i always love to see your thoughts on the black family + mental illness! you have such interesting insight and it's clear you've thought about it a lot. as a bipolar girl myself i spend a lot of time thinking about how i'm like 40g of an unspecified antipsychotic away from becoming walburga lol. for me i think the part that sticks out the most is the anger/lack of mood regulation -- that just SCREAMS untreated bipolar to me, but i think it's a relatively common trait to a couple of mental illnesses. i've always (or at least since i got diagnosed) considered the black family madness to be "just bipolar" because it seems so similar to my own experience and my family's experiences. but i'll be really interested to hear what you have to say on bpd and the black family, because that's not one i know as much about.

thank you for sharing your thoughts! i really do always get excited when i see them pop up on my feed :)

the mood regulation really is it and I think is such a crucial part of the house of black being the way they are bc it exacerbates so many dif issues

the way I understand bpd as opposed to bipolar disorder is that it’s a permanent state of disregulation, bc it’s a personality disorder rather than a mood disorder. so if you’re struggling with that disregulation every day it’s gonna look like anger issues, self esteem issues, problems with stable relationships etc. bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, meaning you have weeks/months long phases of depression or mania (or a neutral-ish in between). which still causes a general feeling of instability but with more built up, often catastrophic effects than bpd

i have bipolar disorder not bpd so I can’t speak to bpd as accurately or authentically, but I think there are a lot of aspects to at least some of the house of black’s members that speak to those disorders. and to be really fucking clear: neither of them inherently make you a bad person or do bad things (like inciting antisemitic violence and preaching conspiracy theories, for instance). if unstable relationships, anger, impulsivity or recklessness, delusional thinking or similar lead you to harmful behaviours or ideas to start with, then mental health problems can obviously exacerbate them. if your recklessness looks like climbing dangerous mountains by yourself (🙋🏻‍♀️) then mania is gonna exacerbate that

so with walburga, she was clearly devoted to her sons and her family. kreacher talks about how sirius leaving broke her heart. she also then lost her second son a few years later. that kind of trauma and grief could trigger truly awful manic/depressive episodes, which could lead to serious instability long term. it could also tear away any control she had over anger management or emotional regulation in her relationships. i think it’s important to remember that the portrait of her isn’t an accurate/entire representation (@narcissa-black-supermacy has said some great stuff about this), but that also capturing her at the absolute lowest point in her life also isn’t representative of her overall

I think if you also grow up suffocated by the world you’re in and knowing nothing else but those crushing expectations, that sort of pressure is going to make it very hard to form a stable solid sense of self and emotional foundation. I am fully extrapolating here, as we know little to nothing about walburga, but as she was presumably arranged into a marriage with her cousin, her life isn’t painted as a picture of freedom. the intensity of mood/personality disorders would exacerbate the worst aspects of that. if you’re only ever surrounded by other manic/depressive or unstable people, that’s what you’re going to intrinsically absorb as normal, and your mind is going to keep proving that bias right

so I think it’s really the story of a woman under a combination of horrific pressure and expectation and control, living in an era of dangerous fascism to which her family was intrinsically connected, raised knowing nothing else but them and their ideas, with the responsibility of raising two boys as the continuation of their line who are both, in different ways, racing as fast as possible towards their own destruction

none if this is to justify child abuse either physically or emotionally. there’s a lot of dif interpretations of this from canon but it’s fair to say sirius had a toxic relationship with his mother and was subject to at least some form of abuse as part of it. what I’m arguing is that simply passing a character off as “mad and evil” is just such a bigoted simplistic way of discussing mental illness and its interactions with morality, power and in this case family. and I think examining how mental illness interacts with the members of the house of black in v different ways reveals an enormous amount about them and adds a lot of meaningful layers to the story

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

white americans when you tell them that the idea of climate change as an impending disaster is a reductive first world perspective because it’s a tangible reality for many in the global south already:

I have a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head There lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed You fascinate me so

You Fascinate Me So, Blossom Dearie

this is what everyone has been saying!! no one is looking at celebrities for political statements, but they should and must use their platform to amplify the voices of those who need and most importantly be against this genocide!!

Hey now, Let her cook!

There's no such thing as overpreparing for love.

Happy (late) Rarijack Valentine's.

Frustrating thing about tumblr is its not mandatory to see timestamps on posts. If you arent using them in this day and age, youre at risk of not understanding the context of a post or that the information on it may be out of date. I dont think this will reach a wide audience but if you dont have timestamps enabled go to your general settings->dashboard settings and turn timestamps on so you can see when a post written like it’s breaking news is actually from 2017.

reylos crying on twitter because Adam Driver explicitly confirmed that Bendemption was never originally in the plans for Kylo....this is justice for the last 8 years, actually

too many conspiracy theories about oil in gaza and not enough practical understanding of the fact that bibi netanyahu and his cronies have extreme personal reason to keep this war going as long as possible and at any level of civilian cost because the moment it's over he'll no longer be a wartime prime minister and will have to face the repercussions for being a massive reason why the october 7 attacks ended up with a body count as high was it was

"summer is the worst" "no winter is!!!" actually both are. down with Big Temperature. spring and autumn for the win

As requested, I have examined my fondness for terrible characters, and I have concluded that I like them because they're terrible and I'm not sorry.

bf admitted he likes being bossed around which is insanely funny considering 1) my mom always told me id never find a partner bc i can be bossy (just comes built in being the oldest sibling also Literally got it from her. also im a virgo not my fault) 2) i was asking him because i was worried i was doing it unconsciously (i try my best not to be) but then he was like no keep doing it i like it

If there isn't a kunikidazai interaction in the next few chapters I will RIOT

Bonus: