#autonomy issues

[sweetpeauserboxes]

[weirdcultstuff]

You know something really cool?

My life doesn’t fall apart so much when I have a meltdown anymore. I don’t have to repair relationships, re-secure my job, etc.

‘Cause I’m not expected to just push through it and continue as though I’m functioning normally anymore. I’m allowed to take hours or days off. I’m allowed to rest. I’m allowed to tell people, “hey, I’m having a bad time right now, ily but I’m gonna be off radar for a bit. Just wanted to let you know so you know I’m not ignoring you.” And then I’m allowed to tell people, “I need a hug. I need help. I need to talk about sad stuff, do you have the space to listen right now?” I have a therapist that I can text or call. I have coping skills. If an activity looks like it would push me to tears, I have the autonomy and respect for my boundaries from those around me to say, “I’m not going to do that today.” I have privacy. My own room with a door that shuts, my own Spotify, my own journals. I have friends that won’t report everything to my parents, or my bosses. I have bosses that won’t report things to my parents. I’m respected as a human being. And non-cult people don’t view crying or being sad or irritable or sick as a High Crime And Misdemeanor anyway.

I’m allowed to take care of myself before I hit my breaking point, so I don’t screw everything up so much anymore. I don’t say unkind things I don’t mean to people I love, or make weird big decisions, or hurt myself, or whatever. Cause I am allowed to set my own boundaries.

It’s truly fantastic.

If you’re living in an abusive situation where you’re not allowed to take care of yourself or set boundaries, and you’re having “meltdowns,” just like imagine them being only half as bad. Or maybe a third. That’s how it’s been for me anyway, after the initial “I’m finally allowed to break down so I’m gonna have all the breakdowns I never got to have before and it’s gonna last for an entire year because I’ve been through a lot of breakdown-worthy-bs” phase.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Assuming any human would volunteer, & yeerks could be trained for it, do you think it could be viable for yeerks to be mental health workers for humans? E.g help addicts get through withdrawal symptoms & learn new habits, or be a point of reality for people with incorrect perceptions e.g. psychosis or the anxiety thing of everyone hates me. Like having a therapist who's with you all the time. There's a bit of precedence in the yeerk peace movement, at least that yeerks and humans can be friends

I have definitely heard variations on this proposition before, and I’ve yet to hear any that don’t strike me as well-meaning but unavoidably ableist.

Any yeerk who enters the brain of a human immediately knows that human’s bank account sign-on, social security number, passwords, and PINs.  But there are forms of personal information even more personal than that.  The yeerk would know about every one of the human’s sexual fantasies, no matter how taboo, and every regretful thing that that human has ever thought about their own parents or spouse or children in a moment of anger.  The yeerk would know about the most hideous intrusive cognitions (“throw the baby off a cliff,” “just shove your boss into traffic”) that have ever crossed that human’s mind.  The most polite and well-meaning yeerk in the world wouldn’t be able to avoid knowing all of that, and more.  Maybe the human regrets having had kids, or thinks their deadbeat ex was a better sexual partner than their current spouse.  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The other complexity is the idea that the yeerk can very VERY easily move and react on behalf of the host, even accidentally, but it’s pretty much impossible for the host to take back control from the yeerk.  If we look at Jake’s brief relationship with Temrash 114 (#6) and Cassie’s even briefer relationship with Mr. Tidwell (#29) we start to get an idea of why the yeerk-human relationship is at extremely high risk for being problematic even with voluntary hosts and well-meaning yeerks.  Jake’s body doesn’t move at all when Temrash 114 is still trying to figure out how to move it, leaving Jake functionally catatonic even in the middle of a combat situation, and Temrash 114 doesn’t even have to exert effort to know automatically that Jake has a crush on Cassie and (in spite of himself) pities Tobias.  By contrast, Cassie has to consciously hold herself back from controlling Mr. Tidwell’s body any time they want him to be the one performing any given action, and she’s mortified to learn so much about the fears and insecurities and cleaning habits of her science teacher but literally cannot help knowing.  Yeerk-Cassie can accidentally throw out Mr. Tidwell’s hand to catch them when they stumble; host-Jake cannot even flinch back when he’s being shot at by controllers.  In case of emergency — both yeerk and host are startled, the host panics or is triggered, the yeerk has a moment of carelessness — complete effortless control of the entire body and mind defaults to the yeerk.  Even if the host is voluntary.

MAYBE there are circumstances where an individual could give fully informed consent to that particular procedure.  My concern is that the individuals that are often proposed as recipients of this kind of intervention are ones who are uniquely vulnerable.  Individuals with communications disorders, developmental disabilities, and/or mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of crime.  Too many of them are already pressured by their doctors into interventions they don’t always understand.  People with addiction or psychosis are already facing an uphill battle against disenfranchisement.  I worry that even idly entertaining questions about how they’d be better under the influence of mind controlling aliens is automatically problematic, no matter how much it comes from a place of wanting to help. 

[weirdcultstuff]

One time someone told me, as a compliment, “Follow your passions! You’re so good at what you do.”

And I laughed and later I wrote in a journal something like: “Life isn’t a Disney movie, you can’t just follow your heart -your heart is corrupt, it will lead you down the wrong paths!”

And now, looking back, the fact that I accepted for twenty years ‘I and everything about me is evil and corrupt and can’t be trusted’ as a baseline fact of life is HECKIN PROBLEMATIC.

[weirdcultstuff]

[weirdcultstuff]

So I’m still figuring out this autonomy stuff, but I think it’s kind of like irl Minecraft.

You can go wherever you want, build whatever you want. Set your own sleep schedule. Decide what you want to wear.

And if anyone tries to stop you, you can punch them with a carrot and then take their bones.

[jasmineintheforest]

I was tagging this on a post but Imma say it again. I think we don't talk enough about Gordon's actual trauma. Vampires in spn are super predatory, often with sexual connotations. Not only did his sister get turned, but Gordon himself did as well. And he had the Dean-like of feeling like he's the monster (before doing anything monstrous) for it and then he thinks he can leverage that predatory power to finish his mission: stopping the apocalypse. He didn't pursue personal goals. He didn't become a predator for fun.

He got turned. It was a horrific thing that happened and then he tried to salvage that somehow before he would kill himself. (We all know Dean's experience with being turned. What it implies. His own trauma -based sense of wrongness in who he is despite him being the victim). There is also a class analysis or smth here about how, when you're literally powerless, you reach for weaponising whatever harm was inflicted on you to do some good before you self destruct. Spn is full of themes like this.

But Gordon esp fits it so well because he was one of the most vulnerable sections of the spn world - a human victimized by the supernatural beings who treat ppl as worse than shit. Out of all the people trying to prevent the apocalypse, he was the most innocent one and the most rightfully justified in doing it. Because his motivation was only to stop it so that humans don't get dead. That's it. He wasn't like characters like Cas or Anna or Crowley etc, who all had very different viewpoints to the proposed human mass killings. Idk there's just so much meat to his arc. He warned Dean! And he was right! I've the few times where Dean straight up doesn't heed a narrative warning. And he pays for it in such terrible ways. Gordon had crunchy methods at the very end but that's literally spn at its best.