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mysaldate · 5 years

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On the topic of BSD mental issues..

Because a lot of people in this fandom just LOVE to bestow their own mental problems on characters and even go so far as to claim not a single BSD character is mentally alright, I went on a little rant to debunk this bulshit of a claim. If you’re one of those who support the “everyone is mentally ill because I said so” theory, don’t even bother reading this, please, and save us both the time.

If you do read, however, please keep in mind those are just my opinions and analysis and why I personally find the claim that everyone is mentally ill bulshit. You’re free to believe what you want but I’ve had multiple people come spurting out insults at me simply for not believing every single character is mentally diasbled.

First, our beloved ADA Atsushi - He's actually doing really well. Sure, he's not 100% ok but we were given no serious childhood trauma impacts (except for flashbacks that don't really... do anything to him mentally except for motivating him to do better which is, you know, not a sign of mental illness), he doesn't have self-destructive tendencies, he doesn't feel like he owes the society anything but he doesn't slip to nihilism either. His motivations are humane and sane and relatable. I mean, if anyone told you your friends would be in mortal danger if you stay with them, wouldn't you try to get away from them too? Dazai - Ok, Dazai is far from stable. He still handles his issues surprisingly well though and his constant suicide attempts are really played off as a joke, which is not the best way to handle them but it takes a lot of seriousness from it and kind of makes it hard to believe it's what he actually wants to do with his life. Especially since there are times where he goes out of his way to make sure he stays alive (Dead Apple being just one example). Kunikida - Arguably one of the most stable characters in the show. Some people claim he has OCD but have you ever seen an actual OCD patient? His love for schedules and hard time when they can't be kept is something that runs in my family and nobody has ever been diagnosed with OCD. People need to realize that having your life planned out is not a mental illness. Yosano - I'm a little more benevolent about Yosano, especially since she has a more psychotic side to her and she seems actually damaged by her childhood but I stiil stand my point that she is doing extremely well for someone who supposedly has a mental illness. It's almost as if the "insane" side of her was purposedly overblown for comedic purposes. Ranpo - I know a lot of people say he's autistic but I don't agree with that hc. Why? Well, I have a classmate who's not autistic and she's exactly like him. She's smart, almost genius, has great deduce skills and brilliant crime-solving abilities (tested multiple times with Black Stories or whatever that game is called in english) but she is unable to live on her own. She knows close to nothing about real life, skills used for everyday functioning and as for public transport, she only learnt how to use it recently and she's almost 19 years old. I also have an autistic friend who specifically said he'd find it insulting to hear that Ranpo is supposedly autistic. Tanizaki - I'm not sure what to say here, Tanizaki is a normal guy. Nothing special about him. He's willing to go great lengths for his little sister but I think anyone with younger siblings can relate to that. At least anyone who cares for their younger siblings. Kenji - Go on and tell me how Kenji of all people has a mental illness, I dare you. And if you pull out his cheeriness, you're obviously just too depressed to fathom that some people might actually enjoy life. Fukuzawa - Again, one of the most stable characters in the series. Say what you will but he's not unstable and his ability to stay calm at almost any situation except for when his kids are in danger is just further proof of this. Kyouka - I'd say she might have issues. My afforementioned autistic classmate pointed out that she feels autistic to him so there's that. Also her childhood visibly screwed her over. However, she's still surprisingly stable and normal despite all of that so while she might have some issues, they are greatly balanced by her strong will and natural personality. Naomi - I wouldn't say Naomi is 100% ok in the head but not to a point where I'd claim an actual mental illness. Sure, I'm not a doctor but nor is anyone who diagnoses her with whatever it is they diagnose her with. Haruno - And exactly what is wrong about Haruno? She's cute, positive, cheery, hard-working and supportive. And she gets scared in situations that invoke this. Literally NOTHING weird.

Next up is our dear Port Mafia Akutagawa - No denying it, Aku has serious issues. Again though, he's doing far better than most people with similar problems but that could just be due to him letting his frustrations out via murder. Chuuya - No issue found here. Sure, he's a little short-tempered but that's about it. A lot of people are short-tempered without being mentally ill. And he could be portrayed with some serious issues due to his origin and past. Gin - Do we even know enough about her to diagnoze her? All we know is that she's silent, a little shy and that she's always on odds with Tachihara. Make me a diagnosis from that. Higuchi - Aside from her massive crush on Aku, there's nothing weird about her. She probably picked the wrong job but she's willing to work hard anyway to earn her place there,, which is not exactly typical for people with mental illnesses. Hirotsu - STABLE PERSON. Just... what else is there to him? He is literally the voice of reason who commands the black lizard solely because he can actually keep them under control. Geez, there is literally nothing linking him to any mental problem! Kajii - This guy's got issues, no denying it. And I won't even say he could do worse because obviously he could but he's fairly close to being the insanest (is that a word?) he can get. Kouyou - Oh look, ANOTHER completely stable person. I mean, come on, she's been an executive since Dazai and Chuuya were 15, that's seven years. Clearly she couldn't hold her position if she weren't stable. Not to mention, we saw her being stable in stressing situations so. many. times. Elise - She's an ability. No comment. Mori - Yes, he has his issues. But he's the hypercompetent Mafia boss who stayed in charge for a very long time already and there's no sign of anyone overthrowing him any time soon, nor planning to because he's just a great leader, something he couldn't be if he was mentally ill. Oda - Do I even need to elaborate on this? Oda is very probably the sanest person we got, one who sees the wrongs of his past and does his best to overcome them and repent, all of which goes without him being depressed or self-loathing in the slightest. Randou - This has been talked about a lot. Randou is sensitive and impulsive and sometimes acts on emotions rather than rationallity. None of that makes him a mentally ill person. It just makes him a person, a human being we can all relate to. Ace - Ace is a selfish human being who thinks too highly of himself and is manipulative and abusive. Is that a problem? Yes, obviously. Is that a mental illness? Not necessarily and more likely no than yes. He does things for his personal gain and everything went his way for far too long for him to expect it to go any other way. And as we all know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutelly. Q - Does anyone really think Q is sane?

Now for the group that so many people dislike it’s honestly sad, the Guild Francis - Francis is, first and foremost, a very loving husband and father. He goes on this insane mission to Japan to obtain a mystical object he believes is real but never got any deffinite proof of. Is he naive? Perhaps so. And after he loses, he gets depressed and broken because he finds out his wedding ring disappeared, probably because his wife did something. That breaks him. And honestly? He has every right to break down. It's understandable and human and it does not make him mentally ill. Louisa - While yes, she is very shy and some argue she has some sort of anxiety disorder, all of this can be explained by the fact that she's practically a child. She's 18 dammit. Who could leave their home country at 18 only with an organization of older people, who also all seem very sure of themselves, while having no combat ability and nothing to really bring to the table? If she were mentally weak, there's no way she'd go looking for Francis after his fall, it's actually more likely she'd hurry back home, probably with tears and fear of being arrested if she were to stay in Japan for longer. Margaret - Name me one thing that makes you think Margaret of all people would have a mental issue. One thing. Most of her screentime is her being a vegetable. And while that is certainly a health problem, not a mental health one. Nathaniel - Hey, he was completely ok before meeting Fyodor. Being religious is not a mental health problem and f you if you say otherwise. John - Again, nothing unstable about John. He's not even that selfish, doing what he can to support his family and even picking up the remainings of the Guild to keep the people together and give them new hope because, y'know, hope is very important to people. Lovecraft - He's not even human. You can't apply human mental health logic to him. Herman - We've seen him for how much... 2 minutes total? And even from just that, he seemed like a calm and composed guy. No sign of mental problems whatsoever. Mark - He's hyper, that's what people say at least. But is he really? Kind of hard to believe when all we've seen of him is two scenes of adrenalin rush, one scene where he tries to lift the spirits of his coworkers and one scene where he just decides to go back home because this adventure is obviously over. No sign of mental illness here either. Lucy - A little more visible traumatic impact than with Atsushi and some abandonment issues, which are completely understandable and relatable. Not necessarily a mental illness. Poe - Ok so Poe doesn't feel well in company of others and he is a little psychotic when he gets too into his self-assigned role but 1) introverts are not mentally ill and 2) it's completely natural to get carried away when we witness the person we believe wronged us getting some karma back.

The one group that appeared for such a short time, yet everyone seems to love them, the Rats Fyodor - The most obvious god complex, clearly. He's not sane but he's stable so there's that. Nobody says he's ok, he's clearly not. But he's composed and smart enough to not let his issues control him. Ivan - Part of his brain is literally gone. He's not ok. he can't be. And unless part of your brain is missing too, you physically can't relate to him. Pushkin - Actually a stable, understandable character. Weak men are known through all of history to be the causes of major drama simply because their complexes over being weak lead to them finding joy in torturing the strong. It's not a mental illness, it's just bad character. Oguri - Clearly, Ogugu has issues. Call it survivor's guilt or PTSD or whatever you want, he has issues. Nobody is denying that. Still, he's doing fairly well when not desperatelly trying to seem evil.

I do not feel like doing the Hunting Dogs for the sole reason of me not liking them enough to focus on their mental states but they are pretty much lab rats, artificially enhanced humans and that alone should be enough to explain why I don’t believe in applying normal psychology to them. As for the Decay of Angels, there’s still much more to learn about them so I won’t get into that just yet. And when it comes to the governmental agents, I haven’t read the novels so I only know a bit about Ango and I honestly don’t see how anyone could think Ango has a mental illness.

I repeat again, these are my opinions, based on my experiences and what I’ve studied about mental illnesses (because believe it or not, I study about these things quite a lot). It doesn’t fit except for Tumblr romanticised versions of them and even those are iffy. You’re free to agree and disagree with all of this or with just certain parts but please don’t feel required to share your thoughts, I frankly don’t much care.

With that I bid you goodbye, at least until another thing prompts me to make a long-ass analysis almost nobody will read, nor care for.

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mr-hawkmoth · 7 years

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How The World Broke Ladybug

Music recommendation

Right now I am pretty upset with how things in this fandom have played out and I know my voice isn’t very strong so I decided to use my writing instead. This is for all of those who think it is okay to send hate mail to others and publicly ostracize them.

WARNING: If you struggle with depression or have suicidal thoughts do not read.

Marinette hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. She had tried so hard to do good. It seemed so simple. Stop the akuma and Miraculous Ladybug would repair the damage caused. It didn’t. Apparently there were some things not even Miraculous Ladybug could fix. Because of her decisions a small girl was currently lying comatose in a hospital bed. And just like that Ladybug became public enemy number 1. Hawkmoth and akuma’s, and the countless times she had saved the city were all forgotten. Instead the headlines read “Ladybug puts girl in hospital”. The backlash was worse than Marinette could ever imagine. People were saying she didn’t really care for the people or the city but rather cared only about the glory. They called her names. They slandered Ladybug’s name. All of them screaming outrage. All of them pointing out alternative ways to have handled the situation. Marinette wondered why she couldn’t have handled things better why she couldn’t of been able to save the girl and stop the akuma. But in the heat of battle you aren’t thinking clearly. There is no long thought out processes only you and the adrenaline pumping through your veins. You don’t have time to think, only to act. Marinette made her choice, and it had been the wrong one.

Marinette checked the news daily for updates of the girls health only to be bombarded with Ladybug hate. The city hated her, even Alya’s blog had gone silent. Alya hadn’t posted a single thing since the incident and her comments section was cluttered with people demoralizing and bashing Ladybug for her actions. But none of that compared to what happened when news of the girls condition was finally updated.

The girl had died.

The city was in an uproar. If Ladybug showed her face in Paris again she worried there might be deadly consequences. As it was groups of youth were gathering together to traipse across the streets of Paris in a witch hunt for Ladybug. People were screaming that Ladybug was a murderer. They called her heartless, vile, disgusting, a child abuser, a cold blooded killer, a bitch, a stupid kid, an idiot, a dumb ass, someone undeserving of her power, a villain, a scoundrel, and a witch.

But none of this compared to the guilt which Marinette felt over the poor girl’s death. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. In the moment it had seemed like the best decision. She had thought she knew what she was doing, that she could make things okay again. She was so very wrong. The words wore down on her. They were right. This was all her fault.

Marinette’s head pounded. Hot tears fell down Marinette’s cheeks in an endless stream. Her throat closed up making it hard to breath. Her chest felt tight. She hyperventilated, eyes burning as she scrolled through the thousands of messages and and articles throughout the news. All of them calling for blood, all of them hating her for what she had done. She had felt guilty enough for what she’d done. Was all this necessary? It was a mistake. She couldn’t take it back. She wished she could take it all back. Puffy eyes and sore body moved away from the computer. Marinette tried to sniff but was so congested the attempt was useless. She let her body fall onto her bed burying herself in her pillow as she curled her body into the fetal position. If only she had been better. If only she had made a different choice. If only…

Marinette decided that day she would not look at the computer. She would not read the hate mail that awaited beyond the screen. Instead Marinette would just be Marinette. She would let herself forget about her alter ego for a little while because for now the only thing holding her together was the fact that she could still be Marinette without the threat of social annexation. At least that’s what Marinette had thought when she arrived at school that morning.

“Hey girl you look awful! What happened to you?” Alya asked as Marinette took her seat beside her.

“Couldn’t sleep last night. Too much on my mind,” Marinette sighed. Alya nodded in understanding.

“So you heard what happened to the little girl then? The city is hosting a candle light vigil tonight by the Eiffel Tower,” Alya said solemnly. Marinette nodded not trusting her own voice. Her throat felt tight and her eyes stung. She blinked until the urge to cry left her. “I was thinking about going, you want to come with?” Alya asked. Before Marinette could open her mouth to respond the door to the classroom burst open and in came Chloe and Sabrina much too chipper in the wake of such a tragedy. Chloe and Sabrina stood int he center of the room. Chloe shot a wicked look Marinette’s way.

“I have an announcement to make!” Chloe’s voice grew louder until all eyes were on her. Marinette’s stomach clenched uneasily. She had a bad feeling about this. “After what has happened in our city I think it is only right that the perpetrator of the crime should be punished for it,” Chloe began.

“Except no one knows who Ladybug is in case you’ve forgotten that Chloe,” Kim sneered.

“Au contrair, Sabrina, you can send it now,” Chloe said smugly. Sabrina looked up devilishly at Marinette before directing her attention to her phone where she quickly sent out a message. Everyone’s phone’s began going off at once. Marinette noticed with a heavy heart that Alya’s phone no longer held the Ladybug charm. The class turned their attention to their phones. Then all eyes trained on Marinette. Some filled with hatred, some with shock, and some with disappointment.

“Marinette, why didn't you tell me?” Alya whispered turning her phone for Marinette to see. On the screen was an awkwardly angled photograph of Marinette mid transformation. And now everyone knew her secret. Her eyes stung as her stomach twisted uncomfortably. Her breathing became shallow as panic swept through her. Her heart hammered erratically in her chest. She knit her brows together, tears beginning to fill her eyes.

All at once everyone began shouting. Alya was asking why she didn’t tell her. Others were asking her why she didn’t save the girl. Chloe stood by the sidelines with Sabrina arms crossed, hipped popped, smiling victoriously. Sabrina shouted out the words murderer, and killer. Someone called her a child abuser. Someone screamed about how stupid she was. Someone else was calling her a fuck up. Max was listing off all the ways she could have saved the girl but was too stupid to think of. All of this coming at her in loud shouts all jumbled together words piercing through her chest. All at once all screaming. All so loud until it was just a single monotonous shouting noise in her head. Her vision pulsed her surroundings warped. She felt as though she were choking. She gulped down air but her lungs didn’t seem to be satisfied with it. She couldn’t get enough oxygen. Her head was splitting open with the throbbing of a headache. Her ears were ringing with a rush of sound. Her vision was moving and blurring pulsing in and out to the sound of the rushing waters inside her ears. Marinette tried to stand. She needed to leave. She couldn’t stay here. Tears fell relentlessly from her eyes. Her legs shook beneath her weight. A step forward. The room spun. She fell to her hands and knees. They were surrounding her now all shouting angry hurtful words down at her, each one pushing her closer and closer to the edge of a breakdown. Hot tears. Rushing in her ears. Blurred vision. She still couldn’t breath. She was hyperventilating now, chest heaving rapidly but with little alleviation. All of them shouted at her, their merciless cries of outrage and disgust apparent in their voices and in their faces. Marinette finally had the strength to pull her head up. Beyond the crowd surrounding her she could see Adrien sitting in his seat looking at Marinette with hurt and disappointment. This was all too much. Marinette shoved herself onto her feet stumbling past her classmates. Sobs wracking through her body, hiccups interrupting her shallow breaths. Her feet carried her uncertainly, the world seemed to turn and twist around her. She couldn’t hear anything it was all a rush of white noise roaring in her ears. She couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet. It didn’t seem real like the world didn’t actually exist around her. She fell again and again as she struggled to make it down the hallway. Hands and knees stinging numbly as she fumbled her way out of the school.

She didn’t know how long it took her to make it home. It could have been seconds or it could have been hours. She wasn’t sure. Once inside she collapsed onto the floor sobs racking violently through her body. She couldn’t breathe. Her body felt as if it were falling apart her mind ripping in all different directions and her heart feeling as though it were breaking inside her chest. Her body burned red hot, her skin melting against bone. Sharp pain building behind her eyes and nose. Head splitting. Eyes so full of pressure it feels they might pop.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck!

Marinette tried desperately to control her ragged breath to no avail. Her body shook. She no longer had control over her body. Her jaw clenched and unclenched tightly. Her phone buzzed endlessly in her pocket. With shaking hands she brought her phone out in front up her. There were messages and voicemails and notifications. Links to articles exposing her identity to the world. Articles slandering her, inhumanizing her, calling for blood, calling for justice. Some of the messages were pictures of the dead girl with the attached words ‘This is all your fault,’. She had voicemails from people crying that she was a murderer, that she should be ashamed, that she deserved to be the one in the casket. People told her that they wished she was dead instead. That she deserved to be in prison. That they wanted to put her in the hospital. People told her she was wrong. She chose to kill the girl is what they said. They told her she was only in this for the glory. They told her she wasn’t a hero. They told her she wasn’t allowed to be a hero anymore that no one wanted her to be one. One man said he would rather die than be saved by her ego inflating heroics. Her phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. It kept going off and dinging with thousands of notifications as word of her identity spread. Marinette ran her hands through her hair raking her fingers over her scalp and ripping at her hair in chunks. She choked down a scream as her throat tightened. Her phone dinged and beeped erratically as her email, texts, phone calls, social media all exploded with messages from the citizens of Paris calling for her to be taken down and brought to justice, calling her a murderer, telling her how truly disgusting and vile they all found her. Marinette couldn’t take it. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t breathe. Her pulse drummed against her ears. Tears blurred her vision.

Her parents were knocking at the door. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t face them! She screamed at them to go away! Screamed at them to leave her alone for a little while, for everyone to leave her alone for a little while. Her parents respected her wishes but the damn phone wouldn’t stop beeping. It kept going off in a continual state of noise. Marinette was losing her mind. She pulled out her hair. She screamed until her face was purple. She screamed and screamed. And then she couldn’t breathe again and she took in shallow ragged breaths chest rising rapidly heart beat moving too quickly in her chest for her little body to keep up. Panic and paranoia, and terror were seizing her body and mind. She would never be able to show her face again. Not as Marinette. Not as Ladybug. She was ruined. The worst part however was that she was beginning to believe that they all were right. They all had a point. She could have prevented this if she had just been a little bit smarter, a little bit faster. She was the reason the girl died. She was a murderer. They were right. She deserved punishment. And her psychological torture didn’t quite seem to be punishment enough for them. Marinette couldn’t take it. She couldn’t do this. She was a monster and she needed to be stopped they were right. But she couldn’t give herself to the mercy of a blood thirsty city. She paced around the room panting loudly as she pulled at her pigtails. Face damp with tears and sweat. Marinette rushed forward and began to push her dresser with extreme effort to cover the trap door that led down into her house. Body sticky and mind racing and hysteric she rushed to a desk drawer. She spilled its contents on the floor hands shaking as they grabbed a bottle.

It was a bottle filled with sleep medication that she had never bothered taking, they were given to her about a year ago when she broke her arm. They were supposed to help her sleep through the pain at night. Marinette fumbled to open the bottle She grabbed the glass of water that had been sitting on her desk since the night before and proceeded to take several mouthfuls of pills until only a few remained and the water was gone. Marinette curled up into a ball on the floor tears still spilling down her cheeks as her phone continued blaring out notifications of hate. She closed her eyes, body shaking. This will all be over soon, this will all be over soon, She repeated to herself until her mind began to drift off into unconsciousness.

By the time Chat Noir came rapping on her door she was already gone.

This is a consequence of what unkind words can do to someone.

If you’re angry about what I’ve done here remember that Marinette is only a fictional character. Those being bullied and receiving hate mail are real people.

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mahouproject-one · 5 years

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Reaching New Heights || Shinobu K. || Re: a lot? || ATTN: Reiko + Anyone Who Investigated Seiji

[tw: suicide, self-depreciation, heart/vein trauma]

It looks like the koi clue was a bust. Damn, he was hoping that would’ve been the final strike. His already flimsy evidence was tearing at the seams. Shinobu’s sulking was interrupted by Tsukuyomi moving slightly as if trying to become the shorter boy’s shield. Shit. Shinobu squeezed Tsukuyomi’s hand, trying to nudge the other behind him.

“Tsuku— It’s just a punch… I can take it, I’ve been hit before, so don't— I don’t want you to get hurt— C'mon, Tsuku—”

His whining was just as soft in return. The boy would be lying if he had no underlying motive for the punch. To him, it wasn’t just getting even. Even if Kris was an inconsiderate jackass, what Shin said was out of line. Maybe it was because he’d made a personal rule to never go that far, even while working or dealing with unfriendly private messages. It was a horrible thing to say that needed some kind of retribution. So if Kris punched him, justice would be served and Shinobu would feel better about himself. Easy, but Kris had other plans in mind.

“…”

The manager’s jaw tightened. Ah yes, the time where everyone ganged up on him over a fleeting comment. He could still remember the furious looks the majority of the classmates gave him. Shinobu couldn’t see their grief at the time, blinded by sleepless delirium and paranoia. Even if the fear of the trial room had faded, he still couldn’t bear to stand at his podium alone. He once again squeezed Tsukuyomi’s hand to comfort himself.

“I still haven’t gotten an apology from anyone else about that trial. Pretty sure you all feel bad about it, but everyone just ignoring it still makes my blood boil sometimes. There was a lot of stuff going through my mind at that time and I didn’t trust anyone back then. Hell, I thought Shiba was talking shit behind my back. Shiba, of all people. It was fucking stupid. I was fucking stupid.”

He inhaled sharply.

“Everyone seemed like a killer in the making. One false move and I wouldn’t be going home. The knife was a way to make myself feel a little more safe I guess. I was too damn scared to actually do shit with it though; if you’d told me to stab you, I would’ve hauled ass. Or take myself out with it before you did anything. Thought I was in one of the nightmares the motive cooked up and figured a knife was better than being drowned again. Never was good in a crisis.” A pause. “I should’ve kept my mouth shut. During the trial, I mean. I knew jack shit, but I just thought that… I dunno, I’d piece everything together and people’d like me. Think I was cool or somethin’. Some dumb shit like that. Instead, I made things worse and a fuck ton of people died. So… I’m sorry. For the knife thing and the mistrial thing.”

Shinobu fidgeted, staring a hole at the floor. There was still a semblance of bitterness, that he was a victim in that entire shit show. Maybe he really did something wrong and he just didn’t understand? All he could think of was not staying quiet, but maybe he did something else wrong. The boy focused on the almost knife fight, trying to find some wrong in it. He was defending himself, wasn’t he? It wasn’t bad to be scared of dying, right? His thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, forcing him to focus on something else. The knife hitting the podium was a starting point at least. Shinobu briefly wondered what Kris would’ve done had the knife missed, before Takako opened her mouth. Oh boy, here we go.

“‘Vote for the person you hate the most’, huh? You got balls saying that after maiming two people and killing one.” Granted, he was assuming the second part. Takako was the last person to be with Joon, so she was the killer. That was his logic, anyway. “We only got two shots at this, remember? We can’t just keep doing trials until we get it right. And if we mess up both of ‘em, we’re stuck here playing Casper and Friends for all eternity. Unlife’s just like life only worse. It’s gonna get boring real quick.”

It was an appeal to one of the things Shinobu knew about the blogger: her short attention span. Also, apparently Miyu’s a mother now. Huh. Regardless, he addressed the group once again.

“We came into this really under-prepared. Both Imai and Ueno are right; all we got are vague clues and speculation. I don’t know what’ll happen if we mistrial, but I’m assuming the punishment will be random, just like with the murder trials. I think the best we could do is all agree on one of the suspects. In other words, a fucking random guess on the traitor based on what we have. I hate it, I hate that we’ve wasted one of these things over nothing, but I have no idea what to do. We’re all tired, some of us need to grieve, and none of us want to damn our friends with little evidence. And for fuck’s sake, could some of you lay off Ueno just this one time? He needs some time alone and this trial is the one thing that’s between him and peace 'n quiet. He’s not a fucking sociopath for wanting to get this shit over with. Man’s depressed, give him a break. Fuck.”

He shot an angry look towards Rosenburg and Shiba, the latter getting an especially hurt glare. Shin was looking forward to seeing the model again, but they ruined it with their outburst. He’d forgotten that Shiba probably had no idea about the whole Joon situation, given that they’d died a little before the Genbu did.

Shin also didn’t really want to hear the details about Seiji’s death so bluntly, but here we are. Twenty minutes of desperation before bleeding out… The thought sent chills down his spine. Mi-ke… also didn’t help. He was glad to see them, but they did make a few points. The lounge would’ve been one of those cat cafes had Mi-ke been the traitor, he bet. Shinobu wasn’t sure if they should trust those words, but why not. It’s not like there was anything better to go off on. They just needed some concrete evidence, a baseline or something. Following Mi-ke’s gaze, his thoughts drifted back to Seiji and with it an idea popped in his head.

“The aorta’s a vein right around here, yeah?” He motioned up and down his torso, vaguely understanding basic anatomy. “Eigawa-san, or anybody, did you check the wound on him? Like the angle of it, and where it was? Maybe we could see how tall the killer was? Ohara-san’s like… 5'11”, six feet tall, right?“

God he hoped he was on the right track. He was desperate.

#mahouichi #chrono #chapter five #mm trial #shinobu k #submission #suicide cw//#self depreciation cw//#heart trauma cw//#vein trauma cw//

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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The Struggle to Predictand PreventToxic Masculinity

Terrie Moffitt has been trying to figure out why men are terrible for more than 25 years. Or, to calibrate: Why some men are really terrible—violent, criminal, dangerous—but most men are not. And, while she’s at it, how to tell which man is going to become which.

A small number of people are responsible for the vast majority of crimes. Many of those people display textbook “antisocial behavior”—technically, a serious disregard for other people’s rights—as adolescents. The shape of the problem is called the age-crime curve, arrests plotted against the age of the offender. It looks like a shark’s dorsal fin, spiking in the teenage years and then long-tailing off to the left.

In 1992, Moffitt, now a psychologist at Duke University, pitched an explanation for that shape: The curve covers two separate groups. Most people don’t do bad things. Some people only do them as teenagers. And a very small number start doing them as toddlers and keep doing them until they go to prison or die. Her paper became a key hypothesis in psychology, criminology, and sociology, cited thousands of times.

In a review article in Nature Human Behaviour this week, Moffitt takes a ride through two decades of attempts to validate the taxonomy. Not for girls, Moffitt writes, because even though she studies both sexes, “findings have not reached consensus.” But for boys and men? Oh yeah.

To be clear, Moffitt isn’t trying to develop a toxicology of toxic masculinity here. As a researcher she’s interested in the interactions of genes and environment, and the reasons some delinquent children—but not all—turn into crime-committing adults. That’s a big enough project. But at this exact cultural moment, with women of the #MeToo movement calling sexual harassers and abusers to account just as mass shootings feel as if they’ve become a permanent recurring event—and when almost every mass shooter, up to and including the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has been a man—I’m inclined to try to find explanations anywhere that seems plausible. US women are more likely to be killed by partners than anyone else. Men commit the vast majority of crimes in the US. So it’s worth querying Moffitt’s taxonomy to see if it offers any order to that chaos, even if it wasn’t built for it.

“Grown-ups who use aggression, intimidation, and force to get what they want have invariably been pushing other people around since their very early childhood,” Moffitt says via email from a rural vacation in New Zealand. “Their mothers report they were difficult babies, nursery day-care workers say they are difficult to control, and when all the other kids give up hitting and settle in as primary school pupils, teachers say they don’t. Their record of violating the rights of others begins surprisingly early, and goes forward from there.”

So if you could identify those kids then, maybe you could make things better later? Of course, things are way more complicated than that.

Since that 1993 paper, hundreds of studies have tested pieces of Moffitt’s idea. Moffitt herself has worked on a few prospective studies, following kids through life to see if they fall into her categories, and then trying to figure out why.

For example, she worked with the Dunedin Study, which followed health outcomes for more than 1,000 boys and girls in New Zealand starting in the early 1970s. Papers published from the data have included looks at marijuana use, physical and mental health, and psychological outcomes. Moffitt and her colleagues found that about a quarter of the males in the study fit the criteria she’d laid out for “adolescence limited” antisociability; they’re fine until they hit their teens, then they do all sorts of bad stuff, and then they stop. And 10 percent were “life-course persistent”—they have trouble as children, and it doesn’t stop. As adolescents, all had about the same rates of bad conduct.

But as children, the LCP boys scored much higher on a set of specific risks. Their mothers were younger. They tended to have been disciplined more harshly, and have experienced more family strife as kids. They scored lower on reading, vocabulary, and memory tests, and had a lower resting heart rate—some researchers think that people feel lower heart rates as discomfort and undertake riskier behaviors in pursuit of the adrenaline highs that’ll even them out. “LCP boys were impulsive, hostile, alienated, suspicious, cynical, and callous and cold toward others,” Moffitt writes of the Dunedin subjects in her Nature Human Behaviour article. As adults, “they self-reported excess violence toward partners and children.” They had worse physical and mental health in their 30s, were more likely to be incarcerated, and were more likely to attempt suicide.

Other studies have found much the same thing. A small number of identifiable boys turn into rotten, violent, unhappy men.

Could Moffitt’s taxonomy account for sexual harassers and abusers? In one sense, it seems unlikely: Her distinction explicitly says by adulthood there should only be a small number of bad actors, yet one of the lessons of #MeToo has been that every woman, it seems, has experienced some form of harassment.

Meta-analyses of the incidence of workplace sexual harassment vary in their outcomes, but a large-scale one from 2003 that covered 86,000 women reported that 56 percent experienced “potentially harassing” behaviors and 24 percent had definitely been harassed. Other studies get similar results.

But as pollsters say, check the cross-tabs. Harassment has sub-categories. Many—maybe most—women experience the gamut of harassing behaviors, but sub-categories like sexual coercion (being forced to have sex as a quid pro quo or to avoid negative consequences) or outright assault are rarer than basic institutional sexism and jerky, inappropriate comments. “What women are more likely to experience is everyday sexist behavior and hostility, the things we would describe as gender harassment,” says John Pryor, a psychologist at Illinois State University who studies harassment.

Obviously, any number greater than zero here is too high. And studies of prevalence can’t tell you if so many women are affected because all men harass at some low, constant ebb or few men do it, like, all the time. Judging by reports of accusations, the same super-creepy men who plan out sexual coercion may also impulsively grope and assault women. Those kind of behaviors, combined with the cases where many more accusers come forward after the first one, seem to me to jibe with the life-course persistent idea. “Sometimes people get caught for the first time as an adult, but if we delve into their history, the behavior has been there all along,” Moffitt says. “Violating the rights of others is virtually always a life-long lifestyle and an integral part of a person’s personality development.”

That means it’s worth digging into people’s histories. Whisper networks have been the de facto means of protecting women in the workplace; the taxonomy provides an intellectual framework for giving them a louder voice, because it suggests that men with a history of harassment and abuse probably also have a future of it.

Now, some writers have used the idea of toxic masculinity to draw a line between harassment, abuse, and mass shootings. They’re violent, and the perpetrators tend to be men. But here, Moffitt’s taxonomy may be less applicable.

Despite what the past few years have felt like, mass shootings are infrequent. And many mass shooters end up committing suicide or being killed themselves, so science on them is scant. “Mass shootings are such astonishingly rare, idiosyncratic, and multicausal events that it is impossible to explain why one individual decides to shoot his or her classmates, coworkers, or strangers and another does not,” write Benjamin Winegard and Christopher Ferguson in their chapter of The Wiley Handbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings.

That said, researchers have found a few commonalities. The shooters are often suicidal, or more precisely have stopped caring whether they live or die, says Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama. Sometimes they’re seeking fame and attention. And they share a sense that they themselves are victims. “That’s how they justify attacking others,” Lankford says. “Sometimes the perceptions are based in reality—I was bullied, or whatever—but sometimes they can be exacerbated by mental health problems or personality characteristics.”

Though reports on mass shooters often say that more than half of them are also domestic abusers, that number needs some unpacking. People have lumped together mass shootings of families—domestic by definition—with public mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas, or school shootings. Disaggregate the public active shooters from the familicides and the number of shooters with histories of domestic abuse goes down. (Of course, that doesn’t change preposterously high number of abused women murdered by their partners outside of mass shooting events.)

What may really tip the mass shooter profile away from Moffitt’s taxonomy, though, is that people in the life-course persistent cohort do uncontrolled, crazy stuff all the time. Yes, some mass shooters have a history of encounters with law enforcement, let’s say. But some don’t. Mass shootings are, characteristically, highly planned events. “I’m not saying it’s impossible to be a mass shooter and have poor impulse control, but if you have poor impulse control you won’t be able to go for 12 months of planning an attack without ending up in jail first,” Lankford says.

Moffitt isn’t trying to build a unified field theory of the deadly patriarchy. When I suggest that the societal structures that keep men in power relative to women, generally, might explain the behavior of her LCP cohort, she disagrees. “If sexual harassment and mass shootings were the result of cultural patriarchy and societal expectations for male behavior, all men would be doing it all the time,” Moffitt says. “Even though media attention creates the impression that these forms of aggression are highly prevalent and all around us, they are nevertheless still extremely rare. Most men are trustworthy, good, and sensible.”

She and her colleagues continue to look for hard markers for violence or lack of impulse control, genes or neurobiological anomalies. (A form of the gene that codes for a neurotransmitter called monoamine oxidase inhibitor A might give some kids protection against lifelong effects of maltreatment, she and her team have found. By implication not having that polymorphism, then, could predispose a child raised under adverse circumstances to psychopathology as an adult.) Similarly, nobody yet knows what digital-native kids in either cohort will do when they move their bad behavior online. One might speculate that it looks a lot like GamerGate and 4chan, though that sociological and psychological work is still in early days.

But for now, Moffitt and her co-workers have identified risk factors and childhood conditions that seem to create these bad behaviors, or allow them to flourish. That’s the good news. “We know a lifestyle of aggression and intimidation toward others starts so young,” Moffitt says. “It could be preventable.”

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-struggle-to-predictand-preventtoxic-masculinity/

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The Struggle to Predictand PreventToxic Masculinity

So if you could identify those kids then, maybe you could make things better later? Of course, things are way more complicated than that.

Other studies have found much the same thing. A small number of identifiable boys turn into rotten, violent, unhappy men.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-struggle-to-predictand-preventtoxic-masculinity/

from Viral News HQ https://ift.tt/2qVBXpg via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

0 notes