Comment by Grumpy Old Snake

We'll just... quietly create these enormously long, slowly narrowing blocks of text and pretend it's a private conversation because nobody else has the desire/attention span to read them. ;)

First off, all this talk reminded me of a writers resource over on deviantART for fainting, which incorporates a lot of peoples descriptions of their own perceptions: http://luna--rose.deviantart.com/art/Knock-Yourself-Out-215931832. I decided to add mine. xD

I'm pretty sure it's not too big a thing; I mean if it is from blood pressure it makes sense, a limb will go numb and get the pins and needles if you keep it in a bad position too long and cut off circulation, so it's probably the same thing. And yeah, once the numbness fades there are pins and needles and this odd cold acid-like sensation.

I can see how you'd get used to it after a while. And it might actually be a real sound: I know that sometimes I can hear my blood flowing in my ears, and it will have a bit of a rushing like sound. The only issue is that usually it's in a pattern like a heart beat...

I didn't think it was very likely, haha! xD I asked because I think I just misread your sentence: you meant at night because you don't wear glasses then, not my initial read of it which was 'those nights when I'm not wearing glasses'. ^^; I've never had a hallucination, or really known anyone who has. It's good they've faded with time, I guess. Have they been around since you were a kid or are they more recent?

P.S. OH gosh I'm sorry about that. D: Both pennames are in reference to one of my characters, named Diamond, who started off as an old diamondback rattlesnake stuffed animal when I was five. He's old enough that his names enough a part of my identity that I feel really comfortable using it as a penname. But anyways once I got the deviantART account I realized that having drawings of him and using 'Diamond' as a penname would get really confusing, and someone tried calling me by the abbreviation which was the first time I noticed what it spelled, so I went NOPE time to change. I still find myself writing Diamond on accident randomly though. ^^;

That's kind of a cool coincidence though, that the names line up like that!

Reply by Wabbajack

That sounds agreeable. HEAR THAT, PEOPLE? NOTHING TO SEE HERE, OFF YOU GO.

lol Unfortunately, the link isn't working. But it's awesome that you're on deviantART too! I'm on there as Tobassinesia. |D I looked at your art (I'm sort of like an awkward internet stalker, hope you don't mind) and your writing style is really clean. It's awesome! /saying random and pointless things, excuse me while I use paralysis spells on my babbly fingers..

Le gasp! I get the acid feeling too! Although when the black-out thing is in effect, the acid inside feels grossly warm. Then it gets cold.

That could be possible... But I know what blood pumping in your ears feels like (my mum says it's when there's too many things going on in your brain at once) and I know sure as hell that the sand thing isn't. Seriously, it's grainy and endless. If compared to a real sound, it could either be "SHHHH", an endless, rasping sigh, or a stream of sand falling like in an hourglass.

Hahaha well that's good to know. I was a bit startled that you'd assume one would wear glasses to bed. Unless the person in question was really paranoid. Or something. The hallucinations began when I was somewhere around 10 or 11 (not too long ago, actually), when I started watching videos of a game called Amnesia. A horror game, obviously. I'd watch until I felt sick to the stomach with fright. But I liked it anyway -- somehow, the feeling of absolute terror made me feel alive. Nowadays it's hardly scary anymore. In a way, hallucinations faded along with my fears. I'm not even nyctophobic anymore. However, if I was the type to have nightmares, I would've never looked at those videos, I'm sure. lol

P.S. It's no problem bro. Diamond looks pretty awesome in your devART gallery. I love that thing with his eye. Is that the same Diamond you're referring too? Oh probably not, since he's a rattlesnake... Erm forgive me if I'm getting confused.

My sister has been DiamondSnake before, though she prefers not to be known as that anymore. Nowadays she's Gambolpuddy. She claimed that "too many people called themselves Diamond" and that it was "uncreative and girly". Her reason was different to the girlies, though; her birthstone is the diamond, plus her real name starts with a "di" as well, and her Chinese zodiac sign is the Snake. As for me, I'm sadly a Peridot Rabbit. But I'd rather people didn't call me that...

Reply by NoRAd

Wow... Amnesia came out when you were ten or eleven? Now I feel old.

As an aficionado of walls of text, I have to say, I enjoyed this conversation. It was long and detailed, but more importantly, kept to the topics at hand. My natural writing style is actually very brief, so I don't often get the chance to weigh in on stuff like this. I have to say, I haven't ever passed out from standing up too quickly or anything, but yeah, I do get that lightheadedness, and occasionally my vision gets a bit wonky.

If we're going by birthstone Chinese Zodiacs, I guess you could call me RubyTiger?

Anywho, on to the interesting topic, these hallucinations. I used to imagine things all the time when I was younger, had trouble sleeping in the dark and all. I think it's fairly normal to see shadows and have your brain tell you that it's not the shadow of that dresser, or even scarier, that there's something IN the shadow of that dresser. Is that what's going on here, or is it something else?

Like... When I was eight or so, I had trouble sleeping because I was scared, so I went into my parents room, and they slept with the lights off, and I spent what felt like at least a few hours terrified that every shadow in the room was going to eat us if I turned away from it for just a moment, and seriously had no idea how they could sleep while we were in such mortal danger.

Doesn't really happen anymore, because my imagination is dead now :(

P.S. Happy belated birthday, I'm glad you hit level 14 last month.

Reply by Wabbajack

lol Aww don't feel old. I think I was in my late 11's. Or maybe even 12's! I don't keep track of these things. XD

*comes back after looking up the meaning of "aficionado* Dude I applaud your love of text walls. Personally, they make me cringe and run whenever I see them. Of course, I don't have any problem with creating them myself...

I wish I could have a brief writing style lol. I go into excessive detail and use far too many verbs. But then again, I feel that the more descriptive one's writing is, the clearer the picture in my head becomes.

Hah! Yours is way cool. I love being a rabbit and all, but it gets lame when people assume you're all cower and no scratch. At least I'm not a Topaz Monkey like my brother.

My brain takes the darkness from the background and sort of swirls it into something new. It's not always just the shadows tricking me -- they literally rise up and take on a new form.
... Of course, the way I'm saying it makes it sound dramatic and horror-worthy. On a side note, there are certain occasions where the figures I see are, in fact, white and not black. My sister has seen coloured ones, too.

I still sleep in the same room as my sister, so I have her for company. I usually wouldn't run into my parents' room if I was scared. But sometimes, I would really prefer to be alone; sleeping people are no better than dead people to me. And since my eyesight started deteriorating from a young age, it started messing with my sister's face. Sometimes it looked like she had no eyes, or like her eyes were open and she was snarling at me. I was also the type to freeze and be unable to anything other than move my eyeballs. I'd be too scared to say anything, or even reach out to shake my sister.

Le gasp! What happened to your imagination? How did it die? I can't imagine being unable to imagine, in spite of my ability to imagine anything to do with imagination!

P.S. I'm not going to ask what thing I said gave that away, but thank ee kindly! XD

Reply by Grumpy Old Snake

xD Move along, move along... (Except not really. Nice to meet you, NoRAd! Or RubyTiger? Anyways, glad it's an interesting discussion to you, too. ^_^)

Haha oops. Well, it's the first thing to come up in the site if you search 'fainting writing tutorial'. I found it interesting to read peoples' accounts. Lol, and no worries, I'm kind of an awkward stalker too. And thank you! It's not often someone has anything to say about my writing... <3

Huh. Well, it was an idea. xD

Oh, wow. Okay. Haha, I never watched stuff like that as a kid. Then again I was an awkward paranoid kid who wouldn't eat at new resturaunts because I was convinced one of the strangers would flat out poison me... ^^; Nowadays it just doesn't hold much interest for me; it's either not interesting or does its job too well. xD I can see how watching that might have lead to some concern, though. And even with okay eyesight I know exactly what you mean by people looking like they don't have eyes in the dark. Do the hallucinations usually happen when you're mostly or almost asleep, or are they while you're still wide awake?

Oh, haha, I guess I'd never thought of other people going by Diamond. Now that I'm older I find it endlessly amusing that I associate the traditionally feminine word 'diamond' with a cranky, mostly blind old man, though. xD And yeah, the human missing an eye is him. He makes a much easier character to work with as a human; I've decided to leave him that way.

I'm going to second that notion, NoRAd; whatever happened to your imagination? D: And I'm going to assume you guessed the birthday either by the sign or the devART account?

Reply by Wabbajack

I'll have to go and check it out. Most definitely. Yay, this can be an awkward stalker club! (come on NoRad, we know you're one too *nudge nudge*)

And a good idea. It's just that I'm not really sure of anything at all. XD

I was, and still am, a strange kid. Maybe I felt stronger when I was afraid. I dunno. Well, the hallucinations happen when I'm wide awake, but when I'm asleep but still awake (my way of describing my "half asleep" state) my tinnitus and hallucinations go absolutely crazy. The hallucinations tend not to bother me at that stage, since my brain is elsewhere, but when tinnitus does something... farewell hopes of sleep. For example, once I was nearly fast asleep, and guess what? This really loud sound, right next to my ear, shook the crap out of me. Only afterwards did I realize that it sounded exactly like a pig.

I like how you did that thing with Diamond. I don't like it when people associate a certain thing with girls/boys. People have dubbed pink the "girl colour", and people have dubbed violent video games as the "boy games". I mean wtf? Pink is at the bottom of my colour preferences and violent games are at the top of my gaming favourites. In my imagination (which was once a lot more out of control than it is nowadays), I had a white dragon and his name was Diamond. There was also a younger one named Emerald. I was quite uncreative while naming my dragons, but not so much when thinking up character names... Go figure.