Sex Stuff You Probably Won’t Learn From Fanfiction And/or Porn:

All MXTX novels are just about one outwardly put-together, inwardly screaming mess of a man and his emotional support war criminal.

The most tempting thing in the world.

I’m gonna write meta about how SJ is a jerk who doesn’t deserve YQY to balance out all the pro-SJ anti-YQY discourse posts that keep popping up

Solitary Confinement

While I haven’t been directly asked for a Masterpost on Solitary Confinement the sheer volume of asks on the subject prompted me to put this together.

Let’s start with some definitions-

Most sources define solitary confinement as 23 hours (or more) a day without human contact. This can be in or outside of a prison context.

Most sources agree that anything over a week is prolonged solitary confinement and most victims would begin to show symptoms within a week or sooner.

All of the research on solitary confinement that I am familiar with was conducted in a prison context. Most of it was done in the USA. Some of the results and conclusions will be affected by that context and we do know that environment effects how well victims cope with isolation.

Symptoms of solitary confinement affect both physical and mental health

Physical symptoms include-

Headaches

Eye problems

Joint pain

Lethargy

Insomnia

Feelings of physical weakness

Psychological symptoms include-

Worsening of all pre-existing mental health problems

Depression

Anxiety

Feelings of helplessness

Self harm

Suicidal ideation

Aggression

Severe mood swings

Irrational impulses

Hallucinations

Psychosis

Difficulty interacting with people

Difficulty learning new skills

Memory problems

There is some data on the prevalence rates of different symptoms but it’s not very clear cut. The fact that pre-existing mental health conditions are more common in prison populations may skew the data.

Speaking in general terms: physical symptoms of some kind are extremely common, depression or suicidal inclination is extremely common, anxiety is extremely common. Hallucinations and psychosis are less common but some estimates put their occurrence rate as high as 30%.

Factors that make Solitary Even Worse

Age is a major risk factor. Research on children specifically is lacking and the research that there is isn’t always clear about the age of the children involved. However in teenagers solitary confinement has greater and longer lasting negative effects. The current research suggests that younger children would suffer even more.

 Pre-existing mental health conditions are all worsened significantly by solitary confinement.

When solitary is combined with poor living conditions the effects on individuals can be devastating. Particularly harmful are lack of space, lack of stimulation, lack of light, lack of sound and any combination of the factors mentioned in this list.

 Having no known release date or time has been shown     experimentally to drastically reduce the amount of time people will feel     comfortable in solitary confinement. This holds true over days. Characters who are confined indefinitely or with no known release date should show worse symptoms then characters who know when they’ll be let out.

Any additional stress, trauma or torture. Threats, lack of medical care and anything that is likely to cause additional suffering will make solitary worse.

 Protective Factors

Some people are really resistant to the effects of isolation and we don’t know why. Individuals such as astronauts, lone sailors and     people conducting polar research are often specially selected in part for     their ability to withstand isolation. The important thing to remember is     that while they exist these people are not common and they are not the norm.

 Having a cause seems to have a hugely protective effect. Political prisoners in solitary confinement do better than other types of prisoners but they do still show symptoms and suffer from confinement.

How long is too long?

A lot of the asks I get on solitary assume it is much less damaging than it is, so I’m going to end with a couple of points on timings that will hopefully help people judge what’s an appropriate time frame for their story.

Remember that torture is cumulative and any additional factors/traumas will make symptoms significantly worse.

Less than a week- the character probably won’t show any lasting effects, though they will probably have started to show some symptoms while confined.

One week to one month- the character will have multiple symptoms, some of which will persist after they get out of solitary and start interacting with people again. They will struggle with mental health problems and may find it difficult to interact with people in a socially acceptable way. However with a strong support network and time they may still make a full recovery.

One month to one year- it is extremely likely that the character has self harmed and/or attempted suicide at least once. They will have multiple severe symptoms. The risk of hallucinations, psychosis and catatonia is increased. Multiple severe symptoms will persist when the character is released and they will probably have to deal with the resulting mental health problems for the rest of their life. Social isolation after release is extremely common and makes symptoms worse. Socially unacceptable symptoms are more likely and likely to persist after release.

Several years- the risk of death by suicide is incredibly high. Self mutilation (ie amputation, scarring the face etc) starts to become an issue. Symptoms can be so severe that the character may not have a firm grasp of reality. Chance of recovery is minimal and many victims find that on release they can no longer interact with others in socially acceptable ways. They are often isolated and severely mentally ill. The risk of suicide after release remains high.

So to summarise-

Solitary confinement is an extremely damaging torture which has long term repercussions effecting victims for the rest of their lives.

It’s rarely portrayed accurately in fiction, but you can help me change that.

If you’d like to use solitary confinement in your writing think about the symptoms your character will show and the time frame they’re confined for.

Consider how those symptoms impact on your character and your story. If possible pick symptoms that fit well with your story and character. Use both physical and psychological symptoms.

Above all don’t be tempted to play down the symptoms and effects of solitary.

I know it’s a long and intimidating list of symptoms. That, I suppose, is part of the point. Writing torture victims well means accepting that characters won’t survive without symptoms and trying to capture how they’d deal with these changes and challenges.

It isn’t easy. It shouldn’t be. It’s also far from impossible.

And as always I am here to help.

[Sources:

Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement by S Shalev A good general overview of the subject.

Solitary Confinement by P S Smith A summary of scholarly debate.

Deep Custody: Segreation Units and Close Supervision Centres in England and Wales by S Shalev and K Edgar This source is particularly about UK prisons but talks in more depth about the process of prisoners being put into solitary confinement and the conditions in UK jails.

American Civil Liberties Union, a source of first hand accounts.

Solitary Watch, another good source of first hand accounts, focused on US prisoners primarily but with some other cases around the world.]

Edited for typos, thank you for catching that.

Disclaimer

Holy shit it's beautiful

The cover for "Thousand Autumns" Japanese ver. is so pretty 😭😭😭😭😭

Baba Yaga the Kind

Like I said in this post, in Russian fairy tales Baba Yaga can range from helpful to occasionally murderous to actual cannibal, but @the-importance-of-being-wilde wanted to know about stories where she is friendly. So here are the ones I know:

The Three Kingdoms

The hero Ivashko Lie-on-the-Stove is sent to Baba Yaga for help after a quest gets him stranded far away from home. He calls her “little grandmother” and she lends him her giant eagle to fly back to Russia. However, this is Baba Yaga’s eagle, so she instructs him to take enough meat with him to feed it every time it got hungry, or it might start snacking on Ivashko himself… (Don’t worry, he only loses a bit of his shoulder before he gets home and even that gets magically healed.)

The Maiden Tsar

I know this is about Baba Yaga, but the Maiden Tsar sails around with a fleet of ships accompanied by her thirty foster sisters just to court an extremely beautiful merchant’s son named Ivan. It’s awesome. Of course the lovers get divided and the Maiden Tsar lets Ivan know that he can find her in the thrice tenth kingdom. Ivan cannot find it, but he does find Baba Yaga’s hut and asks her for help. She says she does not know, but perhaps her younger sister does. Her sister is described as “another Baba Yaga”, but she does not know either. She tells him to go to their youngest sister and warns him that she might get angry and want to eat him, but that if he quickly begs her for three horns and asks her permission to blow upon them everything will be alright. Sure enough, this happens and when he does blow the horns a large firebird comes to fly him to the trice tenth kingdom. (Where Ivan makes amends to the Maiden Tsar and manages to win her love again.)

Keep reading

Timor Python (Malayopython timoriensis), family Pythonidae, Komodo National Park, Indonesia

photograph by James Hunt Photography

ao3 turns 15 today

reblog if youre older than ao3

(there's a lot of people asking about this, but the legal age to use social media is 13, except in few countries. so yes, there are people here under 15)