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btsandvmin · 3 years

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Ask: Reply - 2021.04.16

Time to answer some more of your questions. I have a lot this time, and still a lot left I’ll have to save to another post. You are all very good at being curious and asking interesting questions. There are also some asks that are replies to old asks, and then I’ll include the link to the referenced post.

This time the topics will be:

Ask 1 - About KTH1 and expectations Ask 2 - KTH1 spoiler with “Oh lady” Ask 3 - Vminies getting superiority complex Ask 4 - Not dismissing the bond between Vmin and the other boys Ask 5 - Other people’s words can influence your thoughts Ask 6 - Vmin not sharing rooms in Bon Voyage Malta Ask 7 - Has being a Vmin shipper always been so overwhelming with all the content? Ask 8 - “Just a friend” interview Ask 9 - The garnet necklace Ask 10 - Vmin in CMs Ask 11 - Taehyung uncomfortable about shipping/tae*kook? Ask 12 - What did Jimin write on his shirt in Run ep. 53? Ask 13 - Gina Maeng ask follow up Ask 14 - Vmin’s love is beautiful (and so much nice praise omg)

Today’s post is a long one... Enjoy!

Ask 1 - About KTH1 and expectations

Ok, so I did write a shit post about this... (I mean… This is literally all Vmin’s songs so far ), but I still think your questions are worth a proper answer.

Honestly I think speculating about KTH1 is kind of hard, and as seen in the shit post I am quite torn with my expectations... In general I am the type who doesn’t like to expect too much in fear of being disappointed. I rather be pleasantly surprised. That being said Vmin does have a track record of getting involved in each other’s songs. I mean a lot is just speculation of course, but we do have confirmed cases as well, enough to not be too surprised if they would keep it up and do something for Tae’s solo album as well. (Tae saying his mixtape would be named Jimin back in 2016 still haunts me.)

On the other hand, they have already given us a lot of collabs. Adding more would feel more like a statement, at least if it would be only Jimin out of the members on that album. The thing is that if Vmin would have something “real” or at least if they are a bit careful with how they come across... I am not sure they would do something too “obvious”. But where such a line would be drawn is impossible to know. I mean clearly they managed to write and sing Friends and it worked fine, even if they did get more attention as a ship.

We also know Tae has been quite loud about Jimin in ways that single him out, so maybe they would really dare push the boundaries as far as actually including Jimin in the album somehow. It’s also very possible there could be other members, and honestly we probably shouldn’t hyper focus too much on it and that it has to mean something no matter if anyone is on it or not.

I think one of the rappers being on it is probably more likely out of the members, but it seems Tae has shown an interest in collabs with people outside of BTS, so that’s kind of what I am expecting the most. No matter who in the group is on it I am sure fans will make a big deal out of it, and maybe Tae would rather have his own thing for his first album. I really don’t know how his thoughts would go.

But again, looking at how Tae and Jimin has talked about working together, and have had moments like Tae promising Jimin a song or Tae saying they will work together again... It’s definitely not impossible to get another Vmin song. I do feel it’s more likely for any connections to be vague and not instantly noticeable though (at least not anything romantic looking because we know what happened to the Christmas song). Especially considering how they have only recently revealed things like 4 clock’s inspiration more openly and had Friends followed by Sweet Night. My main stance for any possible real ship is still that they have reason to be careful, and yet another Vmin collab, on Taehyung’s first personal album would probably raise some eyebrows considering everything else we already have. But it could also be me over analyzing them, and maybe they just really like and want to work together. Tae for sure has after all been vocal about this preference and want to work with Jimin.

So yeah, on one hand they have a track record that is hard to ignore... But on the other I wonder if they might want to add another “point” for ARMY to look at them and their songs. I also don’t want to assume that if there are songs on there that sound romantic that they automatically will be about Jimin. There will have to be legit possible connections for me to acknowledge them.

It’s tricky. I guess we will have to wait and see. I am kind of scared both that there won’t be anything or that there will be SOMETHING. Thank you for the ask, and I hope I shed some light on my thoughts on this subject. Either way I am very excited and looking forward to an album full of Taehyung’s own songs and the stories he wants to tell.

Ask 2 - KTH1 spoiler with “Oh lady”

I am not sure it is “lady”, since it’s a bit unclear in general. He also has a part that just seems to go “do be do” and I don’t know if the lyrics are even finished or if he worked with someone else etc. We basically lack a lot of information. But even so using lady/her/she etc. in a song doesn’t have to mean it is about a specific person or that the person is a she or that it is Taehyung’s own feelings (I know he said he usually sings about things he have felt, but just saying it doesn’t always have to be).

Of course I don’t want to downplay it and say it doesn’t mean anything, but considering their fanbase is majority women, they live in a homophobic country and he has even been denied to sing a romantic song with a man before, it’s not impossible to add that to make it more “relatable” or less “gay”. God, that sounds terrible. I don’t want to start discussions where we don’t take their words for what they are, so I hope you might understand my point of view. That being said of course it could just as easily be to or about a specific woman in his life that we don’t know about. Or as you say, he isn’t actually in love but is simply writing love songs that could be inspired by non-romantic relationships or movies etc. as was the case for his inspiration for Winter Bear.

Tae also used “she” in Winter Bear, and that seems a bit forgotten. Or people try to say it has to be about his grandmother... Which we obviously don’t know, it’s just the woman people jump to since he used “she” and many people don’t like the idea of him dating a woman or writing about a woman we don’t know. Either way I think we need to remember that anything is possible and we don’t know them personally and how they think or why they choose to do what they do.

I think we need to remember that there is always going to be the possibility that ships aren’t real, that the romantic songs aren’t about Jimin and that either one of them could be in a relationship with someone else (all genders included).

Ask 3 - Vminies getting superiority complex

Hello! I want to address something that has been bothering me for a while now. I have been seeing some vminnies have a superiority complex just bcoz they ship vmin. Its very rampant among new vminnies and twt vminnies. I get that we all feel validated and happy when out OTP claim to be soulmates and bff. I feel that way too. But people have to remember that vmin are real people and their relationship is dynamic. Like they did grow from bff who used to tease e/o and fight alot to soulmates who are gentle and caring. Who is to say that one day they wont drift apart (i hope not and dont think thats gonna happen but for argument sake) so there is no reason to feel superior or look down on other shippers.

If people think vminnies are superior bcoz they are not toxic they probably know they are lying. Lbr i have seen my share of toxic vminnies though may be a lesser number but they are there and its not the ship but its that particular person who is at fault. While i agree that some ship theories cultivate hate and toxicity there may be people among those ships who are just as sane and good as we claim to be. I just wanted to address this bcoz seeing some vminnies on twt saying locals thinking vmin were tgt after coway add is a validation kind of triggered me. I m sure there would have been similar responses to any other ship bcoz they all have been tgt for a decade and are very comfortable with e/o. I just wanted to talk to someone about this and i know you have discussed similar topics in the past. So yeah this was very long.

First of all, on request I won’t show your name, but thank you for sending me this and letting me know who you are. It’s always nice to know who is behind the question. But that being said I don’t mind people asking on anon, I totally get it being a lot easier to ask or question things when you don’t have to reveal yourself. Either way I am just glad to get interesting and important topics and I do think the things you bring up are worth talking about.

As you say, there is this thing when people start to feel and act superior for various reasons, and I too have seen some Vminies do this. Getting a lot of moments is sure nice. But honestly, just imagine if another ship came and mocked Vmin or gloated every time they got more moments. It has surely happened too, and I am sure it doesn’t feel very nice when on the negative end. Just be a decent human, ship moments will always vary and it’s great to be happy about getting moments, but there is no need to compare or look down on other ships. I say it again, shipping is not a competition, just enjoy your own ship and let others enjoy theirs.

As for feelings superior based on group behavior I think we really need to stop looking at groups and start looking at individuals, both when it comes to groups we are part of and groups we consider “bad”. I have said it many times, but individuals of other groups we don’t agree with won’t all be bad, or all stupid or young etc. We might want to tell ourselves they are worse, but it really doesn’t change much.

Being “less bad” it not a merit and it shouldn’t be a competition. We all have our own selves to answer to and we should judge other people based on their actions and not based on what group they might belong to.

I think size and the toxicity of a narrative can lead to more people in certain groups behaving in toxic ways... But I think any person could happen to fall into these behaviors if not careful and aware. Often the change is gradual too, or you feel attacked by the other “rival group” and thus feel it’s justified to attack back, and so it escalates.

Vminies are at the moment as a group smaller, and thus have less “bad apples”. We likely also have a narrative for Vmin that doesn’t require as toxic mindsets, for example extreme jealousy or Vmin being forced to hide. But there for sure are still toxic Vminies, and there are also a lot of non-toxic shippers in all groups. Usually the louder ones are also the worst ones while the chill and nice will remain in their own lane and ship more peacefully. But being part of a smaller group doesn’t make you superior, your actions is what is important.

As for small moments getting noticed or other types of “validation” for your ship, of course it’s going to feel nice. However, what people see and think of any relationship in BTS is still just an outsider view and literally has no meaning for their actual relationship beyond it being a cute moment. That’s why size and popularity also doesn’t matter as any kind of “proof”. Interpretation will always just be interpretation, good or bad, if you like it or not.

Sadly I think we will get more and more toxic behavior from more ships as the fandom grows and as some things get more normalized within those ships’ communities. It’s about certain behaviors growing into a community culture... The more toxicity that is allowed the more others will follow. That’s why bringing up the problems is important, but trying to do so without shunning people so that they don’t go and create their own space where everyone else is the enemy. After all, being open and welcoming and understanding is much more likely to make someone listen and even change their mind than by attacking them.

I answer for my own actions. So does every person. I don’t want to be judged for everything every Vminie or ARMY or Multi K-pop fan etc. has done. Generalization is a huge problem in general, not just in fandoms or ship wars. I do try to be a positive influence, to not judge too harshly and to remember that being hostile won’t help any situation. But that’s about it. I am glad you brought up this topic, because talking about it is important, but sadly I don’t think there is a lot that can be done about it. Just try to be nice and open minded.

Thank you for the ask, I hope you all understood what I wanted to say.

Ask 4 - Not dismissing the bond between Vmin and the other boys

Thank you. I really see no need for it. It’s clear as day that they all love each other, and even if one pair would happen to be romantic instead of platonic that won’t change. We don’t have to compare and we definitely don’t have to downplay the moments they share with each other. All shippers should at the very least accept the the things they do and say as mostly genuine. I trust BTS and what they show us, it’s that easy.

I know some also get influenced by toxic fans, but we really need to remember that no narratives by fans matter when it comes to reality and what bonds BTS share with each other. They are all great people and seem to have such love and respect for each other I frankly don’t understand how you can be a fan if you think any of it is played up to the point some claim.

Likely no ship in BTS is real, but if any is, to me I am sure the ones involved would be happy and supported by the rest of the members. That’s why it doesn’t really matter what ship would be real or not real as long as they are happy. We shouldn’t let our own views and sometimes want or hopes affect the way be judge their reality. This applies for things outside shipping as well.

Thank you for your kind words. :)

Ask 5 - Other people’s words can influence your thoughts

Indeed. The brain is a powerful thing. This is very obvious if you are a multi-shipper or a general fan, but BTS truly has a lot of questionable moments between all kinds of pairs. Focus is a interesting thing. If you like something you will notice it more, and you will also remember it more while you forget other moments. Likewise if something is “negative” like a rival ship you are likely to notice them more as well. This happens even if you just watch the general content and get your own bias. Imagine then how it might influence you when others keep repeating either your happy interpretations or things you worry about? You’ll get it stuck in your head and remember it more than other things.

Like isn’t it funny how we might gush about Vmin sharing beds, or worry about ji/kook or tae/kook cuddling while hope/kook literally sleep wrapped around each other in both Bon Voyage 3 and 4? Sometimes it’s all about perspective.

By now we need to realize that fan perspective will influence us a lot. And in particular if a lot of people say it or if it is presented in a way that makes it sound logical and intelligent. Words have power.

I still think using “Vmin is dead” or spreading worry often in itself leads to people thinking it and it being somehow accepted as fact. In similar fashion getting to hear about certain ships or certain narratives will make us notice things in relation to that. My own words and posts too will have influence on some people that read them. That’s why I try to be so careful, and why I try to avoid using strong words or claims that might cement themselves in someone’s mind. (I’ll actually talk more about the power of language in my big analysis as well)

Thank you for your input, it’s definitely an interesting thing to consider and another aspect of why shipping mentality is so complicated.

Ask 6 - Vmin not sharing rooms in Bon Voyage Malta

Hi and yes, I have answered this before HERE, but it’s ok. I know it’s not easy finding old topics amongst my collection posts.

Collection of asks - BTSandVMIN Collection of asks 2 - BTSandVMIN Collection of asks 3 - BTSandVMIN

In short I think Vmin wanted to share rooms but that Taehyung got fooled when Jimin stopped him from checking the upper room. Because it seemed like Jimin stopped him from walking into that room by saying he couldn’t peak Tae probably assumed it wasn’t Jimin’s room and that when Jimin said it was his room he was joking (his face was definitely something). So yeah, I think he just got fooled by Jimin’s statement about not being allowed to look inside the room before picking. There are other interesting things about this whole moment, but the one thing we should take away from it is how it is one out of now many examples that seem to show that Vmin have a preference to share rooms/beds. Thank you for the ask. :)

Ask 7 - Has being a Vmin shipper always been so overwhelming with all the content?

I wouldn’t say it’s something recent. I say it often, but we really do get very intense periods from time to time with many of the ships. For example in February 2017 with ISAC, fan signs and everything else we got a lot of Vmin too. I remember being overwhelmed myself, and that was coming out of BST era Vmin. We got many moments every day and that’s just one specific period I can remember.

Over the years sometimes we do get these very intense days or weeks with a lot of moments at once. Usually I get asks like “do you think something is up with Vmin lately” or “wow I can’t believe how much Vmin we have gotten lately” but really, it’s hard to tell, because it really does happen from time to time. I also still say we always get Vmin moments regularly as long as we get BTS content, but sometimes a bit more and sometimes less. I am sure there will be more times when we also get “Vmin is dead“ and worried people because we get less moments than they expect. It just happens, up and down and around it goes.

As for what ships are big I will definitely say Ji/kook and Tae/kook are the biggest, but that all BTS ships are big by now. Meaning as soon as we do get moments it will be seen online. Especially if you follow people who talk about it of course. I also think what platform you are on can result in some ships being seen more than others. For example I know ji/kook is by far the biggest BTS ship here on Tumblr while Youtube seems to have more tae/kookers.

Thank you for the ask. Let’s hope Vmin keeps overwhelming us. (But let’s not start to worry if they don’t) ;)

Ask 8 - “Just a friend” interview

Ah yes, I have a bit of a soft spot for this interview myself. I am not sure, but I think it might be from 2017 (since Tae wrote a birthday letter to Jimin in 2016), or at least that’s when I found it and saved it down. I haven’t actually tracked the original source. You can find the translation in the link shared HERE, credits to @95z.

Seeing this close after the chaos of Let’s BTS and other letter confessions it really does seem very cringe for them to express sincere thoughts in these more formal ways. I can’t blame them.

I do think this interview is yet another example of how much Vmin has tried to adapt to each other, learn and be more open with expressing how they feel. They literally inspire and learn from each other in how to express themselves. Isn’t it completely endearing?

I also love how they get each other to feel strong emotions and how they are there for each other when in need. On a slightly more analytical note I also can’t help but note the “just a friend” vs “soulmate” descriptions and how they seem to have a hard time putting it into proper words. We already know this of course, but yeah... They really don’t have an easy time describing their relationship.

Thank you so much for sharing this moment. I was going to talk about it in my big analysis anyways, but honestly I can’t save everything for it, and you mentioned it so who am I to keep it to myself.

Ask 9 - The garnet necklace

Oh yeah, I know that JK wore it once and that the talk was that a fan gave it to all of maknae line. Not much was ever confirmed from what I know, but regardless it doesn’t change why I think it’s a Vmin/soulmate necklace and why I see it as special.

Here is the thing, when I use “Vmin thing” it really doesn’t have to be exclusive. To me it’s the context around it and how they have used it and even reacted to it that makes the garnet necklace something special for Vmin. In the case of the soulmate necklace Vmin wore it a lot. Almost constantly during a big part of 2017 and even a bit into 2018. They also wore it at the same time a lot. I find this very cute, and we all know “couple items” is something all fans enjoy even if it would just be a platonic relationship behind it. But if both of them wearing it was all there was, as a lot of Vmin sharing clothes (or BTS in general sharing clothes) I wouldn’t really think too much about it beyond it being cute. It could still be just a cute thing that Vmin did, but I personally see it as something beyond the normal clothes/jewelry sharing.

(At the very least you can remember Vmin did this while people thought their relationship was dead, which doesn’t make much sense to do if you hate or dislike someone.)

The things I find more noteworthy about this necklace is the fact that the fandom picked up on it and because they wore it so much and so often at the same time it was dubbed the “soulmate necklace”. Possibly knowing this Tae also brought specific attention to the necklace at two times, as if wanting to show it off. Interestingly enough, in one of these times Jimin seemed to ignore Taehyung who was bringing attention to it on purpose. For me it came across as another thing Taehyung wanted to show off and that Jimin was a bit more careful about.

Of course I could have read it wrong, maybe Jimin just misunderstood. But even so, Tae did bring attention to it in specific relation to Jimin. You can watch the clip HERE. (BTS Tell Us What They Love About Each Other & An Update On Tony & Nate From America Hustle Life)

The other time was in Run ep. 39, right after Vmin talked about being in school together and showing off their school uniforms. If Tae is the one to try and highlight something, I feel it likely has some meaning to him at least.

Either way the necklace is basically a symbol of Vmin’s relationship and the fact that they liked it so much and wore it together during a long period I think they liked wearing it not only because they both happened to like the design but because they both had it. If JK also had one and didn’t use it of course it could include him, but I will still say it remains significant for Vmin’s bond with each other.

As for buying a necklace together they haven’t talked about this one in particular, but Tae did mention he bought his tiger necklace with Jimin in NY, so maybe you are mixing the two things up?

Ask 10 - Vmin in CMs

Thank you for loving my blog and for the ask! :) I am not sure if you perhaps meant in a lot of BTS own photoshoots/units as well, but I’ll focus on CMs in this post since that was your direct example. I might go a bit beyond here, but I saw it as a good chance to revisit some Vmin ad moments.

I wouldn’t personally say we have gotten “way more” but I do think because of their Friends unit they got to do some more interviews together and some CM stuff too. I also think we have gotten more BTS commercials in general now, likely because it’s an income alternative to touring during the pandemic. So that obviously means more CMs, and more chances for them to be paired up. They also have gotten paired with others of course (like in the Bodyfriend CM or Baskin Robbins), but most commonly they aren’t divided in smaller groups at all.

We also have gotten Vmin paired up before, both in photoshoots and in CMs. Of course we saw some great ones in 2016 with Puma and NUGU, but I don’t think we got that much more in 2016 and before than in 2017-2019. I think what we can see is BTS having more endorsements after Covid.

Like honestly, the Puma adds are iconic. Of course the original one, but also the revisits from 2018. Puma definitely seemed to like to pair Vmin in particular. (There are so many good examples from Puma that I’m not including)

We also got a snippet in the Hyundai one, also from 2018.

Another snippet from the Coconut Chicken ad from 2017.

I mean, I don’t know if I should count the snippets at all, like from BTS x VT cosmetics in 2019, but I feel sometimes just being seen in the same frame seems to get attention as being paired up so. (I decided to not include being together when it’s at least a third member in the frame)

And guys... Have you ever watched BTS and the milk song?

What did we get so far more recently? In 2020 we had the Hyundai interview.

And the hyundai #PositiveEnergyChallenge

Fila provided a nice one, also from 2020.

Samsung gave us a snippet recently.

Coway was basically couple goals and like the best one in my own opinion (besides Puma because it is going to take a lot to beat Puma).

But other than that? I don’t think we have seen it that much, have we? I am not complaining or anything, like I am happy with what we got, but I don’t know if it’s that much. I might forget some obvious ones, but these were the ones I had top of mind. Feel free to add ads if you can think of more recent ones that I left out.

So I think we have gotten more BTS ads in general, also more where they are not all of them or single focus, and that we have seen maybe Vmin getting paired a little more after Friends. But to me there is such a small difference I can’t really say if it is anything particular to Vmin or just BTS doing more CMs.

I mean, I don’t have a sheet of who has been paired with who and how many times over the years. But either way I don’t think we should look too deeply into things like CMs or even photoshoots units. Thanks for the ask though, I hope you enjoyed this mini collection. :)

Ask 11 - Taehyung uncomfortable about shipping/tae*kook?

So this is a thought sent in after THIS ASK though it really brings up a new subject, which is that of Tae possibly being uncomfortable with shipping. As for Tae saying that to a tae/kooker in particular I think we have to remember it could very easily just have been in the moment and we can’t know why he decided to reply to that person in particular.

The Vmin post was not invasive and it wasn’t romantic. I mean, I do think Tae keeps showing again and again that if there is any person in BTS that is special to him it’s Jimin. But the difference in the posts also likely matters, but we can’t know how much. We don’t know if Tae would feel annoyed if a Vminie wrote the same thing as the tae/kooker did, and we don’t know if it was just in that moment that he got fed up with the shipping discourse in general, or if it was because it was tae/kook.

Honestly any shipper, regardless if a ship would eventually prove to be real or not, should not go and invade spaces where the boys get exposed to it. We don’t know if Taehyung would have reacted in a similar way if it happened to be another ship.

Personally I don’t think tae/kook drifted apart as a result of shipping, because honestly they still kept being pretty intimate physically and engaged in fanservice on stage etc. If they truly were uncomfortable with the idea I just don’t think they would “feed it” much at all. I think as they said in ITS they just, kind of changed and it became harder to talk. I’ve talked more about tae/kook and my views on their bond in THIS POST and a little in THIS POST as well as about BTS possible stance on shipping HERE.

I also think all of BTS has a pretty good distance from hate and fandom speculations in general. I think that because they know about shipping and partly also feed into it they probably expect crazy people to some degree as well, even if they probably don’t like it. Hetero shippers as well, or solo stans etc. have very toxic behaviors at times, but I think BTS can recognize that it is kind of “bound to happen” with their popularity, no matter what they do about it. Not saying they would like it, and they could definitely feel awkward or annoyed because of it, but it doesn’t seem to bother them too much as I think they can detach themselves from it pretty well.

I also think “fan opinions” in form of rival shipping wouldn’t really harm a hidden couple as it first would likely be a sort of “shield” and second because they have their relationships and are likely comfortable with them on their own terms. What fans think is probably secondary.

It is possible that they could get annoyed or frustrated at times, but again, if they truly felt bothered by it they probably wouldn’t do a lot of the things they do. Because I am sure they are aware to some degree that fans scrutinize their every move and ship moments. Both Tae and Jimin are some of the most physical out of the members, and also some of the members that seem to like to initiate fanservice moments... So I doubt they would have much problem and can feel secure enough in their relationship no matter what fans think.

Ask 12 - What did Jimin write on his shirt in Run ep. 53?

Hi, I guess you got curious after I talked about this episode recently in my post Ask: Reply - 2021.03.30 (Ask 8 - Going down the rabbit hole, micromoments and shipping vs believing).

I don’t know hangul, but I do know what “Jimin” looks like. On Jimin’s shirt from behind the scenes of Run ep. 53 you can see he’s written his own name “지민” Jimin followed by what looks to be “ 님 “ which is nim. So basically the text on the container in the picture says Sir Jimin.

Jimin seemed very keen on writing his name on both his own shirt and on Tae’s and even tried on JK’s. He failed of course, but he sure did try.

Thank you for the ask, and isn’t Tae cute?

Ask 13 - Gina Maeng ask follow up

Glad you liked my reply. :) (From Ask: Reply - 2021.03.30 Ask 4 - Idols dating members of the same group). Yeah I get what you mean, talking about it openly I suppose isn’t so normal. But since it seems to be more and more fans who assume it happens to some degree maybe it’s not so strange if it starts getting more talked about as well. I’ll take it as a good sign, even if the information is nothing new in itself, being more open is going to make it easier for fans to realize it’s possible for their idols to be LGBT+ or have hidden relationships.

As for K-Population it doesn’t seem to be too well known, but it’s one of few actual examples to be found. So yeah, interesting that we know it has happened, and also that it shows what risks it could mean to get involved with a group member. I think the risk of a falling out is something a lot of shippers tend to forget. Anyways, thank you for your reply. ^_^

Ask 14 - Vmin’s love is beautiful (and so much nice praise omg)

Oh my... I am not sure I have ever been called sweetheart by anyone ever before. Thank you! You are making me blush with all the praise. 💜💜💜

But really, we can all just watch Vmin in awe and be happy they have each other and feel such immense love for each other, no matter what that love is. It’s kind of amazing. Like even if they are platonic their relationship is so wholesome and they put so much love and effort into it that it’s truly inspirational. I love when we get bombed with moments like this with a very intense period of great Vmin interactions. As you, me too never fail to feel all soft watching them together.

95z is love and what a love they share. Truly wonderful. 💜

You take care too, and really, thank you so much for this lovely message. it means a lot and is very heartwarming.

And with that sweet ask I’ll end the post. There was a lot of very different questions and I feel I could have written more about many of them, but alas I need to remember I can’t write full essays on everything or I would never get anything posted. Thank you all for reading and I hope you found my thoughts and speculations interesting. ^-^

#vmin #vmin analysis #btsandvmin #ask: reply #vmin collection #vmin ad #vmin cm #vmin commercial #vmin gif #vmin photo #bts shipping #btsandvmin answer #my post #Ask: Reply - 2021.04.16 #vmin soulmate necklace

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shizzlinghotbrason · 3 years

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ok so nearly everyone in the fandom is doing this and as sad as it is that we need to remind these simple things to people, I feel the need to talk about this too.

I won't make this too painfully long because I know y'all most likely already know this and I just wanna put out a basic list of shit you should always follow in the fandom. But for those who don't, a lot of fan content creators, be it artists or writers or just general fans trying to enjoy their time, have been leaving/quitting the fandom.

Why are they leaving, you ask? Toxicity. Toxicity nearly everywhere. People can't hold respectful debates or discourses on interesting topics regarding characters/the books/ships anymore without someone toxicly stating that only their opinion is correct, and going off on anyone who has different opinions carried with a lot of aggressive, rude and shallow behaviour. Fanartists have gotten death threats and are scared of drawing art for the Riordanverse without getting anxious af.

Now the thing is, having done those (eXcepT for the death threats) doesn't automatically make u an entirely shitty person. Maybe you made a mistake and came off as rude without rlly meaning to. That's okay. Here's how to identify if u ever did so, and to change that behaviour. Again, it's okay to make mistakes, but we rn as a fandom srsly need to try to turn things around.

Some basic shit you should remember being a part of the fandom:

• NO NSFW STUFF WITH MINORS!!! That means fanarts, fanfics etc. But here's the shocking thing- when someone does this, you can actually hold them accountable WITHOUT SENDING DEATH THREATS AND CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES! Cuz doing that only makes YOU stoop just as low. Pl e a s e remember that always and be respectful whatever you do.

• That being said, ppl are allowed to write nsfw stuff IF said characters are aged up, aka 18+. Ofc, it's a must that they put a content warning beforehand because many people may not want to read that. BUT, if you don't want to read it and if they've aged up the characters so nothing's morally wrong or gross, then please do NOT hate the author in the comments, do NOT report their post/account. Seriously dude, they gave warnings, if you don't want to read it just scroll past it's not that hard. Unless it's with minors, you shouldn't be reporting innocent ppl's accounts like that.

• one thing that I've seen a lack of in the fandom are trigger warnings. I've seen several fics whose covers are literally of blood. And entire chapters were written with intricate graphic descriptions yet with no trigger warnings or a tw wayyy down in the caption. you never know what may be triggering to someone if a lot of ppl see ur content but the least u can do is put trigger warnings on the most common stuff. I get that it may look aesthetically matching if it's a murder mystery sorta fic but isn't the well being of people more important?

• look I'm not saying you're not allowed to have opinions, but the problem is when you start treating your opinions like facts. I can't count the times I've seen someone state their opinion like it's facts and then trash on other's for having a different opinion. PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS. Stop attacking people for liking Jason more than Percy or vice versa, there's no rule that you absolutely have to like one or the other, ppl can like who they want. When you're stating UR opinion, it would be nice if you used stuff like "I personally think that..." or "... that's just my opinion" because again, Ur opinion is just that, not a fact.

• if you can't have discourses or discussions about certain topics respectfully and nicely then don't have them. if someone's done nothing wrong but state their opinions and you don't like it, don't go attacking them. if you don't have anything good to say, shut up and just scroll past. it's not that hard. we don't need any more negativity in the fandom. If you feel like you're about to snap, mute or block the account you don't like and move on with life. But for the love of GOD don't go out of your way to be agresive or hateful to ppl. They have feelings too and run fan accounts for fun, not to get upset and hurt.

• when a fan account owner has made a post saying what they think of a certain topic, and you comment saying you think they're wrong and they reply that you didn't get the point of their post, then chances are you most probably actually did not understand what they were saying. when this happens, pls don't go on forcing ur opinion onto them as if you got what they meant when you didn't. Maybe next time when someone says you didn't get what they were saying, ask them nicely to explain it to you instead of going off like that?

• firstly, shame on you if you've ever run a hate account. just why? how much more negativity do you want to add? if you come across a hate account please please report it and block it and tell your friends to do the same. if you're targeted in a hate post, I'm so sorry, please know that they're shallow ppl just trying to make you feel shitty, you're dont have a trashy fan account; what they say is false and done purely to spite. report and block them.

• I know Rick has written a lot of racist bullcrap and hasn't batted an eye when we complained about them, but that still doesn't give you the right to send him death threats. Again, no death threats to anyone, yikes.

• don't use fanart that's racist. don't repost them either. Piper has feathers in it? don't repost it. also if you can't exactly and properly credit artists, don't repost their art saying "credits to the artist". I've done that before too but now I understand that's not right.

• also, while we're at it, can we all please universally agree on non-racist fanon stuff and get rid of racist canon stuff? like Piper and feathers, and piper & hazel with colourful and golden eyes, Piper's stupid not like other girls behaviour, and all the other bullshit Rick has put into the books. We as a fandom don't accept it and pretend they do not exist, no racism in this place 🥰‼️

• ppl are allowed to have their own headcannons, it doesn't matter what's cannon. Don't go "but in the books it's.." because in the books there's a lot of shit, and besides, if someone wants to headcannon Percy as brown? black? totally alright! they're allowed to do so! don't go bUt pErCy iSnT pOc iN tHe bOoKs. same goes with sexualities and etc headcannons. as long as they're not erasing the already representation of a minority, it's okay to have headcannons of your own. Like Hazel is canonically black and we should respect that and bring out the best of that, yk what I mean?

That's all I have to say for now. I'm usually a very light-hearted cursed meme account on here but things are getting out of hand. I was wanting to make my 8 yr old brother get into the Riordanverse fandom but seeing the situation of the fandom rn scares me. We need to think about the kids in the future who'll be in this fandom, whose lives will be changed and shaped by these books. Surely, the older people in the fandom before us would be utterly disappointed at what it's become and it's our job to constantly look out for the fandom.

If you're leaving/have left the fandom, I'm so sorry that it got to that point, but ur wellbeing comes first, do what you feel is necessary to feel better, all of us send lots of positive vibes towards your way! and to the peeps who've still decided to stay in the fandom and use their account to talk about this issue, I cannot express how thankful I am of you for doing such an important thing right now. And to everyone - as Harry Styles once said - treat people with kindness.

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everything-laito · 4 years

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(idk if this needs a TW: abuse, violence, memory loss. )

This might sound dunb but if i took a baseball bat and hit Laito as hard as i possibly can would it trigger something to make him act different? Or make him forget about himself/Yui and he’d bo longer be abusive?

It’s not a dumb question, because I do not believe there are such questions, so don’t worry about it! Although this did make me laugh because it so vividly reminded me of the “horny bonk” meme salfkdjgaslf it just fits Laito to a T lol

Never thought I’d pull on my STEM jeans completely up on this blog, but here we are, and I’m incredibly excited!

klSFJklagsdf note that neither of my majors involve neurobiology/neuroscience but I do know a good chunk, let’s jump right in! Also, I’m assuming that Vampire brains are similar to human brains in this manner as well lol

and as always, rant under the cut!

First of all, I’d say that being hit with a baseball bat to the head is a type of blunt force head trauma. This type of trauma can cause a concussion or a contusion. Concussion, as commonly known, is caused by shaking of the brain, while a contusion is a direct injury to the brain. A more severe case is a contrecoup, which is injury that occurs at the brain opposite of impact.

Here’s my source!

Apparently personality changes are common after a traumatic brain injury, and can even effect the brain long after it’s healed (neuroplasticity babyyyy). This is what this article says. Your personality doesn't change, it’s more of the moods are so overwhelming it feels like you’re a different person:

Many people suffer from social anxiety, irritability, anger, depression, feelings of overwhelm, general anxiety, mood swings, or emotional lability (teariness) after their injury. But make no mistake: While these symptoms can make it seem like you’re a different person now, your personality is intact. It’s just buried under the weight of symptoms that are so, so hard to handle.

Think of personality as a collection of traits, and your mood as your current state of being. Normally, our moods don’t last for weeks and months on end. But after a head injury, negative moods like sadness, anxiety, or irritation can drag on, making patients and their families mistake the emotional symptoms for personality changes.

Lmao, flashbacks to the whole American football controversy???? ooooooop! But no, it would not affect Laito’s personality in the case you are thinking about. It really would make that shit worse. I could go on about nature vs nurture and what personality really is, but ima just say this here:

The reason why Laito is abusive + has a facade is because it is his way of coping with emotional, psychological, and even physical trauma earlier in his life. He projects his situations and feelings onto others so he feels “better about himself” and to get “revenge” in a sense.

So it’s not as simple as you think it might be. However, let’s take this a step further. If we were to change someone on a chemical and neurological level like this and do it the old fashioned way; aka not emotionally or mentally confronting these issues that could be solved but change the brain physically.

I’m talking about lobotomy/leukotomy.

If you don’t know, this is a type of neurosurgery that severs connections to the brain’s prefrontal cortex; aka the anterior frontal loves of the brain. This was common in Western medicine for about two years to “help” mental disorders. However a lot went wrong, and some people got more aggressive, patients developed seizures, emotional blunting, or just unable to mentally function. There’s a lot of unexpected and mixed consequences about it, basically it’s just: don’t mess with the brain.

If we’re talking about memory loss in general, or amnesia, can be caused by brain damage or disease. The hippocampus is commonly associated with memory (and memory loss) as well as the medial temporal lobe. A protein, RbAp48, is also associated with memory loss when it is deficient. Without me going off on genes n such (that actually happens to be related to my concentration for one of my majors) its basically like not having this protein = you’re unable to carry out the certain pathways and such in order to remember something. Deficiency in this protein usually means you have a damaged memory.

Amnesia causes can usually be categorized into head trauma, traumatic events, or physical deficiencies (like hippocampus atrophy; which means that part just isn’t used). The type of amnesia associated with head trauma is usually anterograde amnesia (also its an effect of long term alcoholism so stay safe kids). It’s also associated with post-traumatic amnesia as well. Or just remove part of the hippocampus since we’re delving into the darker era of neurosurgery. But acute blunt force trauma to the head in the hippocampus region could make Laito lose his memory, but it definitely could result in other consequences that are unexpected or just “undesirable”

TLDR: dont mess with the brain lol it’s the most important organ for a reason, your neurons can't repair themselves, shit’s permanent!

DSLFKJ Strawberry, you probably did not expect this answer to be well, this. But welcome to everything-laito, where I will talk your ear off B)

Hopefully you enjoyed though, despite it being balls to the wall LMAO! See ya later! -Corn

#analysis #god this was so fun to write lmao I get too excited about proteins so I had to stop myself #laito sakamaki #sakamaki laito #raito sakamaki #sakamaki raito #diabolik lovers #dialovers #dialover #dl

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azenta · 4 years

Text

Inauthenticity

Context: I didnt want to hijack a joke post i scrolled through about inauthenticity and that made me go into Explanation Mode, so here is my own post about this.

So, this is about people crafting/shifting their self around people, either people they care for or even simple acquaintances. The original post that made me create this one was about a dialogue where someone was saying: "I love everything about you!" and the other to reply "No, you only love the meticulously crafted persona I created through years of solitude and isolation so i could be loved and accepted". Or something edgy along those lines. And then, I noticed some people replying the very smart advice to simply "stop doing this if you are unhappy about it" which obviously triggered me into the following wall of text. Because if that was so simple to refrain from that, it wouldnt be a problem nor would there be personality types constructed around this mechanism.

Explanation: What leads to create such an intricated fake persona is related to negative learning experiences as a child where the authentic self got rejected explicitly (verbally corrected) or implicitly (through conditioning; ignoring when the child did X and giving attention when doing Y) by the parents or many encountered authority figures. When the child was presenting their thoughts or feelings, at one point or another, it was explicitly or implicitly corrected or criticized for being incorrect, unacceptable or undesirable.

Of course, there are behaviors that children do that need correction. However, the problems is that in those cases, it was not the behaviors that were corrected, but the core emotions and needs the child felt. Through those corrections they learned that those feelings and needs were either fundamentally incorrect or that they had to earn them. Which as you can guess is quite problematic.

Some children thus learned to manipulate their self to show the parts that are deemed desirable and hide the indesirable ones. So, they learned to please in order to earn their needs, which make people go as far as arranging their whole self to fit the one person or even group of people they want to earn their whatever is sought by the person (attention, affection, approbation, validation, reassurance, etc.). Because, a need is fundamental, and those children learned there were actual conditions to meet them. It's as if you were told that to eat, not to get food, just to eat it, you had to be a good boy or girl, which could be performing at school, doing and performing at sports, wearing make ups a certain way or being a certain weight. So when they fail to meet those desirable standards, 'well too bad you ain't gonna eat and might as well die of hunger unless you decide to be a good boy/girl 🙃'. And this message then gets internalized. So, guess what they choose to do.

So, this is why it gets difficult for those people to simply stop shapeshifting their self. Those children learned that those aforementioned needs had to be earned, rather than understand that a need is a given not a reward. Because you need it to survive. But since they learned it was bad, but still need it to survive, they then associate that to survive they need to hide and mold their self into a desirable one, so they can get their need met.

Lets be clear, I am not saying this behavior is good or even justify it. I do it myself, it's shit, I am suffering from it, and so my relationships. So, what's the solution? You first need to face yourself alone, because that's when all parts come together and when you can see the whole picture of who you are. You actually need to "isolate" yourself periodically to assess yourself truthfully, with as little distractions or possible influence around. Then, take the time to understand yourself, introspect, because it takes some (a lot) time to do. See it as getting to know yourself like you would get to know someone you just met. Ask questions about yourself, about how you feel rn, what do you think, and try the hardest possible to not judge yourself for what you feel and think, which can be quite hard. Also, like when you get to know someone, you have to meet them couple of times, in different moods or situations in order to see the many facets of themselves.

Afterward, when faced to people, observe and notice which parts seem to vanish and disappear, what parts you try to manipulate and modulate. Also, notice around who or what kind of people you are around when you manipulate those given part of yourself. From there you can start questioning why you control those parts. Usually, there are beliefs surfacing up such as "because this is bad/wrong/unacceptable", "if i say or act this way, i might hurt them/get rejected/get into conflict/ etc., and I want to avoid that" or tons of apparently logical justifications as "but i am not repressing myself, i am not like this or i would act like this all the time right?", "i just dont feel like being X, that's all". Those are all learned internal messages that still have the humble goal to protect yourself from a potential loss, but that creates that problem of inauthenticity and ironically contribute to that loss you want to avoid (by creating a confirmation bias). To destroy those thoughts demand a lot of self awareness, self honesty and self correction, to replace those throughts/internal rules for more accurate and less restraining ones. Therefore, it asks a lot of patience and tolerance about yourself, because awareness, honesty and correction are not easy to apply. It is also important to spot what fears those thoughts seek to avoid (Rejection? Abandonment? Worthleness?) and what needs are hidden behind, to actually replace them accurately.

Tho, you don't need to understand yourself perfectly before starting to act differently. The moment you notice some of your needs (boundaries, acceptance, to be alone, to socialize, freedom, etc.), you should start acting on them the best you can. It will actually challenge you to be more authentic and will also trigger your thought patterns, which will make it easier to spot and so, to change.

Of course, it is all easier said than done, but I hope this little explanation could enlighten some people.

Side note: On a typology perspective, the ones the most affected by this are usually 3s, 6s and 9s (core > core wing > fixes), Fe users (high > low), and soc variants (dom > aux).

#inauthenticity #self development #personal comprehension #there could be much more to be said #but i think this is quite a good wrap up of such a complex issue

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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Hi! Same anon as the previous one. Tbh, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Y'see I do ask rhetorically,too but i could really accept and understand how and why ppl can be oblivious to IchiRuki, and somehow felt that the 'canon' should suffice, even the most excruciating of all is the fact a number found the ending even acceptable (ships aside, too). Again, I could respect that. But it's my greatest bane when ppl ask 'why' and not be clear they are asking rhetorically because I literally will

provide you an actual answer. And I get it, it’s the reason why ppl find shipping wars toxic and silly. But then again, as human, conflicts are always part of us (partly because as social psych explains so, we are gravitated to the negative for that allows us to change and survive), and the reason why “logical fallacies” are coined in the first place. Human will always debate, and argue about something; the only thing we could change is how we approach the opposing views.

Again, I dont condone any way, shape or form of abuse and harm. In some certain extent, I could perhaps understand it’s much harder for some IH to approach the actual argument being there’s either too much noise, and trapped in their own island between sea of salt. Thus becoming too acquianted w/ few IH who shared the same thought until it became their views as the only truth (see, that’s why its important to have debates! it is what keep us grounded and fair! Just like you said)

Who am I to speak though? I never ever challenged anyone anyways. And as you said, you just have to understand things in every way you could possibly think of–endless ‘whys’. Which is where I agree in your reply the most–this silly fandom wars is just the black mirror to every truth that lies beneath human psyche–the dark and the grimy. Heck, being a psych major is like staring at dark hole–at times, good, but most just plain confusing, revolting even or just heartbreaking.

Sorry it’s been long, but for the final of this ask: let me tell how glad I was with IchiRuki fandom I found in tumblr. It was the saltiest I’ve ever been (im not generally a fandom person anyways) but it’s the himalayan salt–expensive and actually nutritive it really deepened my desire to become wiser in general. And you for your wonderful essays, critiques and whatnot. I definitively would love to talk with you more not only about IchiRuki but the wonders and nightmare that us humans! Kudos!

I have sitting in my drafts a post spelling out my thoughts on “canon” (and thus, the people who cling to it) in that as a concept it privileges:

officiality over quality when it comes to validity (thus violating Sturgeon’s law)

corporations (intellectual property rights holders) over fans, and thus capitalists over proletarians

hierarchical dominance over mutualist networking within fandom

curative fandom over transformative fandom

genre over literary content

plot over characters

events over emotions

It is notable that (1) generally degrades art as a whole, (2) generally advances the capitalist agenda, and (3–7) generally advances the dominance of men over women (as the genders tend to be instructed by society to view these as A. dichotomies rather than spectrums, and B. to ascribe gender to them and make them polarities). These form the sides of a mutually reinforcing power structure (in the typical “Iron Triangle” fashion) designed to preserve and maintain the status quo.

Who really benefits from say, the policing of what is or is not “canon” in Star Wars? Disney, first and foremost. And then whomever (almost certainly male) decides to dedicate their time to memorizing the minutiae of whatever that corporation has decided is “legitimate.”

One can imagine a universe in which fan fic is recognized by companies for what it is: free advertising. (Much like fan art already is.) Instead, it is specifically targeted by demonetization efforts in a way that fan art isn’t. Why? Because it demonstrates that corporate control and “official” sanction has no bearing on quality, and it is thus viewed as undermining the official products.

In the same way, by demonstrating that most “canonical” works are frankly shit, it undermines the investiture of fans in focusing on details that are ultimately errata (the events, the plot, the genre), which is the core function of curative fandom and the reason for its hierarchical structure. The people who “know the most” are at the top, but what they “know” is basically useless garbage. And those people so-engaged are, of course, usually male.

To “destroy” the basis of their credibility, and indeed the very purpose of their community, is naturally viewed by them as an attack.

(This is not to say that efforts to tear down internal consistency within established cultural properties are good unto themselves, or even desirable. For example, efforts to redefine properties such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Ghostbusters, for the sake of a identity-politics agenda have largely A. failed as art, B. failed as entertainment, C. failed to attract the supposedly intended audience, and D. failed to advance the agenda in question. Trying to repurpose extant media in the name of culture wars is essentially always doomed to failure unless it is done deftly and gradually.)

(At the same time, this also shows what I was talking about last time, with regard to people seeing whatever they want to see. You will see people complain that Star Trek and Doctor Who didn’t “used to be so political,” which is obviously nonsense. These shows were always political. What changed was how their politics were presented. For example, Star Trek has, since TNG, always shown a nominally socialist or outright communist future, but was beloved by plenty of conservatives because they could [somehow] ignore that aspect of it.)

Of course, almost no one is seriously suggesting that one side of the spectrums outlined above be destroyed, rather merely that a new balance be struck upon the spectrum. But, as we have seen time and again in society, any threat to the status quo, whether that be 20% of Hugo Awards going to non-white male authors or the top income tax rate in America being increased by a measly 5.3% (from 28.7% to 34%… when the all-time high was 94% and for over 50 years it was above 50%) is a threat. This is why, for example, Republicans are out there branding AOC as a “socialist” when her policies are really no different at all from a 1960 Democrat who believed in FDR’s New Deal. (Which they, of course, have also demonized as “socialism.”)

(As an aside, all this ignores the fact that most of the “literary canon” of Western civilization, or at least English literature… is Biblical or historical fan fic.)

And this is when I finally get to my point.

Those people out there who denigrate and mock shippers and shipping, the people who hurl “it reads like fan fiction” as an insult, and so on, are the people who benefit from and enjoy the extant power structure. You will see the same thing with self-identified “gamers” complaining about “fake girl gamers.” Admitting that the hobby has a lot of women in it, and a lot of “casuals,” and is indeed increasingly dominated by “non-traditional demographics” is an affront to the constructed identity of being a “gamer.” They are “losing control.” And they don’t like it.

This exact same sort of population is what the “fanbase” of Bleach has been largely reduced down to through a slow boiling off of any actual quality. Of course they’re dismissive of people who are looking for anything of substance: their identity, their “personal relationship” with the franchise, is founded on a superficial appreciation of it: things happening, flashy attacks, eye-catching character designs, fights, etc.

(What this really boils down to, at heart, is that society at large has generally told men that emotions are bad, romance and relationships of all kinds are gross, and that thinking and reflecting on things is stupid. So of course they not only don’t care about such things, but actively sneer at them as “girly” or “feminine,” which is again defined by society at large as strictly inferior. And this gender divide and misogyny is of course promulgated and reinforced by the powers that be, the capitalists, to facilitate class divisions just like say racism generally is.)

(The latest trick of these corporate overlords has been the weaponization of “woke” culture to continue to play the people off one another all the time. “If you don’t like this [poorly written, dimensionless Mary Sue] Strong Female Character, then you are a racist misogynist!” They are always only ever playing both sides for profit, not advancing an actual ideological position. It is worth noting that there was a push by IH some years ago to define IR as “anti-feminist” for critiquing Orihime for essentially the exact same reasons [admittedly, not for profit, but still as critical cover].)

Which makes it very curious, therefore, that the most ardent IH supporters tend to be women. (Though there are more than a few men, they seem to tend to support it because it is “canon” and to attack it is to attack “canon” and thus trigger all of the above, rather than out of any real investment.) I think there are a number of reasons for this (which I have detailed before) and at any rate it is not particularly surprising; 53% of white women voted for Trump, after all.

What we are really seeing in fandom, are again the exact same dynamics that we see at larger and larger scales, for the exact same reasons. The stakes are smaller, but the perception of the power struggle is exactly the same.

Of course, the people who are involved in these things rarely think to interrogate themselves as to the true dimensions and root causes of their motivations. People rarely do that in general.

Putting all that aside, I’m glad that you have found a place you enjoy and feel comfortable, and thank you for the kind words, although I am not of the opinion that there is anything poignant about the non-fiction I write. It is, as I keep trying to emphasize, all there to be seen. One just has to open their eyes. So, it’s hard for me to accept appreciation of it.

Anyway, don’t feel shy about coming off of anon rather than continuing to send asks. We don’t really bite.

#Asks

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jewpacabruhs · 4 years

Text

hi guys! so this post is gonna be a rambly mess but fuck it, here ya go. if u dont wanna read all of it, u dont have to; skip down to underneath the tl;dr in bold text for the important bits :)

(there’s a brief & non-graphic mention of a triggering topic in the next paragraph. please be sure to skip this next paragraph if the thought of suicide is going to upset you.)

alright. so i didn't share this originally, but i spent some time in a psychiatric unit this month. suicidality related. 1000% unrelated from anything online, i've just struggled with depression for a very long time & shit happens. i didn't intend to share that at all & i certainly don't want pity; i'm telling u guys bc my time in the unit was extremely eye-opening, and i have some insight to share. since i've gotten out, with the help of my newest anti-depressant (fourth time’s a charm lol), i'm seeing the world in a better light & i finally have the energy to and the interest in exploring what it has to offer, which frankly i've never had before.

with that has come the realization that i’ve come to do something very unhealthy, and i want to break out of it. and that’s how much i’ve come to rely on my fandom life. i don’t want to get too candid publicly, but mental illness took a lot from me, and i lost most of my life, my future, and my options in the last few years. next year will involve a lot of working on rebuilding things. but in the time that i let things fall to pieces around me & i absolutely couldn’t get out of bed, i had a phone and i had a laptop. so when i couldn’t get up and physically face the world, i built up a new world online.

and i don’t think that’s a completely uncommon experience. most people are able to better manage things, and evenly juggle real life with an internet life (like i did back in middle school), because most people can’t abandon their real lives entirely like i managed to; but i do think a lot of people nowadays rely on their fandom life and their fandom friends when their irl situation isn’t ideal. and that’s an excellent coping mechanism in theory, but i think it’s debilitating in the long run.

forgive me for sounding like an old person, but i’m a heavy nostalgist and a bit of an anarcho-primitivist in that i resent modern technology's influence on society - but that hasn't stopped me from letting it be a big part of my life out of accessibility. the internet kept me occupied during my low points, and i became dependent, but i've realized i don't wanna live like that anymore. i’m vaguely grateful that it usually kept me busy enough that i wasn’t thinking the bad thoughts as frequently, but more than anything, i’m resentful that my grasp on reality got lost somewhere along the way, and i let time get away from me, too. because, again, an internet life should be a fun hobby, but when it’s a lifestyle and it becomes an excuse to avoid dealing with our real lives, bc our real lives aren’t as rewarding or as exciting, then it’s unhealthy.

everything’s at our fingertips these days, but i deeply believe human interaction, fun, and fulfillment shouldn't be spoon-fed to us through a screen. it's easy access, sure, but at the end of the day, is it any way to live? compared with how much world there is to see, i’m no longer satisfied with the thought of sitting behind a screen for another five years. i used to be, when i had no hope and no drive, but not anymore. i’m not gonna let myself settle for staying busy with the thing that takes the least amount of work & movement. not only because i’m a whole ass adult who needs to start sorting my shit out for the long run, but also because i deserve better.

and it’s fucking hard! especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. i dropped out of school three fucking times due to crippling social anxiety and utter lack of ambition and energy. i lost all my friends through that (making friends post-school is hard af); the thought of having to go out and remake friends makes me wanna fucking cry. i have a hard enough time making friends online, i’ve even come to struggle with correspondence thru text & email. phone calls? outta the question. but that’s therapy shit, and i know i’ll get there. i just have to stop putting life off by staying in a comfort zone.

and it’s interesting; depression and anxiety really took everything from me, and while i was dwelling in my own misery, my adhd worsened and decided to make my entire brain revolve around my fixations, so i didn’t have to deal with my own life. can’t think about how much you wanna die and how much you can’t function in society if you’re busy thinking about a ship you like or a character you find interesting. so i latched onto the safety of that. aggressively. problem with that is that once you let your “happiness” (as much of it as you can feel in the midst of your depressive episode, anyway) revolve around an interest, that’s all you have. so you become dependent and reliant, and that’s never good, especially if you’re someone like me who feels pathetic & ridiculous when you realize it’s all you can bring yourself to care about.

and i think that’s what i realized in the psych ward (where there’s legitimately nothing to do; i did soooo much more thinking than usual, and i already think too much haha); mental illness will try to fuck up your lifestyle, so you have to eradicate the things that’ll let that happen in the first place. for example, like i said, my adhd tries to counteract my depression by making me hyperfixate and/or hyperfocus on something else to protect me from bad personal thoughts, and that’s good in theory (doing something you enjoy when you feel bad, to distract urself, is the number one most basic coping skill you learn), but i can’t do it in moderation, i let it run my life, and that’s made me worse in the long run. so i have to force myself out of that completely and not let myself fixate on things that make me happy in the short term, but don’t ultimately further me as a person. having fixations helped me through some awful times, but now i need to force myself to grow up, you know?

and while tumblr and other social media is an excellent way to indulge those fixations, it’s an aggressive enabler, in more ways than one. what i mean by that... okay, so while i’m the type of person who self-destructs while unhealthy, i do occasionally lash out. and i know some people completely explode rather than implode when they’re not doing well. and that’s how you get discourse, i think. because when mental illness makes us care much more about our interests than we ought to, and someone has a differing opinion about that interest, the instinct is of course to attack, if you’re that kind of person. i don’t think i am, but depression and boredom go hand in hand, and i might be inclined to care more about discourse than i would if i were healthy, purely because it’s entertaining and something to do.

that’s a long winded way of saying, while i stand wholeheartedly by my past positions, i do regret starting shit in the first place. i’m not the kind of person who genuinely cares about much and i have little to no sense of morality (im a chaotic neutral bastard), so the fact i was bored enough to start shit really goes against my character and says a lot about how bad i’ve been. so i apologize for all that. but, again, i think that's just what happens when something is truly your everything. and i think the chronic negativity of modern fandom is a result of how damn seriously we all take it, because we care so much and we’re so dependent. fandom’s supposed to be fun, but it’s just too damn stressful this way.

idk my point in sharing all this, but i do think it'd be cool if this kinda got yall thinking. even if you don't engage in discourse, if fandom is just one of your only consistent sources of happiness, that's not healthy either. we all gotta break out & exist more & louder & more positively. and unfortunately i think tumblr fandom (and maybe all modern fandom) is no longer a place that encourages positivity and health.

but for all my criticism, i do just wanna say how eternally grateful i am that i was fortunate enough to meet the people i call my best friends through tumblr. they're my family, truly, and all the bullshit in this fandom has been worth it simply because it brought them to me. i love them to death and i always will, even if interests change, even if we grow apart, even if we quit speaking entirely in the next few years, i love them with my whole heart in a way that transcends a simple fandom friendship and i'm so glad we bonded over sp in the first place. that’ll never change.

i will also always love south park itself. now that the cat's outta the bag about my hospital visit, i can brag about my most pathetic and obsessive accomplishment; the fact that i've never let circumstance stop me from watching a new south park as it airs, and i've now watched sp on 1) an airplane, and 2) in a psych ward. i win for most dedicated fan tbfh. dsjkf & i'll keep that tradition, and i'll still watch this stupid show til it ends! it'll always hold a special place in my heart, & kyman's still my most meaningful & long-term ship. i'll never stop loving it.

tl;dr

so, to recap; for 2020 i'm making myself step back from fandom (not just sp fandom, but fandom in general) and quit letting my world revolve around my fixations so i can enjoy the outside world a little more, mental illness be damned, and the first step is gonna be quitting tumblr. this blog won't be deleted and i may occasionally post (maybe when next season airs) but you're absolutely free to unfollow bc this'll be a mostly inactive blog. i’m also unfollowing everyone, so mutuals, please don’t take that personally.

i will, however, try to write more prolifically, bc fic writing is something i'm able to do in moderation & enjoy, and i hope to get back into it. so if you'd like, you can keep an eye out for any upcoming fanfic i may post - my ao3 is leere. i also have snapchat, instagram, & twitter my mutuals can ask for asap (bc ill be logging out for good by the afternoon of the 31st, which is tomorrow) - though i'm not very active on any of them. still, if you wanna have access to me, i’ll be there.

i want some connection to the fandom still, albeit without letting my life revolve around it, so i'll be starting a new open-to-the-public kyman discord server! the post with the invite for that will go up soon. nvm im too anxious

thank you for reading, thank you for the good times (thnks fr th mmrs), and i hope everyone has a good 2020!

#txt #mine

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and-i-uh · 4 years

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6? 22? Any other number you wanted to answer?

6- i dont have any stim toys, ive never really delved into that stuff, i was never really given the chance to explore stuff that would help me out with stimming and such. I also dont think i would like stim toys? Maybe i just have to try some but idk.

22- idk any specific songs i stim to. But ive stimmed while listening to mcr, and honestly i just stim to alot of the general songs i listen to. I really like singing along, i think thats a stim of mine, and some songs just listening to them is like stimming (anything with drums and/or guitars)

2- i like blankets a lot. Even if im hot and dont really need one, ill subconsciously grab the blanket on the couch and put it on my lap, and on my bed. There was one day i grabbed a pocket-sized beanie baby and put itin my hoodie pocket, and just knowing it was there made me happy. Also when i was with my friends one of them stuck their hands in my pocket and i panicked and like moved it out of their reach bc i was scared to get made fun of lol, it ended up being fine. I sleep with stuffed animals a lot. I think thats it

3- my school experiences were,,, not fun at all. Theres a lot to unpack there. My schools all had this thing called a “504 plan” or whatever. And it’s supposed to help people with certain disorders/disabilities. Mine only acknowledged my adhd as far as i know. Maybe my anxiety too. Some of the things that were supposed to ‘help’ were moving me to the front of the room, i got extended time to complete stuff (supposedly), extended time on certain tests (which i only saw on the act, literally i got no other extended time to do anything else. And after i got extended time on the act my scores shot up. Imagine the potential if i was given my actual extended time shit) and the meetings were hell. They started to have meetings with me in middle school, sixth grade i think. Having an administrator there, and my parents, and at least one teacher was terrifying to me. I think i cried every meeting. Honestly it felt like an interrogation to me, esp with all the damn eye contact and shit. My dad asked me if i wanted to continue it this year and i was immediately like fuck no nuh uh not happening. And whether or not I actually needed to be in the front of the room depended on the class, teacher, the people in there, but a lot of the time i would just be moved to the front and i would hate it. In eighth grade my math teacher moved me from the back of the room (a favorite seat in that class) to the front of the room in the middle of class for like a week. It was honestly humiliating and the only time i was eventually able to express my opinion on the 504 shit. Actually my freshman math teacher did that too. Ahaha moving on now before this gets too long.

4/5- three negative and positive things about being autistic.

Pros-

(1) i dont really have a chance to not have a hobby. Ive always got an interest to keep me entertained and i like that.

(2) stimming is nice, i like it, im not afraid to let myself stim. Makes me feel better.

(3) im unique and shit. I have a different pov than other people and that allows me to have different ways of thinking. I think outside the box ig. I also have this weird version of confidence and objectivity that I appreciate in myself

Cons-

(1) its hard to feel like i belong somewhere, bc im so different. Im getting better at it but im not good at getting close to people.

(2) i also like,, dont have certain permanence? Like object permanence? A lot of the time i dont really miss things/people unless im somewhere that reminds me of them. Idk if it’s negative really but its something,, even a spin, like bts, i dont really miss them that much until i do. Theyre still very important to me but yeah

(3) people dont really get me the same way other people get other people. And its hard for me to explain it to people. And theres certain people i get more than others. Its weird.

7- people need to give autistics a chance to be heard. Apply the accommodations you “give” them. Dont put them in the spotlight and give them space when needed. We are what you might call “picky” too. Eating, learning, socializing, we have our own things we need to be able to do shit. Learn them. Let us stim. Encourage us to learn about ourselves and remind us that youre there for us. But dont try to help us unless we ask or we actually need help. Dont trigger meltdowns on purpose, stop using the r word even in passing like its not a big deal. Be more than aware of us, accept us, appreciate us. Dont be a bystander.

8- i dont have much experience with meltdowns? I think? If i have i didnt have chances to recover. I had to go back to class or something. Idk how to recognize them in me either.

10- showering. Thats a big thing that even though i kinda need i forget to do. Except during school. I had a whole routine in the morning and i was super punctual. If i didnt shower i would be late, miss the bus, forget something.

12- meat. The way it feels. Disgusting. How do people eat it and not feel like dying? Same with lettuce. Spinach is fine but every time i try to eat lettuce I almost throw up. Bell peppers, pickles, vinegar, mayo, eggs usually, cheese sometimes. Just off the top of my head. One time i tried putting lettuce on my burger, was feeling adventurous, and after biting down i had to just take the lettuce off. Another time, my stepmom (newly married to my dad) made slads for us, and i was skeptical. There was white stuff all over the salad and she wouldnt tell me what it was. I tried eating a little carrot stick thing and almost vomited. Thats when she learned I cannot eat mayo. Even if idk that its mayo i still cant fuckin eat it. She forced me to eat bell peppers one time. Didnt go well at all. At all.

(Not gonna do the spin one bc ive already talked about them and if i do again itll be too long)

15- yes! I only do big stuff(?)(like yelling n shit) when im completely alone. Like if im home alone. Bc i get so loud. Sometimes ill hum in my room or sing to myself in my room though. Its so fun. As for phrases i repeat, ill repeat anything i find interesting. In a movie or song, or even something a friend said. One time my mom said the phrase “tough titty said the kitty but the milks still good” and i went around the kitchen repeating it until she got annoyed. Also sometimes something in the room will have a constant sound and ill like think a phrase to that sound repeatedly. Idk how to explain it lol. Idk if thats echolalia either

16- rocks. Typical i know, collecting rocks. But i just cant help it. I see a rock i like, i pick it up, take it home. I used to collect sticks. And when i was in elementary school, i used to pick shit up off the playground. Beer bottle caps was a favorite. Apparently the school called my mom about it bc they found my stash and thought it was from home and my parents were drinking excessively. 😬 oops

18- introverted?

19- kinda depends. Idk. I really cant tell wow. I would probably say hypersensitive. Just cause i have a ton of sensory issues and a lot of stuff bothers me. Like types of clothes. And how things are resting on my body. Yeah i guess i am hypersensitive.

20- i used to struggle with self love a lot. And sometimes i still kinda do. But in the past few years ive really started appreciating myself and trying to learn a lot about myself. Its going well id say.

21- empathy. Hmm. I think im very empathetic, actually. I can always tell when someone is feeling uncomfortable in a situation. And when i should tell people to back off of them if they wont say it themselves. And im very uncomfortable when theres secondhand embarrassment. And bullying, in something im watching or reading. Yknow, I actually cant watch mean girls. I just. I tried, i had to walk away bc I couldn’t take it. It also kinda triggers me so theres that. Bc of the bullying. But yeah im very empathetic. Otherwise socially im not good at that.

23- nope. Ive got like no support system other than tumblr and online friends. Apparently my dad refused to acknowledge im autistic and hes my favorite parent. Thats his big flaw though. And if i “came out” to him and said it myself he would probably come around. I know hes not completely nt either. My Opa has ocd, so nuerodiversity runs in the family ig.

While making this i got distracted and went on insta for like an hour oops lol

24- steampunk cosplay? Or college dorm tips? The steampunk one was freshman year, and the college dorm one was fifth grade. It lasted well into sixth grade and seventh grade.

#actually autistic #autism #autism acceptance #special interest #ask #spin #spins #autistic

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

Text

Seriously, for fuck’s sake, I know that post was AT LEAST as far back as December, if not more, and it literally had less than ten notes just two hours ago.

But remember! I’m on a fucking CRUSADE! I just want to take away peoples’ rape fics and harmless kiddie porn fantasies and I just can’t respect the fact that as long as people just TAG their ‘herein lies my advertisement of the fact that hahaha, omg I think what happened to you is actually kinda hot and sexy giggle giggle aren’t I so TABOO????’ smut like lol okay, well that doesn’t affect me at all, I’m not remotely bothered by having to spend every single day wading through reminders of how much more fascinating people find rape than actual survivors of said things.

I’m the one who has no idea how to live in a society with other people and suck it up and deal with the fact that sometimes, people do and say things that make us uncomfortable and we wish we could avoid, but just shut the fuck up and keep that to yourself, right? Don’t like....TELL people they’ve made you uncomfortable and are doing things that you wish they’d think about more critically, gosh, all that’s gonna do is make THEM uncomfortable then, why couldn’t you just kept it to yourself, how dare you think TALKING about problems is the solution?????

Yup yup, I’m clearly the one who has no boundaries and no regard for other people and can’t let people just have their harmless fun, their different opinions that don’t actually affect me, I’m the one who just can’t seem to stop from hunting down posts I don’t agree with and hopping on other blogs and resurrecting weeks or months old posts just to make sure EVERYONE KNOWS THIS POST WAS WROOOOOOONG. Lmao.

Well I’m very sorry for all that, now that mine eyes have been opened! Rape fics are harmless and this is all just fictional, nobody is actually affected in a negative way by anything being talked about here yaaaaaaay!

Anyway, I’m off to spend the rest of the night trying to calm down lolol because fun fact for people who love to talk about being triggered but have no real clue what they’re actually talking about and how that word was never meant to describe being like...upset or angry but rather the stimuli or situations that put survivors and people with PTSD and other mental disorders into actual goddamn panic spirals and attacks. And thus like, triggers are not as fucking obvious as some of you seem to think they are.

Like lol guess what, I actually can read a scene wherein someone’s raping someone in a scene that looks or sounds EXACTLY LIKE MY RAPE and it can be heart-wrenching and it can be graphic and it can be emotional and I can still not be triggered by that! Know why? Because shockingly, I AM aware that this is just fictional! That these are just fictional characters! That no fictional character and no real person has been harmed in the writing of this scene, because FICTIONAL CHARACTERS CAN’T BE HARMED! Know what else fictional characters can’t be? RAPED. Because rape is not a VISUAL, rape is not an ACTION, rape is not a SPECIFIC SEQUENCE OF EVENTS. Rape is a THEFT, it is one person STEALING another person’s ability to control what happens with their body, taking what they have no right to take, just because they WANT to, just because they CAN. And thus NO rape scene, no matter HOW well written or realistically depicted, is ever going to BE a rape scene, just like no ‘rape fantasy’ roleplay is ever going to BE rape because without an actual DYNAMIC of one person taking something the other person has no power to stop, when its two equally consenting partners or two flat fictional characters on a page, it is still nothing more than a SIMULATION of rape, and NEVER ANYTHING MORE THAN THAT.

And guess what? I can handle THAT just fine. THAT doesn’t trigger me no matter how much it reminds me of my own trauma, because I KNOW DAMN WELL THAT ISN’T REAL.

But you know what IS real? You know what DOES trigger me? The CONTEXT of the scene. The REASON it was written, the intended REACTION of the reader.

The part that makes me lose my fucking shit is when I’m forced to face the reality that this scene exists, was written, because somebody found it HOT and SEXY and wanted to share it with people who’d see it the same way. The reason I lose my goddamn MIND and my adrenaline ramps up and my whole body starts shaking as my fight or flight instincts kick in with no actual outlet because there’s no actual threat, just the phantom reminder of a threat I couldn’t escape from....THAT fun little adventure comes from looking or hearing about things that remind me of my rape, take me back to that fucking room and make me a terrified out of my goddamn mind dumbass nineteen year old all over again.....and knowing that this is HOT to the writer and readers, that this is intended as sexually gratifying, that this scene, this depiction, this simulation of one person STEALING from another powerless person SOMETHING THEY WILL NEVER EVER FUCKING BE ABLE TO GET BACK AS LONG AS THEY LIVE, THE SENSE OF SAFETY AND SECURITY THAT COMES FROM BEING THE ONLY PERSON WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR BODY....knowing that this little smutty fic exists so people can read this and be TURNED ON by this, so they can GET OFF to this, this thing they’re looking at in their mind, reading about, picturing as they stare down at their screen getting all hot and bothered....

JUST LIKE MY FUCKING RAPIST LOOKED WHEN GETTING OFF FROM TAKING THOSE THINGS FROM ME.

THAT is what fucking triggers me, THAT is what makes me feel unsafe and panicky, THAT is what traps me all over again in that fucking goddamn room and leaves me STUCK there no matter how many years its been and HOW far I’ve come in getting past it...

THE CONSTANT NEVER ENDING REMINDER THAT PEOPLE THINK ITS TOTALLY NO BIG DEAL TO FUCKING AGREE WITH MY RAPIST ABOUT HOW FUCKING HOT AND SATISFYING THE VIEW IS FROM UP THERE.

And all the fucking trigger warnings in the world don’t protect me from THAT, they just emphasize how little people actually give a shit, they just want the magic answer to how they can have their fun ‘harmless’ little rape KINK without having someone make them feel bad for the fact that the rank goes FUN RAPE FANTASIES YAY first and survivors who have a problem with that way the fuck last.

Anyway, so that’s what I’ll be doing all night! Links to my paypal and my ko-fi are on my main blog page if anyone’s ever felt informed or learned anything from any of my many, many, MANY posts about this stuff or any form of gratitude for the effort I DO or at least once DID put into sorting through my thoughts and making my points in some kind of way that actually addresses the usual conversations around all this.

Because guess what? It IS goddamn fucking emotional labor. It DOES take work! Its EXHAUSTING. It HURTS. I would give anything in the world to NOT pick at that giant fucking scab as often as I do, but I DONT HAVE THAT OPTION. Because not talking about it DOESNT MAKE IT GO AWAY. It doesn’t make LESS for me to have to navigate through every goddamn day of my life and you know what the suggested response to problems that you can’t fix on your own are? Problems with SOCIETY?

HAVING GODDAMN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT IT.

So excuse me for SAYING that as often as I do especially cuz every time I DO I get maybe ten notes of acknowledgment that anyone’s even fucking LISTENING but meanwhile here’s another fucking five hundred on a Batfam or X-Men shit post, now THAT’S the content people want from me!

Guess what! I WANT THAT TO BE MY CONTENT TO!

I would LOVE nothing more than to just be able to happily and comfortably shitpost about my favorite superheroes and write stuff I enjoy and that doesn’t have the flaws I rant about seeing in so many shows and books. I could talk for HOURS about fun thoughts and ideas I have in my head, I could banter back and forth with my friends about nothing of substance at all for DAYS, I don’t NEED to fucking retraumatize myself every goddamn day screaming into the void about this shit so I can feel IMPORTANT or have something INTERESTING to blog about or whatever the fuck people think is my reason for ranting about this shit. ALL. THE. GODDAMN. TIME.

But I can’t do that, because there is not a fucking day that goes by, not a DAY where SOMETHING doesn’t cross my dash, or SOMETHING isn’t on an Ao3 page I’m searching through for fic about a fave character, that doesn’t set me off and make my body start shaking with how deeply, fundamentally UPSETTING it is to constantly be bombarded with reminders of just how easy people find it to reframe my trauma as something hot and sexy and WAY MORE WORTH DEFENDING than the very thought of me going ONE FUCKING DAY without having to stumble across bullshit like that. Because I CAN’T ‘dont like/dont read’ as much is out there. I don’t need to click on a fic to see this is smut fic by an author who thinks rape is hot and judging from the number of kudos and comments and hits is definitely on to something! GUESS I DID MY RAPE WRONG THEN, cuz it wasnt fucking hot for me!

I would love to just ‘avoid’ it so I can actually ENJOY my fucking time on the internet. But I CANT. Because its EVERYWHERE. And god forbid I try and start fucking CONVERSATIONS about that so that maybe, someday, after we’ve done the work as a society to examine WHY PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING INVESTED IN THIS STUFF, I or at the very least people like me, can someday enjoy one day on the internet where they DONT have to constantly wade through an endless swamp of that shit.

Honestly. Seriously. I have said it so often I can not count. I do not want to censor anyone. I do not want power over what people can read or write. I just. want. to TELL people that when they write this stuff, it has CONSEQUENCES, that there are people it DOES hurt, and have them LISTEN, so that at least, at LEAST the ones who are bothered enough by that realization to NOT be comfortable writing it when faced with the awareness of the fact that their writing HAS THIS EFFECT WHETHER WE SAY IT TO THEIR FACES OR NOT, that THEY at least can decide....hey. What if I just...wrote something else instead?

But what the FUCK am I supposed to do with the constant, incessant reminder that people would rather dig in their heels in defense of their RAPE FANTASIES than roll up their sleeves and do a little fucking examination of WHY they and society at large are so fucking invested in this shit that the very IDEA of ‘giving up’ content like this for the sake of people who have actually LIVED through it, is just....INCOMPREHENSIBLE to them? That they feel ATTACKED by the very idea?

(And don’t fucking come at me with that ‘some survivors use it to cope’ stuff. Yeah, well I used to get in bar fights as my coping mechanism. Didn’t fucking mean it was healthy, and it wasn’t fucking harmless to anyone I punched in the goddamn face, now was it? Also, if you’re not a survivor and you hide behind that line, FEEL FUCKING ASHAMED for thinking of it as a kneejerk response to another survivor telling you your “kink” fucking hurts).

I’m out. See you all later.

#rape cw

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fireeaglespirit · 5 years

Text

@fireeaglespirit @viviane-lefay i do worry sometimes with the stories I write if things might be too much for you. To be fair I dont think in any fanfic Ive ever written anything too explicit but now Im so conscious of other people’s viewpoints and being inclusive that it is a concern. Ultimately I write what I want to/need to but I am aware it might not be for all tastes hence always trying to follow ratings etc.

Replying here so it doesn’t cause any problems with OP, etc..

Ohh. I’m sorry if this worried you.. tbh this was very random and I wasn’t even thinking about fiction when I rb this. This one reminded me of a few times I went out with friends and colleagues and I just felt starkly asexual, lmao

About my tolerance regarding sex and explicitly in fiction, I’ll be honest with you…

There’s hardly anything I could say I wouldn’t read about. I just don’t feel ‘triggers’ or anything of the sort, no hard feelings when it gets to fiction and I value your will to be conscious of other viewpoints but its practically impossible to cater to all tastes like you said, so don’t worry about it much… there’s always someone out there who will feel offended and others who will fiercely love it.

As for myself, I’m very tolerant to sexual content in fiction, idk? I don’t seek it out particularly but its not a deal breaker either.

I know some asexual people are less tolerant, I usually just get a ‘meh’ feeling whenever those subjects are touched in much detail, idk some works do get nasty and bothersome because of much detail involving sexual practices so I just give up on them or put them aside when they bring me no joy but I gladly consume material with sex on it as long as I like some aspects of it. Also, I’m good at ignoring or glossing over things I don’t like in fiction… when I read explicit scenes with intercourse it does nothing to me and my eyes focuses on the sentences I loved such as regarding the feelings between the characters and subtle interactions instead of the physical/carnal aspects of it, and this makes it all worthy it.

Even so, some works might become overwhelmingly depressive or repulsive so I might put them aside even if I enjoyed an aspect of it or I might just skip through them and this happened recently to a series of fantasy books I tried to read which were actually really good but they were so overwhelmingly and unnecessarily dark and had an horrid oppressive atmosphere towards women an sex so I just felt no joy reading them? Its not like I was traumatized by its tone but it felt like a chore and I couldn’t care about it further and no character inspired me whatsoever that the world could change for the better, so I dropped them.

But its not like I’m judging it, I just feel weirded out to some things and I just imagine the kind of mind that takes upon themselves the chore to write a whole series of book which has nothing but suffering and misery in them, especially concerning women, lol. We already had this shit in history and still have in some places in the world so I kinda feel like its not interesting for me to read about it in a fictional setting, especially if I don’t feel like the writer is going to challenge the setting.

But I’m aware most people are much more sensitive… these things can be horrid for those who are more sensitive, and perhaps my own asexuality protects me from feeling it fully as I don’t even think of myself as a being capable of partaking in this (weird, I know), so I have problem even projecting.

But I did felt really strongly for the way women were oppressed absurdly and had their agency completely obliterated, so that sparked a sort of empathy or kinship in me which made progress in such book a chore…

You got my point and this just illustrates a bit my relationship to fiction and things that irk me since you were interested in my opinion… I have another example of fantasy book with lots of sex in it:

I read asoiaf even thought its full of sexual stuff but I don’t feel joy at these parts, yet the work is so good on other themes that I ignore it for the most part… but even so, recently I’ve read F&B and it was kinda overwhelming on the sexist aspect with myriads of female characters turned into child brides and raped and dying at their childbirth repeatedly it just got very tiresome and repetitive near the end, because there where almost no counterpoints to it, unlike in the main series where the situation is dire for women but we have characters challenging it more often and idk. F&B just lacked on that front.

So, this shows a bit my sensitivity towards sex is more related to sexism and the feeling that women are confined to their reproductive aspects: motherhood, childbearing, marriage, sensuality, etc.. I don’t have a problem with sexual intercourse per se as you can see, but that’s from my unique point of view and I know some asexuals are more repulsed towards it, but you asked my opinion…

So, if its consensual sex: its not my cup of tea but I don’t feel like its a deal breaker…

Just to give you a positive sex example: when I see an OTP of mine getting to the point of having sex I think its pretty sweet, like when Jon and Dany consummated their love on that boat… I was happy for them, for all that it means, the symbolism between the union of ice and fire and just two characters which I love dearly, finding happiness and comfort in each other. What’s not to love about it??

This is a rare stance I can say I saw a pair I ship get to that point xD

I love shipping as you know, but its more about the psychological aspects and potential for character development and even when I’m reading fanfic about my OTPs I enjoy more the angst and symbolism than the ‘hot’ parts which usually just makes me go ‘meh’ (again).

So this makes me say: when sex is the focus of works I could feel like I’m too asexual for this, even if it regards an OTP, it just doesn’t have a very exciting effect on me or I’m not explicitly interested in this part of a relationship, when so many other things caught my eye… sometimes subtle interactions and dialogue and and gentle approximation (touches, caresses, kissing, etc..) is so much more exciting for me to read about than the ‘thing’ itself, lol.

To sum it up: when its there just for p*rn or even worse, shock value it just makes me go ‘meh’ or ‘ugh’ or ‘uhh why am I even reading this?’

This reminds me of Vivi’s take on the ‘hiero gamos’, in this case I just say I might even enjoy the theme as long as the scenes involving sex are meaningful and passionate and the aspect I value the most about them are sublime and platonic instead of carnal but I’m aware the carnal aspects are very important for the characters and the audience so I also worry when I get to show my stories people will think they lack sexual content ^^ I get you.

Now that you know my feelings towards sex in fiction, to a broader sense I just wanted to say..

There’s no way to guess people’s sensitives but it doesn’t mean you need to walk on eggshells afraid to trigger people all the time, hell no! I’m all for freedom of creation. At least around me there are no metaphorical ‘eggshells’.

Everyone has their own set of opinions which makes them unique, not just me, I mean… even so I will let my snowflake syndrome show but I’m quite peculiar if you could say, so I sort of grew a strong ‘carapace’ towards the world as I deal with people with completely different views and values on a daily basis which might make me have inflamed political opinions while at the same time, I’m very flexible and forgiving when it comes to fiction in general.

I don’t expect much of the population to be like this so I’m also self conscious when it gets to writing my own stuff because I know people can feel very strongly about it and you’ve seen the way fandom reacts to minor things and bash creators when they perceive flaws in their work… I’m just not a judgmental person, its not in my nature. I just ignore things in fiction if I don’t like and I became even more relaxed over time in regards to this all, lol I nearly reached a ‘nirvana’ as I don’t even feel strongly negative feelings in regard to this.

Snarky and bitter comments from time to time? Yes… but no hard feelings. RL needs my hatred, lol so I don’t have it to spare with fiction any longer.

Anyway, on an unrelated sub note… as you might have noticed, I don’t feel comfortable about current fandom trends and specially policing, and with reason as this gets very serious and quick with literally ‘wave chain reactions’ of hatred sparked apparently from nowhere. I hope people could create more freely instead of the political correct police and restraining of creativity we have now. It was good for a while and I’m all for diversity and change in status quo (for the better), but I think this has gone too far and I perceive a lot of rigidity in fiction right now due to fear of fandom backlash we have creators afraid to make their thing and afraid it isn’t ‘inclusive or progressive’ enough… so they bend themselves endlessly until fandom ‘approves’ them, but even so someone is bound to scream and say the work is offensive and the cycle of hatred is restarted.

I know this reply was like a huge egocentric monologue and I strained with non related issues at the end, but you asked my thought on this so I tried to convey it with detail.. including things related to the perception we have concerning fictional themes and I just kinda had to vent at some parts of it.

etc…. This doesn’t mean I forbid judgment from others or criticism or that I forbid people from harshly criticizing works of fiction, just that sometimes it gets more harmful than beneficial and scare people off, and I felt like saying that.

Anyway,,, just want to say nonetheless I find it very sweet and considerate that you are taking different opinions in mind while writing, but you don’t need to worry at least from my part, and I don’t think you ever got even close to being explicit in your writings so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

#beyond-far-horizons

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lovelesswiki · 7 years

Text

Post-Moonless predictions— Soubi’s mental state (2/10)

previous part<--[here] --> next part

for the last week or so, i’ve been talking about a large theory i’ve been writing. since finishing it, i’ve decided to publish it in parts, since it’s actually about 10 different theories all on one subject. since it’s all written out, i’ll try to be publishing one part of this per day.

essentially, this is a set of theories about what i believe will have to happen in order to properly lead up to a climax--the one we’ve been building up to for years and years now. so, these are what i theorize will happen after the first moonless vs beloved battle, broken up into ten different parts. each theory is explained and theres images for each one.

table of contents (bolded is the post you’re looking at):

moonless and beloved will rematch (1)

soubi will fall into a deep depression and possibly become suicidal (2)

ritsuka will arrive at seven voices, SM’s activity will be revealed (3)

SM will reveal that there was a mole in their organization (4)

kio will be the one to take ritsuka to goura (5)

ritsuka will find things out about soubi and the aoyagi family (6)

SM’s true purpose will be revealed. ritsuka will have to make a decision about good vs evil (7)

seventh SM member will be revealed (8)

nagisa will find out what really happened to sanae (9)

ritsuka will be asked to join SM to fill the aoyagi seat (10)

Theory: after the moonless battle, soubi will fall back into a catatonic state, become deeply depressed, and become actively suicidal. this will be following constant abusive treatment from seimei and soubi essentially giving up on everything.

NOTE: this post will be discussing suicide and abuse in explicit terms. this is a warning for that. also, this post is one of the most important, since i mostly focus on ritsuka in the others, for reasons that ill be discussing in this post.

i strongly suspect that everything after the moonless battle will become worse for soubi, somehow.

before the moonless battle, we see soubi falling into what i can only describe as a near catatonic state. it’s seen at a couple times in the manga that when soubi gets extremely depressed or witnesses something horrible, he locks up completely. after the oath that seimei forces soubi to recite and seimei’s attitude that they lost, i can only imagine that this will get even worse.

catatonia, for those that dont know, is a mental state in which the sufferer goes into a state of immobility where they refuse to do everything or almost everything. it’s a sign of various psychotic disorders, including depression with psychotic features. usually, catatonia presents with things such as mutism, stupor, negatism (refusal to do things that they need to do such as eating), and agitation, and it does often present after a traumatic or shocking event. if any of this sounds familiar, you’d be right, because soubi presents this very clearly in the events following being taken from ritsuka.

(i know soubi is in no way normal, but he certainly doesnt act like this all the time)

in addition to this, soubi has apparently asked and forgotten nakahira’s name multiple times, enough that nakahira is angry about it and calls soubi out for being rude. he also ignores any offers for food and, as nakahira points out, has done nothing but sit in that state since he arrived at the house. he doesnt appear to even have slept.

(im going to go out on a limb here and say that soubi probably did actually forget his name and legitimately wasn’t intentionally being a shitty person.)

in the same chapter, we see that the only thing that rouses soubi is seimei, and every panel after that, soubi is shown to be in what looks to be immense pain. his expressions are very exaggerated and hurt and it literally looks like hes getting a nail driven through his hand again. im not going to show every panel of this, because im not kidding. it’s every panel that shows soubi from the beginning of chapter 105 to right up to where we are currently in the manga, save for the hallucination soubi has about his life back at home, but we’ll be getting to that soon.

the worst of this intense emotional pain, though, is when seimei forces soubi to recite an oath. soubi looks to be in the worst pain hes been in through the entire duration of the manga, and that’s including getting a nail through his hand and when seimei showed up at seven voices and forced soubi to let him escape. truth be told, i think this scene is where soubi crosses the line from being extremely depressed and hopeless to something actually worse. in short, i think this is the moment soubi realizes that there is nothing else besides this, and there’s no way out.

so, before we delve too deep into that, let’s talk about something related. let’s talk about seimei and what’s going to happen directly after the moonless battle in relation to seimei’s state of mind.

i heavily suspect that we’re going to see some of seimei’s violence towards soubi, as well as nisei. we have flashbacks and a current timeline with seimei and soubi where seimei acts very cruelly and abusive towards soubi, but we’ve never seen him actually get physical with him (with the exception of his naming). despite this, it’s been stated multiple times by multiple characters that soubi was beaten by him and we see him at one point during a flashback with kio where soubi’s hand is badly injured and it doesn’t seem to be from a battle. seimei won the battle against moonless, but is clearly displeased with how they won and how close it was, as well as with the fact that nisei was defeated, and in the time between taking him back and now, seimei seems particularly displeased with the way soubi acts and speaks. i believe this is going to come to some sort of a pinnacle where seimei’s physical treatment of soubi (and nisei) is going to be shown in order to trigger readers and fans into a concrete and undeniable belief that seimei is a piece of shit.

(not that he isn’t already, but physical violence tends to be a very ‘in-your-face’ type of thing that cannot be ignored or looked over or even easily forgotten. everyone remembers it and it tends to be huge in storytelling, especially with characters who are trying to be negatively portrayed. while it’s easy to overlook the scenes with rampant emotional and verbal abuse, it’s not easy to overlook scenes with rampant physical abuse. this is why we remember misaki’s treatment of ritsuka and ritsu’s treatment of soubi much more than we remember, say, nagisa’s treatment of the zeroes, despite the fact that she’s hit at least youji. this is also why readers much more easily dislike characters like ritsu and misaki over nagisa and seimei.)

(this scene isn’t remembered very often, even.)

(soubi’s injury is implied to be seimei’s doing, but it’s never confirmed or explicitly shown, although that type of injury is easily done with a knife. i wonder who’s proficient with knives...?)

so, right now we have a seimei that is displeased for a multitude of reasons. first, we have soubi, who’s depressed, unwilling to do much, and who has begun questioning seimei and talking back to him. he won the moonless battle, but only after beloved as a whole was half defeated. and then we have nisei. i feel bad for nisei, because i do not see this turning out well for him at all. nisei lost. nisei was defeated. nisei was weak. nisei couldnt do what he was ordered. nisei forced seimei to rely on soubi to win a battle because nisei couldnt do what he was ‘created’ to do. nisei is useless to seimei, and an embarrassment. there is no way at all that seimei is even remotely happy with nisei, and this is something that i think is going to play out horribly for him, and something that will greatly affect soubi, as well.

to see why, we need to understand soubi and nisei’s relationship. up until very recently, soubi hated nisei with every fiber of his being. he vowed over and over that he would kill him. at the moonless battle, soubi was given a wide and huge opportunity to carry this out and kill nisei, but instead chose to take pity on him. the look that soubi gave nisei in the moment before he put a sleep spell on him wasn’t one of hatred, but one that looked as if soubi pitied him, like he felt sorry for him after watching him be defeated and be beaten up right in front of seimei. soubi seemed understanding, almost, and i think in that moment he came to a greater understanding that being the beloved fighter isn’t an honor. it’s a curse.

i don’t think soubi is going to fair well if he witnesses nisei being punished for his failure during the battle. similarly, i dont think soubi is going to fair well if he is punished or pushes seimei to anger, either.

the entire series, up until seimei taking soubi back, has partially been about soubi building a sense of identity that involves being an actual person and not a thing. at this point, i doubt soubi would react well at all to being beaten or punished for winning a battle too closely, nor do i think he would react well to seeing nisei be punished for having to drop out of a 2 vs 1 battle, humiliating seimei as he did so. in fact, i think this would push soubi towards an edge that i think is going to become very clear in the coming chapters.

to put it simply, with soubi’s characterization and the events leading up to now, i strongly suspect that soubi will become suicidal to a degree. maybe it’s a large degree that pushes him towards an actual choice. maybe it’s to a lighter degree. given what yun has said about the climax and everything, i think it may be the former, and thats what im going to work off of here.

let me break this down a little bit: soubi’s life revolves around the possibility of death. throughout the series, it’s implied that fighters like soubi dont tend to live very long and that soubi is ‘old’ for a fighter. many characters also tell him, to his face, that soubi should have already killed himself and that he didnt deserve to live after seimei’s ‘death’ and that he’d be better off dead. soubi has one reason why he didn’t kill himself after seimei’s death and seemed to be passively suicidal then, too. but, above all, soubi wants out. you know the only way that soubi has been told that he can get out from seimei’s rule? the only way he could leave the life he currently leads? by dying.

(the ol’ ‘ha ha you’ll be dead and in the ground before i ever do that’ routine)

seimei tells soubi here that the only way he can leave or escape is if he dies. seimei makes that very clear, and this scene and the chapters that follow it are some of the most distressing chapters for soubi. something is very clearly wrong with him in these chapters. while soubi can be a hard character to understand, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that soubi is not acting like he usually does. he’s catatonic and depressed. hes refusing food and seems to be lost in his thoughts all the time. he looks like hes in immense pain at every second. he does not look or sound good at all. on top of this, other characters comment on it too.

let’s also talk about that last image a little, too. mikado calls soubi out for drifting away after soubi gets lost in what seems to be a hallucination. i say hallucination because during it, even soubi seems a bit surprised at the outcomes of certain things, though he doesn’t question it. if it were a fantasy or a daydream, he wouldn’t be shocked by, say, ritsuka being able to get permission to stay over at his apartment. and after being taken out of that moment, soubi does seem a little disorientated and not sure where he is, as seen in the way he reaches out for the rain and doesn’t appear to be able to respond.

soubi hallucinates during the battle about his home life and specifically, about the small family he’s built for himself involving ritsuka, natsuo, youji, and kio. in this hallucination, he takes care of the three kids and has ritsuka’s friends over and even comments that it’d be nice to live together. the threat of seimei or of being attacked by opposing teams doesn’t seem to exist in this small world of soubi’s, and he doesn’t seem particularly worried about anything. aside from a comment he makes about shutting ritsuka’s mother up, he seems fairly normal, even. and then he’s torn away from it and put back into the battle, at which point he makes this comment:

soubi’s thoughts in this moment definitely read as an admission of guilt and reluctance. hes very upset in this moment, after being torn away from a reality he’d created to try to deal with things, and he’s realizing that there’s no one around who will comfort him and tell him that it’s alright, and that things are only going to continue to get worse. from this monologue, soubi also seems to not want to fight moonless at all. he doesnt seem to want to participate in the battle, but he’s acknowledging that he doens’t have a choice. soubi doesnt want any part in this battle, and id even wager to say that hes on moonless’s side and wants seimei apprehended. however, he also seems to know that if he fights, that won’t happen. it was the same at seven voices--soubi very clearly did not want to let seimei escape and he did willingly chase him down with ritsuka, but was forced to let him get away with it and then locked down afterwards due to shock and guilt, even going as far as to try to convince ritsuka that he was a bad person afterwards.

soubi really, really seems to want to be ‘good’ and do what the ‘good’ people want him to do. he didnt argue with ritsu at seven voices when ritsu told him to apprehend seimei, and he went as far as to talk back at seimei when he thought seimei was patronizing ritsuka. he didnt want to break that window and allow seimei to get away, but he had to. soubi is a character who seems to very much want to be ‘good’, but is forced to keep doing ‘bad’ things. throughout the series, soubi seems to have learned morals to an extent and now recognizes the difference between right and wrong, and no longer seems to believe that everything seimei does is right.

it’s very clear that he wants out, from telling seimei that it’d be fine to be abandoned to being catatonic at the house to hesitating and hallucinating a fantasy about a better home life during the moonless battle to seeming upset that he’s the one doing these things. however, soubi has no way out. seimei will not kill him. for reasons unknown to me, seimei seems to particularly want soubi to suffer, and seimei is smart enough to know that death would end soubi’s suffering. soubi is strong enough to the point that moonless, who’s supposedly beloved’s match, can’t defeat him. no other team has even come close to defeating him. nisei isn’t going to kill him. soubi can’t run away--he doesn’t have the willpower to, and what would be the point, anyways? the last time he got out from seimei, after seimei’s ‘death’, seimei let him build up happiness and then came right back around and took it all away from him. seimei is never going to leave him alone, and as long as seimei is alive, he’s going to want soubi to suffer. and soubi still thinks of soubi as some sort of god, meaning that soubi doesn’t see seimei as being able to die or even be captured. not that soubi has the willpower to be any sort of cause of death to him, anyways.

this leaves one thing–if soubi wants out, hes going to have to die. seimei would not willingly give him up, since seimei seems to want to cause soubi as much pain as possible, and i dont see soubi as the type who would actually be able to successfully run away and break things off from seimei and even if he did, seimei would find out new ways to take everything away from him. for soubi, it’s completely hopeless, because no matter what he does, seimei is just going to take everything away from him over and over again, as he’s been shown to do.

on top of all this, forcing soubi to repeat an oath clearly caused him great distress during the battle, even if it helped him win. the oath itself is important, as well, since it gave voice to soubi’s thoughts and worst fears--that there’s only seimei. there is nothing else. nothing else matters. there will always be only seimei. while seimei may view this oath as a forced declaration of soubi’s ‘devotion’ towards him, soubi seems to see it as a terrible fate, like repeating this oath only solidified the fact that he will never, ever escape seimei.

as a result of being forced to do that and subsequently realizing that theres no way out, that this is going to be the rest of his miserable life, and that he’s just going to be in horrible emotional pain for the rest of his days when he’d had about a year of happiness with a family that he’d built for himself–it’s going to trigger something in soubi deeper than the near-catatonia that we saw before the moonless battle, and i think itll push soubi into a territory that can be labelled as actively suicidal.

suicide itself has been talked about vaguely in the series before, too. in the beginnings of loveless, teams told soubi directly that he should’ve killed himself and that he was better off dead. at one point, early in loveless, ritsuka asks soubi what would happen if seimei ordered soubi to hurt ritsuka. soubi responds by telling ritsuka that he’d kill himself first before he could do anything to ritsuka. any and all talk about suicide in the series seems to be directed at soubi and no one else, and this could easily be seen as foreshadowing.

im almost done with this one, but there’s also yun saying that the climax would involve soubi realizing that it does matter and him making a choice about what he wants. this could quite possibly be the realization that he could do something about this and the choice whether or not to push himself over an edge that he’s on. ill get to this in another post, but i strongly believe that unfortunately, soubi is a character who has been set up to die, and i think that making this choice would have a huge effect on every character and following event in the story.

at this point, soubi has despaired and abandoned everything. he doesnt care about himself or others. we’re undeniably at this point right now. and with the way soubi is and his mental state currently, the choice that he makes may very well be to kill himself. it would set off a huge chain of events in the series and would effect everyone. soubi is a character who has some sort of non-neutral relationship with almost every character in the series. very few don’t hold feelings one way or another towards him (mikado and seven being the biggest two). everyone else seems to either hate him with a passion or feel positively towards him. his death would effect every single one of these characters and the world, given that soubi is a main player in it and is said to be the best fighter.

going along with that, it would be a fitting climax and a resolution for the problem of seimei. seimei would be left without soubi in what would be perhaps the largest show of defiance possible. he might still have nisei, if he didn’t already discard him in some way or another after the initial moonless battle. seimei would essentially be left with nothing, and it would come down to the fact that all his power lays in the people he’s manipulated and abused his entire life.

there’s also the possibility of soubi attempting at some point after the rematch, perhaps when he’s back with ritsuka, or soubi making the decision at the climax that his life does matter and that he can get out of this somehow.

regardless, im fairly certain that the rest of soubi’s storyline right up until the moonless rematch and subsequent climax will be showing him falling deeper and deeper into despair and losing his grip on reality even more than he has currently. i also believe that it’ll show seimei in an even more negative light, given his attitude involving the first moonless battle.

the rest of this series will be about ritsuka’s doings to come, since i think soubi’s story from here until the rematch will be about his deteriorating mental state.

#loveless #agatsuma soubi #aoyagi ritsuka #aoyagi seimei #akame nisei #soubi agatsuma #ritsuka aoyagi #seimei aoyagi #nisei akame #theory #post moonless battle series #my content

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avasilvugh · 7 years

Note

how do the kiddos/Lena and kara react to the bad relationship Maia is in?

like..........not well. like they react v well for her, in that they’re supportive and caring and do all the right stuff but it also tears them apart

not as in the family is torn apart, like they still are v much a family and v much a unit, but it rips kara and lena apart and it eats at finn and stella bc they all feel like they could have done more?? noticed before it got so bad, been more present

but basically maia is feeling v overlooked and forgotten abt, like classic middle child where she feels like stella’s the baby and finn’s the prodigal son and she’s just.......there?? like she feels like she’s the Angry One or whatever, not anything to be proud of. but she’s not one to ever be forthright with her feelings?? like fuck that, she’s going to bottle that shit up so you never know the real reason for her getting upset. so she’s feeling weird with her family, right?? and she’s in kind of a vulnerable place bc of it, always feeling like the black sheep, always feeling like a bit of a burden and high school is weird and everything is Weird, thats like the best way to put it. maia’s in a state of flux, where she’s not the kiddo that anyone is expecting to go into the superhero business but she’s the one that desperately wants to (like stella will want to later, but rn?? its all maia) but no one acknowledges it bc she never says it

a lot of her problems are rooted in miscommunication tbh like she’ll just........not say anything but be like stewing over it for months ya feel?

so she’s feeling Weird and starts acting out a little, starts letting her grades drop and starts missing curfew and like that sort of puts a bit of a wedge between her and her family, bc her moms are like?? where is this coming from?? and her siblings are trying to talk to her but maia’s started looking at the world like it’s me vs everyone else so she shuts them out, refuses to talk to them abt anything important. so there’s this distance btwn her and the rest of the family, this uncomfortable tension btwn her and her moms and it only feeds into this Weirdness more, leads maia to make more Bad decisions like cutting class to hang out more with these kids she met at the skate park over the summer and its rlly nice?? like she feels heard, feels validated and like her friends from school are nice, are rlly good, but they sort of are like?? it sucks you feel bad but your moms do love you?? talk to them abt this maybe?? and maia’s like lol no, just spends more time with the ppl that are validating her feelings, not asking her to analyze anything, just letting her be

and she has rlly intense chemistry with this one boy in the group?? like its immediate and maia’s dated a little bit but she’s p intense, scares ppl off p often but this boy isnt intimidated, seems to see right through her, seems to see that she’s angry bc she’s scared of a lot, that she’s not as hard and sharp as she acts

and he likes her and she likes him so they get together and maia feels so normal?? like for a hot second she just feels like a regular kid and its so addictive that feeling, she’s not willing to give it up. and her bf is so sweet at first, texts her a couple times a day and calls her after school and brings her snacks when they meet up at the park

i’m putting this under the cut bc the subject matter can be v triggering, pls check the tags and pls pls pls dont read this if any of the warnings apply to you. be safe, i love you

and then, bc it starts so calmly, so carefully, she doesnt rlly worry when it starts to change, when he starts telling her that she’s exhausting, that her negativity is killing him. like?? she already thinks that abt herself, knows she’s intense and moody and angry more often than she’s not, knows she’s a lot to handle, already thinks she’s too Much. so she changes a little, stops venting to him, starts bottling it up again. then its him blaming her for arguments they have, so she tries hard to not start any. then its demanding that she text him back immediately, even when he’s texting her hundreds of times in a day, so she starts keeping her phone on her at all times. then its this, then its that and through it all, maia’s getting a little smaller, a little quieter, a little Less. she’s trying to fit herself into the box he’s drawing around her and she’s not happy with it but she loves him, right?? and he loves her?? he’s the only one that rlly understands her, he’s the only one that rlly cares how she’s feeling, even if sometimes he’s too upset with his own stuff to listen to her, even if sometimes he makes fun of her in front of their friends even when she tells him it makes her uncomfortable

and she hides this all from her moms for a long time, makes up excuses for why she’s missing family dinners and movie nights, says she’s just stressed, just tired. she avoids finn bc he’s always known her tells, avoids stella bc her little sister can literally see into ppl’s minds and she doesnt know why, but she doesnt want ppl to know abt her relationship. she avoids lena bc lena’s got this knack for figuring out when her kids are keeping secrets, avoids kara bc kara believes so wholeheartedly in her that it makes her feel set on edge. she keeps skipping school until it becomes a Problem, until the school calls her moms but they’re both in the middle of something, miss the call, so they call Emergency Contact #1 aka alex and alex is like ??? wtf like maia’s a bit of a hothead sometimes but she’s not reckless necessarily, especially when it comes to school, so she goes to campus, sees maia’s car and is like mmmmmm this is Wrong. so when maia comes back at the end of the day, alex is sitting on the hood of her car and is like hey. we’re going to talk.

and maia’s like.......rlly sensitive?? like somewhere deep down, she knows there’s something off about the situation, that’s why she’s so desperate to hide it, but she’s not like conscious of it, she just gets rlly defensive, gets rlly prickly, and she’s not great at hiding it when she’s displeased or upset but its so muted when alex confronts her and that, in of itself, is a giant fucking red flag bc maia should like?? be arguing, getting irritated like maia weirdly takes after alex in a lot of respects and alex Knows something’s wrong. so she kind of drops it bc maia’s just giving her this look like she’s begging her not to press too hard

like obviously alex doesnt Drop It, she just backs off maia directly for a bit, goes over her head to kara and lena and they’re like SHIT this makes a lot of things make sense and its like, ok, we can handle this

FALSE

maia reacts v badly when her moms sit her down to like.....gently ask what the fuck is happening. like there’s a lot sort of just simmering below the surface, like her bf has been rlly difficult recently and she’s stressed abt that and she’s angry that alex found out, that alex told her moms, she’s angry that she’s getting called on it, that it feels like the only time she gets attention is when she’s fucked up, and it all comes to a head during this one moment. like. it’s the worst fight any of the kiddos have ever had with their moms. like maia’s full out screaming at them and they’re just completely caught off guard bc there’s usually some lead up?? something that builds to a meltdown but nope, not this time, she goes zero to one hundred in a blink and stella and finn are just like hunkered down upstairs, staring at each other like HOLY SHIT maia never yells at moms like that

like its awful, terrible but it kind of makes things better for a while?? like maia screams it all out, her anger, her feeling of being left out, how hurt she feels sometimes, all the things that she’s never let her moms know and then its kind of like. oh. its over now.

and things get a little better after that?? maia takes the inevitable grounding with no argument, but that is like......Another Problem. like maia without any fight?? with no indignant anger??? that’s a maia that none of them have ever encountered and it sets everyone on edge, how quiet maia is, how small she makes herself. but there’s no like?? cause as far as anyone but maia can see. so her moms are a bit more careful with her, her siblings are a little more gentle, kara and lena go out of their way to arrange things to do with maia on her own, to make sure she feels seen and included but by this point, her boyfriend’s been filling her head with really toxic shit, feeding into her venting and solidifying the idea that she’s less than her siblings in someway, so even their best efforts are shrugged off. maia has a million excuses prepped and ready for why she can’t make it to the planetarium with lena, why she has to miss stella’s soccer game, why she turns kara down when she offers to go flying, just the two of them. she’s become a great liar, really, was always a little clumsy with out and out lies when she was a child but now she’s almost as good as stella

speaking of stella. she sees him first. in maia’s mind, when she finally shows up to family game night and finn shouts a little bc they’re playing monopoly and maggie just bought the property he wanted and maia doesnt so much flinch as she does freeze for one, nearly imperceptible moment and stella sees this face, this boy in maia’s mind but he’s smiling?? and she brushes it off at the moment, but it nags at her for a while until she’s asked maia to help braid her hair for her seventh grade dance and they’re up in maia’s room, out of lena’s hearing and kara’s out on a supergirl mission so stella sort of asks are you dating anyone? and there’s that freeze again, that moment and stella feels the dilemma as maia navigates it, as she decides if she should lie when stella will definitely be able to tell, and then finally maia says kind of quietly yeah, i am and then stella’s asking for details, when’d they meet, does he go to school with maia, when is she going to introduce him to the family and maia just shuts her down. switches subjects in a manner that is v final and stella’s not going to push, she’s never been one to push

but now maia’s thinking about it and there’s no way stella’s going to be able to keep this a secret from their moms for very long, so she bites the bullet, tells them in a v blunt way

quite literally walks into the kitchen one morning and is like hey. im dating someone and then just runs out the room before anyone can say anything else

so obviously kara and lena are like ??? ok!! we wanna meet them!! invite them over for dinner!! and maia’s like SHIT i didnt think this through but she cant tell them no straight out without them being like why, whats going on, so she says she’ll invite him and so she mentions it to her bf the next time she sees him and he’s like Upset and Hurt that she wants to burst their little bubble, but he “loves her enough to meet her family” (said with a sigh and a glare that has maia shrinking, apologizing)

so he comes round for dinner and stella’s the one that gets to the door before maia, that pulls it open to meet her sister’s mystery man and she immediately gets a bad vibe from him. like straight off the bat, she looks him up and down and is like No but then maia’s pushing her to the side and pulling him into the house and stella’s just sort of standing there like This is Wrong, I Dont Like This, just trails them after a moment, follows them into the kitchen where everyone’s doing the whole meet n greet thing, the Boyfriend is presenting the flowers he brought and keeping one hand around maia’s waist and he’s shaking hands with finn and smiling all wide and bright and smug, as if he’s already won something and all stella can hear from maia is please like him please like him please like him which wouldn’t be super weird??? but there’s this intense desperation behind it that sets stella on edge

so when she gets the chance, when finn’s chatting with maia and her bf, stella pulls her moms into the kitchen and tells them what she feels, that something is Wrong. and like??? she doesnt have the words for it bc she’s thirteen and hasn’t ever really been exposed to anything like this, but she knows this guy is a bad dude and she says as much and kara and lena are like shit okay our empath/mind reader of a daughter is getting Bad Vibes, we should keep an eye on him, so they do the entire night and its like. there arent any red flags or anything, isnt any bad behavior, but maia is too tense and this dude is too smooth and they’ve both??? been through this??? can see the subtle signs?? can see the way maia freezes a little when this boy puts his arm around her, the way she keeps watching him out of the corner of her eye, how she’ll switch subjects if there’s even the slightest change in his expression like.........maia’s never been a jumpy person, has always been sure footed and confident since she was very little, and kara’s got kill bill sirens going in her head and lena’s got this sick feeling in her stomach, stella’s sitting next to maia and refusing to move, glaring at her boyfriend whenever he’s looking a different direction and finn, godbless him, is looking from his moms to stella to maia sitting so stiffly on the couch, looking entirely uncomfortable in her home, in her own space and he catches stella’s eye, raises one eyebrow and then all he gets in like the in-mind version of all caps is stella just yelling BAD VIBE over and over again

so the night is tense to say the least and stella insists on maia sitting next to her at dinner, leaving her boyfriend sandwiched between finn and lena who both have like.........impressive death glares and maia’s getting more and more agitated, like pushing for the meal to wrap up quickly and it finally does, after her moms grilling this guy to get like a better grasp on the type of awful he is and maia’s like saying she’ll walk him out and kara and lena are both like we’ll come with you and maia’s like No but her bf just squeezes her shoulder and is like nah, it’s fine with this smarmy smile and stella’s still glaring but now finn’s glaring too

so he leaves finally and he reels maia in for a kiss that she v obviously is uncomfortable with so kara like straightens to her full height, crosses her arms and tells him she’s sure he needs to be home and he must sense somethings changed bc then he like just stops putting on a smile for kara and lena, turns fully to maia and tells her to call him tonight and maia sort of nods quickly, seems intent on just getting him to leave, get out of her mother’s view

as soon as he drives away, maia’s like speed walking to the house and trying to run up the stairs, to her phone, but kara kind of catches her hand and is like hey. we need to talk about something. and maia’s like ?? can it wait, i need to text him and stella’s like um he just left, which is when lena shoos the other kiddos out of the house, handing finn some cash and telling him to take stella to get ice cream. so then its just them and maia and maia’s fidgety, wont keep eye contact for very long and kara mentions that, mentions how maia’s changed over the last few months and lena’s saying that they’re worried for her, about her, worried that maybe this boy isn’t healthy for her and maia’s like what do you guys know, he loves me and then lena's explaining darling i've been there, i know what you're feeling, but this isn't love and you deserve better and kara’s thinking about that one time maia came home with a bruise (thanks to the supplement, she can bruise) and she said she got it in gym but now kara’s wondering and they’re being v gentle, asking if she’s happy, asking if he’s kind to her and maia so desperately knows they’re right on some level but that’s buried v deep down and she doesnt want to have to drag it to the surface so she just........flips out

like screams and cries and leaves, storms out and flies away before the conversation can get too far, just yells that she cant believe theyre trying to ruin the one good thing in her life trying to take away the one person that actually give a shit about her

and she flies to meet up with bf at his place and is telling him about their fight and he's like yeah your moms are fucked up, we're in love obviously, they just dont want to see you happy, they like your brother and sister more like all this really toxic shit that he's been feeding her for months, slowly poisoning her against her family and friends

but now she's got this seed of doubt at the back of her head like wait my mothers were really great when i was a kid, did they really change?

is this love or was i just happy for attention?

my moms always tell us that no matter what we do, as long as we're happy and safe they'll support it and they've never proven that wrong right?

so she's having a crisis and he's like pushing to have sex (it's not their first time, and it's not the first time he's had to convince her) and maia's like wait no i need a minute let me riddle this thing out

and he's getting like majorly pouty and upset like right, pick them over me, leave me just like everyone else and maia's staring at him like what the fuck and so she says as much, says that her moms do love her and he’s like ?? really maia? and it goes from there, turns into an argument and he’s saying some really awful things to her

and he’s in the middle of telling her that she’s nothing, that she should be grateful he’s wasting his energy and time trying to fix her when kara breaks the door and says flatly whoops and lena marches in and essentially tells this guy to fuck off (actually she quite literally tells him to fuck off, how dare you speak to my daughter like that) as she wraps an arm around maia and guides her out and maia’s sort of shellshocked?? like shit. shit holy shit

she just like. breaks down in the car. like the moment lena’s pulled the door closed behind them, maia’s just falling apart in a way that lena’s never seen her, like shaking and rocking and full body sobs and kara’s still inside the boys house, having a Talk but then she hears maia’s crying and is just like. you’re garbage, we’re going to ruin your life before she leaves

maia cries most of the night. like suddenly everything bad that’s been happening is at the forefront of her mind but her self esteem is so shattered, she’s just blaming herself. she has like?? three panic attacks and her moms stay with her through it all, keeping her tucked between them, petting her hair and telling her that none of this is her fault, that they’re sorry for not seeing what was happening. when finn and stella come back, they follow the sound of sobbing up to their moms room, drop everything to join the cuddle pile that’s happening. stella tucks herself right next to maia, takes her hands and as much of her pain as she can, tries to give her as much peace as she can. and finn’s never been so close to violence in his life, feels an itch in his fists that is entirely unfamiliar, finds himself struggling to be in the same room with maia bc she’s his little sister??? he’s supposed to keep her safe, you know??

it’s a hard night. it is. maia cant sleep, just keeps crying, keeps sobbing out that he’s good, he is, it’s her fault, so no one sleeps that night, they all stay up and try and find something, anything to make it better for her

and thankfully it’s just nearly break, so kara calls their schools, says there’s been a family emergency and the kids wont be in for the last couple days of term, calls works and says much the same for her, and lena calls in to request all meetings be postponed until further notice, to take a leave of absence. stella won’t leave maia’s side even when the bags under stella’s eyes get too deep, when it becomes clear this is taking too much of a toll on her to keep acting as a sponge for maia’s turmoil, for her pain. maia’s her big sister and they fight a lot but she knows all the shit maia’s done for her, loves her sister enough to bear some of the burden.

lena finds the number for her old therapist, the one she saw when she finally realized her first relationship had been emotionally abusive. they’ve retired, but they recommend someone for maia. kara v quietly lets alex and maggie know whats going on, grabs alex’s hand when she breaks and god, alex feels so guilty, feels like she should have known, seen it, done more. they dont tell anyone else, decide to leave it up to maia if she wants to give out specifics to anyone else in the family, but they do tell the rest of the superfriends that maia’s going through something right now

and through these awful first weeks, maia’s ex keeps calling her, texting her and she always reaches for the phone, so finally finn takes it when she’s napping, goes to the deo and asks winn to reroute incoming calls from this number to go through his phone first. he starts picking up the calls, switches off with stella to threaten the guy, tell him in no uncertain terms that he’s never coming near their sister again

and maia’s?? not handling well. she’s doing as well as can be expected, i guess, but there are some days where she’s okay-ish and can be logical and removed enough to acknowledge that there were unhealthy dynamics (she wont call it abuse, refuses the term for now), but most days she cycles between sobbing and saying she loves him, misses him, wondering if he’s okay without her and other times she’s angry and tells everyone that its their fault he’s ignoring her now

the therapy helps?? it helps a lot actually, not only with this but with her anger issues and other stuff too. it also helps repair her relationship with her moms, who are honestly so so steadfast in their support like kara or lena always pick her up after therapy bc she’s always a little raw afterwards, shouldnt rlly be alone, and one time its kara and maia walks out, gets into the car and says rlly abruptly that her therapist thinks she should do group sessions with her moms separately and kara doesnt even hesitate, she’s just like yes okay what day what time, i’ll text lena to let her know her session

it takes like a Long time for maia to feel even a tenth like her old self. like a Loooooong time. but she eventually does and that’s mostly due to how good her moms and siblings are in the aftermath. like kara and lena both have been where she’s been so they know what to say, how to say, what not to do and they’re so careful to walk this delicate tightrope where they make it clear that this guy was bad for maia but also acknowledging that she was in love with him, that she was v invested in this relationship

and when they go back to school, there’s some rumors bc its high school, but finn sort of fills in maia’s friends a little and they step the fuck up, circle around her and protect her as fiercely as she’s always protected them and finn runs interference whenever it looks like someone might give her shit for the way her ex has mysteriously been stripped of his scholarship to his school, or how his sat cheating scheme was somehow uncovered (*finger guns* uncle winn to the rescue)

stella’s room shares a wall with maia’s; their beds line up with the other bc when they were younger, they used to tap morse code to one another. maia, even as she grew older, never bothered to move it, so stella’s in close proximity to maia every night, close enough that any strong emotion maia feels is enough to wake her up, so whenever maia’s having a crying jag and cant get out of bed to get kara or lena, its stella that comes to her, crawls up beside her v carefully and presses all the softness, all the warmth and peace she carries inside her to maia, tries to give her as much of a break as she can manage, just enough for maia to sleep

it fucks them all up for a rlly long time. like. a Rlly long time. maia has to work through everything she’s been through, has to slowly relearn herself, build up her belief in herself and trust in others. her family has to process the guilt they carry, the grief for all the pain maia’s gone through. its hard, but they love each other and they come through it together, bruised but intact, still whole, still a family

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paradoxnbstuff · 6 years

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okay so i need to talk about this for a minute

because usually i can find some shit about this on youtube or a transition blog somewhere but i cant for some reason this time? and its one of those difficult things to think about that I’ve been putting off for like years. so. anyways. top surgery stuff.

so first of all I have this habit of mine that’s taken a while and lot of shit to notice. it was probably a left over from growing up with my abusive dad and trying to survive that. but basically I’m very good at putting something aside in my head and so thoroughly convincing myself it’s not something that’s bugging me (subconsciously) that when it comes time to actually think about it I legitimately cannot tell how I feel about it. I’m talking about sitting and thinking about it for hours, plus research, and actively taking stock of my reactions as they happen to try to just. logically deduce what’s actually going on in my brain based on physical symptoms of emotional reactions I can’t actually feel. and obviously anyone can see how that would be incredibly useful in a situation like my parents where I had no choice in the matter for 18 years, and i could either constantly wallow in misery and agony and hurt and stress and confusion and terror at just living in my house 24/7, or i could section it off. and create like. a new baseline for myself. ex my baseline became that state and then went up or down based on negative or ‘positive’ things that happened from that baseline. looking at it objectively it was all obviously still horrible and stressful and traumatizing but i wouldn’t have been able to get through it if I was consciously aware of that the whole time. So that’s where that developed.

But weird backstory aside this has carried over to certain things in my life on my own since I moved out too. It’s why it took me so long to figure out gender shit and why I still haven’t figured out my sexuality even though I don’t lack the vocabulary or even really experience to. it’s affected my relationships with people, but I’ve been practically religious about trying to make sure I identify it when it happens and dedicating a lot of time and thought to unraveling whatever’s going on and stopping it, because fuck that I refuse to let it mess with the people I care about. There’s certain markers but it’s not like most things where you experience negative emotions and there’s a natural pathway from point a to point b. the markers are me having to stop and look at the past few months or longer and pick out patterns of times when i acted illogically in similar way, and cross ref it to see if it came with a feeling of abstractness where i couldn’t identify what emotions i was feeling. but like. its like trying to identify nothing. anger or happiness or w/e is easy like hey im feeling that but trying to notice when you’re feeling nothing or something unquantifiable? much fucking harder. and the trigger for me to start wondering if something is going on is when it starts to impact my quality of life negatively in some way. so. a really fucking stupidly difficult logical approach to untangle some very complicated emotions. which is sadly necessary.

so that’s the method I use to realize when this is happening. hasn’t really gotten any easier but i can do it i guess. and this is what’s happening now with me and top surgery? it happened with the decision to start testosterone, (’but im happy with how i look and sound!’ god no ur not u fucking disaster ur brain just didn’t want you to be miserable 24/7 and tricked you into thinking u were) and i think it’s the same thing with this. but i don’t. know??? for sure???? so I’m having to figure out this incredibly difficult and emotional decision with only purely factual patterns to go on and my emotions, which im not sure are fake or not, plaguing me every step of the way. so im just gonna fucking write em down and hope it helps.

fact 1: i never wear a bra. ever. it’s always either a binder or binder-adjacent like a sports bra. it’s been like that for 3 ish years now and it’s not stopping any time soon. i’m violently uncomfortable wearing a bra.

fact 2: i dont like touching my chest or nipples. (tmi ish warning w/e) when I’m having sexual relations with another person im again, violently uncomfortable with the other person touching my chest. i will repeatedly redirect or say no if they start to with absolutely no doubt about it.

fact 3: i don’t like wearing tight clothing if i can’t bind. when I go to the gym and work out I wear a sports bra and wearing tshirts that show that fuckin. again feel nearly ill.

fact 4: i don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror? like. I have/had a lot of dysphoria about my body, specifically my hips and the kinda hourglass dip in between ribs and hips and the way e gives fat distribution around the upper hips around the waist and thighs and butt. that’s mostly gone now due to a combination of T and working out, but I still don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror. that’s possibly because I’m literally like 3/4 of an A cup at max but. yknow. this is also one of those things that is COMPLETELY based on feelings. and it feels suspiciously like when I’m trying to gauge my reaction and get ‘yeah I feel neutral about this actually’ but is really just very skillful repression. and I can’t tell. so. that’s great. it is a subjective fact, as opposed to the previous 3.

fact 5: if i stretch my arms up it looks like i have a flat chest (bc i i have like no boobs to begin with) and the reaction I get to that is a definite. reaction. it’s an adrenaline based one. but another issue i’m working on is i can’t tell the difference between happy excited adrenaline and panic adrenaline and therefore when i feel happy excited about something i start fear panicking instead and it sucks but yknow. so I get an adrenaline thrill. that I can’t identify as fear or excitement. so that’s. there? fuck

fact 6: i’m not male. I figured that out a long time ago but it’s become important again recently that I am n o t a trans man. I’m solidly nonbinary. T was and is the right decision for me. So is building muscle. So is my decision now to grow out my hair again. So is my clothing that is decidedly not masculine fairly often and my makeup (that can be either to help with the masc or just to make me feel hot, or feminine sometimes). But this is something that’s....like. It would make me look a lot more masculine. like a lot. like it would be looking in the mirror and seeing that (without the big scars you see a lot underneath, i wouldn’t have that) and I don’t know if that’s something I want. but at the same time, that’s what I want to look like in clothes. I don’t fucking know.

fact 7: i know there’s probably some underlying fear in there of like societally ingrained disgust for non-cis bodies. and I know for a fact I’m attractive as a feminine person. and doing this means that I’m committing myself to a permanent non-cis state. I’m in no way saying there’s anything actually wrong with that, I’m saying that I know there’s things in the way I’ve been raised that inherently shy away from that still. It’s not something I want and it’s something I have to deal with but it probably is playing a part in my fear in this.

fact 8: currently, my main reason for tentatively starting the application process is my health. I love being active and healthy and exercising and I know that binding long term hurts your ribs and lungs, and I also know that I’m not going to stop binding any time soon if I don’t have top surgery. And getting it just for health reasons is a perfectly valid reason to do it. And if I am actually neutral about my chest and not just tricking myself? I’m totally happy with this being the deciding factor.

anyways. yeah. the problem with dismantling a mental block you’ve set up for yourself is it involves actively unlocking self hatred and pain that you can’t put back in the box once you’ve opened it until it’s dealt with. so there isn’t a ton of incentive to. ngl it didn’t happen with testosterone fully until after I’d been on it for a few months and realized how fucking desperately I needed this to be happening. but I don’t think that’s how I want it to go with top surgery. I want to know before I go through with it what I’m feeling and what I want. and it is. VERY fucking difficult. god. yeah. anyways. that’s where I’m at. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#im trying my best gdi #three cheers for trauma and trying to fucking cognitive behavioural therapy yourself bc ur broke #but anyways uh #yeah #i dont know #honestly any thoughts on this from an outside perspective are welcome #because it will probably help me figure out what im feeling no matter what the question is either way #god #i need. idk what i need.

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