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mercifullymad · 1 year

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Hi there! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for beginner readings about Sanism, anti psychiatry, etc? I've only recently been introduced to these ideas, but they really resonate with me and I'd love to learn more.

Hello, thank you for asking! I'm more than happy to share a list of readings I've found useful and/or important, and glad that you're interested in learning more!

Before I get into the list, one note: I identify as a mad liberationist, rooted in the principles of the Mad Pride movement and the academic (in)discipline of Mad Studies. So I don't have any recommendations that come from a strict anti-psychiatry stance, as I don’t root myself in the anti-psychiatry moment and I simply haven't read much in that tradition. Instead, my readings are mostly rooted in Mad Studies, Mad Pride, the psychiatric survivor/consumer/(ex-)patient movement, Critical Disability Studies, Disability Justice, and Crip Studies.

Without further ado, here are my recommendations (I encourage anyone else to add on in the comments/reblogs—I certainly have not read everything)!

Articles:

Mad Studies – What It Is and Why You Should Care:

“Mad Studies is an area of education, scholarship, and analysis about the experiences, history, culture, political organising, narratives, writings and most importantly, the PEOPLE who identify as: Mad; psychiatric survivors; consumers; service users; mentally ill; patients, neuro-diverse; inmates; disabled -to name a few of the “identity labels” our community may choose to use.”

Mad Studies Network – Shared Principles: From the same website as the above article. The website has many great articles and reading recommendations even though it hasn’t been updated for a couple years.

“We aim to work towards making and preserving space for mad people’s knowledges and histories within the academy and within [mental health] services.”

Mad and Queer Studies: Interconnections and Tensions:

“Mad and Queer Studies have lot of common ground – especially in terms of challenging existing binaries (for example, gay/straight and mad/sane); subverting negative connotations of Queer/Mad; and critiquing prevailing normativities (ways of being ‘normal’).”

A Psychiatric Survivor Studies Manifesto: A critique of Mad Studies and identifying as mad, instead suggesting identification as a psychiatric survivor and psychiatric survivor studies. A good read, especially as someone new to this area exploring your options for self-identification!

“Psychiatric survivors are those who have sought help and have not found it, psychiatric survivors have varying levels of belief in a separation of mind and body. Psychiatric survivors are not reducible to a single category but instead are a force to be reckoned with who have (often dysfunctionally) shut down major oppressive institutions and forced change within medicine multiple times over.”

Against Self Advocacy Part 2: Maddening Autistic Self-Advocacy: From the same writer as the above article.

“Like it or not, mad and anti-psychiatry politics do inform and are part of the history of Autistic politics.”

“The Autistic meltdown, when our bodies rebel because of sensory overload, the issues related to social impairment---many of these things have more similarity with mad politics … But those similarities have intentionally been quieted so as not to make Autistic bodies seem rebellious.”

Mad People Of Colour: A Manifesto:

“We cannot separate our experiences of racialization, madness, and other oppressions. … White people’s experiences of psychiatry are not ‘like colonialism’. Colonialism is like colonialism… Ask yourself whether your goal as a mad activist is to regain the white middle-class privilege you lost when you were psychiatrized.”

Trans Activists, Don’t Throw Mad People Under the Bus!: Article on the shared history and aims of trans and mad people.

“We know that the various psychiatric diagnoses for trans people have not been based in sensitive listening or in any kind of scientific knowledge of etiology, that on the contrary they have been nothing but arbitrary and punitive vehicles for imposing normative expectations of how a person ought to be. We know that psychiatrists and psychologists don’t listen to us, or our communities, don’t know about us, or our communities, and don’t help us, or our communities. Why would we assume things are any different for all the other kinds of people psychiatrists assert dominion over?”

The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health: This article is far from perfect in its analysis, but I think it’s still worth reading for its observations about how the internet structurally reinforces stringent diagnostic categories.

“The danger lies in how we enforce and contextualize these [diagnostic] categories. ... If we cannot commune with each other, relate to each other, love each other, argue with each other, without feeling that we are irreconcilably different because of something endemic to our psyches (you have ADHD, I have BPD, we are not the same), we lessen the chance that we will be able to build actual solidarity, and fight against the structures that cause us all to feel so mentally ill.”

An Introduction to Anti-Black Sanism: Unlike the other articles, this one is an academic article, but it’s too important to leave out.

“The historical and ongoing set of aggressions visited on Black/African people in the Global North is both anti-Black racism and a specific kind of sanism, and we have named this suffering, this particularly perilous mix of oppressions, anti-Black Sanism.”

“Anti-Black Sanism provides a framework that names the injustice, the pain, and seeks to address the historic discrimination, continued overrepresentation of Black/African-identified individuals in the mental health system… Anti-Black Sanism also allows us to join with others in de-centering whiteness in mental health as well as in the ex-patient, survivor, disability, and mad movements.”

The Next Generation of the Mad Movement in New York City Looks Like This:

“Peter Stastny finishes the first panel. As the elder of the group, he’s the self-chosen, pragmatic voice of “What works and what doesn’t work”, having been around and active since the 1980s and watched so many progressive mental health projects become defunded or co-opted or simply slip into obscurity. It’s obvious he wants this project to have a different fate.”

Help-Seeking: Where’s the Help? (tw self-harm and suicide)

“In the context of mental health, particularly intense mental distress associated with self-harm and suicide, asking for help might not only result in the absence of care, it might result in punishment and harm. … Emphasis on seeking [help] ignores not only the availability of help but crucially, the deep pain and frustration of calling for help and having nobody come.”

Un-care-able (tw self-harm and suicide)

“Stigma’ is too general, too mild a word for what is happening here. This is rejection, it is a casting out, it is the designation of ‘un-care-able’. In a sleight of hand so swift as to be both bewildering and dazzling, the more a person who self-harms needs care, the more they prove themselves to be both undeserving of it and unfit for it. Here pain is not evidence of need, and thus a prompt for care – instead, it is the signal for abandonment.”

Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker: Focused on neurodivergence, but a very good and important read for anyone interested in learning more about non-normative bodyminds.

“A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.

In terms of discourse, research, and policy, the pathology paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people not being normal,’’ whereas the neurodiversity paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people being oppressed, marginalized, and/or poorly served and poorly accommodated by the prevailing culture?’’”

Books:

Unfortunately, I don't have many beginner book recommendations, although this depends on how you’re defining "beginner." If you're new to Mad Studies but not new to reading dense texts about Literary Studies, then La Marr Jurelle Bruce's "How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind" or Therí Pickens' "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" would be great beginner texts. If you’re well-versed in the study of rhetoric, then other academic books like Margaret Price’s “Mad At School” and M. Remi Yergeau’s “Authoring Autism” can also serve as introductions. But if "beginner" means written for the general public as opposed to an academic audience, then these are the only recs I've got:

Robert McRuer's "Mad in America”: A history of psychiatry care and the psychiatry industry in the U.S. written for a general audience. Great for contextualizing and historicizing the development of U.S. psychiatry.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice”: This book does a great job explicitly connecting the Mad Pride and psychiatric survivor movement to broader disability organizing and issues. It is a great recounting of organizing efforts from both Disability Justice and the psychiatric survivor moment, grounded in Piepzna-Samarasinha’s long involvement in both.

Eli Clare’s “Brilliant Imperfection”: An extremely insightful overview of and meditation on the politics of “cure” for physically disabled, chronically ill, and mad people. Also some of my favorite writing on the utilities and harms of diagnosis.

[Textbooks] “Mad Matters” and “The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies”: It can be hard to get copies of these books without academic access (or spending a lot of money), but if you can somehow get them, they contain a lot of useful information and history.

[Can’t personally vouch for] James Davies’ “Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis” and “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm than Good”: I have not read either of these books, but they are written for a general audience, so probably very explanatory/introductory in their explanation, which might be good if you are coming to this with no prior knowledge. Jamies Davies is probably the most anti-psychiatry-aligned author on this list, too, if you’re specifically looking for writing rooted in that stance. The books seem to be focused critiques of the contemporary psychiatric industry (rather than focusing on the experiences/organizing/culture of mad people, as most of my other recs do).

Finally, I would also suggest checking out collectives/orgs like Project LETS (lots of great posts on their instagram about sanism and mad pride), the Institute for the Development of the Human Arts (IDHA), Recovery in the Bin, the #StopSIM collective, and country or region-specific Mad Pride groups, Hearing Voices groups, and Alternatives to Suicide Groups. So much of this knowledge is created and spread through social networks and transient social media posts rather than in articles and books.

#hope this helps & that something in this list resonates with u!#mad studies #mad pride #psychiatric survivor #disability studies #neurodivergence #disability justice #my readings

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dontbotherwiththepronunciation · 7 months

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You asked about personal experience and background in the poll. I don't know if many responders filled it out, but if so, were there correlations to certain preferences?

I am very sorry for how long this took! You sent this almost a week ago and I've barely had time to log into Tumblr and make the post, but yes, there were! And some of it was clearer than I expected.

I couldn't find strong tendencies in each group, but under the cut are some things I found remarkable.

Also overall warning for this being a mix of opinions, some you might strongly disagree with. If I could keep down the bitterness for more than a month, so can you. Read, but please be mindful of how the people quoted here can't defend their positions. Don't take advantage of that. Bitch about it with your mutuals if you really need to. I encourage that! I highly encourage bitching to your mutuals instead of writing aggressive vague posts about things that can't be debated fairly by the author of the text. If you want to criticise my wording, that's fair, I tried to limit myself but I might have been more lenient than I should.

(mixed-)Indigenous people of (former) colonies (8/105≈7,6%)

This and the demographic below (which intersected four times) were the clearest when it came to interpretative tendencies and preferences. As a mixed-indigenous person of a former colony and a third culture kid, it wasn't very surprising but it felt very validating. I won't deny that often I'd be reading through their forms thinking "I WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THIS PERSON". *sighs* the woes of not being in an ostrich farm filled with red diaper TCKs and indigenous people of the south hemisphere...

Theonsa & Throbb shippers were in the minority (only one of each) and were picked equally as the ship others liked engaging with the least (three votes each). House Stark tended to rank lower, with 5 voters giving it a 2/10 rating, 1 voter giving it a 5/10 the Theonsa & Throbb shipper giving it a higher ratings (8/10 & 10/10). The concept of Robb Stark being a gift was also somewhat debated with 5/8 being very rejecting of that idea.

The possible endgame of him somewhere in the North was also strongly disapproved, only 2/8 marking those as options they'd be content with.

In regards to whether Theon would have fitted in the Iron Islands, the answers were unanimously positive.

Yes! I think people would have gotten used to him being gay and fabulous, they seem like they can get used to most things, as long as they're an exception and not the rule. Would theon have been happy and fulfilled? Unclear, likely not. Would Balon have been fully satisfied in his son? Unlikely, but I don't think he'd go all Randyll Tarly on his ass. I think he would just be like "woe is me to have an effeminate son and a butch daughter. Oh well."

Barbrey Dustin was the leading MILF among this and the demography below. (WOOHOO)

All these factors were somewhat intertwined in my opinion. Again, linking this in case someone wants to hear about the Theon & children of colonialism experience through slam poetry.

While observing the results from this demographic I also recognised how the the majority of those who preference Dany over Sansa came from this and the TCKs, but among those who identified as "(mixed-)Indigenous people of (former) colonies" the feelings for Sansa were less negative.

Third Culture Kids (8/105≈7,6%)

Very much what I explained above with some small differences.

The "Robb Stark is a gift" concept was almost fully rejected. Only 1 person defended that idea. The House Stark average rating was the same as above and we only had one throbb preferring person among us, with no trace of Theonsa people, but three Theonsa-dislikers and four Throbb-dislikers. The reasoning was not quite that of an anti, but it was HIGHLY critical and often attributed the ships popularity to show made dynamics and scenes.

I'm really not big on Throbb, I know a really large demographic are into it, and it's all very aah 'Robb is a gift' and whatnot but I don't like it! Or, I don't like it how people make it (???). It's not that I particularly dislike Robb, though he is the most nothing out of the stark children to me, but how people always name Robb as a good boy who's done nothing wrong grates on me especially in relation to Theon (does the hunting scene from that Bran chapter in AGOT mean nothing to you?). He's also Mr Feudalism junior. Can we talk about that. Robb does nothing wrong goes hand-in-hand with the freeloader fuckboy Theon which I think is reductive of both. I really just prefer him as a sort of dead Lyanna 'absence defines the narrative where his existence never could' type where his memory is like a shrine everyone flagellates at; snowflakes-melting-in-his-hair couldn't-cut-the-head-off-Karstark-in-one-go fifteen-year-old-boy-we-view-through-his-mother's-perspective. There may have been something, but I think that's just typical best friend homoeroticism that wouldn't have come to fruition proper and would just have existed as a weird tension [...]. I think the show contributed a lot towards its existence and to be real Throbb shippers would be nothing without "I should have been there. Where was I? I should have died with him."

The idea of him being somewhere in the North as his possible endgame, regardless if as a ruler/advisor/peasant passing was fully rejected, no exceptions.

In regards to whether Theon would have fitted in the Iron Islands, one person didn't answer and all the other seven were unanimously positive.

Definitely! I know a lot of people subscribe to the notion that Theon was a soyboy infant and that his father smelled his weakness or some such, but we really have to think about how the environments we're raised in affect us as people.

The Dany standom was more prominent (only one person being somewhat accepting of the Mad Queen theory, but still being very hopeful for a Queen of the 7K/happy somewhere else Dany), while 7/8 of the voters were somewhat accepting of Sansa going down a darker and less happy path. None of them chose anything more pessimistic than that though.

Dany and Theon's struggles with rootlessness and the way they have been made to adapt to different cultures is something I find very touching and many of my irls who are also indigenous people and/or TCKs also shared this feeling among the more (maybe almost anti-)Stark critical views.

It's really hilarious how even his fans won't let him be free of the Starks. Forever chained to fan-made dynamics. Really Robb and him were inseparable? Who told you that? Bran who randomly hates him and also feels jealous? Oh yeah he was seducing Cat, of course...and who was your source? Rodrik Cassel?

was said by one of my irl friends who answered the survey and whose answers were quite similar to those described here but more radical and less apologetic. I hate admitting I've often thought similarly.

Victims of sexual abuse (25/105≈23,8%)

Warning: Rape

Sometimes I've seen people who feel appalled by Thramsay as a ship try to justify to themselves why someone would ship or at least be so invested in a dynamic like that and often they come to the conclusion that the shippers must be coping with their own trauma and sexual abuse, and that might be a possibility but it wasn't one that was reflected on the survey. Only 4/25's preferred ship was Thramsay and the rest were mixed pretty proportionately when it came to ships.

The opposite, on the other hand, was very visible and rather surprising. 18/25 chose Thramsay as the ship they liked engaging with the least and about half of them had a reasoning resembling that of an anti rather than a simple "it's not for me" or actual criticism to the fanon portrayal.

I feel people who like TheonxRamsay are probably mental ill and working through something.

They aren’t real Theon stans they’re just pervs

What really stood out for me though was a strongly polarised view in regards to Kyra, along with some relatively strong criticism of GRRM handling the character and narrative in ADWD.

He sent for Kyra, kicked shut the door, climbed on top of her, and fucked the wench with a fury he'd never known was in him. By the time he finished, she was sobbing, her neck and breasts covered with bruises and bite marks. Theon shoved her from the bed and threw her a blanket. "Get out." - Theon V, ACOK

As I read the answers about Kyra I categorised them between three options;

Apparent indifference: Didn't answer or left a small comment with little to say (8/25)

Comfortable with Theon as a rapist: Self explanatory. Didn't mind or felt guilty about Theon being a sexual abuser. Always saw Theon and Kyra's later encounter as sexual abuse, and was often dubious about the true initial consent because of Theon & Kyra's inherent power difference due to their social positions. (5/25)

Uncomfortable with Theon as a rapist: Also self explanatory. Was critical of GRRM's choice of making Theon rape Kyra and considered it "overkill" or "ooc", tried to justify or twist the narrative into convincing themselves Theon didn't (or at least didn't mean to) rape her, and/or admitted they wilfully ignore that part and don’t read it as canon. (12/25, out of which I am only allowed to quote five in regards to this question)

Ex. Comfortable with Theon as a rapist:

I'm not sure how I feel about the rape though. I lean more towards appreciating that GRRM included that though, because that feels more accurate to how violence is actually perpetrated in life. Having raped before doesn't stop you from falling victim to it, and having been raped doesn't absolve you from the guilt/crimes of what you've done in the past. It's not a moral statement on your character to have been hurt before. [...] I think GRRM very aptly conveys that rape is only ever a false way to seize power over another person, it doesn't prove any inherent superiority in you that you are able to enact this type of violence against another person, especially because this violence is indiscriminate, and happens even to the rapist.

Ex. Uncomfortable with Theon as a rapist:

It's just GRRM using rape as a trope again and it's way too much imo. Idk I don't see why Theon out of all characters in this story is made to rape his girlfriend when they never had a violent relationship before that. It's almost character assassination and lousy writing so I don't read it as canon. I also hate how some readers try to tell others the relationship was always dubious. She was glad to go to his bed when he took over Winterfell so it irks me the wrong way when they try to show her as his victim before the incident went down. It's unnecessary and Theon is always blamed for his actions more than any other character in this series

The majority of all the answers submitted in the poll would have fitted into the "apparent indifference" category. At the end of the day Kyra has little page time, doesn't have a strong characterisation, the only time I saw someone trying to hype her up as a character and obsessing over her it was just so they could juxtapose her as a good example of victimhood compared to Jeyne Poole, whom they hated, and she also happens to be the canon love interest of one half of ASOIAF's most popular M/M ship. She never stood a chance. In truth both of them share a lot in common in how they are narrative props for Theon's arc and have been mistreated and replaced by D&D and the major fandom. It didn't surprised me to see people not reacting to her. The 12 responses I got here did surprise me tremendously.

The following is a quote I categorised as "Uncomfortable with Theon as a rapist" when going over this due to the last sentence, but I also find my own categorising reductive when it came to it. I can't say I feel the same since I very deeply long for a fanfic in which Theon acts as the secondary/less threatening villain to Kyra's failed final girl and is rightfully seen as someone to be frightened of and I sometimes enjoy reading metas in which Theon is called out as a rapist, but I did found this response very honest and felt somehow touched by it. It didn't try to justify itself.

I would hope that when Theon sent for her after his conquest of winterfell it was at first welcome and joyful for her, but I think it was complicated. Being Theon's concubine was a bad and dangerous position for her from the start and I don't think Theon cared. I'm personally uncomfortable with Theon/Kyra as 'normal' pairing that went vaguely wrong, as well as with AUs where everything is fine somehow. I also struggle when they heroically escape or Theon acts as hero towards her in any way. I'm also uncomfortable with AGOT/ACOK prequels where it's a cute teen romance. However I also don't want to read people's fics that are about how much Kyra was hurt by Theon in ways that cannot be redressed nor anyone's Theon rapist metas or fics, even though I agree. In other words I cannot suffer any artistic attempts to make Theon 'look good' or but I also don't like reading about it generally. I guess I wished GRRM didn't do that to me...

I wonder if the overall situation regarding this demographic, this hesitance at accepting one of their favourite character as a rapist and rooting for one, comes from how real the abuse feels in comparison to other much more extreme characters in the story. A man kidnapping you, hunting you with dogs, raping and then flaying you sounds like something out of a gothic novel or a horror movie. A man taking his frustration out by having violent sex with his kind-of-girlfriend, even if she is crying and visibly hurt, and then throwing her from the bed is something a friend could tell you about her abusive ex during a moment of emotional intimacy. The abuse is less exaggerated, so it feels more real and is thus maybe more upsetting, something you want to ignore. However, this is all just my speculation and it might be as wrong as the myth about Thramsay shippers being overwhelmingly victims of sexual abuse.

Victims of domestic violence (20/105≈19%)

There weren't many strong tendencies between them that I could recognise, but maybe some minor things to remark on. Most and least liked ships were spread proportionately, there wasn't any strong criticism against GRRM and the overall Sansa over Dany preference was present here too, but not in a specially drastic manner.

A few things I found remarkable

The highest House Stark scores came from here (with an average of ~8/10 in this subset of answers)

There was a huge love for Theon III, ACOK and Theon IV ACOK. Both of these chapters were on the lower ends of popularity compared to the rest of the survey and I found it really curious to see so many in this subset choose them as part of their favourites (Theon III: 13 votes, Theon IV: 12 votes)

I wonder if at least when it came to Theon III, this might have had something to do with Dagmer Cleftjaw as (up to this point in the story) the only (not-biologically) familiar figure in his life that has treated him with warmth and affection. He warms my heart a lot, but maybe he plays a significantly more emotional role to people who can relate to the domestic abuse and overall lack of positive familial bonds.

11/20 of the voters strongly argued for Theon not having been able to adapt to the Islands had he stayed there or returned sooner. Many of them quoted Asha's description of him as a sweet and timid child and also Theon's own thoughts about Rodrik and Maron, but even more of those based this on Balon and overall Ironborn culture being perceived by them as more brutal, toxically masculine and restrictive.

I think it was his mother who said he had a too kind heart, except for Yara(Asha) the islanders are not known for their loyalty, and living as Balon Greyjoy’s heir wouldn’t have been it for Theon, he deserved his Stark side of that makes sense

no, he already didn't fit into the masculine, blue collar, "you're not a man until you've ripped someone's heart out" culture when he was a young boy, as evidenced by how he was picked on frequently by his brothers and preferred to play with his sisters. he either would've had to repress it and had it eat him alive or he'd just fuck off on a ship until his dad died

Again, I am very sorry for taking so long to answer. I finished writing this a few days ago and then I had to go over it many times. Thank you for your patience and have a nice time. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!

#speaking #Theon survey #theon greyjoy #asoiaf #anonymous

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eliquepalace · 1 year

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mental health tips!

(from a LOA perspective.)

it is important to take care of your mental health through your (manifesting/spiritual) journey. even while being divine, you are in a human body and are bound to have human experiences. and TRUST, i understand how overwhelming it can be to navigate the world when you are spiraling or going through a lot mentally. so these are few tips that i use that have seemed to work for me and i hope work for you too!

when dealing with intrusive thoughts:

→ when those thoughts come, let it flow. as scary as it may seem, don’t engage with it. do some deep breathing exercises and focus on that instead.

→ you are not those thoughts and you never will be. remind yourself that.

→ ‘postpone’ the thoughts. if you usually end up finding it hard to let go of spiraling thoughts. tell yourself “i will come back to it. when i am calmer and feel better, i can look at those thoughts through a neutral perspective.” and often times, those thoughts disappear and you would have forgotten you plan to ruminate over them in the first place.

when dealing with negative emotions:

→ acknowledge your emotions. if you need to cry, talk it out or scream, do whatever, just let it out. don’t harbor pain or hurt. let yourself FEEL.

→ if you constantly deal with negative emotions, i urge you to seek out resources for therapy, if you can afford it, as it can be a great help! (no, you won’t be encouraging the ‘old story’ by talking about your life/emotions with someone who listens). don’t deny yourself assistance out of fear.

→ do something fun or calming:

if you like something fun: get creative, hang out with friends, record video journals or dance.

if you prefer something calming: write, meditate, pray (doesn’t have to be to anyone in particular, it could just be you talking to you/your subconscious), take a quick nap or take a walk in nature.

→ this is one of those many times, you show yourself a LOT more love. treat yourself with kindness and patience. when working through your emotions, don’t criticize yourself for doing too much or not doing enough.

affirmations:

i am a master manifester and i live life calmly knowing life works only in my favor.

i identify only with the greatest good.

i fully trust myself to do what’s right for me.

i am always deserving of what i want.

i let go of anything i do not align with.

i deserve to live a life i love.

this shall pass and it always does.

i kept all my thoughts in check today. i didn’t waver once. my mind is completely saturated with the new story. — courtesy of @blushydior.

general tips:

→ whatever you desire is yours and always will be. letting your emotions flow through won't affect your desires.

→ if you deal with a lot of anxiety around manifesting, go back to the basics!! the over-complication of manifesting does more harm than good. i promise you that reminding yourself of the very bottom line of the law does wonders.

→ manifesting has allowed me to trust myself a lot more than i ever could and that is how it should be. trust yourself and your subconscious. they know what you want, and they won't ever let you down.

→ if you find yourself going through a series of so many questions and fears, that is okay. step away from any form of overconsumption. address those fears and find the root cause of why you feel that way. pay attention to yourself and emotions, break down those fears until you feel safe again.

→ everyone's journey is different. you will get where you want to be, that is guaranteed. take what works and leave the rest. remember, manifesting is meant to be fun!!!

just because you exist, that makes you worthy of your desires and overall happiness. you deserve it!!

#law of assumption #manifestation #spirituality #mental health #anxiety #self concept #neville goddard #mental health tips #loa affirmations #loassumption #elique’s archive

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the-good-ol-art-corner · 4 months

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Good evening, sir. If you don't know who I am, I'm simply a fnati blogger who has come to share a little bit of my fnati au, if you don't mind. I also followed you btw:) Anyway, here we go.

So, we're gonna cover these two jerks first!

Photo Negative Mickey- A young and mischievous mouse, Mick loves to pull pranks on the other toons, especially his older brother Oswald. Unfortunately, Mick doesn't realize that most of his "pranks" are as deadly as the traps from Home Alone. Anyway, Mick can also get frustrated very easily, and often lets his anger out onto others, with poor Oswald getting the harshest of this treatment-both socially and physically. Speaking of Oswald, let's talk about him now next.

Oswald- The older brother of Mick, this armless rabbit has a high interest in eating unhealthy junk food (especially fricking LARD)- so much to the point it's like an addiction. Because of this "interest" of his however, he's been rewarded with a whole lot of teasing and harassment from his younger brother, with Mick often calling Ozzie a "fatass". Despite all the harsh treatment he gets from everyone tho, Ozzie gives 0 craps about it all, and lets everything just phase right through him. Infact, he's also much more calm,laid-back, and relaxed as opposed to his short-tempered younger brother.

So yeah, what do you think of these idiots? If you have any criticism, just tell me, I'm all ears.

(also just a side note: you don't have to, but is it okay you draw Mick & Ozzie in your art style? I really love it! Once again, you don't have to)

Lol, thank you this was a fun read! I'm really intrigued by your take on these two, they seem like a really interesting duo ^^

If you want some genuine criticism or tips, I suggest leaning more into Oswald being the chill, no-nonsense guy over being the fat character who eats a lot. Like, you can keep that trait, but I think his defining characteristic being how laid-back he is contrasts really nicely with Mickey's eccentric, loud, kinda hot-headed, joker nature <3 It's cool Ozzie's fat; as someone who's pretty chubby myself, I love to see the rep :) but a lotta fat characters end up having "eats a lot" as their main feature, y'know? So maybe future introductions of him should lead with that instead

These guys are really cute tho! Hope Mickey can work out his temperament problem, poor Oz,, Hope you like the art!

Reblogs > Likes, Thank You!

#photo negative mickey #fnati oswald #Fnati #five nights at treasure island #fnati 2020 #Oblitus casa #fnati AU #my art #digital art #reblogs > likes #treasure island #If anyone wants to send in more AU stuff and/or requests feel free to drop me some in my inbox!#I'm having a lot of fun drawing these

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mbti-notes · 7 months

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Anon wrote: i hope you've had a great summer. i'm an infj and i've noticed i have a hard time getting along with many ti dominants in my life because of their harsh criticisms. i want to learn how to properly accept it and not feel triggered when it does happen, but i just don't know how to. honestly, sometimes i feel like their criticisms can be unwarranted and nitpicky. but i realize the problem just lies within myself, but i don't know how to work through it. there's a part of me that feels like i should just become more "logical" but i'm just not naturally like that. i appreciate your answer and i hope you have a wonderful day!

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I have already written about how to handle criticism better, search the relevant tags. However, in your case, it seems relevant to ask: Do you believe you have a right to your feelings and emotions? Do you treat them as legitimate? It sounds like you can't accept your feelings of hurt, anger, or shame, and that is the real underlying reason why you can't handle criticism. If that's the case, there is a more pressing issue that needs to be addressed, though you will still need to confront the criticism issue later.

The more primary concern is lack of self-acceptance, which is often a sign of low self-worth. When you don't accept yourself, it's all too easy for others to convince you that there's something wrong with you, that you're a bad person, or that you don't deserve love. With low self-worth, criticism always feels like a personal attack, because it triggers deep insecurities and reinforces the ways you already attack yourself. When you can accept yourself, criticism has a different tone. Instead of taking it personally, you view it more as a new idea or possibility, and you know you have every right to take it or leave it based on your objective analysis of its validity and usefulness. But being objective about criticism isn't possible when you always have negative feelings related to low self-worth clouding your judgment.

Do you understand it's normal and reasonable to feel hurt when you hear hurtful words? People's criticisms are not always well-intentioned, are they? When someone hurts you because they can't get their own sh-t under control or because they don't know how to be respectful of boundaries, they are at fault for allowing their sh-t to spill onto you or behaving inappropriately toward you. When you encounter such people, you shouldn't allow yourself to be gaslit into believing the problem lies with you. In such situations, it's important to listen to your feelings because they are alerting you to the fact that the relationship is in some way toxic - this is one important role that healthy Fe should play in your life.

Even when criticism is fair, do you understand that unsolicited criticism can be a violation of your personal boundaries? If you've said/done something egregious to warrant criticism, then you should not be surprised to receive it. But when the criticism comes out of the blue or seems unrelated to you or the current matter at hand, then there's something more nefarious going on. It's like someone coming over to your house and moving all your stuff around because they think it looks better their way. It doesn't matter whether it looks better or not. The point is they don't have a right to mess with your stuff like that. People must respect each other's personal boundaries in order for a relationship to be healthy.

In my experience running this blog, I've been very lucky because my interactions with people have been mostly respectful and positive, even when addressing criticisms. However, there is the occasional person that randomly comes along to tell me how I should feel, how I should behave, how I should live my life, what I should or shouldn't write about, how wrong I am, how terrible I am, how I should run my blog by their standards, etc, often with little explanation or context. These people are a dime a dozen on any comment section around the internet. If it were the teenage me, I'd probably feel hurt, because of taking it as invalidation. But the wiser adult me understands that these people are overbearing, arrogant, disrespectful, projecting, or clueless about social norms and boundaries.

Do you believe you have a right to live your life as you see fit, without undue interference? Do you view your experience and your perspective as valid and worthy of respect? Do you believe you have a right to decide what role "logic" should play in your life, aside from how much other people value it or not? This world would be a very dreary place if everyone was the same. Don't allow others to change you into something you're not just because they are uncomfortable with you being different than them. However, in order to stand strong against people's harmful attempts to change you, YOU have to be the first one to believe that it's okay for you to be different than them. You have to believe in your worth when others don't.

When someone mistreats you, what should you do? Many possibilities, depending on the context. If you don't feel hurt by it, ignore and forget. If you are hurt and believe the relationship cannot be salvaged and improved, the best thing to do would be to end it or at least strictly limit contact for the sake of your well-being. If you believe it can be salvaged and improved, then you need to: speak up for yourself, inform people of what kind of behavior you consider unacceptable, and enforce limits and boundaries on the relationship until such time the person learns to treat you better.

There are lots of people in the world with bad manners and no social grace, and they will only respect you to the extent that you show them how much you respect yourself.

#infj #auxiliary fe #assertiveness #self advocacy #criticism #self acceptance #self respect #self worth #emotional intelligence #independence #individuality #ask

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mybrotherinkarkat · 1 year

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Lanque Bombyx and the Perils of Transmasculine Representation

I remember when Lanque was first announced as a character for Hiveswap Friendsim, and confirmed by the writers to be a trans man. I was so excited. There had been nonbinary characters in Homestuck for a while already, but as cool as that was, I had been really wanting there to be a canon trans guy. I wanted to see myself represented. So even after my interest in Homestuck had waned, I bought and played Lanque’s Friendsim

To call it a let down would be the understatement of the century

I’m gonna stop here and give a disclaimer. I know the writer got a lot of hate and harassment when this first came out, so I want to make it clear that while I have a lot of negative things to say here, none of this should be taken as justification to harass anyone involved in the creation of this character or his Friendsim. I’m not even going to say that I think V did any of this intentionally or with malice, it’s equally possible that the issues come from a lack of awareness. Thoughtful media criticism is important, but please don’t harass anyone in my name, or in the name of trans guys generally

Also, if you’re one of those people who thinks trans men aren’t “really” oppressed, don’t read this. I don’t want to have to deal with your whining when you inevitably don’t like what I have to say

TW for discussion of sexual harassment and assault

So let’s break this down. There are three routes you can play, each with a different ending: valid, chittr mutuals, and shamed 2 death. The valid route has a completely different characterization of Lanque than the other two, and which characterization you get is dependent upon how you answer a question at the beginning about whether or not you’re old/mature enough to handle a party with adult/sexual/“problematic” themes

If you say no, you get the version I call uwu softboy Lanque. He wears makeup and a flower crown, writes poetry, and is in touch with his emotions. This route gets you an ending where you don’t really befriend Lanque at all, you just strengthen your friendship with Lynera. If you say yes, you get the version I call fuckboy Lanque. He’s mean, overtly sexual, and tries to pressure you into doing drugs and having sex. There are two endings you can get with him. Either you alert Bronya to where you and Lanque are hiding, and therefore don’t end up having sex with him, or you don’t alert her and you do have sex. If you alert her, you and Lanque become chittr mutuals, though it’s implied that this is only so that you can hook up later. If you don’t, there’s a fade to black sex scene and then Lanque calls you a bad lay and leaves you to die of embarrassment

So what’s the problem here? The problem is that both versions of Lanque play into harmful stereotypes about trans men. The uwu softboy trans guy trope is basically the portrayal of trans men as always small, feminine, and young. This is employed to either infantilize us and therefore strip us of our autonomy (think “young girls are being coerced into transition”) or to portray us as ~evil men~ trying to make ourselves seem less ~evil~ by *checks notes* being gnc. Or both, depending on what’s more politically convenient in a certain situation. For example, in Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage trans guys are positioned as both the young “girls” being coerced into transitioning and the evil men doing the coercing

The latter use of the softboy trope, the one where we’re supposedly using it to hide our true nature as ~evil men~ is often combined with the idea that trans men are inherently dangerous and predatory by virtue of being men. This is usually employed by either people who call themselves trans-inclusive feminists but haven’t gotten past the idea that feminism means “men bad, women good”, or by TERFs who don’t care that they’re being contradictory. It relies on a form of gender essentialism that, instead of being about “biological sex” is about a supposed internal gender essence (think “trans men are men because they have male brains”). This trope is used to demonize and dehumanize trans men, and portray us as not needing sympathy or protection. It’s also usually paired with the idea that trans men gain systemic male privilege by transitioning (spoiler: we don’t). This combination of tropes has unfortunately proved to be pretty effective at getting cis women who are otherwise trans-inclusive to turn their backs on trans men

There’s also a racial element here, as Black trans men are typically seen as inherently aggressive due to racism, so the softboy framing is almost exclusively leveled at white trans men. Under white supremacist patriarchy, race and gender are inextricably linked. I’m writing this from the perspective of a white trans man, so there may be nuances I’m missing. Just please remember that there’s no one single trans male experience, and intersecting identities play a role in how bigotry impacts trans men

I also want to stop to talk about the sexual harassment and coercion aspect. I’m not going to speculate on whether or not V intended to portray Lanque as a sexual predator. I can’t know what’s in her head, and frankly it’s not important. Because of the general lack of education around consent in our culture, many people don’t really understand how sexual coercion works or what it looks like, and coercion being presented as normal and fine is unfortunately very common in media. I personally read the way Lanque pressures the player into sex as either sexual harassment (if you alert Bronya) or coercion (if you don’t). While I’m not going to say there are no trans men who are sexual predators, the fact is that trans men are extremely likely to be the victims of sexual violence. According to a study in 2015, roughly half of all trans men have been sexually assaulted, a fact that is rarely talked about and frequently swept under the rug. I’ve personally never seen a media representation of a trans man that dealt with that topic outside of Boys Don’t Cry (and that very emphatically did not handle it well. It was exploitative). So my issue with Lanque being written as sexually predatory isn’t just that I didn’t like it. There’s a real systemic issue with sexual violence towards trans men being ignored and silenced in favor of pretending that trans men are the real danger, and this version of Lanque plays right into it

However, when I first played Lanque’s Friendsim, I couldn’t articulate any of this. I couldn’t really put into words why it hurt so bad. And it did hurt. I went into this excited to see a character who’s like me show up in a franchise that had played a big part in my adolescence, but by the end of it I just felt awful. It wasn’t just that I didn’t like it, playing it made me feel bad about myself. I was ashamed of myself for getting so excited only to be let down. Being angry and not being able to put into words why I was angry only added to that shame. I didn’t want to be associated with Lanque. I didn’t want people to look at either version of him and think that I was like that, or that he was representative of me and my community. I felt betrayed. I also felt like I couldn’t even try to talk about it without being lumped in with the people who were harassing the writer

At the time, the only legible criticism I could articulate was that it was really annoying that they had Lanque take off his shirt and didn’t give him either a binder or top surgery scars. While it’s absolutely possible to be a trans guy with neither, it felt like a deliberate choice had been made to not give him any visible indicators of transness on top of his transness not being mentioned. I get not wanting to make a huge deal out of it, to write him as a trans character whose transness isn’t the focus of the story. But you can do that and also draw Lanque in a binder or with scars. Just have both Lanque and the player treat it like it’s completely normal, or even not acknowledge it at all. That’s a smaller issue, but that’s my advice to cis writers: you can have a character’s transness not be the focus without all but erasing it

Because of all this, I was pretty hesitant when I heard that Hiveswap part two had been released, and that Lanque was in it. I’d been burned before, but I had to know, so I read his wiki and watched a playthrough of his portion of the game. I’m glad I did, because I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it

(Spoiler alert for Hiveswap part two)

While he’s not explicitly called trans, the way him being a male jadeblood was portrayed was almost painfully relatable to me as a trans guy. The scorn, objectification, intrusive questioning, and thoughtless dismissal of his identity were all spot on, in my opinion. I also really liked that his actions felt realistic to what a trans man might have to do under an oppressive system like that. Framing Lynera and/or pushing Joey off the train if she figures him out are ~problematic~, sure, but his other options are to either permanently closet himself or get killed for his identity. And when you combine that with the ruthless nature of Alternian society, it makes sense for his character. After the disaster of his Friendsim, it was refreshing to see a trans guy who didn’t feel like three bigoted stereotypes in a trenchcoat

I honestly think Lanque makes a pretty good case study for the dos and don’ts of writing a trans guy. And his characterization in Hiveswap is a great example of how to make him morally grey without dehumanizing real life trans men in the process

Obligatory reminder that I’m just one trans guy and my opinion is my own. If you’re a trans guy who sees this differently, that’s fine. If you’re a cis person who sees this differently or thinks I’m wrong or overreacting, no offense but I don’t care even the slightest bit and will block you if you try to start shit on this post

#homestuck #lanque bombyx #sa tw #the quicksilvers say

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gemsofthegalaxy · 1 year

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warning: criticism of tdp season 4 and rayla and callum's whole thing. if you love how it's going and love what they did with the narrative and can't wait for the slow burn, then this post probably won't be to your taste, which is fine.

pleease let me know if there are any commonly used "negative" or "critical" type tags that people blacklist if they don't want to see negative opinions on the show, I'm not here often enough to have seen any, and this isn't meant to piss people off but instead to commiserate with people who are more in agreement. lol.

Okay, after going back and watching the finale of Season 3 to give myself more context...

I understand even less how so many people are like "As much as it pains me, I understand why Callum is so hurt and won't talk to Rayla and why he's mad" and "I'm glad they let Callum be mad at Rayla and didn't resolve it too quickly"

because I don't? Not that I don't think it's valid to be mad at someone for leaving you, but, we're dropped into this new dynamic out of nowhere. we don't even get to see Rayla leave. to me, it's just like, a bizarre vibe and one created from stuff that happens entirely off screen?

(I do know that there is a comic that apparently explains what happened between S3 and S4 but I haven't read it! and i wouldn't know about it if not for tumblr. i don't care to keep up with creators and i hate it when it feels like that's a prerequisite to understanding a tv show, which I usually presume to be standalone media. but i digress)

We know Rayla left on Callum's birthday. Dick move. We also know she left because she wanted to get revenge... on Viren..? who, as far as she knew, was completely dead though I can understand it would be unnerving that they never found his body.

I would hazard a guess the real reason would be trying to get those coins back because they contain her family members- again, apparently there is a canon reason available, but i don't have access to it, so I'm left to invent my own.

And Callum... Is pissed and feels betrayed, which I do get, however... what I don't understand is why he's not interested in hearing her explanation?? see, most of the time when I am hurt or wronged I want to hear the reason and have the person explain their process EVEN when i think it won't do anything to help me, and most of the people I know feel the same (certainly not all, but most). So, Callum specifically not wanting to talk and having this quiet disappointment-type-anger just comes across strange to me when i would think he'd be more like "Why'd you leave me? and what are you back for now? what is going on here Rayla?"

now, i have read, also on tumblr, that Rayla left him a LetterTM. I don't remember this being mentioned in Season 4, but I don't disbelief it and I could have just missed it. if it was exclusive to the comics, what I said above still stands.

if the letter is mentioned in Season 4, then, like, surely Callum does know something about why Rayla left? or at least has insight into what she was going through that prompted her leaving?? What little we get from her in Season 4 shows that she seemed desperate for answers and was paranoid, etc.... would he not have some sympathy?

I know he was left behind, but I don't get why people say that Rayla "betrayed" him or "lost his trust". If she left with an explanation that she was leaving, anyway- if she left without a trace and on purpose I would get she "betrayed" him(but I also feel like, if she just vanished completely, wouldn't Callum be more worried about her, and then relieved upon seeing her- even if he quickly turned sour after realizing she chose to leave. If, for 2 years she was just GONE out of thin air, and showed up again I think that would have garnered a different reaction?).

like. I don't know. I feel like I'm missing huge chunks of things (which, I guess I am, having not read the comic). and I don't necessarily want the characters to outline exactly how they're feeling a-la therapy speak, but they felt so robotic and strange this season that I still didn't feel like I was accessing any emotion from them that made sense. like, that's a bit of a harsh way to put it, but still!

overall, i don't really understand Callum and Rayla's emotional reactions to each other. I don't get why Callum wouldn't have an ounce of faith that Rayla had a valid reason for leaving even if it caused him pain. I also don't get why he doesn't want to know about what she faced, or a further explanation for why she left, and I suspect one of the major reasons they can't talk about it is they're just drawing it out for next season, but in that way it feels contrived, to me.

#tdp #the dragon prince #the dragon prince negative #tdp critical

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guildtree · 11 months

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Hi! This is going to be a big ventpost/diary entry/bid for understanding/I don't even know. It's me needing to get thoughts out of my head and into words basically. If you're not in the mood for that and just want more Guild Wars memes, fair enough, keep scrolling, I hope you have a lovely day.

For the rest of you brave souls:

One thing nobody told me about depression, or even recovering from a depressive episode, is that it totally fucks with your emotional regulation. For me at least, being depressed was not sadness per se but numbness. I think it's formally called anhedonia, I call it robot mode, but there's a point where the stress and pain gets too much and my brain simply says, "Enough," and hits the off-switch on all my emotions. I can't feel sadness, I can't feel anger, I can't feel joy. There was a period of a few years where my emotional range went from 'mildly pleased' to 'exhausted.' I've had friends and family tell me they could see a marked difference in how I acted during my lowest point, from having flat facial expressions to losing my sense of humor to being tired all the time. Robot mode is a serious shift in brain function.

Of course, now that I'm recovering from this I can feel the full range of emotion. Which is great! And... also not so great. Because the full range of emotion includes happiness, but it also includes anger and fear and jealousy and true crying sadness, all of which I seem to have forgotten how to handle. (Or maybe I never learned, since I was at least mildly depressed during what a psychologist might call a 'critical phase of development'.) A relative says something rude while I'm stressed and suddenly I want to punch them where before it would have slid off my back. I startle easily when a big truck zooms by, where before I would walk across a busy street without looking first because I simply didn't care. Sometimes it feels like I'm flipping through a photo album of different emotions, slowly remembering how to process one only for another to fly right out of left field.

Right now it's loneliness. There have been a lot of changes for me in the past two years, some because of outside circumstances and others because of choices I made to help myself feel better. I know I made the right decisions, but even good change leads to losing things, and I've lost contact with a lot of my friends at this point. I'm going to have to rebuild my social network all over again, which is a scary and painful and lonely process, and ironically I actually feel more sad from that because I'm not depressed. Sometimes having emotions feels more like a curse.

I think I have to remember the good parts of it too. Yes, I can feel happiness again, and a sunrise brings me peace instead of dread now, but also even the "negative" emotions have their place. Anger is what kept me alive. I'll often say that I'm still around mostly out of sheer spite, and it's true: a real breakthrough for me was realizing, "Hey, it's not my fault I'm hurting, it's the fault of an illness and the rest of the world being shitty", getting mad about it, and deciding to fight back. Fear keeps me from doing stupid things and in a sense leads to pride - because to be proud of yourself for stepping outside your comfort zone, you have to have an 'outside the comfort zone' to begin with. I'm starting to think the point of loneliness may be to push me to seek connection with others - the feeling that I need other people, that I hurt without them, has led me to be more vulnerable with others than I normally would, something that has generally turned out better than I expected.

I feel things now. I feel a lot of things now. It's scary and it's beautiful and it's overwhelming and I love it and I hate it and I'm so so glad I can. The world deserves more than robot-me. I deserve to be more than robot-me. Maybe someday I'll figure out happiness, but for now I'll take embracing the chaos as a substitute.

#hi if you've read this far (wow) and are willing to share your own experiences please do i'd love to hear it #especially if you've felt something similar to me #i've heard a lot of people describe depression as sadness or grief but for me that's never been true #depression is nothingness #the sadness comes after #cw depression #cw mental health

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eleiyaumei · 1 year

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My thoughts when I played Hakuōki for the first time

It’s been 2 years since I first played Hakuōki Kyoto Winds/Edo Blossoms so I thought I could share the notes I took back then. It’s mostly rankings with explanations.

Short Backstory: I only play otome I find on Steam and one day I found Hakuouki on there. I saw the time period, was reminded of the movie “Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise and immediately was like: “Oh, no, I don’t wanna play this misery fest.” But I was still interested (since there’s so few otome on Steam) and thus watched the first movie on Amazon. I don’t remember exactly what I thought of it but I must have been frustrated by how they handled Chizuru... One day, it’s the pandemic, I was stuck in my apartment and I bought KW & EB. And the rest is history…

Note: This is no debate, just my opinion, so don’t expect well-written, logical arguments for anything I wrote here. My opinions aren’t meant to offend anyone but if you don’t like Hakuōki or your favorite character(s) being critically/negatively discussed, please don’t read this or proceed with caution.

Feel free to share your first impressions of KW/EB or Hakuōki in general!

My thoughts after playing Kyoto Winds:

Love Interest Ranking:

1. Saito – perfect Kuudere! Always rational and logically-thinking.

2. Okita – child and adult at once, stubborn, teasing; I find myself in him. (I wasn’t in love with him back then and had to warm myself up toward him.)

3. Iba – perfect, but maybe TOO perfect… (I thought he would turn out to be a Yandere.)

4. Toudou – such a cute little baby!

5. Kazama – human-hater for good reasons, sadist with a soft side to him.

6. Nagakura – my broooo; his energy is contagious!

7. Hijikata – strict and soft at once.

8. Ryouma – hot, but TOO hot, too pushy, seems fake sometimes.

9. Yamazaki – powerless and seeking-to-be-useful like MC.

10. Harada – friendly sexist. (Did you know there’s a thing called “benevolent sexism”? That’s what he embodies. Yes, that’s still my opinion about him.)

11. Sannan – craycray for understandable reasons.

12. Souma – fanboy with ideals instead of a real personality.

Routes

1. Saito

2. Okita

3. Toudou

4. Iba - I didn’t like the ending. I also didn’t like that he let Takeda drift away in the river and MC didn’t question his behavior. No matter if he was an enemy, that still was dishonorable of Iba.

5. Hijikata

6. Ryouma

7. Kazama – too few moments

8. Nagakura

9. Harada

10. Sannan – too few/weak moments

11. Yamazaki – too few/weak moments

12. Souma – more a love story between him and the Shinsengumi

MC (‘s personality)

1. Kazama

2. Heisuke

3. Okita

4. Saitou

5. Hijikata – she apologizes too often

6. Nagakura

7. Harada

8. Ryouma

9. Iba

10. Sannan

11. Yamazaki

12. Souma

Love Stories

1. Heisuke – puppy love: Heisuke is such a lovable cinnamon role.

2. Okita – slow-burn

3. Kazama – MC learns that he isn’t a complete jerk.

4. Saito

5. Iba – cute with problems

6. Nagakura – more like a bromance

7. Hijikata – slow approach but nothing romantic yet

8. Harada – he admires her strength but doesn’t want her to fight: imbalanced.

9. Ryouma – more sexual than romantic

10. Yamazaki – in the end too much too fast

11. Sannan – barely any chemistry, few moments

12. Souma – no chemistry between MC and him

My thoughts after playing Edo Blossoms:

Love Interests:

1. Okita – joker with so much passion and so much warmth… (Can you tell I had fallen in love?)

2. Sakamoto – full of life and passion, his heart in the right place, jokester, intelligent

3. Heisuke – puppy that grows up

4. Nagakura – energy, empathy/compassion for enemies, sense of responsibility for his comrades, love for freedom/independence

5. Hijikata – strict, honorable, soft, can also tease/joke

6. Iba – such a good guy

7. Souma – a boy that grows into a man, cute like a kitten, courageous and proud like a lion

8. Saito – rational and shy, strong will

9. Harada – kind and hot but believing in traditional gender roles

10. Kazama – JERK with kind side, CAN be respectful

11. Sannan – I can’t warm up to this Kuudere; he tends towards madness because he doesn’t want to be (seen as) useless.

12. Yamazaki – irrational, crazy, power-hungry many times due to his low self-esteem, walking red flag. Why should I believe that he sees MC as more than a token and blood bag? He shyly asks for his first kiss but then he immediately doesn’t care if MC wants to kiss him or if the kiss is hurting her. Furthermore, he doesn’t show much interest in MC.

Routes:

1. Okita – all these feelings… This isn’t just Sōji’s route but Yukimura’s as well.

2. Sakamoto – kinda had everything (humor, drama, emotion) and nothing that bothered me too much.

3. Hijikata – Drama, baby! Many ups and downs, moments to laugh and to cry. The moment Kazama recognizes Toshi as a demon has gravitas and his death is honorable. The Sannan-subplot makes sense, Kodo’s death is cheap and easy. I love that Okita gets another scene BUT after that he is never mentioned again!

4. Heisuke – heartbreaking how a ray of sunshine turns into a depressive pessimist… Sannan as a crazy villain is an absolute no-go! This makes him weaker in Toshi’s and his own route because his downfall doesn’t really fit his character.

5. Nagakura – because of the depressive phases and MC’s will to fight. I find it immensely astonishing that Nagakura didn’t need nor used his Fury powers.

6. Iba – because MC took over control several times and Iba respected her decisions.

7. Saito – it’s only about him… (His route frustrated me the most since I was so hyped up at the end of his route in KW...)

8. Sannan – tragic how many distrusted him and he still kept on fighting. …Wait! How come that Kaoru was useless if Kodo only wanted pureblood blood?? …More scientific stuff would have benefitted the route.

9. Harada – MC is an anxious nerve wreck. (This influenced my whole perception of the route.)

10. Souma – still too much focus on the Shinsengumi but Souma has a good character development – from boy into a man.

11. Kazama – boring, nothing happens, threats are taken care of too soon; basically Yukimura’s route just with Kazama.

12. Yamazaki – Kazama takes the final blow from MC! Plot hole/Error: Furies don’t attack MC until Yamazaki defeats Kodo.

MC (‘s personality)

Baseline: She always feels guilty for everything and is just glad to serve as a blood bag…

1. Okita – She does not feel guilty for once and isn’t the only one that cares and makes sacrifices. Plus, she fights physically two times (against Kazama and imperial soldiers, she kills one) and verbally with Kaoru and Kodo in the end.

2. Iba – She has helpful ideas several times and Iba trusts and listens to her. But she thinks Iba is too good for her… BIG NO GO: MC would have let Iba r*pe her because she was sure that this was the demon arm’s doing. This situation traumatizes her for a little while.

3. Sakamoto – intelligent, passionate and strong-willed. She is not let down by insecurity, guilt etc., isn’t wailing the whole time and she is seething with anger towards her father due to his experiments (instead of wailing and not wanting to accept the truth).

4. Nagakura – she exercises fighting and enjoys Shinpachi’s blood-sucking. However, she accepts his proposal when they kiss for the first time and she never fights…

5. Toudou – she has a rather strong will and motivates Heisuke with her optimism but she doesn’t fight or does something else…

6. Hijikata – she cries easily but can talk big, has a strong will. But she is nothing more than a housewife…

7. Saito – she is nothing more than a caring, loyal housewife and a slow-witted blood bag (doesn’t understand what he feels for her until it is spoken out loud). But hey: At least she initiates her first time – on top of him.

8. Sannan – strong-willed but even she is doubting Sannan towards the end…

9. Kazama – she isn’t afraid to speak her mind in front of him, she regulates her objectives. She doesn’t want to re-open the Yukimura clinic even though she likes to take care of others, she is not a fan of marriage, would only marry Kazama.. But in the end, she gives up everything to be with Kazama.

10. Souma – she doesn’t do anything, does not confess to Souma but at least she asks him to spend the last night together with her. She only follows Souma and waits for him – as she is his senpai, I would have expected more of her. Since the north star represents Souma’s purpose of life for him and he is MC’s north star, MC’s purpose of life is Souma…

11. Harada – zero self-confidence, zero self-worth, 1000 anxieties… Harada’s love gives her strength, she only wants a peaceful life as wife, housewife and mother. (The first part reminds me too much of my hurting and depressed teenage self, the last part is something I cannot relate to.)

12. Yamazaki – completely dependent on him, weak, low self-worth, likes to be used.

Love Stories:

1. Okita – so mutual, equal and not toxic. At the beginning, MC takes care of Soji, later he takes care of her. For the first time in his life, he wants to live for ‘selfish’ reasons and wants to spend the rest of his life with MC. Both support each other until the very end.

2. Iba – cute.

3. Sakamoto – he jokes a lot but develops feelings for MC, takes care of her and respects her wishes.

4. Heisuke – it’s more about fighting Heisuke’s problems than their relationship..

5. Saito – slow burn but only MC sacrifices herself for him, not the other way round.

6. Hijikata – takes a long time but is rather cute. He gets softer and can tease MC.

7. Souma – kitten love but development isn’t really visible. Others have to bring them together…

8. Harada – MC depends on his reassurance. It feels bad that Harada is leaving his friends behind for her even though that’s a ~romantic~ gesture.

9. Kazama – he respects her wishes and learns something new. But in the end, he is as ignorant and arrogant as in the beginning… (I HATE THIS still.)

10. Sannan – seemingly pure love: all-trusting, all-forgiving… (You should not trust someone when they don’t trust you back. You should not forgive if you never get anything back in return.)

11. Nagakura – romantic development rather sudden or primarily in the blood-sucking scenes.

12. Yamazaki – rather one-sided and toxic.

Couples I can support:

OkiChi, IbaChi, SakaChi.

Couples I can accept:

HijiChi, SaiChi, HeiChi (Somewhere along the line Heisuke got lost in his own feelings and stopped empathizing with MC. Granted, that’s how depression works, but it does not make for a good relationship. At least in his epilogue, we see him apologizing to MC for not helping reach her goal of finding her father. A glimpse of Kyoto Winds’ Heisuke.), NagaChi, SomaChi

Couples I can barely tolerate:

HaraChi (MC depends too much on Harada’s support; Harada projects his own dreams too much on her without really considering her feelings (though it seems like he cares at first sight).)

SanChi (There’s not much common ground between the two. Sannan does not seem to have much of a romantic interest in MC. He seems more like a happy single. Pairing him with MC is like rewarding her loyalty, kindness and patience with a relationship despite a lack of reciprocated feelings.)

KazaChi (JUST because of that darn ending!)

Couple I find repulsive and can only warn others about:

YamaChi

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anhed-nia · 2 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/23/2022: V/H/S/99

Sorry if this is barely a review of the actual movie, but it's what I have to say.

My father is a retired art critic whose name you'd probably know if you were into art critics. One day when I was a kid and trying to give him a hard time about his profession, I asked him some pointed question about how he approaches bad reviews. He said that he only printed things that he thought the artist might find it useful to hear, and that shut me up. I don't know if that was strictly true all the time, but it stuck in my mind, even though it may not have sunk in right away.

I used to write about movies in a pretty aggressive way. There are various reasons for that. The most innocent one is that my earliest experience was writing coverage of submissions to what was meant to be an all-horror cable network; I had to watch and write about around ten movies a week, and a lot of them were pretty brutal, made by people who either couldn't make a decent movie or, much worse, who thought you didn't even have to try as long as you were making a horror movie. I felt really attacked by the latter type, and I retaliated in stronger and stronger terms until figuring out the meanest thing I could possibly say had become sort of a hobby. I never thought very much about writing publicly, so I never considered my audience. When I started blogging later, I remained pretty obscure, so it still felt reasonable to use writing as a rage valve. Inevitably, though, I grew up a little more, and had to think about what the point of writing really was for me—and the answer was not that I just wanted to be a dick. I wanted to express abstract feelings that art gave me in a way that other people could access if they wanted to. There were things I wanted to explore, discoveries I could only make by trying to verbalize something about a movie, theories I could only prove if the words I chose seemed to work. Plus, I realized, there are people in the world besides myself. Making movies, even bad ones, is really hard, and I'm increasingly meeting people who try it. I became more circumspect about when I wrote out of anger, regardless of who I thought would ever read it.

I have noticed that it's extremely common for people to mistakenly equate intelligence with just being insulting. They think the word "criticism" is inherently negative, and they assume "critical thought" must always result in tearing something down. I once dated a guy like that, and as you might imagine, it was a nightmare. He was always bragging about his class rank and his SAT score, even though those things were far in the past and he never pursued more than a bachelor's degree. His whole manner of displaying intelligence was to as elaborately hostile as possible, about whatever he was discussing; almost the only time he ever had anything nice to say was when he'd stolen a positive opinion from a Rolling Stone article or something. When he was trying to sound smart (which was most of the time), he'd just string together as many malicious adjectives as possible in front of whatever his subject was. I know how that feels, to malign something at full strength; it feels powerful. But if you hear somebody else do it enough times, you start to realize how limited and pathetic it is.

All that said, I wasn't crazy about V/H/S/99. If I had taken the time to watch another movie yesterday, I would have included that in my Blogtober program instead. It's hard to know what to say about this movie that's at all useful. The V/H/S series is often a mixed bag, which is maybe more forgivable for an anthology than a one-story feature, and I try to watch them with an eye toward whatever part I enjoy the most. This time out, it's harder than usual for me to pick.

In Maggie Levin's aggressively '90s-flavored "Shredding", a wannabe band explores the ruins of a destroyed music venue where legendary riot grrls Bitch Cat played their final show. Naturally, Bitch Cat is still in there, but now they're a bunch of freaky ghouls. There are some superfluous details about why this is, but like, they're really superfluous, much like the imitation '90s rock music that turns up a bit too often. The ghouls look pretty good though, if you squint hard enough through all the stylized digital glitching.

Johannes Roberts' "Suicide Bid" is my favorite segment, although I still find myself picking around my least favorite parts. In this very Tales from the Crypt-y short, Ally Ioannides is so desperate to belong to her sorority of choice that she doesn't even notice they're obviously about to haze her. It is genuinely horrifying to watch her come to terms with the fact that she has been buried alive and abandoned in a grave that is slowly filling with rainwater. I found the ending a little dashed off, but some of it definitely got my attention.

Edgy, arty hip hop star Flying Lotus made a movie in 2017 called KUSO that is as hard to watch as it is to forget: a delirious, paranoid, blackly comic fantasy with touches of ERASERHEAD and SPACE IS THE PLACE, featuring moments of genius dog-paddling in a mire of scatological drek. It's a movie you can smell, expressing a hysterical fear and loathing of bodies in general, and of women specifically, and it's hard to enjoy even if it is occasionally inspired and hilarious. Anyway, I almost could have guessed that the V/H/S/99 segment "Ozzy's Dungeon" was made by Flying Lotus. It's a nightmare vision of the Nickolodeon game show Double Dare in which two kid competitors struggle through a dangerous obstacle course styled after the human digestive system, in order to have their "favorite wish" granted. I enjoyed the actual mechanism of wish-granting, but you have to wade through a lot of shit—literally!—in order to get there.

Tyler McIntyre's "The Gawkers" is the source of the movie's confusing wrap material, which is an extremely crude stopmotion movie involving toy soldiers and a lot of ketchup or whatever. This actually bothered me the most out of everything in V/H/S/99, because it so poorly represents homemade productions like this; there are zillions of non-professionals of all ages out there making cheap, charming, fun little hobbyist productions like this with way more creativity and ability, why didn't they just hire one of those guys? But anyway, it turns out the toy soldier stuff is made by a group of unusually obnoxious teenage boys who dupe their weakest link into installing spyware on the computer of the hot chick next door. Spoiler alert: the hot chick turns out to be Medusa! This is a great idea for a movie about voyeurism, and with a longer running time one could explore the important role of the video camera in this misadventure, but unfortunately the vast majority of this short is just shitty teenagers loudly talking over each other. Indoor voices guys, please, for the luva mike!

Finally, Vanessa and Joseph Winters' "To Hell and Back" was convoluted enough that I had to look up what exactly happened in it to write about it the next day, and I found that I wasn't sure I'd actually seen all of what's described in online synopses. This just means that, as I did recall properly, the segment is really dark and hard to parse visually. This is a problem that dogs the V/H/S series because there's pressure to add realism by layering on all kinds of distortion on top of footage that is forcibly non-professional looking. Basically, I didn't hate this story about a camera crew who are accidentally sent to hell during the filming of a magic ritual, but I also couldn't get a lot out of it.

Thus I hope have managed to review V/H/S/99 without being a total dick, but it's still pretty clear what I thought of it. There's no #hailraatma moment in here for me to cling to, and at almost every moment I was just hoping for the inevitable murders to be expedited so I could spend less time with the many loud, awful characters in this movie. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch V/H/S/85 too, when it comes out next year, but I'm on my guard.

#blogtober #blogtober 2022 #v/h/s #v/h/s/99 #found footage #anthology #horror #supernatural #zombie #monster #demon #witchcraft #witch #flying lotus #vanessa winter #joseph winter #maggie levin #tyler mcintyre #johannes roberts

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ladybirdplace · 9 months

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Update

So, I haven’t been posting much at all anymore. I’ve mentioned before that it was due to OCD but I think I’ll elaborate now about that.

For over a year now, I’ve been in a shame spiral about some aspect of myself that I don’t find it pertinent to detail here, not to mention how long it would take to explain, how much eloquence I would have to use to explain why it has taken over my life.

But I want to say instead the way that it has impacted me. I’ve been severely depressed, suicidal on and off. My self esteem has plummeted and I’ve relapsed into negative patterns of thinking about myself from when I was younger.

While I know my negative thoughts about myself are irrational and my insecurities are very minor and are really not a big deal at all, I cannot help the way my brain flies off the handle because I’ve thought of myself in a certain way my entire life, and the cognitive dissonance is strong.

I’ve been feeling a lot of grief for the way I always wanted to be. I’ve dug deep into my own past to examine the way people have treated me in my life and what it caused me to think of myself.

I’ve tried, in many ways, to find out where I 'went wrong'. In reflecting on my younger self, I wonder how I could have possibly turned into the person I am now.

What’s more to the point, I feel that all the progress I made in my relationship with myself has been shattered, or at least blocked and is now unavailable.

I still love myself. That never changes. It is a part of me that can never be taken away. But my mind . . . It runs wild, and I can’t control it. I can’t control my intrusive thoughts about myself, and I need to train myself to not react to these thoughts.

However, being able to know whether they are your own real thoughts or not, whether they are some thought about yourself that you’ve pushed away and repressed is difficult, knowing that I have repressed certain things that I’ve thought about myself before.

It’s hard when you’ve only just found out you have OCD to figure out what you really think and what you don’t.

In past years, I’ve been able to identify my intrusive thoughts as non sequitur, often repellent thoughts that I didn’t want to have.

But the existential or self critical ones I can’t really parse.

And it’s even harder when a part of you enjoys your own misery and feels that that misery is part of who you are, and what your life is.

To make a long story short, I’ve felt disconnected from myself. I don’t feel the same free flowing constant conversation within myself as I did before. Looking at myself makes me feel embarrassed or numb. Some days it makes me gag to think of saying 'I love you' to myself.

I look at my posts here and feel like I'm a different person now. I feel like I didn’t write these posts. So it’s been hard to post because I feel like I’m not the owner of this blog right now.

And, I can only assume as a result of my depression and isolation, I feel like my brain is stagnating and I have nothing to say. I’m not as articulate and creative anymore.

But I am married. I made a promise to myself to love me, and care for me, and I’m not giving up, no matter how hard it is.

I've fought for my love once before, and I’ll do it again, and again after that, and I’ll fight for it until I’m dead, because a life as me, as myself, is the only life worth living to me.

And . . . I guess the point of this post is that, things go up and down. Sometimes it can seem like everything you do for yourself doesn’t matter when you’re constantly swamped with self judgement.

A self relationship can be just as if not more tumultuous as any. It can be violent and scary and traumatizing. Maintaining it can seem futile, and miserable, and nearly impossible.

But love is worth fighting for. You are worth fighting for. You deserve to love and respect and trust yourself. You deserve to live in peace.

#ladybird speaks #OCD #mental health #tw suicidality

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thetaekookcloset · 2 years

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Hi! For transparency sake, I want to say that I am a Jikooker and I like to read other ships blogs to broaden my views on how others perceived certain duos. I came across your blog recently and I like your levelheadedness when approaching asks that are different from your views. I’m one who thinks that people/shippers don’t have to believe the same things and I enjoy reading about why people are passionate about their own ship even if I disagree in thinking there’s romantic potential there. My enjoyment halts when I come across people putting down members in favour of their ship or anything like that. Your blog seems far from that (to my knowledge) because it seems like you respect the other members even though Tae and JK are your faves. My question is how do you feel about the overall ‘reputation’ that Taekookers have as being the ship full of conspiracies about the company and Jimin preventing Taekook from happiness. I hope I am not coming across as rude because I don’t intend to offend or look like I’m a Jikooker “starting shit” on a Taekook blog. I am genuinely curious on how Taekookers who are nice and respecting of others feel when the louder more toxic Taekookers actions reflect badly on them as a whole. This ask is not to say that Jikookers/other shippers are perfect people with no toxicity in our/their ships because that’s not the case, every ship has bad apples. I ask this because I regularly see the public opinion (which includes non-shippers and non-Army’s) compare Taekookers to Larrys or say that they are the most delusional ship. I try to put myself in the shoes of cool Taekookers who don’t align with that behaviour and I would feel annoyed if I were lumped into that negative opinion that some people have on Taekookers. I saw a thread of non-shippers on Twitter basically agreeing with this post and I immediately thought that the cool Taekookers don’t deserve to be seen through that lens.

Hello and welcome! Thanks for sending in such a respectful ask.

The short answer to your question is yeah, it’s frustrating for me sometimes lol. I wish I could just brush it off and not care, but for me personally, that’s always been something I struggle with. Especially if I put a lot of thought into something, even if other people don’t agree with me, it stings sometimes to see that effort and those thoughts brushed off as though they’re completely useless, based on the actions and beliefs of people I don’t know and don’t agree with.

There are a lot of Taekookers out there who either don’t think very critically about what they’re being told, or who see things through an overly simplistic lens, and there are definitely some who take things too far or bring shipping into spaces where it ought to be left out of. I get that there are a lot of “us” who are like that, probably more than for other ships, though I would imagine that’s just because Taekook happens to be the most popular.

It annoys me to see that from Taekookers the same way it annoys me to see it from others -- in fact, probably more, because it’s frustrating when I know I’m going to be associated with them, and also because, in my opinion, no one needs to lean on false narratives or stretched truths or outright falsehoods in order to see the real possibility that Taehyung and Jungkook could be in a relationship.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s plenty of true, factual evidence to support that idea, so it does frustrate me when other Taekookers eschew that evidence to instead talk nonsense, and I do know that happens, I see it often myself.

That said, it’s also frustrating to have all of us immediately lumped together as though we’re a monolith who all believe the exact same things, because just like ARMY is itself not a monolith, neither is any one subcategory of it. So like I said, it does grate on me to know that the real evidence is brushed aside by non-Taekookers, and the real analysis and genuine thoughtfulness of some Taekookers goes ignored and dismissed, just because a certain faction of people who also happen to like Taehyung and Jungkook, and might think they’re together, are ridiculous about it.

Those people’s actions and beliefs don’t automatically mean that the whole idea is absurd. It’s like, I don’t know, assuming that everyone who believes in Santa make up all of the people in the world who like Christmas, and then disregarding the entire holiday as being fake just because of that. Lol I have no idea if that metaphor works at all, but hopefully you get what I mean.

Anyway haha, at the end of the day this is just one topic of millions on the Internet and it doesn’t really matter if people agree or disagree, and if people are going to look down on me for seeing something between Taehyung and Jungkook that they don’t see, that’s their prerogative. In my opinion, they’re missing out by doing so. So I just try to keep to my own little corner where I can chat about what I like, and try not to let it get to me too much while I enjoy myself and keep supporting BTS because I genuinely enjoy and care about all of them.

I hope this answered your question! Thanks for giving me a chance to address some of this stuff lol, and thanks again for being respectful and kind, it’s appreciated!

#ask

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voredere · 2 years

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ok since i can't seem to find a single person willing to say it that isn't using it as a dogwhistle for some nasty kiddy porn crap i gotta do everything myself around here.

the thing about Purity Culture isn't an issue of morality, it's an issue of engagement. what literary analysis asks someone to do is engage with a piece of art, regardless of themes and content, and interpret what the story means to the audience, to the author, and to the characters. you aren't intended to agree with everything depicted-- without even getting into unreliable narratives and the fact "protagonist" means "main character" and not "good guy", once art progresses past an elementary reading level, the reader is expected to take a certain responsibility. Instead of the narrator spoon feeding the plot and morals, the "narrator" is often the protagonist themselves, and we see things from their (potentially flawed) perspective. the reader is expected to look at the protagonists experiences and decide for themselves what is good and bad and if the protagonist is in the right. often the themes of the book will reflect which side the author wants you to take, but the author won't always take the time to write out an explicit condemnation outside of subtext and interpretations. you see this in series like death note, or lolita, or watchmen, or even in children cartoons like invader zim; the protagonist isn't necessarily the good guy or even in the right, and it's the readers responsibility to figure this out.

so that covers "A Book Containing Negative Themes Doesn't Mean The Author Condones Those Themes". there's obvious exceptions where you can tell the author does, ie it's an autobiographical fiction, or They Said So, or there's some weird fetishistic themes. But again, it's up to the reader to read and decide for themselves if that's the case.

But what if the author IS bad?

well, here's where it gets dicey and you have to make some more personal decisions. does the work have artistic value despite its flaws? does engaging with the work privately cause overt harm? (like, if the author has been dead for 400 years, you probably aren't benefiting them by reading). is there anything you can learn by studying the work? are you capable of engaging with the work at a personal distance and deciding what to internalise?

there are some things out there you probably won't find any value in consuming. some legal obscenity standards are even based on the concept of "would an average adult be able to find artistic value in the work". but some works you can gain a lot from studying-- sociological data, inside perspectives on atrocities, dogwhistles to look for, mistakes to avoid repeating, patterns, insight into the author, or "worst guy you know just made a great point". Hell, even guys like freud are still studied today despite most being recognised as garbage.

point being: a complete non engagement policy doesn't build strong critical thinking skills. it's fine to be uncomfortable with some themes, and it's fine to feel an author is reprehensible. this doesn't mean reading their work will make you a bad person. whether or not a book makes you a bad person depends entirely on how YOU respond to it, interpret it, and internalise it. you can control these things. i promise reading a few Bad Books will not make you guilty of thoughtcrimes, nor will it animorph you into a horrible person. you obviously don't have to read everything that makes you uncomfortable, i just severely wish people would stop just straight up not reading entire genres of literature bc OP (guy who has been dead for decades) was problematic.

this does not apply to things like kiddy porn, which lack artistic value and have a genuinely negative impact on public psychological health. kiddy porn enthusiasts do not interact.

#god i'm punching the hornets nest with this one #anyway cancelling dead people doesn't work #they are already cancelled due to being dead #kids these days like oh catcher in the eye is problematic #bro that's not the POINT

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blairwaldcrf · 2 years

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okay! Now that we got this covered. Which was THE breaking point for you? Since you left that faith behind. Was there one particular thing that made you realize "well, shit I gotta get outta this" or many things piling up? And, since your original post already implies negative experiences, I'd be curious if you have any positive experience too?

Okay! So, positive first:

I do miss the sense of community. Because so many days are spent together, each congregation is pretty close. (Sunday being church service, certain days of the week being 3 hour youth/women/men groups as well, and often Saturday service projects.) I grew up in poverty that without the church's assistance would have been very bad. They have programs where they overview finances and help allocate food and necessities they keep in a "storehouse" to it's members, which literally saved my family. Groups in our congregation dropped off expensive toys and gifts on our doorstep on Christmas without taking credit. They do highly value acts of service.

negative/personal/triggers below

Now as for what made me leave, it was a piling of things on another.

It's important to remember that from a very young age girls are told over and over about how important it is to keep your body pure and untouched before marriage, and too often this discussion occurs without the nuance of sexual assault in the conversation. This made me, as a victim from very young ages, consistently feel shamed and forced into self hatred.

One of the most poignant memories I have of "questioning whether it was a true church" was finding out that black men weren't allowed to hold the priesthood until the 70's. The reasonings I was given varied from offensive to disgusting, and while I was a white girl growing up in a town with only two black people in its entirety, my analytical brain hated the fact I never got a straight answer that wasn't rooted in hatred.

As I entered my teenage years, my next issue was around sex. I felt deeply that sex didn't have to be a sin and could actually be an expression/act of love, but I was told over and over that it was a sin second to murder. Murder. Nothing about that felt true to my experiences and as I started to grow past my shame I became critical of the teaching.

When I came out to myself and friends as bisexual, I had an acceptance of myself very similar to abuela's from ODAAT where I figured if god is love and god didn't make mistakes, then I was fine. ... However after my first girlfriend and I broke up, I figured I had been wrong and that God was punishing me. A friend from school who was also only a teenager sent me material from what was basically a conversion therapy website sponsored through the church explaining that my same-sex attraction was due to mommy issues. When I saw how the Mormon church fought against LGBTQ+ rights, I started to split my affiliation with the church while still technically being apart of it.

The final tipping point was when I was told by my bishop that the reason I was self-harming and suicidal was because I had previously had sex before marriage and that I needed to repent before I could ever be happy again. To me, any authority figure who could say something like that to a seventeen-year old girl who was showing signs of actual mental illness that needed medication was not someone who spoke through God. None of the bishops I had spoken with throughout the years had ever seemed like they really spoke through God, except for maybe one. Instead they were all men with too much influence, quoting scripture and going through the motions.

Since I left, I've had the church send a letter to my brother asking where I lived now. I had that previous horrible bishop tell me once more upon a reunion that I did not in fact have Bipolar disorder. I've had several people try to pressure me back into the church... It's hard to explain how it's a cult without being someone in it, but I HIGHLY recommend watching Under the Banner of Heaven because it gets the Utah mormon culture just dead on, as well as the history of the church. It's a great mystery/true crime drama.

#anti mormon #anti mormonism #ex mormon

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funkymbtifiction · 1 year

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I’d see in type descriptions how Fe feels like they fit in, and then they learn to stand out, but I don’t feel like that’s true for me. I feel like I can’t fit in, but I desperately want to.

I would say that is how most FJs feel. Not that they are automatically accepted, but that they desperately want to be.

Sure I wanna be authentic, and I say that, but then as soon as I do something abnormal or weird or get a negative reaction from people, I start internally criticizing myself and start changing my behavior to appear more normal and fit in.

Why? Why do you want to be more normal and fit in? Digging into the why will be very self-revealing. (To get love? Approval? To avoid being a target for others? To smooth things over?) And... question what normality is. What IS normal and who qualifies? Everyone but you? Is this an arbitrary invisible standard that you are creating in which to use to self-punish and self-criticize?

How do you combat feelings of sensitivity?

By learning to step back and consider the source. You cannot control what others say and do, but you can control your reaction to it. If you decide not to be overwhelmed all the time by others, you can often take some down time and work through your feelings.

Criticism can deeply affect me as a person and it can make me feel worthless.

Here again, it's important to use Ti to think about the criticism and ask if it is valid or helpful. Constructive criticism points out a problem (that is not an insult) and helps you solve it. Constructive criticism is "you need a comma in this sentence so it reads better," or "you seem to be too affected by this, you need some distance from it." General criticism is often not useful and reflects someone's own feelings -- ie,I don't like _______. If there's no solution behind it, if it cannot be fixed, criticism is not useful and can be dismissed. So consider the source, consider their intentions, consider how useful it is, don't automatically internalize it and beat yourself up with it. Learn to keep it about the subject it's on, not on its indication of your character.

Especially when it comes to trying new things, and I don’t get it on the first try, I have the urge to basically give up.

Two thoughts with this confession --

Are you seriously getting criticized on your first try? If so, what does that tell you about the character of the person criticizing your first attempt? (Clue: they are neither patient nor compassionate.)

It's unrealistic to assume you are going to be perfect or get it on the first try. Expertise and skill comes with 10,000 hours of practice! Why would you be the magical child who gets it right the first time? Why are you so easy to defeat? Why would you give up instead of keep trying? Where's your fighting spirit? Keep trying!

Why can everyone get it but not me?

They keep trying.

I lowkey wish I wasn’t so sensitive or didn’t care about what others thought of me compared to my peers.

Me too. I'll let you in on a secret: they don't care. It's you who care, who thinks everyone is watching you, waiting on you, judging you, when in reality, everyone is obsessed with themselves. So worried about how THEY are coming across, nobody is thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are. What this means is that you are free to be yourself, to do what you think is best, and to try again. In truth, people respect and admire those who keep trying more than those who give up, so give yourself the gift of persistence.

Something else -- the older you get, the more this will matter less. As you get older and go through life, you will find some things are more important than being included or seen as normal. I am guessing you are quite young and that is always a confusing time of trying to figure out who you are and how you fit into the world. Cut yourself some slack. It will be okay. :)

#question #mbti

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