All MXTX Novels Are Just About One Outwardly Put-together, Inwardly Screaming Mess Of A Man And His Emotional

REBLOG if you are old enough to remember what a VCR is.

I think what scares me the most about fandoms like MARVEL and Stranger Things is the amount of people who think that just because there are unrealistic concepts in most of the movies/episodes that all of it is unlikely to be “relatable” or “realistic”, when, in fact, that is not the case.

Civil War is between a bunch of superheroes with advanced weaponry and impossible abilities. But what people don’t seem to realize is that the very thing they’re fighting over is so much like our world and its politics that you don’t realize how much damage you’re doing by taking one side over the other. If you’re Team Iron Man, you were actively for a law that would limit the rights of enhanced individuals (voluntarily or not) just because of how much “destruction” they caused trying to save the world from worse threats. And, we can see that by the end of the movie, the “rogues” were trapped in the Raft (a highly secure prison made for villains like Rhino, Electro, Shocker, Goblin, etc.) and Wanda, a sixteen-year-old who was manipulated into being experimented on, was even in a straight jacket. They were locked away because they tried to fight for their rights as enhanced individuals against men who either: were not advanced, or had the privilege to take their powers off (Iron Man and his suit). While you may consider this as fiction and nothing more, this is real to lots of people all over the world who are fighting for their lives and rights every day against men like Ross and Tony.

The same applies to Stranger Things, that, although is based around monsters and scientific concepts that are near-to-impossible in our reality, still contains themes that may be relatable to struggling children and adults. We see that in the very first season with the Byers family, and how they were all traumatized by Lonnie and his mental/physical/emotional abuse. In the second season, we also saw the relationship between Billy and Max, which ultimately led to multiple fanfics trying to portray Billy as anything but a monster. A manipulative, romanticized monster whose actions were brushed off simply because of his troubled childhood. 

“It’s literally fictional/a fictional character. It’s not that deep.” Maybe it doesn’t apply to you or anyone you know, but to many, those topics are a constant in their lives.

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

the ao3 dislike button discourse is so painfully transparent because it’s clear to be that people want the ability to harass (and control) fanfic authors without putting their name on it. The internet, ao3 especially, already has the ability to be pretty anonymous but this is just another level of anonymity. Currently, you can leave a negative review, it’s a dick move but not impossible, plus the writer can block users or restrict comments. I’ve had people post screenshots of my fics on twitter specifically to use harassment to get me to stop writing but all it did was show how mean spirited the posters were. But again, I just fucking blocked them.

You cannot convince me the desire for an ao3 dislike button isn’t only to mass harass people without restriction and with anonymity.

The argument I see way too often from Tony stans is the "you just don't like him because he is realistic" which...I know. I know there are bunch of men who get away with ton of shit just because they're rich, white and men. I know there are misogynistic people, sexualising every girl they come across. I know there are people being homophobic, sexist, transphobic and never getting called out. I know there are men telling rape jokes 'cause "it's just a joke". I know there are rich men drowning in their toxic masculinity harming everyone around them. And guess what? I don't like them either. I know Tony Stark is realistic, and that's why he is dangerous. I don't really care if you like Tony, I don't care if he is your favorite character. What I have issue with is anyone condoning his behavior that shouldn't be condoned. I don't care if he is your favorite character, you need to acknowledge that some of the shit he does, is not okay. And to those who say "it's just a movie" it's not. It's media, and media affects reality. If you don't think that the men like Tony, when seeing him being glorified, wont follow his footsteps because it's 'cool', I don't know what to say. There are too many people like Tony Stark. Saying okay to him, is saying okay to every other asshole like him. You can like his character, and call out the faults of creating characters like him. Tony is realistic. I know. And I hate it.

Mad this. It literally says he got jailed for ignoring a court order telling him to stay away from the school - yet the headline says it's for not calling a kid they. He broke the court order cos he was being a self righteous stalkery Christian weirdo. I know the sort, they did the same to us at school cos we were scruffy poor unfortunates / desperate people that apparently needed god to save us. Loads of Christians are like this, proper weirdos.

I think the thing that I've taken away from this panel is that it's okay if you don't like your work because there are people who will love it.

And I didn't take that away because there was any implication that Hugh or Mads disliked the work they did on Hannibal but because they so obviously loved it but even they couldn't remember all the details of the things they loved. Hugh wouldn't stop talking about S1EP2 Amuse-Bouche but he could not for the life of him remember Eldon Stammets' name, and Mads and Hugh had to be reminded of Donald Sutcliffe's name.

And those details of the panel stood out to me because it's like wow I may forget about something I've written or recorded or drawn, but someone somewhere out there, even if it's just one person, probably loved what I made even more than I did and they might've committed parts of my work to memory that I've completely forgotten about or thought were insignificant.

I guess the panel just reminded me how thankful I am for fandom spaces and the fannibal community and just generally people who are kind and uplifting and share what they love with each other.