mattressdemon

[mattressdemon]

[mattressdemon]

A snacc 

(redraw of old Goretober piece)

[mattressdemon]

your eating disorder’s severity is not determined by weight because eating disorders are not weight disorders they’re behavioral disorders thanks for coming to my ted talk

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At least we have laying down

[mattressdemon]

I will never have anything but compassion for kids and teens who react with horror to adults writing sexual material about their age brackets, regardless of the underlying motivations for doing so. It's MORE than fair. For anyone who hasn't experienced being the direct target of CSA in some cases it is even more understandable, because you need to take into account how it can feel to come across that for the first time and learn that some people think about you as nothing more than meat.

I have incredibly clear and vivid memories of my childhood and teen years and the positions I held at that time due to all of the cptsd, and I remember the process of learning I went through on how gender roles worked, on the sexualization of people my age regardless of gender. I had questions, but I wasn't being actively educated on these processes for the most part, just watching them unfold in all their complex ways around me.

It was confusing. It was upsetting. It was violently dehumanizing. Narratives depicting CSA and other forms of child abuse were critical for me realizing what was happening to me was not okay. But even when I was very young I got an uneasy feeling sometimes that I didn't know how to put into words, or even what it was indicating.

Curiosity about that feeling is what pushed me towards literary studies, because I wanted to understand my own emotions, I wanted to better understand the material I was reading, and I wanted to understand the reasons people tell different kinds of stories.

Now I can hold so much nuance in my head at one time when discussing these subjects - but it is because I expressly trained to be able to do that. It is a skill to do that. I studied and love gothic horror - incest and sexual assault is in fact a loadbearing thematic element for that genre.

There's subtleties within the depictions of that from work to work, especially if those works are expressly doubling as cultural commentary and are trying to assert certain values.

If I were to make a teen girl read The Monk with no content warnings or heads up for what that would involve, I would be a raging asshole, regardless of how interesting that story is and how much there is to be learned through examination of it.

If I were to make teens read Lolita without also emphasizing that they read the introduction, and including commentary from the author around the cover art and the intent for the story - I would again, be a raging asshole.

ADULTS who read Lolita often miss the point of it.

Literary analysis is a skill that is honed through challenging ourselves to engage with material outside of our comfort zones, but doing that too quickly and with too great a shift in extremes can create a state of profound distress and even context collapse.

One of my most vivid childhood media memories was of my mother showing me the resident evil movie with absolutely no introduction or heads up of what I'd be seeing. I'd also been educated on real world atrocities, and had a decidedly not normative amount of exposure to depictions of actual violent death.

I am also autistic in the kind of way where if until very recently, if you give an object a name and a story in front of me and then break that object, I will experience a strong negative emotional response. I have always gotten DEEPLY invested in the stories I experience, which is not in itself a bad thing.

However as a kid it did mean then when a character got sliced into cubes by a laser grid, To Me, it was the same as watching someone actually get sliced into cubes by a laser grid. There was no distinction between the intensity of the feelings I experienced there, though I understood that it wasn't actually happening for real.

I have no issues separating fiction from reality.

However, within the reality of the fiction, it was viscerally distressing to see a character I was emotionally invested in get cubed, and that scene gave me violent nightmares and a sense of fear and horror that lingered well into my 20's, creating a deep aversion to zombie media and the resident evil franchise in particular that I had to actively choose to overcome when I was ready to do so.

Consider the Jaws Effect, and the damage that did to public perception of sharks. Or how much meteorologists despise disaster films that present incorrect understandings of how the weather works, and passes those misunderstandings onto the audience.

There is a very unproductive line of argument that goes around on here that's like "omg it's not the author's job to teach you anything, you shouldn't assume that anything presented as factual within the narrative actually is", and like - yes that is often true. On the other hand, we have to consider things like duty of care. Because most people are not getting literary studies degrees, and becoming emotionally invested in a work is to enter into a temporary covenant of trust with the author to know what they are doing and talking about.

That trust is often misplaced - but, again, we're all learning how to be people for the first time, and we only know what we know.

It is not unreasonable to assume that someone writing a medical drama and presenting an actual diagnosis did research to be able to write it well. They should have, if they take their job seriously.

Fiction has been used as a teaching tool for the lifetime of storytelling, and getting angry at people for believing what they are told by stories is not only a waste of time, it punishes them for engaging in good faith with the stories in the first place. That's how you eventually wind up with misanthropic analysis that takes the worst possible interpretation of included material every time. There needs to be balance.

[mattressdemon]

my tattoo finally healed up

[mattressdemon]

reblog and put in the tags the texture that is your sensory nightmare (i.e. textures you really hate. could be food, clothes, etc)

[mattressdemon]

just a guy out having a bang up time

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love when worf says 'klingons do not do such things' and its really clear that he personally just doesnt want to.

[mattressdemon]

Bullying is crazy... I spent 13 years of my life forced to be at a certain location for 6+ hours almost every day, and at this location multiple of my peers would verbally harass or insult me, physically assault me, sexually harass me, socially ostracize me, every single day, for factors entirely outside of my control. And every adult who was ostensibly supposed to prevent this from happening either willfully ignored it or actively contributed to the bullying. And like, I'm supposed to just brush it off as "just bullying" and something that everyone goes through? Like I was literally in psychological torment camp every day for nearly my entire childhood and now I'm supposed to just function like a human being. Anyways what did you want on your sub. Ham and cheese. No lettuce or mayo..got it okay

[mattressdemon]

the ADHD writer's guide to actually finishing a draft (no, seriously) 📝

okay, tumblr, writers... we need to TALK about how to actually finish a damn draft when your executive functioning decided to pack its bags and leave for a permanent vacation in the bahamas.

i'm not here to give you that basic "just set a timer!" advice that makes me want to throw my laptop into the sun. we all know those productivity hacks that work for neurotypicals make us want to scream into the void. (been there, screamed that.)

so here's the ACTUAL guide from someone who's written three novels while her brain was actively trying to sabotage her the entire time.

FIRST: accept that linear writing is a capitalist construct designed to torture us.

i'm serious. whoever decided writers should start at chapter 1 and proceed neatly to THE END clearly didn't have dopamine playing hide-and-seek in their prefrontal cortex.

write whatever scene has your brain chemicals SINGING today. that climactic fight scene that's six chapters away? the tender moment between your characters that happens in the middle? WRITE IT NOW while your brain is actually interested. i have finished entire novels by writing them in chunks and stitching them together like the beautiful frankenstein's monster they are.

SECOND: the 10-minute lie (that actually works???)

tell yourself you're only going to write for 10 minutes. that's it. no pressure. your adhd brain can handle anything for 10 minutes, right? the secret is that once you start, momentum becomes your best friend. sometimes you'll actually stop at 10 minutes (congrats, you still wrote something!) but often you'll look up and realize it's been two hours and you've written 2,000 words. and yes i've seen this a lot, like everywhere, where they tell you "set a timer for 5, and by the time you realize it's 2 hours" i've seen this many times before, and it actually works. at first i thought it didn't but boy, i was wrong.

THIRD: use your hyperfixation powers for good, not evil.

we all know that adhd comes with the superpower of becoming obsessed with random things for unpredictable amounts of time. WEAPONIZE THIS. create artificial urgency around your project. tell people about your deadline. make elaborate aesthetic pinterest boards. create a spotify playlist that you only listen to while writing this specific project. trick your brain into making your WIP the shiny new hyperfixation.

FOURTH: body-doubling saved my writing career and it can save yours too.

find another writer friend (or any friend who needs to do focused work) and sit together - virtually or physically - while you both work. something about having another human witnessing your work process bypasses the executive dysfunction. i swear it's actual magic. discord writing sprints, zoom sessions with cameras off but mics on - whatever works.

FIFTH: embrace the chaos of your natural writing cycle.

some days you'll write 5,000 words in a frenzy at 3am. other days you'll stare at the document for an hour and write "the." BOTH ARE VALID WRITING DAYS. the only consistency we need is returning to the document, not some arbitrary daily word count.

SIXTH: create external accountability that doesn't make you want to die.

deadlines from publishers? great. deadlines you set for yourself? your brain laughs and says "or what?" find the sweet spot - maybe it's a writing buddy you check in with, maybe it's a public progress tracker, maybe it's promising your sister you'll take her to dinner when you finish a chapter.

SEVENTH: the frankendraft approach.

your first draft DOES NOT need to be good, coherent, or even make sense. it just needs to exist. leave yourself notes like [FIGURE OUT HOW SHE GETS FROM THE CASTLE TO THE BEACH LATER] and keep moving. your adhd brain will thank you for not getting stuck in research rabbit holes for six hours.

EIGHTH: find your optimal writing environment through shameless trial and error.

maybe you need complete silence. maybe you need to be in a coffee shop with specific ambient noise. maybe you need to write standing up. maybe you need to dictate your novel while pacing around your apartment. there is no wrong way to get the words out.

i personally write best when i'm slightly uncomfortable (weird, i know) so i often end up writing while sitting on my kitchen floor with my laptop balanced on a chair. whatever works, bestie. a finished messy draft is infinitely more valuable than the perfect novel still trapped in your head. your adhd brain is simultaneously your greatest challenge and your greatest asset as a writer. the connections you make, the unique perspectives, the creativity - all of that comes from the same place as the struggles.

you've got this. now go write something, even if it's just for 10 minutes. i believe in you. ✨ -rin t.

[mattressdemon]

I’m sorry if this is offensive and maybe I’m just really pea-brained, but I can’t grasp how someone can capture the raw appeal of men with such pinpoint precision while having zero attraction to them. Is it that you exclusively date women, hold a small amount of attraction to men, but just choose not to date them? Sorry if this is invalidating to you as a lesbian in any way. I know my share of being invalidated, given that I’m a bi woman, but I just had to know.

I’m not even remotely attracted to men and I never have been, I’m just a very good writer

[mattressdemon]

personally the lattice method of multiplication is the reason i hate math

[mattressdemon]

every major structural social problem right now is basically "we don't have enough skilled workers on the ground" and the reason is always "well we've been intentionally underpaying and understaffng them for decades to increase corporate profits" and somehow the news always just mentions the "shortage" without digging into the cause

air travel is a mess? shortage of air traffic controllers - for some mysterious reason

logistics a mess? shortage of truck drivers - for some mysterious reason

public transit can't meet demand? shortage of bus drivers - for some mysterious reason

We even mysteriously have shortages of doctors, nurses, teachers... FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON

FUCKING PAY PEOPLE AND HIRE ENOUGH STAFF

[mattressdemon]

exactly