jESus fuck COBRA is expensive. i know i could probably do the health exchange and get something cheaper for my awkward month of no work insurance but that requires phonecalls and i might not be able to see my therapist if i lose that coverage... i'm in a good enough place that i can take the hit, esp since my final paycheck is gonna be bloated with my milage reimbursement (thanks julian for giving us excuses to hang in the valley and charge this stupid company ~$35 each trip for my trouble) and my cashed out vacation. i think spoon levels demand it. at least today.
on a happier note, I just played Gris on the switch and it made me cry. I wasn't even really expecting it to--it was lovely but it wasn't until the very end that I realized how hard it was hitting me. Devolver Digital is cemented as my fav publisher. I don't know how the people behind Serious Sam, Bro-Force, and friggin Hatoful Boyfriend are also the ones (seemingly the only ones these days) to see the value in the quiet, thoughtful games. I feel like it's common for people who build their reputation on things that are silly and over the top and irreverent to get a "caring about things is lame" attitude that would keep them miles away from a game like Gris. But both Gris and The Talos Principle are some of the most heart-on-their-sleeve games I've played and i love them
So prettyyyyy. Stand out tracks are the first three, Chiasm, Karasu, Unagi, Comparison, and Gris Pt. 2
ughhh that feel when you feel like you've been writing and writing and then you've only written 600 words... i don't know if ill ever finish this fucking manuscript
Our commission was delivered today :DDD I'm so happy. Moirail and I have a hogwarts AU for some of our ocs and we've spent most of our time focusing on The Snek Girls, three of our Slytherin babies and it's such a good AU. Finally, a universe where Darling has real friends before she's an adult! I think this is the only one of the thousand AUs I have of her where that's true :'D (From left to right that's Theo Almadrius, Sofia Darling, and Sierra Cousland)
It's the best au and it's sort of a fandom free-for-all. We've got Dragon Age, Fallout, Bloodborne (sort of, Theo is morail's Good Hunter but is also gonna be one of his DA4 protags), Buffy (cause Willow and Cordelia are Slytherins and I'll fight you), and of course there are HP characters there (Hogwarts needs McGonagall). Darling and Theo give Sierra a ton of crap cause she's been declaring her undying love for a Gryffindor (Alistair) since half way through their first year, and Darling is a hypocrite cause no one is dumb enough to believe her and Gryffindor Valentine's 'we're totally just friends' bullshit (except for Darling and Valentine).
A16. Does your OC have to go through their own trials to learn a lesson, or do they listen and learn from observation and lecture? I.e., does your OC listen when someone tries to tell them the importance of budgeting, or do they have to go experience what happens if you don’t budget first? It really depends on what kind of lesson she needs to learn. She's an excellent student, did very well in college (undergrad degree in mathematics, with a lot of extra physics and some chem classes in there for good measure) and law school. She's good at taking a concept from theory to practical use, like how she taught herself engineering in the Wasteland mostly from books and applying what she remembers from her science education. She's good at taking instruction from people she feels have expertise or experience in their subject, like teachers, but if she feels like you have no qualifications to talk about what you're talking about, she's probably going to just ignore you. Or, if she finds you irritating, antagonize you and undermine your authority, if you have any. But if the lesson isn't something you can learn from a book or teacher, then she has problems. She knows that she's smart, usually one of the smartest people in any given room, and that tends to make her think she always knows best when it comes to navigating life and relationships. So if the lesson is, "pretending you are Too Cool for feelings is going to royally fuck you up," or "You didn't do anything to deserve or bring about the emotional neglect and abuse your family put you through," or "Asking your friends/partners to accommodate your emotional needs isn't weakness"... well those are long, hard roads for her. She gets better over time, making active decisions to trust people she knows have more emotional intelligence than she does. But her stubbornness and the pervasive feeling of "I know best" makes many things a trial. A24. What are some of your OC’s biggest personal obstacles? This could be emotional, physical, social… Are they aware of it? Are they trying to overcome it? As stated above, she tends to assume that she knows best and in turn, that she has to do everything important because no one can do it as well as she can. In some ways, she's not necessarily wrong, she is terrifyingly competent (because she uses being competent to cope and compensate for her dismal sense of self-worth and self-esteem), but sweetheart, you cannot do All The Things. Her terrible sense of self-worth is at the heart of pretty much everything she does, and is the core of most of her problems. Her need to appear worthy to others manifests in neurotic perfectionism and a stubborn refusal to ask for help or do anything that she thinks shows weakness. This causes obstacles in every sphere, from being unable to process her emotions in a healthy way, to pushing her body far past healthy physical limits, and trouble being vulnerable enough to make any real friends. She constantly ignores and neglects her needs in all three categories. As for her self awareness of the problem, for the most part she struggles to acknowledge it. She's far more likely to acknowledge (read--obsess over) her failures and shortcomings and hide behind a mask of arrogance and confidence than look at her real feelings and self-image. She gets a little better over time, as her partners both demand emotional honesty from her and are extraordinarily gentle and understanding when she does let them in. B1. Do they believe you have to give respect to get it, or get respect to give it? Depends on what you mean by respect? Cause she's adamant about honoring the inherent worth in every sapient/sentient being. But as for respect as in positive regard or deference, her willingness to give it is inversely proportional to how much you feel entitled to it. She feels a solemn duty to knock entitled, arrogant assholes down a few pegs. Conversely, she tends to genuinely like and feel intense regard for folk typically considered outcasts or no bodies. C7. Do they believe people change over time? If so, is it a natural process or does it take effort? She believes everyone /can/ change over time. She's not convinced that a lot of people will, but everyone can. She isn't going to waste her time on people she sees as lost causes (Shaun and Maxson are the two best examples of lost causes. The world doesn't have time to wait and see if they might change, they're causing too much harm.) As for if it's natural, some is, some isn't. Putting Danse in a settlement filled with ghouls and synths and human farmers is going to soften his prejudice just by exposure. If he's going to change his assumption that the best way to keep people safe is to control them, that's going to require real effort. The changes she's working on, allowing herself to be vulnerable and interdependent with her partners, being gentle and forgiving with herself, and letting go of her unhealthy need to feel in control. G7. Do they have any childhood memories they’d rather forget or be less affected by? Pretty much her whole childhood lol. She thinks she's being childish and ungrateful when she's so hurt by the profound emotional neglect she experienced, cause come on, no one hit her, she never went hungry, no one touched her inappropriately, cause almost no one ever touched her at all. When she's started to figure out how damaged she is, she wishes she could easily deprogram a lot of the bullshit and just move on. But patterns that have been carved into her through decades don't fade the moment she realizes they're messed up or wrong. For example, her grandfather was a conservative evangelical preacher and she never quite gets over the belief that god will always be disappointed in her and that she's a failure in god's eyes. She gets to the point where she knows on an intellectual level that's messed up and probably not true, and she knows the people around her are proud of her and love her, which helps. But that deep, instinctual feeling never quite goes away.
hypothetically could someone use like a box trap situation to get this girl in touch with a decent therapist? maybe using a really cool gun as a lure? asking for a friend Idrilla rated your post Agree
a cool gun or her favorite detective comics xD And only if she can take her Emotional Support Robot with her. Lol, make her and Idrilla go to group therapy together. Group Therapy for Stubborn Assholes.
is group therapy ready to listen to a very long lecture about [Idrilla's current hyperfixation subject] and how fast can they say deflection honestly both would have a lot to talk about in group therapy. but i think illa's issues were more, like, from her teenage years forward, and Darling got it bad since the beginning. Mom and Dad Lavellan were immature teenagers when they had the twins and they were raised mostly by themselves, but Darling's family is just nasty. on a lighter note: what kind of detective comics would be her favorite?
Darling is! She'd rather talk about /literally anything else/ other than what they're here for :P And if Illa doesn't start it, they're going to get an earful about whatever is on Darling's mind. Though she'd be difficult in a group therapy setting, not because she would be prickly, kinda the opposite actually. She's compassionate and insightful and would engage with people, and that would obfuscate that she hasn't said anything about herself. As for comics, she just is such a sucker for noir anything. The more hard boiled, the better, and the more ridiculous the better. She wants glamorous femme fatales and stone-chinned, chain-smoking detectives. When you get close to Goodneighbor in FO4, tune into the Silver Shroud radio station, and that's pretty much what she eats up with a spoon.
so while progress on The Manuscript is still slow as balls, I did write a ~6k one shot for Darling following our most recent dnd session On the one hand why can't I bang out 6k on my manuscript?? on the other I'm really fucking proud of this one shot and it might be one of the best things I've written. It came out pretty easy, writing wise, but it definitely messed with my headspace because I was writing a first-person account of someone having a complete emotional breakdown, and I was drawing on my own worst moments of suicidal ideation. So being in that headspace was rough, but it was also sort of empowering/healing because yes, I went back there, but in the story she wasn't alone and had someone there who knew just the right things to say.
okay brain, i'm ready to not have every little thing send me into an anxiety tailspin. you can figure out how to arrange the room to have a bedside table you can put the new lamp on. you don't have to feel guilty about spouse feeling bad because she didn't account for that when she got it for you. Disagreeing with friend about the best way to go about some dnd mechanics doesn't mean you're being stubborn and closed minded and ruining the game for everyone. MIL can deal with me not responding to her IM about Stuff that's happening, because no i'm not really looking forward to starting the new job, I'm just anxious, even if I know it will almost certainly be a good thing. I get anxious (it's anxiety-ception all up in here) when people ask me about stuff like this or say things like 'the new job sounds great!' and i'm just sitting there, having forgotten how to feel anything but anxiety and dread about the future. And responding either with trying to explain my anxieties or an awkward 'mmm yeah i hope so' just sounds so ungrateful. But it's okay. It's how I'm feeling. I can be grateful and even vaguely optimistic (active thought choices) and still be anxious (emotional reaction, especially understandable since the job I left left me with severe burnout and when I think about 'going to work,' my body reacts as if i'm thinking about going back to old job). I don't owe anyone the reaction they want.
No you dont. I'm so sorry you're going through so much anxiety ))^: but you have the right to feel the way you feel. It's really shitty to force yourself to feel a certain way and I really wanna offer an e- hug and hopes that you get out of the anxiety tailspin. Hmu if you need anything, ok?
Thanks, hugs are appreciated <33 And thanks. I'll be in touch, even if just to chat and think about good things.
first day of the new job and i'm trying to not be discouraged by the fact that i'm absolutely wiped this evening. i'm pissed about their health insurance (high deductible plans royally fuck over sick people), but i don't know if there's anything i can do. the office is quiet, and not echo-y like my last office was. i still need to suss out the best way to come out to a bunch of people because running around the office shouting 'i'm a queer adhd mentally ill spergling that gets anxious when you ask me about gender!!!' and yes! i have weird food intolerances so please don't be offended when i find it easier to just handle my own food! And no, i really can't eat fruit and yes bell peppers and squash are technically fruit so no i can't eat them!!
it's gonna be one of those nights, huh brain? Where everything seems like bullshit forever and what if everything /is/ bullshit forever. That would be too many... It's so infuriating to finally leave Hell Job and start New Job and things are ostensibly better and yet my brain is still so fucked. I was thinking and I actually called this happening when talking to a coworker back in like november or something. she asked me how i was cause she knew all of us were miserable, and i was like, hmmm. weirdly fine. Oh. huh, now that I think about it I've been dissociating like hell to make it through the days. And in the past, once the thing I was dissociating to get through was over, my feelings and identity reconnected in erratic bursts and there was a huge backlog of depression and anxiety to process and it left me pretty wrecked. That's probably part of what's happening, especially since New Job takes up so many spoons. so time to listen to Saturn on repeat for hours. It's one of the things that can ease the "please can i just not exist anymore" feelings and the burning desire to take things out on myself physically because i'm angry and disgusted and frustrated with myself. I should write SAL a letter at some point thanking him for this song. it's been my lifeline on many, many bleak nights
