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antirealisation · 2 years

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Excuse you, it's not "reacting in the same ways that you reacted to trauma, finding yourself in the same stuck patterns" -- it's thematic parallels and callbacks.

#......#exotraumatised johnny truant

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solipsistful · 4 years

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Oh my god we just saw some House of Leaves content on a blog that also has “do not interact if anti-anti/pro-shipping” and we’re choking.

Technically if you want “fiction can be literally dangerous to the people reading it,” House of Leaves is technically not the worst direction to go, but also. Also.

- Serpent

#anyway Johnny Truant is the only valid exotraumatised character

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antirealisation · 5 years

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That awful stench returns and with it comes a scene, filling my place, painting it all anew, but with what? And what kind of brushes are being used? What sort of paint? And why that smell?

Oh no.

How do I know this?

I cannot know this.

The floor beneath me fails into a void.

Except before I fall what’s happening now only reverts to what was supposed to have happened which in the end never happened at all. The walls have remained, the glass has held and the only thing that vanished was my own horror, subsiding in that chaotic wake always left by even the most rational things.

Here then was the darker side of whim.

House of Leaves, p. 150

#selvesart #exotraumatised johnny truant #house of leaves #idk. still like this section.

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antirealisation · 5 years

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There’s a bit in the House of Leaves chapters I was reading today where Johnny basically goes, “Man I sure hope it’s the book that’s killing me, because otherwise--

what if my attacks are entirely unrelated, attributable in fact to something entirely else, perhaps for instance just warning shocks brought on by my own crumbling biology, tiny flakes of unknown chemical origin already burning holes through the fabric of my mind, dismantling memories, undoing even the strongest powers of imagination and reason.

How then do you fly from that path?

(p. 325-326)

How, then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#exotraumatised johnny truant #Just what I'm thinking about now lol #what is the more optimistic explanation?

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antirealisation · 5 years

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Whatever reason, all of us here tend to just assume yeah Pelafina tried to kill Johnny, but it probably does change a bit, especially for my exotrauma read-through, if you take seriously that page-517-Johnny is correct and it was just a story that Pelafina came up with -- he doesn’t not remember it because of dissociative amnesia but because it just flatout never happened.

Still somehow easier to think, no there’s gotta be a kernel of Real Trauma, cuz there isn’t for me but I’m such a weird edge case that, well, shouldn’t be counted, probably.

#exotraumatised johnny truant #anyway. done with that read-through.#uhhh Annihilation time I guess?

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antirealisation · 5 years

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Hello who wants more “Serpent processing his own shit talking about House of Leaves.” I wasn’t even thinking about the goddamn book, getting ready for sleep then suddenly WAIT. What if I wrote a LONG POST about Johnny’s perception of himself as traumatised and more specifically this (or maybe just my -- we’ve never read much other analysis, except like to translate Latin or whatever) impulse to read a lot of Johnny Truant’s symptoms as traumagenic, but importantly, not in a way that he himself recognises.

Like, “Oh, he has a panic/dissociative/psychotic attack after filling needles with purple ink -- y’know, purple, as in his mom’s fingernails -- but he doesn’t realise that because Trauma and Denial etc. Easy.”

(And that was part of why I was feeling so bad the other day, like, here I am projecting onto a character who has a pretty multiply traumatic past, where a lot of his issues could be in part a response to Real Actual Trauma. Sure, the details are a bit exotraumatic, “Why am I seeing so much blood and gore, why do I have to make sure that my studio isn’t changing in size,” but the base, the origin of it?)

But then there’s another attack that also gets prefaced with “purple,” but nonliterally: “A few days later, I heard her [a one-night stand] on KROQ’s Love Line, this time drenched in purple rain, describing to Doctor Drew and Adam Caroll how I--’this guy in a real stale studio with books and writing everywhere!’...” (p. 149). And it freaks him out hearing this woman talk about how he screams in his sleep, which basically sends him tumbling into that “Oh no. How do I know this?” attack.

And “purple” there feels a bit more. contrived. Not, like, on Danielewski’s behalf, that’s not the level I’m ever caring about lol who cares about that dude, but Johnny, who still has his mom’s letters in which she talks about trying to kill him and mentioning her purple fingernails then. Suddenly finding it unfair to think that Johnny doesn’t make some connections to his trauma. He just doesn’t present it in the story even though there’s no real reason to think he’s particularly amnesic or in denial about things (see: how he talks about his foster dad and broken tooth, pp. 92-93 in particular for those following along at home -- he’s cagey about actually writing it down for an audience, but I dunno if you can fault him for that), and the other assumption being that if he did recognise it as caused by trauma, the symptoms wouldn't be as bad as they are and getting worse, because trauma isn't meant to do that, but I mean, there’s that whole bit about uhh lemme find the place again

“You like that crap [old abandoned things] because it reminds you of you. Couldn’t of said it better or put it more bluntly. Don’t even disagree with it either. Seem pretty dead on and probably has everything to do with the fact that when I was ten my father died and almost nine years later my crazy Shakespearean mother followed him, a story I’ve already lived and really don’t need to retell here.

Still for whatever reason, and this my Counselor for Disaffected Youth could never explain, accepting his analysis hardly altered the way I felt. (p. 21)

But affecting a connection to trauma even if he might not believe it himself, ~look it’s purple~? 100% projecting here (ie sounds like something I’d do, my “everything is at least five layers of irony at all times”), especially if this is when he’s trying to tell himself, “Maybe it’s not just exotrauma this book that’s ruining my life. What happens then, if I finish the book and it’s still not over?”

Write down hints that it could (should) just be something else, biology or an inescapable childhood, even if you’re putting it in kinda contrived ways that you don’t entirely believe. One of Johnny’s goddamn main character traits is <IS SMART, ESPECIALLY ABOUT LANGUAGE>, do you think he’d ever write the word “purple” without some tinge of recognition of that that colour could mean to him? I feel that way about “red.” I’m not lying about the projection, processing via meta :D

What I’m saying is

Despite claiming in Chapter One that “the more interesting material dwells exclusively on the interpretation of events within the film,” Zampanò has still wandered into his own discussion of “the antinomies of fact or fiction, representation or artifice, document or prank” within The Navidson Record. I have no idea whether it’s on purpose or not. Sometimes I’m certain it is. (p. 149 -- same page, by the way!)

>:/

#apparently i'm just fixating on pages 149-150 lately lol #exotraumatised johnny truant #warning: when i say 'long' iiii meaaan it #like haha where is this even coming from

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antirealisation · 5 years

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Hah, forgot there’s a whole section in House of Leaves where Karen engages with being fictional in kinda a weird way, when she’s going around showing famous people her cut of the recordings (p. 358):

Camile Pagila. Critic.: ... The whole thing’s about womb envy or vagina envy, whatever you prefer.

Karen: What about my character’s fear of darkness.

Paglia: Pure fabrication. The script was written by a man, right?

(Also this whole section is literally just ““What is House of Leaves about?” as a personality test” applied to people like Stephen King and Derrida lmfaoo)

#exotraumatised johnny truant #and ambigiously traumatised Karen Green

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antirealisation · 5 years

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I like how Johnny always holds open the possibility (likelihood) that it's all imagination, whim.

Sure what it feels like sometimes, probably is, but still ugh.

#exotraumatised johnny truant #caaan't sleeeep #or maybe i almost was then. yeah.

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antirealisation · 5 years

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epochryphal replied to your post “Hello who wants more “Serpent processing his own shit talking about...”

ooo. this makes sense to me (though i dunno that johnny Has to know what purple means Explicitly rather than a vague inkling he’s obfuscating from self) (but yeah mm the fantastical symptoms and the getting worse)

I like it the more aware of it, or the possibilities, he is, lol. Like, if the whole idea of Trauma & Denial is that he’s having these weird images of being stalked by a monster cuz he can’t fully handle the image of how threatening his guardians were, sure, That’s Trauma For Ya, but if that’s not an aspect of it that he actually struggles with, if he can say “yes this is because of my awful upbringing” -- or, with the “purple rain” thing, try to make those connections as much as possible, even in a contrived way -- and yet it doesn’t transform the “fantastical” symptoms into more obviously posttraumatic, the way it should...

If that makes sense? I dunno if that makes sense. Having a frustratingly hard time collecting and articulating thoughts lately, just in general. :/

What I’m saying is, the times I say, “Look I’m triggered by references to domestic violence cuz the body’s parents had an unhealthy relationship” can feel so contrived, trying to use it to explain situations where it’s a bit more of a stretch (“... alcoholism is meant to be Chaotic, right?”, purple rain) not actually believing it myself, still resulting in a lot of impossible images no matter how much I try to believe it or how much “sense” it might make if contextualised to the body’s history.

#epochryphal #exotraumatised johnny truant #See at least I've got a tag for you all to block if you want :V

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antirealisation · 5 years

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All this shit about Johnny, “it’s not just (’just’) trauma, it’s exotrauma,” is basically me saying that all the delusions and hallucinations can’t just be normal old psychotic-style reactions to all his goddamn childhood trauma, it’s gotta have this fancy-ass word that makes it sound unique and extra strange and bizarre and anomalous.

Even though that’s actually the opposite of what a lot of the shit we’re reading and apparently claiming to believe says, “Actually psychosis is an under-recognised-ly common response to trauma, hallucinations and shit can be traumagenic, dissociative, even if the content isn’t literally ‘what you’d expect’ from a flashback.”

And we claim to believe that. Repeat it, even. Like how the kids talk about structural dissociation, maybe it matters less that we personally are going against this Good Progressive Science as long as we yell loudly enough about how wrong we might be. And it sounding like the kids is also something I hate, aaaagh where is this scrupulosity coming from, I’m meant to be more callous about these things.

Probably doesn’t matter, putting too much thought into it when literally nobody is affected but me and like a handful of people who even know the “exotrauma” word, but blehhh. Why I hate even hinting at it at the HVN group, when lots of Officialler HVN people really like the traumagenic model.

#exotraumatised johnny truant #cough

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antirealisation · 5 years

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However it does not seem unreasonable to consider a [just-described] traumatic adolescent experience, whether a fantasy or real, as a possible source for Karen’s fears.

(p. 347)

That sure is an understated aside, huh? Given, y’know, the themes of the book.

(And just reminds me of how bad this all is, as if “Maybe this is happening not because of things that happened to the body?” isn’t massively offensive, the actual opposite of what so many survivors fight for, and I act like I care about anti-ableism lollll. As if Johnny doesn’t have a super traumatic past that is just getting expressed in a kinda psychotic way, all “psychotic symptoms linked to trauma” stuff not *handwave* this problematic bullshit.)

I’mmmm gonna just try to play some chill hunting simulator now, ugh.

#exotraumatised johnny truant #sorta

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antirealisation · 6 years

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What’s the difference, especially in differance, what’s read what’s left in what’s left out what’s invented what’s remembered what’s forgotten what’s written what’s found what’s lost what’s done? What’s not done? What’s the difference?

Johnny Truant, House of Leaves, p. 515

#I'm still thinking about this #there's a whole thing here about differance and 'origin'#'there is no stable origin no Underlying Meaning' sort of thing #y'know -- deconstructionism stuff #exotraumatised johnny truant

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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antirealisation · 6 years

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A moment comes where suddenly everything seems impossibly far and confused, my sense of self derealized & depersonalized, the disorientation so severe I actually believe—and let me tell you it is an intensely strange instance of belief—that this terrible sense of relatedness to Zampanò’s work implies something that just can’t be, namely that this thing has created me; not me unto it, but now it unto me, where I am nothing more than the matter of some other voice, intruding through the folds of what even now lies there agape, possessing me with histories I should never recognize as my own; inventing me, defining me, directing me until finally every association I can claim as my own—from Raymond to Thumper, Kyrie to Ashley, all the women, even the Shop and my studio and everything else—is relegated to nothing; forcing me to face the most terrible suspicion of them all, that all of this has just been made up and what’s worse, not made up by me or even for that matter Zampanò.

Though by whom I have no idea.

(p. 326)

lmao #same, dude #relatable #fictivelyfucked

#exotraumatised johnny truant #I'm not actually at this part it's just one of two pages that this book tends to open to #the other being 336 where Johnny talks about undoing Zampanò's erasing of the Minotaur

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antirealisation · 6 years

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Johnny Truant’s trauma is a meme

:V

#exotraumatised johnny truant

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antirealisation · 6 years

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epochryphal replied to your post: username: exotraumatized-johnnytruant - Serpent

Happy Chinhands At. what’s the inclusion-or-not of the whalestoe letters mean. what counts as evidence and believable and what is *presented* as evidence and relevant

Was waiting on you. ;P

Guess how I’m thinking it, in this analysis/headcanon (same thing), Johnny did indeed have a traumatising childhood, fill in whatever details you want there cuz god knows that on its own is somewhat unclear.

I guess I’m identifying more with Johnny’s (reported) experiences of dealing with reality-fiction, inventing-remembering, erasing-not existing (that accidentally destroyed geology chapter, which doesn’t exist and doesn’t matter, vs. attempting to destroy the Minotaur, which does matter) specifically around the reality of the Navidson Record.

I’m kinda flipping through the book now to try to get some examples, but man if I don’t feel the “what’s the difference” (and, yes, fine, differance SIGH) quote. Which I found because I was looking for the purple line (”I’m sorry, I have nothing left. Except this story, what I’m remembering now, too long from the surface of any dawn, the one Doc told me when I was up in Seattle,” y’know, the Doc he just pages before said was made up). Stories, or something.

Feelings of reality falling apart and a beast at his neck as both maybe about his childhood, but also definitely about something else.

idk, probably would have to reread it properly with this in mind to come up with anything, or to realise it’s a dumb idea and I’m just drawing connections based off of the colour red ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know I just turned really vague, even hopping to this sideblog, sorry. I’m suddenly feeling that I’m just trying to make my bullshit seem ~deep and meaningful~. Remembering fake things becomes meaningful and not crazy as long as you can cite some postmodern scholars while talking about them, right? uwu

#epochryphal #exotraumatised johnny truant

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antirealisation · 6 years

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It is not uncharacteristic to encounter adults who detest riddles. A variety of reasons may lie behind their reaction but a significant one is the rejection of the adolescent belief in answers. These adults are often the same ones who say “grow up” and “face the facts.” They are offended by the incongruities of yesterday’s riddles with answers when compared to today’s riddles without. (p. 33)

ha ha

No I’m not still salty about people who tell endogenic systems to “grow up” and “face the facts,” what makes you think that? ;P

#exotraumatised johnny truant

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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