hi so i forgot to message the person who was next (sorry HelltakerHomosexual) so i'm just gonna talk about a thing i like
Shadow the Hedgehog is a character that appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Characterized by his sharp wit and strong sense of purpose, Shadow is a recurrent arch-rival of Sonic the Hedgehog, whom he resembles and shares many abilities. He is a major supporter of trans people, as evidenced by his catchphrase, "Trans people are cool!"
^ this is all from the wiki btw
I like Shadow a lot. His first appearance in the series is in a game where him and Sonic are both fighting the government and destroying these multi-million dollar gunships. Sonic is doing it because he loves communism but Shadow is doing it because he has a blood feud against G.U.N., who are like the global government death squads because they killed this girl, Maria, who he was best friends with.
Maria basically had an incurable illness that Eggman's grandpa was trying to cure by creating an immortal lifeform, which is actually how Shadow was born. Also, Shadow has a copy of Maria's soul I guess? Seriously, look it up. I'm reading all this shit for the first time right now and that sounds kinda trans to me.
Anyway, she gets shot by the troops and despite Maria telling Shadow to be normal and happy, Eggman's grandpa is pissed off about it so he starts psyopping Shadow into wanting to kill everyone on Earth. Eggman's grandpa successfully does the psyop and locks Shadow away until Eggman finds and releases him.
With his newfound power, Shadow starts being evil and helping Eggman find the Chaos Emeralds because he sees him piss on the moon or something. This goes on for a while until he gets back on the space station and remembers what Maria said, deciding to finally be normal and happy.
He switches up, goes Hyper Shadow and helps Sonic defeat the Biolizard which is basically what it sounds like: a giant lizard who wears the space station like a little jacket and shoots lasers from his mouth. Also, that thing was the prototype Ultimate Lifeform before they decided on the optimal form of existence: a little bipedal anthro hedgehog.
So they beat this lizard up, I guess it dies and then the space station is hurtling toward the Earth. Shadow takes a Chaos Emerald and, with the help of Sonic, does one last Chaos Control on the space station, returning it to a stable altitude. Sonic finds himself back on the space station as he flies into the atmosphere. After this, a big semi-translucent Shadow appears on top of the Earth and everyone can see it.
Why would I lie about that? Here it is.
Anyway, a bunch of shit happens after that but I don't care about it. If someone else wants to talk about Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) feel free. What I really wrote this out to justify talking about is the moon in Sonic games. Like I said before, the moon gets pissed on and destroyed with the help of Shadow,
and then in the next game it's just fine but evil now(???)
and after THAT it's not evil anymore but it's fully intact:
What the fuck? Why? How? I watched it get blown up. Who put the moon back together? Anyway, we're getting in the weeds here. Welcome to the mega.
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Am tired but feeling a little better today
Ty for sharing how your journey trying to overcome this stuff is going, is really relatable to me tbh
For years I had been rly out of touch with my emotions to the point I didn't even realize the psychic toll self-hatred as a essential component of your being takes, but I'm trying to be kinder to myself lately (somewhere a little past your stage 4 maybe). Yesterday it kinda all came out during a therapy session, yet I didn't even realize how bad it was until I had to explain the internal experience of these feelings and just started crying. I haven't cried, like REALLY cried, haven't been to overcome some kind of mental block preventing it, probably since..... 2022. Was rly cathartic, even right before writing this I was just crying a bit about SorosFootSoldier's cat :(
Am trying to just.... let myself feel things again maybe and try to stop repressing everything
cw: dysphoria mentioned
Sameee. It's taken me 3 tries to find someone who actually challenges me, tries to understand me beyond a surface level. Cuz the previous ones..... idk why I would even see them cuz is like I uncontrollably switch into some kind of "functional patient-mask" and play the role of some simply depressed and emotionless normal man which honestly just hurts so much to do ugh. This time is like... the mask dropped for some minutes last session, never experienced that before in a medical setting (I actually just kinda fear doctors and medical professionals now from all the shit they have done to me tbh)
Also I didn't consider it until recently (even though people have told me all my life lol) but I think I am maybe autistic, I'm not sure. All this stuff is intermingled with my weird social coping skills, like I'm constantly trying to manage myself to give off and receive the "vibes" people wanna see/send and if I can't the shame beats me into an emotional pulp until I can reconstitute somewhere quiet where I can be alone
Btw, when you mentioned "parts", did you mean at all in the sense of a part in the internal family systems model? Ash talked with me a bit about it a month or 2 ago (I brought it up cuz my good therapist told me that it existed), I think said she heard about it from you, ended up starting to read this IFS book which I found rly interesting cuz I do kinda perceive all my various differently-typed impulses and thoughts as coming from like.... " wolves " lol. I should go back to reading that book, was having some interesting moments trying to commune with the wolves (especially the one that likes to bite me for being myself) and figure out why they're inadvertently killing us lol
Refraining from apologizing for the messiness of this post, am quite tired (ahh so it's coming out through like a layer of indirection, interesting :3 )
Any time, I'm glad I can be helpful! It legitimately makes going through all of it worth it if I can help others in some way.
Being out of touch with your own emotions is super relatable, I've been there... It's so good to be able to feel properly, even if that means crying a lot, imo, I know this feeling. I'm glad you are trying to stop repressing!!
spoiler
Yeah, i know what you mean. My current therapist is also ND, so that helps a bit, she's pretty hyper-perceptive of facial expressions and seems to know how to get past all my masking layers sometimes which is really what I needed. I was the same as you, felt like I was just chatting and paying a ton of money just for someone to talk to...I describe myself as "probably autistic" but there's definitely a lot of variation in how that appears. I have been diagnosed ADHD but am unmedicated currently (which is probably not too smart considering I have a FT job) but score rather high on clinical assessments for autism and relate a lot to the experiences I read about in several books on the subject.
Re. the vibes people wanna see, I am not sure if this is what you mean but this is a struggle I've had that maybe you can relate to: I, previously, would be so hyperfocused on wanting people to like me that I'd lose track of my own emotions and feelings, end up going along with things I shouldn't have because other people wanted something of me etc. I get swept up in other peoples' enthusiasm pretty easily and it can lead to oopsies, I'm still working on this.
Yeah, my therapist is trained in IFST, so that's how we tend to approach things. You've probably read more about it than I have if you're reading a book on it, but my impression is that all people are systems and we have multiple parts that have different opinions. It's kinda similar to dialectical reasoning i think.
I've been mentioning it to anyone who will listen, lol, since I've gotten a lot out of this mental framework. I think the actual therapy bit is about isolating the parts, asking them questions, and kinda reparenting and compromising with them, bringing them closer to your core self (which therapist describes as the part of us that has space and accommodates all of the parts)
And no need to apologize, I appreciate reading your thoughts :)