#It's me. I'm the alter. Posting here in case any of our mutuals are into that? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rin-and-jade · 10 months

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I have only one other alter. And we are pretty much ambivalent to each other. We don’t hate each other, we don’t particularly like each other either. Due to this, I feel as though I’m faking because alters are supposed to be formed to help, to comfort take care or in the case of a persecutor to cause trouble. But she and me don’t do any of these things to each other. When she front sometimes I come ba k to realize she got me in trouble but it’s never for the express purpose of getting me in trouble. Even in the inner world void, we don’t talk to each other, just sometimes see each other. It’s also very isolating because I feel so left out of system positivity posts, as they’re always about how much their system supports them but I have one other person and she doesn’t like me. I feel like I. An never talk about or be positive about my system in system spaces. It’s lonely. What should I do? Is there anything I can do? Am I faking? You don’t have to answer every question I know it’s a lot just any kind of answer would be nice.

My guy, you come here to look for answers, i'm here to do my job by answering any and every questions people give to me,, it doesn't matter if its silly or its unimportant because.. i want to do it for you guys. Also bare with this long explanation, i got to...

When people think of the perfect image of a family or friendship, it all varies but the similarity in general (of how i think) is everything being as functional and as happy as possible all the time, right? I wish, that only exists in fiction sadly. It does not work that way in real life (or to an extent) as not everyone can be friends with each other and thats fine.

I hope you would appreciate me telling my own relationships with others-- i'll give you one,, this one's a secondary keeper, it's a he, so in short he and i are sort of "meh" with each other,, sometimes he gets me in trouble or i get him or others in trouble,, we do not click at all in a discussion or in a debate as we got our own opinions and morals. Does this makes us perfect? No it doesn't. Does it also means we're not doing the things we're supposed to? No, we do our work. Even though it is true that parts are created to be of help, its only half of the truth,, and the even trickier thing is if you don't see things from a different perspective, it will make people assume that the "help" has one definitive meaning and form. This is untrue.

If you think of love, what comes to your mind at first,, is it physical touch like hugs? Maybe being supportive? Attentive? Meeting your emotional needs? Physical needs?? If a guardian love its child, it may not be able to sacrifice time to play together or go somewhere and have fun, be it either too busy working to meet your needs or other problems,, does this means the guardian doesn't love you because not being with you all the time? No. Do you wish it talks with you more? Probably yes. If love can comes in many form, so does with help.

Back to my relation with the secondary keeper, we do not fare well with each other and i BARELY talk to him,, but taking account of his or my actions, mutually agree to work together in solving (because i'd just push him away i couldn't care that much) and keeping an eye out of each other is still a form of help, not what anyone would ask for but needed. Do we go along well? No. But sure we do still have our own ways of being a help. It is alright to have fights, to have enemies, to not know each other despite living in one same body for years-- it is also okay if everyone goes along with each other and barely fight and support each other pretty often,, everyone's dynamic look different, so in conclusion, you are not faking for having it differently.

- j

#did #actually did #did community #did osdd #sysblr #janswersask

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my-breakup-playlist · 8 months

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I've heard people with OCD talk about intrusive thoughts that take the form of a constant debilitating fear that you're secretly [a child abuser/a murderer/etc] and that you just didn't notice it yet, or that you're so deep in denial that you even managed to fool yourself.

I lived in constant fear that I was mentally/emotionally abusing my ex. To the point where I would regularly check with mutual friends and with our therapist, to see if there were any red flags-- hell, even any pink flags-- in my behavior that I needed to correct. Always the answer was no (but what if I'm just that good at covering my tracks, the fear says--)

He called me abusive.

Even then, our therapist said that no, I wasn't. Not even close.

And as many times as he said it, he only ever named two behaviors. Withholding affection (by 'affection' he meant specifically, explicitly, 'sex'-- to the point that I had to start marking sex on a calendar every time it happened, just so i had physical evidence that it hadn't in fact been months since the last instance) and invading his privacy (asking him to explain his thought process was deemed to be surveiling behavior-- I didn't touch his phone, I didn't go into his office or get on his computer except to play video games on it, always with his permission. His feelings, though-- those were off limits to me.)

Maybe that's some DARVO shit. I know that him calling it abuse actively played into those fears that I had confessed to him. He knew that calling it that was a sure-fire way to shut me down, and it always worked (even if he wasn't doing it intentionally, it got results, so why stop?)

Even now, more than a year since I last saw him face to face, I'm still wrestling with that fear.

Did I send an online order to his house because I was careless with autofill, or was that some secret subliminal plot to hurt him? Did I screw myself over financially with a bureaucratic blunder because I made a dumb mistake while stressed, or was it a cunning plot?

Which is dumb, because I know the answer. I was there.

But let's walk down that road for a minute. Let's say I've got a Tyler Durdan situation going on and I'm secretly, subconsciously doing these things to fuck with him.

I would have landed myself the single most milquetoast evil alter at the offensive-DID-stereotypes factory, if the most diabolical thing it can think of is to send him shampoo and request he log on to the BMV website. Worst case, he... What? Thinks about me in annoyance for a day? At worst, I've robbed him of the hour it takes to drive to my mom's house and back to drop something off.

I'm not contacting him directly or showing up at his house, in respect to the boundaries he set.

And the thing is? Maybe he's calling it abuse anyway. Maybe he's telling his friends and family that I'm actively terrorizing him or something. But even if he is, that's a him issue. Because of he wants to make me into a boogeyman, then there's nothing I can actually do to convince him otherwise. Every act and accident will be cast in the worst possible light anyway, regardless of reality.

Which is why I'm posting this here.

Because I tend to re-read these posts when I get twisted into knots about it all, and also because I'm probably not the only one who has this particular flavor of fucked up in a relationship. Maybe it'll help them, or future me.

Here's hoping.

#the way things break down #slow progress is still progress

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maverick-werewolf · 5 years

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Hello! I'm trying to write a werewolf story, but I'm too worried about things we see in every single one (painful transformations, silver weakness, it's a curse, etc), so I'm trying to twist them kind of (painless transformations but you feel the beast fighting for your mind, silver weakness is a myth, it's a rare virus spreading by blood, etc), 'cause "all cliches and predictability are bad" but I never saw anything about cliches that are necessary to the story. Is there any such thing?

Ooh, a fun question! Thank you for asking. Get ready for a long answer! I have a lot of thoughts on this.

I already wrote one very big post on werewolf tropes we commonly see in fiction, and which ones I do and do not like. That’ll help a lot on this topic! But I have more to say, in regard to the points you brought up.

To me, a werewolf is - by definition - a variety of types of people that can, in different ways, turn into a wolf or wolf-man hybrid…

But also, to me, a lot of the fun can get removed with people trying to subvert too many of the fun werewolf tropes we’re familiar with today. The good ones, I mean. Especially the ones that came from folklore, or at least have an amount of basis in some legends.

For instance, painful transformations do have basis, though of course that wasn’t always the case, and I am very biased in that I love them - but non-painful ones and/or mental ones also sound very fun! Personally, I do both.

More than that, though, today we have so many people throwing around the word and idea of subversion that, frankly, almost none of the “classic” werewolf stuff remains. Just to use the examples you gave-

In quite a lot of things today (Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, Warcraft, Twilight [with both the retconned “we’re not actually werewolves” Quileutes and the “children of the moon”], and a lot more), werewolves are not sensitive to silver and that’s 100% a myth. Now, I don’t mind that at all, frankly, because a lot of very stupid and silly and preposterous things result from the Hollywood contrived silver weakness concept, which was never remotely in folklore, but I also think it can be done well and can be fun if properly worked into a setting (I myself use this trope in my main werewolf setting and series, heavily worked into lore so it isn’t just a random weakness).

Here’s the big one for me, though. A curse or a disease - which way should it be handled, and which one might be considered cliche? This is a can of worms for me.

First off, the concept of being a werewolf very much started off as a wide variety of things - a curse, a blessing, something one was born with, some other type of magical ability…

And being a werewolf was never, in folklore, considered a disease. This is completely a modern concept, and one that basically everyone everywhere uses today thanks to the Early Modern period and later concepts. This is a huge topic I could go into even more detail about.

Be it a disease spread by bite and/or through saliva, a disease spread by bite or scratch (ugh, the scratch thing…), a disease spread through blood, an experimental “disease” caused by “science gone wrong,” a disease spread through sex (don’t get me started, though, really)…

Today, it is pretty much always called a “disease.” This is especially when it is associated with madness and/or bloodlust. This is where the word lycanthropy first comes from - in the Early Modern period, people called those suffering with the “insanity” of being a werewolf were said to have lycanthropy. Later, this term was picked up by popular culture, so the term we still have today for people with certain types of mental illnesses is “clinical lycanthropy.”

Most pop culture today tends to turn lycanthropy into a disease instead of a curse. Even in terms of fantasy settings where one might think of it as a curse, it’s still largely considered a disease. D&D, for instance; it’s called an affliction, a disease, etc. Look on the wiki of any number of modern things with werewolves in them and it’ll refer to it as a disease first, if it refers to it as a curse at all, and many paranormal TV shows and the like will have some kind of reference to various bodily fluids in terms of how it’s spread/how it works/what it’s infecting.

Can it be both a curse and a disease, in a way? Yes, definitely! I actually kind of prefer it that way, myself. Though if I had to pick just one, I would pick curse, personally. I also prefer a less scientific explanation than “just” a disease, more often than not, though that’s just me - especially if it starts turning into some kind of STD or something… Bluh.

Details, though. In my setting, just to clear things up, I refer to it as both a curse and a disease. It is, of course, in this case, a setting in ancient transitioning into medieval times, so they wouldn’t really have a more scientific explanation, but some people are looking for a more logical one sometimes. Anyway, I do have other werewolves in other settings that are done differently, so don’t take all those ramblings as meaning that I only like werewolves done one way.

There are lots of ways someone can become a werewolf in folklore. And there are lots of reasons that werewolf might transform.

So, ultimately, you might be more unique in terms of werewolves if you dialed it back toward some of the “classic” “tropes,” like making it more of a mysterious curse.

But that, of course, is 100% up to you! There is no right or wrong way to tell a story that you want to tell. There are just people who’ll tell you which way they would prefer it told. Like me! I can definitely tell you how I prefer a werewolf story handled, and I’m very flattered you’d ask me for my thoughts on it.

And I will say this emphatically, while we’re at it - I love what most people call “cliches.” They are cliches because they are fun and they work. I am a classicist. A traditionalist. I love traditional stories, storytelling, and classical myths, folklore, and - generally - tropes, at least and especially when it comes to things like monsters.

Werewolves, vampires, dragons, elves, dwarves - I like the classics. I think people trying to subvert them too much is creating a world in which we are losing perception of what those things were in folklore and what they were meant to be and represent, and that’s pretty tragic to me, because now everyone is subverting. That’s a big part of my research and academic work.

People cry “cliche, cliche!” but there is no cliche. Because you can hardly find the stuff that is based on what used to be considered cliche anymore, since everyone is scared of being considered “cliche,” and thus are all mutually adopting new cliches in attempts to avoid the older ones.

That being said, sometimes it’s cool when people swap things up, of course, and I definitely don’t want to shoot anyone down!

I also would argue that cliches don’t necessarily mean predictability. A “cliche” done well is a beautiful thing. It’s all about the storytelling. It’s much more about that than the idea of “cliches” themselves.

So let’s reframe the word “predictability” - think of it as “familiarity.” Familiarity can be a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. I think some familiarity, at least, is a good thing. Because if you can recognize a werewolf as a werewolf, then that’s good. If it’s so different people don’t even recognize it as a werewolf, I kind of start losing interest, personally.

I don’t like “our [creatures] are different,” but that is just me.

Getting back on track - are there any werewolf tropes necessary to a story? Completely an opinion piece.

In my opinion? I don’t think so. I think you can make some radically different werewolves that are still werewolves and they’d be neat. BUT I have basically never seen this done, and my favorite werewolves remain ones that others might consider “cliche.”

Is it necessary to have a werewolf that howls at the moon? Absolutely not. Is it more fun than one that doesn’t? It very well might be. Is it necessary to have the werewolf be based in magic instead of science? Nope! Is it necessary to have being a werewolf be based in some kind of disease? Absolutely not. Is it better to have werewolves as rare monsters or as a plague sweeping across the earth? I can certainly tell you I deeply detest werewolves being turned into the zombie plague and/or plague rats, but hey, some people juggle geese.

A whole ‘nother can of worms is if there are cliches necessary to the storytelling itself and progression of the werewolf character(s), or werewolves as monsters within the setting itself if you are not telling a story from a werewolf POV. I’d pretty much reiterate what I said above in that case, too.

If we get technical, no, recognizable tropes are by no means necessary. If we get personal, I wouldn’t call them necessary, but they are familiarity and they are a personal preference - so I rather like at least a few of them.

Oh my goodness, this is a long post. Quite a bit of rambling! Sorry about that. Hopefully some of this was/is helpful, though! Please feel free to shoot me any followup questions this might’ve spawned, I could talk about this all day. :D Plus I totally feel like I left tons of things out, somehow.

Bottom line, though?

Tell your story the way you want to tell it. That is the most important part. Don’t feel like you have to alter something just because someone somewhere might call it “cliche.” Even if they think that, they are likely to enjoy it, anyway!

And ultimately, your story is yours; do what you want with it and have fun. Don’t let anyone anywhere tell you something you do is going to be bad just because of a silly term like “cliche.”

A “cliche” story can be just as amazing or just as terrible as a wildly original one. It all depends on how you tell it. And if you enjoy telling it, and tell it the way you want to instead of letting anyone strongarm you into altering things from your vision, it will be a story well told.

#asks #anonymous #werewolf #werewolves #folklore #lycanthropy #lycanthro #lycanthrope #wolf man #wolfmen #creative writing #fiction writing #writing topics #tropes #cliches

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bthump · 5 years

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I'm pretty sure you've already talked about this but, I want to know your opinion on guts letting go of his obsession with griffith? In one of berserks chapters when they ask his opinion about hawk of light he answers with a smile so people think that he's gotten over it

Extremely short answer: if that’s chapter 345 you’re referring to Guts isn’t smiling in a single one of his panels after he gets asked about Griffith, in fact he has a pretty pronounced :/ face throughout, so that’s just inaccurate. If it’s a different scene, then I have no memory of Guts being asked about the ~Hawk of Light~ any other time so idk lol.

Now, here’s the long answer. I wrote it out last night and decided it was too late to post. Now that the new chapter raws have come out, well, idk if anything here is straight up contradicted now (i’m being pretty vague anyway), but bear in mind that I wrote this before seeing them.

This is a tricky topic for me ngl, like this is the exact question that fucks me up when it comes to my hopes and fears for Berserk.

Is Guts going to get over his obsession with Griffith and genuinely move on?

But as of right now my answer is an emphatic no, Guts is not over his obsession yet. After his last climactic test of resolve when he got in a boat on the docks we saw Guts’ residual feelings loud and clear. Guts’ eyes meeting Griffith’s across a vast distance, the Beast of Darkness taunting him in his subconscious and calling Griffith “the true light that burns us,” and Guts thinking to himself on the boat, “when this journey’s over, I’ll…” before flashing to an image of Griffith.

It would just be straight up poor storytelling if somewhere between Guts ruminating on the boat after the sea god fight and landing at Elfhelm he’d conquered his obsession off-screen and now he’s totally “over it.”

What I think is possible, if shitty, is Guts conquering his obsession at some point in the future in a climactic and conclusive way - after backsliding first. Like let’s be real here, all this constant foreshadowing about the armour and the Beast of Darkness and Guts ignoring various warning signs etc isn’t going nowhere. Guts is going to lose himself to the armour and fight Griffith. That’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.

After that happens I will grant that there is a chance we’re headed for something along the lines of the power of rpg group friendship and/or het love saving the day and Guts’ soul, bringing him back from the armour, and then Guts conquers his obsession properly and… Griffith is defeated in some way, quite possibly because after everything he’s failed to overcome his own feelings. Might be an end of his own making, if that’s the case. Could be by Casca’s hand. Guts could still easily die in this scenario, but yk, it’d be bittersweet bc he dies with his humanity intact or whatever.

Conversely, what I want to happen, what I think would be good, emotionally impactful and thematically resonant writing, is Guts being forced to confront and untangle his feelings for Griffith instead of just trying to overcome them. I want Guts’ apparent inner conflict of Griffith/revenge/Beast of Darkness vs Casca/rpg group/humanity to ultimately turn out to be overly simplistic bullshit. I want Guts’ attempt to get over Griffith to have been misguided from the start, another one of his many ultimately futile and misguided attempts to repress painful and complex feelings through the pursuit of a goal.

I think the most satisfying ending is one where Guts finally confronts his mixed feelings for Griffith and untangles them, and finds the positive feelings still have value. I want the remains of their intense world-altering relationship to go hand in hand with the tattered remnants of their respective humanities. I want Guts to emotionally connect with Griffith and his conveniently unfrozen heart during their final confrontation so they can finally understand each other and their feelings and give readers a real cathartic conclusion to their relationship while probably providing an intimate emotional parallel to whatever world changing metaphysical bullshit is also going on.

Like not only do I not want Guts to move on, I want Guts’ failure to move on to mirror Griffith’s failure to move on and be an essential piece of a non-tragic ending. I want Guts’ lingering positive feelings for Griffith to be what save him from the armour, or from losing his soul to the temptation of revenge, or what the fuck ever.

I want their Golden Age relationship to still have a positive impact on the story, basically.

Essentially my question when it comes to the future of Berserk isn’t Will Guts get over Griffith? but rather Should Guts get over Griffith? And I want the answer to be no.

Idk. I can honestly see good arguments either way lol. It’s frustrating, for every great argument I come up with that supports Guts examining his complicated contradictory feelings and untangling them rather than lumping them together and getting over them, I think of an argument that supports Guts getting over Griffith entirely as intended genuine personal growth. And vice versa, for that matter.

But no matter which option is more likely at this point, I absolutely 100% think that Guts confronting his feelings instead of getting over them is by far better writing. It’s less contradictory, it’s more interesting, it’s narratively symmetrical (in that Guts and Griffith and their mutual failed attempts to get over their residual feelings would mirror each other), their relationship’s got more emotional grounding and build up than Guts and a group of people who barely know him, or Guts and a woman who only even entered into a relationship because Miura wanted more Eclipse drama, it’s more thematically resonant*, and imo it’s absolutely necessary to any emotionally satisfying ending.

Also like, I want to emphasize that this doesn’t mean Guts needs to go “oh shit I’ve been wrong the whole time I should’ve been dealing with my Griffith related feelings instead of trying to fix Casca, wow I fucked up” lol. Literally all it would take is a) Elfhelm turns out to be a bust (which I think is very likely anyway), and b) the emotions between Griffith and Guts amount to something positive as they conflict. This can be anything from smthn life saving to a moment of understanding and personal fulfillment to something that affects the world in a more yk epic metaphysical way to saving souls, to one or both dying smiling.

I just need something, you know?

*I use this phrase a lot lol but what I mean specifically here is that Guts and Griffith’s relationship has been our main illustration of the impact of relationships in contrast to isolating dreams, and I think it would be more powerful to maintain their relationship as our illustration of that theme - true light, the impact of being known and valued, love and hate and need for connection, humanity vs monstrosity - than to swap it out with a different relationship in the last fifth of the story or whatever, and depict Guts and Griffith’s confrontation without that intense, complex emotion fueling it.

#Anonymous #ask #a #b #theme: speculation #theme: ending #theme: true light #character: guts #theme: relationships as personal growth

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