#childhood fucking sucked.

[saintedbythestorm]

Just read a twitter thread where like everyone went on about how they weren't allowed to have long hair as a kid...

Felt so incredibly out of place cause I was never allowed to cut my long hair instead.

[crumbleclub]

michael: do i really have trauma, though?

jeremy: dude. your dad is literally a serial killer

michael: yeah, but he didn't serial kill me

[screechingfromthevoid]

This is after me calling Orym an FFA kid with his green and brown aesthetic

[astrolotte]

Genuinely intrigued by the potential of Peri and Irep's dynamic but only in a platonic way so I end up not vibing with the fandom's portrayal of it 😔😔😔

(No but listen LISTEN they were kinda-almost-friends when we last saw them in FOP, yeah? Now they're enemies, with both actively fighting each other, and Irep going so far as to try and kill Peri's parents. What happened? When? What influenced it? Did they ever become friends, or did it nosedive the moment the cameras turned off? What about Sammy? How do Irep's parents factor into this? Could it ever be fixed? There's just so much we haven't seen, and romance just feels like too easy a solution to me. Let their friendship be easy to break, fragile. Let them have to work to keep the connection. Fairies and Anti-Fairies are literally made to be opposites, so what happens when two genuinely and truly become friends?)

((and yeah I guess a lot of this could factor into a romantic angle but ALAS the fandom seems to be leaning heavily into the funny toxic yaoi angle 😔 I don't mind it! By all means, please have your very harmless fun! But it ain't my jam :P Perhaps I'll have to write a oneshot myself...))

(((see tags for more rambles i guess. whoops a bitch spoke too much in there as he always does)))

[thattheater-kid]

Everyone talks about how fucked up it was that people told kids, especially girls, that if someone picks on you it means they like you. And that is fucked up and should be talked about, but you know what else is fucked up?

Telling bullying victims to have sympathy for their bully because “they’re probably hurting too” (also that the best way to stop bullying is to ignore it, but that’s another post). That’s really harmful and just teaches kids to ignore mistreatment and abuse because the perpetrator has had a hard time too.

[anaalnathrakhs]

oh god ed reddit is having the “uwu anorexia isn’t rooted in fatphobia my mental illness is not abt you” talk again please god help me

fatphobia doesn’t mean “being a meanie to fat ppl” i’m begging you to use critical thinking skills for five seconds and apply what you know about literally any other form of oppression to this situation.

people’s point isn’t that you having anorexia makes them feel bad and therefore you’re a bad fatphobic person.

they’re pointing out how the deeply ingrained fatphobia our society upholds, from misconceptions about health to moralization of looks and weight, including yes being jerks to fat ppl’s faces bc they’re fat, is affecting what you think about your own looks, weight, health, body, clothes, eating habits, etc.

the logic isn’t “you became anorexic because you hate fat people so much you never wanted to be fat yourself (and that makes you a bad person)” it’s “fatphobia is a prism that transforms the root cause of your ed into disordered thoughts, behaviors, and patterns (and unlearning fatphobia will help you with recovery and harm-reduction)”

like. it’s not for no reason that anorexia is a disorder that disproportionatedly affects women. it’s not for no reason that there’s sky high comorbidity rates for eds and ocd. it’s not for no reason that people who need control in their lives so badly that they develop a mental disorder abt it get obssessed with being skinny and not with being a sumo. it’s not for no reason that ppl who feel the need to retract to childhood due to trauma envy things like being skinny light and frail, instead of being a tubby baby. it’s not for no reason that there is an incredibly common anorexic thought pattern (internal and self-directed, don’t make me say what i didn’t say) that associaties restriction and weight loss with moral goodness.

for each of these there IS a number of exceptions, but you can see case by case how the root cause (trauma, need for control, for self-destruction, growing up poor, whatever you think is “unrelated to fatphobia” basically) is processed through the prism of the fatphobic culture we’ve all been raised in. some people just, voluntarily or not, deal with those root causes in different way, which might or might not be healthy. but it’s a consequence of ambiant fatphobia that “i should starve and be skinny about it” is a statistically pretty common response to this distress.

the point isn’t “it’s fatphobic that you don’t deal with your neuroses in a body positive way uwu” the point is that no matter how cool you are with fat people on like, a personal level, you’ve been (like the rest of us) bombarded with fatphobic thought patterns your entire life basically, both directly fatphobic things and reactions to this fatphobia. maybe spoken to you directly, maybe not. maybe about you maybe about other people. you live in a society that places moral values into looks and health, and also pushes some deeply rooted falsehoods about how those things tie into each other. you have a disorder defined by obsessive behaviors. maybe, just maybe, deconstructing the logic that those obsessives behaviors are based upon will help you deal with this disorder. and recover or reduce harm.

basically, anorexia isn’t “getting skinny disorder” it’s “obsession disorder”, obsession with looking attractive, or pleasing your family, or going back to being a kid, or being healthy, or being fit, or being driven and capable, or being worth saving, or having your suffering known, or having control over something, or whatever. the fatphobia that is omnipresent (and i repeat, omnipresent, nobody is singling you out as a bad fatphobic meanie, or even talking about your behavior towards other people around you) in our society picks the direction in which many many people will express that disorder.

of course if you live in a society that tells you “being fat is morally bad” at every turn, when you start developping an obssessive pathological need to control things, without another factor weighting in, most people’s default reaction will be anorexia. food is a regular fixture of everybody’s life, everyone wants to be morally good, and even if we know/understand/believe to an extent the flaws of that “fat = bad” logic we know the world around us still believes it, and nobody wants to be treated like shit. we can think it’s stupid and fight against fatphobia and work to treat fat ppl better in our lives and support body positivity, but in any case, one always judges oneself on different metrics than they judge others, cuz we control our self-improvement. that’s natural. just it doesn’t mesh well with a pathologically obssessive need for control above self-preservation.

[salt-baby]

allergy resident today was getting the medical history from me and at the end of it they just kinda sat back and were like "wow I feel kinda bad for you, you really just got like everything"

later asked my allergist if my MCAS was controlled and he just went "ha! no."

[crimeronan]

i'm super tired right now so as i mainlined all the tags on that childhood horror poll at once i found myself going "damn. everyone's got every horror subgenre and plotline in the world going on. it's crazy how i'm surrounded by so many traumatized friends when my own childhood was so completely normal"

and then i was like

hey. ktikat.

What.

[thecultoflove]

THE FACT THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT FOR THE LAST 3 HOURS OF BEING AWAKE HELPPHDFJKHDFGJNFD THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I COULD OF EXECUTED IT BETTER THAN THIS??? STOP I JUST GOT BBACK ONLINE RIGHT WHEN YOU SENT THIS TOO I'M SCREAMIGNFDHJKDH Ilove thedont seekme im trapped experience this is fun

[aqua-dan]

I be sitting up late at night mad as hell remembering how Garth life’s went to shit when he was like 15-17. Didn’t have anytime for silliness or lolly-gagging just straight trauma and pain nonstop.

Even earlier than that, tbh. Especially if we're taking his "thrown out to die of exposure" backstory, he's technically been in Survival Mode since age 0. Even after he and Arthur teamed up, he never had a normal childhood where he was allowed to do normal child things. He didn't really have a childhood.

[princess-fairytales]

I feel like I'm losing everyone and everything this year and I can't take it

[hungergamesheadcanons]

Murderer/Protector

Johanna felt like she was born to look out for Finnick.

To be fair, she hadn't at first. She had entered the Capitol thinking like every other Victor did - that Odair had fallen into degeneracy from the moment he'd arrived, dressing in little clothing and flirting with everything with a pulse. She had been prepared to thoroughly despise the man, to fight off unwanted advances for the rest of her life.

She had been proven wrong the instant her family had been killed.

She had rejected Snow's proposition, of course she had, but it still didn't prepare her for the grief that had torn through her system. Finnick - though at the time she had referred to him as nothing but Odair - had been the one to find her, screaming and wailing on the ground floor of the tribute centre. He must have known what happened - how couldn't he? - as he'd simply helped her up and taken her to the lift, up to his and Mags and the other tributes from 4s floor. He'd deposited her on the couch, sniffling and coughing, walking to the fridge and pouring her a glass of water right in sight so she could see he'd put nothing in it.

She'd done nothing but react, throwing it back in his face and screaming at him instead, that it wasn't fair and why did he keep his family and a whole lot of other accusations that seemed to roll off him like the water dripping down his chin. He had said nothing, simply letting her scream her woes out before she collapsed onto his shoulder in a mess of tears. He had loosely held her, enough for her to pull away when she wanted, and when she did he had dutifully poured another glass of water. She drank it that time, shamefully averting her eyes from the sea green ones that were filled with nothing but concern.

They'd talked for a long time that night - about her situation and Finnick's. About how he hadn't even been allowed the choice, about how his family were threatened by his noncompliance as well. He'd told her, his voice distant, about how his first client was on the night he was taken out of the games. Before the Victor interview, even. As he was airlifted from the arena, he had found himself in the arms of one of the prominent gamemakers, who had proceeded to take him then and there - bloody, dirty, and terrified. He had been drugged just before, so he couldn't move, couldn't fight back, even though the golden trident was still in his hands. He told Johanna that it never stopped, that you never left the arena, simply changed the playing grounds.

She'd asked him if it got any better. He didn't respond.

From there on out their relationship changed. They weren't romantically involved, as many rumours liked to believe. She had seen them on social media, the idea of tiny angry Johanna Mason dominating big hunky Finnick Odair. The rumours ranged from speculation to full on sexual fantasies - ones that had caused her to throw her phone through a window and into a fountain. No, they were friendly, that was it. More than best friends, but nowhere near lovers.

There were only so many labels you could give to someone who knew your life so intimately.

They spent many a night together simply chatting, Finnick leaning on her as she didn't like looking or feeling weak in any way, whereas he didn't have those restrictions. She tended to speak about home, about the lumber mills and her family. She spoke about her siblings, about their chaotic antics that caused her father to laugh til he cried and her mother to shake her head with a tiny smile. She spoke of small children climbing big big trees, feeling like no one could touch them there, and adults luring them down with treats so that work could resume as per usual. She spoke of wild cats that the children would ply with food, lightly stroking their heads so they wouldn't get spooked. The nights she spoke were the good nights, both of them smiling and laughing.

Sometimes the nights Finnick spoke would be good nights. Sometimes he too would talk about home, about the shanties sung on fishing vessels. He would sing for her, on those nights, any shanty she wanted. She liked the upbeat ones, ones like Randy-Dandy-O, Drunken Sailor, Chicken on a Raft. Finnick preferred the slower, sadder ones, like Leave Her Johnny and Lowlands Away. He would talk about the ocean, himself and his brothers running into the cold water on an evening and splashing each other as the sunset painted the sky and sea in hues of orange and pink. He spoke of building sandcastles, collecting shells, his first catch, his learning to swim.

Most of the time though, Finnick's nights were the bad nights.

He spoke of clients, too cruel and callous to care that the person they were having sex with was a child. He spoke of clients who wouldn't let him say no, who would beat and bruise him and make him thank them for the privilege. He spoke of people who would tie him up and abuse him, of people who forced him to tie them up and abuse them, of people who wanted nothing more than to feel powerful. He spoke of forced drug use, of being plied with alcohol, spoke of people who wanted nothing more than to tear him to shreds, spoke of being kicked out of the door in pieces and trying to glue the shards together before Mags saw him. He spoke of Mags, who had apologised to him for helping him win the games, who had cried in his shoulder when she heard of what had been done to him as Finnick solemnly held her frail body close. He spoke of his father, who had bought into the Districts hatred of the Capitol's Golden Boy, who would not let him near his younger sisters or brothers for fear they would also fall into degeneracy. He spoke of his mother, who wrote him tear-stained letters asking him what happened to her little boy, and that he could tell them anything and they would help him. He spoke of how that was the problem, that they would get themselves killed were they to know that Finnick was being raped on the daily. He spoke of his two older brothers, strong and muscular, who would have crushed clients skulls if they knew what had been done to him. He spoke of his two younger sisters and little brother, all 3 incredibly skilled with creating and throwing fish-hooks, who could silently murder anyone who had touched him and probably not get caught.

On these nights, Johanna held him tightly, feeling him tremble in her arms. Neither of them cried, too far gone for that, but both of them grieved the lives they could have had, the childhoods that had been torn from them, the blood that had been forcefully put on their hands. Sometimes Finnick would break beneath her, and she'd try to comfort him. She remembered one night in particular, where it had felt like he'd shattered, great hulking sobs tearing out of his throat as he hid his face in her neck. She had tried to stroke his hair for comfort, but her nails had snagged in the knots left behind by someone who had pulled too much and too hard, and Finnick had frozen.

"Gentle, please." He had whispered, voice thick with tears.

Guilt had filled every inch of Johanna's body, and she had pursed her lips. "I don't know how," She had said back, and it was true. Johanna didn't know how to be gentle anymore - violence was her thing. She was crude, brash, horrible, a nasty person. She was a murderer, through and through, and this nasty, horrible persona she adopted kept her safe.

But Finnick had looked up to her, those same sea-green eyes that had looked at her with such gentle concern filled with trust. "It's like petting a cat." He had mumbled, and the pieces fell into place.

So when they were alone, they had a pact. Johanna could relearn how to be gentle, to not be brash and abrasive, to feel her emotions without hiding them behind a cocky front. And Finnick would let himself hurt, would let himself seek out soft touches and affection with no expectations behind it, would let himself be imperfect and ugly-cry with no fear of cameras catching him.

She refused to tell him how her public mask had shifted though.

Her mask had changed the instant she had been forced to a party, seeing some sleazy so-and-so put his hands all over a distinctly uncomfortable Finnick, forcing alcohol into his hands, getting close, too close, far too close. Johanna hadn't even noticed her feet carrying her forward until she was behind her friend, nearly going to punch him in the face, before she stopped herself.

Finnick's mask couldn't be shattered by Johanna - he still had people he needed to protect. If she assaulted this man here and now, both of them would be in danger.

Johanna may be a murderer, but at the very least she could try and protect Finnick.

So she lied, tapping Finnick on the shoulder and telling him that Mags needed him urgently for mentor responsibilities. She let him make his apologies, a scowl instinctively painting itself on her face when the greasy git tried to make another pass for Finnick, before ushering him away. She could hear the man complaining behind her, about how getting a slot with Finnick was so expensive and life finding gold in a river, and grinned.

She had no problems being the bad guy if that meant Finnick had at least someone on his side. If that meant Finnick had someone who could protect him from some of the cruelty of the Capitol, even if she couldn't protect him from all of it.

The more they liked him, the more protected he was. The more he appeared to be the agreeable, flirty, fuckboy persona they had assigned to him, the more they supported him, elevating him to this level of almost untouchableness. Were Snow to take any action against him or his family, the Capitol would riot, but that would only work while Finnick was in their good graces. So Johanna would willingly become the crass, rude bitch who cockblocks the Capitol's elite to keep Finnick and his family safe, to keep Finnick from being forced into another bed, to keep Finnick from being hit and hurt again.

And if when she managed to pull him back to District 4's floor they collapsed onto a couch, talking quietly about home and their experiences, the Capitol would never see it.

They didn't deserve their vulnerability.

[pennamepersona]

thinking about how fucked up kristoph gavin is again...my guy really did make sure there was a backup poison just in case the young deeply anxious girl he spoke to one time didn't end up using the first one

[qzse-rtv]

I hate this family so much im going to kill them all

[origamihoshi]

Help I played @oneknightstand-if's demo for their game and I can't stop thinking about the MC and how much I love them, so I drew my version of them.

Her name is Maika (but she's now going by Meika because names have power and there's noway she's going to tell an incubus her real name so why not just change one letter). She doesn't trust any of her allies, but to be fair one is a incubus and the other is a guy from her polo club she think is stalking her so she thinks she has some good reasons not to trust them, but it's okay because she has her beloved plant Audrey III and her magic 8 ball and surely they will never betray her.

I also didn't realize you can avoid getting possessed but when I think about it, it fits her very well that not be able to keep demons out of her head.

I love my weirdo amnesiac changeling who needs to stand out and make sure all eyes are on her, and wishes she could be a fairy princess instead of working in fast food.

[gerrydelano]

new fantasy au time