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atlabeth · 3 years

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fever - sokka x reader

this has been sitting in my drafts half finished for 3 weeks so i thot it was prime time i actually finished it

this is kinda based off the song w dua lipa and angele so you can listen to that if you want

summary: sokka's convinced there's a mystery illness keeping you from focusing, but somehow he's completely oblivious that the only 'sick' you are is lovesick, and he's the reason you can't focus.

a/n: i have never written a sickfic. but this is like. a fake sick fic. its an idiots in love fic. i mean this is coming from mr "is he taller than me? is he better looking?" himself so. it makes sense. as usual, this is not proofread bc im a lazy mf

also im sorry for being vague with the calc but i was NOT about to do math during summer who do you think i am? ??

wc: 1.7k

warning(s): mentions of being sick and 🤢calculus 🤮 but otherwise tooth rotting fluff

How could the smartest man you knew be so, so incredibly stupid?

You thought that you were being obvious, so obviously that you were sure he knew. It was embarrassing how obvious you were.

You had met Sokka in your calculus class at the start of the new semester after you ended up sitting next to each other, and it wasn’t a stretch to say that you were immediately smitten. With eyes like the ocean and a face that had to have been crafted by the gods, you were almost too distracted to respond when he asked you for a pencil. But when he winked at you after giving his thanks, it only solidified what you had already suspected: you had known this man for all of five minutes, and you already had a crush on him.

Little did you know, it was going to turn into the most infuriating crush you had ever experienced.

You and Sokka became fast friends even though calculus was the only class you had together. Unfortunately, it was also something that you completely sucked at. Bad news, it was required for your major. Good news, Sokka was some sort of genius and offered to tutor you — Wednesdays in the library turned into a weekly occasion, and served as an opening for your calculus skills, your feelings for Sokka, and your exasperation to all grow stronger.

You normally weren’t someone to beat around the bush. If you started to like someone, you told them and dealt with whatever happened after, but something about Sokka just kept you from spilling your feelings outright. You knew that if he didn’t feel the same way, your relationship likely wouldn’t change, but there was still that tiny voice that said it’s better to stay like this in case things do go wrong — and this was the first time you listened to that voice. You simply valued your friendship too much.

But that didn’t mean you were going to be completely quiet about it — you hoped that if you did enough, he would be able to realize you liked him and do the whole process for you. A bit of a dim hope, but crushes make people do stupid things.

Things like bringing an extra coffee to every session, laughing at all his jokes (even the bad ones), sitting a little closer to him than usual, not dropping out of this wretched class so you could spend time together (it might’ve been required, but you still counted it). He didn’t make a point to object to anything, so you knew you weren’t making him uncomfortable — but you had concluded after nearly a whole semester of working and studying together that he was the most oblivious person in all of Ba Sing Se. He could teach you all kinds of formulas, but had no idea that you liked him. Grand.

Today was arguably the most important session out of any of them, seeing as your next class was the final, so it was only fitting that Sokka unknowingly made himself more interesting than any material you could’ve been working with. His arms were going to be the death of both you and your calc grade. You swore that the heat rushing to your cheeks was actually emanating off of you.

“Hey, Y/N!” Sokka grinned as he saw you and raised a hand in greeting, a sentiment you would’ve returned had it not been for the coffee cups in your hands. You settled for mirroring his grin and settled down in the seat across from him. You slid his coffee cup over, set your own down, then shrugged your bag off all before taking a seat.

“You ready to study ‘till your eyes bleed?” he asked, prompting a nervous laugh from you.

“You jest, but my eyes might actually start bleeding depending on how long we go,” you sighed. “There’s a reason I got an extra shot of espresso today.”

“Come on — by now you should know that you have nothing to worry about! I am the best teacher there is, and you got me all to yourself.”

Your eyes widened momentarily and you coughed, purposefully averting your gaze to give yourself some time to recover. Okay, he was going to make it really hard to focus today. “Let’s just get into it.”

He nodded and flipped open his notebook, beginning to talk as he rifled through his bag for a few extra things. “Okay, we’re just gonna start with going over the basics, then we’ll work our way up. There’s a couple practice problems on that page, so you can go ahead and answer those as a warmup.

You slid the notebook over in front of you and after approximately five seconds of looking at the first problem, found yourself studying Sokka rather than the material. Who could blame you? In the battle of cute tutor boy versus calculus, he was going to win every time.

He turned around and you immediately averted your eyes once again, trying to appear extremely involved, but you found that your mind was empty on anything to do with math. “Hey, uh— how do you do this first one? I’m totally blanking here.”

“We use limits in everything — this is actually something you’re really good at!” He studied you intensely and frowned. “Are you okay? Like, you’re not sick or anything, are you? You seem kinda out of it.”

You choked out a laugh and shook your head. “No, no — I’m fine. I guess I’m just a little tired.” As if to demonstrate your lie, you took a sip from your coffee and cringed internally. Love had turned you into an idiot.

He seemed to buy it as he nodded and picked up the pencil, scribbling a couple of notes as he explained the first problem to you. “Does that make sense?” You nodded and he handed the pencil back to you. “Okay — the other ones follow the same kind of process. It should be easy enough.”

You managed to get a little further in the second problem, but your lovestruck mind would not stop focusing back on Sokka every time you tried to do, well, anything. Curse him and his perfect arms, and eyes, and hairstyle, and everything.

You shook your head and set the pencil down once more, letting loose a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” Yes, you did. “I just can’t focus at all.” Because of you. You picked up your cup once more and took a sip, hoping it would do something to get you back into the math state of mind.

Sokka frowned once more as he put the back of his hand against your forehead. “God, you’re hot.” You nearly choked on your coffee as your eyes practically bulged out of their sockets — he had to know what he was doing by now — how could he not? “Like, you’re completely burning up. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, I swear— I just…” you set your cup down on the table and heaved a sigh that was a touch more exasperated than necessary. “Are you telling me you seriously haven’t noticed? Like, not a single thing this whole year?”

“I’ve noticed a lot of things this year,” he chuckled. “It’s kind of our whole job, so you’re gonna have to be a lot more specific.”

You finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Sokka, I’m not— I’m not sick! Haven’t you noticed that I’m only ever flustered, or running into things, or forgetting info, or— or just a complete idiot when I’m around you? I like you, like, a lot, and I have for an embarrassingly long time! The reason I can’t focus is because I am hopelessly attracted to you in every single way.”

His brows creased for a moment and you clamped your mouth shut, worried that you had just ruined everything. It was only after a pause that felt like a century that he finally responded, the hint of a smirk on his lips.

“Well, why didn’t you just say something?”

You stared at him, eyes wide and lips slightly parted in pure surprise before the annoyance set in. You set your jaw as your brows furrowed and you hit him lightly on the side of his arm with the back of your palm. “You can’t be serious! You— you’ve gotta be messing with me by now. I really can’t believe that you can be that smart but this oblivious!”

He finally let the grin play across his lips in full force and he shrugged nonchalantly. “I mean, I don’t know how you don’t expect me to mess with you when you scrunch up your face all cute like that every time you get mad. Besides, I started liking you after that fifth class; I offered to help you out so I could spend more time with you! I didn’t realize you felt the same way. I kinda just enjoyed the free coffee and getting to look at you all the time.”

“I can’t believe you!” you cried as you hit his other arm. “You’re telling me that I had to deal with this- this mental turmoil about whether you liked me back, while you were just enjoying the free eye candy and coffee the whole time?”

“You have nothing to worry about! I enjoyed the company far more than the coffee,” he joked, a certain twinkle in his eye. “But, you are probably out a couple twenties after all of that. So, what do you say about this Saturday, the cafe by the shoe store? My treat.”

“Damn right it’s your treat,” you shot back, though you couldn’t stop the smile forming on your face. “You owe me a lot — you have to make up for those coffees and all the emotional distress you caused.”

“Oh, I think I’ll have plenty of time to make up for lost time. After all, we do have a lot of coffee dates to get through.” And when he winked at you just like that first day, you remembered just how impossible it was to be angry at Sokka. “But first, we kinda have to get through this study date. The final’s still happening tomorrow.”

You responded with a raised brow. “This is a study date?”

Sokka shrugged and grinned. “They’ve all been study dates. You just didn’t know it.”

idiots in love idiots in love idiots In LOVe

perm tag list: @dv0412 @siriuslyslyslytherin @maruchan77

atla: @marianne1806

#sokka x reader #sokka x you #sokka x y/n #sokka fic #atla #avatar #avatar the last airbender #avatar the last airbender fic #avatar x reader #reader insert #sadie writes

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bookofmirth · 3 years

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I haven't read ACOSF yet, and tbh I'm rather rusty with the characters but it was really interesting to read your opinion on Elain! I feel there's a lot of complexity to her. And how she presents herself as well because as you said we literally have no chapters from hers or Lucien's POV and I think that's the important point to note because right now we're all just guessing and assuming her to be like Feyre, but she's not. People deal/show their traumas in different way and l think people expect Elain to deal with it as Feyre did. But, Feyres trauma and Elains are very different!

I don't really know what I'm saying. But I read your answer and it made me go 'oh... Huh!' in a good way, it sparked my curiosity! So thank you! But I think Elain perhaps is the most complex person with their trauma. I know people say 'oh Nesta is so different' but (I specialised in drama therapy so I love psycho analysis) and what Nesta did is self destructive to prevent relationships to avoid hurt or more emotions that she doesn't want to acknowledge (in my opinion!)

Elain just shuts down. She doesn't drink, she doesn't screw, she just remains in her garden which in itself says a lot! That's a very grounding way to handle trauma and not a lot of people are aware of that side!

So yeah I don't know what I'm saying but I think it's a really interesting discussion!

I have so many thoughts about Elain! This took me a few days to get to because i knew I had a crapton of thoughts. So this is basically me using this ask to explain the way I see Elain post-acosf!

There are three important scenes in acosf off the top of my head: when Elain talks with Nesta and they fight, and then with Nesta and Feyre and she gets mad and leaves, and then Feyre and Rhys talk about her in their chapter. We’re getting a lot more information about her, and for me, it wasn’t so much about who she is, but why we don’t know who she is.

So far, what we’ve had is Feyre’s and Nesta’s POV. Even when Feyre and Lucien tried to help her in acowar, they were unable. So we’ve never had anything about Elain from someone who didn’t grow up with her and experience the same trauma (such as becoming destitute, their mother’s death, their father being beaten, the Cauldron, etc.)

The sisters do handle it very, very differently. And I think that at this point the fandom consensus is that Elain runs away from her problems, but I actually disagree, and partly because of what you mentioned - that she isn’t using those self-harming, destructive coping mechanisms. Nesta was avoiding her problems, hardcore. It’s absolutely possible that Elain avoids things, but I don’t think that she just runs from all of her problems because:

Elain grieves her father. Openly. She tries to accept the fact that it wasn’t her fault and that she couldn’t do anything about it. (See: her going to his grave in acofas, her first talk with Nesta in acosf.) Elain does not run from her grief, she doesn’t pretend it doesn’t exist, and she doesn’t hide it from others. As one of the most defining events we’ve seen her go through in the series, that’s a pretty big deal.

Elain does not cling to unhealthy coping mechanisms. There could be ways that she does this that we are unaware of. She does seem like the type who would be really, really good at making people think she’s okay, all while she’s silently imploding. But we don’t know that yet?

Elain does not isolate herself.

However, Elain definitely needs to deal with some stuff! She definitely needs to deal with Lucien, and she needs to have an actual talk with Nesta because I don’t remember a single satisfying resolution between those two in acosf. Not like Nesta had with Feyre.

I have this idea that is purely based on Elain’s line in acosf:

“I went into the Cauldron, too, you know. And it captured me. And yet somehow, all you think of is what my trauma did to you.” (pg. 233)

And then Feyre tells Nesta that yes, Elain was right.

This is so so so sossosososos important. I cannot emphasize it enough. Elain is used to putting on a fake, smiling face because she doesn’t want the weight of her sisters’ concern. She has been pretending to cope for so long - and tbf, she seems to have been doing better than Nesta - that people not only forget that she has suffered, but she doesn’t feel like she can even express that suffering.

Emotional labor often means negating one’s own feelings in order to acknowledge or tend to someone else’s. And that is Elain’s major role, in the series. Feyre has been caring for everyone’s physical wellbeing (hunting), while Elain’s role has been to care for everyone’s emotional wellbeing. But, like with most emotional labor, it has gone unnoticed.

I’ve made posts about emotional labor in the past (four years ago!!!!) but I’m gonna spare you the link because a lot of it was about a ship that’s no longer a ship, so here is the relevant content:

What I am talking about is the regulation of emotion - any time that you give comfort, are especially attentive to someone’s needs, stop thinking about how you feel in order to focus on how someone else feels, try to cheer someone up, make sure that they are taking care of themselves, try to allay their insecurities, etc. Basically, helping them with any sort of emotional distress.

You know those posts you’ve seen, about women protecting men’s egos constantly? Or about making time for self-care? Or about recognizing toxic relationships? That tell you “if X is being demanded of you in a relationship, get out”? Those are ALL about emotional labor, broadly speaking. They are warning you not to do more than you can handle, more than you need to do, because it can be harmful to you.

If you have ever been expected to make a person or people feel better any time you are around each other (including when they are angry, upset, anxious, ill, frustrated, insecure, etc.), you have performed emotional labor. Pretty much everyone has done this at some point, unless you are a completely insensitive jerk.

Notice, though, that I said expected to and any time you are around them – this is where the problem comes in for YOU. This is not about just being there for a friend.

Making loved ones feel better is fantastic. Seeing people be polite and kind to one another makes my heart shine. That is not a problem in and of itself. That can be seen as emotional labor, but there are no requirements on you in those circumstances. This is something you are doing of your own free will.

The problem, again, is when this is expected, constantly, over time. Now, in my experience, the expectation is not necessarily coming from the other person. One of the problems with this type of labor is that not only do others expect women to perform these tasks, but women expect it of themselves.

It’s super easy to see this – who is expected to take care of a child when they fall? Who is expected to baby-sit? Who did you want when you were sick as a child, mom or dad? Who is expected to be sensitive and pay attention to others’ emotions?

For more info on this idea specifically, read Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich. As a woman, I realized how much work I had been performing and how much it was harming me and I just… got real upset. She comes at this mostly from what a woman’s role is expected to be within the family, and might actually be a bit outdated in that respect because I feel like family structures and dynamics are shifting (that is a totally un-academic evaluation of the situation, don’t quote me on that), but still, it’s really informative.

While I was doing some research for this post I came across a peer-reviewed article about nursing and basically, high amounts of emotional labor led to anxiety and burn-out in those performing it. It literally will cost your mental health – not to mention your time, energy, attention, and it often requires you to ignore your own needs (this last part came from me, not the article). On the other hand, high levels of emotional intelligence (being able to recognize your own and others’ emotional states) meant less emotional labor (and therefore less anxiety & burn-out). One of the most important things to realize is that while you are taking care of someone else’s emotional needs, your own are frequently unmet. That is why it’s important to recognize this in yourself, not just in these characters.

So where does Elain fit in? Elain is the #1 emotional labor provider of the family, and she is about to freaking SNAP. I know, because once I realized how my trauma was hidden in order to spare someone else its consequences, I fucking SNAPPEd. I’ll also spare you the personal details, but Elain hasn’t been “okay”. She hasn’t been “boring”, or “nice”, or “chosen” Feyre over Nesta. She has literally been unable to express herself because (and I am NOT blaming Nesta or Feyre or her father one bit) her family’s emotional state has been so fragile, there hasn’t been room for Elain to feel or express her emotions in years.

In the feysand short, Rhys says:

I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elain is sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she’d disappoint you all.

And that completely tracks. Everyone has gotten used to Elain being not just “nice”, but being the emotionally predictable one. The one they know they can go to for a smile. The one they can count on for never, ever making them realize that she has been through Some Shit Too. And being that person is exhausting.

When Feyre thinks about Elain not using Lucien’s gloves, 1) she still has them, otherwise she couldn’t think about Elain not using them, and 2) I like to see the gloves as something that she will come to use, once she realizes that she can feel and express those emotions without it causing a breakdown in the family. Right now, she just wants to feel. And she can’t do that emotionally, so she’s doing it physically. Once she heals and finds a better balance, she won’t need to resort to physical pain. (Which, lowkey has me thinking some other thoughts, but.... maybe later.) But anyway, once Elain does go through her very own special journey, I fully expect her to welcome those gloves. She won’t need physical pain to feel anymore.

Not to mention my completely unacademic and non-professional opinion that people will judge a nice women harshly for being rude once, but accept a woman with a history of rudeness for just “being that way”. It’s another way that Elain may feel trapped in her “nice girl” persona. I think she started out that way - kindness and light and generosity is 100% in Elain’s character in the first place. It’s not as if she went into the Court of Nightmares and suddenly Cassian thought, “wait, she fits right in to this shithole of depravity”. No, he still thought the literal opposite. It’s just that once people get used to you doing all their emotional labor, they will continue to take advantage of it, even if they don’t realize its cost.

#elain #acosf #acosf spoilers #spoilers #ask #PHEW I needed to get that off my chest too #midnight-wonder

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swamp-spirit · 3 years

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Am I Depressed or Just Lazy?

It’s the question that haunts most disabled people, whether the disability is physical or mental. Is it my fault? Am I just not trying hard enough? How do I know?

It doesn’t help that everyone has their own opinion, opinions your accommodations and aid depend on. Do you need help, or do you just need to try harder?

Well, here’s my answer for you, an answer that has been very important for me: The question is wrong.

To get into why, let’s discuss different kinds of limits. (note, many disabled people have more than one, if not all of these. this is not an attempt to ‘rank’ disabilities, and all come with their own unique range of issues)

OBJECTIVE HARD LINE

This is something you can prove. You can go into the doctor, do a test, and have them clarify that this is a fixed, provable limit. For example, if you are paralyzed from the waist down, that’s a hard line. No amount of luck or willpower will let you walk that day. You might have a form of aphasia that makes you incapable of forming coherent sentences. If you allergic to gluten, you’re allergic to gluten.

SUBJECTIVE HARD LINE

This is a consistent, predictable limit that you know, but is not an exact, easily proven fact. For example, ‘if I hear about a car accident, I have a panic attack’. It’s more difficult to prove to external sources, but fairly easy to recognize internally.

UNPREDICTABLE HARD LINE

You know your disability has a clear, observable consequence, but you can’t say exactly how much you can handle before it hits. For example, if you walk to much, your hip freezes up, but you don’t know how much walking will cause it. You may know going to crowded events give you sensory meltdowns, but not know how much you can handle. There is no “I can go to your party for exactly eleven minutes”.

SOFT LINE

These revolve around energy. Maybe your executive function issues make it hard for you to do homework. Maybe your chronic pain means going shopping leaves you tired. This is where spoon theory becomes popular. Everyone has physical and mental struggles and limits.

-----

The problem is, everybody has soft lines. Everybody gets tired if they push their bodies. Everybody gets stressed or sad or overwhelmed. There’s no exact measurement.

It makes a lot of us push ourselves towards our hard lines. For example, I struggle with chronic pain and exhaustion, and, at a certain point, faint. After years of being told I was faking it, being dramatic, just needed to push through, starting to actually collapse was the first time people began to realize there was something wrong. I still don’t know how to believe my own body, I don’t know how to forgive myself for not pushing, so I push for the limits. Once I faint, then I’ve finally proved I’m trying, that I’m not just being dramatic or lazy. Mental illness is particularly hard to quantify, and many people are driven to self harm trying to create some proof that their pain is real.

Disabled or lazy?

What do we do if the answer is lazy? We don’t want to be one of those bad disables who uses our health as an excuse and doesn’t make changes.. Maybe you can just push through it. Maybe if you just HATE yourself enough, you’ll be the person you want to be.

On the flipside, maybe it’s your disability. Not your fault. Out of your hands. No point in trying to fix it.

Obviously, neither of these are healthy places to stay, but if the two options are ‘it’s my disability and I have no control’ or ‘it’s my fault and I could fix it if I cared’, what else can you do? It also makes us lash out at hope. After all, if you can get better, isn’t it... kinda your fault that you aren’t? Aren’t you choosing to stay sick?

Because here’s the core problem: You are like this for a reason.

What is lazy? There’s this attempt to boil ourselves down to what’s ‘us’, the core traits open for moral judgement, and what’s ‘not our fault’, experiences outside us that shape our actions. It’s particularly obvious in the way we discuss criminals.

But we’re all the way we are for a reason. Every asshole has mental and social reasons to be an asshole. Nature and nurture, baby.

So what? None of it’s our fault and we should do what we want and blame other factors?

Of course not, but the reverse isn’t any better! Let’s look at a common issue:

I don’t clean as much as I want. Is it my disability, or am I lazy?

If you’re lazy, what do you actually do? Well, you stop being lazy! You buck up and Do The Dang Thing!

But if wanting to do it was enough, you wouldn’t be worrying about it in the first place. Maybe you’ll force yourself to clean for ten minutes, but the real thing you ingrain is self loathing. Stop being lazy. Stop being lazy. Stop being lazy. Hate yourself healthy.

That’s not constructive because you’re fixing the wrong problem. So what do you do? How do you give yourself agency without basing it around guilt? How do you change without shame?

. Instead of asking if your problems are ‘real’, here’s what I recommend:

1. Why am I not acting the way I want to act?

Don’t accept any answer that has moral judgement. Cut the word lazy. It’s useless. Don’t ask if it’s ‘your fault’ you have Type II diabetes, if you ‘should be able to’ pay attention in class. Cut moral judgement from the process.

Actually understanding why you act the way you do might take time, research, and thought, but changing behavior does!

Example: Why am I eating so much junk food when I know it’s making me feel worse?

Bad answer - I’m depressed

Worse answer - Because I’m a glutton with no self control

Good answer - My depression makes me seek out temporary highs from food because long term highs aren’t working, and I have self control issues that mean I often don’t act in my own best interests.

2. What are my barriers?

Once you’ve identified what’s stopping you, get into more details. If you find doing dishes overwhelming, why? What parts of the process do you find overwhelming or uncomfortable?

For the more general answers (motivation, energy, etc), what are your barriers to the solutions? What steps might help with your depression and what’s stopping you from taking those? Why don’t you do your physical therapy?

3. Is this something I can change? Is this something I can change now?

Earlier we talked about hard lines. Those come back in here. Some things, even with unlimited time and resources, remain fact. It’s not ‘giving up’ to accept a hard ‘cannot’. That said, be careful not to listen to mental illness ‘cannots’ in this situation. For example, I have been told by professionals I will probably always need psyciatric medication to be functional, no matter how good my self talk and lifestyle is. Accepting that, I think, is healthy. It would not be healthy, however, to decide that I ‘cannot’ have a good life.

But you do not have unlimited time and resources. When I said ‘what are your barriers’, plenty of you probably went “MONEY! IT’S MONEY, YOU ASSHOLE” Sometimes it means knowing an issue can’t be addressed until you have money/time/surgery.

It’s okay to put things on the backburner. If you’re trying to figure out ‘how do I keep from being homeless next week’, you might decide ‘how do I eat more vegetables’ is not your most pressing issue.

You can also decide a fix isn’t worth the cost. Maybe you could afford knee surgery, but you don’t think the amount it would improve your life would be worth the expense or risk. Maybe you could take the stairs to class, but it would leave you too exhausted to pay attention.

Sometimes you realize ‘I want something more than I want to fix this’, and... that’s okay. Sometimes you aren’t ready for a change. Sometimes you don’t need to change. But if the change really is something you want:

4. Make a plan that directly confronts your barriers?

You’ve already broken your barriers into small, objective issues. Now you can start working on those issues.

If you know you need to eat better, and your main barrier is impulse control, don’t plan to ‘stop eating junk food’. Figure out healthy, easy snacks you like and leave them in plain view.

Find ways to make chores easier. Learn to cook while seated, try playing music while you clean, find what works for you. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

Talk frankly with the people in your life. Try to help them understand what your barriers are and make them allies in overcoming them. “I know it’s important I do this, and I am trying. Here is the specific element I am struggling with. Do you have advice for that?”

I particularly love this conversational tactic with doctors. Here is a conversation I had with a lot of doctors:

Doctor: You need to fix this habit. Me: I know. I’m sorry. Doctor: It’s really important. Here’s why it’s important.

I would get upset and defensive that the doctor seemed to think I didn’t care, and that the solution was just shaming me into caring more. The doctor would probably see me as unwilling to change.

Here is the conversation we have now:

Doctor: You need to fix this habit. Me: That’s a priority for me too, but I’m really struggling with x and y hasn’t helped. Do you have any advice that helps people with x?

This either gets me advice on my actual problem instead of just being shamed for not fixing it, or it forces the doctor to change the topic and perhaps redirect me to somebody with more experience.

Write down lists of issues you want to address with your doctor. Focus on concrete steps and goals, and celebrate every win. People might not see how hard your fight is, but if getting out of bed in the morning is a fight, you have every reason to celebrate it.

But your barrier is NOT that you are lazy. It is not that you are bad or stupid or worthless. You cannot hate yourself healthy.

Your struggles are real, and the steps to overcome them are based in understanding, agency, and support, not self loathing.

#disability #body problems #brain problems

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theghostinthemoon · 3 years

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I’ve just watched Dear Evan Hansen and I’m disappointed

*TW: mental health, suicide, anxiety, depression*

Here’s the thing.

Over the years, I’ve been told this was a musical about mental health, with an important message to give. My friend sent me a list of Must Watch Musicals, and in it was Dear Evan Hansen, with a note about it: “this one is important”.

Well, I wished it had felt that way, I really do. But as someone who has the same mental health issues as Evan, I found it wanting.

And this is what I think the problem is- at the end of the day, mental illness is not the point of this musical. It is merely the plot device.

We leave the show not really knowing anything about Connor Murphy. Who he was, why he might have done what he did, the way he genuinely felt... We know nothing. Instead, we’re left with this idea of the stereotypical angry guy who might or might not have become a school shoorter (and I’m not sure about you guys, but I’m tired of society grouping me together with school shooters and psychopaths. Not everyone with a mental illness is dangerous, or bad, or evil, or has anger issues). And more, Connor’s ghost is used and abused as a joke.

Evan kind of has the same issue. Truly, apart from the fact that he has severe anxiety and depression, that he likes trees, and that he’s manipulative as hell, what do we know about him? That he writes? His mom says he does, but we never see that. Actually, every time Evan tries to writre an email or tries to write something for the blog, we see Alana and Jared wanting to change the words he chose. Even his relationship with Zoe isn’t explored. Zoe says she likes him for who he is, but we barely see them talk about something that isn’t her dead brother. I don’t know how you all feel... But I promise you my mental health isn’t my whole personality.

And now, oh boy, here’s the biggest issue. Evan lies throughout the whole musical. He manipulates people to get what he wants, he lies to the family of a boy who killed himself, he posts fake messages all over the internet, he puts fake words in a dead boy’s mouth, and he seems to be fine with it for most of the time. Let me tell you that, as a person with anxiety, I would have had a mental breakdown. Evan didn’t. He stopped taking his medication, even, because he wasn’t anxious anymore. In real life, though, no one gets healed from their anxiety just because suddenly people are paying them more attention (it nearly felt like they were blaming Evan’s mom for Evan’s lack of social skills, which is unfair for the character, since, you know, she’s working as hard as she can to make sure they survive). It doesn’t even feel like Evan has any respect for Connor’s situation. He never really cared about him. He used him for his own gain. Which is terrible, because since Evan was suicidal as well, he could at least try and understand what Connor was going through, feel some empathy, or sympathy. But no. It was all always about Evan.

By the end of the musical he’s forgiven by the other characters. This is nothing but the writers of the show excusing Evan’s behaviour through the words of the characters he hurt the most. Evan doesn’t deserve that. His actions are NOT okay. He didn’t do anything to make up for his mistakes (mistakes is an understatement...). This reminds me an awful lot of Sierra Burgess Is A Loser. (Spoilers ahead) in this movie, Sierra catfishes a guy with the help of her ex enemy now friend, hurting literally everyone in the process. But it’s okay. Her actions are excused because she’s broken and sad and doesn’t fit in society’s standards. Everyone who watched the movie could see that it didn’t really have a great message. Why can’t anyone see it with Dear Evan Hansen?

I don’t know guys, but I don’t need this sort of representation. Of course, no one is a saint. And there’s people with mental illnesses who ARE bad people. But I don’t think this musical has the cpacity to work through the nuances of that without villanizing mental illnesses. Especially since musical theatre in general is a meduim that works (too much, if you ask me...) with overdone stereotypes that don’t really fit into today’s society anymore. It’s almost as if they can’t dare to have a mentally ill character without having them do something evil. Buddy, we’re well past that in this time and day.

That reminds me... Are we still seriously making homophobic jokes in musicals? Evan and Connor possibly having dated is seen as a joke and it’s also obviously a lie that never happened. I am... So tired. You know what would have added some dimention to the story? Evan actually being gay, for example. It would explain some of his struggles. But no, musicals still refuse to take gay people seriously (looking at you, Heathers, still have NOT forgiven you for the “I Love My Dead Gay Son” song).

I feel disappointed. Because this musical could have been great. Could have actually meant something. Instead, all the messages it tries to give fall flat. The mom working too much, the pressure of the media and its toll on people, the fact that suddenly all the school wanted to know more about Connor after he died, Connor’s suicide itself, the family finding out Evan lied... All important topics that were mentioned, none of them explored well enough.

But oh, well, let’s keep on pretending it has something to say ABOUT mental health.

#this was longer than anticipated #but im a little angry #personal #dear evan hansen #dear evan hansen spoilers #anti dear evan hansen #i guess im only tagging that because some people might be upset about this post #dear evan hansen discourse #is it discourse?? i don't know but i'll tag it anyways just in case #deh

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sotorubio · 3 years

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I'm really confused cus ppl are attacking tiff for taking control of her life, saying she doesn't need to be rescued. I thought that's a good thing? But people are saying it's fake feminism because she was so mean to lola before. But isn't that the whole point of skam? People have this "shame" in their life that they grow from? Like how everyone wanted lola to be forgiven for stuff she did to other people in s6, (eliott, lucas, daphne, etc ,) because she had her own struggles but had grown /was growing from it? But with tiff we're not supposed to support her? It's hilarious how people have decided there's a right and a wrong way to react to clips and it you don't fit the "right" reaction box then you're some kind of heathen 😔

well if we're talking real life ofc something like that is a good thing, finding ur strength after going through trauma is always good n a common "feminist" trope is that a girl recognizes that she needs no man or whatever. i haven't been that active on here recently so i haven't seen the reactions to it but this season has not been a feminist one in the least no matter how many catchphrases they throw in there

above all this season is abt a cis, white, straight and rich girl so. failed step one. ppl need to understand that if feminism isn't intersectional it's worthless n this doesn't just mean they should've picked someone else for the role (which they should've, but there's more to it) u can't make a feminist season abt a white girl if ur gonna villanize all ur woc especially the black women. u can't make a feminist season abt a cishet, rich girl if ur gonna make the bisexual poor girl ignore the fact that this is the person who played w her trauma just a year before. u can't make a feminist season abt a rich girl if the previous season she was overworking her privilege to show how classist she was (which the fans love to forget bc they don't see poor ppl as oppressed lol) and again u can't make a feminist season abt a white girl if all her Cool Feminist Moments only happen when she's talking to a black man such as her snarky "that wasn't an invitation" when aurélien tried to kiss her or her physically attacking him bc he? cares abt their daughter? being consider a Powerful Mom Thing

if all this didn't exist sure it would be considered feminist for her to not need saving, but when we put it in the context of literally everything else we can see that this is yet another poor attempt at taking a cliché feminist phrase that u could see written by a male avengers movie director for woke points. ppl need to understand that tiff has huge amounts of privilege over both aurélien (being white) n max (being cis) so her being a woman doesn't even automatically place her social status "beneath" these men. even just outside of fandom shit ppl should understand that supporting certain women will inherently be anti feminist, just bc ur cheering on a woman doesn't make u feminist.

then second abt the shame thing & lola. the "shame" in all skam seasons has always been smth "innate" due to the lack of a better world. smth that the society shames u for. the isak seasons r abt being gay bc society makes ppl ashamed of gayness, but u don't think being gay is a "shame" do u? neither is being a muslim, but the sana seasons r abt that bc again the "shame" is smth society perpetuates. the fact that tiff was "mean to lola" (she was a classist, she told her to kill herself, she made her trauma n mental illness into her own little joke) is not her "shame" bc that was her choice....that's smth she chose to do she isn't misunderstood or oppressed bc she hates poor ppl lmao. if they made made a season abt the nico character would u say his shame is sexual harassment? i doubt it. bc that's not smth he's involuntarily shamed for that's an action he chose to take.

also tiff n lola's "forgiveness" or lack thereof isn't comparable. first of all i'm not sure why u mentioned lucas? she never rly did anything to him but he on the other hand has a shitload to apologize for to her. abt eliott & daphné i also don't quite understand bc as for daphné they had a mutually toxic sibling dynamic, both failing at communication n treating each other badly but like.. even in that situation daphné was literally stalking her sister so again not sure what blame lola has on her here. n for eliott i also don't get what she should've apologized for like if u mean the club clips then u r in the wrong place bc lola didn't even do anything bad other than be rude which every other character is also guilty of smfjlskd

like see the difference? tiff & lola's conflict wasn't mutual, tiff chose to harass n stalk her based on nothing at all, she was only able to do that bc of the privilege n power she (a white cishet rich girl) has over lola (a bisexual mentally ill poor girl). i don't see how those two r in any way comparable.

so i guess that's my explanation for it. as for ur last point i do agree i don't know why it's anyone else's problem how others react to clips but even then i do think we need to understand that skam remakes take pride in their "diversity" n "representation" so sometimes certain reactions actually r objectively wrong. like saying "i liked this clip" or "i didn't like this clip" is all cool n no one should get hate for that but if ppl watch a clip where certain stereotypes r used unironically n their decision is to actually enforce the harmful message n not waste any of their three braincells for critical thinking bc It'S jUsT FiCtiOn then u r not immune to me thinking ur a brainless idiot

#inbox #anon #skam france

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dropintomanga · 3 years

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“My Broken Mariko” Reveals a Broken Real World

“I’m so broken...I don’t know where to start fixing myself anymore.”

As someone who’s experienced thoughts of suicidal ideation, I can say that Waka Hirako’s My Broken Mariko is a title that hits me harder than most media do when it comes to the topic of suicide. The manga, which I think is one of the best manga of 2020, does not hold any hands throughout the story and there’s so much to unpack. Reading this has made me think about my thought process on suicide and my belief that suicide is a very systemic issue that involves everyone.

My Broken Mariko is about a young woman named Tomoyo Shiino, who just found out her best friend since childhood, Mariko Ikagawa, killed herself a week after they hung out. Filled with despair and unable to process Mariko’s death, Tomoyo decides to go to visit the home of Mariko’s parents and steal Mariko’s ashes from them. Mariko had a history of being abused ever since she was little, so Tomoyo felt it was her duty to free Mariko from that burden. After taking Mariko’s ashes, Tomoyo goes on a journey to a place called Marigaoka Cape as she remembers Mariko wanted to go there with her. Tomoyo goes through hell and back to let Mariko’s ashes be free in nature, but she does eventually start to realize that the best way to honor Mariko’s life is to keep living.

I’m not sure where to start with this. I’ve read multiple interviews with Waka Hirako since there was a good amount of promotion for My Broken Mariko. I wasn’t prepared for how absolutely realistic this story was. And I’m glad for that. Mariko’s history of being abused by her parents (and also a boyfriend when was an adult) shows how prevalent victim-blaming is. Mariko tells Tomoyo that her parents blame her for acting in ways that aren’t to their standards. Everything’s her fault, Mariko says. While Tomoyo was there to support her, Mariko didn’t have extra help beyond that. She had no one else, professional and/or peer-wise, who can empathize with her struggles. Mariko felt too defined by her circumstances to the point where she didn’t know who to turn to anymore for the help she truly needed.

In one moment of her journey to Marigaoka Cape, Tomoyo lashes out in anger at Mariko and herself at a bar. The words she says made me think about how suicide is treated by almost everyone.

“My memories of her keep fading away, even as I stand here! I’ll only remember her as perfect...even though - I thought she was such a pain...so many times..!”

The last part where Tomoyo where she said that Mariko was annoying due to her constant troubles says a lot. Almost everyone doesn’t know how to deal with heavy issues. We’re not equipped to talk about darkness because emotions are placed in this dichotomy of being either good or bad. I sometimes thinks no one wants to admit that we might end up in bad situations ourselves compared to anyone we love who’s suffering/has suffered.

I’ve been thinking a lot of suicide prevention lately as suicide rates continue to rise despite more awareness and helplines. There’s a question posed by a mental health professional about where to go with dealing with loss in this Mad in America article about suicide hotlines tracing calls to the harm of disenfranchised people who need help.

“Is it the path where everyone is so terrified to talk about suicide because of consequences, like having the cops called on you even by confidential hotlines? Or is it the path where we know that we’re going to lose people, and we create as much space as we possibly can to be with people in darkness and talk openly about this and support people?”

I wondered if people like Mariko were so afraid to talk about their emotional pain due to fear of consequences. I also wondered if people like Tomoyo are unable to deal with so much darkness. I remember how I was hospitalized back then and how my high school friends all distanced themselves from me slowly but surely. No one wanted to put up with my mental illness back then.

Also, I wanted to kill myself back in 2016. I made an awful mistake of saying that I wanted to die on Twitter. I thought someone wanted me dead. A colleague of mine thankfully called a hotline for help. Police actually came to my door that night after midnight. I calmed myself before then after realizing I couldn’t do it. My interaction with the cops ended up with no consequences.

To be honest, I’m afraid of dealing with cops and hospitals due to my mental illness. I didn’t enjoy my hospital experience because it felt so limiting. I also realized at the time, my mental illness wasn’t as bad as it was initially perceived. I did discuss that I faked hearing voices in my head for attention. It’s tricky for professionals to handle cases like me because you do have to take things seriously when it comes to mental illness.

But I also realize that the mental health system is sometimes too standardized for its own good. A bunch of its solutions do not work well with people (especially minorities) that experience trauma from societal circumstances. A mental health treatment that works well with middle-class white folks may not work at all with a black person stuck in poverty. Yes, Mariko was so broken that she was beyond help. But what if the help she got wasn’t enough or made things worse?

I loved how Tomoyo tells Mariko in her own mind that it was never her fault and that it was the people in her life that projected their insecurities onto her. Tomoyo does wish that Mariko asked her to die alongside her. I can’t blame her for thinking that as there’s so much hyper-individualism ruining what it means to connect with someone in a meaningful way. Tomoyo and Mariko had a genuine friendship that was still maintained despite their evolving lives.

At the end of the story, Tomoyo opens up a final letter from Mariko mailed to her before she died and the contents of the letter are unknown to the reader. All we see is Tomoyo’s response, “Mm-hmm,” while she holds the letter to her face. It’s very open-ended, but I think that’s the point. Human beings are complicated creatures full of entanglements that make and/or break them. We all have kinds of feelings that can’t be easily labeled despite whatever perception is given of us. We’re all open-ended in our own ways.

That’s why I wish more people “open up” and realize that suicide is a people problem. There’s people who say having suicidal thoughts is abnormal. Let me say this - if you are oppressed by all kinds of stressors and impacts that are usually caused by other people and no one truly cared about you, I think it’s normal to feel as if dying is your option. I sometimes feel that we have too many people well off compared to people who aren’t. Maybe that’s one reason why thoughts related to death are so taboo.

I’ll reveal something that most people don’t know - I still think about death sometimes. I just don’t let it overwhelm me. Or maybe I realized that I’m sick of certain injustices in the world. Thinking about suicide was somewhat of a stance against that. It’s similar to what martyrs believe. However, I do feel that you need to focus on the light hidden in that darkness (sounds Kingdom Hearts-ish, but it’s also true) and make it so that living is a better option. It takes a people solution to find that. I found that I wasn’t alone in how I thought at times and it helped me a bunch to process what I was feeling.

There’s a wonderful line near the end of My Broken Mariko and it’s found on a beach sign. It said “Suicide isn’t a crime, but littering is.” I sometimes feel that suicide is still treated as a crime even by those who want to help. I think that’s why you hear questions like “Why did they do this? How could they?” Most police responses to people with mental illness do not end well. Sometimes, psychiatric help does more harm than good. I’ve had bad psychiatrist/therapist experiences that felt too “medical.” That’s why I want more community efforts emphasized to tackle suicide and not just only rely on the standard solutions.

This is what I think My Broken Mariko is calling for - a communal stand against the injustices that lead people to consider suicide as an option. And I’m glad someone like Waka Hirako feels the same way I do.

There’s a wonderful guide on Psyche, “How to talk to a suicidal friend” with resources and books. Also, please remember that it’s possible that you can’t save someone in the end even if you tried as best you could to help (like Tomoyo did for Mariko) and no one should ever shame you for that. Here’s a list of resources for suicide bereavement.

#My Broken Mariko #manga #mental health #suicide #psychology #josei manga

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undead-notunreasonable · 4 years

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So I remember you mentioned that you were bullied at school? So was I and I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently. What is it that happened to you then? Just curious- dw if you don’t wanna say

This is gonna be long... I’m pretty open with what happened to me when I was at school! So, I guess I was dealt the worst hand: ginger, skinny, Deaf. The problem is growing up, I always had a group of friends & would lose them, and honestly that happened to me recently, so I thought it was because of me when in reality it’s because people don’t get that if you’re deaf, your needs & worldview are SO much more different to that of an abled person & abled bodied people just don’t get it.

Primary school: I was part of the ‘popular’ crowd for quite some time & I never felt any different & I thought these group of girls were going to be my best friends forever. As we go older, things started to change, I was being included less & not being invited to much. Parents would tell their kids to not hang around the disabled kid. Literal grown adults. They even would constantly ask my Mum if she was feeding me or if I was ill because I was so small. My poor Mum. One time I stayed round a friends house for a sleepover & bare in mind we’re little kids we’re like 7? I had a teddy bear that I wouldn’t go ANYWHERE without so of course I brought it to the party. One girl spat her gum into my hair. Another hid my hearing aids. Another hid my teddy bear. They didn’t get in trouble but the Mum whose home it was, told me that I hid it & was playing up. Following morning, it was hot as hell so we had a water fight before our parents came to pick us up, but I couldn’t join it because I couldn’t get my hearing aids wet. Though, I did aim the running hose that everyone was using at one of the girls & she burst into tears, I stopped but the others continued. The Mum yet again blamed me. She told my Mum & my Mum was like “No, she wouldn’t have done that if someone said to stop. And she wouldn’t have put gum in her hair, hidden her bear, or hid her hearing aids.” Eventually they got older & they just outed me. Until I met another new girl who was SO tall & people were mean to her about her height, so I became her friend, and we became great friends! Until another new girl came in who was my friend but she didn’t like me much even though I didn’t do anything wrong. She convinced the tall one to abandon me just as we moved onto secondary school. Secondary school: We had like an introductory week at this school where we met all the other kids so we could at least know someone to hang out with. I was lucky, there was a girl I attended gymnastics with & so I spent the day with her but this one teacher put me with another girl who is a little person & the reason she kept putting me & her together was because “Well you both look similar & you’re disabled, so you’ll get on great.” which is SO fucking wrong. We tried to get on with each other but we just didn’t gel. We exchanged hi’s every so often but we later drifted. I managed to get back with the girl from gymnastics but she wasn’t in my class. I didn’t mind, I was looking forward to studying at a big school & I had friends in another class so it’s fine. Eventually the tall girl from primary & I became friends because the girl she went off with kicked her out of their friendship group & we stayed friends for 7 years. But, this was when Harry Potter movies were slowly coming towards their end (I think they’d released their 4th movie?) and so.. of course... being ginger... meant all the boys started calling me Weasley & Ginger Nut. One boy, used to pass me notes & honestly, I didn’t think it was bullying because I thought I’d actually made a friend in class because I get on well with guys, so I would pass insults back. It only later became bullying when that guy told his friends what he’d call me, they’d start throwing stuff at me when the teacher wasn’t looking. I tried to report it but the teacher didn’t care, told me to ignore it. Boys kept harassing me & so I took it to the vice principal. It happened SO often, literally every day for MONTHS no matter how many letters of apologies or detentions etc, that one day I went to her again for help & she just went “Holly, I’m too busy, deal with it yourself.” A new drama teacher came in and she saw that our class was pretty wild and she couldn’t figure out who was causing it. She asked me to take note in classes of everyone who got listed on detention boards & bring it back to her. Deaf people take things LITERALLY and so I LITERALLY wrote down their names as their names went on board. People started to notice & started cornering me & yelling in my face asking me why I was writing their names down. The teacher at the time in that building caught wind of it & asked me calmly why I was doing it. “Mrs Edwards asked me to.” was all I could stay & then later the Drama teacher explained that she meant mentally take note & that she was so sorry for any harm she’d caused. But this didn’t make me a popular person at all. Valentines were always filled with fake ones & pranks. People fake asking me out, even a friend gave me a card that was meant to be from my crush but it was made up. What didn’t help was that I was a big fan of the Twilight movies. Someone spread a rumour near prom that I was the head of Prom committee & that I was making it Twilight themed & this spread like wildfire. People would yell at me on the way to classes & spit at me “No one’s gonna fucking go to Prom if it’s TWILIGHT fucking themed!! You piece of fucking shit!!!” and I’d get messaged on my Facebook & MSM all night about how I’ve ruined everyones prom. I’d yell “Look at the fucking planners list that’s literally everywhere. I’m not even on it. I’m not even going.” and I really didn’t want to go, I wanted to stay in, in my pyjamas because I was so upset. One bully even cornered me before science class & got into my face, just screaming “You fucking ginger emo cunt! No one will ever fucking love you because you’re ginger & deaf!” and tried to shut us all out. I was in a rage & I managed to push open the door enough to kick him so hard in the shin & keep kicking. He never said a bad word to me again. But all my friends were going to prom & I wanted to go with them. So, I did. (And I wowed everyone there, all the bullies couldn’t believe it was me. I had my hair in a curled low bun, smoky eyeshadow, a black velvet bodiced dress, red jewelled choker round my throat, red silk skirt & arrived in an vintage car. It was vampy, it was gothy, but I looked good for the time. I even kissed my crush that night!) but a year down the line & all my girl friends said they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore because I just didn’t do anything. I was a tomboy, I wasn’t into shopping & getting nails done or clubbing. But they started doing things without me & stopped inviting me, stopped even considering me, so I plucked up the courage to ask why, they said I didn’t do anything, I said “Yeah, not the girly stuff but I would’ve loved to have gone to the movies & gone for dinner with you” and my best friend of 7 years said “I never even liked you anyway.” So I had no friends once more. College: I wasn’t so much bullied in college, other than you had you popular people & your dorky people but the friends I’d made of friends invited me to house parties & eventually down the years (what...5?) I found out between that time that they’d had a group chat on Whatsapp that I wasn’t a part of because it was a sex bet group. They would plot & wager who would convince me into bed first because I was the hot friend. I’m.. not hot. I’m okay. But still. They’d had a big bet on me. I found out & I was livid. I yelled at them & they told me I was being childish about it. So I broke away. I kept a few that I knew weren’t on the chat close. I introduced an old school friend to them & well... he was dating four of them, sleeping with them, then telling them he had to be somewhere else but was sleeping with someone else of the quartet. This all got out & EVERYONE fell apart. I felt so guilty because I’d introduced him but someone assured it wasn’t my fault. Adulthood: Then this year, I lost them all because I yelled at one guy who kept treating me like SHIT & I’d told him to back off. Everyone yelled at me, called me childish, and took his side. People who love calling out toxic & abusive behaviour, telling each other to not talk to someone because of this or that. That’s childish. He and I are working things about but it’ll never be the same. The only friend I had left really upset me when we both discussed about going to this little holiday hut I’d found & I got all excited. She knew I’d fallen out with my group of friends so I said “I don’t have anyone I can invite that can join us” and then she said “I know a few from uni who can come” and then booked it but... didn’t book it for me at all. She said “I can’t wait to go next year with my best friends, it’s gonna be so nice to spend a weekend with them” so I broke things off with her. Like, I found the place, we agreed to go together, we got excited, and then... you just dropped me. So all in all, yeah I’ve been bullied. I don’t have any physical friends anymore, I just have internet friends & I suppose I’m not built for people. I have a few internet friends though, so I’m not entirely alone. But I don’t date for the same reasons, also because of what that one bully said & all the fake Valentines. I’m sorry what happened to you is playing on your mind but honestly, it’s really for the best for you to try & move forward, yes, the memories will be there, but its YOU who decides how you go about your life, how YOU look after yourself, not the past. You are who you are, and you’re wonderful, I’m sure. Except if you’re a terf or a racist but that’s something else.

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divingtotheunknown · 3 years

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Living In Uncertainties

To anyone who continues to resist like me, you may not realize it now but you are ever so lucky to not have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. A huge part of people’s lives was swiftly taken from them as the virus raged across the country. Who would have thought that the one week suspension we heard on the news last year would last until now.

Most of the time, it felt unreal how the entire thing was. It was as if my world stopped and I was confined to one of its corners. I can’t say for myself how terrible the experience was, just that it was. It brought out the worst in the society, in men; selfishness, greed, indifference and above all, fear. Fear was the biggest of the four. It influenced all the others to terrorize the hearts and minds of people.

The virus was very unpredictable for a long time. It is actually testing the technology to stave off the virus. It could appear anywhere, anytime without us knowing and it could’ve meant life or death.

Which means to say that the possibility of anyone we loved or us ourselves getting the virus was high and that could very well be the end of the line. I can’t stress enough how badly that fear affected the mental and emotional well-being of a lot of the people I knew. Personally, I never expected this pandemic would let social media affect my own thinking. The same goes with the mindset of the public with what and how they consume information online. The fact the fake news is everywhere, undeniably a lot of people became victims of it, even some members of my family - which is why it is really important how important it is to be a responsible user nowadays. It was evident that during the first few days, we were vigorously trying to find ways to take off the looming dread from that thought but it seems that no matter how far we ran, that thought kept close on our tails.

People spoke up about the stress this entire thing would cause on society. In particular, the working class and the poor were the most affected. A lot of them needed to work daily just to get paid and earn a living. They had to stop so that they could be safe and also to stop the number of infected people from increasing. There was nothing they could do. When they left, it seemed as if society had stopped as well. To be honest, our business was affected as well. Luckily, I was able to help my parents continue the business through the use of e-commerce using different platforms online but I know and it is sad that not everyone has the access and ability to move forward using the same resources we had. Only a few workers were allowed to be outside of their homes, they were the medical workers and frontliners like those who worked in groceries. A lot of medical workers lost their lives to the virus. How painful it must have been for their colleagues to watch as the people beside them fell ill and succumbed to death. A friend of mine shared to me how hard it was for them not to see her father personally after dying due to a virus. He ended his life fulfilling his duty as a Doctor. Saying the last words for her Dad through video call is different from the usual but again, what can we do? I can only imagine all the pain they carried during those days. How brave they all were, risking their own safety for the sake of others. They did not want to be part of that front and yet there they were.

This stress was also put on students. Universities decided to conduct online classes completely. I did not see the fairness in that. While it’s true that we students should give value to our time by spending it on education, we too felt the weight of the situation. A lot of us were still coping with the madness that seemed to take on the world. But what could we do? Over a year, we have been so hopeful that one day, we can still go back to the campus but despite all that, I am still grateful for the power of media and technology. Applications like Facebook allows us to keep in touch, Twitter and Instagram reminds us to be updated, Blackboard, Zoom, Discord and other articulations of social media allows us to continue pursuing our dreams despite all the limitations and challenges brought by the pandemic. We had no choice but to resign to our fate of finishing the academic year against our wishes.

During these days, the government seemed to be at its worst. It turned out that hospitals all over the country were underprepared because they were not funded properly. What’s worse was that the government deployed the police and troops to “ensure public safety”. Just like what we always see in different social media applications, police do not protect the public, instead the people behind all the shortcomings in the country. How ironic it was to see the military well-armed. It added nothing more than fear to the people. There were several incidents where the military unjustly shot people down for being suspicious or unruly. They did not even hesitate to point their guns! Good thing is, with the continuous innovation in terms of technology, there was much evidence online that would prove the blasphemy of the abusers of power.

It did not take long for people to realize that they would be stuck at home for so long. Everyone needed to stay home and so they needed as many supplies as possible. However, it came to a point where people got greedy and all they could think of was themselves. People tend to hoard whenever they see news about the possible shift of quarantine and this is actually a situation I can connect with the lesson about substantivism wherein technology has a capability to affect or mold the people and even the society. I understand the need to look for one’s own welfare, I understand the need to care for our loved ones but what I did not understand was why people had to cross the line towards being greedy and hoarding far more than they needed.

As far as man has evolved, its progress is still so little. In the midst of a global crisis, they found time to claw at each other’s throats by pointing fingers to pass the blame. It came to a point where Asian people were discriminated against as carriers of the disease. Perhaps the worst case was that of the American president calling COVID-19 the Chinese virus. I felt ashamed of these people. There were a lot of others trying to help build more unity and yet these people were insensitive enough to cause more divisions. I dream that such connectivity has been brought to us by the media, hopefully time will come it will also apply to the society, country even as one nation.

It was truly a terrible time. Imagine the reality of a global scale crisis paired dawning on you from behind and before you are the immoral choices made by the society you live in. It was one of the most vulnerable moments of my life. I felt crushed by the immense weight of the situation we were all in.

I missed the outdoors, I missed my friends, I missed school. I missed the joys that I could only experience outside of my home, I missed the fresh air, I missed the sunlight. realized that I took a lot of these for granted. We can only see our loved ones on our screens and it is heartbreaking that we can no longer do the things we are used to. It’s true what they say: you only realize the value of some things once they are gone or taken away from you.

All I could wonder then, was if life would ever be back to the way things were.

They say that during the direst of situations, the worst and best in man shows. I’ve had my fair share of seeing just how bad a man can get. Yet, there were times when man’s goodness prevailed. In fact, you’d be surprised just how many of them there are.

A lot of people held volunteer work that reached out to poor communities so that they could be given food and supplies. Some people hosted online charity events from their homes to raise funds to donate to the medical effort, online donations drive and they even use media as their means of communication for community pantry. It was those moments that gave me hope and reminded me of how morally good people can be. During those moments it felt like not everything was wrong with the world.

Those days really made me realize how difficult it was to really put a finger on what morality is. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we may never really be completely good or bad. Sometimes, we’re a little bit of each other. Indeed, people are constantly changing, even technology and society. It’s unbelievable how new media changes our lives, our way of living and how we use these innovations although there’s always pros and cons. It’s hard to juggle that thought because we are so limited, so small compared to the universe we live in.

The message I leave with you now, dear reader, is to live. To live means to learn. To live means to see. To live means to understand, to appreciate, to feel, to live is everything. Get rid of the distractions caused by these changes. Concern yourself with the world so as not to be selfish but also devote time to yourself when you need it.

REFERENCES:

Soriano, P. N. (2021, August 31). Nueva Ecija records 14 new COVID-19 Delta variant cases. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/nation/covid-19-delta-variant-cases-nueva-ecija-august-27-2021?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR20YsXyEhuxFMu7Y4P5uWon2xRnYZ7tqpQWSCJxxaaCdpFsTKtasfe5zI8#Echobox=1630055399

Pangue, J. (2021, January 9). In 2021, communities can prove that fighting disinformation isn’t just media’s role. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/moveph/communities-prove-fighting-disinformation-not-just-media-role

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threeletterslife · 3 years

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chana, what are some of your pet peeves while reading a story? like things such as bad grammar. btw i love your works!!

god i love this question so much. and thank you for reading! 🥺🥺🥺i really appreciate the love!

i’m seriously going to sound like a grumpy ol’ bitch saying this but i have a LOT of pet peeves lol. i have such specific, meticulous taste that it’s hard for me to find stories (internet fics and irl books alike) that pertain to my weirdass standards 😀

quick disclaimer! just because i don’t like some of these popular/infamous/adored tropes doesn’t mean they’re not bad at all! remember, i’m just rEALLy picky! here goes:

fake dating. (i hate it. i can’t stand it when a story’s main idea is fake dating. i just can’t seem to understand why anyone would want to fake date. the scenarios always seem so bs-ed or middle school-esque to me. but someone is always welcome to prove me wrong.)

bad grammar. (this one speaks for itself. i can’t stand bad grammar. this doesn’t mean i’ll jump on you if you make oNE little mistake <because, i mean, we’re all human, you know>. but if the grammar mistakes are consistent... and far too many... i will be pissed 😀😀😀) honorary mention common mistakes: every day vs everyday; your vs you’re; .” vs ”. ; affect vs effect; anymore vs any more; their vs they’re vs there; lay vs lie; except vs accept; then vs than; -- vs —

bland/generic y/n. (i love writing in 2nd pov. but just because this ‘y/n’ character doesn’t technically have a name... doesn’t mean... she isn’t allowed to have a personality. a bland or mary sue-type y/n with zero dimension can single-handedly deter me from reading the rest of the story. remember, y/n deserves a personality too 😭😭)

starting the story with “I woke up in my bed after hearing my eomma call my name from downstairs.” (this is just a very specific pet peeve of mine that triggers my fight or flight. i’m blaming this on wattpad.)

using honorifics and romanized korean. (this is going to be very controversial. but... i think it kinda has to be said. i do not want to read an english story that is very obviously not set in korea and have to go through words like “eomma” “oppa” “jagi” “saranghae” “hyung” “jimin-ah” “taehyung-ie” “unnie” “noona” and sometimes a whole SENTENCE in romanized korean. as someone who is korean, i find it—for the lack of a better word—cringy. because of some of the stories i’ve seen, i can’t even speak my own language sometimes without cringing. you could NEVER catch me calling my older cousins “oppa” anymore even though i’m supposed to out of literal respect and culture. and it’s thanks to the fact that some (thankfully, a minority of) fanfiction authors romanticize/sexualize it. don’t even get me started on my younger cousins/siblings calling me “noona.” i wanna d-word every time i hear it because it’s been so sexualized in the ff community that i just don’t feel comfortable with them calling me that for platonic/respectful reasons. but i digress. if i can tell the author has done research and it is written well and correctly and in a non-sexualized manner, then i don’t have a problem with it. still wouldn’t read though 😭😭)

idol au’s. (also controversial. but this is mainly my fault LMAO. once upon a time, long ago, little chana first stumbled upon bangtan and decided she wanted to venture into the fanfiction world for them. her first fanfiction was a jungkook idol au. and now she will probably never write another idol au again because she is scarred. but seriously. idol au’s make me want to cry inside because 1. they’re unrealistic 2. the writers usually do little to no research on korea/the music industry 3. personal (humiliating) history 😔which again, is totally on me. i feel like this pet peeve of mine is unjustifiable tho lmao. a lot of people adore idol au’s. but i just can’t get into them)

adding photos in the middle of the story. (this just boils my blood for no reason i’m sorry 😭😭to me, it seems unprofessional. BOOKS may have illustrations. but only if the illustrations are showing a SCENE that the writing describes. not necessarily an outfit. usually, when internet authors put photos in their stories, it’s to show the ootd/makeup/hairstyle/what y/n is supposed to look like. i’m personally not into that. i think that should all be up to the reader’s imagination! that’s why we read, isn’t it? to be able to create our own faces and scene layouts from scratch!)

social media au’s. (VERY controversial. and kinda ironic since i’ve actually made a whole ass text fic. but lemme tell you it was not fun and i will never do it again 😭i don’t know. i’m not very big on social media lol. and a possible romance developing from such unauthentic apps like instagram, twitter, snapchat doesn’t sit right with me. i’m more into traditional/authentic romance! the kind where you sit down face to face and talk and giggle for hours—without the presence of devices)

a bad ending. (man this one’s a very personal pet peeve of mine. imagine slaving away reading a 100k+ fic just to find out the ending is abrupt, the strings are left untied and your favorite character just... dies. for no reason at all. i hate that feeling of no closure. a bad ending doesn’t necessarily mean a SAD one. i prefer sad/angsty endings to a happily ever after. but i think the ending makes up the whole story. and to have a good ending, the ending must somehow still connect to the rest of the story.)

character inconsistencies. (i love character development as much as the dude next door but just because a character does a 180 out of nowhere doesn’t mean they actually developed at all. real people take time to change!!)

when there are author’s notes IN THE MIDDLE of the story. (believe it or not, i’ve seen this happen. it interrupts the flow of the plot and it looks unprofessional. and the fact that i used to do this when i first started writing ff’s bYE—)

when the romance escalates from 0 to 100. (i’m guilty of this. but it’s also a pet peeve of mine to read something like this LOL. but i get it. writing subtle developments in romance is hard 😭😭but it doesn’t excuse itself from being one of my major pet peeves 😀😀)

when mental illness, domestic abuse, trauma is romanticized. (this is a given, i think. don’t romanticize someone else’s struggles for your fictional pleasure, please!!)

telling instead of showing. (probably one of the biggest pet peeves of mine. too often, i see writers outright telling me that their oc is ‘independent’ and ‘strong’ or that oc and jimin’s romance is ‘unparalleled.’ but if i don’t feel that from the writing itself, i’m not going to be able to believe it. but if you show me that oc is independent and that oc and jimin are meant to be with little scenarios and anecdotes, that’s gonna be a lot more effective!)

when’s there’s no chemistry between the couple. (this is probably everyone’s pet peeve LMAO)

the “oh no! there’s only one bed!” trope. (i never understood this because. damn just take the couch or sleep on the floor. OR just sleep in the same bed with a pillow barrier. it’s literally not a big deal 😭unless 👀 idk this one 100% depends on execution)

and i saved the worst for last:

when you read 50+ chapters for an ‘ongoing’ fic but when you get to the ‘end’... you realize it’s been discontinued since 2017 😀😀😀(the pain is fucking real y’all)

um.... that was a lot 😭😭i’m sorry. i actually thought i’d be a lot pickier, but i guess i’m actually really lenient on types of tropes and au’s. i’m okay with basically 99.9% of all tropes (yes, including vampire, abo, love triangle, etc) because i believe all tropes depend solely on EXECUTION. so generally, i keep an open mind. (with the exception of fake dating, idol au’s, social media au’s and the tHeRe’S oNlY oNe bEd trope lmaoo)

basically, i’m quick to give things a chance but quick to leave too 😔😔

i swear i have more penchants than pet peeves 😭😭but that’s a story for another time!!

#ask #anon #chana #i had fun answering but i might've gotten too heated LMAO #if anyone can prove me wrong... please do #i want to prove myself wrong too 😭😭

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bbygirldahyun · 4 years

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sorry i keep talking about this i don’t think anyone else would understand these thoughts but kids need more education on neurodiversity and mental disorders bc so many people have them. i honestly can’t blame kids for using the r slur or making fun of things they don’t understand. if their parents and educators aren’t teaching them these things it isn’t their fault. some don’t even know the meaning and history behind the r slur they just hear their friends using it as “dumb” and go with it. /1

if that last anon had known what stims and autism was it could’ve been different but im glad she understands now. but then again people just love being ableist, freshman year my teacher taught us about the doctor who faked the studies on vaccines causing autism and showed us protesters holding signs that said “vaccines gave my kid autism” and so on. she asked us after the lesson how many of us would not vaccinate our kids and so many people raised their hands. /2 she was so shocked like she just taught us it was fake and they still didn’t get it. i was the only one who said something about the studies being unreliable. it’s traumatizing knowing peoples are against u no matter how much education they get. a large number of nurses are even anti vaccine. they would rather have a dead kid than an autistic one. so many neurotypical people want to find a cure because they’re ashamed of us. /3 but if they’d talk to us they would know we don’t want one. it makes us who we are, our entire brain and movements and experiences are shaped by autism. imagine how different u and i would be if we got “cured.” we’d be way different people but of course that’s what they want. /4 there’s little to no research on autism, all people talk about when they bring it up is the cure. i’d like to know things about us like why we’re more likely to have joint problems, gastrointestinal problems, sleep disorders. i want to know how men and women present it differently, what the cause is. but i don’t think we’ll ever get that. (sorry this is so depressing thank u for listening😆) -🦦 /5

no don’t apologize at all! i love talking about this kind of stuff with people who understand, it’s so hard to talk about it with neurotypical people sometimes. there is so much misinformation about autism and what it actually is which is what leads to all of the confusion and misunderstanding and eventual ableism. people think autism is a disease or a mental illness, which it isn’t. it’s a developmental disability, we can’t be cured, most of don’t WANT to be cured. this is who we are. if we got “cured” we wouldn’t even be ourselves anymore.

i have a really good friend whose mom is anti vaccine because she thinks they cause autism and my friend doesn’t have any of her vaccines. everytime i go over to this friends house i’m always so uncomfortable and so baffled by how her mom, who is a healthcare professional, buys into a study that has been debunked multiple times and one of the doctors who did it lost their medical license i believe.

since i’m studying to be a teacher, i have to take courses on how to teach kids with disabilities, which i was actually super excited for, until i met my professor. he is one of the most outwardly ableist people i’ve ever met, i feel so bad for any disabled child he’s ever worked with. he talked to us like it was impossible any of us could actually be disabled, he said that autistic people are “manipulative and egocentric”, and when talking about possible causes of autism he listed vaccines and gluten genuinely as possible causes. he also acknowledged that saying the r word is wrong and then continued to say it multiple times. i was mind blown. i couldn’t even speak to this man without my blood boiling. i still am appalled someone who works daily with disabled children could be so ableist, and that he was so positive nobody in our class was autistic he felt like he could say those things. i was so angry i cried sometimes after class.

you’re entirely right though, some people just love being ableist. some people are insistent on being ignorant. i think i mentioned my friend growing up who is also autistic, he has higher support needs and his mom is one those moms who totes him around to get like brownie points for being a decent parent or something. he’s a great person, like he is incredible and an awesome friend and we had so much fun together as kids. but she treats him like this huge burden and loves to play the “autism mommy” card for sympathy like, just stop. you have an amazing kid. go appreciate that.

don’t even get me started on autism speaks. oh boy, i could go for hours. the fact some people out there still don’t know autism speaks is essentially a hate group baffles me. they have no autistic people on their board, they actively advocate for things most of us autistic people are against (i.e. a cure, person first language, etc). the whole puzzle piece mentality too, it’s so gross to me. i don’t have a piece missing, i’m a whole person who just happens to think and act a little differently. i much prefer the rainbow infinity symbol and the red instead movement. because it was coined by autistic people.

i especially hate that so much of research done about us is without us. i would love to know more about the nuances of autism, i’m always trying to research more but sadly most of the information online you have to be incredibly careful what you believe because so many people, even healthcare professionals, spread misinformation. one of the places that actually best helped me understand my autism more was the actuallyautistic tag on here, and i follow some autistic info twitters run by autistic people who discuss our issues.

thank you again so much for talking to me about all this and for sparking this discussion, it’s so nice to get to chat with people who understand about these kind of things! i wish you best, have a good day/night 🥺🧡

#ask #🦦anon

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danidoesathing · 4 years

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ok! i’ve got the beginning and end written, it’s the middle that i need to write still, and it’s disgustingly sweet (i’ll post it to ao3 when i’ve got it finished bc i refuse to upload an unfinished work). also lemme know if you wanna read the ending as well, i wasn’t sure (it, too, is fluffy to hell and back)

Chapter 1:

Tim hated this. He hated it all. He’d rather be anywhere else in the world if he could, he could’ve been at home in his room with his laptop and Jay to talk to, but instead he was here with his mom who thought that she had any right to his life after leaving it for good (when he was twelve years old in a mental hospital too, who did that to their child?) and apparently forgot why she did, since she wouldn’t shut up. He’d had enough by the third hour of the “vacation” she took him to, and maybe if he hadn’t hated pity as much as he did, especially from the one that caused him to be pitied, he would have enjoyed the five-star hotel stay more, rather than feel like he was stuck in one long panic attack. He had managed to get away, though. He excused himself to the bathroom and felt grateful she had allowed him that much. He didn’t pay too much attention to the walk to the bathroom - he was trying to breathe in and out regularly and count to ten and pay attention to what he felt and all the other coping methods they taught him in the ten years he spent in the psych ward. He only realized there was someone else in the bathroom when the person (Tim assumed they were male, this was the men’s bathroom) sighed and firmly said, “I need more time, you can’t just ruin my entire life to gain a few weeks.”

Brian had really been looking forward to the week he’d spend on his own - privacy and being alone weren’t really concepts that his family understood, and it had only gotten worse when the marriage proposal came. He’d tried to explain countless times that he was gay and that he would rather marry a frog than the fake, manipulative, entitled, rude, homophobic, racist, bitchy, but most importantly rich girl his parents had chosen for him to marry. As if he’d spend more than a minute within a five-mile radius of the piece of shit who wanted his money and his name, nothing else. When the call from his mother (Brian had stopped calling Carol Thomas his mom years ago, when she first started denying his issues and instead punished him for things he couldn’t control) came, he escaped to the bathroom since it was closer than his room, even though it was a lot less private. He didn’t think anything would go wrong, it wasn’t busy at the restaurant and even if someone entered, they would probably leave him alone to suffer in his misery.

Brian hadn’t noticed the tired man who slunk into the bathroom at first, but when he saw the defeated slump of his shoulders and how utterly exhausted his eyes looked, his mother demanded that he come home the next day. He was pretty sure that everyone within the state could hear his sigh, and he thought about how he had gotten so sick of his own family that this was the case with every conversation he had with them. After his final compromise, he hung up without saying goodbye or waiting for Carol to respond. He knew what she would have said anyway, was far too familiar with the same conversation.

Tim hesitated, trying to figure out what to do - he couldn’t just leave and pretend he’d heard nothing, but he didn’t know this man, like, at all, so he also couldn’t try to comfort him or ask him what was wrong, because something clearly was.

“Family problems,” Brian said into the silence, which was probably just a few seconds long but to Tim’s anxiety-ridden mind it was a lifetime of waiting.

Tim smiled slightly. “I’m familiar.”

Brian made an interested noise. “You tell me about your life, and I tell you ‘bout mine, alright?”

He understood what sort of deal this was, he was used to therapists and doctors and psychiatrists trying to take his brain apart and figure out what was wrong with him, to try to fix him (or that’s what they said, but he wasn’t sure there weren’t any other reasons behind their words). He despised being treated like a wild animal who could lose his mind and attack at any moment, with a single wrong move. They had treated him like he was dangerous and they pitied him for it, but Brian, he hadn’t looked scared of Tim. He hadn’t acted like he was trying to play it safe - rather, he had tried to make Tim feel comfortable by making himself as vulnerable as Tim was. He realized that he didn’t want to strangle Brian. I’ve spent so much time with psychologists that I’ve started acting like one, analyzing everything and everyone’s actions. Tim laughed internally at the thought.

“Sure. I don’t have anything else to do anyway,” He responded, and told Brian about his current predicament with his mother, leaving out the parts in which he was at the hospital - he just said that he had a chronic illness and his mom had left him at 12 when he had been in the hospital for four years.

“Shit, dude, that really sucks. She doesn’t have any right to your life now, you know that right?” Brian said at the end of Tim’s story, after a short pause to take it all in. “I’m going to sound like a whiny white asshole with my story now,” he added. Tim shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. After all, my life doesn’t invalidate yours,” he said, and the corners of Brian’s mouth twitched up. “I guess you’re right,” he said, and started explaining how his parents wanted him to marry a rich woman high up the ladder of status in the elite community he was born into, and Tim could feel himself tensing up and his mind starting to buzz.

Brian noticed that the man in front of him was looking a little off, and stopped midway through describing that he only had the next week or so to find his soulmate, otherwise he’d be stuck with someone he hated for the rest of his life. “Hey, are you okay?” He asked softly, and the other man (Brian only just realized that he knew this man’s life story but not his name, and mentally reprimanded himself for not introducing himself and asking his name) took a shuddering breath.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, and Brian didn’t call him out on his bullshit. “Please continue, I’m way too invested in your life now.” He smiled, and Brian laughed.

“Alright, but first, you have to tell me your name because I’ve realized we haven’t introduced ourselves and it’s killing me,” Brian said.

“My name’s Tim Wright.”

“Brian Thomas. Nice to meet you, I guess,” Tim rolled his eyes at Brian’s antics, but Brian knew he was amused, as evidenced by Tim’s light snort. Tim told him to get on with the story, (a bit like a whining child, but in a good way, Brian thought) and he responded with, “Okay, okay, I’ll get to it then.”

“There isn’t much left,” Brian warned. When Tim nodded his understanding, he continued from where he had stopped, and when he had finished talking about his current fucked-up situation, the other man had been shocked into silence.

“You have to be kidding me,” he finally said. “There’s no way that that shit’s real and actually happening to you.”

Brian shook his head and sighed. “I wish I was, but nope! My parents are just assholes who are outta their minds.”

Tim thought for a second - he had to do something, but he didn’t know what he could to be able to help. He chewed on his lip, and after a minute or so, had an idea that he thought could possibly work.

“How about we pretend that we’re soulmates?” he asked Brian, who looked taken aback but also as if he was considering Tim’s proposition. Tim was about to backtrack and apologize, maybe say something along the lines of or we can just not do that if you don’t want to I’m sorry for bringing it up you must think I’m so creepy and weird and can we just ignore this ever happened?

But then Brian nodded thoughtfully, and said, “Actually, I can imagine how that would work. I’d call my parents and tell them that I’ve already found my soulmate and that I want to spend more time with you, and you’d talk to them in order to convince them further if they don’t believe me. I already know I’m gay, so my soulmate is definitely a man, so your voice being a guy’s wouldn’t be a problem and when I find my actual soulmate, if they sound different to you, we could just blame it on the phone being weird through the call. We could say that we wanna spend a few weeks getting to know each other before I leave, and during that time I could find my real soulmate. If I can’t, then we can come up with scenarios in which I’d need to stay longer until I do. Yeah, actually, this is a really good idea, Tim.”

“Uh, really? I mean, thanks,” Tim said, still reeling from Brian’s rambling. “How are we going to do this? Do you like, I don’t know, wanna call your parents and I can talk to them?”

“Yeah, sure, give me a sec,” Brian fished in his pocket for his phone and Tim internally panicked while Brian called his mother. He would have had a panic attack, but before he could truly get worked up, Brian was already talking.

“Hey mother, guess what happened - no, you’ll never guess - I found my soulmate! And he’s a guy like I said he would be! Oh, you don’t want my soulmate to be a man? Well, unfortunately, apparently the universe doesn’t share your homophobic views - oh come on, would I lie about this? You don’t believe me? Fine, I guess I’ll have to prove it. Mother, meet Tim.”

“Hello Mrs. Thomas, it’s nice to meet you,” Tim said, and Brian couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen, and he didn’t want Tim to be there for it. He hated his parents, and the thought of them hurting Tim in any way was unbearable. Wait, what? I met him like 15 minutes ago, why do I care so much about him? He was going to figure out his feelings regarding Tim, but then he saw how he was getting anxious, so he decided to intervene now and unpack his shit later.

Grabbing the phone from Tim, he told his parents that he and Tim wanted to get to know each other by staying at the hotel for longer, and when they objected, he simply reminded them that he was his own person and as an adult, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to do, slowly getting more pissed off with every word that his parents said. Knowing that he would snap if he listened to more of their bullshit, he hung up after letting them know he would stay for a few more weeks in Ohio, though probably in a motel (he wasn’t rich enough to spend weeks at a five-star hotel). He looked at Tim. “Are you okay? You looked pretty freaked out there, and I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have put that much pressure on-”

“No, no, you’re fine. I guess I just felt overwhelmed, sort of? I don’t really know why I felt so anxious, but I’ve been dealing with anxiety for, like, 16 years. I should be used to it by now,“ Tim assured Brian. "Plus, it worked, didn’t it? they weren’t happy, but they seem to have believed us, so you can stay for a few more weeks and try to find your soulmate. Actually, why are you searching in Ohio and not Alabama anyway? Aside from the obvious reason, of course.” he added.

Brian frowned. “I don’t really know, I guess this just felt closer to my soulmate. You know how your mark is supposed to like, tingle and shit?” Tim nodded, and Brian continued. “Yeah, I guess that’s why - Ohio feels like I’m closer to finding them than in Alabama."

"Yeah, I think I get it. It feels the same for me too, if I think about it - my mark feels weird and that’s never happened before, so I must be doing something right,” Tim said after thinking for a while, and Brian laughed.

“Hey, who knows, maybe we’ll find our soulmates in here, and maybe we’ll find them at around the same time - that would be so cool! You know, I think I rather like you, Tim. I’d like to be friends - if you wanna, of course,” Brian said, and Tim answered with an affirmative.

“Well, you’re pretty cool yourself Brian Thomas, and I would indeed like to be friends, but I really gotta go. Emily’s probably going out of her mind, wondering where her son she found after 12 years went to,” Tim joked, and they exchanged numbers.

“ So, I still have a week or so left, which means I’ll probably see you around the hotel and shit. Bye Tim,” Brian called as he left the bathroom, and Tim waved back before following.

Chapter 2:

Brian walked back to his room, since he had already finished his dinner, and contemplated the last hour. He had gone from having to fight his parents for less than a week to find his soulmate to being given permission (well, sort of. Brian thought it counted if they had always encouraged him to do something until it actually got to the point in which said thing would be applicable - they couldn’t just change their minds because they were homophobic assholes) for almost a month doing whatever he wanted wherever he wanted to.

Of course, there was also Tim. He didn’t quite understand why he liked Tim already, or why Tim had helped him, but he knew that he didn’t regret it at all. Plus, they were friends now, and he felt that they would only get closer with time. He’d arrived at his room by this point, and after entering, he decided that he wouldn’t get anything else done today. Within minutes he was in bed - no point pretending to be functional when there was nobody around to see it, and plus, he was very sleep-deprived and he should probably go to sleep to fix that.

Since he’d been lying still with his eyes closed for over an hour, Brian believed that he was justified in going on his phone. However, once he opened his phone, he realized that he didn’t really have anything to do, and in a moment of boredom and apathy for his future, he decided to text Tim.

savingprivatebrian [23:42]: Hey tim

savingprivatebrian [23:42]: it’s me brian

savingprivatebrian [23:42]: if you couldn’t tell

He was surprised to see that Tim was online, and soon enough, he saw Tim’s typing bubble pop up.

Tim [23:44]: yeah

Tim [23:44]: i saved your number

Tim [23:44]: anyway whats up

Brian smiled because of course Tim was awake, he totally seemed like the type of person who’s constantly tired and sleep-deprived.

savingprivatebrian [23:44]: nothing

savingprivatebrian [23:45]: i just couldnt sleep

Tim [23:45]: i get that

Tim [23:46]: insomnias a bitch

savingprivatebrian [23:46]: yep

savingprivatebrian [23:47]: so do you wanna just talk until we can sleep

Tim [23:47]: please

He laughed at Tim’s response, and settled comfortably into his nest of pillows (perks of five-star hotels) to talk to Tim.

In the end, they both agreed to go to sleep at around 3:30 in the morning, after having texted for almost four hours. If he wasn’t so sleepy, he might’ve wondered why conversation was so easy when he was talking to Tim when he normally wouldn’t be able to even form sentences with people he knew as little as he knew Tim. Instead, though, he placed his phone on the bedside drawer, rolled over, and fell asleep within minutes, still with a little smile playing on his lips.

Chapter 3:

A week later, Tim’s mother left to go back to work, and Tim promised her that he’d come to visit every now and then. He was surprised to find that he was planning to keep that promise - after his mom explained her reasons, he learned that she hadn’t left because she wanted to, only because she had to. Her life had been easier without him, and that realization hurt. He had held her back her entire life, and he really couldn’t blame her for having done whatever she could to get rid of the reason she couldn’t be happy. He was over it, though. He had had more than a decade to come to terms with the fact that everyone he cared about would leave him eventually, when they realized that he would always be problematic, that he would never get better, and that he would always drag them down. Why would anyone stay with that?

Then came was Brian. Tim knew that he was falling, falling hard, but he also knew that Brian didn’t feel the same - they both wanted to find their soulmates, and even if Brian did like someone as fucked up as Tim, when he found his soulmate, he’d just leave.

He had told Brian about his mom and how he felt, as well as why he was in a hospital for 10 years, and Brian’s only reaction was to hug him (they didn’t notice that no parts of their skin had made contact, Tim would later realize) and telling him that he’d never leave. That was a bigger deal than Brian realized, and he had broken down crying, which caused Brian to start crying too. They had spent about 2 hours talking about their problems, and Tim left Brian’s room feeling better than he had for over a month. They had only been friends for a few days at that point, but there was no denying that they had a connection - they were already so, so close (and if Tim wanted them to be even closer, well, no-one had to know).

Jay had called, on the second day. He had asked what was going on and why the hell Tim hadn’t texted or called him - rightfully so, since they usually talked daily and it had been more than 2 days with nothing. Tim had ranted about Brian and his mom, but it had taken Jay about ten minutes into Tim’s monologue to point out that he was totally crushing on Brian, and Tim had found himself unable to argue. After talking for over an hour, Jay had hung up with a threat to Tim if he didn’t text him everything that happened.

Tim thought back to that conversation many times over the following days - he could trust Jay to call him out on his bullshit and help him work through it, and he knew Jay could do the same. Whenever his anxiety convinced him that they simply tolerated his presence and actually hated him, Tim would text Jay (and now Brian) and Jay would not stop texting him until Tim had no doubt left about their friendship.

On his last day in the hotel, a week after he arrived and met Brian, he had breakfast with Brian to talk about what they were going to do, since this was Brian’s last day too.

“Over here,” Brian called out as Tim walked into the restaurant in the hotel, from which they got free breakfast.

“Hey,” Tim said when he sat down. “You wanna go get some food? I’m starving.”

“Yeah, sure. Just a second,” Brian put his stuff on the extra chair, and connected his phone to a charger. “My battery’s at 12 percent,” he explained at Tim’s questioning look.

“Alright, let’s go. What do you wanna get?” Brian asked when they entered the self-service area.

“Eggs and bacon first, so they cook, but I’ll look around anyway to see what’s there,” Tim answered while grabbing a plate.

“Why didn’t you get a fork and knife too?”

“Because I’ll drop them, Brian.”

“Ha, weak.”

“Do you really want to try me?”

“Geez, you’re just so scary.”

“I know.”

They had reached the omelette station, and they waited for their orders to be cooked in comfortable silence, which was new to both of them. Shaking his head, Tim decided to ignore his lack of friends while he was so happy and had the chance to spend time with someone who not only could tolerate him, but also wanted to befriend him.

He was brought back to reality by Brian nudging him, and snapped his eyes onto Brian in alarm, quickly realizing there was no threat, there was just his food (paranoia had become a reflex at this point, and he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to laugh or cry because of it).

Throughout breakfast, Tim found his eyes lingering more and more on Brian’s lips when all social and conversational norms stated that his gaze should be on his eyes or overall figure to watch his body language and hand gestures, so like everyone else who’s ever been in this situation, he decided, okay, we’re going to put these feelings of attraction in a box, now close it, and yep! Push it as far away from coherent thought as you can, right up against the childhood trauma, self-hatred, insecurity, and look! It’s the box of fear of abandonment. Now, we don’t think about these, so surely this’ll be safe here. After cataloging everything into the dark basement of his mind, buried deep under everything else and covered in the mental equivalent of cobwebs and a layer of dust over everything, he simply looked away from Brian’s mouth and focused on literally any other part of his body, like, like- his eyes! That would surely work, wouldn’t it? You can’t possibly mess eye contact up, even though you’re, well, you, Tim. Don’t fuck this up with your social incompetence.

Yeah, no. After only a few minutes of trying to draw his attention away from what Brian would taste like, he found out that eyes are just as dangerous as lips, since he found that it was easier than it should be to get lost in Brian’s warm hazel eyes. He never realized that there were rings of different colours, and with the light framing his face, he looked otherworldly, like he didn’t belong to planet Earth or at least had some kind of magic coursing through his veins, just like warmth was coursing through Tim’s as he drowned in the ocean of brown and green filling Brian’s eye sockets. Because he was drowning, drowning, drowning as he forgot to breathe, move, do anything at all in the haze that came over him.

-------------------------------

#OH????#PLEASE GO ON #you should this on ao3 or something #effie #fanfic #Slenderverse #marble hornets #mh #mh brim #dani speaks #submission

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fairycosmos · 4 years

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TRIGGER WARNING : I know you're not a psychiatrist tbh I just need to vent and I really like you so yea, I've come to the conclusion that I am what everyone thought I was which is a lazy little bitch using depression and suicidal thoughts as an excuse to be lazy I use to feel guilty but idc anymore it just shows there's no hope for me at all the only problem is I don't have the guts to shoot myself in the head and it's the last option I have Im sorry I just don't know who to turn to

hey dude. i’m sorry to hear you’re hurting so much right now. i know it’s a complex and personal issue that words alone can’t solve, but i still hope you’re open to some comfort, some alternative narratives to center your thoughts around. and idk just a few words from someone who can understand to an extent....i think first and foremost it’s a good idea to ask yourself, when you’re in the right state of mind to, where all of this self loathing is actually coming from. whether it’s grounded in anything substantial. it’s important to remember that a massive part of depression is feeling like you’re faking, over-exaggerating, using it as an excuse etc. i’ve heard a lot of people with mental illness echo the same sentiment. and the fact that you feel this way, so violently negatively towards yourself, indicates that you ARE struggling with a much deeper problem. but we’re taught to overlook it and to blame ourselves, partially due to society’s attitude regarding mental illness. in short we’re conditioned to feel like we’re lazy and worthless if we can’t produce labor and profit, or if something prevents us from doing so, but that’s merely a capitalist myth. those around you have internalized its message and are now projecting it onto you. but now that you recognize that fact, you can begin dismantling that belief system in your own head. cause in actuality, it’s got nothing to do with you or your value as a person. it’s the system that’s the issue, and the way it sees human life as nothing more than a means to an end, when people are so much more than that. you are so much more than that. you’re not here to constantly please everyone or to be some emotionless machine. so anyone who was judging you by that standard is fkn deluded and their opinion doesn’t hold much weight to begin with. then there’s also the stigma surrounding depression itself. people who’ve never experienced it don’t get how debilitating it is to live with. how it doesn’t just prevent people from working, how it prevents people from progressing in all areas of their lives when it’s left unacknowledged. which is why the answer isn’t to hurt yourself, it’s to admit to what hurts. this isn’t a matter of personal failure, or of laziness. it’s an illness, something that needs to be confronted head on with time, treatment, and self help in order to move beyond it. it’s just as serious as any physical ailment, but you don’t have to beg anyone to understand that. you’re going through so much just by getting through the day and the fact that you’re still here counts for so much. i promise, you are not your negative thoughts. your mind is just trying to get you to stay in the cycle of self hatred > self destruction > self hatred so that you feel more discouraged and less likely to seek the support you need, even though that could be the one thing that would break the repetitive pattern. idk who made you believe that you are this bad and unforgivable person but i hope you know that it is genuinely, truly possible to grow beyond that way of thinking. it may take time, and it may feel unreachable right now, but change is honestly constant especially if you seek it out. the way you see yourself in five years will not mirror the way you see yourself now, you know? this is all a process and as long as you’re getting through it, you’re doing so much better than you realize.

it’s ok to recognize all of that and to still feel like shit, to still feel like giving up sometimes. sadness, anger, pain - they’re exhausting and terrifying, but you don’t have to push those emotions away. though they don’t have to control all of your actions either. because they’re never as permanent as they feel. part of being suicidal is thinking in a black and white fashion, where everything has to be all or nothing. but it doesn’t. there’s a lot of nuance and a lot of different choices you can make, if you just breathe and keep yourself in a safe environment above all else. like i said, you’re living with an illness and bad days are a natural part of that. but having the tools to be able to cope with them in a healthy way could make all the difference. and that IS an option for you, even if you can’t see it right now. are you currently seeing a mental health professional? if not, i’d really really suggest looking into that before you make any permanent and heavy handed decisions about whether or not it’s worth it to stay alive. seriously, even if you’re unable to see a therapist at the moment - there are depression/suicide hotlines you can call who can help you with the next step, there may be support groups in your area, your doctor may be able to refer you to a counselor. you are capable of reaching out, as proven with this message, which is a really good sign. and building routines around personal self help and finding what works for you would be a step in the right direction, too. there is so much that can be done in terms of identifying what you feel the way you feel, relearning how to treat yourself, developing a support network over a period of time, opening up to make room to heal - it’s possible. i promise it is. it’s possible to live a full, stable life that you’re proud of despite having depression. if you have any trusted loved ones, now may also be a good time to talk to them about whats going on. i’m sure they want to have the chance to be there for you, and it’s alright to lean on them when you need it. you’re clearly in a very emotional state right now so i don’t blame you if you can’t bring yourself to believe me, but i hope it’s an idea you can keep revisiting. because really what my main point is, is that you deserve to stay alive regardless the fact that you’re dealing with a mental illness. i don’t want to sound cliche but it’s true that nothing would be the same without you, that you’re here for a reason (which you fulfill every day, just by being who you are) and that your presence is far more precious than you know. i’m sorry you were made to feel any different. you get this one life and i would really hate to see you do something you could regret over situations and feelings that can be helped. you are not beyond hope, you are not a lost cause. especially if you live your life as if you’re not. you still exist and that means there are a million different ways things could turn out, the future is ever changing. the present is all you need to worry about. it’s just another symptom of depression to catastrophize and picture everything ending in the worst case scenario, which is something that can also be helped with therapy/practicing mindfulness. anyway, i’m aware that this is getting super long and i’m going to leave some links that may be of some use to you in terms of follow up support, but i’m really begging you. no matter how awful you feel tonight, just allow yourself to breathe through it. cry through it. call someone if it all feels like too much. keep yourself away from anything you could use to harm yourself with. and then wake up tomorrow knowing you have the chance to try again, knowing that that is a good thing, knowing that this moment is not what your whole existence is going to look like. please, please call someone if you think you’re a danger to yourself. even if you have to pick up the phone on autopilot. you mean so much. im sending you a lot of love and hoping you find the self appreciation you deserve. if you ever need a friend please feel free to message me. you’re not on this alone.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/global-suicide-hotline-resources/

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/coping-with-depression.htm

https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/get-help/a-z/resource/50/suicide-coping-with-suicidal-thoughts

https://medium.com/@sameoldzen/finding-intrinsic-self-worth-in-a-capitalist-system-7069be072b5b

https://serenitymentalhealthcenters.com/31-coping-skills-for-depression/

#tw suicide #tw self harm #anon

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intersex-ionality · 5 years

Text

A friend requested that I post this response separate from the main thread so that it can become its own discussion. Here it is in “isolation,” with minor clarifying edits.

CW: This post discusses a hypothetical person’s dysphoria and experiences with medical, physical, domestic, and sexual violence.

I want to address the claim that intersex is not a gender.

That concept--intersex being separated from all other aspects of gender theory--is very young. It is, in fact, younger than me. When I was a child, intersex was not only considered a gender, it was specifically considered a subset of transgender.

For reasons that, I hope, will become obvious by the end of this post.

You see, all of the forces that target, oppress, and harm intersex people are the same forces that target, oppress, and harm trans people. The causes and the effects are almost identical.

Let me present some examples, because human beings often learn best through pattern matching and examples.

Imagine a child is being assigned male.

This means that the child is being forced to adhere, both physically and mentally, to other people’s definitions of manhood. Society looks at the child, declares the child to be a boy, and then enforces boyness on the child.

This enforcement may be medical, and it may not. But, the enforcement will always be psychological.

There will be actions the child is forbidden from taking. Spaces the child is forbidden from entering. Expectations the child will be forced to adhere to. Toxic societal beliefs that child will be forced to internalize. All because society looked at a baby, and said, “you’re going to be a boy now, with everything that entails, with nothing outside boyhood, and you don’t get a choice.”

Imagine the child grows up feeling trapped in boyhood, forced to conform to these limitations. The child knows, on some deep level, that boyhood is wrong for them. The child even knows, in as much as a child knows things about anatomy, that something about their body doesn’t match up quite right with their identity, and becomes despondent and alienated from themself over it.

Is this child suffering because they are intersex? Or are they trans?

It doesn’t actually matter.

In both cases, the child is being constrained to boyhood, often by force, and denied anything else. Because someone, when the child was born, decided, “this baby looks like a boy, better make sure they become one.”

And because every other aspect of society followed along the same path.

Whether the child is trans or intersex doesn’t change those facts.

The only thing that changes is the details. A trans child is far less likely to have undergone infant surgery, but then, not all intersex kids undergo such surgeries either.

The underlying cause, and the resulting trauma, are the same for both the intersex and the trans child.

Let’s say our hypothetical child grows up a bit, learns about gender and sex theory, learns about dysphoria and surgery. And ultimately, decides to seek out medical treatment to achieve a body that feels more right.

Our now adult thought experiment spends years trying to find doctors who will help them.

They’re denied most therapeutic interventions because their therapists consider the alienation they feel from their body to be a type of mild delusion. They’re turned away from most clinics, because “transitioning to something outside the binary” is seen as frivolous or as faking for attention. Surgical intervention becomes less and less accessible with each denial, because now they have a mental health record that makes them “unfit” to decide healthcare issues for themself.

Again, being trans or being intersex makes no difference. The denial and the isolation are still the same. And are still caused by the same force.

A ray of hope for our thought experiment: surgery to bring a body to a state outside the sex binary becomes more possible and successful. Eventually they are able to get the necessary therapeutic letters to seek out this surgery.

And another seemingly dead end: there are so few doctors who perform these surgeries, even fewer who are covered by insurance, and none at all within a realistic traveling distance for them.

This scarcity of options, the therapeutic barriers to access, and the obscene costs associated with specialized gender and sex surgeries are also the same whether the person is intersex or trans. The sex binary doesn’t care why you want to do something different, it only cares about making sure you can’t.

But, let’s say that our thought experiment is luckier.

They have the money, the support, and the opportunity. They get their hormones and their surgeries without so much as a hiccup. There are no false starts, no failed attempts. They achieve a 100% perfect realization of their physical ideal.

Their body is visually androgynous and sexually ambiguous.

And now, they are faced with a new set of problems born from binarism. Problems that still don’t care whether they are trans or intersex.

They get sick, and their doctors blame the illness on their hormones. They get injured and their doctors blame their injuries on their surgeries.

They get attacked and their doctors blame their broken bones not on their attackers, not on blunt force trauma, but on their own “risk seeking behaviour” because of their body and the changes they’ve made to it.

They were attacked because the bastards that jumped them could see that their body was hard to gender. It doesn’t matter if the reason their body was hard to gender was because of being trans or being intersex. The outcome is the same. Violence and victim blaming.

Let’s say our thought experiment is luckier still. They’re white, wealthy, attractive, young. People don’t perceive them as a threat.

They start dating.

And a new set of problems arises. Again, the problems don’t care about the underlying motivations of their decision to have, embrace, and celebrate a body outside the binary.

Again, the problems are based simply on that body, on that divergence from the binary.

When a relationship begins to get heated, and they explain the facts of their body, partners panic and abandon them. If they don’t explain, partners panic and attack them for lying. They’re told that their body is rape, because it’s “false pretenses.” They’re told that no one will ever consent to sex with them.

This, too, happens regardless of being trans or being intersex. The cause is the same either way: a body outside the sex binary is perceived as a trick, a lie, and a scam.

Our hypothetical adult persists. Carefully navigating the minefield of sex and romance, until they finally find a partner who loves their body just as much as they do.

Or, maybe more than they do.

Or maybe it’s not love at all.

Because this new partner obsesses over their body. Begins demanding particular sex acts that they aren’t comfortable with, which emphasize how different their body is from the norm. At first, they are okay with the demands, but as things escalate, they begin shying away from these acts. They begin feeling used, and reduced to a sexual object. When they try to explain their feelings to their partner, they are ignored, or shamed, or made into a guilty party. After all, their partner just wants to celebrate their beauty, how can that be bad?

This objectification through sex also does not care if their body is the way it is because they are trans or because they are intersex.

But now they’re in a relationship, with all of the interpersonal complexities that entails.

And they know from long experience that if they leave it may take years to find another person who is interested in them romantically or sexually. What if that new relationship is just as bad as this? What if it’s worse?

So our thought experiment becomes trapped in a cycle of domestic abuse.

Abuse predicated not on being trans, or being intersex, but on being outside the sex binary.

This pattern repeats over and over. For every negative experience trans people have, there is a matching intersex experience. For every negative experience intersex people have, there is a matching trans experience.

The reason trans people are oppressed is their divergence from what society has deemed correct and appropriate within the binary.

The reason intersex people are oppressed is their divergence from what society has deemed correct and appropriate within the binary.

The cause is the same, the effects are the same. Details may vary, but no more so than details vary among, say, racial groups marginalized for their shared divergence from whiteness in different ways. No more so than individual disabilities are marginalized for their shared divergence from the abled norm. No more so than different orientations are marginalized for their divergence from straightness.

In fact, these differences in detail are significantly less pronounced than the differences in detail between trans people and LGBPQA+ people’s marginalization for their shared divergence from gender roles.

So we’re left to ask ourselves: who benefits from setting up this separation between trans and intersex people. Who benefits from getting intersex people to police trans people, and getting trans people to police intersex people, and getting us both to think of trans people and intersex people as Irreconcilably Different?

It’s not trans people. And it’s not intersex people.

But the sex and gender binary?

All of a sudden, a group that presents a real and present danger to it, and to the class systems it upholds, is fractured. Is fighting itself rather than overturning the oppressive force.

Trying to inflict hard boundaries between trans and intersex people just serves to dis-empower trans people, dis-empower intersex people, turn us against each other, and leave those of us–like you and I–who are both trans and intersex, stuck trying to figure out which parts of ourselves to embrace and which part to ignore in any given situation.

It doesn’t benefit us in any way.

But it sure benefits the people and systems hurting us.

TL;DR: any system that targets and harms intersex people also targets and harms trans people. Usually in the same ways. There are differences in the details, but the causes and effects are both the same for intersex and transgender marginalization. The only people who benefit from intersex and trans people ignoring our commonalities and policing each other, are the people who want to divide and conquer us so that the sex and gender binary continues to be upheld.

#Intersex #actuallyintersex #gender #trans #queer #identity politics #intersectionality #overlapping identities #My Words #tme

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spacebabe51 · 4 years

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Thoughts on 1991 Dark Shadows

You guys asked for it, but I warn you, I'm stupid long winded. I’ll spare you the long intro I was originally gonna tack onto this post because it’s already way too long. Basically this is just my thoughts on Barnabas, Victoria, Willie and Julia and why and where I think they fail to capture the audience’s attention.

So let’s start in the obvious place; Ben Cross as Barnabas Collins. Now. I have a lot of sympathy for pretty much anyone who tries to take on this role: Jonathan Frid just has this unhatable quality to him, which makes the ill-advised nonsensical hypocritical B.S. that spurts from the character of Barnabas Collins like a fountainhead somehow forgivable. It would be really hard to give this role to anyone and maintain that odd mix of unlikeable and endearing. Ok, now that I’ve said that I can say this: I don’t like him. I don’t like this Barnabas.

It’s not because he’s young; I understand why that choice keeps getting made, although I disagree that it’s essential. The original show does go in narrative circles pretending that Frid/Barnabas is much younger than he looks or just avoiding the subject altogether. A young actor can play Barnabas; a hot actor can even play Barnabas; and I’ll grin and bear it as long as he’s entertaining. Cross is not entertaining. I don’t know if it’s fear of doing something wrong or if he watched the original Dark Shadows and saw Frid hamming it clutching a rubber bat to his throat and said “couldn’t be me”, but he will not emote and it absolutely kills the character for me. Barnabas is a lot of things in his first few episodes on the show. He’s suave, he’s scared, he’s unhinged, he’s mournful, he’s triumphant, he’s cruel...but one thing he never is is boring. Even when he’s standing around looking off into nothing and reciting long verses of meaningless prose, we’re engaged. Frid, after all, was a trained Shakespearean actor. Staring into nothing and reciting prose is what he’s best at.

Another thing Frid is is visually nervous; he was out of his depth on a vampire soap opera as well as constantly at a loss to remember his lines, and it shows; in ways that somehow endearingly make the character seem lost and out of his depth in a new time and in a fate he doesn't enjoy. All Cross ever really shows us is suaveness; stillness, and a vaguely constipated expression. He isn’t nervous. He seems calculated. It makes scenes like the one near the end of the pilot way more terrifying. He goes from telling Vicky the story of Josette and Barnabas’ love and her death to savagely beating Willie with nearly the same facial expression and inflection; he comes across as a cold blooded sociopath more than an unhinged impulsive killer. There isn’t much humanity to him, and that makes him hard to root for, either as a villain or a sympathetic monster.

Joanna Going’s Victoria Winters:

Hey, what a surprise! I actually don’t hate her. At least, I didn’t at first. Now, Vicky is a fairly easy character to cast- because let’s face it, she’s a pretty textbook example of a gothic romance protagonist. You know, the kind that are always running away from houses on book covers?

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find someone the audience will connect with and like. The protagonist needs to be a little something more than a blank slate, which is something the original character suffered with, (not in the first season, but in every subsequent one) Going’s Victoria seemed at least a smidgen more self-aware and spunky(?), which is refreshing. Or, at least, I thought. And then episode three came along and suddenly she was 100% on board with Barnabas’ gross stiff romance. So never mind, scratch all that. The actress is fine for the character, but the character is still being sold a bill of goods by the writers.

Jim Fyfe’s Willie Loomis

Let’s get to the real meat of it, shall we? I have to first say that I am probably not qualified to talk about this, being fairly neurotypical and knowing little about the state of representation in the media for intellectually disabled individuals. Secondly, I have to say that I have at least some respect for Fyfe for being one of the few people to go against the grain and actually act on this show, and he is slightly less boring to watch than a lot of the others, if...not in a pleasant way. In any case I don’t think we can blame what I’m about to talk about on his acting per say.

That said...uh...there were some, ahem, bad choices made in terms of Willie’s character. And yes, of course I'm talking about coding him as intellectually challenged and then treating it like a joke, or a character flaw (?). In fact the more I think about it, the worse it gets. Now this is just conjecture, but the choice to cast Willie as conventionally unattractive and intellectually challenged, in order to, I guess, justify or explain the dislike everyone has for him, is incredibly bad for any goodwill the show already isn’t trying to establish among the rest of it’s main cast. Karlen’s Willie, by comparison, is set up as a scumbag from long before Barnabas arrives. He harrasses women, steals, lies, starts fights; etc. Even in the “House” movie, we get a few seconds of him being gross towards Maggie to imply this is normal behavior from him. The most we see Fyfe’s Willie do is be kind of surly and annoying at a bar where he’s already been denied service. He seems more like a guy who isn’t good at social cues, and who is just genuinely sick of being pushed around for no good reason. If Dark Shadows had for some reason decided it wanted to do a story about inequality and social stigma in the midst of it's vampire fever dream, then fine, but that's not what this is; It’s almost like the show wanted to rely on his looks and supposed “mental insufficiency” to make the audience dislike him. He seems more like Collinsport’s long time scapegoat than a drifter who came into town to start trouble, and combining that with the coding paints a very dark picture and makes the already emotionless Collins’ family seem pretty terrible. (and I won’t even go into the whole “Barnabas beats Willie and then two episodes later they’re best friends” thing here because there aren’t enough expletives in the world for it) ALSO also, and this is nit-picky, I have a problem with the fact that Fyfe can’t pick an accent. Sometimes he seems to be trying to imitate Karlen’s Booklynese, sometimes he sounds vaguely Southern, sometimes he sounds like he’s trying to impersonate Goofy...it’s very distracting. Not more distracting than all the other terrible things, but distracting.

Barnabas Steele’s Julia Hoffman: As anyone who follows me knows, I sort of worship Grayson Hall, so I almost feel bad saying I don’t like someone in this role, because, duh. For me, there will only ever be one Julia Hoffman. Is that gonna stop me from saying it? Hell no.

Steele’s Julia suffers from nearly the exact flaw Cross’ Barnabas does; an inability or unwillingness to emote in any fashion. Add on, however, a nauseating lack of chemistry with any of the other actors, and you have a recipe for eyes glazing over by act two. I think, honestly, the biggest flaw of trying to recast this show is this; Dark Shadows is, essentially, a play. It was a troupe of mainly theater actors, working in close proximity, live, on a shabby theater-like set. When you strip away those elements and add in true soap opera people and plots and camera angles, you lose that magical experimental, campy, electric element the original had. I know I’m talking more vaguely about the show now and less about Steele’s Julia, but honestly there's not much to say about her? She doesn’t come across as particularly clever, or bold, or any of the things that made us root for Julia when we were pretty sure she was on the fast track to getting killed her first few weeks. She just sort of meanders through plot points and talks like she’s controlling a ventriloquist dummy somewhere offscreen. She’s not interesting, and when it comes to Julia Hoffman, psychiatrist, blood specialist, hypnotist, fake historian, etc, that’s the worst thing she can be.

If you've read this far, thank you! I would love to hear you guys' thoughts, whether you agree or disagree or think I missed the mark entirely. I'm only on episode 6: I'm going to continue watching, purely out of obligation since they're taking the show off Amazon Prime at the end of the month, and I may make some memes/follow up posts when we get to Angelique, 1795, etc.

#dark shadows #ds #dark shadows 1991 #91 dark shadows #barnabas collins #ben cross #jonathan frid #Victoria winters #Vicky winters #Joanna going #alexandra moltke #willie loomis #jim fyfe #john karlen #Julia hoffman #dr Julia hoffman #Barbara steele #grayson hall #dan curtis

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unordinary-analysis · 4 years

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EPISODE 164

Honorable mentions:

Idea: Arlo becomes a fake joker. Idk if he does it either to take down john or just try to use the authority to fix the school, but im entertained by the idea lmao

I miss Cecile but that’s just a given. I miss her even when she’s in the actual episode lol

Technically Arlo’s not the king anymore but everyone’s still terrified of him and I live for that

Arlo and Rei’s ‘I always have a reason’ parallels are great but that just be my love for parallels talking im not sure yet

Not gonna talk about Blyke again until we see him next because apparently you guys very much disagreed with what i said about what he was going to do in my last episode thing so- I want more information to do off of, but honestly, im still kind of sticking to what I originally thought. Blyke getting enhancement drugs, it makes sense you guys are just mean isudhgfusjhgf

Back on that ‘anyways is my favorite word’ agenda

Colors are nice

The last section isn’t very professional but thats just because i was freaking out about the last scene and it very much shows im just so excited guys

This episode, episode 164, marks the 50th episode since I started writing these, so that’s fun.

Also: this is over a week late, I know, but until i post this, know that i haven’t read any episodes after this episode (ep 164). A lot of times when I am late with these I either forget (it’s constant and often and becoming an issue) or im doing something else that’s creative related that i feel the same obligation to do as the obligation to do this (? Making sense? Not sure), and school.so that’s why this is late oops

Ignore that its not important im just sorry this is late

Anyway, here’s the analysis/commentary/review (? Still confused about this) for episode 164

Also half of this is not proofread because theres a chance if i do that ill get even more writers block even though that technically shouldn’t happen but it does and i just want this out so sorry if some sentences completely cut off or i just don’t talk about something because oops is it worth it at this point

Fake Jokers:

Starting with this because, hey, chronological order. In the beginning of this episode Arlo is approaching a group of students gathered around a piece of paper stuck onto the bulletin board saying that there are fake jokers running around. One of the bystanders is seen saying, “I wouldn’t mind being Joker for a day.” This isn’t very concerning by itself because we already know that people are already doing this, but I just want to point out that the reporter who tried to publish the story about the fake Jokers argued that they should because the students needed to be warned against the fake jokers. What the bystander in this episode tells us is that this reporter was wrong and Isen was in fact right (we been knew but).

Something bigger that I want to bring up is that now because lots of students have been exposed to the idea of faking being Joker, more and more are obviously going to be doing it, which I kind of already just said, but the consequences of such a thing are what intrigue me. If the school is suddenly filled with fake jokers and students are already aware that the majority of the jokers are fake, the Joker mantle is going to lose its significance. No student would take any joker seriously, even if it happened to be the real one.

The thing about that is that the real Joker, John, won’t be able to use his authority as well anymore. If nobody recognizes Joker as the king anymore (what with so many low-tiers also wearing the mask), they’re not going to listen to him. It basically means that John wouldn’t be king anymore. And, though I’m still confused on if John even really wants to be king, if he wanted to be, if he wanted that authority, he would have to find a better way to present himself. It means that John would either have to figure out a way to separate himself from the other jokers (I don’t really know) or reveal his identity to the whole school. This would be something huge, especially because, to John’s knowledge, Sera doesn’t even know who he is yet. But who knows, by the time the decision rolls around or things escalate enough, he might have figured out what she knows.

Another interesting idea is that John would take advantage of this situation to let himself be lost among the fake jokers and disappear, leaving the school without a king anymore and also in chaos, because honestly who. Knows. What the fuck. He wants. Not me.

I do think, however, that John will stay as king. Because every once in a while he’ll make some comment suggesting that, and in one of the recent episodes, he got pissed that someone was impersonating him and if wants to blend in again and not be recognized for his power, I doubt he would act like that.

Isen/Arlo confrontation:

So, in this episode we get Isen yelling at Arlo, which you love to see, and I’m here to talk about it yay.

Isen, at the beginning of the scene, is very nervous and scared of what Arlo would do when he comes, which is very understandable. That dude is scary but anyways, once Arlo does show up and starts yelling, which was exactly what Isen was afraid of, instead of letting himself retreat into his fear, Isen argues back at Arlo, which to be fair probably wasn’t an active decision, supported by how he acts after he yells at Arlo. Isen just blurts out what’s in his head and it’s pretty eye-opening. Isen yells that he never wanted to be given any of the responsibilities given to him by Arlo. He specifically talks about his role as head of the newspaper, but he says later in a much more general way that Arlo forces people into responsibilities that they either don’t want or aren’t ready for. This makes me think back to the beginning of the comic when Arlo made Isen dig up information on John. Isen acted pretty scared and squirrelly once he found out something he knew Arlo wouldn’t want to hear, and that behavior is very much repeated in this episode. Anyway, back to what’s happening currently. Isen defends himself against Arlo saying that Arlo’s accusations weren’t even fair because Isen tried to do the best he could to stop the news of the fake jokers from getting out. Also, it really doesn’t make sense to be blaming Isen for someone else leaking the information (without him knowing) and posting it on a public board (not even affiliated with the school newspaper). What happened is not a result of Isen’s bad leadership, or at least that what Isen tries to argue. Arlo has some other ideas on that subject though. Arlo thinks that if Isen were a better leader, the other students would just listen to him and not go behind his back to publish the information, which I have some thoughts on.

First of all, the fact that Arlo thinks this is the bare minimum for leadership speaks a lot about him. Arlo was the last king of Wellston, which means he was a leader, and he doesn’t think he was a bad one. I think Arlo thought he was a really great leader, because he was to be honest. He fixed the mess that Rei made and kept the students under control. Anyway, Arlo thinking that people follow good leaders with this blind loyalty and trust means that that was the case under his leadership. I just want to say that this probably means that Arlo thinks John is a shit leader, but we been knew. But who knows, John might have that kind of leadership and it would be for the same reason that I think Arlo did: power. Arlo is obviously one of the most powerful people at Wellston. Even more so than his title of king, and probably even his leadership skills, there is no doubt that the reason so many people followed him was this, especially considering the type of society UnOrdinary was. John, as Joker, has lots of authority and power among the Wellston students, which we talked about in the first section, and no one can doubt that it’s because of one thing: his power. People follow powerful people, it’s the way of the world, it’s how hierarchy works. But what I want to point out in relation to this episode is that Arlo seems to pushing this expectation of “leadership” onto Isen. Arlo is undoubtedly a fantastic leader, but as I keep. Repeating. His power plays a huge part in the respect given to him. Isen, though definitely more powerful than some, doesn’t exactly have that power. Not to the extent that Arlo or John has at least. And because of this, obviously, doing what Arlo and John are doing won’t work in the same way for Isen because it’s not enough. He doesn’t have that power backing him up, which is why Arlo’s expectations are unreasonable for him, which is why Isen keeps saying that he can’t do it and it understanding this is why Arlo keeps saying that Isen can. The line, “we’re not all as capable as you are!” From Isen really emphasizes this, though it probably was misunderstood by Arlo as, ‘we’re not as good leaders are you are,’ which might also be true, but that’s not what Isen’s trying to communicate.

Now that I’ve talked about that, there’s something else in this scene that catches attention. After Isen’s outburst at him, Arlo thinks about what he said and firstly, agrees with Isen that he really does set high expectations for people, but secondly, he says that, “it’s never without a reason…” Now, this stood out over Isen’s argument when I first read the episode because of how blunt the statement is. It surprised me in a kind of way. Arlo telling himself that he always has a reason for setting high expectations of people. I was especially intrigued by the pairing of that statement with Arlo’s mental image of John. If Arlo truly feels that he had a reason for believing in John, what was it? I know that he wanted John to accept his responsibilities as a high-tier, but that’s not what Arlo is saying in this episode. He’s saying there’s a reason that he gives people responsibility. Does Arlo have some specific reason for wanting John to have authority? Does it go past that drive inside of Arlo that tells him that people need to be put into their places just because. I wouldn’t really be thinking much about this at all (especially considering that it it very in character for Arlo to make John resume his place purely to secure them hierarchy) if it wasn’t for the fact that only John’s face showed up in between the lines, “I do set high expectations for others,” and, “But it’s never without a reason…” the placement automatically makes me assume that it was chosen for a reason. But who knows, that might just have been a way to remind the reader that Arlo is constantly being reminded of what happened between him and John and how it affected everything.

Anyway, these lines also have me thinking about Arlo’s recent turmoil with himself about John and the part Arlo played in the whole Joker situation. We know that Arlo has been blaming himself for this for a while now because without his interference, John would never have decided to dethrone him and all of the other royals, or at least not to the extent that he did. But in this episode, seeing Arlo talk about how everything he does has a reason and especially those later panels after Arlo leaves the room showing him when he was younger, it’s starting to make me think that Arlo is changing his way of thinking.

“But it’s never without a reason” He swings wildly from agreeing with his past decisions and disagreeing with them, but maybe because this is the most recent, he’s finally realized that he hasn’t been the one in the wrong this whole time. I’m not exactly sure and I don’t want to assume based completely off of one scene, but I really am hoping for some development in this way for Arlo because a. I love him and b. More hatred centered around John, which would mean more drama and I love that. Not much more to say about this

The Talk (wink wink):

I hate what i called this section because i thought of it at like 4am but i dont know what else to call it so- anyways the biggest thing that happened this episode has to be when Arlo and Seraphina met up to talk because if you read my posts, you know that I’ve been begging for this for a while and can I say, im hyped.

First, I want to start with something small, but something that is bothering me. Seraphina seems so pissed at Arlo doing this whole scene, and for what? Honestly, I hope im not biased or anything because I absolutely love Arlo, but he really hasn’t done much wrong in this whole joker situation. The only rational reason I can think of for Sera being pissed at him is because of the whole Arlo fighting john in that clearing like a long fucking time ago. Which, you know, I understand, but at the same time, recently, Arlo has obviously been trying to only help you and tell you the truth, you were the one who was being difficult. I honestly think that she’s just in this state of pissed off because of John, but i don’t know. I hope I’m not forgetting any shit because if im being honest, i don’t pay as much attention to her storyline as I should, especially recently, because i do not care that much for her character, at least not as much as the others. So yeah. R.I.P. that. I don’t know. This isn’t important i think im just very Arlo biased sorry bout that.

OKAY FIRST OF ALL THEIR CONVERSATION STARTING WITH ARLO REMINISCING WITH SERAPHINA ABOUT WHEN THEY WERE THE KING AND QUEEN OF WELLSTON IS ACTUALLY BASICALLY EXACTRLY HOW IVE WRITTEN WHAT I WANT THEIR FRIENDSHIP TO BECOME AFTER THIS AND I WISH THEY TALKED MORE ABOUT THAT ASPECT BECAYSE i would actually die for Arlo and sera to realize that the only thing that kept them apart was not realizing how much they had in fucking common and in reality they were the two people who understood each other the most and i know i sound very confusing because i just talked about how i love Arlo and how i dont love sera all that much but that is beside. The. Point.

Anyway, Arlo talks about how successful their leadership was (back to that common motif of leadership that Arlo just seems to carry around) and how now that that’s changed, the school’s whole vibe has been horribly threw off and shit is happening and he has no clue how to fix it ( I am so sorry for my god awful gen z vocabulary I realize these posts become just completely cheapened because of that but i dont know how else to communicate sorry bout that). Anyway, this struck me as a weird way to start this conversation because Arlo hadn’t reached out to sera before this to talk about john (after she found out about him at least) and it seems to me that he would want to talk to her about that, but the disarming way that Arlo starts talking took me off guard. I’m not really sure about why yet or what I want to say about that,but that confused me.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because sera brings up john herself and directs that conversation where we knew it would go, but at the same time she starts talking about feelings too and this is just so weird because Arlo and sera both are characters who we’re not used to really seeing talk about their feelings and stuff. I think that this has changed though recently for both of them because of the stuff they’ve been through and im here for it, but anyways, i should really talk about the actual contents of their conversation hold up.

But the thing fucking is.

I have to wait for the next episode to fucking get the actual content of their conversation ikfuhefhbejkfhieuhfgieughfnierugniejnrgkjergnkejgnieknjgvkdlnv. *upset noises*

#unordinary #uno #webtoon #unordinary webtoon #official #episode 164 #happy 50th one of these me #sorry its hella late

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