Hey love! Funny you should say that, but I already follow you on one of my side-blogs *wink wonk*. I adore your portrayal. I think you’re a great writer. Keep doing what you’re doing, because I’m loving it! x
When you just can’t love yourself, just work on giving yourself basic respect.
When you just can’t practice self care, aim for basic hygiene and keeping yourself alive.
When you just can’t have positive thoughts, focus on ignoring the negative ones.
When you just can’t quit those bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms, be sure to take care of yourself afterwards.
When you just can’t make yourself eat enough, aim for something three times a day, even if it’s something small.
When you just can’t stop binge eating, just do your best to forgive yourself and focus on something else instead of dwelling on it for any longer.
Not everyone is at a point where they can recover, and so thinking about recovery can be intimidating and make them shut down, because they just feel like they’re nowhere close to getting better so they might as well not bother. There needs to be more advice on dragging yourself through the days. Self care to the bare minimum. Aiming for “feeling okay with yourself” or “feeling less awful about yourself” rather than loving yourself. Baby steps.
This is in no way an invitation to try to draw me into fandom wank, so please don’t try, but I wanted to talk a little bit about this debate about whether the media we consume has an impact on us, because I think it’s an important thing to understand both as a reader and as a writer.
First, creating or consuming “dark” or “bad” media (media that involves things that are considered to be immoral) neither makes a person take part in such a thing nor means that a person approves of it. Once people reach a certain (not particularly old) age, they are able to abstract fiction from reality, and people create and consume a lot of things for a lot of reasons that have no connection to them approving of or participating in those things.
Media doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do people who create or consume it. That doesn’t mean it’s useful or even appropriate to go after somebody for creating or consuming something you don’t approve of, but it does mean that there is a more nuanced conversation to be had about the effects of media than just “it does all the things” or “it has zero impact at all”.
Loki climbs out from behind the mound of leaves, all the brilliant hues of October, brandishing both her knives, stained a screaming red.
She tosses the long braid of inky curls over one shoulder, and licks chapped lips. She examines her brother’s face, full of consternation, and chuckles. It’s the sound of a dry November forest floor rustling.
“The, ah, backside of our ambush is curtailed,” she reports, jade eyes unkindly bright, wiping her forehead with the back of a hand.
Stared at the knives, bloodied and beheld by his sister for a moment before nodding, not curtly, but in the way he nodded when he was being direct and to the point about something. He accepted the statement she had given, and he shifted a little on his feet, feeling the tell tale rumbles of thunder deep in his bones. When Thor got testy, one could tell. As a storm almost always approached thereafter.
“You have of course, out done yourself.” He comments, not giving the compliment lightly. “How do you surmount we are doing in terms of being successful? Should we launch a counter attack?” He asks, pushing one hand through his hair, keeping an ear out for any sneak attacks. As would sometimes happen when they were in the middle of battle. Hand clenched about the hilt of Mjolnir.
“And, because you were just out there, how do you believe we should proceed?”
Loki looks up from wiping her blades clean with a previously immaculate cloth, which she now folds into the pouch strapped to her belt. No sense in depositing it on the ground, where the hounds of the foe might use it to track her.
The thunder that beckons across the skies serves as signal and warning; as ever, Loki feels mingled pride and foreboding. Her brother, without exaggeration, is terrifying, and belonging in the shadow of a tempest Thor conjures is thrilling in the sublime and awful way that any force of nature is.
Her smirk is smug as she addresses him.
“They are comprised of primarily rock trolls, with a handful of elves wearing the extremist insignia of a secessionist sect. They do not represent Alfheim proper; I have dealt with their scouts. Presumably the rock trolls go in blind, so our advantage is exceedingly great. But never be overly confident, brother.”
Oh, she knows this warning against recklessness is futile, but she must try.
icyxmischief 