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cupidlakes · 3 years

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i completely agree with you, gnf deliberately using voice changer i /assume/ so that even if people clipped it, they dont have the /actual/ gnf saying all those things.

also, dream said that while theyre okay with shipping/fanfic/fanart made of them, that doesnt necessarily means they want to see them. i reckon that is gnfs approach as well towards it. wait idk where im going with it im just rambling lol

i haven’t watched the vod yet i’ve just seen people talking about it and the one clip but i get what you mean and that holds some merit i think, when george finds doing/saying stuff embarrassing he tends to avoid it or does it in an obviously silly way like the way he “sings” or how he’ll do accents etc.

george seems to have this thing abt not wanting embarrassing stuff sticking around forever like when someone asked him abt wearing a maid dress and he respectfully said no because he doesn’t want something like that existing online and that’s just what i mean, the boyfriend thing could’ve definitely been something he didn’t want to deal with for whatever reason (not up for speculation)

and to kinda answer the 2nd half of your ask, here’s the thing, dnf becoming this big was genuinely unprecedented we live in a post-heat waves era where the shipping of dnf (especially on main) has become really normalised, also in part due to how dream and george haven’t said anything against it and their boundaries to what we know since the serious stream have remained the same i.e they “don’t care” that’s all fine and good!! i’m happy w that i’m happy they’re happy and comfortable :)

i remember when you’d be crucified and torn apart on twitter, ratioed to hell and back and cancelled for even joking about dnf not too long ago and i’m not saying that was ever okay and dream + i’m assuming george absolutely hate people speaking on their behalf but the inverse, where people are comfortable consistently making jokes about georges sexuality (specifically george) on main and letting those tweets get big enough to where there’s the potential for him to see it, even spamming his replies? personally i don’t see that as a good thing

dream and george have given us explicit permission to talk about dnf but that doesn’t extend to discussion about their sexualities, george says it takes a lot to make him uncomfortable but i don’t understand why you’d want to push it remember when george made that serious tweet about not editing pictures to make it look like he’s saying slurs (a homophobic one in question)? did he ever explicitly make it clear he didn’t want people to do that? no, because it’s kind of common sense and we still made him uncomfortable, that’s what i meant saying not everything has to be explicitly stated by a cc for it to be a boundary or something you shouldn’t do and i think it’s incorrect that as a fandom we’ve been operating like this (although upholding their stated boundaries is important)

i really don’t know if people want another moment where they cross the line with him and he has to address it and you shouldn’t always have to wait for a cc to address something for it to no longer be okay just use common sense i’m iterating once again that there is a difference between harmless dnf jokes that fall within their stated boundaries and truthing their sexualities on main near constantly + reading into things like the boyfriend thing on twitter again, openly

i don’t personally know how george feels currently about dnf whether he ever meant for his permission to mean that people should talk about it in the privacy of fandom spaces (although i get why you’d think that), i can’t ask him what he’s specifically okay with

but i can be normal, enjoy him + his content and dnf casually in tandem on my blog, support him and just encourage others to think about the way they talk about him it doesn’t hurt to not send that tweet or to tweet constantly about george being gay because xyz (insert stereotypes)

at the end of the day george is george his lax boundaries and how chill he is about everything is nice i’m glad there hasn’t been many instances at all where he’s had to speak to us directly about feeling uncomfortable however if he does even subtly make it clear he doesn’t want smth clipped/talked about it’s not hard to respect that and to respect him

hope this all made sense!

#asks #long post #cw negativity #negativity #discourse #again this is just for blacklist ^^#sorry this got so long i’ve just been sitting on these thoughts for a while you know #i say this all respectfully btw #+ if it gets ppl thinking i’ve done my job

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scripttorture · 6 years

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There is a Star Trek episode (Deep Space Nine, s3e21) where it is described how one character, who used to work for the secret police of a totalitarian government, "got a confession" out of a dissident. " You just sat there [- - -] And after four hours of watching you stare at him, he confessed.[- - -] Afterwards, he just kept saying, 'His eyes his eyes.'" (There is a one-minute clip of the scene on youtube entitled “DS9 3x21 - The Die is Cast - The Good Old Times”.) 1/3

Considering other things we see of this culture, it seems likely the victim is restrained and he might well have been beaten or otherwise tortured before the staring described above. Furthermore, there are implications elsewhere that the torturer and the dissident knew each other, possibly very well, before these events. 2/3I’d be interested to hear your take on this, its plausibility and anything that might ‘salvage’ it if it seems very unrealistic. How common is the use of intimidation tactics such as long stretches of silence? What is known of the difference between being tortured by a stranger and by someone you know and possibly trusted? P.S. Thank you for this excellent blog! 3/3

Youknow I think I’ve seen part of this episode.

Fromwhat I can remember there’s a heavy implication throughout that thetorturer-character is an unreliable narrator. Part of that seemed (tome at least) explicitly tied to his role as a torturer.

Andwell, that isrealistic. Torturers are often incredibly unreliable sources when itcomes to both the effectiveness of torture and what they actually didor why something they did was harmful.

Whatthis reminds me of is the way American torturers described usingheavy metal or other Western music against non-Western prisoners.They seemed to consistently put the distress down to the formof music that was being repeatedly played. Rather than the fact itwas constant and at top volume, preventing the prisoners fromsleeping.

Silencecanencourage people to speak but it doesn’t necessarily encourage themtowards confessing or speaking about anything relevant. And I don’tthink staring at someone would have this effect. It’s the ‘HISEYES!’ that underlines the disconnect from reality for me, it justseems so melodramatically implausible if staring was genuinely theonly factor at play here.

It’sone of those strange depictions that can be read as either veryrealistic or hugely unrealistic depending on how much weight you givethe torturer’s account.

Becausethis does seem like a realistic thing fora torturer to claim.But it isn’t a realistic thing to happen.

Whichis another reason why nuance is so important in these stories. We’redealing with unreliable narrators throughout. Torturers, survivorsand even witnesses are all compromised at a neurological level; theirmemories are suspect.

Andtorturers are additionally heavily biased in their accounts. Theytake credit for things that are beyond their control, don’t mentionthings that go against their accounts (sometimes they don’t seem toeven make the connection between them) and bend over backwards tojustify their actions after the fact.

Ican give you an idea of the kind of thing that a torturer mightreport in this way.

Aprisoner is brought in. They’re restrained. They might be beaten.And then they’re ‘sweated’.

Thisis something that used to be common among police forces across quitea few countries. It basically means the victim was tied to a chairwith a bright light shining in their eyes and interrogated for aprolonged period of time. Rooms were usually cramped, so the lightwould make the room unbearably hot. There’s an element of restrainttorture, keeping the victim for a long time in one position. There’ssleep deprivation (because this often went on for over 12 hours).There’s dehydration, because the victim usually wasn’t given foodor water. And they generally weren’t allowed to go to the bathroomeither.

InRussia (and some other countries) they combined this with somethingRejali calls ‘relay interrogation’. Which means they basicallykept switching the torturers. This meant that the torturers wouldalways be pretty well rested but the victim could be kept awake forliterally days at a time.

I’dsuggest that was what happened here.

Ratherthan the victim confessing after ‘four hours’, I’d suggest itwas much more likely he’d been brought in 36-48 hours before andconsistently deprived of water and sleep.

Overthat time frame humans (we shall pretend that aliens work in the sameway) become delirious and often start to hallucinate. Which couldexplain saying something like ‘THE EYES!!!’ It might also explainthe ‘confession’ because in this state some victims aredisconnected from reality to the point that they don’t reallyunderstand they’re confessing.

Torturersare competitive. In a situation like this, with relay interrogation,the firsttorturer gets absolutely no ‘credit’ for a forced confession thathappens five torturers later. All of the ‘credit’, all of thepraise, goes to the last person in the room.

Giventhat there is considerable encouragement for that last torturer toact as though the entire thing was down to them and theirunique/unusual tactics.

Andas torturers are prone to exactlythe same memory problems as survivors,it’s also possible that a torturer in this situation could havegenuinely forgotten that that particular prisoner was brought inseveral days before and had been tortured for that time.

I’venot heard of the use of silence as a tactic by torturers.Intimidation, yes. But it generally seems to come in the form ofthreats.

Howeversilence is commonly used as a tactic by people being interrogated. Atthe very least I know the IRA used this as a consistent organisationwide tactic that members were told to employ if arrested. They wouldturn their back on the interrogators and remain silent. It’sincredibly disquieting and does prompt some people to talk. I thinkthere’s a link to a more detailed discussion of this in the EffectiveInvestigation masterpost.I’m not sure if the Alisons have written any papers on it: their worktends to focus on tactics for interrogators rather than people whoare being interrogated. They’d be a good place to check though.

Fromwhat I know, silence could be an effective tactic in genuineinterrogation but it would have to be part of a broader strategy. Idon’t think it would be effective without the use of other tactics orif it was applied randomly.

Itcould help to get a person to start talking but it couldn’t replacebuilding up a rapport or the ability to steer a conversation to thetopic of interest.

Asfor the last question- I’m afraid I genuinely have no idea. Therereally aren’t enough studies on torturers and the studies I am awareof use a very small sample size. Studies with survivors tend to be alot larger but I’ve never come across a study that talked aboutsurvivors and torturers having a prior relationship of any kind.

Anecdotalaccounts aren’t much better on this front. I’m aware of cases wheresurvivors and torturers came from the same village or small town. I’maware of cases where they knew each other as acquaintances prior tothe victim being tortured. But none of the cases I’m aware ofshowed any indication that the relationship was close. It’s- peoplewho knew each others names, passed on the street, perhapsoccasionally lent the other person a cup of flour. There’s noindication of anything as close as a working or colleaguerelationship in the accounts I’ve seen.

Theaccount Fanon records of a torturer’s daughter who came to him forcounselling doesdescribe a closer relationship with victims. But that’s atorturer’s family member and victims, rather than the torturerhimself.

Becauseit is, by definition, institutional torture doesn’t seem to involvethose sorts of previously strong relationships often.

Nowabusedefinitely does and I suspect that if a prior strong relationshipmakes a difference then you could find that difference by comparingsurvivors of abuse with survivors of torture. Which is a doctoralthesis I’d very much like to see funded but it’s rather beyondthe scope of the blog.

Inthis case I don’t think I’d advise going through anecdotalaccounts and trying to make the comparison yourself. In order forsomething like that to be significant you’ve got to control for alot of factors, which might not be reported in anecdotal accounts andyou need to go through a lotof accounts. I think it would be very easy to leap to an incorrectconclusion, especially when you don’t have direct access to thesurvivors themselves and can’t ask them.

Forthe purposes of the story I’d suggest assuming that there isn’t asymptomatic difference. Assume the symptoms would be the same whetherthe relationship with the torturer was close before or not.

Butadd to that particular issues around relationships and trust.

Thesecan show up as a normal part of the mental illnesses torture causesbut they don’t always. I think tying this kind of… element ofself-isolation and difficulty around personal interaction to thecharacter would add to a story with this kind of relationship.

Accountsfrom survivors of abuse (especially spousal or familial abuse) cangive you an idea how these sorts of difficulties with trust andrelationships manifest. I’d suggest asking @scripttraumasurvivorsfor a source recommendation there though, it’s outside of my area.

Ihope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #torture in fiction #star trek #torturers #writing torturers #behaviour of torturers #forced confession #memory #relay interrogation #sleep deprivation #Fanon #ourfinaldecember #sci fi ask

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morceauoleander · 7 years

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Hey so...... I finish my essay about Ford Cruller and his disorder. Took a while because i was busy but, its here.

Anyone is allowed to me to ask questions about this, I’m all ears. You can also read it on google docs.

So I will start this off by saying this is a very informally written essay- I’m not writing this like I’m turning it into my teacher or something. I just love talking and analyzing stuff (this is also me saying that i love answering questions/talking about Psychonauts stuff….so feel free to ask me questions about this or just talk to me in general) so this is kind of why i decided to do this. I have talked about this before in the past i believe, but on a much smaller scale. So i want to use this essay to explain all my thoughts. I hope that aside from educating readers, that it may also help people with writing their own characters and considering certain things. So let’s get to it!

....

Quick summary on who i will be talking about, Ford Cruller: A well known Psychonaut agent who after having his psyche shattered after an intense Psychic battle, was shunned by the Psychonauts organization as they deemed him unstable and not suited for the job anymore. Ford remains underground in the Whispering Rocks Summer Camp near a large Psitanium deposit, which keeps him mostly stable, allowing him to work in secret. What I will be talking here is Ford’s “disorder” or what we assume to be Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously Multiple Personality Disorder). This is a very controversial disorder for media to explore in characters and story, but Psychonauts’ take on it is different than most. As a person who’s been diagnosed with this disorder for almost three years i wanted to pull apart the writing of this character and go over what is good and what is bad. However I want to make it clear that when i go over the “bad” in no way do i hold the writers of the character up to those facts today, nor do i despise them for it in anyway. This game came out in 2005, information was even more scarce than today and regardless this disorder is painted over with so much misinformation today that I only wish for people to be open minded to learning things.

First i want to quickly go over the comparison of Ford Cruller’s situation to an actual person with DID. The game (as far as i can recall and can find by searching through clips and quotes) never explicitly names a disorder as “Multiple Personality Disorder” or “Dissociative Identity Disorder” but it does refer to Ford’s different selves as “multiple personalities” and let's be real, the description of what Ford goes through is basically describing the disorder- from memory loss to different “personalities”. It is just seen as an effect of the psychic battle Ford went through and is vaguely just called a “disorder”. I would not be surprised if the disorder was kept vague on purpose by the writers. What makes Ford’s writing unique to other media with characters that have DID is that Ford isn’t a villain, or he doesn’t have an “evil” alter who is the main focus of the story. With that alone i give Double Fine my personal thanks for not going down that path. Ford has three alters- a janitor, a chef and an admiral. They are all basically him but as if he was only living under that occupation. Like, instead of being a Ford who had gone through all those Psychonauts adventures, he’s just a Ford who went and got a job as a chef or a janitor. Between all these parts, Ford’s alters do not remember anything between them. However, the psitanium underground is what keeps Ford as stable as possible- without he would lose himself to these other identities and never be able to come back to himself. They seem to exist physically… until he switches to another self, but at the same time this allows him to exist in multiple places. The way Ford’s whole story sounds doesn’t seem bad, to me its probably the best attempt at writing this disorder that i have seen. But there are small things that are immediately incorrect.

Some of the things that are done right though- let’s talk about this first. Major points about the disorder that need to be done right is 1) memory loss 2) definable but not outrageous alters 3) describing it to come from a source of trauma. Memory loss is one key symptom of DID and surprisingly many descriptions found in media don’t capture it well at all. Ford’s memory loss is clearly defined in his experiences, he literally has no memory of his switches. I think that many writers don’t want to focus on it, because it’s not super obvious or important. I guess when your main focus isn’t some serial killer alter you gotta focus on something else. On that, the choice of personalities for Ford’s alters isn’t the worst i have seen but i guess that because I’m so used to seeing that evil no good bad boy alter. It is a bit cliche for them to only be centered around their occupations though, but the way they act isn’t drastic from Ford and none of them change physically from their host’s body. But the idea that an alter suddenly knows how to do a job or all these alters can manage some different/totally unique job is quite false. In the setting of the game, it makes itself more plausible as the alters act as complete separate physical entities from Ford rather than one single body, which is the only reason why it works in this setting. The final plus i can name is that the game gently brought it up as an actual disorder that is caused by trauma. It does get some points wrong, which i will talk about, but it named it as a disorder and its description wasn’t totally inaccurate. Most media fails to look at it at all as anything other than a crazy mental disorder, because much of it starts off by saying such a person is evil or dangerous. However Psychonauts brings up for shortly and says its a disorder that simply made him too unstable to work and was shunned for it, nothing extra and nothing about being dangerous.

As much good as Psychonauts did compared to many other stories there’s no doubt that it’s fictional setting allowed some not so accurate symptoms of the disorder to come into the story. Let’s start with probably the most important thing that was messed up, and messed up by countless other people through the years. Ford was traumatized as an adult/a later age, or well. Not exactly “traumatized” in a traditional sense. The fact that this game used the actions of “psychic abilities” to “break” Ford’s mind kind of cancels out the idea that Ford was traumatized in a way that would make the disorder appear. And while in the game’s context it makes sense, the age range for this disorder is very important for that. A person must be traumatized from ages 5-9. An ongoing abuse/trauma or one time event can cause a young child’s mind to not form a definable personality properly and instead have pieces of identities form in order to cope with specific traumatic situations. In the case of the game, Ford is not that age and it happens with fictional concepts that take the “breaking identity” to a more literal sense, and theres nothing else to say than it’s not accurate and can’t be seen as correct at all. It isn’t as easy as saying they could’ve called it something else and been okay with it…… DID is very specific and its obvious what it is even what the writer avoid saying it specifically. There’s no details that could be silenced in this story that would make it seem like it wasn’t DID without changing it completely, thats just fact.

I believe this is the end of what i have to say-- I had a few more breaks between writing this than i expected, but I think i got across what i wanted to say. As i mentioned none of this was writing to hate on what Double Fine made back in 2005. Its more to explain the disorder next to the game so those who have played the game can maybe understand it in real life a bit more, and possibly educate those curious about writing this disorder.

#psychonauts #ford cruller #long post #mine

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