#What a weird ass life

[wanologic]

sorry danny, sam will never think you’re cool

[possumsinpeoplesuits]

This is gonna be a long post, but... I'm coping with some thoughts on being, well, an Alter. I just wanted to get it all out in case I don't get to front for a while, and also because I don't want to sleep yet. So, without further ado...

I heard someone call me by my own name for the first time today, and got so emotional afterwards I ended up crying. It was my therapist, who I officially introduced myself to for the first time. At the start of the day, he was only the third person to know outside of one friend and my roommate. By the end of today, around ten people know, and I haven't really encountered any doubt, which I guess is a good thing?

I honestly never expected to get this far. I've missed so many years where I've barely ever fronted, to the point it just got confusing whenever it happened. How do you explain to someone that you're suddenly dysphoric in the complete opposite way, or that you can't remember how to do your job? How do you explain to someone you'll probably need to ask their name on three separate occasions before you can consistently remember it, when you're not even sure why?

Theeen the long run up to our breakdown last year started. I tend to front more when there's a lot of stress, which doesn't exactly help things when you then have to figure out what the hell you're even doing, but only being around one or two days a month doesn't really make for a very firm identity, even if I used to be the host for most of the teenage years. Well, most people don't react well to not controlling their thoughts half the time. Less so when they start to remember that, well... Kay's the most recent one of us. Hell, I'm not the original, either, but my social skills aren't exactly the best, so I got written off as a hallucination.

Then Kay hurt herself, and we ended up in a psych ward for a while. There were other things happening, too, like the whole adrenal gland fucking up because that thing burned out from overuse, we think. (What, a system with lots of trauma? That unpossible!) Point being, we were fucked up, and the more fucked up we got, the more I started coming to the front. It was just hard to articulate it right, because surely it couldn't be a disassociative disorder, right?

Yeah, my psych'd talked about CPTSD, and every time I tell one of my childhood stories as a joke everyone gets reeeeal quiet and says things like "Oh my god, I'm so sorry that happened to you" and stuff like that, but there were only a few times I got beat. I only got shot with an air rifle twice, and it only broke the skin once, and two rounds of conversion therapy just left me with a phobia of religious figures and a need to know where the door was to any given room, but it wasn't like I was traumatized or anything, right?

Back to the ward, I remember not being entirely sure how long I'd been there the first day, but some of the other days, I kept trying not to sleep because I had this indescribable feeling that I wouldn't be the same when I woke back up. (there was a fucking reason for that, god I was in denial.) So things got vague for a bit, the adrenal issues were causing some hallucinations, which just fed into the belief that I wasn't, you know, a real person.

And then, about five days into this, me and Kay disagreed harder than we had before, which was the first time in a while there'd been such a stark line between us when it's usually something like a spectrum. See, Kay's usually a bit of a pushover. Nice to a fault, just quietly going along with an ineffective treatment plan because a five minute psychiatrist appointment each morning isn't really long enough to figure anything out, so, uh... I made a suggestion.

Just leave. Despite the self harm, this was a voluntary commitment, we could just leave. She couldn't bring herself to ask. Okay, don't say anything and just ram the door. She thinks it'd hurt because they were locked. So I say grab a keycard from someone, but she watched them restrain someone the day before, so I started losing it and just suggesting getting violent, because, well... last time I was this dominant was when dealing with a meth addicted stepdad who had a habit of hurting my mom, so maybe I had a shitload of anger to get out that I wasn't coping with very well.

Well, it turns out that, if two sets of thoughts are butting heads like that, it gets a little hard to tell which ones are yours anymore. So, all this starts bleeding into her inner monologue, she interprets it as some sort of demonic possession (I was not helping matters) aaaaand asked one of the nurses to be sedated with everything they had.

Yeeeah... we're pretty sure I started as a trauma response, which... yeah, no shit. Still it just... wasn't fun being me, or productive or anything, so I just kind of stayed quieter. Inpatient ended, and a lot of it's just a blur. I know the little fainting spell we had on intake became a recurring thing, and I'm pretty sure running out of cortisol regularly and substituting adrenaline is probably why I didn't just go fully dormant again.

The thing I've learned with OSDD (the low calorie diet alternative to DID) is that there's a bit of bleedthrough. Lines aren't quite as strict, so even though memories do get fucky sometimes, it's not always easy to tell when a switch happens until it's far enough in one direction to make recalling things hard. So I think I was still there somewhere; we bought a binder despite Kay being transfemme, finally donated like two and a half feet of hair, and basically just rationalized it as being more butch as we got more comfortable in being recognized as a woman.

I know there were a few times I just felt insanely dysphoric, or angry out of nowhere, which... yeah, after that inpatient visit, Kay basically walked back in to a hostile as fuck work environment, I learned my lesson about suggesting punches to the throat from earlier, and uh, oh yeah, my dad died by suicide. Y'know, the one who didn't have a giant record of traumatizing us.

I didn't realize this until December, nine months after it'd happened. I have to dig for memories I wasn't really around for, it doesn't come immediately, but I tend to pop up to absorb some insults from mom over the holidays, so I drove up, realized why I wasn't visiting dad this time and just... broke down. Stress vomited in the bathroom, too. Didn't keep a bite of food down the whole day.

Obviously, I wasn't feeling very well. I hadn't slept much, either, but rather than sleep in a recliner in my mom's house, I just turned around after exchanging presents, made the whole five hour trip back in one go, and when I got out of my car, I realized I'd been up for forty hours because I was seeing things out of the corner of my eye, but just... couldn't sleep still.

I was home alone, so I took the time to just... break down until I felt like I could sleep, then sat in my bathtub aaaaand... there were three of us. Like, I said the lines are a lot more defined when there's a lot of stress, right? Well, sleep deprivation seems to really be the only time all our internal monologues can coexist. Also I downed an edible, but it hadn't had time to really kick in yet.

So there was me, then Kay (who was stressing because her last conversation with dad was about the psych ward stay), then the original, core one of us that we've dubbed Alice, who I can only describe as the kid who doesn't know why mom's hitting her and won't remember in the morning. I think I kept asking Kay if this is how she wants to be, but we got a little distracted with the other one who, uh... was a fucking surprise?

But again... we were fucking delirious and slowly getting high enough to finally sleep for about 14 hours. It wasn't until she was describing it to the same therapist (with the preface "Obviously I don't have OSDD/DID") that he was like "Actually, that sounds exactly like what that is." and that was the theme of the session.

There was still a bit of denial, though. I mean, I was an absolute dickwad who only came out when things were going terribly wrong, so it felt like the best thing to do was to hunker down each time and hope a nap would hit the reset button.

I'd occasionally talk with my friendly neighborhood @lizardywizard who helped field possible names, since I was still using our deadname, and it seemed like another little spur in everything going smoothly.

Then this week, there was an electrolysis session that was a looot more painful than it should have been, and I was fronting again by the end of it. Then woke up, still fronting. Then another day. Then Friday wasn't for a bit... and then someone kept startling me by SCREAMING at the top of their lungs somewhere in the mall, and wouldn't you know it, fronting again.

So I've basically had a week where there hasn't actually been any specific emotional turmoil, but I've just... existed, and been conscious of the fact it's me. There's loads of dysphoria, though. I'm not sure how I'm sandwiched between two transfems and still a guy, but it probably explains why I've felt so much kinship with transmascs lately, since, well... twelve years of transitioning medically has got me at the point where I'm not able to pass as my assigned gender at birth, but I'm sure as hell not detransitioning, so I'm having to get some tips for making it a little more bearable to effectively wake up almost fully transitioned?

I obviously already had the binder, and I tend to wear loose clothes anyways, plus the undercut looks very femme down, but looks masc as hell when I tie it back. Even the FFS I've been recovering from is pretty okay. I wear a mask all the time anyways, and it just made me even more twinkish than before, which goes great with the goth look.

I'm still figuring a lot of things out, but suddenly having all this time to not be, well... a scary voice in someone's head has given me enough time to think things over. I never wanted to exist as someone's trauma response like a sacrificial doll anytime there's pain. I've been so confused on what to do, though, because that's really all I've been since, what, ten years old? But I'm not getting tossed through conversion therapy, I'm not in a religious school that hates queer people, the meth addicted fucker is long long gone, and I barely have contact with mom. Without those things putting me on edge, I'm... normal. I'm alright to be around, just a goth twink who likes music and, I'm finding, is INCREDIBLY GAY, like painfully gay and I kind of love it because it's just another way I stand out in my own head amongst the asexual bambi lesbians.

I don't know how long this'll last. I haven't fronted this frequently since, well... before Kay. So, sinceI don't seem to be going away anytime soon, I figured I'd introduce myself here:

I'm Noah. I'm looking forward to meeting some of y'all, and to the scalie buddy who helped me figure out the name... thanks for making me feel real, man. It really means a lot to have someone I can talk to when I'm still hiding almost everywhere else.

[chickensauras]

I think Laois and MY personal favorite creature, The Simurgh, would get along :]

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

I’ve been highly confused as to why Michael “deeply openly thirsting on Twitter about David Tennant for half a decade” Sheen is half-in half-out the closet but apparently Wales is absurdly homophobic lmao what the fuck how is a country the size of New Jersey that much of a hater bruh we out number the shit out of you

[smolthealmighty]

Ok I’m freaking out over the quirk shenanigans going by on in this chapter… but isn’t it something that Overhaul with his disassemble/reassemble quirk didn’t give two shits about his underlings’ health and wellbeing since he could put them back together if he needed them…

…but Tomura with only the modified disassemble part of that quirk treated his team like they were precious and worth fighting for?

[rotationalsymmetry]

Imagine being Orion in A Deadly Education.

People are mostly not that interesting to you. They don't like you so much as they like what you can do. Maybe at some point you tried to really connect with someone, and it didn't go that well, so you didn't keep trying. Fighting mals though? You're good at that. It makes sense to you, unlike most of the things people do. It's rewarding -- intrinsically rewarding -- and people seem to be happy that you're doing it? Because they don't like doing it but it benefits them. So, basically no downside.

And you go off to school and it's full of mals, and people think you're great because you fight the mals, and you ignore them as best you can when you're not fighting mals for them. (You're polite, your mother always wanted you to be polite and you don't want people to be mad at you. But you don't do anything beyond being polite.) And people seem to think you're doing a good thing. So. It's ok. It's good enough. The world makes sense, more or less. This is what you're for.

And one day you see a soul eater go under another student's door, and you destroy it like you always do. Except this person is mad at you. Which makes no sense. No one's ever been mad at you before, not for fighting mals. So apparently you did something wrong even though you only did what you always do which has always been right before. But you guess you should probably make it up to her? So when she says she needs to go to the shop at dinner you offer to go with her, why not?

Except somehow she's mad at you again. So you have to make it up to her even more now, you guess?

(You don't like it when people are mad at you, but you know what to do when people are mad at you. You Make It Up To Them, usually by doing whatever they tell you to or fighting a mal or both, and then they stop being mad at you. You prefer to understand why they are mad at you, but most of the time it makes no sense, and you know what to do when it makes no sense to you why someone is mad at you.)

So you guard her door while she fixes it. Which takes her a weirdly long time. You've just taken down several mimics, you're bursting with mana, you'd give her some if she asked. Mana has never been a scarce resource for you; on some level it hasn't really occurred to you that it could be a scarce resource for anyone else. People aren't that interesting to you, you don't think about them much, except when someone tells you to, like your mother making you do flash cards of other kids' names. But she doesn't ask, and she doesn't cheat either, she does things the long and hard way, which makes a third thing all coming from the same person that doesn't mesh with your pre-existing worldview. She's fascinating.

And then she pulls on your mana like it's nothing and she's even more fascinating. How did she do that? Is she a malificer? (Is that why she keeps being so mean to you, when nobody is ever mean to you?) What's going on?

And you've never voluntarily fought alongside anyone else before, but she's good to fight with. She's annoying, but she does also point out things you missed or didn't know.

And she stands up for you, in a way that nobody has ever stood up for you before. She's not nice. She's the opposite of nice. But it's starting to dawn on you that being nice is not the same as something else that seems like it should go with being nice. And if El is not nice to you but is that other thing, maybe some other people who are nice to you are...not that other thing to you?

It's a lot to think about.

Anyways. You like her. You're not very interested in people. But you are interested in El.

And then you have the best day of your life, when you've gotten to take on more mals and scarier mals than you've ever taken on before, and you did it and you were good at it, and you kind of didn't want to leave but you were supposed to leave because that was how the Mission worked, and then you were about to die because you missed the bell and the cleansing fires had started and there was nowhere to go, but at least you were going to die next to El.

But she didn't think she was going to die, and she cast a wall of mortal flame (who does that?) and it worked as a firebreak and you didn't die and no one had ever saved you before. That wasn't how the world worked. Who was this person who kept breaking the rules of how the world worked like they didn't even apply to her?

(And then you look around and she isn't there and you kissed her earlier when you thought you were both going to die, and she, uh, didn't react well and oh no, what if you've ruined everything what if you like her but she doesn't like you like that what if she won't want to be around you any more? What if the one interesting person in the entire world doesn't think you are interesting?) (it'd be ok, right? It was ok before.) (it wouldn't be ok. So maybe it wasn't ok before either.)

[scatterpatter]

one of the best things about embracing plurality and starting to actually admit I'm part of a system online is realizing just how many people in my spaces are also plural and its just

[starrylevi]

“Are you okay?” Levi asks you.

“No.”

“I know, you don’t look it. What’s wrong?”

“Everything is wrong, Levi. I’m exhausted…I wonder what it’s like to have a brain that functions the way it’s supposed to.”

His eyebrows furrow slightly. “Your brain is fine.”

“But that’s the thing, it’s not!” You say exasperatingly. “It’s wired differently and so it makes everything more difficult. I switch between three modes: Not wanting to exist, Surviving, and Beyond Surviving. Guess how much time I spend in each mode?”

Levi doesn’t say anything in response. His expression shows more concern than confusion this time.

“Fine, I’ll tell you. Most of my time is spent surviving. Some of my time is spent not wanting to exist. And just a little of my time is spent beyond suriving…what kind of life is that?”

Levi’s eyes look at you with sadness. “Not much of one, to be honest…but it’s yours and you only have one.” He counters.

“Well, I don’t even know if I want it half of the time. Y’know, someone told me that life is basically climbing mountains. You climb a mountain, which represents a challenge or obstacle, once you get to the top you enjoy the view for a moment…then you climb back down and do the same thing all over again. Rinse and repeat.”

Levi seems to identify with what you’re saying and he knows you’re frustrated right now but he needs to keep you from spiraling. He’s not letting you give up. That’s not the way. “It’s what we have to do, Y/N.” He says gently.

“And what if I don’t want to do anything? What if I don’t want to climb fucking mountains? What if I don’t want to constantly be challenged and given obstacles? What if I just want to sit at the top of the mountain and just be?”

Levi knows these feelings all too well…he’s wrestled with them a few times throughout his life but he’s continued to push through because that’s what you just do. And you’re going to do the same even if he has to do the pushing for you. You snap Levi out of his thoughts with your next statement.

“It would be so much easier if I just…”

“Stop.”

“But-“

“Stop.” He repeats sternly, his steel eyes boring into yours.

You grunt angrily. “You’re not even real, Levi!” You yell out at him. You’re not angry with him. You’re angry at the world, angry for the universe and your parents for putting you in this predicament, angry for placing you into a world that doesn’t accommodate you. “You are a 2-dimensional character I use to cope. There’s no way for you to actually soothe or help me. You. Are. Fictional.”

Your words don’t seem to phase him. He shrugs. “I’m real enough.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’m real enough to you. Y/N. You are the one who brings me to life. You are the one who decides how real I should be. What does it matter if I’m not a real person?”

“It’s silly.”

“Who says it’s silly?”

“I don’t know, a bunch of people.”

“Well, fuck all of those people then. Just fuck them.” He states as if it’s obvious.

You sigh. “It doesn’t work that way, Levi…”

“So make it work that way. No one else is keeping you alive but yourself.”

“And you…” You say softly.

Levi shakes his head. “I don’t do anything. Like I said before, you’re the one who does the all the heavy lifting. I exist because you want me to. I function the way I do because you want me to.”

“So I control you?”

Levi rolls his eyes at that. “Don’t be a brat. What I’m saying is I’m just an outlet for you.”

You pause, thinking of his words. He’s not wrong. He’s just a character but he’s also not just a character because of you. “I wish you were real.” You admit sadly.

“I wish I were real too…for you.” He sighs as he runs a hand through his raven hair. “But it doesn’t matter if I’m real or not. I still occupy your brain. I still make you happy, that’s all that matters. As long as you let me live in your mind, I’m always going to be here for you.

You nod, not saying anything further.

“Okay?” He asks.

“Okay.”

“Good.”

[stripeydemonwiththestupidhair]

Brother eww

What is that brother

[im-smart-i-swear]

can you remember being born? were you born at all

[torturedpoetdean]

carson the electrician joins the ranks with the christmas elf as a canon buddie warrior ✊🏼

[lildoodlenoodle]

One of the biggest problems and red flags about the whole spider society was having kids be workers for them.

Now I’m not saying the spider society shouldn’t have contacted the younger spiders or even work with them! But the spider society should function as more of a support group and emergency backup type situation for the younger spiders.

There was no reason for Margo, someone who is implied to be like Miles’s age, someone who can’t even drive, to be running an integral part of the society and how they are keeping the multiverse intact. She not only ran it, but if it malfunctioned it was clearly her job and responsibility to fix. When the machine ‘breaks’ and functions while, as far as she’s aware, no one’s in it she’s panicking, even though there would be no real consequences if she just let it run. There was no reason for Gwen, a 16 yr old, to be running around the multiverse alone going on high stakes solo missions(and that’s not even getting into the whole homeless thing). We don’t know yet what Peni’s role is but we have to assume it’s similar in nature and responsibility. That is insane.

Pav is the only one who seems to have a healthy relationship with the society, because he’s not really in it! He doesn’t know the indoctrination canon events yet, we don’t see him going off on solo missions, he gets backup when he needs it and that seems to be it.

For the kids that do know the canon events theory(Margo, Peni, Gwen) I cannot even imagine what must be going through their heads. Who else from their worlds has to die. For Peni, is her last living relative, Uncle Ben, the next person for her to lose? If Gwen returns to her world how long will it take for her dad to die? What other traumatic events have Miguel’s theory dictated will happen to them next? What horrors do they know will happen to them and their loved ones that they aren’t allowed to prevent? Is Gwen destined to die young because she’s the only Gwen we see Alive? And Gwen and Hobie, Pav’s friends, do they know that Gayatri and her dad are both destined to die? Like the mental gymnastics these kids have to go through and the mental torment that goes with it.

And then on top of it, to threaten said teenagers, who you have working for you, with being kicked out and being isolated from the people that are like and understand them is really fucked up. Especially if the threatening is because they are acting like teenagers and not soldiers. If Gwen is sent home, not only is her life put in danger but so is her father’s and they all know it. That is some culty level gaslighting and even grooming. Margo and Peni both are implied to not have good home lives either. The more you think about it the worse it gets honestly, because what goes along with this is we never see any of the adult spiders say anything about this.

Miguel and Jess both saw Gwen’s father, a grown man, try to arrest his daughter with a gun pointed at her. They save her, Jess takes her under wing(and whether they meant to or not) effectively become her guardians. They monitor her with what could essentially be a baby monitor/tracking device. They can control where she can and cannot go. And while understandable to not give a teen access to the entire multiverse they were very much giving her the adult responsibilities of protecting it.

When she does screw up, because she is a child who wants to see her friend, Jessica very flippantly references Miguel sending her home, making me think this is not the first time they’ve had that conversation, which is so worrying. And then they eventually do. They knew exactly what situation they were sending her into and not only did the entire society watch Miguel do it with little protest but didn’t even mention it afterwards. Even if Gwen was a threat they had other options, rather than sending her home, where she could still be safe.

There’s also a lot to say about how Jessica, Peter B., and Miguel handled Miles that speaks more to this pattern of behavior but that’s another post.

In the comics the ‘Spider Society’ got away with this sort of stuff, even having an actual infant just chilling with the group, because the spiders were being hunted. They couldn’t go home or leave the safe space dimension because it wasn’t safe. In the movie that is very much not the case. WHY WERE TEENAGERS WORKING FOR THE SOCIETY!?

[13reasonstoeatthatcake]

I really want to know how Lilith Sorrengail feels about trying her best to get her youngest daughter away from whatever it was that her dad supposedly found in the Archives after Brennan 'died', just to get said daughter even more involved with the tyrrish rebellion two: electric boogaloo.

[thecoolest69]

My family is taking me to school tomorrow cause I told then about what was going on IM FUCKING SCREWED GUYS 😭😭😭

[sunbun-fnaf]

THREE LIVES AT FREDDYS WAS VERY FUN!!!!!

this is very late. mostly directed at the first session but for such a goofy concept i had a LOTTTT OF FUN!!!!! IT WAS REALLY REALLY NICE TO TALK TO PEOPLE AND I DIDNT DIE AND ALL WAS GOOD IN THE WORLD

SOOOOOO LIKE MANY OF MY FRIENDS AND OTHER 3 LIVES PARTICIPANTS. I designed a very vague ref for that my silly guy looks like :] i. introduce you to whatever the fuck this creature is. because when given the option i will always choose william afton and when given the option i will always make him the most extra fucker to exist

[recitedemise]

OOC, but tomorrow's my 'broke up with my abuser' one year anniversary! Or I guess escaped, really. Whooping! Hollering! Clapping! I started writing Gale shortly after that horrible trial of a break up (which took literally 3 days before they essentially finally let me go. read: FINALLY let me go, because I genuinely needed permission to break up), and Gale coming out of a toxic relationship himself made me really sympathize with him. :' ) Anyway, it's been a whole year, and I feel...so, SO much happier. I still have deep anger that crops up very often knowing I'll never get closure for what happened to me, but you know what? I don't have to wake up nervous about getting bombarded with texts anymore or checking my phone throughout the work day to get yelled at.

To commemorate, I'm looking at just ONE example of the hell I put behind me. :P

Anyway, that's just a taste.

Like, lmao, where the hell did this come from.

It's funny cuz I wanted to break up countless times before this, and the problem each time which I REPEATEDLY told them about while even providing examples on HOW to fix it was how they spoke to me especially when they were angry or distressed. They eventually told everyone I used threats of breaking up as a tool to get them to behave instead of a genuine desire to break up.

It's so bewildering. Someone talks to me like THIS for over a year, and they think my wanting to break up (after a period of extreme exhaustion, depression and mental duress) was fabricated and a manipulation tactic and that I'm just emotionally abusive and playing victim...because evidently, the distress they caused me couldn't be real seeing as how they never do anything wrong ever.

Anyway.

All abusers can have a happy go rot in a pit.

Extra: when they apologized, they literally pulled the 'my therapist said it, not me' line. Rank fool is stupidly incapable and unwilling to take culpability for literally anything. Literally has never done it ever in their entire life. Abusing me then weaponizing their therapy? It's more likely than you think.