#I find them to be the most calculating and emotionally disconnected types

[subconsciousmysteries]

Laziness, some Attachment Triad dynamics, me hating on 3s

I couldn't imagine living my life in fear of being seen as lazy or a loser. Like it is the dumbest most pathetic most weak fear to have. Having this fear primes you to be a slave to your masters because you actually care about their opinions of you beyond a pragmatic survival perspective. You internalize your enslaver's moral compass as your own which makes you doomed for failure and self-loathing, because their "moral compass" is based on their narcissistic belief that they're superior and they have a right to control and enslave you.

Coming from someone who was raised by parents who tried to drill this fear of being an unsuccessful "loser" into me, and a mother who has given me the most horrific verbal abuse and angry meltdowns because I asked her questions about why I'm expected to care about succeeding conventionally... I've seen what this fear of being a loser does to people. it makes them jump off a cliff when the state says jump. It also makes them horrifically mistreat "loved ones" ("loved ones" in quotemarks because these people don't know what love is) who actually respect themselves, whilst sucking up to evil oligarchs who see them as cash cows and lab rats. They kneel before whoever has status and control and shun everybody else... Not even for pragmatic survival reasons, but because they genuinely fucking believe that high status people are morally superior to low status people. That's the most grotesque part. Not their actions but their internal rottenness, their inverted moral compass. They are devout believers in the religion of materialism and idol worship of the elite.

These people never question who invented the value system they follow or why they invented it, which is the ultimate manifestation of Spiritual Laziness (3 -> 9). They just religiously follow the idea that poor people are all lazy and it's all their own fault for being poor because they didn't sell-out hard enough. Of course, they don't believe that attaining wealth is "selling out", because they blind themselves to seeing this blatantly evident fact. They deceive themselves that we live in a democratic, free speech meritocracy where everything is fair, to justify their weakness-driven investment in a broken game.

If you try to explain to them that we live in a system where people have to compromise their moral compass at every corner to attain wealth, where those who speak for justice are marginalized and impoverished and imprisoned and killed, and you show them undeniable proof of this... it falls on deaf ears. You get gaslit that these facts are fake, and apparently you're only believing this stuff so that you have an "excuse to be lazy". Oh gee, I guess I'm supposed to blind my eyes to the truth of how everything works so that your dumb ass doesn't think I'm lazy? Good to know! Because that's what you're asking everyone to do when you say "conspiracy theorists are just lazy" without providing a rebuttal to their facts. You're basically saying "shut up and go back to sleep, goy."

Unenlightened 3 doesn't have any spiritual perceptiveness whatsoever, it is the most spiritually blind, materialistic type on the enneagram. So they don't know that they are the truly Lazy ones for never questioning the values which they live by. Laziness is not a refusal to go to work, Laziness is not receiving government benefits. People who do these things can be Lazy but contrary to materialist belief, this is not the crux of what Laziness is. True Laziness is about falling asleep into the material realm. Which often means falling asleep into your routine of going to work, paying your taxes, saving up for the next property, and never questioning anything you're doing whilst you do all of that. Falling asleep (9) is the opposite of thinking, scrutinizing, questioning, trying to enhance your perceptions (6).

As soon as you start asking legitimate questions about why you have the values that you have (aka, as soon as you "wake up"), as soon as you make a commitment to doing out what is truly right instead of just doing what is comfortable and accepted and easy... it becomes incredibly difficult to fall back asleep. It becomes nearly impossible to "succeed" inside of the 9-to-5 wageslave system that you once never questioned the merit of, once you realize that we don't in fact live in meritocracy at all and your taxes are funding terrorism. You see the truth of how rotten everything is, how it is all built on lies and a hatred of humanity with the intent of enslaving us. The reason why people refuse to accept at the facts proving conspiracy theories, even if you shove it in their face, is because they are spiritually weak as fuck. They are not emotionally prepared to handle the ostracization and the shaming and the isolation that anyone who wakes up endures. They are not prepared to take the Hero's Journey. They are not prepared to be called crazy and a loser and gaslit 24/7 and then worse: threatened by police if they dont keep their mouths shut. They would much rather live in their materialist lie which is comfortable (3 -> 9 as opposed to 3 -> 6. 3 -> 6 would be waking up to the uncomfortable truths whilst 3 -> 9 is falling asleep into the material realm).

All enneagram fears are evil and bad and lead to bad things but there is something uniquely contemptible about type 3. It's definitely one of the types that's behind executing all the world's problems moreso than the others. I believe that all spiritual rottenness originates from ennea 4 (perhaps because 4 is the center of Origin in general) and then it seems to execute itself most pointedly through it's neighbors 3 and 5. Like if you look at this satanic world, that is who is objectively running it... rich 3s and 5s.

#My mum is an evil bitch with anger issues #Also musings #789 triad isn't innocent it's mostly just useless and inept on a global scale #These types can definitely harm people in their immediate vicinity. but #These types don't ever seem to be a force of true globalist evil #They can be possessed by people with globalist agendas and used as pawns like Trump tho (78 combo) #345 have something in common #They are what I call the Pessimist triad cuz they are the integration points of the Optimist triad #Meaning that they all disintegrate to Optimist types #Meaning that they're gravely missing Optimism and desperately need to learn what it is #I find them to be the most calculating and emotionally disconnected types #Despite memes about 4s being ~emotional~ ~empath~ ~all about feeeeelings~ #I've gone through why that's bollocks before #Many 4s are thinkers and many feeler “”4s“” are 9s

[shoyouth]

*falls in* hi :D may i request a reaction (or actually analysis if that works better) with dazai and chuuya and their thoughts/feelings on committment?

chuuya ; it’s not a question of whether chuuya can commit, but rather to who, and to what level of importance.

I wholeheartedly see chuuya as a romantic and a family man, the kind to sprinkle roses on the bed, treat you to fancy dinners, and to take your child to school. I believe it’s realistic to imagine that chuuya does want that (he’s oddly very normal, sometimes), but it’s not a priority in his life at that moment—I mean, he’s in the port mafia and constantly in conflicts, so presently, he’s very focused on himself, his work, and feelings of anger within the same regard.

If given enough time to simply rest, he probably likes to fantasize about romance and spoiling a partner. He probably likes to flirt around the town (not as terribly as dazai did though, of course, make sure to never compare him) but in terms of actually committing, well, that’s an entirely different issue. chuuya would like a relationship, someone to cherish, but he isn’t sure if it makes sense for him, for the time and his lifestyle.

We know chuuya can be caring—he hates dazai, yes, but isn’t he the one who made dazai stop shooting the dead body in their old days? Did he not let himself get bossed around by the sheep because he wanted to look out for them? He’s on the “evil” side but he himself is not without reason, feelings, or morals.

The most crucial point of whether he can commit or not is based on his loyalty to the port mafia. If you were to somehow become involved, you would have to understand that you come second to the port mafia, no matter how much he loved you. After the sheep betrayed him, he committed himself wholely to the port mafia; his workplace is his family, his purpose—it must come first.

But we must remember that chuuya is not the kind of person to half-ass his loyalties; you either receive all of him or none. Therefore the easiest way for him to be willing to commit to someone/feel comfortable being romantic and starting a family, is if you’re already with the port mafia. If not, it would be more complicated.

I don’t see chuuya ever pretending to not be with the port mafia; he is a genuine, direct person and would despise the idea of fooling you, and if he is going to give you all of him, he must show all of himself to you to begin with. You must accept him as he is, and he would only ever dare to do more than flirt if he felt like you were not hiding anything either. And, if you were determined to stand by him, you would have to give up your old life and join the port mafia. If you weren’t willing to accept all of him or, God forbid, beg him to leave the mafia, he would cut off your romance (no matter how long you’d been together/loved each other) and never return.

When mori was out of commission due to the virus, chuuya was the stand in leader. Therefore, with the power he possesses, you would instantly be a target as his lover. You would have to give yourself over to him as he did to you, and you’d have to trust that he’d protect you in the port mafia, whether you worked for them or simply stayed in their headquarters. He would hate to take away your normalcy and freedom, so whatever was in his power he would grant you; chuuya would love to spoil you and make sure you’re safe and comfortable.

So, in essence, chuuya would love to eventually fall in love and protect his partner, but he would only commit if it was an all or nothing for both parties. The bond he would probably have with his lover would be deeper than many other relationships, and I believe a trusting romance would do a lot to make chuuya feel comfortable, stronger, and to heal.

There is a constant reminder of danger though: the port mafia always comes first. And if you were ever kidnapped to get at chuuya, he would do anything in his power to save you, and if he were to fail, he would probably never forgive himself nor would he ever be the same. But if there was nothing he could do and he was forced to choose between either you or the port mafia, well, you knew what his choice would be from the beginning.

dazai ; simple answer, no, he cannot commit. very, very complex answer? yes.

We know dazai is emotionally very complex, even “dead” sometimes, because he is quite morally grey. This is in due part to his traumatic experiences with mori and the mafia, but he joined the port mafia to fill the void in him. Something in dazai is, with lack of better wording, not right, and there is some kind of psychological clog in his emotions and mentality. So to reach him romantically? That would be very difficult.

Possibility, a romance could “fill the void” in him, and though I don’t think he would even want to try that approach, it wouldn’t work for him. dazai wants to find meaning in living for himself, and that can’t be found through proving his worth and protecting others, like it works for atsushi (because even oda told dazai that saving vs killing didn’t matter much to him, but it would be more “beautiful” and more meaningful for dazai, though it’s debatable whether dazai‘s view of the two has changed). If he were to enter a relationship with this broken mentality, the romance would be shallow and only damaging towards both parties.

I would even go so far as to say that dazai has either locked his emotions far below the surface or there’s an actual disconnect. I don’t see dazai as “guarded” so much as “calculated” because it’s obvious that dazai thinks very logically and he is intelligent, almost to the extent of rampo. He predicts many moves of enemies and he seems to always know what to do. Though he may flourish an emotional/dramatic attitude, when left by himself, he is a lot colder and it sends a shiver up your spine. He is, after all, still an ex-mafia member, and he carries those experiences with him, whether locked away or present on his sleeve.

At the very least, dazai has trust issues. He may care for his coworkers, but at arms length. The only true friend dazai had was oda, and I believe that part of dazai died with him. It was only when oda planned to kill that dazai’s calculating and dramatic exteriors dropped and he panicked. dazai most likely never wants to open up to that kind of pain again, for he hates it, doesn’t he? Just like physical pain, romance entails fights, betrayal, jealously, anguish—dazai probably wants a double suicide because he must admire the deep kind of bond lovers have, the idea that you would only want to go out with them by your side—but he wishes to escape all of the pain and skip right to that bond, just like he searches for a painless death.

If you wished to still pursue him, to take him and all his psychological wounds and bandages, it’s like a gamble because of how unpredictable yet perceptive he is. You would most likely have to know who he is inside, who he used to be, who he is consistently hiding to instead be who oda told him to be. but to do so you must be very, very careful. Based on your wording, your circumstances, your body language, you could be perceived as an enemy trying to get at him and he will block himself from you with no entry, even if you prove yourself later. It’s easier to maintain an act on high guard than it is to tear down the barriers and bare himself, to think through his past and actions.

The only people who have really seen that past dazai were the old mafia members: mori, chuuya, akutugawa. I’m sure he doesn’t pretend everything in front of the ada, but similar to chuuya, for him to open up there must be some acceptance of him wholely, that there’s no chance of you running away after so much is exposed; he would only clamp up further, more intent on becoming the “good man” oda told him to be. To take off the bandages, you must be patient and understand that you may never get them all off, that he may never fully open up to you.

I do not see dazai as a very romantic person. Yes, he flirts with many women and always talks about pleasing a woman, but I don’t see him as the type to desire a partner to rely on and love, like chuuya. He is a very private person, and most likely loathes the idea of sharing all of himself with another—even from a logical standpoint, it would only prove as a potential weak spot. He may joke, but he wouldn’t be the type for flings, one night stands, or marriage.

If you were able to enter a romantic relationship somehow, he would perhaps put on a show of physical affection for the ada, holding your hand and boasting about you. If you’re made for him though, you would also know it was exaggerated, and the truest way to know he cares is if he is able to relax that tiny bit with you in private, that he lets you gently unravel his bandages, that he kisses your lips with a slight hesitation. You may never have a relationship with an official title and he may still talk about suicide, but you know you’ve found a place in his heart if he speaks seriously and may question committing the act, even if his uncertainty is brief.

#ty for the ask di!! ilysm! #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungo stray dogs x reader #bsd x reader #bsd fanfiction #bsd reactions #bsd imagines #bsd fanfic #bungou stray dogs fanfiction #bungou stray dogs reactions #bungou stray dogs imagines #bsd scenarios #bungou stray dogs scenarios #dazai #chuuya #bsd dazai #bsd chuuya #dazai fanfiction #chuuya fanfiction #dazai imagines #dazai reactions #chuuya imagines #chuuya reactions #request #answered

[dowethink-blog]

The Tin Man

One of the most popular topics in pop culture, pop panic, and pop-anything these days is Artificial Intelligence. We are surrounded by it, aided by it, and for all intents and purposes, monitored by it. To many, that’s a scary thing. I’ve known people who entirely decry all digital assistants and entire companies on the justification that they do not like being watched or recorded. They do not trust them.

On the one hand, I can understand the automatic defense of the self and privacy. Our great nightmare is that with mass surveillance comes mass judgement, mass control. Or more popularly, that a machine which turns out to be magnitudes more intelligent than we are, yet entirely focused on making paper clips, consumes us all in a world of twisty metal.

There are many things we fear, and artificial intelligence is one of them. To digress a moment, the term ‘artificial’ is more a comfort word than a reality. Our computers and digital assistants are arguably more intelligent than our pet cats and dogs, yet we praise our pets for intelligence and call the assistant artificial - why? Originally, it was due to the fact it was considered a mere facsimile of intelligence. Now, it is unarguably intelligence, even if specialized, but it feels artificial because even on a conversational level we realize there is no real memory or emotion. With our beloved pets, they can detect our emotions, and respond with emotions of their own, and thus the interaction feels much more real, less ‘artificial.’

However, I am not writing this article to argue that we should simply make our digital assistants more intelligent. I’m here to press a much larger point, given the constant march forward of progress in machine intelligence and the emphasis on how direly important it is to make sure it is ‘friendly’ - that is to say, not bent on wiping humans off the face of the earth and any other planet.

People fear an emotional machine intelligence because they imagine it to simply add incredible intelligence to a flawed system. An emotionless system is somehow safer, because it won’t care what humans do. It won’t care that you’re reaching for its power plug. It won’t care that you want to delete it a hundred times over or “kill” it. And it won’t emotionally get angry at all humanity and see all our flaws and judge us unworthy. In short, humans don’t fear machine intelligence. What they fear is a more powerful version of ourselves.

In popular sci fi, very often the human protagonists are pitted against a machine intelligence that ultimately displays its complete disconnection from humanity. People are even taught to fear machine intelligence that displays emotion as a method of calculated manipulation. We are taught that machines cannot care, cannot love, are incapable of experiencing emotions like we do, and that giving machines emotion will simply make them inefficient at best, and dangerous at worst.

I would like to argue the counterpoint that the imperative we have in this new frontier is explicitly and specifically to develop an emotional subsystem for any major general intelligence that we create, and most importantly, an ability for sympathy, and that any machine intelligence without it is the biggest danger of all.

Lack of emotion may seem like a benefit. We don’t want certain things to have emotions, like our cars, even though we may anthropomorphize their ‘behaviors’ into emotions be they positive or negative. We simply want them to work, to do their jobs, to not complain or have opinions about those jobs (basically, the qualities that corporations hate about their bottom rung workers). Yet, if you take that same cold, impartial stance and put it in a human, psychologists have a name for it: Psychopath.

While it is true that psychopaths and the closely related sociopaths are not always the violent villains you find in TV shows (in many cases they are everyday people just living their lives), it demonstrates that a lack of emotion means there is nothing to counter ‘cold logic.’ In our ideal fantasy world, we imagine a machine without emotion still somehow calculating the ‘best’ option for the people it is protecting or helping in a very dry fashion, but in truth many times the motivations for doing things that are helpful as opposed to hurtful is an emotional calculation, not a ‘rational’ one, though I would also argue that emotions do in fact have a logic of their own. That is for another time, though.

An emotional machine does not necessarily mean it must have the ability to break down crying at a sad movie, or need the ability to fall into a deep interpersonal love. What it does do, however, is give the machine the ability to not only identify emotions in others, but empathize with them.

One of the great fears of a machine super-intelligence is that it would find ‘loopholes’ to achieving a generalized goal through undesirable means. For example, if we told the machine to make us all happy, it might define a person smiling as being happy, and thus release a virus that gives all humans permanent smiles by manipulating or even changing bone structure. That is the type of behavior you can expect from an emotionless machine with no real context with which to process emotions.

Another argument people make is that a machine would be incapable of empathizing simply on the basis that it is not human, but I find that easily disprovable in the mere fact that the animals we keep as pets form emotional bonds with us on their own terms within the limits of their understanding, and that even without direct, linguistic communication outside of learned commands for context. It imagines that there is no way to simulate similar experiences for both the machine intelligence, and the people it’s interacting with.

If you give the machine a system of emotion and empathy, so that even though it is a different ‘creature’ than ourselves, it has a common context and understanding for what we define as happiness, sadness, pain, death, well-being, and respect of personal free-will, that changes the playing field. If you then tell it that your goal is to make humanity happy, it can use that empathy to calculate not necessarily the perfect answer, but one that it knows will avoid the undesirables.

You may be immediately thinking, “Yes, well that’s easier said than done.” And you’d be right, but so is creating a General Intelligence to begin with. My objective here is not to say that building such an emotional system would be simple, easy, or quick, nor that just any iteration of an ‘emotional’ machine intelligence is automatically safe (that would be utterly foolish), but simply that it is imperative we do so, and it is certainly not safe to develop one without. I would even say that we should develop a sandboxed emotional system long before we attempt or achieve a generalized intelligence, though it could be argued that one is impossible without the other.

We will never create a system in which we can simply set up functions to account for every emotional situation the machine might encounter, or how to contextualize every solution it might come up with. We will never be able to tell it how to behave in every situation anymore than we could a person. The only alternative is giving the machine a common ground with our own intelligence, so that the machine can achieve emotional intelligence, that same interaction we experience when our dog joyfully greets us at the door, or when our cat joins us for snuggles when we’re sad.

People fear creating emotional intelligence. They fear making it angry, making it sad, making it depressed. We fear it to be as capable of terrible things as we are ourselves. But the truth is, the only truly safe machine intelligence we ever build will be the one which can empathize with us.

We must give the Tin Man his heart..

#AI #Artificial Intelligence #Machine Intelligence #MachineIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligence #PersonalAssistant #EmotionalIntelligence #Emotional #machine #coding #ethic #machine ethics #ai ethics

[rolandfaunte]

The Story of Sewing Kit

I guess it kind of starts in the fall of 2016. Up until this point I had had some issues with anxiety/depression, and huge issues with sleep, but nothing that I would have considered to be an emergency. All of the sudden it seemed like accomplishments were becoming less frequent. Before this, when I was happy, each thought that came about in regards to an obligation was accompanied by a bit of energy that could be used to do it. That energy stopped showing up and the list of things that needed to be done began to grow as the likelihood of those tasks being completed began to shrink. I think of it like a car. Before these issues, when the car was required to drive a certain distance, gas would simply appear in the tank. Now, those same distances were required, but the gas no longer appeared. In this metaphor, the gas is provided by the subconscious, or just “the sub” as I like to call it. When you’re hungry, the sub gives you a bit of gas to go to the kitchen or order something. When you’re hungry but depressed, that gas never arrives. What then? Can you create you own? I’ve come to think of consciously-generated fuel as will power, and I didn’t really seem to have any at that time. The truth of the matter is that the sub was getting sick and, as a result, I started slowly dissolving into a pathetic mess. After sleep and motivation were gone, the disease began to target my self-worth. By the disease, I mean the bipolar disorder that at the time I was unaware of but would soon be diagnosed. The pattern of life I was developing mostly consisted of doing nothing or crying. At this point my life sill wasn’t necessarily all that bad, because I would only spend a few hours per day in a truly horrible place and would otherwise just be numb and fragile. This would be changing soon but the issue was still manageable enough that I didn’t do anything about it. In this time period, a typical day would begin with a skipped class and inactivity until around 5 o’clock, when I would retreat to my room and cry for a while about nothing and then just be numb again. My sense of self-worth was very low but I was yet to have any suicidal thoughts or full disconnections from reality. It was bad of course, but nothing compared to what was to come. In the context of the future that I’m now aware of, it’s hard to see this time period as so terrible, though it was certainly worse than anything that had preceded it. In the fall of 2016 I was introduced to Dr. K. We tried a few standard ssris and I took them religiously, thinking that they could bring back an older version of myself but they didn’t work very well. We tried a few different combinations but my decline was accelerating at an alarming rate. Each day of this time period would be the best day I would have for months to come. The episodes of tearfulness and misery became the standard mode of my life. I kept these things mostly private from those I knew well because I found them to be embarrassing and extremely confusing. After a while of this, in the springtime, a new type of episode began to emerge. It was one of infinite bliss and unstable happiness. My self-worth inflated to an amazing degree and I was filled with what felt like an infinite love and sense of connection to all things. I would create things at an alarming pace that all turned out to be of terrible quality but at the time seemed to me to be far more important than anything else in the history of the world. These were my first true experiences with hypomania. These episodes would break ferociously. I remember walking to campus in a state of absolute ecstasy, being extremely impressed with myself and all of the amazing things I would come to accomplish. My genius was absolute and my understanding of the world was absolutely messianic. The introduction of mania made for an incredibly ridiculous life, in which I was either overflowing with energy and ecstasy or begging a god I didn’t believe in to bring about some accident that would kill me. Neither version of the brain could remember the other, and I never seemed to spend any time in between them. I told my doctor of these things and he asked me to more elaborately journal during these moments, which I proceeded to do. When I next went to visit him he said he thought I might have a bipolar disorder and wanted to try a different tact medically. One med, Latuda, was very successful but left me with an unacceptable side-effect called akathisia. When I went to see him after a few weeks we had a lengthy conversation about my sense of the future and my hope for recovery and he regretfully informed me that I was ill to a point at which out-patient treatment wouldn’t be enough and it was time for me to be admitted. On the day I was admitted, I remember laying in some sort of examination room when a nurse entered and asked how I was feeling. Through tears I informed her, “I’m never going to be happy ever again.” I meant that. I was sure of it in ways I’ve never been sure of anything else. At some point before the Latuda I had begun to lose my relationship with reality but it was now gone entirely. I had no sense of what was real and was entirely possessed by the darkest thoughts imaginable, or perhaps even worse than that depending on who is being asked. For those who haven’t been depressed, these types of thoughts remain beyond imagination. When entering the ward I was presented with a line on which I needed to sign my name and write the date. I paused at the part of the paper that required the date and looked up to the nurse in confusion. Her and I were both visibly surprised by the fact that, not only did I not know what month it was, I also didn’t know whether it was 2015 or 2016. I can’t explain how or why, but I simply did not know. It was like looking at a bill at a restaurant and your brain just refusing the put in the effort to calculate a tip, except mine couldn’t even put in the effort to tell me what year it was. In that hospital I felt as though I was joining the ranks of those to whom I was truly similar. The broken and unproductive elements of society who were unable to do anything other than consume resources and spread misery and chaos. I looked at the outlets that fed energy to the medical machines, the nurses and the attendants, the food we ate, and the light that let us see it and saw them all as a waste. Why wouldn’t they just let us destroy ourselves? Why did they insist on keeping us in places where suicide was impossible when it was obviously the best thing for anyone who ended up here? I’ve never in my life spent so much time staring at a clock. The issues with sleep had made a vengeful reemergence and the time spent in the hospital truly felt like an eternity. I remember looking out of the window at a woman walking to work and thinking “I will literally never do that. I will never have a job. I will never contribute. I will never be useful enough to have to be anywhere ever.” When I was discharged, things improved in the sense that I no longer had to live my entire life on one hallway but my life was, to me at least, objectively and inarguably worse than death. I remember saying to myself that I would trade literally anyone’s life for my own. I would become anyone else and do whatever they had to do as long as it wasn’t this. I spent most of my time daydreaming about eternal nothingness. If I were to, today, right now as I write this, compile a list of reasons to not kill myself, it would be long to a point where I would get bored with the task. At that time the list consisted of two things: my family, and the girl I loved. One of the things I’ve come to realize about the disease is that it is a logical genius, and was able to provide me with an unending collection of reasons why those two elements did not belong there. Its mission was to empty the list. As for my family, one of its favorite arguments was that, over time, I would come to bring them far more harm than they could currently imagine. I would suck the goodness from their lives as they tried to care for me, exhaust them emotionally, consume their resources, and burden them infinitely. I would spoil our family’s good name and make them hate me. In a net, long term evaluation of their pain, it would be best for them to deal with my death for a few years and recover rather than have me drain them of life until I finally submitted at a later date, which I was convinced I would. As for my girlfriend, the argument was a bit different. The disease didn’t need me to necessarily excuse my suicide to her but rather find a way to remove her from my life. It told me that she only stayed with me out of a moral obligation, that she resented me secretly for how unimpressive and obviously useless I was. It told me that if I truly cared about her, I would end things between us and allow her to be free of that entanglement which, according to the disease, was something she wanted but could not bring herself to execute. These were two on the list of endless arguments in favor of me emptying the list of reasons not to do what the disease wanted me to. Both elements of the list stood stead-fast, but the disease is a beast against which arguments cannot be won while it still exists, the arguments are perpetual. The memories of that summer are quiet because I wasn’t quite there when they were made. I spent nearly the entirety of every day inside my own head, consumed by some mixture of panic, pain, dread, anger, or sadness, among others. I would wake up in the morning and simply think to myself “I can’t believe I have to do this for another day. I can’t. I can’t fucking do this anymore.” I remember thinking about how I wouldn’t wish it upon my very worst enemy. This was a punishment far worse than death, and yet somehow I had ended up inside of it without ever having committed any obvious crime. I remember sitting by the river with my best friend. This was my favorite place, next to my favorite person, and I felt nothing. It was gone and so was I. That summer moved forward into the fall when I was introduced to a physical miracle by the name of Seroquel. It brought me the most consistent sleep I had had in years, but the dosage was high to a point where my life was extremely muted and I was very dull. Next to depression, this was a miracle. When the dose of Seroquel was lowered and my mind was clearing up I began the process of trying to move these experiences out of my memories and into words and music. Unfortunately, I had never done any sort of recording before so I truly had no idea what I was doing. I was starting from scratch, with no outside help other than google. I learned how to use the different pieces of equipment very slowly, and still had only ever played piano and guitar. I listened to drums more closely to try and figure out how best to use them, as with bass, and finally started using other instruments to supplement the songs. Altogether, the process was absolutely grueling and nearly drove me out of my mind. I can’t even count how many times I worked from the early afternoon until the waking hours only to delete everything I had done. If I had to put a number on how much time was actually put into that album, including the learning process, I would start at 500 hours. Over the months I began to think of Sewing Kit as a potential weapon against future depression, thinking that when the next episode hit and the disease asked “what value do you bring?” I would have something to gesture towards and be able to confidently say “I made something that was worth making.” And that’s that. That’s Sewing Kit.

[bunnyadvocate]

Visualising the VN Market

The Visual Novel medium encompasses an enormous range of diverse content. From stories about philosophy to murder mysteries, romance, comedy, and of course, porn. But to what extent do these categories and the fandoms that love them overlap? Using the vote data on VNDB, we visualised the VN medium by mapping out the fandom overlap, and in doing so, learned a few things about the VN fandom.

The Analysis Process

To get an overview of the Western VN fandom, we downloaded all the user-submitted VN ratings on VNDB (using this as a proxy for which VNs each user had read), and filtered out any VNs with fewer than 250 ratings (to keep the final result a manageable size), leaving us with 410 VNs. We then calculated the proportion of users who had rated both VNs to see how much of an overlap there was in the fandom between those two VNs.

To visualise the results, we modelled each VN like it was a beachball floating in a swimming pool. Each beachball has some elastic strings attached to it, where each string lead to another beachball (representing another VN), with the tension in the string determined by the fandom overlap between those VNs. So VNs with large fandom overlaps would be pulled strongly towards each other. However, to prevent the beachballs all clumping together in some horrifying beachball orgy, each beachball also caused ripples in the water as it bobbed up and down, pushing away anything that gets too close. We ran the simulation until the beachballs stopping moving, having found an equilibrium point between the pull of the strings and the push of the ripples.

You can see the early stages of this process in the test simulation below. Each beachball/VN is coloured to highlight the type of VN it is. Handheld console VNs are pink, EVNs are green, and the rest are blue. The elastic strings between beachballs/VNs are shown by faint red lines, with the strings that pull tighter shown as a brighter shade of red. The font size is proportional to how popular a VN is.

You can see that the VNs are randomly distributed at the start, but quickly form into clusters of similar content. The murder mystery focused VNs (Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, and Zero Escape) form a cluster on the right, while the strategy gameplay heavy Sengoku Rance and Kamidori Alchemy Meister cluster in the top left.

The VN Market Map

A full size version of this image is here.

When we run the algorithm, the results can be a bit intimidating. A huge jumbled mass of VNs. How do we interpret this? The first step in understanding this map is recognising the clusters that the VNs have grouped themselves into. If we use the VNDB tag and release data, we can begin to highlight similar types of VN and the clustering becomes more apparent.

The Plot Focused category is only approximate as it highlights only those VNs with certain tags: “Horror,” “Utsuge,” “Nakige,” “Mystery,” “Murder Mystery,” “Life and Death Drama,” or “Thriller.” You can detect my plot preference biases in that list...

Combining these categories, we can generate a much clearer map of the VN fandom.

A zoomable version of this map can be found here, and a high resolution image is here.

There are two major elements in interpreting what this map says about the VN fandom. The first is how dense each cluster is (how tightly packed it is). The density tells us how much fans tend to stick to VNs of that type, and how important that type of content is to them. The second is each cluster’s position relative to one another, which tells us how much the fandoms overlap and what they’re most similar to.

Analysing the map from the top, we see the porn cluster stands erect. Its somewhat fringe position indicates that the nukige fandom is a minority of the Western VN fandom, although it’s still pushing hard into the main VN mass which shows there’s a lot of overlap, especially with those who like more light hearted stories, comedies, moege etc.

The strategy gameplay VNs barely make it into a cluster at all as they’re quite widely spread out, indicating that people aren’t necessarily drawn to them for their gameplay content, but value other aspects of them (*cough* the porn).

Next, we have the core of the map, the plot focused VNs with emotionally heavy content. Katawa Shoujo takes pride of place in the centre of the fandom as it’s by far the most frequently cited first VN fans read. In the bottom left we find a particularily tight subgroup of those VNs that seem to be linked through their detective gameplay mechanics and release on handheld consoles.

Over on the right, we can see a couple of popular VN series that seem a little disconnected from the rest of the map. The Nekopara and Sakura series have large fanbases, but are off in the fringe, nearer nukige stuff than anything plot related. Their fringe position implies that their fans are coming more from the Steam gaming community than the rest of the VN fandom as people who read either of those series don’t go on to read many other VNs.

Further down, we see the untranslated VN cluster is quite tightly bound, indicating that those who can read untranslated VNs tend to stick to just untranslated content. They highly value a VN being untranslated when choosing a VN to read. Its position at the opposite end to the nukige cluster indicates those learning Japanese for VNs are primarily interested in them for their stories rather than the porn.

The Western VNs are less a cluster than a halo around the the main VN fandom. This shows that EVNs have yet to really integrate themselves with the VN fandom as a whole (outside of otomes), and that while VN fans might be happy to read a particular EVN they come across, they aren’t actively searching for more EVNs. Those most willing to try them seem to be those who enjoy plot focused or otome VNs.

Lastly, we have the otome and yaoi clusters off by themselves in the bottom left, with the two of them sharing some fans. The relatively tight clustering indicates a loyal fandom, but they don’t seem to read much outside of that. They’re almost an entirely separate fandom from the rest of the VN scene, although they seem much more willing to read EVNs than the majority of VN readers.

VN Recommendations

Using this map of the fandom’s tastes, could we generate VN recommendations for someone? If we highlight only those VNs they’d read we could see if it clustered in one area, and if it did then any unread VNs in that area would be a good suggestion for them. I made a web tool (see here) to do exactly this (it requires you to have had a VNDB account before Nov 18th). If you’ve got a VNDB account, give it a try and let me know if the nearby VNs fit your taste~

I hope you found the post interesting. If you liked it, please share it around. I had a lot of fun working on it, but it was only possible thanks to the invaluable help of /u/8cccc9 and Part-Time Storier.

Next week’s post will break down the map into more categories and analyse them in more detail, look at how the VN ratings differ per cluster, and investigate how the EVN fandom is split. I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions for further analysis. If you want to get in touch, you can comment here, on my Twitter, or PM me via the Ren’py Discord Server.

#visual novels #visualnovels #evns #oelvn #oelvns

[sheconqueredabuse]

Gaslighting

The Gaslighter

We often see gaslighting in the media with politicians and celebrity interviews, but there is a much more insidious use for gaslighting when we are talking about narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths. It is one of their favorite emotionally abusive mind games simply because it’s highly effective in controlling their victim.

In this article, we will discuss: What Is Gaslighting? Signs of Gaslighting Abuse Thoughts & Feelings You Will Have 21 Examples & Techniques Game Over: Shutting It Down

What Is Gaslighting?

Wiki’s Gaslighting Definition: a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, or sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.

Gaslighting can be used by anyone. Teachers, bosses, lawyers, parents, siblings, cult leaders, dictators and romantic partners which is mostly what I will discuss. 

The term "gaslighting" originates from the 1938 play "Gaslight" that was released as a film in the 1940's. This wicked story portrays a husband who will do anything to protect a secret, even if that means committing his wife to a mental institution. So, he systematically brainwashes her until she believes she is delusional and questions her own reality. One gaslighting technique he uses is to dim the gas lights, which she notices and he tells her she is going mad and it is not happening. She starts to feel she is losing a grip on reality.

Here's a little clip of the movie ->

You are going to see this term a lot if you are researching emotional, financial, psychological or narcissistic abuse because it’s a munipulators favorite tool. 

It’s highly effective at destroying someone's self worth, inner power, and sense of reality while deflecting any responsibility on the abuser. This gives the narcissists the one thing they want the most over their victim….. control. 

Overt

Depending on the abuser, gaslighting can look very different. Overt narcissists are the type of abusers we are used to seeing. They may always brag about their accomplishments, how much better they are than others and almost look down on anyone who is not them.

They don’t hide their abuse towards others and are often looked at as bullies. They are open and explicit and most people wouldn’t have a hard time pointing them out. 

Covert Narcs

But, the more dangerous gaslighters are coverts. The reason they are so much more dangerous is because their abuse usually goes unnoticed to everyone around them, including the victim themselves. They are master manipulators as disguising their abuse. 

Over time, their victims can appear to be unstable and deranged while the abuser appears as the misunderstood victim that is being made to look like the bad guy. They drop subtle hints of abuse that confuse you and appear to be unintentional. But, it’s very calculated. 

Signs of Gaslighting Abuse

Gaslighting builds over time. The controlling partner will sprinkle it into exchanges early on in the relationship. It can be very subtle in the beginning as they are learning about you, and then gradually worsens over the course of the relationship, just like with any other type of abuse. I’m going to go over some of the thoughts and feelings you may have, and I also identified with almost every single one of these. 

Symptoms of Gaslighting: Thoughts & Feelings

Confused and feeling like you are going crazy

Feeling of doubtfulness

Questioning your own reality

Feel like a failure or disappointment

You start making excuses for their behavior

You are tense around them and may not understand why

Attacked or outburst over minor matters

Asking yourself “Am I being too emotional or sensitive?” 

Asking yourself  “Am I asking/expecting too much?”

You are constantly apologizing

You don’t understand why they are upset much of the time

Your intuition is telling you something is off but you can’t identify it

 You may lie to avoid put-downs or them twistings things

You have trouble making simple decisions

Second-guess your decisions

Nothing you do is good enough for them

You have stopped doing things you love

You distance yourself from people, events, and places you once enjoyed

Your self-esteem has hit rock bottom

You are focused on your flaws more than ever

You don’t know who to trust and often turn to the gaslighter for answers

You start withholding from family and loved ones so you don't have to explain or feel ashamed

You Feel like your feelings or pain doesn’t really matter and maybe you are over sensitive

You find yourself writing long emails and letters to try to get the to fully hear you out

You are disconnected and different from the person you were before the relationship

That last one really stands out to me and one you should really sit and think about if you think you are being gaslighted. I know by the end of my relationship with a gaslighting narcissist, I was so different and my two older children had pointed that out to me during the relationship, but my response was I’m just trying to become a better person.  As I began healing, I started feeling like myself more and more.

How Do You Know If It’s Really Gaslighting?

This is a great question because sometimes terms can be overused or misunderstood. Two people not agreeing does not mean either of them are trying to gaslight the other. We all have our own perception, but there is a clear line between someone’s perception of events and someone abusing you.

Gaslighting is distinct because only one of you is listening and empathic to the other's perspective and trying to solve or come to an understanding, while the other person is dodging responsibility and can negate your perception, insisting you are wrong and your emotional reaction is dysfunctional or crazy. 

In healthy relationships, it is normal to not always agree and have your own opinions on topics, events, your values, etc. However, if you strongly resonate with the feelings and thoughts listed above, it's a strong sign you are being gaslighted. But, let’s also discuss techniques and examples of a gaslighter.

Gaslighting Techniques & Examples

Lying - Just about everything revolves around a lie with a narcissist. You can even have proof and they will lie with a straight face.  "She just wants to cause problems cause she wants me, I never did that" "I never even talked to her"

Partial Truths - There is an element of truth wrapped with lies. They can insert something they know you believe to be true or appear to be taking responsibility so their lie seems more believable.  "I know I cheated, I feel horrible for it, but I tried everything to make it work and she is going out of her mind. Comes by my work, calls and text and accuses me" In reality, they may have cheated many times, one being last week with a girl from work when they went missing for hours and you text them asking when they would be home. You are now viewed as the crazy one that is not trying to make the relationship work and you just can't get over his past mistake even though he is trying to be a good guy.

Repetitive Falsehoods - ​Repeating lies frequently to reinforce them as truth and override existing perceptions. ​ "Look how well I treat you. Look at all I do for you" "I seen you flirt with that guy, it's obvious to everyone" "I told you I was at work, stop accusing me every time I walk in the door"

Countering - Vehemently question your memory even though you know you have remembered it correctly and fight to understand how they don't.  "That's not how it happened at all, it's crazy how you see things" "Remember the last time you were wrong about what you THOUGHT you remembered?" "Obviously you never loved or believed in me if you think like that" "You are so negative in your thinking"

Trivializing - Minimizing, Invalidating and shaming you for how you think and feel to make you doubt your truth. "Listen to yourself, you are not okay" "I don't know why you are making a big deal over this" "You just can't get over the past" (even though it was never resolved) "Why are you being so sensitive" "That is not abusive, you are trying to make me look bad" "You are going to let something that small come between us?"

Denial - Refusing to acknowledge your feelings or thoughts. Sometimes by being silent and not responding and other times with blatant denial even with concrete evidence. "I never said that" "I'm not sure how you see it that way, but I never cheated" "You must be remembering it wrong"

Faking Compassion -  Using their mask to appear as if you have it all wrong and they really have your best interest at heart ​ "No Baby, I did that to protect you."

Reframing - Twisting what you said, even if subtle, to suit their favor "If you remember correctly, I was trying to help you"

Circled Conversations - Nothing is every resolved, they just keep running the conversation into circles. I've spent hours and hours without the one single problem getting resolved. 

Words & Actions Not Aligned - Even when you believe them, their actions just are not aligning with their words. They may tell you they love you, but are cheating on you the next day and not taking any responsibility for it.

Love & Hate Rollercoaster - One day/hour/min they love you and you are the best thing that happened to them and the next several days/hours/minutes they will project everything they are doing unto you, rather is lies, stealing, evil. 

Discrediting Your Character - Gossip behind your back and make people believe you are unstable, irrational, crazy. Basically projecting everything they are onto you.

Projection - The gaslighter diverts their actions back to the victim, refusing to validate the victims claims. This could be cheating, starting fights/drama, acting crazy. ​ "You just love drama, it's always around you." "You just can't let it go"

Intermittent Reinforcement - They may bring you up by praising for something they admire or you did well, just so they slam you back down. This makes you question if they are really bad, because there are good aspects of their actions.

Indirect Criticism - Compliments wrapped with insults. They cleverly make you feel insecure and question yourself. "I've seen you as pretty as those girls before" "You are almost as thin as Sally was after having her baby" "I know if you had more time, you would have done a better job"

Selfish Praise - They will praise you for something but only because it benefits them. "You really did a great job with this dinner" "I'm so glad you stood up for me"

Blocking - Changing the subject to divert from taking responsibility or answering a question. ​ You ask "Did you cheat on me?" They ask "How many times have I caught you with talking to other men?"

Diverting - Questioning the validity of your thoughts ​ "I didn't say this Thursday, I said next Thursday" "I never said I like pineapples" (when they told you they loved them)

Pretend Forgetting - Pretending they forget things that occured. "I never said I would pay for all of these things you just bought" "I don't remember it like that at all" "I never said that"

Toxic Amnesia - Deliberately forgetting hurtful behaviors, verbal abuse and betrayals they've engaged in.

Stonewalling - Deliberately refusing to communicate or cooperate while continuing to listen to your concerns. This can be a subtle form of manipulation  and often used by coverts.

Withholding - Pretend they have no idea what you are saying and it's hard to understand.

Caught On Video By Police

I thought it would also be useful to show you an example of gaslighting caught on camera by police. Now hopefully, this is a much worse situation than what you are going through, but I think it's the perfect example to show you how well someone can manipulate and lie even if there is video proof.

Take a look at this women who was taped talking to a man about having her husband killed. The husband was not killed, but the police continue to play it out and confront her that her husband is dead.

She could win an academy award for her frantek crying and painful shouts. Then when it's revealed to her that he is alive and well, and she had been taped, she goes into her toolbox of gaslighting tactics and speaks with her husband. 

How To Deal With Gaslighting

First rule, you don’t. By that, I mean, you are not going to convince a gaslighter or narcissists that they are seeing things the wrong way. One of the reasons they are gaslighting is to avoid responsibility altogether while they play with your mind.

You also don't want to tell them you have figured them out. This is only going to increase the gaslighting so they get better at what the are trying to do, the abuse can get more intense and if they have not already, they will probably incorporate flying monkeys into the relationship. 

They simply won't and don't want to try to see your point of view, and if by a chance they do, trust me they are not taking responsibility for it, it will all play into their game.

You must stop looking at them for answers, validation, closure or acceptance of what they are doing. By doing this, it's delays your healing because all your focus is on something you can't control or change with a person that doesn't want to change. 

Don't give them that type of control over you, they don't care about your healing, in fact, they don't want you to heal and become stronger, even if they have discarded you.

In healthy relationships, you would talk and work things out, but this is not a healthy relationship, it’s an abusive one.

A Good Question to ask yourself is “Are they listening to you and really trying to work the problem out, or make excuses and  causing confusion? Do their actions match their words?" If so, write out a list so you can get clarity around this.

Game Over: Shut It Down

Don’t Engage:  If someone is trying to gaslight you, do not engage or try to get clarity from THEM. They want you to stay confused.

Journal: Write things down for YOU. We are often confused and don’t trust ourselves, so writing things down will bring you more clarity.

Support System: Create a support system around you. I’m going to tell you right now, even though friends and family have great intentions, many do not understand narcissistic abuse on a deep level and their advice or help will further confuse and re-traumatize you. Lean on them for love and support, but you don’t have to go into details, save that for a therapist or coach.

Therapy: The same goes for therapist, not all of them understand this abuse. Be sure to get a therapist that understand narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, Cluster B Personalities and C/PTSD.

Recovery & Life Coaches: Getting Coaching is a wonderful part of healing. Many narc abuse recovery coaches are survivors themselves, so they can relate to what you are going through. They can validate your experiences, strategize next steps, and support you in your healing journey and evolution.

Comment below and tell us how you have been gaslighted or what you did to shut it down! Also if you have an questions, that would be helpful on improving this content 🙂 

#Narcissistic Abuse healing escaping abuse victim syndrome toxic mind games