Scampy
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I am unreasonably excited for this
Saccharine had, like, two lines, and she's already fantastic.
Man
Man, it always feels weird to talk about how much you enjoyed something when this was the subject matter, but here we are.
This was awesome. Thank you so much!
This is such a strong opening chapter. From the inside of Sour Sweet's mind, I can see how having such rapid-fire changes in emotion/thought, with constant fears of abandonment and being hated running through them, would be downright exhausting. I don't blame her for lying in bed all weekend.
I second how great Saccharine is, with this exchange in particular just being gut-wrenching:
Just... damn.
Also, just wanted to note that I love your characterization of Cadance here. I don't think I've read many stories thatvactually use Dean Cadance as a character, but you pulled it off really well in this chapter.
I can’t wait to delve more into this. It’s a strong start.
Sunny Flare and Sugarcoat are so obviously trying to help Sour Sweet, and the fact that her horrible, self-hating thought patterns keep getting in the way of that is so hard to read.
Another really immersive, vivid chapter, really showing the reasoning behind Sour Sweet's irrational thinking and what it leads her to. What it's doing to her friends is already heartbreaking, but the thought of being in Tenor's place in this kind of situation is just... God.
To be fair, Tenor might have only been that interested in Sour Sweet in the hopes of getting laid with a cute girl--teenage hormones gonna teenage hormone--but he's clearly a good guy at heart, who has asked for her consent for everything from putting his arm around her all the way up to full-on sex and gotten nothing but affirmatives. If she's mirroring positive body language along with her words, what exactly else is he supposed to think or feel here? He's doing all the things one should do in that situation, but because he isn't privy to what's going on in Sour Sweet's head--and why--he's gonna feel awful in the next five seconds. And I feel for him there.
This is not gonna end well.
Wonderful story. Emotional and terrifyingly realistic. You've certainly cemented yourself as one of my favourite writers, Scampy. Here's to whatever else you have planned!
Damn, gonna need a break after just the first chapter. The anxiety is extremely relatable. Every time you drop a story like this I end up questioning a lot about my pasty life and sometimes even current one.
I'm joining the Saccharine fan club here and god I hope Sour can eventually fully enjoy having such a wonderful sister.
That bit with Sour's PTSD of living with her mother was so well done. Both in writing and how you decided to show it in the page. Masterful.
Wow. That was a tough read.
But so, so, so well done. God.
It's really striking how, throughout this story, as much as Sour Sweet has tried to do right by everyone around her--often in very irrational and twisted ways, but still trying nonetheless--everyone else is trying so hard to do the same. From Tenor, to her friends, to even her dad (very subtly, with clues like telling Saccharine to be nice to her) and of course, the most hard-hitting of all, Saccharine... it's all just so heartbreaking to read. That moment where Sour Sweet finally picks up the note and reads it absolutely brought me to tears. What a powerful demonstration of love.
As heavy as this story is, I couldn't help but laugh at this line, though:
I don't think the levity there was intentional, but I really appreciated it regardless. That's such a Sugarcoat thing to say, lol. Which says a lot, given how little we see of her in Friendship Games. (I never saw any EqG shorts or specials with the Shadowbolts that might have aired later, though, but I'm guessing the characterization is probably similar.)
That first step towards getting better--admitting that you're not okay in the first place--is so tough, and yet so, so impactful. An incredible way to end this chapter.
Once again, I have to commend your characterization of the Shadowbolts in this story, especially Sugarcoat. This line is just so her (and, again, so unintentionally funny):
Her two closest friends coming to check on Sour Sweet after she's started the treatment process is honestly a perfect ending to this kind of story. Things aren't going to be easy or perfect or fixed overnight, but they are going to get better, and that's what's so important.
I really love the title of this final chapter too. Despite everything, it is possible for Sour Sweet to build a life worth living, with people who love and care about her by her side along the way. And if that's not hope, I don't know what is.
Really proud of you for finishing this story, hon. It turned out beautifully.
I thought Sour-Sweet's mental illness was bipolar/manic-depressive disorder.
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As far as I understand it, bipolar disorder (both I and II) are characterized by episodic depression and mania, or hypomania in BP2's case. Both forms of bipolar have episodes that last days or weeks, and are more than just a moon swing.
That said, the popular perception of bipolar is usually of someone who has rapid mood swings, happy one minute and miserable the next. That characterization is actually closer to borderline personality disorder IRL, where the person's emotional state is very unstable because they react strongly to everything. Something that might make someone else bummed out can leave a borderline patient emotionally devastated, and at the same time, good news for a neurotypical person may come across as the best goddang thing to ever happen for a BPD patient. It doesn't help that BPD also tends to fuck with your perception of other people's words and actions, resulting in being upset by things that, to an outside observer, have no obvious emotional charge. At the same time, these heightened emotional states are transient--just as quickly as a person with BPD can feel like their world is falling apart, they can feel like everything is perfect only minutes later. I myself have many memories of going from feeling rather neutral, to suicidally depressed and fully intending to kill myself, to being totally overjoyed, all within the span of minutes.
It's that instability of mood that's the real hallmark of BPD. Everyone's different, of course, and not every BPD patient has the same symptoms, but an unstable emotional state that's highly reactive to any changes in circumstance--real or imagined, good or bad--is what's at the heart of the disorder. At least that's been my experience, and the experiences of others I know with BPD.
So Sour Sweet, whose mood shifts are frequent, rapid, and very fleeting, feels far more like someone with BPD than someone with Bipolar I/II. At least to me, but I'm biased, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Thank you for your civil reply.
Holy shit I had no idea this is what the thought process of a person with BPD is like.... Love the detail, seems so real
once again, Im finding bpd-posting is far too relatable for anything good
sugarcoat is my favorite shadowbolt, and I like what you did with her here, but you've also managed to sell me on sour sweet! Ive never been that big a fan of her, but this one made me look at her in a different light
That's pretty painful to read. Poor Sour Sweet... Her mother's got a lot to answer for, it seems.
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Yeah, I definitely appreciated that.
It would have been easy for Tenor to be a creep or abusive or anything, but he's not. He's being decent and reasonable and asking for consent, like you said, and only moving ahead when he gets it. He's doing it right, but he doesn't know the situation with Sour Sweet. Who is not a bitch, either, just messed up... but that's not her fault, either.
It's a terrible situation, but nobody's a bad guy here. Which, in a way, makes it all the more painful.
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It really is! And yeah, this is pretty heavy, even painful read... but that final line works.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy saved my life. Between those and an outpatient program I have begun to heal from the trauma. I hope your journey continues to go well.
Wow. Poor Sour Sweet.
This is definitely a "one-chapter-at-a-time" level of rough story.
The subtle horror of this story is that nothing happens to trigger Sour Sweet’s spiral. We get a glimpse of her head during a day in the life, and that makes you wonder how many times this cycle of thinking and acting has repeated.
It’s nice that the story ends with the probability that this time will be different, though.
Love you scampy.
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Thanks, I love me too 🥰
Sour Sweet's inner thought matches a lot with how I think about the world around me in my darkest and most cynical moments. Honestly part of the reason why I find it hard to befriend people
Ironically it's Sour Sweet's anxiety about others hating her that is causing her to *actually* hurt her friends.
"HUGS YOU TIGHT"
"HUGS YOU EVEN MORE"
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Describes every woman my straight friends dated.
😜
Monk
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media.discordapp.net/attachments/692239896773001217/1192240933698289726/sonk_swonk.png?ex=65a85be5&is=6595e6e5&hm=0ab12ee6b8a3f49eaa17b867459d550e51260207227cde352ff8c20befe55ebf&
"duhhhhhh, DAE think women are irrational??"
Get outta here, dude.
I have been on the lookout for stories that explore Sour Sweet's mood swings, and this is the most visceral one I have read to date. Sour's internal dialogue really tugged at my heartstrings, especially since I once knew someone who very likely struggled with BPD. The ending was most befitting, in that while Sour's struggle continues, she is better prepared to face it.
Thank you for sharing this tale. Bravo!
Aaaaaaaaaaa you outdid yourself with this one, Scampy! You're proud of it and YOU SHOULD, I am proud of you too
because we've been friends for a while and I know the importance of this story <3
As I said, the only reason I'd travel to the US is to meet u (and everyone else) and give you a big ass apapacho, Miss ministers in Suffering stories affairs <3
lmao does that make sense? LololNow onto the story, I'm gonna put my Gdocs under lock and key. Who allowed you in??? Goddamned C2 and his ways I'll get back at him with bait nonshipping stories.
I told you but I still want to write it here bc u deserve public praise: everything, everyone is so fluent and organic, the story just... flows. And it becomes so relatable at times (bc anxiety + self-loathing do not mix well) that gosh, it hurts and it hurts l deep.
Soursweet feels super in character, with the quick mood changes, and how it all ends up in spiraling thoughts. Like, in this context, it just make sense for her to act like that.
And everything else that comes to mind is the angst you made me feel on my chest the whole time because aaaaaaa goshgoshgosh. I'm gonna get back at you! You'll see! (Because this has definitely inspired me to keep writing my sad stuff (TM)). Nah but really, it hurts so much because you've manage to submerge us (me?) Into soursweets mind, at the same time that once knows its really not like that, but her thought process just keeps twisting the knife on the chest.
And, oh godh, that last scene with the folded paper ghfhdjdhdhshw it was so powerful. And I really ñike how it pushed her forward and, at the ending, she uses it as an anchor to keep going. The ending is perfect, it gives conclusion and a nice, satisfying ending while still remaining true to reality, which is: getting therapy doesn't "cure you" but it's a big step toward feeling better.
Woof. I don't quite know where to start, so I'll just go by train of thought. Apologies for any confusion.
First off, I was so sure that Sour would fully commit to the deed, and the next chapter would cover the fallout. By the way, was that grey haze thing and Sour "watching herself" some kind of dissociation?
I know I'm repeating what's been said, but I'm glad that Tenor at least asked for Sour's consent multiple times.
Poor Sour's breakdown over the drinks being spilled. She's been through so much!
Next chapter's going to be even rougher...
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I considered this idea, and I think it could've been a good story if I went that way. Ultimately I decided against it though, because if the story contained that level of sexual trauma, that trauma would need to become the focus of the rest of the story in order to do it justice. As it is, Sour Sweet still clearly experiences sexual trauma, but not in such severity as to shift the focus of the story completely away from the BPD experience.
Yep, severe dissociation is a really common symptom of borderline. When your feelings are always so intense, and your mood is so reactive and unstable, sometimes it just gets to be too much, and the brain disengages because it can't handle it anymore.
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Ah, okay. That makes sense.
Hm. I'm on the autism spectrum and I think I've gone through that. Sometimes I get overstimulated and my brain just kind of shuts down. I can't talk and I just sort of stare blankly. That's only in extreme cases though, it doesn't happen often.
Right from the very first line you make the story way too relatable. You perfectly encapsulate those dozens of spiralling thoughts that feed off one another, all stemming from a single innocent interaction. And how that taints the interaction going forward and makes Sour actually change her behaviour based on it. Just… ouch. It’s not a flashy or melodramatic introduction, but it’s no less hard-hitting.
Ooh, now that’s a really interesting interpretation of Sour’s vocal tic, I don’t think I’ve come across that before.
Jesus, everything about the conversation with Cadance is so uncomfortably muddied and uncertain. And this is where you let the nature of an unreliable narrator flourish – between Sour’s illness and what seems like Cadance’s carefully-chosen words, I honestly can’t tell what is Sour’s BPD reading too far into Cadance’s words, and what actually is Cadance engaging counsellor/therapist white-lie mode.
Speaking of, I’d be remiss not to mention the way you write the flashback. While the usual choice of ‘italicise everything’ wouldn’t quite work since that’s used for Sour’s internal (and intrusive) voice, the partially-transparent quotes are both more evocative and more, well, fun. I’m always a fan of when people play around with the words on the page, and here it’s used to really evoke the feeling of scattershot memories, lodged deep down somewhere and repressed.
And, of course, Saccharine. A great character balance between not having as much life experience or emotional acuity as Sour, yet at the same time she’s clearly clever, and can pick up on people’s feelings. And of course she’s just a good bean.
I love the way Sour’s internal voice briefly, and constantly, interrupts the flow of the conversation with her friends. That might sound a bit weird, but it makes it feel so true to life: Something’s said, she immediately internalises it and this stupid little voice yanks on the choke-chain and stops her from feeling, you know, happy that her friends care about her. And more than that, it seems to interrupt Sour’s own speech. Her sentences feel disjointed without the monologue because, of course, the monologue itself is the surreptitious third party in the conversation.
The talk of a big spring break party, meeting new people, and this line… there’s this horrible pit forming in my stomach…
I suspect it's the foreshadowing at play here, but that pit is not abating as the scene changes and Tenor is introduced.
And yet… well, it’s been said many a time here so I’ll beat the dead horse a bit more. I really appreciate that you make Tenor… well, okay. He’s a bit too forward, and not exactly experienced at picking up some of Sour’s more subtle cues, but he’s a teenager at a big party – a combination not exactly renowned for inciting level-headedness. He checks multiple times that Sour consents to what’s going on, but from where we are in Sour’s head writing this part of the comment… kinda makes me feel disgusted with myself.
But the important thing here: It would’ve been easy to make Tenor a bully, a monster, but I suspect that would’ve detracted from what this story is about: Sour, and her condition. So instead you make it complicated. Sour’s inner conflict is wrenching us in two directions, and… now the dissociation makes an awful lot of sense.
Damn, reading through this a second time is making me feel uncomfortable all over again. And that’s absolutely a compliment.
So there’s… there’s a lot of emotion packed into this, and there’s absolutely no let-up. Right from the start, there’s this feeling that I’m looking at a runaway train. And it feels like Sour’s the only person in the story here – even though there’s someone else in the room, Sour’s words and emotions are coming out unbidden and unfiltered, like that venomous inner monologue has finally been given a way out. I’m not quite sure how to describe what I’m feeling, honestly, but bloody hell do you ever make me feel it. It’s like I was being carried through on a wave of suspecting where this was going to go, doubting that it would, and really hoping that I was wrong.
Jesus, this hurts. And not just the bluntness of it, but the way you can tell Sour’s had this entire internal conversation just thinking about it, and that’s the outcome.
I apologise if this comment seems a bit of a mess; I’m struggling to put my thoughts into words to be honest. The best way I can put it is that you write the spiral so quickly and unrelentingly, it all mashes into this unrecognisable haze of ‘bad’. Right up until…
Fuck.
This… I don’t know if you intended for the reader to feel confused and overwhelmed throughout the first part, but to choose this particular moment to have everything snap back into clarity? There’s no way that’s accidental, and it is agonisingly true to life. Just the phrase ‘anchoring Sour Sweet to her own body’ made me have to stop for five minutes. Seven short words and you’ve spoken more sense about the topic than most entire journal articles I’ve read.
One final diatribe: You make Saccharine into such a great character here. I can tell you’ve thought up a lot of history with her and Sour’s condition, such that even though she might not understand Sour’s volatility, she understands that her sister isn’t defined by them. And more importantly, that she is determined, even in the bad times, to try to help however she can. It’s really nice to see it pay off at the end – a part of me hopes that Sour is able to tell her that it was her note that did it.
I was thinking of writing about how we finally see the improvement, the recovery, the outcome of ‘it gets better’, but… that’s not quite being fair. Much like earlier in the story, you show respect to the complexity of the topic of ‘recovery’. So instead, it’s nice to see the learning.
You make Sour’s internal conflict still there, and still ring true. From her scars to that unrelenting insistence to people-please, having Sour work through them even though the self-doubt and uncertainty is still there… honestly it’s more impressive to see Sour working through them compared to having them be gone entirely.
And the Crystal Prep gang have such a great chemistry when they’re all together – the little bits of snark that you have them sneak in (as well as Sugarcoat’s… well, lack thereof) add a bit of depth and makes them feel like more than just acquaintances. For each of them to put up with the others, hmm. Sour was never quite as alone as that stupid little inner voice kept insisting she was.
Dam this got me hard in the feels.
The events later in this chapter have dominate the comments - with good reason, to which I simply will emphasize TamiyaGuy's observation "[such parties are a setting] not exactly renowned for inciting level-headedness" - but I wanted to draw attention to earlier... The withdrawal, the paranoia and then the idealization of her friends, the fervor to 'be good/compliant', and the atmosphere of the party (real and internal) were all captivating, and, as I understand it, realistic if not authentic in their portrayal. Reading this is rough... which wins it all my praise.
I did not expect the 'coping mechanism' of cutting herself from this character, but I buy it. :c
Perhaps even moreso than previous chapters, this one is a roller coaster of frame-of-mind for Sour Sweet. Of especial commendation is how it is written in and out of pearlescent lucidity and opaque snarls, yet each beat is genuine and recognizable; that we can get lost in them with Sour Sweet rather than simply lost.
It was arguably outdone by the latter scene, but the bit where SS whispers (to herself?) that she loves Saccharine after verbally ripping into her was at once both devastating and doubly illuminating.
This comment will echo some of the above...
I too appreciate that you focus on the process of recovery and management, rather than a theoretical, idealized end state of "being better"; you show the learning and the struggle and the constant vigilance involved. I feel that you - intentionally or unintentionally - hint at so much she has yet to learn: expanding the nuance in understanding the [seemingly-]contradictory minds of others; recognizing more of the psychological drivers at work, e.g., the fear of isolation behind the compulsion to please; ...I thought I had at least one more, but it is gone after typing those.
Plato's Cave is real, and sometimes it is a nightmarish home.
BPD is something I personally do not recall seeing explored authentically before... This has given me some new insights and things to reflect upon. Thank you for sharing this story with the world.
If this comment comes across as muted, please understand it stirred up a lot of thoughts and emotions, and I am conscientiously filtering to what I hope is constructive and welcome!
FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!
Amazing! The amount of things I could relate to... And well written, you just feel what she's going through!