I have two common artistic outlets, writing and embroidery. Truthfully I haven’t done much embroidery lately, but I hope that can change soon. I’m one of those who believe having creative outlets is crucial, and that belief has just been reinforced by my TS. However, I know it may be hard to get into something creative when you’re worried about your tics getting in the way. Today I’d like to talk about the process of creating art with tics, as well as how my TS has influenced my art. At the end, I’ll add some photos of my embroidery as well as adding my sewing and writing tags (I haven’t shared a lot of my writing but there is some there).
Heads up for tic depictions.
Writing-
I take a lot of solace in writing stories, and mainly write fantasy. While I’ve been writing for far longer than I’ve been diagnosed, after my diagnosis my writing has changed. A lot of my characters have shifted to become allegories for my experiences with Tourettes. Wild magic sorcerers, characters with magic related to their emotions/state of being, and characters with other entities that can control them are very common. Some of these characters are explicitly stated to have TS or just tics in general, while others take a bit more interpretation.
These kinds of stories and characters are very therapeutic for me to write, as it feels like taking back some kind of control. It’s also very easy for me to get so deep into thought about these stories it can sometimes help ease tics. I do have a tic that is specifically “throw pen” when trying to write things by hand, but I’ve found that happens less with things I want to be writing than it does with something like paperwork.
Embroidery-
Writing is a bit more about coping and processing, but embroidery is more about directly helping with tics. There’s just something about the whole process of creating embroidery that calms me down and keeps me calm before tics can even start. I think it has something to do with the repetitive, rhythmic motion of the stitches, combined with satisfaction of the end product, especially since most of my pieces are fandom related.
I’ve actually never thrown a needle and there’s a very noticeable reduction of tics when I’m able to just sit and do embroidery. Unfortunately, it can be a difficult craft to travel with. I’ve experimented with taking small sewing boxes and a small project with me places, but it was hard to keep track of things. I could probably take it places with tables or benches where I can just sit and work, but I wouldn’t be able to take it to work. (I used to be able to take it to work but there was a huge overhaul of my workplace and it requires a lot more from me now).
Writing this all up has made me miss doing embroidery more than I already did, I really need to get back into it. If you’re interested, I’ll be putting some of my old works below, as well as adding my embroidery tag (#trashcatsews) which will take you to the posts where I go more into detail about the pieces.
Tomorrow will be a much lighter topic, focusing on some of my funnier tics.
As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great day!
I have an idea to write a scene that goes along with a song but it won't fit any of the stories I've been writing and now I'm debating writing it out as a one off but then idk how much character development I can get in and it might not have the same emotional impact...
Song is Her Song by the Family Crest and it hits HARD, and knocks the wind out of me no matter how many times I listen to it, which is kind of a lot since I'm obsessed with The Family Crest rn.
I just got reminded of a character I made as an NPC for a homebrew dnd campaign (haven't used her yet, and probably need to edit some stats to make her viable). She was written in part about how my tics feel so she's a very eccentric character.
⚠️everyone with TS or a tic disorder will experience things differently. This character is only based on my experience.
This is a bit long so I'll start with just explaining the character and then how it relates to my tics.
Character
Noella is, in essence, a wild mage. She is an aasimar, the only known aasimar of the god of mischief. She appears to be a human apart from her rose gold hair and her eyes that reflect the night sky. She is usually seen in plain comfy clothes with a large basket backpack like one that would be used to carry a baby. This basket is usually used to carry her pet spider Sprinkles, who is half blind and missing a leg.
Noella has Tourette's Syndrome (or the fantasy equivalent), and her tics set off her wild magic. Some things her magic cam cause is teleporting 1sqft of land and anything (or anyone) on it, either to or away from her. She can cause explosions, cause things to shrink or grow, randomly switch or change an item in some way, or even create mini biomes (2ft radius). The only set tic (as her tics were based on mine and I was planning to use my above table tics to gauge when she had hers) is duck-duck, which summons a random unique rubber duck.
Due to all of this, her house is in a very secluded area of the woods, and you know you are going the right way when things begin to seem strange, starting with the animals. Exotic animals or animals with magical abilities or discolored animals are scattered through the forest.
Noella can be temporarily "cured" by Remove Curse, but that results in a surge of tics when it wears off. A safer suppressant is a potion from a gnome in the nearest town that lets her be tic free for 1d6 hours. During this time she can cast a spell called "Reverse" that undoes all of the environmental magic and channels it back into her (magic affecting animals cannot be reversed). She then needs to redirect the recalled magic somehow, either into wild magic bombs or into a large effect. She's used this to grow a giant tree for her house, make the house larger on the inside, permanent alter self (or others on the rare occasion they ask), and, if the party befriends her, opens fast travel.
However, if she suppresses her tics for more than four days, each subsequent day has a higher chance of a wild magic explosion. So day 5 is a 10% chance, day 6 is 20%, and so on. This explosion has a range of effects based on d100 roll, it ranges from killing all organic life in a 25ft radius (excluding herself) and making the land unable to ever support life again(nat 1), to permanently upgrading the weapons of those in 10ft radius with a +2 to damage (nat100).
How she presents how my tics feel
Aside from her direct connection, there's some less obvious details.
Let's start with Sprinkles- I made Sprinkles a giant spider because that's almost how I invision my Tourette's, misunderstood and scary to a good amount of people. It can be dangerous in some sense, but is usually harmless. Sprinkles was also hurt because of a messed up teleport from Noella's tics, which kind of presents my fear of hurting someone with my tics, either physically or by saying something hurtful. Luckily the only person hurt by my tics so far is me, but I still worry about that, especially when I think about learning to drive. A part of me is also afraid of accidentally offending someone and getting hurt because of it, like how a dnd party might jump to attack a giant spider if they don't stop and let things be sorted out.
Most of her tics result in fairly neutral magic, like how most of my tics are neutral. There's a chance for something bad, or something good/funny, but it's mostly neutral. Also while I don't affect my environment as drastically as magic, my tics can still affect my environment, usually by making a mess or confusing my cats. The "reverse" spell is really more like picking up after myself once I've calmed my tics enough, but it doesn't affect animals bc I can't uninjure myself or unconfuse my cats. I can, however, pick up dropped or thrown things, and set objects right.
The Remove Curse "cure" is reminiscent of trying to suppress tics on my own will power. It works sometimes, but I never know how long, and my tics come back worse when I suppress this way. The potion is less a form of suppression and more symbolic of calming myself down, which is why I can then clean up. (The big magic afterwards is just for the game sadly, I'm usually wiped out after).
The wild magic explosion is a tic attack. I added a few good things for the game play, but tic attacks are always negative experiences for me irl. It doesn't kill everything around me, but it's extremely painful and embarrassing to go through and even distresses the people around me. Even though I know it'll be okay once it passes, it can still feel a little like the end of the world when I get the worst of my attacks. Suppressing my tics almost always leads to an attack afterwards, usually the next day, and the longer I suppress the worse the attack seems to be.
I don't really know how to segue into a closing so I'm just jumping to it lol.
Thank you for reading, I hope it made sense. If you're curious about anything here, my asks are open and I'll answer the best I can. Also I'd love to hear about more tourettic dnd characters if you have any, and can give more info on Noella and Sprinkles if anyone is interested.
For Libitina herself, I'll give you my favorite personality tidbit and a favorite physical tidbit.
Liba is very headstrong, and doesn't let anyone order her around. This can be a bad thing though, as she is needed to carry out a prophecy and basically just said "nuh-uh" and won't do it until she feels like it.
A little needed context for the physical detail is that Liba fully died but was brought back and is now technically undead, and effectively immortal.
Needed to have that context bc the physical detail is her back tattoo, which is known as a death mural. Crystopians have a strict set of burial rights, which include magically tattooing the back of the deceased with something that represents them or is important to them. Liba's death mural is a map bird's eye view of where some of the most important countries to her all kind of meet. There is her adoptive home country of Crystopia, as well as Veydra, Windward Basin, and Isera, which are the countries of origin of some of her closest companions. Windward Basin is small enough to be included in its entirety and is centered as a result. A blue dragon and an oversized phoenix are circling around each other over the basin, creating a yin and yang type of visual. Around the outer edge of the piece is a trellis like frame, which is over growing with vines and hiding glimpses of magical creatures. The trellis' design matches the decorative carvings on Alvera, Liba's battle axe. At the bottom of the mural is the mark of a demi-god like being called Pantera, who's follower had shared Pantera's name and blessing with Liba.
I hope I described it well, I just realized how context heavy it is 😅
I might try to sketch it out but idk how well that would go lol.
Hi!😊 This is going to be for a character called Libitina, or Liba (lee-buh). She's the main character in my most fleshed out WIP.
💚- Libitina identifies as a girl, and prefers she/her pronouns. As for sexuality she would identify as demisexual and polyamorous.
❤️- her best memory would probably be her first visit to Windward Basin, the country of dragons. She was the first non-dragon, non-Drakon to step foot on their land in over a century. She was there with her adopted father, Anric, on a political visit from Crystopia, land of the giants. Liba was granted the honor of being the first to enter their country because without her magic they would have still been isolated. Since they had been isolated in a magical barrier for so long, many magical creatures that were thought to be extinct still existed there, and she spent much of her trip learning about and playing with said creatures.
Some lines I've written recently and adored but will probably never be published anywhere (color coding for sets)-
"Should I take that as a threat?"
"Take it however you want, just take it away from here."
The divine nature of her eyes made them difficult to decipher, but he could read her like a book. Unfortunately, he was reading a tale of pain, heartbreak, and sorrow.
What was he doing? She just finished off a string quartet and he came in like a fucking tuba!
"It's fine. After all, life is a long line of distress, lit only momentarily by joys." She paused, rubbing her arm. "And seeing you again is a joy like the light of the sun after a long night. A very long night."
Now that Google detects dialect in writing, reading so much has become a bane to my own writing 😭
I never really paid attention to my franken-english of American and British spellings but it keeps getting pointed out now and idk how to turn it off, it keeps distracting me 😅
Hi, I'm Fen (any pronouns)! I'm pretty new to all these social media things (and social stuff in general 😬) so if I make some mistakes please be patient with me 😅. There will probably be a lot of emoji use here, since I struggle with tones and words so I use them as add ons and sometimes replacements if I can't come up with the words😊
I started teaching myself embroidery around July 2022, and realized pretty quickly that it seemed to help calm the tics in my hands. Since then I've been trying to learn more and more, since I really enjoy it.
In an attempt to work on my anxiety, I decided to start sharing my art, and trying to spread some positivity. I'd also like to spread some info about Tourettes, including how it can affect my life.
If you are looking for anything specific in my sea of reblogs, a majority of my original posts are tagged for organization 😊
#trashcatsews- for all embroidery and sewing posts
#fentics- for Tourettes info and anecdotes
#trash(cat) writings- for my occasional writing and info on if I publish anything
#art and trashcats- for non-embroidery art
#cooking with tourettes- adventures in cooking when I like to throw shit 😅
