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DeseretRain posted:Horror Well that's all basically child abuse. Glad to see it seems you came out of it ok, though.
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Nov 28, 2011 19:34
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DeseretRain posted:*Stillborn story* That's not the first time I've heard that said in regards to a stillbirth followed up by a successful birth. I've wondered if it's some sort of broad coping mechanism since I've heard it said by a Christian couple and a Pagan couple. Doesn't change that it's still disconcerting as gently caress though.
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Nov 28, 2011 21:23
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Corridor posted:I got the same poo poo from the SA forums. Awww... goons can be pretty mean too. 
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Nov 28, 2011 21:33
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Someone even bought me an avatar of my photo going WHAT GENDER AM I.
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Maybe I'm jaded from my experiences with wacky pagan families but that seems pretty normal. I don't think any of it compares to say, telling an elementary school kid that they'll go to hell for being bad, but that's how most of the kids in my school were raised. They basically said "Hey, you're very special according to our religion though it really doesn't affect you in any way- won't you go into politics and be the next president?" Adults might find it pretty chilling, but I don't think it's out there for a kid to think they were born twice because they had trouble the first time (especially if you're already being raised to believe in reincarnation.) Now, my boyfriend, the Digimon believer, was actually coming from a pagan family, and his mom insisted some of the same things and insisted he had abilities, but she also did things like tell him he was too smart and special for school, so why bother? Let's learn tai-chi and mind control in the backyard instead. I've been writing about him, by the way, but it all comes out too depressing. There's not a lot of funny in his story, especially when we both realized that he didn't REALLY believe in Digimon, but facing reality was worse so he actively chose to ignore it. EDIT: VVVV Goddamit you're right. Well, I just can't read I guess. Clockroach fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Nov 28, 2011 |
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Nov 28, 2011 21:46
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Perhaps you missed the part about the beatings and attempted strangulation? That doesn't seem very normal to me.
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Nov 28, 2011 22:09
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DeseretRain posted:They also told me that I was "psychic" and could "read their minds." They also insisted that I could "astrally project" and told me that my soul traveled around independent of my body. This is intensely disturbing to me, more so than the stillborn reincarnation thing. I can only imagine how confusing and weird it would be for your parents to insist that you have special magical powers and that you should be able to read their minds. It's pretty amazing that you came out as a (presumably) normal and well-adjusted person.Have you heard of the term Indigo Children? I wonder if that's something your parents read about or if they worked out their own world philosophy independent of it. Generally, indigo children have a learning disability of some sort (but not always). The parents, desperate for an explanation or some purpose behind why their child was born "different", latch on to this loving insane theory that their children are tapped in to some kind of global consciousness or are otherwise more enlightened than normal people. Here's a more thorough explanation of indigo and "crystal" children: http://www.starchild.co.za/what.html quote:The older children (approximately age 7 through 25), called "indigo Children", share some characteristics with the Crystal Children. Both generations are highly sensitive and psychic, and have important life purposes. The main difference is their temperament. Indigos have a warrior spirit, because their collective purpose is to mash down old systems that no longer serve us. They are here to quash government, educational, and legal systems that lack integrity. To accomplish this end, they need tempers and fiery determination. (I guess maybe that fits with your parents' idea of you going into politics?) It's hard to find sites that are critical of the Indigo Children movement, but here's a thread on the Rick Ross forums with an account from someone who grew up with crazy parents: quote:Somewhere right now, there's a kid (thousands or hundreds of thousands, really) who is being indoctrinated into these things by people who he or she trusts and believes. A schism is developing because love and devotion can't undo the observation that these things aren't really happening. The child is terrified by the unseen or terrified that there isn't an unseen to be terrified by. The alternative is parents who are not to be trusted in the most basic and fundamental ways. If the child forces himself or herself to believe, the love for the parent can remain intact, whole, and the parent can be admired, looked up to, revered. I don't know if there are support groups for people who grew up with the indigo child movement (I can only find groups for people who still think they're indigo children...) but hopefully if you haven't already, you can find a therapist or someone to talk to about this. I think it's a good idea, especially if you still don't feel like a "normal" person - just remember that you're not alone in dealing with this!
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Nov 29, 2011 02:23
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naptalan posted:It's hard to find sites that are critical of the Indigo Children movement, but here's a thread on the Rick Ross forums with an account from someone who grew up with crazy parents: I was really wondering why you thought Rosay Rawse message board was a good place to find people talking about this.
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Nov 29, 2011 03:22
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Of DesertRain's saga:Barry Foster posted:Well that's all basically child abuse. Not really. Lots of religions teach about a pre-existence, and lots of parents teach their kids their religion. While this one sounds New Age, it could easily have been Mormon or Hindu. The hitting and attempted strangling? That's abuse, holy poo poo, strangling your own kid?!
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Nov 29, 2011 03:39
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DeseretRain posted:I'm not sure where constantly screaming at me and hitting me and once trying to strangle me to death fit into their spiritual views, but like I said, they're crazy. Your story was pretty funny in a stupid way, right up until this part. Thanks for not being a serial killer.
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Nov 29, 2011 04:14
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The Saddest Rhino posted:
Are you familiar with the puppet called Miss Piggy on the U.S. TV show The Muppets? I think they share an acting method.
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Nov 29, 2011 10:38
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Holy poo poo, reading Henriette with Miss Piggy's voice makes it even more amazing.
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Nov 29, 2011 10:52
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Great, now every time the saddest rhino posts about the film all I am going to be able to think of is the muppet show theme tune being looped. Also these stories are all really, really good I am suprised that so many people have had so many terrible experiences and can still look back on it without either breaking down or smashing something.
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Nov 29, 2011 11:07
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naptalan posted:Holy poo poo, reading Henriette with Miss Piggy's voice makes it even more amazing. I imagine her yelling Rhino's name in the voice she uses for KERMIIIIIIEEEEEE
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Nov 29, 2011 12:17
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Frozen Horse posted:Are you familiar with the puppet called Miss Piggy on the U.S. TV show The Muppets? I think they share an acting method. Holy crap 
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Nov 29, 2011 13:22
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Frozen Horse posted:Are you familiar with the puppet called Miss Piggy on the U.S. TV show The Muppets? I think they share an acting method. Hey, thanks... I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but that is exactly the sort of thing I was envisioning. Great thread, Uglynoodles. You have all my sympathy for the things you've been through. Nice job on becoming a rockin' good storyteller. I'm hooked!
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Nov 29, 2011 20:10
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Thanks for the support. I wouldn't say I'm at all normal or well adjusted, but I won't go into that in this thread. Anyways, I don't think of my parents' weird spiritual beliefs as being abusive. Obviously the yelling and hitting was emotional and physical abuse- I basically brought it up in the context of, "I don't see how that fits with their spiritual beliefs." Which I really don't, because they always said their moral/spiritual beliefs required total pacifism and non-violence. So I just don't even know how they reconciled that. I guess it's just their craziness. One time, as an adult, I brought up the strangling incident to my mother, and her exact response was, "I only tried to strangle you ONCE. You're making too big a deal out of it." I don't even know how to respond to that level of insanity. But yeah, I never saw the spiritual stuff as abusive; just weird. I don't feel like the spiritual stuff damaged me in any way. They had some weird beliefs about nudity and sexuality that really messed me up and probably qualified as sexual abuse, but I don't think the spiritual beliefs themselves, like the stuff about psychics and seances and astrally projecting, was really harmful at all. And I don't really think it's any weirder than someone who was raised with Christianity or some other mainstream religion. Maybe it's because I'm agnostic, or maybe it's because New Age-y beliefs were totally normalized for me as a kid, but I kind of see all spiritual/religious beliefs as being equally silly. Like, people talk about how crazy soulbonders are, but I don't really see how it's any crazier than people who think that if they worship zombie Jesus that they'll get to live forever in paradise. Or people who think a worm could be the reincarnated spirit of their grandma, like some Eastern religions think. It just all seems about the same to me. I think there's some famous quote that says something about how if one person believes it, it's a delusion, but if a whole society believes it, it's a religion. But then, I literally didn't even know what Christianity was until I was almost in middle school, and soulbonding is closer to the kind of stuff I was raised to believe was normal and true. So Christianity actually sort of seems weirder to me. All religious and spiritual beliefs have the same amount of proof, which is zero. And of course, you can't disprove any of them, either. So who knows? Any of them might be true. I think probably nothing happens after we die, but I can't know that, and nobody can know that. I mean maybe when we all die we'll be totally surprised to find out the soulbonders were right and we'll just be running around the afterlife with Umbreon and Gatomon and the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Or maybe the rapture will happen tomorrow and all the true believers will ascend to heaven and the rest of us will be stuck here going through years of plague and a battle with Satan. WHO KNOWS. (Though honestly, if I had to choose, I'd go with the belief system wherein I get my own Umbreon.) The problem with Denise isn't so much her crazy beliefs; it's that she treats her friends and family badly and she's selfish and lazy and doesn't take care of herself. If she was a perfectly nice person who happened to believe she was married to Heero in the spirit realm, I'd basically be like "Whatever." I have a question about Denise: One of her "husbands" is from a yaoi game, right? So does that mean that in her mind, the guy "broke up" with his boyfriend from the game and he "turned straight" in order to "marry" her? If so, she's really terrible at being a yaoi fangirl.
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Nov 30, 2011 13:43
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Are you saying there are people who are good at being yaoi fangirls? 
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Nov 30, 2011 13:56
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naptalan posted:Are you saying there are people who are good at being yaoi fangirls? I'm an unrepentant yaoi fangirl. Go ahead and laugh or whatever. But I don't think most of us are anything like that link you posted. All the ones I've known are incredibly supportive of gay rights in the real world. I've spent a lot of time in my life doing volunteer work for gay rights.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:15
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Remember, Denise's persona is a dude. A guy from a yaoi game loving her totally fits within the context of her universe. Also, "disproving" a religion is an interesting notion. I guess you can't really attack the belief system proper for a lot of the religions that focus mostly on the afterlife, but you can definitely go after the historicity of a given religion. And when those facts don't match up, it casts doubt on the rest of the religion.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:24
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DeseretRain posted:Like, people talk about how crazy soulbonders are, but I don't really see how it's any crazier than people who think that if they worship zombie Jesus that they'll get to live forever in paradise. The difference is that soulbounders believe they have a spiritual relationship with an unambiguously fictional character. The creators never presented them as anything but fiction. Jesus, Mohammad, and every Buddha were all living, breathing persons separate from the mythology that grew up around them. Worse though is that soulbounders take things to the next level by co-opting the character in a way that prevents anyone else from having the same degree of connection. It's one thing to worship Jesus and look to his teachings/fiction for guidance. It's a completely different matter to claim that you are Jesus. One allows the mythos to be shared by everyone; the other is akin to a toddler gathering up all the toys in the room and screaming when anyone else tries to play.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:24
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Which makes you wonder, how would an encounter between two people married/bonded to the same character play out? Would they call each other out on their craziness, become best buddies, or fight it out for the right to pretent-date their imaginary boyfriend/girlfriend? Because my understanding from the stories in these threads is that these people usually make sure that their fictional harems are carefully divided among their circle of friends to avoid any conflicts.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:40
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Twiggy Johnson posted:The difference is that soulbounders believe they have a spiritual relationship with an unambiguously fictional character. The creators never presented them as anything but fiction. Jesus, Mohammad, and every Buddha were all living, breathing persons separate from the mythology that grew up around them. Jesus and Mohammed existed, but God and Allah could be totally fictional. I don't know a whole ton about soulbonders but I've read about them online a little and from what I understand, most of them believe that there are practically infinite universes- like the way Denise said that there's a universe where the only thing that's different is that Uglynoodles was born a boy. From what I've read, soulbonders basically believe that there are also infinite variations on the fictional universes. Like, there's a universe that is basically Yu-Gi-Oh, but there are infinite variations on it, like there's a universe where the only difference from the Yu-Gi-Oh canon is that Anzu is a blonde instead of a brunette, or a Yu-Gi-Oh universe where the only difference is that Kaiba actually kicked Joey right in the face and said "Seriously, Kisara is my soulmate." So if your soulbond is Malik Ishtar, there could also be tons of other people who legitimately have Malik as a soulbond, it would just be a Malik from a very slightly different Yu-Gi-Oh universe.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:52
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Rexides posted:Which makes you wonder, how would an encounter between two people married/bonded to the same character play out? I like to imagine that it would turn out in the same way as a meeting between Godzilla and Ghidorah. But with 100% more cheetos dust.
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Nov 30, 2011 14:58
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DeseretRain posted:I'm an unrepentant yaoi fangirl. Go ahead and laugh or whatever. But I don't think most of us are anything like that link you posted. All the ones I've known are incredibly supportive of gay rights in the real world. I've spent a lot of time in my life doing volunteer work for gay rights. It's more on average a yaoi fan's supportive but there's enough that's been commented on who are homophobic that it still throws my head off on how the hell that's possible.
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Nov 30, 2011 16:05
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Rexides posted:Which makes you wonder, how would an encounter between two people married/bonded to the same character play out? Would they call each other out on their craziness, become best buddies, or fight it out for the right to pretent-date their imaginary boyfriend/girlfriend?  big enough.
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Nov 30, 2011 16:13
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M_Sinistrari posted:It's more on average a yaoi fan's supportive but there's enough that's been commented on who are homophobic that it still throws my head off on how the hell that's possible. Because they're selfish and immature. Speaking for myself and for the vast majority of women I've met who like slash, it's a just a fetish, and therefore not necessarily connected to real life. In real life, homophobia and discrimination are serious problems, and so you need to support the fight against them. But for some girls, homosexuality exists for their pleasure. So it's okay for them to fantasize about prettyboys one moment and to bash actual homosexuals the next, because those gay men and women aren't accommodating their desires.
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Nov 30, 2011 16:47
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Ask me about studying law with a girl who thinks she's married to Sai Baba Previously: The Girl in the Sari A Note on Henriette Phantom in Honolulu The Girl who Thinks She's Married to Sai Baba & Part 2 The Thespian Society Amnesia: The Friendship Descent The Stage Play Interlude 1: Raja Discovers Blogging Interlude 2: Le Fursécution! The Bollywood Film 1: A True Story The Bollywood Film 2: I am Batman --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I am really good at google. Can I do some internet detective poo poo on your stories? A: NO. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bollywood Film 3: Andrew, You're Not The Father Shawn, dude. You know Henriette. Oh yeah! She's doing some wife-beating movie, isn't she? They were trying to sell us tickets in class just a moment ago. Do you want to be in her movie. You are supposed to be some rear end in a top hat lawyer (like me) who is trying to make Henriette's life miserable. Is she... is she as batshit as everyone says she is? Just a little more than that. HELL loving YES I AM loving INShawn's role was to be the previous lawyer of Sadna (Henriette's character), and was apparently trying to milk all the money out of her. Sadna got wind of this deceit and hired Hinder, her ex-suitor, as her lawyer instead. I asked Henriette why neither Lin nor Jake Long, American Dragon could act as the lawyer instead.  I Will Survive! as you know is a movie about a lone woman's triumph against the treachery of men! That's why all the villains have to be male. It's to show women can survive in this unforgiving world of men and their ilk! That explains Lin, what about Jake Long, American Dragon? You're silly! Jake Long, American Dragon's Chinese. The lawyer has to be Indian. These things need to be accurate. It's a Soon we were moving to a new set, which would be the student affairs office the staff had graciously lent Henriette an hour to film her movie. I picked up Shawn, and while driving there gave him a quick run through of I Will Survive!. So Henriette eloped with the Abusive Husband, had a son, divorced him and fought him in court for like ten years. And the Abusive Husband was a cafeteria worker who then owns a company listed on the stock exchange. And the original alimony before the final court order was MYR 100 / month (USD 31.46 / month)? True story, brah.As I parked we saw Henriette and Jake Long, American Dragon outside of the office. They were dancing to some Bollywood song Henriette was blaring on her cell phone. So this must be the part-musical portion of I Will Survive!, then. A bit of an odd place to do it. Henriette climbed on to a table, spead herself on it and made movements resembling a slow motion epileptic fit. Jake Long, American Dragon hugged the camera stand, and spun around the place. Henriette was singing shrilly in words foreign to me but probably in praise of Sai Baba. Shawn was a little flabbergasted at this point, probably just realising he may have gotten more than what he had bargained for. As for me, it took a hell lot of an effort to keep my decorum with an impartial expression. Wait, Jake Long, American Dragon was hugging the camera stand? The camcorder... oh, there it was. At a corner on the floor. Then what were these two doing?  Hey Shawn, Rhino, we're just having a fun break before filming. Care to join us? (gently caress) NO THANKSLin soon came from the office to let us know we could start filming, and Henriette stopped gyrating like a mouse after ingesting rat poison long enough to describe to us the scene (which was of course improvised). Shawn was Sadna's previous lawyer, who tried to "commit fraud" by having the alimony set down as a settlement fee of MYR 100,000 (USD 31,461) paid by the ex-husband, Shum. The scene was me (as Shum's lawyer) negotiating the settlement fee with Shawn and being all evil, rear end in a top hat lawyers twirling our moustauches. We were then left to write our scripts, as Henriette needed to do some scene involving her and a police officer (played by a security guard). How is this fraud again? I think she means you re trying to cut the trial short so you can get some easy money. As to why you are not prolonging the trial to allow you to charge exorbitant legal fees and then lose her case in the process... no, I don't know how this is fraud, seriously. It's a true story, I guess. Is she really studying law? YOU POLICE ARE ALL THE SAME I CAN'T EVEN REPORT MY HUSBAND IS BEATING ME UP WITHOUT YOU ASKING ME ALL THESE UNFAIR QUESTIONS LOOK AT MY WOUNDS LOOK AT MY SCARS CAN THEY HEAL THEY CANNOT HEAL YOU MEN ONLY PROTECT YOUR KIND AND NOT THE WOMEN HOW CAN A WOMAN SURVIVE IN THIS CRUEL WORLD I AM A SINGLE MOTHER OH SAI BABA Yes.Jake Long, American Dragon approached us. You law students are so smart! You can just sit down and have an intellectual argument at the spur of the moment!Riiiiiiiiiiiggggght. I had yet to find out Jake Long, American Dragon was a furry yet, but that was one of my first few actual encounters of him. Shawn was already finding him creepy and I just wanted to get the whole thing over with. And we got over with the scene pretty easily because Henriette was not involved in it whatsoever, since it was just two evil dudes chillin' and schemin', turning a settlement fee from MYR 4 million to MYR 100,000. We took it in one take (despite me flubbing all of my lines), and Henriette was pretty happy with the outcome. Shawn and I had to do another short scene somewhere else, which involved us doing more schemin' under a tree or some poo poo like that (Skipping ahead - neither Shawn nor I had any other scenes after that, and we were no longer called in to act anymore). Lin and Henriette did another scene closeby, which left us alone with Jake Long, American Dragon. gently caress. Jake Long, American Dragon, ever eager to please, showed us the scene we just did. Holy poo poo, not only did I flub my lines, I had apparently flub it in such a way that I was actually bargaining in detriment to my own client while Shawn was trying not to laugh his rear end off. Why weren't we given scripts nor were we allowed to rehearse? This was going to be in the final I Will Survive! and everyone is going to watch me do stupid poo poo. Why did I answer the phone? Noticing how unimpressed we were with our performance, Jake Long, American Dragon showed us another tape. It was a scene of Henriette and a little Indian boy, who he informed us was the kid acting as Henriette's son. So, what about you, Jake Long, American Dragon? You have a role in this? Oh yes! I am acting as Henriette's son. Uh... so the little Indian kid you showed us just now... would grow up to be you, a Chinese young adult? And this is a true story, right? Yeah, why?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfelqZpapZA Bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3erkxaBo3L0
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Nov 30, 2011 17:22
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DeseretRain posted:Maybe it's because I'm agnostic, or maybe it's because New Age-y beliefs were totally normalized for me as a kid, but I kind of see all spiritual/religious beliefs as being equally silly. Like, people talk about how crazy soulbonders are, but I don't really see how it's any crazier than people who think that if they worship zombie Jesus that they'll get to live forever in paradise. Or people who think a worm could be the reincarnated spirit of their grandma, like some Eastern religions think. It just all seems about the same to me. I think there's some famous quote that says something about how if one person believes it, it's a delusion, but if a whole society believes it, it's a religion. I was raised like you but without the crazy abuse element(not really pagan but... spiritual everythingism) and can confirm that if done right there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'm an atheist now but it has taught me a lot of good things. In my family at least it mostly involved coming to understand yourself and why you are the way you are which involves a lot of soul-searching, working through traumas and learning to accept yourself and others. I was a pretty emotional kid who cried when other people felt bad so they told me that I could ~*sense other people's feelings*~, instead of being written off as a whiny child my family taught me how to accept it but most of all deal with it by making a conscious choice to just let some poo poo go and not make other people's problems my own. It didn't matter whether I could actually feel other people's feelings or just empathized too much (which weren't seperate things in my family's eyes anyway) because it came down to the same thing in the end: they taught me how to be a balanced person. My mom calls it headology, like the common sense psychology the witches use in Terry Pratchett  Also: most of the loooong line of psychics/astrologers/whatevers we consulted were just psychologists without a degree in my experience. E: I went to a Christian school as a kid because we believed in everything that sounded suitably spiritual. It creeped me out for the most part as I didn't understand why everyone only wanted to talk about what is WRONG and SIN and EVIL, so my mom took me out of that school pretty quickly. One time I suggested to the preacher dude that maybe he should include some Captain Planet in his sermons because Jesus only cared about people. 
PiratePing fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Nov 30, 2011 |
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Nov 30, 2011 18:00
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The Saddest Rhino posted:
I was so happy in the moment that I thought you had linked us to "I Will Survive!" footage. I would sell my 18 year old cat into slavery to see it.
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Nov 30, 2011 18:24
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DeseretRain posted:I don't really see how it's any crazier than people who think that if they worship zombie Jesus that they'll get to live forever in paradise. Or people who think a worm could be the reincarnated spirit of their grandma, like some Eastern religions think. It just all seems about the same to me. I think there's some famous quote that says something about how if one person believes it, it's a delusion, but if a whole society believes it, it's a religion. The belief isn't crazier, its the people who are. There are sects of any religion just as batshit as soulbonders, but they have a large segment of the population that is not dripping with crazy to make them look better. And with some set dogma to help keep things from going all the way down the rabbit hole. Even though its often just numbers that separates a religion from a cult, that makes more of a difference than you'd think. Also, Jesus is a REVERSE Zombie. To get eternal life, you eat his flesh. His delicious, starchy flesh.
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Nov 30, 2011 18:54
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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Twiggy Johnson posted:Worse though is that soulbounders take things to the next level by co-opting the character in a way that prevents anyone else from having the same degree of connection. It's one thing to worship Jesus and look to his teachings/fiction for guidance. It's a completely different matter to claim that you are Jesus. One allows the mythos to be shared by everyone; the other is akin to a toddler gathering up all the toys in the room and screaming when anyone else tries to play. That, more than anything, was what confused me about Dark Lady Celebrian. When she first showed up on TV Tropes and claimed that video game characters talked to (and through) her, it was the way she acted that made no sense. It wasn't at all like The Ruling Class, where Peter O'Toole's character thinks he's Jesus and acts all serene; she was desperate, paranoid, had the biggest persecution complex I'd ever seen, and always had to be the center of attention. Later on, she tried introducing a couple other soulbonders to the ventrilo channel, and they did the exact same thing. I've never played Final Fantasy XIII, but isn't Lightning supposed to be cold and unemotional? Why didn't these soulbonder people at least try to emulate the personalities of the people they claimed spoke through (or were) them, instead of making them exactly like themselves? Why was she too lazy to try to differentiate her versions of Iji, Cirno, and Yuffie, aside from making the last one speak in broken Japanese?
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Nov 30, 2011 20:42
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Ever read "the diaries of Margery Kempe"? Because bugger me if it doesn't match up a great deal to what appears to be going on in these people’s minds. They are a struggle to read but it's odd to notice that video games and anime are not the only things that can drive people into being monstrous attention loving crazies who think that they have a special "bond" with a person that they are "so sure is real".
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Nov 30, 2011 21:40
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Hedera Helix posted:I've never played Final Fantasy XIII, but isn't Lightning supposed to be cold and unemotional? Why didn't these soulbonder people at least try to emulate the personalities of the people they claimed spoke through (or were) them, instead of making them exactly like themselves? Why was she too lazy to try to differentiate her versions of Iji, Cirno, and Yuffie, aside from making the last one speak in broken Japanese?
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Nov 30, 2011 22:18
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Viola the Mad posted:Presumably because SHE'S supposed to be the center of everyone's attention and SHE gets to determine everything about the character, never mind the character's actual canonical behavior. From what I've seen, Dark Lady Celebrian's response to such queries as yours is, "Well, Lightning is standing right next to me and that's not how she behaves, so obviously you're wrong." It's a fundamentally self-centered view of the world. Doesn't she also "fix" all the villains she "bonds" with and makes them non-villains? Because she's soooooo special she can turn anyone good?
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Nov 30, 2011 22:45
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Holy crap, uglynoodles. This is fascinating to read but I'm glad you're well away from all that bullshit. Soulbonding actually freaks me out a fair amount, in a "there but for the grace of dumb luck go I" kind of way, because it reminds me of the way I used to act when I was a little kid. I never pulled dollfies>people level poo poo, thank god, but I was awkward and introverted and antisocial and bullied and etc etc and instead of learning how to be worthwhile in the real world, fell back on pretending to myself that I was the reincarnation of Frodo Baggins from Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I know. It was a long time ago, so I can't recall if I went as far as actually believing it or not, but either way, it's embarrassing as all hell to remember. I never outright claimed to anyone that I was Frodo, but I'd do dumb poo poo like "slip up" occasionally by referring to events in the books using personal pronouns or whatever. And I'd greet people in Quenya, and use archaic words like "verily" oh so proudly because I was the only one my age who knew what they meant. I vaguely recall pretending to have ~mysterious knowledge~ about stuff that wasn't outright stated in the books, though I never got into a fight with someone who questioned me. Not that many people cared enough to bother, since I was the only one obsessed enough to care about the name of Sméagol's grandmother or whatever. I stared off into the distance a lot in what I thought was a wise and mysterious way but which probably just looked pretentious. I guess this is turning into Ask Me About Being A Recovered Soulbonder, so here is an art of me in school:  I literally had a replica of the One Ring that I carried everywhere on a chain. I acted out the whole idea of being addicted to it. It was some cheap metal, so the gold colour all rubbed off pretty quickly and the chain started to cut a groove into it. I slept with the bloody thing in my pocket. Once I bought a coat, and I chose a specific long tan one because I thought it looked like something Frodo might wear. Quite a lot of happy posing happened in that coat. More will inevitably come back to me after I hit submit on this comment, but suffice it to say that I realised what bullshit I was peddling and phased myself out of it. I didn't completely go onto the sane and narrow; I was in school plays whenever I got half a chance, and went through a brief phase or two of method-acting to a fault. But then I simultaneously finished primary school and moved with my family to a whole new town, which was probably the best thing that could've happened to me; I was away from the old bullies and the people who I expected to dislike me and think me weird, so I was still shy and socially awkward as hell, but I felt able to try making real friends instead of inventing fantasies. I never turned into a social butterfly, but I learned to talk to people and realised that I didn't have to be Super Special Shiny Hero Fictional Dude to be worthwhile. I went from sitting in the corner hiding behind a book to sitting with people and talking about music we'd heard and lessons we'd had. I went from thinking myself asexual to talking about boys and even dating a couple of times. Then when I was a teenager I made a friend who turned out to have her own huge stores of soulbonder-like crazy, which is a story all by itself, and which pushed me into actively being afraid of being insane. Nowadays I've more or less worked back to a happy medium of neither talking to the voices nor being scared of everyone who does. I still get paranoid about losing it, though. I have a job and a boyfriend and friends and skills and most of the time I manage to be happy with myself, and I guess it's scary to realise that if I hadn't let go of some stupid delusions as a kid, I could be one of these horror stories. Living in my mum's spare room, talking to hobbits instead of looking for work, loving people over for the sake of my fantasy. Talk about dodging a bullet. Turpentine Caz fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Dec 1, 2011 |
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Dec 1, 2011 00:12
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It looks like this thread won't run out of material. It'd be great to hear more of your story, since we don't have a lot of other first person perspective on the whole soulbonding delusion. Did you have depression during/before your delusions started? You briefly mentioned hearing voices - has that persisted? What were your relations with your family like during this period?
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Dec 1, 2011 00:20
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Josef bugman posted:Ever read "the diaries of Margery Kempe"? Because bugger me if it doesn't match up a great deal to what appears to be going on in these people’s minds. They are a struggle to read but it's odd to notice that video games and anime are not the only things that can drive people into being monstrous attention loving crazies who think that they have a special "bond" with a person that they are "so sure is real". To quote a wise man, "Holy poo poo. It makes total sense." Margery Kempe was a crazy person who had "the gift of tears," meaning that anything that reminded her of the crucifixion of Jesus--crosses, loud cracks or snaps, cross-shaped things--got her weeping, so she was crying virtually all the time. She wore white even though she had a bunch of kids, she was so obnoxious she got kicked out of pilgrimages she joined... She had very vivid hallucinations of being there with Jesus and Mary Magdeline during the crucifixion, basically becoming their best buds and comforting them and being comforted by them. On the other hand, she respected the holy canon other than self-inserting herself into it as a sidekick. Soulbonders don't even have the common courtesy to stay in-character.
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Dec 1, 2011 00:54
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Tulip posted:It looks like this thread won't run out of material. It'd be great to hear more of your story, since we don't have a lot of other first person perspective on the whole soulbonding delusion. I was diagnosed with depression a few years afterwards, and I'm on Prozac for it right now, in fact. I don't know about during or before then. There is a history of depression in my family, but I'm not sure how young people can start suffering from it? I'd have to look that up. The voices thing is pretty much restricted to sometimes hearing my name spoken, though sometimes I'll hear other words/phrases or just random unidentified vocalisations. It's not something I've spoken to a doctor about, though, since they're not telling me to burn down an orphanage or anything. It's just an anomaly that leads to awkward moments sometimes when I think someone's spoken to me and they haven't. (It's not something I've admitted to anyone but my boyfriend, in fact, but this is the anonymous internet, so...) Actually, when I first typed that phrase about the voices I meant it metaphorically and was going to take it out in case it was confusing, but then I thought about it and realised it was accurate enough to stay. So they're infrequent and unobtrusive enough for me to do that. It gets worse if I encourage it. By which I mean, if I'm actively trying to hear the voices and going "hey I totally have someone in my head wheee~" I'm more likely to think I'm hearing people talking to me and reacting to stuff inside my head. I know this because occasionally I'll feel really lovely and then it'll be tempting to pretend to be someone else. I know it isn't safe, though, so I try not to do it. Relations with my family were... not idyllic? My dad was a dickbag who buggered off and committed suicide, but I can't remember whether that was right before or a year or two before the fantasies started. I argued with my mum, but she was a really good mum nonetheless. She cared for and still cares for me and my brother and she's worked really hard to make sure we didn't go without. We get on really well now, at least when I'm not at the house for long stretches (at a distance we're fine but under the same roof we always find something to fight about eventually). You wouldn't know it to look at us now, because we're pretty much best of friends, but my brother and I used to fight like cat and dog as well back then. It was a mutual thing; I was a dick to him, he was a dick to me, cycle repeats. I hadn't made any friends, so the only places I really got out of the house were at school, at the childminder's and at this summer club thing my brother and I went to. The other kids at school and the childminder's provided full-time bullying for my convenience; the summer club was the kind of place that makes kids play cricket in the blazing sun and tells them to like it, and all I wanted to do was sit and draw or read. Which is hardly the world's most heartwrenching sob story, but when I was a kid all this was pretty much the worst thing ever. I was open to escapism in a pretty big way. edit: I spell goodly. Turpentine Caz fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Dec 1, 2011 |
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Dec 1, 2011 01:03
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Thanks for the in depth response. I apologize if i come off very clinical/cold, i'm mostly interested in this in an academic way (not that i have any psychology training, i'm just a dude interested in the subject). If you have a cautious therapist, you should probably talk about the voices. Auditory hallucinations are commonly seen as a signature of schizophrenia, but even fairly mundane depression can cause them, and "dude on the internet" is really not the sort of authority that can tease that out. If your auditory hallucinations are indicators of another condition that might be worth seeking treatment for. Also depression can hit absurdly early, and while it frequently has "triggers," it doesn't need to be the ultimate sob story and frankly a family suicide is a perfectly reasonable trigger, and daily frustration (authority figures trying to manage your leisure time, general bullying) is a pretty solid way to sustain and even create depression. Did you ever have the sense that you were more than one person? Did you compartmentalize your emotional reactions? Have the delusional symptoms in general tracked with your depression (i.e. do you feel less need to pretend to be somebody else since you started being medicated?)? With regards to family, were they aware of your delusions? How did they deal with it? Were the delusions/affectations of your behavior a subject of bullying, and if so, how did you react to that? Also, congratulations on recovering this far. It's always good to have success stories.
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Dec 1, 2011 01:36
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Twiggy Johnson posted:Worse though is that soulbounders take things to the next level by co-opting the character in a way that prevents anyone else from having the same degree of connection. It's one thing to worship Jesus and look to his teachings/fiction for guidance. It's a completely different matter to claim that you are Jesus. One allows the mythos to be shared by everyone; the other is akin to a toddler gathering up all the toys in the room and screaming when anyone else tries to play. Rexides posted:Which makes you wonder, how would an encounter between two people married/bonded to the same character play out? Would they call each other out on their craziness, become best buddies, or fight it out for the right to pretent-date their imaginary boyfriend/girlfriend? After reading this thread a few weeks ago, I started another thread on a different forum about soulbonding, something I've found incredibly fascinating since first being exposed to DarkLadyCelebrian in the PYF Trainwrecks thread. Anyway, the long and short of it is that two real goddamn soulbonders showed up to answer questions. One had realised it was crazy and left a long time ago, and the other was still an active soulbonder. I did actually ask the active soulbonder how the community dealt with fights over who had the "correct" soulbond: quote:I've never seen this happen. People tend to treat others who've bonded with the same character as them as a curiousity, and often swap stories, but I've never seen anyone convinced they had the one true on or anything. So yeah, if it does happen, it's not that common. I also asked a bunch of other questions about soulbonding "politics" but the answers were all fairly tame (actually, soulbonding communities seem quite chilled out about most things, which I wasn't expecting at all). It's an interesting read though, so the thread is here if any of you guys want to read the rest of their answers. Knood, the ex-bonder, shows up halfway on the first page, and Also, the current soulbonder, starts posting here. Also, re: DLC, even other soulbonders think she's weird: quote:I am familiar with DarkLadyCelebrian and, to be honest, most of what she writes completely confuses me. I'm not saying she's not a soulbonder, just that she's a very unusual soulbonder. As far as I can tell, she doesn't hang out with other soulbonders at all, so she's developed her own terms for thigns, which aren't the terms used in soulbonding communities, so they don't make sense to me. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing, people can use whatever terms they want. It's just got me a little confused. I wonder if DLC was ever involved in soulbonding communities? She seems quite convinced that the characters she's talking to are the really real characters from the video games she plays, so maybe she avoids them because she doesn't like the idea of other people "claiming" her characters. It seems that, on the whole, soulbonders are very mellow about the existence of other versions of their bonds. There's even a whole community dedicated to people from the same "verse" trying to connect.
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Dec 1, 2011 02:09
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