#my ocd was going insane bc the other posts showed the post after

[unhetalia]

source: himaruya hidekaz

[awkwardplantwrites]

I haven’t written yet, but I do have a lot of ideas to go off now. unfortunately, a lot of involves re-writing stuff. on the one hand, I don’t want to be stuck on the same chapters, but on the other hand, I just Won’t be able to continue unless I add it in. I know a lot of people say “just write, don’t edit” but those aren’t the rules bc there is none and I can do what I want. (pls fix? no being stuck!!! only edit!)

here’s a long post about things I’m planning on adding, as well as headcanons about my own damn story because I’m stuck in fanfic mode forever.

lots of spoilers ahead! 

a horse motif for Renato: I remember when namme-e made the posters, one had a horse on it, which I reckon is a common association with knights. so far there have been 2 horses (well, one is a Kelpie, but it’s a water horse shh. I also found out Northumbrian folk/where Llantry is based call them Brags!) and there will be more horses later in the story. they’re recurring anyway, so why not use it. 

and upon looking at it’s symbolism, I realised that horses are very duty bound creatures, like Renato is to the people of Llantry, they symbolise war/battles - which can bring in memories of his dad, and in comparison to the first horse (which dies in chapter 5... some unintentional symbolism there) Isbeil the Kelpie is much more free and independant and they’re at the Fun part of the road trip, and the Nukelavee (even more dangerous than kelpies) later on will be wild/untamed right about when Renato’s emotions will be in turmoil... you see where I’m going with this :D :D other contenders for motifs include: hands, mirrors/reflections, his shield/armour, dragons. swords are more of a precision tool for magic than a weapon in this universe so that wouldn’t work as a motif.

a candy motif for Pepi: you thought I made him a candy merchant intentionally? no. not at all. except now it is. candy represents good memories, childhood, rewards, pleasure, reminds him of his dad’s business, responsibility in maintaining the business, his family, his lack of magic/inability to make candy, having to do Tammy’s chores for her, and just Tammy in general I guess. 

in the beginning I remember him being enthusiastic about it (if he’s not I’ll add it in lol), singing about it and complaining about being “a candy delivery boy turned overworked squire” and even from that you can tell he already has a complicated relationship with candy. he can’t make it but he sells it and hates selling it but when he talks/sings about it it attracts people, especially children.. perhaps engaging his own inner child too... in chapter 3 Pepi mentioned he was down to two bags, which means he held onto them despite selling out the rest... representing that he’s still holding onto his past even though it’s in the past and gone... and one day he’ll run out and it won’t be in his control and he won’t be able to get any more unless he goes home... which means FACING HIS PAST. so I’m thinking, if he becomes more neutral to it that’ll show how he views his past more healthily? then eat fruit instead?? idk.

magic based on senses: kind of ATLA inspired, but with the 5 physical senses (and a spooky 6th). as I started writing this I realised I probably based their powers depending on which god chose them, for example Lidion is the god of protection, so Renato gets protection based powers. but y’know, I had another idea as I wrote this lmao, what if the regular civillians/people born with magic have sense based magic? not sure if it’s a little ambitious to have 2 entirely different sets of magic. maybe the god powers can be based on senses too. initially the magic was based entirely off of DND classes (Renato’s a paladin and Pepi’s a wild magic sorcerer) but I think I’ve found something more original haha. or perhaps I accidentally moved onto Greek god/Percy Jackson-esque powers. crap. research says scottish mythology is kinda like Greek myths anyway: that’s a win in my book. 

changing Finlay from a floating crystal ball to a bird: introduced in chapter 2, and EVERYTIME I WRITE I FORGET ABOUT FINLAY. it’s like a personal meme at this point. so anyway I took a “what core type are you quiz” a while back and Pepi got adventurecore after I chose bird as his inner animal. making this change will make sense because a) Pepi can talk to animals and this will foreshadow it, b) he likes music and this might be his magic type..? c) Disney needs a mascot character if they’re going to make FM a movie

I just read some bird symbolism and GOD I want to make Finlay a chicken, since it symbolises finding inner power, getting over fear and also it’s very funny to me. or a duck since that symbolises decisiveness and leaving the past in the past. see there’s a lot of things I can do here. but is there such a thing as having too many motifs? I just read that you CAN have more than one, so yes, Finlay will now become a duck. 15 year old/duck obsessed me would be very happy.

empahsizing the illness: plural illnesses actually. Llantry’s illness is actually depression - which they didn’t know bc this is set around the 15th century and the gods forgot to tell them about it or something - caused by overusing their magic, the death of Renato’s dad (public morale figure), poverty, and y’know the middle ages in general. I feel like Renato’s way too upbeat, especially in chapter 4 when they’re running away from the Wakefield Knights. before now I was trying to weave in mood swings which would affect his behaviour and therefore the story. admittedly it’s very difficult, as what they’re doing generally requires a lot of energy and the tone is usually light. someone suggested having his depression be worse when the situation is worse, which I probably will do, but I still feel he could be more low-key. I really, really didn’t want to use the “happy and sad duo” trope, I wanted them to be more or less equal in demeanour. though if I want to portray his depression and distinguish them both it’ll have to be exaggerated I suppose. 

the second illness, Pepi’s anxiety. or well, it was initially anxiety but it’s starting to look more like OCD (that’s self projection for ya). some of my readers already figured out he can do magic, however it’s not that he doesn’t realise it. he casts spells in his sleep and thinks it’s his “evil self” (that idea is still TBC), and he sneaks off in the morning because he remembers sleepwalking and cleans up his mess. and to avoid making it look like schizophrenia, I’m planning to write it so it’s obvious he’s just very in denial about being able to do magic, because later it’s revealed he’s scared to use magic, because he doesn’t want to end up like his sister who became possessed by an evil being and abused magic, which for him is both a rational and irrational fear. avoiding magic could be considered a compulsion since he has intrusive thoughts about becoming evil. 

so I did already plan for him to gradually get more restless and uneasy, he’s supposed to be seem energetic bc he runs solely on anxiety. in my head I was thinking of quirks, and realized him hoarding stuff in his pockets “in case he needs it later” and his insane amount of GUILT, and all that felt pretty OCD. so why not: he’s got OCD. possibly PTSD too.

the idea for Finding Magic began as “magic takes part of your soul, 2 wizards search for help as their magic stops working”. I still have the exact post it note I wrote the first idea on. for this story I have 2 countries, 13 semi-developed towns, over 30 characters. (yes, not Tolkien numbers, but I’m not Writers George) and the reason I wasn’t able to write about ANY of them for the past 2 months is because my brain spirals and ruminates over miniscule details that readers will never know. also because I lost passion, was too tired to develop characters I needed to develop the story to finish the first draft... but now that the passion is back: I’m writing this at 5am, which is reminiscent of the first day I came up with FM, back then called Journey to Magic, where I couldn’t sleep since I was bursting with ideas. 

I guess this is what I find fun, analysing and improving and brainstorming. so while I might not have chapters written down, they’re pretty damn clear in my head and as you can see, I can talk up a storm about my story despite it not existing :D

[brokendildo]

this is about to be a real personal post about my previous relationship so if you don’t care just scroll on by

anyways have y’all ever left a relationship that you thought was okay at first and eventually found yourself more and more unhappy? and once you’re finally out of it you can assess the damage it did to you and you finally see all the red flags that you chose not to notice before? like i put so much work and time and effort into my last relationship with a man who was clearly not stable mentally or emotionally and he’d gaslight the shit out of me. every time we had an argument (which was often) it was always my fault. he never not once apologized for the shit he’d do and i’m pretty sure he was cheating on me the whole time. and if not the whole them then at least more than once. we dated for a year and a few months on and off and that was the first red flag i should’ve seen. when you break up with someone over an argument and you feel you’re no longer right for each other just leave it at that. i kept going back four or five times and i regret it now. i wasted so much time with that asshole. and when i say mentally and emotionally unstable i mean like we’d be getting ready to leave his house (which was an hour away from mine and i made my work schedule work around my visits to see him and over that year and a half he came over to my place TWICE.) like we’d be in the car about to leave the driveway and he’s like I HAVE TO CHECK THE DOOR and i’m like it’s locked?? i locked it? and he’s like no you don’t know what you’re doing. like okay bitch and on top of that he was insanely paranoid like he would tear up receipts with the last four numbers of his credit card and his name on it. i know that’ll come from anxiety and ocd considering i have been diagnosed w both but he refused to get help and when i would mention therapy or even a simple doctors visit he’d flip out. all those were things i should’ve noticed but the main thing was how he treated me vs. how i treated him. just to clarify, at the time i was working in an extremely busy restaurant. i couldn’t get weekends off because of this so my schedule went something like this: school from 7am to 1 pm every week day and then work right after (i’d have to be in around 3) i’d work until 12 or 1 am and then get home and have to do homework until about 4am and i’d get zero sleep. then saturday’s id go in at 7am to work and get out around 3 or 4 depending on whether or not the person who was suppose to take over my station showed up on time. then i’d drive an hour to go to his house and he would never ask me about my day and when he did it was only because he felt he needed to. it always sounded forced and i knew he didn’t really give a shit about my day (or me honestly) but that became very clear when one day while telling him about how my day went (it was a really bad one) he starts yelling at me saying that i need to stop fucking complaining all the time. that shit hurts when it’s coming from someone who claims to love you. and the worst thing about this entire relationship is that it really fucked me up in the long run. i’m in a healthy relationship now and i couldn’t be happier with the person i’m dating and i honestly see a wonderful future for us but there’s still some issues that i’m trying to work through and it’s not easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. i apologize constantly i’m always trying to make sure that my partner is happy and i feel like i’m overcompensating and usually when people do that i’ve noticed it’s bc they feel guilty about something and i don’t want him to think that i have anything to be guilty about but i also don’t want him to just leave?? idk. don’t ignore your issues kids because they grow into ugly monsters.

[bondsmagii]

Hey! Regarding the sixpenceee fiasco I've been reading her posts and stories for like years and it might just be because I usually skim but I don't recall any specific stories that target mental illness. Do you have any clear examples??? Rly shocked tbh bc I used to love her

I’ve been seeing the stuff go around for a couple of years now and I admit at first I didn’t pay it much attention, which is a shame because a lot of those call out posts had good links that are now all gone because of people deleting. As a result, a lot of the initial stuff that made me start thinking more critically about sixpenceee’s posts have been deleted. I’ve spent the last few days trying to source them again via people’s new urls and internet archives, but literally 90% of the links are gone.

So, I’ve done a bit of digging of my own, and I’ve managed to find some still live posts that I think illustrate what I’m saying a bit better. I’ve screencapped them all and will be hosting the images myself independently of a specific post, so the links should always work.

I’m specifically focusing on the content of this ask here, with posts that use mental illness as entertainment, or treat it in the same way as regular “creepy” (i.e. horror) content.

The case of Margaret Schilling is a post about a woman in a psychiatric hospital who died after getting lost in the building, and her body wasn’t found for many weeks. There is a short paragraph at the end about how the hospital is apparently haunted by Margaret now, but the majority of the post focuses on her being mentally ill and the suffering she must have felt being lost and dying of cold and exposure. There’s also a picture of the stain her decomposing body left, so beware of that. It’s tagged #paranormal.

The Mentally Ill Man Who Cured Himself With a Gun is a post about a man with serious OCD who tried to kill himself by shooing himself in the head, resulting in brain damage that “cured” his OCD. The photo is of a man with a gun to his head, if that will bother you. It’s tagged as a science post.

Short Creepy Story is a story from Reddit where the “creepy” event is a schizophrenic woman acting strangely because of her hallucinations. That’s it. Dude’s mum is schizophrenic and he goes upstairs to find her in the bathtub thinking she’s in The Little Mermaid. The title is “short creepy story” so like, yeah.

The Child Star is a story from Reddit which focuses on children being sexually abused and not understanding what’s going on, and the police interviews with one of the grown up children who is now clearly suffering from mental illness thanks to the trauma. (Full story)

The Suicide Orphan is a story from Reddit which focuses on an orphan that drives people insane and results in them committing suicide, and I know that this isn’t the only example where sixpenceee posts things that use suicide as the main element of a horror story, which is exploitative and also I personally think it’s inappropriate to use something that comes as a result of serious suffering and imply that it was the creepy ghosts that did it. (Full story)

“Psychopath” post includes a link to a quiz where you can see where you “fit in on the psychopath sprectrum”. I’ve seen people mention her using outdated terms in her posts and so this is here as proof that it does happen, and also because “do you have a severe personality disorder?” is a bit of a cheap entertainment trick in my opinion.

Karin Catherine Waldegrave is a post about a woman who replies incessantly to her own posts on social media, believing she is the target of a conspiracy. It’s clear she’s likely mentally ill. The post is tagged #creepy.

Chinese Water Torture is a post about the torture method that drives victims to extreme stress-related mental instability, and is here both because of that and because the fact that it’s tagged #creepy, which doesn’t seem appropriate.

The Edmonton Train attack video shows someone apparently in an altered state of mind through drugs or mental illness (or both) attacking someone on a train. She gifed a video which has since been deleted but a different video of the attack can be found on Youtube, and described it as “insane”.

Drawings of a Young Schizophrenic Boy is exactly what it says – a bunch of drawings from a young boy suffering from schizophrenia. The boy is quite obviously distressed by his hallucinations but the post is treated like the other paranormal posts, designed to shock and scare. The post is also tagged #creepy, which is inappropriate. (Close up of caption and tag, as the image is difficult to read)

Made By a Paranoid Schizophrenic Patient is another drawing by a person suffering from schizophrenia, also tagged #creepy, and this one with a self-promo in the caption.

I also found a post where sixpenceee addresses the claims of ableism. She says she agrees on the points made about films and stories portraying the mentally ill/physically disabled as “scary”, and that she tries to avoid using words like “insane”. She also asks people to differentiate between her paranormal/creepy posts and her scientific posts. However, she still continues to frequently refer to things as “insane”, both as descriptors and to self-promote her blog (1, 2, 3).

This covers the things I’ve seen people claim she does, but if anyone has any other links (especially things saved from earlier posts like this) feel free to add on.

[longtruce]

here’re the notes i was telling you about

i’m not gonna post an explanation or anything right now bc i think i’m in the angry phase of a breakup and i don’t wanna be a dick bc i still do like you and miss you and care about you.

e l i a n o r

3/22/19 2:48am

i’m still awake. it’s been just over three hours since we started officially dating. i’m still so happy about it. as you will know by the time you read this, whenever that may be, i write my thoughts in my notes a lot when i’m feeling an excess of any emotion. right now it’s happiness and excitement. eli, i’m so fucking hype to treat you better than you ever have been and better than you can even imagine, though i can promise you i won’t treat you better than you deserve because you deserve absolutely everything amazing in this world and, unfortunately, i can’t give you all of that... but i’ll try anyway. so many projects have popped up in my head and i can’t wait to work on them and show you them. i hope you like them even half as much as i like you.

3/25/19 3:38pm

i didn’t think you could be more amazing than i already thought you were but you’ve since proved me wrong... i managed to get a concussion within the first two days we were dating and you have taken care of me so much. you came over to stay with me in my dorm right when i got back so that i wouldn’t be alone. you let me sleepover that night since my roommate was sleeping elsewhere. you took me to a play yesterday as a date and then let me come over last night. you didn’t mind that we couldn’t watch TV because of my concussion. you turned off the lamp and lit a few candles so my head wouldn’t hurt as much. we just laid there and cuddled, occasionally talking about everything and nothing. you mean so much to me already, and i don’t know how it happened but i kinda like it. thank you.

3/30/19 9:14am

you said that i’m so good at stuff you keep forgetting that i’m new at this... the perfect ego boost. in all seriousness though, thank you. you’re so patient with me. you don’t get annoyed or upset by the fact that i’m scared and don’t know what i’m doing, you reassure me that it’s okay. you didn’t get scared away when i showed you my scars, you stayed. you care. it means the world eli.

4/15/19 11:53pm

i guess i am like a puppy. think about it like this. i’m one of those puppies that has boundless energy, the one that’s always bouncing off the walls and trying to make you play with her and always tugs at the leash on walks because she wants to meet people. the thing is, though, there’s almost always an exception to those puppies, at least in my experience. there’s always one person that causes a little switch in them, one person who they’re excited to see and follow them around dutifully. there’s one person that they’ll calm down around, instead of trying to play they’ll lay on the person’s lap to get affection just because they love the person’s presence. my guess is that, if i’m a puppy, you’re that exception.

5/2/19 12:40am

i really like you. i know you know that already but i don’t think you understand. my eyes soften every time i see you. i can’t help but to smile whenever you’re talking to me. feeling your hand in mine slows my heart rate. cuddling with you makes the world go quiet. kissing you causes me to melt. i like that i can see a future with you el. a beautiful one. you’re the only person who can see me. you notice all of these stupid little quirks and tendencies and you make sure to remember what they mean. you actually care about me and it’s insane. i like how you’re randomly ticklish in the weirdest places... and the tickle spots move every day. i like how you tease me back. i like how you challenge me. i like how you’re determined to get everything you can out of this life. i like the way you talk about traveling and your friends. i like your stupid jokes. i like how thoughtful you are. like fuck, you remember that mercy/gatekeeper has a part in it that triggers me because it sounds exactly like the voices in my head when i’m having a bad OCD episode so you always try to skip the song when it comes on, and you remember that my stomach does that little flex thing whenever something on the screen triggers my intrusive thoughts so you cover my eyes or skip ahead. i don’t think i’ve ever met anyone as thoughtful as you. i like that you do an extreme amount of research for every app you download, every single thing you want to buy online. i like how excited you are to try new things. i like how passionate you are about reading and knowledge. i like those little brown flecks in your eyes. i like the shape of your lips, even if i don’t know how to describe them. i like how you put your hair up right after you get out of the shower. i like how you’ll brush your teeth in bed when i’m over because you want to be around me. i like how encompassed you get when you’re playing assassin’s creed or whatever that game is. i like how you attempt to dance to music even when i’m holding you. i like how you work hard in anything you do, whether that’s VBC or your new garden. i like the feeling i get whenever i’m with you.... content.... which is something i rarely feel. when i’m with you, all of my problems become small. i like how you make me want to be better. i just really like you, okay?

5/9/19 10:25pm

i miss you. like, a lot. i miss our every night routine. i miss sassing you and being jokingly offended or angry when you sass me back. i miss you telling me to eat food. i miss you being so into your video games. i miss you telling me all about the places you’ve been and about your favorite authors. i miss your cuddles and your kisses. i really fucking miss you, okay?

5/13/19 12:33am

i ordered the flowers a few days ago. they should arrive on the 21st, if all goes according to the plan. i told you i had one, babe. i’m not gonna let the summer tear us apart if i can help it. this summer i’ve decided to send you something for each month-anniversary of our relationship that i’m not with you on. so basically may, june and july 21st you will receive something. my original plan was just flowers each time but now that i’m thinking about it i might branch out and do other mini presents. who knows? the point is, i told you in the beginning of this note that i was excited to treat you better than you ever have been before and i’m doing my damn best to keep that promise because you deserve it. even if we end up only being temporary, i wanna make this the best temporary thing you’ve ever had.

5/21/19 10:04pm

i’m driving down to visit you in a couple days. i’m so excited. i can’t wait to cuddle with you and tickle you and hold your hand and kiss you and just be with you. i miss it so much. i miss you so much. distance has never been a strong suit of mine. physical touch is too important of a love language to me, so i’ve never bothered to try. every time i like someone who likes me back that i won’t be around for months on end, i just end it. i don’t even bother to try distance. but with you, i took that chance. and i don’t regret it. but i also don’t want to have to go months without seeing you. the drive is easily worth it.