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Looks good to me, there is a letter or two that I kinda need to squint and turn my head little to work out, but other than that its solid and legible. Only word I couldn't figure out was...cryptonesia? craptonesia? Its not a word I've run into before so I couldn't just read the word instead of the individual letters.
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May 15, 2022 05:51
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Goddamn dude. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't write.
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May 15, 2022 05:59
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bulletsponge13 posted:
I don't care if that was the actual high point. It was one hell of a high point looking down on Mount Everest. I read a lot of stuff, on the internet and in book form. Most of it is immersing to a point, but my afantasia means I still don't get any mental images of the scenes. The bridge story though? I could loving FEEL the puppy eyes, FEEL the amused smirk of the guy calling in your every request. I could even feel the setting and the game of "I spy with my little eye, something that needs to blow up" while driving do a road of questionable safety. Keep this up, get this published and yes, yes you will end up helping another veteran express their own traumas. I guarantee it.
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May 17, 2022 05:19
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bulletsponge13 posted:Like in the C4 bit, I did no physical descriptions of the actual place, which was beautiful and lively. At the same time, you painted a picture so evocative that I found myself transported there. The color of the tree doesn't matter in the end. The fact that you made my Afantasia inflicted brain paint the picture for me anyways tells me that you didn't need to distract us by narrowing down the details.
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May 18, 2022 06:54
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fresh_cheese posted:I hear you when you say you dont think what youre doing is that big a deal. When you are really good at something it feels too easy and comes naturally, and it is difficult to understand why everyone else is reacting to it like they are. Not empty quoting.
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May 18, 2022 13:17
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This part here:bulletsponge13 posted:
Feels like it hits the nail on the head. We're not saying you are awesome because we know you and feel like we should be supportive. We're saying you are awesome because we know you and therefore know that you aren't the kind of person who writes this one-handed, spinning it out of thin air. The context matters a hell of a lot. If I knew these stories were coming from that psychopath Navy Seal (was is Gallagher he was called?) then I would absolutely find them revolting because it would mean that the whole right wing war fetish would seep into the setting and general feeling. If I didn't know you at all, I would be super immersed, but with that niggling feeling of "this could someone writing up some real bad poo poo and enjoying it for all the wrong reasons". Since I've gotten to, somewhat, know you through your posting here over the years, all I'm left with is a profound sense of gratitude that you got through it and that you are willing to write it down so the history of that war doesn't end up reduced to the usual dry history book blandness or the war porn of the chickenhawks.
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May 19, 2022 05:39
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bulletsponge13 posted:
First up: The problem with being utterly dependable is that people can and will depend on you beyond the point of reason. This unfortunately also means that they cannot make do without you. Obviously they can if they apply themselves to fill your role, but going above and beyond is not the natural choice of a human being when given an option that lets them conserve their own energy. Second: Could I get you to put a piece of scrap paper between the page you're writing on and the rest of the block? The writing is good and legible, but some of the ink seeps through the page and stains the next one in the block.
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May 20, 2022 06:30
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bulletsponge13 posted:
Holy poo poo can I ever relate to those two statements (well okay in my case enjoyment might be the wrong word, but the captured attention and super supportive posters for sure). I made my little thread about epilepsy, expecting it to hit like 1 couple of hundred views or something. Got so exited when it pass 200 views, superhyped when some kind people gave it a gold rating and now I'm just staring at 13800 views, trying to figure out how the gently caress that happened.
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May 21, 2022 06:39
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I get where you're coming from with that sentiment. I got the same feeling with my epilepsy thread. "People are paying attention and praising me for the stories I tell, can't every stop telling stories now." That's just not how it works. You tell a story when your story is ready to be told. If you start trying to force them out on paper at a set interval, then quality is going out the window and people will start wandering off as the stories get diluted. This thread is your collection over however many hours or years it will take you to write them down. We'll be here until you tell us to go away. Don't try to force the writing like it was a day job.
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May 22, 2022 05:42
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The one that really hit me was the dude with the self-inflicted wounds. Just reminded me of the goon who talked about working for a charity orphanage/school in India. Having to turn away a physically handicapped but obviously mentally gifted kid because he was one year too old to accept when they were already overcrowded and understaffed. Watching that kid walk away after they had just snuffed out all the little candles of hope in his eyes of any kind of future. Same hopeless, powerless, utterly soulcrushing feeling that keeps you awake at night and there is nothing you can do about. And nothing you can tell yourself that is going to make it okay. Keep telling these stories buddy. Cause no-one else will and they are the only kind of stories that actually matter when it comes to showing what a war is. I feel like its gonna be a bit of a tonal whiplash to point it out after the previous sentence, but the image cut off a little bit of the first letter on each line at the top of the page. Not enough of a bother to be worth reuploading, but I figured you'd like the heads up so you notice it on the next picture you take. Man that feels weird and pedantic to point out.
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May 24, 2022 05:13
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Goddamn dude.... Hardest part for me to read was the way you waaaay too accurately described the feeling of being about to throw up. Took me back to that seizure I had where, just as I regained consciousness, the paramedic exclaimed: "Real loving lucky that he didn't throw up and clog his windpipe. That would have been it." Ever since then, that sensation of being just about to throw up has been short circuited into a primal fear of imminent seizure and death. The way you described it made that fear rear its ugly head. Bear in mind that I got Aphantasia and can't actually visualize my own thoughts. Your writing once again managed to just plow straight through that mental roadblock.
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Jun 11, 2022 05:59
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Tolkien also survived a series of brutal battles that wiped out most of his unit. He survived because he was part of the designated survivors, the ones who were kept safe to keep a core of experienced regulars around to indoctrinate the fresh reinforcements. The rest of the unit was slaughtered in a day. I Think that happened two or three times during the Somme.
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Jun 11, 2022 21:50
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For Tolkien specifically? I agree about it happening in general a lot more than three times, but I don't know about how many times Tolkien had to go through it.
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Jun 12, 2022 05:12
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bulletsponge13 posted:I have a favor of type to ask- The first day that you stepped back on to US soil, leaving the middle east behind for good, did you feel safer, happier, anxious, homesick for Iraq, calmer or scared? Don't mind me if this is something you don't wanna delve into.
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Jun 17, 2022 21:16
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"Nothing great, just a recounting on how we disobeyed direct orders to save lives".... Right then. Btw I got another question for you list of prompts. Since I know absolutely fuckall about what its like to live in Iraq, I'm curious to hear about the Iraqi view of what constitutes normal weather and what constitutes "story time for the grandkids" weather. I'd also love to hear more about the Iraqi food and how much you got to participate in the local food culture vs relying on MREs, weird longterm energy snack bars, energy drinks and food provided by the army logistics system, on base and away from base. Stuff like ever getting to wash your clothes or plug things into an electrical outlet would also be nice to learn about. I honestly don't know if you just wore the same blood-soaked gear from day 1 to end of tour or if you got a chance to wash stuff on base or in civilian housing/random stream.
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Jun 18, 2022 12:06
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Apologizing for that sort of thing is of course always nice of you, but keep in mind that you are doing a public service voluntarily without compensation. You are not doing this out of indentured servitude to the public. These stories are a gift you bestow upon us without expecting anything in return, we have absolutely no right or interest in demanding or pressuring for more than you are happy to give. This is only awesome as long as you are having a good time sharing. Otherwise this will end up like a bunch of yokels in a bar surrounding a veteran who just wants to enjoy his beer in peace, clamoring for him to tell another war story.
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Jun 24, 2022 06:12
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Goddamn that story about pulling a prank with a landmine... What the gently caress outcome did they expect to get? Aside from the idiotic round of laughs they got at that moment. I mean that soldier would presumably go on to continue being a part of their squad. So now they've utterly hosed with the mind of someone armed with a rifle and a responsibility to keep their backs from being swizz cheesed by the enemy. I don't think I'll ever understand the mindset of hazing those your life depends on. Sure it seems to work out fine a lot of the time. But goddamn that is just a textbook example of mental health issues coming down the line for that poor kid after he gets out.
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Jun 25, 2022 06:05
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Yeah the first story was absolutely captivating. Then the Second story just came out of nowhere and eclipsed it entirely. I don't expect my opinion to matter in the slightest when you go through that thing deep in your mind, but to me, you did the only thing you could. No choice was involved, no reasonably acceptable alternatives were offered. Some people can take a step back and say "not my fault, not my responsibility to go beyond the rules of the land". You have proven again and again in every one of your stories that this is not the kind of mindset you could ever adopt. You did the only thing you could. You did the work and handled the crisis to the best of your abilities. Rule makers and law writers would never understand the fact that to you, there was no alternative where you just let the kid suffer. I'm certain that you know all this, otherwise this wouldn't be something you'd be telling us. If you had any niggling doubt about actually having had an alternative where just leaving the kid to suffer was acceptable, then that fact would have salted the emotional wound and poisoned your mind. You did good in a lovely war, with a lovely set of tools and a lovely supporting structure at your back.
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Jul 27, 2022 09:34
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Well you've already gotten past the absolutely hardest part: Building up the mental energy to actually write it down AND getting to the point where you are okay with other people reading it.
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Jul 31, 2022 08:21
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The whiteout has felt like a form italics since the ink is of a different thickness and the handwriting a bit more expressed when you write over a whiteout covered area. So it either doesn't register or it lends some added punch to a given sentence depending on context.
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Aug 1, 2022 05:40
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Is it a trick of the lighting or a specific pen you are using that produce that golden font color? Cause it is awesome and somehow makes the whole thing a lot more legible to me.
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Aug 5, 2022 07:24
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Out of curiosity Bulletsponge, did you ever read the book Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918? If you haven't, I suspect it would be something you'd be able to connect with on a deep down level.
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Aug 16, 2022 19:20
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I've been reading through it the last few days (Think this is the 4th time I consume that book and end up wishing his writing went on forever). As I read some of his more "wtf were they thinking" journal entries, it dawned on me that I simply need a book like this containing all of your recollections. Considering his book ended up being praised nearly unanimously by civilians who lived through the first world war, war veterans, historians, politicians and book critics (there were a few dissenters among officer-worshiping historians and opinion-havers) this should be considered very high praise indeed.
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Aug 16, 2022 21:10
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Same here, well minus the having a wife part, it just forced back up memories long processed, analyzed and reburied. Not to taunt me, just to point them out to me, to remind me how far I've gotten, how much I've grown. I know I keep saying this, but thank you for writing this my friend.
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Aug 18, 2022 05:57
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Next time you have this internal conversation with yourself: "IT ALL HAS TO HAVE BEEN WORTH IT IT ALL HAS TO HAVE MEANT SOMETHING." Do yourself a favor and scroll through the replies you've gotten throughout this whole thread. From where I'm sitting, it certainly looks like you're on the path to making it truly mean something. You are helping veterans who have been out for as much as 30 loving years deal with their poo poo. You are helping civilians finally "get" their dad's issues. You are helping people realize that they aren't the only ones dealing with a some super unique bullshit situation that only they can understand. I don't know if it makes it worth the sacrifices you made and the price you paid. But it truly did mean something by giving you the ability to help others.
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Aug 18, 2022 20:48
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bulletsponge13 posted:Therapist is trying to teach me "No, being honest about your accomplishments isn't seeking attention. Being proud of what you've done isn't ego surfing. There is a difference between a normal sense of self esteem and narcissism. You just have to learn the other end of the spectrum." Look at it this way. If someone spends most of their deployment behind the wire, goes into one day of light combat and then comes home full of war stories they've heard, then that is where you could accurately describe it as an ego thing or bragging (I included a single day of light combat to at least remove them from the stolen valor thing). Once you spend YEARS living and breathing in a situation that most other people would need a psychologist for after experiencing an hour of, you are no longer ego tripping, you are giving an experienced account of a life that can only be written down by those who have been through it. That's not narcissism, that's a skilled craftsman writing down the less glamorous details of his trade.
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Aug 19, 2022 07:32
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For a second there, I thought the coolaid had finally gotten to you. I misread a single word and suddenly I was staring at a sentence going: "A mustache means death, dismemberment or prison."
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Aug 27, 2022 07:35
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bulletsponge13 posted:Thread ain't dead, just in a coma. Oh man, I've been there (not the contractor running off, just the house fire and temporary housing part) as a kid. If you still haven't found acceptable living space when that timer runs out, you stuff your crap in a storage unit somewhere, get your family on a plane to Sweden and live in my house for a year while you sort that poo poo out. No I'm not kidding (you'll have to do the whole Visa/passport paperwork song and dance of course, but hey) Offer stands and is frankly insisted on if the alternative is living on the street or in ruinously expensive hotels.
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Sep 10, 2022 03:30
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I'd suggest trying to write about the place, instead of the event. Not having to delve into the specifics of whatever happened on a given day. Just painting the scene and letting the stories flow as they come to you and you feel able to express them. Trying to plow straight through a writer's block is perhaps possible, but not enjoyable and you will not be happy with the end product. The food, the weather, the local customs, the local wildlife, the colors of the place and how they differed from your homeland and home region, the difference in the seasons, just getting accustomed to the time zone. All that stuff is usually the details that get in the way of the story when you have a specific story you want/need to tell. But they are also the details that make the story special or plant the seed of the next story.
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Nov 5, 2022 11:28
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bulletsponge13 posted:
I dunno, that kinda makes sense to me. It's a massively impactful event in your life, but aside from the general military dickery stuff, you can't really talk shop about your messed up legs with someone who had their spine hosed up. You can relate to the feeling of getting crippled for sure, but the cause of the damage, the medical recovery side and all the "poo poo I have to live with daily" are completely different. Relatable, but foreign at the same time. Talking about how something completely changed your ability to live your life can sound extremely hollow to someone who still has use of that bodypart, but has lost use of another equally critical bodypart.
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Nov 5, 2022 16:59
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Well that's your first post that makes me tear up. Not quite sure how I feel about that considering the other great material. But yeah, real dusty here all of a sudden.
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Nov 7, 2022 06:25
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goddamn that mood shift at the end. Massive joy filled buildup, creeping unease and then boom. Right in the hurt.
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Feb 3, 2023 09:30
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If nothing else, this might be a very useful collection of memoirs to have lying around, if you work as a psychologist/therapist specializing in war veterans dealing with hosed up poo poo.
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Feb 23, 2023 21:18
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I was thinking more about providing your therapist with a collection of these posts so she can hand them out to other war veterans. As a way of getting them to open up. To show them the situations she has helped another vet work through. I'm going out on a limb here and assuming that she didn't do a tour of duty in the "up close and personal" section of the military, so having that thing around as a way to show she knows what it means to have "seen some poo poo..." might assist her in helping a lot of others. Thinking about the generations of veterans who just didn't talk about it, because that's just how it was. And then Audie Murphy came along and said "gently caress that poo poo, its time to talk about the aftermath." We've come a long way since then, but the vast majority of people will start out with that "thank you for your service" and a fuckton of veterans just don't have it in them to open up again to another therapist who doesn't get it. SerthVarnee fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Feb 23, 2023 |
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Feb 23, 2023 21:29
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Huh. I never thought about it that way. Thanks for teaching me something new guys!
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Jun 1, 2023 22:38
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We are here to read the stories as you feel like sharing them. We are not here expecting a Monday and Friday scheduled update like you were just making them in the factory. You do you and we'll still be here to appreciate you.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:53
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I saw this and thought of you Bulletsponge13 https://terminallance.com/2023/11/12/veterans-day-presentation/ Makes me really drat grateful to have been given the opportunity to read your memoirs. Edit: I should mention that reading the accompanying text blurb underneath the comic itself is mandatory, otherwise this link is going to look a lot more awkward.
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Nov 13, 2023 07:41
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That Hakuna Matata description had me cackling all morning. Put that update in the book as your first story. Place the small story from the start of that post on the cover of the book and you've got one hell of an eye catching book.
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Nov 29, 2023 13:48
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bulletsponge13 posted:
Both of those feelings are way too well known to me. The constant checking for replies thing is something I do in the epilepsy thread, mostly because I have this weird hangup about laving people hanging in a thread I started. The thing with getting caught flatfooted by a compliment took me years of immersion therapy to get used to. The thought alone, that people were saying it sincerely, completely stumped me. Funny how long it can take you to get rid of bad lessons taught at a young age eh?
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Dec 1, 2023 09:41
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Happy new year! Bulletsponge you have a PM waiting for you.
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Dec 31, 2023 19:31
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