i'm just thinking about like. all the posts that still circulate even after the op's blog has been deleted for a while. like they still get passed around like a hot potato by circles of mutuals. there's art and writing from people that deactivated that circles around too. there's corpses and ghosts that we share a building with and we nod respectfully at them bc we still appreciate what they put out into the world after they're gone.

Buttercups and Golden Flowers

I think constantly about Pudding and Sanji being obviously parallels of each other and how fucked up it is that Pudding had to live the life Sanji managed to escape but she constantly gets hate online as if she hadn't been literally manipulated by her mother through the whole fucking arc. But okay. Yes. God forbid women have any sort of trauma response and if they do they're not allowed to have a redemption arc because of course they're extremely evil for making your silly baby boy cry and they don't have a heart even though it's explicitly shown in screen that they do and they regret their past actions.

Terminally online angel and devil.

I had a scrap piece of paper and drew the little freakish dog 👍 I have been silently enjoying your art for like a couple months now? I found it randomly on uploaded Pinterest and was like “oh huh that’s rad” and yeah he’s such a lovely sad little beast

.

In political spheres, I so often want to ask, "is what you're doing 'punching up,' or are they just an easily-available, acceptable target?"

Chosen

you know what's so disappointing? the way people keep saying 'don't be afraid to portray mental illness and disability in media!! in your art and writing!!! normalise it and don't shun it!!!' and then the MOMENT you bring up a symptom that's too messy and uncomfortable to handle, they take a fuckin u-turn and go "UM no that's bad. like. you're a bad person if you do that. that's weird and it makes me uncomfortable so it's wrong."

here's the thing!!!!!!! it's not convenient!!!!! it's not simple!!!! i can't be honest and keep writing about how depression paints your whole world blue and all that shit!!!!!! because guess what!!!! depression and disabilities and borderline personality disorder and SO many other things are just. not neat and clean or easily consumable. they WILL make you uncomfortable and sad. they WILL make you feel bad. honesty is not easy. it's not meant to be.

and dehumanisation of sociopaths and psychopaths is genuinely distressing. not all of them!!! are!!!! bad people!!! it's a medical condition!!!! a mental illness!!! a person's illness doesn't make them bad. their actions and the decisions they take decide that and I am SO sick and tired of people watering down every complex human trait and toxic behaviour as good and bad and right and wrong. don't you see!!! some things are simply just. human. that's all. people fuck up. badly, sometimes. but that doesn't mean they are not people. I'm not saying you should forgive everyone and become a full time saint. you are entitled to your anger. i'm just asking you: don't take away a person's right to err and still be considered human. not all actions fall in the neat divisions of right and wrong. some things just are. grow some balls if you want to see true suffering in media. because it is Not easy or pretty. not even close. you will be conflicted and uncomfortable and troubled. make peace with that fact.

"I hate how small this fandom I'm in is" then make it bigger?? You're part of the fandom, if there's no content you make that content.

wholeheartedly and with as much gentleness as possible, i truly think there needs to be more discussion about downpour in the community as it is now. for a variety of reasons.

TW // Food , EDs

Something about Usopp getting sent to an island where delicious food is used as bait and he has to actively fight to eat (thus probably ending up just straight-up not eating some days and relating food to negative experiences) and Sanji constantly using food to serve and make others enjoy but barely eating himself because it isn't as rewarding and he doesn't really care about his well-being because he is used to starving (both physically and emotionally).

Like-- Usopp not really refusing to eat but kind of having a defense mechanism/odd quirks around it (eating too fast, keeping food for later, feeling safer if he straight up doesn't eat, or directly not being hungry at all) and Sanji actively just forgetting to feed himself and when he tries to do so he isn't... Full? At all? or satisfied? It just leaves him emptier. He likes giving food to others, that's what completes him. Eating just because just feels wrong for him.

So you have this guy with strong defense mechanisms against food who treats it as a necessity to live instead of enjoyment and another who treats food as an enjoyment but ONLY for other people and never himself.

And I like to think Usopp, after spending so much time getting used to storing food just in case he can't go hunting for more, still does the same when he's back with the crew. But he doesn't even know why he does it exactly. He is eating. He doesn't need to do this. But then he realizes he always thinks about Sanji whenever he keeps food. Usopp notices Sanji barely eats if the food is something he gives to himself, but gladly enjoys it when it's somebody else's doing. So Usopp just waits until everybody is out of the kitchen to approach Sanji and go "Hey, um, would you like to share the leftovers with me?" and something like that. And Sanji does end up eating more than usual which is, you know, an average meal.

On the other hand, Sanji stays with Usopp while he eats and speaks to him. Makes him feel safe so he doesn't have to make everything quick and running. Make him see that he is alright and he can take his time to enjoy the food without any worries. At the end of the day, they end up eating together after the whole crew has gone away, but that's more than fine with them.

Telling content creators it's wrong to explore artistic freedom and be independently funded by fans, and they should instead continue taking advertisement revenue from google* is

NOT

the anti-capitalism stance actually.

*(Yes, google owns youtube.)

vaguing a post that's on my dash that I don't want to engage with (as usual) but actually no CPTSD isn't a diagnosis for 'when things were a tiny bit bad a lot' or 'if you experienced relationships that were toxic but not abusive' it's a diagnosis describing the impacts of CONTINUOUS TRAUMA. not less significant but more frequent trauma; trauma which is ongoing/continuous/recurring in developmental years.

like I'm not trying to gatekeep here and I recognise the value of saying 'it doesn't have to be a Single Big Obvious Trauma' because one key thing about CPTSD is that generally it makes traumatic incidents Your Normal so you don't necessarily view them as unusual or concerning. but I often see people talk about CPTSD as if it implies smaller individual incidents than PTSD and that just is not the case.

most experiences I have seen people be diagnosed with CPTSD for (myself included) are not 'a little bit toxic'. they are things which, each incident taken separately, an outsider would still recognise as traumatic - medical emergencies, rape and sexual abuse, significant physical violence, emotional abuse and coercive control, homelessness, severe poverty, war, torture, etc - and the thing that makes the PTSD C is not the relative level of the trauma, but the fact that it's enough of a repeated and consistent pattern, at an early enough stage, and sufficiently embedded in everyday life, that it becomes a person's baseline for 'normal'.

CPTSD is not a synonym for emotional microtraumas or cumulative trauma or 'death by a thousand cuts'. It's specifically defining the psychological differences in response to long term formative trauma as opposed to traumatic events which you process as an aberration (eg the difference between regular violence against you from trusted adults in childhood vs being physically abused for the first time in adulthood with existing experience of healthy relationships). Traumas causing CPTSD tend to be pretty similar in type, scale and severity to traumas causing standard PTSD - they are just more embedded and normalised earlier in life.

all this to say there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that cumulative microtraumas can't affect us in traumatic ways. there's nothing wrong with pointing out that there's a broad range of types of trauma, and trauma can include stuff like growing up marginalised or ill as well as abuse, war, injury or immediate loss. there's nothing wrong, too, with acknowledging that a lot that is traumatic doesn't necessarily feel traumatic to you.

but like. no. CPTSD is not a diagnosis for people whose trauma wasn't 'big enough' for PTSD. CPTSD is not cumulative microtraumas. CPTSD is a response to formative macrotraumas or to a long term traumatic situation without hope of escape or change and if you want to talk about microtraumas then do that but it's not what CPTSD is!

Ignore all logistical considerations of "would they ever meet each other under these circumstances". If you don't think Jules Bashir would have chosen to join Starfleet, imagine he is on the station for some other reason, or they meet in some other location.

I wanted to make this poll because I've seen various fics where Garak reassures Julian that far from being upset over him being augmented, Garak is grateful for it, either explicitly because (he thinks) they wouldn't be able to have their usual conversations if it weren't for the augmentations, or simply because he likes Julian "just the way he is" and wouldn't want him to be "different". I disagree that Garak would think like this (or at the very least, I think Julian would react negatively if he did, rather than be reassured), so I wanted to hear everyone else's thoughts.

it’s been a day and i still can’t believe there are ppl out there who believe that gale‘s narrative arc is about learning to communicate better