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Tulip posted: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. Thank you.  It's a pretty huge relief whenever I think about where I am right now compared to where I was. Even this time last year I didn't have a job and I thought I'd fail university and have to live in mum's house working tills. Now I'm a graduate writing advertising copy and living with my boyfriend. I'm lucky as hell.And don't worry about coming off as too clinical. I'm doing this to hopefully be interesting/entertaining and because I find self-analysis cathartic, so I don't mind not getting headpats. I don't have a therapist at the moment. I had one for the last year of secondary school (stand by for a short aside about that) and another on and off while at university. The latter I never really clicked with (the medical services at that uni were hilariously lacking anyway), but the former really helped me get past a lot of trauma I had about my dad and about being felt up by a job interviewer when I was 16. If I remember right, it was sometime during that year that I was officially diagnosed with depression, though I didn't go onto Prozac until my first year of uni. As for the aside: I only had a therapist at all because my secondary school mailed a letter home one day saying basically "we're having you see a shrink, go to classroom x at y time on z-day". I still remember that letter a bit incredulously, though in my case the end turned out to justify the means. Bringing the therapist bit back on topic: I never told them about the delusions, in part because I was scared of it going on some kind of record and ruining my future and the friendships I'd built up, and in part because the whole Frodo Baggins thing was ancient history by then. I did tell the first therapist about my fears of being insane and about the soulbonder-ish friend I mentioned before, since that whole debacle had gone down the same year if I remember rightly. I did sometimes get the sense, and please feel free to laugh, that I was a dinosaur. Walking like one, vocalising like one, generally pretending to be one. Dinosaurs and other animals from their reign were another obsession of mine, before even Lord of the Rings. This was long enough ago that it was probably just a tiny child messing around, though. I don't want to wonder about it so hard that I conjure memories out of whole cloth of being a raptor otherkin or whatever the hell. Same story with lions, on and off. It's always the beautiful animals, isn't it? Nobody ever soulbonds a cockroach. Sometimes when I got into a screaming match with mum or was really hideously upset I'd get the sense of me telling me to shut up and stop being an idiot, if that makes any sense. As in there were two of me, and one was above it all and thought the other was an idiot for getting caught up in all this emotional stuff. Sometimes when I wanted to break something out of frustration I'd stop and not do it because I told myself not to. I still don't know how normal this is. Can anyone chime in with comment as to whether they've experienced it? Delusional symptoms have definitely gotten better and worse in accordance with the depression. I don't mean to belittle anyone's experience with delusions by saying this, but from what I've experienced and witnessed regarding them I get the impression that they're influenced by whether or not you want to be deluded. I doubt that's the deciding factor in anyone's case, but in my own and in the cases of people I've known, the more they were tempted/encouraged to live in their fantasy world, the more they did. I'll go through periods of time when I can't see why the hell I'd think that kind of thing, and then something will go wrong or I'll go into a depressive slump and wham, escapism is more attractive and the delusions threaten to come back. The medication definitely helps keep me from wanting to pretend, in that it makes me less prone to feeling worthless and so on. My family didn't and don't know, as far as I'm aware. I remember my mum worried a lot that I wasn't getting out enough, didn't have enough friends, didn't go out enough, spent too much time reading and not enough socialising. I think my mental health did seriously worry her at one point, because I remember her confronting me because she thought I'd messed up a room. This was right after we moved to the new town and the rooms were still full of boxes, and a lot of stuff had dust on it, and she thought I'd drawn in the dust. When I said I didn't she didn't go on to ask my brother or whatever, but said that she was worried I'd done it and didn't remember doing it. Which has stuck with me because it kind of freaked me out. Most of what I got bullied for was my obsession with reading. I would read a book all the time, constantly, whether it was Lord of the Rings or other novels or science books or history books or... well, if it had words I would read it. Other people would steal the books and throw them around, call me book-related names and try to trip me as I walked along reading. The other thing I got bullied for was being very naive about life and sex and so on. People would say my food at lunch looked like [insert x y or z thing that's excreted from your body], and try to get me to say I wasn't a virgin and make lewd gestures and so on. I don't remember getting bullied for the affectations specifically, though I doubt they helped the general perception that I was a weird kid. I wasn't overt about the Frodo thing, so I'm not even sure people knew. It was for my own benefit, not theirs. Sorry it's taking me a while to type these. I want to check over them to make sure they're accurate/readable before I send them out. 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Dec 1, 2011 02:51
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Turpentine Caz posted:I did sometimes get the sense, and please feel free to laugh, that I was a dinosaur. Walking like one, vocalising like one, generally pretending to be one. Dinosaurs and other animals from their reign were another obsession of mine, before even Lord of the Rings. This was long enough ago that it was probably just a tiny child messing around, though. I don't want to wonder about it so hard that I conjure memories out of whole cloth of being a raptor otherkin or whatever the hell. I totally did this as a kid too. I loved dinosaur everything. Knew a fuckton about a wide range of species, wanted to study the poo poo out of some dinosaurs when I grew up, everything. And, for at least a while, insisted I was a dinosaur. I remember having an "egg-hatching" ritual in the morning, things like that. Apparently I even demanded to be tested to prove it, which my grandma agreed to until my mom shut her down. I think I'd grown out of it all by eight or nine, tops, though. I'm not sure how deeply I ever really believed it and, of course, I was mostly a little kid. Turpentine Caz posted:Sometimes when I got into a screaming match with mum or was really hideously upset I'd get the sense of me telling me to shut up and stop being an idiot, if that makes any sense. As in there were two of me, and one was above it all and thought the other was an idiot for getting caught up in all this emotional stuff. Sometimes when I wanted to break something out of frustration I'd stop and not do it because I told myself not to. I still don't know how normal this is. Can anyone chime in with comment as to whether they've experienced it? Oddly enough, I can also go along with this too. In my mid-teens it was more as you said, like there was two (or more) people present. It still happens, but now it's more a case of an inner-dialogue I knowingly have with myself to work through a situation. If I've been depressed, I'll give myself a pep talk. If I'm angry, I'll tell myself to shut up and figure out why I'm angry in the first place, and so on. I've got a few ideas on why I do it, but anymore I don't see it as something negatively impacting my life. And, truthfully, that's the biggest difference between a mental "quirk" and an illness.
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Dec 1, 2011 04:11
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Turpentine Caz posted:Sometimes when I got into a screaming match with mum or was really hideously upset I'd get the sense of me telling me to shut up and stop being an idiot, if that makes any sense. As in there were two of me, and one was above it all and thought the other was an idiot for getting caught up in all this emotional stuff. Sometimes when I wanted to break something out of frustration I'd stop and not do it because I told myself not to. I still don't know how normal this is. Can anyone chime in with comment as to whether they've experienced it? Like RyuujinBlueZ I experience a lot of inner-dialogue involving personal difficulties with 'another'; when I'm depressed, upset, guilty, questioning my behavior in situations, those sort of things, I've found it makes the best sense to examine myself through inner conversations with (embarrassingly enough) fictional figures I admire. I think over time they've come to represent certain ideals I strive for. I know they're not real, I never physically hear their voices or think I'm soulbonded with them. Those 'conversations' are tools of self-confidence and self-discovery with positive outcome and do NOT replace going to my actual family and friends for help and advice.
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Dec 1, 2011 05:41
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Turpentine Caz posted: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...) Uhhhhhh that's something you should tell your doctor. Yeah. Even if they're not telling you bad things and you're cool to live with them, no one should be hearing voices. They may stay that way and not be a problem, but schizophrenia's a oval office to deal with if it decides to suddenly blossom and you have no idea how to deal with it. For reference, I hear voices sometimes when I'm extra tired, just snippets and words like I'm tuning in and out of a radio frequency. At times when I'm trying to sleep I'll be startled awake by some of the voices. I told a doctor and he said it was not really a big deal but to be extra careful not to take any mind-altering recreational drugs because I may well be one of those people who goes permanently batshit after getting high on something everyone else was okay with. Turpentine Caz posted:Sometimes when I got into a screaming match with mum or was really hideously upset I'd get the sense of me telling me to shut up and stop being an idiot, if that makes any sense. As in there were two of me, and one was above it all and thought the other was an idiot for getting caught up in all this emotional stuff. Sometimes when I wanted to break something out of frustration I'd stop and not do it because I told myself not to. I still don't know how normal this is. Can anyone chime in with comment as to whether they've experienced it? I do this all the time, it's nothing unusual. I think that people who don't have this inner voice are generally the ones who make terrible loving decisions you read about on the news, and you go "What the gently caress made that dumbass think that was a good idea?" Depending on how stressed and upset you are, the inner voice can be so different from yourself as to seem like another person entirely. If you want to go a step further, Pratchett's Tiffany series calls them Second Thoughts. The other you that remains calm and detached and acts as a central balance of rationality. Corridor fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Dec 1, 2011 |
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Dec 1, 2011 05:52
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Corridor posted:Uhhhhhh that's something you should tell your doctor. Yeah. Even if they're not telling you bad things and you're cool to live with them, no one should be hearing voices. They may stay that way and not be a problem, but schizophrenia's a oval office to deal with if it decides to suddenly blossom and you have no idea how to deal with it. Ah. Okay, thanks. Now you mention tiredness, it does mostly just happen when I'm tired, but I'll tell a doctor. (Don't have a permanent one right now as work has me travelling a lot, but the clinic where I last renewed my prescription is a good place.) Various people posted:Stuff about talking themselves down. Oh sweet. That's one less thing I have to worry about. What Superman's Gal Pal said about imagining conversations with admirable fictional characters makes a lot of sense to me, in fact, because I've occasionally done that too (also in a non-soulbondy, knowing they're fictional kind of way). For me it's just like wondering what a real-life authority figure would do in the given situation. Neither the real person or the fictional character is actually there; rather, it's a case of trying to emulate / be inspired by the traits of theirs that you admire.RyuujinBlueZ posted:I totally did this as a kid too. I loved dinosaur everything. Knew a fuckton about a wide range of species, wanted to study the poo poo out of some dinosaurs when I grew up, everything. And, for at least a while, insisted I was a dinosaur. I remember having an "egg-hatching" ritual in the morning, things like that. Apparently I even demanded to be tested to prove it, which my grandma agreed to until my mom shut her down. I think I'd grown out of it all by eight or nine, tops, though. I'm not sure how deeply I ever really believed it and, of course, I was mostly a little kid. You are awesome. I used to walk to school like a Utahraptor when I was a tiny child. (They were my favourite of the raptors because they had the coolest colour scheme on Walking With Dinosaurs.) I was convinced I was going to be an archaeologist. And the swimming pool was not for swimming; it was for acting out dino hunting scenes. Also for holding my nose and flipping upside down so that the underside of the water looked like the floor, with people's lower bodies sticking through it and kicking up into the air. But that has nothing to do with anything, it just looked really cool. We made our own fun when I was a girl, walked ten miles through snow, et cetera
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Dec 1, 2011 06:27
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The depression and inner voice chat made me think of this Hyperbole and a Half post. Maybe not an actual audible inner voice, but a kind of internal disassociative narration. I remember reading that audio hallucinations are actually really common, especially if you're tired/falling asleep. (Hearing is the most clearly remembered sense- the same neurons fire when you're hearing something or remembering it) My one experience with that kind of thing was waking up, and then all of a sudden there was a deep, gravelly man's voice in my head- think Tom Waits- commanding me to listen to him and do what he said. He told me to go outside (in the middle of the night, in winter), and await further instructions. I was busy going "oh my god I'm having a psychotic break", but I reasoned with it that it wasn't real. As my position got stronger, and I insisted that I was hallucinating, it began fading in and out like a badly tuned radio. Eventually I won the argument and it went away. 
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Dec 1, 2011 06:54
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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? My first though when confronted with this possibility was something along the lines of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. I suppose it depends on exactly how down the rabbit-hole they are.
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Dec 1, 2011 07:32
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Turpentine Caz posted:You are awesome. I used to walk to school like a Utahraptor when I was a tiny child. (They were my favourite of the raptors because they had the coolest colour scheme on Walking With Dinosaurs.) I was convinced I was going to be an archaeologist. And the swimming pool was not for swimming; it was for acting out dino hunting scenes. I don't remember what I favored anymore, but it was awesome. The last time I remember anything along those lines, though, was in fifth grade. At the end of the year my teacher, who had become a good friend as well, complimented me on how well I'd come out of my shell over the year and hoped I'd continue to expand and grow as a person. My response was to ask him to help me find the pieces, 'cause I was going to need my shell again come sixth grade. First year of Middle School for me, and all. As for the "Inner Voices" thing, I don't know about famous or fictional people. I've long joked that I keep "backups" up my closest friends in my head, though. I used to have such long conversations with my best friend, in my head, that I'd forget I hadn't told him any of it when we'd talk later. Then again, 90% of his responses are always one-word so... I'll be a nerd and say, though, that when I'm really depressed I give myself a Kamina Speech. Not, like, the character so much as the style of motivational speech. Really, just a mental punch to the face and a "Who the hell do you think you are!?" to help me see I need to keep going. 
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Dec 1, 2011 07:33
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:As for the "Inner Voices" thing, I don't know about famous or fictional people. I've long joked that I keep "backups" up my closest friends in my head, though. I used to have such long conversations with my best friend, in my head, that I'd forget I hadn't told him any of it when we'd talk later. Then again, 90% of his responses are always one-word so... I do that too.  If I need to figure something out I have a mental conversation with my best friend from High School. I haven't spoke to him in about four years now and haven't really been friends with him in about eight, but he's still my mental "okay Knitter let's sit down and talk this out" voice. Wonder what he would think of that. 
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Dec 1, 2011 08:02
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Wandering Knitter posted:I do that too. I do the same thing but the person changes to a more appropriate one depending on the context of what I'm working through/explaining. Something relating to math will be someone from math class or maybe the professor, something relating to martial arts will be one of my students or instructors, etc. I also just realized it's never, ever been my parents. That is kind of frightening for some reason, seeing as our relationship is pretty normal.
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Dec 1, 2011 08:36
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Wandering Knitter posted:I do that too. Haha, that's a bit more strange than mine. My best friend and I have been close for a while now, and still are. Though with both of us having cells now, I'm as prone to just up and text him as I am to have a mental conversation. My pet theory for why I've always leaned on "Inner Voices", to the point where it was a big issue when I was a boy, is that I've always believed that I'm the only person I can count on 100% of the time. Granted I'm usually counting on myself to gently caress up, but still. Reliability is reliability.
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Dec 1, 2011 08:51
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:
Hey, I do this too. I had no idea it was so common, I just thought I was weird. I have conversations with pretty much any drat person on my mind at the time... friends, relatives, fictional chars, celebrities I admire. They're just basically... eh, kinda like versions of myself with a mask on, to use as a sounding board for my thoughts. They're what I use instead of a diary.Buried alive posted:I also just realized it's never, ever been my parents. That is kind of frightening for some reason, seeing as our relationship is pretty normal. Aw that doesn't seem strange. Very broadly speaking, parents-child dynamics tend to be far too involved for them to make good confidants. People are often less likely to confide in them than in friends, even if they love their parents.
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Dec 1, 2011 09:14
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Corridor posted:For reference, I hear voices sometimes when I'm extra tired, just snippets and words like I'm tuning in and out of a radio frequency. At times when I'm trying to sleep I'll be startled awake by some of the voices. I told a doctor and he said it was not really a big deal but to be extra careful not to take any mind-altering recreational drugs because I may well be one of those people who goes permanently batshit after getting high on something everyone else was okay with. This sometimes happens to me when I'm lying in bed. I thought it was a pretty normal thing, even if it doesn't happen to me terribly often. I wasn't planning on taking any mind-altering drugs anytime soon, but thanks for the heads up!
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Dec 1, 2011 10:07
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I have auditory hallucinations as well, but as the other mentioned, mostly at night or if I'm really tired. Its usually one of two cases, either its dead quiet, or there's some kind of constant background noise (like a fan). Usually its not voices, but music (but every now and then, sometimes there's lyrics). The part that pisses me off is its really good music. And the minute I focus on it too strongly, it vanishes. I used to do nighttime security in places with industrial grade ventilation systems, and I would sometime hear faint music under the white noise. This was usually not "orginal music", but often what songs were on the radio. So, I think it was just sort of my brain making patterns in the chaos. It makes hearing tests a huge pain, though.  I wish they'd use some sort of differentiated thing instead of just the tone. Because towards the upper end, I'm not sure if I actually heard that beep, or if it was in my head because I'm trying to find it.Corridor posted:Hey, I do this too. I had no idea it was so common, I just thought I was weird. There's actually people who help to "coach" you to have conversations with (usually historical) figures. I remember back in the Clinton Years where "HILLARY WAS HAVING SEANCES!  ", but in reality, she was just meeting with one of these types of people.The deep end starts when you start confusing the mask with yourself. I also pretended I was a dinosaur a lot when I was kid.
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Dec 1, 2011 11:56
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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SRM posted:This sometimes happens to me when I'm lying in bed. I thought it was a pretty normal thing, even if it doesn't happen to me terribly often. I wasn't planning on taking any mind-altering drugs anytime soon, but thanks for the heads up! Yeah if it's when you're just about to fall asleep and you're in that weird half awake stage, hearing things is normal, apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia#Sounds
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Dec 1, 2011 12:52
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Guesticles posted:I also pretended I was a dinosaur a lot when I was kid. I think that any kid who did not do this was sadly abnormal in some way. Unless they have a suitable stand-in for the dinosaur, like a jabberwock or unicorn or something.
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Dec 1, 2011 13:57
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I'm pretty sure everybody pretended they were a dinosaur at some point. I was an allosaurus! ...okay sometimes I was a Charizard instead. But pretending is a perfectly normal part of childhood. And even as a kid, I knew I wasn't really a dinosaur or pokemon. But it was fun to act like one. The only times I've had consistent auditory hallucinations is when I was extremely caffeinated. I started thinking that there was things that weren't there, like a bear around the corner or something. Its like my heart was racing, so my mind tried to find a reason for that to happen. Clearly I'm jumpy because there's something dangerous nearby! I also have had hallucinations when extremely tired or running a high fever, but that sounds fairly normal. As for an internal voice... I think everyone has some sort of internal monologue. Thinking of "oh, what would X do in this situation" is pretty common. It can get to be an issue if you let it take over too much. Internalizing your thoughts and thinking things through is good, but if you spend so much time doing that that it ends up affecting your life in the real world, that's a problem. And it's not always just "I'm too busy talking to Bugs Bunny!" stuff. Constantly berating yourself in your head is a hard thing to break out of.
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Dec 1, 2011 14:36
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I had a dinosaur costume for Halloween when I was little. It wasn't used just for Halloween though. The only auditory hallucination I have is the normal one when I'm tired and I hear my name being called, usually it's my mom shouting it, and it probably stems from her shouting my name to wake me up for school years ago. Also I tend to hear music when I'm listening to static or other white noise, but I think this is also common, albeit something different from hypnagogia. Internal voices pretty much pop up as needed, but they're all me, just taking a different stance on a subject and sticking to it like someone on a debate team. Maybe this has something to do with me liking to play devil's advocate a lot, or it could be the other way around. I also "rehearse" conversations in my head a lot that I plan on having or think I might have, which can take a while if I try and account for all possible responses...so far no one has sucker punched me mid-sentence and wildly changed topics, but I still prepare for it. More on topic the whole soulbonding thing sounds like people started daydreaming and then just didn't stop. Told the "lie" so much they started to believe it. A lot of it sounds like stuff I used to daydream about and sometimes role-play with others, but it never got to the point that I believed it to be true. Some other people I knew at that time had a looser grip on reality, but nothing like what UglyNoodles or some of the others in the thread have dealt with; more weird than flat-out crazy. Granted one of them that thought she was a werewolf-vampire (it was one or the other or both, can't remember) did bite me.
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Dec 1, 2011 16:43
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GenericOverusedName posted:Internalizing your thoughts and thinking things through is good, but if you spend so much time doing that that it ends up affecting your life in the real world, that's a problem. This is pretty much the modern definition of mental illness, right here. It's generally accepted that everybody be crazy. Look at how many of us all did the same things as kids, still do the same things now, that could be considered symptoms of a problem. Deeper than that, most people have some "quirk" that's basically a low-level form of a proper mental illness. But, until it starts to have a negative impact on your life, it's not considered a mental illness.
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Dec 1, 2011 19:23
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Hallucinations are pretty normal and just about everybody has them. But yeah they're usually either the result of being excessively tired or simply your brain trying to find pattens where none exist. We're very good at that. It's why sometimes we see faces in trees or clouds even though there really aren't any faces there, but we're so wired to find patterns in our environment that we see them anyway. The true crazy doesn't begin until you start believing that those faces are the reincarnation of Sephiroth or whatever.
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Dec 1, 2011 19:43
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This thread is great in so many ways. Not only do I now know that people like Denise and my first boyfriend are more common than I ever would've imagined, but now I know that other sane people have conversations with people in their head too (while being aware of what they're doing and not actually thinking there is someone else in there with them). Mine are usually people like musicians or comedians who I really respect and I've done it for like 30 years without ever having told a single person about it. And yeah, night time auditory hallucinations are normal. I don't understand how smoking weed would make you crazy because once in a great while you think you hear someone say your name when you're lying in bed.
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Dec 1, 2011 20:27
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Guesticles posted:There's actually people who help to "coach" you to have conversations with (usually historical) figures. I remember back in the Clinton Years where "HILLARY WAS HAVING SEANCES! This reminds me of an idea my boyfriend put forward when we were talking about soulbonding a while back. (We were talking about the kind who think characters live in their heads, rather than ones who think they are those characters.) He suggested that everyone talks to themselves and lots of people 'hear' the conversation, but soulbonders are worse than most at recognising both/all sides of the conversation as themselves. I know a couple of people online who buy into that kind of soulbonding, and I've noticed that the characters in their heads grow and change whenever they get into a new movie or whatever. Their new favourite characters will suddenly turn up when they get back from the cinema. There's a weird kind of logic for sequels and ongoing series, where newly-revealed information about the character (such as stuff about their childhood that the soulbond should have known) is only revealed to the soulbond at the same time as the soulbonder learns it. The offered explanation is that the soulbonder has the 'master' set of memories and knowledge, and the soulbonds all have to crib off of that. The same defence is used for why soulbonds can't take over the body and speak a million dead languages or levitate or do other things the soulbonder usually can't. I've been told that a soulbond can take over the body (which they call 'fronting') and be slightly better at people skills or something like that, which if you ask them is proof that it's real, and if you ask me is to do with them having more confidence in the soulbond's ability to do X thing (like how I started finding it easier to talk to people as a kid, not because of a new ability I never had, but because I was more confident that I could make friends in the new place than in the old). When I started I had some way to tie this tangent in to the first paragraph, but damned if I can remember what it was. I'll leave the tangent though, because I think it's interesting and in some ways it's similar to the stuff Denise came up with.
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Dec 1, 2011 20:29
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Brightman posted:Internal voices pretty much pop up as needed, but they're all me, just taking a different stance on a subject and sticking to it like someone on a debate team. Maybe this has something to do with me liking to play devil's advocate a lot, or it could be the other way around. I also "rehearse" conversations in my head a lot that I plan on having or think I might have, which can take a while if I try and account for all possible responses...so far no one has sucker punched me mid-sentence and wildly changed topics, but I still prepare for it. You are not alone, I do this too. I'm constantly over analyzing potential situations, and preparing for farfetched scenarios that couldn't feasibly happen.
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Dec 1, 2011 23:54
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quote: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. No, she believes that she is Parrier, a male demon in "an accursed female form," to use her own words. Once again, she has no desire to live as male, dress as one, or transition in any way. So in essence she believes she's in a gay relationship with an astral animu rape ghost. quote:Which makes you wonder, how would an encounter between two people married/bonded to the same character play out? I have an account on LJ that I used to lurk into a number of Otakukin communities. I wanted to see if Denise was really a unique case or if there were more like her. I wanted to know how and in what ways she was broken and if there were others like her. I wrote up all the appropriate background posts and what have you, and then lurked from there. I cause no disturbances there and I bother no one -- I don't need to. It really does it all itself. It's really quite fascinating. It's typically against community rules to engage with someone with the same character in that kind of way, you know the 'NO I AM THE REAL SAILOR MOON~' or whatever. But, just because it doesn't happen in the community doesn't mean it doesn't happen on people's personal journals. Because it does. Often. And it's hilarious, but mostly it's just sad. They'll often snark about each other and how fake each other is and list reasons why the other one is not actually THE REAL SAILOR SENSHI USAGI or whatever and internet bitchfights ensue. Eventually one of them comes up with the ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS~ thing to settle the dispute. quote:I did sometimes get the sense, and please feel free to laugh, that I was a dinosaur. Walking like one, vocalising like one, generally pretending to be one. I did this.
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Dec 2, 2011 01:33
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uglynoodles posted:No, she believes that she is Parrier, a male demon in "an accursed female form," to use her own words. Once again, she has no desire to live as male, dress as one, or transition in any way. So in essence she believes she's in a gay relationship with an astral animu rape ghost. Now, understanding I may not want to know the answer, and we've determined that Denise has about a +25 save vs. logic, but... if she's a (demon) male, and her anime waifus or whatever are male... how was she preggers with their astral rape babies? I mean, she's female, but her astral self is male. How did this work?
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Dec 2, 2011 02:08
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^^^ Well, you see... when Heero blew his astral spunk into Parrier's rear end in a top hat, his anus opened up a portal into Denise's actual vagina, causing Heero's ghost spunk to shoot up Denise's fallopian tubes and fertilize her real eggs. Thus, Denise gets pregnant and ghost babby is formed, or something. Then, after 9 months of astral time (which is roughly the time it takes to dodge a phone call exhorting Denise to leave her house) ghost babby is born. It all makes perfect sense when you think about it really hard. Nixnihil fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 02:15
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^^^ Either that or MPreg*, probably. *Male pregnancy. Yes, it's terrifying.
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Dec 2, 2011 02:45
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Anyone interested in the conversations in your head style topics should check out the book "Incoginto: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman. In addition to all kinds of other wonderful brain stuff, he talks about how and why we can have arguments with ourselves. In summary, our brain has tons of constantly running "programs" dealing with how we will behave, what we perceive, etc. Many are responsible for covering each single task, and each one of these deals with the task in a slightly different way. If the vast majority of programs agree on a result, that tends to be what we think or perceive. Sometimes, the programs are more or less evenly split about what to do, and the conflict can manifest in our inner monologue. If we see a cookie, and 12 programs generate an answer eat the cookie, and 14 generate not to eat it, we'll start to argue with ourselves about eating the cookie.
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Dec 2, 2011 02:46
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Guesticles posted:Now, understanding I may not want to know the answer, and we've determined that Denise has about a +25 save vs. logic, but... Recounting what has been told to us so far, Denise beleived she was Mystical Lovely Cloud Princess Magnolia during her Heero years. I would not put MPreg scenarios past her if she's still hung up on Astral Babies(r) though.
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Dec 2, 2011 03:27
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Guesticles posted:I have auditory hallucinations as well, but as the other mentioned, mostly at night or if I'm really tired. Its usually one of two cases, either its dead quiet, or there's some kind of constant background noise (like a fan). Usually its not voices, but music (but every now and then, sometimes there's lyrics). The part that pisses me off is its really good music. And the minute I focus on it too strongly, it vanishes. That's considered auditory hallucinations? I thought everybody had experiences like that with white noise. quote:It makes hearing tests a huge pain, though. I also have this problem. The last time I was tested, about 5 years ago, I was told that my results were good enough that I "can hear bats". Thing is, as far as I can tell, the tones are all spaced out in a predictable pattern. Even if you don't hear it, you can reasonably guess that there was a tone played.
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Dec 2, 2011 07:16
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This will sound like it's down the rabbit hole & out into Neverland, but here we go. Writers are highly aware of a phenomena known as 'living characters'. When writing, characters will 'come to life' and when they do they completely take over the work. They have their own voices, personalities, and preferences, and fighting them makes for a very difficult task. Some refer to is as 'automatic writing' others 'seat of the pants writing' and still others as 'batshit insane'. Writers learn to let them have their way and then go back and carefully edit the manuscript. Readers can pick up on living characters rather easily. Not all books have them. Some writers hate them to the point of reworking everything to avoid them. How can you tell if a character is alive? Well, the most famous living character is probably Sherlock Holmes. Thackery acknowledged that Becky Sharpe of "Vanity Fair" had a mind of her own; this is one of the earliest references to the phenomena.
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Dec 2, 2011 09:27
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I didn't know there was a name for it but I've always known the phenomenon. Man when one of my characters doesn't develop into a 'living' one I get really disappointed. Often I'll scrap them and create another from scratch in attempts to make it happen. I can't imagine hating a living character. They're a lot of fun but tend to hog the narrative like egocentric actors trying to out-ham each other. In fact I often think of them as actors that I script and direct but which have their own demands and needs that I have to work around. I remember one I wrote about a while ago decided he was gay. It was loving weird because his sexuality had nothing to do with anything in the story. I resisted and rewrote for a long time, then finally figured that if he wanted to come out that badly then it would be a shame to deny him. But after that he didn't really work well in the role anymore so I wrote him out entirely. And then I felt weirdly prejudiced, like I fired an employee unfairly or something. fake e: I also heard that when Schulz originally wrote Lucy in his Peanuts comic, she was a very sweet little girl. real e: I can see the living character thing happening a lot in Vanity Fair, actually. The story gets taken in some wildly different directions at times, and Becky in particular... at the beginning you're very sympathetic to her as a clever and independent woman making a bunch of idiots dance for her, and at the end you still sort of like her but she's such a callous sociopath that her downfall comes as a relief. She's like an old buddy who used to be awesome and then got progressively more manipulative, and you try to keep liking her for the person she used to be but you finally just admit she's too far gone. Corridor fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 09:40
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Corridor posted:I didn't know there was a name for it but I've always known the phenomenon. Man when one of my characters doesn't develop into a 'living' one I get really disappointed. Often I'll scrap them and create another from scratch in attempts to make it happen. I can't imagine hating a living character. They're a lot of fun but tend to hog the narrative like egocentric actors trying to out-ham each other. In fact I often think of them as actors that I script and direct but which have their own demands and needs that I have to work around. It's startling when they come alive, isn't it? Yes, you want them to do so, but when they do it's always a thrill. If you let them do all the heavy lifting for you, writing moves quickly. Sure, you have to go back and fix things, but letting them have their way is a fun ride. You never know where you're going to end up. But there are people who can't lose that control. They want things to move in a set way and follow a strict outline. Sometimes the characters will live and spite them; at other times they have only a pile of inert words to show for it. You'd be surprised at the number of books whose characters are just inert lumps. Most of them, really. One of the things that make stories immortal are the live characters. Amazingly, it is not discussed in writing and literature classes as often as you would expect. It's probably too uncomfortably close to schizophrenia for non-writers to truly comprehend. Not that writers aren't crazy, you understand; it's just that we prefer to keep it to ourselves. 
Khazar-khum fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 10:12
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The whole "living characters" thing seems kind of like you strike a good neuron and it fires across the synapse, connecting to all the right ideas, forming a near perfect character in your mind so quickly that your conscious can't keep up. I'm not saying that to put it down(in fact, i think it makes it cooler, your body writing your story without "thought"), but it reminds me of when i was a kid and got bored, i would just make scratches on the paper at random with my pencil, then suddenly my hand and subconscious brain connected the dots and made pictures.(still wouldn't call it art though, i suck at drawing) And an annecdote in regards to a "third party" inner dialogue: After years of therapy for several reasons and my mother, a psychologist, I had created a mini therapist in my head that looked at things third party style. During one of my therapy sessions, i basically had the inner conversation outside and my therapist essentially said "Well, it looks like you don't really even need me, you're already doing all the work "Of course that was probably just a symptom of his awesome therapist skills(To this day, i don't seek out therapy because i know i'll probably never get someone that good again, which is sad)
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Dec 2, 2011 10:50
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Khazar-khum posted:It's startling when they come alive, isn't it? Yes, you want them to do so, but when they do it's always a thrill. If you let them do all the heavy lifting for you, writing moves quickly. Sure, you have to go back and fix things, but letting them have their way is a fun ride. You never know where you're going to end up. That's one of the reasons why Stephen King is such a great writer. Even if his books are considered pop culture trash, all his characters are living.
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Dec 2, 2011 11:11
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So I've just one-shot read this thread over this evening, my girlfriend (who is a connoisseur of human tragedy) having linked me to it. My brain feels like I rubbed it with steel wool. Good god, crazy people are out there. I wish all the survivors of the crazy the best. I could tell the stories about the kids I knew back in the day who spoke of being pagan deities (The Sun Child!) and claimed to be able to see the magic within people (I was "approximately the 83rd most powerful magic user" at my high school) and all that. I won't---my stories aren't anywhere near as funny or tragic, they just kind of happened. The other unfortunate realization over all this came from reading the OP and finding out I could have a bit part in the movie of central Pennsylvania nerd weirdness---Back in college, I didn't know them as anything other than just some local weirdos that were friends of friends of mine, but I hung out with FF7 House a few times. My mind is loving blown reading the webpage about them. That is additionally scary poo poo. (and then after that I ended up finding out that some of my other friends were eyeball-deep in cosplay drama psychosis) Also, I Watson, your avatar is kind horrifying. The gently caress?
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Dec 2, 2011 11:49
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DeseretRain posted:That's one of the reasons why Stephen King is such a great writer. Even if his books are considered pop culture trash, all his characters are living. I dunno... I never really got that impression with King, but I now I think about it I suppose they kind of are living... I just find them annoying and dull. Realism, I guess. Pratchett is definitely a writer of living dudes. You can always tell when the characters in his books aren't living, they're so flat and lifeless by comparison. e: Allen Wren posted:I hung out with FF7 House a few times. My mind is loving blown reading the webpage about them. holy goddamn poo poo Corridor fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 13:18
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This is pretty much my favorite thread ever, and I hope it never ends. I used to be friends in some capacity with the FF7 house chick who thought she was Hojo (more details on her below). I had a bunch of weird friends from that group of weirdos because I used to terrorize everyone in it and for some reason the moderators didn't ban me for at least six years of terror (if not more). I'm pretty sure I got to stick around for so long because I behaved in a manner they considered to be in accordance with a trickster archetype, which made me one of them (to them), not to mention that I had a tendency to be occasionally cryptic enough to perpetuate this (as I recognized it was one of my staying tickets). One time this totally insane person (in this context, that means "more insane than everyone else in the community") thought that I was "kin" of a plant that I always used as my user icon and repeatedly threatened to eat said plant, pickled, in between bouts of temper-tantrum. I'm pretty sure that if soulbonder magic curses worked I'd have spontaneously been reduced to a fine meat paste ages ago. Actual threats of "magic attack" are extremely rare, though people would occasionally make those or, alternately, there would be some really involved discussion of magic or a section of data/post that was intended to be a "spell." If anyone has any really in-depth questions about common belief structures or details on any of the people I can remember, I can most likely answer them, as well as any questions about the people or beliefs mentioned here. Almost everyone thinks they're a wolf or a dragon (or both), and new arrivals tend to lose interest in this newfound belief system after a few months when they realize it's still the same old world out there. Stuff like Denise's princess singing is pretty common, and I know I've seen concepts like "The Admiral" and "Parrier," with similar names, around before (more than once). A lot of them respond fairly calmly to being made fun of, but I'll note who I remember being particularly explosive. A ton of middle-aged to elderly elves who have bizarro hippie meet-ups, tons of group sex, and are generally accepting of everyone. Most of these people have tons of old tech experience with BBSes and so on and have presumably thought they were elves for a really god drat long time. Some of them have kids to whom they've passed their beliefs on to, to some extent. These people were probably the only reason I wasn't booted sooner. Honestly they were pretty cool for the most part and were so tolerant that I'm still on good terms with one or two of them. The Digimon king went around telling everyone she was Xelloss from Slayers for a while and then changed her mind and decided she had always been Ken from Digimon in actuality, and was just in denial because claiming to be someone from Digimon is apparently more potentially embarrassing than being someone from Slayers (?). She liked to make posts full of pseudoscientific words and ideas talking about string theory, multiple universes and the nature of time. If anyone made fun of her or started talking about actual science she'd have a tremendous tantrum, oscillate from being openly filled with rage and trying to seem calm, then eventually storm off to an otakin community that I never even bothered trying to harass (people are more fun to bother on their beliefs when they have some semblance of structure, and otakin is too "anything goes"). As I recall, her posts in otakin were even weirder because those communities are incredibly forgiving of nebulous woolly thinking. She was also constantly trying to find a way to set herself up as some kind of "big shot" in the community. This may have actually been the weirdest thing about this person. Faeries were basically my gateway drug to flaming people with bizarre belief systems, I got into a community of them and terrorized them so badly that they actually deleted their entire community and remade a new one that was locked and invitation-only. Usually I would drive them bonkers by asking Socratic questions, being outright nasty, or making fun of errors in their misappropriated folklore. They spent an amazing amount of time trying to seem random, doing things like threatening "to steal all your left socks," and most of them were from families middle-class and up, wore arm warmers and eyeliner, and shopped at Hot Topic. Their rage over being made fun of is hands-down some of the funniest I've ever seen -- lots of capslock and "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN?" type stuff. I should note that I don't really do things like that anymore but I still think it's hilarious. Hojo was Christian, was totally enamored with Christianity and believed she was an angel (and of course a ton of other stuff) in addition to Hojo (the mad scientist from Final Fantasy 7). She liked to talk about Christian theology justifying her ideas about multiples and pantheism -- for example, saying that "thou shalt hold no other god before me" implies the existence of other gods. She really enjoyed getting involved in discussions and waxing philosophical and handled being questioned really well (most people started getting passive-aggressive, angry, avoidant or all three when questioned). When she got angry she never had tantrums or exploded, she just got really cold and terse. Near as I can tell she was honestly pretty intelligent, just really, really far "out there." Indigo moms periodically would stop by to tell us all about the magic powers their "indigo children" had or start talking about crystals. The example of this that immediately comes to mind for me is the one that showed up and claimed that having their toddler near electronics would make them suddenly turn on. Usually these would stop responding when people asked them questions. I'm pretty certain that "indigo children" are some kind of response to rising occurrences and identification of autism. If you guys like this stuff, I can write some more about vampires, the virus guy and "data spells", werewolves, and disturbing trends in the community to name a few. I also know a fair amount about American ball-jointed doll and lolita culture and the miscellaneous crazies and pseudoreligious beliefs in that twisted menagerie. edits for clarity and grammar mad carl fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 13:59
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mad carl posted:If you guys like this stuff, I can write some more about vampires, the virus guy and "data spells", werewolves, and disturbing trends in the community to name a few. I also know a fair amount about American ball-jointed doll and lolita culture and the miscellaneous crazies and pseudoreligious beliefs in that twisted menagerie. Just post them already.
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Dec 2, 2011 14:45
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DeseretRain posted:That's one of the reasons why Stephen King is such a great writer. Even if his books are considered pop culture trash, all his characters are living. Of course they are. They're all him. At least the vast majority are. quote:If you guys like this stuff, I can write some more about vampires, the virus guy and "data spells", werewolves, and disturbing trends in the community to name a few. I also know a fair amount about American ball-jointed doll and lolita culture and the miscellaneous crazies and pseudoreligious beliefs in that twisted menagerie.
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Dec 2, 2011 14:58
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