(no subject)

[stardust_rifle]

I've been hearing a lot of "If you can't distinguish reality from fiction, then you need to get help!" posts from the pro-shipper side, and I'd like to offer my perspective, as a person who is one of those people (sometimes).



Hello. My name is M (hi, M) and I have pretty severe anxiety. Sometimes, that anxiety bleeds over into paranoia-type symptoms. Those symptoms can sometimes be triggered by engaging with various franchises (ie; FnAF, 99% of all creepypastas, The Magnus Archives)

I have, on multiple occasions, become abso-fucking-lutely terrified that Slenderman/Springtrap/some other Spooky Man will break into my house and murder me. Engaging with these franchises is a good way to send me into a paranoia spiral, which is pretty much going to ruin the next two weeks for me.

So, what do I do about it?

I have pretty much every single word related to these franchises blacklisted and muted. I don't interact with them. I certainly don't go on angry Twitter rants about how everyone who writes FnAF fic is personally responsible for worsening my mental illness.

Because that's what you have to do if you're vulnerable in this specific way. Make ways to protect yourself, as opposed to expecting every single person on the Internet to do it for you.

Comments

[reilaflowers]

This is trigger warnings in a nut shell and why I stopped using most of them. There's some things that should be warned about, rape, extreme violence, questionable consent. There's other things that people need to self monitor.

I've honestly seen warnings for "kissing" on gay erotica. It's a male pairing with an adult rating, it's to be expected.

[feotakahari]

If it isn’t too invasive, I’m curious how this overlaps with your interest in gore. Can you watch Dexter? Read Shintaro Kago? What sorts of things cross the line for you?

[stardust_rifle]

Oh, you're not being a problem!

Eroguro isn't a problem, and it's not the gore, it's the feeling of paranoia or "realness".

See, I can read Junji Ito (most of his stuff, anyways, Amigara Fault was...not a Fun Time), look at eroguro art, and even to a lesser extent read stuff like the SCP Foundation and play Corpse Party because it exists on a spectrum of "realness". A lot of Japanese horror stuff exists in a sort of "unreality" where my brain perceives it as being a narrative and not reality.

I think it's a combination of setting (something with a fantastical setting, like Corpse Party or Shiki is much easier for my brain to see as Not Real then something like Marble Hornets) and...I don't know how to phrase it as anything but "audience distance".

Something like a clinical tone, or having a narrative other than Spooky Things Happening, or having a protagonist with a face and a name creates audience distance, whereas having an "audience insert" protagonist (like a lot of Western horror games) or an emotional tone (like 99% of all creepypastas) hurts audience distance.

Of course, this isn't a given. Ib has a pretty fantastical setting and a storyline with a character protag, but it induced an episode.

[feotakahari]

Ugh. That sounds pretty awful, going into a thing you think will be okay and then getting triggered anyway.

(I’m thinking of what these things have in common, and I’m coming up with “almost anything that gets Let’s Played by ManlyBadassHero.” Giant flaming anti-rec here.)