#ofc disclaimer is that a lot of this is my own reading. it doesnt have to be agreed by everyone

[seventh-fantasy]

li xiangyi, yin, and femininity

we all know that li xiangyi is a character of fractured identities. and li lianhua is an unreliable narrator to his own story. these make him not the most straightforward character to study. but I've believed in treating li lianhua as a part of li xiangyi, rather than separates. and there must be a common thread that ties all of him together. thus, I offer what I have found to be the most useful lens to use to view him as a cohesive whole, regardless as li xiangyi, li lianhua, or any other identity he may reinvent into: his 阴 yin qualities. (yin of yinyang)

this framework suggested by the drama's text itself has helped clarify to me his strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and struggles. by identifying this constant, too, makes it so much easier talking about what has changed in him.

[to the, hopefully growing, boli lhl hivemind @markiafc @ananeiah]

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there are some notes on the concept of yinyang and chinese conceptualisation of gender I have to preface with.

[disclaimer: of course, I'm not even trying to cover a tip of what experts have extensively studied and debated in a depth it deserves. all I'm doing is try to parse the broad, fundamental ideas that are needed to explain my blorbos through my own spotty brain filter. so there bound to be nuances I've overlooked or some degree of my own interpretation. pretentious but needs to be done.]

阴 yin and 阳 yang are concepts characterised by passiveness, darkness, gentleness, femininity etc, and proactivity, light, toughness, masculinity etc respectively. a very key and handy concept to have in mind is their relationship to each other - which I'll not attempt at explaining better than literal scholars have:

Yin and yang exist only in relation to one another internally as the way warmth-coldness only exist relative to one another. Furthermore, when using yin-yang as an organizational schema, achieving balancing harmony is always the goal, not domination nor subordination of one to the other. [x]

while yin and yang can be symbols of femininity and masculinity, it doesn't mean all female are yin and all male are yang. it's certainly not a strict 1-to-1 equation. the concept of gender in chinese context is more social than biological. this suggests room for fluidity, and shaping of identities, often through social rituals as one journeys through life. it also means that there can be femininity in the masculine, and vice versa - in fact, that's only healthy because you need a good balance of the two worlds. no one part is better than the other. if you think of the two components as relative to each other, they are always interacting and affecting each other, rather than being strict and inert binaries. simply put, it needs to be kept in mind that there are greater nuances in applying yin and yang to the definitions of gender, and to avoid at all cost a simplification of this framework into a binary.

sure, the show has implied that lxy's powers and energy are yin-coded. but femininity is only one of the multiple attributes of yin. so how are we extending lxy's yin to femininity specifically? it's in the text that substantiates and qualifies lxy as feminine. dead women being used as proxies to his character. being literally dressed as a woman in order to put himself into their shoes and feel what they've felt. adopting a name that happens to be very, very feminine - 莲花 lianhua (lit. lotus flower) (it must be caveated that chinese names are NOT gendered. but there are just some names that are more feminine than others.) him coming to lead a life revolving around traditionally feminine, domestic things as li lianhua. him having interactions with the women around him like he's in his own element - no pressure and tension at all, unlike with all the other men.

as such, I'm more willing to use yin and femininity interchangeably in discussing lxy (while it's not necessarily applicable to every point that will be mentioned albeit there being some degree of implied association). and it's for the sake of elucidating what I feel is an intention or very plausible reading of the canon text in parsing feminine experiences in lxy's character. and thus, his queerness.

one last note is that taoism is going be mentioned quite a bit as well because of how much it as a philosophy honours the yin quality. its key tenets include valuing passiveness and inaction as a form of action, and submitting to the nature of things. and we will see how those come up in lxy's life too. (though I'm not gonna attempt to deep dive into it here beyond broad strokes of it.)

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a huge part of li xiangyi's yin actually manifests in him being a passive person. this applies not just to li lianhua, but also li xiangyi. I know. ok wait hear me out. the idea of yinyang is after all components that can change and are relational to each other: thus, there were points in li xiangyi's life when he was less passive than other points, but they ultimately don't match up to the degree of aggression displayed by other men around him. so relative to their display of proactivity and aggression, he can be considered as passive. the best example is that of shan gudao proposing to launch an offensive on jinyuan alliance, while lxy - as much as he was arrogant about it - was standing his ground on not taking action in favour of peace.

it has already showed up in his childhood as well. he wasn't a particularly competitive child: 从来都没有谁要和你争 nobody has ever thought of competing with you over anything, he told sgd as he recalled of their times growing up. it was in fact sgd who was desperate to control and override lxy's presence. baby lxy did not hesitate at all over giving up on winning in favour of protecting his only rare few close relationships left in the world (given how hard-earned relationships are when they're non-familial !!!!). as much as I resent the one-dimensional writing of sgd, he has served as a very strong marker to highlight on lxy's yin.

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I've harped on it several times before but this is the time I finally get to explain it proper: my own theory is that li xiangyi became an unparalleled swordsmaster because of his yin/feminine quality, not in spite of it. an interesting point that had been out in the open unclaimed until it was brought up in our friend group is that, li xiangyi does not actually fit anybody's conventional image of a 武林盟主 wulin mengzhu (ie. ruler of wulin). it would most likely have been some burly, muscular, ultra-masculine dude. even if they don't look like the demonic monk, it should be someone more like di feisheng. but. it's li xiangyi, the boyish, delicate-looking kid, who came to the top. (no wonder people - mostly men - love or love to bully hate him like weak men hate powerful women??)

"why didn't they cast someone who looks more like a wulin mengzhu (read: traditionally manly)?" no, no that's precisely the point. nobody said wulin mengzhu have to look manly. and also who is to define the manliness required to be in a place of authority? (or in my other meta, we would ask, who is to define anybody gets to have the authority over anyone else at all?)

by taoist ideal, gentleness is the most refined form of strength. li xiangyi has been haunting and distracting me in my chinese calligraphy practices lately because I'm thinking about how this must be the closest to what it felt like lxy becoming the best swordsman in jianghu. (so pretentiously brainrotten of me, I know, BUT IT'S REAL and I'm suffering.) mastering a chinese art is essentially about mastering a delicate balance between force and gentleness; being able to draw force from softness 柔中带刚 and an ability to maintain this balance. a beginner will instinctively hold a brush for the first time with brute, unrefined force. some fairly reputable contemporary calligraphers, according to my teacher, can be seen as being either too soft or too forceful - but are still able to pass off as good enough. it's then, the master of masters who will have the sophistication of a firm yet flexible control of the brush with the appropriate use of gentleness/laxness that produces a harmony of strokes. this idea extends to any other sort of chinese craft or practice including traditional chinese medicine, and I believe, swordsmanship too. I'm taking a fucking leap of faith here to say this because I practise NO sort of (chinese) martial arts, I must caveat. (someone who does may want to say something...) but theoretically that should be how it works.

it is not for no rhyme or reason, or *handwaves* that lxy emerged to the top AND is almost undefeatable. among a competitive, forceful (ie. yang) wulin, li xiangyi stood out with a power and energy defined by yin (ie. gentleness and stability) that led him to create his signature 扬州慢 yangzhouman. it is characterised by 慢 slowness (my calligraphy teacher says to us all the time to take it slow), and also described by dfs as 中正绵长 - which I would best describe by painting a picture of a steady and stable stream. these precisely speak of the essence of a mastery of gentleness as strength to me.

conversely, dfs's way in mastering power is very largely premised on taking action because he literally had no other choice in the environment he grew up in. both of them develop in opposite ways. it was the case of gentleness for lxy clearly because he grew up in a safe, nurturing environment that had allowed him to be slow and steady at his own pace, drawing on his natural gifts.

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now top of the wulin world at 17, li xiangyi founds sigu sect. li xiangyi, the boy before becoming menzhu and li xiangyi the leader of sigu sect are not the same.

how then did a (relatively) passive boy like lxy end up founding sigu sect. this lxy is the one who was fostered into competition - though not in an abusive, twisted way. in fact he was raised in a rather taoist way by his shifu: to be honest with yourself and respect your opponent. so he honoured whatever powers he had been bestowed with by nature. he gives into it. even so, at another level, I just have a sense that shifu and shiniang's competitive marital spat had an insidious effect on the boys...though the detrimental effect was more on sgd than lxy. baby lxy feels like a sweet-natured kid who was just in his own zone, you know - some (aka sgd) would say, too much of him even, to have not realised what was wrong at all with his shixiong for years.

that's not all of course. I've always gotten the vibes that his attitude behind forming sigu sect felt more like, this is what all the good men of jianghu do and I will have to do it now especially that I'm the best. it didn't feel particularly personal to me, but rather what would have been expected of him by the social climate of wulin jianghu (eg. lxy saying to 光耀师门 bring honour to his teacher). it's definitely not an expectation from his shifu, who explicitly told him that he was never expected to become a noble figure of any sort, but just to be alive and contented. as concluded by the man himself as li lianhua: "有些人入了江湖是为了立心，而有的人入江湖为的是立命。我却不知道自己真正想要的是什么。some people enter jianghu for the cultivation of the mind, others for a cultivation of a meaningful life. but I never knew what I truly wanted." he was ultimately, unwittingly a passive player in his own story of becoming the great sigu sect leader.

(at this point, as a side note, I do wonder if there were any other similar sects or alliances that function the same as sigu sect that came before it. because I'm damn well sure there must be something, as likely as there must have been generations of wulin legends who came before lxy. but of course, this is not what the story is concerned with at all and I'm ok with that.)

it's crucial to point out that, even despite this being the phase of his yang in the display of taking action and enacting firmness, lxy had still done sigu sect with the sole purpose and manner of upkeeping peace and order (in the way of the pro-universal love, anti-aggression mohist 侠 xia leader of the people). he's still very characterised by yin in my books, especially when vis-à-vis to sgd.

a li xiangyi full of himself and made himself too useful to the people was only bound for a great asteroidal fall, in the concept of 物极必反 - or in taoist lexicon 反者道之动 (ie. anything that has reached its limit will only start developing in the opposite direction). if you think you're above all, you can only go down.

this manifests during the next time he took action - and it was one so forceful that it overpowered even his opponent, dfs who ended up being the passive, receiving party in this case - was in initiating the battle at donghai 10 years ago... and gee oh boy. it didn't end well - for both of them, but even more so for lxy. (dfs was like 'tis but a scratch (shrugs)' as compared to him being ripped off his tendons by jiao liqiao like nezha did to the dragon prince. truth is he had to go into a 10-year healing retreat served by his entourage. :p) ok, I digress.

xiao zijin was quick to attribute sigu sect's fall to lxy's arrogance - in turn setting the stage for lxy's 10 years of self-hatred and the framing of lxy as a villain? irresponsible figure? by jianghu. (god forbid girls do anything! ok for legal reasons, this a joke.) lxy lost his mind in ways I believe he never had in his life there and then upon seeing his shixiong dead. so, you could say he led the jianghu world to ruins out of love (using this term loosely). but it feels inaccurate to say it's due to arrogance. he did not do that out of self-importance or ego, especially when the revenge for sgd was a collective decision made by sigu sect as we know from the flashback. so when llh pinned all fault on himself for being arrogant in the past, it is with caution to take his words because that's the unreliable narrator in him speaking.

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anyway, it's precisely li xiangyi that is capable of bouncing back from such a fatal crisis, equipped with his yin and a mastery that gave him the power of flexibility.

it's extremely vital to re-establish that literally the only thing that was keeping li xiangyi alive, physically, as li lianhua is yangzhouman. (monk wuliao literally said that to lxy even though he did facilitate in saving him.) it's the yangzhouman that was drawn from lxy's mastery of yin. without yangzhouman, li xiangyi would not even have the chance to become li lianhua and undergo any needed process of transformation. without li xiangyi, there would have been no yangzhouman. no li xiangyi, no li lianhua, get it?

the point is not to deny the change li xiangyi wants to make and has made. but to acknowledge that change isn't about complete erasure and destruction. something from you survives. something in you had kept you alive to have you come so far, regardless of all the bad bits that you want to denounce of. you've always been worth it.

bringing back the thing about his new name: the distinction must be made that he did not pick it because it was feminine but it just so happened a feminine name had resonated with him. (read: he didn't necessarily identify as a woman but identified with femininity. at least within the parameters of canon text.)

he also made an interesting choice to retain his surname for someone who was desperate to sever ties from his past. hmm. or maybe he wasn't that desperate? when li lianhua says li xiangyi is dead, I believe it meant that li xiangyi the sigumen menzhu is dead rather than li xiangyi as an entirety. li lianhua is a returning to the path lxy could have gone if he did not establish sigu sect, the path that shifu wanted him to take. when he walked to the doors of sigu sect in the aftermath, nothing was actually stopping him from going back (people were still around and alive, instead of all dead people, you know)... except for himself. taking that action would have been too much for him. so he went with the flow of life giving him a chance at rebirth and walked away. there, inaction as a form of action.

zhan yunfei and qiao wanmian have said to li lianhua, oh that doesn't sound like li xiangyi at all. but has it been considered that, maybe it was sigu sect's lxy who wasn't the real lxy? sigu sect lxy was one big performance of the values of masculinity and heteronormativity that llh had came to an awareness of, and eventually struggle with again and resist against in the final year of his life. there had only been some glimpses of his true nature allowed (validated by fang duobing talking about lxy at his altar).

imho, most flashbacks of lxy during that period felt impersonal and more like a template of a hero expected to marry his girl at 18. going through all the motions and steps of a normative life even before he was old enough to grasp and explore his own identity and what it meant in the world. no wonder he denounced so much of what he had done as lxy including liking girls. walking away then also meant a walk away from those duties and expectations. li lianhua is li xiangyi liberated from masculine duties and heteronormative performance.

in doing that, he had the opportunity for the first time in his life to explore what he truly wanted, at least within the parameters of what he could afford to do at that point. he could go on to build a domestic, feminine life within the space of jianghu (as I've established here). it's a kind of feminine lifestyle that doesn't quite exist in mainstream society - being a woman there meant to stay put in a domestic space without much room to move socially. nor did it exist in wulin jianghu because even the women there like shi-guniang and jlq were expected to be masculine, aggressive, competitive. so building a mobile home in the space of jianghu is his way of defining the life he wants and can have. li lianhua is the extension of femininity in li xiangyi - and one that can be free.

it's also worth talking about in my opinion what is one of the most important and a favourite dihua moment: when dfs said to lxy that his greatest weakness was to like being a hero. and a swordsman should be without weaknesses. I'm forever wrapped up in how many layers this can be read in. was he mad at lxy for liking to be a hero or having weaknesses, or both? if the former, it was dfs criticising, based on lxy's public reputation, lxy's oversized illusions about being a hero - a figure of masculinity with an unrealistic sense to uphold noble goals eg. saving the world etc. that is actually perfectly logical coming from dfs, the straightforward, no-nonsense, morally neutral guy with no illusions about heroism (in this case, he feels more like a yin). but at the same time, we should understand that lxy's motivations behind the donghai battle are more personal than noble. if any, it was actually the opposite of noble - it was like he was acting out of the role of a caretaker of his family, and at a cost of the peace and order of jianghu he was set on guarding(!!) dfs also knew that lxy was there just for his shixiong. and so, dfs, who happens to be the epitome of yang, can be read as a symbol of masculinity disapproving of lxy for being sentimental and emotional; for having the "feminine" desires to simply want to defend his family (not saying those are exclusively feminine traits but they have been conventionally associated as feminine). I think both layers of reading are correct and should work together to contribute to the complexity of their characters. (we can see how it contributes to lxy and dfs being the perfect yinyang halves to each other, which I will come back to briefly touch on later.)

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for 10 years he lived a life of seclusion and staying-in-his-own-lane a taoist would be proud of. he knew he was dying and has always been ok with dying, as he claimed. but did he want to die? to think of it, it was the opposite. because in those 10 years when he could have 100% just taken action to take his own life, he didn't. in fact, he lived on and took care of himself in the way shifu wanted him to. he had simply preferred letting nature run its course. if bicha didn't take him, he wasn't gonna do anything. but if he died one day very soon, he would be ok with it too. sure, he was maybe banking on a lead to sgd's whereabouts to appear during his last years alive but that clearly wasn't the only thing on his mind for NINE years because he didn't actively go out seeking for that either. this is basically him telling dfs that he would just lie in the sun and wait for the sweet release of death, if dfs were to force him to fight. not even the mortal threat from dfs was enough to move him into action of fighting back or killing himself.

time and again, lxy as llh was dragged into fdb's cases but not only that, he also maintained an impersonal distance with them. it's starkly different from the usual (wuxia) hero archetypes (for eg. fdb) who would be more impassioned and personally invested in the plight of the victims- or unlike most seemingly aloof protagonists who would somehow grow emotionally invested over time. one of the many things I love about llh is that he never tries a second time to persuade people out of their decisions he finds unwise (eg. him just wanting to move on in response to the girls in 女宅 insisting on staying behind with their slave master at first.) he will not interfere in other people's choices made in their own lives. it's not his business. he didn't even want to be there, to be honest.

however as the story progresses, more and more people - especially men, his past, and the leads to the truth came back to demand and taunt him into doing something. they vary from well-meaning people without any harm intended such as fdb intruding upon his private space completely uninvited and qwm wanting him back; to dfs merely seeking him as a mean to an end initially (eg. I only need him to live long enough to have one last fight); and finally, on the other end of the spectrum, outright aggressive and hostile people like sgd and xzj who wanted him to die. under all this pressure, he tried his best to deflect, but he does waver especially when it comes to matters concerning the people he cares about aka his obsession wish of 10 years of looking for sgd's remains that had lied low until fdb entered his life, and then later on taking revenge for his shifu.

looking for sgd became his final bid at taking action. he was operating on a slim chance of getting some emotional closure from finding out his shixiong is dead for real, yes. what a good plan. but objectively unnecessary. or surprise! uhhh...finding out his beloved shixiong is actually alive and would strangle him for one corn chip? AND OH NO IT GOT WORSE- uncovering a devastating truth about his shifu's death that he could have totally gone on with life fine without knowing if he had continued not caring.

but it is sometimes just impossible not to care - it is only human to care. and he is human, not an icon in the image of a hero. so he took a chance, once more, and it killed him in unprecedented ways. it's donghai all over again. things in life don't go as planned. you fuck around and it fucks you back. finding out the truth behind his shifu's death and his family background from the past did nothing for him as li lianhua living in the present.

it's no wonder that this lxy decisively relinquishes the desire to take action in the end. he goes back to letting nature run its course. and this time, stands firmly to it despite everyone begging him otherwise. wangchuan flower could only give him a recovery (or survival?) rate of 30%. there's a 70% chance of failure and even in the 30% he was not sure what he was to become. in comparison, dfs took a 10% chance game of survival in a heartbeat, and it pushed him to new heights. that's how they differ: he thrives by taking risks and action while lxy the other way round. so, something like that has happened before and he wants none of it again.

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he leaves lotus tower, only taking his horse and a sack - relinquishing almost every other material belonging he had - and sets off on a journey. before xzj interrupted...where to was he going?? I wonder. we don't know for sure, I think? and are we allowed to know? that makes the scene he had with xzj an understated inflection point in the very last part of his journey. yes, he was already on his way to...maybe die? but not necessarily. you don't have to travel distances with your belongings for that, right? or speak to dfs personally about not wanting to fight? (borrowing one of @ananeiah's takes.) regardless, he was definitely leaving behind jianghu - not only wulin jianghu (he already did that 10 years ago), but also the jianghu space he had carved out in the last 10 years.

what sparked the decision to jump off the cliff in him was dfs's words from the night of their wedding 10th donghai anniversary: 横扫天下容易，断相夷太剑不易 conquering the world is easy, breaking xiangyi sword is not. in the original context, dfs was talking about defeating lxy being harder than conquering the world. but when it came to this scene, it was to lxy about forsaking the very last worldly possessions he had after already giving up on lotus tower and hulijing (including releasing his horse), especially his only connection left to swordsman lxy.

perhaps it had dawned on him that, wanting things at all was bad for him. in the last 10 years, he lived a life of seclusion, wanting very little. but he had still wanted things. there were still things he couldn't let go of that had led him to this state. despite having lived on an identity inspired by a buddhist teaching for 10 years, maybe it was only at this point that he was finally the closest to reaching an understanding of it. (I wish I was knowledgeable enough right now to dive into the possible buddhist reading here but alas. I'll leave it to our resident expert @markiafc)

it doesn't quite matter in the end where he was going after all. what mattered was that he literally went where the water took him and we're not supposed to know where it ends. I'm not seeing this in a bad and pessimistic way though. I think the relief in all this is that he had tried his best to within his abilities. also it's a form of enlightenment in relinquishing a desire, an obsession, a need to take any more action in order to live well. thus his ending felt to me relatively tender, empowering, and kind - albeit bittersweet and heartaching - than other possible kinds of ending, in a story where it was very possible for him to have died under the knives of his opponents or bicha at any moment, outside of his control.

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if you've come so far in this post, congratulations! but also a reveal is that... you're not immune to the dihua propaganda threaded throughout this post. :P

as mentioned, other men like sgd and xzj in lxy's life were incredibly hostile to him. their yang nature overwhelmingly powers his yin. but dfs is different. dfs is the yang counterpart that fits perfectly to his yin.

dfs's yang is one that contains yin, that mirrors lxy's balance of yang in yin. it was suggested in text they are yinyang-coded meant to complement each other, given that whenever wangchuan flower's yin vs yang properties were discussed, the two men were always spoken about in the same breath. more importantly, as with the above few analyses of dfs's words playing a big role in shaping of lxy's choices with multiple meanings - as well as their day-to-day interactions - we can see that they constantly play off each other.

dfs's yang energy has been used to help lxy prolong his life (though not saving him entirely), while lxy has used his yin energy to save dfs and subsequently helped him attain his breakthrough. dfs has also helped lxy in his breakthrough of yin but not in the same way as dfs's cultivation of his combative powers, and rather, it's for lxy an understanding of his own path to take in life - a cultivation of the mind (both times 10 years before and after). given how significant dfs is in the shaping of lxy's realisation of the yin path - alike his shifu has, it's no wonder that they were the only two people lxy had imagined in his last sword dance of a farewell to jianghu.

with each of them coming together to form the perfect yin-yang model, they're a harmony of yin and yang representing the cosmos. what I also love is that they didn't start out as a perfect fit, but only towards the end of the story was the harmonisation completed, which makes sense for two components that are always in a flux influencing each other. the fact that they were number 1 and 2 of wulin, and being the only ones capable of understanding each other in a level nobody else could... it all reinforces the cosmic sense of their relationship. they're the halves to a whole, fitting in a specific way nobody else can.

(I mean. technically this is going into the space of extrapolation based on a tangential interpretation of canon text, so do take it with a pinch of salt. but of course this pinch of salt can do wonders for a shipper's feast... :P and this certainly could have been a meta of its own expanding on dfs's side of the analysis, but this is it for now in this context.)

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to think of it, li xiangyi has actually died more than that one time that turned him into li lianhua. first was a death of him as a nanyin royalty - I resent having to bring up nanyin like it should hold any weight to the narrative as far as I'm concerned, but the point being that he had a completely different (familial-based) life before that still stands. then he had a rebirth as li xiangyi, disciple and swordsman to his shifu and shiniang, and later died again when li xiangyi the sigu sect leader took over. lxy the sigu sect leader died at sea in the battle 10 years ago and came back as li lianhua. (just like nezha, died after battling at east sea and rebirthed from the lotus) li lianhua then dies by the end of the drama.

there can be a myriad of interpretations as to what exactly happened to him, including the possibility that he's still alive. regardless, we can agree that li lianhua as an identity has ran its course, and he had to evolve again. but into what form?

in the line of thought of yin and femininity, and how his transformation has been in an increasing degree of presentation of femininity - even way back when I was watching the show, I had the idea of him living socially as a woman post-li lianhua. I don't know what he would be realistically doing or what could be practical for him in such an identity. but conceptually it was sensible and compelling to me before diving deeper into the details. (I have more elaboration to do on this that I won't be talking about here publicly but it is in the same strain of idea as this other comparative meta I wrote.)

I think the next possible identity lxy can assume - alive in the material realm or not - is one that will be beyond a material being. a nameless entity. once you've gone through the phases of life - from not knowing to knowing, and perfecting knowledge, then to the surpassing of knowledge - you surpass all worldly existence, and become one with the cosmos.

I end this off with an excerpt from Tao Te Ching's Chapter 41 (I'm not pretending to have read the whole book ok but I couldn't resist including this):

明道若昧，进道若退，夷道若纇 [...] 道隐无名 The bright path seems dim; Going forward seems like retreat; The easy way seems hard [...] The Tao is hidden and without name. (x)

the character translated into "easy" is the same 夷 yi of li xiangyi's name. somehow this seems to encapsulate the journey of his life: one that seems blessed and smooth-sailing but ending up to be rocky and turbulent. but at the end of the day, after all that he had been through, he will become hidden and without name.

#莲花楼 #mysterious lotus casebook #lhl #lhlmeta #my posts #a big win for the inaction fandom. lxy would have been patron saint #this inevitably turned into a 'lhl is a taoist and buddhist story if not a very chinese story' meta hbhjbjhbhjjb #the last thing i do before going to sleep is write this meta. the first thing i do after waking up is write this meta. #i feel so insane writing this. it kept growing like a monster. do you think this is a joke it's like my part-time job now #but it's one of the few times in my life i have confidence in my insanity. so. #crazier thing is. this meta is approaching 6k words yet i still think there must be things i haven't covered. #the last section is so nuts idk how i even wrote it guys i think i was possessed #it's also like the most pretentious way to put that he's dead in this world ok hjbjhbhjbhjbjbh #to be clear iirc the drama didn't say LXY'S POWER/ENERGY IS YIN in the same way it literally said dfs's energy is yang #but it's definitely implied by the explanation of the flower's healing properties for both of them. on top of yangzhouman #also fuck. another reason he didn't choose to save himself was so dfs could have the yang flower which he believed was what dfs wanted #thank u frens mark and ana for indulging my brain in the first time i brought the lxy as woman thing up. for it to have come this far #ofc disclaimer is that a lot of this is my own reading. it doesnt have to be agreed by everyone #i would be very happy though if any part of it resonated with anybody #also a good part of the analysis is based on my memory of the show. though i did revisit parts selectively to verify. sooooo. yeah.

[miracledarling]

why every method works

[ small rant + my experience in loa community ]

💙notes: this was supposed to be a very old post i started writing weeks ago but it never got published so i added more stuff into it later

disclaimer: when i talk about my own experience and perspective, i am not forcing any of my opinions onto you. find what works for you, literally the point of this post is to provide that reassurance

📖table of contents . . .

① it does work, duh ② rant about overconsumption ③ my personal experience ④ what i've learned ⑤ the bottom line

i have explained basically similar things in other places that i am covering on this post so don't be too surprised

1 2 3 4 5

but i've already had this in my drafts for too long so i had to put this out there at some point . . .

it DOES work, duh

as a beginner in loa, i would be drowned by my logical mind. even before i got into loa, i was listening to subliminals. and i would constantly be asking myself: "is this gonna work?" "am i doing this right?" if i paused a subliminal halfway through, i would get so anxious. asking myself "do i have to rewind the subliminal all over again?" then, after reading solar subs guide, i was introduced to loa and the concept of manifesting. but ofc i had trouble believing in subliminals in the very beginning and at that point i was just feeling that i was wasting my time. on all this "spirituality" but months later, after seeing small successes one after another, i realized the law may hold some truth after all. ofc i was still skeptical, and always questioning myself, but i've gotten quite a lot of manifestations it was a bit good to be true right?

as for the loa community, theres been debate in this community time and time again, trends come and go. if youve been on loatwt u know how toxic that affirm vs states debate got, and it's still coming back every week. sometimes people will push one method and put down another, or feel discouraged when the method that is trending isn't the one that resonates with them.

i've seen some limiting beliefs being spread around here and there but what i've learned is that there are NO rules when it comes to manifesting. when it comes to the law of assumption, the law of assumption is LITERALLY the law of ASSUMPTION. like literally. it's like not only is the world made of atoms, it's literally made of assumptions. everything is an assumption. EVERYTHING.

and one important thing i realized is there are absolutely NO RULES. NOTHING IS TRUE UNLESS YOU ASSUME IT IS.

only what you persistently assume will be true, will be facts.

i mean, sure i heard a lot of ppl say things like "_____ doesnt work "

sigh. that's just a personal belief? bc rlly, anything can work depending on ur assumption. from now on, whatever ur doing, it WORKS and it's WORKING (and can you stop telling urself that it didn't work or u fail, u CANNOT fail). no literally please stop searching for reasons you've failed. you're just persisting in the assumption that you've failed. the more you search for it, the more your outer reality is going to show you evidence that you're failing. right at your face.

what you could do is you can create the assumption that everything always works out for you. and no, u do not need to rewatch the youtube vid, reread that success story, reread the post, nope. it works, it's working. ur doing it right. believe it or not it works !! ofc it works. it does work, duh. u can't fail. the law is always working. and it's working in your favor.

a rant about overconsumption

now some people may overthink everything. and i get it. i recommend just staying away from all the loa info you can find.

yes i know i've been reposting many posts but the reason i'm going to take a little break from doing that is for my own good and for everyone else's. because i feel that retrieving all these old posts will make you more prone to overconsumption(and take up some of my own time and energy) and it's not my job lol.

like most of us are constantly saying the same answer to all your asks and in our posts, only adding out own views and experiences. seriously, you don't need to read any more posts at this point. it's the same thing with personal opinions added to it. to be honest, it you're someone who is new or overthinks a lot, scrolling through tumblr may do more harm than good. you're just getting fed a ton of different opinions of different bloggers regarding the same topic-loa, and seeing disagreements cause confusion. i know that the states vs a&p discourse confused the shit out of me. i was overconsuming and overthinking without applying. big mistake. i'm happy i learned to create my own rules now.

there's something i realized: is there even a point for consuming loa content?

i mean it's the law of assumption. like literally assumptions that you persist in manifest. so why do you need to know more than that? as i said earlier, why do you need to look for a reason that you've failed. stop excusing that. you didn't fail. you didn't fail at all. you just chose to go back to the old story and you decided to accept that instead of accepting the new one. you declined the new story.

imagine if you attend a party where you needed to pick ONE dress to wear. you're currently wearing a pink one but you want to wear the blue one. well then wear the blue one. put the pink one away and put on the blue one. so simple right?

now back to what i was talking about. there is literally no need for you to look for more loa information at this point. there is zero reason to do that. because you know what the law is. just by the title it's the law of assumption, so literally just assume and persist in that assumption. that's it.

99.9% of blog posts are just repeating the same thing to you. but with their opinions added. i don't know how many times i'm going to have to say this but it's the truth.

keep this in mind: an assumption persisted in hardens into fact. now you see most posts always somewhere says something along the lines of:

"dwell/think from your desired state" "dwell in 4d/imagination" "think as if you have it already" "persist/stick to the new story" "don't waver/go back and forth, just stick to the new story" "affirm and persist until your mind is saturated with the new story" "repetition reprograms your mind, creating new assumption" "change your mindset to fit the new assumption" "just know and persist in the knowing" "be consistent and consistently thinking from the new story" "maintain a mental diet to stick to new story" "just decide and stick to it"

in the end, they all imply and result the same thing.

new state = new mindset = new story = 4d = assumption that you have it already

so persisting in any of these means you're persisting in the new assumption.

in the end, all of the methods you ever used for loa are just to get you to persist in the new assumption. and persisting in that causes it to harden into fact.

now, why do people ask questions, consume new information, use methods, etc?

well actually i think it's okay to do so, and makes sense especially if you're someone who is new to the law. the thing is, the law is just extremely simple. to the point where people just start to complicate it. people literally have to ask "how to persist" "how to accept" "how to fullfill" "how to intend" and that shows it's being complicated way too much. when law assumption is just assumptions become reality.

but it now that i look back, it actually makes sense why people would overthink something so simple, or create new methods, word things differently, and such.

if i were a beginner and i wanted to know how to manifest and someone tells me "oh, easy. just assume, just decide you have it" it probably wouldn't be too helpful. because now i would wonder how to decide. or more, i would wonder "so...is that it? that's all" i mean who would even think it's true at first sight. and especially as a beginner i would probably check the 3d right after and be unhappy because i "decided" but nothing changed. and doubt the law.

which is where methods come to play. if just assuming/accepting is too far to grasp, methods and challenges help people apply the law. since it's broken down step by step. like SATs for example, getting into a drowsy state, repeating a scene until feeling the wish fullfilled. that is easy to understand and follow.

but of course methods are never required. and for those in disbelief of the law, i always tell you to test the law for yourself, apply, and stop overconsuming/overthinking. because overconsuming really does more harm than good in my opinion. because all these loa content are talking about the same thing in general, but just with our personal experience and opinions added to it, it can really make people confused. remember the whole states vs affirming debate. so if someone has all these opinions being thrown at them, of course they will have no idea who to listen to or what to follow.

this is why it's so important to find what works for you. literally start applying as much as you can. it's like an experiment. find your own way of manifesting that you personally enjoy/like. if you are ever going to consume info, only take what resonates and leave what doesn't. manifesting is not one size fits all. if someone has limiting beliefs, stop taking it in like a sponge. girl you are a human not a sponge.

now that you know that everything surrounding loa basically implies the same thing, i hope you release some of that stress and anxiousness when consuming loa content. or simply consume less content.

my personal experience

since i've been such a skeptic in the past, i would constantly be switching methods, hopping from this to that. when i watch one youtube and then watch another with different opinions, i would feel like this is such bs.

so let me give an example. i've seen people say that robotic affirming "doesnt work" when i've manifested most, if not almost all of my desires purely through robotically looping affirmations in my head. because I ASSUME it works, duh. if u assume it doesn't work, it won't. easy as that. like you can assume it takes 1 repetition, 10 repetitions, 10k repetitions. it depends on ur ASSUMPTIONS. its the law of assumption. i've also seen people say that you need to go through a "transition period" which is a huge myth. i've never experienced one in my life.

see? literally it boils down to ur assumptions. even for me, i had to find my own way out of here, rather than consuming other people's info.

what i've learned

okay i was hesitant to write this part because people might take it the wrong way, and defeats the whole purpose of this post. this isn't directed towards anyone lol. rather, see this as a reminder that you do what you want, not what anyone else says. gotta recognize yourself as the creator.

there's literally no wrong way. what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. but this is only what I learned so feel free to skip this part if you're not interested in hearing my experiences

now, this is what i discovered about myself, just to show that everyone has their own way of manifesting and no wrong or right

i'll admit i am more of an affirming girly and i probably always will be. i'm going to be an affirm + persist girly for life but it's not like it will be the only way to manifest. i respect whatever you do and i love the fact manifesting is different for everyone. in no way will i purposefully force my own opinions onto anyone because whether you like states or affirming or whatever it's completely fine.

and literally i still apply states as well. although i don't really ever considered myself a "state girly," i've known about states for a long time before it became popularized. i remember learning about states and to me, it was the whole package. it did help me in the sense that i could just identify with what i wanted easily. so i will always apply it when i manifest alongside affirming. in other words, i actually apply both.

but on contrary to what works for others, affirming was an easy and straightforward way to get what i want. rewiring the brain through and such made more sense to me especially as a logical person who was skeptical since day one. and whats more is that the reason i found out about loa is through subliminals and i learned more about loa through youtubers, such as sammy ingram. so i was used to affirming the whole time. and it worked for me. however, you do not have to "follow" this if it does not resonate with you

although i understand states better now, and i do believe they are what manifests i still always use affirming and persisting as my main way to manifest since it's always worked for me.

however, if anyone ever ask me how to manifest something, i would always try to tell you to do what works for you. and always do what you resonates with and don't let others opinions guide you. you don't have to repeatedly affirm if you don't want. if you have better way, thats alright, apply it. most important is applying and persist in it rather than overconsumption.

the reason i always share so many posts with you is to help you gain some insight. like i've reblogged tons of posts on my sideblog and even organized them. i've found some old ones that have helped me. but please don't aggressively read and reread all of them. like honey that's overconsumption. no need to do that. skim through one of them and then delete the app. and start applying. and you will be surprised how fast it manifested.

so the void, states, self concept, whatever the trend was...all those things didn't resonate with me as much. heck i didn't even know what was the void until early january which meant 8 months after i already started to manifest for myself

but this just shows that no matter what the hype is, you should stick to what works for you. stop letting others dictate you. just test the law and trust yourself. do it your way.

the bottom line

i don't care how you like to manifest. i seriously don't and in fact, after you read this post, i'd like you get off your phone and test the law to find whats works for you. it doesn't matter works for me. it doesn't matter what other blogger say, it doesn't matter. all that matters is what works for you.

MANIFESTING IS NOT ONE SIZE FITS ALL(i remember sammy ingram even said this in one of her videos lmao) like i don't care if u do affirming, states, or void. it doesnt matter at all. never mattered and never will. just do what u like, darling.

people succeeded with states. people succeeded with affirming. you know what they all had in common? they applied the law.

i have my rules and my beliefs. other bloggers have their rules and their beliefs. many of us have our own limiting beliefs. its all depending on out assumptions. nobody makes ur rules. only you.

yes, even neville, who has very valuable teachings, still does has his own beliefs. like i don't resonate with his ideas of "appointed hour" or "bridge of incidents" but some people do.

and remember when people used to push the "time lag" or the "transition period " well guess what, those are ASSUMPTIONS. its all assumptions.

stop letting people tell you what works and what doesnt. you decide.

in the end, it doesn't matter if u do states, affirming, whatever. it depends on ur assumptions.

stop limiting urself, and do what works for u 💓

#queued posts⏰ #loa #loassumption #manifesting #manifesation #self concept #neville goddard #affirmations #void state #loa affirmations #affirm and persist #10k affirmations #affirmyourreality #affirmyourself #affirmdaily #states of consciousness #manifesting tips #law of assumption #law of attraction #void #sammy ingram #loablr #loa blog

[calcja]

SAINT OR SLUT

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A 18+ POST W SOME NSFW THEMES READ AT YOUR OWN RISK ⚠️

Sypnosis: Here's what i think abt whether bonten characters r virgins or nahhh (ofc they're not minors here)

author's note: EXPECT wrong grammars and spellings bc english is not my first languange but i will try my best 😤 and also

❗️pictures are not mine. Credits to the rightful owners❗️

❗️ this doesnt follow the manga ❗️

• MANJIRO SANO

• Personally, i'm 50/50 whether if Mikey is a virgin or not, but i'm sure home boi flirts w girls

• Bro is literally stressed out w his life ever since he was a kid and we are all aware that he lost lots of people during his teenage years that led him into becoming a person that he is right now

• He would go to clubs for work or when he's stressed out, looking for some hot chicks to comfort his lonely ass then make out with them later on but it actually depends though if he would be in the mood to do it with someone, he might be "too tired" to have sex or if ever he did it, he would most likely do it just to feel something

• HARUCHIYO SANZU

• Now come on now

•He's a slut. like a literal slut. the slut of them all. the one and only babygirl.

• He's the guy that when you first look at him, you will say ti yourself immediately that "oh he's a slut" "oh that guy is definitely not a virgin" "he definitely fuck bunch of girls"

• Especially when he's high? oh my god. One thing u expect when this guy is high is hes at the club fucking some girls or getting his dick sucked.

• He doest want makeouts w gropings, home boi always wants a good fuck

•But regardless of being a fuck boy, Sanzu doesnt just easily goes to clubs on his daily basis, when he has work to do especially when it an order from mikey, he would do that first.

• Overall, he's the type of guy who do his works first and surprisingly do it well before he gets his ballsack empty!

• KAKUCHO

• hmmmm this guy is a.... virgin.

• He's voted for being the best boyfriend at the poll one time so i guess this guy is actually sweet irl or in fanfics (EVERYBODY LOVES THIS GUY HE SOLOS ALL UR FAVES IF UR A HATER OF THIS MAN THEN J ALSO HATE U)

•Moving on, Kakucho goes to clubs only just for work and nothing more. Sure he might get some drinks then that's it. • Unfortunately, it's very rare for someone to come up to him to flirt, not bcs of his scary face but bcs of his calm yet cold personality, voice and aura.

• I think he prefers to train more than having sex when he's stressed

• I just imagine him during his day off in his apartment or house or wherever the fuck he lives to have a calm life, taking care of some plants, relaxing while watching tv, reading books, drinking coffee, training and overall just enjoying little things in life.

• ANYWAYS BUT WHY DO I THINK ABT HIM PLAYING A GUITAR (Izana's old guitar)?!?!???! AND HE LEARNED PLAYING THE GUITAR FOR IZANA???

#bonten #manjiro sano #kakucho #tokyo revengers #sanzu haruchiyo #sano manjiro #tokyo rev x reader #tokyo rev smut #bonten imagines #bonten mikey #bonten smut

[starrynightzie]

I mostly wanted this acc to be specifically for art, not rly for anything else but i need to get this off my chest. Obviously if you’ve been on twitter, you’ve probably seen a lot (and i mean a LOT) of hate towards gay ships/shippers recently, (first w togachako, then w stsg) i wanna address all the weird shit thats been happening w jjk dudebros lately. Idk what it is but they’re rly upsetti spaghetti abt even the mere thought of stsg being more than platonic besties, going so far as to shoot down any hint of them being romantically inclined in the slightest - so i thought that i’d take it upon myself to provide poof that stsg has queer, romantic subtext since ppl are being extremely obtuse abt them, all for the sake of protecting their friendship from us evil gays. (other shippers do this too but im mostly focusing on dudebros bc they’re the ones primarily acting like assholes to us for no reason, like yeah, sure, some stsgs are extremely cringey & weird but that can be said for ANY shipper in ANY fandom. When you’re in a fandom as big as this, of course there’s gonna be some bad eggs, it’s inevitable.

ok so. !!DISCLAIMER!! i do not speak japanese, so if i say something incorrect then please correct me. i’ve done enough research to be sure that what im saying is right, but im only human, and sometimes, i might be wrong. so, take what im abt to say with a grain of salt. (just in case).

first off, it should be stated that gege akutami, the creator himself, is an avid bl fan (and ik what ur thinking, ‘oh, that doesn’t mean anything! just bc u read bl, it doesn’t mean you’re likely to write gay relationships into ur own manga!’ which is true, gege HAS said that he doesn’t want to write romance in jjk. HOWEVER, as much as i love stsg & see them in a romantic light, i do definitely think that the reason why their relationship feels so ambiguous is bc gege intentionally made it that way. i think he made their relationship up to the individual’s interpretation. And for ppl who’re thinking ‘why would he do that?’ well, he doesn’t like writing romance, right? so this is the next best thing he could do. and also i have to point out (in case ppl get defensive), gege literally does not and will never care if ppl ship stsg or not, again, he’s a bl fan and if anything - all of the evidence that im going to talk abt proves that he most likely ships stsg himself, so… 🤷‍♂️

2. i’d like to talk about s2’s op & ed which are HEAVILY romantically coded. If you don’t know, the op was written to be from gojo’s pov & vice versa with geto for the ed, the op in particular is a very special case. The song is explicitly abt reminiscing the past , wishing gojo had noticed geto’s sorrow sooner and it also mentions a ‘silent love’. the word ‘love’ being used here is ‘koi’ which EXCLUSIVELY means romantic love… now, since this song was specifically written with gojos pov in mind, doesnt it seem kind of weird to have the word for ‘romantic love’ in there?? (koi can be referred to as ‘young love’ or having a ‘crush’ on someone…. hm… ThAts WeIrD.) instead of using ‘ai’??? which would make more sense if stsg were just besties bc ai is more general and can be used towards friends & family.

and then ofc there’s the whole theme of ‘blue spring’. director park (who directed s1 & jjk 0) has stated in an interview that geto was gojo’s last warm spring of youth. now if you dont know, spring of youth/blue spring means a time in a young person’s life where they have hope and happiness… in animanga, it often means falling in love too… so judging by this, it seems very likely that gojo perhaps developed feelings for geto during their teen years together. Director park has also mentioned in an interview that gojo & geto’s relationship goes beyond ‘friendship’ & being ‘familial’. 👀

3. another clear indicator of gojo being in love w geto is the whole ‘love is the most twisted curse of all’ spiel he said to yuta. ‘but he could mean platonic love!!’ idk, considering yuta had romantic feelings for rika and hes discussing them with gojo & gojo knows this, dont u think it’d be a bit weird for him to mention geto here too? if they were just best friends?? (that’s not even mentioning the fact that gojo & geto’s relationship is supposed to parallel yuta & rika’s in jjk 0…)

4. and then ofc we have gojo saying his last words to geto, which were censored. now, correct me if im wrong but the ONLY times ive ever seen inaudible dialogue being mouthed to another character is when its a love confession mostly seen in romance anime. and like, there’s also no need at all for gojo’s last words to be censored in the first place. (although, i do suspect that his last words may play a major role in the future when he faces kenjaku.) what solidifies it for me being a love confession is that, 1. geto blushed after gojo said whatever it is that he said to him, (only in the manga tho, idk why they didnt make him blush in the movie but its whatever.) and geto replies with, depending on the translation, ‘at least curse me a little at the very end’ or ‘you should at least curse me at the end’. which heavily implies that gojo said something extremely sweet & heartfelt to him as his final words. and if thats not enough to convince u that gojo’s last words were indeed a love confession.. gojo’s eng VA HIMSELF, said that his last words when translated into english means three words… im not saying that gojo’s last words were specifically ‘i love you’ or anything like that, but i am definitely sure that whatever he said was a love confession/something very romantic in nature. bc why else would gege choose to draw geto blushing?? that wouldnt make any sense.

gojo also killed geto on the 24th of december, which in japan, is the most romantic day of the year & couples in japan treat christmas eve as kinda like a separate valentines day. even in the jjk manga recently, gojo offered to fight on dec 24th & kenjaku mocks him by saying how romantic it is… even gege himself acknowledges how romantic christmas eve is in japan, this enforces the idea that gege must’ve chosen dec 24th for a reason, bc why else would he have picked an extremely romantic date as not only the day where he fights kenjaku who is inhabiting geto’s body, but also making it the day geto died?? yall have to remember that all of this has been planned out by gege, none of it is a coincidence… he didn’t just come up with all of this on the spot, he’s been planning this stuff & thinking about it for literal years.

5. and finally, probably the BIGGEST piece of evidence there is, geto & gojo’s character songs. gege chose romantic break up songs for BOTH of them.. like im sorry but if stsg were rly truly only best friends, he would not have chosen those songs for them, it just doesnt make any sense.

conclusion: obviously, this probably isn’t every subtextually romantic thing about stsg’s relationship but these are all the things that i’ve noticed. again, if you see their relationship as purely platonic then that’s fine but don’t be assholes to people for seeing romantic subtext that’s quite clearly there. if i have missed anything out then please let me know and i’ll edit them into the post.

#jujutsu kaisen #sorcery fight #jujutsu gojo #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #geto suguru #suguru geto #stsg #satosugu #sugusato #jjk analysis

[irrealisms]

1 for the ask game, for every fandom in your tumblr about...!

the character everyone gets wrong

tolkien: tough one. honestly, i feel like due to the nature of the fandom most people have defensible readings of most characters, even if they're not my own? to the extent tht people get characters wrong it's mostly by not thinking abt them very much! I'm inclined to pick Galadriel, though, bc she's also in LotR and so you get LotR fans thinking they can speak to first or second age galadriel, and then u get silm fans overcorrecting and ignoring third age galadriel entirely, and ofc there's the various Sexist Archetypes she gets shoved into by virtue of Being A Woman. actually a Lot of the women in tolkien are characters ppl get wrong a lot. elwing! míriel! indis! idril! lúthien! niënor! haleth! And So On Forever And Ever. this is again mostly due to Simply Not Thinking About Them Very Much tho

wktd: tbh the fandom gets the wktd girls pretty solidly. no real notes here. benefits from being a small fandom for a game with Three characters all of whose issues are pretty spelled out for you & constitute the central plot.

glowfic: im gonna be honest i do not feel confident to speak for other ppl's characters and state what ppl get right/wrong..! like idk man maybe im the one getting them wrong. ppl mostly dont like... write fic or make headcanons for each others glowfic in a way where the author isnt involved in having opinions about it? so if someone was mischaracterizing a glowfic character idk how i would know rly

hannibal: all of them @_@ no one understands this show like i do and it's a perpetual frustration... im gonna throw out abigail as my answer tho bc she sooooo often gets reduced to like, part of the murder family, which ignores soooooo much of her storyline and how much she did not (uncomplicatedly) want that. her relationship with will is So So Complicated but ultimately she likes freddie more than she likes will in some ways! and at least back when i was in the fandom ... ppl dont get that or just treat it as like, a flaw or misunderstanding to be corrected.

tma: ooooo this is a tough one. honestly the fandom was big enough that it's hard for me to say No One in the fandom got characters & in a lot of cases there was the question of like, does the fandom not understand X or do i just not seek out very many fics abt X... e.g. i havent read any tma fic that got georgie very well but also i havent read any georgie-centric tma fic! kind of a skill issue on My part rly!

mcelroy + polygon content: oh this is a trip down memory lane. everyone writes taako very few people write taako well. i'm not a taako fan and instead had Cares About Less Popular Characters disease but i did feel for taako enjoyers for this. i didnt really read polygon rpf so i can't speak to that side of things.

poetry and short stories: i don't think there are rly characters Everyone In The Fandom gets wrong for this tbh. like thats just not rly a coherent thing

the untamed/mdzs: SONG LAN...... i am not even a big song lan fan im a xuexiao stan first and foremost. but good lord. man has like 2 character traits and the ppl writing fic for him cant even remember those! also lwj but with the disclaimer that i have a very specific read of novel!lwj that just doesnt rly apply to untamed!lwj. which most people are writing for. i guess this is also true of song lan but i have more of a sense of "if you care a lot about song lan you should do your due diligence in hunting for scraps of characterization" whereas caring about untamed!lwj and not reading the book is like. yeah okay fair enough. to me.

tgcf: ooooh. hard one. my immediate instinct is mu qing bc i follow the tag and have to read way too much mu qing slander but i have in fact read good mu qing fic.... might stand by that anyway tho. the tgcf tag is like 50% mu qing slander by volume and it makes me sad. mu qing get behind me bby i'll protect u ;-;

dream SMP: hahaha. ha. what character DOESN'T dsmp fandom get wrong. it gets tommy wrong it gets techno wrong it gets phil wrong it gets puffy and niki and hannah wrong it gets dream wrong it gets purpled wrong it gets quackity wrong it gets sam wrong it gets schlatt wrong it gets karl wrong it gets george wrong it gets wilbur wrong it gets LITERALLY EVERYONE wrong. constantly. the only times it doesn't get someone wrong is when it's forgotten that they exist at all (this is about the eggpire but it's also about eryn and fundy and jack manifold and i'm sure many many others i'm not currently remembering). im giving the prize for Getting It Wrong to phil, though. i don't even LIKE phil. but everyone who writes him gets him wrong. they are just writing Generic Bad Dad or Generic Good Dad. he's got traits! i promise!

ok actually since this one's my current special interest i'll go a bit more in depth. tommy's rude & annoying & a fighter, he very very rarely has the sort of fawn response ppl write. techno is funny but he's got emotions and he is usually acting based on those emotions; if you're writing him in s1 he's less based than you think and if you're writing him in s3 he's more based than you think. phil has traits other than being a dad and also if you can't accurately identify which characters he is and is not a dad to then you don't get to write him. puffy, niki, and hannah all have traits other than being women; no, "therapist", "girlboss", and "mom friend" don't count. purpled is not particularly a Manipulated Minor TM, he's an amoral mercenary, he's kinda fucked up by isolation but he's more like punz than he is like tommy or tubbo. none of quackity, sam, and dream are one-dimensional characters whose only trait is Sadistic Abuser but also if you write them without acknowledging that they're sadistic abusers (with the exception of writing about early dsmp/before The Horrors) then you're doing it wrong. same goes for schlatt but with the addition of "he should not under literally any circumstances talk like he's got a tumblr". karl's more of a bitch than that. so's george. wilbur is more of an asshole and less of a creep than that. i could go on literally forever the dsmp fandom gets every single character wrong & it is my burden to be right about all of them u_u

(choose violence ask game)

#therapists dni #any british ants in the chat?

[probably-haven]

after binge reading i have come to a new revelation: I’m not a fan of most Xiaoven fanfics

Don’t get me wrong, I love the ship and its one of my favorite to think about.... but most of the fanfiction for the ship just- doesn’t sit right with me for a number of reasons. 

Disclaimer: these are personal opinions from my own taste and are in no way an attack against any authors out there, because frankly fanfic authors are great and not like i could do better lol. As these are personal opinions, I acknowledge here and now that a number of people disagree and that they are under no obligation to change their opinions in any way as it is not and never will be my intention to tell others what they should be thinking That said- read at your own risk if you want- meh, anyway-

time to share some opinions that have been on my mind lately

The biggest reason.... is how they handle Xiao. And I don’t even mean mischaracterization because Xiao is such a complex and yet simultaneously simple character that as long as you’re somewhere in the range of “Xiao vibes” it’s really hard to write him out of character because of his complexities. What I mean is something that i actually completely agree with as being accurate to his character. In nearly every single fanfic I’ve seen, there is some element of idolization that Xiao has for Venti, or for the sake of reference, Barbatos. He tends to think himself beneath Barbatos and/or indebted to him, whether that be because he’s an archon, because he saved him, or simply because of Xiao’s tendency to dehumanize(yes i see the irony in that word usage) himself.  This by itself isn’t an issue but its often how this trait of his is treated.

Imma just list a few ways I’ve seen this be handled within Xiaoven fics. - It isn’t handled, it’s just there and accepted as a part of who he is in the story - It isn’t handled but his trait is treated as source of humor within the story - Venti(and others) roll with it (finding humor in it, just cant change it, encouraging it, making jokes about it, etc.) - Venti takes advantage of it(whether accidentally or purposely) - it’s actually addressed(by Venti or someone else or the narration- can go a number of ways, but just- even a brief reference to the fact that its not a good mindset fits in here) - savior!Venti(Where venti disagrees with it but the way it’s written gives off “god among mortals” vibes- like he’s just being humble and truly is above him in reality) - its the focus of the story  - not directly addressed but shown to be destructive.  - they chose not to not include this in the story’s characterization of Xiao(just saying that this is valid ahead of time) Theres others but i have a lot already.  Note that I tend to read more ‘serious-toned’(idk if that makes sense) fics so that may skew my perception

Now there’s a few that i have issues with on their own- both instances of it not being handled, Venti(and others) rolling with it, Venti takes advantage of it(purposely(and without good intent)), and savior!Venti. Xiao not only has this trait, but he is unfamiliar with what is normal in relationships or emotions as a result of isolation and inexperience. He is also either not aware of or not concerned with what is considered strictly “healthy.” Combining these makes for a rather dangerous combination and just accepting it as “oh he’s just like that, it’s who he is” or making it out to be something funny- It’s not wrong or bad by any means necessarily, and I could still possibly enjoy it to an extent depending on a series of different factors, but its- not as often.  Even in the case where I do enjoy reading it however, I would still feel uncomfortable sharing it with or recommending it to others because in the first instance it feels like normalizing a destructive and dangerous mindset, and in the second case it does the same while simultaneously making a joke of it. It’s the same deal with Venti or other characters rolling with it, but that’s probably gonna be mentioned later too. Not to say that this is a “wrong” way to handle it, that it makes the fic bad, or that authors even are normalizing anything by doing so, just that in my specific instance- not a fan. 

I’ll get to the others when i talk more about Venti, but for now: It’s the focus of the story. I think I saw like... 2? where the story was like- focused on this and why its a problem which- power to them, address those real world problems like a boss- but also i wouldn’t actively seek it out or anything- like, good job, but doing so just leaves it open neutrally for other factors to decide how good a story i think it is. 

not directly addressed but shown to be destructive. You’d think i wouldn’t like this- but frankly in fanfiction not everyone wants to address every character flaw verbally because it can through off story, narration, dialogue, and general flow to do so. This can be with an event, an action, a dialogue, a mere comment, making it actually fit into the it’s actually addressed category except that its- subtle enough to make its own category. plus i live for show not tell- in everything- its a thing. im- very much a fan of when the fics do this but the subtlety is easy to miss and its not common so- 

It’s actually adressed- doesnt have to be a lot- just mention anywhere or imply anywhere that maybe idolizing someone as a god and savior and being in a relationship with them while having little knowledge of standards, emotions, relationships, or healthy behaviors in general- maybe isnt the smartest idea in the word. (”Call me Venti, not Barbatos” by itself is not enough to fit in this category tho as a note)

-

Now lets talk about Venti...

uh.... those who have followed me for awhile will probably already know this but... I have a lot of opinions on Venti and a pretty- “niche(?)” perception of his characterization that isn’t shared by a lot of others- so I don’t actually read as much Venti fanfic in general as you might expect because I often end up disagreeing with how writers portray him, which again, in no way is their characterization wrong, but- “their perceived truth” conflicts with “my perceived truth” and by extent so does the characterization, though neither is any more correct than the other from an objective point of view, if that makes sense... but anyways now that that’s said, moving on before this becomes a philosophy lecture, as fun as that would be for me.  I’ll try to keep my “perceived truth” out of this for the first bit. 

Venti’s response to this: 

He rolls with it: this depends on the mood of the fanfiction. If they dont put a lot of stress on that trait of Xiao’s it totally fine but if the trait seems to be a major part of Xiao’s character, it seems like normalization once more. (more on this later)

he takes advantage of it purposely: if its an AU or something and Venti’s like a villain(i saw a few) then- villain venti isnt my cup of tea but i have no qualms. If they don’t portray Venti in a negative light while having him take advantage however that’s a bit uncomfortable to read for me because it feels like normalizing taking advantage of that mindset as well as the mindset itself. However, i did see a number of instances of Venti using it as leverage for like- self care- which i definitely have no qualms. Xiao: [insert probably destructive idolizing statement about being indebt] Venti: How bout you pay me back by actually sleeping for once smh or other variations are okay and depending on the vibe are actually a really fun dynamic as long as it doesnt turn into romanticizing or normalizing it, y’know?

Venti accidentally taking advantage of it.... I love angst- and in most of these theres a sense of guilt when he realizes- and i just think thats a lovely way of addressing the dangers of such a mindset for both sides. As long as it doesn’t keep repeating to the point of romanticization its totally cool to read in my eyes(not irl ofc). If Venti never realizes he accidentally took or is taking advantage it feels a bit like normalization, and if he does but just- doesn’t care thats- a rip.

savior!Venti...... i- i hate. the story giving off vibes that Xiao’s mindset is technically correct while Venti oh so humbly tells him to treat him as an equal like the wonderful and charitable person he is.... i just- no. of course thats over dramatizing it- I think the main thing that gives it this vibe is when Venti doesn’t seem either concerned, surprised, uncomfortable, or otherwise have a negative feeling towards Xiao’s mindset. Just- it makes the whole thing weird in my eyes when Venti doesnt really seem to have his own reason to oppose the mindset idk- 

-

fact time!

Venti is the god of freedom. His backstory is freeing Mondstadt from a god’s tyrannical reign. His origin is a windsprite, just another breeze bringing changes for the better. His form is a nameless boy who played an instrument and then died, thus failing at his only dream and only ever accomplishing anything because of the help of others. He slept for a thousand years after the archon war to avoid putting Mond under the rule of yet another tyrannical god. He only even became a god because Andrius chose to let him. He wouldn’t have even had that chance if the nameless bard had survived, he’d remain just another wind while his friend ascended to godhood. Venti sacrifices his own power for his people’s freedom. 

now that I’ve laid out a number of canon facts, time for opinions:

Venti has little to no desire to be seen as a god. He thrives in, comes from, and emphasizes a lack of superiority in quite nearly everything. The first Ragnvindir, who canonically turned his back on Venti after Decarabian’s fall, likely did so because one- he anticipated power would corrupt and Venti would soon become just another tyrannical god, two- he suspected Venti used the nameless bard in an attempt to rise to godhood, or three- idk insert other possibilities to acknowledge again that i could totally be wrong.

Look me in the eyes and tell me Venti wouldnt trade godhood for his friend in an instant. His godhood was only granted to him because his friend died and could easily serve to constantly remind him of what could have been and what he lost. Venti takes no enjoyment from being seen as superior and in my opinion, I feel that it could actually make him largely uncomfortable when his divinity and abilities as an archon get involved-

also self promotion for my favorite posts- check out #archon war era venti if thats interesting to you

so anyway Venti rolling with it or making jokes about it just doesn’t sit right with me.- 

-

Okay! enough talking about that mindset!

idk- i have... a few/lot of other gripes and stuff or just things that kinda throw off the vibe for me but that’s the main one plus my general personal pickiness when it come to Venti fanfics- but this has gotten long enough already- 

idk i just felt like rambling about it and i haven’t done a long post in a while so-

again, I love the ship and its actually one of my favorites- just the fanfic isnt my thing..... that doesn’t mean i don’t still love it and come up with a whole ton of brainrot and ideas on it tho lmao

#genshin impact #genshin xiao #genshin venti #xiaoven #genshin barbatos #opinions #discourse #? idk ill tag it just in case #dont mind my constant backtracking and justifying and repeated disclaimers- #i just have a crippling fear of being cancelled lol

[roseworth]

pls tell us more about fitzmom! i want to know her like you do 💛

i am SO glad u asked 🥰 strap in i wrote so much more than i thought i would

(disclaimer these are obviously all headcanons bc fitzmom has no canon personality so every hc i have for her comes from the love in my heart)

so first of all i like the name Celeste for her, i’ve heard a lot of different names for her but i use celeste (mostly because of the word “celestial” bc,,, moon lol)

some quick little things about her before i get into A Lot:

-she’s very sarcastic/snarky (like eugene 😌) but not because she’s a mean person, just bc she thinks it’s funny. she’s very confident and determined (stubborn) because if she knows what she wants, she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. this can often become a fault because she unintentionally steps on others or ignores their wishes if she thinks she’s right.

-she also wants to get along with everybody, and she’s a little rapunzel-ish in the way that if she doesnt get along with someone she’s Stresses Out and needs to make them like her

-also she’s bi. no reason other than that there’s no way i can look at her and think “straight woman”

i’m gonna put the rest of this under a cut bc it got,,, a lot longer than i expected sorry 😳 i just care very deeply about her

she wasn’t born into royalty. she grew up in the Dark Kingdom and lived there for years, but she was just a normal person for most of her life. her dad left when she was young so she was raised by her mom. when she was in her early 20s, her mom died and that was what pushed her to leave the dark kingdom for a bit. for the next few years she journeyed around the world and visited other kingdoms just to see what it was like, but the dark kingdom was always her home. she was in her late 20s when she came back to the dk

when she came back home, she expected to just settle back into a normal life, but she ended up meeting a dude that just happened to be the king. she didn’t even realize that he was the king at first bc she didnt bother paying much attention to what the royalty was up to. but one day someone says “so i saw you’ve been spending a lot of time with the king ;)” and she just says “haha what? that’s not the king that’s just ed.” and they have to tell her that he’s actually the king. when she asks why he never told her, he just said that he assumed she knew and didn’t care (and he was right, she didn’t care, but she at least would’ve liked to know 😔)

the two of them get closer. she thinks that he’s the weirdest person she’s ever met (in a good way) and he gets all flustered around her whenever she smiles. nerd.

she also cares a lot about the kingdom. it’s her home and she grew up with lots of the people in it, so she wants to protect all the citizens even before she becomes queen. she also is used to the Moonstone causing problems and wants to find a way to stop it just as much as anyone. she reads a lot about the history of the Moonstone and the different research that’s been conducted on it to see if there’s a connection she can find or a way to stop it. she doesn’t find anything, but she doesn’t like giving up.

edmund proposes to her, ofc she says yes bc she loves that nerd and wants to spend her life with him. technically there are rules against royalty marrying commoners but a) he’s the king so he does what he wants, b) she knows what she wants and won’t take no for an answer, and c) she knows almost the entire kingdom and everyone loves her so no one cares that they’re breaking one dumb rule

she tries to bond with the brotherhood and she soon finds out that they’re all just as weird as edmund and she LOVES it. she bonds with quirin and hector pretty much instantly. when she finds out quirin knows a little bit about farming (he farms as a hobby on the side. what a loser) she asks him to teach her everything bc she loves nature and likes to learn how to grow things. since she’s traveled a lot, she can connect with hector since he has random animals that he’s just kind of collected from places he’s been. he has a rhino that he just… brought home one day. she thinks that’s the coolest thing ever

but she has a bit of trouble making friends with adira since adiras really closed off and likes to keep herself distant. that doesn’t stop celeste from trying. she offers to help with adiras training. even though adira is stronger than her, she assumes she could hold her own for long enough in a sparring match. it doesn’t go well, so she tries a different tactic.

they end up comparing research on the Moonstone, and adira tells her about her Sundrop theory. they go on a little quest to see if they can find anything about the Sundrop. they don’t find anything, but after adventuring together for days, they finally feel Connected to each other. adiras never had a girl friend since most of the people she spends time with are the brotherhood. so she thinks it’s nice that she has someone that is willing to spar with her and go searching for long lost magical artifacts #justgirlythings

celeste always wanted a big family. she has so much love to give to everyone and she just always imagined having children. when she first got pregnant she was ECSTATIC. she found a way to mention it in every conversation she had, no matter who it was with

but as it got closer to her delivery date, she was starting to get scared. she didn’t want to screw it up, and she wanted her kid to feel happy and loved all the time. she felt like it was so much pressure to have this kid that she had to raise to be happy and okay and make sure that the child was ready for the world. then she started stressing out over every little choice she made as if getting the wrong crib meant the world was going to explode

edmund talked to her about it and assured her that they were in this TOGETHER and no matter what happened, they would love their child. sometimes things were out of their hands, but they would make sure that that child had all the love in the world :’) that reassured her a bit, and she tried to work on letting go of control.

but then the Moonstone started getting worse than usual. now she not only wanted to protect her kingdom, but make the best life for her kid. it started up about a month before she gave birth, and she was getting nervous about what was going to happen.

after she gave birth to a lovely little boy, she kept an eye on the Moonstone. it was only getting worse, and she didn’t want her son to have to deal with it. she tried to stay away from it but she couldn’t ignore it.

when her son is about a month old, she tries to destroy the Moonstone. it doesn’t work. it shoots up a rock and kills her.

edmund is with her in her last moments. she knows she’s about to die and she feels like she failed. she couldn’t save her kingdom or her son. she tries to apologize to her husband because she was dying and she didn’t even get to destroy the moonstone. she just wanted to keep everyone safe and she failed. edmund promises her that he will make sure everyone is safe. that makes her feel better

she tells him that she loves him. she asks him to keep their son protected and happy. then she dies in his arms.

her death impacted everyone in and out of the kingdom. people everywhere were mourning the loss of the queen of the dark kingdom.

everyone in the brotherhood became more closed off after that. after her death, quirin swore to not get any more loved ones involved in the Moonstone if he could avoid it. he knows how dangerous it is and won’t lose anyone else he cares about to it. hector acts like he doesnt care as much as he does and tries to cover up the issue with anger. he knows that she was looking for the Sundrop with adira, and he wonders if that research is what made the Moonstone angry. he decides that if moonstone=bad and sundrop=moonstone, then sundrop=bad. adira is also extremely hurt, because she barely takes her walls down to form connections with people. so then one of the only times she allows herself to get close to someone, she ends up getting hurt. so she puts her walls back up and refuses to make more close relationships out of fear that it will hurt more when she loses them.

so basically no one is dealing with their loss in a healthy way

edmund is definitely not dealing with it well. he loved her with all his heart and doesn’t know how to go on without her. he realized that his son was in danger the longer he stayed in the dark kingdom, and so were the rest of the citizens. so he literally pushes everyone away and makes them leave. he doesn’t want his son to be constantly weighed down by the threat of the Moonstone, and he wanted to keep everyone safe the way he should’ve done for her. so he sends everyone away and pretty much spends the next 25 years wallowing in guilt. he never got the chance to process the grief because everyone was sent away so abruptly. in the empty castle, at first he to her every day and over time he just naturally starts voicing all of his thoughts to fill the silence

anyways years and years later, after the series, eugene wants to learn more about his mom but no one likes talking about her (bc no one ever bothered processing their grief so they just ignore it now) so he goes through old dk files and records by himself and tries to find anything about her. he finds the pages and pages of research she did about the moonstone but can’t really find much about who she was as a person

eventually he asks adira about the research they did together to try to learn more about her. adira tells him about their time researching together, and eventually tells him about her. adira says that ever since the forest of no return, she had her suspicions that eugene was Horace just because he reminded her SO MUCH of celeste that she wondered if they were related.

eugene is happy to know that he’s so much like his mom, since he spent his entire life imagining what she was like without knowing who she was. eventually he gets his dad to talk about her, and edmund realized he felt better about it when he could tell stories about the happy parts of their life together instead of replaying her death over and over in his head

okay i think that’s all i have for now i’m sorry i wrote so much i just Love this character whose personality i completely made up

#everyone please tell me your fitzmom headcanons #i love hearing about my girl and i want to know what everyone else thinks of her #i wrote most of this at 4 am #i was planning on just writing a little bit then it got away from me #i just have a lot of feelings about her #im almost glad she didn’t get any canon development bc i’m afraid chris would ruin her 😔 #WAIT AMDHFKSKA MORE THINGS I DIDNT INCLUDE: #first of all when eugene heard his dad talking about his mom it made him think of himself and rapunzel #just because of how much edmund loved and cared about his wife #eugenes like :0 omg I ALSO love and care about my wife!!!! #but i didn’t include it bc that’s more new dream centric and i wanted this to at least mostly stay centered around fitzmom #and another thing i didn’t include #i once heard a hc that quirin and fitzmom are siblings and i love that so much #i didn’t include it bc it doesn’t fit with my Vision™️ #and also i don’t remember who originally said it and i don’t want to say it w/o credit 😔 #tangled #fitzmom #eugene

[flowerslightning]

Have you heard about PFA and MFA?

or the full name is ‘Psychological First Aid’ (PFA) and ‘Mental Health First Aid’ (MFA)

Can we relate it with Cloud Strife? As we all know, Cloud had mental illness and was struggling alone. Let’s take a quick look on this topic then and see if characters in FF7 ever give PFA/MFA to Cloud or to each other. This is going to be a looooong post although I tried to simplified it, so, yeah. Good luck reading this !

Disclaimer : I’m not a psychologist. I’m still a student and psych is not my major field. During my intern, other than we got exposed a lot about psychiatric disorders and ways to deal with them, we also got trained psychological first aid in emergency department. If it wasnt because of this quarantine, i would have finished my training in emergency field. There might be false interpretation here or there, forgive me for that and pls correct any mistake in this post

This will probably trigger LTD. Sorry, but I had to, Pls read this post with open mind. Keep in mind I like both Tifa and Aerith, i have no grudges agaisnt Barret, Vincent, Nanaki or Cid so I am not being bias with any of them. I forgot a lot of stuff in OG (I played it when I was really really small), so I will be using lots FF7R and AC references here (and a bit from OG, depends whatever I remember)

Good to go? Allow me to rant. Read it slowly and if u skip some of it, u’ll probably mislead my actual words, and u’ll be triggered af. Don’t come at me with madness if u dont read the whole post properly

What is PFA and MFA? Generally speaking, if Basic First Aid is about covering the wound to prevent further bleeding, then PFA (Psychological First Aid) and MFA (Mental Health First Aid) is like applying a bandage on ur mental to avoid u continue being distress. 

Usually, PFA is often associated with disaster event or terrorism, where large number of people got affected. Meanwhile, MFA focus in one person who is developing mental health prob or already in mental crisis due to certain traumas, such as vehicle accident, house burned and etc

 Pls note that, certain people NEED MFA while the others may NOT NEED it. It is important to respect their needs/wants. Some victims may refuse verbally but they ACTUALLY NEED it (CLOUD STRIFE) and maybe some victims look like they dont need it, but they want it, and its super fine to give it

PFA/MFA not only done by the professionals and it is not a professional counselling, although necessarily training is needed if u want to approach deeper in this field. PFA/MFA is also not a psychological ‘debriefing’ - in which MFA/PFA doesnt need to involve a detailed discussion of the trauma event with the victim, but instead, it is an alternative way to psychological debriefing that helps for long-term recovery. (unless if ure a pscyhiatrist, then u have to forget about MFA and ask detailed questions regarding the events to help the patient to recover)

MFA and PFA both almost the same, but I will mention more about MFA here.

MFA (Mental Health First Aid) is not just about comforting “Oh, are u alright. I’m sorry for what u’ve been through”, but it is also about assessing their needs and concerns, protecting them from harm, provide practical support and support them feeling able to help themselves and others.

The main key for these two term is RESPECT - respect victim’s dignity, respect both parties safety and respect victim’s rights to make decision. Even without the PFA, we should respect these three in whatever circumstance we are in. 

A lot of us honestly were born with natural skill of MFA bcause of our own empathy, instinct or experiences and some got trained professionally. Some of them already had MFA due to high common senses they have.  

Some of the Do’s and Dont’s when giving MFA include;

Do’s : 1. Be trustworthy | 2. Respect their decision | 3. Be aware of and set aside ur bias | 4. Make it clear to them u are available for help even they push u away | 5. Respect their privacy and personal space | 6. Do remain calm and soft when the person in distress | 7. Listen and don’t interrupt their talking | 8. Help in terms of basic needs | 9. Create connection the person with others | 10. Give hope to them | 11. Provide private place to talk about the event | 12. Respect their strenght | 13. Advice small necessary matters or give simple words of encouragement | 14. Acknowledge positive features of what victims have done

Dont’s : 1. Rush in whatever the thing theyre doing with u | 2. Be dismissive | 3. Make promises u know can’t keep | 3. Ask anything in return for helping them | 4. Exaggerate ur skills | 5. Force help on people, being pushy | 6. Pressure them to tell their story | 7. Judge that person | 8. Put the person in risk of harm as result of ur actions | 8. Force them to accept ur idea/Listening to ur rant | 9. Talk rough | 10. Being bias with the people | 11. Touching that person too much | 12. Talk with the person in negative terms | 13. Abandon the person’s feeling

To simplify, there are 3 ways for MFA to begin, and I will only talk about one of them, the one that is the hardest to do, that is when u notice someone looks distressed and ure concern about them, and leading u to approach them first without them noticing ur concern. [Am I putting the right words here?]

In Cloud’s case, who do u think the first noticed Cloud behaved oddly and went to help him first ? - yeah Tifa. U probably would say “OFC she went to help him, she met him first at the train station. That guy looked sick af, who wouldnt ask if he was alright. If Aerith/Yuffie/Jessie met him first, they would do the same”. Okay guys, that was not my point. 

Let’s focus one by one characters and see what Do’s and Dont’s MFA (Mental Health First Aid) they’ve done to Cloud and other charas. Keep in mind, none of them know what Cloud had gone through, but Cloud had showed some obvious sign he was unwell and only a few of them noticed that and took action for it. 

The symbol [X] means the Dont’s in MFA and ( ✔) means the Do’s in MFA.

Biggs Jessie Wedge -

I know there’s a thing about man helping man’s psychology and Jessie being flirty with a guy.They [X] thought Cloud was like how they saw Cloud. and they considered it as normal. They didnt see Cloud under distress so they dont have the need to concern his mental status. The good thing about them was, the three of them (✔) respect Cloud’s strenght, giving Cloud the confident to be in action. But, Jessie [X] had zero respect on Cloud’s personal space

I wanna highlight about Biggs. Biggs had an attitude of overthinking stuff, but it wasnt so bad that would cause him harm, he just cared too much about his friends. So I believe Biggs was the type that would notice immediately when his friend being strange and would give MFA (Mental Health First Aid) with his own instinct even without the person asking it.

During the Sector 7 Plate attack, where Biggs was severely injured, when Cloud said he was not a fan of kids and Biggs said Cloud had so much in common (in common of what? Cloud with the kids or Cloud with him?), Cloud gave him ‘a sad look’ and Biggs reached out his hand to Cloud’s head. Biggs (✔) remain calm and soft when dealing with Cloud’s feeling (who faced traumatic event but Biggs didnt know about it) on that moment despite his current physical status. And also he (✔) wished goodluck to Cloud, leading to prevention distress on Cloud

Marle -

Marle [X] judged Cloud for someone who had no skills, but she entrusted Cloud to take care of Tifa’s well being. Not knowing who Cloud was, Marle noticed Cloud looked glum, she (✔) offered her ear for Cloud to rant and knew right away he was not having enough sleep, then (✔) advising him to sleep more . Lol, she was [X] biased with Cloud and Tifa. Not her fault, she only knew Tifa’s story, not Cloud’s. After the Sector 7 plate fall, we saw her being the most active member to help with the remaining citizens there. Marle without a doubt had given the citizens there PFA (Psychological First Aid) , by helping them with their (✔) basic needs, (✔) create connections, (✔) put away bias, (✔) remain calm and soft. 

Barret Wallace -

Barret was the same like Biggs Jessie Wedge. I’m sure Barret thought Cloud was just fine. Barret saw Cloud as a mercenary with stinky attitude,[X] judging him like that causing Barret to gave him the same attitude too. But overall, he (✔) respected Cloud’s strength a lot

However, after the Sector 7 plate fall, Tifa and Barret were the one that hurt (mentally) the most, Tifa as usual locking her emotions, there we could see how Barret comforting Tifa by (✔) giving words of encouragement and proceed on (✔) hugging her to show his empathy. Barret also (✔) remain calm and soft spoken when talking to the survival victims of Sector 7 citizens. He also (✔) acknowledged what the citizens had done to survive

Vincent Valentine - 

Don’t be surprise Vincent was listed here. This guy here was like another version of Cloud but more mature. In addiction, they both kinda share the same pain. So, I personally think Vincent understands Cloud pretty well. In AC, where Cloud was mentally ill, Vincent saved Cloud from Kadaj and brothers and (✔) took him to safer place. That was a common thing to do. But let’s go deeper, Cloud never told him about himself, but Vincent already  (✔) aware of Cloud’s trouble with the geostigma stuff and Cloud’s current mental status. Vincent, (✔) calm and soft like always (✔) didnt hesitate to asked if all of these were just about ‘fighting’ and it made Cloud to ‘re-think’ further about his problem. He (✔) didnt pressure Cloud here, instead he was (✔) helping Cloud to understand the condition he was facing, and this lead Cloud to avoid distress.

Aerith Gainsborough -

I know Aerith was special. She was an important character and devs created her to be ‘loved’ by the fans so that her death would be tragic. Aerith did almost all the things that shouldnt be done when giving MFA to mentally ill person. Some of u may say “Duh, Aerith didnt know anything about Cloud thus she had no intentions of giving him MFA”. Yup, ure right. Aerith didnt know about Cloud’s mental status but so as all the other characters in the series. 

Aerith was [X] being pushy with Cloud, in lots of ways, from making him as a bodyguard for free to forcing him to wear a dress. She [X] forced Cloud to accept her idea about meeting Andrea, dance and gown. She also [X] forced Cloud to help picking the flowers. Aerith [X] didn’t let Cloud to have his own decision [X] neither giving him a chance to talk,  and [X] abandon his feelings (cough..uhm, Aerith resolution). She also had [X] no respect on Cloud’s personal space and [X] too much touching and leaning to him. Aerith also [X] put herself in danger and that worried Cloud.  She [X] looked down on Cloud in someways too

However, at the Sector 5 slum, where the hooded man appeared, Aerith noticed Cloud was having trouble with himself, she (✔) encouraged Cloud to keep himself together. Also, throughout the entire game, Aerith always remind the team to (✔) have hope in everything. Her positive vibrant attitude was what (✔) made everyone able to believe in themselves. She also (✔) ensure Marlene’s safety and protected her. She was able to (✔) remain soft and calm when approaching Marlene. Remember Betty? Aerith took her time to helped her out and she even (✔) respected the little girl’s strength, (✔)slow and steady when saving her and (✔)soft spoken

Tifa Lockhart -

Tifa met Cloud at the train station, saw him being ‘not-so-fine’ state despite Cloud claiming he was completely okay. Tifa didn’t know what Cloud had gone through and  she (✔) didn’t pressure him to talk about it. She even helped him to (✔) find a place to sleep even when Cloud never asked for it. Tifa unconsciously was the first person to give Cloud MFA without knowing what Cloud had faced previously. And Cloud, on that moment, he really needed a help. Tifa also (✔) stated that if Cloud need anything, she would help him with it

Tifa (✔) remain calm everytime Cloud had sudden headache, she didn’t leave him alone and (✔) didnt put any pressure on him by asking question. During the (✔) Alone At Last, they had privacy Tifa asked about what happened after he left Nibelheim. She (✔) listened and didnt interrupt him, (✔) neither pushing him to talk more. Moreover, Tifa (✔) put a distance with Cloud, dunno if she was the one who was being uncomfortable or she actually (✔) respect Cloud’s personal space and privacy. Tifa (✔) didn’t force him to stay at Midgar, she asked him and was glad Cloud would stay for a while. Tifa was no doubt (✔) respect all Cloud’s decisions too. Also, don’t forget, Tifa also helped Cloud to help (✔) make ‘close connection’ with the Avalanche members and people in Sector 7 slums. She also (✔) didn’t do much touching with Cloud (Well, I mean, she didnt touch him in clingy way)

In AC, Tifa (✔) encouraged Cloud to have hope for Geostigma and the family

Tifa did [X] put herself in danger by becoming Corneos bride participant and that gave Cloud trouble (but Tifa ensured him she would be fine on her own previously) And btw, in OG, I read about the fans questioning why Tifa [X] didnt tell Cloud the truth. I would like to argue this matter. TIFA IS A CHARACTER WITH REAL HUMAN FLAWS, she too had her own traumatic event and was not really sure of herself on what to do. However, considering what Tifa had done for him, Tifa had helped with Cloud’s psychology the most.

I know Cloud was putting up a font, and that made him to have condescending attitude, and people couldnt see what Cloud was hiding behind the the bravery face. However, all of us as fans acknowledged the pain Cloud was suffering in the entire FF7 story. Some of the characters like Tifa, Marle, Vincent, Biggs noticed it and they took actions for it, while others, I do personally thing, they were hurting the Real Cloud’s mentality more. 

Long story short, Tifa was the one who gave mental health support the most to Cloud, followed by Vincent (AC), Biggs and Marle. Aerith did the worst with Real Cloud's mentality + she then died, mking Cloud be more miserable,

However, Aerith actually had the best way to give MFA/PFA to children, but maybe the worst to Cloud. While Tifa gave the best MFA to Cloud which helped him to get himself together through out the entire time

Alright thats the end of my talk. Thank you for being with meee

#final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii #cloud strife #character analysis #final fantasy theory #advent children

[abosideblog]

OKAY SO- im in the process of getting back into the pjo fandom so i figured i would make a lil headcanons post for some of the characters because why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(quick disclaimer: ive only read the original PJO series and the HoO books- i havent read the magnus chase or the ToA books yet, and its been a while since i last read all the books i have in their entirety so all the characters will be based on how they are in the PJO + HoO books and there may be some inaccuracies here n there)

Annabeth- definitely an alpha. a leader-type too. being the daughter of athena, she’s very wise + rational, and excellent at making plans which imo are very good traits to have if youre the head alpha of a pack or are mated to the leader of a pack. shes also very mature for her age- which, admittedly is mostly due to circumstance rather than her naturally being like that- but i feel like as a child of athena, maturity would come more naturally to her to some extent

Percy- either a beta or an omega. hes not very submissive and hes an excellent fighter + leader which would make you *think* hes an alpha but hes just got those omega vibes yknow?? idk how to explain it properly sorry 😭

Grover- i figured since hes a satyr and not a human the whole a/b/o thing wouldnt really apply to him?? but if it did he’d be a beta!! betas serve as a good balance/midpoint between alphas and omegas, so if i end up headcanoning percy as an omega (which im very inclined to do) grover would serve as a good balance between percy + annabeth like he did in the books :-)

Piper- either an alpha or omega, i havent decided yet. im leaning more towards alpha since from what i remember of HoO she was pretty aggressive and rebellious, at least by aphrodite kid standards, and doesnt really care for her looks much, which is again measured by aphrodite kid standards. however the fact that pipers more tomboyish-ness is mostly in comparison to the non-tomboyish-ness of the other aphrodite kids leaves lots of room in my mind for her to be interpreted as a masculine/tomboy type omega buuut she also has that little hint of Alpha Vibe in a way i cant explain so i’ll have to reread the HoO books and see if i can try to explain myself better,,,

Jason- tbh i read him as a beta. hes a leader type like percy, but he has zero qualms in passing the helm onto someone older and/or more experienced and overall just better suited for a leadership position, which in my mind isnt really an alpha or omega trait?? like omegas tend to higly value agency + independence + basically being able to control your own situation is since (in meta, but also in universe) it isnt really something thats afforded to them, so many arent willing to step down so quickly. and while the want/need to have control/agency over youself and your situations isnt as prnounced in alphas, it is smth thats still there and even the most cooperative of alphas may still need some degree of convincing to hand the reigns over to someone else so being able to let go of a leadership position as easily as jason is able to (from what i remember) is a very beta trait imo

Leo- a very cheeky omega. tbh i think his personality type lends itself more to being an omega since i remember him being a lil jokester, a lil flirt yknow, like a charmer!! and i feel like those types of traits would be pretty common in omegas for various reasons. hes also super short (around 5’6”/170cm which tbh isnt all that short but you get what i mean) and its my personal headcanon that omegas- particularly male ones- fall mostly in the 5’5”-5’7” height range (with exceptions ofc)

#omegaverse #a/b/o headcanons #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #omegaverse headcanon #alpha/beta/omega #alpha/beta/omega verse #alpha/beta/omega au #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson heroes of olympus #percy jackson headcanons #this ended up being a really long post sorry 😭

[ayyponine]

for english i had five diff classes and one of them only got one lesson. they clapped after? pure lil fucks bye see you again never tfw you get the hang of the special smartboard functions mmm look at me highlighting shit with the pen tool MMM also when afterwards you get yr feedback but instead of straight up telling you they go “how do you think it went?” and you nail what they were gonna say B) fininshing up JUSt as the bell rings MMM using cool videos fr yr class on body language B))) turns out kids still like mr Bean also with my vid from the shaun of the dead (when he’s on the phone and the body language doesnt match the verbal info)... it was titled “eloooo its me” in youtube and when i asked the kids like do yall remember whos calling him one of em just went ADELE. quality banter did i mention that day i low key roasted a kid. girl was giving me attitude and turning to the person behind her to talk and i confused her with a girl with the same hair and attitude from my other class so i called her the wrong name and when she was like ughh! i just said im teaching 8 classes yall... maybe if i’d seen your face a bit more i wouldve gotten it right can you tell that this happened during my second week aka the week i gave zero fucks. this was my last lesson with that class so i figured like girl...big deal if i get yr name wrong, you’ll never have to see me again after. deal with it the second week was a lot of fun in general i think bc being stern with the kids is a big hurdle and i was given the advice to work on that. so the second week i was just like aight. no doormat behaviour imma fckn go for this shit hard. and i did. and i was a boss ok theres smth extremely satisfying abt writing on the chalk board and getting chalk on yr hands? idek i got to write on a whiteboard as well  btw. thats right i wrote on all the boards. turns out my chalk writing is a bit loopy, while marker on whiteboard is big and pointier. the smart board was a bit of a mess bc the calibration was slightly off but the mentor insisted i use it so ah well tfw yr kids can spell utility room no problem (possibly bc you paid some special attention to that in class) but then write celler. ettic. menchon. going to work in a fancy dress shirt and black trousers but also.... converse sneakers and socks with lil hearts on em. im an adult tfw theyre working on a test and the classroom is dead silent. with you on a step in the front overlooking the scene. it’s a powerful feeling ngl just because it’s finally fucking quiet it’s kinda weird fuckin with their heads just a lil bc a volunteer reads out the correct answer in present simple  “you look like an angel” and instead of saying good, next please youre just like oh :>> why thank you pulling the exact same joke when you do that exercise in the next class because you’re a total dad and love the confusion and surprise on their lil faces and ofc this interaction i had with some of my sixteen yr olds (in dutch, soz) “mevrouw, weet ge wat hij zegt over u?” “oei, wil ik het wel weten.” “hij zegt met haar wil ik eens iets gaan eten” “ha, alee dan. het probleem is wel, ik ga alleen eten, op date met mensen wanneer ze 20, 22 jaar oud zijn.” “alee mevrouw! wilt gij op hem wachten” “awel, da’s goed. als ik tegen dan nog niet van ‘t straat ben weet je mij te vinden.” “......mevrouw woont gij op straat!?” fukn classic (btw disclaimer no i dont plan on ever having dinner with him. im certain by that time we’ll both have forgotten god bless) also i think i already mentioned the kid i took aside to talk with? i hope he’s okay man i got a soft spot for kids like that who are actually super smart and got a lot to contribute to class in their own way but then get in trouble with teachers bc of their behaviour and get sort of pigeonholed for it :// i low key want to shelter them frm all harm bc in my experience?? theyre good kids. maybe the best out of all of em. also my sixteen yr olds asked me if i was part taiwanese?? i always get super amused when people guess weird races fr my white ass ive heard stuff like bulgaria or pakistan but theyve never gone this far east so that was intriguing

[avasilvugh]

hello i have a question: how do the superbabies get their names??

hello!!!  well i am glad u asked bc i went through a handful of names for the kiddos before settling on finn, maia, and stella.  here’s a lil background info so u understand how i picked the names, then i’ll get into how kara and lena picked the kiddos names

so In General (i say this as a disclaimer bc i am not a huge comics person, nor have i conducted extensive research on kryptonian culture/naming, and all my info came from a couple days trying to glean what i could from reddit/wiki/etc) male kryptonian names are monosyllabic, ending with a consonant.  female names seems to often, though not always, end with an ah sound (lara, alura, astra, kara, etc); all examples do end with vowels and seem to be exclusively polysyllabic, though all examples only go as far as three syllables at most

so that’s the background info, here’s the actual headcanon

so they start thinking abt names p late into lena’s pregnancy??  not Late late, more second trimester but just like just sort of brainstorming bc quite frankly, neither of them rlly expected for it to take, for them to make it out of the first trimester without something going wrong.  like??  they both hoped, but were still prepared for the worst and then it doesnt happen and then they’re like......oh my god we need a nAME

so kara never explicitly says it, but lena’s done her research, come to some conclusions abt kryptonian naming conventions and she notices that kara’s suggestions are basically falling well within these conventions, and she like......she doesnt know how to bring it up, not sure if she even should, but she starts narrowing her names to ones that follow kryptonian conventions

they sort of accidentally start gravitating towards like......celestial names??  like their list for girls names are populated almost solely with ~space~ names and all the boy names with similar meanings are things like atlas, things that no one wants to saddle an infant with

and then lena’s like eight and a half months pregnant and constantly uncomfortable and crying at every other thing and they’re watching the force awakens and kara’s almost dozing, and finn walks on and that giant fucking nerd like gasps and kara bolts upright and is like halfway to packing the car up to drive to the hospital bc, u know, when ur wife is nearly full term and gasps rlly loudly, the first general thought is LABOR???  but lena’s heartbeat is normal and she’s doesnt look like she’s in pain so kara’s kind of like ??  babe you’re nearly nine months pregnant, please do not make that noise unless its Time, i’m begging you, i am tired

but lena’s just staring at the tv, open mouthed, gaping bc holy shit she knows what they’re going to name their son, should they have a son

kara what about finn

what

we can name him finn

finn?  like star wars?

finn like star wars

and kara sits for a minute, just looking at lena, her mind still struggling to like process that lena isnt in labor, she should probably put the go-bag down but then she’s grinning bc her wife is an Actual nerd and finn is a good name, a solid name, something that can work for a little boy and for a grown man and kara goes finn luthor, i like it

and lena gets this sort of fragile look in her eyes bc she appreciates the gesture??  she does, and she loves kara’s insistence that she should be able to reclaim the name but she doesnt want it, never felt welcome to it and she sure as hell doesnt feel like saddling her child with it so she shakes her head a little and says very firmly finn danvers and that is finn danvers’s origin story

maia and stella are easier??  u remember that list of names they had compiled when pregnant with finn, well it’s 90% girl names like they were truly fucked if maia had been a boy but, well, it worked out.  maia’s the name of a star in the taurus constellation and it fits kryptonian naming conventions and honestly??  it just sounds nice, sounds right.  maia danvers.  it’s short and easy to spell and sounds good with finn, sounds like a solid sibling name with starting with the same letter (lena was......kind of adamant abt that like.........not making that mistake @ the universe)

and stella!!  means star and also part of the name of the baby bat from stellaluna, which was.........maybe one of the first books kara read on earth and like...........got rlly attached to...............

dont look up the plot of stellaluna and think abt sad and scared little kryptonian orphan kara zor-el reading it and imagining her mom finding her, telling her it was all in the past, taking her back to krypton, taking her home

ANYWAY stella also fit kryptonian naming conventions and sounded nice with maia and finn and like idk the best way to describe it but it just felt right??  like there kara and lena were, sitting in their dimly lit room and kind of staring at this little baby in the bassinet by their bed, this little thing that’s so quickly claimed her own piece of their hearts and they’ve been going back and forth abt names for a little bit, since they got her down for the night and kara breaks out her phone bc ofc she kept the list of names in her notes and she kind of scans them and then whispers what about stella and lena repeats stella and they look at each other and they just know, u know??

do the kids demand the story of their names a lot??  yeah tbh.  stella in particular and when she’s small she latches onto stellaluna like kara did, usually asks kara to read it to her at least twice before bed.  when she gets older it sort of hits her, the like significance??  like how many times has she dreamed of the same thing--not necessarily like her birth mom appearing and being like lol it was all a bad dream but more??  someone finding her and being like hey!  ur not completely different, ur just different from them!  but ur completely normal for us!

i like how this went from p light to like haha have some angst disguised as fluff

#supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #lena luthor #superbabies #anonymous #human interaction

[anything-advice-blog]

Submission - URGENT

URGENT

sorry i tried to find the key word and read faq and disclaimer multiple times but cant find a thing (if you still use it) but i found out my best friend attemped suicide today but apparently chickened out of it in the last minute and now hes in hospital. its 2 am and its been over a hour since i found out but im still shaking and crying and not sure if i can properly stand or walk.

1. what if he had done it / succeeded (im not sure what happened) idk what i would have done and what if he tries again and this time it actually happens, it would be so horrible and i dont know i dont fucking know

2. i also dont know what to say to him, he always blames himself for every single thing, “im so glad you didnt do it” -> he’d think he did something wrong (which he of course did but i understand and dont blame him im just so happy hes still alive) and then never tell me about anything again, “please dont hurt yourself again” -> he’d think he did something even more wrong. also he never tells me about how hes feeling bc he doesnt want anyone to worry about him, like when i found out about today it was bc he told me “lol theyre gonna drug test me loll”.. but it works the opposite bc now i never know when hes hurting himself or feeling down so i have to be worried 24/7.

3. this is all just so terrible and all i can imagine is him in ambulance or calling the emergency number or lying in hospital bed and i dont even know what he has done because HE DOESNT TELL ME ANYTHING. and i would like to say he doesnt deserve this and ofc hes my best friend and i just want to see him happy and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa but hes actually been pretty rude to me recently and ive been so angry at him and this is all just too much bc im still mad af at him but at the same time very WORRIED.

4. im feeling so guilty bc i was at a party today and had really fun and he was TRYING TO KILL HIMSELF. also im really bad at listening and always trying to say something positive but i know that theres nothing positive about his life situation and i kinda understand why he did this.

and everythings just a mess and i dont know what to do and say and what if he does it again and now its nearly 3 am and i should be up at 8.30 but idk if i can go to school but i really should and the school portraits are taken tomorrow morning and im gonna look like a corpse

probably the worst thing is how hes not wanting any help or anyone to worry and all his messages are just “lol tried to kill myself but im still here wasting oxygen ahahah”-style (the 3 short messages he has sent about this). its actually so big and serious thing but i would probably act the same. i WANT to worry about him, hes so important to me i dont know i dont know i dont know i dont know

*TRIGGER WARNING - SUICIDE**

Hey love,

I personally want to apologise for getting to this ask so late, and I sincerely hope that you and your friend are okay. Firstly, discovering that your friend has attempted suicide can be such a scary and daunting experience, and I want to make sure that you are okay. This can be a lot to deal with, and a lot to take in, and it’s extremely important that you are looking after your own health. Please do not hesitate to talk to a professional or a trusted adult/friend about how you feel, because if your friend is in danger of harming himself, it is not solely your responsibility to look after him. 

As for the first part of your ask, it would be absolutely devastating if he had succeeded, and that would be tremendously hard to deal with. However, just try to think positively, as he didn’t succeed, and he is still here, living and breathing - even if he doesn’t want to be. This gives everyone time to find the best help available before it happens again. 

People who are experiencing these feelings often blame themselves, and unfortunately there’s nothing that you can do to turn that around. When saying things such as “I’m glad you didn’t do it,” perhaps try and think of a different way to phrase how you say it to them. For example, rather than saying “please don’t hurt yourself again,” tell him how proud you are that he hasn’t been hurting himself. That will ensure that doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, however that’s purely just an example.

Of course he doesn’t deserve this - no one does. If he is being rude to you - just try to understand that he is emotional, and that sometimes he isn’t thinking rationally. Obviously that is much easier said rather than done, but sometimes it cannot be helped. 

In no way should you feel guilty for doing something that you genuinely want to do, such as going out to a party, for a fear that something will happen to him. You cannot stop your life in order to watch over someone 24/7, as this will make your mental health deteriorate, and it’s not your responsibility at all. However, it is still okay to be worried, because that’s what friends do, and it’s completely normal. 

Have you tried talking to his parents, or someone close to him that could potentially help in getting him to seek professional help? It’s so important in this situation that he gains the best help he can in order to prevent any suicide attempts, and to overall better his mental health. 

I really hope that you and your friend are okay, and I’m going to list some online counselling services below that either of you can easily access to ensure that you can get some professional help when and if you need it.

Headspace

Beyondblue

SANE

Lifeline

Lizzie x

#aab #anythingadviceblog #lizzie #urgent #tw suicide #suicide #tw #trigger warning #best friend #help #advice #mental health #submission