#it needs nurtured

[kurtsascot]

crys is helping me workshop this freak nasty vampire fic and make it hotter please thank them for their service

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[stilitrash]

Simon and Marcy have the same taste in women and that's beautiful <3

[bruciemilf]

Jason being protective over Bruce just feeds my soul. I don't even need dinner, just give me Jason scaring off suitors away from his dad and I'll be CONTENT

LISTEN. Bruce is literally always sending Jason messages, texts, tries calling him, even sends him memes at Steph's recommendations, but nothing! Nada!

He always sighs and tries again, but eventually scores Jason's gonna talk when he's gonna want to.

He also leaves him voice mails, detailing about doing arts and crafts with Damian, how he tried Jason's training routines, taking cooking classes, - and he always ends the message with, " Don't get into trouble, Jay. "

It passes as I love you,

What does it? What finally stirs Jason back into the Wayne Manor? This:

" Jason Peter Todd. This better be the last time you prank call Tim in a middle of a meeting. You're more than aware our investors are, -" cut " I'm calling you for a favour. Could you watch Damian for me Thursday night? Everyone else is busy, and Clark made some reservations at a ridiculously expensive establishment, I-"

Jason marching through the manor with this voice mail at full volume, while Bruce and the others are trying to get him ready for the date. Dick is the first one who spots him. " Oh, no-"

" HE IS A FUCKING DEAD MAN!"

" Jason," Bruce is very calm as he attaches his nicest broach on. " Watch your language. "

" Who's this Clark guy? How long have you known him? What does he do? Do we have a background check? What about romantic history Who's? Who's side was he on in the Heard vs Depp trial? "

" He posts golden retrievers on that blue bird app you like. He's even...Approved? I think? But Dick told me not to mention it around you. And take that off, you'll scare him. He should be here any minute now."

" OH THATS WHAT I'M COUNTING ON - "

[qcoded]

some genderbend art I've been meaning to post :P empress belari and the collector!!

these can double as art for that canon divergent, teen girl!philip i was talking about lol

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

These people who are ignorant and gullible enough to buy into that 'masculine and feminine energy' garbage that gets peddled around TikTok and other platforms can speak for themselves. My masculine and feminine energy live in perfect harmony with each other. They have definitely kissed with tongue. They are sucking and fucking as we speak. They hype each other up. They love, respect and admire the other. Where one goes, the other follows. Separating them is a fool's errand.

[witchofthesouls]

I wish the Lost Colonies' cultures and biological quirkw had been delved deeper, especially how they would viciously clash with modern Cybertron, both pre- and post-War.

I mean, I think it's really interesting juxtaposition between the deep scars of Functionism versus the other worlds' sources of prejudice and discrimination. Camien devotion and deification of Solus versus a Cybertron with no femmes with Megatron's and Optimus' cult of personality as well as atheism and agnosticism, especially among their respective inner circles. Cybertron's complete desolation and Eukaris' lush and lively greenery. The meritocracy of racing-obsessed Velocitron. Prion had minicons with multiple alts, and Devisiun yielded split-spark twins. The people of Carcer are those of wardens living in a prison.

Do the Camiens think of their Titan's homeworld as cold and lonely? Would they think of those from Cybertron suffering from disorders from the lack of close, intimate connections and no true community?

Velocritron descended from the scientists of Navitas, and they utilized the scorching heat to derive alternative sources of fuel. Do they scorn the deprived worlds for not searching for solutions?

How do the Eukarians view the others that cyberformed their planets? Do they see Cybertron and the others as sterile and lifeless; their civility is a cheap, hollow mimicry that hides their teeth and claws?

The Carcerians developed an austere culture that prioritized keeping their Titan on complete lockdown to the point sacrificing themselves to achieve that goal. How do they view Caminus' offering to dismantle himself so his own children can thrive in such a harsh environment?

How do diplomacy and common courtesy differ from each planet? The language and food? The behaviors? The relations with nearby neighbors, both mechanical and organic?

[sarcasticsra]

HE COULDN’T THINK OF ANY FACTS.

Hyperfixation and passion got married and are taking care of all of the interests! Elias’ brain is just absolutely flooded with dopamine right now, it’s the BEST.

“A strong sense of pleasure slightly tempered by conscience sounds pretty fun.” Trapp is always 100% correct. My god this man is so quick and talented. More Trapp on D20 2kforever.

Conscience understanding the place self-loathing can come from and shrinking it back into more helpful “you fucked up but you’re going to fix it” guilt, accountability. Goddamn seriously self-loathing evolving from guilt Brennan you’re a goddamn genius.

Impulse and hyper vigilance have gotten divorced and remarried 17 times at least already, you can’t convince me otherwise.

Way to go, Elias. I knew you could do it, buddy.

[insteading]

As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

[bonefall]

If Brambleclaw was written like that in PO3 as an example of a "good" father, was kind of light was Squirrelflight shown in as the three's mother?

It shifts over the course of the arc. In the first two books, she's FIRMLY strict and distant. I have mostly negative feelings about it. In The Sight and Dark River, they are trying to "foreshadow" the big reveal by showing Squilf as if she's less of a mom to her kids than the "nurturing" women who birthed their own.

While she has a pretty equal mix of moments where she's being supportive or harsh when you tally them, a LOT of emphasis is put on how she doesn't seem to like being in the nursery, how her job "keeps her away" from her children, and how she's short with them when they're just being kids in public.

Even crashes this one moment where Brambleclaw is just... playing with them before a Gathering. Leafpool is also compared to Squilf often, notably more fretful or concerned for the Three. It's frustrating-- they're trying to contrast her to them.

It's Outcast that starts to really tip the scales, though. She gets about 2 harsher moments with her kids on average in Outcast and Eclipse, outweighed by LOTS of times they're having emotional scenes. The way I LIKE to read this is that Squilf is a better parent to older kids and that it just took her some time to hit that stride.

I feel like that makes a lot of sense for her as a character. She's not a nurturer, she's a negotiator. Physically active and excitable, guiding a teenager through their adolescence just comes more naturally to her.

(though it stays frustrating that they wrote such horseshit like Squilf constantly snapping at... kittens playing, mostly so Brambleclaw can look so special and perfect in comparison.)

The more cynical side of me, though? I think it struck them that The Fire Scene wouldn't be as emotionally impactful if she meant what she said to Ashfur; "Go ahead, kill them, they're not my biokids so I don't care." She has to LOVE them to feel pain at their fury. So as the books progressed they wrote waaaay less "Nasty Squilf Moments" like in Books 1 and 2. We don't even GET one in Long Shadows, until the Fire Scene itself.

And also, I think they realized that having that Fire Scene sentiment NOT be a lie, when she raised them from birth, would be super fucked up. In a bad way. I don't think even the Erins are THAT shortsighted. I'm glad they didn't.

She spends all of Sunrise wracked by guilt though, even before the Gathering Reveal. The climax of the arc is really fixated on how miserable her and Leafpool feel, and that's kinda the point. The story was building to this moment where the family crumbles apart.

[epickiya722]

You know who I have beef with in BNHA?

Everyone who saw Tenko on the street and decided not to help him because he looked "creepy".

To hell with "waiting for a hero"! You didn't think "Oh, this is obviously a kid who needs help! Let me take him off the street before some maniac gets him"!

There are some things the citizens could do without relying on the heroes, jeez!

[goddessbustier]

[wordsofwisdomandsoul]

[crescentfool]

having the hc that minato is ace is incredibly funny sometimes when you think about how ryoji is oh so very bi because it's like. "ah. death stole my ability to be attracted to people," in the same way that ryoji stole minato's eye color and energy level. like wow, thanks ryoji, you just keep finding things to steal from minato!

[furiousgoldfish]

Today I am bothered by the fact that babies and toddlers are programmed to ask for attention and affection naturally, right, and if they don’t get it, they ask for it louder and louder, until they get completely exhausted and they can’t move anymore, which is when it sinks to them that there is no help, no attention, nobody coming, they’re not being cared for, which is when they go silent and numb and stop asking for it.

Natural progression for a human is to get as much attention and care as they need as a baby, then also as a toddler, and then at some stage later they stop needing it as much, they start desiring separation and individuality, and their desires for attention flow towards different people then, they want positive attention from their peers, then from the rest of the world as well, but not in that parental way anymore, now they want to be acknowledged and equal and needed and wanted, not fed and pampered and hugged, although a tiny amount of that isn’t rejected if offered.

If abused, these needs can developed differently. If as a toddler you’ve spent more time in that catatonic and numb state, fearing for survival because you’re a baby and there’s no caretakers, that leaves a mark on you. If you’ve been denied physical attention, hugs and pats and strokes on your head, as a toddler, that again leaves a mark, makes you feel undesirable, unwanted, disgusting, unworthy. And since you’re constantly feeling hurt, the desire for separation can come early too; because your instinct is to survive, and if your caretaker is a danger to you, you still love them of course, but you realize you have to be independent, have to take care of yourself, have to figure your own issues out without asking for help. It’s also followed by a dose of dissociation because the pain of being emotionally abandoned so young, is too much for anyone. Being neglected when you desperately need someone, will cause you to dissociate, possibly even develop a dissociative disorder to survive.

But what happens with all those needs for affection? If nobody fulfilled your basic needs for care as a toddler, do you ever evolve to wanting to be equal to others? Or do you, forever, yearn for parental type of care? Need to be pampered and reassured that you’re wanted and valuable and that someone will take care of you, make sure you eat, make sure you don’t die, make sure you’re safe? Does this ever go away, if nobody ever takes care of you this way? Do you ever feel completely comfortable being equal to someone? Do you not interpret intimacy as a way to get that positive touch, and crave it not in a sexual, but in a ‘i need to be held’ kind of way? Do you not assume they also want to be pampered, and offer it as a wild hope they might do it back, but they just accept it and take it and run off with it? Do you forever just end up a caretaker nobody ever took care of, who has no way to ask for it because it feels so wildly inappropriate?

[theshadowrealmitself]

At all times I am shaking with the need to see Vulcan plants, like, in order to sustain a vegetarian diet for every member of their species the plants have to be bountiful, but also, pretty much all of Vulcan is a desert, right? so it’s desert plants, and I just want to see some funky alien desert plants please please please please please pl-