#(also a chronic over-explainer so sorry for the wall of text. I'm just always scared I'll be misunderstood)

[ikkaku-of-heart]

A Few FYIs to All Current/Potential Ship Partners

Mostly posting these because I am a chronic over-thinker and worrywart about certain things, especially when it comes to shipping, so I figure I’d write some stuff out for my own peace of mind and possibly even my partners’ or mutuals’ who wish to ship but have been too shy to approach.

I ship based primarily on chemistry, but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to discussing the possibility of shipping. Hop into my DMs and I’m certainly happy to talk OOC about it and we can see what it would take for the ship to develop. Hell, even if there is chemistry, please come into my DMs and discuss making the ship official because like I said I’m a worrywart and frequently psyche myself out into thinking that I’ve misread the situation and the chemistry is one-sided.

I am multiship AF. Ikkaku is a social, flirtatious, vibrant woman so naturally she gets around. This ranges from one-night stands to friends with benefits to hateships to actual romantic relationships. However, each ship, unless we decide otherwise for plot/characterization reasons, is in its own separate universe. Ex. in a verse where Ikkaku is shipping with Nami, Ikkaku x Zoro isn’t a thing unless we decide it would make for interesting characterization or plot stuff.

I absolutely ship with duplicates! For example, I ship with two different Eustass Kids and am perfectly willing to ship with more, so don’t be afraid to approach if you want to ship. Each person’s interpretation of a character is different, and therefore each ship dynamic will have its own nuances and cool moments. Because of this I’ll be making a different ship tag for each version, because each one is special and deserves it. 

On the subject of duplicate shipping, I only ask two things:

Don’t assume that just because I'm shipping with one person’s version of a character, that your version is automatically shipping with Ikkaku, too. Like I said, each interpretation is unique and I generally ship based on chemistry.

I know I can’t ask people to completely avoid feelings of jealousy, but if you feel I’ve been showing favoritism towards one version of a ship over ours, please just come talk to me so we can instead work things out. 

I don’t do exclusives. If you want me to exclusively ship with you or your muse, I’m sorry, it’s not happening. Nothing against those who do exclusives, but it’s not for me and certainly not something Ikkaku would be happy with.

On the subject of Hawkins, I know I’ve written more than a few things for him and Ikkaku lately as an NPC ship, but I want to make sure that this is not how I would expect any current or future Hawkins RPers to interact with me. Now, if you decide you want to explore this version of the ship with me, I’m absolutely for it! But I also treat it the same way as I do duplicates - it’s its own separate verse and does not reflect on my interactions with Hawkins RPers. For non-Hawkins RPers, if you want to make this ship part of ours’ canon, I’m also all for it! Feel free to DM me to discuss!

I adore all my ships. I will gladly talk about them all day if prompted. The problem is, I frequently worry that I’m annoying people when I talk about my ships, especially unprompted. So, if you’re ever worried I’m cooling towards our ship, just poke me and I can almost guarantee you’ll be treated to dozens of headcanons and thoughts I’ve had about our ship.

For those who interact/are interested in interacting with Ikkaku’s grandfather, Tomasu, shipping is a no-go for him. Arashi is and always will be his only love. He doesn’t even do casual sex decades after her death. So if he’s ever involved in a ship meme, it’s 99% likely as a joke.

#Time for Maintenance (OOC) #Over the Intercom (PSA) #Wear My Heart on My Sleeve (Shipping) #(Anubis is a chronic overthinker and needed to get all this out instead of stewing in worry) #(also a chronic over-explainer so sorry for the wall of text. I'm just always scared I'll be misunderstood) #(on that note if anything here doesn't make sense to you please let me know so I can clear it up)

[traumaticexperiences]

Anonymous:i think it's abuse, but i'm not quite sure.

so, years ago, middle school-early high school, my mom got more physical.  Used to grab me by the arms or shoulders, if she grabbed by arms + dug her nails in i would too. one time she slammed me against a wall and started hitting/punching? me (cant remember entirely).  didnt leave marks like bruises or anything, just red fr little while. eventually she got less and less physical, and then hasn’t hit me in… idk, awhile.  at least a year probably.  But was this physical abuse?

aside from that, ever since i can remember, she has a horrible temper.  Calls us all names.  When I was younger, elementary school-ish, I remember calling my cousin a bastard.  I didn’t know it was a bad word because my mom called me + my brothers that sometimes.  I figured it wasn’t as bad as “bitch” because she said it less, or something.  She has called me names like that, and worse things like “cunt” countless times.  Same w my brothers.  But a lot of times we get into a screaming match and I say mean things too.  but I think that’s a newer development.  Eventually I got fed up of taking it and started yelling back instead of crying and just letting her make me feel like shit.  I remember a time in elementary school she told me to go drown in the shower.  I remember because I was in some fandom chat room thing and I was sad, and I told them what she’d said and they (mostly older kids, teenagers) were all horrified and comforted me and stuff.  

Also I’m a lesbian, and this was a five-ish year long ordeal that began with her first stealing my phone in 8th grade-ish and reading my text to a friend saying I thought I was bisexual.  It was turned into me “hurting her” because she couldn’t handle it being in “her family”.  She wanted me to just try being with a boy.  I never have and never will.  After getting a girlfriend in senior year of highschool, and after she talked to some close friends of hers, she became more accepting.  But before then, and even after that point sometimes, she’d still call me a dyke when she was mad, usually over my appearance.

Which always has been and apparently always will be a huge thing for her, too.  I don’t like makeup much.  I’m pretty feminine but I don’t really do my hair or makeup ever.  I just brush my hair, that’s about it.  This always upsets my mom.  My grandpa who recently died was in the hospital a year or two ago, and she yelled and screamed at me before we went to visit him the first time because after she asked me, I told her I wasn’t intending to put on makeup.  She was telling me she never wanted to be seen in public with me if I didn’t have makeup on, telling me I “look like a piece of shit without it,” etc.  In high school she’d often have to pick me up because of doctor’s appointments (I have many physical disabilities/ am chronically ill / have mental illnesses) and so often she wouldn’t even say “hi,” or “how are you,” but rather her first thing would be “Wow, all these other girls come out of school looking so wonderful, I want to cry when I see that disheveled mess is my daughter.”  I remember so many times doing my best not to cry in the car, looking out the window at the clouds or the sun thinking it would help me not to cry because that was letting her win or whatever, or at least I thought so.  I would just say “I don’t care” over and over again because arguing with her obviously did no good and just made her yell more.  But even though I really have no desire to do my hair and makeup every day and look super pretty, her comments did get to me.  I’m a freshman in college right now and sometimes I’ll apologize to my best friend / roommate for looking like shit and she’ll have to really convince me that I don’t.  My mom’s disparaging comments really stick with me even now.  I’ll walk out the door and feel super self conscious and have my mom’s words echoing in my head but still not actually do anything about it (do my hair, or makeup, that kind of thing).  

But I’m not perfect.  I forget things a lot.  Like if she tells me to do something I might just forget to do it.  Or if she wants me to clean and I just can’t find the motivation to do it.  Or if I do it but I don’t do it well enough.  It gets into this awful cycle where I don’t do something and she gets mad, and then I get depressed so I just lay on my bed and do nothing, therefore making her more mad, etc etc.  It’s hard because she has chronic pain too from a surgery that went wrong like 16 years ago that messed up her leg.  

And when she’s nice to me, I really do love her.  She’ll help me calm down from panic attacks and she brings me to doctors and gets me the medicines that I need.  I was in the hospital a month or so ago and she drove down to my college (4 hours away) at midnight just to be there with me since I had to stay overnight.  

It’s like, I know she loves me.  And the first few weeks of winter break back in December were good.  But if I stay home long enough she goes back into how things were before I left for college.  Eventually the honeymoon sort of phase wears away, and she’s back to treating me like shit, and I’m back to wanting to go away to college again.  Right before I went back to college I remember she said something about how I do nothing for her no matter how she talks to me, “whether she’s nasty or sweet as pie to me”, and I responded in frustration that she was always nasty to me.  And at that moment I was doing dishes as she told me to do, and she came up next to me and started slamming dishes down and told me to get out of her sight, to not do the dishes and to do them later when she was gone so she didn’t have to see me.  But at that time, she was trying to get off of cymbalta, which apparently has horrible withdrawal symptoms.  So I guess it made her temper even worse.  When she was slamming stuff I flinched, I really thought she was going to hit me (she hadn’t in a while).  But she didn’t.  But I still flinch at sudden movements in daily life–yesterday in the dorm bathroom as I walked out, someone walked in, and I flinched really violently just because I hadn’t seen them coming (pretty embarrassing lol).  

Also not sure how common this is, but when other people around me get into arguments I get really anxious?  My best friend’s family treats me like their own, and her cousin+cousin’s husband took us out for dinner, and on the way home they got into a disagreement and I got unbearably anxious, I actually had to do deep breathing exercises to try and keep myself calm.  I get kinda anxious just thinking about it.  The people involved have never yelled, they’re always super nice to me and each other–it was a perfectly civil disagreement that they were in, just very passive-aggressive tbh.  But it never escalated.  They just kinda bickered and then we got to our destination and they solved the problem, and that was that.  

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  That first thing I mentioned, about her shoving me against the wall, happened like 5 years ago.  I thought I was over it until I tried explaining it to my best friend and ended up a sobbing mess in the process–I couldn’t even talk.  I angrily mentioned it to my mom at some point more recently and she laughed at me, saying she “barely touched me” and making fun of me in front of my brother, who joined in saying how ridiculous I was being and laughing at me.  That experience has made me really question everything, to be honest.  My mom has a lot of shit to deal with, and I’m not the best daughter in the world, far from it.  I get good grades but that’s about all I’m good at, all I can be counted on for.  Or at least that’s how it seems to me.  I can’t tell if how she treats me is normal, and I’m overreacting, or if it’s abusive, or if she’s just angry at me and I deserve it.  Any advice on that front?  I’m sorry this got so long.  

It would be nice if this is anonymous.  But could you tag it as “mint” so I can find it if you make it anonymous?  Thank you.  And thank you for running this blog.

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yeah your mom roughly grabbing your arms and shoulders and slamming you against the wall and punching you sounds terrifying, the fact that it didn't leave marks and bruises just shows that she wanted to hurt you, but didn't want any proof of it left over that could be used against her. it's horrifying. It is physical abuse, and even if it lessened it's likely because physical abuse is used to permanently keep someone scared, intimidated, and obedient, being abused this way in the past is enough for long term consequences, so they don't even have to hit you in the present because your body remembers abuse from the past and is ready to obey them in order to avoid more!

Name calling is abuse, and being told to drown in a shower was basically telling you to die, holy shit, that's horrible! I'm glad you got some comfort afterwards, that's really traumatic.

Refusing to acknowledge your sexual orientation and then using it as an insult is crazy abusive, it sounds like she really hated you and everything you are. Also that is a lot of abuse just over your appearance, the worst is comparing you to others as if you're inferior or something to be ashamed of, it's awful! It's severe emotional and psychological abuse, and it's no wonder you were doing your best not to cry, and still don't feel like your appearance is good enough. You're in the right here, not wasting your time to adjust your appearance to how others would prefer is good! looking the way you feel comfortable is the best decision for you, and your mother had no right to dictate it or to shame you for it, you're a human being, and that matters more than your appearance, and anyone using your appearance to imply that you're less is dehumanizing you, and negating your worth as a human.

You don't have to be perfect in order not to be abused, and even if there were some times where she wasn't abusing you as much, it just means she is able of not abusing you, but she still abused you all the other times. Not abusing you or being nice to you for a short while is absolutely no excuse for abusing you the rest of the time. She sounds really terrifying and it's dangerous to believe she loves you, i don't think someone who cares even slightly about your well being could ever hurt and abuse you this much.

For abuse survirors it is common to get scared and anxious when getting into arguments because in the past you were taught that arguing risks abuse, risks someone accusing you of provoking them or being at fault because you didn't just do as you were told. After that, even if you were in a civil argument it would be scary. Your brain gathers all information about arguing and if there was danger in the past, it expects danger in the future, and sends out warnings and anxiety whenever you have to argue.

It's hard to ever be over someone who you love and trust shoving you against the wall. It's terrifying to just know that person is capable of that, of wanting to hurt and scare you that much. And your mom is gaslighting you and pretending it didn't happen because she knows it was abusive and cruel, and she doesn't want to deal with consequences of that. I'm glad you're questioning everything, and you don't have to consider what your mom has to deal with, this is about you, and how your mom affected you, and what is the shit YOU have to deal with, because of her. You don't have to be counted on for anything, you're a human being, not a tool, not a robot, not there to be of service to others. You deserve good things even if you don't bring profit and good things to others. I don’t know about advices, but I hope you keep questioning your mom’s intentions and actions and do what’s best for you, regardless of what she wants. Remember your life belongs to you, and you do not have to live for her and her ideas of what you should be. If you feel you could be happier without her dragging you down and burdening you, try to get free. Good luck.

#trigger warning #child abuse #emotional abuse #homophobia #abusive parents #gaslighting #submission