#tw for unreality and dissociation talk in the tags

[the-sleepwalker-503]

[ Welcome to The Sleepwalker 503 - a HLVRAI askblog. ]

[ This is a fan askblog, the characters are derived from RTVS's HLVRAI. ]

Remember, everything you will read here is not real!

I thought I'd open this up to you guys for fun, so here's how this goes for those of you who're unfamiliar:

Send a message [ to the Inbox ], and it gets answered [ in the blog ]. No promises that everything will go through, but we'll do our best to answer most of the stuff you send us!

[ Read from the start here: link ]

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There will be Alt Text for all character icons and screenshots, and IDs for more complex pictures.

The tag "screenreader unfriendly" will be used for posts with long strings of emojis, small text, fonts, and text that is italicised, bolded, or coloured.

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Trigger list and general no-nos under the cut:

Alright, for your own safety, we're gonna run through some potentially triggering stuff that'll come up while you're here:

Trauma

Paranoia

Hallucinations

Dissociation

Nightmares

Depression

Triggers we'll tag:

tw unreality

tw stammering

tw eye contact / tw scopophobia

tw blood

tw panic (for panic attacks)

tw suicide ment

More to be updated

That's not all of them! They WILL be updated as we go, and that's gonna depend a lot on what you talk to them about, but I WILL be making new posts, in addition to this Pinned post, to update y'all when there's a trigger update.

All triggers will be tagged "trigger" and "tw trigger", so blacklist what you need to!

If y'all need any extra trigger warnings not already listed here, just DM them and I'll tag 'em too if they come up.

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Just so we're clear, we won't be tolerating any bigotry. So no:

racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, fatphobia, antisemitism, etc.

Nobody's perfect, and we're all working on it, but those asks will be deleted to prevent further harm.

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[ That being said, if anything starts reading as bigotry or harmful stereotypes in the blog, do NOT be afraid to reach out in DMs or through #mun chat. Things will be put on hold until we figure something out to continue with. ]

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Don't worry if the Inbox disappears at any point, we're just clearin' out the messages before we reopen it.

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Okay then, we all set? We all good? Cool, play nice now y'all!

[echidnana]

what the fuuuuuuck dude

[silverwarewolf]

I hate conspiracies so fucking much but i guess y'all just like them too much huh

[bagelbucket]

me: has been experiencing more visual hallucinations, extrema paranoia, and have convinced myself that i'm in a dissociative state strong enough to convince my brain that i'm living a separate reality/detached from my own reality and i'm not actually experiencing anything real me: haha its fine

[aardvaark]

Hi, I saw your post about unreality trigger warnings, and I was wondering if you could give some pointers on what sort of things should be tagged as such. I'd like to help anyway, but having an unfortunately severe dissociative disorder myself, I take the importance of avoiding triggers very seriously. Sorry if you receive this question a lot, and thanks for the answer in advance.

i haven't received this question before, and don't worry, i love getting asks! it's really nice of you to take the time to ask me a question /gen. dissociative disorders can be really hard,

/warning in advance that this will explain some unreality triggers/

some of the main ones are things that you would see on blogs like posts-from-a-funnier-timeline, which, btw, does a great job at tagging unreality. so posts that are completely made up but presented as if they were a truth are usually something that should be tagged. for example, a false announcement like "i cant believe [person/group] said that [false statement]" or "so sad that [person/group] did [something they didnt do]". this is because ppl with dissociative disorders and psychosis already can have a hard time being able to tell the difference between what is reality and whats not, and this makes it more confusing.

- any posts that are like "you're in a coma" or "this is a dream". this is triggering mainly for derealization.

- posts where the OP claims they have gotten this post specifically to the reader, ie "we are trying to reach you through this meme". often related to derealization and persecutory delusions.

- posts claiming that an event didnt happen, especially ones like "the world ended in [insert year], everything after has been imaginary". most recently, the "2020 was fake" meme.

- false confirmation of conspiracy theories like "cant believe that the government just told us [insert something here]". this usually can trigger persecutory delusions.

- the "you're finally awake, that fall looked really bad" meme.

- claims that things like thought projection is real, such as the meme that goes like "i'm psychic blogginf about [x], so if you're thinking of [x], that was me"

- posts that claim the OP and/or the reader have some sort of ability, relatiosnhip, etc.

- memes about like "the fbi agent reading my ao3 history", things suggesting that OP or the reader is specifically being targeted.

im not saying these memes cant be funny to many ppl without mental illness - i like some of them when im in a good headspace too! but it's necessary to tag as a trigger, thats all. yeah, it might make them less funny to your mentally well neurotypical audience or whatever, but please consider those with these more stigmatised disorders.

some things you probably dont have to tag with unreality are things like sarcasm (maybe use tone tags if you're concerned!), posts discussing mental health issues like psychosis or dissociation (the disorders arent unreal!), the fact someone was lying if you're just talking about someone lying, etc.

if you wish to tag a post like this one here which is not unreal itself but instead discusses unreality, think of using "tw unreality mentions", "delusion tw" or "derealization tw", so that people can still filter out these posts and also know that the post itself is not unreal if they come across it.

this list is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully will give a bit of an idea of what to tag as unreality. hope this helps!

[intolerablexsacrifice]

tagged by: @zzapzzaptasers, whom I adore <3

name of your muse: James Flint / James E. McGraw (no I don’t know what the E. stands for, it’s on one of the bags or some shit in his little London flat)

aliases: Captain Flint

one picture you like best of your character’s fc:

two headcanons you have for your character that you never told anyone:

I doubt there’s anything I’ve never told anyone but there’s shit I haven’t like, put into words properly? I’m too tired to go into full detail right now BUT:

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Flint’s view of Thomas is... extremely distorted by the time we reach the postcanon reunion, and in general, he’s a traumatized, codependent mess with no fucking idea how to Do Healthy Relationships anymore and no real self-awareness of how unhealthy some of his behaviours and beliefs are. There’s a lot to be said about both how he ties his entire fucking identity to Thomas, and the disconnection between Flint and James - perhaps surprisingly, James is the one that... can think straight, basically. Flint, on the other hand, has a real fucking difficult time seeing Thomas as ever like... wrong??? Which naturally leads to all kinds of fucking problems like “maybe it’s actually not a good thing that Flint would literally do anything for this man no matter the cost, Especially Now That Thomas Is Alive And Flint’s Terrified Of Losing Him”. Also, y’know. There’s the dissociation issues re: Flint vs James (which isn’t to say they’re two separate people, by the way, it’s not as clear-cut as that, but James himself structures his identity and his life through literary narratives etc so. It’s Complicated.) ANYWAY I usually avoid talking about it because a) I don’t want to get into some Discourse with the purity police about whether or not their relationship is Unhealthy In Some Regards Therefore Shouldn’t Be Written At All and b) it makes it sound like Flint can’t stand up for himself against Thomas or some shit which... ISN’T TRUE it’s just that his judgment and perceptions are compromised when it comes to him (and it’s specifically a Flint mindset; when he feels more like McGraw, it’s... less of an issue).

(tw for manipulative father figure in this next point) Hennessey plays a fairly big role in like... why James, even as McGraw and not Flint, has always been fairly easy to manipulate despite being manipulative and cunning himself. James has been under his wing since he was a child, after his grandfather died- there was a lot of fucking time for Hennessey to influence the way he views the world and the way he views other people’s treatment of him. I’ve talked about the “darker, wilder” / “I told you to be careful of those people” shit before and I won’t go into it again but G-D ANYWAY being exposed to shit like that from a young age, no matter how low-level, changes the way your mind works and perceives things and. Handwaves. James doesn’t view Hennessey’s pre-betrayal behaviour as wrong, and he’d certainly never believe that he was being mistreated or spoken to wrongly in any way (especially during that time period, like...). Until, you know. The betrayal. But We Don’t Talk About That, James Literally Never Talks About Hennessey And All Of This Shit Is Why.

three things your character likes doing in their free time:

Listening to music. One of his favourite things about returning home to Miranda is just being able to hear her play the harpsichord again while he rests or reads or whittles to keep his hands occupied.

If you think the Walrus crew don’t stage drama productions whilst at sea you’re wrong. Flint isn’t usually in them (but he can stand in for pretty much any part, because He Knows Everyone’s Lines, More Or Less, unless it’s something he isn’t intimately familiar with), but he watches every single one. Even the awful ones. Because they’re all awful.

Is it cheating if I say ‘sucking dick’. Can you believe I nearly wrote Flint as ace way back. Can you even imagine.

seven people that your character loves and/or likes:

Not necessarily ships, and also in no particular order.

@harriedwritings‘ Silver, primarily modern Silver (and likely postcanon Silver once they like... chill out and talk about shit), but good luck getting him to admit they’re anything but ‘flatmates’. (No genuinely he doesn’t even use the ‘friend’ word.)

@oceanfoamed‘s Abigail! They’re adorable and it’s kind of the saddest fucking thing in the world considering he killed her father, but y’know.

@unwilling-ships-surgeon‘s Marcellus. -v- Pointy bastard.

@tidefated‘s Joji g-d he loves Joji so fucking much it’s unreal.

@metalzerotruck‘s Truck, who is just super fucking chill to be around even if he also occasionally makes Flint flustered/nervous. >:0

@zzapzzaptasers‘ Darcy is surprisingly fucking likeable to our resident modern demon!Flint. THEY’RE GOING TO BE SUCH BAD INFLUENCES ON EACH OTHER G-D.

??? UHHH FUCK I DON’T KNOW I know there are more but I’m TYRED.

two things your character regrets:

Not doing anything to save Thomas while they had the chance.

Killing Gates. ;^;

two phobias your character has:

Uhhh fuck I genuinely have no idea he can’t stand the feeling of blood spattering on his face or in his mouth after what happened to Miranda, and all that shit Silver said about patterns repeating themselves re: his partners fucking haunts and terrifies him to this day.

tag ten people to do the same: if you’re looking at this please do it

[nightshaded-blog1]

@ask-skylark​.

                        [BLOG]: faunfiction.tungle.com                               Antifaunism in Education:                              Discipline v. Faunus Rights

My deepest apologies for not having posted lately. The amount of antifaun bullshit I’ve had to deal with from Beacon Academy has been unreal. Long story short, a group of dedicated antifauns have outed me, and I’ve been put on academic probation while they continue to pose a violent threat.

So here’s what happened. Cardin Winchester (click here for a full list of his blogs so you know which ones to block), as you all know, has been Beacon Academy’s strongest antifaun voice online and off--but what is worse, he has been known to target Faunus students both verbally and physically. I knew eventually that he would come after me, and so I had to prepare myself, but I  trusted that if he did, the school would at least be on my side.

That was my biggest mistake.

I should have known from the beginning what kind of treatment I would receive, but since Ozpin had been kind to me, I allowed myself to be caught off-guard. The Faunus rights classic Antifaunism in Education exposed for the first time ten years ago that Faunus students are disciplined more strongly than human students, and the author writes today of how nothing has changed. (sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.) What happened in Beacon was a reflection of that. I was severely punished for acting in self-defense while the perpetrators got away with everything.

As to the incident? Cardin didn’t attack me first, but I had reason to believe he was going to. Last year he made insensitive remarks about violence against the Faunii in class, sometimes even directing them at me because I always defended us--in a previous post I had even dissociated in class because he bragged about the ways in which his grandfather had scalped us. About a week ago, when the incident happened, he tried to talk to me after class. That’s when it started.

“So,” he said. He was slowly walking me into a corner as he spoke. “You seem pretty passionate about this Faunus stuff. Any reason why?”

The way he spoke as though he knew something about me, and the way he stood made him appear highly intimidating. I have been attacked like this on the streets before--I even used to have panic attacks when cornered by anyone for any reason, even when it was a teacher trying to get me to stay in one place while he lectured me. Also, considering that newly outed Faunii are common targets for antifaun violence and that there is a far-right campaign dedicated to outing and attacking hidden Faunii, that made me doubly ready to fight back and I was completely justified in doing it.

I told him I was passionate because I wanted to stick up for what I believed in. He said “hm, that’s kind of cute” and took a step closer. Then he asked me just how badly I believed in what I said--once again, I took this to be a threat, because he seemed to imply that he would test my beliefs with physical violence. To get him to back off, I slashed at him with my claws. Even though I was in hiding, the threat that I felt from him made me break my cover and attack. He tried punching me, but each time only managed to punch one of my shadow clones. I had to slash him again before I managed to run away.

Obviously, Cardin was quick to portray himself as the victim. Here are screenshots of the messages he and some of his friends sent me after the incident.

[TW for ableism, violence and gore under the spoiler - highly distressing images + mentions of war crimes and dead Faunii.]

1. [Cardin]: Lmao I always knew you were one of them. Not surprised you were too much of a /scaredy-cat/ to admit it. Just wait until Ozpin deals with you--don’t bother telling him you were traumatized because none of that triggered bullshit is an excuse for attacking me. I really just wanted to know why you always seemed so hot and bothered in history class but it’s not my problem if you’re too much of an angry bitch to recognize that.

2. [Cardin]: Oh, and it was easy finding your blog. I had a feeling only you could come up with all the SJ stuff that you do here. Maybe if you were nicer to me I would have listened but oh well, what can you do with a radical. :\

3. [Anonymous]: I better see you slit your own throat with those claws

4. [One of Cardin’s friends]: Hey. You. Yes, you. You lay another hand on my bro Cardin and I’m gonna put you in stitches. Who you gonna call, the White Fang? We’ll wipe you out faster than Vale did in the prison camps.

5. [There is an anonymously submitted image of Faunii massacred in an infamous war crime, one that everyone in Remnant knows and regards as an atrocity.] We’re coming for you, kitty.

6. [There is an anonymously submitted image of a dismembered Faunus child above the message.] Don’t mess with us.

I have PTSD. I was unable to even organize those images into this post--I had to ask a teammate to do it for me.

And it gets worse.

PTSD is half the reason I am in this situation right now. If I were a neurotypical Faunus, I would have been believed right away. But instead, my concerns for my physical safety were invalidated and written off as paranoia and irrational anger that came about as a result of my illness--the administrators who talked to me told me so when I protested my sentence. (Those of you against intersectional justice, take note--both antifaunism and ableism played a part in my unjust probation.) Cardin knew this could happen because anyone can read on my blog that I have PTSD. And so he managed to get away with what he did by portraying himself as “reasonable” in contrast with my “irrational” and “PTSD-fueled” actions--he took the same angle with the administrators that he did with me in his first message: he claimed he was just curious and that I had attacked him out of nowhere.

The end result: Cardin, a straight human male and committed antifaun, has not received any punishment. The friend of his who managed to show his face to me only received two weeks of academic probation, while I received six months.

Of course I also demanded an investigation into the anonymous messages. The school replied that they took “no responsibility” for things that happened anonymously online, when those messages were clearly sent by people attending Beacon Academy--if not Cardin himself. I sent them a reply stating my case for an investigation, to which they have not yet replied. Presumably, they have no interest in helping me.

Do you know what academic probation means here in Beacon? When there’s violence involved, your weapon is taken away from you.

I am left without a weapon while the people who threatened me roam free.

I, Blake Belladonna, am outed, punished and unsafe while the school drags its feet investigating the anonymous threat. While Cardin or any of the anonymous students are free to corner and attack me at any time.

Ozpin may have helped me two years ago, but now he and his administration display the same callousness toward my species as could be expected from other schools. 

I have never felt more sickened and betrayed.

1,258 notes Tags: #school #beacon academy #personal #antifaun #antifaunism #faunus rights #ableism #antifaunism in beacon #ableism in beacon

blake spent most of her recent days alone. yeah, maybe she should be sticking together with team rwby for safety in numbers, but how could she be around them when she knew exactly what they thought of it? weiss got all huffy and self-righteous about how violence is never the answer. yang said the same thing as weiss, except she tried to say it more gently. and ruby? oh, bless her poor little heart, she was so innocent and sweet and full of platitudes of goodness and joy--

enough.

she was justified. she would hear no other opinion.

she did not regret the feel of her claws tearing through his face. the swift, elegant hook like the swoop of an eagle’s talons, the seamless sweep of finger-blades through flesh, the fierce precision of the swipe that would just miss the jugular. in fact, there was a part of her that enjoyed it; a very small part, but it existed nonetheless.

cardin’s blog said that the wounds on his face, neck and chest required more stitches than he could count on his hands.

cardin winchester in stitches. she could now die fulfilled.

but for every revenge, there was a counter-revenge--that was the way things went between humans and faunii, and that was the way it would always be. she could smell it coming now: sky lark?

there. THERE. she was justified. he was coming to attack her. he was.

she whirled around to face him, crouching into a fighting stance.

       ❝i know what you’re here for. he deserved it,❞                 she snapped, unsheathing her claws.           ❝don’t come any closer unless you want to get it, too.❞

[echidnana]

we’re really glad our therapist is so nice