Once again thinking about the ATLA post series (not in continuity with the comics) fanfic I'll never write that follows Azula going to work in Iroh's tea shop in Ba Sing Se and her ensuing struggle with psychosis and realizing she was in the wrong and is just as much the victim of an abusive parent as Zuko was.
In this story Iroh tries to help her and at first she HATES it. She hates his kindness, she hates the sadness on his face when he sees her struggling, she hates all of it. At one point she snaps at Iroh to stop pitying her and he says, "Don't you know the difference between compassion and pity?" And she snaps back that they're the same thing and he replies, "You're wrong, Azula. Pity is simply feeling sad for someone's circumstances. Compassion is the desire for their circumstances to get better." And it hits her like a ton of bricks that this man, unlike her father, wants what's best for her. He's only ever treated her with kindness and she's disrespected him and called him weak for it and it's the most actual love she's ever received from a father figure in her fifteen years of life. And she wants nothing more than to cry in his arms but she can't yet because she doesn't know how to show weakness in front of anyone because of what her father did to her.
I see a post floating around sometimes where someone said that as a child, Azula is the scariest character, but as an adult, she's the saddest and I agree. She was 15. She deserves a redemption arc.
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Red Bull plucking Rocky (Seb's race engineer, the guy that helped Seb to 4 back to back championships at RB) out of his mysterious high ranking dwellings in the factory, giving him an AT uniform and sending him into Daniel's garage to "keep an eye out on Daniel" literally WHAT ARE THEY COOKING
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when y'all stop perpetuating stigmas and demonisations of certain mental disorders you deem 'scary' and 'problematic', we can actually start having a conversation about it.
self-absorbed people aren't immediately 'narcissistic'. stop using it as an insult to or even descriptor of every person you feel is being particularly selfish or conceited.
NPD is a serious disorder and should be treated as such. stop demonising it.
and also, abusers who use the tactics of putting others down, making everything about them, etc. are extremely self-absorbed and could be anyone. stop making it look like it's just people with NPD, who themselves are abuse victims... often of that exact abuse you accuse them of.
same goes for BPD and emotional abuse/using emotions and outbursts as abuse tactics...
generally start treating people with a cluster B personality disorder like the human beings they are, deserving of respect and kindness, just like everybody else.
stop throwing around the word 'psychotic' when you're really just trying to say somebody is 'evil' or 'deranged'.
psychosis is a very serious symptom of extremely demonised disorders, like schizophrenia. people with it are just as deserving of respect and kindness as every other human being is.
low/no empathy doesn't make you a bad person. not having compassion doesn't make you a bad person.
it's okay for people to not have those traits. they aren't 'monsters' for it. nor are they undeserving of your love and compassion for it, either.
in order to have a nuanced and helpful conversation about stigmas of mental disorders, you need to understand your own partaking in them and unlearn those words, behaviours and thought patterns. please.
sincerely,
a person with a cluster B disorder that is sick of your hypocritical bullshit aka ableism
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Schizospec culture is not being autistic, and not being allistic, but instead being a secret third thing (schizo-spec)
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While I'm not satisifed on the whole with the book's treatment of Renfield, I do love that it never takes the angle of him as some sort of cautionary tale of "This is what you get for following evil too closely! When you want to turn away later, you can't! It's your own fault for not being pure from the start!"
Like while it doesn't hold Seward to account as much as I need it to, the culpability still is fully on him for ignoring Renfield's pleading. Mina already showed there's a better way to talk to him the day before. Quincey comments that it was an awfully harsh response to him and that he can't help but feel there's something they should have listened to. Van Helsing reassures Jack's doubts while admitting he probably would have listened to Renfield if it had been just him. But hey, Seward's the expert here! ..And then it all blows up in their faces.
And then all of Jacks' reasons for dismissing Renfield are also proven wrong in the narrative: It's not about how sane he is! He's still capable of caring about people and wanting to do the right thing! After Seward's dismissal, Renfield gets the last word: Remember that I did my best to get you to listen, and you refused. The wish to do good and the choice to turn away from harming people is what mattered, even if his efforts were in vain. He just needed the CHANCE.
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