#sure he has crippling self-hatred but THAT'S NOT HIS FAULT | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gpsoftun · 3 years

Text

And now, for a rant years in the making....

The longest thing I've ever written began because X-Men First Class was such a well-acted breath of fresh air. The dynamic between Charles, Raven, and Erik really captivated and inspired me. Enough to create an ongoing series that has had more good years than bad.

Unfortunately, starting with Days of Future Past, FC's legacy was sacrificed to the creatively bankrupt egos of the very production team that ruined the X-Men film series in the first place. This, along with the misandry/racism disguised as empowerment/diversity plaguing modern media, torpedoed what could have been an amazing series. James McAvoy pulled off the impossible by cementing himself as an iconic Charles Xavier on par with Patrick Stewart. After years of Ian McKellen's hammy one-dimensional villainy, the God's gift to acting that is Michael Fassbender emerged as the definitive Erik Lehnsherr. In Jennifer Lawrence's casting as Raven, the producers took an asinine, fanfic-esque concept like making Mystique Charles' adopted little sister and pulled it off so unbelievably beautifully. Despite their limited screentime, Alex, Hank, and Sean displayed more personality and likeability than any depiction of Jean and Storm across multiple films. However, moronic Brian Singer and Simon Kinberg could not wait to destroy all of FC's good will for their own agendas.

James McAvoy portrayed Charles as spirited and slightly mischievous yet highly intelligent, altruistic, nurturing, and self-sacrificing. Then the sequels tried in forced desperation to paint him as an overbearing, elitist misogynist and the one responsible for Raven and Jean's destructive abuse of power. Even though all he did was give them a home, make difficult choices in order to protect them and others, and brought both of them onto his team due to his personal relationships and trust in them. Because women are so strong and capable except when it comes to taking responsibility for their horrible choices. No, human flaws are strictly of the Y chromosome. Charles has been abandoned his entire life, received no real support, had his body and mind mangled because of his 'best friend', yet puts everyone before himself and always forgives the undeserving. Still, the producers and equally idiotic fandom reduces him to a spoiled white male with no concept of pain or hardship.

Through extensive research and dedication, Michael Fassbender put more into portraying Erik than, quite possibly, any actor taking on a comic book role. Erik is so worldly intelligent, handsome, sauve, and masculine to alpha levels, but with a pained vulnerability about him. FC is the ONLY film to paint him in this light. According to the sequels, Erik completely abandoned the friend/brother he crippled, couldn't hold his own team together for even a year, got captured by regular humans- the strategic nazi hunter got captured by REGULAR humans for ten years, betrayed his friends who freed him at the first opportunity, took no responsibility for the unforgivable things he did to Charles, abandoned his pregnant lover, almost ruined the lives of mutants everywhere by attempting a terrorist attack on TV, then ran off with his tail between his legs once thwarted. And that was only DoFP. In the next movies, he gave up his mutant identity completely, married a regular woman two seconds after declaring war on regular humans, was a pitiful excuse for a father who couldn't train his ONE mutant child to control her powers, got his family killed by his own past actions, then went on a murder spree with a lunatic that resulted in Charles' torture, Alex's death, and the destruction of the school- with the students being saved only by Peter's coincidental presence. I'm not even going to talk about that stupid phoenix movie. My blood pressure is already to the ceiling. No wonder Michael Fassbender grew to hate his character.

Speaking of hating their own character, even Jennifer Lawrence doesn't like how the warm, familial relationship between Raven and Charles deteriorated into something so cold and bitter. Raven abandoning her devoted brother is not only never properly addressed but the sequels want to pretend like it's Charles' fault they're estranged. Raven spends their every scene being a hostile, rude ingrate towards him right up until she's killed by that monotone wet rag they call Jean. Charles is willing to sacrifice his own life multiple times for Raven but she shows more regard for her attempted murderer Erik. So, I suppose the feminist message is that a protective, peace seeking, reasonable man is too controlling and toxic but a violent, unhinged, homicidal man is worthy to be praised. That phoenix movie sure thought so, considering they completely demolished Hank McCoy.

These movies also have no care or concern for life itself. The hellfire club slaughtered an entire facility full of people and killed Darwin yet Erik and Raven jumped to join them. Then, we're supposed to care that those monsters are dead by DoFP. Meanwhile, Sean and Alex's deaths are glossed over but Raven's is supposed to be tragic and meaningful.

That brings up yet another problem with this cursed series. Mutation is supposed to be an allegory for various prosecuted groups. The producers really wanted the live action mutants to be lgbt stand-ins. I can't even begin with how insulting that is. So, Magneto's the face of the gays, huh? Meaning if other people do anything but pledge absolute loyalty to that lifestyle, gays will react with violence and destruction, willing to kill anyone- even their own-, who gets in their way. Also, those who believe the lgbt lifestyle will lead to inevitable chaos are proven right by X-Men execs. Mutants have caused massacres of government officials, killed their own family members during uncontrolled rages, and nearly doomed the planet too many times to count. This is what gays relate to? This?! This infantilized depiction as sadistic megalomaniacs?!

Overall, FC- as engaging as it was- is a mere anomaly in the grand scheme of the X-Movies. A dour, joyless, soulless catastrophe of unforgivable discontinuity, underdeveloped characters, multiple horrid actors, outrageous missed opportunities, and nonexistence ethics with a transparent, hypocritical agenda.

I started my fic in 2011 as a way of addressing the growing racial upheaval going on in the US at the time. Ten years later and things are infinitely worse than anything I could have predicted back then. There are no intelligent conversations to be had nor heroes to look up to. The entire entertainment industry has become a battleground for the war of identity politics. Not even just fandoms arguing amongst themselves but also Hollywood creators taking the time to be aggressively insulting and dismissive of their own fans. The flames of hatred are being fanned and everyone seems so blind to it.

80 notes · View notes

vivithefolle · 3 years

Note

I was always confused by Hermiones behavior towards Ron in OOTP. Was she trying to hide her feelings? because she didn't really gave him any signs. Why she was so nasty at him with the teaspoon thing. Was she trying to make him jealous with the letters? What did or didn't she understand from Ron giving her the perfume. Is all this just JKR being stupid because she don't want them together before the very end. Sry for all these questions but I am rly confused can you plz help Vivi?

Once again, I’ll copy one of my Quora essays!

it’s a stereotype to say that girls resort to underhanded tactics when it comes to dating, or like to “test” their partner’s love… but it’s a stereotype for a reason: there are teenage girls who resort to those tactics.

The archetype of the Tsundere exists as an exaggeration of the traits some teenage girls demonstrate when they find themselves in a position of vulnerability such as “having a crush on someone”.

For someone as prideful as Hermione is, having a crush on someone is extremely threatening.

Hermione prides herself in her logic and intelligence. The validation she receives from getting good grades is something she needs, because she’s very insecure deep down. She thinks all she has to offer is her intelligence, and as she goes from a little girl to a young woman, this causes her grief because she doesn’t want to be just “intelligent”. As her body develops and changes, she finds that being the smartest one in the room isn’t enough anymore - she still loves being the smartest in the room, but she wants more than just that, she wants validation for other things. That’s why she was extremely hurt when Ron tactlessly (and Rowling-ly) remarks “you’re a girl” - she wants to be seen as a girl, as a woman, as more than a walking brain. She wants validation that she is a girl, and beautiful, and sexy, and capable of making heads spin. She needs “sexual” validation, for lack of a better term.

Of course she doesn’t really realize those feelings. All she knows is that it hurts when Ron seems to consider her “one of the guys”, or looks at girls that aren’t her. She likes it when he compliments her, but she’s also angry at him because he only ever seems to compliment her intelligence and damn it, she wants him to compliment something else! She wants him to look at her, REALLY look at her! Look at her like he looks at the pretty girls!

Little does she know that Ron does look at her, but he probably thinks he’s a pervert for doing so. Because - because she’s Hermione! She’s not like other girls, she’s not - she’s not the kind of girl you ogle! She’s the kind of girl you gift flowers to - roses, they’re her favourite - the kind of girl you have long, meaningful talks with - not sure if they’re always meaningful, but they sure talk a lot together! - she’s the kind of girl you… the kind of girl you love, not the kind of girl you just look at…

*wistful sigh* Mutual pining, mutual admiration, slow burn, +100k words…

But truth is, many people go around saying that Hermione treating Ron harshly and treating pretty much every boy (with exceptions like Draco Malfoy) more gently is because she actually doesn’t like Ron, and likes anyone but Ron.

When the truth actually is that… Hermione is awful. No, no, seriously, when Hermione is in love, she’s terrible. She can be a nice friend but when she’s in love with you she’s horrible. Especially since she’s a teenager.

Hermione is a prime example of a Tsundere.

The cute, blushy, giggling Hermione who flirts with [insert character here] and cries delicately when she’s rejected? Pure fanfiction. Canon Hermione keeps her love aggressively hidden behind countless iron walls, only letting it peek through when she’s absolutely sure the person she likes isn’t looking.

“How was practice?” asked Hermione rather coolly half an hour later, as Harry and Ron climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room. “It was -” Harry began. “Completely lousy,” said Ron in a hollow voice, sinking into a chair beside Hermione. She looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt. - Order of the Phoenix

Rare footage of the Hermione Granger, scientific name Selfinsertus Overratedus, displaying interest in specimen of mighty fine hunk

Hermione isn’t sweet and tender and kind with the one she loves. At least, the teenage Hermione isn’t. She’s harsh, she’s disdainful and only gives out breadcrumbs of affection once in a while as part of the complicated mind game she’s playing.

You see, Hermione is never going to make the first move. You must be the one to ask her out, because she sure as hell ain’t going to do it for you.

This is due, I think, to the events of Goblet of Fire. Viktor Krum asks her out because Rowling absolutely wants Hermione to be the ugly duckling who transforms into the beautiful swan, so she brings in Cardboard Cutout With No Personality Aside From Being Famous to woo her self-insert.

Now Hermione has gotten the experience of being asked out, and being a rather socially awkward person who also hates being vulnerable - more on that later - well, now she just assumes that if someone asked her out once, then anyone who does like her can do the same.

Which is why she doesn’t realize that Ron is actually aware he loves her. There’s a big comedy of assumptions going on in Romione’s love story.

Hermione believes that Ron either 1) likes her but is oblivious to his own feelings and so she thinks she has to “give him hints” to make him realize it. Emphasized best by this exchange:

Hermione laughed. “Harry you’re worse than Ron [at understanding girls]… well, no, you’re not, “ she sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy.

“I’ve sent him so many signals and yet he doesn’t notice. Woe is me!”

2) doesn’t actually likes her, but sees her just as a good mate or worse, as another sister.

Hermione keeps flip-flopping between her two assumptions throughout the series, all because of her biggest assumption: she thinks that if Ron was interested in her, he would ask her out. Because Viktor Krum was interested in her, and he asked her out, so why wouldn’t Ron do the same? They’re both boys and she’s a girl, after all. Isn’t that how it works?

This is also why Hermione’s “““invitation”““ to the Slug Club isn’t even an invitation - really, it’s worse than Ron’s invite to the Yule Ball, at least he was actually offering her to come:

“We’re allowed to bring guests,” said Hermione, […], “and I was going to ask you to come, but […] I won’t bother.”

“I was going to ask you to come but I won’t bother.”

This is literally what she says. It’s more of a “look Ron! An invite! If you’re good maybe I’ll think about letting you have it!” than anything else.

It’s because this is Hermione’s last resort. The ultimate humiliation. She has to resort to inviting Ron when in her mind, he’s supposed to be the one asking her out. He’s the boy! He’s supposed to do it! (And this is why I laugh at all the fools who claim that Hermione is the pinnacle of feminism. Seriously, the girl is more of a misogynist than any other character in the series.)

Hermione failed to take into account that Ron’s insecurity cripples him worse than she imagines, and that he copes with it differently than she copes with her own insecurities.

And this is the part where I explain about Hermione’s hatred of being vulnerable.

You see, I can relate quite a lot to Hermione - I see a lot of me in her, and a lot of people who hurt me in the past as well.

Bullied because she was an easy target, being the know-it-all and local teacher’s pet? Yep. Bullied for her appearance (I got braces when I was 8 and have been wearing glasses since I was a toddler, she had her bushy hair and buck teeth)? Can relate. Cried easily? Super check. Rule enforcer when the teachers weren’t around? Mega check.

And naturally, when you’re such a water fountain as I was, there’s nothing more humiliating than ending up crying in front of your bullies. You quickly learn that it will bring you nothing but more bullying. More humiliation. More vulnerability.

Hence why you start despising any form of vulnerability you find in yourself.

Obviously, being in love? That’s one of the most terrible things you can find yourself in when you’re afraid of being vulnerable. Because, oh god, your feelings are completely insane around the person. They make or ruin your day. You keep wanting to show them how cool / great / impressive you are, and you try desperately to mask all your little faults so they will hopefully return your feelings.

Given that Hermione is already not the most socially-aware battering ram in the knife drawer, she acts especially nasty to Ron, because she’s overcompensating for the vulnerability he makes her feel. And she most likely isn’t even aware of it! Forget Fanfic Hermione cringing as she realizes how mean she sounds, welcome Canon Hermione who just doubles down on a pointless argument just to drive home how totally in control she is and how Ron has absolutely zero effect on her, no siree!

In short: Hermione overthinks. She overthinks everything. She’s overthinking every of Ron’s actions, she’s assuming he’s either out to get her because she assumes he’s perfectly aware of her crush on him and he’s just toying with her (this is the very insecure, pessimistic Hermione speaking), she’s assuming he’s completely oblivious to her feelings and so she uses the ages-old technique of the “subtle hints” to make her feelings known to him (and fails miserably because she doesn’t want to put herself out there too much in case he rejects her, which would be the ultimate humiliation and the worst possible thing to happen to her, in her teenage girl mind), and she’s assuming he’ll never like her the way she likes him, all the while being woefully oblivious to the fact that Ron does want to be with her but she keeps sending him signals that she sees him as a troublesome child rather than a potential partner.

All in all, a teenage Hermione in love is utter torture. She’s her own worst enemy, and it’s only when she decides to let go of it all - of the mind games, of the distancing, of the passive-aggressive; of the overthinking - and just takes a chance that her efforts bear fruit.

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.

(As much as I’m disillusioned with Romione, this kiss is still one of my favourite parts of the series. They mutually sweep each other off their feet for god’s sake, you wish your ship would.)

#vivi answers #ask #romione #hermione granger #ron weasley #ron weasley defense squad #ron weasley defence squad #hp fandom #hp meta #character analysis #hp analysis #romance #teenagers

103 notes · View notes

transsexualhamlet · 3 years

Text

asmr i psychoanalyze my favorite war criminal, aka calling out norman the essay

basically all of my thoughts on norman on one callout post because i care him (both manga and anime are discussed)

LINK TO RAY PSYCHOANALYSIS: https://chaoticgaymess.tumblr.com/post/646749875570196480/ray-81194-the-long-explanation

this is going to be ungodly long so here’s a keep reading, essay below the cut

((tw for suicidal ideation and self harm, brief discussion of eating disorders))

Disclaimer: no shipping is included here this is just about norman also they’re kids who call each other siblings

Thoughts: So you may be thinking, Rowan, why do you yell about the colorless war criminal so often? Well the answer lies in your honor the court hates to see a girlboss winning. Norman is a girlboss :) Yes norman is a tiny twink who can't lift a milk jug. And he is a girlboss :) Obviously I don't condone, um, eugenics and all, but that's not the point the point is that he satisfies my need for more characters like Levi motherfucking Calder from Unwind because I’m apparently an edgy 13 year old. Also all of his problems are violently things I can fix and I keep him around as a pet project because someone needs to give him a hug and slap him on the face

I diagnose him with things:

-pisces man :pensive:

-is he albino? Not literally. Is his skin so pale he would catch fire if he went outside at noon? Yes.

-autism: Yes I’m aware that calling him autistic makes him, problematic rep by perpetuating the autism unfeeling savant stereotype whatever but have you considered i’m autistic and I’m projecting also he’s L with standards? Anyway traits of AuTism he has: hyper fixation, canonically breaks and fixes things over and over because like ofc he does, doesn’t understand Emotion, hyperaware of body language at the same time as it all somehow flying over his head, low empathy, sensory experiences™, min maxed in certain areas, and I don’t think he’s got social interaction quite right? There’s something off about it

-gifted kid (derogatory) This is self explanatory but basically him being the smartest and the best in a competitive environment caused most of his issues, such as the perfectionism, the need to succeed, the lack of self esteem and ridiculously high expectations on himself, giving himself no breaks or time to relax, the “i must be productive with every second of my day or i will die” deal, the “peaked at 11” thing, the way in which he goes through life like there’s going to be a fucking test on it

-Eldest Daughter™ lmao. Norman’s always had to be mature, he’s always had to be the best, he’s always had to do the things Ray got out of bc he’s a snitch and Emma got out of because Isabella likes her. Norman gets respect from Isabella only if he excels, and her bar for him is astronomical. He doesn’t have the Mommy Issues that Ray has, but it’s because for him Isabella basically just reflected his expectations on himself, whereas with Ray it was more personal.

-low empathy (part of the autism thing): this one needs more explanation, but it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. Cognitive empathy is a thing and he can use it, but he does not instinctively understand other people’s emotions, or even recognize them properly, especially when the person is not like himself. This is obvious in Emma. Man has no fucking clue what’s going on in her head or why she does what she does, but he can predict what she will do in any given situation very well. He could understand the suicide attempt from ray he predicted more because Ray’s an easier equation to solve, and someone who’s more similar to him. I know he gets it because, well, motherfucker’s just as self desctructive as him, just in a more dignified manner.

-he’s got some sort of chronic illness. This is also me projecting and a headcanon but he’s got something going on, even before lambda pumped him full of growth hormones or whatever which they maybe should have Not Done but oh well. (I assume this just didn’t happen in the anime, since he’s still so fucking short) But he's So weak. He passed out when it was too hot. He passed out when it was too cold. He can’t open a pickle jar. His skin is too pale and he’s skinny af. He’s much more prone to sickness and probably has asthma too? But in the case that he did actually have something going on, I don’t think grace field would see the need to treat it, if it didn’t impact the quality of his meat? Isabella’s probably just “you have chronic pain and you get migraines? Great, take some tylenol and do some calculus.” Can’t say that probably helped anything.

personality type: ISTJ

Basically, he’s the most boring personality type to exist, and personally as an enfp i do not respect him. But basically this means he’s a fucking nerd that gets his projects done for school the day they’re assigned, is probably the president of the Anime Student Council™, and could probably get away with premeditated murder (ok actual istjs this is a joke don’t skin me)

The only trait that norman doesn’t have on the istj thing is telling the truth. Yeah, he values the truth, but like, that doesn’t apply to him, clearly. Bitch is a notorious liar.

The only other personality type he has any similarity with is intj, which is the same except it’s more rare and a purple theme instead of a blue theme. Sadly, that’s not him though, because although he can care more about some kinds of philosophy overall this isn’t the case and ray already occupies this personality type tbh.

strengths and weaknesses: This one’s kind of obvious, but he is aside from the crazy insane intelligence good at planning. Extremely good at planning. He can predict any outcome and figure out how to prevent it, using all his resources. For example he’s physically weak and someone could literally just walk up and stab him, but it doesn’t impede his progress on his goals because he’s surrounded himself with strong, mentally inferior people who would die for him in a heartbeat. He never gets stuck in some “everything is shit and i can’t do anything” deal like Emma and Ray do, he always works through it and has confidence in his abilities (in as much as he will solve the problem or die™. Weaknesses other than his twink body include his Low Wisdom score. It’s funny how he’s often associated with an owl, the mans is 14. He thinks he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t. Plus obviously his fundamental misunderstanding of so much of everything going on around him, the fact that he lies not just to the world but himself, his refusal to take care of himself and his incredible cowardice. His achilles heel is being forced to, actually confront his actions.

what he likes about himself: He does pride himself on his mental abilities, and his judgement, which in his opinion is the only correct opinion and the only correct way. In the past, he likes being seen as a leader, he likes being responsible for other people. He likes his ability to manipulate and lie, because he sees it as an asset, and I honestly think he enjoys being william minerva more than he enjoys being Norman. He prides himself on his unhealthy expectations and the fact that he is able to meet them. Honestly, he does think he’s better than everyone else, mentally, though it’s humbled by his self hatred. Cursed thought: If Norman had self esteem he would be light yagami.

what he doesn’t like about himself/insecurities: Oh god, nearly everything. His appearance, his status, his superiority, his physical inability, his own mess of a mind, also have I mentioned his appearance. He’s obsessed with self control. He wants everything he sees wrong with himself gone. And I understand why having control of everything is necessary and appealing, everything for him has always been rigid and planned out from moment one, he was even more regulated in lambda, and though he desperately wants to Not Be Food, he has no idea what to do with the chains now that he’s broken out of them. So he just wraps them around himself. Regulates to an unhealthy degree when he sleeps, what he eats, when he actually takes even minimal care of his own problems, what he looks like, how much of himself he lets show, the expressions on his face, the literal thoughts inside his own head he will shut down if they are not Correct. It’s literal self harm. Norman, please stop it.

motivations/goals in life/general philosophy: To be honest, I’m not sure he knows what he wants. He sure thinks he does, he could sure give you a memorized answer, but it means nothing. He wants to excel. He wants Emma to be happy. He wants to be perfect and for that to make everything perfect. But he doesn’t realize everything he’s working towards will do pretty much the opposite of that. He’s a crippling perfectionist, and pretty much everything he does is motivated by his fear of failing. He picks the certain path, he doesn’t wait for anyone else, he doesn’t care if it’s not nice. Emma foils that a most of the time because he cares about her, but it can only go so far, especially after he’s had so much time without her to develop a Complex. His philosophy is very contradictory, basically the tokyo ghoul “everything bad that happens to you stems from a lack of ability”. All of his problems are his fault. All the world’s problems are his to fix. If he can’t fix them, it’s his fault, it’s because he wasn’t strong enough, and not being perfect condemns someone forever, including himself.

how he’s perceived by others vs how he actually is: In most people there wouldn’t truly be much of a difference, but with Norman things are different, because, well, most of his personality in grace field is a put on, as well as the tough guy dictator thing he radiates after lambda. How he appears to someone is determined by the context of their meeting- the kids at grace field see him as a nerdy, weakish, pretty boring kid who is really caring and kind. The researchers at lambda see an obedient, beaten down and perfectionistic boy. The lambda kids see him as an infallible leader, ruthless and genius, a good man who knows what’s right. But in truth none of that is him. It’s a fucking chess game to him, putting on different faces, lying and pretending and treating everyone differently. In truth? He’s a fucking coward. He’s scared out of his mind and he’s tired and he can’t take pain, he’s obsessed with reaching some goal he deems is necessary that in the end is going to be his death because he doesn’t want to face the consequences of his actions. He’s taken on the role of someone evil, though deep down he’s not, he feels it’s easier to live that way because it strips him of his conscience.

interpersonal relationships: In general, Norman sees all relationships in a pretty dim light. He sees everyone as black and white, for the most part, and other people make no sense to him intuitively, he has to figure them out like a puzzle. He’s manipulative and not particularly kind, but he follows all societal expectations to a T, overly focused on his appearance and placing the person he’s interacting with into a Category™. So he can be truly kind, to people he feels deserve it, to people who he values and doesn’t see flaws in. He gets incredibly attached to people he loves, protective, though he often doesn’t take their own feelings on the matter into consideration, and he’s ruthless with anyone who he deems a bad person. With people he understands and relates to, though, things can be different. If he sees someone as like himself, he will drop all the social interaction police bullshit and cut to the chase of whatever he wants or needs from them, and he’s not very forgiving in any manner, if he thinks what someone did is actually bad.

Emma: Norman obviously cares a lot about Emma, and honestly views her as better than anyone else. He realizes her moral integrity and all of the things she has and he doesn’t, and admires it. Because of his black and white view, Emma is like an angel to him. She couldn’t do anything wrong if she tried. But he comes to treat her as something to be protected instead of respected, and although he realizes she wouldn’t like what he’s doing, he fundamentally cannot empathize with her and doesn’t try to understand her. Their personalities are very literally opposite. Norman really needs to fucking listen to her. And Emma needs to understand that Norman doesn’t have a single ounce of empathy and you really do need to spell it out for him. Emma can only convince him when she has logical reasons for her actions, which she, doesn’t often have. And Emma gave Norman too much slack, because she didn’t see past the surface, and Ray never wanted to warn her, even though he knew the dude was showing a bunch of red flags, because you know. It was kind of an unspoken deal between them. (on ray’s part)

Ray: His relationship with Ray is a lot more complicated than with Emma. He understands Ray, where he doesn’t understand Emma, and he can see right through anything Ray does. And this makes things really tense between them, because Ray doesn’t, take kindly to being psychoanalyzed. If someone perceives him he will deck them and Norman is just there silently perceiving him at all times when Emma doesn’t see it. They are both constantly in competition with each other, but they care about each other a lot, though it’s kind of in a derogatory way. They both recognize each other as fundamentally fucked up, and silently agree never to bring it up with Emma. They’re nice to each other when she’s around, but all pretenses disappear when she’s gone. Ray is always frustrated with Norman, because Norman’s never been intimidated by him, and though he tries his best not to be vulnerable around him, Norman can always see through it, whereas Ray can’t crack Norman’s fake fucking smile no matter what he does. Norman will always take Emma’s side, and doesn’t see Ray as a good person at all, but he still understands and can excuse him, he takes measures to be… worse than Ray, which is better in his mind, because it’s rational, and ‘not selfish’.

Isabella: She has always had ridiculously high expectations for Norman, and treats him kind of harshly compared to the others. Bitch has heat stroke and Isabella’s first question is a calculus problem instead of like, “are you ok”. She knows he doesn’t complain about anything ever and she doesn’t stop him from being Terrible to himself, because it makes her job easier. They want smart kids, not mentally adjusted kids. She does really care for all of them, but she basically overrides it, she gives them what they want, not what they need, lets them be exactly what they’re making themselves. Isabella is distant with Ray but gives him anything he wants, she’s close and super nice with Emma, but Norman is… it’s weird. Isabella is proud of him because he meets her astronomically high bar. But at the same time, Norman never really cared for her that much and has never pretended to. Once they discover The Thing, though, he has a revelation, and it doesn’t take him long to switch his entire perspective about her. He’s pretty much like. Oh. She’s like me. That explains it, time to treat her like I treat myself: fucking brutally. Passive aggressive as hell. The kind of energy the :) emoticon at the end of an email gives. He does like just go “yeah we should kill her” at one point, which. You know, ok. When he got shipped out it was hhhh really interesting because Isabella knew full well he knew he was walking to his death and Norman was like “are you Truly Happy?” and just went :) and she was like h u h and tried to get him to talk while they were walking there because she feels Bad about it and he just. Did not. He didn’t say a single word just kind of smiled menacingly at her and I think it was half a sort of rebellion and half because he viewed her as similar to himself and therefore felt no need to put up any front with her, no words were necessary for him to impart exactly how he felt about it

Lambda kids: His relationship with the lambda kids is weird and bittersweet. I think he really truly does care about them, they were in a similar situation to his and he wants them to get what they want. However it is not a healthy or beneficial relationship, they see him as a god and don’t realize that he’s killing himself to give them what they want, he’s basically adopted them when out of anyone norman’s the one that should least be in charge of kids. I think he’s honestly younger than them but I’m not sure if they even know. He acts like their fucking mom, and that’s from what he thinks mothers are like… like isabella?? Giving them what they want, not what they need, lying to them, showing a front, caring deeply for them but at the same time using them for his own ends. And it’s not helpful for him. He thinks he knows what they need, but what he’s doing is what they want. What they need is therapy,(and so does norman), and he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with using them as weapons because they love him. It makes him feel good, to be seen as perfect, to have people who don’t know how weak he really is. But it’s only making him worse, and he’s enabling everything the lambda kids are doing wrong as well. They need like, Yuugo and Lucas. Some actual adults who are actually wise and have the ability and the knowledge to take care of them and understand their mental problems and maybe actually address them. And actually be nice to them. But um sadly.

what he’s doing wrong: It’s pretty obvious, but… Norman, you maybe *shouldn’t* commit genocide? You’re not helping emma, you’re not making anything better. You’re not helping the lambda kids, you’re enabling them. You’re not helping your friends from grace field, you’re ignoring what they want. You’re not helping the world, you’re eradicating an entire race from the face of the earth and murdering the poor for the crimes of the fucking 1%. You’re not being a martyr, you’re a selfish piece of shit liar you little coward, you just want an easy way out and you want to die on your bloody fucking hill instead of admitting you’re wrong. Grow up, cringe little man.

why he went wrong: I think most of the reason this happened was the way he was raised combined with the kind of person he is. Norman would have turned out fine, if there has been good adults in his life who actually cared about his well being. Instead he got people who just wanted to control him and make him what they needed, and family who largely didn’t realize there was anything wrong. Ray being an ass to him most of forever probably didn’t help but well, that’s just Ray. Even then, he would have managed alright if he escaped with the rest of the kids because he would never have been separated from the experiences that caused the rest of them to realize demons weren’t all evil. In lambda he didn’t have anyone supporting him or telling him when things went too far, so he fell into relying on himself alone, pushing himself further with absolutely no limits. All he saw was enemies and allies, and things got stratified. He never had a lucas or a yuugo or mujika when he would have needed it, instead he found children who wanted him to be in charge and a world that made it so he had to be. Everything was an echo chamber for his worst thoughts, so they just became more and more dominant.

what he needs: To put it simply, he needs Emma and Ray to cut to the chase and slap him across the face and make him take care of himself. He needs to be forced to see everything for what it really is- this edgy 14 year old committing atrocities to feel better about himself? He needs to be told that what he’s doing is irrational, because in reality, it is. There are better solutions that he’s ignoring, both to his own suffering and the demons, and the way he’s going now no one will truly be happy because of it, that there is no requirement that things be perfect and this bullshit doesn’t make him stronger. He needs someone responsible to take the fucking dagger out of his hands. He also needs someone to babysit him and make him go to bed at a reasonable time.

i describe his personality through songs on my spotify playlist for him:

-outrunning karma by alec benjamin: this one super applies because it calls him out for making shitty decisions, being manipulative and a liar, and having blood on his hands in a very calm and subdued manner, that he knows this is wrong and yet he chooses to keep running faster and faster towards destruction, that he means to escape it through death

-empty by boyinaband and jaiden: yes this is a song about anorexia yes it also applies to norman i’m not saying norman literally has an eating disorder (but honestly it wouldn’t be far out of character if he did) but metaphorically this applies to his method of ignoring his needs, both emotional and physical, in favor of seeming in control

-toxic thoughts by faith marie: this one speaks to his gifted kid trauma. Man’s got perfectionism running his entire soul. He’s terrified of failing, because he’s always been at the very top, he’ll beat himself up over any miniscule mistake and forces himself to keep at bad habits that keep him Productive, but he won’t ask for help no matter how much he’s suffering because that would be failing, he fights with his mind, this song basically tells him “yeah i feel you but you need to stop that”

-no time to die by billie eilish: ignore the romantic overtones but this is emma and norman, emma who trusted norman and was lied to, betrayed, for norman’s greater good, and norman who refuses to feel or hurt because of it, who refuses to apologize or see himself as wrong, pushes forward because he’s going to Pass Away

-achilles come down by gang of youths: hhhhh it's like. His vibe. Obviously you can disregard the lifestyle specific shit but it's. It's achilles come down you have to understand it’s like the same deal as friend, please just like french and longer

-friend, please by 21 pilots: i feel like i don't have to explain this one but it’s more to the manga (not the anime where he kind of figures out he done did wrong by himself instead of committing unforgivable sins and still going yeah this is valid before emma is like holy fuck). He is like sorry emma I cannot fix anything I’m going to die :) *coughs blood* and emma going like stop it stop it stop it fuck you see you fucked up and i forgive you just stop don’t walk away while he’s like “no<3”

why im a repressed little norman kinnie even tho he’s my exact opposite: I don’t generally kin ppl like norman, honestly he’s an infj I have no clue how it happened but I’m pretty sure it’s because of my intense desire to project onto a little man who cannot lift a milk jug and has chronic pain and decides you know what I AM tired of being nice i DO wanna go apeshit. Also he’s a twink. A little bastard. He’s a terrible person and I go mood every time he does anything. I said mood when he fell out of a tree. Don’t know what this says about me, I swear I wouldn’t commit no genocide. He’s like the inverse of Yoichi Saotome, and somehow i kin him too. Damn.

Miscellaneous headcanons:

-man’s SO attached to his william minerva cloak. He’s a wispy little bitch, you know he’s wearing that thing inside the house, he’s fucking cold. It also makes him Look Important he can retreat into it like an emo middle schooler with an oversized sweatshirt

-although you could probably get Mad street cred from having two whole brands you know he’s not gonna whip it out and show off his lambda thing he’s incredibly self conscious and his chest hasn’t seen the sun in years

-norman’s got MAD laundry skills to be able to wear like, all white all the time while constantly murdering people. I think he’s the only one who knows to do the laundry. And Ray is the only one who knows how to cook.

-but even then there’s gotta still be a few questionable stains on that thing, but if anyone asks he’s like “ketchup” “I’ve literally never seen you eat anything with that much color” “ketchup :)” *coughs blood*

-he’s probably thought “well i have not literally coughed blood yet today so I am not legally obligated to take care of myself”

-He probably adopted much of his current personality from taking on the persona of william minerva. I’m calling him out for being like me, he’s a blank motherfucker, he absorbs personality traits from characters he plays! He’s just not in theatre so it’s a bit more intense!

-the first time he sees barbara Eating Demon Meat he kinda stares and goes oh cool! not for me and violently exits the room. Like it's hilarious bc he thinks that's really gross on a moral level though he understands why she would do it

-Which is even funnier bc I’m not sure about the canon on this but there was That Chapter Cover that one time that kinda seemed to imply norman eating demon meat which i absolutely latched onto because I’m terrible. He was just politely eating it. With a knife and fork like why dude. As to a possible reason for him doing that I can come up with, of course barbara does it out of spite, but man we don’t know the properties, if it had some sort of painkilling aspect to it or it was like, caffeine, you know he would, but he would Definitely not talk about it

-I kinda disagree with what the anime did in episode eight? It was good I liked it and the imagery was fantastic but also have you considered Norman could not kill someone with his own hands if he tried, or even physically injure them? That’s what his minions are for shawty. That doesn’t make it any less bad, of course, but the manga captured it perfectly by the fact of he carries around a dagger and a scepter in the capitol battle, but he never even raises it out of more than intimidation. He walks through calmly like he’s not scared at all but he makes sure all the lambda kids do all the actual murder, he just stands there impartially, clearly The Mastermind, as the kids fucking murder the queen of the demons. And I think that’s more profound because he’s, a coward. And he doesn’t realize being the one who orders the strike makes you just as responsible as the one who sticks the knife in someone. The knife is just there to Compensate™ for the fact that he weighs like eighty pounds.

-he’s more of like lady macbeth (because he’s a girlboss) than macbeth himself. He has blood on his hands, but it’s the kind of blood that you can’t wash off. He never killed anyone himself, and he cannot admit he never would have been able to.

-the last thing is that there are definitely epic things about the anime, episode 8 was my favorite so far, goddamn that imagery and the bitch walking through the city while it burns down with the screaming asmr going on behind him my god. We stan. But like the downside of, letting Emma and Ray get to him before he commits first degree murder makes the whole thing lose a lot of his value. In the manga (oh my god look at me being a pretentious manga fan please) it fit more of his ideas- he never backed down, and he planned for Emma coming and trying to stop him. Of course he wanted Emma to stop him, he wanted it with all his fucking heart he was pleading for it to happen but the man wouldn’t give himself what he wanted if he was held at gunpoint. He knew she’d come and he made absolutely sure she wouldn’t be able to stop him. So when she came and he said “you’re too late”??? It kind of said it all, in the fact that he was disappointed that he got his way. He still thought he did the right thing, but deep down there where he shoved all his thoughts and feelings he desperately wanted to be saved from himself.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Feel free to eviscerate me if these are not Correct he is just my favorite girlboss who I feel the need to yell at

#tpn #the promised neverland #yakusoku no neverland #tpn norman #norman tpn #essay post #god why do i do this to myself #dear god help me this is 5000 words #rowan's hyperfixation essays

73 notes · View notes

wreath-of-laurels · 3 years

Text

Todoroki/Iida - Iida becomes a villain

So @doomsdaybeamxd prompted me with

Pairing: Todoiida AU: Iida falls in with the villains. Big Angst Time

I’d normally write a mini fic as is proper but my brain has too many ideas for this. So here’s a general idea of how I think it goes as if I actually tried to write a tiny bit, it wouldn’t stay a tiny bit.

As it is, I’m writing at least some of this in Variations on a Theme. How much I’ll do, I don’t know.

Childhood friends

Shouto and Tenya met shortly after Rei was put in the mental hospital.

This happened because Enji was feeling guilty over Rei and seeing Shouto being lonely so was for once in his life was trying to be a semi-decent father and decided to arrange regular playdates.

No, Enji never considered to let Natsuo or Fuyumi play with Shouto. If he thought about it, he'd have reasons but they'd all suck.

Shouto was lonely and so was Tenya as he got bullied for being ‘weird’ and bit by bit they established a friendship.

There may or may not be mutual puppy crushes involved.

Enji after gaining a +1 in parenting points, loses 10,000 by saying that Tenya is the sort of good, loyal son that he’d be proud of, and accidentally implying that Tenya is there to change Shouto into a version of him.

This makes Shouto hate Tenya, assuming that he was in on it, and he refuses to spend anymore time with him. This upsets Tenya and baffles Enji. Enji doesn’t even consider the possibility that it was his fault.

Years pass.

They meet again at UA

Years past and Tenya is really looking forward to seeing Shouto again. Elementary and middle school were not fun and he got bullied a lot. Surely Shouto has forgiven him for whatever he did!

Nope.

If anything Shouto’s angrier as he still has feelings for Tenya and he wants them gone. Shouto won’t even tell him why they’re no longer friends. Just that it’s Tenya’s fault.

The sports festival goes about the same as before except that Tenya gets the call about Tensei just before his fight with Shouto.

Stain killed Tensei instead of crippled. His mother lets this drop on the phone.

Tenya instead of going home seeks out Shouto. Shouto’s older brother died. While he never talked about it, surely Shouto knows what it is like, maybe even knows how to cope.

Endeavor has just been blabbing away at Shouto. So Shouto is angry and totally avoids looking at Tenya or paying much attention at all, missing all the absolute BLATANT hints that Tenya needs help.

Shouto misconstrues Tenya’s disjointed ask for help and bitterly says that the normal thing is that the weak are ‘thrown out’ and the strong survive. Shouto has no clue that Tensei is dead.

Whoops.

Tenya and Shouto have their match because the teachers haven’t heard about Tensei yet. It is a lot more brutal than the canon one. Shouto even loses himself for a while and uses his flame.

Tenya loses. Now he’s angry at Shouto too.

Shouto later has the chat with Midoriya, they have their match and Shouto starts thinking over things.

The next day Tenya refuses to talk about anything. None of the students have a clue what happened to Tensei.

The teachers do. Aizawa, Mic and Midnight went to school with Tensei. They try to be comforting. Tenya is super polite while raging inside that when Oboro died and Tensei was upset, they weren’t around.

To be fair to the teachers, while Oboro and Tensei were close friends, Tensei wasn’t with the rest of them. Everyone was trying to keep Aizawa from falling apart at the time.

Tenya is NOT in his happy place.

Tenya goes after Stain

Tenya is a whole lot less patient at this point than his canon self. He doesn’t wait to go after Stain at this point. As his armour is at school, he uses his brother’s access cards and such to steal Villain stuff from his agency.

The one-on-one battle of Tenya against Stain goes initially better. He gets a few good hits in. Stain is ranting about Tensei was a fake hero. He eventually takes Tenya down but fail-safes in the villain gear kick in and electrocute Stain.

When Tenya gets a hold of himself, Stain is ranting about all the Iidas being false heroes that need to be cleansed.

Tenya does not take this well.

At all.

And he has one of Stain’s knives.

Tenya finds himself wondering why his clothes are soaking wet. And red.

He then notices a few things (a) Stain is dead, probably has been for a while, (b) there’s a hero in the alley who apparently Stain attacked before Tenya showed up, (c) the hero is dead because they bled out, just like Tensei did, because Tenya was obsessed with killing Stain and (d) his parents and Aizawa have tracked him down and are watching in absolute shock.

Tenya runs. Aizawa recovers first and erases his Quirk, but Tenya runs all the time and even without it he is very, very fast. By the time, the Iida parents recover, Tenya has apparently disappeared into thin air.

This is because he kind of has. The League thought Tenya was Stain and Kurogiri warped him out of there.

Shouto finds out

Over at the Todoroki house, Fuyumi asks about how Tenya is doing, what with the death of his older brother.

Shouto didn’t know but rolls his eyes. Though after some thought and after learning from Midoriya, it occurs to him that perhaps Endeavor doesn’t own Tenya. So maybe his actions had nothing to do with what Enji wanted.

Also if there’s one thing he knows about Tenya is his older brother is his world.

And that expression on Tenya’s face during their match looked a lot like the nastier ones that Shouto himself has worn.

Shouto still has Tenya’s number from childhood and vice versa. He considered deleting it but at the time he was using it to remember just how much he hated Endeavor.

Tenya apparently sent some angry messages.

“Oh no.”

Tenya is with the League

Tenya is so exhausted and upset about what he did and what his parents saw that he’s oddly accepting of being trussed up.

Tomura after some initial ranting about killing the kid who ruined the USJ (even though he didn’t), listens to the news, some police and hero chatter then puts his thinking cap on.

Hero kid killed Stain. He is oh-so miserable about Stain being killed. I mean look at all the tears on his face . . . Good riddance.

Hero kid killed Stain when he was already out of the fight. Then kept on standing for the lolz. Nice. This could be interesting and Sensei is apparently all for it.

As Tenya is pretty much a Sim with its free will setting off at this point, Tomura instructs him through things, plants some ideas in his head and basically treats him like a very dumb pet.

Not much happens until Stain’s diary is published and copycats start showing up. Tenya starts to wake up at this and it is not pleasant (though Tomura loves it).

Tomura pretty much points some out and lets Tenya loose and eventually Tenya comes back with a sword.

RIP Spinner.

Awwww... Tomura always wanted a little brother.

Well, no he didn’t, but now he does.

Shouto and His Newly Reinvigorated Guilt Complex

Everyone is freaking out, trying to track down Tenya.

While they acknowledge that Tenya killed Stain, Shouto’s the only one who thinks that the Hero Killer Killer is the one responsible for killing an increasing number of Stain followers. The Iidas can’t believe that of their little boy, the teachers are letting their guilt taint their opinions and Midoriya and Uraraka are, at the end of the day, idealists.

Shouto knows what it is like to have your hatred of someone turn your life into a tunnel vision. If his father had killed his mother, Shouto has a very good idea of what would happen.

As it was, Shouto seriously considered killing his father when he was younger. At the time, he only didn’t try to do it because it would hurt Fuyumi and he has a very hard time picturing Endeavor being able to die.

He honestly didn’t take into account that his mother wouldn’t want him to be a killer.

He still doesn’t take that into account because Shouto, the idiot, hasn’t visited his mother because of everything that has happened. The guilt of not helping Tenya makes him ashamed and he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her.

Shouto, you complete and utter idiot.

So he’s collecting (stealing) money from home, dyes his hair black and is going undercover to try to track Tenya down.

He’s really bad at the undercover bit (rich kid clothes) and his scar is very distinctive. Plus UA and Endeavor are tearing up the landscape to find him and he doesn’t have a magic portal man to transport him.

He’s all set to get caught when a mysterious burned man offers to show him the ways of the underworld for a price.

From here on?

I really don’t know but I don’t see the internship or summer camp arcs going the same way, if they happen at all.

#iida/todoroki #iida & todoroki friendship #my hero academia fic #ask game #prompt fills

7 notes · View notes

dogbearinggifts · 4 years

Text

“He Made Me What I Am Today”: Thoughts on Pogo and Complicity

It’s taken me a while to understand this fandom’s hatred of Pogo.

He’s never been a favorite character of mine, but I’ve always liked him. In the show and in the comics, he serves as a sort of surrogate father figure, providing the siblings with much-needed level-headed advice and guidance free from abuse. In the show especially, he’s stern yet kind, intelligent and understanding of the children’s limitations. This is precisely the sort of parent the Hargreeves siblings needed.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found fans expressing disgust toward his character—some going so far as to cheer his gruesome death at Vanya’s hand.

Vanya, it seems, is at the center of fandom’s disdain for Pogo. Many arguments as to why he allegedly deserved what he got center on his actions the day Reginald had Allison Rumor her into forgetting her powers, and on the fact he never told her the truth. These arguments tend to treat Pogo as the only truly rational adult in that house since he lacked Grace’s manipulative programming and Reginald’s sadism. Because he was the only one who saw Reginald for what he was, he had a responsibility to stand up to him and put an end to the abuse. According to this view, Pogo chose to be complicit in Vanya’s abuse. He chose not to stop it, he chose not to undo it, and it is this choice that makes him irredeemable.

What it fails to account for, though, is that Pogo isn’t the only clear-headed adult in that house. To say he chose to go along with Reginald’s orders is a drastic oversimplification. Because, like Grace, Pogo too was programmed to never disagree with Reginald. Like the children he cared for, he was abused into compliance; and like Vanya, he was made to forget the power he possessed.

Pogo Is a Product of Abuse

In the comics we get a moment where Five, having donned Reginald’s monocle, sees Pogo as an apparently ordinary chimp suffering in a lab*. The show implies Pogo’s origin with a single line: “In all respects, Sir Reginald Hargreeves made me what I am today.”

I want you to ponder that for a moment. Pogo wasn’t born with human intelligence or a human personality. He was born as an ordinary chimp with no more intellect or insight into the universe than other chimps possess. Then, one day, he’s taken captive. His captor torments him. He hurts him. He leaves at night and returns in the morning to hurt him again, and again, for hours and hours and he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know what’s happening, he only knows it hurts and he hurts and he wants it to be over but it’s not over—

And then one day it is.

It’s over. The pain ends. The ongoing fear and despair comes to a halt as Pogo understands more than he ever thought possible.

Reginald could have explained every step of the process to Pogo, once he had the intellect to comprehend it. Or he could have kept the details somewhat vague, but made the link between Pogo’s newfound sapience and the horrors he endured clear. Whatever the case, it stuck with Pogo for the rest of his life.

Everything Pogo has—every word he speaks, every thought in his head—is the result of those experiments. Every aspect of his life exists because he was held in that lab for perhaps months on end, dragged from cage to table and back again, pricked with needles and cut with scalpels. Without the horror Reginald inflicted on him, Pogo would still be an average chimp living in a jungle somewhere, unable to comprehend things we humans take for granted.

No one is more aware of this than Pogo.

His Attitude Toward Abuse is Fundamentally Broken

Reginald didn’t need to abuse his kids. This fact is so apparent it almost need not be said, and I only say it because by the end of the first season, all seven of those kids either know this or are in the process of learning it. Exclusion from the family dynamic, exile to the Moon, being locked in a tomb with the dead—none of these things were necessary, and the people who suffered them are aware of this.

But in these cases, it’s obvious that the methods used did boundless harm and negligible good. Vanya’s exclusion left her depressed and bitter, with few social skills and no friends to speak of. Luther’s exile sent him spiraling deep into suicidal depression, led him to self-harm, and robbed him of whatever ease with social graces he might have possessed. Klaus’ stints in the mausoleum left him with untreated PTSD and a crippling fear of the dead, leading him to cope through drugs and alcohol. Each of those kids can tell a similar story: Reginald put them through hell to try and make them stronger, and instead they were broken almost beyond repair.

Pogo’s abuse, on the other hand, worked as intended. Reginald planned for it to give him sapience and high intelligence (in the comics he’s referred to as Dr. Pogo) and that is what it did.

I’m certain that, given a little time and a conscience, Reginald could have devised a way to grant Pogo his intelligence without the need for experiments or persistent cruelty. A man who can grant humanlike intelligence to an ordinary chimp is a man who can refine his methods to make them as painless and noninvasive as possible, but for whatever reason Reginald chose the most sadistic method. The abuse was not necessary, but it’s a part of Pogo’s origin story and a part of his past.

The horrific abuse Pogo suffered resulted in a clear, tangible benefit for him. If that sounds twisted, it’s because it is. Pogo’s abuse is twisted, and his story is twisted. Rather than backfiring as it did in the cases of the Hargreeves siblings—and in real cases where parents resort to abuse to make their children stronger—it did precisely what it was meant to. It made Pogo stronger. It improved his mind. It gave him everything he never knew he wanted.

So when he sees Vanya being locked in a soundproofed room or watches Luther depart for the Moon on a pointless mission, his thoughts are almost certainly not on what sort of awful man would visit those horrors upon his own children. Chances are, they’re on how some good must come of this. While he suffered in that lab, he couldn’t have known he would wake from those horrific, invasive, degrading experiments stronger than he ever thought possible. Surely Luther and Vanya and all the other children will emerge from their own suffering stronger than before.

He Doesn’t See Reginald the Same Way the Siblings Do

It’s rarely addressed in fandom, but Pogo and the Hargreeves siblings come into Reginald’s care in markedly different ways, and they are intended for markedly different roles. The children are adopted as infants, presented to the world as Reginald’s children, and brought to the dining room table each meal. They’re given rooms in the upper stories of the Academy and, while not treated in any way resembling decent or humane, are at least granted the status that comes with being the child of a reclusive billionaire.

Pogo, on the other hand, began as a science experiment. When the torture he endures attains its goal, he is never treated as anything more than a butler. His room is sparse and in what appears to be the servants’ quarters, and he is never shown seated at the table with the rest of the family. When speaking to the very children who seem to regard him as a secondary father figure, he calls them Master and Miss—deferential even as he exerts authority.

To the siblings, Reginald Hargreeves is Dad. He’s cruel and unreasonable, sadistic and uncaring even when it would behoove him to show a modicum of kindness. Under his roof, his authority is absolute—but that authority extends only to the outer walls of the Academy. If Reginald had never adopted them, Klaus would still be Klaus and Vanya would still be Vanya—hopefully with more confidence and less trauma, but they would still be the same people. Their personalities and intelligence would have remained constant regardless of who raised them.

Without Reginald, Pogo as we know him would not exist. Philosophy and physics, morality and mathematics would have remained foreign to him. Even if he had lived and died as content as a chimp can be, he would have gone to his grave without enjoying a good book or understanding why people seek out music that makes them cry. Reginald might be Dad to the siblings; but to Pogo, he’s God—reaching down from on high, plucking Pogo out of the dust and demanding his will be done.

It’s an understatement to say that Pogo knows Reginald is smarter than he is. His intelligence and personality exist because Reginald possesses the capacity to grant intelligence and personality to animals like him; and if he has the power to bring animals up to a human level, then his intelligence must far outstrip even the smartest human. He’s brought Pogo to a level on par with the children he cares for, but he hasn’t brought Pogo up to his level, because that level is so far beyond that of an ordinary human that it’s impossible to conceive. As far as Pogo knows, Reginald Hargreeves can see in nine dimensions and remembers every point in human history.

The programming instilled through religious abuse can be overcome. Those raised to see their deity as an all-powerful version of Reginald Hargreeves—harsh and demanding, quick to find fault and quicker to mete out punishment—can and have conquered this view and managed to either renounce faith entirely or define it on their own terms. It can be done. But it’s also extremely difficult. The abusive deity survivors are raised to worship is all too often made out to be a deity with humanity’s best interests at heart, whose abuse will eventually bring about humanity’s good.

From all the evidence we’re presented with, it appears something very similar has happened with Pogo. It’s doubtful Pogo worships the man, but it is clear he not only reveres him, but trusts him—and trusts that the crimes he perpetuates against his own children will ultimately benefit them.

He Tries to Mitigate the Abuse

He doesn’t step in and try to stop it. We see him assisting Reginald at several points—pointing Allison toward the security footage, withholding the truth of his Moon mission and Reginald’s suicide from Luther, holding the door as Reginald ushers Vanya into that soundproofed chamber. He’s never enthusiastic about this support—in Vanya’s case, he is clearly pained by what he’s enabling—but he doesn’t put his foot down and refuse to do as he’s told, either. But he doesn’t treat the children as Reginald does. If anything, he strives to be Reginald’s opposite in as many ways as he feels he is able.

If later seasons reveal that Reginald rose each morning and made a list of ways to make Vanya feel unwelcome in her own home, I would not be surprised. He places her at the end of the table; he makes her stay upstairs while her siblings get tattoos; he refuses to let her be in the family photo. All of his actions toward her, large and small, made it clear that she was inadequate and that he barely considered her part of the family. Yet when she returns to the Academy for Reginald’s memorial service, Pogo greets her warmly, addresses her with the same honorific he uses for Allison, and tells her “This is your home, and it always will be.” Reginald may have treated Vanya as unworthy of his approval, but Pogo treats her as her siblings’ equal.

From the quick temper he displays at Five’s insistence he be allowed to time travel and the obvious fear the other siblings have of him, it seems clear Reginald’s punishments were anything but fair. Discipline, it seems, was a chance for Reginald to vent his anger on whichever child displeased him, rather than a means to correct bad behavior. But when Klaus steals the box and throws the journal away, Pogo doesn’t fly into a rage and toss Klaus out on the street—or do something even more twisted—as Reginald might have. Instead, he confronts Klaus, informs him of the error and why it matters, and gives him a chance to correct his mistake. Reginald’s discipline was likely capricious and disproportionate; but if this example is anything to go by, Pogo’s approach is stern, yet consistent and restrained.

Pogo does deliberately withhold information from Luther and, to a lesser extent, Allison. He places Allison in a room where she’s sure to find the relevant tape, effectively sending her and Luther off on a wild goose chase. When Luther discovers his Moon mission was a sham, Pogo’s attempt at comfort can sound an awful lot like damage control. However, these deceptions are undercut with a subtle layer of kindness. He lures Allison to the relevant tape with footage of herself and her siblings as children—footage that includes her deceased brother, which is comforting and cheering to her. He is quick to refute Luther’s assumption that he was sent to the Moon for his own personal failures; while his reasoning that “After your accident, he wanted to give you purpose” has the ring of an excuse (and a flimsy one at that) it’s offered when Luther is clearly spiraling and in desperate need of something to hold onto. It’s clear in this scene that Pogo isn’t simply trying to cover his own ass; he cares for Luther and wants to ease his pain.

Pogo Probably Doesn’t Realize He Could Have Done More

When I was a kid, I watched a show called Recess. (Late 90s and early 2000s kids probably all just cracked a grin.) If you haven’t seen it, it followed a group of fourth grade students and their adventures at school, outside of school and—mostly—at recess. There were a lot of colorful characters on that playground, and one of them was Ms. Finster, an assistant teacher who monitored the kids at recess and served as a recurring villain, relishing each and every chance she got to foil lovable troublemaker TJ’s plans.

In one episode, Ms. Finster hits on a plan that she calls The Box. She draws a box and, when TJ misbehaves, makes him stand inside. It’s just four chalk lines on asphalt, but it triggers something in TJ’s brain. When he stands in The Box, he sees the asphalt rising up to hem him in, pulling him further and further underground as his panic rises. He isn’t imprisoned. He can leave at any time, and to an outsider this much is painfully—even comically—obvious. But to TJ, he’s trapped.

Pogo could have stood up to Reginald. He could have done it when Vanya’s powers were taken away, or he could have done it on a random Thursday. He could have taken Luther aside and told him the truth of Reginald’s death or he could have sat everyone down and explained Vanya’s powers before shit hit the fan. I’ve said elsewhere that the characters in this show are responsible for their actions, but Pogo is responsible for his inaction.

Yet this inaction is not the result of a moral failing on Pogo’s part. He didn’t sit back and choose not to tell Luther or Vanya the truth or remain complicit in their abuse because he wanted to see them suffer. “I had no choice” is what he tells Luther. To us, it’s obvious that Luther’s response—“There’s always choice”—is correct.

But it isn’t obvious to Pogo, because Pogo is trapped in a Box of his own. It’s a Box made of abuse both physical and mental, of a twisted gratitude toward the man who tormented him, of a lack of faith in his own conscience. Pogo is complicit in the siblings’ abuse, make no mistake. Of all the people living in the Academy, Pogo probably stood the greatest chance of overthrowing Reginald and getting those kids into a more positive environment. He wielded the most power in that situation, and Reginald knew this. And so, as with Vanya, Reginald made Pogo forget his power. It took longer. It involved more pain, more mental manipulation than direct mind control. But in the end, what Reginald did to Pogo was far more effective—and arguably more sinister—than what he did to Vanya.

Her powers, after all, could be reinstated simply by removing her medication. Removing barriers around your own mind meant to keep you dependent and doubtful, with no physical evidence to prove those barriers are gone? That can take a lifetime.

*********

*It’s been a while since I’ve read the comics, but I do remember that chimps with human intelligence are just kind of a Thing in that world. I don’t remember if Pogo’s sapience is made out to be a product of experimentation or if the experiments he endured are separate from that. However, since Pogo is apparently the only superintelligent primate butler in the show’s ‘verse, it seems the implication is that he gained his intelligence from Reginald’s experiments.

123 notes · View notes

ohnohetaliasues · 4 years

Text

Stones to Abbigale {Ch. 3+4}

(Kat)

I’m doing chapter four also since chapter three is so short.

I hate this book thoroughly.

But here we go.

Briefly after I fell asleep that night I had a dream about Abbi,

Please don’t go the way I think this is going.

it was the first dream I had experienced in some time. I'm not normally the type of person to be deeply impacted by dreams as more often than not I can control them. I can recognize the fact that I'm in a dream and twist things around so that whatever is making me afraid becomes afraid of me. This tactic however could not possibly work in this soon-to-be nightmare, as there was no living monster waiting around the corner. There was no emotion in this machine that was about to reveal itself to me. I could only watch without a physical form. I was just a helpless spectator in my own mind.

Okay so that was actual word salad.

The dream began without any sound; only a deep hum accompanying what appeared to be Abbi laughing in a field of what looked like gray grass from a far. As my view of her revealed more detail I began to realize that what I thought was grass was actually long slender claws.

So this girl is just...

In a field of claws?

Experiencing a more alarmed spectrum of emotion, the audible hum cut out and was replaced by Abbi's screams. The sounds echoed bouncing off the walls of my mind splitting me in two and engulfing the core my being.

I’m so fucking confused.

She was not forming any words in her screams and I began to understand why the more I analyzed every detail. I shifted my perspective to a new angle. I was now above her looking down and could see the claws were pulling her into the ground. She showed no resistance to being dragged into the ground, she didn't even cry for help, she would only scream in pain as she slowly sank beneath the surface. I began to distinctly hear blades and gears violently turning just beneath her.

I cannot fucking picture this happening for the life of me.

It's difficult to explain, but in her eyes I could see she didn't want to be saved as she genuinely felt she had earned the suffering she was enduring.

Edgy as fuck, okay.

She believed she deserved to be ground up until there was nothing left. Once she was pulled completely under I was finally given a physical form in the dream. Dropping from above I landed on the soil she disappeared in. I immediately dropped to my knees and began digging with my bare hands to get to Abbi. I was only inches deep before the ground ripped open forcing me to jump back.

Okay uh.

I have no valid words that could express how I feel right now.

A deep canyon began to form central to where I had begun digging. The splitting and groaning quickly gained momentum. Ripping and screeching sounds erupted all around me as the earth divided before me at a now crippling rate. A hellish sight consumed my eyes as I looked down on the collapsing landmass below. Powerful machines wielding massive blades swung violently scraping dirt and rock with a sound so tremendous I could only faintly hear the screams of countless desperate humans below.

This is just.

Not okay.

I quickly realized the terrified voices beyond the ripping blades were no illusion.

But this is a dream.

Which means it’s an illusion.

Thousands of lives were being devoured in piles, no person among them begging for life rather, like Abbi, they screamed only from pain delivered not just by the roaring blades and gears, but their very existence itself. Suffering & consciousness had become one in the same.

You are not poetic.

Shut the literal fuck up.

I then woke up to my room filled with sunlight, but it could not change the darkness my dream left me with. I felt something inside me change, almost as if I had seen something I was never meant to and now had to find a way to lose the thick cloud freshly looming over my head.

I hate you.

It is as I said briefly before, I feel like a visitor here, like I'm in this world but not a part of it like everyone else.

Shut up, you pretentious asshole.

I study people and situations to find out how they work and sometimes my dreams fill in the emotions and thoughts I missed while I was awake.

Yes, so you’ve said, in a very creepy non-human way.

Not having to go to school that day due to my suspension I decided to write a letter to Abbi.

Cool. Awesome. This won’t be cringey at all.

It read:"When I look in your eyes... I at times feel a level of sadness I have never felt, as if we, despite barely knowing each other, have been apart for far too long.

Excuse me, that’s incredibly creepy.

When I talk to you it is like I am listening to a voice I've ached for yet haven't heard in a lifetime. Every other experience I have with you seems familiar but at the same time, it hurts, like you would feel if you begged for something and only received it when you had already given up hope.

More word salad.

These feelings are all so strange and evolving at a rate that scares me as they are for someone I am only just now truly getting to know.

Even with my brief presence in your life I've picked up on so much suffering and almost feel powerless to create any change.

This is so alarming and creepy and you need to stop.

There are so many wounds, so many scars, so much I only know enough about to fear. I'm trying to understand. Abbi, you have more pain in your life than I can imagine. I hear it in your voice, I see it in your eyes and in the way you move. I just want to see you smile without there being an ocean wall of tears behind your eyes. I want to hear everything you have to say. I want to find a way to heal the damage done until you can forget it ever existed.

THE ONLY FUCKING PROPER REACTION TO THIS LETTER IS TO MOVE TO ANOTHER CONTINENT.

I sent the letter to her email address, moments later the phone rang. Answering the phone I heard Abbi's voice on the other end.

"Hey, can you meet me at the Quick Shop?" she asked.

I responded, "Did you see my email?"

She replied "Nope, why didn't you just call?"

I said, "It would've been really hard to say over the phone, I had to find the words."

She replied, "Ok, I'll look and then I'll head over."

I then confirmed "Sure, see you there".

Yikes.

Shortly after, I got dressed and skated over to meet her. I arrived quickly, thanks to what seemed to be a record speed for me. However once I arrived I found myself waiting for someone who now had no intention of meeting me. I could only assume I had just made myself look like a huge jerk to her. I attempted to call her from the nearby payphone and she didn't answer.

What did you expect? That she wouldn’t find that fucking creepy?

As I skated home, in my mind, I went through the letter I wrote over and over. I began to blame myself, concluding based on her absence that I must have dug too deep too fast.

I scared her away because I reacted on the emotions I experienced in that dream before actually considering the human being on the other side of the letter.

Yeah, at least you’re fucking self aware for once.

I felt like I was just about finally connect with someone only to ruin everything at the last minute.

That’s your own fault. Don’t bitch about it.

Okay, chapter 4.

My suspension had been lifted and I had just arrived back at Lakewood High. Approaching my history class I could hear people snickering as they watched me walk by.

Someone screamed "Wuss! Learn how to fight!" behind me but I just kept walking.

I feel like I’ve read shit like this before.

Oh.

Yeah, it reads like any angsty Wattpad story ever.

As I sat down in class Mr. Hanson walked up to me, he placed his hand on my shoulder and spoke under his breath so others would not hear "Don't worry about the work you missed, ok James?"

It would be preferable that you didn’t use ‘ok’ instead of the word ‘okay.’

But this is terrible, so I don’t have high expectations. I don’t know what I expected.

I looked up at him and he gave me a slight smile. I suppose it's because he felt bad that I was beaten up shortly after trying to get Jason to leave the class alone. It was a lucky break too considering Mr. Hanson's class was one of the few I didn't stop by to see what work I would miss before beginning my suspension.

No. No. That isn’t this teacher’s job. He needs to grade something, and if James didn’t do the work, it would be immoral to put good grades in the grade book when this is the case.

I approached the art trailer feeling panicked over what to expect. I hated that I said anything to Abbi, that I overstepped my bounds and acted like I knew her when I was only going off my own dream-influenced emotional intuition.

Intuition my ass. That dream means nothing at all. Shut your pretentious mouth.

I felt a conflicted hatred towards myself for jeopardizing a relationship with someone that was so important to me.

MY FUCKING GOD YOU’VE HAD THREE CONVERSATIONS WITH HER.

If she did give up on me, I could only blame myself.

Yes. You can.

Opening the door I could see Abbi wasn't inside, instead there were just pieces of my bear sewn to pieces of her bear sitting on her desk. Maybe I was reading too far into what it meant, I could really only hope that there was something left to us that I could sew back together.

If I have to read another bullshit waxing poetic thing, I’m gonna scream. My eyes are already glazing over.

Walking closer I could see something sticking out just beneath the bear.

It was a note that read: "James, meet me behind the church when you get this."

Immediately, I thought of the church neighboring Lakewood High.

I find it bullshit that James was immediately able to figure out what church Abbi meant when she didn’t even specify which church she was talking about.

I stuffed my backpack inside the desk

Your backpack fits in a desk? Either the desk has a large compartment, your bag is nearly empty, or your bag is very small.

I’m going with the last option because it’s the funniest.

and quickly made my way off campus to meet Abbi.

You left your bag in class and just left?

What is wrong with you?

As I approached the church there was a strong forceful wind blowing behind me that made it feel as if I was being pushed to her by nature itself.

I really hate you pretending to be deep, Onion.

I felt like a fool for thinking that, I'm far too unimportant for any significant force to consciously influence my life. I walked around the church only to hear Abbi say loudly "James!" I turned to see her standing under an overhang that reached out from the church.

That is called an awning.

I walked over to her and began to apologize for the letter, but she cut me off saying "Why did you write that to me?"

A valid question.

I responded "I wanted to separate myself from everyone else in your eyes. I wanted you to know I was trying to understand you, all of..."

She interrupted "How messed up do you think I am James? How screwed do you think my life is exactly? Because if you had any social skills, you might know that saying to someone what you did, is... I'm not damaged goods... I'm not broken!"

Her voice was giving out as she began tearing up. "I'm sorry... I was..." I said, helplessly watching tears fall down her face.

This is a confusing and mechanical interaction.

"I was wrong... but I'm here, and I will be as long as you let me." I said.

She wiped her tears and struggled to speak. "The reason you saw what you did, in my eyes, my voice..." she continued to struggle as she cried "You saw the bruises from my ex, but you wanted to know everything."

You two have known each other for two fucking days. Like, you’ve only spoke four times now.

She paused to wipe her tears again. I listened carefully as she continued to speak "James... I haven't been beaten just one or two times..."

I would care more if there was any buildup to this moment or any character development that would make me like this girl.

But there isn’t.

So I feel nothing while reading this, and that is both incredibly boring and unfulfilling, as well as genuinely kind of creepy.

The fact that this does not evoke emotion in me when I should be feeling some form of empathy instead of the apathy I feel disturbs me.

Abbi said as she looked at me as if every word was agonizing for her to say.

I would like to know why she’s telling this to a guy she barely knows.

With tear soaked eyes she continued, "I've been violated beyond that James... by people who called me their friend, people I trusted took advantage of me and that killed so much of who I am... who I was."

I am so concerned that I don’t feel anything here. Are you guys feeling anything?

Her face was consumed with stress, her body shook but she managed to continue, "My mother abandoned me and left me with my father who doesn't even care if I live..." before she could finish I wrapped my arms around her.

She dug her fingers into my back as she pulled me closer and cried into my chest.

As we held each other I said, "You were never damaged, only changed. Any part of you that you think died is just hidden, waiting to come out when it's safe..."

I want to actually die.

Abbi squeezed me even tighter.

I continued, "Every time I see you, you become more beautiful to me than before."

She gripped me more tightly than anyone ever had. She was finally hearing everything she wanted someone to say to her and I was saying everything I wanted Abbi to hear, that is, most everything.

Okay, cool.

I just... This is such a gross fetishization of abuse? It makes my stomach twist. I also feel strange that I can’t feel any form of emotion for these characters beyond annoyance.

It actually bothers me deeply.

This is the opposite effect you want to have on your readers, Onion. you want your characters to be relatable and real so your readers can connect with them and feel something for them. Well written characters are ones you can get attached to.

These characters are poorly written, which is why I cannot relate to them or get attached to them. I’m not saying I’m any kind of master at writing characters, but Abbi has no personality of her own other than the fact that she’s an abuse victim, and the fact that that is all is concerning. I don’t even know what she looks like.

James is the most pretentious, condescending narrator in the world and it makes me physically recoil while I read from his point of view. He is nihilistic, bleak, creepy, and very flavorless. He’s boring as all hell, and again, I don’t even know what he looks like.

Does Onion just forget to describe his characters? It makes it very hard to visualize anything with them.

Okay. I’ll see you guys in chapter five.

This book is actually repulsive.

~Kat

11 notes · View notes

kraptos · 4 years

Note

2, 10, 14, and 17 for Atreus of Sparta and Kratos :D

this one got long, i’m so sorry adfhaskfs

gonna put it under a read more....... :’)

2. Their emotional/moral weak spots

Kratos: not sure how much of a headcanon this is, but imo kratos’s biggest weak spot is his kid! he'd give up anything and everything to ensure his safety and well being, even if it was detrimental to himself. while we're on the topic, he's also a big softie and if little atreus wants something, he Will get it… (andvari!) sad, but i like to think it’s because he knows he hasn’t been the best parent and is trying to compensate :(

Atreus of Sparta: i think the atreus of sparta’s largest weak spot would probably be kratos! i headcanon their relationship as being fairly parental in nature as he’s someone kratos admires greatly and is basically his role model. so i think this would still stand true even if i WASN’T shipping them (ahaha..). atreus cherishes their relationship and would do all in his power to ensure kratos’s happiness & health ;u;

10. Fears/phobias

Kratos: again, not really a headcanon, but losing his family, for obvious reasons. i know we see plenty of examples of this between him and his son throughout the game, but i think this fear outweighs just about anything else (falling short of seeing little atreus’s behavior reflecting his own, which is another headcanon of mine). anyway, getting back to kratos’s crippling fear of losing his loved ones, i like to narrow it down to losing them in a way that would specifically be his fault and even more specifically by his own hand (i do love the idea of kratos being incredibly distrustful of himself in this regard). so with that in mind i like to think a lot of the fear that came with losing faye was not so much how he lost her (since i guess she died from illness? which is completely beyond his control), but more so the notion of raising a child he has rather successfully ignored for the past decade (due to yet another fear-- failing completely as a father by raising a son to be just like him).

Atreus of Sparta: being alone! i picture atreus as a total extrovert, and thanks to spartan society he doesn’t know how not to belong to a collective unit and exist on his own as just atreus and not atreus of sparta. in Agapē he’s rejected a lot of the fundamentals of spartan culture, yet still takes pride in being spartan. his past is absolutely not as traumatic as kratos’s, but thanks to his moral compass, he has every reason to reject the fact he was born and raised a spartan. the reason he doesn’t is, i think, because he’s afraid of what it would mean to belong nowhere.

14. Ingrained habits/forces of habit

Kratos: putting the blame on outside forces and not himself. i know in 4 we see him at a point where he’s grown past this and now fully accepts the blame for things that are his fault, but it's fun to think about him occasionally falling prey to his old mindsets out of habit. and, even better is if it scares him when he catches himself doing it.

Atreus of Sparta: biggest thing that sticks out to me is religion. sorry ALL of these AoS headcanons are from my fic but it’s hard to imagine him in any other setting OTL,, anyway, i think this plays into his biggest fear-- religion is one of the last things left from his culture that he feels is moral enough to practice, and if he lets go of it, he lets go of who he is and where he finds his sense of belonging. sure doesnt hurt anything (except kratos’s feelings) to say a prayer every now and again. and though he’s pretty sure the gods dont care what happens to him anymore because he’s a traitor, it doesnt really stop him, its habit and therefore its familiar and a comfort.

17. Regrets

Kratos: EVERYTHING. just kidding. ahaha… or am i? i like to think the root of kratos’s regret is asking for ares to spare him in the first place (vs when he killed callipoe & lysandra). he’d been happy and successful and if he had died, it would have been with honor and as an esteemed member of spartan society. and while we’re in this vein, it sure is fun to think about kratos considering himself a coward for not accepting fate when it was his time, esp fueled by his self-hatred at knowing it would have eventually spared his family their lives in exchange for his own. hindsight sure is 20/20, isnt it, bud

Atreus of Sparta: i like to headcanon atreus as being the opposite to kratos in this regard. he’s incredibly religious and believes the gods/fate have orchestrated/predetermined his life and future, as well as that for those around him. because of his beliefs, he doesn’t really harbor regrets for his actions, since he views the outcomes as being outside of his control. (BUT i will say as far as agapē goes, he sure as heck regretted leaving sparta for a hot second, though he doesn’t anymore)

#ask #ask meme #the-shy-artisan #thanks for the ask paige-- these were rlly fun!!!#agapē #still accepting these ones too if anyone wants to send more!

7 notes · View notes

elucere · 4 years

Text

sad late august quarantine thoughts

When quarantine first started, I really thought this would be easy for me. And in some way, I was right. This has been easier for me than the average person and, arguably, much better than the first half of my year. I graduated in December and didn’t land a single job after pretty aggressively applying during my last semester. So during the months of January and February, I was completely broke and moved in with my family. I didn’t have any money or means to do anything but sit at home all day and wallow.

Being a student was such a core part of who I was and to suddenly lose that and have nothing to fall back on really did a number on me. Not only that, but the self-hatred was killing me. Not being able to snag a job was entirely my own fault- I just wasn’t good enough. The weight of failure followed me everywhere and I felt so completely defeated all the time. I was trying my best to stay busy one way or another but it felt impossible to find the energy to do anything. I filled my time by watching 12 seasons of Criminal Minds or cramming 30 DCOMs within one week. And when I wasn’t doing something stupid, I was crying. I found a job right before quarantine started and every single day I’m thankful. It was truly no less than divine intervention and it truly made the difference with quarantine.

More than anything, though, what helped with quarantine is the fact that I’m used to being alone. My junior and senior year of college, especially, I didn’t really make friendships with the people I dormed with and none of those previous residential relationships followed me. At this point, I was eating every single meal alone. When I was upset, the only relationships I had to fall back on were ones I cultivated online. I already had a less than traditional college experience. The only parties I went to were my club’s socials and beyond the people I met there, I had nothing. Even then, if I was in large groups of people I would just completely shut down or not go. At first, being alone 90% of the time was very depressing. I cried a lot. But then, I got used to it.

Which, when you think about it at first, isn’t that bad. The moments you have with yourself are just comfortable, neither really good or bad. And people say to live in the moment, yaknow? But moments only last so long. We don’t spend most of our time doing exciting things or going to exciting places. Like, hell, I work a 40 hour work week, do you think I’m trying to live in the moment? No, we spend most of our time reflecting and looking forward. Live in the moment is only a sentiment that’s worth so much. I remember going to Disneyland 4 years ago and when I was riding Big Thunder Mountain, I remember thinking to myself, “You’re in Disneyland this is your favorite place and you’ve been looking forward to this trip forever. Enjoy this moment.” And honestly, I would’ve probably enjoyed that moment just as much even if I didn’t have that moment of reflection. That temporary gratitude is only worth so much. But the memory of that trip is still able to give me happiness. Life is a collection of moments and you get to pick what stays with you. Living for and in the current moment is exhausting and not everyone can find enough joy in the little things to fufil them.

Getting used to your own company isn’t inherently a bad thing, but I think I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I would decline large outings, minimize my attempts at making friends, spend at least a year not talking to people in a group before I felt comfortable because I was so wrapped up in my insecurities. That’s what it all boils down to, I suppose, at least for me. Because when I’m out with other people, I’m happy for a few hours, and then I come home and it’s just straight crippling self-hatred. “Was I funny enough? Was I annoying? Did they like talking to me? I should ask if they enjoyed themselves? They won’t answer honestly even if they did. How would I know, then? Would they not invite me out again? And if they don’t, that just sucks. If they told me what was bothering them, I could fix it but now they aren’t giving me the chance.” And it goes on and on and on until I’ve convinced myself I’m the worst. And then eventually, the person does drop me because I basically projected all that insecurity onto the relationship and made those worries true. And then because I’m worried about doing that to someone else, I end up internalizing all my worries and it just gets worse and worse to the point where I have to go to the bathroom and cry during outings because I already feel like I’ve let everyone down. At this point, when a friendship begins to drift, I’ve already cut that person off in my mind because I’ve convinced myself that this was just an inevitability of the friendship, that I was never good enough for them and they were just talking to me until they found something better. Being alone may have denied me happy moments with others, but it also prevented me from creating painful memories.

This is where social media has kind of crippled my ability to form relationships with people too. Because I don’t want to reach out to a close friend and share this, no that’d scare them off. So let me post about my deepest fears and pain to like 100+ people on my finsta. That’s healthy and normal. Let me complain on my 300+ follower twitter account. And then I develop an unhealthy relationship with those sites when I don’t get the response I’m expecting. Posting online is like having friends without gambling individual heartbreak. When I put effort into a tweet or a project and it doesn’t get acknowledged, I feel it reflecting badly on me. It’s only a matter of time before I get caught up on how I come off online too and suddenly, it’s hard for me to post. I don’t know what to say. I’m not getting engagement, everyone must hate me. I don’t feel close to anyone. Everyone else has such close friend groups and it’s so hard for me to find that for myself, so what’s the point? So I get overwhelmed and leave for a while, but it’s a cycle like anything else in life.

Being so wrapped up in people’s hypothetical perceptions of you sucks so much. In April, I started writing for DiscussingFilm. Film criticism wasn’t really something I imagined myself doing and quite honestly I’m not sure how I ended up there. I’m grateful for the opportunity and everything it’s given me, but it also gives me something more to be insecure about. I’m a chronic overwriter. My stuff is way too long for no reason. That may just be my style, but when I read other people’s reviews, I burn with jealousy. They’re able to condense their thoughts so succinctly and clearly. We have the same words at our disposal, the same complexities of the human language, and yet how I express a thought is so much more awkward and jumbled. I hate it. And I sit at home, stressing to high heaven over some 1.2k word review just sick with worry about how others will perceive it. What they’ll think of it. If they’ll be disappointed. I can’t imagine a bigger heartbreak than the thought of someone opening my work, reading it, and thinking that it was a waste of their time. And that has most definitely happened somewhere in the world and I feel just so powerless to stop it.

That goes beyond insecurity though and speaks more to the feelings of powerlessness. This standard that you’ve set for yourself and if you can’t reach it, you feel awful. Not everything is in our control, but we have to assign a certain level of personal responsibility to it or else the chaos is overwhelming. It’s a fine line to walk, and honestly, I don’t know how to do it. How much of someone else enjoying my work within my control? Or getting hired? Or other people’s perception of me? If they think I’m funny or annoying? Probably less than I’d like to admit, but definitely a lot less than I’m comfortable with. Because even when I’m insecure, I’m still living in a logical reality where my actions have nearly complete control of other people’s perceptions of me and I could easily change them. But it’s not that simple and I don’t think it ever will be, really. So what am I supposed to do about it? Just stop stressing?

One of my favorite musicals is Newsies. The protagonist, Jack Kelly, is obsessed with leaving New York and going to Santa Fe and just becoming a cowboy. He feels trapped by the city and Santa Fe is his idealization of freedom. There’s a moment where he’s talking to his friend and she asks him if he’s going there or if he’s running away. Because, you see, if you’re going there and it’s not the right place you can go somewhere else. But if you’re running away nowhere will ever be the right place.

So when I was in high school, I idolized the concept of going away to college. I thought that if that happened, I would finally have the space to be myself and finally be happy. So when I had a really bad college experience, I realized college was my Santa Fe and I was running away. I had brought all of my baggage with me and my insecurities and my emotional turmoil and nowhere will ever be the right place for me until I work through those things. At first, I thought my problem was the people, so I cut them out. But now, I know that’s wrong.

Quarantine has given me a lot of time to self reflect. Who am I? What do I like? But more than that, it’s revealed to me how incredibly lonely I’ve kept myself. And I’ve always felt this way and somehow each year I manage to push myself more and more away from others. Newsies ends with Jack deciding to stay in New York because he realized he didn’t really want to leave, he wanted a reason to stay. He wanted to feel loved and valued, which is what we all do. To try and trick myself that the best way to protect myself is to shut myself off was stupid. Dumb. There are at least 35 DCOMs that come to this conclusion and I shouldn’t be having this conversation at 22.

I think what did it for me was the realization that I would be in the same place with or without COVID. It’s one thing to say that you’re sad because of all the things you can’t do, but the realization that you wouldn’t be doing those things regardless hurts a little more. It’s being accutely aware of how much you’ve taken for granted. The fact that I’m feeling just as fine now, amidst a global pandemic, as I have my entire life just speaks to how awful the mental prison is where I’ve trapped myself. Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean that it’s the best way for me. I deserve to do better for myself, but why won’t I let myself have it?

Normally, I’d internalize this. But that doesn’t really push me to change. Sometimes, all you need is for other people to recognize how you feel so you don’t really feel as alone. I don’t really expect people to read all of this. There’s so much happening in the world that we feel powerless to fix. I try so hard to do my part but it’s just exhausting. So many injustices are than the problems of one person feels so trivial. But I’d like to imagine that the struggles of trying to find yourself, especially right now when we’re so disconnected from another, is universal. This is one thing that we can fix. I am so sick and tired of being lonely and just hating myself so much. I want to be better, I want to feel better, and I want to figure this all out. But I’m not quite sure how. Vocalizing this all feels good and it feels productive, but at this point I just don’t know how to talk to people. But I’ll try and I guess that’s all I can really do.

Quarantine and a global pandemic may be a box we’re forced in, but it doesn’t mean we have to put ourselves in a mental one. When quarantine is over, we are going to walk out of it as new people and now is the time to decide what commitnments we want to make and what actual changes we’re going to work towards during this time to make sure those wishes for ourselves become a reality.

I love all of you so much. You have value and are appreciated in your life. People are so complicated and sometimes it’s hard to grasp that everyone else has lives that are just as complex and nuanced as your own. Everyone is struggling and everyone is succeeding simultaneously in this big, increasingly chaotic world. So give yourself some credit and know your worth. It’s hard to define who you are, especially when you don’t really have others to compare yourself to and better define the differences. But also, remember people aren’t just one thing. Just follow what you like, try new things, and look inward just as much as you look outward.

#mine

1 note · View note

laurensaysthings · 4 years

Text

The Church

I can only speak for myself and the specific sect of Christianity I survived, and I believe wholeheartedly that every human being has the right to decide their own beliefs about existence. But I also believe that there are many others like me who have been traumatized by the weaponization of the unique brand of conservatism that occurs within certain Christian communities.

Here is my truth.

I grew up attending an Evangelical Free Church in a small, predominantly white farming town. I was a depressed, anxious kid. As a licensed mental health professional, I would probably schedule a kid like me for twice-a-week sessions. But back then, I was praised as an overachiever. Middle school was my time to shine. I was 0.01 points away from being 8th grade valedictorian. I was involved in sports, yearbook, student council, youth group, guitar, piano and voice lessons. But buried under all of that was a mile-thick layer of insecurity and crippling fear of losing a Kim Il-Sung level of control over my existence.

Though I was surrounded by adults who purported to care about my “spiritual well-being,” not once did anyone acknowledge or seemingly even notice my many depressive episodes or extreme anxiety, let alone suggest I receive treatment. Instead, I was pushed to do more within the church. I led worship for the youth group and small-group Bible studies for other teen girls. All the while, I was broken, often suicidal, seeking out external affirmation as a way to subvert my lack of self-knowledge and self-worth.

Women weren’t allowed to hold higher leadership positions in my church, so the highest achievement I could hope for beyond what I’d already attained was to land a husband. A man’s commitment to a me as a woman was the highest form of validation.

And in the pursuit of being “chosen” as a wife, the greatest honor, I had to prove myself to be worthy in a very specific way. It was drilled into my head that the highest form of integrity a woman can have is sexual purity. This meant not having sex before marriage but also, not leading men astray in my daily life. Mostly this meant I had to dress conservatively, because I was taught that men having sexual thoughts about me was my own fault only. I was Eve and every man on earth was Adam. He only ate the apple because she suggested it.

In retrospect, this ideology is obviously why it took me 4 years to share the fact that I’d been raped with my Christian relatives. In fact, I still struggle with the vestiges of this ideology in my romantic relationships. How do you build an equal partnership when you are responsible for your partner’s actions and even their private thoughts in addition to your own? What an impossibly heavy burden to carry.

Meanwhile, I was never taught about consent and bodily autonomy. The focus was only on sexual purity, not on what it means to have agency over your body and your sexuality. “True love waits” was the mantra indoctrinated into us as teens. Just don’t have sex, then get married, then have sex. That was the limit of the education about sexuality. Men have the right to your body because men, after all, are the head of the church and the household. The pain of this still lingers in my bones. I am still grieving over what I’ve let men get away with and what I’ve blamed myself for, even recently.

The first example I can recall happened when I was 16. I had dropped out of high school after freshmen year because my depression had become untenable. The excuse I used was that I was spiritually vulnerable to being led astray by my classmates’ drug use and sexual escapades. But ultimately it was as simple as this: I was mentally ill and not receiving treatment.

I was in so much pain, and I couldn’t share this struggle with my fellow Christians, my community and support system, because even at age 14, I “understood” that being in emotional pain was merely a result of personal moral failings. I just had to be a better Christian, pray harder, be more involved in church activities. Then I would feel better.

I was homeschooled my sophomore year, and then I enrolled in courses at a local community college for my junior year. I tried to hide my age from my classmates (which in retrospect was incredibly silly, considering I looked like a child). There was a man (age 19 or 20) with whom I had a few classes in common that first year, and he took an interest in me. You will recall that my entire education about relationships up until that point was limited to the church’s overtures about the importance of my purity and my responsibility for men’s purity, so I was deeply confused by this man’s behavior toward me.

He sexually harassed me for months. It was so bad that at one point, a professor noticed and called me in to his office to ask me if I wanted to report the man to the school’s administration. But of course I didn’t because it was my fault. If I could just be more conservative, it would stop. I started dressing in baggier clothing, trying to talk to this man about Jesus so he too could be saved. I spent MORE, not less, time with him in this pursuit. He offered me a ride home one night, and I would have accepted had it not been for the intervention of my parents and a good friend I had at the college. Who knows what would have happened had I gotten into his car that night.

A few days after I refused the ride home, he changed completely. He started mocking me, telling me how worthless, ugly, disgusting I was. I will never forget one night at the end of class as we were leaving, he turned around and, in front of all of our classmates, said to me, “No one will ever touch you.”

Thinking back, I am so deeply sad for how much I internalized that sentiment. Being desired by a man, no matter how awful his behavior, was the ultimate compliment. And even though the church sought to curb sexuality as a means of control over women, it ironically had the opposite effect. Suddenly, as a result of this man’s harassment, I understood that the easiest way to get attention from men was through my sexuality.

The church taught me that it is irrelevant for a woman to be intelligent and compassionate and successful, because what matters most is marriage and children. Sure, you can have a career, as long as you have a family first. College was a means to an end: attend a good Christian school to find a good Christian husband.

Here is the impossible paradox inherent in the church’s lessons: attracting attention from men means you are impure and unworthy of committed love BUT your worth is determined by a man paying you attention and choosing to commit to you. And so we have the classic conundrum of the “innocent slut.” Of course I know this impossible standard exists outside of the church, but the church certainly does a good job of reinforcing the mixed messages women receive all day every day in a constant barrage of advertising.

Imagine if we let women's integrity be defined in the complex, holistic ways we calculate men’s integrity. Of course that would require women to have power and bodily autonomy. It would require women’s worth to be defined outside of the context of men’s approval. In fact it would have nothing to do with men at all. But in the church, I learned that men are the center of everything. I can support them and play a role in their agendas, but they hold the power.

Fortunately here is where my own beliefs started to diverge from those I was steeped in. When I left home at 18, I moved to a new city and surrounded myself with incredibly strong women. They were funny, creative, brilliant. Some of them were even Christian, which actually helped during this transition period. Quite frankly, these women saved me.

Through their relentless friendship, I learned that even though I was broken, I was still worthy of unconditional love exactly as I was. I didn’t need to change or hide my truth. On endless road trips across the country and all-nighters studying and just sharing the mundane parts of life with people who loved me so thoroughly, I started to heal.

With these women in my life as my safe harbor, I could be weird and take risks and explore my talents and interests unhindered. It was a revelation. I started to understand the power of women and not fear it. I started to understand my own power, and it had nothing to do with men.

Of course, it’s a journey. During this same time, I let men take all kinds of liberties with my time and my body. To this day, I’m still recovering from the harm the church has done in my life, but my recovery started there with those brilliant women.

In the decade and change since that time, I have gotten treatment for my mental illness. I still have depressive episodes every now and then, and on a scale of 1-10, my daily anxiety level is an 8. But part of who I am is that I run a little neurotic. I still want to have a Kim Il-Sung level control over my life, but I can cope when I don’t, which is most of the time. And I still seek out brilliant women as my daily support system.

I hold a leadership position at work now. I have a team that relies on my integrity, which I define by my compassion, strength, commitment to social justice and unconditional support of my team members.

I survived that Evangelical Free Church in a small, predominantly white farming town. I don’t look back with hatred or bitterness but rather with grief. I am grieving what I missed out on during those years and also the harm I may have done to others as part of that structure.

To my family members who continue to try to reel me back into the church, this essay is for you.

This is so you can better understand why I left and why I won’t return. I don’t begrudge you your beliefs at all but I do take issue with the institution.

I believe that we all have to continue to examine the systems within which we operate. What I've learned in the years since leaving the church is that we often miss the forest for the trees. You can be so steeped in something that you miss the harm it’s doing.

Another way to claim our power is to keep learning. Surround yourself with people who are different from you, listen to their experiences, believe them. Support others in claiming power that was stolen from them.

As with those women who helped me heal, I want to be a safe harbor for others to heal. The work begins within ourselves and the institutions we uphold. We are responsible.

Love, Lauren

0 notes

catboyfeli · 7 years

Text

Can people like... stop hating on Veneziano to make Romano look better? They’re both cuties. And I don’t think Romano would appreciate you insulting his brother either, even if it was to make him feel better >.>

People call Veneziano weak, but he literally grew up being abused by Austria, lost multiple people throughout his life, had to deal with Romano constantly belittling him, and dealt with being bullied by other nations all the time.

He knows he’s annoying and childish and even insults himself multiple times throughout the series. He always is worried about people leaving him for someone better and even bursts in on Germany in the shower to make sure he still likes him.

It’s heavily hinted he has some form of anxiety and most likely has depression as well. People blame him for Romano’s insecurities, but it’s not his fault?? He tries his best to make his brother happy, as well as everyone else he knows.

People take Romano’s inferior complex way too far most of the time, anyway. It’s all up to personal interpretation but seriously. People act like he grew up being hated and alone... But he had Spain who took very good care of him, and he obviously knew his Grandfather cared about him. Why does the fandom turn his insecurities into a huge, crippling self hatred? He has more to his personality than that.

People call Veneziano weak in comparison to Romano, but do you ever see Veneziano talking about his insecurities? No. Neither of them do. Why do people assume Romano has it worse just because he’s grumpier, and Veneziano is more cheerful? The reason he is so cheerful is probably because he doesn’t want to burden anyone.

This is all up to personal interpretation but just... stop comparing my sons please. They’re both precious.

#i keep seeing people calling vene weak and saying romano is better #and i s2g #i will fight #hetalia #aph #aph italy #aph north italy #aph veneziano #aph veneciano #aph romano #aph south italy #aph italy brothers #aph itabros

119 notes · View notes

vivithefolle · 4 years

Note

I love your analysis about the Cho/Ron interaction, but I'm just curious as to how Harmionie shipping Quorans would respond to it if you post it there. Knowing them, they'd probably see it as more proof that Harmony works because "Look! Hermione doesn't care when Harry is tactless but she can't stop nagging Ron when he is tactless!" 🤣 Seriously, though. Hermione is WAY nicer to Harry than she is to Ron. Come to think of it, Hermione is nicer to most people than she is to Ron.

Aaaah, well that’s simply because Hermione is… awful.No, no, seriously, when Hermione is in love, she’s terrible. She can be a nice friend but when she’s in love with you she’s horrible. Especially since she’s a teenager.

Hermione is a prime example of a Tsundere.

“How was practice?” asked Hermione rather coolly half an hour later, as Harry and Ron climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room.“It was -” Harry began. “Completely lousy,” said Ron in a hollow voice, sinking into a chair beside Hermione. She looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt. - Order of the Phoenix

Rare footage of the Hermione Granger, scientific name Selfinsertus Overratedus, displaying interest in specimen of mighty fine hunk

You see, Hermione is never going to make the first move. You must be the one to ask her out, because she sure as hell ain’t going to do it for you.

Which is why she doesn’t realize that Ron is actually aware he loves her. There’s a big comedy of assumptions going on in Romione’s love story.

Hermione believes that Ron either 1) likes her but is oblivious to his own feelings and so she thinks she has to “give him hints” to make him realize it. Emphasized best by this exchange:

Hermione laughed.“Harry you’re worse than Ron… well, no, you’re not, “ she sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy. “Look - you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her.”“Is that what she was doing?” said Harry, as Ron dropped on to the bench opposite them and pulled every dish within reach towards him. “Well, wouldn’t it have been easier if she’d just asked me whether I liked her better than you?”“Girls don’t often ask questions like that,” said Hermione.

“I’ve sent him so many signals and yet he doesn’t notice. Woe is me!”

2) doesn’t actually likes her, but sees her just as a good mate or worse, as another sister.

“We’re allowed to bring guests,” said Hermione, […], “and I was going to ask you to come, but […] I won’t bother.”

“I was going to ask you to come but I won’t bother.”

This is literally what she said. It’s more of a “look Ron! An invite! If you’re good maybe I’ll think about letting you have it!” than anything else.

It’s because this is Hermione’s last resort. The ultimate humiliation. She has to resort to inviting Ron when in her mind, he’s supposed to be the one asking her out. He’s the boy! He’s supposed to do it!(And this is why I laugh at all the fools who claim that Hermione is the pinnacle of feminism. Seriously, the girl is more of a misogynist than any other character in the series.)

Hermione failed to take into account that Ron’s insecurity cripples him worse than she imagines, and that he copes with it differently than she copes with her own insecurities.

And this is the part where I explain about Hermione’s hatred of being vulnerable.

You see, I can relate quite a lot to Hermione - I see a lot of me in her, and a lot of people who hurt me in the past as well.

Hence why you start despising any form of vulnerability you find in yourself.

(As much as I’m disillusioned with Romione, this kiss is still one of my favourite parts of the series. They mutually sweep each other off their feet for god’s sake, you wish your ship would.)

#ask #vivi answers #hermione granger #ron weasley #analysis #hp analysis #character analysis #harry potter #romione #shipping #hermione granger critical #hermione critical #ron x hermione #ron weasley defense squad #ron weasley defence squad

125 notes · View notes

jessi-31days-blog · 7 years

Text

What’s my point here? A pre-journey introduction.

Note: I began my journey October 1st. As today is October 2nd, I’ll be posting this, the log of my first day, and the log of my second day. From then on it will be one post per day.

First of all, who am I and what makes me want to improve myself?

I’m depressed, going through my second heart break this year. This wasn’t just a painful loss heartbreak and a rebound heartbreak; these were two significant and equally painful heartbreaks. That probably gives you an idea of how good I am at keeping a partner (sarcasm translation: I’m clearly not, nor am I good at selecting a partner). Life long story short: I’ve dealt with trauma, loss, mental illness of many kinds, and immense failure all my life. I can’t remember the last time I made someone deeply and genuinely proud of me. Yes Mom (and maybe Dad), I know you’re reading this, and I know you guys are proud of me in the sense that you love me and are glad I was born to you and that I have managed to not kill myself (okay, the rest of you can tune back in now). But I haven’t completed anything, except a 2 year Christian leadership program that honestly did me more bad than good (not because of the people, the program itself, or the church associated, but because I was balls deep in mental illness and self hatred and didn’t know how to properly socialize with people at this time; therefore any help that was given to me didn’t really work). Anything good that did actually happen to me during that time was all God.

Pause.

Don’t get turned off by my mention of God, by the way, because I don’t want to alienate anyone who may want to follow my journey that are put off by religion (but I’m one of those cliche bitches that calls myself spiritual instead; go ahead, judge me), my God (Jesus), or people who follow other faiths. Besides, I’m one of the most unorthodox Christians you’ll ever meet, and I honestly do not give a fuck about being the perfect Christian. All I believe is that Jesus Christ was who He says He was and did what He said He did, and that He loves everyone. Other than that, I just live my life. So you’ll see mentions of my faith, but it won’t be annoying. As a matter of fact, some of my newer friends might just now be discovering that I believe in God. Hi guys! I love you! I know it might take you by surprise that I believe in this, but I’m sure that’s not the only time something I’ve said has taken you by surprise! Wink, nudge. My older friends will read that and be taken aback that I would withhold such information as my belief in Jesus back from my dear friends. And to y’all I say: calm down. Breathe. I’m not trying to be Andrew Wommack or Todd White right now. I think believing what Jesus did to be true is enough for me to go on about my daily life like a normal person. Besides, shit! It’s harder for me to come out as Christian to some people than it was to come out as bisexual! And that’s saying something. Because on one hand, I’m like a diet hedonist, or hedonist lite. Not the coolest thing I like to admit about myself, but give me a break. So you get one of them “crazy Christians” (I know you know the type) to notice 1/4 a teaspoon of hedonism and you’re damned to Hell. On the other hand, there’s the whole ACTUALLY BEING ASSOCIATED WITH PEOPLE LIKE PETER FUCKING POPOFF SOMETIMES that makes me kind of just want to keep my relationship with God to myself.

Unpause.

Other than that leadership school, I haven’t actually finished anything except every single cigarette I have ever smoked (I quit 6 months ago, but I swear to god I would get every last tobacco leaf in those skinny cancer bastard sticks). I didn’t finish high school (but I got my GED, so maybe that counts as finishing something). I didn’t finish even one year of bible college (hold your laughter kids). I had a mental breakdown last year which lead to two things: sending me into a mentally crippled state of mind, thus leading me to be misdiagnosed and way more medicated than I needed to be, and two, the inevitable destruction of my first true love. Now that whole break up wasn’t solely my fault. It was about half. Looking back at what I’ve learned, while I thought he was my miracle, he was everything but that.

Fast forward to April (I think) this year. I leave everything I have, all my friends and most of my family, and my car, in California where I grew up my whole life, and I move to Florida with my mom and step dad.

Okay, this is taking too long to explain. TIME FOR THE LIGHTNING ROUND!

Here’s what happened April-September:

Deep post break up depression (the first love ended last year, but we ended for good right after I left for Florida, thus explaining the depression).

I start to really like alcohol.

I meet someone new, we become friends, we fall in love, start a romantic relationship.

I still like alcohol, once a week.

I meet an amazing group of friends from all over the world in a Skpe group advertised on Reddit.

I like alcohol one or two times a week.

The romantic relationship starts out great, ends terribly. Another heart break. LIKE FOR ALCOHOL INTENSIFIES.

I decide to sign up for college to get into the medical assistance career, which begins October 9th. I realize I gotta do something to improve myself, thus getting the idea to do this thing.

Okay, now what am I trying to accomplish?

I want to be less depressed on October 31st than I was October 1st. I want to learn to enjoy healthy habits and hate unhealthy habits. I want to finish something that I start (which is why I’m using a blog as accountability). And last but not least, I want there to be a record of my efforts to overcome mental illness for two reasons: First reason is that if I make it and I become a better, stronger, and happy version of myself, I want a record of what I did to get to that place. Second reason is if I don’t make it, if this thing actually does kill me (God and my mother forbid), I want there to be a record that I at least gave it my all. That I tried my best to make my life worth living. I know that the second reason sounds depressing, but I’m just being honest.

As a matter of fact, if you’re gonna follow my journey, just make note of the fact that I will always be honest in every entry; the good, the bad, the ugly. If this 31 day self improvement challenge does nothing for me, you’ll be one of the first ones to know. If this absolutely changes my life, you’ll be one of the first ones to know.

And what exactly am I going to be doing?

Yoga, guided meditation, reading a proverb, reading a blog post, encouraging/helping one stranger on reddit, and going for a walk (or strength-type yoga that is equal in exercise) every day for 31 days. I’m also giving up alcohol for 31 days.

I’m going to use doyogawithme.com’s “Yoga for Chronic Stress, Anxiety and Depression“, which lasts for 21 days. This program includes 10-ish minute videos and a guided meditation each day, with one rest day per week. After the 21 days, I’ll find 10 days worth of yoga and meditation to fill in the gap. My hope is that easy yoga and guided meditation will help me let go of a lot of hurt, learn to calm myself down naturally, and begin thinking positive thoughts.

I’ll be reading from the book of the Bible called Proverbs, which is basically all about wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

So far the blog I’m reading from is TWLOHA.com’s blogs, which are very insightful and good for people who struggle with mental illness or family/friends of people who struggle with mental illness. If I find any other good blog sites, I’ll read from those, too.

As for the strangers on reddit, I’ll most likely sort by “new” in either r/anxiety or r/depression, and pick someone to give a sincere, detailed piece of advice or encouragement to. My hope in doing this is that it will teach me to think of others, to not be so self centered, and to learn how to make people feel better about themselves or their problems.

I was never in alcoholic territory, but I was getting at least tipsy 2-3 times a week, and I’d rather not get used to being liberal with whiskey for the sake of “numbing” depression

So, if you wanna follow my formula (ew, I hate that word), do some or all of the following every day:

Do yoga or breathing exercises, listen to a guided meditation on a topic of your choosing, find a book about wisdom or wise sayings and read a portion, find a blog about something that interests you and read a post, encourage at least one stranger (be it on your favorite social media site or in person), and do some kind of lite to medium exercise. Bonus points if you journal about everything. Oh, and give up a bad habit, such as alcohol, soda, or fast food for the 31 days as well. Feel free to customize your own 31 day challenge. Don’t let me hog all the self improvement (assuming I’ll see some, ha ha ha).

Anything else?

I’ll probably end up making this blog look more aesthetically pleasing at some point, and maybe I’ll take down my face picture and replace it with something that isn’t my face, idk. But as of typing this sentence it is 11:10 pm on October 2nd, and I just want to post my two days of entries then go to bed.

If you choose to follow my journey: thanks, bud.

#self improvement #mental health #guided meditation #jessi-31days

0 notes