Thanks for writing this, as someone who also has this paraphilia (and others) and has lived with it for a long time. I have been a follower for a while now as your art and writing has often spoken deeply to me, but this is on a whole 'nother level. The feelings you expressed here were so honest and so well-expressed, and they are twistedly complex feelings I have felt before so I was amazed by how well you were able to articulate them. While our perspectives differ a little something I have always enjoyed about your work is that it just... Well, I understand it, and I feel understood by it.
I saw this piece while bored towards the end of my workday shortly after you posted it, and once I read through the first paragraphs I was too engrossed to put it down. When I finished I just left early and rushed through the errand I had to do so I could get home and write this comment with a real keyboard. Normally I am too nervous to comment, but this is... I don't know how to say it but this piece is very important to me. It kinda has a similar feeling as you described with Ikkakujuu wa Tsuranukanai!, "I:m just so thankful for something like this existing;". It's hard to say exactly why yet, but I feel inspired. You and your work are an inspiration. Thank you so much again; I am so grateful that you post your art, writing, and thoughts. I would like to do the same someday, and your stuff makes me feel like there's a reason to.
I hope you are able to finish your phylactery someday, I would love to see it. I don't know if this helps at all, but when I read your updates on twitter etc. I try to send you good energy, and I don't know if what I do counts as "prayer" but I think it is easy to explain if I just say that I pray for you sometimes. Although I do not know you personally, I think of you fondly. Good luck, with everything.
i'm usually only a lurker, but i really wanted to express that your insight is inspiring and makes me feel more lucid than i have been in a long time. thank you. your work will not be in vain.
hi mara barl. i don’t know you outside of the creations you put into the world, but i wanted to let you know that this work (and your other pieces) was very comforting to me and has helped me process some of my own feelings regarding my “irredeemable sin”. i hope you are or will be doing well soon.
This is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I've ever read. Thank you, few things have as much soul as this does and I think it healed something for me. I don't think I've related to something so closely as I have this. I love your writing and I admire you for it. I wish for happiness for you.
Wow You have such a talent for amassing 5 million things and twining them all together into one almost scary thing that spirals away into nothing. I hope you will be happy some day (not meant to be a platitude
Hi Mara I wanted to thank you so much for writing this as it helped me a lot dealing with something similar and I also have paraphilla for beasts and have roleplayed a lot despite not feeling totally ok about it. I have always had a very hard time forgiving myself for feeling certain ways even if I have done nothing wrong it feels very bad but the way you wrote about it here makes me feel better, like I can think more clearly on it now and learn to be ok now. I have started reading Aku No Hana and will probably check out the other works you mentioned here too. But just thank you so much it means a lot. I hope one day you finish your phylactery too.
I read all of this in one fell swoop I literally couldn’t stop reading. You truly have a gift in expressing some of the most horrid and soul wrenching feelings a human can experience while still being alive. I can relate to a lot of the pain you feel; I agree with most of what you say regarding your feelings about your past and what you’ve done. But I want to say that these peoples comments should be sufficient to say that you don’t have to click on soulless databases of characters for connection. You don’t have to scour fictional settings for comradeship. The people who are like you; hurting and bleeding with guilt with only the help of themselves to patch themselves up/hurting themselves again on purpose because they think they deserve it. We are here and we are like you and we are scared and hurt and the world where your soul can heal is already here; the people who you love will help you recognize this. I am healing too, I hope you can expel/accept all your poison and live a fulfilling life. Acting up is a hard thing to acknowledge + take accountability for when it was all started by you being a product of your environment and leaves you feeling like a victim. While it’s true, there is work to be done on oneself regardless, which can be so painful and alienating. You will survive the grime. Thank you so much. Please keep writing!
you are one of this most interesting souls i’ve ever come across.
i came across you briefly as i enjoyed the images you posted, but i never looked deeply into you as a person.. thank you for putting so many feelings i lacked the words for into coherent sentences
i think partly my interest is sparked because i can see bits of you in myself ..or, maybe its the opposite.. i’m not quite sure...
i think your words have helped me understand myself just a little more in many ways that i don’t know yet.
you are someone i would enjoy being friends with if not for anything but to listen to you speak words that remove blank spots in my brain and put something there
perhaps i’ve stayed up too long past the time my sleeping pills started kicking in.. i’ll forget about typing this in the morning..
unlike people who speak empty words,
your words feel full.
sometimes i am unsure the substance
but i know that whatever is inside is sloshing so close to the edge that it may spill
thank you for your words. i hope they will stay put and not vanish
I'm fair glad that you're still here Mara. And glad that you wrote this (you did a real good job~). There's a lot of little ways I've been inspired by you, and even now I'm thankful to have caught the off-chance I happened upon you by. I hope that potion isn't fatal, because I wanna see where you end up on my way to wherever I'm gonna end up. It'd be a serious shame if we never got to cross paths again 💜
i've been struggling with the feeling of "having done something horrible vs having had something horrible forced on me" for a while, and i think reading this has helped me begin to process that better than before. thank you.
As someone who has also lived with this paraphilia all my life I want to say thank you for all of this. I've not been following you for long so I wasn't aware of the background, but when I first saw your art from 3.B.a going back through your Tumblr I also wondered if you were like me. Everything you wrote here resonated so strongly in me I found myself starting to cry, and I had to say something. I think it's okay to love that enheart part of yourself; at least I hope it is, for my sake too. I hope you are able to find an equilibrium of peace with your internal selves and the world and people around you, because I also hope that such a thing is possible for me. I hope you are able to make your world phylactery one day, because I would like to see it.
I haven't finished reading your whole post yet and I think I don't understand a lot of what you wrote, but I need to go to bed and I wanted to reply, so I'm doing it now so I don't forget.
If choosing narratives because they make us seem like good people is a lie and a vice, which I think it is , like you said (my understanding of what you said), then is choosing narratives because they make us seem like bad people also a lie and a vice? at least when i do things like that, maybe i want to feel like somewhat of a good person. if i talk about things ive done in a way that leads people to think ive done nothing major wrong ill still know and think i did something awful (and ill think i did another thing bad in misleading them) but if they know how bad i am (even if its maybe a bit of an exaggeration/un-nuanced) and still see me as a person, want to be around me, or something, maybe there would be some kind of absolution there. (I don't know if you want/don't want people to write things like this as comments to your post, but I think I'm going to post it anyway, so if you don't want me to im sorry.)
i kind of think its a vice though. this is maybe weird reasoning, but maybe true good and true evil are so pure and divine that ascribing them to ourselves in any way is hubris. maybe we are so defiled as humans that we cannot even have the comfort of being mostly or all bad. thats what i think sometimes.
im going to bed now. i hope you find people who care about you no matter how you choose to tell them about yourself, if that's what you want.
Thanks for writing this, as someone who also has this paraphilia (and others) and has lived with it for a long time. I have been a follower for a while now as your art and writing has often spoken deeply to me, but this is on a whole 'nother level. The feelings you expressed here were so honest and so well-expressed, and they are twistedly complex feelings I have felt before so I was amazed by how well you were able to articulate them. While our perspectives differ a little something I have always enjoyed about your work is that it just... Well, I understand it, and I feel understood by it.
I saw this piece while bored towards the end of my workday shortly after you posted it, and once I read through the first paragraphs I was too engrossed to put it down. When I finished I just left early and rushed through the errand I had to do so I could get home and write this comment with a real keyboard. Normally I am too nervous to comment, but this is... I don't know how to say it but this piece is very important to me. It kinda has a similar feeling as you described with Ikkakujuu wa Tsuranukanai!, "I:m just so thankful for something like this existing;". It's hard to say exactly why yet, but I feel inspired. You and your work are an inspiration. Thank you so much again; I am so grateful that you post your art, writing, and thoughts. I would like to do the same someday, and your stuff makes me feel like there's a reason to.
I hope you are able to finish your phylactery someday, I would love to see it. I don't know if this helps at all, but when I read your updates on twitter etc. I try to send you good energy, and I don't know if what I do counts as "prayer" but I think it is easy to explain if I just say that I pray for you sometimes. Although I do not know you personally, I think of you fondly. Good luck, with everything.
i'm usually only a lurker, but i really wanted to express that your insight is inspiring and makes me feel more lucid than i have been in a long time. thank you. your work will not be in vain.
hi mara barl. i don’t know you outside of the creations you put into the world, but i wanted to let you know that this work (and your other pieces) was very comforting to me and has helped me process some of my own feelings regarding my “irredeemable sin”. i hope you are or will be doing well soon.
This is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I've ever read. Thank you, few things have as much soul as this does and I think it healed something for me. I don't think I've related to something so closely as I have this. I love your writing and I admire you for it. I wish for happiness for you.
Wow You have such a talent for amassing 5 million things and twining them all together into one almost scary thing that spirals away into nothing. I hope you will be happy some day (not meant to be a platitude
Hi Mara I wanted to thank you so much for writing this as it helped me a lot dealing with something similar and I also have paraphilla for beasts and have roleplayed a lot despite not feeling totally ok about it. I have always had a very hard time forgiving myself for feeling certain ways even if I have done nothing wrong it feels very bad but the way you wrote about it here makes me feel better, like I can think more clearly on it now and learn to be ok now. I have started reading Aku No Hana and will probably check out the other works you mentioned here too. But just thank you so much it means a lot. I hope one day you finish your phylactery too.
I read all of this in one fell swoop I literally couldn’t stop reading. You truly have a gift in expressing some of the most horrid and soul wrenching feelings a human can experience while still being alive. I can relate to a lot of the pain you feel; I agree with most of what you say regarding your feelings about your past and what you’ve done. But I want to say that these peoples comments should be sufficient to say that you don’t have to click on soulless databases of characters for connection. You don’t have to scour fictional settings for comradeship. The people who are like you; hurting and bleeding with guilt with only the help of themselves to patch themselves up/hurting themselves again on purpose because they think they deserve it. We are here and we are like you and we are scared and hurt and the world where your soul can heal is already here; the people who you love will help you recognize this. I am healing too, I hope you can expel/accept all your poison and live a fulfilling life. Acting up is a hard thing to acknowledge + take accountability for when it was all started by you being a product of your environment and leaves you feeling like a victim. While it’s true, there is work to be done on oneself regardless, which can be so painful and alienating. You will survive the grime. Thank you so much. Please keep writing!
you are one of this most interesting souls i’ve ever come across.
i came across you briefly as i enjoyed the images you posted, but i never looked deeply into you as a person.. thank you for putting so many feelings i lacked the words for into coherent sentences
i think partly my interest is sparked because i can see bits of you in myself ..or, maybe its the opposite.. i’m not quite sure...
i think your words have helped me understand myself just a little more in many ways that i don’t know yet.
you are someone i would enjoy being friends with if not for anything but to listen to you speak words that remove blank spots in my brain and put something there
perhaps i’ve stayed up too long past the time my sleeping pills started kicking in.. i’ll forget about typing this in the morning..
unlike people who speak empty words,
your words feel full.
sometimes i am unsure the substance
but i know that whatever is inside is sloshing so close to the edge that it may spill
thank you for your words. i hope they will stay put and not vanish
I'm fair glad that you're still here Mara. And glad that you wrote this (you did a real good job~). There's a lot of little ways I've been inspired by you, and even now I'm thankful to have caught the off-chance I happened upon you by. I hope that potion isn't fatal, because I wanna see where you end up on my way to wherever I'm gonna end up. It'd be a serious shame if we never got to cross paths again 💜
i've been struggling with the feeling of "having done something horrible vs having had something horrible forced on me" for a while, and i think reading this has helped me begin to process that better than before. thank you.
Wow this was a beautiful piece. I'll be reading back through your other posts because I love your prose.
I found you thread a thread somewhere about old games and some fanart from Sengoku Turb
am printing this out to read more carefully
As someone who has also lived with this paraphilia all my life I want to say thank you for all of this. I've not been following you for long so I wasn't aware of the background, but when I first saw your art from 3.B.a going back through your Tumblr I also wondered if you were like me. Everything you wrote here resonated so strongly in me I found myself starting to cry, and I had to say something. I think it's okay to love that enheart part of yourself; at least I hope it is, for my sake too. I hope you are able to find an equilibrium of peace with your internal selves and the world and people around you, because I also hope that such a thing is possible for me. I hope you are able to make your world phylactery one day, because I would like to see it.
I haven't finished reading your whole post yet and I think I don't understand a lot of what you wrote, but I need to go to bed and I wanted to reply, so I'm doing it now so I don't forget.
If choosing narratives because they make us seem like good people is a lie and a vice, which I think it is , like you said (my understanding of what you said), then is choosing narratives because they make us seem like bad people also a lie and a vice? at least when i do things like that, maybe i want to feel like somewhat of a good person. if i talk about things ive done in a way that leads people to think ive done nothing major wrong ill still know and think i did something awful (and ill think i did another thing bad in misleading them) but if they know how bad i am (even if its maybe a bit of an exaggeration/un-nuanced) and still see me as a person, want to be around me, or something, maybe there would be some kind of absolution there. (I don't know if you want/don't want people to write things like this as comments to your post, but I think I'm going to post it anyway, so if you don't want me to im sorry.)
i kind of think its a vice though. this is maybe weird reasoning, but maybe true good and true evil are so pure and divine that ascribing them to ourselves in any way is hubris. maybe we are so defiled as humans that we cannot even have the comfort of being mostly or all bad. thats what i think sometimes.
im going to bed now. i hope you find people who care about you no matter how you choose to tell them about yourself, if that's what you want.