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warsofasoiaf · 3 years

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Writing Characters With Believable Military PTSD

I typically write these writing and worldbuilding essays from a dispassionate perspective, offering advice and context to prospective writers from as neutral a point of view as I can manage, with the goal being to present specific pieces of information and broader concepts that can hopefully improve writing and build creators’ confidence to bring their projects to fruition, whether that be writing, tabletop gaming, video game programming, or anything that suits their fancy. While writing this essay though, I struggled to maintain that perspective. Certainly, the importance of the topic to me was a factor, but ultimately, I saw impersonality just as a suboptimal presentation method for something so intensely personal. I do maintain some impartiality particularly in places where historical or academic context is called for, but in other respects I’ve opted for a different approach. Ultimately, this essay is a labor of love for me, love for those who suffer from military PTSD, love for those who love those who suffer from it, and love for writers who want to, in the way that they so choose, help those two other groups out. Thus, this is a different type of essay in certain segments than my usual fare; I hope the essay isn’t an unreadable chimera because of it.

This essay focuses on military-related PTSD. While there are some concepts that translate well into PTSD in the civilian sphere, there are unique elements that do not necessarily fit the mold in both directions, so for someone hoping to write a different form of PTSD, I would recommend finding other resources that could better suit your purposes. I also recommend using more than one source just in general, trauma is personal and so multiple sources can help provide a wide range of experiences to draw upon, which should hopefully improve any creative work.

And as a final introductory note, traumatic experiences are deeply personal. If you are using someone you know as a model for your writing, you owe it to that person to communicate exactly what you are doing and to ask their permission every step of the way. I consider it a request out of politeness to implore any author who uses someone else’s experiences to inform their writing in any capacity, but when it comes to the truly negative experiences in someone’s life, this rises higher from request to demand. You will ask someone before taking a negative experience from their own life and placing it into your creative works, and you will not hide anything about it from them. Receiving it is a great sign of trust. The opposite is a travesty, robbing someone of a piece of themselves and placing it upon display as a grotesque exhibit. And if that sounds ghoulish and macabre, it’s because it is, without hyperbole. Don’t do it.

Why Write PTSD?

What is the purpose of including PTSD in a creative work? There have been plenty of art therapy actions taken by those who suffer PTSD to create something from their condition, which can be as profound for those who do not have it as it is therapeutic for those that do, but why would someone include it in their creative works, and why is some no-name guy on the internet writing an essay offering tips as to how to do it better?

Certainly, one key element is that it’s real, and it happens. If art is to reflect upon reality, PTSD suffered by soldiers is one element of that, so art can reflect it, but what specifically about PTSD, as opposed to any other facet of existence? Author preference certainly plays a factor, but why would someone try to include something that is difficult to understand and difficult to portray? While everyone comes to their own reason, I think that a significant number of people are curious about what exactly goes on in the minds of someone suffering through PTSD, and creative works allow them a way to explore it, much the way fiction can explore scenarios and emotions that are either unlikely or unsafe to explore in reality. If that’s the case, then the purpose of this essay is rather simple, to make the PTSD examination more grounded in reality and thus a better reflection of it. But experiences are unique even if discernable patterns emerge, so in that sense, no essay created by an amateur writer with no psychological experience could be an authoritative take on reality, the nature of which would is far beyond the scope of this essay.

For my own part, I think that well-done creative works involving PTSD is meant to break down the isolation that it can cause in its wake. Veterans suffering may feel that they are alone, that their loved ones cannot understand them and the burden of trying to create that would simply push them away; better instead to have the imperfect bonds that they currently have than risk losing them entirely. For those who are on the outside looking in, isolation lurks there as well, a gulf that seems impossible to breach and possibly intrusive to even try. Creative works that depict PTSD can help create a sense that victims aren’t alone, that there are people that understand and can help without demeaning the sense of self-worth. Of course, another element would be to reduce the amount of poorly-done depictions of PTSD. Some creative works use PTSD as a backstory element, relegating a defining and important element of an individual’s life as an aside, or a minor problem that can be resolved with a good hug and a cry or a few nights with the right person. If a well-done creative work can help create a bridge and break down isolation, a poorly-done one can turn victims off, reinforcing the idea that no one understands and worse, no one cares. For others, it gives a completely altered sense of what PTSD is and what they could do to help, keeping them out, confusing them, or other counter-productive actions. In that sense, all the essay is to help build up those who are doing the heavy lifting. I’m not full of so much hubris as to think this is a profound piece of writing that will help others, but if creators are willing to try and do the hard work of building a bridge, I could at least try to help out and provide a wheelbarrow.

An Abbreviated Look At The Many Faces and Names of PTSD Throughout History

PTSD has been observed repeatedly throughout human history, even when it was poorly understood. This means that explorations of PTSD can be written in settings even if they did not have a distinctly modern understanding of neurology, trauma, or related matters. These historical contexts are also useful for worldbuilding a believable response in fictional settings and scenarios that don’t necessarily have a strict analogue in our own history. By providing this historical context, hopefully I can craft a broad-based sense of believable responses to characters with PTSD at a larger level.

In the time of Rome, it was understood by legionnaires that combat was a difficult endeavor, and so troops were typically on the front lines engaged in combat for short periods of time, to be rotated back for rest while others took their place. It was considered ideal, in these situations, to rotate troops that fought together back so that they could rest together. The immediate lesson is obvious, the Romans believed that it was vital for troops to take time to process what they had done and that was best served with quiet periods of rest not just to allow the adrenaline to dissipate (the "combat high"), but a chance for the mind to wrap itself around what the legionnaire had done. The Romans also recognized that camaraderie between fellow soldiers helped soldiers to cope, and this would be a running theme throughout history (and remains as such today). Soldiers were able to empathize with each other, and help each other through times of difficulty. This was not all sanguine, however, Roman legions depended on their strong formations, and a soldier that did not perform their duty could endanger the unit, and so shame in not fulfilling their duty was another means to keep soldiers in line. The idea of not letting down your fellow soldiers is a persistent refrain in coping with the traumas of war, and throughout history this idea has been used for both pleasant and unpleasant means of keeping soldiers in the fight.

In the Middle Ages, Geoffroi de Charny wrote extensively on the difficulties that knights could experience on the campaign trail in his Book of Chivalry. The book highlights the deprivation that knights suffered, from the bad food and poor sleep to the traumatic experience of combat to being away from family and friends to the loss of valued comrades to combat and infection; each of these is understood as a significant stressor that puts great strain on the mental health of soldiers up to today. De Charny recommended focusing on the knightly oaths of service, the needs of the mission of their liege, and the duty of the knight to serve as methods to help bolster the resolve of struggling knights. The book also mentions seeking counseling and guidance from priests or other confidants to help improve their mental health to see their mission through. This wasn’t universal, however. Some severely traumatized individuals were seen as simple cowards, and punished harshly for their perceived cowardice as antithetical to good virtue and to serve as an example.

World War I saw a sharp rise in the reported incidents of military-related PTSD and new understandings and misunderstandings. The rise in the number of soldiers caused a rise in cases of military PTSD, even though the term itself was not known at the time. Especially in the early phases of the war, many soldiers suffering from PTSD were thought to be malingering, pretending to have symptoms to avoid being sent to the front lines. The term “shell shock” was derived because it was believed that the concussive force of artillery bombardment caused brain damage as it rattled the skull or carbon monoxide fumes would damage the brain as they were inhaled, as a means to explain why soldiers could have physical responses such as slurred speech, lack of response to external stimuli, even nigh-on waking catatonia, despite not being hit by rifle rounds or shrapnel. This would later be replaced by the term “battle fatigue” when it became apparent that artillery bombardment was not a predicative indicator. Particularly as manpower shortages became more prevalent, PTSD-sufferers could be sent to firing squads as a means to cow other troops to not abandon their post. Other less fatal methods of shaming could occur, such as the designation “Lack of Moral Fibre,” an official brand of cowardice, as an attempt to shame the members into remembering their duty. As the war developed, and understanding grew, better methods of treatment were made, with rest and comfort provided to slight cases, strict troop rotations observed to rotate men to and from the front lines, and patients not being told that they were being evacuated for nervous breakdown to avoid cementing that idea in their mind. These lessons would continue into World War II, where the term “combat stress reaction” was adopted. While not always strenuously followed, regular rotations were adopted as standard policy. This was still not universal, plenty of units still relied upon bullying members into maintaining their post despite mental trauma.

The American military promotes a culture of competence and ability, particularly for the enlisted ranks, and that lends itself to the soldier viewing themselves in a starkly different fashion than a civilian. Often, a soldier sees the inability to cope with a traumatic experience as a personal failure stemming from the lack of mental fortitude. Owning up to such a lack of capability is tantamount to accepting that they are an inferior soldier, less capable than their fellows. This idea is commonly discussed, and should not be ignored, but it is far from the only reason. The military also possesses a strong culture of fraternity that obligates “Don’t be a fuckup,” is a powerful motivating force, and it leads plenty of members of the military to ignore traumatic experiences out of the perceived need not to put the burden on their squadmates. While most professional militaries stress that seeking mental health for trauma is not considered a sign of weakness, enlisted know that if they receive mental health counseling, it is entirely likely that someone will have to take their place in the meantime. That could potentially mean that another person, particularly in front-line units, are exposed to danger that they would otherwise not be exposed to, potentially exacerbating guilt if said person gets hurt or killed. This is even true in stateside units, plenty of soldiers don’t report for treatment because it would mean dumping work on their fellows, a negative aspect of unit fraternity. Plenty of veterans also simply never are screened for mental health treatment, and usually this lends to a mentality of “well, no one is asking, so I should be fine.” These taken together combine to a heartbreaking reality, oftentimes a modern veteran that seeks help for mental trauma has often coped silently for years, perhaps self-medicating with alcohol or off-label drug usage, and is typically very far along their own path comparatively. Others simply fall through the cracks, not being screened for mental disorders and so do not believe that anything is wrong; after all, if something was wrong, surely the doctors would notice it, right? The current schedule of deployments, which are duration-based and not mission-based, also make it hard for servicemembers to rationalize their experiences and equate them to the mission; there’s no sense of pairing suffering to objectives the way that de Charnay mentioned could help contextualize the deprivation and loss. These sorts of experiences make the soldier feel adrift, and their suffering pointless, which is discouraging on another level. It is one thing to suffer for a cause, it’s another not to know why, amplifying the feelings of powerlessness and furthering the isolation that they feel.

Pen to Page - The Characters and Their Responses

The presentation of PTSD within a character will depend largely on the point-of-view that the author creates. A character that suffers from PTSD depending on the presence of an internal or external point-of-view, will be vastly different experiences on page. Knowing this is essential, as this will determine how the story itself is presenting the disorder. Neither is necessarily more preferable than the other, and is largely a matter of the type of story being told and the personal preference of the author.

Internal perspectives will follow the character’s response from triggering event to immediate response. This allows the author to present a glimpse into what the character is experiencing. In these circumstances, remember that traumatic flashbacks are merely one of many experiences that an average sufferer of PTSD can endure. In a visual medium, flashbacks are time-effective methods to portray a character reliving portions of a traumatic experience, but other forms of media can have other tools. Traumatic flashbacks are not necessarily a direct reliving of an event from start to finish, individuals may instead feel sudden sharp pains of old injuries, be overwhelmed by still images of traumatic scenes or loud traumatic sounds. These can be linked to triggers that bring up the traumatic incident, such as a similar sight, sound, or smell. These moments of linkage are not necessarily experienced linearly or provide a clear sequence of events from start to finish (memory rarely is unless specifically prompted), and it may be to the author’s advantage to not portray them as such in order to communicate the difficulty in mental parsing that the character may be experiencing. Others might be more intrusive, such as violently deranged nightmares that prevent sleep. The author must try to strike a balance between portraying the experience realistically and portraying it logically that audience members can understand. The important thing about these memories is that they are intrusive, unwelcome, and quite stressful, so using techniques that jar the reader, such as the sudden intrusive image of a torn body, a burning vehicle, or another piece of the traumatic incident helps communicate the disorientation. Don't rely simply on shock therapy, it's not enough just to put viscera on the page. Once it is there, the next steps, how the character reacts, is crucial to a believable response.

When the character experiences something that triggers their PTSD, start to describe the stress response, begin rapidly shortening the sentences to simulate the synaptic activity, express the fight-flight-freeze response as the character reacts, using the tools of dramatic action to heighten tension and portraying the experience as something frightful and distinctly undesirable. The triggering incident brings back the fear, such as a pile of rubble on the side of the road being a potential IED location, or a loud firework recalling the initial moments of an enemy ambush. The trauma intrudes, and the character falls deep into the stress response, and now they react. How does this character react? By taking cover? By attacking the aggressor who so reminds them of the face of their enemy? Once the initial event starts, then the character continues to respond. Do they try to get to safety? Secure the area and eliminate the enemy? Eventually, the character likely recognizes their response is inappropriate. It wasn’t a gunshot, it was a car backfiring, the smell of copper isn’t the sight of a blown-apart comrade and the rank odor of blood, it’s just a jug of musty pennies. This fear will lead to control mechanisms where the victim realizes that their response is irrational. Frequently, the fear is still there, and it still struggles with control. This could heighten a feeling a powerlessness in the character as they try and fail to put the fear under control: "Yes, I know this isn’t real and there’s nothing to be afraid of, but I’m still shaking and I am still afraid!" It’s a horrifying logical track, a fear that the victim isn’t even in control of their thoughts - the one place that they should have control - and that they might always be this way. There’s no safety since even their thoughts aren’t safe. Despair might also follow, as the victim frantically asserts to regain control. Usually with time, the fear starts to lessen as the logical centers of the brain regain control, and the fear diminishes. Some times, the victim can't even really recall the exact crippling sense of fear when attempting to recall it, only that they were afraid and that it was deeply scary and awful, but the notion that it happened remains in their mind.

Control mechanisms are also important to developing a believable PTSD victim. Most sufferers dread the PTSD response and so actively avoid objects or situations that could potentially trigger. Someone who may have had to escape from a helicopter falling into the ocean may not like to be immersed in water. Someone who was hit by a hidden IED may swerve to avoid suspicious piles in the road. Someone buried under a collapsing ceiling may become claustrophobic. Thus, many characters with PTSD will be hypervigilant almost to the point of exhaustion, avoiding setting off the undesired response. This hypervigilance is mentally taxing; the character begins to become sluggish mentally as all their energy is squeezed out, leaving them struggling for even the simplest of rational thoughts. This mental fog can be translated onto the page in dramatic effect by adding paragraph length to even simple actions, bringing the reader along into the fog, laboriously seeing the character move to perform simple actions. Then, mix in a loss of a sense of purpose. They’re adrift, not exactly sure what they’re doing and barely aware of what’s happening, although they are thinking and functioning. In the character’s daily life, they are living their life using maximum effort to avoid triggering responses; this is another aspect of control that the character can use as an attempt to claw back some semblance of power in their own lives. Even control methods that aren’t necessarily healthy such as drinking themselves to pass out every night or abusing sleeping pills in an attempt to sleep due to their nightmares, are ways to attempt to regain a sense of normalcy and function. Don’t condescend to these characters and make them pathetic, that’s just another layer of cruelty, but showing the unhealthy coping mechanisms can demonstrate the difficulty that PTSD victims are feeling. Combined with an external perspective, the author can show the damage that these unhealthy actions are doing without casting the character as weak for not taking a different path.

External perspectives focus on the other characters and how they observe and react to the individual in question. Since the internal thought process of the character is not known, sudden reactions to an unknown trigger can be quite jarring for characters unaware, which can mirror real-life experiences that individuals can have with PTSD-sufferers. In these types of stories, the character’s reaction to the victim is paramount. PTSD in real life often evokes feelings of helplessness in loved ones when they simply cannot act to help, can evoke confusion, or anger and resentment. These reactions are powerful emotions with the ability to drive character work, and so external perspectives can be useful for telling a story about what it is like for loved ones who suffer in their own fashion. External perspectives can be used not just in describing triggering episodes, but in exploring how the character established coping mechanisms and how their loved ones react to them. Some mechanisms are distinctly unhealthy, such as alcohol or prescription drug abuse, complete withdrawal, or a refusal to drive vehicles, and these create stress and a feeling of helplessness in characters or can impel them to try and take action. Others can be healthy, and a moment of inspiration and joy for an external perspective could be sharing in that mechanism, demonstrating empathy and understanding which evokes strong pathos, and hopefully to friends of those who suffer from PTSD, a feeling that they too, are not alone.

As the character progresses, successes and failures can often be one of the most realistic and most important things to include within the work, since those consumers who have PTSD will see parts of themselves in the characters, which can build empathy and cut down on the feelings of isolation that many victims of PTSD feel. A character could, over the course of the story, begin weaning themselves off of their control mechanisms, have the feelings of panic subside as their logical sides more quickly assert control, replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthier ones, or other elements of character progression and growth. Contrarily, a character making progress could, after experiencing significant but unrelated stressors, backslide either into unhealthy coping mechanisms or be blindsided by another attack. This is a powerful fear for the victim, since it can cause them to think ‘all my progress, all my effort, and I am not free!’ This is often a great fear for PTSD users (people with depression often have the same feeling) that find methods of coping are no longer as effective, and the struggle is perceived as one that they’re ultimately doomed to failure. This feeling of inevitable failure can lead to self-harm and suicide as their avenue of success seems to burn to ash right as it was in their hands. More than one soldier suffering from PTSD has ended up concluding: “Fuck it, I can’t live like this,” as horrible as that is. Don’t be afraid to include setbacks and backsliding, those happen in reality, and can be one of the most isolating fears in their lives; if the goal of portraying PTSD accurately is to help remove that feeling of isolation, then content creators must not avoid these experiences. Success as well as failure are essential to PTSD in characters in stories, these elements moreso than any other, I believe, will transcend the medium and form a connection, fulfilling the objective we set out to include in the beginning paragraphs.

Coming Back to the Beginning

It might be counterintuitive at first glance to say “including military PTSD will probably mean it will be a long journey full of discouraging story beats that might make readers depressed,” because that’s definitely going to discourage some readers to do that. I don’t see it that way, though. The people that want to do it should go in knowing it’s going to be hard, and let that strengthen their resolve, and put the best creation they can forward. The opposite is also true. Not every prospective author has to want to include any number of difficult subjects in their works, and that’s perfectly fine. Content creators must be free to shape the craft that they so desire without the need to be obligated to tackle every difficult issue, and so no content creator should be thought of as lesser or inferior because they opt not to include it in their works. I think that’s honestly stronger than handling an important topic poorly, or even worse, frivolously. Neither should anyone think that a content creator not including PTSD in their works means that they don’t care about those who suffer from it or for those who care about them or who simply don’t care about the subject in general. That’s just a terrible way to treat someone, and in the end, this entire excursion was about the opposite

Ultimately, this essay is a chance not only to help improve creative works involving PTSD, but to reflect on the creative process. Those who still want to proceed, by all means, do so. Hopefully this essay will help you create something that can reach someone. If every piece of work that helps portray PTSD can reach someone somewhere and make things easier, even if ever so little, well then, that’s what it’s really all about.

Hoping everyone has a peaceful Memorial Day. Be good to each to other.

SLAL

#essays on writing and worldbuilding #ptsd

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gingerswagfreckles · 3 years

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Queer is my fave word, thanks for posting about that book, I'm gonna try to get a copy! It's just awesome to have an umbrella term for not feeling cis-hetero but not entirely certain where you fit under the umbrella yet.

Ahh yes!! You mean Gay New York by George Chauncey? That book is THE book on queer history in the US (it's really not just about NYC, but it is focused there). Not only is it the most meticulously well researched book I have EVER read, it is just. So brilliant in how it analyses the construction of and intersection of gender, sexuality, biological sex, class, race, and society. Like I read it for a class in freshman year of college and trust me I was already EXTREMELY liberal and well versed in queer discourse. Yet it completely I mean COMPLETELY changed my understanding of not only sex and gender but just like. What identity is, how much of what we see as static and natural are actually very contextual social constructs. And it really showed in a very concrete and reality based way how every identity exists and is defined through the context of its environment, and that while our experiences are very inherently real, the lines we draw around these experiences to define them are not. Like. The existence of a queer identity the way we generally think of it now did NOT exist in the same way throughout history. The intersection of so many facets of life have been interpreted so completely differently throughout history and in different places and social contexts. The queer community has never been some static and well defined club that one is or is not a member of. It is and always has been a nebulous and highly changeable social network of people with common experiences and interests who have defined their own communities in wildly different ways depending on where you look. Trying to strictly define who does or does not belong in or who has or hasn't existed in the queer community throughout history is completely pointless, because in reality we are talking about an absolutely enormous group of people who have been variously connected to and socially isolated from others, who have seen their own identities and their own communities in completely different ways.

It really highlighted for me how pointless 99% of the discourse on this website is, and how much almost all of it boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what identity is. NONE of the identities we think of as inherently real are inherently real, and arguing about who should be included in a community or who's identities are "valid" just shows that you think the framework through which you understand sex and gender is universal rather than cultural, contextual, and highly individual. Like, identities overlap! Identities step on each others toes!!! Words and labels change, and people do not universally agree on what they mean at any point in time!!! You would not believe how many people who you would think of as being part of the queer community didn't think of themselves as part of the queer community, and you would not believe how many people who you do NOT think of as part of the queer community DID see themselves as part of it, and were accepted!!

Like, for example, the interpretation of what it even meant to be "homosexual" was SO different depending on what period on time you look at, what location, what social and financial class these people were part of, what racial identity they saw themselves as (and that's a whole 'nother can of worms!) Sexuality was often seen as MUCH more connected to gender performance and sexual roles one took than it is today, and a lot, I mean a LOT of men who always topped did not see themselves as homosexual/gay/part of the queer community at all, especially in working class communities. And!! Guess what!! This is the part that will really blow your mind!!!

T H E Y W E R E N ' T W R O N G!!!!!!!!!!!

They were not WRONG about how they defined their identities or how they saw themselves in relation to a certain social community!! Because they were using their OWN social and sexual framework to interpret their identities and their actions!!! And saying they were WRONG in their interpretation fundamentally misunderstands that the criteria YOU use to measure whether someone is part of an identity or social group is not any more correct or real than the criteria THEY used! Saying these people were "wrong" is to impose one's own modern and highly contextual social framework on people from the past-- and TBH it's fine to see people from the past through modern lenses, and to recognize that they would be seen as gay/a certain identity by modern standards. That's fine! But the way they saw themselves then wasn't wrong, it was just different, and your criteria for what you see as gay or straight or part of a community is just as arbitrary and based on the context of your environment as theirs was.

People like to argue with this all the time, saying things like that these individuals were just suffering from internalized homophobia, gender bias, ignorance of what this or that identity "really" means, and these people are really really really misunderstanding the point. These are usually the same people who say things like "words mean things!!" when points like the one I'm making are brought up, because they continue to misunderstand how much these words yes, mean things, but mean things within historical and cultural contexts that are NOT shared by the entire world. Like, ok, you may say our example man from the 1910s is gay whether he recognized that or not, because he engaged in homosexual acts. But what does it mean to have homosexual sex? To have sex with someone of the same biological sex? Well what is biological sex, and how do we define what makes ones biological sex the "same" or "different" from your own? Is it someone with the same type of genitals as you? That's not a universally shared opinion, and the way you define the "types" of genitals are not universally shared either. What if I told you that there have been cultures throughout history who have categorized biological sex through the length of the penis, with people with shorter penises being seen as a separate sex than those who have longer penises? So two people with penises could have sex with each other and not be understood as having sex with someone of the same sex, in that culture!

Oh, that's not what you meant? That's wrong? Why? Why? Because your personal understanding and your culture's general perception of what biological sex is is more valid and real than that culture's? Why? WHY? Could you really explain why, or is it just that the difference is making you uncomfortable, because it threatens your perception of a LOT of the ideas you see as inherently real?

And we could do the same thing with the ACT of sex! I mean, what is sex? What physical acts are sexual, and what aren't? Is it just someone putting a body part inside of another person's body in some way? Well what about handjobs and other kinds of outercourse? Is sex then some physical thing we do in pursuit of an orgasm? What if you don't orgasm? Is it not sex then? Is sex the use of our bodies to derive general physical pleasure? Well what about a massage? Is a massage sex? In some times and places, many people would have said yes!

These aren't just theoretical questions- Chauncey outlines how these differing definitions of what sex is and what makes it queer not only allowed for a lot of people we would unquestioningly think of as part of the queer community to exclude themselves, but also resulted in the inclusion of people we would never consider to be queer now. Like, most female prostitutes who served only male cliental absolutely hands down refused to give blow jobs in the early 1900s, because blowjobs were seen as an extremely deviant expression of sexuality and were understood to be part of "homosexual" activity, regardless of the sex or genders of the people involved, because it was sexual activity that explicitly was not seeking to create a baby. This was a widely understood concept at the time, and persisted despite the fact that many of these women were using contraception and therefore obviously not seeking to get pregnant. Blowjobs were still seen as perverse and "homosexual," and thus not something most regular female prostitutes were willing to engage in.

Therefore! Female prostitutes who only ever had sex with male cliental but DID provide oral sex (and many other not-penis-in-vagina-activities) were often lumped in with lesbians!!! And treated as such in arrest records and propaganda! And guess what?? As a result, guess who these women usually hung around with, and where they usually could be found? Within the queer community and queer spaces!! These women were seen by the broader society as well as by much of the queer community as QUEER, and many of them likely understood themselves this way as well!

And for the record, these questions of what sex is and what gender is and what makes it gay or straight or whatever are not questions that belong strictly to the past. Survey the general population about what act they consider to have been the one where they "lost their virginity," and you will get wildly different answers. Survey self identified gay or straight people on what kind of sex acts they engage with and with who, and you will similarly find an enormous variation in reports.

And these questions MATTER! These questions matter, not in that we have to find some way to answer them, but in order to understand that we can't, definitively, and that thinking our own perceptions of any of these things are more valid than others' perceptions is incredibly harmful and dismissive to the lived experiences of other people. You can't define other people's identities out of existence just because they threaten or overlap or contradict with your own understanding of some concept, because your definitions of literally any of the criteria you are using to try to build your boxes are ALSO up for interpretation!

Like, I'm sorry I know I am rambling soooo much but you opened the same floodgates that this book opened back when I read it. If the people on this stupid website had any understanding of the history they claim to know so much about, they would see how their attitudes of "this identity is more valid than that identity" and "you can't sit with us because you're not actually part of this or that identity because my definition is better than your definition" is nothing new or woke or progressive, but is the exact same shit that has always been done and has been used to marginalize people who's existence or behaviors threaten the status quo. Like yelling at asexual or pansexual or nonbinary or aromantic people or whatever other group that they don't belong, or that their identity isn't real because it threatens the perceived integrity of another identity...it's all so stupid!! Your identity is also just a way for you to define yourself within your cultural context! Like I've literally seen people be like "asexality isn't a real identity bc if we didn't live in a society that was so sex obsessed then you wouldn't feel the need to define yourself this way." And it's like....what?? Yeah, ok??? But we do live in this society???????? And you can say that about LITERALLY ANY identity??! Not even ones related to sex and gender! Like "you aren't really deaf and deafness isn't real, because if we lived in a world without sound then you wouldn't notice you couldn't hear." Like yeah?? But we do live in a world with sound?? So...people find this term useful to articulate their experiences? And they might even dare to form an identity around it, and maybe a community, and might even become proud of it, even though it is a social construct, just like pretty much everything else??

It just drives me nuts. We go around and around in circles without ever understanding that so much of the bigotry we face is the same thing we are perpetuating with each other, because we don't understand that it is natural and normal for people's definitions of certain identities to conflict, and for their interpretations of the world to run up against each other sometimes. And that there is no strictly defined queer community, and who does or doesn't "belong" is not a decision that any one person or even any one culture gets to make, ever.

To try to finally actually wrap back around to what your actual comment was to begin with, I think queer is a wonderful word, and that GENERALLY SPEAKING in our current cultural context, it is used to encapsulate so much of the messiness and overlap that makes people so uncomfortable, but is what makes the queer community so great!!!!! That being said, it of course has had different definitions in different time periods and cultural contexts just like everything else, and some people may still have negative connotations associated with it and therefore not feel comfortable using it to self-identify. And that's fine too, as long as you don't try to force other people to stop using the term to describe their own identities on the basis that your definition is more real than theirs, which is the opposite of what queer history is all about.

If anyone is interested in the book I am talking about, you can buy it as an ebook, audiobook, or paper copy here: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/george-chauncey/gay-new-york/9780786723355/

It goes into way way way more depth about everything I'm rambling about here, and backs it up with the most research and evidence I've ever seen in one single book. The physical copy is about as thick as two bricks stacked on top of each other, so if you can't get an exclusionist to read it, you can always just whack them over the head.

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...By the 1920s, only the very poorest Danish families had to depend on the economic contributions of adolescent children for survival, but in most households daughters were still expected to help supplement the household income by handing over their pay. Especially in their first years as wage earners, parental control over children's income was considerable. Mothers in charge of the family budget generally kept most of the wages, permitting adolescent wage earners only a limited weekly allowance for personal expenses. Young women's family responsibilities continued in other ways as well.

While sons were given much more leeway, daughters were generally expected to contribute their labor to the household after they arrived home from work. "In my family, all the children were sent out to work after their [Christian] confirmation [at the age of thirteen or fourteen], and we all had to give mother some of the money we earned for housekeeping," Gerda Eriksen recalled of her working class youth in the early 1920s. "But," she continued, "the girls also had their chores—running errands, peeling potatoes, setting and cleaning the table, doing the dishes, bringing up coal from the basement. My brothers never had to do any of that. That was women's work."

But if contributing wages and labor to the household continued to be the unquestioned norm, young women's sense of their rights and obligations vis-a-vis the family was nevertheless changing in other ways in the early decades of the twentieth century. When earnings were sufficient, some daughters decided to strike out on their own and live independently in rented rooms, small apartments, or boarding houses, but given their low wages this was a possibility for the very few. More frequently, young working women sought to use their earnings as leverage to negotiate a stronger position within the family. Especially after World War I, when most families were able to place themselves safely beyond the poverty line, the necessity of individual sacrifice for household survival began to fade.

This allowed even working-class daughters to assert their right to new privileges in exchange for their economic contributions, and in the 1920s they did so in increasing numbers. Young women's sense of what they could legitimately demand from their families clearly sprang from their status and experiences as wage earners outside the home. In the labor market, and particularly in jobs other than domestic service, young women learned a rhythm of time and labor that divided daily life into paid work and one's "own" time. This was a rhythm already familiar to most men, whose lives had long been split into realms of work and leisure. Therefore, (male) wage earners were the obvious beneficiaries when Danish government regulations in 1919 limited the work day to eight hours, allowing working men more free time than ever before.

Married women, on the other hand, did not experience a similar shortening of the workday. Whether they worked outside the home or not, housework, child-rearing, cooking, and cleaning were never ending tasks, and unlike their husbands, they had to snatch their few leisured moments in between domestic responsibilities. As working women, daughters were precariously positioned between these different patterns of daily life. Even though they took on wage labor much like their fathers and brothers, young women were simultaneously expected to share the steady burdens of domestic work with their mothers and to devote their nonworking time to household labor.

It was this discrepancy between expectations fostered by labor market participation in the context of increasing standards of living, and the realities of family life that became increasingly intolerable for many young women in the 1910s and 1920s. In their minds, earning a living and bringing home money positioned them on a par with male members of the family, entitling them to at least some of the same prerogatives. Consequently, while they did not resist having to hand over a substantial part of their earnings, they more and more openly resented that their financial contribution did not always earn them what they considered its reasonable counterpart, namely the right to free time. As a result, families with adolescent daughters were plunged into conflicts about the degree of personal autonomy that labor market participation and wages ought to bestow.

Intrafamilial conflicts are often difficult for historians to document, but in this case tensions between parents and children are easily discernible. They surface, for instance, in the immensely popular advice columns of the 1910s and 1920s. Convinced of their right as wage earners to at least some free time and exasperated by their parents' unwillingness to grant them this privilege, some young women turned to advice columnists, hoping for replies that would affirm the legitimacy of their demands.

Among the correspondents was "Betty" who openly questioned her parents' authority. "I work from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. every day," she explained. "When I come home, I am tired, but I still have to fix dinner and look after my younger sister. In the evenings my parents say I have to do needle-work, but I would rather read or go for a walk. Can they really demand that I stay at home? I am seventeen and a half years old, and I pay my mother Dkr. 8 every week."

Similarly, "a Copenhagen girl" found the relationship between rights and duties in her life unreasonable. "Before I leave in the morning," she complained, "I have to light the fire, make coffee and pack lunches. When I come home, the dishes are still sitting there, and there are errands to be run. Sometimes I want to meet my girlfriend at night, but my parents will almost never let me go. They say there is no reason to 'gad about,' but I don't understand what is wrong with having a little bit of fun at night when you work all day." Other evidence also suggests that many young women openly struggled to obtain the right to leisure and independent activities they thought they deserved.

Personal narratives often reveal both the intensity of such conflicts and the ingenuity of young women bent on getting their way. Emilie Johansen, who grew up in a middle-class family in a suburb of Aarhus recalled, for example, how she and her sister enlisted the help of an older aunt in their conflicts with an authoritarian father. "He was so strict. He would never allow us to have any fun, never allow us to go anywhere. It was hopeless. But then my aunt—I guess she was feeling sorry for us— we talked to her, and she hired us to do some cleaning and stuff. And we would get there and she would say, 'Why don't you girls run off to see a movie?' I don't remember if we ever actually did any work."

Equally resourceful, Copenhagen native Anna Eriksen depended on the backing of an older brother, who, in exchange for small favors, would promise to act as her chaperon outside the home only to vanish as soon as the siblings were out of their parents' sight. In addition to such evidence, numerous magazine articles and newspaper columns from the 1910s and 1920s chronicle the anger and bewilderment of parents who found themselves in constant conflict with their daughters. For mothers, this seemed particularly difficult. Not only did their daughters' desire for a "modern" life seem a rejection of their own norms and values, which in itself was hard to bear, but on top of that, some girls directly flaunted their disrespect of maternal authority, especially if fathers were absent, indulgent, or merely lackadaisical.

"When my daughter is not at the office, she thinks life has to be lived in a cafe, or in other places where people are judged according to their dress and style," "Ninka's mother" wrote to a women's magazine in 1921. "If I tell her to stay home even a few nights a week, she acts as if I've just imposed a life sentence on her." "She doesn't listen to me," another mother complained of her seventeen-year-old daughter. "When I tell her to stay home, she just laughs and says that you are only young once, that this is the twentieth century and not the Middle Ages, and that she is already wasting too much of her youth in a dirty factory. Besides that, she has her own money."

Even more desperate, the mother of one of the much maligned Langelinie girls told a newspaper journalist that she had "begged and pleaded with [her daughter] not to go there, but it doesn't help. I have to go to work, and my neighbor tells me that as soon as I am out the door, she takes off." Using whatever means it took, many young working women who came of age in the late 1910s and 1920s thus pushed for new personal freedoms and especially the right to free time. While some parents never gave in to their pressure, most young women seemed gradually to succeed in carving out of daily life at least some uninterrupted time devoted to relaxation and their own enjoyment.

From the mid-1920s, the frequency of daughters' publicly voiced complaints declined dramatically, and coming-of-age stories no longer featured such conflicts. Apparently, Ernestine P. Poulsen, born in 1902, described a phenomenon that extended beyond her family when she explained that "I fought a lot of battles with my parents [over the right to leisure]. Perhaps I cleared the way because when my [younger] sisters came along, they did not have to do the same. My parents had kind of accepted that girls also needed time of their own."

This did not mean, however, that conflicts between parents and daughters faded. Rather, the grounds of conflict merely shifted. Much resistance to giving young women free time derived from the material conditions of daily life—the practical assistance of grown daughters was still important for the well-being of many working-class households—and from a more general reluctance to give up control over children. But parents' reluctance also stemmed from their misgivings about young women's actual use of their leisure time.

Had daughters simply demanded more time to pursue leisure activities within the home, had they insisted on participating in cooking classes and sewing circles, or had they wanted to attend lectures on hygiene and housewifery, they would probably have been met with more understanding. But these were not the kinds of activities young women longed to engage in, and therefore the question of female leisure remained a contentious issue throughout the postwar decade.

Working-class and middle-class daughters had of course not been entirely without time of their own prior to the 1920s. Nor had they been completely confined to the home. Girls from the countryside had always been allowed to participate in regional fairs, celebrations, and local get-togethers of young people. Urban working-class daughters had long socialized outside the home on staircase landings and front steps, in backyards, and on city streets or in neighborhood parks, and many middle-class daughters belonged to women's clubs and organizations.

What constituted the major departure from convention in the 1910s and 1920s was young women's insistence on their right to "go out," an activity significantly different from the kind of casual socializing that took place outside their parents' windows or in clubs and organizations under adult supervision. "Going out," Regitze Nielsen recalled, "that was when we got dressed up and went somewhere." More specifically, "going out" meant pursuing pleasures that took young women away from home and family, into the public, and, in particular, toward new forms of commercial recreation, including movie theaters, cafes, dance places, and amusement parks. As a social practice, this form of "going out" challenged older norms for female behavior in several ways.

First, it obviously entailed their deliberate desertion from the domestic world, if only momentarily. Second, "going out" meant young women venturing outside familiar neighborhoods and beyond the realm of adult control and surveillance, claiming for themselves the right to an independent, unsupervised social life distinct from familial traditions. Third, as opposed to more traditional forms of leisure for women, "going out" was a strictly peer-oriented activity in which kinship ties had much less significance than freely chosen and carefully cultivated friendships among girls and young women who usually met in school, at work, in clubs and organizations, or in the neighborhood where they lived.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, "going out" meant women's entrance into public spaces traditionally defined as male territory and often imagined as sites of immoral activity where men and women freely mingled, potentially transgressing social and sexual boundaries. Because each of these four aspects seemed to pose a fundamental threat to the social and sexual status quo, intense controversies between parents and children over young women's new leisure activities reverberated throughout the postwar decade. Years after families had conceded to daughters' demands for more time of their own, parents struggled to control or at least influence their use of that time.

By dictating curfews, prohibiting particular activities and specific locations, insisting on being introduced to friends and companions, and demanding the chaperonage of brothers, parents sought not only to protect their daughters against potential dangers but also to maintain at least some authority. Consequently, when young women ventured out into the public sphere, they generally did so under the intense scrutiny of parents who continued to hold some power to revoke their newly won privileges. Thus, even as "going out" gradually became a regular part of young women's lives, treading carefully remained an often perplexing prerequisite.”

- Birgitte Soland, “Good Girls and Bad Girls.” in Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s

#1920s #history #danish #birgitte soland #becoming modern

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linkspooky · 4 years

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Repress Your Feelings, Girl.

Toga and Uraraka can’t understand each other: because Toga can’t explain herself properly, and Uraraka doesn’t really want to understand. However, there’s also a narrative reason behind why these two characters are fighting each other. It has nothing to do with morality, good or bad, hero or villain, but rather the writing of the characters themselves. Toga Himiko and Uraraka are foils, two sides of the same coin meant to reflect each other. They are essentially (in narrative terms at least) the same person, just both of them expressing different sides of themselves. Uraraka Ochako represses, and Himiko Toga expresses herself, more on their foiling underneath the cut.

Before I start out I just wanted to point out a few of the deliberate paralels the narrative draws between the two characters. First, the girls come from completely opposite circumstances.

Uraraka comes from a poor family, whereas Toga comes from what seems to be a wealthy household, considering there’a a gate in front of their door.

Typically Himiko would be the privileged one, but the narrative inverts this. Uraraka grows up in a household where her identity is affirmed by her parents no matter what. Himiko grows up in a household where she is constantly told she is wrong by her parents.

Ochako is continually accepted for who she is, and Toga is told not to be herself, not only suffering parental abuse, but also psychiatric abuse on top of that.

One more way in which they are opposites, Ochako is someone who tends to be sheltered (her parents did her best to hide the fact they were suffering from her because she didn’t want her to feel guitly about it, however it produced the opposite effect, Uraraka got better at reading the faces of people and noticing their suffering.)

Himiko on the other hand has grown up very unsheltered, she’s been on her own since middle school. There’s several hints she’s been exposed to the ugliest side of people already and spends her life running away from them and keeping herself safe from them.

Himiko and Uraraka are both incredibly good at reading other people, but they developed this ability for opposite reasons. Uraraka who was sheltered noticed the pain her parents tried to hide from her and developed it compassionately, and Himiko who has been on the run for most of her life developed it as a method of survival. However, that doesn’t mean that Himiko is lacking compassion, or Uraraka always empathizes with everyone she meets, because both of them are complex individuals.

Himiko is capable of empathizing with other people, not only that but she’s grown significantly out of her shell and learned that other people besides her have needs, feelings she needs to take care of, to the point where she’s stopped prioritizing herself first in all circumstances. On the other hand, Uraraka is just as capable of shutting her feelings down and ignoring the viewpoints of other people she finds disagreeable with her own.

Uraraka and Toga are also both extremely social people, however all of Uraraka’s friends accept her for who she is. Deku knows Uraraka so well that he can tell when Toga, pretending to be Camie, is the one replacing her. Toga is someone who like Uraraka was always at the center of a group of friends tying her together. However, Toga could only present her fake self in front of them.

1. The Repressed

Jung divides the self into three, the shadow, the persona, and then the ego (self) which is made of a combination of the former too.

Persona

The persona is how we present ourselves to the world. The word "persona" is derived from a Latin word that literally means "mask." It is not a literal mask, however.

The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among various groups and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may appear in dreams and take different forms. [source]

Shadow

The shadow is an archetype that consists of the sex and life instincts. The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.

The shadow forms out of our attempts to adapt to cultural norms and expectations. It is this archetype that contains all of the things that are unacceptable not only to society, but also to one's own personal morals and values. [source]

My Hero Academia uses Jungian Symbolism, especially in regards to Himiko and Uraraka’s characters, this isn’t something I made up it’s directly in the text. Toga’s act of repression is literally called: wearing a mask.

Toga and Uraraka are written to contrast each other on which part of themselves they present to the world. Uraraka is extremely conscious of other people’s expectations of her, so she plays up her persona. Uraraka is someone who is always putting up a show for others because she knows how they perceive her.

Her own perceptiveness works against her, because while she loves seeing people happy the most she also can’t stand to see them in pain, or even be the reason why they’re in pain. Uraraka’s solution to this is a rather immature one, she believes if she’s good all the time, if she’s always this pleasant and happy person and never shares her problems then she won’t drag the mood down.

Uraraka is conflict avoidant in other words. There are times she directly addresses the conflict like the times with Tsuyu, but even then it’s in a “We should all get along as friends” sort of way. Uraraka always pushes her feelings down and tries her hardest never to cause trouble for others. However there’s a line between trying not to hurt others, and simply pretending the conflict does not exist.

The shadow is the part of ourselves we repress in order to play for other’s expectations. The persona is a performance, it’s the personality you perform every day. You would swear with a group of friends, but you wouldn’t swear in front of your grandparents. People hide parts of themselves depending on who they’re interacting with, personality is in part a performance to the expectations of others around you, that’s natural. Everyone will have a side of themselves they show to others, and a side of themselves they keep repressed. That’s natural. What is not natural is to be all one way or all the other.

‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’ “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

The point of the shadow and the persona, is that both are true at the same time. You are both who you pretend to be, and what you hide of yourself. The persona is not fake just because it’s a performance, and the shadow isn’t the true self or all there is to you just because it’s hidden. However, the opposite is true at the same time, the persona is not all of who you are, and you can’t make your shadow go away just by repressing it.

Psychological repression is not a healthy strategy for dealing with emotions. It doesn’t resolve emotions, it just makes them go away for a short time. One response to the presence of a shadow is to simply ignore it, but ignoring it will just make you ignorant.

Uraraka views herself to be a good person, and views heroes to be good, but that belief hasn’t come from confronting the bad of society and deciding that heroes are still good anyway. Which is my point, not that Uraraka is wrong, but that she’s ignorant. She’s sheltered, naive, and her lived experience is so narrow she can’t realy make a judgement call on Toga that’s accurate. Like, just for exmaple heroes do in fact kill people. They even get excited about completely destroying villains.

There are heroes who become heroes just to beat the shit out of villains, there are heroes who will try to kill villains, Tokoyami gets confronted with the fact that Hawks killed a villain and his first response is: You did nothing wrong, Hawks. Uraraka sees heroes as the ideal only ever saving people. Yes heroes save people. There are other heroes who are violent. It’s not one or the other, the truth requires acknowledging both at once. Uraraka’s point that she would never feel happy about violence is a false one, because she doesn’t know that for one, and two heroes are just as capable of violence as villains.

The key point to repression is that it doesn’t work.

Himiko already tried reperssing herself and it just drove her insane. The feelings don’t go away simply by pretending that they are not there. Even in a narrative sense, Uraraka’s shadow that she has repressed has escaped her in the form of Himiko and is running around constantly trying to challenge her and confront her to get her to acknowledge those feelings. The feelings will not go away, and Uraraka’s solution is to just keep putting a lid on them and pretending they are not there. It’s because she has such a tight lid on herself it makes her impossible to see things from Himiko’s point of view.

Why is Uraraka supposed to understand things from Himiko’s point of view? Because Himiko is Uraraka, she’s all of her repressed flaws come to roost. Uraraka cannot change or improve as a person until she accepts both the best and worst of herself instead of just trying to always be good all the time. Understanding Himiko leads to a more gray and nuanced understanding of reality rather than the black and white: heroes good, villains bad. Himiko is a foil, a narrative device used to show the flaws of another character.

Uraraka did nothing wrong / Uraraka is right.

Well okay then, but Uraraka would be a pretty boring character otherwise. She’d just be a good girl who did good things all the time and always tried her hardest. I’m not trying to insinuate Uraraka is a bad person, I’m arguing in favor of her complexity. I think there is more to her character than just her trying to be a better hero, and getting stronger and learning to use her powers better. There’s an emotional complexity to Uraraka that she represses.

Emotionally, Uraraka is similiar to Himiko because they both cope poorly in the same way. Emotional repression is unhealthy. Himiko has only two modes, repress everything or don’t repress anything and both of those extremes are bad. Uraraka is on the path to becoming Himiko, because the only way she knows how to deal with things is to shut her feelings off and as Himiko said that doesn’t work: it just drove Himiko insane.

2. The Expressed

Himiko Toga is who she is in reaction to her trauma. Uraraka pushes herself down and tries to play to the expectations of others, and Toga asserts herself and tries to defy other people’s expectations.

I’m actually going to blow everybody’s minds here though: Toga doesn’t actually want to murder people and suck their blood dry. It’s what she thinks she wants, but once again, she is who she is, in reaction to trauma. Toga was violently abused, Toga became violent, but it’s not who she is inherently. It’s who she thinks she is.

Toga has internalize every bad thing every person has ever said about her. Toga not only foils Uraraka, she also foils Shigaraki. Toga has been convinced, that what she wants naturally, is to suck people’s blood, and kill them. The same way that Shigaraki has been convinced by AFO that he was naturally born with the urge to destroy others.

These aren’t things that they have a natural inclination or desire to do, it was things they were told about themselves repeatedly. Shigaraki by AFO, and Toga by everyone around her. Even Toga’s initial incident of violence has a lot more in common with a psychotic break, then with you know, a pre-meditated murder that she did for pleasure.

It’s not something Toga naturally did on her own, it was something she was pushed to do. Remember, Toga suffered twofold abuse. Abuse from her parents, but also psychiatric abuse. The people who were supposed to help her reconcile her quirk, and her unnatural tendencies didn’t try to heal her like they were supposed to. She was demonized by everyone around her, told what a bad girl she was constantly, not for anything she did wrong but because she was born naturally with a quirk. She tried to be good and smile for the sake of others, untils he reached a breaking point: then and only then did she lash out.

Toga’s initial instant of violent wasn’t a pleasure killing. It was a lashing out due to a psychotic break, and it was because both of the systems in her life that were supposed to help teach her to learn to deal with emotions, quirk counselling this world’s version of child therapists, and her own parents, chose to demonize her and tell her to repress herself.

However, children who are abused tend to internalize the words their abusers tell them. Children who are abused often believe they “deserve” their abuse because of their bad behavior.

Now, I’m not trying to justify. I don’t think Toga Himiko is allowed to run around killing whoever she wants just because she was abused. My intent is to explain how her brain works.

Toga Himiko doesn’t get to lash out as she pleased, but I think it’s important to understand that Toga’s lashing out is what makes her human. She’s not an inhuman monster, she’s a human reacting to circumstances. Most people exposed to ugly situations, react in ugly ways, and the few that don’t are the exception that proves the rule.

My point being that Toga is not an insane monster that lusts for blood, she just believes herself to be one. The same way that Uraraka is wrong, Toga is also wrong at the same time.

Because as I said the above is right. Toga can’t live her life just lashing out. While it’s understandable, someone who has endured violence can’t keep lashing out violently forever. Toga’s choice to always lash out is just as unhealthy as Uraraka’s choice to always repress herself.

Because Toga relies again and again on violence to vent her feelings, violence has become an inescapable part of her life. It’s also contrary to what she really wants. Toga thinks she wants violence, but the violence is just a reaction to the violent abuse.

Yes, Toga says all she wants is to drain people dry of their blood but characters are liars sometimes.

Sometimes you can’t take a character at their word. Sometimes instead of reading something directly as stated line for line in the story you have to read between the lines. Toga says she wants to just kill people, but her internal thoughts contradict her.

What Toga needs is to be accepted, loved, and trusted like Uraraka is. That’s her deep internal desire that she states to herself when pushed to her absolute edge by Curious. What Toga thinks she wants is to drain the people she wants dry of their blood, so she can become them and live vicariously through them. What she thinks she wants is a life where she can do whatever she wants, and do as she pleases, in response to a life where she wasn’t allowed to do anything that she wanted. But, that again is a child’s idea of rebellion. It’s a response to her abuse, it’s not who she is. However, Toga’s personal development was forwarded not by killing people and draining them, but by the empathy and acceptance she showed towards Jin.

There’s what she needs, what helps her develop into a more stable person, the empathy and care she shows to Jin. The acceptance Jin showed her in return.

There’s what she thinks she wants, which is to just rebel against everything and always do what she wants in every single situation and accept no limitations on her personal desires.

Toga is in fact just a normal girl, who wants to be accepted by the society at large, or at least find people who accept her. However, Toga doesn’t see herself as one, because she’s internalzied the idea that she’s the blood thirsty monster that everyone thinks she is. Which is why Toga contradicts herself.

Toga in the same breath will say “I’m also a normal girl” and then “I’m a weird kid, I’m a weirdo, no one can understand me.”

Toga cannot explain herself, because she’s wrong about herself. She’s making herself out to be a violent monster because that’s how she copes, the really really bad way she copes. It’s easier to be a violent monster, she’s more protected that way, then to be a runaway girl who’s just scared and alone. However, because Himiko can’t admit this, she also can’t explain herself to other people. She presents the monstrous version of herself and that’s all Uraraka can see.

Neither Uraraka nor Himiko’s way of coping is sustainable. Uraraka cannot keep repressing herself forever, the same way Himiko cannot violently lash out forever.

While what Uraraka says is very black and white, it’s not wrong. If HImiko is goign to live her life “Kill or Be Killed”, then she’s just as likely to end up being killed then she is to be the killer. There’s no happy ending to that kind of life.

However, there is no happy ending to Uraraka’s way of living either. Her perfectionist tendencies and her desire to only ever be good just aren’t going to work, because one a lot of bad things are going on already Uraraka just doesn’t see them, and two it’s not sustainable, Himiko was someone who held everything in too and look where that got her.

Uraraka and Himiko’s talk failed because neither of them are capable of communicating right now. Uraraka can’t understand because she doesn’t try, and Himiko can’t explain herself because she also doesn’t try.

Uraraka only sees what’s good about the world, about heroes. Himiko only sees what’s bad about the world, about heroes. Uraraka sees the beautiful parts, Himiko embodies the ugliness.

However they are both wrong because they are both short sighted. People are not just their shadows, and they’re not just their personas. They are both at the same time.

A junagian shadow confrontation doesn’t end in a fight between good or evil. The shadow is not evil, the persona is not good. They are just two halves of the same person. Defeating a shadow does not make it go away. The shadow is something you have to learn to live with, the same way everybody on earth is flawed, and just tries to live every day working on their flaws the best they can.

The shadow is something that has to be reconciled. Uraraka and Toga don’t have to defeat each other, they have to reconcile with one another.

The narrative is pushing their reconciliaton because Toga and Uraraka both have what the other needs to grow. Uraraka is ignorant because she’s lacking experience. She hasn’t lived Toga’s experiences so she doesn’t understand her perspective. She doesn’t know, and she won’t know until someone explains it to her. However, saving as many people as possible means that Uraraka should also be open to trying to save people who react to abuse in ugly ways as well, because a person can be a victim and a villain at the same time. Uraraka will be a better hero if she’s able to see the flaws in her own society, because she’s a part of the next generation to reform society.

And Toga can’t become someone who is trusted by others if she’s violently lashing out all the time. The same way that Uraraka needs to see what’s bad about the world, Toga needs to learn to see what’s good about the world. The same way Uraraka needs to see both sides of the world, that of a villain girl and that of a normal girl. Toga needs to come to terms with herself, that she’s not a violent monster, but a normal girl. The only way she can stop lashing out and start actually taking responsibility for what she’s done and start on the path to self improvement is if she starts seeing herself as a person capable of improving.

Toga wasn’t born this way she was made this way. She’s just a people, and people change. Toga can either try to change, or keep lashing out forever but at the moment she doesn’t even know that changing is an option for her. She thinks she’s going to be stuck as a monster forever because she was just born one. That’s why, Toga also needs Uraraka as much as Uraraka needs her.

#togachako #uraraka ochako #ochako uraraka #himiko toga #toga himiko #lov meta #mha meta #league of villains meta #my hero academia meta #league of villains #toga himiko is a terrible person #yeah but she's fascinating #besides it's not like she killed YOUR MOM #she hasn't hurt anybody in reality #she's a character in a narrative and we can analyze her without the need to moralize her #because obviously killing is bad #but like beyond that it's constructive to look at her and try to understand her as a person

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funkymbtifiction · 3 years

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Hello. I have a few odd questions after reading this post I hope that’s alright. INFP said “When I do have feelings for somebody, I love them so deeply that I find it almost impossible to ignore that intensity” and that they’re miserable if they approach relationships ‘pragmatically’ i.e. no attraction and chemistry. So would that mean that high Fi users would be unlikely to do blind dates, arranged marriages (like in Islam where it’s believed love is comes after marriage, would they be miserable like this and unable to fall in love most of the time?), or even to believe in the “well give them a chance, you never know” approach because of Fi?

History stretches way back and often in it, people did not marry for love -- that is a relatively new concept. IFPs in some situations have zero control over their life choices -- in certain cultures and religious establishments, your parents and/or “elders” choose your spouse for you and you don’t have a say. That does not automatically mean you won’t fall in love with your partner/spouse, but it also doesn’t mean you will. In a free society with the benefit of choice, a lot of FP types would say they would rather fall in love than get married for practical reasons. And yet... aren’t all relationships eventually in some sense “practical”? People find people for many reasons -- some of them because they want to fall in love, some of them because they’re afraid to be alone, others because they are lonely. Your motivations are probably derived from your core Enneagram type, more than your personality type -- but a Fi also is miserable, as various posts have pointed out, trying to “force” feelings. The higher the Te, the more able they would be to rationalize with themselves about it, but it’s still ultimately true that Fi does or does not love someone, and cannot force chemistry. I’ve seen FPs be open to blind dates, etc., as long as the ultimate choice is theirs -- and others who refuse to do any such thing. It’s all dependent on them as individuals, what they want for their life, and through what means. I do think, however, the “well, I’ll give them a chance” is more EFP than IFP. IFPs usually know quicker how they feel about someone, and if it’s a no-go, it’s over. It also relates to being sx-blind. Soc wants to bond and forge a relationship, sp wants to nest and grow old together, sx wants raw intensity and friction.

Is this approach to love a high Fe/Te way? <- no, an FJ may also want love or say no to an arranged marriage or a blind date or not care at all.

Would sx-dom high Fe/Te user feel the same way as this because of sx?

Sx is looking for sexual intensity and attraction -- sometimes Lust.

And does this mean that high Fi and sx-doms would be the type to love the most “deeply” then?

What does love mean to you and how do you measure it? To me, love is being willing to stay with someone even when it’s hard, when you have to take care of them while they battle cancer and have nothing to say to you, because they are up at 2am puking their guts out in the toilet -- and you wish you could save them from that pain, because it puts you in literal physical agony to see them suffer. To me, love can mean sending your kid to rehab so they don’t wind up dead of an overdose. It can mean caring about someone enough to walk out of their life, because you realize they are better off without you, that you bring out the worst in them or cause them too much pain. To me, true love is unselfish, and cares more about what is best for the object of their love, than what they want. Is that deep love? Possibly. But it’s not the “consume you alive” kind of love that a lot of movies and books glamorizes, is it?

Basically I’m asking - people love differently right, some fall in love fast and others take more time, some fall in love 'pragmatically’ and others are guided by their feelings, some root their romantic relationships in friendship and familiarity and through that experience love and others base it in chemistry and sex appeal, so does the way we love and experience love correlate with our types and social instincts? How?

I imagine it does, but you’re asking me to compress all of humanity and its complexity into a single answer -- and there is none. I would say heart types make decisions through their feelings, head types try to make them with their head, and gut types operate off of instinct. I know an ESFJ/INTP who got married after their first date (a week later) -- though they had worked with each other for six months. They’re now 40 years into marriage and have been through hell and back, health-wise, without ever making a misstep. I’ve known other couples who dated FOREVER before finally getting married. I’ve seen people hop in and out of marriages and relationships, never seeming satisfied. Are some combos more pragmatic? Yes. Are some more restless? Yes. But that does not automatically mean they will do/not do certain things.

#question #mbti #enneagram #submission

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firstginger · 3 years

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daemon roundup: ducks from my birding book i think are cool

HOODED MERGANSER, Lophodytes cucullatus Bio: The hooded merganser is a species of diving duck that feeds primarily on aquatic insects, crayfish, and small fish. Notably one of the few species of diving ducks that hunt fish, they have exceptional eyesight that has adapted to hunt underwater and they propel themselves along with their feet. They're named for their crests which can expand and fan out (like the picture above) particularly when courting females. These ducks are found in wetland forests as well as ponds and lakes, though their highly specific diet makes them sensitive to deforestation and water pollution. They're short-distance migrants and will form monogamous pairs during breeding season, and are commonly seen roosting in large groups. Traits: The hooded merganser soul is a bold, determined individual. They’re gregarious and socially tolerant, and as such are the type of person to feel at home in a group or by themselves, so long as their freedom of expression is not restricted. A hooded merganser does not mince words. They have a very strong sense of self and their image, and they strive to meet it. Their sense of pride comes from their achievements and recognition of them; for this reason, they are typically independent workers, reveling in the thought and execution of their ideas, and savoring the outcome. They’re absolutely ambitious and the type to have big ideas and follow through, though the ends tend to justify the means for them, and they have no issue with cutting corners or picking up work that others have started to make their dreams happen. This definitely gives them a headstrong and competitive reputation. In combination, it’s easy to imagine that a hooded merganser soul can get “blinders” on and struggle to acknowledge others’ contributions or perspectives outside their own. Their energy is in quick bursts rather than patience. They may be prone to rashness or sudden impulsivity when they find an opportunity; their quick-thinking is both a strength and weakness. The hooded merganser’s bold and ambitious energy within their own niche may surprise others when they realize how sensitive they are. They’re not terribly adaptable people and tend to trip over their own feet when suddenly they have to plan rather than rely on their honed instincts. They don’t like going into things blind or making a fool out of themselves, and do the best when their large spirit can shine in their favorite activity.

SURF SCOTER, Melanitta perspicillata Bio: These beautiful sea ducks are commonly seen floating on the water's surface and then diving for their prey. Their diet consists primarily of mollusks, crustaceans, and pondweeds. They are molt migrants: after nesting on freshwater lakes, they'll fly to sheltered waters where they congregate in flocks of thousands among ocean coasts and bays. Their flight feathers will molt leaving them flightless for a period of about a month. Pairs are formed monogamously and they have high fidelity of nesting areas. Interestingly, chicks will sometimes move between broods, for they feed independently and only rely on their mothers for protection and leading them to food-rich areas. They're rather silent birds and typically only vocalize during courtship and alarm calls. Traits: The surf scoter soul is a mostly tolerant, internal individual. They tend to be most comfortable in a group or among like-minded companions, as they have a vulnerable streak and derive confidence from being surrounded by support. It can therefore be easy to mistake this person as a wallflower among a crowd, while nothing could be further from the truth. While not the most adaptable of individuals, they have highly independent and keen minds. Surf scoters are opportunistic and flexible thinkers within their comfort zone. They enjoy solving problems and don’t require recognition to appreciate their successes. In fact, teamwork isn’t terribly natural to them. They’re the live and let live sort, and even their closest friends might find them distant, just because the surf scoter appreciates space to explore themselves and assumes others do as well. Perhaps surprisingly then, they’re also quite protective. They are the type of person who gets quietly attached to people and spaces, and this typically quiet soul will come to life when that is threatened. These sudden bursts of emotion can be unanticipated by those around them: their habit is to bottle up their feelings and perhaps not even be completely conscious of it themselves, until it reaches a boiling point and comes free. They tend to get lost in their ideas. They’re absolutely a work smarter not harder kind of person, and will not keep persisting with something if it’s not working, preferring to drop plans that aren’t panning out. Curious and determined, these individuals exhibit a focused drive and quiet willingness to succeed.

MUSCOVY DUCK, Cairina moschata Bio: The muscovy duck has both a domesticated and wild variant, the former of which is only found in southern Texas and northern Mexico. They're one of the oldest domesticated fowl species, notably kept by the Aztecs and native people of Peru and Paraguay. Both wild and domestic variants are large birds; they have strong claws to perch in trees as well as dabble in wetlands, ponds, and lagoons. They're non-migratory and forage by grazing or catching small fish, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, and insects in shallow water. They're an aggressive species that will fight over food, territory, and mates. Males impress females by raising their large crests; they don’t form monogamous pairs and many females will mate with the most desired male, though adults will communally protect chicks. They're very hierarchical and communicate in a variety of ways, including tail waggling, crest raising, hissing, quacking, and head bobbing. Traits: The muscovy duck soul is extroverted and impressive. At their best they’re confident and bold, though their important sense of self-image makes them prone to feelings of inadequacy if they don’t meet their own expectations. They’re highly sensitive to group feedback in both a good and bad way: recognition and praise makes their day, while criticism causes them to wilt and push themselves harder. They’re very socially shrewd and observant when it comes to hierarchies. The muscovy duck likes to know where they stand among others and feel secure in their place. They don’t do well alone and can be prone to insecurity and self-doubt when by themselves, but they truly blossom among others, and strive to make themselves valued and included among their friends. They put a lot of stock in success: they like to be acknowledged and needed, but they want to do it their way. The muscovy duck can absolutely be hard-headed and stubborn. While they’re very flexible, they’re not the most open-minded and find that the best ideas come from their own head. They have no issue with communication — these people happily tell others when they’re appreciated, and when they’re wrong. The muscovy duck can therefore be blunt and dish it out better than they can take it so to speak, but their inner strength makes them excellent at bouncing back. They are not put down for long, and failures tend to just fuel their drive for success. Their energy makes them boisterous, talkative companions, most typically the natural leaders of friend groups who relish being included.

KING EIDER, Somateria spectabilis Bio: An arctic duck, the king eider is best recognized for its colorful bill plate. They are highly adapted for the freezing temperatures due to the layer of down beneath their feathers that traps air to help it retain heat and maintain buoyancy. They'll form large flocks on frigid coastal waters consisting of thousands of birds. The king eider hunts both in the open ocean and in shallow tundra lakes. At sea, they dive up to 150 feet to the sea floor to feed on benthic invertebrates as well as mollusks, crustaceans, and urchins. During the breeding season, they’ll dabble in lakes and sein to catch small invertebrate prey. They are more isolated during breeding and will form pairs; incubation and chick raising is conducted by both the male and female, and females will sometimes defend chicks communally, though males are not nest territorial. Traits: The king eider soul is hardy and companionable. These individuals are sociable and highly agreeable; they’re very tolerant of other people and perspectives, and overall are go-with-the-flow types who don’t keep strong boundaries. They’re not terribly hierarchical and among those with duck daemons are one of the least competitive. It can be said then that they’re much more self-focused and concerned with their own well-being. They’d much rather conserve their energy for their own ambitions and visions, though they aren’t pushovers when it comes to something that matters to them, and will clearly get their point across when someone steps over the line. These individuals clearly excel in their sense of resolution and determination. They aren’t easily ruffled; they’re very secure internally, and proud of their hardiness. When it comes to their work, they put their all into their efforts, and have an excellent sense of ambition and opportunism. King eiders are self-driven and flexible thinkers, and have incredible endurance when it comes to pursuing things. Their enduring demeanor makes them naturals at managing difficult situations while maintaining their inner determination — tolerant and focused, they know their expertise speaks for itself. While not cold by any degree, like other sea bird souls the king eider isn’t known for their teamwork, though is tangentially supportive to their friends who needed. They have a mature perspective on life and enjoy fending for themselves.

#daemon roundup #daemonism #form finding #hdm #long post

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shoichee · 4 years

Text

Star-crossed

[Midorima x Reader]

[Hanahaki!au]

Word Count: 8840

Warning: attempted angst, death

Note: This is my first time writing angst, oh dear. Even after years of bawling over other people’s works, I still have no solid idea on how to create heart-wrenching writing. Here goes though.

»»—————　☼　—————««

“I’m really excited!”

“Ne, ne, I honestly can’t wait to bloom…”

“What kind of flowers would my body grow do you think?...”

You only drone out the incessant bustlings of chattering from your classmates as special health education class ended as you sat there patiently waiting for the next teacher to walk into class to start the next period.

Next is… ah, math…

You sigh, heaving out the bulky textbook out of your bag and drop it on the desk with a thump, making a few students flinch at the near proximity. You lay your elbow on the hardcover, allowing your thoughts to drift away as your fingers gently thrum. This teacher, you knew, was the type to start class unceremoniously late.

It was boring. Everyone already knew about the stage of blooming. It had been incanted incessantly to you by adults around you ever since grade school. Yet, Shūtōku high was one of the many high schools that still insisted in “teaching” the basic knowledge of what’s to come soon.

Maybe these classes don’t teach, but rather, serve as a reminder of the inevitable that all growing teenagers will face sooner or later: blooming.

Some people have already experienced it as soon as they graduated out of middle school; they were called the “early bloomers.” That was one of your closer friends.

So what’s it like? you once asked, turning to your new friend at the time. You said you bloomed…

And you recall her nodding her head fervently.

Yeah! she eagerly replied. While it may be painful at first, it went away after a few weeks for me… it’s not so different like getting a period, you know?... I heard it’s different for everyone, but for me, my heart thumped super loudly! And I get these tingly sensations!...

… It’s just like a sign that you’ve become totally mature!

A frantic clang from the doorway interrupts your train of thought as you eye the expectant teacher, completely out of breath as he tries to arrive on time but completely failing miserably.

Unlike in special health ed, most of the students groan at the thought of continuing the onslaught of derivative lessons. You don’t really care either way and promptly open your textbook to the appropriate page.

As class slowly ticks by, your mind wanders off from the subject of class again, drifting to the constant destination of your recent curiosity of bloomings.

You are what everyone calls a “late bloomer.”

You aren’t the only late bloomer, obviously, but it does make you quite anxious at the fact of potentially being the “last one” in your class, or perhaps out of the entire school.

No one wants to really hang out with a late bloomer; they were often stereotyped as “immature” or “abnormal.” After all, this was a normal stage of life, a sign of growing up out of childhood. No one wants to hang around with someone seen as a “kid.”

A soft cough pulls you from your daydreaming as you subtly glance at the desk to your left. It was a classmate of yours, as well as an acquaintance.

“Hey,” you whisper, trying to not bring attention to yourself. “... Are you okay?”

She gives a quiet clearing of her throat before she nods, hand still pressed against her lips. She then shakes her head side to side, her long hair swaying slightly with the motion.

“Ah, don’t worry about me getting sick,” you quietly reassure. “But you should really go to the nurse’s after. Have you tried tying your hair up? I heard doing so can help cool off and keep a clearer head…”

She cautiously drops her hand back to her desk before giving you a small, reassuring smile.

“Thank you, (l/n-san). I’ll be fine.”

“(l/n).”

“Yes!” You stand up from your desk the moment the teacher calls on you, relieved at the fact that he didn’t seem to notice your hushed conversation.

“Could you please come up to the board to solve this problem…?”

---------

Lunch time is always the time you come out of class to search for Takao. As you walk briskly in the hallways, you try to avoid staring at everyone’s floral tattoos located at the side of their necks, imprinted underneath the canopies of their jaws. Each individual’s flower mark showcased what their bodies grew during their stages of blooming.

And each plant was unique to the individual. They could represent their personality, their prospective future, what their future soulmate would be like… anything goes, and every student constantly gossips about what the other’s marks would exactly mean.

You, markless, walk faster, hoping that no one would spot you and flit their eyes to your blank neck… although everyone at school already knows those who have still yet to bloom.

You envy them.

“(y/n)-chan!!” Takao waves you over when you enter the cafeteria. “Over here!”

You briefly scan the tables before you spot him, begrudgingly noticing his pink hyacinth at the crook of his neck, even though you’re happy for him that he passed that stage of his life.

Pink hyacinths… they symbolized playfulness.

You would know; not only did special health classes painstakingly educate students since young for the anticipation of blooming, you took the extra effort of researching many more flowers on your own time, patiently abiding your time to have a striking plant engraved onto you one day.

As you carry your tray and slide into your seat, you finally notice a grumbling greenhead besides Takao.

“Shin-chan! So you do care about having a flower mark after all, eh?”

That’s right, huh. Midorima, too, was markless.

Just like you.

“Your assumptions are getting ridiculous, Takao.”

“Seriously? You expect me to believe that when your eyes always land on people’s necks when you talk to them—pfffft—” He breaks out into guffaws as he clutches his stomach helplessly, which cued Midorima into reaching for the point-guard in an attempt to strangle him.

Pink hyacinths are perfect for someone like Takao. You couldn’t help but let a smile slip from your lips.

“Whoaa!!” Takao peers over to you, ignoring his predicament of being restrained to death by Midorima. “(y/n)-chan! You should smile more!—ow!”

“Worry about yourself first,” he scowls, before tentatively letting him go with a defeated sigh. He opts to hold his lucky charm for the day (a terracotta pot).

“Shintarou-san,” you call out to him, after several minutes of comfortable silence as all three of you ate your lunches. “What do you think your flower would be?”

“Man proposes, God disposes. As long as I always provide everything to maximize my opportunities and follow the order of fate, I do not need to worry about such baseless things.”

You mildly snicker at his typical response. “Is that so, horoscope man.”

“Why waste time worrying about something that’s not in your hands?” He pushes up his glasses with his taped hand. “You should be focusing on what you can do as of now, nanodayo.” When he finishes, he looks up from his lunch to glance at you, noticing your widened eyes.

“Ah…” you stare at him at a loss for words, caught off guard at the fact that he sounded… almost concerned for you. “I’ll keep it in mind, Shintarou.”

“There’s no way that’s our Shin-chan!” Takao rushes to try to feel Midorima’s forehead. “That’s way too good of an advice to be you—”

“Shut up—get off of me—!”

As the two basketball players struggle in each other’s vice grips, they fail to notice the ruddy color having its own moment of blooming onto your cheeks.

---------

“... and what this means, class, is that having your first love is a monumental sign of blooming. That being said, having to experience love for the first time does not automatically guarantee blooming. This natural phenomena is still being studied by scientists around the world. What’s also interesting is that we humans are the only ones with this unique…”

More basic information? You yawn, covering your mouth in hopes no one notices, but as you look around you, your classmates are too engrossed in the lecture to even pay attention to anything else.

Of course they’d pay attention. It’s a special event that will happen to everyone at some point; even though you were sure they all already knew the information to heart, you knew they would take any opportunity to learn more about themselves in any way. You don’t blame them, however. You’re curious about your own body’s idiosyncrasies of not blooming yet.

“... Lies.” You snap your head to the source of the quiet remark to see your classmate on your left, arms crossed on the desk with a minimal scowl on her face.

Noticing your piercing stare, she turns to you before widening her eyes at realizing that she was heard. She abruptly turns her face to the front of the class, trying to pass off the act of suddenly paying attention to the teacher.

You turn your head to face the front as well but you still glance to your left from time to time.

“Are you feeling better?...” you hesitantly whisper.

Not expecting you to show concern, she jumps in her seat before eyeing you warily. As soon as she decides that you were merely concerned, she gives a polite nod and a smile.

“It was just a little flu I caught… Thank you for worrying about me. I’m just a sickly person but I thankfully recover very quickly.”

And with that, she ends the conversation with you to finally genuinely pay attention for the rest of class.

You try to do the same, but you feel knots of lead settling in your stomach.

… Lies?

What was that about?

---------

“(y/n)-chan! Wanna come and watch our practices today?”

You were stopped in the hallways by a grinning Takao, with a trailing Midorima not too far behind with a bundle of faux peacock feathers.

You’re not too sure if you should be concerned with a clinging Takao on your arm and attempting to kidnap you or a stoic Midorima displaying around a ridiculous souvenir.

“Huh? W-why?”

“You’re obviously free right now, obviously.”

“That doesn’t make sense—wah!”

Before you can put any further word in, Takao is dragging you to the gym, with an exasperated Midorima being figuratively pulled along with you two as well.

“Here we are, (y/n)-chan!” Takao ushers you beyond the gym doors and indicates the bleachers for you to sit and watch.

“You really think I’m going along with all of this, Kazu?”

“I know you better than anyone.”

“No you don’t,” you frown, turning away from him with a huff.

“Takao.”

Takao immediately gulps at the call of his name from Midorima and both you and him turn around to see a particularly hostile green-haired person.

“Sorry, sorry! Please don’t hit me!” And Takao races to the lockers in an attempt to escape from his fury.

Midorima relaxes his stance after he leaves and turns to you.

“Thanks, Shintarou.”

“I wasn’t doing it for you,” he says, adjusting his glasses. “He was just being more troublesome than usual.” But the way he clumsily handled his frames told a different story to you.

You laugh at him. “If you insist, Shintarou-san.”

“R-right…”

“Hey! Shin-chan!” Takao yells from the opposite side of the gym. Get over here! Captain is coming!”

At the captain being mentioned, Midorima straightens up before jogging over to warm up.

You suppose you can watch their practice this evening.

---------

You’ve never seen anyone handle a basketball like that.

What the hell? His range was damn near impossible.

You were thankful that you allowed Takao to drag you over to the gym to watch. Otherwise, you would’ve never learned about this side of Midorima.

Wait… Midorima?

No, you shake your head. It’s only because it was a lot more interesting than all of your classes, that’s all.

You repeat it to yourself like a mantra, yet every time your eyes land on Midorima’s shooting form, your mind goes blank.

You were absolutely captivated… not that you would ever admit it though.

---------

“... scientists are still doing social experiments on the blooming stage of humans. You may be wondering, if it’s been a part of societies for thousands of years, why are we studying it? Well, during old times, they were often explained using myths and folk stories…”

It really sucked that special health ed class was a mandatory requirement for all first-years. All of this was old news to you still.

“... new recent findings came out that answered the everlong question of whether the bloomings can actually be dangerous for humans, and how dangerous.”

Oh? That was new. But you suppose there was no way they’d tell little kids about the possibilities and risks with bloomings.

“Obviously, we know it can be fatal, just like pregnancies going awry and such. While we don’t know the exact mortality rate, researchers are trying to develop new medicines to curb away the potential amount of deaths associated with bloomings. But other scholars suggest not to drain precious resources into medicine development when they can use it for more pressing medical issues, and I know many of you believe this as well. Their take on this issue is that ‘blooming is something that should not be tampered with and the success of bloomings rely solely on the individual’s abilities and willpower to come of age since it’s unique to every person’...”

Unique… He was right. Even the signs and symptoms of a blooming vary greatly for everyone. The only thing everyone had in common was that their bodies grew plants. Even the way plants grow vary from person to person. That’s what they taught since the very beginning.

“... since blooming is unique to every individual, creating a standard medicine and procedure for all would be impossible, or at the very least inaccessible due to high expenses in accommodating medicine for every patient.”

Most of the students in the room nod in fervent agreement, and pretty soon, the room was filled with chattering at the new information they took in.

You glance to your classmate on your left again but you were surprised to see that her seat was empty.

Was she not here from the start?

You sigh and chide yourself for not noticing at the beginning of homeroom, but quickly dismiss the casual thought for more immediate problems like your upcoming exam for chemistry in a few periods.

Ah, oh well.

---------

“If you’re looking for Takao, forget it. He’s in detention for causing a disruption for one of the teachers last period.”

“Sh-shintarou?!” You whirl around to find Midorima alone with his bear plush. “You’re not at practice?”

“We practice tomorrow.”

“I see,” you say, not knowing how to continue the conversation from here.

“I guess I’ll be going home early then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As you try to walk past Midorima, he sidesteps quickly to block your pathway, and you walk right into him before stepping back out of embarrassment.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—!”

“(y/n).” He averts his eyes while sliding up his glasses. “You’re walking home alone?”

Still in a state of flusters, you promptly nod your head as you stare down at your shoes.

“Come. We better get going before it gets too late. Cancers will have unlucky encounters after dusk.” Midorima jerks his head to the direction of the exit, motioning for you to follow before he turns on his heel and walks away.

“Sh-shintarou?”

“I-it’ll only be… troublesome if something were to happen.” He stops walking and looks back at you. “What are you waiting for? Hurry up.”

“R-right. Coming!”

---------

It wasn’t completely unexpected that the walk home would have an awkward atmosphere between the two of you. Usually, Takao would be the social “buffer” and the proxy between you two, but now that he was out of the picture, neither of you knew how to strike up a casual conversation. That was more of Takao’s specialty.

“... I’ve thought about what you said.” At his voice, you turn to look up at his contemplative face. You give him an inquisitive look to encourage him to continue his thought. “... Although I’m not so certain what kind of plant I would grow. Not even the Oha Asa could predict it.”

“Ah, I see…” You turn your face to face the front as you gaze at the sunset ahead. “Are you afraid of the uncertainty?” At your question, he falls silent, giving you the confirmation that he was, indeed, scared.

“Shintarou,” you murmur. “You’re not alone in feeling the uneasiness of blooming.”

“Wha—I never said anything about blooming, nanodayo—”

“Sure,” you interject. “Well, for me, I really hope I’d get a gorgeous flower, a flower so breathtaking that would make everyone stop in their tracks to admire the mark. I want to change those stares of pity and disdain into those of admiration and envy…” You can tell he’s hanging onto your every word despite the fact that he wasn’t facing you, his steps slowing down ever so slightly to be as close to you to hear what you had to say without deeming it suspicious.

“I envy Takao… a lot,” you sigh, and Midorima turns his head slightly to you at the mention of Takao’s name. “He already has a flower mark and he’s so put-together despite his cheerfulness… He’s really reliable.”

“I see.”

“... and the truth is, I’m really scared. I feel like I’m going to be the last person to ever get a mark. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, with my body—”

He stops in his tracks.

“That’s a foolish line of thought.”

You turn to face him, ready to glare at him, but you stop when you make eye contact, startled at the intensity of his gaze. You swear you can see your figure reflected in his viridian irises. A few seconds of suffocating silence crawl by, and you break away eye contact, intimidated by his gaze and the possible implication of his words.

“Sorry about that.”

He says nothing in return.

The rest of the walk home became even more uncomfortable, with Midorima walking slightly ahead and you making a wordless effort to constantly match his stride.

You don’t know why, but seeing his taut back to you squeezes your heart ever so slightly, the mute badumps ever feeling like a constant dull sore.

“Shintarou…” you softly call out after you arrive at your house. The sun had left the horizon shortly before you arrived at your destination. “Thank you for walking me home, and… sorry, it looks like it’s past dusk now, but will you be able to get home safely?”

“Fool,” he huffs. “I have my lucky charm to compensate for my misfortune today.”

You smile at him, relieved at the thought that maybe that moment before was all just your overthinking.

“Of course, Shintarou.”

---------

It was hard looking at Midorima without losing your cool from that point on. It wasn’t like the two of you did anything out of the ordinary yesterday, excluding the fact that he volunteered to walk you home. But you knew he just cared for you in his own way, as a friend.

As a friend.

“(y/n)-chan!” Takao tries to pounce on you, pulling your cheeks apart. “What’s with the nasty frown on your face? Didn’t I tell you that you should smile more?”

“Shtop—pawling—Takow—!”

As he laughs at your stretched face from his pulling, you manage to pry his hands off of your cheeks and take refuge behind the sour-faced shooting guard. “Shintarou! Save me from Takao!”

“Takao, come here.” He gave a harsher punch to his head than usual, and Takao did not fail to comment on it.

“Sheesh, that hurt even more, Shin-chan? What did I do?—oh, ohhhhhhh.” His grimace lit up to an expression of realization and mischievousness. “I see.”

“Your antics are getting more and more preposterous. If you have that much energy, you should expend it during practice, nanodayo.”

“Right, right, Shin-chan!” He waves Midorima off before slinging his arm around your shoulder. “But (y/n)-chan, don’t think you're off the hook just yet!”

You can only sigh as he dramatically waggles his finger at you while Midorima clicks his tongue, opting to walk to his classroom instead.

“H-hey! Don’t leave me behind!”

And with that, the duo disappeared right before the warning bell rang.

---------

You sense an uncharacteristic aura of hostility directed at you right when you entered class, but you shake your head before plopping at your designated seat. As much as you try to mind your own business, the hostility you felt peaked even more. You glance around before your eyes fall on your classmate to your usual left.

She was silently seething, but particularly at you.

“Is… something the matter?” You shot her a worried look. “You were gone yesterday, right? Did your flu kick up again?”

“What’s with you?”

“Pardon?”

“Why do you care so much for me? I never asked for it.”

“Wh-what? I’m just worried? Did I say something wrong?”

“You are—”

“I am?”

And the bell rang with such convenient timing to interrupt the two of you.

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

And class started without a further word from her, and as lectures progress, you peek over to her desk to see her never looking your way. The least you do, you decide, is to try to apologize and talk to her afterschool.

“... a revolutionary finding was published all over the news yesterday regarding bloomings. He proposed the most controversial proposition yet: bloomings neither affect the human body’s growth and maturity physiologically nor psychologically and that these ‘effects’ from blooming are merely all placebo. His conclusions have caused an uproar in the world of scholarship, but what I want for you students to do is to write an in-class paper about your reaction to these potential revelations…”

You sit up straight, and for the first time, you listen to his lessons with utmost attention. Your mind racing, you rush to grab a suitable pencil before you start to write your thoughts for the assignment. You peer over to your classmate to see her already writing furiously. You do the same.

She was the first student to screech the chair as she stood up, daintily holding the paper to bring it to the front desk.

All you could discern from her paper, even despite the neat writing, was:

I am ultimately relieved.

---------

“W-wait! Please!” You dash out of the classroom, trailing after your classmate who hightailed it out as soon as possible.

“Leave me alone already!” she heaves over her shoulder, willing her legs to run even faster.

“Your… homework! I have to give… work that you… missed!” And you had relatively no problem speeding up to match her pace.

“Can you just stop following me?! I can just get it from my teachers! What’s your deal?!”

“I want to apologize—!” But before you can finish your sentence, your classmate drops onto her knees, clasping her mouth in complete desperation. “H-hey! What’s wrong?!”

She wheezed into her palms before she got up and ran again before you could completely catch up to her.

She busted open the main doors and ran into the secluded areas of the school courtyard, hoping to lose your trail of her, but as soon as she turned from looking behind her shoulder to the front again, you managed to cut her way off.

“Your… homework…” you gasp for air, shakily handing her the papers that were clenched in your hand.

The next thing you register are splatters of blood on the sheets. And your classmate desperately holding her coughs in.

“Hey!...” You hold her frame, slowly dropping the two of you onto the ground in kneeling positions to try to ease the burden on her body, soiled papers already discarded to the side.

Cough. “Don’t—” Cough. “Fucking—” Cough. “Touch me…”

As she spoke, her hands loosen up their grip against her mouth, but as soon as she did, petals and buds cascaded from her lips. Which were all soaked in blood.

“I…” You dumbly look at the pile of flowers in front of her. You couldn’t even tell what type of flowers they were from all the blood. “You’re blooming?” You always thought she already did.

She slaps your hand, which was on her shoulder the entire time, before tucking her strands behind her ear to prevent them from being further drenched in crimson.

Her neck, being exposed for the first time, was blank.

“C-congratulations!” You say, holding both her shoulders this time with excitement. “You’re—!”

Slap.

The sound resonated through the area, which luckily was mostly empty. Your face pulsates with a stinging heat.

“I’m fucking dying!” She stands up shakily from her kneeling position. “How could you say such an awful thing—I’m dying, I’m fucking dying…”

You can only stare at her in shock from her being so volatile for the first time since you met her, or the fact that she said such a morbid thing.

“I don’t… I don’t understand—?”

“I’m sick!” she seethes, her throat struggling to choke out words. Tears run silently down her agonized face, diluting the thick blood smeared across her face.

“I’m so sorry…! I didn’t know your flu was this ba—”

“You’re the reason why I’m dying,” she hoarsely spat.

The silence was so palpable that even the labored breathing from her was unnaturally loud.

“What? Why me?”

“I…” she hesitates, before dropping to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to—it’s not your fault, I…

… I’m so scared.” Hiccup. “There isn’t any medicine to help me…”

You hand her a tissue from your bag to try to clean up the bloody mess off of her, but before you can dab the tissue to her face, she gingerly grabs your wrist.

“I… love Takao.”

What? You held your breath, anticipating to hear what she’d say next.

“But he rejected me not too long ago. I thought I could get over him and be done with blooming relatively quickly but…” She pointedly looks at you. “Whenever he’s so close to you, especially as of late… my heart hurts. It hurts, it hurts so badly and I don’t know, and then I just start coughing more, and more, and more.”

“It’s just a stage of life,” you insist. “Maybe your case is the most extreme, but—”

“Oh, stop it already,” she snarls. “You still believe in whatever they feed you about this ‘blooming’? It’s a disease, for fuck’s sake.” She tries to get up again. “I thought… I could be friends with you because you were the only one who wasn’t being sucked into their rhetorics… guess I was wrong.”

You were still on your knees when you tried to stretch out your hand to her, but retracted it after seeing her stumble away from you. But as she did so, she hacked out a new bouquet of flowers, but this time, you could see tiny white flowers rimmed with pale blue.

Morning glories…

They meant unrequited love.

“(y/n)...?” she softly asked, for the first time using her usual mild-mannered tone of voice with you today. She disregarded the mess of petals she made around her, appearing to be accustomed to the unsettling sight.

“... yes?”

“Do you love Takao?”

“I would never see him that way.”

“That’s… good to hear…” She gives you a defeated close-eyed smile.

“Wait… you still need to get cleaned up.”

You got up on your feet to try to guide her face your way to wipe off, and as you try to scrub the dried clots of blood away, she manages to croak a laugh.

“I thought that you were trying to rub it in my face about Takao the entire time whenever you talked to me… I was so wary of you, I was so blinded…” You silently listen as you pour your water bottle over the next tissue.

“Do you know why teens in particular have to pay attention to when they’ll bloom?”

“No…” You furrow your brows, already reevaluating about everything you supposedly already knew about blooming. “I don’t.”

“Teens are more likely to have their first love than any other person. If they can overcome their first unrequited love… that would mean… they are ready to apparently to survive and carry on with their lives…

… tell me… am I not good enough to be alive? I can’t even get over—”

You only hush her as you scrub away the last remnants of blood from her skin. Her clothes were unfortunately already stained.

“That’s the best I could do,” you quietly say. “Please get home as soon as possible. And take care of yourself.”

“The paper we had today in class… When our teacher talked about the new findings of blooming research, I was so happy. But looking around class, no one seemed to share the same sentiments. Even still, I am glad about the possibility that one day, we’d stop emphasizing so much on these marks…

“Although I wish I made the attempt to become closer friends with you sooner, I have no regrets now… I’m so glad you’re here…

“I feel so relieved…”

---------

The next day of school, you had an ominous feeling settled within the pits of your stomach. You come to school early, deciding to sit at your desk the entire time and reading to pass the time. You did not feel like talking to your happy-go-lucky friend and his grumpy pet, as much as you usually enjoy their company.

Ever so often, you would glance at the clock and wish for it to come faster.

The bell eventually rings and most of the students crowd into the classroom into their seats. The homeroom teacher promptly follows after and puts her bag onto the front desk. But the seat to your left… was empty.

“Everyone… I have some unfortunate news to share,” she solemnly says. No, no, no… it can’t be.

Your mind goes blank as you stare at the teacher, vaguely reading her lips as one thing went in and out the other ear.

“... she unfortunately passed away. She wasn’t able to bloom.”

Your heart, already struggling to keep afloat on the last shreds of optimism, sank.

“Wha…? She’s gone?”

“That’s such a pity…”

“She was in our class? Since when?”

“Yikes, she wasn’t even able to bloom? That sucks for her, honestly.”

You stare blankly at your desk, not registering the fact that the special health ed class teacher took over the class after homeroom.

The whispers around the gossiping students only serve as a cruel reminder that late bloomers did not get any sympathy from others.

You needed to bloom, and fast.

---------

You only manage to exit out of class and find the cafeteria out of pure muscle memory, but your mind constantly goes back to yesterday evening with her. Were you the last person she got to speak with before she died? Was she scared? Did she truly die happy? You will never get to know.

You stop before the cafeteria doorway, inhaling and exhaling to bring your conscience back into the present day, and slowly stroll in. Takao and Midorima were already deep in conversation, so you stop, waiting for the perfect opportunity to join them.

“Shin-chan, have you heard?” Takao says, holding up his fork. “A student our year died from blooming.”

“It’s not in my matters to worry about, although I would like to give her family my condolences.” Midorima takes his time to cut his patty cleanly with a knife.

“It must suck though, to think this would happen… isn’t it a bit sad, Shin-chan?”

“It’s easily preventable, nanodayo.” He chews a small piece before continuing. “I would’ve never made the foolish mistake of falling in love. I’d rather be markless than fall in love.”

He would’ve never made the foolish mistake of falling in love…

He would’ve never made such a mistake…

He would’ve never fallen in love.

And certainly not with you.

Your heavy heart spikes in a pulse. Your heart was now racing for the wrong reasons. Those dull sores were now nothing compared to the incessant squeezing on your heart. And it won’t let up. You try to steady your breathing to calm yourself but your intake of air almost feels as if it’s being cut off.

You feel as if you can’t breathe.

You step back a couple steps before you dash to the nearest restroom, ignoring the stares of a few students around you.

“Speaking of the girl, wasn’t she in (y/n)-chan’s classroom? I actually haven’t seen her around today.”

“Takao, let me eat in peace.”

“Sheesh, you’re such a downer, Shin-chan.”

---------

You not being able to breathe was not just figuratively.

You ran to the restroom up on the 3rd floor, where you knew it was always mostly empty. You opened the door of the furthest stall and locked yourself in before you tried to heave whatever was blocking your airway.

1… 4… 7… 8 fern leaves—fronds—were choked out in a string of forced wheezes. They all floated seemingly innocently on the water of the toilet bowl.

Your body trembles, not able to take the sudden physical burden on it.

You should be happy, you really should. This was what you wished and prayed for all these years. But whatever you coughed out wasn’t even pretty-looking; hell, it wasn’t even a flower.

“I’d rather be markless…”

With Midorima’s words playing back to back in your head like a broken record, your lungs had the visceral reaction to gasp for more air before throwing up the rest of the leaves. It took the rest of lunch for you to stand up properly and collect yourself before you headed back to class.

You wished and you wished for your blooming to come, but now that your signs became apparent, you suddenly don’t want to bloom.

---------

Classes became harder to focus on, especially with the persistent dull stabs echoing in your heart. You feel that this pain was being constantly amplified and spread to the rest of your body.

You’re tired already, and it was only the initial stages.

School finished before you even knew it. Maybe it was because of the constant distraction your pain provided. A benefit from this new situation, if you were trying to be hopelessly optimistic, is that you wouldn’t be bored anymore at least.

You walk out of class in a slight daze, loosely scanning your surroundings until your eyes land on Takao and Midorima, although your gaze lingered on Midorima longer than you want to admit.

You hate this. The moment you figured that you fell in love with him was also the moment you learned that it was unrequited. If that wasn’t the unluckiest thing that ever happened to you, you don’t know what else is.

As you walk towards them, you toy with the idea of carrying around lucky items and taking Midorima’s advice in doing whatever you can to make your life easier (especially as of late), but you decide against it, trying not to dig your own grave by purposely doing things that reminded you of the green-haired boy even more.

“Kazu! Shintarou!” You casually wave over to them, masking the pain you felt at the sharp jabs you felt every so often in your chest.

“Oh? There you are,” Takao walks to your side to drop his arm on your shoulder. “Where you been, (y/n)-chan?”

“Been busy with… assignments and school.”

“Ah, well that can’t be helped. Speaking of busy, our captain is upping our practices, so we’re going to be gone a lot of the times.”

“No, no, don’t worry about me, just focus on basketball,” you say. “After all, that’s what you’re most passionate about. Don’t let me stop you.”

“You sure are understanding,” he laughs as he ruffles your hair. “But so—wah? Shin-chan, where are you going? Don’t leave me behind, damn it!”

Midorima won’t even speak with you…

“Seeyah! Nice seeing you!”

“Yeah… bye, Takao and… Shintarou…” By the time you spoke Midorima’s name, it barely came out as an audible whisper.

Somewhere within your heart, you hoped to be able to speak with Midorima but you wonder if he’s avoiding you on purpose.

As you walk home, alone, you think about the conversation you and Midorima had when he walked with you.

Had you misinterpreted Midorima in thinking that he wanted to bloom?

Was Midorima not the type to even want a mark?

In the end, were you just projecting your own desires and insecurities onto him?

The more you think, the more you realize how little you truly know about him. Right on cue, your windpipe constricts and spasms, signalling for you to find something to throw up in.

The nearest trash can was sufficient, and besides, no one was out in the streets to see a pitiful you hacking out with atrocious noises in an attempt to coax the leaves out. You pant in an attempt to calm your breathing, noticing the small spots of blood already staining dots on the vibrant fronds. Viscous blood mixed with your saliva hangs precariously from your lips, waiting to separate and fall into the bin with the leaves.

Your hands, grasping the trash can’s rims, shake in trying to hold your body up. And they tremble harder when you squint your eyes to start sobbing.

Your thick tears managed to fall into the bin before the ropy strands of blood dangling from your lips.

---------

You decide to spend most of your free time, at home and at school, researching about blooming beyond what your education system fed you. At school, you properly utilize the library, scouring every book on the subject you could find. But you weren’t surprised to see only books that talked about topics that were already covered in class.

Your fervid research took your mind off of Midorima, which subsequently stalled your stage of blooming.

You were going to start at the foundation of blooming: what exactly was it?

While the question is still being debated among the top scientists in the country, you took it upon yourself to try to come with an answer for yourself. For all you were concerned with, everything you thought you knew about blooming felt like an intricately-woven lie.

All the theorizing in your mind halted when you coincidentally found Midorima in one of the library sections.

“Sh-shintarou…?”

At your voice, he jumps out of his skin and then freezes. “What are you doing here?... Don’t you have practice?”

“Obviously I do, nanodayo…” he mutters, sliding his glasses up. You hate that you’ve noticed his habits even before you fell for him, but now that you did, you were even more hyper aware of everything he does. “But they insisted I rest for the actual games.”

“... while the others continue practice like normal?”

He ignores your question as he turns around to walk away. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll be going.”

“W-wait!” You unconsciously grab the back of his uniform shirt. Shit.

He turns around, eyeing you and waiting what you had to say.

“Well, I… I have to go home—right now! And well, since Takao is at practice I was wondering if you—”

He frowns before calmly replying. “No.”

No?

He leaves.

You stand there completely devastated. You don’t know whether to be furious at him and hate him to get over your pain or to do nothing but collapse against the bookshelf and silently cry your heart out.

You did the latter.

---------

The more you think about your unrequited love, the faster you will bloom. The faster you overcome and mature, the faster your blooming will pass. That’s what the books say.

But if you think about them more, isn’t that just a first-row ticket to accelerating to your death? Perhaps your late classmate was right in which blooming wasn’t something to boast about.

Your eyes have been puffy for days, although you mask it quite well with skincare and a dab of concealer. Nonetheless, you still look unwell and unnaturally pale at other parts of your face.

Your other classmates don’t pay attention to you, and for once, you’re grateful that your markless status helped you in flying under everyone’s radar.

You think you’re getting delusional. To ease your own pain during class, you now make it a little hobby to come up with different scenarios in how you would be saved from this.

What if you stop coming to school for a few weeks to see if anyone notices that you went missing?

What if you collapse in the hallway while walking with your friends and then Midorima panics and confesses his undying love for you?

What if an earthquake hit the bustlings of Tokyo and you were one of the only students who couldn’t be rescued by professionals and you were trapped because of your blooming body—and then maybe perhaps Midorima—

“(y/n).”

“Y-y-yes?” You immediately stand up without missing a beat.

“Could you read the passage from lines 37 to 49?...”

“Yes!...”

This was stupid. What were you even thinking at this point?

Honestly, your best option was to do everything in your power to get over Midorima and get your long-deserved mark.

---------

It’s been a couple of days.

While you still fantasize a few “damsel in distress” scenarios sometimes, you feel numb in a good way; your body was accustomed to the dull thuds, so you don’t even feel them as much anymore, and your mind has been clearer ever since the passing of your acquaintance, but at this point, you’re more inclined to call her your friend. You still hacked up a few ferns, though.

You decide to visit her grave on the weekend, which was freshly dug and cemented; it’s been a few weeks since her passing after all. As stupid as it sounded, you got her morning glories. Her spirit might hate you for constantly reminding her the cause of her death, but it’s the only flower that truly reminds you of her, and the only flower that made such an impact on you.

You pay your respects and spend the afternoon with her, murmuring how she was right after all and now it was your turn to finally go what she went through. You also talk about how Takao was doing, and how Shūtōku was competing right now against the big schools. You affectionately rub her gravestone before you leave.

You happen to pass by the stadium of where the esteemed Winter Cup was being held. That was where your team was competing wasn’t it?

You stop, however, when you see a particular greenhead near, with an unfamiliar blonde… and a pink-haired girl, a gorgeous one at that.

Thump… thump… thump…

You were supposed to be over him. You weren’t supposed to care about his affairs. But you saw him being so casual with her while she was holding a baby husky, you suddenly felt as helpless as the you back in the cafeteria, at the doorway, when you heard what Midorima said.

You already told your late friend that you got over Midorima. The last thing you wanted to do now was to end up lying to her that you never did.

You tear your eyes away and bolt, tears blurring your vision as you run in the general direction to where you thought was your home. You hoped that your parents were still at work, because you did not have the courage to tell them that you were a disappointment because you couldn’t even do the bare minimum of blooming. And you certainly hoped her spirit wasn’t following you somehow, because you didn’t want to be the reason for her suffering again, as unreasonable as it sounded.

By the time you arrived at your gates, you couldn’t control the resurfacing of ferns from your lungs as you felt the blood spilling in bursts with the leaves, along with the loud hiccups and desperate wails that escaped from your body. You had left a visible trail of complementary colors of red and green. But you didn’t care. Guilt and rejection wracked your body to the point beyond properly functioning.

Despite the muddy colors that fill your vision, you manage to clumsily use the keys to enter into your house, but walking beyond those gates proved to be more troublesome as those muddy colors soon became even hazier and your legs wobbled weaker. You stumbled and tripped and slipped yet you made the effort to get back up again. You knew you were going to have to hide the dark bruises that formed from you constantly crashing… and probably come up with excuses if you couldn’t obscure all of them. You beg your body to make it to your room at the very least.

I’ll… just sleep it off… it’ll all be okay… I’ll wake up, and everything will just be a dream… a dream…

You collapse onto the floor of the living room, your house door still completely open from moments before.

It must be your room’s bed, right? How else would it explain why you felt so at ease right now?

You feebly choke, too lethargic to even hold up a hand to stop the contents of your blooming from spilling all over the floor.

Ah… won’t they be mad when they’d get back from home?... Maybe you should clean up your bed.

But a short nap sounds heavenly at the moment, and your body has the same idea, your heart relaxing and easing up on the painful thuds for the first time in a while.

You peacefully flutter your eyes, registering amongst the haze the brilliant shade of greens the fern exhibited, which truly reminded you of the person who ultimately could not return your love back… a true sight for sore eyes like yours.

“Sh… ta… rou…”

You vaguely felt your throat tickling from the inside before you lost complete consciousness.

The fern that represented eternal youth… new life… new beginnings… even until the end, you could not comprehend why your body decided to grow ferns.

The sight on the floor was eerily ethereal. Your face was completely serene as your lips were parted by long, elegant ferns emerging from your esophagus, watered by fresh crimson. Your body looked like it was made to be a delicate, asymmetrical vase for the newly-sprouted foliage. There was nothing but silence, save for the wall clock’s ticking that signaled your death.

---------

“Midorin? What’s wrong?” Momoi tilted her head up at Midorima, who started to palpitate. “Did the games pump you up?”

“Obviously not.” He glanced at her pointedly before he excused himself.

“H-uh? Hold up—Midorin!”

At her voice, he took longer strides to outpace, even lose, her, and he sharply made a turn to a deserted area behind the stadiums. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe—

A cough. Two coughs. Then his floodgates bursted, with a yellow petal fluttering into his hand before he coughed up the rest of the hyacinth flower, its scent steeped in the headache-inducing odor of metal.

The yellow hyacinth… while the pink hyacinth tattooed on Takao meant playfulness, his own flower meant jealousy.

The first time he felt it was when Takao dragged you to the gym and proclaimed that he knew you better than anyone. His own heart thrashed in its place at the sight of Takao being so confident and easygoing around you. While beating Takao managed to subdue his inner pain, a seed of doubt was still inevitably planted within.

The second time he felt a stronger wave of envy was when he saw you patiently waiting for Takao to come out of his class.

The third time he felt his heart do an awful kick in his upper rib cage was when he heard you spoke so highly of Takao as he walked you home. No matter how much he tried to get close to you, he knew he could never outdo Takao socially. The fact that he could only get as close as he did to you was indirectly thanks to Takao. He was silent that evening, his mind swirling from the self-hatred and jealousy of his innate friendliness to everyone… especially you.

You both ironically envied Takao for different reasons.

As soon as he waited for you to safely enter your house, he widened his eyes as his throat started to twitch. Clasping his lucky item, he bolted to the nearest grass area outside a fence to barf up his umpteenth whole hyacinth flower, with crushed petals and stems.

That’s when he knew that not even the Oha Asa could not save him from this, not unless he took a different approach.

He hated it. He could not emphasize it any further than that. The way you allowed Takao to get so close to you, the way he saw how Takao knew what was going on inside his head. He hated yet envied his natural ability to read people.

So what did he do? He only did what he only knew how to do in social situations: walk away.

He’d never admit that he was in love. Certainly not to Takao. He’ll keep denying it to him to the bitter end. He told himself that he would show Takao someday, that he was, without a doubt, more suitable to be by your side.

He wanted to get over his love for you as soon as possible so he could adorn a flower tattoo…

If he did… would you notice him too?

Would he be a man worthy of your love?

Avoiding you broke him in many ways. Every time he did, he kept rethinking about his plan. Was this a good idea?

But being the stubborn person he was, he decided to not budge. He’d figure that the Oha Asa would give him the ultimate blessings for Cancer someday soon, and he could act accordingly then. For now, he figured he should lay low.

He’ll never breathe a word of his blooming to Takao. He didn’t want to be the next person making that same mistake as your classmate, yet here he was, a perfect example of falling for the exact same trap, despite knowing the consequences.

He couldn’t help it. Not if it was you.

Yet, Takao being the sharp point-guard that he was, noticed how Midorima had trouble keeping up during practices. Midorima didn’t know what Takao told the captain, but the next thing he knew, he wasn’t allowed to practice under the pretense of “saving his strength before the games.” As much as he wanted to argue, he couldn’t do much when the captain’s glare pierced through him, daring him to defy the captain’s order. He couldn’t even play basketball anymore in order to distract himself from thoughts of you.

As he continued to think back about all the failed interactions he tried to initiate with you, his lips leaked petal after soaked petal onto the concrete as he propped his forearms and head against the wall.

“Damn it… damn it… damn it…”

He slowly slid his down, his fisted arms and head still against the wall, until he dropped his knees onto the hard floor. He tried to regain his composure, but it was difficult with his knees mushing the bloodied flowers already on the concrete and the fresher flowers ever so continuing to fall on his lap.

He kept hacking up hyacinths blossoms, hoping he could clear his throat and stabilize his breathing again before he could go back into the stadium. Even after nonstop regurgitation, its glaring yellow color kept mocking at his macabre predicament, taunting him to try to stop the flow of its fatal petals.

He slammed his fist against the wall. He had to tough it out… how else could he ever face you?

But the strength of his wall pounding told a different story. It lacked physical strength even with his unwavering conviction. Midorima was dying. He was dying and he wasn’t even able to have a single thing in his favor.

For the first time, he cursed his fate, cursed the horoscopes, cursed astrology and all the unseen deities in the cosmos for concocting up such a horrible thing for only humans.

“... It’s really frustrating… being like this…”

Midorima gave a final, painful rasp before his body completely slumped, his raised arms going limp at his sides. His body eventually fell onto his side, unable to hold up its own weight without support.

His viscid blood slowly soaked his verdant hair, his orange jersey jacket and sweats, and his golden hyacinths. Warm colors ironically encompassed his ever-growing cold corpse, illustrating a striking yet haunting still-life painting, lying in wait for the next person to discover at the back of the stadium…

#midorima x reader #midorima shintaro #midorima shintarou #midorima shintarou x reader #midorima shintaro x reader #knb #knb x reader #knb scenarios #knb angst #kuroko no basket #takao kazunari

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zodiactalks · 3 years

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Love Life with Leo Woman & 5 Brutal Truths

Leo women are known for their charm, their animal magnetism, their ability to stand-out no matter what, and their goal-oriented personalities.

They're also known for being stubborn to the point of stupidity, for thinking very highly of themselves and for needing heaps and heaps of personal space, followed by lots of time for themselves.

They're enigmatic, they're self-assured, they're a force to be reckoned and, above else, they're incredibly easy to fall in love with.

After all, who can resist a woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid of doing what she needs to do to get it?

If you're in love with a Leo woman, you're in for a treat, but to survive the experience, you need to know the following brutal truths.

#1. They're stupidly stubborn.

While they might call it determined, the truth is that Leo women are simply stubborn.

What's the difference, you ask? It's actually quite simple.

A determined woman will do anything she needs to do to achieve her goals, while a stubborn woman will try her best to prove you wrong, even if you're in the right, and she ends up looking like a fool.

Leo women are both.

They're determined when it comes to their professional life, their family life, and their goals. They're hard workers, they're patient, they're go-getters, and they're capable of achieving truly amazing things, but they're also stubborn.

Leo women can choose absurdly petty hills to die on out of sheer stubbornness. They're capable of undoing hours of hard work because it didn't go as they wanted it to, and they're capable of acting against their own best interests just to prove a point.

Do you know that phrase that goes "Cut the nose to spite the face"? That's Leo women at their worse.

The best way to deal with this?

Just let them be.

We don't mean roll over and accept you're wrong even if you're right. That's not going to help anyone; no, we mean 'recognize that she'll be on the defensive and act accordingly.'

When arguing with her, avoid calling her names or making argument about her. Simply state your point as impersonally and calmly as possible.

Once they calm down, they'll listen, but the more you push them, the more they'll push back.

#2. They're ego-maniacs

There's no nice way of putting it. Leo women think way too highly of themselves.

To be fair, there's plenty to admire about them. Leos are naturally charming, have impeccable taste, and are incredibly committed to their goals, which means they're often successful at what they want to achieve.

However, they're prone to obsessing over their good traits and overlooking the bad, resulting in the kind of woman who thinks she can do no wrong.

Leos can, and do, react poorly to criticism, which they often interpret as personal attacks rather than the advice it sometimes is.

Their desire to be admired and praised can also lead them to be unnecessarily competitive and showy, always on the look-out for opportunities to show off their skills and their smarts.

Leo women's ego can also lead them to believe their own hype, resulting in an individual that isn't aware of their failures or misjudges their skills and abilities. Not a crime by any stretch of the imagination, but a trait that will rear its head over and over again in a relationship with a Leo.

Suffice it to say, if a Leo claims to be an expert at anything, take it with a grain of salt. The reality, and their perception, aren't always the same.

#3. They love to annoy.

We mean this in the most loving way possible.

Leos love to mess with people, teasing, pranking, and joking around as a way to show they care. Though not their most well-known trait, Leos are huge jokers, and they're often looking for ways to make other people laugh.

It's not hard to believe, really. Leos love to be liked and desire being the center of attention, and what better way to charm people than by making them laugh?

The thing about Leo women, though, is that their humor often derives from making fun of others. We don't mean that they like to mock others or bully people to get their kicks.

No, Leo prefers joking around their friends and families, but they often choose to do it by teasing them or making small, personal jabs in the name of good fun.

If you have a thick skin and enjoy sarcastic, even black humor, chances are you'll get along with them wonderfully. If you don't, then you'll want to talk about that with your Leo lover. Otherwise, she'll probably make fun of you in a way you won't like.

#4. They have no time for nonsense.

Some women are perfectly fine with tenderly helping others when they're having trouble; some women are more than okay with people who put their feelings first; some women believe that participation alone is enough of a reason to feel proud and happy.

Leo women believe precisely none of that.

Leo women are strong, sharp, stubborn, self-assured, and both willing and capable of eating the world whole. They have no time or patience for people who second-guess themselves, for those who aren't willing to go after what they want or for those who give up easily.

What's more, Leo women aren't care-takers.

Oh, they'll try to help you, and they'll always be pushing you to excel yourself and your own expectations, but sooner rather than later, they'll pull away and expect you to do things yourself, regardless if you're ready or not.

Because of this, Leo women can't tolerate clingy, insecure partners. They don't want to be with someone who needs to be continuously reassured, nor they want to share their life with someone who will expect them to take every big choice in the relationship.

Leo women want to date an equal, and if you want to be their equal, you have pretty big shoes to fill.

#5. They're super affectionate.

Leo women may be independent and may need their space. They may pursue their goals relentlessly and may sometimes appear distant and aloof.

However, Leo women care profoundly and love intensely, and that applies to family, friends, and lovers alike.

They're protective, playful, loyal, fun, and, more than anything else, motivating. They'll continuously try to improve the lives of their loved ones, either by pushing them to improve themselves or by taking things into their own hands.

Though they may appear self-centered, Leos are always aware of the people they love and those who have helped them. They give back, happily and generously, whenever they can, and though they may not check on their loved ones daily, they sure as hell think about them.

It may not be evident at first, but one of the biggest motivators for Leo's thirst for success is to provide for their family and their loved ones. Success for success's sake is rarely something that appeals to Leos; No, they want to be the best, so that they can ensure the people they care about are happy and well cared for.

Acts of services may not be every Leo woman's love language, but they tend to be up there amongst the most popular.

#leo #leowomen #leo woman #Leo zodiac #Leo love #leo traits #zodiac signs

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justhewayfaringstranger · 3 years

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So, I've wanted to address this topic for a while and this post I read this morning while having breakfast is a sort of response from the universe.

I would say to start by explaining a simple concept.

Demons and spirits are not the same thing, but rather, they vary from each other. Likewise, spirits and ghosts are not the same.

• Creatures understood as "demons" exist in all religions; they are supernatural beings, typically associated with the evil, historically prevalent in religions, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore;

• "spirits" are instead organized energy with at least a certain level of sensitivity that has an energy body and in most cases also an astral body. The Latin word is a translation of the Greek prneuma ("breath", "air", "vital breath") and to some extent it can be seen in the apeiron of the Presocratic Anaximander, who had to some extent dematerialized the archè (Greek: ἀρχή ) of the other Ionian naturalists, the original principle of the universe and of every part of it, impalpable and invisible but still material, as shown by another void that, blowing inside it, fills with air matter. With the Stoics, the term begins to be compared to today's one of spirit. The pneuma belongs to the god who gives life to things and guides them according to his wishes. The pneuma is a force that manifests itself not only in the individual man but is present in all things as the "soul of the world". They are ancient entities like the world itself, part of the primordial chaos and consequently neutral in themselves;

• the term “ghost” refers instead to any incorporeal entity. The term ghost comes from the Greek φάντασμα phàntasma, which in turn derives from φαντάζω (phantàzo, "to show"; from the root φαν-, which expresses the idea of "appearing" and "showing"), and had the meaning of apparition (understood as a supernatural manifestation) and only with time has its meaning been restricted to indicating the apparition of a deceased.

In 1800, with the birth of the practice of spiritism in France, it ended up rendering in the common imagination "spirits" and "ghosts" similar entities, if not true synonyms.

The French pedagogue Allan Kardec after observing a series of phenomena, formulated the hypothesis that such phenomena could only be attributed to incorporeal intelligences (spirits). Spiritual communications took place "thanks to the intervention of a medium", that is a person with particular skills who acted as mediator between spirits and living beings, during the so-called séance. This became a busines for many and most of the spiritualists were actually charlatans who swore to the victims that they could talk to the dead. In most cases, those who could afford to turn to a medium, were economically wealthy and of high rank lost and therefore for the scammer it was certainly not difficult to obtain information (even intimate) about the deceased and those around him, if at this was added some well-orchestrated play of smoke and lights, here is the "grandmother's ghost".

Having understood this, one wonders what it is then what we understand as a "ghost of a person". It is a trace left by the living. On a scientific level, death doesn't exist. From the chemical-physical point of view we are isolated systems that receive energy and produce it. But the universe itself is a closed system. So our energy is the energy of the universe. We are universe. What happens when we die? Our energy returns to the universe system. But as we know, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it changes. So our energy is energy that has been changed in the past by others, and will be changed by others when we are gone. Death doesn't exist because energy is immortal. The energy that I am using now to tap on my laptop keyboard is the same energy that Gaius Julius Caesar used to pull the reins of his horse and to cross the Rhine. And it will be the energy that in the future a scientist will use to to be able to travel between the various space-time dimensions. Death doesn't exist, and the life of one is the life of all.

To simplify then, what we mean as the ghost of Marilyn Monroe for example, is nothing more than a sort of energetic gif of Marilyn Monroe.

I'll give you another example. Anne Boleyn died by beheading, therefore by a violent and unjust death. In this situation, she is likely to have felt strong emotions and released a huge and consistent huge amount of energy as a result. Let's say that Henry VIII was present at the execution along with a bunch of other people, let's also say that he went back to that place (or others where Anne felt strong emotions and therefore released large amounts of energy) and thought about her, let's say that Elizabeth I also thought of her mother and so many other people. All these emotions have turned into energy. If we saw energy as a palette of colors, it would be as if: the more consistent the emotions, the more intense the color, therefore, the more energy we send (even unconsciously) to the energetic image of Anne Boleyn (the energetic gif), the clearer this will be where most of the energy is concentrated (eg the Tower of London, a room in the building, etc.).

So when we go to a "haunted" place, what we see is not the "person", but a kind of still image. And according to the speech above, it is therefore normal to find this type of freeze frame in places such as castles, hospitals, etc. then if these are found on natural energy centers or lines… bingo!

Speaking instead of spirits, as mentioned before, there are no good or bad spirits. Good and bad as well as light and dark, like day and night, are a contrast present in many traditions, including native ones. This duality can also be referred to the human being and represent a moment of acting or thinking of a person. You can think and act towards the light or towards the darkness and this can also happen to shamans.

Just think of the ego and when it takes over, or when you try to manipulate, at that moment you are not in the light. But it can happen and that doesn't mean being good or bad. Acting, in fact, can also be connected with a person's karma and precisely follow what is required by this spiritual law.

Light and darkness, as in the human world, are also reflected in the world of spirits and even in this case they do not absolutely determine the condition of goodness or badness. Spirits, who in the light can be protectors, guides or allies, can also move in the dark dimension.

And if we think like the natives that everything has a spirit and that it can move between light and darkness, we can understand how there can be spirits that are particularly powerful and able to move very strong energies such as to create an effect in ordinary reality.

It is important to know the distinction between light and shadow because, from an early age, we were educated to separate the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, but for this we have become very sensitive when it comes to going to work on our shadows. As I told you, light and shadow are states of being that we all have within us. Working with shadows doesn't mean black magic, witchcraft or whatever. Simply observe the aspects of light and be able to deal with those of shadow as well. Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin that it is important to integrate.

Being half Latin, therefore leaning towards a culture extremely linked to its roots and above all to the relationship with mental spirits, it isn't difficult for me to understand this concept, and therefore despite being a Christian, I have no problem in defining myself as a witch. Of course, coming to this awareness wasn't easy, as I am partly European and therefore I grew up in a society in a Western society that is scared of what it cannot control. After years of researching my origins, my culture and theological studies, I have come to find my balance.

Returning, however, to the main reason for this post, having made the necessary explanations (and given the tools for a critical analysis of the matter), here are the points on which I personally disagree and why:

Reading books about witchcraft: Knowledge for educational purposes is by no means negative, quite the opposite. The question is whether the aforementioned "about witchcraft" book is a "spell book" or some sort of "sacred book". For example, if I find the Necronomicon tomorrow and start reading it without knowing what it is, it is likely that I will find myself living the remake of The Conjuring in the real life.

Casting most types of spells, including hexes: Same speech made in the previous point. One of the first rules of witchcraft is "know your practice". You must be aware that what you are doing is not a game and every action has consequences, even if you don't believe in the rule of 3 (everything you do comes back to you 3 times). In the specific case of curse and hexes spells, they are the most treacherous and dangerous, because you are working with dark and malevolent energies. This type of practice in particular is a double-edged weapon, which is why many witches advise against them and propose alternative methods if possible.

Practicing divination: It isn't always negative, but in some types of divination the help and guidance of spirits and divinities is sought. For example, I often do bibliomancy with the bible and even if I first ask for God's guidance, in front of each answer I ask for confirmation, because the devil was the most beautiful angel in heaven and just as darkness does not allow us to see. where we go, even a dazzling light can deceive us.

Playing with Ouija or other talking boards: Ouija is not a game and it is an extremely dangerous tool, precisely because what you do is contact spirits and entities and you cannot know who will answer the other side. Nothing good anyway.

Putting up fantasy or non-Christian artwork: Have you ever seen Annabel? Here, the principle is the same. Be careful what you bring into your home, as home is a sacred space, and nothing can enter without you giving it permission. So if you not only invite it, but rather you bring it inside and give it a space, don't come and complain to me if it is difficult to send it away.

Celebrating pagan holidays: If it's a holiday of a closed religion, avoid ruining your life. Holidays basically consist of performing rituals that often involve spirits. Learn about the history of that holiday you want to celebrate, the symbols, the rituals, and why it is celebrated in that particular way.

Celebrating Halloween: The same as the previous point, except that we all (or almost all) know that samahin is the day when the space where the veil falls and the two worlds come into contact.

Watching scary movies and TV shows: I'm not saying that if you watch The Exorcist you will be possessed, but I can't assure you otherwise either. I took The Exorcist as an example because it is known that a real ritual is performed in the movie and a lot of "disturbing" things have happened on the set of the film and to the actors. When you watch a movie, even if it is fictional, if for example it performs an evocation or a ritual you are not only witnessing, you are participating in all respects. Be careful, every person is different.

Reading (horror novels, fantasy books, comics and graphic novels). Playing (tabletop RPGs, LARP games, video games): Same as the previous point.

Listening to heavy metal music, dancing: It goes for any kind of music actually. Do you know how many pop songs I use as a spell?

Dyeing your hair: I'm not saying you'll invoke a demon, but for many cultures cutting your hair makes you more vulnerable to spiritual attack and color is an essential aspect of witchcraft.

Swearing: Wishing someone who has crossed your path death is considered a curse in all respects. Even if done unconsciously.

Drinking: Drinking, smoking… shamans have used alcohol and drugs for centuries to connect with in the spiritual world.

Having tattoos and piercings: As long as you don't tattoo Aramaic words that you don't know the meaning of, everything is fine. Before getting a tattoo in a symbol you saw in a temple in Mexico, find out the meaning of it. I'll give you an example: my cousin once bought a T-shirt with the words "puta madre" (mother whore). He had bought it only because he liked it, without knowing the meaning of the word.

Now, most of these points are mainly related to intention. As I said before, I often use music in my spells, but if for example, I use "can't be touch by Roy jones" for a protection and encouragement spell (eg a manifestation) and a few months later I listen to the same song on the radio doesn't mean it will work like a spell again. In many cases it is a question of intention. Yhat's why it is important to educate yourself.

#witch #christian witch #afro witch #green witch #witchraft #education #educate yourself #witchblr #witchy things #spirit #ghost #demon

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bookish-mbti · 3 years

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Some Frasier MBTI types

Scott has gotten me into watching Frasier and these characters are satisfyingly typable, so I wanted to make a post elaborating on the MBTI types of the Crane brothers.

Frasier Crane | ENFJ

Frasier’s functional stack is easily readable and because of it, he is a fantastic example of an ENFJ. The outer world and social structures are what defines Frasier’s reality.

Frasier exists in the outer world of established external structures, measurements of value, and social status. He appreciates things that can be thought of as impressive based on external reference, even such as the items he so values in his apartment: “This lamp by Corbusier, the chair by Eames, and this couch is an exact replica of the one Coco Chanel had in her Paris atelier.” He likes things that are socially recognized to be impressive or renowned.

ENFJs also use auxiliary Ni, and as such, Frasier is very insightful and thrives when guiding individuals towards their best path and potential. His radio show allows him to do this on a broader scale with a wider audience, while also allowing him to fulfill his role in a way noticeable externally within the societal structure he values. Fe-Ni tends to work with groups of people such as a classroom as a teacher, and in Frasier’s case, it is his radio show.

Se is tertiary in Frasier. ENJs, though they are not Se dominant, are often very action-based. This advice from Frasier, in my opinion, exemplifies healthy use of an ENFJ’s functions: “Six months ago, I was living in Boston. My wife had left me, which was very painful. Then she came back to me, which was excruciating. On top of that, my practice had grown stagnant, and my social life consisted of... hanging around a bar night after night. You see, I was clinging to a life that wasn’t working anymore, and I knew I had to do something, anything. So, I ended the marriage once and for all, packed up my things, and moved back here to my hometown of Seattle. I took action. And you can, too. Move, change, do something; if it’s a mistake, do something else.”

Tertiary Se is more noticeable than inferior and ENJs may score surprisingly high on Se, caught between their penchant for deriving meaning and passion for making their dreams realities.

Frasier is sensitive to criticism, which comes from inferior Ti. When he is criticized in a column in the Times with the simple statement “I hate Frasier Crane,” he can’t help but feel as though it is an unwarranted personal attack. Ti is a function based in impartial analysis and criticism of structures or methods, completely independent of people and in conflict with an Extraverted Feeling approach.

Further, after he is sold a false piece of artwork, he is infuriated by the injustice, the blatant lack of regard for ethics. His idealism that people are good, respectful, and care for the well-being of others (Fe-Ni) is shattered. He keeps grasping for some way others and systems may help him—first through calling the police, and then by considering hiring a lawyer. When both Martin and Niles say it isn’t worth it and when Martin tells him that sometimes bad things happen in life and there’s nothing you can do, Frasier has immense trouble coping with the concept. Feeling dominants often run into conflict with the approaches of the Thinking functions, which they perceive to be cold, heartless, and, in the more extreme, immoral.

Another characteristic of Frasier’s inferior Ti can be seen in the second episode, when he is still adjusting to his father and Daphne moving in with him. In the case of an inferior Ti eruption episode, Fe dominants become uncharacteristically cold and withdrawn. In this episode, Frasier is perturbed by all of the ways Martin and Daphne have infiltrated the life he worked to build for himself. He is uncharacteristically in a bad mood, seeking solitude, and short with understanding; his tertiary Se is used defensively to defend his uncharacteristic, self-based need for solitude by saying that since the situation isn’t working out now in the present moment, then there is no hope of it getting better and he should change something about it.

Niles Crane | INFJ

Niles’ function stack is also one that is very readable and makes him a great example of an INFJ.

While he is similar to his older brother, there are some distinct differences. Where Frasier’s typical impulse is to seek out others and talk to them, in need of feedback, Niles is more private and withdrawn, mulling over things internally before externally voicing a conclusion. Where Frasier thrives navigating the social world and being a prominent face in the community, Niles considers his radio show “pop psychiatry” and values a more typical setting where he can see patients one-on-one rather than seeking a broad audience and outward recognition. This is not to say that Extraversion and Introversion have to do with sociability or ability to perform in front of an audience—Niles frequently holds group therapy sessions and workshops etc.—but than IFJs and EFJs tend to differ in their natural preferences. EFJs like to immerse themselves actively in a society and have engagement and involvement. IFJs don’t require this external feedback or engagement, and many times like to help others in more controlled, individual sessions.

One example Niles’ Ni is evident is after he and Frasier see their father having dinner with an old family acquaintance. They remember that her family used to be close to theirs until one summer they had a falling out and were no longer acquainted. The next day, Niles arrives at Frasier’s apartment and announces he had been doing some thinking, wondering why their father was with that woman, so he dug up his old childhood journal and an old photo album their late mother had put together. In the journal around the time they remembered the family friends having a falling out, Niles had written that he had seen his father and her in each other’s arms. In the photo album photos from that summer, there were multiple photos with a woman cut out of them. With these things brought to attention, Niles suggests a theory that their father had an affair. This is Ni—seeing something, mulling it over, connecting separate pieces, and arriving at a conclusion. Frasier first strikes down the accusation, saying there isn’t enough evidence. Again, this is Niles’ Ni—the connections he has made are based on internal thought processes, not totally tangible, but make sense in his linear internal logical deductions based on a couple of pieces of evidence. Ni can derive insight and theory based on minimal things in reality and is not dependent exclusively on what is experienced through the senses.

Another example of Niles’ being his type, and perhaps a good example of how INFJs tend to offer advice in general, can be seen in this conversation between him and Frasier in episode 2.

Frasier: Niles, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Dad and I had another fight. I’m afraid if we stay under the same roof together we’ll do irreparable harm to the relationship we have as it is.

Niles: Well, what are the alternatives?

Frasier: Well, if I didn’t feel so guilty I’d, I’d do what I should have done in the first place: just move dad and Daphne into their own apartment.

Niles: Oh, for goodness sake, Frasier. It hasn’t been that long, you have to give it a chance. And you might remember why you moved him in in the first place.

Frasier: Refresh me.

Niles: You wanted to get closer to dad.

Frasier: I still do. There isn’t anything I’d like more, but he makes it impossible. I can’t read my book, I can’t have my coffee, I can’t have any peace in my own home.

Niles: So what you’re saying is, you want to be closer to dad, but you don’t actually want him around. Ask yourself Frasier, have you tried to sit down and talk to him—I mean, really talk to him?

Frasier: Well, I... Maybe I haven’t done my best. I guess I owe that to the old man, don’t I? Well, ah, thanks for the chat, Niles. You’re a good brother, and a credit to the psychiatric profession.

Niles’ dominant Ni urges Frasier to see past the interpersonal rifts and down to the heart of what matters most, which was Frasier’s original goal: to become closer to his father. Conflict that seems unsolvable through talking it out is a trigger to Fe dominants, and as such, it was hard for Frasier to see past it. Niles’ Ni reminds him of the goal despite this conflict, as Ni as a dominant function is more zoomed out and big-picture; while Niles too uses Fe and is people-focused, he primarily views the world through Ni, which sees things outside of the framework of relationships, whereas Frasier’s dominant Fe was stuck seeing only the relationships and the conflict within them and he forgot the original goal. Additionally, Niles’ use of Ni prompts Frasier to point his own auxiliary Ni at himself and remind himself of his personal responsibility and purpose to the situation with his father.

Niles’ inferior Se is noticed more comically, such as how he doesn’t remember meeting Roz even after he has met her multiple times, nor does he remember where they met. Ni is a very internally-based function, and with inferior Sensation, Ni dominants can have trouble recalling concrete information about their surroundings or people they come into contact with in the external world. Another example of an INJ’s inferior Se can be seen when Niles is gripping shortly after his divorce. He begins to date someone completely opposite from his normal temperament and is impulsive, spontaneous, and doesn’t give any deep thought to his actions or the purpose for these actions. He stays out all night, drinks more, plans a trip with his new girlfriend to another country. It is all very out of character for him, which happens when an INJ is gripping—usually notoriously inert and cerebrally-based, they become active and spontaneous in the outer world, over-indulging in sensory activities.

#Frasier #Niles #MBTI #ENFJ #INFJ #Ni #Fe #Ni-Fe #Fe-Ni #Frasier Crane #Niles Crane #Frasier MBTI

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flickeringart · 3 years

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Fire and Air

As functions of the psyche

Fire is commonly associated with spirit. For some, ”spirit” seems too abstract to even begin to grasp. It’s essentially the thing that is life and gives life at the same time. It makes things show up and it is the thing that shows up simultaneously. It takes things into being and it is the being at the same time. Fire is the presence of life and the meaning it carries through its forms (which includes the absence of meaning). For something to ”be” it has to come alive in consciousness and it’s this phenomena that fire is a symbol of.

There’s a strong sense of ”being life” in fiery individuals which comes with all the positive attributes of warmth, passion, confidence, enthusiasm, bravery, creativity, leadership and authority. They view life in terms of symbolic meaning, which is different from viewing life in terms of literal function, which is more characteristic of earth. It’s also different from experiencing life through emotion, which is characteristic of water. Emotions have no higher purpose or inherent meaning when taken out of a fiery context. Water is the animating force, which means that it is experiential rather than symbolic. Since it’s purely experiential it is undifferentiated which allows for no more than what is felt. What is felt is a fact, but it has no context. Context is ultimately provided through the air element, which I will get to.

In astrology, fire dominant people are often described as being willing to head out on adventures, take risks and live like they are demi-gods of sorts. This is because they are in touch with the spirit of life – not the experience, the concept or the function of life. The force, or ”fire” if you will, is not a definable substance; it’s the implication and the presence of each form and phenomenon. Generosity is another thing that is usually associated with fire people. They can give because they usually don’t feel a sense of pressing lack. A gift is a symbol and is immortal in essence – it carries power because of the intention put into it. To contrast, from an earthy perspective a gift has a literal function (of utility and sensation) and is consequently stripped of its godliness. It is plain materia that is used for its physical properties and nothing more. Of course, in real life individuals are not made up of one element, but it’s effective to exemplify in this way.

Life of fire dominant individuals is, from their perspective, a fascinating enfoldment of a story. They’re not merely bodies that are born and clothed, moved and put to sleep, they harbor the sense of immortality, of being exempt from death in the way that death is present only because of the image making faculty and the attribution of meaning. Physical death is a symbol, not a fact in the life of these people. It’s more than a concept, because it is not separated from life, it’s an expression of life. Every component of life has a purpose, because the fact that anything shows up in consciousness must mean that it belongs to spirit. The spirit is pure light, pure being. The optimism that is usually associated with Aries, Leo and Sagittarius stems from this notion. The negative attributes of arrogance, superiority and intolerance that are sometimes shown in individuals with these signs are due to compensation for disconnection with the intangible. They don’t feel immortal and need to compensate for it by elevating themselves above others. It’s a childish attempt to regain potency, but it’s not genuine, it’s artificial.

Speaking of artificial, since fire is associated with the archetypal realm, individuals with strong fire placements tend to be able to step into the energy signature of a certain archetype and live it out. This is a great source of strength, but it is never the less a substitute for cultivating real confidence and power. Through the use of a certain jargon or mannerism that is essentially “taken on”, the person is able to navigate the environment and get certain needs met without having to put in the effort of actually meeting them on one’s own. For example, a person could want to live out the father archetype in order to gain strength and a sense of purpose. By stepping into the energy signature the person can live a life that is worthy of this specific archetype and feel safe as part of a set narrative. Fire is intimately connected to tales and story lines – and fire dominant individuals generally feel safe in the world of legend and myth. This might lead them to cope through bringing this world into real life, to compensate for feelings of inferiority and incompetence. They might be able to embody archetypes to the extent that they elude people – the façade seems so seamless and organic, almost too consistent.

The real strength of fiery individuals is found in the capacity to be, not in turning to archetypes to cover for a weak ego. Fire is not about what there is – it’s about the “is-ness”, the essence, and the spirit of life. It can’t be substituted with or derived from anything other than itself.

To flip the tables, I’d like to discuss the Air element. Air is somewhat of an agent of spirit, a mediator of life. Extending and reaching into the unknown, seeing the potential in the expression of thought and form. It’s the connective function within the psyche; in symbolic terms it’s the bridge that is made between point A and point B. Air is the function of relatedness which is distinctively different from merging, which is more characteristic of water and the emotions. While being the bridge, air is also the points on each side of the bridge. To make it even more complex, it’s also the absence of the bridge and the points. Air has no substance but can imitate substance accurately enough to be squarely in the perspective of a particular substance. It has the function of detachment, which allows for observation and objectivity. It also has the function of disidentification, which makes it possible to step back from or get closer to something that exist in consciousness. Perhaps equally important to mention is that air not only allows for disindentification but identification as well. In order to be able to relate from something and to something there has to be the introduction of duality. Subject interacts with object, which can be illustrated by a simple sentence. The air element is what allows for a conceptual “I” to exist and it’s defined by a simultaneous conceptualization of a “you”, “I am talking to you”. Language and communication is inevitably dualistic in this way. The intellect has a separating function – it depends on refining and dividing experiences into manageable parts.

Air dominant individuals operate primarily on the level of the intellect, which gives them the reputation for being conventionally smart, interactive, curious, inquisitive and reasonable. On the more negative end, they’re known for being prone to over-analyze, rationalize and not experience reality through anything other than the interpretative functions. As many have discovered, words are only pointers and don’t offer anything else than conceptual understanding. The experiential and functional components of reality are sublimated for abstractions. It makes air people very good at selling and promoting because they can interpret reality to their liking. The thought scape has limitless potential – which also contributes to making air people great liars, or more positively, great persuaders. As already stated, air is the subject and object but also neither of the two. Getting out of tight spots and trappings is one of their greatest advantages for this reason, but it could also lead to confusion. Is the subject the object or the object the subject? You see what I’m getting at.

Life of air dominant people primarily consists of relationships – not only with others but with themselves as well. There’s usually uncertainty around what one thinks or what one is without the contrast that other people provide. This is especially the case for Libra, the air sign of partnership. A conceptual self is derived from observing another and assuming a role that works to create equilibrium and balance. It’s not “ultimate” balance, but the relative balance that can be achieved between two shifting components. For Gemini, it’s more about general interaction and play then perfecting communion and for Aquarius there’s an emphasis on ethicality and mental ideals than balancing out polarity. Overall, air is necessary to provide context. Without the ability for comparison and evaluation, events are void of implication. There’s no clear direction or perception of direction. It’s easy for air dominants to confuse the mind with a concept and locking themselves into a mental prison. It’s also easy for them to not identify with anything in particular and be a constant inconstant, which paradoxically serves as fixed identity anyway.

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lligkv · 3 years

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what the world will look like when it’s over

Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the first Adam Curtis documentary I’ve seen. I gather it’s not the most successful demonstration of his method; it sounds like Hypernormalization or The Century of the Self are tighter in their construction, less effortful (count how many times Curtis says something like “But then it started to run out of control” in this one), and perhaps less frustrating in their narration. In the early episodes of this documentary in particular, it feels like Curtis is constantly presenting what’s being covered as the turn, the decisive shift in his narrative—the emergence of the American counterculture, the revolution of the “unit of One” led by Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing to help her break the stalemate with the other revolutionaries in China into which Zedong had fallen in the 1960s, George Boole’s development of Boolean logic to describe human thought. And the whole thing feels longer and baggier than it needs to be. The early episodes devote much time to interesting individual narratives, like that of the Trinidadian British activist or sorts named Michael Freitas (or Michael X) or a trans woman named Julie in 1960s Britain; they also sprawl in a way that makes the overall argument a bit hard to divine. It’s not until the fourth episode that the shape of Curtis’s narrative becomes clear—that our age is the product of a struggle between a new, broadly liberal-democratic and capitalist image of individualism, a dying era of collectivist struggle, and older, more vicious systems of power, derived from the control of capital and expressed through the middle classes’ suspicion and viciousness toward the subaltern and toward each other, even as they remain subject to the power of oligarchs and billionaires.

Curtis also seems to play fast and loose with the facts sometimes. When he presents Médecins Sans Frontières’s founder Bernard Kouchner as an avatar of a theory of the “one world” of liberal democracy—the idea that we’re basically one world of individuals, enjoying certain human rights regardless of political orientations or ideologies, and that Western nations are duty-bound by virtue of their prosperity to intervene when other nations violate people’s rights—it seems a distortion of what Kouchner actually says in the footage Curtis includes: “We don’t care on leftist or rightist countries [sic]; there is no leftist and rightist suffering, and there is no possibility to split the world in[to] ‘good’ people or ‘bad’ people, ‘good’ dead and ‘bad’ dead.” Which isn’t to say Kouchner didn’t believe in liberal-democratic ideas—he may well have—but what he’s shown as saying has to do with the consideration of suffering as suffering regardless of a person’s identity or allegiance, which is a different matter.

This is just one of several moments when I stopped to wonder how secure I actually was in Curtis’s hands. But ultimately, I find the emotional history he lays out resonant. The age we’re living through now, in the 2020s, is indeed the product of certain fantasies of individualism and of a post-end-of-history, neoliberal “one world”—with no ideologies but capitalism and putative democracy—meeting age-old systems of power, acquisition, and control, and age-old features of the human mind and heart: resentment, prejudice, betrayal, jealousy, the need to be prosperous, the need to be free.

And Curtis’s work appeals to me for the same reason the writer Pankaj Mishra’s work does. He historicizes our underhistoricized time. What’s more, he does so in a way that’s especially rare to see in any mainstream media venue. Usually, when you want to understand the connections between, say, colonial-era empires and post-war welfare states, or if you want to understand what happened to turn Western societies as they were post-war to Western societies as they are post-financialization, you have to seek the information out on your own. It’s valuable to have someone in a place like the BBC willing to put the pieces of these narratives together. And willing to remind us of the events that are so incredibly easy to forget even in one’s own lifetime. Abu Ghraib, for instance, which pops up in part 6 of the documentary. That shit happened while I was alive. How often do I remember it? How many American sins get drowned out in the new ones that emerge every day of every month of every year? Or in the stasis that sets in when what was once novel, like the War on Terror or the invasion into our privacy represented by the Patriot Act, fades into regular life?

I was jotting down copious notes while watching the doc, as is my wont. The questions and thoughts that came up, in no particular order:

How do the elites of a given era impose their preferred ideologies? How are the structures of power we grow up with constructed, and how do those go on to shape our behavior?

Control, as it’s practiced by societies in the 21st century, often comes down to the recognition of patterns in human behavior—and their manipulation.

The loss of power, like that which was suffered after the collapse of Britain’s empire or in the slow hollowing-out of America’s manufacturing industry in the 20th century, leads to anger and melancholy that people can’t be expected to abandon. Does doing what you’re supposed to do bring you the happiness you were promised—or anything even resembling that happiness? When we’re living in a historical moment in which the answer is no, as is often the case today, we’ll need to watch out. It’s a sign people are being manipulated and abused.

Over time, the tech industry has come to understand that you can manage people en masse by collecting their data and manipulating the messages they receive in social media activity feeds and advertising—and you can make them feel like sovereign individuals at the same time through the very same means. In light of all this, will there ever be a revolution that actually changes the structure of power we’re currently stuck in? Is there a chance to alter this extreme individualism. on the part of people who are surrounded by political systems so enervated, by the supra-governmental system that is global finance capital—which politicians can’t control, and must appease and palliate—that they can’t respond to phenomena like climate change or meaningfully punish atrocities like wars prosecuted on false pretenses? Or are we stuck where we are, in a world that’s corrupt and exhausted? In nations whose governments depend on technologies of surveillance and myths of consumerist abundance or nationalist glory to maintain power, in the absence of any real vision for the future?

It all leads to some interesting takeaways. For one, the way culture reacts to politics and vice versa. As I was watching Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I was reminded of a conversation folks on the Discord server for the Relentless Picnic podcast had had recently about the strange things Richard Dawkins posts on his Twitter account. And it led me to think: when religious “caring conservatism” was in the White House, Richard Dawkins and his New Atheism, this brash repudiation of religion and its pieties, grew as a counterweight. When Obama and his technocratic regime were in power, with social media bringing on a wave of progressivism in popular culture and algorithms presenting us a fantasy of endless choice—much of which was a thin veneer over the same old shit: banks getting bailed out, forever wars going on, productivity rising while wages stagnated—we also got Jordan Peterson-types who claimed to speak to a human need for narrative, even in this point of stability we had seemed to reach, this recovery of sanity after the chaos that was the Iraq War and the financial crisis; who claimed we needed ideas and myths to animate and drive our lives, because they sensed there was something hollow and mendacious driving all this consumer choice, for all it seemed a symbol of our freedom and progress.

Of course, both Peterson and Dawkins are provocateurs, not intellectuals; I don’t mean to dignify the movements they led much, since in both the appearance of intellectual rigor or moral clarity often covered the indulgence of the worst instincts: immaturity, obstinacy, provocation for provocation’s sake, contempt for women and trans people. The New Atheists had a point, and could be absolute assholes about it; they ultimately could be as fundamentalist and dogmatic as any religious people. As for Jordan Peterson, his actual work, in the way of so many grand theorists, uses the appearance of profundity to cover something ultimately pretty banal. And he’s most known for grandstanding in the public sphere—refusing to use people’s pronouns, the usual conservative shit. But these movements do seem to reflect a countercultural response no less than 1960s counterculture reflects a reaction to the staid culture of 1950s America and the sins it covered up.

Which leads me to the question: what was the culture’s response to Trump’s administration? Maybe QAnon and Russiagate, as conspiracies—that is, actual narratives people inhabit to explain the world’s evils, and not just a vague need for them that they satisfied with Jordan Peterson’s light form of Stoicism or his theories of Light and Dark or whatever the fuck. And in that way, perhaps, once a countercultural movement—namely nationalism and Trumpian populism—actually seemed to have overthrown a regime, of Obama-era liberal technocratic management, culture and politics came to mirror each other, rather than standing in opposition to each other. Both became equally conspiratorial and unhinged; in fact, they merged. All the ruling myths and conspiracies mutate in kind these days: Trump’s garbage about draining the swamp, a cover for Trump and his family enriching themselves and Stephen Miller’s like getting to fashion the state they wanted, becomes QAnon’s garbage about rings of child trafficking and pedophilia and Trump, of all people, being their savior—all while actual trafficking and abuse perpetuated by Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk goes unpunished, Epstein’s death swallowed up by the state without a sound—becomes the liberal pundit class’s screaming about Russia: connections between Trump and Putin that were always conjectural to me, because no one who pled them seemed to feel much need to substantiate them.

Here again I feel like what were once centrifugal forces in our culture—between mainstream and the independent media, for example; between people in power and their critics, either in the media or at society’s margins—have collapsed into a single morass. We’re all in hell and there’s no way out.

In all this, what does Biden’s administration represent? Little more than an interregnum, to my mind. How disappointing to see not even a gesture toward forgiving student debt or raising the minimum wage in these first 100 days of his presidency. There’s been some progress in climate legislation, and progress in putting Stephen Miller’s deportation machine to a halt (though they’re also reopening several emergency shelters to accommodate more minors already being held past the mandated limits for keeping them in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement). But there’s also been such triangulation on policy by the administration and its supporters and such complacency on the part of the media covering the administration, refusing to call them out on or even cover this. And how can the average voter respond but with resignation?

Ever since I read Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus near the start of lockdown, absorbing the picture of the world pre-World War II that’s presented in that book, I’ve thought we’re in the same sort of moment that Mann’s protagonist Zeitblom was in. There’s a crisis that’s passing over this whole planet like a wave or a seismic event, and no human intervention can interrupt it. We can only wait for it to pass—holding on to whatever’s to hand, waiting to see what the world will look like when it’s over.

#adam curtis #documentaries #thomas mann #jordan peterson #richard dawkins #pankaj mishra #the relentless picnic #conspiracy

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