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diffenbachiae · 4 months

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hi lizzie. do you have any advice for someone who is very much not on their own side

yes!!! for me it was 3 separate pieces all kind of coming together over the course of the past few years. the first 18 years of my life were a long stretch of ‘if i can just make it to adulthood and out of this house it’ll all be okay’ and once i made it i was very quickly realizing that everything was not, in fact, okay. some of this might not be as relevant for you if you aren’t someone with c-ptsd but for me this is what helped!!

1) If everyone else is a person, you have to be a person too. Things that apply to all people must be true for you as well.

that’s where I had to start because that’s where my self-esteem was- it was really hard for me to convince myself that i deserved to eat, let alone that i deserved friendship, love, or affection. i would have myself come up with Rules for All People. all people deserve enough food to fuel their body. all people have inherent worth without needing to prove anything. all people deserve friends who treat them well. this really helped me confront the hypocrisy in my own brain and helped me see how flawed my own perspective of myself is- it’s really hard for me to think of myself as a person automatically and it’s much easier for me to come up with things i think are true for all humans and then logically i Must be part of that group.

2) Nothing will get better unless you try / you have to trust yourself.

dude i wasn’t even trying for such a long time. i think that a big part of this was my obsession with rescue/found family stories as a kid- i expected a safe loving adult to swoop in and save me and teach me how to be a person and obviously that never happened, but i didn’t realize the fantasy persisted. i wanted my friends to let me tearfully confess my childhood and have that magically make it better, i wanted a picture-perfect significant other to scoop me into their arms and erase my childhood… this isn’t to say that talking about your loved ones with your feelings doesn’t improve things, but that mental health recovery has to be an individual journey at the end of the day. you have to want to get better and work at it. part of this for me was working on not lying to myself. i would think ‘it’s okay that i’m laying in bed for 12 straight hours today, i’ll get up and clean tomorrow’ all while knowing full well i wasn’t gonna fuckin do that for a second. it was always tomorrow, next week, next year, things will be different, but then i wouldn’t take any action to make things different. i started to practice telling myself i would do things and following through. this feels really silly to type out bc it sounds so simple but self-discipline was one of the biggest skills i was lacking and teaching myself it has made a HUGE difference. it’s really hard to learn how to make yourself do things you don’t want to do but if you start small and ramp up it’s way easier.

3) You’re allowed to have fun.

everyone in this goddamn world will try and convince you you can’t have fun and it makes it so hard to stay on your own team. shame is a really powerful weapon of control and it’s so easy to start to internalize it until you feel guilty about EVERYTHING. guilt about eating food, what kind of food, if it was too much food… guilt about rest, about oversleeping, about productivity… idk i feel like there’s a million rules to follow about what my life ‘should’ look like and none of them seem quite that focused on the enjoyment of that life. i started to try and practice looking at my choices with less judgement and more focus on enjoyment. sure i can spend five hours on tiktok and then tell myself i’m lazy and terrible because of it but that doesn’t actually do or solve anything- i’m beating myself up because i feel like i should. what’s more useful is to think ‘did i enjoy that time genuinely? do i even remember any of the videos i watched? did i do that because i get joy out of it or because it’s easier than being bored?’ tiktok is my example because it’s the app i most easily fall into using out of habit and not enjoyment, but i also genuinely really enjoy tiktok when i use it in a specific way (crochet inspo, rewatching my favorite covers of songs… instead of just the FYP)

this ended up being really long rip i hope it’s useful to you anon!!!! please keep in mind i’m not a mental health expert of any kind i am just someone who is too poor to afford therapy and has spent countless hours reading books and online resources in an attempt to not feel like a pit of sadness on a day to day basis lol. please feel free to send me more asks or message me if you want to talk more (this goes for anyone reading this as well!!!!!) ✨💖💖

#also the first step is deciding you want to live. which is a whole thing in and of itself.#if you’re still making that commitment please know that i want you here with us!!!#personal tag #this was very cathartic to type out ngl

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

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Let’s talk: RUN Episode 131

by Admin 1

I know I’ve probably said this about literally every episode but this one was so fun! Admin 2 and I were honestly laughing almost the entire time while also trying our best to follow along their “debates” and just taking in all the chaos. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Quick recap: in this episode we’re at the pool that belongs to the same hotel at which they had lunch at the end of the previous episode and the objective is twofold--not get wet and win a debate. That’s basically it, it’s like the mint chocolate debate episode but even more hilarious and with the addition of wet Bangtan.

Something I truly love is how it took vmin exactly 57 seconds (which includes the 18 second long intro) to find some kind of ‘reason’ to hold/shake hands behind JKs back. Because of course they did.

After the whole “mess” that ensued after the Titanic preview picture was posted yesterday, I can basically just say one thing--there was literally no need whatsoever to get all anxious and uncertain about the picture, or anything the shippers made out of it. As always the best course of action, which is the one I usually apply, is waiting until we get the full thing so we have context for what we’re shown in the picture/teaser/scene. It’s like that scene at the end of one of the ITS episodes where Jimin goes to JK to tell him about a supposed leak in his room which was taken way out of context and proportions until we got the next episode a week later and the actual events were completely different from anything and everything that was theorized.

So, what’s the lesson? Wait until we get the full thing, dear fellow vminnies, that way we can avoid making each other anxious and unsure.

Anyway, let’s get into it by starting with the ‘warm-up’ which consisted of one-on-one “battles” where the members stood on these floating foamy mats being held by two staff members and having to make each other fall into the water by playing the hand pushing game.

Yoongi VS Jimin -- I like how the two shortest members went against each other, which I’d assume might’ve had something to do with Yoongi’s shoulder and how chances of Jimin hurting him due to his height/size/weight were the smallest as opposed to Namjoon or even Hoseok. Maybe I’m imagining/overthinking things but it seemed like Jimin was a little hesitant/careful in how he approached the game and in the way he touched Yoongi, which honestly is very thoughtful and cute of him if that’s true, considering his shoulder and all. In the end Yoongi, after they basically goofed around more than actually tried to push each other, offers a deal of just doing it once properly, ending in both of them falling in the water since Yoongi leans forward, hugs Jimin and drags him down with him.

Tae VS Hobi -- These two might’ve been the quickest, given how Hobi said he’s scared at least three times and Tae basically use a moment to ‘attack’ where Hobi was distracted by the fact that a moment prior he thought Tae almost would’ve hit him in the face with his forehead on accident. That lucky did not happen, but Hobi did end up in the water and Tae remained on the float and completely dry.

Namjoon VS Seokjin -- Now these two, how can I put my thoughts/feelings into cohesive words and sentences instead of just a long key smash? They were hilarious, and their round definitely took the longest out of all of them, both trying to make the other fall yet simultaneously seeming like they weren’t trying all that hard since neither wanted to land in the water? After all before the game started Seokjin did complain how the RUN crew told him they wouldn’t have to get into the water. And yet, in the end, after a visible moment of contemplation, Namjoon hugs Seokjin (who hugs him back) and they fall into the water together (when I tell you how much I love them, wow).

JK VS Jimin --Here’s where we get the Titanic moment while JK and Jimin stand on the float and are being pulled to the middle of the pool, the members immediately jumping in with Hobi going “Jack, come back” in a breathy voice while Yoongi (?) sings the melody of My Heart Will Go On and everyone is laughing. It was an absolutely hilarious and cute moment. What made me laugh the most during the whole thing were the Jimin heads used to hide whatever, which I as a joke called the “Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra (Head Edition)” while talking to Admin 2. During the game itself Jimin and JK are hilarious, slapping each other’s chests and trying different tricks to make the other fall, showing how amazing their core strength and balance is, but eventually Jimin shoves JKs chest and JK falls into the water, winning the game since Jimin “cheated” and thus lost.

Seokjin VS Tae -- Interesting to note is how Jimin remained in the water and close by while these two were playing. Seokjin and Tae though somehow seemed the most chaotic out of all of them, despite Seokjin offering that they should just do it in one go...which didn’t work out. They leaned into each other twice while laughing before starting to “wrestle” until Tae put his arms around Seokjin’s waist and basically threw him into the water while subsequently being pulled after him and falling in as well. Sometimes I think we forget how strong Tae is (though after his BE_log earlier today I doubt we’ll forget that again any time soon).

Once “warm-up” was done, the members were split into two groups of three while one person, the MC, sat in the middle in a glass box (though missing the front glass panel). The rules were established and we basically figured out that there are water canons in front of the seated members and a bigger one releasing water onto the member sitting in the middle. They got words and things they were not allowed to do/say since otherwise they would get splashed.

Safe to say they all fairly quickly looked even more like very wet puppies. I mean look at Yoongi and his cute curly poodle hair, adorable!

The debate portion itself was about “crunchy or soft cereal”, “eggs of peas on jjajangmyeon” and “firm or soft peaches” and truly more chaotic shouting than actually debating. The team members and the “MC” changed for each round, which lasted 11 minutes each. Who debated what was chosen by the crew (or the MC). My highlights for the cereal debate (besides Seokjin cutely complaining how he prefers his cereal soggy and Namjoon equally cutely telling him to just pretend he likes it crunchy) were Yoongi (who was team soggy cereal) and his argument that since Kendrick Lamar eats soggy cereal, that’s basically the winning argument, Namjoon arguing that since “cereal” and “crunchy” both start with a c that’s the only right answer, and Tae arguing that if you eat chocolate cereal it’ll melt and you’ll additionally get chocolate milk so obviously soggy cereal is better. The jjajangmyeon portion had discussions about prices, as well as Hobi (team peas) arguing he doesn’t like seeing animals in pain (which was quickly countered by JK saying he’d just eaten pork before the episode) and Tae generally being appalled by having to argue in favor of peas since he doesn’t like them yet used the argument that his dad likes them so if you argue against them...well.

And finally the peaches debate had Tae and his galaxy brain using their Chilsung Cider ads as argument and how the peaches in it were firm since they bounced and thus they are better, which JK tried to counter by pointing out that those were just CGI to which Tae basically said he’s insulting their beautiful ads, how dare. I also love how Jimin, who was on Tae’s team, went along with whatever nonsense argument Tae came up with as though it was the most logical one in the world. Just lovely soulmate things, we love to see it. Speaking of nonsensical arguments, you have to give points to Namjoon for his ability to sound like he’s making perfectly sensible and logical arguments while doing, well, the exact opposite. Or Yoongi who just bs-ed his way through the entire thing while acting totally serious about it.

Can we please have a quick look at the following screenshot:

And now, can we please talk about how everyone is nicely sitting in their designated place with space between them...and then there’s vmin who are like magnets because “Space who? We don’t know her”.

Admin 2 asked me to add their comment/thought about how it looks juuuuust a little as though vmin may or may not have been holding hands below the table, which, I mean, we’ll never know but, at this point (especially after the BE unit unboxing video) I wouldn’t even be surprised if it were true.

At one point when Seokjin became the MC the water kept on coming and coming and the members were desperate to figure out what was the thing they were doing that caused it. Jimin thought it could be the caps that some of them wore, so without hesitation or question, he took off Tae’s cap (bless Jimin for giving us another view at wet hair Tae, truly) and then, I swear, it looks like he wanted to ruffle Tae’s hair yet just a second before making contact he stops himself and instead turns his hand in like a “I’m presenting some kind of argument” way. Adorable.

A final note goes out to the fact that they are wearing white button downs which, I mean, makes perfect sense I guess? And also how the crew gave them bathrobes so they’d stay warm, I’d assume, yet very quickly those were drenched as well thanks to the water canons so it basically defeated the purpose completely. And yet, despite all the water etc they all look fantastic.

Overall it’s a hilarious episode that’ll give your stomach muscles and lungs an amazing workout. Bangtan were their chaotic, loud, and mischievous selves and honestly, I can’t wait to see what else they’ll debate in the next episode.

#vmin #RUN BTS #RUN BTS episode 131 #BTS #Taehyung #Jimin #Namjoon #Seokjin #Yoongi #Hoseok #Jungkook #namjin

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nerdythebard · 3 years

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#12: The Doctor [Doctor Who]

Brother, I disown you...

I don't know what my friend/chosen brother was thinking when he made this request... Actually, no, I know exactly what he was thinking! Well, no time to dawdle, let's do this Time Warp. Again.

Next Time: Before we return to the gods, I want to make a character very close to my heart. He is also a Doctor... only, word of warning, he's a little... Strange.

Well then... sigh, let's see the goals we need to meet to make the most brilliant alien in television playable in D&D:

Heroes Never Die: The signature ability of a Time Lord (and the most problematic), a way to cheat death and return to life. Yes, somehow we need to make a virtually immortal character in Dungeons & Dragons...

Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Even in his relatively serious regenerations, the Doctor is prone to flashes of randomness, acts of nonsense, mixing puns and physical comedy to often hide the incredibly fast and advanced brain processes.

Go-Go Gadget Galore: Do I even need to say anything? Besides his trusty TARDIS (which will not be included here, we're making the Doctor, not his equipment!), the Doctor also brandishes sonic devices of multiple varieties, psychic paper, the thing that goes DING, etc.

---

As you can imagine, finding the right race replacement for Time Lords wasn't easy. I'm definitely not using The-Movie-That-Does-Not-Exist solution, and making the Doctor... half-human, urgh. All we need to do is find a humanoid, almost-fossil race that can come back from death a limited amount of times.

The Doctor is a Human Revenant, a playtest race from Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Heroes. In-game, Revenant is an undead that came back to life to pursue a certain goal, whether it's vengeance, retribution, or to make amends. Putting some flavour into it, and turning it into a long-living, mysterious being who perhaps came from the Astral Plane to search for a way to save his home planet... why not? Regular Revenants get only a +1 to Constitution, but if we're using pre-existing race (such as Human), there's another set of rules. So, we get a +1 Constitution and +1 Intelligence, and we don't get to pick a skill or a feat. Not yet.

What's most important here is the Revenant's Relentless Nature feature. We are assigned a goal, a very specific one, that we must complete in order to achieve peace. Work with your DM on that one (the saving-your-home-world one from before sounds like a good start). Until we complete the goal:

If we are below Hit Points Maximum, at the start of our turn we regain 1 Hit Point;

We know the distance and direction to any creature involved in our goal (perhaps a fellow, once-friend Time Lord?);

When we die, we come back to life within 24 hours with 1 Hit Point. If our body is destroyed, we come back in a spot within 1 mile of our place of death (unfortunately, our equipment is destroyed);

BOOM! JUST FLAVOUR EACH DEATH AS A CHANGE OF FACE AND PERSONALITY, AND WE HAVE THE REGENERATION SYSTEM! HAH! YOU SEE THAT, BROTHER!?

Ekhm... back to work, then.

The Doctor is pretty far from home, so giving him the Far Traveller background seems like the right approach. We gain proficiencies in Insight and Perception skills, proficiencies with one musical instrument (perhaps a recorder?)/gaming set, we learn one language of our choice, and we get the All Eyes on You feature; our mannerisms and quirks definitely draw attention towards us and our group, but we can take advantage of that in order to fish for some information, secure an audience with the local nobleman, or... I dunno, snog Madame de Pompadour?

ABILITY SCORES

No surprise there, we start with Intelligence. We have a literal Big Galaxy Brain™ and we use it often, and only sometimes to show off. Follow that up with Dexterity, we're nimble and we're doing a lot of running, especially when being chased (plus, we've invented the Drunken Giraffe dance). Constitution is next, the Gallifreyan biology is significantly superior to that of regular Terrans.

Next up, Charisma. It usually works, sometimes it doesn't, but even then we're kinda adorkable. Wisdom is a little low, I think we all shall agree to that, the Doctor is a creature of whim. He gets lost in thought, has a hard time remembering to explain his logic to others. Finally, we're dumping Strength. Now, we're definitely physically stronger than humans, I just don't remember any particular feats of super-strength in the show.

Heck, you want even more Time Lord shenanigans? Ask your DM to implement the "every death/regeneration makes all ability scores randomly switch places" rule.

CLASS

Level 1 - Artificer: Once again, nobody is surprised we begin with the Smart & Techy One™ for the Doctor. Artificers were brought to 5e via Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. These magical tinkers have d8 Hit Dice, [8 + Constitution modifier] initial Hit Points, proficiencies with light armour, medium armour, heavy armour, shields, simple weapons, and optionally firearms (although that's definitely not the Doctor's style). We additionally get proficiency with thieves' tools, tinker's tools, and one set of artisan's tools we choose. We can't get the sonic screwdriver (although if you want one, hint to your DM about the existence of the All-Purpose Tool), we have all these tools to replace it with. Our saving throws are Constitution and Intelligence, and we get to pick two class skills: let's get History and Investigation.

Artificers start with Magical Tinkering, an ability to bestow harmless magical properties onto inanimate objects. We choose a Tiny object with no magic in it, and grant it one of the following properties indefinitely:

It sheds bright light for 5 feet and dim light for an additional 5;

Whenever tapped, the object plays a recorded message no longer than six seconds;

The object continuously emits a smell or a sound of our choice;

A static image (picture, lines of text, shapes, etc.) appear on the object's surface.

Artificers are also casters, so at the first level, we get Spellcasting. Our casting ability is, of course, Intelligence and the number of spells we can prepare is equal to [our Intelligence modifier + half of our Artificer level rounded down]. We also know how to cast rituals.

We start with two cantrips:

Magic Stone lets us imbue three pebbles with magic (or perhaps, in this case, kinetic energy?) for 1 minute. We can then use the pebbles ourselves, or give them to somebody else. On a successful hit, the target suffers [1d6 + our Intelligence modifier] bludgeoning damage and the spell ends on that particular pebble.

Prestidigitation is a cantrip of plenty varieties, which very well could be disguised as the Doctor's tinkering with his sonic screwdriver. It can be used to warm or chill food, clean or soil objects, or perhaps lighting and snuffing our small flames.

We start with two 1st-level spell slots, and we get three 1st-level spells:

Alarm sets up a secured perimeter, no larger than a 20-feet cube, for 8 hours. Whenever a create not-designated as safe while setting the spell, crosses its boundary, we get a signal informing us about the intrusion, which also wakes us up if we're sleeping. The signal can be set to inform only us, or everybody around.

Detect Magic informs us of any magical activity within 30 feet of us for 10 minutes (concentration). We sense magic lingering on objects, people, as well as locations, and we can determine the type of magic present (but not a particular spell, for example, we sense that a spell on the object is enchantment-type, but not that it's Power Word: Kill).

Identify is... pretty much the one function of the sonic screwdriver we've all seen. It lets us learn about an object we choose, including its magical properties (if any) and if it's affected by any spells. And it works on wood!

With a spell list like that, we can safely say

Level 2 - Artificer: We continue with the Tech Savvy Class, and we learn the Artificer's signature skill, Infuse Item. It lets us bestow magical properties onto mundane items. Similarly to Warlock's Invocations, Artificers have Infusions they can select and put into items. Starting from this level, we can infuse two items at once, and we get to pick four Infusions from the list. For the Doctor, let's pick:

Replicate Magic Item: Bag of Holding is probably the most useful infusion in the early game. The infusion does exactly what it says, and a Bag of Holding is always a good item to own (just watch out for the Bag Man!)

Enhanced Defence infusion puts some extra protection (+1 to AC) onto an armour or a shield.

Mind Sharpener is a helping hand for any spellcaster. The infusion put onto an armour, or woven into a robe, sends a jolt to re-focus the mind. When the wearer fails a Constitution saving throw to keep their concentration, one charge (out of four) of the infusion expends, to make them succeed instead. The charges are refilled at dawn.

Returning Weapon gives a +1 to attack and damage rolls of the weapon it's applied on and makes it return to the wielder's hand immediately after it's used to make a ranged attack. With the keyword "immediately", it gives your Rangers and other bow-users infinite ammunition with just one arrow.

We can also get one more 1st-level spell: Disguise Self changes our appearance for 1 hour, or until we choose to dismiss it as an action. The spell affects our body, clothing, and items we carry (including weapons). It is not a physical disguise, just an illusion woven around us; if we make ourselves thinner than we really are, and somebody was to touch the space where our regular body would be, they're going to feel the body, albeit invisible. For the Doctor, this seems like a combination of psychic paper and the Chameleon Circuit.

Level 3 - Artificer: At this level, we get the Right Tool for the Job feature. If we have thieves' tools or artisan's tools in hand, we can create any other set of artisan's tools.

We also get to pick our subclass, our Artificer Specialization. The Doctor is no alchemist, and we'll probably build Tony Stark at some time in the future, therefore we're picking Battle Smith. Those tinkers are masters of protections, being able to put up defensive mechanisms on the spot. Since the Doctor is a diplomat first, runner second, and combatant very close and reluctant third, focusing on support is a good option.

As a Battle Smith, we gain proficiencies with smith's tools, and we gain some more magic with Battle Smith Spells:

Heroism imbues the willing creature with bravery. Until the spell ends (1 minute, concentration), the target is immune to being frightened and gains Temporary Hit Points equal to our Intelligence modifier at the start of each of their turns (AKA every six seconds). When the spell ends, any Temporary Hit Points remaining are lost.

Shield creates an invisible barrier as a reaction to getting hit. It adds +5 to our AC until the start of our next turn.

Although a reluctant fighter, the Doctor as a Battle Smith also gets the Battle Ready feature. We gain proficiency with martial weapons, and when we attack with a magic weapon, we can use our Intelligence modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls.

Finally, Battle Smiths get the Steel Defender. With our tinkering, we create our first companion, a steel defender; it is friendly to us and our companions and obeys our commands. With that, we got ourselves the one and only K9

Level 4 - Artificer: At this level, we get our first Ability Score Improvement! However, instead of upgrading our abilities this time, we'll grab a feat. The Telepathic feat from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will represent the Doctor's limited psychic abilities: we increase one of our non-physical abilities by 1, let's go for Intelligence. We can speak telepathically to any creature within 60 feet, but the creature cannot reply (unless they're telepathic too, of course). Finally, we can touch a Detect Thoughts spell once per long rest, without a need to expend spell slots. Give your target a good headbutt, and learn their surface thoughts.

We also get our final spell: Catapult turns one inanimate object that isn't worn or carried (and weighs from 1 to 5 pounds) and turns it into a remote projectile. The object flies in a straight line for 90 feet before losing its momentum and falling. If it hits a creature, they have to make a Dexterity saving throw or take 3d8 bludgeoning damage. Distract your pursuers with a head of cabbage flying at their heads.

Level 5 - Rogue: We say goodbye to the Artificer, as we move onto Rogue for the rest of the build. Rogues use the same Hit Dice as Artificers, so nothing really changes when it comes to our Hit Points. We already have proficiency with light armour and thieves' tools, but we can pick one class skill – let's pick Acrobatics for better running and parkour chances when escaping aliens and responsibilities.

Rogues start with Expertise, which lets us double our proficiency bonus (NOT ability modifier) for two skills of our choice: let's boost Insight and History, to best utilize our centuries of living. We also learn how to speak Thieves' Cant, a special system of phrases and signals used by other Rogues to communicate without revealing their secrets. Finally, we have Sneak Attack: once per turn we can add 1d6 extra damage if a) we have an advantage on our roll, or b) the target is within 5 feet of another creature hostile towards it. The attack must be done by either a ranged weapon or one with the finesse property (like a dagger or a rapier).

Level 6 - Rogue: We get Cunning Action, which let us turn some Actions we can do in combat into Bonus Actions. That way, we still have an Action to spare if we decide to use Dash, Disengage, or Hide. Considering how much running the Doctor does, it's good to have something else to do just in case.

Level 7 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack changes to 2d6.

We also get to pick our second subclass, our Roguish Archetype. Now, initially, I considered going Swashbuckler, as it combines nimble footwork and gives us some charm abilities. However, since we're going with the build that emphasizes support and actual combat as a last resort, we'll go with Inquisitive.

We start this subclass with Ear for Deceit, whenever we roll Insight checks to determine if a creature is lying to us, we treat each roll of 7 or lower as 8.

We also get Eye for Detail. This is mostly to be used in combat (or if your DM runs dungeons in Initiative Mode), as it allows us to use Perception or Investigation checks as a bonus action, where it would normally take an action.

Finally, Inquisitive Rogues get Insightful Fighting. As a bonus action, we can make an Insight check, contested by the enemy's Deception check. If we succeed, for 1 minute we can use our Sneak Attack on the target even if we don't have an advantage or the target isn't near another of its enemies.

Level 8 - Rogue: Time for another ASI! Let's raise our Intelligence by 1 point, and use the spare one for Strength.

Level 9 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack changes to 3d6.

We also get Uncanny Dodge. Whenever we're being hit by an attack, we can use our reaction to halve the damage dealt.

Level 10 - Rogue: Halfway through the build, and we get another shot at Expertise. Once again, we get two skills to which we can double our proficiency bonus. Let's go with Perception and Investigation.

Level 11 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 4d6.

We also get one of the better abilities in the game, Evasion. If we're being targeted by an AoE attack that would deal half damage on a successful Dexterity saving throw, we take no damage if we make the save. What that means is, we can now take a Fireball face-on, shrug it off and loudly proclaim

Level 12 - Rogue: We get another ASI. Let's improve our Dexterity by two points this time.

Level 13 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 5d6.

We also get another subclass feature. Steady Eye gives us an advantage on Perception or Investigation checks if we move no more than half of our movement speed on our turn.

Level 14 - Rogue: Time for another ASI. Let's focus on getting some more Hit Points this time, and get +2 points to Constitution.

Level 15 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 6d6.

At this level, we get Reliable Talent, which upgrades our abilities to almost anime protagonist-level. Whenever we make a check for a skill we're proficient in, we treat all rolls of 9 and lower as 10.

Level 16 - Rogue: We're getting one more ASI. Let's raise our Dexterity again, putting 2 points in it.

Level 17 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 7d6.

We get our final subclass upgrade for this build, the Unerring Eye. We can now sense illusions and magical tricks within 30 feet, as well as shapechangers not in their original form. We can detect there is an effect trying to trick our senses around us, but we don't know its nature (i.e. if we meet a creature that activates our sense, we cannot distinguish whether it's a Disguise Self spell, or a natural shapeshifting ability, or a Druid's Wild Shape).

Level 18 - Rogue: We get another one of the best abilities in the game, Blindsense. We can now detect the presence of invisible and hidden creatures within 10 feet radius of us.

Level 19 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 8d6.

Our mind becomes more slippery with Slippery Mind. We gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws.

Level 20 - Rogue: Our build's capstone is Rogue 16, which is also our final ASI. Let's finally cap Intelligence, as it should've been from the start when it comes to Time Lords.

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There it is. My take on how to play as the Doctor in Dungeons & Dragons. I believe I've covered most if not all of the important features the Doctor has, but let's see:

Let's face it, we're not a frontline fighter... we're not even a backline fighter. We support. With 14 AC (without armour), 151 Hit Points on average, and a +4 to Initiative, our job is to manoeuvre, around the battlefield and let our friends take care of the enemy, while we do other things. With Reliable Talent and Expertise we are great at sweeping the room for clues and hints, even if in the heat of battle. Thanks to Unerring Eye and Blindsense, our senses aren't that easy to fool.

Unfortunately, our Strength is not great, and that means some weapons are just a hindrance (unless we pick a finesse weapon, which replaces Strength with Dexterity). While we have late-game proficiency in Wisdom saving throws, throughout the earlier stages those might prove a little problem.

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And that is it for this build. I hope that you guys enjoyed it, and I'll see you for the next one!

- Nerdy out!

#d&d 5e #dnd #dungeons and dragons #character building #the doctor #doctor who #new who #classic who #time lord #artificer #battle smith #rogue #inquisitive #revenant

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decayandfanfics · 3 years

Text

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut later.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

_________________________________________________________

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It takes about ten seconds to screw up your whole life.

Well, in theory.

College is a monstruous violent thing that feeds on your happiness and lets you sharp and scrawny, both physically and mentally. Medical school was brutal, you knew it before even applying, though you didn’t think it would be this exhausting. But you are a responsible person above everything else, so you use your sharpness and the power machine that is your brain, forcing yourself to do it. So, here you are, four years into it, stress flowing through you like blood, embedded in your system like is normal. You are fine with it, at peace with your constant nail chewing and the tics in your brow. It is fine, you went completely insane in the meantime, but it was worth it.

You see, there are many ways of being a hero, and with a quirk like yours, it would be nothing but almost impossible to follow the traditional path, so you take a side path, another form of saving lives (the true form in your experience) and with a head like yours, becoming a doctor is the natural way. Thinking about finals, your succulents and rent, you walk the path that leads to your little apartment in a quiet part of the city when you hear the soft whimper behind the trash cans in an alleyway. It would be wise to keep walking, but you believe in helping others and curiosity it’s been a main trait since childhood, besides, the soft hum of your quirk sings inside your chest like a promise of safety, so you turn and get close to it, prudence before you take another step.

“is anybody here? I heard a cry” you keep walking, measuring the distance between you and the street in case you need to run back “do you need help?”

You see him. A young man, grabbing his head between his hands, his body clutched against the wall. “Sir, are you okay? Can I help you?”

“My head…I’m going to split! It’s me! It’s me! No! it’s not! I can’t!”

You look carefully around you, making sure no one else is watching, then your eyes flare with your quirk relaxing him softly, easing his tensed muscles as you get close.

“hey…what’s the matter? i want to help you.” You decide the best option is to put yourself to his level, before speaking sweetly, your activated quirk shining subtly red in the dark.

“My mask” he says with teared eyes “I lost my mask. I’m going to split without it.”

It some kind of psychotic episode, you know that much, but he seems to be harmless otherwise. Concluding that if dangerous he would already lash out, you decide to look for something in your backpack.

“Does this serve you?” you ask handing him a red beanie you keep with you in winter.

He takes it with trembling hands and covers his head completely with it.

“Oh…thanks. That’s better. I feel better now. Thank you, miss, thank you!”

“You have a name?”

“I’m Jin. My name is Jin.”

“You have a family, Jin? Someone to call? Maybe a home?”

“my…yes, i. I…my phone is dead. I need to call Toga-chan.”

The moment he stands you see it. A big bloody gash at his side in desperate need for some stitches.

“Omg…you are hurt. Careful. Let me help you. We need to take you to the hospital.”

“No. No! No! I cannot get caught; they’ll lock me up if…yes, they will, no they don’t, yes, they will!”

“okay, okay. No hospitals. But i need to see that injure. It looks awful.”

“It hurts, no it doesn’t. But, yes. It hurts.”

“Let me take care of it. I’m a doctor…I mean, I’m on it, but I can take care of your wound.”

You take him home, thinking that maybe he’s been hospitalized before. You know how psychiatric patients tend to be caged up when no one looks for them, often tied up to the beds, sedated so they don’t bother anyone. It is cruel and you don’t want that. Besides, he says something about his friend Toga, something about someone called Dabi and Compress, so you just assume he actually has someone to look over him.

That’s how Jin ends seated in your kitchen, eating some leftovers, freshly patched as his phone charges in a corner of your living room.

“thank you again…you’ve been so nice to me, yes you are.”

“is nothing. I’m glad I found you. That wound wasn’t deep, but it could get infected very easily.”

You let him stay the night, trusting in your gut and the power of your quirk to keep you safe. He seems thankful and kind. His ways are soft, a hint of naivety and simplicity when he speaks, so even when you stay careful, you really don’t think he’ll be a problem truly.

Next morning and after some phone calls, Jin says goodbye to you between tears and wholehearted thanks. Your beanie still in his head, two holes where the eyes should go.

You watch him go from your window, waving your hand and a smile plastered across your face, hoping he stays with someone who cares for him, because he’s clearly in a vulnerable state. A blond girl takes his hand rushing across the street, watching every direction before disappearing in a nearby alleyway, but you think nothing of it.

You thought nothing of it when you got a basket full of candy by your door.

You thought nothing of it when you heard your neighbor talking about a strange man waiting for someone in the main hall of the building.

You thought nothing of it when you receive a letter from Jin naming you a great good friend of his, saying he would be your friend forever.

That’s why you think it’s kinda your own fault when the entire group of homeless people makes its appearance at your door one night at two am in the middle of your well-deserved vacations. (a month after your little encounter with Jin.)

Fear shoots through you like a bullet so quickly you forget how to breathe the moment you see the hands and a bunch of costumes for clothing.

You’ve seen the tv, you know who they are, yet you just cannot fathom why the fuck are they standing outside your apartment, covered in dirt, starving and distressed; at least, not until you hear his voice again.

“Hello! I know this is unexpected, but you are my friend! Look, Shigaraki! She is the one who helped me when I was about to split! The doctor one. She was so good to me! Is my friend! Could you help us, please? I know it’s late, but please.”

You are livid.

Jin Is no other than Twice.

This is no other than the League of fucking Villains.

Chapter 2

#shigaraki x reader #bnha fanfiction #shigaraki tomura #mha shigaraki #shigaraki x you

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midnightmarginalia · 4 years

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Ho fuck this is long

Ok so like. I made a fucking mistake. I wrote an essay for my creative non-fiction class. We had to write a Lyric Essay. simple enough. it's whatever. I transcribed parts of my journal. it was fun. HOWEVER, I made the mistake of telling the class that I did some heavy editing to get rid of some unconventional grammar I use cuz internet, ya know? this was 3 days ago. jump to today. I wrote a 7-page essay trying to briefly explain SOME of the grammar conventions that have evolved alongside the internet. I had to explain this to a group of 40+ year-olds. so NOw I present this to you, o Tumblr. for the love of god let people read this and add to it, I spent eternally too much time on it

So "Internet English" or "New English" is a linguistic phenomenon that centers on conveying tone and different connotative meanings through informal writing. Linguist Gretchen McCulloch actually released a book on this called Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. Her book actually is really interesting (I highly recommend it) and covers some of what I'm going to be talking about today. In the first section, she compares the process of learning literacy to be similar to learning how to talk solely through exposure to formal writing like speeches, screenplays, audiobooks, etc. You miss all the nuances of informal speaking. Well, the same is true for written language. Before the Internet, informal writing was extremely hard to come by and even harder to study; even letters, postcards, secretive notes and the like were still written fairly formally because there were no mass text-based communication practices. Now, we have this vast intangible library of infinite knowledge and human interactions, making the necessity of informal writing more prominent. As such, internet users, especially people from my generation, have evolved a subset of written English to better express connotative meaning through the use, abuse, and misuse of capitalization, spacing, spelling, punctuation, incomplete sentences, and more. Let me show you a little of what I mean.

Capitalization

Capitalization is a common convention used to convey emphasis, although which type of emphasis that is changes based on how the capitalization is used.

Random Capitalization is meant to grab Attention and express that Something is Very Important or should be Stressed by Your Inner Voice when reading.

ALL CAPS IS MEANT TO SIGNIFY A VAST INCREASE IN VOLUME, THOUGH IT IS OFTEN INTERPRETED AS SHOUTING. THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE.

a crescENDO IS MEANT TO SPECIFY VOLUME AND/OR IMPORTance for one segment. It is often used to EXPRESS GROWING EXCITEMENT!

CaPiTaLiZiNG a RanDoM AsSoRTmEnT oF LetTerS ConVEyS SaRcAsM oR a MOcKinG TonE.

I cannot really articulate why but this, thIS, tHIS, and THIS are all different. This is called Varied Capitalization and can apply to any word, though I most often see and use it with articles.

not capitalizing anything in a sentence is an excellent way to express a monotone voice that seems very apathetic towards everything and everyone. "oh look. john and i went to the store. how exciting."

Spacing

Spacing Conventions are less common, and ultimately there is only one that I find noteworthy. Spacing out letters in a word like r e a l l y conveys that the word is significant. It takes up more space than really and thus needs to be stressed. It is also important to note that this convention is often coupled with full capitalization. There is a significant difference between "I am really hungry" and "I and r e a l l y hungry" and "I am R E A L L Y Hungry"

Spelling

Spelling, like Spacing, is less varied than some of these other conventions. The most common spelling convention you are likely to encounter is the Intentional Misspell. This is used to express one of two things; you can discern which by the context of the rest of the message. It can be used to display excitement. The misspell conveys a kind of excitement that interferes with dexterity, like how your hands shake after a jump scare: "gyus I just swa A Quiet Place an d it s one f thr svsriest movis I've ever seen." The other emotion the Intentional Misspell can convey is much more subtle and complicated. It is the sense of false apathy. it is nit uncommun to putf a typo in everyr other werd or so to shwo yu don't realy give a fukc but yiu actually do. This is much harder to discern and your best bet on understanding this half of the convention is context clues.

Punctuation and Lack Thereof

Punctuation is, in my opinion, the best, most diverse option for conveying a specific kind of tone. There's a lot to cover here, so I will do my best to keep it brief.

A full stop is a short sentence with a period. It is meant to be read in a scolding tone. The usage of this is especially important in text message and chatroom settings because you can signify the end of a sentence by sending the message. A good rule of thumb for the tone is that the shorter the message, the more scolding the tone.

Putting. A. Period. Between. Words. Conveys. That. The. Matter. At. Hand. Must. Be. Taken. Seriously. This is simply the act of emphasizing each word with a full stop.

not having any punctuation or capitalization at all makes for a very fluid reading experience yes the sentences can get mixed up but those who read and write this way regularly can discern separate trains of thought if you've noticed the lack of capitalization you may recognize one of the earlier discussed conventions it is important to note however that the monotone voice of that convention disappears with the punctuation

Question marks now signify an upturn in the voicing of a statement rather than forcing something to be a question. now you may be asking yourself "why would they do this." The only answer I have for you is "it just seems right?" the upturn signifies a tentative statement while the flat delivery of the question signifies frustration or bafflement.

Punctuation Frequency is meant to signify the amount of severity accompanying the statement. This is exclusively used with question marks and exclamation marks. A common example is extending the simple “what?” to “what???????” Notice the difference? The same thing can be done with exclamation points. Note the increased excitement between “The baby was born today!” and “The babe was born today!!!!!!!!!!!” These, of course, can be amplified even further by incorporating some of the other conventions we’ve discussed previously.

Exclusive Punctuation is a convention most commonly found in messaging systems, but it is still important. “???” is an expression of pure confusion. If you were to receive this message, that whatever you sent the person prior has left them amazed, confused, flabbergasted, awe-struck, bewildered, and more. On the other hand “!!!” is an expression of pure excitement and glee. The best description I’ve seen for this is that it is a noise of happiness.

While there are dozens more grammatical conventions, these are the primary ones that a vast majority of people will use. It is time to move on.

Ellipses

Yes. This is punctuation. But it elicits its own category. Ellipses are great tools for signifying that there is more to this statement than meets the eye. However, there are now multiple types of ellipses that have different meanings.

Periodic Ellipses or Hard Ellipses are just that. Hard. Say I were to text someone “Hey can we talk after class...” The ellipsis generates a cold tone that has some worrying connotations. Something important to note here is that the length of the ellipsis can signify severity, though after a certain point it becomes superfluous and silly. The only friendly usage of a Hard Ellipsis is the Two-Dot Ellipsis. “Hey can we talk after class..” is far far less sinister than “Hey can we talk after class…”

Commatic Ellipses or Soft Ellipses are just that. Soft. Instead of being composed of periods, these ellipses are composed of commas and have a vastly different meaning. These are meant to convey either worrying or flirtatious tones. To go back to our previous example, “Hey can we talk after class,,,,,” is going to be read in a flirtatious manner. However, “Hey can we talk after class,” is going to be read worryingly. The trick to discerning the different tones is the length of the ellipsis. Three commas or less conveys a worrisome tone, whereas five or more conveys a flirtatious tone.

Sentence Structure

Look! We’re almost done! There are many people who will play with sentence structure to convey meaning but the most widespread practice is the Incomplete Sentence. This one is actually fairly straightforward. Leaving a sentence incomplete expresses exhaustion (either emotional or physical) and adds a sense of trailing off in the speakers voice. I mean, have you ever started a sentence and then just

Noun/Verb Dichotomy

Ok last one. This one is also pretty straight forward, though still quite complex. The Noun/Verb Dichotomy is simple the act of using a noun in place of a verb to get your point across. For example, a more expressive (and in my opinion more accurate) way to say “I like to get a midnight snack at 2 in the morning” would be “I like to velociraptor around my house at 2 in the morning.” The second conjures such a specific image that it can more concisely convey the actions and emotions being done. The possibilities are endless. This opens up the door for someone to sentence how they want. Although many people will get a headache and want to clothesline into a wall. These all make sense to a native speaker of this kind of english because, while our brains do brain logically, english doesnt logic englishly so the brain brains by itself to logic the english!

So that is my mini-lesson on Internet English. please remember I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what’s changed.

#holy shit #language #languaging is hard #linguistics #its sublime #but so funky #for the love of god add to this #also correct me #theres a good chance I am wrong #I had to do all this research #all this studying #its unprecedented #i could make this my dissertation #like #holy fuck

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pathology-studies · 5 years

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Hi! Can you please share your process on how to study? Or simply, how you study?

Hi Love!

How I study depends on the subject, but here are my three major categories. If your class/test requires all of them, prioritize them according to whatever your prof / more advanced students say is most important.

Broad Concepts

When to use? Long answer tests / debates, connecting ideas.

Talk to your friends about the key concepts! Explain it to friends in your class (people who can catch your mistakes / misconceptions).

Mind maps to connect your big concepts! Make what I affectionately call “dating profiles” for them: what are their 3-5 MOST important features?

Ex. Vaccines: safe, effective (activated B and T cells), and accessible financially/societally.

Do some extra reading about it – make sure that you have examples of how to use the information and why it’s important. Google that shit, baby. Look at how other people describe it and use it!

Make up “long answer” questions with your friends and trade them.

Ex. If you were a researcher trying to make a vaccine that was for pathogen X, and it needed to reach places without sufficient, what are three Next Gen vaccine types you could make, and what are their advantages and disadvantages?

OK, so this question isn’t really fair: it requires connecting broad concepts AND knowing their tiny details! So once you’ve pinpointed what broad concepts you need to understand, move into their nitty gritty details:

Heavy Memorizing (Detail Oriented)

When to use? Multiple choice, True/False, examples for long answers, straight-up classic memorizing (think history classes or anatomy!), fleshing out your understanding of concepts.

Oooooh flashcards. Quizlet is OK but hand-made ones stick in my brain better, personally. Run through them, stick any of them that aren’t INSTANT recall back in the “do-over” pile, continue until they are done. THEN, pick them up again every few days until the test to keep it *fresh*

Make a generic chart with lots of boxes. Print like 15. Fill out as much as you can from memory. Check it, add in info you forgot / correct what you got wrong. Put it away. Fill out a blank one. Repeat until you could do it in your sleep (or do it perfectly 2x in a row lol) It’s really useful for memorizing things that have categories like this:

DISEASE 1 : host, vector, symptoms, epidemiology, pathogenic factors

DISEASE 2 : host, vector, symptoms, epidemiology, pathogenic factors

if you have say, Disease 1-20, and disease 1-5 are in an over arching group, you could mind map it too!

Mind maps are the ultimate catch-all tbh. I usually do one on paper and then a million on a white board until i can nail it every time! Whoop!

Ask your friends questions and have them ask you! Me and a friend of mine always study for parasitology by taking our notes and drilling each other with every relevant question we can think of, correcting each other as we go, and then doing it AGAIN (you guessed it) until we can get it perfectly every time,

You might be like “thats unrealistic for the amount of notes I have!” and you might b right but we did it with over 200 powerpoint slides and both got As so….sometimes weird shit works idk fam.

pls start studying for tests more than a 5 days out it makes memorizing things….way better…and less stressful…

Procedural (Doing it!)

When to use? Practical/lab tests, math/chemistry.

DO EVERY PRACTICE PROBLEM PROVIDED.

If you’ve done all of them and ur still nervous, look up youtube tutorials and pause the video when they give out a problem, get as far as you can, and then watch and see if you got it right.

go to office hours! you prof / TA might have EVEN MORE practice problems!!

If it’s a lab technique, as you TA if you can practice w them (they might say no!)

Memorize all the steps to a method (works for lab or math/chem) and then easy peasy plug and chug it baby. This can be time consuming and stressful tho: try to break down each step LOGICALLY if you know WHY you’re doing something, you can APPLY it to new problems which is p cool.

general advice:

stay hydrated love. Eat!! Your brain is a diva that NEEDS glucose to function. Supply that glucose.

you can do literally anything but don’t waste time trying to force a certain study technique to work for you. Some things gel w ur brain and some things don’t: find the right balance between lowest effort and best results.

Work out. It’s good for ur brain to get some blood flowing! This can be walking around, doing some chill yoga poses on ur bedroom floor, whatever. It’s esp helpful to break up study sessions w some stretches / light exercises if you can. Do some wall-pushups or try to hold a plank for a few seconds. release ur physical tension it will help you focus.

DO NOT fuck w distractions: phones, music, noises, people that distract you, do NOT let them interfere w ur study time. There is other time for that I promise you. If you go hard during study time, it will take you less time to learn the info, and then you can actually ENJOY the other things instead of feeling guilty.

Notes (personal preferences): I usually listen to lyrical music when I’m doing practical stuff, and non-lyrical for the first bit of memorizing (or when i’m reading) and then switch to all lyrical (if u can remember that shit w hayley kiyoko blasting directly into your brain you’ll remember it when those noisy people walk by your classroom! but use this as a “final test” of sorts if lyrical music is super distracting to you.”

I also always study with a water bottle / tea / whatever to sip on so I don’t get dehydration headaches sneak up on me and gradually make me devolve into a frustrated pile of goo, but that’s just me.

Let me know if you have other questions about specifics / want clarification or anything like that! Good luck!! You can do it!!

#the lab rat speaks #anon #asks #how to study #studyblr #study advice #study tips #study techniques

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autumndiesirae · 5 years

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1/ It's different because certain ships (not sure if you mean something like incest ships or pedo ships) are gross to most people and they dont want other gross people to see themselves in it and enjoy it, or feel like they are encouraged by it. It's like how nazi's glorify Warhammer characters that "cleanse the xeno scum" for disturbing and troubling reasons, or seeing pedo's get off to loli or cub stuff. It's a yikes.

2/ It’s different from school shooters + video games because those argue that games actually *create* disturbing behavior or train the mind to do so. It implies that someone who is already on that path wouldn’t have any changed behavior or feel validated by seeing something that already reflects their thoughts, as opposed to what these “dont ship because XYZ” people usually claim

3/ It’s different from women who were called Satanists because those claims came from a culture of oppression against women who were seen as mysterious and less than men, mixed in with byzantine superstitions. I doubt you’re implying that these shippers are oppressed or mean to imply, as a side note, but that’s why.

4/4 Though it may be similar to how certain books are banned, though that parts a bit vague. Did you mean “Catcher in the Rye” kind of banned or “Quran” kind of banned or even “Diary of Anne Frank” banned? Could mean a lot of things. I know of one book that was banned from my library because it had a few characters sneak back into their house via the second floor, and explained that most older houses were unlocked on the second floor and up. That was because that fiction could affect reality.

Like first and foremost who is the judge of what’s a ‘gross’ ship? Because I’ve seen something like the label of ‘gross incest ship’ thrown at both Shimadacest, where it’s a valid label because it’s actual incest, and also at something like McReyes because ‘the two had a relationship that could be seen as father/son’ even when the two aren’t related and that claim is entirely a fandom interpretation of their relationship. Literally that was the entire crux of the Voltron ship debate. Literally no one is saying you should be fine and comfortable with every ship out there, including actual incestuous or pedophilic ships, but the problem is that those labels are applied to things where it doesn’t even work and saying that antis only ever address ‘gross ships’ is entirely subjective. No one says you have to like ships with an age gap, no one says you have to like ships where the two start out as enemies, no one says you have to like ANY ship. But more often than not the labels of ‘gross’ and subsequently pedophilia/racism/abuse/etc get stuck to ships where it absolutely is not applicable. If a ship involves two consenting adults, which more often than not it does, then you really cannot censor it and someone else’s enjoyment of it just because you think it’s gross.

‘It’s different from school shooters + video games because those argue that games actually *create* disturbing behavior or train the mind to do so‘Okay but I have seen this exact claim word for word addressed towards people who ship undesirable ships. That EXACT phrase has been thrown in my face and I’ve been called an abuser, homophobic, and misogynist for shipping Meihem because the two hate each other in ‘canon’ when I myself am an LGBT female multiple-time abuse victim (not to mention the two are consenting adults with no canon sexuality, and the point of fiction is to be transformative anyway). The idea that ships that some arbitrary person decides is amoral create/train people to accept immorality is absurd and yet it’s an argument I see constantly on this website. It is not the job of fiction to teach you morality, especially at the age when most people engage in shipping (teenage years) and already have a sense of right and wrong.

Also the reason I bring up the parallel between women reading and anti-shippers is because its the same train of logic - “if you, a tender and impressionable young creature, consume this content that someone else has arbitrarily designated as undesirable, you will develop into something undesirable because your brain simply cannot comprehend that the content you are reading is presented in a fictional context”. Oppression or not, it’s the exact same message. I read Lolita, I read Clockwork Orange, I read Animal Farm, all before the age of 15 - I didn’t magically become a pedophile, a murderer-rapist, or a fascist, because I could comprehend that it was a fictional story, even at a young age. If someone is already twisted, then whether or not the story glorifies or condemns certain subjects will mean nothing to them because their base understanding of morality is already skewed. Censoring the works of normal people because of the fear that someone may take that story and use it to justify their actions is simply absurd. I’m an abuse victim who often writes about abuse - I expect my readers to understand that I am not glorifiying or romanticizing it by placing it in my story, and if they don’t, then I understand that they never had that understanding in the first place.

‘I know of one book that was banned from my library because it had a few characters sneak back into their house via the second floor, and explained that most older houses were unlocked on the second floor and up. That was because that fiction could affect reality.‘And you see absolutely no issue with this? You see no issue with books being censored because someone decided that teenagers can’t read something and not do it? By that logic, based on the amount of content I’ve read that involves cheating, I should be perfectly okay with cheating and also engage in cheating regularly. Except I don’t. Because I can separate fiction from reality, and so can most teenagers. Other examples include libraries banning Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn for mentions of the n-word, or Harry Potter for ‘witchcraft’, or Steven Universe for ‘LGBT propaganda’, etc. Where do we draw the line?

I appreciate your response, Anon, I really do, and I’m not trying to attack you, but you’ve not managed to convince me why the ‘don’t ship XYZ’ crowd’s message is anything different than any other attempt at censorship based on the arbitrary standards of someone who decided that certain groups just can’t possibly distinguish fiction from reality. That’s not even accounting for the research by psychologists of how the brain interprets fiction depending on how it is presented, and how MANY CSA/abuse/etc survivors use content as a coping mechanism. Please, have some faith in people. An arbitrary and subjective system of ‘this ship is gross and I don’t like it’ will not get us anywhere.

#delete later #anonymous #mail

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scripttorture · 6 years

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I have a bit of a situation in a fanwork I'm writing, one of the characters (H) has undergone a weeklong period of isolation. For most of that time he is isolated, and for the first few days he's been deprived of food and water. However, midway through this, H had a biological cycle happen that made the people holding him deeply uncomfortable. In this universe, people form strong emotional bonds to each other (which these characters have) and are incredibly reluctant to hurt another (1/?)

(2/?)and these characters, who were already questioning this decisionimmediately feel uncomfortable. L doesn't want to stop the tortureitself but does want to to d it down in severity (H had tried tomutiny against them and severely injured a non bonded crew member soshe wants information) but D thinks they should stop it as much aspossible. L puts D in charge of bringing him rations and eventually Dsympathizes with H to the point where he convinces L to stop itentirely, but because(3/?)of H's bad self esteem in regards to said biological process, he'saverse to people touching him during this time and literally screamsat D to leave him alone on multiple occasions and nearly cries at onepoint. This biological process is also usually a sex trope, and Hends up kissing D a short time afterwards but freaks out the secondhe starts thinking clearly and threatens him with a weapon. It is ofnote that they've had a fight over H and his position in society b4,but grew(4/?)past that and were close friends up till H attempted to mutiny. Thisis based off of events in canon, and given the organization they workin (and the fact that there's multiple mutinies handled this way) Isuspect that isolation is protocol. H has worked for thisorganization for awhile and would know this, and even be equipped forhandling aftermath as a medical officer. Given his position in it hemight also know how to handle aftermath on himself (if possible). Myquestion is(5/?) how would this affect H (he has previous trauma andis naturally untrusting and has difficulty making significantrelationships), as well as the relationship between the characters,given that they end up having to deal with far worse people who endup torturing L, H, and another character again. (L goes through whatH went through for the most part, poetically). It is also notablethat D offers to stop the isolation earlier but H tells him to fuckoff and leave him alone to handle it himself bc of how much beingaround other people upsets him during this time (during previouscycles, he has intentionally isolated himself for long moments oftime), and D does so up to a point when he can't follow through withthat anymore

Myability to answer this is hampered by the fact that a central themeis a pseudo-biological cycle that’s outside reality.

I’veleft this for quite some time because I’m honestly not sure how tobalance the fantasy elements with reality. In this case I think thefantasy elements are too big of an influence for me to really….knowwhat’s ‘realistic’ in this situation.

Allthe research I’m drawing from doesn’t have anything even close tothis pseudo-biological cycle.

So-I’m not sure how much I can do with this. You’ve constructed thecharacters in a way which means they don’t behave like normalpeople any more, they no longer have human brains.

Ican talk about the effects these techniques would ordinarily have andgive my opinion of the responses you’ve planned for the characters.But I’m going to have to completely ignore a central element of thestory to do so and….I’m not sure how helpful the answer is goingto be as a result.

Thetime frame you’ve got for isolation and starvation seems reasonableand wouldn’t be life threatening to most healthy people. It wouldleave the victim physically weakened and with a longer reaction time.He’d also be starting to show the psychological symptoms ofstarvation and solitary confinement which youcan read about here andhere respectively.

Ifthis system of neglect and isolation is routine in the setting thenthe character mighthavea good idea of what care should look like. But that doesn’t meanthat knowledge would be helpful or that he’d be able to apply it tohimself.

Hemight, for instance, be able to consciously recognise that much ofwhat he’s feeling is influenced by not having enough to eat. Hemight even be able to pinpoint particular feelings and behaviours asbeing caused by starvation. But that won’t make the feelings goaway.

Bothof these tortures are depriving someone of a thing they need tosurvive. Recognising the symptoms won’t fill that gap. I think thatthere would be a limited amount he could do for himself beyondacknowledge that these states are temporary and he could recoverlater.

Myown experience of mental health problems is that it’s perfectlypossible to know whysomething you feel is irrational or unhealthy and be unable todistance yourself from the feeling anyway. I think when the feelingswe’re talking about are physiological responses to very specificbodily needs (ie food and water) then it would be even harder toachieve that distance.

Ifhe was starved over a more prolonged period I think that effect wouldbe even more pronounced. As it is- well the time frame makes it lesslikely he’d be outright irrational, but irritable, aggressive,depressive, apathetic and suffering from mood swings- well thatsounds likely.

Ifyou’re writing the pseudo-biological cycle as a way ofstrengthening social bonds in a group (ie it generally makesindividuals closer whether they’re having sex or not) then I thinkit would make sense to show the symptoms of solitary confinementhitting the character harder. Because if the idea is the turn theprocesses that help us bond socially up to 11 then I think it wouldmake sense that depriving someone of those bonds would have a moreacute affect.

Inthe same way that depriving children of food has a more profoundeffect on them physiologically, stunting their growth andintelligence and possibly having epigenetic* effects that are passedon as far as their grandchildren.

Asfor the character’s responses. I think H’s response, these moodswings and aggressive pushing away of the abusive character, works.Both of these symptoms can be caused by starvation and solitaryconfinement and they tend to persist for a while after a starvingperson has enough to eat.

Invictims who are confined for longer periods it’s pretty common forthem to act aggressively towards other people when they appear. Partof that is the natural antagonism torture victims feel towards peoplethey blame for their suffering (a category that can encompass morethan torturers).

ButShalev suggests that it’s also to do with getting a responsehowever negative. People insolitary confinement quickly ‘learn’ that behaving well doesn’tget them the human contact they desperately need. Some people canrespond to that by behaving ‘badly’ instead, vandalising theircell/furniture, making a mess and insulting or attacking guards.Because they’re so desperate for human interaction that evennegative reactions and violence seem preferable to being ignored.

Whenit comes to writing relationships I try to stick to howrealistic/reasonable I think an interaction/progression is orsuggesting possible alternatives. I personally dislike the style ofwriting advice that tells people what they ‘must’ do.

Idon’t think there’s any one formulaic way to write anythingcorrectly. What’s right for your story and these characters will bedifferent to what’s right for other works. The effects torture hason survivors are highly individual and complex. So are therelationships that survivors have with other people. Ithink having that variety and nuance in fiction is important.

So-I’m not going to tell you how these relationships ‘should’ bewritten. What I’m going to do is unpack what I see you describingbehaviour wise and how realistic/reasonable I think that is. I’llalso talk a little bit about some of the options you have here.

Generally-you seem to be leaning in to the idea of H being particularlyantagonistic towards D. I think that makes sense, especially since Dis the character he has most contact with. Despite D’s intentionsto end the abuse it would make sense that H could see D as theprimary abuser.

The...individualsand circumstances traumatised people latch on to and come toassociate with abuse are not necessarily logical. Antagonism canextend far beyond the people directly responsible for abuse,encompassing a whole group of people with perceived similarities (ienationality, race, gender).

Survivorscan also latch on to the peoplethey see every day even if they know logically that these peoplearen’t wholly responsible for the situation. A guard who hands outreduced rations could easily be hated and blamed for a prison-widepolicy of starvation. The guard is responsible for going along withand enforcing the policy as an individual, but probably didn’tpersonally ensure it was implemented and wouldn’t be able to carryon enforcing it without wider organisational support.

SoI think the way you’re highlighting this antagonism on H’s partmakes sense.

Butthat does affect where H’s future relationship with D can go. It’sperfectly possible for H to reach a point where he can acceptlogically that D was doing the ‘best he could’ in an awfulsituation while stillfeeling extremely antagonistic towards D and finding positiveinteraction difficult/impossible.

Ifyou wanted to move their relationship beyond that I think it wouldtake a lot of time, patience and compassion. It would require H tohave a strong desire to get past this, which he may not necessarilyhave.

@scripttraumasurvivorshas written quite a few useful posts on tackling the relationshipbetween abusers and survivors if/when abusers ‘get better’.

Thetrauma H associates with D is unlikely to go away. That isn’t tosay that their relationship can’t get better than it currently is,but I think you need to think carefully about how good it couldreasonably be with all this baggage. It’s also important toconsider at every step whether the narrative is straying towardsexcusing D’s complicity in the abuse H suffers.

SinceH has been traumatised before and generally finds trust difficultthen I think this series of incidents (because you seem to bedescribing two counts of torture here, one at the hands of L and Dand another later on where L is also victimised) would hugely impacthis recovery. H is probably going to feel as if he’s steppedbackwards and ended up in the same place he was when he wasoriginally traumatised or somewhere worse. Any difficulty he hasrelating to other people or trusting them is likely to be magnified.

Hissymptoms (which ever ones you’ve picked for him) are going to getworse. He may acquire new symptoms, new expressions of old symptomsand new triggers. That will make dealing with his symptoms moredifficult because old coping strategies may no longer work.

Fromthe way you’ve characterised him so far I think he’d find it verydifficult to accept help from others and impossible to seek it out.It seems likely that he’d come out of these incidents furtherisolated.

Ifthere are characters that you think he’d feel safe around and beable to accept help from it’s likely he’d still struggle withbasic social interaction. You’re describing a pattern of moodswings and aggression that- well basically a lot of people finddifficult to deal with and patterns of behaviour like that can bevery difficult for survivors to recognise and break. Especially inthe immediate and short term aftermath of a traumatising event.

Ifeel like I have less of a clear idea of L than I do of H and D.You’ve described both H and D in so detail and their interactions,whereas L seems to have been mostly characterised by sticking rigidlyto this idea that torture is an essential response to treachery.

Lseems to be responding to the situation involving H with a mindsetthat seems very typical of a torturer. D isn’t. To me that seems toimply that L has been torturing for longer and could therefore havemore symptoms than D at the outset.

Aswith H another traumatic event (being tortured later) is only goingto worsen those symptoms. It’s likely L would gain new symptoms.

Forboth H and L post traumatic stress disorder is more likely becausethey’ve both been traumatised multiple times.

Ithink depending on the symptoms you pick and the amount that H hascontact with L while being abused by L and D- you could potentiallywrite them with a more positive relationship than H and D. It’sstill likely to be incredibly complicated and not necessarilyhealthy.

Ithink the deciding factors are likely to be how much H blames L forbeing tortured and how much he sympathises with L when both of themare being tortured. No contact when L is responsible for H’s abuseand a lot of contact when they’re both being abused by someone elsecould result in a more ‘positive’ outlook from H’s side. It’sstill not likely to be hugely positive though.

FromL’s side a lot is going to depend on how much they cling on to theidea of H as a traitor who ‘deserves’ punishment. From what yououtlined I think you could reasonably write L lashing out towards Hwhile both of them are being tortured. If L sees H’s actions asabsolutely inexcusable then torture is not going to change that viewpoint and make L suddenly more sympathetic to H’s plight. They mayeven respond with a knee-jerk ‘well you deserved it but I don’t’sort of response.

Whichis unlikely to result in positive interaction.

Combiningall of these complicated layers of antagonism, symptoms and responseswith the pseudo-biological cycle in your story could result in somevery interesting relationships. From your outline it sounds as ifyou’ve got a group of characters who are all likely to have somesort of severe mental health problem and are largely antagonistictowards each other. But at the same time their ‘bond’ could bedriving them to stay close to each other, seek out each other’scompany and perhaps even attempt to protect each other.

Tome that sounds like a very interesting set of internal conflicts evenif it is pretty far from reality.

Italso seems like a reasonable way of blending fantasy and realitywithout falling into torture apologia. The unrealistic elements arevery clearly tied to the fantasy biology.

Overall,I think this has the potential to be really good. A lot is going todepend on the execution and how you balance the different elements inthe story. The emotional elements across the different characterscould be especially challenging. Sticking to one first personnarrative point view might limit your ability to explore theemotional conflict you’ve set up in the other characters. Multiplepoints of view or a third person overarching narration may be aneasier approach.

Ihope that helps. :)

*Epigeneticsare a sort of rewritable code on top of DNA. They’re instructionsto the body to turn certain genes on or off, expressing them inparticular places to different degrees. The body rewrites them inresponse to environmental stimulus. Some of them seem to be heritableand in rats certain diets during pregnancy have been shown to change epigeneticmarkers in mothers vs their children (ie both have a particular gene but itis expressed in the parent and ‘off’ in the offspring).

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw abuse #solitary confinement #starvation #abusive relationships #clean torture #writing victims #writing torturers #fantasy ask #Anonymous

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jernal · 6 years

Text

A Day in Inpatient Eating Disorder Treatment

It’s Monday, weekday 1/5 (unless you’re still new or untrustworthy because then you’re here all weekend too; no leave), breakfast is at 08:00 but we have to be in the lounge at 07:00 for bloodwork. I set my alarm for 06:30. I need this. My alarm starts quiet and gets louder but my brain jolts awake at the first tone; I’m so worried my roommate Miranda is growing to resent me and my alarm. I shower at night so I can get up and out quietly. I’m always tip-toeing. I’m tired though so it takes me a minute to peel myself off of my starchy hospital sheets. I didn’t sleep well because overnight every 20 minutes a nurse walks into our room with her iPhone flashlight on, shining it in our faces and whispering “checks” as if I might not know why she’s here. Sometimes I hold my eyes wide-open, staring, just to unnerve the night nurses. There were two Code-Whites last night too. Alarms and screaming. In Ottawa, the Regional Centre for the Treatment of Eating Disorders (AKA: your only option) is made up of just six beds on the locked general psych ward. Fourth floor, north wing. Code White, Four North. Code Blanc, Quatre Nord. So I get up and tip toe out of my room and into the half-lit hallway. I no longer care about how socially unacceptable it is to walk around a place full of people in my sleep clothes and bare feet. I’m wearing a purple nightgown with thin straps and a low open back; it’s cute. I walk to the nurses station and stand by the reinforced glass window waiting to be noticed by the clerk. It’s Bruno. He never fails to have a positive attitude and light sense of humour - it must not be easy to do in a place like this. He knows that I’m here to ask for my curling iron or straightener. I switch it up every morning. He waves it in front of the glass like a treat in front of a dog. I am the dog. I have no power. He means it as a joke though and I do appreciate him. I have to say please and thank you to him - he doesn’t tolerate my teenager attitude; I’m 24, but living in an environment where I have no rights and am at the mercy of a wide variety of older-adults has made my sass-control regress a bit. While I wait for Bruno there’s a man with long dreadlocks wearing a hospital gown, spinning circles and popping wheelies in a wheelchair close by. I usually avoid interacting with general psych patients but he talks to me a bit. He tells me he killed someone and he’s here until he can be assessed, then he’s probably going back to jail. He seems more sane than the majority of gen psych patients and I’ve never see him before so I talk to him till I have my curling iron. I have to return it once it’s cooled, I’m not allowed to have cords.

I sneak into our bathroom and close the door before I turn on the light. I’m really concerned with people potentially hating me, letting a stream of blinding light escape from the bathroom would make me easily hate-able. I do my hair and then sit on my bed to do my makeup. Miranda is up by now and I can turn on a light. I take time to do my makeup and my hair, I pick out an outfit and I don’t outfit-repeat for as long as possible. This seems stupid but looking like myself is the one of the few things I have control over. I will not become a sweatpant-wearing, dirty hair, slipper-footed hospital patient. I’m here for a long time and I’m going to gain weight and struggle with that - I don’t need to struggle with feeling ugly and frumpy too. I apply my usual false lashes.

It’s 06:50 now. The six of us have an unspoken arrangement when it comes to bloodwork: first come, first serve, first leave. The two smokers, Nate and Amy are usually first. We meet in one of the two lounges. There are a couple psych patients in there too. One is an old man in his hospital gown going hard on the elliptical in the corner. There’s just the one exercise machine, it’s pretty random and for some of us it’s very hard to ignore; we could risk being discharged on the spot for getting on that thing. The room otherwise has a TV encased in plexiglass on the wall, a variety of leatherish couches, chairs, some tables, two vending machines and a small shelving unit with mushy ancient puzzles and boardgames. None of them have all their pieces, that’s a guarantee. The nurse is 15 minutes late, pushing her cart in casually like we haven’t been waiting anxiously to do bloodwork and get the fuck out. I don’t mind needles. I watch. Once I’m done I head to the set of double doors of 4 North. I have to have Bruno buzz the first set unlocked, walk into the vestibule, wait for it to close behind me and have him unlock the second set. I’m going to Critical Care; it’s a huge open space with the Tim Hortons (not the Second Cup that’s closer but yuckier) and giant windows and couches. I bring a book and sit with my coffee as long as possible. I won’t be alone again all day.

I come back up at 07:55 and wait in the hall outside our special EDP kitchen. The gen psych population eats in the lounge or in their rooms. Some of them are aware that we have our own special room but not aware enough to understand why. Sometimes they yell about it. Once, a non-verbal man came in and took the glass base out of our microwave and we had to pull an alarm because our nurse had left briefly. Our nurse this morning is a bitch. I can’t put it any nicer. Her name is Brenda and we got off on the most wrongest foot ever. There’s a general belief that people with eating disorders are sneaky, manipulative liars. I fancy myself a rational adult and choosing to recover in this way was hard enough; it makes no sense to me at all that I’d voluntarily leave my job and move onto this ward just to lie and sneak around and try to lose weight and be symptomatic. She didn’t talk to me or get to know who I am before deciding I was bad. Seeing her walk down the hall, realizing she was our nurse for the 7-3 shift, makes my stomach flip. It causes me more anxiety than the meal itself. I spoke with the ward manager a few weeks ago though, Brenda apologized to me. She was wrong and treating me unfairly, for no reason evident to me. She still makes me anxious though. She’s late but she doesn’t apologize. If we’re late we’re actually punished with having to eat more at snack time. Punishing an unrelated infraction with food - now that’s logical. During Breakfast, we turn a radio on so it’s not silent. Brenda talks though - she’s famous for it. She’ll keep talking even though no one responds. She’ll keep talking even after we’re finished and waiting for her to start check-out. Breakfast is one of the worst meals in the day. In the wise words of Nate, my best friend in this hell-hole, “this meal makes no sense”, and they’ll chastise us saying meals don’t have to ‘make sense’ but having toast, a muffin with cream cheese on it, an apple and a glass of milk is a lot. But wait, cause if you’ve ordered a bran muffin with cream cheese too often (‘too often’ is completely based on the opinion of the power-tripping dietician, Shelley) you might get a bran muffin and…. a piece of plastic-wrapped, room-temperature cheddar cheese. This meal makes NO sense. So you down each piece as quick as possible because, that’s totally normal and not disordered eating, right? Yuck. When we start passing our plates to the person closest to the dish cart Brenda wraps up her latest anecdote, sighs, then turns to her side and asks the nearest one of us how their breakfast was. We have to say something positive - how this helps our recovery, (lying when necessary to come up with an acceptable response) I’m not sure. I say “I liked the muffin.”. Nate raises his eyebrows a tiny bit, tilts his head sharply and says “my omelette was the same temperature as my milk” and I stifle a laugh. He is a barista in the real world and he has a chalkboard-painted travel mug. Every day he writes something on it, every day I look forward to it. Today he’s written “Day 42: one lump, or two? “‘six’” - Shelley”. Last Friday's mug said “Day 39: to have your pancake and eat it too”.

The day is spent in groups. There’s CBT group, led by a Nurse Practitioner, Simin, who is almost like a psychologist… except not at all. There’s family and relationships groups: open-circle groups led by Stephanie, an actual psychologist who can only speak in that whispery therapeutic tone shrinks develop. These groups drive me insane because it’s completely unstructured and we might spend the hour listening to some rambly, whiney story about someone’s mom. I’m a bitch though. It helps that person to talk, but hearing about five other people’s problems doesn’t benefit me at all. I have a therapist in the real world, I want to exempt myself from these groups. There’s body image, the ONLY group led by the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient program. There’s DBT where we just watch one patient draw a chain of events and we analyze the shit out of it for an hour. There’s ‘take charge’ group led by Jodie, a social worker, where we made resumes…. (most of us are adults with jobs), There’s medical education run by Simin again, the NP, possibly the only valid group although she chooses a topic at random and it’s very basic information, I truly appreciated the group where she explained that ‘gluten-free’ diets are a bullshit trend. There’s a group led by Shelley the dietician where we learn about the food pyramid and how milk is good for you.

Lunch is at noon. 2 starches, 2 protein, 1 vegetable, 1 fat, 1 fruit, 2 dairy. Afterwards we do menu marking. We sit together and circle the meals on wide menu sheets that we’ll have for the next five days. It’s so stressful I know ahead of time to ask for a PRN. I request clonazepam. In my pre-treatment life, I used this med as a sleep aid. Now it doesn’t affect my wakefulness in the slightest. I’m so anxious it barely does anything at all. I struggle immensely writing out my future five days. Trying to do it ‘right’. Trying to pick the ‘right’ things. Trying not to forget any portions. I hand over the sheets of marked menus to Brenda or Shelley and they skim it and accept it or point out flaws. I don’t trust the acceptance anyway, Shelley might make changes later without my consent. Why bother giving us this ‘responsibility’ and ‘control’ and ‘choice’ if you’re going to make changes later without warning and our food comes up with something senseless and surprising that we’re forced to consume anyway? Mixing food & eating with a sense of insecurity and distrust. Excellent. Oh, did I mention that if we’re late to group, chewing gum etc, we might also be punished by having one menu taken away, meaning one of our days meals will be totally redone by whoever is in charge at the time. It’s no wonder that this task and these people are actually giving me bigger trust issues and general anxiety than I probably came in here with.

We also meet with the psychiatrist, Dr. Proulx, on Mondays. This is the only time we see her besides Body Image group, DBT sometimes, and Feedback (which is Tuesdays, a long table with all staff and all 6 of us) and it is the only time we see anyone on EDP staff one-on-one… and even then, Simin The NP is usually present as well. Throughout my time in program I won’t ever understand the purpose of this ‘one-on-one’ meeting besides to discuss medication. When I was admitted Dr. Proulx questioned the medication I’m on and suggested going off of it and trying something more fitting. I’m on Limotrigine, an anti-convulsant used off-label as a mood stabilizer for bipolar and schizophrenia. She didn’t know me or my history, decided it was the wrong medication, but then didn’t do anything to change it.

At 3pm, the nurses switch shifts. It’s a gamble, there are a few nurses who are true gems and a few who are new and/or unfamiliar with the psych ward. None of the nurses are specialized in eating disorders, they’re just trained nurses who happened to end up on the psych ward and then happened to end up assigned to us. Despite the clear lack of formal training or understanding, some try to psychoanalyze or offer impromptu therapy sessions. On one of my first days, a filipino nurse with broken english came in to ask me how my first shower was. I wanted to tell her it was worse than the public pool showers I remember vaguely from my childhood swimming lessons but I figured she wouldn’t get my dark sense of humour and just nod along knowingly, supportively, ahh yes, I see. But does she see? My bathroom comes equipped with two milk crates stacked sideways forming a sort of shelving unit for us to store tiny hospital towels. I have my razor hidden between a few of them, I just can’t stand having to ask for it every second day and I am not a self-harm risk. None of us are; self-harm = automatic discharge. The bathroom has a stand up shower, no shower curtain, just an open doorway beside a metal shower head protruding from the wall. Our bathroom door has no locks and our room’s door has a towel wrapped around the handles, preventing it from closing fully. My roommate has a huge problem with the lack of security and lack of privacy. She sleeps in a sleeping bag on top of her bed. The filipino nurse asked me if I had any urges and on my first day I was naive enough to not know what the hell she meant, asking nervously knowing my roommate was on her bed behind our divider curtain, certainly hearing this exchange, and the nurse clarified by miming cutting her wrists. Yep, definitely not a mental health professional. At 3pm I’m overjoyed to see our nurse is Barb. Colleen is a close second best-case-scenario, a warm, smiley woman with a kind voice and a motherly demeanour. Barb is funny and also very kind. She holds one of us back at random after dinner to check-in and unlike every other nurses attempts at therapeutic conversations, I do enjoy chatting with Barb. She believes me when I tell her I didn’t mean to cut my meat up into ‘too-small’ pieces, she believes me when I tell her that’s not an ED behaviour I have. She believes me when I say I know what I’m doing here, what I mean to accomplish, what my goal is; I mean to spend my 8 weeks (that’s the max, I had decided right away) eating well-rounded meals and gaining some weight. I know I’m sick, I know I have an eating disorder and I know I’m doing serious damage to myself, she hears me when I say this. She believes me, and more importantly, she respects my decision, when I tell her I’m not looking to work on issues relating to past relationships, family, self. I’ve worked with half a dozen therapists by now, I know that 8 weeks in an artificial environment made up of 90% group therapy sessions is not the place for me to open up about any and all issues, I know it won’t help and could actually hurt. Barb hears me and believes me. I respect her for respecting me and treating me like a rational adult. Dr. Proulx tells me that anorexia is not rational, therefore I am not rational. It’s like she doesn’t think that eating disorders are mental illnesses, and I can be level-headed and rational about any other area of my life. I feel distrust and scrutiny from almost every direction. I’m a perfectionist and feeling like I am failing constantly is extremely distressing. Not feeling approval from those in charge of my care and recovery is really hard for me.

Dinner with Barb is nice though, and often times meals are ok. The food isn’t all terrible. I did make a dire mistake of selecting a ‘salisbury steak’ not actually knowing what it was but knowing what steak was and knowing I was in The Red Meat Club (low iron) so I didn’t have a lot of choice anyway. Salisbury steak, the hospital kind at least, is something I don’t ever wanna see or smell .. or taste.. again. Imagine how hard it was finding a positive to share with the group after that surprise. I also tried my very first Shawarma here in the EDP kitchen. It was pretty good. We’re a bit lucky because EDP gets extra menu options and they’re good ones like Stir Fry of the Day, different sometimes but good almost always. Barb is nice but she’s just as strict as the rest of the team, things can still go bad real quick - like someone throwing a pudding cup across the table, scattering silverware and cups everywhere. I leave the kitchen when Barb said “ok you all can go except….” and she chooses someone she’s been wanting to chat with, hasn’t seen around much, etc. It’s not me today.

What’s difficult about the routine after dinner is that unless it’s the one day a week where we have our glorified arts and crafts group (therapeutic creative expression?) we have 2+ hours to kill. We have visitors or we hang out or just hide behind our curtains watching Netflix on our laptops. If we have arts and crafts, whichever nurse happens to be on shift that night picks an activity at random, I think they must google it 20 minutes prior, and we’re expected to do the activity as if it’s crucial to our progress and recovery. The only example I can even think of is when Brenda told us to “draw what having a life looks like” and in her better-than-thee way, left it at that. So poetic and profound and intentional. I basically regressed back to my oppositional high school self, took her directions exactly literally and sketched a perfect anatomical fetus in utero. That’s what it looks like when someone “has a life” inside them. Everyone else did what I knew she wanted; smiley faces and playing outside and friends and family and food and stuff. No. I’m an artist. I won’t conform.

Since dinner is at 5pm, night snack feels miles away at 8pm and that’s great except then we’ve eaten (sometimes several things) so late before bed it makes relaxing enough to sleep really difficult. I have graduated to a meal plan where even at snacks I have to consume what feels (to my body) like a LOT of food. Because I’m still not gaining weight as fast as they think I should be, I’ve had an Ensure Plus Calories added to my meal plan. I have a Chocolate Ensure Plus Calories with a pack of 4 two-bite brownies. At 8:00pm, after a solid dinner and a solid day of solid meals. I regret immensely choosing this too-chocolatey snack combo. No point wishing it wasn’t so, I sit down with my things. We all scan across the table to see what everyone else has. No one is jealous of me. We came in on our own and are waiting for Barb but she’s actually taking her dinner so Nurse Will comes in. Nurse Will is a hottie, or at least.. the hottie. There aren’t a lot to choose from (although, pro-tip: set your Tinder location settings to as narrow as possible and you’ll pick up a lot of nurses and doctors in here). Nurse Will has helped out with EDP nurses on occasion but never on snack with us. He seems a little uncomfortable, not sure what routine we follow. I open my brownie packet and discover there are 5 and not 4. I panic. I look around wildly trying to catch someone’s attention. Amy sees me first, sigh of relief, Mom might help me. My voice cracks and I tell Will there’s an extra brownie it’s only supposed to be 4. I know this is not an anorexia thing, but I know normal people would be delighted by an extra brownie, but normal people don’t also have to down the 400 calories of chocolate ensure I do. I’m already challenging myself so much and oh jesus god if he makes me eat the 5th one that I was never supposed to have I’ll throw a proper fit. I’ll get myself discharged. But he makes one joke about how ‘oh I guess you have to eat it!” but my look of terror had him quiet down and say it’s all good if they say so? Confirmation from my team that it’s ok if I don’t eat the 5th brownie. We do that too, sometimes someone has an issue and the team weighs in and says well I had that food too so it’s ok for you to, or maybe hmmm that is a lot of rice if you’re not ‘challenging’ this meal. My life was in their hands but they unanimously agreed that 4 is the normal in those bags. Safe. Well, still very full of heavy, rich, chocolatey calories. Camille gives me a shy smile and thumbs up from across the table. I remember the first time she did this to me, my first day here and I was pushed into lunch with 5 people I didn’t know, a room I’d never been in, a sandwich I didn’t like. And I cried. And cried and cried. Quietly as possible, because surely the other 5 people were uncomfortable. But I looked up and Camille was waiting for me to look up, her hand clenched in a thumbs-up of encouragement. I wanted to cry and run away and I was so embarrassed and this stranger was being more kind than she needed to be.

After snack I jump in the shower. As quickly as human possible because as I’ve mentioned, our shower is drafty, the shower head is such a little nub on the wall that you have to press your back flush with the cringey tiles to be under the shower head’s spray zone. I don’t stop thinking about what I’d do if the bathroom door suddenly flew open. After, I dry off using 3 scratchy little hospital towels and walk down the hall to drop em in a laundry bin. I grab new ones cause I need to rebury my razor in them. My MacBook and it’s charger are under my mattress.

At night I usually hang out with Nate. We might go down so he can smoke and for my last dose of fresh air for the night. Back on the ward, we sit up on the counter outside my room and watch the nightly traffic go by. We read IKEA catalogues, make up backstories for patients. We watch this NBA sized guy pacing slowly, dragging his catatonic feet but managing to have feverish conversations with the people in his head. Otherwise, the hallway traffic tour slows and we have some quiet. We sit in the lounge watching the other nurses all doing checks together and chatting. Eventually Nurse Jillian will firmly encourage us to go to our rooms. It’s probably 1am but I’ll be up at 6:30am and tip toe out of bed to start this all over again.

Except tomorrow is Tuesday, We’ll have Feedback at a round table with the whole EDP staff, all 6 of us, and go round the table one-by-one one staff delivering the feedback of all to the one patient. Feedback is maybe more stressful than Menu Marking but not usually for me. I go into Feedback having faith that these professionals discussed and shared their thoughts, that I can’t get bad feedback because I’ve done nothing but try to do everything right. Feedback can change everything for some… not for me….. until the time that it does.

But that’s another Day in Inpatient Eating Disorders Treatment. A Tuesday

#words #edp #anorexia #eatingdisorder #inpatient #ed inpatient #ed treatment

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billokekeeducatinginart · 6 years

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Memory Write Up

1) In the first session we were introduced to how the human brain remembers stuff and learn.

Firstly we were introduced to the several of types an individual learns which are: visual, auditory, verbal, physical and logical.

After it we were given some words in an order, which we had to try and memorize which were:

Apple Tree

Lion

Mouse

Car

Crown

King

And some others I do not remember.

Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.

To improve learning you could do it in 10 different ways:

· Focus on the relevance of what you’re learning

· Take time to reflect and self-explain

· Use a variety of learning data

· Change things up as often as possible

· Identify any gaps in your knowledge

· Establish clear learning goals

· Practice generalising

· Make your learning social

· Use analogies and metaphors

· Find daily opportunities to apply what you’ve learned

Also to improve your memory you can, give your brain a workout memory requires to use it or lose it.

1. Don't skip the physical exercise

2. Get sleep

3. Make time for friends

4. Keep stress in check

5. Have a laugh

6. Eat a brain-boosting diet

7. Identify and treat health problems

8. Take practical steps to support learning and memory

2) Studies on the brain:

Memory has been the subject of investigation among many 20th Century psychologists and remains an active area of study for today’s cognitive scientist.

The Theory of memory known as the multistore model was proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968. This model suggested that information exists in one of 3 states of memory: the sensory, short term and long term storage Information passes from one stage to the next the more we rehearse it in our minds, but can fade away if we do not pay enough attention to it.

Information enters the memory from the senses - for instance, the eyes observe a picture, olfactory receptors in the nose might smell coffee or we might hear a piece of music. This stream of information is held in the sensory memory storage and because it consists of a huge amount of data describing our surroundings, we only need to remember a small portion of it. As a result, most sensory information decays and is forgotten after a short period of time. A sight or sound that we might find interesting captures our attention, and our contemplation of this information - known as rehearsal - leads to the data being promoted to the short memory storage, where it will be held for a few hours or even days in case we need access to it.

The short-term memory gives us access to information that is salient to our current situation, but is limited in its capacity.

Some information regarding people that we have met, important life events and other important facts makes it through the sensory and short-term memory stores to reach the long term memory.

Memory in Genders

In general, males are better at spatial tasks involving mental rotation, but females have superior verbal skills.

Males are far more likely to pursue math or science careers.

Gender differences in math are not consistent across nations or ages.

A number of imaging studies have demonstrated that the brains of males and females show different patterns of activity on various tasks.

Nicotine has been shown to differentially alter men's and women's brain activity patterns so that the differences disappear.

Both oestrogen and testosterone have been shown to affect cognitive function.

Training has been shown to bring parity to differences in cognitive performance between the sexes.

Age also alters the differences between men and women.

A lot of studies in recent years have demonstrated that oestrogen is an important player in women's cognition. Spatial ability in particular seems vulnerable to hormonal effects.

This studies go on unto different fields of study such as memory in animals and children.

Researchers are finding exciting new evidence to suggest that men and women don't simply appear different, they're actually wired differently, too. Researchers are quick to point out that there is no calculable research to suggest that one gender is more intelligent than another.

However, there are some structural differences that may explain why men are generally better at remembering driving directions and women are generally better at remembering emotional events like anniversaries and weddings.

In kids brains when children learn and remember things they experienced as babies or toddlers, such as the alphabet song, this knowledge is considered “implicit” memory. The average age of the first “explicit “memory that can be recalled by an adult is not until about three and half years old, on average. An episodic memory plays out in the mind like a story. The preverbal diaper years that precede the first episodic memory are usually lost somewhere in the ether, a phenomenon referred to as “infantile” or “childhood amnesia.” Experts agree that older children and adults don’t typically retain memories from this period because the memories were made before language was a big part of their lives.

Mainly in kids before the age of 7 they experience a strange phenomenon known as childhood amnesia. Kids can remember events before the age of 3 when they’re small, but by the time they’re a bit older, those early autobiographical memories are lost. New research has put the starting point for amnesia at age 7.

From a site I found out that: (Over the next 6 years, different groups of children came back at age 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 to the lab and were questioned by the scientists on the events that happened when they were 3. Since the researchers knew the details of the events, they were able to probe exactly how much the kids remembered -- and how they spoke about the memories.

The result? If the kids were between 5 and 7 at time of second interview, they remembered over 60% of events, Bauer tells Kinder Lab. But the children who were 8 and 9 remembered 40% or fewer of the events, and they had begun to talk about their memories in a different way.

“We think that it has to do with basic biological processes, as neural structures undergo a lot of postnatal development,” says Bauer. “Early in development those structures are working, but not very efficiently -- children are forming memories, but through natural processes those are fading and becoming inaccessible. By the time you reach adulthood, those memories are working very effectively.”)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617702001622

https://classroom.synonym.com/difference-between-boys-girls-memory-5244222.html

https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/kinderlab/birth-memory-why-kids-forget-what-happened-age-7#page-2

https://www.todaysparent.com/toddler/toddlers-memory/

Different Style of learning and teaching

The problem between teaching and students learning is that each teacher has a particular style and so do most students.

The problem is that teachers and students don’t always match.

You may notice that children learn differently than you do causing you to question why they’re not as interested or not “catching on” the same way you did at their age.

Also people wonder why some teachers were “better” teachers than others or why you liked a certain subject over another.

These are actually very important information to know. Educational science has studied these questions for years and has determined that when some individuals struggle with learning it may be entirely a question of how they are being taught.

People now a days have different learning styles and different ways to learn that why some teachers used variety of teaching methods as everyone is different for example some use visual learning methods such as images, pictures, and spatial understanding.

Whilst others use learning styles such as Aural, Verbal, Physical, Logical, Social and Solitary.

https://www.time4learning.com/learning-styles.shtml

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fightingmama-blog · 6 years

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This is long. Please read it. This is a story of The System and how it fails kids. More than that, it’s a story of how people within The System are complicit in this failure. All year I’ve been saying it feels like I’m living a British sitcom because this stuff is just too crazy to all happen to one person at one time. Everything I’ve written is true. I have permission from my daughter to share it, but I want to do so anonymously. Please share this far and wide. I want the world to know how stupidly difficult it is to simply live when your brain is trying to kill you.

My daughter is 15 and has been struggling with severe depression and anxiety for the past year – well, for longer than that, but with suicide attempts and hospitalizations in this year.

None of this is or has been secret, but it’s hard to talk about, to make oneself vulnerable. Mental illness is difficult enough to talk about without also feeling like a failure as a mother (regardless of whether that is logical or not). I have learned this year, though, that all of this is a lot more common than I ever thought.

I think the worst thing a parent can face is the idea that the child they created doesn’t wish to have been created at all. The scariest thing I live with is the idea that I might wake up one morning to find her body.

I first learned of the suicidal ideation (SI) last November. Immediately I went to her school for help because not long before we had had a meeting to support her anxieties and I was told they could help in these cases. They did nothing for a full month, despite me calling weekly to check in.

She eventually began receiving therapy at a place called Nueva Vista (NV), but not until the end of January. Her first psychiatrist appointment was not until nearly a month later and she wound up not making it because of her first hospitalization. The doctors in the hospital started her on meds, though. I could not get another appointment with the NV psychiatrist for almost another month and she wound up missing that one, too, for the same reason. At this point I demanded that they see her sooner and they made it happen.

Before, I never really understood the need to pull a child out of school for a doctor’s appointment, but now she’s been pulled out on a regular basis. Sigh.

She was hospitalized once more in April, this time due to a reaction to a new medication they had tried.

A few weeks later we were told that NV provides services in sets of 13 weeks. She was at the end of her first one, and they were applying for a second, but that she would likely not receive a third. I was a little upset because we hadn’t been made aware of any of this at the beginning of our time there. But they promised us a number of things:

1. That they would prepare her for the end of services.

2. That they would help us find services to transfer into.

3. Worst case scenario, they could end services, we could wait three weeks and reapply.

In May we had an IEP finalized for her to help her with this at school. For those who don’t know (lucky), an IEP is a legal document for special education written to provide services, support, and accommodations for a disability. Her IEP stated, among other things, that she would get a therapist at school. The school wanted to write in 730 minutes per year, but my advocate (a very close friend who is a special ed teacher) would not settle for that, knowing that it wasn’t specific enough. Schools are notorious for not writing IEP’s properly and not following them when they do. There is a whole branch of law devoted to suing schools who do not provide accommodations to their students. Anyhow, my friend insisted that my daughter’s IEP state the therapy be provided at least every other week. This turns out to have been a necessary thing, because they did not actually hook her up with a therapist for 3 months.

And then that first therapist? She told my daughter, “If you cry all the time, how do you expect to have friends?”

Other fun things her teachers, school staff, or even her IEP case carrier have said to her, KNOWING her IEP is for depression/anxiety:

-You look too sad all the time. Why don’t you look happier?

-You made me feel like I did something wrong.

-Well, if you don’t talk to me, how do you expect me to help you? (This one in the middle of a panic attack.)

To jump ahead for a moment, because it will just be easier to get all the IEP stuff out of the way, I requested an IEP meeting at the end of August to revise the IEP and, while they held the initial IEP (and I refused to sign it because it wasn’t complete yet), they have STILL not finished it.

During May and June I was dealing with my son’s (12 yo) extreme anxiety. He had entirely lost the ability to participate in school, partly due to a new curriculum, but, I think, largely out of the anxiety he felt over his sister’s health. In trying to find him therapy of his own, he was given an eval at a place called Motiva, but they felt he was too severe for their services and they referred him to NV. THAT was a whole damn mess. They didn’t want him and they gave me a whole host of excuses:

1. He can’t be seen there until autism isn’t his first diagnosis (yeah, that will never happen).

2. He can’t be seen there without a diagnosis (first of all, the referral from Motiva listed a diagnosis, secondly, my daughter didn’t have a diagnosis until they gave her one AFTER she was being seen there).

3. Why couldn’t Motiva just see him, anyway? (Because they don’t do family/group therapy or have access to a psychiatrist)

Eventually, Motiva convinced them to take him, but I don’t feel like their heart is in it. I really don’t. He hasn’t been referred to the psych, and they are already talking about ending his services at the 13 week mark despite the fact that it took them 8 weeks just to get him to talk to them at all.

NV is considered a medium-high severity mental health clinic. I don’t see how a child being hospitalized three times in three months isn’t considered severe. I don’t see how a child being unwilling to consider talking to a therapist at all for 8 weeks isn’t considered severe.

And yet, one day towards the end of summer, my daughter’s therapist told her she had one visit left. I had assumed that they would TRY to get her the third set of sessions, but they didn’t even TRY. They also had not:

1. Prepared her for the end of services.

2. Helped us to find care to transition into.

I demanded to speak with the director of the place. This was a terrible idea. The director, Bill Simpson, is a terrible human being. You would think that a director of a mental health clinic would understand how to speak to people, particularly those in crisis. You would be wrong.

During this conversation, he told me that the reason they could not apply for a third set of sessions is because the county would never approve such a thing unless the child had been hospitalized in the previous two weeks. I mean. That sounds like a thing that might be true, but it also sounds like a thing that a doctor could potentially make a case for more care for a child in a particularly special place (i.e. one who had been hospitalized three times in the past year, and who was not stable on her meds even after more than six months of trying to figure out the right meds for her). And yet he told me (and he repeated it several times), “absolutely I would refuse to help your child.” He claimed that if he even submitted one request for a third set of weeks without the right criteria, the county would refuse to approve any requests ever. That? I have a hard time believing. And even if it were 100% true, I am certain he could have found a kinder way to convey that information.

When I tried to convey the promises I had been made by the staff 13 weeks ago, he brushed me off, saying that he couldn’t believe everything everyone says they are told. It felt a little gaslighty.

He also told me there is no such thing as long-term therapy. Did I already mention gaslighting? Cause that statement right there is the king of crazy.

I am not even kidding you when, at a later date, I asked how to complain about the way he treated me and I was directed to their in-house comment cards instead of the proper county forms that the office doesn’t have access to. I’d love to believe that was a simple mistake.

Every time I try to discuss these things with the staff in the office, they nod at me and say, “I’m sorry you felt that way.” But it is so clearly empty. They don’t actually care, or perhaps they do, but cannot act in any way helpful because of the way the director runs the place. I don’t know. In the end it’s irrelevant because it is simply not helpful. I don’t feel heard and when I try to explain that they are able to say, “Well, I apologized. What more do you want?” It is a very crafty way to dismiss a person.

I am getting quite good at spotting this sort of manipulation, though, and I refuse to play along. My tactics tend to be reminding them what they said two minutes ago, comparing that with the opposite thing they are telling me now, listing all the conflicting things they have told me during the conversation, and listing all the evidence I have from previous experiences. I am never loud, I am never rude, I never curse or insult. I simply state truths. I am always treated as hostile.

We tried to find a new therapist for her. We spoke with a place called YES through San Ysidro Health Center and the woman who did the intake was so kind. She told us that they had plenty of kids who’d been patients there for years and that I should come in and talk with her and she’d take care of my daughter. It felt so good to be heard, and to hear the promise that someone would help us.

They did not help us. They contacted NV who told them that my daughter had “met all her goals” and so they were not able to serve her at YES either. They said they could refer to the general San Ysidro Health Center, but I know (because that is the clinic where my doctor is) that their therapy is not traditional therapy. They only offer 30 minute sessions and most of the work is done at home, alone. That is not nearly the kind of care my kid needs right now.

So around this time, my daughter’s psychiatrist was still adjusting her meds so they could not fully close out her case at NV. She continued meeting with her therapist, but just for 20 minute check-ins instead of the full appointment. She had been on Lexapro since April and it was working well, but not well enough. So we tried Wellbutrin in August. It was a kind of a gamble, as anyone experienced with Wellbutrin knows, but it seemed to be a miracle drug for my kid. She was almost normal for the first time in more than a year! But that only lasted two months. The psych had tried raising it, and then raising it once more.

We saw the doctor one last time the week after they raised it a second time. Here is where things get really upsetting. My daughter had never been stable on meds. She is proving extremely difficult to treat. The longest period of stability were those first two months on Wellbutrin. The doctor’s nurse had found us a new psychiatrist, but the waiting list to see them was three months long. I kept trying to explain how the math doesn’t add up: three months without psychiatry for a kid who’s never been stable more than two months is not good math. Further, we kept telling the doctor, the case manager, the nurse, and the therapist that her SI was increasing and that she was feeling worse and worse. The therapist kept responding by saying, “Yes, but you have coping skills now!” They would not listen when my daughter would try to explain that coping skills can only do so much when your brain is trying to kill you.

The very day she had her last appointment with the psychiatrist, I had to take her in to the ESU. The Emergency Screening Unit is a pace you can take a kid in crisis and have them screened 24 hours a day by a nurse. This is one way to be admitted to a mental health hospital unit, and my daughter had been in the ESU twice already so we were familiar with the process. They kept her overnight, but then they released her, stating that she should continue the services she already had. When I tried to explain that she didn’t really have services, she only had one exit session left, they looked at me blankly and either told me that NV would help her find services (they wouldn’t and didn’t – not for therapy, anyway) or they just repeated the last thing they said before I confused them with things that are happening to us. I mean, believe me, I am also confused. But not helping is, it turns out, not helping.

Luckily (?) because my kid had been officially suicidal again (it’s not real unless a doctor outside of NV had been told?) they were able to extend her therapy for the third set of 13 weeks.

But not the psychiatry. Honestly, I don’t know why.

JUST before we found this out, though, my daughter flipped out one day and had to be taken in again.

It was a good day. She’d had a good day, and a good evening, and she seemed fine in the night, too. I was tired and trying to talk her into going to bed. She cheerfully, and entirely unsleepily told me she would. And then I heard music. And then she was getting up and going into the bathroom. I knew she wasn’t going to bed, but I had no idea she was in her room self-harming and trying to commit suicide. (For the record, all the medication and sharp things are locked up.) I was trying to just let her be a kid, but finally something in me took over and forced her to answer me as to what she was doing. And she fell apart and started crying. So I knew I had to take her in, but she told me, “What if my brain makes me run away from you outside?” and I knew that she was telling me she didn’t feel safe enough for me to drive her myself.

Do you know what happens if you cannot drive your own kid to the ESU? You call the police and they take her away in handcuffs. It’s traumatizing for everyone involved. Luckily, we DID know that is what would happen so we weren’t blindsided by it. But it was still awful.

I followed them to the ESU and it turned out to be a very, very late night. I wound up falling asleep on a couch there and they woke me at 3am to talk with the doctor about admitting her. I believed she would be hospitalized. I didn’t expect what actually did happen, though.

There is a place at the same facility that ESU is at. It’s called Intensive Respite Program (IPR) and it’s not quite a hospital in that the kids there have more freedom. They can have some belongings, they can have visitors at any time, they can even leave for awhile. We got to have her home with us for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful. It is very small – three kids max and each get their own room. They spend all day doing work from therapy to DBT to sensory experiences (they have a whole room devoted to sensory stuff). It’s really a beautiful program.

But my favorite part is the people. The director, Hillary, is amazing. The therapist there is, too. They have reacted appropriately to our story. That is to say that they are appalled. They have made the decision to keep my daughter there until her services on the outside are in place (about another week). They have given me the number to a special ed lawyer to help me prepare to talk to the school. They are coming with us to the school. They have already met with us and our wrap team (a program called Families Forward). I am so grateful to them.

I don’t know where this will lead. Maybe we will get dumped again. I mean, why not?

But I don’t think so. They’ve already shown us they are with us.

But here’s the thing. Repeatedly I have had to check on people, to make sure they are doing their jobs, to ask them to do their jobs. It’s ridiculous. I’m a single mom. I’m quite poor right now. I’m a full time student. I have TWO kids with special needs. I have no family support. I have enough to do without doing the work other people are paid to do.

I have been praised multiple times by various sources (some genuine and some probably less so) for my advocacy for my children. But that only goes so far. When you face one brick wall after another there’s not a lot you can do.

I don’t know if this happened (is happening) to us because we are poor, or because this is mental illness we are dealing with (would a physical illness get the same treatment? to the same degree?), or if it’s just the way things are for everyone, but it’s not acceptable. We MUST stand up for healthcare, for mental health, for children. This is just not okay. It nearly broke me, and may still do so. Please. Someone. Fix the system.

#mental health #suicidal ideation #teen mental health #hospitalization #medication #therapy #psychiatry #IEP #special ed #san diego #nueva vista #ESU #the system #the system is broken #fix it

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moonbittern · 6 years

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im exhausted and have been dealing with sensory overload all day so it seems like a great time to make an unnecessarily long-winded post about gallifreyans + language

(before we start i want to clarify that i largely operate on my own sense of canon so this is going to be part actual canon, part ignoring canon, and part making shit up) (but largely the latter)

doctor who likes to do the “one language per species/planet” thing, which is a very common scifi pitfall but it’s wrong and im against it. if you’re going to pull out any sort of “one culture/language/etc per species/planet” thing and there’s more than 10 people in your species/on your planet - well, first of all, you’re wrong, but second of all there is going to be a story behind why things are so lacking in diversity, and it’s not going to be a good one.

now, honestly, gallifrey is a better fit for the above than most scifi planets, if only because rassilon is The Worst and gallifreyan society is pretty strictly controlled. it’s easy to imagine that there is, at the very least, one Proper Gallifreyan Language with some other Less Acceptable Gallifreyan Languages that the prescriptivists all turn their noses up at, and that the end result is very little in the way of linguistic diversity.

HOWEVER.

i would like to suggest the exact opposite - that gallifrey is extremely linguistically diverse. like, ridiculously. like, how in the world can you even sustain that language:people ratio.

(honestly, i only really thought of this bc it gives me the opportunity to come up with a lot of fun language headcanons and to make a lot of conlangs, but i think my explanation makes sense, and everything’s more enjoyable for me this way and do i need an excuse?)

i’ve seen people interpret the 1-2 comments the doctor makes about language as them not being fluent in very many and largely relying on the tardis translation circuits to get around, but given that we’ve heard them speaking languages that are just as alien to them as they are to us, i prefer to think that the doctor is legitimately fluent in a ton of languages and that they have some amount of control over what languages onlookers hear them speak via the translation circuits. nine made a comment about knowing billions of languages, which is almost certainly an exaggeration but still evens out to “a fuckton”, and im willing to take them at their word.

my point being is that even if you gave a human being centuries with which to do nothing but study languages, they wouldn’t be able to achieve fluency in that many (even if we’re assuming said human being was cognitively wired in a way that was compatible with those languages, which isn’t a guarantee but, you know, scifi) and obviously the doctor does a lot more with their time than learn languages. i tend to think the doctor is naturally good at languages, but being good with languages doesn’t bridge that sort of gap, and imo the logical conclusion is that gallifreyans are extremely quick to take up new languages and on top of that likely never lose their language-learning sweet spot (humans lose this...well, it’s complicated, but it’s around the age of 7, which is why it can be so hard to learn new languages as an adult).

so, then, how might that affect linguistic diversity? imo it’s likely to sort of trickle down into rapid linguistic evolution (well, maybe just relatively rapid, but still), and while there are theoretically ways they could force standardization, i ask: would they want to?

the destruction of minority/marginalized languages - intentionally or otherwise - is a distressingly common occurrence here on earth. but we’re a species that loses its ability to acquire native fluency in new languages after our first decade of being alive and struggle to acquire any sort of fluency in the less than a century we have to live after that. if we take everything i’ve said until now to be true, gallifreyans - with an average lifespan up to at least several centuries if not several thousands of years, depending on your feelings about who can regenerate etc - can easily acquire fluency (possibly even native fluency, if their brains don’t distinguish between the first language they learn and the ones that follow) throughout their entire lifespan. which, again, may make their languages evolve and differentiate quickly, as presumably it makes basic things like picking up new words and phrases easier as well. it also means that high linguistic diversity doesn’t create many communication barriers, bc you probably speak every language you need anyway, no matter how many that is.

(not as many as the doctor, bc the doctor’s a deviant who willingly associates with aliens; but still)

so we’ve got a situation where the chapters are almost certainly divided by language. socioeconomic classes are likely divided by language, at least to a point. individual houses may cluster into language groups, and likely have their own dialects. you probably have a distinct idiolect that you only use around close friends/housemates/family - bc said idiolect would have developed around them, so they’ve had the chance to learn it. there’s a lingua franca (or two, or three, or ten) used for inter-chapter and inter-class (and possibly inter-house) communication. you speak A Lot of languages and all of them are gallifreyan and they exert a lot of influence on each other, but you’re also very aware of what languages are appropriate to use with what people.

which brings me to my next point: gallifrey is kind of awful and very much a dystopia, and not trying to actively stamp out certain languages doesn’t mean certain languages aren’t looked down upon or that language isn’t used as a tool of oppression.

the first point is familiar to us and probably speaks for itself. aristocratic prydonians probably think the languages that are associated with cerulean shobogans are awful and ugly and inferior, and so on.

the second point i think deserves a bit more discussion. gallifreyans are big on education, but there are limits to who gets what sort of education, and even if you acquire languages easily, you can still be denied access to learning those languages.

i imagine the higher up you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more languages you have the opportunity to learn. depending on who you are and what sort of job you’re planning on getting there may be some languages lower down on the ladder that you need to learn, but honestly a lot of people probably don’t bother; classism runs deep, and you always have the cross-class lingua francas. you do probably learn languages at your level that are spoken in other chapters, just in case, but obviously your chapter’s languages are the best (plus those handy lingua francas!) so again, why bother speaking the others much?

what you are not allowed to do is learn languages that fall above you on the social ladder. im sure some people get past that restriction, but for the most part it doesn’t happen, and there is oh so much that can be done with that. people can have snide conversations in your presence that you can’t prove have anything to do with you; certain educational materials/scientific journals/etc are written in languages you’re unfamiliar with, therefore effectively blocking you from learning about subjects considered above your station; you may not be able to read signage in certain areas; the possibilities are endless and if you’re thinking that any of that sounds suspiciously similar to real-life things that happen on earth, well, you’re not wrong.

(a lot of the above probably also applies to writing systems and there’s also probably unique things to say about that but honestly im not super knowledgeable about scripts and im tired so i will leave it at that)

(could also probably make a whole ‘nother post about how gallifreyan society handles aphasia (i.e. not well) but again, tired and not my area of expertise)

language, guys. language.

#i didn't bother proofreading this im just throwing this out there #i hope at least some of this makes sense bc this is My Jam #dw tag #gallifreyan languages

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