if you’re writing james & sirius in a way that atleast one person doesn’t ask ‘are those two dating’ then sorry but that’s actually two random OCs with familiar names

Why I Love Helena

// Thanks to archiving my old blog on Wordpress, I now have one of my favorite and super personal ooc posts that I’ve wrutten. It got deleted when I deleted this blog earlier, but now I have it back. YAY!

So this gets really personal and long, so its going under a read more. Basically, its me infodumping about my love for a Ukrainian serial killer.

Thanks to some questionaires I’ve been tagged in recently, I started thinking about why I relate to Helena so much, more than other fictional characters I’ve related to in the past. The short, tl; dr answer is, to quote Sarah, I look at Helena, and I see me–the me I could’ve been, had I been in her shoes. Let me explain.

I am a very religious person, I always have been. I am also very literal, and very exacting. My parents are wonderful, and are so much more mellow than I am, so I’m not sure where this all came from, but here we are. By literal and exacting, I mean I told my mom, after I’d asked her a question during churvh, that women weren’t supposed to talk in church–I’d just remembered that (my church doesn’t have women preachers, if you’re curious I’ll explain), and I didn’t want my mom or I to do anything wrong. I was five.

I didn’t eat desert because I thought eating if you were full, and making yourself feel ick, was gluttony. I got a better understsnding of what that actually is when I finally told my dad my understsnding of it, and now I know differently.

I had a similiar issue with equating outbursts of wrath to childish temper tantrums. In fairness, both examples started out as my dad trying to explsin concepts snd answer questions in away I could understand. He didn’t intend for me to take them to the extremes I did.

There are more examples of this, but those are the main ones. I didn’t think to tell anybody about my admittedly puritanical viewpoints, and I’m not sure if I assumed everyone else thought like me, or–more probably–that it was their job to figure this stuff out, and their own fault if they didn’t.

Besides being literal to the extreme, I worried a looooooooot. About everything, but mostly accidentally doing something wrong and not knowing it was wrong before I did it. I didn’t understand humor or sarcasm for a long time, and so I tended to just laugh becsuse everyone rlse was, so I worried a lot about laughing at something without really getting it, only to figure out later that it was mean, or an inuendo or something. This never actually happened to me, but I worried about it happening.

i tended to take personal responsibility to the extreme, so I thought if you misunderstood something, or accidentally did something wrong, then it was your fault, and not knowing wasn’t an excuse. My parents never said this, so I’m not sure where I got it from, though I have a few ideas–I grew up hearing some pretty old school fire & brimstone sermons, and I think no one at the time realized how literally I was taking certain Bible passages that do teach you need to make sure you’re doing the right thing, and do teach that there’s consequences for doing wrong even if its done in ignorance. 

The problem wasn’t with the verses, but rather it was that I was applying them indiscriminately, without regwrd to context–i.e. I tended to feel that misunderstanding a social situation and doing something weird or off was wrong in the same sense committing an actual sin was wrong–I think, I know I thought it was wrong and that was bad, and I’m assuming wrong bad and sin were basically synonyms but its been too long for me to say for sure . I also tended to ignore the fact that or the fact that I was a kid who was still figuring things out.

Besides the fact that I was basically a younger genderbent Inspector Javert for most of my childhood, I was and am hugely introverted. I much preferred games of pretend to having conversations, and preferred animals to people. When I was about ten or so, I started to feel much younger than my peers, emotionally and developmentally, and that feeling’s gotten stronger over the years. I’m not interested in the things most people my age are, minus my history studies, and okay, fandoms, but the interpersonal relationships part, the desire for a spouse and children–no. Just, no. As a teenager, I’d take my stories and toys over chatting about boys and buying clothes any day. Prior to age ten, I just thought most children my age were dumb, lacking in imagination, and needlessly prejudiced–i.e. So and so has cooties so don’t play with them. Really??? I was a weird kid.

I don’t self harm, and my church doesn’t practice penance as a sacrament–though repenting is certainly necessary for forgiveness–but, the notion behind penance, the idea of msking atonement, appeals to me and I think, especially as a kid, when I had trouble understanding things like grace and forgiveness, I would have been quite attached to the idea of following a set formula, proving your repentence, and having that assurance that I was forgiven. I get thet penance doesn’t work like thwt, that if you’re not contrite all the prnances in the eorld aren’t gonna do anything, but I would’ve seen it as a formula as a kid, and that would’ve certainly been part of the appeal.

I can, to be perfectly honest, also understand a need to punish yourself to relieve feelings of guilt. I’ve never done that, but I used to struggle with a lot of guilt feelings and my solution was, luckily, to talk to my folks about it–especially when I was dealing with intrusive thoughts, which I struggled with from ages 8 to 18 or so, before they got better. There’s a verse in the book of James about confessing your faults, and so I applied that to my situation, and for once my overgeneralization actually paid off.

Imposing a punishment on myself never occured to me, but had it, or had it been suggested, I probably would have done it. I hope this isn’t offensive to anyone who has issues with self harm, snd I apologize if I said something wrong here. I’m still not great at figuring out what’s appropriate to say and what isn’t, as honesty above tact is ususlly how I operate, and while I can be very thin skinned, I can also tell people how it is without much sugar coating. If I’m saying it, I know I’m not upset. If someone else says it, I assume they are, because I have a bad habit of thinking I’ve upset people when I haven’t–probably because its hard for me to remember that I’m not the only thing influencing people.

I don’t mean thst in an arrogant way, rather, I mean it like this–if I greet someone and they sound snappy, I assume I’ve interrupted them or upset thrm, especially if I haven’t seen them that day prior to that incounter, so I don’t stop and think about other interactions with other people, or other possibilities, instead I assume I’m the cause. I don’t know why this is but it’s annoying.

As for my honesty without tact, you can blame the enormous amount of guilt I felt over a fib I told when I was three.

I want to stress that I’m not blaming my folks, or my church, and certainly not the Bible, for any of this. Once my folks knew what was going on, they helped and continue to help. My church iis great, and they emphasize grace and mercy and forgiveness. Obviously, there are plenty of Bible verses that do the same thing, and had it occurred to me to say something sooner, my misconceptions would’ve been mended sooner. My dad wasn’t really aware of the extent of it, as mentioning it didn’t occur to me.

My mom, somewhat, knew I worried and was rigid, but couldn’t figure out why–though she told me the other day it did seem like I was always worried about doing something weird or wrong–so she did what she could to reassure me when I asked, without realizing why I had my issues. We still don’t know, I’m about to get results back from an assessment that will hopefully shed light on some of that.

I used to asdume anything wtong was also somehow sinful, and by wrong I mean things like worrying my folks over how little I ate, or zoning out in the middle of a conversation, or unintentionally saying something that hurt someone. I was born very premwture and have hsd trouble eating enough my whole life, and my folks worried about it–prior to hitting puberty, my apetite was largely nonexistsnt snd sporadic at the best of times. I think I misinterpreted their wnxiety as them being upset with me, and that got translated in my head as I’ve done something wrong. I can’t, currently, recall if that meant I thought I’d sinned, but I think it did, given how badly I felt at the seriousness with which I viewed doing wrong things. While I have no idea if Helena is like this, I could see her lumping things into right snd wrong, and assuming wrongness equals sin.

This got really long and I’m sorry. Basically, I love Helena because I understand her. She reminds me of St. Joan–who I also relate to, for basically the above reasons. Apparently, I have a thing for zealots. I should also add that I am loads better, and–usually–don’t worry about things like I used to.

Yesterday and today people are confusing me to the point of anger. This whole "turn the other cheek", "treat others as you would like to be treated", "hate only brings hate" attitude some of you have towards T**** and its supporters is so fucking ignorant. I've said those things as well, I do believe in that but the difference is I know when it calls for it and when it doesn't and now is NOT the time for it. We're talking about so called people who have no problem denying you and thousands of others their right to live. That disgusting abomination sitting in that building right now could be the cause of hundreds of deaths because it influences "people" to act out in hate towards people like you. And by act I mean they are going to try to kill you and terrorize you. These are the same dumbasses who'd probably say "Oh no don't gas Hitler, he killed millions and caused an insurmountable amount of misery and pain, ripped families apart and caused damage thwt is still felt today but we shouldn't hate or kill him because love and peace conquers all." Bitch. Please. Sit the fuck down. I'm going to assume, which is terrible and shouldn't be done but I will anyway to get my point across, that people who say this sort of dumb shit have never in their lives faced the really real possibility that they may die because now these fucking abominations have a green light from their so called leader to act even more horrible because they know there WILL NOT be any conssquences to their actions. Thousands are facing, have faced and will face that reality now and you wanna talk about not hating or wishing death on something because it's wrong and it'll stoop you down their level? Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, you ignorant piece of fucking filth. You are just as bad as those who see these things going on, say how wrong it is and then fucking do nothing about it. Sometimes fighting back with full force is needed. Sometimes hating them back is needed. Because Kathy across from your house decided to vote for that thing. She will dead name you, cheer as they declare your existence as illegal, deny you basic human rights and as much compassion as you wanna show her she sure as fuck won't show it back to you because she think your existence is wrong. And I'm not just talking about white people. Plenty of LGBTQIA+ and PoC and other marginalized groups are just as shit as that orange thing's supporters for condemning you for fighting back because they see it as wrong. Then they cry foul when the shit hits the fan and hits them in the face. Then they wanna go up in arms because it happened to THEM meanwhile others have been fighting back and withstanding attacks from both sides. Guess what that is, that's right, privilege. Get the fuck out of here. Shut the fuck up. So done with this hypocritical bullshit. I am blocking every stupid motherfucker who thingks you should just turn the other cheek or talk shit about those who want to fight this shit or express hate on these violent racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic groups. I'm done, I'm so ready for Ragnarök!