*KICKS THE DOOR DOWN* WWWAIT FREYA I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ON FANDOMS VIEW OF THIS SHIP I NEED TO KNOW UR OPINION. HOMUMIKU???
WKSHJSHJDBJHAHAHAH HIIIII, GRACE!!!! ❤️💕💞💝💗💖💘💓💕💞💖💞💘
Homumiko (HUGE spoilers for DGS after the bingo sheet):
I have been waiting to get into this ship properly, because I have THOUGHTS and I need to be forced to get them out coherently.
Let's get into the basic ship itself. Honestly? No comment. I think hmmk cheats a bit by relying on the literal decades people have spent shipping Holmes and Watson together, and I doubt that they would be half as popular without this history; but, as someone who has never had strong feelings about HolmesWatson either way, I don't have that bias! Even if we're just going off of DGS and looking at how they complement and trust each other, and are obviously more comfortable around one another than most other people, I don't really have a strong opinion on them. I do think they're close, but whether that bond is platonic, romantic, sexual or some mix of the two is just not something I particularly care about. You know who I do care about, though?
Susato-san.
OKAY, SIT DOWN, EVERYONE BECAUSE THE SHIP BINGO PART OF THIS IS OVER, AND NOW WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE PARTS OF HMMK I DO CARE ABOUT AND WHY THAT ACTUALLY HAS VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH THEM AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HER.
Let's get this out of the way first. Based on my very modern sensibilities, I take a rather harsh stance on Mikotoba's parenting.
Do I think he loves his daughter? Sure. But which parts of his daughter? Because it's very easy to love a child who is always obedient, elegant and the literal embodiment of idealised Japanese womanhood without knowing or truly even looking at her. I think Susato made it easy for him to love her, because she believed she had to earn it. Her father left when she was born, consumed by grief over her mother's death -- her mother, whom she killed. I know the game tries to justify this by saying it was Jigoku who dragged him away (and I do think him leaving was good for him, because I doubt he would have been a good father even if he'd stayed due to his grief), but the point is that he still left. For six years. And when he returned, he didn't even return because of her (whether she knew that from the moment she met him or not is debatable, but I think, at least on a subconscious level, she knew. And, of course, it's also debatable whether he could have returned sooner because of his commitment as a transfer student, but the Mikotobas are a powerful family, and, if Soseki could return before his period of learning was fully up, I think he would have been able to pull strings to return home if he wanted to).
This falls under speculation, so I understand not agreeing with it, but I don't think Mikotoba ever properly spoke to Susato when she was a child, especially not about what he did in England. I believe that a part of the reason why Susato started reading the Sherlock Holmes stories to begin with was because they featured a doctor in London, like her father had been, and she wanted to feel closer to him through those stories. And it probably worked! Her father probably did start engaging with her more after after she picked them up, because it was an easy way to connect with her. That's why I believe she was so insistent on the existence of John H. Watson, as a doctor, when she met Iris and learnt the truth.
There's this distance between Susato and her father which glimpse in moments in the game, like how he remarks on her lack of composure in court (suggesting that he isn't used to seeing her yamato nadeshiko mask slip), how he less requests her trust and more orders or expects it forthright, and how he seems reluctant to face the parts of her that inconvenience him (like how he asks her to play the koto when he isn't home and how, when faced by her real anger, he looks to Holmes to explain the situation rather than actually attempt to himself).
HOWEVER, in the setting of the game (Meiji-era Japan), I will concede that Mikotoba is a fantastic father. He may not have been very present in her life growing up, but men largely weren't expected to be. Their jobs were to provide for their children, not nurture them. And Mikotoba went well beyond his duty in that regard. Add to that the fact that he had her properly educated, ensured she knew how to defend herself, and allowed her to pursue her studies overseas at a level that was on par with any man, and you can see that he's really quite a great father; which is why I don't think he sees his absence as a flaw or even notices he was absent. Susato, though, does.
Now, Susato is obviously a product of her time, too, so I believe she'd be insulted if anyone was to suggest that her father or childhood was lacking in some way. That being said, I do believe she is aware of the distance between them in a way he is not. I think her affection for him is founded on a sense of duty and filial piety rather than pure love (although, obviously, she does love him), and, as she grew older, she stopped vying for his affection; hence why she's obsessed with the Great Detective more so than anyone else when we meet her. I also think that this distance contributed to her becoming so attached to Kazuma, in spite of the fact that he kept her at arm's length, too; he may not have allowed her very close, but he was always there, and he saw her for who she truly was. When she leaves at the end of the first game, Susato is not so much anxious that her father is ill as she is shaken -- she seems more upset that she's leaving her Baker Street family rather than that her actual father might be dying, and I think that's because she knows how to live without him. This distance between them, I believe, becomes all the more apparent to her when she goes to London and sees the deep bond held between Iris and Holmes.
And, speaking of, you know who else I think is aware of the distance between them and the part he played in creating that distance? The Great Detective himself, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
See, I think Holmes has always known about Susato. I'm quite sure that, from the moment they met, he knew that Mikotoba was running away from something and that he had left an infant daughter back home. He just didn't care.
We don't know what Holmes was like when he was younger, but I believe he was a lot closer to how he appears in a lot of modern adaptations and how Watson describes him in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories: the 'cold, calculating computer' character. I don't think it's a stretch to think that Holmes viewed marriage and children as mere distractions and interferences to the mind; and Mikotoba was, presumably, his first real friend. He wasn't going to let something pesky like a baby back home detract from his friend's obviously sterling character and brain! After all, it's a lot easier to ignore this nebulous, abstract entity when you simply consider its existence, and thus its abandonment, unimportant. It's a lot easier when you don't know what it's like to be a father yourself. It's a lot easier when you don't know her.
Here's the thing: I believe Holmes's image of and relation to Mikotoba began changing from the time he started raising Iris. Suddenly, that inconsequential baby seemed to bear quite a bit of consequence, actually. But it was still all right to keep dismissing her, because maybe Mikotoba's baby wasn't special the way Iris was. Maybe she was a brat or an idiot, and really not worth much time at all! Maybe she could've lived without him and been perfectly fine, regardless...? As time went on, I believe the excuses he made for Mikotoba's decision all those years ago became increasingly flimsy, but he was still able to hold onto them because The Daughter was still an indistinct figure in his mind. She wasn't quite real.
That is, until he met her.
In the game, Holmes tends to keep a certain width between himself and Susato. He very rarely initiates conversation with her the way he does Ryuunosuke, and from a Doylist (ha) perspective, this is obviously because Ryuunosuke is... the main character. Looking at it from a narrative perspective, though, I think he was afraid of hurting more than he already has and must.
Holmes is a very resolute man. He sticks by his decisions regardless of what anyone else thinks, so I don't think he ever regretted what he did. However, I do think he felt guilty. Certainly, he didn't quite take her father away from her, but he did play a role in keeping him from her for so long. I think there was a part of him that consciously guided Mikotoba away from thinking about Japan while they lived together, because, well... he didn't want him to leave.
There's an interesting layer to the separation that Holmes creates with Susato, because, beyond the distance he maintains between her and himself, he also keeps her identity separate from her father's. Contrary to how he refers to Ryuunosuke by his last name, Holmes only ever calls Susato "Miss Susato" or "my dear (madame)", and never "Miss Mikotoba". I view this is his way of, perhaps subconsciously, dividing from that little girl he once decided did not matter. And it's interesting because, to an extent, he tries to do with her and Kazuma, too.
In the SS Burya case, despite meeting Susato first and seeing how affected she is by Kazuma's "death", Holmes largely ignores her in favour of focusing on Ryuunosuke and his bond with Kazuma. He calls Kazuma Ryuunosuke's "dear companion" and pretty much only interacts with Susato when he has little other choice... until he sees her cry.
See, I believe that when Holmes found out Susato was going to England and was about to be wrapped up in the whole messy affair, he was fully committed to Not Giving a Damn about Her. Sure, he would let her and Kazuma live with him, but by no means was he going to allow himself to grow attached to her because, again, he values his relationship and history with Mikotoba too much for it to get complicated in this way. Susato's relative composure throughout the case helps him hold on to this resolution; however, when he catches that final conversation between her and Ryuunosuke in the cabin, he is finally forced to see and acknowledge the amount of pain she is truly in. It forces him to at last face the fact that he can't avoid or fake aloofness around her any longer, because she is not some nebulous, distant entity he can continue to ignore. She is an actual girl with a fiercely strong spirit, a brilliant mind and real, human emotions. A girl whom he's hurt twice-over now and must continue hurting until all his lies finally come to light.
When he makes that decision to enter the cabin and console her the only way he knows how, he throws away any hope he had of feeling anything but apathy towards her. In truth, he probably didn't have much hope of that to begin with, because at his core, Sherlock Holmes is a good man, and he cares.
He cares for her, too, even though he may have no right to. How could he not, when she loves him so openly, trusts him so readily, saves his life? How could he not, when she comes to him in the middle of the night with a secret she can't tell anyone else because his judgement is the only one she wholly trusts and believes in? How could he not, when she refuses to accept he lied despite the living, breathing evidence he did until he admits it himself? How could he not, when after everything he has done, she still looks at him the way she always has and says that she's proud that her father is the assistant of "the Great Detective"?
How could anyone not? How could Mikotoba not... love her the second he laid eyes on her?
And of course this doesn't shatter his love for Mikotoba -- he has no right to these feelings in the first place: no matter how indignant or guilty he may feel, it doesn't change the fact that he has been lying to and manipulating her the entire time they've known one another. He can't even bring himself to tell her that he's been lying; he has to go through Ryuunosuke instead, because, even after all this time, he still can't face the woman whom he's done nothing but cause pain for from the moment she was born. When he can't even give her that ounce of respect, who is he to judge Mikotoba?
So he doesn't. Till the end of the game, he keeps Susato at a distance and pretends that everything between him and Mikotoba is as it was from the start. But, inside, I think he knows it isn't. Because I think Holmes can see that Mikotoba doesn't feel half as guilty about what they've done as he does, and that he doesn't view the fact that he left Susato 16 years ago as a real problem. And while he doesn't judge Mikotoba for that, I don't think he can look past it anymore. That final investigation and dance of deduction, to me, is less an assurance that they are still the same partners they were before, and more a final farewell to their old, uncomplicated bond -- the one that did exist before they grew to love other people and understand what love truly meant to both of them.
Going back to the ship itself, I think shipping them pre-DGS works perfectly well. They both had a huge impact on each other's life and changed one another for the better; Holmes by drawing Mikotoba out from his grief, and Mikotoba by pulling Holmes from his life of solitude and loneliness. They needed each other, but it is also because of these reasons that I think there was an issue of codependency between them, hence the semi-horrible for each other box I gave them. With Mikotoba, it's clear cut. Holmes helped him run away from his very real issues at home and allowed him to live like he was a bachelor with zero familial obligations again. With Holmes, it gets a bit more foggy, but I believe that Mikotoba basically allowed him to live believing he was the only person Holmes would ever truly connect with and properly befriend. Holmes is obviously his own person and whatnot, but I do think there was a bit of unhealthy attachment there on his end if not both.
During DGS and post-DGS is where their ship gets more complicated for me, because, while Susato is still very much there at the beginning of their relationship, her role in their lives and what they did to her becomes impossible to ignore once she and Holmes actually meet. I don't believe that they can just pick up from where they left off because there is now (imo) a fundamental disagreement in how they view their actions and how it affected her. So, even if they do go back to being lovers or whatever afterwards, I feel that there should be this chasm or weight between them that they simply don't talk about or acknowledge in any way. Because I don't think they'd discuss it. Holmes because it isn't his place, Mikotoba because he sees it as a non-issue (maybe he doesnt even notice this distance), and both because sweeping unpleasantness under the rug is so ingrained into their cultures.
My main issue with the way this ship is often portrayed post-DGS (why they got a 50-50 on the I would erase them from existence box) is that it ignores what happened with Susato. The few times I've seen the concern that she might have an issue with their relationship even brought up in hmmk works is always because they're gay. Which, like!! Fair!!! It's the 1800s, I get it, but!!!! You're ignoring the actual, very big issue for why she might be hurt and that's because DGS ends with her finding out that three of the men she's closest to have been lying and using her for their own means her entire life!!!!!!!! And she just has to take it!!!!!!!
Which brings me to the second most popular interpretation of this ship which doesn't just put Iris and Susato in a box somewhere unseen, and that's the one where all four of them are a peaceful happy family with 0 issues! And this one bothers me because it seems like it's taking what Susato said at the end of the reveal as what she 100% sincerely meant down to her core, rather than something she had to say because (1) it is her duty to honour her father no matter what, and (2) because Iris was there. When she learns the entire truth, I don't think Susato knows what she truly thinks or feels about any of it; but she sees Iris, and she sees this little girl who was abandoned through her circumstances as a baby, named after her mother, and forced to grow up much sooner than she should have been, and she sees a girl who is more her sister than anyone else. So she does what she always has and tucks away her own emotions so she might tend to someone else's. She has been the perfect daughter her whole life; she can be the perfect sister.
Even if you don't subscribe to the, admittedly, harsh view of Mikotoba's parenting that I do, I don't see how you can get away from the fact that they still lied to her for a significant portion of time. Especially from Holmes, whom she trusted and believed in more than anyone else! In the face of his shoddy deductions, she still held onto her unwavering belief that he was a genius and a good man, and then it comes out that he's just been lying to her from the first day he met her. I just can't extract the ship from their treatment of Susato, so when I say that I would erase the ship from existence, it's mainly about these two bits. As with Asoryuu, the primary reason why I don't ship them personally is because I can't do that to her.
And, obviously, it's just shipping and fun and games, and everyone should feel free to ship whoever in whatever way they want bUT IN A SPECIAL WORLD MADE PERFECTLY FOR ME. iris would be perfectly oblivious, and susato would have tossed both holmes and mikotoba into the thames and left them to figure it out. In a world that must still vaguely make sense with the canon of the game, though, then Holmes would have given Mikotoba the boot and taken the kids; because he may be a coward, but at least I can see that he knows he fucked up, and he allows Susato to set the terms of their relationship, just like he does Iris.
Anyway, I'm so sorry for how long, convoluted and only tangentially-related to the ask this is, but thank you so much for it, Grace!!!! I don't think I quite got down what I meant precisely, but it's the closest to coherency I've ever gotten so. Thank you 💖💕💗💓💕💘💕
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Do you have any general hcs of the 1bit/1beat cast? Anythings fine
Kind of rough but
-I've played around with the idea with Eruno being from an orphanage/foster home(the "because you've got a proper family" bit) but I go back and forth on this one.
-Nio and Sakuma are friends! He does shifts at Bitwave they hang out there. The poor boy needs someone to fend off the fangirls.
-Eruno and Akitaka accompany Haruya on deliveries sometimes. Pals.
-When Aira's mimetic muscles get installed she doesn't really quite get how to use them immediately. Her expressions start out real stiff(which she expresses dissatisfaction with, and gets help from the others) to real exaggerated and overplayed(think unbridled rage or pained anguish at things that just kind of annoy her).
-Also she has Kiri make her taller so she can grow alongside her friends!
-Also Also by 1beat she has at LEAST one sibling who's just, a really muscled out doll in frilly clothes.
-Meru listens to death metal. She'd hoped it'd help her stay up better but now she just kind of likes it.
-Outside of tending to the shrine, Hakuhi has embroidery as a hobby.
-Izuchi took piano lessons when he was younger(parents made him do it to try and play up the prodigy genius image). He quit.
-That potion thing he made in 1beat was ripped from Kirai's anime but in part he'd made it after Eruno came to him Demanding a way to make her dog live longer.
-He went to Blue sun college(less because he thought he needed to and more for the benefits a degree there would give him) and got into an apprenticeship with Kiri. He keeps the lab when Kiri moves to Coco Alley(easier to skirt by the law). Familiar with the Blue Sun Trio to some extent.
-He has a sweet tooth but doesn't really admit it because he deems it unhealthy.
-While he did have a hand in the creation of the master program, he doesn't stay on the team after it's finished. Does continue to get occasional updates about it from Hiyu and Nanase though.
-His room is all clean and organized on the surface(maybe a few seashell displays, a poster covering a hole in the wall) but he keeps all the goofy weird shit stored away in drawers and under his bed.*
-I've played around with the idea of there being a 3rd Nasuga sibling who's just too young to be relevant in the game(<-no canon basis i just thought it'd be fun) but I'm not sure if I'd keep that.
-Enri has a pet hamster! He's like the band's son.
-The gang Kirara used to be a part of was like a sparkly gyaru girl gang. She never really enjoyed fighting but took a lot of lessons growing up so she was really good at it. The gang is still going strong though and at least a few of her Gyaru Friends are members(and there's at least one member who's just a plain normal ass girl that hangs around them but that's getting into oc territory).
-Rocca ends up growing up to be like Really Fucking Tall. Momori models clothes on her and remarks that she could be a model if she didn't trip over herself so much(not that she'd want to be one anyways).
-Mary has 3 siblings, they've done a way better job at staying out of the public eye(and have grown somewhat distant from her as a result).
-On account of being friends with a lot of the townspeople and having a lot of relatives, Hitohito is just one of those guys with a lot of connections. In a "guy who knows a guy" way.
-Chino is Coco Alley's mom jkasdsa.
--She brings Sora(was familiar with his family and doesn't want him to get too lonely) cookies and flowers sometimes and while he's dismissive about it he does secretly appreciate it.
-Tobari is the heiress to a big tea emporium who dipped because she got bored and/or got into a disagreement with someone over there, but continues playing up her Elegant Fancy Lady image despite living paycheck to paycheck(which I mean, good for her I guess.)
-Although Sagara knows Asuto through Hitohito, they actually interact fairly regularly in anime forums.
-Hitohito, Izuchi, and Sagara were on friendly terms when they were kids but grew distant for reasons. Hitohito and Sagara had gotten back in touch and still hang out. Heat reached out to Izuchi but was promptly brushed off, still looks out for him. Izuchi and Sagara have a weird frenemy/rival thing going on.
-Sagara has no siblings she just kind of lives alone with her mom who may or may not hate her.(although it's less "hate" so much as disappointment)
-Sagara's chicken avatar is modeled after one of her childhood pets.
-Sagara definitely Naruto runs.
-She holds DnD(\Dnd adjacent. Just some ttrpg I'm not an expert) sessions at every couple of weeks. I'm not saying Izuchi willingly participates(those commoners are hopeless without his guidance), just that she didn't exactly have very many other people to invite(Hitohito and sometimes Meu and eventually Nanashi).
-She has a knack for trying to help townspeople as part of some sort of Magical Girl Code but isn't as good at it as she thinks she is.
-She has a compartment in her arm warmers that's full of bird feed, she's made an alliance with the pigeons.
-While she does cool it with the Organization stuff, she never drops the chuuni behavior. Eventually opens a small cake shop with some edgy chuuni-esque title(debated on whether it should be in the same place Little Berry was, like after little berry closes its doors).
-Nomiya and Hiyu butt heads a lot but they both get along fine with Azusa. Somebody needs to be nice to her god damn it.
-The Kujohs have a pet dog but it's actually Azusa's. Following with the rest of the family, it's a big intimidating dog that's actually just really chill. Enri has tried to look past it but he's always very leery about visiting them.
-Nomiya's riding an adrenaline high throughout most of the game but his more calm demeanor in his events is just him going in the opposite extreme as a result of coming down from it. He's usually fairly loud and confrontational, just not THAT loud and confrontational.
-He keeps in closest touch with Tobari after the hackers are disbanded. Somewhat on account of her being able to hold her own in Break Passage the best out of the other three. She views him as a weird little brother.
-The hackers hold gatherings in memory(or what little of that memory they even retained. It's mostly secondhand from Nanashi) of Mikado where they commit minor crimes. The gathering was Kotora's idea the crime was Nomiya's.
-Sagara has a journal that she calls the Abyss Tome that's just full of fanfiction and anime drawings of herself and her friends(/enemies). Has a bunch of spell names listed down in it.
-Saaya and Meu are friends! Saaya comes to her for divinations about her love life a lot and just ends up venting. Meu's happy to listen though and tries to comfort her the best she can.
-Speaking of therapy though, Saaya does get therapy sometime post-canon and distances herself from Nanase(while a lot of Nanashi's friendships that start off on the wrong foot have room for growth, the memory thing makes things kind of... weird with her). She's in a much better state by 1beat.
-Saaya writes a lot of poetry.
-Yoh and Sagara are related. Somehow(I did consider nephew at one point but that didn't really pan out).
-So are Hiyu and Arumu. They've got that green hair and funky eyebrows.
-Akuta and Kaori date briefly(well, she's a fan of his work, and he is rich, and while he can't speak multiple languages he is well-spoken, what could go wrong?) which just ends in them breaking up over a disagreement over a book's ending. That was more the final straw though, actually getting to know him put into perspective just how far from her expectations he actually is and she's not super pleased about it. They do stay friends but something something important lesson about your idols being people.
-I feel like I've said somewhere that Kotora leaves the cafe to Rocca when he retires but I need to clarify that Kotora keeps being the cafe guy well into old age and that Rocca would be a whole adult by then.
-Kaori was the youngest of her siblings and only one to stay with her mother, she sees her dad as a good for nothing deadbeat(it wasn't an amicable divorce) and the ordeal heavily influenced how she views romantic relationships as a whole. Grew up somewhat distant from Kotora and their sister but reconnected in adulthood.
-Her "ideal guy" is just the best traits of her favorite book leads cobbled together like some kind of frankenguy. (And she might be internalizing something... who knows)
-The world did enter a more 'cyberpunk dystopia'-esque futuristic state a long time ago and the return to more traditional old timey ways is sort of in response to that, but Yasune is the only one who'd actually lived through it. Although then again the 2nd oldest character in the game is only 36 so...
The post is starting to not process so I'm going to cut it off here.
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doing all this reading on cross-cultural parenting styles is so so fascinating. the practical differences are super interesting (ie learning about different cultural approaches to food, sleep, toilet training, safety, respect for others, etc). but i think the most thought-provoking part is just like... thinking about what each culture’s dominant parenting approach reveals about the traits that culture values & the way people in that culture perceive the world and their interpersonal relationships with others. like here are some of the themes that are emerging about american parenting:
americans are obsessed with individual success and individual excellence. much of american parenting focuses on discovering and actively cultivating each individual child’s “gifts,” which are assumed to be unique to that child, relatively fixed, and innate. we also seem to have this idea that if a child demonstrates interest in something or an early knack for something, we have a responsibility to accommodate that interest and make investments (of time, energy, money) to ensure that this gift is being cultivated appropriately, with an eye towards producing a child who excels in that particular field.
a major tradeoff is: that focus on individual achievement often crowds out a focus on interpersonal connection & on helping kids feel meaningfully enmeshed in and connected to a community that cares for them & that they in turn have obligations to.
americans are incredibly focused on and concerned with meeting developmental milestones (and with pathologizing children as deficient or “slow” or medically abnormal if they don’t meet those milestones). conversely, we see it as highly desirable for kids to hit developmental milestones early, so we invest a ton of time and resources into trying to hurry our kids along. we want our kids to walk, talk, read, sleep through the night, play instruments, speak multiple languages, excel at sports, etc etc etc as early as possible and feel very proud when our kids are labeled “more advanced” than other kids their age.
americans talk to their kids constantly, from infancy to young adulthood, and most of this talk stems from a belief that more talk = more learning. we learn that “good” parenting is hyper-involved, hyper-attuned parenting where the parent is always asking the child questions about the world around them, introducing new information, explicitly teaching or instructing, narrating our own actions so that the kid will learn from what we’re modeling, etc etc. we seem to do this because we feel that pressure for the child to be learning faster, learning more, learning all the time, so that they can grow up faster, reach milestones sooner, and demonstrate a capacity for excellence in their chosen field earlier.
american parents worry a lot more about their kids (we are preoccupied with safety and risk in ways that seem one million times more stressful than many other approaches to parenting... though this is partly because we live in such child-unfriendly environments that weren’t designed with children’s needs in mind). but we also worry a lot about (and spend lots of time focusing on) making our kids “independent” of us. we simultaneously try to protect our kids from any kind of risk or setback that could discourage them or delay their growth, but we also try to push kids away from us faster, wanting them to achieve an independent, self-reliant, self-regulating maturity as quickly as possible.
americans are obsessed with “self-esteem” and often try to boost self-esteem by praising children for anything and everything (even if the praise is superficial or not really deserved). we are often afraid to give honest or hard feedback out of fear that it will damage the child’s self-image or make them feel negative feelings about themselves. the result, though, is that we seem to end up producing generations of kids who are much less resilient, prone to melting down over negative feedback or obstacles, self-absorbed/self-focused, and preoccupied with the idea that they have a sort of innate “right” to feel good all the time. this one is SUPER interesting to me because it feels connected to some thoughts i’ve been working through lately about the therapy-industrial complex and our culture’s obsession with mental health, which idk... my feelings here are complicated and require more unpacking than i want to do in this post lol. but i think a lot about how hollow praise can feel and how intensely addictive it can become, and just like... how truly enduring forms of self-worth seem to come from going through painful phases of life and grappling with difficult personal or interpersonal problems and emerging from those periods with a stronger, clearer understanding of yourself and your values. idk much to unpack here... much to think about...
idk there is probably more stuff i’m forgetting... i’m not really going anywhere with this post lol i just want to start synthesizing some of the things i’m reading. they’re like, simmering on low on the back burner of my brain right now... will be interesting to see if/how they end up getting internalized.
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