#to be clear: i have a very healthy relationship with food and even my body since top surgery. it’s just that she keeps commenting on both

[shitouttabuck]

my mother is like i don’t care if you have a healthy relationship with food and your body i will still do my darnedest best to try and give you an eating disorder by commenting on your food intake when you do eat but also commenting on your food intake when you DONT eat because oops you are so anxious to eat in front of your parents now you simply lose your appetite when you have to have a meal with them

#ed cw #this is. ridiculous i don’t know what her problem is #actually i do it’s that she is and always has been this petite woman and i have always been big and unlike her in every way physically #and the trans thing has only made it worse w her #i feel insane sometimes like i Need to move out so badly #n #to be clear: i have a very healthy relationship with food and even my body since top surgery. it’s just that she keeps commenting on both #in a negative way. and man even the healthiest mindset and knowing she is wrong objectively doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like shit

[lylahammar]

People always talk about how Laios is a character who gives fat vibes even if he isn't technically fat in canon which is very true, and I have some thoughts on that!! (this will be a long post lol sorry)

There's a lot of material in the dunmeshi extras that show how fatness factors into dungeon exploration, which shows that only the most skilled adventurers are able to keep weight on while in the dungeon (thank you to @savaralyn2 for the translations! links to the individual posts these panels come from are added on the pics):

So we know, at the very least, that most of the characters are kept thinner than they would be naturally through the strain of death/revivification in the main dungeon. We also see that Laios has some fat on him, which through the text means that he's skilled enough to at least keep some of his weight (which makes sense, he doesn't die very often in canon).

(to be clear this ^ doesn't constitute as "fat," he is built as fuck here he just has some fat on his body which shows his prowess as a fighter in this universe) HOWEVER my personal little pet theory/headcanon is that Laios actually has a difficult relationship with food! I know that doesn't make much sense at first since he's shown to eat a lot in canon, but hear me out. In pre-canon, before he reunited with Falin, he's shown to be extremely gaunt:

But after partnering up with Falin, he gains weight and looks much more healthy very quickly. Part of this is definitely because of his unstable living situation/mental illness, but he and Falin still live in very poor conditions after this and he still manages to gain weight/get healthier, so I believe it's mainly due to her making sure he eats enough. We also know that Laios is. most certainly autistic. Nobody argue with me on that it's like pretty much widely accepted as canon for a lot of reasons lmao. So my theory is that he's actually food sensitive. He's shown to not really care about food that isn't monster-related. Even when he eats regular food, he's usually imagining it being a monster instead.

He has never eaten squid before, which is totally normal, but could also support my theory in a way :P it being a monster still can't save it from the autistic sensory bad experience in this case, though.

So I think that his adventurous eating during the course of the story isn't because he's actually an adventurous eater normally, it's purely because of his special interest (monsters, duh). During his journey to recover Falin, he's able to build up a healthier relationship with food through Senshi's guidance and the involvement of his special interest.

By the end of the story, after he's retired from dungeon exploration and living in comfort/safety, and with his newly healthy diet, he's finally able to gain a lot more weight. Imo, his is a story of someone who's naturally meant to be fat, but is only able to reach that point when in a stable and healthy environment.

(for the record I know he's not that fat in this post canon comic, but this is only a year and a bit after the end of the story so there's still time lol)

alright I'm goin back to drawing now just had to infodump for a minute ✌️ keep it sleazy

#lyla's talking again #this is all probably common fanon but I just wanted to type out my specific thoughts on it lol #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #laios touden #long post #CW disordered eating

[transmutationisms]

could you talk more on eds and biopolitics?

sure, so this is broad strokes and it's also worth reiterating that the energy deficit characteristic of EDs can have a lot of different causes besides intentional food restriction—food insecurity is a huge and underrecognised factor here but there are many others. so when i talk about intentional restriction and the desire to be thin / lose weight, i'm not suggesting these are universal characteristics or causes of EDs.

anyway though, in the context of discussing these things, and particularly the relationship between 'diet culture' and EDs, a perennial frustration to me is that i often hear people fall back on the idea that the desire to be thin comes about as a result of the beauty standards perpetuated in mass media, fashion adverts, &c, without any subsequent interrogation of why it is that beauty itself is now so heavily dependent on thinness. after all, plenty of people have pointed out this is not a universal; beauty varies in different times and places, what is described or depicted as beautiful in historical records doesn't necessarily have much overlap with today's hegemonic standards, and so forth.

so when historicising this phenomenon it becomes very clear that the euro/anglo standard of thinness as beauty is, one, part of the ideological apparatus justifying colonialism thru the creation of race and white supremacy. sabrina strings and da'shaun harrison have written on this. two, the thin ideal is also inextricably tied up in medical discourses defining the ideal body as one that is economically productive, with the promise being that if the populace can be transformed into 'healthy',*** useful, hardworking citizens, the state benefits. control of bodyweight is therefore certainly a means of demonstrating one's supposed self-control, moral discipline, &c, but it is also a demand expressed in medical terms: these two discourses merge and overlap, and are both part of the capitalist state's transformation of its citizenry into a biological resource that can be controlled, managed, and exploited to bourgeois ends (profit): hence, biopolitics.

(***the story of how 'health' itself comes to be so dependent on thinness is obviously a critical piece of all this but this post is long as shit already so suffice it to say that this conflation is also not obvious, necessary, universal, &c &c)

medico-political discourses in the 19th century tended to talk about the dangers of both over- and under-weight more than what we hear now; similarly, if you think about something like wilbur atwater's calorie-value charts, these were explicitly intended to guide labourers to the most calorie-dense foods, because to atwater the central danger to be avoided was starvation among the workforce. these days in wealthy countries like the us, you are much more likely to hear about weight management in the context of demands to reduce; this is of course following moves like the WHO declaring an 'obesity epidemic' in 1997, and the rise in the usa of more explicitly nationalist, militaristic weight-loss rhetoric in the post-9/11 era.

however, my position is that these demands for thinness, and the beauty standard that follows and justifies them, are not a departure from earlier 19th- and 20th-century scientific nutrition advice, just an evolution that, for a multitude of reasons (politics, medical professional interests, insurance company practices, &c) has simply come to focus more on the ostensible economic and national threat posed by fatness. the underlying logic bears the biopolitical throughline: the state has, or ought to have, an interest in enforcing the health of its population, and as part of this demands that you the individual surveil and alter your weight according to the scientific guidelines du jour.

this is fertile ground for the development of what, in extreme form, we regard as ED pathology. first, because even the most purely 'health'-motivated individual engaging in the required degree of bodily monitoring and caloric restriction is liable to respond to energy deficit in ways that can become diagnosably distressing. second, because the morals of 'health' are never far from standards of beauty; thinness is sold in overtly profitable ways (the diet and weight-loss industries) and furthermore, our idea of beauty is often a kind of post hoc justification for the thinness already being demanded by state and medical authorities. which is really just to say, beauty is part of the ideological superstructure both resulting from and invoked as a justification for the material conditions of capitalist biopolitics. again this is very broad strokes, but imo it is a much more useful framework to understand EDs than simply presenting them as a result of desiring thinness because it is glorified in The Media, because... reasons (essentially the rené girard model, lol).

#eating disorders

[sexygaywerewolf]

my new Ninjago OC!

more information ↓

I haven't come up with a name for him yet bc I suck at those but I've got a backstory

- He was outcast by his species before the merge because of a reason I haven't fully flushed out yet (thinking of making it so that he can't do any shapeshifting at all and making it an entire allegory), but he deals with a lot of feelings of inadequacy because of this and he thinks he's failed as an Oni

- he was outcast before March of the Oni and was lost between realms trying to find a way back home to the first realm without the power of the darkness to guide him. essentially the realm crystal is the EASIEST way to travel realms but it isn't the only way, and he spent a lot of years alone

-When the merge happens he's forced to live in a world he doesn't understand at all and a lot of people during this time are struggling to figure things out. He manages to find a job at Chen's Noodle House and starts to enjoy the life as someone who serves food so eventually he leaves with enough money saved up and opens up his own restaurant

- I like the idea of someone gaining weight when they're happy bc he used to be really emaciated and could barely eat even 3 times a week due to how hard it was to survive but now he's got a healthy relationship with food and his body and he's generally a pretty sound guy and pretty mature considering things. It doesn't look like he's fat in the image but from experience an apron will hide a lot of that lol

- He does a lot of introspection and his outlook on life is that "it's complicated and messy but at least it's life," and he usually looks at things from a realistic perspective while hoping for the best.

-He still gets irrationally angry at a lot of things though and often he'll find himself taking it out on inanimate objects and then he'll feel bad about it afterwards. He doesn't do it a whole lot in front of people, especially customers, but if he's comfortable around you you'll see him swearing and breaking things (usually with his claws on accident) a lot more

- Meets Lloyd a few weeks after the merge when he just started his job at Chen's and initially Lloyd is weary at first because yk he's an Oni and Lloyd had subconsciously associated Oni with bad and everything wrong in his life, but [name I haven't come up with yet] is essential to something Lloyd is trying to figure out so they need to interact and Lloyd figures out through sheer power of being exposed to something that HEY you dumb idiot your ancestry isn't evil or bad

- He had severe issues for awhile with meeting people's expectations and he constantly ran himself ragged trying to keep himself in multiple places at once. He felt like he had to depend on only himself for a while because of the fact he let down his Oni tribe and because of the fact he lived so long in isolation away from others. When he's hired by Skylor he burns himself out within the first week because he doesn't take a break except to go home and sleep.

- Y y y es this is meant to be an OC shipped with Lloyd but they're both demisexual here bc I will always make my favs be on the ace spectrum no matter what

-Hes 21 when the merge happens and by the events of s1 he's 27 (2 years older than Lloyd). He was outcast by the Oni when he was 15 years old (around the events of season 1)

-fun fact, Oni still have pupils in my hc you just can't see them very well. they're kind of like the changelings from mlp where they do have pupils once you look closely but they blend in so well with their irises that you can hardly see them. most Oni eye colors are red, purple, or blue. some are occasionally orange, yellow, and pink. [name I haven't come up with yet] has purple eyes

- he has so much fur/hair (think kind of like mohair on a goat) that he has to stuff a lot of it in his shirt and then use pins to hold it in place and he spends like 30 minutes each day just combing it

- he works out every other day to help clear his mind and to calm himself down but Oni are naturally pretty big anyways and really strong

- despite the fact he knows how to cook he has the worst appetite known to man and will not hesitate to eat the nastiest things ever. I like to think that anytime Lloyd gets offered gross food (as he's somehow done a lot in the show) he pretends to "steal" it but he does genuinely enjoy every single food he comes across and it's not just something that comes from his life of being outcast it also comes from his Oni biology. Though, he seems to be a lot more inclined to eat certain things even for an Oni

if it's not poison, it's food!

- has abnormally large ears for most Oni and he can hear slightly better than most people. it's also another reason why he stretch himself too thin while working when he first started because he believed everything he heard needed his attention and he was constantly trying to get to multiple places and do many tasks all at once

okay now imma go to bed hehe this was actually really fun

-has a better work/life balance in the future at the very least lol so dw

-has digitigrade feet! they're not very exposed bc he wears baggy pants all the time but if you look down you'll see he's never wearing any shoes and his paws are just out

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lego ninjago fanart #ninjago oc #original character #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #fanart #art #ninjago dragons rising #dragons rising #its so me to come up with all this lore and never give my characters a name #oni #oni oc #rossartisting

[lowkeyrobin]

Hello I was wondering if you’d be able to write a Ranboo x Gender neutral reader that’s struggling with self harm/depression (only if you’re comfortable with writing something like this, I’d not I completely understand) :)

hi!! thank you for the request! ; and I'm totally okay with writing this, considering I'm fully healed from my very depressive middle school state and the only things bothering me haven't hurt me that much in a long time 🫶 I hope that you're doing okay anon 🫶🫶🫶

RANBOO ; it's okay to not be okay

summary ; ranboo does his best to help you while you struggle with depression

warnings ; language, talk of self harm & depression, talk about relapsing, mentions of ED

genre ; angst/fluff

word count ; 627

masterlist

he'd known for a while that you were struggling and even suggested taking a break/breaking up if you needed it as to not overwhelm you with managing a relationship

obviously you didn't want too

but that came with a negotiation that he was going to genuinely help you no matter what

literally came over after a stream, like 9pmish and went straight to your bathroom

they got a little trash bag and threw out all the razor blades in your house, like looked everywhere, tore the whole place up to even get secret stashes

you followed and watched them do this, fearing they'd yell at you afterwards because they were totally silent while doing so

they also stashed the knives in a drawer with a child lock which you genuinely couldn't open, using the smart logic to use a butter knife if you needed to cut something up

if you were making food and needed to cut up meat, call him and he'd open it for you, considering you lived like 5 minutes away from each other

after he threw all the razors and pencil sharpeners and anything you didn't need that could hurt you away, he sits you down on the couch

you have a long talk about how you need to stop hurting yourself and you talk about safe self harm

from coloring on your body, listening to music really loudly, experiment with guided imagery, holding ice, punching a pillow/cushion instead of yourself, eating sour/spicy candy, etc

they're just trying to give you safe alternatives to substitute the actual harming tactics because they know you won't be able to quit immediately

every week you have a long talk about your feelings, how you're doing, etc so ranboo can determine how to help you/get an idea of how you've been doing

you talk to him frequently that you're worried about relapsing and hurting yourself somehow, from cutting to slapping or punching yourself

if you run to him thinking you're gonna hurt yourself, he wraps you in a hug and doesn't let you go until you feel more calm

frequently sends you texts to uplift you a bit and make you smile

sometimes you'll just have tight hugs on the couch where he just talks to you to get your mind off of everything and make you a little happy and joke around

usually takes you on long walks to clear your head if you express being stressed or very upset about something

he gets you on a nice healthy diet and helps you not under/overeat and possibly give yourself an ed

also helps you get into a routine to feel more clean and organized

refers you to therapy and towards yoga/working out

they'll happily do yoga or work out with you, 100%

anytime you smile, he just looks at you with like love in his eyes because he's clearly doing something right

loves taking you out into nature to listen to the birds singing and smell the fresh air, he can tell it does wonders for you

loves bird watching with you too

he'll find a show with like 7+ seasons for you to watch together so you can get interested/fixated on something and think about that more then your fear of hurting yourself or relapsing

in general they'll do whatever it is to help you cope, knowing they can't magically make you feel any better

so supportive as well

when you reach sobriety milestones (a month, two months, three months, six months, a year etc) he throws a little party

over time all your friends get more and more proud of you and show that well

ran however is definitely the most proud, seeing as you'd found a way to overcome the pain that tormented you

#lowkeyrobin #mcyt x reader #mcyt preferences #mcyt oneshot #ranboo x reader #ranboo oneshot #tommyinnit x reader #tubbo x reader #gn reader #gender neutral reader #they/them reader

[certifiablyinsanez]

I’ll come out and say it. I preferred season 2 of GO over season 1 and here’s why:

For starters, season 1 was great. Of course, it was our introduction to this marvelous story and world. But here’s my problems with it:

Too many characters, most of whom I don’t care about.

Anyone who says they don’t watch for Crowley and Aziraphale would be liars. We all love them and absolutely crave content surrounding them and their admittedly perfect love story. So with all the characters fit into season 1, several of which I couldn’t stand, it’s somewhat difficult for me to get through without constantly rolling my eyes. My problems with the characters stem as such:

The relationship between Anathema and Newt. Anathema is a strong, smart woman and Newt is honestly an absolute loser. To me he’s got the personality of a wet noodle and his biggest character trait is ‘make computer explode’. It’s like if Seamus from Harry Potter was given a role past his station in the story. They know each other for all of an hour and they end up kissing and having sex which to me is just weird and out of place. I’m fully convinced that wouldn’t have ever happened if Agnes hadn’t mentioned it. And even though I like Anathema, her purpose in the story feels a little…meh. Like sure she and the human computer virus stop nuclear Armageddon but like…I feel like Adam could’ve just been like “stop” and it would’ve had the same result.

Shadwell and Madame Tracey. Again, what do they even do other than provide comic relief and give Aziraphale a body to possess? Also, how is it that Crowley and Aziraphale have the best love story I’ve ever seen and yet in the same story there’s a ‘couple’ where the man, for years and years screams at you, calling you names and treating you like dirt and you….like it? Like, it feels like something an incel would think of as a cute relationship.

The Them. Honestly I can’t be too mad over this, they played annoying little 11 year olds very well, but like, they were irritating. Like Pepper, supposedly a feminist but then says pick-me stuff like “tHeY bOuGHt mE A giRLs BiKe”. Also says that if she were an alien she “wouldn’t bring messages of peace and harmony” but bring violence instead and then later against war says “I believe in peace”, like??? Brian was just so bland he doesn’t even deserve mentioning. Wensleydale? I dunno, the line “I believe in food, and a healthy lunch” like fuck you mean you believe in food???? He could’ve said something like “I believe that all people deserve food” or something that, idk, actually made sense? And then there’s Adam and I’m sorry but the ENTIRE BUILD UP OF THE SEASON ENDING WITH “you’re not my dad”…really? He makes it seem like he loves his dad but Mr. Swindon Ambassador is a total TWAT. That whole bit was just anticlimactic to me.

Overall I feel like a ton of screen time on these characters just don’t do it for me. Season 2 on the other hand? Completely eliminates non essential characters. I’ve heard people complain about “lack of depth” in the new season and honestly, idk if they were just on the toilet or watching their phone for the whole season or what but here’s what I LOVE about season 2 that missed the mark in season 1.

The characters were just *chefs kiss*. They bring back Gabriel, an absolutely abysmal character from the last season and somehow make us love him. They introduce Muriel, who is just a peach! People seem mad over the fact that their character is just “cheerful ditz” and I will FIGHT YOU FOR THEIR HONOR. Their character is so much more than that for a start, and it’s very clear that their presence is important for the story. They took Beezlebub who had no depth in the previous season (negative depth actually), and gave them purpose and a role. If anything Nina and Maggie aren’t really my faves but at least they were more human in representation than season 1 relationships. But my favorite bit?

None of the characters on screen felt like wasted time.

Not once didn’t I roll my eyes or wish they’d get to the good bit. I enjoyed watching all these characters interact towards the greater story. But even better? We were fed with aziracrow content. An absolute feast! And I can’t believe y’all are complaining. I could genuinely just watch an entire series of their antics over the millennia I love them so much, so for people to say it was slow, boring and lacked depth is borderline offensive.

For a transitional piece, it was masterful.

#good omens #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #good omens 2 #aziraphale x crowley #crowly x aziraphale #haters

[lebenspurpur]

ANNA THE HUNTRESS X READER HEAD CANNONS??

AN: My god, it's ''fasnet'' time here right now and my days are spent being hunted by witches and being too drunk, but I finally got around to writing again!

Warnings: NSFW in the second part, but there's another warning further down

Anna lacks a lot of experience in the romance compartment. I tend to think she must've lived in some kind of community at least one time in her life. After all, even as a fully self-sufficient hunter, there are things you need to buy to start such a life. My guess is, she lived near a cottage or village of some sort as a child when her mother was still alive. Still, even when she still had the means to socialize, I doubt there were many who found her romantically interesting (as sad and unbelievable as that is). Relationships whose focus lies on romance and not the typical mother-daughter antics she's used are therefore new territory to her.

This is why at the beginning of said relationship, she'll most likely treat you more like someone she has to take care of, than an equal.

This providing side of her is the attribute she is most prideful about, though. Anna's love language is 100% acts of service. Her life is spent making sure you're healthy (physically and emotionally), fed and feeling loved and cared for. She won't calm down until she's sure every task revolving around your well-being is taken care of.

Her passion for those tasks, however, can also be a hassle. Many nights, you might spend alone because Anna is busy, hunting, sewing, cooking or preserving food. She can be a bit oblivious to the emotional needs one might have in a romantic relationship, another consequence of her solitary lifestyle and lack of experience. She needs a lot of instruction to figure out that sometimes, you just need her to hold you.

Lucky for you, Anna is very, very attentive. She wouldn't have survived without being alert at all times. With you in the center of her life, she can put all that attention and focus on you, learn every single thing about you and memorize it.

Give the Huntress a few months, and she can read the smallest signs of body language you exhibit. A small shiver? She's there with a blanket. Rubbing your tummy absentmindedly? She'll warm up some stew. Eyes looking a bit more remote and isolated than usual? She'll hurry up with her chores, so you can cuddle up before you go to bed.

While we're on the topic of cuddling, Anna is so touch-starved. In the beginning, she's afraid to ask for your touch, scared that her scars or more or less intimidating figure disgust you. When she realizes you like the way her body looks, her touches and asks grow a lot bolder. It's her favorite activity, relaxing somewhere while you touch her. Even if you're just holding her cheek, or checking for injuries, she'd do anything to have those hands linger on her skin.

And she's so warm. The red forest is always a damp kind of cold, a wet freezing temperature that seeps into your clothing and bones and cools you from the inside. You don't know how she does it, but Anna is like a furnace. Even if she just came out of the pouring rain, her torso is blazing hot and perfect for pressing your freezing hands against.

That attribute of hers is especially helpful at night, when you come to realize how painfully cold it can get, even under a bunch of wool and fur blankets. Since Anna is probably taller than you, she encases you better than any blanket ever could. Plus, she'd never complain about your cold hands against her body, if anything it makes her happy to know that she can warm you up.

Now, onto a little more spicy coziness. (NSFW content following, if that was not clear enough ;))

Anna's sense of providing for you doesn't decrease in the bedroom. If anything, it gets more intense. The Huntress is a pretty dominant top, bordering on a stone top, meaning she focuses on her partner's desires without expecting much in return.

But, as mentioned before, she can be a bit oblivious to her partner's needs at the beginning of a relationship. If you don't make your desire visible or vocal, chances are she'll mistake your eagerness for a reaction to the cold, simple shyness or the need for some innocent physical attention.

Her first time will be very slow and unsure - she's scared of screwing up, scared of driving you away but nonetheless, very eager to learn. Anna's attentive focus comes in handy, once again. She learns, quickly, either how to fulfill all your wishes, or tease until you're begging.

Which brings us to the next point, Anna adapts very well to your desires. She can be soft and loving, granting your every wish, and at the same time the Huntress has the power to be absolutely ruthless and dominating. What you want her to be is up to you.

One word: size kink. The predator side of Anna is very, very proud of her physique. She's strong, tall, difficult to kill and defeat. Her body is an important asset to her task of protecting and pleasuring you. And since she knows how much you like that body of hers, there's no reason for her to hide the joy she gets from seeing how much stronger, and taller she is, compared to you.

Anna likes to praise as well. She's usually not the most vocal person, speaking only when something is important enough to be voiced. She rather listens to you talk. When she's feeling intimate, that changes drastically. Seeing you so vulnerable and ready for her just entices something inside the Huntress to voice her pride and adoration, even if it's in her mother tongue. Most of the time, she prefers her praise in Russian. That way, she can tell you thoughts that are, in her mind, not yet ready for you to hear.

#ahhh anna my beloved #i missed her #dead by daylight #dbd #dbd huntress #dbd huntress x reader #the huntress #dbd the huntress #the huntress x reader #dbd anna #dbd x reader #dead by daylight fanfic

[hotforharrison]

Hi! I want to hug you so bad! 

(If anything, English is not my first language, but I hope it will be understandable, everything I write with the help of a translator).

Good for you for speaking up! You don't have to keep all the pain inside. It only hurts us more and also the feelings in our heads keep pressing on us even longer. I'll be honest! I have always been overweight myself. I'm not good with English weight meanings, but google says 200 pounds fits what I mean. And I weighed that in my teenage years because of family and school problems. I thought I could never change. I thought really horrible things. I really thought that death was the best way out. I might have weighed more, but at some point I stopped getting on the scale. I wish I could say that something universal helped me in the end, something that could help you quickly too! But it was more of a moment of acceptance. I realized that I was hurting myself. That all these thoughts were ruining me. I wanted to be happy and healthy! And you know what? You're realizing it, too, and that's a huge step forward. And the important thing is to remember that. There will be good days and there will be bad days. That's normal! But gradually things will change. It took me a couple of years to lose the weight, and it took me a few more years to figure out a little bit about myself and my problems, including my food problems. And maybe the help of a psychologist is what you need most right now.

It's also important for you to recover from injury and surgery. This will take even more time. But don't berate yourself and your body! It's a lot of stress for him and trust me! He's working very hard to recover. And you should be grateful to your body. One day things will go faster. You'll see! Just give yourself time. I know you want the best here and now, but when we've been eating and hurting ourselves for years at first without realizing it, and wanting to fix things quickly isn't going to work. 

And about your husband. Honey, I'm probably not the best person to help you with that, and I'm sorry. I can imagine how hard it is, being together for so many years and in an open marriage, but still at some point to realize that you are not so important anymore. I'm really sorry, honey. I think you're realizing it yourself and you know what will happen in the end. Again, it's the realization and acceptance that counts. It's going to hurt, darling. But time heals everything. Your attachment to your husband now is more a fact of your habit and the bargaining constancy you're used to. And change is always stressful. But whatever happens in the end, everything will be all right. You're going to get through this! And you will achieve your goals. Step by step, everything will be fine. You can do it, I believe in you ❤️

Thank you so much!

Your words are completely understandable and clear! I wouldn't have guessed your first language wasn't English.

I don't keep them completely inside. I do talk to my bestie about all these things (I met her on Tumblr over 4 years ago, and she's the best -- @skymoonandstardust )

I also have a counselor who I talk to, including about my disordered eating and relationship with food, but I've had some trouble getting sessions with her over the past couple of months. She's always booked pretty far out, and the last few sessions have been canceled due to the counseling center scheduling an appointment wrong (seeing both the marriage counselor and my solo session on the same day, which no one mentioned most insurances won't allow), then a massive power outage, then severe weather, then she had a family emergency and had to reschedule her appointments a few more weeks out. I hopefully have another session on Monday, if nothing happens to cancel it.

I'm sorry you went through all that with your weight and mental health issues, but I'm so glad you were able to work through it and that things got better for you! Being happy and healthy is so important.

I lost a lot of weight (around 80 lbs) my first year of college when I was 19. I was very active, both walking everyday and hitting the gym at least 3-4 times a week. I didn't count calories, but I did eat sensibly. The only problem with that was that the weight loss was entirely for my first... partner, I guess I could call him. It was a really messed up situation. I moved to be with him, minus all the weight. He hadn't seen me in a year, and he didn't comment on my weight loss at all. That hurt a lot after I worked so hard.

I'm losing the weight for me this time -- a good portion of which is for my health.

I had to do a pre-op complete metabolic panel for my ankle surgery back in January. There's a range in fasting blood sugar levels that indicates prediabetes, and I was 1 into that threshold, out of I think 26 -- something like 101 when the range was 100-126. Diabetes runs in my family, and a genetic test I had done several years ago indicated I was much more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than the average person.

There is the dating component, too, but the weight loss isn't for my future boyfriend (hopefully) so he'll think I'm hot or whatever. It's so I can be comfortable in my own skin. I'm obviously not going to be ready for a relationship if I don't want to be naked in front of anyone else because of my own intense insecurities.

I've also amassed a box full of clothes in my goal clothing size that I bought on clearance that I'd very much like to wear. I used to wear men's fandom shirts, like Marvel, and men's athletic pants pretty much exclusively. I felt terrible about myself, and it reflected in my appearance. I learned over some time that I feel much better about myself when I dress in feminine clothes that make me feel pretty, which I do also have in my current size.

I know didn't gain all the weight overnight, and I'm not going to lose it overnight either as much as I'd like to. Patience is definitely difficult with as much as I want to meet my goals, but I know it is important. I'm not going to help future me at all if I rush things and don't allow my body to heal like it needs to. I'm going to begrudgingly listen to my doctor and physical therapist and not push things.

The prospect of divorce is particularly hard for me because my husband was my first boyfriend, first legitimate actual relationship where I wasn't a dirty little secret. He's been my only real relationship, and the only person I've ever loved romantically.

I had a "boyfriend" in 2016 when we hadn't been polyamorous for long, but I use the term "boyfriend" loosely. The relationship was very short lived and more wishful thinking on my part because of being new to polyamory and wanting to have a boyfriend in the general sense of having one. We weren't very compatible. He was just the first guy who showed interest in me, and I went with that.

I know salvaging my marriage is likely the same sort of wishful thinking as well, and I realize that more some times than others, but I'm not ready to completely give up yet. It hurts too much right now. Just thinking about it leaves me in tears.

I think it's part of why I've been writing one of my fics again -- to escape from the reality of my marriage and imagine being in love again, when my heart fluttered and was full of joy and there were shared smiles and laughter and inside jokes and nothing was forced, instead of this aching in my chest with what I desperately wish was a premature sense of loss and grief, and profound loneliness that doesn't go away even when we're together, and trying to somehow recapture what used to be there between us when I just don't know how to accomplish that, and the only thing that seems to be left now is denial and a stream of tears that never fully dries up.

[constanciandrea]

alternative continuation to @shugarezaissugar’s 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙚

hi! i would just like to remind you that the angsty prompt and the original story doesn’t belong to me, but to the wonderful @shugarezaissugar! my rp partner and i actually decided to rp the continuation, privately, I hope it was okay! as per the original piece’s writer’s wishes, I’m going to post what my rp parntner and I had written so far. 

my partner wrote Shouto, and i wrote as an oc (I apologize if I went ahead and did it. fingers crossed that you like her even just a bit! x.x I just don’t know how to write this all in second POV since I’m quite new to writing in general! please bear with me, thank you! :)

this is my very first tumblr post, so please bear with the format! 

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Shouto’s part: Written by my rp partner

It hadn't been that long since Shoto had stopped calling Aevi and leaving messages on her phone, knowing that she would never get them, that he was just talking to air. A voice that no longer led to the girl he had fallen in love with. He hadn't really moved on, but Shoto was getting better, his heart slowly healing. Meeting Anna had changed everything for him. She had been the person he needed to breathe life back into his soul, to reform his body from the shattered mess he was. She put back the pieces of his heart bit by bit until he was finally able to send one last voicemail telling Aevi goodbye, and that he loved her. He always would, but it was time for him to go now. Shoto had spent too much time pining for what he could no longer have, and his friends were right; it hadn't been healthy.

  It had been a couple months now since he finally let go and his relationship with Anna had flourished. Some of it, he knew, was because she resembled Aevi so much that it was, at times, easy to forget that she wasn't...and sometimes he felt guilty, thinking that his loss was the only reason he was interested in her to begin with. But, he also knew that this wasn't true. He fell for her in a way that was new and exciting, something totally unpredictable but not unwanted. And when he looked at Anna, his heart sang with that love, helping him heal a little more all the time. 

Today they were at a festival.  Some of their friends had invited the couple and honestly, Shoto was already considering going. It wasn't often that UA students got to get out of the school and go to a public event, especially 1-A with all the trouble they have gotten into over the years pretty much from day one. The weather was warm and everyone was laughing. There was food to be eaten and laughs to be had... Everything had been perfect for one tiny sliver of a day. But then it all just...twisted. Contorted into the nightmare that he was looking at now. Betrayal clear on his face as he looked into the eyes of the girl he had thought was dead for the past several months. Throwing out some trash from her food...Present Mic and Aizawa-sensi hot on her heels...until they laid eyes on him. 

"Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on...Aevi, is that really you?" His voice was deathly calm,  the type of tone that you tried to use when you knew you were about to break. The tone his own father used when he was in trouble as a child. Or when he was apprehending criminals. Aevi’s part: Written by Anri (me) With a skip in her step and a smile on her lips, a girl with dark hair's mellow brown eyes lit up with joy. Her eyes sparkled with mischievous glee and her hair swirled around in wild waves. As she skipped down the busy street of Shinjuku, her laughter rang out like music.

For Aevi, it was simply the perfect day. The best day in her life, so far. After all, it's her first time leaving the "orphanage" to go to visit the city, the festival at that, despite having lived in Shinjuku for eight months already. She simply wasn't allowed to go out because it was dangerous. Especially for her. No, not Aevi.

It wasn't as if her teachers don't understand her desire to go out and see the world for herself again, she had no memories of anything, after all. But they were genuinely worried about the potential chaos that her quirk would cause. Try as she might to convince them otherwise that she would definitely behave, Aevi knew deep down that their concerns were valid. 

Her teachers would watch as the poor girl glumly stared out at the window, dreaming with *such* want, desire in her eyes to be able to use her wings to fly freely in the outside world. That's why when Aevi spent literally months trying to win over her teachers, giving them little handmade gifts - sweet little trinkets that showed them how much she appreciated their effort and support.. their resolve were slowly crumbling down.

At first, she felt like it didn't do anything at all, so she had to resort to doing volunteer works for the orphanage, eagerly doing chores everyone hated and using her infamous puppy eyes no one was able to ignore. Once she noticed it was time for the final blow, she negotiated and reassured her teachers that even though she may pose a problem, she would do her absolute best to keep everyone safe. Hence, she had to spend months upon months of quirk training and self defense. Her hard work paid off even though she was just barely able to protect herself, as her teachers said. So to take precautionary measures, she had to go with at least a couple adults around.

"Aevi, I told you to stop running through the crowd—-" Hizashi Yamada scolded the girl as his eyes widened at the scene that was unfolding in front of him. As Aevi was throwing away her trash in the trash can, she seem to have ran into a group of people.

The girl tilted her head in confusion as strangers she had never seen before seem to have mentioned her name. Were they talking to her? "I'm sorry, do I happen to know you?" She smiled at the group warmly as she asked in a polite manner. Aevi suddenly felt a jolt as her teachers grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

a/n: original author, please let me know if i should put it down! thank you! 

#todoroki #shouto #shugarezaissugar #words are strange to me #continuation #bakugou #boku no hero academia #reader insert #angst with comfort

[el-oh-her]

“but you don’t have the body image issues to have anorexia”

If I had to give you a moment I realized my ex best friend didn’t care about me, it would be this simple sentence. She said it so easily, so matter-of-fact, and all I could do is stare back at her, and avoid looking at the mirror behind her. At me.

I have always had a very weird relationship with food. Ever since I was little. There wasn’t any peer pressure to be skinny or really any food anxiety from my parents. But I inexplicably had food anxiety. I think. at least, I remember always asking for food when I was at friends houses. 

In one of my women’s studies classes we were reading about anorexia in nunneries. And I began to wonder if someone could be involentarily anorexic. Because I had no issues eating and I didn’t feel bad about it. But I could never seem to finish a meal. Even really small ones. Three chicken strips and fries? I could never. And I wanted to know why I was like that, and I wanted to be able to eat a full meal because I was always tottering on underweight. 

I made the mistake of telling my ex best friend about what my class was covering. About my contemplation about involentary anorexia. The reality is that I understand I am tiny, and I will never be judged for having that small body. I don’t want to take up space in a communtiy that struggles to be heard, as bigger girls struggle with their body image because of the way society looks at them. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that I have little love for the girl I see in the mirror. I understand logically that I must be attractive, since boyfriends have never been an issue. But I have never looked in the mirror and saw myself as beautiful. I loathed the way my boobs hang low and how lumpy my hips look. My spine that’s definitely not straight and my bad, broken teeth, rotted from years of depression. The way my skin is never cleared of acne, no matter what I do. My body feels half alive, and I feel apathetic in taking care of it because it never seemed to get better, and always seemed to get wose. 

I chose not to tell my ex best friend, that I did, in fact, have the body issues for anorexica. Because it wasn’t the fact she was wrong, it was the very notion she thought it was something appropriate to say. She had, in that moment, become an unsafe, dangerous person. I did not want to justify my own struggles to someone who would not even listen to me in the first place. How scared I was that I couldn’t seem to finish a meal, and I was trying desperately to understand why. 

It turns out, when you’re anxious, your fight or flight is triggered. And your non essential funcitons shut down, including your digestive system. So, essentially what happened is that the abusive enviroment of my ex friends and my ex boyfriend was so intense, that I lived in a constant state of anxiety which meant I was never hungry until my body NEEDED food. I called these my ranvenous periods, where I wanted to eat everything and anything. 

Getting healthier has come with weight, and I can’t say that I love gaining it, though I know it’s healthy for me. That’s what society has done to us girls. Even though I’m healthy, and my doctor isn’t worried anymore, I still feel like I failed.

And my ex boyfriend was not intentionally food toxic, but ignorantly food toxic. I can’t really blame him because it wasn’t just him, it was just this ideology he pushed that accidentally caused it. He basically said fresh and home made is always better, and somewhere along the way I began feeling like any food with butter or fried in oil or made with something not fresh was unhealthy. And now, I struggle making food because I feel like if it’s not raw, it’s bad for me. 

I had told my sister I tried to cut some oil and butter back on a recipe and it wasn’t tasting good so I just followed the directions and behold, it tasted fine. Ifelt bad because sure there were veggies, but also a whole lot of oil and a half stick of butter. My sister was very casual when she said, “food is food. If it tastes good then it is good.” 

It is hard to feel healthy in a world that feels like everything is unhealthy. Some days we lose. Some days food is food, and if it tastes good then it is good. 

[whentherewerebicycles]

weight talk below the cut!!

[insert standard caveat that no one has to lose weight or feel pressure to lose weight, everyone gets to make decisions about their own bodies, and choices I make about my body are not an implicit judgment of anyone else’s choices!]

I’ve been working for three years—literally almost to the day—to slowly lose weight and keep it off through sustainable long-term lifestyle changes. three years ago this week I was at my highest weight I’ve ever been and was having all kinds of health irritations that I thought were just the result of turning 30/getting older (I now think they were the result of an extremely sedentary lifestyle combined with fairly heavy drinking combined with a really bad processed food diet). anyway I won’t rehash everything as I’ve def written at length about it before but I started eating a whole food plant-based diet and trying to consistently get an hour or more of physical activity every day. it’s sometimes felt like sloooow going, esp compared to the short-term results I used to get with crash dieting (where you’d lose a bunch of what was almost certainly just water weight by starving yourself, only to rocket right back up to your starting weight or higher within a couple weeks or months). but I’ve made changes to my diet and lifestyle that now three years later just feel like a rock solid part of how I eat and plan my day, and I feel the benefits of them so strongly (and the negative effects when I’m traveling or out of my routines and can’t do them) that I think they’re just like… permanent now. best of all I feel like I’ve spent the three years negotiating ways to be flexible around food so I don’t feel all those strong bad feelings of guilt/shame or deprivation that used to characterize my entire relationship with eating. I can make a cake and eat it without feeling like I have to atone for it afterwards. I can be adaptable when I’m traveling while feeling confident that I’ll be able to reestablish healthy routines once the temporary disruption is over. I can calmly regulate my own emotions around food and make good decisions that will make my body feel good too. and even though losing weight happens really slowly, I track it pretty carefully and that helps me see that 1) it’s a steady downward trend and 2) my weight fluctuates significantly less than it used to, which I think means that I’m basically very slowly lowering my ‘resting weight’ (ie the equilibrium weight my body hovers around even as I fluctuate a couple pounds in either direction throughout my cycle). and that is very cool to see!

May 2020: 199 lbs

May 2021: 183 lbs

May 2022: 175 lbs

May(ish) 2023: 169 lbs

I could probably ‘lose faster’ if I restricted calories more, but I don’t want to! a lot of the research says people can lose up to 1-2 lbs a week for sustainable weight loss but that just hasn’t been my personal experience—if I lose too fast by restricting too much, it comes back and the temporary loss doesn’t seem to shift that resting weight baseline for me at all. whereas losing at this rate (less than a pound per month, but with a slooooow steady downward trend) seems to give my body time to readjust and accept the slightly lower weight as its new normal. this is totally unscientific and purely just personal opinion lol but I feel like, we know that the body doesn’t like change and is always trying to reestablish and maintain homeostasis… so in my mind it’s like well if I bring the weight down so, so gradually maybe my body doesn’t really register it as a change it needs to adjust for. anyway I don’t really care about why it works but it’s working for me.

I don’t really set goals around weight loss anymore (or I’m trying not to) because I don’t want to view it as like, a competition with myself that has a clear end goal, but I think bringing my resting weight to somewhere in the 150-160 range would be ideal for me… I have that sturdy Italian + Irish peasant stock build lol I’m not meant to be waif thin nor do I aspire to be. but 150-155ish is a weight I’ve felt very good/healthy at before and in the longer term (like 1-3 years) it’s the place I’d like to get to. I feel like sustainably losing 50 lbs and making lifestyle changes to keep it off is actually a huge fucking deal and if it takes me six years or so to do it that feels kinda right to me… like of course doing a complete and enduring overhaul of your attitudes and habits/routines around food and physical activity is going to take a long time to really firmly and permanently establish. like it took what, 26+ years to establish pretty fucked up and unhealthy routines/mindsets around food and exercise? so in the grand scheme of things six-ish years is actually really fast. also I am just kind of into the slowness of it all as a concept—like, proving to myself I can conceive of and implement a very long-term transformation of this huge area of my life/identity. I like the idea that you can change any aspect of your habits or attitudes once they are no longer serving you well. it’ll take time and patience to do it but you CAN do it.

[ed-recovery-affirmations]

Thanks for answering my previous ask!

I have nobody to share this with so hopefully you won't mind me sharing it here: So far, recovery has been going pretty ok for me. For now, I'm avoiding the mirror and I shower with the lights off, and those are behaviours I'll have to work on one day too but for now it seems to be the best course of action, because seeing myself in the mirror would most likely cause me to relapse. Especially since I know for a fact that I'm totally bloated right now, so whatever I'd see in the mirror wouldn't even be an accurate reflection, but my disordered mind wouldn't listen to that.

I'm currently going through the dreaded extreme hunger phase, which is partly why I'm so bloated lol. For the first few days I've been alright with it but it's like the 4th day of my mind and stomach both screaming for food like vultures and tbh I'm starting to feel kinda guilty about it. I realise that it's a part of the process and that it's good for my organism and that my body is trying to repair itself, but my ED is slowly rearing its ugly head and scolding me a ton, saying that I'll gain weight, trying to convince me to look in the mirror, etc. So far I've been able to resist and I also keep reminding myself that I SHOULD gain weight because I've been horrfically underweight all of my life and I'd be much better off at a healthy weight. The only problem that keeps weighing on me is that I have a really big issue with folds. Even though folds are completely normal and everyone who's not very underweight has them when they slouch or sit, my mind has somehow become convinced that rolls mean being fat. I'm not sure how to get rid of that mentality. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Another thing I found out is that I might have to give up romantic relationships for the time being. Even though I've struggled with anorexia for most of my life, going through on and off phases, my last relapse and the worst I've ever had occurred after I got into a relationship. Specifically it seems that a lot of my behaviour hinges on the obsession with being "perfect" for my partner. I can't let go of thinking about needing to be as thin and hourglass-shaped as possible for my partner, and I can't let go of the fear that if I get to a normal weight and perhaps lose some of that hourglass look, he won't find me attractive anymore and will leave me. I'm like constantly horrified of the possibility of being seen naked or in tight clothes, I'm plagued by the desire to be as attractive to him as possible and then to stay exactly like that for as long as possible. I attempted to talk to him about it before considering breaking up, but he made it clear that he doesn't wish to discuss my mental health problems with me, and as much as I'd like to, I can't just turn this problem off with a flip of a switch. So I decided that I'll most likely break my relationship off and stop dating altogether until I manage t somehow fix my chain of thought. At least I personally think that's the best solution for now.

I definitely don't mind you sharing! I usually do post things my followers choose to share, since I think it can really help create solidarity among the ED community. It can show others that they are not alone, and sharing recovery tips is always a plus too!

It seems like you've got some great harm reduction strategies in place in the form of avoiding scrutinizing your body while you prioritize getting regular nutrients into you again. That's really important. I think you're right that you will eventually have to learn to be able to view your body again, but if you just need to avoid visual triggers in order to eat better, that definitely comes first. You might want to practice just falling in love with your body exactly as it is - as the vessel that is doing its best to take care of you and keep you alive.

So, for example, if you did catch a glimpse of yourself and you happened to notice some recovery bloat or other triggers, you could take time to say to yourself, "That is my body doing what it needs to do to heal me. My body is trying its best to make me healthy and well, and this is what it needs to do." I think body image issues are something shared by all people who are going through health issues, since bodies do tend to do weird stuff while they're healing. Illness is only pretty on TV, not in real life.

Maybe when your ED is scolding you, you can take some time to examine where those thoughts are coming from? Like you could say "I wonder if I should be scolded for enjoying my food as humans do?" Or "I don't think it's such a bad thing to allow my body to heal." Don't try to fight the thoughts or stop them from coming, even though they're hard. Just gently challenge those thought patterns so that you can adjust your thought patterns gradually and become more aware of them. This is what I'd suggest especially when you start thinking about things like rolls, which seem to be a big trigger for you. You can perhaps engage with the thought directly, and say things to yourself like "If I need to hurt myself to pursue a roll-free body, is that something really worth pursuing?" Keep in mind that, since you're deep in ED thoughts, your mind might respond with "yes." As I mentioned before, trying to fight off negative thoughts will only give you more anxiety around them. Instead, acknowledge them, consider what feelings are causing them. The negative thoughts will not change overnight. It will take practice.

I'd also suggest, and this may take practice since it sounds like you've struggled with fear of fatness for a long time, that you just take a moment, when you have the capacity for it, to address how you have learned to think about fat bodies. Do people who are truly fat deserve less love, less respect, less estimation of worth? Society may have taught you that they do, but I think it's time to challenge that. Again, your mentality won't change overnight, so don't beat yourself up.

Lastly, I think it's so, so strong of you to prioritize your health over this relationship. That is such a hard choice to make! But honestly, even though it's really difficult now, I think you will realize down the line that someone who doesn't want to talk about/support your mental health is someone you can't build a healthy relationship with down the line. I hope you get lots of quality time to spend just pouring lots of love and energy into yourself, and perhaps work with a therapist on some of the body and intimacy issues you've been dealing with, if therapy is an option for you. I hope that you get together with someone down the line who is interested in building a relationship based on mutual support!

#ed recovery #body image #F/O/F #ana recovery #long post

[demcnsinmymind]

More talk about Lance's relationship with Azathoth

especially in his mid post!canon interactions and the TVDU verse I have with a couple of lovely people on here

obviously messed up and trigger heavy since it's not healthy at all

I've already talked about the "biology" and physicality behind their bond, aka that Azathoth's mere presence inside his mind keeps him from slipping into the severe effects of brain trauma he's suffered from his lobotomy. It's basically like a pacemaker that's keeps him functioning and mentally alive and thus, it being in there is a necessity. I've also made a clear distinction between it and Friedkin, and established that it never physically harmed him and doesn't ever want to, but that it's using his mental health problems as its main food supply and wants him completely to itself and isolated.

I've also talked about the fact that he's trauma bonded to Azathoth and has severe stockholm syndrome which I cannot understate enough, and which plays a huge roll in this headcanon and 99% of all post canon interactions as well.

Anyway, something I have already written out in the TVDU verse with @sanguinelupus is the fact that at some point after being turned into a vamp, they manage to actually bind Azathoth and shut it up inside his mind - basically just locking it up inside. Thus insuring that it's keeping him from slipping into utter insanity and brain trauma, while at the same time just making it 'disappear' more or less, since it cannot take over anymore, cannot talk to him anymore, is basically what any other human would suffer through during a 'normal' possession, locked away in the body. It's basically like a cure from possession and making him 'normal' again.

Let me tell you my dudes.

This did not go well.

He broke the binding spell to bring it back.

The thing is that Lance is not just physically depended on it staying there, but also mentally. He's aware what it's doing to his psyche and people he cares about. He's aware that it's like a dark cloud sucking all joy and color out of things with all its feeding and needing him to feel miserable. But the thing is that post canon, he himself feels likes he needs to feel miserable and like this, and he cannot bear being without it.

He has severe survivor's guilt even if he doesn't admit it to himself out loud. Just because it's so paradoxical to him. He's fought hard to stay alive and get out of there. His perseverance and strength and optimism is very important to him. He feels like he deserved to make it and go home. That he's earned still being alive. He wants to be alive and he's scared as shit of dying and getting hurt.

Yet at the same time, he feels terrible about being the only survivor. That none of the others made it. He blames himself for the deaths of his entire team. He thinks they'd still be alive if it weren't for him. He won't ever permanently kill himself because he's fought too hard and is too proud, but he feels like he needs to be miserable to pay for what happened in canon.

And thus, he's keeping Azathoth around. And he needs it around, because he thinks that it's his only friend. Also, he associates losing Azathoth with losing his team and friends. It is the last thing he has from what happened in canon. The only thing that was there and knows what it was like. And he feels like if it were gone too, then he would have nothing and no one from his past. And he can't deal with that.

That's why he got it back in that verse, and that's why he doesn't want to get rid of it and why he'll never get rid of it, even if there was a way to do it without fearing total insanity and brain trauma.

He's also too used to its powers and being supernatural. Without it, he'd feel like less than normal. He'd feel worse than insignificant. He'd feel like an utter failure. So it stays. And it keeps feeding into that 'relationship' and 'friendship' by riding right on that train and telling him that it's the only thing he truly needs.

The thing is that in a fucked up way, the attachment and obsession is mutual. They care in both directions, but of course, it's utterly messed up, toxic and unhealthy. But that's exactly why I think that without any other friends, human and good people in his life, he'll drift off into full blown symbiosis with it. He thinks he deserves it and that it's the only way and the most reasonable option. Neither a hero who beat the devil at the end of the book and went home (just like I said, because he thinks he doesn't deserve it), but not a villain either since neither him nor Azathoth are truly evil.

Neither of them want to end anyone or even kill people unless they have to, unlike the cult that's after them. They just want to survive and vibe at all cost and they know their best chance is to achieve that together. But...yeah. It's super entangled and messed up and so not pretty. But in their book, there is no other option or outcome. They're a package deal. For better or worse.

#headcanons #hc : relationships #abuse tw #mental health tw #toxic relationship tw

[song-of-the-rune]

To anyone who does OC writing of any kind -- essentially, how do you decide who a character is?

Thinking aloud, please feel free to answer without reading all of the rambling below, which is more about a specific character than the question in general:

I found this in my drafts. I don't need advice on this particular character anymore, but I am still curious to hear about others' processes!

I have a character who I know a little bit about, but he's relatively undeveloped, and I'm trying to make him the protagonist of this short story I'm writing. I have a vague background, and I know how he typically handles things in the moment -- but I'm not sure how to have him react in the longer term. Partially because I know he himself is conflicted.

I guess part of my problem is that I don't want him to be too similar to the antagonist/deuteragonist, or if he does end up being very similar, I want to keep it clear that that's a corruption of his old self or it's otherwise forced on him.

I guess, partially, I am torn on -- do I want a happy ending for my protagonist?

I like happy endings, but I also like torturing my characters a bit and exploring pain through writing. I know I shouldn't worry about what others think of my writing in general, but when this is done, it's going to become lore for my tabletop setting, so... it does need to be a little bit consumable. (Or, I guess not? It's not like this is all happening on-screen.) It's also not like he's particularly... relatable for most readers, I'd think, at least not for my players. He's established in the setting as not a fantastic person, though I've started sympathizing with him when I started writing this. On the other hand, he's also a great candidate for a redemption arc, and I'm a sucker for redemption arcs. On the OTHER hand... It's very much against his own sense of self-preservation at this point.

Okay, I guess let me explain some things to help clarify the question:

(Spoilers for a story about my OCs I want to post here later if I get around to finishing it)

How do I decide how much Kaz values self-preservation?

High-fantasy setting. The man has been murdered and forcibly turned undead to grant him immortality. Why? So he can serve as a soul cage for the now-lich Rik who forcibly turned him -- essentially, he is the key to someone else's immortality. But he needs his own soul cage, and in an attempt to make things "even", embeds it in Rik's body. So, the two need each other to survive in order to keep surviving -- almost, I'll get back to this in a moment.

However, uh... obviously that's not a healthy relationship. So Kaz wants out, because he trusted Rik up until this happened. However, he didn't come prepared like Rik did, so he's actually at a bit of a disadvantage. Basically, Rik could replace Kaz at any time, taking away his immortality, so he's essentially at Rik's beck and call if he wants to survive. Not only can Rik take away the thing making Kaz invulnerable, but because of the way they're bound, Kaz can't put distance between them to keep himself safe from Rik; there's essentially always the option to teleport directly to Kaz. The best option in terms of survival is to make himself indisposible, which means cooperating, even if minimally. But, he knows that Kaz is going to be psychologically manipulating him the whole way and it probably won't be minimal.

What does he do? Does he just... die? Or does he keep doing things he doesn't want to do in order to survive?

How do I decide what a character lives for?

He's undead. He doesn't want to be. He misses food and feeling the sun and being able to be around animals without them being terrified of him.

#ocposting #ocs.kaztik #runic ramblings

[humanitiesnb]

GLASS HALF EMPTY MANIFESTO

Would you consider the glass of water above to be half empty or half full? To solidify your answer, let’s play a short game. I want you to visualize an open field. What’s the field’s condition? Is the field dry? Is it lush? How big is the field? Is the field filled with something like grass? Is the grass well-trimmed? Is the grass dead? As you wander aimlessly around your field, you take note of the weather. What’s the weather like? Is it raining? Is there a storm coming? Is it sunny? Windy? Foggy? Your answers to these three scenarios speak volumes about your outlook on life. Are you more of an optimist? That is, you see the glass half full, your field is overflowing with coruscating flowers, and the weather is sunlit and radiant. Or, are you more of a pessimist? In other words, you perceive the glass as half empty, your field is barren and lifeless, and there’s an upcoming deluge. For me, I’m undoubtedly a gloom-ridden person. This characteristic is exposed through three of my pieces of work. In module two—titled abstract images—I chose to peruse Rufino Tamayo's Children's Games. Despite being doused in a fiery red color, the painting's subject matter—children amusing themselves—is innocent and should have unveiled feelings of childlike jubilation and nostalgia. Instead of thinking about the positive perceptions that Children's Games brought out, I immediately thought about my fear of growing old and developing dementia. Likewise in the poetic license assignment, I chose a poem that illustrates a dangerous but all too common viewpoint that men have of women. I could have very well selected a heartfelt poem like Lullaby by Langston Hughes or an encouraging one like Mother to Son also by Langston Hughes. But again, I picked a poem that fixated on the cynical perceptions one gender has of the other. Lastly, the piece I chose to analyze in the not seen on TV module was a piece that mocked human intelligence and highlighted human depravity. In all three of these assignments, I had plenty of opportunities to either choose a buoyant piece of work or discuss the euphoric feelings and thoughts that the piece gave me. However, my line of thinking and subsequently my writing was constantly somber and critical. It seems like there wasn't a jolly bone in my body. 

The American Psychological Association defines pessimism as “the attitude that things will go wrong and that people’s wishes or aims are unlikely to be fulfilled" (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Based on this definition, pessimists loathe being placed in joyous situations where there’s an increased probability of things going awry. Marriage, having children, traveling, meeting new people, forming new friendships, impressing higher-ups, getting a promotion, and trying new foods are all a couple of situations that pessimists want to steer clear from. However, maintaining a relationship like one does in marriage and putting yourself out there through traveling are two circumstances that have an immense likelihood of bringing needless suffering. In the age of hook-up culture, people are reluctant and at times even afraid of commitment. This lack of devotion and dedication—amongst other factors—bleeds into marriages. Of course, the idea of finding your soulmate and living happily ever after is enticing and lovely but it’s just not realistic for the majority of the world’s population. An individual has to spend a significant amount of time, energy, money, and effort on producing and maintaining a healthy marriage. Unfortunately, the bulk of people either aren't willing to surrender or don’t even possess these four fruitages of marriage. If the majority are antipathetic about preserving a relationship and if more than 50% of U.S. marriages fail, then why would a pessimist want to be placed in this type of high-risk but low-reward gambling situation? In less than a millisecond, a seemingly happy marriage could crumble. Traveling poses another set of unwanted problems. Tourist destinations such as Paris, Cancun, Miami, and Bali are ripe with scammers and thieves. It’s extremely simple for a local to pickpocket a tourist in a crowded area because the tourist is either ill-prepared (for example, wearing a backpack instead of a money belt) or is distracted. Moreover, if one isn’t careful, one might be subjected to being swindled. Con tricks like taxi drivers claiming the meter is broken, vendors inflating prices, or phony police officers issuing fines are all scams geared towards extorting oblivious tourists. As evident by the Brittney Griner case in Russia and the Otto Warmbier case in North Korea, a small misstep or a lapse of judgment in a foreign country (especially a country whose government abhors America) could cost an individual their freedom and their life.

Clearly, being a prophet of doom and gloom is advantageous. When an individual catastrophizes a plan or situation, it forces them to become prepared for the possible outcome. This preparedness may come in the form of developing an action plan. For instance, before going on a trip or getting into a relationship (God forbid!), a pessimist might create a detailed list of all the feasible things that could go amiss. They can then attempt to mitigate the possibility of the worst-case scenarios coming to fruition by taking steps to prevent them from happening, or they could imagine what they would do or say in those mishaps. For example, signing a prenup as a safety measure if your marriage ends up dissolving (prevention) or being calm if robbed at knife-point in Athens (action). The key, though, is to set low expectations and then brainstorm ways for how everything could go wrong. It might be tedious or even exhausting but if those scenarios become reality, you'll thank the heavens that you had and acted on your foresight.

WORK CITATION:

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Apa Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association. Retrieved July 29, 2022, from https://dictionary.apa.org/pessimism

[aalactaotao]

I'm Fat But I'm Not Offended

That great epitome of Dark Romanticism Edgar Allan Poe once said the following words: “whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine…”. Excellent quote and yes, I must say that he has every right to be confused. One would have to live under a rock if they haven’t heard all those ‘yo mama is so fat’ jokes floating around these days despite the setting being a world that is supposedly ‘sensitive’ and ‘careful’ to not offend.

Be it on the silver screen, television, radio, comic strips, the internet, any form of media, overweight people are ubiquitously present for the sole purpose of being ridiculed. First of all I would like to make it clear that this post is not intended to come across as a ‘fat acceptance’ propaganda, but as one could surmise from the title, it is about being fat and not offended at these jokes. Again, the media seems very adamant to attach to overweight people a niche which these same people never asked for in the first place: namely, where the laughs are, the fatty is somewhere near.

It is no secret at all that the world favors the skinny to the extent that anorexia is often times glorified as some sort of ‘gorgeous people’s disease’ when in reality a keen comedian if willing, could crack a joke or two regarding the frankly ridiculous notion anorexics have that the more skeletal they look, the sexier they would turn out to be. But no comedian would even dare.

Remember, in order to be ‘funny’, one exclusively has to make fun of fat people.

And it’s not just whether being fat predisposes someone to being the butt of jokes which Edgar Allan Poe has to be confused about, but the scorn and in some cases, hate that the overweight experience at the hands of not only comedians but really, from everyone. Excuse the comparison (I’m not being bitter here at all), but anorexic people aside from being glamorized are showered upon with sympathy and support, whereas the fatty is simply looked down as being ‘a hopeless case’. Sure enough, the suffering of anorexics is not something trivial, but given their shaky relationship (or lack thereof) with food, it is but reasonable to conclude that being overweight or obese and being anorexic are two ends of the same spectrum.

But then again the media begs to differ. In comedy, one merely has to have weight issues in order to be considered ‘funny’; in soap operas, the evil stepmother or importunate in-laws often sport thick physiques; in action films, the head criminal is most likely to have a gargantuan belly with double chins; and in romantic comedies, the fat one is almost always the loser with no girlfriend.

Albeit the stated examples are not always the case, it paints a picture of how the media and therefore the people they are able to influence, view overweight people.

It is needless to point out that it would be wishful thinking for this world to portray overweight females as damsels in distress nor to have fat males as dashing debonaire for the simple reason that it is not natural in the same way that it is not natural for magazines to put anorexic ladies on a pedestal wherein they are viewed as the ideal of what ‘beautiful’ looks like. The natural way of course is to admire healthy bodies and sound minds.

Going back to my point, to be offended at all with the jokes directed at fat people is a form of submission to the status quo. What’s wrong with that mindset ultimately has to do with the fact that the status quo is very much skewed to the advantage of a particular people with a definite ideology that unlike what they say embraces each other’s differences and therefore unites all, in fact aims to divide everyone to produce class warfare.

This is not something one could change overnight given that we are used to it, used to have people make fun of and belittle (note the irony) fat people, but we, including myself, as fat people, could start with not being offended. But we should not do does in a haughty manner as that would defy the purpose; it should be done in a polite way that exudes grace and humility. However, that is not to say that an overweight person should dismiss comments about his or her weight as simply a product of prejudice- no, in fact, it could very well be a wake up call to better health. Furthermore, the most important thing is to do something about the problem of being overweight. Try to maintain a well-balanced diet, exercise at least twenty minutes per day, learn how to be disciplined when it comes to food intake, and do our best not to live a sedentary lifestyle. So the next time someone makes fun of us for our weight, we need not get offended especially if we know within ourselves that we are doing something about it.

I read somewhere that success is the best form of revenge and if shedding a couple of pounds won’t shut the detractors up then I don’t know what will.

#fat girl #fat #body positvity #body shaming #fat shaming #body neutrality #health #obesity #body image #beauty #society #beauty standards