#pain is often caused

[brucethewannabebard]

(Don’t) Say “I Love You”

I won’t say I love you. But try not to take it personally. It is just that word has a different meaning for you than it does to me. See words have power and can mean different things to different people. Love unfortunately has lost the deeper meaning it once had for most people. Most use it too liberally, Saying to to everyone about everything. Most people have come to think love just means to like a lot. So they love whatever new show or trend has their attention, forgetting that the thing they loved a month ago they now barely think about. So when you say you love me, do you mean like you love a movie?

Some people try to spread love, insisting that they are full of it to the point they can give it to everyone. People who truly have that much love do exists, but they are few and far between. More often they are people just trying to hide their own damages by trying to please others. Or someone who is more concerned with the concept than the practice. You see most people use love in this context to mean be kind, respectful, and compassionate. But I can give all those things to someone I have no love for. It is simple. So Love stops being about the actual emotion and instead becomes short hand for just not being a bad person. So when you say you love me, do you mean it like you do for that homeless man you gave money to? 

Still more people use it for their friends and family. This is both the most honest common use of love and the biggest killer of the word. Because you can have great platonic and familial love for others, and mean it when you say it. But when you say it to a romantic partner, people often use it because it is a strong feeling like they have for their friends. Thus the problem begins, because infatuation, lust, and fascination can be easily confused for love when you throw in romance to cloud the vision. So when you say you love me, do you really? Or do you just love the excitement of something new? Do you just feel attraction strong enough that you lack a better word so you use the only one you have for strong feelings?

See, while I may be guilty of using the word in all the ways I described, I never lost sight of what it means to me when I say it to a partner. Love in that context isn’t some passing fad, nor some generic good will. It isn’t just the convenient short hand for caring. When I say I love you, I mean it as deeply as I can. It is implicit trust, unwavering support, and dedication. It is me saying I have weighed the options and decided I would rather spend every day with you, no matter the challenges, than ever face the world again without you. 

It is passion that burns so strong that it is visible behind my eyes if you know what to look for. It is the desire to comfort and serve you, and put you first in everything I do. It is wanting to do everything and nothing with you. It is the  comfort to be vulnerable, and open. To have no secrets and no fear. I mean it from the deepest depths of my heart, and to the end of time. 

Because there is no one I have ever said it to that I stopped loving. Sure some of them I hate now as well, but the love is still there. Because when you truly love, you love them regardless of how they wrong you. So I won’t say “I love you”, not until I am sure I mean it. Because if I said it without feeling to that extreme, it would be dishonest of me. So when I do say it, you must understand, I will from then on be in your corner forever. Because I have learned how to live with loving someone, even after they stop liking me. 

But please, now that you know what I expect from the word, don’t say you love me. Because I just might be foolish enough to believe it again. Then when I discover you don’t mean the same thing I do, it will start to crumble. I will still love you, and that I can deal with. But I can’t take the disappointment of another false love again. So say you like me, you enjoy my company, that you miss me when I am gone. Say you care, but not that you love. Because if you tell me that, and I believe it, I won’t be able to survive finding out it was a lie. 

[lazylittledragon]

what do you mean youre technically a detransitioner cause of terf bullshit?

it's a v long story but i detransitioned for a couple of years when i was 16/17, for multiple reasons but mostly because i fell into the blaire white/kalvin garrah chamber of "you have to be This way to be trans otherwise you're not real".

i was already Deeply insecure about myself and my 'passing' and i was led to believe that i couldn't want to wear makeup or skirts, and i couldn't choose not to have bottom surgery, and i couldn't do anything but bind for 12+ hours a day to the point that my ribcage is still misshapen. basically i thought that if i wasn't suffering enough doing 'feminine' things, i couldn't really be trans, so i should just go back to being a girl and suck it up.

the terf bullshit is because i'd seen a lot of terfs/detransitioners talking about the 'dangers' of testosterone and how it would turn me into a horrible ugly evil monster and how there was nothing worse than wanting to be a man. which combined with 'you need to fully medically transition to be valid at all' creates some very dangerous and upsetting feelings to cope with.

it also came from trying really hard to put myself in a little box before i realised that my sexuality/gender are very fluid and it's FINE for me not to have a label and just do whatever i want. when i was 19 or so i went back to using they/them (and eventually he/him) and changed my name again because even though i like doing 'feminine' things, i don't want to be seen as a woman.

tldr: i was conditioned by transphobic/terf rhetorics to think that i was being trans the 'wrong' way so i couldn't be trans at all, so i believed i must actually be a girl if i still wanted to do 'feminine' things. nowadays i am a transmasc who does feminine things because i don't give two shits about what any transmed prick thinks of me anymore.

[acroagoraphobe]

josh chronic pain hcs?

Oh yeah!! Heck yeah!!

Joshua with the chronic pain that he absolutely has because nothing at all healed right. He's screwed up and how is he alive?

Barely gets up and out of bed on most days because everything hurts so much. It would be enough to make the average person throw up.

He definitely has bones that were broken that didn't heal right, like in his arms and legs from being tossed into the grand canyon.

Refuses to actually do anything to help himself, even though its agony to exist, he takes his pain as punishment for his crimes.

Can't carry heavy objects because it hurts too much to put too much weight on anything.

This man would heavily benefit from something like a wheelchair ir some ofher mobility aid but ofc he has the mentality of both "I aint no bitch" and "I deserve this punishment"

Constantly sitting down because its the only time he can feel even slightly any relief from pain, that's why he usually sits and works on his guns.

Desperately tries to hide the fact that he has a limp when he walks. But it's pretty obvious that he's in pain when he walks.

Also the fact that he's an old man he has the usual old man pains along with that like back ouch and such.

Life is pain for him, he says its the burns but it's really not. I already said that he has broken bones that didn't heal right, but also probably improperly healed sprains too.

His sleep is plagued with frequent nightmares caused by the pain and waking up every 30-50 minutes because his body is screaming at him in agony.

Very limited range of mobility, not flexible at all obviously, but he has such a high pain tolerance and forces himself to walk around and do things.

[nightmun]

Everyone’s been sharing their versions of the intern so I wanted to share mine! This one’s a little more out there than the others but they’re still doing their best to help around Middlesea Hospital (I just think it’s funny to picture the intern as a big noodle arm so I’ve gone all in on that headcanon). The design they’ve got is based on the sleeve paint in my main file, the only difference being that they’re left handed cause I’m left handed irl so why not. Hope you enjoy this slightly more cursed take on the intern though!

(Also tysm to @emo-hermit for the template!)

[simplydnp]

not to be a demon phannie but how often are they sharing clothes

simultaneously more and less often than we think

[survivinghellandhistoricalevents]

Ambulatory Wheelchair user Vil Schoenheit, AU

As a dancer and a highly active person the stress put on his joints and injuries to the hip and torso area gave him chronic pain. Formed a pars fracture and sprains became fairly common. With the additional injuries from his overblot it was decided that he would benefit from a mobility aid.

References below cut:

[prongsmydeer]

I finally got around to watching Elemental (2023) and I do think those that were describing it as an immigrant story were accurate. It is also a love story, like the marketing said, but you can't disentangle Ember's experience in the story from her family being diaspora.

But what struck me most about the film is that it's one of the only recent pieces of media I've seen, both in Disney and outside of it, that depicts generational trauma in a way that is fundamentally kind to the previous generation (parents, grandparents, etc).

In most other versions of stories like this I've seen lately, for the (immigrant, usually some variety of Asian, and it is clear that the Lumen family is inspired by multiple Asian cultural influences) parents/grandparents, even if we understand why they behave a certain way, it usually frames that generation as restrictive, oppressive, and perhaps even knowingly upsetting the younger generation. And yes, there are parents that do that. I understand the benefit of telling that story.

However, there are also immigrant families like Ember's. Where you have a family that supports you, that treats you kindly. But even still, you carry the weight of what has happened to them, an indebtedness that you can't ever repay. Bernie, Ember's father, doesn't want to force Ember to do anything. But he carries his hopes for her future, and Ember in turn responds by behaving in the way she thinks would make her parents most happy. So though they have this loving dynamic, the conflict is not in their personality, but in that weight they are both carrying. And that is a story I find relatable as an immigrant, and one that I thought was a standout point in this film.

[sneez]

i used to talk about this a lot on twitter a few years ago but recently i’ve been thinking again about how little agency victor kain has both within the narrative and as an individual. specifically i think a lot about how his life after nina’s death is one in which he as a person plays very little role, and the fact that his duty as her husband (and as a kain) means that after she’s gone the nature of his family’s beliefs about the preservation of the soul keep him trapped by design in a grief that is necessarily all-consuming. if he wants to keep nina’s soul alive he can never progress beyond even the first stage of grief: every moment has to be dedicated to her and her memory; he has to be constantly reminded of her and the fact that she is dead. for him to move on would be for him to essentially kill her, so he can never even attempt to recover from her loss. his life has to revolve around the space where she was. in that way i see him as kind of a living shrine, a memorial whilst he’s alive and a vessel when he’s dead. his path is called the mistress! his entire life is explicitly devoted to someone who will take his body and return to life when he sacrifices himself for her! he’s working towards a utopia like the rest of his family, but who is it for? he lost his son in the pursuit of this thing which he will never get to see, and which seemingly never had a place for him at all. the kains’ utopia doesn’t even extend to their own.

all of this pains me particularly acutely because of how clear it is that victor does have interests and desires of his own, despite his implications that he is nothing more than a mouthpiece for his family. if you believe andrey, he doesn’t even want to be here: he wants to go back to the capital to finish his degree. i often see people talk about the kains as if they are one undifferentiated entity, but a lot of the quests ‘the kains’ give you are from victor, and i would argue that in most of those he is acting as an individual rather than necessarily a kain. he wants daniil to free the wrongfully imprisoned people; he acts against his family’s interests in rewarding clara for telling him about rubin. his letter to daniil on day 9 causes me agony for many reasons but in this context specifically because it doesn’t seem like he wants to die. georgiy appears pretty unfazed about being possessed by simon (although it’s georgiy so who knows) but victor, who has two children and has been one of the town’s rulers for presumably several decades, is telling a man he met just over a week ago that he is the only one to whom he can pass on anything meaningful. you could argue that he is just manipulating daniil here to persuade him to take up the kains’ cause, but i am of the opinion that he is being genuine in this case. he doesn’t want to die. he wants his family back again, but the only way they can be reunited is with his death. he wants to finish his degree. i am putting my head through walls

[rogers-the-musical]

I’m still waiting for that post-Endgame fic where Peggy still shows signs of trauma from losing Steve, even though she’s healing and he’s back and they’re happy as ever. Because hello, 1953 Smithsonian interview.

[adriles]

"your violence is unspeakable now " ive always committed grievous acts of violence and war crimes . You are just mad at me for killing someone who matters

[thesoftestmess]

maybe if vash and nai combined the singular trauma-riddled braincell they each have left and met somewhere in the middle between "religious cult working towards the genocide of humanity" and "absolute submission to our oppressors and the colonisers of our people's land" we would've gotten somewhere

[sealestial-k]

This Is Russel- he is a Shambling-Mound taur- or Bushtaur if you will. I Homebrewed a lot about him- he was formed like most Shambling-Mounds, lightning struck a patch of land, bringing it sentience, however in the patch of land was a fresh body, giving the New Shambling Mound access to humanoid intelligence. And so the new being came to life. Obviously I named him Russel because he is a Russel in the bushes.

[thwackk]

i got this crusty ass screenshot of this picture in jay’s house and i had to redraw it because i love the brave and the bold artstyle and it’s the only time you’ll ever see barry with his cowl off and the unsatisfied part of me had to draw it as close to the style as possible

here’s the original

[caffeinatedopossum]

Do they make... like... hearing aids for people who's hearing is *too* good so they can "turn down" the sounds or is that impossible or just too niche of a problem? Asking for a friend

[lazaruspiss]

the part of bruce being abusive where he still loves the people he hurts is important guys. like you know it's possible to hurt people even when you love them, right? you know that it's possible to do terrible things without fully realizing and/or admitting that said things are terrible, right? you understand that relationships can be complex, right??

[loki-zen]

still cackling/crying about having invented an incredibly Autistic-Coded Alien (classic archetype) species in my sci fi LARP but nobody clocks this immediately because two of its most visible traits are

1. friendly and sociable

2. good at, and desirous of, ‘fitting in’/‘belonging’ socioculturally/as part of groups

edit:

3. it is not mechanically or culturally particularly geared towards playing a ‘Nerd archetype’ such as a Scientist; rather its mechanics easily make for a good (somewhat unusual) combat build.