#the internet makes it all so much fucking worse this stuff can't exist without it

[wild-at-mind]

If you ever see me becoming one of those transmisandry people, please fucking call me out immediately.

[sysmedsaresexist]

hey does acknowledging the existence of parts make symptoms worse? like if they have a different name or other stuff about them thats different from you as a part, or using we/us, or generally just talking about them as a different part. i see ppl on reddit complain abt 'fakers' and them talking abt parts as if different from themself being against treatment guidelines but whenever i talk about my parts this way w drs/nurses/etc no one gives a shit. how else am i supposed to talk about it

Posting all three asks together.

To the very first question, does acknowledging parts make symptoms worse, yes and no. I have to talk about both, because it depends.

Typically, when people first find out they're a system or start questioning having a CDD, symptoms DO get worse.

A lot of antis and reddit are going on old research (old research doesn't support them, bear with me). Before the age of the internet, most people had someone ELSE point out that they were a system before they saw it in themselves.

This has to do with how mental health was treated a couple decades ago (having problems was Bad™️, deny and hide symptoms, it's still true but it was much worse), and access to resources about symptoms being much, much harder to come by. Amnesia was harder to notice. These days, every time you log in, you can see what your alters were doing while you were gone. There's no denying or hiding it.

That said, take myself, for example. I'm in my mid 30s, and I've been in therapy since I was 4.

Around age 20, after a very serious event, my therapist and I started to discuss alters. Before this point, I had rarely heard them, as far I knew, they didn't have names or personalities. Many of my alters DIDN'T have names. They were little more than emotionally reactive concepts of bad coping methods-- "the angry one," "self harming one."

It wasn't until I worked with my therapist to gain some kind of communication that my system kind of... activated. Suddenly, all my symptoms seemed 100 times worse, I was noticing things more and more, the increased communication was terrifying, we fought and rejected each other. We became more real, gained traits, names, voices.

Typically, this kind of upset settles after a while, but it's normal for it to get worse.

This type of progression of symptoms is well documented, but it's no longer the norm.

Now, is it specifically acknowledging the alters or parts that cause issues?

Fuck no, and Treatment Guidelines don't say that acknowledging them as separate is a bad thing.

The treatment guidelines are very clear that you use the language and words that the client uses.

What the treatment guidelines advise against is encouraging the rejection or disownment of parts. An example is someone who's religious, and believes that their system is related to possession. The therapist is to refer to the alters in the same way the client does-- by name and "we/us", etc, without encouraging the idea that they're actually possessed by a demon.

This is more about system accountability than anything else. The point is to get the system to realize that they are all in this together, and that the actions of one have consequences for all, including the demon in question. There is no hell to return to, when the body goes to jail, so do you.

This is integration.

Learning to get along, compromise on needs and wants, working together, leaning on each other, learning about each other, until together you're an unstoppable power ranger mecha with useful skills spread throughout the system. Everyone has a part to play in success.

You can't do that if you don't acknowledge them and their differences.

Fuck reddit.

[winterandwords]

For the writers living with chronic illness and physical disability

I'm going to get into writing and posting this while my brain is still half asleep and before I change my mind because it feels too personal and I don't do that online. Please excuse any typos.

Comments on a recent post of mine about wanting to write but not being able to got me thinking. I'm chronically ill and physically disabled. I have been for most of my adult life (I'm 42 now). It's been progressing slowly throughout that time and more rapidly over the last few years. It is what it is.

I don't talk about it in detail on the internet because it's impossible for me (not saying other people can't do this) to accurately represent the full experience in a way I feel comfortable with while still engaging enjoyably with an interest-based community, which is what I'd rather be doing here.

Also, people get fucking weird about it. I have no patience for *pat on the head* "well done for existing" consolation-prize pity bullshit or inspirational cripple bullshit. Equally, I have no patience for being dragged into a who-has-it-worse competition that I'm never going to take part in because I don't see the world that way or a what-about-me-ism-fuelled derailment session.

This shit is complicated. I'm on Tumblr to write and to talk about writing. But if I'm also quietly dealing with all that other stuff alongside making up some guys (gender non-specific) in my head and putting them in situations, I know some of you are too.

And you know what? It's hard. I know it is. We live in an inaccessible world and so many parts of that world and so many people in it can be brutally hostile towards chronic illness and physical disability in ways that still shake me to my core when I encounter them. It no longer surprises me, but it still fucks me up on the regular.

But listen. YOU ARE CREATING. You're doing something huge and worthy and valuable and fucking difficult. You're carrying the weight of all that other shit and YOU ARE STILL CREATING. It might take you longer than you'd like and you might be doing it in ways that are far from ideal, but you are still doing it.

You might feel excluded from communities and events and conversations, not necessarily because anyone is intentionally excluding you, but because you have no option other than to do the sick-person version of things and it's impossible not to feel like you're on the outside looking in sometimes when that's your experience.

The point of all this is that I want you to know with my whole heart that YOU ARE SEEN. Your strength and your determination and your sadness and your rage and your pain and your more-able days and your rock-bottom days are all seen.

Your challenges and your messiness and your perfectionism and your complexity and your dichotomies and the unrealistic standards and demands you have internalised from existing in an ableist society are witnessed and felt, widely and deeply, and with a solidarity unshakable enough to hang bridges from.

I'm not going to tell you that you're good enough, because it should go without saying. I am going to tell you that you're not alone, because that does need to be said. You are so much more than a conditionally-acceptable exception and you deserve to reach and exist beyond the boundaries of the small boxes you get shoved into without your consent or permission. YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE.

Alright? Alright. Keep going 💜

In case this gains any sort of traction and people start replying to it or reblogging it, I want to make something very clear. I am also neurodivergent. That is not what this post is about. I also have lifelong experience of mental illness and trauma. That is not what this post is about. This post is about chronic illness and physical disability and it's for people who are living with those specific things, whether or not they're also living with the other things.

So, in the most loving way, if you have something to say that isn't about that, this isn't the place to say it. Thanks.

[oodlyenough]

6-2 magical turnabout

I gotta admit I was deeply skeptical of this one, because it felt weird to jump back to Apollo and Athena and Japanifornia after the tutorial, and I'd heard about the uh questionable way Phoenix and Trucy's relationship is handled, and the Gramarye retcon stuff was a mess ...

but I actually really liked it! At least as much as Turnabout Academy, where I think they are similarly "so dumb it loops back around to being fun" (not a bad place to be for an AA filler case). What gives this one the edge is that SOJ has actual gameplay again. Thank fucking god. I can click things! I can investigate! There are minigames! I have to solve puzzles myself instead of waiting for NPC Athena to do it for me! These are the most basic elements of an AA game and somehow Dual Destinies had none of them, making SOJ feel like a revelation. So I think that makes this my fave case since AA4? Wow

Anyway let's get into it

I like the idea of defendant Trucy. Trucy was so ignored in AA5, and even in AA4 where she was a major player we rarely dealt with how she honestly feels about things. So it was nice to explore that a little more. Being a defendant is a rite of passage for an Ace Attorney character. She's all grown up now.

A magic show as the scene of a murder is a really fun idea also. It just gives great excuses for the shenanigans that take place in any murder case, and the solution feels less contrived bc it is with a perpetrator and a set design where those things are expected and facilitated naturally without a shit ton of contrivances and coincidences.

Apollo and Athena, for all my complaints about how they cannibalize each other's screentime just by simultaneously existing, are a fun team. And this time we actually got a lot of interactive banter because we actually got to CLICK STUFF wow so great much gameplay.

I do really enjoy Athena. I wish this franchise would get out of the habit of creating these interesting but half-baked characters just to park them immediately in the next instalment to create more interesting but half-baked characters. I have the rest of SOJ to go but I don't imagine Athena will have much of a role to play in it, just like how Apollo got shafted in DD to make way for Athena, and Trucy fared even worse. The main cast is so bloated the games can't balance everyone.

I am THRILLED Ema is back. Some of her new sprites are sf cute too. Overall, I have to compliment SOJ's sprites, which are very detailed and have lots of different animations. Many characters have new/more expressive ones, and they look way better than DD's 3D models.

The Gramarye lore is a hot mess. I do not believe the new writer remembered that Trucy is a Gramarye on her MOM'S side, since apparently the "Gramarye creed" was "passed down from my father, from his father", making it... the Enigmar creed. I also, generally, could probably have done without some of the way the Gramaryes were discussed here. They were pretty obviously a toxic shitshow nightmare in AA4, and Phoenix explicitly wants to protect Trucy from the truth of that. Here, we introduce the Jonkler out of nowhere, and have him cursing Magnifi and taking his revenge on ... the toddler... and it's all just a little bit weird. The poster of him being CANCELLED is the funniest thing I've ever seen though so I can forgive a lot of it just for that.

Also where is my man Valant. Why the hell would Trucy invite the Onceler to her show and not him lmao. Justice for Valant!!

I've also never wished Apollo knew his heritage more than in that last bit where Tony Stark was raving about how he defeated the "last" Gramarye lmao.

Nahyuta is ... fine so far. Honestly I know he's so unpopular in fandom but he's kind of fine so far? Not an immediate fave, but not even in my bottom two. The bit where he talks about studying Japanifornian culture made me think of the Dalek that "knows everything" because it downloaded the internet in 2013.

I've been semi-spoiled for Apollo and Nahyuta having a history together, and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that the game is not concealing this, but teasing it right from the off. I liked that in Apollovision his dialogue box is labelled "Nahyuta" even though everyone in-dialogue is calling him by his surname. I suspect this might be more a game dev limitation (character limit?) than anything else, but even if that's the case, it's a happy coincidence. The real test will be if they manage to stop Nahyuta and Apollo from feeling like a redux of Edgeworth and Phoenix, or Athena and Blackquill. Much of my issue with the end of DD was that it felt like we were just revisiting the trilogy's greatest hits without the same depth. But... whatever. I'm intrigued enough, at this point.

The biggest problem with this case, the elephant in the room, is Phoenix, who is inexplicably not there for his daughter's debut, did not even send flowers (apparently), and does not even talk to her on the phone in the last scene. This is exceedingly stupid and reeks of a total narrative oversight because they're not even trying to make some kind of point about Nick being a bad father. It's just a total lack of thought or effort. But ... anyway I have a whole other post written up about how Trucy and Phoenix's relationship is written in all the games, so, more on that another day, I guess. TL;DR Canon is a liar sometimes.

The "Gramarye[Enigmar] Family Motto" stuff, which is already so similar to the Mia Fey wisdom, could've just been collapsed into one thing: Trucy as a performer adapting that lawyer motto to her own life would be a nice way to show how Trucy is influenced by Phoenix, as well as Apollo and Athena. But uh, well, the game doesn't seem to care much about Trucy and Phoenix, so. I also find the "smile though your heart is breaking" mantra, including the JUDGE telling Trucy to look happy lmao??!?!, is like, kind of weird tonally, to the degree where I wonder if there's a culture gap happening. But I don't know enough about Japan to say.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this case. SOJ is off to an OK start with me so far, at least in comparison to DD.

[fireemblems24]

I am so glad you pointed out the imperialist vibes Edelgard has sometimes. As someone who lives in a country who was basically occupied ahem conquered because they said "we have better ideas that will improve your lives" and had our culture absolutely shattered, one of the main reasons why I disagree with Edelgard so much is because of that. She thinks her point of view is superior and the most morally right and I really don't like it whenever she sounds so confused about people defending their homeland. Especially that one line she has with Dimitri in Chapter 17 ffffff—

Like, girl, they have the fucking right to disagree with you please stop sounding so confused as to why they can't see eye to eye with you gahhhhh

I would be more tolerant with the war if she had say, did diplomacy before it? But she tried to had Dimitri and Claude killed in Part I (the prologue). I would also understand her better if the war was a last resort and the other leaders were corrupt and all that. But they're not. Many of the students (who have power because many are noble heirs) outside her house are heavily affected by the nobility and Crests (Sylvain, Ingrid, Mercedes, Lysithea, etc.) or at least understanding of the problems caused by them (Dimitri). It's so frustrating how so much of this can be prevented if she just talked about it.

Also, to those who said she wants the change to be quick, even with war it won't be. The fucking war basically caused continent-wide damage. It's going to be so hard to actually fix this. Hell, there's definitely going to be an eventual rebellion by former Kingdom / Alliance people or sympathisers. It's not going to be as clean cut as the game or some pro-Edelgard people make it to be. Not everyone is going to agree with her, whether she takes over or not. She just destroyed the stability of the continent and while yes, she can rebuild it again, it will still take time and who's to say future leaders won't be corrupt? Also, a hierarchy will always exist, whether she likes it or not. Especially if she plans to set up a meritocracy. Meritocracy is going to usually end up giving power and privilege to those with already pre-existing privilege as they the opportunity to show off their merits or develop those skills. Poor and disabled people are going to have difficulty as they don't have equal opportunity to develop skills and accomplish stuff. I'm generalising, but it just ends up as a hierarchy, again. Not only that, it also has ways to enforce discrimination.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, she needs to long term plan out her systems. I apologise since I have bad memory but as far as I remember, the game doesn't give us too many details on how she wants to establish her system. All I remember is she does the war > Church / Rhea out of power > Establish her government > ???. Someone please clear this up for me because I'm confused.

...and again really, diplomatic reforms are an option. Yes, they're much more tedious. Yes, they take so much more longer. Yes, sometimes it feels impossible to accomplish. But did she not even consider it as an option?

All in all, I do like Edelgard. But I really wish the game let us go against her while we're with her? I wish it wasn't just general "agree with Edelgard" for CF. I remember someone pointing it out to me before that it would've been really great if she had someone in her house who does the same role Felix does in AM... which is basically disagree and call out the lord's shit. And they pointed out Ferdinand could've probably been that character for CF. And I kinda agree? I really think CF would immensely improve if Edelgard had a challenger / foil to her beliefs similar to how Felix does that for Dimitri.

Anyway, sorry for the very long ask lol. I like Edelgard and I agree with some of her morals and ideals such as the crest system being bad but....she's done so dirty asdfghjkl. I do think she's written well enough to incite these emotions in me, and she makes for a good antagonist. As a protagonist lord however.... yeah.

First off, sorry it took so long to respond, but I wanted to give an equally throughout response. 

While I haven’t gotten to chapter 17 yet, I can attest to the notion that Edelgard’s rhetoric is eerily similar to Imperialist propaganda. I do understand this is fiction, and that it’s okay to hand-wave/enjoy things in fiction that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t in real life. Crimson Flower has its charms and parts I enjoy. Edelgard is an interesting character more hampered by things that plague Three Houses as a whole than anything else, but it’s still worth examining how dangerous her rhetoric is. Because, unlike you, my country sits at the opposite end - the Imperialist nation selling that rhetoric to its citizens, and, unfortunately, at the time I bought it - which makes me really sensitive to this. 

I’m from the US and I’m specifically speaking about the US’s invasion of the Middle East. I was in middle or high school, just barely a teenager, and naive and ignorant enough to believe what my leaders said. Because guess what? I bought into it out of misplaced and ignorant (and racist) compassion. I was horrified at the idea these people were suffering unfairly just because of where they were born whereas I got all these promised privileges just because of where I was born. I really thought the US would go in there and give them democracy and everything would be great. Looking back, I realize they were lying, that we’ve only made things worse, that it’s horribly racist to assume the US was just inherently better, and I’ve sense then gained access to fast-speed internet, traveled, matured, etc . . . and thankfully this all happened before I had any actual power to do anything like vote. But to this day I’m beyond pissed off they used my own compassion against me to line their own pockets. It was ignorant and racist, but it was all based in concern that others didn’t have the same quality of life I had and a growing realization of my own privilege. And that’s what I hate so much. It didn’t sound evil. It sounded good. It used people’s good will and compassion against them and twisted it into evil for their own causes. 

I don’t think Edelgard is after Faerghus and the Alliance because she wants oil. I think she honestly thinks she’s doing good. And, if this were real life, I think that makes her rhetoric even more dangerous than a corrupt politicians’.  Because everything else is still the same. She’s being ignorant, nationalist instead of racist in this case, and honestly thinks her moral superiority will improve everyone’s lives even if it means ravaging the entire content in war. She is dangerously naive and ignorant. 

Maybe I’d support her more morally if I believed for an instant the general populace welcomed the changes she wants to bring, if the leaders she fought against weren’t open and wanting change themselves, ect . . . But the dialogue indicated her presence inspires people running and screaming in terror, not welcoming her presence (see the chapter where you kill Claude). The Kingdom is still fighting tooth and nail against her. She’s not supported. Her changes aren’t wanted. And she hasn’t bothered to learn a single thing about the cultures she’s determined to squash under her heal nor the leaders heading them. 

I also think I’d support her better if we had a clearer idea of what her plans were. But CF has shifted from Edelgard speaking about interesting ideas and classism to evil dragon overlords and chastising Byleth for making her blush. The decision to side with her or Rhea is not choosing between two ideals, but an emotional, spur of the moment thing. Edelgard’s early supports with Byleth attempt to convince the player to side with her not based on political ideals, but on feeling sorry for her. 

CF gives you no choice but to agree with everything Edelgard says (as you said, there’s no “Felix” or a “Lorenz”). It wants you to support her war without question, and therefore you don’t get any answers to questions like - if this is really just about Rhea, why are we invading the Alliance? Because they won’t hand power over to you? Why didn’t you just stick to the Empire to enact your changes? In the end, you’re left with what sounds more and more like an entitled Imperialistic princess with absolutely no idea how ignorant she is hell bent on conquering what she thinks belongs to her based on a conspiracy theory. 

All that said, I do think Edelgard has interesting ideas and isn’t wholly wrong, just how she goes about it is horribly wrong. And I fully believe the core issue is how CF has dropped the ball big time writing wise, because diving deeper into her ideas and not her crush on you would go a long way. So would shifting the narrative away from evil boogey dragon lady must die and everyone else is wrong and I am superior and right and more towards a clashing of ideals, this route could’ve been a lot more and seemed a lot less ignorant, naive, entitled, and Imperialistic. 

[heavensenthearty]

Can’t get over the irony in that post about oppression you rb’d. First they have a great message about trying to have empathy about other people’s situations and not making assumptions about them just because they’re different... then “oh but you can’t have an opinion if you’re white lol”... that person really just invalidated their entire post huh. So much for “empathy” lmao, what a hypocrite. Respect goes both ways

TW // Death, racism, communism, allusions to suicide

I think that in this modern times the word "white" has become a synonym of "from a first-world country" because the majority of the population in the main first-world countries is white, (I didn't design the phenotype 🤷🏽‍♀️). So it's not completely accurate, but it's the second-best and shorter option, I suppose.

Then again, it is very rare to find a kind of oppression specifically inflicted over white people. That's not saying bigotry and disdain for interracial couples doesn't exist and doesn't invalidates that issue, but the OG post you're mentioning indeed had oppression as its main focus.

It's no secret the U.S. is going through some tough times, and I do try to be as sympathetic as possible considering their issues are taking place in a country that is not my own. Nevertheless, my U.S. friends are being affected by these problems, and if they are as emotionally shook as they are, then I can't claim my problems are worse than theirs, because each of us lives through the difficulties in a different way.

But... I am human. I can get angry. Especially when I feel even the people I consider my friends are throwing a fit over a problem that I see rather mild compared to mine.

I've already said that I hate the "minimum wage" discourse because at least in your country you can get your wage increased without the prices of the food and first need products being increased as well. In my country, our minimum wage is increased fairly often, the problem is that every time it does our currency devalues itself for the reason that we don't count with the emergency funds to give that much money without retribution, so the price of everything else also has to increase to continue the cycle. It's a constant chase and a permanent reminder that it doesn't even matter how hard you try, you will never be able to afford food for more than a week.

Yes, it must be difficult to not count with affordable healthcare, but at least your country has doctors. Mine doesn't. Or rather, my city and most of the other states don't. Most of the doctors left the country faster than the rats left the Titanic when Venezuela started becoming... what it is today. (Smart guys, huh? 😏 They earned that diploma.)

Yes, it must be annoying to have two-hours-long internet outages every now and then, but at least your country doesn't have 6-days-long complete blackouts with the communications, the water, and the domestic gas being totally cut off.

And it's not that I appreciate my friends any less, but every time I talk about these stuff their answers are either "I'm sorry", "No bueno", "Mad respect for you" and we just proceed to talk about something "happier".

Thanks, but you think any of that is going to keep me from fucking dying if the rest of the desperate people in here decide to loot my house in search of somewhere to sleep themselves?

This is what happened during the other blackouts:

People looted all stores and malls looking for something to eat and abandoned houses for somewhere to sleep. I sleep every night knowing that if the situation presents itself, there'll be a pretty good chance someone comes through my window and kill me and my mom in our sleep to take our house as if it was theirs. I have to be ready to sleep with a knife next to my bed like I did the first times.

First-world countries can't relate, right?

And no offense to anyone but they don't make the effort to relate, they don't ask people the background of everything that's happening in their suffering countries, they just make assumptions and repeat propaganda and when we do tell them how things really are, they tell us to shut up because they know more about these stuff.

Behold the comments I've received from, yes, white people after I talked about the situation in my country:

"Well, if you guys were better at (insert random socio-econimic system) then you so many bad things wouldn't happen to you."

"Geez, why can't you all Latin American countries be unproblematic like Uruguay."

"I don't have time for your little girl definitions of racism."

"I can't take you seriously, you think Venezuela is communist."

"I don't care about your anti-communist things."

But sure, how could I forget the time an Asian person but living in the U.S. retweeted my story of how my mom lost her company with laughing emojis and saying "Can you believe someone would share this and have such little sense of privacy?"

Or the time a person with supposed depression sent me GIFs of Chavez laughing.

... I don't want to talk... about what I... thought about doing after that.

You're right, Anon, respect goes both ways. And these people didn't respect me and my country, so I'm not obliged to respect theirs.

I just do so because I have empathy.

[cardhouseandthecage]

I actually am wondering about the Star recruitment process, Denizen-Star communication, and the interface between our reality and Faerie with regard to all this. Like if you or I was to get sucked into the Star process, what would it be like in terms of ordinary logistics? How would they first reach out to us? What if we tried something like getting other people involved who legit believed in all this but the Cardhouse really didn't want them involved? Apologies if this can't really be answered!

an EXCELLENT QUESTION, friend, and incidentally a subject of ongoing investigation on my part. THE subject of ongoing investigation. My whole life. Which is to say: I can’t give you a complete answer—I can’t even necessarily give you a correct answer—but you have absolutely come to the right place. You wont get any kind of answer anywhere else. Here’s what I’ve pieced together from my research, thus far:I. The first thing you need to know about Stars is that they don’t actually believe in fairies. Not Literally. Not necessarily. 

You are familiar, I assume, with the Moment of Magical Proof™? You’ll find it with most stories that begin in the mundane. Our protagonist might want to believe in magic, but they can’t—magic is fake and everyone knows it—so they’ll rationalize for as long as they can. Then something happens. Magic intrudes upon their lived experience in a way they can no longer deny. YER A WIZARD, HARRY. Magic is real, and will continue to be real for the duration of the narrative.

That moment never happens.

There is no first contact for a Star, no revelation, no paradigm shift: it’s only ever a slow fade. And that little voice of in the back of their heads, the one that knows none of this could ever be real? It never goes away. That’s important. It’s part of what splits them—and without a split there is no harvest.

The Cardmaster settled upon this business model for a reason. Certainly he could present the Cardhouse more literally, but he’d be working against dominant trends: most people don’t believe in fairies literally, and our beliefs govern the channels through which fairies can contact us. So if you don’t really believe that some fairy bitch could pup up in your window and approach you with the deal of a lifetime, they’re going to have a really difficult time making that happen.* It’s much more cost-effective to build on a pre-existing system of belief than to overturn it. 

II. But what’s all this nonsense about the power of belief, HQ? Are you really going to sit there behind your screen and tell me that you subscribe to Magical Thinking? Who exactly is funding this study???

AHAHAHAHAHA NO ONE, naturally, but also: no. No, of course not! I may not be funded but I take myself very seriously here: I’m not arguing that our beliefs can change reality directly. Antoine was absolutely right about the tree root: that’s a thing in the physical universe and it’s going to go on existing regardless of what we think about it—outside of what we think of it. Oxygen doesn’t care about my feelings! There’s a side of things won’t budge, no matter what I believe (I know this; I’ve tried). Even if I clapped my hands and dreamed with every fibre of my being, it wouldn’t wouldn’t make a fairy into something I could bring into a lab and prove.

But my belief would change something. It would change the Faerie-Reality interface. If I believed fairies were real, they’d be real to me. It would change how they exist in the extra-dimensional space in my head. And that space in my head—in all of our heads—that’s the dimension of things that connects up with Faerie. That’s what empties into Faerie, perpetually, without our volition or consent. I’m fooling myself if I think I’m in control of that space just because my thoughts effect it: I didn’t choose most of my beliefs any more than I chose my body. There’s a whole world of thought that I inherited, and correspondingly a whole landscape of Faerie that’s built up in connection to Reality over time. By this mechanism, then, our beliefs can alter reality: indirectly. Reality generates Faerie, but Faerie is incessantly fucking with us in return, and the ways in which it fucks with us influence the actions we take in Reality. III. Any agency behind such fuckery I term “a fairy.” 

Fairies ��live” in the backworld (they’re made of the same stuff it is) and can manipulate the residue that accumulates there: they’re not real by any means, but they do exist. It is worth noting that fairies, by this definition, don’t give a damn whether we believe in them. This may first strike you as counter-intuitive: if they’re made of our thoughts, then surely our belief means a great deal to them? To which I answer: yes, it does. Absolutely. Just not in the way that you’d think. I’m guessing you’ve probably encountered some version theory of belief-dependancy and the Decline of the Mythical? It’s related to a lot of things (many of which are true, see: placebo effect), but generally it asserts that the vitality of imaginary beings has diminished in direct proportion to our diminishing “belief” in them, and consequently there has been a great falling off in the power of gods and fairies and the like as we have entered the modern era. My findings suggest the otherwise. I say we still believe in plenty of “unreal” things, and as strongly as ever we did. Even our science feeds into the Faerie: it’s made of our thought! We use science to describe reality, but it itself is not fully “real.” Besides which, it’s not as if fairies are limited to drawing upon our literal beliefs. We don’t generally think of fiction as real, and yet it shapes us. And a desire can be every bit as potent as a belief. Fairies don’t care whether we believe in them: all they require is that we want to. They’ll play our beliefs against our desires and catch us between them, bring us to our knees before the impossible; we’ll yield our sacrifice readily enough, god or no god.  All they require is that we dream. 

So no, I don’t think we’ve impoverished fairies at all by sorting fact from fiction as we have. I think we’ve blinded ourselves to their power, locked the door and thrown away the key only to have them catch it. I think we’ve given them everything. I think we’ve spoiled them.

IV. But I digress. You asked me about the logistics of Star recruitment and Denizen-Star communication. 

It starts, traditionally enough, with a fairy ring.

Not a literal ring, generally (that’s very retro), but the there are certain channels of interface—certain ‘meta-forums’—that the Cardhouse keeps open as traps for potential candidates. For a while now, the internet has been the best “place” to set up such a forum, so they frequently overlay or branch off from real online sites. But they could be anywhere. Any work of fiction can easily serve as a jumping off point (provided it’s fantastical enough), or else game of make-believe, or even a good old-fashioned glade or a shopping centre or an abandoned house. If you’re intrepid enough you might find your way to to one through pure whimsy: it’s only a matter of stumbling into the right headspace.

Unfortunately, there’s no clear indicator for when such a stumbling has transpired. The meta-forums interface so seamlessly with what we think of as plausible that we don’t recognise them when we see them and we can’t tell once we’re in.** You can’t necessarily tell when someone else is in one either. It just looks like preoccupation—an obliviousness to the “real world.” But it also looks perfectly realistic, especially from the standpoint of the Star. Because fiction exists, and games exist, and there are all kinds of things you can get obsessed with on the internet and none of them especially challenge the laws of physics. They way you engage with the meta-forum doesn’t look different from how you’d engage with any other imaginary thing. Generally, it starts out as a game or an RP or a kind of choose-your-own-adventure story through which you get to know the characters and the basic setup. That setup presents itself very differently depending on what you’re into, but you’re usually given to understand that the Cardhouse produces very special magical items, and that you can help the Cardmaster gather ingredients for these items by undertaking quests or solving puzzles or making certain offerings or blending the perfect tea or getting your two favourite denizens to make kiss or doing whatever it is you’re doing that is “playing the game”. One denizen in particular serves as your primary contact and guide. You might also be given to understand that Cardhouse products are all a part of the ongoing effort to Fight The Encroaching Darkness. It’s a very all-consuming obsession, and while you’re immersed in you often ‘forget’ it isn’t real, but never in a way that raises any suspicion. For the most part, you know it’s just a game. And for some people that’s all it ever is, and they move on.

If you are destined to become a Star, however, at some point the game will change. One day, your denizen approaches you in great distress: the threat of the Encroaching Darkness, they say, is much worse than they had previously let on. The game might end, as if it had never been! You may well never see us again, in which case… farewell in advance! It will be a very moving performance, and naturally you, the potential Star, will be deeply upset by this news. If you’re right for the job you will offer up your assistance on the spot, unprompted. You will say the magic words. Is there anything you can do to help?

…Funny You Should Ask.

And now the denizen will lay it out: there is, in fact, a way. You may not know this, but you happen to be a very special sort of person: a Star sleeps within you—a great power—but its light is not for the human world. If you were to promise to fight on our behalf, we could help you unlock that power on the other side. You would swear fealty to the Cardmaster, pledging your light to the cause and security of our House, and help us to beat back the darkness. But be warned! It is no task for the faint of heart. You would be asked to undertake missions in the depths of the Wild Lands, where evils reign free. You would be placed in grave danger. So yes, you really could save us, but we would never ask anyone to accept such a burden! If however you should choose to do so….well. You would be richly rewarded.

If it’s gotten to this point, the potential Star (feeling very heroic) almost always accepts.They are assigned to a team and presented with a “cage” to help concentrate their powers and serve as a holding space for any magical items they’re give in Faerie. The cage exists between realms and the Star can access it from either side. Generally, the more they use their powers as a Star, the more it fills up with light for them to draw upon. Doing certain things in the Mundane however can cause that light to diminish or spill out, so they learn to avoid doing those things. Yet insofar as they are human, the Star still regards this all as a kind of fantasy. Insofar as they’re a fairy, however, it is very real. How any given Star rationalizes the paradox will vary, but at no point does the human fully “believe” that what’s happening is real. So a fissure develops between the two selves, and the more and more the Star invests in their fae identity, the deeper it splits them.

And here is the difficult part—the part no one understands. People often ask me what a Star’s human self is doing when they are a fairy. Are they sleeping? Unconscious? Physically elsewhere? Mentally dead? Sitting behind a computer screen as in hypnosis? All of those, possibly. None of those, necessarily. The trouble is that there’s not a one-to-one correspondence between time spent in Faerie and time spent in Reality, so it never maps on perfectly. It’s very difficult to make it add up: I don’t have a working model for this part at all.

But I do know this. When a Star is harvested, they are harvested whole. No one notices them go, and there is no body to find. Everything that ought to have been real about them has been redirected to the other side. They make ghosts of themselves. They split off without a trace.

——

*Oh, you might say, well if it’s as easy as believing…—no. Believing is far from easy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not convinced? Then try! As an experiment: just try to alter your basic beliefs in what’s possible and what’s not. Tell yourself you might wake up in a flower tomorrow morning. It’s possible! Tell yourself the earth of flat (come on, really in vogue). Or tell yourself I’m right! Tell yourself believing makes any difference. COME ON JUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF,,,YOU CAN DO IT!! Ha. Of course you can’t. 

**This may appear to stand in contrast to more traditional fairy-lore, but I think it’s actually very much in line (and it’s one of the many reason I’ve chosen to call these creatures fairies). Sure, in those stories, the human usually knows that they’ve crossed into some kind of Other Realm and accepts the fairies as real, but none of that especially shocks them. They’re not experiencing any major paradigm shift: either they’re in an altered state or this encounter still falls well within their understanding of “plausible.” But their conceptions of plausibility will only stretch so far: they don’t understand that time is passing differently in the other realm, that a very alien set of “rules” governs the very fabric of it. The shock only comes when the person tries to leave Faerie as they would leave a party at someone’s house, and finds that they can’t. And it’s the same with Stars. Our notions of plausible versus implausible have shifted a little, so the trick happens at a different level, but it’s the same trick. The human has passed into foreign territory, but they’re still processing it in mundane terms, and consequently they won’t pick up on the most “unrealistic” aspects of the encounter (if ever) until it’s too late.

[kawaiijohn]

Okay rant incoming. No reblog or 🔪🔪

Do not fucking reblog this. This is my personal trauma, read at your own risk and it's time for Dante over sharing time. It goes in circles but I haven't spoken about this shit at all personally and I'm just so so so tired and upset.

Cw for rape mentions, abuse mentions, csa, and a lot of my trauma. Skye do not look at this.

I just sit here, constantly reminded that she still had a platform and did the exact thing to freshly turned adults almost a decade later and blames her mental health/memory issues for assaulting and grooming people.

It's apparently abelist to say she assaulted you bc she "can't remember doing it" and you the victim are "obviously lying"

This was the same person who encouraged her friends to bully my ass for shipping mostly m/m stuff and at the same time bullied me into letting her do whatever /she/ wanted and to control what I watched/read.

The same person who used me, a freshly graduated abused 18 y/o with trouble communicating and problems reading people, to get at my friends who were still in highschool, all while talking the talk and walking the walk as a feminist, a savior of women's rights, the only "not fedora bro" person that existed on Tumblr! (she was not presenting feminine at the time, and was very attractive and charming)

She had so many underaged victims and used their terms and the like to get at real people. She straight up told people "this fictional content is bad and fucked up and depraved" and then would go and do what was in that content. And I mean she'd verbally tell you you were DISGUSTING or FUCKED UP for liking stuff like that, and would go and do worse to real people.

I do not trust people who are verbal to the point of attacking people over this sort of content. I can't trust them. I really can't.

Just block them, and don't fucking bring "gross ships" up in public servers! You mentioning ships that are like that is only going to trigger people who are legit triggered by it my guy, and you make yourself look immature AF! If you know it's wrong irl and causes a LOT of issues/discourse, there's 0 need to fucking bring it up to a large audience without consent.

The people who do this shit are one of the following:

1. Someone who hates the ship and wants everyone to know it/agree

2. Someone who feels the need to comment on how they're "surprised this ship exists! How could anyone write this!!!" Bc they're apparently new to the internet/fandom

3. Someone with interpersonal communication skills who DOES like the ship and doesn't realize it may be in poor taste to share it like that (this happens almost never, but I've seen it once or twice)

4. People trying to actually start shit in a large group

It's why I have RULES in the fandom servers I'm in that state EXPLICITLY:

there is to be no shipping discourse. If it's a ship known to cause problems/have a lot of fucked up elements or content (think age gap (minor/adult but aged up) or incest ships) don't bring it up! This isn't the place for it! I don't care the opinion, these types of ships cause issues and trigger a lot of people, so don't bring them up!!

Like as an example: I can't do teacher/student ships for personal reasons AT ALL and they make me feel gross and can trigger me on a bad day, but I ain't gonna go find someone who writes that stuff to tell them how "morally reprehensible" they are. I don't go comment on every fic with that tag to tell people to get help or fucking die.

Focusing on that shit when it makes you uncomfortable is just going to make you feel worse. If you don't see it or acknowledge it, your mental health will do SO much better.

I've found that with a large block list and blocked tag list, I feel a lot better mentally bc it reminds me "I can find the stuff I do like, and this isn't my adult life in the real world. This is a fucking Hobby"

It also helps to assume the best in people, and I can't do that with people incredibly verbal/hostile to people who ship/like things they don't like.

If you tell someone they are "literally a fucking pedophile" for liking idk fucking narusasu bc "oh my God they were CHILDREN" when most of us grew up watching it at the same age as the kids, I'm going to block you bc you're making a fucking accusation I can't fucking stand behind.

Real pedos exist. Real groomers exist. They will do whatever they can to hurt people.

I was groomed using Homestuck and cosplay. My abuser and groomer would send me explicit texts teasing cosplaying certain characters. She would never follow up and would fish nudes from people (minors) like this. Does this mean Homestuck and cosplay should be banned?

I have a friend who was groomed using dangan ronpa bc she liked one of the characters who was her age at the time. Our abuser and groomer would tease her with "oh maybe I'll cosplay him then, but only if you're a good girl for me" and yet nobody said anything bc most of us were still in high school or hadn't been out of HS long enough to know this was wrong.

We just liked the attention from someone who was masc, bc she targeted people who didn't have good relationships with their father figures.

She knowingly preyed on abused femme presenting people with parental issues. People who had mental disabilities (autism mostly) and who were all under the age of 20, but mostly under 18.

She sex trafficked one of my best friends.

She touched my underaged friends with my little siblings sitting right in front of them (She did not care that my mother was nearby. I didn't say anything bc I was too afraid and it had already started. She used fear to scare any of us from speaking up)

She assaulted so many minors that when I made a callout post about her, I got equal number asks of "she would never" and "I was 14 when she used me as a sex slave"

And yet she knew the words. She knew the phrases. She was PC, a feminist, against rape fantasies and everything deemed any bit problematic.

Yet she still raped my friends. She still touched children.

She still did what she did and no matter how much she denies it, she is a monster of a human being.

After I called her out on Tumblr in 2014, which I only did bc she was using her blog to get nudes from people and plan meetups with minors, she still managed to get enough following to become a mod in a popular lesbian gaming discord and subreddit a few years later, and did all of it again in 2020. To so many other people.

I cried reading the subreddit I found.

She wants to deny everything she did, to call me a liar, but I have video and picture that prove she was there when these things happened. She did not want pics taken while she was at my house for "stalker reasons"

I realize she didn't wanna get caught now.

I hate her.

I hate myself for this. I hate myself for not having it as bad as the people she actually assaulted.

I hate that I got off easy with just mental and emotional abuse and gaslighting and grooming.

I cannot trust people who speak out as venomously as she did against "problematic content"

The people who do horrible things irl don't get cancelled. They keep doing what they can. And they find sneakier ways to keep doing it. They keep their audience and move on.

The people who enjoy shit that's fucked up in fantasy are some of the nicest and most comforting and accepting people I've met, they understand it's just fantasy and make sure people KNOW it is fantasy. They're usually marginalized, disabled, abuse victims, ect and they get told to kill themselves, to delete. They lose their jobs.

This is not okay.

My abuser still walks around, still exists in fandom spaces.

Every time she gets accused of stuff people don't take it seriously bc of how often the term gets tossed around.

I knew a group of cosplayers who called someone a pedophile simply bc they didn't like them and wanted their accounts to get deleted.

I knew a group who would explicitly go into questionable fic tags and "try to find where the author lives/works"

Stop making the terms ""rape" and "pedophile" a joke. Stop reporting fic tagged properly of like older aged up teens to the fucking FBI. Stop telling people to kill themselves. Stop doxxing people minding their own business.

Stop hurting actual victims. Talk to people who work to help victims on what actually helps. Talk to therapists and research fiction vs reality stuff before spouting shit that makes people afraid of you.

Whatever.

God that long Twitter thread post got me remembering the fucked up shit my ex abusive friend put me through

[stormfang-gnash]

Tumblr is also like the best place for long form content and long form discussion that can involve a large number of people and be easy to follow. [Quote tweets are succinct on screen, but a bit more to navigate through than just scrolling through a tumblr chain]

Facebook limits you to friends/friends of friends because of privacy issues. I dont want my name and face plastered all over the everywhere, and certainly not if I'm making a post rambling about some video game lore for half a page. Twitter can be private (in the sense it doesn't have to use your real name), but it's often linked to Facebook, and it doesn't really allow for in depth discussion due to character limits, and also the culture isn't really one of blathery discussion there. Instagram is picture based, so good luck going apeshit over the latest episode of Good Omens or whatever.

But tumblr? You can shut out the lights, scramble your voice, and shout into the void, and a series of equally faceless scrambled voices will holler back. You can talk about whatever weirdness you want in great detail without worry of your grandma seeing it, or an employer finding it after a quick google search. The anonymity is nice here, and while it has been used for hostile and toxic reasons, it's usually just used to be a dumbass on main or talk about fan theories.

Like

No other website really is like tumblr, which I came to realize after the porn ban in December, and the only other ones that have anonymity like this are reddit and 4chan, but... those are typically much worse.

Instagram is too... self absorbed? Like its too fashion/beauty vlogger, too highlights-of-my-day/faked posts for me to really get deep into. Twitter is too short format to hold my interest, and Facebook is just boring posts from people you hardly know anymore and reposts from other sites. Same with Reddit, just mix in some bigotry. Every other site (except reddit/4chan) requires you to have a persona, a brand you're trying to promote. You can't just be "sans-undertail-420-69", you have to be a real tangible someone, it seems. Tumblr is just chucklefucks being chucklefucks that don't even read each others usernames until we hit a post where the username is part of the joke, or a post from one-time-i-dreamt.

Where else can I go on the internet that has an entire community dedicated to unprofessional taxidermy, will teach me about weird obscure things but also stuff like afterbirths and how to save myself in the event I fall through ice, but also see shit like "hewwo? Misto obama?"??? Fucking nowhere. And it's incredible we exist with our own weird culture, and subsequently even weirder subcultures.

If tumblr dies, there isn't anywhere we can go, because this site genuinely is just a 2000s forum with some modern social media features tacked on, and nowhere else will ever be anything like it. I thought i could adapt to twitter, because it's "just tumblr with a character limit" (what i told myself when I first started twitter), but it really is so much different than tumblr. Even the tumblr spinoffs like pillowfort or waterfall won't be able to recapture the magic of tumblr - so much of tumblr culture is born directly from the mismanagement of this hellsite, and finding ways to circumvent or rollback updates we had thrust upon us.

Actual things that may have made tumblr money and bigger in the long run:

-allowing big blogs to monetise a la YouTube, which incentivises them using your platform as well as entices new people to use your platform.

-this would attract real advertisers and real user-brand partnerships to come to the site and thus making more advertising money

-better policing and getting rid of the nazis and cp

-a site hosted and funded annual con(s)(no not dash con, but like a real con paid for by this site not some diy event in bumblefuck usa) that fosters the community and unity of the fandoms that thrived so heavily on here for so long

-site funded contests like art contests or music contests which again, incentivises people to use the site

Because let’s be real, we all joke about tumblr being worthless(which on a philosophical level, it is) but tumblr has actually, dare I say it, been one of the biggest influences on modern internet culture. Where would a website like buzzfeed be without tumblr culture? Where would countless popular facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts be without stolen tumblr content? Who the fuck would still be watching supernatural????

I always say this as someone who’s been using this site since 2012, tumblr has always had intrinsic value, but the poor management of the site, poor user experience really did a number on it lmao, I mean fuck tumblr but also, don’t sleep on tumblr

Feel free to add more or add your thots