I'm Scarlet and I'm not cool. This is place where I make noises about whatever thing I'm obsessed with at the moment and hoard random crap that catches my eye. I have also, in extreme circumstances, been known to draw things!
I Love stories where the setting is a character unto itself I love fucked up cities that are not only reflective of but formative to the main character
A fucked up guy’s toxic relationship with the city he grew up in is something that can be so personal
The city that you were born in. The city that you were reborn in. The city you were shaped by. The city you can never leave, despite all the filth and crime and death. The city that keeps drawing you back like water down a drain. It’s miserable here and it’s your home whether you like it or not. You don’t like it, but some part of you loves it. A sufficiently fucked up city can be like a mother or ex wife to a sufficiently fucked up guy
Having psychosis but not “glaringly obvious” psychosis is weird. I did start to wonder about myself years ago, but went into denial about my symptoms quickly and easily because it’s not like I was having vivid hallucinations. I’ve never held a conversation with someone who’s not there, for example. And this is somewhat my bad for only having a stereotyped understanding of what psychosis can look like.
For me though, my schizospec/psychosis symptoms look like this:
Perceptual distortions: Hearing or seeing things incorrectly. Everyday sounds morph into people talking to me, usually with indistinguishable words/ babble. Images are distorted or skewed. It takes me a moment to recognize an object sometimes, even with clear visibility.
Mild hallucinations: I’ll hear music playing quietly or electronic noises, see shadows or shapes at the corner of my eye or as a flash that immediately vanishes. Sometimes I think I see a bug crawling near me but when I go to look directly at it, there’s nothing there. I’ll smell things that aren’t there, and sometimes even feel touch - though I attribute that mostly to C-PTSD. The most vivid hallucination I can ever remember having was a door slamming.
Ideas of reference: I sometimes interpret things as having some kind of “special” meaning to me. I see “signs” and tend to view things in a superstitious way. I see things as good or bad omens. I think random events are some part of fate. When I’m not doing it I can see how irrational that is, but it happens anyway.
Paranoia and delusions: My prime example of this is a reoccurring belief that my therapist doesn’t think I have DID at all and is only playing along for some unknown and malicious reason. When under enough stress, I’ve also been afraid to take medicine in case it’s been tampered with or someone is trying to drug me with the wrong dose.
Overall, my psychotic symptoms get noticeably worse with stress or lack of sleep. I can go for long periods of time with virtually no psychosis at all, but it always reoccurs.
None of those things are normal if they happen with any consistent frequency… Or honestly, in general. Anyone can have mild hallucinations for a variety if reasons (like sleep deprivation) but.
Me thinking I can hear people talking to me in the white noise of my fan isn’t normal. My brain morphing objects into animals that I believe are real and alive for a few moments isn’t normal. Hearing noises and music that aren’t there isn’t normal. Seeing things that aren’t there isn’t normal. Having paranoid or superstitious beliefs about the world around you - believing that everyday events are somehow “special” and “meant to send you messages” isn’t normal - unless sometimes within the context of specific cultural and spiritual beliefs. Believing that others are against you or out to get you when you have no basis or evidence is not normal.
i think blue hawke can be the most tragic variant. like there’s something specifically horrific about being the diplomacy person in Diplomacy Doesn’t Work: The Video Game
“can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding” is the most concise and powerful dismissal of people who are “jokingly” racist and i can’t believe it’s from a They Might Be Giants song
Man, They Might Be Giants has always been political.
A concept in my head that been rolling around a lot:
Hanahaki, but instead of it being triggered by unrequited love, it’s triggered because all the love you have for a person turns inwards because you’re too afraid to show it.
So it kills you, not because someone doesn’t love you back, but because you don’t let it out and all that love you have stored, that could grow into something beautiful, turns on you and turns your insides beautiful.
Love is growth, and without any place for it to grow outside, it grows in. If you confess, reciprocated or not, the disease goes away because it’s no longer trapped. It gives self-destruction a new meaning.
When I think about American attitudes to parenting there’s something that always comes to mind, but I don’t know whether it’s a real thing. All my life in American films and TV I’ve heard child characters addressing their dads as “sir” or being told off for not doing so.
Is that really a commonplace thing in American families, or is it just a shorthand way of showing that the character is a shitty dad?