#like the trope was literally named after the bipolar experience. all I want is one high budget movie about us

[undedkat]

Ok but a movie with a feminist deconstruction of the manic pixie dream girl trope that’s actually about a bipolar women would have so many layers to it.

How people want a fun and unique partner until they’re too fun and unique. How women aren’t just blank slates for romance. How women are often abandoned by their partners during health crisis. How sometimes toxic men will focus on how their partner’s health problems inconvenience them.

It would be such a fun way to explore the trope in such an emotionally charged way.

[psychotic-psypport]

Thank you for your blog!!!

TW: media ableism, slurs, delusions, nonverbal auditory hallucinations, mentions of bullying, mentions of misdiagnosis

CW: infodump

How do you feel about reclaiming fictional characters who are written by ableist writers but nevertheless mean a lot to you? I have this one character, we are almost polar opposites in some important things, but I have always related to them so much in terms of mental illness, to the point of once, soon after I first met them, having a delusion on being them under human disguise with false memories (a thing in this canon, it is generally extremely psychosis-triggering and I'm making a list of the main triggers to post. Several affected me back then, but even though I still love that canon). That was way before I got diagnosed, first thought that they might be schizo-spec too and actually learned what schizophrenia is (pretty much in that order).

They are one of the core reappearing antagonists, and yes, that's as bad as it sounds. I'm on my way on going through all their appearances, but for now I'm mostly familliar with the later ones. So, I don't know how schizo-spec were they shown originally, but :))))) I know that the main character called them "m*d and paranoid" in one of the early appearances :)))))) F*CK. The character responded that everyone is, but they admit it. Fast forward to the time where the series died and after 15 years of books-and-audios-only was revived on screen: that's when things got HORRIBLE. The character got introduced into the revived series returning from being disguised as human with false memories, what I mentioned earlier — thanks for inducing delusions!!!!! Much appreciated!!!!!!! But this was, like, the least bad part for a while. The writers suddenly gave them a constant abstract auditory hallucination (four-beat rhythm, the heartbeat of their species) which they never had been mentioned having before, AAAAAND they got a delusion that it is "calling for them", and tried to turn Earth into a warship and conquer the universe thinking an eternal destruction might stop the drumming. Things are even worse because the actor still wanted to give them depth but the writer/showrunner 'pushed him to play "giggling lunatic"' (TV Tropes quote)! In their next appearance, still with the same actor and writer (also the last episode by that writer) they are still psychotic, but this time they have a lot of depth and it's honestly still my favorite episode in the entire show. But, don't know how it counts, but: their hallucination turned out to not be a hallucination but was implanted into their head as a child so that looking for the means to stop it they would save their home planet from the eternal war (the story is actually longer than I said it) and then the person who did this wanted to dispose of them.

Oh and yes I had this hallucination when I had the delusion of being them and thanks to that shit I thought it's more than a simple hallucination without any additional delusions :)))))))))

Their next several appearances, with a different writer and a different actress, are usually much less ableist in itself, but the actress constantly called them cr*zy/ins*ne/etc in interviews and there are some other gross ableist things. The previous actor and writer did that too. And the next, current actor and writer seemed to be a GIFT — they recognized them as mentally ill, recognized their depth, they did not call them names, they respected them!! And the actor is an absolute GOD in playing them. But some of the promos were f*cking ugly, and in the last interview the actor did, in the end, call them cr*zy. That was a full stop knife in the back. I could not believe it.

The main character is repeatedly ableist to them too — "m*d and paranoid", "psychiatrist field day", "a lunatic". Thanks, I hate it

So, why don't I throw it all into the Ableism Garbage Can?

They were pretty much the first character to whom I related in terms of mental illness. Like me, they were emotionally unstable, codependent, depressed, constantly on fire mentally, had lifelong identity crisis, and that was way before I learned what else united us.

Also, they, together with the main character, were bullied as a child, and it was the first time I saw a character who shared the traumatic experience which unfortunately shaped my whole life, and their experience wasn't mocked in any way. That meant and still means SO MUCH to me.

(and yes, this point was written by an entirely different person than those who wrote them in the revived TV series)

When I got diagnosed, I first thought that I was misdiagnosed — I thought I was autistic for a long time, and I got diagnosed with Pseudoneurotic Schizophrenia, which is a subtype of Schizotypal in my country, and many autistic people in my country get misdiagnosed as schizotypal. But I started to read about it and it was the first thing ever that explained what the hell was I going through.

(I still think I'm misdiagnosed — I'm most probably Schizoaffective bipolar subtype, but the doctors in the hospital didn't take my bipolar symptomatic in account. I'm going to a new psychiatrist this Sunday, and I hope to talk to him about it)

So I desperately needed schizo-spectrum characters to relate. Characters to relate were always a biggest thing for me, long before this one. Aaaand I first had a thought, then fully realized that they shared this experience to me, too.

I first met them five years ago, and got diagnosed half a year ago, all this time they were there for me when I most needed it, along with several other characters, but they are still the only schizo-spectrum character among them. I don't want to let go of them. I want to reclaim them.

What I told about are not the only instances of them showing schizo-spec symptoms, and I want to make a big post on it once, perhaps when I'm familiar with all their appearances. And I'm on my way, and I'm moving!

I'm also writing a fanfic about them, and I want to explore the topic, along with everything that I appreciate in them and a general deep character study.

Also: their homeworld used "insanity" as a term about them — it has probably about early XX-century concept of psychiatry (barring the sh*tty gender things, literally the only good thing about that society is a complete absence of gender), and back then it was a legitimate term for psychosis (please don't think I'm defending the early XX-century psychiatry or the character's homeworld). So, pretty much confirms.

My answer for this is probably gonna be a lot shorter than the ask, mostly because I feel a very strong pull in one direction.

It's ok to claim characters like this! Death of the author! Frankly, we've seen it happen a lot where the whole fandom of a piece of media goes "ok, my character now". It's especially understandable if you relate to this character like you do. Honestly, take what you can and take what you want from this and discard the pieces you don't want. You don't want to defend this behavior of course, but there's not a thing wrong with claiming this character as your own and finding yourself in them. You are allowed this, and you don't have to ask anyone's permission. Kinda like the other ask I got earlier, who finds themself in and enjoys the Shining, it's ok to enjoy it even if it's problematic. We don't get much representation, so mostly we come away with villains, which sucks, but you get to do with those characters what you please, no one can stop you from relating or feeling connected to the character. If they give us the scarcist representation possible, is it really a failing on our part when we connect with the few characters we find like us? I don't think so. It's only natural to seek these parts of yourself in media, and they just happen to mostly show up in an ableist/derogatory/stereotypical way with villains.

[boricuareads]

Seven (7) Soft Fantasy YAs You Want to Dig Into

A fellow blogger (hey, Carolina!) brought to my attention that not many people like high fantasies, which is valid. Often, high fantasies are riddled with complicated magic systems that only the author seems to understand, or they’re riddled with fantastic world-building drowning in coded whiteness. What’s the point of building an amazing world or magic system or even species if they’re gonna be coded with whiteness or they seemingly just showcase a cis heterosexual Christian fantasy.

This list, though mostly about soft or simple fantasies that don’t have overly complicated magic systems, or so many characters that you need a whole encyclopedia to keep track of them, make you think about the redefinition of what makes a Fantasy thus. I love being transported to new worlds, while still being able to critique it without the heavy burden of convoluted magic. Therefore, here I give you seven books that fit into the mold as well as break out of it:

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust: I love a good fairytale retelling. By this I mean, I love fairytale retellings that subvert fairytale narratives of damsels in distress or just change our perceptions of the women in these stories. In Bashardoust’s novel, we see a Snow White retelling that examines the power of the patriarchy and the ways in which men manipulate women and gaslight them, all within a soft fantasy. There are two POVs, one from the “wicked stepmother,”  Mina, and a stepdaughter who was made from snow, Lynet. It also makes us reexamine what the relationships among women should look like, not with enmity but with more sympathy. There’s also a queer relationship between Lynet and a Hot Medic that’s nuanced and soft in a way that isn’t seen as much. The magic is also subtle, but when it arrives, it comes roaring with the subtlety of the Rohirrim arriving at the last moment in the battle for Helm’s Deep. Which is to say, it’s not subtle at all, nor should it be. (Read my full review here.)

Ash by Malinda Lo: Another fairytale retelling, this one is Cinderella retold. This one is sort of magic-adjacent, as there is the presence of fairies and magical creatures. And yet, the story is mostly focused on the ways people who are often abused seek out a form of escapism, and that’s what Ash does when she literally escapes to the forest to be among the fairies. Except, sometimes, the forest doesn’t want you to live among mortals and it wants to control you in the same way you’re controlled at home. Especially when you start falling for the King’s Huntress, then the friend you’ve made in the forest will get jealous.

Wintersong by S. Jae Jones: We have an adaptation of Labyrinth with a complex MC in Liesl, and a mercurial love interest in The Goblin King. At once haunting and alluring, this story reels you into the Goblin Underground and doesn’t allow you to claw out of it even if you beg for it. S. Jae-Jones gives us at once a story about a selfish nineteen-year old girl who lives in the shadow of her younger brother, who’s a musical prodigy, and her wish to be a great composer. When her sister is taken by the Goblin King to be his wife, Liesl sacrifices everything to bring her back, including her life as she knows it in exchange for a life in the Underground. Liesl is impulsive, obsessive with her music and her desire to be close to the Goblin King, and so loving and protective in the way older sisters are with their younger siblings. The author in Shadowsong described Liesl as being bipolar, something Jae-Jones experiences, which isn’t something we’ve seen in a lot of historical fantasy fiction. Anyway, there’s not a lot of complicated magic stuff, but the story is still pretty fantastic.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness: I’ve already talked about this book in a different post but I love talking about how great the book is. It follows a group of friends who live in a town where weird shit is always happening. Except, they’re not the protagonists of these quests, they’re just bystanders to the other teens who have been chosen to have shit happen to them. It’s an interest take on The Chosen One trope and who gets to survive after fictitious calamity. This book is pretty much a Contemporary book except for the fact that there are… aliens? celestial beings? in the world. It’s a pretty simple book in terms of the fantasy in it, because really it focuses on its cast and who they are outside of whatever’s plaguing the town they live in.

Timekeeper by Tara Sim: This book delves into the effects of PTSD and the concept of time as a tangible thing rather than a concept. Timekeeper is the story of a mechanic named Danny Hart, who fixes clock towers in a steampunk-ish Victorian London. Except, the clock towers are magical, since they keep the people that live around these clock towers alive. When Danny is sent to a different town to fix a clock tower that keeps making people do the same thing many times, he stumbles across the clock’s spirit, Colton. There are also some mysterious bombings happening all over England. Sim’s book is definitely a fantasy, yet the world-building isn’t in your face, and it’s all brought forth with the patience of someone whose job it is to fix clocks.

The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury: In The Forbidden Wish, we see an Aladdin retelling, where the genie (or, jinni) is instead a woman. (Do you believe me now when I say that I love a good retelling?) In this version, the jinni, Zahra, wishes to be free of her chains and not have to fulfill the wishes of anyone else anymore. When Aladdin stumbles across her lamp, she relishes the fact that after she fulfills her duties, she might be free at last. Except, she didn’t count on falling for Aladdin and she doesn’t know whether she’s fit to betray him and her own heart. The fantasy of this book mostly comes at the hands of Zahra’s magic and the Jinns’ existence.

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore: The Nomeolvides women have been cursed with the power of growing flowers. They’ve also been relegated to the tending of La Pradera, grounds that aren’t theirs but for the fact that it swallows the people the women love, never to be seen again. And then one day, La Pradera spits out a boy no one’s ever seen before, a boy not from their time. Though this book is firmly cemented within magical realism, there is still such a fantastic undercurrent in the lives of these girls and women who’ve lost so much. It’s a story about ownership of brown bodies, especially the bodies of brown women in the face of a white cisheterosexual capitalist patriarchal society.

There you have it folks! A full list of some recommendations of books I adored with my entire heart that aren’t too hard to get into because of its fantasy. What do you think? Do you have a book in mind that could fit into this category? Let me know in my ask box or on my other social media: Twitter or Instagram, both @boricuareads.

As always, make sure you check out the rest of my recommendations, reviews, edits, and more.

[bipolarandannoyed]

On why I’m contemplating shutting down my AO3 account

So I wanna first clarify that this is not a decision I’m taking lightly. I’ve actually been contemplating this for around two years. I have not decided yet, but I wanted to let everyone know it’s a distinct possibility so they don’t go to check something, or re-read something and it’s just gone.

Even though this post is going to be a TL:DR in and of itself, I’m still going to give you a quick TL:DR of that in case you don’t want to read this monstrosity.

It’s a mix between my tumultuous relationship with fandom, some issues I’ve had with specific fandoms, problems with fanfiction in general, an extreme loss of inspiration and drive, mental illness, and my original writing.

All right. Some details. I can extrapolate on any of these, so if you want more information, please ask.

1) When I first joined fandom, it was a different beast. It was the mid 2000′s and I was a young teenager with only a few friends who, thinking back, probably didn’t like me that much. Fandom was the first place I could connect with people who liked the same things I did, back when the internet wasn’t the home staple it is now. A lot of you may still feel the same way.

But as the internet is such a mainstay in most homes, and most people have their own nearly unlimited access to it, fandom has changed. It’s taken on the popularity issues that prevail in every large culture. With the introduction to “fandom awards”, I’m not sure how this can be argued. And I despise popularity hierarchies. I hated them in school, and I hate them online.

Before anyone gets on my case about just being petty because I want to be popular in fandom, I don’t. I actually want to avoid being one of those “top tier” fandom people. I like to be anonymous. I even have anxiety about leaving my curtains open. I was raised to be paranoid, and for very good reasons I won’t be going into.

I have moral issues with popularity. Specifically in the way we treat those who aren’t popular. They’re all but ignored. And when they’re not, people act like they’re throwing them a bone, like any attention to the work they produce is a gift they’re receiving and they should be so excited and happy to get a single like. Meanwhile they watch the big names being showered with praise and attention. Think about when you’re in school and you experience this yourself, and how it makes you feel. But that’s the thing, no one does.

Fandom feels entitled to the work of people. I’ve received my fair share of “write it for those of us who are reading”, and that’s just unacceptable. You are not owed a single thing. People are producing things for you for free. And for most of us it goes completely unrewarded. I’ve said in the past to think about comments and reblogs as payment. Everyone talks a big game about supporting artists, but that ends pretty quickly when there’s a chance for real follow through.

2) As for my personal issue with fandom, it’s about people stealing the stuff I produced. Not my stories, thankfully. I’d be filing a complaint about that real quick. But with posts. I won’t name any names, or even fandoms, but it’s happened a few times with a few different people. Sometimes it would be a few days after I posted, and sometimes it would be as little as an hour. Since I’m not a big name, no one notices. And since I prefer to stay under the radar, calling the people out would only call unwanted attention to me. So, as a result, I’ve mostly left fandom.

3) So my problems with fanfiction are a bit more of a me thing. If you followed my old tumblr and read my personal posts, you’d know that I don’t really read fanfiction anymore. I haven’t for a couple years, only fics that people have personally suggested to me.

A few years ago I got curious about why my fics were unpopular. I’ve only written two that more than a few people have cared about, and in an unpopular fandom, or with an unpopular ship, that’s pretty par for the course. But I’ve considered myself a pretty decent writer for a while, and that was a huge blow to my ego and had me questioning my ability to make it as an author, which has been my goal for fifteen years, and something I’d been considering for a few years before that.

I did some research on what kind of fics and authors are popular, and I found it’s the opposite of what people like with books. Simplicity is the most important thing. Fics with common plot lines, predictable plot points, and recognisable tropes tend to be the most popular. Conflict tends to turn people away. Basically people want comforting stories that don’t challenge them in their fics. That’s something I just can’t do. I’ve actually tried. I love writing stories with high conflict and taking tropes that people are used to and turning them around. I’ve used fics to develop my writing to prepare for my books. I will never be a popular fic writer, and I’m okay with that.

4) I’ve lost most motivation for my fics. A big part of that is because of my living situation. I’m working on building a tiny home so I can make sure I’m not homeless, and for health reasons. Because of that I’m living with my family while I build it.

But an even bigger part is because there’s no energy in it. People’s excitement, their responses, gave me energy and inspiration. I wrote Pretend to be Dating in two weeks because of the interaction with people who were reading it. It’s about 28,000 words, which is the length of a novella, and I didn’t fill it with superfluous prose. People were excited, and they expressed that excitement. That made me want to produce more. And even before that when I was writing for TotA, a pretty much dead fandom, I had a friend who would get excited every time I would write anything, no matter how small. But she has a family now.

That interaction, that energy, inspires me. And I know it inspires a lot of others. And no, not every comment inspires me. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between someone commenting because they like something, and because they just want me to continue. Being a temporary distraction from life until people move on to the next distraction actually has the opposite effect and kills my inspiration and drive. It’s important to me that people like my stories and my writing.

I’m aware that a large part of this is my fault. Because people liking my stuff is vital to my future career, as there is no career if people don’t, responding to comments on my AO3 makes me feel like I’m artificially boosting my comment count and making it seem better than it is. It’s a very weird bit of anxiety, but it’s very debilitating. That’s why I’ve encouraged people to come talk to me here.

5) So I’m bipolar. I’m taking meds for it, but I’m not currently in therapy.

A lot of people don’t understand what bipolar is. It’s not being moody. It’s a cycling disorder that can seriously mess up your life, fuck with your mind, and it’s one that’s still socially acceptable to dismiss and mock. Just look at every time someone calls Halsey “teen angst”.

Bipolar has a lot of effects on my cognitive abilities, and actually made it nearly impossible for me to read for three years before I finally started taking meds. I sometimes spend over and hour at a time pacing because I just can’t seem to stop, I’ve almost broken my hand because of sudden bursts of anger, and there are high risk behaviors we suffer from that have caused me to almost die on several occasions, behaviors I don’t consider dangerous when I’m doing them.

There’s a reason so many bipolar people relate to Jekyll and Hyde.

I’ve been depressive since last May. It’s been a very long depressive phase for me. It’s caused me to almost lose my job. And because of that, it’s been extremely difficult to write. I used to write until my hand literally couldn’t hold a pen, for twelve hours at a time. Now I’m lucky if I can get more than an hour a night. So when I can write, I want to write something that’s important. And if my fics aren’t important, if people don’t care, I don’t want to write them, no matter how excited I am about certain stories or chapters. And when I post a chapter that I’ve been so excited about, and no one else is excited, that has a really bad effect on me.

6) I’ve mentioned that I’m working on becoming a published author, hopefully a career author. This is vital to my happiness and fulfillment as a person. This is the entire reason I started writing fics back in 2005. I’ve written entire books that I’ve scrapped, have five projects in the works, and am working on creating a serial to gain attention.

At this point, writing fics is doing nothing to help me with that. It’s a distraction. And until recently, it’s a distraction that I’ve found worth it, because it’s something I enjoyed, and something that gave me creative satisfaction. But that’s not the case anymore. I don’t see the point in producing things for people who don’t appreciate them, when I could be working on things that could hopefully supply me with the means to live.

Fanfiction will always have a place in my heart. It’s been such a big part of my life. But like with most things that I loved as a teenager, it just doesn’t give me the enjoyment and satisfaction it once did.