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snootlestheangel · 8 months

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Just A Dude!Ghost Monster AU

Side note before this post gets rolling, I love that my post with the highest notes starts with "I don't know who else" and I think that's very reflective of what Tumblr is like XD

Anyways

We're doing it! We are writing a Monster AU featuring Ghost as the only human despite what everyone else thinks! As far as I am concerned, mostly gonna post it here on Tumblr, since I don't really have much right now for it, mostly just little blurbs but if needed for readability, I'll put it on AO3 (under my profile FeelzMaster)

I'm gonna go ahead and give y'all the rundown of what species are featured, kinda what this world's like, the stuffs, ya know? TW: talks of death (just how they can die, relax)

Soap

To be 100% honest, I really wanted to do the whole werewolf!Soap thing cause it's just so perfect for him, but I thought back to a post I made about him being lightning and thought HUH WHAT IF?

So, partially inspired by @tactax-art and their depiction of Soap dealing with fire 'n shit, I have made Soap a unique type of "nymph". Technically, nymph isn't the right word, but neither is elemental, and the true name of these things is so old it's real translation has kinda lost meaning so they stick to describing themselves as "nymphs" or "elementals".

He is a Lightning Nymph, which is rare but that's apparently what happens when you cross an "atmospheric" air nymph (his mum) and a less traditional water nymph (his dad). He's often seeing consuming/messing with things that have electrical charge in order to keep up his own energy (Gaz once had to watch him literally lick an exposed outlet and maintain a straight face). Every time it storms, he's outside somewhere as high as he can get so he can soak up the natural static energy that comes with storms. He can and will shock people for the fun of it.

As for abilities, he's obviously highly conductive, can manipulate electrical energy but it's pretty exhausting so it's more of a life or death thing, he can glow in the dark if he wants to, and he's hyper aware of changes (due to ~energy~). His diet is batteries... Jk, but seriously he does not eat like a human would, he straight up eats things that will help with energy. Like I said earlier, he's licked an exposed outlet like it was an espresso shot. Downside is he can't see for shit in the dark so he's reliant on sensing energies, nightvision, or having one of his buddies that can see in the dark guide him. Can be killed if his brain stem is destroyed, but is also very weakened by the typical stuff (gunshots, stab wounds, severe bodily trauama, etc). but can be severely weakened by being trapped in insulated rooms/wrapped in insulators. If exposed to these things and not able to find a sustainable source of electrical energy, he will die. (rubber, steel, copper are some good insulators)

Gaz

I don't know why but I'm gonna make him a Siren. For some reason Siren!Gaz just melts my heart and I wanna hold him. I don't care if he can lure me to my death with his voice, I wanna hear him sing :'(

He's typically pretty human appearing, it's a natural instinct for Sirens, but when he's tired or distracted (like working out/doing paperwork), you can start to see some very fish-like qualities. Mostly very gorgeous iridescent scales around his ears, eyes, neck, shoulders, knees, top of his feet, and back of his hands.

Can breathe underwater, has the best vision in the dark, eats like a typical person but with more sea food cravings or cravings for fatty foods (like human), when in full Siren form he doesn't have a "mermaid's" tail, it's much more shark-like so he can accelerate really fast. Generally just more shark-like, except his scales are fish-like. His nose, like sharks, is super sensitive to certain changes, so booping his nose always throws him off if it's surprise, but he will also bump his nose into people/things without realizing it to get a better sense of it. Can be killed by things humans can, susceptible to parasites.

Price

Honestly, his has been the hardest but I'm gonna do changeling. I honestly don't know a lot about them, and quite frankly I've already got one homebrewed monster here, so why not another?

He's definitely the one everyone mistakes for being human cause he's so good at keeping up appearances. But there are always times where Price manipulates his appearance/body just enough that it's a little startling for those that believed him to be human to suddenly realize he's very much not.

He's got better eyesight in the dark than a human, but nowhere near close to what Gaz has. He's good at picking up on scents though, as his nose is a bit more attune to sniffing out humans than anything. He's not a bloodsucker, but changelings typically feed on weakened/ill/very old/very young humans, so he's able to tell when something is wrong with someone. Stifles the more violent urges of his species by eating a primarily meat heavy diet with a lot of raw veggies for the crunch. Most susceptible to things with iron or salt (obvi) but can still be fatally wounded by stab wounds/gunshots. Most other stuff won't kill him but it'll certainly hurt and he'll complain the entire time.

Alejandro and Rudy

These two are werewolves and Los Vaqueros is their pack :'). Most Vaqueros are also werewolves, but they do have a variety of other creatures commonly found in North America.

And finally, the whole point of this: we got our boy Ghost as a literal human being. Nothing more, just a dude. A dude with so much fucked up shit happening to him constantly it's just assumed he must be inhuman. NOPE! He's just a dude, a very very unlucky, and probably cursed, dude.

So yeah, that's what I have so far! Working title is "Cheers to the Unknown"

Taglist (if you want added let me know in the replies/reblogs): @tacticaltaxonomist @cthulhusstepmom

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invertedeidolon · 2 years

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The Longest Library #8: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Rundown: Esther Greenwood has depression. But this is the 50's, so not only does she not know that the sensation of slow mental suffocation is called that or why it's happening, you also don't just come out and say that. Asylums are still a thing. Compulsory shock treatments and all that. Potential for a lobotomy. Unlike stories depicting the raw, constant pain of trauma, or the exhausting tension of anxiety, this is a true, numb march into the frozen, spiraling waters of depression. The constant disappointment, the inability to see the good in anything or anyone, the attempts to keep moving on, torn between just continuing as is or lashing out just to feel something. 3.5/5, IGN thinks this is a great depression simulator. (TW: mental health stuff, depression, suicide, older medical practices, etc.)

Eyo! This post was available an entire month early on my Patreon! I also review fanfiction sometimes but that's a Patron exclusive ;)

So this is one that I was initially excited about it. I'd seen quotes and snippets of poetry from Plath before, and I'd heard the name mentioned way more times than I'd even seen any of her works. Finally I'd be reading a 'classic', getting caught up on the times. Not going to lie, it didn't live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong. I still respect it. It just didn't engage me in the ways that I like being engaged as a reader. And that's okay. I think that was the point. This was a book mostly for Plath and her alone, not necessarily for anybody else. I can also see how it would resonate with other people. But knowing what I know, and living how I've lived, I feel like I'm too much of an edgelord to relate to Esther as a character. In the intense states that I've been in, a LOT more would have happened. She just kind of, lets things happen to her. And again, that's the POINT. It's depression. It makes you inactive, makes you no longer a participant in your own life. You've been benched and you have no idea what's making the plays in your place, but all of them are bad ones. And just as this is a partially fictionalized account of Plath's experiences, it makes me want to write about my own. It feels like writing inspiration is a very scarce commodity these days, so I'm eternally grateful for it's existence. That she pushed this out despite everything conspiring against it.

"I'll have a vodka," I said.

The man looked at me more closely. "With anything?"

"Just plain," I said. "I always have it plain."

I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I'd have it with ice or soda or gin or anything. I'd seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in blue light, and the vodka looked dear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right.

My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it was wonderful.

ESTHER NO. Just get a gin and ginger ale, I promise you it won't make you look inexperienced or anything! This is having the opposite effect! Also: same. I have a lot of trouble drinking standard alcoholic drinks, because I'm sensitive to the taste. It's just ass. Were wine coolers invented yet? Get her a wine cooler for godssakes. I'm also familiar with the feeling of being inexperienced and almost childlike with certain aspects of adulthood. My moment was attempting an insult style joke. Of course I was like 10, and it was undeniably aggressive and out of nowhere.

The sight of all the food stacked in those kitchens made me dizzy. It's not that we hadn't enough to eat at home, it's just that my grandmother always cooked economy joints and economy meatloafs and had the habit of saying, the minute you lifted the first forkful to your mouth, "I hope you enjoy that, it cost fourty-one cents a pound," which always made me feel I was somehow eating pennies instead of Sunday roast.

So, can we make it a rule to stop making backwards comments about people eating? There are ways to discuss dietary needs with your children without making it a moral issue every goddamn time. And if it's an adult, don't fucking comment unless it looks good and you want to know what it is so you can try some too. That's literally the only acceptable comment. And even then, use sparingly.

I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.

This is something about human power dynamics that has always amazed me and proven true. If you can keep your center steady and act like you're at a level station or a little bit above while doing something you're 'not supposed to', people's brains assume it's supposed to happen, because someone with an air of authority is doing it, and they don't look weird or guilty about it, so it must be fine. And then if nobody else breaks the trance, then you get away with it. Especially with bored rich people.

Would YOU really know how to proceed right away if you caught someone else's toddler calmly wadding up a loaf of bread and shoving pieces of it into a VCR player, and they didn't respond with a startle when you called their name? After the second or third? Any escalation would seem foolish now. It makes you stop. It's how public child abuse happens too. The quiet kind. Someone authoritative is doing it, and nobody is stopping it, so it's okay, right? It's how a lot of things happen.

After Doreen left, I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should anymore. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.

Depression does this neat trick where it saps you of the ability to take care of your responsibilities and obligations. Obvious, right? But then it makes it so that you can't do anything enjoyable either. Even if you could muster the gumption and the energy, even if you fight through the cloud of negative resistance your brain spoonfeeds you to convince you not to do the thing, you're still too numbed out and disconnected to really enjoy anything about it. Esther is realizing that even if she did fly off the handle and live a wild young adult life, she wouldn't be able to even enjoy it.

I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction.

Not only are most things obnoxious and tiring when you're depressed, but most filmmakers get obnoxious and tiring when there's a new thing for them to play with. I wonder if movies were really like that back then, just a really long obnoxious advertisement for color film?

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

Of course this is going to sound weird. Does anybody else have a puke buddy that's still around? I don't have any puke buddies, but people have puked around me and consider me a friend after for not being weird about it. It's a strange phenomenon. I'm curious.

I bent my head and took a sip of the broth. […] I felt purged and holy and ready for a new life.

Shit I wish I could make soup that does this. I need to be able to make something like this. I know how to add love into tea, but I need something very special and specific that you can't buy anywhere. Hmm. Probably something with a hint of menthol...

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.

Here Plath describes the phenomenon of Twilight Sleep, a sort of half-asleep state caused by a specific mixture of drugs that was used in the 1900s as a 'pain reliever' for women in labor. It didn't actually relieve much pain, though. The drugs caused a loss of memory of the event, meaning they woke up thinking that the pain never happened to begin with.

By 1907, Gauss used twilight sleep with all his pregnant patients. At the Women’s Clinic of the State University of Baden in Baden, Germany, Gauss began the process of twilight sleep once a woman first experienced labor pain. First, he injected the laboring woman with a mixture of morphine and scopolamine. The ratio of scopolamine to morphine in the mixture depended on the person. After he gave the first injection, Gauss gave subsequent injections of scopolamine only, to inhibit memory formation during labor and delivery. While scopolamine prevented memory formation, it did not prevent pain, therefore to reduce the screaming and thrashing of women during labor, Gauss placed the pregnant women in a dark room and covered their eyes with gauze. In addition, Gauss restrained the pregnant woman on a padded bed using leather straps and inserted oil-soaked cotton into her ears to eliminate the woman’s hearing. Following the delivery, the woman would have no memory of the labor or delivery.

Pasted from <https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/twilight-sleep>

To be fair, most women truly didn't remember the process, and woke up feeling great. But it's still some seriously horrific shit to think about. I also wonder if the body stored the implicit traumatic memory, if perhaps these women had lingering triggers that they couldn't explain. Maybe a leather strap bracelet around their wrist a decade or two later makes their heart race and they find they can't stand bracelets or wristwatches at all, actually. And then of course there's literally everything else wrong with strapping down someone in labor. Movement and being literally anywhere other than lying down on your back can help relieve and distract from pain. Especially with something like giving birth, you need people around you. It's a human thing. To be isolated and disconnected (even if there were medical staff present, they couldn't be perceived by the patient) during a large life event like that can be traumatic in and of itself. And also the release of hormones post-birth that promotes the bond between parent and child. Did that process happen properly? Lots of questions. But this is about Plath, not twilight labor, So I'll put it on the shelf for now and if it tickles my fancy I'll read more about it.

Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only think I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

A very valid question to ask: Is my boyfriend's dick really that ugly, or am I experiencing severe anhedonia that's up and made my sex drive vanish? It takes 'different eyes' to see genitals as pretty or appealing, I think. Those eyes are context and mood sensitive, and without those, I think it has the same impact as looking at and comparing editions of an encyclopedia. But wrinklier.

From the first night Buddy Willard kissed me and said I must go out with a lot of boys, he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made him feel like doing out of the blue, he couldn’t help it and didn't know how it came about.

Not to be a 'gifted child' about it, but man whenever they're like "You don't seem like a virgin!" is an absolute power trip. And getting to keep your dignity after? Perfection. It's such a feeling of power, to feel like you've got it nailed down right out of the gate. As an AFAB, simps are my casual heroin. Can't do it anymore now that I'm in a relationship, but man. I lived for that shit. Feeling wanted and having that much control over it. Of course the more in person it is the riskier it gets, because of the way our culture is and our collective emotional immaturity combined with adult mobility means a lot of unnecessary murders. We'll not forget the disproportionate number of dead women here. But man. *chef's kiss*

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do. I began with cooking. […], but I would just look on and say "Yes, yes, I see," while the instructions slid through my head like water, and then I'd always spoil what I did so nobody would ask me to do it again.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

At this point in my life, I feel this. For context, she's describing the sensation of having so many choices for her path in life, but not being able to decide on any one of them, wanting all of them, and being afraid that if she waits any longer, it'll be too late. Even though my own symptoms of mental illness have reduced significantly (which would have contributed to the feeling of frozenness and indecision, or even taking the choice away from you altogether) I still have way too much I want to learn and do. I've narrowed down my goals significantly. I might not be able to do any beekeeping until maybe my 50s, I've accepted that. Nor will I ever own a small café. However there's still at least five books to publish and 7 animations to learn how to make and two hundred something-something books to read and 300 games to play and so, so, so many things to make. And ten years of my life I feel compelled in an almost obsessive fashion to reclaim. It's a lot.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs.Willard's kitchen mat. Hadn't my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon[…]my father said to her, "Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves"?--And from that day on my mother never had a minute's peace.

I think this is a reason why 'just be yourself' should be a golden rule. If you're not getting anybody as yourself, or if you're feeling the pressure to change, either there's something wrong with the people around you, OR (and this is important), there's something wrong with YOU. And you can't just pretend to be different either. You need to make real changes of one kind or another that result in real growth. You don't even have to be traditionally problematic either, it applies to everyone. It could be because you aren't actually assertive or don't value yourself enough to seek and keep a healthy relationship, maybe doubts make you self-sabotage, lots of reasons a person has need for growth other than 'just being an asshole'. Because you can't pretend either. Not forever. In this case, you cannot make it by faking it. That's how messy divorces happen.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

This is something I've experienced but I can't understand. I have a memory of my mother trying to draw me and me bursting into tears at the sight. I can't remember exactly what I was feeling. Fear? Shame? Disgust? Those ARE my personal primary negative emotions, to be fair. In Plath/Esther's case, it could be shame. 'Don't look at me. I'm not what it looks like. Maybe if they have a photo, the emptiness and disgustingness will show up on camera like a hideous phantom, and they'll see how much of a fraud I am'. Something to that effect.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

You ever get that bug up your ass that's like: this is fuckin easy, why didn't I do it before? I can just… Do It. I can Shia Lebouff it. I once got the hare-brained idea that I could just shit out a novel in two weeks if I tried hard enough. I still want to attempt that at some point. But so far a lot of my writing projects are either slow 'research' based or compilations made of various small pieces. I also once had the idea to just write a novel to a shitload of power metal, inspired by a dream I had about an armored skeleton riding a pegasus that was on top of a flying nuclear warhead (it was dope) and there were murder-clowns involved somehow. Maybe I can combine the two. Nothing but powermetal and coffee for two weeks.

Anyway, immediately after, Esther does this:

I strolled into the kitchen, dropped a raw egg into a teacup of raw hamburger, mixed it up and ate it.

Nice. Gotta fuel up if you're gonna write that much. Remember when we could blindly trust food well enough to be sure that a snack like that wouldn't immediately kill you and burn down your house? Me either. Also: That nice is genuine. My favorite is raw hamburger with beefy onion soup mix. It's been so long… And another thought that occurred to me, is that maybe this wasn't a legitimate snack, and was instead an act of engaging in risky behavior? Hm.

At that rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the trouble was. I needed Experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? […] I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.

She makes a very good point! If you don't have very many experiences, it's hard to approximate the feelings into writing that the reader could then approximate for themselves. However, there is a solution to this that doesn't involve tragedy, binge drinking, discovering repressed trauma, and several disappointing one-night stands! It's called reading. Because most authors are good writers precisely BECAUSE they can bring a reader through a range of emotions vicariously through the writing itself. You can gain more experience and introduce yourself to many writing styles and ways of expression subliminally as well as learn a lot of new things just by constantly reading. Yes, even fanfiction. Because fanfiction will sometimes explore new concepts if it focuses on things like expanding the world building or exploring alternative storylines or personalities for characters. Even if it's all trash romance or really badly written, you can find out at the very least the kinds of things YOU like to read, and be able to bring more of it into the world through your own writing. Even disappointing stories will teach you about what you want to create. Always be reading.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue. It seemed silly, to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

So, time can go a little bit funky when your reward systems are shut down, you aren't sleeping or are sleeping irregularly, and also the simplest tasks now require about 50 times more effort than they otherwise would. It means the unpleasant things last forever and feel like a trip to the DMV on steroids, and then the things are supposed to be fun turn into a regular trip to the DMV. And in your mind it feels like something THAT horrendously tiresome should definitely happen maybe twice or three times a year, right? No. Every day. It's like you just finished painting your whole house and then find out you have to do it all over again tomorrow, from scratch, and it starts to feel like your effort doesn't matter if it just has to be done again and again and again and again. I used to get that way about things like bathing and even eating. I would get angry at my body for demanding more of me than I could feasibly provide, and especially since I was putting in the extra effort to do things 'right' (Light exercise, eating right, doing my damndest to get enough sleep, keeping a routine) and I still wasn't feeling any better (that spiel is okay sometimes but it's not the cure. You need more than just that.) And then you realize just how long the average human lifespan is nowadays. And then it kicks in that you're spending every. Single. Day. In that mental DMV. And it seems like that won't be changing anytime soon. And then the need to escape arises.

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out. Then he would lean back in his chair […] and tell me why I couldn't sleep and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end. And then I thought, he would help me, step by step, to be myself again.

What you're looking for, dear, is a trauma informed therapist who is experienced in attachment systems and reads newer psych journals from about 110 years out from where you are. Things are certainly better now than they used to be, despite all the work that still needs doing.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin of the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

I feel this on a visceral level. As a traumatized individual with a dissociative/freeze response to stress, I am inherently disconnected from my body. I don't view my body as my Self. It's just it's own animal. This line is like looking at the bush you pass by every day and deciding you will stop pulling leaves off every time you pass. It's not the body that needs killing, it's the Self, the thing living in the body, if there was just a way to get rid of it… SOMEHOW.

I was thinking that if I'd had the sense to go on living in that old town I might just have met this prison guard in school and married him and had a parcel of kids by now. It would be nice, living by the sea with piles of little kids and pigs and chickens, wearing what my grandmother called wash dresses, and sitting about in some kitchen with bright linoleum and fat arms, drinking pots of coffee.

What is it with the arms? I've already got arms because puberty fucked me, but what is it with the arms? It can't just be skin sagging, it gets HEINOUS and it's a fact of life that I accept only under sufferance. Also, I had to look this up: A wash dress is this light, edwardian type house dress, think mary poppins' white getup flavored but with much less embellishment.

I was afraid that at any moment my control would snap, and I would start babbling about how I couldn't read and couldn't write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.

Living under stigma has this effect. Where the act of being vulnerable enough to receive help has always been told to you as the worst thing you could possibly do, the thing that will show just how crazy and abnormal and isolated you really are, and that you would do well to continue trying to keep up the illusion of an untroubled person for as long as possible. Even if it kills you (which in this case, it absolutely will).

Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, […] which would save it, time and time again, whereas if I had the whole say, I would be dead in a flash. I would simply have to ambush it with whatever sense I had left, or it would trap me in it's stupid cage for fifty years without any sense at all.

#relatable. My greatest fear during my most intense suicidal episodes was that I would be rendered immortal by the world's desire to see me suffer. That I'd find myself in a position where I wanted to die, but couldn't for one reason or another. And I would just... survive. And everyone who would constantly go on about 'oh, it gets better!' would come up to me on my 70th birthday and say 'well, wasn't sticking around worth it?' and I would tell them no. It's exhausting, and painful, and you better be grateful that I care enough about your feelings to spare you the pain of my death, because every day has been a waking hell and I can't wait until the nurses slip up on my next heart attack. Anyway, it DOES get better, but that isn't ALL that we need to hear in those moments.

The nurse had left the box of thermometers on my bed […] a heavy naughtiness pricked through my veins, irritating and attractive as the hurt of a loose tooth. I yawned and stirred, as if about to turn over, and edged my foot under the box.

You ever just wanna be a little bit of a bastard? Just… go a little bit apeshit. As a Treat.

I knew I should be grateful to Mrs.Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs.Guinea had given me a ticket to europe or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat--on the deck of a ship or at a street café in paris or bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

Changes of scenery or situation does very little to actually help the chemical aspects of depression.

I hated these visits, because I kept feeling the visitors measuring my fat and stringy hair against what I had been and what they wanted me to be, and I knew they went away utterly confounded.

Yeah. Antipsychotics are brutal and can very rapidly change your body shape beyond recognition. Not in a bad way, just in a very abrupt and upsetting way that gives you little warning or control over what's happening to you. Which can ALSO be depressing, and sometimes traumatic.

In spite of my profound reservations, I thought I would always treasure joan. It was as if we had been forced together by some overwhelming circumstance, like war or plague, and shared a world of our own.

Listen, that's nice, but who the hell is joan?? She's not mentioned earlier in the book, and if she is, I must have missed it.

It was only after seeing Irwin's study that I decided to seduce him.

I get it. I absolutely get this. I am a slut for some good bookshelves.

Ever since I'd learned about the corruption of Buddy Willard my virginity weighed like a millstone around my neck. It had been of such enormous importance for so long that it had been my habit to defend it at all costs. I had been defending it for five years and I was sick of it.

There was this thing on the internet for the longest, where if you asked what to do about your depression, they'd say 'did you do it yet'? And it leadds to a lot of compulsive 'I'm going to die anyway, let's get this over with' sex with a lot of unfortunate, unfulfilling consequences.

For one crazy minute I thought joan would refuse to call a doctor until I confessed the whole story of my evening with Irwin and that after my confession she would still refuse, as a sort of punishment.

It's things like this that made me wonder who treated her like that enough that she would think that of her best friend.

A bad dream. To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything.[…] maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

The dissociative space between walking sleep and remembrance can become almost a location in itself, a tangible place you can stand, when everything else is intangible.

I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

And the dread of knowing that at any time, for any reason, it can come back to ruin your life. At this early stage of becoming familiar with your mental illnesses, there's a very real fear of it assaulting you and you never being able to come back from it, ever again. Because at this point, we don't know exactly what works to make it ease up.

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And now I'm going to finish off with a more atmpospheric quite~

…the streets were grey and fuming with rain. It wasn't the nice kind of rain that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they must have in Brazil. It flew straight down from the sky in drops the size of coffee saucers and hit the hot sidewalks with a hiss that sent clouds of steam writhing up from the gleaming, dark concrete.

An easy 3.5/5, incredibly colorful writing, but I personally wouldn't be compelled to pick it up again. It's not raw or exciting or stimulating. It's depression. It's numbing and confusing, which Is very true to life, and just like in the wake of an actual depressive episode, leaves you wondering what the fuck all that noise was about. So in reality, it's more like I'm giving the book a 4/5 for being a pretty good simulation, but brushing up against the sensation is more like 3.5/5.

#The bell jar #sylvia plath #origin1 #wri1 #thelongestlibrary

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