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#trauma frameworks
chthonic-cassandra · 11 days
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Recent books, fiction -
Emma Cline, The Girls - a teenage girl in the late 1960's ends up on the outer edges of a Manson-like (very closely Manson-like) cult. This was okay, but not great, falling too often into cliches about teenage girlhood and lacking a sharp understanding of cult dynamics. By basing the fictional cult in the novel so closely on Charles Manson's Cline gets to handwave a bunch of things about how and why it works, but the seams in the construction show through anyway; Cline's understanding about what leads people to join and stay in these kinds of groups, and how the internal dynamics function, seemed to me persistently surface-level. The strongest part of the novel is the protagonist's potent desire for one of the closest inner circle girls in the cult, which is the reason she becomes entangled much more than any draw from the cult leader himself. There was something interesting there, if Cline had focused on it, and something interesting too in the hints about our protagonist's solitary experiences of lesbian masochistic desire, but this thread was resolved in a way that felt to me disappointingly simplistic. The hints about our protagonist's adulthood following her experience of the cult are also flat, without the messiness of what it can mean to survive that experience. Worth reading as an example of a fictional depiction of organized abuse, but not a great one.
Mona Simpson, Commitment - family saga novel following three siblings as they make lives for themselves following their mother's depressive breakdown and institutionalization in the early 1970's. This had some flashes of clarity and insight, but fizzled out quickly into banality. There were some things that Simpson wanted to say about pragmatism vs making art, and about living in fear of mental illness, but it all got sanded down. The depiction of 'mental illness' is also two dimensional at best. This suffered especially for me in proximity to a recent read-through of The Frederica Quartet, which deals with some similar themes with an incomparably greater level of complexity and beauty. While this novel wasn't terrible, the fact of how lauded it has been made me feel cynical about the state of contemporary literary fiction.
Dion Fortune, Moon Magic - a hilarious but less than successful chapter in my weird journey of reading Fortune's fiction work. Like The Sea Priestess, to which it is a loose sequel, this novel centers around a blatant Dion Fortune self-insert initiating a repressed professional man into sexualized spiritual enlightenment. Unlike The Sea Priestess, Moon Magic is told largely from the point of view of said Dion Fortune self-insert, which brings the narcissism levels up to the nearly intolerable. Left unfinished at Fortune's death, the final chapter was written by her friends which was also not a great choice.
Melody Razak, Moth - a left-leaning, intellectual family in Delhi struggles to cope with the cataclysmic violence of partition. Stepping back from this book there are elements of it, and of the way each character was drawn, which I appreciate, but I felt consistently uneasy reading it, so much that I put it aside for a week in the middle, which is unusual for me. There was something about Razak's narrative gaze which felt exoticizing in its hazy simplicity; this maybe has to do with her conviction to "tell the untold stories" of women who experienced violence during partition, which I don't think is ever a great way to go into a fiction project for reasons I have written about elsewhere. However, the intensely brutal violence of the final section of the book somehow landed for me more as a reader; I don't actually know how I feel about the representational ethics of it, but something about the extremity brought it to a narratively more effective place. I'm still trying to sort through why.
Stacey D'Erasmo, The Complicities - after her husband's conviction for fraudulent business practices, a woman moves to a town in New England, opens a massage practice, and gets emotionally involved with a beached whale. Ugh. This was very bad, and I don't know how it ended up on my to-read list. Flat, simplistic prose style, irritating narrative voice, unlikable characters. Whatever.
Kikuo Tsumura, There's No Such Thing As an Easy Job (trans. Polly Barton) - genuinely hilarious satire on Japanese capitalist culture. A young woman, burnt out on her previous job (the nature of which isn't revealed until the end, which was an effective choice for me and so I'm not spoiling it), seeks to find a form of employment that will require the least possible from her intellectually and emotionally, ending up in increasing surreal work situations. This kind of book often doesn't work for me (I'm not a big humor person), but this was sharp and understated and very good. The section at the cracker factory in particular had me trying ineffectively to explain its hilarity to people around me. Recommended.
Catherine Lacey, Biography of X - in an AU United States where the southern states seceded in the mid-twentieth century, a newly widowed woman attempts to find out the truth about her wife, a notoriously secretive and manipulative artist. This was ambitious in its metafictional conceit and had a premise that intrigued but ultimately didn't live up to its promise. The world-building of Lacey's AU felt implausible and insufficiently developed; there were so many aspects of it that didn't land, like the distracting use of real-life figures or the total lack of critical analysis around race and gender. If the AU premise had been removed and the focus kept tighter on the central relationship it might have worked, but there too we just didn't have enough to go off of. This mostly just made me wish I was rereading Siri Hutvedt's The Blazing World, a much, much stronger metafictional depiction of a female artist, which maybe I should do.
Mariana Enríquez, Our Share of the Night - in Argentina during the period of military dictatorship, a young father attempts to save his son from the abusive group of which he has been a part since childhood. I loved this book so so very much. As a horror novel, as a depiction of organized abuse and intergenerational trauma, as a representation of the ways that state and interpersonal violence repeat and mirror. It's not a perfect book - I think that the last third could be tightened and shifted in certain ways - but what it's doing is so strong and specific that I don't mind. I sort of want to buy a copy and reread it right away. Strongly recommended, with the content note that it is a very emotionally plausible and unsparing depiction of its subject material.
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finalgirlfall · 1 year
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These discourses of heterosexuality oppress us in the sense that they prevent us from speaking unless we speak in their terms.
— "The Straight Mind," Monique Wittig
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ofbreathandflame · 5 months
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(heavy discussions on sa - this is actually an older post that i made like months ago, and was actually the first draft of the amarantha taboo post, so some things sound similar! just a heads up!)
you know i actually think there is a wider discussion to be had about rhysand's sexual assault - or sexual assault and trauma as it functions in the wider narrative. ive always felt that bc the story puts rhysand in this vulnerable position (i.e. a victim of sexual violence) the story always needs to like...make up for it, if that makes sense? 
what i mean is: the story creates this dynamic where rhysand is a victim; he has no power, control, or say - but it also has a very hard time reconciling to the fact that he was placed in this position. and so there's these weird placeholding pieces of information that often addle or confuse the narrative. and i talked about this before with rhysand's framing of his 'service to amarantha.' i also contributes to the moments of hyperviolence with rhys in the books, as if he constantly has to make up for the fact he was placed into these vulnerable positions in the first, implicitly.
the first book - and other books thereafter - imply that rhysand's court is specificially shielded from amarantha because he aligns himself (action word). rhysand's decision is framed as a 'sacrifice' which implies a choice (that he didn't really have). it always implies that rhysand is the one consciously 'one-upping' amarantha by 'agreeing' to be her 'right hand man' again - notice how despite the fact amarantha is characterized as a sexual deviant, she's rarely the focus. its what rhys 'gave' and not what 'amarantha did.'  
and this is fine if this is the way rhysand chooses to see what happened to him - bc then that's a trauma response. he can't acknowledge it so its better for him to rationalize it - that would have been great writing. 
but thats not how his sexual assault and role utm is discussed. 
other characters view rhys sexual assault as a statement of heroism (which ew) and not a just a statement of amarantha's capacity for sexual violence. tarquin literally says something along those lines. which again is implying that RHYS HAD A CHOICE. we can't frame this as heroism. he was raped, he did not sacrifice something...it was taken. 
in the initial scenario - where we remove the idea of autonomy (e.g. the idea that rhys purposely aligns himself with amarantha) he's a victim. but then - so is tamlin, tarquin, beron, kallias, and helion. in short - rhys being taken advantage of says nothing about him. it's a statement on amarantha's cruelty. but the story isn't satisfied with this bc...how would he be any different than tamlin whose vilified for being directly affected by his trauma, who 'sat on his ass for fifty years' as the book says. 
its the tragedy of how male sexual assault is rationalized in this series. the story literally purposely sets up a mirror position where rhys and tamlin are consistently compared for how they work through some of the craziest trauma ever known to man. the level of trauma the story is asking these characters to 'overcome' is actually quite insane. 
so the story ups the ante, it doesn't want rhys to be 'just a victim,' it wants him to be the MAN TM. bc tamlin and tarquin are 'just victims' so ewww. like even lucien is given another horribly written experience with sexual assault (which it literally has to bend the worldbuilding to accomplish) and then kind of position his complaints abt ianthe as whiny. or how tarquin's trauma is...not 'dark' enough for feyre. these men are often characterized as cowardly or not enough in relation to rhys. helion, thesan, tarquin, and tamlin are all consistently characterized as 'cowards' with little to no initiative or backbone.
so the story does that thing where it provides impossible situations: rhysand is the most powerful being in the world, he's so powerful that even without his 'real' power, he's still light years more powerful than the others when they're powers are ripped away. he can read minds, and has two wraiths that can literally walk through the walls and spy. he's often sent on missions on behalf of amarantha and can waltz in and out of the spring court without any issues (ie. its easy for him to convince amarantha he needs to go to the spring court multiple times. and then when he works for amarantha - he's the mastermind, not her. he's playing her all along and blah blah blah). but then it doesn't know how to write this dynamic with rhys and amarantha. and then it depowers him, while shaming the other men in the series for not doing 'enough' even when the most op character with all of those advantages isn't even able to over power her.
there's little introspection into amarantha as a character and as a villain -- and you'll notice she's hardly ever mentioned after the first book...despite the fact that she was literally the high queen of prythian and was the governing oppressive force for a half-century. as said in this post - the story isn't actually concerned about making a point about male sexual asault.
and that's why i talked about why that amarantha taboo is...kind of important to how the story chooses to conceptualize sexual violence/assault. the choice to create amarantha (and ianthe and maeve too) as these caricatures of sexuality - which is pretty much the case of all of sjm's villains. 
the story doesn't want to fully commit to a tactical scenario, because it doesn't believe that he's a victim in that capacity  - or at least that the victimhood is valid. bc its spends so much time invalidating the male trauma around rhys, the only way to make a distinction between rhys and the others to have rhys "orchestrate" his own assault to save everyone.
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sforzesco · 8 months
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Agrippa, Antony, and Octavian operate in a kind of love triangle where the object of desire is Rome. however. definitions of Rome vary. Rome is a place, Rome is home for Antony. For Octavian: Rome is a place, Rome is home, so he BECOMES Rome. Agrippa has only ever operated on a Rome Is Octavian framework, so as long as Rome stands, Octavian lives, immortality is achievable.
Everyone else suffers.
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chicago-geniza · 2 months
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Unfortunately I will be citing this tweet in my fake thesis on the postwar psychoanalytic turn in historiography + how imagined communities make possible the framework of "collective affects" that imply a shared in-group phenomenology-over-time, regardless of proximity or distance to the event "collectively experienced"
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lycunthrope · 7 months
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the narcissistic parents subreddit is the worst thing to happen to online discussions of mental health
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ajani · 3 months
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Googling a keyword on a DNI and learning about a new type of discourse is always a strange experience, especially when it's effectively transmedicalism
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prettyboykatsuki · 11 months
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nothing will be more insane then people demanding explanation for dark content and fic
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alewyren · 1 year
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tbh I never know where exactly I should weigh in on discussions about cultural appropriation as an ethnically greek person, both from the perspective of “greek culture might actually be the single most widely appropriated culture on the planet and I’m slowly realizing how much of an effect this has had on my sense of identity” and “oh so it��s okay to make my culture an aesthetic but not yours, got it cool”
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mustiels-art · 2 years
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it was only a matter of time before I made a csm oc...
friend is planning a csm-based oneshot so I made the Deer Fiend, aka John Doe. He isn’t the most intelligent or agreeable, but he hasn’t mauled a civilian yet so he’s good enough. True form sketch under the cut (CW Body Horror)
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A big messed up cluster of deer legs and moth-eaten pelt.
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chthonic-cassandra · 5 months
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Thinking something about how being the final bride of Bluebeard necessarily means separating yourself from the previous ones, putting yourself in a different category. There is a renunciation in that, in the determination that their fate will not be yours. But of course the structure of the tale makes it so that the only unity with them possible is in death (unless the wives are not dead; but the renunciation is still required). How to find a way out of this.
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finalgirlfall · 2 years
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In Dracula vampirism designates a kind of colonization of the body.
"The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," Stephen Arata
I get the feeling all he really wants is to leave part of himself inside me, to stake his claim, not to impregnate me or anything like that, but something more permanent. He wants to make sure he’ll always be there, no matter what. He wants to leave his fingerprints all over me, every piece of muscle and bone.
My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell
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hauntedselves · 2 years
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BPD parts are a thing?
Long wordy explanation under the cut, but TL;DR:
Yes, but they arent the same as alters. DID & OSDD-1 are the only disorders that include parts that are separate enough to be autonomous. The activation of different parts is what causes splitting (in a BPD sense).
The theory of structural dissociation (from The Haunted Self by Otto van der Hart, Ellert Nijenhuis & Kathy Steele) says that BPD & DID are on a spectrum, from PTSD → CPTSD → BPD → OSDD-1 → DID. These are all trauma disorders, and all involve dissociation to some degree. The TOSD is an explanation of identity fragmentation (parts) in these disorders.
PTSD has primary structural dissociation, CPTSD, BPD & OSDD-1 have secondary SD, and DID (and sometimes OSDD-1) has tertiary SD. Each disorder on the spectrum has what The Haunted Self calls Apparently Normal Parts (ANP) and Emotional Parts (EP). The ANP is numb, dissociated, avoidant of trauma and often can’t remember trauma very well (if at all). The EP is often stuck in the trauma memory, and becomes activated when the person is triggered.
In PTSD (primary SD), there is one ANP and one EP. The EP is the part that is active when someone is having a flashback, trauma nightmare, hypervigilance, or a fight or flight (or freeze, fawn, etc) response, etc.
In CPTSD, OSDD-1 & BPD, (secondary SD), there is one ANP and several EP. The EP hold different aspects of the trauma, and different trauma responses. There may be one EP for a freeze response, one for hypervigilance, one for flashbacks, and so on. In CPTSD, the EP are the same as in PTSD, plus ones that hold CPTSD symptoms like anger, negative self-image, etc. In OSDD-1, there will be EP who are the same as the ones found in PTSD & CPTSD, but there will also be EP who have their own separate sense of self and autonomy (which are alters). If there’s amnesia between the parts, it’s OSDD-1a.
Specific to BPD, EP will hold different attachment disruptions. One will hold idealisation and another devaluation, and conflict between them is what causes [BPD] splitting. There will be other EP that hold other things, like trauma responses, paranoia, and strong emotions, and so on. Conflict between EP is what causes unstable identity.
In DID (tertiary SD) there are more than one ANP and several EP. OSDD-1 would fall into tertiary SD if there is more than one ANP (which is usually the case with OSDD-1b). The EP in DID are the same as in OSDD-1 (mix of secondary SD type EP & alters).
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Some further reading on TOSD & BPD parts if you’re interested:
Mosquera et al., 'Early experience, structural dissociation, and emotional dysregulation in borderline personality disorder: the role of insecure and disorganized attachment', Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation (2014)
Marylène Cloitre, Donn W. Garvert, Brandon Weiss, Eve B. Carlson & Richard A. Bryant, 'Distinguishing PTSD, Complex PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder: A latent class analysis', European Journal of Psychotraumatology (2014)
Trauma and Dissociation website
DID Research website on TOSD
A couple of posts by this-is-not-dissociative: one, two, three
Nijenhuis, Steele, van der Hart, 'Trauma-Related Structural Dissociation of the Personality', Activitas Nervosa Superior (2010)
If you can get your hands on The Haunted Self it explains the TOSD (if you're not opposed to piracy, I recommend this site) - here's a pdf & here's an epub)
(sorry if this was way longer and in depth than you were asking... special interest went off!)
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floorpancakes · 1 year
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i refuse to let clamp off the hook for underutilising himawari's fucking fascinating character setup and traits but on a less serious level im obsessed with the concept of her as an instigator of chaos.
like she's way less airheaded than she seems and it doesn't come off like Default Airhead Girl Behaviour or even Default Girl Companion That Ships Her Friends primarily (like not as hard as some other series by comparison I mean she's very I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE by default) specifically she just seems like someone that thoroughly enjoys being a little shit in a sincere way and giggling at her dumbass friends and has a shade of high emotional intelligence about it all. like she's just girl of all time. she's i don't know where im going with this just take this low effort meme from when i watched the holic stage play on youtube this isn't a coherent thought it's like 2am ill come up with better thoughts later
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#ive seen kaguya sama and i know chika is a little bit rotted as a human being but we need to think about himas agent of chaos potential#this is all my personal intepretation but in general i find her a very cool character and working with the barebones framework is still fun#shes got so many interesting character traits#like how shes totally hooked on horror and spooky stuff more than the guys#but it has a distinct contrast with her deep fucking trauma and daily struggles with her curse-but-not-cause#theres smth that feels part coping mechanism part catharsis and part just straight up gap moe abt that#like....girl of all time#also her being depicted a lot either in rly bright sunny tones OR gothic lolita and no inbetween#i mean the joy of holic is everyone is basically posable dolls dressed up in whatever outfits you want but like its still a theme#and like we are given tidbits and small bits and pieces of her personality and interests and its not enough but its rly cool to think abt#they underused her frfr but what we do learn in how she reacts to stuff and bounces off other characters is so AAA#its wild how shes kinda a main character but kinda not in such a deeply fleshed out character driven story#i know shes a key player w loads of strong emotional moments but shes overshadowed a lot and it makes me wanna write mad headcanons#i find myself wondering how she copes day to day with her situation and how itd impact her personality around other people and self image#IDK you could write entire books abt her#but mostly: shes sillay#shes a little bit of a blank slate fill in the gaps but my brain is more than happy to supplement vibes and guesses#hima does not read as het to me because queer friendship groups work on stand user logic#i have a few fic ideas where it deep dives on her life as an adult and her push and pull w social interaction#but its early days on that so any details would b not very interesting past the conceot stage lol#i rly gotta get my ass to writing more fic but brain is a fuck writing longform is haaard unless its like idk visual novel formatting#anyway this is just nothing im not aiming for interaction here i just have half baked thoughts abt himawari the girl of all time#also hima kinda goes through hell and back so doing her dumbass 3 person comedy routine w her dumbass frisnds must be of big fuckin solace#its like that post about just being a girl who wants to have fun . she wants to have fun w friends#AND THAT IS OK justice for hima idk i love her even if she got the short end of the stick for deeply long term focused character writing
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brxsm · 1 year
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I made an EAP appointment to get advice on how to talk to HR about what happened today. I have to be strategic and avoid personalising anything and just focus on policies and procedures and our organisational framework, I think. Ugh.
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pavocelus · 1 year
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think i might .. make my portrayal darker, really lean on kaeya's fatui ties, the sacrifices made in pursuit of knowledge for khemia and ruin machinery in khaenri'ah, khaenri'ah's relation to other ancient civilizations // i already have ideas concerning pierro which will be on my sideblog, how they'll tie into my kaeya, the heirarchy of the eclipse dynasty ( it's literally named that because it's like " khaenri'ah was plunged into darkness, but it will be brought back like a solar eclipse ) // i feel like i've been writing a very watered down version of him.
#ooc.#it's because i was influenced at the beginning of my portrayal#thinking that making the only poc in mond have darker and villainous ties would be giving into stereotypes#which it would#but it's also not my fault that mhy hates melanin#it's not my fault that kaeya has the peak framework of an antivillain#there's no solid reason for kaeya being the only one with melanin in mond which is just so sus#i hate that his story is genuinely more interesting to me if he leans into the villain side of it#love kaeya fighting the good fight and shit but he doesn't get enough screentime to really emphasis if he's struggling with his loyalties#idk#i just don't see the point in portraying kaeya as this edgy mysterious dude if you're only ever going to lean into one facet of him#another person made me feel like / as a brown person myself i should be egging kaeya on to be good but like / as someone who comes from#a colonised culture i would still be just as angry that i had to be displaced and put into unfamiliar land and also suffer religious trauma#like#there's only so much sunshine and rainbows you can put into someone who has dealt with that much hardship#ALSO CAN I JUST SAY that the more i learn about key characters the more i realise that not all of them are completely bad and not all are#completely good#like can we remember that the abyss order is basically a revolution#and the fatui's ultimate plan is to strike back at a dictatorship#like of course it's not that simple but these statements aren't WRONG either
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