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grapejuicestyless · 10 months

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Endless Empathy(People Pleaser pt.2)

Harry Styles x fem!reader

Summery: A continuation of the People pleaser short writing that is both linked in my master list on my page and on the top of this part!!! This Can be Read separately!

Angst to fluffy(kinda!)

Read part 1 here!

If you asked Y/n Y/l/n what her favorite feeling in the world was, it wouldn’t even be a second thought as to what her answer would be. It was so obvious to everyone who was lucky enough to be consistently surrounded by her energy. Y/n loved love.

It wasn’t necessarily the feeling of being loved. The girl, as much as she had drifted off into daydreams, fantasizing about her silky white wedding dress and her ideal bridesmaids, her desire for the feeling of love cut much deeper.

It was the knowing feeling that she could give back to someone who needed it. The fuzziness she gained every time she could provide a sense of reliability to someone close to her. The idea she was able to earn their trust because they were just that close made her feel less alone on the nights she spent across the world from her home.

Y/n loved that feeling. The way it would spread from her chest and expand into the pit of her stomach, making it all fluttery and warm. So much so, she found herself altering herself to fit the impossible standards she held herself to.

She found herself doing things she really had no desire to, her passive aggressiveness only grumbling through her lips when she was sure enough she was alone, out of ear shot. Quickly, her lack of want would be overtaken by that euphoria she felt again, the intense sense of happiness making up for her discomfort she subjected herself to.

From afar, it looked like an addiction. The girl constantly itching to do good, to be better. To be the best version of herself in order to lift those up around her, to make everyone proud of her. She wanted people to not feel ashamed when her name came up in conversation. An addiction so bad, the girls need for approval and longing to please everyone at once, her body often moved before her mouth could catch up. Her mind could be screaming no, but she would already have said yes.

It’s not like it had a cure. How can you cure a pathological people pleaser? You can dote on them and smother them as much as you want. Do anything they need, go out of your way to make their life easier, but ultimately your effort will only make it worse. Devoting your time to someone who doesn’t want it in that way. They begin to feel like a chore, an inconvenience that they need to make up for. And the cycle begins again.

——————————————————————————

A burden is often what I felt like these days. Feet swung over the arm of the couch, head pressed back on the cushion that was Harry’s lap. His hands brushed between my hair, which had been stuck on my forehead in an intense sweat that I had broken into while rehearsing for our upcoming show in Cardiff.

We’d only reached As It Was by the time Harry decided it was time for us to conclude our soundcheck.

It was confusing, the way he said it. Almost like it was directed towards me. He sounded like he had been worried, eyes focused in on mine carefully.

Maybe it was because of the scene I’d caused just the show prior or the fact I was sure I was probably shining under the stage lights in my pooling sweat that caused an uneasiness to rise in Harry’s mind.

“Y/n? You ready to call it?” I blinked rapidly, opening my mouth, I was a fish out of water. Sentences became impossible to correctly piece together as an extra layer of heat covers my face. A blanket of blush covering my already irritated face, I felt embarrassed.

Why would he stop such a crucial part of each show for me? What if something had happened during our closing songs tonight? The unsettling lump in my throat expanded into what felt like vomit rising, even with my throat completely dry. The idea that something could be jeopardized, ruining the great experience that is Love On Tour, could all be caused by my inability to keep pushing for just a few more songs made me sick.

Yet, the look Harry gave me as his hands slipped around my waist, lips caught in a worried line sent an all familiar struggle in my bones.

I wanted to make it right, make sure everything was double checked. There would be no issues and everyone could have their two hours of love promised by Harry and the love band, but I also longed to make sure Harry was content, constantly unbothered. If I continued to push the bile down hard enough, I could focus on doing what’s best for one person, forget about everyone else involved.

So it became a blurry mess, between the moment Harry called soundcheck quits to where we found ourselves now. Cuddled up in the relief that was well filtered air conditioner. Harry’s hands tangling and detangling between my hair, pulling lightly on my scalp to relieve any possible pressure, his eyes fixated on the TV which played some ninety’s sitcom with a beautiful group of friends that the public was made to believe were considered average.

While he seemed content in the position he was in, in the moment, I couldn’t put my mind to ease, the anxiety that I could do exactly what I feared most poisoning any sense of relaxation I had previously.

How do you make everyone happy at once when nobody seems to be on the same page? How can you spread love evenly when you’ve already spread yourself so thin? My face was greyed, mind plagued by my deepest fears. My harshest wounds.

Realistically, Harry’s final decision had benefitted the entire crew greatly. Everyone tired and worn from the continuous heat wave that was a blanket over the earth at the moment. But the way it was phrased, the way I was shot sympathetic smiles made me uneasy. As if their benefit was more of a loss and a waste of time.

Looking up at Harry, I studied his face carefully. He seemed at ease. Unbothered by it all. His eyes trained on the screen, a soft laugh escaping his throat. Completely relaxed. Like he didn’t realize I was just barely a foot below his eye level, eyes watering as I slowly died. I promised him to stop being such a push over, such a people pleaser, but you can’t cure a sickness that’s not truly an illness.

How can you love someone you don’t know is sick?

——————————————————————————

I wish I could say I stuck to my word. Continued to be the person I vowed to become after my incident weeks ago. Stopped being a push over, stopped forgetting about myself. Stopped putting on other peoples shoes before my own. But I’m not a liar.

The air was thick, the humidity unforgiving and unrelenting all morning. Everything felt off from the minute my foot left the hotel room booked for the crew. Yet, I took no time to dwell on my own feelings, pushing back the unsettling pit in my stomach and focusing on the day ahead.

Elin sent a quick text to our band group chat. An old one we’d made without Harry to surprise him for his birthday. It was short and simple. The flags were there, ruby red and waving in the wind. The fact that the request was hidden from the one person who pushed back for me. The only person who could say, “no” for me without anyone protesting.

She wrote, “Hey, y/n/n! I’m running a bit late. Would you mind picking up some coffee and treats for everyone? I’ll send the address for the shop!” It was less of question, I realized, reading it back. More of a request or even a demand. Still, it was short and a simple task. Nothing unmanageable.

She sent the location, and only then did I fully recognize my regret. The shop was almost thirty minutes away from the arena, without traffic. Considering morning rush hour was in place, I could count on being late.

But I had agreed. The guilt of being late ate at me, but even the thought of letting everyone down was nauseating. Making my head spin and eyes water at even the slightest vision of their frowning faces and furrowed brows.

So, I got in my car, ignoring every text as I broke every law of the road to reach the coffee shop as quickly as possible. Eyes squinting at the morning sun and arms sticky from condensation.

——————————————————————————

When I arrived to the arena, it was bustling. The stage crew rushing around to find parts of equipment needed for the upcoming soundcheck, managing security debriefing down the hall for barricade procedures. The heat almost unbearable in each hallway.

It all led to the one room that everyone gathered in. A larger dressing room that was more of a living room. Colder than most of the building and more decorated too.

Laughter filtered through the cracked double doors, cold hair slipping through like a small taste of what heaven felt like in that moment. You could see everyone standing in a circle, cups of water held loosely in each one’s hand as they joked around as a tight knit group of friends would.

They must of smelled the goods, it must have wafted because without even a noise being made, Nyoh, Pauli and Mitch were looking straight at me. Smiles painted on their faces wide and welcoming, reflecting their actions as I was swarmed by every single band member at once. Hands grabbing at the donut box and tray of coffee all but ripped out of the palm of my unsteady hand.

Their gratefulness was overwhelming at first. Supplying me with that addictive euphoria I longed for with each task I put myself through. They hustled around to take a peak at what I had bought. Ready to stuff their faces with a little of each as I settled in for the day.

Silence fell over the room suddenly, a deep breath being inhaled only to be held. Almost as if someone was trying to find something to say, but had come short. Unable to figure out the right articulation of their statement.

“What, is something wrong?” I smiled sweetly, walking over to the table. Sarah shrugged, turning to me with a sweet smile, hand on my shoulder almost like it was a support for what was about to be said.

“Oh, nothing. We just don’t really like these flavors.” Nyoh shared bravely, smiling halfway, still focused on the opened and not crinkled donut box.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry guys, I wasn’t told if you guys wanted anything specific. I can run back and get some more?” Somehow, even in my greatest efforts, I still came short. Guilt eating at me that I had probably ruined their morning. Delaying their breakfast because I had to be a screw up. It made me sicker than the pit in my stomach this morning had made me.

“No, no. It’s okay. I’ll just order some online. It’ll be here quick.” My face looked just as blank as my mind was.

In that moment, I lacked all ability to respond. Thoughts running wild, much to fast to say anything except a pathetic squeak.

“Oh.” Is what I said. If I wasn’t such a coward, such a push over, a walking talking door mat, I would’ve yelled. Ripped the hair from my scalp.

“Why did you make me drive all the way there this morning if you could just order it? What about the money I spent? Are you going to pay me back or is this just another involuntary favor I’ve gone out of my way to complete?” If I was Harry, which I’m not, I would’ve said that. I would’ve yelled and cried and defended my name with all my willpower. Not letting anyone interrupt. I’d have some self respect but that wasn’t me.

I am Y/n Y/l/n. The girl who sits in the back of the stage, doing so much for so little. The girl who gives up everything for everyone because she can’t control it. Because she’s sick in the head.

So I said, “Oh.” Like an idiot. My throat dry and my eyes watery. I nodded, firm and short. Ready to make my exit.

Everyone turned back to their circle, laughing again as the order was placed. In a room full of my brothers and sisters I couldn’t help but feel out of place. Unappreciated. Suddenly, it was like my endless empathy and compassion wasn’t enough for them. It wasn’t good enough. And if that wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t good enough.

And as I disappeared behind the double doors, not a soul called back for me. A ghost to everyone. Unappreciated and unaware of the intense heartbreak I was facing.

In this moment, I believe it’s where it got bad. Worse than ever before. My brain no longer silently resisting as my entire being longed for that nod of approval and the appreciative conversations that came after it.

It continued, like this, all day. My feet padding against the pavement and onto the tiles of the hallways. Sweat sticking to my forehead and dripping down my neck. It looked in my shirt.

All day I’d been running around helping. The itch to be better, to do better overwhelming. If it was fetching a water bottle for the sound guys or searching up and down religiously for a missing headset for the lighting crew, I was first on the scene to assist in every way possible.

Each nod and smile sent my way fueling my addiction. Each action I pursued further breaking my promise to Harry more and more. I felt myself slipping away.

I just wanted to be good. Longed for it every waking minute. Like if I kept pushing, kept reaching that desired feeling, achieving each goal to make another persons life easier, I lost more and more of myself. Stress building like a ton of bricks throw on my shoulders. The weight unbearable. Heavier and heavier each minute.

Harry had finally shown up, ready to begin soundcheck. His in ears hung around his neck carelessly. White shirt stuck to his body in sweat. The words crinkled to a point where they were unrecognizable. His shorts were short and shoes light on the floor. He looked satisfied, light and well rested. The opposite of everything I felt.

“Hey, angel!” He called enthusiastically.

For the first time that day, my cheeks lifted from a genuine smile. Not one caused by a success in helping another person, or a result of devoting all my time and energy to another. But because someone who never asked anything of me and still held as much if not more appreciation for me had welcomed me into his arms without any requests.

I let myself melt into his touch, eyebrows relaxing and heartbeat slowing for the first time all day. His lips rested flat against the top of my head, arms held tight around mine, chest pressed against mine. We were a sweaty tangled mess but I couldn’t have been happier.

“Ready to do some test runs?” He questioned, moving back to brush away beads of sweat that had collected on my rosy face. I nodded eagerly, though inside I felt weary and panicked at the idea of having yet another long task to do.

Another swift peck was delivered to my forehead, Harry’s hold retreating from my body. He led the way to the stage before stopping.

“Shit, I forgot the waters. Y/n, would you mind grabbing them? I left them by the water fountain.” I nodded, blinking harshly. My feet pivoting away from him, shoulders hunched and muscles tensed.

My feet moved quick, running down the halls to find the pack of water bottles Harry had instructed me to grab.

The plastic was soon in my line of vision. Full and cool to the touch. They were heavy. Nothing I couldn’t carry normally, but the unforgiving tension within my muscles made it hard to move. Multiple times I stopped to set it down, breath jagged and heavy. Hands slipping away from the plastic cover as my palms were lathered in sweat and leaking water from inside the package.

And suddenly, the hallways that was once so short became longer and longer. A never ending straightaway that only felt hotter and hotter with each step. My mind weighed me down. Pulling me into a spiral of negative thoughts and emotions. I began to believe I couldn’t do it. No, I knew I couldn’t do it.

No matter how much I wished, longed to do the only thing Harry, my best friend, my lover, had ever asked of me, I couldn’t physically continue. The bricks building finally reaching the maximum and breaking the camels back. This final request dealing my final blow. And each thought, each straining muscle crashing underneath it.

The crash was loud, when I went down. Knees hitting the floor, the sound of bones hitting concrete muffled by the squeak of water exploding throughout the thin passageway. The plastic breaking and the singular packages of the liquid bouncing around. Running off and away.

Only then did the panic reach an all time high. As if the severity of it couldn’t get worse. It did. My hands reaching out to grasp at any stray bottles. Holding them close to my chest. Keeping the few I could reach close to my body. I shook, unable to breathe suddenly.

Maybe it was the humidity, or the heat. Maybe it was another heat stroke. But no, to anyone passing by, or anyone who could have seen it from an outside perspective, it was clear that this was not the weather. This was deeper than that. This was pure panic. Something I’d buried for years all surfacing at once like a tsunami of pain washing over my lungs and drowning me in it.

A sob racked through my body, the cry escaping my clenched jaw with such force, my throat burned after. The rising nausea Id felt all morning turning out to only be a lump of anxiety that had grown ten times its size and finally escaped its cage.

Everything hurt, in that moment. My lungs on fire and my eyes crying themselves a river. The tips of my finger scratched at my throat. The only breaths that manages to get in and out being the gasps for air between each sob. I tried to grab my throat, grab my chest. Anything to make it easier to breathe. Yet, my hands were locked around the water like a vise. I couldn’t pry myself away from it if I had tried.

My head pounded, my body growing weaker, aching into less of a dull pain and more of a searing sensation pricking across my skin like pins and needles.

My ears were ringing, downing out everything other than the heaviness of my breathing and volume of my cries. So much so, I hadn’t heard the heavy footsteps rushing in my direction. I hadn’t seen Harry in a full sprint rushing to my aid.

No, in my full blown panic attack, I hadn’t even been able to process he was there with me until his fingers curled around my shoulders and his green eyes looked into mine.

I watched his mouth move rapidly, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Still unable to hear, eyes moving too fast to read his lips.

“H-Harry I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” I all but yelled. My breathing loud, sounding of a wheeze.

Even in my state, the dining intense and my body still burning, I understood he was doing his best to calm me. Familiar with the feelings that had overtaken my body.

In the mess, he has somehow managed to rip the water from my grasp. My hands flying to his shoulders, head buried between his shoulder and neck. His shirt wet with my tears.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The words came out like a prayer.

I’m sorry.

I didn’t know why I was sorry. Maybe for not doing my job I promised him. Maybe for adding stress to his already full plate. Maybe it was me convincing myself I was only becoming more of an inconvenience to him. Either way, I felt him shake his head.

“Don’t say that. No, stop apologizing. Fuck, stop it.” He begged gently, hands rubbing along my spine in an attempt to soothe me.

In some ways, it worked. The ringing fading into the background and my lungs becoming a little less tender. But the burning was still there and breathing was still a struggle.

I shook my head against his skin, eyes shut in embarrassment.

“I’ll pick it all up. I’ll clean everything that spilled. I’ll-I can fix this.” I pleaded, more for myself than for him. He held me tighter.

“No. No you won’t. It’s not your problem. Y/n, stop. Stop. Please, listen to me.” He sounded more stern than calm now. A different approach being taken to get me to snap out of it.

“Y/n you did everything you could and that was more than enough. You are more than enough. Please, believe me. Please, try to understand my perspective.” By now, my eyes were dry, all my tears used up. My breathing heavy but manageable. The gasps fading into soft hitches of breath from my intense sobbing.

“You promised me, you promised that you would stop doing this. Stop overworking yourself for the benefit of others. And I believed you, but I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have because I know you. I know you better than anyone here, so I know you’ll never change.” I looked at him through my eyelashes, slouching further into myself, I sat away from him. Head pulling itself off of his shoulder to face him.

“I’m so-“ He cut me off, not wanting to hear another apology slip past my lips.

“I wish. I wish you could see what I see. How everyone else sees you. How you’re more than enough even without all these extravagant attempts to ease our stress. Y/n, you do so much more for us in one week than we could ever hope to do in one year. You put yourself last in every single situation. You’re selfless and the most empathetic person I have ever had the privilege to know. You’re brave, a-and passionate about everyone. How can you not see that? That this enough? You just being here is enough?” It was like the roles were swapped. My eyes drying while Harry’s filled with tears. Filled to the brim along his waterline. He blinked them away, my thumb quick to find the few that fell past his eyelashes and wipe it from his skin.

“I wish I could promise you that I’ll change, Harry. I wish I could tell you I’ll never do this again, but if I’m completely honest, just for a second, I can’t do that. It’s like, my brain is wired specifically to aid to everyone else’s issues. I can’t rest until I’ve done everything I can, Harry. I just can’t. And my chest hurts. It physically hurts me not being able to make everyone happy. I just feel like I’m always doing something wrong. Like I’m disappointing everyone.” I ripped myself open completely with my confession, showing a vulnerability I hadn’t even had the courage to admit six inches away from a mirror.

“I don’t expect you to change, love. I just hope that one day, you’ll be able to see what we all see. What we all recognize everyday. That you’ll figure it out.” His hands held mine. His steady hands drilling my shaky ones.

My eyebrows furrowed into a sad expression, but it was a good sad. One that needed to be expressed.

“I love you.” It was quiet, barely a whimper. My throat dry and eyes puffy. He smiled, sighing softly. Not out of irritation, but admiration. A soft smile playing on his face.

“I love you more.”

In that moment I felt less of a failure and more like a success. Like ultimately, even if I had failed myself in more ways than I could possibly count out loud, ultimately, in some odd, twisted way, I had won. Guilt continued to eat at me and my stomach would always twist at the idea of letting someone down, but it was lesser than before. Being told I was more than enough sparked something small inside of my brain. I couldn’t promise to change, I couldn’t promise to stop overthinking and pushing myself down. But I knew I could get better. I could work on it. I know that, and I’m thankful for that.

#harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles fluff #harry styles imagine #harry styles angst #peoplepleaserpt2 #people pleaser #fine line lyrics #hslot harry #hslot23

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the-matron-of-ravens · 8 months

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Genuinely curious, what are your thoughts on Dancer and FCG cuz like, he Literally, not figuratively, tried to kill her and did kill all of her companions at the time. I can see being critical cuz she doesn't seem to treat them like sentient beings, but even in the canon... most of the automatons aren't. Just some of the really old ones from Aeor/other old cities, right? So? She got a whoops!sentient microwave, treated them like a microwave, they killed all her friends and almost her and she's supposed to....? Be good buds with them? Also I know it's said that she trauma dumped on FCG, but let's switch it from microwave to personal journal - how would YOU feel if your personal journal popped to life and attacked you for trauma dumping? IDK haha I guess Idk you opinions and I'm just responding to my projected assumptions of your opinion. REALLY I'd 100% sincerely would like to hear your thoughts. I was really bothered by FCG pushing to meet with Dancer. Like jeez just leave her alone, you're her literal sleep paralysis demon, read the room.

Hey! Thanks for the ask, I put this a little bit in the tags but I can elaborate more here. (Edit: elaborate A LOT MORE it seems)

So here goes, I don’t know if you meant it this way but the analogy of a journal or microwave is helpful here because that’s exactly how Dancer treated FCG - as a tool to be used. But they *aren’t*. FCG is a whole being with emotions and thoughts all of which are apparent and so clearly distinct from other automatons.

So tbh, I think the perspective of “whoops! Sentient bot” makes sense for like a month, max. Not years. After all, we have seen NPC after NPC recognize FCG is a sentient being almost immediately after meeting him. I find it VERY hard to believe that Dancer never realized it herself.

Additionally, we need to step out of the plot itself and look at FCG’s mechanics. We know that every time he heals, takes damage for someone else, etc. he takes stress points, and that once past a certain threshold his switch flips and he goes full Murderbot.

We also know that rest and recovery are what reduces FCG’s stress points. So that tells us that Dancer was using and using and using FCG and not letting him rest (enough? At all?) even though he needed it. Because again he’s a person not a tool.

Even when they met back up recently and FCG sobered her up she remarked how she missed him doing that for her. And while I don’t expect her to miss him, I do think it’s indicative of her interest in him never being about him as a person but only how he could serve her.

And if we want to criticize FCG for his lack of boundaries, inability to take no for an answer and pathological need to fix Dancer sure that’s fair. He needs to unlearn a lot of that and quick. But we then have to ask ourselves where did those traits come from? They didn’t come from nowhere.

FCG is mentally extremely YOUNG. Aside from the 6?-ish Months spent with Ashton all he remembers is his time with Dancer. So, if FCG has a pathological need to fix others, to help them, and feels worthless if he’s unable to do so - that comes from how Dancer treated and trained him.

That doesn’t just go away; ESPECIALLY not when FCG doesn’t even remember going postal and doesn’t see to have the (IMO) most clear and realistic view of his and Dancer’s relationship.

After all look how he interacts with the Changebringer. She’s his surrogate Mom/Dancer. He needs someone to tell him how to feel, think, and what’s Good and Bad because he doesn’t know how to do it for himself - because he wasn’t *taught* to.

But here’s my real question. What do we call one person keeping another person in service to them, with no compensation or personhood to be had, and with no intentions of releasing that person from that service? That’s slavery my dude. AT BEST indentured servitude.

(but that implies there’s a debt. What debt? Waking him up? He didn’t ask for that; that was her choice.

And again this sounds a lot like children being “indebted” to parents for giving them life, housing, feeding, etc. )

That’s the part I can’t get over. And that’s the part I can’t get behind where FCG is the abusive one. The power differential was NEVER in FCG’s court; he never once thought of himself as a person or as anything but in service of “Soul Touched”. That complete sacrifice of yourself and your needs (or an inability to even know you HAVE needs) comes from being in relationships where those things are expected/demanded.

So, yeah, he literally tried to kill her, and I gotta be real I’m not surprised. Even children of abusive parents who they love snap sometimes. Because again, that’s mentally what he was at the time. A child.

But even then, no I don’t think it’s unreasonable or unrealistic for Dancer to be traumatized or not want to see FCG again. I don’t even think she’s wrong to say “I can’t give you closure” because closure isn’t something other people give you.

But the way she’s been discussed to be largely clueless about his sentience, blameless in his blow up, and FCG’s victim? I just can’t get behind that. Like at all.

#Critical Role #CR Spoilers #FCG #Dancer #TW: slavery mention #of the fantasy variety #tw: parental abuse #I don’t think this is discourse (moreso Meta IMO) but if folks feel differently I’ll add a tag #fresh cut grass

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Joseph Burgo, Ph.D

Published: May 11, 2023

In 1942, the psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch published a landmark paper in which she described a particular type of person who relates to the world and to other people in ways that appear normal but who, over time, comes across as inauthentic. “Every attempt to understand the way of feeling and manner of life of this type forces on the observer the inescapable impression that the individual’s whole relationship to life has something about it which is lacking in genuineness and yet outwardly runs along ‘as if’ it were complete.” Hence the term she coined to denote such people—the “As If” Personality.

When these individuals come for therapy, they often appear to engage enthusiastically in the psychotherapeutic process, though over time, no progress is made; a feeling of futility might plague the therapist. The challenge is to recognize and address a fundamental dynamic crippling the work: rather than being used to convey meaning, the words employed by the client instead conceal and ward off an internal truth felt to be intolerable. The personality enacted for the therapist’s benefit embodies a kind of performance, the simulacrum of an actual person with emotions and connections to other people, when in fact, the person feels empty inside and unable to engage authentically with anyone.

In the early years of my practice, one client (a highly intelligent and verbal young man) once asked, “If you tell me what you believe my unconscious is saying based on what you hear, how am I to know if you’re right? How do I know if some other formulation isn’t what’s actually true?” It’s ultimately up to the client to decide whether an intervention is accurate, of course, but this young man couldn’t connect my words with his inner world to assess their accuracy, largely because he relied upon language to obscure rather than to illuminate. He appeared to be a willing client, but the way he communicated instead made sure I’d never get anywhere near him.

As the treatment progressed, he began to offer alternative interpretations to my own. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he might say. “But it could also be …” At that point in my career, I viewed such client-therapist interactions through the lens of dependency and the common defenses against it; I would have pointed out how he was relating me as if we were colleagues or co-therapists and couldn’t allow himself to be a client depending upon me for help. While that formulation is true, I would now add this: while it appeared as if we were engaged in a psychotherapeutic process, he was thwarting my attempts to make contact by substituting an alternative reality for each one that I proposed. Therapy became a competition via language to define what was “true”; he ultimately won that contest and moved on.

Historians of psychoanalytic thought view Deutsch’s formulation of the “As If” Personality as a precursor to our understanding of borderline conditions and pathological narcissism, and my own clinical experience bears that out. The use of language to obscure or annihilate hated truths regularly features in psychotherapy with clients afflicted by disordered personalities; helping them to connect with and tolerate acute psychic pain is a central challenge of this work and means developing a more authentic language connected to emotional truth.

* * *

In my more recent work with gender-distressed youth, I find myself again confronting this disconnect between language and emotion, but it feels less to me about disordered personalities than a social media-induced kind of dissociation. One teenage girl, trans-identified, talks at length about her daily interactions with her mother, her peers at work and at school, but the space between us feels dead. At times, I have a feeling of futility, that if I try to make sense of the actual words she employs and events she describes, we’ll remain stuck in a place without meaning.

Another client, a highly intellectual young man, uses sessions to expatiate on the socio-cultural construction of gender, explains to me why he rejects masculinity and embraces the feminine, but has no connection with his body. He never masturbates and finds his nocturnal emissions to be disturbing. Now and then for reasons that mystify him, he will begin to weep in session. He feels relieved by his tears but has no words to describe what he might be feeling.

Yet another teenage girl, also trans-identified, adamantly insists upon her desire for cross-sex hormones. Like my other two clients, she has no relationship with her body. She spends much of her free time playing video games online, inhabiting her avatar, and interacting with the avatars of other online players she’s never met in real life. The possibility that testosterone will make her sterile or eventually lead her to have a hysterectomy bothers her not at all; she finds the idea of sexual intercourse to be disgusting and has no intention to marry or have children. She has never masturbated and finds the idea “gross.”

Like many young people who survived the lockdown years by going online, these clients have spent so much time inhabiting virtual worlds that they’ve lost connection with what’s visceral, immediate, and real. They live in a realm of imagination where anything is possible, where infinite malleability has taken the place of a physical world with reality-based limitations. By changing your name and your avatar, you can transform yourself into someone entirely new. The laws governing this alternative space give rise to a belief that you can change the very nature of reality simply by describing it in a different way.

The apparent re-creation of reality via language lends an “as if” quality to their personalities. They seem to have an internal psychic life that’s meaningful to them, they appear to have friends and other social relationships, but their emotional lives lack depth. Because their words have become untrustworthy guides to truth, I’ve taken to teaching my clients about how we human beings come to recognize our own feelings as they arise—when it comes to sadness, for example, through the perception of bodily sensations around the eyes, chest, and back of the throat. With the first client I described above, most times when I ask her to move her attention down into her body, she will begin to cry.

For many young people, social media usage has severed the connection between specific words denoting feelings and the visceral indicators that help us to identify those feelings. The signifier has become detached from the signified. As a result, language becomes a disembodied and self-contained set of internal rules and interrelationships without connection to psychic truth and often external reality.

* * *

In our daily interactions with other people, we usually assume that the words they use to communicate accurately represent the meaning they intend to convey; this fundamental assumption underlies all cooperative efforts to engage with other human beings. But in our modern world, it’s increasingly difficult to believe that much of the language exchanged conveys meaning or objective truth, especially in the contentious realm of social media. Like my patients described above, the public language deployed in this space often serves to deny or obscure truth, to replace it with an alternative reality constructed via language. Life on Twitter often boils down to a war of words to determine whose version of “reality” will prevail, a dynamic obscured by the misleading appearance that both sides are using language in the same way.

In her keynote address last month at Genspect’s historic “The Bigger Picture” conference in Ireland, Helen Joyce, author of the book Trans, drew attention to this issue. While proponents of the affirmative care model for gender-distressed youth speak and write in the empirical language of fact-based science, they actually disdain it. Gender ideology is like a cuckoo bird invading the nest of empiricism says Joyce, appropriating its language and apparently respecting its methods while all the while subverting them. Like my long-ago patient who spoke as if he was authentic and in contact while deploying language to obscure truth, the gender ideologues publish studies in professional journals, written in language that appears to respect the empirical method but actually undermines its assumptions and replaces objective reality with their own disembodied version of “truth.”

The work of Jack Turban, for example, relies upon copious footnotes and citations to other studies which, upon closer examination, either have nothing to do with the position he claims they support or directly contradict it. Turban writes as if he were devoted to the scientific method and its standards of proof but actually cares nothing about them. Colin Wright, Jesse Singal, and Leor Sapir have devoted thousands of words to debunking Turban’s claims, highlighting his factual errors and misleading citations; for those of us firmly rooted in reality, their efforts are crucial, but for Turban and his acolytes, they are irrelevant. Gender ideologues only pretend to care about empiricism, mimicking its techniques for understanding objective reality; what they really intend is to replace immutable facts and objectivity with their own subjective version of the truth.

This dynamic reflects core tenets of post-modern thought and critical theory, where so-called reality is supposedly determined by the discourse around it, and whoever controls that discourse has the power to determine what counts as “true.” While it appears as if gender ideologues are engaged in good faith debate over what scientific studies can tell us about, say, the reality of biological sex, their position really boils down to “because we say so.” They amass flawed and flimsy studies published in professional journals and devote entire books to “proving” sex actually occurs along a spectrum of possible expressions, all in order to control the discourse around the nature of sex. Objective truth is irrelevant; whoever speaks with the loudest voice gets to decide what is true.

Helen Joyce’s observations were inspired by a philosophy symposium she attended focused on the work of British philosopher Roger Scruton; she was particularly struck by his delineation of two opposing views of human nature that give rise to very different ideas about how a society should be governed. One views human nature as a blank slate and believes it can be improved and eventually perfected; from this perspective we are evolving toward an ideal society. The other, “constrained” by the facts of biology and our evolutionary heritage, believes humans cannot fully transcend their bodies, and society must therefore pass laws and uphold traditions that restrain the more brutal aspects of our nature. The American economist Thomas Sowell believes these conflicting visions characterize the conservative versus progressive debate in the United States.

On a broader level, these opposing views also help us to understand the current battle about sex and gender, especially on social media. On the one side we have proponents of biological reality who hold that facts are facts and sex is real; they believe in the scientific method and esteem empiricism as a mode for apprehending truth. On the other, we have those who behave as if they care about the scientific method, but in fact care only about wielding power.

* * *

Just as Helene Deutsche’s landmark paper led to deeper insights into borderline states and pathological narcissism, recognizing the as if quality of contemporary discourse helps explain why our society exhibits so many features of the Cluster B Personality Disorders. Disordered personalities characteristically display overly emotional and irrational forms of thinking along with an unstable sense of self and its relation to others. As patients, they at first appear to engage in the psychotherapeutic process but remain quietly hostile to the process. They will defend their fragile sense of self in often hostile and verbally abusive ways against attempts by their therapist to illuminate painful psychic truths.

Due in part to the rise of social media and the increasing influence of virtual online spaces, young people today inhabit an as if world that mimics reality but actually denies many hated truths about it—that sex is real, binary, and immutable, for example. Adopt a new avatar or change your pronouns and you can become somebody else, even alter your sex. Your subjective belief about who you are overrides objective truth. And if anyone should challenge your self-image by asserting so-called “facts,” you are justified in weaponizing language and hurling abuse to ensure that objective reality will not prevail. Rage, invective, and crude insults to dehumanize the other are the order of the day.

Welcome to Twitter, a place where daily interactions between two conflicting visions of human nature resemble one prolonged eruption of borderline rage. On one side are those who insist reality must be what they say it is; they feel sorry for themselves and persecuted by those who, on the other side, assault them with facts and arguments about objective reality. It takes a non-defensive therapist with a high tolerance for pain and a strong sense of self to work with disordered personalities, in part because they so often attack your own sense of self-worth when they feel threatened; it’s no wonder that even the rationalists ultimately resort to contempt and abuse as Twitter discourse descends into name-calling on both sides.

How are we to heal a disordered society such as ours? Most of the time, I’m cautiously optimistic that the Colin Wrights and Jesse Singals of the world will eventually prevail and, through dispassionate analysis and assertions of fact, reinforce our connections to objective reality. But sometimes, in the dark of the night, I worry that the proponents of radical subjectivity will win. Like my long-ago patient who defeated my efforts to connect him with psychic truth and who ultimately destroyed his own treatment, they will shout the rest of us down with brutal abuse, in the process annihilating all the glorious achievements of Western Civilization and the Enlightenment.

Ideologues like Jack Turban don't post for truth, but for narrative. This is the guy who, like Kendi, blew up his core premise with a single tweet.

Turban's strategy is one he's learned from media on both sides: publish the narrative you want to be true up front (especially in the headline or summary); that's the story the initial wave of your most regular readers will see and retain; when forced to clarify, correct or retract, do so quietly; now you can say it's correct, but you've already convinced your regular readers of the original version.

It's designed to create repeatable memes, with the theater of linking to studies, regardless of whether what he's citing actually says what he claims, or even refutes something else he's already said.

#Joseph Burgo #antiscience #anti Enlightenment #anti science #gender ideology #queer theory #objective reality #mental health crisis #my truth #delusion #subjective reality #subjectivity #radical subjectivity #authoritarianism #woke authoritarianism #chronically online #mental health #mental health issues #religion is a mental illness

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tinnchan · 2 years

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I think what some people who are constantly repeating that “Jiwoo should’ve just talked to Seojoon” aren’t realizing that for some people that feels impossible. Jiwoo clearly has just as much trauma and mental health problems as Seojoon, but they present differently because they are different people. From the beginning of the show whenever Jiwoo pushed Seojoon away I just felt like he was terrified and was desperately hiding behind walls he built for himself, and I felt like these episodes proved it. Jiwoo had got it in his head that he was a burden to Seojoon, that he was inconveniencing his life and career for Jiwoo and that Jiwoo was holding Seojoon back from living his full life. And Jiwoo probably didn’t want to say that because his biggest fear was that Seojoon would say he was right. And so he left in a self destructive manner thinking Seojoon would get over it bc he had so much more life around him than Jiwoo ever did.

When Seojoon came to the village with his lil antics I think he panicked. We don’t know exactly what he was feeling at that point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at first he thought Seojoon was just there bc Seojoon isn’t the type of person who can just leave things open. Or once Jiwoo got wind of some scandal he thought maybe Seojoon needed to lie low and was just bored and that’s why he showed up. I don’t think he let himself think that Seojoon was there because he loves him, even if all the signs were there because Jiwoo is very proud but very insecure. He can’t let himself realize he messed up bc it would break him, and he can’t imagine that he could be so important to someone so he had to keep denying it.

I think that’s why he lashed out especially hard after the kiss too, he felt like he had messed up again by letting Seojoon in. He was seriously panicking. And when he panics he withdraws within and attacks anyone who tries to reach him. Even if he realized Seojoon still loved him he was convinced Seojoon would move on eventually, that their relationship had an expiration date, and that he was a burden and Seojoon would realize that eventually. Was he cruel? Yes of course. Was that acceptable? No not at all. Do I think it’s a realistic portrayal of someone with Jiwoo’s issues? Yep. And I also think they can get back together and that Jiwoo isn’t some awful person who doesn’t deserve Seojoon (I also don’t really believe in the concept of “deserving” someone but that’s another conversation). I think people often ask for realistic portrayal of mental illness and then get angry at characters for acting in ways that hurt others bc of their mental illness. And don’t get me wrong, illness isn’t an excuse for being cruel, but I dont think anything on this show has made Jiwoo irredeemable or made him unworthy of Seojoon’s love or made their relationship impossible. Anyway that was a lot of stream of consciousness so I hope it makes a bit of sense lol.

Your stream of consciousness is more coherent than whatever I can cook up in my text posts anon.

People definitely show a lack of understanding for Jiwoo's struggles.

In S1, Seojoon tells Jiwoo that guys like him, guys with walls around him, are his style. He likes them. But it's just not a trait for Jiwoo and it's not something you can out-kiss or out-hug. The show depicts how unromantic, how heartbreaking it can get to live with such walls.

The boy has abandonment issues which run deep. It's almost pathological. He did it to his ex-girlfriend, he did it to Hyun Pil's girlfriend, his close friend. I agree with you. It's very easy to think "he should have told Seojoon what was going on". Yes. He should have. If self-loathing and loneliness didn't also cause us to act irrationally at times. That night, it was all of Jiwoo's anxieties and fears piling up until he was suffocating and all he could think of was cutting loose.

Not to repeat all the great points you listed but yeah! He genuinely believed that Seojoon would eventually tire of this thing with a guy like him and would and could move on. He says it in their restaurant confrontation- he does not understand why Seojoon is going through all of this, what's so good about dating him? Jiwoo does not fight for this relationship because for him, because of him, it shouldn't be fought for.

Jiwoo was very much entitled to not fight for this relationship if this would have put him in a better position. Seojoon recognizes it himself in episode 8. If tells him that if he left, he should be better off and not be miserable. If up until the breaking point, we experienced Jiwoo's point of view instead, it would be very hard not to feel like Jiwoo should have the right to step away from Seojoon if that's what he wants (of course the show also shows us that those characters are better off together).

Obviously, he should never have ghosted Seojoon for a whole year. It's terrifying and inexcusable. He should never have slept with him, went too far and lash out (though for the things you pointed out, we can see why it happened).

Bang on for the bit about deserving and this aspect makes me love the show even more because this is what you expect from a romance story. The protagonist must suddenly provide a secret, noble sacrifice-reason, risk his life, earn back his love through some grand efforts and declarations spanning two or three montages. It's only if we see him suffer enough as viewers that we deem it acceptable. Life doesn't work like that. Of course, we want Seojoon to start valuing himself. It hurt to see completely ignore any pride and self esteem. We recognize that this stems from his own issues. Why should he suffer when he did nothing wrong.

But also, you cannot move on from the hurt, you cannot truly and honestly fix your relationships if you use a sort of metric. You hurt me x amount thus I require x amount of repenting or i am allowed to hurt you in an equivalent amount. You won't go very far trying to base your relationships by calculating such loss. That may be satisfying but that's not how you achieve true forgiveness and healing.

Of course, I still want, as a viewer scenes of acknowledgement from Jiwoo and a true moment of vulnerability in front of Seojoon. Seojoon deserves a real explanation. He deserves the opportunity to choose whether or not to forgive Jiwoo once all the information is available to him.

But anyways, Jiwoo has been one of the most realistic portrayal of mental health issues in a BL and I am so grateful for the show for this.

#ask #anon #i need a tms ask tag i fear i am clogging the tag #but also tagging more so for anon's points #to my star #to my star 2 #thank you for your ask anon!#my askbox is always open for stream of consciousness #long post

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fyreblood · 2 years

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( kim minjeong/winter. female. she/her. ) presenting lady sang yire, 21 old firebender loyal to house sang. resourceful yet ingenuine, they find themself impartial to fire lord chaesan’s reign. will this be their salvation or their undoing ?

hello hello it’s eden here, presenting to you my first muse sang yi-re ( saet-byeol’s intro is to come… and yes i brought two of my aespa girlies and i would bring them all if i could 🫠 ). yire is the youngest of the house of sang, growing up incredibly well-protected much to her chagrin and as a result she’s bit of a fireball. restless, stubborn and intrepid, its safe to say yire was not made out for the court life as much as she’s been forced to appear (though she does make quite an act of it) and as such, you’ll find her attempts to break the boundaries from within quite… disruptive ? chaotic ? amusing ?

give this post a like if you’d be interested in plotting with yire and i’ll reach out to you, otherwise feel free to just dm me first ! her intro page will be up soon but for now, you’ll find some more info on her below the cut.

𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐈𝐑𝐄 ( 상이레 ) ; 𝐂𝐎𝐄𝐔𝐑 𝐃𝐄 𝐅𝐄𝐔

sang yire is the youngest member of the noble house sang, the house which is known for producing the minister of foreign affairs — a role so drab that yire would rather fall off the face of the earth than ever take over.

that is possibly the only aspect she actually likes about being the baby of her family because otherwise, she has always been treated as that; a baby. she’s been protected and sheltered from anything remotely dangerous or adventurous by both her parents and then ultimately her older siblings once they found out her extreme lack of self-preservation and how prone she is to dropping face-first into bad situations

she’s been trained to act the role of a perfect noble lady, but in reality, the poise and mannerisms she’s been forced to practice are merely a facade to hide her true aspirations;

from her youth, her dreams had been to travel far and wide but also to be able to fight, something her pacifist and diplomatic family never truly understood.

as she’s grown, she’s found an affinity in mastering weaponry and martial arts, as, though she’s a fire-bender, her abilities aren’t that strong. her favourites are close combat fighting without weapons but she also loves the thrill of wielding a sword or a bow and arrow — though her mother had made it very clear early on that there would be no letting her join the royal guard or the yuyan archers 😢

essentially now, our beloved girl of chaos is relegated to only two plausible options (at least for her) — become a travelling storyteller... or a pirate

she’s far too restless for life in the fire nation and it’s led her to a lacks of sense for what is dangerous and what isn’t. yire has become very prone to getting embroiled in bad situations but her resourcefulness is her greatest strength (some would call it ingenious, others would call her crazy...) and she’s always able to get herself out of it, if someone else doesn’t come scrambling to save her first (*ahem* please give her some overprotective over siblings, i beg.)

her other prominent quality would be that she may or may not be a pathological liar, whether its accidental or not. yire is never truly genuine with what she says because she believes everything too mundane, thus her compulsion to fabricate something elaborate from something small can get sort of infuriating and has more than once caused a bit of trouble (but she doesn’t have harmful intentions!)

she’s recently feeling stifled in her role as a noble lady and has since been going out of her way with attempts to escape; by faking a kidnapping, her own assassination (though that one didn’t go down very well with her family after what happened to her brother two years ago o.o) and simply just running away, though her plots been foiled time and time again not because she’s bad at escaping but only because she never planned far enough ahead

as to what she’s doing in present-day, yire is currently biding time until her next attempt of something that will give her more freedom but in the meanwhile she’s trying to repair the slight damage to her reputation and her family dynamic after her blind-sighted ‘assassination’ stint

you can find yire almost everywhere in the fire nation; falling out of trees, duelling with children in the streets (wooden swords only!!), prancing around dangerously at the hing wa harbor at night or even dealing cards in one of those shady—and probably illegal—gambling halls and as long as she’s here, she’s at least attempting to dabble in some sort of occupation to see if anything is enough to make her stay — being a circus trainer, magician, personal assistant and a running messenger to name just a few (all with lady-like grace of course otherwise her mother would throw a fit)

#.　🀐 / . ooc — 𝒆𝒅𝒆𝒏 #.　𓆩 𝖄 𓆪　.

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psychsavant · 1 year

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samwinchesterism · 3 years

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i know it’s just bad writing, but i’m still so obsessed with making sense of the the difference in sam’s attitude about how people have treated him in 4x21 compared to how he remembers it in 13x03. like thinking about sam’s hurt indignation when ruby says “i had no idea dean would do that to you,” about the forced detox and him saying “yeah, you and me both” in that way, and then around nine years later he says to dean about that whole arc “you saved me,” and he says to jack, “my family helped me through that.” like, just younger sam still having it in him to feel something, anything negative about being treated poorly and unfairly versus older sam looking back on being hurt and mistreated and thinking, i was being helped, i was being saved... it makes me so !!!!!!!!

i mean, think about the sheer volume of guilt and blame that was shoved down sam’s throat in the year that followed the events of 4x21 over season five that would have altered his perception of himself and what happened to him, such that at the end of the season he’s thinking that he’s the least of anybody that he knows, even as he gears up to sacrifice everything - his life, his body, his eternal soul - to save them all. like, the way he internalized all of that shame and that blame and it became self-loathing and over time it just built up inside him -- because it’s not like he stops being blamed for this, dean brought it up again in 8.23 and it got brought up in s9 too and not once did he get absolution from any character about it -- and so of course he looks back and thinks, i was a monster and i didn’t deserve to be treated any better than how i was treated, he looks back and he thinks, they helped me, they saved me, even when they trapped me in a cell and said they didn’t care if i lived or died.

but then when you also take into account seasons 8 and 9 - in season 8, sam thinks his brother is dead and tries to move on healthily and build his own life and he just gets dragged through the mud for it by dean and by others, he’s made to feel so bad for it that by the end of the season he feels like he’s better off dead because he let his brother down so many times - and just for trying to deal with grief and trauma in the only way he felt he could? and yet he feels so bad for it he said he never forgave himself even three years later and still apologizes. and then in season 9, sam’s last great stand against being mistreated by dean, not one single person validates his anger at dean either, including dean himself who acts like it’s unfair? later in season 9 and then in season 10, dean spits sam’s words (that he wouldn’t “save” dean in the same way) back at sam and sam is basically made to believe (see his convo with charlie in 10.18) that his anger at dean was unwarranted, that dean did the right thing, that by extension any negative response to mistreatment is unfair.

so after all that blame, all that guilt, just clearly being internalized and coming out in sudden bursts of desperation and despair like 8.23 - and more importantly, after season 9, being made to feel like he really has no right to object to being mistreated (and that’s been a recurring theme anyway, with sam getting shit for wanting to leave an abusive childhood behind, the way that sam so gamely takes punches from dean and says you satisfied instead of getting angry at being hurt, sam’s almost pathological ability to forgive those who wronged him, sam supporting lucifer’s injured body with his own to save him in service of a greater good in season 11, sam not being angry at god for being a deadbeat despite keeping faith for so long), being made to think that he was in the wrong for being angry about something as awful as having your body violated like that without your consent.....

then you have season 13 sam, who just has all of this inside him that’s built up and calcified over the years, and the blows to his self-worth and his autonomy have just kept coming and coming and coming and coming and that young man in season 4 who was shocked and hurt that his brother would do something like that is just gone, the young man who would be upset that someone would lie to him and hurt him like that is dead. and he’s replaced by someone whose experiences have forced him into this place of kindness and forgiveness that stems from the most awful self-loathing and self-blame and lack of self-worth, that sense of forgiveness that, uncovered, is really just an open invitation to hurt him because he no longer has the ability to think he deserves to be treated well or kindly or honestly or in a way that’s respectful to his autonomy. and so i can’t believe dean would do that to me becomes dean helped me, dean saved me and it just shatters me whenever i think about it

#sam winchester #sam winchester meta #dean critical #supernatural #spn meta #dean winchester #this isn't like a dean hate post it's more about sam and like. i can't talk about s9 sam without being dean critical lol #this doesn't make sense im sorry but i just think about this so much i need to externalize it or i wont sleep #season 13 #season 4

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jackrrabbit · 4 years

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Runaways /// Dabi x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You were like an older sister to Dabi back when the two of you were teen runaways together; now that he’s found you as an adult, it’s not going to be so easy to get rid of him.

A/N: I could write a term paper on all of Dabi’s pathologies in this fic...I forgot how much I love writing smutty angst. Good shit 👌

I was planning on making this a ficlet so it’s kinda structured like that even though it ended up a full-length piece. Also, Dabi says some bullshit about sex work that I absolutely do not agree with or condone so please keep that in mind.

➠ see also: [homeowners association]

Tags/warnings: Dabi victimizes you, noncon/dubcon, light yandere, threats, cheating, NTR kinda?, mentions of past sex work, degradation, rough sex (breath play, impact play, crying), mild violence, very brief mentions of past child abuse in the Todoroki household, sad stuff/angst idk lol, *Daddy Issues by The Neighborhood plays in the background*

Dabi would know you anywhere.

You’re different now, which makes sense. It’s been years. Your old uniform of raggedy denim and hand-me-down leather has been replaced with a prim linen dress, designer label at the collar. You used to dye your hair religiously (it was neon pink when he saw you last) but now it’s styled back to your natural shade, a color he only saw back then when your roots grew out. You smell good, expensive. It does take him a second to recognize you without smudged pencil eyeliner drawn under your eyes like in the old days, but once he catches your gaze the realization is immediate.

It’s you. You. You.

You recognize him too, but your reaction is different—shock, then panic; you tug the arm of the man at your side, urging him to walk faster so you can pass Dabi on the sidewalk. The rejection stings for a second, but he isn’t too surprised. You did abandon him, after all.

Dabi doesn’t let it bother him. You’re not going to get away that easy. He pulls you into conversation, grinning when you reluctantly introduce him to your companion (who is, apparently, your husband) as an old friend from school. You didn’t go to school—Dabi knows that, and you know that, but your husband doesn’t. Which means your husband isn’t aware of your sordid past as a runaway.

This is going to be fun.

Once he knows you’re in town, he doesn’t have much trouble finding you. Your husband is a very wealthy man, well-known in this city now that he’s moved here. So this is what you’ve been up to all these years? Shacking up with some ugly motherfucker who’s at least 20 years your senior because he can afford to dress you up in pretty things and take you on overseas vacations? Dabi has to admit, he wouldn’t have thought it of you. Back when he knew you, you were so sincere, such an idealist, even in your darkest nights.

Then again…you always were willing to get your hands dirty in exchange for a warm meal and a place to sleep. Maybe you haven’t changed as much as you think.

Dabi comes to your house in the middle of the day when your husband’s at work and you’re stuck at home because that’s what you are now, a housewife. From a cocksucking whore to a pretty housewife with a dirty little secret. He’s getting hard just thinking about it as he watches your internal debate on whether to let him in or not. Eventually guilt wins out and you usher him inside, hoping the neighbors didn’t see a known villain lurking on your doorstep.

You make Dabi coffee (and aww, you remember exactly how he likes it). He gets you to talking, and you don’t seen surprised to learn about his current line of work; when he presses you, you admit that you’ve been following him in the news. Your life, in comparison, has been wholly uninteresting: you met a man, he proposed, and you married him. Very little has happened to you since. After a long silence you timidly apologize to Dabi for leaving him behind when you two were teenagers, and he tells you he understands.

He doesn’t forgive you.

Overall, things are good, he tells you. But you know, sometimes he misses the old days. Being on the run with you, stealing food from gas stations, breaking into fancy summer homes and pretending the two of you lived there. Stitching up each other’s cuts, because one of you had always gotten in a fight in the past few days. Sometimes he still has dreams about the smell of the balm you used on his fresh burns…and your cool hands, smoothing gently across the tender skin on his face, but he doesn’t say that.

You look down into your monogrammed coffee mug and tell him you know what he means.

When you turn your head like that, Dabi can see the tiny dots running up the side of your ear where your old piercings have scarred over from lack of use. Do you remember when he gave them to you? You did his first, running a needle through the lonely flame of your lighter (he offered to use his quirk, but it was still hard for him to control then so you declined) and then threading the metal through his ear. You promised it would only hurt for a second, and you were right, so he let you do the others.

Then you offered to let him do yours. Just one on each ear—you already had an impressive collection of piercings, but you wanted to let him return the favor, so he did. You were older and more experienced and had lived on the streets for longer, so when he held the needle in his hand and heard your voice saying you trusted him, it was the first time he ever thought of you as fragile, something delicate, something that he was capable of harming.

He chose twin helix piercings for you, cresting the shell of each ear, silver band rings to match his. When they were done you pulled him to a mirror and asked him what he thought. It hadn’t been long since he got the worst burns on his face (the ones under his eyes, wrapping around his chin and down his neck) and he was still getting used to the knowledge that the ugly, wrinkled scars were never going to heal. “I look like…” he started.

A monster. A freak. A victim.

“A badass,” you said. “You look fucking cool. Any asshole who wants to pick a fight with you will take one look and know you’ve been through worse shit than whatever they can dish out, and that’s something to be proud of.”

Now that Dabi thinks about it, he probably wanted you even then.

…But the longer he reminisces, the more nostalgia’s going to distract him. He came here for a reason, and it wasn’t to have coffee with you and talk about the good old days. What he’s about to take from you—what he’s about to make you give—is long overdue.

You’ve still got a little fight in you. Dabi likes that. But you’ve gone soft, filling out and losing muscle in places where you used to be lean and hard from the constant running and fighting of your old lifestyle. Besides, even if you were as strong as you’d been back then, he’d still be stronger than you—he’s a man now, and it’s incredible how small and weak you seem now that he can look at you as a man.

Were your punches always this light? No way…and your wrists couldn’t have always been this delicate. It’s really no trouble at all for him to wrestle you down to the couch and pin you there so he can tear off your stupid little housewife dress and tug your panties down past your ankles.

Once he’s got you fully naked, though, you pretty much give up trying to fight him off. It’s sad, really—like you’re remembering the past, remembering all the times you let other men hold you and fuck you just so you could have enough money to take yourself and Dabi to McDonalds for a few days. And now look, you’re plenty well-fed, but Dabi’s the one holding you down against your will. Funny how things change like that.

He does appreciate your submission, since it gives him the chance to get a decent look at you. The years have been kind—you look so much healthier than you used to. No more visible ribcage stretching out your skin; no more unhealthy pallor from going outside only at night. Your hands are as soft and manicured as if you’ve never done a day’s work in your life, a far cry from the bitten nails and bloody knuckles of your youth. It’s good to see you like this, and he lingers for a second, drinking in the sight of you and committing you to memory.

Dabi’s pictured this moment for years. He used to think he’d savor it, be sweet with you, slow and gentle to show you what you were missing with the trashy guys you used to hang out with. But now, hey—he’s the trashy one, he’s the one who wants to hurt you and own you and ruin you. May as well act like it.

Your husband doesn’t fuck you like this, does he?

You’re unbelievably tight for a former whore. Dabi can barely hold out when he first pushes into you, licking the tears off your cheeks when apparently it hurts too much for you to keep up a brave face. It takes real effort to fuck himself all the way into you, pushing past the tense squeeze of your muscles while you…well, you’re not exactly wet, but he’ll get you there. As soon as his hips are grinding up against yours, he’s hitching your legs up on his shoulders and pounding you into your stuffy antique couch so deeply that he thinks it might splinter into pieces underneath the two of you.

God, you’re so, so, tight. Dabi feels like a virgin with his cock buried inside you, biting his lip so he doesn’t cum in thirty seconds and thrusting into you with a rhythm that comes from nothing less than pure animal instinct. And you’re getting into it too. Can you tell that your pleading and begging him to get off you is turning into moaning? Can you feel your hips bucking weakly back against his, reverting to the position of the submissive bitch your body remembers even if your mind has tried to forget?

It’s perfect, right and good and perfect, everything Dabi’s been waiting for since he first knew what it was to want someone—no, not just someone. You. It’s always been you. A person never forgets their first love, right? It’s perfect, except—except you won’t look at him, you keep looking off to the side and sniffling, and that’s not going to cut it. So he slows down and wrenches your head back to center and makes you kiss him, sliding his tongue over yours and trying to see if he can feel the place where you used to have a piercing there, too. It’s kind of thrilling, actually—wondering whenever his face dips into yours if you’re going to bite him, if he’ll come back from you with blood in his mouth.

He’s only got to thumb over your clit a couple times before you’re clamping down on him, your body begging to be used and abused. Your husband hasn’t been treating you right, though Dabi doubts the old bastard can even get it up without a blue pill. Sure, you look like a sweet little doll, so darling and delicate and breakable, but Dabi knows you better than that. You’re strong, you can take it. He knows you want it rough, so that’s how he’ll give it to you—and hey, hey, he can feel your cunt quivering around him—you’re cumming, aren’t you? So you like it. You like it.

He knew he wasn’t going to last long before, but when you cum and tighten and squeal so high he thinks you could lose your voice, the tension in his abdomen rises up and he digs his fingers into your hips and—shit, you’re saying something, what are you saying? You’re pleading, begging him not to cum inside—but, ohhhhhh fuck he can’t help it, he can’t, he can’t, he’s cumming all the way deep into your tight little snatch, cockhead jutting up at your cervix, fucking his semen all the way through you until your slit is smeared white from top to bottom.

Stop crying. Dabi’s sick of hearing you cry.

You’re still pretty nimble, even though your current exercise regimen probably doesn’t extend beyond periodic jogs around your neighborhood and weekly pilates with all the other bored trophy wives. He’s kind of surprised when as soon as he lifts himself off of you, you have the strength to roll off the couch and scramble around on the floor for your clothing.

You don’t say anything, which he wasn’t expecting. You don’t scream at him, demand that he leave, or ask him how he could do this to you after everything the two of you went through together. You probably still think of yourself as an older sister when it comes to him.

When you’d first met the scarred kid trying and failing to live off the streets, you knew he wasn’t cut out for this. He’d known pain before, plenty of pain (icy-blue fire roasting the skin off his face—spiral fracture from callused hands twisting his arm behind his back—cold, aching muscles after what he thinks is the fifth hour spent locked in a closet), but he’d never known hunger. Hunger was a different kind of beast, one that would chew the kid up and spit him out and leave him broken if you didn’t take him under your wing, so you did.

It wasn’t like you had much of anything to spare, but you made it work. For a few years. He didn’t talk at first, but he took what you gave him, so you gave him what you could: food, if you had it; a place to sleep at night; the knowledge you’d gathered in your own years as a runaway on how he was supposed to survive in a world that didn’t care whether he lived or rotted away in a gutter. You cared.

Until you didn’t.

‘Going to be traveling alone for a while. Don’t wait for me. I’m sorry,’ your note had read. You left it in his backpack along with $43 in cash—not much, but he knew it was more than you could afford. It was all you had.

And now you have all of this! Don’t you feel lucky? You have the rich husband who barely looks at you, the big house with so many empty unused rooms it makes him sick, more food than you could possibly eat in one lifetime. All of that, and you also have Dabi’s semen leaking out of your cunt. It’s a real rags-to-riches story, he thinks.

Dabi picks a cigarette out of his jacket and you stop fixing up the buttons on your dress to ask him not to light it inside. How will you explain the smell to your husband? Every move you make, every syllable that comes out of your mouth, is weighed down by despair. You look like you’ve been beaten.

He lights the cigarette anyway.

///

Before he had you the first time, Dabi thought once would be enough. Pretty naive, huh?

He makes it his mission to fuck you in every room of your husband’s gluttonously enormous mansion (what with your history Dabi has a hard time thinking of the house as yours, and considering the way you tiptoe around and seem like you’re afraid to move so much as a vase, he suspects you feel the same). There’s a lot of rooms.

When he shows up at your door again you don’t even bother to hear him out, instead just trying to shut it on him, but he forces his way in. You wouldn’t want to make him mad, would you? Not when he’s got such a filthy secret hanging over your head? Will your husband keep paying for your designer shopping trips when he knows you’re a street rat who used to steal everything she wore? Will he still kiss you goodnight when Dabi tells him you used to wrap those pretty lips around strangers’ cocks for money?

If you want Dabi to keep quiet, you’re going to have to convince him the best way you know how. A cockwhore is a cockwhore. That’s not the kind of stain you get to wipe away with time and distance and expensive clothing.

In the kitchen: standing up, your back to his front and your hands barely holding you up on the counter, so hard and rough and deep that the dishes are rattling in the pantry. One of your teacups falls out of the glass china cabinet and shatters into a million fragments in a four foot radius over the tiled floor. Neither of you notice until after. Blunt red lines press themselves into the tops of your thighs where he’s shoving your body into the edge of the counter and there are bruises on your tits from how hard he’s groping you.

In the dining room: sitting on the edge of the table, one of your legs hiked up beside you and the other on a chair while Dabi kneels on the ground in front of you, his head between your thighs and his tongue flicking over your pussy. You start off thinking that you’re going to have to sanitize the entire mahogany surface before you can eat off it again and then he licks his lips and sucks on your throbbing clit and you don’t really think about anything else after that.

In your husband’s study: doggy-style on the floor in front of the fireplace, facedown, his body folded over yours, pressing you so deep into the tacky lion-skin rug that you can taste it. He sighs in your ear—actually, you’re not sure if it’s a sigh or a growl—and his hand comes up to cover yours. You feel the metal stitches and the rough burned skin scraping on your own and it reminds you that it’s him. It’s Dabi.

(A few days after his 13th birthday, the Dabi you used to know told you that he was going to dye his hair—he wanted to be unrecognizable, and you understood, so you found some old scissors and stole hair dye from the pharmacy and you spent three long hours chopping his hair into rough spikes and painting it black. When you washed the dye out of his hair in the sink, your hands were stained inky black too. When he saw, he looked worried and weaved his fingers in with yours and asked if the dye would hurt your skin if it stayed on too long.

And you looked back at this kid—small for his age then, burned by his own quirk, trying so hard to look older and tougher than any 13-year-old should have to be, and you thought to yourself, I would die for you.)

Now you hear Dabi growling out your name and squeezing your hand as he reaches his climax and you think, I would kill you if I could.

///

Dabi saves the master bedroom for last.

Your husband is hosting a party at your house. Dabi knows because you begged him not to come today, looking up at him with those doe-like eyes, offering things you never would have offered if it weren’t important to you that he stay away on this particular evening. But he still comes to crash it. He arrives just minutes before your husband does, and you have barely enough time to tuck him away on the dark bedroom balcony and pull the curtains closed before your husband is opening the door and greeting you.

Dabi settles himself into one of the tasteful Adirondack chairs on the balcony and listens to your voice, or at least what he can hear of it through the sliding glass door. You’re sweeter with your husband than you are with Dabi, and he should’ve known you’d be, but it still makes him hate your husband more than he already did.

On the other hand, there’s something strained and high and nervous in the way you’re speaking. Probably because your husband is standing about twenty feet away from the man you’re cheating on him with.

It takes a while for the two of you to dress for the party, but finally Dabi hears you tell your husband that you’d like to take a little longer to get ready and bid him goodbye. “Love you,” you say to the old man as he leaves the room, so casually Dabi might not have heard it if he wasn’t listening.

Then you’re opening the door and ushering him inside and telling him anxiously that he has to get out before anyone sees him. But, oh, you look nice like this, dolled up in your evening gown and makeup and diamonds, trying to pull him to the door even though you must know by now that he’s not going to leave it there. Instead of following, he backs you up onto the bed and peels down the straps of your dress and slides his hands up under the skirt, and all the while he can’t stop thinking about what you said to your husband.

You used to say that to Dabi.

The first time it was an accident—you’d mentioned it off-hand during a night when it was snowing and his unnaturally high body temperature was the only thing keeping the two of you alive. “God, I love you,” you’d said, draping your arm around his shoulders and pulling him in close to share his heat.

It had stunned him and you could probably tell. Maybe the next few times were just you taking pity on a kid who had never been told so casually and so simply that he was loved. But eventually you meant it, the little love you’s before you went to sleep or when one of you went off to do something alone for a few days—a familial love borne of mutual reliance. For the years Dabi was a runaway with you, you were the only person he could trust, and he knows the feeling was mutual.

Now he wants you to tell him you love him again.

It would be hot, wouldn’t it? You telling Dabi you love him while he forces you into a mating press on the bed you share with your husband. Isn’t that hot? You’re never going to be able to sleep on these sheets again without remembering his hands on your body, his tongue in your mouth, his cock filling you in ways you haven’t been filled since you were 19.

How are you gonna lay next to your husband in this sad cold bed? ‘Cause that old fuck isn’t touching you, Dabi knows that much—if he was, he’d’ve noticed by now that you’re always covered in bite marks and hickeys that he didn’t give you. How are you gonna sleep at night knowing what a nasty slut you are, telling another man you love him?

So say it. Say you love him.

Oh, you’re going to be like that, aren’t you? What did he tell you about being a fucking brat when he’s talking to you? See if you’re still so defiant when he’s got his hand stroking the length of that pretty throat and then sealing down on it, squeezing gently on the veins running up the sides of your neck, not too hard, but enough that you’re probably getting a little dizzy while he continues to fuck into you. Does it hurt? Your face is turning pink. Uh-uh-uh, don’t try to pull his hand off, or he’ll show you just how good he is with his quirk these days.

You’re trying to choke out the words but you can’t quite make them make sense. There’s something endearing about the way your whimpers vibrate through the skin of Dabi’s palm, how he can hear you as well as feeling you. Oh—could you say his name too? He knows you’re feeling all fucked-out and wet and sloppy, every moan rising and falling in time with his cock stretching your pussy open, but can’t you give it a little more effort? He’s sure you can get his name out if you really try.

And if you’re not going to cooperate, Dabi may as well just dig the heel of his knuckle into your windpipe, because you really do tighten up so deliciously when you cough and sputter like that. Fuck, if you keep doing that, he’s going to cum, gonna cum right here in your syrupy pussy and spill it all over your marriage bed—but no, he wants to hear you say it first, so when you’re gagging and turning red and your eyes are watering he finally stops choking you, loosening his grip just enough that his hand is resting on your neck in a lover’s touch. It takes you a second and your voice is so hoarse he can barely hear it, but then you’re speaking and something jumps in his chest—

“I…I love—love y-you, Touya!” you sob. “I love you! I—love you, Touya—Touya—Touya—!”

And ah fuck it’s almost exactly right, your voice saying you love him, saying his real name, a name he hasn’t heard for years because you’re the only one who really knows it anymore—but you’re crying, real heavy sobs while you gulp in frantic lungfuls of oxygen. Your ribcage is heaving underneath him and—god, fuck—your guts are clenching, sucking down on every inch of his cock, every vein—

—oh shit fuck fuck he’s cumming, and he presses his face into your neck, into your hair, kissing you and thinking I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you—

—please stay, forever.

///

When he’s done, he goes for another round just to make sure you’re going to have cum dripping down your thighs when you go back to the party. No panties, unless you want him to walk through the grand foyer with all the other guests on his way out.

You don’t look at him as you fix your dress and your hair and wipe at your smeared makeup. With your eyeliner rubbed down to the bottom of your eyes, Dabi’s reminded a little of how you used to look—and the reminder is doubled when you slide your legs across the side of the bed and limp over to your vanity, walking hesitantly, your hips rocking from side to side. Damn, did he fuck you that hard?

Reminds him of the old days, you shuffling back to the hideout with that same awkward pain in your gait, purple marks around your neck, and a dim smile decorating your face—for his sake. Oh, and cash in your pockets. You’d tell him that the two of you were going out to eat that night and refuse to let him look at the injuries. God, it made him angry, it still makes him angry just thinking about it—angry at the men who bought you for treating you like that, angry at you for letting them. Angry at himself for not being old enough or strong enough or rich enough to stop them.

Anger, yes…and other things too. There had been a sick, insidious part of him that wanted to be in their position. He’d hated himself for it back then, until you left and the desire to punish you for abandoning him got twisted up with the desire to own you and keep you his. Maybe if he let himself think about it, he’d still hate himself for what he’s doing to you.

By now, you’re too good at covering up the bruises. A sweep of foundation and powder passes over each hickey he left on your throat and it’s like he never touched you. You have to push him off the bed so you can strip the sheets and replace them. When you’re done, you tell him to wait a few minutes after you leave to sneak out the back and he makes another half-joke about joining the party and introducing himself to your old man—

—and you shove him up against the wall with all the strength left in you, wrap your hand around his neck, and dig your fingernails under the line of piercings in his cheek. If he even looks at your husband, if he even thinks about it, you’ll rip his goddamn face open, you tell him in a low snarl.

It’s an empty threat (you and he both know who would win in a physical altercation) but there’s real hatred behind it. Dabi hasn’t seen that kind of fire in your eyes since he found out you became a trophy wife. It makes him want to have you again so he does, pulling your arms away from his face, standing and holding you up against the door to your bedroom, forcing you to wrap your arms around his neck and cling to him to keep from falling.

He’s lubed up by his own cum, and the wet squelching of your pussy just reminds him what a mess you’re going to be when you return to high society tonight. Maybe your husband will be able to smell it on you—the cum, the sex, the other man who’s been keeping his darling wife warm while he’s at work.

Well, probably not. If that stupid fucking cuckold hasn’t figured it out by now, there’s not much of a chance he’ll get it on his own. As Dabi sinks into your tight, gummy cunt again, he decides that he might just have to help the process along. A man deserves to know if his wife is being unfaithful, right?

///

Your husband’s office phone number is written on a post-it note that’s tacked to the desk of his study. It takes Dabi 40 minutes and $30 to buy a burner cell phone, leave a message on the man’s voicemail, and toss the burner in the kitchen trash at your house while you’re in the shower.

The message is short and straightforward. Dabi introduces himself as ‘the man who’s sleeping with your wife’, describes the floor plan of your husband’s house and what position he fucked you in for each room, and finally finishes it off with the evidence—the precise size and location of every hickey he’s left on your body that will still be visible by the time your husband returns from work.

Dabi almost wishes your husband had picked up the call—he’d’ve had a good time explaining in pornographic detail the way your tits look under those too-formal dresses, the way you moan when you cum in his mouth, the way you told him you loved him while he choked you out—with your husband in the house, no less. But this is fine too.

Besides, it’ll be so fucking funny if someone else at your husband’s company hears the message before he does.

///

Whore. Your husband called you a whore.

You’ve been called a whore a lot, actually. More than most people. You should be used to it by now. But it’s different when your husband says it. Your husband, the man who rescued you from a life of poverty and starvation, the man who has given you everything you own, the man who slid a ring onto your finger under a wedding arch and promised to love you in good times and in bad. The man you’ve almost convinced yourself you love back.

He called you a whore and slapped you when you tried to explain yourself and shoved you out the door and locked it. You can still hear his voice telling you the only place he wants to see your face again is in a casket.

So that’s why when Dabi comes to collect you, you’re hugging your knees to your chest on your front porch in your shiny lace-edged slip nightdress, hair in a mess around your head and your lip bleeding onto your chin. Your feet are so cold—your husband didn’t even give you time to put shoes on before he threw you out.

The night is cool and dark but the porch light buzzes on for half a minute when Dabi climbs up the steps to come crouch next to you on the doorstep. You try not to look at him, but he tilts your face toward his, electric-blue eyes skimming over the red mark and blue-black discoloration blossoming across your cheekbone; the blood drying on your split lip.

Dabi asks calmly if your husband hit you, and you nod.

Good, he tells you, and his body lights up blue in a roiling cloud of flames. He’s been waiting for an excuse to kill that old fuck.

The fire is like lightning, bright and ghostly in the darkness. The crackling of the flame eats away at the heavy silence of the night and you crawl back from the dry heat of it, sure you can feel your eyebrows singeing from being near. Dabi looks different backed by the inferno—bigger, crueler. Frightening. He reaches at the door but you shout at him to stop.

Why? Don’t you think he should suffer, after what he did to you?

But your fists clench by your sides and you set your teeth and you tell Dabi that if he’s going to kill your husband, he may as well set himself on fire too, because it’s his fault in the first place. And he’s done a lot worse to you than one slap.

Dabi waits a moment, searching your alarmed expression for something, but whatever he’s hoping for you don’t give him and the flames go out. The air smells like smoke and his hands are hot—not burning, but uncomfortably hot—when he kneels in front of you and rubs a thumb over your bruised cheek.

“(Y/N)—” Dabi starts, and then he can’t find a way to finish. So he just gathers you up in his arms and carries you bridal-style down into the lawn and to the driveway, where he’s got a car waiting to take you guys back to his place. You don’t resist, which surprises him again. He thought you’d push away at him, scream, get angry—he thought he’d have to convince you. Or force you, like he usually does. But you just let him deposit you in the seat next to the driver’s.

Before he gets in, he asks you if you need anything from your house. He can go get it for you. See if any balding motherfucker in his forties can stop him. But you just shake your head.

“There’s nothing,” you say blankly. “I have nothing. I…have nothing.”

Just like back then.

“Not nothing,” Dabi tells you, turning forward to the road so you can’t see the look on his face. “You have me.”

///

In the end, he does understand. He understood it the second he held that goodbye note in his hands and knew you were lost to him.

You were 17 when you met him and 19 when you left—hardly older than a child yourself. You barely had enough to provide for your own needs, much less a teenage boy’s. By the time you left, Dabi was more than capable of surviving on his own and already falling into ugly crowds, gangs and syndicates who saw money in his quirk, people you’d sacrificed a lot to keep him away from. He no longer needed you, and it was time for you two to go your separate ways. Dabi understands that.

But now you need him. Just like you needed him when you were fucking strangers for food money; like you needed him when you ran away; like you needed him when you got trapped in this mundane, sparkling-clean life, a life that was never going to fit you. Only this time—this time, Dabi’s old enough for you. He’s not a kid anymore, he’s a man. He’s got an apartment and a good job (well, kind of) and he’s got money. He can provide for you the way you’ve always needed him to.

Dabi’s going to take care of you, and you’re never, ever going to leave.

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trashyswitch · 3 years

Text

Golden Freddy's Tickly Torment

Cassidy (Golden Freddy) remembers something from her childhood that proves super useful on William. She also finds out some body & Ghost connections and some bodily functions that William now lacks.

This fanfic has implied torture. But, there is a secret that makes the torture a little easier for the reader to handle.

This fanfic prompt was suggested by @trashylever on Tumblr. Link

I hope you enjoy!

Golden Freddy was sitting with William in the closet that he had been locked in for a decade now. Throughout all those years...William suffered at the hands of Golden Freddy. The Golden bear counterpart of Springtrap had been possessed by one of the victims of William’s kill streak: Cassidy. And Cassidy was determined to make William suffer for as many years as she can, so William regrets every second he took killing those innocent kids. While Charlie was looking after all the ghosts and protecting them from the hands of William, Cassidy was busy driving William insane in as many ways as she could…

Right now, Cassidy was doing what she normally did: taking his ear off, and talking some more into the separated ear. She kept on rambling and rambling and rambling...There was never a second of quiet. The only time Cassidy would take a break was to allow William the chance to not drown her out. By the time she stopped talking, William had turned the rambling into mumbling.

But then...it went silent…

Too silent…

...waaaay too-

“Oh yeah! I remember one time I was going to my friend’s house for a play date-”

Aaaaand there it was again. And again...and a-fucking-gain.

“And she wanted me to give her the game boy! But I didn’t wanna stop playing the game! So she decided to tickle me until I let go of it. I managed to last 10 minutes straight before I finally let go! Isn’t that amazing?!” She told him.

“Ugh…” He mumbled.

“I’ll take that as a big, fat, definite yes.” She started poking his arm.

William was about to smack her across the face. That would easily shut her up. It certainly did the trick when-

“Saaay, speaking of tickle-tickle-tickling, were you tickled as a kid?” She asked.

……….Wait what?

“No. Why would I be?” William lied.

“Everyone gets tickled at least once, William. How often were you ever tickled? How ticklish even are you? Did your Mom tickle you? Or your Dad? Or did both of your parent’s tickle you? Did you have an older brother or sister? DId they tickle you? Were you able to fight back? Or did you just take it like a strong boy?” Cassidy kept asking question after question.

William began to grow uncomfortable with what they were talking about now. Everytime she said the word...It gave him butterflies in his stomach. It made him wanna cower. It made him wanna...smile from pure embarrassment.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost...OH! WAIT!” Cassidy joked. “But seriously, you looked scared…” Cassidy admitted. “Are you scared of how long you��ll have to endure this evil, insanity test? Or are you scared the tiiiiickle monster’s gonna getcha?” Cassidy teased.

Oh no...Not that word again...and don’t bring the tickle monster into this…

“Do you know that a tickle monster creeps in this very room?” Cassidy teased, possessing Freddy to move herself onto the Golden animatronic’s kneecaps. Then, Cassidy’s ghost zoomed out of Golden Freddy’s mouth with a big smile on her face. “Did you know this tickle monster is waiting? Waiting for the peeeerrrfect time to strike~! Watching...Observing your every move...Waiting for the day it can slip out of the hiding spot and tickle you until you’re a tomato red blob of giggles!” Cassidy teased.

William was mentally dying at this point. The teasing was killing him suuuper slowly. He knew the tickle monster wasn’t really a thing. He knew the tickle monster was really Cassidy. He knew that really well. And yet...The fact that we was sitting with one of the most vengeful ghosts on the face of the earth, legitimately scared him. With how much she’s been doing already, it’ll be impossible to predict just where she was going with this...

But then William realized something: he can’t actually be tickled! He’s no longer connected to his human body, and animatronics don’t have nerves! So it should make sense!

...Right?

“IIIII wonder...where are the sources of this evil killer’s ticklish spots?” She asked casually. “You gonna tell me? Or do I have to tickle you myself to find out?” She asked evilly.

Wiliam sighed. “You can’t tickle me.” William told her.

“Oh I can’t? Well:” Cassidy possessed Golden Freddy again and flopped the Freddy Fazbear body right onto Springtrap’s.

“AAH! CASSIDY!” William shouted.

She ignored him and started scratching at his ribs with the golden animatronic’s fat, shiny fingers. William’s eyes just about bulged out of his skull as the butterflies in his stomach increased ten fold. “C-CASS-”

“Yeeeeeessss?” Cassidy moved the Golden Freddy thumbs into the pockets of the springlock suit and dug deeply into the hips.

OH NO! SHE COULD ACTUALLY TICKLE HIM! TALK ABOUT UNLUCKY! NOW SHE WAS GONNA USE IT AGAINST HIM! NOOOOO!

William wiggled around as much as he could from under Golden Freddy. He tried to prevent himself from laughing by holding his breath. He even unpossessed the springtrap suit to try and prevent the ticklishness from getting to him. But it still tickled like a son of a gun! Only now, William was wiggling around in ghost form and holding his hip while doubling over.

“Ooooooh! Interesting!” She reacted as she moved veeeery slowly up the ribs.

William desperately tried to tell her to not go there, due to just how ticklish it was when he was alive. But Cassidy ignored his begging words and moved closer and closer to his special little breaking point.

But as Cassidy was reaching a bad spot, William realized something horrific:

With William not possessing the springlock’s limbs, CASSIDY WAS ABLE TO MOVE THEM AROUND AS SHE PLEASED! WITH NO RESISTANCE WHATSOEVER!

“NO! NOOO! CASSY PLEASE!” William pleaded and reached his ghost arms out. “Sorry Mr. Afton…” She smirked with the look of pure devilish evil in her eyes… “But I’m not Cassidy anymore…”

It was then that Cassidy’s hand grabbed William’s hand and lifted the arm out of the way of the vulnerable spot.

“LEHEHET MEHEHEHE GOHOHOHO!” William shrieked as he anticipated ticklish fingers in his terrible armpits.

But...nothing.

Just...Nothing.

William was scared to open his eyes…

He accidentally let out a little chuckle. “C-Cass...what-”

[Let’s see how much pain you can stand.] The Golden Freddy’s voice declared…

then, Cassidy touched down on both armpits and dug deep into them. Every crevasse, every wire, every steel bit in the armpit...was touched and tickled for at least 5 minutes each.

“NOOOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! EEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” William finally let out his true, strongest belly laugh he had ever mustered. And it did NOT sound like that fake little fluffy laugh William used while with Cassidy.

This laugh was HEAVY. This laugh was DEEP. This laugh was ABSOLUTELY HYSTERICAL. It sounded slightly like pathological laughter! It even sounded slightly joker-ish at certain points! It was all over the place too! It was like he had 10 different laughs he was switching to every 8 seconds or so! It was surprising and strangely satisfying.

“STAHAHAHAHAHAP STAHAHAP IHIHIHI’M GOHOHOHONNA DIHIHIHIHIE!” William begged.

Cassidy giggled. “Oh you silly goose! You’re already dead!” Cassidy joked.

All of the memories of people tickling him and reacting to his laugh and ticklish spots came flooding back into his head all at once. From Henry tickling him many times to get his glasses back, to his wife tickling him during her playful moods, to even Michael tickling him as a 9 year old! Would you believe that Henry’s wife even had a chance to tickle the poor guy? Yyyyup! She did, and she never did stop reminding him of it.

Cassidy moved her hands down to the middle to lower ribs to lessen his crazy laughter. William’s laughter turned calmer, and surprisingly adorable rather than concerning. “There! Now you sound a little less insane.” Cassidy told him.

William ignored her and only thanked the lord above for giving him a break.

But the break only lasted a few seconds before Cassidy explored down to his stomach and belly button.

William squeaked and really quickly possessed the animatronic body to move Cassidy off him. But with the tickling weakening him dramatically, he couldn’t do nearly as much as he thought he would be able to do. Cassidy settled for a compromise by laying partly on the springtrap’s side, and partly on the floor. With this decided, Cassidy decided to still attack his tummy.

This caused squeaks and squeals to leave William’s mouth. Then, wouldn’t you believe, giggle-filled laughter quickly filled the closet room. “Ooooooh! A whole new set of laughter! I wonder which one’s your real laughter…” Cassidy poked into the equivalent of William’s belly button…

William screeched and covered up the springtrap mouth. “MM MM! NOWAY!” He warned.

“No way? More like no way you’re getting out of this! So you minus well accept your fate.” Cassidy told him.

William whined as he wiggled around and kicked the empty air.

“Ooooh! Should I be going for those kicking feet of yours?” She asked.

OH NO…

He shook his head.

“Or perhaps I should go for your neck~” She asked.

William looked down and whimpered. His feet were way too ticklish, but his neck was the most embarrassing ticklish spot out of all of them! It made him all blushy, made him giggle and snort, and if he were a cat, he would most definitely purr. Even as a human, it made him dissolve into a puddle of giggles and titters.

Cassidy brought her hands towards the neck and wiggled them eagerly. “Kitchy kitchy kooo~” She teased.

William quickly decided to unpossess the animatronic suit. As much as he appreciated the feeling of moving the physical limbs around, William knew he’d need to move around and wiggle more the moment his neck was tickled even the slightest. So, he did just that and covered his ghost mouth.

“Oooooh! I see the murderer decided to finally come out of his shell! What a nice surprise!” Cassidy teased. It was then that she finally touched down onto his neck.

William squealed and rolled left and right as he floated in the air. His ghost had curled into the fetal position and his laughter was another octave higher. It sounded more like squeaky giggles rather than actual laughter. William definitely had a large variety of laughter that came with the man. No wonder everyone wanted to tickle him! They wanted to slightly gamble their trust away to see what type of laughter they could get out of William that day!

It didn’t take long for William to start snorting and covering up his mouth. Even Cassidy had to admit: He was kinda cute like this. Not love kinda cute, but definitely toddler kinda cute. He had that sort of vibe to him when he was tickled.

Cass actually had to remind herself for a second that William was a child killer and a manipulator. It was the strangest thing.

William’s laughter had begun to sound tiring. He sounded too mentally tired to really keep laughing, even though his body was forcing him to.

So, Cass enjoyed it for a few minutes. She found it interesting that William could be left in such a weak state through such a silly strategy. But, it worked and that’s all that mattered to Cassidy.

The animatronic slowed its fingers down and removed them from William’s neck. William breathed heavily and deeply to try and calm down. Though, Cassidy found this strange. His lungs should be a different scenario thanks to his ghost form and possessed state. William being able to be tickled and touched made sense. But lung capacity as a ghost? That didn’t make sense at all.

Was William faking it?

Cassidy decided to try something out to answer her question. She moved her fingers to William’s armpits and smirked. If he was really this tired, his laughter will be breathy, whiny, and weak.

Cassidy touched down-

“OHOHOHOHOHO NOHOHOHOHOHO! CAHAHAHAHASS COHOHOHOME OHOHOHOHON!” William screamed.

There’s your answer! He was definitely faking!

“Such a liar. You weren’t really getting tired...You were just trying to get me to sympathize with you and stop!” Cass called him out. “Now quit being a lying baby and act like a man!” Cassidy dug her fingers deeper into William’s armpit.

William SCREAMED and completely lost all his composure at this point. He couldn’t hide anything with his tickles being this strong! It was like trying to hide a huge, bright flamingo in the middle of a bedroom. EVERYONE’S EYES WILL GRAVITATE TOWARDS IT!

“There we go! Look at you being so brave and strong! Doesn’t it feel good?” Cassidy asked.

William shook his head.

“Is this really too much for you to handle? Would you like me to stop?” She asked.

“PLEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE! STAHAHAHAHAHA!” William’s laughter was all over the place and not even close to going silent.

It was this observation that fully confirmed Cassidy’s suspicions:

William has no lung capacity anymore.

“Hmmm…” Cassidy thought for a moment and stopped her fingers. William’s laughter lessened dramatically as he breathed...rather calmly for being tickled for potentially hours. Being in the closet meant that they both had no clue what time it was or how far along the years had gone.

William, with his newfound strength, pushed Cassidy off him. He was angry that Cassidy had brought him down to such a ‘weak’ state. How dared she make him laugh like that! How dare she figure out his tricks! And how dare she tickle him beyond the average human limits! It was a good thing he didn’t really have much lung capacity anymore! Or else he would be passed out cold from all the loss of oxygen.

Cassidy smiled and sat in silence for a few minutes as she processed the ticklish laughter. Then, she clicked a button on the Golden Freddy suit and giggled as recordings of William’s laughter and giggles filled the room.

Oh no she didn’t…

She recorded ALL OF IT?!

William growled and tackled his golden counterpart to the ground.

“HOW DARE YOU-” William yelped and lowered his face as his belly button was poked and tickled.

“Nice try, Mr. Will…but you should know something very important:” Cassidy’s voice changed to the animatronic’s voice...and the animatronic’s eyes glowed as she began to say the words:

[I always get the last laugh…]

The last thing William heard was a deep chuckle...

Does this fact about William (No lung capacity = no need for breaks) make the torment a little easier to handle? Let me know! I'm trying to find ways to not really go down the road of tickle torture unless it's fully justified.

#mental torment #william afton stuck #william afton is crazy #cassidy's revenge #punishment #post-fnaf 2 #pre-fnaf 3 #locked in a closet #ticklefic #ler!cassidy #ler!goldenfreddy #lee!william #lee!springtrap #tickle torment

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frontinus · 2 years

Text

Jim Harrison’s Principles of Moderation

Quite some time ago I turned an impressive corner with the emotion of wanting more consciousness. I wrote two pages called the Principles of Moderation, which had a wondrous, albeit slowly evolving, effect on my life.

Drinking causes drinking. Heavy drinking causes heavy drinking. Light drinking causes light drinking.

The ability to check yourself moment by moment has been discussed at length by wise folks from the old Ch’an masters of China all the way down to Ouspenksy. This assumes a willingness to be conscious.

The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit, thus losing a pleasure that’s been with us forever.

We don’t have much freedom in this life and it is self-cruelty to lose a piece of what we have because we are unable to control our craving.

Measurement is all. A 1½ ounce shot delivers all the benefits of a 3-5 ounce drink. A couple of the latter turns one into a spit dribbler. Spit dribblers frighten children and make everyone else nervous. On any sedative there is a specific, roomy gap between smoothing out and self-destruction. There is no self-destructiveness without the destruction of others. We are not alone.

Naturally there are special occasions. Generally one can’t have more than one a week due to the first paragraph. When you get older like me it’s once a month, if that.

It’s hard to determine pathology in a society where everything is pathological. The main content of our prayers should be for simple consciousness. The most important thing we can do is to find out what ails us and fix it. Often we need outside counsel, for clarity and to speed up the process. (I’ve had over twenty years with my mind doctor.)

In drinking, as in everything else, the path is the way. What you get in life is what you organize for yourself every day. There is an ocean of available wisdom from Lao-tzu to Jung to Rilke. It’s there in preposterous quantity. If you drink way too much it will kill you and the souls of those around you. If you moderate you can have a nice life.

There is another rather manly approach that has been useful, an offshoot of bushido I have drawn from occasionally (in The Man Who Gave Up His Name, etc.). It can sound corny but has been quite relevant for most of the history of human life on earth. The main point is that life is trying to kill you in hundreds of ways. You have to be alert by the millisecond. If it’s not wild animals, it’s your human enemies, your habits and conditioning, your lazy senses.

A lot of overdrinking comes from feeling bad physically. One overdrinks to feel better in physiological terms. This can be avoided by vitamins, exercise, and reasonable diet. Again, it’s a cycle: overdrinking causes overdrinking because you feel bad.

Another source of the problem is the unreasonable expectations we get from others and ourselves. Unreasonable expectations can be removed by thinking it over. They can’t be “downt”, pure and simple. Everyone can’t get to the top or even the middle.

The aim is to remove horrors. This really takes a specific level of attention. Pigs love mud and there is a real streak of muddiness in our psyches. It can be soothing to wallow. We prefer to be stunned rather than overwhelmed. Unfortunately the variations of self-pity are the most injurious emotions we have.

Oddly enough our main weapons in controlling drinking are humour and lightness. The judgment of others and self-judgment (stern) are both contraindicatory. When we fuck up we mentally beat ourselves up. It doesn’t work at all and has to be expunged. The reason to slow down is to feel better and it works real good.

You begin by cutting it all down by a third. After a few weeks you go down to a half. After that your soul will tell you when you listen. It helps to avoid pointlessly cynical camaraderie. Often it is actually a matter of one drink too many.

We need always to separate the problem of virtue from the problem of lack of control There are too many lies in circulation as always. Certain countries, France for example, drink more alcohol but have fewer problems. This is partly due to the predominance of wine which is less of a stun gun of behaviour but also that drinking isn’t connected to virtue or nonvirtue. It is a practical problem. Drinking has to be strictly self-controlled the moment it negatively affects our character and behaviour.

These are relatively mild pointers though the consequences of ignoring them are as fatal as shooting yourself in the head in a curious time warp wherein the bullet takes many years to reach its inevitable target.

Jim Harrison

https://groveatlantic.com/book/off-to-the-side/

#jim harrison

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cuntess-carmilla · 3 years

Text

On disability and gender

I'm writing this from my perspective as a dyadic TME non-binary lesbian (also mixed but very pale and non-Black, as well as relatively thin). I will group myself with women but like, I'm also not really a woman it's complicated lol. I say this because I can't have first-hand comprehension of all the possible dynamics between gender and disability, and other physically disabled people are very much encouraged to add their own thoughts and perspectives to this post.

I don't feel equipped to speak on how being disabled and intersex impacts gendered experiences because I have too much left to learn, so I'm sorry that I'm not going to go into it. It's not because I don't recognize that struggle, it's because I just don't have the range, so please, if you're an intersex and physically disabled person and you want to expand on this, don't be afraid to do so.

Able-bodieds can reblog but don't speak out of turn.

------------------------------------------------

For a long time I've been trying to articulate my thoughts and pain on how physical disability impacts our gendered experiences and I think I'm finally starting to get to it.

When you're physically disabled you're immediately stripped of a (willing) gender identity as well as desexualized.

Gender is embodied and performed. You can embody it "incorrectly" and perform it "poorly". Everything regarding the embodiment of physically disabled people is seen as incorrect, and the literal meaning of "disabled" is that we can't perform the same way that able-bodied people can, or at least we can't without severely impacting our wellness.

Disabled men are emasculated. Constructs of ideal manhood are in big part built on things such as physical prowess, never expressing vulnerability, being self-sufficient outside of anything domestic, and conquering women sexually and romantically.

Disabled men are seen as weak, they are seen as pathetic for having visible vulnerabilities or (if their disability isn't immediately visible) for exposing their vulnerabilities instead of "sucking it up". By needing aid, accessibility and carers that do more than what a wife would traditionally do for any man, the sense of self-sufficiency men are supposed to perform is unavailable to disabled men. All disabled people are desexualized and seen as repulsive once our sexualities are acknowledged, and even disabled dyadic cishet men can't escape this. Able-bodied women see them as unfit for any sort of serious romantic or sexual partnership. Not to mention too the traditional role of men as providers and how difficult it is for any disabled person to acquire wealth at all, let alone enough to support more than ourselves alone. The rates of poverty for physically disabled people are fucking astronomical, so most disabled men can't even use that to their advantage in romance and sex to make up for all the other ways in which they're at a disadvantage compared to able-bodied men.

Disabled women fail at embodying and performing every single aspect of traditional womanhood too, but in particular; domestic labor, sexual labor, and beauty standards.

All labor is difficult if not downright impossible when you're disabled. Disabled women who need carers as adults are seen as complete failures because, even as children, but especially as adults, we're the ones who're supposed to be the carers of others, not the other way around. People love to pretend that women are coddled more than men, but nothing breaks that illusion more than being a disabled woman. A woman's needs are supposed to be invisible and self-fulfilled, or else we're whiny spoiled bitches, and guess what that means for disabled women. When we can't perform this pristine role we're immediately marked as failures, we're undesirable and nothing but a parasitic drag in the lives of abled people.

Yes, not all disabled women are straight, plenty of us are bi or lesbians, many are also aro/ace, but the point is that the patriarchy doesn't really give a shit what a woman's sexuality is, because no woman is seen as having sexual agency, so even if we're not straight we're expected to exist to satisfy men sexually. I cannot describe how difficult it is to be sexual, even when you're not ace, if you're physically disabled. Speaking from my own experience, trying to maintain a sex life as someone who experiences chronic fatigue and chronic pain is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing aspects of my disability. I want sex, I want to want sex, to be able to fuck my fiancé, but most of the time I simply can't gather the energy to even feel horny. I feel like such a failure of a lover because of it. Even though my fiancé is patient and understanding with me!

Can you imagine what it is like for disabled women who aren't as "lucky" as me, to have a partner who understands that we simply can't do it all the time even if we do want to? I don't want to go into too much detail about this because it's very painful and triggering to many, but I think you can imagine what happens to a lot of disabled women (and disabled people in general) when we're not satisfying a partner sexually and they get too frustrated by it. Being as vulnerable as we are, nobody cares much what happens to us. More so since, again, physically disabled people are seen as sexually repulsive, so if anyone wants sex with us we're supposed to be "thankful" for it, no matter the circumstances.

As for beauty standards, any woman who doesn't fit traditional beauty standards will know just how badly men treat you when they don't find you physically appealing, and well... Let's just say that a cane or a wheelchair aren't seen by society as particularly attractive, no matter how much the woman using them fits traditional beauty standards otherwise. Then there's female amputees, women with deformities, etc. In my case, I'm a literal mutant. If I don't disguise my tells with corsetry, long sleeves, and so, so much more, my body looks "off", I have been told repeatedly that my body looks "off" my whole life, and I'm one of the least visibly disabled ones! Even regarding body hair it's fucking hell. My collagen is so elastic that when new hair grows it stays ingrown unless I manually break my skin with a needle or a pumice stone (no, gentler ways of exfoliation don't work), but shaving isn't ideal either because my skin is, due to my altered collagen too, literally transparent and you can see the roots of my dark hairs under it even if I shave down to accidentally harming my skin with the blade.

Performing femininity at all is just... It's fucking hell. If it's exhausting for able-bodied women, can you imagine what it is like for us? I can barely manage to shower, by the time I'm done with my hair, makeup and outfit, every bit of my very limited energy is depleted and then I still have the rest of the day to go through. And I LIKE being feminine. I like wearing makeup and wearing the outfits I wear and yet I still dread it when I know I'll have to do more than stay in my pajamas at home.

Also, the perceived fragility of disabled women isn't the type of fragility that is seen as desirable in women. It's not delicacy. Wheelchairs, canes and other mobility aids aren't seen as "delicate" or "demure". Neither is kinesio tape, or compression stockings, or any other sort of medical equipment which, on top of it all, tend to not be very "aesthetic". Our fragility isn't the romanticized type, it's the "wow, you're an useless burden who can't serve me the way I expect you to" type.

When it comes to "binary" disabled trans people (for a lack of a better term) the degendering is even more intense than it already is for their cis counterparts (all that I described above applies to them too). There's a dichotomy of the even heavier denial of their actual genders as men and women due to the combination of their transness and disabilities, contrasting with how even if they were to conform to their assigned genders at birth they'd still be seen as failures at it due to everything I've already stated. There's also the sentiment that their identifying outside of their assigned gender at birth is a sort of consolation prize, something they're going for only because they were failing at being proper cis men and cis women, and thus their actual genders are even more invalidated and effectively pathologized in the most medical sense of the word, which is already a problem for all trans people, but for physically disabled trans people this intensifies the problem even more.

When it comes to non-binary disabled people things get so fucking confusing and infuriating. If binary disabled people get denied their manhood and womanhood, best believe that multigender disabled people (bigender, genderfluid, etc) are denied all aspects of their genders even harder. Not even completely agender disabled people are safe from being seen as failures of their gender identities by people who would perfectly respect the identity of an agender but able-bodied person. The fact that the default gendered status of all disabled people is forcefully degendered makes it so agender disabled people aren't seen as having any agency or self-determination in their (lack of or neutral) gender identity, it's seen as a passive inevitability from their embodiment, so it doesn't really "count", while simultaneously being subjected to the general transphobic bullshit any other agender person would be subjected to.

All of these things already affect white, thin and dyadic physically disabled people. When you add race (especially Blackness and/or being dark skinned), fatness and being intersex into the mix, the ways in which we're degendered and misgendered are off the fucking rails.

We can't fucking win.

#disability

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incorrect-ikevamp-quotes · 3 years

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why does jean warn up to mc so quickly? ikevamp makes it clear that jean is a pretty reserved person and doesn't open up or let people in easily but he seems to let mc in quite quickly and it confuses me quite a bit.

Oh boy, where to begin with this one.

Well, I have a lot of Feelings^TM about this, but I'll try to be concise. Essentially, I think Jeanne doesn't recover in the other routes--or the general storyline--largely because he's just a lot to unpack narratively speaking. And without some pretty direct intervention, he has a hard time healing. MC’s direct intervention was meaningful because it was focused, consistent, and adapted to Jeanne’s specific needs. She also doesn’t make light of his experiences which is key; she fully understands that she can’t fathom what he’s been through. There is a very weighty respect and acknowledgement, a seriousness with which she treats his wounds that’s important.

It’s easy to make this a “why is MC nOt LiKe ThE oThEr GiRlS” but honestly that’s just not the sense I get when I look at all the information available to us.

That being said, I also just feel like every person's recovery from traumatic events doesn't really look the same? I mean Leonardo’s cptsd isn’t going to operate the same way Jeanne’s wartime/Inquisition cptsd is going to operate. Some people require very individualized healing, others will often require a large scale group effort to lift them up.

Typically people don't ever just get over what happened to them and never worry about it again, either. It's usually a process of coping; the hope is that with time you find healthy ways to deal with grief and move forward. Therapists aren't magicians, they just help people process painful experiences/thoughts. It's honestly up to individuals to find meaningful ways to implement these tactics.

Tl; dr: My contention is that Jeanne doesn’t open up or choose to stay alive because MC magically heals him, rather his recovery is a convergence of many people’s efforts and hopes that he stays alive. Gilles (he insists that Jeanne must live, asks him to promise), MC (affirms and bolsters that promise), Comte (makes a second life and recovery possible)--and in no small measure Mozart and Napoleon--all make an active effort to buoy him. As people often say, it takes a village to raise a child.

While Jeanne seems to respond most powerfully to MC’s attempts, it feels more like a product of chemistry/compatibility than it does a random cop out. There is no insinuation that only romantic love can heal; after all, MC gets close to him without any romantic intentions at first. They’re just good friends? It’s more that their feelings simply moved in a different direction after a point, which doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. Jeanne is also incredibly moved by Mozart’s love for him as a friend, Comte’s love for him as a father, and even Gilles’ love as a comrade to an extent. If anything, without their input Jeanne’s capacity for romantic love would be questionable at best.

Now, because I can never for the life of me stop analyzing, I have a more large scale outline of my thoughts below. Spoilers for Jeanne’s route:

If we look at Jeanne's life history, he has pretty specific trauma. Most of the harm he endured was a direct result of human rights violations after the war itself. He didn't enjoy fighting and killing people, but he's also very much a man that sees the reality of his position: it's either kill or be killed. His entire goal was to defeat the enemy as efficiently as possible in the hopes of ending conflict, and with his enormous resolve turns the tide. He had no innate interest in inflicting harm, or lack of control when engaging. He isn't pathological about it, and doesn’t dehumanize the other side. He was more "this was an act of necessity, but those are still human beings." So as far as I can tell he has a very strong moral compass and sense of duty, he doesn't show much delusion/confusion in that regard. (Also evident in his conversations with the young orphan boy.) Furthermore, he has been shown to have a sense of humor--cracking jokes with Gilles and boosting morale for his fellow soldiers.

His childhood abandonment is significant (he left his home because he was "not an adequate farmhand and they had no ability to feed all their children") but I don't know if I would consider it a huge trauma point for him. It seems as though he deemed it an act of necessity--not spite. It was simply the way of things, and he couldn't help his wiry constitution. You'd be surprised how common that was once upon a time, tbh... While it's certainly not right or fair, it does appear that in his perception it was the choice he made and he moved on after he became a soldier. Just focusing on what he could do, rather than everything he lacked. For people in his position, they often feel it is useless to linger on what should have been. There’s no time to linger or doubt, life hangs in the balance.

That leaves us with his time under the Inquisition, just before he was slated to be burned alive. I think this is the keystone trauma point for him, because there are a lot of moving parts to his powerlessness here. The first part is that his entire life's mission--ending the war so that people would no longer have to die and/or starve as a result of senseless violence--was just sabotaged. All those years of doing things he never wanted to do (wartime violence) and being forced to leave his family to ensure they didn't all starve, all of it treated like some kind of joke. Like he didn't sacrifice years of his life and sanity to protect a people who were happy to call him a monster and watch him burn alive. The second part is the overt gaslighting and rewriting of Jeanne's personal history (and overall French public perception) for the sake of the King's political agenda. To call him a treasonous danger to the country when he was once lauded a hero. The third portion is the actual physical helplessness of being arrested, starved, and continuously maimed for no reason beyond pure malice. While it's never right to do that to any human being, this was done to a man who prided himself on his stalwart moral code. To abuse and torture him for something egregious that he would never do (at the risk of death) is just another slap in the face to everything he is and believes in.

I just feel like the context clarifies why that period of time would be the tipping point. His entire moral code and life’s work is being called into question and swept aside, as well as his agency? He believes very powerfully in a sense of right vs wrong, what's fair and what isn't fair. Somebody else deciding that for him--and deciding in a way that is openly unfair/incorrect--further makes him lose himself and his sense of reality. A person in that situation begins to doubt if they are good or bad. His belief in god all the more pressing; if he was a good person, why would fate bring him so much suffering? Honorable soldier or not, his blade has drawn so much blood...

People often reference his stilted social skills (and I am of the belief that he is on the autistic spectrum) as a reason why he is so "people-adverse" but tbh? I don't agree. His memories before the onset of this trauma reveal that he was actually a very warm person, and that people were more than willing to fight under his banner. He had friends, and he had comrades--his country loved him. He was the picture of well-meaning civic duty. Just because he doesn’t integrate smoothly into larger social groups or adapt well to socially shifting circumstances, doesn’t mean he just hates people lmao. When people give him the space to exist within his comfort zone and don’t take advantage of him, he thrives. Compounded by that, we also have his actions in the present to further prove what is true and what isn't.

While he is stern with the orphan boy (I'm sorry I can't remember his name, damn it) there is no malice or cruelty in what he has to say. He doesn't punish the kid or do anything out of line. It may not be fair in terms of the adult level of discretion he asks of him, but the kid also didn't have a lot of options realistically speaking lmao. Same thing with MC, she and the orphan boy are nearly identical in how Jeanne treats them. He's a little rough, but the route reveals that his intentions are just a reflection of what he's been through. He truly believes that if a person isn't strong, they won't survive--because his entire life was a series of trying to be strong/reliable because nobody else would. There was nobody to protect him, and nobody to care for him went things went south. It was him and his sword against the world, and even his exceptional skill as a fighter did not protect him from the Inquisition's arbitrary torture. He has lived in a world where good acts can become absolutely meaningless, where following rules and helping people still gets you slaughtered. That's going to take a considerable toll on his mental health: where do you find the will to go on when the next second of your life could mean the devastation of everything that matters to you?

Spoilers: you don't. Or if you do, every minute of the day is a fight to stay alive. That is the point at which we meet Jeanne. Caught in the hellish whirlpool of wanting more, wanting better--but being terrified of the cost. The cost of hoping, only for his entire world to go up in flames again. It's not a small thing, in my view.

If you have any doubts as to whether or not that is the case, I direct you to literally every singular instance in which Jeanne's emotional sensibility goes visibly dark/south. When do these instances happen? When it rains, for one. And when Shakespeare deliberately starts pressing on his sensitivities: about the soldiers he was forced to kill, about the nation that spurned him, how he's truly "wicked" at heart and doesn't deserve to be happy--seconds before flames erupt for the festival. Does that really sound coincidental? I mean lmao. The rain is a painful reminder, but MC transforms that memory into something a little lighter with her bet. He has nothing to lose in her game, all she does is ask for time with him or offers him something if she loses. There's a playfulness there, a restoration of agency and ease that's invaluable to his recovery.

As for Shakespeare's deliberate retraumatization...I can't even begin to explain how damaging that event was. Shakespeare is undermining Jeanne's agency in that he--not unlike the corrupt monarch of Jeanne's era--is twisting Jeanne's beliefs to work against him. He knows full well that Jeanne doesn't feel like he deserves somebody so bright and understanding (we need to remember it's not really a luxury he's had much in life, especially after the war ended). He knows Jeanne has a tendency to impose that strict moral code on himself even more than he does on others. To reaffirm his every worst fear and lurking terror only throws Jeanne into a vicious downspiral. Jeanne doesn't reject MC out of disgust or hate. He rejects her because he literally cannot handle the concept of trying to be happy again, or of burdening her with his constant struggle to move on while he’s in the middle of a bad episode. He knows he won’t be able to stop reliving the past, that every second of his life and breath will be colored by his gruesome memories. He's trying as hard as he can to keep the intrusive thoughts quiet, to move on. But I'm not going to lie to any of you, that is incredibly difficult to do alone.

The next obvious question is, well why can't the other men help him? This isn't to say that they can't--we see how much solace Jeanne finds in Napoleon and Mozart. Even Isaac is gentle with the veteran. But there are limits to how much they can do. Napoleon is struggling with his own wartime trauma, and it's not identical to Jeanne's. Plus there’s a distinct difference in their sensibilities? Napoleon is the type to habitually seek comfort in helping others when he can't help himself, he's not as in tune with answering his own personal feelings and regulating them. (I mean just look at his new ES: he knows what he wants, but it takes a nudge from Isaac for him to go through with it.) He’s very communally reliant in ways Jeanne isn’t; Jeanne is a very private person, and typically prefers one on one from what I can tell.

Mozart is the definition of repression, and if you look at their interactions it's usually Jeanne that's smoothing over Mozart's rough edges. Mozart says as much himself: that he feels like a rotten friend because he knew Jeanne was struggling with a lot of intense trauma, but he didn't know how to unravel it without hurting him in the process. Mozart calls it personal cowardice, but honestly I just feel like they both had too much going on to be able to help each other effectively. (And Jeanne expresses this sentiment too? This idea that he's not angry with Mozart? He knows they're both carrying a lot, he's just touched Mozart cares about him in return.)

Okay, briefly unrelated, but like. Am I the only one that wheezes uncontrollably when Mozart is like "?????? Idk what it is about MC...I don't want her to be scared of me..." in his own main story in the baths. And Jeanne. IS TRYING SO HARD. NOT TO SPILL THE BEANS ABOUT HIM O B V I O U S L Y BEING IN LOVE. THE HILARITY I CAN'T DO THIS. Jeanne was like "yeah....yeah that's rough buddy.......[screams internally, give your boy time Jeanne he's fragile]"

Honestly? That's the thing about Jeanne too--he has incredible self-awareness and hyperarousal-related (I mean the PTSD kind, get your head out of the gutter) awareness to the people around him. He's very, very conscious of the fact that he is surrounded by geniuses when he can't even write his own name. Just because he has the fortitude not to lash out with his insecurities, doesn't mean he never feels stupid or inferior. And it doesn't help when there are people in the mansion who call him--a fucking war veteran from 500 YEARS AGO--nAiVe. He's not naive lmao. He just doesn't know how the world works so many years later, and it's a ridiculously steep learning curve? Leonardo and Comte are nearly 500 years old, but they lived throughout every hour of that time in a linear fashion. It is a big deal to be moved from 1430 to 1890 in the span of a second asynchronously, and then be expected to function without a hitch??? Given the circumstances he adapts well.

That atmosphere--this constant impatience with what he doesn’t understand, his inability to be caught up to speed quickly--is going to hinder his recovery lmao. He feels like a burden most of the time, and agency and freedom are crucial.

Another thing that occurs to me about the mansion's arrangement is that there is a power dynamic, just as any space with people in it has some level of hierarchy (unless you live with miraculously chill people). Jeanne is acutely aware that Comte is the most powerful being in that space, and he is not only hatefully angry at him--but likely afraid too. We have to remember that the biggest betrayal he witnessed in his life was at the hands of a monarch; it was the aristocracy that turned on him and erased the truth. Comte is openly a child that resulted from both that era and that type of lineage, I don't really blame Jeanne for being wary. He intimately knows how willing rich people are to throw normal folks under the bus to suit their ambitions/whims. Comte, while not deliberately threatening, also seems to be painfully aware of this impression he gives off. His "chad persona" as I've mentioned allows him to navigate his life in secret by necessity, but it’s actively damaging to his son. He can't reveal the truth because of Vlad's betrayal, and he's openly unsettled by what it could mean to be honest. Will they wonder about Vlad and find themselves ensnared under his mind control as Charles and Shakespeare are? Will Comte himself be subjected to the mortifying ordeal of being known only to lose them?? That's a risk he isn't willing to take--and that leaves him in a double bind.

What is it that they say, the truth will set you free? This is where MC and Comte come into enormous play when it comes to Jeanne's recovery. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the people in the mansion have their own traumas they're trying to carry, and I feel like a lot of them are unsure how to approach Jeanne. Or if they do, he's very guarded. It takes a lot of consistent effort to get through to him. What does MC do when Jeanne unleashes his harsh worldview on her? She's understandably frightened, but Jeanne isn't malicious (so she chases him around). In fact, he openly avoids and runs away from her--well aware that what he's done is wrong. If anything, he did it on purpose, bringing us right back to Shakespeare's verbal undoing; why does Jeanne attack her in the first place?

LMAO. He attacks her because she essentially says "oh thanks for helping me!" "I am not nice. Watch yourself." "But you seem like a nice guy to me?" "REEEEEE" Does the pattern become a little clearer? When people think kindly of him, his instinct is to shatter that illusion with an impulsive reprehensible act. When people think poorly of him or lash out, what does he do? When that orphan boy starts yelling and screaming, Jeanne is nothing but calm. He explains the situation, and offers the kid a choice, perfectly happy to be the bearer of bad news. This operates on many levels I’m sure, but I have a feeling it has something to do with him being hailed a saint and a war hero only to be tortured and branded a monstrosity (and he probably thinks being a vampire is doubly monstrous). He’s more comfortable being hated because he feels it’s what he deserves in a lot of ways.

Jeanne has a lot of internalized self-hatred because of what he's done, and because of how much harm was inflicted on him outside of his control (he's Catholic and he was tortured, come on this writes itself). If I'm honest, I think that's actually the greater part of why he hates Comte lmao. Comte refuses the very concept of being cruel no matter how much Jeanne lashes out. Sure he lectures him and scolds him, but he never actively limits what's important to him or controls or harms him. Comte fully realizes the tragedy of how Jeanne's life was used by a nation in dire straits, and knows he needs time and acceptance to heal. No matter how dismal or unhappy, Comte doesn't stop--he fully believes Jeanne should have time in his life where he can really live for himself for once. But therein lies the issue, Jeanne doesn't know how to live for himself.

Which brings me to how MC and Comte "heal" Jeanne. I feel like they give him the space he needs to recover, and that's what results in his gentled temperament and happiness. Remember that so much of his main story is MC endlessly chasing after Jeanne. No amounts of his hissing or running or threatening stops her. Even if his refusals are empty of real dislike, they're enough to deter most people. Not MC. She's able to see through to the depths of who he is, and doesn't just use him for her own ends? She actively seeks to teach him (to read and write) to help him settle better in this era, she actively tries to ease his distaste for rain with a well-meaning bet, and she never gives up on him. (Actions mean so much more to him than words in general too, tbh...). Love is more easily defined by work and effort than it is by attraction.

When he has his episode at the festival, sure she's rattled; but that's because she truly believed that he didn't want to be around her anymore. When she notices he really doesn’t want to be followed, she stops like any normal person would. It’s only when she reads his notebook and sees the truth for herself (that he’s given up despite having the same feelings for her) that her determination is rekindled. She doesn't approach him fearfully, doesn't treat him like he's made of glass either. She just wants him as he is--accepts and loves him as he is. Scarred, bloody, exhausted, abrasive, terrified. She doesn't define him by how easy he is to love. That is a huge issue with traumatized people lmao. Because of their maturity, people always just assume they don't need help, or they rely on them to an extent that isn't sustainable. The second they reveal need or that they struggle, people walk away or victim blame them because it’s easier than taking them seriously.

While MC's attempts may be a little more obvious (cherishing his lily field, wearing the hair pin he gave her, careful about his gruesome injury, really listens when he talks about the horrors of his life and accepts that he experienced a level of agony/terror she can never understand, tries to express her feelings no matter his evasion) I think it's also important to consider Comte's large scale effort. I don't say this to undermine MC, I say it because Jeanne's life was defined by a complete lack of security. He left his parents to make their lives easier, he lived in a war that meant life or death any second, and his country's leader branded him a traitor which lead to his endless torture and public execution. Jeanne does not know a life in which safety is the norm. Point blank. He does not understanding going outside and not expecting the worst anymore.

Comte not only understands that level of despair, but treats it with dignity and respect. He fully accepts being hated if it means Jeanne can use that hatred to live on and find a way to heal. And most importantly, when Jeanne begins to move forward with MC and Mozart's help, Comte never once holds it against Jeanne when the truth is revealed. He's not angry, this isn't about reprisal or reparations or revenge. It's just love.

Jeanne doesn't really have a concept of this? His entire life was mostly transactional, defined by strength and efficiency. Nobody gives a damn about your feelings. You either hurl yourself at the problem or die. Nobody is going to help you or carry you or save you. While he may have had a little more support while he was in the military from his fellow soldiers, that support system was ripped away from him during the Inquisition.

One very common sentiment regarding elongated imprisonment and torture is that survival occurs in pairs. It is an undeniable fact that people need others to survive. It is the nature of who we are. Individualism has never proven to be successful, or if it is, its dividends are astronomically minimal when compared to people working together.

What does it mean to be the most reliable, steady person in the room? Usually it just means you don't know how to ask for help when you are no longer capable of maintaining that stance. Napoleon is guilty of it. Leonardo, Comte, and Jeanne all are too. It's part of why MC and Comte's capacity to see what he needs and provide as much as they can is such a big deal. That sort of consistent support (without a constant necessity to beg for help) allows Jeanne to be able to re-integrate into his new reality and find joy. Even if his nightmares and memories never go away, they are now being actively overrun by positive experiences. That's the thing about recovery, really--it tends to be more about drowning out the negative as much as possible and coming to terms with it, than it is about forgetting or never feeling it again. It’s about softening the sharp edges of pain like sea glass.

So is MC magical and randomly got Jeanne to open up? Nah, I don't think so. I think it was a series of persistence and real acceptance of who he is that made him warm up. People really seem to underestimate how deeply affecting understanding is, but that's how damage is undone. Jeanne can't really linger on the idea of his own monstrousness, his unworthiness, a lifetime of misery, when the person in front of him actively listens and cares about him. Makes him laugh and smile and lose himself in warmth for the first time.

If I'm honest, I feel like people also just...underestimate the level of traumatic resurgence that's perpetuated and inflicted by society’s standards in general lmao. This rhetorical structure in which good and bad exist in moral extremes, this idea that people should be able to recover and never experience relapses or periods of sensitivity. The refusal to radically listen to people and their problems, and make active attempts--not matter how small--to mend/ease those hurt feelings. Granted there will always be people in the world who do not want to improve, but I feel like most people want to. It's hopelessness, silence, and stigmatization that remain the true enemies of traumatized/mentally ill people everywhere. And among that population are always war veterans...

#ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp jean #ikevamp jeanne #ikevamp meta #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp comte #sorry i have a lot of feelings about this topic kjahsflkjhsjkghfd #but yes!#i think mc being able to help him was more about her sensibility and the mental fortitude/space to be able to care about him as he needed #i don't think it's necessarily that she's SpEcIaL #trauma is a sensitive subject--especially considering he's a war veteran #but i also think it's simple and complex at the same time #simple in the sense that people really do just need consistent support and love to be able to care for themselves again #complex in the sense that support can come in so many permutations and some of them are very delicate and multi-faceted #and thus must be handled with extreme caution in some regards #anywho not that i'm any kind of expert this is just what i understand and see #also in case it wasn't clear i love him and cry every day (look away comte it's my whoring hours)#though i hope this helps??? i went off harder than anticipated lakjhglkj #thank you for the ask!!! <3333 #asks #rambles #not incorrect quotes

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sodone-withlife · 3 years

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icarus fell, and blood stained the ground

i'm back!! (but not really—the new school year literally starts in an hour and it will be back to my pathological dependence on academic validation. at least i can say i've technically published another fic before summer break ends)

anyway, here's the fic in response to part 1 of sumayyah's post. i published a companion poem for this some time ago. as per usual, i gave up on proofreading so hopefully any mistakes don't detract from the story. also, i hope the formatting and jumping back and forth between italics makes sense—let me know if it doesn't, though it might be easier to read on ao3 (it should go up on there by 4pm PST because school)

warnings: murder, major character death (may potentially be classified as suicide-by-proxy, depending on your interpretation), guns, canon typical violence, slight gore at the end, mentioned substances

word count: 1.9k words

The damned man thought of everything, Jessica thought as she scowled at the damned folder that sat innocuously on the large mahogany desk.

The desk that would soon be cleared, all traces of the previous owner gone.

She lifted a shaky hand and brushed it through her hair, shuddering at its greasy and unkempt state that hinted at the state she had been in recently. Weary to the bone, she forced herself to sit back up and grab her phone, dialing the number that was written on the sticky note placed on the inside cover of the folder. It didn’t surprise her to hear an unfamiliar female voice answer the phone with a “Ms. Brooks?”

He had thought of everything, after all.

Really, the only thing she was surprised at was the sheer extent of his connections—but thinking back to her phone calls with Haley back when he was still practicing law, the talks about extravagant offers from top corporations and firms, she really wasn’t surprised. Thus, it made sense that her call to the top law firm in the state would be answered within two dial tones and by someone who already knew who she was.

And within minutes of talking with the woman who introduced herself as Ms. Stevens, Jessica became even more aware of just how prepared her brother-in-law had been before he walked to his dea—

Not an in-law anymore—her brother. He had long since earned that designation, that spot in her broken family, no matter how much self-flagellation he put himself through in regards to her sister’s murder and no matter how much abuse her father hurled at him in the years before the man who once viewed him as a son succumbed to dementia.

Hours later, despite having already reached her limit twenty minutes into the call, she finally hung up the phone with only funeral arrangements as an immediate concern. Slowly, she stood up from the chair and mechanically made her way into the tiny bathroom that had once been a familiar sight, when her nephew was still a child—

She forced her mind away from that minefield; she wasn’t willing to spend another sleepless night thinking about what had gone down in the past month, what had happened a week ago in that apartment, what her nephew was doing and thinking in the cell that only seemed to become colder and crueler the more she thought about it.

How many prisons had he visited? How many interrogation rooms, holding cells, general population cells, max security cells, death row cells? Did he ever get used to it? Could he allow himself to get used to it, to forget that these people are also human no matter the crimes they’ve committed?

A careful hand fell onto Jessica’s shoulder, and she shuddered under the warmth that seeped into her body, a warmth that had been lacking from her life for a long time now. She turned to see Morgan staring back at her, concerned.

“You didn’t pick up your phone,” he explained neutrally, flicking his eyes towards her phone—and sure enough, there were ten missed calls, each from a member of the team. She looked back up but avoided his concerned gaze only to latch onto her reflection in the mirror and internally winced at her haggard appearance.

“Did you—“ she coughed, clearing her throat, “have you figured out what happened?” Morgan’s unspoken question about her well-being went unanswered, and she continued to avoid looking at him.

She watched the man shake his head through the mirror, unsurprised and once again cursing her brother for his incessant habit of playing his cards close to his chest, especially when it came to personal issues.

How else is—was—he one of the best at poker in the bureau, often even beating Reid?

“He hasn’t talked, either,” Morgan informed her quietly, saving her the pain of asking the question herself. “Forensics is still struggling to put together a cohesive picture. To be honest, I doubt we’ll ever find out what actually happened in that apartment.” He shook his head, frustrated at the man he considered his brother.

If either of them bothered to ask, they would have found that both were truthfully unsurprised at this outcome, given what they only recently learned about the factors and circumstances that led to it. The few established facts about this case in addition to speculation based on systematically organized notes left in an even more meticulously organized folder painted a clear enough picture of the events preceding the fall.

But it wasn’t really an accidental, flailing fall.

In all truthfulness, he didn’t fight it.

Icarus let himself fall to his death in an attempt to compensate for his hubris, to suffer the consequences of his mistakes, and it was both a cowardly attempt to escape the hellish burns caused by the boiling, melting wax and a selfless attempt to teach posterity to avoid ending up like him.

Jessica remembered the warmth of Morgan’s embrace when he ignored all protocol and took it upon himself to inform her of what had transpired in the past two months, regardless of the still-ongoing investigation. It didn’t do much to soothe the cold that had threatened to swallow her whole as she listened to the details in silent horror.

He had sat her down in her apartment, the one she had taken care of her ailing father in before he finally died and the one she couldn’t bear to move out of for all of the memories that had been formed inside—with her father on his good days, with her brother, with her nephew

“A week ago, we were invited by MPD to consult on a series of killings that happened over the course of a month. We had an eye on the situation since the second murder, and there were two more victims in the span of a week before we were finally called in,” he began quietly.

He had suspicions as to what was happening by the time the team was invited in on the case at the personal request of the MPD chief. It certainly wasn’t the first time he had come across this profile before, but there were simply too many puzzle pieces with matching edges for the connections to be brushed off as a coincidence.

“Based on the rate at which bodies were popping up, we anticipated another one within two days of us being called in, but the killer had gone suspiciously silent. We went through crime scenes, forensic reports, and things weren’t adding up.”

"It’s a local case and we’ve coordinated with MPD multiple times, they know the drill. I’d like to take a personal look as well, the brass has been all up in my business about this case given its proximity to the Hill."

That’s what he said to the team regarding him suddenly taking the initiative to go to the crime scenes despite his responsibilities—it had been a while since he last went out to crime scenes, often taking care of the office politics and coordinating the investigation back at whatever precinct or office the team had taken over.

“There were odd inconsistencies, missing pieces of evidence… There was evidence to show that the killer was an amateur, but ultimately the profile we ended up building was nowhere near as detailed as we hoped it could be—but it ultimately went a long way in helping us figure out what was really happening.”

Old case files going missing from his home office, growing interest in his job, sudden mood swings happening long after the worst of puberty, increased isolation, dropping grades…

Absentee fathers of Georgetown students being stabbed and shot to death as if the killer was unsure about what to do, an innocuous Jack-in-the-Box takeout bag sitting near the last three bodies…

Numerous signs, and yet it was the outwardly irrelevant piece of trash, perhaps a sign of the killer’s gluttony—a sick joke that only he could have recognized—that led him to put all of the horrifying pieces together. It’s been over a decade, and yet the memories of that damned day remained as clear as ever, dogging his every footstep. Nightmares in which the worst happens still often visit him in his sleep, sometimes even combined with the effects of Peter Lewis’s drug concoction, effects lingering even after all these years.

“Somehow, we completely missed the fact that he fit the victimology. Maybe it was because of his efforts to distract us… If we had put it together earlier we might have been able to figure it out much earlier, and maybe everything could have turned out differently.”

Only after intensive counseling and careful editing of his case reports was he allowed to continue in the bureau after Lewis and his targeted attacks, and yet he knew he was still being watched. It was with that thought in mind that he made a decision on how to handle the situation. Either way, his life would be irrevocably changed, and there would be casualties alongside him.

All he had to do was figure out how to minimize them.

“He never came in that morning; Reid was the first to notice the lights off in the office. We were headed towards his apartment complex as soon as we saw a cleared-out office with a retirement letter being the only thing left on the desk. All of the pictures, trinkets, law books, messy stacks of paperwork—gone.”

A retirement letter for formality's sake, one copy emailed directly to the director and one printed on his desk, to simplify some things for the bureau and to ensure that Jessica and his son get his pension should the worst happen. All of his decisions, meticulously recorded and justified, except for this last one to protect the team from the consequences of his choice. All of his notes, all of the claimed evidence, carefully stored in the file box he left next to the retirement letter back in the office. Favors accumulated since law school called in, contacts throughout the local justice system ready to step in and deal with the fallout.

All of this, an attempt to compensate for the mistakes he’s made over the years and his hubris, to protect the remnants of his family and the team.

Morgan couldn’t finish telling Jessica what had happened, voice somehow caught in his throat and refusing to cooperate. He simply shook his head, and she folded in on herself, the weight of the last week too much for her to hold up. Slowly, he pulled her into a hug, rubbing her back but not doing much more to soothe her.

This is a wound that wouldn’t ever heal.

The story ends like this:

Icarus burned, and Aaron Hotchner said nothing as the hand that held the gun against his temple shook with uncertainty. Everything he wanted to say was written—one might call him a coward, but writing had always been so much easier for him—and he knew that he would be the final casualty, that the killings would stop after tonight.

Icarus fell, and Aaron Hotchner was flung sideways, the unyielding bullet from his gun fired by his own son shredding the brain that thought had of everything but the emotional and psychological effects his final decision would have on his family and friends.

Daedalus grieved over his son’s crumpled form, and Jack Hotchner would be found with his father’s dead body in his shaking arms as he stared blankly at sights unseen to the team, who had come hours too late.

Blood stained the ground, seeping into the cracks and crevices of grasping fingers, and nothing would ever be the same.

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #bau #jessica brooks #jack hotchner #tw character death #tw guns #tw violence #tw murder #tw death #just to cover my bases #tw substances #tw drugs #tw gore

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always-and-forever-pan · 3 years

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Miraculous Ladybug Character Observations

Edit - have been asked to tag this as Salt. Don't see how it is but I've updated that.

I was unable to sleep last night and I re-watched the Miraculous ladybug series up until season 4 and I had a few thoughts about the character Arcs we’ve been shown so far.

Marinette - sweet, kind, selfless, brave, naïve, obsessive, kind of a stalker but done with good intentions, passive when not in the mask, insecure, nervous, indecisive when not spur of the moment, catastrophizer. I could go on. (I mean the schedule when I say kinda salkerish. It’s weird as all get and a major red flag but it’s got ALL of her friends schedules on it so maybe it wasn’t meant to be as weird as it was? but combined with the modelling photos. But she’s also an inspiring designer and all the photos are of the Gabriel line or group friend shots so again weird but not as weird as it could be. It leaves us in this position of hating it but also loving it which adds to the discomfort)

Adrien - does not understand the world outside of TV shows, his entire life has been spent being told only what his father wants him to know. This has resulted in immaturity, 'innocence', a lack of empathy on some things because of this lack of understanding, and a child-like understanding of friendship. Due to only having seen romance on TV and his father's attitude of "Pursue until you succeed" he has a tendency to be mildly sexually harassing of the female population (note i do not mean rape please understand degrees of severity. As CN he does not take no for an answer, continues to push his feeling and wants onto LB despite her clear rejections but he never actually does anything explicitly sexual either which leaves us uncomfortable and unable to put reason as to why), he is a passive bully (by not calling out the bad behaviour of his friends he allows it to continue), he is manipulative (threatening to give up his miraculous if Plagg doesn't tell him the secrets). With a little help and experience he could grow up, could be a decent person but that's not going to happen until someone points out his flaws. I’m actually the most mad about Adrien, I loved the soft fluffy boi at first but they’ve done him so dirty and I want to but cant Stan him if they’re going to accept his behaviour and use him to teach people that it's okay.

Alya - Brave, passionate, energetic, and confident. She is a ride or die, type of friend. However, she is also stubborn to a fault, loyal to the point of enabling bad behaviour, her passion for superheroes leads her to danger and she doesn't think about hers or the people she's dragging into the situations safety or wellbeing during those times. Alya doesn't like to be wrong, combined with her stubbornness this at times ends up with her being wilfully ignorant of things (like Lila's lies)

Nino - enthusiastic, friendly, compassionate, a follower, a strong sense of right and wrong, argumentative. Not a bad person it's just that he is more of a follower than a leader so when someone he trusts tells him something he will follow it through (e.g. when Alya all but tells him she believes Lila over Marinette Nino does too)

Chloe - Due to Chloe's dad not being a parent but trying to buy Chloe's love all her life Chloe is a brat, is spoilt, has delusions of grandeur. Due to a mother who left when Chloe was a baby and can not even remember her name, or birthday, or even that Chloe exists half the time it has lead to Chloe having some very severe abandonment issues. And a Flaming Heap of mommy issues where Chloe needs to be perfection personified otherwise she'll never be remembered. This leads to Chloe lashing out at anyone who can do anything better than she herself can.

Lila - proud, loves attention, hates being called out, unashamed to put someone down if it lifts her up, not a smidge of remorse in her body, no empathy. Pathological lying and manipulation, no morality, narcissistic, superiority complex. She is actually the ONLY character we’re given who has ZERO redeeming qualities (They even tried to give Gabriel that weird ‘doing it for true love’ story).

Rose - sweet, cheerful, bubbly, naïve, optimistic, feels deeply about things, open and honest. Her naïve nature means that at times she is taken for granted.

Sabrina - meek, mousy, loyal, book smart, follower. She has a warped sense of how friendship works. Sabrina is willing to do all sorts of cruel things on her friend's orders.

Nathaniel - an introvert, imaginative, artistic, quiet, shy, pan boi, observant, non-confrontational most of the time, jumps to conclusions if he feels he is being teased but will feel bad afterwards for acting negatively.

Max - gamer boi, is mathematically gifted but does not understand human interaction (can calculate exactly how fast Kim has to run but can't see that giving Chloe a gift is a bad idea?). is proud to the point of being selfish in his success (games and maths) but can still back down from his pride if it will mathematically work in his favour. He seems to try to be kind but his lack of understanding makes him stiff.

Mylene - has a crippling anxiety that comes with panic attacks (see horrificator) though she tries to be brave. Is ashamed of her fears, seems to know they are irrational, this leads to her being very sensitive about it. Once she manages to get past the initial fear she is kind, and loving, trying to see the best in people

Juleka - Has Crippling Anxiety, has panic attacks. Can not think of anything worse than having to speak in front of people. This means she is quite often passive. Due to her near-silent nature, she is often forgotten, this leads to Juleka being quite observant but also having what seems to be abandonment issues. These issues could also come from the fact that Jagged Stone is said to be their father and didn't even acknowledge them until season 4.

Ivan - is quick to anger and tends to express his negative emotions through violence, but he's been working on that (in origin's he goes to hit Kim for teasing him but is later friends with him. I call that growth).

Le Chien Kim - VERY competitive, is loud and at times abrasive. He is a jokester who likes to make people laugh but sometimes takes it too far. He will always feel sorry when he does take it too far. Kim can be hot-headed and rude at times but it stems from a place of being firm in his beliefs (even if they are dumb).

Alix - probably the most well-adjusted character on the show if I'm honest. She's impatient, pushy, stubborn, competitive, a little be of a problem with responsibility and authority but not much. Despite all of this we also see her acting patient, selflessly, unmotivated, obeying authority and taking responsibility for things. It makes it hard to hate her or like her. It also makes it hard to assess her in terms of character flaws, possible miraculous, what relationships could grow all of it. (Personally, I think this comes from the fact that she was once meant to be in a trio with Chloe and Sabrina so she's more a prop than a character in the early storylines, I really hope they flesh her out some more in season 4 the way they seem to be doing)

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