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culminada · 2 months

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I'm asexual! but I barely experience acephobia because my other three alienating traits are like shields that protect me from it 🙃unfortunately I do experience the -phobias people have of the other three things so. yaaay my ability to make friends? not to mention romance? ugh.

first up is that I'm multicultural and belong to a cultural minority. I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot because it's very confusing! so I just call it my culture of origin! and they're not online at all. like we/they (??) barely believe in the tech things. definitely they're not on tumblr. so I'm not looking for them here. just talking about how being multicultural has affected me socially. Mostly it obstructs my social life from my end, by getting in the way of me feeling like I have anything in common with people. I'll only really accept a romantic partner from my culture of origin, so that excludes 99.999% of people I'll meet on the street from discussion of my sexuality lol.

Second up! The autism! Nobody ever tried to make friends with me (or responded when I tried to) and I have no clue if its because of the 'tism or the red blotches on my face from the dermatillomania. I might lean more towards the autism but I'm still skeptical of that, also I'm 'culminada' (CULtural MINority, Autism, Dermatillomania and Asexuality) so, autism it is :) I had to practice for YEARS before I got the hang of interacting with people I didn't know well. Small talk? What's that? WHY? I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. Nobody sticks around anyway. (The one time somebody approached me independently while I was writing in my notebook and I stared at my notebook while trying to think what to say. so they walked off. utter joy.) The progression from 'stranger' to 'acquaintance' to 'friend' and so on is also something I've had to learn. I've had to claw my way up the 'relationship ladder' which, sadly, does exist whether one is on the friendship ladder or the romantic ladder. I have yet to progress anywhere on the romantic ladder with ANYONE so. yayyyyy

Dermatillomania, the incessant picking of my own skin! Like I said, red blotchy face isn't very attractive. Sometimes I'll be bleeding and not notice. yaaaaay. Finding a romantic partner is going to be. yknow. a breeze. a walk in the park. as easy as breathing. not to MENTION. the sheer TIME it takes out of my DAY. how am I supposed to learn the wifely skills of my culture when I?? lose HOURS to dermatillomania and executive dysfunction? (they have a feedback loop on each other. I get Stuck in my day for whatever executively dysfunctional reason! oh now I start picking, bc of course. OH DEARY NOW I CAN'T SWITCH TASKS, GUESS I'LL STAY HERE FOREVER. DESTROYING MY SKIN.)

So yeah, by the time somebody infiltrates the layers of visual disgust, autistic communication barriers, and cultural differences, they're pretty well screened against something as simple and boring as acephobia. You don't get close to me without being VERY accepting of differences. (or just. yknow. capable of critical thinking and the awareness that people are different lolz.)

(I also tended to be that twelve-year-old who sighed wistfully and said I can't wait to get married, I want to get married ASAP, you know historically people got married at like. 14 right? and so everybody around me was always going OH DEARY YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY WAIT... LIKE SIX MORE YEARS IF NOT LONGER which I'm sure my fellow asexuals would have loved to hear, but my alloromantic brain was Very Unhappy about. it has now been 6+ or more years, for the record,)

anyway that's me. I got tired of repressing my aceposting and autism-posting and so on, bc my other blog is a fandom fic blog. btw go check out @skaald-of-the-hearth-fires that's the fifth, unofficial reason I feel alienated. (actually that falls under the autism heading, nevermind) my culture barely does video games. nobody in regular old boring American culture plays my special interest video game either. I find this quite distressing when people ask what I do and I say oh!! I'm a writer! I write fanfic for Guild Wars 2!! oh you haven't heard of that. ok. I'm so normal about that. so I've written the fic to be quite understandable to non-gamers, fandom-blind readers, and brainrotted fans alike :)

#asexual #alloromantic #alloace #dermatillomania #culture of origin/cultural minority #<- I have no name for it. it's not a racial or ethnic culture it just IS. no I will not describe it. it's my culture of origin #I might call it tree-culture or smth. after my icon which is from that culture. (yes its vv basic. did I mention they dislike tech?)#I also just love trees so I sorta pounced on that logo. I'm a tree-person. fr fr.#also if you didn't catch: YES I tell IRL people I just met that I write fanfic #supposedly I'm trying to destigmatize it but -gestures at the rest of the post- I have. MANY things to destigmatize #that goes into the multicultural thing ad;lkja;dlsfkj so I'll leave off here #back to my original point though: it looks like nobody is using the 'culture of origin' tag so I'll.#I'll take that thanks

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sunsets-and-kxsses · 2 years

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HI BESTIE YKNOW IM HERE FOR THE CONTENT >:]

You should. Answer the first 5 of those for your Dream s/i >B]

-Jack

[Ask Game Link]

(Give a basic run-down of your s/i. What should we know about them right away?) Okay, so my S/I is Dream’s right-hand man but also partner, but the partner part of their relationship is mainly kept a secret! She uses she/he mainly but doesn’t really mind any pronouns. He absolutely loves chaos and basically just sits back and lets Dream cause trouble because it’s fun to watch.

(What role does your s/i play in canon? Do they have a large role or do they just sort of exist within canon?) She actually ran in the L’manburg elections and nearly got the position, coming third in the poll, but when she heard of Dream’s plans she immediately joined up with him. He also goes around and gets information for Dream, but in a more casual way with people.

(In canon, was your f/o the first person your s/i met? Or did your s/i encounter someone else first?) He met Punz first, because Punz came to introduce him to the SMP and give him a basic tour! He joined around just before the elections.

(Excluding your f/o, does your s/i get along well with anyone else in canon? Is there anyone they don’t like? Is there someone that doesn’t like them?) She’s fine with Punz and adores Tommy in a way of “aww little brother, look at how fun he is to taunt!”. He also really does not like Schlatt nor Wilbur, and generally is neutral to other people. She’s hated by Sapnap and George though.

(What’s that one thing that your s/i is always associated with? Even if some people aren’t very familiar with them, what’s that one thing your s/i is known for?) When people first see him, the first thing they notice is how extravagant his outfits are! She usually wears dresses and bold make-up, but even without that, you can recognize her a mile away.

#[An Invite to Dinner]#[Life Through the Eyes of a God]

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ilyuqi · 2 years

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what are your thoughts on aro/ace people?

they exist

okay sorry bad answer i laughed but yes. they exist and i 100% believe being asexual/aromantic is a thing that deserves respect. only thing that makes me want to kill myself is when white heterosexual asexuals try to act like they have the same struggles as me. bitch. shut up. at that point you're just telling me you like the opposite sex but don't fuck 😭 i promise you no one is going to effing kill you for that

and it very much is white het people. like for example my desi friend is a het asexual and never has she acted like our struggles are the same, but both of us are in a similar boat of having to have children, even if we don't want too. problem is, she's sex-repulsed and absolutely hates the idea of children, and i'm a lesbian. like. we both have very different sexualities and no way they can even be compared, but i know what she has to deal with in the future will be horrible and it's more or less the same for me. we can both relate to each other's struggle in that way. yknow? hope im making sense here

there is a part of me that wonders if asexuality is like. a sexuality or preference but i feel like that's a whole other debate. at the end of the day idgaf. if a white het asexual tries to tell me we're the same, i'll sock them in the face. otherwise, i seriously will not care (unless you say something stupid, mostly thinking about that "STOP KILLING US" post with the asexual flag in the background someone made because "asexuals were being excluded from the conversation")

#like hope i make sense here #and that sexuality vs preference debate doesnt really matter but like . i do think about it sometimes #like .. like if you are JUST asexual does that make you queer?? or do you just have a preference for relationships #like does anyone consider karl for being ace like idk #sorry to make it about minecraft just thinking #irdc if im being very honest like asexuality has always been an internet debate that i simply do not care much about

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littlebabycrybtch · 5 years

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tcm86 replied to your post “one more thing about bianca devins though like. literally please God...”

you arent unsafe you dumbass she wasnt killed just for being ace. oh my god just avoid cis men

i genuinely dont know how to explain to you that an ace person being murdered for rejecting advances is inherently tied to their being ace and that cis men, being well known for hating anything not het, also, hate aces,

#tcm86 #like... nobodys killed just for being specifically pan or nb or any other obscure/unrecognized identity either #thats literally not how heteronormativity works its that #cishets hate anything not cishet and anyone that isnt is in danger lmao what world do u live in #where u think cishets hear 'ace' and Accept us as 'Straight' and lov and support us and want us to feel Safe like have u. met a homophobe #have you met an alt right anti sjw 'special snowflake' 'attack helicopter' kinda guy bc idk how to break this to u but theyre on your side #with not wanting aces to exist and disrespecting lichrally everything we do #like yall fucken kill me shes literally Dead and u still cant respect her identity or the ppl in mourning without tryna derail like #'she died bc she rejected a guy not bc she was ace >:(' hi do u know what the word ace. yknow. means #these concepts are related.... they correlate....#anyways ur not worth arguing with if u dont get why us having to deny sex bc of being ace means danger for being ace just fucken care #literally if you care about womens consent and protection from rape culture YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ACES AND CARE ABOUT OURS #bc 1. ace afabs exist and are a majority in the community u dunce #2. its literally just common sense that there are dangers we face from rape culture that solely stem from our identity #and that needs recognition especially in times like this holy fucking shit #its not... hard to listen like if you have been tryna ignore and exclude a group since 2011 how tf do u think u kno how we live #its literally right in front of your face and yall are still tryna put your cringe feels over letting a teens death be a sign to act #like i cant believe if somebody had posted months ago like 'when an ace person gets murdered then exclusionists will care'#ppl woulda laughed at the mere concept and now that its actually happened in a publicized way yall are literally clowning oh my GOd #aces are people hi im people and im telling you i do not feel safe and your response instead of wanting to like #idk care about rape culture and offer support is to mock and narrow it to 'avoid the ppl that would make u unsafe' like jwejhwhjew #anybody else in this club uhhhh tired #if i have to deal with this shit for the rest of my life And the apathy of so called 'activists' i s2g

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tottymatsuno · 2 years

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Hi hello your Todomatsu takes are so so good and every time I read your posts/tags analyzing him I just go: "YES. Exactly."

I remember being active in the fandom a few years ago, and it was pretty common for people to just exclude him or make fun of him, because "satan".

(I don't know if I'm making this up or not, but I remember seeing posts laughing at those times he talked to himself, telling himself he loved himself, etc and I just ??????????)

Anyways I love how you deconstruct all of his "evil" moments and bring his underappreciated characteristics to light without reducing him to a pure angel. He is complicated and wonderful and thank you for everything you do for the Todomatsu agenda.

- Anonymous Thottymatsu enjoyer

RIGHT?!?? PEOPLE HATED HIM!!!! like everything people hated totty for were literally just either shit his brothers did first and worst OR him being egged on by his brothers! Todomatsu's bad behavior that isn't instigated by others is SO rare!!

He's just unsympathetic lol. He's callous he's a bit more calculating than his brothers (not by much) and he's trying to set boundaries between the six. He's not nice!!! That's IT! HES NOT NICE!! And that's because he's TRAUMATIZED! he's not nice to his brothers in a way that screams nice to them because he's different!

The show doesn't point out Todomatsu's kindness because to drive the point home that the brothers are fucked up its to demonize quite normal behaviors. Todomatsu trying to have a life without his umbilical cord attached to the other five is demonized. Oh you got a phone? Evil. You can talk to people? Evil. A job? Who do you think you are, we're all neets.

And he is SO beaten down that he talks to himself because who tf is going to love him otherwise. Todomatsu constantly switches alliances and gangs up on others most of the time bc Osomatsu is doing it first but also because he needs to avoid being the one beaten. He can't rely on any of his brothers for comfort or support so he relies on himself. Which is also seen as inhuman.

Totty literally can't win for losing. If he's honest he's a piece of shit, if he lies he's a piece of shit. He isn't allowed space for himself, he isn't allowed to exist comfortably and he's not able to leave either.

But he is kinda a piece of shit still?? He's like a dog from a hoarder house and def needs a lot of specialized care and love before he should be rehomed but... I mean. He's so sweet. Not an angel but he wants to be. He's got this pure ideal of who he should be in his head, knows what to say to appear that way but falls short because no one has ever taught him patience and compassion. He's lacking examples of genuine kindness and that stops him from reaching his true potential.

Todomatsu is so interesting to me because lol same trauma same mental illness. I also hate sugary sweet totty, like if I wanted to romance a little devil archtype with no depth or bite there's probably an app for that but like. He's so realistic yknow? He's the type of guy who rehearses what to say so many times it comes out naturally.

He's the type of guy who is so desperate to appear likable that he actually repulses most people. He doesn't invoke sincerity in return for really no reason and so he's reluctant to extend it first.

I literally got anon hate back in 2015 for loving him. But ykno I really just sit and think "what makes Todomatsu irredeemable compared to like Osomatsu?" and the simple fact boils down to people's aversion to his feminine behavior and because of projection. People often have mob mentality and only want the narrative to explain to them characters actions. Critical analysis is dead in fandoms so if the show says "He's evil" most people will mindlessly agree. If the show only says "Todomatsu is the only evil one" then people agree. It doesn't matter if the person who said it is angry at Todomatsu and is an unreliable judge bc its easier to agree if you already don't like him.

At the end of the day there's a million fucking essays about how Ichimatsu's stank ass farts are cries for helps or how Karamatsu is a poor sopping wet newborn bunny rabbit and exclusively a victim of abuse and not apart of an intricate orouboros of self cannibalism through others as both a victim and perpetrator.... Or whatever. Like people legitimately think Totty is normal and therefore not worthy of any compassion because he just has ptsd and not cptsd 🙄🙄🙄

Anyways ilu anon we are bffs.

#My cherished anon #THAT'S MY BABY GIRL RIGHT THERE #assigned unlovable at birth #Folks seein Totty cry and yelling he wants to leave his abusive household and get better: if he were really traumatized he'd wanna stay

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ashleyetc · 2 years

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Doesn’t it seem like a slippery slope to you to say that bad artists can make good art? If we say the art is good, then we are giving a passive endorsement to people who want to experience it. For example, if we condemn a racist but still laude aspects of their work, if we still stock their work in bookstores and libraries, and make it publicly available to anyone but experts on anti-racism, we are only ensuring that more and more poc will be harmed by exposure year after year, giving evil authors a way to victimize their chosen targets even from beyond the grave

not entirely sure what prompted this? but ultimately i kinda think no. like, partly because you cant simply eliminate all art from general public consciousness that was made by bad people- imagine trying to get everyone to forget r kelly exists, or writing a history of opera that excludes wagner while still being coherent, etc. i dont think censorship in the manner you seem to be suggesting is like, plausible, in the internet age, and i think its ethically dubious at best. i am an anarchist, and by this i mean that i am against all authority, and the idea of a specific group of people who get to decide what is Good and gets to stay and what is Bad and must be purged makes me shudder, regardless of any stated noble intention.

i think part of the problem too is you are viewing all art by bad people as targeted and malicious. this is definitely true in some cases, lovecraft's work isnt subtle for the obvious example(thats a little unfair to him but im fine with being unfair to the man), but i think a lot of bigoted art simply isnt intended to 'victimize a chosen target' as you put it. cat's cradle by vonnegut is an incredibly racist book, but i dont think thats due to malice as much as kurt being an ignorant white guy writing fiction in the 50s. i dont say that to excuse it, to be clear, but im mostly pointing out that the book doesnt exist as a racist diatribe (i would also point out that his later novel hocus pocus is pretty definitively antiracist- would that make a difference in your calculus?). the racism isnt the point, in other words (again not saying it doesnt matter).

i think a lot of artists who are awful people simply dont make art about that, too- sure, i find it pretty gross to listen to a love song sung by john lennon, but i think its a bonkers take to think anyone who doesnt feel that way is therefore an abuser themself, or endorsing abuse. for a lot of artists the ways in which theyre awful just dont actually show up in their work.

and i definitely think this is like, on a sliding scale, yknow. like, if someone is monetarily supporting an artist who lets say is using their wealth to push back against civil rights for a particular marginalized group they hate, then yeah, that sucks and they should feel bad. and i sure as hell dont wanna hang out with anyone who tells me 'yeah i know he (allegedly but come on) started his own neonazi hate group from prison but burzum is so good.' but like. i cant get too worked up about someone listening to some shitty old dead assholes music, or reading some old books that yeah are pretty racist. i mean, tolkien's shit is racist, in a similarly ignorant fool way to the vonnegut i mentioned, and i would feel ridiculous condemning anyone reading that when its so ingrained into culture.

idk im open to the idea that im wrong but i havent seen much reason to believe it and i dont think this line of thinking is helpful in the absolute like this, like sure there are important discussions to be had about this stuff, but i dont think youre really looking at it in a particularly useful way.

tldr: nah, its way too complicated for that kind of approach

#this is a little rambly #wrote it as soon as i saw the ask and currently not in a great state of mind or remotely put together #sorry if i come across poorly and/or rudely i do think this is an important topic #and i think that like if you discuss wagner without pointing out he was a proto nazi and thats the main theme of his work youre wrong and #would be better off pretending he didnt exist arguably #but again its just complicated

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faebriel · 3 years

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ok ok I'm insane and couldn't pick one so have two (no need to answer both if you don't want to)

“You talk to him.” Not kindly, but he does.

“I’m used to him,” he shoots back. “I’m the only person who is.”

That makes Niki feel something, some uncomfortable tug in her chest. She mentally kicks herself. It’s not jealousy, she reminds herself, because despite the near-cliff jumping and the long nights without food and the nuclear fallout that has punctuated her last few months, being jealous of Tommy would be the least reasonable thing she’s allowed herself to be, maybe ever.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy says flatly. “You never - eugh.” He cuts himself off with another ragged sigh, running a hand down his face. “Look, Niki, it’s - we were all together in Pogtopia, right? But I was there first. With him. And you didn’t see the start of it, it was horrible, and I’m glad no one else saw the beginning of it either but it was still just so shit and he kept saying all these terrible things about Tubbo and Fundy and you and,” he takes a shaky breath, “then, when I died, I saw him.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Well, the voice in the back of her head whistles. If you were still wondering about all this afterlife bullshit, if you want to know where you’re going after your third life, here you go.

and

“You didn’t even - this isn’t about L’Manberg, Wilbur!” Niki shouts.

And then he stops, breathing hard, and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say.

“What else is there?” he asks.

Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut, her chest, her shoulders, chilled down to the bone. With slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes, sitting in her throat, threatening to spill over into a sob. She swallows - to keep her cool, to stay calm, to keep it together -

And then, something in her chest just snaps.

“You said you’d come back for me!” she cries, and her voice hitches on the lump of tears at the back of her throat and god, she sounds absolutely pathetic. Wilbur’s face softens immediately, which somehow just makes her feel even worse. “In Manberg. When Schlatt put me in prison, and you and Tommy were in Pogtopia, you said you’d break me out when it was safe. I waited for weeks , Wilbur. It was… it was horrible.”

“Niki…” a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker across his face, and he seems unsure which to settle on. “We got you out though, right? After the festival.”

“You looked for the button first,” she says quietly, and he stills.

Her sniffling sounds embarrassingly loud against the quiet background of night.

thank you sm!!! i’m gonna put these under the cut because they got a little long sorry (tw for discussion of suicidal ideation)

to preface: tommy is kind of the accidental but incredibly necessary invisible support beam for niki and wilbur’s making amends in bitter. niki cannot accept wilbur’s actions and apology without first acknowledging her own actions and making steps towards an apology, because otherwise it kind of falls flat? in that ending scene niki finally gets what wilbur is feeling and wilbur finally gets that someone else knows how he feels (it’s not perfect 100% yet, but…. that’ll get explored later)

onto the actual snippet! “tommy talks to wilbur - not kindly, but he does” was very important to me! tommy has stuck by wilbur ever since pogtopia, but the tragedy is that he is not equipped to deal with wilbur’s issues, and it shows. wilbur’s first stream after revival depicts this really clearly, where tommy tails wilbur around the whole time but insults him, is still stuck on calling him the villain, physically fights him at some point, etc. on one hand this isn’t healthy but on the other hand tommy is actually around, which is more than can be said for basically any other ally wilbur has had on the dsmp, maybe excluding his dad, who literally killed him lmfao.

this whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that tommy believes that he is the only person who properly understands wilbur, the only person who gets what happened to him, and feels like wilbur is generally his burden to bear. he failed to stop wilbur from both 1. hurting other people and 2. killing himself after the pogtopia-manberg war - and he doesn’t trust wilbur not to do either of those things again, so he’s stuck hovering around wilbur while wilbur is inadvertently setting off his own trauma and feeling responsible for any way he might fuck up and hating that but not wanting to leave. tommy’s memory isn’t perfect and he isn’t a perfect narrator, what he remembers from pogtopia the most were the scariest parts and that’s understandable but it means he’s holding wilbur to the worst expectations of behaviour (and he does so very vocally). the others showed up later, sure, but in tommy’s eyes he’s the only one who saw wilbur’s descent, and by the time they showed up wilbur had already changed irreversably. tommy tries to rationalise this by splitting the ‘different wilburs’ apart from each other in his head (he does this in canon too - there’s one quote from like late 2020 where he says he and tubbo need to keep on going for who wilbur used to be, not who he became, even though they’re,, the same person), and no one challenges that perspective, so he just keeps doing it even though it’s not healthy for him or wilbur.

and then limbo happened and, oh geez, THAT didn’t help jhfaskjjfsa

tommy is on a bit of a knife edge with niki in this fic. niki’s in this state of “ok, he’s annoying whatever, i’m moving on”, but all tommy knows is that she tried to kill him that one time, disappeared off the face of the map, joined a book club with two people who definitely do not like him, and now is just acting weirdly mellow and polite. she is not someone he wants near wilbur bc what the fuck is she gonna do? what is he gonna do? who knows. he’s frustrated that niki doesn’t seem to acknowledge how he’s feeling (especially bc once upon a time she would have been someone he trusted to acknowledge them - they were friends, they fought together) and he’s taking a big step by telling someone about his concerns here, especially bc tommy doesn’t really like talking about them at all. he wouldn’t be saying absolutely anything to niki if he didn’t truly believe she should stay away from wilbur, even if he’s wrong about him. (sometimes i think i write tommy as a little too emotionally mature here but it all goes out the window when wilbur’s brought up. idk if that balances it out)

ok onto niki: this is the first she has actually heard of limbo! she’s only just come around to the fact that resurrection is possible at all. death is kind of a touchy subject for niki both in general and re: wilbur in the fic - she’s coming off of a period in her life where suicidal ideation was, uh, a big thing (whether you want to read that into canon or not is subjective, that’s just the angle i went with in this fic). the sudden existence of a life after death, miserable as it is - and whether she really believes in such a place, when it only exists in tommy and wilbur’s words - that is a lot of information for her to absorb all at once. death is a weird connection point for tommy and niki here, coming right off of the fact that they’ve just acknowledged each other having those problems - tommy, out of, yknow, altruism, would very much like to keep niki out of that place, and niki is quietly reckoning with the fact that that is where she would have sent him. the concept of limbo from the perspective of a character with no experience of it, even secondhand, is so interesting to me like what kind of eldritch location would you feel like you’re living in asghjkl

(also - i gotta be honest the jealousy angle here but mostly when she’s talking later about dream not deserving wilbur’s companionship kinda came out after this post came across my dash while writing. whoops /j)

fun fact, this is the very first snippet of bitter that i ever wrote! all the way back in may!! this is like the moment of the fic - it's where the miscommunication that niki and wilbur have been having is shattered entirely - and so sticking the landing was uhhh kinda important to me lol.

wilbur's entire being in this fic is basically consumed by L'Manberg - he equates his self worth to it entirely. in his eyes, everyone (rightfully) hates him because of what he did to L'Manberg, because L'Manberg was corrupted and he himself with it, etc. niki tries to tell herself this, and while it definitely does form part of her issues with him, it was the betrayal that causes her this much pain - that he seemingly brushed her and their friendship off entirely when he supposedly left her for dead in manberg. because here is what we as the audience know: wilbur couldn’t leave niki in trouble when he heard her life was in danger, even when he was trying to find the button (pretty much the only thing he sees himself as having left at this point) and so he returned. here is what it looks like from niki’s perspective: wilbur told her to wait in manberg until it was safe to come to pogtopia, laid the place with TNT, went to blow up the place, and only returned when he couldn’t find the detonator (and then the first thing she saw him do in pogtopia was encourage the pit behaviour but that’s not what we’re talking about asdfgh). that is massive miscommunication and it’s been brewing between them for months - to make a quirky little reference to the title, niki has been carrying that anger with her so long it's gone bitter. it was never just about l’manberg with niki - not that anger, not her and wilbur’s friendship (hence the little flashback earlier in the fic, bc niki’s relationship to anarchism and statehood or statelessness juxtaposed with her friendships with wilbur and eret - she loves l’manberg bc she loves wilbur, but she loves eret too and those national ties don’t undermine that - is Real Interesting to me) - so when wilbur asks what else there could possibly be (because in his mind, what else could she have bothered staying around for?), she just fucking breaks.

“Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut...with slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes” - prose discussion time! heat and cold are two big throughlines in this fic - particularly for niki, cold is what she is. admittedly when i started with it i mostly wanted to subvert hot = angry and cold = dead but i kinda ended up enjoying this take on it for what it is instead of just as a subversion (also i like the idea of revived people running hot, their bodies r working hard to keep em going). she’s holding onto her feelings and refusing to deal with them, she’s frozen over. descriptions of cold are key to niki’s mental state throughout the fic - cold weight on her chest, feelings of frostbite when she and wilbur hug the first time, ice cold water during the dinner scene, waking up in the cold flat, etc. this was an attempt at describing a more visceral feeling of like, when you’re really mad and you can just feel the adrenaline running through your veins. always felt more cold than hot to me. when she starts to cry, the facade she’s been putting on is finally thawing out and cracking the ice she’s buried her feelings under. (also gives an excuse to write warm comforting hugs towards the end /hj). it’s a loss, it’s catharsis, it’s a whole mess.

and ofc this is all news to wilbur and he feels terrible, because as unintentional as it was, he really really hurt her - because the destruction of l’manberg fucking sucked but above all else wilbur hurt the people he loved because they loved him so much and not in spite of it, because they cared about him so deeply and his death was a massive blow to them. this hasn’t even dawned on him, because how could it? he respects deeply niki (lowkey respects her opinion more than his own at this point) so he has to listen, because it’s niki (“and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say” - because he does), and what she says fucking floors him. in his eyes, he failed her by putting her in danger and then by destroying her home - the idea that she valued him and their friendship so much flies entirely over his head until this moment, and he is forced to re-evaluate the mindset that has motivated him since… basically since pogtopia! the way i write wilbur is like… yes, he’s one of niki’s closest friends and he’s more aware of her insecurities and issues than most (which is why he does always take the time to listen to her, etc) but he does over-idealise her a bit. tbf, i think he does to some extent with everyone (calling tubbo strong on the anniversary stream, for example). also the fact that he really wasn’t around for niki’s lowest moments as a character! he still thinks of her the way she was in l’manberg - confident, steadfast, respected - and this moment shatters that for him as he realises exactly what effect he and his death had on her and everyone else, not just by his actions, but because they loved him and cared for him so deeply.

sorry that this got horrifically long!! and thank you so much for sending snippets in <3333

#ALSO SORRY THIS TOOK TWO WEEKS. LMFAO #asks #thespoonisvictory #dvd commentary #< i have successfully coerced a discord server into doing the dvd commentary on a regular basis and it is the BEST thing

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unproduciblesmackdown · 3 years

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even more prompts catchup

April 5th: What was school like for you, or what is it currently like for you if you are still in school? Elementary, high school, post-secondary?

i Hate/d school lmfao......like i do Like To Learn and Know Shit, and of course Sometimes / on some occasions it was like, hey i'm having a good to pretty great time at school, but those were usually Special occasions or teachers going out of their way to give us you know, fun projects / go beyond the Standardized Testing curriculum, which natch they couldn't always do / did require sort of going Above & Beyond, rather than being the constant, guaranteed experience of like hooray for school......it's like, oh hooray re: the Play Scenes my fourth grade english class did that was like, an Extra thing, where we got to audition and i just had a great time like oh right, clearly Theatre in retrospect, or hooray re: the field trips, or projects we did In Class, since i hated homework.......i was always that accursed (i mean, not accursed for Me, but) combination of "really a terrible student but also gets great grades" lmao i forever do things Last Minute but like, when i was At school, in class, i'd just power through whatever work there was then & there usually, and in middle school would sometimes do hw on the bus, as i was the last on the bus route to be picked up in the morning or dropped off in the afternoon, but as soon as i got home i was in Home Mode and yknow. didn't just sit down and continue School Stuff asap. also hardly ever Studying unless it's the night / morning before a test lmfao but i had a great memory for that stuff, so studying that last minute was like "yep, i Do remember this from going over it 2 seconds ago" so yknow, despite hating school / no good Study Habits(tm) or anything, i did fine. i also read a ton, at home or at school and at any other point. so i was also like, quiet and generally ~well behaved~ or whatever lol (the like "how are kids (or anyone) supposed to stay focused and on task for 7+ hours a day..." thing), segue into next paragraph

i also remember like, 3 day a week preschool being the first time i was, you know, in some sort of School and also around other kids that much, i did have this sense that like, somehow there were Rules that i wasn't following, not re: Classroom Rules or something, but wrt socializing with peers, like that everyone else had something going on in how they interacted which i wasn't gonna get right, & i had this sense of like, not really being Allowed to interact lmao, even being 4 years old i have a few distinct memories re: this of like, a) choosing to play by myself in the classroom or when outside, and b) my "best friend" being the one person who just like, chose to hang out with me lmfao, but i was like oh cool Having A Friend lmao, like i didn't Not want to have friends, i was just already aware of like, i don't feel like i can just up and interact w/these people and i don't feel like they want me to, and c) re: that being aware of whatever Rules Of Interaction existing and that i wouldn't meet them / abide by them and thus there'd be some kind of repercussion for not meeting those rules, and not being allowed, i remember that like. there was this other indoor playspace in the lower level and there were toys i wanted to play with but Refrained from, and it was like, why did 4 yr old me get the idea i Wasn't Really Allowed, and most of what i can theorize is that it was like, well other kids might want to play with that, and the Normal / Better kids should get priority lmao, and/or being nervous that it just might otherwise lead to some sort of Interaction i wouldn't feel ready for.....and d) sitting at a table with like whatever 4 or 5 other kids or something and amongst ourselves someone was like "oh put your foot in the middle if you're [x]" and i tried to join in on a technicality lmfao and also just in, you know, active efforts to be Participating with these other kids on their terms, and it did not pay off, something that repeated uhhhhh, forever i guess lol. insert that post like can allistic people be normal for 5 seconds.....

like in elementary school i wasn't really making friends either, incredibly, i was Amicably Tolerated by many people then & like, again also at any point after at least lmao (and it helps that i was generally in teachers' good graces, not that i narced on anyone ever, but i had like, my Niche as the Academically Successful One, and also i was the kid who draws, another shoutout to some post and tweet about how being The Drawing Kid was like, some measure of respect but also disdain lmfao...) and sometimes people would again like. choose to interact with me repeatedly, and i'd sort of be nonplussed at best b/c it's like, okay thanks but in this situation i didn't Choose this any more than i choose [Trying to be in the group but being rejected/excluded], so it's kinda weird, i was friends with someone for a few years in elementary school but we just were Coincidentally in the same class for those years, when we were in different classes in 3rd or 4th grade and just weren't seeing each other it fizzled out, in middle school i made another couple friends where we were all being Funny lmao, but i didn't go to high school, so once again we weren't seeing each other, and [At School] was where i always had most Interactions with people, didn't see people much outside of school even if we were hanging out / being friends During school, for [a whole tangent] reasons, so. guess the good news is i'm still in touch / friendly acquaintances with some people from school from college, but even then, there was Some more social success or whatever, but not all That much, and i was still unhappy like, not having many friends, often being like "i'm going to the cafe a block away b/c i have no social occasions here and i want to get out of the dorm / be around people," that if i was with more than one other person i could end up the third wheel friend lmao or nobody is paying attention when you talk or oh no i put myself out there hanging with a friend group but maybe people thought you were a joke or something, thanks. smh

and that like, speaking of college, i went early but this was, for my part, truly primarily driven like "well i hate school so if i can Not go to high school, okay" and like, while i got in and everything it was still like "tf is college, i've never known what i Want To Do so i wonder if i'll figure this out, but i'm not expecting to last past the first semester / year b/c this is college and i'm a terrible student actually lol" but then turns out i kept doing well enough like A's & B's like oh woops i guess i'm still here, then, hope i can figure out what tf "credit hours" means (finally did lol).....then sophomore year was a bunch of just Agonizing over "what tf do i major in," something i never figured out, wherein i might bring something up & it got parentally shot down like "never heard you talk about that" like what tf Did you hear me talk about? are you thinking i had my life figured out by age 9, b/c i didn't think that, i'm only 15/16 even Now, even being the Regular college age it's like, nobody's figuring their life out then. also i didn't tell my parents things, so. and then i settle on something that sure, Might've been of interest, but also it was like, a) a program that barely existed and req'd taking classes at a like 30 min away campus and also the head of department had Just retired and the most heinous teacher in the related fields was now in charge, brilliant and b) the sort of thing you'd just wanna start taking prerequisites for like as soon as you set foot on campus, like, great. and c) i was like, hardly feeling all the Academic Ambition anyway b/c i never had, b/c i hate/d school, and b/c i still didn't Know what i wanted to major in, and i was stressed n depressed and also realizing oh right, i'm not cishet, and oh right, i'm never going to get along with my family b/c [long tangent] reasons and that's kind of concerning, here i am impending Being 18 and like, how do i get out of this b/c it's becoming clearer that i'm not just gonna start getting along with the 'rents now that i'm not an elementary schooler and also now that i'm realizing the Reasons being at home sucks. guess i learned stuff in college lol but also it was like, the experience of getting to be Away From Home and existing every day without parents literally / figuratively over my shoulder at some point every day, and getting to do shit on my own and figure things out while Not At Home.....i also had a lot of fun taking a couple classes from this one music prof lol. he was this weird really enthusiastic and really knowledgeable guy lmao like great, these evening classes where we go over to the arts building and he plays things on the piano off the cuff and tells a lot of tangential stories while we're learning about like, beethoven technically, or folk music. didn't need those classes but they were great, i've had these teachers who were totally into whatever they were teaching and had a great time with that

also acknowledgment to the fact i was a No Extracurriculars person all through school, k thru 6 and college alike really, although i took dance class for that k thru 6 period, just that was separate from school actually (and another fun "being away from home" thing and Theatresque performance thing i enjoyed) but besides that it was like, how do i figure out what i want to do without committing to joining this whole thing, i don't know How to sign up for stuff really either, and it'd probably entail "asking for stuff" and needing to coordinate more rides and etc and that's just a hassle, and i wanna go home from school asap anyways, and then like, when it came to college, i was again at first thinking like "well idk what i'm doing and i hate homework so i'll probably mess it up in this first year anyways" and figured that doing anything Extra outside classes was just gonna be too much, and also, it's like, i've never been in these kinds of groups before and why am i gonna start in college, where there'll probably be all these people who Have done this stuff before, and are also 18? e.g. even though it was like "hey you're away from home and don't have to ask/tell anyone else anything to do this club stuff or whatever!" supposed ideal environment for trying stuff out, it was like, maybe i'm theoretically interested in auditioning for the fall theatre production, but the last acting experience i had was like, "2 month drama class in middle school" or "that 4th grade [section of a] play" so like, not really Any education or experience or Training re: any of that stuff, and a bunch of 18 yr olds who might've, or [age peers] who were theatre people who had already done stuff so they weren't getting Lead Roles or anything but they were getting cast / taking classes / joining an a capella group while i'm like right on, i'm over here with some sort of Grade Honor Society (??) saying my gpa qualifies me to join and be able to experience some further academic rigor/requirements lmfao and i'm like absolutely not. get away lol. anyways so bit of a chaotique Post K12 Zone Education Experience there lmfao, all kinds of things i'd Like to Learn and even take classes on, but didn't like, right i love learning languages but never took classes, love math and shit but only got to a certain level of calc and even then seemed to miss some Lore, never did anything re: theatre, etc and so on. so you wonder if some advantages re: high school would be like, more chances for those extracurriculars (or regular curriculars) but, as though i wouldn't have the same qualms about getting in on any of it, and as if i wouldn't've still hated school but also still been at home, F. and i think people can be a lot more normal to each other when it's college and you're Not stuck in one building together 8 hours a day lmao, got some gentle "occasional Bullying style attention" in middle school, but had juuust enough like, [that Niche of good grades / kid who draws] and people who Were friendlier to me that it was you know, unpleasant, but didn't have to be that huge a deal, and then i was outta there soon enough. also, in college many people are 18 or older, as opposed to 11 to 13. anyways the rest of my school story was that in the end the problems were "i don't know what i want to major in and also now's a worse time than ever b/c i've realized my existence At Home is untenable, and naturally i am quite depressed & stressed about things, and i gotta say absolutely virtually every adult presence was either totally unhelpful to Counterproductive here lmao, like, not much anyone could do really but it's helpful when someone is like, i'll treat you like a person vs simply just going 'uh why are you not doing the academic stuff good enough'" lmfao like. the whole time Not having friends i'd wanna talk to through class and happening to get good grades in part b/c i somehow Could as easily as i did and also i was afraid of getting C's or worse b/c "tfw i wasn't even yet in a grade that gave you A thru F grades yet but my older sister caught shit for getting a C

like :/" and etc means adults are like My Student Is Fine, and also, what are you gonna do even if they aren't, i guess. i just had to figure out completely for myself Why and How i really wasn't Fine and that was quite difficult and also took a long time. then there was a mutual prank of "i drop out of college at the tail end of things" and "now i have to be at home with parent/s more resentful of your obvious Waywardness (insert: not being cishet, and the fact it occurs to me that my being autistic was always causing 'problem' behavior i was getting shit for like, the whole time lmfao, even if nobody knew / labeled it like oh this is for ND reasons, or if it was both true i tried to come out (smh, thought i Had to b/c that was part of Not Being Cishet) and it was simply ignored / unaddressed and yet it sure fueled further specific resentment of my not Performing Gender properly, or "worse," so that went well, in that i eventually abruptly left and did not maintain contact, in the interest of "the levels to which i was thriving was like, that if i bailed and like died 50 hrs later it'd still be what i want to do," true to that i did not / don't regret it. and what do you know, i was first able to bail to a relatively nearby friend from college's home, whose family also liked me lmao. shoutout to school still being where i made Any friends, except a friend i made who was a coworker of several years. and Online Friends, which, another school connection, that like, i can more readily Connect w/people via talking about interests, something that happened Sometimes at school in person lmao but not much, but also that i Talk About Interests in a way through Drawing, which, well shoutout to doodling in the margins of papers throughout school lmfao, it didn't hurt! that's my saga.

oh and that footnote, i also really enjoyed the "in middle school you either take language classes or 4 Electives you rotate through each year" and those electives sure featured some more varied and hands on activities i had a great time with. shoutout to like, cooking, and to shop class, my Car Designs were great apparently, idk how. shoutout to my Intuition re: engineering or something lmaoo.....very fun to just end the schoolday in that big garage space where you could actually open that garage door right to where all the buses were, beautiful. Oh, and that's another footnote, when my last class of the day in 8th grade was english, i'd sometimes finish work early and my teacher would let me go to our spacious library, with the v nice librarian who'd recommend books to me she thought should be checked out more often b/c she knew i liked to read that much, and also just generally had teachers / other adult staff kinda wandering in at the end of the day, talk about "i don't really relate to other ppl my age" where i did generally prefer to be around adults, so that was fun. oh and also shoutout to hating school lmao wherein during like, middle school when the schoolday started at like 7:30am or smthing disgusting and i just learned to like, view whatever time it was in a "at least it's almost [x]" like well okay, first period is math and that kinda sucks but at least once it's over this hardest part of the day will be over, then next class is kinda more chill at least, and then it'll be the last period before lunch, etc etc etc where i could sort of keep up that stamina like telling myself at any point it was Almost [a more encouraging time of day] lmao like. kinda fucked up to have to be dragging yourself through the weekdays like that, but

Oh! goddamn and i didn't even get into that if i ever got in ~trouble~ in elementary school it was stuff like Not Paying Attention, but where half the time that might be some other kid beside me messing around lmfao and i'm not gonna be like "uhhh follow the rules!!!" (and that even when i was In Trouble like go sit in the chair where you have to be quiet there for like 10 min i might say something to some other kid in that zone and they'd be like "um it's the quiet chair you have to be quiet!!" or "uh we're getting into the next lesson and you have to put that book back asap" like wow these other kids are dweebs about Rules lmfao) and there'd just be times like, it's 1st grade and i know how to read pretty well already but we're going over the alphabet like stoppp i know the Phonics already........or the ways ND people can kind of Intuit some stuff more successfully, like in third grade learning multiplication i neverrrrr studied but just broke it down like, okay i remember the Fives b/c of telling time, i know the 2x table and stuff, i know the commutative property, if we're all the way at the 8x and i haven't Memorized stuff, i can still like, break it down to say, [5 x 8] + [8 x 2] or something when i see 8 x 7, even if it takes a second lmfao.......and stuff like the tragedy of when i Did make a friend in like, 2nd grade, who i think we didn't even talk to each other ever?? i was playing legos or smthing by myself once during Indoor Recess and she just started playing agreeably along with me, aka someone socializing on My Terms apparently as our Introduction, and we just were friends past that but one time, not even during a Lesson Session, we were messing around quietly making each other laugh as the incredibly important process of "put papers in your folders" was going on, and since we were Not Paying Attention for some reason the teacher made a whole example of it where i had to carry my desk across the classroom for the Shaming Element of it and also so that i had to permanently sit way further from that friend, so that was kind of discouragement re: interacting at all. thank you to that teacher, who'd later once Gesticulate to me from across the gym that i should put my arms down at my sides rather than being crossed (we were rehearsing some class performance) & i had no idea what she was trying to convey, so afterwards she told me i had to have Reduced Recess Time or some shit because of Ignoring her instead of putting my arms down lmfao. and i was irritated at having been misinterpreted / my Intentions dictated to me and punished like that, but i was also used to it from adults lmfao and did not bother explaining myself lol like yeah god forbid i left my arms crossed on purpose and now i have to read some more during recess. tl;dr school has so much nonsense & i def had some Times re: being autistic & also just being someone who hated school forever lmao, think it was Also 2nd grade where one arbitrary sunday night i just cried out of frustration at having to go back for another normal school week. classic. oh and that also, while i wasn't like "oooo booksmart people who hate not having a Definitive Correct Answer to things &/or ohhh autistic ppl So Good at math, in a way everyone hates and disrespects, but they suck at Literature/Arts which requires you to reflect on humanity and shit," like, not only was i the drawing kid but i was also apparently ahead of the curve as it were at like, Literary Analysis lmfao where there was a few times in elementary school i'd be the kid providing the Interpretation like "what's this poem about / what's the theme or Symbolism in this story," but from elementary school to college it's like, for god's sake don't ask me to come up with a story / work with some really open ended prompt, i don't Invent in that way, and when i try to draw on Inspiration i'll get stuck on some specific source and be unable to do anything but just rip it off really lmao. but then again i was prolific in "it's 1st grade and you write and illustrate a little short story or smthing in these booklets

that we then have a simple little binding process for" like ohhh fancy, i got a tootsie roll lollipop at Awards Time for writing a shit ton of those lol. but that's like, when you're too young to have that much of a Creative Process anyways lmao. but then, my older sister, whose Thing was writing, has an incredible 2 Volume like, noir mystery saga from those elementary school times, it's a classic lmao. anyways once again so much to say about School lol closing the door after meandering on that one for this long lol

April 6th: Are you able to drive? If so, was it difficult to learn? What was difficult about it? If not, do you use any alternatives?

i did learn to drive, tbh just universally it's like, at any point you're driving there's A Lot to pay attention to at once, even if you think you're Good At That or whatever, which i sure don't think i always am lol, and it's pretty wild we just, you know, let everyone go around as fast as they want in machines that can kill you or someone else, and this is also Unnecessary b/c like, let's have accessible & reliable public transit so that everyone can travel without Needing to have a car / someone else who will drive them. i didn't think i had too much trouble learning to drive, but it had to help that i just took it very seriously from the start lmao like, well, i'm quite aware i could kill someone with this. the driving classes i took were alright, i remember the instructor being pretty chill and friendly lol. rip to the fact i could be tense when driving with parent/s, when driving a manual i'd always like screech the tires when accelerating out of a Stop, until all at once it was like "and i'm driving that manual car alone on a road trip & wouldn't you know it, only literally once did i have that issue of not getting out of a stop smoothly enough" lmao like the Anxiety......really like yeah i had an alright time learning and think i'm solid enough at driving / like doing it, theoretically, but Driving Is Wild just in general and let's have that public transit

April 7th: How are you with sarcasm and/or metaphors/figures of speech? Do you interpret things very literally?

i think i Usually get what people mean with these Devices but i can't really say lol, but anytime you know, someone is being more Implicit in what they say, plenty of times i can infer one implication and only later realize they probably meant a different one, or yknow, i make whatever initial inference i make and can be stuck like "???" and have to like, mentally run diagrams about the interaction lol......meanwhile i'm not always remembering that like, if i'm shifting context mentally that's necessarily able to be inferred by whoever i'm talking to lol, whether it's about getting into some adjacent topic or like, i don't think it tends to be very clear even in person when i've started being sarcastic lmao, like i know that can be true for anyone but it's like well, guess i gotta make it clearer i'm doing a bit......flipside of that or something lmao that people are more Obvious than they think they are sometimes about like, idk, when someone is sort of making some sarcastic remark to you but the sarcasm is also sort of only to themself, aka just like okay i know you mean this more dismissively / disparagingly than re: what you're saying just at face value lol like. just always fun >:/

#30daysofautismacceptance #2021 #you know that Read More means especially a saga even by my standards lmfao

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stereolovers · 3 years

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ok i hope this isnt weird bc it was a couple days ago BUT i saw ur tags on the post abt ocs and if u want to talk abt ocs i would absolutely love to hear about them!!!!

hi sorry this has taken so long! i keep coming back to it because i’m not entirely sure on how to describe each of them without like... saying too much!

so obviously i’m still working on editing everything, because i keep learning new information whenever i go down a wikipedia rabbithole, and because i’ve accidentally connected the dots many many times, so even though i’ve done a few drafts and stuff i’m still not 100% certain about everything (if things don’t make sense here it’s because i’m absolutely trying my best to not just dump everything about the character)

arlo is my main main character! i’m actually writing this entirely from his perspective, which is a biiiig change from what i’m used to.. but it’s weirdly fun because he’s very fun to write as he has certain ways of speaking (pats myself on the back for this one). he.. originally was a dishonored oc, which is Weird once i look back on that because he’s basically just shittier jindosh. because he can be. it’s a bit hard to explain his character without giving too much away, but since he’s my main Dude, he goes through a lot of good development throughout the story while also (un)knowingly helping everyone else out that he previously fucked up. i don’t want to say that he gets redeemed, because not everyone should be, but he definitely realizes a lot of shit. yeah he’s cool.

ace is actually an older oc of mine that i brought over because this originally wasn’t supposed to be a Big Thing, but she’s here now and i love her slightly more evil personality... as they’re all Bad in some way. i just like antagonists way more so.. everyone’s shitty. she’s like my main character, a little less than arlo, but she’s still very important and shows up the most. she really just Appears. that’s her thing. and also in this universe there is a (somewhat) logical and scientific (not really) explanation for her blue eye

crystal is... something else. her name is inspired from a lady my mom went to school with (she gave me both crystal’s name and will’s). i’m still working on her character, but i enjoy her as she’s kinda the breath of fresh air in this group of determined evil backstory ocs (she’s an antagonist too, as they all are. she’s carefree evil... chaotically loving. yknow? i love her despite the fact that she needs more development.

malachite is one of the most important characters in this, as she’s basically the most level-headed of the group, and really is the brain of the entire story.... she does A Lot. like a lot. everyone (excluding celia and, technically, montgomery) has like a niche of science that they excel in, along with other things. everyone kinda invents something important during this, that helps another character in the future with their plot progression, if that makes sense. and malachite is very very important! she literally creates wireless communication, gps tracking, and with the help of crystal she crafts ‘phones.’ they’re not called phones of course, but she does, and she’s great! she also creates boats! she’s a ship captain and absolutely loves it. crystal & her & ace (they’re kinda all a Group) hang out on her ship frequently, and they’ll just enjoy each other’s company. crystal & her are girlfriends and they’re just wonderful.

will is great, and even though it’s really arlo’s story, he actually goes through the most change throughout. and it’s good change! even if he’s not described to be there, or talking in a scene, chances are he’s actually in the background...he’s like a walking dictionary definition for irony- he absolutely Hates being known and seen and being in crowds, etc, you get it. but get this. his name is will durness. wilderness. this is another name my mom gave me out of the blue (his development throughout the story isn’t like, oh, this guy now can do public speaking and is comfortable in crowds, because imo that’s not realistic. instead its more like how can he accept that other people enjoy his company, and want to be around him? he allows himself to have friends and to feel safe around them. and i love him)

those ^ five knew each other at aronose (which, without making this even longer, is basically a Huge and Important and Prestigious science trade school type thing. it’s cool and basically what every dark academia fan wants), and after a mysterious four years in which Things happen they all reconvene in interesting ways, and discover how they’ve all kinda been intertwined in this Thing. and then they help each other. it’s cool! i promise.

montgomery is the worst of everyone, which is saying a lot when they’re all antagonists. he’s the main reason everything that happens.... happens, and [spoilers for a big part of my story just in case you don’t want to read it.. don’t know why i’m talking like i’m actually gonna upload it when it’s done but you never know] even after he’s gone, his presence is still like... there. his thing is just... manipulation, but in different ways. he just Knows how to talk to people. and all the rest of the characters have to deal with his lingering Ideals and Things. which is cool. everyone’s gotta work through that! yay for character development. and he’s the duke, so he can do basically whatever he wants (and he WILL remind you many times of that fact.) he’s kinda got his eyes on everything and everyone. i don’t really like to describe my ocs by comparing them to other existing characters, but he’s like if you somehow combined peter lukas and (sorry for this) h*ndsome jack. yeah he’s definitely a very fun character but man is he hard to write which is kinda funny cause like. he’s my oc lol. he only married celia for the status and she definitely knows that (but i promise there was once a time where they actually loved each other)

celia is possibly my most underdeveloped character out of everyone, but she’s still important to the story! she’s the duchess, and yet we don’t really see much of her in person until probably.... halfway through the story. she hates everyone, but mostly montgomery (lol) and arlo, for numerous reasons. they hate her too so it works out ig. i don’t have much to say about her oops

i just realized how dump-y this is... but i have an unfortunate time trying to describe everyone. somehow. yeah hope this somewhat made sense! i think.. honestly their pinterest boards / tags on my oc blog / spotify playlists do a lot for them

#miragearenas #you have opened the pandora's box of Facts

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unravelling-the-world · 3 years

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random thoughts related to kagepro (tw for depression?? death?? suicide ?? implied ?? im not sure and idk what else read at ur own risk)

well idk lately ive been thinking a lot and ik ive uh always (? since i can remember?) have been depressed (i mean...it started around age 12...i dont really remember much before that. most of what i remember are bad moments anyways. or very specific scenes. but they dont feel mine. if that makes sense. its like remembering the scene from a movie. back on track i guess idk well lately ive realized i actually kin some characters and lately ive...been relating a lot to shintaro kisaragi fromkagepro. i mean its ok. there´s always been that specific similarity in us (after all, how many characters in anime are as related to coca cola as shintaro //and me,,im literally a coca cola addict lmao// well anyways. after some days, this lead me to thinking...to a hidden memory within my brain, i guess. I remember introducing my then best friends, to kagepro. one told me haha he´s like u bc the coca cola!! and i think i just laughed and smiled? i truly didn´t see it? i was sad sure, but i couldnt really relate to him. after all, i was the leader of my own little group of 12 year old weebs,right? (i was also 12 btw) i didnt personally dislike shintaro but i didnt rly see myself in him yknow? also i have loved ayano from ever since i have memory so idk like she´s one of my biggest comfort characters and its weird bc if she was ´´real´´ idk if i could date her or anything but im just glad she exists bc it somehow comforts me a lot yeah anyways ayano essay for another time lol. anyways at this age my favorite characters in kagepro were ayano and konoha ( i still love them a lot) thing is, at this point in my life i didnt know/wasnt aware i was transgender but i already kinda liked he/him pronouns so i roleplayed a lot. online. i roleplayed as konoha obviously lmao and actually one of my irl friends related to shintaro ?? and i think we may have roleplayed lmao and stuff.... she even had a facebook account named shin hikkikomori or smth like that. anyways fast forward bc after being 12 a lot of stuff happened obviously. and none of that relates to kagepro until quite some time. i will mention some items that dont really relate to kagepro but marked moments in my friend group that may be relevant later on. Around 2016)? Some of my closest friends changed schools (but we kept contact) yet i still had a big group at school. But it got fragmented along the way. 2017 i went to Japan and formed a new, different friend group with people that even today, are dear to me. When i came back, my friend group fragmented more. I kept contact with other members of the old group but one on one, not as a group anymore. 2018 we graduated, and i broke up my realtionship with one of my former best friends (2016-2018) 2019 was a year of change, and even though i was afraid and shit got weird, i was not doing too bad. i will skip that. Well. Im sure we all know 2020 was a trainwreck, shit happened. i had a villain arc. I lost my shit,definetely. Ups, downs, whatever. 2021 has not been too different. However, even through everything, in early 2020, i kept close relationships with my friend group. as the year moved forward and the restrictions started lifting ( thank you government very cool <3 //ironically obviously, this is the reason this shit wont go away//) some of my friends saw each other irl and stuff, or talked about stuff i didn´t understand/didn´t want to hear while on discord. I felt alienated. I felt empty. I got mad at a friend for the first time, for something he said. I ended up isolating myself. A friend celebrated her birthday. She invited me and never excluded me, asked me a lot of things and asked to virtually include me. But that would just make me feel more alienated, wouldn´t it? I told her it was ok, i didn´t go. Honestly, I felt like a bother. I didn´t want to bother. I wasn´t okay, but i didn´t want to bother anyone, so i isolated myself. I had a very bad breakdown. lasted weeks. When I recovered, it wasn´t the same. It felt like everyone else was closer, while i drifted away. I kind of recconected with some of my friends from Japan after this. In the vacations, i felt like i reconnected with some friends just to drift away again later. However, i never could reconnect with one of my best friends. She never really got mad at me or anything ( i think) but we don´t really talk much anymore. We used to talk daily, be it actual talking, memes, anything. I don´t think we´ve actually talked in weeks. There´s nothing I can do. This year, another friend had a birthday, but I was so disconnected from everyone I didn´t even care. I mean. It´s all broken now, isn´t it? The other day I just started wondering. When did I start relating to Shintaro so much? I had always been like this, hadn´t I? Who am I, actually? Why do I relate so much now? It´s not just about the soda. I had lost friends before, but I never really felt like that. Sometimes I feel like I´ve lost everyone. In a one year span I became a hikkikomori. About a month ago, when I entered classes, I was recognized as Shintaro pfp and I admitted to kinning him to people i´d never talked to before (on chat) // I decided to go apeshit idc anymore about what anyone thinks of me// I had fun. I think I must´ve posted on my stories, because two different people told me they were the ene to my shintaro. I appreciated it. i mean it´s kinda true bc now that i´m only on the pc they do bother me online and try to get me to open up or get better but sometimes the just annoy me lmao but also not bc they all have their own particular lives and they all seem to be doing better than me. Still, my classmates are very nice and inclusive. But it´s not like im close to any of them I guess. I´m just alone now. I´m fucked up man....I don´t feel real anymore. I don´t really know who I am. I guess that´s why I find comfort in seeing a part of myself in Shintaro? But when did i turn out like this? Why didn´t I relate when I was younger? Well, I hadn´t really lost any friends back then. I now know how painful that is. How lonely it is to be alone even when there is people around. idk. and i´ve always been quiet. introverted. shy. a loser. yet now whenever i meet anyone i try to idk connect? but i cant. i wish i could be more evil. maybe it´d just be easier if everyone really, truly hated me. maybe i´d get the strength to actually kill myself then. it´s weird. i really see myself in route xx shintaro. I know that´s fucked up because I know how it ends. but truly, i was trying. I was healing, i think i was going somewhere. and i was trying to keep my newly formed renovated friend group together. I really was trying to. I didn´t mind if we had sub groups on the big group, but we were all there for each other. I tried my best. I felt like i belonged. but now im alone again. and this time there´s nothing i can do. if something, i´ve made it worse. and i keep making it worse. it´s weird. when i first got into kagepro, both shintaro and ayano felt like adults. i thought they were really, really big. im older than them now. now i know theyre not really adults. i get it. i still feel 18. after all, these last two years have been taken away from me. i didnt waste them myself this time. i feel like a rotten 18 year old...when i listen to lost time memory, i just...get it. i always liked the song. i thought the story was so cool. when it first came out.. i still remember. iwas there. i waited for it. i loved it. i still do, but back then, i just saw it all as some really great and cool song. now i feel like i really, really get it. i love it even more. im hiding away in all my memories. but what is my true heart? what do i really want? i don´t know, i don´t know... If I'm 'wise' then, I can't face forward; I have no reason to so, I'll rot away instead It would be nice if time could be turned back. Years may pass but I'll never die I repeat hopeful words to myself, even though I know I still won't be able to reach you. "It doesn't matter, just die already!" I said as I clutched my wrist, simply cursing it. Unable to do anything, I merely indulged myself in life. "If summer can show me dreams, then let's go to before you were taken away" The days where I hid my embarrassment are illuminating upon the atmosphere and burning my mind. If I'm wishing for a dream that can't come true, then I'll embrace this blurry past and have a dream which I don't wake up from and naturally seclude myself from the outside world. "But that means you can't even see tomorrow?" I don't really care 'bout that, so it's ok I stained my hands in order to kill these boring days I'm choosing "solitude" after all A rotten boy at 18 today too, prayed again while clinging on to your colored smile Underneath the blazing sun Asking "Somehow, please take me away instead of leaving like this!" and my murmuring breath was quietly stopped

I guess i just wish someone could actually help me. take me out of this hole. Maybe some kind of closure would be nice. It´s not the same, though. I don´t have enough bravery in myself to actually kill myself. Mostly because of guilt. I can´t take the guilt of dissapointing everyone. I don´t want my parents to get hurt. I don´t want my bunny to miss me. Yet i wish everyday for it to be over. Lately, half of my dreams have been in Japan, with many friends, some who i met there, some who have never been there. Yet my brain shows me the dreams before it was all taken away. I think one of my favorite parts of the day is dreaming. I like to sleep simply because I dream. And i sleep very few. mayb bc i hate myself? I still barely indulge in life. I do anything to stay distracted. If i think, it all goes to shit. it all does. like now. Heh. it´s funny. I guess no one is truly my ene, because no one actually knows how mentally fucked up i got these past months. No one knows how badly i´ve been treating myself and how badly i´ve been doing. Still, i can´t tell anyone but scream it into the tumblr void. No one has to keep up with my shit. No one has to take care of me. After all, it was I who chose solitude. It was me who kept them away. But I don´t get a second choice. I don´t get a change of routes if things go sour. And i guess I don´t get to get a mentally fucked up friend group where I belong for a second time. Once was good enough, wasn´t it? I.. Even when I wasnt as deep as i am now (again) into kagepro, ive always wanted to die on August 15. It holds meaning to me now as well. Every year I used to ask people to go out with me that day. I know im not brave enough to kill myself. I always hoped for a lil miracle i guess. Last year was the first year...I didn´t do anything. I just... I just hope this year i can make it. I hope the miracle happens this year....I can only hope......its too late for me to be saved, isn´t it? I never thought it´d be like this. I don´t get closure. I don´t get goodbyes. I am left behind on a world that keeps moving. I am nothing.

#long post #hinatalks #we live in a society #fr fr #when i die....if god is real..i´ll end this once and for all. all of it #i am left with nothing but pain and anger.... i cant even feel anymore. i think i forgot how to

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pigletsbigmovie · 5 years

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im sooorrryyy i really didnt want to go off on the g/ood o/mens discourse but i’ve run into so many posts that like. suck ass. and it makes me so mad every time so im just gonna vent it out and hopefully i can move on with my life

tl;dr: why the fuuuuck should i praise a cishet man for essentially just saying im allowed to have headcanons like? thanks i was gonna pretend everything’s gay anyway whether you like it or not bc thats just how art works??? also people throwing lgbt+ ppl under the bus in order to praise that cishet man is fucked up. thats it thats the post.

heres the long version

saying “you can think this character/relationship is gay” vs “this character/relationship is gay” are 2 different things and the former is pretty nice but it doesnt actually count as representation

and the amount of mocking and vitriol i’ve seen lobbed at people who are upset at the way geil naiman has handled the aziraphale/crowley relationship is fucking... Ridiculous.

like you’re??? you’re really gonna throw other lgbt+ people under the bus in order to defend a cishet man????

i’ve been trying to ignore it but it’s like every post i’ve stumbled upon on the topic unnecessarily accuses people who think he’s q*eerbaiting of Performative Fake Woke Tumblr Bullshit!

people trying to throw out Gotchas like.... “oh interesting that these trans/nb characters arent q*eer enough for you hmmmm”

like hello,,, gay ace nb individual here who has issues with geil naiman’s writing! we exist!!! it’s really hurtful to call our concerns Performative! that’s unbelievably Fucked Up why would you do that??? why are people scrambling to protect and praise a cishet man for doing the bare minimum!!! and he isnt even doing that very good

if we’re talking trans/nb representation then yknow sure. the tv show’s pretty swell. yeah they’re all non-human entities which is EH but i cant think of any nonbinary character on mainstream tv/film other than SU so alright

but if we’re talking about aziraphale/crowley’s relationship then, yes! yeah i’d say it’s q*eerbaiting! all of his answers about it are so Vague! and he even outright says Why he keeps his answers vague!

bc he doesnt want to exclude people’s headcanons

which is fiiine! i dont have a problem with, for example, mark hamill saying it’s ok to think luke skywalker is gay! that’s cool!

but im not mad at mark hamill bc he doesnt pat himself on the back for the bare minimum of saying im allowed to do something that i was gonna do anyway whether he approved or not. he doesnt act like hes provided anything more substantial than the assurance that he doesnt hate gay people

if geil naiman just said “their relationship is up to interpretation” i would be fine with that! im used to that! it wouldnt be anything new!

i just dont like how he replies to people like he’s given the gays everything they want just by encouraging headcanons?? like it’s not representation!

im sorry but if everything can be Canon then Nothing actually is!

when geil naiman says “a love story” he means it in the vaguest sense possible. i’ve seen him encouraging people to view it as a romantic love story. i’ve seen him also encouraging people to view it as two people who love each other platonically and as best friends bc platonic love is just as valid as romantic love.

a relationship can’t be both romantic and aromantic simultaneously?

and if he’s encouraging both interpretations then that just means neither are Canon in any meaningful way

which isn’t to say that headcanons are in less Meaningful and less Real than canon! not at all! art is all about interpretation!

it just means im not gonna praise an author for representation that they didnt provide :T

#this post is a mess usually i put more thought into what i write but right now im just tired mad. just wanna get my anger out and mooove oon #ten2 talks #long post --

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terryblycute · 3 years

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2020

overall this year was bad. bad, just like any other, how its always been, so nothing special. im writing this because my memory is getting worse and worse, and im sick of not remembering

corona lowkey annoying cuz i couldnt visit my friends on new years eve, but other than that everythings the same. on a positive note i didnt have to work as much either, and on a negative note i didnt get as much money. but thats alright.

((rude, unempathetic rant incoming. i know what im about to say is stupid but its my feelings and i want to talk about it regardless. if anyones reading, skip this)) what HAS been bothering me the most about corona is all the „2020 bad“ memes and people legitimately complaining about it. cuz like... nothing has changed. every year is horrible. it always has been. every year innocent people die, and nobody can do anything about it. of course i feel horrible for the people who lost their income/housing or family members because of it, and they have all the rights to complain... but lets be honest. none of the people i talk to were affected in any way by it. and the majority of people i hear talking about it havent lost their family/friends or homes to it either. its just a mild inconvenience to them, not being able to party without being arrested or seeing their friends or some shit. boo hoo, im alone all the time and never see any of my friends either and at this point im completely love & touch starvated regardless of corona. get over it

so... corona things out of the way, ive started thinking about my mental illnesses & trauma... A LOT. ive never thought about it all that much, because critical thinking is not something im able to do, usually. ive been reading lots of comix of people talking about/depicting mental illness, so i guess that kind of inspired and changed something in me, if i like it or not.

well, it turns out there is a shitton to unpack. i mean, ive always known there is so much wrong with me... but i was never really aware, if that makes sense. im still in the dark about most things, but its all coming together, little by little. i dont want to put my finger on anything, because im dumb, but at this point im 100% sure autism/aspergers isnt the only thing i got. far from it, in fact.

ive also learned that a lot of things in my life have left me with genuine, significant trauma, which ive never really realized before. i just thought the way i react to some things is cuz im, yknow... a whiny bitch. to name a few things:

me getting defensive/snappy when people of „authority“ (family, caretakers, doctors) ask me if im tired, how late i went to bed etc bc it is indirectly tied to why i was forced into psychiatry & the abuse i had to suffer there

fight or flight response activating when people talk about being in support of outdoor cats (i dont even want to fucking elaborate. tl;dr: my cat was almost killed by outdoor cat people and would be dead now if i hadnt gotten my shit together and worked hard on getting my own apartment, where he is safe. ive recieved no support & only been demonized during this time). this is a genuine fucking trigger

my rocky relationship with my mother and my thoughts about her, who is a genuinely good person, but managed to fuck me over, rip my entire ass apart and ruin my life regardless. also her lowkey restrictive/controlling upbringing stunting me for life

my huge, life-impairing abandonment issues. i dont even know where they come from, all i ever experienced were regular breakups & rejections with no hard feelings that just hit me especially hard for no reason i guess

how i cannot bear to be alone in a discord voice channel waiting for people to join & my stunted ability to talk to people when im alone with them (i got actively excluded by my best friends for being suicidal & a downer, they created a discord voice channel i couldnt see & didnt have access to for them to be without me, all while i was waiting all day long alone in our regular channel for someone to join me, in the same server)

relatedly, my inability to talk about my problems & mental illnesses with them. is also related to the cat incident

also my inability to show affection ever since my best friend stopped telling me „i love ya“

nothing else i can think of rn

i also realized that something is fundamentally, objectively wrong with me. i cant really talk about it... but the actions of one of my friends made it clear to me. it was proof that, somehow, im imbued with the horrifying essence of some eldritch lovecraftian horror being, repulsing everyone without them even realizing, unable of being loved. and its just... this knowledge, its too heavy to bear, for a single human being. i dont know what to do. i will have to live with this for the rest of my life - and i cant do anything about it.

ive also reconnected with an old friend over animal crossing, who introduced me to some other old friends (they were more like aquaintances back then, really), and in one of them ive found a friend for life, pretty much. but theyre all great, really.... i seriously appreciate that. they took my mind off my other best friend, whos been kind of ignoring my needs, resulting in me having panic attacks every day.

also, im making more of an effort to talk to & reply to the people i care about, cuz i have this friend who would chat me up every now and then, without me ever messaging him, just for me to ignore him for a couple hours cuz im too tired/busy/whatever... so at one point i was like „wait, what am i doing? hes one of the few friends who actually makes an effort, and i really care about this bitch!!“, so i went ahead and got my shit together, as best as i can at least (depressions still a bitch but im trying)

one last thing i wanna talk about... my view on life. this is gonna be huge, i think. big trigger warning for suicide stuff & other negative shit

im suicidal. always have been. thats not a secret, everyone who knows how to read between the lines (i cant, but most people do) can see that. sometimes you dont even have to, cuz im telling you outright. i usually dont talk about this openly though, not to my friends at least, cuz people only put up with suicidals for so long, and i cant afford to lose anyone else... ahem. anyways, something changed in the way i see suicide. when i was younger, i wanted to die because the pain i had to bear was just too great. there was no hope. and its still true - the pain is unbearable. i am in pain every waking moment. i have been for almost 11 years now. there is no joy, there is no happiness, there is only distraction.

however, thats not the reason i wanna die anymore. i think think that if i put in effort, i think i could be... not in pain, all the time anymore. but, heres the thing: i dont want to. im too tired, im too broken. i dont want to change, and i dont want anyone else to change. now i just want to die, for the sake of it. because i love death, with all of my heart. i think death is the best thing that could happen, to anyone. i 100% believe death is the only thing that will save you, ever. i am not exaggerating when i say „i love death“. and to live, without having the means to safely & efficiently kill myself... its destroying me. i get panic attacks every week thinking about it. what if someone else leaves me? im not gonna take it anymore, i refuse to. i refuse to keep suffering, but to end my suffering once and for all i have to die. i really, truly hate living... it just really isnt for me. and thats okay, im fine with it, im fine with dying - its what i want, its my choice, its my destiny - and i love this destiny. i wouldnt want it any other way - to kill myself, or be killed, thats how i want to go. i just need someone to help me. idk where im going with this, so lets move onto my next point:

my worldview. so.. im not sure when this all started. was it 2020? or 2019? maybe it started to dawn on me even earlier, i dont really know, but its been really intense in 2020. the way i view the world & life has changed drastically (or rather, formed, ive never really thought about it that much before). my mom has made it clear to me that you could be a genuinely good, loving person... and still fuck up your kid for life. and this is why i came to the conclusion that good parents, who dont fuck up their children irreversibly... they dont exist. the moment youre born into this world, youre doomed. there is no one who doesnt suffer, there is no one who doesnt want to die - and if they tell you they dont, they either just dont know yet or are in denial. if there is ANY chance of someone growing up to suffer just like i do - it is not worth it. irresponsible, even - to bring a kid into this world. and, the way the world is, and continues to be, there will never be the chance for someone to never suffer like me. which is why i dont think children should be born into this world, ever. and it fucks with me - it fucks with me so bad.

...happy mew year, everynyan

#long post #suicide tw #negative #corona tw #idk what to tag #2020

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tamiddyinyourcity · 4 years

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Life updates for 12:10pm, Monday, June 8th of 2020:

I am severely depressed, hahaaaa.

Every day is a huge struggle to even get out of bed. It gets better, eventually.

A large chunk of my friends are either nonbinary, spiritual, gender non-conforming, or (sadly) experienced similar trauma as I have. The last one sucks, but it still counts as a collective, "Oh awesome, everyone I know relates to me on niche things that others usually can't relate all too heavily too". Do you know how nice it is having other friends that do manifesting and are out here buying crystals and Florida Water? Yall are such bad bitches. I love yall. If I do ever travel to another state or vice versa, me and one of my online homies are gonna go to a spa together. Fuck yeah, gang gang in this bitch yall. (LMFAOOOO why must i say this.)

Also had an interesting talk about gender bias with a cis fellow. He was just like "they had a WOMENS ONLY job opportunity class that I WANTED TO, like, why do they get resources that i dont???", which lead to a bit of a winded talk, but all in all, we both got the collective gist of "gender biasing anything and excluding people from work and jobs in industries all for a certain bro culture is idiotic and ridiculous". And how gender restrictions for certain jobs are stupid, and literally lead to tons of people having restricted lives due to refusing basic ass access. (Like how strong men and women exist, but refusing to let women work due to a bias in construction or police work is idiotic.) So yknow, glad we hit the same page. Nice fellow, making a lot of international buddies these days.

Also it reminded me of my old job, where my boss saw me and my other young female coworker as useless, and often had "bro time" where he and six other men took ages to figure out how to set up a SINGLE computer. I got paid either way, but still gross. Since for fucks sake, I HAD VALID EXPERIENCE WITH CORDS AND SETTING UP TVS, but nooooo, let the very old and blind easily winded old misogynists sit around talking about the 60s. Smh. My boss was divorced three times and his personality always shows why.

Anyway, making more friends. I try to be as supportive of peeps transitioning as possible, since people are ridiculously out of pocket or vicious to those who dont conform to gendered looks. I already get enough shit from people who hate how anti-feminine I look from time to time, AND how aggressive or entitled others can get when I do.... So, I wanna help those who although might be physically stronger or whatever be safer, since the world is cruel. And if enough people become comfortable with transgender people or cis peeps who just like clothing not inherently gendered for them, then I feel like the world becomes a better place. I still feel terrible knowing some people get treated like total shit or even killed for their sexuality or whatnot, and not everyone is next to SF where this shit is normalized.... I just wanna support those who I can, fam.

Got to send my friend Kieran a bunch of tutorials for things like T-shirt upcycle DIYs and circle skirts from alt youtubers and whatnot. Been broke, been awkwardly transitioning into a more feminine or androgynous style with champagne tastes and a public water fountain with 99 cent crystal lite packet budget. I know how thats like. Hope they make some fly ass looks with that.

And my other friend José is doing well. We haven't talked in awhile, but they're still a great friend/acquaintance. A nice buddy of mine. Talked today, felt great.

Also back to the friend I had the gender bias talk with, I also learned that the UK NEVER HEARD ABOUT TRAYVON MARTIN. WOWWWWW. He was SHOOK AS FUCK. SINCE YEAH AMERICA HAD A MAN KILL AN INNOCENT FIFTEEN YEAR OLD AND THEN AUCTION THE GUN AND SUE THE FAMILY FOR DEFAMATION SINCE THIS COUNTRY IS SO FUCKED.

I'm also inspired by recent protests to restart up a certain project of mine. Feels good, even if I struggle to finish a project; just happy that my room is completed, and to now be able to do whatever I feel for myself.

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solipsistful · 7 years

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categorizing the bipolar disorders is weird

WHO WANTS THE L O N G E S T INFODUMP, 1,500+ WORDS GO

I... didn’t actually incorporate citations into this (hindsight: 20/20), but if anything stands out, feel free to ask and we’ll point you to sources.

The Formal Criteria

As it stands, the bipolar spectrum is diagnosed primarily based on the idea of a linear “mood spectrum” and how close you get to either extreme, with some extra requirements around how long episodes last (chronicity). So, canonically, the spectrum goes:

Bipolar I: Mania, depression

Bipolar II: Hypomania, depression

Cyclothymia (sometimes called bipolar III when people are making a point of the spectrum): Hypomania, chronic mild depression (dysthymia)

So first off, chronicity: Technically, there are requirements for how long a state has to be in order to count as an “episode”. One week (or until hospitalization :V) for the manias, two weeks for depression, and for dysthymia, technically two years.

These cutoffs are fundamentally arbitrary. It’s why there are quite a few ways people get around it. One major group of bipolar NOS is just episodes that aren’t long enough; the DSM-5 proposed a condition for further study of depression with not-quite-long-enough hypomanias (maybe “technically” what we have ;P). I think originally the idea with chronicity was to exclude the rapid mood shifts that might be better captured as emotion dysregulation a la borderline, but that’s morphed a bit. “Rapid cycling” officially means more than four distinct episodes in a year. Now, we have “ultra-rapid cycling” for multiple in month, and “ultradian” which completely removes any chronicity requirement and refers to multiple episodes in a day.

I think some of the difficulty with chronicity is a problem with what exactly a mood even looks like. There’s a reason we’ve heard some folks actually prefer the language of “manic-depression” over “bipolar”, because two separate poles? lmao. Mixed episodes are common – I’ve heard that in bipolar type II in particular, time spent in a mixed episode tends to outnumber the time in straightforward hypomania (*waves*). Plus, mixed states are often the most problematic – suicidality goes way up compared to depression alone.

Mixed states are kinda by definition hard to categorize. People have tried. The most sensible categories I’ve seen are actually the ones that hide the mixed-ness. That sounds strange, but categories like “dysphoric mania” and “agitated depression” can definitely be seen as fundamentally mixed – the hate and emptiness of depression while manic, the energy and irritability of mania while depressed. It’s why we say both “mixed” and “agitated” for our brand of “lots of the energy and irritability but also misanthropy and anhedonia” – whaaat’s the difference. But even those only work for some people some of the time – often times, the person themself just has to figure out their own “categories” for their episodes. Mostly mixed episodes just tend to be a jumbled, manic-depressive mess.

At least personally, we can see why mixed-ness would cause confusion with chronicity. We’ll get irritable at something in the environment and stay that way for a while before falling back to the “baseline” depression. That’s not “cycling” to us; it’s that the irritability and resulting energy need a target, plus the mood reactivity of atypical depression (I’ll address that in a few more goddamn pages).

Funnily, though, the definition of a mood spectrum doesn’t quite stop there. Something that always strikes us is the mania-hypomania distinction – the formal distinction between types i and ii. The way folks lay out the disorders, you’d think it’d be a quantitative, scalar difference – that is, maybe 3 symptoms from the list is hypomania, but 5 makes it mania. That’s how minor and major depression work! But actually, the difference is based on two things: Is it impairing (in particular, are you getting hospitalized or arrested)? and are you psychotic? Say yes, mania. No, hypomania. Technically, you could have two people, one who checks off more of the formal criteria but neither of those key questions, and another who just barely passes the cutoff but got arrested for something like kleptomania, and they’d be hypomanic and manic respectively. That said, it’s not just meaningless arbitrariness: some other not-readily-apparent things actually fall out of that distinction:

As I said, mixed states practically typify type II in particular.

Type IIs tend to spend way more time depressed – a number we’ve seen suggested is upwards of 40:1 depressed:hypomanic (bipolar I, more like 3:1). Therefore, it’s super hard to actually catch (“Wait, was that hypomania or just my annual week of feeling better?”) This gets particularly relevant when talking about soft bipolar.

I’ve also heard it suggested that type IIs tend to spend more time in any non-baseline state longer a higher percentage of the time than type I. There really does seem to be an inverse relationship between how “extreme” a mood is and how long it lasts -- cyclothymia being the other end of that, with basically no time at baseline, but no major depression.

Type II tends to come with more suicidality (see: mixed episodes), so smack that in people’s faces if they call type II “not as bad” as type I.

“Soft Bipolar”

So, with that, you know how I said there were three categories of bipolar? SURPRISE, THERE’S MORE. There are a few different schema, but I like Fieve & Dunner’s -- they’re the ones who first laid out bipolar I, II, and III, after all. It’s just that the other three don’t get as much specific attention:

Bipolar IV: Hypomania or mania caused specifically by anti-depressants

Bipolar V: Seemingly unipolar depression in people with bipolar relatives

Bipolar VI: Mania without depression -- unipolar mania, basically. A weird category that might not actually exist. Funnily, all a bipolar I diagnosis requires is a manic episode -- it just happens that people diagnosed as such almost always experience depression as well. I don’t really know much else about it.

Every so often you’ll see other categories. For example, I’ve heard folks suggest that seasonal affective disorders that only present with depression might actually be a bit bipolar-y.

Bipolar V is the fun one, for me, and is what most often gets called “soft bipolar.” An important first note is that bipolar V has a habit of becoming bipolar IV so, yknow, there’s something there. Another is that sometimes you’ll see “soft bipolar” used to refer to bipolar type II -- here, the idea is that anyone who “seems” unipolar depressive but “actually” belongs on the bipolar spectrum somewhere must have type II, because type II in particular can be so hard to catch -- it’s just thought that maybe the patient just hasn’t noticed their hypomania.

Why would someone with a unipolar presentation belong on the bipolar spectrum, anyway? Other than just the desire to group together the possible genetic causes, there are actual effects: Bipolar depression looks different than non-bipolar depression. This is actually the trend for all bipolar depressions, but only becomes particularly relevant when depression is all that is being experienced in the first place. Specifically bipolar depression tends to be:

Atypical, not melancholic. (Atypical doesn’t actually mean uncommon here. Those terms refer to specific historical things -- melancholic was described first, so atypical was the “other”.) But what makes a depression atypical is, specifically:

Mood reactivity -- the ability to sometimes feel good because something good happened, even if that feeling goes away really quickly.

The opposite of certain melanchonic symptoms -- weight gain instead of loss, and hypersomnia instead of insomnia.

A weird personality thing: being super sensitive to rejection, even outside of any mood episode. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A really physical feeling of fatigue called “leaden paralysis”

Resistant to SSRIs and other meds that are specifically anti-depressants, but helped by mood stabilizers and other bipolar-focused meds (sorta obvious in someone who actually fits a canonical bipolar presentation, but a bit unexpected if it’s “only depression.”)

Or, even if an SSRI helps, it will randomly stop working much more often with bipolar.

Or an SSRI might just kick off mania.

Irritable -- of course, here you get into the difficultity with “is irritable/agitated depression actually mixed”, but irritability alone isn’t traditionally marked as not-just-depression.

Psychotic. You can technically have unipolar major depressive disorder with psychotic features, but some folks think that that makes it a bit more soft bipolar (the association between bipolarity and psychosis would be aNOTHER DAMN ESSAY, but the short version: their immense conceptual separateness is very much a matter of “some dude in the past said they’re different”. They’re clearly at least genetically related.)

Starting earlier in life, and steadily worsening. Some (lucky) folks experience just one or two episodes of major depression and that’s it. Bipolar doesn’t do that, and repeated mood episodes have a habit of getting slightly more extreme each time they happen.

The above, sans psychosis, is how we self-diagnosed as bipolar, even before we started delineating mood episodes. ;P It’s a bit weird to ask a psychiatrist that no we don’t experience hypomania but please put us on lamictal instead of trying yet another anti-depressant -- she was kinda hesitant at first, and apparently noted us as probably bipolar type II while simultaneously explaining that lamictal is often used off-label for depression (cough, probably actually folks with soft bipolar).

So, you have a cluster of diagnoses where you have just a few formal criteria (what counts as a mania, hypomania, minor depression, and major depression) but actually a lot of shared features that aren’t necessarily suggested by the criteria (atypical depression, type II suicidality vs. type I, etc.) -- which leads to some suggested alternative criteria that would center things like the atypical features or mixed episodes and thereby potentially incorporate “unipolar” presentations, almost in contradiction with those formal criteria at the outset.

- Ace

#actuallybipolar #actuallyautistic #time to work on my actual grad student work goodbye

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