything he put his son through, all the violation, all the control, all the misery, and finally, fully regret what he did.

adrien dying and taking felix with him would definitely lead to a kagami and marinette team up again. part of kagami's revenge would be for felix but also for adrien; yes part of her would be mad at him for killing himself and not getting help elsewhere, for breaking everybody's hearts. but like, also she'd know he wasn't to blame at all for being a hero. and yeah, she'd both be cut up over felix and mad at him for lending a hand to the whole tragedy in general. mixed emotions galore!

(omg, that part about everyone mourning adrien and only amelie, kagami, and maybe chloe mourning felix--that hit hard dude 😭 poor felix lol he deserves that)

and "adrien being willing to kill himself to get away from [gabe]" oof OOF that hurts too even though it's true. you just have a way of analyzing things that really point out how tragic the characters' situations are :D in regards to all of gabriel's guilt and shame...who's to say he's not already deeply feeling all of that? you're on the right train of thought though! i'm very glad you're beginning to examine gabe's inner demons and looking at how he would handle all of this :DDDDD

#odnlb #one does not love breathing #odnlb analysis #odnlb discussion #kagami tsurugi #adrien agreste #felix graham de vanily #gabriel agreste

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candiid-caniine · 5 months

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You once made a post quite a while ago about neurodivergency and how that affects kink. And while I am about a month and a half late to the party, I thought I'd answer. Because we have thought a lot about this.

So I think the most obvious way for us is through DID, dissociative identity disorder. Each headmate has their own kinks and attitudes towards sex. My dom, who is also plural and also of the mindset that everything can and should be sexualized, has certainly done some thinking about this. Favorite has to be an idea they've had for a long time (but never gotten around to doing because of a bunch of reasons) about making me switch out just as I'm about to cum. And having me switch back as soon as they do so, so I have to clean up the mess. Another plurality-derived sexy moment came from looking at nudes that another headmate took. I just had a deeply rooted feeling that even though this pictures looked like me, they weren't me. They were somebody puppeting my body around. I had never had a kink for such a thing before, and I still don't really, but oh my god. Oh my god.

For me specifically (call me... Gold), autism and ADHD heavily inform my kinks. We have severe executive dysfunction issues that make it really difficult to do basically anything. Clear instructions are the cure to this for me, to the point where I will do literally anything a select list of friends ask. The happier they are with me, the happier I am. I'm sure how you can see how this leads to me humiliated, in immeasurable pain, and so horny I could cry. Being horny just amplifies this feeling, so obviously orgasm denial is my number 1 kink. I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it.

Now to expose the system's other host (we have two), who you can call Lily. She is the holder for our histrionic personality disorder. Basically she really really really really needs attention so the rest of us only kinda need it instead of just really needing it. If that makes any sense at all. But, of course, sex is a place to find attention. Which means she's big into being worshipped. Number 1 kink right there. And on the sub side she loves praises and insults alike. Often she'll be a terrible brat when around friends who are also kinky just so that she can be the center of attention.

And to bring it back to your blog's theme, I am both pleased and dismayed to discover that the way horniness builds overtime is mostly (if not entirely) emotional in nature. If I'm being denied for an extended period of time (like now, happy November), and a headmate of mine fronts and cums, I don't feel any less horny.

I think that's all worth mentioning. Hope you find this interesting!

- @golden-tumble

hi friend! wow, this ask was so detailed and so, so interesting to me! thank you so much for sending it!

i can honestly say that, while i've had several friends who are plural, i've always felt...i don't know, unsure of how etiquette works irt sex. of course, i know each person in the body is, well, a person, and i should simply communicate with the person and the system at large about boundaries and preferences, etc. but i've felt out of my depth in regular conversation with members of a system, so i think that informs some of my anxiety.

it's fascinating to me that Gold continues to experience the intensity of denial even if another headmate orgasms. i guess i never really thought about which parts of denial-brain are truly brain and which parts are body, so that's a question answered that i never really thought to ask!

i've heard from plural friends/plural-owned nsft blogs that some headmates also hold what we consider "paraphilias," or any sexual interest that other system members feel is taboo, so that the rest of the system is protected from the guilt or shame that said paraphilias might cause, which i've always found really fascinating too.

i'll answer your wonderful ask with a bit of sharing of my own re: autism and some other things:

i frequently experience speech loss with enough stimulation/deep enough in subspace. i actually find it highly erotic, rather than distressing. uh, i mean, it is somewhat distressing, but in an erotic way, and i trust my spouse deeply and they know how to communicate with me despite the speech loss!

i have visual synesthesia triggered by (some) orgasms. i have seen flowers, horses galloping, all kinds of colors, robots, etc. when i cum lol!

one of my special interests since my early teens has been BDSM, in case you somehow didn't pick up on that lmao!!

my sensory-seeking behaviors for pressure affect my preferred positions and activities. fucking *love* being crushed under another person's weight, grabbed roughly, having my face shoved into the bed...just,, and i actually have an aversion to light touches. tickling/caressing, brushing lightly, poking, all make me squirrely, so i need to be touched like you fucking mean it ;)

it's obvious from this blog, but when i *want* to be, i'm ridiculously easy to condition. even when i don't *know* i want to be. see my interaction with lady maria a few posts ago. see also that i accidentally started cumming on command, then accidentally stopped being able to cum without permission. (downside: i might be losing my ability to cum on command, since we don't let me cum much anymore ;-; unsure if it was bc i was just bone-tired last time they told me to, but future testing will confirm.)

weirdest one: ever since i was young, i've been a maladaptive daydreamer and had highly vivid imaginary friends. one might even consider them accidental tulpas (i know the term is contested but it's the most recognizable one and i don't know what else to call them, sorry!). in childhood these friends were just friends, but as i got older and started to experience arousal/sexual interests, my relationships with them have gotten...charged, at times. they're not concrete enough for me to "feel" touch from them, etc, but i've definitely had them watching me and egging me on and dirty-talking to me while i touch myself, and it's fucking hot <3

i consider my romantic orientation to be affected by both my physical disability and my neurodivergence. the degree, times, and forms of attraction that i experience to others fluctuates and shifts depending on what's going on with my body and what's going on with my mind. i don't remember the terms for this, but to a degree it affects my sexuality as well--not so much whom i'm attracted to sexually, that's static, but *how.*

thanks again so much for sharing! <333

#golden-tumble #asks #health and kink #neurosexy #denial #h/d #gen

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eggs-can-draw · 8 months

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you can't be doing my girl Kaede dirty like that, first Sayaka, now this? manic pixie dreaming some guy's life on the way out is the least relevant aspect of those characters!!! And you dare call yourself a woman liker? When only looking at those really interesting and morally complicated girls from the lenses of how they affected those boys? For shame.

My girl, Kaede Akamatsu, is a scheming, lying, betraying murderer who felt the weight of the shot put ball in her backpack while talking about trust and cooperation. She dirties her hands, she makes sacrifices, she's the boss and feels responsible for the group but doesn't actually trust them. She's reassuring herself more than them, she doesn't really believe what she preaches, and she's scared, but she's responsible and so - she resorts to denial, toxic positivity, being too pushy, and still feeling like it's not enough and being restless, fidgeting, planning to do something on her own, because if she can't pull through on all her promises then she still has to try to do her best for everyone's sake.

When she doesn't claim the first blood perk it has nothing to do with Shuichi and forcing him to face the trauma or with guilt and wanting to be executed, she wants to catch the mastermind, for the group's sake, that's all that's on her mind. And when she makes him go through the trial the way she does it's for the sake of the group then his, she needs him to be able to lead in future trials and save the group, it's not exposure therapy, he's reliving the trauma to his detriment. Really, the promise is because she's already thinking that a murder can happen again and at most she can hope that this will make the next person hesitate.

V3 has such a strong theme of characters being fucked because of their sense of duty, everyone who killed or tried to felt obliged to, this includes kiyo feeling like he owes to deliver friends for his sister. Kaede isn't just Shuichi's fridged pure angel on his shoulder, he made up an idealized version of her to cope, sure, but she's there setting an example, so you can see Kaito with his hero complex and Kirumi's devotion in the next chapter and know that they're fucked. None of them are okay in that way, down to Shuichi on his executioner duty.

The previous games are like "wouldn't it be fucked up if even our bright youth was capable of atrocities?" and v3 is like "what if you tried to do something noble but were deeply mentally ill, and also who are you to make this decision for others? What if we'd rather all die together than let you take away the burden of the sacrifice all for yourself?"

She is morally gray and she did things that were not good and she is going to be so fucked up about it post-game and she kind of already was in-game, the lack of faith in people from the audition video seeping through the optimistic facade. This is such a rich mess of a character and you're going to say she's your fave because of Shuichi? Seriously?

Don't take it as me being personally mad at you, I am just opinionated about those stuff

Oh my god you’re so right fucking eating this like a fifty three course meal bestie. Legit I will be thinking about this all day you’ve wormed your way into my brain bestie

#eggs can answer #ohwell-itsme #danganronpa #ndrv3 #kaede akamatsu

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intergalacticwhales · 2 years

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ok soooooooooooooo I wanna talk about Dorian/Iron Bull bc my brain is going to implode if I dont

I feel like their relationship is the most satisfactory one out of all the romantic options in the game. Its not just that it embodies the things that are forbidden in their respective cultures, its that their relationship is forbidden in account of their peoples being at war for centuries. Can you imagine the ammount of work they had to put into their own internalized beliefs on each other AND themselves to make it work????

But it goes deeper than that. Its a relationship that allows them both growth and exploration of their most deepest fears. I think Iron Bull is loud and unapologetic about their relationship bc he knows Dorian has to work through a lot of internalized shame and guilt over his desires, bc he had to repress them and act as if he didnt care about a relationship for his entire life in Tevinter. And it might seem like he is pushing Dorian, but actually he knows that he doesnt regret anything, he just needs to realize he doesnt have to hide anymore, even from himself (specially from himself). ALSO temptation being Dorian’s greatest fear adds even more shame and guilt about his thing with Iron Bull at first, letting himself be “conquered” and all that.

On the other hand, the whole thing Iron Bull has to work through is allowing himself to want. To desire more than just please other people. To be more than just a tool for other people to use. He might start his relationship with Dorian with the conviction he is doing it to help him work through his issues, and also bc he cares about him. He can understand the feeling of being a stranger in the south, and Dorian’s conviction to redeem his homeland is noble. Also he can feel Dorian’s disrespectful looks at him and he can’t deny he is also attracted to the guy. So, why not, right?

Only that he realizes that Dorian doesnt only want to fuck. He can see, even through all that denial and repression, that Dorian wants to love and be loved. Be cherished, even. The thing is, does Iron Bull feel he can give Dorian what he needs? bc he can see that Dorian feels ashamed about his desire, but he keeps coming back. And Iron Bull keeps welcoming him. And it is a simple thing, right? to ask Dorian what he wants and to understand what he needs and try to give it to him. And Dorian probably doesnt question what Iron Bull wants or needs (out loud) bc is he ready to hear the answer? whatever it might be? absolutely not.

And so its a barely balanced “simple” thing, about passion and desire (on a superficial level), until its not anymore. Iron Bull becomes Tal-Vashoth. He confronts his deepest fear, of madness and what it means in practice: hurting everyone he cares about. Specially Dorian. He probably responds to this by trying to push Dorian away, only to realize they are more tangled than he thought they were. Dorian is stubborn as hell and he cares deeply, so, even if he told himself that his thing with Iron Bull wasnt going to last and that he would probably get tired of him and push him away eventually, he refuses to let it happen, not like this. So the roles reverse: Dorian is now reading Iron Bull wants and needs, and giving them to him. He makes him understand he has complete control over himself, that the links with a system doesnt make him the person he is. Its the relationships he chooses to maintain and cherish what grounds and reminds him of the good he can do in the world. And that changes everything.

So now asking the question is very important. What does The Iron Bull want? He doesnt have a system that tells him what the limits are anymore, and he has to confront the fact that the limits are very blurred by now. So there’s an opening, a possibility. Something he had never had before. Something neither Dorian has had before, by the way. So they are just staring at each other in disbelief. Could you ever guess people like us could have something like this, together? No wonder Varric wants to write a novel about us.

Only the sky tearing itself open could make such a thing happen.

#honestly I could continue writing about them but #maybe I'll save some thoughts for later idk #I'm just...... emotional over them #dragon age #Dorian Pavus #Iron Bull #nahuel's nonsense

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besttreatmentcenter · 4 days

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