Do You Ever See A Post That Makes You Feel Sad, And You Can't Place Your Finger On Why..?

. . . Those visuals are absolutely haunting. I'm bumping this source material to the top of my list

Holy shit- actually, those first 3 paragraphs plus that stray sentence that technically is it's own paragraph meaning the first 4 paragraphs in reality...

I no longer believe your my demon friend- I think you might be Lord Unknown. (Is only seen once in-game so far outside of the devlog and is from an optional path that gives more content)

And the group of people with only one surviving... That could've been a meeting with 6-Eyes (the cult) and the survivor could've been the cult leader.

Honestly- the fact that it's in a cabin could explain why there was a ritual set up in an abandoned cabin near my grandparents house when we were kids. (Devlog stuff, sorry just rambling)

Yeah, shit. I don't know about anything else for that dream but holy fuck, when I was reading about the first 4 paragraphs all I could think was "yup, sounds like Lord Unknown" and the cult leader

Anyway- uhhh... I'll leave you be now.

-Ashley Graves (the Coffin of Andy and Leyley)

PS: if it'll help at all, I have 2 screenshots of the only 2 times Lord Unknown actually makes an appearance, one in the devlog and the other in the game itself

The group that I saw in my dreams did hold an uncanny resemblance to a cult.. It was rather chilling to see them there, huddled in the shadows, whispering about such awful, wonderful things. Waiting for me. There is.. One small thing though. I’m not sure the men died, they simply vanished from my line of sight, all at once like the light being snuffed out of a candle. Like an illusion. Nevertheless, I feel a pull towards that name. If you could show me the screenshot, if you wouldn’t mind..

Please Share What's Given You Mental/Phantom Shifts

We all know that feeling- where you're watching a movie, and something on screen catches your attention because it's just like you. That creature transformation, that dynamic between two people, that mythical beast.. whatever it is, we latch onto these scenes because they help us better contextualize and explain our experience as alterhumans, because it so deeply affects us, leaving us in shifts for days after. 

I would like to share a few moments in media, besides the suggestions of others, that have impacted me in such a way.

I'd like to start by sharing my thoughts regarding the movie The Omen. It's one of those horror movies that stick with you, not just because of the plot but the intrigue surrounding such a film. Everyone knows that rumor that it's a cursed film due to the tragic occurrences that surrounded it's production. In the series of films, horrible things happen to anyone who gets close to Damien, as if he himself has willed them to happen. He's depicted as the antichrist, and the way he talks, the things that happen in the trilogy.. Well, it just left me feeling like we're in the same boat. That there's something more to it, because I feel stained by something horrific and I feel as though I've inflicted this malcontent against anyone who gets close to me. 

It's part of why Insidious spoke to me as much as it had, my first watch through. The demons and spirits in Insidious are described as hungry and they can even smell the still living souls when they astral project from their bodies at night. They feed off the fear of those they afflict, and they aim to steal the bodies of the dreamers for their own. That scene where there was that dark figure standing in the corner of Dalton’s room? That is so close to how I've found myself in my many dreams, haunting others like a sleep apparition demon. I would be lying if I said that was my only reason though… The red door that's been shown in the original film– I heard they're making a movie giving it some background story, but there's something about the red door that felt familiar. I don't even know why. 

The Rake had been one of the creepypastas of the early 2000s that had stuck with me throughout my childhood- I remember a depiction of its ghoul like figure, sitting at the edge of beds. If you look directly at this creature, it attacks viscously, wishing not to be perceived. This shrill voiced anomaly of the woods reminds me much of myself, reminds me of things I’ve long forgotten. The Rake holds a special place in my heart. I was nearly obsessed with the story in my preteens, and it remains a topic of interest to this day, along with the stories of The Operator. 

It should come as no surprise that I relate a fair bit to Johnny Truant, with his descent into paranoia and hysteria throughout his journal, and his ambiguous end. It’s just one of the many reasons I felt so attached to House of Leaves. This character is not my only reasoning for why I feel attached to House of Leaves though. There are recurring themes that have left its mark on me, and made me who I am. The house’s inner dimensions being as twisted and foreboding as they are, as well Will’s letter regarding the house to Karen had left a significant impact on me. It’s so unfortunate that only fragmented pieces seem familiar to me while not touching on some of the topics of my dream memories- because I would claim this as my source in a heartbeat. 

Smile was an interesting one, to give me Kin shifts. While Insidious was the first movie to allow me kinshifts that left me truly feeling like a monster, Smile was the first time I found I liked it, and how that terrified me. The idea of something so horrific infecting someone in a parasitic nature–

I have always felt my urges held those same parasitic traits. It only got worse with the sequel. The opening soundtrack and the ending left a terrified thrill in my heart, left me feeling that desire to suck the marrow straight from fear itself. 

.. And then there was ‘The Murders of Molly Southbourne’, a book that I still reflect on not for it’s literary prowess, as I found myself not particularly enthused by the lackluster route the book had taken.. But the very first moment the story’s central theme was unveiled to me, the idea of what could be had always sat heavy in my head. Stories of doppelgangers, and monsters being born from shed blood had always been something that caught my eye, and this book was no different. Sure, there were other stories such as Plastic Faces, taken straight from r/No Sleep, and Tender is the Flesh with the dehumanisation of Jasmine and heavy themes of gore. I guess in truth, the visuals in my head have always drawn me in, fed life to me where I would otherwise be vacant. I just want to know who I am, maybe that's why the theme of doppelgangers and the uncanny has always caught my attention so consistently.    

There are others like this that I ruminate over, trying to find meaning in while it turns a blade of desire deep in my soul,

But I’m interested in you. What do you remember viewing, that first ever gave you those ‘shifty feelings’? Feel free to reblog with your own experiences.

Tumblr Is Once Again Trying To Warn Me I'm Becoming A Miserable Bastard

hello boss !! im an Elias AND Jon fictionkin and you said you wanted to interact with them (I think . don't respond to this ask if I'm wrong I'll have to explode /silly) but I'm curious as to what that interaction would entail .. would it just be questions about our canon mems, or would it be something more? only reason I ask is because I don't have very many mems regarding either of them , and I don't want to disappoint you with my lack of . memories , or helpful information .

That's a good question, I'm glad you've asked. While I do have a complicated relationship with memories specifically, I won't limit my search to that. Any information you have to offer that is relevant; Your journey in finding your kintype, any shifts you may have experienced.. These are all things that I would find incredibly helpful at the moment. Thank you for reaching out 

Have you looked into the persona series (particularly p5 and p3) as well as the umbrella academy?

Ah, I am vaguely aware of and have viewed the Persona games, but I hadn't considered the possibility that it may be a kin source. Thank you for this suggestion, maybe I'll have to refresh my memory on this series as a whole

As for Umbrella Academy-- I can't say I've viewed this one before. I'll definitely add it to my source list, and if any fictionkin or fictives wish to share their own memories from these sources, the door is always open..

A Dream About A Cabin

They're standing around a table when I materialize in the corner. Pressed tightly together in their circle, shadows stretching over the walls, they whisper about the horrors of man and as they hit that crescendo of hysteria, their voices hiss into hushed silence. They know I’m with them now, bodies growing still. This is where I’m really taken aback- the majority of the figures at that table bleed into nothingness- as if they were never there to begin with, save for one man who turns slowly, the satisfaction is just dripping from his eyes when he faces me in full. 

“How nice of you to visit while I wait on my crime, were you hoping to find answers here?” He asks. It’s almost friendly and teasing but make no mistake, the mask that he wears has not put me at ease, I can tell that there’s something not fully human about him. He picks up on my glare that’s pinning him down for answers, and he doesn’t delay because he knows the sharp twist of hunger and the paranoia in our gut is the only thing that drives us. “You know- the life sentence you’ve subjected me to? Don’t you hear it underneath every dream, that hissing noise? Tell me, do you know who you are yet?” And he’s right, there is something just undercurrent. It’s whirring and clogged with dust. I begin to wonder if he really can’t leave this place… or if much like me, he’s been broken down into tiny, tiny pieces. “You don’t know, I can tell by that constipated look on your face. You don’t know, and it distresses you more than anything.” Sure, his smile is tight with mirthless cheer. This fear he sees in me is his own though, and that’s how he’s able to tap into it. “In the end it hardly matters, what’s in a name anyways? You and I still play our role of a voyeur all the same,”

What’s in a name indeed.

“I can show you things.” Suddenly his voice is right next to my ear as he looms from behind me. “Things that will leave you awake for hours, things that will make you think twice about wandering dark hallways alone at night.”  I crane my neck, trying to get a look at his face while he says this. For some reason, having him out of my line of sight makes me terribly uneasy. “Would you like that? You don’t have to answer, I already know.” And I would like that. I really, really would. All it takes is one second to get caught up in his purple prose, and suddenly I feel the urge pulling me under again. All it takes is for him to give me that final push, and the next thing I know-

I’m right back where I started. In a bedroom, standing over another victim. This one gazes at me through hollowed sockets, healed over through the ever merciful passage of time. I know he can see me though. He can sense me standing over him and he can imagine what I must look like, the unspeakable form I’ve taken, he fears it just as any other man that I’ve held in this very spot before him. He fears me, and I am a glutton by nature, so I press my fingers down into the mottled flesh, and let myself get pulled away by the currents of his memories. 

There was a cabin, long forgotten by those who came before. Built upon hallowed grounds from merging timelines, out far in the woods of Scotland, Isobel has gone missing.. And I have to bring her home. All through our lives, she had been the braver, more outgoing twin. In grade school she had been the one to hang upside-down from the monkey bars, the one to brave the dark and assure me that it would be alright- because she'd be there to protect me.

 She had always been interested in exploring new uncharted lands, and that interest of hers never seemed to be fully quenched. That wild side of her’s became more refined the older we got, her taking wildlife survival courses while I focused on our university's acting programs. 

The rock filled dirt road came to an abrupt stop, but I knew where I was heading, based on the letters that she had sent during the very beginning of her expedition- a little cabin, modest and in need of repair. When Izzy had said that she wanted to take a gap year to find herself, we had been supportive. Even more so when she said she wanted to use the time to pursue her passion of solo camping. It had seemed like the perfect vacation to her restless legs and wandering spirit. No one could have expected Isobel to have gone radio silent only a month into her trip, not returning home from even 2 weeks later. Had she simply lost track of time? I didn't want to think of an alternative answer. 

So here I was-  walking up to this haunted abode, ready to knock.. When I got the feeling of being watched. It prickled along the hairs of my arms and down my neck in icy fingers, dancing lines down my back. “Izzy!” I call out, but she does not answer to my knocking, the door remains shut. There's a scent to the air, sickly and metallic. It's the smell of death, I know it. Isobel is likely gone, but in a moment of nervous energy- I'm not sure what took over me, I began making my way around the back of the cabin in long leaping strides. I needed to find a way into that cabin. If Isobel was in there.. I needed to be there for her, like she's always been there for me. 

Eyes frantically searching for a way in, I decide that I'll grab a rock and smash the first story window. A window that looks to have already taken a beating, by some unknown sources. The rocks are small. These would hardly do the damage I was hoping for. I wander farther to the treeline, where a ditch of disturbed and peeled back earth is alive with flies. I fear the worst as I inch closer to the shallow burial, only to find.. Eyes. 

Eyes, plucked from a variety of animals, bloodied with the nerves still attached like outstretched appendages, eaten by the black flies that cluster around. I feel faint, and I once again feel the feeling of eyes upon me. She's standing there, hands bloody, eyes ravenous and frenzied. She's scared, and she wants to go home. She wants to go back to how it was before all of this. “Over here! Over here with me, where it’s safe!” She makes a frantic gesture for me, she wants me to walk over to her. Something is terribly off though. I take in the disheveled appearance of my sister-

“You haven’t bathed,” It seems silly that of all the things that stood out to me, that’s what I chose to point out. Her hair was matted and sallow in tangled clumps down her back. Grime and blood caked under her fingernails. She smelled of death. “Something awful happened in the bathtub of this house. Something terrible lives here.” I take a step back from her, glancing back at the shallow grave of eyes. Taking all this in, I remember what I wanted so desperately from these dreams. I am not Kieran O’Connor, I am Jules, and I need to ask a question right now.. But I’m terrified. I don’t understand how this could’ve happened to the O’Connor twins, they were such a happy family.

“Why?!”  It’s all I could think to ask. My voice is strained in my throat, but it’s my question, and that is all that matters at this moment. “Don’t you feel it? The eyes that are on us? Kieran, look into the woods!” She’s already looking past me, and so I did, and I saw everything. 

The woods had gone still, quiet. Birds perched on branches as stock still as could be, staring deep into us, emotionlessly. Squirrels halted in posture, facing their judging gazes with the lone pine marten, but there was more. A darkness in those woods, so terribly familiar gazed into me as well with its many, many eyes. I felt it look through the vessel of Kieran O’Connor and into my soul, just as I knew- something I’m unsure of how I became so certain of, that Isobel was doing to me, right now. I spun around on my heels to look back, and Isobel’s expression has changed. 

Isobel wore such a hateful expression. Have you ever had someone look at you with such a true level of hate that it left you frightened? That it warped their face and made them an uncanny looking stranger? I’m not talking about the usual mocking and disgust that people often exhibit towards those they take a disliking to. Isobel became something other when she recognized me. “It’s staring through you, too. I should have known better… than to have expected you to let me leave this place so easily.” 

“Put down the knife, Isobel.” But it was too late, she was rapidly advancing on me, mouth slightly agape and that hateful expression twisting once loving features. She was his sister. My head smack hard against the ground as she pushes me..Kieran, over. He trusted her. The knife angles down to his eye. How could this have happened? How could I let it happen? And I felt it as well as I had heard it, when the first eye was plucked free with a sickening pop. 

I don’t need to tell you, that this was when I woke up. You already know.

Do You Remember The Time You Got Lost In The Supermarket?

You were a child then, so your memories are muddled. Your perception is warped- of course it is. It starts off simple, with you wandering off. Or maybe you looked away for just a moment, and when your concentration was broken from what you were looking at, you suddenly found yourself alone. 

However you got yourself in this position, the outcome is the same; You've been condemned to an eternity of wandering aisles in hopes of finding familiarity where there is none, as the crowds of tall faceless- nameless strangers rush by, making you feel more and more claustrophobic by the second. You have no hope, it's been crushed into tiny pieces under the abstract concept of setting and its permanence. 

I would like to propose the idea that maybe, not knowing your identity but still being plagued by memories is similar to being lost in the supermarket. You feel as though you'll be in an endless free fall. I know it seems impossible to stop all of this confusion and frustration–

But this downward spiral doesn't have to be forever. We have a beautiful community, of those just waiting to take your hand and guide you out. I think the alterhuman community is a second chance for us to find ourselves. We've just got to be brave enough to admit that we were lost in the first place.

love as recognition

anna gavalda / friedrich nietzsche / clarice lispector / jandy nelson / rebecca perry / mhairi mcfarlane

Defanging Fear Itself

‘When I say end, I don't mean "lifeless", I mean "terminated life as we know it". This is an important distinction.’

 I keep staring at my dms, vacantly, pondering just what I’ve done. When I started to reach out out into the void, I had thought this was a noble sacrifice, and that if only I reached out-

Maybe I could erase all the harm that I’ve created. I think I lost track of that, somehow along the way. I was so caught up with filling this hollow part inside of me, so caught up with keeping myself warm that I hadn’t even considered the people I was setting on fire just to do so. 

…And here’s this guy, right? I’ve been talking to him for a while, and he just gets it. Everytime he talks to me, he’s given me nothing but sure guidance as if he can peer right into my mind and see just what I’m feeling- and lord, do I feel so much. It’s like I’m holding back an ocean of anxieties, and one word is the detonator. I think about what he’s told me a lot, mostly about how he died because I just couldn’t understand it. Why did someone so clever and swift have to die? How could you devote your whole life to something, only for it to turn around and stab you in the back? I think about myself, how I gave into the impulse, and I wound up in the hospital with an atrial fibrillation. I've given my whole life to something, and it's going to eat me alive.

‘Why did it have to end though? The world, I mean?’

Who am I trying to find? Would it really be helping them, if I asked them to remember me? Would sorry really be enough to rekindle their souls and make things right again?..Or am I just doing this for me? Maybe it’s better that I live my life, never knowing. The people I hurt may be living a beautiful life, far from the pain of whatever timeline that’s been shattered underneath my fingertips. I can only hope they are. 

He was willing to trade humanity for enlightenment, and because of it he was killed. Well, what does that make me?

 Is that who I truly am? 

Am I willing to kill the things I’ve been trying to save? Fear, it’s all I’ve talked about since I created this blog. Humans have been telling tales of fear since the dawn of man, because we crave the cortisol and adrenaline like rich silk under our fingers. I don’t think I was laying to rest your fears, when I came out of the dark to carve into you with inquiry, I think I was just breathing life into old wounds, and you deserved better than that. Trading a complete life for a high that will never hit the same hardly seems fair, so let's turn around and bite the hand that feeds us out of spite. It's hurt you, and it's hurt me. If we don't we'll succumb to desensitization, or an even worse fate. We need to defang these fears before they swallow us whole. 

I’ll defang myself first.

I promise. 

(Consent for this documented information has been given by all parties involved.)