#psych verbs

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

y'all i caved to peer pressure and made one of those lists of books. I got to be the first person to add some books by tumblr mutuals to this list website, apparently, so that's pretty cool. anyway pls tell me if you have read more of my books than I have bc I honestly need motivation to get through my tbr piles of shame.

[skiddo-xy]

I've actually found that language learning is quite enjoyable for me when you look at it as a bunch of different skills you can use. I think the thing that first triggered this feeling as an example was when my English teacher from exchange (they put me in English so I could help out the class/teachers lol) who was an L2 speakers said "that makes two of us" when talking to me and even though you I would usually hear "same" or "me too" it was just a nice way of showing how hard you worked in the language. So yeah, going to focus more on grammar points and sentence structures for Italian

[totopopopo]

Wait I’m 70% sure ocpd is a thing unless you meant it’s not real in the antipsych way not the literal way

i had no idea that was a thing i just used those words to avoid using the term obsessive compulsive disorder bc that’s not something i’ve been diagnosed with or feel like i can claim to have lol

[librarycards]

sry if you've answered this before, but do you have any fave or recommended poems centered around or related to disability?

thanks for your patience, i do! i'm including some of my favorite books below, as well as some individual poems.

i've also written some disability-themed pieces/books. Some pieces I've written that may be of interest include these two and these two in Electric Lit, Diagnostician's Note in Protean, RUNNING in X-RAY Lit, Late Summer Dispatch in Princemere, Headcase! in the New Orleans Review, and to a specified fate) and these two in The Institutionalized Review.

books (all of the authors listed also have individual pieces published that are worth checking out!)

Hannah Emerson, The Kissing of Kissing

Twoey Gray, Electrodaughter

Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene

Sam Sax, Madness

Bettina Judd, Patient.

Jane Shi, Leaving Chang'e On Read

David Wolach, Occultations

Petra Kuppers & Neil Marcus, Cripple Poetics

Phil Smith, Writhing Writing: Moving Toward a Mad Poetics

Edited Anthology: Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

some poems i love (* marks those I have edited/helped bring into the world!):

Jess Silfa, Keeping Up

Dane Lyn, Stoner Termites*

Andy Jackson, Disfigured Fame

BEE LB, Two poems

torrin a. greathouse, SICK4SICK

Nora Hikari, The Fictive's Address

Matthew Tuckner, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, With Figurative Language

Isaac Pickell, In The Psych Ward*

Zachariah Claypole White, OCD Sonnets

Evan Reynolds, [ABJECTION]*

Jesse Rice-Evans, Snow Moon

hope you find something you like!

[trans-axolotl]

" “In the year 2024….” read the headline of an editor’s message in a 1970 issue of The Presidio, a publication out of the Iowa State Penitentiary. Even for people in prison, whose primary currency is time itself, the date felt far-fetched. Something so distant, it was more the setting of a science fiction novel than of a real-life possibility. Al Ware, the paper’s incarcerated editor, had just experienced the solar eclipse of the century, though Iowa was outside the range of the total eclipse. He whimsically mused on whether he’d be around for the next one—if he meant alive or still in prison is up for interpretation.

People travel for hundreds and thousands of miles to view total eclipses and consistently have difficulty describing the experience fully with just words. But even a partial eclipse can be a stunning spectacle. For those in prison, whose lives are often drudgery punctuated by fleeting moments of fear, being able to experience something collectively with people beyond the walls is the type of reprieve that buoys the psyche for quite some time.

I sat in prison for the partial eclipse of 2017. A far cry from how Florida prisons handled a total eclipse in 1970, the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided a dusk-like darkening of the sky was a security threat that warranted a total lock-down. Never mind that for half the year the sun set at dinner time, and we were allowed to continue going about our business, jogging on the rec yard, grabbing a book from the library, and just generally moving about the compound. Perhaps some nefarious actors would use the few minutes of diminished daylight in the middle of the day to orchestrate a prison break, or perhaps the reverse, introduce contraband.

It felt like my life came to a screeching halt the moment I was arrested. No longer did I feel like I was living, an active verb, I was merely existing. If I vanished off the face of the Earth, not a single thing would change in the world, so minimal was my presence, so isolated was my life. Headlines flashed across the television screens, one of my only tethers to the outside world. Floods in Houston, fires in California, a mass shooting in Miami. It was as if these events were happening in some other world, one to which I only had the narrowest window...

...And with that, she led us outside. She didn’t ask where the colander had come from, and I did not tell. Its round holes somehow cast crescent shadows, illuminating the laws of physics. The sky darkened but nothing like dusk, a bizarre energy filling the air—or perhaps it was the abject fear that I was risking time in the hole to watch odd-shaped shadows dance on the ground, unable to even look at the eclipse directly.

For days to come, we tried to explain to our friends what it felt like, what those colander hole shadows looked like. It was simply too difficult to describe.

Whether Al Ware is still around to see this eclipse—he would be eighty-two—is unknown. What is known is that at least a few hundred people that experienced the total solar eclipse from prison in the United States in 1970 are still in prison. The next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous US won’t be until 2044—and unless that’s your release date, I’m sure it feels just as abstract as 2024 felt to the men at the Iowa State Penitentiary back in 1970."

- Watching an Eclipse from Prison, by Morgan Godvin

[rosie-b]

If people don’t stop putting random apostrophes in verbs and plural nouns I’m going to lose my shit

It’s “she gets it” not “she get’s it”

Its gold hue was alluring. The hearts were red. The radios played the singer’s song. And so on and so forth! PLEASE learn how to use apostrophes correctly!! Save me from needing a trip to the nearest psych ward 🙏

[noblebs]

find the word tag

tagged by @captain-kraken 🖤 thank you!

trust, chapter 1:

The man laughs in sympathy—raspy from years of smoke, but warm and earnest. "Don't let 'em run you ragged. You're still young, got plenty of life ahead of you. There's no job worth your soul, trust me." Orion swallows and looks him up and down. On the older side, face speaking of years exposed to elements, but his body is still well and able. A working man all his life, she's certain: someone who deserves a chance to rest. She might be able to help him get there. "What's your name?" she asks past the bubble of tension working its way up her throat and stubs out her cigarette, tucking the holder into a pocket.

complain (well, close enough), chapter 5:

Orion stares at him. "What?" She laughs, a nervous reaction. The submissive, deferential guilt awakens an interest she doesn't have time to pursue, but his naked earnestness unnerves her. "Give me time for a smoke and a shower, and I'll be right as rain. My bag is back at the other hotel, we'll go get it after. It's fine." She is starving in the more banal, physical sense as well, but it's only one of a half dozen complaints warring for attention in her psyche.

held, chapter 6:

Her only answer is a roll of her eyes before she fishes from a suitcase pocket a pair of soft jaw pliers. They are so close, toes teetering over the edge, and Orion needs to provide one decisive push to send them plummeting. She had hoped this step might not be necessary if the environmental conditions had been ideal, but of course her luck wouldn't land in her favor. The curtain between worlds stretches taut and gossamer before them, hanging like a watery film between the two branches. Its breath is held, waiting for her to tear it open. It wants willpower; it wants sacrifice.

red- okay I don't have any red, but I have a lot of verbs ending in -red so maybe that counts??, chapter 8:

The ADU, like everything else about Orion's circumstances over the last few years, had been graciously provided by Annex once he demonstrated a lower flight risk and was cleared to live off-site. He pays no rent, which he wouldn't have been able to afford on his meager stipend, and the agency's random, supposedly secret inspections leave it slightly less dusty than before he left. She wonders if Devilant has the deed on his own house, or if his home is likewise a leash by which to keep him close to Annex's heel years after retirement.

tagging @saturnine-saturneight @tragedycoded @sodaliteskull @autism-purgatory @leahnardo-da-veggie to find the words side, empty, break, and top

[hometownrockstar]

i think its crazy how no matter how pro mentally ill and psych critical u are you can still really easily downplay or insult yourself for your own symptoms like "oh i dont believe that other people are faking and i criticize the psychiatric institution but i am probably faking myself and everyone can tell and doesnt believe me" like you know. recently i started having a problem where sometimes my ability to form sentences is impacted and i cant use helping verbs or full sentences and it sometimes even impacts my internal wording like i cant word things correctly in my mind, and yet i still think "well my desire to refer to myself in third person or anything else is just a preference that makes me feel better, its not a NECESSARY thing so it cant be a mental illness thing and i am just pretending to do smth i dont NEED to do"

[kostudies]

18TH JANUARY, 2024 ; I came back to my hometown today in a rush for reasons, so I cancelled a few plans I had with friends today and for the weekend. my social psycho lecture was great, the professor is intriguing and I like his demeanor. I'm getting back to a routine that I like, but dread the upcoming workload (and the masters' candidatures...). My mind is clear for now.

I'm struggling a lot with basic verbs used in farsi, but I'll keep doing the unit again and again until I'm fine with it. I'd love to take more time to study more the languages I want, maybe during the summer holidays.

2h of lecture, 5 cigs, 2h of phone time, 3h of focus.

spanish and portuguese lessons on duolingo and persian lesson on drops.

begin and finish your social psych flashcards.

continue your cogn neurobiology and pharmaco flashcards.

inform yourself on the masters available (damn) and take notes.

hang out with a few friends in the evening.

take a walk for thirty minutes + read in the evening.

♡₊˚ 🎧 ; yoshimasa terui - arrogance.

[noxxha]

Iwagakure conflict reveals quite a lot about Hashirama

The Iwagakure negotiation (conflict…?) reveals quite a lot about Hashirama (if looking at this situation from a particular angle, that is)

We know not when exactly this incident takes place in the timeline of Naruto Shippuden, other than it being sometime after Konoha has been established.

It is most likely not during the early days of the village either, as both Madara and Onoki are wearing the symbols of their respective villages, which means that all the villages (Konohagakure, Iwagakure, Kumogakure, Kirigakure, Sunagakure) are established, functional and working for their own interest(s).

Whether this incident is before the Five Kage meeting, or after, is a touch trickier to answer.

Objectively I would say that it occurs before the meeting in question as Madara appears to have not yet distanced himself from the village - he even bears the symbol of Konoha on his person (and that is a rarity). It is, however, the words he speaks that indicates that he is still loyal to Konoha (as loyal as he can feel to a dream that was never his).

In my eyes - as I have mentioned in a few posts beforehand - this conflict is what causes Madara to consider turning his back on the village (in canon it is the modified stone tablet that, at the very least, does his psyche in once and for all) but this conflict/disagreement could honestly have been enough for Madara to conclude that staying in the village was pointless; both for personal reasons and reasons related to the village itself.

Madara’s expression in the above panel…there is something about the way he is drawn here that shows that Madara just…does not enjoy speaking the words he does (the first words, that is). He looks almost weary (melancholic even), which is not the gaze someone should have when they enjoy feeling superior and happy to get to “enslave” someone (a whole nation even) - “From here on you will obey the leaf.” Obey - that’s a harsh word.

In the german version Madara says the following:

“Es gibt kein Bündnis! Folgt Konoha, unserer Macht!”

Which translates into the following sentence in english (1:1):

“There is no alliance! Follow Konoha, our might!”

“Our might” is the keyword here. He presents himself as part of the village, as being an extension of Hashirama’s will - because it was probably Hashirama that sent him there in the first place. I doubt Madara would have gone to Iwagakure if not under the order to do so.

But for what reason?

The words also imply that Madara was not in Iwagakure for a pleasant chat or a diplomatic discussion (he was at the very least prepared for resistance judging by his attire)…then again diplomacy might have been the case, but Madara phrased himself rather poorly - which I do not agree with entirely.

Madara is honest - blunt but with an elegant edge to his speech - and he knows how to strike with his words to hurt, anger and psyche out his opponents (The Five Kage in particular come to mind).

“There is no alliance!” - these are some interesting words that carry a lot of implications. And to put them in context we have to look at what Onoki says before Madara answers him.

And Onoki says the following words in german (Onoki speaks in dialect in the german version, I have chosen to use the “understandable”/translated part in the glossary for this because the dialect is gibberish for those not knowing the language);

“Warum?! Das stimmt nicht!”

“Why?! That’s not right!”

“Meister Hashirama hat uns…”

The second part is a bit tricker to translate into something coherent from one language to the next. It looks like Onoki is about to say something akin to “Hashirama-dono has told us…” (has = hat and us = uns) this sentence is honestly wacky to translate into english - as we are missing the exact word to make the sentence make sense. In the german language the verb would be (almost always) at the end of the sentence (“Meister Hashirama hat uns gesagt”) and it’s the word after the … that is interesting. It can be anything really (said/lied (to us) depending how to interpret Onoki’s words in the end.

If I were to translate the sentence 1:1 it ends up looking like this (it looks more like a mathematical formula than a sentence):

“Hashirama-dono has …. (to)us…”

And in english the tone in this sentence (if translated 1:1 that is) becomes nearly ominous or sad and could almost be interpreted like a monologue.

But I’m derailing this post already, so I will stop the speculations and come back to the topic at hand.

For the sake of this analysis, I will say that Onoki wanted to tell Madara that “Hashirama-dono said to us that-….” to which Madara replies that “There is no alliance!”

It could mean everything from Iwagakure was planning an alliance with another of the five hidden villages (not that such would be a hinderance to Konoha, as long as it did not mean war?). It could mean that Konoha planned to form a more “loose” alliance with Iwagakure (as in exporting/importing specific wares), but Hashirama changed his mind and wanted to subjugate Iwagakure entirely to get their power on Konoha’s side. Or it could simply mean that Konoha (Hashirama) lied to Iwagakure, for whatever reason, and always intended for a more “brute force” method to get his will (through Madara).

Going over the tone of the words once more (and pretending Onoki meant to say something close to “Hashirama said to us that there would be an agreement”) the situation could be seen as Madara going to Iwagakure without orders to do so. If that is the case…this situation does happen after (to shortly around) the Kage meeting. As it was during that specific meeting that the Kage, at the time, were distributing the Tailed Beasts to achieve balance power-wise. And that can be seen as an “agreement”, but there are probably many more to which this situation can refer to honestly - as Madara makes no mention of a Tailed Beast. But it could, nevertheless, refer to one of them. The words are vague enough to imply any and every conflict, that was one of many, possible causes for the First Great Ninja war happening.

(I personally headcanon that it was Hashirama who ordered Madara to Iwagakure. It is just more interesting in that way. Both for Madara and Hashirama.)

Many characters feel resentment towards Madara (as in this particular instance) when their anger should be directed at Hashirama for being the one giving (most likely) the order for Madara to even be there. The latter is nothing else but an extension of Hashirama’s will at this point in time (most likely).

It is almost as if Hashirama uses Madara as a scapegoat and shield to escape punishment and dirtying his own hands…

There are many implications with this confrontation, but it is no denying that this confrontation caused a rift between Iwa and Konoha.

In the english dub the conversation goes as follows;

“What? But why?! That wasn’t the agreement, lord Hashirama said-“

“There is no alliance now. You’ll merely bow down to the might of the Hidden Leaf.”

But no matter, the end result is still that they clash (in the anime Madara uses Susano’o to destroy the building behind him and wound Onoki and Mū).

There is something about his expression that just…makes the whole situation feel wrong. Weariness and melancholia is what I mentioned above, but it could be interpreted as a look of disgust even…but whether it is directed at Onoki and Mū, or at something else (be it his thoughts in that moment, himself, Hashirama or Konoha itself) is not easy to answer.

It is quite telling that he is losing faith/has lost his faith in Hashirama as well, by the fact that he does not want to hear his name being mentioned. This indicates quite the rift between them, that something has gone wrong. Terribly so.

It is mostly likely some sort of disagreement. And it is most likely a disagreement about peace and/or about Konoha.

They have yet to speak by the stone tablet is my claim, but I will also claim that it is here that Madara understood what Izuna tried to warn him about. Despite being stoic, I imagine it left not even someone as stoic as Madara completely unfazed.

After all, he gave this peace of theirs a chance - despite his condition not being met (this peace was first and foremost for Izuna and their clan) and he has been met with disappointment after disappointment since then.

But the questions remains why Madara was even sent to Iwagakure (if he was) in the first place.

He is frowning here it looks like, he looks even thoughtful and a bit lost in his thoughts. But whether it has to do with the present situation, or something internally, is impossible to say as we are seeing Madara (once again) through the eyes of another character (Onoki).

It is here that we can piece together a possible philosophy for Hashirama’s view about peace.

Hashirama’s method of assuring peace is through dominance and power (mixed with a sense of compassion - that extends only so far…), while fear is ultimately what keeps the power balance in check. You could say that he is keeping peace upright through bonds and cooperation, and in a sense that is correct as well, however - somewhere along the way - Konoha changes Hashirama.

From this idealistic, dreamer who truly wanted the world to change;

To this terrifying and ruthless person willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for ‘his’ village;

While not identical, Hashirama’s way of achieving peace is similar to how Pain wanted to achieve it.

In the case of Hashirama, his method works for as long as he is alive. But, according to the Naruto timeline, he is said to have died quite young.

Considering the fact that the first Great Ninja War broke out sometime after (to shortly before) Hashirama’s death, it is quite telling how the power balance shifted so rapidly and readily once he was no longer there to keep things leashed.

Madara returns to Konoha, and he probably stays for a while longer, before he and Hashirama have their conversation by the stone tablet.

We can see here the philosophy behind Yin and Yang, and how Hashirama and Madara tried to achieve it in their physical reality by cooperating- but the results did not become what they hoped for.

While not a complete disaster, there was too little trust between them in the end. The friendship between Madara and Hashirama was never the most steady, but it’s here that it shatters once and for all.

Hashirama assembles as much power as he can, under one name (Konoha), but did he do anything for the clans under him? Did he do anything to soothe resentment/paranoia that had to fester in their hearts?

Not what we know, at least.

He tried to work together with the other villages - but it says nothing about what he tried to do for the clans living in Konoha.

In the above scan, Hashirama asks Madara to see everyone in the village as his “siblings” - “I want you to watch over everyone” and yet Hashirama, himself, cannot even have the back of the clan that founded the village with him. He cannot prove to Madara that he (Hashirama) is willing to watch over his co-founder and support him and his clan.

Then again, Madara probably let no one close to him at this point (or at any point after Izuna’s passing) which means that Hashirama could not reach him even if he may genuinely have wanted to do so.

He could not even stand up to his own brother (who was probably a thorn in Madara’s side and cause for concern with his politics). Hashirama could not be someone that helped foster some sort of begrudging understanding between Madara and Tobirama - despite not really knowing who Madara was as a person at that point (they were apart for at least a decade after all).

And in between them stood also the loss of Izuna (something Madara would never truly forgive Tobirama for).

We can also come to the conclusion that Hashirama has not really shown much resolve to “deal” with Tobirama over the years they have worked on this village. Madara knows Hashirama well enough by that point. He knows that his words are empty and that he will not back them up with action in the end.

He knows Hashirama well enough to know that the latter will not do anything. Not really.

He leaves the village. Knowing once and for all that the peace, he wanted so desperately to believe in, would not manifest through Konoha.

[liketwoswansinbalance]

MASTERPOST for The One True School Master of Vault 41

This is a continually updating table of contents to help with navigating my posts about TOTSMOV41, my WIP longfic.

The fic's premise: Sophie joins forces with a resurrected, former lover in the midst of trying to get Tedros back onto Camelot's throne, but that's not even half the uphill battle: rogue psyches and distrust abound and threaten to shatter the present state of the Woods as everyone knows it.

or

In which Rafal is resurrected during the events of One True King and things go horribly, disproportionately wrong!

Also, the fic will not be published for a very long time, so don't expect to see it anytime soon. I'm still on draft zero/the outline/script.

⸻

—Table of Contents—[Pre-Publication of Fic]

1. Title reveal and associated music

2. Round I of Excerpts

3. Apparently, the tag "otk" is banned from tumblr.

4. The misleading trope hint

5. Round II Excerpt

6. Visual ref. 1

7. Facts about the fic

8. Reblog #1

9. Aesthetic for one of the first scenes (and flower trivia in the comments)

10. A Peek at My Outline Process

11. Reblog #2, dialogue, and reference to suicide

12. Round III of Excerpts

13. Sketch - Rafal got punched in the face.

14. Screenshots of my Pinterest board for the fic

15. Update, more facts about the fic, and its references to philosophic concepts

16. Round IV Excerpt

17. Cover Reveal

18. Reblog #3

19. Reblog #4

20. Reblog #5

21. Hypothetical Non-Excerpt

22. The Recurring Japeth Punchline

23. Reblog #6

24. Reblog #7

25. Three "Fun" (Incongruous) Facts

26. Thanatos drive reference mentioned

27. Reblog #8

28. Reblog #9

29. Reblog #10

30. Ask containing minor fic trivia

31. Update and Round V of Excerpts

32. Which wizard is this? (a.k.a. The Tedros Insanity Poll)

33. Reblog #11

34. Reblog #12

35. Reblog #13 and Fic Tags

36. Round VI Excerpt

37. The Suffering Scale

38. Word Ask Game

39. Word Ask #1

40. Word Ask #2

41. Word Ask #3

42. Results of the Tedros Poll

43. Round VII of Excerpts

44. Guess the Last Verb/Noun

45. Minor Spoilers

46. Reblog #14

47. Reblog #15

48. Reblog #16

49. Visual ref. 2

50. Reblog #17

51. Slightly Cursed Thought?

52. Aesthetic

53. Round VIII of Excerpts

54. Scrapped Hypothetical Scene

55. Reblog #18

56. Visual ref. 3

57. Reblog #19

58. Reblog #20

59. Deliberate or Not Deliberate?

60. Update and Another Ask Game

61. Page Number Ask #1

62. Page Number Ask #2

63. Visual ref. 4

64. Visual ref. 5

65. Reblog #21

66. Reblog #22

67. Reblog #23

68. Reblog #24

69. Reblog #25

70. Verbing Nouns

71. Reblog #26

72. Reblog #27

73. A Little News

74. TLEA Evidence for One of My Theories

75. Reblog #28

76. Reblog #29

77. Trick-or-Treat Ask Excerpt

—The Story— [Links TBA after publication.]

Part I: Of Solipsism, Sophistry, and Storians.

Part II: Great Mistake II, Great Mistake III, and Verisimilitude

Part III: Phantoms, Prescience, and the Pen

Deleted Scene

Meta post

Fic Analysis, Commentary & Trivia

Propaganda

⸻

Need-to-Knows (a.k.a How I'm meddling with canon):

This fic will involve Rafal being resurrected, and lead up to an alternate continuity of plot events, all set during One True King. Thus, its title will be: The One True School Master of Vault 41. However, the title may or may not be a bit of a misnomer, so I might just end up subverting your expectations after all.

There will be a form of "psyche travel," or an approximation of time travel, using Dovey's crystal ball like in ACOT, the arson of a certain Wizard Tree to look forward to, and some offbeat, unprecedented action taken by the Storian. Of course, Agatha and Rafal will bicker a lot while Sophie plays the role of mediator. And, oh, Rafal will be tortured, slightly…

Additionally, there's a couple things to note about the premise and the changes I've made to canon, for context:

1. The fic will disregard Fall as canon, yet will acknowledge Rise.

2. There are several canon elements I'm not using. The Rafal is the fic is him from Rise, and also from TLEA. I decided to only acknowledge Rise but not Fall because I didn't want to work with the identity-swap twist. So Rafal is Rafal is Rafal in this case. I will draw from both his Rise characterization and his TLEA characterization.

3. Later in the fic, Rise Rhian only has minor appearances, and is present in Rafal's psyche, but he will not actually be a character until I write a possible sequel, if I ever do reach that point. So, you can assume Rhian was moderately Good to grey on the morality scale, and that Rafal was the one who ultimately committed the fratricide for the purposes of this fic.

4. I've decided not to acknowledge the OTK parentage twist. To clarify, Rafal will have no relation to Japeth, simply because it felt out of character for him to have children with a woman he seemed to loathe, even if it may have been less out of character for the canon Rhian falsely disguised as "Rafal." I personally thought it contradicted Rafal's characterization, so Japeth's placeholder father, who probably won't even be mentioned in the story, will be the Green Knight, to explain his magical prowess as the Snake.

Otherwise, for the most part, this fic is alternate continuity "canon," and diverges at some point during OTK.

I've tried to set the stage, eradicate confusion, and mediate potential disappointment as best as I could above, but if anyone would like me to demystify anything about the fic, my writing process, or ask anything else at all, feel free to send questions to me! Yet, I might not be able to answer everything, for various reasons, including limiting excessive spoilers, so please keep that in mind.

[anaxerneas]

I fell down a rabbit hole which led me to reading about Diana Fleischman's work in evolutionary psychology. Unsurprisingly, she believes that evo-psych can shed light on "signaling" in politics.

Is it "dehumanizing" or at least demeaning to say that people are signaling rather than communicating in certain contexts?

For example - saying that someone is "virtue signaling" or signaling their reproductive fitness, v.s. describing a driver as signaling with their turn signal or a scuba diver with the "O.K." gesture (those two examples are clearly voluntary, but an evolutionary psychologist would still be interested in their survival value).

A person "presenting" with a symptom isn't signaling an underlying illness, and discussing symptoms with a doctor is ideally an act of communicating with them, not signaling to them. Those two verbs are basically interchangeable in the case of the driver and diver though (reflecting the difference between simple sign systems and the medium of language?).

But even if an evo-psych explanation happens to use "communication", the act is usually attributed to things like bodily traits and physical features. Very different from a person's choice of words!

The tendency for people to engage in art or mathematics is given explanations that artists and mathematicians wouldn't give themselves, though at least some evolutionary psychologists explicitly distinguish claims about the evolutionary functions of cultural phenomena qua adaptations from claims about individual goals and intentions (in contrast to internet commenters who confidently make sweeping claims about the latter).

There are some important differences in those examples, even if they can't be neatly accounted for in terms of conscious/unconscious or voluntary/involuntary. But appeals to evo-psych aren't usually respectful of those distinctions or possible nuance/complexity in applying them.

[maristelina]

I was wondering if you have ever made a theory about the Milgram project as a whole instead of just individual characters because recently I've started thinking about the real life milgram experiment and it's relation to the milgram project and us as the participants. Would love to hear your thoughts about this

I haven't written my thoughts properly about this before but I can give you a quick rundown of it.

The Milgram Project is closer to the Stanford Experiment than MILGRAM itself but it is still connected.

There's also a core detail in the MILGRAM novels that expands what MILGRAM does with its trials. Going more in-depth with spoilers.

Jackalope, the current one we're seeing at the highest position, seems to be looking for a way to have "beautiful/elegant" punishment system. Jackalope gets really passionate about this even in the videos!

Jackalope has talked about multiple MILGRAM experiments and torments indicating it is something that probably has been happening since dawn of man.

It's also important to mention that MILGRAM has a lot of religious imagery that is on purpose.

Dante's inferno (Abandon hope all ye who enter on promotional materials, The Emphasis on Doors/Gates).

The emphasis on sin instead of crime when describing our prisoners. "Book of Sins", "Sing your sins", Undercover's lyrics.

Not only that, using the name Es is very interesting too.

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the "es" refers to the id - the primitive and instinctual part of the human psyche that focuses on immediate satisfaction and operates unconsciously.

In existential philosophy, "es" is sometimes used to describe a person's intrinsic nature or essence. The true "es" of a person as opposed to their public persona.

In some religious and spiritual traditions, especially Hinduism, the "es" refers to a supreme, divine power or absolute cosmic spirit. It represents the latent spiritual nature underlying all of existence.

"Es" is also sometimes used to mean quintessence or embodiment. For example describing someone as the "es" of a certain quality.

In Spanish, "es" is the third-person singular form of the verb "ser", meaning "to be". So "es" means "he/she/it is"

Not only is our Es gender neutral, Jackalope makes it a point that the Warden has to be hopelessly devoid of self but still able to view sin in different perspectives.

Jackalope is also contradictory that he goes you have to be human to be able to judge human sin. But he also wants to strip away Es's individuality? Isn't that interesting?

He even mentions that the current Es is the ideal warden. A vessel to express our thoughts about the prisoners.

This is something I haven't fully thought of yet, but I want to talk about Jackalope himself.

The history of Jackalope is manmade and is a hoax to drive sales. But if you think about the theme of MILGRAM so far, I think it's very interesting they chose this peculiar creature. They have the ability to hypnotize people by dancing and using telepathic powers to "sing" to people. They're also canonically shapeshifters.

Sorry for my messy unorganized thoughts, I figured this might help spark some discussion for now! :)

[librarycards]

Hello! Sorry if you’ve posted about this somewhere already/if it’s redundant, but I thought your coinage of “transMad” was very cool and I’m wondering what that term means to you? I’m really happy to see other people talking about madness being intertwined w their gender/transness and looking forward to checking out your reading lists :))

thank you so much for asking about one of my favorite things to infodump about!! rather than rehash a bunch of stuff, if it's okay, I'm going to borrow a few quotes from past!me that i've published in different places // offer you some things of mine to read.

broadly, though, i use transMadness as a way to explore the identificatory, epistemological, methodological, and theoretical implications of an orientation (to use Sara Ahmed's term) toward bodymind noncompliance and self/selves-determination. this orientation refuses to delineate diagnostically between Maddened / transed experiences of the world/our many worlds, and instead takes this shared/overlapping ground as a jumping off point for solidarity and speculation - that is, something that allows us to imagine otherwise worlds / make them manifest through creativity and collaboration.

(Ha, and I claimed i wouldn't talk too much...famous autistic last words)

ANYWAY. here are some clips that might help explain more dimensions of transMadness. note that, in my dissertation-in-progress, i'm focusing on xeno/neogender and/as self-diagnostic cultures among queercrip and transMad internet users. i'm interested in the anti-psych liberatory potential of this digital community work, especially as it centers forms of knowledge and scholarship devalued within Academia Proper, especially because so much of it is made by and for disabled, Mad, queer, trans people, esp. youth. Onward to quotes!

On transMad epistemologies: citation/power/knowledge:

I’ll spend most of this piece looking not at what transMad is, but what it does. First and foremost, transMad cites. Even its name alludes to other portmanteaus: neuroqueer and queercrip being the best-known among them. Many people have offered many different (ever-“working”!) definitions of these terms; today, I offer co-coiner Nick Walker’s (2021) definition of neuroqueer: a verb and an adjective “encompass[ing] the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms” (p. 196). In terms of queercrip, I also return to its coiner, Carrie Sandahl (2003), who for whom the queercrip (as person and as method/movement) confuses the diagnostic gaze, bears sociopolitical witness, and performs glitchful[4], incongruous, confusing in(ter)ventions into possible community. At base, “queer” and “crip” appear as analogous, reclaimed slurs signifying marginalized transgression. When combined, they describe a loop, perhaps a Möbius strip: crip (ani)mates queer, queer tells-on crip. The specter of crip haunts queer—and even more explicitly, as we will see, trans—and the crip(ped) bodymind holds, moves, and fucks queerly. Who knows where “queer” stops and “crip” and “neuro” begin? Likewise, transMad, whose citational style leaves little room for diagnostic clarity amidst a pastiche of noncompliant text.

On transMad epistemologies: multiplicity (h/t @materialisnt):

They encourage us to remove others’ names from our bodies, to reign in unruly citations, to set “boundaries” which violate Mad, crip ethics of care (see Fletcher, 2019). In truth, any framing of individual authorship in which the body text is “mine” and the citations gesture “elsewhere” belie the inherent interdependence of all intellectual life, and particularly of transMad intellectual life. transMad plural scholar mix. alan moss (2022) argues in relation to the pathologization of multiple systems: “all people, indeed all that exists, is a system that itself is constantly enmeshed in several overlapping and interconnected systems.” In short, I am full of Is, and will continue as many more. Just as disability justice helps us understand all life as interdependent and deserving of access, a transMad approach sees our selves as numerous and fuzzy. We have permission to dispense with the need for tidy texts, with our interlocutors, edits, and iterations either obfuscated entirely or exclusively relegated to a bibliography. transMad citation may thus be considered akin to visible mending[6], creating flamboyantly messy, multiplicitous work that does not seek to pass as objective or discrete.

On the value of (crip) failure and/as "virtuality":

Don’t get me wrong: Zoom PhD work is a failing enterprise. That is to say, it is a queercrip, transMad enterprise, which is to say, it is a beautiful, beautiful project. Mitchell, Snyder, and Ware describe such “fortunate failures” in the context of “curricular cripistemologies.”5 Coined by Merri Lisa Johnson, the term “cripistemologies,” refers to “embodied ways of knowing in relation, knowing-with, knowing-alongside, knowing-across-difference, and unknowing,” ways which frequently exist outside the purview of mainstream academia.6 Curricular cripistemologies, then, refer to an intentional, queercrip deviation from normative pedagogical approaches which trades the corrective impulse of “special ed” and other rehabilitative programs, and offers instead a generative noncompliance.7 That is, rather than trying to identify, isolate, and ameliorate difference, curricular cripistemologies lean into difference as it is experienced by disabled students ourselves, querying how atmospheres of in/accessibility shape normative approaches to education and how the embrace of “failure,” not as a last-resort but as a first choice, poses potentially transformative possibilities.

On transMadness and fat liberation: (for @trans-axolotl's Psych Survivor Zine)

A transMad, fat approach to disorderly eating requires making connections with humility and understanding, and, as I discussed above, engaging in compassionate, critical interrogation of our own anti-fatness.

[...]

A transMad, fat, abolitionist politic is one that makes room. We imagine beyond the cage, even if the details of that imagining are not yet clear. Just as we have carved micro-sites of support within violent digital and in-person contexts, just as we have learned to think about our lifeworlds beyond the paradigm of “recovery or death,” we can also reconceptualize fatness not as the enemy, but as another form of bodymind noncompliance in alliance and/or entanglement with disorderly eating practices. For thin disorderly eaters, this requires us to fundamentally challenge the way we view food and embodiment, even while maintaining a Mad respect for alternative ways of approaching reality.

On xenogenders, virtuality, and self-determination:

It is this very “irrationality” –– the “unrealness,” the “you’ve-got-to-be-kiddinghood,” that is most frequently weaponized against xenogenders, as well as their newly-coined sets of xenopronouns. The perceived and actual virtuality of xenogenders is often placed against the notion of “actuality,” in this case, of “real” (or “practical”) genders and pronouns to be used in one’s “real life.” Disabled activists have rightly resisted the distinction between online and (presumed-offline) “real life,” given that this categorically excludes homebound bodyminds, as well as those without IRL social and support circles. That said, I believe the virtual –– as almost, not-quite, proximite, making-do –– is incredibly useful in thinking about xenoidentities as transMad tools –– particularly, as transMad tools of underground collaboration / co-liberation.

[...]

What if gender was a project we wanted to fail? That is, what if trans- was a process not of getting better, not of moving-toward a bodymind more sane, more straight, and more cisheteropatriarchially desirable, but rather a line of flight on a longer trail to illegibility? Indeed, what if we replaced pathology’s narrow “path” with a trail lighted by the language of our comrades, whose linguistic interventions make and break gender in ways heretofore unimaginable? Xenoidentities, both individually and as a trans-gressive M.O., are fundamental to a broader transMad project of crafted, collective illegibility; intersubjective citation (imagine what it feels like for someone to be the gender that you coined!); and collective care that refuses a politics of cure. Crucially both virtual and digital, xenoidentities are furthermore a manifestation of the power of trans, predominantly disabled digital counterpublics, who overturn the hierarchy which places the IRL-real above the digital-unreal, making unruly, Mad space in which (with apologies to Donna Haraway) a hundred xenoselves might bloom.

On Maddening queer "diagnosis":

In her indictment of all “Kwik-Fix Drugs,” Gray further indicates the practice of forced treatment as in and of itself as a project of violent normalization, regardless of specific target or reason. The intentional ambiguity between her narrative of Madness and her narrative of asexuality disrupt mounting demands for a healthy (sanitized, neoliberal, and consumable) queerness. A Mad ace approach identifies these demands as, indeed, comparable with cis heteronormative notions of sexual maturity and responsibility – the idea that participation in culturally-normative sexual practices is a prerequisite for health (Kim, 2011, 481) and thus, personal autonomy (Meerai, Abdillahi, and Poole 2016, 21). By fusing the “lack of sexual appetite” attributed to her medications for bipolar disorder with her asexuality, Gray destabilizes the binary between healthy-sexual-diversity and unhealthy-psychopathology. She is once again disrupting contemporary queer impulses to dissociate from ongoing histories of pathologization. Here, Mad and queer/asexual activism are as inseparable in text as they are in Gray. Gray and her comrades collectively refuse both sexuality-as-“rehabilitation” (See Kim 2011, 486) and asexual acceptance predicated upon normative “health” (Kim 2010, 158) – that is, they Madden asexuality. Twoey, in her own voice, remixes the sources of her own pathologization, staggering the supposedly-divine pronouncement of the DSM across pages and bookending its extracts with her own writing and art. In this undermining of the DSM’s epistemological polish, Gray disrupts the domination of written prose over poetry and visual art, while also critiquing the role of the DSM in commercialized health “care.” Her zine opens with the lines “sex sells and sex is sold / sex was being sold and i didn’t buy” (Gray 2018, n.p.). Gray indicates a pathology perceived not only in a refusal to practice sex, but also in a refusal to buy (into) it. After all, a refusal to buy into existing sexual paradigms is for her also a refusal to buy into a feminized reproductive mandate.

[trudelosch]

It's oddly difficult to describe what subjective time feels like. The clock on the wall simply ticks, persisting in its steady progression, while those in the body and psyche call for a great variety of verbs to describe less readily chartable motions. The time of interiority pools, constricts, tumbles, and speeds. We live in a felt narrative progression, through which our experience is transformed into memory. And memory edits its records of the past like a brilliant auteur —cutting, juxtaposing, creating a pace determined by the direction and emotion of a story. What is memory but a story about how we have lived?

— Mark Doty, The Art of Description

[luxe-pauvre]

How, then, to find Wonder, if the experience of immersion must ditch two thousand years of existential isolation? Our egos, neatly ordering the cleaning cupboards of our psyches and forever threatened by disarray, have daily bolstered this two-world view, because if we are fundamentally severed from any direct experience of the world, then the arm’s-length things in it feel easier to name and reduce. Nouns – labelled things – are easy to possess, to call our own. Once we have arranged them, we can close the cupboard door and move on, unbothered by complexity. We might try transforming the Big Nouns in life to something more embodied and active – in other words, verbs. Shaken up in this way, concepts burst into life, and wonder may find space to emerge. It is verbs that move and slide beneath our feet while our ego frantically tries to organise them into motionless configurations of nouns. Happiness, Success, Failure, Love – these cause us too much heartache by presenting themselves as static and objective. Let’s see them as verbs, things we do. We are actively engaged in how happy we are; the labels of success and failure belie a shifting relationship to events as they unfold and as we compare them to our expectations; meanwhile, love must be found and animated each day in a hundred minor gestures. Even a bottle of polish, it turns out, needs our present and active involvement to bring it to life and give it any meaning. How much more involvement and activity might we find by verbing some of these concepts?”

Derren Brown, A Book of Secrets: Finding Solace in a Stubborn World