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tinystepsforward · 4 months ago

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ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

#reblogs turned off because obviously i'm already bracing to be pilloried for saying one thing not quite correctly or whatever #and also bc i have zero interest in having this be boosted by trans dudes on their own transandrophobia agenda either #i'm just venting #but frankly the first time i got yelled at for saying that as an intersex person some of the immense violence i experienced as a child #was motivated by transmisogyny #i was a teenager and it was someone a fair bit older than me with more local clout so like. it's been a decade. how is it worse now.#intersex spaces have made SO much progress and yet #also yes i'm femme! i'm femme in a trans way! many dykes who aren't women are!#many of us got more comfortable w it as adults who had gender agency!#in literally the same way it took my wife ages after transitioning to work out she's also butch and doesn't actually want to do femme thing #bc that's a shared experience in how we've navigated the expectations of womanhood before opting out of the parts we don't want!#anyway the lawcomm shit was fucked bc honestl i don't give a shit if someone lost their gonads as an adult in an accident #they should be protected even if they don't consider themselves intersex #and we know that gender as an axis of oppression comes back to the reproduction of the nuclear family #and that cis women who can't have kids sometimes become the political football though ofc not as much by far and like #idk. y'all ever heard about solidarity? sometimes i feel like i'm back in the place where the loudest traumatised person at the party #is yelling at another young woman like “you'll never understand what it's like to be a victim”#when said young woman was assaulted the week before.#a politics that starts by defending and defining oneself w oppression kinda fucking sucks actually #and intersex people stopped policing intersexness by who got mutilated a long time ago #bc actually we want the generations ahead to not get that treatment #and when i see “trans elders” going on about how “if you pass and got on hrt before 18 you're not trans like i am” i'm like. why! what!#anyway. tired.#may regret this. we shall see #tony muses

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misscammiedawn · 10 months ago

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Derealization in Night in the Woods and Metal Gear Solid 2

This post contains discussions and descriptions of severe dissociation that may be triggering to those who experience those symptoms and details themes of abuse, war and alcoholism please be kind to yourself when reading. Full game spoilers for NitW and MGS2.

In my Media, Myself and I series of posts I've been talking about depictions of Dissociative Identity Disorder in media. Highlighting good representation because I think it's easy to tear down what doesn't work, but showing what does is a very teachable moment. Best way to increase understanding and tear down stigma is to show understandable and relatable examples. Even if they're imperfect.

To that end, I wish to take a mild distraction from talking about identity focused symptoms of dissociative disorders and do some posts on elements of dissociation which aren't highlighted as often, particularly not well.

Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder is on the dissociative spectrum and the symptoms are experienced within forms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Identity DIsorder.

To borrow an info-graphic I utilized in my Hypnosis and Dissociative Disorders essay a while back

Source: Mayo Clinic

The brain processes the world and our association within that connects the concepts of "Me" and the concept of "Reality" and integrates them so we are able to process external reality and express our internal reality.

When we look at our hand we can look at it and understand "this is my hand", the shape of it, the sensation of proprioception, the knowledge that we are able to move it and it will move based on our innate intention. There is no process of "I want to move my hand, I am going to move my hand, my hand is moving" it all happens as part of one seamless process.

A practice within hypnosis for creating a sense of dissociation required for trance states is to have a person look at their hand and turn the phrasing from "my hand" to "that hand". Gradually having a person look at a thing until our brains stop processing it in relation to our surroundings until it "detaches" as a way of temporarily removing critical filters in an effort to lead a person to an altered and suggestible state.

A good example of this one can experience without assistance is to stare into a mirror for an elongated period of time. Our brains are always attempting to process a large amount of information and presents context to you that changes "those images on the mirror's surface" into "my reflection", it's why we are able to feel familiarity as a sense. When we perceive something that activates those associations the relevant information automatically filters in our mind and presents the concepts associated with the stimulus.

If we stare at the same reflection for too long those associations begin to disintegrate and we begin to view them divorced of the contexts we hold for them.

For those who suffer dissociative disorders, this is the root of why someone with DID will not "recognize" their reflection or why a person may not feel familiarity with something/someone they are aware of.

Dissociative amnesia is a topic I wish to cover in a future essay but it is also included in this process. Essentially when we dissociate our minds lose the ability to effectively filter what we are perceiving and relate it to our selves, our memories and our experiences.

Derealization is what happens when that critical filter between the external world and our internal perception breaks down. It's when we are not processing the world as being something we are engaging with. This may present as a disconnection between our perception and our understanding, for example "my hand feels like it's larger than it looks" or it can be a complete disconnect from what is happening in your present reality causing you to feel like you are in a dream. In extreme cases you lose your ability to relate your actions from consequences.

Let me tell you, having this happen while you're behind the wheel of a moving vehicle is terrifying and I hope no one reading this ever has to experience that.

I should also note that these symptoms tend to get dramatically worse the more you focus on them. In my own life, if I have a sensation that parts of my body feel incompatible with my inner perception of them then the vague dysphoria can blossom into full dissociation if I try to examine the feeling in any depth.

For an everyday version of it, think about the sensation of Deja Vu and how it feels like you have already experienced something which is happening in the present. During that state you are dissociated enough from processing your present reality that it "feels" like you've already experienced it, despite the knowledge that you are currently in the moment.

All of this is to give a vague view of what Derealization is and what it feels like.

Today I want to share two pieces of media that include a character overtly experiencing these symptoms and how the fiction displays the character experiencing this internal experience so that an external audience may understand.

Night in the Woods is a 2017 narrative driven adventure game by Infinite Fall. It follows two weeks in the life of Mae Borowski, a 20 year old cat suffering from severe anxiety who has dropped out of college and returned to her childhood home, an impoverished Western Pennsylvania mining town named Possum Springs.

There she moves back in with her parents and reintegrates with the rural community of Possum Springs. She spends time with her childhood friends, talks to the locals and tries to solve the mystery of a severed arm found in town. All while having vivid dreams on a nightly basis and dealing with the an ambient level of judgment from her parents, friends and community over her perceived irresponsibility.

Where Mae is trying to solve the mystery of the severed arm and the secret cult that hides within Possum Springs, the audience has some other mysteries to solve attached to the attitudes of some of the residents. Mae's parents and friends constantly pressure her to explain why she felt it necessary to drop out of college when so much was sacrificed to get her there. There is also "The Incident", a mysterious event in Mae's past, ominously hinted at when Mae's next door neighbor warns...

"No one's forgotten who you are and what you did, you know. Small town polite's all you got, kid."

The player is left in the dark as to the circumstances that paint Mae's reputation in town and throughout the course of the two weeks we begin understanding more about Mae's past, the circumstances behind her return to Possum Springs and the reasons those around her harbor a mild resentment towards her.

There are some potential supernatural elements relating to Mae's dreams and the nature of the cult but I feel it is best to stick to the grounded elements of the plot for the sake of this essay.

The Incident, it is revealed, is that 6 years before the game Mae beat another kid with a softball bat. Seemingly unprovoked. It earned her the nickname "Killer" and shaped much of the way people in the town, including Mae's own parents, view her.

"Why did you beat Andy Cullen?" and "Why did you drop out of school?" are questions people constantly demand of Mae and it forces her to become defensive and prickly to those around her. There's even a sequence involving a heated argument between Mae and her mother when the latter drops her kindness and patience over the matter and demands answers that Mae refuses to give.

To give the game away without fanfare, Mae suffers from extreme dissociation.

She's ashamed of it, afraid of it and the local town doctor, who I will discuss shortly, has no meaningful way of helping her deal with it. Mae is left to journal about her feelings with no meaningful way of understanding her symptoms or preventing them from crippling her. It is not even referred to as dissociation within the plot of the game, though those who are familiar with derealization will recognize it easily.

If you wish to see the conversation where Mae confesses her condition, it is about 4 minutes long and will provide some context, though I will brush over the description if you do not have time/ability to watch and listen.

youtube

Mae describes a time when she was playing videogames and felt an intense empathy towards the characters on screen. She felt like she knew them intimately and at a certain point something "broke", she came to understand that the characters she had been so connected with were not real. She was not actually connected with the events happening on screen, it was all a game.

And in understanding that she felt alone and abandoned on her side of the screen and the sensation spread out to the view outside of her window. The trees blowing by in the wind were as fake and distant as the characters in the video game. She had memories and attachments and associations with that tree, but looking at it from her window she could see that it was just a tree. Just an object.

"Just shapes"

This disconnect spread into every aspect of Mae's life and all of the associations she had built between herself and the world around her had vanished and she found herself in a world that she no longer felt attached to in any meaningful way.

"Just like this meaningless bulk of... stuff."

She felt alone. Abandoned. Overwhelmed by the simultaneous enormity and emptiness of everything.

The next day during the softball match she cannot even remember how it happened but she ended up ontop of the mass of shapes that was Andy Cullen and... that was The Incident.

Mae's family lost a lot of money paying off the medical debt for Cullen's family and everyone's attitudes towards her turned cold. She was sent to Dr. Hank for therapy... and this is where I take a break to discuss the causes of dissociative disorders and how badly Mae was let down.

The root causes of DPDR are the same as other dissociative disorders in that extreme abuse, neglect and continued stressful situations cause the mind to put up barriers and break associations to protect the self from harm. To boil a complex idea down to a few words consider the mind saying "This is not happening to me." as a way to prevent pain from an experience.

Where identity based dissociation focuses on the words "to me" and removes the self from the harmful events, derealization focuses on the words "this is not happening" and rejects the events outright, refusing to process the context behind what is happening.

Much of the game's story is told through implication and one must peel back layers in order to get a full story. At first glance Mae may seem like a normal young woman from a rural community in the rust-belt and question what could have been enough for her to develop a dissociative disorder.

First off, don't do that. No one owes anyone a justification for their condition and there is no such thing as "traumatic enough" to be valid for a diagnosis. What a person experiences is what they experience. But Mae is fictional and the core of her character is having an under-treated dissociative disorder. Half the reason I wanted to write this entry was because her depiction of it is deeply relatable and can be used well for teaching what goes into a person developing PTSD and dissociative disorders; most depictions seem content with sexual abuse or violent deaths.

For Mae, it's a lot more subtle and all too human. At least, for a cat in a world of anthropomorphic animals.

Mae's mother, Candy, never went to college and always regretted it. She feels like her life hit a dead end and she has remained in the mining town of Possum Springs decades after its mining industry faded out. She works as a receptionist at the local church, spends all day reading True Crime novels and had a number of miscarriages before finally giving birth to Mae, her "miracle baby".

Mae's father, Stan, was working with the mine when it closed down and has since been bouncing between job to job trying to keep his family afloat, especially after the medical expenses from The Incident, the subsequent remortgaging of the house and Candy's dreams of sending Mae to college. Stan tries to be a good father but hates his job, is always working and it is revealed he used to be an alcoholic.

Lastly you have Mae's Grandfather. He is dead before the game starts. Mae loved her granddad very much and his influence can be felt throughout the whole game. He would read to her, pay attention to her and teach her things. One of the game's DLC chapters even involves him reading Mae a bedtime story.

Also grandpa Borowski was a union man and collected the teeth of an employer who tried to abuse the workers. That doesn't really play in to my essay as Mae does not discover this fact until the events of the game but I am not going to go without hyping up a man for taking teeth.

Mae misses him so much that even 6 years after she was asked to keep a journal by Dr. Hank the first page reads "RIP Granddad" and as the game goes on the following can be found inside:

This information is drip fed to us through organic and relatable moments. For instance, Mae reveals her father's alcoholism while she is drinking too much (sidenote, she is underage for the location she lives) at a party.

The idea is to give a full and rich view of Mae's life and show that she may not even recognize the trauma for what it is and was.

For instance, we know from the start that Mae has crippling anxiety. This could easily be linked to the expectations of Candy putting her hopes and dreams of college on her "miracle baby". Before Mae was even born she had expectations placed upon her for being the long wanted child of a mother who wanted her baby to do all the things that she never could.

For neglect you have the fact that both parents are forced to work in abundance to maintain their lifestyle and pay for Mae's college in an economically depressed community. Mae spent a lot of her home life alone, feeling pressured by her mother and literally scared of her alcoholic father.

Both parents are good and loving and kind parents. But they failed in some regards. Sometimes you can want the best for someone you love and do everything you can to provide the best life and a failure to listen, adapt and accommodate can do more harm than anything.

Her grandfather eventually passed away, taking her positive links away in her home life and after The Incident she was ostracized from the community and forced into further isolation. Socially anxious, outcast and without her supportive grandfather, she eventually is given an opportunity to go to college. Something her childhood friend would have literally killed for an opportunity to do in her stead.

---and she drops out.

---and upon returning no one will get off of her case about it.

This damned statue did it.

A statue so loathesome to Mae that it appears in her nightmares and she relives the fantasy of smashing it to bits with a baseball bat.

If you watched the above video (or have played the game) you will know that the statue was made up of several shapes and was installed at Mae's college.

The sight of this statue terrified Mae to the point of which she would spend entire days holed up in her dorm room either not eating or gorging pizza and sleeping for days at a time.

Being away from the familiar sights and people of her home town made her dissociative symptoms go into overdrive. At home she knew that The Tree that had lost all meaning and association to her was still the tree that she played with when she was young. She knew that her parents are the people who raised her. Even when she saw them as "dead shapes" the memories persisted and she could endure.

At college it was nothing but strangers in a strange land and a statue comprised of shapes reminding her that everything was shapes.

But they sent her to therapy, did they not? Why wasn't she being treated?

Dr. Hank is a small-town doctor he is the physiologist, he is the dentist, he is the psychologist. He is the doctor. The only doctor and he has no idea how to treat someone with severe symptoms like Mae.

In town Mae can talk to a character named Selmers every day. Selmers is a self-styled poet with depression and also being seen by Dr. Hank. In discussing both mental healthcare treatment and depression with Selmers the player can learn that Dr. Hank treats all forms of mental illness the same. Essentially "journal until you feel better". The town lacks the structure and framework to provide help to someone like Mae.

In other words she has been untreated this entire time and removed from her support network and sent off to college, she could not handle things. Of course she was going to fail under those circumstances.

The game does a remarkably good job of displaying how DPDR can impact a person, especially as it is linked to anxiety and depression, and creates an empathetic narrative about what it must be like to live with that condition.

Sadly it offers little in the way of answers for treatment. In reality treatment involves psychotherapy and creating a structure of coping mechanisms for how to handle episodes and ground oneself. This can come in the shape of breathing exercises, kinesthetic sensation fixation, identification exercises ("name all of the blue items you can see" "name all of the items that begin in A") but above all else, getting a grip on what emotional triggers one has and learning to resolve them will help.

For Mae, being away from home is a trigger for her. Home isn't going to be the same place and people forever. She needs to be able to get on top of her symptoms in order to cope. Dr. Hank was not helping her with that.

The game ends on a bittersweet note that Mae may end up spending her whole life in Possum Springs purely from fear of leaving her zone of familiarity.

Unfortunately the narrative is about clinging to a dying town and how unsustainable it is.

We do not know what will happen next. The structure that failed Mae has only gotten worse in the 2 years since she left for college. Her parents may end up selling the house because they cannot keep up on the payments and on a long enough timeline Gregg and Angus will move away (should their relationship survive the effort to escape) leaving Bea and Mae to watch Possum Springs continue to decay.

Part of Mae's journey is accepting this inevitability and not fighting it, but choosing not to abandon the town regardless. After all, she can't stray from it without a risk to her mental health.

The game offers no answers. It simply shows a slice of hard reality for those who live caught in the trap of decaying towns, economic collapse and mental illness without support structures and treatment. but it does a very good job of providing an empathetic case that an audience can relate to and sympathize with the symptoms of.

But what about a game that tries to make the audience feel the same way that the character does...?

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a 2001 self-proclaimed tactical espionage action game developed by Konami.

It tells the story of a secret military operations agent code named Raiden who is attempting to save the US President from a terrorist group called Dead Cell. There is much more to it. But I am attempting to be brief.

Metal Gear is absolutely frustrating for me to write about in this essay series because their research tends to be fairly good but their sensitivity often comes off as actively malicious at best.

In terms of conditions, symptoms and sensitivity to emotional triggers, Raiden is on paper a fairly decent representation of dissociative disorders developing in those who grew up in war. In practice he has a murder alter named Jack The Ripper who breakdances with 3 katanas.

I promised I would stick to positive depictions only and so I will stick only to the final 2 hours of Raiden's first appearance.

At this point in the game the president is dead, we have learned that the terrorists were really after a giant battleship that houses a powerful AI which is going to be used to censor the internet to control the flow of information and control the populace. Raiden has met up with protagonist of the first Metal Gear games, Solid Snake, and has managed to install a virus into the AI system that will corrupt the data and prevent it from controlling the internet.

In order to get on the battleship, Snake betrays Raiden and hands him over to the terrorists.

Thus begins the final act of MGS2.

It is imperative to understand that these events happen in rapid succession right after the AI is infected with a virus.

Neither the audience nor Raiden are given an opportunity to truly process all of the rapid fire information that we are hit with.

MGS2 has a metatextual narrative about the nature of sequels and audience expectations. Many of the events happening within the story are intimately playing upon our familiarity with the series, recreating circumstances from both Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid. Part of the critique is that players are looking to simply recreate the experience of the first game and the narrative goes out of its way to punish Raiden (and thusly the player) for trying to "be" Solid Snake. Much of the game has been mired in failure and any wins we have received are either negated in a cutscene following our gameplay victory or are displayed as being ineffective next to Solid Snake who is forever being displayed as the better protagonist.

So when Raiden wakes up in a torture chamber directly designed to look just like the Shadow Moses Island torture chamber from Metal Gear Solid 1 (and both dialogue and graphics of that cutscene are displayed briefly) we, the player instantly assume familiarity with the concept. To drive that point home the player is forced to survive a button tapping mini-game which is sprung upon us out of nowhere (there is no tutorial. The game expects your familiarity with the concept and thusly does not need to explain it - as a side note it is impossible to die in this minigame, so a lack of familiarity does not impact gameplay, only narrative experience)

All while the only surviving villain from the first game directly says in dialogue "We're also inside the memory of Shadow Moses"

The cutscene also has Raiden face to face with the main villain who recognizes Raiden as a child soldier he helped raise to fight in an African conflict. For the first time we are able to view Raiden, view Jack as his own man outside of his similarities to Solid Snake. We find out he is a child soldier with an impressive kill record who was raised with other child soldiers, drugged and forced to kill in a conflict that he had no personal connections to. He claims "I was given a gun and told to shoot, if I refused then I was the one who would be shot."

Throughout the game, Raiden has been getting phone calls from his girlfriend, Rose, who serves as the mission analyst. When the villain, Solidus, reveals Jack's history she calls him to ask more about this and Jack at first pushes away the memories, claiming that "they" wiped his memories and that he experiences nightmares only to give a vivid and emotionally description of his experiences as young as 6 years old killing for no reason other than he was told to.

Rose attempts to comfort him, to say that she wants to share the burden of his past, Raiden refuses, blocking everything out and pushing Rose away, claiming that he cannot afford to start a family.

Children are a huge emotional trigger for Raiden. This is displayed heavily in the future games of the series.

Overall this is an extreme example of a backstory that would give an adult severe PTSD and forced to confront his past, Raiden is emotionally primed to have a complete dissociative break from reality.

But presently I am not writing about how Raiden experiences derealization. I'm writing about how the player experiences it.

We know that Raiden has been trained in virtual reality to prepare him for this mission. When we see cutscenes describing this we are shown footage of the previous Metal Gear games, particularly the virtual reality training missions from the PS1 game.

The implication is very much that Raiden has played the same games that we ourselves have. The Metal Gear Franchise has an interesting meta-narrative going on that displays games are released in order of declassification with an early conversation in MGS4 mentioning that the events of MGS3 (which takes place in 1964) were declassified recently in the game's present of 2014.

Raiden has played the Metal Gear games. We have played the Metal Gear games.

And the game itself is overtly recycling moments from earlier entries of the series and trying to highlight this fact.

Right after we put a virus into the AI.

Things got really weird from the moment we insert the disc to infect the system.

Escaping from the torture chamber our character is completely naked and runs to the next area. We are given a loading screen.

Ominous music plays and we receive a phone call from Campbell, the mission control from both this game and the previous Metal Gear games. He speaks with a distorted voice. He stutters, telling you that you must proceed with your m-mission. He notes that in your current condition you will not be able to attack or "enter the hanging mode"

He continuously spouts the mission objective and says your role is to take out the terrorists. Raiden demands to know why he keeps saying "role" and Campbell replies

Raiden then notes that he has never met Campbell in person. He has only spoken to him over long distance communication.

Should you return to the torture room the title card will be switched with the name of Japanese rail stations. If you pause the game you are treated to a "map" of Arsenal Gear:

The image is from Glauben, Wissen und Kunst der alten Hindus

All while Campbell calls you every few steps to order you to turn the game console off, recycle further lines from previous Metal Gear games (as well as show footage from them) and your radar is replaced with voyeuristic footage of a young woman sunbathing.

The enemies are now wearing thick armor with no humanizing characteristics and they fly about with inhuman power while wielding katana that can block machine-gun fire.

The floor has scrolling text floating across the surfaces something that the series uses for the VR stages to signify you are in a training stage.

The game is pulling out all of the stops to make sure you are confronted with the reality that you are playing a video game while the character within the video game is experiencing the same information.

He meets up with Snake who reveals he has the unlimited ammo bandana from completing MGS1, all but confirming this is a video game. Much of the information in this segment can be justified in-game. I literally cannot sidestep the fact that a flesh and blood man pointed at a piece of headgear and said "Unlimited ammo". I almost wanted to skip over it as it's devastating to my point about how the game tries to pull you and Raiden out of reality.

See to Raiden, he can no longer be certain if any of this is happening or not because of his experiences with VR. With everything collapsing around him, it feels reasonable to assume that the AI Virus is breaking down the universe around him. With full knowledge of the plot, we the audience can know that everything is happening and the virus has infected his augmented reality elements that make up the in-game HUD. But Raiden doesn't know that and the player on first playthrough cannot fully know it either.

It's almost reasonable to assume that the entire game is taking place within a VR Simulation.

Virtual Reality has long been studied as having links to DPDR with a number of scientific studies examining the link.

The connection is very much there though typically VR only influences a mild sensation of derealization when playing, though to those prone to dissociation they may experience more rapid and powerful effects with prolonged exposure.

Raiden tells Snake what is happening and how his grip on reality is falling apart, going as far to doubt whether his girlfriend, Rose, was ever real either. Snake has no idea how to verify for Raiden that the things that are happening are real and tells him to just keep moving forward and figure it out. He also provides Raiden with a sword.

In the metatext, this is a symbol for Raiden gaining his own unique playstyle. As long as he is emulating Solid Snake he cannot succeed but when he accepts himself as his own person and embraces his unique gameplay mechanic he is able to break free from the narrative and actualize as his own person.

In the sense of the derealization episode, it gives Raiden an opportunity to mow down the wave after wave of "Tengu Soldiers" who come after him and Snake.

Metal Gear is a franchise that doesn't like it when you kill people. Here it has handed you a sword and told you to go to town with an unlimited supply of anime ninjas. The game lightly insisting "it's a video game, it makes no difference how many people you kill" and to flaw the game's philosophy for a moment, the only penalty is a ranking when you beat the game. MGS3 is the one that actually hits you with consequences for in-game murder.

As Raiden stands on a platform with Snake the game continues to devolve and a custom Mission Failed screen appears, mimicking the standard game over.

Gameplay continues inside the small box that typically displays where you died, you can die on this screen.

You then fight 25 copies of the giant mech in a recreation of the photo area from the Metal Gear VR Missions and the world's most convoluted plot reaches its crescendo point with every character betraying everyone else before Raiden has to kill a cybernetic US politician with a sword for the first but not last time.

The sequence takes about forty-five minutes to an hour thirty depending on your play style. The plot is too much and has a layer of metatext on top of it regarding the nature of audience expectations and sequels along with a haunting premonition of what the internet would become.

There are a lot of reasons to praise and a lot of reasons to hate the ending of MGS2. Personally I adore it. But one thing that truly cannot be stated enough, especially back in 2001, is how the game intended to make the player feel during that final section.

It's not enough that Raiden was having a complete dissociative episode, losing grip on his reality, it's that the game was designed to make the player go through those emotions at the same time as the character.

I was going through a really rough patch at the time. It was a few months before I was kicked out, my ties with my mother had been cut off, my dad was in a ward and suffice to say where my head was at the time? The immersive dissociative experience this game offered worked like a charm. Though external factors had a lot of influence.

DPDR is weird in the sense that everyone dissociates. It's a natural and normal thing, but disorders that are born from an excessive amount of disconnect between the self and reality tend not to be relatable experiences. Displaying a character losing their grip on reality is not an easy thing to do.

When we see someone say "I don't know what's real any more" in a piece of media we have empathy for their situation but it's not easy to have the audience in the same mindset as them.

Another hauntingly good example is Perfect Blue which I will likely not discuss in detail in this essay series because the content is a little too dark and the depiction of Dissociative Identity Disorder is not flattering in the slightest.

But the movie does depict an actress whose reality is blurring in with fiction by having a series of interactions happen one after another and revealing that the entire scene was part of a television shoot, with every subsequent scene piling on the confusion between what is happening on camera and off camera.

I can think of other examples of characters experiencing derealization episodes. Some even have fairly good depictions of how someone can be driven to that point, such as the slowburn of Bojack Horseman Season 5 where a number of circumstances pile on until the title character has an episode. The problem is... every single depiction that is coming to mind right now ends in either stigmatizing depictions or violent outcomes.

Heck, even Mae and Raiden up there had violence attached to their dissociation.

If there's one thing I want to make clear as I go through these essays, it's that those who have mental illnesses featuring dissociation are usually trauma survivors and are far more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrators of it.

I'm happy with the two examples of derealization I've written about today, NitW for the realistic depiction of the origins and impact and MGS2 for taking the player along for the ride; but I'd still love to see an example where a break from reality did not end with blood.

Please send me an Ask if you can recommend any.

So... that about brings it to a close for my little ramble on DPDR. I've a few other entries in the essay series on the back-burner. Next will likely be a breakdown on how Umineko handles recontextualizing memories. I've gotten a few paragraphs of that drafted out already.

These essays are really a bit of self-indulgence for me, though so they happen when they happen.

Thank you for reading.

#dawn posting #night in the woods #nitw #metal gear #mgs #mae borowski #raiden #media myself and I #what a thrill #DID #watch me post my trauma in public #derealization #DPDR #unreality #media essays #Youtube

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clangen-dadm · 3 months ago

Note

I got permission to post asks about potential treatments for Warriors disabilities & disorders for those who want to write about them, this one's about autism (referred to as starwalker in-game, but I'll be using the name autism)

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS:

- Do not use the herb-related FICTIONAL treatments IRL AT ALL!! I am not a medical professional or vet. If you believe someone needs help, get them real help!

- I obviously cannot speak for everyone with any disorder, so take everything with a healthy pinch of salt because not everyone will agree with me. If you're one of those people, I am absolutely open to civil conversation and constructive criticism ^^

What is autism?:

Autism, aka Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by many symptoms including (but not limited to): difficulties with communication and socialization, repetitive behaviors, sensory sensitivities, and difficulties with executive functioning.

Important things to note from this description:

- Autism being referred to as a spectrum means no one person experiences anything the same, so symptoms vary a LOT. Imagine a circle--every autistic person falls somewhere on that circle. Just as symptoms vary, some may not need very much support in their day-to-day life, while others might need lots of regular accommodations. This does not mean anyone is "more" or "less" autistic than anyone else.

- Neurodevelopmental means all autistic people are BORN autistic and will ALWAYS be autistic. Nobody's entirely certain where autism originates from, as it's actually a relatively new diagnosis, but we do know that it is not something that can be prevented or cured.

- Executive functioning is tied to a lot of things--emotional control, flexible thinking, impulse control, self-monitoring, working memory, organization, task initiation, and planning and prioritizing.

I'll admit, I'm writing this late at night and a majority of what I've been planning on saying is already covered here: https://allwritealright.com/how-to-write-an-autistic-character/#Make_Your_Autistic_Character_an_Individual (Excellent post, definitely check it out!), so I don't feel a need to say too much more, but there are s few more things I wanted to discuss.

How would Warriors treat autism?:

Honestly, I don't have any herbal remedies for this (and frankly I don't think they'd be very useful or appropriate anyways), but there are plenty of ways to accommodate for autistic kitties in your Clans!

When a cat is having a meltdown:

1) Stay calm! They don't need more stress right now.

2) Remove any potential triggers.

3) Distract them (encourage them to use calming strategies and offer something else for them to focus on)

4) Give them time and space to recover.

To treat sensory sensitivities in a cat, first identify triggers. If they're triggered by loud noises, try to keep them in a quiet area. They could wear little mossy/feathery earmuffs to help when things are noisy! If they're triggered by touch, make sure everyone knows to ask before touching them (which should be pretty basic manners anyhow). If they're triggered by smell or taste, keep those specific smell/taste triggers away from them. You get the point :)

To help a cat who is resistant to change through a change, try reinforcing everything else being similar except for one thing so that they can ease into a new routine instead of being shoved into it.

For nonverbal characters, communication cards, while limited, are one option left unmentioned in the blog I linked that can be quite helpful, as well! Simple things like common emotions and phrases are a good idea for these cards :)

Ough I really wanted to write more but I can't think of anything else that wasn't covered in that blog post unfortunately :( but if anyone has any questions I'll be lurking around the blog now and then, and I'm sure the actual mods of this blog can help too!!

this is really cool!! thank you :)

To piggyback off this, personally one thing I’d like to see more of in autism rep is characters with negative stims or tics! When overwhelmed, I have really bad negative stims (hitting myself, biting myself, etc), which can make things even worse, but a good therapist and support group can help your character through! In real life this may translate to hitting a plushie or biting an orange peel, but I’d love to see creative ways warriors could come up with instead- maybe they could bite into a preserved pelt or extra prey! In the game we have some stim toys they can get from two legs, but I’m sure warriors could also come up with some creative ideas!

I also appreciate it when other characters help autistic characters work through their sentences without teasing them. I have a moderately annoying stutter and struggle to find my words, especially when my emotions are running high. The best people in my life will patiently wait for me to get it out instead of pressuring me or making fun of it. I’d love to see a community of cats around the autistic character!

I’m sure Song has more ideas as well, unfortunately I’m the only West Coast mod XD ! I’ll ask them in the morning

#mod bingle #actually autistic

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subsystems · 1 year ago

Text

10.2.23

Disclaimer: This is my own musings about plurality. I talk about my personal experience with unification (final fusion) too. Don't read if that upsets you for some reason.

Something I haven't really talked about is my relationship with the idea of plurality. I saw someone talking about how they feel simultaneously plural and not plural, and I find that really relatable.

I used to despise being called plural. It brought me so much shame. Made me feel like this one single symptom of my disability was being cherrypicked and pinned onto me as a label. I felt like my vast and varied experience with DID was minimized for something much more palatable and "fun" to others. It was almost like the full DID was being pushed aside. Like being told "yes, you should continue to hide that and you should continue to be ashamed of it."

I also felt like plurality still applied to me, though. Yes, the blanket definition of plurality does fit me. I am a person who has multiple parts, a plurality of perspectives, I am "more than one." That fits...but that's not all?

I think another thing is that, when I got diagnosed, I didn't even feel plural even though I knew the term technically fit me. I hardly ever felt a presence of parts even though they were there. We hardly talked, hardly wanted to acknowledge each other, even though the evidence was there. For me, it was like being forcibly dragged in and out of existence. Someone else would replace me but I wouldn't know that, wouldn't remember. So, what do you mean that there are systems who never feel lonely or out of control because they're always co-conscious, voluntarily switching, and chatting inside? What do you mean that's even possible? Was I the only one living my own life in slivers and pieces? Was I the only one experiencing the unbearable loneliness that is my DID?

Yeah, I am "more than one" but...

It was complicated. There's probably old posts on my blog where I talk about how I'm not plural even though I have DID. And probably other posts where I'm calling myself plural as if my teeth are clenched. Like it's painful but necessary.

Sometimes I revisit those old feelings, but for the most part I feel at peace with the concept of plurality now. As a young trauma survivor, it was hard to separate the concept itself from the online culture surrounding it. But, ultimately, the way other people experience their plurality doesn't invalidate me. The concept itself doesn't minimize or shame me. It's just a word for an experience, in the same way that dissociation and flashbacks are words for experiences. The way these things are treated and talked about are ripe for criticism, not the experiences themselves. It's nice to have words for them.

And there's no universal way of "being more than one" because it ranges on a spectrum of experiences. Much in the same way dissociation can be mild or extreme, be it brought on by trauma, mental disorders, religious practices, drugs, or other things. Who fucking cares.

But when I think about it...when did I start actually feeling plural despite always fitting the concept? Out of anything, I think unification (final fusion) was actually what helped me finally feel my own plurality. Isn't that interesting?

Unification was when we finally felt each other. I feel the entire multitude because I am it. We're all together, all at once, at all moments. We're constantly in communication. There's no blocks, no separations, no barriers. I'm all of us and we're all of me: a big bundle of parts, connected together like a constellation.

That feels more like plurality than anything I ever felt before.

#sunflower posts #actuallydid #actuallyplural #actuallydissociative #actuallycdd #actuallymultiple #plurality #DID recovery #dissociative identity disorder #long post #personal experiences #final fusion

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literallys-illiteracy · 5 months ago

Text

Today's Shy Look:

Trigger Warning: This Analysis contains mentions of:

NSSI (Non Suicidal Self Injury)/ Self Harm.

ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)

----

Literally's note:

This was originally part of the Hod/Literature floor analysis, but however due to the nature of the topic i thought it best to post separately for those who may want to avoid reading about this.

also because the tone is completely different from the rest of the floor's analysis due to my swapping into scientific introduction mode halfway through instead of the PM autism mode which i usually write in. for any future Abnormalities which have a similarly sensetive thematic i will do the same as here, linking back to this post with the same warning to make it easier to avoid.

Ok now back to 'Essay Literally' instead of 'Socially inept Literally', <3

~~~

The story of “Today’s Shy Look” is one of a person being forced to express themselves to the community despite being shy, they wanted them to express emotions to show that they are happy - Shy Look took to flaying their skin and carving 5 faces on different patches, so that they would be able to wear these masks and express their emotions, pleasing the people of their community;

ostensibly Today’s Shy Look’s story is one of neurodivergence, more specifically developmental disorders such as ADHD, or in this story’s case, Autism, fitting the thematic of an inability to express oneself, and a societal expectation to do so.

The flaying of the child’s skin is analogous to the harm that this societal pressure can create among children who diverge from the norm, having to change themselves in order to please others, to fit the permanent square peg into the permanent round hole; to climb up the slope of the bell curve; to become Normal.

The story may also be read in a more literal sense, the harm which society places on divergent children being not only that of an inordinate social pressure, but the actions which may follow, actions which bare a much more direct parallel to the child’s flaying of their skin.

There is a correlation between self harming and Alexithymia (Norman et al., 2020), a common symptom in ASD (Kinnaird et al., 2019); Additionally there is proposedly a correlation with ASD and developing psychiatric disorders, specifically depression and anxiety (Lugnegård et al., 2011);

Due to a harder time understanding emotions and an inability to properly express them, individuals with ASD are more likely to self harm (Vandewalle & Melia, 2021)

; those who lack healthy support, are more prone to viewing themselves as being “incorrect”, leading to attempted “Self correction” or “punishment” when one does not act to their expectations, this concept of heightened standards is called perfectionism (Frost et al., 1990;) (Gyori & Balazs, 2021).

Often i have noticed a correlation between emotion repression and low self esteem alongside a sense of perfectionism (conjecture, 2024), additionally comes a link between self harming and shame, using it as a form of motivation (Schoenleber et al., 2014).

We can elaborate on this concept through the lines present in Library of Ruina and Lobotomy Corporation:

“Goodness, why are you making such a face? You're making others feel gloomy too. Please be more considerate, you don't live in this world alone after all.”

The concept of deviation from societal norms being something that should be eliminated, the shame that the child may have felt for abstracting from the norm ; The posing of the child as “Selfish” or “inconsiderate” when they are the ones expected to change their ways for the others, leading to the belief that they are the ones required to change, that they are the ones who have done something wrong;

"Do I look a bit better now? I hope I do…"

The pressure and desire to conform to the ways of the society, the disregard for their own suffering in lieu of the community’s values;

"What the fuck do you want from me? To keep smiling like an idiot?!"

The frustration with the community’s wanton expectations, the repressed emotions coming to the surface, the resentment at the community at large.

#project moon #essays i wrote primarily while half asleep #projmoon #library of ruina #lobotomy corporation #lor #lobotomy corp #psychology #Today's shy look #hod #hod lobcorp #hod library of ruina #Abnormality analysis #literally's literal illiteracy #Floor analysis #Angela series #Abnormality analysis LoR #Abnormality Analysis Lob

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thoughtsaboutautism · 4 months ago

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The romantization and trivialization of Autism Spectrum Disorder in the book "Unmasking Autism"

It's taken me a while to post this, even though I had the whole text written already. The problem is that every time I pick up this book or write anything about it I have a really hard time dealing with my emotions. This book is so bad and harmful that every time I have to think or read it – even if I'm doing so to criticize it – I have a hard time.

Anyways, I came across this table of "common, healthy autistic behaviors" (I didn't get that far in my reading yet) and I decided to make this post based on what I had already posted on Twitter.

The first thing that I need people to understand is that however you feel about your autism, however you identify, autism is, inherently, a severe developmental disorder that causes severe disability. You CANNOT have autism if you do not have deficits and impairments and I DO NOT CARE how you feel. Autism is classified so because people who have it need help, need A LOT OF help, REGARDLESS of whether we live in an accepting society or not and autism does not exist without impairment/deficit because if it did it would not be autism, it would simply be a personality trait.

The second thing that I need to say is that the traits listed on this table absolutely do exist in ASD but they are being put in an extremely romanticizing way and if one experiences ASD purely as described on this chart, then they likely do not have ASD. This is the exact problem with Tiktok, Twitter and other social media current content about autism, it's shallow, lacks context and is romanticizing. This kind of content is why so many people end up self-diagnosing with autism without actually having it, it's why people like myself – who have more difficulties – have a harder time fitting in, because current autism advocacy, such as this book and other social platforms, are advertising a type of autism that is cute and fun and easy to deal with, while autism is an extremely difficult condition to live with not only for the autistic person but for their family and friends as well. By advertising this cute, quirky autism, you are once again, like the autism community has always done since "Aspies for Freedom", leaving out those of us who are most marginalized. And I dare to say that this does not only happen to high support needs, but low needs people too who don't fit the new ASD criteria you have created.

Now, about the chart, the first sentence says: "intense studying of a new favorite topic". Not only is this type of wording extremely vague and could apply to literally anyone, but it's also undermining the intensity and the reality of having a special interest. Having a special interest is time consuming to the point of losing sleep, not using the bathroom, not showering, eating or interacting with others. A special interest itself causes so much self-stimulation that many people end up having meltdowns from overstimulation, a support worker once contacted me for help because their patient was so excited about Doctor Who that they'd talk about it to the point where they'd hyperventilate and trigger a panic attack and even lightheadedness due to lack of oxygen. Well, for myself I have experienced similar symptoms, like when I almost failed high school because all I could think about was this one TV Show I liked? Or when I almost passed out from crying and excitement from seeing Katy Perry at a concert when I was 15? Or when I was taken out of class on my first day of University because I was so excited about the topic we were studying I started making noises and disrupting the class? Or when I triggered a meltdown because I spent the whole day studying this same topic to the point where I overwhelmed myself?

"Not noticing sounds or social signals when focusing on an engrossing task": oh, do you mean when my dad and uncle accidentally mixed two chemicals to clean our pool causing a mild explosion in our backyard and a toxic fog that came into our house and I didn't hear my mom calling for me because I was too focused on a book I was reading? Or do you mean when I was a kid when I would be so focused on lining up my toys or watching the fan that I could literally spend hours and hours without having any other type of interaction which could lead to neurological damage because I wasn't using language and interacting with anyone? Or do you mean when autistic kids are usually so interested in objects that they barely recognize and acknowledge other people, leading to difficulties with development of language, cognitive and motor skills? A lot of autistic kids need to go to speech therapy, ABA or early interventions because we could very easily spend our whole days focused on a task or a toy to the point where we won't interact with anyone, which could lead to serious neurological issues such as completely lack of functional language. Social interaction is key to development of language and other important skills that will improve an autistic person's life, including those who are nonverbal and have very high support needs, and the fact that many autistic people won't acknowledge sounds or people interacting with them when they're focused is dangerous for their physical and mental health. See here the problem of intensity? How this book is shallow and lacks true understanding of ASD? Everybody happens to ignore one or two things if they're focused, doing it constantly to the point where it's dangerous and almost impossible for anyone to interact with the person is ASD.

"Needing to know exactly what to expect before entering an unfamiliar situation": yes, absolutely, every time I have to go to a new doctor my family has to call them beforehand, make sure they can see someone like me, ask them whatever procedures or exams they plan on doing and STILL I have to take extremely strong medication to allow doctors to touch me and for me not to have a meltdown because it's a new situation. Do you know what else? Needing a support worker with me on my very first day at University because the thought of going to this unfamiliar situation was so overwhelming I needed support, and still do every once in a while. Of course this is an extremely healthy behavior and doesn't cause any distress at all. Of course that I will always have people to tell me exactly what's going to happen to lessen my anxiety a little bit but still have a meltdown in the end (irony).

"Sticking to a very rigid schedule and rejecting deviations to that schedule": this wouldn't be a problem in a neurotypical person who can easily adapt to changes and eventual issues that come up in our daily lives. Unfortunately, I hate to say that most autistic people like myself deal with inevitable changes by banging their head against the wall causing themselves a concussion. Good changes? Bad changes? Ugh, it doesn't really matter. "I was finally hired to this job I have been rooting for in a long time", too bad dude, all your schedule will change and the only way you can cope with that is by having multiple meltdowns and eventually needing to be put to bed under the affect of Xanax. "Amanda, your cousin stopped by to make a quick visit", ugh, sorry, I wasn't expecting that pleasant surprise, I unfortunately must have an anger attack and self harm to cope with my feelings. "Amanda, your grandmother died and now your mom is staying home for a week on a grief work-leave", hum, not really on my schedule, will have to spend the next days trying to not sound like a dick to my mom because she disrupted my routine and I am having many conflicting feelings while she is dealing with the death of her mother. "Amanda, you have to come home right now because your grandfather just died and we have to travel for his funeral", ugh absolutely normal and healthy behavior to have a full blown meltdown in the Uni hallway because I wasn't planning my granddad's death and needing to be helped by a Professor who then called 911 because she didn't know what to do with me.

"Spending hours or days alone sleeping and recharging after a socially demanding event or stressful project": clear example of trivializing ASD. For most autistic people, even for people who have low support needs, socially demanding events cause episodes of mutism, inability to do any task at all, inability to shower, eat, take care of themselves, work. Autistic people aren't just chilling on their couch watching TV after a social interaction. Autistic people are laying in bed, feeling sick, having symptoms such as fever and panic attacks, feeling overwhelmed. I would argue this applies mostly to low needs people because for people like myself and other higher support needs people I know and live with, social events are not even a possibility in the first place.

"Needing 'all the information' before coming to a decision": this one absolutely pisses me off. When I need to make a decision I do need all the information, but not only the information available, I really need ALL the information that I WANT, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, such as wanting to know what will happen if X is chosen, but how will you know for sure something about the future? And no, I cannot let it go, autism causes something called cognitive rigidity, which makes every thought and feeling get stuck in an eternal loop which we are mostly unable to stop. On my second year of University I had to make a decision to follow a degree in Hebrew or Linguistics. I needed all the information. But the information that I needed was "how will I do on the linguistics tests if I choose this degree?" and "how will I be able to complete all the Literature courses on the Hebrew degree if I have a hard time with reading and comprehension?". This was one of the hardest times in my life when I got stuck in thoughts to which there were no answers for and this caused me extreme anxiety and distress.

"Not knowing how they feel or needing a few days to figure out how they feel about something": this is the number one reason to why I will bang my head against the wall. Not knowing how I feel, not understanding how I feel is an extremely distressing experience if not to say dangerous. Many autistic people don't notice serious illness and symptoms because they just don't understand that whatever they are feeling is normal. Luckily, I have had fewer experiences with that, but I know people whose appendix were bursting and they thought it was just a stomach ache. Last week I got up feeling weird. I didn't understand what it was, I thought it was anxiety. I went to my therapy appointment and came out still feeling a little bit off. I get home and vomit for 10 minutes straight in the bathroom and proceeded to have one of the worst food poisoning I've ever had. I had to be taught what feeling happy was, I had to be taught what feeling sad was. I have to be taught how to comprehend simple human emotions and how to understand them in my body because I simply cannot understand them. I am 22 years old. This is not healthy, this is not normal. This causes extreme distress, this is dangerous. And at least I can communicate to some extent how I'm feeling but there are family friends whose kids' are completely nonverbal with very little functional language. Whenever something changes in their mood, they have to be taken to the hospital to make sure it's nothing physical because they cannot communicate or comprehend their emotions.

"Needing a rule or instruction to 'make sense' before they can follow it": again, cute and quirky if you're an adult and the only situation you can think about this is things like "ugh, why would I treat my boss any different just because of a made up hierarchy?", not so fun when it's an adult person who cannot understand danger and thinks that riding the car with the seatbelt doesn't make sense. Not so fun when it's a 30 year-old man who doesn't understand what the police is and might act improperly around them, risking his life. Not so fun when it's a 12 year-old kid who doesn't understand death and thinks that playing "killing his sister" (by choking her) is fun. These are all real people I've met in my life.

"Not putting energy toward expectations that seem unfair or arbitrary": again, quirky if you're an autistic woman who doesn't see a point in make up, not so quirky when these things are like me, who sees exercising as totally pointless and I could very much spend the rest of my days not doing absolutely anything to move my body. Not so quirky when the expectations are actually adult people who don't understand the need to shower or personal hygiene.

I think I have made it a bit clearer with my examples how incredibly romanticizing this book is. It's a shame that so many people see this as some kind of autism bible when it's a book made by someone who we don't even know if is truly diagnosed with autism, with an extremely shallow understanding of ASD and complete disregard to the impairing nature of ASD. As I said before, ASD is inherently a condition that causes deficits and impairments and people who – most of the time aren't even diagnosed – don't get to redefine and trivialize the reality of living with autism, specially with someone with higher support needs. We can talk about different experiences of autism, we can talk about differences between high and low support needs, but we need to do it carefully in order to not trivialize what ASD really is – which is exactly the opposite of what this book does.

#autism #unmasking autism

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longing-for-rain · 5 months ago

Note

why would anyone want to prove race/sexuality/ability isn't real? Is there even any group of people that benefit from postmodernism?

Absolutely. Pretty much every government, religious institution, and other power structure. Think about it. If race isn’t real, how could racism be real? If sex isn’t real, how could misogyny be real? If we can’t define what makes someone disabled, how can we define how they experience discrimination? It’s very much in the interest of people who benefit from these power structures to keep people quibbling over definitions than actually addressing the root of the issues.

See, this is why postmodernist thinking is dangerous. We have become so fixated on individualism and identity that we forget to think about why power structures exist and what functions they serve. Do you think we have discrimination because some people woke up one morning and decided to be assholes? No; it’s not an individual choice. It’s as ingrained and widespread as it is because of the ways it benefits people in positions of power and maintains them in those positions.

Take racism and classism for instance. The widespread belief that one group of people is inherently inferior to another. This thinking is what so many civilizations used to enslave huge portions of their population to use for labor. It doesn’t really matter that the ideas of race and class are social constructs; regardless of how we parse down their definitions, they way they are actually used is more important to addressing those issues, so that’s what benefits people in minority groups to focus on.

It’s the same way with misogyny. In most societies, pervasive misogynistic myths that women are weak, submissive, inclined for childcare, etc. have lead to effective enslavement of women, allowing our labor and bodies to be exploited. You can make the argument that some women are infertile, etc. and therefore can’t be exploited for reproductive labor, but let me ask you this…do you think women in misogynistic cultures are afforded the same rights as men on the basis of being infertile? No; they aren’t. Quibbling over technicalities like that does not meaningfully address the issue.

The ways this manifests can be more subtle, especially in modern times. The best example I can think of is something I’ve witnessed personally as an autistic person.

Disability and what exactly defined a disability is something that I see debated frequently, especially with autism since it’s a spectrum and presents differently in different people. However, it does make certain aspects of life difficult, and many autistic people require accommodations to help them.

So here is what I’ve encountered. I am what you would call “low needs” in the sense that I don’t really require accommodations in my day-to-day life; my career is suited well to me and I am able to manage my symptoms. That is not the case for all autistic people. Many autistic people do need some degree of accommodation so it makes sense that those people receive the most attention in advocacy focused on those accommodations. Imagine if I went up to those advocates and told them they need to change their language and focus because I don’t feel included and it’s invalidating to me as an autistic person without the need for those accommodations. I say this because I’ve actually seen other autistic people do this. Like I’m sorry, I get that it can feel isolating to be autistic and not recognized; I did not know I was autistic until I was an adult woman. But it’s just not productive to center yourself when there are people who need access to accommodations; by fixating on yourself, you’re making it more difficult for them to do that. Sorry if this is insensitive, but if your biggest issue is not feeling validated enough as an autistic person, that is a privilege. Stop focusing on yourself, on definitions, on labels, and start focusing on things that actually address people’s needs.

And yes. I really do think this logic benefits ableist government institutions who view disabled people as a nuisance that costs them money. They will absolutely latch onto this idea of “autism is a spectrum and can’t be truly defined” to justify “therefore we have no reason to fund support for autistic people since there is no way to define if they need it” which is…clearly a problem.

I hope that gives you a better idea of where I’m coming from when I criticize this, because I really do see the rise of this thinking as a kind of backlash to the work done by activists, and it’s a bit scary to see people who claim to be activists eating it up.

#postmodernism #feminism #ableism #autism #racism #ask #anon

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g-hua · 5 months ago

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"Ew, look at this person faking ADHD / Autism for attention, I bet this upsets actually ADHD / Autistic people so much, I'm only defending the neurodivergent people you guys!"

YouTube commentary channels just like limbo dancing with the devil, don't they? The crap they do for that adsense and sponsor money...

First of all: If we need "defending", we'll let you know. Until then, maybe stop infantilising us and allow us to have our own agency.

Second: I'd like to see your diploma from med school. Why are you the authority on symptoms for these disabilities? Would you maybe take a moment and think about the massive number of adults being diagnosed now, especially women and PoC, due to the diagnosis criteria having been ridiculously strict and very much catered to only very few stereotypical symptoms found in mostly cis white male children? Are you unaware of how hard it could be to diagnose either? How long it takes for some? Do you even understand what people mean when they say that Autism is a spectrum? Maybe stop assuming that someone is faking it because their symptoms don't perfectly align with the ones you're reading off WebMD.

Third: Most of the people I see bothered by someone possibly faking ADHD / Autism are either neurotypical or, if they are neurodivergent, they aren't ADHD or Autistic. Trust me, I do not care. Unless it is being used to affect me in a negative way by mocking me or stigmatising my disabilities I do not care. Anyone faking a disability probably has their own problems that they need to figure out and work through. They probably feel like it's really hard to figure out what's "wrong" with them. They're different too and just don't know in which way or how to figure it out. Give them the room to do so. They aren't doing it to harm others.

I'd like to remind you lunatics of something that happened when we had those "weebo stories" blogs where people sent the stories about their unhinged encounters with weebs: Once someone stabbed a wheelchair bound person on their thigh with a fork to "prove that they weren't disabled". Another time, someone tried to prove in various ways that a blind person wasn't blind. You're on the same damn level as these people, making it your personal crusade to "prove" that someone isn't disabled because you want content. It's unhinged.

The lack of empathy for others these days gets more and more exhausting, but you constantly stereotype people like me as lacking empathy. Good grief...

#vent post #mental health #mental illness #actually autistic #actually adhd #autism #adhd #youtube #commentary channel

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realmermaid333 · 2 years ago

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my first autism awareness month post lol (im so late)

For this autism awareness month I want to talk about the more I guess "taboo" part of autism acceptance and the Autistic Experience TM

People say they support people with autism until an autistic person makes a social mistake and says something weird or stims in an "odd" way or does literally anything "strange". As soon as we unmask or the mask slips people no longer want to support us.

I see this a lot with social mistakes being made then people being extremely judgmental and even going as far as saying people are using autism as an excuse to make social mistakes. While this has happened before, it isn’t always the case.

A big reason why we need autism awareness is people don't fully understand what autism is.

I'll give a simplified definition: Autism is a developmental disability that impacts the nervous system. It impacts social and emotional development and common symptoms are difficulty with communication and social interaction, obsessive interests, and repetitive behaviors.

There's more to it but that's the gist. Autistic people misinterpret social cues pretty often and that can lead to small miscommunications or even huge misunderstandings. Some people with autism struggle to tell when someone's joking, some autistic people struggle to tell when a joke or comment is appropriate, some autistic people struggle to tell if they are arguing with someone, some autistic people can't tell they are hurting people's feelings unless they are told.

We are a wide spectrum. There are varying levels: level 1 (generally low support needs on most days/for most people), level 2 (generally medium support needs on most days/for most people), and level 3 (generally high support needs on most days/for most people).

I find that a lot of the time when people are introduced to the topic of autism it is from a level 1, low support needs autist who is great at masking. While those people deserve and need platforms too- I myself am a level 1 with lower support needs, though I am not very good at masking- we often ignore the level 2 and 3 autistics and those who are visibly autistic.

There may be a time when an autistic person says something that makes you upset or uncomfortable and you need to communicate that. Not everyone can tell they said something that made someone uncomfortable. I think we would all also benefit from being less judgemental when someone makes a social mistake. All humans make them from time to time, though especially autistic people and other neurodivergent people do.

I am also tired of people saying that mentioning you’re autistic after accidentally saying something that makes someone uncomfortable is using it as an excuse. It is not an excuse and shouldn’t be used as one! But it is an explanation. Understanding that someone is autistic is really good background to knowing why they may have said something. An autistic person may share they are autistic after a misunderstanding so you know it wasn't intentional and that they understand now and hope to avoid the same thing in the future.

As a lot of ya’ll are my friends, and I may be one of the only autistic people you are friends with, though only online. I want to tell you about my own social mistakes. I come across much more neurotypical online because I can overthink what I say lol. And most of the time it isn't healthy. I am so anxiously self aware to the point of self sabotage sometimes. When I am in online spaces I overthink what I'm going to say and sometimes edit and revise messages before I send them (I am trying to stop doing this). This is how I tend to avoid misunderstandings! I do get scared I'll mess up and people won't want to talk to me anymore. I shouldn't do that! But yeah, irl I have accidentally said things that people didn't like. I've accidentally made people uncomfortable because I couldn't edit and revise my words after I said them like I can when I type before sending.

This is an easy thing to do in general even for someone who isn't autistic! We've all done something like this before. But when you're autistic and you may miss the context of jokes others were making or you may entirely misread a social situation. Then you try to join in and sometimes it doesn't work or you fuck up. It happens! I've done this before many times. And unfortunately people tend to be really judgmental about social mistakes, at least in my experience. It makes being autistic really hard sometimes.

And this does not mean that you shouldn't tell an autistic person they've made you uncomfortable or said something you didn't like! That kind of constructive criticism is okay and necessary! People won't know you're upset if you keep it to yourself, especially if this is a person who reads social cues and body language poorly. This post isn't to excuse something negative an autistic person may say or say your feelings are invalid if an autistic person makes you upset. It's just to hopefully help people be more understanding.

i don’t wanna type a tldr, just read/skim i guess. but here’s a crappy one.

Social mistakes are a huge thing for autistic people and it just saddens me and makes me self conscious sometimes the harsh ways people deal with them. it can be really easy to make a social mistake for most people, but especially for autistic people, and especially in online spaces.

prepare for more of my rants & musings about autism related things

#actually autistic #autistic women #autism #autistic #autism awarness month #autism awareness #autism acceptance #disability #neurodivergent #fandom issues #fandoms #online spaces

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whyamiheretumbled · 5 months ago

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Rise Leo and the Cluster B spectrum

@smudged-kaleidoscope YES, ITS BEEN MONTHS,BUT GUESS WHOS BACK WITH TMNT UHM INTERPRETATIONS?! MEEEEEE!!! And today, why I think Rise Leo might be on the cluster B spectrum.

IMPORTANT NOTES:I am not a licensed professional, all of this is done through forums run and managed by those with a Cluster B disorder, talking to those with cluster disorders, research, and anaylziation. Also, personality disorders DONOT make people inherently abusive. Maybe, MAYBE, abusive tendencies, due to the way their brains interpret things, but this does not make them ALL abusive. It is a personality disorder, not a reason nor excuse to be a prick. Abuse all boils down to the PERSON.

The four types of Cluster B Personality disorders are:ASPD, NPD, HPD, AND BPD. These are characterized by unstable lifestyles and erratic/dramatic behaviour.

Personally,I think Leo shows symptoms of all(since Cluster B's and other Clusters have an overlap) and as a person with multiple HC'S who is also NOT licensed, it's hard for me to choose exactly what to identify Leo as.

He is histrionic, he enjoys being the center of attention and feels uncomfortable when people are not entertained. He could be sociopathic(since psychopaths have complete absence of bonds apparently, that's why I didn't identify him as this), low empathy towards his brothers and others, he's full of himself to mask any and all insecurities, and he's afraid of being emotionally abandoned.

But at the end of the day, I think Leo might be sociopathic(or at least have sociopathic tendencies) and have NPD. The reason why I don't believe he has BPD is because he doesnt seem to have the same mood switches commonly shown in BPD(I'll compare his behaviour to his brothers later!). OF COURSE, mental health looks different in everyone, and he could still have BPD, maybe quiet BPD instead of 'standard'. Same thing with HPD. Histrionics tend to 'over-react', and want attention on them at all times. But Leo isn't especially clingy, and while he is dramatic, I'm not sure if it's out of him actually being emotional.(So his dramatics would be an example of him having an overlap between the four personality disorders.)

Now, why do I think Leo has NPD and or ASPD?

APSD and NPD have both been researched, and, according to peoples experiences, seem to stem from genetics and childhood trauma. We already know Splinter was/is quite full of himself, which could've been a symptom, and maybe he has a personality disorder, but for the sake of not feeling like analyzing him today, let's just say this was brought on by childhood trauma.

We KNOW Splinter was neglectful, and that the brothers are all dissatisfied with their relationship with him, and how he raised them. Their normal is being ignored by their father. Leo constantly seeks out other father figures, as well as trying to act similar to Lou Jitsu to try and impress the one he has. This already makes Leo not have the emotional support he needed growing up. Being ignored from time to time by a parent, and then them randomly deciding you're important, is very hurtful(I know from experience). Other factors could be them growing up in the sewers, isolated. They never had any social interactions besides each other and basically the media to know how to act, and let's be honest, Lou Jitsu and Jupiter Jim both seem to be pretty egotistical characters. If Leo was looking up to them, he most likely mimicked the way they behaved. We see in the series and in the movie his brothers,or family in general, don't especially trust him, which would've filled him with self doubt, and therefore, double down.

In addition to this, Raph is known to be overprotective. He lived a life with little to no boundaries. There are SO MANY factors adding up to his personality developing in a different way.

In the series and movie, we see that Leo has many insecurities and masks this with his dramatics and being full of himself. Does this mean he ACTUALLY feels this way? Maybe he feels like this at some points, but this doesnt mean he feels like this all the time. Guess what personality disorder(s) deal with this? That's right! Cluster B!

When Leo feels insecure, targeted, attacked, etc, he doubles down. He acts out. He tries to sway what's happening the way he wants it to go. He builds walls. He might even lash out at people, and say hurtful comments. When Leo is confronted about his tendencies, those walls go up, and he starts trying to distract whoever. if he feels REALLY self doubtful, like seen in that one ep with Splinter and Leo infiltrating Big Mama's, he gets upset and questions why, after EVERYTING, why dont thry trust him? Why are they mad at him for no reason? He didn't do anything, right? They're the ones who are being weird, not him.(this is also an example of how Leo distorts his reality).

In Cluster B(well, alot if not all personality disorders technically)people who have said disorder(s) may also lash out if they feel offended. This doesn't mean just because they feel perfectly attacked. In the movie, Raph gets kidnapped by the Kraang because Leo was desperate to get the key(to prove his self worth?). Leo goes into a moment of hysteria, I think the character term is. He has a anxiety attack. He's lost his big brother, and all he got was the key. He's a fucking failure. And who is the reason for this failure?

Casey. Leo immediately goes after him, blocking everything else out and fighting his brothers just to attack him. When April asks 'so you just, left Raph?' Leo pushes the blame away, talking about how he left himself. He blames Casey, because he knew, he had to knew, and he just let Raph get hurt. This seems like a mixture of him lashing out because of both his own attacked ego(since he couldn't preform the task fully) and being upset because Casey hurt someone close to him(which I'll go into later ToT).

Throughout the film(and series) Leo constantly strives for attention/affection. At least on the emotional side. He keeps quoting Casey, and when finally confronted with the fact he isn't 'the best', he reflects, and then sends himself in the Prison Dimension later on(and he most likely thought/knew, he wouldnt be making it out. He sacrificed himself for everyone to be happy, to prove he was worth something, that he could be a hero, etc). In the series, Leo constantly makes jokes and stuff to make everyone pay attention to him! In one episode, the Sydney one, Leo is trying to a do a trick, but he instead crashes, straight into the wifi! And he blames Donnie, for putting it in the spot, not on himself, because why would he be blamed? Donnie should know not to put stuff where they don't belong. It's not his fault.

Another thing, Leo refuses to be wrong about almost anything! And I can see how it could be frustrating,if no one EVER believes you. But sometimes, Leo was wrong, but he still refused to listen to anyone else just because he had to 'prove something'. I feel like at some moments, he does feel maybe guilty about his inability to listen and learn, but for the most part, he believes he's right all the time and everyone else just can't be unless they agree with him.

Yet another symptom is a general lack of respect for authority. Once again, throughout Rise, Leo questions Splinter's authority and Raph's, even if it is a bit subtle. Even in the Hidden City, he's enthusiastic about Senor Hueos's past. Yes, it's cool he was a pirate. But also, pirates say fuck authority. I feel like he doesn't even care enough to be in authority. He trusts his brothers, Raph, at least, he trusts them to a slight extent to have good ideas or whatever. But more often than not, he thinks they need guidance. He could feel uncomfortable by directly being in charge until his character development. So, he let's other people 'run the show', while he does stuff in the background. He doesn't care enough to fully be in charge, but if a plan is stupid, he's gonna say something(a lot of EPs highlight this, like Donnies Gifts, Mystic Mayhem, the episode where they frst meet Big Mama, you get the point lol!) And in Snow Day, Leo can be seen writing down all the rules, which I'm going to take as him waiting to break/bend/loop them later on XD

AND OMG, I've mentioned this a lot already but Leo is so fucking insecure! Like seriously 😭😭😭😭 his whole persona of being the 'face-man' quite literally means he has little to no personal sense of self. He's fucking insecure, he masks, he feels like he's nothing with his brothers. Face man literally is barley a part of the team, it just means he shoes off to people and entertains them! And this guy, when someone doubts him, he gets so upset 😞 enough abt this point tho, since I've ranted enough on it already!

Fucking. Favorite. People. Contrary to popular belief,you dont have to have BPD to have a favorite/fixated person, or have one, or have them be a romantic interest. For Leo, I think his favorite people would probably fluctuate around his family. If I had to choose a specific one, then most likely Raph. I would say Donnie, but I just don't feel like he 'looks up to him' as he does to Raph. Raph is the big brother, who they look to for guidance, and to handle everything. Without Raph during the movie, that was the only time Leo was actively trying to fix his behavior. He sees Raph as a little dumb maybe, sure,but I genuinely think he finds him VERY important, a slight exception to that authority thing, etc.

Next point, little to no empathy! Leo is very sarcastic, maybe more than Donnie. He can be very, very patronizing towards others in certain situations(like the Repo Mantis ep where they were looking for the Mystic Metal!). There are some points, yeah, where Leo shows empathy ("that lady in a wheelchair walked! ", having a pillow with Donnie's logo, apologising to Raph for everything's he's done-) but I think some of those points are either him masking, being overdramatic about how he actually feels(which could be way less intense) and maybe just actually feeling emotional. Having ASPD/NPD do NOT mean you can't feel emotions, a common symptom just happens to be little to no empathy! And I feel like Leo acts like this on enough occasions for it to count.

Leo iis proud, loud, and shows off, but since I've already said this part so much I won't go deep into it ;-;'.INSTEAD, let's talk about Leo being manipulative! This is another point I've mentioned, Leo swaying things or people to go the way he wants. I don't think this makes him bad. He might not even realize he's doing it sometimes. (He's also a teenager, which I have to mention later ToT) People with Cluster B may tend to manipulate others, but this is due to the way their brain works, and shouldn't be used to demonize them, especially since untreated Cluster disorders are very self destructive and hurtful to the individual. Some if not most people with NPD/ASPD might dream of manipulating others, or already do so. Once again, this doesn't make them bad.

Risk-taking, but hating consequences. Leo loves risk taking. He can be impulsive. He skates in a 'high crash area' where a spread of food is out. He takes off his suit just because he wanted to breathe, knowing that there was a wild sick Splinter running about. He throws himself into the Prison Dimension 😭😭😭😭 but one of the things I think that separate him from his brothers, is that he maps stuff out(kinda like April). He knows the risk, he takes the risk, he's reckless because he's BORED and wants to have FUN. And sometimes, if the risk isn't good enough, he says fuck it and doesn't go for the reward:AKA, adrenalin, dopamine, whatever good brain chemicals you can think of that make you be like 'Woo, fun! '? That's what he's chasing.

Okay, iI'mma compare Leo to his brothers :^ now. Well, specifically his moods. While his brothers, might be prone to breaking down, getting easily upset and angry, ETC, Leo is way more calm. There's a lot of specific instances in the show of his brothers losing their cool, but Leo rarely does. He just keeps the mask up, and if he's mad, he's mad. But sometimes, even when he's 'mad', he's still running off that rush that comes from it. This isn't a specific symptom or anything, I just wanted to compare how their moods are different, since I was like'Wait... Wait a minute? '

Final thing(for now >:}). Leo is a teenager. Personality disorders form, yes, but since he's a teenager, hormones can easily mimic symptoms, and a few assumptions and symptoms doesn't mean having the disorder. But, based off this stuff I mentioned and more, I think he might be a sociopath and maybe vulnerable NPD. If I used anything incorrectly, or worded it wrong, or misinformation, please let me know! I know Cluster B's are all heavily stigmatized and seen as abusers. I don't see everyone with Cluster B as an abuser, nor do I think Leo is an abuser. I don't think any of his traits that come off as 'bad' ruin him as a character, or means there is something wrong with him. I recently saw a few posts, and felt motivated to finally make this.💔

#npd safe #npd #rise leo #rottmnt leo #aspd safe #aspd #rottmnt headcannons #headcannons #rants

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