#cw family issues

[formula-red]

I tried to be good, am I no good? Am I no good? Am I no good?

untitled, Geloy Concepcion // Seventeen Going Under, Sam Fender // untitled, traumatizeddfox // Two People, Sam Fender // The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, Frank Bidart // Hard Times, Ethel Cain // Child Wearing a Red Scarf, Eduoard Vuillard // Complex, Katie Gregson Macleod // Funeral by Phoebe Bridgers, malaak // Too Much Wine, The Handsome Family // untitled, milklump // untitled, dying-weeds // Strangers, Ethel Cain

[fourfoldtrap]

Family games nights aren’t the same now that Splinters dead…

[chaotic-on-main]

First One of Many - Levi Ackerman x Reader

The first time Levi Ackerman met your family, it was Thanksgiving. You've been dating for a little less than a year, which means you've been hounded by your family for just as long to bring around 'the new man'. It's not like you didn't want them to meet Levi - it was quite the opposite. You didn't want him to meet them. Your family, as most were, is extremely dysfunctional in the most passive aggressive ways. It was always, 'Oh you look great, did you lose weight?' or 'When are you going to settle down?', never once minding the fact of how rude it was to ask. Levi wasn't the type of person to hold back his disdain so when you both arrived at your childhood home and he acted quite polite, you were surprised. A strong handshake to your father, a small bouquet of flowers for your mother. It was civilized, until your parents and family members started hounding him about marriage and children and you just wanted to die on the spot. Levi, noticing your discomfort and embarrassment, took your hand in his under the table as he answered the questions with grace - never answering directly and deflecting so easily. Only when you were able to bid your farewells and crawl into Levi's warm car are you able to breathe. He takes your hand again, kisses your knuckles, and looks you straight in the eyes before saying, "Next year, we'll only go to my mom's okay?". It wasn't just the fact that he was just as exhausted by your family as you were, it's that he mentioned 'next year' like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I made the moodboard and wrote the HC for @postwarlevi 's 'Under The Harvest Moon' collab! This was absolutely self-indulgent but kept it x reader for anyone who might relate. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! 🦃

[kedsandtubesocks]

god I need to vent so bad…

so I have a jury summons coming up this Monday and I’m so anxious about one, being picked, and two being back at the courthouse

I have such bad memories being there and then I have this fear of running into my dad there

And then fucking tell me why after not hearing from him since my birthday in November, out of the blue texts me today and literally just sends me the 👋 emoji like he’s waving hi???

And like…my mom and grandma said after my mom got divorced from him she without fail got a jury summons every year for a while and she knows he knows people in the courts and i just have this dreadful feeling he’s doing this on purpose and that im gonna run into him Monday

I cried on the phone with my mom and I’m so thankful she understood but god… I hate this so much

[asdro]

Lazily made on Instagram just because I needed to share these thoughts :(

(These days have been rough, but I think it'll get better)

[my-dark-lord]

Hey hello!

I was wondering If you could do some velvette angst (Because angst Is Life) headcanons? Please and thank you if you do! And if you dont, thank you still!

Headcanon Requests Open!

Oh, I love this idea. I love, love, love angst and I love, love, love Velvette!

Please be aware that these are headcanons based on how I write Velvette. I've been writing her for two years and have lots of headcanons for her, and have not changed her to be more like canon Velvette other than her looks.

Velvette is a ball-jointed doll. Due to this, her skin is plastic filled with meat. She can remove any of her body parts and replace them at will. As soon as it's attached to her body, it becomes Fleshy and Real and she can use it like it was her original piece. She owns a factory that makes replacement parts and sells excess to other doll demons or whoever wants them. This becomes a problem for her when people expect her to change her body to fit what they want out of her. Valentino can get ahead of himself and wants her to present masculine more often and it does wear on her that she doesn't feel good enough in her original form.

As one of Carmilla's Hellborn Sinner daughters, she has some serious mommy issues. She feels as though Carmilla never takes her seriously or thinks of her as a capable woman. She ran away to join Vox and Val when she was 20 partially to hurt her, to escape, and partially because she loved them. She and Carmilla don't see eye to eye and probably never will.

She always felt like she had to be a certain way for people to like her, and she hated it when she was younger and continued to hate it into her young adult life. She leaned into the goth thing and her actual interests and hobbies after she moved in with Vox and Valentino. She believes that they are the only people that love her for who she is.

That being said, she feels as though she is an outsider in their relationship sometimes. Vox and Val are so wrapped up in each other that she is lucky to be involved, but she is usually fine with giving them their space. Sometimes it makes her feel incredibly lonely.

She feels as if she cannot be soft or tender or be seen as vulnerable because this is the facade she wears thanks to how she felt growing up. She always felt like she had to be the opposite of her mother, and she could never do things the same way. She had to be independent. This has made it difficult for her to cry. Vox and Val have never seen her cry and she's been with them for a few decades.

[futilechildhooddream]

it is hard to exist around people who disagree with my existence. who think my identity is a mental illness, that I can’t be believed to speak on my own experiences

“because I’m autistic. because trans people don’t exist but are just misguided. because they are older and I am young and naive, and it’s not my fault I don’t understand I am wrong about my identity. because they isn’t proper English. because society is forcing me to be like this”

they say they love me and I know they do, yet they call me daughter and their little girl

I think my mom wonders why I smile less here. why when she speaks of me with pride I stare with apathy to hide the sinking pain

I am sinking under the weight

I thought coming home couldn’t hurt so bad. everything is good except

they don’t see me as I am

[champofpallet]

Hey everybody it’s been a while! Sorry I haven’t been on lately. I promise I haven’t forgotten you.

I’ve been having lots of problems with my family. Last month my grandmother died so I’ve been a mental wreck lately. Not to mention another one of my family members is trying to inherit EVERYTHING from them so they can sell their stuff for money, so I’ve been very stressed about that, my family is absolutely toxic.

But good news is that finally after years and years of trying to fix things by ourselves someone is finally going to help us with the hurricane damage!

I’m still not in the mental mood to write yet, but as soon as all this settles I’ll do my best to be back! Love you guys ❤️

[lost-estradiographer]

Family drama after the break.

Aight, I tried. I'm not perfect, but I'd like to think I'm better than him. I'm not bothering with his wife; she still hasn't even read my letter.

God it's going to take so much less energy to not worry.

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: Everything Everywhere All At Once

In order to sate my frequently insatiable appetite for talking about movies, I am going to start a bit of a column on this here webbed site. Every Friday I'll be sharing my perspectives, interpretation or just wild gushing about or rancorous condemnation of a movie. First in line is none other than Everything Everywhere All At Once. Content warning: Heavy topics such as family troubles, sexuality, mental health problems, and generational trauma. I'm getting into the weeds with this one. There'll also be spoilers, and frankly, if you haven't seen this one yet, I can hardly recommend it enough. Don't read the rest of this, just go see it, you will be confused and delighted and probably crying just a little bit.

Everything Everywhere All At Once has received all but unilateral praise, and I think it rightly deserves it. Even so, there are some aspects of how this thing is so impossibly awesome and some of the more specific facets of the ways it is so impossibly awesome that get overlooked.

Yes, there is no denying it is a powder keg of impossibly cool dimension-hopping kung fu, as raucously comedic as it is genuinely heartrending. It should stand on its own how powerfully the movie speaks on generational trauma, conflict, and healing from the same. The acting is somewhere north of incredible, with Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Hyu Quan delivering several lifetimes worth of life-best performances. You know the cast is stacked when James Hong is in a movie and he doesn't get to be the best thing about the movie all on his lonesome just by showing up, for once.

All of this is very true, but as far as I'm concerned it's hardly scratching the surface of EEAAO, and why it might be the best movie of the decade. First off, I want to talk a bit about the queer themes of the picture.

One thing I keep coming back to in Everything is how I find it nearly impossible to not read Evelyn Wang as bisexual. Well, I say bisexual which is probably a bad habit on my end, as mspec probably is a better umbrella term to use when the exact nature of her attraction isn't explored in much detail.

Now, why do I read her like this? Evelyn is, obviously, married to her husband Waymond, but there are still reasons one might suspect she is not exclusively attracted to men. We see Evelyn in a sapphic relationship, albeit it is in what might be the single most unlikely parallel universe imaginable where humans have evolved to possess functionally useless hotdog-fingered hands. Still, I would argue that the seeming impossibility of the outcome might be a narrative device all on its own.

Being in a queer relationship seems almost impossible to Evelyn, to the degree that professing genuine love to IRS Maven and minor antagonist Deidre is sufficiently out of character to launch her into her first multiversal ability jump. Almost impossible, however, does not mean impossible, and the fact that there's even a question and that she can eventually do it does imply something about Evelyn's sexuality I would say.

Also, on a less textual plane, doesn't part of this sound very familiar? If you, like me, came into your queer identity as an adult, doesn't the "living a genuine queer life feeling like a distant impossible dream" strike a deep resonating chord? Granted I've never considered having disgusting sausage fingers a prerequisite, but then again, Evelyn has a few years on me for such a neurosis to develop.

Now that I think about it, the visceral unpleasantness of the literal sausage fingers could be read as a form of body anxiety as it pertains to sexuality, at least when the condiments get involved.

Another thing that supports this reading is the parallels between Evelyn and her daughter Joy. This isn't to say that one has to be Mspec to have a sapphic daughter, of course. Considering how alike Evelyn and Joy are, though, and how acutely their struggles are mirrored in other fields, mental health struggles, desire for parental approval, etc., it's not an outrageous leap to assume Evelyn could also bat for the other team, as it were, lending extra weight to the "I prayed she wouldn't turn out like me" line she delivers to her disapproving father.

It's also interesting from this point that Evelyn acknowledging Joy's sexuality to her father's face functions as a sort of False Dawn in the plot. It is no doubt a part of mending the relationship but at the moment it's hard to not agree with Joy's assessment that this is more "[Evelyn] figuring her shit out" than the mending that her relationship with her daughter needs. To get all the way there, Evelyn, and we along with her, have to take a deep dive into the philosophy and the all-annihilating bagel.

There's also some really cool philosophy going on in Everything Everywhere. In the formal sense of things, the philosophy navigates the borderlands between Nihilism and Existentialism. Jobu Tupaki represents utter despairing nihilism, wishing for non-existence to rid herself of the pain of being and the crushing weight of knowledge of her million alternate lives and how nary a one of them offers as much as a morsel of relief.

Nihilism is one of those things that popular culture often imbues with entirely too much power owing to the understanding that hopelessness is somehow more intellectual than less despondent philosophies. Everything Everywhere treats Joy's hopelessness not as an inherently valid position, but as a reaction to the cascading failure of her family to prove proper care.

Look no further than how Jobu wants her mother, Evelyn Prime, to accompany her into the nothingness of the Everything Bagel. If, truly, nothing mattered, it wouldn't make any difference to Jobu whether she walked into the nothingness of the bagel singularity alone or hand in hand with Evelyn or with every single soul in the IRS. And yet, she pursues the version of her mother that can see what she sees in the vain hope that this Evelyn will feel as she feels and reach the same conclusions she has. It's very understandable, of course, but it severely undermines the point that there is nothing worth caring for in the universe.

It shouldn't really surprise the astute reader that the villain of a kung-fu action film isn't correct in the philosophical sense. The deftness with which Everything Everywhere handles the reveal of it all is, however, quite heartening. Jobu Tupaki isn't wrong because she's evil or evil because she's wrong; She's acting out because she's hurting and, ultimately in need of the help of her parents. Evelyn struggles similarly, and it's a good thing that she is married to the single most transcendentally kind man in all of existence.

Waymond Wang is in many ways the lynchpin of the entire movie, the pivot point that allows Evelyn to find a way out of hopelessness and regret. The way he accomplishes this is, again in the context of this being a kung-fu movie, highly unusual. Waymond is unflinchingly kind, in a way that at least initially makes him seem like a colossal wimp, a stereotypical henpecked husband. While it is true that Waymond is a bit of a wet blanket, there is also quiet strength to his approach. As In The Mood For Love-Waymond so memorably put it, his front of unflinching kindness is how he fights.

What makes the whole final sequence so rousingly powerful is how Evelyn internalizes and synthesizes the perspectives of her little family. Her instinct to protect her daughter in ways her father couldn't protect her and Waymond's conflict-solving kindness allows her to overcome the final barriers between her and Jobu. This comes in the form of some kickass untraditional kung fu, yes, but also from the realization that there is no one beyond hope, redemption, or beyond love. Even the bitter battleaxe IRS agent, even the parallel universe where everyone has hotdogs for fingers, even the aging widower with no sense of personal space, hell, even Chad the raccoon avatar.

It is a powerful scene of catharsis to see Evelyn compassion-fight entire swathes of opponents, but it doesn't become the transcendent piece of media that it is before the confrontation with Jobu in the Prime branch, and her father and Joy in the Prime Beta-branch. Here, the final piece of the puzzle awaits in the single most difficult thing a parent can do. Evelyn defeats Jobu and stands up to her father, yes, but to truly mend the rift between her and Joy, she must see and understand Joy's pain through true empathy, and if there is to be a happy ending for her and Joy, Evelyn must do the unthinkable.

Evelyn has to let Jobu go and trust that Joy comes back to her. If Joy chooses continued existence, it's of her own free will. Evelyn will go every step of the way alongside Joy if Joy will allow her, but it is ultimately up to her daughter. It's a profound act of love and empathy, and yet it feels almost impossible. It is an act of ultimate vulnerability, and, in some ways, the grandest act in a movie of grand acts, and even thinking back on it now brings tears to my eyes.

[formula-red]

well. 353 days since i last saw my father. 313 days since i last spoke to him. 213 days since i sent him a letter telling him to never talk to me again. and today, with my sister now safe at uni, i finally blocked him

(do not read past this if you are sensitive to anything related to this)

(what is essentially a long journal entry incoming lol)

is this the end? i'd like to think so. but how do i truly end a relationship with someone who has shaped the most deformed parts of who i am?

you will always cast a long shadow across my life– the time and the effort i have already put and still have to put into undoing all that has been done, the literal and metaphorical cost of recovering, the parts of myself i hate, the fact that i hate myself in the first place– these are all things that will weigh on me for years, if not forever, in one form or another. i hear your words echoing in the ones i use to hurt myself. i can't look at myself in the mirror without seeing the same cold blue eyes that were so unfeeling in the moments when i felt far too much. i wonder if you ever look in the mirror and see the opposite; do you see my own reflected back at you, wide and innocent, just a child struggling to understand what she has done? there is a part of me that will remain that child looking for answers forever, a part of me that will always want to know what about me was so wrong to make you hate me so much, what about me was so different from my siblings and so revolting to you. a part of me that will always want you to love me. but i know that those answers will never come.

i try to tell people but they don't understand. and i know you wouldn't understand. did you know i had to learn how to be sad instead of angry? i didn't know how to be sad because of you. i thought that rage and violence were sadness. you taught me that anger is controllable, it can be weaponised, it is the emotion of the strong, but sadness is weak, sadness is embarrassing and humiliating and for children who can't handle themselves and who shouldn't be let out of the corner. you stripped me of basic human emotion, conditioned me to believe that feeling something other than anger was a sign of failure and fragility.

now i take pride in being everything that would disgust you. everything you trained me not to be. i am kind. i am soft. i am gentle. i am fragile. i am open. i am sad. i am happy. i ask questions. i give hugs. i cry. i listen. i care. i am still working on trusting, and on accepting myself, but i move towards both every day.

most importantly, i love. completely and deeply, i love. i love other people so much. i live my life vulnerable and open to destruction authored by the hand of another. i open myself to the immense beauty and pain that is loving another human being far beyond myself. i reach towards instead of pulling away, ready and willing. i love without restraint or hesitation. i love, i love, i love, i love, i love.

i know my life will be better without you. it IS better without you. and i will never, ever, treat another human being the way you treated me.

and while i will never forgive you, with time, i will be able to forgive myself.

and that is all that matters.

[worldsofdreamers]

And the thing is

And the thing is, I'm angry

I'm angry because you lied

And I'm angry you hid

And I'm angry that your shame shrouded the truth about me from me for all these years.

I'm angry I memorized the sound of your boots and your keys more than the sound of your laugh.

And I'm angry because I shouldn't have had to.

And I'm angry that I can not accept the things you said in earnest a million years too late after all the words you shouted.

After every broken tape and shattered dream, how could I believe when you say you're proud of me for searching and learning?

Because are you really?

You still call me by her name

And that's how I know some things never change regardless of what you say.

Because she persists, a ghost in both our memories but she was never really there.

A little girl you hoped would be your legacy, so long as you kept the truth locked away.

You have to know by now she was never me.

Not really.

The girl in your dreams.

All of your dreams squished into a tiny frame?

They never quite fit.

Is that why you lied?

Because you were haunted?

Well don't you know I'm haunted too.

Haunted by the years of laughter at my expense.

Haunted by the nights, sleepless, wondering what was wrong with me.

If you had helped.

If I had known.

If you could admit that maybe I needed the truth.

If you had seen the light leave my eyes and found a flashlight.

I wouldn't feel like a haunted house.

Your shame grew around me, a cage full of specters.

And the thing is, I'm angry.

[kedsandtubesocks]

I feel so angry and hurt and scared

Like, I feel like a feral coyote caught in cage

I should be enjoying this week with my grandma and I know her friends mean well but ever since I got the text from my dad they’ve been trying to cheer me up and make me laugh and I feel like I might snap

I want to scream can’t you see how terrified and angry I am? I don’t feel like laughing and being cheerful - can’t I be upset? I want to cry and curl into a ball

So now I’m in the car waiting for my mom to come get me because I feel like I’m about to crumble at any minute and I feel so pathetic

And I know it’s just all these emotions and anger reacting to everything but I hate this

I hate how small my dad can make me feel and how proud I think I’ve come along and healed only for this to remind me I’m not

I know the weather isn’t help with how gloomy it is and I want to stay positive but I just want to cry

[queerpossums]

my new year’s resolution is to keep lowering my (abusive) parents’ expectations so that by the time the spring 2025 fafsa rolls out i can file as an independent. i’ve made so much progress this year, i can only hope that by this point next year they realize how much they fucked up or they piss off.

[waitaminuteashh]

thought I'd finally have the time to write all the little fic ideas that's been bouncing around in my head, but turns out I don't. my family is constantly staring over my shoulder and just hovering whenever they see me open my laptop or start typing (and a quiet, private room is definitely not an option). I've been trying to write whenever I can, but it feels like I'm not doing enough and I feel (more than) a little bit useless that I'm not getting everything done :/

[shoesallinaline]

About to go to a family dinner with family I haven’t actually seen in at least four years, and these are family members I have a somewhat uneasy relationship with. My mom and dad were white and Persian respectively, and the tension is mostly tied up with cross-cultural stuff that I’m not particularly invested in. I know they’re going to ask me about my brother (who I am no longer in touch with really, for good reason), and idk, I’m just feeling freaked out and on high alert. I’m sure it will ultimately be smoother and more fun than I anticipate, but still.