#its valid to live life being like 'idk' and then find out the actual answer a week or two later or more

[funnierasafictive]

some advice i see a lot regarding how to tell if someone is a fictive or just a character that the person is imagining is to try to imagine them doing something they wouldn't and see if it feels wrong or if they flat out refuse but i was wondering is there any way to tell if you've just imagined them refusing? like, if it's more in character for them to do so is that not simply where your mind would go? how can you tell whether there's a person behind it or whether it's just that your mind itself doesn't want to cooperate??

Honestly, I'm not sure how to answer that. BUT, it does remind me of when our old host met Jaiden (not a fictive) and they read that a way to check if someone is really sentient, you do this specific exercise about balancing a feather on their noise or something. Honestly none of us remember the point of it or how it would have worked, but what happened was, Jaiden was already Real. He split real, Jamie just wasn't sure (thank you denial). Because Jaiden cared about Jamie, he indulged him and did the exercises. But it would go on for DAYS to the point where Jaiden literally told Jamie to just "stop". "I'm real!" and even if Jamie told him to do these exercises, it was annoying him.

So yes, having them do something they'd like is an option. But have you considered annoying them to the point where they snap at you?? SKDFJS

OF COURSE DONT like. put yourselves on bad terms. but its something to think about. A lot of the time when we're in denial, the person we/the current front is in denial about, starts getting annoyed, and then we feel bad about hurting their feelings.

So I'm not your therapist and I can't tell you what's what- but I guess you could also think.. "If I annoyed them, and they react badly to me annoying them, and that feeling of them scolding me makes me feel bad.. why would I ever make that up?"

Also give it some time. Sometimes if a split is new (or you think someone just split) it'll be hard to tell. Denial is a BITCH. If you already are used to having alters or system members in general, The fictive who just split WILL eventually be comfortable enough to be "concrete enough" with you, if they already even know who they are. maybe your brain itself is still figuring things out. We talk about splitting as a community a lot--where spliting is usually depicted as like this FAST thing. but sometimes its slow! which DOESNT help if youre trying to figure out if you have someone or not!

[rin-and-jade]

I've had knowledge of being a system since like 2021 or something like that and with all my research I concluded I was probably experiencing OSDD1A. However, as I researched deeper and learned others experiences, I've been highly questioning polyfragmentation. I think *I* was a split of a new subsystem from events in 2021.

For example, I have knowledge of previous years of having groups of people in my head. Some were consistent, some weren't, some were fleeting. Except now.. Now it feels like there's mainly me with a lot in the background and nothing makes sense. Yet when I try to do anything in reference to DID my body and brain freeze. Like locked in type freeze.

My therapist believes we are experiencing continuous amnesia, but in my soul that feels so wrong and inconsistent with our experiences.

Life often feels like an old rolling picture film, where it's continually going, but there's almost constant *clicks*.

I want to ask my therapist to take me through the DID and BPD diagnosic processes because it's now becoming such a hindrance I feel l can't move forward because everything is so stuck and I want amswers... but I'm too terrified and remain frozen doing nothing. Accepting my experiences as they are and not living.

Idk what I'm actually asking but my intention with this was to ask something but it's been forgotten.

Uhhh.. I guess.. what is the DID or maybe even BPD diagnostic process even like? Is it even worth it??

If you feel like continuous amnesia isn't the right answer, you always have the right to correct the person and explain why it doesn't match your existing experiences with it. Everyone's not perfect in getting the right answer first try, your therapist might be aware of this and will improve with some feedback. This also applies to me, okay?

Just to be at the same page, i'll once again explain that continuous amnesia means having difficulties in forming those exact memories when events are happening currently, that would be forgotten in the aftermath with no defined minimum length of time. Am i understanding the term as how you did? If so, you might find this input as wrong because you're still capable of recalling the past until present, but have many gaps, if that's what the clicks mean?

I had asked a polyfrag system i am friends with, and it's worth mentioning that they experience huge gaps in memories and understood your 'film' analogy and included the fact that the memories can be scattered to other parts despite having a constant fronter living the moment. Though some can recall the gaps easier than others.

That might answer your uncertainty with the therapist's input and now, the last question of yours; i heard that the diagnosing process could be in a form of series of questions be it on paper or by talking, and from there it will be deduced wether you have it or not by assessing your daily life experiences, the internal and external problems it's creating and how it affects your life and other's by a specialist. What is worth or not worth truly depends on a person's agenda, one example if its to validate a disorder you think you have and get approved by a specialist,, it definitely is worth as it shoos away all the doubts.

Though, diagnosis can wait, because you seemed to be in freeze mode which could be a survival mechanism if things are overwhelming or etc. I hope you can do some searching on the internet to break free from it, if you can't seem to, or have more questions/clarifications please reach out to me on DMs, hope this helps!

- j

[completelyordinarycat]

Compiling my TFTR end notes so they clog up the fic less but tbh it's mostly for sentimental reasons. Fun Facts:

Chapter 3:

Harry rambling about the Pale as a way to talk about wanting to disappear is based on a real conversation I've had.

Chapter 4:

I used Korean as a Seol language because it's the Asian language I'm most familiar with. I speak neither Korean nor French fluently (I don't speak French at all) so please correct me.

For reference, I switch between sounding out, anglicised, and characters to indicate the way characters are hearing language and tonal differences.

I am a white person, so I'm not in any way the person to be talking about experiencing racism but it felt wrong to ignore the place that has in DE and Kim's story especially and it's role in cop work especially. I work a lot with people who speak English as an Additional language, so I've tried to respect the bravery it takes to speak a language like English when you aren't fluent, and base that conversation on actual ones I've had. While I've tried to be actively anti-racist from a narrative standpoint, I won't do that perfectly.

The fire, and its cause, is based on one where I've lived that I won't go into for obvious reasons.

Eomma is based on my Italian great-grandmothers.

Chapter 5:

if you see me misspelling characters names: no you don't. I learned via this fic that they aren't columbinimus clouds, which is the best spelling I can offer for what I spent my life reading and pronouncing. Plus side: every spell check I'd laugh because I'd get to remind myself it's spelled with CUM not COL.

I find it really, really hard to keep real life geography straight let alone in-game stuff. I'm taking Messina to be an Italy stand in because it's literally a city in Sicily, which is where my family is from, so when I saw it in the game I was like bwuh??? If that's wrong let me know and I'll change it.

The reference to culturally insensitive ads is a reference to a real pizza place where I live, as well as various chain Asian food places with actually completely racist ads.

Chapter 6:

Had Harry been not caught up in his own stuff, Katya's song choice would have been more illuminating to him than any other piece of information thus far. But there was a reason Judit said that sometimes we get caught up in the little internal things that drive us (b/c its foreshadowing) which is what Harry and Katya do. Idk if you’ve ever had a fight with someone that, while it has valid points, you think back on later and are like oh. That wasn’t really about that at all, was it? They’re both still learning about how to do healthy relationships.

Having a character whose entire character trait up until this point is being secretive meant I had to do so much exposition I would have rather included earlier ughhhh.

The entirety of the case discussed is plotted out in full despite being only mentioned briefly.

I never name male perpetrators because in reality they always get the headlines when their victims don't and it pisses me right off.

I am ACAB and continue to be (and yes, ACAB includes all these characters and the RCM) but what Katya and Liza are implied to be doing is a form of the PEACE method including focusing on establishing known factual events.

Some of the city's reflections of love are inspired by me re-reading this answer at the time of writing. I think "If you found love right now, you would run it straight into the ground in seconds," applies to Harry though he's not at a place where he's ready to understand what that would mean in this fic, imo.

I had to remind myself how to do medical notes for this and they may or may not be accurate, idk. They're meant to obscure information, though, so non-accuracy works in this regard. I'm a suicide attempt survivor so I tried to be sensitive about this. For a disclaimer, I’m not a medical professional and my work lies in health advocacy, hence how I know a lot of this. You can tell, because I abbreviated a medication which is one of the first things they tell you not to do but hey, it was on purpose. Here is a translation:

TW for domestic violence, attempted suicide (with potential context as to a method), abortion and miscarriage:

“02:00 5mg/h AC bolus pushed via NGT. 10ml/h IV saline bag replaced.

03:40 PT semi-conscious but non-responsive, pulling at NGT. IV sedative admin.

5:30 RR 27, HR 114, BP 160/110, other VS normal. ECG shows sinus pause reduced but bradyarrhythmia remains.”

This is basically not that important really lmao. I could have skipped it, in retrospect, but I think it gives some nice context to say that Katya is okay, health wise, in that moment. In summary: she’s being given activated charcoal via a naso-gastric tube which is a common treatment for some kinds of overdoses (and why you shouldn’t use activated charcoal tablets/toothpaste if you’re on prescription medicine!). She’s sick and her heart is being a bit funky, but she’s okay. You can say this is why Katya refers to this as a “heart attack” rather than what it is.

“Emergency Department (ED) admission 23:39 by neighbour for suspected overdose (OD), no known next of kin. Blood alcohol level .32, suspected drug use. Became physically aggressive when asked if deliberate OD, requiring intramuscular sedative. Transferred mental health ward 00:48. History: childhood Pale Related Acquired Brain Injury. 3xED presentation for gun shot wounds and stab wounds relating to RCM work. 2x presentation for injury relating to suspected assault and battery, patient denied intimate partner violence and left against medical advice both times. 3 pregnancies and 0 live births: ED presentation following miscarriage after fall; ED presentation for miscarriage after suspected assault and battery; ED presentation relating to suspected termination of pregnancy haemorrhage requiring blood transfusion and overnight observation.”

Again, I’m hoping no one is learning how to take case notes from this. I re-wrote this a million times, no lie, and if I saw this on someone’s records I would probably be like UM WTF. But for storytelling purposes, it got the job done lmao. I hope the original gets across what I wanted to get across: that something really significantly bad happened in Katya’s past that explains her motives and behaviour. I wrote it with the intention that Harry has just gotten enough information to want to push, but not to know that he shouldn’t. Having said that, you could make the argument that he should have known at the very least what the abbreviation for Assault and Battery is, so if he knew, would he have pushed anyway? Canonically, I think the answer is yes because even a high-empathy Harry can be remarkably tactless on a fail. Which is why I think this interaction is fun(? Oh wow I’m a freak) because it’s pushing (fanfic) Harry’s assumptions of himself and his goals. His stated goal is to do good, but he actively doesn’t do that in this scenario (though, neither was Katya, tbf).

In his defence, he’s right but he’s also kind of wrong. Yes, Katya’s background makes her empathise with this case a lot more, but the other implication that Harry misses is that she was actually involved with the case to some capacity while it was ongoing, and therefore she feels responsible

If you care about the OCs at all: Katya, as a mirror to Harry, has been going through a parallel to Harry's plot and she's really going through it. At the end of this chapter she is off-screen having her own "I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore" moment. We only just get to glimpse it.

Chapter 7:

Mee's Kitchen is a reference to a beloved take out place where I live, and again I'm sticking with Korean stuff because I'm most familiar with it.

Harry feeling like he has no control and slapping himself and being terrified of that is based off of my entire life lmao but particularly a few years ago when I started to slap myself without consciously deciding to do it. Then I 1. started dealing with some of my mental health stuff, and 2. started being treated for ADHD, and, surprise, it happens less now and when it does I don't freak out about it. Harry is very flippant about it, which I was too for a long time. I have a lot of body-focused repetitive behaviours and repetitive behaviours in general and no one has ever formally told me if that counted as one of those or not. I don't like to call out specific things as me obviously projecting but I also wanted to be clear that if you also have those kinds of behaviours, there's nothing wrong with you and don't listen to a guy in a fanfic. Talk to someone about it if you're worried. <3 I tagged it as self-harm because it seemed to cover all bases.

Chapter 8:

This was a hard chapter to walk the line on and if I wasn't doing the poetry chapter title thing, it would be titled "What if Rigorous Self-Critique Was More Helpful and Less An Opportunity to Hate Yourself into Self-Destruction, and Therefore Allowing Your Shitty Behaviour to Continue." And I never want to demonise addiction or mental health struggles and I hope I don’t. In my own experience to do better you do need to face up to things you've done that you’re not proud of. No joke, a lot of this fic is me exploring the idea of restorative justice and how and when we can forgive someone, especially when that person is a victim too. But I also don't want to woobify Harry and I recognise that I could have gone harder on this and that's a flaw in this work. Very few things destroyed me in DE like Rigorous Self-Critique. My reaction to reading it was physical horror and I still remember how it felt. And I just couldn't play that out to its extreme in this. It would be too much of a tone shift, for one. And for personal reasons, I just couldn't. Also, In editing this chapter, I removed a bit of context I didn’t fix. Specifically, there is no doubt in my mind that Harry is abusive towards Dora and I realise I may have presented it as if to imply he wasn’t. Harry was specifically asking about sexual violence, and that is what Jean investigated. I may fix this in the future, when I’m in a better headspace.

I love to write bi-Jean being no-homo, I don't know why. Jean constructs intricate rituals to allow himself to hear that he is loved.

Other fun facts, grabbed from my notes:

MoralIntern/Coalition politicians declaring that homo-sexuality no longer existed in Revachol is based on a comment from a politician where I live who said that there were no gay people in his state. It’s also very inspired by real life anti-homosexuality laws stemming from racism and colonialism and eugenics.

This fic works from the assumption that Dora ended that cycle of untreated mental illness and abuse by leaving as soon as she realised what was happening, by virtue of having a better education and resource access through being middle class. She is my idealised version of myself here haha. So the question becomes less, is Harry a bad guy? But what can Harry do to make sure he doesn’t continue a cycle of violence that probably pre-dates him by centuries?

I also can-opened myself writing this fic because I was like, why do I write stories about people being at their worst and still being loved? And my brain was like, because it’s the kind of story you needed to hear when you were at your worst, that it’s still possible to be loved, and never heard. And then I had a little cry :)

 If you think that Harry is a bad and an irredeemable man, you’re totally valid! Maybe I will write a fic about that at some point.

I love Jean now :)

I was like haha what if I make the chapter titles a poem from the city to Harry and immediately regretted it because I'm bad at poetry :)