#they were a much better support system when they were hypothetically supportive

[confinesofmy]

soo crazy how after about a year and a half of leaning heavy on my family because my mom died and i was falling apart i am now pretty sick of the majority of them lol. like i finally fell in with them properly because the circumstances were right for it and uhhh turns out they're bad. can't stand em. lowkey. not good people, like for OTHER people they're not. but also me personally they're not good for me to be around. so now i know lol. 😵‍💫

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

what meaningful plenaration does "sane" add to "safe sane and consensual"? safe and consensual are both pretty intuitive as to what is and isn't and why they're important, but what is the aspect of this nebulous hypothetical insane sex (this would work better as a phrase if insane sex wasn't already a thing people said about good sex. much to think about) which is uniquely best to avoid but not already covered by safe or consensual?

i've been thinking about that one thing i saw a while ago about reevaluating ssc in the face of increased awareness of like, mad liberation and the ways that mentally disabled people are barred from sexual agency by ableism & the psych system and i genuinely can't come up with a reason why sane was in there in the first place

great question! let's talk about it!

but first: hey. what on earth does plenaration mean. I absolutely understand the question that you're asking but I don't know that word (unusual for me, if I may flex a little!) and google is giving me NOTHING.

anyway, moving on!

SSC was initially popularized by in 1983 by the New York group Gay Male S/M [Sadism/Masochism] Activists, and particularly activist David Stein. let's take a look at their full statement:

GMSMA is a not-for-profit organization of gay males in the New York City area who are seriously interested in safe, sane, and consensual S/M. Our purpose is to help create a more supportive S/M community for gay males, whether they desire a total lifestyle or an occasional adventure, whether they are just coming out into S/M or are long experienced. Our regular meetings and other activities attempt to build a sense of community by exploring common feelings and concerns. We aim to raise awareness about issues of safety and responsibility, to recover elements of our tradition, and to disseminate the best available medical and technical information about S/M practices. We seek to establish a recognized political presence in the wider gay community in order to combat the prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions about S/M while working with others for the common goals of gay liberation. (x)

GMSMA was founded three years prior in 1981, which is only important because that was also the year the first AIDS patients were identified. I don't know if you're familiar with a little thing called The AIDS Crisis, but suffice to say that during the 80s the public perception of gay male sexuality Was Not Good, particularly something double deviant like sex that was gay and also kinky. in a later essay reflecting on (and criticizing!) the mainstreaming of the term, Stein said he wanted to SSC framework to distinguish mutually consensual sadomasochism from "the criminally abusive or neurotically self-destructive behaviour popularly associated with the term 'sadomasochism'."

in other words: while I can't tell you everything that lay in the heart of David Stein when he first used the phrase, it's very clear that the GMSMA seemed invested in improving the public image of kink by separating it as much as possible from the notion that it was something only practiced by crazed degenerates - you know, something queer people have been forced to do for pretty much all queer sex throughout history? in the same 2000 essay linked above, Stein reflects on how many people took SSC as "a welcome validation for a type of sexuality still considered "sick" or "crazy" by much of our society."

is there still ableism baked into that narrative re: the notion that mental illness is a bad thing to be affiliated with? yeah, absolutely, and we'll get to that! spoilers: it's been a source of much criticism, which is why many people now prefer RACK over SSC. but give me a second to get there!

in the essay I've been pulling from, Stein freely admits that GMSMA never attempted to offer concrete definitions of SSC, particularly not the latter two: "We left "sane" and "consensual" much vaguer, "sane" because it's pretty vague to begin with once you get past the obvious meaning - able to distinguish fantasy from reality - and "consensual" because we didn't realize how tricky it is."

the idea of "sane" meaning a person is meaningfully able to distinguish fantasy from reality was echoed by Gil Kessler, a longtime kink educator and board member of GMSMA. rope enthusiast Tammad Rimilia defined it differently, saying that sane kink referred to a situation where "all parties are engaging in this activity by direct intention and can judge the effects of their actions." you can see that echoed in Stein's earlier statement about differentiating the kind of sex that GMSMA encouraged from "self-destructive behavior."

tl;dr, the "sane" is mostly there to specifically draw attention to the fact that some people engage in sex in ways that may be a form of self-harm and/or may want to engage in sex when they are experiencing reality in a way that prevents them from making rational, fully-informed choices, such as psychosis or manic episodes. per their own statement, it seems the GMSMA would discourage having sex with people in this category.

obviously that may already fall under the purview of safe and consensual, but show me an organization that's never gotten a little redundant in its mission statement and I'll eat my shirt.

now, back to that criticism! as Stein notes in the essay I've referenced heavily in this answer, understandings of safety, sanity, and consent have come a long way since 1983! the risk-aware consensual kink model (RACK) has gained popularity for many reasons, with much of the conversation centered on both the inherent ableism of SSC and concerns about the promise of "safe" and the unhelpful and unrealistic expectations it may set. hell, even notions of consent are constantly growing and evolving. and that's wonderful! SSC comes from a very specific time and place in the history of kink and may no longer be the pinnacle of best practices for everyone, but there's still plenty to be learned from its origins.

[magpod-confessions]

hi. so because i'm normal about jonathan sims and jmart. um.

i really like jmart. i think there could have been MUCH better buildup, but... ultimately it's a very cute ship. i think the appeal, yeah, is a lot that it's just canon. but.

they're both deeply broken people. jon wasn't loved enough. his grandmother tried her best, but he was never cuddled, never read to, never had a chance to *be a little kid*, really. and martin was never loved. maybe he convinced himself he was just never loved the right way, that his mum just didn't know how to show it because he was so *insufferable* and *incompetant*, but no matter the lies he tells himself, martin was not shown love by his mother.

and then they meet. and martin gives and gives and gives because that's all he knows. and jon has no idea how to receive because he never really had anything to receive. and jon's coping mechanism, with that unknown situation, is to reinforce his emotional walls. martin does not know how to stop giving. so they don't work at this point, not at all.

and then jon's emotional walls come tumbling down. well, moreso that they were violently destroyed, with prentiss and all. jon has no support system!!! tim hates him because he's a fucking *stalker*, martin... well... he can't rely on martin, of all people. and sasha... he never knew her too well, but she's acting strange. so jon and martin don't work together at that point, romantically, i think partially because jon won't let it.

in big part, jmart is built on mutual trauma (NOT traumabonding!! i know it's used that way in podcast, but that's not the correct definition) and ... martin being pretty much the only person jon has left. of course, there's basira and melanie and georgie, but they don't *get it*. they didn't go through everything jon did alongside him. sure, martin didn't either, but martin has been there the whole time.

it's partially a relationship of proximity, partially shared trauma, but i do think a lot of it is genuine care for each other (even if that care stems from the former two reasons).

anyways. theyre really cute. tma could have been just as good without it, but---and im saying this as someone who typically despises most romance in media---i really adore them and their dynamic. it opens up so many doors for both character- and self-exploration.

martin learning to love without sacrificing himself. jon learning to love openly, period. explorations of trust and how mutual trauma that affected people in different ways can shape them, etc etc etc. and of course, this is all in fics and in my own mind, because . theyre dead . (i wont accept any ending but that, honestly. theyre not Somewhere Else to me). but. it's nice. they mean a lot to me as characters and as people and as a pair. thumbs up.

and some jon ranting!! because i. admit. finally. that i might be a bit of a jon kinnie.

jon doubts himself, constantly, unless his decision is completely impulsive (ex. the coffin). he can't *let* himself feel, fully, because as a child it was always annoying/obnoxious, or too much, or wrong in some ambiguous, nebulous way.

he's out of touch with himself emotionally. it's... not so much that he doesn't get emotions, it's moreso that he's repressed the majority of his own so intensely that he has a hard time dealing with others' emotions because he's not too sure what it's supposed to feel like without a heavy flavouring of shame.

he's read a lot of books. he knows, in theory, what sadness or romantic love or anger or excitement feels like---and occasionally in practice, when the repression and 'compartmentalisation' (bottling it up) becomes too much and it all boils over---but he has a hard time relating those hypothetical and heat-of-the-moment feelings to actual, real life people.

he struggles with empathy, severely. partially an autistic thing, partially a trauma response. yknow. he's genuinely well-meaning when it comes to comforting those he cares about, but he's not sure of the right thing to say because of how severely that muscle has atrophied. he was never taught that with his grandmother and her neglect (and yes, no matter what he says on tape, it was emotional neglect) and then not having very many friends... he missed those prime developmental stages as a child.

he never empathised with book characters, i don't think. he was always the observer, never really fully putting himself in the role of the protagonist. he definitely used books as an escapist coping mechanism, but it wasn't in a visiting-this-fictional-world way, it was more of a losing-himself-in-the-story way, if that makes sense. there was always a sense of detachment. reading was an *in between* of his life and the life of the protagonist.

he struggles with his and others' feelings because, from his perspective, his emotions are uniquely shameful, uniquely embarrassing, and uniquely *harmful* to other people. so, he represses them, and doesn't let himself feel them unless they're 'useful'. and then, when he can't apply this ideology to others' emotions, he has no way to deal with them. he freezes up because this is a situation in which he has no real experience in, and, as a child who was punished for behaving autistically *wrong* ---whether by his peers or his grandmother---he's scared to make a wrong move.

he sees himself as a person who is uniquely capable of harm. other people can hurt other people, sure, but jon can hurt them in a *special* way, a *worse* way, because he is a fundamentally wrong, bad person.

yeah👍

.🗣️

I AM EATING THIS I agree with this yea

[lovingdabeessss]

Hypothetically, do you think Tai's feelings for Yang's would be different if Summer was alive ? I mean , would he treat her better and compare her less to Raven ?

Or at least hide his judgement better because , I think at least, Summer wouldn't accept him treating his daughters differently?

Oh yeah absolutely i think he was a great dad when summer was alive not just cause summer wouldn’t tolerate it but because it would just never occur to him he loved them all so so so much he probably wasn’t even nearly as upset about what happened with Raven because he had a support system of people who went through the same thing and they were all in it together and it was loving and sweet

Yang was just his daughter and he loved her she was nothing else but something to love

Everything came after was what grief can do to people and it can do awful awful things he lost a LOT when he lost summer not just her but everyone got worse around him including qrow his last bit of support and it just wasn’t a good situation

I’m not saying they’d all be perfect parents I mean they still were beholden to Ozpin or at least qrow and tai are even still they’re all super willing to leave for any amount of time for missions so they’d still have lots of problems but it would never be based in a lack of love

If this post is weird at all it’s because i got real hurt and I’m kinda delirious as im editing the post so sorry

[carriesthewind]

I am, like probably a lot of other people, here due to the absolute INSANITY of the ChatGPT case, and I’m curious: if the original dude, the one supposedly injured by the airline, loses his case due to all of this, would he theoretically have a lawsuit against ChatGPT? Because afaik there’s nothing on ChatGPT saying “yeah, this thing can just spit out bullshit sometimes,” all of that has been found by people playing FAFO. So his counsel is obviously responsible for just…making up shit, but does ChatGPT potentially hold liability for not disclaiming its product can’t be used this way?

I'm going to be cautious in answering this, because consumer litigation/products liability is NOT one of my practice areas (hell, I might well be missing an entire cause of action). So take everything I say here with many grains of salt (and if someone more familiar with the issues would like to chime in, please do!).

So as far as I understand the issues (again, giant grains of salt), even if he could establish negligence, or (if chatbot is a "product") a defect in the design or the marketing, his big issue would be causation. That is, he would still have to prove the negligence/defect was the actual and proximate cause of his damages (and that there were damages). (Also he would be filing against the makers/distributes of ChatGPT, not the product itself.)

And (again, based on my limited understanding) there would be two enormous hurdles to proving causation:

Proving that the negligence/defect was the reason he lost the case, not because his lawyers fucked up. (Because if I was defending the makers/distributes of ChatGPT in this hypothetical case, one of the first things I would point to is the inevitable sanctions order against the lawyers detailing all their ethical and professional violations.)

Proving that he would have won the case except for the use of ChatGPT. Part of the reason I think this is a different issue from the above, is going back to how this all started: a motion to dismiss by the defendant asserting that the plaintiff's claim was time barred. If the defendant is correct, the plaintiff would not have been able to recover regardless of the use of ChatGPT. The actual and proximate cause of any damages would be the failure to file suit within the necessary time frame (assuming that he could/would have won had the case proceeded).

His much better case in this situation would be a malpractice suit against his lawyers. (Especially because, looking at the docket, it looks like they were the ones (Schwartz in particular) who were representing him when he originally filed a suit back in 2020, and fucked up by not appropriately preserving the case while the defendant was in bankruptcy.)

(Also, I'm going to take this opportunity as an excuse to say to anyone reading this: please don't make assumptions about the plaintiff? As OP states, he was supposedly injured, and we know very little else. Making up facts about what might have happened, or what his motives might be - either in "support" or him or against him - doesn't help. When someone is allegedly injured in an accident, the way our system determines who has to pay - the person who was allegedly injured or the person who allegedly caused the accident - is through the court system. He was/is using the court system as intended. There is absolutely no indication that he did anything wrong here.)

[mostesteemedgingeroverlord]

Belief: Faith and Works

Started thinking about how I live out my faith, because I saw, once again, the argument that if pro-lifers were serious about saving children, more of us would foster or adopt. And look, it's a bad faith argument, I know that. It's more of a "gotcha" than an actual thing they expect us to consider. But maybe we need to take it seriously. Maybe we need to be willing to think about the implications of our beliefs, all of our beliefs, beyond the easy parts.

Before I get blasted, let me acknowledge that many people are not able to foster or adopt, whether for physical, mental, or financial reasons. And that doesn't undermine the validity of their belief that babies deserve to live. I'm not saying that you have to do something about your belief to be allowed to believe it.

But you probably should.

What resources do we each have to live out the conclusions of our beliefs, yet choose not to do so? And I'm not even talking big. Yeah, some of us can donate our time and money, some of us can foster or adopt, but everyone can do something. You can pick up the kids of the single mom down the road when she works late on Tuesdays. You can start a little dance class at your church for the under privileged girls in your community who couldn't otherwise afford it. You could give that international student a ride to the airport at 5 in the morning. You could have dinner with the immigrant family who is new in town and doesn't have many friends yet. You could help your widowed friend move in to his new house. You could babysit for that mom you know who needs a night out with her friends or her husband. You could invite that college kid who is far from home or rejected by her parents to come to your house for the holidays. You could love the people around you! Even when it's uncomfy or awkward or inconvenient. (And those are all real examples I've seen lived out by those around me, not hypotheticals.)

Being pro-life is just a facet of the Christian life. A glimmer of the diamond that is the body of Christ in it's magnificent whole. Of course we are pro-life! We are pro-humanity! Pro-community! Pro-compassion! Because that's what Jesus requires of us. Two commands: love the Lord your God and love the people He made in his Image. We love God by knowing Him better. But we don't get to separate our love for Him from our love for others. "As much as you have done of the least of these, you have done for Me."

It's easy to write this. It's easy to yell on the internet, to rant at those who disagree or misunderstand. It's easy to get puffed up in our "most correct" beliefs. But love? That thing that our faith is empty without? That thing that defines us as Christ followers? That's gotta come from more than just our words, guys. And actions are really hard sometimes, but if our faith is real, we have to ask the Spirit -- our Comforter and Advocate and the Voice of God in our hearts! -- for the strength to do it anyway.

There are over 300, 000 children in foster care in the US. There are 4000 in my state. I'm a single woman, but I have a good job and a house and a good support system. I have a deep hurt for these kids. I'm not for one second under the impression that it would be easy to foster (I have close friends who foster and my best friend is a social worker, I know the realities) or that I would be undermining my beliefs if I don't do it. But I'm praying about it, very seriously. Praying that if that's what I am suppose to do, that God will give me the strength to do it, and that if that's not what I'm supposed to do, that He will show me what I am supposed to do.

I think we make excuses too often. "Oh sorry God, I can't do that, so I guess I can't help with this. Good luck!" It needs to be "God I don't think I have the ability to help this way, but help me to see if I'm wrong or to find the thing I can do." There is always something you can do! (Even if it's prayer! And there's no "just" prayer, but that's a rant for another day. Prayer is big and powerful and tunes our hearts to God's, I'll just say that for now.)

Anyway, this is mostly an introspective ramble about my own conviction about my faith, but maybe it will help someone else. And remember! God made you special and he loves you very much.

[elfhunk]

You seem to know much about body training!

Could you recommend any chest excercizes?

I love my body and I only wish my moobs were bigger :3

cracks knuckles.

alright, so here's a funny little chart i made on twitter a few months ago. i stand by basically all of this still. i know you're asking about just your "moobs", but i cannot answer this to my satisfaction without opening the can of worms.

you can target just your chest, but it's important to remember that your body is a complex systems of muscles supporting each other to perform any given task.

for working on the chest, we can take the barbell bench press as our example to demonstrate.

here's a rough map of the muscles being worked by that exercise.

even if it's the pectorals and deltoids doing the majority of the work, it can't actually do that work if it's not stabilized by the core, or if you're body isn't firmly grounded through your legs.

long term, regardless of whether your goal is strength, bulk, or definition... you kinda need to work on everything.

so all of that groundwork out of the way, assuming you're starting from scratch, here's what i would recommend based on personal experience and recommendations my friends have found helpful:

cable resistance bands! full kits will run anywhere from $20-30.

body weight exercise! even better with a pull-up bar.

your goal should be gradually increase the load being put on your muscles by increasing the cable band tension or going through the stages of push-up modification.

your goal is getting to ~8-12 repetitions of a exercise until failure. failure is what it sounds like. it is your muscles telling you that they are done. it is really important to listen to them when they tell you that they are done. pain is not in fact gain. pain is pain. pain is potential injury.

if something feels wrong, stop what you're doing. when you're starting this stuff out at home, you need to be really careful. i cannot, from my ivory tower of the internet, obsessively monitor your form. i can just tell you to watch, read, and listen carefully to whatever instructions you're following.

what really helped me when i was figuring out my relationship to this stuff is just bending to the whims of capitalism and picking up a tracker app. i personally use fitbod and haven't had any complaints, but a full $10/mo subscription for this kind of thing isn't for everyone.

the apps are mostly helpful because once you tell them what equipment (if any) you have access to, they'll only generate routines you can actually do. that way, you can gradually just learn what you like doing and what your options are for any given muscle group. one could, hypothetically, subscribe for a month while writing down all of the exercise options it recommends before immediately unsubscribing! i don't know!

so that leaves us the other two thirds of the venn diagram.

sleep is sleep, but diet is... really where stuff gets wonky and hard to advise on from a distance.

as stated above, i personally decided to not track any of my macros or attempt serious bulking & cutting. food is too important to me personally, socially, and culturally! so i focus on consistency instead.

so if your goal is close to where mine is—firmer, more muscular pectoral muscles that fill out my silhouette nicely, that you can feel flex and move and tense, but aren't the cavernous cleavage of a dedicated bodybuilder—it's mostly just going to be supplementing your protein and creatine intake.

i leave you with this very funny video from adam ragusea i show to people when i try to explain what looking up anything gym related on the internet is like.

for the average person, 99% of this process is just... doing the work. it's the literal work, putting decent quality fuel back in the tank, and giving your body the rest it needs afterwards.

i'll be transparent and say this year has been actually horrible for me at the gym. between changing medication and personal life circumstances, i just physically and mentally couldn't hit most of my goals this year.

but that's fine! because every time i get back from the gym i feel so much better than when i left.

if you keep that feeling of strength and very literal empowerment centered in your mind, it will precipitate outward naturally.

especially if you get to wear something cute while doing it.

[slowtides]

As a writing teacher, I have a lot of thoughts about Chat GPT that are still percolating, such as how Chat GPT and other automated writing systems can be used in classrooms as writing tools. But there are several theses that I feel reasonably strongly about.

At this point, submitting student work to AI detectors violates your students' intellectual property rights. This is also true for plagiarism detectors like Turnitin. Students have a right to their own intellectual property, and submitting it to AI detectors and Turnitin means they may lose intellectual property rights, their work may be reproduced without their consent, and it may be used for research purposes without their informed consent. All of this is cop behavior, in my opinion.

Making students do in-class, timed writings under pressure instead of take home essays will not make them better writers. There is tons of research in writing studies to support this (I can link to it if people are interested), and we've known this for a long time. But for literally fifty years, writing studies has almost unanimously agreed that the way to support the development of student writing is to teach writing as a process wherein drafting, seeking feedback, and revision are the priorities. This also has the added benefit of increasing accountability because students must demonstrate sustained focus on a single project.

One of the best ways to discourage AI-generated writing is to give students prompts where they have to engage with the text in a very specific, localized, and/or personal ways. Changing prompts from vague analysis disconnected from their daily lives to engaged, personal prompts will challenge your students intellectually and creatively. Instead of giving vague prompts, find ways to connect prompts to the city you're in, the communities your students are from, the local people in your world. This is possible across all disciplines; it just takes more creativity and front-end labor on the teacher's part.

When I've talked to my students about Chat GPT and whether they would use it, most of them said they wouldn't. I take this with a grain of salt because I am a teacher and there is a power dynamic there that is difficult to cross--they wouldn't want to say anything that would make me suspicious of them. But when I asked it in a more hypothetical way, like "What is a hypothetical situation in which you would use Chat GPT?" most of them said they would use it if they ran out of time, if they didn't care about the assignment, or if they were just lazy. Here's the thing--really lazy students won't put in a lot of effort anyways, so that category doesn't matter as much. But one way you can work around the idea of students running out of time is by giving them more time to do assignments and enforcing check-ins like different phases of draft work. Part of teaching writing well is giving students opportunities to learn and practice time management, which is a very difficult skill. And one way you can work around students not caring is by either giving more engaged, personal, and localized prompts or by having students create their own prompts. There is a lot of research in literacy studies that shows that giving students choices improves their engagement.

I'm still thinking about a lot of other things related to Chat GPT and automated writing systems, but this is where I'm currently at. I'm still reading the research in the field as it comes out, as well as waiting for university and programmatic policy changes. But what I've come to is that if you don't want students using Chat GPT and automated writing systems, then you can't treat students like their writing is automated and disposable. Making your class meaningful is a huge step toward supporting students as they write and make meaning in the world.

[variousqueerthings]

assumes 4 likes from nice people is there to enable me 😂

some stuff about marriage (which I know can rub people the wrong way, so to disclaim this is not about personal choices, this is about an institution/structure/social construct)

I see posts on here about why marriage is important and they’re wondering why there’s queer pushback against it, and I think they misunderstand the politics and the philosophy behind marriage abolition, in the sense that they posit these hypothetical queers as young, naïvely idealistic, and/or uninformed

I’d say anecdotally most queer people I know who do get married are more pragmatic about it than many straight people, and I know a fair few straight people who are incredibly pragmatic about it too for that matter. hell, I generally am like “I’ll get married to any of my friends that need to get out of a country if that should happen” -- that’s about the only reason I would get married. 

there’s some element of starry-eyedness-gonna-be-with-person-I-love, sure, but people know about taxes and healthcare and parenthood rights and inheritance and the like, they’re not ignoring those things -- the people who don’t get married (like me) aren’t not doing so for shallow understandings of what marriage is for

anti-marriage politics has been around for quite some time (literally every text I’ve picked up with political essays from the 80s-2000s has included some form of it, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it earlier) and it’s not technically at odds with individuals getting married because they have to -- in fact, the point is that this isn’t about individuals, it’s about systems of assimilation that force people to make choices to conform simply in order to survive, but also assimilation as something some people were going for the whole time:

(mostly white, middle/upper-class) gay people who were in the fight for queer rights, until marriage equality meant they’d gotten what they came for, and they stepped out of it. which also on some level maybe didn’t feel like a choice (I’m sure for some it was), so much as that’s what happens with the violence of assimilation -- you become the in-crowd and the idea of creating waves (after all, you’re married, what are you still complaining for) becomes a lot less salient. head down, live your life, forget the rest of the reasons the fight was happening at all

and suddenly the coalition of queerness -- fights for non-segregated healthcare, for asylum-seekers and refugees, assisting homeless queers, disabled queers, sex-workers rights, the rights of less clean-cut easily digestible queers, and rights for non-queers that were part of the understanding of many who were involved: unions and working class rights was a big one, all of the above encompassed people who weren’t queer, etc. -- that coalition was broken up into becoming about individual lives, it became a private thing, it folded into the idea of LGBT+ and never shall the letters overlap, you are now “allowed” this much leeway as long as you conform and melt away into individualism and consumerism. your family is now you, your spouse, and a couple of potential kids.

the people asking “why marriage” were/are asking why straight systems were getting to define when and how somebody is allowed access to basic rights. because while marriage can go from the “we’re deeply in love and want to show the world by shelling out so much money” to “we went and got a piece of paper signed with our friends, maybe ate some cake” it’s still structurally shutting out non-traditional wider coalitions of support, and wider family structures

marriage is the end-goal, pack up, go home (to your monogamous spouse, and your nice, clean house)

it’s not necessarily saying that there are fixed better new systems all ready to go (although in various places those systems are created out of necessity), it’s asking who is shut out of marriage as an institution and why, and if financially stable queers -- or heck financially unstable queers who need marriage to just keep afloat -- are so focused on this, then what and who is being forgotten about in return? 

a lot of the texts point out that in America it was healthcare that was the big focus pre-marriage equality fight -- I cannot say for the rest of the world, but I know the UK is relatively similar in that regard, because AIDS highlighted just how vulnerable queer people were in these systems, and of course the UK also had Section 28, which while no longer in operation legally, is alive and well in discussions about what children “ought” to learn in schools (especially now that transphobia is really just the new cool way of attacking queer people en masse, despite what some LGB-transphobes believe, they are affected by this too)

I’m sure that there are people who are disconnected from the texts on what marriage abolition as a concept is all about beyond “I don’t want it on a personal level, because it’s monogamous and I am not monogamous” but I also think a lot of those people instinctively do get it, like I instinctively got it when I was a bit younger and only knew that it wouldn’t work for me, because, well... I simply don’t believe in its beliefs. and to get married would be as much a lie for me as a romantic relationship, as being cis was, as being heterosexual was -- you might as well ask why I fight for non-segregated healthcare, for non-binary to be recognised legally, instead of just living as a binary cis person. it’s all the same thing

I get that it’s a piece of paper that would give me the right to be supported by [insert person-whom-I-have-entered-into-an-agreement-with here] but it’s also a symbol, and a powerful social demand, and it is amatonormativity and heteronormativity and it’s a system that is used to cover up all kinds of ethical fucked-uppedness, while also having limitations of personhood within it that this post is already too long to get into -- but consider women were fighting to have rights outside of marriages and once those rights started to happen divorces rose astronomically (good for them).

I would never judge someone for getting married for whatever reason, just recognise that I’m one of the people shut out of that structure, and so I am more vulnerable, and instead of thinking that’s naïve of me, ask whether a structure that excludes so many people in its design and demands conformity to enter into it, can be a very powerful tool for violence

and now I need to make a list of those texts, because they do say it with more examples and contexts than I do

[wisteria-lodge]

bird primary (badger system) + snake secondary (bird model)

I've been stuck deciding between 2 houses for primary and I really need some help...

So, I thought I was a Snake Primary at first but I read up a bit more on Badger Primary and it really resonates with me because I do think people are all people that have inherent rights and deserve respect, and I think I am prone to "dehumanising" to justify why I don't like someone, so I was sure that I'm a Badger Primary...

So far, so Badger.

BUT my religion is also very important to me, like if my religion stated that someone important to me was doing something very bad and had to be cut off..I'd do it. I'd probably try to identify the exact bad thing and try to justify that hey, maybe it's not so bad!

What's interesting here is the almost rules-lawyer vibe of this hypothetical. (And you know me, I always like specifics over hypotheticals, and can do a lot more with them, but hey.) It's fascinating that your instinct is to try to find a way to argue around the the hypothetical Bad Thing. That's definitely not an internal primary (Lion or Snake) where you would just get a FEELING and that feeling would be TRUE.

But if I was truly convinced they were doing something bad according to my religion, I'd cut them off. That sounds a lot like a Bird Primary to me..

An idealist, for *sure.*

So then I thought, well, would I feel guilty doing it? I'm not sure, because I've never been in that type of situation, but I feel like I'd try really hard to make that person be better and help them out so they wouldn't be bad and thus I wouldn't have to cut them out or something, and if I cut them off I'd feel pretty paranoid that I went too far and maybe it wasn't that bad, again, that sounds like a Badger right?

I could actually see that being pretty much anything. Cutting someone off is a big, complicated, dire thing full of a lot of emotions, which makes it hard to get clean data. Probably everyone would try to make the person better first (by their definition of better) and probably everyone would have at least one dark night of the soul where they wondered if their actions were justified.

I think the Bird Primary thing might just be a model from my religion or something, I remember once I almost believed something blatantly false that almost made me renounce my religion. I remember I was literally sobbing because I felt betrayed? I couldn't process the fact that my system for telling right from wrong was wrong itself, and that sounds very Bird

It sounds very VERY Bird. This is a VERY Birdy crisis.

but I remember thinking, "well if this is really true, then I'll have to become an agnostic because people are people and I can't support something that oppresses people because that's wrong" and THAT sounds Badger.

But it's ALSO possible that actually, the Badger Primary is a model, and Bird is my Primary. My Desi family is pretty big on family first, I might have gotten it from there.

I remember having a conversation with my mom about how I'm going to move out when I'm older, and she began the whole 'but who will take care of me' 'the nuclear family model was introduced by those angrez (white people/british) this is not our way' and all, but I don't remember feeling guilty? I was more angry that she wasn't considering MY feelings, because I'm important too.

I used to be pretty bad at considering myself important, probably because of my parents guilt-tripping and family-comes-first thing, I still kind of struggle with that but I'm getting better, like, community IS important to me, but if my community was doing something wrong or hurting me, I wouldn't hesitate to call them out, and the way I determine what is right and what is wrong is through my religion.

Your Badger and your Bird are very, very bound up together. I suspect most of the time you look Badgery, because you've got a Badgery system. But it's still a system. You get right and wrong from your religion, and apply them outwards into the community. If that community (or the people in the community) do things that you consider wrong - then you call them out, or might even cut them off.

You also have a trick of taking about your Badger tendency in slightly more negative terms than your Bird tendencies. You talk about "dehumanising" and "paranoia" and "guilt tripping," and I'm not surprised that you've got a super Badger family. Badger is talked about as something slightly external, while Bird is just neutral. Your relationship with religion seems to be very much *yours,* which is another reason I'm voting for Bird Primary, Badger system.

At this point I'm so confused that I'd take pretty much anything, even the initial Snake Primary. I'm just glad I'm sure of my secondary, I'm definitely a Snake secondary with a Secondary Bird Model, if that helps somehow.

I'm gravitating towards Bird with Badger Model, but I'm not sure, and the tiny chance that I was actually right about Snake Primary is now wriggling in my thought process, please help I can't decide things for myself lol

I agree completely with your assessment.

[anendoandfriendo]

10 and 25?

Context.

10. How did you discover your system? What was the process?

Well, you see, y'all, we had this on Twitter but the first sign we were plural was when we were sorely disappointed to hear that, no, most people do not get better at drawing without practice, in less than ten seconds. We were probably about ten, and did not draw often, so of course that cyndaquil was absolutely, positively shitty-looking on both iterations, but just so y'all know here —

We had weird obsessions of "what if X character was in this world?" questions that at first glance may have been just a weird Autistic asking weird fandom questions but it was very persistent; and also there's probably the fact we had a weirdly gravitational-repulsive relationship to characters like Kirbopher/Zetto from T.O.M.E (we were sorely disappointed to find that this character was "just one person" and had NO CLUE WHY once we did get around to watching it, and we were always kind of watching and hoping we would not any plurality tropes at the same time for these types of characters).

Anyways, it took until about university before everything sort of clicked. We'd heard the term "endogenic" in high school on a more inclusive blog, on our last year there. Keeping in mind we graduated early in high school that would have been between six and eight years ago.

Uhh, we think we played with the idea a little our second year at university but sysmeds and anti-endogenics specifically had us repress ourselves a lot (side note that this is the reason we will always stand by the fact that anti-endos are, and will always be, inherently ableist and maybe even fascists, even if we were to hypothetically turn around and realize tomorrow we were not endogenic).

It took at least another year? Maybe a half a year? before we realized, and the only reason we did is because, well...this is a little embarrassing to admit but we had come out as a system previously within our university's anime club a semester prior, but Kusuo projecting nemself into the table and very obviously announcing nyr presence as a soulbound was probably what got us to accept it more formally and wholly.

RIP now our offline friends who also follow us here know the reason we were trying our best to NOT be staring at the table after that Saiki K episode. 🤣☠️🤣☠️ Whoopsies.

25. What is something you wish singlets knew about plurality?

A lot of your problems would be solved if you asked yourselves "is this a way that I would treat them if they were a singlet???" and if the answer is "no" then you should either ask or shut the fuck up. One example we tend to think of is the way y'all use parts language to describe us, it's fucking insidious. Sure, your friend is "part of the group" but you don't treat your friend as an extension of your limb, that would be abusive.

More headmates and alters does not an unhealthy system make. Shut the fuck up.

On that note: multiplicity is not inherently disorderly. I will not elaborate on this one.

I am very specifically asking singlets to shut the fuck up and start supporting us when we choose to not drink the koolaid that sysmeds gave us and try to aim for healthy multiplicity instead of final fusion, and that is assuming we somehow ended up disordered in the first place. I am very specifically asking them to learn history on shit like the empowered multiplicity movement (web archive because...paranoid until we can move this thread to our tumblr) so they know sysmedicalists and anti-endogenics are lying. They are lying when they call it ableist. They are lying when they say calling them sysmeds or drawing comparisons between plural and queer communities is transmisic. The TPA may have legitimate reasons to be criticized, as @delgado-master put in the previous linked post, but it was also much worse for us as a community before they existed. Anti-endogenics, in particular, are liars and anyone who puts any caveat onto endogenics existing, weather they "believe in us" or not, is not someone who is going to give you accurate information.

Related to the above: learn what dogwhistles are, and learn how sysmeds and anti-endogenics use them. Saying you're anti-misinformation but then lying about your own marginalized community makes you the bigot, and it's especially telling when they have to thinly veil their hatred the way TERFs veil their hatred as "concern for women," and similar.

I want y'all to be able to arm yourselves so you can call these ableists' asses out when they pull the shit they do — and LOUDY. PUBLICLY. Endogenics, their supporters, and anti-ableists in general have enough emotional and intellectual labor going on. It would be nice to free some of that energy up to do something more effective, and I think that is where singlets can help.

There is a lot more I want to say, but I don't think I'm going to have time to list everything lmao. I would be here all day if not longer if I could keep going.

- Silva

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

i want spinner to get the quirks eating his brain matter removed and get medical attention, i want the 1A kids to not have to fight a war, I want kurogiri to get his memory/freedom back, I want shigaraki to be freed from AFO, i want dabi to get healed, i want miruko to NOT LOSE ANY MORE LIMBS she already lost TWO and part of her ear, i want toga to get therapy and quirk counseling, i want magne and twice to be alive, I want AFO dead, i want the todoroki family to be a family again*, i want the PLF and league to stop trying to trigger anarchy-armageddon, i want all the younger characters who had to shoulder so much shit to get hugs and have their elders shoulder it for them, i want eri to grow up happy, i want someone to tell izuku he isn’t responsible for solving every problem and him wanting to help who he can is enough, i want bakugou to survive and grow as a person, i want to see acknowledgement and reparations for how heteromorphs are treated, i want uraraka and toga to reach an  understanding of one another, i want the heroes to decide to break down their corrupt instutions, i want society to stop using ‘villain’ as an actual legal term, i want all might to live to see a society where people don’t need a symbol to be hopeful, i want stain to see a psychiatrist, i want aoyama to get compassion and help, i want hawks and lady nagant to live and testify against the hero commission and stand trial for what they need to be held accountable for, i want someone to science a way to fix the noumus and let them be people again, i want any and all trials hypothetically held after the war to not just be emotion-fueled spectacles to satisfy the public’s want for punishment but actually FAIR trials that examine all the factors in each case, i want the story to subvert the ‘redemption by death’ for all applicable characters, i want amajiki to grow and become more confident with himself, i want hagakure and yaomomo to get an ACTUALLY-FUNCTIONAL HERO UNIFORMS, i want midnight to be alive, i want tartarus to be closed, i want the hero industry to stop using a ranking system, i want the hero industry to add ‘social service heroes’ as a branch of hero work, i want mha’s society to teach history better and put the due responsibility back on its citizens to hold it up, i want inko midoriya and rei todoroki to be friends, i want shinsou and monoma to become a great heros, i want izuku to become a great hero and talk about his life pre-One For All and advocate for change, i want hatsume mei to become a great support-item inventor with melissa shield, i want the hero students to get a official government apology for being unofficially drafted, i want the villains to get an official apology for being let down when they were innocents*, i want tsukauchi all might and nedzu to tag-team-investigate the hero commission, i want all my blorbos to get a bowl of warm soup and a soft blanket

i want sO MANY THINGS TO HAPPEN and i KNOW!!! i know i’m setting myself up for disappointment and i am crabby about it

*not endeavor. for the rest of the family to heal, he has to be put in indefinite time-out - he also has to stand trial for all of the shit he pulled so no one has the chance to make him a martyr

*not including re-destro and any of his close right-hand folks in the original MLF- he was a rich dude whose goal wasn’t to fix the issue of how people are treated for their quirks or how they’re forced not to use a part of themselves except in government service, he wanted to create an opportunistic, supremacist-style society where the current attitudes towards not-strong/undesirable quirks would be amplified to ‘those with these praised and acceptable abilities get to do whatever they want and everyone else has to take it because we shouldn’t have to care about people if they can’t force us to respect their rights as people’

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Victims can be villains as well and sometimes a villain just isn’t worth it.

No person with a functioning conscience and any information literacy should think Hamas are the good guys in any story. Victims yes. Heroes? No.

Yet everyone with half a heart and half a brain has long recognized that only the Palestinians can ultimately decide they want sewer pipes not missile casings.

The Palestinian people are the ones who were always going to pay the price for trying to “destroy” Hamas because its their own expression of nationalism, rage, and despair and if they are not persuaded Hamas is an unfit tool to express that rage then you won’t beat it out of them. Especially if the one trying to beat it out of them is the one they view as the primary obstacle to peace.

No Israelí national security goal has been satisfied by invading Gaza and turning it to rubble. Two million people who may have responded to surveys in the hypothetical that they loathed Israel and thought terrorism was an acceptable form of resistance now have even more visceral reasons to feel this way if they had any doubts before. It’s very, very rare for people to be dissuaded from violence through violence: they have to have another credible option on the table.

And now it looks an awful lot like Biden has got himself maneuvered into stepping on another rake by a GOP war caucus that will blame him for the war they want him to start.

Iran almost certainly understands itself as the equivalent of France supporting the American colonists in the Revolutionary War. Except it’s not mild reform of the British system they’re supporting, but theocracy. Nonetheless it won’t stop until it is stopped.

Stopping it though is another impossible nightmare where nothing can get better in the attempt but a lot can get worse. Like Hamas in Gaza, there are historical reasons Iran’s geopolitics are the way they are and that history informs the present which also lays out why no one (except Pakistan) has directly attacked Iran. No one has the belly to invade and occupy nor should any rational person desire this, and bombing is largely symbolic.

If a bombing campaign is on a large enough scale to bring Iran to its knees as Israel has brought Gaza to its knees, then you create a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions and irregulars across the region will feel the need to take a side. A weak Iran will have little incentive not to lash out and will be a magnet for foreign fighters and expats seeing an opportunity to try to carve Iran up.

Any bombing campaign below the level of humanitarian disaster is simply mowing the lawn or poking Iran in the eye as retribution. Iran will not be seriously deterred and will likely be incited.

Which means there’s no realistic scenario where we don’t either arrive back at the status quo: a stalemate where much of the region detests Iranian meddling but largely just fences with Iran’s non-state allies (I don’t believe in using the word proxy, I think it’s a bad description of the relationship between Iran and these groups) and avoids tangling with Iran directly because while the status quo is terrible, war would be worse and even a victory over Iran is likely to destabilize the whole region as people whose lives are already precarious vote with their feet by the millions.

And we all know what happens to the political systems of European countries when Muslims and other non-white people show up looking for safety and sustenance.

Buckle up.

[o-craven-canto]

Hypothetical land animal descended from a starfish.

Original page on my DeviantArt here (drawn in 2018, when I should have been working on my master thesis instead)

It's well known that echinoderms descend from bilateral ancestors [i.e. with a left/right symmetry, like vertebrates], such as the Cambrian Ctenoimbricata, and that they adopted a secondary radial symmetry as an adaptation to an increasingly sessile, filter-feeding lifestyle like that we see in sea lilies today. In fact, later Paleozoic echinoderms seem to run the gamut from fully asymmetric (Cothurnocystis) to three-sided (Helicoplacus) to five-sided (Gogia), The reduction of musculature in favor of connective- and vascular system-based movement might have the same origin. (On this argument, see Zamora et al., 2012 and Zamora & Rahman, 2015.) Interestingly, some modern echinoderms seem to be going the opposite way. Some sea cucumbers have retaken an active, and even pelagic, lifestyle, and their bodyplan is taking a more bilateral shape. Brittle stars, which are surprisingly active animals, have redeveloped their musculature and greatly reduced the vascular tube feet. So. What if an echinoderm, say a common starfish, were to evolve into a motile, bilateral, maybe even land-based animal? Now, as great as echinoderms are, they do have significant handicaps in this sense. Their vascular system, from which they depend for movement, respiration, and metabolite distribution, is open to the outside (seawater is filtered through a porous plaque called madreporite). They have no reliable system of osmoregulation, which means they can't survive without salt water. Let's be realistic, if in half a billion year echinoderms have never produced (as far as we know) so much as a freshwate species, let alone a terrestrial one, I don't think there's much hope of it happening in the future. But, just for the fun of it, let's imagine it happens anyway. A starfish somehow manages to close off its water vascular system (which is, after all, a compartment of the coelom), keeping it around only for mechanical purposes. Respiration is transferred to the body wall, which develops many small respiratory sacs; and circulation is full entrusted to the haemal system, a net of channels separate from the coelom. (In the case you need it, this is a pretty good diagram of starfish anatomy.) The hemal system develops a proper heart (rudiments of which already exist in starfish) and a kidney-like organ(s) to regulate the salinity of blood and the vascular fluid. Now our creature can live in fresh water. The water vascular system fills the larger coelom compartment and forms hydraulic muscles - connected sacs (each of which can be sealed off with a sphincter if it loses pressure) that can contract or relax thanks to walls of proper muscle. Once the body wall is flexible enough, this allows both and efficient control of movement, and mechanical support even out of the water! The creature adopts a very active lifestyle, which naturally favours a bilateral symmetry, because when you move in a consistent direction it's more efficient to place your sense organs, weapons, and mouth there (basically making a head), and not put them behind. There's no meaningful difference between left and right sides, though. Each arm of a starfish contains a nerve that runs along the ventral surface (better to pull that inside!) and ends in an "optic cushion", basically an eye. The distal tube feet allow to crudely manipulate objects. That's a good start for a head. A single eye can't see depth, but you can just do what birds (which can't look at an object with both eyes) do, and bob your head to infer distances from parallax. Of course the nerve cord will concentrate its neurons at the end, and form a crude brain. A problem: you can't put the mouth there, because the mouth of a starfish is at the center: it's the opening of the big central stomach that can be everted to swallow preys. Problem solved: pull a Snaiad and extend the stomach forward, basically as a muscular second head that exists only to feed. No, not only. Starfish have huge gonads that open between the arms to spray eggs and sperm into the water and hope for the best. Out of water, that's not an option. So let's say the gonads reorient their openings into the stomach. Now the feeding head is also a genital organ, and the land-starfish can impregnate each other with a kiss. (The female will probably just vomit the fertilized eggs, maybe in a convenient pond for a frog-style larval stage.) For respiration, say that the little cavities between the dorsal plates become hundreds of tiny lungs, each opening into a spiracle, that deliver oxygen to the haemal system. More specifically, soaking in the blood of a special haemal compartment (a "respiratory sinus"). The anterior tube feet, which will always be the first bodypart to contact something, have developed a hard cuticle that divides them in discrete segments, turning into two pairs of antennae and four of maxillae (insect-stile jaws, useful to fend off enemies and chew up food for the gastro-genital head). Similarly, independent tube feet have survived at the tip of the other four arms - which have not gained much complexity, beyond the new hydraulic musculature. In other species they may take the form of sharp claws or nimble fingers. And there you have it. A starfish from our seas turned into a barely recognizable ursine beast by a number of suspiciously convenient adaptations - not to mention a distinct lack of terrestrial competition and a generous reprieve from planetary sterilization courtesy of the Sun. An implant on a mostly empty alien planet, perhaps? Or simply evolution taking a radically different road somewhen around the Ordovician Extinction, maybe in a world in which this "vertebrate" thing didn't really work? Chissà.

@danbensen >_>

[spenpy]

Any Daiya headcanons ?

BAZILLION apologies for the wait on this one anon!!!!! u_u heres my current takes on this legend:

- daiyas had a potentially big voice, but was on average MUCH quieter than mondo. he consciously kept it down a bit because he didnt want to come across as BRAZENLY intimidating unless that was actually what he was going for! had a NASTY shout when trying to make himself known

- animal-loving runs in the family! hes actually a pretty big cat guy (though he was fond of the Little White Bitch Dog known as Chuck, and he would NEVER say no to being greeted by any number of large dogs). if you were to ask him what kind of cat was his favourite, his answer would probably be somewhere along the lines of "well i like those orange ones haha"

- a HUGE music enjoyer, you could even consider it his secondary interest besides biking. pretty bad at playing instruments and not a strong singer, but he liked to listen to LOUD EAR-RINGING WHATEVER-GENRE. AS LONG AS ITS LOUD AND PASSIONATE AND GETS UR HEART GOING.

- mild dyslexia that he didnt really mention to anyone, it went undetected in the school system (besides in his grades, alas) and he mostly just laughed it off if someone noticed any switched letters in his writing

- naturally grows a BIT (A BIT.) leaner than his brother... but honestly? just about as strong lol, mondo's just bulky. daiya worked out regularly and taught mondo his routine (which would be later modified in a vain effort to be better)

- daiya dated a few girls but honestly? his heart was with the gang for that whole period KJSFD

- he had a decent amount of mechanical knowledge and knew the ins-and-outs well enough to repair or modify most motorcycles. not at an ultimate level, but he was very good in his own right.

- bitch was SO proud of his hair and SO proud of his routine, he woke up way earlier than necessary to arrange it at his own pace

- CANNOT COOK. microwaves only!

- absolutely beloved by the group for being a good leader that guided everyone (COUGHS even through questionable activities), and genuinely a caring support. he greatly valued personal connection amid an otherwise chaotic structure and therefore, many of the crazy diamond's members came to see him as an older brother figure.

- (this is also one of the few nuances mondo desperately tried to keep alive in his stead, because he considered them family as well. though it wasnt the best environment per se, they did come to see him as someone to enjoy and come to for help, which he was very glad for)

- admittedly not......... the most educated about mental health awareness...... it wasnt for lack of trying, but he just never grasped the depth of how much his brother was struggling with self-image, self-motivation, and anxiety+anger, and figured that since HE'D had many of the same struggles (certainly not in the same way), mondo would also get through them just fine with some encouragement. tldr no lol.

- in an au where say, this bastard survived, i think he would grow and learn more about why this line of thinking Really Wasn't It. hypothetical future him be horrified that he'd assumed these were just normal growing pains! he'd certainly try to give support when he can.

- at the end of it all, his little brother is his favourite person in the world over any bike or cool hairstyle-- hes partly WHY daiya formed the crazy diamonds: to give him a big support system (in lieu of a more common family structure) of strong presences and to let him feel some sense of morale-building duty and pride in something that was Their Thing... even if that ultimately came with its own problems.

[damiano-mylove]

Members of Måneskin with a mentally ill/disordered S/O

Illnesses included: Depression, ADD, Tourette's and PTSD (so warnings for that and SH, drug usage, isolation, and heavy topics in general) *Masterlist*

This was a collaborative effort between Nik, Lina, Lute and two unnamed but very appreciated people - all of us afflicted with the varying illnesses above

Vic

Vic would take an empathetic approach to your illness/disorder (relating to you, researching, never pitying)

Depression

Vic would take a more of a nurturing role to your sadness

On the more sad days, Vic would nap with you for a little bit but she'd get to a point where enough would be enough

She would coax you out of bed in ways that appeal to you more than you'd ever care to admit, starting out with just getting you to eat somewhere else than in bed, then eventually moving up to showering, etcetera, etcetera

Vic would be very acutely tuned toward your needs, and she always fulfilled

It broke her heart that you were so sad, but she could relate and that made it a lighter burden on your back

When you first told her, Vic just went silent, then hugged you for a long time

ADD

Vic wouldn't be as supportive in this, but not in a neglectful way

She had a way of getting your attention back on the topic at hand, but sometimes she was just as bad as you for getting away from the main point

The impulsivity, she wasn't the biggest fan of, but you two worked through it like adults

When you'd forget things, Vic wouldn't get annoyed - but she would always remind you when you forgot what you needed to remember

Also, she was the best for finding misplaced things

PTSD

Vic would be very careful to avoid your triggers, however she never felt as if she was walking on eggshells

Before you were able to fully tell her what happened, Vic would never force you to tell her anything you weren't already ready to tell her of your own accord

There was no way she couldn't feel a bit sorry for you, but she never showed it, and she certainly didn't pity you - she just was sorry that something happened to you to give you PTSD

She would be mindful to never act as if she would be able to fix you

Tourette's

It didn't annoy her as much as you thought it surely would - especially since you had been trying to keep the tics at bay in the beginning of your relationship

Vic usually went on like nothing happened when you'd tic, but sometimes she'd laugh if your tics would hit her

Vic would proudly go out with you, even though you were scared about the looks you'd get on the street, but she never minded because she loved you and she wanted to show you that she loved you

Thomas

Thomas would take a supportive approach to your illness/disorder (reminding you to take your meds, making appointments for you if you'd ask, doing anything he could to make you feel better)

Depression

Thomas would always be the perfect person who would just shut the fuck up and cuddle you, but he would only do it if you'd ask because he knew sometimes you didn't feel like being around people

Wasn't really trained in any of this so he just cared for you like he'd like to be cared for

He was doing his best, and it was apparent, but sometimes you'd have to tell him what not to do and what to do

Of course, Thomas wouldn't bat an eye to stop or start doing anything at the raise of your finger - whether it be rub your back or let you be alone for a bit

He understood that he alone could not cure your depression, but he understood that he would be around for the ride, if you would have him

When you first told Thomas, he was silent, just nodding. He asked you a few very respectful questions but would never dream of pushing you. He would rub your knee and assure you of his love for you, no matter what

ADD

Honestly, Thomas didn't know what ADD was, at first

He googled it, then thought better to just ask you for a primary source

During nights where you couldn't sleep, Thomas would be right beside you, not sleeping either, which wasn't healthy for either of you, but it sure as Hell made you feel less lonely

Thomas lost shit and things all the time, so he never judged you for that, and his memory was potentially worse than yours so who was he to speak on that

But he was extremely good at getting you to finish tasks before moving on (sometimes just finishing them himself)

PTSD

Again, didn't exactly know what it entailed at first, but asked you a few questions to clear the air

Thomas would lead you through deep breathing exercises (unless you told him not to) when you were triggered and started losing control

Would always do anything and everything he could to avoid triggers with you

He would he more than patient with you

Tourette's

He would find some of your tics endearing (not harmful ones)

At one point, you'd even developed a verbal tic saying Thomas' name, which he always chuckled at and responded to you every single time as if you'd requested his presence, each time with a new pet name and a smile

If your tics would hit him by accident, you would apologize profusely, but Thomas would always laugh and brush it off

During tic attacks, he knew to just let you be, unless you would stop breathing, then he would certainly step in

He would ask his doctor a "hypothetical" about how to help someone through a tic attack, then used that advice forevermore, and it usually made a helpful difference

Ethan

Ethan would take a companion role (letting you take the lead, showing him what would happen and what to do to help, always listening to you before making his own move)

Depression

He'd dealt with depression before, but thoroughly understood that everyone is different in how they display mental illness

Ethan would recognize what to do, but would ask you for confirmation before acting upon anything that had potential to make a difference

On days where you couldn't leave your bed, he would bring you food (not a steak dinner, but he would definitely bring you soup or toast or a sandwich)

On days where you couldn't shower, he'd either be in the shower with you, or he'd draw you a bath instead, or he'd buy dry shampoo and sanitary wipes (those would be the last case, because he didn't want to throw off your pH)

He would assure you of his love and that you didn't burden him whatsoever

You were suffering, and you didn't make him suffer, but he did take some of that suffering from you

ADD

Certain times, I regret to say, he may get slightly annoyed, but not for long and not to the point of icing you out or anything

Ethan always found things to keep your mind occupied (watching Monty Python (actually a great programme for AD(H)D people), intricate games, new books, etc)

The best at finding lost things, and also has the best memory under the sun

Your symptoms wouldn't bother Ethan, save for constantly speaking (which can get a little annoying during a film or something)

PTSD

Would basically just go one with life - he would avoid all things relating to your triggers and PTSD - but otherwise, it would be business as per usual

If you got triggered, he would be by your side and on your side

He would do anything; deep breathing, distractions, grounding, getting your meds, anything

Ethan would always let you speak about it, when you'd want to, but otherwise treated you the exact same way as he had before you told him

Tourette's

He's always looking for something to joke about, and sometimes your tics provide just the material

He wouldn't dream of taking the piss out of the harmful or mean tics, but if you were laughing, then he was sure to be laughing as well

If your tics involved a bird whistle, he'd call you his 'little red bird' but wouldn't anymore if that upset you

Tourette's are a tough subject to joke about, but Ethan would always listen if you told him it was offensive, unfunny, or just a bad joke and Ethan would always take it in good humour and apologize

Most of the time though, he could make some funny fucking comments

Damiano

Damiano would take a nonchalant approach (not explicitly talking about it, never take the spotlight off you (if he could help it), try his best to help you through any challenges without making you feel like you were an inconvenience to him

Depression

He was your best friend before he was your lover

As such, you were always able to talk to Damiano about your depression anytime you felt it getting bad, as to warn him

Damiano would never leave your side, unless you told him to, but he'd always have a film on in the back, or he'd play with your hair, or distract you by brushing your hair or having you help him pick out an outfit

He enjoyed cleaning, so your bedroom would never become a depression room, and that helped get you out of your slumps most of the time

Dami was also swimmingly good at getting you up, even if it be just for a dance in the moonlight then back to bed, or a walk around the block then on the couch

He understood wanting to cope, but if you were prone to drug usage, Damiano would totally discourage it and stop you from using as best he could

ADD

Not everyday is a trip to Disney, but with Damiano, it is

Damiano always had new records to catch your fancy, he'd always have some home project lined up for the two of you, he'd always let you do extravagant things with makeup on his face

It seemed if you lost something, Dami would find it, but if Damiano lost something, you would find it (good system actually)

Would always have reminders in his phone so he would add reminders for you on his phone (appointments, birthdays, events)

Damiano seemed to always have just the trick to get you to sleep, even when you felt like you physically couldn't

PTSD

After you told him, Damiano would immediately avoid the topic in future conversations

He would support you fully during any trigger or episode, but he never treated you any differently at all just because you have PTSD

It hurt him that something hurt you so badly, but he took it all in a deep breath - after all, he signed up for you, all of you, so he certainly wouldn't give up on you just because of a disorder

Damiano would be in your corner 100%, and you knew it and you knew you could always go to him

Tourette's

Some tics would get that beautiful smile on his face, but otherwise he continued conversations like nothing ever happened

He didn't bat an eye at a physical tic, not a verbal tic

But he was the man to go to during a tic attack

He wouldn't treat you like a science experiment, or like an insane asylum patient - he treated you with love and support, like no one else ever had

Damiano had read about a dozen books on how to support people with Tourette's, and he'd also talked to other people he knew who had Tourette's - Damiano was thoroughly educated on how to help you, the love of his life

headass this was hard to fuckin write and i know its shitty and the cw’s are a bunch and i cut it but im sorry and hope its good enough