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that's really exactly it.

as someone who could very easily qualify for a diagnosis of bpd or cptsd, and even very often resonates with both, everything described in bpd is just a demonization of the same patterns of behaviour described by cptsd. it is just describing you as evil for struggling with being hurt so much, and in doing so, takes the focus away from the person hurting and puts it onto how it inconveniences everyone else.

we really need to be critical of how these labels come to be, because they are deliberately created, and they are created by people with biases. they are so often just a tool of oppression, another extension of a discriminatory machine.

I hope it isn't derailing, but I think this is also really illustrated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. "narcissist" was a word for an asshole before it was a word for a disorder. rather than describing how someone might struggle to relate to others or be open to true connection, and centering the person who needs to heal, they instead called everyone who struggles with that an irredeemable dick and dressed it up in medical expertise so you wouldn't think to question it. frankly I think it's silly to call for treating "narcissist" like some sacred medical term instead of looking at how fucked up it is that they called a disorder that???

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK sorry i couldn’t hear you over the sound of me putting a fictional man in a slutty apron and calling him mommy. sorry. i was too busy hand-feeding him strawberries and then writing 12k of emotional devastation and domestic porn. sorry i gendered him like a little fucked up doll in a victorian nursery.

YES. HE’S A WOMAN TO ME. HE’S A HOUSEWIFE. HE’S A HIGH-FEM BRAT. HE’S A PRETTY LITTLE THING WHO GETS RAWED IN THE MOONLIGHT AND MAKES SOFT WHIMPERS AND BAKES BREAD TO COPE. AND I DO NOT CARE IF IT MAKES SENSE.

HE IS MADE OF TROPES. HE IS MADE OF VIBES. HE IS MADE OF GLITTER AND TEARS AND POST-WAR PTSD. HE IS WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT. HE IS NOT A MAN. HE IS NOT A WOMAN. HE IS A TRAGEDY IN LACE.

you’re talking about “misogyny” like i didn’t just write a fic where he gets folded in half by a feral beast of a love interest and then cries because he’s “too used to not being touched gently.” BABE. THERE IS NO DIGNITY HERE. ONLY CATHARSIS.

your academic thinkpiece cannot survive the heat of my horny little monkey brain. you want to talk about gender roles?? I WANT TO PUT HIM IN A COLLAR. I WANT TO GIVE HIM A GENDERCRISIS VIA DICK. I WANT TO MAKE HIM THE MAID AND THE MUSE AND THE MADONNA.

and also? sometimes i call him a manwhore for getting railed twice in one chapter and still being emotionally unavailable. because HE DESERVES IT. because I SAID SO. because it’s FUNNY and UNHINGED and that’s the POINT.

another thing i tend to think about with this. i also just think in chapter 5 there's a theme of care and dependency. the flowers have extreme guilt over being taken care of by asgore. flowery conceptualizes himself as weak and useless. in the dark world, his fantasy, he tries to return the care given to him to asgore to "make up for" asgore taking care of him when he should've died decades ago. it's an extreme example, but i also resonate with his feeling.

when your body or mind puts you in a situation where your reliance on other people becomes really explicit, you're trained by the world to see that as shameful or to see yourself as deficient. your efforts to ignore your needs just to avoid "being a burden," will leave you worse off. you punish yourself because of deeply internalized ableism.

regardless, even by virtue of being a living thing on this planet, you are already designed to need others. you have to listen to your body's needs even against a society that teaches you you shouldn't. you have to be okay with the fact that you have needs. sometimes your needs are different or are greater than the person next to you, and all you can do is listen to your body and turn to others when you need them. you're still a person when you need people.

when toby says this:

it's interesting to me how much he uses the language of deltarune to express this feeling. your hopes and dreams slipping away, and bitterness growing is literally the explanation we get for shadow crystals (and so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. it looked like glass). this is also the crushing feeling when you lose a sense of control when you're in pain, when you can't do things the way you want, the way you used to. but when you find yourself still able to fly, you do so because you've adapted. you've listened to your body. you've learned that listening to your body means changing the pace, letting yourself be cared for, letting yourself be helped.