#enforcing my boundaries hurts sometimes

[kindnotestoself]

HEARTBROKEN

[lunasun1verse]

See this?

This is a truth spell I created a month and a half ago. The truth oil used as well was done over the course of one moon cycle. I’ve also been prepping for this with Hecate’s guidance, fully understanding what I was asking for…..

I used it because my mom and I are having a serious communication problem and I wanted to clear the road for us to talk.

Oh we talked all right…. I expected it to at least be a few days, but it was less than 36 hours. It worked too well and now she’s gone no contact with me because I wouldn’t let her overstep my boundaries with her christofascist gaslighting. Given she’s a self proclaimed prophetess, the woman has no clue what power she has in her words… she lovingly cursed me before going NC. Strangely I feel nothing. Just numb and struggling to mourn a living loss.

So how do we cope? We take back our power, we take a ritual bath, we meditate, then continue with filling up the tarot card book with art. Screens hurt my eyes so I thought this would be a good idea. Honestly, I’m passing the time until I can actually cry. She may have been a religious nutcase, but she was my mom….

Anyway, here’s some of the pages.

I love art. It’s a good outlet.

Anyways, I know one very good thing came from this: I no longer have to hide.

I’m free 💖

Anyway, the song today is EXVCT’s Better Than You Thought.

I’m absolutely gonna come back better than before. Now I don’t have to worry about offending her, now I don’t have to compromise my boundaries, now I don’t have to keep enduring her constant curses and negativity.

[ladyloveandjustice]

To give my Real Opinion on the whole Clark vs Lois issue (since people are giving me theirs), I'm surprised it is an issue, since it's very clearly supposed to be an conflict where both people made decisions that made sense from their point of view but still hurt each other. It makes sense that Clark would be insecure about telling Lois this when she's acting distrustful of Superman, and it makes sense he'd freak out and not handle a situation where she was putting a lot of pressure on him well. It also makes sense that Lois would be angry (and probably humiliated) and upset that Clark not only lied to her face when she was begging him to tell her the truth, but left her where she couldn't help him when she was worried sick about him.

Honestly, I think a lot of you aren't being honest about how you'd feel if you had a friend who disappeared every time something dangerous happened, you spent a lot of time frantically searching and worrying about that friend each time, only to find out oh hey, your friend was well aware of how worried you were and was actually right there but they were pretending to be someone else instead of letting you in on what was happening. You'd feel played with.

And Clark also KEPT lying when she was basically saying "hey stop lying to me. I know." He did it instinctively. She was begging him to tell her, and he didn't. That's going to hurt, and that's going to be galling. She definitely felt she had no other choice than to do something drastic, because she can't enter a relationship with someone she knows is lying to her and here he is, refusing to come clean. She's a reporter, the need to know drives her.

"Lois isn't entitled to Clark's private information, they haven't known each other that long", sure, but Clark vanishes in dangerous situations and causes real distress, Clark has been discussing Superman with Lois and unconsciously trying to manipulate her feelings on him while not telling her the whole truth, and you'd feel weird if someone did that, you'd feel kinda violated! And even if someone told you they weren't doing that to laugh at you, wouldn't you be hurt and humiliated?!

When exactly IS Lois entitled to Clark's info? When they start dating? How many months is it okay for him to date her without him telling her he's actually the guy she spends every waking minute trying to interview? Would he have told her as their relationship got serious? Not knowing that is probably scary and if I was Lois I'd think twice about if I wanted this either!

And what's especially scary is that yeah, he did leave her behind to so he could possibly go get killed when she was begging him not to. That's terrifying. She was probably terrified the entire time she waited. He was able to take her choice away from her, and Lois does not like feeling helpless. Clark was scared of her getting hurt, so he enforced his will and so shewas scared for HIM. and then he refused to talk about those worries!

It's also pretty galling when she's already helped him out in several fights- she's proven she can be useful and helpful! I'd be mad too! I'm sure there was a little vindictiveness in her actions- you see how you like it when someone takes your choice away too.

At the same time, Clark is clearly not comfortable showing people his whole self. He still doesn't know who he is, and he goes into panic mode about it. He's very scared of people being hurt because of him. What he did made sense from his point of view. And I'm sure he's not happy to be forced to reveal his secret.

It doesn't matter 'who's more right'. It's not a game they get to win! They both violated each other's boundaries. Their feelings both make sense from their perspective, and interesting conflicts are complicated. And I like it when characters don't just react to everything flawlessly. There's a lot of drama in secret identities, and sometimes stories have conflict.

I do agree this should have happened later in the season or as a season 2 thing, but that's sadly just life in this streaming hell era. They didn't know if they'd get a season 2 to tell the story they wanted. We have to take the conflict as it is. And let's face it, if Lois had taken longer to figure out, y'all would be making fun of her for being dumb. Lois is for some reason always the butt of that joke even though nobody else can see Clark is Superman either- and when she does figure it out (as she usually does!) and has anything other than positive feelings about it she still gets blamed. Just enjoy having a character who can have complex feelings.

If you hate relationship conflict, there's stuff for you out there! Read Superman Family Adventures by Art Baltazar, it's very cute low stakes low conflict stuff and has an actual Himbo Clark.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for breaking up with my partner of four years who I live with?

sorry this is a long one but I don't want to leave stuff out and make it seem biased.

My partner (22F) and I (22F) have been together since senior year of high school, just before COVID hit, and have lived together for a bit over a year now.

It's her first time living outside her parents' house, and early on she was a really crappy housemate. I ended up nagging at her a lot and having to use gentle parenting techniques to get her to do basic housework and do her share of responsibilities. We had a fight around six months in, where I told her I felt like I had to parent her, and she understandably took it poorly. Since then, she's put in a lot more effort around the house in a way that felt less like it was a product of caring, and more like the product of fearing abandonment. I pointed this out to her, and she said that she was trying harder because she loved me and wanted me to be comfortable in our home, though she had made several offhand comments that she was always worried about pissing me off.

I've been clinically depressed for a long time, and one of the chief ways it's manifested is irritation and anger. It developed into a problem, and I started getting therapy/ medication. Often I would end up being pretty mean to her. I felt bad about it, but she would get on my nerves a lot. I get overwhelmed and overstimulated easily. She has unmedicated ADHD and often comes in and starts hyperactively info-dumping about her day without a greeting or anything, knowing I had just woken up (I work nights).

She stopped doing that only after months of me asking her to and enforcing that boundary. Sometimes I was hurtful about it, but when I was nice about it she tended to ignore me or "forget" I'd asked her to stop doing that.

The last six months she's been better about things, but the first six months of living together kinda killed my feelings for her. At first, I thought it was stress from school, work, and other things related to the house (bug infestations, things breaking constantly, standard Landlord Special bullshit). But more and more I found myself annoyed with her. I'd often make rude comments about her behavior out of frustration. When I tried to discuss things more maturely, she'd break down crying and panicking, and I'd reassure and comfort her afterward instead of getting to express my feelings. She'd rarely express hers, just start sobbing and apologizing and saying she'd change, which made me feel awful and like I couldn't express grievances to her.

I'd try to get some space from time to time, and she'd get extremely anxious and seek reassurance, which I'd give to her because I didn't want to start anything. I thought I'd come back around and find happiness with her again. She'd been extremely patient with me throughout the relationship, with my moodiness and temper. I'd tried changing that about myself, but I found that the only thing that ever seemed to help my moods was getting space from her.

In late 2023/Jan 2024 I ended up having to get a couple surgeries, and she was supportive and caring in a way not many people would be for their partners. She made time to take care of me while I was more or less disabled and gave me grace as I worked through the emotional aspects of my health issues.

During this time I started having feelings for her again, but within a week of recovering, I was back to feeling the same sense of vague irritation and resentment as before, even though her behavior had changed and she was objectively being an amazing partner.

I realized I wasn't happy in this relationship and felt tremendous pressure to be responsible for somebody who had fallen behind me in terms of emotional maturity. I couldn't discuss big issues with her without her breaking down and panicking, and I felt like I had to walk on eggshells because of it. I was hurtful to her because of it, and it wasn't fair to stay a relationship I was no longer emotionally invested in.

Before I left for work one day, she ended up pressuring me into talking about what was on my mind after I told her I didn't feel the time was right to discuss it. I told her how I felt and that a breakup seemed like the healthiest way forward for us. She shut down, started crying, panicking, saying that we could work it out and go to couples therapy, etc. By this point, I had kind of lost faith in her ever fulfilling any promises related to therapy. I had to leave for work and she wouldn't stop talking about it, so I ended up apologizing, taking it back, and saying we could work it out.

A busy week or two went by where I was noticeably less nice to her, hoping that when I tried to break up with her again she wouldn't get emotional whiplash from it coming seemingly out of nowhere. I wrote out what I wanted to say in a letter and told her that I had things to talk about, but put them in a letter so she'd have time to process it instead of shutting down. I told her this, as well, to give her something of a warning.

I asked her what she thought we talked about during that big argument, and she said she honestly couldn't remember. We then went to a concert where I got drunk to try and enjoy things (I did) but she couldn't have a good time due to worrying about our conversation. I gave her the letter two days later, left it for her in the morning to read and process while I was in class that day.

It understandably went poorly, and she blames me for being a shitty partner, for being mean, for ruining the concert which was the one thing that she had looked forward to us doing as partners, and for treating her like shit in the weeks leading up to the breakup, and has indirectly asked if I can stay elsewhere on the nights where we'd be sharing a bed. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[hellenhighwater]

I had a look through your posts but I couldn't find anything... I was just wondering if you could share some advice on training cats, particularly in the realm of "not eating plants" and "not scratching things that aren't theirs" ? I'm getting a kitten next week and, while excited, I am also nervous as I've had some pretty destructive cats in the past...

Thank you in advance!

I can really only speak to what worked for me. I'm sure there will be more updates when the Interlopers come home--they currently are still at the shelter for a liiiiitle more observation.

When I brought Mal and Vice home, I babyproofed my bedroom. Nothing they could break, nothing they could damage--no surfaces they weren't allowed on, nothing they could hurt by clawing. And for the first few weeks, that is the ONLY room they were in. I don't know if stockholm syndrome is an option for cats, but they both have it now; we bonded. As they got settled and we built trust, I started bringing them out into other areas of the house, always under observation. When I (or a housemate) wasn't there to keep an eye on them, they just were put back in safe home base bedroom. The goal is to establish a positive relationship far enough that a no! won't send them hiding from you.

This is Vice in the living room for the first time.

The thing with cats is that they'll break a rule if they think you're not there to enforce it. So you have to be there, always, for long enough that the good behavior becomes a habit before they're left on their own. So as they moved into other areas of the house, the no! was always enforced when they started to do a naughty, and they learned to not even try because they'd get caught immediately. Eventually they had more and more run of the house, and were finally just left on their own. This means consistency and patience from you, and from everyone in your household. And that doesn't stop--you get in the base of this when they first come home, but you have to continue to consistently enforce forever. That's the deal. Their brains are itty bitty and full of mischief, and sometimes they're going to push boundaries because they can.

There's also some steps you should take to just cat-proof in general. Smooth river rocks in the top of any diggable pot; toxic plants relocated or removed, and furniture that might be particularly scratchable protected with throw blankets over the arms...you get the idea. Part of it is training, and part of it is creating an environment where they're not being tempted.

[dairy-farmer]

https://www.tumblr.com/dairy-farmer/726959056617635841/and-i-thought-youd-be-the-last-person-to-ever?source=share

ok but dick cheating au kinda makes me want jason to swoop in and be unbelievably smug about it

like jay and tim's relationship is at lot and yes jay has hurt tim badly but jason has also never been anything but unfailingly honest with tim

if jason was having issues or doubts or even thinking about cheating on tim he would at least put their relationship on a break instead of self sabotage like dick

i think tim deserves that type of honesty and dick deserves to see tim happy with someone else

and also i'm a jaytim shipper at heart

!!!!! jason and tim have a very different dynamic from the rest of the family. they're not quite brothers and not fully enemies but they're also not quite friends. they're in this weird gray area and so tim's not sure who's more surprised when he goes to jason's apartment after leaving dick's- him or jason.

the only place tim can think to go is jason's because...unlike most of the bats jason is surprisingly nonjudgemental. his disapproval or pity or whatever knee jerk reaction people will have about tim getting cheated on in a relationship is sort of...not there. jason, when he feels like it, is a very calm presence. despite their tumultuous history and even antagonism towards each other tim feels an odd kind of comfort and ease at being around jason. jason is also someone who never hesitates to speak their mind and enforce firm boundaries. so when the family starts calling tim after dick desperately reached out to them, jason doesn't hesitate to tell them to fuck off and leave him alone.

jason is an unexpected pillar of support and a big relief from the rest of the family's tiptoeing.

tim does not tell them why he and dick have broken up. he doesn't want to endure that awkwardness and humiliation of forcing the family to try and navigate the minefield of THEIR breakup. jason accompanies him to dick's apartment to pick up his things because...well jason is the only one who really knows about the circumstances. tim couldn't very well just show up to his apartment without an explanation and so tim had condensed it down to a 'i walked in on dick fucking barbara in our bed and he has the keys to all my apartments can i stay here?'

jason is not some paragon of virtue. tim knows that lying and cheating is something jason does daily to get shit in his part of gotham done but if there's one thing jason isn't- it's indecisive. sometimes he will do something stupid and live with the consequences rather than hem and haw over it. tim respects that. it makes it so that jason is always blunt and brutally honest about stuff whether or not they hurt people's feelings.

so tim knows jason is being truthful when he tells tim he won't let dick talk to him if tim doesn't want to when they pull up to the apartment.

dick cries when tim shows up with boxes. he begs and he pleads and it amazes tim to realize that just a few days ago those sounds would've ripped his heart to shreds. dick also apologizes. a lot. he says it was a mistake that he never meant to do it, he doesn't know what came over him, he loves tim, he doesn't know why he hurt him.

and maybe its true. maybe dick honestly is a victim of his own impulse. but that's up to him to fix. lest he do this to his next partner.

jason keeps dick in one corner of the apartment while tim sorts through their laundry and wraps up antique dishes that belonged to his parents. the rest of his stuff will have to be for movers to take and tim takes pictures of dressers and couches so they can be forwarded to the company. its better to cut this off clean and quick. no mess. tim won't leave even a hair behind so there will be no confusion about this, no excuses for dick to show up at his door with a shirt tim left behind. tim drake is not a forgetful person and so him "forgetting" a knick-knack or shirt behind must be a sign that he was leaving the door cracked for them to possibly reconcile, wasn't it???

no. tim was not doing that. he wasn't THAT big of a masochist. but he had to make sure he cleaned everything out because dick...lingered. every one of dick's breakups was messy and fell into a cycle of repetition and it was never really 'the end'. dick was on again and off again with so many different people and tim was not about to do that. he didn't play games like that and so dick needed to know that whatever they had was off and would stay off.

the first time tim speaks to dick in the hour that he spends cleaning out the apartment is to turn to him and ask for the keys to his other lodgings across the city. and dick just...crumbles. he lets out loud heaving sounds and starts breathing hard and...tim's not heartless. this is clearly hitting dick very hard and...tim has most of his stuff gathered. so tim just tell him to mail him the keys to jason's address.

he's careful not to comfort dick or treat him delicately. that's the job of dick grayson's lover and friends and right now...tim doesn't want to be either.

jason makes it easier.

he's frank and he's honest and he doesn't try to save tim's feelings from telling him exactly what he thinks. that dick is a piece of shit for this but mostly a coward. that this is the kind of disrespect you don't take sitting down. that tim should firebomb dick's car, don't worry jason will cover for him.

jason is short with dick, if not outright rude. barbara gets the same treatment even though tim tells him to leave her alone because it's not like SHE was the one who owed him a commitment of monogamy and trust.

but jason just stares at him and quietly says that she knew full well they were together and she disregarded his entire existence, his feelings, and his relationship for a fuck with a boy who had dropped her numerous times. and plus, like dick, she was too ashamed of herself to even have the balls to properly apologize.

so being around jason is refreshing.

and soon after a few weeks in his apartment tim finally receives all his keys in the mail and a shameful note from dick accompanying it. he's sorry. tim believes him (some part of tim would like to believe that if he'd never walked in on them, if dick fully believed that he could make sure tim never found out- that he still would have told tim and tim still would have done...all this). but that still doesn't change anything.

tim doesn't stay in jason's apartment much longer, he knows how important having a space to yourself is so he doesn't want to be a bother for much longer.

but still, jason continues to talk to him. call him. text him.

tim asks why and is softly pleased by jason's reply that he enjoys spending time with tim.

things with dick are weird. frosty, even, when he gets too comfortable and casual for work acquaintances. but jason tells him to always maintain his boundaries and that dick will either get it eventually or tim will need to bring up an ultimatum so they can work together.

it isn't easy. some days tim wakes up feeling like absolute crap, sometimes he wakes up with nightmares of being on the other side of that door and hearing barbara and dick and the squeak of bed springs.

it was unbelievably selfish jason tells him. so fucking shortsighted and stupid. dick blew up the best relationship he's ever had for a girl he knew it didn't work out with. and babs? god. jason had actually thought she was kind of alright but for her to hurt tim like this when he'd never done a single thing to her?

its safe to say jason hates them. he probably hates dick and babs enough for both of them because most of the time tim can't muster enough strength to feel anything but indifference to both of them. he wonders if that means he should see someone. it's not normal is it? to amputate an entire limb of his soul. the part that belonged to dick.

but it gets easier. slowly.

jason helps. a lot.

even when tim registers his attraction to jason and his sensitivity and the way he gets so indignant at the pain of others, tim still doesn't try to pursue it.

it feels cheap. disingenuous. it feels too much like he'd be treating jason as a rebound following his relationship with dick and tim doesn't want that for jason. jason deserves better. he deserves to be loved wholly and fully with no agenda attached.

but jason has always been someone to go after what he wants and damn the consequences. he asks tim out ignoring how it would look, what people would say.

jason was already a 'reject', already ostracized, he told tim. people already thought the worst of him so who cared if they thought he was an opportunistic parasite who'd been waiting in the shadows for the moment dick and tim's relationship fell apart?

and...jason is good at that. helping tim get out of his own head. helping tim steady himself and figure out what he wants.

he makes him feel like its okay. to disregard what others might think, what dick might think if tim started a relationship with jason.

dick had already shown he could be selfish so...why shouldn't tim do the same?

[positivelyqueer]

I saw some posts a little while ago about how boundaries are something you enforce, and how you need to establish what the consequences are with you and the other person.

And while I think that's good advice, especially for people who struggle stetting boundaries, or who are dealing with people who frequently overstep or disregard them, I don't think it needs to be the first step when raising them.

A lot of people don't mean to hurt or disrespect you by over stepping boundaries they don't know are there. And for a lot of people the knowledge enough that they're not treating you how you'd like to be treated is enough of a deterrent to uphold your boundaries.

Just starting with a 'hey can you not talk about that around me,' or 'please don't touch my shoulders without asking,' can be enough for people.

If they continue, the action consequence format is then useful. 'I've asked you already to not talk about this with me, if you continue I'm going to stop talking with you.' 'I don't feel comfortable you touching me without asking, I'll stop spending time with you if you keep doing it.'

I understand that they point is 'you shouldn't rely on other people to enforce your boundaries' but I worry that sometimes it gets muddled into overcomplicated therapising and individualism.

That's all. I hope you have a good time surrounded by people who care about you.

[chxrrylime]

Hi! I really love your writing and i have this idea stuck in my head for so long i just had to request it from you.

Angst about anyone from Cod characters you write with male reader.

They just returned from a mission or just had a hard week and are really overworked. They get mad about something small that the reader does and scream at him for it. The reader gets really sad and when they realize what they did they apologize to him. Maybe some soft smut at the end or whatever you want. I leave it to you.

I hope this is okay with you and thank you infront <3

It's suggestive at the end but nothing explicit! It's in the content tags but just want to mention outright that Soap and reader's relationship could be seen as a little unhealthy/abusive because of what happens, and I want to enforce there's never an excuse to hit your partner (unless it's a sexy consensual thing).

Soap x M!Reader ↪ 1575 words — ANGST.

Content tags — unhealthy relationship, arguments, borderline physical abuse, apologies, Soap's in a bad headspace.

Soap’s near blinding optimism often meant people neglected to realize just when he crossed the line into frustration, and sometimes rage. Rookies learned quickly that messing around with their sergeant was usually okay, but there was a certain point he would snap and have their asses handed to them. There were boundaries.

The 141 knew that nothing frustrated Soap more than red tape—the footering around by the brass that meant sitting and waiting when a potential target could be going into hiding, or worse, continuing to hurt people. It was times like those when the squad knew to leave him be and let him run or punch it out in the gym. 

Except, you were new enough to the team to not have seen that side of Soap just yet. Sure, a bit of scolding to the privates a few times, but not that festering rage that stemmed from Soap feeling useless.

So you had no frame of reference—not to mention, things had been going really smoothly with the most recent target. Smooth enough where you and Gaz got to sit out the last mission. 

You weren’t yet informed of how it went, Price having delayed debriefing since they’d gotten back so late, urging the boys to rest up and be back in his office in the morning.

And so you had no way of knowing that the whole thing had gone ass up—that they caught the guy but not before the intel they needed to actually pin him was wiped, so they had to let him go. Soap looked tired in Price’s office, brows a bit furrowed and eyes hard, but nothing to hint the magnitude of the storm in his head and chest.

It was late when you entered the kitchen, the overhead LEDs dimmed down and buzzing softly in the cool night air. Soap was hunched over at the metal table, a rocks glass brimming with amber liquid next to him as he slowly scrolled through something on his tablet. 

“Hi, Johnny,” you said softly, not wanting to startle him out of his focus. He didn’t even flinch, glancing up to you with a half-glare before returning to the screen. You frowned.

“Are you okay?” 

“Solid,” he responded stiffly, still not bothering to look at you, “get what you need and get out. I’m busy.”

You raised a brow at him. You wanted to argue that this was a common room—that if he was doing important work and wanted to be left alone then he should be in his room or one of the offices, not the fuckin’ kitchen. But he was using what you’d come to refer to as his sergeant voice. It meant there was no room there to even argue in the first place. The bastard was pulling rank on you.

You set your mouth into a straight line, puffing a sigh through your nose that Soap would usually ignore as an exhale of breath, though this time his head snapped up at you.

“Watch it,” he said lowly, and you barely managed to suppress the frightful shiver that tried to run down your spine.

“Sorry, sir,” you replied, monotone, body stiffening into loose attention. He eyed you for a long second, seemingly looking for something in your face you’re not sure he found as he returned to whatever was so important on his tablet. 

You let your muscles relax as his gaze left you, rounding the table to dig through the refrigerator, looking for a midnight snack. You heard Soap huff behind you at your rummaging, and your jaw tightened. What was his problem? Why was he treating you like this? Price and Ghost hadn’t seemed off when they’d come back—the mission couldn’t have been that bad, right?

You’d decided on a small bag of baby carrots. They were Price’s, and he’d be annoyed you’d taken them, but you knew it’d be fine if you just buy him a new bag next time you’re at the store. It’s not like he really ate them all that often anyway—as healthy as the man was, especially for his age, he was never really a raw vegetables kind of guy and at this point probably just bought them to feel like he was doing something for himself.

It’s just your fuckin’ luck as you close the fridge door and go to take a step back that your foot catches on absolutely nothing but the floor, and you topple back into the side of the table, trying to twist to brace yourself and only managing to smash the side of your head off the edge.

Soap launches up, knocking the chair back onto the floor with the force of his movement. The bottle of whiskey he’d had (for some god damn reason) near the edge of the table plummets to the ground, shattering barely a foot from your face and splattering liquor everywhere. 

“Are you out of yer fuckin’ mind!?” Soap shouts, accent thick, a laugh ripping through his words—not one of humor, but one that makes you wince and want to hide away. It’s dry and scary and far too loud.

You scramble onto all fours, little shards of glass sticking into your palms, about to stand when Soap grabs you by the collar of your shirt and yanks you up, spinning you and slamming you back against the counter, the hard marble digging into the base of your spine, knocking the wind out of you.

“What’s your damage!?” You growl, heaving, shoving hard at his chest and wincing as the glass shards dig a little deeper. He doesn’t budge, shaking you a little.

“You’re out of line!”

“You’re being a dickhead!”

You manage to catch his wrist before he even realizes he was about to hit you, his eyes wide as you glare down at him seconds before bashing your head against his, making him shout and stumble back, catching himself on the crooked table. 

He holds his forehead with one hand, groaning before looking up. You look furious, a line of blood dripping down your face where your head crashed together. Of course he’s not bleeding—literal hard-headed bastard. Dropped on his head as a kid too much, maybe.

You’re glaring, panting, and his eyes soften ever so slightly, regret and guilt rising in his throat like bile. 

“Fuck, Y/N—” he croaks out, reaching out for your arm. You shove him back again, pushing past him.

“Keep the hell away from me, Johnny.”

*

You’re sitting on the edge of your bed, having spent the last hour picking out the glass shards with tweezers, now wrapping your hands with bandages when you hear a tentative knock on your door.

You don’t respond, but the door opens anyway. You already know who it is without looking up. The door closes behind him and you hear the click of the lock. Your shoulders tense. You keep your arms rested on your spread legs, head down as the soft foot falls approach you. You can see his boots come into view, and a gun calloused hand rests on your shoulder, gently pushing you to sit up straight so he can fit himself between your thighs. 

You glare up at him and he frowns. He looks sad. Regretful. Deep down you know he didn’t mean any of it—you know better than anyone that sometime in this profession you just snap. But it doesn’t make you any less angry, or at least any relevant amount less. 

You could handle being yelled out, fuck—even berated. When you fucked up that was part of the job. But you weren’t working, you thought you were with Soap, Johnny, not fucking Sergeant MacTavish. And yet the way he acted felt personal—that’s what broke you. That’s what made you fester with anger. You never thought he would raise a hand to you.

He does it again, now, raising his hand up. You flinch as he cups your cheek and it makes his heartbreak.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he says quietly, voice thick with emotion, “I… I was in a bad headspace.”

“Yeah,” you say flatly, looking from those shining blue eyes to the window, the full moon shining brightly through the glass.

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” he swipes a thumb over your cheek, and his movements get your attention again as he slowly lowers to his knees, his big palms spreading out over your thighs, “take it out on me.”

“Johnny—”

“I-I need you to—” he cuts himself off, looking up at you eyes wide. He looks terrified. His hands squeeze your thighs hard and you place your own hands over them, “this is for you, but—if that’s, fuck, if that’s too much then I’m being selfish too. I need you to take me out o’ my head for a bit. So I stop feeling like… this.”

He gestures loosely between the two of you, but somehow you still understand. He needs to stop feeling like MacTavish. He needs something to force him out of that violent headspace—whatever happened on that mission trapped him in there, your Johnny only seeping through the cracks just enough to beg.

You run a gentle hand through his mohawk, waiting for his eyes to flutter shut before your grip tightens, tugging the strands hard. His eyes shoot open and he moans, pupils already beginning to blow out. 

“Okay, Johnny,” you murmur, pulling him toward your crotch, “make it up to me.”

[ravenlocksentwisted]

I've noticed a behaviour that I've been blocking popular bloggers for.

We all have boundaries. Things that we won't accept. Lines where it becomes NOT OK for someone to talk to us anymore. It's incredibly important to enforce those boundaries - even moreso in the deluge of communication online that comes from people we don't know and don't share values/norms with.

I've noticed a particular thing that (sometimes) happens when a person dealing with the maelstrom of a popular social media account hits their "NO" line. It goes something like:

"How DARE you (a person who may never have interacted with me before) violate my boundary (which you should have known by paying careful attention to all of my posts and sharing the exact same sense of online norms as I do.) I am going to use forceful (or hurt/put-upon) language to tell you how terrible you are for doing this."

"If you question, explain, or even apologize, I am going to tell you you have done further harm, because you should know (by reading my blog/mind) that I consider it a boundary for YOU to not interact with me after I scold you. I am going to continue this conversation instead of blocking/disengaging, because for my boundaries to be enforced, I require you to back down."

It's not always quite this obvious, but as time goes on I both have less patience for this attitude and start to recognize the harm that internalizing the "rules" that are broadcast like this has done to my life.

I have a lot of sympathy for the people running these accounts I, too, work with the public. And when you're running a community of any kind, it can be really helpful to slowly teach people the most useful ways to interact with you. It also sucks that no matter what you do, some people are going to be jerks. Wherever possible—easier said than done—you do need to exclude some people from your community!

But the more it looks like someone is repeatedly engaging in these behaviors:

Beating people over the head with the concept of boundaries instead of personally enforcing them

Scolding people for not being personally familiar with them and their blog

Having a large number of sometimes-conflicting rules

Claiming that their cultural norms and expectations for behaviour are universal

Using emotionally-loaded language to ensure the offender is seen as having egregiously violated an agreement

The more I've started realizing, "Ah, this person is not safe for me to be around, and reading some of their posts might be harmful to me. Better block them."

And we're all happier for it.

[peachy-panic]

Not My Father’s Son

Shh it’s a surprise. Roughly 15 years after the beginning of Do No Harm. 

WARNINGS: BBU/BBU-Adjacent, collar mention, fear of medicine, scar mention, bad family relationship

The kid perched on the twin bed can’t be much older than him, if not several years his junior. At his own twenty-one years, that would put this rescue right at the border of legal age for entry into the system. But after three years immersed in active rebellion work, he is no longer surprised by the ease with which WRU ignores their own rules.

He crouches into their line of sight, keeping a solid 3-foot distance. Their sharp, green eyes track his every move; wary, in direct contradiction to their body language. It’s still eerie to witness, no matter how many times he’s seen it in action—the way the ‘training’ embeds itself so deeply in each person’s psyche, so much so that they are able to convey a false openness, a mockery of calm, even in their most desperate moments of terror.

And this rescue is terrified.

“Hi,” he says, keeping his voice low and even. “I’m the shelter coordinator here. You can call me KT.”

Rule number one is no full names at intake. It’s not a pleasant thought, and certainly not one anyone in this work likes to think about, but the new rescues don’t always stick around. Sometimes they’re taken back by force, sometimes they are pulled back in by the demons those people planted in their heads. But once they’re back in WRU’s clutches, delicate information has a tendency to spill out. People have a tendency to get hurt.

The volunteers—the people who help run these shelters and perform under-the-table medical care and go on emergency extraction missions—know what kind of risks they’re signing up for when they dedicate their lives to the cause. But he has seen too much loss in his life at this point not to enforce every precaution.

“I heard you were having some trouble with the medicine,” he begins. But no matter how softly he makes the statement, their eyes lock up with renewed terror.

They dart their gaze to the small table beside the bed. On it is a plate, mostly empty save for a couple empty sandwich wrappers and crumbs, and—most notably—a small paper cup with 2 pills still inside.

“It’s okay,” he says calmly, showing his palms. “First thing you need to know is you don’t have to take anything that is given to you here. We are not like them.”

They never believe it the first hundred times, but it’s always worth stating.

“Second thing,” he continues, “Nothing we give you here will harm you. And I’ll prove it.”

He pulls a small bottle from his pocket and shakes 4 pills into his palm, then stretches out his hand. “Pick two,” he says. “Any two.”

Their eyes dart between the offering and his face, searching for any sign of a trap

“Go ahead. It’s okay.”

He patiently waits them out, as long as it takes, but they finally reach out and pluck two of the pills from his palm, careful not to let their fingers touch skin.

“Cool.” He nods then lifts his hand in a half-hearted cheers gesture. “Bottoms up.” He throws his head back and swallows the pills dry.

They are staring at him when he opens his eyes, and he offers a small smile.

“See? That would be one hell of a game of roulette, and I’m not that brave. Promise.”

It takes a few more seconds of hesitant thought, and he is prepared for the likely possibility that it won’t happen today. That’s okay—he’ll try again tomorrow. But then, without a word, they bring their hand to their mouth and pop the remaining two in. Tempering his own joy to the smallest smile of encouragement, he picks up their water cup and hands it over.

As they tilt their head back to swallow, his eyes dip unwittingly to the band of discolored skin around their neck; a tan line from the collar that would have been severed and destroyed before they came anywhere near the boundary of the shelter. Without having to look, he knows there will be another mark of newfound freedom in the form of a freshly stitched line just behind their ear.

For a moment, he is overtaken by a memory, seared in technicolor behind his eyelids: a piggyback ride in his childhood playroom. His forehead pressed against a soft bed of blond curls. His own little fingers coming up to trace a line of pink, raised skin he had never noticed before. One he could only see from that angle. “Sev, you have a cut.”

He blinks himself back to the present. The rescue is staring down at him with eyes that are eager to trust through layers of wariness.

“Thank you,” Kade whispers sincerely. “You did great.”

Two knocks behind him startle them both. He turns over his shoulder to see Jordan, the nurse practitioner on night shift, in the doorway.

“Torley,” he says. “Need to steal you for a minute.”

Kade sends a meaningful glance in the direction of the frightened rescue. “Is it urgent?”

Jordan’s deep brown eyes hold his for an extra moment. Kade has known him long enough, both professionally and personally, to read the answer there.

“Okay,” he breathes, turning back to the rescue. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to step out, but I am around if you need me, okay? Ask anyone to page me and I’ll head this way. Yeah?”

Hesitantly, the rescue nods. It will have to be enough for now.

The door has barely closed behind him when Jordan curls a soft hand around his elbow.

“Jesus, Kadence, you can’t do the pill trick every time. At this rate, your liver is going to fail by age 30.”

“Maybe I had a headache,” he counters. “Or maybe I’m making up for the rebellious teenage years I skipped out on.”

“You mean you’re not still in them?”

Kade smiles, leaning a little bit into his warm touch.

When they reach the end of the hallway, something in Jordan’s demeanor changes. The teasing smile slips from his face as he scrubs a palm over his mouth. He pulls Kade to the side, turning to face him and lowering his voice so that only the two of them can hear.

“What’s wrong?” Kade asks before he can explain. “Is it another emergency rescue? Two in one night?”

“No, it’s…”

“Jordan?”

He meets his eyes again, and by now Kade is well and truly nervous. “It’s your brother.” He drops the bomb, watching it land over Kade’s expression. “He called for you.”

Kade blinks, trying to wrap his head around those words in that order. He hasn’t spoken to Stephen in almost a year. Jordan knows that, along with most of the reasons why.

“Tell him to fuck off,” he says, though his voice is a little pinched.

“Kade—”

“No.” He shakes his head, starting to walk away.  “I… I have work to do, I don’t have time for… And he should know better, after that fucking disaster last Christmas—”

“Kade.” Jordan pulls him back, forcing him to pay attention. “He said it’s about your father.”

-

@whumpervescence @shiningstarofwinter @distinctlywhumpthing @whumptywhumpdump @nicolepascaline @anotherbluntpencil @hold-him-down @crystalquartzwhump @maracujatangerine @batfacedliar-yetagain @thecyrulik @pumpkin-spice-whump @finder-of-rings @melancholy-in-the-morning @insaneinthepaingame @skyhawkwolf @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @mylifeisonthebookshelf @dont-touch-my-soup @whump-world @inpainandsuffering @cicatrix-energy @quietly-by-myself @whumpsday @extemporary-whump @the-whumpers-grimm @thebirdsofgay @firewheeesky @whumperfully @hold-back-on-the-comfort @termsnconditions-apply @cyborg0109 @whumplr-reader @pinkraindropsfell

[cemeterything]

online interactions are a double-edged sword 'cause yes, bad-faith interpreters are everywhere, but making assumptions about people's intentions when they're not quite clear can land you in equally hot water. it's a terrible balancing act sometimes, trying to toe the line of staying kind without being too vulnerable to assholes wanting to twist your words. i've only ever seen you err on the side of kindness, which is really hard to do and i applaud you for that. you're much better at handling things outwardly than almost anyone else i follow.

thank you so much. i agree, it's difficult sometimes to decide how best to act, and i know that it's possible to be too tolerant and nonconfrontational and let people hurt you or others. i've been guilty of that before, and it's something i'm trying to learn from and work on, because it's not kindness to let people hurt you or others because you don't want to stand up to them and have difficult conversations. it's cowardice.

but wherever possible, whenever possible, i try to approach things with kindness and patience. i find that most people respond better to a willingness to hear them out and try to reach a point of mutual understanding and agreement, which is what i always aim for if someone's intentions are misguided but not malicious (though i do my best not to compromise my own values, either, because it's important to stick up for what you believe is right). i only hope that people see how much better it feels to be given a chance to explain themselves and clarify things they might have unintentionally made unclear, and consider doing the same for others. i want people to feel as safe as possible around me, and that means they deserve to be safe to be wrong sometimes. if i have the patience and energy and time to explain that to them, then i'm willing to make the effort.

it's not easy, but it does get easier with practice - and it also gets easier to enforce boundaries and call people out when necessary if you're more confident that you're being the kindest, most patient person you can be in the given situation. being kind to other people also helps you be kinder and more patient with yourself - if you're constantly searching for flaws in others and unnecessarily critical of them, you'll be drawn to focus on those qualities in yourself, and treat yourself more harshly than you deserve. i became a lot happier and more self accepting when i started being kinder to myself - but also more self aware, and more willing to acknowledge my own flaws.

i'm really glad that it's something other people see and appreciate it, because it is something i work hard to maintain ^_^

[pumpkzsafeplace]

anon questions 💌: dealing with guilt & vulnerability issues in a dynamic.

guilt & vulnerability issues can be incredibly hard to deal with when thrown into a new dynamic, especially when you've been looking after yourself for so long <3. so here are pumpkin's top tips to help! <3.

letting your guard down. ⭐

letting your guard down, especially after being your own safe space for so long, can be incredibly difficult. sometimes the fear of getting hurt could quickly end a dynamic before it even has a chance to begun. take baby steps, know that fear will always be there but sometimes we still need to jump into the water to finally understand the beauty of the sea <3.

❀•°❀°•❀ opening up. 🌙

opening up and trusting somebody can look different to every person. some people open up and trust others easily- whilst others battle incredibly hard. don't be fooled in thinking theres a time limit- it took me around a year to be completely open with my caregiver, and look at us stronger than ever <3. do whatever makes you feel comfortable, just make sure to communicate that you're trying so that the other person doesn't feel too lost <3.

❀•°❀°•❀ knowning mistakes are going to happen. ⭐

mistakes happen in every dynamic, platonic or not and that's completely okay! i know if you're anything like me- the moment something bad happens your mind can go into overdrive, thus leading to panic attacks and meltdowns. but honey bees, without faliure even the greatest scientists wouldn't be able to create their long standing projects. we learn from our mistakes and grow in time. even three years later, me & my caregiver are still learning about each other. it's okay to mess up sometimes <3.

❀•°❀°•❀ it's okay disagree sometimes. 🌙

just like it's okay to make mistakes- it's okay to disagree on opinions sometimes too <3. remember, you two are two completely different brought up in two completely different households that would have held their own beliefs and standards. we can disagree, argue points and find the middle ground. it doesn't harm the dynamic at all by dicussing each others sides, who knows- you might just even come up with a more knowledgable solution <3.

❀•°❀°•❀ understanding boundaries & asking for help ⭐

understanding boundaries and battling with your guilt for bothering other people might be one of the hardest things you tackle in a dynamic <3.

i know it was in mine. i would upset muself by thinking my cg didn't care- and yet i wouldn't tell them i was upset because i didn't want to overcross any boundaries & force them do something. but what we need to realise as littles is that if we do something that bothers our caregivers, or upsets them in anyway- they will tell you. they're not expecting you to pick up on make believe signs to figure them out, they're there to help and do their best too. & nine times out of ten- when you're worried about upsetting them, they're probably thinking the same about you. it's okay to be nervous, you'll get through this together i promise <3.

❀•°❀°•❀ some things take time. 🌙

building a strong relationship with someone doesn't happen over night, it takes mistakes, laughter, disagreements, learning, postivie re-enforcement. remember life is a marathon, not a sprint. people's life journeys go at different paces, you've got this i promise <3

gif isn't mine

[vaguely-concerned]

...this is fully just a Vibe based observation, but sometimes NtN!John talks about M-- and A-- almost as if they were his parents fhdkjsahkjfas. it's mixed up with a lot of other stuff of course, but sometimes, especially when the two of them join forces, there's a sense of 'wow when mum and dad get along anything is suddenly possible' beneath it. I'm not sure it's an aspect John necessarily wants to admit to himself, but now that I've put it into words I think there's something to it, and it's an extension of something I was trying to get a handle on even back in HtN. the thing he says to augustine when asking him to come back to him at the end of HtN has always been really striking to me:

“Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.”

it speaks both to this insidious lack of boundaries and centering relationships entirely around himself -- 'you can only be something or someone in relationship to me: my child, my brother, beloved by me, my hand and my gesture in the world' -- and to how he's tried to make mercy and augustine* (freshly reduced to only augustine in that moment rip :'( ) his everything-in-one persons. they're his children, his siblings, his best friends, his spouses, his lovers, his generals, his disciples, his saints, his parents (less so after the resurrection, but there are still hints of it to my mind -- he really wants those two to get along and be a stable functioning unit again for the sake of his own emotional stability huh lmao, and to add spice he seems genuinely hurt at the thought that they've just been pretending to dislike each other while he was there and felt differently when they were alone together without him, at a point where that truly is the very least of his problems, it's weird and tangled stuff), his companions and caretakers, his dependents (they were so fucking scared), coworkers and subordinates, his enforcers -- all at once and all according to what he needs from them at any given moment.

*g1deon is different, because his use for him is more straightforwardly 1) as a weapon and attack dog and 2) when he needs someone, a buddy, to think he's fine. not necessarily right, but fine. the more things change ig haha

pretty much the only thing they aren't to him are cavaliers because, as augustine observes to mercy, he doesn't want nor need a replacement for alecto. he understands just enough about love and loneliness to not literally consume them completely into himself, and I don't think that's quite what he needs from them anyway, but god, he's done everything short of that in the name of tying them to him. (which i think is a theme mirrored in ianthe's relationship to corona, incidentally! for all of her 'real love is acquisitive' mindset, ianthe does realize that subsuming corona completely into herself is not going to be a satisfactory solution to their... whole deal. despite the way they're so deeply enmeshed, there needs to be a sliver of Other left in the mix to experience relationship instead of just uh. devouring yourself by your own tail, attachment wise, or the unending solitude of grief of the 'regular' flawed lyctorhood.) and part of how he did it is by setting everything up to make them complicit in the same sin he committed -- binding them all inseparably together politically/structurally, cosmically/metaphysically, spiritually, emotionally, morally, in common yet isolated eternal grief. you can't leave me, you're the same kind of bad as me. it's the same blood on all our hands now. a piece of me in you, a piece of you in me (but only to the extent it's convenient to me let's be sensible about this guys I am god after all I've got a lot on my plate right now). he made them kill and eat everything else they loved so only he was left, and they share in his guilt over the system of empire they created and perpetuated.

both mercy and augustine have, though the myriad, found ways to defend themselves against this obliterating kind of love john extends to them -- mercy by making herself unlovable, augustine by making himself untouchable. (Nothing could ever really touch Augustine vs. John's repeated statement of having to make his loved ones something he could touch -- many thoughts.) most importantly they had each other, as loathsome as I'm sure that fact was to both of them hahaha <3 this thing of 'when augustine and mercy agree on anything, you know shit's getting real' that turned out to be the one thing they could hold on to in this lifetime too.

and i think this whole glorious clusterfuck's role in the narrative ultimately is to shine a light on how harrow and gideon grew up together having to be everything to each other (under the cut because god this got long why am I like this):

Tiny Harrow had found [Gideon] an object of tormentable fascination—prey, rival, and audience all wrapped up in one. And though Gideon hated the cloisterites, and hated the Locked Tomb, and hated the ghastly great-aunts, and hated Crux most of all, she was hungry for the Reverend Daughter’s preoccupation. They were the only two children in a House that was otherwise busy getting gangrene.

and provide an example of the long-term toxicity of a similar interpersonal dynamic. Harrow and Gideon ended up like that through no fault of their own; they didn't choose it, it was a tragedy they were innocently born into and then they acted out love and connection as best they could with what they'd been given, as brutal as their best was. but john is the deliberate architect of his own situation! he meant for this to happen, he decided this was an acceptable outcome long ago! the first house also has gangrene, but it's because john deliberately and methodically has been chopping all its limbs off over the myriad to feed it to the ghosts of his sin and done nothing in particular to treat the wounds!!! even mercy is deemed unnecessary in the end, once she's become more emotionally uncomfortable to deal with than useful to him, emotionally and otherwise. (and augustine realizes that's exactly how john thinks and how he ultimately views them! imagine having that knowledge hanging over you for thousands of years without being able to get out!)

john has been alive for ten thousand years, and for those ten thousand years he has kept the same three people around as his core family. (even from john himself we hear very little about any of his biological family apart from a few mentions of his grandmother, which seems... telling.) he's still playing house with them in harrow the ninth, hugs and family dinner and yes, love, but an infinitely haunted love. (also oh my god were harrow and ianthe basically the saving the marriage babies of lyctorhood, 'here have some new sisters they're just as good as the old ones probably cheer up' dhfsjdfa I've never thought about it like that before but there might be something there.) all three of the people he loves the most were intimately involved (ahahaha oh I do amuse myself at least) in a plot to murder him -- not because they didn't still love him in some twisted hopeless way, I don't think, just to get the horror to finally end.

he asks Harrow, seemingly rhetorically at the time: Why would you let someone go -- away from you -- untouchable -- two people? I couldn't... I loved them too much. if he'd paid any attention at all, he'd already know her answer: to keep myself from consuming her completely. so I wouldn't destroy her. he took their memories so they wouldn't leave him or stop loving him, while harrow gave up her own memories of love and grace rather than destroy gideon's soul, rather than continue to exist escalatingly at gideon's expense, as she has always been set up to systemically. (which is not like. a great long-term solution to the central problem of personhood/individuation vs. connection and love here or anything -- obliterating yourself in the name of love is no more sustainable or moral than destroying the other -- but it IS a statement of priorities haha.) do you think john would ever have taken that deal? he's tried to keep his loved ones exactly the same, keep them his and with him, for ten thousand years, and hasn't realized they've been slowly drifting away from him all that time -- that even if they had wanted to stay with him despite it all, with the way he has set it all up there is no choice anymore, it has destroyed them. it's the saddest fucking thing because he loved them so much, they loved him so much, and yet... he made it into this horrific thing with his own hands because he has that insatiable hunger and he's still so afraid of change, as much when he's made himself God as he was as a child. nona the ninth being a story of found families that ultimately 'fail' and fall apart even though love was there, reflecting back on the themes of HtN and revealing new things there. thoughts. many thoughts. indeed, feelings. please bear with me, I'm still not sure I've managed to say exactly what I mean here especially in terms of john's motivations but this is the best I could do right now and my brain is fried so... here have the Psychosexual Clusterfuck Polycule Thoughts I managed to pin down for now

TL;DR: sometimes I wonder what the fuck john's primary attachment relationships as a child were like because frankly it sounds like something did Not go entirely right there lmao

[rook-jemmy]

I don't think you're an asshole, if that counts for something.

You seem to have gone through a lot, it's really hard to come out of that as a gentle, understanding person. It's fine.

Even if not everyone will see it like this.

thanks nonny. after giving it some thought i realize that i'm actually a lot of things. sometimes im an asshole, and sometimes i am a gentle and understanding person. sometimes im even both. ur right that its hard to be gentle when people remind me of those jerks who did awful things to me, or when people really are acting like a big piece of shit who dont really deserve my gentleness. people sometimes set off all the alarm bells in my head and its hard to be a big cuddly teddy bear when those things make it impossible to think clearly. i think the important thing is trying 2 be gentle anyway, but figuring out where your boundaries are. and enforcing them so you can be gentle without getting hurt. 🖤u nony

[fairy-pd]

girlies im doing it

strap in for

Thomas Hewitt x age regressor!reader

WARNING: reader's little age is around 1-8 yrs old and okay with physical touch. GN reader, no mentions of what the reader's appearance is. Use of strong language, and use of the terms daddy, dada and papa. May not be appropriate to read while age regressing!

((this is my first time ever writing a hc drabble, sorry for all the mistakes aaaaakqksksk!!!!!))

BIG on the daddy/papa/dada stuff. will die. will melt. will blush and, most importantly, will do anything for you as long as you call him any of the above

You got this man wraped around your little finger

You were already the most precious thing in his life but after he found out you had this softer, more innocent side that was even more dependent on him??? you're the purest, most angelic thing ON EARTH to him now and he will do ANYTHING to keep you safe

Tbh he doesn't really understand what's going on, even if you explain it to him. He knows its something very far away from any kind of sexual stuff, this much he gets, and isnt bothered at all by the whole thing; he understands its something completely harmless that makes you both happy

Tommy boy is ye old Provider™️, sometimes to his own detriment

It makes it hard for him to throughly discipline you cus 1) he doesn't wanna make you upset, and 2) he doesn't understand that boundary setting goes both ways, and that he is allowed to have his own boundaries respected

This often leads to him trying to juggle between his responsibilities around the house, his own basic needs and taking care of you

As kids do, you'll end up testing his limits and he won't ever tell you "no", which can lead him to feel a little upset (not mad!!) over something you did

Picture Tommy grumpy all day long cus you bit his finger a little too hard

You'll have to talk to him about this when you're out of your headspace, about what kinds of things he doesn't want you to do and what kinds of things you're okay with him doing to enforce boundaries

You'll have to give him lots and lots of reassurance about his caregiving

Will freakout if you cry. In the TCM 2006 universe he hasnt been frequently around super small children, as far as I know, so he doesn't know that little kids cry that much about things that are so??? nonsensical???? sometimes

'Why are they crying about the cockroach I stepped on??????'

He'll spoil you as a result of his adoration for you, his permissive-leaning style of caregiving and his inexperience with children

Expect lots of hand-sewn gifts. You'll have all the plushies and clothes in the world if it the depends on this man

Expect also all the cuddles, kisses, head scritches, hand holding, all the nine yards of our big boy's biggest love language: physical touch.

He is going to be really gentle, even after you reassure him that he wont hurt you cus ur not made of porcelain, cus he is kinda terrified of scaring you shitless again and making you fear him. It tackles into his abandonment issues

But honestly? There's very few things in his life that make him feel so...fulfilled, and the biggest one is being your caregiver

A provider at heart, as I said earlier, Tommy loves the feeling of taking care of the people he loves and making sure they have everything they could possibly need. It makes him feel important to be relied on, and to be the person people come to when they need help. Makes him feel needed, valued, appreciated

So imagine what your little babbles and love declarations do to this poor man's heart

Nothing in the world compares to when you come crying to his open arms saying "I missed you, papa..."

Or when you tell him he's the "bestest most handsomest daddy in the whoooooooleeee wooooorrrrldddd"

Or even better, when you wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his front, tightly, when he picks you up

He swears to God one day you're gonna make his heart explode

How in hell did he manage to find a baby so pure, so innocent, so goddamn tiny at heart like you??? how??? what did he do to deserve you???

He LOVES coming to your little makeshift bedroom in the basement to hang out after a hard day of chopping, killing, and chasing people all around town

He won't ever greet you with his bloody apron on, doing his best to present himself as clean as possible in case its "baby hours" as he calls your regression

You're not really allowed to go anywhere without him or Luda Mae, so you end up missing him a lot (and sometimes having meltdowns, all by yourself :(( ) and being extra clingy when he eventually shows up

He made you a little doll of himself, using an old dress shirt he was gonna give to his mom to use as a rag, and it smells just like him, which comforts and calms you down a little till he comes back

The softest, most caring and wholesome cg ever, thats all

Thats it for today aaaaaa!! I think ill eventually post a follow up for this cus its late, Im sleepy and this man makes me so so so so happy I cant even😭😭😭

Thanks for reading!!

[random2908]

A college... let’s say a friend’s ex invited me to hang out with her and meet her kid today. It was really interesting. Parenthood’s been really good for her; she was always a very low-empathy person but she’s trying really hard for her kid’s sake, to understand what their problems are and deal with them gently.

Her parenting was interesting, as she struggled to decide which external/societal/park/restaurant rules to enforce with her kid and which to let them flout, and how to explain her decisions. Sometimes she’d let her kid do something until I--or in a couple cases a stranger--told her they were significantly getting in strangers’ ways, like, people were tripping over them. (The kid is 6.) So then she’d tell her kid to stop, and she’d say it was because they were tripping strangers, but she had trouble articulating--and they had trouble understanding--why that even matters. (When we were in college together I don’t think she would have thought it did matter.) When they grabbed a salt shaker off someone else’s table at lunch she was able to grab on to “violating other people’s personal boundaries” but that was the closest to a success of articulation that she managed and the kid was dubious about it. Or she’d tell the kid not to do something because it was causing her sensory overload and the kid was not nearly old enough to be self-aware enough to understand what sensory overload meant. I had to make it about me, “hey, every time you bang your knife on the table, it hurts my head a little, could you please stop?” or, “well, we’re eating inside because after a long morning of being out in the bright sun my head is starting to hurt from it, so it just feels nicer to be inside.” and they were so eager to please me, their new friend, that they went along with it immediately as soon as it was about me instead of their mother. Even though the sensory stuff was obviously bothering her a lot more than me.

The kid was very sweet when given the opportunity! I was introduced at the start of the morning as a friend, and of all the people in our group I was the one who drove there with them, so when they needed an adult to cling to, they came to me if I was closer than their mother. They wanted frequent tactile assurance that I was there, usually in the form of resting their head against my belly (that’s how tall they were if we were both standing up). But they had a lot of trouble understanding why they were being asked to do things, didn’t want to do things if they didn’t understand why, and particularly had a lot of trouble understanding why when the answer involved being considerate of strangers. And toward the end, when they were tired and hungry, they were no longer able to listen to why (as inevitably happens with kids who are tired and hungry) and so were unwilling to go along with anything.

Anyway, I thought the contrast between “that sound is hurting me, your new friend, so please stop” working well and “please don’t trip strangers” working poorly was pretty interesting. I wonder if I could have leveraged that on their mother at 20 if I’d known to try that tack. I kind of doubt it, I kind of think that’s the sort of thing that works particularly well on a 6-year-old and particularly poorly on a 20-year-old. And I, at 21, mostly wasn’t willing to express the necessary vulnerability to attempt it anyway, in case it backfired.

There was one moment toward the end, on the way to lunch. They wanted to do their seatbelt, but it was a new car and the seatbelt was tricky, especially for small arms trying to reach down from a carseat. Eventually they got really frustrated and I reached back and offered to help, and they let me. Then they remember their ipad was in the trunk and undid their seatbelt again, only to be told it was a 6 minute drive and we weren’t taking out their ipad for that. So then they struggled to put on their seatbelt again, and I turned back to help them, and they started kicking. I got it on them again, after somewhat more struggle this time because they weren’t cooperating. As we got going my friend said she was proud of how hard they’d tried with the seatbelt, and when we got to the restaurant, they could share a milkshake. (Obviously to pacify the kid for the rest of the short car ride.) The kid screamed, “NO MILKSHAKE!!” So she was like, “ok, no milkshake.” When we parked at the restaurant, she again offered the milkshake as a reward, mainly to get the kid to come out of the car, and the kid responded the same. As she was unpacking the car, I asked them if they didn’t want a milkshake or didn’t feel they’d earned a reward. The kid, half-crying--the most visibly upset they’d been the whole day--said they hadn’t earned it. Neither she nor I really knew what to do from there; we knew what the kid was feeling, but no one from our parents’ generation would have even asked us that question, they would have just assumed we violently didn’t want a milkshake, leading to a meltdown because we did want a milkshake. As we walked to the restaurant she tried to tell her kid that rewards in life were never really commensurate to what’s earned--that she nearly always felt she was given either a lot more or a lot less than she deserved--so she’d learned it was best to take what good things you were given. The kid, tired and hungry, was unfortunately not in a state of mind to process this--but I thought it was a pretty good first stab at the problem.