#he's got to fucking go see a psychologist/go to therapy

[flowerandblood]

The Prince and The Fox (3)

[ modern! • Aemond x friend! • female ]

[ warnings: kissing, mention of sexual abuse, violence, trauma ]

[ description: After the events of her childhood, despite her best efforts, her neighbor and the younger brother of her friend Helaena, Aemond, does not want to know her. This state lasts until a house party organized by his older brother, Aegon, during which an incident occurs that will change their relationship forever. Slow burn, angst, toxic ex-Alys, rough Aemond. This is several anon requests combined into one fic. ]

WARNING: The main plot between the characters takes place in high school. Yes, in high school. The belief that teenagers wait with an intimacy when they are in love in high school is ridiculous to me. Aemond and the character here are the same age. Don't ask me how old they are, in my country you are of the age of consent in your first year of high school and an adult in the last year of high school, so if it is more convenient for you, think about it that way and decide for yourself. In this story, I am not following the trail that they are magically friends right away, but how they become friends and what that even means. I'm writing this fic to give the perspective of young, lost people, not adult women who want to see exactly themselves in everything they read. If that's all you expect, this isn't the fic for you.

I don't want whining about this in my comments or asks. I will delete these and block you. You have been warned. Aemond + Evans Series Moodboard

This is my first story that has its own playlist, but yes! Get in the mood! Story Music Playlist. Song used in this chapter: Don't Bring Me Down by Electric Light Orchestra.

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

_____

From that day on, they both took off their earphones when they stood together at the bus stop. Her presence had apparently stopped being awkward for him and he had become addicted to listening to Kajagoogoo, although he admitted it reluctantly.

"They have a terrible band name, but that bass is fucking awesome. They got really into my head and it's good to listen to them in the background while doing something else at the same time." He muttered, without looking at her, scrolling something on his phone.

She knew this was his way of distracting himself from the stress of the conversation, that he wasn't good at it and pretended to be indifferent, his lips tightened.

Since the whole thing reached the headmaster of the school the matter became very serious and Cregan was not laughing anymore. The headmaster became very concerned about the whole situation and even though it was not the school where the sexual abuse took place, bullying did.

On the corridor cameras, Cregan could be seen knocking her over by propping her up with his leg, as one of his buddies scratched the word 'liar' with his key on her locker.

Although these were not crimes for which you could go to jail, the principal invited her to an interview accompanied by the school psychologist. The headmaster asked her if she wanted someone to accompany her during this talk and she said without thinking: Aemond.

She surprised him when she asked him to go with her to his office, he was the only one to witness it all and she was afraid to be there alone. He just nodded and answered nothing, clicking something on his phone, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

They went there together.

The director approached the matter with understanding and quoted to her what he had heard the day before from Aemond.

"Your colleague told me that he witnessed the incident and that there is video footage of what happened. I also know that Cregan's classmates nag you a lot because they prefer to believe him. The psychologist and I thought that, if you agree, we would give his class some shock therapy and show them the part of the video that shows him hurting you.

Of course, we will only do this if you agree, however, we believe that if Mr Stark loses his credibility, you will regain your composure and be able to focus on your education rather than the unpleasant incidents you continue to face from them. We know that the footage shows nothing of which you would be ashamed, nor of course your exposed body." He concluded, glancing uncertainly at the lady psychologist.

She didn't know what to say, she could feel her heart pounding hard.

"Think it over calmly. It's just a suggestion and you don't have to do it. We want to help you and we know it's hard for you." Said the psychologist in a soft, calm voice.

She looked apprehensively at Aemond, who was staring at her out of the corner of his eye with his lips tightened, himself clearly not sure what he was thinking.

"It's your decision. You don't have to do it. But I think this bugger deserves it. He walks around the school like a king, he thinks you don't have the guts to show it. That you'll be embarrassed when he's the one who should be ashamed of himself." He said lowly, and she thought with pain that he was right.

Why should he spread rumours about her, lie that she wanted this?

"Fine." She mumbled, the headmaster sighed quietly.

"Do you want to be there when we show them this?" He asked lowly, and she shook her head quickly.

"No."

She delivered an excerpt of the video to the director that next day. He and the lady psychologist watched it to make sure that the video would not portray her in a negative light and make matters worse, but what they saw left no illusions.

She knew that the headmaster would go to Cregan's class with the psychologist at their advisory class and throughout the day she felt like she was going to die, her whole body was trembling, she hadn't eaten anything and she was cold.

As she sat during one of the breaks outside the classroom, staring dully at the floor Aemond sat down next to her and sighed, taking out of his pocket her favourite chocolate bar, Milkyway, which he must have bought from the school vending machine. She looked at him gratefully and shook her head.

"Have you eaten anything today?" He asked lowly and she shook her head again, lowering her gaze.

"I won't swallow anything. My stomach has been hurting since this morning."

"Hmm."

They sat side by side like that, their shoulders and knees touching, not speaking until the bell rang announcing that the break was over.

They sat down to their benches, the teacher came in, but she couldn't concentrate on what he was saying, terrified.

Everyone was watching it now.

She covered her face with her hands, thinking that she had made a mistake, that it would get worse.

However, to her surprise, as she walked out of the classroom she was approached by several people from his class who had also thrown unpleasant comments at her earlier, including his buddy, who shouted to her and Aemond at the time whether they were going to go fuck.

They stood for a moment as if they didn't know what to say.

"Hi. We saw the video. I…fuck." Said the boy, scratching his brow with his thumb, pale, embarrassed, horrified. "I…I really believed him. I swear to you I would never have suspected he was capable of such a thing. When I watched you pull away from him and he wouldn't let you go…fuck, a red light should have lit up in my head earlier as he said he was going to fuck you, but I thought, I don't know, that's what you want, that you're into him, not that…"

He stammered, all red, she could see he was barely holding back tears. He shrugged his shoulders.

"And yet I acted like a stupid piece of shit to you. Then, after all of that. I believed my mate, I thought I knew him." He said without looking at her, his other colleagues nodding.

"We're ashamed. He walked around talking about it as if nothing had happened, as if it was just your imagination. He cried in class as the principal came in and said what he was going to show us. I think he realised he was going to lose a lot of friends."

She looked at them all with her heart beating hard, scared and ashamed at the same time, not knowing what she should say to them.

Most of all, however, she felt relieved.

They had finally left her alone.

If she could consider that something good had come out of all this, it was certainly her relationship with Aemond. They only talked on the bus or while waiting for him at the bus stop, usually about school, teachers, homework, or music.

He played her songs on his earphones when she asked him if he could recommend something new to her, however, he always listened to Kajagoogoo with her on the way to school.

She liked the fact that this had already become their routine, something they shared, proof that they had established a bond, this time unforced, desired from both sides.

She found to her surprise that he was actually a very sensitive, calm man.

She really liked him.

Helaena was very concerned about all that had happened, and wrote to her often to find out how she was feeling. She didn't want to impose on her and didn't visit her at home.

However, one day she asked if she would like to stay with her for the night and sleep in her room, talk about everything that was on her mind and then watch Shrek together or another cartoon they loved as children.

She thought it was a good idea.

She arrived at the appointed time in the evening, Alicent opened the door, smiling warmly and embracing her.

Since the situation with Cregan it seemed that their families had become closer, her parents were extremely grateful to Aemond for what he had done and always greeted him when they saw him on the street or in the shop, embarrassing him.

She saw Helaena run out from over her shoulder and wave to her, holding two bags of their favourite Chips and a carton of orange juice.

Walking towards the stairs she swallowed loudly as she saw the exit to the garden, feeling an unpleasant tightening in her pit and a cold sweat on her back.

She squealed when suddenly Vhagar ran out at them from upstairs, wagging her tail and barking, happy that they had a visitor, almost knocking her over.

"Vhagar!" She heard his impatient, low voice. "Come back here! Immediately."

Vhagar ran up to him, looking at him with her big, pleading black eyes, and he sighed as he stroked her fur. She smiled at him as she passed him, they threw each other a brief, shy 'hi' before she disappeared with Helaena into her room.

Although she didn't want to at first, she felt she had to get it out of her, that she couldn't take it anymore, that it was poisoning her from the inside.

They were both sitting in their pyjamas, T-shirts and shorts on her carpet, a bowl full of crisps and two glasses full of juice between them.

"At first when he touched my thigh I thought − gee, maybe he really likes me that much that he can't stop, I don't know. I felt, I sensed something was wrong and I'm mad that I didn't push him away then! I went outside with him because I thought maybe I don't know, he wants to sit with me in an embrace, stroke me, hold my hand, kiss me. And when he slipped his hand under my dress, when he squeezed me, when he wouldn't let me move or pull away I felt…" She stammered, feeling her voice break, her throat tighten, tears gather in her eyes.

"…God, I just felt that I was very afraid of him, that it was very bad and terrible, that I didn't want it, that he was hurting me, that it was such a bad touch, I don't know how to describe it." She mumbled, Helaena looking at her with her lips slightly parted, her eyebrows arched in pain, her light hair tied up in a bun.

"It felt like I couldn't breathe, it felt like I wanted to scream, like someone was skinning me, it's this feeling of sudden panic, but also something else, like deep in your lower abdomen, this all-consuming fear and terror, like the air is stuck in your throat and you can't catch your breath." She muttered quickly, shaking her head, refusing to let the tears flow, her lips tightening.

"I don't know how he can think it's nothing. To live with the fact that I asked him to stop and he didn't." She shrugged her shoulders, Helaena got up and sat beside her, embracing her, letting her lie on her thighs.

She burst into tears when she started to stroke her head, when she told her that it wasn't her fault and that no one blamed her, that just because she hadn't pushed him away at first didn't mean he had the right to do what he did, that he had done it deliberately and premeditatedly, that no meant no.

She shuddered and lifted her gaze when she heard movement near her room, as if someone had moved out of place, and then the quiet sound of a door opening and closing.

Was he listening to what she was talking about? Was he eavesdropping on them?

She pressed her lips together, lowering her head, feeling ashamed.

She said she would go to the toilet to bring herself to order, but in fact she went to his door, hearing from it the song he had shown her a few days before, 'Don't Bring Me Down' played by the Electric Light Orchestra.

She knocked loudly and heard that after a moment the music quieted, someone's footsteps on the other side.

He opened the door and looked at her in surprise, involuntarily glancing down at her bare legs and then at her face again, swallowing loudly.

"Were you eavesdropping?" She asked reproachfully.

He pressed his lips together, looking away.

"Yeah. I'm sorry." He said low with sincere regret. "I wanted to know how you were feeling. How you're coping with it."

"Can't you just ask me?" She said regretfully, looking at him with her eyebrows arched in pain, feeling the tears under her eyelids again, emotionally unhinged from what she had recounted.

He looked at her surprised, she could see that he was uncomfortable. He let out a loud breath.

"I'm not good at this. At talking. I didn't know if I should ask. Whether it was the right thing to do. I don't know what more I could say." He muttered, shrugging his shoulders, looking everywhere but at her.

"You can ask me anything you want. I trust you." She said softly, and he swallowed loudly, as if for some reason her words caused him pain, as if he wanted to say something more, as if he had something on the tip of his tongue.

She waited patiently for him to pull himself together, for him to think through what he wanted to say. He looked at her.

"I hated you all these years. I hated you because I saw you as a person who does everything for show. For show you baked me cakes to make you feel good about yourself, for show you came here and apologised to me, always loud, always first everywhere, you always had to have your opinion about everything." He said low and fast, and she felt the cold sweat on her back and the frighteningly strong pounding of her heart as she looked at him in disbelief.

"When I heard what Cregan said to his mates I thought I should warn you. To say: be careful, he's planning something more, he's talking about you to his mates as if you were an object. But I didn't. Because I didn't like you." He muttered and she saw his lower lip tremble, his healthy eye red, his breath hitched.

"If I told you, it wouldn't have happened. Do you know how I have you saved on my phone?" He asked in a trembling voice, a single tear running down his cheek.

"Foxy."

She felt tear after tear begin to run down her face, she drew in air loudly feeling tightness in her throat, she felt like someone was tearing her heart from the inside out, a strange, broken sound came from her chest.

"Please, hug me." She mumbled so pitifully that his face contorted in a grimace of pain and regret, he pulled her to him instantly and she clamped her hands on the material of his Tshirt, sobbing loudly, his arms wrapped around her tightly on each side.

"− I'm sorry −" He muttered in a low, hoarse, breaking voice. "− I'm sorry −"

She lifted her gaze to him, trying to catch her breath, and he lowered his head to look at her, their faces almost touching, their hot breaths surrounding their skin.

She felt something strange looking at him so closely, she thought he had a lovely eye colour, that he had fine cheekbones, a pleasing nose and forehead. Something changed in his gaze when he noticed that she glanced at his lips and found them surprisingly full, they looked soft, slightly parted in his accelerated breathing.

She felt his body tense up, felt his fingers clench tighter on her back. All she could hear was the loud pounding of her heart and their breaths, nothing more.

"− wanna kiss? −" She heard him whisper, as if it was a kind of casual proposal, as if he was asking her if she felt like eating something or going for a walk.

She swallowed loudly, glancing at him again, and simply nodded.

She didn't have time to take another breath and his warm, soft lips were already on hers, she felt his hand on the back of her neck which drew her close, making his job easier, he sighed as if with some kind of relief.

She had never suspected that kisses were so wet and sticky, so noisy, but she didn't want him to stop, so she stroked his scarred cheek with her hand, closing her eyes, mimicking his movements, brushing her lips against his with a loud click.

She tightened her second hand in his short, light hair, feeling the heat in her lower abdomen, feeling the pulsation between her thighs, his lips wonderfully soft, moist and firm, he brushed and sucked her fleshy skin, their breaths loud and drawn out.

"− fuck −" He growled out between one loud click of saliva and the next, panting along with her, their kisses increasingly deep, intimate, passionate and wet.

They pulled away from each other suddenly, breathing as if they had run a marathon, looking at each other in disbelief.

"− I − are you all right? −" He mumbled, his healthy eye wide open in panic.

She just nodded, feeling that she looked just like him. She moved away from him and he let her go immediately, running his hand over his mouth and chin in a gesture of disbelief.

"− I − fuck −" He muttered and they both gasped when they heard the sound of the door opening, Helaena leaned her head out, clearly worried that she hadn't been back for so long.

"− are you okay? −" She asked loudly, surprised, and she nodded, looking up at him with her heart pounding like mad, swallowing hard.

"− y-yes − I − I am coming −" She muttered and ran towards her, Helaena smiled at her and closed the door behind her.

She said she had already found Shrek online on her laptop and everything was ready to watch. She smiled and sat down on her bed next to her, trying to focus on what she was seeing, but her thoughts, as well as her heart, were with someone else, a few rooms away.

They kissed.

Good God.

An excellent start to a friendly relationship indeed.

_____

Aemond Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@its-actually-minicika @notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess @sweethoneyblossom1 @watercolorskyy @randomdragonfires @apollonshootafar @padfooteyes

#aemond fic #aemond fanfiction #aemond targaryen #aemond x oc #hotd aemond #aemond x fem!reader #ewan mitchell #ewan mitchell fanfic #aemond one eye #aemond fanfic #aemond fluff #aemond kinslayer #aemond #prince aemond #hotd fanfic #hotd fanfiction #aemond smut #aemond targaryen smut #aemond targaryen fanfic #ewan mitchell fanfiction #ewan mitchell smut #hotd smut #aemond targaryen angst #aemond angst #hotd angst #ewan mitchell angst #modern aemond angst #dark modern aemond #modern aemond smut #modern aemond

[the-grand-gemini]

Big obsessed with all of the BG3 villains. The themes of the cycle of abuse/trauma in all of the main cast makes me feral over how the villains unfortunately do not/did not get the opportunity to be "saved" by Tav (if doing a good playthrough) and by experiencing the heros journey.

I could talk about Ketheric and Orin, but after reading @bearhugsandshrugs fic it got me deep diving into Gortash's character. It's amazing and everyone should read it especially if you're weak for Tav/Gortash like I am 👀💦

Trigger warning for abuse mentions below the cut.

Let me start with stating this is NOT an Enver Gortash apologist post, he's evil and he's done terrible things. This is just me yelling into the void about character foils.

Childhood abuse:

In game we really only get to know his history through background information that we can scrape together if you search through the city and the House of Hope.

We don't get any details on what exactly Enver went through as a child. We can assume neglect/possible violence from his parents given his mother's words and the fact they sold him. We get to know that he was beaten when living in the House of Hope, but not what other possible horrors he could have experienced there (not including just the trauma of witnessing the other debtors and Hope), what age he was, or for how long (if anyone knows more timeline wise I'd love to know) he lived there before he escaped. We don't know how he escaped either, if he had help or did so on his own.

I'm no child psychologist, but abuse has lasting effects as we can see through all of the main party. Victims of abuse tend to have difficulty moving past certain emotional stages in their life. Aka a person abused in their childhood may have issues maturing emotionally without therapy, etc (again I'm not a psychologist). There is a strong possibility that "Child" Enver is still probably holding the reins emotionally while adult Enver isn't even aware of how his past affects every action and reaction he has at all times.

I can't imagine how living with Raphael during ones formative years being healthy in anyway, but we can definitely see some of the learned behaviours he's picked up from the Cambion. A focus on possing/presentation, a suave persona, torturing/using people for his own gain, a general lack of empathy, deal making, similar attire with devil motifs...

Unhealthy coping mechanisms:

Speaking of attire, Enver's coat not allowing Fear to be cast on him speaks volumes to me. Imagine the absolute horror of moving from one situation of abuse to another much worse one in the hells as a child/teen and probably being in a state of fear/anxiety at all times. Enver wearing a coat that doesn't allow him to feel fear gives me three main thoughts:

1. He is doing everything in his power to avoid that specific emotion and therefore prevents himself from thinking about that period of his life. Meaning he is not confronting his trauma the same way the main party is forced to throughout the game.

2. Narratively does the coat prevent him from feeling any fear at all? Or do we just go with the game mechanic that ensures he cannot be made afraid by the fear spell? If it prevents him from feeling fear at all (which I think is narratively more interesting and you can take this headcanon out of my cold dead hands) how does this effect his every day decisions? Fear prevents risky decisions all the time, it's one of the emotions that actively keeps people alive. Psychopaths usually don't experience fear the same way an average person would. Given his many horrific actions (the Iron Throne being a key example) I wonder how much his forceful removal of fear has done to his perception of rational thought. If you aren't afraid of consequences what's to stop you from doing anything at all? Selling a loyal body guard to the hells, torturing an entire faction of people in order to manufacturer your own personal army, stealing from an immensely powerful devil aka mother fucking MEPHISTOPHELES??? He presents himself as calm and collected in conversation. He appears as if he's the most rational of all three villains when he's really just as awful when we look into what he's actually been up to vs seeing Orin and Ketheric kill people on screen.

3. Where did he get the coat? Did he make it himself or was it a boon from Bane? A promise to a devout worshiper that he would never be made to feel afraid or beneath anyone again?

Another abuser - Bane:

Speaking of Bane... Another user (please tag if anyone can find the original post!) mentioned a line Astarion says where he states that he prayed to all the gods, but none answered. OP wondered if Enver, trapped in the hells and desperate for salvation, called out the same way... only for Bane to be the only god to answer. I'd die to know specifically when he was introduced to Bane and made to be his chosen.

We know Bane is considered an evil god and we even find that if we kill Enver and then use speak with dead that Bane is torturing him in the afterlife for failing him.

Given this abusive relationship is Enver a foil for Gale, a man groomed from a young age by a goddess and left with the consequences when his actions did not meet her expectations?

Is he like Shadowheart, someone who was given no alternative and made to believe they willingly chose their god only to learn they were deceived and never had any other options?

Like Wyll he's cast out by his father (or in his case both parents).

Like Lae'zel he's worshipping a deity with false promises, how can he believe he'll rule the entire world like a god himself when Bane the god of TYRANNY would see no other at the top but himself (Was he secretly planning to use the crown like Gale to usurp Bane or just pandering to us)?

We know he and Karlach are absolutely foils for each other given that he is her abuser and like himself Karlach was forged by her times in the hells only to survive on her own merits.

Those are my thoughts! Would love to know anyone else's on the walking red flag that is Lord Enver Gortash.

If Enver lost his memories like the Dark Urge would he be given a chance to redeem himself through his actions? Could he with his knowledge of infernal engines fix Karlach's heart

Would Enver have ever become Lord Gortash if not for Bane...?

Anyways if anyone wants to yell at me about Enver, Orin, or Ketheric please feel free to do so! I love characters who fell through the cracks because they had no one there to help them only to crawl out themselves and burn the world.

#enver gortash #lord gortash #bg3 gortash #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #bg3 thoughts #headcanons #character study #the cycle of abuse #trauma #child abuse #trigger warning #fear #ketheric thorm #orin the red #character exploration #narrative foils

[mr2swap]

Exchange therapy: Take a picture of "me"

-Hey son! Take a picture of me with Superman! The boys in the gym will love this! - my son slowly leaned towards the plastic statue that attracted so much attention from all the children, I took out the cell phone from a small backpack and with my small hands pointed towards the 30-year-old frontman me and took the picture then flexed his arms showing the messy hairy bush that was in his armpit even though now I'm in my son's skinny body and I can't smoke or drink I was having fun, unlike my son I was sober, maybe it wasn't a good idea to leave him my credit card, but he knows what he's doing, and I'm having an amazing time at the water park!

The relaxed and carefree life of a teenage boy had completely intoxicated me, there were times when I even forgot that the man with the hairy pecs in front of me was originally me, the body-swapping machine had done a great job with us, everyone our skills and memories were also exchanged, I barely remember what it was like to be an adult, I even forgot how to drive!

Before all this relationship with my son was screwed, we used to argue all the time and my son started to hide things from me like that my son was actually gay and that my ex-wife had a hot new boyfriend, after the divorce with his mother my son's grades dropped to the ground, he started fighting at school and behaving like a real bratty teenager. Still, of course, that was after-life swapping therapy.

The school psychologist recommended me to one of her colleagues with an experimental therapy sponsored by SwapCorp, it's pretty simple me and my son swapped our lives for a month to understand each other better, and after that… well we're still at it, supposed that would only last a week, the therapy was a complete success!

The first thing my son did when he got home changed his clothes and go straight to the gym to test his new strength and the first thing I did was lock myself in my new room to play video games, eat Doritos and discover the pleasure of jerking off a cock. Young and virgin with my soft little hands, when he started touching me I couldn't stop until I shoot my hot and stinky load on a dirty used t-shirt.

In just one week, my son had become a responsible adult, I didn't even miss a day of work when he was in my body. I don't think anyone touched him we exchanged our bodies, not even my ex-wife, it was a bit awkward when I heard her new boyfriend fuck while I was sleeping in the next room in my son's body.

But the strangest thing was when guided by my adolescent instincts I quietly sneaked into my wife's room and masturbated watching how my new "dad" fucked the witch who had made my life miserable for so many years, her new boyfriend was super hot! He had a thick cock and a hairy ass that took all the attention away from my wife's breasts that I missed so much.

With one hand I tried to silence the moans that came out of my mouth and with the other, I massaged my teenage cock until I ejaculated while she wore the pajamas my son had given her the year before for Christmas.

While reviewing the photos on the phone, my son ordered a couple of drinks and flirted with the bartender. I had been away from romance for too long, but my son had only been in my body for a couple of weeks, and now he's quite a casanova, maybe it's better if we stay like this for another time he seems to be enjoying his new authority and his new responsibilities as a single father.

This is supposed to be only temporary, but the doctor secretly confided in me that we could stay like this as long as we wanted we just need to both agree on this, it's not so bad being an ordinary teenager when you get used to having to masturbate 6 times a day with gay porn and getting a boner in sports class.

Hey! You can support me to continue creating stories and see all my stories on my patreon and have access to the stories on my discord server.

#bodyswap #body swap #male body swap #body switch #male transformation

[sweetlikehoneystingslikeabee]

Can I get date night headcanon for BTAS Ed?

His S/O is a therapist at Arkham so can't really be seen in public, so on Valentines Day he gives himself to Arkham to spend it with her on long "session" which is actually a date. S/O is a nice and warm person and just wants Ed to improve.

A Date in the Asylum - BTAS Edward x F!S/O (Valentines Event 2024)

Pat sent me an additional ask for this to be Fem S/O so that's been added as well! This ask is for the 2024 Valentine's Event.

TW: None

It had been an almost foolproof plan on his end.

An issue had been presented for his Valentine's plans. He had wanted to make it an event, expensive dinner in the city, dressed up. All eyes on his hands along your hips. His girlfriend is a beautiful, and most importantly, intelligent psychologist at Arkham. He would know how skilled you are- You were assigned to him, after all.

And yet, this presented the issue. You were, understandably, not ready to lose your job at this point and coming out publicly would do that. Plus, you were working Valentine's. You had promised him a quiet evening at home under the cover of darkness another night. Just because it wasn't the actual day didn't mean you couldn't still celebrate! He agreed.

This, however, didn't stop him from walking into Arkham, admitting to a fake crisis and demanding a therapy session with you. It wasn't until he was sitting across your desk from you in handcuffs that you'd realize how involved this was.

"I have patients I needed to actually see tonight, you know." Tumbled from your mouth the moment the guards left the room.

Edward pretended to look ashamed, "I think I need you more, dearest doctor."

"This is doing nothing for your long-term recovery." Yet you couldn't deny the small little thrill in your heart seeing him here. The grand gesture of it.

He merely sighs, "I know. You always have such high hopes that I won't misbehave. The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions expecting different results, as I'm sure you're aware." A smile plays on his face. Then he snaps his fingers.

"What are you-" Your thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the door. The door opened. A cart was pushed through. The door closed. There were two plates on either side of the cart. A valentine's day dinner. You were exasperated, "How...?"

Edward got up from his seat to grab the cart, pushing it next to your desk, "Favors. A device here and there. Nothing too difficult or challenging for my brilliant mind. Hm. It's not as impressive as I'd hoped." He picked up a loose french fry, seemingly disappointed by the lack of any true plating.

It was now that you chose to get up and inspect the food yourself. "You did all this for me?"

He stuck the french fry in his mouth with smile, "My lady, I'd escape from Arkham many times over for you. Breaking in was a cinch. Besides... I don't know of anyone more deserving. You've shown me kindness when no one else has." The space between your bodies closes and his hand goes to your face.

"All I did was see the good man you are."

Edward audibly swallowed. One of his emotional tells. He leaned to kiss your forehead, "That's why I'd traverse the labyrinth for you. Happy Valentine's Day."

Fuck it, you were already going to have to scrub the video feed from tonight, if Edward hadn't already planned for it. Your arms wrap over his shoulders before locking lips together.

#foxy valentines event #Riddler #Btas Riddler #edward nygma x f!reader #foxwriting

[straying-further-from-gods-grace]

Human AU! Picrew

Alastor! He's a serial killer and cannibal in every AU I make unless otherwise stated. Some AU will include Al being trans, having epilepsy, or severe scarring and sometimes migraines. Eating disorder in the fact he mainly eats humans and starves a lot of the time

Nifty in every AU will be Alastors little sister, be it through found family or actual adoption. She is also a cannibal and a nurse unless otherwise stated. Every AU she lost her eye while being sex trafficked.

Rosie and Husk are Always going to be Exes, be it married or dating, but exes. Rosie is a cannibal, Husk isn't he just helps his family hide evidence. In certain AU they're Nifty and or Al's adoptive parents/found family parent's in others they are just older friends who are protective and the mom/dad friend. Rosie is a psychologist and Husk a bartender, most AU they're gonna be ex military

Angel Dust (Anthony) Husks twink boyfriend he gets after divorcing or breaking up with Rosie. Still a hooker but he and Val have a healthy relationship. Unless I need Val to be nasty for my plot. Ex addict, makes music sometimes, recovering eating disorder

The Vees! Vox with his heterochromia and I like making him sweaty either an actual problem or he's just sweaty. I also like to give him a stutter in certain AUs. He's German.

Valentino is as always, half blind, and he's a nasty weird tall man with a connective tissue disorder in most AU, he's also Latin and a pretty good friend he's very supportive just bad at it.

Velvet is a weird little chaotic rat but her boys worship her. For some reason I see her as a Floridian military brat idk, fashion designer and influencer in every AU. I ship her with Rosie.

In some AU they're adoptive siblings

Charlie and Vaggie! Twinning UwU! Vaggie is an ex Catholic cause I think it makes sense and Charlie definitely practices Wicca or something. Charlie actually does own a hotel, it's a rehab her father funded for her because she wants to help nd she has whateva sort of degree would help with that, something with therapy. Vaggie works as a security guard there.

Vaggie twin sister Lute, she's having a near constant mental breakdown, she's a psycho deep down and is FILLED with religious guilt idk what to tell ya. Killed someone. Her arm is amputated too. She teaches self defense, specialising in helping people with disabilities learn to work around them.

Charlie cousin Peter. Everyone think he's the "gay" cousin but he's actually straight and VERY comfy in his masculinity, nondenominational. Isn't technically allowed to visit the Morningstar house alone because they're "evil" but they're just spiritual. Broadway!!

Lute boyfriend, Adam. I could NOT resist making him adorable and precious because you see him and go awww but then he fucking opens his mouth and calls you a slur. Lmao. Questioning his faith. Rock star wanna be, studies music theory or something

Adams cousins! Big sis Sera is constantly worrying and lil sis Emily is heavily sheltered. Sera is a Sunday School teacher, idk, maybe religious studies? Emily if the AU has her college aged will want to be a nurse (I've been seeing Emily ships everywhere but what if she falls for her fellow nurse who's secretly a psychopath?? Nifty, I mean)

Cherri! Angels BFF! She's deffo an artist and also a demolition expert or something, and does monster trucking too! She's the best most supportive person, Penti adores her and she's secretly in love too but she's scared of it. Angel keeps mocking her that he's got two guys (Val and Husk) and she won't even take a chance on the dude who would find a way to blow up the sun for her.

Penti is trans, hjs family is also Muslim but he was disowned when he came out. He has triplet little siblings! Is studying to be or is a physicist. Idk minor speech impediment/lisp!

Frank is the embodiment of chaos and when he meets Alastor is obsessed with him (crushing on a guy your older brother doesn't like is a right if passage) Chandler and Leslie are his siblings. They we're disowned for supporting Penti and Chandler has refused to wear her veil since. Leslie still upholds their faith but is very supportive.

Usually Vark will be a dog. But occasionally an AU will call for him to be Vox little brother so here's a design for him!

#ao3 link #human au #Hazbin hotel #Picrew #radio static #vox x alastor

[wisteriasymphony]

I Can't Be Your Boyfriend And Your Therapist.. But I'm Sure as Hell Going to Try!

(The Adrinette Yes/No Hands Thing but with Claudrien and I make it better and perhaps even cute)

Adrien tugged on the collar of his sage green sweater-vest as he mulled over how to properly introduce the exercise. His girlfriend, in all fairness, had commented once before on how his usual sense of style made him look like a psychologist, and whether she knew it or not he was probably going to live up to that notion quite soon.

"So, I know we had a fight very recently," is how he started it off. Probably not a particularly brilliant choice, but it set the foundation as he needed it to.

"Yes." Claudia knit her eyebrows together as if she was wondering just how stupid Adrien was. "We did."

"And-! Because that fight was, erm..." He gestured with his hands for a moment as if trying to pull in the latter half of his sentence with a length of twine. "...Borne of- er, brought about- by a miscommunication in our respective wants, I thought we should find a way to alternatively communicate that bypasses your usual hangups of not wanting to tell me things!"

As always, as Adrien got more anxious, the more he peppered in hyper-specific and fancy words into his speech. It clearly didn't help his case for clear communication much, now did it? Claudia had to take a moment to parse what he meant, but she was usually better at the 'listening' shtick than she was at the 'speaking'. That was in part what brought them together so quickly, he supposed. His desire to be heard and her tendency to listen.

"Okay," she finally agreed, a touch of reluctance in her voice. "And what is this 'alternative communication'?"

"Well," he said, chewing on his lip, "I'm going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to raise your left hand if your answer is 'yes' and your right hand if your answer is 'no'. Like this." And Adrien raised his left and his right hands one after the other.

Claudia, sitting directly in front of him, mirrored his movements exactly.

"Uhm-- Your left hand."

She raised her right. "I mean, from your perspective, this is my left, so I was going off that," she said. "This is left to you, right?"

"Right— Er, wrong- I mean—" Adrien paused for a moment just to tussle with his own perception of which hand was which, making an "L" with his left hand for good measure to confirm it was what it said it was. "My left and right doesn't matter, it's yours that does."

"But then you might think I'm saying the opposite of what I am if you mix them up."

"I'm not going to do that!"

"Adrien, I fucking saw you mix them up a few seconds ago," Claudia sighed. "Let's just go with your left and right, and I'll do the math in my head to reverse it."

Adrien felt it necessary to capitulate—Jung, Maslow or Spielrein he clearly was not. Not just because those were all psychologists and what he was doing here was closer to leading his girlfriend through a therapy session (...Better than leading a patient into his bed, he supposed).

"Alright." Adrien took a deep breath, before taking out a piece of paper with all of his questions for her written on it. "Question One: Do you feel trapped in this relationship?"

Claudia paused. Raised one hand halfway, then raised the other. Then both were raised at about shoulder height, and then she dropped them both entirely.

"See? This is another issue with this whole yes-no thing. It's more than that."

"Well then tell me. Why is it 'more than that'?"

Claudia seemed to hold her breath, letting her words dissolve in her mouth like a bitter pill rather than saying them out loud.

"No, I'll play your little game," she muttered, raising both hands and averting her eyes from his. "Ask me if I feel like you are trapping me in this relationship."

He didn't have that as a question, actually. He thought that was what 'Question One' meant.

"Okay.. Do you feel like I'm trapping you in this relationship?"

Again, both hands were raised, but it was at a skew: If the height was a factor, it seemed like her answer was 75% "No" and 25% "Yes". Still, her eyes were turned away.

"Do you feel like I'm intentionally trapping you?"

100% "No". Adrien thought about it for a moment, and what he got was probably a clearer picture than if he'd just stuck to the original first question outright. She did feel trapped or obligated in some way, but it was slight and she didn't think he was doing it on purpose. She probably didn't even see his proposal as anything malicious moreso than as something impulsive. Claudia probably understood—and he did too, to be fair—that when he had proposed to her, Adrien had been blinded by his own hopes for the future that he sort of disregarded what would have to happen to get there. What Claudia would have to potentially change about herself to make that work.

"Do you feel like you're trapping yourself in this relationship?"

100% "Yes". ...That was interesting.

"How?" Adrien set the paper down on the floor entirely. "Is there something else to it, or—"

Claudia had closed her eyes entirely. "That's not a 'yes' or 'no' question," was all she said.

"...Do you think you're trapping me?"

200% "Yes". She even used her other arm to support it, stretch it up further. Adrien just nodded, and continued to think of similar sentiments or questions to try and get to the bottom of it that way.

"You think you're trapping both of us in this."

Still a "Yes".

"...And you think you're doing it.. more intentionally than I am?"

Even more of a "Yes".

"Are you worried that I'm unhappy in this and I don't know it?"

"I can't raise my hand any higher than this," she joked. "Hell, Do you want me to stand up? Jump?"

"No, we can stay seated," he said. "...Here, my turn. Ask me if I'm worried that I'm unhappy in this."

Claudia finally opened her eyes, and Adrien noticed they were initially shut to hide how watery they were. She looked to his crossed legs, then to his shoulders, and then right as the top of his head—the closest she could probably manage to eye contact at that point.

"Are you?"

He raised his left—her right.

"No," he said, keeping his hand raised. "Not at all. I feel like if I was unhappy and didn't know it, it would at least be something eating away at me or whispering in the back of my mind, but it's not. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

Claudia nodded.

"And- If we really need to look at it in this way— I enjoy myself more when I'm with you. Quite literally—I think I'm a better person because of you. It's been really nice to have someone to open up to like this," he confessed. "—And I know I'm hiding things, just like you are, but I hope we can work through that together. I really do have just as many issues as you do, Claudia. You're not any more of a burden to me than I am to you."

"It's not really a 'burden'," Claudia sighed. "I feel like I'm trapping myself in this because I want to take care of you so badly. It's kind of ruining my life, and it'd be better to let it go... but I still want to because I love you."

"Exactly," Adrien said. "So why can't the same be true for me?"

#claudrien nation have fun fucking crying #also if I continue this they would take turns therapizing each other. toxic? YES. but it's mutual and THATS THE DIFFERENCE #ml writing salt #FIXED! ml writing salt #also he keeps his hand up like he's swearing an oath. that is intentional. #claudrien #shitsquare

[chipadequeso]

i found a 2022 spanish production of falsettos. um here's comments because i don't like it!

IT'S NOT FULLY SUNG-THROUGH?? why!!!

jason's too over-acting and whiny i don't like him.

trina's amazing!! her voice is godly . every trina i've seen is so well-casted... whizzer is in my heart too and marvin is pretty good

they broke mendel's character into ... two separate characters..... i dont understand why they chose that??? i dont really like it

took me very long to realize but THEY ARE NOT JEWISH!!!! WHAT!!!!!! I HATE THIS PRODUCTION SO MUCH BITING AND KILLING

1. mendel like the psychiatrist that appears from song one is a woman?

2. after im breaking down this guy appears (he's mentioned in everyone tells jason to see a psychiatrist) and he's trina's new boyfriend ... it's an interesting choice i guess?? i just really dont care about him during a tight-knit family reprise like who are you!!! your conflict with marvin makes no sense you dont know the guy you just tell him it's your family now without no previous stuff the obc gives you!!!!!!

marvin at the psychiatrist bad bad hate it. part one turned into a conversation . like literally practically word by word . part two is replaced (bc this mendel is not trina's gf ...) with a two sentence thing about gay sex ??? part three is ok . it's not a mini-opera if you only sing in 1/3 of the thing!!!!!!

"just because you failed as parents" ".....GET THEE TO A PSYCHIATRIST" became "BECAUSE YOU ARE BAD PARENTS!!!!" "you will go to the psychiatrist!!!"

also they dont say psychiatrist they say psychologist . those are two different jobs guys

in the this had better come to a stop coreography marvin is fucking going through it man he's suffering it so bad . it's expressive and all but i like the more subtle "im repressing it because im stubborn" things c borle and michael rupert got going on

AGAIN ... "smile trina ill help you mend!" BECOMES "trina, live and let live!" where's the psychiatrist having a relationship with his patient soo disappointed

no jason's therapy . THERE IS NO TRINA'S SONG / MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS. you just go fucking straight from i'm breaking down to tight-knit family (reprise) to trina's song reprise. huh

after the chess game it goes directly the games i play. i genuinely really like this whizzer

marvin hits trina is fine? no i am so dumb. also NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU NEW BOYFRIEND!!!!! STOP COMMENTING ON STUFF!!!!!! after the hit there's like ONE second and there's no tension and we're already starting with i never wanted to love you.

act 2 starts with "2 years later" and miracle of judaism. huh!!!!!!! and they dont tell us who the lesbians are!!!

there's some cheerleader girls in miracle of judaism cheering for jason he's distracted by them

the pace in the act 2 is all off!!!! there's missing songs just like in act 1 but here there's no high building up that breaks when whizzer falls sick . it's just uhhgh

no bar mitzvah . just a birthday. hate hate hate

the you gotta die something coreography is amazing ngl . there's a guy in black acting as the death and he dances with whizzer and throws him around leaves him on the floor when he tries to grab him just woahg . it's similar to the thrill of first love one too ..

marvin carries a crying whizzer to the hospital bed and what would i do? is him sitting down to him next to it .

no jason's bar mitzvah though bc no jewish people no bar mitzvah...

someone threw roses at marvin and whizzer and i agree

thats it i really really dislike this. good voices and all but the story is all over the place and it's by far the worst production i've seen bc of EVERYTHING they removed..

#falsettos #ignore meee

[sharkneto]

5 Rob 1234... These exist?!? How MUCH do they exist??? What are the odds that we will eventually see them someday?

(for WIP ask game)

I've shared a few snips of them before (found HERE), and god... hopefully? I've got so many goddamn WIPs and so much less time to write than I used to during covid times, I can't promise anything and especially can't promise anything being soon.

It's a concept I love a lot - I love Five and Rob's relationship, I love Rob constantly tricking Five into cooperating with therapy until he starts doing it willingly on his own. I like the idea of Five trying to keep everything tight to his chest and aggressively keeping it there until Rob can get him to understand that he doesn't have to do that, that he doesn't have to live like that.

But it's a rarely worked on WIP (partly hence why there's multiple files of different Rob and Five conversations rather than One Set WIP), around JT and the apocalypse fic and Number vs Apocalypse Week fic and random odds and ends I play around with.

So, would I like to share it? Absolutely. Will it be any time soon? Absolutely not.

Long snip for your time, though. This is 5 Rob 3

(cw: some discussion of the implications of Five's physical vs actual age in terms of his brain and cognition, mostly from the angle of Rob being excited about brains and Five unimpressed by it)

“What are you thinking about?” Five asks after Rob doesn’t start off their session in the first minute of their meeting starting.

Rob keeps considering Five through the screen. “Your brain.”

Five blinks. “You do that to everyone?”

“More or less. When they’re my patients, definitely. And if there might be something interesting going on. Yours definitely has a lot going on.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.”

The sit and stare at each other through the screen some more. Five leans back in his seat, eyes narrowed slightly. “If I ask for specifics for what you’re thinking about in regards to my brain, will it be a long winded way of talking about something I don’t want to talk about or is this genuinely a tangent about my brain?”

Rob hums. “If I’m clever enough maybe I can loop it back to your problems but currently I’m just thinking about your brain.”

“This a hobby of yours?”

“A little bit, I guess,” he says with a laugh. “Also my job, but it is why I went psychiatrist route instead of psychologist route. If you go to medical school they let you look at more brain scans.”

“I’m sure that’s super normal,” Five deadpans.

“How would you know, with your fifty-eight-year-old consciousness in a thirteen-year-old brain?”

Five crosses his arms. “It’s almost fourteen,” he defends.

Rob thinks about that for a second. They’ve sort of talked around this before, and maybe with the birthdate coming up they should talk about it some more. He’ll poke. “Aren’t we technically still six months or so away from your physical birthday?”

That gets an exasperated huff from Five. “October 1, 1989 is my actual birthdate and I’m keeping that, it’s a constant that’s never going to change short of me fucking up so badly I’m not born, in which case I’ve got bigger problems – although not ones I’ll care about because I won’t exist.” Rob keeps a straight face. He actually loves it when Five gets on these little time-travel-insane-consequence rambles. Feels like a sci-fi movie and Sarah can’t poke holes in it like she does when they watch time-travel movies. Five also really likes to get on these tangents, so they’re really good for getting him talking on days he doesn’t want to talk – not that seems to be a problem today.

Five pauses but Rob waits. He’s not done. The pause stretches for a couple seconds before Five huffs again. “I’m not moving my birthday because I arbitrarily and accidentally changed my linear position in time. October first isn’t my actual birthday anymore, either, but the amount of effort to figure out the new date is completely not worth the effort. I could do the much easier-to-calculate physical birthday in February—” he cuts himself off with a suddenly blank expression.

Rob frowns. “Five?”

“The day’s not February tenth anymore,” he says, brow lightly furrowed.

“Why not?”

He blinks again, obviously doing math. Rob doesn’t know what it is about Five’s expression that tells him that he’s doing math, but there’s a specific sort of blankness he gets when he’s running numbers. “February tenth was my physical birthday in the apocalypse,” Five says slowly, still a bit distant. Rob subtly slides his notebook over and grabs a pen, even though Five can’t see it with how Rob has his camera angled. “It was February tenth. Now, though, assuming this body is the body I originally jumped from 2002 in…. oh, it’s still just February second. That was dumb.”

“Did you want it to be more different?”

Five shakes his head, a small frown on his lips. “No. I don’t know why I thought that was going to be a significantly different date. April 2, 2019 versus March 24, 2019 are only a week apart. I could have done that math much smarter. Christ, I’m getting stupid in my old age.”

Rob smiles. They’ve looped back to what he’d originally been thinking about. “Or your brain is thirteen. And a half,” he adds when Five gives him a flat look.

“What does my brain’s age have to do with anything?”

“A lot, actually. Maybe. What do you know about brain development?”

Five stares at him for a long moment. “Nothing.”

“Ah, lucky for us I know a lot about it. The cliff notes version of it is that there are set developmental phases for brains from ages zero to around twenty-five. Twenty-five is when science and medicine generally agree that everything is up and functioning, it hangs out there for a few years before it starts going in the other direction. Before that point, it’s building up pieces and pruning connections that allow for better logic and more complex thinking.”

“You’re saying I’m half developed. And you’re declining,” Five says dryly.

Rob shakes his head, ignoring the easy insult. “No. Maybe. See, you’re a really interesting case of the physical versus consciousness. A really fascinating case study that could be a missing key in understanding where what makes us us sits. You, yourself, are fifty-eight, assuming you haven’t been messing with me and your whole family this entire time—”

“What would the point be of doing that?”

“—which I don’t think you are, which is why I accepted you as a patient. I don’t know how you’d even go about trying to parse it out, because it’s such a messy knot. It’s why we’ve been wondering about consciousness and the self for centuries, millennia. But you have such an extreme difference between the two that we might just be able to get a hint.”

It’s quiet as Rob finishes. Five sits considering that, expression slightly pinched. Rob waits.

As Five continues to not say anything, Rob’s gut sinks a little. Maybe he got a little too excited about this, misjudged how interested Five would be about it. He did just pretty blatantly say that this man, who is already stuck looking like a thirteen-year-old, might actually be stuck in a much more real way as a thirteen-year-old.

“Five—”

“You know,” Five interrupts, “you and Sarah make a bit more sense now.”

It isn’t clear if that’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult. Maybe it’s neither. Five usually likes to rub in insults. “How do you mean?”

 “You both like puzzles. You just hide your intensity better than she does.”

Rob might have gotten a little too enthusiastic about how interesting a case Five is. “I’m sorry, Five, I—”

Five waves a hand, tone still low. “Don’t apologize. You know I appreciate candor. Was this the point?”

They haven’t been here in a little bit – Five directing with questions. Rob did miscalculate this. He can let Five keep the control. “Was what my point?”

“To talk about how shit it is to be a fully grown man who looks like a child?”

“No. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about and thought you might find it interesting, too. I had planned on today being a bit lighter on Big Things after last week.”

Five nods slowly. He’s not looking at Rob. “Wow,” he says after another moment. “Bad job of doing that.”

“I’m seeing that now, yeah.”

Five forces them to sit in that. Rob glances at the clock. He has forty minutes to salvage unless Five ends the session early.

“I get the appeal,” Five says after another long minute. “I’m an enigma on a lot of levels. Most of my life doesn’t exist anymore and what it was is so statistically improbable it should be impossible and unbelievable. This isn’t what all this has been about, right?”

He slips that question in as if it’s just an unimportant end to his statement. That’s how Rob knows it’s important. Five likes to bluster, likes to misdirect to avoid feelings and hard topics. The exception is when he needs real, important information. He’s not good at direct lies and it’s obvious the tactic he figured out for learning information he needed while trying to stay under the radar is to be as casual and nonplussed as possible. If Five doesn’t seem to care about the answer, maybe the person giving it won’t care about giving it either.

“No, Five,” Rob says without hesitation. Waiting until Five looks back up at the screen, he continues, “I agreed to be your psychiatrist because I think you need the help to sort through the everything of your life and also think I’m a good fit for helping you do that. You seem to agree, since we’ve been doing this for three months now. My own, side interest of what might be going on in your head isn’t a part of it, outside of my thoughts on non-psychotherapy approaches that might help you should you ever decide you want to try some drugs or physical treatments. Today’s tangent is just that, a tangent that I think is interesting but is non-defining of you or the work we do here.”

Five nods at that with a small frown. “To help you along on that tangent, then, so we don’t have to do it again – it’s wrong.”

“Okay?”

“Your little theory has me half-developed and stupid, of which I am neither.” He waves off Rob as he opens his mouth to apologize and explain. “It’s fine, as you just explained to me your brain function is also declining due to your advancing age. It is interesting, though, that your go-to direction for me doing a simple math calculation in an indirect way was to blame it on a possibly under-developed brain rather than the fact that I’m thirteen years older than you are and am farther along on my brain slipping into mush.”

Rob swallows and waits.

“But how I know you’re wrong about my brain is because, while I don’t remember much from being thirteen, I do remember some decisions I made when I was that age. One very big, very dumb decision. With absolutely no concern for the consequences and no back-up plan. That’s the sort of thinking thirteen-year-old brains do. It was a childish and very poorly calculated mistake. And I’m not that stupid now.”

“Understood,” Rob says. That sits between them, a bit heavy which was not Rob’s goal for the day so he adds, “You’re dumb because you’re old, not because you’re young.”

A smile ghosts at the edge of Five’s mouth. “Exactly.”

“Glad we cleared this up. I’m sorry I pushed us here, I misjudged. We’re good?”

Five nods. “We’re good.”

#i rotate these two in my head a lot #i'm really soft for their relationship #but it takes a lot of thought to write therapy (ha who would have thought) and i've got so many other projects #with JT as the current priority when i've got brain and time to Write Specific Project #that it really doesn't get much work #so #snips and chatting about it is what we've got #five finds therapy wip #i should have a rob tag #snips #ask game

[hekateinhell]

As someone who is interested and knowledgeable in psychology, can you comment on how you think vampire psyche is different from human psyche? I’m always curious like... could you pavlov condition a vampire? Would therapy work on them, since their brain is kinda frozen in time? Just anything you find interesting regarding this topic, please share!!

Disclaimer time: I don't practice as a psychologist or psychiatrist (lol that's more years of a Ph.D. or med school than I'm willing/able to do anytime soon). Whatever I say is just based on what I know from my psychotherapy courses and what I've learned over the years in relation to treatment models, behavior patterns, and mental health conditions (basically, whatever would bring someone to a clinical counselor's office). Also, these are fictional vampires, and Anne didn't really get into their psychology much, so take this with a grain of salt - it's just for fun!

I do think the vampire psyche would be extremely different from a human’s! Fanon aside, there’s no real way to quantify hundreds and thousands of years of experience (suffering, loving, so on) into one human lifetime. Attributing the labels we use for ourselves in terms of diagnoses, sexuality, monogamy, etc., doesn’t make sense to me from that standpoint. I feel like when a vampire starts noticeably exceeding the range of the average human lifespan (let’s say 150 years, for argument’s sake) - their view of themselves and others would evolve beyond what we can condense into our nice, neat little boxes.

That said, we know in real-life that trauma has a measurable impact on our brains, even more so in childhood, which can affect what would be deemed "typical" brain development. I'll use Armand and Lestat as examples because I think this can be applied to both their human experiences. (And Armand is my favorite fictional brain in formaldehyde). They both had abusive/traumatic upbringings (in different ways), which would have affected the natural course of their psychological development throughout their childhood and teen years.

Then, to top it off, they both got turned at an age before their minds fully finished developing (this happens around 25 years). We know their minds are never going to finish growing. It’s evident in some of the characteristic behaviors they exhibit throughout (i.e., their needy, obsessive tendencies read as a very young, trauma-related response), especially when contrasted against a vampire like Louis (who was exactly 25 when he was brought into the Blood).

Would therapy work on them? (Paging Dr. Fareed, vampire psychiatrist). I don't know about therapy, but I like the visual of Marius reading books on child development and cult deprogramming and going WHOOPS FUCKED THAT UP (not right away because this is Marius, after all, but the thoughts would nag eventually). As far as conditioning goes, they all definitely have reinforced patterns established in their relationships, just like we do.

But to answer the broader question (in a more serious way), yes, vampires do have the capacity to change, and we can see this with Lestat, Louis, and Armand especially in their respective arcs throughout the series!

Armand, by his own account, was prone to cycling in and out of what he described as, “an acceptable madness to a state of which I alone knew the dangers,” during his centuries with the cult; Allesandra tells him that he dreams, “the sad dreams, the dreams that precede madness,” (no shit, I wonder why?).

So for Armand to go from the broken cemetery waif Lestat met in the 1700s to being a settled family guy in NYC by the end of the series is an exceptional demonstration of the mental adaptabilities of a vampire. From Prince Lestat:

“Not so savage really,” said Gregory. ‘There is not a single one of us, no matter how old, that does not have a moral heart, an educated heart, a heart that learned to love while human, and a heart that should have learned ever more deeply to love as preternatural.’ Armand looked sad suddenly. ‘Why has it taken me so long?’”

Last, but I'm sure not least, to try to answer Armand’s question - why does it seem to take so long for these vampires to get from Point A to Point B? Aside from the apparent lack of support systems for most of their lives, and really, anything at all that would be helpful, Marius gave us a clue in B&G when he described how vampires process their memories:

“No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.”

They don’t have the luxury of having their worst memories fuzzy out and become less painful over time, the worst days of their lives will always be as sharp and fresh as when they first happened.

Ow.

Bummer note to end on, but hey... they all lived happily ever after?

#vampire psych 101 #this was painful #vc #the vampire chronicles #mildly meta #you ask and hekate answers #and rambles

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

tw// religious and emotional abuse ment, swearing, bad (as in, bad praxis) psychologyst ment, self harm scars ment, suicidal ment. This is just an experience, like. I needed to share it with someone. No urgency

Three years ago, I tried going to therapy, but I am still living with my abusive family, so, while they agreed to take me (after a big intimidation session from their part), they got to choose my therapist. However, I think they took the recomentations of the other members of the congregation and took me to a psychologyst who always gives reason to the parents/abusers. He would invalidate every thing I said about parents, feelings, religion. One time, he straight up told me that, bc my scars were "really superficial" (tho, I literally got nerve damage from the injury), he was sure I was doing it for attention, and that I wouldn't "go further" bc wasn't actually suicidal and was just confused with my parents way of showing love. This was in the span of a month, too, like, this all happened in the third session. Fourth session he tried to use an hypnosis method to see "what was inside my heart" and then finally family said "Oh, maybe we won't bring you back here" bc of religious reasons opposing hypnosis.

So, for a while, I actually thought it was all something I had in my mind, something I was making up or overreacting to. Maybe I was just attention seeking.

That's it, until recently, after finally making friends, one day something triggered a flashback, and I broke down and started spilling all that happened in that time, didn't cry, but I was constantly running out of breath. And believe me, when this guy, this doofus (/affectionate) said "That wad fucked, wtf" I think something lifted. Like, actually freeing stuff.

And while I still think I need to see a good therapist, I think this actually gave me enough validation to start taking myself seriously. Idk, maybe I am exaggerating, but I swear this was changing, having someone validate what happened as more than "just a bad day years ago".

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry to hear about what happened. Please know that you didn't deserve any of that and that psychologist should absolutely not be in practice. I wish you could've seen the look on my face when I read about what he said and did to you.

I can understand how an experience like this, also informed by the people you unfortunately grew up around, has potentially shaped the way you view yourself. But please know that your pain and experiences are real and valid, and you're not making it up or overreacting.

I also think it's worth considering that there's too often a stigma around the idea of being attention-seeking, because while many people may use it to refer to destructive behavior done for some kind of sympathy, even that would indicate that the person needs care and not ridicule. Even if this was attention-seeking behavior, you still have valid issues that deserve addressing.

It can definitely feel validating and freeing for someone to acknowledge how messed up your experiences were, especially if it's hard to acknowledge the severity yourself. I hope that this can be a step towards seeking the care and healing that you deserve.

I hope I could help and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

#mod bun #trauma talks #tw abuse #tw emotional abuse #tw sui #tw sh #tw self harm #tw religious abuse

[vtforpedro]

medical update

I've been trying to find the energy to write an update and you'd think being stuck on a reclining chair for the entire day that I'd be able to find some but NO! My body has simply said 'no energy' this month.

I've actually had so many appointments this month it's been criminal. I haven't had to move around this much in a long time and it hasn't been so great pain-wise. So, I think I was at 16 weeks when I made a brief update about seeing my neuro in person??

21 weeks this week. Y'all it's been five months of this lmao I'm going to try to summarize so I don't get lost in rambling immediately

-saw my neuro in person on august 18th -order for another fucking lumbar spine MRI -pain specialist and pain psychologist referral -ER visit on august 26th for neuro-unrelated shit finally lmao -pain specialist at 18 weeks -pain specialist ordered a compounded cream at an APOTHECARY just for meeeee, a tens machine, a prescription nsaid, steroid injections for my sacral area, aquatic therapy, a medical grade back brace, and a chiropractor but insurance doesn't cover that -EMG procedure as ordered 1.5-2 months ago -saw my OB for what I went to the ER for -got my back brace -follow up with my neuro's PA because we wasted 1 hr and 45 minutes yesterday trying to get my telehealth appt with my neuro to work but it didn't. their fault, but they said I couldn't see him until OCTOBER 25TH THEN huahguahghguah

So that leads to today lmao

Most of that has been this month u_u Tuesday was the last in-person appointment for the month and I could die happy. Soooo much pain.

Alright, so now let's go through what happened with all of this.

1. My neurologist is a discriminatory egotistical asshole who is one year out of residency. He will not give me the diagnosis he and I talked about me having 99% for sure but we needed to 'clinch it' (per their notes) with a lumbar puncture. Which we did. But then they destroyed me lmao. He heard I'm in the middle of applying for disability and walked back my diagnosis super quick and announced he was 'not an advocate for long-term disability' and that he's a 'positive person' while not asking what my goals for recovery were whatsoever.

Sorry that making $300,000 a year has clouded your judgment that a measly $850ish monthly payment can be life-changing for a little guy like me while I go through intense physical therapy and mental health therapy to deal with what Y O U R hospital did to me.

He also marked my chiari malformation as 'resolved' after that conversation. I had mentioned my neurosurgeon didn't think I had a "real" one and my neurologist disagreed. Let me stress this: HE DISAGREED. But then he marked it as resolved. The only way to resolve a chiari malformation is neurosurgery you absolute buffoon of a man. So now it's marked as resolved and not an ongoing issue for my disability judge to see. :)

Anyway. I could probably prove malpractice fifty times over with this place lol I'm going to talk to the office manager about switching to a different doctor but they're a 'teaching' hospital so not sure if I'll be able to. We'll see. I truly hate this man. The stuff he has pulled would take up days of my time explaining. Legit hatred is what I feel for this man lmao he is doing everything he can to be combative after what happened to me when instead he should have offered me the best care possible after their fuck up.

Lots of trauma to work through hoo boy! And it just gets worse every goddamn week, I swear.

Okay, the EMG. It was ordered because I am having nerve pain and have been since oh I don't know the first day. So this was my second EMG and it was a hellish experience, but guess what?

I have fucking nerve damage from the lumbar puncture. Specifically, the nerve that affects the lower lumbar back, down the butt, back of the leg, and into the calf. Sometimes into the foot, but not always.

Guess who has been telling them about the tingles I have every single day of my life on the backside from my lower back to my butt to my thigh to my calves. They've brushed me off continuously because it wasn't in my feet. Turns out it doesn't HAVE TO BE.

N e ways. Guess what this specific nerve damage also causes?

'Excruciating pain with prolonged sitting.'

I've been asking since my headache went away (the severity of it dropped off at 10 days post LP) WHY I CAN'T SIT UP. I asked every single medical professional I talked to at this place for months. Why. Can't. I. Sit. Up. Without. Excruciating. Pain.

My neuro's PA is a much nicer and way less combative military man :P and he said 'this is really fantastic to have because it supports everything you've been telling us and we can move forward'

Super glad it only took 4-5 months for you guys to take me seriously.

I now have to do physical therapy to recover from being bedbound for 5 months but also to help with the nerve damage. I JUST got a back brace on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, for the first time since April 29th, I was able to sit up and stand on my own. Tears. Literal tears. How fucked is that? But I can't even be happy. I'm so fucking angry that a medical grade back brace might've been helping from the beginning but it took seeing my neuro face to face with my mom at 16 weeks for him to believe us that this has ruined our lives.

It's ruining my rock-solid relationship with my mom.

She can barely work. She is our sole income.

I'm in excruciating pain so bad I have asked my mother to kill me, leave my apartment so I can kill myself, and to please be happy for me because I'll be out of pain.

This man's face as I cried and said those words was very 'oh shit she really meant everything she said the last 4 months.'

Infuriating. No other words. It's just infuriating.

2. My pain specialist rocks. I wanted to scream with relief when she listed everything she wanted to do. We can't do steroid injections because, less importantly, I have extreme trauma about needles in my back haha wonder where that came from, and, more importantly, I'm a leukemia patient and they lower the immune system.

I had labs done and my hematologist's appointment too. She's not happy with my labs because they jumped quite high, I'm not happy with them, and despite zero detectable leukemia cells……. she wants me to do a repeat bone marrow biopsy once my spine is recovered.

:)

If I have cancer floating around in there, I can't even treat it. At this point it would be watching it closely, making sure I don't get covid (the measures we take going to, during, and after appointments contribute heavily to my pain and exhaustion, but it's been 2 yrs of my life already), and honestly, hoping for the best.

More needles in my back yay.

Hopefully this is like… months down the line, so I'm trying not to worry too much about it right now.

3. I had to go to the ER because I thought I had appendicitis. I'm back on my med for the high pressure (my neuro says it's only possibly there yet would not give me this medication if he were not sure because it'd be dangerous but I digress) and it's a diuretic so I pee a lot. I can't get up on my own yet, so having a full bladder was pressing on the appendix area and idk it felt like someone stuck a hot poker/brand in my insides and it was. Unpleasant.

My WBC jumped, and the pain tests were all there, but everything came back clear. So. YAY FOR ME AGAIN. But the ER PA did say it could be scarring they can't see, so I wondered about endo. Looked it up and it spoke to me in the worst ways lmao so I saw my OB and we're gonna try a few conservative things while I go through everything else.

So, a mystery right now.

So goddamn tired y'all. There's more but I'll save it for later. It hasn't been gucci but my MH is not as horrid as it was before.

Love you all.

#medical #personal #vtforpedro personal #tw medical #doctors being doctors oh boy #man idk what tumblr did to my complete lack of formatting by adding it but no thank u

[laconic-nightmares]

this is so helpful, christ.

I think im assisted by the fat my thoughts nowadays are less 'what ifa' and more... 'clockwork orange', thoughts that obviously arent real but that devastate me through their repulsivity alone.

ideally I'd hack that function of my brain and memories affected by it off and let that shard of me toil while I rest, recuperate, and then take it to get that whole thing fixed and ideally reintegrate that shard of myself? It would be a painful existence, but like... idk. if I knew it was not endless, and if I got to see me resting in a way I can't, I think I'd be able to manage?

I don't know what other options are available to me, but if its... an option, and if it will let me heal that part of myself and let the rest of me get to be a person, it seems worth pursuing? Idk where to start or if my preconceptions abt this are all wrong though.

again this is.... really a lot. it's either a light at the end of the tunnel, or relief that I'm not missing a way out I could've sought out. tysm.

they really can get quite disgusting, i know and i sympathize, sometimes it feels like having the worst fucked up horror movies just playing in your head 24/7 with no off button and it is completely understandable to be horrified and disgusted by them. i'm somewhat desensitized most of the violent/sexual ones these days because i decided to just. do art about it. oddly enough coping with fiction isn't just for the folks with ptsd, ahah.

obviously, you know your mind best, and you know yourself and your situation best. expectation and intent do have an effect on how these things turn out, even if there will always be things you didn't expect to show up. if you believe it would be compartmentalizing yourself to help you heal and rest, not just shoving them down into a box that never gets opened (by you, at least) again, that is a different story entirely.

and. well. just in general, even if it doesn't work out, trying sometimes is better than doing nothing. it really seems like you're at the end of your ability to cope alone and frankly even a 'bad' coping mechanism is still a coping mechanism if it's keeping you going.

i can try to rustle up some resources for creating headmates if you want/need me to. it's not something i talk about often because of the sysmeds but the r/tulpa subreddit is where we figured out we were plural, and we do have a 'tulpa' even if he doesn't really use the term anymore.

the other thing i would recommend you look into (or if you need me to do some googling, i will - frankly i'll probably have a look anyway for my own sake) is something called Exposure Response Prevention therapy. obviously these are 'best' done with a therapist/psychologist/someone who knows what they're doing, but sometimes just studying the thing can help to a degree if that isn't an option.

from what i understand ERP is considered the gold standard treatment for OCD currently, and i have seen anecdotal evidence to suggest it helps with intrusive thoughts.

other than that i just want to say that i am so proud of you for reaching out, and for taking steps to try and make things better for yourself. both of those things are so hard to do, especially with OCD brain

i can't promise super quick responses or that i'll have answers for everything, but our ask box is always open if you have other questions

#sickened answers #current nightmare; dmitri #sorry for the wait for a response waking up is not kind to our brain #takes a while for words to become useful

[goodbyenorthernlights]

I think I've mentioned before that I RP Rezo on dreamwidth sometimes, and the RP community on dreamwidth does a lot of ooc/meta chat on a second website called plurk. I keep my plurk account private (and I do not particularly recommend plurk as a site, tbh, I'm just there because it's where other people are) so. Figured I'd repost some of the stuff I've written about Rezo for the 1.5 people on tumblr who might be interested.

Here's a meta post about Rezo and Zelgadis's relationship that I wrote 9 months ago, featuring some commentary (in italics) from the Zelgadis-mun I was playing with at the time.

Gonna ramble a bit about my take on Rezo and Zelgadis's relationship, so, uh, CW: Child/familial abuse and general dysfunctional family stuff.

This need to ramble inspired by a tumblr post I saw along the lines of "does turning your grandson into a chimera count as physical abuse."

Now idk how one would classify that because obviously nobody in the real world has been able to do such a thing. Although I'm sure there's a precedent for people doing nonconsensual medical experiments on their children, which would probably be the closest analogy?

Anyway, after a bit of thinking I kind of picture that Rezo would have been like. A mixture of psychologically abusive and neglectful.

wrt the neglect I also think a lot of it would have been cultural- like WE'D consider a guy letting the teenager in his care go on dangerous raids against bandits to be a blatant act of supervisory neglect but in the Slayers 'verse nobody really bats an eye at Lina, the teenage protagonist, going around getting into zany adventures.

And this is headcanon but I imagine Rezo started working as a healer at a similar age. So if anyone called him out on that he'd just be ???? and think they were like. Smotheringly overprotective.

But based on the way we see flashback!Zelgadis behaving, I do think Rezo was generally pretty good to him as a kid. I can see him being distant, and/or leaving a lot of Zelgadis's actual care up to other people, but I don't think he hit Zel or insulted him or anything like that.

I think the abuse started very suddenly and rapidly got worse, basically.

Basically, imagine you've been raised by your grandfather. He runs a nonprofit and is very busy with it, so he isn't around as much as you'd like, but he's always been kind to you and you also know the people he works with and they're always kind to you as well, and life is generally okay.

But then when you're fifteen he drugs you out of nowhere and you wake up missing a kidney, and after that he just keeps getting colder and more distant and starts getting involved in crime and makes you help him out and it all comes to a head a few years later when somebody finally fucking shoots him.

And then you're just left there like ????? well i'm gonna need a fuckton of therapy after all that.

Also, as Zelgadis's player, the fact that it was a revelation made him wonder how much of Rezo's prior actions were less about 'I love my grandson' or 'I have an obligation to this kid' and more 'I have a hidden agenda'.

Yeah, it's a wonder Zel is capable of trusting anyone at all after that happened. I imagine there might have been warning signs that Something Is Wrong With Rezo but 1) Rezo was doing his level best to hide them, and 2) Zel was a kid, not fuckin' Psychologist Sherlock Holmes, so from Zel's perspective it came entirely out of nowhere.

I mean, I assume it's why he stuck with Rezo because you get the sense that he honestly didn't believe anyone else would believe him over Rezo. He was shocked Zolf and Rodimus sided with him when he did defect

Yeah, I can imagine that the adults Rezo was interacting with were more "Hmmm" about him, it just kind of varied on where they went with that "Hmmm"

I think Zolf and Rodimus probably went "Wow okay so he's ACTUALLY a bastard" especially after he cursed Zel, whereas Eris went "oh no...... poor little meow meow......."

i do not know what to conclude about dilgear and noonsa although it is interesting to me that they're both nonhumans.

#Slayers

[outofbodyinjury]

demon dando :0

you and @insideline asked the same thing so I'll answer both here <3

so uh. dearest rat nedpaint. last summer in the soup exchange I signed up to write you a fic and I delivered the first chapter, with grand delusions that I'd finish it posthaste and uphold my end of the exchange. anyway that didn't happen so the fic is languishing

anyway, second chapter twist and the premise of the entire fic is that lando isn't just a damn good driver, he's actually a demon and when daniel has a mental snap and basically throttles lando in a scuffle about what lando knows that daniel doesn't, lando transforms into his supernatural form and goes for blood. it's more of a panic response than anything malicious, because daniel threw the first punch, but lando is literally a devil and daniel gets pretty scraped up in the ensuing fight. so daniel flees the scene, lando collapses, and when daniel gets to safety he does a pat-down and realises he's got these wicked scratches on his neck and shoulders, so he cleans them up and hopes this was a dream.

it doesn't come up again in the next week and daniel starts to think he hallucinated all of it, except his wounds are very much real and taking quite a while to heal, and then at the next race weekend when he's around lando again they get infected. he sneaks a look at lando's hands and sees his nails are bitten short. daniel's slow-burn nervous breakdown begins here because he doesn't know if it happened or he's going certifiably insane.

anyway, he gets absolutely spanked the next race and starts to think it's more likely that lando is a demon than that he's actually worse than his baby teammate, but it's less likely he's a demon than that the two are them are just not in equal machinery.

he talks to michael about it, michael doesn't believe him because daniel's played enough pranks before and cried wolf enough times. mikey says he doesn't give a shit about lando, he’s here for daniel and they’ll address daniel’s problem by focusing on him rather than his teamie

daniel still doesn’t give it up though and michael makes a fuss about getting a psychologist—not a sport psychologist, something more heavy-duty because daniel’s acting paranoid and actually destructive. lando continues to torment him from afar just by existing. daniel thinks hard about voodoo dolls

blake asks daniel what the fuck is up because he heard michael saying daniel is batshit and they need to get him under control. daniel tries to confide in blake but blake doesn’t believe him either because demons aren’t REAL, and then later daniel sees blake and michael chatting suspiciously then they stop when they see him. he’s being plotted around. he’s unstable. lando is still being a bitch

there's no tidy ending because I don't know if daniel should kill lando, lando should kill daniel, daniel should kill himself, or just retire and go to therapy. all of them are good options! so that's daniel's insanity speedrun any%

#IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO SEXY....KIND OF NATCORE #but god damn it's a bit tonally out of my range..I could have done it but I spent so long just looking at the doc and being like #woo this isn't my wheelhouse #it's basically just daniel going off the deep end. poor dude. mclaren is that bad #I am so so so so sorry I did not finish it and i hope a lifetime of forwarding you the nastiest hrpf i find #can make up for it #nat redpaint #insideline #fic things #asks

[manicherry]

WELL, you asked: Since when are you mentally ill?

ok. i'm gonna write a book about my life so get ready for this shit:

i don't remember most of my childhood, but i know that since i was a kid i've been hearing voices, seeing things and believing stuff you might find funny but to a child it was terrifying so i won't tell. my parents took me to multiple doctors and psychologists and it stopped on its own. then at 15 i got major depression and anorexia because my baby sister died and my mom got cancer, i was in therapy for a few years and then i left because my psychiatrist was a bitch. i started drinking everyday and doing drugs, one night i OD and i almost died, i was diagnosed with BPD and forced to see another psychologist, she was another bitch, hated her so i stopped going. then the real fuckery started. one day i was thinking about going out and drinking some beers with my friends and suddenly i had a realization. it was the longest and most severe delusion i have had so i won't talk about it. i started seeing animals, cats, dogs, spiders and bugs. also, having deja vus, not the normal ones but like real life deja vus out of the matrix. i saw things happening twice. and i thought i wasn't real and i needed to kill myself to wake up from the coma. then it got even worse, the voices, everywhere, male, female, adults, children, saying both random and terrifying stuff. all of this lasted an entire year, then it suddenly stopped and i got really depressed. my family noticed i was way too sad and i went to another psychologist, she told me i needed to see a psychiatrist and he told me i have bipolar disorder type 1, the manic and psychotic kind. i kept getting depressed and then too fast and messy and making my life a disaster, then depressed again and again and again. the psychosis is present most of the time though. this shit is tough.

well, that was my fucked up story.

#nat answers

[forestryfae]

anyways i really need someone to diagnose me cus this is ridicilous. im 25 and all i know is i have mood swings randomly and can be set off by the tiniest shit, i am constantly scared of relationships and literally cant trust people no matter how well i know them and i have long periods of just giving up cus nothing is worth it or fun and then when something IS enough or fun i literally cant get enough of it and WILL go i NEED more. and i obbsessively pick shit and decide that This Is Safe And Perfect and somehow i NEED it in my life or nothing will ever be okay and i might as well set my life on pause until i can achieve Perfection

but yeah. the inpatient im at is so work focused, despite being a PSYCHIATRIC institution, that they value work over therapy. i need therapy. i need therapists. i need something where we are BOTH working on my social and life skills and my mental health at the same time. like those three NEED to be in sync. i cant ONLY go to work for 5 hours a day then come home exhausted and have noone talk to me except for like. to ask about art group and to tell me i need to clean my room. and then at the same time have them not do any other follow ups, not help me with medication at all, not checking in on me, not doing therapy, not taking me to appointments theyve been informed of well ahead of time, not have regular treatment-related talks with me, not even inform me about treatments, and constantly tell me its all my responsibility to fix and figure out even though its. their job. i came here to learn how to be an independent adult and instead i wind fucking. being told "figure it out yourself" and "do this" with the expectation that i should just know automatically as if i was born with the knowledge of the whole world.

like. can i maybe get some fucking therapy? i NEED a psychologist. i NEED medication, maybe. i dont know. what i dont need is to be forced to work for a year with no follow up at all and noone doing their job to make sure my treatment is like. actually working. i shouldnt have to remind them that they need to do meetings with me and that we have stuff we need to work on, i shouldnt have to deal with asking people to remember me and notice me and having to feel like im nagging or not worth the effort.

so yeah. after almost a year of being here i have finally gotten a meeting with the ONE doctor we have here who can prescribe medication so we gotta figure that shit out i guess. hes very anti meds tho according to the other patients here, and frankly i can see it seeing as his first action was to just. tell me to go sit in the livingroom and talk to people cus its good for me. nothing else like buddy. i needed. help. and you wanna focus on me talking to people daily no matter how much anxiety i have?? thats. not treatment. wheres the cbt stuff. the fucking mental excercises. the regular talks. but yeah hes been on paternity leave since like a month or three after i got here and now hes only gonna come here every. 2 months i think it was. i get to talk to a doctor who may or may not be a psychiatrist about medication i may or may not get, who has had ZERO involvement in my treatment here, and who still hasnt sent me to a ears nose throat specialist even tho i requested it months ago. instead ive been prescribed medication with no actual examination at all.

but yeah i can either stay here or go home and i dont wanna go home so. might as well. stay here for a while. and hope that i can get the shit house sold so i can find an apartment and maybe like have a life eventually.

#talkies #anyways todays mental breakdown is brought to you by me misinterpreting a single line of dialogue and feeling like a fucking idiot ever sin #like it literally should not matter to me. but i dont want people to think im a dumb stupid fucking illiterate and socially stunted idiot #and it constantly feels like i dont know how to do anything else cus im not perfect and i never recieve feedback on my. existence. #except for when i fuck shit up. as if noone else ever does. like. there are bigger assholes and idiots out there than me #except for this one guy whos also inpatient here and hes like. he keeps telling me i am actually normal and nice. i get a lot of that feedb #back here and its. rly good to know im not some monumental fuckup who will never be perfect no matter how hard i try. #and like i dont have to be perfect either i can just be. and i can try harder to be better and thats enough #but yeah atleast my fucking. brain is kinda working again. maybe itll be okay