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The Internal World Project.
12 years ago
OKAY guys. I needa ask a favour. This is for a group of people with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) who are looking for artists to draw their different personalities.
As a group, furries are probably the largest minority to experience body dysphoria, which is when you feel you don't belong in your body. The Internal World Project plans to help people with DID, possibly trans* people, and generally people who have dysphoria to get an image of who they feel inside. Here are the details, from the founder themself:
TL;DR
There are a finite, but immensely large amount of stories about people who are different. Today I want to talk about one certain type of different people. Before then, I want to compare them to the different people we have looked up to over the years, in books, comics, television, movies, art, and all else. I’m sure at least a few characters pop to mind.
The psychic. Twins with special powers. The reincarnations of important people. The person who just doesn’t give up even if the odds aren’t in their favor. The kid with the imaginary--or not so imaginary--friends. The person who can see across dimensions, across time, across realms. The people who suddenly find themselves in a magical world, the outsider.
This all seems so far-fetched, doesn’t it? You probably don’t believe in magic or superpowers or fairies anymore, but you can’t let it go. You wish for it.
You know what people say about wishes.
I would like to introduce you what some might say is a mental disorder. All in all, it is a sign of the human brain coping. Some of us can paint and write worlds into being. Our brain sometimes does it unconsciously. Dissociates. Creates an alternate reality or pretends the world we exist in isn’t the real one. One way or another, you end up having to deal with more than just an external world.
Dissociative Identity Disorder and problems like it aren’t all too rare. It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder, but most medical professionals don’t like that. Some of us that have it don’t like it either, though I am not all too bothered.
Nonetheless, at some point, we needed to survive and our brain chose to compartmentalize. That’s the medical standpoint on it. Others of us believe we have shades of old incarnations, spirits residing inside us, more than one soul, absorbed multiple babies (chimeras), etc. There’s plenty of theories, and, like most beliefs, it’s hard to exactly prove any of that wrong, isn’t it?
Me? I have a mental palace similar to Sherlock Holmes. A big creepy mansion, all rickety but made of strong wood, something that will last longer than any cookie cutter house. Inside are a large amount of rooms, each full of important things, riddled with metaphor and symbolism. The outside is a void, all dark with no stars or moon or sun.
My body isn’t anything too special. Woman’s body, flax hair, green-blue eyes, pale skin that gets rashes under the sun, stretch marks where my hips grew too fast, and a freckle in the hollow at the base of my neck.
Inside of that body in my mind palace brain is where the rest of me lives, people once forced into filing cabinets, only allowed to exist as imaginary friends and then characters I put in stories, talked about as if they were real because they were. Their personalities have as much worth as mine, but they, however, have one problem I don’t have.
They have no body, but they are stand alone people. I could take one out of me and put them in the world and they would be okay. I don’t think some of them would much like the exterior world, but they’d try and at least one is quite willing.
Us with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often have alters--different personalities--that have clear ideas on what they look like, but this doesn’t match up with what our body looks like. Think about it as a variation on what transgendered people have to deal with. The dysphoria is there quite often for some of us.
Me, Cas? I’m an animal rescuer; genetics, history, and English nerd; a Whovian and generally Anglophile; published writer and poet; and a panromantic asexual. Mirrors are not the bane of my existence.
But my internal world is much more complex.
There’s Caspar. Six three, all lean muscle, darker tan, messy black-brown hair, and amber eyes. He is male and feels it. Whenever he sees a mirror or a photograph of ourselves, he flinches slightly, unable to help it. Beside his looks? He’s a lover of reptiles and birds, a lovely painter of modern art (entirely different style than our art!), attempting to learn German, and, if he could’ve been, he’d have either wanted to work for the military or the FBI. He’s a protector and a jokester. He compares people to inanimate objects. Most often, he feels like lava. Right now, he and I are in a serious relationship with another man, which I am overjoyed at.
There’s Cassandra. She looks like us, but us like we were six. Her room has yellow walls adorned with purple butterflies and she has a collection of glitter, feathers, and random craft stuff that she occasionally will throw in all directions. She loves cats and rabbits, adores the zoo, and would like to be a princess, but a princess like in a Disney movie, not a real princess. She reads animal encyclopedias but has pretty atrocious grammar. She feels like cold bubbles and is the only one of us that’s particularly good at crying.
There’s the shadows. As far as I can tell, they’re two old, mangled male wolves, a female wolf who has taken the name Laurel, and a cub. They shift together and come apart, becoming as big or as small as they need to be. (Trigger Warning) For the longest time, they were all suicidal. When we have them close to the forefront, it can be like fireworks and flame in our skull.
According to the others, I feel like a glass of water. Used to, I’d go catatonic to avoid showing my others, my alters. My head and hands would ache. That happens sometimes if I don’t let one of the others talk when they feel the need to, but we’re getting much better at talking to each other and working together as one.
Taking in all of this, I hope you have begun to grasp what I’m planning. I’m calling it The Internal World Project. I would like all the lovely artists on here to take a chance and help someone with DID or a similar condition or “mental quirk” to have something to show their friends, their family, their partner, etc. what they look like. What they feel they truly look like.
It might be a big deal or a small deal for you, but it would mean so much to the people like us. Your donations are free except for time and supplies after all. You’re not tossing money in a hat hoping it would go to a good charity. While I am currently being the middleman, I am rousing the people on DID forums and in support groups hoping to get them to come to those who decide to donate by making portraiture. I’m hoping to find people that will share their stories with you and help spread awareness about this problem, this feeling of often times wearing a mask but being unable to make a new one for yourself.
I am a writer, not an artist by design. I can do a bit of painting and sketching, but little on the level of what I would hope for. While each person may have their own needs and wants, I’m hoping for people who can manage a bit of realism or at least a lot of human (or other!) emotion. Feel free to donate even if you can’t, however, and thank you for any attempts made to help!
Imagine if you were never able to look at yourself. Take that to heart at least today, and, if you can, at least spread the word.
Thanks,
Cas Kingsley (C.M. Koenig)
/TL;DR
What we are looking for are people, artists, who can do the art for this. Possibly paid, but chances are they will be donation pieces.
The original journal can be found: http://slssfrncghst.deviantart.com/journal/
A useful website: http://www.intervoiceonline.org/
To contact The Internal World Project, contact the user slssfrncghst on dA, or I can send your information to them. If you can't help, please, spread the journal. This is something really serious for those involves...
As a group, furries are probably the largest minority to experience body dysphoria, which is when you feel you don't belong in your body. The Internal World Project plans to help people with DID, possibly trans* people, and generally people who have dysphoria to get an image of who they feel inside. Here are the details, from the founder themself:
TL;DR
There are a finite, but immensely large amount of stories about people who are different. Today I want to talk about one certain type of different people. Before then, I want to compare them to the different people we have looked up to over the years, in books, comics, television, movies, art, and all else. I’m sure at least a few characters pop to mind.
The psychic. Twins with special powers. The reincarnations of important people. The person who just doesn’t give up even if the odds aren’t in their favor. The kid with the imaginary--or not so imaginary--friends. The person who can see across dimensions, across time, across realms. The people who suddenly find themselves in a magical world, the outsider.
This all seems so far-fetched, doesn’t it? You probably don’t believe in magic or superpowers or fairies anymore, but you can’t let it go. You wish for it.
You know what people say about wishes.
I would like to introduce you what some might say is a mental disorder. All in all, it is a sign of the human brain coping. Some of us can paint and write worlds into being. Our brain sometimes does it unconsciously. Dissociates. Creates an alternate reality or pretends the world we exist in isn’t the real one. One way or another, you end up having to deal with more than just an external world.
Dissociative Identity Disorder and problems like it aren’t all too rare. It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder, but most medical professionals don’t like that. Some of us that have it don’t like it either, though I am not all too bothered.
Nonetheless, at some point, we needed to survive and our brain chose to compartmentalize. That’s the medical standpoint on it. Others of us believe we have shades of old incarnations, spirits residing inside us, more than one soul, absorbed multiple babies (chimeras), etc. There’s plenty of theories, and, like most beliefs, it’s hard to exactly prove any of that wrong, isn’t it?
Me? I have a mental palace similar to Sherlock Holmes. A big creepy mansion, all rickety but made of strong wood, something that will last longer than any cookie cutter house. Inside are a large amount of rooms, each full of important things, riddled with metaphor and symbolism. The outside is a void, all dark with no stars or moon or sun.
My body isn’t anything too special. Woman’s body, flax hair, green-blue eyes, pale skin that gets rashes under the sun, stretch marks where my hips grew too fast, and a freckle in the hollow at the base of my neck.
Inside of that body in my mind palace brain is where the rest of me lives, people once forced into filing cabinets, only allowed to exist as imaginary friends and then characters I put in stories, talked about as if they were real because they were. Their personalities have as much worth as mine, but they, however, have one problem I don’t have.
They have no body, but they are stand alone people. I could take one out of me and put them in the world and they would be okay. I don’t think some of them would much like the exterior world, but they’d try and at least one is quite willing.
Us with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often have alters--different personalities--that have clear ideas on what they look like, but this doesn’t match up with what our body looks like. Think about it as a variation on what transgendered people have to deal with. The dysphoria is there quite often for some of us.
Me, Cas? I’m an animal rescuer; genetics, history, and English nerd; a Whovian and generally Anglophile; published writer and poet; and a panromantic asexual. Mirrors are not the bane of my existence.
But my internal world is much more complex.
There’s Caspar. Six three, all lean muscle, darker tan, messy black-brown hair, and amber eyes. He is male and feels it. Whenever he sees a mirror or a photograph of ourselves, he flinches slightly, unable to help it. Beside his looks? He’s a lover of reptiles and birds, a lovely painter of modern art (entirely different style than our art!), attempting to learn German, and, if he could’ve been, he’d have either wanted to work for the military or the FBI. He’s a protector and a jokester. He compares people to inanimate objects. Most often, he feels like lava. Right now, he and I are in a serious relationship with another man, which I am overjoyed at.
There’s Cassandra. She looks like us, but us like we were six. Her room has yellow walls adorned with purple butterflies and she has a collection of glitter, feathers, and random craft stuff that she occasionally will throw in all directions. She loves cats and rabbits, adores the zoo, and would like to be a princess, but a princess like in a Disney movie, not a real princess. She reads animal encyclopedias but has pretty atrocious grammar. She feels like cold bubbles and is the only one of us that’s particularly good at crying.
There’s the shadows. As far as I can tell, they’re two old, mangled male wolves, a female wolf who has taken the name Laurel, and a cub. They shift together and come apart, becoming as big or as small as they need to be. (Trigger Warning) For the longest time, they were all suicidal. When we have them close to the forefront, it can be like fireworks and flame in our skull.
According to the others, I feel like a glass of water. Used to, I’d go catatonic to avoid showing my others, my alters. My head and hands would ache. That happens sometimes if I don’t let one of the others talk when they feel the need to, but we’re getting much better at talking to each other and working together as one.
Taking in all of this, I hope you have begun to grasp what I’m planning. I’m calling it The Internal World Project. I would like all the lovely artists on here to take a chance and help someone with DID or a similar condition or “mental quirk” to have something to show their friends, their family, their partner, etc. what they look like. What they feel they truly look like.
It might be a big deal or a small deal for you, but it would mean so much to the people like us. Your donations are free except for time and supplies after all. You’re not tossing money in a hat hoping it would go to a good charity. While I am currently being the middleman, I am rousing the people on DID forums and in support groups hoping to get them to come to those who decide to donate by making portraiture. I’m hoping to find people that will share their stories with you and help spread awareness about this problem, this feeling of often times wearing a mask but being unable to make a new one for yourself.
I am a writer, not an artist by design. I can do a bit of painting and sketching, but little on the level of what I would hope for. While each person may have their own needs and wants, I’m hoping for people who can manage a bit of realism or at least a lot of human (or other!) emotion. Feel free to donate even if you can’t, however, and thank you for any attempts made to help!
Imagine if you were never able to look at yourself. Take that to heart at least today, and, if you can, at least spread the word.
Thanks,
Cas Kingsley (C.M. Koenig)
/TL;DR
What we are looking for are people, artists, who can do the art for this. Possibly paid, but chances are they will be donation pieces.
The original journal can be found: http://slssfrncghst.deviantart.com/journal/
A useful website: http://www.intervoiceonline.org/
To contact The Internal World Project, contact the user slssfrncghst on dA, or I can send your information to them. If you can't help, please, spread the journal. This is something really serious for those involves...
