shellphones | TEXT // Looking to Cure Fear, Pls Help

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TEXT // Looking to Cure Fear, Pls Help

Type: Text (Dated after Farplane event)
Sender ID: Anonymous
To: Public
Subject: Ranma's trying to cure his cat phobia
Warnings: Possible discussion of trauma, otherwise N/A

[After some recent... events that's transpired in the past couple months, events that left people he likes critically injured, it put a lot of things in perspective. Soul searching and all that junk. It... wasn't a new thought that popped up for the first time in this world, he's sat on it from time to time back home. But there, it didn't seem like there was constant events that'd set him off bad enough to maim his friends. Yet these past few months, he's kept falling into the Neko-ken state more and more, kept having his ailurophobia pushed to the tipping point. The cat island, the ghost cats, and now the black ooze of despair.

"Prevention is an important aspect, but I fear it may not be enough on its own.". Sherlock's words have been haunting his mind more recently from their talk of contingency plans. It staked his pride like a dagger to the heart. Control was something he should have, and he thought he had it all in check. For all his discipline, he can't get over being a scaredy-cat without losing his sanity.

He doesn't like considering this a viable option. Pop went out of his way to make sure he's adverse to showing weakness. This was something he should do though, before he goes above just clawing up people like fleshy scratch posts.]

Heya, I need some advice. For a friend. [... Look, you've gotta take baby steps sometimes when you're learning to walk.]

How do you get over a fear you've had since you were a kid?

[Vague, nondescript baby steps.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

You're know the for a friend excuse is older than most of the people here, right?

(Asshole gotta asshole.)

Desensitization can work. Either exposing the person to the feared thing in small controlled amounts where nothing bad happens or just learning about it, like watching videos or reading books.

[ Sherlock is keeping an eye on this post in case he might find something which can help him with the crippling fear of water he's had since a child. ]

[For a friend. yea, sure, okay, but.]

I guess it depends on the fear in question. I've read that repeated controlled exposure--where nothing awful happens--can help, but that's probably not gonna work for things like thunder or heights or the ocean.

[Assholes beget assholes, everyone knows that's common knowledge. You're lucky you're anonymous Sidestep, otherwise you'd get a scathing remark from the boy. But since they are, and Ranma's wanting to actually get solid advice, he'll hold off. For now.]

Did I ask if that's cliché or not? No, I didn't think so.

Pictures, she [Cuz clearly, if he uses the right pronoun, they'll clue in its him. Sometimes, his genius astounds even him.] can handle fine. It's the real thing's the problem. Her old man already tried "desensitizing" her to it, but that did squat. It only made it worse.

[C'mon Sherry, don't you know water is the giver of life? :)]

[He has friends! Who are close enough to him to be the same person.]

She's... [Technically, he's not lying addressing the "friend" as a girl.] ... afraid of dogs.

[Completely believable and can't be linked to another animal to Kaveh knows someone to be deathly afraid of, no way no how.]

And that's prolly not gonna work. Her old man had his own way of "controlled exposure" trying to "fix" her.

[Kaveh... hasn't been told of the whole Neko-ken training incident now that he thinks of it, has he? He can't tell him now though. If he does, then his anonymous identity'll be revealed!!!]

[ Fuck you, Ranma ~~/throws it in his playlist because the vibes~~ ]

[Unfortunately Ranma he only knows one person with an incredibly shitty dad ~~that he's been told about anyway~~ so his eyes just narrowed at his screen.]

what happened?

[Just engaging in some light hearted adopted-sibling teasing. <3 ~~yes goooood i will infect everyone's eardrums with the earworm that is the epic soundtrack~~]

[... siiigh. There's no good way he can explain this to Kaveh of all people without exposing himself, is there?]

... Promise not to laugh?

Laughing is the farthest thing from my mind right now, I promise.

[It better be, otherwise Ranma'll be very unhappy.

Dropping the public convo and switching to private DMs, he too drops the fictitious friend bit.]

Pop found this "invincible" technique called the Neko-ken in an old training manual. It goes like this: dig a pit or cellar deep enough the bottom's pitch black, and fill the hole after with starved and feral cats. Tie salty meats to the trainee's body, and throw them into the hole. The cats smell the food, go into a craze, and... You're smart enough to piece the outcome togethr.

The whole point was to burn a fear of cats so deep in the person's brain, they'll fight like a cat. Pop wasn't happy when I crawled out all scratched up, so he kept doing it over and over. 'Till either I figure it out, or I got over the fear. Lucky him, he got his wish. I know it.

[At the cost of being irreversibly screwed up in the head whenever a cat's nearby.]

It depends on the fear, but some will say exposure therapy (in a controlled environment) is one way to try to learn how to confront and surpass that fear. However, one can also learn breathing techniques or meditation tricks that will allow a person to react to a situation involving said fear with calm focus, even if it might not necessarily remove your fear of said situation completely.

[There's a pause, and then--]

Or, I suppose I could try to create a potion that will remove that fear entirely for a brief period of time, if you have reason to believe that none of the above is feasible for you.

[There is a very long pause between messages. It's probably a good thing this is in text so Ranma is not privy to what Kaveh may have just called his father.]

That's why you...become cat-like when you can't get away from them, then?

I don't know about a cure but I'd sure like to figure out what's wrong with your father's mind.

[ He's not going to say "sure, for a friend" because it's kind of rude but he's onto you, guy. ]

You've gotten a lot of answers, but if you want help and need a volunteer sometime, I don't mind lending a hand.

[Unlike the rest, Beat believes that this really is for their friend! Whoever's behind this seems to be a good one if they're looking out for them like that.]

guess it depends what your friends afraid of
and how scared they is about whatever it is

Edited 2024-11-30 13:45 (UTC)

(Look Ranma, they know that trick. They've let people assume their villain self is a he in order to distance them from their civilian identity.

In fact, it's that sudden inclusion of pronouns, alongside the apparent intensity of the fear and the mention of an old man that has them switching over to private and:)

And is she female all the time? Because this sounds really familiar.

Exposure therapy's off the table. Their old man did his own form of it. Meditation's not too bad an idea, they've done it a hundred times as part of their training. Though it's difficult to keep a calm mind when their body wants to get out of dodge ASAP.

[The proposition posted at the end caught his eye. And his caution.]

Potion crafter, huh. What's the catch?

[Chances are, Ranma's called his father worse than what Kaveh could come up with.]

Considering he didn't bother reading past the first page of the dumb manual? There's a vacancy up there instead of his brain.

Appreciate the offer, though dunno how much help you can be.

[He isn't against his help if Vash actually can produce results.]

[Funny thing is, Ranma believes Beat's caught on like the rest. Doesn't mean he's dropping the coy act.]

They're afraid of

['...' buffers in and out for a solid two minutes.]

dogs. And scared enough to lose their mind. Literally.

[Screw you sidestep for figuring out his bullshit!]

... Why wouldn't she be?

[Desperate idiot.]

I only know of one person here who has an uncontrollable fear caused or worsened by their shit dad fucking around, Ranma. And I've used the 'pretend to use a different pronoun' trick before too.

Edited 2024-12-22 08:53 (UTC)

[shit]

... is it really pretend if they use both sometime?

Not necessarily. Some people use all of them.

But anyway: I'm not sure regular methods for getting over a fear will help here.

They do?

[hi teen from the late 1980s, what is gender?]

You think? I know that already, but I'm willing to try nearly anything. Someone's got to come up with one good idea eventually.

[He can't be stuck being afraid of cats all his life and going all cat mode, can he?]

Yeah. It's not common, but it happens.

(Yeah, they know Ranma is kinda ignorant about all this stuff. He at least tries though, which is more than they can say about a lot of the people who aren't utterly uneducated.)

Maybe, but I don't think it's just a fear of cats that you're dealing with. Treating it as such is probably counterproductive.

[In his defense, no one in his time knew or accepted stuff like genderfluidity (yes the irony writes itself) and such outside their norms. You're either boy or girl or magically afflicted to swap sexes. His time in this world has been an eye opener that broadens his horizons.]

But the fear is the crux of the problem here. How else am I supposed to treat it?

Edited (sorry for edits, left out stuff i wanted to add) 2024-12-22 10:09 (UTC)

(And for someone who comes from a world so rigid about gender, he is doing remarkably well figuring things out.)

Yeah but I don't think it's just being afraid of cats. I mean, think about it. Your dad basically abandoned you and threw you in a hole because he thought it would make you stronger. You don't think other fears like being too weak or being abandoned might be tied up in this too?

Edited 2024-12-22 10:30 (UTC)

[Less figuring stuff out and more accepting them as it comes along. Much like most things in his life tbh.

...]

Don't know whatcha talking about. I don't start acting like a cat over feeling weak or Pop leaving me.

[If that was a factor, he'd probably be spending a lot of his time half-cat in the latter case.]

(Somewhere, they're sighing.)

Nevermind.

(Sidestep does not have the patience or the ability to explain that trauma works differently from phobias, and that the triggering fear may not be as important as the other emotions involved when actually trying to fix the fear in question.

They may not even be right about that stuff.

...This is stupid.)

[wow, why does everyone immediately assume that azul has some nefarious catch attached to things he offers here... even if ranma is correct that there technically is one...]

Well, that depends entirely on how much you are willing to pay or what you'd offer as a trade for it--the ingredients I need to prepare a potion like this do cost money, after all.

[Can you blame a guy for being cautious? Living most of your life as an itinerant martial artist with a father allergic to honest work and a fatal gullibility to deals that sound too good, you tend to run into people that make you wary to buy whatever they're selling. He learnt to take everything about everyone with a grain of salt from a very young age.

And even if Azul isn't some snake oil salesman, magic and him don't really mix well together to begin with.]

Name your price.

[He doesn't think he has anything on hand the bespectacled guy'd take, material wise.]

... Look, I get you're trying to help and all. Appreciate it, really do. It's just not that complex you need to pick at my head trying to psychoanalyze me.

[Being honest, it isn't like Ranma's an expert on mental health and how it affects a person himself, especially during his time and his environment.]

Except you just said the simple solution doesn't work.

(Fuck. They can't just ditch Ranms to deal with this on his own, even if they want to.

They sigh.)

Think of it like you're fighting a villain and his henchmen. Yeah the big guy is the one calling the shots and the source of the problems, but he's got a bunch of smaller guys making it super difficult for you to land a hit.

[You're too good to him sometimes Sidestep. Though now you're speaking his language; violence. It takes him a sec or three to digest what they're putting down in front of him.]

Okay, yeah, I get it. Don't go for the head, go for the others first before taking down the big one.

(As far as Sidestep is concerned, they're actually a horrible friend who is betraying him even now, but Ranma is free to keep thinking that.)

Something like that, yeah.

[He doesn't know Ranma well enough to actually know what valuable items or abilities the other man may have, save for the small glimpse he got of his prowess while they had been taking care of that gun wielding squirrel bounty.

But, for now, he simply offers (insert price here) asking for payment in the form of doubloons--a little pricey, but not break the bank worthy. It's enough to pay for the ingredients needed to prepare the potion, plus extra for Azul's efforts in doing so.]

Would this be considered good enough for you?

Edited 2024-12-26 00:22 (UTC)

[Wow. Whoever this is sure is taking their sweet time? Maybe they don't really want to spill their friend's secret?]

dogs? sounds normal to me
they get bit or something?

[Hmm... It looks reasonable enough, and he's racked up enough cash here to make Azul's considered price look like chump change.

But there's something you need to know: Ranma's a haggler. If he can spend as little money as in his bank, he'll take it.]

If you give me a list of the ingredients you need, and I can fetch them for you, will that bump down the price?

[Azul's a businessman, so he can respect the haggling. And it's not an unreasonable offer to make here, so...]

If you are able to acquire the ingredients and bring them to me, then yes, I will consider bringing the price down a little more since this will certainly be very helpful in making sure I can prepare what you need in a timely manner.

[It pays to be frugal.]

Deal. Tell me what you need, and I'll meet ya with the stuff and the money.

Their dad tied food to them and threw them in a dog pit.

[Azul will proceed to send a list of ingredients needed (probably mostly plants that can be found growing around the place or acquired through shops, a few vials of this or that of "water from the purest lake you can find, not any from the sea" and other liquids type of fetch questing) and an address for where his workshop is for the other man to bring the ingredients to.]

If you have any difficulties in acquiring something on this list, please let me know.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

TEXT // Looking to Cure Fear, Pls Help

Anonymous

not here

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not here x2

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still not here

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i can't believe it's not here

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Switching to private, sorry sherry!

un: octoblot

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un: bountyfull

un: stillarhino

Private

sorry for the delay

sorry for the delay aaaaaaa

sorry for the delay aaaaa

sorry for the delay

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Still private, no longer anonymous

Re: Still private, no longer anonymous

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I've finally escaped the clutches of writer's block, sorry for the delay ;^;

no worries! it happens to the best of us

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Writer's block hit at the worst time, sorry for the delay (also cw for ranma's dad being terrible)

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