#PLEASE ASK ME I will write a snippet pleassee

[walsuf]

hey I wanna make a character with narcolepsy and I've been doing my own research but I also felt like maybe asking someone who has it and stuff and since you made that comic headcannoning SM with it (really neat btw <3) I thought that you may be comfortable sharing some experience with it (as much as you feel comfortable ofc!) so I could better understand it so I may fit it into a character myself. OBVIOUSLY YOU DONT NEED TO ACCEPT IF YOU DONT WANT TO! this is coming out of nowhere and stuff so apologies if you feel uncomfortable!

[LONG POST] Yeah! Let's talk narcolepsy! Some things that might help (ft. Shadow Milk)

First and foremost, I want to say that my experience with narcolepsy is going to be very different from other people's, and I'm mostly just going to yap about my own details. Everyone experiences their symptoms in a unique way, kinda like how every bag of fruit snacks is different. You anticipate the same stuff inside (symptoms), but one bag will have all of the colors and another might have all orange ones.

I think my biggest advice here is to not dogpile all the symptoms, just focus on what heavily affects a character the most. Sometimes that's going to be nightmarish hallucinations, sometimes their sleep attacks; for Shadow Milk, I fixate a lot on cataplexy! (Weakness is a huge thing that I struggle with personally.) Regardless of additional symptoms, excessive daytime sleepiness will always be present :p

This one might be hard, but do something that you resonate with the most. Most people have experienced sleep paralysis at least once; a lot of people with narcolepsy get sleep paralysis very often, usually accompanied by visual/audio/tactile hallucinations. Then, it becomes a matter of changing the frequency and intensity rather than making something up.

When it comes to hallucinations, they can sometimes be horrifying (and are exacerbated by sickness, lack of sleep, and general unwellness). I find that a lot of people with nightmares and frightening hallucinations tend to have those in excess; I personally almost never get those. My hallucinations are usually very minor, like seeing the lights flicker when I close my eyes, or feeling like my body is surrounded by water or gently rocking back and forth. My most frequent one (and by far the most annoying) is that coming out of sleep I hear my alarm going off or my name being called. Neither of which are actually happening.

Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), like everything else, presents differently in everyone. Sleep attacks are only one aspect of it---which gives a person the nearly irresistible need to sleep for seconds to sometimes hours. Some people thug them out (often they can be resisted) because they find themselves losing way more time succumbing to it. Some people fall asleep very quickly, and can be in the middle of an important thing while doing so. I've personally fallen asleep mid-lecture while writing notes, and looking back at them is... interesting (there's a thing called "automatic behaviors" you might want to look into). Personally, I don't get sleep attacks often, but they are exhausting to deal with, and make me pretty much appear and act drunk without the fun part.

My normal experience with EDS is just a general level of sleepiness following me throughout the day, like that same feeling you get while working on an essay late in the night. It's manageable, but sucks. This isn't to say I never feel alert, there are good days and bad days, but most are in this sleepy middle ground that forces me to nap twice a day (noon and afternoon) lest I get all grouchy and my speech starts to slur.

From the outside perspective, sometimes people can guess that I'm having a sleep attack or just generally sleepy before I even know. I'll be told, "you sound tired," which is almost followed up with an, "...I do???" I crash within the next ten minutes almost every time.

Cataplexy is a symptom specific to N1 (which is actually an autoimmune disease, fun fact), and also happens to be what I struggle with frequently. It has strong emotional triggers (think anxiety, anger, surprise, laughter [doesn't have to be all of those, just pick a few]) and causes a degree of weakness. This can be anything from eye twitches and difficulty holding up the neck to full body collapses. For the most part, I feel it in my hands. When I laugh, I can't write or clench my hands any more. They become useless floppy limbs until a few minutes pass and they're back to normal. I am (unfortunately) a very giggly person. Personally, my slightest attacks make my head fall forward. My most severe one had me collapsing 6 times in the course of 15 minutes, hitting my head each time. Cataplexy attacks can cause subsequent attacks to come easier, and it's difficult to break the cycle. I avoid stairs for this reason.

If you've ever experienced morning weakness, or a few minutes in the morning where its slightly more difficult to hold things and get around, that's a lot like what minor cataplexy feels like, except condensed into a short, spontaneous episode. Oh! And it's often accompanied with blurred vision (look up ptosis) and speech difficulties as well!

I don't fear any of my symptoms because that's just how I experience the world. I've always felt weakness with laughter, so I thought that was always normal. I've been frequently sleepy and assumed that I was somehow lazier than everyone else. Now, I try to listen to my body. It takes a lot of effort to stop a conversation and go to sleep because my body needs it, and it sometimes sucks to forewarn my lab partners not to tell jokes around me. Sometimes I lay down in the middle of nowhere and have random people asking if I'm okay (hate this, I'm usually too weak to respond).

All in all, just try to make it a set of circumstances that someone else lives with rather than a set of symptoms that constantly put a character into crisis mode. People with narcolepsy don't need to be babied (I sincerely hope my comics don't come off that way because they're rooted in personal experience), they can manage their symptoms just fine on their own. Self-accommodations can come off as strange or funny (bringing a blanket everywhere, wearing sunglasses to manage minor cataplexy, wrist strap on the phone so as not to drop it), but they're there for a reason.

Sorry for the tangent, I've actually been on a heavy uptick educating myself. A good place to go for life experiences would be, of course, the narcolepsy subreddit. It's a good resource for people talk rather than medical jargon. If you need any examples for how to write or depict certain symptoms, though, I would be more than happy to do that on request! (I loove writing drabbles, and I know there's almost 0 narcolepsy fics, much less any written by people who care about accuracy. I'm begging to be asked here [will probably cookie run-ify everything though])

Thank you for reading if you got this far, and I hope this helped!

[winterchimez]

please tell me all abt the sunwoo jichang and jacob fics PLEASSEE i know some of them like the sunkyu series but Pls 🙏🏼

my sweetest moni <3 ask and you shall receive ✨

Dancing With A Stranger (Ji Changmin)

summary: you both hated each other’s guts for as long as you could remember since joining the dance club. but as summer is approaching and your club has decided to host a summer camp getaway, you are left with no choice nor escape as you get paired up with your rival to perform a choreography together by the end of the camp.

pairing: rival Changmin x dancer f!reader

genre: angst, suggestive, slight fluff

a/n: okay so i was supposed to get this out for K-Vanity's Summer Event but due to irl stuff i wasn't able to finish it on time 😭 but i will eventually get this out bcs I LOVE THIS WIP. Sam Smith's Dancing With A Stranger will forever be one of my ult fav songs ever ✋ tho depending on when i'll publish this i'll def change the season to match the timeline by then fs

After Hours (SunKyu series)

summary: you've been The Lupin's main singer for the past several years, and none of the large number of men who have tried to woo you has ever piqued your interest. that is until one fateful night where you encounter a secret admirer of yours, Kim Sunwoo, and that is where you truly believe and realised that he was one of a kind.

though at the same time, your roommate, or rather friends-with-benefits at this point, Ji Changmin has begun to see his relationship with yours as something much more then ever before.

it is up to you to make the ultimate decision. to choose the admirer? or your one and only roommate.

pairing: admirer Sunwoo x singer f!reader x fwb Changmin

genre: suggestive, angst, otome

a/n: this whole series was actually inspired from The Weeknd's Moth To A Flame, so umm yes, this will be pretty suggestive 🤓 i plan to make this a mini series, so i'll probably have 5 general chapters, and then eventually one chapter per route (aka you will be choosing either Sunwoo's or Changmin's ending depending on your choice) so yeah kinda like those jp otome games lol

a lil snippet from the drafts 👀

Untitled (SangKyu series)

okay so i have two options for this

Black & White Swans au

pairing: royal Sangyeon x royal f!reader x enemy Changmin

genre: angst, suggestive, crime, fluff, otome

a/n: this whole series was inspired from this tiktok i saw!! i was like omg that would be such a cool series 😮 though the thing is i've never written royal au before, nor do i have much experience in them cs i don't really read much royal au fics to begin with 😭 so i'm still debating on going this route or not

Cops & Robbers au

pairing: detective Sangyeon x detective f!reader x thief Changmin

genre: crime, angst, some fluff & suggestive, otome

a/n: now this is a genre im pretty much more comfortable writing in lmao this was inspired by one of my all-time fav jp drama Dorokei!! i literally watched this for Nakajima Kento back then 😭 but i'd imagine you and Sangyeon are detectives who've been on the hunt for Changmin for as long as possible (and Changmin would kinda play the role of Arsène Lupin in this). so every time your police force has always failed to capture the man himself, because what they didn't know was that you were living with two identities, aka also being Changmin's right-hand woman in his crime spree hohoho 👀

like before, around 5 general chapters before choosing which route/ending you'd prefer!!

summary: the campus heartthrob whom you've had a crush on for the longest time finally asks you out on a date. since you have never been on a date before, you decided to elicit the help of your best friend, Kim Sunwoo, for some romantic advice.

pairing: f!ckboy Sunwoo x g.n!reader

genre: suggestive, angst, fluff

a/n: never in a million years would i have known that this would be my most well-received fic as of now and with the many requests i've gotten to make a pt2 for this, i will have to now (technically it was my fault for ending it on a cliffhanger so 👀)

but eyyy, with pt2 all i can say is we'll def see y/n's date with Hyunjae, Sunwoo gets jealous and is not happy about it (though he tries to hide it to the best of his abilities but he will eventually fail HAHAH), confronts y/n abt it, and yeehaw more spicy scenes coming your way folks ✨

read pt.1 here!!

Door (Kim Sunwoo)

pairing: ex Sunwoo x g.n!reader

genre: angst, hurt

a/n: this is inspired from their jp track door! ever since i released lip sync i was determined to also write for my other fav tracks from the album, one of them being this one!! i haven't planned much of the plot yet, but judging from the lyrics i'm definitely going for an angsty breakup fic, may or may not get both Sunwoo & reader to be reunited at the end 👀

Starry Night (Jacob Bae)

summary: your childhood friend Jacob has promised you that he would give you the best graduation gift you'll ever receive. you did not expect that you would both travel out of the country to the City of Love and eventually become more than just friends.

pairing: best friend Jacob x g.n!reader

genre: fluff, crack & humour

a/n: this is a fuzzy warm fluffy cobie fic!! there's just something about stargazing while lying down on a field with your loved ones. originally, i had planned to write this for his birthday way back in May, but i couldn't so i'm saving this for the future! but i'd imagine you both lying down on the fields near where the Eiffel Tower is, and just stargazing with one another 🫶 and i'll def write about some cute and fluffy moments from their trip (cafe hoping, etc.)

ask me about my wips!