#is that tag still warranted? frankly idk

[haljathefangirlcat]

Charlie + picking up and twirling her badass spear-wielding former Exorcist gf

[ca1e70-deactivated]

a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years. 

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism 

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid. 

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis 

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later 

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best. 

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever. 

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment) 

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH 

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair. 

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going. 

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY

[ladyfl4me]

A,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z ;o

Okay *cracks knuckles* let’s go! F, M, and S have already been taken from this list, so feel free to send in... B, C, D, or H, I guess. Yeehaw. This is really fucking long.

A: How did you come up with the title to [TMWCIFTC]? -- It started, as many things do, as a bad pun. The novel The Spy who Came In from the Cold was a cold-war spy thriller, about a British spy who goes over to East Germany as an apparent defect, except he’s actually there to spread misinformation and fuck shit up. He falls in love, becomes disillusioned with his superiors, and is shot dead over the corpse of his lover after climbing over to the east side of the wall. Needless to say, this is nowhere close to what happens in TMWCIFTC. I chose it early on because of the literal meaning: there’s a moth(man), he’s coming in from the cold WV weather, boom shaka laka, we have a title. Over time, though, it’s evolved into another meaning. Indrid himself is coming in from an isolated, lonely existence: he’s rejoining the family that cut ties with him, he’s in love, he’s warm and safe. The moth sure did come in from the cold, and hopefully he stays that way.

E: If you wrote a sequel to [TMWCIFTC], what would it be about? -- Hm. Considering my entire TAZ fic career is a tangled hairball of sequels and prequels, I kind of have this base covered. At the moment, TCOS - aka The Children of Sylvain, the sequel to TMWCIFTC - is about three things: a Pine Guard road trip race against time and the feds, the Spanish Sylvan Inquisition That Nobody Expected (least of all Jake and Hollis, who have to set aside their differences and past conflicts to save Kepler - and who knows, maybe they’ll fall in love along the way), and Alexandra the Interpreter getting woke to Sylvan politics and doing what she can from the inside to change them. In other words, it’s going to be a massive sequel that is the finale of the Amnesty alternate universe I’ve created. It’s this series’ Endgame. (That reminds me, I need an actual title for this collection of stories I’m writing. The “Tin Cinematic Universe” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like.)

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? -- eh, it kind of depends. It’s like a buffering bar on Youtube videos. I outline what I can until I run out of ideas, then start writing, then add outlines to the end, until the outline is complete and I just have to keep writing.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? -- I don’t have one for reading, but for writing, I fucking love structuring chapters around songs. Classical or otherwise, I love music. All my stories play in my head like a movie screen, and I just do my best to describe what I’m seeing in my head with an accompanying score. It’s not so much a guilty pleasure as it is a writing process. Frankly, I don’t think I actually have a guilty pleasure; the act of writing itself is all the happiness I need.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic]. -- An alternate ending for The Devil Went Down To Georgia would be... interesting. It ended with Boyd-as-Jersey-Devil scaring the pants off some poor broke college kid, who stole his worthless fiddle; then he changed back, and he and Ned went on their merry way to go break into Aubrey’s house and send everything down the drain. If there was one thing that I could change in there, it would be how fast Ned ran. If he ran a little faster, he would have seen the alley; he would have witnessed Boyd turning into the Jersey Devil, or at least turning back into himself; and he’d get a very rude awakening as to what Sylvans are and that his partner (in crime, and everything that mattered) was a fucking cryptid. God, that’d be a fun AU to write. Who knows, I might go do that someday.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? -- At the moment, the only angsty idea that I’m actually conceptualizing is a Hollis/Jake angsty breakup for TSG. (Spoilers, I guess.) I once wrote a very grimdark ending to TMWCIFTC where everyone fell through the ice and drowned. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also mentally killed off each Amnesty protagonist and NPC in various ways, but I never felt comfortable writing them down. I only write angst with a happy ending because those are the kinds of stories I need to hear.

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting? -- 9 times out of 10, I just throw it into the void. I write as much as I can in big chunks, and then kind of hope for the best. TMWCIFTC, for example, is a completely unedited, unbetaed vomit draft. I usually do a quick reread of my oneshots to catch grammar and spelling errors, but other than that I just trust myself that it’s fine.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you? -- Can I get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night? Can I please get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night??? I was 14 chapters into that bastard before I a) became a more casual MCU fan and b) discovered TAZ. It was such a niche fic with such a niche structure - LOTR as galactic Asgardian propaganda to cover up Odin’s mistakes - that at some point I lost interest in it. I just saw Endgame though, so now I might get some inspiration for stuff to bastardize.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Characters. When coming up with character backstories, I can usually find ways to slot their lives together that necessitate a plot. I love character-driven stories, where their actions actually do shit and their words actually mean something, in favor of getting dragged along behind the plot like tin cans behind a car.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) -- I’m definitely an architect, but in a really messy way. My friends can attest that I do an insane amount of planning for each story - often in their DMs, sorry about that, Fae, Cro, Indy and Aline 😬 - and all that usually ends up in a stream-of-consciousness rant outline on Google Drive. Knowing where the story is going helps me a lot, but the planning I do is definitely just building flower beds in which to sow seeds. Or building a greenhouse. I plan the bare bones of a story, and things get really wild within it, but it does follow a logical plot structure.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations? -- I have a lot of respect for the people who can successfully pull it off, but idk if i’d ever want to do one myself. I get really possessive of my stories and ideas and like to be the one in charge of their execution. That being said, some collabs have produced amazing stories. I don’t mind reading collab fics, but actually being in a collab grates on me more than it should.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? -- I’m definitely influenced heavily by Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods and Good Omens a lot while I was trying to write TMWCIFTC; not only was it a good brain break, but I was able to pick up a lot of tips on scene pacing, concise yet expressive language, and character interactions. My creative wriitng professors have always told us to read so we know what to steal - not in terms of content, but in execution. 

On the fanfic side, @miamaroo is a huge inspiration for me. I’ve been reading Northern Migration a lot recently, and I love how its canon divergence is so worldshaking and so complex, but is still familiar in nostalgic yet terrifying ways. I read it back in October, went, “Huh, I wanna do something that wild. And if miamaroo can do it then I sure as fuck can too,” and I started planning TMWCIFTC during that one month dead zone the McElroys took last year. Northern Migration is one of the best, most coherent, most stunning, and most incredibly written TAZ Balance AUs I’ve ever read, and if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have been inspired to take the fuckall huge plunge into TMWCIFTC.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Bed sharing and cuddling, hand kissing, wrist kissing, whump, sympathetic villains. Canon divergent AUs are my absolute favorite things to both read and write. Anything that would turn me into Charlie Kelly slamming his finger on a bulletin board screaming, “CAROL,” is a fic I would give my life for. 

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand? -- Not a fan of a) woobification and b) flat villain characterization, to the point where the story is riding on villain tropes instead of an actual person or plot. Character nuance is always something I look for when I read. I don’t usually get bitter about tropes, though; some stuff, when subverted, works really well. I fully subscribe to don’t like, don’t read, don’t write, which is why I don’t write anything that warrants AO3 content warning tags or an Explicit rating, in favor of focusing on plot. Every author has a reason for what they write and how - be it their level of experience, personal preference, or simply the joy of writing something and getting it out there - and I respect that. Within reason, of course.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much. -- 

@miamaroo, for reasons I’ve already discussed. My favorite TAZ Balance author hands down. Read Northern Migration and give it the love it deserves, or I’m replacing all the faucets in your house with silly straws.

@transagentstern. Fae has a bunch of absolutely incredible fics and an amazing grasp on characterization. We come from the same place with AUs, in that canon is but the bare planks on which we put the drywall of our plot an characterization. They structure AUs and character backstories from the ground up in believable and emotionally raw ways. Also they have great music taste. I especially like their interpretation of Indrid in Moth to the Flame; he, like all the other characters in the story, is far from perfect, and his character arc is explored in relatable ways that I love to read. 

@keplersheetz. Aline - theneonpineapple on AO3 - researches like a motherfucker and has a wealth of knowledge/experience/viewpoints to draw on, making author-author interactions with her an absolute delight. She’s also doing the lord’s work with rarepairs. Spin a wheel, find a ship, and she’s probably written for it or at least conceptualized it. Reading her character studies and stories of the old Pine Guard - aka Mama’s original crew, before the current PCs joined - is always a delight. I’ve also hashed out a lot of details for The Children of Sylvain, especially for Mr. Boyd Mosche, guilt-wracked Jersey Devil extraordinaire, with her help. 

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose? -- Not gonna lie, I’m fine with a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. It’s been a hot few months since I’ve actually stopped to read fic, but from what I recall, most of the fics I’ve read have done a good job of keeping things intact.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones? -- The vaguer, the better. With really specific prompts, it usually feels as if the story’s been written for me already; with vague, general prompts, I have more agency to explore my own ideas. Some accompanying detail is usually nice, though. For example, the coffee shop/college/flower shop AUs that @transagentstern​ wrote are my ideal prompt for drabbles: premise, a little bit of open-ended detail, clear explanation of what’s going to happen while leaving the rest up to the imagination. Good stuff. If it’s for a long-form piece, though, I prefer full agency, or even just some time to lie facedown in the dirt and wait for an idea to strike me.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer. -- Yes.

Y: A character you want to protect. -- Tim.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- I do read lots of major character death, yeah, though not always for TAZ. There’s something cathartic about seeing a character die, but sometimes it sits wrong with me in ways that I don’t like. As for writing, I’d rather kill a character for a reason rather than for shock value/for the Feels, though said Feels can accompany the reason. 

[coteriesrp]

     – THIS IS A SAMPLE APPLICATION FROM GHOST WITH ZAKI!

So, I’m honestly terrible at writing apps because I like... think in abstract shapes and colours and textures only, and trying to put words to that makes me cry on the best of days. My process writing this involved a lot of constant procrastination between bouts of sentences, but I tried to maintain my focus on the essence, the vibe of the character (which I hope comes through in this app). I just tackled whatever I had muse for on a given day, and only wrote as much as would come out, and this is the result, ultimately...

    – PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS ONLY AN EXAMPLE & ALSO THAT IT’S NOT TO BE USED AS INSPIRATION OF ANY KIND

out of character info.

ALIAS › Ghost

PRONOUNS › he / him

AGE › 30

TIMEZONE › gmt+1 (or +2, depending on daylight saving idk)

LINES › incest, child abuse, graphic sexual violence/assault, paedophilia, animal cruelty

VEILS › physical/emotional abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia

in character info.

CHARACTER › Zaki

GENDER & PRONOUNS › cis man & he / him

APPARENT AGE › late 20s

DISCIPLINE › Fortitude

DEMEANOUR ›

If Zaki had a choice, he wouldn’t be perceived at all. His entire being blurs the lines between nature and nurture; was he always wild eyed and violent, or is it a defence mechanism constructed from a life that threatens to swallow him whole every night? If you ask him, he’d tell you that he doesn’t know. And frankly, he doesn’t care. As long as people stay at arm’s length, he’s… well, not happy, but less on edge. What others see as standoffish, Zaki sees as a healthy and warranted dose of suspicion and mistrust. Even those who see his kind as the ultimate expression of freedom — clanless — have something to hide. He doesn’t know what, but he’s not about to wait to find out and get burnt. It’s better to kill than be killed, right? And he’s quite good at killing.

JOINING THE COTERIE ›

As much as Zaki wants to go about eternity alone, it’s just not safe. He knows survival is easier when you have people watching your back, and besides… he owed the local Anarchs a favour. Fuck knows what they would’ve asked for if he said no to this.

(UN)LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY ›

Life as a mortal was similar to life as a vampire, except that he has more power now, and no one to tell him that ripping out throats is illegal, or whatever. Sure, the Camarilla tried to tell him so much, but… that’s why he’s not a Cammie, right? His philosophy for life — or the lack of it, whatever technicalities you wanna go with — is simple: kick before you’re kicked, survive by any and all means necessary. If anything, Zaki’s incredibly adaptable to a variety of situations. And one way to stay on top of the food chain is to identify the biggest, baddest motherfucker in a given area and draining them dry.

THOUGHTS ON HUMANITY ›

Zaki tries to steel himself from the plights of others — Kindred or kine — as much as he can. Just bury his humanity deep where most nights even he won’t be able to find or recognise it, and it’ll get him through his lack of life. Of course, not as easy it sounds. He’s naturally in tune with those in situations similar to himself, and perhaps it’s his humanity rebelling against the Beast, but it’s just as loud and insistent sometimes as the urges of Blood and Beast.

LIFE EVENTS ›

— He’s twenty-nine when his life comes to an end. Not because some supernatural being saw fit to suck his blood from his body and replace it with just a drop of their own – no, that comes later. Twenty-nine and bleeding out in an alley in Banha, slow, painful, the bullet lodged in his stomach enough to seal his fate, but unfortunate enough in its placement that it would take at least a few hours. It’s the dead of night when, through sweat and the haze of pain, a figure moves closer from the mouth of the alley. They watch, stand there for a long moment. His eyes close to darkness, accepting of the end. When he wakes several hours later, it’s to a hunger he’s never felt in all his years on the street and an instinctual terror bubbling in his unharmed stomach, telling him to hide, hide, hide.

— The Blood struggles as much as the Camarilla vampire in his grip, twisting to free themself to no avail; Zaki's fangs sink deeper still and the thick Blood – thicker still than that of kine – fills his mouth. He swallows, mind bursting, finding his senses still and focus. Every gulp brings him closer to what he can only presume is a peace of some kind; the cold body turns yet colder and without the Blood to animate, the elder vampire turns to ashes as if in slow-motion. Just as the ash threatens to engulf his mouth, Zaki pulls his head back and drops what's left of the true corpse crumbling in his hands. For the first time in his miserable deathly existence, the Hunger is sated. He takes a deep breath.

EXPANDING CONNECTIONS ›

– JAZIRI - Although he doesn’t precisely understand or like it, there’s something in Jaziri that Zaki feels drawn to. Perhaps it’s the lamb to the slaughter idea they seem to inhabit, or perhaps it’s because in another life, he could’ve easily fit into their shoes. He doesn’t exactly know how to deal with this, but it makes him softer towards them than towards others.

– PEACH - Zaki suffers peach for their usefulness, as their skill in and understanding of tagging and graffiti is one of the main ways the coterie can safely communicate with other Anarchs. That said, Peach is far too loud for his liking, and he doesn’t trust it one bit.

miscellaneous info.

EXTRAS ›

Here’s a playlist, and a character blog, and a pinterest, kids!

LAST WORD ›

Hello, I see you reading this, I sure hope you have a wonderful day. (:

[quietborderlineinfo]

Hi I have a question or want your perspective on something please. So I've seen myself in other people's descriptions of bpd for a long time. My t thinks I might have it. If I have it it's the quiet type. But there's just some things that I can't see fitting? Or understand how they would be "quiet"? And some of the criteria I only experience very rarely or with certain people. 1/?

alright hey stargazer!

i can totally appreciate how much thought and detail you’ve put into this - i remember being in that place, and its so confusing and frustrating and frankly exhausting. breathe; from what youve said it sounds like your T is paying close attention and wants the best for you. over time, you’ll figure out what diagnosis & treatment(s) may work for you. until then, just focus on getting better one step at a time.

keep in mind that below i just discuss how the things you said relate to the diagnostic criteria, but no one here can diagnose you. definitely talk to your T (and if theyre not a psychiatrist, try to talk to one of those if you have access to a good one, since theyre more inclined to diagnose, in my experience)

also remember that you only need 5/9 for a diagnosis - so two people w bpd may have only 1 overlapping symptom. (so if you dont see yourself in everything you read, thats normal)

For instance 1 (frantically avoid abandonment) only w/ 2 relationships I’ve ever had, and these are more feelings than actions I take 2 (pattern unstable intense relationships) I’ve only had one significant relationship in my life and it was very intense and unstable, but I have no history of it but I also have no history of what I would call “close” relationships. I’m mostly avoidant of them) 2/?

1 & 2: saaame. i once asked a T if never letting yourself feel close to people was a form of attempting to avoid abandonment, and was told that it can be, if that’s why you do it. it can be hard to figure out why you do something you may have always done though, so it helps to both try to analyze past experiences and definitely to try to look at your feelings and how they’re motivating you as you go forward.

I’m not sure on the whole feelings vs actions thing; ask your T cause i think there can be a lot of grey area. and for #2, i had the same experience too; everyone who treated me seemed to think that the one relationship was enough evidence, i guess considering that avoidant behaviour. 

3 (id disturbance) I’m not sure exactly how this manifests or is separate from depersonalization. Like I don’t feel real when I try to engage in hobbies. I only exist when I’m doing things with others and then I feel fake and two dimensional (but this is getting a lot better and I’m afraid that means the symptom isn’t real) I’m not sure of my own hobbies and I have no internal motivations or knowledge base to make my own decisions. 3/?

. I can hardly tell right from wrong a lot of the time and use clues from others to help me. And I can change depending on the people I’m around. Is that what this means? This isn’t all things but some things 4 I am not in the slightest impulsive except if you count the impulsive texts I would send to that one intense relationship to make sure she didn’t hate me every few weeks 4/?

3. so depersonalization is a type of dissociation, so that’d fall under criterion 9. symptoms can get better and that absolutely doesn’t mean that you are now or have ever been faking; remission of symptoms with time and/or therapy is actually more likely than not. not knowing right from wrong is interesting cause at first i thought that was entirely unrelated, but realized it could come from not having an internalized moral system, which would definitely sound relevant.

what does fit the description is both not being sure of your hobbies (esp since it sounds like means youre not sure of what you enjoy/care about?), and changing depending on the people you’re around (if you feel like its more of an internal change than say, changing from business-appropriate speech patterns to something more casual when around friends vs at work).

the wiki page describes ID disturbance really well i think, but if you still have questions, definitely send them your T’s/our way.

4. neither am i, and i was still diagnosed. some people seem to think that it’s one criterion that has to be met though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is possible that it manifests only very specifically, like w me I’m only impulsive w self-harm or recklessly crossing the street.

5 (self harm) I’ve cut in the past but I can go years without cutting, but the urge to cut will always surface every few weeks whether I act on it or not 6 (affective instability) not sure I understand this. My emotions are so intense that I have a hard time doing anything but engaging in avoidant behaviors. Focusing on school and work is extremely difficult around my thoughts and feelings, Is that what this means? I can change really quickly too based on one thought or one outside occurrence5/?

Hi stargazer anon again. Sorry I’m all over the place with this I just get confused. So missing might be the part that addressed diagnostic criteria #7. basically yes I experience emptiness. I think The end of message 5 is relating to diagnostic criteria #6 (instability of mood) and message 7 is relating to diagnostic criteria #8 (anger). Sorry it’s a mess. But I don’t think there is anything important in the missing piece. I was just going through each symptom and comparing my experience w/ it

5. that certainly counts! (proud of you for keeping it to a minimum, hope you’re working w your T to eliminate it entirely!)

6. “Patients often describe affective instability as an “emotional roller coaster” that relates to a subjective sense of strong affects and emotions experienced in an uncomfortable, rapid sequence.”

what you described sounds intense, and to clarify the changeability i think it can have a lot to do with reacting really strongly to things in the environment/in relationships. you didnt talk too much about the changes, so id say it sounds like this likely fits, but warrants more discussion just to clarify.

7. aight √

But i don’t get angry at people usually. I used to have this pattern of withdrawing from my relationships because I was convinced they didn’t really like me and I wanted to see if they would come talk to me to sort of “test them” but knowing the whole time that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve their love anyway and if they didn’t really love me then I didn’t deserve it (though have gotten way better at this with therapy). Is that what is meant by the cold shoulder? 7 I think/?

8. see idk, it’s possible that that’s anger for you, but it sounds like you’ll wanna think more about it. i think cold shoulder is more about refusing to engage someone because you are upset at them. to me, what you described sounds more like fear than anger, but only you can know that. idk about other quiet borderlines but for most of my life I’ve had anger far repressed 🤔

9. (for the sake of completion) depersonalization, which you mentioned in part 2, is a kind of dissociation

Sorry for this essay if not ok just ignore and delete. Sorry I’m just having a hard time cause so much of this feels like me but then so many of the hallmarks don’t at all, or only rarely appear. I think I have aVpd too and it makes it hard to know because some symptoms cloud each other. Thanks can please tag stargazer if you do answer it? 8/8 I think it was?

sorry for taking so long to respond! yeah its useful to have a full discussion with a psychiatrist about this especially when multiple disorders are in question. also remember that as much as we may seek the sense of identity labels can give us, you dont need to fit something specific to have valid pain that deserves to be treated and warrants a break from work.

please let us know if you have any follow-up questions. good luck - it’ll get easier with time & work!

[winndowsvista-blog]

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 56 truths about you. At the end, choose 10 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

TAGGED BY : @e1mayarah TAGGGING: @girlcftomorrow, @indiekara, @biologicalengineer, @heckcdup, @roltikkonn, @siiobhansmythe, @nctwearingthat, @inze, @im-a-hawker, @marsdin (i think that’s ten? idk. do it if you want :))

Muse: Winslow “Winn” Schott, Jr.

WHAT WAS YOUR:

Last Beverage: sprite! Last phone call: james. Last text message: james. Last song you listened to: that’s what i like by bruno mars. i like knowing someone shorter than me is capable of being so cool. gives me hope. and it’s a bangin’ song. Last time you cried: like, a week ago.

HAVE YOU EVER:

Dated someone twice: nah. Been cheated on: no, unless any of my past girlfriends have something to tell me. Kissed someone and regretted it: mhm. Lost someone special: yep. Been depressed: life isn’t exactly always sunshine lollipops and rainbows, kids. Been drunk and threw up: it was one time.

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:

blue, forest green, and sun yellow.

LAST YEAR, HAVE YOU:

Made a new friend: sure have. Fallen out of love: no yes. Laughed until you cried: yep. Met someone who changed you: i think things have changed me rather than people, if i’ve been changed at all.. Found out who your true friends are: yep. Found out someone was talking about you: i’m sure it happens even though i’ve never actually caught wind of it.

FIRSTS:

First surgery: had my appendix out when i was six.  First piercing: no piercings, thanks. First best friend: connor pearson was my best friend from preschool until i moved schools when i was eleven. First sport you joined: i played soccer until i was eleven. i wasn’t terrible. First vacation: boston, when i was four or five. i don’t remember. First pair of trainers: i dunno, i’m sure i was wearing sneakers when i was real little.

RIGHT NOW:

Eating: cereal. Drinking: apple juice. I’m about to: go do my super cool job. Waiting for: i ordered some socks off amazon, and they haven’t come yet.

YOUR FUTURE:

Want kids: yep. Get married: it’d be nice. Career: fingers crossed i’ve still got my DEO position...

WHICH IS BETTER:

Lips or eyes: eyes. Hugs or Kisses: i’m a fan of both. i get more hugs, though. Shorter or Taller: most people are taller than me anyways, so i think my opinion here is irrelevant. Older or younger: age is but a number. unless we’re talking romance, in which case i like to keep everything legal. and while i respect the elderly i don’t think my ideal future of getting married and having kids will work out there. Romantic or Spontaneous: either one. Nice stomach or nice arms: is this important...? Sensitive or Loud: a bit personal, don’t you think? Hook-up or relationship: relationship. i wouldn’t say i’m clingy, but i think i get too attached to people for a hook-up. Trouble maker or hesitant: trouble maker? like, a criminal? i’ve had enough of those, thanks.

HAVE YOU EVER:

Kissed a stranger: nope. Drank hard liquor: yep. Lost glasses/contacts: i’ve lost way too many contacts to even count. Sex on first date: maybe. personal details here, guys. Broke someone’s heart: i’ve always been on the receiving end, i think. Been arrested: only technically. there was an unsigned warrant, and it was for something i didn’t even do, so i’m not counting that. Turned someone down: again, i think i’ve always been on the receiving end here. Cried when someone died: yep. Fallen for a friend: mhm.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

Yourself: sometimes. Love at first sight: can i say i believe in like at first sight? or connection at first sight? i’ll go with that second one. Heaven: nah. i don’t really know what to believe when it comes to after death. frankly it freaks me out. Santa Claus: i did, until aforementioned former best friend spoiled the secret when we were nine. Kiss on the first date: if it’s right, sure. Angels: i guess i believe in living people personifying angels? if that makes sense?