why are leftists on this website unironically complaining about Feminist Killjoys gently reminding everyone that a movie on a corporate IP is trying to sell you something. The movie being good or fun does not mean that it's primary purpose is not to create or increase cultural awareness and good will with consumers so that they can sell something to you

Things I wish more writers understood about PTSD

Traumatic events don't always lead to PTSD. Two people can experience the exact same traumatic event, and one can go to work the next day shaken up but otherwise alright, while the other still has trouble functioning normally two years down the line. This is a fact that's been studied to death in psychology, but we're still no closer to figuring out why this discrepancy exists. So no, that character who experienced a very traumatic event and wasn't traumatized to your liking wasn't actually 'unrealistic'; they just didn't live up to your preconception of how trauma is supposed to effect people.

There is no flaw or 'weakness' in a person's temprament or personality construction that will make them more likely to develop PTSD, and likewise, people who don't develop PTSD are not inherently 'tougher'. PTSD is not the kind of illness you can blame on the person who suffers from it; human beings are more complicated than that. Furthermore, people who don't develop PTSD from a traumatic event exist, in fact they're very common, and while they don't develop that precise, largely arbitrary set of symptoms, they are still likely to be deeply affected by the event/s. Their experiences are no less real than those of their counterparts.

Sometimes, a person who experienced a traumatic even didn't develop PTSD afterwards - because they already had it. There are lots of people who go into therapy following a traumatic event only to discover they've been experiencing the symptoms of PTSD for years, following a previous unrelated traumatic event. This is especially common for people who had C-PTSD beforehand. Since PTSD can often manifest in very subtle ways, and since people are likely to 'mask' symptoms as a way to keep judgement or prying at bay, this scenario is not particularly uncommon.

PTSD doesn't always develop immediately following the traumatic event. PTSD can take any amount of time to develop. For most people, it takes around 3 months for symptoms to appear, but for a lot of people, the symptoms of PTSD do not appear for many months, even years after the event/s. This usually has something to do with the memory issues that can arise after trauma, and also might be affected by how a person conceptualizes the 'threat level' over time.

People with PTSD are not 'broken'; people with PTSD can be treated. Human beings aren't inanimate objects; we're living beings, graced with this incredible ability to adapt, grow and change. While there is no 'cure' for PTSD, there are loads of types of psychotherapy and medications that help to alleviate symptoms, and many people with this disorder are able to live fulfilling lives despite the diagnosis. Recovery is never out of the question, no matter how severe a person's symptoms might be. PTSD or not, I for one have yet to encounter anyone I would ever consider irrevocably 'broken'.

People with PTSD don't all experience the same symptoms. I feel like it needs to be said, because there is a bit of a 'type' in fiction, isn't there? And this can be incredibly disheartening to read for someone whose PTSD doesn't align with the way it is constantly shown to 'normally' manifest. In reality, PTSD is a very complex disorder, which might express itself in a wide breadth of different ways, and people handle their symptoms using a wide breadth of different methods. You'd be hard pressed to find two people who are completely alike in this regard.

Perpetrators of violence are just as likely to develop PTSD as their victims. This is one of those things I learned though my torture research escapades, and I've found it applies to other violent crimes as well, such as violent assault and murder. It's not a particularly nice fact to know if you want to maintain your straightforward good-vs-evil worldview, but alas, the real world is grim and complicated. There is actually a name for this type of PTSD, and it is Participation-Induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PI-PTSD), or perpetrator trauma. PTSD does not discriminate, and you're not safe from it just because you're not on the recieving end.

People with PTSD aren't automatically more violent. I don't know why this myth has to be so prominent with every single mental illness ever, but like, yeah, its not true for this one either.

this might be a controversial take but speaking as someone with ocd, i don't believe ishmael has textbook ocd. she has something else. ocd is broadly an anxiety disorder that focuses on unreasonable intrusive thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive calming behaviors (compulsions). ishmael's behavior, from what we've seen, doesn't really line up with my experiences... but sinclair's does.

ishmael's file says that she "suffers from an obsessive-compulsive neurosis", which is different from the ruminating anxiety disorder that ocd is. ishmael is, yes, obsessed with an extremely fucking traumatic event that very much did happen to her, and is, yes, compelled to make things right somehow by spending years searching for any other survivors as well as seeking revenge. but i don't believe what's going on in ishmael's head is the same sort of persistent intrusive thoughts + repetitive behavior that characterizes ocd. sinclair is a way closer example to that - he worries excessively and chews on his fingers to calm himself down, even though it's not actually productive and does in fact hurt him more.

what i think ishmael has, rather than ocd, is a parallel to ahab's monomania, which is not a diagnosis that really exists anymore but was a thing at the time moby dick was written. she's single-minded, fixated on her goal. we're seeing her kill everything in her path, almost indiscriminately, to try and get to (presumably) ahab. she's obsessed with vengeance and wants to kill ahab just as ahab wanted to kill that whale. it's more likely that her symptoms are ptsd, and that ptsd has gone untreated for so long that it's now manifesting as sheer rage.

there's a chance that she does suffer from, say, intrusive thoughts about the whale, or about her crew members dying in front of her, and that she has compulsions we don't see. up until verg announced they were going to u corp, ishmael had been very put together, very rational. we're seeing her come apart at the seams now and she's no longer behaving logically as she had before. she's entirely ruled by this obsession. but in my experience ocd isn't usually about just one thing, though i've had extended periods of focus on one particular theme.

we're only partway through the canto so my opinion here very well might change depending on how things go! but i don't think the same files that list faust's problem as being "insufferable" and gregor's as "repulsive" are a reliable medical diagnosis, even if ishmael's appears similar to one.

Hi Betts! <3 Can you tell us more about your craft process on how you pick a voice for a piece? I usually start plotting a story when I see or read something that makes me think, "That. That's what I want." But often I struggle to translate that feeling into a particular narration style, especially something that feels doable for more than 20k.

ah, you've touched on the most important and most difficult-to-articulate part of my writing process.

so first i want to say that you never *have* to change your voice or style. i would say most writers basically only use one voice, theirs, and they stick to it. if you're happy with the way you're writing, don't feel obligated to switch it up because you think you have to have major variation in that regard.

however, voice is pretty integral to my writing. if i can grasp the voice of a character, i know everything about them. there's minimal conscious invention in my characters. they have a voice and therefore they exist more or less fully formed, and could become the protagonist or narrator of their own story. in fact this sometimes bites me in the ass, because when i find a new character, i always want to switch into their POV. and that makes whatever i'm working on longer and more complicated, when i'm trying to keep it short and simple.

when i say "voice" i don't mean it as some fancy craft term. i mean i can actually hear their voice in my head. that's something they don't put in the welcome packet when you get diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. a lot of people assume "hearing voices" means audio hallucinations, but it can actually just mean harboring the inner monologue of other people in your head, knowing it's nothing more than cognitive ventriloquism. if you have this capability, congratulations. you have a mild positive psychotic symptom extremely conducive to creativity. if you don't, a lot of what i'm saying probably doesn't make any sense.

there's a lot of overlap between high creative output and what i call diet coke psychosis. as in, you may have all the flavor of a psychotic disorder (creativity!) and none of the calories (the agonies).

so how do i find new voices? actors.

when i binge the filmography of an actor, it's to appease an obsession, yes, but there's also a creative practicality to it, in that they can often serve as the foundation of a new voice. it usually begins with simple facecasting (which is another thing not everyone does), but often morphs a step beyond that, where you have the actor's real voice playing a character you've created. and then that, after months or years or tens of thousands of words, eventually develops into a whole-ass new person. and once you have that, you can add that voice to your roster and toss them into other stories.

in addition to filmographies, i also binge actor interviews. seasoned actors have developed a persona, so they have an ample filmography but their interviews are less useful. but actors who are fairly new and don't have many titles under their belt yet have no idea how to be famous, and that's where the gold is.

i also owe a lot to gimmick interviews like when actors have to answer questions while being attacked by puppies. no one can maintain a persona when puppies are crawling all over them.

you know how when you're around someone long enough you can pick up their mannerisms? and you know how sometimes you can daydream about being interviewed for no apparent reason? my process of finding a voice is a combination of those things. maybe i'm making it more complicated than it is. maybe it's more common than i'm giving it credit for. but it's very difficult to consciously describe unconscious processes.

a lot of writers base characters off of people they know. i actively try not to do that, not because i think it's wrong but because it's going to happen anyway, and if i push that instinct away, what bleeds in is what i can't keep out, and what i can't keep out is what needs to be there. so every voice is an actor playing the character of someone who was once very dear to me. (i almost never create characters based on people actively in my life.)

and, of course, i have to put a piece of myself in each character too. i have to find some personal connection, usually a question i have about myself and my life that i think only they can answer through the course of their journey. i have to be curious about them. what do we have in common? what don't we have in common?

as to your question about sustainability over 20k, one challenge i've given myself these past couple years is the way a character changes and develops over decades or maybe their entire life. a voice doesn't always have to be consistent, especially if your story takes place over a long time. in some cases whatever a voice turns into over the course of a story is just the way it needs to be, but sometimes you have to pull a "he wouldn't fucking say that" and go back to shuffle sentences around a bit.

i also think a lot of what i'm saying applies mostly to dialogue and first person. i consider first person basically a very long monologue, whereas i think third person i think has a lot more elasticity, and you can move around more easily in the closeness and distance of narration. i think that elasticity is what makes third person more comfortable for a lot of writers.

voice is a big thing deployed in a little way. it's the difference between "don't have" and "haven't got." it's whether they're more conducive to ending thoughts with a hard stop or connecting them with "and." but it's also in the lies they tell themselves to get by, and what they think the conflict is versus what the conflict really is, and maybe what they're trying to persuade us of. a voice is inherently rhetorical.

i hope some of this makes sense. and because this has gotten long, i've provided some examples from my novel in progress, rabbit's blood, under the cut!

i open the novel in third omniscient, which i absolutely hated because it's antithetical to everything i've described here, but it got the job done. whether i'll keep it through to later drafts remains to be seen.

On November 9, 1951, Mary Mills goes into labor. Her husband Duke is not present. She hasn’t seen him since she announced to him that she was pregnant with twins. In Duke’s stead, her oldest son Wyatt, four years old, waits at her bedside to meet his brothers. Wise beyond his years, he understood immediately that his father had abandoned them. After these past several months watching his mother’s grief and fear and anger rise as she slowly came to accept the truth, he vows now to dedicate his life to doing the right thing.

after this, the twins are born, skip and birdie. in subsequent chapters, we move into first person.

here's birdie at 60ish years old in the present. he's spent the past 10 years driving around the country robbing banks with his daughter mel.

It took us a long time to realize robbing tellers was a stupid idea. Tellers only ever have a couple thousand in their drawers. Not even worth it to go in guns blazing, get all the money from all the drawers and hold everybody hostage until the vault opens. One, that’s mean. Two, the vault might not have much either. On a bad day, you’ll walk away with ten, twenty grand, meanwhile half a dozen people are going to be traumatized for life, and if you get caught, your ass is in jail for a minimum of seven years. The government doesn’t give a fuck about banks losing money, but they get real angry when you put a gun in somebody’s face. That is, unless they’re the ones who gave it to you.

here's birdie reflecting on the past and falling in love with mel's mother, anita.

I’d gotten good at following her orders, so when she said, “Kiss me,” I said, “Yes, ma’am,” and I did. It was sweet at first, which made me think she was shy, that maybe this was her first kiss, but that didn’t last long. Passion wasn’t something I’d ever associated with myself and definitely didn’t associate with her, but we brought it out in each other alongside all the other dark and wild things.

this is birdie's son johnny reflecting on how much he hates his father. he's 30ish in the present timeline.

For my entire life my father had a goatee like the devil and blond hair that had turned mostly white by the time he was forty. He was thin, wiry, had the defensive posture of a surly teenager smoking outside of school. Mom, Mel, and I all looked alike, but Birdie looked like some guy who’d just wandered into our house.

and here's mel, also 30s, in the present. birdie has decided to part ways with her and this is the aftermath, where mel hooks up with a showgirl and takes her to breakfast the next morning.

Sara and I have breakfast at the Denny’s on the Strip which is maybe my favorite Denny’s in the country, and that’s saying something. I ask her lots of questions about microbiology, and to be polite she asks me some questions too, about my occupation and where I’m from and all that, but I evade them because she’s not really interested in my answers and I’m not interested in giving them. She’s twenty or twenty-two or something like that and that means she just wants to be the center of somebody’s attention, somebody she thinks is bigger than her, and that’s something I can offer. 

some things to note:

in the first excerpt, you'll notice a lack of contractions. that's because it's just my voice and i don't use a lot of contractions. because neurodivergence i guess, i don't know. there's also a higher register here, which you can tell by the variation of the sentences and the position of the clauses.

i based birdie off my father but birdie's voice isn't my dad's voice. that said, my dad was a habitual lecturer and so birdie is prone to Explaining Things. he also lobs off subjects of sentences sometimes and because he's spent his life running from the law, he's somewhat defensive and that comes out in a kind of aura of persuasion.

he's much more forthright when reflecting, and i think that can be found in the facts he's putting down over the opinions he offers in the present. when reflecting, he's much more vulnerable.

as far as johnny goes, i'm still working on him. i dragged him over from a different project and i'm reworking him. in the other project, he was extremely jaded and cold, and his narration style was direct and somewhat distant. some of that will carry over, but i also want to make him slightly more pathetic and immature.

mel is very reluctant to end sentences, so i try to keep them going for as long as i can. she also rambles, has a good sense of humor, and is extremely intelligent.

okay i've worked way way way too long on this, so i'm just going to hit post and hope it offers a little insight. also, happy to talk more about rabbit's blood and my process of writing it if anyone is interested.

i think the last few years have really destroyed any understanding of the work politics actually is. it's not as simple as having a particular position on an issue and being in office. so many people think biden and the democrats can just codify roe, or cancel student debt, or revamp our healthcare system, but they choose not to and instead sit on their hands. and i think bernie plays into that completely. politics is work, and it takes time. it's not as simple as "congress should do x" and "biden should do y" the way he tweets that it is. and you'd think he'd know that, being a congressman for this many years, but he doesn't seem to care. and the way he's convinced young people that it is as easy as tweeting about it and the democrats are just choosing to do nothing has done so much damage. our system has never worked like that. you can hate our system (believe me, i do), but you can't change the fact that it is what we have right now. that's what i think a lot of people just choose to misunderstand/ignore.

Yes, this exactly. The social media-ization/virtual gamification of society has done tremendous damage in a lot of places, but perhaps especially in politics. Whether it's Trump tweeting/Truth Socialing an endless stream of inflammatory fascist garbage, or the Online Leftists thinking that endless tweets attacking the Democrats counts as an actual policy platform/constructive political engagement, it has drastically reduced and degraded American civil society's understanding of basic democratic functions, at a time when they're desperately needed. Now, so I don't sound TOTALLY like an old curmudgeon ranting on a porch (although it's probably too late for that, lbr), this isn't altogether the fault of social media. It's just a tool that society chooses to use in a way that is convenient for it, and offers a way to easily magnify and accelerate trends that already exist in real life. However, the idea that you can just post a Tweet and be done with it is absolutely one of the worst misconceptions about how the American political system works, and yes, Bernie is very guilty of the idea that you can just use the right hashtags and that will something something cause everything to magically fix itself, or would if the Democrats cared enough to try. Etc.

It's the same thing as when he spends his time in an online echo chamber that is predisposed to agree with him anyway (hence all his constant Guardian op-eds on obvious subjects, as I was talking about in the last post), is not going to challenge him, and allows him to look like he's talking about it/drawing attention in a productive way. Because his fans all want to look like the Best Bernie Supporter, they also take his rhetoric, aggrandize it as much as possible, and redistribute it in a way to make sure that everyone knows THEY ARE COMMITTED TO THIS, THEY ARE POSTING ANGRILY ABOUT IT ON TWITTER! WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM THEM?!?!

Obviously, this is a symptom of the total collapse of ordinary politics and civil society that has taken place in America throughout the Trump years, and which we are likely to take decades, if ever, to fully recover from. It's not Bernie's fault alone, or entirely the fault of his fans, even the loudest and most obnoxious ones. They're just participating in what seems like the only way to do things, especially since Trump literally did make policy by posting a deranged tweet and expecting his administration to implement it. But for the last time: a left-wing version of Trump is not a good thing, and we don't need to make the same mistakes just because they're easy, comfortable, involve no substantial challenge of our pre-existing views or venturing outside our comfort zone, and don't, in the end, actually change anything or help anyone. So. Yes.

Hello. I will be grateful for your reply. Do you think there is a magical reason for my condition? The fact is that I was attacked by laziness. It so happens that there is quite a lot of free time now, but I put everything off for later - not only runes and rituals, but also certain household chores, self-care, the same fitness, cosmetology. As for the runes, if they used to always work for me with a bang, now I approach the launch of any formula for a very long time - then there is no desire, then there is time)In general, the question is - what could be the reason for such a situation and what to do about it in your opinion? With respect to you, your admirer.❤️

There's no reason to assume magic first and foremost. The world moves in mysterious ways, but something like....95% of it is predictable.

You could just be bored. That happens. You lose interest in something and then the attention is gone. The larger option may be to change up your schedule or add something new to your routine or otherwise give into the lack of motivation. It's happened to me before and will again, but that's largely symptomatic. Speaking of symptoms...

If it bothers you enough to ask advice from strangers online, make an appointment with a mental health professional. I'd recommend a seeing a therapist, but dial up your insurance and see who's in your area and in your personal pay bracket. The higher likelihood of the nature of your problem is that you're in a mental health downswing. Anhedonia's a common symptom in a variety of different possible flavors of the unable-to-attend-to-own-needs variety, so the best way to identify what's up is to get a professional to take a look and start a plan up with you.

It's very easy to romanticize what's going on in our lives, but I've often found that identification of a root cause works most effectively when you start off grounded in practicality. Magic can be great for symptom management when new things pop up, but a witch is in charge of your own craft, and often leaves gaps where one isn't an expert. If the man at the head of the ship isn't a captain, they shouldn't be steering. If the man is inspecting the plumbing, they should be a plumber. You're not a doctor. I'm not a doctor. Ask someone who knows what they're doing, make a plan with them, then try to see what spells and sympathetic rituals help you stick to what you learn. If you want to find a possible magical reason you feel unwilling to complete self care and enrichment tasks afterwards, just hit the problem from both ends rather than just magically.

Laziness doesn't exist, but barriers to completing tasks do. Best of luck,

~cha cha slides into the room~

May I ask about some shadow knight angst or shadow king angst ?????? Also thanks for sharing your OC you’re very passionate about them and it’s good to see writers happy about their creations.

~Cha cha slides out of the room~

First off, I'm so glad you enjoyed my endless ramblings about her. I am so passionate about this character I forgot I made her an entire pin board that's fokin massive, so feel free to breeze through that if it's to your liking.

Now for some Shadow Knight angst... [friendly reminder I am not a mental health expert, most of what I touch upon in this post comes from wikipedia deep dives and personal experiences. DO NOT take any of what I say here as professional advice or diagnoses, I am literally just a freakazoid on the internet]

Something I've definitely ruminated on but never made a coherent post about is how shadow knights probably struggle a LOT with derealization/depersonalization. I mean, both of them are potential symptoms one might experience after prolonged trauma, stress, or anxiety like say being dragged into literal hell and raised into undeath and then forced to kill that which you love most. Furthermore, if Gene fucked with their memories at all then they have even more doubts. And on top of all of that the time distortion from the Nether makes it even harder to know what's real or not. How can you be sure of what's real and what isn't if you don't even know how long you've been gone from the overworld?

I imagine Vincent and Gene struggle with it the most. Both of them have been very direct puppets for the Shadow King, Gene especially, and likely struggle with the feeling of their body not being their own. Sometimes Gene is feeling perfectly fine, just his usual self, but then something... changes. He isn't sure what or why, but the world is blurry and he can't feel his own breathing and his body feels limp but he can see it still moving. He keeps speaking but his voice doesn't sound like his own, at least internally.

Vincent learned to deal with this... problem on his own. He says he's been alive for 100 years, but even he's unsure of that number. He's been around for a long time, and sometimes the things he says aren't true to the time he's in anymore. Technology and understanding changes, and while he can keep up with it sometimes, other times he can't. He'll ask about the latest news from O'Khasis and have to come to terms with the fact that the head family he once knew no longer exists, only survived by their descendants he doesn't know. It sometimes feels like he came from a completely different time and place. He's pretty sure he didn't jump timelines/realities, but he can never know for sure. Not when everything is so... off.

While someone might call it "spacing out", Laurance is in fact having a completely silent mental breakdown about his lack of control over his own life. This goes double if I smack him with the headcanon that he's Xavier's reincarnation and therefore also gets his memories sometimes. It's not that Laurance is just spacing out or his head is up in the clouds, he's literally questioning whether he even belongs in his own body because it doesn't feel like his own anymore. These scars aren't his, his hands are shakier than they used to be, and he can't even tell if his wants and desires are his own because who knows what's the Calling, what's Xavier, and what's his own memories.

Sasha gets a glimpse at how Meteli has changed since the last time she was there and it's all wrong. None of the buildings she remembers are there, none of the guards she once knew remain, even Cadenza looks different. It makes her wonder if she ever lived there in the first place. If the Meteli she remembers was even a real location at all, or something Gene or The Shadow King put into her head. And if she isn't from Meteli, where is she from? Is she even from anywhere? Is she even of this world? Did she even have a life before becoming a Shadow Knight? The only thing that tethers her to reality is Kenmur, but he'd rather forget she existed. Maybe she shouldn't exist.

Zenix can't even remember when or how he answered his calling. He can't remember who he killed or why. He can't remember the life he had before he met Garroth and moved to Phoenix Drop. Did he even have a life before he met Garroth? Did he even have a life before becoming a shadow knight? Is he even a full shadow knight? There's a blood lust that's ever present in his person, but he can't tell if it's his own or someone else's. Is this blood lust the calling? Or Gene's? Or the Shadow King's? Or maybe he's always been a bad person who wanted to do bad things and was just looking for an excuse. It's this kind of spiral that eventually pushes Zenix to rebel. He doesn't know who he was, or even who he is, just who he wants to be. That's the closest thing to sanity that he can hold onto.

That's all I got. For now...

~Cha cha slides out but I trip over my own feet and eat shit in the doorway~

Why do you think five hates himself?

I think it's mostly because Five is pretty much a failure across the board.

I've said this before, but the fundamental difference between Five and the rest of his siblings is that his siblings can point squarely at Reginald as the reason why their lives are ruined. But Reginald didn't ruin Five's life. Five did.

Five had that one act of teenage rebellion/self-actualisation backfire on him and has been trying to do things right ever since, and all he's ever accomplished is making everything worse. He is very competent, he is very skilled, he is very clever, and it keeps getting him nowhere. Every time he manages to do something right, the consequences of his decisions come back to fuck him over.

So every time he comes face to face with a different version of himself, it's a reminder of his perpetual failure. Himself one week younger, about to jump forward to 2019 and try to save the world? Will fail, and will botch the jump while he's at it, condemning himself to Puberty 2: Corvette Stingray Boogaloo. Founder Five (ignoring, for the moment, that that plot point is a mess)? Literal representation of the fact that not only did Five fail for 45 years of his life, he will continue to do so for another 87 before dying alone and unfulfilled in the worst company - himself. And even discarding the other versions of himself that Five encounters, he does not care much for himself. He is willing to die if it means the world survives. He has accepted that there very well may not be any happiness in his future, but everything he's ever done is not about himself, not anymore. I don't think he attributes much value to his own life. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. And all that jazz.

And yet.

I don't know if Five truly hates himself. Maybe he does. I think he definitely doesn't really like who he is, what he's become, what time has changed about him, but he has the tendency to cling to life, even if he says he is done with it. There's a drive for survival in him that shows that whatever disdain he may hold toward himself, it's not complete apathy. And if it is hatred, it's a very passionate, fiery hatred that somehow still fuels him. Sure, he has fucked up a million times before, but what if. Just this once. It might work out. What if the worst person you know (yourself) could get it right this time? Because Five is still alive despite. Not only despite everything the world has thrown at him, but also despite everything he has done wrong. Despite all that, he is still there.

And there is one last puzzle piece - Delores. I love her, especially in S1, because she is such a good plot device. In S1, she was used to offset Five's brash, rude nature in talking to other people and show that beneath it all, he could love, even if the literal object of his affections is a mannequin. And the thing with Delores is that she is him. She is a psychological manifestation of the decades-long trauma that Five suffered, a symptom of forty years of solitude and isolation. She exists in relation to him, an extension to him. The way I always interpreted her was as the best part of Five. When we see him talk to her in S1, she seemingly chides him for his alcoholism, she told him beforehand that his botched equation was off, she has an edge on him because she is meant to represent, I think, the best parts of himself, the last shreds of his humanity. When the Handler offers him a way out in exchange for years of service as a killing machine, he looks back at Delores (the best parts of himself), but turns away and takes the Handler's offer. When Luther threatens to toss her out the window and gives him the choice between her (the best parts of himself) and the gun, when push comes to shove, Five picks Delores. There's a part of himself, a very, very fucked up part that has been hurting for decades, that fiercely loves himself and is not ready to give up on himself. And that's painful, as indicated by her name, a botched version of a word that literally means pain (plural).

And then he lets her go at the end of S1, because, on some level, he is aware what he has been doing. Aidan Gallagher said in the virtual panel released after S2 that Five knew that being alone in the apocalypse would drive him to lose his mind, so he used Delores to lose his mind in as controlled a way possible (x). Obviously he clearly did not do that perfectly (weird wedding hallucination/distortion of events proves that, if nothing else), but there was an awareness somewhere that she was a coping mechanism, and so he let her go, a first step to healing. That's why his language changes from using 'we' when talking about his time in the apocalypse in S1 to 'I' in S2. That's why he knows how he botched the jump, and can correct it for the younger version of himself. That's why he manages to be more vulnerable in S2. He has finally allowed himself to be all of himself again, even the part he loves.

Then S3 came along and made Delores a punchline and nothing else and kind of trampled on my nice interpretation without even giving Five the grace of having him go back to an old coping mechanism mean something. But I still want to talk about Five and self-loathing in S3, because we do get his reaction to Klaus telling him he's a good brother. He is surprised, genuinely taken aback, and Klaus was even reluctant to tell him, almost fearful of Five's reaction. Five doesn't like himself and the fact that someone else perceives him as good family throws him for a moment. And then there's the way he remembered his wedding speech vs. what it actually was. He remembers drunkenly spouting genuinely mean things at Luther while his entire family looks on, apathetically (except for Klaus, who is mildly more enthusiastically, meaning that at some level, Five's subconscious has understood that Klaus genuinely cares for him). In reality, he was sappy and loving, but his mind does not remember that. In his mind, he is not good, and he is not kind, and he can't connect to the people he loves the most - he fails at something as small and insignificant as a wedding speech. So, despite everything Delores may or may not have meant or symbolised, Five still has a lot of issues about his own self-image, his self-worth, how he is perceived by others and what he thinks of himself, all stemming, in some way, from that one act of teenage rebellion/self-actualisation that he failed at.

OSDD is trauma based, and all research on DID automatically applies to it

Back when DDNOS was still a possible diagnosis, the criteria and perceived presentation of DID was significantly stricter. This meant that DDNOS, type 1, was diagnosed far more often than DID (and, in fact, was the most often diagnosed of all DDNOS types), and contained a much wider variety of presentations and experiences. As such, research on DDNOS is far more plentiful than research on OSDD, even today.

By the time DDNOS was changed to OSDD, and DID received a much needed overhaul, most presentations of DDNOS automatically became DID. For example, DDNOS, type 1a was used for cases where a clinician hadn't yet witnessed a switch to another alter. At the time, if the clinician didn't personally witness a switch, DID was not to be diagnosed. In the DSM 5, the clinician no longer needs to witness it to make the diagnosis. It also previously stated that amnesia had to be severe between alters. This also changed by the time of the DSM 5, and there were several other changes, as well. [x]

That's why you won't find much research on OSDD -- it's become surprisingly redundant with the possible presentations of DID. In my own case, OSDD was diagnosed as a placeholder while more tests were done for DID. It was never meant to be a final diagnosis for me, but it put something appropriately vague enough on my record for insurance purposes. OSDD "mixed dissociative symptoms".

With that said, OSDD, like DID, is obviously trauma based. Research into DID is research into OSDD by basis of type 1 being the same thing. In DDs, alters are formed by dissociative barriers. The strength of those barriers will decide which diagnosis you get.

OSDD: Either the memory barriers aren't very high, so there's no amnesia, or the barriers between parts aren't very high, so you have indistinct states.

DID: barriers between both parts and memories are high

BPD/DPDR: barriers between both parts and memories are low

The barriers, or levels of dissociation, as per research, are influenced by age, attachment styles and interaction with supporting figures, trauma, and predisposition to dissociation (biopsychosocial model). In all cases, trauma and attachment styles are the most common indicator of DID and OSDD, followed by age at the time of experiences. [x] [x] [x] [x I’m really trying to find this full article, it’s so good] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Other things that I want to just... randomly throw in here, in a completely untargeted way:

1. No, studies cannot prove with 10000000% accuracy that DID is caused by trauma, but given the fact that everyone and their brother has tried (and failed) to prove it isn't caused by trauma, I'm willing to put my money on the theory that it's solely trauma based. 

At this point, the APA or ISSTD saying it’s not caused by trauma would be like every astronomer and geologist going, "So we just found out that the earth is flat. Like, nobody knew at all. We just found out yesterday."

Flat earthers still exist, and they're still spouting that the earth is flat. That doesn't make the earth flat or the possibility that it's gonna be discovered to be flat any more likely.

Or, you know, there’s still a small chance the megalodon might exist? Like, a 0.1% chance. Does that mean we need to accept that it does exist? No, common sense, and repeated testing has proven otherwise.

2. Nobody is saying you have to acknowledge your trauma to identify with DID. Therapists specifically don’t ask about trauma, and they don’t want you looking for it outside of therapy before you’re ready. Funny enough, people with DID can heavily relate to not remembering trauma. The thing anti endos ACTUALLY get upset about is when you start insisting that you can have DID/OSDD without trauma, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

3. Please stop wording it as “Identifying As Having A Disorder,” that’s disrespectful and not how it works.

4. OSDD is not an afterthought-- it’s a purposefully broad and vague disorder to cover many different things (not just DID-like presentations), and it’s STILL the most commonly diagnosed DD. Unlike DDNOS, which used its subtypes quite frequently in research, OSDD doesn’t, so how do you expect to find pointed research about it when it covers every presentation not covered in the other DDs?

 5. "It’s a catch-all for people who don’t fit neatly into the primary diagnostic boxes and are deemed undeserving of research and support in the same way DID systems are." How about I hit on you the head with a hammer, stop talking about crap you don’t understand.

 6. "Koomer and Oguigi"  🔥 burn

Chef anon here. I had this idea Izanami having a kid with her s/o. Probably by accident. But imagine how it would flip her whole worldview. Like she's supposed to be the god of death but here she is literally creating life.

This is quite the unexpected meal you've cooked up, chef, quite strange indeed. I actually had a ton of fun writing this surprisingly, I don't know how but it was. Keep cookin' like this, this got me over my writer's block like a charm.

-For this to happen you're definitely gonna need to be a guy. No offense to any ladies out there (are you even out there reading my work?), but accidental pregnancies typically do not happen in Yuri.

-This was something that really should not have happened. It did happen though when Izanami was feeling rather frisky on one particular night. Those less than pure urges finally started to surface once you started dating her which certainly took her by surprise. It was an...interesting night to say the least.

-What was even stranger however was the next couple of weeks after that. She started experiencing strange symptoms of...something. Her suspicions were only confirmed when she sensed life inside of her, something that didn't normally happen. This only meant one thing...

-Izanami hadn't bothered with protection that night. She believed that being a living Drive and the embodiment of death itself meant that this was physically impossible. Yet somehow it was possible.

-She had zero idea how to go about this. Granted she wouldn't have much trouble hiding this, she almost never made public appearances as the Imperator anyway, but this completely went against her very nature and her goal.

-When you found out about this however, you were quite happy, much to her surprise, especially if you know about her goal to destroy the Master Unit and end the world.

-The child is born away from the public eye. The only help is nurses personally selected by Izanami herself and they're under very strict orders to not tell anyone of this. This is probably the first time she actually feels pain. It's not what she was expecting, in a rather intriguing way.

-Due to being a Drive, it only takes her but a few hours to recover once she tells the nurses they can go and she's back at it like nothing ever happened. She heads back to her quarters to see you there caring for the baby as it's asleep, admiring and treasuring it. You greet Izanami with a smile and immediately start listing off possible names you were thinking of.

-For the first time in her existence, she doesn't really know what to do. This isn't meant to be her purpose, yet upon seeing how ecstatic you were at having a little one in your life, she eventually decided that it was at the very least worth a shot. She already gave you a chance after all, even if she still planned to carry out her mission.

-However as time goes on, she actually comes to genuinely care for this child she's given life to, even if by accident. She'd heard stories of parenthood changing people in unexpected ways, but she never expected said ways to be so drastic, let alone to even happen to her in the first place.

-She's expectedly pretty clueless on how to care for a child at first, she needs you around to show her the ropes so that she doesn't accidentally kill it. The fact that this is a genuine worry only gives her even more of an existential crisis.

-She's more torn than she ever has been in her life. Her goal was to always bring an end to this pointless looping world that the Origin had let go on for far too long. She'd always reasoned that this goal was justified because of this phenomenon making all of existence completely meaningless. But with both you and her own child in the picture now...

-...Now she's not so sure.

In the story I'm writing, a large portion of the characters are humans who can shape-shift into exactly one animal. As a general rule, their animal form usually resembles their human form, but appears at least adjacent to what is typical to the animal they become. How do I go about determining the animal form appearance of someone who has a chromosome non-disjunction, but whose animal form doesn't have the same typical number of chromosomes as a human?

Hello!

This is complicated and can be a bit tricky if the conditions the person has isn't really possible in the animal. For context of this ask I'm unfortunately not a veterinarian but i tried to do research to be able to answer it. I also hope I understood the question properly if not please feel free to resend and maybe a different mod who understands better will be able to help :) (smiley face)

The easiest and least scientific way would be to just apply the symptoms to the animal and ignore the fact that it isn't realistic (which I don't think would be too much of a problem considering they're a human shapeshifting). So if they as a person have widespread eyes or have very small ears, you could just apply the same to the animal. This will be easier done in a animal with a more humanlike face (like a cat or some dogs) rather than something like a fish or a bird in which case it would be definitely harder to conceptualize. But since it's fundamentally unrealistic i think it's fine if you get creative with it ! It would make the most sense I think because even the chromosome conditions that both animals and humans can have mostly have symptoms that are unrelated at best.

The slightly more scientific way would be to pick an animal that can have something similar to the disability the person has. For example cats can't have Down Syndrome because they don't have that many chromosomes but there are cats who visually resemble the human disability to some degree (like Monty the cat) for other medical reasons. If the disorder you're writing the character with also comes with lack of coordination or some kind of problem with movement then you could look up how cerebellar hypoplasia presents in the specific animal (it's present in many not just one species so theres a chance it could apply to the one you were planning to write). It's not perfect either but if you have trouble visualizing how that could look visually then this is a possibility.

The "most scientific" but also probably requiring you to change the exact chromosome disorder is to pick a disorder that exists in both the animal and humans like monosomy X, trisomy XXY, or some sort of mosaic combination. But the animal counterparts of these disorders have different symptoms than the human ones so it wouldn't be as obvious to the readers that their animal version also has the disorder (unless It's something like a cis male or trans female character with Klinefelter Syndrome shapeshifting into a small calico or tortoiseshell kitty, which i think is more obvious because these cats can't be assigned male at birth without the trisomy present). The only exception of that I was able to find (warning: it's a scientific paper) is monosomy X in dogs having some similarities to Turner Syndrome in humans (small stature, "younger" appearance, and excessive skin at the neck). But that's kind of it.

From the research I done so far for this ask it seems that a lot of different chromosome syndromes in animals cause it to be much smaller than it usually would be. So while it might not exactly translate from the human version it's something that could possibly happen if you want to be scientifically accurate.

I hope this answer was at least a little useful ! Sorry most examples were cats but they were the easiest to find references for.

(on a side note it makes me really happy you decided to look for an option for the character to not lose their disability when shapeshifting I wish i could be of better help..)

mod sasza

for admin oliver: 1. what books does gilbert actually like, since i rmr reading that serge tries to get him books but he can be kind of picky with them? 2. can you go more into detail about gilbert's addiction and the reocvery process for that? also which part of recovery/withdrawal/etc is he currently at 3. this might need a tw idk but can you also delve more into gilbert's current issues with eating and the psychology around that? how has the accident impacted them? 4. since his thoughts around auguste start to change in this au and he realizes how bad auguste really was, how does that impact his thoughts on other characters from bonnard to rosemarine even?

claps hands! that's a lot, i have been successfully entertained ... thanks for asking, i shall now answer in a way that hopefully satisfies you!

as always with these long asks, the answer is below the cut! warning for drugs and eating disorder talk, i'd try to be as subtle as humanly possible but ... it's kazeki, so. yeah.

I. gilbert's reading preferences

it's mentioned during his backstory chapters (so around volume 4-5) that he took a liking to erotic novels when he was little, and judging by that scene in volume 11 where he recites something along those lines i'd say that preference hasn't faltered.

so, he enjoys erotic novels, pretty obvious and a canon fact.

but i think he'd also like books on animals, since he doesn't have one at the moment the closest thing he has is a book.

we never talked about the kinds of books serge got him (they were scattered around the room, anyway) but they didn't get much attention from gilbert. he reads them, sure! but he doesn't particularly care for the stories or their contents ...

he'd like very dramatic books, too ...

NULL'S EDIT: Serge definitely did not bring him erotic novels., even if that sort of thing could actually have helped him heal his autonomy or sexuality or familiarity or what not he would Not have done that ghsdhf. But, he definitely would bring him stories, dramas, the 25 cent romance prints (there might be some dicey stuff in those, he is not proofreading them) at a certain point in the story they did find a bible and had a laugh about that

II. addiction, recovery, withdrawals ...

he used the initial withdrawals as a way to inflict pain in himself (so, self-harm)

opioid withdrawals are physically painful, they have a variety of symptoms such as nausea, goosebumps, sensitivity to light, hypertension and, in his case, he had hallucinations at the start (not 100% sure if this last symptom is medically accurate, though!)

anyway, he wasn't having a fun time. it was awful.

he stopped taking the drugs despite having them at hand (as null mentioned)

thankfully, it seems that opioids stay in the system for a few days (not entirely sure, since we don't exactly know what drugs gilbert was taking ... hence why i'm talking about opioids in general) so that's good, but he was jumpy and miserable for a bit longer since he was really, really dependant on them + his body is already a little fucked up and very weak, it probably took longer ... paris messed him up.

but, right now, he doesn't crave them. the little bottle they had is hiding somewhere in a box and gilbert has forgotten about its existence by now. though, he wishes he could go back to them, since that at least helped him "go away" for a moment. i guess he's going to go back to his old habit of daydreaming to make time go by faster.

Null's Edit: It's common for cases of extreme disassociation to alleviate some feelings of addiction. At a certain point, when he decided he needed to go cold turkey off everything, Serge basically took the bottle they'd spent their lifesavings on and hid it. Gilbert does not know where it is. No Opium for Gilbert.

III. disordered eating and "coping" with his current situation

he's been in and off in regards of that, to be honest. sometimes he's hungry, and sometimes he goes so long without eating ... a day or two at most.

he has always struggled with food, that's not a new thing for gilbert (or serge as an spectator, for that matter)

he relapsed (more like, he got worse than he already was) shortly after the accident, yet he kinda had to start eating more so his wounds would heal (bodies need calories and nutrients to do so, and while it wasn't nearly enough, he managed to do it)

he's not truly recovered, he may never be without the aid of a specialist (and they are expensive! he's got a whole lot of issues to take care of, sadly.) but he's hanging in there ...

he doesn't really have a reason to starve himself now, serge is tending to him most of the time already after all! and his reasoning of "maybe if he (auguste) is close to lose me he will appreciate me more" doesn't apply here for the most part, but he's gotten used to eat only when his body can't handle its hunger, or when he's in the right mood.

he's eating, sure, but he doesn't eat enough for someone his age and height.

also, keep in mind that he's pretty depressed, he doesn't feel the need to eat because his appetite has been affected by everything (stress, sadness, just the way he is)

it's mainly out of habit than him actively starving himself, though that also plays a part in what he does ... he's unwell.

the accident only made things worse, though he doesn't really care about weight gain (even if it's not preferred) or beauty, it's partially a need for control (everything is out of his hands and it feels WRONG) and partially because he's sad.

he's so, so sad.

IV. more thoughts about auguste and bonnard (and rosemarine)

so, auguste is out of the equation.

he started to realize that all the stuff that happened to him wasn't normal at some point. he already knew it was wrong (hell, serge told him that a billion times! of course he had to realize at some point) but he was in denial for some more time.

he feels gross, in a way. gilbert already felt weird over the whole thing because he never genuinely liked sex, he was just taught to crave the pain that came with it, he was taught that intimacy was supposed to be painful, and bloody, and disgusting ... and that he didn't have much of a saying in it, anyway.

he was a child, it obviously didn't click until now (or maybe it did, he just chose to ignore it.)

so, i went over his thoughts on auguste in a past ask but, i didn't mention that he (knowing that auguste is his dad) really feels in a different way towards him. sure, he's angry and grossed out, but he's also very affected. not only did he live in a lie for so long, but the person he needed the most (his dad) is the one who did most of the damage.

he hates him, but he can't help but imagine how things could've been if only auguste wasn't the way he is.

bonnard doesn't occupy most of his thoughts, but he doesn't particularly like him. he's not important enough to gilbert, even if he still has nightmares of the day he first touched him, of the blood, the pain, the fact that he entered survival mode upon waking up ...

yeah, no. he doesn't like bonnard, he hopes to never see him again.

rosemarine is a complicated subject, i have yet to reach the paris volume so i'm not sure if his relationship with gilbert improved in some way (i think it sort of did? he was the one who helped him and serge leave, right?) but i know for a fact that he resents him for not doing anything to protect him when he was at laconblade.

sure, auguste had threatened him (gilbert doesn't know that, though, in gilbert's eyes rose didn't do anything because he simply didn't feel like it), but rose didn't do anything about it for around 5-6 years. that makes him an accomplice.

rosemarine allowed that to happen and engaged in the abuse (physical abuse, at least) probably more than once, so ... yeah, he doesn't hate rosemarine, but he doesn't know how he can sleep at night knowing that.

sorry if i was unclear in any points! let me know if that's the case, pretty please . . . i probably spaced out at some point 🌀

Anti-recovery people: hey, it's okay to be unhealthy. That's not always something you can change and it's certainly not something you have to do. It's okay to exist as you are.

"Pro-recovery" people: OMG YOU'RE what's wrong with the mental health community, you BRAINWASHED me into thinking it wasn't okay for people to seek help if THEY wanted it, this is honestly TOXIC AF.

Anti-recovery people: but ... that's literally not what we said. Most people view recovery as this linear progression of milestones that often includes becoming more palatably neurotypical, which is ableist. What we're saying is that it's okay to recover if you want to, but that doesn't have to look like the mainstream abled version of recovery, and that it's okay to not do so at all. Some people also can't recover to those standards and we celebrate accepting your limitations.

"Pro-recovery" people: So it's OKAY to just harm your friends because of your mental illness? You support being a BAD person and not bothering to change? Also being unhealthy is bad and I'm going to assume because I recovered that everybody is capable of doing so, even if using different methods, and just choosing not to bother because of YOU people.

Anti-recovery people: What? No! Hurting other people is not okay! Do you actually think that these symptoms of a diagnosis are what causes someone to choose to harm other people? That's both super ableist and also a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes harmful, toxic, and abusive behaviors.

Anti-recovery people: In the few cases where someone is truly incapable of controlling a harmful behavior, where someone has extremely high support needs, we support them getting the adequate societal support to have someone help them through these behaviors without anyone getting hurt, but more importantly, without exacerbating their own distress that they are very clearly expressing.

Anti-recovery people: In most other cases, conflating the choices and actions of someone who is mentally ill with their diagnosis is super ableist, as is conflating "it's okay if you struggle to brush your teeth" with "it's okay to treat your friends and loved ones like shit with no consequences". I assume you're defining harm as "actively insulting, belitting, invalidating, physically or sexually assaulting you, though, and not just visibly having symptoms of a mental illness or talking about their struggles, right?*

"Pro-recovery"people: . . .

Anti-recovery people: We're saying that it's harmful to moralize health, for multiple reasons. There's that you are not capable of determining if a person is able to recover, for any given definition of recovery. There's that even if a person is able to, them being unhealthy is not actually harming you, and they have the right to make those choices even if you wouldn't make the same ones for yourself. There's the fact that recovery looks different for everybody, and for many, accepting that you can't "recover" to the expectations set by the mainstream IS recovery. ESPECIALLY given that many things that are called "unhealthy" are perfectly harmless and healthy aspects of neurodivergence that have been unnecessarily medicalized by our ableist society and psychiatric institutions.

"Pro-recovery" people: . . .

"Pro-recovery" people: YOU'RE the reason I wanted to kill myself for a decade and didn't bother to do anything about it! Personal responsibility, ever heard of it? Once I left your CULT I started doing yoga and now I'm BETTER and so everyone else can do that too!

Anti-recovery people: ... Do YOU know what personal responsibility is? All the "anti-recovery" in our names means is that we are against the idea that it's morally wrong to refuse to recover, whether that means refusing to conform to the mainstream ideal of recovery, a choice that you make to not pursue recovery, or an acceptance of your own inability to recover. We are not against choosing recovery as a personal decision if that's what you want - in fact, we support those people.

Anti-recovery people: Anyway, you don't know what led up to someone making this choice. Someone with long-term treatment-resistant suicidal depression is not wrong for not continuing to try meds that have not once worked, pursuing expensive TMS they may not be able to afford which is not covered by most insurance, continuing meds that have some effect but worse side effects than the depression itself, or psychotherapy that may have little to not effect, especially if they have at any point been subject to psychiatric neglect or abuse, which is more common than you're aware.

"Pro-recovery" people: See, I was toxic like you but unlearned all of that so now I'm no longer toxic. Btw I'm currently actively harassing disabled people because they're not 'working hard enough' or using 'better coping skills' and them being unhealthy is a personally harmful to me and everyone that ever interacts with them. What do you mean that's not okay just because the disability is a mental illness?? That's ableist!!1

Anti-recovery people: Okay, so, you haven't even bothered to deconstruct the moralization of healthiness and how that ties into ableism, I see. It's actively bigoted to expect someone to meet certain standards of health when they have a CHRONIC HEALTH ISSUE. This is no different than expecting someone with a chronic illness never to eat or drink anything unhealthy, to exercise regularly, have perfect sleep habits, and otherwise be a paragon of healthy choices or else it's "their fault" for just "not caring enough to put in the work to recover. Of course, you likely also do those things, in which case the comparison is lost on you, because ableists are so rarely ableist against only mentally or physically disabled people and not the other.**

Anti-recovery people: You also seem to believe that you're ontologically incapable of doing harm - you say that it's an "ongoing process" but then your actions show that you haven't bothered learning to listen when people say you're harming them and have just changed your targets to be people who have less societal power than you so they're less able to stand up for themselves and you're less obligated to listen to them. Are you just trying to find a justification for bullying people that others will accept?

"Pro-recovery" people: . . . STOP HARASSING ME!!1

Anti-recovery people: *Looks into camera like they're on the office*

*I have actually harmed others in the past in ways that were influenced by my mental illness. OCD, of all things, was the one that most directly impacted my actions, and I owned my mistakes. That being said, they were still my CHOICE. The mental illness played a role, but it didn't cause the harm I did. You know what wasn't my choice, though? My overreliance on my friends for essentially trauma-dumping and for getting my emotional needs met because I was actively being abused and the system was neither providing me ANY way out nor even adequate mental healthcare (as if that's possible when being ACTIVELY ABUSED WITH NOT EVEN A BROCHURE OFFERED ABOUT HOW TO ESCAPE ABUSE.) I was a drowning person clawing at them for survival, and it was neither of our faults that the system is primed to actively keep disabled people in abusive situations. So don't @ me.

**I would know, I am both multiple physically and multiply mentally disabled.

do you reckon matthew has adhd?

(i've seen some people really endorse it but also I feel like we're terrible at telling hyperactivity from hypomania, myself included, and it's possible that the old adhd stereotype isn't the best indicator)

this may or may not be me researching cyclothymia for myself too btw ;) and as a fellow adhder I also wish for all of the siderants in this post to be unapologetic <3 <3

Thank you for this. I do consider myself to have a PhD in Matthew Fairchild, so I'm excited to have a go here. Siderants incoming.

I don't want to get too deep into my own mental health issues on here, LOL. But I feel like it's almost impossible for me to talk about Matthew without being open about my own lens and viewpoint.

I need to preface this by stating that I relate VERY STRONGLY to Matthew in a ton of different ways, but one of the main ones is through a lens of mental health. We have similar symptoms and I definitely believe him to have a similar issue to myself. I am bipolar, have ADHD, and have PTSD. So this is where I am coming from; this is my background.

Matthew and PTSD

Let's just all agree right off the bat that Matthew has PTSD after the events of CLS. I don't think the word's used solely because it's 1903 and it doesn't exist. I'm pretty sure Cassie has said he has PTSD before directly. But also it's referred to in the books as "a shadow hanging over him" and a "hard edge." Everyone notes that his behavior changes after his mother's miscarriage. I'm not going to delve too much into this because it's literally canon and anyone with media literacy knows it.

Bipolar Matthew

I have very little doubt that Matthew is bipolar. He exhibits regular symptoms of depression and anxiety even as early as NBS and CLS. He also was completely out of control in several cases, and we see it most starkly when he blows up a wing of the Academy. If you read CLS, he seems completely unable to control his temper and detaches himself from the action as well, stating that in the interval between Alastair @ing him and his leaving school "a wing of the school blew up" rather than "he blew up a wing of the school". He also seemed incredibly giddy as talked with Will and then with Alastair as he told him he put all his things in the South Wing.

We see bipolar-esque impulsive behaviors in TLH, though TLH Matthew is definitely somewhat muted because of his alcoholism.

There is no arguing that Matthew suffers from depression in TLH, which manifests as addiction and also as what seems to be exhaustion. He falls asleep anywhere. Cassie herself has said that Matthew is depressed as well.

But, I also note that he has manic tendencies. He runs off to Paris with Cordelia extremely impulsively with almost 0 thought to the consequences. He jumps through the portal to Hell after James in a completely split-second decision. Thomas notes that Matthew has, for the longest time, believed that consequences were something that happened to other people rather than to himself and his friends. All of these things are consistent with bipolar disorder.

He also does something common to those both with BPD* and bipolar disorder called "splitting." Splitting happens when the person views others as either all good (Cordelia, James) or the literal scum of the earth with 0 gray area (Alastair, Grace). When shown gray area, he is jarred.

*I have also seen BPD peeps headcanon Matthew as borderline. When they talk about it, I can see an argument for it, but I do not personally think that Matthew has the shaky relationship insecurities that partly define BPD. He hates himself, but seems secure in the fact that others currently love him (even if he worries that they will not if they know of his Great Sin). I do not think he meets the BPD diagnostic criteria. But I am not a psychologist and am also biased as I am bipolar and want my fave character to be my Bipolar Buddy, lol.

ADHD Matthew

Getting to your question, does Matthew have ADHD?

This is actually the one that I'm least certain of.

He certainly does exhibit several ADHD-like traits. He's very externally boisterous and jubilant. He clearly hyperfixates on aesthetics and Oscar Wilde, talking about them in nearly every situation even when it's unrelated. (I find this funny because his Oscar Wilde obsession mirrors my TSC obsession. He's got a green carnation; I've got a clockwork angel pendant. It's amazing).

He also definitely shows difficulty focusing on tasks. However, it's impossible to say that this is a result of ADHD because of his addiction. Alcohol also causes people to have short attention spans and a bad memory, so this isn't saying much. The same goes for his poor physical coordination.

We would need to go solely from his time at school to figure this out. The only issue here is that it's challenging to separate Matthew's NBS behaviours from the fact that he was actively trying to get expelled. Did he really struggle to focus or did he just pretend to so he could piss off his teachers? Was he performing poorly because his needs were unmet or because he was purposely trying to be terrible? There's no telling, and I honestly suspect the latter.

So, I have no idea!

I personally think that Matthew may have ADHD solely because bipolar and PTSD exascerbate ADHD symptoms. All three of them exascerbate each other, actually. But I'm not too committed to this.

Hi Sophie! We hope you are doing well!

You mentioned recently the fact that many DID patients spend years in psychiatric treatment before getting an accurate diagnosis. I was wondering if you knew or readily had available more detail on that.

Iwrc the average time to get diagnosed is something like 7 years (and please correct/confirm me on that if you have that data). What we're curious about, and hope you might know, is when the "clock starts" for that statistic.

For instance, we started seeing a psychiatrist in ~2013 for trans related issues. Then when we had a breakdown in 2016 we saw another psychiatrist and began therapy. But only in 2022 did we start seeing our current therapist (following our syscovery the previous year), who Dx'd us with OSDD-1 after a year, and then later changed it to DID last month. And each of these periods had breaks in treatment except for the current one.

So our question would be when the clock would have started? In 2013 since that was our first experience with psychiatry? 2016 because that's when the related symptoms started getting treatment? Or 2021/2022 because that's when we were pursuing this specific diagnosis? Also I suppose it might be worth asking if the clock stopped with our OSDD-1 diagnosis or our DID one, but i figure the DID one because DID is likely the Dx that this data would be about.

If you don't have this info, that's totes fine! We're mostly just curious what's meant by a diagnosis taking in average X number of years, as it can paint very different pictures (e.g. did we have a miraculously fast diagnosis, or did we get the high end on the wait time).

-Faye

I can't say for certain. Despite the frequency this comes up, it's kind of hard to find info about it.

When I got this, I was sure it would be a simple thing to track down the information. There were a ton of websites that referenced this. But hardly any provided sources. And many sources I found ended up being paywalled.

One led to this paper:

With this citation...

That doesn't exist online...

I found this paper next!

The first source led here.

That 1986 study seems firmly locked behind paywalls though. And I haven't been able to find the Rivera one yet.

It's worth noting that all of these studies are old, and these very well may not even be applicable in the modern era.

My best guess is that the clock would probably start ticking as soon as you saw your first psychiatrist in 2013. But I can't say for sure with absolute certainty. I don't even know if all these studies would have used the same standards.

In fact, the wording of some of these, that patients spent this many years "in treatment" before getting correctly diagnosed, may imply that it's counting active years of treatment. So yeah, I don't know. 🤷‍♀️

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

I really like the Barbie movie. Honestly, I do. But holy shit is it obvious it was written by a cis-white woman.

One symptom of this movie's white feminism leaking through to me is that joke at Gloria's husband attempt to learn Spanish, which just comes off mean-spirited to me. Why would you mock something that wholesome? Ffs the man wants to better his communication with his wife and child. Wouldn't catch me out here shaming my partner for trying to learn Vietnamese. More importantly, aside from that joke, Gloria and Sasha just sound like two whitest women you can think of. How is that the only signifier of their cultural identity?

Also doesn't the existence of the patriarchy rely on the grounds that men have always had power and women exist as an afterthought and have to depend on its benevolence? By that logic, isn't the Barbies the patriarchy in Barbieland? Barbies are the ones who have jobs, who are in high offices, who own properties. The Kens are assigned as Barbies' accessories, they don't own houses, because every house is Barbie's dreamhouse, they have no executive power, they have to rely and compete for scraps of Barbies' affections. If anything, the Kens ARE the marginalised, powerless group in this world. They have more in common with real-life women than the Barbies, including the fact that the Barbies are diversely cast but the Kens only consist of one allowed body type. And even as I like the deconstruction of a redpilled Ken, does it really work when the character never really have a perceived entitlement, fed to him by society in the first place? Like, Gerwig tried to describe the Kentakeover as evil, monstrous brainwashing with the worst symptoms of toxic masculinity and needs to be shut down, which feels too much of an easy way out for me, when it could have been that Ken found political-conciousness in the real world, reinterpreted it and used it to help fellow Kens gain more equality in Barbieland. Would have been wayy more interesting if that line about him thinking the patriarchy is about horses have been taken more seriously imo. Instead they framed it in this milquetoast take that's really fucking stagnant when you put it in context: The Kens can rebel, yes, but not too much, not too confrontational of the system, they can't demand substantial change in it, because then they would just take over it and it will be baaad. That depogramming speech Gloria gave the Barbies would have applied much better with the Kens in the context of their world. Yeah, you can argue that "But isn't that like how women are in the real world?" And yes, the movie acknowledged it in like one line, and it doesn't make its avoidance of criticisms on capitalism and needs for change in the system any less shallow, does it? And also the motivation for Ken's rebellion is just that he's an incel. Like, I like that Ryan Ken and Margot Barbie reconcile and address their failings at the end, and that Barbie acknowledges that she has been a pretty shitty friend to him. But the rest still rings very hollow.