In Minds and Memories

If your character has a chronic illness or chronic pain please understand that they have already made peace with a version of their life that other people would find unbearable. They are not constantly in crisis. They have adapted. They have systems. They know their body in a way healthy people never have to. They are also exhausted in a way that doesn't show and angry sometimes in a way they feel they're not allowed to be. Write that competence and that exhaustion together. Both are true at the same time.

not doomed by the narrative but saved by the narrative. yeah i know you'd rather die than keep suffering but the story doesn't actually care what you want. you have to keep going, even when it hurts. even being erased from existence won't stop you from being salvaged from the wreckage of un-being. get up. keep pushing. keep bleeding. keep living.

shout out to the spiral #myspiral

snake pareidolia is one of the strongest things in human minds too! people report freezing mid-stride before being consciously aware of a snake in front of them, and the same happens with coiled rope, etc. in humans and other primates. it’s even been proposed that the need to detect snakes was a factor in the development of primates’ insanely good color eyesight

I hope you find your way back to yourself. to the version of you that you miss, to a version of you that you recognize and identify with. I hope you meet happy again.

they hate me because the years of memory loss has purified my mind

despite everything, it’s still you (derogatory)

vaugardian backhanded nicety of "I hope you change a lot before we meet again :)"

Love love love characters that present themselves as emotionally open social butterflies but the more you see of them the more obvious it is that they’re the most closed off fuckers in the story. Sure, they want to help you with your personal problems and messy emotions, but if you turn that shit back on them, they’ll shut down or deflect every time. Why are you sticking your nose in their business anyway? It’s not like it matters. They’re not a person, they’re just a role being played. They’re the guy who fixes things and saves people. Please ignore the man behind the mask, he’s fine. Everything’s fine.

(visibly shaking, clenching my fists as i speak) i enjoy characters who are lying to their friends about everything

im sorry i said that i wanted to replace your tendons and muscles with thin spectral cords of myself so i could draw you up and pull you around like my puppet. in retrospect that was kind of a weird thing to say and most people don’t wanna get possessed or whatever. could i instead coil myself around you like snakes and move you how i want with more brute force? is that more normal

highly recommend: making that character’s mourning WORSE!!!! make them play pretend with that corpse. make it seem like they’re moving on until they start telling the new person to start dyeing their hair the color of the person they lost and start calling them their name to make it clear that they’re hanging out with this person now to try and make them into the old one. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they die to prove it was unpreventable. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they live to prove that it wasn’t doomed to happened. make your grieving characters actively harm the people around them and the memory of the person they lost. I love you morally dubious grieving characters

Unreliable everyone