Nov. 7th, 2016

athousanderrors: from 'Spirited Away' - soot sprites, clutching confetti stars, running about excitedly. (Default)
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An Englishman is being shown around a Scottish hospital.

At the end of his visit, he is shown into a ward with a number of patients who show no obvious signs of injury. He goes to examine the first man he sees, and the man proclaims:

Fair fa’ yer honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain e’ the puddin’ race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
painch tripe or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
as lang’s my arm.
The Englishman, somewhat taken aback, goes to the next patient, and immediately the patient launches into:

Some hae meat, and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

This continues with the next patient:

Wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beastie,
O what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
wi’ bickering brattle.
I wad be laith to run and chase thee,
wi’ murdering prattle!“

“Well,” the Englishman mutters to his Scottish colleague, “I see you saved the psychiatric ward for the last.”

“Nay, nay,” the Scottish doctor corrected him, “this is the Serious Burns unit.”
athousanderrors: from 'Spirited Away' - soot sprites, clutching confetti stars, running about excitedly. (Default)
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micdotcom:

yep, Johnny Depp has been cast in the Fantastic Beasts sequel — and might be playing a significant character

follow @micdotcom for more
athousanderrors: from 'Spirited Away' - soot sprites, clutching confetti stars, running about excitedly. (Default)
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elidyce:

underhuntressmoon:

irdeadite:

too-ticky:

Something that pissed me off the other day.

Talking to a guy who knows my parents but doesn’t know me very well, and he tells me that his friend (indeed, a very nice and talented actor) recently put out a horror movie. And I’m interested until I hear the words “So it’s about this guy with OCD…” and at that point my mom and I give each other a sidelong glance.

I say, “I don’t know, because I have OCD and it’s a pretty serious thing for me.”

To which he follows up, “Oh, you don’t have it like this guy! You’re totally functional!”

Okay, dude. Yes, I am standing before you in a fancy club, dressed nice, and looking relatively balanced. But you do not know me. You do not know OCD.

You do not know that I have been non-functional, and that in order to maintain my current balance of sanity, I take daily medication and see a weekly therapist, and I still have downward spirals and panic attacks.

OCD can add to a story, for sure. The Aviator is a great example–albeit, it was on the voyeuristic side, kind of “check out what a weirdo this guy really is”, but his condition was portrayed in a realistic and *sympathetic* manner, because it focused so hard on his anxiety and entrapment.

I don’t need a horror movie about my disorder for a couple reasons.
1. I already live the horror movie that is OCD.
2. Just like people with psychosis, schizophrenia/schizotypal disorders, dissociative identity disorders, and any other number of mental disorder that makes us act in unusual and yes, sometimes frightening ways, I don’t need it to be the hinge for your horror flick, a handy device that makes more people like you scared and misunderstanding of people like me.
3. And for people with the above disorders who may not be diagnosed, they don’t need to be told that they are dangerous monsters and cause them to avoid treatment out of fear. (This goes double for people who experience paranoia or delusions as part of their symptoms.)

This post ended up way longer than I meant, but really, truly, hear me out creators:

MENTAL ILLNESS IS A TRAIT AMONG AN INFINITE VARIETY OF PEOPLE. IT IS NOT A CHARACTER FLAW, AND IT IS DEFINITELY A POOR PLOT DEVICE FOR THE HORROR GENRE. YOU CAN DO BETTER.

*Loudly looks @ the movie “Split” *

For real can we stop this shit along with having horror movies take place in mental hospitals

But imagine that the protagonist is the one with the OCD.

She is targeted by a serial killer who enjoys toying with people, gaslighting by proxy, and ‘maybe I’m going crazy’ works perfectly on all his victims until this one.

Because she knows the difference. She checks that her door is locked a dozen times before leaving the house, so she knows she didn’t leave it open. She unplugs every appliance in the house before she leaves, so she knows she didn’t leave the television on. Her clothes have to be organized in a very specific way so she knows that someone’s been touching them.

Of course, the horror movie aspect comes in when, because she has OCD, nobody believes any of this. Not the police, not her friends and family, nobody. “Everybody just forgets sometimes” or “It’s just your mind playing tricks on you” mouthed by people who don’t understand that she doesn’t EVER forget, that her mind plays tricks on her all the time and this is not like that, this is someone else *doing* it. she has more than enough experience to tell the difference.

When she reports whispers coming from inside the walls, she gets asked if it could just be ‘in her head’. No. It can’t. She knows what the inside of her head sounds like and it’s nothing like this. But nobody believes that.

She can’t leave the house because every time she does, someone comes in and touches and moves her things but nobody believes her. Her family come over to try to ‘calm her down’ which is absolutely zero help. It doesn’t matter how many traps she sets to prove that someone is in the house, nobody believes she didn’t trip them herself. In desperation, she turns to the people in her therapy group. Someone is in my house, moving things, whispering things, and nobody believes me, I need help or I’m pretty sure he’ll kill me.

And they show up, en masse, with improvised weapons and toolboxes, and they search every inch of her house (without making a mess in any way because they totally understand that that would upset her) and when she says the voice comes out of her bedroom wall they start measuring every room and wall and *that* wall might be thick enough for someone to hide inside so they tap on every inch with a rock taped to the end of a broomstick so they’re not in arm’s reach and that bit sounds hollow and that and that and that but *that* bit doesn’t and the serial killer bursts out to find a) way more people than he expected and b) OCD protagonist wielding a butcher knife.

When he’s doubled up on the floor screaming and clutching his bleeding abdomen they call an ambulance because they are not murderers unlike this guy and he gets pulled out and taken to hospital and her friends from therapy offer her a scrupulously clean spare bedroom and help cleaning up the blood and fixing the place up again and anything else she needs.

Six months later she’s back at work, and hears a receptionist talking about how her ex is being kind of creepy and she’s sure he’s sneaking into the house when she’s not home but her friends think she’s totally overreacting and maybe she’s just crazy -

OCD protagonist tells her that no, she is not crazy, and anyone who discounts her fears like that is not a friend. If she doesn’t feel safe, she needs to take steps to protect herself. Would she like to know how to rig some little traps to let her know for sure if someone’s been in the house? OCD protagonist knows some good ones.

Traps? Would they, like, hurt him?

They could. Would she like them to?
athousanderrors: from 'Spirited Away' - soot sprites, clutching confetti stars, running about excitedly. (Default)
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jollysunflora:

lullabyknell:

bigenderbeatnik:

nentuaby:

Heck, I bet there’s a special, secret lounge accessible only to students who convincingly give the door an answer it hadn’t had in mind.

Do you think Ravenclaws ever argue with the door to their tower? I bet they do. Like, the eagle says their answer to the riddle is wrong, but they argue the point and the eagle eventually comes around to their side and lets them in. 

Okay, but I actually think about this all the time. Ravenclaws and their problems with their dormitory door. 

Like, imagine Su Li and Lisa Turpin coming back from dinner having some conversation or another about how they have some Herbology essay due tomorrow and neither of them did it because they were too distracted with a tangent they got on while doing their Potions homework. And Lisa’s going, “Alright, Su, Tony’s already got the books, so we just have to buckle down and do this. We got this. It’s fine. We’ll just go in and work our asses off.”
They get to the door and knock, still talking, entirely on muscle memory. They’re barely listening when the eagle asks them, “Where do Vanished objects go?”
Lisa’s brain is a little too fried with worry to think at the moment, but she’s not too concerned about getting in because Su looks calm and thoughtful about this one.
And then Su turns to her and goes, “Where DO Vanished objects go?”
Damn it all to hell, Lisa knows that look.
“Su. Su, no. It’s a riddle, Su. It’s just a riddle.”
“Yeah, I know it’s a riddle, but it’s also a legitimate question. I mean, Vanished objects have to go SOMEWHERE, right? For you to Conjure them again afterwards? Or are you just creating an identical object out of nothing? Or maybe not nothing… what are Conjured objects made of, do you think?”
“Su, we really have to write this Herbology essay.”
“I know. But it’s an interesting question. I bet somebody’s done a study on this. I heard Padma say that Conjured objects are different to real ones. Do you think that there’d be a way to tell if your Conjured object was the same one you’d Vanished? Like, if you bespelled it with a charm and it came back with the spells?”
“Well… I once heard an upper-year say that Vanishing bespelled objects is tricky. They were looking into it for their Curse-Breaking apprenticeship. But it might be possible. I definitely don’t think it’s possible to Conjure bespelled objects from nothing.”
“It might be. I read this book where somebody talked about conjuring a Sneak-o-scope and those are definitely enchanted objects.”
“Was it a Gilderoy Lockhart book? Because that sounds like bullshit to me.”
“No, I can show you. It was in a Auror’s Memoirs. I just returned them to the library this morning, so I bet nobody’s taken them out yet. And-”
“That sounds like an unreliable source.”
“AND I was reading this Charms book the other day that referenced a book on the specifics of Vanishing objects that had an author who was an expert in their field and a retiree from the Department of Mysteries with the same last name as the book by the Auror.”
“I’m not believing this until I see a source.”
“Fine, come on!”
The eagle knocker has long since settled back into its resting state by then, Su and Lisa immediately run off to the library, arguing the whole way, and the next day, Professor Sprout gives the extremely apologetic students an extension on the essay while sighing, “Ravenclaws.”

Or imagine there’s some Muggleborn student who has an astrophysicist for one parent and a biologist for the other, and they think magic is amazing, but they’re also really into Muggle science as well.
“Which came first,” the eagle knocker asks them at one point, “the phoenix or the fire?”
And they’re immediately like, “the fire.”
While their friend is like, “Benny, no, that’s not how this works. My brother told me about things like this, it’s one of those paradox questions.”
“What? No way. Fire came first.”
“Benny…”
“Fire is a chemical reaction and, as far as I can tell, phoenixes are a fiery bird that probably evolved just like everything else did on this planet. We’re a really small speck on the cosmic calendar, Raleigh, and I’m saying that unless phoenixes are actually aliens - which would be AWESOME, you-”
“Benny…”
“-have to admit - fire came first. There are trillions of stars that haved burned and died billions of years before our sun was even born. This is just like that chicken and the egg question, in that it sounds like a paradox but it’s actually not, because the egg existed long before the bird we know as the chicken ever evolved-”
“Benny!”
“What?”
“You… the door opened.”
“What? Oh cool. Finally, someone who recognizes science in this nutty place.”
About a week later, Benny completely disrupts and derails their Astronomy class by arguing with Professor Sinestra about the school curriculum (that hasn’t been updated in more than fifty years or more) being “WAY TOO OUT OF DATE, PROFESSOR! THIS TEXTBOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1910! THESE TELESCOPES ARE RIDICULOUS! WHEN’S THE LAST TIME A WIZARD WENT TO AN ACTUAL PLANETARIUM?! OH MY GOD, DO WIZARDS EVEN KNOW THAT THE AMERICANS HAVE GONE TO THE MOON?”
And the wizardborn kids are like, “The Americans have WHAT?” While poor Raleigh has his face in his hands and isn’t even surprised.

Or imagine other things. Like that time the first years has to stand around for two hours after the Welcoming Feast because their Prefects gave them a short speech, a small tour, and then got into an “academic disagreement” (as the house of Ravenclaw has come to call them) over the riddle. So there’s this group of eleven-year-olds playing party games in the hall while their fifteen-year-old “mentors” yell at each other over the riddle. And they only got inside in the end because someone actually managed to notice that the first years never came in and “Hey, that’s sort of weird”, and sent some second year to go look for them.

Or when NEWTs season came around, and there was a seventh year SO STRESSED that they came back from the library at three in the morning and when the eagle knocker asked them a riddle, they just burst into tears and sobbed against the door for ten minutes before the eagle awkwardly declared, “Nicely answered!” and let them in anyway.

I mean, Ravenclaws… they’d be a mess.

#oh god I can’t stop giggling#this is so perfect and accurate though????#like#oh my god#I love shit like this#I can just… so perfectly imagine that seventh year just curling up on the floor WEEPING while the eagle is just like….#Rowena never fucking prepared me for this

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