#one of the most annoying parts of having bpd isn’t even part of the bpd itself but it's the stigma

[albtrosz]

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[detentiontrack]

alter intro???? ALTER INTRO??? (only if u want! /nf. signed, another system)

Sure! Why not. So I can’t make them front on command so this is all written by me (sage)

(Also I’m very early in awareness so there could be more I don’t know about yet. But these are the main ones.)

Cameron/Cam (do NOT call him Cam unless he says you can), 21, he/him, bisexual, protector/deals with triggers and self care, has probably been present since the trauma started.

- comes out if I’m making bad decisions or not taking care of myself (like if I don’t eat or drink water and have no motivation to make food)

- comes out if I’m extremely distressed and can’t use my coping skills, and then makes us do the coping skills himself

- frequently flirts with men and changes my tinder profile to show men

- hates taylor swift for some reason (is a weezer/the front bottoms fan. Also dabbles in boy genius and phoebe bridgers but will never admit it. Sorry Cam lol)

- other than me, he knows the most about psychology (our major) and in a pinch, can function at school (doesn’t like taking tests though so that’s MY responsibility)

- the only other part besides me that knows how to drive (he was the most present when I was learning how to drive because I was so anxious about it)

- yells at me for not eating or sleeping and leaves me nastygrams if I don’t take care of myself

-

Lily, 17-25 depending, she/her, no sexuality (not aromantic, she just hates everyone equally and thinks all people are inherently untrustworthy and bad and thinks we should not have ANY relationships. We’re working on that in therapy.) persecutor, been present since about age 9, deals with conflict, holds residual eating disorder symptoms (mostly body/appearance based symptoms) also can’t experience social anxiety or insecurity.

- is the only one who really meets the criteria for BPD (shocker /s)

- deals with interpersonal conflicts like relationship and family issues.

- literally hates everyone. Especially Cameron. It feels like trying to gentle parent kindergarteners when they’re both co conscious.

- hyper feminine. Will dress my body up with makeup and hairstyles and fancy clothes even if we’re just going to the grocery store.

- sometimes comes out or is co conscious when I’m feeling really insecure or socially anxious

- that annoying vegan + low carb + low sugar girlie. Yells at me if I eat bread twice in the same day.

- to be fair to her, used to be a LOT worse. Her role while living in an abusive household used to be to be super oppositional and stand up for us and our siblings so no one gets hurt. She has bitten someone before and would do it again. Literally isn’t afraid of anything. This can backfire though if someone hurts my feelings and she wants revenge.

- doesn’t like driving and doesn’t know how to drive but always wants to front while I’m driving

- doesn’t know anything about our education or the things we learned in school, and thinks our major is cringe.

- thinks literally everything is cringe and lame

- just told me this post is stupid and everyone should “mind their own goddamn fucking business” (I, Sage, don’t feel that way though!! Ask whatever you’d like /gen)

(???) I’ve been referring to him as Jared. Ageless (but I get middle aged man vibes) No pronouns or sexuality (I just go with he/him), present since the start of trauma, last resort alter

- by last resort, I mean his job is to completely shut off all emotions if it’s not safe to process them in the moment. During the abuse, it manifested in going completely “blank”, and now as I navigate triggers, he shuts off all emotions and makes me numb like a robot and fronts until I’m in a safe place.

(Like it happened a while back when I got triggered at a grocery store. He kept us together until I got to my car and could breakdown and allowed me + Cam to deal with it)

- Cam HATES him because he believes that we should be processing our emotions in the moment and not repressing things (which is fair, because I repressed all emotions and trauma for a long time, but sometimes I need to keep it together at work or in school or in public)

- rarely ever talks or is co conscious. It’s all or nothing with him.

(I don’t feel comfortable saying her name online for personal reasons so I’ll call her C) C, 8/9-11. She/her. No sexuality because she is a child. Child alter (the term “little” personally icks me out)

- rarely ever fully fronts but loves making her presence known

- my therapist and I’s best guess is that she’s basically me if I hadn’t gone through all of the trauma and lost my childhood innocence (I also was always expected to function like an adult in my actual childhood so I never really got to act like a kid)

- likes “childish” media like amphibia, toh, and inside out/io2

- likes to dance and be silly

- biggest fan of lily but lily HATES her and thinks she’s annoying

- comes out when listening to certain pop songs or when I’m being silly with my little siblings

- doesn’t have the ability to feel angry and doesn’t know what abuse or trauma is. Remembers absolutely nothing from our childhood. My therapist and I are working to understand if she even knows if she’s a part of a system

[noxexistant]

OKAY BUT WHY ARE YOU GONNA FREAKING TEASE US LIKE THAT. ARE YOU DIAGNOSING THE DELANCEYS OR NOT?!

IM SORRY i was too busy fully crying over the overwhelming response encouraging me to keep talking about my blorbos :’) i got very in my own head that i was being annoying, particularly about the delanceys, but hearing SO MANY PEOPLE ask to hear more is so wild n lovely n auuuuughhh i love you all

ANYWAY. we’re pulling the boys out of the blender to psychoanalyse them for once

cw; talk of food issues, abuse, substance abuse, plus all the usual stuff for my delancey interpretations

it’s rambling time

first of all, oscar.

he absolutely has symptoms of antisocial personality disorder, to start us off.

antisocial personality disorder, like bpd, can be caused both genetically and by abuse/neglect/instability during childhood, and details such as parents abusing alcohol or other substances can factor in. i headcanon both the delanceys’ parents to have abused alcohol, and particularly their mother to have been bipolar, which affects their upbringing and their own genetics/vulnerability to mental illness.

oscar is just so angry, all the time, as a child - nothing is fair, nothing is okay, and there isn’t even anything he can do about it. it’s this crushing sense of frustration and fear and helplessness. even at school, even when he’s really, honestly trying his best, he can’t pay attention. he knows he’s incredibly lucky to be going to school at all - morris’ll never go - but that just means he’s in trouble there as well as at home. he gets caned at school and then comes home to get beat. it’s not fair. nobody listens, nobody treats him well, but he has to look after morris anyway even though nobody’s ever looked after him.

the anger calcifies as he gets older. solidifies into this mass that sits inside him, taking up all the space for anything good. he becomes aggressive and impulsive, and learns to stop caring about other people because none of them can be trusted - enough people have proven themselves awful, his parents and everyone on the streets and snyder and the other kids in the refuge and weasel, so he’ll stop trying and trust they’re all the same. even someone who might not be a threat is probably worthless and useless, he has nothing to gain from doing anything but getting them out of the way, and oscar recognises his hypocrisy because he used to think similar things about morris, but morris is different.

morris is a part of oscar. he isn’t an outsider, he isn’t like anybody else, he’s the only thing in the entire world worth caring about, and oscar does. he doesn’t feel anything when he hurts or scares anyone else, at most feels a sense of satisfaction, but his stomach drops out when he accidentally scares or hurts morris, by shouting at him or moving too fast or doing one of the things that makes morris go empty-eyed and far away. oscar feels sick with guilt then - really, physically sick with it, like it’s surrounding the black mass of his anger and there isn’t enough space for it and it all just starts spilling out - and he doesn’t know how to cope. he doesn’t know how to stomach his love for morris. especially not when it has to sit next to all the anger like that. he tries so hard to keep the two away from each other, but he still gets angry at morris often, although nowhere near as often as he gets aggressive with anybody else. he hits morris sometimes, even though he really doesn’t mean to, and morris always says it’s okay. he says he’s not scared of oscar, not really, no matter what, because they’re them - the two of them, one entity. they’re entirely codependent.

morris has borderline personality disorder. which is also influenced by his autism - these two types of black-and-white thinking and sense of justice and general perception of the world, feeding into each other and creating a sense of isolation that keeps him away from everyone but oscar. oscar’s the only person who can be trusted, and morris loves him more than anything - way, way more than he loves himself, which is not at all. every part of morris, his moods and emotions and his worth and his willingness to do anything, ride wholly on oscar’s mood at that moment and how he’s treating morris. morris is far more likely to hurt himself if oscar is upset with him or not talking to him, which oscar knows, so once they’ve been in the refuge for a while he stops being upset with morris for any longer than the duration of one of his outbursts. he won’t let morris hurt himself anymore, will often encourage morris to hit him instead of hitting himself when he’s upset or frustrated.

still, morris is forever terrified that oscar will leave him just like ma and pa did, so he tries to be good. he tries to always agree with oscar, and keeps quiet when oscar’s having a bad turn, and he doesn’t get mad back even when oscar hits him, though that’s also in part because he can’t. the second morris gets hit like that, he shuts down - thinking about pa - and then everything’s gone for a few hours, maybe a day if it’s really bad. he’s lost months to dissociation before, whole years with only brief glimpses of the surface before he went back down, particularly while he and oscar were in the refuge. there’s things that scare him and upset him that he doesn’t understand because they’re parts of memories he doesn’t remember. he has little to no sense of self and no sense of self-worth, he has bouts of being sure he doesn’t need anyone but oscar and bouts of feeling so lonely he can hardly breathe. he feels empty a lot, but also feels angry and sad and desperately scared, and sometimes giddily happy but it never seems to last long. he thinks about dying a lot.

he also definitely has arfid. it’s a mix of a lot of triggers - his autistic sensitivity to foods, all his trauma surrounding food, and low interest in eating anyway because he can’t understand his own hunger cues and tends not to really enjoy food. he’s been malnourished his whole life, and largely still is, even nearing adulthood - he won’t eat like oscar does, wolfing down a whole plateful of whatever’s on offer, he can’t. he’s sick if he tries to eat food he doesn’t want, and/or has meltdowns. it terrifies oscar, who is just desperate for morris to eat at least enough to be healthy, but even oscar usually can’t convince morris to eat. he focuses on getting the particular foods that morris does like instead, and always keeping them so that he can get morris to eat a bite or two at a time throughout the day. on morris’ worst days, oscar will get him candy - his favourite, the only thing he’ll always eat - and let him eat that like a meal so he’s at least eating something.

that being said, oscar isn’t great about consuming stuff either. he likes alcohol too much, and he’ll do his damnedest to not drink a drop in front of morris but he’ll often sneak out once he knows morris is asleep and duck into a bar for an hour or two. he drinks like he’s trying to knock himself out, which he usually is. he likes a bar fight too - meaningless, usually, and no-holds-barred. he’ll glass someone for saying anything bad about his brother, or anything good about his parents. he drinks what his father used to, because he knows what it’s called and what it tastes like - he’d used to steal swigs from the bottles left out, when he was a little kid. he’d made morris try too, when he was the age oscar’d been when he first tried, but he’d spat it straight back out. oscar’d laughed at him, but now he’s grateful. morris hurts himself enough without adding drinking to the mix.

both of them have c-ptsd. morris has nightmares every single time he falls asleep for long enough, and doesn’t sleep much because of it. oscar has adhd - it influences his aggression and frustration, this constant burning restlessness that exists within him. he’s deeply impatient with anything he finds boring, which includes most people, and he most commonly “stims” with violence. the vast majority of morris’ stims border on self-harm, and he self-harms to stim too, but he has some positive stims - rocking back and forth, bouncing on his heels, stomping his feet, tracing the edges of objects, echolalia. he chews on things, including his own thumb, which he does both because it feels nice and because it hurts. sometimes that’s the same thing to him. he sucks his thumb too, especially for comfort, which ties into one final detail

morris age regresses, or does something adjacent. it’s this kind of undiagnosable no man’s land between his trauma and autism and developmental disability, but mainly just characterised by vulnerability and childishness. oscar’s the only one who really knows, mostly because he’s the only one who could ever notice, but he gets even more protective when he knows morris is more vulnerable - entirely nonverbal, just stimming and comfort-seeking. that’s when oscar sticks right by morris’ side, not getting restless or seeking out any fights for once, not talking for any reason other than to give morris something to listen to. just…looking after his brother, as best he can.

[aithusarosekiller]

Archie’s unusually polite guide on how to write Bipolar characters in fic:

Of course, I can only speak from my own experience, so don’t take everything I say as the ‘one way’ to write bipolar characters, as obviously everybody experiences it differently. That said, I am making this to guide people on how to write realistic characters that do not fall into the trap of being stereotypical caricatures. Please try to share this so more people can see and maybe share their experiences and ideas so we can help more people write realistic characters that make people feel represented. I obviously do not speak for everyone.

With all that being said, I’ll start my list for my lovely chemically stable folks out there.

You don’t need to make it their entire character. Remember, before we are anything else, before we are our diagnosis, before we are our struggles, we are PEOPLE. Many people fall into the trap of making everything a character does directly related to their disorder, which is not only unrealistic, but annoying. We make decisions just like anyone else. Maybe Ben didn’t choose to wear red and blue socks because he is manic, he most likely just wanted to wear red and blue socks. You don’t even need to tell people they are bipolar. If it’s not a major plot point (which you should be careful doing too but I will touch on that later) you don’t even necessarily need to explicitly say it. If you do it well enough, you can make it part of their character without needing to make the character stand on a table and yell ‘I HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER’. Treat them like any other hc, include it in your writing without making it seem like something shocking and horrible that needs special attention. This can make the readers feel like it is something horrifying that needs to be front and centre, instead of an experience a character just so happens to have. We aren’t a circus act, we’re real, living people.

Try not to accidentally romanticise and idealise it. What I have seen a lot of people do is while they try to avoid making it seem like a demonic experience that leads people to live a life if misery and constant torture, they accidentally make it seem happy and flower instead. This is a really easy thing to do, and is very harmful, so it’s best to try to spot it  as soon as you can. Loads of people accidentally romanticise it and idealise it by making it seem like something quirky and easy to manage, which only builds up stigma around it and coddles to people with the ‘just make the most of it’ mindset. If it’s an important part of the plot, you should be mentioning the bad parts, you should be mentioning how shit it can get and how much it impacts our lives, so don’t be afraid of doing that. Just remember to get the balance between that and the fact that in many ways, we are the same as everyone else. It isn’t an endless torment, but it also isn’t a quirky thing that we enjoy living with. Try to find a good balance between the two and you’re all set.

Don’t call it BPD. This is a really simple one but one I see…all the time. BPD stands for Borderline Personality Disorder, which is an entirely different thing.

Not all Bp is type 1. And not all experiences are textbook examples. Research type two and cyclothymia too. Not everybody experiences things exactly the same way as everybody else. I never see type two in media so I know that I, and others, would love to see more that we didn’t have to write ourselves. Look at websites and videos of people talking about their personal experiences and go off that, make the character complex and unique, don’t just copy out the DSM-5.

Talk about the crap bits! Gonna list off some of the symptoms I have that I don’t often see in fics so you can see how diverse it is.

 Depressive first:

Weight loss

Oversleeping

Complete withdrawal from loved ones

Emotionally vacant. It’s not always intense sadness, it can feel like nothing too

Fatigue

No appetite/constant nausea

Slow recovery

No consideration of hygiene…at all

               Hypomanic:

No sleep

Cannot sleep

Panic attacks become more frequent

Don’t even notice until after

Large appetite

Those are just a few, make sure you research and look around at more.

Remember the basics. Remember how long episodes typically last. That they aren’t continuous for most people. They can’t be fixed by the power of love. It can be genetic. Meds don’t eradicate it. Just the typical stuff.

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Honestly my body is breaking and I know it’s my fault but it really hurts and you’d think having all these body problems from my mental health issues would encourage me to get better but if anything it just instills more hopelessness and “throw in the towel” attitude. It feels like I’m always in pain from something and I hate it.

I’m either having body tingles/pains , tight chest, dizziness, constricting heavy feeling on my chest from my mental illnesses or I’m having horrible pain in my pain left arm or part of my back from I don’t even know what. My chiropractor can’t figure it out. Is it my mental illnesses again or something else who knows. My knees have been getting so bad lately. And again I know it’s probably my fault. I don’t move around enough, I’m underweight, I don’t eat enough or get enough nutrients. But god they kill. I’m genuinely starting to think it’s like arthritis at this point. It’s gotten so bad that I’m calling up the specialist on Tuesday after the long weekend to make an appointment hopefully this week because I can’t handle it anymore. No matter what stretch I do, how much voltaren I put on, how much heat I use, if I have my legs bent up or out straight they just kill. But he’s going to cost a pretty penny too. I’m lucky my psychologist is booked up for a whole so I have to wait to have my appointment with him so I can use that appointment money on my knee appointment. But it’s still annoying 😂

AND I’ve been getting some horrible head pains lately. I’m used to normal headaches from like lack of water. Or the ones I get in my jaw from clenching all the time. But this was is different and not one I’m used to. It’s like a really sharp line that starts from behind my left ear and goes up and then curves into my eye. God it hurts. I genuinely have no idea what it is because I’ve nerve felt it before. I’ve had it for about the past week or so. Like the pain isn’t there 24/7 but when it does hit me I’d say it can take up to 20 minutes before it dissipates. And I don’t think that’s a water or jaw clenching thing.

I feel like I don’t have the right to complain about my body pains because most if not all of them are probably my own fault from just not looking after myself but I feel like I’m reaching my limit with it all. I’m so tired it always being in some kind of physical pain from just my body breaking down or my emotions.

Like for sure that’s absolutely one of the things I hate most about my BPD. it’s all the dang emotional pain I feel. Why can’t I just feel sad. Why does feeling sad have to actually physically hurt me. Why does my body do that lol.

[salientdopaminehigh]

This’ll be a long one… so—if you’re interested in how I’m doing, it’s all here. But I figured I’d warn some folks in case they’re just not interested in that.

—————

So my depression symptoms are worsening. To the point where (without getting into too much detail) I’ve had some pretty dark thoughts about myself again lately… it’s been a while since that’s happened.

Some people have asked me how I am—I do appreciate that. But to be very frank, I’m not well.

My anxiety surprisingly isn’t on 10 like it has been over the years—I think the ADHD meds have helped with that and while I’m not ruminating on the usual things...I am thinking about all new saddening things about my life and its trajectory. But because my moods been on such a downward decline, some of my other ADHD symptoms have been more prevalent too.

I know I’ve bothered many people with my persistent need to talk or ramble for long periods of time. For that I’m sorry.

I know—it’s a bit much.

I’m a bit much. To be honest though, I really don’t mean to be… it’s just something I do when I’m overstimulated or excited or interested in something and I’ve always done it. One of my oldest memories is from when I was a very small child and my step father told me I talk too much after rambling about my excitement for the Ninja Turtles for 10 minutes straight… It still weirdly strings. Heh…

This thing about having a neurodevelopmental disorder like this compounded by depression, anxiety and everything else is complicated because any one of those things can exacerbate the symptoms of something else when I’m worked up. And while that sounds great on paper—it’s still too much for people to handle and it’s annoying. And I get that… I really do. But again, I don’t do it on purpose. :/

Part of the problem with infodumping like ADHD and autistic people do is that is that it’s not always about passion interests. Sometimes it’s just facts or even feelings and it can be a lot for people to handle like pent up emotions. So I just clam up… like I have been for a few days now. This blog is really where I try to work those things out or my system.

I’ve been through about 4 different therapist in the last few years because many of them leave their practices or something else happens—bigger and better opportunities I suppose. But it’s been difficult for me to go through everything all over again with someone else. Every time, I have to relive all of my childhood traumas and all of my pain that I carry with me every day. And it hurts…a lot. Like I can’t even really describe how much it hurts to face those things all over again. It’s taken me a few years to even admit that I was neglected as a child and that I have trauma from that. Because I’ve associated this idea of trauma with being something closer to physical abuse and while most of my abuses were more verbal, I was also left alone to take care of my siblings and raise myself…and that’s abuse too..that’s its own kind of trauma. Neglect is painful.

In addition to all the therapists, I also joined a group therapy program called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy—which is designed for people with Borderline Personality disorder but many people who don’t have it still go for different emotion regulation problems. Even though my diagnosis switch from BPD to ADHD after a while (and believe me, the ADHD makes more sense)…I kept going because I learned a lot of useful skills…but it’s over now. It was a one year program. And the thing I miss the most about it, the thing that I used to hate in the beginning of it? It’s the people. I miss the group because they were so supportive of each other.

After DBT ended though, I thought I was doing well…and then my current therapist decided to leave the company. And I get why—her father is terminally ill and she wants to be there with him for his final days. And that’s really important to her and I respect that.

But for me—I wasn’t able to find another therapist that I could see until mid-June. That was about a month ago. I thought I was okay at first…I really did. But the longer I go with everything bottled up the unhealthier I become.

Anyone who has asked how I’m doing lately and I’ve told them I’m okay—I lied. I lie about my wellbeing a lot. Because if I really start getting into how I am—it becomes a lot and that’s not really what people want to hear. It’s overwhelming and their own lives are complicated enough. Thinking about how complicated and sad someone else’s life can be isn’t something most people sign up for when it comes to friendships or relationships. And while I don’t mind when people infodump and vent on me because it’s sort of therapeutic for me to help people work through their own problems…I can’t do it to someone who I’m not paying to listen to me.

I had a friend once tell me that they couldn’t be around me because my sadness made them sad inside in a way that was toxic for them…

I think about that comment a lot. Especially because I used to have feeling for that person at one point too which really makes that kind of thing more painful actually. It’s like being rejected on multiple levels.

I talk a lot about RSD as something ADHD people (myself included) can/do live with. And while I’m certain that I do experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and have since I was a child—I do understand that I push people away a lot too. And weirdly, as I’m typing this I realize that even that may be related to the RSD…because part of the reason I push people away and don’t talk about my wellbeing is not just because I don’t want to talk…it’s also because I worry that if I do talk, I’ll upset them and they’ll regret having asked me in the first place. And that perceived rejection/criticism (real or not) is absolutely a part of RSD…I guess I just didn’t think about that until just now.

I guess I’m writing this because well—some people have asked and it’s easier for me to just put it all down in a post where people can chose how much they want to buy into this information and I don’t have to be there for any perceived rejection when/if it’s received poorly.

My birthdays coming up very shortly.

And I do get like this around my birthday a lot—anyone who knows me, knows that.

When I was a child I was very close to my grandmother on my mom’s side. And she passed away from a brain tumor on my 6th birthday. I didn’t know it happened on my birthday when it happened of course. I found that out on my own later…but I think about how much that hurt when I was a kid. And then my dad left shortly after that and he and I have a strained, distant relationship where he usually forgets important dates like my birthday too…so guess part of me is just dreading the whole thing really.

You’d think I’d be used to that by now at my age but I guess some wounds just don’t heal.

I’ll be okay.

I’ve got no reason to think that I won’t be…While my thoughts about my existence can be dark. I’ve got no plan and no motivation to go through with anything at the moment.

I’m just struggling right now to keep a clear head.

If you made it to the end of this—Thanks for taking the time. I do appreciate your interest in me.

[nbrook29]

💞 My ultimate Sobbe fic recs 💞

Recently, I have gone through Robbe/Sander tag on ao3 and I decided to compose a list of fics that are absolute gems for me. A few disclaimers first:

✔ I didn’t include works in progress (WIPs), however I did include fics that are only on tumblr

✔ the order of the fics below is random

✔ this is the list of my personal favorites so if your favorite fic is not on the list it doesn’t mean it’s bad or that I consider it bad - we just vibe with different things :)

✔ if there’s a fic on this list that you decided to give a shot and loved it, please remember about leaving a comment under it to let the author know that

✔ I’ve been trying to add the “read more” thingy but it doesn’t show, I’m sorry, I know long posts are annoying af

under 1k

we’re keeping it simple by noobishere | G

Summary: Sander comes over unannounced and attacks Robbe’s very person (a.k.a the one where Sander teases Robbe on Eenvoud)

This is a guaranteed mood lifter. It’s short, sweet, to the point, and oh so funny. The banter. And I’d die to see that in the show. 

1k - 5k

Fizzy Colas by Foxsake5 | M

Summary: Let’s say this is a clip (hopefully not as short as the standard 1:40 of this season) with Sander as the main on a ‘bros night out’ 🍻

This author is my queen/king alright? They take a simple idea and turn it into the most lovely/cute/soft story. This fic is exactly that. Sobbe’s chemistry here is out of this world and the banter is to die for.

high for this by flowersmaze (@bowieskam) | G

Summary: In which Sander remains a Flirt™ and in love with Robbe even when he can’t feel his face after a medical procedure

The summary says it all. Loopy Sander is the cutest and funniest thing.

Pull Me from the Dark by TheOceanIsMyInkwell (@theoceanismyinkwell) | T

Summary: Sander discovers that Robbe has recently been prescribed antidepressants, and Robbe opens up to him about the night he almost stepped off the bridge. Only love will show how much they’ve grown and pull them through.

This time, the boys talk about Robbe’s mental state which is unusual in fics. This oneshot is communication 101. And this line is just 👌🏻 “But after the dust of their first kiss and their first vows of commitment settled around them, Robbe took a look at the space in which he floated and realized, somewhere along the line, that finding the love of your life doesn’t fix you.”

diminuendo by noobishere

Summary: Waking up feels like an ordeal. His eyes are heavy, arms a dead weight, he isn’t sure if his limbs are even in the right places, but eventually, Sander comes to. (a.k.a a take on how Sander fairs after Robbe left for school.)

Sander’s POV after Dinsdag 7:27. It’s a great insight into his headspace during that time. This could be a scene in the show because it fits so well.

you’re wonder under summer sky by nothingbutniall | M

Summary: Two city boys go camping. What could go wrong? (Everything, apparently.)

Those boys are a chaotic mess okay? They’re such dorks. This fic has the best kind of grumpiness there is and sobbe is written so in character here.

if we can make it through december (maybe we’ll make it through forever) by nothingbutniall | G

Summary: Robbe and Sander at the Christmas market.

Can you imagine those two dorks at the Christmas market? Well you don’t have to anymore because this fic is everything you need and more. And this line “Couldn’t,” Sander sulks. “You can’t hold hands properly with mittens on.” makes me go all gooey inside every.single.time 😍

A New Sunday Feeling by Foxsake5 | M

Summary:  Sander before Robbe: Ugh, Sundays 😒 Sander after Robbe: 😏🥺🥰

The way this author writes sobbe’s intimate moments is just pure talent. They have such way with words.

memories painted with much brighter ink by nothingbutniall | G

Summary: Saint Nicholas is the perfect excuse for an evening of gifts and banter with the flatshare. (Basically all five of them being cute together, and then Robbe and Sander being cute with just the two of them.)

This is the perfect fic for an October evening, when Christmas is just around the corner and you’ve just made yourself a cup of coffee and want to read some heart-warming well-written christmassy fluff. 

5k - 10k

Let’s Dance by msleviss (@sander-driesen) | G

Summary: Robbe and his friends go to a club to check out Amber’s DJ cousin.

THIS PERSON PREDICTED DJ SANDER Y’ALL. And Robbe thirsts over him. And there is an instant connection. And Robbe dances. And it’s so cute.

video phone by tokyometropolis (@luludemauryyy) | E

Summary: AKA OH MY GOD, THEY WERE QUARANTINED…except not together, because life is cruel. Thankfully it’s 2020 and when Robbe has an…er…intense dream about Sander in the middle of the night, all he has to do is press one button and Facetime him about it. Thing is…sometimes FaceTiming isn’t enough.

Look. I get that smut fics are not everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s totally fine. But. If you’re looking for a well-written smut that’s in character and where you can feel the love between the characters, this is it. Hands down. Sorry not sorry 💁🏼‍♀️

10k - 20k

our camp of dreams by robbesanderx (@robbesdriesen) | M

Summary: a summer camp!AU where robbe and sander are both co-counselors

Misunderstandings lead to pining. Teenage angst at its finest. I really like camp stories, it’s my thing.

Falling For You by silver_etoile (@azozzoni) | T

Summary: Robbe only knows one thing about football: that Sander Dreisen is the hottest player on the FC Utrecht team. When Jens drags him to a match, the last thing Robbe expects is to meet someone so perfect, and it’s all he can do not to mess it up, but will he succeed?

Sobbe in a different setting with a bit different dynamic yet still having that special something. It’s a nicely written story of the development of their relationship, first meeting, falling in love, ups and down, all the best things in fics. And Sander as a soccer player is a pretty 🔥 concept (and I think Robbe agrees).

This isn’t our first time around by noobishere | E

Summary: One moment they are in the kitchen of their shared apartment, the next, they’re in this strange but familiar room.(a.k.a the au in which they accidentally go hopping through multiple universes)

The universe takes matters into their own hands and shows those silly boys that they are meant to be. Sign me up for the ride.

Coffee and Croques by peaceoutofthepieces (@peaceoutofthepieces) | G

Summary: Sander works at the on-campus coffee shop with Eliott, and he might just have a crush on the cute boy in the brown coat.

I’m a sucker for coffeshop fics. There is just something so good about them. This one is the coffeshop!AU that sobbe deserves. Oh the pining, and the secretive looks, the silly boys, and a pinch of Elu. Me likey ☕

The finest of the meadow by allforyoumylove | M

Summary: The universe brings two lonely boys together in a flowering meadow. They fall for each other fast and hard among delicate daisies, warm summer breezes, and shooting stars.

This is magical. My comment on the work was “So soft, so beautiful, so THEM, ugh.” and I MEANT that. This is just the right amount of sweetness. This is a must read. I’m not messing around. 

two side of the same coin series by MajorAccent (@acespaceacepilot) | E

Summary: the valleys and mountains of sander’s bpd

How the boys handle Sander’s ups and downs. Robbe being the best boyfriend ever. I love how good he is for Sander, being there for him, not treating him like a baby, and not controlling him. How much he tries to make it at least a little bit easier for him. If you don’t want to read explicit stories, at least give the first part a try since it’s not E rated. 

Zaterdag 9:58 by Foxsake5 | M

Summary: What happened after the croissants dropped to the floor 🥐🤭💕

I meant it when I said Foxsake5 has great way with words. Every single piece of theirs is just “chef’s kiss”. This fic is a definition of a domestic fic. Oh, and it happened. Totally. It’s my headcanon now.

its an unrequited love by eggsntoast | G

Summary: Sander works part-time at a museum every Sunday. Robbe is a frequent visitor.

A Sander POV fic. I was sold from the beginning. The development of their relationship here is so cute, and they’re being so stupid with their pining instead of just talking to each other and you just want to shake them but at the same time you’re rooting for them so hard. Oh and did I mention pining?

20k+

Jij Verliest series by ravenbrenna09 (@djsander) | M

Summary: For the past three months, Robbe’s life—and what it once was—had been stripped away and rearranged. Now, if anything, his life had become a bit repetitive: homework, stream, ignore Thomas’s Instagram, repeat. But one Friday evening, Robbe meets a hurricane in the form of a platinum-haired tattoo artist who just might show him everything that he’s been missing.

This is a long series okay? But oh so worth it. It’s captivating and you don’t want to stop until you finish. And once you finish you’re sad it’s over even though you’ve just spent 8 fucking hours reading it. It’s amazing. But you probably know that because it’s quite popular (rightfully so). The best thing is that you expect it to go bad halfway through because it’s difficult to keep the quality on the same level in a fic that long. But it doesn’t.

Visitations by lucidpantone (@lucidpantone) | E

Summary: Does Robbe and Sander’s relationship survive into adulthood. This fic takes place in two simultaneously timelines: the past and the present.The present occurs in one entire day. Both timelines are completely out of chronological order. Everything is in clips.You can be dropped in at anytime of the day in any timeline. So clip by clip you will need to piece together what happen to Sander & Robbe and why the present looks the way it does and what happened in the past that got them there.This love story is a journey. So be prepared.In the words of one of our Even’s. It’s a complicated love story between complicated people.

This is not a regular fic. The author put so much thought into it, there are so many gems, so many little things that you have to pay attention to because it.all.matters. And there is not one interpretation. Don’t you just love when a story forces you to think and use your brain? Cause I do. Not gonna lie: this story hurts, and like the author says themselves, it’s a journey. But oh my god get in because it’s amazing. And the ending is just sjsjsjsjsddhdhsdsgdsg 🤯

the night we met by themoongirl (@dearsander) | T

Summary: Robbe Ijzermans has a brain that won’t let him sleep, a chest that feels far too heavy and thoughts that never stop.During his first year of college he meets Sander Driesen. Robbe finds what he never went looking for.

A college AU. This fic is a journey of pain and fluff and humor. It has awesome friendships. And sobbe falling in love. And liminal spaces. I read it a while ago so I don’t remember it as well as the others but you know what? I still remember that it was great and I’m lowkey happy I don’t remember it that well because now I can go and read it again. 

The Stars Look Very Different by @peaceoutofthepieces 

Summary: Robbe is bored. He’s bored of listening to his friends talking about girls, and his other friends making out, and no one ever doing anything. He’s tired of having to put in all the work, of making his own fun. He’s tired of feeling nothing so he doesn’t have to feel like nothing. His party stunts are pushing the limit, his thrill seeking beginning to worry even his friends, and his carelessness is toeing the line of dangerous.

He’s a little tired of being ‘dangerous’, too.

Sander may or may not have a crush on the older boy with the apparent death wish. He wouldn’t mind a little danger.

Once I started reading this fic, each day I was waiting for an update at the edge of my seat which was a feeling I expected from s4 that did not deliver. TSLVD definitely delivered. My favorite sobbe social media AU

Ziggy Stardust Series by skamsnake (@skamsnake) | M/E

A collection of fics taking place throughout the season. Most of them are E rated so be aware of that but it’s a really cool mixture of fluff and spice *fans myself*

[bpdanakins]

i just infodumped to my friends about bpd anakin and i have No Regrets snakjdkajfsk

anyway, doth thee have any more bpd anakin (or just anakin in general) headcanons becuase i am living for this

I am So Sorry this took so long, but hopefully the length makes up for it. Thank you so much for sending this to me bc BPD!Anakin is my entire life. I could talk about it all day, every day.

I’d like to thank @apple-grass-and-smiles for helping me organize my Thoughts on all of this, prompting me to focus on certain things and giving me feedback in general too. 

Okay, here goes:

Anakin fidgets!! I’m not even sure if this is a headcanon but if it is I will die on this hill. He can’t stay still for the life of him and doubly so when he’s anxious, nervous or Ready To Do Something Already. 

We know Anakin can’t hold eye contact to save his life when he’s upset or insecure, but I can also see him having issues with touch when he’s upset, unless it’s from certain people only (Padmé always gets a pass, for example).

Anakin’s quick to let some small stuff go, but larger things people do that hurt him (whether intentionally or not) aren’t really ever forgotten, and he just kind of takes that in and suppresses it, until random moments when it pops up, he remembers, and it just hurts like it’s happening all over again. The people around him often have no idea what fully sets him off, bc to them, his reaction now seems out of nowhere while his mind’s still stuck on this other thing.     - His reactions also seem sometimes like they’re Over The Top, but even just remembering past hurts can feel almost disabling at times. It’s worse when he ends up ruminating on it, because the hurt and feelings of betrayal just keep building up over and over until it almost blots everything else out.

When he’s happy or surrounded by those he loves, everyone kind of can feel it too, bc he’s just fuckoff powerful in the Force and esp other Force sensitives kind of gather around his space and just… his affection and excitement are literally infectious. 

This probably runs closer to ADHD than BPD for sure, but get him talking about anything mechanical (robotics, engineering, racing, etc) and he will go from 0 to 100 so fast you’d get whiplash. No one minds though bc, as I said, his excitement is infectious and honestly those around him just adore listening to him go off even though half of it goes over their head.     - Ahsoka may not ever get Gotta Go Fast, but she definitely loves it when he really talks her ear off about all this stuff, bc it makes her excited to learn and she picks up on all of it easily. (There’s a part of her that wants to emulate him and she does def look up to him obviously.)     - We see it with Obi-Wan, but people love to use his love of all things mechanical as a way to distract him from things that upset him. It doesn’t always work but they try.

With Obi-Wan, he ends up on the side of Anakin’s splitting like, all the time. And unfortunately sometimes Obi-Wan can’t tell that Anakin’s lashing out not because of something Obi-Wan’s actually done, but bc Anakin’s young and Obi-Wan’s the figure he can project a lot of his frustrations on.     - It can lead Obi-Wan to being confused and hurt sometimes, bc he doesn’t always understand Anakin’s thought processes when this happens, and it definitely sometimes cuts him to the core. On the reverse side, though Anakin might not always say it to his face, Obi-Wan definitely can overhear him at times when Anakin’s ready to 1v1 anyone who even so much as makes a frowny face about Obi-Wan, which helps Obi-Wan remember that Anakin does love him too, actually.     - It ends up being one of the points of frisson between Anakin and Mace, bc Anakin can’t read body language perfectly, especially when it comes to feelings of abandonment or someone seemingly not loving who Anakin loves to the same degree. Mace has a drier sense of humor at times and defs has a more resting frowny face, and this rankles Anakin at times bc he can’t always tell when Mace is just chilling vs being disappointed, and while Anakin will take it all personally, he ALSO takes any perceived criticism to those he loves personally too.     - Both Mace and Obi-Wan don’t get this bc they have a perfectly fine relationship. Anakin’s just Like That.     - (And super overprotective of people’s perceptions of Obi-Wan. Anakin will go off about Obi-Wan being mean and all that, but fuck you and your entire family tree if you ever even think Obi-Wan’s anything short as the most amazing Jedi to ever Jedi.)

Everybody and their mother can see the pedestal Anakin puts Padmé on, and surprisingly she rarely is on the end of his splitting. When he does, he just internalizes it bc he can’t stand the idea that he’s somehow seen her in a wrong light, or he feels guilty for getting angry with her.     - He also defines a huge chunk of his life around loving her, making her his center for a lot of his decisions and reactions, so when they’re off, his whole world seems backwards. It makes him Really uncomfortable and unsure. He gets panicky and upset and often people have no idea what the cause is so they just end up a lil panicky in return.     - He tends to take it out on others, by doing an exercise or by disappearing to fiddle with something.     - Pads has an easier time recognizing Anakin’s emotional needs, bc in some ways they’re the same as hers. She’s good at reaching out to him, comforting him and reassuring him of her love. And in turn, he like, never fucking shuts up about how much he loves her, and those moments are what make her feel so special around him. Being loved by Anakin makes someone feel important and even get tingly, bubbly happy feelings, because it’s hard to doubt it sometimes.     - There’s a part of her that sometimes worries about how Intense he is, but, like I said, when his positive intense emotions are focused on you, it feels wonderful. And he’s genuinely super sweet and gentle, and she appreciates that, when she tells him to back off about something, he’ll listen to her wishes. (I’m using movie Anakin as my base here bc TCW!Anakin in this regard is just…. bad y’all lmao)

Anakin’s anxious about Ahsoka All The Time. He’s afraid he’s a bad teacher, he’s afraid he’ll mess her up somehow, he’s afraid he’ll hurt her or she’ll get hurt, and that’s why he can’t stand the idea sometimes of her being on her own. It’s not a lack of trust in her abilities, but because he feels responsible for her, and that’s why he’s always ready to put himself between her and literally anything that could potentially hurt her. (Even if it’s not a physical threat.)     - There are times she finds this amusing and times this makes her angry, but mostly she is long suffering. There are times she appreciates it though, bc she’s still a kid and isn’t always sure which way is up, especially when in a war. Anakin is often a cornerstone for her, and though she’d literally NEVER admit it, his overprotectiveness can sometimes be a reassurance. She knows she can handle herself just fine, but when she has an inkling of doubt, she’ll remind herself that Anakin will be there, and then go and take care of the problem herself.     - She doesn’t always get his moments where he’s not always falling over himself to talk Obi-Wan up or go out of his way to sass at him. To her, they have a wonderful relationship and she rarely notices when Obi-Wan might say something that pokes at Anakin wrong, so she often just winds up ???? when Anakin is huffy or annoyed with her grandmaster.     - She sees Anakin’s anger issues a little more easily than others, and she worries about it but always brushes it off or downplays it, bc she always sees why he’s angry, and also always just assumes (like everyone else) that he can Handle It.     - Anakin’s recklessness and impulsivity are some of her favourite things about being his padawan. He’s literally never boring to be around, and Ahsoka needs that sort of excitement to sometimes push aside the knowledge that she’s literally in a warzone. Anakin’s also really good at doing this intentionally; he’s literally always worrying after her, and all he wants to do is take care of those he loves and make them happy, so sometimes he’ll be Extra just to get under her skin or distract her and honestly this is the basis of where their playful competitions always come from.

If Ahsoka is long suffering, Rex is doubly so. Sometimes it’s all he can do to keep up with Anakin and Ahsoka, but he appreciates Anakin “thinking outside the box”. He also appreciates knowing that Anakin is just as loyal to him and his men as he himself is (well… Anakin is until he isn’t lmao)     - Rex, like Pads, is really good at picking up Anakin’s moods and even trains of thought, so he’s always able to work around that, or even see where Anakin’s mind is going when coming up with a plan. They make a really good team bc while Anakin can jump from one idea to another without them seemingly correlated, Rex immediately follows Anakin’s leaps and they just end up in sync.     - That being said, Anakin can be really confusing at times. His moods are often so all over the place, that Rex generally has no idea what tf is going on. He deals with it by learning to be calm when Anakin’s unable to, and just ride out Anakin’s worst moods until they pass by, learning not to let it all phase him. Anakin lowkey hates it when he’s upset, but once the worst of it passes, he really appreciates that Rex will just… not press like Obi-Wan, or balances out the moments Anakin’s mind is so cluttered by instead just keeping a good focus on things.

Probably everyone’s most baffling symptom of Anakin’s is his paranoia. Obi-Wan kind of sees it the most, because Anakin is always testy with the Council and often feels put on the spot, dismissed and looked down upon. To everyone else, they don’t get where Anakin’s ideas come from, bc everything seems chill on their end. His fretting about others’ well-being is straightforward enough, but his instant panic-turned-anger shift when he receives any criticism (especially the perceived type) always gives people whiplash. It’s hard to keep up with, hard to see what it was that got to him so much, and hard to know how to help (particularly when they’re worried that trying to help him will feel like “taking sides”).     - Ahsoka takes Anakin’s POV of the Council pretty easily, at least when it comes to him. This is mostly bc she’s not there when there’s a meeting or tension around them, nor was she there when Anakin first arrived, so she just assumes they must genuinely often have issues with him too. She doesn’t see it to the extent Anakin does though, but she recognizes that sometimes he seems to blow things out of proportion when he’s upset, and figures it’ll just blow over once he’s calmed down.     - Pads, on the other hand, is always kind of aware of Anakin’s fears of losing her. He often not-so-subtly looks for reassurances that she loves him and won’t leave him, that she’s feeling alright or not angry/annoyed with him. She chalks it up to his trauma with his mother (and she’s partially right), so even when sometimes it gets on her nerves that he seems to doubt her so much, she tries to remind herself of that and let it go. 

Those closest to him can pick up that Anakin tends to see the negative in things, and is generally really hard on himself. They try to help out by giving praise where it’s due and just overall Being There, but it’s Rough to know they often don’t get through. (Palps, on the other hand, knows how to weaponize this.) 

The saddest part is that I don’t think anyone once thought Anakin was Seriously Ill, partly out of ignorance, partly bc they assumed it had to do with his age/upbringing, and partly bc, eventually, everyone was dealing with trauma and even if someone wanted to send Anakin back to the Temple to have a nap or something, they legit couldn’t bc there was a war going on and he also would never have tolerated it at that point in time.     - Obi-Wan’s the one who worries about all of this the most, because he’s always felt such a huge responsibility for Anakin and loves him a lot, he’s just never fully been able to understand how to get on the same wavelength as Anakin.     - Anakin, too, actually never fully figures out that there is something Going On. Everything’s always overwhelming him and even though he prefers doing things at 100mph, sometimes it seems like there is Too Much going on, and even during peace times it just felt like he couldn’t keep up with everything. He hates internal reflection but also can’t stop overthinking about everything, and so he just ruminates and goes in circles and often just ends up going nowhere when it comes to dealing with things. He tries his hardest all the time, he is ALWAYS trying, but doing stupid stunts, fighting droids, making robots and speeding everywhere all the time is truthfully only a bandaid.     - Being surrounded by those he adores and receiving affection from them/seeing them happy boosts his mood a lot but he doesn’t have enough self-awareness to guess at why his happier moods just won’t last.     - Sometimes he can figure out when he’s being irrational and then just takes it out on himself, which only exacerbates his bad episodes. 

Palpatine doesn’t help. He’s abusive, manipulates Anakin all the time and is the Worst and definitely makes everything Anakin is struggling with harder and I think we should all just punt him into a sun thank you this isn’t a headcanon I just want everyone to know how much I hate him

[marshvlovestv]

Eric in the Pod Room - An impassioned defense of a man at his worst

Big tw for discussions of suicide, suicidal ideation, and mental illness, and lots of me projecting my own issues onto a terrible fictional character

I’m in a really bad place mentally right now and I’m immersing myself in a Zero Escape Let’s Play series to distract myself from it. It definitely isn’t the healthiest thing for me to be hyperfixated on right now - the series has a chummy relationship with the concept of suicide, after all, and suicidal thoughts are my worst symptom at the moment. But you know what, it’s twisted, but I’m so dangerously comfortable with my own suicidality at this point that the themes of suicide in Zero Escape almost feel warm and welcoming, to the point where I’d even consider them a factor in why I am so obsessed with the series.

I was working on a larger meta, which most of this post is an excerpt from, about the many suicides from Zero Time Dilemma specifically - none of them influenced by Radical-6, all of them with some interesting psychological analysis to be done concerning them. But the Let’s Players have reached the Pod Room, the puzzle that seems to singlehandedly give players the most reason to hate my favorite character. They turned out to be no exception, and they spent the length of the puzzle going on and on about how they despise Eric. I got really tense and upset and thought, “You know what? Forget about Diana, Carlos, and Delta. I can talk about them later. All I want to do right now is come to Eric’s defense. I want to talk about my boy.”

Like, I get it, you know? The first time I saw the Pod Room, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Eric, either. He bullies Sean, he actively refuses to be of any help in solving the puzzle, he makes lewd comments about Mira (and for the record, the problem I have with this is the fact that he says these things around a child, not the comments themselves; people should be allowed to experience and express sexual attraction and that is a hill I will die on). After the puzzle itself, we learn about Eric’s deepest trauma and after that I see people either feel bad for hating him and begin to sympathize with him fully, or go, “Yeah, that sucks for him, but it still doesn’t forgive a damn thing. He’s the worst and I hate him and I hate this game for making him exist.” I am firmly in the first camp, if you couldn’t tell.

Lest we forget: This is the route at the end of which Eric commits suicide. A murder-suicide, granted, but still. He takes his own life. The Pod Room is the start of Eric’s descent into rock bottom and I just... can’t hate him for that, especially not when I recognize some of myself in him. I have never killed another person (I promise); I don’t have homicidal thoughts. I don’t know personally what would compel someone to commit a murder-suicide and I don’t even want to speculate. But his homicidal tendencies aside, Eric and his suicidality have always spoken to me personally.

I’ve done plenty of analysis of Eric in the past under the lens of personality disorders, and my most general conclusions are that he suffers from PTSD, dependent personality disorder, and possibly borderline personality disorder as well. Suicidality is highly correlated with all three of those disorders, and as such I find it highly unlikely that his decision to kill himself in this route is a spontaneous one. If he is anything like me, when he isn’t actively, imminently suicidal, he probably still spends a lot of time imagining worst-case scenarios in which suicide would be a no-brainer. For me, my worst-case scenarios often involve the loss of my parents; they are my Safe People, people around whom my AvPD symptoms are less extreme and my behavior is less inhibited, and I seriously fear for my ability to function without them in my life. Sufferers of many different personality disorders have “special people” like this in some way or another. DPD and BPD have, respectively, Depended People and Favorite People, the objects of the sufferer’s attachment. Mira clearly fulfills both of these roles in Eric’s life, and lots of his worst-case scenarios must involve the loss of her.

Before her death is even confirmed, we can see how much he struggles to function without her there in the puzzle room. I read Eric’s behavior in the Pod Room as him flailing in the absence of his special person. The Let’s Players I’m watching have even made derisive comments about how he doesn’t even know how to be a person, and I’m sitting here like, yeah. You’re right. He doesn’t know how to be a person, not right now. His identity and self-worth are tied to a person who has disappeared under mysterious and stressful circumstances; without her, he feels useless and helpless, which is why he’s overwhelmed by something as simple as a sliding block puzzle. Without her, he loses his grip on his self-control, which is why he has no filter to stop him from saying inappropriate things and why can’t stop his worse impulses to mistreat people. I’m not trying to say that anything he does in the Pod Room is right, but there is a reasonable explanation for why he acts the way he does.

And then, they find Mira’s body. One of Eric’s worst-case scenarios has come true, and in the process he has lost not only the person most important to him but the very sense of self that said person helped him feel. It’s just as bad as he always imagined, and even worse, she was killed in exactly the same way his brother was, triggering a PTSD flashback. His trauma is further compounded by being shown graphic video of Junpei and Akane’s deaths (and later just being shown their dismembered bodies in person).The devastation he must be feeling in this moment is beyond what I can even comprehend and I fully understand why he snaps.

Again, I don’t want to speculate as to why his mind goes “revenge first, suicide second” and why he kills people he could be reasonably sure are innocent. All I can say for sure is that, when he does ultimately kill himself, it’s not out of guilt and it’s not out of fear of consequences. His last words are promising Mira that he’ll be with her soon. The suicide is about her. It was always about her. It’s not just that he’ll miss her; he genuinely cannot picture a life for himself where she is not a part of it, at least not a good one.

(Quick sidenote here to talk about one other thing that Eric does in this route: shooting out the X-Pass authenticator. Once Mira’s body is found, six people have died, meaning that Eric, Sean, and Q are free to leave. But Eric shoots out the authentication device before this is possible. When this happened in the Let’s Play, the players called him an idiot for destroying his own means of escape, which really annoyed me. Here’s the thing: Eric is already actively suicidal at this point. He destroys his key to the outside world because he can no longer imagine a life for himself in the outside world. Shooting the authenticator was in itself an act of suicide, even though he wasn’t pulling the trigger on himself.)

All of this is not to say that Eric is okay in the true end and should be left to his own devices. He’s a man in pain, a man in constant crisis, and he’s in desperate need of intervention to prevent him from harming himself or others. I like him and Mira together and she will likely always be a special (Depended, Favorite) person to him, but he can’t and shouldn’t rely on his relationship with her to keep his head above water and keep him from acting the way he did in the Pod Room. Eric needs professional help; but call me optimistic, I think that learning from Sean about how he acted on the other routes, what it looks like when he is truly at rock bottom, might inspire him to seek that help.

Anyway. Sorry for the rant, I hope it was interesting at least. I’m going to go refill my medications and schedule an appointment with my therapist because, as fun and cathartic as this was to write, it’s definitely not healthy to get this riled up over fictional characters; plus, I can’t rightly advocate for a fictional character to get help when I’m not taking care of myself, can I?

[onisiondrama]

Onision on Kermit and Friends - Summary Part 2

((Edit: Sorry! I feel like I should have put a warning! A homophobic guest briefly shows up on the stream. If you want to skip that part, skip the first bullet.))

New fan comes on. James points out the fan's name says "Trumpster." The fan compliments his comedy. There is a pause. The fan asks how he's doing and James says "fine." The fan asks if the popularity was addicting when he was more popular. James says he's a work-a-holic. The fan says to prevent men from raping children they should go back to the Jesus days when they didn't allow gay people around children. He says you check by looking at their buttholes. He calls it "butt-hole challenge." He asks if James would pass that challenge. James asks if this is homophobic. He says he has a very gay only fans. He asks if the fan thinks your butt turns into Utah after you have gay sex. The fan says your booty hole will be like a can of coke. (I am so lost right now.) James says you push poop out of your butt every day and it doesn't make your butt like the grand canyon so he doesn't think gay men would have a gaping butt. He says it's a straight man myth.

Andy asks if James thinks he (Andy) is gay. James says he thought he was because that's how people portray him. Andy says he's not.

A guy comes on and starts ranting for a while. James uses his Onision Youtube account to say "What even is this" The guy is still ranting and James holds up a paper that says "WTF?"

The co-host comes back and says she was trying to be funny when she said the transgender thing. James says the documentary implied he made people turn out that way and that's not a thing.

The host asks if he feels he has no control when anyone can make a documentary about you. He says yeah, he feels powerless when a multi million dollar company portrays him as the next Charles Manson. She asks if it affects him emotionally. He says he's only sad for Kai, not himself. He says since 2007 he's said he would rather have 10 fans that genuinely like him than a million that don't really care. He says on his Discord he has a few people who genuinely want to be there so the rest doesn't affect him. He says when people were wrong about the meltdown videos being real, he knew they were wrong so why should that make him feel awful. He says it does present real life challenges.

The host announces Andy needs a bike to get around and needs money for pizza. She asks if Onision's offer for a bike was real. James says yes if he's willing to pick it up, but he's far away so he doesn't know if it's worth the trip.

The next gust comes on and says he looks like he's on with Jim Morrison right now. The host James this guy had 85 million views on a single video. The guy says he had 150. The host wants James to give feedback. They play the video. James asks if the goal is laughs or views. The guy says he just did it to annoy people. James says it's a funny idea and it was witty and he never would have thought of that. The host asks James if he should make more videos on a frequent basis. James says when he began they were not as good as that. The guest says the videos take a lot of time to make and he knows you need to make a lot. James says if it takes longer to make, people tend to notice how much effort you put into. He says he noticed when he puts in more effort or follows a trend it pays off.

Billy The Fridge joins. The host asks if Billy has a question for James. Billy says James followed him back on twitter that week, then James blocked him. James points out the last tweet Billy made about him from February. Billy said he made a joke tweet. Keemstar said Youtube is 16 years old and Billy said something about Onision and the age of consent. Billy says he thought it was funny and he asks James if it hurt him. James says his first thought was "what a dishonest prick" because everyone knows for a fact he isn't remotely interested in 16 year olds, but considering the position that he's in and that coming from someone he considered a friend was deeply annoying. Billy says he's sorry and he thought it was funny. James sarcastically says it's super funny to disown your friend the moment a bunch of dishonest people lie about them after he rejected them. Billy says he didn't disown him the moment- James says he was the first of his friends to be like "uh don't cancel me."

James says they had a text conversation where he described in depth how horrible of a friend Billy was because he didn't defend him and Billy's response was "yeah I know." Billy agrees, but says he defended him for years but one of his biggest defenses was that Sarah said nothing was going on between them, but when it came out it muddied two years of defense he had. James asks when what occurred? Billy says when it came out that he had sex with Sarah. James asks under what arrangement did that happen? Billy says Sarah came out and told the internet.

James says people don't know how it began. He says after he told her he couldn't do this with her, she said twice "I'm sorry for raping you guys." He says he spoke to her this January and admitted again that she said that. He says she leaves that out of every discussion because it doesn't go along with the "Onision is a psychopath" narrative. Billy agrees. James says it started through sexual extortion where somebody said "I could destroy your life if I wanted to" then later said "I'm only going to sign this agreement in which I won't say horrible things about you if you sleep with me." He says that's the arrangement she proposed to him. He says if he was interested in 16 year-olds why didn't he sleep with her when she was 16? Why did he tell her to get away from him and kick her out for being inappropriate with him 2 times? He called her names. She swore she was never groomed as an adult. She sexually extorted them, got what she wanted, got rejected when he freaked out, she apologizes, goes home, he makes a video about people with BPD, then she goes "ape" on him. He says she said in a live stream she never gave him a reason not to trust her, but now she can't do it anymore. He says this is why he knows this person isn't trustworthy because they would take something innocent and frame it a different way to fall in line with he obviously corrupt Chris Hansen.

He says during the call with Sarah, he asked if anyone was paid for the interviews and she said no. He asked if anyone made money because they were involved in the show and she said "uhh I can't legally answer that question." Billy laughs and says he got a contract from them. He says they were trying to fly out to sit down and interview him and he stopped responding because he could see the set up. He says they were struggling to keep the show together and they didn't have enough people to talk. He said he talked to the producer for an hour and a half of the phone and it didn't add up to him. He asks, what would he say anyway? James jokingly says he tried to fuck Billy so many times. Billy says he literally humped him on camera and everyone says he tried to rape him, but it was a joke.

Billy says they always joke and that's why he said the 16 thing. James says he was hitting him while he was down. Billy says James is always down. James says in the last 10 years he was the #67 most subscribed on Youtube, so he wouldn't say that was down. Billy says it's down when those videos of Shiloh come out and make him look like a psycho predator. James says actually everyone hated Shiloh for the longest time but they have selective memory.

The host asks if they could be friends again. Billy says he doesn't know if Onision wants to be friends with him and he doesn't know how they could go back with what happened. He says what happened with Sarah was why he had to step away from him. James interrupts him and says he became a white knight for women and didn't think if it was true. Billy said all he said was to listen to the girls. James asks why didn't he tell people to listen to evidence or to the person who has receipts? Billy says why not listen to all the people who want you in jail and you're not there? Billy says obviously James didn't do anything illegal.

Billy says the reason it was best to distance himself was because time and time again there were friends they had they James ghosted and made them feel worthless. James asks who? Billy says he's not going to name names. He says the last one had been at James' house for months, then James ghosted her when all this went down. James says the texts are on his website. Billy says he knows he posted them publicly and she felt like she was worthless. James says she publicly attacked them and acted like he and Kai should be in prison. James goes off about how great Kai is and keeps talking over Billy. James says apparently everyone is on good terms now and are friends again. He says they apologized because they threw Kai under the bus because they were ghosted. He said she was ghosted because the best friend Kai ever had just went public and tried to make them look awful so Kai was dealing with a trust complex. He just had his heart ripped out. Billy says that's why that person responded poorly, they had their heart ripped out by Kai's heart being ripped out. James says so Billy had one example and they have since resolved their differences and are on some of the best terms he's seen now.

Billy says there was another person who had a falling out with James who he heard went to lunch with James after. He says that was nice he made up with them.

[bloodhonnie]

maybe tmi but do you think that only ever falling for people who i know for a fact won't reciprocate is a symptom? the last time i fell in love it was so intense i felt like i was put on this earth just to exist in his vicinity and the whole time he had a gf of 5 years and said he saw me like "one of the boys" LMAO. part of me's like if you show interest in me there must obviously be something very wrong with you otherwise you wouldn't be able to even stand me... i swear 2 years ago my friend told me he was gay and for a week later all i could think was have i actually been in love with him this whole time?😂 also like you said! if they won't be in a relationship with me i don't have to think about my complex and very contradictory intimacy issues lol

Hello! I’ll try my best to explain what I think it is for me and you can do with that information what you will. Also a huge disclaimer that I do not self diagnose more like self speculate but I don’t shit on anyone that does self diagnose. Getting a diagnosis is hard and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD so take this with a grain of salt I just think this describes what I go through the best.

*disclaimer!! I’m not saying that rsd and bpd are the same thing or that ppl that only have bpd can have rsd. Rsd is specific to people that have adhd. I’m extremely aware but due to the similarities I thought it would be prudent to use it as a framework to explain what rejection and abandonment in relationships looks like for people with bpd.*

So into my answer! It’s extremely common for people who have ADHD (both children and adults) to have something called rejection sensitive dysphoria (which I will be referring to as RSD from here on out). RSD as described by webMD: “RSD can affect relationships with family, friends, or a romantic partner. The belief that you're being rejected can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you act differently toward the person you think has rejected you, they may begin to do so for real.” The webMD article notes that there are similarities between symptoms of RSD and BPD. This excerpt from this psychology today article section titled: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in Relationships, explains how RSD can interfere severely in your life affecting your quality of life.

“As you may expect, RSD can have a significant impact on having relationships—or even the seeking of them. Dating can be especially hard for someone with RSD, as they are hyperfocused on any perceived slight whatsoever (Why did it take so long for them to text back?), and they may assume they are being rejected when that is far from the case. They may ruminate on what they said or did "wrong," or isolate themselves to the point of self-sabotaging and actually driving the other person away due to seemingly not being interested themselves.”

The next paragraph explains this cluster of symptoms further. Being insecure in your relationships can be a deterrent to those seeking you out or those that are interested in you.

“Within relationships, people with RSD can have different ways of manifesting their underlying discomfort and fear, and sometimes, gender roles can make a difference. A person may continually second-guess their actions, wanting frequent reassurance from their partner that everything is "OK" within the relationship. They may grow timid and afraid of sharing their real feelings because of the fear that those feelings won't be deemed acceptable. They may escalate conflicts with anger that feels out of proportion to the situation.”

You can check out the full article for a full list of symptoms that comprise RSD. Onto my point now. As someone diagnosed with BPD you might be familiar with the fact that we tend to have unstable relationships in our lives. Wether these relationships are romantic or not usually isn’t much of a factor when it comes to our insecurities surrounding how others perceive us. So, not only do we have an unstable sense of self, but we also have an unstable sense of how others view us. This usually stems from childhood neglect and trauma. When a child forms an insecure attachment to their parents believing or actually witnessing their parents, guardians, or caretakers leave or move on can cause long lasting trauma. It’s a form of emotional stability teasing. By that I mean that usually the caretaker intentionally or unintentionally essentially teases the child with emotional and physical stability. Some examples might be a semi absentee parent or a parent that verbally abused their child by claiming that they will leave because of how the child is or simply because they want to. Both of these scenarios can cause a child to no longer trust those around them. Children learn how to behave in society by observing their peers but most importantly from observing their caretakers. What’s my point? My point is that there’s some evidence to suggest that people with BPD experience something similar to RSD due to trauma or other factors. The first step anyone with BPD can take that will change their life is becoming self aware of the way they are and what BPD looks like for them. It’s important to note that I by no means am an expert in this and this is what I remember from my psych classes.

Anyways moving on to my own personal experiences. The biggest and most harmful situation to me that I perpetuated was liking someone who told me not once but twice that they didn’t wanna be in a relationship with me. I’m not saying that I’m fully at fault but it’s literally so annoying that I definitely subconsciously knew they would never take me seriously and I decided to bet all my money on the same pot. The situation is a bit complicated but it boils down to the fact that I knew they weren’t truly attainable so I cut it off only to go back TWICE to see if it would work out. I knew they weren’t attainable, they had told me so and yet I still continued to pursue them. Not everything is black and white tho and sometimes you need to learn to trust yourself and your intuition. I wasn’t particularly wrong for believing that they might come around but I was wrong for entertaining it simply because I wouldn’t have to actually commit despite what I thought and felt at the time. My experience with BPD is very similar to RSD except that for me as someone with BPD and not RSD I experience this all the time with everyone in my life. I don’t feel secure about any attachment I have to anyone and believe that eventually all of them will leave me because I am actually as bad as I think. This isn’t true and it’s a hard thinking pattern to break.

I don’t know if this helped? It might just be me rambling into the night. Anyways thanks for the ask and thanks for sharing with me! Stuff like this can be hard to sift through!

[mollydollyjournals]

Monday 25th January; 156lbs

I didn't check my body composition today. I just stepped on the scales and left my phone in my bedroom, which means it doesn't send info to the app. So I know that I weigh a little less than the other day, but still way too much.

Toilet tmi again. Im still really constipated and it's actually just fucking painful. The biggest issue is it's not that I haven't been eating. I always try to eat reasonably high fiber (compared to my caloric intake anyway - 8-9g fiber a day isn't much for a normal 2000kcal diet, but it is for 800kcal) and if I need more then I have some particularly high fiber stuff like pulses. Fruit and veg is a good way to go. It's been 3-4 days now so I actually have been eating a bit more to try to make it happen, including higher fiber, but still nothing. I took some stimulant lax last night and still nothing. Had yogurt and coffee and still nothing.

I have this pain in my abdomen too. I suspected some internal bleeding last week or the week before so I'm sure something is up. Just I don't know what I should do about it. I don't want to go back to the doctor and ask them to investigate something else again. I think after my liver scan and blood tests came up fine they'll think I'm lying or exaggerating. I just don't know what's wrong with me. Is it an impaction? Do I have something constructing my intestines? An ulcer? I have really bad acid reflux too. It's like my digestive system is too full and it's just not emptying. My waist feels huge. It makes me actually scared to eat for physical reasons, because if it's not stimulating my gut to move like it should be, then all I'm doing is putting more pressure on my insides.

I'm currently drinking some osmotic lax, which is all I can do. It's what you're supposed to do for impaction. I bought it specifically because I've had these problems before and you're not meant to take stimulant lax, and sometimes it'll resolve itself but it can still be painful and also it'll take longer. Osmotic lax doesn't work fast though - you have to give it a few days. During those few days I'm just reabsorbing waste matter from my intestines. Its disgusting and unhealthy. And when it finally does work, I might have the opposite problem. In the past I've been reluctant to take lax for this because I've had instances where it acted kind of like...a plug. That once it's passed, everything else goes way too fast after it. Sorry that's gross. I guess if anyone wanted more motivation to eat properly it's so your digestive system doesn't get fucked up like this. I noticed a lot of mucus not long ago so maybe the regular mucus layer got stripped and hasn't replenished. Idk.

Other than that there is family drama happening with my brother who is currently in a psych ward and my stupid mother who thinks the sun shines directly out of his anus. My entire life she's treated him like her precious baby and I've just been secondary. Maybe because she associated him with my older brother who died. Who fucking knows. But they're stressing me the fuck out and pissing me off. I keep telling her what to do and what not to do, which I get from trying to properly research his conditions and others similar and from having dealt with her when she was in a psychotic episode, and she just doesn't. She thinks if she just talks nice and loves him enough he'll get better. As if that isn't the whole reason he's a spoiled piece of shit who thought he could take all the drugs with no consequences. This probably sounds very hypocritical from an alcoholic who has trouble not drinking even after physical health problems, but there's much more to it in my brother's case that I cba to go into.

The worst part is she gives him all the attention and understanding that I want and haven't had. I've spent the last few days feeling especially lonely and invisible. I've been talking about it a bit on social media and only a couple of friends responded. Hb came up to my room and saw me crying and basically acted like an awkward dad. Bf hasn't acknowledged much of what I've posted and we still haven't spoken directly. If not for those few friends I might have done something drastic. I don't know. I need to know if I'm actually liked loved and cared for. Missed at all. Lockdown has fucked with it so much and I already had trouble with it. I feel like I need to do something big to get attention. I could just be honest about my feeling like I want to kill myself and see who responds. But I've spoken about it before and people just kind of 'haha same' if that. I don't know if they realise that I'm genuinely close to doing something, or just don't care.

I do have borderline personality disorder and I'm so aware of the stigma. I don't want to be manipulative or abusive. I want people to want to be around me, not because I forced them. I'm so scared of being needy or annoying or overbearing or anything like that. And then if I do say something, I'm already feeling really bad and struggling a lot, so for it to be ignored hurts so much. That's why I end up drinking. I already have trouble seeing my friends post about their struggles and get so much support and love offered, when I get barely any. One of my best friends also has BPD but also everyone loves her. She has a successful small business doing what she loves, if I go anywhere with her strangers stop her and compliment her or ask to take her photo but pretend I don't exist or give me a passing smile. It's not that I don't think she deserves those things or love and support. It's just that I want it too. She's one of the few people who's reached out to me recently and I really appreciate it. I guess she knows how it feels. I just wish I wasn't so jealous.

So for my brother to start saying stuff in the family group chat and my mum to just start fawning over him and all that? Just the extra salt I really didn't need in my wounds. For one thing, I told her not to play into how he is because he'll feed off the drama. I know this because of who he is, that he really is an attention seeker, and that all 3 of us have a tendency to get caught up in things. My brother and I inherit our cluster B personality traits from her. I told her not to get into it and remain impartial. She didn't. I even messaged her and my dad separately and told them that I called the hospital and asked them to check on my brother, but she hasn't given me so much as a thank you.

She's up early for work and I sleep on Mars time, so my dad is still asleep. He'll probably say something when he gets up in a few hours. It all feels backwards. He was so abusive to me growing up. He was unnecessarily strict and horrible to me all the time and kicked me out and disowned me regularly. He tore down my entire sense of self and called me stupid and made sure I realised that if I wasn't doing well it was my own fault and I wasn't trying hard enough. But now he keeps a level head and we reconnected after years of not talking because my brother and mum both had a psychotic episode at the same time a few years ago. I hated him so much but now his approval and support is worth the most. But it's the same problem again - he seems to genuinely realise now that his overly authoritarian parenting was wrong. It's just how it is in a lot of African cultures, and his father was especially abusive, so he wasn't well equipped. He's doing things differently with my younger half brother. But why couldn't it have been me? Why didn't I get to have a nice dad who acknowledges his humanity? My half brother deserves it, but why couldn't I have that while I was growing up too?

It just makes me feel really abandoned. In every situation, there's always someone else who gets what I want, and I don't. I hate my brother so much. I feel like it'd be better if he was dead. But then my mum would spiral, and I'm not really that cold, so I phoned the hospital to talk to them and get them to check on him. Phone calls make me so nervous. I was shaking. Before the call, while I made the call, and for a long time afterwards. I didn't even get acknowledged.

I want a drink.

[uchikatsu]

( cw for mental illness, substance abuse, self harm, & suicidal thoughts )

since some time in his late teen years, genji has struggled with borderline personality disorder. for a long time, however, his behaviours were attributed simply to genji being genji.

he was diagnosed in early adulthood, though seeing a psychiatrist was not something he personally wanted to do. he would always insist himself to be fine, hated to be honest about his emotions or mental state because he didn’t want to be seen as weak. he faced enough disapproval from his family and the clan as it was.

after being diagnosed, he was scheduled for therapy sessions and dbt (dialectic behaviour therapy), but he only ever attended a few of these appointments. the rest were skipped out on. he didn’t have anyone making sure that he went or even checking that he attended.

he was also prescribed some medications to help him balance some symptoms, but he didn’t keep up with taking them as he was supposed to. they were also abused on some occasions, but he never went back to his psychiatrist to get more after going through the few months of refills.

now i’m going to go through the symptoms of bpd, how genji has been affected by these, and how he coped with them.

FEAR OF ABANDONMENT.  prior to his near-death, genji saw himself as more or less abandoned by much of his family / clan. he was viewed with disdain and seen as a liability, all because of who he was as a person. though he didn’t care a great deal about the opinions of the clan, this all still had a greater impact on his self-esteem than he ever let on. what really terrified him was the idea of being abandoned by hanzo and his father. when hanzo began to pull away and become more involved with the clan’s expectations of him, genji would fluctuate between getting into massive arguments with his brother and practically begging him to spend time with him like they used to, or to not listen to what anyone, particularly the elders, had to say. the death of his father sent him spiraling into grief & depression for the short period of time he had to begin processing it before he was nearly killed.

for the majority of his time in blackw/atch & overw/atch, genji avoided making any attachments to people as best he could under the belief that in the end, they would either leave or betray him. he had no trust whatsoever

by the time of the recall, he’s still somewhat tentative about making new connections with people, but he has regained the ability to trust. there’s still a lingering fear of being abandoned by those he cares about, but this rarely results in any of the lashing out that it used to.

UNSTABLE RELATIONSHIPS.  prior to overw/atch, genji’s friendships and relationships were always short-lived. friends tended to last no more than a month or two before he cycled on to new ones, and ‘relationships’ were less that and more… one-night stands or casual sex. people would seem great at first, but he swung quickly from idealizing to devaluing. plus, if he left them first, they couldn’t abandon him.

relationships were especially tumultuous during his time in blackw/atch — most of the time genji despised the people he had to work with, at BEST finding them annoying. eventually some DID grow on him to an extent, but it didn’t lessen his hostility toward them much. there were occasions when he was calmer and even… open with others, but these moments were infrequent and never lasted long before he was right back to closed off and unpleasant. no one ever knew where they stood with him.

in the time of the recall, his relationships are much steadier, but there are still times where he will idealize others or devalue them, get angry at them for the smallest of reasons, etc. this is particularly the case with hanzo as he tries to mend the relationship with his brother.

UNCLEAR / SHIFTING SELF-IMAGE.  in his younger years, genji swung back and forth to some extremes on how he saw himself. at times he felt he felt great about himself, even felt superior to others, and other times he felt like an utter disappointment, like what the clan elders said about him was true, like he was a mistake that didn’t belong — not that you’d have been able to tell. he was always good at hiding this. even hanzo only saw the cracks in his confident facade a few times.

in blackw/atch, the negative self-image was by far more prominent than anything positive. he hated himself constantly rather than only sometimes, and the only real argument that went back and forth was that of whether he was human or machine.

by recall, self-image is much more stabilized and generally more positive. that isn’t to say he doesn’t still struggle, as there are still times where he feels like he’s a bad person, but he’s come a long way from where he once was.

SELF-HARM.  something that genji mostly engaged in during his time in blackw/atch. he would self-harm primarily through cutting himself and sometimes even tearing at pieces of his synthetic body — removing the outer plates, ripping at wires, etc. many of the scars across what skin he has left were caused by himself. he was also quite heavily suicidal during this time, faced with suicidal thoughts quite frequently. he would sometimes throw himself into battle almost like he was TRYING to die.

EXTREME EMOTIONAL SWINGS.  genji has always been prone to swinging from one emotion to another with enough speed to cause WHIPLASH. he can be perfectly happy one moment and fall into a depressed place the next, could go from somewhere content to outrage over the seemingly smallest things. the swings are intense, but generally don’t last long.

IMPULSIVE & SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOURS.  though some of his reckless and impulsive behaviours were simply him being young and… well, reckless, a great deal of the time they were fueled by a desperate need to FEEL GOOD, or to FEEL SOMETHING AT ALL. nights spent partying, getting drunk and doing drugs, hooking up with strangers, these were all methods genji used to cope. they made him feel better in the moment and distracted him from his life. on top of substance abuse & risky sex, he’d also spend money carelessly & excessively and commit the occasional crime ( outside his family’s business ), such as shoplifting.

as a blackw/atch agent, genji would throw himself recklessly into combat without any real care for himself. he often wound up in the medical wing with serious injuries, parts needing replacing, and sometimes with entire limbs missing. this was a combination of a need to feel something — anything — and being honestly quite suicidal.

come recall, genji is still impulsive, but he’s far better about keeping himself under control. he’ll still be reckless at times, but not nearly to the extent as in his past.

CHRONIC FEELINGS OF EMPTINESS.  fairly self explanatory. something he dealt with heavily prior to his near death and until his time with black/overw/atch was done. as with the other symptoms, he’s much better in the present, but does still struggle with some empty numbness.

EXPLOSIVE ANGER.  also fairly self-explanatory and, again, primarily a symptom he faced in the past. it was absolutely the most extreme during blackw/atch.

FEELING SUSPICIOUS &/OR OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY.  dissociation is another symptom that has affected genji across much of his life and is one of the symptoms that still affects him the most by the time of the recall. it was, understandably, especially bad during the first year or so after having much of his body replaced with cybernetics, but during times of stress, particularly emotional stress that he would and still does hide, he’ll often feel as though things aren’t real, or as though he’s outside his body. he’s good with grounding exercises in the present though, whereas in the past this was another symptom that he would try to solve with distractions & self-destructive behaviours.

[writerseven]

hey if you're still doing commentaries could you maybe do one on the conversation dick and alfred have in the most recent chapter thanks

 I am always down to do commentaries!

This got long, so I will put my rambles about this bit from brother chapter two under the cut:

so when plot was just starting to happen in the series, I actually debated for a bit whether or not Alfred would know, and how much. Ultimately, I felt like him knowing would make more logical sense and feel more grounded, and some version of that reveal has been in my outline ever since I had an outline. I have been waiting for the chance to write that, like, five second moment of one of the kids having a stomach-dropping realization that alfred has known this whole time. I think early on it was much later in my outline and it was Tim? But in terms of plot machinations and where things are headed and characters emotional states, it ended up fitting perfectly for Dick in this moment.

Setting that up was tricky. I figured some people would already suspect, but I still wanted it to be potentially shocking for readers who anticipated a nicer Alfred? I really tried to figure out how to tune that entire chapter to feel like it was building up to Good Guy Alfred, and add in little mentions from Dick’s PoV of Alfred being great/kept in the dark/etc that would set expectations without being too obvious as red herrings.

Honestly, I’m not sure I really succeeded on that, but as long as that moment is still horrifying and awful, that’s more important that being shocking. If I were to go back and edit this series as a whole, I would probably try to set that up for longer to really pull the rug out from under people.

asdfjk I’ve written a bunch and I haven’t even gotten to the actual convo you asked about yet

OKAY. So Alfred doesn’t have a lot of lines because it’s not a very long scene all things considered, so I tried to really be thoughtful about what he did say. Right before Dick “tells” Alfred, we get this:

Alfred doesn't complain, glancing over his shoulder. His mouth gives a wry twist at the display. “Ah, well. You know Master Bruce. It does not matter what logic or decency or I say when he's determined to wallow in guilt.” 

They’re talking about the Jason Robin suit display, but that’s also setting up everything that comes after.

“Were I capable of stopping Master Bruce from every foolish idea that gets into his head, he wouldn't be gallivanting about each night to risk his life dressed as a flying rodent,” says Alfred, pushing the kettle back into its designated place. “I can protect him from many things, but not himself.”

And that’s kind of the basis of Alfred’s feelings here. He doesn’t approve of Bruce abusing the kids; of course he finds it indecent and misguided and perhaps, if he can admit it to himself a tiny bit, wrong--but it’s not his doing, and, gosh, well, he’s tried his best to steer Bruce right and you can’t win ‘em all, right?

He’s also, like, super focused on Bruce above all others. Alfred calls Batman a foolish idea because of the way it endangers Bruce, and even frames the idea of stopping him from being a pedophile as “protecting him from himself.” Alfred cares about his pseudo-grandkids and would rather not have to chose, but Bruce is his baby and will always come first.

A lot of enablers of this kind of abuse are romantic partners, and because of the unusual way the Robins were raised, that’s not a far off comparison from their side of things; Alfred took somewhat of a parental role for Dick and Jason especially. But in terms of Alfred’s psychology, I think of this more like an enabling parent--the kind who wants their kid to be good and well-raised, but ultimately just cannot accept the concept of their precious child having done something truly bad. And if that kid ever did, they’d be helping bury the body instead of asking questions.

Alfred's eyes are low—No. Alfred's eyes are averted. His lips are still pinched, brow still creased. Dick doesn't get it at first. But something cold creeps into his chest. “Alfie...?”

[fixed typo count: 1. how am i so bad at this]

One of the most annoying things about describing facial expressions (or body language) is that you can describe it textbook-perfectly for a particular emotion, and still have it not convey the emotion you mean it to. Part of that is that we only have so many words for the ways faces move, part of it is that individual facial movements can convey multiple expressions (e.g. frowning can be for irritation, disapproval, disappointment, sadness, etc), and part of it is that if you’re not using words that convey obvious emotion (’scowl’ ‘smile’ ‘grimace’ etc) readers kinda have to take a second to actually picture what you’re describing before they can discern an emotion from it.

...on the flip side, if you want characters and/or readers to misunderstand an expression, that means you can still get away with a lot of describing.

All that lowered eyes, pinched lips, creased brow could be the sign of someone taking in horrible news and trying to suppress a strong reaction, which is what Dick thinks at first--and then a little word choice of flipping the vaguer “lowered” to the distinctly guilty “averted” and Dick starts to get it.

“Perhaps,” Alfred says, carefully selected words, “you should let it not be true.”

And there we get to, like, the entirety of Alfred’s justification. Love for Bruce is why he lets this continue, but the how is just a straight up I Do Not See It. From a little later:

“There are things in his life,” Alfred says tightly, refilling his cup, “in any loved one's life, that are simply separate from our own.”

I don’t know if this is ever going to come up, so I don’t mind mentioning it here though it hasn’t been explicitly shown in the story--but this is the first time Alfred has ever really discussed this with anyone. Dick is the only person who is fully aware Alfred knows.

If you go back, you can actually see brief mentions in Bruce’s PoVs of keeping things hidden from Alfred, e.g. debating if he could convince Alfred that short-shorts for Robin are a tactical decision. I think I dropped that in the first time before I had actually considered Alfred’s role in a longer story, but I ended up liking the idea that not even Bruce is certain whether Alfred is aware of his abuse. He goes back and forth between thinking maybe Alfred doesn’t know and he must hide it (because clearly Bruce is such Clever Genius Sneaky Man that no one could ever learn his secrets), and suspecting closer to the truth: that Alfred knows, but the silent condition for his enabling is that Bruce never ever brings it up and lets Alfred feign ignorance.

I realize I’ve talked a whole bunch about Alfred here and said almost nothing about Dick, but to be fair, we’re already in Dick’s PoV so there’s not as much new stuff to cover.

What if he doesn't? Dick can say something stupid instead, watch Alfred's face clear and that smile return. They'll go upstairs, maybe, have tea with Jason, laugh and reminisce. Bruce and Tim will return later, change back in the cave, and come upstairs where they can all be together. This little messed up family in the kitchen, happy and unbothered. Alfred won't have his heart broken, and Jason can warm up again, and Bruce will smile at Dick, and Tim won't resent him. And all Dick has to do is pretend he was wrong and never say anything, until he starts to believe it himself.

They could be a good, happy family. The blissful life of ignorance.

I feel WEIRD talking about my own feelings on my writing (because what if they’re completely off base from how it reads??) but I think this was the most crushing bit to me. Dick so badly wants the good family that he deserves, wants his dad to love him, wants everyone to be happy. And, without knowing it yet, he’s basically described what Alfred actually did. Dick is going to push past this moment of weakness, do the right thing instead of pretending, say something so incredibly hard--and then find out it was all pointless because someone else already made that choice.

Sad. Alfred looks sad. Dick doesn't understand, he doesn't understand. It's the wrong sadness. And Alfred's—being—gentle.

“Let's get you some tea and a chat,” Alfred says. Dick means to refuse that too, but the words get choked up and the next thing he knows Alfred is guiding him up that long staircase. That hand on his shoulder is so gentle and the words are so gentle and the pace is so gentle and Dick can't seem to resist any of it and he doesn't know where his—body has gone.

I kind of realized after I wrote the previous chapter that I would never be allowed to use the word “gentle” in Dick’s PoV without it carrying a very specific connotation. And on the bright side, I can just drop a single word and have already established the emotion behind it!

Alfred is now placed alongside Bruce (and Catalina Flores, and the BPD, and those appeared-for-two-seconds traffickers...) He has the upper hand, and has no need to be cruel.

(also that “he doesn't know where his—body has gone” my dudes, Dick must have, like, so many issues with bodily autonomy after all the shit he’s been through, even in a ‘verse where Bruce isn’t an abuser, and I could do a whole post about that y’all)

Alfred gets him some tea. Dick stares at it until a soft sound and Alfred sipping his own in demonstration stirs him to follow suit.

They're sitting at the kitchen island. Dick is sitting at the kitchen island, dangle of his legs off the bar stool making him feel like a kid again. Alfred stands on the island's other side, patiently watching him. Tea. Kitchen. Alfred knows. Dick has the vaguest presence of mind to wonder if they passed Jason on the way up. He's pretty sure they didn't; Jason must have moved.

[dissociation intensifies] adjf honestly I was like “oh no am I using dissociation too much in this series” because part of me always wants to highlight the different ways people can react, but IN MY DEFENSE dick has a canonical history of reacting to traumatic events like this so. yeah. Errbody dissociating.

(For the record, Jason did indeed move and they did not pass him.)

There’s a middle bit to this conversation that I don’t have to much to say about where Dick is just trying to come to terms with the revelation and completely failing to understand how Alfred can not do anything. because Fundamentally Good Person Dick Grayson reigns supreme in my heart.

and then that tension escalates to:

Dick hands clench on the tiny teacup. “He's raping kids.”

“Richard.”

From getting to chat a bit in the comments, it’s not just me, but I’ve always found that initially naming a thing can feel more shocking than the thing itself. Bruce grooms his victims (Dick included, though Bruce never raped him), and gradually submits them to more and more discomfort, and gaslights them, and that sort of slow ramp up can make things seem...less awful, or less definable, or less abusive than they actually are.

I’ve always found things seem a lot clearer in retelling (or, for fiction, in telling at all), when in the moment, in real life, there’s a lot of second guessing and ‘is this really happening?’ and ‘what exactly is happening?’ and ‘is this really what i think it might be?’ And then you don’t want to get it wrong and be jumping to conclusions.

So there’s also a power in my mind of being able to name things? The first time is really shocking and hard, but then suddenly there is this title you can group it under. And maybe you don’t know what to do about “my adoptive father who i love but is sometimes difficult is maybe carrying on a sexual relationship with my not-brother who swears that it isn’t happening and also seems to want to be there, and i don’t want to hurt anyone,” but you probably have a much clearer reaction to “this man is raping children.”

I think it takes a lot from Dick to name it as such--And there’s a reason why that is the moment Alfred snaps. “My employerson who I love has a complicated relationship with his kids” is a lot easier to be willfully ignorant towards.

Finally, the end of the conversation is just Alfred laying out why Dick can’t do anything about it and how no one will help. And also trying to guilt Dick into believing this is for the best. Alfred is happy to have all four of his boys around, and he would prefer that illusion of being whole and happy to losing any of them for the sake of helping the others.

...and, I’ll be honest, that ending explanation is also for me the author to be able to explain it. If you’ve got a purely logical viewpoint here, there’s a question of, like “why doesn’t Dick just ask Diana to use her lasso, or ask a telepath to read Bruce’s mind?” etc etc, and my hope is that it will be clear to everyone that emotion is about a million times more important than rationality when it comes to trauma reactions, and that Dick actually does even have good reason to doubt talking to any of those people would help!

Because the person he trusted most in the world to have his back re: Bruce already knew, and doesn’t want to change anything.

[namemeagainivebeenlost]

Don’t Join a Sorority

So a year and a half ago I joined a sorority called Sigma Lambda Alpha at my university (oh yea, we’re name dropping). I was excited at first but the whole thing was a shit show. They were unorganized, power hungry, immature, gossiping little girls all vying for attention, which was ridiculous, because this is a small school and a tiny chapter of a tiny sorority. Seriously, look it up, my sorority isn’t even the one that shows up first, it’s some honorary architecture frat by the same name.

Well the semester before last semester I had a bad break down, but I kept soldiering through my sisterly duties, because I made a commitment, right? And even when I needed time to study or rest, they still asked for more and I gave it.

Well the next semester (last semester) I told them I needed a break, I told them I needed to go inactive, just for a semester, so I could get my grades up and make more friends and get my medications put to rights to prevent anymore bipolar manic meltdowns. (You ever stayed awake so long you started hearing dogs in your room, scratching at the floor next to you and breathing on the back of your next, despite your bed being 4 1/2 ft off the ground and in a dorm room with no animals? You ever seen shadows in your room, disappearing into one wall, only to float through your window and stand over you for hours? that shit is fucking scary as hell)

They said no. They said I hadn’t been in the sorority long enough to take a break, even though I had medical evidence that said I’d need to go home often to see my doctor and get therapy (medical leaves of absence are totally allowed per our by-laws). And what girl did they send to convince me to stay a fully active member (despite the fact I failed all but 2 of my classes the semester before because of my issues?) the girl who I invited INTO MY HOME (because she was an international student and couldn’t go home for Christmas and I didn’t want her to have to spend it alone) and who told I and my mother (both of us suffering with BPD) that mental illness wasn’t real, medication didn’t work, and people just aren’t self disciplined enough. (And you know what? I forgave that, there was a culture difference and I can understand that.)

But then when I tried to explain to her why I needed to go inactive, just for a single semester! She told me I needed to stay there, I obviously needed people “keeping an eye on me”, as if needing to fake it for 2 dozen practical strangers wasn’t part of the problem. Then she said I needed to stop taking my moms advice, she said my mother never went to college and so she didn’t know anything.

OK

HOLD UP

First and foremost, you shut your goddamned mouth about my mother. I can take you talking shit about me, about my dad and my sisters, but you DO NOT talk about my mother so disrespectfully.

Second, I have been through this kind of breakdown before, I know what I need to do to get past it, I know that I need my therapist and my medication and my family to support me. Her trying to tell me what I need was bullshit.

So I was forced to plead my case in front of the entire executive board and a woman I’ve never met who was on speaker phone. I barely know these girls, we run around but I don’t have an emotional connection with any of them except for one. They pressured me into detailing my spiral downward throughout the last semester, my history with this kind of illness, my, then brand new, diagnosis of bipolar disorder and subsequent cocktail of drugs to control it. By the end I was a sobbing, humiliated mess, begging them to just let me be for a few months.

They let the girl who didn’t believe in mental illness and insulted my mother walk all over them. I was required to log all my study hours (fair enough) but also only be partially inactive. I still had to participate in rush and volunteer and I was forced to go to multiple social events, when I told them I didn’t want to. Only some of this is common for inactive members, and I had more responsibilities added on which were untraditional. In the end, it would have served me better to just stay active, I’d have had less duties.

Then, as icing on top of all this, they had a secret meeting after I left about how to address my mental illness. They told all the execs and most of the other sisters to text, call or “run into me” at least once that semester. Not because they genuinely cared, but because they, and I’m almost quoting here, wanted to be sure that should I kill or harm myself, they couldn’t be held responsible.

Wow. Just wow.

So, insulted, disgusted, frustrated and feeling disrespected, I tried to bow out as gracefully as possible. My letter of resignation was concise, diplomatic and pretty short.

After that they told me they needed all my stuff with letters back, so I returned it all, even a gift from my aunt.

Then they told me I needed to return every gift my big or any other sister had given me. This included cross over (when we become members), big reveal (when we find out who our big is), and actual reveal (when we’re revealed as the newest sisters), which was all annoying but understandable. Then my big told them to ask me for any other gifts she’d given me back, birthday and Christmas gifts, along with a few souvenirs she’d brought me back from her summer trip, all of which had no sorority letters of any kind on them. I was a bit hurt but honestly I don’t care, I don’t want these gifts that bad, and I certainly don’t want those associated memories, you know?

So today I was supposed to meet with them down stairs in the dorm buildings main lobby to hand off the gifts and SURPRISE SURPRISE, no one showed up. I waited 6 minutes then went back to my room because I’m not wasting my time. (I tried texting the president multiple times before, during and after the meeting time, but she never answered, still hasn’t and it’s nearly 4:15 now)

My mom and I were discussing this hand off last week so I texted her and told her she was right about no one showing up despite our agreement, AND

MOM

She was so done with all their shit when I went back to school and they starting asking for personal medical histories and records that should be private. After that she was like “fuck em, cut em off, Hope” and she’s just gotten increasingly disgusted and infuriated by they behavior ever since.

So anyway, all that to say, I’m going to leave the crate with all the gifts in the very public lobby. If someone steals stuff out of the crate, whelp, maybe they should have showed up like they said?

Y’all, my momma don’t play games and I think it’s about time for me to take a page from her book.

[underlxnd]

hey totally not a person you know here, just a random anon. Can I get every headcanon symbol for every muse.

fk u mandy

send 🍯 for a food headcanonsend🥛for a drink headcanonsend 🐢 for a mental health headcanonsend 🦄 for a physical health headcanonsend ⌛for a sleep headcanonsend 💕 for a love headcanonsend 💣 for a stress headcanonsend 😵 for a sickness headcanonsend 🤲 for a religious headcanonsend 🏡 for a home headcanonsend 🍬 for a family headcanonsend 💼 for a work headcanonsend ⛈️ for a sadness headcanonsend 😡 for an anger headcanonsend 💩 for a ridiculous headcanonsend 🌼 for a happiness headcanon

Read more because this is gonna be long af

🍯 - Let’s do favorite foods for this one

Alicia - Asian cuisine, Alyse - baked goods, Cheshire - fish, Jasper - cookies, Xander - quail, Scarlette - apples, Jack - a big ass cheeseburger, Archer - baked chicken, May - tea cakes, Milly - donuts, Ayden - candy (more specifically lollipops), Delia & Dudley - sweets, Beatrix - flesh uh let’s go with steak

🥛 - favorite drink

Alicia - coffee, Alyse - cappuccino, Cheshire - milk, Jasper - tea, Xander - brandy, Scarlette - merlot, Jack - fireball whiskey, Archer - any fruity alcohol, May - tea, Milly - coffee, Ayden - vodka, Delia & Dudley - shirley temple, Beatrix - blood uhm w-water..

🐢 - mental health; they are all neurotic and have some sort of mental issue

Alicia & Alyse - childhood trauma led to all sorts of issues with them and their trauma has manifested Wonderland and its inhabitants, which resulted in them being afflicted with some of their issues, Cheshire - depression masked by humor, Jasper - anxiety, Xander - probably the most normal/stable but has a problem forming bonds/connections with people despite how kind and empathetic he may seem, Scarlette - superiority complex that is debilitating and heavy emphasis on the ‘to mask feelings of inferiority’, Jack - insomnia and extremely repressed, Archer - bpd, May - OCD perfectionism, Milly - narcolepsy, Ayden - drug dependency and suppresses whatever could be wrong before it can effect him, Delia & Dudley - unhealthy codependency and mild sociopathy, Beatrix - Dissociative identity disorder

🦄 - physical health

They’re all in good physical health, as they can not die or be seriously/permanently hurt.

⌛ - sleep

As they are ‘imaginary’ in a dreamland, they do not have dreams of their own.

💕 - love

This is just...a messy topic for any of them, really. Fortunately, yes, they are all capable of love. But unfortunately, most - if not all - don’t really know how to process the feeling and it causes anxiety and distress. (though, of course, with love and patience they can be helped through that - for the most part)

💣 - stress

Bruh they all stressed tbh The glory of being a manifestation of mental illness

😵 - sickness

For the same reason for their immortality, they can’t really get sick. Like, they can’t get a disease or anything serious. Maybe a cold or something here and there but generally pretty healthy.

🤲 - religion

They were made by two kids, that’s the closest thing they’ll ever see as ‘God’

🏡 - home

There are many houses of shapes and sizes throughout Wonderland, as well as two magnificent castles - a white one and a red one. A lot of the houses are unoccupied and spawn and despawn randomly if no one claims one, to accommodate the random npcs as well as visitors such as the twins. The white castle belongs to Xander, where May stays. The red castle belongs to Scarlette, where Jack and Jasper also reside. The others occupy one of the random houses throughout Wonderland - Archer owns several for his parties and a separate personal residence, Chesire tends to bounce from house to house and doesn’t really settle on one.

🍬 - family

There really isn’t much to say that can’t already be found elsewhere here fgfdhg

If the character isn’t listed as being related to another character, then that character has no family rip

💼 - work

Their jobs/roles have already been covered. If one isn’t listed then they’re ‘unemployed’.

⛈️ - sadness

Honestly lmao they all fuckin sad, man, even if you can’t outright see it - though it is obvious with a couple. They’re lonely and dealing with shit. Hug them.

😡 - angery

Scarlette is like always angery. Jack is easily annoyed and gets pissed off, but generally has a lot of patience and discipline. The twins, May, Milly, and Jasper don’t really get angry. The Tweedles, Ayden, and Archer can be dangerous when angry. Xander gets like disappointed quiet angry which is scary in its own way. Beatrix will turn into a beast and eat you.

💩 - ridiculous

Before things got too hostile and split between factions, they would have a tea party every Sunday to try to keep the peace. Obviously it wasn’t enough.

🌼 - happiness 

T..They aren’t very happy, pls help. This is very thread dependent as positive things depend on how the characters develop during interactions with other people’s muses, and it won’t always be the same outcome.