#to receiving the support he needs

[bestworstcase]

How much of Ironwood's decision making do you think is informed by his semblance? Or is it a non-factor?

ooh this one is fun because i don’t agree with ✨any✨ of the common takes that i’ve seen across the spectrum from “mettle is auto-brainwashing” to “mettle is just the trigger he pulls on a gun”

and i need to preface by saying that i have adhd, and i experience EXTREME hyperfocus. extreme like i work from home and enjoy my job so i accidentally pull 14-16 hour days about 2-4 times a month because i’ll get going on a task after lunch and blink and it’s four in the morning. extreme like before i went on meds i needed to set alarms for mealtimes to avoid starving myself to death and that still only worked half the time. extreme like i have to be careful about reading books because i will not stop reading until i’m finished and very long books can prevent me from sleeping multiple nights in a row.

that said i do not and have never experienced hyperfocus as involuntary. i am always surprised by how much time has elapsed, because it never feels like more than maybe half an hour tops and it is always actually more like 10+, but for me hyperfocus is preceded by about 15-20 minutes of normal focus during which i’m fully aware of what my brain is doing and am able to step away if the thing i’m doing isn’t something i want to sink the rest of my day on.

it’s both a fairly debilitating symptom and something that i make a deliberate choice to do for a variety of reasons that are not especially important here. there is risk-benefit analysis involved.

this is basically how i think mettle works, with the sole difference being that hyperfocus requires a specific kind of trigger [complex high-interest tasks] and mettle does not, so ironwood can induce this state at will for any task. besides that, my interpretation of mettle is that it’s deep hyperfocus on a particular task, lasting anywhere from a couple minutes (for very short-term goals) to an entire day but averaging around 8-10 hours at a time for anything involved (paperwork, strategizing), possible to interrupt with difficulty, and involving a mildly altered state of consciousness in the form of a dramatic reduction in sensory and temporal processing i.e. no perception of time passing and inability to perceive sensations like hunger, fatigue, discomfort, people talking to you without getting your attention first, and so forth. it does not cause changes in personality or cognitive function, nor inhibit decision-making except insofar as it takes conscious effort to step away from the task.

mettle as described is “like an iron resolve […] that powers him to [keep going], almost like a very stubbornly, narrow focused mindset on things […] to push himself to do what he’s decided he’s gonna do” or to “push himself through something like searing the flesh off your arm, like if this is the goal he needs to accomplish, everything else goes by the wayside.” and for some inexplicable reason this has been widely interpreted to mean that mettle is a switch ironwood can flip to make himself willing to kill people. no! mettle is how he’s able to flay and cauterize his own arm to escape watts’ trap! mettle is how ironwood keeps himself awake and lucid for a solid forty-eight hours after his fucking arm gets amputated! mettle is why he’s composed and reasonable at the top of volume seven and gradually unravels into an unhinged frazzled lunatic over the months that follow because he’s using his semblance to force himself past the limits of what his body is physically able to endure.

ironwood is a soldier born and raised and indoctrinated into a military state that never quite escaped its prewar fascism. he was always perfectly willing and able to kill people at the slightest justification—“if you were one of my men i would have you shot” was, um, not a joke. that’s who he is. that’s what atlas molded him into, same as it molded clover and harriet and elm and vine and marrow and winter and goddamn near everybody else it touched who didn’t have the means to get out.

mettle didn’t turn ironwood into a murderer—atlas did.

but hyperfocus is not a healthy superpower, ok? it feels fucking great to effortlessly glide through a week’s worth of work in a single afternoon but you have to balance that against the physiological and psychological toll that will take if you try to make that your normal. it’s a day of absolute peak performance and then a crash, and you have to be able to crash. you HAVE to let yourself rest. hyperfocus feels like infinite energy and that feeling is a lie your brain tells you after unplugging all the early warning systems so that your body can’t interrupt you with petty things like hunger or pain, and you HAVE to remember that.

ironwood goes off the fucking rails in volume eight because he believes that lie. he desperately needs to eat and sleep and take it easy while his body recuperates from losing an arm, but mettle can make all of that pain and exhaustion fade away—only it doesn’t actually. the physiological need is still there, getting worse for every minute he spends neglecting it. all through volume seven it’s building up and up until it hits a critical mass after he flays his arm and his cognitive functioning just fucking implodes because his brain physically does not have what it needs to work correctly anymore and the result is this sudden explosion of acute irrationality and emotional lability that just keeps rapidly getting worse and worse and worse because ironwood keeps trying to brute force his way through it with mettle.

i have done this. it sucks. for me the stakes were high school so it mostly looked like a prolonged meltdown and some screaming fights over college applications, but the underlying psychological mechanism driving ironwood’s dramatic tailspin is exactly hyperfocus run amok. in its worst extremity unmanaged hyperfocus is just a horribly destructive and insidious form of self-harm and it will make you completely fucking batshit until you stop.

[xerospaced]

There's this guy, Dr Russell Barkley, he does talks on ADHD. I've come across a fair bit of his content on various platforms.

Every time I see one of his videos I end up in tears. Usually within the first few minutes.

He speaks very plainly and clearly about the function of ADHD. He presents a realistic picture of what is happening and what is required.

I came across this one:

In typical fashion, I found myself crying within a few minutes.

Because other than schooling I have never had a support system. I have never had a single person in my life really hold me accountable. I have never had anyone work with me to create some kind of structure or consistency.

Everything he said, even within the first minutes, resonated with me so deeply. Because I honestly have no idea if I can do this alone. And it scares me that I might wind up getting nowhere because I am lacking in support.

ADHD is manageable. But it is damn near impossible to manage alone.

I just don't know where to go from here.

[tenebrius-excellium]

Thinking about Httyd...hot and perhaps too personal take: To me, Httyd was more than anything else a movie about emotional starvation. And Forbidden Friendship was the sweetest, briefest celebration of relief from that.

Afterwards, everybody basically told Hiccup to man up “because that’s just life” and I will never forgive Httyd2 and Httyd3 for that.

[pawsitivevibe]

Sometimes it really is enough to say "that sucks, I'm sorry that's happening to you" rather than try to lecture someone or give advice tbh

[arklay]

MR. & MRS. WESKER 🤍

i was able to commission the lovely @rcehb-art on twitter for this piece of diana and wesker during their strange after-the-fact reception for their very private wedding. i am just so in love with this and how it turned out, and i can't thank rc enough !! she is so kind and amazing to work with and i can't recommend her enough if you're looking to commission artwork ♡

[curiosity-killed]

It is! Possible! That I may be being too hard on myself! Again!!!

[wilchur]

It really annoys me that there's no way to talk Astarion out of the ritual other than bargaining with the lives of the spawn to be honest. Makes it so that trying to persuade him as a character that is far from good and selfless, but cares about him a lot feels ooc as hell. Sure you can pick the "Cazador said this will kill you, don't risk it" option but it leads you back to either "But the spawn :(" or "Okay, let's do this". The dialogue tree there leaves no ambiguity to the morality of your character.

I wish there was a way to get the insight check after you voice the fear for his life and get a persuasion one if you succeed. Kind of a "I was ready to see them all burn for you, but I can see that you're not sure and the ritual claiming your life is not worth the risk. We'll find another way. There's still the crown, remember?" thing. They leaned too heavily into this ending being the "vampire fetish" one, assumed that if the player character doesn't care about a bunch of random spawn, they would not care about Astarion's emotional wellbeing and that's just not how people work to me. The way you have to be the one to make the choice what to do with the spawn if you do stop the ritual annoys the fuck out of me too. It's not my choice to make, my Durge does not give a fuck what happens to them once Cazador is gone and the party is safe. He would rather leave that choice to Astarion. He wants to kill them anyway? Great! Blood, guts and suffering! Lovely! He wants to spare them? Whatever love, if that's what you want. Let's just get the fuck out of here.

It would be nice to have that option, especially considering this is supposed to be all about Astarion reclaiming his autonomy.

I just don't like it when to not get fucked over by a game I have to sacrifice the roleplaying aspect of it idk. Even if my character genuinely wants Astarion to ascend no matter the cost it will have for others because he's convinced them that's what he needs to finally gain his freedom and they're the kind of "anything for you kitten" person, they still should be able to notice that Something Is Not Right without it going against their personality and feeling forced.

[lpsgirl109]

Suddenly obsessed with the idea of FA Harry Osborn villain arc featuring Bruno looking at the Avengers and going oh my god what did you do to piss this guy off

[jrueships]

' it's the WaWaaas Pizza 🎶! for YoUuu and MeEe~😸🎶!

WaWa.'

[yeonban]

And if I end myself what then.

[confused-stars]

thinking about the dissonance between water being the element of change and healing, and Fontaine being stagnant and unyielding in the ways of its justice system

[tousakamis]

sigh. my mum is talking about how she recognises that both me and my little brother are mentally ill but she's apparently been "protecting us from labels how she wasn't" (because that's "all that society wants to give kids nowadays") and she wants us to just "get on with life and be who we are"

[nerdie-faerie]

Why is it that when I'm sick, finishing work late because a load of people didn't show up and ongoing work drama, stressed about my upcoming essay and still have a hour walk before I can get home, my dad is apparently kicking off and threatening to kick me out when I'm not even there??

[yourwolfmuzzle]

I thinking about this shit for a whole day for no reasons so i need to talk about this, otherwise it will stuck in my brain forever as a non answered question - Are we kinda continue this whole “characters reaction was wrong\right in this situation” and kinda “angry wemen” situation that we have in this show?

So...this whole story started because “evil wemen” react "wrongly” and transform into literally witch and evil immortal “god-like” person. We have a lot of fem characters, who have “wrong reaction” and transform into antagonist of this story (and i also will count characters who then get they “redemption” one way and another). Even if we have characters, who is in “good side”, like Yang, who openly can be angry and go into “emotion side” is not in character story fully or this part of they character got change or end pretty soon (Yang whole “think before act” kinda end in vol6 and from what i can tell, she kinda now mix of “i sometime acting before thinking” but now its portrait as a “haha funny moment” at least in vol9? And she also now got in her character description “she scare looking one” and i dont know where its coming from but anyway this post is not about sudden character description changes that is not sounding like “character evolving”.).

And...in vol9 we have Ruby, who pretty much have a depression and kinda PTSD stuff going on after all stuff that was happening in vol7-8. We going to skip this part that she and her team partly in wrong, but anyway - this is what we got in this volume. And when she openly starts to express all her accumulated emotions and anger about this - everybody was not was to trying to support her or talk with her. Even worse - just when she start to express her anger, the other main character started shutting her up. They let Jaune to express his emotion about loosing paper pleasers, who he was trying to protect for who know how long and support him in the next-next episode, but not Ruby. Ruby not only did not get support or at least some talk about all this, but she kinda after this got “punished” by other “angry evil female character”. And after “walking in the tree” she got her problems “fix” and only after THAT she got her some sort of support in for of “friendship hug”.

Only after she “not angry anymore” and “not depress anymore” she got her support. She react “wrongly” about her trauma, got “fix” and only after she transform into flawless hero she got her support from people, who she was venting only a couple episode ago. Adult Jaune received support and group hugs while Ruby was in the process of “fixing her emotions and discovering perfect form of herself”. Only after you not “angry wemen anymore” you can get some support...or if you not Yang.

(thank you to coming into my another “why de fuck they treat Ruby like this in this volume” talk)

[autistic-shaiapouf]

I remember seeing the phrase "proudly autistic" and. yeah, I think that that may be what I want

[bleakbluejay]

i'm so convinced that every writer for every big show or movie that has the main character have an amputation is not personally close with an amputee

with the exception of maybe forrest gump bc i thought lt. dan was very convincing and compelling

but like. they make getting and maintaining prosthetics look easy. they make it look not very painful (or the pain is super temporary). they don't bring up the emotional distress being an amputee can create, and if they bring up the ableism, it's a distasteful joke. all the negativity is done upon amputation and never beyond. and that's just so unrealistic i think. unless i, myself, am the world's most sensitive bitchy amputee.