#...i..need to not get upset... it's okay...

but you weren't raised in a safe house. like generational wealth, it just skipped you. neither of your parents really know how to apologize or to talk to you with peace in their hearts. at sixteen, just once, you'd written down a little speech and tried to give it to your mom: hey i don't like it when you comment about my body and she'd given you this strange look, almost alien, and you'd felt stupid and small, then. and your father? fuck no. many years later you'd describe it to your therapist: in my house we just pretended like nothing had happened. like, overnight: all the pain was gone.

and since you weren't raised right, you struggled in school, too, didn't you. you struggled making friends because the architecture of appropriate behavior blindsided you. you weren't cruel - but you obviously seemed off to the other kids, strange in a way that was somehow always abrasive. and in that state - unhappy at home, unhappy during the school day - you would have given anything to have been loved. any person and any context.

so it's fine when your friend is a little pushy or mean or controlling. sure, she keeps you up late with threats of suicide but tells you never to call an ambulance. sure, he constantly pressures you for sex. sure, they are overly clingy one day just to disappear the next. all of them are still your friend, which is new. you don't understand this idea on the internet that you could just "cut people out" if they don't "serve" you. if you cut out the people in your life who take from you; you would have nothing and no one. maybe the people who can exile others just have more to choose from. maybe they had good parents. maybe they just have had an easier life, and have never needed someone.

not that you need people (you do. it makes you sick how badly you need people to like you), you rarely ask for more, don't you. so when you finally get into a relationship - well; now you're really chosen. and what's more, they make you feel wanted. even if it's just for a fraction of a second, you get to say: this is my person. holy shit.

nobody is perfect. hell, you're not perfect either. and how many times do you hear the words relationships take work. it's work but it's worth it. your hands shaking on the steering wheel. you have tried podcasts and audiobooks and self-healing and (in utter desperation) even a chatbot (it was a bad night. inside of the yelling, you'd thought: this is just the normal shape of my life). and the thing is that you want to give people grace. you want them to feel like you don't take everything personally. maybe that's why you're terrified to set a boundary.

and everywhere the positivity like an earthquake at your feet. all of this should feel like healing! you should practice gratitude! repair will feel good, right? it will feel good, eventually. the problem is probably you, actually: maybe you are just bad at it. you need to control your emotions more, you're always lashing out at the wrong things. some part of you is still sixteen, writing a dramatic letter to your mother. some part of you is still hiding from your father.

it must be like how they name mascara better than sex, then. repair is something you can buy lessons for; it is likely that repair doesn't really feel good - you're just being marketed to. the people who are able to have hard conversations and actually feel good: those are also people who have that generational wealth where their parents are normal or even kind and their friends were supportive and gentle and their partners never raised their voice. it feels good to them, but you probably will never feel safe enough for it, how could you.

but then you meet her, and she hurts you by accident. shaking, you bring up your handwritten bulleted list of things you have condensed into the smallest, gentlest packet of information. you have codified it into the perfect therapy speak. you have practiced it for three days, trying to make sure it is the best and least offensive version of things.

and she just... accepts it. and holds your hand. and asks you gentle questions about everything. she apologizes immediately. there's no fight, no yelling. you walk away feeling - good. it feels good to be cared for, it feels good to be seen.

cut to when james potter is 23 years old and overhears some people while in animagus form talking about a super exclusive exhibit with highly illegal, very rare creatures in it. he gets pissed off and finds out the location + how to sneak in, which is when he encounters creatures he's never seen or heard of before, all in captivity etc etc, and he's sick to his stomach, and then the crowd is led to the exhibit that apparently claims to hold the last, lost generation of the Blacks who have become beasts, so everyone starts whispering and gets eager to see but also doesn't really believe it, even james doesn't, but then they're led into a room with...Something in it.

the person explaining everything says only one Black can be on display at a time, to lower the risk + keep the others calm etc etc, and this one is apparently the Last Born Black of the line, otherwise called "regulus" the name given to him when his parents still hoped he'd be human. and then there's a whole spiel about the Blacks and what they are and how dangerous they are and how they're not for sale and are only for viewing pleasure etc etc. it's explained that the Last Blacks are not only cursed but also a curse in and of themselves, so no touching is allowed either.

anyway james sticks around (hides under his cloak) and waits until the room empties out to get closer and actually try to get a proper look at this thing (regulus) and then he does and he's obviously enamored Instantly but also he's fucking horrified bc of the captivity of it all etc etc, and so naturally he immediately wants to Save The Blacks + bring down this whole fucked up operation.

so, cut to james skipping off to some auror he knows for help. enter alice, stage left. she's like james wtf why are u always in some shit and james is like. Please Help. so they find out all the details and put together a Team of sorts. james obviously refuses not to be involved, alice is ready to bring down the Bad Guy Behind It All, and they need a way to bust the whole operation which means they need a way to shine a spotlight on it, so enter rita skeeter next, who is a reporter always foaming at the mouth for a scandal. she's more than willing to Get The Scoop, as it were. but they all need a way in, which sadly will take unsavory undercover shit and does in fact need a magical creature to open the door for them, and whaddya know? james just so happens to know a guy. remus is Not impressed but he owes james a lot and also james blinks big sad eyes at him and tells him about the horrible conditions and all the sad creatures who need his help and remus admittedly caves. and lastly, they need unexpected transportation, the sort no one would be expecting, and alice just so happens to know a guy who can drive. none other than ted tonks.

anyway the whole plan ends up going sideways ofc, but each person on the team is supposed to worry about one Black at the very least and do their best to get them out. james, naturally, has latched onto regulus. alice of course stumbles across narcissa, ted finds andromeda, remus is practically kidnapped by sirius, and rita is attacked by bellatrix. so then they are all Stuck with their respective Black, and under threat/on the run from the Bad Guy who is trying to steal them all back etc etc.

james is living out his monsterfucking fantasies, except forbidden romance style. remus has decided he and sirius are now monster4monster. ted is oblivious to the fact that andromeda is slowly seducing him. rita is pissed off that she got stuck with The Crazy One. and alice is in the most complicated position of her life since she has a husband and narcissa doesn't seem to care and just keeps kissing her and thinks alice is Hers now and frank is being such a good sport about it (has no fucking clue what's going on, really, but there's an ethereal creature obsessed with his wife, he's Not complaining).

I talk all the time about communication and how important it is to express your needs, especially when you’re having a hard time. That lesson came up again this week, right in the middle of a depressive episode.

Last night my husband wanted us to decorate, because normally I love it, and he knew I wanted it done before I had company the next day. Instead, I ended up curled in a chair, sobbing, feeling completely crushed by this heavy, unshakeable sadness in my chest. I told him that, and he immediately tried to comfort me. He snuggled up, told me he loved me, reminded me it was okay. Usually that helps.

It made me feel worse.

Not because he was doing anything wrong, but because in that moment, sitting in my feelings wasn’t helping. I was anxious. I had company coming. Decorating mattered to me. I needed to be able to function, not fall apart.

So I took a breath and said, “I really appreciate that you’re comforting me. I know you want to help. But I think what I need right now is a distraction. I’m not in a place to process these feelings. I just want something to pull me out of them.”

And he adapted. No hesitation. He shifted gears instantly. And it worked. Within a few minutes I was laughing, and we were decorating the tree together. It didn’t cure the depression, obviously. The sadness is still there. But in that moment a distraction helped me get through something that mattered to me.

People sometimes claim that DBT is just about ignoring your feelings, and I want to be very clear that when I talk about it, that isn't what I'm advocating for. Processing emotions is important, but sometimes you’re simply not in a safe or practical place to do it. Maybe you’re at work. Maybe you’re around other people. Maybe you’re too overwhelmed to dig into it right then.

That’s when skills like ACCEPTS come in. They’re not about pretending you’re fine. They’re about helping you get through the moment so you can come back to your feelings later when you’re actually able to handle them. And sometimes the truth is that once you’re no longer overwhelmed, the feeling resolves on its own. Not every emotion needs to be dissected to be processed.

Has been seeing a lot of Smilk hate cause of the polls and I felt bad so I quickly doodled him 💔

“But they cradled me, yes?”

I got really into the theory of the apple (from that one image from the beast yeast chapter 7/8 leaks) being the fruit of knowledge. And I thought, what if Pure Vanilla takes a bite out of it? (*^▽^)/★*☆♪

i don't really get why people are so opposed to rc stories having mature themes in their plots. to me, as long as there's a clear trigger warning and, depending on how explicit it is, a skip option for the scene is available, i genuinely don't mind. life isn't all rainbows, and these kinds of situations add realism. sometimes they even help with worldbuilding and character development.

to me romance as a genre has never been just fluff. it's common for love stories to be tangled up with grief, danger, trauma, betrayal, etc. that's often what makes the romance hit harder. a tender moment lands so much more when it's set against something heavy. stripping all of that makes the stories more flat than romantic.

also, not wanting to be that type of person, but the app is 18+. most of us reading these are adults. we don't need every story sanitized down to the safest possible version of itself. the whole point of having trigger warnings and skip options is so that people who DO need to opt out, can, while everyone else gets to experience the story as the writer intended. that system already works and it respects both sides.

limiting writers to only positive romance boxes them into a corner creatively. a lot of the depth, tension, and emotional payoff in these stories comes precisely from the darker beats. you take those away and you lose what makes certain routes memorable in the first place.

what really annoys me is the idea that writing about something dark means condoning it. when a character does something horrific to another, that's not the author endorsing it, it's the author showing how messed up said character is. that IS the character. treating depiction as approval basically means no story can ever have a real villain.

and could there have been a less explicit way to make that point? of course, that's a fair conversation. but that's not the argument a lot of people are making. they're pointing at the dark content so they can say "how could anyone like this author." it's just a "gotcha" dressed up as criticism.