Peri

persephone (seasons are pretty cool) author and musician

[professional-drawer]

why this 🟥 look so mad

(if you like my art, im on artfight as bluewer)

[periseph]

He’s mad cause someone asked him for iron blocks

[write-with-will]

Working on the wiki for Strijain rn (the sow hyperfixation is kicking back in and I decided to do this one first)

Can yall pretty please ask me the most random stupid questions (setting wise, military wise since that’s the book four focus, legit ANYTHING)

I’ve found that my best ideas come from having to make shit up on the spot to answer questions

[write-with-will]

@vesanal @xunfix-writes @thebookishkiwi @inspirationallybored @corinneglass

@seastarblue @seafloor509 @ark-inkweaving @leahnardo-da-veggie @adhdalex15

@ifmasonbasonwasawriter @theink-stainedfolk @hauntedmoontimetravel @overwhelmedfernfrond @scrapsscribbles

@professional-termite @novaluna7189 @traderotales @periseph @sundeir

@hyacinthwritesbooks

[scrapsscribbles]

thats actually a really good strategy wait

ok why do they have teenagers in the military? i guess lane is kinda a special case (although i dont really remember a ton of those details) but why do they choose to put cali in there and not somewhere else? surely they find survivor orphans in other places too. do they also go into the military?

[write-with-will]

Teenagers are the main percent of the population mostly because they’re the easiest to manipulate and younger people are more susceptible to propaganda.

We also see strijain in one of its hardest times—famine everywhere, economy in the trash, military recruitment at an all time low. It is standard protocol for any orphans that remain unclaimed after two weeks to be immediately drafted (Cali was kind of a special case because there were other things involved but this is the gist of it).

Also there isn’t really much of a ‘somewhere else’, the military controls basically THE WHOLE of Strijain, and with recruitment numbers so low, the only logical move was to recruit any able bodied young people found.

[write-with-will]

@scrapsscribbles

Also cases like Lane’s (babies being just dumped in the woods to get rid of a mouth to feed) became realllyy common, infant mortality rates skyrocketed to the point where the government had to step in and be like ‘hey. I know you’re all starving and it’s our fault but please stop killing your kids ok :)’

And how did they do that? By putting in place a system where you could basically sell your kid to the military in exchange for a monetary reward (it’s worded differently and propagandized to seem Not That Bad, but yk)

[scrapsscribbles]

ooooooo i like that a lot (not like the actual practice just the storytelling value thats very good)

[write-with-will]

Thank you thank you :)

[periseph]

Which country is Strijain even at war with, and what’s the wider context of the conflict? What scenario would justify such extreme measures to sustain a military?

[what-is-gender-offical]

I keep meaning to post this, I really want people to see this

@do-not-u-dare @satan-offical @cranberry-branflakes @tired-shipper-offical @garlic-bread-cult-offical @queer-offical @testosterone--offical @silly-little-arson-frog-offical

[blindbeta]

Different anon here! I have a character who's blindness is incident related, but it's been several years since then and the story isn't heavily focused on his trauma (or at least that specific trauma, as he has others that aren't related to blindness)

This was before I knew injury-based blindness was a harmful/potentially harmful trope though, so now I'm worried that I'll have to rewrite his backstory entirely to avoid writing about experiences I don't have, or pushing any harmful tropes that are already pushed far too much.

What do you think? Could I still use that as part of his story without focusing too much on that specific traumatic event, or do you think it's better for me to discard it entirely?

The Accident Narrative/Going Blind Through Trauma trope and How to Make It Better - (I’m just calling it that because I don’t know if this thing has a name)

My problem with this trope - and the problem many people have with it- is very specific. I’ll try to break it down for you so it is easier to understand. My problem is basically with the execution.

Characters go blind unrealistically often from traumatic accidents in media. Mainly because it creates a lot of drama, which is fair, if cheap. It is also a good story starter if the story will be about them being all sad that they’re blind. These stories usually focus heavily on the blind part rather than the trauma part, and they paint blindness as the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Including death. Sometimes the character grows out of this feeling and sometimes they don’t.

The way you portray this is what changes the narrative.

I like that your story takes place several years after the incident although how well it is done will depend on the portrayal of the resulting blindness. Blindness can be tough, but avoiding considering the incident a tragedy that ended his vision could help. Not having too much of a woe-is-me attitude toward it will also help. Starting the story years after the incident creates beneficial distance.

With this in mind, the story won’t be - about - him going blind and then adapting and possibly being sad, possibly not sad about it. That would be a type of story that is probably best left to blind people who lost their vision later in life. Your story avoids this issue by starting the story well after the incident occurred. When you said you didn’t want to write about something you hadn’t experienced, to tell a story that wasn’t yours to tell, this is what you want to avoid. If you aren’t writing about going blind/being blind, you’re good, at least for this question.

So, you have avoided writing about the experience of going blind (and having that be the focus of your story) and starting the story at another time so your character can have some distance from his trauma. Your story will not be showing your character tragically losing his sight and learning to adapt. -dramatic sniffle-

The other part of this ask that really works for me is the part about focusing on different traumas. It sounds like the character is going to have more to them, and the idea of the Blindness Trauma being not as significant as other more recent traumas sounds good and true to life. It also takes the focus away from any implications of blindness as particularly tragic and all-encompassing. Your character will expirience different things just as anyone else would. Focusing more heavily on other things in his life is a good idea. That, coupled with the distance from the initial traumatic incident makes it okay with me.

What else can you do?

Here are a few other options for you or other readers who are writing incident-related blindness:

1. Have them focus on the traumatic incident itself rather than the resulting blindness.

Yes, going blind can change your life. It can be scary and someone may need to grieve their vision loss as they would any other major change. However, this doesn’t have to be the dramatic take-up-an-entire story thing either.

If you decided to write flashbacks, you can show the character mostly dealing with trauma, with blindness as a reminder of it. This puts the focus on the traumatic incident itself healing from trauma rather than trying to heal from blindness. When sighted people write about this, it comes out as awkward, not relatable, and impossible to separate voice-type things - like worrying about never being able to marry - from the authors own opinion or worries about blindness.

Focusing on the trauma of say, extreme injury can help with that. It is important to make a distinction for the reader, who usually goes in not knowing much about blindness and conceptualizing it as one of the worst things that could happen to them. Make it as clear as you can that the character is upset due to trauma rather than being devastated their life is over because they are blind.

2. Have the trauma happen off-screen / have them not remember it much due to young age

It sounds like this is also what you’re going to do. You could mention the traumatic incident briefly, without too many dramatic details. A few descriptive sentences should be enough. You could write it for reference and only take a few samples from it you liked. This keeps the focus away from drama for drama’s sake. It also disrupts the usual narrative, putting you farther away from the Accident Narrative or trope. You could simply have had the character be too young to remember much detail.

3. Add more blind characters

This one is good for any story. You should always trace your logic for topics like the one you presented or consider how to do things better, but one easy way to avoid readers thinking all blind people are like your character (which they might), you can add another blind character or more who were born blind or went blind at a very young age. Who don’t struggle with being blind generally. This exposes your readers to more ideas of blind people.

When your story is standing on the line between nuanced character and meeting a stereotype, you should absolutely have at least one other if not a few blind characters. In fact, I would be surprised if a story like this didn’t have other blind characters and, if I were reading this story randomly, I might even feel less forgiving or open to what was different about the Accident Narrative this time.

Thank you for asking this question. It is kind of challenging to answer and I had to rewrite this a few times. Basically, you want to do what you can to disrupt the usual portrayals of blindness because there are actually so few and most are made by people who aren’t blind or even disabled. You cannot make this trope or stereotype go away, but you can try to shake it up. Because this can be done differently, to avoid writing about adapting the tragic blindness, I am ok with this type of story.

I don’t know if this one is harmful exactly, but it is frustrating to see and can certainly lead to some harmful ideas, such as blindness only being tragic even when someone was born blind. I have a review coming up for a book called Blind that might be helpful, as well as a post called Tropes I’m Tired Of that I hope will help. Your ask definitely helped me consider more ways this trope could be made more bearable and concentrate on what exactly I dislike about it.

All that said, this is not a post encouraging people to use this narrative in all their projects. Only if you feel like it is necessary and fits the character. I would like for this trope to be less common than being born blind or going blind in a way that isn’t so dramatic and, possibly, abrupt. When most characters go blind through traumatic accidents it contributes to people’s idea that blindness is not only traumatic for anyone at any age, but also cannot be anything but a tragedy.

I really hope this helps. Of course, I would really encourage a few different sensitivity readers with this story. Just to get different perspectives. There is another blind person who also offers sensitivity reading at @sensitivityreaders and it might help to get them or someone else, in addition to me. Because I would love to read this sometime.

-BlindBeta

[ludicrouslybad]

guys why is it lowkey thursday today 😭😅

[write-with-will]

@periseph

[periseph]

today.

[theworstmemoryintheworld]

I’m going to sound insane for a sec but I feel like people are forgetting that casual players of Minecraft exist. The other day I saw someone talk about how no one uses mounts anymore because everyone uses elytra’s and it’s like HUH?? What are you on about bro 😭 wtf are you on about. Getting a horse used to be the biggest deal to me and it still is. Today I got into an argument about how Minecraft isn’t a game about colonialism because unless you choose to play as a colonist than it’s about love. It’s always been about love. No one is forcing you to make villager farms that’s all you man. I am just building a house and enjoying myself

[periseph]

Minecraft aura

[periseph]

So it all starts with Carl Anselmann, born in 1931 in what’s now the Czech Republic. His childhood gets wrecked by WW2 and ethnic expulsion, which already puts him on a lifelong trajectory of loss, displacement, and obsession with his past/memories. He grows up smart and articulate, ends up in the U.S., and becomes a Professional Science Guy by the 50s-60s.

By the 60s/70s, Carl is convinced he’s onto something massive: a nuclear fusion reactor that could actually work.

In August 1972, Carl runs an experimental accelerator-driven fusion test during a massive solar storm.

It goes catastrophically wrong.

The reactor destabilizes.

Carl is partially blinded, and he loses huge chunks of his precious childhood memories (also reality tears just enough to create what later gets called the Backrooms)

The Backrooms ends up forming as a location built from carls memories of places, most prominently his childhood bedroom (hence the Victorian wallpaper)

Carl survives, but from this point on, everything he does is quietly about one thing, getting his memories back.

In 1982, there’s a prototype test at Oak Ridge. It doesn’t open the Backrooms, but it proves Carl’s tech can dump absurd amounts of energy into a target, which partially replicates the phenomenon.

By 1988, Carl’s back in public, pitching Project FL31 to anyone who will listen. Of course, he told absolutely no one about the Backrooms part, or his secret lost memory quest. He ended up getting a government contract to do “nuclear fusion research” from the DOE, and used the money to cofound a research institute with this radiologist guy named “Lawrence.”

From then on, it’s full speed ahead to build a portal into an infinite hell-building.

On October 17, 1989, they test the portal thing (called “The Terminal” in the San Jose Institute of Medical Research’s buildings basement.

The machine screams “oops! all plasma.”

The Loma Prieta earthquake hits 39 seconds later.

The Terminal opens anyway. That timing CANNOT BE a coincidence. They’re shooting some radio waves into it to read the other side and this map of the Backrooms starts forming in real time. Someone insists they keep going despite the massive earthquake going on.

By 5:13 PM, the Terminal is fully open.

From here on out:

Missing person reports spike. People begin vanishing into something nobody outside the project even knows exists.

Researchers start poking around “Area 1” this large room in the Backrooms where things are fairly open and symmetrical (which also happens to be exactly where the portal opened to, lucky them)

It’s about then that we’re introduced to Kevin. He’s this researcher at SJRI who primarily works in documentation (as part of the Biomedical department) and one of his colleagues, Thomas Parker (who Kevin has a high-key top secret crush on lmao) ended up recommending Kevin to work on documentation in the Backrooms (since Kevin’s “good with a camera” apparently)

So, Kevin (the camera guy) goes into the Backrooms, removes a fluorescent light fixture and realizes something deeply unsettling:

The materials are normal.

The manufacturing dates are decades old.

The lights look like they were built to last forever.

This place wasn’t randomly made.

It was designed, intentionally or not, or at least, formed in a non-random way.

By January and February of 1990, people are disappearing regularly, all over the world.

A team of researchers exploring deeper into the eventually find a corpse inside the Backrooms:

Later study in the biomedical division shows that some parts of the corpse were preserved, while other parts completely rotted.

The body and its immediate surroundings in the Backrooms were covered in a mutated strain of hay bacillus (which had turned into a mold-like colonial organism thanks to symbiosis granting it biofilm powers).

The implication is simple.

People are falling into the Backrooms, somehow. They’re dying of starvation. And when they do, the microbes they carry with and inside them have to get creative.

On March 1, 1990, Kevin, Thomas, Michael, and Wendy go in to map a different part of the Backrooms. Thomas wants to try out the camera (and Kevin isn’t about to object to his bbg Tommy)

It’s 12:25 PM, and they’re headed back to the Terminal to eat lunch, when Thomas hears voices in a hallway.

He turns around.

And as he walks into another hallway, he timeslips forward to May 8, 1990.

Everyone else just sees him vanish.

SJRI panics, sets up cameras, logs weird motion, and eventually decides the simplest solution is a cover-up.

Kevin and Michael are deeply upset by this, because tbh, Thomas was their FRIEND, (and meant even more to Kevin lmao).

By mid-March, Thomas is declared dead in a fake car accident. They faked the body by taking the body they found in the Backrooms, and torching it.

On May 6, 1990, Kevin, Michael, Robert, and Jennifer enter another, unexplored region of the Backrooms.

Everything goes wrong when Kevin falls into a hole in the floor, and lands in a lower area. He breaks his neck and fucking dies (/j he’s fine he lands on his fat ass lmao)

He finds a semitruck, in a wreck, crashed into a wall, the trailer on its side, the contents scattered everywhere

More concerning, he finds a trail of blood spatters on the floor.

He follows the blood trail and runs into a mass of what looks like vines, coating a dark room.

Some of the vines, (to Kevin’s credit, he immediately noticed they looked kinda like a person) start to move, like a giant, woobly stick figure.

Kevin runs away. The creature screams and tries to attack him. Kevin is too fast for the opps tho, and loses the mold stickman.

They get Kevin out. SJRI boards the holes in the floor up immediately.

Two days later, on May 8, 1990, Thomas Comes Back at the Worst Possible Time.

He wanders through the various rooms of the Backrooms, clearly not okay, confused about where his teammates went (from his perspective, they were the ones who vanished)

That same day, SJRI is giving a polished presentation to the Department of Energy, showing off their cool Terminal thing.

The DOE is a little upset about being lied to, but they immediately realize “holy shit, this Backrooms thing is super cool, way better than the nuclear fusion we were promised”

At 5:29 PM, Thomas literally stumbles into the observation room (a spiffy little room built just outside the Backrooms side of the Terminal) mid-negotiation.

The DOE contract still goes through, but now Thomas is a problem that can’t be ignored.

Throughout May 1990, SJRI keeps Thomas on-site, trying to “reintegrate” him into society slowly.

It doesn’t work.

He becomes paranoid, starts believing the staff and even reality itself are part of the Backrooms, and are trying to trick him.

“If this place is so real then why won’t you let me go see my wife and kids?” - Thomas

Normally, if someone said this, you’d call them schizophrenic.

“Bro is Doug Ratman from Portal” - you if this was any other scenario

But, while Thomas was finding his way back to the Terminal, he had stumbled upon a region of the Backrooms that looked like an outdoor neighborhood.

So he knows that the Backrooms can copy areas from the real world, something that SJRI had only theorized about at that point.

On May 22, he breaks out of the room he was confined in, and escapes back into the backrooms, hoping to find a “real” exit.

On May 25th, two teams enter the Backrooms.

Kevin, Robert, and Preston (Preston is a chill guy from Moss Landing Marine Laboratory who had to find a new job after the Earthquake) enter an unexplored area. Robert has a shotgun, because after the encounter with the spooky Backroom entity, SJRI is getting serious about safety measures.

They find a hand-drawn map on a wall, which makes them think someone’s been navigating this place long-term, potentially someone else who fell into the Backrooms.

Then Thomas shows up.

He takes Robert’s shotgun, holds them at gunpoint, and demands the truth about what happened.

Keep in mind, none of the researchers were aware Thomas was still alive. They knew his death in the car accident was fake, but they all assumed he had been lost forever when he disappeared back in March. So to see him alive shook Kevin.

Robert and Preston have no clue who Thomas is and are kinda panicking tho.

Thomas shoots Robert, and runs.

He forces his way back through the Terminal into SJRI, before getting disarmed, escaping outside, and supposedly dying on a hillside, falling off a cliff he didn’t see like a fucking cartoon character.

There is no body.

On May 29, 1990, after the incident, and the later explanation of everything given by the supervisors to the other staff on FL31, Kevin and Michael talk.

Kevin is spiraling, convinced the DOE killed Thomas.

Michael tries to keep him grounded.

The project continues.

The Backrooms stay open.

And Carl Anselmann, the man who accidentally made all of this, is still chasing a past he can’t remember, inside a space built from the pieces of it.

That’s a story for the second act tho.

It’s called “Anamnesis.”

[write-with-will]

Also chapter four is just about done I think

May rework the ending later but I think it’s fine for now

[periseph]

Nice :)

[is-this-fascism]

so let me just get straight what happened the other day.

guy comes into the hospital asking for a mental health eval. they take him to the back room. his affect is low and irritable. when they take his stuff, he requests (irritably) to keep the sunglasses as overhead lights will hurt his eyes and cause a migraine. they say it's fine.

when taken back to the psych ward from the front room, they try to take his sunglasses again. this time, he's surrounded by 6 security guards. a scuffle occurs when they try to take the glasses, causing them to break. the security guards pick the guy up and forcefully drag him to a room, where he's restrained. he's reacting as if he's being kidnapped because that's essentially what's happening from his body's perspective, causing bruising and a black eye.

now restrained, they pump a massive dose or benadryl and ativan into both of his thighs and leave him there to cry alone with only a nurse outside who looks and talks to him like he's a tied hog.

when the psychiatrist arrives, he asks a few questions before deciding this homeless man must have put himself through all that just to get a room for the night, and claims 'if you don't want medications, we can't help you. you can either talk to social work or get discharged but you're not going to the psych hospital.'

gets discharged into the streets with a benadryl withdrawal????? bc that'll make everything better??

[is-this-fascism]

first of all, the idea that homeless people can't be suicidal and will always seek medical care to get out of the elements is ridiculous. sure, it can be a benefit, but i seriously doubt any homeless person is visiting the hospital just to treat it as a free hotel. even if they stay at the ER there are going to be mental health benefits over staying on the streets, especially in bad weather.

second of all, treating someone who claims to be suicidal like a criminal and tying them up like a pig, then discharging them to deal with the withdrawal from a drug you forced on them is just wrong. like, if i had immediately gone and killed myself they would have that blood on their hands. and they don't know that i wouldn't have.

this is our mental health industry folks. this is mental healthcare in the U.S. believe it's true because it happened to me.

[is-this-fascism]

and i don't wanna hear any 'what you need is a shelter' because i've been playing the game of these systems for so long you can't tell me what i need. shelters are just as if not more abusive than what i faced at that hospital, and on top of that it takes weeks to months to get approved for entry. last time i was at anything like a shelter it took The Entirety Of Winter to get in. many of them also charge rent. so what would be the point if i'm trying to get out of the elements, or save money? or if, god forbid, i'm actually suicidal and need a safe reprieve.

[is-this-fascism]

i mean fuck, i literally said to his face 'i will kill myself if i'm discharged from here and i don't have a car' and dude still thought nah. mooch. grifter. resource waster.

regardless of whether i was lying or not, the chance that i wasnt is so serious his reaction is simply vile.

[is-this-fascism]

really my fault for going to the absolute worst hospital in the area tbh. ive been treated badly at all of them but never like That

[is-this-fascism]

in case anyone is wondering, yes this is fascism

[periseph]

L hospital, private healthcare needs to stop existing, they do more evil than good at this point

[write-with-will]

So we were talking about climate change and shit in science and my teacher asks for ideas about ways to solve it and this kid genuinely goes ‘kill all homeless people bc overpopulation’

And I just.

What?

What???

[periseph]

Yeah, that’s definitely a poorly thought out idea.

A much better plan is to develop nuclear fusion energy, place tariffs on foreign oil and insane taxes on domestic oil, and force everyone to convert to cleaner and cleaner energy sources over time until everyone puts out zero emissions.

Then, we build giant sequestration towers to yank CO2 and other greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and use it to feed and regrow deforested sections of vital ecosystems.

All the while, we move our destructive farming practices into space, using fusion-powered reusable rocket tech, and geosynchronous satellite networks that function as habitats for agriculture and human life.

I call it:

“Forcefully shoving humanity into the future they need, whether they want to go, or not.”

[maharbathegreat]

the existence of the butch lesbian implies that of the batch lesbian, bitch lesbian, and botch lesbian. i wonder what those would actually mean though. b_tch is a very versatile word

[periseph]

Bro is on something

[periseph]

carl but you pronounce it sarl

I am going to find you

[periseph]

Alright, Carl lore time

As a child, Carl Anselmann had this wonderful bff named Tsvetan

Tsvetan’s family lived with Carl’s for a time as they were in hardship and couldn’t afford a home, so Carl and Tsvetan spent like all their early childhood together

Tsvetan’s family ended up moving to Kutna Hora when Carl was like 8 (Tsvetan’s dad obtained a job there)

They wrote like, hundreds of letters to eachother, but ended up losing contact when WWII ended and all the ethnic Germans (including Carl and his family) were kicked out of Czechoslovakia

Which was one of many reasons Carl was not too happy with the relocation thing (besides losing his beloved childhood home and his other friends)

But oh well

Science time for him !!

[valemrsn]

you can create characters and imagine them kissing btw. not many people know about this life hack

[periseph]

My characters are all old men ew no

[write-with-will]

How fucked up would it be if I made the cult eat dragons….

[periseph]

Depends if the dragons are eaten alive or not…

[periseph]

“We chain them with cursed metal, a gift from the sun, fallen into the heart of the Earth”

[write-with-will]

How fucked up would it be if I made the cult eat dragons….

[periseph]

Depends if the dragons are eaten alive or not…

[periseph]

Deltarooms can be real. Deltarooms can be real. Deltarooms can be real. Deltarooms can be real.