#pathological demand avoidance

He's so fucking desperate for meaning in his life, and when he's not doing a "The second I find something to live for, it's over for you bitches" shpiel, he's bitterly ruminating over the Imperium's refusal to recognize his legion's contributions to empire.

When we later see Abaddon's attempt to recruit him, we're rooting for Talos and First Claw to escape the clutches of the Black Legion. Nobody can leash the Night Lords, baybeeee, renegades for life, fuck yoouuu.

Then, in Talon of Horus, we get page after page of Khayon glazing Abaddon for finally creating a place for traitor Astartes who feel completely disillusioned by their respective legions lack of purpose, cohesion, principles, etc. Who feel aimless and empty without having a cause to fight for. Who feel slighted by the Imperium's lack of recognition for the Astartes' contributions to empire.

And, yes, Khayon's perspective is wildly biased and unreliable.

But I just love the idea that Talos straight up Pathological Demand Avoidance'd his way out of exactly what he was looking for solely because he doesn't want to associate with Chaos tainted Astartes. Despite, y'know, already associating with a different group of Chaos tainted Astartes.

EDIT:

To be fair, it's not just Talos' Pathological Demand Avoidance or his weirdly inconsistent take on Chaos (when you do it: it's bad. When my friends do it: we don't talk about that, everything is fine) that sabotages his recruitment to the Black Legion.

It's also the fact he's so completely wrapped up in being a Night Lord, he's contemptuous of any non-Night Lord based solution. He's deeply disillusioned with the current state of VIIIth Legion and literally none of his brothers share his desire to change the status quo, but when a non-Night Lord Astartes offers to address every single one of his concerns, he's like "NO. NOT YOU"

One fun part of pathological demand avoidance I never see anyone talking about is that when something becomes insanely popular, the abstract concept of popularity feels like a demand or an expectation and I start hating it.

Umamusume? Pisses me off. TADC? Get it off my screen forever. KAngel? Possibly the most annoying character ever and I haven't read even one of her lines.

I don't hate any popular thing for good reasons or to be contrarian, I hate it because how dare you suggest I might want to interact with it don't tell me what to do

A kind of subset of self-regulation skills (which I posted about yesterday) is frustration tolerance. It’s another popular recommendation for ND kids that *sounds* like a very worthwhile goal. If your kid is frustrated and acting out all the time, getting them to tolerate frustration better sure seems like it would solve a lot of problems.

Here’s the thing about that: you don’t get better at feeling frustrated by spending more time being frustrated. You just get more fucking frustrated. And just like with the attempts to “teach” self-regulation skills, all you’re gonna get is someone who gets better at *pretending* not to be frustrated OR someone who lashes out more because you won’t stop frustrating the shit out of them.