#suicidal actions tw

[animenostalgia]

Some extremely sad news to share - Mangaka Hinako Ashihara, best known in the US for her shoujo work like Sand Chronicles and Forbidden Dance (originally Angel's Kiss in Japan), has died from suspected suicide. Her latest series in Japan, Sexy Tanaka-san, has recently gotten a live-action drama series. But behind the scenes, the production has been riddled with problems. Ashihara had expressed in a now-deleted blog post the scripts where not what she was promised out of the adaptation, which she later apologized for, saying she hadn't meant to sound like she was attacking the staff of the TV show.

People speculate that all these issues most likely lead to feelings of despair, though we don't know the full details and possibly never will. Whatever happened, it is a true tragedy and Ashihara will be deeply missed.

[stressfulsloth]

I really do think it's interesting that the way DE discusses ableism gets ignored by a lot of the fanbase. Because Harry is undeniably disabled and that's a core conflict of the game. He's living in an impossible situation that so many disabled people get caught in; he's physically disabled, even more so by the end of the game after being shot, but even at the beginning of the game he struggles with nerve damage, post-polio syndrome, partial paralysis in his jaw, withdrawals, and that's not even starting on the mental illness. He is sick and cannot ever properly heal under these circumstances because he cannot stop moving forward or he will start to sink. He's living in poverty. He has no safety net. No way out of the RCM. That night in Martinaise before the beginning of the game, he tries to quit- throw everything away. He tries to end his own life and drive his car into the sea because he cannot fathom a future where he's able to get out of this alive when he's so intrinsically bound to this abusive institution that he can't escape from.

And then comes Jean, deliberately forbidding anyone from jogging Harry's memory out of spite and anger, refusing to allow anyone else to help, calling him a fucking idiot and a psychopath, asking if he can go to the toilet on his own, telling him that he doesn't deserve his disability pension because it should go to cops who gave a shit instead (nevermind that Harry has been working at burnout pace for years, he's an addict so his contributions are essentially worthless, right?). He has a conversation with Judit, right in front of Harry, on whether or not he has learning disabilities.

This guy is a very interesting character! And I'm not denying that he's likely dealt with consequences at work from Harry's illness. But he also fulfils the narrative role of being a mouthpiece for the suspicion and even outright aggression that addicts face even while trying to recover. He fulfils the role of a representative of the RCM, with the ability to approve or deny Harry’s return and in turn essentially sentence him to a slow death in the seaside village. He is not there to help; he is there to judge and observe, and then blame Harry when things go bad even though his inaction is at least in part responsible for the deaths during the tribunal. And this is all very deliberate! The RCM, and by extension the Coalition, as an organisation is failing both its officers and its citizens- Jean, by extension, is one of the officers being failed! They are underfunded, overstretched, overworked, and shouldn't even exist in the first place. The expectation on partnered officers to provide emotional support to each other is ridiculous. But instead of directing his anger upwards towards the Coalition airships or superiors at the RCM, he directs it outwards, towards 'the liberals' or towards Harry, who as a disabled addict is a pretty convenient punching bag.

His vitriol towards Harry is not supposed to be sympathetic! At least the way I read it, you're not meant to look at him and think 'oh wow Harry's struggle has been so hard for him.' You're meant to question his language, to think more deeply about how society treats addicts, how punitive measures are never going to help someone get sober, about the importance of safety nets.

[hg-aneh]

You don’t have to answer this but I hope you read it. I just now saw that you wanted to settle things privately and I feel like a dick because

Well. I hope you’re doing alright and that you have lots of warm blankets and all your favorite drinks of choice nearby. ♥️ I was upset on your part. Lots of good vibes to you.

Hey, don't feel bad about it, I know your intentions were definitely not bad with this, and I'm very appreciative of the gesture regardless of how I wanted to handle things personally

What has been bothering me however is the way people are reacting about this being brought up to Neil

I know it can be mortifying to the fandom at large, but sometimes, some people on the internet won't stop or listen to reason unless some higher authority tells them to do so (which, in this case, it would be Neil), and the people who come to those higher authorities are only trying to make things right, it's all!

Also, he's got over a thousand asks on his inbox and he decided to pick this question to answer by his own volition

No one was pressuring him to do so and he's not going to leave the platform or close his askbox because someone gets a bit too personal with him, he's said before that he just deletes asks that make him uncomfortable, which wasn't the case here so that should tell people enough about it in my opinion (you are completely allowed to disagree)

I've also seen people considering this whole thing just "drama"-?

Listen, I know those people are not me and that theyre not in the position I'm currently at, and by God I hope they never EVER will be

But look. I haven't told anyone (besides 2 friends who watched everything unfold very closely and have helped me with receipt-safekeeping) all the details about this situation, nor have I gone out of my way to talk about it fully with anyone or allow myself to process this whole thing completely, but I assure you, it is not just drama

The way the buildup of all of this messed with me almost made me k-ll myself about a month ago

I can see why people would think it's just something silly since they don't have all the details (and I'm not planning on revealing them unless something big comes up), but please, to those people, think of that for a second, think of everything I haven't talked about. Just. Keep that in mind before you call this drama

I'd really appreciate that

[utilitycaster]

(this is tagged for it as well, but putting it here: the below involves some non-graphic mention/discussion of suicide in relation to episode 3x78)

I think it's important to keep in mind, regarding the most recent episode, that while Ashton's behavior was extremely dangerous and reckless, it was not suicidal in intent. Ashton thought it would work. They thought that they would fix things, and they ignored all the smart people warning them against it because it would imply a lot of negative things about their parents. That doesn't mean it wasn't an action taken out of a certain lack of self-regard (Ashton's realization of this is what drives much of his conversations in the first half of the episode); but it's much more akin to an accidental overdose, or a drunk/reckless driving, or other dangerous choices. It feels very true to the idea of punk that Taliesin is going for, in which dying young is always very much a possibility, even perhaps an expectation; but not necessarily a goal. Ashton did not expect taking the shard to result in their death, and is incredibly shaken specifically because it did.

With that in mind I think the party's reactions seem very real and very understandable. The fact is, when someone does something very risky and nearly dies (or even is briefly clinically dead, using real-world terms) but ultimately survives it's extremely normal for one of the emotional responses to be anger that they put themselves in such danger. It is not, perhaps, rational, but most emotions aren't. It hurts a lot when someone one is close to does something that harmful to themselves. I don't judge the other members of Bells Hells for expressing those feelings. Frankly, them not expressing similar feelings in the past might very well be why Ashton made the decisions he did: the party lacking trust and walking on eggshells around each other is why he didn't confide in them, and why they fell apart so completely here.

I think it's relevant that Chetney tells Fearne, after stating he likes Ashton, that either she or Ashton can talk to him if they "want out", and he pretty heavily implies that this indicates not just leaving Bells Hells, but suicide, and that he has considered the latter in the past. It's clear that initially Chetney considers that a possible reason for Ashton's actions. He then gives Ashton the "You should leave" speech only after everyone present has been talking at dinner, after Ashton has indicated that he will help find Laudna. It only comes out after Ashton's emotional state is made more clear to him: it's pretty bad, but not actively at risk of self-harm (and indeed, desperately trying to avoid it and to change).

Finally, it's worth considering how important anger is to Ashton. Obviously I don't think having Imogen, FCG, and Chetney yell at them feels good. I also think it's going to feel better than apathy, and more honest than any other option. I don't think a forced gentleness would be better; in fact it might be worse, with them taking a break because clearly Ashton is having a hard time and needs to recover (shades of how Marisha mentioned Laudna feeling like a burden following her resurrection), rather than "we are clearly all in disarray and all have been not dealing with a lot of emotions, and this could have been any of us, and we should all regroup." I mentioned before that ultimately what's important is, angry as they are, Bells Hells undeniably stayed, and FCG and Imogen at least made it clear early on that they would, even if they were angry. Ashton was abandoned in the past by people who weren't even angry, is the thing. I don't think they cared enough to be.

[queerbauten]

It is suuuper telling how many people are acting like the two choices are “allow people who are doing harm to continue doing harm” or “have the guilty party kill themself”

[sunlit-haruka]

I don't know if this still happens cause I'm not too involved with the Fuuta side of the community, but when I was first getting into Milgram I remember being somewhat annoyed at how much I saw Fuuta's murder being watered down to just "Haha twitter user was twittering". And I still feel that way, not because I think Fuuta should be specially punished for his murder, but because in a series full of murders that anyone could commit when placed into their shoes, Fuuta is the character that I think exemplifies the fact that any of these prisoners could be you if you were placed into different circumstances.

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

also i just wanna give a quick note to ppl bc I’ve seen this happen before when characters commit suicide- please be careful how you phrase posts about them having a happy afterlife/being happier/ect. like that is not necessarily a bad thing to do but you do have to be careful. q!jaiden commited suicide. she chose to die to the nuke due to her own grief and trauma. now obviously stuff just depicting her chilling with the dead eggs and server members is fine, but specifically framing it as her being better off dead due to said grief and trauma or framing it like she could never heal or be better alive can be extremely triggering to people with suicidal ideation. obviously out of universe we know jaiden has said she'd make it more angsty if she was alive, but in-universe the idea that q!jaiden could only be happy through killing herself is just like. potentially very harmful.

[lifeof-pink]

kdj trying to kill himself after seeing the OD is such a visceral and gut wrenching part of the book—

“Something was wrong. A blade… I, I needed to find a blade.” <- this scene (chapter 515) actually broke my heart, i genuinely felt sick reading it. he’s so desperate to die that it’s honestly palpable, it’s like finally seeing that truth behind the snarky mask kim dokja always wears. it took me until this point to realize that every time he tried to sacrifice himself for his companions, it wasn’t just a well thought out plan but a true, genuine suicidality and the acceptance that he might not come back. that he isn’t worthy of living a good, happy life with a happy ending. (which maybe i’m just slow, but i really fell for dokja’s lies, every single time i thought to myself “everything’s going to be fine because he has a plan to survive this,” and almost every single time i was right. except for the end i suppose.)

and fuck, it hits so, so hard.

[ghouljams]

wait why would ghost be pondering if he made the worst mistake of his life? was he that entrenched in the idea of dying on the job that he prefers it to civilian life?

Hmmmm. I think in my mind it's more Ghost's own anxiety around his personhood that hes fully catastrophizing. It's not so much that he loved the SAS but more jumping feet first into a pool he no longer knows how to swim in. The last time he was allowed to be a civilian and enjoy quiet was right before his family was killed, before he became Ghost. I think Ghost's worry is that there isn't a civilian left in him, that the SAS is all that there is and he will never be able to reaclimate.

I always see Ghost as a character that is rigidly settled on the idea that he is one thing, he serves one purpose, and he does it well so why should he try and be anything else? But it's also a very... hm. When you live for so long anticipating your death, living past it feels wrong in a way. There's a piece of you that gets left behind. You wake up the same as you were the day before, but you're not the same as when you went to sleep. Ghost barricades the door because it's an old habit in an unfamiliar environment. But it's not a safe house, there's no watch, there's no one coming after him, there's no expectation he might not see the morning, and that scares him in a new way that dying hasn't in a long time.

Price is offering him the opportunity to be Simon again, and that's scary too. That's a choice with a heavy potential for mistake. What if there isn't any of Simon left? What if he does something wrong, plays the part of Simon wrong? What if he can't be happy as a civvie? I don't think he was happy(maybe familiar, satisfied) with being an operator, but it's the enemy he knows. This is a wide open unknown, an abyss he has to stare into and hope it doesn't stare back. When he meets Goose at the bar he makes a choice to be Simon for her, to take a baby step with a stranger, to give her a fragile part of himself because he gets this squirmy feeling in his chest when he sees her smile, and then has that ripped away from him the next morning.

[alilaro]

god people are so unhinged about james somerton

[bijoumikhawal]

a lot of the talk about Bushnell is reminding me of my "the "mentally ill" have their right to violence revoked" thing again

like. When you're deemed mentally ill, suddenly you must stress how you are more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator to be deemed as human. Because any violence you commit, as a crazy person, is bad. It cannot carry rationale, because you are crazy. If I, as an autistic person, hit someone who was hurting me and got in legal trouble, I can be referred to as just "crazy" instead of as a victim responding to an aggressor. It's an underdiscussed area of dehumanization.

And that's before we talk about intersectionality, and before we talk about how this factors into the idea of ODD, and the "violent" responses patients have to doctors (including those who simply aren't white, and those forced on meds that hurt them, and those resisting sexual assault, and-).

But this is not just interpersonally political, it is political at scale. Black men were targeted by schizophrenia diagnoses during the Civil Rights era (and this is also around when schizophrenia became a "scary" illness). The crazy cannot have valid political criticisms, as a movement (remember that being "crazy" is a vector of oppression abd marginalization) or as individuals in other movements.

Ive seen both the sentiment of "oh Aaron is gonna be slandered as crazy" and exactly what the sentiment warns of- "we can't valorize suicide from the mentally ill". And the first isn't wrong, because society at large does view the "crazy" as lacking political agency, but it's lacking.

Bushnell had been trying very hard to get out of his military contract without being imprisoned at best, while witnessing genocide and knowing he was complicit. He may not have had clinical depression normally, but that would inspire a mental rational response of situational depression (and yes, mental health issues can be a rational response to horrible circumstances). Further, I know of instances of self immolation that WERE done by people who did have long standing mental health issues and were done to protest the treatment they'd experienced that caused them and that resulted from their existence. Mental illness and divergence from the norm is more complicated than just "these people are incapable of rationality, they are incapable of political thought, and they are incapable of agency".

[softpine]

oh god i'm spiraling thinking about how this is going to make elaine feel after she hears asa did this as soon as she dropped him off! and beth and cara? danny and casper? stevie maybe being the one to find him?? IM LOSING IT

seriously i feel so bad for elaine, she has the least context of anyone in this situation. all she knows is that asa was acting weirder than normal and very secretive, then she takes him home and within hours he takes his life. she'll be rethinking everything he told her that day, i mean he literally said “If I can’t help anyone, then… I don’t know why I’m even here. I don’t know how much longer I can stand to be so useless.” she's going to feel so guilty :(

beth, who has been battling with herself over whether she should let asa be a normal kid with privacy and agency, and who only just convinced caroline to ease up on him a little. and cara??? this is quite literally her worst fear:

danny and casper, who both chose to pursue something for themselves instead of putting their family first like they always have in the past, who are terrified of being far away when their family needs them.

stevie, who convinced asa to look for finn in the first place, and who already has guilt over the way she froze up and watched a woman die because she couldn't jump into action quickly enough. stevie, who will have to be the one to intercept asa's parents at the door if the paramedics haven't gotten there yet.

jada, who we aren't sure how much she saw or knows yet, but the sheer amount of guilt she has weighing her down is already so so heavy. i can't even imagine how responsible she would feel for potentially being unable to save her best friend since the literal day he was born.

and finn??? the real kicker for me is that finn would/will be horrified when he finds out what asa put his family through, all for him. he got upset when asa did something as innocuous as burning family pictures, because asa's family loves him so much and he hates that asa has put such a strain on their relationship because of finn.

but i hope i've made it clear enough that this isn't really about finn. asa hasn't been cycling through antidepressants and seeing countless doctors since he was 12 for no reason; he genuinely does struggle with severe depression, losing finn was just the last straw. asa's ability to see ghosts has caused him so much pain over the years, but finn alone made it worth the heartache. without him, he feels entirely helpless. he's surrounded by people every moment of every day, but he can't connect with a single one of them. so while his motivation here may not have been to die and stay dead, i also can't say that he had a clear enough mind to be worried about the emotional impact this would have on the people around him. he knows that if caroline found his body, she would never recover from that, but even that is only a short-term consequence – he's not thinking about how his loved ones will feel in a week or a year or the rest of their lives. i can't really fault him for that. but the whole thing is fucking tragic :(

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

Dumping this in the queue, at 20:30 Monday night, and not looking any more than that at tumblr - but I have to say something somewhere, or I'll burst. Why the hell does the psych care so much about whether I harm myself? Surely she should only really care about whether I kill myself or not? At least for now? Why does everyone care, if it's not bad enough to hospitalise me? It's not. At least for now, I'll make damn sure it's not. But I wish I'd never reached out for help. I wish I'd just let it go on until I killed myself. It would be easier that way. I'd do it now if it wasn't for the fact that I promised, and that there are kids in the house - no fear. Somehow I can't bear the thought of these kids knowing about all this. They're such dears. They're kids.

Damn it, I'd at least hoped I'd make a week of placement without cutting myself. Luckily right now I don't care.

[pen-of-roses]

Longing

(TW: Implied suicidal ideation, potential self-harm, blood, references to death and being buried alive. It's a kinda heavy one)

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial, I present Conor having angst:

This was not the type of place he ever lingered, if he had ever even visited. The very ground itself forbidden to him and him alone.

That was perhaps, not the truth, given that others, though few, shared his condition similarly enough, and it wasn’t as though it burned his very skin. But it took hold of something in his chest, wrapping it’s dark painful claws around that thing, and threatened to rip and tear until there was nothing left. And he had such little will to stop it.

That grip was not pity, nor grief. At least not for them.

It was not forbidden in the sense he could not touch it, because oh, had he so many times before. But he could not keep it, and it refused to keep him.

He was frozen, staring out over the rows and rows and rows of field and grass. Stones, statues, and simple markers some could only just afford stared back at him. Taunted him. 

We offer rest. We offer peace. We hold memories and proof that they were loved and someone cared enough to place us here.

His fingers dug into cold, smooth stone, sapping away his blood’s warmth only slightly, until it cut and brought it hot to the surface.

You still bleed, and you still live. And you will forever.

Perhaps he should be grateful for them. They were, after all, evidence that the dead were not immediately burned or discarded or carved up or worse, sent to the waves, here. As such, he would only have to dig through the dirt to freedom if something went wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. Though those were often unmarked.

A group huddled around one now, a gaping dark hole in the otherwise well cared for ground. Or so he could imagine without being able to see through the bodies this far away, though not far enough for their cries to die in the wind before him. 

Mourners.

On some shards people were assigned to if no one was there for the dead. 

This groups’ grief was loud with many voices though, pressed tight together. 

His teeth ground together and his jaw ached.

Lucky.

Perhaps he did have one out there somewhere. Perhaps someone who had seen him fall or heard somehow, but couldn’t find a body, added his name to one of the simple wooden stakes. Perhaps it was enough that they shed a single tear over it too. Perhaps they had even given him a last name.

But if anyone had, it would have been long lost to time.

Like he should’ve been.

If anyone had, it was a pointless gesture anyway. Proof they hadn’t known him long enough to understand. And all that would be left to show for it was a meaningless empty grave for one who could never fill it.

[junejasprose-addict]

Some fucking ghouls on twitter just misgendered me and called me a chaser and a cross dresser and an agamp because I have an nsfw account where I retweet porn. Why do these kinds of people exist? Why are there trans women that just love acting exactly like terfs? I am so fucking tired of this shit and I'm not out to anyone irl so I have fucking no one to talk to about this! I'm not a docile little house cat so that gives people a free pass to paint me as a predator

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

this might be a controversial opinion idk, but i feel like a lot of people assign more intent to dream's ending than was actually there

like. yes his death was in part a suicide, i'm not saying it wasn't, and i've talked a lot about the reasons and motivations behind that already. but i've seen a lot of responses to my posts lately talking about how dream knew this would definitely happen and he had a plan and was doing [x] thing because he knew it would lead to his death (or the more gentle version that he didn't plan it, but saw it coming and did nothing to stop it)

which. doesn't feel like an accurate description of what happened?

because he tried to stop the kindly ones plot. he genuinely did

he knew that the furies wouldn't be persecuting him out of nowhere, that's unlike them, there's enough nuance in this situation that something else has to be spurring them. which is true. lyta invoked the furies for revenge against dream, and the blood debt is enough of a technicality that they had the power to back her

so dream goes after lyta - stop her, stop the furies. but he's met with thessaly, who predicted this, and has protected lyta inside a ritual circle, which dream can't cross. she taunts him about it (bc this kind of magic is one of the few places mortals have more power than endless), and when he asks why, she says she wanted to hurt him

alright. no stopping the furies. but dream knows they will have to meet him face to face if they want to do anything about this, so as long as they meet him in the dreaming, that's his seat of power, they won't be able to act against him in any real capacity. he'll just have to wait them out, until they tire of this or something happens to lyta

there's one more caveat though - if he leaves the dreaming willingly during their attack, he cedes that seat of power, he won't be the master of the dreaming anymore, it'll belong to them. and that's the last thing he wants, so he tells delirium when she asks that he can't go with her, he has to stay here

nuala is the breaking point. because he has still been dealing with suicidal thoughts for centuries, they're not new and they didn't go anywhere, he's just really good at ignoring those thoughts in favour of his actual responsibilities. and while he didn't intend to die here, he's more exhausted than ever, he's lost in grief over his son, and for the first time, doesn't have the strength to push those thoughts down. nuala calls him from the dreaming, because he promised her any request, and it's a good enough excuse and he's tired enough that for a moment his subconscious wins that battle

and from there he's stuck. he tries to go back to the dreaming and fix it, but it's not his anymore. so he's left with only two choices - leave, abandon all this, go somewhere far away and stop caring about everyone you left behind and what the furies may do to the dreaming in your absence - it's no longer your problem. or he can acquiesce to their demands, lyta's call for revenge

and given who dream is, that was never any kind of choice.

i think people assume he planned it all because of one of these lines

but that's the thing. when the only thing keeping you going is the fact that suicide would be the most terrible horrible act you could possibly commit (this is someone who values his responsibility over anything else! he is dutiful! the whole point is he cannot willingly abandon his post!), you definitely haven't made a plan, and you're never going to. it's an escapist fantasy that sits at the back of your mind, that's all

the things death is drilling him about here are his decision with nuala and the fact that he never chose to leave, even when he got in way over his head, that's all she questions him about in this conversation

and i don't think he's lying in his response to her

yes, he's been 'making preparations' for a while, but those are things like ensuring daniel's ascendancy, tying up loose ends with people, actions that don't lead to anything. he doesn't have to die just because he did those things, those are just emergency precautions. and they make him feel better to do, because he gets to indulge in that fantasy without doing anything about it. he can't be blamed for this, they don't mean he wants to leave, he's going to keep doing his job forever because he has to

but you know. just in case. he's just being smart about it. that's what he can tell himself, anyway

and the reason why this distinction matters so much to me is, dream really tried. we see as early as season of mists that this is what his internal monologue is like so much of the time, given the slightest excuse to give up, in this case literally just the journey between the dreaming and hell, and some part of him yearns to just abandon everything

but he tells it no. he's been telling it no for centuries. this has been a constant fight to stay alive and he's been doing it! it's not been easy, but he's been putting in so much unnoticed work to keep everything going, to not give up. and one moment of weakness that ended up being his downfall shouldn't get to erase that

and when we say that he planned this the whole time, or that he knew this would happen and let it, we're not really appreciating just how much he tried