I Just Want You To Hold Me In Your Arms

My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

i knew this conceptually, but like you dont really KNOW that public school is designed to set you up to be a good worker bee until you're cracking out a report, after hours, at 7 pm on a monday night and it hits you; oh, i'm doing homework, this is why they made me do homework, and suddenly i'm feeling it in my chest. i cant believe i was raised by the state to be an automaton, and worse, i am one of the lucky robots who isn't doing manual labor.

i’m always like “i can’t wait to feel good and confident and grow into the best, healthiest version of me!!!!!” while doing horrible acts of self sabotage like girl it doesn’t work like that u are pressing the gas and break at the same time stop it

nyctophilia -- finding relaxation or comfort in the darkness. 

Sometimes I refuse to sleep, because at 3am is the calmest I ever feel. Not that my body isn’t dying of anxiety. But the world is silent. No one expects anything of you. No one in that moment can make you feel terrible. Only you can. And there’s a weird power in that. 

just a sad kind of tired that creeps upon you with little cat feet

curls up on your shoulder and never leaves

it yawns and shifts and gets heavier and heavier, but you can’t bring yourself to let go

you get sadder and tireder but the numbing blanket it provides is addicting 

you can’t go back to the world without the tired kind of sad and its little cat feet

have def prolly rebloged this before but i keep coming back to it bc it's like my holy grail of succinct character study/ship analysis 💞💞💞

was the last nail in the coffin for me to start writing out the dron 6th year au that's been floating around my head for months, can't thank you enough!!!

asenora i will listen to anything you have to say about these characters ever. please tell us what the tea is with dron

as i rummage through the backlog of messages in my inbox the thing that i have discovered is that you girlies [gender neutral] are absolutely clamouring for citizenship of dron nation.

[thank you to @spectral-kitty, @thesilverstarling, and two mystery anons!]

to which i say, the borders are open, baby. you just have to read the following manifesto:

why fandom needs to stop sleeping on dron

something i am continually banging on about, as regular readers know, is the harry potter series' fondness for assigning [male] characters to narrative mirror pairings.

exploring these pairings is interesting in and of itself without a romantic dimension being involved - i could talk for hours about the mirrored approach to guilt and grief in snape and sirius' characterisation - but it's also true that several of the most interesting ships which can be drawn [however non-canonically] from the text are between the two halves of each mirror pairing.

tomarrymort is the obvious one, snack [or starprince or snirius or whatever we're calling it] is starting to get the attention it deserves, but people are still sleeping on draco malfoy/ron weasley [and also, may i say, on lucius malfoy/arthur weasley and narcissa malfoy/molly weasley], largely - i fear - due to the sheer popularity of drarry and dramione.

i'll be honest that i really don't like dramione, and i'm generally ambivalent towards drarry, but i do love dron. and the narrative mirror aspect is entirely the reason why.

ron and draco begin the series as mirror archetypes within the genre conventions of a children's boarding school romp. ron is the loyal, humble sidekick of the everyman protagonist, draco is the everyman protagonist's posh, stuck-up rival. both are insiders to the world of the story - whereas harry, the reader surrogate, is not - who introduce harry to the positive and negative aspects of the wizarding world respectively.

as a result, ron and draco are mirrors in terms of personality, and are much more similar to each other than either is to harry or hermione. this doesn't, of course, preclude ronarry [a ship i adore] or romione [which i've defended here] or drarry or dramione [if ya nasty], but it introduces a specific - and very interesting - tension into the pairing which is absent from these other ships.

both ron and draco have shared positive traits - they're both loyal [and their loyalty is very practical and pragmatic - ron is not hagrid, whose faith in e.g. dumbledore is totally unwavering; draco is not bellatrix, whose faith in voldemort is the same], they're both highly observant, they're both quick-witted, they're both capable of doing the right thing - if not always immediately [which is, in fact, more admirable than being preternaturally willing to suffer and sacrifice], and so on.

they also have shared negative traits. they're both attention-seeking [ron fucking loves nearly being knifed by sirius and you just know draco was seething], self-aggrandising, insecure, sulky, and predisposed to jealousy.

and this is a gift for authors, because it means that dron butt heads in a relationship in ways which allow for real character growth... or otherwise.

one issue that i have with drarry is that it often feels like the change either one goes through within a fic is kind of out of character. for example, you have a harry who feels insecure and haunted by his ill-treatment of draco [this is a man whose response to committing attempted murder is to be raging that it reduces the time he has free to hit on ginny], or a harry who is chasing after a cool and sophisticated draco who eventually learns to open up [whereas if there's two things draco isn't, it's someone who keeps his thoughts to himself and someone who isn't a distinctly unsophisticated flop].

dron, however, react to conflict in the same way - which means that the two of them finding themselves in conflict with each other absolutely slaps. they also have similar levels of emotional intelligence, and are likely - if they're inclined to - to be able to communicate with each other and work through issues surprisingly effectively. they can be a mess, or they can be a happy-ever-after, and i like that in a ship.

but, while ron and draco are mirror archetypes, they are specifically children's literature mirror archetypes. ron's role as harry's guide to the world diminishes in the later books, as the series' horizons move beyond hogwarts to think about wizarding society and voldemort's impact upon it more widely [he is replaced by characters such as dumbledore]; while harry becomes considerably less bothered by the pettiness of draco's rivalry with him [concerned as it is with things like being good at quidditch and getting away with misbehaviour at school] as the enemies he's focused on shift to being the resurrected voldemort and his death eaters.

which is to say that dron makes considerably more sense within a hogwarts setting than drarry.

as i've said elsewhere, an issue i have with drarry is that it's frequently written in a way which suggests that harry and draco have a mutual obsession with each other - while the actual evidence of canon is that, while draco is [as his archetype demands] preoccupied with what harry's doing, harry rarely gives the impression of caring what his rival is up to unless directly compelled to by draco's own attention-seeking.

ron, in contrast, spends a lot of time noticing things about draco unprompted - he can, for instance, recall overhearing him boasting offhand about what broom he owns in philosopher's stone - and retaining this information in order to deploy it at the opportune time to get a rise out of him. he delights constantly in his misfortune [him being hyped for days because draco's annoyed harry gets a firebolt is beautiful]. he's ready to throw hands with him at any given opportunity, often giving those of us who thrive on cheap innuendo plenty of material in the process [draco finds himself, for example 'on all fours, banging the ground with his fist' after having ron's wand pointed in his face... same, girl.] and he tends to consider draco much more integral to the various shenanigans which take place in the castle than harry does [ron is the main proponent of the 'draco malfoy is the heir of slytherin' theory in chamber of secrets - and he is shook when draco reveals that he's wrong].

and draco does the same. he comes into the trio's compartment on the train in goblet of fire and immediately starts telling ron how unfashionable his dress robes are. he obsesses over ron's position as gryffindor keeper for months - and, of course, makes up a song about it, which isn't exactly helping him pull off 'i don't think about you at all', is it? - and ron is profoundly affected by the taunts in way that harry, who doesn't really care what draco thinks of him, isn't. and he constantly goes out of his way to provoke ron into trying to punch him [him shoulder-barging ron in half-blood prince just after harry's essentially outed him as a death eater in madam malkins... exquisite pettiness].

all of which is to say, their interactions feel very teenage and petty and silly all the way through to the end of half-blood prince in a way that draco's interactions with harry and hermione don't, and - therefore - i sincerely think that dron can be made to work much more plausibly as a pairing in fics set while the characters are at school.

my final point in favour of dron is that they mirror each other in their approach to their other relationships, and the tension this causes is really interesting to explore.

both ron and draco have mirrored attitudes towards their place within their own families - something neither harry nor hermione can have with draco for obvious reasons. ron is one of many siblings and feels overlooked in the crowd; draco is an only child and feels overburdened by the visibility, especially once his father is sent to azkaban. they both conform to behaviours expected of them by family [they are both in the same hogwarts house as generations of their family, they share their families' political views etc.]. they are of the same social class and their families both have a reasonably similar level of political influence [despite what we're told about his insignificance, arthur weasley is known to everyone in the ministry and he's able to throw his weight around to influence policy even before the promotion he receives in half-blood prince], but their material circumstances are divergent. they both heavily resemble their fathers - to the extent that they are immediately recognisable as each man's son - and spend their schooldays defending family honour by playing out lucius and arthur's own petty feud [lucius and arthur - and, indeed, narcissa and molly - are also narrative mirrors, and we deserve many more enemies-to-lovers fics featuring them]. and the course their lives take during the war is dictated as much by their role within their families as it is by their relationship with harry - the scrambling post-dumbledore order operating out of the burrow is a mirror image of the ascendant voldemort operating out of malfoy manor.

they are also obviously defined by their mirrored relationship with harry - most interestingly by a major similarity in their attitude towards him: that both struggle with how jealous they are of harry.

this leads to lots of excellent tension which just isn't possible in drarry or dramione. how do both sets of parents react to the news their sons are in love? how do ron and draco's relationships with harry change as they find each other? how does draco cope with the hustle and bustle of life at the burrow? how does ron deal with having to have dinner at the manor [particularly interesting because the world in which draco lives is one that's familiar to him - he's not going to be shocked by any of the weird stuff in that house, he knows how it all works, so he can ruin christmas by deciding to have his dad arrest lucius for fun instead]?

it's messy, and fun, and it sustains me.

and some recs for the lads?

collateral damage by @danpuff-ao3, which starts out with both of the lads working out their... issues with harry and ends with declarations of going to lunch with each other's mothers.

dance the night away (aka it's true love, you bastards) by evandar, which has as its premise ron and draco ending up, largely by accident, going to the yule ball together.

this great stage of fools by @nanneramma, which correctly demonstrates how ron is charming enough that him being supremely annoying is actually loveable.

i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls

mentally pss pss pss-ing at all the phenomenal drarry artists on here like they're easily startled stray cats with dron snippets bc i KNOW they can be converted with minimal effort and i Want More Content

Tactics of narcissistic abuse

Love Bombing & Mirroring are tactics to gain your favour. These will come from a narcissist you’re just getting to know and they’re trying to convince you they’re your perfect partner, soulmate, best friend, ideal lover. Love bombing is showering you with over-the-top affection and support, they’re likely to see what works best on you, then give you just that. They’ll convince you that you’re special and make you feel special, whether it’s with attention, gifts, promises, love phrases, or making you look and feel very good in front of other people. If they can spin this as fate or destiny, they will. You have one lucky coincidence? It’s destiny that you met. They’ll create the image of ‘it’s us against the world’ and convince you that they’re all you need to never be alone, unappreciated or unhappy again. They will say phrases like ‘We were born to be together’ or 'You’re the only one who understands’ and make you feel like you’re in a romance film.  Mirroring is the way to convince you that they are just like you, your perfect match. They do this by pretending they want the same things as you. All of your opinions will be shared, your desires will be their desires too, however you want to live, that’s now their ideal life too. If you want children, so do they, if you want to live in a cottage, so do they.

These will be repeated until you feel like you finally got something perfect from life, you commit to them and trust them completely. You will become lenient with your boundaries and disregard minor red flags, because hey, you finally found love, or someone like yourself who makes your life better. These are crucial to keep you around for a long time; the illusion of happiness and perfect companionship you always wanted will keep you holding onto them in hope that things could once again, be this perfect for you. You will not want to let go of them even after the love bombing and mirroring is long gone. Love bombing and mirroring are not indicative of how they’re planning to treat you once you’re committed to them; as soon as they feel you are ready to fight for a life with them, roles will change and you will have to endure escalating abuse from this person, endlessly.

Scapegoats and people badly damaged by trauma will often not get the full love bombing or mirroring, narcissists will be able to win our devotion by acts of basic decency, small thoughtfulness and acting tolerant of our trauma symptoms, this will feel like everything to us, and once we decide this is a good, special person who makes us feel safe and we’d do anything for them, they’ll turn and exploit us endlessly.

Only way to spot this on time is: there will be a little voice of suspicion in your head going ’Isn’t this actually a little too perfect to be real? A little too convenient and ideal?’ and you will not want to listen to that voice. You should listen to it. It’s your instinct, trying to tell you something is off. I won’t blame you if you don’t. Most people won’t just walk away from their ideal partner because things seem 'too perfect’. But, get suspicious at least. Alert to red flags.

Enablers and Flying Monkeys

Narcissists can’t abuse if they’re on their own; they will work hard to build a reputation and charm people who they can later use for purposes of enabling, triangulating, controlling, scapegoating and smear campaigns. Enablers, or Flying Monkeys, are people who are either admiring the narcissists, want to be in narcissists good favour, are trauma bond and scared of the narcissists, are emotionally manipulated or simply too cowardly to point out that the narcissists is wrong and cruel. Most people will fall under the influence and want to be on narcissists side because it’s easier, tempting, feels safer, and doesn’t require much thinking. Narcissist will sometimes emotionally manipulate people to go do their dirty work; they will cry about how they miss their runaway children so flying monkeys would harass and judge children for running away, they will invent stories of abuse and insanity of their spouse so people would shame and judge the spouse who the narcissist is abusing. They create environment in which they can keep abusing and other people will jump to defend, justify, victim-blame and further confuse the victim. “They had a hard life”, “They’re your mother/father/uncle, you have to forgive them” or “He’s not that bad” are the phrases you’ll hear from enablers and flying monkeys. The term “Flying Monkey” is taken from the Wizard of Oz, because the Wicked Witch owned an army of brainless flying monkeys who would do her bidding – much how narcissists do with their enablers.

What enablers are doing is absolutely wrong. They should not be ready to defend abuse, or excuse and justify it, or believe and act on smear campaigns, not for any reason. They are hurting and isolating the victim, and regardless of how much they suck up to the narcissist, they will eventually become the targets too. Victims are right to cut out enablers just how they’re right to cut out abusers. You do not have to suffer for their cowardice or stupidity.

Triangulation is a form of abuse where narcissist brings another person into the relationship in order to bypass your boundary. For instance, you refuse to speak to the narcissist, so they send your family members, friends, or their friends, to talk to you about how much you’re hurting the narcissist and how cruel and unfair you’re being. Or, you’re trying to set a boundary in your marriage, and suddenly a friend or a relative comes talking to you about how unreasonable it is to set such awful boundary and to think of your spouse’s feelings and how bad they have it. Narcissist may try to use you for triangulation too, for example, they might tell you 'Go tell your sister she should do xyz and she’s making a mistake, she’ll listen to you’. It’s implied you agree with the narcissist, and that both of you are doing it for the sister’s good, when it’s more likely the narcissist is trying to force this person to do something they’re deeply set against and would only serve the narcissist. Narcissists will use their children to triangulate a marriage, they will often 'gang up’ other family members on their spouse, or one of the children. If you’re the victim, you’ll find yourself cornered, isolated, and in doubt whether you’re doing the right thing, trying to establish a boundary. Narcissists will also often show affection, compassion or even love to a third person simply to make you jealous and worried that something is wrong with you since you don’t get the same treatment. It’s what creates an illusion that the entire world is agreeing with the narcissist and no matter what you do, you look unreasonable for fighting them.

Narcissists will sometimes invent completely boogus scenarios and try to terrify people into doing their bidding and believing they’re right. As if the world will fall if narcissists don’t get what they want.

Society at large will often enable abusers; you can call out abuse and be rendered a 'killjoy’ because people prefer to enjoy cruelty together with the narcissist than to oppose them. Narcissists are capable of rousing a whole gang of people to turn against the victim and to aid in their abuse; this is scapegoating.

Gaslighting is a form of abuse where the abuser attacks your sense of reality. They will usually do this to obscure and deny acts of abuse. “I never said that” “That didn’t happen” “That’s not how I remember it” “You imagined it” or “You’re crazy, I would never do that!” are common gaslighting phrases abusers use for events that absolutely happened, and they absolutely remember. It’s even more powerful if they get other people to agree that you’re insane for remembering a past event of abuse. They can sometimes try to convince you that something didn’t occur while it’s still happening. This renders your intention of calling out abuse impossible; you’re now debating whether the event even happened and your sanity is questioned.

The point of this is to drive you into insanity; prolonged gaslighting will make you doubt your own memories and senses, and you will no longer be secure in your own point of view or version of reality. You will not be able to fight abuse, because you will get stuck on wondering if it’s even real, or if you’re making it up. Narcissist wants not only to abuse you, but to control your perception of it, reaction of it, and to disable you from telling anyone and being taken seriously. Smear campaign and gaslighting ensures that everyone thinks you’re lying to make problems, even you.

You can attempt to block gaslighting with phrases like 'That was not my experience’ 'I know the truth and I am not debating it with you’ ’ Don’t tell me what happened, I was there’ or ridiculing them for thinking it would work, but sometimes abuse will escalate if you refuse to play along, so be very careful with them.

Baiting, Projection and Scapegoating

Baiting is the way narcissist finds out which triggers will work on you. Types of baits are: Scaremongering, Accusations, False Claims, Guilt-tripping, Victim-playing, False Hope, or Intrigue. They will use these to elicit either fear&anxiety, or guilt&responsibility. You are likely to get pulled in and respond emotionally to these, and thus the narcissist will discover which one of these is most triggering and they can use it to either control you, or to affirm that they can still get you riled up, scared, guilty – they feed on being able to provoke these, it makes them feel powerful. They can later use the same trigger to push you into guilt and fear if you try to resist their control. If they continue doing this to you for a long time, you are likely to develop self-doubt and anxiety about your own persona. Way to counter this is to grey rock them.

Projection is a primitive defense-mechanism, where a person feels uncomfortable with their behaviour or thinking, so they accuse someone else of it to deflect the bad feelings from themselves. This can feel the same as baiting, but narcissists do it without realizing they’re giving you the information about what they’re actually feeling and doing. For instance, a narcissist will accuse you of being self-absorbed after they start feeling uncomfortable with how self-absorbed they are, they will start to call you selfish when it comes to their mind how selfish they are. They will accuse you of the exact shit they’ve been doing whether it’s lying, manipulating, faking for attention, cheating, exploiting, lacking compassion, stealing. These claims will feel like they’re coming out of nowhere at first, but eventually you will wonder if you’re really like that, and accept their projection on yourself, believing to really be as bad, or worse than they are. Even though they’ve done 100% of these things, while you have done none of it. This can also be countered by being aware what is going on and grey-rocking them. Deflecting the blame back to them will not work because they’ll either deflect it back, or throw a tantrum and insult you.

Scapegoating is the most vicious abuse narcissist can inflict on their victims and is designed to completely break a person’s spirit while creating power out of terror. Scapegoating doesn’t only serve to terrify and control the victim; it shows everyone what the narcissist is capable of, causing them to go very far to avoid becoming the next scapegoat. This creates enablers, flying monkeys and other benefits for narcissist to enjoy, while the scapegoat is isolated, not believed, and often shunned by the community to show loyalty to the narcissist.

Scapegoat will be blamed for every narcissists flaw, accused of provocation and creating trouble, shamed for their likes and interests, humiliated for their appearance or needs, their work will be rendered worthless and any pain and injury will be treated as if the scapegoat deserved it, or wanted it. Nothing is out of bounds to criticize or belittle in the scapegoat; flying monkeys will do it too, to either affirm themselves with the narcissist, or because they too crave power by stepping on someone defenseless. If a narcissistic parent decides to scapegoat a child, the other parent might stop caring for the child, and agree that the child deserves only to be neglected and shunned. The illusion narcissists create, of entire society agreeing that a person is irredeemable, deserving only of pain and ridicule, has turned people to suicide.

Scapegoat absorbs all of the narcissist’s malice, cruelty, sadism, baiting, projection, guilt and tantrums, so other people in the environment can get some relief and can use the scapegoat as their shield. You can be chosen to be a scapegoat for challenging the narcissist and standing up to them, for refusing to scapegoat someone else, for seeing thru them and showing any potential for undermining their authority, if narcissist is jealous of you, if narcissist feels threatened by your intellect, compassion and emotional depth they lack. And often, you’ll just be chosen because they’re in position of power and you’re unprotected. If you’re their child, a lonely classmate, employee with no high reputation or lots of friends, a minority, different in the way of sexuality or behaviour, anything that is easily used to sway a group of people against you. Narcissists will make sure to spread a smear campaign filled with lies against you, so that nobody would align with you, or believe you if you try to counter their word.

This type of treatment is beyond anything a human being could deserve, and devastating for the victim’s self esteem and sense of reality. After surviving a scapegoating situation, people might not want to find themselves in any social setting anymore. They might start believing themselves to be unlovable and defective. There is usually no way to counter it or fight your way out, unless there’s a higher authority who could side with you, or there’s a way to physically remove yourself from this environment.

Grey Rock, Hoovering and No Contact

Grey rock is a way to counter baiting and projection; narcissists learn and thrive on our emotional responses, it gives them a thrill to be able to send us into rage, terror, disbelief, shock or panic. Grey rocking means you give zero emotional response, and thus prove yourself very boring and a bad source of narcissistic supply. So, regardless of what egregious threat, accusation, claim or insult they make, you just reply with 'mhmm’ and look completely disinterested. You reply with one-word sentences, say 'sure’ or 'yup’ if they accuse you of something or try to fearmonger, answer questions with 'maybe’ or 'I don’t know’, agree with whatever bs they’re pulling out of their ass without caring, refuse to get pulled in or baited, give them no significance in the conversation until they leave. It is very hard to do, because they will up their game and even fly into rage to get a response, if they feel entitled to it. In some cases they might resort to violence. Often, they’ll keep changing the tactics until something works, and if nothing does, they’ll feel dejected and go find another source of supply. If they feel like they can’t get to you, this undermines their imagined power over you.

No contact is the only way to truly win against a narcissist; if they can’t reach you, they can’t manipulate or hurt you. This means no responding to messages, no letting them know where you live, blocking them on every service, and in most situations, even the enablers have to be no contact, because the narcissist is likely to send them into triangulation and use them to get to you. If you’re unable to go no-contact with a narcissist, a lot of people opt for 'low contact’, which means you only hear from them once a year, or once every 6 months, insufficient for them to gain control over you, and you grey-rock them all the way, and never share any personal info that might be used against you. Hoovering is something a narcissist will do to you after you’ve left them. They might leave you alone for a long time, then suddenly send a message saying they miss you, or they’re thinking about you and wishing you could do xyz together. They might also influence another person to tell you 'x misses you, they wish to see you again, they’re doing bad without you’. This is done to remind you of the 'good times’ and an attempt to draw you back in, as you’re supposed to have forgotten all the abuse already and be ready to take them back. It might come as outrageous expectation or denial of everything bad that happened – that’s because it is. All you have to do is grey-rock this, not respond, and enjoy in knowledge that even if you can’t ensure revenge, you can take yourself away from them, and they will never have you back.

Sources: Baiting, Scapegoating, LoveBombing, Gaslighting(video), Projection(video), Triangulation, Mirroring(video),  FlyingMonkeys (video), Hoovering, Grey Rock