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#that might be actually related to my mental health problems..

imaginarylungfish · 3 months

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we don't want izuku to be quirkless in the end blah blah blah, yeah i know. same.... but also, it could be cool.

imagine he still becomes a great hero, but quirkless? he's the first quirkless hero? and maybe that message is not one for mha to tackle, but hear me out:

what if his arc is him wanting so badly to have a quirk, getting one, learning that being a hero is inherent to himself and not attached to his quirk/abilities, giving his quirk up, AND still being a great hero? wouldn't that be awesome?!

i think that type of character trajectory is unique and interesting in and of itself. but i also know my personal experiences in life contribute to why i think it's cool. i became sick and chronically ill in my late-teens/early-twenties. i lost my health. over the past 5 years, i've regained a lot of it, but i'm not 100% better (and most likely will never be). i've had to go through the arduous process of accepting my physical limits through many iterations of functionality yet learning when i was actually being held back by mental limits/fears and how to push past those.

i relate to izuku's character on many levels: wanting so badly to have something i don't, trying so hard despite not having that thing, and getting that thing you wished so badly for seemingly out of the blue (for me, it was a medication that drastically improved my health). i also relate to his self-destructiveness in name of a goal and sense of (sometimes unwanted) martyrdom.

but i was always a little disappointed throughout the series in the fact that izuku's big problem at the beginning was just seemingly resolved by him getting his quirk from all might. does he view his quirkless self as worthy as his OFA self? we don't know. (do i view my sick self as worthy as my "healthy" self? i don't know.)

so, i just think, if izuku loses his quirk, there is more room for growth for him. in other words, he becomes more interesting. and i get it, this is a shonen manga, it's ending soon, and it's supposed to have an inspiring message (i assume). so maybe it ending with him being quirkless is not something that belongs in this category of manga/anime. but if any series can break the mold, isn't it mha?

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ourflagmeansgayrights · 8 months

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ok so like objectively yes ed did things wrong but not only do i personally feel no negative emotions about any of that, i swear it would make more sense tonally with the rest of the show to NOT make a huge chunk of s2 be about ed facing the consequences for and redeeming himself from the marooning/pushing lucius overboard/izzy toe thing. like if im wrong i’m wrong and it’s whatever but i really really think the focus will be more on ed’s internal emotional state and how his choices were informed by trauma and how he’s going to learn to heal more than it’s gonna be like, Ed Learns It’s Wrong To Maroon People And Force Feed People Their Own Toes. like if anything i think it’ll be Ed Learns That He Deserves To Be Happy And He Also Realizes That Marooning People And Force Feeding People Their Own Toes Is An Unhealthy Coping Skill That Negatively Affects His Mental Health And He Learns New, Healthier Coping Strategies. like i think the focus of coming out of the kraken era is going to be almost entirely on ed’s feelings, and any mention of how his actions harmed the rest of the cast will be brief and/or it’ll primarily be played for comedy

which yes irl this would kinda suck to have some guy respond to getting his heart broken (and other stuff) by killing and maiming people and then have his whole journey of self-discovery be solely abt him and not any of the people he’s hurt. HOWEVER a biiiiiig part of the humor of the show is that the characters are experiencing some very real and very relatable self-esteem issues and insecurities and vulnerabilities, and all of that is placed on a backdrop of comedically gratuitous pirate violence. like this is a romcom and ed is basically going through the classic emotional beats of the romcom heroine getting her heart broken and eating a whole tub of ice cream and crying in her room for days before becoming cold and distant and “love is dead” edgy, only the joke is that bc he’s a pirate his “love is dead” romcom era includes some people actually literally dying. izzy and the crew all just happen to be in the blast radius for this joke, and while we as fans might love and care abt those characters too, the plain fact is that ed and stede are the main characters and the other characters’s feelings or storylines or internal motivations simply do not matter nearly as much to the show as theirs (with the exception of maybe jim, and also maybe olu depending on how s2 goes). and that’s literally just how romcoms work. this sort of “protagonist bias” is like, a core part of this kind of story.

and there’s nothing wrong with not vibing with the story because of that. if season two comes and goes and you aren’t happy with how the show handled the consequences of ed’s actions in e10 that’s fine, nobody has to feel any specific way about this show. but if i’m right and this is how s2 plays out and some of y’all don’t like this, the problem is not that ofmd is bad. the problem is just that this is not the story you wanted or expected to be told.

i DO think, tho, that there’s something very powerful abt a character like this being a queer indigenous man. he’s a gay romcom protagonist and narratively speaking his feelings trump all. this is a queer romcom that uses gratuitous slapstick violence as a punchline and where the queer main characters are allowed to get violent and unhinged about their feelings, and at the end of the day they ultimately get a pass bc it’s a gay romcom and the show is about them. like literally that description itself is more than i could’ve ever dreamed of from any tv show ever, and THEN you’re telling me that one of the main characters is indigenous???? it’s been a year and a half and s2 is right around the corner and i swear to god i still can’t believe this show actually exists. we don’t GET shows like this, we don’t GET characters like this. ed teach is such a fucking blessing of a character and i love him with all my heart.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd meta #ofmd s2 #ofmd speculation #ofmd s2 speculation #edward teach #ed teach #edward teach born on a beach #s2 predictions #txt #meta #mine #og #this is why im unironically on team “ed did nothing wrong”#the show gives us very realistic depictions of emotional trauma #and slapstick looney toons depictions of physical trauma

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wawawawawawawawawawawawawa · 6 days

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the amount of times i Do This must be a joke at this point but here i am. doing it once more. izaya's highschool videogame SCREAMS "i just found out i have aspd and i am NOT taking it well." and i shall explain how

a preface: wrt "how did he know in high school, don't you have to be 18?" you do.... with the dsm guidelines. japan, iirc, uses a conbination of the dsm and icd to diagnose mental illnesses, and the age stipulation isn't in the icd. also, shinra could have told him, and lbr shinra wouldnt care about strictly adhering to the age thing

anyway i went thru and highlighted different parts of the videogame's text, so i can easier explain which part means what. i'll primarily be focusing on the chronic boredom associated with aspd- since izaya's game deals with patience, most musings in it will be related to that boredom. but the boredom, especially izaya's, IS important, as its the boredom that drives him to do what he does. to be what he is.

(shoutout to miyukiwinter for the scan)

so... the red bit. this relates to izaya's worldview of the need to keep evolving to escape the mundane, and it not mattering if you aim high or low. now at this point, izaya was solidly in some shady shit and clearly on the path of the low aim. but the thing is, about aspd... the boredom is all consuming. you'll do ANYTHING to not be bored. i've seen people say they developed substance abuse problems to escape the boredom, and i confess... i've done it too. it truly is THAT bad

i say all this because... izaya will never be able to stop going lower, and lower, and lower. he's fated to fall forever. maybe he wouldve been able to brush his behavior off as teenage craziness, but with a diagnosis like aspd it becomes increadingly obvious that there is no "oh, i'll mellow out once i reach my 20s." it's not going to happen, at least, not without great effort. and lets be real, nobody has any faith in aspd's recovery rates, less so in the early 2010s, so izaya upon diagnosis would see NO FUTURE for himself. no escape from the cycle. he's trapped.

the blue bits are a bit more vauge, but the undertainty turning to loss evokes the next stage after the initial shock of diagnosis: grief. and make no mistake, there IS a grieving process with mental health diagnoses. you go from being shocked and scared, to being depressed and numb.

but there's... another layer to this, with aspd. you see it with cluster b disorders in general, but aspd is HUGE in the pop culture zeitgeist

the layer is, the idea that People Like That don't feel emotions. that any emotional display is false and an explicit ploy to mainpulate someone

and when this inevitably ends up untrue, you might start to feel... odd... about feeling those emotions people say you can't feel. and one of the biggest emotions aspd gets that with, is fear and by extension, anxiety.

some aspd people genuinely do feel reduced fear! but it's far from being a diagnostic criteria, and aspd can actually be comorbid with anxiety disorders. but scientific facts and wider culture rarely match up, so the idea persists

so izaya might have started to think.... was he ever truly anxious? or worried? was he really more rotten than people thought; was he just mainpulating people the whole time? does he really not feel anxiety? was his nervousness over things like shinra leaving him or hell, this diagnosis, rendered null and void?

and then we reach the teal portion.... despair

(just a sidenote, tumblr has no teal color option so it'll just be blue)

in this sense, "the hole" refers to the endless downward spiral, and his diagnosis- but not just having it. no, "the hole" most likely refers to the moment izaya developed it in the first place.

who are you, if you thought you were in control your whole life, but you found out that the reason you do the things you do were because of foeces beyond your control? who are you now, having a label you know will cause everyone to see you as nothing but a stereotype?

why was he still alive, suffering like this? what point is it to be alive, controlled by something you can't fight, forced to make your life worse and worse and worse, until you die young?

so now what? who did this to him?

in the game, the hatred is towards "the player." and honestly this could have multiple different meanings when applied to izaya's own life

does he hate god? was he raised religious, his father being a christian, and was this what made him lose faith? what loving god would condemn someone to suffer like this?

does he hate his parents? after all, it was their genetics that passed this down, their upbringing that nurtured it, their neglect that made him the way he was. is it their fault?

or... does he hate himself, for being the way that he is? for having it in the first place, for not being able to overcome it, for having such a bad reaction to it?

for being too cowardly to kill himself?

which brings us to the final segment. awareness.

he says outright, the game is depicting the player's life. in the game itself, this ties into his mockery of players, but in a meta sense, it could be a hidden admission that it's depicting his life

especially the talk of meaningless games- fooling around with nakura creating small gangs, betting pools, and his eventual adult pastimes of messing with people. is his life enriched? no, it's merely occupied, and he knows it. he might have repressed it as an adult, but here, in high school, at this moment, he knows.

and if he can never truly alleviate his boredom, never truly be fufilled, then he can act like he's in control all he wants, but he's no better than a man falling in a hole.

#izaya orihara #orihara izaya #durarara #durarara side stories #AYYYYYY WE R SO BACK #im still v stressed about moving BUT i couldnt resist i HAD to write smth about this #i havent had the money to get the side stories book!!! 😭😭#all my money is going towards movingggg and bills #hashtag still open for commissions #waposts

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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 8 months

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my dysphoria has been very bad recently and i have found it very difficult to do things like showering, changing and sleeping especially. ive been over wearing my binder a lot because i find it very difficult to bring myself to take it off, and i keep wearing it for 30+ hours at a time which i know is bad but i currently have no other alternative and not wearing one feels worse than the pain i get by overwearing. i hate wearing sports bras and ive run out of transtape, i have ordered more but it probably won’t be coming for another couple of weeks. i don’t know what to do because i don’t want to damage my body severely, is there anything else i can do?

Lee says:

As you know, wearing a binder for extended periods can lead to severe health issues, including respiratory problems, rib fractures, and skin conditions.

When you feel like doing something that's harming you physically is your only option to cope because your dysphoria is that intense, you should look into getting a therapist.

Frequently binding for 30+ hours isn't a sustainable option and finding alternative coping strategies will be easier with professional help to help you deal with what you're doing through.

Two posts that might help with your specific questions are Staying clean and coping with shower-related dysphoria and Dysphoria when you have to sleep and those two posts really cover most of what I have to say on those subjects so I won't reinvent the wheel by typing the same thing but I encourage you to read both links.

Apart from that, in the next couple of weeks as you wait for your TransTape to arrive (And start the process of seeking a therapist!) here are some strategies you can try doing:

1. Layered Clothing:

Wearing loose, layered clothing can help obscure the chest area. Consider wearing baggy shirts, jackets, or vests to help reduce the visibility of your chest.

Luckily it's fall time (at least here in the East Coast) so it's starting to get a little bit cooler, some days, and I wear a sweater (at work) or sweatshirt (when at home) like 100% of the time just because I'm always cold and it's also an Autistic sensory friendly thing for me too.

See more: Body neutrality

2. Distraction Techniques:

Engage in activities that take your mind off your dysphoria. This could be reading, drawing, journaling, listening to music, watching movies or TV, or any other hobby or activity that you enjoy and find absorbing.

Engage in self-care activities that actually make you feel good about yourself, not just doomscrolling social media. And for those times when you are on social media, if you're currently following anyone who makes you stressed/unhappy, stop following them. It's your feed and you're in charge!

But if you find that it's hard to do the necessary activities of everyday living because you find yourself spending most of your time engaging in distraction techniques, and you're falling behind on homework/work, that's another sign that you need additional support from a mental health professional.

3. Grounding Techniques:

Practicing mindfulness can help you stay present and reduce distressing thoughts, but the kind of nebulous meditation stuff never worked well for my ADHD brain.

Guided meditation

15 meditation tips

How to do progressive muscle relaxation

Body scan relaxation exercise

Mindfulness skills and worksheets masterpost

Imagery

Imagery self-help

Relaxation

Relaxation audio

Safe-place visualization

I found specific things like grounding exercises, like the "5-4-3-2-1" technique (identifying five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste), can help divert your attention from dysphoric feelings if you're having a Moment. This type of strategy is useful when you start to notice yourself spiraling to try and re-center yourself.

Soothing grounding exercise

Physical grounding exercise

Mental grounding exercise

Grounding techniques

How to make a grounding box

Grounding exercises

How to ground and center

4. Stay connected:

Connect with in-person and/or online LGBTQ+ support groups who understand what you're going through. Sharing your feelings and hearing from others who have similar experiences can be comforting and it can help you to learn new coping strategies and things to try.

In general, avoiding isolation is important. Join a club or volunteer for something, join a sports team, hang out with your friends, etc. Just don't stay alone in your room. Get out of the house if you can, or invite people over or have video calls or phone calls if aren't up to being out and about. Just stay in contact with people.

See more: Motivating yourself to socialize

5. Set Alarms:

Consider setting alarms or reminders to take off your binder and give your body a break. Even short breaks can help reduce the risk of injury.

Here are some links that may help in general:

9 strategies for dealing with body dysphoria

How do I deal with dysphoria?

20 Small Things To Do When Gender Dysphoria Gets You Down

25 Things I Do To Make My Body Dysphoria Feel Smaller and Quieter

More on coping with dysphoria

Dealing with dysphoria

A post with suggestions for coping with dysphoria

Take care of your mental health

8 tips for managing dysphoria and mental health

A coping tip

Disablity-friendly dysphoria tips

Dysphoria that prevents you from leaving the house/doing activities of daily living

Your feelings are valid, and it's essential to find ways to manage your dysphoria that prioritize your health and well-being. There isn't a secret dysphoria cure I can share with you, to be frank it just sucks sometimes and there's not a lot to do about it but you gotta find a way to cope and keep going and stay safe.

Eventually it gets better-- you either find a way to cope more effectively and manage the dysphoria and/or time just passes and you grow older and eventually find a way to access surgery, but either way you will eventually become an adult who is managing life somehow and overall doin' okay and yeah there's hope at the end of the tunnel so please keep going!

You deserve care, support, and understanding, even if your family isn't able to provide that right now. And again, apart from the two links that I started the response with, the main advice I have is that you should ask to speak with a therapist (even if you are closeted and don't tell your fam that it's gender/binding/dysphoria related) and just let them know that you're struggling with your mental health in general.

Please reach out for help if you need it, and consider seeking medical attention if you experience severe pain or discomfort from binding. Good luck!!

As some of you may have noticed, our blog has been around for a decade or so and some links may be broken because we're all busy etc so pls let me know if something is wonky in a post I'm trying to link to!

Followers, any advice for anon?

#Lee says #dysphoria #coping with dysphoria #chest m #binding #injury m #binding injury m

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meimi-haneoka · 2 months

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I know my last report is so long...and technically, I could've summarized so many of those info in shorter paragraphs.

But it's all intentional. I really wanted to write their dialogues out as far as possible, because I've noticed something in the fandom. I'm pretty sure this is not limited to CLAMP but to 'public figures' in general, especially on the internet.

I've noticed a sort of tendency to dehumanize these four women. Sometimes I come across comments that make my skin crawl. People calling them names, insults, "these old hags", people who think these four women should only live to satisfy the fandom's hunger for content, or their fetishes. They don't consider (and even if they do, they do not seem to know what the words 'be indulgent' mean) these are four human beings who have their lives, wishes, preferences, shortcomings, health problems, or even not a 100% great mental space.

I admit I have "joked" with heavy terms in private too, in the past. But lately, especially after they started to open the Twitter Spaces, showing their more "raw, genuine side" to us, and ever since my JP skills allowed me to understand them better, I can't bring myself to do that anymore. It might be because I'm getting old too and I understand painfully well what it means to begin having problems related to age (for memory or even physical pain), and the love and care (and often pain) that lie behind a piece of artwork, but I just can't help empathizing with them. Hearing them joking among each other, knowing how much they care for one another like sisters, hearing them talking so humbly about their work even after such a long time, getting to know when they're feeling sick and knowing their struggles because on the workplace they're like a machine that can work well only if all the components are in good condition...it really really makes you realize how human they are.

I think the turning point for me was when I heard one of the personal Spaces Ohkawa opened every morning for a week, while she was having breakfast, talking about various topics. In one of the firsts, she apologized because you could hear the noise of the washing machine working on the background. It struck me so powerfully. This is not some kind of unapproachable, inaccessible person living on another existential plane, this is a normal, regular human being who writes stories for a job but who's got to do laundry like every other regular person on this earth. They might drink champagne and go to fancy restaurants (but Ohkawa in particular is a fan of McDonald's too) but that doesn't mean that they lost their humanity.

And I found myself not wanting to partake in this stupid game of dehumanizing them anymore. Actually, with my translations, I want to try to make people see what I see too. Make them feel the "vibe" through their own words, because you can understand so much of them through the words they often use. Ohkawa might look like this merciless and whimsical boss, but she actually just loves the stories she envisioned very much, and she's ready to go through a shitstorm to defend her choices on the workplace.

She just feels a bit guilty that when there's criticism of her choices, the work of her colleagues gets dragged down along, but they're all in this together and they stick to one another tightly.

I can only do these translations when it's about CCS because they're exhausting to me and take me so much time, so my "brainrot" helps me push through to finish them. But at least for that, I want to try to do this, when I can.

#it's a behavior I've noticed particularly in young people so of course that's part of the reason too #but there's a good amount of people well far in their adult years acting like this #I dunno I just can't deal with this fandom anymore #I just put things out there #when I want #IF I want #and if it sparks a positive butterfly effect then all the better #the recent passing of popular mangaka really put me in front of the bitter truth #that one day we'll find ourselves crying with nostalgy at their posts about food and champagne #so really let's give them A BREAK

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kakiastro · 1 year

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How to use your Astrology Birth Chart to Grow your Social Media Page

So this post is dedicated to those who wants to gain a following but don’t know where to start. Fear not, if you’re interested in astrology, your birth chart can show you the way.

Okay let’s get started

1. First thing we’re going to do is look at your 11th house in your chart(not including planets just sign ruler) I recommend using Whole Sign system for this

Why the 11h?

-Well, because the 11h rules over social media and how society as a whole see you. It rules over followers or what the kids call it today; your Stans! It rules over your overall vibe on social media

Ex: you have a Gemini 11h. So your overall vibe might be funny, you may be known to post funny memes or jokes, you may talk about a variety of different things that peaks your interest. You would easily gain followers because Gemini is an air sign, air moves quickly.

Now this brings me to my next point

2. Look at the element of the sign it’s ruling in

Earth signs- you guys will gain a following at a slower pace. I actually think this a good thing because you can start to get to know your followers at a much slower pace than let’s say becoming viral and gaining 10k new followers in a day. Having that many strangers follow you that quickly can be scary. It’s more cooler to gain a slower moving following. Plus, I feel like because it’s slower moving, you’ll gain a more loyal base. Like if you decide to move platforms, your followers would follow you there. “I’m going where you’re going type of energy”😅

Fire signs- you may gain a huge following right away because there’s something fiery or explosive about your content that gets your followers going. Not going to lie, I feel y’all may attract people trying to argue with you and y’all getting into it with your followers here😭, going private would help with that. Like once you have a good following, go private is my recommendation

Air Sign- I mentioned this briefly in my last point, but you guys would gain a lot of followers quickly; I’m talking overnight viral sensations. You made a quick post before bed , you wake up the next day with 10k shares and 7k new followers😅 . 11h is ruled by Aquarius so air signs are comfortable in this house. Word gets around fast. Same with fire signs, you might want want to go private once you have a satisfied following and community cause you’re about attract all sorts of people, which may include the weirdos

Water signs- I feel like it can go either way for you all. You either get a huge following right away or it takes you a bit. I say this because water can be intense & fast moving or it can be calm & still. I do feel like gaining huge following can probably feel like too much, like a tsunami crashing in on y’all . I feel like people find you relatable so that’s how you gain your following. Having a boundary with social media will help your mental health because people may project their own problems on you so honestly going private or turning your notifications off for that post will help as well.

Now here comes the interesting part; for this section we will use derivative astrology.

Derivative houses is when you count the houses to get more info about a person or event.

3. Let’s use Gemini 11h example again.

So we’re going to turn our 11h into the 1h aka the ascendant. This would be our social media birth chart

Now if you know your social media pages time and date, you can create an actual birth chart but if not, use this method

So Gemini 11h will turn into Gemini 1h

With us looking at our 11h as the rising, we can break down our social media chart better.

Gemini 1h- our social media aesthetic, first impressions and overall vibes

Cancer 2h- how we monetize our social media, what can people gain from our blogs.

Leo 3h- how we communicate to our followers, what do we want to talk about on our pages, how our followers pick up information

Virgo 4h- how we connect with our followers on a more personal level, how our followers connect with us on an emotional level.

Libra 5h- how you express yourself on your page. If you’re a creative, this is how you would share your work.

Scorpio 6h- your daily routine but with post. If you’re a pastor, you may go live and read scriptures at 8 pm every Wednesday , so your followers can expect to see you every Wednesday at 8pm. This is the house that shows how often you post.

Sagittarius 7h- these are what I call your close followers. These are the people who never miss a single thing you post. The 11h is Is your fandom as a whole but the 7h is the people who interact with you everyday. This is also the house of open enemies so this where your haters will reside as well

Capricorn 8h- this one’s tricky cause depending on what your content is, this is the area where people may have transform from following your page. Like for example; you may follow a doctor in India and the health information he post on his page may have helped you improve your health. His knowledge transformed your life.

Aquarius 9h- the overall big picture that you want people to see on your page. This could also show the type of international people you attract on your page.

Pisces 10h- what your blog/page will be remembered for if you decided to quit social media. Your public image on social media represents here as well.

Aries 11h- your following on a mass frame. this is the overall energy of your followers.

Taurus 12h- how people connect with you on a subconscious level

I hope this method helped a lot of you all out, comment if you’re confused on something. I hope this breakdown method was easy to follow for you all.

#astrology community #astrology #knowledge #love astrology #astro observations #derivative houses #social media

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ikamigami · 3 months

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So today's laes episode was very informative.

Poor Earth, she really tries her best but she's definitely too soft to handle her family issues.

It's completely different when you give therapy to people who you're not connected via any type of relation vs when you give therapy to your own family and such.

Sun's advice was very good. Probably dictated by years of leaving with Old Moon to whom Lunar is similar in personality.

I can't blame Earth for being scared of Lunar rn. I would be scared too. Also she needs to sort this out before she starts helping Lunar because it may cause more issues in the long run.

And.. seriously, Sun? Old Moon abused you only just a little? 🤨 Don't lie like that. But oh well. Let's move on.

Even if alcohol isn't a problem for Sun yet.. it doesn't mean it won't become a problem. Like I said, Sun shouldn't drink alcohol with the mental disorder he has. Also the fact that Sun feels the constant need to explain that he doesn't drink a lot is a bad sign.

Ofc Earth doesn't see the issue because she doesn't know that Sun suffers from mental disorder.

Also Sun basically admitted but he's sitting at home doing nothing and he drinks wine. Oh, that definitely will help improve his mental health/sarcasm

I knew that Earth would be against killing Eclipse and that's good. And see that Sun wasn't even upset at her for this. Maybe that's because he also doesn't want for Eclipse to die? I'm sure he doesn't.

Seeing Earth smiling upon hearing that Eclipse is back to life again made my day ^^

About Lunar. I think that he isn't even trying to get better. That's why Sun's statement about them is fair. That maybe Lunar doesn't actually want to get better.

Someone could call Sun a hypocrite but like I said many people who suffer from depressive psychosis don't report any of the symptoms on their own.

Sun and Lunar's situation isn't the same.

At last - Sun told Earth that he thought that the neighbour knocked on the door. Earth said what neighbour. They live on island alone so they can't have any neighbours. Sun's answer didn't explain anything - I immediately thought that Sun might be hallucinating again hence the whole neighbour thing.

This episode was really good yet it was a little bit of sad not only because of whole situation between Earth and Lunar but also because Sun also needs help but I know that he won't ask for help. I know that he won't say anything because that's how it works.

It was a bitter-sweet episode.

#laes #laes earth #lunar and earth show #laes spoilers #sams sun #mental health #tw mental disorders #tw depressive psychosis #tw hallucinations #tw alcohol #tw trauma #laes lunar #sams eclipse

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seraphinesupremacy · 3 months

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🫧Hi🫧

Name: call me Dia💎

Age: I was born in 2002 and I'm too lazy to update my age every year💅

Nationality: Italian (English is not my first language so I might make some grammatical errors)

🏳️‍🌈: I'm a sapphic and demisexual/demiromantic girl (I use she/her pronouns)

MBTI: ENTJ (Don't stereotype me. I'm just really into doing things right and I like to have a plan for everything. I always try to find a solution to people's problems)

Something about me: I'm autistic 🪐 and I'm very extroverted, I like to socialize and meet new people. So if we have any interests in common, feel free to write to me🌌 (Read the continuation to find out more about me and what I post, it's important. Thank you)

(I made this edit using picsart stickers that represent my interests and something about me)

🎮Favorite video games:

•League of Legends (I play on the European server)

•Wildrift

•Valorant (I don't play it that much because I'm not very good)

•Overwatch

•Team Fortress 2

•Life is strange (this game made me realize I'm not straight)

•Detroit Become Human

•Danganronpa (I discovered this thanks to tik tok during the pandemic. It was very trendy at the time)

•The last of us

•The Sims 3/4 (I never had the chance to play the previous ones)

🍿My favorite TV series are:

•Shameless

•Love, Death & Robots

•Bojack Horseman

•Arcane

•She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

•Hazbin Hotel

•Helluva Boss (I know it's a series that can be found on YouTube but I didn't want to make a separate category)

•South Park

🎼Singers I like:

•Melanie Martinez (my queen)

•Mitski

•Ariana Grande

•Ashnikko

•Kali Uchis

•Madison Beer

•Girl in Red

•Marina and the diamonds

•KDA ("Akali that girl, 'kali go grr 'Kali don't stop, 'kali don't skrt 'Kali got a job, 'kali go to work 뜨거워 언제나 don't get burnt" 🗣🗣🗣)

•Gorillaz

•Queen

•Molchat Doma

•Arctic Monkeys

•Mother Mother

•Jack Stauber

•Cavetown

•TV girl

•Bo Burnham

I actually listen to a lot of artists but I don't remember them all c:

🫧Things I like:

•Lost media

•Liminal space

•Dreamcore

•Nostalgiacore

•History of cinema (especially animated films)

•Psychology (and all other branches of this science. I also love anthropology and sociology)

•Travel and discover new places

•Everything that has to do with creativity (Drawing, writing stories and fanfiction, creating things like accessories for your clothes and such very cute things. I really admire people who can repaint dolls)

•Having fun (going out with my friends, watching films - if they're trashy films it's even better -, sending each other memes and tik tok videos and things like that)

🪷Hobby:

•Cosplay (Especially cosplaying my comfort characters)

•Drawing (I haven't drawn seriously since 2020. I'm waiting for inspiration)

•Collecting dolls (I love Monster High, Ever After High, Rainbow High and L.O.L O.M.G. I also collect Funko pops and figures from other brands. I also have many books and comics -which I have to finish reading because there are too many-)🧸

•Roleplay (Doing roleplay with me means that I have already organized the whole plot. But I also listen to the other person's ideas)

•Find out about the topics that interest me (Most of the time they have to do with culture. I'm a very curious person and I love to inform myself)

💿What I post on Tumblr:

•Things about my fandoms (Mostly I repost cute icons and wallpapers. Sometimes I make some wallpapers. Maybe start writing some headcanons)

•Positivity (Especially mental health or pride posts about being a member of the LGBT community. Be yourself🌈Be unique)

•Random things (I don't know how to explain this category. I could write something like "I'm looking for people who like this song, does anyone remember this movie? etc" or I answer some questions. Sometimes I also reposted something related to when I feel down, but they are old things and I don't think of posting them again because I prefer to think about good things and find the positive side)

•Aesthetics (If I see some nice photo of a sunset or the sky, I immediately repost it because I feel like it. I also post a lot of things related to nostalgia because as I said before I like the "nostalgiacore" aesthetic. And I'm very nostalgic, they were beautiful times when the only worry was "which Winx character am I?")

•My posts are tagged "Dia's post"

🔞If you are a minor, do not interact. I'm a girl from 2002 so I have young adult maturity‼️ For adults (because I know we are not all the same and not everyone likes some things) I would like to point out some things that I could reblog: I might reblog paintings or sculptures with naked people BUT also drawings with people semi-naked or shown in a sexy way. The artists I refer to are: Fumetti Brutti by Josephine Yole Signorelli and EvviArt. They are the only ones I follow but it is to make you understand what type of art I like. I could reblog posts where sexual topics are written: from the classic "use protection when having s3x" or raise awareness about some topics related to this theme. I want people to be informed about some aspects of this topic (I'm not talking about p0rnographic things ) such as the importance of using protection and above all how important consent is. I don't reblog kink-related stuff or explicit porn because it's not a topic of interest to me. And I don't even have kink because s3x isn't a topic that interests me. It doesn't shock me to hear about NSFW things (it disgusts me if disturbing topics are included in this topic). Many of my interests (TV series or video games and things like that) involve adult themes.🔞

🧜‍♀️Comfort characters:

•Jinx (League of legends/Arcane. She is my main and for certain things I see myself in her)

•Seraphine (League of Legends. didn't like her at first but I love her gameplay. And I think she has the best skins -along with Jinx, of course-)

•Evelynn (League of Legends. She's a Goddess)

•Chloe Price (Life is strange. She made me understand that I like women too. I love this punk)

•Sunset Shimmer (Equestria Girls. She is one of the few ENTJs to be a positive character. I really like how her character has evolved)

•Reagan Ridley (Inside Job. We are very similar in certain things)

•Entrapta (She ra. I love this chaotic neutral autistic scientist princess. Again, I see myself in her)

•Kotori Minami (Love Live! When I was in middle school this was my favorite anime)

•Dia Kurosawa (Love Live! Sunshine. Love Live is an anime that accompanied me as I grew up. I'm very fond of it)

❕️I'm looking for young adult people like me (young adult means being over 18 and under 30). I have no problem with NSFW (I prefer artistic nudity) and I have no problem with swearing. I have a certain maturity so I want to interact with people like that.❕️

‼️ This is my safe space🗣 SO DO NOT INTERACT WITH ME IF YOU ARE: racist, homophobic, transphobic and against the LGBT community, do not interact if you are a pedophile and if you harm animals. Don't interact if you are against feminism (which I remind you, means gender equality), don't interact if you are people with ideas of hatred and discrimination. No ignorant people about mental health or what is happening in the world, because we are in 2024 and we need to have a minimum of culture. If you think abortion is murder, I would say you can also go elsewhere because I support women's rights and human rights in general. In general, don't interact if you are a person with bad ideas (that kind of bad ideas. Go away)‼️

🌟Talk to me if you are a normal person (and if you're nice and send funny memes. Or if you want to talk about some fandom in common or something. We can also play some video games together or talk about philosophical things like "what's the point of life?" or things like "do aliens exist?")🌟

#about myself #mutuals #get to know me #gamergirl #gorillaz #team fortress 2 #love yourself #idk what im doing #actually autistic #monster high #doll collector #i love fictional men #i like girls too #multi fandom blog #intro post #blog intro #league of legends

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wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

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*lies down for a nap*

*thinks about The Eighth Sense post by @starsickkk and @lurkingshan*

*jolts violently upright from bed*

"OH MY GOD, EIGHT SENSES"

Okay so most of us are familiar with the five senses, right?

Touch

Sound

Sight

Taste

Smell

But there are three other senses as well, at least according to this website on the sensory processing system, and this one on autism, and this one from the STAR institute, and this website on neurodiversity as well. So what are the other three senses?

6: Vestibular- This is your balance and orientation in space (x)

7: Proprioception- This is your perception of position, location, and movement of your muscles. Essentially your ability to process where your body physically is. (x)

According to Wikipedia (this is a fictional show and as such I will not be spending time looking for the original, actual, scientific journal articles) your body uses information from both proprioception and the vestibular system to understand your body's position and movement. Now the internet has not been specific/completely in agreement about whether vestibular or proprioception is 6 or 7, but multiple sites I've cited on here do list the following as the eighth sense:

8: Interoception- Internal perception. The eighth sense is what allows us to feel if we are hungry or thirsty. But it also said to be tied to how you experience/feel your emotions.

According to these website you can either be hypo-sensitive (meaning low awareness) or hyper-sensitive (meaning high awareness). People with low interoception might not be aware of pain and temperature, might not feel hungry or thirsty, and may have trouble identifying their emotions. People with high interoception may have heightened awareness of their hunger or thirst signals, might experience emotions more strongly, and might feel pain even after an injury has healed.

And it's making me think about this post from @chicademartinica about JaeWon's relationship to food. I don't think these are entirely related but, I don't know I guess I'm just thinking about whether or not there is a reason this show is named The Eighth Sense. Whether or not this show will explain the meaning of The Eighth Sense. Whether or not what we are seeing before us is real or imagined.

And because I sometimes have difficulty pointing things out and then letting it hang open for interpretation and speculation, I started digging into the idea of PTSD playing with interoception. I found this study from Frontiers in Psychology that found "the more childhood trauma participants reported, the more difficult it was for them to perceive their heartbeat after the stressor" where heartbeat was being used to define interoception. And something I do know to have a current evidence basis is that prolonged exposure to stress, particularly in childhood, is associated with greater HPA axis dysregulation (For those of you who don't know, the HPA axis controls stress) that can cause both physical and mental health problems long term.

Prolonged exposure to stress like, say, having to abandon your dreams and your passions to take over the family business?

Prolonged exposure to stress like, say, having an aggressive father?

Prolonged exposure to stress like, say, witnessing the death of your baby brother and being powerless to stop it? Living with the guilt of that for over a decade?

What I really want to know is the name of the medication JaeWon is taking because that can help narrow down the type of mental health problem he is struggling with.

Any way you play it though, I am really just curious if the name of this show is The Eighth Sense because JaeWon is missing his. Because he's numb, because he's not eating, because he's has outbursts of aggression, because he's feeling detached from people who aren't JiHyun (many of these are symptoms of PTSD by the way), because he wants people to like him and he wants to be nice, but you can see him just spend so much of his time folded in on himself. But JiHyun is lighting that spark, JiHyun is getting him back in touch with his emotions. JiHyun is making him feel happy again.

Note: Usually I would want to be more responsible about sharing science like this (ie I would be checking sources for accuracy, trying to find studies or at least looking at the studies these articles may have been inspired by, making sure these studies are published in peer reviewed journals or whatnot. But as I said before, this is a fictional piece of media and so I will not hold it to the height of scientific feasibility because this is what you find on the internet when you google this stuff so if the writers were at all informed by this concept this is probably far more likely what they would have found)

#the eighth sense #t8s #the eighth sense theories #TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS PEOPLE I WANT TO KNOW #the eighth sense meta #jaewon #jaewon x jihyun #I need the next episodes now so I can know whether or not this show is real #i honestly have no idea how we got here

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hxhhasmysoul · 4 months

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Hi, I really like reading your JJK analyses. Do you think that Itadori ate Sukuna's finger out of his free will? A lot of fans think that Itadori deserves to be punished for Sukuna's crimes because he willingly ate the finger (and because Sukuna is apparently a force of nature so he cannot be punished). I disagree, but what do you think?

Okay, so this really touches on a lot of stuff in-world for JJK and in general, philosophically. And philosophy is not my strong suit XD

Let’s take care of the last part of this first. Sukuna is a human, not a force of nature, not a god, not a curse. He’s a human in full control of his mental faculties: not mentally ill in any way, but especially not in a way that could make him incapable of controlling himself, not intoxicated, not coerced, not controlled by an outside force through magical means. So he’s fully responsible for all his decisions regarding his actions when he has control of Yuuji’s body. He’s hard to hold accountable, true, but it’s the problem of those who’d want to punish him. You know, skill issue.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the Yuuji part of this claim.

Free Will vs Fate

The first thing is whether free will exists in the JJK world and to what extent. And I feel it does but there’s also a fate component, for example in relation to Tengen and Six Eyes. So there’s some limitation to the free will, at least for some characters. Is Yuuji entangled by fate with anyone? He could be. There are hints that his connection to Sukuna might date back to Heian. It’s hard to tell at this point.

Choice

Then we come to the concept of choice. Let’s say Yuuji had the free will to eat the first finger on that school roof, that there was no fate involved. How much of a choice did he actually have?

Some people like to entertain themselves by saying things like “you always have a choice” even when the choice is between two horrible outcomes. For example working a job that is very destructive to your body and mental health but having a home or having no job and becoming homeless. They like to pretend like there’s a viable choice here.

And this is also the case with Yuuji. His choice was eat the finger and hopefully save Megumi or run and live with the guilt of whatever fate befell Megumi, likely never even finding out what actually happened, considering how secretive the sorcerers are. Is this really a viable choice?

I don't think it is. The manga rushes through this part in a typical first chapter fashion. In the anime Megumi warns Yuuji not to eat it but he doesn’t even tell Yuuji why. He doesn’t warn Yuuji that he’s likely to die, let alone that Yuuji dying would be the preferred outcome to the alternative, aka an evil homicidal bastard returning among the living. So Yuuji is working with the information provided and to him it seems either they both die or they get both saved. To him it feels like a fair gamble at that point.

And all this disregards the circumstances of that choice:

Shock and grief of losing the only family he had merely minutes or hours earlier

Last words of the said family member which are eerily relevant to the situation with the curse

Shock of learning about the supernatural

Shock of seeing his friends badly injured and knowing they could’ve died

Mortal danger

Extreme time pressure

All these render any discussion of free will in that decision making process a little shaky. In philosophy the influence of a person’s mental condition on choice, free will and ethics is actually a field of study.

Circumstance or Part of a Plan

Yuuji was created to become Sukuna's vessel as a part of Kenjaku’s plan. And for that plan Kenjaku manipulates the lives of others and creates situations to get certain outcomes. Like they did with Yuuji's friendship with Junpei. Once Junpei was involved by Mahito but also befriend by Yuuji, mother used that to test barriers for their own plans and also to test Yuuji. And probably confirm Sukuna’d made a vow with Yuuji. Kenjaku doesn't tell the disaster cursed about the vow, but they know much more about Jujutsu and Sukuna than the curses, they knew Yuuji was going to come back to life after the detention centre. Likely because they knew Sukuna would make a vow.

This makes me ask questions like:

Why was Sukuna's finger, an object of such importance, in an average school?

Why was Yuuji in that very school?

Why was that finger easily accessible?

Why did Yuuji find it? Was he drawn to it?

All these put complete free will on his part into question, unless we assume this was all a complete coincidence that by complete chance played into Kenjaku's plan.

But even if someone believes that, Yuuji would've been fed a finger at some point. How would it play into him being deserving of punishment? If he was coerced, would he still deserve it? What if he was tricked? Would he deserve it because he allowed himself to be incapacitated or tricked? I mean it's not an uncommon position assholes take towards victims of violence or scams.

Crimes and Complicity

Now let's look at Sukuna's crimes and Yuuji's complicity in them.

The first time Sukuna has reign of Yuuji’s body is on that school roof.

Sukuna then kills the curse and fantasises about massacres. The latter isn’t really a proper threat of violence because it’s not directed at any particular person or persons. That’s it, then Yuuji takes over. No crime so far.

Then Gojou comes and arrogantly and irresponsibly decides that it’s a good idea to check Yuuji’s control over Sukuna in the open, there isn’t even a veil raised, no crowd control. Sukuna proceeds to do some property damage - his first actual crime. Is Yuuji responsible for that? Not really, he’s a traumatised and badly hurt minor who was pressured to relinquish control of his own body by an adult.

The second time Sukuna comes out is in the detention centre.

Yuuji waits for his friends to be far away and then gives Sukuna control. It is very much a calculated risk, Yuuji believes in his ability to prevent Sukuna from rampaging and assesses the cursed womb as a bigger danger to everyone than Sukuna in his body, and he’s mostly right.

Sukuna does more property damage and severely beats up Megumi and kills Yuuji. The latter is Yuuji’s choice to stop him from killing Megumi. So yeah, he’s responsible for Megumi’s injuries because he didn’t factor in how his own injuries and mental exhaustion would prevent him from fully controlling Sukuna. And in a kind of twisted way Yuuji is responsible for Sukuna’s last crime of killing Yuuji himself, because if he didn’t come back Sukuna wouldn’t have killed him.

Then Sukuna tricks Yuuji into a vow and makes Yuuji unaware of the existence of the said vow..

For Sukuna’s third outing Yuuji isn’t responsible in the least.

Yuuji gets killed by Chousou and if he was left alone, he and Sukuna could’ve died then and there. The only reason he survives and Sukuna is let loose is because the twins and then Jougo force feed him more fingers overwhelming his soul’s capacity to cage Sukuna. Considering the level of trauma Yuuji had sustained then, it takes him more time than at the detention centre to take back control. And yeah, Sukuna commits a mass murder.. And more property damage ;-)

So.

Even if someone decides that Yuuji had completely free will to eat the first finger (I wouldn’t if it’s not obvious so far), under regular circumstances Yuuji is perfectly capable of caging Sukuna, rendering him incapable of committing any crimes apart from verbal harassment and threats of violence.

The sorcerers knew that perfectly well, because Gojou has tested it, on the roof and then by feeding Yuuji another finger after Wasuke’s cremation.

The elders decided to murder Yuuji, and his two new friends as collateral. Thus created an abnormally traumatic situation. Which led to Yuuji losing control over Sukuna.

Not learning from that debacle that Yuuji should be kept away from harm so they can slowly feed him the fingers, the sorcerers put Yuuji on the front line in Shibuya. And the whole Shibuya incident is orchestrated by Kenjaku, though not micromanaged. I don’t think they predicted Sukuna’s rampage. That was on the twins a bit but mostly on Jougo, the former are kids, Jougou is ancient, he should’ve known better.

Blame - Who Deserves Punishment?

That all being said. Yuuji would’ve been fed Sukuna’s fingers one way or the other. He ended up under the care of the sorcerers who went the most fucking irresponsible way possible about handling that.

Would the mass murder in Shibuya not happen if Kenjaku fed Yuuji the fingers under different circumstances and Yuuji was under their care? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Would other mass murder happen instead? Maybe, maybe not. Would Sukuna have killed Gojou? Absolutely. Unless Gojou’d stayed in the box.

This whole idea reeks of the fandom’s dislike of Yuuji. Nobody talks like that about Gojou and the elders where it’s pretty easy to point to the ways they are very clearly complicit in various tragedies in JJK, including the way the Shibuya incident went.

And I guess they forget that Kenjaku exists?

Yuuji is a child and new to the jujutsu world. He follows instructions and puts trust in the adults in the jujutsu world. Most detrimentally to himself, he puts trust into Gojou who fails him over and over again.

Yuuji doesn’t proactively go into the world to seek the fingers or fight curses. He finds himself in situations and tries to handle them, but he’s not the creator of the said situations. He’s not the driver of the events. He doesn’t act recklessly.

Even if we consider eating the first finger, Yuuji's act of full free will. Yuuji ate the finger out of desperation and ignorance but still he managed to prevent Sukuna from doing any harm. He handled his questionable choice.

Then Yuuji was captured by Gojou, the strongest of the sorcerers and an adult. A person fully aware of curses, jujutsu and the threat of Sukuna. And Gojou decided to let Yuuji live, even though he could’ve killed Yuuji on that very school roof. Gojou kept Yuuji alive despite the elders’ will. He kept Yuuji alive knowing full well that by doing so he put a target on Yuuji’s back because he dragged the boy into his little political scuffles with the elders. He kept Yuuji alive and didn’t protect him, and didn't really put much work into educating Yuuji so he could protect himself better at least.

The truth is, if we’re looking to blame someone for Sukuna’s crimes, other than Sukuna (and he is the one to blame first and foremost!), or at least Kenjaku or Jougo, then it’s mostly Gojou and the elders to a lesser degree.

#answering asks #jjk meta #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #itadori yuuji #sukuna #this fandom is really shit tier #if i see this opinion in the wild here on tumblr dot com i will block on sight #gojou kinda did get punished for his irresponsibility and arrogance #i mean he got clowned on in public showed his true colours and achieved nothing #talk about a fitting legacy for that man #thank you for the ask

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halsteadlover · 29 days

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Just a little rant here about my personal life so feel free to skip lol

I know nobody is gonna read this and I’ll probably delete this when I’ll come to my senses but right now I feel so depressed I just need to get this out of my chest. I always felt tumblr like a safe space so here I am.

I don’t know if you remember the times where I took some time off because of anxiety and my mental health.

Lately it feels like it’s getting worse and I really don’t know what to do, I don’t know if many of you will relate (I really hope not) but it’s just like I don’t know how to be happy and I really hate it here man. I’m so tired of feeling like this, always worrying and having anxiety about something I don’t even know about. I feel so crazy sometimes you know? Like there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m honestly so grateful for the things god gave me. I’m healthy, I have a loving family (even if sometimes they’re overbearing to the point of crazy), I get to study for my dream job, I have a bf that puts up with my ass, friends even if few of them, there’s nothing wrong there are so many worse things people go through and I don’t even have to right to rant about any of this. So why do I feel like I don’t deserve any of this?

I have such deep trust issues it’s ruining my life and relationships, I don’t know why. I hate myself and I sometimes think I don’t deserve to be loved, I’m not that speciale and I’m so damn insecure that every good thing that happens in my life I can’t help but think it’s gonna fade in a minute, that something bad might happen, that I’m so easily replaceable.

Sometimes I truly think that if I disappeared no one would notice or miss me, I thought about doing it but I’m so damn scared. I don’t know where this is coming from, maybe the bullying had something with it I don’t honestly know but I’m so tired of feeling like this.

Why can’t I just love me? Why can’t I enjoy a single good thing that happens to me? Why do I keep sabotage myself by thinking I don’t deserve any happiness and it’ll soon fade away?

For example, these last two days I took three different exams and even though I’m relieved I can’t help but think I’m such a failure, that my parents are so disappointed in me for taking so long to finish a degree I was supposed to finish years ago.

I had an anxiety attack yesterday morning while I was with my bf and I sobbed for hours while he held me but if you ask me what triggered it I wouldn’t know how to answer you.

Why am I like this? Why am I not normal?

It’s just a bit of everything and I honestly don’t know what to do.

But please don’t judge me. I’m aware these “problems” are nowhere serious like some others and I’m so sorry for being so dramatic it’s just… I don’t know guys, I just want to be happy, to feel loved without actually thinking about the worst.

Am I soo pretentious? Do I sound so ungrateful? Complaining about these things when I have everything some people unfortunately dream of? I don’t want to sound like that and I feel so guilty about having these thoughts.

I know you’ll think I’m an attention seeker, fishing for compliments or things like that, I’ve been told that before here and I’m so sorry if it seems that way but trust me it’s the opposite of that. I’m telling this here because I guess it’s easier behind the screen, when no one knows you and can really judge you, but I also thing you’ll judge me anyway but at least it was good for me to let this out.

If someone reads this I hope you won’t think of me any less, and if you’re feeling something like this too I’m so sorry and if you want to talk my inbox and DMs are ALWAYS open for you guys, I’m here even if it takes me some time to answer.

Sorry if something doesn’t make any sense, I didn’t even read this back I’m just cried my eyes out while writing this post and now I have a headache. At least I hope the sleeping will be good lmao.

But tomorrow will be better, I’m sure of this.

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ai-the-broccoli · 8 months

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The Resignation and Resistance of Yukika Nanase, an analysis

Last Friday (September 29th, 2023) was the 15th of the Eighth Month in the lunar calendar, which is the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival/Chuseok/Tết Trung Thu/Tsukimi/Uposatha, festivals strongly associated with the autumn moon in Asian countries.

Since I happened to have some ThoughtsTM and writings on Yukika Nanase (whose release event, "Otsukimi is After an Elegant Tea Party" was about, well, [O]tsukimi, and who's got a lot to do with Yukika in general), I thought this might be a really good excuse for me to finally officially begin posting on Tumblr! So...

Here is the first one out of a few (perhaps?): a little something I first wrote earlier this year, though now refined, organized, and extended by... maybe over 5 times its original length, for posting on here.

(official CG of the full moon, as it's depicted in the Yukika-narrated event Otsukimi. why exactly there is a rainbow around it is solely up to interpretation)

You may or may not be aware that Yukika Nanase is one of my favorite characters and main blorbos in Magia Record, and while I'm sure personal preference (and her being Relatable™️ for me) counts for a good part of it as it usually does, I would personally argue that she is also just an exceptionally intriguing character in general.

Typically, the fandom at large seems to view Yukika as a daredevil ojou-sama of sorts and some thrill-seeking gambler (and a character that her designer Masugitsune really likes), etc, etc. Now, it's clear where that image comes from, and by no means is it totally off either, but once you really get around to watching or reading any of her stories, you basically immediately see an entirely different side to her than what you might've assumed from her fandom reputation. almost like... the back side of the moon, so to speak

Now, in the canon story content itself, Yukika is often treated as a somewhat comedic character by the narrative, especially in stories where she's not the main protagonist. By no means is this a complaint or a criticism: Elements of comedy don't make a character any less well-written (unless said comedy is implemented in a way that's ineffective or distracting, but that's another matter entirely), and with Yukika in particular I've found that she often works with comedy excellently.

Besides, the fact she often has a comedic-ish role is largely in line with (and partly because of) Yukika's own extremely effacing perception and framing of herself—however, it also makes it quite easy for one to simply completely overlook her own emotional complexities and problems, both in-universe and among fans in the community. Which is fair, even she herself does it! ...But I do want to draw attention to it here, since it's an aspect of her that's quite interesting to me.

So today I'm going to talk about... Yukika's fatalistic mindset and her mental health.

Long informal analysis under the cut:

[cw: major spoilers for most Yukika-related stories, vague reference to Ashen Revolution's themes and motifs (nothing actually spoilery aside from AR's short very first opening section, which will be directly quoted), clinical discussion of mental health issues, mention of addiction]

A Magical Girl who has lived without ever straying from the rails laid out for her since childhood. Raised as a young lady, she is able to handle everything with ease, but her self-esteem is extremely low because of all the talented ladies who surround her. Though she was fed up with the boring life she was leading, her life has taken a sharp turn since she became a Magical Girl, and now she is constantly caught up in trouble.

Yukika's Extraordinary Everyday Life

If you're already familiar with any of her canon stories (or have read her official character description above), you must know that Yukika's "main thing" is that she's always involved in all kinds of trouble on an extremely frequent basis.

Like almost any other playable character in MR, she has her moments™️ (and, the fact that she is in constant stress and anxiety due to the passive effect of her wish; when nothing is wrong she keeps worrying something is about to go wrong in no time and she apologizes for it in advance, and when something is wrong, she blames herself for no matter what it is and tries to take responsibility at top speed), but overall Yukika seems generally surprisingly "fine" as in, we pretty much never see her get into any particularly negative emotional outbursts over anything, at all. Despite all the troublesome situations that she never stops finding herself in, she seems decently adjusted and stable (that is, "stable" on the grand scale of things, since everyday instability is her stability), at least among the MR girls we know.

But when you look into why that is the case, you'll kind of see that it's because Yukika actually has her own unique sense of a fatalistic mindset—in that, typically speaking, (there are some notable exceptions, such as when she made her wish) she completely accepts the state of herself and the state of her life as they are, even though they are by no means what she genuinely sees as ideal.

For instance:

[Though with all that said, I am, so to speak, in the role of "Villager A". - Yukika]

Yukika: (As I was one of many “Black Feathers”...) Yukika: (I didn't have any desire to advance and become a White Feather someday.) Yukika: (Because those White Feathers who manage the Black Feathers are more suited to shining...) Yukika: Yes, like the pride of Mizuna Girls Academy, Akatsuki Tsukuyo-senpai…! Yukika: Even in Mizuna Ward, where many wealthy families produce polished children, Akatsuki-senpai is a genuine charm... Yukika: ...Just like the full moon. Yukika: (While I get saddled with Student Council Officer duty almost every year because I seem "sort of" ladylike, whatever that means...) Yukika: (Akatsuki-senpai has an aura leagues above mine.)

she looks weirdly happy in the last two (pretty self-deprecatory) lines here and then goes on to talk about how her presence is so faint that Akatsuki-senpai still doesn't know she's a Magical Girl yet, whi— ANYWAY I digress

From this early part of Otsukimi, we see that Yukika has a crush on Tsukuyo (for legal reasons this is completely? a joke) a pretty set idea of what her "role" in this world is supposed to be (i.e. she has a "fixed mindset", as some may call it, as opposed to a "growth" one), and that is the role of a "Villager A"—basically meaning an NPC character, to put it in more common terms.

Yukika: (Looking for a substitute for Akatsuki-senpai and being mistaken for Akatsuki-senpai…) Yukika: (Despite her absence from beginning to end, she's got the sense of presence of a true protagonist!) Yukika: (It's getting more impossible by the second for a minor role like me to pretend to be her...)

And this attitude is very telling of her outlook on life as a whole.

Student Council President: That’s right. Will you accept? Yukika: Please leave it to me. Yukika: Our already-busy President shouldn't have to deal with this kind of hassle. Yukika: As the lowliest Student Council Officer, I think that I'm the right person for the job. Girl A: ...Oh, I’ll help you too! Student Council President: Thank you, it’ll be a huge help. Yukika: By "the lowliest Student Council Officer", I mean the Student Council Chore Officer, of which one is selected from each class. Yukika: My job is to gracefully prepare the tea in the student council room, help pour the tea for the exchange parties, and so on. Yukika: ...That's a tremendously misleading description, of course. Yukika: But in short, since it's hardly comparable to the Student Council President, who's elected by the whole school, and the Class President, who's elected from her class's honor students... Yukika: The job naturally gets foisted on me, the vaguely cultured-ish girl with no aura and hardly any presence!

From her rank in the Wing of the Magius as a "lowly Black Feather", to her duty in the student council as the "Student Council Chore Officer", Yukika views her roles and positions of insignificance as essentially predetermined things that she—as a self-perceived NPC figure—is simply matched for by nature; and she never even considers the idea of breaking out of this status quo, because, to her, it is simply a fact of life.

and you may notice this in the way Yukika presents/frames things—anything—in general, too; she's basically got an attitude of "ah well, of course, things are how they are; now let me deal with it so it doesn't trouble anyone else" toward basically everything, ever.

This brings me to my next point...

A Bunny Caught in the Tracks of Orbit

Yukika: Speaking of the moon, I used to wonder when I was a kid... Yukika: When the moon faces the Earth, it only shows the side with the rabbit and its mochi. Yukika: Why doesn’t it show the “other face” on it’s back? Yukika: According to my physics teacher, this is because the moon’s cycle of “revolution” and “rotation” is the same. Yukika: It’s apparently quite common in space. Yukika: (I don’t know what the standard of “common” is in space, but...) Yukika: Ah... I am Yukika Nanase, a first-year student at Mizuna's Girls Academy and a Magical Girl. Yukika: Yes, I am one of those who reluctantly set foot into the world of Magical Girls— Yukika: the "other side" of common sense, that most people will live their lives without ever knowing.

(excerpt from the start of Otsukimi, slightly condensed for format)

It is very clear from Yukika's Magical Girl attire that she's associated with rabbits/bunnies—partly for the casino aesthetics, partly for the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reference, and partly because of the Moon, which is heavily associated with rabbits in Japanese culture. Namely, there is the legend of the moon rabbit, a mythical creature said to live on the moon, as Yukika herself references in the excerpt above.

Now, the next part is going to look like a bit of a stretch if taken to be actual speculation of canon, but to be clear that is not my intention; it is merely a connection I made/similarity I noticed, and I figured it would be interesting to bring up.

(...Actually that does remind me, I should probably clarify here that this entire analysis is, in fact, of my own personal interpretations of the content presented in the game itself, rather than what I theorize to be the deliberate intention of the writers.)

With that out of the way, let's look at the opening section of Ashen Revolution:

Rabi: We can never stop the never-ending movement of the starry sky. Urara: However much I practice, I can never defy the gravitational pull drawing the diabolo. Alexandra: No matter how much I raise my voice, without this atmosphere, my melody will never resonate. Asahi: Yes, we are forever under the control of the unseen. Asahi: Like this rabbit, it lost its life at the hands of my unseen self. Asahi: Everything is made by the natural order, and being at the mercy of it is a fate we must resign ourselves to...

I won't go into details about AR here since on a technical level Yukika is entirely unrelated to it, but it is an event about the struggle of Magical Girls, who help people in secret but remain completely unknown, unacknowledged, and not understood. Which...

compare Yukika's previously quoted monologue, in which she compares the world of Magical Girls, which "most people will live their lives without ever knowing", to the backside of the moon.

Coincidentally, Yukika's own character is also all about helping people in the background and never ever being acknowledged (to a higher degree than the average MR girl). Relatedly, she also notably possesses a level of figurative invisibility/unseenness similar to the AR girls, through her entire recurring "faint presence" thing.

So, as seen in the AR excerpt above, the rabbit motif is used to demonstrate their helplessness in the hands of fate—or in their specific case, "fate" as in what they perceive to be the "Will of the Universe".

Well, funnily enough…

[Yes, I believe it's all due to the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe... - Yukika]

Yukika: (Here it is, the new hassle..!) Yukika: (The schedule has returned to a blank slate…) Yukika: (Rather, things have actually gotten worse thanks to the passage of time.) Yukika: (How can I put this? It’s as if...) Yukika: (It's as if some great and terrible will of the universe is at work,) Yukika: (and is specifically targeting me and creating trouble.)

…alright, so this is 99.1% a coincidence, especially because the two terms don’t use the same word for “will of the universe” in the original Japanese text, but it’s pretty crazy nonetheless.

In any case, the themes of fate and fortune are indeed actually heavily featured in Yukika’s own character. There’s her gambling motif as seen in her story, design, and gameplay alike, and her entire “keeps getting caught up in troublesome matters” thing, which is the result of her wish.

And how does she see it?

Girl A: Wouldn’t that mean you’d have more work? Yukika: Please don’t worry. Yukika: Dealing with trouble is my fate. Girl A: …Fate? Yukika: Ah, nothing! Let’s hurry! Girl A: Yeah, got it! Yukika: (Yes, I am involved in trouble on a daily basis.) Yukika: (It’s the “fate” that has been decided for me ever since I became a Magical Girl.)

"Fate". Once again, we see a certain degree of fatalism in Yukika's worldview, especially in regard to herself. Rather than a choice she's made on her own, she sees her behavior/self-imposed duty of helping everyone out as the luck of the draw, something that is "decided for" her.

And this part is extremely significant because it offers us a particularly revealing look into her mindset:

The truth is, in spite of everything she goes out of her way to do daily in order to resolve trouble and help/save other people, without actually being forced to do any of that by anything or anyone, Yukika sees literally all of those actions as passive acts rather than something she's doing out of her own free will (and isn't actually obliged to do, really)—because, no matter what she does she only thinks of it as the predetermined consequences of her own choice, for these issues are always the fault of the wish she personally made (or so she thinks), thus the responsibility to resolve them naturally always falls on her shoulder, which is why there's really never anything to brag about about this, according to Yukika.

As for why and how she made such a wish in the first place, that is explained to us in her MSS:

Yukika: …I do think that I was blessed in many ways during my upbringing. Yukika: But one day, um… In spite of all that luxury, Yukika: when I thought of how from then on, rather than moving forward with my own strength, Yukika: I would instead be riding the train toward the future on the tracks built by my parents, Yukika: I started to feel like I wasn’t really “living” at all…

Not necessarily relevant, but for a bit of a linguistic context, the word for “tracks” (in the sense of “rails; train tracks”) and the word meaning “orbit” (as in the trajectory of a celestial body around another; the curved course of a satellite) is the same word in Japanese (and various other languages. Which makes sense, since even the English term “orbit” was derived from the Latin word “orbita” meaning “tracks; course”); hence my title for this section. anyway this ties into the motif of gravity as seen in Urara's line above

Very interestingly, the original line here too explicitly uses train and train track imagery as a metaphor for the course of life and fate, similar to how it's used to symbolize these things in Kenji Miyazawa's The Night on the Galactic Railroad, and by extension Magia Record, which takes a lot from Miyazawa's works.

Speaking of which, that brings us to our next, largest, and final section...

A Thin Ice Between Life and Death

buckle up guys, it's got three parts

Pt. 1. The Rabbit with a Death Wish

Earlier on, I said Yukika accepts her life as-is, but really, she also fully accepts her death as-is. While her heart does desire to feel "alive", and it is for that, rather than any active desire to actually die, that she longs to be at the brink of death, it is... actually a bit worrying, how little she feels like she has to live for.

Well, let's look at the part in Otsukimi when she thought she was going to die to the powerful Witch:

Yukika: (Ah… There’s blood coming from my mouth. This is called hematemesis, right?) Yukika: (I'm... definitely a goner at this point.) Yukika: (But despite that... No, maybe because of that...?) Yukika: (My head's perfectly clear, and I'm getting tons of adrenaline.) Yukika: (Way more than when I bet all of the coins I have…) Yukika: (I feel like I’m alive!) Yukika: Hehe... Yukika: (...Wow. I must be kind of crazy.) Nanny Witch: …………!! Yukika: Kwaah…!! Yukika: Hehehe... I've got plenty where that came from! Yukika: ...Is what I'd like to boast right now. Yukika: But my battery is dead. [the image of Hotori and Rion flashes before her eyes] Yukika: (I’m going to die without being able to do anything…) Yukika: (I wonder if that unknown White Feather felt the same chagrin…) [the image of Hotori and Rion flashes before her eyes] Yukika: I’m sorry… Yukika: I won’t be seeing you two at the moon viewing party. Yukika: .............

...maybe it's just me, but it strikes me as unusual and almost alarming how little she seems to feel like she has to live for, you know? Like, Rion and Hotori are a pair of girls who she literally just met this afternoon. And they (and her not being able to defeat this threat on other people's lives) are somehow her biggest regrets.

And like, Yukika isn't just like this here. Whether you say it's for thrills or for other people's sake (it's usually initially the latter with the extra bonus of the former sometimes), she never even hesitates to put her life on the line. It's kind of sad, really.

This makes sense, though; this sort of attitude tracks perfectly with the abysmally low value she attributes to herself and her existence (again, in her eyes, she is literally just the most basic NPC ever, and who cares about what happens to a random NPC? well actually several people in this fandom do care, including me, but it's not like Yukika Nanase would know that).

In fact, let's look at the legend about the moon rabbit that I mentioned earlier. A quick online search would tell you that it's a mythical figure in East Asian and indigenous American folklore, based on pareidolic interpretations that identify the dark markings on the near side of the Moon as a hare or rabbit

As a side note, this is (accidentally?) fitting in the context of her own perceived "lowliness" (+ faint presence and all) against Tsukuyo's full moon-like brilliance... but I should probably leave that for another analysis oops (assuming I ever write one)

who (in East Asian folklore) pounds the elixir of life (according to Chinese and Vietnamese interpretations), or rice cakes such as the mochi (Japanese and Korean interpretations).

But how come the Moon Rabbit arrived on the Moon?

There's a story behind it that originates from Tale 316 of the Buddhist Jataka tales, and a derived version of it appears in the Japanese anthology, Konjaku Monogatarishū.

According to the Japanese folklore:

The rabbit, as well as the hare, have long been associated with moon deities, and may signify rebirth or resurrection. According to legend, an old man who lived on the moon decided to visit Earth. A group of animals saw what they thought was an old beggar who was starving. “Poor beggar, he looks hungry and has no food. Let us give him some food”. First, the monkey plucked some fruit from the trees. He brought the fruits and laid them in front of the old beggar. Next, the otter collected some fish and brought it to the old beggar. The jackal was too lazy to find something that the beggar could eat, so he caught the first animal he could - a lizard, and placed it in front of the old beggar, along with some water. The rabbit did not know what to get for the old beggar. He was not good at catching animals or fish, nor could he scale trees and get fruit. He only knew how to gather grass, but humans didn’t eat grass. Having nothing to offer, he sat in a corner unhappy. Suddenly he remembered that humans like to eat meat. So he got up happily, prepared a fire and jumped into it, having decided to cook himself for the unknown old man. The fire did not burn the rabbit! The old man revealed himself to be Sakra, the ruler of Gods. “You have been very kind and selfless.” he said to the rabbit. Touched by the rabbit’s selflessness and virtue, he drew the likeness of the rabbit on the moon. “Henceforth, for all ages, all those who will look at the moon, will see your shape in it and remember your kindness.

(the story of Tsuki no Usagi, from here. lightly adjusted for formatting and such)

Most versions of this myth have roughly the same story, with the identities of the rabbit's companions varying. Interestingly, the legends of Moon Rabbits among some indigenous cultures of North and Central America often tell an extremely similar story as well. For example:

According to an Aztec legend, the god Quetzalcoatl, then living on Earth as a human, started on a journey and, after walking for a long time, became hungry and tired. With no food or water around, he thought he would die. Then a rabbit grazing nearby offered herself as food to save his life. Quetzalcoatl, moved by the rabbit's noble offering, elevated her to the Moon, then lowered her back to Earth and told her, "You may be just a rabbit, but everyone will remember you; there is your image in light, for all people and for all times."

(from Wikipedia)

The Jakata version of the tale relates that this event took place on Uposatha, which is the same night as Tsukimi. And while it’s hard to say for certain that this was 100% a deliberate reference, it’s definitely not farfetched to connect this legend to what Yukika does on Tsukimi in her debut event, and in general.

Deeming herself a thoroughly unnoteworthy person with nothing special to offer, she's extremely willing to throw herself into anything from minor inconveniences to life-threatening dangers, as long as it's to help someone else. Because, as noted by Tsukasa and Mifuyu in her MSS...

Tsukasa: I mean, she says she’s "dragged into it" by the effect of her wish... Tsukasa: But really, isn’t she taking on this lost child of her own volition? Mifuyu: She’s the type of girl who could never leave someone in need alone, no matter what. Mifuyu: So, from her perspective, it’s the same as being dragged into things. Tsukasa: …What a kind girl.

...So, honestly, I have no doubt that she would have no hesitation in doing the same thing as the original Moon Rabbit did in the legend, had she been in his/its situation.

Yet the thing is, as Mifuyu analyzes above and according to Yukika's own words about "fate" prior, Yukika never sees what she does as anything exceptional because, in her eyes, she's only doing what she's naturally supposed to do, and what she probably (incorrectly) assumes to be what anyone in her circumstances would also do. Thus, she never sees any merit in those actions and she refuses to take credit for them, trying to remain in the background because she firmly believes that's just where she belongs by nature. but more on her self-effacement next time.

Now, onto the secondary reason she's eager to throw herself into danger:

Her thrill-seeking instinct.

Though it's a well-known fact about Yukika that she is quite a reckless gambler, have you ever wondered...

Why is she like this in the first place?

Pt. 2. The Psychology of an Ennuyé Bunny

in which I accidentally turned the analysis post into a psych diagnosis of a mostly unspecified mental condition I swear as a distinctly not STEM person I went out of my way to do scientific research this time, please bear with it if you don't mind

Of course, there's a canon explanation for this in Yukika's MSS, where it is discussed.

Tsukasa: …medal games? Yukika: When I abandon myself in an all-or-nothing, do-or-die game, I can forget for a moment about my boring daily life. Yukika: So… going to the arcade after school to play medal games became a hobby of mine. Yukika: I even secretly bought a casino set, and now stare at it at home every night… Mifuyu: …Your escape from reality, I see. Yukika: Exactly. Tsukasa: If that’s the worst you can do, then you really are a true lady.

(Seen in her MSS and personal memoria, this is the casino set she secretly keeps in her closet but only ever stares at, without actually doing anything with it.)

As Mifuyu puts it, Yukika finds in small acts of gambling an escape from her boring reality, and as she said in her wish, what she wanted was "the feeling of being alive".

This is, statedly, due to her boredom* more on this later from following a predetermined life path (hence her wish being an act of defiance against fate, one which she is shown to be deeply ashamed of), but also...

...you know how substance abuse, excessive gambling, and other forms of addictions often co-occur with mental health issues?

Yeah.

In many such cases, said addiction can be the consequence as well as the cause of these issues

because for people with symptoms of depression, anxiety, executive dysfunction (and any other kind of stress or motivation issues, etc.), activities like alcohol and gambling provide them with a temporary source of ease, escape, and/or brain chemicals of the likes of catecholamines* see explanation later, any of which they might lack otherwise.

Besides, executive dysfunction (which is seen in many different mental conditions) can also mean worse inhibition control in both thoughts and behavior, which makes people with executive function issues particularly susceptible to addiction to physiological-rewarding behaviors, in more ways than one.

So... while I'm not going to pin anything particularly specific on her (okay I lied I'll say here she clearly does show symptoms of general anxiety at least, even if that's solely induced by the effects of her wish and not something originally innate to her, but that's mildly beside the point here since I'm more talking about the cause of her wish instead of the consequence), I don't think it's that much of a stretch to speculate that Yukika might have a mental condition or two that contributed to her unbearable "boredom" with her routine everyday life at that time.

Many studies have shown that executive function problems (as seen in various different conditions including neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and ASD, or mood disorders such as depression and bipolar) may be caused by imbalances and deficits in certain key neurotransmitters, such as:

dopamine, and

noradrenaline (a.k.a. norepinephrine)

...both of which are among the 3 catecholamine hormones & neurotransmitters, alongside adrenaline a.k.a epinephrine.

for reference, common ADHD meds like amphetamine (Adderall, etc.) and methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, etc.) are often catecholamine analogs or serve the same function, that is to say, they're used to increase the amount of dopamine and noradrenaline released by the patient's adrenal glands.

You may have realized that this isn’t exactly the first mention of adrenaline in this post. Indeed, Yukika herself brought it up in the earlier excerpt from Otsukimi where she experiences a rush of adrenaline at death’s door.

Adrenaline and noradrenaline both fall under what's considered “stress hormones”. Along with dopamine, they're a big part of what activates the fight-or-flight response (or to put it in more medical terms, the "acute stress response") in a person, as the catecholamines increase heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle strength, mental alertness and more.

Between the two, adrenaline is released by your body when you experience acute or chronic stress, in preparation to protect itself against real or perceived danger.

On the other hand, noradrenaline is continuously released into circulation at low levels, but the amount produced also increases in response to stress and fright.

(By the way, adrenaline is made from noradrenaline, and noradrenaline is made from dopamine.)

...Right, well, all this neuroscience stuff and I still haven't made my point yet. But basically, what I mean is that there's enough canon evidence for me to believe the odds are that Yukika Nanase is not precisely a neurotypical individual, no matter what her problem(s) actually is in exact.

This is evident in her...

Chronic boredom (sometimes synonymous with "ennui") prior to making her contract, indicative of a depleted reward system

Attraction toward gambling and other risky behaviors that act as stimuli and generate the release of catecholamines in her brain

Possession of a certain level of impulsivity, and engagement in reckless & risky activities

Novelty-seeking attitude and behavior

As previously discussed, those traits above are primarily observed in Yukika's wish, the circumstances and reasons behind her wish, and her thrill-chasing attitude and behavior, including her fondness for medal games.

Like, if you read what Biser Angelov says about the connection between ADHD and boredom (the article is about ADHD specifically, but you can apply this particular section's info to other conditions with cognitive dysfunction as well):

As you can see, the screenshotted paragraphs discuss similar ideas to what I've been talking about in this subsection, and I'm sure you can see from here how the situation described indeed applies to Yukika, especially with her state before her wish.

In addition, let's examine the psychology of a thrill seeker. Yukika fits the description of what we would call an "adrenaline junkie", being particularly into thrills and dangerous situations. But what exactly makes thrilling sensations so appealing to a so-called "adrenaline junkie"?

You may or may not have heard of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), originally published by psychologist Marvin Zuckerman in 1964 as a measure of sensation seeking that encompasses and evaluates an individual’s personality traits of thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition, experience seeking, and susceptibility to boredom. A study about the brains of people with high scores on the SSS shows that under chaotic/dangerous/troublesome circumstances, these people tend to excrete less cortisol and more dopamine in response to the situations, compared to those who score low.

Now, cortisol is also a stress hormone, but it generally generates more feelings of what we actually consider "stress" compared to dopamine (and other catecholamines), which is instead more associated with feelings of pleasure and attention. So, during those highly chaotic experiences, those with a thrill-seeking constitution are more likely to feel good and elated instead of feeling burdened by stress, and the experiences thus become exciting to them rather than suffocating.

Considering the factors analyzed above, this might be the case for Yukika as well. If her brain suffered from a deficiency of catecholamines on mundane days but could produce much of those energizing neurotransmitters and hormones under stress and fright, it would explain why she enjoys high-risk/near-death experiences (and gambling) and finds being in chaotic troublesome situations to elevate a good portion of her boredom.

Moreover, the need for higher stimulation in children with executive dysfunction is backed by scientific research, according to this article on the link between ADHD and high-risk behavior.

Other studies (Zentall and Zentall 1983 and Douglas 1983) indicate that children with attention problems need a higher level of stimulation. According to the research, children with ADHD are under-aroused by dull or repetitive tasks and will seek out high-interest or high-risk activities to compensate. Further, (Farley 1981, 1985) children that are under-aroused will search for more intense activities and will be more open to different experiences. They will prefer complex tasks to simple tasks; will seek new and novel experiences that include the need for high energy and high risk. In short, Farley found that children with hyperactivity seek high stimulation. His recommendations for children with hyperactivity included modifications to education to include more interactive and creative experiences to provide the extra stimulation needed.

Many other scientific studies, such as this one conducted in 2021, have also proven that ADHD, a major symptom of which is executive dysfunction, is "uniquely linked to a pervasive pattern of engagement in risky behaviors", spanning across various domains, including gambling.

Moving on, Yukika also has the tendency to:

Ramble a lot (in her head and otherwise) while jumping from one topic to the next, sometimes in ways that would be considered... whimsical?

Accidentally think aloud, or vocalize things that she has no intention of letting the other party hear about, without realizing it until she sees their reaction

Despite her own opinion, Yukika actually stands out to me as quite capable, intelligent, and resilient in various areas (especially when you consider how honestly difficult her everyday life is like).

That said, the way she thinks and talks does sometimes give off the impression of some sort of scatter-mindedness, and when we spend time in her head we see that Yukika kind of zones in and zones out of conversations sometimes because there’s always so much going on in her brain (partly thanks to her full awareness of her own trouble-attracting nature, but I kinda get the feeling she was probably kinda like that even before becoming a Magical Girl), causing her to blurt out to people things she doesn’t mean to tell them about at times.

There are several instances of this in Otsukimi, including the “dealing with trouble is my fate” comment she didn’t mean to let that random girl hear about in the earlier excerpt, and the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe remark (as seen in a previous screenshot) wasn’t meant for the Tea Ceremony Club’s leader’s ears either.

As for her erratic thought patterns in general, you can probably see the way her internal thoughts are always constantly racing throughout the entire event. In fact, one can just look at the very start of Otsukimi for an example. And in a different scene, we see Yukika suddenly wondering to herself, while very sincerely navigating the problems in an attempt to solve them:

Yukika: (This time, I’ll find the cause of the trouble!) Yukika: (I’ll definitely reveal it...) Yukika: (Just what the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe (Tentative Name) actually is!) Yukika: ………… Yukika: (I doubt it'd happen, but just imagine...) Yukika: (The moment I step into the old school building, everyone yells "Happy Birthday!",) Yukika: (and this mob of well-wishers swallows me whole.) Yukika: (If nothing else, please let me be spared the embarrassment of such a turn of events...) Yukika: (Ah, and maybe even Akatsuki-senpai is in the act.) Yukika: ...Yeah, I think not. Yukika: I mean, it's already past my birthday for starters...

...yeah. Doesn't particularly read like the thought process of a neurotypical kid to me, but hey, who knows, maybe that's just me.

Moreover, she also shows signs of:

Anxiety and restlessness (the former of which was either caused by her wish or marginally increased by it)

Low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and (debatably) inappropriate guilt

...etc, etc.

Overall, I believe that more than sufficient evidence is present in canon for one to see Yukika as having one or more mental conditions that come with executive dysfunction, and interpret her behavior and thinking through such an explanation.

Pt. 3. The Girl Who Wants to Live

On a note directly related to my conclusion in Pt. 2, I'm going to take a moment to compare and contrast Yukika to one of her better friends, Yuuna Kaharu.

Now, I personally believe that Yukika is quite a parallel to Yuuna in various ways, and Yuuna in The Flower that Blooms in a Hollow Heart definitely reads to me as having depression. I'd say the parallel is most obvious (to me) in like, Yukika's "I feel like I'm not really alive because all I'm doing is living the boring luxurious life to the future that my parents planned for me" (Yukika MSS, paraphrased) vs Yuuna's "I'm an empty shell blessed by the lucky life handed by me by my parents on a golden plate, only living because I'm not dead yet" (Hollow Heart, also paraphrased).

Yukika and Yuuna are also character foils, however, in that Yuuna has an arc centered on growth and she is able to advance forward because she finds herself a clear and defined goal in Mami, whom she sees as a role model that she aims to become like one day. On the other hand, Yukika establishes right at the very start of Otsukimi that she had never any desire to advance upward, whether in WoM or in school, because it was supposedly people like Tsukuyo who were suited for such better roles, and to Yukika, that's simply how it is.

There is another striking difference between them, and that is that Yuuna is unabashed in taking credit for when she's done something good, whereas Yukika times and times again brushes off any help she's offered with an "oh it's nothing special / it's already over with so let's not talk about it" kind of attitude, because that's really just how she sees it.

As examined earlier, this is largely due to her low self-worth and her perception of everything as her own natural responsibility. The unfortunate thing is that this self-effacing attitude, on top of her already faint presence and all, makes her even more unnoticed and her deeds completely unacknowledged.

And then, by further preventing most people from recognizing Yukika and her efforts, it reinforces her mindset about her lowly faint presence and further contributes to her lack of self-worth, which in turn makes her value her life even less, altogether creating a vicious feedback loop.

Yukika speaks of having friends in class, but with the way she talks about it, they don't seem all that close to her and they're definitely not people she could fully open her heart to.

see the fact that she's very concerned that her classmates and school friends mustn't hear about her visits to the arcades; she is never really seen thinking much about them on-screen, going to them for help, or worrying about any particularly important school friend when the whole school is in trouble, etc.

In canon, there are like only three named characters who consistently notice Yukika and actively try to pay attention to and care about her (Rion & Hotori, later Yuuna), and none of them even go to the same school as her.

And because Yukika has this somewhat fatalistic mindset, no defined aims or goals in life, and effectively actively discourages people from noticing her, she is likely to just... stay this way, unlike Yuuna.

Like, Yukika is just a weirdly really static character in her default state. As someone who's tried to work with her as a major character in a story, it's honestly kind of crazy how I always absolutely have to throw her into some odd situation where another character actively tells Yukika that she (and she specifically) should try to change or grow, as long as I want to make her undergo any dynamic character development. Otherwise, her usual mentality typically completely blocks any possible self-development of the introspective kind from happening.

To me, there's something rather... subtly tragic(?) about this, but...

Yeah, so, I for one do believe that Yukika still has the quality for future growth. Not sure if it could happen in the game or not, but like, I do think that can still happen to her as a person. And more than that...

In spite of everything I've been saying up till this point, Yukika's core desire is "to live".

It's in the wish she made. It's why she chases excitement the way she does. Indeed, Yukika is relatively easily self-sacrificial as a result of the "low self-worth + too kind" combo and she seeks to experience the brink of death for a wholly different reason, but truly, her overall main subconscious drive is to feel alive.

And the most paradoxical thing here is the fact that her longing to experience a brush with death stems from her desire to live, rather than a desire to die; not only thanks to the catecholamines rush, but also because it is through the fact that the chance of death exists for one that their life is so meaningful. (or so goes my personal opinion, in any case)

After all...

Yukika: Wow... Student Council President: What do you think about it? Yukika: Yes... Yukika: I'm so glad to have been born on a planet with a moon! Student Council President: You… you're that moved by it? Yukika: Yes. Yukika: I thought that I wouldn't live to see it again. Student Council President: Okay…?? [...] Yukika: The same old face of the moon as always. The same boring world as always... Yukika: Tonight, they both shine brilliantly to me.

...

Even though her everyday life is tedious, her self-esteem dreadful, her mindset somewhat fatalistic, and something's up with her brain chemicals too...

Deep down in her heart, the thing Yukika Nanase truly wants is to be alive.

And I don't know about you but... man. I find that very moving, you know?

And...

That's all, folks!

This concludes my essay. Basically, my big main point is that Yukika is certainly one of the most characters of all time and should be cherished at all costs.

Thanks for reading this (very long) propaganda analysis post to the end, and I’ll see you next time o7

#magireco #yukika #yukika nanase #nanase yukika #magia record #analysis #character analysis #essay #i (ai)#own writing #(can you see I have no idea how to tag yet?)

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antitheticallyargumentative · 9 months

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Hi! I would very much love to hear the entire long rant about Ted and Jamie’s relationship!

I love you for indulging me.

A little disclaimer that I in no way hate Ted. I love him. He has good intentions. He's just a flawed human with a lot of his own baggage that hinders him from actually being able to objectively see Jamie's situation for what it is. And that leads to him offering shit advice. He seriously fucked up when it came to Jamie, (in my opinion), even if his heart was in the right place. So here we go.

TW- mentions of mental health issues, canonical suicide, and abuse and trauma

The way I see it, there are several things happening here. 1) Ted sees Jamie as a surrogate son-figure, because he misses his own son and Jamie is a little bit wayward and lacking his own father-figure, and that activates Ted's savior-complex-I-can-fix-him ways. 2) Ted sees Jamie as a little part of himself- his own inner child. The sixteen year old boy who brutally lost his own dad and never worked through the grief. 3) Jamie sees Ted, at least a bit, as a form of father figure, in the way that he both wants his approval and is innately distrustful of him. (Mind games.)

The problem then lies in the fact that Jamie is not truly either of these things that Ted sees him as, and Ted cannot be a healthy male figure for Jamie because he has too much of his own shit to work through, first. And Jamie also has his own.

I think that, at his core, Jamie wants to be a good person. His time at Richmond has seen him growing into one, and in his head I think he at least partially equates that to Ted's influence. So he wants to stay in Ted's good graces, because like he's said he never got a lot of support from older male figures, and that's clearly something he craves. He wants Ted's approval, but there's also the fact that Ted has left him during confrontations with his dad twice, and in Jamie's eyes, sent him away to Manchester City right after he started trying. Need for approval paired with feeling like he's walking a very fragile line and can't quite trust anything about his relationship with Ted to stay safe.

Ted holds onto a desperate need to fix things. When you see someone hurt themselves, or lose them to mental illness, it's traumatic. It makes you wonder if you could have, should have, done more. Seen it coming. If you could have stopped it. Ted said to Dr. Sharon that “I wasn’t ever gonna let anyone get by me without understanding that they might be hurting inside.” So now he walks through life trying to make sure everybody stays OK, except for himself. And you can't do that. It's not healthy. So when he sees Jamie, this twenty-something-year-old kid with a fucked up relationship with his dad, Ted can't see it clearly. He's so caught up in his own father-related trauma that he projects that onto Jamie. He gives Jamie the advice that he means for himself. Ted needs to forgive his father, so that he can process the grief and the trauma and move forward. Ted needs to give that to himself. But that is incredibly dangerous advice to give someone who's father is clearly shown to be emotionally and physically abusive.

Ted and Jamie both have a lot of father-related trauma. But their situations are not at all applicable to each other, it's just that Ted can't see that because he hasn't worked through any of his own issues. Which leads to complicated relationships and shitty, dangerous advice. There we go.

Woo! That was long.

#ted lasso #jamie tartt #james tartt sr #ted lasso's father #ted lasso & jamie tartt #psychology!#relating psychology to tv show characters aka my favorite pastime #tw mention of mental illness #tw implied abuse #tw suicide mention #tw abuse #tw trauma #cw mention of mental illness #cw abuse #cw trauma #cw suicide mention #asteria argo #maisie speaks

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multiplicity-positivity · 5 days

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For context, I’m not sure if I’m actually a system yet, but recently I’ve been questioning if I might be and I’m wondering if anyone else around here has ever experienced this or heard of it happening…

I used to disassociate daily to the point that functioning was very difficult, but since I’ve been taking medication for other mental health disorders, I haven’t disassociated at all. At first I was grateful for that, but now I actually feel more distressed that it never happens anymore…I get so tired and frustrated with being conscious all the time that all I want now is to be able to take a break from my body and the real world if only a little while. Anyway, I was wondering if you or anyone else has ever heard of that happening?

Hiya! Healing, growing, and getting better can often be really painful and difficult, especially if you’ve grown comfortable and used to having symptoms that negatively impacted your daily life! >_<” We talked a little bit about our experience and it’s kind of dark, so we’re putting it under a cut!

Our system personally still struggles a lot with dissociation, but there are other areas of our life where we’ve made some real progress towards recovery, and we find ourselves having feelings that are really similar to how you describe feeling about not dissociating anymore!

We used to be collectively very, very depressed, with many members feeling suicidal often. As we’ve made progress in therapy, it’s gotten to the point where many of us don’t feel so suicidal all the time. And there are parts who actually genuinely miss feeling so hopeless and worthless, as weird as that sounds >_< Because when you’re suicidal, that gives you an answer. And if you’re struggling, you can always rely on those negative thought patterns as a way to cope and escape, instead of buckling down, facing your problems head on, and focusing on finding a solution. So in many ways, living life without feeling suicidal all the time is harder… but life has more meaning now! Progress and healing can be challenging and difficult, but it is still so worthwhile! Because we can have those special moments of joy now, when we weren’t really able to in the past. :3

So sorry if this isn’t exactly what you were hoping to hear, but we really just want to assure you that we understand where you’re coming from entirely, even if we can’t relate to not dealing with dissociation specifically! >w<

When you’re struggling, distressed, or upset, maybe it would be good to try and take some time to focus on yourself and try to meet some of your needs!! This could also help you rest, relax, and recharge instead of getting burnt out due to not relying on dissociation to cope anymore. We have a lil post with some self care questions that might help - we’ll go ahead and link it here! :3

We hope this helps!! And we’re sure that other systems and even singlets have probably dealt with this same sort of feeling, even if it’s not dissociation specific! If anyone sees this and wants to share some of their own experiences, y’all are welcomed and encouraged to!! :33

#suicide mention #depression #dissociation #healing #recovery #personal growth #not sure if this needs more tags - let us know if it does!!

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