Story: "Birthday Girl" (Part 6 of 18)
Apr. 28th, 2013 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis story is a sequel to "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," and "Touching Moments," "Splash," and "Coming Around."
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hulk, Steve Rogers, Betty Ross, JARVIS.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Inferences of past child abuse. Current environment is safe.
Summary: Doombots crash a beautiful spring day in the park. The Avengers clean up the mess. This includes Natasha's rather confused longing for something she never had: a birthday party.
Notes: Asexual character (Clint). Aromantic character (Natasha). Asexual relationship. Teamwork. Canon-typical violence. Friendship. Confusion. Hulk is a genius too. Fluff. Making up for lost time. Birthday. Cultural traditions. Games. Gifts. Cake. The cake is never a lie! Tickling. Trust issues. Safety and security. Non-sexual touching and intimacy. Personal growth. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. Skip to Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18.
"Birthday Girl" Part 6
Phil sat back in his chair and willed his heart to stop hammering against his ribs. He knew how the fight ended. Natasha was upset but uninjured. Steve lay a few feet away on the couch, wounded but recovering at his usual speed. Phil had seen much worse. Even so, it was never easy to watch a scene like that and grasp just how much damage it had done to the team.
Then the Starkpad went dark. Do you concur? (Yes) (No) JARVIS asked. He knew them all well, by now, as well as an artificial intelligence could manage with pervasive awareness of their histories and their steadily improving present. Yet he still asked for confirmation, especially in emotional matters, because his own nature was so different from theirs. He never stopped studying them, never stopped learning, so that he could support them better in the future.
(Yes) Phil replied. He marveled again at how accurate an observation JARVIS could make -- even down to intuiting when to speak aloud and when to send a discreet silent message through the nearest piece of hardware. There are human butlers serving in manors who have less domestic finesse, Phil thought. It made him proud to count JARVIS among his friends.
On the couch, Steve reached for another pillow. He paused, groaning, and wrapped an arm around his healing ribs. The pillow lay just out of reach. Steve gathered himself to try again.
Without a word, Natasha got up and lifted the pillow onto the couch. She tried to tuck it into place for Steve, but didn't find quite the right spot. She had first aid training but no real knack for looking after people.
Steve just smiled and adjusted the pillow a bit. Then he lay back with a sigh. Natasha dipped her head in acknowledgement. Her slim hand ghosted along his shoulder before she returned to her former seat.
Natasha must blame herself for Steve's injuries, Phil realized. Even in the dark room, he took care to keep his worry off his face, lest she misread it as pity. A moment's hesitation out of identification with or concern for someone, and needing a little assistance from a teammate, is nothing to be ashamed of. God, Natasha, you're not a machine.
She had tried to be, though -- tried to recapture the frigid indifference of her time before SHIELD in the belief that it made her a better fighter. It didn't. It undercut her teamwork in ways that Phil still hadn't managed to explain to her fully. A machine would have ignored the civilians in favor of destroying the enemy as efficiently as possible, nevermind the collateral damage. She had, after all, been trained to think of other people as targets or distractions, a habit of depersonalization that proved difficult to break.
Well, this is going to take a while to patch up, Phil concluded.
The screen lit again, discreet white letters saying, Phil, your chili is hot.
Phil put down the Starkpad. He slipped into the kitchen and filled a tray with bowls and spoons and boxes of crackers. He latched the lid on the crockpot and carried everything into the common room, fragrant steam trailing along. The Avengers descended on the feast like a horde of locusts.
* * *
Notes:
Blame causes problems whether directed at self or others. Self-blame undermines the ability to assess yourself accurately. It is particularly common after trauma. Some people consider self-blame a kind of internalized emotional abuse. There are ways to acknowledge and overcome self-blame. The art of self-forgiveness involves setting aside blame and examining things in a more compassionate perspective. There are tips on how to forgive yourself.
Identification with others involves assimilating common traits. Sympathy and empathy are feelings related to the emotions or experiences of other people, providing a positive basis of interaction. Without these factors, people can be indifferent to the harm they do to others. These relate to emotional intelligence, which impacts teamwork (or the lack thereof).
Collateral damage is harm done to other people or things besides the intended target. Some people feel that this concept makes it easier for the military to escape public criticism for carelessness. "There was collateral damage" sounds less ominous than "We hit the ammunition factory and also the hospital standing next to it."
Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder is a variation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, based not on a single major impact but on long-term exposure to harsh conditions. It's the cumulative stress that does damage; like a turbo button, the body's fight-or-flight reflex is meant to be pushed once and released, not pushed and held down. This site about PDSD/PTSD from bullying has a brilliant contrast between mental illness and mental injury, and I'm delighted to see somebody other than me making that distinction. Contrast Natasha with the other Avengers and you can see how the methodical nature of her torment and the length of her captivity created a different pattern of reaction than what appears in the others. As some of you have pointed out, she reads more like a prisoner of war than an abuse survivor.
Depersonalization or demonization is a process of self-delusion, making other people seem less than human. This is a typical practice in war, to make soldiers more willing to kill without hesitation. It's a type of othering. A key drawback is that it also erodes the individual's sense of self, which is also called depersonalization. Often accompanying this is derealization, when the individual feels that the world is distant or dreamlike and nothing matters. This can lead to depersonalization disorder. In regard to the Red Room, this was a feature and not a bug -- torture aims at breaking down the sense of self so that the victim is more easily controlled. Childhood trauma can lead to depersonalization disorder. In particular, look at the scale there and see how the Avengers fall toward the top half for emotional abuse, with Natasha capping out at emotional torture for being forced to harm others. It is possible to cultivate a strong sense of self and to learn sensitivity for other people's feelings.
[To be continued in Part 7 ...]
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hulk, Steve Rogers, Betty Ross, JARVIS.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Inferences of past child abuse. Current environment is safe.
Summary: Doombots crash a beautiful spring day in the park. The Avengers clean up the mess. This includes Natasha's rather confused longing for something she never had: a birthday party.
Notes: Asexual character (Clint). Aromantic character (Natasha). Asexual relationship. Teamwork. Canon-typical violence. Friendship. Confusion. Hulk is a genius too. Fluff. Making up for lost time. Birthday. Cultural traditions. Games. Gifts. Cake. The cake is never a lie! Tickling. Trust issues. Safety and security. Non-sexual touching and intimacy. Personal growth. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. Skip to Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18.
"Birthday Girl" Part 6
Phil sat back in his chair and willed his heart to stop hammering against his ribs. He knew how the fight ended. Natasha was upset but uninjured. Steve lay a few feet away on the couch, wounded but recovering at his usual speed. Phil had seen much worse. Even so, it was never easy to watch a scene like that and grasp just how much damage it had done to the team.
Then the Starkpad went dark. Do you concur? (Yes) (No) JARVIS asked. He knew them all well, by now, as well as an artificial intelligence could manage with pervasive awareness of their histories and their steadily improving present. Yet he still asked for confirmation, especially in emotional matters, because his own nature was so different from theirs. He never stopped studying them, never stopped learning, so that he could support them better in the future.
(Yes) Phil replied. He marveled again at how accurate an observation JARVIS could make -- even down to intuiting when to speak aloud and when to send a discreet silent message through the nearest piece of hardware. There are human butlers serving in manors who have less domestic finesse, Phil thought. It made him proud to count JARVIS among his friends.
On the couch, Steve reached for another pillow. He paused, groaning, and wrapped an arm around his healing ribs. The pillow lay just out of reach. Steve gathered himself to try again.
Without a word, Natasha got up and lifted the pillow onto the couch. She tried to tuck it into place for Steve, but didn't find quite the right spot. She had first aid training but no real knack for looking after people.
Steve just smiled and adjusted the pillow a bit. Then he lay back with a sigh. Natasha dipped her head in acknowledgement. Her slim hand ghosted along his shoulder before she returned to her former seat.
Natasha must blame herself for Steve's injuries, Phil realized. Even in the dark room, he took care to keep his worry off his face, lest she misread it as pity. A moment's hesitation out of identification with or concern for someone, and needing a little assistance from a teammate, is nothing to be ashamed of. God, Natasha, you're not a machine.
She had tried to be, though -- tried to recapture the frigid indifference of her time before SHIELD in the belief that it made her a better fighter. It didn't. It undercut her teamwork in ways that Phil still hadn't managed to explain to her fully. A machine would have ignored the civilians in favor of destroying the enemy as efficiently as possible, nevermind the collateral damage. She had, after all, been trained to think of other people as targets or distractions, a habit of depersonalization that proved difficult to break.
Well, this is going to take a while to patch up, Phil concluded.
The screen lit again, discreet white letters saying, Phil, your chili is hot.
Phil put down the Starkpad. He slipped into the kitchen and filled a tray with bowls and spoons and boxes of crackers. He latched the lid on the crockpot and carried everything into the common room, fragrant steam trailing along. The Avengers descended on the feast like a horde of locusts.
* * *
Notes:
Blame causes problems whether directed at self or others. Self-blame undermines the ability to assess yourself accurately. It is particularly common after trauma. Some people consider self-blame a kind of internalized emotional abuse. There are ways to acknowledge and overcome self-blame. The art of self-forgiveness involves setting aside blame and examining things in a more compassionate perspective. There are tips on how to forgive yourself.
Identification with others involves assimilating common traits. Sympathy and empathy are feelings related to the emotions or experiences of other people, providing a positive basis of interaction. Without these factors, people can be indifferent to the harm they do to others. These relate to emotional intelligence, which impacts teamwork (or the lack thereof).
Collateral damage is harm done to other people or things besides the intended target. Some people feel that this concept makes it easier for the military to escape public criticism for carelessness. "There was collateral damage" sounds less ominous than "We hit the ammunition factory and also the hospital standing next to it."
Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder is a variation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, based not on a single major impact but on long-term exposure to harsh conditions. It's the cumulative stress that does damage; like a turbo button, the body's fight-or-flight reflex is meant to be pushed once and released, not pushed and held down. This site about PDSD/PTSD from bullying has a brilliant contrast between mental illness and mental injury, and I'm delighted to see somebody other than me making that distinction. Contrast Natasha with the other Avengers and you can see how the methodical nature of her torment and the length of her captivity created a different pattern of reaction than what appears in the others. As some of you have pointed out, she reads more like a prisoner of war than an abuse survivor.
Depersonalization or demonization is a process of self-delusion, making other people seem less than human. This is a typical practice in war, to make soldiers more willing to kill without hesitation. It's a type of othering. A key drawback is that it also erodes the individual's sense of self, which is also called depersonalization. Often accompanying this is derealization, when the individual feels that the world is distant or dreamlike and nothing matters. This can lead to depersonalization disorder. In regard to the Red Room, this was a feature and not a bug -- torture aims at breaking down the sense of self so that the victim is more easily controlled. Childhood trauma can lead to depersonalization disorder. In particular, look at the scale there and see how the Avengers fall toward the top half for emotional abuse, with Natasha capping out at emotional torture for being forced to harm others. It is possible to cultivate a strong sense of self and to learn sensitivity for other people's feelings.
[To be continued in Part 7 ...]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-28 10:32 am (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2013-04-29 05:22 am (UTC)Thank you!
>> These chapters feel short :) <<
I aim for about 2 pages, which is about 500 words, in the shorter stories. That's average to long for a blog post. Sometimes the stories get longer in progress. Stories that start out longer, I'm more likely to break into sections of 4 pages, 1000 words.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-28 05:40 pm (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2013-04-29 05:25 am (UTC)When I write JARVIS, I try to base him on canon examples but also expand on that. I like to explore ways in which he is a person, but doesn't think or perceive the world or interact with people in the same ways that humans do. He's very caring, responsive, and protective of his people. He learns fast, and he's always learning more about what people like and how to take care of them. That's the butler in him. And hey, JARVIS is a superhero in his own right, because it's easy to forget but he's up there running Iron Man along with Tony. Neither of them could do it alone.
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2013-08-07 08:05 am (UTC)True... But I hadn't thought of it that way...
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2013-08-07 08:12 am (UTC)Wow!
Date: 2013-04-28 05:53 pm (UTC)FYI, I'm watching Iron Man today, learning Tony's backstory.
Re: Wow!
Date: 2013-04-28 06:12 pm (UTC)Thank you! To be fair, writing is my dayjob so I have extensive experience in finding references; my google-fu is strong. Then on the editorial and reviewing side, I've always loved introducing people to cool things. So as long as the footnotes are popular, I'll keep them up. I have some poetic series, and Schrodinger's Heroes, that also frequently have footnotes.
>> That being said, poor Natasha is trying hard, but she is utterly clueless. She honestly doesn't have the information or experience to know what to do. <<
Sooth. She doesn't have the background and whatever instincts she had were wiped out by training. Now she's trying to rebuild but it's motivated more often by things like guilt than by actual compassion, so her aim ... isn't very good. But she gets credit for effort.
>> FYI, I'm watching Iron Man today, learning Tony's backstory. <<
Yay! I think you'll enjoy it, although parts are really quite dark. It specifies much about why Tony is the way he is, and hints even more.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-28 06:30 pm (UTC)-A
Thank you!
Date: 2013-04-29 06:20 am (UTC)I'm happy to hear this.
>> The balance between plot and fluff is wonderful, and I love the way you write the characters. <<
That's useful to know.
>>And JARVIS is so lovely!<<
Yay! There's a little more of him in this story, and quite a lot in the next.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-28 08:44 pm (UTC)OTOH, you seem to have found one of the better sites and one that I bookmarked.
Okay...
Date: 2013-04-29 07:03 am (UTC)No worries. Just because you mention something, you're not obligated to do the legwork for me. As it turns out, just the name of the problem was enough for me to find at least a little on it. I would like to find more, and I'll probably keep picking around the edges of this, because there's more about Natasha and other POW issues over time.
>>[we have a cat who's obsessed with going out and will bang on the bedroom door as soon as the sun rises.] <<
*chuckle*
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-08 12:34 pm (UTC)You're welcome!
Date: 2013-05-10 07:06 am (UTC)It may be because a lot of fests and communities have a "must warn" list that just says "abuse" or "child abuse," so people are expected to tag for it even if it's not current. Then they don't think to distinguish "past abuse" or "abuse recovery" or the state of the environment or available support, etc. I'm far more inclined to write about the process of resolution than about the original abuse.
>> If the tags say "child abuse" but don't say specifically that it's people remembering past experiences I won't read it just in case. <<
That makes sense.
When I'm tagging or warning, I try to think of what makes me want to read or skip a story, and what other people have said about their decision-making processes too. So that also helps me think about what goes into stories. I want my readers to know what they're getting into, preferably without spoiling the action. Sometimes I write fluff, often I write things with a mix of light and dark, and occasionally I write things that are quite ruthless.
>> And I like that you put all the links after and I can read stuff - you know a lot. <<
I'm an information magnet, yeah. I like putting in concrete details to make a story more realistic and interesting. In some projects the footnotes become popular, and I'll do more of them -- this is one. If you look at some of my original work like Fiorenza the Wisewoman, Hart's Farm, and Schrodinger's Heroes, those also run to footnotes.
>> I like your stories. <<
Yay! That makes me happy.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-20 05:02 am (UTC)Well...
Date: 2013-07-20 06:53 am (UTC)Basically, different problems often have different solutions. The chance of fixing something is low if you don't understand the precise cause. If different causes produce similar symptoms, they may be conflated and treated the same -- which will work for some people but not others, and probably nobody will realize why the results are so erratic.
Suppose three people are depressed. One of them has a comfortable life, and a mental illness based on biochemical imbalance. One has recently witnessed a horrific event, and a mental injury based on that past damage. One is in an abusive home, and mental injuries continuing from that situation. The first person is most likely to need medication, the second would benefit from talk therapy to assist in processing the memories, and the third needs to get into a safe environment before much of anything else will help.
Anxiety is one of those things that can crop up for no discernible reason. You can't fix it by changing the environment or your actions, if there's nothing concrete that you're anxious about, just constantly freaked out. Talking, praying, and most other solutions have little effect on this kind of fear. It's frustrating if people keep trying to solve it, because it's not that kind of problem -- like trying to pull out a knife that isn't there. But if you can figure out what part of the brain has gone haywire, sometimes the right drug can shut off the fire alarm that is ringing for no good reason.
PTSD is a mental injury, not an illness: it is explicitly derived from a horrible event, and may have lots of different symptoms. Some people have a harder time coping with it because it's described as an illness and that doesn't feel right to them. Others accept it as an illness and think of themselves as crazy in ways that are not conducive to healing. If you get hit by a truck, you're not sick, you're injured. It's a whole different issue.
It's not an absolute division; those are just examples. Many mental issues can be cause by both routes, like depression. There are lots of different solutions to try, and some work better for certain problems or certain people. But it is always true that the best route to solving a problem is to understand its root cause so that you know exactly what you're dealing with.
The mental health care industry spends a lot of time not doing that. In its defense, the brain is a vast confusing thing we know little about -- and that's the part we can actually measure objectively. The mind, we can't even get that far, we're going mostly by guess and by golly. But people seriously need to pay more attention to the different causes of similar conditions. The sheer unpredictability of results in this field indicates that there are a lot of untracked variables in play that make things work or not work, and we don't know why.
Re: Well...
Date: 2013-07-20 11:26 pm (UTC)On what basis, given the relative newness of psychiatry and the even more extreme newness of decent neuroscience are you comfortable with the assertion that most other mental disorders are permanent? Postpartum depression, postpartum OCD, and postpartum psychosis often aren't. Some although by no means all people with major depression are actually able to go off medication after a couple of years. Anorexia nervosa appears to actually derive mostly from a biological response to starvation that some people are wired for, and if you can get them to eat normally for long enough, goes away without medication or therapy. (I assume you already know medications don't work in most cases, the less popularly known fact is that the "underlying cause" model of therapy doesn't help either, and sometimes makes things worse. Cognitive behavioural therapy can sometimes make a difference, but only if they are also getting adequate nutrition, and getting them adequate nutrition can help even if they aren't also in therapy).
How confident are you in the validity of the article you cited? Personally I think it focused a lot on how Normal (and therefore Not Mentally Ill) someone with PTSD was. I can understand how this might be helpful to someone with PTSD, but the argument struck me as fundamentally ableist and is only reassuring because of the internalised ableist beliefs that most people already carry around. Wouldn't it be more helpful to say "PTSD is curable, let's see what else might be curable!" Rather than "We don't know how to cure most mental illness, and we do know how to cure PTSD, therefore PTSD is not a mental illness, because the fact that we don't know how to cure them right this minute means other mental thingies are not curable?" Distinguishing PTSD from everything else, when mental illness is so stigmatised, may help people with PTSD, but it hurts everyone else with a mental health problem (including those who have both PTSD and another thing), because it serves to exacerbate the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with someone mentally ill, and (in this particular article) to reinforce many damaging and untrue stereotypes. If you want to protect people with PTSD from the stigma of mental illness, maybe focus on changing the culture so there's less of a stigma, rather than saying "we're not like those other people"?
It makes the implicit argument that being sectioned is not stressful, traumatic, or dehumanising for people who are mentally ill, which is of course ridiculous. Moreover it says things like that people with mental illness tend to be unaware that they have a problem (demonstrably untrue), and that people with mental illness are unconcerned with the needs of others and with how their condition affects others, which is also untrue and more than that a pretty horrible thing to say. Same with the idea that mentally ill people tend to be self assured and not have self-esteem problems. These kind of statements may describe the 20ish percent of schizophrenics who are for some reason unaware that they are schizophrenic, and some people with personality disorders (which, by the way, are generally considered to be of exogenous origin, and treatable, if they are treatable at all, with therapy and not medication), but not to the vast majority of people with mental illnesses. To suggest otherwise is untrue, unkind, and will only serve to exacerbate the stigmatisation of mental illness.
You do treat injuries differently than illnesses, and so there is a valid distinction to be made there. But to say that one is a normal response to an abnormal situation, and the other means there is something wrong with you, is patently absurd. Strep throat is an illness. It's a normal response to the situation of Strep A having somehow colonised your pharynx. But you take a course of medication and then it goes away. Hepatitis C is an illness, and an equally normal response to being infected with the Hep C virus, but isn't curable, although it is manageable with medications, as most mental illnesses are currently thought to be. A broken wrist is an injury, and with appropriate treatment generally goes away completely. A knee or back injury though, even if treatment and physical therapy can relieve the acute symptoms, may cause a person problems for the rest of their life. It becomes chronic, but sometimes manageable with medication and lifestyle changes, but is still unquestionably an injury and not an illness. Then take the case of AIDS. Until very, very recently, it was incurable, but could be managed with greater or lesser degrees of success with medication, exactly like most mental illnesses. Now we've cured it in an infant and a couple of adults. Because medical science keeps getting better. There's a case to be made for differentiating between mental health problems of primarily exogenous and primarily endogenous origin, but only to the extent that it affects what the primary avenue of approach for treatment might be.
With all due respect,
SparklyEevee