Ricken's Pony is the Best

This blog is dead now. I used to post mostly art or Fire Emblem.

[ablogforrickenspony]

I really really love this song and it's soon to arrive on the global server for project sekai so I put this video together for it!!

[ablogforrickenspony]

I was chatting with a friend and ended up getting onto the subject of felix so I wanted to reference this one rant I went on about him once back when I was playing three hopes and I forgot HOW MUCH I YAPPED ABOUT FELIX in general. this is stuff about him in bother three hopes and three houses but yeah. I just think its wild that I treat him like "I don't really care about him" but then also subject my friends to huge blocks of text like this

[ablogforrickenspony]

the BIGGEST differences in my opinions when playing sacred stones 16 years ago and now is that i no longer hate innes, i actually like him a lot, and also i did NOT realize how many people comment on eirika's appearance and it is creeping me out

[ablogforrickenspony]

replaying sacred stones bc the last time I did was 16 years ago and it's time for me to finish the stuff I struggled with as a youth, and I'm just drawing random stuff as I got

[ablogforrickenspony]

ruitoya scribbles

[qqchurch]

[agentchimendez]

A newer OC, Sellout Sheila. She's meant to be a representation of my frustration over success being determined by algorithms and luck, and the embarrassment over trying to unsuccessfully bank on trends. She's a forty-year-old catwoman with 32 followers who can't seem to make it big.

[kafkasapartment]

artistsuniversum: “Kathin Marchenko is a textile artist and designer known for her expressive embroidery on delicate tulle fabric.

Using a "painting with thread" technique, she creates portraits, anatomical forms, and ethereal figures that seem to float within wooden hoops, blending craft with fine art.”

Artist: @kathrin_marchenko

#art #embroidery #artist #textileart

[diserbillyti]

Been playing a lot of "psychological horror" games lately, and man

nonschizophrenics will simply never understand that "what if it was all in the person's head?" will never be scarier than a monster that actually fucking exists.

oooh what if you're crazy :o what if you hallucinate a goobly gobbler? well mate you fucking deal with it. rent's due monday. but an actual real goobly gobbler coming for my gnuts? that's different.

[diserbillyti]

Y'know just once I'd like to play a horror game where you play a mentally ill / disabled character, and the horror is navigating able-bodied people.

I don't mean in the baisc "how do you have a conversation while autistic?" sense, or some kind of The Sims hardcore mode where your bars count down faster or Papers Please where you need to fill out an NDIS application.

I mean something that is cognizant of the fact that,

schizophrenics are 16 times more likely to experience violence in our lifetimes, and it's

at the hands of able-bodied people almost exclusively, and

not only are able-bodied people oblivious to this, but when you tell them they universally make that fucking face like you just handed them a cat turd and say "that doesn't seem right," because we

live in a culture that perpetuates unrealistic narratives about schizophrenics doing mass violence literally all the time, both in fiction and in disingenuous reporting of "actual" events (which always lean on mental illness and never far-right radicalization or awareness of shit like terrorgram, hm).

Able-bodied people CAN physically assault you and then claim self-defense and your disability WILL be used in court to justify that version of events. It's just something that happens all the time.

I think that most people would find being disabled and needing to navigate getting on a bus without some scared white woman calling the cops on them much more frightening than the concept that ooh what if my broken mind conjured an image that isn't really there.

Mate, if your broken mind conjured an image that wasn't really there, rent would still be due on monday, and if you can't pass as normal well enough to scratch up the cash, you'll be getting a visit from the cops. Landlords don't fuck around and a lot of the pigboys don't think you have a right to live. They're armed and they don't need a warrant if the landlord has decided you're squatting.

It's like, OK, you know how 90% of body horror really is just, "okay so imagine if there was a Disabled Guy?" It feels like 90% of psychological horror, that is horror that wants to play with mental illness and especially the concept of delusions/hallucinations, is just the mind version of that. It's body horror but your judgment and senses. "Okay so imagine if there was a Schizophrenic Guy."

anyway my point is, make the ghosts real so I can fuck them and have an ectogasm with the phantoms, or stop wasting my goddamn time

[diserbillyti]

I think Asylum Fiction, as in fiction about psychiatric hospitals and so on, really captures this.

There are two kinds of Asylum Fiction:

A: crazy people are scary, look at that freak Renfield eating flies, and

B: you are locked in a cage where freaks who don't see you as all the way human have complete control over you and your body, and not only is no one coming to save you, but everybody believes this is for your benefit. There is no discharge, there is no escape. They have you on suicide watch so you can't even leave that way.

One of these is both an actual disabled perspective and, dare I fucking say it, genuinely scarier for able people, too.

[diserbillyti]

American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns I'd bet. They're okay but extremely trope heavy. Still, the focus is on how the individual is treated, and there's no silly rugpull where it's like "actually she found a broken piece of glass, and she's been jacking up the innocent nurses and other patients this whoooole time!"

But yeah, I think that able fear of becoming disabled is normal to an extent, but with mental health specifically, the way that character is written and the fear is communicated always takes an able lens.

The horror doesn't work, if you are not already scared mental illness.

There's a lot of drama in the idea of disconnection from reality and loss of "self" to psychosis, so much so that it's an extremely common trope in a number of horror genres. Every Lovecraftian videogame protagonist is some kind of crazyguy and the best Lovecraftian videogame is about a "sane" woman going to a (opulent) psychiatric institution (in a converted mansion) to check on her "schizophrenic" uncle, while fearing "the family curse."

Obviously the potential exists for a much more interesting story and a much more unique game, where either Emily is simultaneously crazy, or we are in the perspective of her crazy uncle who is investigating this spooky eldritch horror cult that runs the asylum while they need to differentiate between what's a delusion. This is (sort of) a detective game, so you could challenge the player by presenting paranoic apophenic connections and asking them to distinguish those from a real clue. Meanwhile, the protagonist is going through the dissociation that comes from having people tell you the real things you experience are all in your head, yada yada.

The issue is, within the genre of eldritch horror, once someone is all the way crazy their character is done. This is such a staple of the genre that in the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, which pulls some inspiration from Alone in the Dark of course, if your "sanity meter" runs out your character is rendered unplayable, mechanically the equivalent of death, because in most Lovecraft style fiction the story ends once the protagonist is all the way crazy. I'm not scared of this, because I by definition am not in this story, I am not allowed to be because I disappear as a Fail State.

This is imo because the emphasis is always on the able perspective and the able fear of disablement. It's not a humanizing fear, it's a fear of becoming less human, of "losing one's mind" in the sense that one becomes essentially unable to have intentions, meaningful emotions and worthwhile human experiences. That's relatable, I guess, but it's an inferior product to a thing that is aware of and willing to explore the reality of the situation that disablement creates.

So, look at how survival horror videogames specifically have historically approached the subject of being A Woman.

Full disclaimer, I am not A Woman, but I've learned about The Women from videogames and thus am, as the redditors say, le expert lol.

OK, so,

Something a lot of You Are A Girl Horror does is really humanize the fact that being a woman can be and often is fucking horrifying, right?

Heather Mason is followed around a mall by a creepy old man she doesn't know and is objectified by a religious cult for her body in a way that specifically focuses on motherhood and The Womb. Haunting Ground is extremely about weird freaks wanting to use Fiona's "amaranth" (again, The Womb) as some kind of tool of immortality, and will lobotomize her to make it easier if they want to.

There's a YouTuber I like who articulates this really well.

She has a lot of videos on You Are A Girl Horror.

There's also of course fem-led horror where this is not a major element, but women are just as powerful as men and their being a woman is treated as incidental. I love Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield as protagonists. That itself functions as commentary in a much broader genre context where women are often either trivialized into dumb blonde victims, or sexually objectified for a presumed male audience. Meanwhile, here is Claire in her own game kicking ass and solving the mysteries (Code: Veronica, Revelations 2), or here is Claire and she is both just as competent and in fact just as much The Hero as Leon.

The actual best survival horror game merges these two. You play a badass, but the bioessentialist infliction of patriarchal expectations of woman as mother is still an underlying theme of the game, sometimes as overtly as making you blow up a semen storage thing lol.

Aya Brea: Cum Destroyer.

My point being, there is a massive difference between these and, for instance, later Fatal Frame games where you have a see through white shirt that gets more see-through the more damaged by the ghoulies you are (that is seriously where that franchise ended up lol).

One approach treats being a woman as a human experience that is both worthy of respect and a source of relatable horror rooted in the shit women go through, and the other treats women as an outside object for the presumed dude audience to eyeball. One is inclusive of women as audience members, the other is indifferent to and even at times deliberately exclusionary of them.

I would argue that fear of disablement that treats the existence of disability itself a point of horror, ooh scary Renfield eating flies, works like the latter case, but for disabled audience members and (increasingly) able audience members. I don't think anybody can take Maiden of Black Water completely seriously as a work of horror due to its alienation of its own protagonists' life perspectives, as it reduces them to, essentially, damp booby ladies. You have to work against how it treats its principle subjects to see the horror it's attempting to earn, in a way that is not necessary in other horror that takes seriously the fact that its she/her heroes are complete human beings, and their experiences are in fact a relatable source of horror even for men.

[ablogforrickenspony]

speaking of stories where the characters all either convince themselves to live with the belief that they are unforgivable and must suffer for eternity (Kanade and Rui) or are fighting to prove that there's hope and ways to change for the future (Ichika) or choosing terrible coping mechanisms instead of facing their problems ever (Shizuku)... I am thinking about this vampire AU again

[ablogforrickenspony]

also wrote out a POV thing for an OC and his faith (this is probably part 1 of 3, but I don't know if I'll make the other parts)

[ablogforrickenspony]

got into a terrible mood yesterday so i ended up drawing a bunch of OC art

[19thcenturyfuck]

not to post even more Villains Discourse on main but it really bugs me how people read giving villains tragic backstories as inherently excusing their actions and/or demonizing trauma survivors.

the actual message of Tragic Villains is (almost) always “people who are never taught or given any healthy, constructive outlets for their emotions will often find unhealthy, destructive outlets.” it’s that people who are traumatized and never learn how to cope with that trauma can become a danger to themselves and others. the message isn’t “trauma makes you evil!!!!” or “genocide is okay if you’ve been sad before!!!!” it’s “people need compassion and help to recover from trauma instead of becoming increasingly angry and harming themselves and others in the process.”

this site takes an alarmingly behaviorist and punitive approach to everything and it’s literally the most annoying thing. y’all have this concept that “if we just punish people hard enough, if we just scare them enough, if we just make them feel guilty enough.” that people just Do Bad Things Because They Do Bad Things, I Guess, and Because We Didn’t Threaten Them And Shame Them Enough. but humans are an innately social species. at our very core, we need compassion and kindness. we need healthy relationships with other humans.

you can keep looking at traumatized villains and being like “haha this dumb pathetic sadboi thinks murder is okay because his parents died” but as a survivor myself, unaddressed/untreated trauma absolutely can make you ragey and destructive. i was lucky enough to have support and eventually get the treatment i needed. but it’s not hard at all for me to imagine how, if that hadn’t been the case, that could’ve been me. obviously not on a movie-villain scale like murder or war crimes, but it’s so irritating as someone whose trauma has always manifested as anger to watch people on this site be like “this is just bad writing!!! real survivors/good survivors don’t end up like that the writers just hate survivors and want the audience to condone murder!”

[sheathandshear]

[pinecone-paws]

I made slightly accurate wolf images based on that one post about loners making quotes with wolves and lions when they're the most famous pack animals ever

Feel free to use, they kinda look crap but it's okay I saw an actual lone wolf quote in COMIC SANS while trying to find pics for this

[ablogforrickenspony]

i like yvonne but its also funny that my brain cant comprehend her proportions and does this instead

[ablogforrickenspony]

playing Clair Obscur made me think of stuff Julia Lepetit has said on streams

(shout out to the knight's try videos SSS did, i still love rewatching them because they're so fun)

[johnlennonirl]

Here I am, posting something similar like the fibro post... this one goes out to my psychotic folks🫶

[happyk44]

[ID: Every image has a light gray background and a slightly darker gray border. The font for the text is dark gray. Occassionally OP draws themself in. They are coloured in white with black lineart. There is some shading in gray. In the first image only, OP colours their eyes light green.

1: The Psychotic Spectrum ...And My Own Experience (A Guide!!) =D

In the middle of the graphic, OP wears a button up shirt and a sweater over top. The shirt collar sticks out from the colour of the sweater. The shirt is buttoned all the way up. OP has shaggy shoulder length hair and black nails. They are wearing glasses. An arrow points at them reading, "Brought to you y a schizospec guy."

"No, I am not a cold-hearted psychopath," they say, gazing tiredly to the left, "nor is that silly thought of yours a "delusion"...."

2: Introduction To The Topic:

All fingers extended and hand flat, OP gestures sharply as they say, "Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, are still widely misunderstood disorders. Many people fear other psychotic people and have very wrong views about them, believing they're dangerous, cold, without empathy, and most media display us as serial killers or make us the abusers.

This is simply [red font] not true! It's been proven that psychotic people are the one's more prone to getting abused or being victims of abuse. [end rent font]

3: The text continues. "Sadly, there is still bad representation in media displaying psychosis/schizophenia." Below the title are two examples of poor representation. OP is drawn small at the bottom, lineart only. They continue on with, "Either they display psychosis like something "magical" (making it seem like a superpower)." The example used is Donnie Darko. "Or make them violent criminals": Norman Bates in Psycho is the example.

"But there is also good representation." The example used is A Beautiful Mind, although OP add, "Somewhat I guess", indicating that it's still not the best representation

4: Here are some pyschotic spectrum disorders:

Schizophrenia

Schizoaffective disorder

Delusional disorder

Schizophreniform disorder

Bipolar

Brief psychotic disorder

Schizotypal personality disorder

In an asterix to the side, OP adds that depression with pyschotic features also exists and some people with BPD also experience psychosis.

5: Symptoms of Psychosis:

Halluciation (auditory, tacticle, visual, olfactory, etc,,,)

Delusions (grandiose, persecutory, somatic, erotomanic, etc,,,)

Disordered thinking and inappropriate behaviour (disorganized speech, derailment, tangential thining, catatonia, etc,,,)

Negative symptoms (reduced emotional expression, decreased motivation, reduced speech, anhedonia, etc,,,)

And more

In the upper right corner, OP frowns, brows furrowed nervously as three bugs crawl on them. Two spiders on their shoulder and a beetle on their hand. The bugs are a hallucination, possible tactile and/or visual. They are draw in red lineart only to indicate this.

In the lower left corner, OP shakes in place. Their eyes are closed, but thier mouth is open, downturned. They are uncomfortable. Red scribbles are drawn in their head, where their brain would be. This is likely an interpretation of the Disordered Thinking symptom. The shaking indicators around OP were also drawn in red.

6: "Delulu is the selulu!" "I'm so delusional over him!" I'm just... gonna put this here...

Underneath the title is a screenshot from the wikipedia page on delusions. It reads, "A delusion is a false [underline] fixed belief that is not amenable to change [end underline] in light of conflicting evicence. As a pathology, it is [underline] distinct [end underline] from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as [underline] individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs [end underline] upon reviewing the evidence."

Beneath the screenshot, text reads, "Delusions are not funny, nor are they quirky. I have extremely debiltating paranoid delusions that cause me to fear the public because I'm convinced everyone is watching me or out to get me. I also struggle undressing inmy own room because I believe my posters or secret cams are watching me." An arrow points out from the paragraph to read, "The same goes for like "the voices told me to dye my hair! xD"... It's just annoying."

Drawn tired in the lower right corner, OP adds, "Your crush not reciprocating your feelings or you being obsessive over someone doesn't make you delusional... It also pains us psychotic people constantly having our issues "meme-ified" or being used for jokes... People have stopped taking me serious or laugh at me..."

7: 4 Key Facts: (source: world health organization)

Schizophrenia specifically affects approximatley 24 million people or 1 in 300 people (0.32%) worldwide; it's not as common as other disorder.

Stigma, discrimination and violation of human rights of people with schizo-disorders are sadly common

Onset is most often during lat adolescense and twenties.

Schizophrenia and early psychosis awareness day is May 24th! (Ribbon color is silver)

OP is drawn smiling with their eyes closed. Two sparkles are drawn beside their head.

8: I Am Schizophrenic.

Nervously OP holds their hands together in front of their chest. They gaze off-screen, cheeks coloured in light gray. "And being honest, it's always scary opening up about my psychosis without being judged, made fun of, or being feared. I don't "look" like my disorder and fear not being taken seriously. I'm always afraid I'll be seen as insane if I open up about my symptoms/diagnosis."

9: "I just hope to spread a better image or view on psychotic people by showing that even artist like me can be schizo and that we are not what the media makes us out to be."

OP smiles softly at the viewer, hands and arms tucked behind their back. The blush is still evident on thier cheeks. Two arrows point at them from either side. They read, "Just a guy! Litterally funny dogdude!"

/end ID]