apparently the bio lab in our sch has good fengshui for buying taylor swift tickets?? + @downbadforpixels told me to write this, so let’s have SOUKOKU ATTENDING A CONCERT

let’s say it’s taylor swift because she’s slay and everyone’s buying tickets rn :D also skk is so taylor swift coded oh my god. ok but, even though dazai dislikes staying in crowded places for too long because it drains his energy, he follows along with chuuya when they travel to tokyo to attend the concert. chuuya had opened up at least 5 devices when the tickets were being released, and he had managed to get hold of two tickets for them. he barely bat an eye at the price, easily keying in the credit card details on the back of his black card as dazai watched from behind, both concerned and happy for him.

they manage to get seats right in front of the stage, and surrounding them is screaming crowds of fans who almost blast dazai’s ear drums off. he turns to look at chuuya, who has the biggest smile on his face as he stares straight ahead towards the stage, eagerly waiting for the performance. dazai chuckles to himself; if seeing the chibi this happy meant having to attend concerts like these, dazai would gladly go to one with chuuya every single day for the rest of his life.

they have a great time at the concert, singing along to the songs and cheering with the rest of the audience at the end of each one. the crowd around them moves along with the beat, and the many overlapping voices almost drown out the singer’s own, but dazai manages to single out the beautiful voice belonging to his partner, and his cheeks flush when chuuya turns to him. “my thoughts will echo your name, until i see you again !” he mouths the lyrics over the loud music, and dazai grins back.

after the concert, the two of them head back to their apartment together in silence, throats sore from shouting to the music. chuuya has one hand on the steering wheel, the other linked with dazai’s, and he quietly hums to one of the songs from earlier. dazai’s lips purse, before mouthing back his reply to chuuya. 

“these are the words i held back, as i was leaving too soon: i was enchanted to meet you...”

Hey Olimar, Hey Louie. You know how everything seems so big to you on the Pikmin Homeworld? Well, have you guys ever considered that you guys are just really small? After all, Size IS relative, and it’s likely that the increased amount of oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere, allowed for bigger fauna. In fact, judging from the size of the remains of the ancient civilization, you guys might be able to fit in the palms of their hands

that’s just me spitballing, though

The existence of creatures so large is massively improbable to our understanding of biology. Even with lower gravity and higher oxygen, the idea of a mobile heterotrophic organism (the kind that undoubtedly produced what we are finding), and one that is able to maintain its metabolism while moving such large limbs (if they have any) at that, is nearly fantasy. This theory also fails to explain the size of the artifacts that we are discovering: shields, statues, bedding. . . If I am small as you say, which I am not, then why do they suit civilizations of my own size? The theory of giants is similarly believable to that of an abnormally cultured and regularly sized people— that over so many millions of years, these strange beings were able to utilize their abundant environment to the fullest, and decided to make their homes grand and towering. They appear to have been very dedicated architects. . . But at the same time, if they were our size, the realm of technology that they must have possessed to navigate their modern world should look much more developed than it currently does.

The biggest problem with both of these theories is this: we have not found a single remnant of this lost civilization's bodies. Their artefacts mean nothing to me. As I scientist, I can exclude no possibility until I can falsify it wholeheartedly. There is no evidence that anything we assume is correct, simply because we should never rely on our own sense of normal for a planet so many light years away. Maybe they're giants, or maybe they're just weird to us. We are discussing possibilities, and I am happy to engage with your ideas.

- Captain Olimar

Don't mind Olimar, he doesn't like to be proven wrong. Anyway, If I'm just really small, that means there's a whole world out there consisting entirely of things I haven't eaten. I guess it doesn't matter to me how big I am. Though I wonder what these larger-than-life creatures would taste like...

- Louie

LRT honestly this whole thing has proven to me that belief isn’t a choice. Like if I could, I would go back to believing it. I used to believe it wholeheartedly until I saw evidence against it. Now I know every argument for and against it, and it does not hold up to scrutiny.

That’s why it bothers me so bad. Anyone on tumblr who isn’t 100% on board with this thing is labeled a bad person. Even people who don’t even talk about it are labeled as suspicious simply because it’s so prevalent now that not having an opinion or not openly supporting it is uncommon, at least on tumblr anyway.

I didnt even WANT to stop believing in it. That’s what sucks so bad. I went searching for arguments against it so I could laugh at how ridiculous they would be. Everyone told me that anyone speaking against [redacted] is a bad person and that their arguments don’t hold up… and I believed them ;-; like a fool. I believed them.

It turns out 500k people can all be wrong.

Literally how am I supposed to live like this. I keep waiting for it to go away. Everytime something bad happens related to it I’m like “ok, it’s over” BUT IT KEEPS. GOING.

Now I just have to live in uncertainty forever and morn the person I used to be and the friends I’ll surely lose if they find out

the story of us--part 3.

you take the breath out of my lungs, can't even fight it. and all of the words out of my mouth without even trying, and i'm speechless. sometimes when i look at her, i lose all words. i can be mid-sentence and still, i'd lose my train of thought and just stare back at her...she draws me in and i can't resist. in this world where nothing else is true, here i am, still tangled up in you. it doesn't matter what else is happening, she is my first thought in the morning, the last at night, and every thought in between. now i'm defenseless, i'm falling in endless love. i feel like i've been falling for her for years. no matter if we were together or not, the universe was preparing me for her love, her everything. and even now, i find myself falling in endless love with her, every minute of every single day. i could make you happy, make your dreams come true. nothing that i wouldn't do, go to the ends of the earth for you, to make you feel my love. there is nothing i wouldn't do to make her happy. she deserves so much happiness and love and all of the good things, and i'll do whatever it takes to ensure that she gets it all, until the end of our days. pretty good at being wrong for my whole life, but with you, i know there's one thing i got right. it doesn't matter what's in my past, what's in her past. all that matters is her. us. we. our life. our love. that's the one thing that i've done right in this life. on days when it feels like the whole world might cave in, stand side by side and you'll make it. she's the best thing that you'll ever have, she'll love you if you love her like that. i can't imagine anyone else standing beside me on the bad days. she's proven she's it. the universe chose her and delivered, and i wholeheartedly believe that she is the best thing that i'll ever have. my one. my only. my everything. my all. i'm drunk on your voice, high on the moment. i'd fall for you twice, if that's what you wanted. i'd give you my life from now till forever, i'm falling in love with you over and over again. her voice gets me every time. i could listen to her talk 24/7, 365 and never tire of it, like my favorite melody in my ears. and i would most definitely, and do, fall for her daily...daily there's a reason i've got this smile on my face and it's her, as i free fall into forever with her. 'cause a fire never starts without a spark, and baby, you're my spark. 'cause i saw love, love, love in your eyes. you stole my heart and i don't mind. she ignited this spark within me that i never had a clue was even there. things i want for my life that i never wanted before, never imagined. all because when i looked into her eyes for the first time, i saw a movie of the way my life was supposed to be, the love i deserve, the love i fucking want more than anything, now that i have her. take my hand, take my whole life too. for i can't help falling in love with you. i couldn't stop falling for her if i tried. but i don't want to do that. i don't want to feel anything but this, but her, for the rest of my days. i have died every day waiting for you. darling, don't be afraid, i have loved you for a thousand years, i'll love you for a thousand more. i swear, i know i've said this a thousand times, but i do feel like i've loved her, known her, for a thousand years. we've loved each other before and we'll continue loving each other in each universe. a love like this doesn't die after one lifetime. i'm forever yours, faithfully. i'll never understand how she was single, how she wanted me. but she did. she does. and i'm forever entangled in her soul, in her heart. i'm right there at the tip of her tongue, just waiting to hear my name roll off of it. that's my favorite sound. lonely rivers sigh, "wait for me, wait for me." i'll be coming home, wait for me. home. with her. i can't wait to be there, in my home. my comfort, my love, my happiness. my everything.

The Feeling of Heartache/Momentum

I am an absolute mess...

My first breakup was extremely difficult, But at least that was able to force myself to forget about the person. Same with the third.

This one just hurts in a whole new way.

If I'm too quite this to physical pain, I'd say the first two felt like serious stabbings (The first one involving a lot of twisting), and this just feels like I'm being melted. Lowered into a thing of acid and I can't even scream...

Part of me wants to say that, If I had seen this coming several months ago, I would have cut it off then and there... But knowing me I don't think I could have.

Cuz you know I think I've realized that, somewhere along the line, I taught myself that My main purpose in life is to make others happy... and while that's certainly something I wish to do, It's always come at the expense of my own well-being.

So after my first relationship I kept seeking out other people in an attempt to do that... At least that's what I assume.

And please do not misunderstand me, some of the people I was with, these two especially, they were the greatest people to have ever come into my life. Certainly the most impactful.

Also I just want to say quickly, for any of the people who would like to claim that I'm being dramatic, I encouraged you to imagine something/someone that you've poured your heart and soul into. Something/someone that you've grown accustomed to thinking of a particular way, treating a particular way, building a routine around that person/thing.

Then imagine, after a few years have gone by, and all of a sudden - You're no longer allowed to think of or interact with that person/thing the way you've learned to. Yes they're still there, but now it feels like there's a thick, emotional barrier between the two of you...

I don't know if that's even remotely close to how either of them feel, but until I hear otherwise from them, that's what I have to assume to keep the friendship going.

I could go on about the other reasons that make this harder for me, but I think that more than enough covers what I need it to.

I told myself when this relationship started that, if it somehow managed to not work out, I could never bring myself to date again... I was so confident that this was the right one. "I could make this last forever, this is the relationship I want to work on!"

...but after several failed attempts at improving, and a few broken hearts, I was proven wrong.

But see, there-in lies the problem - she's polyamorous... Despite knowing for an absolute fact that I was not, I was convinced it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I would be completely fine with dating her while she dates other people as well.

On paper there's absolutely no problem with that, but having an in practice is an entirely different beast...

Once we got comfortable and she started looking into finding other partners, it's like all of my worst traits were fucking magnified. My jealousy, my insecurities, my fears of rejection and abandonment, I became possessive and controlling it was... It was gross and I just couldn't stop.

And I wasn't doing this to be cruel to her, or anything nasty like that. I kept pushing because I wholeheartedly believed that this was all just a me problem and that, If I just worked hard enough, I'd be able to get through it and we could live a happy wonderful life.

But I was wrong... I was wrong and I let things get out of control. After several months, she decided enough was enough... and it kills me that I couldn't bring myself to realize it first.

It's terrifying how blind I can be to my own actions, even when I'm confident that I know what I'm doing.

And yet, despite all the shit I've put her and everyone else through, somehow she still wants to be my friend. They both do... And I just can't help but wonder if I even deserve this.

I genuinely don't feel like I offer anything as a person, nothing useful or valuable anyway. Lately I haven't been able to think of myself as anything other than a burden, and this was well before she decided to call it off.

No matter how hard I try, I can't find the will to challenge myself anymore... So much so that I even fight it. I used to be such a bright, beautiful, and happy soul... and then I let the world destroy it, burn it, tear it, and throw it in the mud.

I'm so incredibly tired of my own shit, and at the same time I want to learn how to love myself God damn it...

With some much needed guidance, I am taking steps to actually better myself.

These several months I've been talking about it, But I never really made any substantial progress... Probably because I was forcing myself into a relationship that wasn't healthy... But whatever.

I am terrified of myself, angry at so much for the world around me, and hopeless about my possible future...

But two nights ago I decided "fuck that". Starting from here I will make these changes, and one of those changes was to simply find a new therapist... However in the process I realized that I also needed to check myself into a mental hospital...

From there I got even more help that I so desperately needed... I just hope I will continue to find the strength to keep this momentum going.

Honestly I could go on for hours about this but I think I'll leave it here.

For anyone who bothered to read this, thank you, and I hope it didn't make you too depressed lol

Y'all have a good day~✨💕🌸

I got asked about this theory I got about Morgana being connected to Persona 3...

...so here we go. Heavy Persona 5 AND Persona 3 spoilers ahead. This is gonna be a long post too, btw.

So, let’s lay some groundwork first. We all know Morgana, the cognitive cat made by Lavenza and/or Igor themselves, yeah? All we know is that he was created by them. So...what was he made from? Did he just pop in out of thin air, or was some kind of material used in the process.

If you played P4A/P4AU (or if you played Persona 3 and paid a whole lot of attention to its lore), the Plumes of Dusk comes to mind. As a good chunk of us know, they were used to give Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapons such as Aigis and Labrys their respective personas, and by extension, personalities.

And after you finish a certain request in P3, Elizabeth gifts you a Plume, implying that she (and possibly other Velvet Room residents) may have more on hand. So it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to imagine that Morgana was created from a Plume of Dusk, given that he still has his own personality and persona despite being a mere cat/cognitive being, right?

However, Plumes of Dusk are confirmed to be parts of Nyx that were shed upon her fusion with the moon, meaning that if Morgana was made from what’s essentially a part of Nyx, he also has some form of connection with her.

Here’s where my theory comes into place: Morgana is a reincarnated Ryoji Mochizuki.

You’re probably really confused now. And weirded out. You might be asking, “Misty, are you high right now?” No, I’m not, as I am not from Colorado. That aside, I do wholeheartedly believe this statement.

First off, let’s get into visual similarities.

Pretty simple things: They both have blue eyes, and a yellow scarf, along with the rest being a plain black and white color scheme with little exception. And while Soejima had designed Morgana the same way he did with other mascots by using the "toy" set of colors (red, blue, and yellow), you can't deny that these two have pretty similar vibes in terms of the use of color.

One thing in particular I want to point out, however, is their eyes.

(My apologies for the slightly low quality of the image on the right. It's...difficult to find high quality official artwork of someone who hasn't gotten major relevance since around 2006 or 2015.)

Their eyes have almost the exact same colors, with the exact same way they are colored—A dark blue with a lighter blue surrounding it.

(Interestingly, Morgana's false human form found in Persona 5 Royal does this the opposite way, switching the colors around.)

(This appears to indicate that what you see is not his true "human" form, and that is proven true. Food for thought.)

These visual similarities can easily be proven coincidence however, so take this all with a grain of salt.

Up next is details I gathered from Persona 5, mostly Morgana's social link.

One thing Morgana wouldn't let you forget throughout the game is that he is not a cat, but rather, a human being. He acts quite adamant about that statement and never lets it go, until the false reality he is given in Third Semester is shattered, forcing him to admit that he was a cat all along, and I won't deny that he is. My theory merely states that he was human in a past life.

It starts with rank 1 of Morgana's social link: He states that wandering throughout the Metaverse caused him to lose both his memories and his true form. But as of the end of the game, the concept of Morgana even having a supposed "true" form is thrown away, which I find kind of...wrong. Yes, his supposed memories of being human had come from witnessing those jailed in the Depths of Mementos, but what if they also came from fainter memories from a past life where he was indeed human for a time?

Another thing: Throughout the events of his social link, Morgana has nightmares about actually being a shadow, or being created from shadows. You can easily connect this to Ryoji. How so, you may ask? Ryoji's true form, the Arcana shadow of Death (which by design is Thanatos, so I should remind you of the fact that personas are essentially tamed shadows), is spoken of, and I am very much paraphrasing by going off of memory here, as the "shadow that was not meant to be."

Along with that, early on, Morgana wonders about the possibility of actually being a malevolent being, which can be connected to how Ryoji wound up being the Appriser of the Fall. That's merely more food for thought more than anything, though.

Some extra tidbits:

In Akihabara, if you interact with one of the claw machines in the arcade, Morgana states that he feels like he's seen it before, possibly referencing the claw machine you can play with in Paulownia Mall.

A Mementos line from Haru says that Morgana would be "exceedingly" popular with the girls at Shujin if he were to attend. Whether this is merely her being nice, pointing out the fact that everyone loves cats, or referencing how Ryoji was extremely popular and flirtatious around girls in Gekkoukan, who knows. Probably the former two if we're thinking realistically, but we're not, so I'm going with the latter.

An unused Mementos line (for Royal, not vanilla P5) has Ann stating, "Mona's surprisingly stylish. Especially that yellow scarf!" This may or may not reference how recognizable Ryoji is with his yellow scarf. Probably not, but I don't really care, lmao

In conclusion, Morgana and Ryoji are likely to have some sort of connection, if you believe the basis of Morgana's creation coming from a Plume of Dusk. Whether they are the same person reincarnated, or connected in some other way, is more up to you than anything. Feel free to add onto this or smack me in the face and call me wrong. Actually, don't smack me in the face and call me wrong. I'll cry.

To fakeclaim or not to fakeclaim: Why I think this goes deeper than a simple “yes” or “no”

TW/CW: fakeclaiming (duh), briefly describing a fear of causing accidents

If you have a short attention span, you may skip ahead because the first few paragraphs will be me explaining a bit about myself and why I decided to write this. I should strongly emphasise that this is my personal opinion as a neurodivergent. No I do not have a PHD, no I do not think that my words should be treated like a textbook. Just some thoughts of my own. Heads up: I have neither DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), Autism, nor TS (Tourettes Syndrome) a.k.a conditions that fakeclaimers believe “fakers” enjoy pretending to have. I am clinically diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and NVLD (Non-Verbal Learning Disability). When I use the term “faking” I am referring to the act of pretending to have a disorder in general and not faking any specific neurological condition. I originally intended to let this stay inside my head as a thought but it’s been a few days and it isn’t going anywhere. I feel like I have to say it out loud and I don’t care if no one sees it or sees it and thinks I’m stupid for having these opinions. I’ll confess that a while ago I subscribed to r/fakedisordercringe because I had heard that there was purportedly a rise in people faking disorders and as a neurodivergent I was fascinated and disgusted that people would perceive mental disorders as “fun” and “quirky” and turn it into an aesthetic which pop culture is indeed guilty of, my impression being that the subreddit would be aimed at calling out neurotypicals clearly proven to be faking. It seemed a nice enough place that could serve as a platform for neurodivergents to correct misinformation spread by known fakers and spread awareness and also had strict ground rules against doxxing, misgendering and direct harassment. There was an automod that would encourage users to NOT submit any genuine cases and to provide evidence of the person in the video faking their condition. I thought that the subreddit was well maintained and run for the first week or so I was there. Until I found a post containing a tiktok clip in which the person stated something along the lines of “walking in circles around the pole in my room is my favourite stim”. It was submitted by a user of the subreddit who described themselves as “diagnosed with autism”, and their argument was that “walking around in circles is not a stim” and that the person was “undiagnosed”. As someone with ADHD that has similar habits, I was confused as it felt very genuine to me. I replied that as someone with ADHD I exhibited similar behaviour and that the tiktok individual could be having ADHD, even in my comment I linked a WebMD of the medication I am currently taking. I reported it to the moderators of the subreddit under “bad evidence” and to their credit it was removed very quickly in under 5 minutes of me reporting it and slapped with the “bad evidence” flair (it could have been that others did the same) but in the time it was still up I was downvoted for my comment. This left me stunned and disheartened because I was under the impression that the users there were familiar with how mental disorders typically worked and that the majority of those subscribed are neurodivergent like me. That was the moment I began losing faith in it. The moment I was no longer certain they were 100% knowledgeable about the things they talk about. As soon as I was downvoted, I instantly went to check if “pacing around is a stim” because I started doubting whether what I am doing is what ADHD people are supposed to do. It made me question myself. And yet, I can’t argue that the subreddit has no purpose and that all they do is falsely accuse genuine sufferers. Because they have defended an individual from accusations of faking by other subreddit users. Because they have actually called out proven fakers like ticsandroses who earned money from faking tics and stopped spreading awareness about TS after they were exposed (correct me if this bit is wrong). Which is why I am still temporarily subscribed, and remaining cautious. Still, there’s now that lingering sense of wariness when a new post comes up: Is the person in the video actually a faker, or are they neurodivergents whose manifestation of the condition can be interpreted as “fake”? But I did have a realisation: Fakeclaimers and “fakers” (at least those who are really faking) are two sides of the same coin. They have the same problem. Both of them fail to view disorders as a spectrum, thinking that the behaviour of one member of the community is indicative of what the average sufferer should behave like. For “fakers” (again, those who are actually pretending), they take an extreme end of the spectrum as the “model” example, which is why some of the proven ones often can be observed to imitating the behaviour of well-known users that are known to actually have the condition when trying to create the illusion that they actually have it when they may not. (TheTrippyHippie is one of these genuine sufferers that documents what it’s like for her to live with her condition, Tourettes) They often set a low bar for the diagnostic criteria. “Blinking on the beat is ADHD!” “Shaking on the “my anxiety” song is an indication of anxiety!” “You like organising your snacks? OCD!”  And when I, with ADHD am unable to do these and am under the impression that people like me are SUPPOSED to, I can’t stop the thought that “maybe I’m the faker” from popping up in my brain. Why am I not shaking my hands to stim? I can’t focus on one song in this blend of audios but I’m apparently supposed to instinctively be able to do if I have the condition?  Fakeclaimers are the opposite. They often fakeclaim by downplaying the condition. “You’re faking because I know people in my life with *insert disorder* and I barely noticed that they had it while you’re trying to make it obvious”, “you don’t have it, you’re just neurotypical and acting out a tv show stereotype” or the one that hurts me the most “real sufferers wouldn’t be happy about their condition because it is the worst thing ever and all of them don’t want to have it and would pass their disability onto you FAKERS since you want to be neurodivergent so bad”, which I am often conflicted over because ADHD has its good and bad. On one hand the bad is really bad: The drowsiness I slip into when I’m unmedicated fucking sucks because it instilled in me a fear of driving because I always imagine myself falling asleep at the wheel and killing someone on accident, when I’m jittery and can’t sit still and my deadlines are running at me. But some aspects of ADHD can be really helpful like when I enter hyperfocus and actually get more stuff done than before, when new ideas rush into my brain out of a sudden and I’m overwhelmed yet happy. So to say that neurodivergents must resent their condition wholeheartedly makes me uncomfortable. I have a love-hate relationship with it but can’t deny that it has some hand in shaping my personal identity. To them, it’s fake because they think everyone should be on the mild end of the spectrum. Both of them don’t seem to understand that we all act differently. It’s a spectrum for a fucking reason! People who react more severely might not be fakers but be on the far end of the spectrum. People who barely react might be medicated at the time or having a mild version of the disorder. God, we’re not robots. Why can’t people just understand that? I wanted to argue for a particular side, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Not when either option brings about negative consequences and ultimately hurts people. I wish there was a definite answer. I wish there was a foolproof way to identify fakers and not drag actual sufferers by accident in the process. I wish there was a way to “just know” someone is faking. But there isn’t. But I hope that this rant on a hot afternoon in my country does add something useful to the discussion.

3. sadness

Don’t be like that. Be like this, or be that other thing. Be unique, but don’t be too unique. Fit in, but try to be a rebel. Be a renegade, but don’t rock the boat. Don’t know what you are supposed to be? What? Do you have imposter syndrome or something? Just be yourself, but, y’know, sand down the edges a little bit. Be friendlier. Be the kind of person everyone likes. Be the life of the party! Don’t be some shut-in, some crazy cat-lady with absolutely zero social life. Don’t be sad. Don’t burden others with your sadness. Work to maximise the total happiness of your community. A smile goes a long way. Can’t smile? You really can’t help but being a sourpuss all the time? Well, I guess maybe that if you can’t help but stay in a perpetual bad mood bringing everyone else down… then maybe you should just stay isolated? Better stay alone, away from others. You’re toxic. You’re just so damned sad. You really must be quarantined.

I am sad, a lot of the time. Are you? But, no, you can’t just admit that you are sad. Don’t be a buzzkill, try to inject a little humour into the things you say. You can admit you’re depressed, if you do so with a joke. Don’t let others know you’re being sincere. Ironic jokes work the best, don’t they? They let you confess your secret gloom to everyone around, but they’ll never know just how serious you’re being. With a wink of the eye, any candid expression of your inner turmoil can become a hilarious post-modern gag. Are they or are they not telling the truth? Oh, I’ll never tell! And it will all work out excellent, up until the day you commit suicide. But every comedian’s time in the limelight has to end at some point, right?

This blog is supposed to be about autism spectrum disorder, why am I suddenly discussing depression? Well, I suppose that it is time we bring to the table this little thing called comorbidity. Psychology is messy. Some would argue that it is barely even a real scientific field (I tend to think that it is the best thing we have, but I acknowledge that in places, psychology is fundamentally flawed.) You may have thought that you’d get just one diagnosis. One simple label that you can work through and overcome. You’re bipolar, now go deal with it! But instead, you find yourself with a whole fistful of diagnoses. What to hear my proud list of diagnoses? Oh, please, don’t think because I am listing them this one certain way, I put them in order of relevancy to me. I love all of my diagnoses equally.

My diagnoses are:

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)

Agoraphobia

Possible Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Asperger syndrome (AS)

No, I was never officially diagnosed with depression, but largely because, at the time I received these diagnoses, my depression was so blatant that it felt as if I was walking around with a cloud of miasma surrounding at all times. Imagine me as Pig-Pen from Peanuts, but instead of being covered in dirt, I was covered in the funk of melancholy. And whatever treatment I would eventually go on to receive (and still am receiving to this day,) would go about treating my anxiety first, and hopefully, the depression would give in alongside the anxiety. It has, for the most part, though, I still feel the presence of that black dog from time to time. I also got only a half-hearted potential diagnosis of OCD, but later, during a trial of an antidepressant that had a freakishly negative impact on my psyche, it blossomed into a fully-grown attention-craving condition. Turns out that OCD can be a real hog for the spotlight, really not allowing any of the other diagnoses to take their turn on stage. Thankfully, when I got off that particular antidepressant, those symptoms stopped, but it has led me to be far more aware of my internal obsessive-compulsive thought patterns. For me, OCD largely lacks physical compulsions, but my mind is ablaze with intrusive thoughts, and I will routinely force myself to repeat certain phrases in my head to make them go away. The funny thing is, I never realised that wasn’t normal.

Diagnoses are an attempt to map out a spiders’ web of problems. Things come hand in hand. While I’m no psychologist, I can speak from the perspective of someone who has been through the psychiatric process, which I suppose, lends me a certain kind of expertise, doesn’t it? Maybe it really doesn’t. Maybe I’m just throwing words out there, thinking that I could serve a good purpose, but instead all I am doing is contributing to this great onslaught of digital disinformation we’re all suffering under. But I’m probably just too doubtful of myself. I am speaking about myself, after all. I’ve got first-hand experience in being myself. I know exactly what it feels like to own this skin, these bones, this heart, and this mushy brain of mine. I’m not claiming to know everything. I’m just claiming to know about this one sad individual writing this hoping it might allow someone to reblog my posts with the hashtag “relatable” one day.

Anxiety runs in my family. The neurosis demon gets passed down from generation to generation, only occasionally skipping a beat. My mother and I share many of the same neurotic quirks, though, she has for the most part of her life not had it to quite the excessive degree that I have it. I really took that genetic predisposition for anxiety and ran with it. And while I’m the only person in my family to have gotten diagnosed as being “on the spectrum,” there are a few members that I kinda sort of in a way actually quite seriously suspect might also be here somewhere on the spectrum. Still, as always goes with diagnosing, there’s no point in doing it unless the person is in need of some kind of treatment. I wholeheartedly believe that most people on the planet belong to one spectrum, be it an autism spectrum, a bipolar spectrum, a narcissism spectrum, even a schizophrenic spectrum, but diagnoses should be exclusively reserved for those who need psychiatric care. The world is a spectrum, and it’s worth noting that the terms “sane” and “insane” do not alone capture the complexity of the human psyche. A person can appear perfectly sensible, yet at some point in their life, they may have been a real silly little bugger who thought that their pet hamster was the reincarnation of the Buddha. Just as with physical health, one can struggle with one's mental health for one period in their life, only to later on in life feel utterly and entirely mentally healthy. Or, well, sadly in a lot of cases, people who were perfectly mentally healthy may suddenly become diagnosed with dementia. But that’s really sad, so let’s not talk about that.

Is it all genetic? Well, no. Or well, maybe? In regards to autism, I am pretty sure that, yes, it is genetic. While, yes, I do admit that I’m just a dummy on the internet, so what do I really know? And the brain is such a complex bit of mushy meat, so I could always be proven wrong. Though, I tend towards thinking that there most likely is principally a genetic factor to conditions like autism, or attention deficit disorder (and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,) or things like bipolar disorder. But with anxiety, quite frankly, I can’t say how much of it is nurture and how much of it is nature. I mentioned that my mother and I share many of the same neurotic quirks, so that would imply that there is something in one's genes that can make some more prone to anxiety than others, but my mother does not struggle with agoraphobia, nor does she seem to have any obsessive-compulsive tendencies. In fact, in my family, even those that exhibit some element of heightened anxiety, they don’t seem to show any milder symptoms of this kind. I can’t help but feel as if these conditions I gained through that tortuous period of every boy’s and girl’s (and boy-girl’s) life is called puberty. I hate to conform to stereotypes but I did indeed hate being a teenager. Believe it or not, I wasn’t a jock, and no, I didn’t go to parties. I mostly spent my time crying.

The question that no doubt plagues every movie psychiatrist to no end is what kind of trauma must a person undergo to make them go mad? Abusive parents? Abusive uncles? Abusive teachers? Abusive dogs? Honestly, to be an adult raising a child must be rough, considering how any mistake you make might suddenly turn your little babe into a future serial killer. Now, there’s no doubt that there are some seriously terrible parents out there, and that a lot of people have mental woes that definitely came about due to their parents and their abysmal lack of parental care. But generally, how much can you actually blame on your parents? We know the cliché, let’s go sit down on the sofa and complain to our Freudian hack-shrink all about those times as a kid our dad missed the big game, or that time our mother embarrassed us in front of all of our friends. I have plenty of things to complain about my parents, like I believe we all have. Our parents are flawed, messy human beings, of course they occasionally made mistakes throughout our upbringings. But is that nearly enough to turn a person mentally ill? Putting up with an at times really embarrassing mom? No, I don’t think so. And of course, there are some real awful parents out there, I’m not doubting that. Trust me, I’m a fan of true crime, so I’ve heard some real grizzly stories of what some kids are forced to grow up with. But I am thinking that those instances are more rare than they are common. Most people with mental illnesses can most likely not blame their parents.

How ‘bout bullies? Yes, them bullies. Them awful mean bullies that made all of our lives so painful. It’s funny, it seems like every school had their own fair share of bullies, and yet no-one as an adult ever comes forward to admit that they themselves were the bullies. It’s almost like as if no-one ever thinks of themselves as being a bully, even when they are throwing rocks at that weird chubby kid with blonde hair who happens to be named Fredrik and who just wants to be left alone. Was I bullied? Well… yes. But I can’t say I got the brunt of it. I got bullied, but overall I’d say I only ever had it slightly worse than most people. I was still quite tall, typically taller than my classmates growing up, and for the most part I could roll with the punches. If you really want to talk about a kid I knew growing up that got bullied, let me tell you about this kid who knew all the right dances for all the right Britney Spears songs. He was gay, I think. Not quite old enough to have come out, I suspect, but, well... He liked all the female pop stars, but not in that way of wanting to kiss them and fondle their boobies, but in the “I want to sound just like them when I grow up” sort of way. I don’t know what happened to him (or them, or her, depending on how they identify now,) but that was real bullying. Like most folks, I found myself stuck in that limbo of seeing others get bullied far worse than me and being too cowardly to intervene, in fears that I’d end up taking their place. Yes, isn’t school just a marvellous place? It’s a wonder any of us turn out okay.

No, I think that, fundamentally, the problems I have arose with myself. This, blaming myself, is not something that I am unused to doing. I have a long history of blaming myself, that’s really the problem. As a teenager I knew that I was different, and I was frightened and scared of being exposed. I didn’t even really know what it was that was different about me, I just knew that I didn’t fit in. I felt as if I didn’t deserve to fit in. The older I got, the more intense these feelings got. And I started taking it out on myself. I started hating myself. And I really mean furiously hating myself. It wasn’t some casual self-loathing, it was searing self-hatred. I did not physically hurt myself, but I did engage with self-harm. I kept repeating the mantras of “I hate myself,” and “I am pathetic,” over and over again, with the ultimate goal of making myself cry. For a period, I couldn’t go to bed without making myself cry first. I began taking days off from school, pretending to be sick. Well, I suppose I was ill, but not physically. I began failing most of my classes, I only ended up doing well in art. I stayed away from school for whole weeks at the time. Once, when I shame-facedly returned to school some of the meaner boys came up to me and said that they were surprised to learn that I was still alive. They were surprised, but also a little disappointed.

This was a time in my life when I really needed psychiatric care. This became increasingly obvious to my parents, and my teachers. I was clearly suffering from depression. Not just some teenaged angst, but full-blown, wholly insidious, depression. But, well, I didn’t get the care that I needed. Oh, I did go to see a psychologist a couple of times, but she saw no reason for me to continue seeing her. I don’t know why she felt as if I wasn’t in need of help, frankly, I can’t fathom why she felt as if I wasn’t in need of help. I suppose I avoided telling her the truth of what went on inside of my head, but I feel like as if any good psychologist would have been able to tell that the kid sitting across from them was clearly suffering from something a tad more intense than just some common concerns about puberty. At most I was able to confess was that I was feeling ashamed over myself for getting so fat, but it should have been clear to anybody that I was only using that as a hook to hang my self-hatred on. There very clearly was some underlying condition that I had that should have gotten addressed. But it went ignored.

At most I can think to explain this is the fact that I wasn’t “problematic.” Not in the way some kids are, when they’re struggling with their mental health. I did not act out, I did not take drugs, and I was certainly not violent. Even to this day, though I have at many times suffered from suicidal ideation, I am a real low-risk for actual suicide considering my intense fear of dying (yes, that’s an odd combo to have.) So, I’ve come to realise that the only way I am getting treatment is if I actually seek out treatment. And back then, I was just as placid as I had previously always been. I was quiet and introverted, just desperate to get back home so I could go and hide in my room. Many teenagers are like that. And it is easy to ignore them, because they want to be ignored. They just don’t want to exist. When you are desperate to be left alone, eventually people will leave you alone. I would go on to receive psychiatric care later on my life, but only after several years passed. I did have a better time living in my later teenage years, but like with a bone that heals wrong, I needed someone to come in and sort me out. I was sad as a teenager, but I would become really sad as a twenty-something. Hopefully my thirties will be jolly.

i've contemplated making this post for some time now and kept struggling when trying to find the right words to even begin with. i've come to the conclusion that there's no one good way to do this, especially coming out of nowhere as it is, so i'll just preface it by saying, to you, whoever might be reading this, you are under no obligation or expectation to read any further.

i am making this post to address as much as i can think of addressing, as a way of having proper closure here. this is not me trying to make a comeback or anything of the sort, it's just me trying to close the book for myself and anyone else who might feel concerned. so please, if you know enough to know why i disappeared, if hearing from me stresses you out, if my presence makes you feel unsafe to any degree or you know it might have a negative effect on your mental state or even just your mood, please do not feel any pressure to read on. you will not be out of the loop if you do not read this, this post will have zero impact on you or the community. this post will not be deleted or edited either, so if you can't stand to just ignore it, feel free to come back to it later.

before i get into anything, i want to apologize for any potential bad timing; i have not logged in here or otherwise seen the state of the dash since roughly two or three weeks after my last post (so about four months ago). i do not know who is or is not following me or who otherwise might see this post , i do not have the slightest idea of how the community fares these days. i apologize if this happens to be published at an especially bad time, or on the contrary it's a particularly good one, it's purely coincidental, and i encourage you once again to simply come back to this when it's more convenient if you do feel like you ought to read what follows.

as stated previously i have had no contact with this blog or any of the blogs that were previously associated with it in a few months now. i have no idea if what happened where i'm concerned was addressed publicly or not. i do believe it would have warranted a callout post, but i don't know if one was actually made. it makes it difficult to address when i don't know what people generally do or don't know, so i'll just say this: everything you've heard, if you've heard anything, is probably true.

the abuse, the gas-lighting, the suicide baiting, the mean or passive-aggressive comments, the talking smack about people in private. all of it happened, and it was happening for several months, and i'm not here to try to deny or justify any of it. i'm sure anyone who paid attention to the dash was able to observe that i had questionable vibes at best, and i'm here to tell you that it was much, much worse in private, and it was much, much worse for those who endured it than i could ever make it out to be.

for most of the time i was on here, i tried to advocate against elitism, clique culture and all around bad energies while being one of the main people to perpetuate them. i never questioned myself and if anyone confronted me, i took for granted that they were wrong and argued around it. i had a 'assume people are shitty until proven otherwise' mindset that resulted in a lot of unwarranted aggression, mistrust and guilt-tripping towards many people. i caused an immense amount of tension and distress, both on and off the dash, and never took responsibility for any of it at the time. for that, i am sincerely sorry.

there's only so much i can say without starting to list everything i've done to people individually - which i think would be inappropriate considering i am making this post without speaking to them first or otherwise knowing whether they've recovered or would be okay with me disclosing the details of our involvements. 

however, i don't want to simply dismiss my actions by confirming i did them and moving on, either. if there are any allegations i should address or at least acknowledge in more details, please let me know. i just quite frankly don't know how to publicly take accountability for things that went on over the course of a long time, or that weren't always explicit, or that i may not realize the full extent of even now, seeing as i've never gotten to actually discuss them with the people concerned. i don’t want to make this a potentially triggering read for those who were involved by bringing up details without their permission, but i don’t want those who weren’t involved to assume my actions were minor offenses only because said details are lacking, either. it's important not to underestimate the gravity of the harm i've caused, and far be it from me to try and sweep it under the rug. in that sense, the only thing i can say is, make no mistake, i am 100% guilty of all of it.

what’s more, me admitting to my wrongdoings is only me going off of what i can remember. i can guarantee that all i've done is even worse than i make it sound, seeing as it's worse than i'm able to comprehend, for i was never the one on the receiving end of my behavior.

for the longest time i wholeheartedly believed i couldn't be a bad person because i never /meant/ to hurt anyone. i was wrong. i was a bad person because even when i knew that i was capable of unintentionally hurting people, i did not take responsibility or seek to correct my behavior. i always had (pardon the language) bullshit excuses to justify my actions and invalidate the pain of those i hurt, whether it was to myself or to other people. i thought my initial intentions mattered more than the effect they had, and therefore no harm was ever actually my fault because i hadn't intended it.

it's an incredibly toxic mindset to have. it's the same rhetoric with which racists, homophobics, ableists and such people can get away with racism, homophobia, ableism and so on without guilt- by convincing themselves that if they don't mean it that way, then it absolves them of blame, and whatever harm they cause is technically the victim's fault for taking offense to it. it's a very harmful thought process, and not at all the kind of person i want to be, and i'm sorry i hurt so many before i came to understand this.

for what it's worth, i am getting help. i am seeing a therapist once a week since may, with the goal of understanding where my abusive and manipulative reflexes come from and getting rid of them. beyond our weekly sessions, i was given an exercise to do on my own time, on a daily basis (or at least as often as i interact with others), meant to help me learn to believe in the inherent goodness of people and develop a kinder and more optimistic disposition towards them. i have also taken a summer course in communication in hopes of (re)learning how to properly listen and be more receptive of people's thoughts (and especially criticism), although that has admittedly not proven quite as effective as i'd hoped, so i am looking to consult with a specialist in that department when post-pandemic re-openings allow it.

obviously, none of these efforts make up for what i've done. they are quite frankly too little too late and will never erase the pain i've inflicted. unfortunately, they are also the only concrete action i can take to make amends after the fact, now that the damage is done. or so it seems from my current perspective.

if there is anything else i can do to make up for even a fraction of the harm i've caused, i would be very thankful to hear about it. if there is something i am at fault for that i may not be taking accountability for, i would also like to know. keeping in mind that, while knowing exactly how my behavior was problematic would allow me to better take the blame for it, this is not an obligation or expectation in any way. please only let me know about such things if you feel secure in doing so; do not feel pressured if you feel it would compromise you. my growth is no one's responsibility but my own. that being said, i know that i scared and bullied a lot of people into silence in the past, and i feel like inviting you to speak up about the stress or pain i've caused you is the least i can do to make up for it. if it's more empowering for you to ignore this and move on, by all means, just ignore this and move on.

if at all possible, i would also like to apologize for my behavior - more than just generally. i honestly believe that i have caused some manner of torment, whether directly or indirectly, to everyone in this community, and that everyone is deserving of an apology. i am fully aware that most of the people concerned likely feel unsafe at the idea of being in touch with me in any way, so i will not be reaching out to you directly myself, but with your permission, i would like to personally and individually apologize to anyone willing to indulge me for a brief exchange. i am not doing this to earn your forgiveness; i am doing this because i genuinely feel bad. if i can contribute to your finding closure by acknowledging how i've wronged you, it's the least i can do. i promise that i have no intention of using this as an opportunity to renew contact and that, should you do me this favor, you will be more than welcome to completely cut ties after the fact with no hard feelings on my end.

i can be reached in a fairly timely manner (as in, i am logged in on those accounts on my phone) on discord (Eph#2409) and tumblr ( @friendlifyre ). if a less instant method of communication is more comfortable for you, the e-mail [email protected] is at your disposal. if you don't mind the wait, you can also give me a nudge on this blog, as i will be (albeit rarely) logging in here to work on old drafts (without publishing them) until they're finished or i otherwise feel content with leaving this part of my life behind.

as a small addendum, i am humbly asking to please be civil if you use any of these methods to reach me. while i am arguably deserving of the death threats and insults coming my way, i am sharing these specifically to make open communication possible, and to make it easier to avoid me for those who wish to do so. i will not silence you if you choose an aggressive approach as i recognize it's ultimately what i deserve; i only ask that you at least consider that i am really just trying to do something right in the wake of all the wrong i've done, and i would appreciate if all related messages could remain constructive and not just mean for the sake of being mean.

as a conclusion i can only apologize once more for the bad vibes i brought into this community. it will be months if not years of active work on myself before i can confidently say that i have made progress and become a better person, yet i suspect a good number of people may carry with them the tension and fear i've instigated far longer. i am truly sorry. i can only offer, for what little consolation it might be, that not at single day goes by that i don't regret my actions and feel the weight of them.

if i could give my past self any advice, or anyone who indulges in similar attitudes, it would be to keep questioning yourself, to stop assuming you know better. just because your intentions are not bad does not mean they never affect people in a bad way. just because you can recognize abusive behavior in others, does not make it inherently impossible for you to be abusive. make an effort every day to consider those around you as individuals, even when it's easier to view them as parts of a bigger whole, of a community. learn not only to be kind but to think kindly, to catch yourself when you think mean thoughts and condition yourself to a more positive approach. assume people are good until proven otherwise. if there's anything you want to get off your chest that you wouldn't want divulged to the whole world, even when you think you're just harmlessly venting, you are ultimately spreading negativity and should work on getting rid of it from within instead.

it's always more work to improve than to stay the way you are, but you owe it to everyone else if not to yourself to be someone who's good to be around.

thank you for taking the time to read this if you have. regardless of who did or whether there is any kind of response to this, i will continue this work-in-progress that is my self and try to make sure i never put anyone else through what i've been putting people through here. i am glad i have the opportunity to acknowledge at least some of my problematic behavior and apologize, as it seemed, for quite some time now, the only logical step i hadn't taken yet in my journey to moving forward.

once again, thank you for reading this, and, assuming this is the last interaction we'll have with one another, i wish you the very, very best.

Stone to Gold

              Not like any other, I have a devastating childhood. I was born from an average type of family, my late father used to be a tricycle driver when he was still alive, and my mother uses to work as a contractual government worker. My dad died when I was 5 years old, he was shot in his temple, drag down from his tricycle to the empty field, and covered him with his tricycle, by a man, said criminal was never been caught until now. Some of the stories state that I was with my father a few minutes before he was killed, we drop my older sister in school and my father was hired by the said killer to drop him somewhere. My father drops me off in the neighbor’s house to give me to my mother, A few minutes later someone was yelling outside our house saying that my dad died. At a young age, I still have the blurry memories from the past, when my father was killed, by a man that until now was still running free from his sin.

                Don’t misunderstand my mother's plan to make him pay for what the killer has done to the lover of her life. Many rumors surround our family during those days and until now, some say he was killed by a policeman friend of him, that handed him a gun, which my father has lost. Some say he was misunderstood as having an affair with a policeman friend side chick, well my dad was handsome in his ways. But until now none of these rumors was proven. My mother plan on having it investigated but someone told her that she might be the next target of the next killer if she does so, my mother got scared not for her own life, but for us, I and sister are too young for this kind of reality that is eating our entire life. So, to cut the story short, my mother had nothing to do but to make ways for us three to survive.

               After a year my mother meets another man, eventually, after 2 years of my father's death, my mother marries this guy and they had a daughter, my half-sister. It's hard for me to accept this kind of change that is happening so fast. Don’t get me wrong I love my sister, and I don’t care if she if my half or whole sister, I love her wholeheartedly. But it came to the point that my elder sister whom I feel is the only one who cares about me during those days, went to study in another town. At those times I am the only one who was expected to do house chores and is being scolded at my every mistake.

                Yes, you think it right, I was marked as our family's black ship. It's not always like that, it started when I got hospitalized because of the flu and chicken box with bleeding, my mom never stated to look after me she never stays for more than an hour in the hospital, she just hires someone to look after me and my sister switch schedule with them. As you see, during that time my mother was already a businesswoman and is always busy. After that, I become the evil child, and rebel against my mother, I do things she hates, and I make sure she gets upset about it.

                After that when my sister was 4 years old my mother and his husband went to a fight and separated because he was caught cheating red-handedly, I feel sorry for my mother during those times. But it also gives us a positive effect, we always bond as a family even without a father. I pity her more when she got into an accident that broke her right knee, which the doctor says will never return to the way it was before. I took care of her three months during those hard times. I was marked as the most loving, helpful, and patient daughter during those moments. I went from a stone-hard heart daughter to a gold shinning love giving daughter, because of those experiences.

                 Don’t pity me just because of those moments that I was suffering, I believe that I went through all that for some good reason. Now I learn that if they don’t show you, love, make them feel loved instead. You will not be forever ignored, you are made different and your purpose will be seen at the right moment and time of your life. We always need to look at the positive aspects of life in any way life serves you. Now I’m studying political science and dreaming of becoming a lawyer because I don’t want to have another child in the name of Elah, who never had a chance to fight for her right as a daughter of a killed man, just because the criminal is in power or is rich. Just like gold that came from a stone who needs to suffer to go on to the flame to shine. I will shine at the right time.

Elements of Love - Ending Version 2 - *SPOILERS*

ch 1 – ch 2 – ch 3

Only read if you’ve read chapter 3 and chosen this ending

Logan asks to go to the hospital 

Hint - 🐰🐰🐇

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“Take us to the hospital.”

Ethan and Remus were silenced by Logan’s sudden comment, the first he had spoken above a whisper since he revived Virgil. Relief flooded Remus’s chest at Logan’s words, and he watched Roman nod and step back from the bike. Ethan didn’t move and Remus’s brow deepened as he gave him a challenging glare.

“You heard him. I’m taking them to the hospital.”

“But that isn’t safe. Logan,” Ethan turned to his adoptive son in the back and rested a hand on top of his; “if you go to the hospital, they will ask questions. Do you really want to risk them taking you away?”

The look of resolve in Logan’s eyes shocked Ethan and he  withdrew his hand as they spoke.

“My partners lives are worth the risk.”

“Right. I’ll meet you guys at the hospital. Ride safe, Princey.”

“Ride swiftly, Duke.”

Roman moved clear as Remus took off, grabbing his helmet and passing it to Patton.

“What are you two doing?” Ethan grabbed Patton’s arm; voice borderline frantic. “You can’t follow them. It’s not safe.”

Pulling his arm free, Patton shook his head.

“Logan’s right. It’s worth the risk.”

Defeated, Ethan watched as his final two students mounted the red bike and sped away. It was an odd feeling to be standing alone breathing air suddenly very thick with smoke, the soft crackling of dying flames behind him. He had hoped to take is makeshift family home, tuck them safely inside and put the whole event behind him; but it seemed he wasn’t going to get what he wanted ever again.

The worst part was the cruel sense of déjà vu watching them all leave, only last time it was an ambulance that took his eldest son away while he was loaded into a vehicle of his own; cheek screaming in pain, but mind fixated on his children. He didn’t see his boys alive again after that and eventually left his position at the hospital to work in aged care.

Logan didn’t know the truth; none of them did. Ethan told them his boys were taken and killed by an unknown party; a lie that they believed wholeheartedly. The truth was something Ethan  didn’t like to admit to himself; he was responsible for their deaths. He was stricter with them never using their powers and they acted out because of it. Ethan had come home early to find them in the basement with a collection of houseplants and candles. The fight that broke out between them caused the eldest to lose control of the flames, quickly engulfing the house with the youngest trapped inside.

Smoke burning his throat finally pulled Ethan out of his thoughts and he climbed into his van and drove aimlessly through the town, too afraid to go to the hospital and face the truth of the situation.

*********************

It was amazing what a new day could bring. The winds were gentle and kept the smoke clear of the town’s main area, though it still stained the sky where it burned safely within containment lines. Clear skies and green grass made for a perfect mix as Remus laid on a blanket outside of the hospital. The peaceful sight made Ethan’s blood boil as he approached; kicking the other man’s foot to get his attention.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What a harsh tone from the man that abandoned his child; though Logan isn’t the first, am I right.” Remus didn’t open his eyes, but a wicked grin spread across his face as Ethan stumbled over his words in response.

“I didn- how- what- what are you talking about?”

“Lying is pointless Dr Deceitful, I already know the truth about your boys.” Now the young man opened his eyes and looked  up at the elder. “You should’ve moved more than one town over; gossip can still travel far.”

“What do you know?”

“Enough to know you’re a liar.”

“Have you told them?” Remus’s grinned at Ethan’s defeated tone, knowing he had finally won.

“Don’t have to. Your little disappearing act  yesterday has just proven to the them how little you care; I didn’t have to say a word.”

“And yet you are laying outside like it’s spring break. How does that make you any better than me?”

“I’m here.” Rising to his feet, Remus stood at eye level with the older man and straightened his face; tone changing with each sentence spoken. “I’ve been here the whole time. I was here when the police asked questions. I was here when Patton collapsed in the waiting room. I was here when Roman cried for the first time in years. I was here when Virgil stopped breathing again!  And I was fucking here when they found Logan unresponsive on the floor! Where were you?”

All colour drained from Ethan’s face at Remus’s words. He fought to keep filling his lungs with air and swallowed the bile rising in his throat before speaking again.

“Is he… I mean, a-a- are they-”

“They’re alive if that’s what you’re asking.” Remus snapped, tired of watching the man try to play victim. “No thanks to you. I’d hate to think what would have happened if they’d listened to you.”

Crumbling under the man’s harsh glare, crueller than Roman’s despite their identical features, Ethan lowered his head in defeat.

“It would seem you were right, Remus. Thank y-”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t do it for you.”

“No. Of course not.” Running a hand through his hair, Ethan met Remus’s eyes again with a pleading look. “May I see them?”

“If you’re asking for my permission, you’re not going to get it.” He raised a clenched fist, steam snaking out from between his fingers. “If I had it my way, you’d have a symmetrical face. If I was you, I’d leave.”

“Is that a threat?” Though he had meant to sound firm, Ethan’s true fear was evident in his voice; eyes fixated on the steaming hand before him.

“More of a warning. If you do anything to harm or endanger Roman and his partners again…” he opened his hand to allow a burst of flame to flash; revelling in the way Ethan stepped back instinctively. “I won’t hold the flames back.”

Ethan nodded before carefully stepping around the younger man and heading towards the hospital. He had initially come to apologise for his absence and reconnect, but now he knew his safest option was to say goodbye. Remus was right, he couldn’t be trusted. He’d lost his own children and almost lost his adopted ones. It to mention Remus clearly had a better handle on his elemental abilities and would be a much better influence on the group than he was.

Remus watched as Ethan crossed the lawn to reach the hospitals side doors, phone silently vibrating in his pocket until he pulled it up to his ear.

“How you feeling, Princey?”

“Better. Patton has been given the all clear and Logan apparently regained consciousness. We might be able to visit in an hour or so.”

“Well, someone else is on their way up to see you.”

“Wha- Ethan?”

“Yeah, I just saw him walk past. You want me to come up.”

“I think…I think we will be alright. Can you get some fresh clothes from our place though? The spare key is in the broken doorbell button.”

“You are a royal pain, you know that right?”

Roman genuinely laughed on the other end, lifting the spirits of those within earshot.

“And you’re the Duke of simpleton. I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll be sure to have my face on properly this time. Bye.”

Remus didn’t expect to heal his relationship with his twin instantly, and had respected his need for space that day, but it was comforting to make him laugh. It made him hopeful for the future as he grabbed his blanket and headed to the carpark to collect his bike.

********************

Ethan kept his visit brief that day, checking on Roman and Patton’s conditions before being allowed to see Logan due to his parental status. He confessed his motives were selfish to keep the group away from professional medical attention; leaving his visit short due to Logan’s weakened state. Before he left, Ethan pulled Roman aside and recommended he worked with his brother on his elemental control and forgot all of his teachings.

“Are you leaving us?” Roman questioned, already predicting the answer.

“I will still be around, but I think this is proof that my teachings are ineffective. I’m not an elemental of the same degree as you all, and it was wrong for me to act like a master when I have no experience. You all deserve better.”

With an affirming nod, Ethan gave Roman’s shoulder a comforting squeeze before he left; never planning on crossing paths again.

Remus was glad to see the former doctor’s van pulling away as he returned to the hospital. A weight lifted from his chest knowing his deceitful influence was no longer going to be a factor in his brother’s life, and he entered the hospital hopeful for the future.

********************

I’d like to say this story had a happy ending, but not all stories do. Choices have consequences, and Logan chose to side with Remus over his adoptive parent. The decision meant his life was saved and Virgil got the medical attention he needed; but it also tore him away from Ethan and brought the group to the attention of the authorities. Thankfully, Remus was able to expertly fabricate a tale of survival of both fire and lightning that satisfied all parties that they weren’t arsonists or reckless thrill seekers; just a group of young adults that chose the wrong time to be out on their bikes in the forestry.

Logan remained under medical observation for a few days before his eventual discharge. The wind seemed to cool the day Logan was released, happily shifting the trio’s hair as they headed out to Patton’s car.

Visits to the hospital became a regular event for them over the weeks that followed. From individual visits to Virgil and group dinners held in his room, they made sure he was alone as little as possible.

Patton looked at the clock, sighing as he realised it was time for him to head off for an afternoon class. Roman would be finishing work within the hour for some alone time with Virgil before Logan arrived with afternoon tea.

“I’ve got to go now, Virgil.” Patton said softly, squeezing his partners hand and leaning in to place a kiss on his forehead. “But Roman won’t be too far behind. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He never expected a reply to his question, but he felt Virgil’s hand shift slightly. Mouth dropping open Patton watched Virgil’s features shift, breathing adjusting from its usual constant rhythm.

“Virgil? Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Tears slipped from Patton’s eyes as he felt Virgil’s hand squeeze slightly again, and he reached over to tap the call button on the side of his bed.

“Well now I’m not going anywhere.” He laughed, leaning in close and allowing his lips to brush against Virgil’s; the slight tingle against his lips let him know they were going to be okay. “Take all the time you need, Vee. We’ll be here when you’re ready to wake up.”

____________________________________

That was the end. Want to jump to another universe and try the other ending - CLICK HERE

Let me know your thoughts on this story and the ending. I’m just glad this project is finally done.

💜🐌

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What else have I done:

The Shield to your Sword (WIP - A fantasy/magic au - Prinxiety (Royal Roman and orphan Virgil - they’ll admit to their love eventually), Virgil angst, non binary healer Logan, *spoiler* Patton, cursed Deceit and ridiculous Remus)

Libraries are for Meetings (ongoing WIP - Human/University au with Royality and developing Analogical. Slow burn and heavily focused on a grieving group of friends that Virgil slowly becomes a part of to better himself.)

And more….

Writing Master Post

Check out my other blog for random fandom reblogs and stuff @snail-giggles

12 questions about that article on treating chronic pain with more pain

Edited to add: Some thoughts on Invisibilia's response to the criticism:

They say the piece was about a "small subset of chronic pain sufferers": young people with the "rare condition" Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS). First, AMPS is not a "condition"—it's an umbrella term (one that, as far as I can tell, is not widely used outside of these type of treatment programs). According to Hoffart, it covers “juvenile fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, localized pain, neuropathic pain, central sensitization syndrome.” So it appears to cover basically any unexplained/idiopathic neuropathic or functional pain syndrome in children and teens. I do not know how the pediatric versions of these syndromes may differ in prevalence (or anything else) from the adult versions. But, collectively, the adult versions are not rare in the least. Fibromyalgia alone is estimated to affect at least 4 million people (most of them women) in the U.S.

This story was clearly framed as part of a broader exploration of "how our culture's attitude towards pain has shifted over the past fifty years" so the idea that it was just about one condition and one program and "was not meant to serve as a commentary on all chronic pain experiences" is hard to buy. Plus, this story is part of a larger conversation about chronic pain. While these particular treatment programs are extreme and rare, the basic theory that unexplained chronic pain is caused by patients focusing too much attention on their pain/"conversion” of emotional distress into physical symptoms/reinforcement through “secondary gain”/etc. is one that much of the medical community still holds.

It is not some radical new theory; it is a very old theory. More to the point, it has been the default theory until quite recently. The long history of just assuming that unexplained pain syndromes (that, not incidentally, mostly affect women) are psychogenic or fabricated and, consequently, not scientifically researching them and dismissing sufferers as “malingerers, liars and hysterics” has had implications for our understanding of chronic pain in general. And how we understand what is now variously called "amplified" or "centralized" pain has implications for many, if not all, people with chronic pain.

I am not against interdisciplinary pain treatment programs. I'm not against behavioral pain management techniques. I am certainly not against incorporating psychotherapy into any pain management approach.

I am against pretending we understand what is happening in "the mind" when what we really mean is that we don't understand what is happening in the body. I am against accepting unfalsifiable and highly implausible theories by default instead of doing actual science. I'm against treating patients on the basis of those unproven theories with unbelievably little regard for the potential harm to them if we are wrong.

Original post:

I don’t know what questions the journalists asked the experts in this NPR story about programs that treat unexplained chronic pain conditions in kids by forcing them “to push their bodies until they are in tons of pain” in order to retrain their brains to ignore pain.

But these are the questions I would have asked them:

1) What evaluations do patients undergo before the program to determine that there isn't an undiagnosed condition or injury that explains their pain? Literally, what lab tests and imaging is ordered? How many specialists have independently reviewed their case? How sure are you (as a percentage) that you have ruled out every possible underlying cause of the pain before accepting a patient into your program? 2) Your program is based on the theory that the pain persists because patients focus on it. But what is your theory for how the pain begins? How do you explain experiences like Devyn's in which the pain began suddenly out of the blue?

3) There are many pain experts who believe that what you call "amplified pain" is indeed caused by an amplification of the pain processing system but is due to sensitization at the level of neuron, not mediated by psychological factors like attentional focus. What evidence specifically convinces you that your theory is the more likely one? And what evidence would convince you that your theory is incorrect? Is your theory falsifiable?

4) You theorize that the pain is an expression of emotional distress in kids who are "not in touch with their feelings" and "don't have the sophisticated emotional skills they need to manage in an increasingly stressful world." Given that girls are generally more emotionally intelligent and in touch with their feelings than boys, what is your explanation for why girls are disproportionately affected by these pain syndromes? And if your theory about the root cause of the pain is correct, wouldn't the factor that explains the gender difference then need to be something nearly universal—like, say, sex-based genetic or hormonal differences—to produce such a marked gender imbalance in the opposite direction? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t that suggest that biological factors play a more important role than your theory allows for? 5) Many other experts in what you call amplified pain recommend exercise because of its physiological effect on the pain processing system. What makes you believe that any benefit from your program is due to the experience of pain and not the direct effect of the exercise itself? Have you done a study in which one control group got the exercise only (or the exercise, therapy, and breathing exercises) but without the focus on ignoring the pain? 6) Similarly, learning to distract yourself or even disassociate from the pain is a common way of coping with pain, both acute pain and chronic pain explained by an underlying disease or injury. Have you done a study in which you put patients with "explained" chronic pain conditions (say, rheumatoid arthritis patients) through the same treatment program? If patients with "explained" chronic pain report comparable reductions in pain wouldn't that suggest that what you are offering is not a treatment of the root cause of the pain but simply a (very unpleasant) way of teaching patients some pain coping skills? 7) Your program is rooted in a belief that you should not give more attention to patients' pain complaints. An asthma attack and a nosebleed are not pain complaints. What possible justification was there to ignore these problems in Devyn? 8) Upon completion of your program, what training do you provide to patients and their parents about how to differentiate between their existing pain, which they are instructed to ignore, and new pain complaints that may be a warning sign of an unrelated potentially life-threatening medical problem? 9) How did you get permission to implement this treatment program if the approach has never been proven safe and effective in large controlled studies? Do you inform patients and their parents of the untested, experimental nature of the program?

10) You believe that the alarmingly high and rising rates of chronic pain in the US are caused by the fact that American society has "focused way too much attention on aggressively relieving pain" and our medical system "asks patients to rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 10, and treats it like an emergency." How does this theory square with the overwhelming amount of evidence that pain is frequently undertreated in the US medical system, physicians get little training on pain management, and most continue to see pain as a diagnostic clue and not a problem in and of itself?

11) As our understanding of the neurobiology of pain has gotten progressively more sophisticated over the decades, many other previously inexplicable aspects of pain that we resorted to explaining in psychological terms have become explained in physiological ones (for example, phantom limb pain). Doesn’t this history give you pause about the wisdom of resorting to psychological theories for pain that is currently “unexplained”?

12) You clearly believe wholeheartedly that your theory is correct. What if you are wrong?

My Thoughts on Endgame

I went to see Endgame last night and have had all day up in my office all alone to compile my thoughts and feelings, of which there are numerous, about the movie while it’s all still fresh. Major spoilers below the cut, so if you haven���t seen it, back away!

Warning: Super long post ahead.

First, I’d like to say I am a Tony/Nebula stan, wholeheartedly. Somehow, the Russos managed to lighten up a very dark reality where Tony and Nebula are floating listlessly in space and running out of oxygen. The dark mood is made a little lighter by a noticeably very thin Tony teaching Nebula about paper footballs, and her innocence of Earthly activities gave her a human depth that only made me fall even deeper in love with her character. And the way she pushes Tony’s (probably last) bag of food towards him, knowing he needs it more than she does. (Does she even eat? Do cyborgs eat?)

Second, Clint’s family disappearing was the first time I cried. Honestly, I didn’t have a dry eye the entire movie, but it progressively got harder and harder for me to not sob. We’ll get to that.

Carol popping out of literal space to come cart Tony’s ass home was admittedly a little cheesy, but I didn’t hate it. What I really loved was Tony’s reunion with both Steve and Pepper, and the fight that ensued, mostly on Tony’s end, was emotional and so very Tony that I still had a hard time keeping it together. And I’m really glad that the Russos didn’t just skip over Civil War in favor of uniting everyone to take down Thanos for good. And it showed how broken up over it Tony still was because we all know Tony does have a heart and Steve Rogers broke it.

An appropriate time skip 5 years into the future and Scott Fucking Lang and that goddamn rat busts out of the Quantum Realm only to discover almost his entire family has been dusted. Ouch. And once he finds his daughter, instead of moping and falling into a pit of depression and grief, he hauls ass to the compound to talk to the Avengers about time travel and undoing everything.

Here’s where Meg really loses her mind. The teams. The effort to get the stones back. Natasha Fucking Romanoff schooling the Science Bros in figuring out there are three stones in New York all at once. Fucking Captain Sassypants fighting his 2012 self and Mr. Stark Scott Lang (i’ve been corrected) perfectly coining the term “America’s Ass” and Steve just going with it. I can’t with these two, honestly. Steve swearing. Talk about sticking it to Joss Whedon for that pathetic little joke we all thought was funny until we knew better. That whole sequence was perfect, especially because it didn’t go off without a hitch. Which means Loki is still alive somewhere in another reality. Yahoo!

Thor. Poor alcoholic, out of shape, PTSD-stricken Thor. My baby angel. It hurt to see him so lost and broken, but Korg and Meike playing Fortnite about killed me. The balance of humor to sadness was utterly perfect through this whole movie and it was all comprised of jokes that made sense. The fat suit made me cry of laughter because it looks so goddamn unnatural on someone who’s as cut as Hemsworth, and Tony’s Lebowski dig was wholly appropriate.

This is where Meg realizes she is not going to be okay for the eightieth time. When Nat and Hawkeye are delegated to retrieve the Soul Stone, because we know while they don’t what needs to be done in order to get the stone. I had a feeling Nat might be one of the ones we lost, but I have to say I never saw it coming like this. I was inconsolable through the entire sequence as she and Clint are fighting over who’s going to be the one to die. I had my sweatshirt over my nose to stifle my sobbing and my boyfriend’s looking over at me wondering if I’m going to be okay. Y’all should see my eyes today, no lie.

And the fact that they played the same music for Nat that they did Gamora in IW was the knife through my heart followed by that heart-wrenching shot of her lying dead at the bottom. She’s gotten rid of the red in her ledger. Natasha, my beautiful, intelligent, bad-ass, super spy, we love you. So much.

Steve in mourning for Nat deserved more screen time than just a quick shot of him crying while Banner pitches a bench across the lake. Steve and Nat were one of the powerhouse friendships of the MCU, and this is one of the few shortcomings of Endgame. I wanted to see Steve angry, and heartbroken, something on par with Clint’s outburst that it should have been him. Steve and Nat were best friends, he deserved a little more screen time to mourn such a powerful relationship.

The epic battle scene that follows after this is nothing short of incredible. The entire theater erupted in cheers when Steve wielded Mjolnir like he was meant to, so at least Joss Whedon got some foreshadowing right! At first I thought it was lifting by itself but nope! Steve is worthy, and he knows he’s worthy. There’s an incredible theory out there that Mjolnir can detect someone’s perceived self-worth, and I fully believe that theory after watching this movie. And the little humor in there when Steve ends up with Stormbreaker and Thor gets Mjolnir and says, “No, no, give me that. You get the little one.” Kill me. The fact that Thor is doing all this badass fighting with a beer gut leaves me in stitches just thinking about it.

That epic entrance of all those who fell to the Snap emerging in a beautifully shot sequence gives me life, okay? It was perfect. I even looked to my boyfriend and said, “Where are the others? If it worked, where are they?” and BOOM! There they all are. Bucky with his long-ass hair is such a fucking look, I can’t even. AND STEVE FINALLY SAID THE THING. I swear the entire theater cheered again for this!! Also Rocket wearing Bucky’s goggles that he probably stole? Epic. Even if they aren’t his, but you can’t really convince me they’re not because they’re too similar. So Rocket hasn’t lost his penchant for stealing things.

Okoye, fierce queen, we see you taking out Corvus Glave all on your own. We also see that amazing, powerful female battle squad who cut through Thanos’s army like it was fucking tissue paper. Wanda, the Strongest Avenger (fight me on that, I dare you), taking on Thanos and stripping him of his armor like the fucking boss she is. Say it with me again: Strongest Avenger. 

I also really really loved the game of Hot Potato with the gauntlet. Which brings us to...Mr. Anthony Edward Stark. The OG, the Big Guy. These next two paragraphs will be dedicated to him. The man who, 7 years ago, told us he would just “cut the wire” rather than lay his life on the line to save the other guy. When Dr. Strange said to Tony, “If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen,” I really, truly believed that Strange didn’t think Tony would go through with sacrificing himself in order to stop Thanos. He’d try to find another way. And yet I, along with a lot of others, knew he would do just that. Because Tony is nothing if not determined to prove everyone wrong about who they think he is, including Steve Rogers. Especially Steve Rogers. 

Tony gets to interact with his father and learns that while Howard was incredibly flawed, he was still wholly dedicated to his family. Proven by his nervousness about fatherhood because all he’s ever known is technology, and he knows a child does not work the same way tech does. He’s terrified. And he hides, buries himself in his work because he doesn’t know what to do. But he loves his family, I know he does. A lot of other people know he does. I was a mess for that whole thing, too.

Tony’s funeral was absolutely perfect, a perfect sendoff to this legendary man who basically built the MCU. RDJ, we love you 3000. Thank you for giving us Iron Man. Thank you for carrying us through this journey of hilarity, sadness, darkness, anger, grief, all of it. I have a ton of emotions over RDJ’s exit from the MCU but I can’t properly formulate words.

ALSO: HARLEY WAS AT TONY’S FUNERAL. HE WAS THE LONE OLDER TEENAGER. CUE MORE CRYING FROM MEG.

And the final bit that seems to cause a lot of dissatisfaction: Steve’s final decision.

I personally loved it. I don’t like the misstep in jumping over Steve and Bucky’s bond, because that was a driving force for an entire movie, Russo brothers. So I feel a little cheated with their relationship taking a backseat to Sam receiving the shield to take up the Captain America mantle. But aside from that, Steve’s decision was very, very fitting. He’s given so much of himself to wars and other people that he deserves to be selfish. And maybe he had that quote in AOU that someone else came out of the ice, but A4 Steve knew he could have that life, and he chose it. Bucky knew, almost instantly, when Steve was about to bring the stones back, which was why he was so relaxed and calm when he didn’t come back.

Bucky, I feel, is relieved above all to see Steve reach old age, since he probably never expected him to, at least before he became Captain America. He’s lived his life as Cap, and now he gets to live another as the man who finally got the girl. I just wish we could have seen more of the bond between the two of them, unless they had some kind of heart to heart off-screen which, again, a waste of one of the quintessential relationships in Steve Rogers’s life. 

And Bucky and Sam having some kind of mutual understanding, I know for a fact there was some reconciliation in the Soul World that we may or may not get to see in the new series coming out. I would love to see the two of them struggle with coming to grips with the fact that they were dead, and came back because their friends put themselves on the line at an incredible risk to try and bring everyone back. I think they could really create a bond similar to Steve and Bucky’s that was built on being “men out of time” and instead create a bond that’s men who survived the Snap and now are living a life without Steve Rogers (assuming he won’t take up the mantle again and will succumb to old age, like he goddamn deserves). Bucky is all for Sam taking that mantle, and that second of understanding between the two of them sent me off into another cry fest because I really love their dynamic, and Seb and Mackie both just have amazing on-screen chemistry. I am so excited to see what they bring to the new series coming out.

I would also like to say that while I was very emotional over Steve hearing Sam’s voice over comms saying, “On your left,” I really feel that Bucky should’ve had something. That’s really where Endgame’s biggest shortcoming is. They’ve built up the relationship between Bucky and Steve through CTFA, CATWS, and CACW, especially Civil War, and all you’re going to give them is four minutes of screen time together? Outta here with that. You dedicated an entire movie to Steve going to war for Bucky and y’all are gonna disrespect them like that? Even not shipping Stucky romantically, I can see the loving bond between the two of them that’s held up for 8 years. They deserved more than just a one-off line from CATFA, though that really set me off on another crying spree. I’m really not joking when I said there wasn’t a minute of that movie that I was dry-eyed.

Overall, I give this movie a 10/10. For what it was meant to be, it was everything I had expected and so much more. This movie made me roar with laughter, broke my heart more than once, and gave me an overall feeling of closure all at once. I am forever grateful to the cast, the crew, and the amazing characters created. The incredible late Stan Lee with his final cameo, to which the theater, again, erupted in applause. I’m just so overwhelmed by the work everyone at Marvel has put in to these characters and this world to give us these amazing stories. I’m tearing up as I write this because this is the end of an era for a lot of people who grew up with Iron Man, Hulk, Cap, Thor.... Black Widow. I just want to extend the biggest of thank yous to all of those people who made this world possible and brought so many people together.

meditations on fred andrews, radical softness, trauma victimhood, turning the other cheek, and old folk/country tunes

I’ve been frustrated for the last week with Fred’s devil-may-care attitude toward his situation, and I’ve definitely sensed we all are – WHY ARE YOU SO CHILL ABOUT BEING SHOT, FRED?? I saw a post recently questioning why Fred doesn’t have Archie’s storyline – paranoia, revenge, reconciliation of trauma -  and I wholeheartedly agreed! But then this episode happened and  - holy smokes, it’s all connecting. So here’s why Fred’s characterization has me absolutely GAGGED this episode, and where it might be headed.

I’m getting revved up because I think I have a guess (or maybe a hope!) at where we’re going with Fred this season. Buckle up.

Let’s start here: Fred is a study in radical softness and non-toxic masculinities, and I’ll fight to the death about it. @village-skeptic has pointed out that I work with this a lot in my fanfic, but my stuff is absolutely just springboarding off what we are canonically given in the show.

FRED IS SOFT: A THESIS. We’ve seen Fred cry multiple times by now. We’ve just seen him admit he’s afraid and talk openly to Archie about fear. Fred is allowed to interact with this emotionality that isn’t typical of his gender, and definitely isn’t typical of all the male characters on the show. Especially when we stand Fred up against other father figures: tough guy FP and his gang activities (fp cries a lot too but that’s another post), Cliff and his patriarchal maple syrup empire, Hal watching sports on TV during the abortion fight - the way Fred specifically is allowed to be soft is pretty glaring when we put him in a room alongside any of the other dads. (and yet he’s soft in conjunction with typical masculine signifiers, but I get into that later. Hal isn’t not soft just because he’s watching sports, it’s a lot of other stuff.)

I have a .mov file labelled freddale on my laptop that’s all of the fred scenes spliced together without any other noise, so trust me when I say I see it everywhere. Arguably our favourite Fred/parenting scene is him validating Archie’s need to cry after the Grundy confrontation. His bisexuality is still fandom conjecture but there’s unmistakeably at least a little bit of gender trouble here: Fred’s main qualities are without a doubt nurturing and paternal. In Mary’s absence we see him interact equally with maternity and maternal roles as he does with typically “masculine” signifiers: beer, construction, ect. (tangibly related: Hermione got the job at Andrews Construction because one of Fred’s guys was gone on paternity leave. He’s at the very least a guy who gives his crew paternity leave.)

We know Riverdale is at least willing to spend some time meditating on different conceptions of masculinity because FP tells us Jughead isn’t interested in sports, he takes after his mom, and FP means that as a compliment. I think the fact that the overwhelming fandom perception of Fred has included the word soft speaks volumes. I’ll bend to the knowledge of someone more versed in astrology than I, but Fred the way I conceptualize him is definitely a cancer: sensitive, sentimental, emotional, family-oriented. (again, moon signs & the moon itself are associated with femininity, motherhood, etc but this is more conjecture so I won’t get too into it. But when we find out fred was born july 10th you heard it here first.)

Fred is a lover, not a fighter. You cannot argue with me that this is untrue. You cannot. Fred is a lover before a fighter, always. We rarely see him get aggressive (and even when we do it’s not that aggressive), never see him get violent. All his plots, (minus uhh whatever’s going on with that construction site thing) are about his feelings (his crush on Hermione, his divorce, his fear for Archie ect). That revenge hasn’t even occurred to him after the shooting is surprising to us, but pretty characteristic if we’re charting his behaviour throughout the series. His #1 most important thing is family. “THAT’S WHY I CAME BACK.” He came back from the other side for Archie. We absolutely feel frustrated at Fred’s inactivity at times, but what he’s doing even when he’s inactive in other ways (LITERALLY, when he’s in a coma, but throughout the whole events of the series as well) is always holding Archie close to his chest and silently, constantly, eternally looking out for him, warning him, helping him. He sometimes makes decisions (like letting Grundy go) that will spare Archie’s feelings in the moment without any foresight as to future repercussions. It’s all about protecting Archie’s feelings. Loyalty is a main cancer quality too, and loyalty to Archie is Fred’s #1 constant concern.

Fred’s also a silent, tactile lover: his signature comforting-archie move is the hand on the back of the neck (just off the top of my head you can see it during jughead and fp’s blowup, when mary leaves in s1, but there’s a ton more sprinkled throughout. I think he does it during the grundy confrontation??). He hugs a lot. Before he makes out with Hermione in the trailer she presses her hand to his chest and he takes it and holds it there. We get that in place of any excessive dialogue – we’ve seen Fred so far to be very economical with his words. He chooses when he talks and then he talks carefully. But touch is 100% the way he expresses himself. If you’re into love languages as I am, I trust you to agree with me that Fred is a physical touch person. It ties into his physicality in other aspects of his life – building, construction, but it’s also consistently how we’ve seen him express and give affection (Hermione, Archie) and that ties further into his position as possessor of soft, non-intellectual, non-aggressive loving. Non-aggressive, tender physical expressions of affection is something that a lot of men avoid for the specific fear of being unmanned by it, it’s something specifically coded feminine, so that’s further at work along those lines.

Ok let’s say you believe me that Fred is a vessel for emotional honesty and the eradication of toxic masculinity. What’s the point of this post, and what does it have to do with Fred’s potential character arc?

Well, Alice and Fred were having it out during the town hall, and Alice spilled the tea of the year:

“FRED ANDREWS, TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, LIKE ALWAYS.”

No, no one vocally agreed with her, but no one was really startled by the accusation either.  Because, yeah, she’s right: Fred up until now has been glaringly non-confrontational. I think it’s really safe to assume it’s part of his character. I know there’s been tons of scenes for me where something has been happening and I wanted Fred to step in, but he just kind of hovered in the background, occasionally touching Archie’s neck and looking sorrowful. (again, see the Grundy confrontation and Jughead and FP’s argument outside the school, but there are many more!! I think we get it when Keller and Kevin are facing off against Fred and Archie after Moose’s attack too). Fred never does anything wrong himself, but he lets things happen. Fred always takes the path of least resistance; he stagnates instead of being spurred into action. He’s planted firmly in the middle of fight-and-flight: instead of fighting or running I’d say he just stands still until it passes.

Think of our biggest collective grievances, all tied to non-confrontation and a failure to react: He let Jughead sleep in the garage!! Jughead ran away from the dance and no one – not even Fred, Parent of The Year – followed him!! HE. LET. GRUNDY. LEAVE. TOWN. WITHOUT. REPERCUSSION! He never hurt anyone directly, he just didn’t step in.

As much as I acknowledge that these inactions are due in part to, well, Luke not being written into every scene, they have always felt like character lapses to me. But if Riverdale is aware of it, as we can assume from Alice’s comment, could there be a longer game at play for this particular pitfall of Fred’s character?

He clearly always looks out for the best in people too: he’s defending the Southside at the town hall, we’ve heard him say “we don’t know that for sure” a lot when Archie’s making assumptions. Fred is slow to act, and another reason for it is his innocent-until-proven-guilty attitude about a lot of events and people. He turns the other cheek until he absolutely can’t ignore it anymore.

Enter Coward of the County, a 1979 country/folk ballad (or, rather, the Adam Harvey and Troy Cassar Daley cover, because that’s my preferred version, but bump whatever you can find). Here’s the lyrics. 

TL;DR: The song tells the story of Tommy, a young man known as the coward of his town because of his tendency to step down from violence and avoid confrontation. Tommy’s father, who died in prison when Tommy was ten, told him before his death that Tommy should always walk away from trouble and not try to prove his manhood with violence, which is why Tommy reacts ( or doesn’t react ) the way he does. His father asked him:

Promise me, son, not to do the things I've done

Walk away from trouble if you can

It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek

I hope you're old enough to understand

Son, you don't have to fight to be a man

Tommy has been devoted to his father’s words all his life. Three of Tommy’s tormentors are a group of brothers known as the Gattlin boys. One day they attack and rape Tommy’s girlfriend Becky, and when Tommy finds out he apologizes to his father’s memory, locks the door of the bar, and beats the everloving beejeebus out of the three of them, no longer heeding his father’s advice, but not letting them get away with it either. Here’s that confrontation, and the end of the song:

Twenty years of crawling was bottled up inside him He wasn't holding nothin' back, he let 'em have it all When Tommy left the barroom, not a Gatlin boy was standing He said, "this one's for Becky”, as he watched the last one fall (and I heard him say)

"I promised you, Dad, not to do the things you've done I walk away from trouble when I can Now please don't think I'm weak, I didn't turn the other cheek And papa, I sure hope you understand Sometimes you gotta fight when you're a man"

It’s a meditation on manhood in a way, but to me that’s always been secondary to the main message of picking your battles, about being gentle and unaggressive while not allowing injustice to happen when you can do something about it. And it’s always spoken Fred to me, even though I wasn’t fully able to to reconcile why until this episode rolled around.

At first glance it reads more like an FP/Jughead story, and fairly so – “please don’t go down my path and end up in the slammer and lose the things that make you soft and unique in pursuit of a designated masculinity” is more or less exactly what we’ve heard from FP to Jughead. But the voice remains Fred’s to me – I think in a small way because he addresses Archie as “son” so often, but also because the repeated warnings Tommy’s dad gives him – ( “promise me you won’t do this” “walk away if you can” “it doesn’t mean you’re weak if you don’t fight” “you don’t have to fight”) are so emphatically close to the actual dialogue that we get from Fred to Archie in the show. How many promises has Archie made Fred? (and broken?) A huge percentage of Fred’s screentime is delivering this kind of advice to his son in these types of snippets. (In fact, the first thing we really significantly ever hear him say to Archie is the parental wisdom that if you’re confident enough in yourself, you don’t have to tell lies.) The delivery of parental wisdom – especially that tells us how to be a man softly and that manhood isn’t and shouldn’t be intrinsically linked to violence – is very much Fred’s realm.

I think the song caught my attention because of that message: that Tommy’s daddy was big enough and bad enough and man enough to go to prison and there realized that violence shouldn’t be what masculinity is all about is a pretty compelling argument for the toxicity of the maleness = aggression equation. Yet, the song also tries to navigate the question of how one can fight and defend oneself in a healthy way, and how one can identify with masculinity in a healthy way. There’s a lot of grey area where you try to draw that line through any of those points, and it seems almost right to see Fred try to navigate this as a trauma survivor.

I’ll return to Fred as a survivor of trauma in a sec, but let me finish drawing song parallels. Alice very clearly calls Fred out on his method of non-confrontation in a way that calls him a coward. His turn-the-other cheek mentality, now that’s spoken by Alice, is now an acknowledged character flaw with a past, and we can be confident that this is something Alice has seen again and again from Fred. Fred doesn’t step up. Fred doesn’t act. Fred lets things go. Fred is barely doing anything about the killer on the loose, for god’s sake, even though he was shot. Alice’s perception of Fred as cowardly ties into our own frustrations at Fred for being so silent and taking the path of least resistance all the time, even when his life is in the balance.

Tommy begins where Fred is – very hands-off, very uninterested in defending himself, seemingly unaffected by his trauma or by the opinions people hold of him. Fred’s manhood has no stake in aggression or violence, and his response is fear and disavowal rather than Archie’s out-and-out rage and desire for revenge. He’s not fussed about Alice’s – or what’s implied to be the whole town’s – perception of him. He’s willing to sit back and believe the cops will take care of the situation.

Tommy gets to the point, though, where he can’t be apathetic without becoming a bystander. His attack on the Gattlin boys for what they’ve done to Becky is a moment of catharsis, and a reconciliation of the inaction he’s performed all his life – “twenty years of crawling was bottled up inside him”.

Fred, in his turn, has a lot to be angry about, and a lot that he hasn’t acted on. Not just because he’s been shot, but because of everything Archie’s been through as a result of neglectful or harmful adults in his life, because of what’s happening with his business, because of all the ways his family has been failed or manipulated by the town. And we’ve barely seen any of the anger from him yet, not even in the face of his shooting, which is probably the greatest trauma he’s faced. So where is the subplot where Fred finally gets mad enough to seek out revenge? When is going to lock the barroom door and slam some heads?

I just called him a stander instead of a fighter or a flee-er, but let’s talk about the one time he does drop everything and fly into motion. We don’t know for sure exactly what happened in that diner, but I’m pretty sure we’re meant to assume he got his body in the way of Archie and took the bullet for him (an action he mirrors in his dream-realm, regardless, so we know he’s prepared to do it.) Fred does pick his battles, and whatever his commitment to non-violence, we know that he’d drop everything and do anything for Archie’s sake. I don’t think I’m reaching to say that Archie’s the person who would tip that scale: we’ve already seen it happen in small ways. Fred has the full capability of choosing when to act out in violence.

On trauma, though: The intersection of catharsis, healing, and revenge is another complicated element when we’re asking about Fred seeking or not seeking revenge on his shooter. Fred is a trauma victim who is momentarily disinterested in fighting back against the person who attacked him. Do we want to encourage him to fight back for the kind of catharsis that Tommy gets? Would fighting back be a source of healing for him? Would attacking the black hood be a release of his personal twenty years of crawling, or would it undo the work he’s done for himself in reconciling his softness and his masculinity? How do you reconcile trauma and still show mercy? When is it necessary to fight? Can radical softness still be radical if it lapses? Is that lapse itself radical? How do we even begin to answer these questions (especially on a cw show)?

I think this is where I start getting hopeful that all this is headed in the same direction. Here’s what I think: Fred is disinterested in revenge because he’s currently teaching us all a lesson in picking our battles. He’s keeping Archie close and embodying his greatest character flaw – inaction – in a way that’s connected to his greatest strength as a character – his non-toxic approach to masculinity and his soft, compassionate side. We know that Fred’s capable of choosing when to act, but that he typically chooses to turn the other cheek. He’s doing so now, and it’s frustrating, and thus is possibly being set up as a character flaw to overcome. And overcoming it demands action against the black hood specifically.

All this to say: I’m getting hopeful that we’re gearing up for a character arc where Fred overcomes his tendency to turn the other cheek and gets to pick his battle and then absolutely obliterates the black hood. For Archie’s sake, or his own healing. Fred’s a lover, not a fighter, but he’s getting to a place where to be one necessitates that he has to be the other: he has to protect the things he loves, and he has to pick when to be soft and when to be hard. Sometimes even the softest guys have to fight, and I for one won’t be mad if Fred comes out swinging. Give him Archie’s baseball bat and let him have at it.

Expecto Epiphany!

19 years later and I’ve only just realised that Harry and Ginny’s “couple’s name” is either Hinny or GARRY!!!

Can you imagine if they were at a Wizarding Ball, in an alternate reality in which Snape lives, and if the following were to happen:

Snape hides behind a pillar, uses his wand to alter the tenor of his voice, and bellows “GARRY!!!”

Standing beside each other, both Garry the Wizard and Harry and Ginny look up to establish the source of the call. Being unable to do so, all shake their heads in confusion and resume their respective conversations.

Snape quietly sniggers to himself and then once again shouts “GARRY!!!!” across the hall, whilst maintaining his cover.

Garry the Wizard and Harry and Ginny look up sharply from their conversations, in annoyed bewilderment, scanning the hall for who continues to call them. Again, unable to locate the caller, they return to their fellow patrons with frowns on their faces. Ginny, in an attempt to provide comfort, raises her hand to pat Harry on the arm.

Out from under his control, a loud laugh escapes Snape before he can stop it. He raises his hand to his mouth to try and muffle the sound. Waiting for the right moment, Snape, using his loudest voice, screams “GARRY!!!! OVER HERE!!!”

At this, both Garry the Wizard and Harry charge forward, in agitation, in the general direction of where the sound originated from. Ginny tries to reach for Harry and her words “Leave it be, Harry,” are lost in the surrounding noise of the ballroom.

Garry and Harry suddenly notice each other, just as they are about to collide. They screech to a halt and turn to the other, taking stock, tilting their heads in confusion. As if this was a production timed to perfection, both raise their hands and point to themselves, saying “Garry,” in affirmation.

Harry, realising the error of his ways, turns to find Ginny. He then indicates, with his raised hand, first to Ginny and then to himself, repeating, “Garry.” He follows this with what most would consider to be a firm, assuring nod to Garry, who looks as though he has encountered a confundus charm. Harry, being none the wiser, smiles to himself, lost in his celebratory mood, for that nod was, in fact, a nod to himself for a job well done!

Breaking from his reverie, Harry finally notices the confused state of Garry the Wizard. Harry sighs in belligerence, as realisation dawns. It appears that there is still someone, who has not heard of “Garry Potter”. Knowing he could not take his ire out on this unsuspecting wizard, Harry resorts to happy thoughts to rein in his emotions. Ginny, Ginny, Ginny, he repeats as a mantra.

Once collected, Harry explains to Garry, “The short story is this. Someone started a vicious lie that me and my wife Ginny would much prefer to be referred to as “Garry” instead of our own names. For whatever reason, people believed it to be true and started calling us Garry, until it spread like wildfire and then, everyone called us Garry.“

Feeling the presence of another, Harry turned to find Ginny approaching, with a gleam in her eyes and a victorious smile on her face, for she had heard what Harry had said. Harry knew the reason for that expression, for Ginny had just won their wager; they had found someone who had not heard of the infamous “Garry Potter”. Harry responded to Ginny with a lightly, mocking huff of breath, before turning back to see Garry give Ginny a wary nod in welcome.

Harry continued to explain, “When I heard someone calling out “Garry”, I thought they were referring to us.“ Harry watched as Garry’s complete demeanour changed from perplexed to utterly insulted. “Dear boy, although you may have saved the world from the Dark Lord, I can assure you that if anyone is calling out my name, they would be referring to me, as I am Garry the Great Wizard!” Looking at Harry in disdain, Garry questioned, “As the Great Wizard, did you honestly expect me to believe such a foolish story? It is a pity really, that you continue to seek fame, when you are the most famous boy of all. You must move forward, my boy, and let go of the past.” Garry nodded to Harry in paternal concern, as if any amount of nodding would drive his point home and as if Harry were still a young boy; a student at Hogwarts to be taught an important life lesson.

Harry released a breath in exasperation. “Look, it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not but it is true. That “Garry” could have been meant for me.“ Having stumbled, Harry raced to correct himself, whilst simultaneously indicating Ginny, “I meant us.” Harry looked away in embarrassment. Garry narrowed his eyes at Harry and examined him, as though he were a herbology specimen. “Dear boy, are you inebriated? You do not even remember your own name!” At this point, having watched the heated discussion, Ginny could no longer contain her laughter. She quickly raised a closed fist to her mouth to mask her laughs with supposedly unintentional coughs. Harry narrowed his eyes at Ginny in mutiny, for he knew all too well what that sound meant.

Garry continued on, as if he had no concern for Ginny’s health at all, not even the small amount one would have for a stranger out of sheer politeness. “Dear boy, your name is Harry,” he said very slowly, as though Harry could no longer comprehend the English language. “Your name is not Garry,” he elaborated, shaking his head to emphasise the point. Garry then raised his hand and pointed at himself, all in rather slow motion, as if someone had turned the dial down and reduced the speed for the passage of time. Enunciating clearly, so as to not be misunderstood, Garry stated, “I am Garry. Not you.”

Turning to Ginny, Garry advised in supplication, “Perhaps it is time to take your husband home. It seems he has had a bit one too many. Either that or he has taken a potion of some sort.” Nodding to himself, Garry said under his breath, “Yes, Yes. It must be a potion.” In response, Harry closed his eyes in an effort to regain control. He did not know whether to laugh in hysteria or pull his hair out in frustration.

Off to the side stood George Weasley, leaning against the wall with a drink in his hand. He gazed at the trio in obvious delight, with an ear-splitting grin on his face and the light in his eyes completely regained, even if for a short while. For, this had been the most fun he had been a party to, in a very long time. Over the many years, he had become a wizarding succes, with Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes expanding globally in the Wizarding World. He had worked tirelessly to achieve this, all in the name of his dear twin brother. Speaking of, the devil himself, or well, Fred, was standing next to George, mirroring his stance, albeit with a ghostly drink instead. Having noticed that Harry appeared close to breaking point, the Weasley brothers turned to look at each other, with mirth flowing freely between them, and raised their hands to their mouths to hide the laughter that was erupting. For they could not believe that dear old Professor Snape was the perpetrator behind this elaborate joke! In complete synchronicity, between laughs, when gasping for air, both Fred and George breathed the words, “Never in a million years.”

On and on, the debate continued between Harry and Garry, for Garry would not budge, being the stubborn wizard he was. All the while, behind his adopted pillar, Snape had listened to the ongoing conversation between the two Garrys. Having cast the Muffliato spell, Snape was able to laugh freely and wholeheartedly about all that was of his own doing. Wiping tears of humour away, Snape devilishly thought, Oh, if only Harry could know that I was the creator of his “Garry” tale. Hah! And Harry swore a Slytherin could never trick a Gryffindor! How I have proven him wrong. Snape giggled to himself in glee and victory. He desperately wanted to share this secret with someone. There was only ever really one person, with whom he could share in this with. Snape scanned the crowds looking for Albus Severus Potter, the only person who would truly appreciate how spectacularly marvellous his scheme was to achieve a one up on Harry. And well, after he had told his magical tale, he fully expected to bond with Albus by sharing, what the muggles call, a godfather-to-godson “high five”. The notion still perplexed Snape but the act itself, well, that was positively thrilling, not that he would confide so, to another soul.

Unable to locate Albus, Snape heard the silent approach of footsteps. Snape turned to see who was moving towards him and upon recognition, his face flooded with guilt, like a child caught with their hand in the chocolate frogs jar. Trying to remain expressionless, Snape stood poised with dignity and arrogance, his usual façade.

For this bystander had witnessed the scenes, as they unfolded, from start to finish. As he watched, his head had bounced back and forth across the ballroom, just as the Snitch would during a Quidditch match. He had understood what Snape was trying to achieve from the very start and mentally smiled to himself at Snape’s jesting. For Snape had come a long way. In this, he felt proud. However, he could not permit Snape to be the only wizard to have fun. Now, it was time for his fun; time for Snape to be teased. As he made his way towards Snape, he noted both George and the apparition of Fred watching his approach, giving a nod of respect in passing, with eyes twinkling in mirth. Yes, the bystander had known they, too, had seen it all. He gave the Weasley brothers a sly wink in response, for the true fun was about to begin! On the cusp of reaching his destination, the bystander schooled his facial features to a scolding expression and changed the tone of his voice to one of aghast pretence. In practiced bewilderment, Dumbledore exclaimed, “Snape, what in Voldermort’s name are you doing?!”

The End.

Note from the Author: So, this was completely unplanned… 😅

Leroy/Grumpy (Once Upon a Time): ISTP

Dominant Introverted Thinking [Ti]: Grumpy has an understanding of how things work. He often makes brutally honest assessments of situations and isn’t exactly mindful of the feelings of the people around him. He brusquely tells Snow White that nobody is going to want to help her sell candles for Miner’s Day because the only person people in the town hate more than him is her. Leroy is an adept problem-solver. When he eventually comes around in order to impress Nova, they have a difficult time getting the townsfolk to make a purchase. He first comes up with a plan to sell candles door-to-door. He then attempts to persuade Mr. Gold to let the rent go for one month. When that fails, he cuts the power, creating a demand for candles. Leroy is argumentative and points out other people’s logical flaws. When Mary Margaret chastises him for pursuing a nun, he tells her she is no better than he is because she had been sneaking around with a married man. When Granny refuses to allow Ariel entry into the diner because of her lack of clothing, Leroy defends her by pointing out all of the times Ruby has been in there, dressed in practically nothing. Leroy is detached in his decision-making and doesn’t typically let emotions influence his thought process. Elsa needs to be stopped. All evidence indicates that she was the one who froze the town.

Auxiliary Extroverted Sensing [Se]: When there is a problem, Grumpy has no problem diving right in and doing something. When Nova is filling up a bag of fairy dust in the mines, Grumpy (“Dreamy”) sees that she is having trouble turning off the machine and immediately rushes over and pulls the lever for her. Then, the bag nearly ends up being incinerated, but Grumpy leaps up to where the bag is and stops it from entering the fire by hooking it with his ax just in time to save it. When he is trying to sell candles with Mary Margaret, he decides that if customers won’t come to them, they would have to go to the customers, and takes action by going door-to-door and eventually cuts the power. Leroy enjoys sensory pleasures. He’s the town alcoholic and the first time we see him in Storybrooke, he is in jail for disorderly conduct. Back when he was Dreamy, he wanted to run away and see the world outside of the mines. Dreamy wasn’t satisfied working in the mines like the other dwarves and planned to abandon his responsibilities. He tends to express his feelings through physical displays. After telling Nova he can’t be with her, Dreamy returns to the mines and violently begins beating a rock with his ax, breaking it. When Sneezy draws the short straw when the townspeople are trying to test the town border, he refuses to step over the line, and Leroy pushes him over it, stripping him of his Enchanted Forest memories. He decides he would rather leave Storybrooke and lose his memories than stay there with Regina, and is set to drive out of down until David stops him. When Regina shows up at the celebration at Granny’s, Leroy immediately grabs a knife, wanting to know what she’s doing there.

Tertiary Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Leroy doesn’t exactly have a positive outlook on the future. His insights are usually of a pessimistic nature. However, when he has a goal in mind, he stops at nothing to achieve it. He is determined to raise five-thousand dollars for Sister Astrid so the nuns will be able to remain in Storybrooke and he becomes singularly focused on accomplishing his task, no matter what he has to do to get the job done. When the curse is lifted, Leroy quickly becomes concerned about the possibility of outsiders wandering into Storybrooke, and he wholeheartedly believes that trouble will be coming their way, and this hunch is eventually proven to be correct.

Inferior Extroverted Feeling [Fe]: Emotional expression isn’t exactly Grumpy’s forte. He’s a loner and isn’t as community-minded as some of his fellow Storybrooke residents. He isn’t particularly compassionate. Once everybody regains their memories of who they truly are and Leroy hears that an angry mob is headed to Regina’s house, Leroy believes that she deserves it. He’s somewhat oblivious to what other people are feeling. Even when he was still Dreamy, he was clueless when Nova hinted that she wanted to see the fireflies with him. When he goes to tell Sister Astrid that he and Mary Margaret were unable to sell the candles, he can’t bring himself to disappoint her and instead lies, saying they sold them all. He allows other people to influence his emotions, and lets the Blue Fairy and Bossy convince him that he can’t love and that Nova will be better off if he refuses to run away with her, and he listens to them. Leroy is afraid that saving Greg’s life will lead to unwanted attention for Storybrooke and is leery about saving him for the sake of the town.

Note: For some reason, I’ve only ever seen Leroy typed as an INFP, but I just don’t see enough evidence to support that.

Enneagram: 6w5 8w9 4w5 Sp/Sx

Quotes:

Dreamy: All she talked about was going to see some fireflies, not loving me Belle: What did she tell you about these fireflies? Dreamy: That she was gonna go see them on the hilltop tonight. That she heard they were the most beautiful sight in all the land. Belle: She wasn’t telling you about fireflies. She was inviting you to go be with her. Dreamy: You think so? Belle: I’ve had my heart broken enough to know when someone is reaching out. Now go, find your love. Find your hope. Find your dreams.

Mary Margaret: Oh my God. You like her. She is a nun, Leroy. Could you possibly pick anyone any less available? Leroy: Says the girl who went after a married guy. At the end of the day, you’re no better than I am. You got your reasons for being here, I got mine. Now when I say I’m gonna get that five-thousand dollars, I’m gonna get that five-thousand dollars.

Bossy: You can’t do this, Dreamy. You can’t go to her. Dreamy: Why not? Bossy: You have a responsibility – to mine the diamonds we make into fairy dust. Dreamy: But I love her. Bossy: You’re a dwarf, Dreamy. You’re not capable of love. It’s not how we’re made. Dreamy: What if I’m different? What if you’re wrong? Blue Fairy: Bossy’s not wrong, young one. What you feel – it’s just a dream. Dreamy: Who are you? Blue Fairy: I’m Nova’s teacher. And if the two of you run away together, it will not end well. Nova will lose her wings. But if you return to the mines, and you allow Nova to become the fairy that she was meant to be, the two of you will bring untold joy to the world. Nova can be a great fairy… if you let her. The choice is yours.

Mary Margaret: Leroy, you know that a relationship between you and Sister Astrid can never happen. Leroy: My whole life people made it their business to tell me what I can’t do. She was the first person that said I could do anything. Who believed in me. I didn’t want to disappoint her. But there are consequences to following through when the world tells you not to. I mean, look at me. I am a pariah in this town.

Dreamy: What matters is I can’t stand in the way of your happiness. Nova: You are my happiness! I love you. Don’t you love me? Dreamy: I’m a dwarf. I can’t love.

Grumpy: I don’t want my pain erased. As wretched as it is, I need my pain. It makes me who I am. It makes me Grumpy.

[Mary Margaret and Leroy are trying unsuccessfully to sell their candles on the miner’s day fair] Mary Margaret: This isn’t working. Leroy: You’re right. We should pack it up. Mary Margaret: Now you’re quitting. Leroy: If the customers won’t come to us, we gotta go to them – door to door. Mary Margaret: If they hate us here, what makes you think they’ll like us in their homes? Leroy: Exactly. They’ll pay us just to leave.

Leroy: So let me get this straight. You got a twin brother? David: Yeah. Leroy: Whose name is James? David: Right. Leroy: But *your* name is James. David: No, actually it’s not. Leroy: Charming, then? Mary Margaret: No, that’s the nickname I gave him. Leroy: Hey, hold on, what the hell *is* your name? David: David. Leroy: Your cursed name? David: My real name. Leroy: What, you’re David, James and Charming, and David’s like a middle name? David: No, it’s my name name! Leroy: You know, whatever, I’ll call you whatever I damn well please! That OK? David: Sure, Leroy.

Granny: Uh, maybe you didn’t notice the sign? No shirt, no shoes, no service. Leroy: Now you got a dress code? I seem to recall some Ruby outfits that are seared into my brain.

[David is trying to unlock the stranger’s phone] David: Leroy, can you get it open or something? Hack it? Leroy: Well, you do understand that computer hacking and pickax hacking are different.

Archie: Dr. Whale’s whipped everyone to a frenzy. They’re going to Regina’s house. They’re gonna kill her! Leroy: Great. Let’s watch.

Leroy: [handing Gold another vial with the elixir] This is for you. Mr. Gold: And what am I supposed to do with that? Leroy: Belle once helped remind me who I was. I’ve never forgotten. I want to return the favor. Don’t let her die as Lacey.

Henry Mills: [to David] You’ll find another way. In the book, things always look worse right before there’s good news. Leroy: [running towards them with the other six dwarves] Terrible news! Terrible news! We were out at the town limits. Tell ’em who you think you are, Sneezy! Sneezy: Will you stop calling me that? You know who I am. I’m Tom Clark, I own the Dark Star Pharmacy. What’s going on here? Leroy: [to the others] If you cross the border, you lose your memory all over again. Archie: And coming back doesn’t fix it? Leroy: If it did, would I have come running in yelling, “Terrible news”? If we leave, our cursed selves become our only selves.

Leroy/Grumpy (Once Upon a Time): ISTP was originally published on MBTI Zone