#trauma informative

[subsystems]

About dissociation in childhood, from Treating Adult Survivors of Childhood Emotional Abuse and Neglect (pp. 148-150)

[brucewaynehater101]

The batfamily, after finding out another really important secret, are under the impression that Tim doesn't trust them. Why else would he wait for the last possible minute to inform them of his personal information?

Bruce sets up more team bonding (family time) to try to mitigate this.

Dick drops by Tim's office more with lunch to hang out.

Jason uttered out a really awkward but heartfelt apology about some past wrongdoings.

Steph hauls Tim over her shoulder and then plops him down into outings such as the movies or zoo.

Damian told Tim that his photos are so bad he might as well just give Damian copies of them.

Duke, trying to get to know Tim better, challenges him to see who can solve puzzles faster. He also brings fun inventions to Tim's workshop for them to do together.

Barbara sets up monthly code nights with Tim. She also occasionally passes along fun missions he could do with his siblings.

While all of this is nice, Cass and Alfred know the truth. Tim just finds it funny to watch his family blink rapidly and then go through five stages of grief whenever they unlock more background lore.

[hichter-art]

THE SONIC X DC CROSSOVER IS OUT!! (And I love it!!!!)

SONIC, my dude, my guy, please never change!

The pseudo beef between these two😭

Also I love how you get so much dialogue between the characters when they are all fighting or getting to know each other and for Batman and Shadow it’s mostly:

*understanding silence*

[tealvenetianmask]

Does Blitz blame himself for Cash's abuse?

Stick with me, and I'm truly sorry.

All of the people except Cash featured in the memories Rolando shows Blitz are people who Blitz has cared deeply for and felt like he hurt, failed to get close to, or let down.

Let's look at them (again, yes)

Tilla

Fizz

Verosika

Loona

M&M

Barbie

A whole lot of Stolas

So. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Is Cash Fucking Buckzo. Doing in this line-up?

Well. Hurting Blitz, horribly. My first meta on this scene didn't really capture this, but as many have pointed out, this is Cash grabbing Blitz's freshly burned wrist after the fire and smacking the ever living shit out the burned side of his face. Presumably blaming him for the fire and everything (and everyone) lost from it. And then Cash telling Blitz in the hospital that Fizz doesn't want to see him.

It's emphasized too. Right after we see the memory of Cash hitting Blitz, we see Blitz physically flinch while watching it.

So if this is just a compilation of horrible memories, maybe that's all there is to it.

But if it's a grouping of the people Blitz cares for, well . . . it makes sense for it to be that, doesn't it? Blitz has a lot of love in him, and yet he's scared of intimacy. His trauma is ABOUT hurting people, losing people, driving people away, craving closeness that he can't have . . .

Being an abuse victim is complicated. Being a family scapegoat is complicated too. A lot of abusers try to make the victim think that they're ACTUALLY the cause of their pain and everyone else's, and we already know that Cash did this to Blitz (literally in this same set of memories in the hospital).

But we also saw it in The Circus when Blitz was much younger, and saw how much this tactic got to Blitz.

Cash guilts his son into going into a dangerous situation for him. If Blitz doesn't do this, their lack of resources, the possible suffering of his parents . . . it will all be Blitz's fault.

And Blitz cares deeply (he always has!), so he does it.

Now one might argue that Blitz says "of course I want to help Mama" here and leaves Cash out of his reply, so he doesn't love his father. But reality is often more complicated than that. He's upset here that Cash is forcing this on him. Cash hurts him. His mother (seemingly) offers much more love. That doesn't mean that Blitz doesn't ALSO feel some care and responsibility for his father's wellbeing.

I think that Blitz believes (or at least a significant part of him believes) that he destroyed Cash's life too with the fire, and that he deserved that beating and being turned away from the hospital and possibly many of the beatings and beratings that Cash delivered in the past. I think that in the moment when Cash grabbed him, he felt that he fully deserved the agony he felt when Cash held his wrist.

I think a part of him loved his father growing up and still loves him-- that there were moments between the incidents of cruelty where they had fun together as a family, and where looked up to his dad and wanted desperately to win his approval.

I think that Blitz has a lot of anger toward Cash too, and that a part of him always knew that Cash was wrong to hurt him. He had a whole lot of resilience and defiance in him even as a young kid.

I think that he felt guilty for all of the times he felt angry at his father. I think he might still.

I'm off to cry and then grab my pitchfork and storm wherever Cash is living nowadays. Who's with me?

[positivelyadhd]

here is your reminder that all trauma is valid.

trauma is to do with how our brains process (or don't process) memories and experiences and that if something is traumatic for you then that is trauma.

it doesn't matter if you or someone else thinks it should be significant or not or if someone else went through the same thing and wasn't impacted by it. what matters is if it's significant to you and how it impacted you.

a huge part of recovering from trauma is allowing yourself to accept that you had it in the first place.

[deservedgrace]

something that's really been bothering me lately is how the church i was a part of would like... repackage doctrine to make it sound nicer and more acceptable. like, the belief that all humans are evil by nature and deserve eternal torture for the crime of existing is inherently violent and cruel. but my church didn't frame it like that. they framed it as "yes we're ALL evil and wicked and we ALL deserve hell to atone for our sin (being human) BUT god loves you despite you not deserving love or happiness or anything good at all and all you have to do to avoid the pits of hell is accept jesus as your savior isn't that so amazing????" and they framed the crucifixion as this beautiful, selfless act of god by taking our place on the cross instead of "this all-powerful being who created all the rules decided that he required torture, death, and human sacrifice to be able to tolerate us". and it's not "women will be viewed as lesser than men" it's "women must submit to their husbands the same way we all must submit to god it's not dehumanizing it's holy and yes women have different roles but that doesn't make them lesser than and sure we don't have any women in leadership positions in the church and we would never even consider it, come on now that's ridiculous, but that's just because men are supposed to lead because men and women are different and created for different purposes it's just biology". and there are plenty others! i know that the reframing of everything is part of how they can even get people to accept the doctrine in the first place, but being on the outside of it is kind of horrifying. when you get down to the actual beliefs that are held without the distortions and manipulation, so many are violent, cruel, dehumanizing, abusive. but they distort and manipulate these beliefs to make them seem acceptable, morally correct, and redefine what love is and should look like.

[whump-is-love-whump-is-life]

That’s a nice fight or flight response you got there. Sure would be a shame if it turned to fawn against your will

[sophsun1]

#same energy aka the aftermath of dealing with evan 'chaotic bi' buckley #what makes this even funnier is that he's talking about each of them to other

[subsystems]

Idk if anyone's posted this before but if you want a good primer on ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) please check out this online course. It's free & only 50 minutes, plus you get a certificate once you're done. I really recommend it for everyone. Especially because not many people understand dissociation and childhood trauma even though the basic information is right here.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: parrotfish

Which fish hangs out on a mermaid pirate's shoulder and repeats what she says in a high-pitched voice? The parrotfish, of course. Or at least in fiction they should (certainly will in my D&D world). But even in real life, parrotfish are still pretty interesting.

(Image: a common parrotfish (Scarus psittacus) seen from the side in front of rocks and corals. It is a brightly-colored fish, mainly light blue but with patches and stripes of yellow and pink on the fins. Its mouth is open, revealing what appears to be a beak. End ID)

Parrotfish are fish famous for their mouths and eating habits. There are about 90 species known. While they were historically considered their own taxonomic family, they have since been reclassified a subset of the wrasse family and there is still some debate on how to classify them. Most species are on the smaller size, but a few can get very large. The largest species is the green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) at 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) and 75 kg (165 lbs) while the smallest species is the bluelip parrotfish (Cryptotomus roseus) reaching 13 cm (5 in). I could not find an average weight for the bluelips. What makes parrotfish really stand out visually is their colors and their mouths. Most species are very brightly colored, with distinct markings and males are usually more brightly colored than females. Their mouths are dominated by what appear to be beaks, which gave them their common name. These beaks are actually made of approximately 1,000 teeth arranged in 15 rows. As the teeth wear out, they drop off and are replaced by the row behind them. The teeth are made of fluorapatite, the second hardest biomineral int the world. To support their hardness, the fluorapatite crystals that make up the teeth are woven together in a structure very similar to chainmail, resulting in very hard teeth that measure in at a 5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. For reference, iron is a 4 and higher numbers are harder. The teeth can also handle 530 tons of pressure. You could put the weight of 200 black rhinos on a tooth and it would be fine. The beaks are powerful enough to bite through rock. Which is what they use it for, but more on that below. Another unusual feature of parrotfish is how they sleep. Some species make their own sleeping bags, which would be adorable if they weren't made of mucus. The mucus is produced using glands in the gills and looks like a transparent bubble. The fish sleeps in the mucus cocoon and when it wakes up, it eats the cocoon. There have been several proposed benefits of the cocoon. It contains chemicals that harm skin parasites while also providing a barrier that keeps new parasites from reaching the fish. It also likely blocks the fish's scent, helping it hide from predators.

(Image: a green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) swimming over yellow coral. It is large and mostly a uniform green color, except for the front of its head, which is pink. It has a large, fleshy lump on the top of its head. End ID)

(Image: a close-up of a parrotfish's beak. The top and bottom beaks are divided into two halves, left and right. The beak is bade of small, circular teeth that overlap each other. End ID)

(Image: another common parrotfish seen from the front. It is inside of a mucus cocoon, which appears as a transparent bubble around the fish. Bits of sand dot the cocoon's surface. End ID)

Parrotfish live worldwide, though the majority of species are found in the Indo-Pacific. They live in warm, shallow waters with lots of rocky reefs, especially coral reefs. They use those powerful teeth to eat and what they eat most is algae. There are three main types of feeding behavior: excavating, scraping, and browsing. Excavators bite into rocks to get their food, scrapers crape food off of the surface of the rocks, and browsers go after larger food sources like seagrass and sponges. Some of the larger parrotfish species also make coral a large part of their diet. When they eat, they naturally get rock in their mouths, moreso in excavators. Because their food clings to the rock, spitting the rocks out would deny them food. Instead, parrotfish use pharyngeal teeth set in their throats to grind the rock into sand, which then passes through the digestive tract. When it exists the digestive tract, it is in the form of fine grains of rock. Or to put it another way, parrotfish eat rock and poop sand. A single parrotfish can produce up to 40 kg (88lbs) of sand yearly, and bigger species can produce even more than that. The process of rock being broken down by living things is called bioerosion and parrotfish are one of the most famous sources of bioerosion. The sand they produce can serve as the basis for new growth of coral or other species and helps reinforce nearby islands. In places like Hawai'i, the Caribbean, and the Maldives, it's estimated that up to 80% of the famous white sand is produced by parrotfish and they serve as a major source of incoming earth to support the islands. This makes parrotfish ecosystem engineers. Their eating of algae is also majorly important to their ecosystems. Algae can overgrow and smother delicate ecosystems like coral reefs and seagrass beds and decaying algae draws oxygen out of the water. Parrotfish help the health of their environments by keeping the algae population at healthy levels. Parrotfish also eat seaweeds and sponges that grow much faster than coral and can smother coral reefs. Parrotfish are considered keystone species in many reefs, including the great barrier reef and their population dropping correlates with reduced health of reefs. Damaged reefs tent to have larger parrotfish populations and those populations drop as the reef recovers.

(Image: a group of many parrotfish feeding on coral. They are all the same species and are mostly blue, with yellow heads and stripes on the face. They appear to be biting the the coral. End ID)

Parrotfish are protogynous sequential hermaprodites. This means that all parrotfish are born female and can become male later in life. The transition is usually triggered when there are too many females or not enough males in a location, though in some species any fish that reaches a certain size will become male. Some parrotfish are solitary while others are social. In social species, the social groups consist of a large male and a harem of females that he protects and claims mating rights with. Other males will attempt to fight the male for dominance via headbutting and threat displays and occasionally one of his harem members will become male to challenge him. Males are usually more colorful than females, which they use to woo females, but also puts them at greater risk of predation. If the harem leader dies and is not replaces, one member of the harem will transition to male and replace him. Many species perform courtship dances during nights of the full moon. In non-social species, males will perform displays and fight with each other to attract females. In social species, the dominant male will mate with his harem while smaller males without harems will try to sneakily woo claimed females or sneak in and mate without being noticed. Parrotfish are broadcast spawners. The female releases her eggs into the water and the males releases sperm to fertilize them. The eggs will drift on the current until settling, after which the larvae will hatch. As with most fish species, only a very few of the larvae will reach adulthood.

(Image: a Mediterranean parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense). It is mostly bright red, but with a yellow patch above the tail and a yellow stripe around the eye that runs down to the belly. A large patch behind the eye is blue. End ID)

Thankfully, most parrotfish species are not particularly endangered. The largest threat to them comes from habitat loss as pollution and climate change harms coral reefs. Reintroducing parrotfish to damaged reefs helps them recover. All species are edible, though there is no commercial fishery for them. While parrotfish are capable of delivering powerful bites, there are few reports of humans getting bit. That being said, I found one case where someone had skin on his penis bitten off by a parrotfish. And yes, that link has pictures. Enjoy.

(Image: a blue parrotfish (Scarus coeruleus) looking at the camera. It is a blue fish with darker patches around the eye. Its snout is bulbous and the beak points downward. End ID).

[brimay]

Sometimes I feel normal and then I remember that Peeta is canonically the only person Katniss found truly attractive. And she married him.

[spicethymecontinuums]

there’s so much I could say about the new Yellowjackets episode (fantastic work as always), but I just want to say that it’s really telling that Shauna’s punishment for Nat is to fulfill the same role that she’s had to, to be the butcher.

it’s also not lost on me that Shauna had to butcher and prepare Javi, a young boy that Shauna has previously (somewhat) bonded with, after loosing her infant son. Of course she sees it as a punishment.

[javierduffy]

has anyone ever talked about how javier named his horse a name from the bible (“boaz” is a hebrew name meaning “strength”/“in him (is) strength”. also like. a literal guy in the bible.) or am i just late to this party

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 273

You know what? We need more Good parents Fentons. 

And you know what else? Technically, Jack helped Danny defeat Pariah via the use of the Ecto-Skeleton. And like, that’s his son, his baby boy. Sure Danny is and has always been a mommy’s boy, but it doesn’t change that fact. They’re both already feeling horrible about the fact they could have hurt him, they could have hurt their son- they have hurt their son, killed him with their inaction and never again. 

So when these oversized jello-eyeballs try to insist that their baby, their precious baby boy, take a crown? Become a king when he’s not even out of highschool, when he doesn’t want it? No. Hell no! That is his Danny-o, his baby boy who was terrified of his own parents! 

Which is how Jack, despite technically still being alive even if so-very ecto-contaminated, became the Ghost King. 

And for some reason there’s several ghosts rather happy about this- oh, these are his Danny-O’s ghost-parents? Not-ghost parents seeing as some of them have never been anything but a realm denizen? That’s really fascinating- y’know what, want some fudge and we can exchange childcare- Maddie dear come over and meet our co-parents apparently!  

Now it’s not all easy, but they’re trying their best, and that’s all that can be asked. 

…

Which is perhaps why it’s so exasperating- or as Maddie would put it, downright infuriating- that it is now, almost an entire year and a half later that the Heroes finally arrive to investigate. Well, at least he has plenty of fudge since it’s almost time for the council meeting. 

[wardensantoineandevka]

sometimes I wanna talk more about Laudna and unpack how I personally was really disappointed after having some really high expectations of her and was really excited for an exploration of aspects of trauma and healing from it making you feel locked in place or the navigation of such a huge narrative event from a different perspective but how I ultimately personally felt her character was worse than incoherent, it was empty (hollow, even), especially under how Marisha initially conceptualized her as "over her trauma" and how that affected the way groundwork was laid

and sometimes I imagine talking about how even her mechanics are underwhelming when they could have done something interesting

but then I remember the worst I got harassed and the only time I was called a slur in this fandom was because I mildly remarked that maybe there's an interesting narrative to be had if she wasn't resurrected

so, I just waffle about it endlessly