Pre-menstrual depression is always depicted as like "He He! I had a box of icecream bars and cried while watching the Titanic!" But in reality, it's more like, "I'm standing the edge of an abyss. There is nothing good inside of me, I'm filled with rage and desperation."
It's crazy that being told how to deal with that is never a part of anyone's menstrual sex education.
This has already been said in the notes, but if PMS causes extreme depression and even suicidal ideation, that is in fact something that most people do not experience and it can be treated
Like for the majority it really is "oh i'm hungrier and moodier than usual"
^this should be a part of sex education so the point still stands
I went to my doctor after I was walking to work one morning and saw a bus coming and actually took a step to throw myself in front of it before I pulled myself together. Later that day I started bleeding and was literally like someone flipped a switch and I didn't feel suicidal anymore. Which made me feel like I was loosing my mind because who goes from 'I want to throw myself in front of a bus' to 'I'm perfectly fine' just like that? I did some research, I went to the doctor and described my feelings, he looked me in the eye and gently asked what I thought it was, I said I'd read about PMDD and I thought it might be that, he said 'I think so too' and wrote a prescription.
If, before you get your period, you feel furiously angry, suicidal, irritated by every tiny thing to the point you want to murder someone, stuck in a black hole you'll never escape from. If you are experiencing extreme emotions for what seems like no good reason, especially if you get your period and those extreme emotions just go away. You're probably not just PMSing , you may have PMS's feral big sister PMDD and it's treatable.
Also this is something that can develop as you get older. So if you used to get normal PMS but what I wrote above sounds more like your norm now then don't just write it off as regular PMS.
ALSO! If you start having those feelings and suspect you’re heading towards perimenopause, talk to your doctor.
Basically, if you have a uterus and you start having extreme mood swings every month, that’s not actually normal, go talk to a medical professional. Don’t grit your teeth and suffer through it.
I’m a Mileven. Please keep this post up! You were so right for it. https://www.tumblr.com/theduchesswrites/816360427911053312/ill-say-it-the-worst-of-the-byler-shipping-has?source=share
As someone messaged me, it's time someone said it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have no issue with the simple act of shipping Byler. Zilch. Shipping is supposed to be fun. Fandom is supposed to be fun.
At the end of the day, it's all supposed to be fun.
My issue, and I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon unique to Byler or a greater issue with shipping in the last few years, is with the lengths shippers will go to morally and intellectually justify their ship.
A lot of the arguments for Byler being canon are shippers grasping at straws. People do that all the time. I'll complain, but I'm pretentious as fuck.
What scares me are the implications of some of the arguments Bylers make.
I'll leave the rest under a break since, well, this is gonna be long.
The first is that Will is "owed" Mike in some way, or he at least deserves the chance to express his feelings for him. As an adult who's been in more than one long-term relationship, I cannot express how shortsighted this sentiment is.
First of all, Mike isn't a "prize" for Will. Even if Will is in love with him, even if Will were a girl, Mike isn't a "reward" for Will. Frankly, this is incel logic.
Also, canon!Mike is in love with and in a committed relationship with El. As long as Mike expresses to Will that he wants to be with El — which he does ad nauseam, especially in Season 4 — then Will has the only answer he needs: Mike doesn't reciprocate. It's actually incredibly selfish to put someone who's already in a committed relationship on the spot and express your feelings for them.
Canon!Will knows this. He's empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Even in Season 5, where his catching Robin and Vickie making out leads him to temporarily short circuit and see if Mike reciprocates, he immediately takes the hint.
More to the point, Will is deserving of love, but he isn't owed any specific person. That goes for all of us.
There are other people who say Mike is a bad partner to El, but would magically be redeemed if he were to date Will.
Some of these are from young queer people who simply want more representation in mainstream media. I agree, there needs to be more, but I honestly doubt straight people's ability to write coming out arcs. We saw how much the Duffers fumbled Will's, and it's been a pattern in many, many shows over the years.
These shippers aren't thinking about the deeper implications of what they're advocating for. Here's the thing: I don't think Mike is a bad boyfriend to El, but if I did, then I'd say that Will would deserve a better boyfriend than Mike.
Why?
Abusive people do not change for the "right" person. Will, a canonical victim of CSA and homophobia who is also introverted and empathetic, deserves a partner who gets him from the outright.
It bears repeating: I don't think Mike is an abusive boyfriend by any means. If I did, I wouldn't ship him with anyone.
There are also the Will Byers stans. These people often identify with Will or simply infantilize him, as some young women and girls do with queer men. (Not all Will fans are women and girls, but it's a large portion, especially the most vocal section.) Even though they don't like canon!Mike, Finn Wolfhard is hot, so they really want to see Mike and Will get together anyway.
This leads to them going the extra mile. It also requires a lot of mental gymnastics, which inadvertently leads to the following:
Ableism: El is slow, she's BSY when she's a goddamn child, that she still doesn't even know what sex is by Season 5
Misogyny: Mike liked her in S1 because her short hair reminded him of a boy, labeling her as BSY from the time that she's 12, dismissing her trauma when talking about her relationship with Mike
General IDK: A lot of Will stans claim they love El, but say that anyone who thinks she's still alive at the end of the series is delusional. That's because a lot of them would rather an abused girl be dead than alive and *possibly* have a chance, no matter how remote, of reuniting with the person she loves one day. Can't have that when shipping is involved, amirite?
Byler Twitter is, as one would imagine, a cesspool. Tweets celebrating El "dying" get hundreds, if not thousands, of likes. One tweet begging for a link to a fanfic where Mike tries to kill El got over two thousand likes. This isn't funny. It's just misogyny.
Byler Tumblr isn't much better. In fact, I'd argue that the latter can be even worse since, as adults, they should know better. (At this point, Tumblr users are often older than Twitter users.)
I'll end this by saying that, of course, most Byler shippers don't partake in this behavior. Unfortunately, of the few that do, some are the most visible within the subfandom. This creates a feedback loop.
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