#my ptsd is so goddamn c

[cesium-sheep]

no yeah pretty sure it's a trauma response thing.

the whole year has been so very very very bad, so as the end gets nearer I get counterintuitively more anxious, both because I become more afraid something else will come along to kick me back into the pit and because I have a little more room to breathe instead of just having to grit my teeth and carry on. (this is pretty normal in the context of prolonged stress and long-term traumatic situations (as opposed to singular Events))

[dismalzelenka]

.

[possibly-eli]

i dont understand what about this is so difficult for people to comprehend:

i just kinda want my thoughts on opinions on MY OWN HEALTH to be entertained instead of immediately disregarded

like. im 17. i shouldnt be having back pain so often. i shouldnt be having such severe leg pain. i shouldnt be dealing with such shitty hand joints. but FUCK ME i guess i dont get a say in jack SHIT about my own health!!!!! because what i say means fuck all!!!!! ok man!!!! whatever i guess!!!!!!!

[chipped-chimera]

Idk how many people know about shit going on in Auspol atm but to my fellow aussies out there just so you know I am sick to my stomach and spitting fire and if we get a no vote on this shit I really just wanna tear up my citizenship and go back home to New Zealand I am sick of this shit.

[absentlyabbie]

i'll tell you what converted me to being all-in on keeping cats indoors only:

living for a year and a half in a rural area with a sudden feral cat colony explosion on the property.

i moved in with my folks for a bit and at that time, one (1) stray cat mama had taken up residence on the property, but was too feral to let my mother anywhere near her. but especially after she brought three kittens around, mom fed her and the kittens in hopes they'd grow trusting enough she could catch for spay and neuter at the minimum. momcat stayed mean and hella wary, but the kittens would hang around a little nearer and play with my mom via long stick, but still wouldn't come close enough to touch or catch.

unfortunately, two of the three kittens were girls and started having kittens of their own before further progress was made, shortly after i moved in. and that was pretty much instant doom.

there were so many kittens. SO MANY. multiple litters. every time we turned around, more kittens.

we fed them. we hunted for and located the kittens every time anywhere on the property and would move them to a repurposed doghouse anytime a mama cat had them somewhere else, so that they could grow up human-socialized and we could spay/neuter them when they were old enough. (also it was a handy tactic to push the issue of the mamas getting more used to/trusting of us themselves. only really worked with one of them, though.)

and we watched them die.

we watched litter after litter of kittens never make it to the age they could be spayed or neutered. the moms stayed, for the longest time, too skittish to more than briefly touch, much less catch and crate for a vet visit.

it sounds like a silly joke to say i have kitten-related ptsd, but i absolutely do.

too many goddamn times i'd walk out of the garage and find the carport and gravel drive strewn with tiny bodies. others simply went missing, never to be found.

one in particular, i wish i hadn't found, and the visual literally haunts me still, almost a decade later.

i saw so many kittens die of snake bite, spider bite, wild dogs, birds of prey, hit by cars, respiratory illness, covered in fleas and eyes crusted with infection.

and we loved them all. scrimped for antibiotics if the vet could be convinced to give it to us despite our being unable to bring them in. bought flea collars and ointments. we cared for them and fed them and petted them and played with them, brushed their fur and cleaned up their little faces, put ice in their water in hot summer, rigged a heating lamp in their house in the winter.

and they died. horribly. that property is pocked with unmarked graves of kittens and cats.

all the best intentions, not enough resources, and it didn't matter anyways because the population went from three to almost twenty (at times, over thirty) in the blink of an eye.

they died and died and died. our hearts broke over and over again. the stress and anxiety wore us down like sandpaper. i think, by the end of it all, we managed to find less than 10 of them all homes, including batman the disabled kitten i found a home across the country through tumblr.

it was carnage and tragedy, frankly. and we were helpless.

it only ended because they started dying faster than they could be born, and because we finally caught the two remaining mom cats in traps and got them spayed.

the points about outdoor cats being invasive predators devastating to local wildlife populations is true and valid and important.

but i know cat people, and cat people who don't know better than to let cats outdoors. what matters to you is the cat itself, generally. the cat being happy and taken care of.

keeping cats outdoors, letting them outdoors, is not taking care of the cats. it's not protecting them. it's not giving them any happiness or invigoration that couldn't be provided to them as indoor-only pets with just a little research and effort.

they die. they get ill. they get hurt. they're at risk of predators, and cars, and disease, and carelessly cruel children and deliberately cruel adults. they're at risk of disappearing on you because someone else saw a cat outdoors and intervened to give it a better, safer life not in conflict with the local environment.

and if that offends and angers you that someone would just take a cat they saw roaming outdoors, even collared, and that it sounds like i'm endorsing that, i am, but not if you intervene and be that person yourself for your own cat.

if what matters to you is doing right by your cat because it's family and a living creature whose happiness and health and safety is important to you,

keep them indoors. not part time. always. exclusively.

edit: since apparently i need to clarify this, i'm saying cats should live inside, that they should not live outdoors, even part time. visiting the outdoors supervised on a leash or in an enclosed catio is not the same as even part-time living outside, and i am certainly not advocating against it.

[suzukiblu]

Omegaverse anon

That's such a kind offer, thank you so much

I'm into DC stuff right now, Clark pining for Kon to be his pup Gave Me Life, I love found family dynamics and H/C so much a lot of your work is right up my alley already 😀

Let me seeeee, then, I don't have any fully-finished DC omegaverse of my own, I'm pretty sure, BUT here's some goodies I think you might dig! Your mileage may vary, obviously, so mind the tags, but I think all of these fics are interesting and I enjoyed them myself.

. . . also gonna be honest, there's a lot more nursing fic in here than I expected, haha.

You and me and them. Let's be pack. Let's show the world we chose each other, by Ace_of_Hearts4444. This is, like, the literal first fic I thought of for DC omegaverse recs, especially for your listed likes. Pack dynamics-heavy AU WIP where being stray is dangerous and unhealthy, especially for presented people, and Kon just so happens to present while stray. So Young Justice immediately makes a pack for him, naturally, with a side of alpha!Tim/omega!Kon. And uh, then Clark gets in trouble for obliviously letting his clonebrother/clonekid/clone?? run around stray, haha. Also just about literally everyone in here is my fave dynamic for them, haha, I think this author is in my HEAD.

This Isn't How Things Are Supposed to Go, But We've Always Been Unorthodox, by RenkonNairu. This is an AU Tim/Kon WIP with alpha!Tim accidentally marking omega!Conner Luthor and the subsequent fallout, and also omega!Clark's PTSD from Lex being a bastard and angst about the pup he couldn't stand to keep while alpha!Bruce very patiently attempts to court him. Warning for past rape/noncon with Lex/Clark.

Soft as a petal, sharp as a knife, by BearlyWriting. This is kinda angsty but def has found family and hurt/comfort elements to it; pre-death Jason presents as an omega and makes some understandable misassumptions about the situation, and Dick helps him through it. Warning for past rape/noncon prior to Jason coming to the manor and Jason being afraid of it having happened again.

punishment verse, by dexdefyingstunts. This one is honestly, like, very porny but also is pack dynamics/found family and hurt/comfort. Long story short, alpha!Jason gets gangbanged back into the Batpack by Bruce and his brothers and it's, like, surprisingly sweet but also kinda dubcon. Warning for dubious consent, past underage, and implied incest, but it's mostly incest between adopted family members and isn't intended to be either any kind of romantic relationships or abusive, it's a hierarchy thing in the AU. Just mind the tags, basically.

Sweet Like Honey, by Nightwang. This is literally just "no one gave Kon decent sex ed and surprise, he's an omega!!" Tim/Kon porn. Basically, Tim helps Kon through his presentation heat and they're both cute about it.

Baby mine, by PrincessKinny. Dick has been hiding his secondary gender but that stops working when Damian happens and his inner omega decides that is His Pup and he needs to goddamn PROVIDE for him.

Omega Milk, by Ellegrine. Series about omega!Jason slowly starting to let various pack members nurse from him and strengthening familial bonds in the process; goes from Damian to Tim to Dick to Bruce. Definitely covers hurt/comfort and absolutely thriiiiives on miscommunication and Bruce being unnecessarily stoic and fucking himself up emotionally in the process.

Baby Birds, by iselsis. One of Dick's pups tries to steal Batman's tires and Dick lets the alpha take them, assuming he's going to be the trade-off for Jason and Tim getting a safe home living with Bruce Wayne. Warning for Dick spending basically the whole fic assuming he's about to be sexually assaulted, though said assumptions are unfounded and it's actually just all sweet and domestic and a little bit heartbreaking.

a kind of faith prevails, by julodinae_sunsets. WIP where newly-rezzed Jason presents as an omega and Talia decides that means he should be pupsitting for her. Canon proceeds very differently from there, and Damian will NOT tolerate anyone trying to take him away from his new umm'i.

Wet Nurse, by Cheesy_Potatoes. Bruce is an omega and everyone keeps bringing him their traumatized pups to nurse. WIP.

Omegaverse Jewels, by Zinc10. Jason presents belatedly as an omega and takes the inconvenience about as well as can be expected. Tim/Jason and a lot of Batpack fussing as everyone takes their turn trying to get Jason home.

I Have Worn a Coat of Scars, by Ellegrine. Omega!Jason has self-esteem issues and alpha!Dick fucks them better; that's it, that's the fic.

the pillow fortress of solitude, by feelingwhimsy. YJ cartoon fic, season one era. Everybody finds out Superboy is half-human by finding out he's an omega, and Robin and Wally bro-cuddle him through it. Ending this rec list on a cute note, haha.

[isan0rt]

Good Lord. Okay. Listen. We all agree that pre-timeskip Houses Dedue is not doing so great in the mental health department. We all agree on that. My guy needs therapy about his survivor's guilt and his PTSD and we're all agreed his self deprecation is Intense but like.

Listen. You can't…address that without also acknowledging he's like that because people have been Fucking Racist To Him Constantly for the Last Four Years of his Goddamn Life. And not like, just ‘microaggressions at the workplace’ racist, though also that too. Like, ‘somebody might fucking murder him’ kind of racist. He's not just insecure or whatever. This man is trying not to get hate-crimed.

It's rational, actually, for Dedue to assume that Any Given Faerghan is gonna be racist to him, because before going to Garreg Mach every given Faerghan except Dimitri HAS BEEN super mega turbo racist to him everywhere he goddamn goes. There's no reason for him to believe his classmates are gonna be different. Like, he doesn't know Mercedes is from the Empire! He has no reason to believe Chivalrous Knight Fanboy Ashe doesn't hate Duscur and everyone from there for regicide. Annette is the only one with a pass and only because Dedue respected Gustave until he went out for cigarettes and never came back, abandoning not only Dimitri but also Dedue in the process. The safest thing is to assume people are gonna come at him hot and preemptively deescalate the situation.

Like, he suffers from the “you can get C and B supports after the time skip” weirdness for sure, but even in his C supports, even if you get them before the skip, he is fully willing to tell Felix where to stick his fucking grapes, and he's willing to tell Ingrid she can be as big of a bitch about it as she wants but he's still going to do his job on the battlefield even if that means keeping her alive. He's consistently assertive of his boundaries with Dimitri in all their supports, including when Dimitri wishes that he did not have a particular boundary (using Dimitri's name and calling each other friends, things it's actually physically not safe for pre timeskip Dedue to do).

Because he is confident Dimitri isn't gonna fucking lose his mind at Dedue about it. He's also confident Felix, Ingrid, and Sylvain won't do a hate crime at him if he's acting in capacity of Dimitri's Vassal because of their fundamental loyalty to Dimitri, so he can safely tell them to shove it also. He tells Gustave he's a disappointment to Gustave’s face in their support!! Dedue isn't just a shrinking violet or whatever, he's just judicious about what shit he's gonna start, and how likely it is that talking shit is gonna get him hit.

(Also, yes he's a quiet guy... But also he's interacting with all these people in his second language, which he has no formal training in and which he learned from Dimitri. He really has to think about what he's going to say before he says anything because there is very little margin for error for him to misspeak without consequences and he knows it.)

Honestly unpopular opinion because like while I'm under no illusions that they did clearly fake out killing him for reasons other than his personal growth, I actually think it was in Dedue's personal best interest that he spent the timeskip in Duscur. This man hates Faerghus, he says that to Dimitri in their supports, but he's been stuck with them and having to just put up with it because he had nowhere else to go (even aside from the fact that Dimitri is literally the only living person in the world who loves him and he's terrified of losing that).

He's very clearly much more self-actualized when he returns, and in a much more relaxed and self-assured emotional place after the timeskip. Probably because he wasn't the one and only Highly Visible Do A Racism Here target and instead was with his own community, where he could actually unpack all that shit safely. Dedue needed that time outside the Racist Aggression Bubble of Faerghus to deal with his survivor's guilt properly.

You really can't address Dedue's self-image issues without also digging into the way dealing with constant racism reinforces those issues. You super cannot. Race and racism and how he deals with it is critical to the character. Is it always handled gracefully by the narrative?? No, absolutely it's not, but it is in fact in the narrative and you HAVE to engage with it if you're going to engage with Why Dedue is Like That.

[skaldish]

VENT INCOMING, DIRECTED AT NO ONE IN PARTICULAR

I'm losing my goddamn mind y'all. I've worked my ass off all month and purchased only the bare essentials and at the end of the day I have all of $6.07 to my name.

Six fucking dollars.

I am beyond anguished. How the fuck is anyone supposed to make it right now without ending up in inpatient from working themselves to death? Because that's nearly what happened to me back in 2020, and my brain and body are incapable of sitting 40 fuckoff hours a week in an office because of it.

What do I do these days? I spend all my waking hours either drawing new designs (which FUCKING HURTS because I have permanent soft-tissue damage in my hand from my previous job) or making prayer beads, which takes a ton of time to craft, photograph, edit, and upload to the website.

And normally this wouldn't be much of an issue, but work is a thousand times harder for me when I'm in a dead panic, because my fear response is to freeze, so I have to take time out of my day to soothe my C-PTSD-addled brain so I can work without incurring additional self-harm.

No, it's not worth going on disability for me. I've checked and it's not worth the lack of financial mobility. My state has general assistance options, but the amount of cash you get from that is pebbles compared the mountain that is the cost of rent. My therapist used to be a social worker and even she is out of ideas.

I haven't been able to work on Skald's Keep because I can't afford to.

I haven't been able to continue translating Ebbe Schon's work because I can't afford to.

All I do is stay on this miserable device from sunup to sundown working on contracted websites and running my store, only to end up with six cock-sucking dollars at the end of the month because I so much as dared to look at a box of grapes at the grocery store.

Gods, this is beyond humiliating. I feel like a fucking failure.

Here's my ko-fi if you want to give me a buck for my thoughts.

And, as always, my store, if you want something for said buck.

But fuckhell do I need to break through this because I can't stand feeling like a begging dog.

[afniel]

Nevi Infodumps Upon Request: MMX2

Because god damn let's just make this its own thing and stop doing it on some other poor bastard's post, what did they to do deserve me happening to them.

Also I have to make a correction! There is no Z-Saber in X1, I just remembered that goofy. Zero doesn't give you shit if you upgraded your arm parts, he just dies. It doesn't even exist until X2. I have no idea why I thought that considering I played it recently enough but despite appearances I'm not known for my great recall of chronological order shit.

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST AND I HAVE REMEMBERED THAT "MANNERS" EXIST SINCE YESTERDAY SO. I am using a cut. And lowering my voice. This too is "manners."

@longshotlink I have done the thing! It does not stop from happening.

OKAY SO TO RECAP.

Mega Man X1: *slaps X* this bad boy can hold so much survivor's guilt and self-loathing.

There, that's it, that's the recap you get.

My second favorite game in the series is X2 and you're about to find out that I like them in the order they came out in, so this is going to look chronological. It is not! Not really. This is a coincidence.

Six months after X got PTSD real bad from everyone he knows dying/being killed by him (except technically Dr. Cain I GUESS, I forgot he existed for a moment there) he's still tracking down Sigma's followers and presumably shooting the hell out them. He goes to an abandoned reploid factory with the Maverick Hunters, where Green Biker Dude dies after a glorious ten seconds of doing nothing but popping a sick wheelie on a Ride Chaser and getting shot to fuck.

Rip to a real one, I guess. Pour one out for Green Biker Dude while we're here.

(Because we source our art here, this is by Springqueen on DeviantART.)

X tears through the factory and kills a huge-ass mechaniloid—wait, you say, the hell is a mechaniloid, we got reploids but that hasn't come up yet? Well, see, there's normal robots, and there's people robots, and mechaniloids are the normal robots who aren't really self-aware, and you literally cannot predict who the fuck is which:

This is a sentient being, with a rich inner life and emotions equivalent to a human's! (Only the C-15 model from X1, though, after that they're mechaniloids.)

This man is just a really fancy computer who can't actually feel anything!

I am not even joking. This is canon. Figure it out! I sure can't. It is a mystery. Nothing makes sense and everything is confusing and quite possibly bad.

There are three dudes ominously watching X and talking about some kind of nonsense bullshit crap, and these guys are Agile, who is tall, smirky, and pointy; Serges, who is short, Dr. Wily, and pointy; and Violen, who is huge, dumb as a sack of hammers, and pointy.

No really, they're all kinda pointy. For some reason they specifically have pointy feet. And they're talking about 'the control chip' and being all m~y~s~t~e~r~i~o~u~s but let's just get it out of the way. These mofos are reassembling Zero for nefarious reasons. Why? Well, you see, when you're Keiji Inafune and you just made a game, even though you teased a sequel in the post-credits, you totally did not think this through (because you have never thought anything all the way through in your life and you are not beginning now!) and now you're stuck, because you WANTED to make Zero the main character, got talked out of it, and then somehow ended up killing your intended main character. And everyone else. The only surviving named characters are X and Dr. Cain, and like...now what, right? Shit. Fuck. You fucked it up. You were supposed to leave some guys for the sequel. Well uhhhh they're all robots, just...reassemble someone real fast. Like Zero. You wanted him to be the cool one anyway, let's try that again but not wrong this time!

But never mind that! It's all fixable. Everything is fixable. Even Zero! Well, no, X isn't fixable, he's a goddamn mess, but details, man.

This gets a LITTLE fucky to summarize because there's some branching paths, so I'm gonna flip back to the actual game side for a second. X2 actually fucking slaps as a game. It's got an extra math coprocessor in the cartridge! Did you know that? The Cx4 chip showed up again in MMX3, and was the reason X2 suddenly had WAY more onscreen sprites, transparency effects, and even 3D wireframe enemies. This shit was amazing on the SNES.

Also, X2 is another case of "oh no, these Mavericks are ex-Hunters again," so like. ACAB. Not all of the Mavericks are, but still more than none, which you'd hope would be the number. They have not learned shit about shit for vetting members. The call is coming from inside the house, guys! Maybe Hunter HQ should think about the implications of the fact that—*I am shot in the head by Keiji Inafune, who has never once thought something all the way through in his life and is not beginning now, killing me instantly*

In X1 there were basically three kinds of defector:

I'm So Bored Please God Kill Me Now

I Just Love Hitting Things

and

Whatever You Say Chief!

Well, and Storm Eagle's unfortunate little thing of

I Got My Ass Beat To Hell And Back Until I Said Fine I'll Kill The Humans With You Just To Make It Stop And All I Got Was This Terminate On Sight Designation T-Shirt

X2 is a little more varied than that. You now have the new exciting backstory flavors of

I Love Money More Than My Life And This Guy Promised Me A Raise, Sooooo... (Bubble Crab)

The Bad Guys Are Somehow Less Ableist Than The Good Guys (Overdrive Ostrich, who USED TO be able to fly, lost the ability in an accident, and retired because the Hunters were kind of treating him like damaged goods and he was over it. Editor's note I do not blame this dude at all, what the fuck!)

BLOCK OUT THE SUN (Flame Stag)

I Love Trash (Morph Moth, who was not a Hunter)

Idk I Was Already Doing Crimes, Might As Well (Crystal Snail, also not a Hunter)

Sigma Is My Literal Dad (Wire Sponge, made in one of Sigma's reploid factories. He came out wrong even for a Maverick. Good job, Sigma. Great quality control.)

There's Still No Virus In The Continuity But I Sure Caught It Somehow Anyway?? Help Me (Magna Centipede, who used to be in Zero's unit, but got 'brainwashed' somehow.)

(This happens a lot. This will keep happening. Zero collects subordinates who are just WAITING for an excuse. Also this will make a whole lot more sense once they retcon in the Maverick Virus and then MORE sense once they retcon in that it is coming from Zero specifically but we aren't there yet so right now it's just weird and kind of unfortunate!)

And you still have at least one I Just Love Hitting Things (Wheel Gator).

Also why are so many of these guys invertebrates? This is like the invertebrate game. X1 has two, but X2 has five of these things. (X3 has three, X4 has two again, X5 has three again, X6 has three, X7 only has one, and you will not see another game with five again until X8, the last one. I don't know why I went to count that.)

After X whacks a few of the Maverick stage bosses, there's a little cutscene at Dr. Cain's lab. The three shadowy weirdos from the intro call Dr. Cain to say like, "Hey, X, we named ourselves the X-Hunters for reasons you'll never be able to guess, and also we have Zero's parts. Meet us at the wherever the hell on the map we visibly teleport to after this in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking." They hang up, Dr. Cain is like, "Well, it's fine, we still have Zero's control chip here and they can't really resurrect him without it, plus this is obviously bait, so maybe don't do anything too hast—"

X declares he's got to get Zero's parts back at any cost and runs the fuck off, because he's fine, okay. He doesn't wanna talk about it.

This scene is way more interesting in Japanese, where Serges and only Serges slips a bit and calls him Rockman X, which is sus, because nobody really mentions Rockman in the games, except for some reason Dr. Cain in English who calls him Mega Man X. Dr. Cain has actually read Dr. Light's notes so he's got at least a historical reason to be doing this, but Serges wouldn't know that shit, right? It is definitely unrelated that the Japanese materials describe Serges as having comparable intellect to a certain unnamed mad scientist. It is also certainly coincidence that despite Zero being an absolutely undocumented black box of a Wily creation, Serges somehow knows how to upgrade him too.

Let's assume for the plot that X does go through and collect all of Zero's parts, which is his head, torso, and legs. Now correct me if I'm wrong but his head did not actually fall off in X1...but meh, details, right? Once you have all three, Dr. Cain says he needs a little more time to get Zero's control chip installed, so go deal with the other Mavericks until then. Then, once you do that, he tells you it's going to take even MORE time, but hey, the X-Hunters are hanging out at the North Pole, like some kind of shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and murder you. So X fucks off to the North Pole to do some violence, and shoots the hell out all three of the X-Hunters, like you do. In Japanese, Serges is kind of pissed that "Light's memento robot" defeated him, which again...yeah, that seems normal, nothing to see here!

Once X murderhobos his way through the rematch fights, he gets a random zoom call from Sigma, who invites him to come to the central computer in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking, and once there he gets a nasty surprise: his buddy Zero is there, chilling, and Sigma is like, "Lol he's so mad that you let him die. Look at how upset he's getting. Look at his fists. They're balled. He wants to beat you up so bad." Except, assuming you collected all of Zero's parts, this is a shitty dollar store Zero with a palette swap, and the real Zero is offended as shit and shows up and kills the fuck out of his copy, saving you a fight. Sigma is like, "WHY are you not on my side though man you should be. You should totally be on my side and fighting him instead, it's your destiny." Zero's like, "Maybe so, but I still don’t like you!" <- Unlike almost everything else I keep putting in quotation marks, that's a real quote. I'm not making that one up. It's even better in Japanese because it's SO DISMISSIVE the way he says it. It's literally, "It's because I don't like you," but you'd almost have to localize it to something like "It's because I don't like your face," to convey the don't-give-a-singular-fuck disdain. He's just like, fuck your stupid destiny thing, do I look like the kind of person who cares.

I feel like this game is just kind of less interesting at the end than X1. Sigma did actually run off to Magna Centipede's level for his final stage for some reason, which is unusual. A lot of the implied angst in the first game exists, and X basically ignoring Dr. Cain's attempt at warning him to be careful because OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE CAN FIX THIS ONE THING AND MAYBE AT LEAST ONE PERSON HE CARES ABOUT WILL BE OKAY is pretty good. And once you blow up Sigma, he does have a little foreshadowing about Zero being "the last of the doctor's creations," or MUCH more specifically in Japanese, being "the last of the Wi...num...ers..." aka the Wily Numbers, aka Dr. Wily's robots, which is like...where'd you hear that, hm? Were you talking to that shady Serges guy again who was also basically your lieutenant? Couldn't be he's someone from the past who would know all this shit.

But I'm not gonna touch the epilogue just yet because let's say X decided that actually he should focus on the mission at hand and ignore these guys clearly trying to goad him into doing something stupid. Good call, X! You have finally learned a little self-preservation. Except, this goes badly actaully, because the X-Hunters will break into Dr. Cain's lab, not butcher him for some reason even though that would have been the logical thing to do if they really wanted to fuck with X and hamper his efforts, and steal all of Zero's parts, including his control chip.

I have a little headcanon about the reason they didn't bother, but I'll save that for a second or three later. For now...

X fucks off to the North Pole as before, deals with the X-Hunters (who are now shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and STEAL YOUR DEAD FRIEND'S LEGS??), meets Sigma at the central computer, and Zero is there, only that's the real Zero, and X has to fight him. Maybe for the first time, but not for the last time, because reasons! X wins, which apparently slaps some sense into Zero, who for some reason apologizes for causing so much trouble (probably having been resurrected, reprogrammed, and then kicked in the head by your bestie until you're unreprogrammed makes you stupid) and says he's going to go destroy the main computer.

Wait, what main computer, like do you mean this entire stage? When did we ever establish about there being a main computer that needed to be destroooooh fine whatever go destroy the main computer and X can just fall down this hole where Sigma is. X is like, "Take care of yourself, Zero. I don't have time to put you back together again," and once again that's a real quote and I'm not just being flippant. Was that an attempt at humor? In Japanese it's just, "Do you intend to die?" which is like. God damn, X. I know this is the point in the game in which Zero exploded himself last time, but he JUST got here, he's not going to Death Hug the computer too. But ya boy is evidently having a flashback.

From there things proceed as normal, X defeats Sigma, and this time,

Two of them.

Joined by his friend Zero, Mega Man X gazes out over the sea. Sigma has once again been destroyed, but X wonders if the fighting will truly end. Was Dr. Light’s dream of a world in which Reploids and humans lived together in peace merely a dream? The price of peace is often high, X thinks to himself. Who or what must be sacrificed for it to become a reality? And when the time comes, will he be able to do it? The future holds the answers or…

It's a lot less of a downer than X1 was. The music is tense and kinda gloomy, but it's not the endless despair party that X1's ending theme was. X is like, okay, maybe this will work out. Sigma's defeated again, this sucks and all, but he's clearly the bad guy in this situation so there's less of an internal conflict about Was This The Right Thing To Do. Obviously so! It's less, was this right, and more, can I do this? And Zero's back, so maybe even some of the mistakes are fixable. It's not going to be easy, sure, but it at least feels possible.

Or maybe it's hopeless after all. Will the fighting truly end?

Haha, no. But don't tell him that right now, I don't think he could handle it. Can you imagine. Let the poor dude rest for five minutes. Just let him have this one little victory. God damn.

Anyway, let's leave those guys on their cliff and go over here instead for

HEADCANON TIME oh boy let's do it!!

So, it is not at all a stretch to say that Serges is probably some kind of AI incarnation of Dr. Wily. The game is not explicit about this, no, but it's heavily implied in the Japanese version, and Keiji Inafune, who has never thought anything all the way through in his entire life and is not starting now, is on record as having left it intentionally vague so that you can draw your own conclusions. Weird thing to tease, if there weren't a little truth to it.

This takes some of the later games' plot existing to make sense, but I don't think the X-Hunters really exist to be subservient to Sigma and just carry out his funny little genocidal reploid rampage. It's established that Zero was created by Dr. Wily, and if there's one thing that you can count on with Dr. Wily, it's that he is the kind of guy who will create a whole guy whose personality is summed up by, "I exist to kill this other guy and then after that I have no idea." He definitely did this with Bass. He definitely did this with Zero. In fact he went so overboard with Zero's Kill A Guy programming that Zero wanted to kill EVERY guy upon activation, which Sigma had to beat out of him (X4), making him weirdly normal.

(In fact the original recipe Maverick Virus was just a day-one patch for Zero's omnicidal bullshit tendencies to make him fucking stop it, dude, you have things to be doing that aren't creating new Pollock works all over the buried lab every time like a rat or something wanders in. But then because Wily is kind of a shit programmer but a really good scavenger of other people's shit, the day-one patch went, fine, you suck, I'm doing a world tour and getting stronger and coming back and FIXING YOU. Maverick Virus out.)

Now if you were some kind of AI version of Dr. Wily watching this—your favorite and final murder machine that you made specifically to kill Dr. Light's little baby-boo-bop hugs and love machine—and he is NOT doing that, he is in fact BECOMING BESTIES FOR LIFE with his enemy, this is not cool! This is just more proof that you are a bad programmer. Or, your original meatsuit self was a bad programmer, and now YOU are a program made of and by a bad programmer, which is arguably WORSE. It's enough to give a guy a FUCKING COMPLEX. Which is also a common thing to happen to any given Wily creation.

So your goal, here, because you think you're Dr. Wily or close enough to count, is to manipulate the situation into getting Zero to remember that he's supposed to be biting X to death with his teeth, not whatever the fuck pattycake he's playing with him right now, what the FUCK. WHAT the FUCK. Ahem.

If you have the X-Hunters kill Dr. Cain, well, that's not going to incentivize this happening at all. X is going to be so mad he kills you, and that's not optimal for shit. So fuck that guy. We ignore him. Unused variable. Just get Zero's parts and scram, because the important thing is rebuilding Zero, not fingerpainting with the innards of some human. (Even if Violen would probably be into that, but he's an idiot whose text box dialogue even appears more slowly than anyone else's, you can't listen to him if you want to get ahead in life.)

Sigma is really secondary to this too. He's very conveniently placed, and kind of easy to manipulate: just tell him that you know all about Zero (which is true) and that he's supposed to be on Sigma's side (which is close enough to true that he won't question it) and you can make this happen (you think you can. IT SHOULD WORK. Dammit. How bad of a programmer was your mental predecessor, anyway?). So Sigma kindly sets up everything for you, and you do your thing.

And they fight! Finally. It is glorious. Of course you are dead by the time this happens, probably, but maybe you aren't, because you have probably vacated your trashed-ass body into some other convenient system. (You will definitely not show up in X6 as some guy named Isoc, who upon finishing his work, goes absolutely inert like his whole-ass self just left his body, which you have definitely not just done and will not do again.)

EXCEPT GOD DAMMIT ZERO X HIT YOU IN THE HEAD HARD ENOUGH YOU CALMED DOWN AGAIN. GOD. DAMMIT. WHY THIS. FUCK. Okay, yeah, you're leaving. See y'all in X6, this sucks.

Anyway the real takeaway here is that Dr. Wily was just such a big fan of percussive maintenance that Zero occasionally needs to get beaten in the head with a wrench for a bit and then he's great for a while. If he starts twitching, that just means it's Wrench Time.

Anyway, that's X2, my second most favorite one.

Wire Sponge is a luffa, by the way. Loofah. However it's spelled.

This thing. That's what he is.

And I will not stop calling centipedes 'hyakuleggers' now because Magne Hyakulegger is way funner than Magna Centipede as a name.

[someoneinjersey]

all I did was brush the surface of talking about my stupid rp characters with @the-one-blog-to-rule-them-all earlier and now i'm like SHOULD I GET A WEBSITE TO LOG THEM ALL WITH BIOS AND PICTURES AND STUFF I STILL KIND OF REMEMBER HOW TO DO HTML?????

no pls calm down I just like talking about myself and my shit because i'm self centered and all my likes and hobbies were discounted most of my life by my family.

yo I'm reading this book called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and fuuuuuuuck me its like reading about my whole fucking life and personality and my parents' personalities and Jesus Christ it's a great read but like fuck you just don't realize how fucked up things were in your childhood when its hammered into you that you didn't starve or get beaten or experience homelessness or addiction.

speaking of I am soooooo tired of talking to my mom every goddamn day like if I don't check in with her by like 6 pm she texts me like ARE YOU OKAY?!!??! like yeah I'm just doing things or sleeping or something like it is not a priority to talk to you every single damn day bro she even called the other day and instead of saying hi said "are you glad to hear from your mom?" like I don't talk to her EVERY DAY. and that's really actually emotionally manipulative because then i'm forced into answering a weird question to give her some kind of validation or trying to dodge it by just bringing up whatever she was just complaining about to distract her from it so I don't have to answer. id really love to just check in maybe once a week but I feel obligated because she's so miserable in her marriage and home and now she has this HUGE GAPING WOUND that won't heal as a complication from her transplant and it is GNARLY and it looks absolutely fake but she's suffering from it and so its like I cant even try to set a boundary right now.

my aunt was talking about having a big family get together over the summer and I was like oh yeah it'd be great if Kate and I could both come up wouldn't that be nice and like ............................ no. like I miss my extended family and I enjoyed seeing them when I went "home" in October but going up there again would mean A the stress of travel again B I cant afford traveling to begin with and C seeing my mom and her husband. I could handle my mom for like a day or something but if I have to be around her husband its absolutely horrible. plus like I don't even feel welcome back at their house because they emptied my room and redecorated it within two weeks of me moving down here. I have so much PTSD and so many triggers about going back "home". I do miss New Jersey but more in the sense of being by the water and convenient things and close cities to do stuff in and hockey games and the pride of just being from NJ but as much as I hate this place here it is NOT worth it to go back to NJ again for a long long long long long time.

blah blah blahhhh

[laooneart]

Hello merry Christmas people i am here today because i will be headcanon-ing Harringrove love languages

Lets go

Steve:

obviously gift giving You cannot tell me he doesn’t love giving Billy gifts, even if it’s literally just a flower he found on his garden

Physical touch This man can’t keep his hands to himself, he needs to feel the heat of another body, I also headcanon that he hates being alone cuz he definitely has PTSD due to all the shit that he’s been through since season one

Acts of service Try to deny that this boy is willing to do whatever it takes to keep you happy/help you/keep you safe, even if it could be extremely dangerous for his life as we’ve seen how he’s so protective. I’d imagine that when he finds out what Neil has been doing to Billy he’d go livid, like straight up would beat the shit out of him if he sees him lay a hand on Billy, he wouldn’t care if Neil is stronger and bigger. (You know what? As soon as i get my laptop imma write that into a fic)

Words of affirmation My baby doesn’t get any words of encouragement/affirmation or validation and his self esteem is nonexistent since the Halloween party in season two. So I can see Steve actually crying without even noticing when Billy says something like “Holy shit Harrington! You’re a genius!” “I hate to admit it, but you’re not that bad at fighting” “You might just have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen holy shit” (this last one is the one that breaks him)

He’s just not used to being loved, and I’m actually livid about it

Gift receiving He never gets gifts, period. Who would give him a gift? Nancy? No that’d be awkward for both. His parents? What a joke, probably not even a letter or call to check up on him, sure they send him money because they’re not about to leave their child without some sort of support cuz you know, Hopper would be on their asses about it since that’d be like child negligence. So when Billy gets him something,(a flower a letter even a goddamn cassette made BY HIM) Steve can’t help but be

A. Confused af

B.More in love than he already is

C. Overwhelmed and starts to cry

D. All of the above

Billy:

Acts of service Billy won’t normally say anything sweet like Steve would or wouldn’t start the physical touch kind of love, so he sticks to SHOWING how much he loves or cares for Steve. Also im sure since Steve is willing to move heaven and Earth for Billy, Billy is willing to destroy the world for Steve (you’ve seen those texts where they say that a hero would sacrifice you to save the world and a villain would sacrifice the world for you? Yup, that’s Billy)

Quality time Let’s be honest, he finds EVERY excuse on the book to get away from his father and problems, so i imagine he’d constantly go to Steve’s house just to talk/smoke/ or do what fucking ever

Physical touch Listen listen, i know i said Billy isn’t the type to start physical touch but when already engaged in it he’ll continue it. Like Steve brushes his hand against Billy’s? He’ll grab his hand and intertwine their fingers or Steve will start cuddling him and Billy will start stroking Steve’s hair or something

Words of affirmation He has a higher self esteem than Steve but since he normally doesn’t hear anything related to love receiving whenever Steve tells him: “I love you” “You’re amazing” “How did i get so lucky to have meet you?” ,Billy would just go “Oh”

And that would be it! Thanks so much for reading this and I’d love to hear what you guys think about this, any suggestions? Feedback? Send em right up!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year loves!

[diffenbachiae]

hi lizzie. do you have any advice for someone who is very much not on their own side

yes!!! for me it was 3 separate pieces all kind of coming together over the course of the past few years. the first 18 years of my life were a long stretch of ‘if i can just make it to adulthood and out of this house it’ll all be okay’ and once i made it i was very quickly realizing that everything was not, in fact, okay. some of this might not be as relevant for you if you aren’t someone with c-ptsd but for me this is what helped!!

1) If everyone else is a person, you have to be a person too. Things that apply to all people must be true for you as well.

that’s where I had to start because that’s where my self-esteem was- it was really hard for me to convince myself that i deserved to eat, let alone that i deserved friendship, love, or affection. i would have myself come up with Rules for All People. all people deserve enough food to fuel their body. all people have inherent worth without needing to prove anything. all people deserve friends who treat them well. this really helped me confront the hypocrisy in my own brain and helped me see how flawed my own perspective of myself is- it’s really hard for me to think of myself as a person automatically and it’s much easier for me to come up with things i think are true for all humans and then logically i Must be part of that group.

2) Nothing will get better unless you try / you have to trust yourself.

dude i wasn’t even trying for such a long time. i think that a big part of this was my obsession with rescue/found family stories as a kid- i expected a safe loving adult to swoop in and save me and teach me how to be a person and obviously that never happened, but i didn’t realize the fantasy persisted. i wanted my friends to let me tearfully confess my childhood and have that magically make it better, i wanted a picture-perfect significant other to scoop me into their arms and erase my childhood… this isn’t to say that talking about your loved ones with your feelings doesn’t improve things, but that mental health recovery has to be an individual journey at the end of the day. you have to want to get better and work at it. part of this for me was working on not lying to myself. i would think ‘it’s okay that i’m laying in bed for 12 straight hours today, i’ll get up and clean tomorrow’ all while knowing full well i wasn’t gonna fuckin do that for a second. it was always tomorrow, next week, next year, things will be different, but then i wouldn’t take any action to make things different. i started to practice telling myself i would do things and following through. this feels really silly to type out bc it sounds so simple but self-discipline was one of the biggest skills i was lacking and teaching myself it has made a HUGE difference. it’s really hard to learn how to make yourself do things you don’t want to do but if you start small and ramp up it’s way easier.

3) You’re allowed to have fun.

everyone in this goddamn world will try and convince you you can’t have fun and it makes it so hard to stay on your own team. shame is a really powerful weapon of control and it’s so easy to start to internalize it until you feel guilty about EVERYTHING. guilt about eating food, what kind of food, if it was too much food… guilt about rest, about oversleeping, about productivity… idk i feel like there’s a million rules to follow about what my life ‘should’ look like and none of them seem quite that focused on the enjoyment of that life. i started to try and practice looking at my choices with less judgement and more focus on enjoyment. sure i can spend five hours on tiktok and then tell myself i’m lazy and terrible because of it but that doesn’t actually do or solve anything- i’m beating myself up because i feel like i should. what’s more useful is to think ‘did i enjoy that time genuinely? do i even remember any of the videos i watched? did i do that because i get joy out of it or because it’s easier than being bored?’ tiktok is my example because it’s the app i most easily fall into using out of habit and not enjoyment, but i also genuinely really enjoy tiktok when i use it in a specific way (crochet inspo, rewatching my favorite covers of songs… instead of just the FYP)

this ended up being really long rip i hope it’s useful to you anon!!!! please keep in mind i’m not a mental health expert of any kind i am just someone who is too poor to afford therapy and has spent countless hours reading books and online resources in an attempt to not feel like a pit of sadness on a day to day basis lol. please feel free to send me more asks or message me if you want to talk more (this goes for anyone reading this as well!!!!!) ✨💖💖

[fictionkinfessions]

(cw: very much venty and negative, cult discussion, minor gore mention, uses second-person pronouns near the end but is addressed at random and not at reader) the fandom seems obsessed with me apologizing. over and over again i see them saying, he’s going to have to apologize so much in season 3. fanart upon fanart of me apologizing and apologizing and being ignored. you know what? i did fucking crawl on my knees and beg and apologize and bawl because i am c-ptsd: the character. but that is not their fucking business. almost any apology i would give in the story would be an extension of my trauma. they want an apology for another stupid fucking reason. so, you know what, fucking here: i’m SORRY that i was born and raised into a religious cult that put our status above all others and i’m SORRY that it’s like tearing my nails off to talk to someone shunned from that cult even if i love him and i’m SORRY that i acted strangely and rudely while i was literally dealing with my cult leader showing up on my doorstep, now innocent, and i’m so, so fucking sorry that i said that to my most beloved when i was literally drowning in doubt and fear and self-hatred because of everything i had been taught for over six thousand years. i’m so fucking sorry that some of you can’t see that something fucking bad happened to me. they told me to shut up and die. he would never, ever say these goddamn things. i’m so sorry you can’t see that. i’m sorry that some of you are too fucking stupid to forgive me. -#📔🍣🪶

📦

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

wish I had a comprehensive list of all well-known people who fucking had something to do with last year's global hate campaign against an abuse survivor (which if I didn't have C-PTSD before that, I sure fucking do now) whatever they said or did because two of my worst trauma/mental illness/neurodivergence symptoms is paranoia, hypersensitivity and impulsiveness and I can't fucking enjoy doing my favourite things right now. even people who didn't and spoke out because lord knows I have lost so much and been hurt so much that I just need hope in the fucking human race again and that the people I find fun to watch and talk about aren't actually assholes. especially since even who appeared to be rational fell for this.

I'm so goddamn traumatised I just want to know without looking it up. I don't need that torture. It's so fucking difficult to feel hopeful about anything or anyone right now.

[ourdrybones]

I’m so discouraged my psychiatrist upped my dose of Prozac but added the caveat that if it is c-PTSD like my therapist thinks then SSRIs aren’t the answer because it’s not a chemical imbalance it’s brain trauma. So idk I feel fucking nuts all the goddamn time right now and I struggled adapting to the Prozac in the first place and now I have to struggle to adapt to this dosage only to wait and see if it actually does anything.

I also went on the c-PTSD Reddit and am reading about other people’s responses to medication and it feels all to relatable. I just hate that I have to actually work through this and process it. I’m so exhausted. I want to be better so bad.

[soulfullionbunny]

i tried to change myself for her but i cant. i tried to be more active on social media but im just not someone gy have a need to express myself. i dont want people to see me, and i dont want people to hear me. besides, going public is seriusly putting ourselves at risk for identity theft/scam. do you know how many sensitive information we exposed? the fact that my instagram and tiktok is public is goddamn nervewrecking. had to hide my birthday, my adress and shit. tu pun x complete, my college and my old high school still there. fuck me i hope im not one of those people yg kena scam sbb tu dowh.

i also tried to be more outgoing, but didnt end well. not a fan being mesra and doing small talk. if im gonna connect, i want it to be over something i will have in common with. in the mean time, i will stuck around wiht my extroverted friends je. im not comfortable with strangers honey, sorry.

then i tried being a rider/rempit. she mentioned she likes them, so... aku pun dah lama plan nak beli motor. maybe she like me again if aku ada ciri2 yg dia suka. but i cant gak bcs that would need money, and im using my money for the future. i cant spend it on that (yet). i know rezeki boleh cari yada yada bla bla but this is my way of mencari rezeki. i will secure money for me and my family first before i spend it on commitment camtu. it will be fun and it will be badass af, but too bad, i have a future to secure.

generally x de changes sangat, im still me. im not pious even after the changes i did. tried memorizing the Quran but i think im too slow for it. at least aku x tinggal solat dah which is good. i can offer religion stability to me future family. im still autistic, having ADHD and C-PTSD. those are permanent, so they are part of me FOREVER lol. therapy is getting expensive so i had to downgrade to public therapist and some exercise my old therapist gave to me. emotionally im more present but damn it takes a lot of energy. probably why i never express it in the first place. lagi 1, my god im also still horny af. i dont know what is wrong with me but my libido is never ending man. this is clearly not porn problem sbb i stop it cold turkey, its my bio problem. dasar species kena kawen awal. i held back lama but at some point kena release gak lmao. bcs of that i had no choice to marstubate once a while. its not that hard actually without porn, but actually easier. probably i dont need the extra help. and its actually flood everytime i did it. damn i probably need to write a separate post about my masturbation journey HAHAHAHHA.

anyway, changes are hard but im changing. but to be a completly different people is impossible. I would appreciate myself more, and just be the best of me instead of other people.