Everything Hurts 🤕

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.

A big part of body horror is obviously about the unnatural, but there is also a large part of it that is about violation and/or loss of control of your body (whether by someone else or through some other force).

For example, I've written body horror about the tumors my body keeps growing, because there are ways in which that feels like a violation of my body, even if it is coming from my own body. Forced or unwilling pregnancy is another thing I have thought of writing in that way, and that I think there absolutely should be space for in the genre.

If you want to know what it’s like, it definitely isn’t like those pictures you see with the horrific slenderman people everywhere.

I don’t know what it’s like on the more extreme end, but at least on the mild end for faceblindness, you can definitely see everybody’s face. But there isn’t a thing in your brain telling you to recognize it more than other stuff just because it’s a face.

Like, imagine you’re introduced to an oak tree. Then three more oak trees. Then the next day, you’re expected to be able to differentiate them. It’ll be difficult at first, but eventually you’ll be able to see that this one looks a little bit different from that one.

Now imagine one of those oak trees is suddenly in your front yard. Ignoring the craziness of a tree appearing out of thin air, would you be able to tell it’s the same tree you know from that other location?

Now imagine that a tree that has been in your front yard for years and years and years shows up in the Walmart parking lot. You’ve seen this tree so many times, you can recognize it immediately even though it’s in an unexpected location.

If I look at a picture of Robert Downey Jr. I immediately know who that is because I’ve seen the Avengers movies and he looks the pretty much the same in those as everywhere else. I can recognize Tom Holland because for the longest time so many people were obsessed with him, so I was seeing pictures of him everywhere.

I once saw a collage though that somebody made of their favourite actors, and wondered why the same guy was on there twice. It was Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans both with short beards and short hair. I can’t immediately recognize Scarlett Johansson unless she has red hair.

If I see a picture of Jim Henson, I have no idea who he is unless he’s got Kermit with him or he’s in a Muppet workshop or something like that.

I can immediately recognize Daniel Radcliffe or Elijah Woods, but I thought Dumbledore and Gandalf were played by the same person for so long. I remember arguing with my siblings about this as a kid.

If I saw anyone I’m currently friends with at the supermarket, I would know it was them. My physics lab partner once wished me luck before my chemistry exam, and even though we would spend the entirety of physics lab yapping at each other, the second she was in my chemistry class I could not figure out who she was.

One of the cashiers at PetSmart that I always talk to while buying guinea pig food and crickets showed up as a customer to my job today, and in my head I was like “that guy looks so familiar, I can’t figure it out. Is he a comedy YouTuber or something?” it took me five minutes to realize who he was and I see him almost every week.

I know what a lot of my online friends look like, but I would not be able to recognize them if we were in the same area unless either I already knew they were gonna be there, or they noticed me first and came to say hi. And I still might not recognize them initially for that second option.

And wow was it difficult keeping track of groups of people when I was a host at a restaurant. There would be a group of four, two people would go to the bathroom, then I couldn’t tell it was the same group.