#think about it from the perspective of a mentally ill person who isn’t taking their meds and is desperate for content

[wool-string]

I’m thinking about this…

What does she know?

Why did she really split Kei n Kai when that same year Kei’s father was also a criminal. Why does she know that Kei will go back on his word? What did Kei do before hand that would prove he’s soft/irritational? In this essay I will-

No but genuinely (essay time) this could tie together a lot of things. But mainly the “Kaito nekozawa theory” and the “Kei and Kai probably kept contact anyways” theory

Why? Let’s discuss~

Firstly the split. Kei is 9 when he ig watches his father get arrested and decides ‘Now my sister will never get a cure. So I’ll step up and I won’t mess up like he did’

So he tells his mom and his mom says ‘ok.. then stop talking to Kaito. He’s the son of a criminal…’

??… SO IS KEI???

But hear me out.. Kei and Kai supposedly never went to school together. There’s the possibility of Kei’s dad meeting up with Nekozawa for the organs under the guise of ‘hey let’s get our kids to meet for a playdate!’

So they became friends until the incident (Kei looked shocked by the news too so maybe his mom explained the situation to him later on where Kei decided ’well it’s not like Kai had anything to do with it’ which could also explain why Kei goes back to Kai)

Kaito was just a child. It wasn’t fair for her to put such a heavy label on him especially when Kei was also having a hard time) But knowing his father’s record and what they just went through, maybe Ritsu feared Kaito taking the same path (one that Nekozawa got away with so that’s why he isn’t locked up) And as Kei becomes a doctor, she feared the same outcome. Right? Maybe..

And Kei is such a good son. He works so hard and studies. He never Played. He doesn’t go out with friends much (in fact he didn’t have any before that one approached him? Maybe the Kaito incident made him scared of having friends now) and he’s SO smart (minus street crossing knowledge)

So why would she immediately think Kei wouldn’t run away? What did Kei do before that insinuated him being softer and less rational than shown?

Maybe he can’t cross the street right. Maybe he did choose to fight terrorist. He can be a bit aloof and swayed to do things that aren’t smart… but those things can be excused by the situation

What did Kei REALLY do that made her genuinely believe that he would go back to fight?

YEAH. YEAH.

After all, Kaito got arrested saving Kei. And surely, that could be a one time thing. kaito’s not like Kei. He doesn’t think things through. It can be excused surely

Kei though... Kei is smart. But he can be a bit dumb and be swayed to do dumb things. She knows that.

So was Kei “sneaking off” to be with Kai, thinking his mom didn’t know when actually she did? After all, Kei says ‘Eriko is the only one who knows about my ties to Kaito’

But why wouldn’t his mom know about it? In fact why did Kaito even have Eriko’s contact saved (she was about 5-6 when they split she wouldn’t have a phone yet) and why did he know that Kei was the one calling him that day?

Kei didn’t have his contact. But he had Kaito’s number memorized. He didn’t need that. Maybe Eriko knew they were still talking/hanging out cause he would use her phone to call him sometimes. Maybe after his mom caught them and took his phone away?

Maybe the reason she split them at all was because she could see the feelings Kei was getting for Kai. And it not that she wouldn’t support it, but Kei has big ambitions and dating someone like Kai could get in the way..

So conclusion??

They sneaky links ong

[moonbaetarot]

Pick a pile

What makes you a good person

1. 2. 3.

Pile 1

Your a peaceful person you like to keep your peace. Your someone who goes with the flow your ok with change and new things even if your scared of a situation you know it’s all going to be ok. You stay true to yourself you’re not flashy you don’t flex your money or newest finest things you have. You see things from every perspective you’re not quick to judge you know everyone comes from different paths in lives and may see things differently. You may have struggled with mental health, anxiety or depression in your childhood or teen years this really played a part in who you are today. You may be a teacher or want to be a teacher of some sort or had a teacher in your life who you looked up to I’m getting miss honey and Matilda vibes. You make what seems impossible possible. Someone here could be 22. You have a lot of stability you’re ready for anything. You see everything as an opportunity. You don’t let people get in the way of your path in life. You know how defend your self you usally don’t tho if someone says something about you you just like I feel sad for them like “you must be miserable to hate on me” but if you need to defend yourself you’ll snap and get your point across.

Thank you for reading loves! 🤍

Pile 2

Being a good person may feel hard sometimes. it’s like you do everything for everyone and get nothing back. You over work yourself for people who don’t deserve nothing from you. You’re worrying about pleasing others over your own happiness. You may feel like being a good person gets you nowhere. (I’m sorry love if someone in your life and doesn’t appreciate you you need to cut them off you deserve so much more then people who don’t appreciate all you do, you are so important and you will find someone that will appreciate you.) You take care you others I’m getting empathetic energy like if someone around you is sick your fast to get them whatever they need because you remember what it’s like to be sick so you wanna help them get better. You stay committed your very goal oriented if you put your mind to something you’re doing anything to get there. Someone here may be very close to their grandma or used to when they were little. You find a way to see the joy in fun in life even when things aren’t easy. You’re good at giving advice you know just what to say in any situation. Someone here may have very long hair or like to their elbow. You know how to keep a promise. You need to learn to cut people out your life love someone in your life isn’t good for you.

Thank you for reading loves! 🤍

Pile 3

You use past situations to help better yourself. You work well with other people and groups. People see you as approachable you have a very friendly energy about you that makes people wanna talk and be friends with you. I feel like you’re a very good friend always checking up on people making sure everyone’s ok and making sure no one feels left out when y’all hangout. I feel that sometimes your face may say other wise tho lol someone here may have a rbf or just look mad or tired sometimes. You are good in relationships you were made to me a lover I’m hearing “best I ever had”. When you have kids you’re going to be the best parent you are going to love those kids so much And unconditionally. I feel like having kids is going to change you for the better if there things you don’t like or flaws you have become a parent is going to change all of that. I feel like you’re a trustworthy person people trust you with many things. You look out for people you love and protect them from people with ill intentions Your able to see the bad in people and they will think there slick and getting away with it but you see right through them. You have a mothering healing energy people feel safe around you being around you just feels like a big hug. You have a very soft submissive girly energy.

Thank you for reading loves! 🤍

[attractive-nuisance-esq]

Ed’s journey this season is going to perfectly mirror addiction and recovery, and I am so fucking here for it. Watching these first three episodes of S2 was like watching a highly dramatized AU of my own descent into rock bottom (except everyone was dressed wayyyyyy cooler than I ever was), so I have a lot of thoughts, reactions, and insights that I want to share with other fans. I’m sure many of us who have struggled with our mental health connected with Ed in these episodes, but I think addiction is the most appropriate lens through which to view him because addicts (more often than people who struggle with other mental illnesses) so wholly destroy their own lives and utterly devastate those of their loved ones. I want to share - from the perspective of someone who has steered her own ship straight into a storm and woke up alone to face some very hard choices - what is going on with Ed at the start of this season and what I think is coming.

Let me start by saying that Ed isn’t literally addicted to any one thing, despite his heavy use of drugs and alcohol, but his goal is the same as that of all addicts: escape. He does not want to sit with the pain of Stede leaving him on an immediate, surface level; on a deeper, more habitual level, he doesn’t want to sit with the pain of his own self-loathing. Of course the two are related: the former brings the latter to a head. Stede abandoning him dredges up and brightly illuminates all of his insecurities, and now Ed has to run. Get out. Escape. Don’t think about it. So he is fighting, stealing, drinking, snorting, shooting, killing - whatever it takes to not think about it.

“Demon? I’m the fuckin’ devil.” People in recovery often talk about addiction as if it were a separate, sentient monster living within them. Ed taking on the mantle of demon - a creature known specifically for possession, for removing the host’s free will - is intentional. So is his insistence that he’s not just any demon but the demon. The worst there is. (More on that when we get to The Innkeeper.)

Izzy’s confrontation of Ed in the captain’s cabin and then on deck is a form of intervention. Izzy is trying to help Ed, but of course this goes terribly for him and for Ed because interventions (I cannot stress this enough) are maybe the worst thing you could do to an addict. All addicts know things are bad, but they cannot be pushed to change one single second before they’re ready. Ed knows things are bad. He’s well-aware of how he���s spending his time, how his crew feels about him, how disappointed Izzy is. Being confronted with all of those truths by Izzy was always only going to make him do two things: 1) dig further into his unhealthy coping mechanisms, never mind that they don’t have nearly the effect that they used to; and 2) lash out at the person who forced him to think about it. Izzy lost his leg the moment he stepped into Ed’s cabin.

The impossible bird. You guys remember the song Chandelier by Sia? The one about her addiction to alcohol? The whole thing may as well come right out of Ed’s mouth at the end of that first episode, because that experience is exactly what he’s trying to convey to Frenchie. Nevermind that Frenchie has the temerity to tell him the bird can’t exist, that it has to come down sometime, that flying forever isn’t sustainable. The bird can come down on its own terms, or crash… but Frenchie’s definitely not going to say that much. Still, “that sounds like something that can’t exist” hits Ed, and leads us to the next episode.

Now we’ve got Ed forlorn, heartbroken, almost catatonic while playing with his cake toppers. We don’t actually see him crying in the opening of the episode, which is the point. He’s done crying now. The impossible bird can’t exist, and Ed has already resigned himself to this. He’s decided to die. The only sure-fire permanent way to not think about it.

When next we see Ed, he seems to be doing better, but this is a huge red flag for anyone who knows to look. He’s giving away his responsibility to Frenchie; he’s cleaning the cabin for the closure. He knows the end is coming fast, and the relief that knowledge brings him leaves him weirdly at peace. It is he eeriest part of these episodes, IMO.

Then he goes to find his first mate, the person who knows him better than anyone else in the world, the man he just fucking shot and ordered killed. Ed needs his low opinion of himself validated, and of course he thinks he’ll get it from Izzy after everything he’s done to him. He wants the one person who has stuck with him through everything to confirm that he’s now irretrievably broken and no longer worthy of his love. Ed wants someone to tell him that he’s right: he should die.

He doesn’t get that from Izzy. Interestingly, Izzy doesn’t tell him he should die. He says “Clean up your own mess.” Izzy has learned the lesson now that Ed isn’t ready to get better and that he can’t make him be ready. (This post isn’t about Izzy, but hoo boy - I have big feels about that man.)

Ed has been indulging in various forms of self-destruction in order to not feel his feelings, and steering the ship into the storm is his worst indulgence yet. This is the worst of his crimes - not beheading or arson or a red wedding. It’s when he tries to bring down everyone who has ever loved him into his misery, into believing what he believes. The audience generally (and Ed’s audience of Stede specifically) can forgive him for hurting strangers and for the non-specific mayhem whose victims we’ve never met; but it is much less certain that anyone will forgive him for hurting the only family he’s ever known.

The storm itself is the perfect metaphor for Ed’s attempt on his and, incidentally, everyone else’s lives. One of the most common metaphors used by friends and family members of addicts is that of a hurricane: that their addicted loved-ones tend to destroy everything they touch, anyone who was foolish or brave enough to stick around. And, like hurricanes, addicts aren’t malicious. Ed’s primary goal here is to get himself killed, not to kill everyone else. He wants the ship to go down so his death is certain. His firing a cannonball into the mast and asking Jim and Archie to fight to the death isn’t malice: it’s utter and complete nihilism. Nothing matters anymore. Nothing and no one. The end is near, and he’s so fucking drunk and high off these distractions that he couldn’t think about it if he tried. He’s manic with relief. (See also: “Finally.”)

And now for the finale: Purgatory. Buckle up, because this is where the addiction analogy gets real *chef’s kiss.* Purgatory is the equivalent of the morning after the worst, most rock bottom binge night of your life. You wake up with no one for company but the ghosts of your former selves. Now what?

Well, first - who is Hornigold to Ed? Why is he the guy Ed sees? It’s because Hornigold is another addict, if you will, but one who is (in this Purgatory hallucination) farther along in his recovery. He can impart some wisdom from that place, but he can also stand in as someone Ed can loathe because they’re not as different as Ed once thought, even if Hornigold can say he’s grown.

Hornigold tries to give him soup. He tells Ed, “Gotta get these nutrients into you,” and then literally shoves soup down his throat. That’s what it’s like in rock bottom. You don’t want to take care of yourself, but some lizard brain survival instinct takes over and makes you drink water, eat a piece of fruit, take yourself to the hospital. These things don’t really happen voluntarily that morning after, but you can still count on that instinct to kick in with some damage control.

Ed telling Hornigold how he “got here.” Hornigold says “Mutiny. It’s always mutiny.” Ed insists his mutiny was special, worse somehow. This whole scene is exactly what happens in your first recovery support group meeting. You go in thinking no one has ever been as fucked and fucked up as you are, which makes you feel isolated and alone. But then you get there and everyone else in the circle has done the same shit, been through the same shit. Ed’s not actually the devil; he’s just another demon, like many demons before him.

Ed worries he’s insane when he reflects on everything he’s done. Hornigold’s reply that “Feeling bad isn’t going to rebuild an abdominal wall” is a concept that people usually learn a little bit later in recovery, so I expect we’ll see more on this theme from Ed. Guilt is a useless emotion that only serves to conversely make the addict feel better but doesn’t help the harmed party: the addict feels like their suffering is cleansing, but it’s not - feeling guilt is just more self-indulgence, more self-destruction. Hornigold - a fellow addict in this moment - is trying to get this lesson to him early. It’ll return.

“You’ve got to move on or blow your brains out.” We’re getting back to Purgatory as the metaphor for the morning-after rock bottom, because this is the exact calculation that every person in recovery has done. They all had to answer that one big question. Your whole life is a mess, and you made the mess. Do you want to clean it up? Or quit? (Or make some soup? Yeah. That big question can’t be answered without basic needs having been met. So let’s eat. Let’s start there. It’s easier.)

Now we have Ed’s fantasy about opening an inn: This is also a common part of the morning-after rock bottom. You start thinking about the wrong turns you took, the mistakes you made, the way your life was supposed to go and all the reasons you’re not where you wanted to be. (And all the people you can blame for the fact that your life didn’t go as planned.) And when that honest part of yourself starts telling you that actually it’s all your fault… well, a) you don’t wanna hear it, and b) you can’t silence (kill) that monster, no matter how hard you try. You’ve got to face it. Face all those truths you’ve been running from for years. Now you have to think about it.

So now the big question, the inevitable math. Hornigold suggests looking at the pros and the cons. That’s the easiest way to break the calculation into manageable variables. This is probably my favorite moment of the episode, because when you’re sitting there, morning after the worst night of your life, everything is fucked - these are the exact variables that go into your equation. Do I really want to live? You ask yourself that, and because your life is in fucking shambles, you come up with the stupidest goddamn reasons to keep going. You wanna see the next seasons of Good Omens and Loki. You wanna eat your mom’s spaghetti again. Sometimes it’s nice when someone hugs you. It’s never the big things that save your life; it’s a bunch of the littlest things. The smallest comforts. The big things… they’re too unattainable. They’re too much to hope for, and they’re more than you could possibly deserve. What are the pros of living for Ed? Warmth, good food, orgasms. This is a stunningly accurate representation of the things that will keep you alive once you’ve hit rock bottom.

And then the cons: “I don’t think anyone is waiting for me.” This is why addiction is the better metaphor. There is no human experience more isolating than addiction. You are alone in more ways than you’ve ever been before. You have pushed away or pissed off everyone who ever cared about you. And even the ones who will maybe still be there for you - they can’t help you clean up the mess you’ve made. You have to do the work alone, even if they’re still willing to stand next to you. And this con… it’s the scariest one. Your list of little pros looks so pathetic next to the horror of being utterly fucking alone. Who is going to brave that for some stupid shit like Tom Hiddleston sexily flipping his hair back in that Loki way he does? Why should Ed carry on just because blankets are cozy and marmalade is pleasant?

This is where we get to the moment on the mountain, and what Stede represents. Hornigold tells Ed “You’re unlovable, and you’re afraid to do anything about it.” Ed could do two things about being unlovable: He could try to fix it, or he could end it all. Hornigold represents the worst part of Ed: his weaknesses and cowardice. And if Hornigold is in the driver’s seat, he’s going to end it all. He throws the rock off the cliff, and Ed gets dragged down into the water to drown. (Let’s also talk later about how often addiction is compared to drowning, and how nothing else in the show actually threatened Ed’s life - not Izzy with a gun, not all the rhino horn, not Jim’s cannonball - like drowning in his own mind.)

But then there’s Stede. Stede is how the pros win over that one big, horrifying con. Stede is hope. Stede is just a glimmer of hope. Hope is the most important thing you need in the morning-after rock bottom. As much as I enjoy the idea that it was love that saved Ed, I don’t think that’s a wholly faithful interpretation. Because Stede’s love for Ed doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t fix anything - it certainly doesn’t fix Ed. It cannot fix Ed. Hornigold just told Ed that he’s the one who has to “do something about it,” because Ed is the only one who can save himself. But even if Stede’s love for him in itself isn’t what saves Ed, Ed’s trust in Stede combined with that love gives him hope. Stede loves Ed, truly loves him, came back to him even though he knows Ed’s nature, knows his list of crimes, knows what he’s done to Stede’s friends and family. And maybe Ed can find in himself what he trusts Stede truly sees. It’s a “maybe,” not a certainty. But it’s hope. Someone loves him. Maybe he can love himself, too.

This Woman’s Work: I read this song as referring more appropriately to Ed’s relationship with himself, in no small part because Ed literally made himself the woman in the cake topper couple. All the things that should have been done, should have been said - they’re things Ed needs to do and say to himself. He’s got a little life and a lot of strength left. The journey has just begun.

I want to pop back quickly to a few other moments in The Innkeeper that resonated, starting with Stede and Izzy’s discussion about what happened to Ed: “He went mad. He was a wild dog.” Izzy describes Ed’s breakdown as if he was no longer the same person he once was; this is exactly what addiction does to a person. Ed hasn’t been himself; he’s been held hostage by his need for escape, and he’s become something else. Possessed, if you will.

Izzy: “You and me did this to him, and we can’t let the crew suffer any more for our mistakes.” I’m not writing an essay on Izzy (yet), but this is a very interesting perspective that says a lot about Izzy. Stede and Izzy both owe apologies to Ed, but they are not responsible for his actions. I predict we’re going to see this theme explored in later episodes as a part of Ed’s healing process and recovery. And also hopefully in Izzy’s growth.

Frenchie’s line that “We’ve been living second-to-second for a while now” is a callback to the impossible bird idea. Which, again, is just Chandelier x Sia. “I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down, won’t open my eyes, keep my glass full until morning light ‘cause I’m just holding on for tonight.”

So what’s next? For me, it was learning to sit alone in a quiet room with my thoughts. It was apologizing to the ones I hurt, because even if I didn’t mean to hurt them - even if I was suffering also and worse - they still got hurt, and in the end it didn’t matter why. It was developing the habit of liking myself, and acting on whatever self-love and affection I could conjure up. And yes… it was new seasons of Good Omens and Loki, my mom’s spaghetti, and hugs.

So I think Ed has a lot of accountability, reflection, and breaking of old habits in his future… but also warmth, good food, and orgasms. And good for him. That’s the beauty of recovery: we get to come back.

[prying-pandora666]

“The Search” Rewrites, Book 4: Air, Leaks, and A Call for Help from the Fandom

I’ve talked a little about the Book 4: Air restoration project @book4air. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out! Three full episodes are already out and episode 4 is going to cover Zuko’s early days right after his banishment, exploring his relationship with Iroh and the world as Zuko understands it as a lost boy rapidly coming into manhood.

Wait until you hear the VA’s performance with music and everything! It’ll break your heart.

But I want to talk a little bit about what comes after these next few episodes: our adaptation of “The Search”.

If you’ve seen our adaptation of “The Promise”, you’ll know it was quite faithful. This won’t be the case for “The Search”. For the purposes of the overarching story we are telling, this story is getting overhauled. (Please still support the original release if you’d like to see the canon version).

The biggest change that’s been announced is the addition of Toph. The team felt that a story about family, identity, and faces could benefit from including Toph’s perspective as she comes from a unique but toxic family situation, has a strong conflict between the performance expected of her versus who she really is, and is completely blind and so faces don’t even register for her.

Here is the sample scene we released:

But I want to talk a little bit about what we are changing about Zuko and Azula’s roles in the story. While the set up is virtually unchanged, there is one small alteration that makes a big difference.

(Sorry for the poor quality, this is technically unreleased content and I’m being kinda risky leaking it.)

Ursa’s letters are now a diary. This means that rather than get random flashbacks, the narrative framing now becomes Zuko and Azula reading these entries together. As a result, they get to discuss their discoveries about their family, and even share each other’s perspectives.

What that means is that when things like Zuko dangling Azula over the cliff happen, now we actually are forced to address it. The characters have to talk about how they treat each other and the reasons why. They have to confront the toxic family dynamic they’ve been forced and groomed into since childhood. Zuko has to realize his mentally ill little sister isn’t the monster here and in fact he’s the one with all the power now, and Azula has to realize that Zuko can be trusted if she can let go of her fear long enough to talk to him about her vulnerabilities.

We also address issues like this:

Many people criticize this for being OOC, but I think there’s a way this could easily not be. Sokka has been known to be juvenile and reactionary as a first response, the difference is that he always eventually apologizes and learns from his mistakes. Without even needing to be asked.

Threatening a mentally ill person who has just been removed from an asylum—even as a joke—is not okay. It would be questionable even if they’d been friends before this, but considering their prior relationship it really does seem like an boneheaded lack of awareness or compassion for how triggering this could be.

So rather than remove this interaction, we addressed it. And I am really taking a risk posting this here, but here is a brand new script page:

Sokka isn’t just comic relief. Sokka is smart, Sokka is compassionate, Sokka is brave, and Sokka knows when it’s time to apologize and reach out versus when it’s time to fight.

Safe to say, there are several things that stay the same and we tried to keep faithful to the spirit of the story, but there’s a lot we wanted to do for the Gaang and for the Fire Sibs, and I hope you’ll join us on this adventure, whether you’re a diehard fan of the comics and just looking for a fun AU, or you hate the comics and would like a rewrite, or even if you’ve never read them and would just love to return to the world of ATLA.

The only trouble is, we can’t do it alone. The project is very expensive and time consuming to produce. Our team pays for everything out of pocket and some of us don’t even have reliable housing, so it’s been a hard time.

If you can help in any way, even only by spreading the word so YouTube will stop burying us in the algorithm, that would be huge!

If you can afford to help, we have a Patreon where you can get all sorts of early goodies.

Reblogs and comments greatly appreciated! As the head writer and voice of Azula, this project is very near and dear to me. Avatar was my first pro-writing gig when I was just a homeless 19 year old, and it’s here for me again as I struggle to rebuild my life and health that COVID destroyed.

I love this series and the community that has helped me through the hardest times in my life. I can’t wait to make something beautiful with you all!

[meowthefluffy]

What does Virgil think about Roman's memories from the Sleeping Beauty au?

Honestly? He doesn’t believe them at. At first he has pretty hostile feelings towards Roman, and finds it creepy that this guy keeps insisting that he knows him, and is convinced it’s some sort of hoax, but after seeing how distraught it makes him to have his past constantly denied Virgil begins to soften. From Virgil’s perspective Roman is suffering from some pretty serious delusions, and is terrified and scared basically nonstop, only truly as ease when Virgil is around. He isn’t really comfortable with how attached Roman is to him but after getting to know him and observing him in the hospital, all Virgil can see is a deeply mentally ill person who deserves kindness.

From Virgil’s perspective, even if what he claims caused his injury and coma didn’t happen whatever did happen was very very bad and undeniably an intentional violent act, so he thinks it’s probably some sort of coping mechanism.

Roman is constantly displaying severe symptoms of ptsd and grief over the loss of his past, so even tho he doubts that any of it happened Virgil no longer doubts how much Roman believes it. Virgil thinks that Roman probably worked at one of the local theaters (since one recently did a play based on a similar story) and after his injury he confused the plot of the play with his life. He takes Ro to the theater a lot hoping to bring up some memories , but all it does is instill a love of musicals into him lol

Even tho he doesn’t believe his story he does grow to really care about him and understands that even if Roman’s memories aren’t real he can be a comfort to him as he recovers! Virgil makes no progress in returning Roman’s “memories “ but he does manage to help Roman accept that none of it was real. Once Roman finally accepts it and attempts to move on, at this point far less vibrant and happy than he once was, and integrate into modern society the two begin to drift apart. Altho Roman understands Virgil is a different person and not the Virgil he remembers , the idea that none of it was real makes it hard for him to even look at Virgil. All he can feel is sorrow over the fact that THIS Virgil the “real” Virgil will never love him(and he doesn’t really want him too, as he feels it’s and unfair pressure/expectation to put on this person he now truly believes he doesn’t know)

And eventually he tells Virgil he’s ready to move out. He’s got a job that doesn’t bring up too much of his trauma and avoids most technology as a librarian and is basically ready to be fully self sufficient. So they say their goodbyes.

So when on the anniversary of when Roman died rolls around Virgil goes to visit the spot he found Roman, for no other reason than that he misses Ro and doesn’t feel comfortable reaching out, he is caught completely off guard by the complete and utter onset of memories of his past life.

Roman was right, he is the re incarnation of the old Virgil and in addition to this revelation Virgil realizes …

that Roman is in grave danger.

[emblemxeno]

hey! i’d like to preface this by saying that i genuinely only want to have a good-faith discussion about this, but when you made that post about claude’s “who steals your freedoms, gives you duties, forces you to marry etc etc” dialogue, i don’t think he means that the church is personally doing those things but rather that those are the indirect effects of the church’s teachings and influence on society. like, obviously rhea isn’t personally forcing dimitri to be king, but the blaiddyd family’s right to kingship (and respective duties as king) are derived from both the church’s involvement in the establishment of the kingdom and the belief that crests are blessings from the goddess, a belief that also plays a lesser but still prevalent role in the justification of noble houses’ ruling rights and the importance of their lineage. i agree with you that rhea does not spread these teachings with ill intent, and as you pointed out, the fault lies mostly in the nobles themselves for abusing crest status despite rhea’s mitigations, but that doesn’t change the fact that those beliefs form the foundation of current power structures and that those structures will be difficult to properly reform without uprooting that system of beliefs altogether. (pretty sure this is also the reason why the game takes time to clarify that edelgard’s ultimate goal isn’t to kill rhea, it’s to end the central church, which unfortunately also results in rhea’s death as the head of church because she doesn’t surrender). in the end, i don’t believe that edelgard’s war is the best solution either, but i wanted to at least share my interpretation of what edelgard and claude’s points regarding the church are and how it’s possible to have dissonance between personal actions and intent vs widespread ingrained influence

Ehhh, I would agree with that perspective, but ultimately the game still has Edelgard and Claude both posit that killing Rhea is the first foundational step towards change. As you say, Rhea herself isn't enforcing the kinds of practices that the noble houses are doing, but since that is the case it creates a dissonant objective: if Edelgard's goal is to uproot the power structure, then why does she still war against the church and Rhea after reforming her own territory with no impediment? The answer is that her goal is self righteous conquest for a world she personally wants, without regards for what anyone else says. If Claude's goal is to open borders and create harmony amongst people with differences, why does he ignite conflict between Sreng and Faerghus again, and why does he kill the head of the church branch that accepted foreigners? The answer is that he's ignorant and immature (and that the writers didn't care to have him question Edelgard) and never grows out of it.

However the biggest hole in the idea that the church is too involved with the foundational power structure is that the people who have the biggest problems with it in Three Hopes-Edelgard and Claude-have had little to do with the church itself. Adrestia has not had religious influence in politics for over a century, and Leceister is explicitly stated to not have had religion as the crux of its foundation. Edelgard and Claude are looking at the Kingdom and jumping to conclusions regarding problems that they have absolutely zero jurisdiction in. Them disagreeing is valid, but inciting a war and enabling bloodshed against a power that has done nothing to them personally? Those are the actions of bad people who have no self awareness and can't stay in their lane because of self fulfilling ambitions for the world.

It's why Claude in particular is so frustrating because we as players know that he can grow out of that mentality-and that his writing in Hopes was scuffed in the first place cuz fuck his curiosity and thirst for answers, amirite?-but since he's played as an opportunist jackass who in fact achieves the opposite of what he says he intended to do in the first place, it comes across really terribly.

[webbywatcheshorror]

Shelter/6 Souls (2010)

Shelter, also called 6 Souls for its US release, is a story about a forensic psychiatrist who takes on a new client, intending to prove his disassociative identity disorder is fake, and gets in way over her head.

That synopsis by itself does nothing to really prepare you for what actually goes on, but does the job of letting you know that the main character, played by the captivating Julianne Moore, is not the kind of psychiatrist you’d like to have. 

Before we get started I’d like to note that I do not have a thorough understanding of DiD and therefore am not equipped to touch on what are probably very glaring inaccuracies. Horror is, sadly, rife with the misinterpretation of mental illnesses in the interest of using them to frighten audiences.

With that in mind, let’s begin. Review under the cut, and as always, SPOILERS ahead!

Ever watched a movie that starts out intriguing, adds elements that really add to the suspense and mystery, only to not only fumble the ball but start running with it back in the other direction? That’s what this movie did for me.

The main character is Dr. Cara Harding (not to be confused with another Julianne Moore role, Dr. Sarah Harding), a forensic psychiatrist with a strong belief in God and a strong disbelief in certain mental diagnoses. Her father and young daughter, who I believe is 8, have lost their faith due to the fact that Cara’s husband was murdered. This is an important plot point.

Cara’s father, played by Jeffrey DeMunn, convinces her to see a new patient who, as he puts it, has quite the act, and he thinks she will find him very interesting. This is where it started to get interesting for me- she meets David, who is paralyzed from the waist down. He’s a polite young man with a Southern drawl, who answers her questions dutifully. Nothing unusual about him, until her father calls him from the office phone and asks for Adam to be put on the phone.

This causes him to shift into his Adam persona, who is a far cry from the soft spoken David in many ways- including physically, as Adam is colorblind where David was not. Oh, and Adam isn’t paralyzed, either.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays the different personalities incredibly well. Posture, body language, all of it- each one is distinct from the others. And there are others. Despite the narrative presenting it as DiD for a lot of the runtime, what Adam actually has going is a lot more supernatural in nature- the ‘other personalities’ are actual people who’ve died.

When Dr. Cara discovers that David was a real person, she does something I consider to be awfully cruel. She finds David’s mother, (played by the delightful Frances Conroy) a deeply religious woman, and arranges for her to meet with Adam with the intention of having her meet David. Now I’m no fancy doctor, haven’t studied psychology or anything, but it strikes me as a very poor idea to bring a woman in to meet a man who, from your perspective, has created a ‘fake persona’ where he ‘pretends’ to be her dead son. It goes about as well as you’d expect, even though David is able to tell his mom things only the two of them ever knew about.

Cara of course had not considered the consequences of her actions, because she is so focused on proving that DiD is a ‘medical fad’ and isn’t real, that things like ‘basic human decency’ and ‘what a doctor is actually supposed to do’ are cast aside. Her dad calls her out on this later, which pleased me, since she should be ashamed of herself. If I had a doctor do anything like that to me there’d be PROBLEMS.

She also takes David to the scene of his murder which results in him having flashbacks and freaking right the hell out so badly that he retreats back into himself and we get to meet an entirely new guy named Wes who is not at all pleased to be out in the woods with someone he doesn’t know. Girl maybe smother your ego a bit. Even IF David had been a personality created by Adam, bringing him to the place where the real David was murdered just seems like a dick thing to do.

Before things really ramp up, there’s a scene I really liked where Cara’s brother is combing through a video of Adam sleeping on the night another character dies (and has ended up as another one of Adam’s ‘personalities’), and is doing some Nonspecific Computer Voodoo when he makes a connection and discovers that the spooky shadowy shape in the video is in the shape of a wavelength. Which can then be played. A ghost/spirit/whatever taking the form of a sound wave is pretty fucking genius, actually, and I’m hoping the concept pops up in more stuff in the future.

Cara investigates more and finally ends up in a small village in the mountains where she finds out what the actual fuck is going on with her patient and it turns out to have been Hillbilly Hoodoo (we got a two for one special in this one, traditional and technological wizard solidarity I guess). See a long long time ago, this faith healer reverend guy tried to convince everyone that only God could keep them safe from the influenza epidemic, and he used his kids as proof, but they’d been vaccinated. When the Hillbillies found out, they kill his kids???? And then suck out his soul, which is a thing they can do, and mark his body as ‘a shelter for the faithless’.

Which causes the Reverend to become functionally immortal as it’s his body, and not Adam’s, that stores the other souls. Adam, also, is hella dead. So he’s been going around collecting the souls of people who don’t believe in God by first cursing them to have nasty boils and burns on their flesh and puking up dirt, and then just sucking that thang right outta their mouth.

And this is where it started to fall off for me. I’m not a fan of most religious angles, real or fictional, because they’re rarely written in a way that doesn’t make me wanna roll my eyes so hard they pop out my mouth, Barbara Maitland style. See, the mountainfolk confuse me- on the one hand, they punish the Reverend (and his innocent children??????) because he went against God and turned to Science for protection; they also are doing Hillbilly Hoodoo and instead allowed him to just run amok, killing as he pleased, which is fine apparently because they’re safely sheltered together in the same vessel. Like are they supposed to be doing the Lord’s work or not?

It seems to me that if you were really wanting to serve God you wouldn’t be damning people for not believing, I’m pretty sure there’s like a whole thing were their sins can be forgiven? Has to do with God’s only son? I guess technically they aren’t fully denied the opportunity to repent or whatever, since their souls are intact, but they don’t even know they’re in a new body, much less that they’re DEAD AS HELL, so I kind of doubt that’s ever gonna happen. 

But the worst part of it was when Cara’s daughter, age 8, is marked for collection, and the Hillbilly Matriarch (the Granny) tells her there’s nothing she can do BECAUSE THE CHILD LOST HER FAITH. THE CHILD. MUST DIE. BECAUSE SHE LOST HER FAITH. A child, who is barely able to comprehend what faith even actually means, is doomed to die and have her soul removed because she isn’t fully convinced that there’s a specific deity. It’s ok, says the Granny, she’ll be safe in the shelter vessel with all the other faithless souls. Cara’s safe, despite being kind of a bitch who’s definitely been responsible for the death of at least one person.

I’ll be honest, this made me so mad. The stakes are at their highest, we’re reaching climactic territory, I’m pretty invested, and then WHAM. Now I’m just annoyed and waiting for whatever bullshit ending they’ve got for me. Cara kills the cursed reverend after he absorbs her daughter’s soul (while her child is the one in control!!!!!! why not call out literally any other personality? You already know how to do it!) and the kid’s soul goes back into her body and it’s implied at least one, if not the rest, follow her there. And that’s the end.

So raising her daughter is going to be a fucking nightmare. Not only do we have Adam, David, and Wes, but we also have: an old family friend AND HER FUCKING GRANDPA, both of whom died during the events of the movie. And can be called out at any time, and presumably can just call themselves out, if the scene were Cara meets Wes is any indication. So not only did I find myself suddenly disliking this movie and whatever message it’s trying to send right when things are getting intense, but now the ending isn’t even satisfying to me.

The events of the ending are fine, decent even! In fact, if not for that bullshit reasoning, I’d probably even have liked it! Like, they could have just said that once the sheltering had begun there’s no way to stop it because it was an unstoppable process instead of ‘oops the little girl doesn’t believe in God enough. We’re done here. Die.’. I’d have been intrigued by the idea of how the kid was now the new Shelter and whether or not this meant she’d be compelled to seek out the faithless or if she’d be more of a passive collector and only take them when they died on their own. I’d have loved to know more about how the aftermath turned out with her carrying the other souls, and having to live with the trauma of knowing your mother choked you to death at one point.

But no, I’m just disappointed and feel like my time was wasted. Five ghosts outta ten for having a lot of interesting concepts and decent pacing, not to mention powerful performances, but then also having an innocent child get punished by death for not believing in a God that let her dad get murdered. Honestly I’m mad about it all over again.

[giftfromblythe]

Magic

There’s something in these moments

That makes me feel alive

A nameless emotion

That fear cannot survive

Within the synergy of motion

And light’s gentle touch

The silence before the torrent

The breath before the plunge

And if I were to name it,

Would that tear away the veil,

Or would it rob the magic

From this beloved tale?

This poem is particularly special to me because it is about mental illness even though it might not seem like it is initially.

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the times I used hope to pull myself through some very difficult experiences, but I haven’t talked as much about where that hope comes from.

Most often?  I find it comes from single, simple moments.  The sort of thing that makes you gasp in awe or cry in joy—something so beautiful or so personal to you that it makes you feel completely and utterly whole in ways you never feel otherwise.  I live for those moments.

Now wait, Blythe, you might say, isn’t that a bit cliché?  How could something so simple, so comparatively small, outweigh all the absolutely terrible stuff your head dumps on you like clockwork?  Isn’t it inauthentic to claim it could make such a big difference?  Doesn’t it sound too much like the load of nonsense that some well-meaning but especially clueless people who have no idea what mental illness is actually like try to tell you will cure you?

Well, you wouldn’t be saying anything my brain hasn’t tried before (and probably will again, it’s stubborn that way), and I’ll tell you what I tell it then:

It absolutely does make that big a difference.  Just…not in the way those people who tout positive thinking as a panacea for all woes seem to think it does.  It’s not a matter of willpower or forcing ourselves to think a particular way right this instant and then never having a panic attack or a bout of suicidal ideation ever again.  It’s much subtler and requires just…remembering how those moments make you feel.  That feeling of magic and overwhelming wonder—you don’t even have to know what it is specifically, it just has to be something special to you.  Nothing elaborate, just something you can call to mind in an instant, that’s how memorable it was.

What it does is remind your brain that it can feel happy.  That this pit you’re in isn’t how it’s always been, and therefore not how it’s always going to be.

It doesn’t take the pain away or the challenge of working through that pain until you’ve reached a point where you don’t have to simply endure it anymore, but it does make it easier to hope.

And really, that’s the main thing that keeps you going: hope.

This poem is an attempt to put those moments of, well, magic in perspective: that your fear and pain don’t survive in the face of something that is ultimately beyond those things, something so pure and good and nigh-on incomprehensible that your mental illness can’t rationalize it away as something less than it is.  For me, I often find those moments in nature.  I’ll tear up from watching a hummingbird (so tiny, how can it exist and be so fast) going from flower to flower.  I’ll be breathless looking out over a bluff as the sun sets.  I’ll stop and stare at the moon coming up over the horizon.  Sometimes it comes from people or man-made places too—back before my crisis of faith, when I went to church, there was a moment where everyone was singing and I felt like I could fly with how beautiful it was.  Even though the context means something very different to me now, the beauty of the moment has stuck with me.  It’s these sort of inexplicably moving events that I call back on when I need to remind myself of the good that is still in the world, and that’s what I tried to capture in the poem.

Thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of this post that you can use when you’re struggling.  As always, take care, listen well, and share your stories.

—Blythe

[mdhwrites]

...Yeah, Fuck You Too, Wednesday

TL:DR Maybe don’t make your reimagining of a classic horror monster explicitly use harmful tropes that paint anyone with trauma or mental illness as people who are so violent that even the outcasts of the world consider them too extreme and dangerous. Go fuck yourself show. The show, not the character, to be specific. This isn’t going to be a review of the whole show either. My short thoughts on it is that it’s good when it’s more about what makes for good Addams material (warmth, creativity, inclusive, character focus) and bad when it’s trying to be Harry Potter (bigoted, plot focused, making the main character the most special thing on the planet). The only one that I want to touch on is the bigoted element though. Specifically from my perspective as a creative person who suffers from depression, anxiety and BIPOLAR. SPOILERS! Btw, just in case that wasn’t clear. Wednesday considers itself a mystery, I would argue a bad one that points out it’s bad, and this is the big twist for half of its mystery. If I haven’t made it clear, I think the twist is awful but I still thought I should put a warning. We good? Okay, let’s talk Jackyl and Hyde then. In their modern incarnation of effectively the past 50 years, it’s the movie monster where a mad scientist makes a potion that unleashes the INNER BEAST! In fact, the Wednesday version of the Hyde is obviously based visually on that interpretation. Has a similar transformation to the werewolf transformation we see and follows many of the design principals for other interpretations of the beast. This version, the potion, is... *shrug* I could see people claiming issues with DID or if you really stretch it bipolar, but it commonly comes off more as an addiction allegory. Once he takes it, he is doomed to keep taking it and each time risks his life more. That’s pretty strong and mostly unoffensive, though that depends on interpretation too. This is not the angle Wednesday goes AT ALL though. Honestly, it feels like they were trying to be clever based off of the ORIGINAL Jackyl and Hyde story which... is not a bad idea. For those who don’t know, the original version goes (heavily abbreviated) like this: Man makes a serum that transforms his appearance and lowers his inhibitions. He names this form of himself “Mr. Hyde.” HOWEVER, Mr. Hyde is not really a second person or even personality. Instead, this Victorian Gentleman with everything uses Hyde for the one thing he can’t have: Freedom. Freedom to do as he pleases, especially socially. So Hyde can steal, harass, lay about, etc. like that and feels no guilt for it and can’t bring dishonor onto the original man. HOWEVER, then Hyde kills someone and the guilt of this makes the man try to stop using Hyde but Hyde now doesn’t need the serum. He comes out on his own. This scares the man, because it means Hyde is a liability, not a sanctuary, and eventually it grows so bad that the man kills himself. Again, you could argue that folks with DID also shouldn’t like this version. However, to me, it speaks a lot more about the nature of repression, that which we give up to live in the societies we do while actually not damning the fact that we give up the ability to murder strangers in doing so, and the cost in which you bring you onto yourself when you indulge even a little in those darker impulses. A true slippery slope where you convince yourself to steal once, it can be harder to stop yourself from stealing again. It’s like how mobile games try to get you to spend a little money on a starter package because once you’ve done it once, psychologically its been proven that you’re more likely to spend again. SO. If that’s the original story, and before it the modern interpretation, what is Wednesday’s interpretation of Hydes? Well, as it is explained in the show, a Hyde must be ‘unlocked’ either through hypnotism or a traumatic experience inflicted onto them by another person. This person who unlocks them is their master and they must do their bidding. They are incredibly strong, deadly, and the show makes a point that with time the Hyde can become aware of what they’re doing and be more active in the murder they perform. Hydes are also considered outcasts amongst outcasts because they are too unpredictable and too dangerous, even to werewolves, vampires, etc. So you have a character who suffers trauma and from that trauma becomes, explicitly, an uncontrollable murder beast because they’re ALL murder beasts. Every last one of them. They are also explicitly easily manipulated into crimes and doing terrible things, even by the one that could be claimed as an abuser in this situation, and as such the show’s standing on them appears to be either to ignore them and risk them killing a LOOOOT of people or... Kill them all before they can hurt anyone. You know... The same sorts of things that a lot of people suffering from mental health have to deal with on a day to day basis as people are only now starting to be properly informed as to what we are like. And if you’re thinking I’m reading too much into the mental health allegory here, A: the red herring for the master is a therapist who practices hypnotherapy so there’s that old gem, and B: the Hyde’s mother was diagnosed as severely bipolar as a way to cover up what she was. The show ITSELF admits that mental health is the clear allegory and association with this.

And fuck that. I’m literally disabled due to my depression, anxiety and bipolar, and barely have an existence with the money it affords me, and I still have never considered hurting others or murder. In fact, like most mentally ill people, I present a threat to myself astronomically more often than other people. So yeah, seeing some of the most old school trope bullshit tied to my illnesses be presented as this clever twist? Kind of makes me sick. And I’ll be the first to say that the show struggles with other allegories that could be taken offensively but I am a straight, white dude so I’m not going to try and act like an expert on those things. I’m just going to stay on this because I have a reason to be personally pissed about it and I’ll admit it. I’ll even be kind enough to admit that the concept is not god awful, it’s a neat monster idea, it’s just the implications and the explicit parallels the show draws that makes it so disgusting.

So yeah. I am not looking forward to a S2, still gonna keep writing Wenclair because that is the best thing from that show and I hope you all have a wonderful day. Oh, but I will actually link my original books because sometime in the next six months, maybe even as early as the new year (haven’t fully decided yet) I’ll be releasing a book that features two sapphics falling in love in a Crises Recovery Center and I did my best to have an even, realistic hand when it comes to the therapy and treatment presented in the story. So, you know, if you believe me on understanding these things, maybe follow me on Amazon or here and keep an eye out for when that releases. I also in general just do a lot of character focused, fantasy romance. https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B071ZYCZ1T

[halucygeno]

Mental health vent: on being neurodivergent, Kokobot and counterproductive “help”

So, I recently looked up the #Depression tag and was immediately messaged by Kokobot, Tumblr’s officially partnered mental health counselling provider. In typical late-capitalist fashion, it was absolutely atrocious at its job, and not-so-secretly a scheme to harvest people’s user data. User @viridianriver​ made a fantastic post where they summarise the issue better than I ever could, give it a read:

https://www.tumblr.com/viridianriver/722834494910038016/kokobot-the-airbnb-owned-tech-startup-data?source=share

Highly unethical shit and revolting all around. Whoever from Tumblr staff decided this was a good idea should be fuckin’ ashamed of themselves.

But this saccharine, performatively gentle parasite of a bot made me reflect on some of the ways people in real life have failed me when I’ve brought up my mental health problems. Aside from the struggle of finding a therapist who understands my style of thinking and the type of guidance I need (I’ve been through 4 different ones), I’ve often ran into an invisible wall when openly speaking to friends and family.

I’ve been meaning to write something like this for a while, and Kokobot gave me the push to articulate some of my observations - about what is helpful, what isn’t helpful, and some general patterns in how people have addressed my mental illness.

Anyway, here’s my honest advice:

[DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional. This is just an opinion based on my personal experience. Take everything I say with a tablespoon of salt.]

Seek out other people who have struggled with the same (or similar) problems as you. These are the people who are best equipped to empathise with you and see things from your perspective. I know it may sound impossible at first, but you gotta try.  

If your school / university has a counselling service, see if they run any support groups. If not, check to see if there’s something hosted independently by students or local organisations. You preferably want to talk to someone you can trust, like a family member, friend or close colleague. If there is absolutely nobody in your real-life environment you can turn to, then confiding in a stranger online is a “good enough” substitute. Obviously, maintain a good level of caution when speaking to anyone you don’t know - don’t reveal identifying information like photos, names or addresses. If your problems involve something very specific or personal, use analogies and fake names.

The reason I put emphasis on contacting others who have gone through similar issues is that people without that perspective, even if well-intentioned, can actually worsen the situation with their attempts to help.

For example, if you speak openly about your suicidal thoughts (even if you make it very clear that it’s only casual suicidal ideation, with no clear “plan” or strong compulsion to actually do it), people may panic and call emergency services, which can lead to you having to spend half an hour explaining to confused cops and medics: “no, I’m fine, I’m not about to kill or injure yourself, the caller misunderstood me, no, I don’t need a Diazepam injection, no, I don’t want to see a physician...” and so on.

Trying to open up to people who lack the proper perspective will, ironically, increase your frustration and isolation as they adopt an overprotective, patronising attitude. Your negative thoughts will be treated as aberrant and pathological (even if they are well articulated and backed with arguments), and therefore quickly dismissed as “the illness talking”. The condition will basically be used to discredit your autonomy of beliefs, and you will be pressured to adopt the standard, “healthy” attitudes and desires.

Paradoxically, while acting as if your mental illness has completely taken over your thoughts, they will also heavily underestimate its severity and treat it as an issue of “willpower”. You may hear suggestions for things like mindfulness exercises, breathing techniques, meditation, a healthier diet, homeopathic treatments, etc. While these may help in some cases (especially eating healthy), they completely ignore the fact that people on the spectrum or with attention disorders may be straight-up neurologically incapable of focusing on some of these these tasks. (This is anecdotal, but I have attempted about a dozen guided meditations + yoga, and each time it feels like being put in a straightjacket while some pretentious twat tries to gaslight me about what I’m feeling to the tune of the most annoying, cliche “relaxation” music imaginable. It’s impossible to feel anything other than frustration.)

The worst part about this is that these very deliberate displays of “care” and “sympathy” usually dehumanise you by refusing to meet you where you’re at and discuss things on your own terms.

If you’re feeling depressed because of socio-political issues like climate change, racism, economic exploitation and inequality, instead of helping you channel your frustration into action - telling you how to network with local activists, offering to read political theory with you, etc. - they will view the social concern itself as the issue and nudge you towards supressing it (saying things like “focus on your own life, then worry about politics”). Instead of trying to politically empower you, they want you to surrdener to disempowering political apathy.

If you’re feeling depressed due to difficulties with an academic or personal project, you’ll hear vague non-advice like “be kind to yourself” and “don’t push yourself too hard”, with zero actual interest in learning about the specifics of what you’re struggling with. If you’re a writer, for example, these people won’t bother to read your work, and if you ask them to give you some feedback on a draft, they’ll agree before procrastinating it into oblivion.

And don’t even get me started if your sadness stems from philosophical reflections. Most people are extremely illiterate in even conversational-level philosophy, making constant appeals to anecdotes, mysticism and “common sense”. It’s often a struggle to get them to question something they take for granted, much less make them logically evaluate the coherency of a philosophical principle.

You get the point. People say they want to help, but they seemingly want to do that without making any commitments or getting to know anything difficult about you. They can be incredibly overbearing in terms of suggesting broad, overarching lifestyle changes, but when it comes to specific habits and behaviours you yourself want to change, where you could really use a bit of coaching or encouragement, they don’t even examine it.

I understand that the kind of help I’m asking for is incredibly labour intensive and difficult - especially if someone is struggling with a highly technical skill (in which case it may be downright impossible; how are you supposed to help a friend stuck on a programming task without being a programmer yourself)? But if these people are not willing to do that, then the least they can do is shut up with their patronising self-help platitudes. It feels more alienating and depressing to constantly hear stock responses like “it will get better” than just not talking about it at all.

So yeah, look for others who have gone through the same thing. Seek practical, actionable advice instead of vague, feel-good nonsense. Don’t bother talking to those who obtusely fail to understand your condition and condescend to you - it will just exhaust you.

Those are my two cents, and better mental health advice than anything Kokobot will ever give you. Peace.

[quibliography]

The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik

Synopsis:  This novel is about a girl, struggling to graduate from a school that is trying to kill her. Although to be fair, it’s not just the school but also the other students and the maleficaria. The Scholomance is a place for the children of the magically gifted to be both sheltered from the dangers of the world and toughened up to survive it. El has managed well enough on her own so far, but by your third year, one is expected to have gained allies. And no one wants to ally with a prickly loner like El. No one except the school’s golden boy, Orion. El can’t stand him but she might need to tolerate him if she’s to keep her ill-fated destiny a secret. I mean, just because she could wipe out a nation with a single breath doesn’t mean she should.

My Quibs: I know I’ve said this a thousand times too many, but I really need to stop reading books with teenage protagonists. I really just can’t with her. She’s bitter and angsty and resentful and rude and the worst of all, hypocritical. She thinks she’s better than most other students who are elitist or aggressively competitive or judgmental, but then she believes them when they tell her she’s the most worthless person. She resents people for not befriending her but then she resents Orion for spending so much time with her. And to top if off, she is so morally high-grounded it infuriates me. All of this I could somehow manage, if we didn’t get so much internal dialogue. It’s like a one-sided endless stream of consciousness about the terrible conditions of the school, the social behaviors of her classmates, the fears of her deep secret and accidentally fulfilling her prophecy. The closest I get to another perspective is when Aadhya and Liu snap her out of it and El takes a long enough breath to recognize other people’s struggles. And this isn’t even balanced out by my love of world building. Novik created an interesting premise, not so unique as to need an encyclopedia to understand but still different enough to be engaging. Unfortunately, we don’t get to hear it from Novik. We hear it described through El in either textbook-like paragraphs detailing the functional mechanics of how rooms are organized and the hallways get cleaned or bitter rants about how students behave socially to protect themselves in the lunchroom. I’m not one to fall on old standards and rules because rules are made to be broken. But Novik needs to do more showing and less telling. Though I don’t want to crush everything about this series. For instance, it may be cathartic for a reader to see characters express their emotions and Novik knows how to thoroughly work them with her characters. I mean, if there’s one thing El can do, it’s express everything.

Should you read it? Considering my review, I can’t personally recommend it.

Similar reads? It has similar elements to so many other YA series: strong female protagonist and world-altering destiny/prophecy.

(Spoiler Alert!) Novik is not one for the twist. I mean, she titled her second novel “Last Graduate” so even though I kinda know where it’s headed, I was excited by the how and the why. But it wasn’t hard-hitting enough for me. Orion’s self-sacrificing self-destructive push is very Hollywood. You can almost see El’s slow-motion outstretched hand as she scream echoes ‘nooooo’. And setting the school adrift into the void didn’t sound like the ultimate no-return kind of demise El kept insisting it was. And surprise surprise, in book three, it wasn’t. And that’s what was infuriating to me. El’s massive attitude swings of “he must be dead” depression to “I can go back to him” stubbornness and even when he’s alive and more-or-less well, she still chose to be angry because he’s not mentally healthy and grateful. I’ve also realized I’m not a “destined hero saves the world” kind of plot seeker anymore so I’m not really invested in the core of this series. I’ve finished the series though so despite my frustrations and rantings (uncomfortably similar to El’s) Novik’s writing must still be decent. Even if I disagree with all her choices.

What did you think of The Scholomance series?

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Author: Mark Manson

Rating: 4/5 stars

It's been a couple of weeks since I saw it, and I still find myself remembering parts of the book. If you were wondering what "getting more restful sleep" looks like in action, this is the book for you: it's both entertaining (as it goes on, there's a lot of drama and suspense and intrigue, and it's well-written enough to hold your attention and not bore you) and good for improving your health -- it's really good at giving you perspective.

As for the "getting more restful sleep," here's a concrete recipe for doing so -- just a couple of notes first. First, it isn't really realistic to try this plan on a weekend; if you have, say, a busy work week or a busy summer weekend on your hands, I wouldn't recommend trying the "no screens" thing on either of those. Also, if you don't have insomnia, it's likely that "no screens" is not an effective enough sleep treatment to make up for the time you're cutting off (though I say that as a person who's never had much trouble sleeping).

Instead, try it on the evenings and mornings after a busy workday (ideally one where you didn't do too much, but this step is easy to do anyway). Just try to make sure that you're not doing anything else that could keep you from getting eight hours of good sleep. So, no reading books or watching TV or browsing the internet, and don't eat late in the evenings.

The basic idea is to reduce your exposure to any one source of light and noise, ideally from around 10pm to around 8am (for me). So, for example, if you spend most of your day reading, you could try switching to something visual and/or auditory; if you spend most of your day on TV, you could try shutting off the TV a couple hours before the recommended bedtime (though this is optional and I wouldn't make it part of your sleeping routine); if you're in an urban area and get most of your light from outside, you could try closing your window a bit earlier so you're in a room with the same amount of artificial light.

And that's it. This has worked well for me, for various reasons, and if it's been helpful to you I'm not sure why I haven't recommended it before.

---------------

One thing I think you'll find interesting is the role that boredom plays in this sort of sleep routine, in both ways of thinking about sleep and insomnia and about mental health in general.

On the one hand, people talk a lot about how important it is to get enough sleep. We like to imagine that we can just switch on the sleep machine at any time and fall asleep within minutes, and we think it's something of a miracle when we can do that. So much of the time, though, we are sleep-deprived, and we are constantly thinking about how much better the world would be if we got enough sleep -- not in terms of our current quality of life, which I would argue is pretty much fine (with a few exceptions), but in terms of our ability to do better things, or think more clearly, or feel less stress, or whatever. "Enough sleep" just means "getting to your goal," and sometimes your goal is having time to watch a TV show you like, or get to bed on time, or finish that big project you've been putting off, and it's a struggle to get to that point.

And when you're doing that day after day, when you're tired and overworked and maybe even stressed (and yes, there are different kinds of stress), eventually you can see how badly you've messed up, how much worse you are than everyone else, how bad a person you are... and if you're thinking like that, the prospect of "enough sleep" is not appealing.

When you're already in a bad state of mind, I think, the idea of "having enough time in the day" doesn't seem to make as much sense. It seems to take a lot more time for people to recover from a stressful day than it did to cause the stress in the first place; it's probably less "sleep deprivation" and more "depression" than it seems. The same is probably true of "mental illness" as a general condition -- there aren't many people, at least not here, who would say "I want to be healthy but then I'd have all these time-consuming and stressful obligations in my life," because we've seen how hard it is to avoid having those obligations already.

But if you're already pretty sleep-deprived, then you are in a bad mental state; the things you need, like a nap or a couple of hours of TV, seem too much like "having enough sleep" and not "too much sleep." And then there's a kind of psychological relief in, at last, actually doing them -- as if getting those things are the things that will make you feel normal again, that will get your mind working right, and getting the things wrong will keep you in a state of mental confusion. Getting yourself to do things that are "just enough," that are too little or too much, is hard to do on any given day, but after a couple of weeks of trying it, you start to think about those things in terms of an underlying state of mind, rather than as specific things that you will inevitably fail to do on a given day.

It's similar to the idea that, if you're trying to quit a bad habit like smoking, you don't have to quit "cold turkey" or give up smoking completely immediately; it's enough to make the changes gradually, so that you feel the changes yourself and don't need to quit at all, at least not at first. Your brain wants the change, and your brain wants you to feel the change, so you'll be able to do something that's a little easier than you might otherwise have been able to manage if you were still in the state where giving up was impossible.

There's some of that going on here. There's a kind of "getting enough rest and relaxation" that your brain is asking for, that you need so you can have the mental state your brain likes, and there are many small things it would be great to do -- take a nap, go for a walk, read a bit of fiction, listen to music, do some chores, do nothing, and so forth -- that, if you can do them regularly enough, you can slowly build up to doing bigger and bigger ones. The smallest change will cause a bigger change in your mental state, and eventually you'll build up a chain of small changes that all adds up to a big change in your mental state (and that change will actually make you feel better than if you had done nothing to fix it).

Maybe that sounds too abstract. Here's an analogy. If you don't have much sleep, maybe a cup of coffee will feel good. If you have too much coffee, you'll feel jittery and tired, and if you try to drink more coffee, you'll probably just get more jittery and less-restful. If you drink just enough to feel good on the one day and then have more, it's probably going to be a big step back, and the feeling of good will fade as you get more and more jittery again. But with a cup

[snakegentleman]

I think something we need to discuss is that a lot of people got diagnosed (or self dx-ed) with things like autism and ADHD and that diagnosis for a lot of people put a lot of problems in peoples’ lives in context including the ways they were abused whether they realized or not. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has noticed the uptick in people using narcissistic abuse as a legitimate term.

Here’s where I think it’s coming from. Here’s an example: I saw this tiktok asking about whether there was a munchausen by proxy that’s just the controlling aspect not the medical. And the answer to that is it’s a type of emotional abuse. Most abuse is able to be categorized into the four boxes we have for it in the DSM. But everyone in those comments was talking about narcissistic abuse and it clicked for me.

Emotional abuse is dismissed a lot as not as bad so a lot of people are realizing they were abused and no one is taking them as seriously as they feel the abuse impacted them. A lot of people just got diagnosed with something that changed their perspective on why they’ve had such a hard time navigating the world their whole lives and made them more susceptible to abuse.

I think some people think that if they have a disorder that made them susceptible to abuse, that means there must be a disorder that makes people more likely to abuse. And that’s just not how that works. The difficult truth is that hurt people sometimes hurt others to try to minimize their own. Any person of any neurotype can abuse others, but those who were abused are more likely to be abusers because they are hurting.

Not to say we have to have compassion for our own abusers, but we have to acknowledge that mental illness, personality disorders, autism, etc. are neutral. They don’t make you a better or worse person; they are just things a person has along with everything else about them. There isn’t a special evil people disease that makes all the abusers in the world abuse people. They are also people using hurting others as a coping method. The sooner everyone accepts that reality, the sooner we can destigmatize cluster b disorders because the people who have them are the most susceptible to abuse because cluster b disorders come from childhood trauma.

Most of the time, the narcissistic abuse is just emotional abuse or a combination of a bunch of different types of abuse. Just specify.

[ca-cupid]

I can understand where the anon felt offended over comparing cancer and obesity because yeah they both are technically diseases but one is much much worse than the other but also they were a little harsh to you specifically like let’s meet in the middle here and just be open to educating and also listening to plus size people in this matter. I don’t think you’ve had any bad takes, maybe things didn’t come out right but from what I’ve been reading you’ve been willing to listen and you’ve been pretty nice

Like I’m not in as much of a health crisis as if I had cancer. Some people can’t help being overweight because of medical reasons, disabilities, or mental illnesses. Yeah there are people at risk of health issues but it’s the same if you’re at the opposite end of being underweight.

I hope you aren’t letting too much get to you but also I hope that you’re able to see where some of us are coming from.

- sincerely, the overweight anon who responded to that other self hating anon (I talked about how there are no truly fat dolls out there)

Like what you said on a surface level I think they’re pretty comparable bc they’re both diseases (none of this “you’re spreading misinformation” bullshit that’s a whole different topic okay) but no shit it goes deeper than that, if anything the out of the ordinary one on that persons list was eczema??

Also yeah it’s so strange that people aren’t willing to “meet in the middle” but I understand that it’s easier to get angry defending your point than to admit your point may have been wrong, I still strongly stand by most of my points but I have learned new things and said “my bad I genuinely didn’t know this”

one of the main reasons why I really didn’t agree with what that anon said, being fat isn’t always in someone’s control and it may not always be due to dietary issues

Obviously I can see where people come from, I always try to see from several perspectives so yeah I get what everyone is trying to say, but for a lot of things I just don’t necessarily agree with so I keep my stance and even if they keep trying to explain their point and I don’t agree I don’t need to reiterate my points so at certain points,, yeah the convo is done and I don’t want to hear your same points over and over while you try “debunking” me

[spccd]

thomas ‘tommy’ shepherd // SPEED.

name. Thomas “Tommy” Shepherd faceclaim. Diego Tinoco affiliations. Young Avengers, Nomads birthdate & age. June 9, 2001 // 20 species. Mutant identity. Secret

traits.

LOYAL: Tommy’s not really used to having people who would go to bat for him, to be honest. Sure, there’s been a few years of being on a team, but that doesn’t override a lifetime of the opposite—which means that if Tommy thinks he can trust someone, then they’ve got a ride or die for life. He may act detached and, in his own goofy way, standoffish, but Tommy’s the kind of guy who would bury a body for someone that he isn’t even that close to. Snitches get stitches, you know? It’s the kind of prison loyalty you get used to after years spent in and out of juvie. 

SELF-SUFFICIENT: If nothing else, Tommy is pretty independent! For better and for worse, a lifetime of having to take care of himself means that he is more than capable of providing for himself (and others, should the situation arise). As much as he jokes about how badly he wants to marry rich and never work a day again, Tommy is pretty streetwise and can get himself out of a bind… usually without causing too much trouble. Sure, that means his credit score is shot to hell because he took out a credit card to pay a lawyer after he got arrested once and didn’t have the funds to pay it back, but what does he look like he is, middle class? The point is, he’s fed and sheltered and he’s good at keeping himself in check in a bind. If he were to get separated from the rest of the gang in some kind of catastrophic event, he could take care of everyone. And himself. 

UNDERSTANDING: Some of these hero types kinda… have a moral superiority complex. And Tommy finds that exhausting! He is Not The One. Sure, he has a unique perspective on the matter, but Tommy knows more than anyone that having done bad things doesn’t mean that you’re inherently bad, and he’s quick to give others the benefit of the doubt. While he may not be immediately trusting—he doesn’t believe people right away, and it takes him a long time to truly open up to folks—he is the kind of person who believes that intentions matter and that people aren’t defined by their pasts. Everybody’s got some baggage; what’s the point in getting hung up on it?

FLIGHTY: Is Tommy deeply loyal? Yes. Is Tommy deeply unreliable? Also yes. Sure, he would do anything for his friends, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll show up on time—Tommy’s still not accustomed to having to really answer to someone, and because he’s so fast, he has a tendency to wander off… and then get distracted and stay wandered off. His brain works faster than most people’s, so he might follow the trail of a thought (literally) before whoever he’s talking to has finished a sentence, which has gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. 

VOLATILE: Unfortunately, Tommy’s temper has always been the source of all his problems. Angry outbursts are common in those who aren’t used to being heard, and Tommy’s entire childhood has been marked by neglect and worse; while he often has a goofy, fun-loving exterior that can get as good as he gives with teasing, a misplaced word or a teasing insult that cuts a little too deep can send him swinging straight into rage. It’s a minor issue when it’s a spat between friends; it’s a bigger issue when he’s vaporizing his school or dealing with his massive issues with authority.

RECKLESS: Remember that ‘unreliable, thinks faster than everyone else and will run off’ thing? Yeah, it becomes MORE troublesome! Tommy thinks fast, but that doesn’t mean he’s great at thinking before he acts—his body’s just too fast, and he’s going to start moving before someone can stop him. It doesn’t help that he has a compulsive need to keep moving lest his debilitating insecurity catch up to him (sure, most people can’t outrun their mental illness, but what about the fastest guy alive?), and he’d rather run headfirst into danger without a strategy and figure it out later than stop long enough to start lingering on self-doubt. 

abilities.

SUPERSPEED: the name of the game. Tommy’s maximum speed is unknown, but he can easily run faster than the speed of sound, over water, etc.; he takes a lot of pride in having been able to run from the US to Genosha and searched the island faster than Billy was able to teleport there, sucker. His physiology is also adapted to allow him to run at such speeds without suffering from the friction or reduced oxygen, as well as somewhat reduced impact effects. He also has superhuman stamina to allow him to keep moving at incredible speed for several hours.

ENHANCED STRENGTH: With great speed comes great leg strength. Speed can lift about 1 ton’s weight with his lower body strength, and even his upper body is strong enough to bear about 800 pounds – mostly under duress. It’s not, like, his preferred state to be in, holding 800 pounds.

ENHANCED PERCEPTION: Look, when you’re moving way, way faster than everything around you, it kinda feels like the rest of the world is in slow motion. Tommy’s mind processes regular information at speeds aligned with his physical speed, allowing him to be aware of his surroundings while moving (the rest of the world literally does appear to be in slow motion) – and to react just as quickly, giving him lightning fast reflexes. This also means that he can, for example, read entire books in a very short timespan and remember what he’s read. 

MOLECULAR ACCELERATION: The major difference between Tommy’s abilities and Pietro’s is that Tommy can create hyperkinetic vibrations that accelerate the molecules in matter and can make them, uh, explode. It also means he can accelerate his own molecules enough to pass through solid surfaces! But mostly the “blowing stuff up” part. (Pietro can sort of also do this, but Tommy can do it from a distance, therefore he is cooler and also better, thanks!) 

WEAKNESSES. He is still, you know, broadly human; while his body can withstand extreme friction and he can dull the effects of sudden impacts, he is still painfully mortal and woundable in all the usual ways: a punch, a knife, a gun, an energy blast, a broken heart. He is also frankly unaccustomed to people being as quick as he is, and so can be caught off guard by anyone whose speed comes anywhere close to his. …And he’s an impulsive, reckless dumbass, his fatal flaw.

headcanons.

Mostly? Tommy’s here for the free food. Just kidding; Tommy was technically summoned to play the role of emotional support child to Wanda, a thing he has a lot of mixed feelings about—if only because every time he roasted Billy for being like, “you just don’t understand her like I do” about Wanda, it turned out he was kind of right, while Tommy was happy to shrug off the similarities and weird coincidences. But it is true that in a world that no longer has room for superpowered beings who want to live their lives in peace, “apathy” and “staying out of it” are no longer really options. He’s also lonely, but like hell he’d ever admit that one.

 Absolutely did not sign the Accords!!! Tommy has ENOUGH issues with the government crawling up his ass to go willingly sign away his rights like that. REGISTER? No, thanks. That gets in the way of his ability to “get away with doing stuff,” thank you very much. Frankly, Tommy is hesitant to register for anything that would get him put into any kind of database, period, especially as a mutant with a criminal history—but everything that went down with the Accords certainly did not inspire confidence. 

Another great reason to be willing to relocate to Sokovia? Tommy is effectively homeless. He wasn’t welcome back home after he broke out of SuperPrison—and frankly, didn’t want to go back there—so for some time he made an attempt at normalcy by moving in with Billy and Billy’s extremely normal family. It… didn’t really work out. They are extremely nice, and Tommy still makes a point to stop in for dinner and stay for a few days because he has some manners and he’s not about to wholly disrespect the amount of care and compassion that Mrs. K showed him. But a curfew, a sort-of-mom who expected him to be home for family dinner every single day at seven p.m., sharp… none of that really worked for him. He wanted it to! He really did. He wanted to be able to fit into their lives. But at the end of the day, Tommy just felt suffocated—and the lingering sense that sooner or later, he would fuck up the whole thing, earn their ire, and wear out his welcome, so he bailed before that could become a problem. In the meantime, he’s been squatting in a house in New Jersey with an old ex-villain who basically has dementia. Why, who’s your roommate?

Speaking of an old ex-villain who basically has dementia! Tommy has become a great homecare nurse. This is a pretty unexpected turn of events for someone who is pretty selfish and was once called a sociopath by the person he thought knew him best, and for someone who loathes doctors and labs and medicine of any kind. Taking care of Master P gave Tommy purpose in life when the Young Avengers couldn’t really keep operating, and he feels pretty guilty about abandoning him, actually. That means Tommy will still sprint across the whole of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to check in on the guy and make sure he isn’t stuck on the ground because he fell over and couldn’t get up and to make sure he’s eating and all. Pandemonium’s not completely incapable of taking care of himself or anything, but he forgets.

After the Young Avengers broke him out of juvie, Tommy never bothered to return to high school. It’s that ol’ “fitting in with normalcy” thing again, and a desire to keep himself off the ‘grid’ as much as possible. He did, however, receive his GED, but he hasn’t bothered with trying to go to college—too expensive, first of all. Second of all, not really worth his time. 

Tommy does have a superspeed mutation, yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that—hence his ability to vibrate molecules around him at range. As a product of Wanda’s soul, Tommy contains traces of magic within him, too, and it is the source of his abilities; Tommy’s superspeed is its own kind of reality warping, not dissimilar to time magic—he can move quickly by changing the world around him, so to speak. But practically, it’s superspeed.

In that vein, slowing down can be… a challenge. When you start doing everything faster than the speed of light, it can be difficult—at tims, agonizing even—to operate at a slower pace than everything else; imagine going from the internet speeds we have now back to dial-up. This became a huge factor in why Tommy struggled to maintain real human connections: people just couldn’t keep up with him, and he didn’t want to have to slow down for them. Joining the Young Avengers helped that a little as for the first time he met people who kind of understood him, but his attention span is shot to all hell, and he still struggles with a distinct lack of, uh, patience. 

biography.

It all started with a curse. Frank and Mary Shepherd never really wanted a kid; Mary Shepherd can distinctly recall the moment she saw that little pink plus on a pregnancy test (and the second test, and the third, and the fourth) and burst into tears, damning whatever God was listening for giving her this problem that would make her body unrecognizable, belonging to someone else; for another mouth to feed; for forcing her into a marriage she didn’t really want. The whole fling with Frank had been hot-and-cold, intense passion and even more intense fighting. She’d hid the pregnancy at first, until her then-boyfriend inevitably found out and promised to be the best goddamn dad the world had ever seen. They may not have had much, but they would have love, and wasn’t that everything in the world?

No, it turns out, it was not. The fighting stopped… for a while. Frank and Mary got married, a combination bridal and baby shower that left them with a small house stocked with all the signs of domesticity: a mobile with little animals to hang over the crib, a Kitchen Aid mixer (the ultimate symbol of luxurious suburbia. Mary never imagined she’d have one; now that she did, she hardly knew what to do with it). But the tenuous peace they’d brokered didn’t last long, and Frank started drinking again, and Mary never wanted to have this stupid baby, didn’t he remember that, didn’t he remember how he’d talked her into having this baby and if it was his idea he was going to need to take some of the responsibility instead of going out after his shifts, stupid deadbeat?

Anyway, that basically set the stage for Tommy Shepherd’s life. 

His parents split when he was young, and Mary Shepherd made the choice to reclaim her life, leaving behind the man and the kid. Frank left Tommy more or less to his own devices; he wanted a buddy more than he wanted a kid.  It didn’t help that Tommy was a hyperactive, rambunctious kid as it was, never mind being one starved for attention; even at a young age, it was clear that while sometimes Frank liked him, at other times, his dad found him annoying as fuck, and Tommy struggled to be able to gauge which way the pendulum would swing. When whatever shenanigans Tommy got himself into stopped entertaining him, Frank stopped paying attention.What qualified as “entertaining” got rarer and rarer as Tommy got older, which meant he would start making grander and grander attempts for attention… and in a whirl of anger and every other poorly regulated emotion in the book, Tommy’s outbursts and tantrums took a turn for the violent. Prone to stirring up trouble and picking fights at school, Tommy was regularly in detention or suspended, and before he hit puberty, he already had a knack for finding himself on the wrong side of the law and inside juvenile detention halls.

Most of those stints were short stays for minor incidents—just enough to get a rowdy brown kid off the street, you know? But Frank’s girlfriend always had a funny feeling about that kid, his angry eyes, his unfeeling expression, the way he never flinched at gore, his stupid white hair. She was pretty convinced he must’ve been a mutant or something.

Turns out, she was right. (Or something. Tommy’s not clear on the details.)

When Tommy’s abilities manifested—the same day as that whole Novi Grad Sokovia thing, whatever the hell; he didn’t keep up with world events enough to know how they got there, but he did know where they ended up because you couldn’t escape that particular aspect of the news cycle—all he knew was that he could finally taste the air of freedom. Freedom from the crap of his daily life; freedom from teachers who loathed and distrusted him, who treated him like he was nothing but a lost cause and a trouble maker; from his dad who never wanted him around anyway—for once, Tommy’s life could be really, truly his own.

Anyway, that’s how he ended up vaporizing his school. It was mostly an accident. (Mostly.) No one had been inside—late at night, zipping circles around the track field in a blur too fast for the human eye, all Tommy had been wishing for was the promise that he wouldn’t have to go back to that cursed shithole. And suddenly, the shithole was no more.

He could have run away, of course. He was way faster than any cop car, and the cameras were gone. But when you’ve suddenly blown up your school and reduced it to nothing but ash and scorch marks on the pavement, what the hell do you do besides stand there in awe and start laughing in disbelief? So naturally… he was caught. Before Tommy could really register what was going on, special ops police had encircled the premises and nullified his powers, hauling him off to a unique hell specifically for those bad kids unlucky enough to have superpowers.

For someone who already felt caged within the confines of his crappy life, you can imagine how that went—Tommy did not exactly love superjuvie from the start. When the heads of the prison realized the extent of his mutations, they saw only an opportunity. Ah, war: the mother of invention. From there Tommy became the subject of secret, probably illegal experiments, as a team of scientists hoped to bottle his speed and his kinetic vibrations into something mass producible, or else to find a way to turn him into the United States’ greatest living weapon. They had invented the super-soldier, after all, and that was with a regular human. What else could they make? 

The result was that Tommy had phenomenal control over his abilities in a short amount of time, and the instant the power nullification was turned off of his cell, he did what any sane person stuck in a prison would do: he blew the door right off. On the other side were a bunch of wannabe superheroes his age, in desperate need of help—somebody’s boyfriend had been kidnapped. Somebody, it turned out, who bore an odd resemblance to him; they may not have been identical, but there was an uncanny connection. (Tommy claimed not to notice. No one else was polite enough to do the same, apparently.)

So what was Tommy going to do, say no and keep himself incarcerated forever? The rest, as they say, is history: they saved the boyfriend, Tommy joined the team and adopted the name Speed, they went on their share of adventures. Tommy never returned to his dad’s house; his dad never asked about him. For a brief time, he lived with the Kaplans for lack of any place better to go, but after a few days of having to put up with Billy and Teddy sucking face and Rebecca Kaplan trying to lovingly psychologize him, it was time to go. He found some stability working odd jobs where he could get a month’s work done in a few days’ time and pay rent to a landlord who didn’t ask questions, but as having superpowers became more and more dangerous, so did Tommy’s plans for income.

Eventually, the Young Avengers were forced to disband, and Tommy found his way back to New Jersey. Until the Mistress of Magic appeared, apparently demanding his presence…  

[sti11dreaming]

October 10 2019

“I thought I’d die if I ran like crazy. It left me breathless and it was painful but I didn’t die. People don’t die so easily.” - pieta in the toilet 

It seems like certain behaviors hold a monopoly over mental illness. If you don’t act in the way that mainstream media portrays anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness you’re not suffering, and therefore aren’t worthy enough to receive the support you so desperately need. In my experience, mental illness is supposed to be loud and obvious, not silent and deceiving. This creates a complex dilemma for someone like me. I’ve learned to cry in quiet corners, and hide anxiety behind delayed deadlines and minimal human contact. Some days, it takes me an extra 30 minutes to get out of bed, because my depression is telling me there’s no point in doing so. Other days, my anxiety tells me that if I get up I’m going to ruin some major aspect of my life anyway, so it’s safer to stay under the covers. When these two come together it feels like a brick trying to break its way through my chest.

I can recall a time when my grievances were easier to read from an outsider’s perspective.

I had endured similar conversations before, but it was in that moment where I learned my feelings could be interpreted as a nuisance or even a threat to those who were supposed to be helping me. If I wanted to be taken seriously, or have my feelings deemed valid, I’d have to fight like hell for it. Fifteen-year-old me didn’t have the energy for that. And sixteen-year-old me not only doesn’t have the time but is keenly aware that she shouldn’t have to fight for same basic human decency that is so easily given to other girls; girls who are viewed as more fragile, and more deserving of that extra care. Somehow their mental illness is more legitimate than mine because it can be heard from miles.

Mine is quieter and unsure of itself, not sure if what im going through is an actual affront to my health or if the problem is too much of an anomaly to garner attention, or worse, it could make people think i’ve fabricated the whole thing. That is why I tend to keep my feelings to myself now. I don’t want to go through the humiliation of justifying my emotions to someone again. Sometimes, I am okay with this. Considering that I feel ok being alone, and I usually prefer to be left alone.

Let's say that I know I am not a...easy person. Sometimes I don't talk for days, and when I talk it's just to argue over my existence and I don't care about anyone.I just want people to understand that I’m not a happy person. I’m sad most of the time. Sadly hopeful, sadly peaceful, sadly in love and sadly alive but I’m not really broken, yet. Sometimes I feel that I am damaged, but I really am not. I’ve recreated myself into this person, and I’m okay with what I see. Sometimes I see me when someone says something nice for something I wrote, or sometimes I see me when my mother is happy, or my brother talks with me, but I’ve never seen myself in anyone else’s eyes and feel like I’m going to be sadly okay for the rest of my life. That’s kind of what love is for me.

However, I still don’t believe my silence makes my mental illness any less severe than someone who’s more vocal about theirs.The other day my sister asked me why I always act so anxious. She said I need to stop. I wanted to tell her that it's not how it is. But I ended up crying silently because no one would believe the reasons why my brain starts shutting down all of sudden. It's a lengthy process. She maybe too thinks that I've been fabricating things all the way down there and maybe,I no longer want to fight against their words.But when it hurts ; I know it's real.

The way my depression manifests itself is the why I still check on my friends, even when it seems like they’re fine. Mental illness doesn’t look the same for everyone. You can’t always gauge how bad someone’s situation is by how angry or happy they “look.”Anxiety isn’t always someone shaking or not being able to breathe, and depression isn’t restricted to someone sobbing in the middle of the street. These things can look detached, it can be taking an hour or four to reply back to a text. I know I have trouble with asking for help, and that makes it difficult for the people who care about me to give me the support I need. They don't understand anyway. I’m trying really hard but I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt when it really does.

I don’t like writing anymore. I’m tired. I have empathy for everyone but me.

Yet, I’m allowing myself to feel my sadness and anger. It’s supposed to heal me they said, I’ve never been in so much pain. My brain feels like it’s failing me. It doesn’t work. I wish people didn’t die. My mind is full of “I wish”s and “what if”s. That’s probably why I’m so anxious.

The past ten months have been rough. Of course I’m depressed , devastated and deranged .I’m still trying to figure out how everything went wrong so fast. I just sit in my room, and stare at the wall, and I can see myself getting worse day by day, and I’m just so freaking exhausted. I don’t even know if I'm breathing. I feel as if I'm lying under a trash pile. I am the garbage everyone wants out. Nothing is alright anymore.i feel so fucking alone and disgusting .It’s OK to be sad. But I can’t let go of the guilt I’ve attached to it. I fight with myself a lot. My life is going really well despite everything that’s happened. My depression is selfish. At least that’s what my brain is telling me. That’s what makes me so upset.

People tell me all of the time that suicide is a long term solution to a temporary problem. The only issue I have with this is that my mind isnt temporary.

I do not really know whether I have survived. My inner self has shut itself up more and more. As though to protect itself, it has become inaccessible to me.

Writing this is not as cathartic as I want it to be. After not being able to cope up with anything for months, you’d think I’d have something interesting to say. I can’t hear or see any of my accomplishments. Everything is really flat at the moment. I’m not miserable, but I don’t feel like I’m here in the world. is the world even for me? I ask this question every hour because I progressively feel less safe as each day passes .

I’ve been dealing with some really weird problem for almost three years now, and every time I tried to talk with my family they’d brush it off as an exaggeration. I never got to see a kind and competent person who took all of my complaints seriously and did everything in their power to figure out what the problem was. No one who quelled my fears and let me know that what I’m going through isn’t anywhere near fatal or serious, but I need to take better care of myself.That kept changing my attitude immensely towards my family increasing the distance , and I think I'm tired of being with them. I value human Human connection before anything. I don't care if it's the blood.

I've started feeling more claustrophobic than ever. At some point, I want to isolate myself from everyone.i want to run away from everything as my anxiety has never been extinguished, my mental health that's never been looked after. On top of that I'm already having some really odd symptoms, carrying around this fear of having some serious disappointment issues which was keeping from getting so much stuff done. I wish I could bring myself to happy.

I’ve been living in my own bubble for the past few weeks, trying as hard as I can to focus on my schoolwork because I’m constantly worrying that I won’t pass my exams. This worry intensified when I got my mock results and I got an F. I am still trying somehow.

When in actuality, I feel like I’m dying inside constantly and I only look serious because I don’t feel comfortable around most of my peers.They are always looking down on me for a certain reason.The girls who talk with me sometimes act like I'm an extra person who's ruining their mood at lunch time. I saw them making disgusting faces at my self harm scars . Probably thinking something embarrassing and unrelated to me. I told them it's cat scratches and laughed loudly. I was the only one laughing in the room.So I have decided to wander alone at the lunch hour. I feel like a fool.I sit in the back of the class. Mostly, alone. It has never been because I don't know what I'm doing. Even if that's true. It has never been cause I'm a bad student. Whether or not I am, it has only been cause I don't want to be seen. I don't want their glares to consume me. It's been already so much painful. I cry like rain in the spring so they evaporate into the sleepy mistake easily. That's why I'm in the back of the class, behind everyone cause every single task I try to do, every second of reading chemical revolution and for every math I should be solving faster; I'm sorry I'm struggling. I feel so much self pity at most of the point that I just want to end myself and end it all. I wish they could know that my favourite movie is Willy Wonka chocolate factory but they prejudge me so I guess they’ll continue to assume that I’m so serious that sometimes I feel like no one is real. Lately I've realized that it's always a better option, instead of telling someone how tragic I feel, I put in headphones and load myself with studies and try to keep away from crying. But that made me cry even more. I always had snitches and had a hard time trying to keep a secret that- I'm hurt, I'm depressed, so I read my global studies loud ; but in the end all I want to do is to burn this pages , take off this painting of pretending and tell every single person I met that, I am not alright.

Crying doesn't release the burden from my chest anymore. If I'm not hurting myself, I'm hurting everyone around me.

My face melts away a little more each time I pass a mirror. I’m scared of the day I’ll look at it and see nothing staring back. I’ve remembered how to cry again, but now I just do it because I’m scared. The scar on my left arm, a muffled chord progression, the bottle of antiseptic under my be - I know I didn’t make them up, I wouldn’t know how to. But they’re gone all the same and I don’t want my mind to paint itself a liar. It scares me every time I search the pages just to find new holes torn in them. If my mother didn’t say that, why do those words ache? If I’ve never heard that story, why do I know the ending? I’m trying to commit myself to memory before both my mind and body complete their vanishing act. I need to know that even if I forget a little more of myself every day, that someone will think of me. Tell me I’m funny, crazy, anything - have an opinion of me so I can cry a little bit every time about having succeeded in the act of being here. I’ve learned that you can’t disappear if people love you, so I’ll do anything for anyone. I break bits off of myself and give them to whoever needs me most. No matter how exhausting they are to take care of. People with rarity and broken hearts ; they can keep my memories far safer than anyone can.

I was in battle with my mind during all of my final exams. Sometimes, with a song that just wouldn’t get out of my head as I tried to focus on the VERY important task at hand. Other times, it was trying to stop the intrusive thoughts that screamed horrible things in my head. During my math final, I couldn’t figure out something very simple and my brain decided to remind me that these are the grades colleges look at. I started panicking about not getting into any college at all, which caused me to have to take a break to prevent myself from crying. Which caused me to have less time to finish the test. Which made me panic even more.

Finals week has pushed me to the absolute limit. I am not a test score, and from now on I’m not going to treat myself like one.

I hope one day I'll stop mourning about my past and myself.I hope I'll be able to let go the guilt of being a person no one wanted me to be. But does this make any sense yet?

My god, what an absolutely...shattering experience it’s been. It’s left me with such profoundly stupid questions like...who the fuck am I? Why does this hurt so much? How can I make it stop? And the best question of all, does it even fucking matter? ”