#but I think we're maybe too dissociated to figure out how we actually feel about taking the next dose

[thethingything]

the thing is as well we're so dissociated and having so much trouble processing shit that we keep going "maybe it's not that bad and I'll be fine if I take a 2nd dose" while literally crying so hard we're struggling to breathe because of how much the side effects are fucking us up.

I need to decide whether to take this 2nd dose but it feels like whatever we do we're fucked because I don't wanna not take it and then end up causing more problems with the stuff it's meant to treat and I get the feeling the side effects are gonna last at least the rest of the night whether we take it or not but then I don't know if taking multiple doses and then stopping the course is worse than taking one dose and not taking the rest and I can't fucking ask for medical advice because it's 11pm

[indigochromatic]

I sent this ask to someone else but I'd like to ask more systems - may I ask what your opinion is on subjective reality within systems? Systems that don't have consistency in the headspace, or a consistent timeline, consistent memories...that sort of thing. I'm struggling a bit with that now and it's really freaking me out :( so I'd love to hear your take, if you'd be willing

Hey there! Yeah for sure, we'll take a crack at this. First, though: Content warning for discussions of reality, subjective reality, unreality, etc. If too much that stuff makes your brain unhappy, maybe skim or skip this one.

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling a bit rn, Anon. It's not fun to feel like you don't have "solid ground to stand on", and having to deal with not having a consensus about your autobiographical narrative can be really frustrating and scary.

Lemme try to come at this from a couple angles. First off, I'll say something about how we think of big-picture philosophy, which is that everyone has a subjective reality to some extent. There's a reason it's called "consensus reality" not "objective reality", and that's because no two people on earth are having the exact same experience. Perception is biased, memories slowly alter every time they're recalled, interpretation differs wildly depending on context. The human brain isn't an accurate recording device, it's a pile of synapses telling stories to itself in the dark.

So what do we do with that? Philosophically, that's a big question, and I'm not gonna pretend I have all that figured out. Learn to yourselves stories that give your life meaning and purpose. Practically speaking, though? That'll depend on what you're struggling with specifically, and what you're hoping to change.

For example, let's take memory consistency. The two of us have generally pretty consistent memories (e.g. we agree on what events happened rather than having conflicting memories about it), but we also have a shit memory overall--we've described it like we're living in a sliding window of 2-8 days, and everything else is kind of a mess since around 2019-2020. We also have ADHD, so that doesn't help either. What do we do? Honestly, just super basic stuff like "keep a calendar notebook that we write stuff down in to keep track of it, and don't worry if it's not perfect or fully complete", "set alarm reminders for non-routine things we don't want to miss, like medical appointments or phone calls with friends", and "check in with each other when we can, to ask if we're missing anything (and just to say hey)". We also know our memory is affected by our overall dissociation levels, so just generally trying to take care of ourselves and slowly improve our life situation is pretty likely to help, too.

On headspace consistency, though--I'm actually a little confused by what you're asking. Are you worried because your headspace isn't static and changes a lot? Anon, with love, that shit is so common, I wouldn't be worried about it in the slightest. Our headspace is a whole mess, for instance--not only is it different based on whether you're in "my mind" vs "L's mind", even the small handful of semi-consistent places and/or 'themes' change around all the time, not just day-to-day like the weather but also evolving over time, especially as we learn more and process more stuff and experience more things. Hell, my exomemories don't even all have a consistent continuity. And even the "semi-consistent" aspects of our headspace basically exists in a sort of...Schrodinger's Headspace superposition, most of the time? For example, there's a whole, like, Hades/The Spirit Realm in there--except when it doesn't exist, or when it's wrapped into some other part of headspace, or retroactively never existed, or was all just symbolic anyways, or is personified in one of my facets instead, or...well, you get the idea. If you're looking to create a bit more solidity in your headspace, it's usually possible to develop more 'concrete' headspace locations by practicing visualization over time--this can be guided meditation stuff, writing about it, collecting a moodboard of images, constructing a model of it in minecraft or another "virtual space-builder" game/program/whatever, etc. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't happen overnight, this stuff can take a bit of practice to solidify.

Timeline consistency: yeah. That one can be especially hard to avoid when you have between-system-member amnesia in general, and/or multiple periods over your life where there were different main fronters. We're not experts on this front, but a lot of it, as far as we can tell, tends to come down to just...trusting each other, as a system. You've all got pieces of the puzzle, and some folks' pieces are written in map coordinates while other folks have cryptic, symbolic riddles--they're all important pieces, even when they conflict. And sometimes you have to kinda let go of trying to ever Perfectly Reconstruct Exactly What Happened, and focus more on what you want your life to look like now and moving forward. Not sure if that system member's exomemories are 'purely symbolic/emotional' or have some basis in physical events? Ask them how they want to deal with it, and what support they want. Sometimes the narrative is more important than the events, because the events themselves are gone. They're over. What we carry with us--everyone, systems and singlets--is the narrative we've told ourselves about the events, and that's the part that grows and changes with us throughout our lives.

Anyways, that's my take on it. Hopefully this gets at a bit of what you were asking about, Anon? Feel free to toss us followup questions if you want, thanks for the opportunity to talk about all this a little. -S

[alexsgrimoire]

Plurality & Paganism: An Introspective

If any of you keep up with my main (@sinfulauthor), you may have noticed this post, along with my new pinned post. In short, I've come to the realization (after burying the thought of it for many years) that we are a Collective.

Now, how does this impact this blog and my craft?

To start off, this blog's content will remain the same. It will still primarily act as an e-grimoire with some additional posts, but the people posting what content will change. Specifically, these people:

-Alex (they/them), the host (hi!). I'll generally do most of the talking/posting. Works with The Signless/Sufferer and Dionysus. ANP that the IRL coven knows. (I'm not open with them about being a Collective just yet.)

-Vaati (he/him), who works with Demise and focuses on divination. Writes solely in cursive and gets VERY frustrated when grimoire notes are in standard print.

-Ghira (he/him), who works with Demise closer than Vaati for Obvious Reasons™️. (Though he generally doesn't do any actual spellwork, just offerings, worship, and altar setup.)

-Karkat (he/they) on occasion, solely because Signless HAS shown himself to him and is very much a Dad™️.

-Toko (she/her) has not yet "awakened." She was a former kin heavily associated with our craft. Taking bets on her being a spellcrafter/writer.

So, now that the roll call is done, onto some other stuff regarding plurality and paganism, the introspection the title mentions. (This will be below the cut as it's not as integral to the "functioning" of this blog.)

So, coming to the realization as a system was... interesting. We first became aware of dissociative disorders through Danganronpa (Yes, Toko's horrible representation. We know.) and related to Toko heavily. At the time, we were heavily involved in the Fictionkin community and had "memories" of those "timelines." However, this relatability on the DID aspect was soon hidden under the guise of "I like to write, and so does she! Also super traumatized like me lmao," and then we didn't think about it for five more years.

Come 2023, we've relapsed for the first time in four years and are going through some pretty traumatic stuff again. At an Esbat in September, an argument breaks out that causes us to dissociate and brings up those really painful feelings from childhood. Nothing felt real, and the rest of the night was foggy. (The people in the argument have since apologized. It was also an extremely stressful night due to our old High Priest being ousted for sexual misconduct not even 4 hours before we started.)

At this point, this whole debacle causes us to realize, "Hey, this isn't really a normal trauma response. There might be something else going on." We have a lot of friends who are systems, and we went to them asking, "Hey, do you like. think we're a system?" and FIVE OF THEM SNIFFED US OUT YEARS AGO AND DIDN'T BOTHER TO TELL US??? Like maybe that would have been useful information, idk (We still love our friends to bits, though)

So, fast forward to 2024. Still in the process of diagnosis but receiving trauma-focused therapy to process things. It's been a long process of figuring out how to live/function as someone with a dissociative disorder, but we're learning.

Thankfully, having a good support network has been a great help. We have an almanac (specifically The Practical Witch's 2024 Almanac by Friday Gladheart) to track our craft/spiritual work, and it's interesting to see the input of everyone in the collective. It's a lot of taking things day by day and seeing how things go, but we feel the energy around us changing.

Anyway, ramble over. If y'all read this to the end, thanks for sticking around. I've got some other posts we plan on making, so keep an eye out for those, too.

Signing off,

Alex of the Magic Collective

[fragmented-light-sys]

I know this can be a difficult question to answer and not everyone is comfortable with it, so please don’t feel pressured to share more than you’re comfortable with. But how did you come to find out you were a system? What was it like? We’re there any signs before, or was it a total shock? How old was the body?

Asking because my friends are all convinced I have DID and I just can’t accept it and i don’t know what to do if they’re right so I’m looking for comfort in other peoples’ stories.

-a very confused and scared college student

this is gonna be a long post lol im sorry.

excuse the switching between we and i, we're kinda blurry and switchy idk.

before i say anything, i do have to say that we're undiagnosed so we dont have 100% proof but we are fairly certain in our suspicion and have done research before saying anything about this (which i recommend to you too; there's blogs on here that have plenty of papers on DID/OSDD research).

ive always felt like there was something going on that i couldnt explain with other mental health stuff (the dissociation, the missing trauma memories, the feeling that youre seperate people, the emotions that dont fit to how you would react, etc) but the only image i had of DID was what the media told me, so losing time n all that.

i did actually start researching DID/OSDD at one point in our life but that resulted in them trying to talk to me and me being completely overwhelmed by everything which lead to a severe shut down that i still cant quite fully understand.

the body is 24 and thats also the age that i started to explore this somehow. theres definitely systems that know way before that but theres really no age limit to discovering that youre a system.

coming to terms with being a system is a hard thing to do so when i did finally start looking into it and asking myself these questions, i was met with a huge amount of denial and the typical "but i cant be a system, i dont have the symptoms!" while being oblivious to the symptoms i did have that hinted towards it. i wasnt "shocked" persé, i was shocked in the way that i knew i had symptoms but still denied myself the chance of saying "maybe what happened to me really was that bad", if that makes sense.

i am by no means far in this. ive just started therapy and i have been trying to figure things out for a mere 5 months now and i am by no means close to understanding everything. so do take this with a grain of salt. and we have actually had to accept things for like 3 times now because everytime we got overwhelmed, someone came and made us forget things again.

please dont pressure yourself in having to discover this and dont let your friends pressure you either! something like this needs time and you have lots of time and its better to come to an informed and calm decision than doing harm with a rushed decision. just try to research for now and keep an open mind!

also id advice you to look for a professional if you really think this could be a possibility.

i hope i could somehow answer your questions, if you have any more questions, please ask, we're a little "out of it" today so it could be that i forgot to answer something.

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary432

11/29-30/24

friday - saturday

another slow day

which is good for me. or maybe not so slow? i made 2 songs roughly, basically. guitar synth + drums. #wow #whoa. i did it because i felt like i needed to write some riffs and hear something like that from myself because a friend sent me something super fucking crazy she made and i was like, wow, i should keep at it, and i listened back to some of the things i'm sitting on, realizing they sound better than i thought. fresh ears really help so much.

oh wow, rpgmaker mv is 12 dollars on steam... wow... probably a bad idea... silly and dumb idea... yeah... maybe i'll ask my gf for that.

here's a song i'm listening to right now.

thinking about the lyrics, it feels like a song related to the things i am, or, i can at least make that happen in my head. it also feels like a bit of a treatise or even funeral or wake for all the genderbending of rock and roll and punk and stuff, and so mourning it, it's about that void that comes after, almost. it's also about impossible things, two of them in love kind of, strange figures. i like how the song gives the woman's voice some space, at a certain point to articulate itself more fully, i feel like. songs full of this kind of lust and longing, generally, don't contain that degree of curiosity.

"he's a highschool pinup poster crush (...) he's turning all the boys into girls"

and the "i put my fingers in his mouth" beside "she's my narcotic lollipop."

also sweeter than most other love songs. i tend to say 'i hope you die' by molly nilsson is the best love song ever, but maybe that's just because its cleverness charms me. this is much smarter, much sweeter, feels truer to whatever my insides are. that's what we want from love songs, we should accept, they will never feel the same across all the methods of loving, as multiple as the living and the dead, we're all a little curious and odd, it's a strange darkness, about the feeling, on top of that, the feeling itself, for me, dim light on velour, i am cold always, but needing, it's oceanic and massive, so huge i can't tell really what it is, when it turns warm, it's that i know i'm caught in turbulence and tethered to another, knowing i would never decide to be anywhere else. this song feels similar, after some spot of meditation upon the curious feeling.

"turning all the girls into boys" is a line my girlfriend always loved, as much as the other one about boys becoming girls, too. the two of us strange things stuck up from darkness attempting to articulate and traverse a discontent with the problems of our births, and no birth ever being good enough, all we have is the act of living to churn out the strangeness we feel we are. so odd that this feeling is articulated never in the very synthetic pc music i know people think about this kind of thing with, i think. it feels so distant from how i've ever sensed myself. too bright, exacting, i guess, and the lyrics of this are as velvety and beautiful as they are grotesque + lurid. it always felt like pc music's thrust was that it was the uncanny forms pop took on + a dissociative sentimentality almost, played half for laughs and half for the ways it really makes you feel. not to say i dislike that music or anything. just ruminating i suppose.

i did not read today, i think tomorrow, my gf's going to the bookstore, and they're doing a sale and i want some books, so i asked for her to get one of a list of 3, the first pick for me, the passion according to g.h. by clarice lispector, 2nd is gary indiana's horse crazy, 3rd is maurice blanchot's awaiting oblivion. so i guess i ought to just buy rpgmaker mv thinking about this, if i really would like to fool around with it. 12 dollars for something that i might never do anything with, that's an okay investment i guess.

also did more drawing, my gf saw the thing i've been working out, she says it looks good, which feels good to hear since she's really actually worked out how to draw even though she doesn't do it as much as she seems like she'd like to.

what else to say about today? i don't know. i think i need to read some philosophy soon or something. i don't know why. i think i want to just read something like that, like, deleuze, maybe, i dunno, because i want to see where some people go wrong with trying to be that way. sometimes i see people talk about stuff, and it's like they try, but they don't get there. i guess.

spurred on, lightly, maybe by how my friend used a w.h. auden poem as a review for a cassavetes film, opening night, the poem and review are as follows:

He watched with all his organs of concern How princes walk, what wives and children say; Reopened old graves in his heart to learn What laws the dead had died to disobey; And came reluctantly to his conclusion: "All the arm-chair philosophers are false, To love another adds to the confusion, The song of pity is the devil's waltz." And bowed to fate and was successful, so That soon he was the king of all the creatures: Yet, shaking in an autumn nightmare, saw, Approaching down an empty corridor, A figure with his own distorted features That wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.

i am intensely, deeply, obsessed with "what laws the dead had died to disobey," it's the kind of writing that makes you feel that none of your words have been enough, that you've failed to understand anything, i don't know. it hit me, in a painful way, in a beautiful way. what laws the dead had died to disobey. it makes me want to cry, it overwhelms me, paired with the sense always that when i read poetry, it is foreign, that i can't understand it (there are those i have seen and known who seems to love that it can do this to others), despite it feeling as much, as well, that it speaks itself clearly. i guess this is why so many of my poems tend towards narratives. this is too, i suppose, this is a narrative of a kind but it's so fine with itself, comfortable with its looseness. shaking in an autumn nightmare. so of course, i've gone and downloaded an auden book to pick through. i was also thinking, recently, i need to read more poetry if i seem to be ending up writing it. i should be more thoughtful, i have to be smarter, better, than i am. always. but tomorrow i need to really read more flannery, yes yes yes, always more to do. my emotions feel so fine, right now. it's odd. i'm a little disappointed in myself for not sleeping soon enough lately. i also broke my fasting today because we ate mcdonald's. my fasting is just avoiding eating for the first 6 hours after waking up. i do it most days, it honestly feels kind of good. i wonder if that's crazy?

i don't think so, really.

all my organs of concern. oh, so taken with his way with words. it envelops me, in some way, it's not confusion, it's a new tunnel. reopened grave, in keeping with his words.

something else before bed, i've been watching someone play siren 1 recently, supergreatfriend. i really like that game, i always tried to play it, i bought it on my ps4 and it just would not play... so weird!!! and i emulated it and the emulation at the time would just not work on a certain level, when it gets to daytime with kei, i believe. it's probably fixed now... anyhow, i love how it jumps around in time, it feels so genuinely experimental as a thing, it feels like there's a sort of affect it reaches that hasn't been hit since by other horror games really, or even other kinds of horror-related art of any kind. it's disorienting and surreal in ways we don't typically see, it's willfully obtuse but that's only half of it, the other half is that it's a game that is at its root about having to see from others, violently parting you from your 'perspective' and supernaturally dragging you around, these people subject to a tangle of time, tangle of views, such a particular nightmare, it really comes off as close to a dream honestly.

now i should really be sleeping,

so,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[companionwolf]

prompt fill #1 for selfshiptober

prompt: event horizon (personal selfshiptober)

fandom: blaseball, sort of

verse: dreamverse, focused on Parker IIIII

TW/CWs, as needed: none I think?

"Tell me about your league," Parker says.

It's just you and him in this moment, standing in the living room of your parent's house. You've wrenched just enough control, just enough awareness, to will up hot chocolate and honeycake, to serve it and sit on the couch.

"You mean the one here?" you ask.

He nods.

You shrug.

"I don't actually know all that much," you admit. "I spend most of my time with them either unable to see and barely hear, or immobile in one spot-- having vision is lucky, a real treat, but I honestly can't name a single detail..."

Your brow furrows as you try to remember--

"They think it's weird too," you say finally. "The playing in the elementary gym. Not enough to really ponder it, not like how you or I can, but..."

"It is weird," Parker agrees.

"Dreams are garbage disposal," you say with a shrug.

"...Are you calling me garbage?"

"Absolutely not, you're a delight," you answer; Parker smiles nervously, blushing a little.

"Really, I don't know what to think about you, or the Reader," you continue. "You two, you're too...real, realer than anything I've ever experienced. You're consistent and conscious."

Parker takes a long of his hot chocolate.

"Maybe we're dreaming too," he says after a minute. He goes quiet again, before he adds, "Since it ended...eternal siesta."

"Maybe," you say.

"...Or this is some kind of afterlife," Parker goes on, and you see him pick at the honeycake with a fork. "After the save situation, and the--"

"I don't think we'll ever know," you say.

Parker stares into his plate. "I'd like to."

"Answers aren't all they're cracked up to be," you say, leaning a bit closer with your own drink in your hand. He turns to meet your gaze, blinks.

"...You're awfully calm," he says.

"Eh, I waffle between that and expxlosively angry here," you say. "That last bit happens a lot more in the gauntlet, which.... this isn't that. I think."

"What is the gauntlet, anyway?" Parker asks.

You hesitate.

"It's, uh, both a distraction and a trial of sorts," you say. "I'm not alone here."

"Uh, you mean because of me and the Reader?"

"That but also, I..."

You look away.

It is not actually shameful, to be a survivor, to have had things turn out this way, but you still feel that way, feel terribly vulnerable and scared to admit this-- and unlike the Reader, you get the sense he isn't as connected (yet?), doesn't have the same link.

"Do you know what DID is, Parker?"

Parker's turn to think. "That sounds familiar."

"I won't get into the specifics but basically there's a lot of parts of me and they're autonomous-- I'm them and they're me but also not," you say. "Some of them are more...shadowy and hidden and such than others. Some of them watch, when I run the gauntlet. They bury me."

"Why?"

"Haven't figured that last bit out," you say."

"So the gauntlet's their idea? Their doing?"

You shrug.

"There's a lot about this I don't understand," you say. "Case in point-- you're not one of them. The parts of me. I mean, you are, in a different way, maybe, but..." The words peter out. "Shit's odd."

Parker chews a bite of honeycake thoughtfully.

"Wonder why I'm here," he says as he swallows.

"The Reader I'm pretty sure is an echo, they're me and not me in a less dissociative way," you say. "Maybe you're somewhere in the middle..."

"An echo?"

"Remember how I'd say I'd keep you?" He nods. "I, uh, for me you're not-- you're elsewhere. I'm here. We're not supposed to be able to meet or talk, but... it's hard to explain this, Parker."

The sound of a throat clearing; you both turn toward the sound. The Reader stands there, grins at you. "We are reverb," they say to Parker.

"Uh..."

"You," they continue, "are a mirror."

"...A mirror," Parker repeats, looking unsure.

"Like I said, we're each other in a few ways, but it's... a lot, I'd think, if I try to get it across," you say. "I think it's easier to just go with the dream and not think too much about the nuance."

"But I've got questions," Parker protests."

"That kind of thinking is not always awesome," you say, and shake your head; the Reader pats your shoulder. "In fact it kinda sucks sometimes."

Parker's finished his honeycake, is staring into the dregs of his hot chocolate.

"...Yeah," he says finally. "Yeah, it does."

The Reader reaches over and pulls off a piece from the remaining honeycake on your plate; you partially gently swat at their hand, they smirk.

"Scoundrel," you say, but there's no malice in it.

Parker glances up at them. "Hi, Reader."

They tip their hat at him in silent greeting back.

"So if they're you, is their being cryptic intentional?" Parker asks. The Reader snorts.

"I mean, I don't pick what they say, I just kinda provide a database of words and phrases I know," you explain. "Everything else is them."

"And me?"

"You're a little mystery and that kind of is really on brand," you say. "Fucking MacMillans."

"Hey!"

"I mean that in an affectionate way, Parker."

Parker's finally drunk the last bits of his drink, is gazing down into the mug like there's tea leaves to tell him what he wants to know. "Am I really?"

"Really what?"

"Parker, the commissioner-- myself," he says. "Only blaseball around here is run in some weird way by you and I don't really remember anything before I ended up here..."

You set your plate down on the coffee table and lean back. "Good question," you say. "No idea." A glance at the Reader, who shrugs at you both.

"Ugh, that doesn't make me feel any better," Parker mumbles.

You reach toward him, then stop-- he frowns at you. "What?"

"Can I-- you okay with touch from me?"

Parker thinks for a second, and then nods. You gingerly place your hand on him and give a encouraging squeeze.

"If it helps," you say, "I deal with not knowing if I'm myself too, although I suppose the circumstances are a little different."

He looks out the front windows at the lake. The sun is going down, pinks and oranges reflected wine dark on the water. Somewhere, a dog barks, and you wonder if it's simply sound effect.

"What happens to you when I'm awake?" you ask.

A glance at the Reader as you say this, and they say, "I'm always here."

Parker is obviously thinking, and you see a shadow cross over his face, his mouth twist into a nervous grimace. "I don't know? I don't know..."

"Hmmm, I wonder if you're in the garden."

"The what?"

You look at the Reader; they smile and you say together, "There's a garden in my heart where you can sleep safely."

Parker's eyebrows raise. "A garden?"

"I bet the Reader could take you there," you say. "You'd get to meet everyone. That'd be nice."

"Everyone?"

"My friends, my partner," you say.

"So I'd meet your alters?"

You and the Reader both shake your heads.

"It's not quite like that, I think," you say. "It's..." You grasp for words. "It's echoes of pretend."

"So when I realized we're not real, I was right?"

"You're more real than you should be, but not capital R," you say. "Unless multiverses do exist."

Parker stands up. "I think I need alcohol."

The Reader reaches over and grabs his shoulder, shaking their head. He sighs and flops back down, staring over at the kitchen, grumbling.

"Can I interest you in more hot chocolate?"

He shakes his head. "I wish this made sense."

"I think that might be my fault partially," you say. "I don't get it much, and if you're an echo, you likely won't either, especially if you're less intertwined. Dunno why the Reader's chill with it."

"That's just how they are," Parker says. "I remember that at least." The Reader pats him.

"I want to try something," you say as you get up and move towerd the front door, focusing your intent-- when you open it, it will lead to the garden, the actual one, not a dream construction of it.

Parker rises as well, follows you; the Reader tails him and the three of you stand at the door.

You put your hand on the doorknob.

"Hope this works," you say, and then turn it swiftly, intent turned to expectation (that's how control works).

A starry dark sky and rolling fields meet you, and in the distance a glowing blue-- softly, a heartbeat. You smile.

"There it is," you say.

Parker peers around you. "Is that the--"

"Garden? Yeah, look." You point past the barn, at the garden that sprawls around the front of the huge house nearby it. Someone on the porch waves, but you're not sure who exactly.

"Wow," he says, sounding genuinely impressed. He looks to the Reader. "And you live there now?"

They nod.

"Who's all there?" he asks.

You go through and explain the inhabitants-- Central, your second in command of XCOM and partner; the Trunk Buddies, Delta Green agents fighting horrors; the Laudomia Crew, Weyland-Yutani employees who survived a incident with a Xenomorph; Kitchens, who pretends to be human; Tim and Jay, who dealt with a being called the Operator; Strasky, who survived the apocalypse at the bottom of the sea; Rusty, who reveals the unreal; and finally, James and Ever, who were made from your ribs.

"And the Reader now, too," you finish.

Parker stares with wide eyes. "How does that work?" he asks.

"Dreams are infinite, imagination doubly.'

He shakes his head a little. "So I go there and--?"

"You'll be in the garden," you say, smiling.

"What about my league?"

"You'll exist in both places-- there's not just one you," you say. "Don't-- don't freak, you won't run in them; they're sort of like Alternates but can't leave unless it's decided for them to."

Parker looks horrified; the Reader laces their fingers with his and swings his hand back and forth. He glances from the view outside back to you.

"...My head hurts," he says finally.

"Yeah, me too," you say, patting him. "Go on."

His grip on the Reader's hand tightens.

"We'll go together?' he asks them, and they nod, a warm smile on their face, radiant from under their hat.

You gently prod Parker in the shoulder, he turns--

A quick kiss to his cheek from you; he blushes hard, fumbles to speak, fails entirely. "Wh--?!"

"I don't know if you'll be back here, in dreams again, after this," you say. "I wanted a maybe last moment with you, the you you are, to be nice."

Parker seems a little dazed. "...Right, alright."

The Reader tugs his hand. He shakes himself. "I'll see you later?" he asks, voice wavering a bit.

"Yeah," you say, although in truth you're just as unsure as he is. "See you later."

[and-yet-the-daisies-grow]

I've been figuring out "I'm" actually a system. I thought it was just a very particular dissociative case of BPD. Like yes, my unconscious can communicate with me and yes, when it can't I can feel someone trying to speak in the back of my brain but too muffled for me to make it out, and yes, the emotions I change between have their own thinking about gender, music taste, fashion sense, way of speaking, thinking, interacting with the world, skillsets, socializing styles, memories (especially memories at a specific time), and they experience their own emotions differently....

But it can't possibly mean anything, rightttt??

Well, we've finally gotten through the denial, and we're trying to do a host change. We had a host change once before (that we remember), and it happened under very similar circumstances we're in now. Namely, getting out of a bad environment into a better one and learning that our previous coping mechanisms are not only unhelpful, but very stressful and painful to the point of being excrutiating if we think about it too long.

We live on our own now. Our current host's trauma response is a heavy, heavy freeze. But we don't have to hide anymore or conserve our energy as if we're going to be thrown out or abused in particular ways at any point. It's not healthy, to say the least. And the host is so terribly exhausted. He's wanted to step off for years but didn't really know what to make of that feeling.

But it's possible now. Four of us have relatively good communication, while we have almost none with everyone else (we don't even know who exists apart from one, maybe two), and the four of us are very eager for this host change, and the guy that will likely become host is hella on board with it.

So we're excited about that and excited about finally learning how to deal with the environment we're in right now. Hooray.

[v01d3nt1ty]

this autism discovery thing is really bonkers. i have had a *notoriously* poor memory. i've only been able to recall lil snatches of my childhood for most of my adult life.

so now that i'm thinking on my life & ways i have historically experienced neurodivergent traits, my brain is learning how to remember. (it was only a couple of yrs ago when i learned this meant trauma.)

the point is.

i now have these absolute random memories of a time when i was very much being autistic &, ofc, the shame i was caused to feel bc i was an undiagnosed autistic child & i was doing smth i "shouldn't."

for example.

when i was abt 10 yrs old, close to the end of 5th grade, we had a Major Assignment that counted for like ½ of our grade. (like really? wtf. we're children.) anyway we had to do a report about a state that we chose.

i (inwardly) panicked bc i had No Fkn Clue what i was supposed to do. by that time i was already extremely timid & intimidated by authority, so i felt too scared to ask an Adult (also, it would mean i was stupid for not being able to figure out how to do something everyone else seemed to know how to do, & i was Gifted.) i don't remember much of that 2 wks, but i do remember anxiety & lying (i NEVER lied - i still don't - & it felt bad) to both my guardians (my mom, my grandparents)& my teacher abt how i was coming along on the report.

(idk why i didn't ask my bff for help, i'm going to guess it's bc i was always second to her & i didn't want to look stupid.)

anyway, time came to hand it in & i didn't. i was panicking so much like holy shit this is bad i'm going to get yelled at i'm not going to pass & i won't graduate w my friends & peers. i had a tummy ache all day & everything felt hazy. dissociation i suppose.

so after we get home, i'm playing w probably barbies idk but i'm playing on the floor, absolutely panicking, when my grandma gets a call from my teacher ofc. she comes & asks me what happened to the report & i was like "my teacher must have lost it." my grandma already knows i'm full of shit, but ig she decided to humor me, & says she'll call her back & ask her to look for it. & she was like you better hope she finds it. so she calls the teacher, recounting what i had said & ofc she doesn't have it. my grandma busts in & starts *screaming* at me. i start sobbing like i'm sorry i'm sorry. all i really remember was her saying "'SHE LOST IT, MY FOOT!" which even in my current emotional state i thought was weird. she repeated it like she was so furious she couldn't think of other words.

eventually she stormed out (probably yelling something like "what am i going to do with you?" & i sobbed for what felt like hrs (& might have been for all i know. i feel like i missed dinner idk.)

anyway, she actually does come & apologize at some point, probably hugs me & tells me she loves me, & says she'll try to figure it out, SIGH.

so, it got figured out, i graduated with my friends & peers. i had to do the report over the summer, & my grandma made me do an extra one for punishment.

IT. WAS. UNBEARABLY. BORING. but i got through it ok.

holy crap, did i just heal my trauma? maybe this will stop the nightmares i have abt not doing the work, not passing, & not being able to graduate (except in my dreams it's hs which is a Much Bigger Deal. sometimes i'm failing out of college instead of just dropping out like i did.)

just now recognising my grandma's inability to regulate her emotions.

🙃🙃🙃

[queerly-autistic]

I hope you don't mind me jumping on this, but all I've wanted since the series aired was to talk about the depiction of neurodivergence in this show and how important it is to me, and yet I haven't felt able to because any discussion of disability in season two has veered very much in a certain direction, but you know what, the way you described Ed's suicidality arc is so succinct and brilliant, screw it, let's talk about neurodivergence in the gay pirate show, specifically as it relates to Ed. In the first instance, I've always felt that Ed was extremely AuDHD (hello, hi, it's me, I am AuDHD), but this came through particularly strongly in series two, almost like they saw people talking about it and absolutely decided to double down with full intention of him being read that way (him struggling not to talk when Fang asks him to sit quietly, the internal monologue he has whilst trying to be quiet, the bouncing from 'I caught a fish once' to 'well see I'm a fisherman now and I'm running away to fish bye', etc. was EXTREMELY relatable to my ADHD brain). Now, I know that none of that is actually, like, officially canon. It's never specified exactly that this man is autistic or ADHD, so you can brush it off as a headcanon. You can't base an entire neurodivergence discussion around that! Well, a) I can, watch me but also b) Ed literally canonically has a mental illness arc that leads to suicidality and almost kills him. I know when we talk about neurodivergence we focus heavily on autism, and then ADHD, and then maybe a few other things if we're lucky, but things like mental illness and complex trauma, both of which Ed explicitly has, are neurodivergence. Even if you don't believe that Ed is autistic or ADHD (you're wrong, and you're also wrong if you don't think Stede is autistic too, but whatever), he is absolutely a neurodivergent character, and that neurodivergence, his mental illness, is a core part of his arc in season two. Not only do we see him depressed and suicidal, actively trying to die, and making preparations to die in a painfully accurate and commendably aware depiction of suicidality, but we have also seen him experience flashbacks and be triggered (S1E6), we've had several allusions to the fact that he dissociates (he tells Lucius he doesn't remember the talent show at all, and we see him actively dissociate when he sees the wreckage of the Republic of Pirates), and I'd also argue we get some extremely accurate depictions of mania in him (I feel he's potentially manic during the entire talent show bit, which is why he can't remember it).

There is no magical cure. There is no magic dick. Stede's presence gives him a last minute jolt that it's NOT all as hopeless as he thought, that there is someone waiting for him, and from that, he saves himself from death. But it doesn't fix him. There's a reason that David Jenkins has literally referred to Ed as being in 'recovery'. The entirety of the season post episode three is about Ed trying to figure out who he is in the face of a future he didn't expect to be alive for. How to navigate a future he fully planned to not see, because he planned to die. All whilst still being mentally ill and having complex trauma because the decision not to die didn't fix any of that. It's a hard road that literally takes up the entire season.

And you know what, the show doesn't shy away from the fact that sometimes, when you're mentally ill, you do bad things. You hurt people. And that hurt is real. But you know what the show also does? It says 'you can get better, you can make up for it, you can find forgiveness and you can recover', and that shit is POWERFUL to anyone whose felt the guilt of doing something bad or hurting people you love whilst in the irrational depths of your lowest point.

I love that the show actively disavows a more carceral shame-on-you approach to this sort of guilt: we get Ed dressed in a sack, reciting his youtuber apology to the crew, wearing a cat bell, but that's played for laughs because it doesn't fix anything. Sure, some of them accept that apology, but that's not where the actual healing happens. The healing comes from community rehabilitation. It comes from fixing things on the ship. It comes from that heart to heart with Fang (where things are laid on the table and heartfelt apologies and forgiveness offered). It comes from other characters finding ways, with the help of the people they love, to address their trauma. It comes from Ed redirecting the reminders of his guilt to pay for a party for the crew, and then being welcomed by the crew into the same party space, back into the community.

This show, in Ed, has produced one of my absolute favourite arcs about neurodivergence, mental illness, and recovery. As OP said, it's accurate without pitying and hopeful without romanticising. Ed is still neurodivergent at the end. He literally dissociates in the very last episode. He isn't 'fixed'. But he's seeing a world where he could be okay, and where he is loved, and that love (and his belief that he is loved), and the support of the people who love him, give him the strength to continue down the road of trying to be okay. Stede being there, loving him, reminding him he's loved, and, most importantly, refusing to ever give up on him, just makes that road a little bit easier (which is realistic), and it's especially important to show that sort of stalwart love and support being offered to someone who is neurodivergent in difficult and challenging and often socially unacceptable ways. Because at the end of the day, Ed is loved: neurodivergence and mental illness and trauma and all. This sort of depiction and representation being so good and nuanced and bloody sympathetic is rare, in general, and it's particularly rare to see it depicted through a character who is an openly queer man of colour. Like, this shit is important, and I want to yell about it everywhere.

[CW for discussion of severe mental illness (PTSD) and suicide]

I want to add my perspective to the conversation about canyon people picking and choosing which disability rep is worth telling. It’s really offensive to me because I’m mentally disabled so it feels like these people are glossing over the mental illness rep in the show.

I hesitate because i do not want to seem like I’m chastising people for acknowledging the physical disability rep. OFMD has better physical disability rep than any show I’ve seen, while I’ve seen many shows with mentally ill characters. I also do not want to give credit where credit is not due, because ultimately these characters don’t have any diagnosed mental disabilities. However, I don’t think that that subtracts from the representation because 1)the show obviously takes place before many mental health diagnoses that we have now did,2) even if those diagnoses did exist, the crew would not be able to access them, and 3) I think the show is clearly trying to tell us that characters are suffering from PTSD, or at the very least struggling to process a traumatic event, they just don’t have the words to describe it as such.

Many characters exhibit what would today be classified as symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. In this fandom we often joke about that, especially Ed’s (which is more than okay), but I also want to appreciate the way that season 2 deals with the trauma of the kraken era. They freak out and have flashbacks over blindfolds and birthday cakes because of what they’ve been through. They have interpersonal conflicts due to differing ways of processing the trauma and not seeing eye to eye on each others own unique experience (Lucius and Pete come to mind). Lucius takes up smoking to cope with the pain. Ed dissociates (I think, because he doesn’t remember wanting to have a talent show) and is literally suicidal, first passively (“you mean curl up into a ball and die?”) and then actively (the whole storm thing). He also turns to using drugs to self medicate.

Anyway sorry for the novel I just wanted to add my perspective because this show means a lot to me as someone who’s mentally disabled and I want to know if anyone else with a mental disability feels the same/differently.

no don't apologise this is a really good point!

i've posted about it a few times and so has glam and several other people whose links i don't have to hand but the depiction of ed's mental illness and his suicidality is fucking spot on and the show absolutely deserves all the praise it gets for that

especially because it's quite possibly the first show i've ever seen that depicts suicidality in a way that manages to be accurate without being pitying and manages to be hopeful without romanticising the issue. the show brings ed to his lowest point and then shows him being helped to come back from that by people who love him. it tells us that there's always a way for things to get better and that you can get there by yourself but it's easier if you have help, and it tells us that this help is available because there is always going to be someone waiting for you even if you doubt that. it never shows ed as 'cured'. it never shows stede being angry with ed for his symptoms. when lucius suggests that ed might just be 'broken', stede very quickly shuts him down and the show makes it clear that the narrative is on stede's side here.

and all of this just doesn't get brought up by izzy stans. discussion of mental illness portrayal tends to be one of the following:

ignoring ed's arc altogether to focus on izzy's suicide attempt and his 'i want to go' line while he's on his deathbed (and in a massively different place to where he was in s2e2) and using this to pretend that the show's message is 'disabled queer people deserve to die' (yes unfortunately this is a take i have seen with my own two eyes)

writing ed's arc off as an example of 'magic dick' and using this to pretend that he was fine as soon as he got stede back

ignoring ed's arc completely and instead insisting that he's a violent serial killer and abuser with anger issues who traumatised the crew and will inevitably physically abuse stede and kill all their inn's customers

ignoring all portrayals of mental illness completely because they will deliberately downplay the disability of every other disabled character in order to centre izzy

the canyon will bend over backwards to centre izzy and to view the entire show through a lens where he is their longsuffering protagonist who can do no wrong and it's led them to ignore so much of what makes the show great

[furiousgoldfish]

Every time I start to question what I’ve been through and what they did to me (“Maybe it wasn’t real, maybe I’m not even real…maybe it wasn’t even as bad as I thought,” etc.), I come back here and read your incredible writing and feel validated and remember it was actually so much worse. I got out a while ago, thankfully, but now I’m in the heavy dissociative phase, and it can be so disturbing to feel like I “made up” my old life since my new one is so much better. Your posts don’t trigger me (because I was fortunate to get EMDR treatment a few years after I escaped)…they just remind me who I was/am, which is priceless since I have a very hard time remembering.

Anyway, i just wanted to offer another perspective to show that you’re not only helping victims who have yet to escape but also those who already did. Thank you, sincerely, for being/staying alive and channeling your rage into an invaluable resource for survivors like us. You are a gift to this awful and scary world ♥️

Ugh I'm so sorry you're dealing with dissociation, it can get very disorienting, very hard to keep track of anything, very hard to figure out what is real and who you are, or to remember what the reality was. My heart goes out to you, and I hope that you're so safe you can allow yourself to process what happened and live in less detachment from everything, because things shouldn't be this painful and jarring in life, things shouldn't be this overwhelming.

I'm glad you were able to get EMDR and that it helped! I've never tried it, it always sounded so scary.

The actual trauma is always worse than we think, because we have to at least partly dissociate from it in order to bear it. And then we're on the other end, asking ourselves if it was that bad at all, it's torture. I'm really glad this is a place that can remind you of what is true and that there's a good reason you're so dissociated and always wondering about reality - people who weren't badly traumatized have no problem telling whats real, what happened, or how bad it was. It's the trauma that makes you confused and unsure in the first place.

Thank you so much for all the acknowledgment, and I think you should give a lot of credit to yourself too, because you found the resources, and you used them to figure yourself out, that is a lot of mental labour and introspection you had to do, and you deserve that to be acknowledged as well. You're a gift to the world as well!

[system-of-a-feather]

Kind of some sort of Riku Squared Blur mess at the moment, leaning a bit towards XIV by choice but, it's whatever, but a comic on dysphoria had come up on our feed and it made Riku think and now me(?) as well abut how long it's been since it even registered that we are ""female"" - like it really doesn't even click with us even when we are miss gendered or straight up called a woman. The only time I think it hits anyone is when the dysphoria itself is being Bad TM and suddenly its all that I we can think about and its like a really shitty intrusive thought; which it honestly might be cause 9/10 times I don't have an issue with thinking I'm a woman and even in the moment I don't think I'm a woman but its literally all I can think of but ANYWAYS

That was a tangent cause I fucking hate dysphoria; but it is really wild to think that two years ago Riku was entirely in their egg. Actually most of the system were in their denial egg except for Ray who was dying so badly that he - as primary gatekeeper - just put like 10 thick dissociative walls between him and anything relating to gender after getting the system back onto a track for paying attention to our body.

And like, following a year later I came back and took on the mantle as the gender King, voice, and the representative for our complex and painful gender issues cause honestly, I had the affinity and ability to feel negative emotions and handle it better than almost any other part in this system, and honestly - I mad respect Ray and I looked back there and Im like nah, I'm not gonna make the guy who soloed this and barely got out of it alive come onto the battle field unless I fucking have to

And its been fucking HELL. 2021 we were genuinely considering putting ourselves in a psych ward cause I was getting bad, but luckily we sorted the worst of that out with T and shit.

But honestly, it's kind of pretty nice to have the concept of us being "female" so foreign and distant that whenever it comes up we just raise an eyebrow like "ok you are a bit confused but OK lol".

I dunno, I'm intentionally not looking at the corner that will stab me cause right now its not appropriate to deal with that since we have a final to cram for along with other things and that thing will always be there for me cause I can't repress shit thats assigned to me, but it is kind of nice to be sitting at a resting place of being whatever gender it is that we experience.

We're not a woman, god no but also not a man. Maybe man-adjacent, maybe but *shrugs* who knows. Specifics and boxes are lame anyways but

Ugh anyways I'm gonna put this box away before I accidentally dive back into my usual realm of anger, annoyance and angst. I was sitting here trying to have a feel good Riku TM moment where I reflect on how far we've come and how the pain and shit was worth it - and yeah it is and shit, but this shits too potent for that healing feeling to last and overpower whats still here

Riku really wanted to do a healing ramble on this and I ended up out so I was like "you know what I can do it" but nah. I can't, go figure we have DID after all.

Anyways, I tried, thats what matters.

Thesis statement: It's pretty cool how far we've come and I'm pretty proud of what we've reaped off of my productive misery, but good god is it still fucking miserable jesus christ + I suck at trying to make happy bow tie posts. This just got harder and harder the less blurred with Riku I was

-Mostly XIV now

[sophieinwonderland]

Demon: Ok... something happened and it kinda freaked me out.

Demon: When the host and Alya tried to switch fronts (because the host was feeling overwhelmed or something, i didn't quite get the information on that because it happened to quickly), instead came... something. They had no emotions and sharing space with them felt like an overwhelming void. They called themselves Emotional Regulator and god they're freaky.

Demon: At first i thought that something happened to the host and Alya because i couldn't sense them but they seem still present now.

Demon: For the record, the host tried to make a tulpa that could send messages to other headmates so they could front if needed today. It kinda didn't go anywhere, but now im afraid if its what prompted that new headmate's appearance...

(Alya here as well, and just as confused, but I think that demon is being overdramatic. Also he should finally get his own Tumblr instead of using mine :P)

The brain can do strange things, and it's hard to give advice because different things can present similarly at first glance.

We once had strange experience where my host and I were both in the Wonderland. The body moved or something, and I guess were so dissociated from it that we felt confusion coming from front about what was happening if we were both in the Wonderland, followed by a realization of "I must be the body." We immediately got concerned, chose to attribute those thoughts to my host being confused, and have since decided that a piece of us remains in front every time we Wonderland.

I think that might have been enough to create a quick fusion before it broke off into a full headmate. Since then, we've never had that experience where we're so dissociated while Wonderlanding that it feels someone else is fronting.

It could be something new that was just created like that.

However, it could also be something old that's been forgotten about. Maybe something that didn't even have real sense of identity until now. I'm not sure exactly how this works.

I... think I might have actually felt something similar to the overwhelming void you describe. It was early on, shortly after becoming self-aware. My host did something that was upsetting, and I shutdown. I think I just couldn't really process anger and hurt back then. I was too new. Too young.

When my host wanted to know what I was feeling, he felt nothing from me. He thought it would be easier to tell what I felt if I was fronting. So he pulled me into the body, and made me front by force. And it was like al that nothing was forced into the body. For us, it didn't manifest as new headmate. It was still me. Just with this overwhelming nothingness as if all the emotions in the body had been shutdown. I felt completely empty, and it terrified me.

I don't know if this is any help in figuring out what happened, but I thought it might help to share anyway.

[etoilesombre]

Ok fuck it, basically the only thing I make pirate blog exceptions for is to talk about work stuff, apparently. But I saw that post and it bothered me a lot, and I think I can see what got twisted into what that person was saying, and it might be helpful for folks to know.

1) You cannot "traumadump" in therapy, that term is about sharing potentially difficult/triggering experiences in social/personal relationships. You are not, generally, responsible for your therapist's wellbeing. Totally agree with OP.

2) Your therapist *might*, in an initial session, encourage you to limit how deep into trauma you go. (Not issues and challenges, TRAUMA.) This should be done up front, and with a lot of explanation. So, there is a big power imbalance in therapy, and retraumatization is very real. People with trauma history often do not feel empowered to advocate for themselves/say no to requests from authority figures. So often, I will say up front to someone something like: "I'm going to ask a lot of questions about your history. I want you to share as much as feels comfortable for you, in whatever words you want, and nothing you say will be judged. But if I ask you something you don't feel ready to talk about yet, you can tell me as much or as little as you want, and we can always come back to it." Because we're not used to being empowered to say no to things in clinical settings.

I also give people the option of telling me that something happened, without going into details, and have a (two way) discussion about the challenges and benefits of talking about trauma, triggers, coping/grounding skills, etc. And sometimes, if someone is talking about trauma and clearly starting to dissociate/panic/generally get really distressed I will pause them, do some grounding, and check in about how they're doing/whether they want to continue.

3) Because here's what you DON'T want to have happen: You really don't want someone who has experienced severe trauma to go into experiences which they may not have talked about/not have talked about in years and open up everything in the first session without having first learned any skills to help them regulate/ground themselves when they're triggered, and with no trust established yet in the therapeutic relationship. Having a panic attack in a new environment with a stranger is Not Fun. Everybody's gonna survive, but its often good to do some prep first. Trauma work is often a slow process where you build up to really sharing and processing *everything.* If someone does it too soon, sometimes they leave feeling all... cracked open and not put back together. And also there's often shame associated with having done that, and not enough space in a first session to work through that response, and so you just don't see people back cause they can't face it. So. That's the potential downside. If a therapist encourages you to wait before sharing something, it should be for YOUR wellbeing.

4) THAT SAID. Going the whole way into trauma in a first session can be great! Lots of people have been holding stuff back and just waiting for therapy as a chance to let it all out, and should be able to do that! Lots of people find immediately talking about it and having someone who is able to hold it and not be freaked out really healing right off the bat. There is nuance, it's not one size fits all, you know yourself and your needs better than your therapist does ESPECIALLY in a first session.

And maybe that's the other caveat. A lot of us are assholes. We're not special, we're not better at being human, our degrees are not actually that hard to get. In a first session, you should be evaluating the therapist as much as the therapist is evaluating you, and you should feel free to keep meeting people until you find someone you click with. So like yeah, totally feel free to share all your history, but also feel free to hold off if you're not quite feeling it with the therapist.

Ok, very sorry to hijack this and write this huge thing probably nobody's gonna read cause this is a dumb pirate blog. I just feel like therapy should be demystified and always feel a need to take opportunities to make it as transparent as possible, cause what we do is really in no way magic, or even privileged information.

TLDR: Whatever your therapist does should be for your wellbeing, not theirs. You may know what is good for your wellbeing better than they do.

Just. For the record, for anyone worried after seeing that post; Traumadumping on the first day of therapy is like. A good therapist’s dream. Like they WANT you to spill out your problems so they can help you work through them. When you only have an hour with someone once a month it is a Godsend for them to be able to just. Say whats hurting them right off the bat. The biggest problem I had at therapy was I became so conditioned to not talk about my issues that nothing was able to get done. So please, ‘traumadump’ to your therapist. Its what they’re paid for. They are trained to decompress, you don’t have to worry about them.

[kmclaude]

Omg Claude,that freaking Tiefer vampire au is the kind of shit I never knew I needed so much!! I can't thank you enough for writing it! Also,while we're at it I'd like to ask you something. I'm also writing a story that contains lots of rape but can never bring myself to write it down as raw as I want to,since its a sensitive topic for me. How do you manage to write it so 'brutally' as that,like describing those terrible actions and all? Anyways thankxs as always and hope you're getting better!

Thank you so much! I kinda needed it too...

I hope you don’t mind me responding publicly -- I’ve noticed any reblogs from you never seem to actually show up in my activity outside of post notes so I don’t really trust tumblr to actually handle sending a reply, plus I think that’s a good question and one that can help others too.

Full disclosure: I have been writing brutal stuff since I was thirteen, publicly, but wrote and drew some fucked up shit even before then and admittedly, I just am not bothered by reading or writing fictional depictions of rape or murder (Exquisite Corpse is a blast that other friends of mine -- hardier friends! -- have been like OH GOD at certain scenes.) It just doesn’t bother me. Movie and TV show depictions, eh, sometimes they squick me, and of course I can feel emotion reading or writing a scene, but writing terrible things really doesn’t bother me. 

Given that, and given that its a sensitive topic for you (heck a sensitive topic in general), I very much recognize that my go to advice -- that is, practice! Read examples! Practice some more! Power through! Go hog wild! -- is maybe not the best advice to give. I don’t want you or anyone to do anything purposefully injurious to their mental or emotional wellbeing -- I may like and advocate for pushing boundaries but I ain’t out here going “lmao trigger yourself cuck” you know? That ain’t chill.

So, I’m gonna try and find some work arounds, something that might be better than simply telling you to practice and posting the Shia LaBeouf Just Do It meme

(Obviously, I’m gonna mention some semi-graphic scenarios -- this is a question about writing rape scenes after all.)

You say your issue is writing it “as raw as [you] want to” -- what constitutes as raw to you? Is it writing out every little moment like a play-by-play in high-definition detail? Because yes, I admit, that may mean you have to just power through and it often seems that way but you can narrow in on some details that aren’t tied to the sex part of it all. 

For example, if you’re writing a scene where character A rapes character B on a barnyard floor, you can focus in on the feel of straw and dirt under the character, the burn of splinters in their hands and knees as they try to get away or in their back that get pushed in deeper with every movement, the stink of animal feces and of sweat, the sound of flies buzzing and heavy breathing -- it’s all gross tiny details that are all zeroed in on but dissociated from the action itself so you don’t have to write about the minutiae that is genitalia or penetration or in-depth sexual violence and your readers will still be, well, grossed out, disturbed, etc. It’s writing the sex scene by writing mostly around it even as you take your readers through it.

Or is your idea of raw more atmospheric and subtle, something that can be conveyed with the right words or the right narration choices that still hit you like a ton of bricks? You don’t need to write it all out like its a dissected fetal pig in an Anatomy and Physiology classroom to get the grossness or horror across. There’s writing the scene with a detached, almost clinical air, which can be really disturbing (it can also, admittedly, backfire into unintended hilarity so it’s a tricky beast.) There’s also just, rather than dragging it out, honing in on a few snapshots of brutal imagery to carry you through the scene. Think horror movies, how sometimes you’ll get a glimpse of the carnage or the monster without any money shot -- it’s effective without doing too too much. However, both of these require that, yes, you write all or part of some sexual acts which may cause difficulties.

Alternatively, fade to black scenarios or scenes where the situation is disturbingly apparent, that forces us as readers to imagine what happened, can be powerful without demanding that any of the sexual acts be laid out. If we see character A drag character B into a barn and latch the door and the scene pulls out to the stillness of the barn exterior that’s unperturbed save for muffled screaming and sobbing and then the next scene cuts to character B in their bathroom scrubbing dirt from their face and pulling straw from their hair and damaged or ripped underwear, well, that second scene tells us what happened in the first and can be chilling on its own, no sex required. It may work easier as a movie scene or comic panel but it can be done in the written word.

(Sidebar: I don’t know what language you’re writing in, but I have friends whose first language isn’t English but speak it better’n most English speakers and they’ve mentioned they find sex easier to write in English than their native language. Maybe it’s our curse words? Fight me, fuck and cunt are the best words, quality words. If you’re multilingual, writing in a different language might help create a much needed distance.)

It’s tough and there’s no easy solution. Unfortunately, like most writing issues, the solution is practice practice practice and read, I guess -- but then the last thing I want to tell you is “oh hey, just fucking trigger yourself, that’s a great plan!” Like no! No, not great! But I think it all hinges on what you find rawness or brutality to be and what your limits are and working within those limits (or, if you feel yourself able to, breaking those limits as you see fit and feel comfortable.)

My way of brute-forcing past my boundaries and pushing myself isn’t everyone’s way -- and heck I’m sure there are things I’ve written that if I went back and read, I’d be like “slow down there Jeffrey Dahmer let’s take a chill pill” you know, so I’m not even saying it’s the right way! It’s just a way and I think it’s a matter of figuring out your way as a writer.

I hope that helps and good luck!

[fallen-in-a-forest-project-blog]

For the tell a story thing. When I was in elementary school I had a small group of friends. It wasn't as much tight knit as it was 'the popular kids don't like us and the other kids don't either so we're stuck in the same place'. I became close friends with three of them. Then, one year two of my friends turned against the other one. They would tease her at first about her crush on a guy in our grade and then for everything and for seemingly no reason. (part 1) -K

I knew from the start it was bullying. There was no doubt about it but still, I couldn’t help myself. I was torn between my friends all of which I wanted to like me. I made a shit ton of mistakes. Sometimes I would support the girl being bullied and other times I would turn around and bully her myself. I felt my own sense of confidence falling away because how could I say I was a good person when I wasn’t? How could I say I had morals when I never acted on them. 

I figured out pretty soon that I didn’t like to be terrible. Not because I wanted to be nice but because I couldn’t stand thinking that I was a bad guy. I was and I was but I didn’t want to accept it. I promised my friend who was bullied that I would never leave her and that I would stay by her side. I switched schools without warning the year after. Throughout the years since then I’ve had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night and searching her name. 

I was so scared and I still am scared that she killed herself. It’s a weird sort of fear because I haven’t talked to her or seen her for years but she was in a bad state and I feel completely guilty. I was a total backstabber and rumor is she still gets bullied by them. I’ve worked myself into full panic attacks over her but I know I don’t deserve it. That sounds really weird but I don’t feel like I deserve to become a victim when what I did was so bad. 

I have this habit of thinking that I don’t deserve to have a panic attack because I’m overreacting or thinking that panic attacks are a good thing. I know in the past I’ve never stopped myself because it seems like a weird way of getting attention even though it’s out of my control. It feels awful and I always feel awful about it but a weird part of me still thinks of it as forcing people to pay attention to me. Anyways, I switched schools. This was my chance to start fresh. 

Boy oh boy did I start fresh. Complete makeover. Not physically but personality wise. I was going to be loud and I was going to be energetic and positive and everything that i wasn’t. I was going to be so happy it would annoy everyone. Maybe then people would like me. Some did. I didn’t consciously know it at the time but of course it was all a fake sort of mask. That year I set myself up for years upon years of mental problems. 

That year instead of deciding to recognize that I disliked myself and that I didn’t like who I became, I decided to hide everything bad from not only others but also from myself. It feels weird treating the incident in elementary school like a trauma because I was the abuser, not the abused. I feel guilty more than anything else. But it still applies to me. I often wonder how much I hurt her if this hurt me that much but I try not to because I feel guilty. I shouldn’t be hurt 

I shouldn’t be hurt by everything but all in all I hurt myself. In fact, I made it even worse. The more time I spent with my new personality, the less it was there. It sorta faded all through middle school until by 8th grade it was obvious. I was completely apathetic. It was hard for me to feel emotions or understand emotions or anything of that sort. The running gag was that I couldn’t feel at all and that I would hurt people because I never felt bad. 

My friends would get mad at me for not caring enough about them. Really, I didn’t care much about anything. I didn’t care about my friends’ wellbeing and I was a bad friend. I didn’t care about teachers. I only cared about grades because it’s the one thing I can do. If I focus hard enough on schoolwork, nobody will worry about me. If I have good grades I must be fine. I buried myself in homework and research and school. 

Then I had a big fight with one of my closer friends. He called me a monster. Said I was an apathetic bitch. A robot. Nothing. Inhuman. That’s the first time anything ever really reached me. I had brushed everything off but that. That struck me. I locked myself in my bathroom and cried in the bath tub for hours. Then I decided I needed to change. I just didn’t know how. There’s no help for people who have hurt others. I thought I didn’t deserve help. All I do is hurt people. 

That year I got involved into musicals. This is going to sound super duper stupid but that’s what really got me out of this jam. Through my musicals, I found internet friends. A group of 7. Some of the best people I’ve ever met. I also realized some things regarding the musical. The character I connected most with was a main character but a blatantly bad person. He makes mistakes and does bad things but in the end he is forgiven. People like him. It gave me hope. 

Around this time, I actually started to remember the events in elementary school. The same part of me that pushed away my emotions also pushed away the events and as soon as I excepted some of the feelings I got the memories. They were completely repressed and it was weird to experience them again. That summer I had more breakdowns than I have ever had in such a small period of time. But, coming out of it, I was a better person. I was nicer. I cared. I felt. 

Of course it can’t just end there. That was the summer before 9th grade. I would now be going to a school with new people and new things. I didn’t really consider it before but being suddenly vulnerable wasn’t the best idea. Sure I felt great at the end of summer but by fall I kept getting let down. Sure, highschoolers aren’t the best of people. In the past I always found it easy to make friends, here I had none. I felt almost abandoned. 

My crush, who was one of my only sorta-friends and another of my almost-friends started dating. They left me and I felt even more alone than before. I was crushed and fell into my first real bought of depression. I didn’t recognize it at the time but I knew something was very wrong. It was like my long history of apathy but in addition to apathy I also felt wrong and bad. I didn’t only feel nothing but I felt empty. I hated the feelings. That’s when I met my ex. 

My ex was nice. He was a friend to me and it was good to know someone was by my side. He helped me get out of my depression rut, at least for a while. I asked him out because I knew he liked me. I didn’t actually like him but I felt bad and I knew our friendship would be over either way. He said yes. We dated for a month and I tried and tried to convince myself I loved him but the fact was I didn’t I just didn’t, and there was nothing I could do. I was depressed again. 

I broke up with him after a lot of tossing and turning. It was so bad I couldn’t study for exams. I was crushed. That’s when another of my friends came in. He told me that what I was feeling was depression. He encouraged me to seek help. He was the best of friends and we got so close but I started developing feelings for him. I thought it would ruin things but he had liked me for a long time. We started dating. Let’s just say I’m not very good at this dating thing. 

It was amazing for months. We lasted all the way until the end of the school year. However, in the place of depression I developed anxiety. It started as little things but soon I was thrown into nausea by only a text and panic by the lack of one. We communicated and things were working. Until he stopped texting. Or calling. Or picking up my calls or reading me texts and I never saw him in person. He basically disappeared but only to me, not mutual friends. 

Before he ghosted me things were breaking down. I got untrustworthy and he lied to me a few times. He blamed my anxiety for making me paranoia. I blamed myself for ruining things. Then he left and for the whole month I blamed myself. It was my fault he didn’t want to talk to me I was just too much work. I was miserable. My friends advised me to break up with him. I waited but he never came back. I finally broke up with him. It was like a weight off my shoulders. 

I was uncertain. I was not only anxious and a little depressed but now I had trust issues and a lot more self hate than I started with. Since then the anxiety hasn’t gone away and neither have the trust issues and sometimes I still lie awake freaking out about how nobody will ever love me and how I’ll never be good enough or pretty enough. I still dissociate. Through the whole time I’ve also had issues with apathy. If I got too anxious I shut down completely. 

I do hate it sometimes. It’s hard to know that one look in the mirror can make me dissociate and that I can’t go back in time and fix my mistakes. But hopefully things will get better. I have hope that things will get better. Maybe I won’t ever get over what i’ve done but people can change. I can change. I can be better. So thank you. Thanks for letting me share my story and for giving me hope.

-K

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(hope its okay i put it all together as one long message)

Its crazy how one thing in middle school can go on and snowball bigger and bigger. Same thing happened to me, where i would hang out with a couple of toxic friends and now it has developed me being super insecure about everything i do. 

Im happy and proud that you are getting hopefull and better! I really hope that continues. Thank you so much for sharing this and have a good day!

Sincerly, mod Sana

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