Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

uh this might not be super well worded but tried?

Spoiler: tmi but hopefully helpful

i think a big thing would be the kind of body dysphoria he has? i'm trans, but body dysphoria isn't really a thing i have, and i've honestly always always wanted to get pregnant, so being in that situation, the trauma would largely be the aspect of "not able to handle baby as a teen" and "forced pregnancy and horribad misgendering" but the pregnancy might be neutral-ish. if he's someone with even mild body dysphoria, pregnancy could be something that just being pregnant itself might make him suicidal even if he wants to be pregnant/wants the child (source: trans masc parenting group i lurk in), and horribly exacerbated by the misgendering/forced aspects of it. if he's someone like me without a lot of body dysphoria ... i know i would probably come out of an experience like that with body dysphoria as a trauma experience. and dysphoria can manifest in weird ways, even without the intersection of trauma.

something my therapist(s) and i have been talking over is that my anorexia is a trauma response to my family and physical dysphoria. i have the normal anorexia triggers, like seeing food, or someone commenting on my weight, or seeing someone that i think is skinnier than me - but after a lot of idk soul searching, realized that the main underlying problem was being in situations where i felt misgendered, even if i wasn't being so. this is why my eating disorder always reappears with a vengeance whenever i spend any time with my family, even just calls or texting, because they emphatically refuse to gender me correctly, whereas when i was living at college, going months at a time without any contact with them, and surrounded by people who reaffirmed and respected my gender, i still had some disordered eating, but i wasn't actively starving myself like i am now. and i still generally think of myself as someone without body dysphoria because when i'm not being misgendered maliciously, i actually am super comfortable in my body and genuinely love it. my anorexia disordered thinking patterns (sorry, that's worded weirdly) tend to circle around "i have to be skinny so i can be a Real Girl (TM)" and it's almost like ... my brain thinks of my body as nonbinary/masc adj, and so i'm trying to fit myself into a hyper feminine model of womanhood to cope with being misgendered?

which is to say, i know that when i imagine myself going through a pregnancy i wasn't ready for and then a pregnancy i was forced into and misgendered during and, it sounds like, had forced body modifications to make me more feminine, i would come out of that with hella body dysphoria. it would be hard for me to think of my body as mine and my home, when it had been violated so horribly

jeez, i'm sorry to put so much of this under a spoiler, but my anorexia/dysphoria intersection is ... highly personal, and i feel more comfortable putting it under one. :(

anyway, that's all to say: if he was someone who was comfortable in his body prior to his pregnancies, i'd expect him to be less so, even if he might try to hide it. even if the pregnancy was wanted, it still changes your body in major ways, and those changes are probably going to feel horrible. this might manifest in a low perception of how he looks (convinced he looks ugly, that he's unattractive, etc), discomfort with parts of his body, particularly genitals or secondary sex characteristics (so feeling discomfort when naked, or when made aware of those body parts, for example. sex might be difficult because of the vulnerability required to just get naked with someone and allow them to touch you, and even masturbation might be difficult, if he's repulsed by his genitals). he might respond by being hypersexual, tho, and putting himself in unsafe situations and seeking out sex all the time (and the self harm aspects can be exacerbated if, for instance, he explicitly seeks out partners who will misgender him). he might respond by becoming asexual and/or celibate.*

you said he copes with alcohol, so tbh i'm leaning towards a hypersexual trauma response? alcohol is the world's best date rape drug, imo, and i can easily see a vicious cycle where he goes and gets drunk to try and make himself comfortable with his body (possibly with the intent of trying to lower inhibitions around intimacy), and then has sex he feels bad about (which doesn't require that the people he sleeps with strictly be assholes or rapists, though predators are much more likely to take advantage) but feels that he can't feel bad about because he initiated and/or didn't say no, so he drinks more, and the cycle repeats.

he also might cope with being ... idk, bombastic? overly sexual and flirtatious, putting on a front of self confidence and that he has great self esteem? that's a lot more tempermentally based, i think, so idk if you feel that fits him.

you said he's super family oriented, but coupled with calling him gruff and not interested in emotions, i'd expect him to suck super bad at it, at least first. and like, generally a big response to things that hurt but you don't want to or don't know how to respond to is going to be anger. is he an angry drunk? it would suck, but i wouldn't be surprised if he ended up being a "throws shit and screams" drunk, especially if he's prone to being an angry drunk. maybe he goes to bars to pick fights. even if he isn't an angry drunk, that alcoholism is going to need to be dealt with before he's really going to be able to there for his kid. he might respond by being cold and distant with his kid, too, because like ... no matter how much he might (come to) love them, everything about their origin is going to hurt, and hurt badly, and he doesn't sound like someone with good coping mechanisms and ways of recovering.

also, after all of this, you said he turned to alcoholism after his husband died. i strongly feel he's going to struggle with suicidal ideation, if he doesn't already. it's really easy, if his husband was a major support of his, and then to be dealing with this, for him to feel lost and hopeless, and for that to turn into wanting to die. wanting to go to sleep whenever something bad happens, wanting to go to sleep and never wake up, putting himself in risky situations and being reckless (i'm generally someone who's really cautious about crossing streets, and waves to cars, and everything. unless i'm suicidal. then i'm like "fuckin hit me.").

*asexual doesn't exclude hypersexual. i went through a period in my late teens, when i was struggling to come to terms with being asexual, where i sought out sex partners and put myself in risky situations (particularly: deliberately tried to go out and get myself raped, on more than one occasion). otoh, when i finally decided to try to embrace being ace (or at least accept it), i went through a two year celibacy period "because i'm asexual"

uhhh, yeah, if you want more spitballing, i'd be happy to help? if not, i hope what i wrote helps.

 

That was super helpful, thanks so much! A lot of your speculations line right up with his canon characterization, also.

As far as body image and dysphoria goes, he canonically works out a lot, and I think there's a case to be made for him being comfortable in his body so long as it feels like his body - when he's fit, when he looks like any other man. Post brainwashing, he's shown pretty much drinking, working out, and throwing himself into situations where he's likely to die. Ofc, his team regularly goes up against out of their league foes and make it out, so it's not as noticeable as it could be, but I'd definitely say he's at least passively suicidal. So, drinking to forget, working out to try to reclaim his body, and trying to join his husband. Meanwhile his (adult) daughter keeps sending him messages asking him to come home and see his therapist. When she and his newly discovered daughter meet, they will team up.

When he finds out about what happened with his new daughter, both the progress he's made recovering and the friendship he's been building with her regress a lot. Probably he'll lash out, but not at her directly. His husband's father abused both him and his mother, so he'll have trained himself into just leaving when he's angry at his family rather than making his husband feel like he's following his mother's footsteps.

Also, I forgot to mention earlier - he was a teenager in the mid 80s. Definitely in the activist scene. Definitely had to deal with all sorts of bullshit that I, a young bean, know about only through research. I will gladly listen to any who have experience from that time.

 

"Redneck science" doesn't mean "bad science." Ask any agricultural college.

 

In a missing persons' case where the person's personal effects were found (dropped phone, etc), would the cops keep them as evidence? In a thing I'm cowriting we need a family member to have a specific item from the missing person and if the cops wouldn't give it back we need a reason for him to not be carrying it at the time.

 

How soon after would they need it? I don't know how long it'd be held, but if they don't need it right away, there'd be a chance of the stuff being released to family after it was processed, I imagine? Not sure, though, sorry!

 

Not immediately after, but long before the missing person is found.

 

a very, very cursory Google search suggests to me that the only reason police would keep personal items after processing is if they believed that they'd find either DNA or evidence on them, or they might carry a scent for search dogs? so like...it seems like it would depend on the item. like, in the case of a cell phone--you are probably not getting that back until the police can go through what's on it at least a little bit, on the chance that something in the photos or messages or something could help them figure out what happened to the person.

eta: and I have no idea how long any of that would take, I have no idea how fast police can go through a phone for anything suspicious or anything. so. sorry.

 

Okay, probably simpler if we have the guy not carrying it when he vanishes, then. Thanks for the help!

 

This is gonna sound weird, but...

Are there any foods that are safe for dogs to eat but not safe for humans? Google offers lots of info on the other way around...

 

Raw red meat (although you can't really just give domestics raw meat after growing up on kibble, it has to be gradually added a bit at a time to adjust afaik), small rodents, live or freshly killed birds, and expired foods that are old enough that humans would get sick can in some cases still be edible for a pupperoni. Doggos have like, antibacterial spit or something like that and can digest this stuff easier.

 

they also have more acidic stomach acid iirc which is better at killing bacteria than human stomach acid

this is why dogs like to eat things like week old buried rodent

 

also: raw animal intestine for the same reason. You wouldn't want to chomp down on a deer's filled intestines, whereas canines (and the big cats) can do and do so and will even enjoy it. And potentially extract more nutritional value from it because it's literally predigested.

 

Dogs will also eat faecal matter that's exited said intestines, but I don't know how "safe" that is for them or if it would count in context as "food". I'd go with roadkill or something.

 

Dogs will also happily eat grass even though they can't digest it properly, which probably wouldn't kill a human but would be difficult to get down and the blades have serrated edges which could cut a person's tongue and throat.

 

IIRC, dogs eating grass is actually part of why they're so resilient wrt food. If they eat something that's making them sick, they'll just do that to purge their bowels.

 

A lot of the time dogs eat grass when their stomach is upset, or they are trying to correct something missing from their diet (usually fiber). About 20% of the time it's so their body will expel something that's making them sick

Edit: ninja'd