#''what you are experiencing is trauma. you didn't need to be in the building for it to affect you.''

[depresseddepot]

the case of the "coworker that knows exactly what I'm thinking and exactly what to say" strikes again

#aka she stopped by my desk today and said #''i have to say something to you. you don't have to look at me while i say it nor do you have to say anything back'' #''what you are experiencing is trauma. you didn't need to be in the building for it to affect you.'' #''i need you to really listen and understand that something really shitty happened to you and im sorry'' #''it isn't a failure to ask for help or for time off or to drop out for a little while'' #and i think someone warned her abt how i was acting bc she was then like #''pretending that you don't feel anything does not mean the trauma isn't there'' #and i. ofc. cried like a baby #how in the world does this women always know EXACTLY what i need to hear #the ''you don't have to look at me or respond while i say it'' is what got me. like. girl you can see right through me huh #anyways i feel a bit guilty bc im worried she thinks she has to be a second mother to me now #and while i definitely need it (lmao) i don't want her to feel pressured to always Be Compassionate Like That to me #like. i am an adult and we ARE just coworkers #but man. to be percieved (affectionate) but also to be perceived (derogatory) #or whatever #i work with so many mothers that are way more touchy and wise than my own mother lol #like one of them has stopped me at the door every day since it happened and asked me if i was REALLY okay #and like. i guess they all could tell i was lying?? idk #i think my boss has been pulling people aside and telling them to take it easy on me for a while but i dont know for sure so #anyways. i also have had 1 day off in the last two weeks #all the better to dissociate through i suppose but man. i love money #this post is all over the place

[tonkatsubowl]

aventurine can't help but admire you from afar.

the way the wind flows with your hair, the way your eyes lit up when you smile, the way you just... ugh, everything! despite being bold, haughty and confident, the man was actually a bit nervous to talk to you—or confess, even.

why?

trust issues and trauma, of course.

"i suggest you try speaking with them. in reality, not everyone will constantly betray you or stab you behind your back. take a leap of faith, and test the waters, gambler."

dr. ratio says as the gambler slumps back against his seat, grumbling. aventurine's face was occupied by an open book, in which he definitely did not read.

"this is all too frustrating. really, i'm experienced with talking with women, bedding them—but it's rather annoying that i can't even talk to them." aventurine sighs with a sheepish smile, "perhaps this is a curse that was placed upon me. truly, a riveting way to die." he sarcastically says.

"you're not going to die," dr. ratio says, folding his arms across his chest, "you are merely confused with your actions at this point. i had already suggested you a few ideas, and i won't speak any further."

"oh, c'mon now, don't be like that~."

"you are being pesky, and stubborn. the door is behind you whenever you wish to leave."

the gambler sighed, rubbing the back of his head, "alright, alright. i will leave you to your... whatever you were doing earlier. i'm not opposed to your suggestion, but rather, i am... conflicted, as you say."

dr. ratio sighed again. he did say he wouldn't speak any further after that. but finally, aventurine left, leaving the man be.

days later, you were with the express team. as though aventurine had successfully guessed you'd temporarily depart ways with your crew, he approached you. you were visiting a cat café that time, and he first admired you through the windows of the building. you were happy, and it was a beautiful sight. you held a few cats, took a small nap with a few of them, and you began to play with them. that was when he finally approached you, letting the cats come to sniff him out.

"my, i didn't expect you to visit this kind of café," aventurine says, catching your attention.

like a cat, you perked up, gaze wandering towards the familiar voice before your eyes sparkled upon seeing him. "oh, 'ven!"

his heart skipped a beat, but he hid it. he had nearly forgotten that you gave him a nickname the moment you two first met. aventurine was too much of a hard word to say, you told him that one day, so you decided to give him a nickname.

"the one and only." he says, lowering his sunglasses. as he sat next to you on the floor, the cats came to snuggle up against him. one cat, in particular—a white one with a luxurious collar—came to sleep upon his lap. you cooed at the sight, lifting a kitten and setting it on your lap.

"what brings you here? i didn't expect you to be the type of person to visit a cat café, especially with how busy you are."

aventurine shook his head, "i just wanted to see you."

you blinked, tilting your head. "you wanted to see me?"

he nods, stroking the cat on his lap, giving you a faint smile. "... i was wondering. this request i am about to make isn't business related, or anything of the matter. i've no ill motives behind it—but would you like to... come join me for dinner sometime tonight? that is, if you allow it if you aren't busy. or your... friends allow it." he knows how protective the express team can be of you.

you paused for a moment, blinking. "... like... like a date?"

he nods again, "a date."

"oh! then sure!" you smiled brightly, and your answer was instantaneous too. "i'll just let the others know i'll be busy tonight. where are we going?"

"ah, nothing too fancy (a lie). i just wish to show you my favorite spots here in penacony."

"okay! well, i'll try to dress up nicely, then."

"no need," aventurine shakes his head, "i've already set up a whole schedule for us. let's look at various of clothing later, and see which one you like most."

you blinked. you didn't have that much credits to spend, honestly... "ah... but my budget—"

"who said you were paying?" he flashed a smile. "my dear, i will be the one spoiling you tonight."

"... oh. but wait, that's so much money! please, you don't have to do all of that for me..."

"ah, don't worry! i have all the credits in the world."

"... o-okay."

the night of the date, you were a tad nervous. you didn't know what to wear, and luckily enough, march was kind enough to dress you up a bit.

waiting at the designated location of the date, aventurine shows up wearing his sunglasses as usual. he smiles, taking your hand into his, before gracefully leaving a kiss atop of the back of your palm. you lightly flush, before following the gambler towards wherever he wanted to go...

... and the first stop was the expensive clothing store! it consisted of luxurious of dresses, suits, tuxedos and what not. throughout your time there, the man was practically dolling you up. letting you try on different sets of clothes, getting one custom made on the dot, and even trying to have you match with him.

you finally found the right set, and it was ungodly expensive... but aventurine paid it off like it was nothing, and waited for you to come out with the dress, or whatever you had on. and once you left the dressing room, aventurine's heart melted a bit. his eyes softened, but the color of his shades had hid his admiration for your beauty. he clears his throat, snapping himself back to reality (dreamscape) before rising.

"you look stunning, (y/n)." he says, taking your hand once more, "i adore seeing that on you. perhaps you should wear it more frequently, it suits you like no other."

you felt butterflies roam in your stomach as you look at yourself in the mirror. "you... think so?"

he shakes his head, "i know so."

the second stop was a fancy restaurant. it was built into a casino, so from there, he introduced expensive, five star meals to you and showed you how to play a few games. he won you a cute little plush of (insert favorite animal) through a game vendor, and proceeded to bring you around. he was showing you off like a trophy, too, bringing his arm around your waist to show the world you were rightfully his.

at least, not yet.

the third and final spot was a scenery.

it took a while for the both of you to get there, but the hike was worth it. once you got to the top, you saw the outstanding view of penacony, and you took a moment to admire the horizon.

the night sky, how the stars sprinkled and welcomed you into their sights, and how... aventurine looked stunning underneath the night sky.

you admired him for a moment. he was truly a beautiful man, and instead of admiring the stars, you were admiring your future lover. you felt your heart melt as you sat, staring at him so lovingly.

"hmm? is there something on my face?" asked-he, his smile widening as though to tease you.

you decided to get a little bold, "beauty."

he chuckled to himself, his heart racing. his pride won't admit that he literally felt the world around him explode as you said that. there was just something about you that was just so... perfect.

and yet, all in all, the man was still terrified of you. given his trust issues and everything, he wasn't sure of you - but he knew that he was happy being around you.

all it took was time.

"i can say the same for you," he says in a soft voice, coming closer to you, "did you enjoy tonight?"

you smile, brushing his golden locks away from his visage, "i did. when will we have a second date?"

you paused.

"w-wait, i mean... that's too far, right? i mean, don't get me wrong, i-i'd love to have a second date with you, but that is if... you're okay with it!"

he blinked, before smiling, a chuckle leaving his lips as he returned the favor for you. brushing your hair away from your face.

"... i wouldn't mind. let's have another one again soon."

#honkai star rail #hsr #hsr x reader #hsr aventurine #honkai star rail aventurine

[mmgwritings]

RUIN ME, RUIN US

Characters: Kaz Brekker / Dreg ! Reader

Prompts: “I… I want you to touch me,” Kaz admits, while staring up at the ceiling, "There" cheeks reddening in an increasing show of embarrassment. (prompt created by @dumplingsjinson)

Warnings: Smut; Canon divergence; Obviously, I didn't proofread again; Masturbation; Oral Sex; NSFW; Really Long Text Sorry!

The streets were packed with people. Dazzled tourists, ravkan peasants, privileged and neglected children fought for space in the alleys with merchants, prostitutes and pickpockets - all the same, all too happy with the promises of the holiday. Nachtspel was an event during the Kerch year, in Ketterdam the party lasted for more than a week if you looked for the right club to spend money on frivolous pleasures.

This year people commented that the festival would last a month due to the visit of King Nikolai of Ravka, a tall man with a sarcastic smile who every now and then Y/N would bump into in the Slat - a place where kings didn't belong, that much she knew... at least not kings with a good reputation. The visit of the Ravkans was a promise of prosperity, King Nikolai and his entourage were in Ketterdam to bargain a spice trade line with the Council of Tides, a way of linking Ravka, Kerch and Shu Han in a triple alliance.

But it's interesting to think that King Nikolai is smart enough to also bargain with the real monarch of Kerch: Kaz Brekker. Y/N had not yet been in Ketterdam years ago when the Fold was destroyed, when a certain Ravkan prince needed the help of a small gang of thieves. But she heard about all this from Jesper, the Dregs' sharpshooter and part of Kaz's small retinue: the Crows. She also heard about the former king of Ketterdam, Pekka Rollins, and how Kaz made him beg, how he took everything from Rollins: clubs, indentures, friends in politics. Everything.

Well, almost everything. Kaz Brekker remains a mystery.

Y/N met Kaz a few days after arriving in Ketterdam, when he walked into the teashop she tended to. He needed a new waitress for the Crow Club, a seemingly simple job if the additional skill of the position wasn't listening to the conversations of some customers. She accepted, and here she is three years later. And she's dangerously involved with Kaz.

It all started very simply, they barely realized that they were spending too much time together. Y/N in the lounge, taking care of drinks or delivering envelopes to Kaz's office, or sharing a quiet living room in the Slat after everyone went to sleep.

One thing led to another over the years. A whispered conversation after the two drank too much, a longing look exchanged as they left for their posts at the Crow Club, a sleepless night on the building's terrace. But the moment they really realized, admitted, actually, having feelings for each other was when they realized that they needed each other.

For Y/N, their relationship was experienced at two peaks: the calm and comfort of knowing that they both loved each other and the turbulence and insecurity when dealing with Kaz's traumas. Y/N saw the way Jesper and Wylan, Nina and Matthias' relationship bothered Kaz, he wanted to be able to offer Y/N the same level of intimacy.

And that's why they've fought countless times. Silent wars where Kaz reluctantly tried to break up and Y/N pretended not to hear her boyfriend's stupid arguments. When Kaz tried to get away from her in vain, because Y/N always found a way to bother his heart with smiles, jokes and words of affection.

Kaz knew Y/N was patient. She was the best in his world. But, he knew that he needed to become a better man for her. What kind of relationship is this where he couldn't touch her without almost throwing up, fainting?

Y/N realized, just like she notices all the little things that make Kaz human, that he was trying to be more physical. Sometimes he would touch her hand gently, his fingertips gliding across her palm as if she were made of the most fragile glass. Other times he sat next to her on the window sill, too close that she felt his heat. Or when he suddenly decided that they would share the room, the same bed.

That was a difficult moment: Kaz gradually tried to stay close to her, until finally he managed to rest his arm on her throughout the night. But, all of this was done when he was fully dressed. Long-sleeved shirt, thick pants.

The kisses? Impossible. These took longer to go from merely touching lips to touching tongues. Let alone get lost in the moment. A kiss from Y/N would leave Kaz feverish, on the precipice between fainting from anxiety or lust. Sometimes he didn't even know if his trembling hands were a good or bad thing.

But it's over. Kaz, when properly warned, could get carried away. Y/N and Kaz occasionally had make-out sessions, one that left them panting, sweaty and craving for more. Wishing they were like all the other normal people, the ones they heard sighing in the dark alleys when they came back late at night from some mission. Those who occasionally locked themselves in the Crow Club bathroom and came out with a flushed face.

Would today be anything different? Y/N wondered as she went up to her room. Earlier, when she was still in stock at the Crow Club, Kaz spent time with her keeping her company while she counted the products. Y/N could tell he was a little nervous, but she didn't pressure him into saying anything.

So, he finally said a curt "Meet me in the bedroom later" and left for the office before Y/N could ask anything. And here she was, walking into the room and finding the sight of a Kaz Brekker sitting by the window, his eyes vacant into the night.

"Hey, how are you? Where's everyone?" Y/N said, taking off her coat and placing it on the trunk at the foot of the bed. When she arrived at Slat she noticed that it was strangely empty, even for a festival the house always had one or two people in the common rooms.

"Out" muttered Kaz "I gave them the night off." Then he finally looked at Y/N and there was something strange, it was as if he had never seen her in his life, as if he didn't know how to approach her.

"Cool… But, what happened to you? Did you want to tell me something?" Y/N said, approaching him slowly. Kaz sighed and held out his arms, an invitation for her to touch him, to hug him.

Y/N smiled, a gesture mirrored by Kaz, before surrendering to her arms. She was a little shorter than him, barely reaching her shoulders, the perfect height to fit in. Kaz placed a small kiss above her ear, a kiss that ended up trailing to her temple, her cheek, her jaw, the corners of her lips.

And then the famine came. The desire for more, much more. Kaz kissed Y/N's lips, a warm touch. Her hands, which had been clasped behind Kaz's back, moved up to his arms.

And then Kaz's tongue touched Y/N's parted lips strongly, a request, a promise. His tongue was everywhere: first sliding tentatively across her lips, then massaging, then sucking. It was so much more than they'd tried before, Y/N thought, as he nibbled on her bottom lip, pulling her closer into his arms, squeezing as if to make sure she was real.

Y/N didn't need to think much, she didn't want to stop and ask Kaz if everything was okay because, a second later, she felt one of his hands on her ass, groping. They had too many clothes on. Kaz wore a dark, velvety green vest over a white shirt with long sleeves buttoned over the wrist. The pants were black and made of thick material, the ones he usually wears in the invention. Y/N was already wearing a long blouse, the pants she wore were masculine enough to not receive more than two glances from Crow Club customers. But now, she wished there weren't so many layers between them, that the cloths would disappear.

Y/N's hands came up to Kaz's face with a caress, she wanted more than anything to slide her fingers through his hair… so she did, and he allowed it. His kisses were making her dizzy, fervent.

"Kaz," she whispered as he occupied his lips with a new target, her neck. The hands on her ass tensing in search of more, more closeness. "Slow down, Kaz," she protested.

Kaz listened and then stopped, looked at her with dark eyes, his face flushed and his lips red… lips that Y/N would never get tired of kissing. "I want you" he said "I want you to kiss me until you're sick of it, I want everything… more"

Y/N's heart lost a beat and then pulsed quickly. That was the kind of thing he said in her delirium, when she dreamed and woke up wishing she could just embrace the man who slept next to her. What else could she do upon hearing this request? She kissed him like she had never kissed him before, her fingers threading through his hair, down his neck, to his face.

A sloppy kiss because they've never done it before. Hands roaming each other's bodies more than they dared before. Kaz was all hands. Tightly squeezing her ass or reaching up to her waist, pulling her closer.

Then, one of Kaz's hands went to Y/N's hair, deftly removing the ribbon that held the curls in a messy braid, while his other hand went down to her right thigh, lifting her leg slightly so that he could get closer... Saints, she wanted to be able to melt and merge with Kaz.

Y/N could barely breathe between the kisses, Kaz's lips were all she wanted, she wanted them all over her body, for him to mark her. Then he pulled her towards the bed, bumping into the table, tripping over the carpet and laughing a little at his clumsiness.

She sat on the bed and looked at Kaz, her face flushed and a slight smile on her face. The street light that entered the room bathed him in a warm, golden light, Kaz had never seemed more alive than at that moment. He was the most beautiful person Y/N had ever seen in her life. He looked so carefree as he rested one of his knees between Y/N's legs, his hand tenderly caressing her face and brushing away stray strands of hair from the front of her forehead.

"You're so beautiful", Kaz murmured, his lips resting a soft peck on the tip of Y/N's nose.

"I can say the same", said Y/N. Pulling him to the middle of the bed so he was on top of her. "There are so many beautiful things I can tell you now. But none of them compare to you, Kaz Rietveld."

She kissed his cheek, then his nose, his chin, his mouth. Her hand, the one that wasn't busy cupping Kaz's face, slid down his back, feeling the muscles beneath his clothes tense slightly, then, at the base of his spine, she pushed him slowly until their body was pressed together. Too many clothes, Y/N thought.

Kaz must have had the same thought, because he deftly slipped his fingers between the top buttons of Y/N's blouse. Beneath it there was nothing but skin flushed with desire.

Well, they've seen a bit of each other's nudity over the years they've shared a room, but it's never been this explicit. So raw. Kaz's eyes slid over Y/N's breasts, his fingers following his gaze to her nipples, touching tentatively, seeing how far they could both go. When her only response was a sigh of pleasure, Kaz opened the rest of her blouse and clumsily pulled the fabric from her body.

Mouths, hands, sighs, moans. Kaz offered and received caresses as he rested his mouth on Y/N's nipples, his warm tongue sliding, sucking and nibbling mercilessly. Y/N's hands didn't know where to hold on in the material world, they were in his hair, keeping him as close as possible, on his shoulders, on his arms, pulling him for more.

Kaz realized that his favorite sound was her moans. It was a sound that reverberated through his body like an overwhelming storm that made his heart palpitate heavily, that made his brain melt and that somehow, caused a pleasant pressure to rest in his groin.

Y/N was lost, she didn't know she was so sensitive there. Or maybe this is just Kaz's effect, his talent. When his mouth was on her nipples everything was perfect and horrible, she felt out of control, completely at Kaz's mercy.

When he stopped kissing her was the moment she hated him, but when he looked at her with a shy look on her face, Y/N loved him more than anything. What happened? Y/N wanted to ask, but there was no time, Kaz let out a low, guttural sound when he moved over Y/N, she felt, through all the layers of clothes that still separated them, Kaz's cock pressed against her.

A shiver ran up her spine. Y/N kissed him hard, tongue lashing over Kaz's lips, her nails scratching his arms, pulling him, feeling him. A wave of pleasure coursed through her body as her sensitive nipples came into contact with the raised embroidery of Kaz's vest. She opened her legs wider to accommodate him between her and Kaz's hand went to her ass, pulling her towards his crotch.

Suddenly, Y/N pushed Kaz away. Turning his body so she was on top, she then quickly took off her pants. She's sick of so many clothes.

Kaz was in awe, looking at her body as if it were some kind of miracle, as if some saint was descending from heaven with an offer too good to be true. Or like a demon, leading him to a path of no return. For the first time in his life he felt nothing bad happening, no repulsion, no aversion at the thought of touching someone. He just wanted more from her, wanted to take everything from her, touch her everywhere, but more than anything, he wanted her to touch him.

Their relationship was always smooth, they never talked about sex or about anything other than kisses, but they both wanted the same feeling of fulfillment that all other couples had. So, it was not without shyness that Kaz, completely vulnerable to Y/N, looked at her with pious eyes and pleaded.

"I... I want you to touch me," Kaz admits, while staring up at the ceiling, "There" cheeks reddening in an increasing show of embarrassment.

It was selfish of him to ask that. It was malicious, negligent, narcissistic, asking for pleasure when she was the one who should be adored. But Kaz was never much for bending, he was never pious.

Little did he know that it was what Y/N wanted most.

She smiled and kissed Kaz, her light fingers opening the buttons of his pants, slipping down to his cock. The feeling was very different from what she had imagined, Kaz was warm, soft, firm and… big. Very.

Kaz let out a strangled sound, his hands that rested on her waist fluttered slightly. "Everything is fine?" she asked, the movements of her hand stopped completely, but she didn't remove it.

"Yes," he sighed, closing his eyes in pleasure.

Y/N then moved her hand slightly up and down, gently squeezing the base, sliding the tip of her thumb over the tip of his dick. Feeling the cum spread in his hand. Kaz was discreet, he was trying not to get carried away, she realized, but she could hear the light moans that escaped his lips, she could tell that he was really enjoying it when he tensed his jaw, when he squeezed her ass.

Daring the limits, Y/N lowered Kaz's pants further, finally seeing him completely. It was definitely not what she had imagined. Kaz was very thick, the tip was a dark pink color that glistened with cum and had some prominent veins. She wondered what it would feel like in her mouth.

When Y/N gave Kaz a peck on the crotch, just above the pubic hair line, she looked at him as if asking if she could continue. His eyes were moist, as if it was a difficult task to contain all of his impulses.

“Please,” he begged, one hand caressing Y/N’s cheek. "Please don't stop" he moaned.

She then tried putting just the tip of his dick in her mouth, her tongue testing the taste of his cum, then, tentatively, she saw how much it all fit.

It wasn't much. She didn't have that much experience, she couldn't take his entire dick in her mouth without feeling like she might choke. So, she took turns sucking and licking, from the base to the tip, then, when she saw that he liked it, she held his balls and massaged them lightly. But she never stopped moving her hand in a tempting gesture.

Kaz was getting carried away. When he became very impatient with Y/n's slow movements he begged to be rough, when he felt her tongue passing over the tip, sucking, and looking at him, he let the moans, previously low, sound at ease. Damn anyone who listens.

Please, please, please, he said. Hip thrusting, his dick entering her mouth even more. Beg, Y/N wanted to say, beg for more and maybe I'll let you cum, fill my mouth with it, let you see how you ruin me.

So, when she felt his hip thrusts become more sloppy, when his moans were lost between his panting, Y/N sucked hard on Kaz's cock and felt, in the back of her throat, his cum pooling on her tongue, sliding down her chin.

When his orgasm ended, he was panting and feverish, his hair messy, beads of sweat sliding down his forehead, his cheeks pink. He was a beautiful sight. He was a beautiful mess.

As for Y/N, she was strangely shy under Kaz's longing gaze, feeling cum slide down her chin and drip onto her breasts. "Beautiful" Kaz said, standing up and placing a sloppy kiss on her lips, his tempting tongue lashing into her mouth, both of them tasting him.

"All mine", he whispered, as he pulled her to saddle him. Y/N felt his dick brush against her pussy. "And I want all of you. I want you to ruin me, ruin us."

#mmgwbrekker #six of crows #grishaverse #kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker smut #shadow and bone #kaz brekker imagine #kinktober #kaz brekker kinktober

[cntloup]

Close Call

Fem!Reader angst, mention of death, mention of trauma, mention of suicide

Simon sits on the bar stool as he quite often does when he needs some alone time after missions although he usually doesn't drink this much during these self debriefing sessions but this last mission was a real tough one. He had a close call while clearing an enemy's building and he was scared shitless... like truly frightened out of his wits. He had never felt that way before until in that moment. Of course he always made sure to stay focused and finish the mission as unharmed as possible, but he never feared for his life to that extent because this time was different. He had you. What would happen to you if he was gone? How heartbroken would you be? Would all the pain come back? All that trauma you suffered from. All that heavy weight which he took off your shoulders. And you did the same for him. Oh how brave and strong you are in his eyes even though you don't see it yourself but he makes sure to make you believe in yourself step by step. Never pushing and prying too much just as you do with him... just as patient as you are. Would you survive if something happened to him? As much as he wants to stop these thoughts, he can't help but think about a conversation you once had on this topic. About how you wouldn't want to keep living if you ever lost him. He quickly pushes the thoughts away as the adrenaline and the extreme fear he experienced subside. He stands up just as a group of young people enter the bar chatting and laughing loudly already wasted probably bar hopping. As they settle, he reaches for his wallet to pay for the shots and leave as soon as possible. He misses you, but he needed some time to think those things through before seeing you. He didn't want you to see him in that state and god forbid to snap at you. As he gathers his stuff and begins to leave, one of the girls comes forward "where you goin, handsome? You seem kinda wasted. Do you need a ride?" 'Wasted my ass, just say you wanna get laid' he thought but replied coldly "Home. And no." "Well, it's still early. We can go to my place" she slurrs her words as her hand starts to touch his bicep which he quickly shakes off and states firmly "I have a wife who I love very much and I miss her as I haven't seen her for a while because of work. So please step aside so I can leave." He speaks to her calmly and tries not to be overly aggressive and harsh as she is quite young and apparently drunk. She gets out of his way disappointed and he starts walking towards the door but he stops and turns around "Oi!" The girl turns her head "Stop inviting random strangers to your house!" Then he leaves and gets into a cab to finally come home to you.

comments/reblogs are greatly appreciated ♥ 

#simon riley #simon ghost riley #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley x you #cod x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost x reader #ghost riley #ghost simon riley #cod fanfic #ghost cod #cod ghost #ghost call of duty #call of duty #cod mw2 #cod #mw2 #cod modern warfare

[zahri-melitor]

“It was only six feet,” muttered Dick.

“What did you just say?”

Dick sighed and rubbed his face. “I know you woke up in a grave and it was very traumatic for you, but you’re acting like this is the only time it had ever happened to anyone. You just had to dig straight up. Do you hear me complaining about it?”

"I'm sorry, did my ongoing trauma from being beaten to death and then waking up in a confined box make you feel uncomfortable, Dick?"

"You just keep going on about it like you're the only person who has ever experienced this. It sucks. No question. But getting out for you was basically on easy mode."

"It tore my fingernails off. I almost SUFFOCATED."

"That is part of being in a coffin, yes Jason."

“What are you talking about?” Tim walked into the room, towelling his hair dry from his shower.

“Being buried alive.”

“Digging myself out of my own grave.” Jason and Dick answered simultaneously.

“Well which is it?”

Jason glared at Dick. “Digging myself out. Dick here thinks that I’m blowing things out of proportion by being slightly upset about that building partly collapsing on me tonight.”

“Well, that is a conversation I can’t contribute to, so I’ll leave you both to it and go to bed.” Tim dropped the towel in a laundry basket and started to walk away.

“Tim,” Dick reached out to catch his arm. "What do you mean, which one?"

Tim shrugged a shoulder. "Well the only insights I have about being buried alive are 'sit tight and wait for rescue and slow your heartrate so you're not using so much oxygen' so I don't really think I need to be here. Good night."

"When have you ever needed that? And if you did, you didn't try to dig yourself out?" Jason said skeptically. "That's your view? Stay in one spot and wait for help? Because trying that in Ethopia worked so well for me."

"I was under a concrete slab. There wasn't much that I could do."

Dick tugged Tim around to face him more fully. "And when was this exactly? I don't remember that case report."

"It was during AzBats; that's why you haven't read it. And I was fine. Steph eventually got me out."

They stared at each other. Dick looked away first. "I wish you'd had more support back then."

Tim smiled, one side of his face quirking up. "You had your own problems."

"Wait a minute. Back up. When was this?" Jason interrupted.

Dick looked back at Tim. Tim rolled his eyes up slightly. "When Tim here was a little baby Robin. Thirteen or so."

"Excuse you, I had had my fourteenth birthday by then. I had my licence."

"Oh I'm sorry, when he was fourteen years old. And far more grown up."

"That's right."

"You were buried alive under concrete?" Jason sounded incredulous.

"It happened. Why, did you think you were the only one? Dick once tunneled out of a grave sideways and almost fell off a cliff into the sea."

"I didn't think you knew about that time," Dick said, his voice soft.

Tim grinned. "You left some notes in your own computer system about it."

"Stalker."

"You like me that way."

"You've both also been buried alive?" Jason threw his hands in the air.

"Mmhmmm." Tim yawned and stretched, walking towards the stairs.

"As I was saying, it can get a bit tiring listening to you go on about it," Dick added, following him.

"I DIED!"

"Yes and you never ever let any of us forget it." Dick slung an arm over Tim's shoulder, then turned his head back to look at Jason. "Want some hot chocolate before bed?"

#Robin 3-5 and Nightwing 127-128 exist folks #snippets #my fic

[badaziraphaletakes]

I have no funny meme or gif for this one.

The "Aziraphale needs to see the circumstances around Crowley's fall in order to see what heaven really is and that's going to be what causes him to break away" take really, really bothers me. For a multiple reasons.

The first is because Aziraphale is already miserable and TERRIFIED of heaven. I am sick and tired of the expectation that he deserves to have some kind of (further) shattering emotional crisis about them. They've made him miserable for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. They've kept him separate from the love of his live. He deserves for them to leave him alone. Not to be further traumatized by finding out more upsetting things. The reason he hasn't "broken away" from them isn't because he "needs to figure out that they're evil" or something like that. It's because they are too powerful and he knows how terrifying and awful they are and that they will do very, very awful things to him if he tries to rebel. The problem isn't Aziraphale's mindset. It's them. It's them. It's them. Period.

Our angel has been through f*cking ENOUGH. He does not deserve to suffer more. He does not need to be tormented more in order to somehow magically be transformed a good person. (Enough, please, with the takes that trauma builds character. That's bullsh*t.)

Please, PLEASE don't forget that all the things he says about heaven being good are said WHERE HEAVEN CAN HEAR HIM. They are effectively omnipresent.

Aziraphale doesn't need to "break away" - Heaven needs to leave him alone. Period. They're the wrongdoers in this situation, not him.

The second reason I hate, hate, hate this take is because we don't know whether Crowley wants Aziraphale to know about his fall. YOU DON'T ALWAYS WANT THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR TRAUMAS. And that does NOT indicate a lack of trust or a flaw in the relationship. It is FINE not to ever want to tell people you love about certain sh*tty things that happen to you. This is very normal and okay.

I can think of multiple separate instances of this in my own family.

My dad never told me or my mom about the things he experienced during war. Not in detail. What would be the point? It wouldn't make him feel better, and we wouldn't really understand, because we haven't experienced that. It would just upset everyone.

I never told my family I was sexually assaulted. Most survivors don't tell many people about the experience, including people close to them. Why the hell would I????? It would just make them miserable and it wouldn't make me feel better. Sharing things like that doesn't always help. I only talk about it with people who've been through the same thing.

If Crowley hasn't talked to Aziraphale about his fall and doesn't want him to know how bad it was, I say good for them both. Leave it there. I would feel very violated if Aziraphale found out inadvertently (or worse, went snooping - although I don't think he would do that, but I digress) about something Crowley didn't want him to know about, and the show presented it as something that "needed to happen". That's messed-up. We shouldn't go prying into people's traumas like that. (Besides, Aziraphale is already very aware of how lonely and depressed Crowley is. He knows Crowley didn't want to fall. He knows he's upset about it.) If Crowley is keeping it from Aziraphale, that is his prerogative. It is a completely valid choice that needs to be respected. It doesn't necessarily mean he made that choice out of some misguided notion of "protecting" Aziraphale. It could very well just mean he doesn't see the point in telling him something that would probably just make them both miserable.

I am not here for the trauma of Crowley's fall being weaponized as some kind of teaching tool to make Aziraphale "learn his lesson". (Especially if Crowley's not the one to tell him.) That's sick. It's cruel for them both. It would in all likelihood not be good for their relationship.

Ehh I feel like there's more I could say on this but I'm getting too emotional to be coherent so I'm just going to leave it there.

Thanks for reading, friends.

#good omens #goodomens #good omens 2 #badaziraphaletakes #goodomens2 #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #crowley x aziraphale

[internerdionality]

And just to be clear, it wasn't just Izzy's death or the way it happened that I found incredibly disappointing about that finale. For that matter, while there were some great moments, the entire season felt rushed and incomplete, with a lot of decisions that just baffled me.

The Olu/Zheng/Jim/Archie polycule got no resolution whatsoever and just felt crappily done. It felt like Jim and Olu transitioned from romantic to platonic between seasons and then got shoved at new love interests, instead of actually grappling with the interesting poly dynamics, jealousy, NRE, insecurity, etc., that they could have engaged with. And to be clear I LOVED every moment of Olu/Zheng and Jim/Archie! But it felt like the show didn't believe you can have meaningful romantic relationships with multiple people at the same time, so they had to make it as if Jim and Olu's romantic sexual encounter at the end of last season didn't mean anything and that the two of them are perfectly happy being chosen siblings. This after Oluwande is explicitly described as in love with Jim in the first season! WTF?

It also felt like they just abandoned Lucius and Pete being poly in favor of having a cutesy wedding? Like don’t get me wrong, yay for weddings, but honestly it felt very mononormative and forced instead of queer and affirming. Even if Lucius had like, kissed Fang on the lips right after, or if they'd had more affection shown between the whole crew during the wedding, that would have been something. It just felt off.

Zheng felt like a wasted character by the end. Her just letting Ricky know where all her ships were was unbelievable for how competent and badass they made her out to be, and literally her only impact on the plot was serving as a vehicle to drive Stede from place to place. Also just killing off her entire crew other than Auntie? Hundreds of mostly Asian women? Yeah, that's not a good look.

Why did they feel the need to destroy the Republic of Pirates, for that matter? What actual plot or emotional growth did it create? At the end of Episode 7, I expected Stede to have to grapple with how he's managed to not just bring down Blackbeard but the *entire Republic of Pirates* and *the Pirate Queen of China* to add to his whole "I ruin beautiful things" trauma and instead he just doesn't seem to care at all. Like how did he get from all of his trauma and grief about being inadequate in the first season—the actual trauma that led him to leave Ed in the first place—to "oh, it's not so bad being a failure once you get used to it"?!?! Throughout the season I kept thinking that he was repressing and it would come back up to bite him in the ass but no, apparently he just fixed that issue offscreen? What the hell?

And it was the same with Ed! After all that build up in the first season about how Ed doesn’t like to kill people directly—and maintaining that through the first two episodes, even, which was hard! We never see him directly kill anyone! The guy he shot had already been run through!—he’s literally joking while surrounded by corpses he killed and the show barely addressed the trauma that the character we knew would have experienced. Just a completely dropped note. What happened to Ed's self-hatred that they spent an entire dream sequence episode establishing?

Ed and Stede’s actual conflicts and problems just basically disappeared at the end, with a “oh I actually do love you, babe” glossing over Ed’s very legit reasons for leaving and then Stede (apparently?!?) being convinced to give up piracy without a second of screen time spent discussing it. If felt like they were actually setting them up to just be the toxic lesbians from episode four, how is that a satisfying finale? I honestly would have rather had them end the season apart again, but this time knowing they love each other and they have to do some work to get back to each other. Like, Stede sailing into the sunset after kissing Ed and promising to come back and Ed going "i trust that you will, thank you for giving me the space I need to heal"—that would have been a satisfying place to leave them.

And then Izzy's death... don't get me fucking started on what a complete waste of screen time and acting that was. Wow.

#our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #izzy hands #ofmd #gentlebeard #blackbeard ofmd #boatmance #lupete

[utilitycaster]

VERY glad that Evontra’vir said “the titans are dead” because like there are currently living beings that will suffer if Ludinus’s plan succeeds and they just don’t seem to matter compared to titans that died a millennia ago??? (After trying to wipe out mortals themselves)

Hey anon,

Agreed. The thing about the titans coming up is that it does, actually, make a lot of sense for the two characters who have been most vocal about it - Ashton and Laudna - to feel this way! But it doesn't come from a rational place; it comes from profound trauma and loss about which they can't be objective.

Taliesin talked about this on 4-Sided Dive: Ashton is grabbing on desperately to the one piece of information they know now about their missing childhood and is "leaning into it...probably before he should." We know this about them; Ashton's been emblazoning themself with the Hishari and Dunamancy symbols without having a single clue what they were. The titans are part of that. Did you notice how he keeps saying "things are changing" and didn't actually like...provide any meaningful information? Again to quote 4SD: "...there's not a lot of judgment happening about whether or not that's a good thing or not, and what it actually means." Like, I think that, based on Ashton's past position of "don't kill everyone for your goals, that is shitty" if they did stop, and process, and set aside that strong emotional factor that's in play (which is not something I'd expect them to be able to do easily!) They'd realize that the titans returning, were that possible, would be cataclysmic. But that's not what they're thinking about right now. I think Evontra'vir bluntly stating that the titans are dead was a needed splash of cold water on that line of thinking.

My thought re: Laudna is that it's slightly more metaphorical. Consider her backstory: a conquering force swept in and destroyed most of what had been there before. She is a relic both of that earlier time and of that conquering force, and the subjugation she experienced never truly stopped, even though Whitestone has moved on. Of course she'd see herself in the titans in the telling of stories about the titans! People like Percy get to return and revitalize and build a new family and grow old and happy and die, despite their trauma, and she's caught between life and death forever. Of course she'd relate to some half-buried thing that people call monstrous and ancient and displaced! But that doesn't actually help her do anything about her situation and it's not a philosophy that really is useful in understanding the larger geopolitical (and, frankly, cosmic) reality happening right now, because, yeah, if you let the titans back, people will die.

For both these characters - who have spoken to each other about being physically altered and left for dead, alone, in ways no one else can quite understand, I think there's something immensely seductive about the idea of something older than the gods, something defeated but could rise again, which both is relatable to their own situations and comes neatly packaged with a reason why it didn't save you when you called out. But it's still a fantasy. It's not real, it's not going to happen, and so it's important that Evontra'vir, who as Jirana said, does not mince words, called it out for what it is. The titans are dead. Something of their essences does remain for you to use to make a choice. You are going to have to do this using your own judgment; you are doing the saving; stop worrying about the dead and start thinking about what you will do to serve the living.

I think an emerging theme of this campaign - and arguably a secondary theme of the past campaigns, and really, the theme of D&D if you think about it, is that the person you developed into because of your trauma, and the coping mechanisms and behaviors and presentation you developed as a result may eventually cease to serve you once you find a support network and begin to be given more and more agency within the world; and indeed, if you cling to these things they will begin to hurt those around you, and eventually you as well. I think "The Titans are dead" is one way to very, very bluntly and effectively communicate that.

#answered #Anonymous #critical role spoilers #ashton greymoore #laudna #re the last paragraph i do find that this campaign the fandom voice in favor of NO WHAT IF I NEVER NEED TO CHANGE is louder #or perhaps i just had it better tuned out in c2 or perhaps the nein made a more inhospitable growth medium for that particular breed of mol #anyway. evontra'vir was right. titans are dead. nice dichotomy idiot. what lies outside it. #critical role

[morallyinept]

Hey Dieter! Let's talk about sex!

Urm, no... I didn't say let's have sex, I meant let's talk about it and have a discussion.

I mean, sure, we totally can... afterwards.

This week Dieter & I want to get a little physical with you... Grab the lube, it's another Self-Care Session with Dieter & Jett!

Get off me, you hound...

☝🏻Just a heads up, below the cut we'll be briefly mentioning some themes with regards to sexual trauma - it's nothing heavy or detailed, but it's okay if you'd rather not read it. We get it, and we completely understand. 🖤

Sex. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing, right? (And if, you haven't experienced it yet, trust us, it's wonderful.)

And no matter how you choose to express yourself sexually, or your sexual preference, we're here today to talk about the inner workings of the mind, ⚙️ specifically your mind, when it comes to feeling confident and free in your sexuality.

We're going to talk about sexual expression & sexual repression today.

And you thought this was going to be straight up porn, right D?

Yeah, I know you too well, bud. Sorry to disappoint.

Sexual expression is often a topic that people hesitate to talk about openly. But did you know that exploring your sexuality can actually be an effective way to combat depression and improve your mental health? 

I know, amazing right, D?

Yeah, you look totally enthused about it there, bud. 🙄

Embracing your body and cultivating self-confidence is vital to expressing yourself sexually. Many people struggle with self-esteem and body image or dysmorphia issues, which can hinder their sexual experience. It's important to focus on the positive aspects of your body and to feel comfortable in your own skin.

Sexual expression is a broad term that can refer to any kind of sexual activity, from self-pleasure to intercourse. It can also include more creative outlets, like writing erotica or making art with a sexual theme.

D, that's... Urm... Yeah.

There are many benefits to be gained from sexual expression. For one, it can help reduce stress and anxiety levels. It can also increase feelings of pleasure and intimacy, which can boost mental health overall. And, sexual expression can be a tool for exploring and understanding your own sexuality, as well as increasing communication and intimacy within a relationship.

If you’re struggling with mental health issues like depression, sexual expression can be an important part of some treatment towards that. In fact, research has shown that it can be an effective way to combat depression symptoms.

So if you’re feeling down, don’t be afraid to explore your sexuality and get creative with your self-expression. It could be just what you need to start feeling better!

Yes, D, later... I'm in the middle of something here. Sheesh. 🙄

Sexual expression is a broad term that can refer to any type of sexual activity or behavior. This can include everything from expressing one’s sexuality through art or fashion, to engaging in sexual activities with another person, or by yourself.

Sexual expression can be a powerful tool for mental health and combatting depression. For many people, sex is a way to connect with another person on a physical and emotional level. It can be a source of pleasure, release, and intimacy.

Sex can also help reduce stress, anxiety, and promote relaxation.

The Benefits of Exploring Your Sexuality for Mental Wellbeing

For many people, sexuality is an important part of their identity. Exploring one’s sexuality can be a liberating experience that allows them to express themselves in a new and exciting way.

It can also help to build self-confidence and combat negative body image issues. Sexual expression can also lead to increased communication skills, as well as improved intimacy in relationships. Ultimately, these benefits can lead to a more fulfilling and satisfying sexual life.

Strategies for Connecting with Your Sexuality and Improving Your Mental Health

Sexual expression is not only a healthy part of life, but can also be a powerful tool in combating depression.

When we're open and honest about our sexuality, we are more likely to feel good about ourselves and our bodies, which can lead to improved mental health. Additionally, sexual expression can help us connect with our partners on a deeper level...

Some more than others, clearly...

Here's some things that you can do:

Talk about your desires with your partner. Discussing sexual fantasies and interests can make sex more exciting and satisfying for both of you. Communication is key! 🗨

Be creative in the bedroom. Try new things, experiment, and have fun!

⚠️ Always practice safe, consensual sex.

Get outside help if needed. If you’re struggling to get in touch with your sexuality or improve your sex life, consider seeking out therapy or counseling from a sex therapist or other qualified professional.

Take care of yourself physically. Eating well, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep will all help improve your overall health - including your sexual health.

Be mindful of your mental health. Sometimes, the last thing we want to do is get jiggy with it when we're feeling blue. Depression can also reduce your libido. If you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues, talk to your doctor or therapist about how they may be impacting your sex life.

☝🏻And don't forget, any kind of sexual activity should always be consensual. Always conform to the principles of morality and legality (i.e. not breaking the law or causing sexual harm to others), and you should always be in a safe, comfortable space where you can, and have the right, to say no.

So we've talked about sexual expression, but what about sexual repression and what is the difference, D?

Okay, maybe I'll talk about this one...

What is Sexual Repression?

When you see or hear the word repressed, it automatically conjures up negative connotations, doesn't it?

But I'm here to break down those negative assumptions.

And so is D... careful, bud. Don't want you poking an eye out with that thing... 😏

Maybe you learned in childhood that sex was unpleasant or just for marriage? Your parents may have told you masturbating or thinking about sex meant you were sinful or dirty? Perhaps you've had an uncomfortable experience, or have suffered some sexual trauma? As a result, you've learned to squash your (perfectly natural) desires in order to protect yourself.

Typically, sexual repression happens in response to restrictive ideas or attitudes about sex.

Parents, or other caregivers, may teach these ideas directly, but you might also simply absorb them from watching other people or influences, as you grow up.

At first, you might knowingly stifle sexual thoughts, but over time, this repression often becomes automatic. People typically tend to associate sexual repression with religious upbringings, but traditional ideas about sexual behavior can stem from other sources, too.

A history of sexual trauma can also factor into repression. Rape and sexual abuse can cause significant, long lasting emotional pain, and thoughts of sex might trigger memories and further distress, making it difficult to enjoy, or even want sex.

Not wanting to try things like oral sex, anal sex, BDSM, or sex with multiple partners, doesn’t mean you’re repressed however.

There’s nothing wrong with only wanting one type of sex. Some people might label this “prudish,” but remember it’s your desires that matter. If vanilla is your favourite flavour then indulge, baby!

If you don’t want to have sex until you’re in a committed, long-term relationship, that’s entirely your decision. And if you never want to have sex at all in your life, that is perfectly fine and acceptable too.

No-one should dictate to you how you choose to express yourself sexually.

In short, repression refers to deep-seated negative feelings around the very idea of sex. Common themes and behaviors include:

shame and distress associated with sexual fantasies

guilt and other negative feelings after sex or masturbation

difficulty enjoying healthy, consensual sex

negative self-talk after sexual thoughts or activity

believing your body is unattractive or unworthy of sex

Difficulty accepting your sexual orientation. 🌈

If you identify as LGBTQIA+ but grew up in an environment where being straight and cisgender were the only acceptable options, you may have felt the safest hiding your identity and sexuality.

Even when you finally felt like you could express yourself, doing so might not have felt natural, or accepted. Or still might not if you've not fully come out yet.

Despite knowing your orientation is a normal expression of human sexuality, you might continue struggling with guilt or fear around your identity, especially when trying to counter years of upbringing where your questions or curiosities have been stifled.

What can you do about it?

First, know that sexual repression is real, not all in your head. Second, know it isn’t your fault.

Thirdly, talk about it!

Simply having an awareness of the signs of repression and how it affects you can help you take steps toward countering it.

Talking about how you feel and what you desire is perfectly natural, and highly encouraged. You can talk to others who have been in a similar position to see how they have learnt to combat their own feelings. You can talk to a family member or a trusted friend, or you can talk to someone professionally.

Practice mindfully accepting sexual thoughts. Mindfulness can help you become more comfortable with sexual thoughts by increasing your awareness of them and learning to accept them without judgment.

Read up on sex positivity. Sex positivity can help counter sexual repression, so getting more comfortable with the idea of sex as a healthy activity can help you work through repression. Exploring sex positivity could involve reading book or stories about sexual expression. It can also mean familiarizing yourself with sexual expression in films, and art.

There’s always porn-

Ethical or independent porn, D. 🙄

You can also find toned-down explicit scenes in ordinary books and movies, too, so you don’t have to look for erotica specifically, unless you want to.

Get comfortable with your body. Repression can sometimes affect how you feel about your own body.

Instead of loving and accepting your physical self, you might have a tendency to hide or desexualize your body by wearing loose, constricting clothes and avoiding nakedness.

To increase your comfort with your own body, you might try:

looking at yourself in the mirror naked

listing five things you like about your body

sleeping naked to enjoy the feel of your body

masturbation - take some time to really get to know your body

Talk to your partner (if you have one). Sometimes, opening the door to conversation with an understanding partner can help you feel more comfortable voicing your desires.

Mindfulness during sex can also help you recognize when you enjoy something, since it lets you focus on your experience without letting unwanted thoughts distract you.

This way, you can better express your enjoyment at the things you are happy and most comfortable with.

☝🏻And don't forget, any kind of sexual activity should always be consensual.

So, D, would you say you're comfortable at expressing yourself sexually?

Well, I'm hardly surprised there.

Now, I did say we could have some uh... fun, after this post, didn't I? And we're at the end, so...

Okay mister, go get yourself ready. Assume the position.

Got something new I want to try today... 😏

Dieter and I hope you know that no matter how you choose to express yourself sexually, that as long as you do so in a mindful way and are kind to yourself, it can really benefit your mental wellbeing in the long term. 🧠❤️

We love you, and we'll see you next week for more Self-Care with Dieter & Jett!

Stay kind, stay creamy. 🖤

YOU. ARE. STRONGER. THAN. YOU. THINK. 🖤

ℹ️ Dieter and I always strive to bring you unbiased, fact-checked advice. We're not licensed therapists, so we do a lot of research to ensure we can provide helpful and informative posts. Well, I do. Dieter mostly sits around eating KitKats.

Do you. Then do Dieter.

More Dieter & Jett love here

#self care with dieter & jett #dieter bravo #dieter bravo the bubble #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #you are stronger than you think #do you #then do dieter #jett's pedro boys #jett has spoken

[scoonsalicious]

you're such a wonderful writer and i hope you are doing great 💖

wanted to ask you, how do you write this type of topics that are hard and difficult? what did you feel while writing for chapter 23, 24 and 25?

i hope to know more about you as a writer and your methods because it has been mind blowing reading Unwanted

Thank you so, so much! I'm doing great! lol

So, I originally started writing an answer to this question that more specifically aligned with what you asked, but the more I thought about it, the more I kind of wanted to delve into what this story was supposed to be, what it turned into, and what it was like creating it. This is probably way more info then you every asked for or expected, so I apologize, but just rewatched Endgame in the name of research and I'm crying like a baby right now, and feeling pretty emotional, lol WARNING: This is going to get heavy. So, Unwanted was never actually supposed to turn into what it was. It started with this really simple image in my brain. Reader (not yet named) undercover, working at a strip club, and Bucky showing up to annoy her and get her flustered. She's unhappy to see him. Why? They used to sleep together, but she hates him now. What happened? In the original story, Bucky and Pocket never fell in love. They were best friends, and became FWB. A new Avenger is recruited (Jade was originally named Sage, and then Jewel, before we got to where we are), and Bucky goes on this Russian mission with her and sleeps with her. He comes back dating Sage and distances himself from Pocket, and she's heart broken, because she feels like she'd just been used, and now that Bucky had a new set of holes to fill (Pocket's words, lol), he didn't need her anymore. Then, she gets assigned to this mission in Atlantic City (that part-- the missing women, the trafficking, was always the plan), and uses it as a chance to get away from him.

But then something IRL happened that actually ended up changing the entire course of the entire fic. A little backstory: When I was a child, I was sexually abused by a neighbor/family friend for many years. I didn't have the language at the time to explain what happened to me, so I never told anyone. I changed, going from a really happy, outgoing kid, to being really withdrawn and anxious; it basically destroyed my soul. This, of course, was back in the early '80s, where CSA wasn't really discussed or understood the way it is now. The signs were there, but my parents didn't know they should have been looking for.

I thought I got over it. I thought I processed and dealt with it and moved beyond it, and I grew into adulthood. But in reality, I was just building a mask. But then, in February of this year, while I'd already been working on the fic for several months under the aforementioned plot, something happened: My young nephew started showing signs that he may have been abused, as well, by either his nanny or someone the nanny had exposed him to. My brother and sister-in-law recognized the changes in him immediately, and did everything right. This triggered me, and it was pretty apparent that I had never processed my trauma-- I'd just repressed it. And everything came rushing back. I suddenly had immense anger toward my parents for failing to protect me, for not seeing the signs, for forcing me to interact with my abuser for years and years. It was misguided, and I recognize that, but I never allowed myself to process the emotions at the time, and was kind of starting over from scratch.

So, Pocket, in a lot of ways, became me. I gave her extremes of what I experienced so she could help me work through things, to help me process everything I was feeling, that sense of abandonment, not being able to trust people, the inability to form real relationships because I don't know how to be vulnerable. And I gave her some of my characteristics: from about ages 15-25, I was addicted on and off to opiates, and in college, I started drinking excessively to numb my pain, to the point where I have liver and kidney damage from it. I gave Pocket my use of humor-as-a-coping mechanism, my penchant for swearing, and most importantly, I gave her my pain, my hurt, so that she and I could get better, together.

So, when I write Pocket's spiral in Chapters 23-25, I'm writing an exaggeration of every spiral I've ever had, because, I figure, if I can get Pocket through all of that, surely I can get myself through my own shit, right?

I'm sure it wasn't the answer you were quite looking for, but it's the best way I can explain how I, and Unwanted got here. And as for my nephew, fortunately, after a State Police and Child Protective Service investigation, it looks like he was never actually sexually abused; for that, at least, I'm grateful.

[wowbright]

The ofmd season 2 finale makes sense to me for Ed's character because his journey is not about transformation, and it's not about leaving behind the parts of yourself that you hate and fill you with shame and scare you. It's not about becoming morally good, or even about becoming morally better, necessarily. It's about integration--integrating the contradictory parts of ourselves into a unified whole.

We all have contradictions in ourselves, and Ed has them galore. He's soft, and he's scary. He's sensitive, and he's heartless. And traditionally he's given the shadow parts of himself the name of Blackbeard. And he's called the soft sensitive parts of himself Ed.

But the thing is, all of those things are Ed. And he has to decide what to do with them. His impulse in 2.7 is to throw away Blackbeard, to throw away his leathers, to throw away the pirating life, to throw away anything that is ugly and imperfect and scary about himself.

He loves the soft, sensitive, aware, appreciative part of himself. He wishes that was *all* he was. But in the finale, he realizes that's not working. Because he's also impatient and distractible and self-centered and used to other people doing the dirty work. Before, they did the dirty work of killing people for him. Now, they do the dirty work of fishing and hauling and cleaning and repairing nets and everything else.

If he's going to stay with the fishermen, he's going to have to do the dirty work of being a fisherman. And sure, when PopPop tells him to go find something he's good at, maybe that's derisive and mean, and maybe it sent Ed into a bit of a tailspin. A lot of people think it did.

But I don't think that's all it did. I think it got Ed thinking. He wasn't willing to do the dirty work of fishing. And he knew how to pirate, but he was ambivalent about doing the dirty work of that--had always been. Was there a way to live a life without dirty work? Because that's what he wanted.

And I like to think that somewhere on his magic rowboat ride, he realized that life *is* dirty work ("life's a dick"). Whether he's a fisherman or a pirate or something else, the job will always require dirty work. He will always have to do dirty work. What he needs to decide is how dirty, and what kind of dirty, and will it be a dirty that he's good at or bad at, that harms him or helps him, that builds community or tears it apart.

Maybe he didn't have that realization. It doesn't matter, because when he gets to the pirate island and he thinks Stede's very possibly hurt or dead, he makes the decision to do the dirty work himself, and for what purpose. And it's probably not a completely conscious decision at first, to kill those two soldiers in the boat. But it's a decision, and it's a decision that signals a change in Ed.

Because previously, when he went ballistic, he went ballistic on his crew, on the people close to him. He hurt the people close to him because that was a way to hurt himself, to remind himself that he was a bad person, to remind himself that he was dangerous to the people close to him, because he had murdered his father, and that made him a bad person, and he wanted to punish himself by constantly reopening the wound he had experienced by killing his father, even though killing his father may have been the most moral option out of the options he had for dealing with that situation. The outside world thought that he was attacking the rich, the merchants, the empire. But Ed was on a suicide mission. He was trying to get the attention of Ned so that Ned would come and kill him and possibly his entire crew, who he saw as parts of himself. (Storywise if not psychologically speaking, he forced his crew to kill people as a way of displacing his trauma onto them, and of making them deserving to die with him.)

Which is to say, previously, when he's gone ballistic, he's gone ballistic on *himself*, and any deaths and injuries and mayhem were just collateral damage in that war. But the soldiers Ed kills when he returns to the island aren't collateral damage on the war he has against himself. He's fighting against them and what they represent--a navy and an empire that has hurt (and he fears may have killed) Stede.

But what's even more important is what he's fighting *for.* Because that's a totally new thing, and fighting *for* something.

He's fighting for Stede and for himself and for the life and love he thought he didn't want when he was stuck in the Gravy Bowl.

In real life, murder and killing are horrible tragedies. In fiction, they are useful narrative devices. In OFMD, killing can be a sign of depravity, and/or it can be hilarious, and/or it can be a means of liberation. If killing can be so many things within the story, I think it can also be many different things for Ed: it doesn't always have to be Ed harming himself; it doesn't always have to be morally gray.

Ed is integrating the sunny and shadow sides of himself into a whole person working toward a united goal. He can be soft and tender and tell Stede, "I love you. I love you." He can be violent and wreak death. But he does it in service of one thing: his love for Stede, and the family he doesn't yet recognize as his own, and the life (as in the fact of living, not any particular lifestyle) he didn't think he wanted. ("Die, motherfuckers." "For love!")

Ed is everything he ever has been. He hasn't changed. He's still imperfect and impulsive and, yes, violent. And yet he has changed so much. He's no longer trying to destroy himself, and he's no longer interested in inflicting violence (directly or vicariously) on others for no good reason except that he's bored and hates himself.

And when he makes a decision to open up a little inn on the edge of the island, it's sort of impulsive, but it also isn't. It's something he's played around with in his head for a long time, as we learned in the Gravy Bowl. And unlike with many of his previous impulsive acts, he's not using it to run away from himself or anyone or anything else. It's an attempt to work on his relationship with Stede, and to find out if he can stomach the daily dirty work of running an inn, and maybe even to learn how to not be a dick to his customers. (And this post is mostly about Ed but don't worry about Stede here and how he's abandoning his lifelong dream of living out on the open seas as a pirate--because was that his dream, or was it a manifestation of his deeper dream, which was to break free of the heteronormative prison he was trapped in? Well, he can do that at the inn, too.)

TL;DR For me, the narrative is cohesive. It makes sense. The story was never about how killing his father turned Ed into a monster. It was never attempting to set up the expectation that if Ed resumed killing people with his own hands, it would be an obstacle to his healing and growth. The story was about how Ed's reaction to killing his father--his interpretation of the events and how they had changed him--his belief that he was a fundamentally bad person and unworthy of love--distanced him from others and turned him into Blackbeard. And this season was about how accepting love made him able to accept that he wasn't fundamentally bad; and being fundamentally good isn't a requirement for healing or being loved.

#edward teach #ofmd #ofmd season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd meta #our flag means death #ofmd s2 finale #ofmd 2x08 #mermen #this post includes mentions of Ed's suicidality as well as fictional murder and killing as presented in canon #to me this show is all about how life is messy and you can't wait until things are perfect to move forward because things are never perfect #you will move forward and you will make mistakes and you will never stop making mistakes #life is truly a dick #life's a dick

[probablyhuntersmom]

A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2)

I forgot to add in the first post last weekend that I am taking excerpts from Parts 2, 4 and 5 of the book ("What My Bones Know" by Stephanie Foo), in case anyone plans to get a copy of it.

I didn’t use anything from Parts 1 and 3, since 1 involves the author recounting her own childhood trauma while 3 is about the cultural and historical events that are tied to the generational trauma in her family and community, which she researched to find answers.

Also..with two of the Owl House specials remaining, which would definitely give us more major Hunter moments…any additions from those two episodes that relate to the book excerpts will be added as new posts, e.g. if any scenes from For The Future are relevant to this Part 2 post, I will be making a post titled A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2B).

Anyhow if all this sounds confusing now, there will ultimately be one grand masterpost listing every single part. As usual, take care with the warnings of mentions of abuse and trauma ahead. Here goes, for Part 2:

Hunter’s history differs only slightly from the above. He also played a caretaker role to Belos during the latter’s rage episodes:

which shows the failure on Belos’s part, especially since he’s in the guardian/caretaker role, to own, regulate or seek his own help for his difficult emotions, but it imbued Hunter with that sense of feeling “special”. The Golden Guard role was his, and his alone. Belos could then reinforce the whole “wild magic is bad” narrative, exploit how Hunter loved to feel special and wanted, and continue abusing the boy.

But as Hunter tried harder and harder to get Belos to love him the way he wanted, he too experienced a growing vigilance and desperation that was destroying him more and more, as he was worn down further over time.

I’d say it was like this for Hunter too. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t please Belos enough. It wasn't fixing things and it felt as if he was a ship slowly sinking. As his desperation grew, you could say he ventured out further beyond established boundaries, and Hollow Mind was the culmination of the courage and support he spent the previous episodes building up.

He, just like how it’s stated in the book page above, ended up woven more into the world, sewn emotionally and professionally into a network of lives. He made trusted friends and healthier company at last. Ultimately, all those actions he took nudged him along the path meant for him, and it even ended up with him being brave enough to say this in Hollow Mind:

To ask the ultimate question, "What did you do to the other guards?". The question that got Belos to decide “Okay, time to off this Grimwalker and then make another”.

Following that heart-stopping moment, Luz saving his life, both of them escaping, and then the panic attack scene that we all remember, Hunter’s story isn’t over yet. 

With where he is now, in the middle of S3, he might be mentally and emotionally operating in a way that I can deconstruct while we wait for the next episode.

I am inclined to agree with these.

It’s just…so likely for Hunter. It was the case for me, since the first 5 years out of my 7 years of seeing therapists (2014-2020) were either just talk therapy or with ineffective therapists that I didn't trust enough. It felt more like just maintaining healthy enough functioning in my daily life, rather than having what felt like proper breakthroughs.

What Hunter needs first and foremost is to just continue experiencing the precious trust and presence of the good people he has formed good relationships with. Everyone is now in survival mode and would need the same manner of support.

Frankly, almost everyone in the show needs that too. The Isles will be going through some form of collective grief, if not already.

Processing all that has happened to him, in his young mind, will be hell of a lot of work. He can’t nicely fit all of that horror into a framework of cold logic, and I doubt the mess can be solved just by “talking things out”. After all, he has Complex PTSD: and being entangled in damaged formative relationships (Belos and the Emperor's Coven, basically) - not necessarily involving just people, or his relationship with himself, but also himself with the world - is the centerpiece of Complex PTSD.

Cold logic can't exactly help you make sense of why you lacked warmth in your formative relationships (the more technical term is "primary relationships" where your primary caregiver(s), a parent/guardian, is supposed to supply you with security and warmth in their relationship(s) with you).

The clearest analogy I can think of for how he’d need some time before talk therapy could ever benefit him, is when a computer does that thing where it shuts down outside of your control, in order to prevent further damage. When you switch it back on by pressing the power button, it usually acts as if nothing happened before that. This numbing and calmness has been essential in the short-term for Hunter to function, one example being from Hollow Mind:

because his emotions being almost completely shut down here were crucial for survival: for his legs to carry him, with Luz’s help, to escape Belos’s mind. If he didn’t have such a shutdown, he may have frozen in place due to being too overwhelmed, making it harder for Luz to shake him into being lucid to follow her, and Belos would’ve been able to apprehend and capture him all over again in the mindscape.

Survive first, fear later.

There is the possibility that with Flapjack’s death in particular, he might swing towards more dissociation than ever before. The reason why dissociation happens in the first place is because the brain, like the computer, would be overwhelmed if it stayed online any further. It’s a protective built-in mechanism to numb intense psychological pain. That computer can still work overall for some time, but boy oh boy..it would need some repair shop work at some point to even perform basic functions.

If his best friend’s death, by his hands, shocked us in the audience as much as it did, it goes without saying: he himself is carrying a massive amount of shock. The thing is..for the time being his attention is diverted to fighting back and going after Belos, making sure everyone else is safe. But we shall see how his mental state will be after the fighting is over.

This pattern of shutting down/short-circuiting and then coming back online without proper deep healing, would be detrimental long-term if it keeps happening and if it continues past the point where things start to be truly safe for him. It can sadly go on for years if e.g. a child is trapped until they move out as an adult, which would mean the road to healing is having to thaw out of several years’ worth of survival mode and hypervigilance.

To remain isolated would be the biggest obstacle in any stage of his recovery. Thankfully he is now the furthest thing from isolated, where the story left off. Check out how different the screenshots are below omg…the effects of Belos isolating him versus where he is now:

A consistent theme has been an ongoing tension between his fears and what he chooses to do anyway. It ain't just great storytelling, it also feels damn real because I'm willing to bet many of us experience the same tension in our day-to-day living.

E.g. in Labyrinth Runners, the panic attack he had:

is what made the later moment so much more powerful, when he decides to run towards fear to help Gus:

Over time, he has repeatedly made decisions where he prioritizes care for others, the desire for connection and wanting to do what is truly right, over the fear of being hurt and rejected. My personal fave example of how he worries for others’ safety is this seemingly smaller moment, but it’s honestly heartbreaking and reveals hell of a lot about who he is:

He is so terrified that Belos is back, quivering and exasperated, yet he doesn’t want Luz to call anyone else to help them: and in no way does he do this to show off or anything, he wants to protect his loved ones. But this tenacity that exists alongside his gentle spirit is what got him to rebel more and more throughout Season 2, leading him into greater danger and well..unfortunately all of that plot was also building up to what Belos did to him in Thanks to Them.

…yeah. Talk therapy is not what I think this kid needs right now, not till there is restored peace all around him. Because talk therapy requires quite a bit of usage of the brain’s prefrontal cortex - the part responsible for reasoning and logic - and it is activated when we are in conscious control of our thinking. And facts such as “My ‘uncle’ chose to lie to me my whole life” can’t be understood and analyzed in the same way as a math problem can be deciphered :’) How does one make sense of something like that?

Poor Hunter can only accept the reality that Belos chose to do all that, and a key part of this acceptance is to affirm his own strengths and believe he can accept such hard truths. To achieve such acceptance, treating his condition would most likely require subconscious work that is experiential in nature (involving deeper parts of the mind than just the prefrontal cortex) as opposed to just analyzing and taking things apart. Because I don't think simply talking about this:

on top of a childhood of being manipulated, will get this poor kid to where he'd like to be.

My former supervisor calls experiential subconscious work “heart work”, not “head work”...i.e. experiencing one’s feelings and relationships in a safe space. All of Hunter’s military training and duties are most definitely “head work”, all about strategy and withholding trust, which means “heart work” - building trust and finding authenticity in his relationships - has been a new journey for him. His network of relationships and perceptions need a major, positive reframing. And there are so many emotional wounds, oh Titan, so many from Belos.

Hunter is likely to benefit from experiential subconscious work such as the increasingly popular Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) modality for therapy, because EMDR can be an effective treatment if a client experiences discomfort in the form of physical bodily sensations whenever their trauma is triggered, though it is not necessarily for everyone who suffers from trauma. A Boiling Isles version of EMDR might involve Illusion magic...if a therapist from that Coven can draw out mental images of clients to project into the therapy room, that would be a cool simulation and cool parallel of how therapy works in our world.

EMDR was the biggest, most revelatory thing for me in my own recovery but a coursemate of mine found it to be too much and too direct: instead, she benefited from the Emotion Freedom Technique (EFT) approach which was more physical in nature and relied on tapping acupressure points on the body. Idk, maybe I matched better with EMDR because I have an innate curiosity about things, even if it has gotten me in trouble many times in life (this sounds like Hunter as well) :S Whereas EFT was the better fit for my coursemate because she wanted a sense of attachment and connection with herself via the specific sense of touch.

Disclaimer: I am not yet certified in EMDR, god it will be years before I can afford the training fees but I have been on the receiving end of it as a client in many sessions. So I am no trained expert in it at all.

We see Hunter experiencing physical distress related to his trauma, which is why the EMDR technique, that aims to reduce trauma-related distress experienced in the physical body, could be the right match for him. Since he loves the Ruler’s Reach and Cosmic Frontier, he might like how EMDR is like letting your subconscious re-tell your story as a heroic triumphant story, and the treatment feels like rewriting your painful memories while still acknowledging how they actually happened. Because the treatment helped me learn that it is possible to hold both of those in your mind.

To sum up EMDR the best I can, the client replays their difficult memories in their subconscious imagination. It relies on a phenomenon called bilateral stimulation (BLS) which is related to how making left-and-right motions (e.g. going for walks, or swimming) while holding upsetting thoughts in our heads, helps to reduce the intensity of such thoughts.

The general process involves:

Helping the client prepare an imagined safe place to go to (Hunter might choose his fave location from Cosmic Frontier, since clients can choose fictional places if they like) and if needed, a safe person (he might choose Camila) to come rescue them in their mind, in case revisiting the bad memories becomes too distressing. The therapist gets the client to experience the safe place and person, then describe to the therapist what they see, hear, touch etc with as much detail as possible. There will be several practice rounds in those safe spaces, before the client is supposed to do the same imagination thing with their scary traumatic memories in later sessions: once they are experienced with visiting their safe places.

Desensitizing the pain and distress of traumatic memories, working through only one memory at a time, where the therapist gets the client to hold the painful memory in mind while also performing left-and-right physical movements e.g. client moves their eyes left and right, following the therapist's hand motions. The therapist regularly checks in with how the client feels and also measures 1. the intensity of the client’s distress (using the Subjective Units of Disturbance or SUD scale, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest distress level imaginable to the client) and 2. The strength of the client’s positive belief about themselves (using the VOC or Validity of Cognition scale, on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being complete trust in the positive belief). The aim is to reduce the SUD score to 0 or 1, and increase the VoC score to 7, per memory that the client decides to process with the therapist. This would definitely take at least 3 sessions per memory, based on my experience.

The desensitizing step takes multiple sessions (estimated to be 8-12 sessions for simpler traumas, and many more sessions for complex traumas) helps to make room for new positive beliefs about oneself e.g. “I am worthy of love” to take up more space in the client’s mind, while the emotional space taken up by negative beliefs like “I am unlovable” gets smaller and smaller.

In my experience as an EMDR client, you are just supposed to let your subconscious flow and alter each memory during the desensitizing, because it isn’t about how realistic the memory was, it’s about what meanings you’d like to put into the storyline of the memory e.g. going from “I deserved that abuse” to “You know what, I’m gonna try protect myself”. This means Hunter could incorporate his fave fictional scenes and elements into his own story. I found that my brain went from accurately replaying my traumatic memories, to adding in new things or replacing original parts of each memory. And best of all, I wasn’t actively choosing all these changes - I just let my subconscious run on its own, since it is outside my conscious control anyway. E.g. in a memory where my own abusive mother was yelling at me during a car ride, I saw a tall red tree (red is my fave colour and I feel strength whenever I see it) rapidly growing out of the road directly in front of us. It could cause my mother to lose control of the steering and brake hard, and I could quickly unlock the front passenger door to exit the car and run to my own safety. The most real thing about this was that I now got a taste of how it would feel to use strong boundaries with my mother in real life, and the coolest thing was seeing how my own brain went off on its own to write an encouraging story, which is what mattered and allowed my positive beliefs about myself to start taking root. It all started in my imagination, guided by the therapist.

The best way of putting it is..I realized that when the original traumatic events happened in my life, the bad events happened which then installed negative beliefs about myself (and the world) into my brain's programming, breaking my trust in almost everything except my escape spaces like gaming and art. With EMDR, after feeling the safety of trusting my therapist and my safe place, I had to let my brain create the positive version of the above: letting improved versions of those traumatic events be written by my subconscious: which helped to usher in the positive opposites of those negative beliefs.

It would be too lengthy to go into more detail here about how EMDR could help our boi, so I will instead cover that in my future case formulation post that is separate from this series. But EMDR is not the only way to reach a point of having positive beliefs about oneself. Some people may be able to reach that stage without therapy, using resources like a strong support network and doing meaningful work and activities, which is completely valid and fine as well.

EMDR was the tool that helped the book author reach her first ever breakthrough in her mental health journey. It helped her realize that stuff from so long ago, which she thought she had gotten over, needed to be revisited in order for her to start feeling love for her inner child and younger self. Feeling love for yourself and understanding self-love is very hard work, and it’s not the same as shrugging “Yeah, I guess it’s good to love yourself” and knowing it in theory as an observer.

That section of the book is sort of like how Hunter becomes more and more able to draw strength and other positive qualities e.g. courage, trust, etc, from himself, on his own. The rest of the Hexsquad and Camila came in to help and save Hunter first, which gently reinforced a healthy narrative over time that he is in fact deserving of love, getting him to believe along the lines of “You know what, I don’t want to try being useful to Belos anymore, because what he did to me and what he does as the Emperor is wrong”. This understand was further reinforced when he was the one to extend help to Gus towards the end of Labyrinth Runners.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this post is how Hunter’s friends helped to positively reshape the way he saw himself, when they modeled how healthy relationships should be for him. Many posts have already made in the fandom about how this was the case in every episode that Hunter was featured in (from Hunting Palismen onwards), so I’ll only show the recent examples from Thanks to Them below:

I like how during all of his screentime, it wasn’t obvious to us whether he had good beliefs about himself, right up until we see him at his happiest, in his cosplay outfit and secondly when he expresses his desires out loud to Belos while being possessed.

Learning healthy behaviours from positive influences outside of himself (sometimes, in therapy speak we call this “introducing a foreign element” outside of the client’s own familiar world, to introduce real change), because he had no reference points to draw upon from his own knowledge, is what got him to begin understanding and believing he deserves better. Such recovery work can’t happen within a vacuum, since no man is an island. Some form of connection is needed as a catalyst.

And ajhdhkjkljdfd I am so so proud of him that he could already practice these modeled behaviours himself at least a couple of times, supported by Flapjack's love, after being equipped with the love he needed:

Now, without Flapjack, I am on the edge of my seat wondering how he sees himself, and while he will never be the same again..I wonder how he will find his way back to liking who he is. I hope to see a more in-depth, layered and raw version of these where he has to face himself...and Flapjack is not going to be there this time..:

Especially since his “I like who I am right now” has been so greatly challenged by Flapjack dying by his own hands.

The author's breakthrough after meeting her younger self in her imagination, during her own EMDR sessions, was that she now understood in her heart, not just knowing in her rational head, that her parents did not provide her with healthy love. With that, it became clear what it was that she needed.

This is crazy important. Gradually, Hunter made his way from merely knowing (suspecting that the 'love' provided for him by Belos was not right) to fully understanding (feeling what love is supposed to be, through his friends and Camila). This concept references what I said very early on in this post about “heart work” vs “head work”. Head knowledge is the knowing part that looks for facts and can be reached quickly, but heart knowledge - trusting, believing, seeing the meaningful significance of something - can be tough to find without the aid of a support network, therapists and any form of meaningful inspiration.

The following life-changing truths that the author found in the challenging parts of her EMDR therapy sessions, are truths that were also revealed to Hunter in his character arc through difficult experiences:

I'm sure there will be amazing upcoming dialogue where his support network and found family help to further reaffirm the positive beliefs that he has began to trust about himself.

And that’s that for Part 2!

I wonder if any of the above was helpful, and feel free to comment and discuss in the notes.

Importantly, to put up a word of caution here: please do not try any EMDR on yourself under any circumstances, of course xD

Which stuff did you guys find the most interesting from this part? If anything above is pretty complex for you, feel free to DM me or comment to ask further questions~~

Part 3 will be posted next weekend.

#toh analysis #toh hunter #the owl house #toh flapjack #toh belos #emperor belos #hunter's abuse #hunter's trauma #hunter's cptsd #loz writes a meta

[writerof-thewoods]

hai ^u^ um i was wondering if you had any toddler / baby regressor vanessa headcanons from the fnaf movie ? :00 or anything about her hehe , i'm an introject of her and i've been looking for some stuff :33

I do actually!! She's been on my mind a lot recently, so here's what I have for her :D

(I'm probably going to include some of my other headcanons just because I feel like they fit here as well if that's okay!)

Baby Regressor! Vanessa

She's not quite sure what her age range is, though she does know it's pretty small. Mainly because it's before she can remember all the things that happened with her family, so with being pretty young at that state, it's between 0-3.

Very independent, "I can do it myself !!" I feel like she wouldn't really care about having a caregiver, like it's not something she thinks she needs, but won't say no if it happens.

Because of that, she has trouble letting her guard down around others when she's regressed (mainly Mike). Feeling that vulnerable around someone else reminds her of when she was a kid, so it's hard for her to trust that he won't do anything to her.

Dealing with the trauma of everything is hard on someone that's as small as she is. Her brain doesn't know how to process it all and it takes a toll on her both mentally and emotionally. Sometimes she just cries and doesn't know why, but aside from that, she's not really an explosive or overly emotional kid. Mainly a little bit more sensitive than anything.

Is a little nervous when it comes to him acting like a sort of parental/brother figure towards her. She hasn't experienced that in a long time and ever since she's worried it would turn out just like her relationship with her father. That she'll be rejected, taken advantage of, or forced to "grow up."

Mike, being the ever-patient guy he is, wishes he could get rid of those feelings for her. He'd never hurt Vanessa and despite how much she questions it, he still reassures her that he won't.

Will tag along with him anytime she can. He's pretty much the one person she trusts with this and will take up any chance to be around him. Since she's content to pretty much sit and sleep or watch, he doesn't mind.

He also gets much more protective over her when she's little. It could be something as small as seeing a bug in the house or crossing the street, but whatever it is, he's making sure she's alright. That's his baby and though he's still figuring it out, he'll do anything for her.

Very tired kiddo, but hates sleeping alone. She spends most nights (if they aren't with each other) on the phone with Mike or falling asleep together (which happens more often than the former.) And he, having a similar problem, is cool with it either way.

Has a plush bunny (and later on, all the other animatronics) that she keeps with her at all times. It's small enough to fit in her pocket, so she can bring it in to work whenever she's having a rough day.

While her skills aren't as good as they normally are, she still loves to draw with Abby when she feels old enough to. Most of the time they're just scribbles and she's proud of it either way.

S O many forts. It's not even funny. They're her favorite spot to be in and there's no stopping her and Abby from building them.

Speaking of which, it was difficult in the first place to tell Mike about her regression, and it was even more so when it came to Abby. She was a kid and Vanessa didn't expect her to understand it, plus she worried that it would freak her out. They didn't exactly say it was that, but they pretty much put in a way that made sense to Abby. And she didn't mind, she was actually happy to have someone to play with, even if it wasn't someone exactly her age.

She never had a ton of pet names growing up, so Mike takes advantage of that. Mainly variations of her name like "Nessa", and he calls her ones he finds silly or funny. Like "Peanut" or "Munchkin." He does have a favorite though and ends up calling her "Little Lady" most often.

Much more comfortable with PDA/touching in general when she's little. Even if it's just small, subtle things like holding each other's pinkies or holding hands. It helps her feel safer to know that someone else is there like "Hey, I got you." And it helps both her and Mike open up more to each other by doing it.

the DNI banner credit goes to @geekgirl-33, I hope it's okay that I used it!

#request answered! #writing requests #agere writing #fnaf agere headcanons #little!vanessa shelly #regressor!vanessa shelly #caregiver!mike schmidt #mike & vanessa #Mike x Vanessa #my headcanons #my writing #agere blog #fnaf agere #five night's at freddy's #five night's at freddy's movie headcanons #willowws writing

[the80srewinders]

Inside The Mind of a Sysmed: An Experienced Guide

by Finley, host

Sysmeds are system exclusionists- they think you need trauma to be plural. They often push that DID/OSDD only develops from trauma and, although that might be true, I've found evidence it might not be always the case (way after we made this blog.) They use the basic well known facts about DID/OSDD to pull you in, because its how they build trust. Then they tell you the misinformation about systems of all types.

Why do they do this?

I used to be a sysmed when I found out about DID- because I fit a lot of the symptoms, and was in denial I had trauma, and felt like I needed trauma or I'd be broken, I closed my mind off from any possibility endogenic systems, much less DID without trauma, was possible. If I believed that, I'd start thinking I was endogenic, and I'd feel like I was broken and an insult to real trauma survivors- I already felt like that. People who were traumatized as children don't remember all of their trauma and there's a select group that remember very little or none. Society pushes the "trauma is something you remember that shatters and severely hurts you mentally that you always remember and want to forget" narrative alongside people who claim they remember their trauma and are "proud survivors. " I grew up believing that and as a result, I thought the only trauma I had was bullying and sexual assault/rape in public school, and my cousin sexually abusing me. Remembering very little details of all those traumatic events and having mostly depersonalized memories of those events, I didn't see where it could be bad enough to cause DID. I also thought I never dissociated until I found out I could have DID but I later found out the things I called weird about myself were actually dissociation- the sysmed view just didn't make it seem that way. I had to go through six months of research to find out dissociation was experienced differently by person. I was on r/DID a lot when I was in the diagnostic process (which took months) and learned so much misinformation about plurality I was suffering with denial severely. I thought I didn't have DID and I was just born broken, I was nothing like these people. Switching all the time, being in distress because of dramatic disorienting dissociation, having vivid flashbacks to trauma all the time. I was none of that. The denial of my trauma ate me up and left me with a hole of invalidity to fill with validity. So I would hold sysmed views to make myself feel valid and say those online when I needed to boost my sense of validity. But the more research I did, the more I found that endogenic systems were valid and often do have trauma- its just not what made them plural. And that everything I experienced was in fact in favor of DID- amnesia of trauma, depersonalized memories, not noticing switches, randomly hearing alters thoughts intruding into my consciousness instead of full on conversations with them thinking theyre "imaginary friends", unstable identity, and after I found out I had DID, headaches when trying to communicate internally with alters.

Basically, sysmeds are sysmeds because they are in denial of their trauma, and the society stereotype on trauma doesn't make them feel any more valid. Mix this in with the singlet created stereotype on DID in media, and how psychology often falsely validated these presentations until 1994 with the DSM-4 which renamed the disorder accurately, and sysmeds don't feel valid at all. They feel inherently broken and like they're nothing without trauma (or at least trauma they can remember.) Their denial of trauma eats them up and makes them miserable, and in an attempt to feel valid, they are filled with hate toward anyone who would make them feel like they're not valid by just existing. Sysmeds let their trauma or denial thereof turn them into miserable exclusionists who knowingly spread misinformation and bait an entire community into being seen as bullies. All because instead of therapy, they chose to go with what feels good in the moment out of anguish.

So yes we are pro-endogenic. Because when we had enough of the pain caused by denial and the "denial-be a sysmed to cure it" cycle, we chose to do research. All it takes is researching trusted websites about plurality, including medical websites that have validated endogenic systems. Sysmeds love trusted sources especially government medical websites, don't they?

And you'll find that there's really no need to be a sysmed at all.

Edit: Sysmeds have different reasons for being sysmeds. Just because these are the sysmeds we encountered and why I became one, doesnt mean its why every sysmed is a sysmed. It could be because they just don't see how endogenic plurality can exist, they strictly believe in the theory of dissociation, or they were exposed to sysmedicalist content like r/DID or r/systemscringe. (We're not against the theory of structural dissociation, we just think that applies to posttraumatic/dissociative disorders only but there's other ways systems develop.) Those are their reasons for hating each other as well. Our experience isn't universal and we realize that.

#dissociative identity disorder #actually dissociative #other specified dissociative disorder #osddid #dissociation #system stuff #endo safe #pro endo #syscourse

[linka-from-captain-planet]

Hi again! Here's another thing I'd like your angle on: When trauma catches up with either Minthara and Florrick, how do they help each other cope?

hi! This is tough to answer because you first have to arrive at one or both of them a) registering the fact of being traumatized and simultaneously b) welcoming help from anyone, let alone one another.

Cut for wall of text

Minthara picks and chooses what trauma she's willing to recognize (e.g. she will talk pretty freely about Orin, but will never acknowledge the trauma of her upbringing). Florrick definitely thinks she doesn't have any because the only real setback she's ever experienced in her life was Wrym's Rock and that Turned Out Fine. So the first barrier is that neither is really likely to open up.

In my headcanon, Minthara opened her heart to a Tav only for them to choose someone else, so she's more hesitant than ever to open her heart, even as much as she desperately wants that connection. She would write Florrick off as not being able to understand because she didn't experience the tadpole herself and has only ever heard the worst of Menzoberranzan, and she's also very cognizant of the fact that Florrick wants her to change. She feels like she's still at war, so showing any "weakness" just wouldn't fly. Florrick would be able to recognize when Minthara was upset, but being more emotionally reserved and not a words of affirmation type, her attempts to support in other ways would probably fall short. (This is increasingly the conflict in my fics).

For Florrick, hubris is a big part of her personality and I think she sees herself as being logical and methodical, when really she just isn't. She was on board with the logistical implications of losing Ulder to the Absolute and grieving for her city, but she doesn't quite grip the purely emotional impact of the truth that she was almost killed, her talents and efforts weren't enough, she was betrayed by a monster wearing the face of the most important and trusted person in her life. It keeps her up at night, but she holds the feeling at arms' length, trying to rationalize it away. Minthara, depending on how emotionally engaged she's feeling, might not have a lot of sympathy because betrayal and impending execution are just a regular Tuesday to her. At her best, I think she'd actually be quite good at comforting Florrick with her poignant words and grounding touch, but she's also self-conscious of her feelings in contrast to what she perceives Florrick's to be, so she could easily hold back.

Another thing is that Florrick has something that Minthara doesn't: other people to turn to. If she felt she needed support, she would seek out Ulder, other friends, or other more established romantic partners first, both because they know her better and because she isn't sure if Minthara wants to be that emotionally intimate. For Minthara, the loneliness of surface life is a big pain point these days, so feeling like Florrick chooses others over her builds resentment and makes her less likely to try.

So basically, they could help each other cope, but... it's spotty at best.

#minthara/florrick #hopefully this is comprehensible as I've been brain dead for a few days #asks

[mommyghostface28]

I just wanted to hop on here to join in on the current convo with these other anons on your blog. I want to say that you're not alone in struggling with emploring your sexuality after an assault or bad sexual experiences. I've been through forms of assault myself so I get it. I've also experienced men doing things to me that I didn't exactly want them to. And you would be surprised at just how many other people will be able to empathise/relate.

It can be really difficult to build the self confidence to explore again and figure out what you're into after something like that happening to you. And it can sometimes even be hard to figure out what gender you like after going through forms of assault, as it might not feel safe anymore to explore sex with that gender for whatever reason. And alot of people also do find it hard to navigate through trying out rougher sex and bdsm, because as much as we may love doing those things (We may prefer kinky sex to soft sex because we get off on it more), we may find that being put into certain sexual situations brings back memories of the past, or if someone uses certain words/phrases that an abuser/assaulter previously also used, then it is only natural for you to feel triggered by it. However, even if you are able to push any bad memories or thoughts that surface because of trauma to the back of your mind during sex to carry on with the moment, that isn't going to benefit anyone in this situation, it may make your experience less enjoyable, and might leave you feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable, upset even if any flashbacks start to happen.

Some people also find that their role in bdsm might be effected by their trauma too. For example, after experiencing trauma, they might only feel comfortable being the dom not sub or vice-versa as they don't like to feel powerless, that feeling of loosing your control during sex that submissives feel might trigger someone with a past of assault where their control and say in the situations got taken away.

I also want to mention that some people may even find that certain forms of bdsm/kink can be quite liberating and healing for their trauma (eg: I've met alot of people who say this about cnc. I don't know much about it personally but I'm sure someone reading this will get what I mean ahah).

The best thing to do in these situations in my experience, would be to take things slowly to start off with. Don't jump into the deep end with bdsm and overwhelm yourself. Really get to know and trust the people you're sleeping with first, so make sure that you feel completely at ease and comfortable so that it can be an enjoyable experience for you both. If there's no real trust then it's more likely for bad memories to surface. And definitely talk to them openly, with honest communication. Discuss what you both want/don't want to happen when you're being the dom or sub, and talk about what you do like/don't like. and what might trigger you during sex. Your partner will need to be aware of these things so that they can be mindful of it during sex/bdsm, and so they can be caring and understanding if you do start to feel triggered while with them. Alot of doms out there would want to know these things simply so that it can be kept in mind when exploring new things, making sure your triggers can be avoided/worked around. But also so that they can take good care of you, and later be able to include certain post sex aftercare to check in afterwards, and provide anything you may need to feel better. I get it can be really daunting and scary opening up about these things, but it's very helpful when going into these situations, believe me ....

I apologise this message was long, I felt like it needed to be said. I can certainly empathise with these anon messages I'm seeing on your blog. I want yall to know that you're stronger than you may think, and your trauma does not define who you are. There will be caring people out there willing to help you explore. I'm sending all of you massive hugs. ❤❤❤

- (anon 🧚‍♀️).

love..this was truly SO beautifully said. Thank you so much for sharing your mind on this, I truly appreciate your input and your supportive, kind words. You’re such a Gem 🥹❤️

I know others will appreciate your words too.

I’m sending YOU a massive hug as well..and my deepest sorry that you’ve also experienced this. You have such a pretty soul but it seems despite what you’ve been through you still radiate so beautifully and that’s amazing. I hope you’re so proud of how far you’ve come too ❤️

- 🧚‍♀️

#wlw nsft #nsft wlw #wlw ns/fw #lesbian nsft #sapphic nsft #bd/sm mommy #nsft lesbian #domme momm #wlw domme #🧚‍♀️