#just trying to prevent myself from doomscrolling too much

[lynxfrost13]

Gamers forgive my scattered activity both here and on discord!! I’m just a little beat with everything going on, hoping to get my energy back soon 💪

[so-i-did-this-thing]

im sorry this might not be the place to ask for advice/help but im doomscrolling about the news and the soon to be president and im seeing so much to be scared shitless about, invasions, removal of vaccines, cost of living increases, revoking of trans rights and how it might make it all the more impossible to get the surgeries i wanted... its just too fucking scary to breathe right now what do i do with myself

Hey, Anon. I'm here. A lot of us are here right with you.

It's scary, to be sure. And I'm not going to sugarcoat the possibilities of things going south very quickly. So, let's jump into some survival tactics.

This post on burnout is a great place to start. There is a lot of overlap with burnout and the anxiety you're feeling.

Allow yourself to slow down and unplug. You are allowed to step away from the news cycle -- events out of your control will unfold regardless.

Don't feel guilty by letting yourself relax. I find it especially helpful to do activities that don't involve the internet -- I've been decorating my house, mending broken crockery, and sketching some embroidery ideas. I try to take the time to get dressed and groomed every day, to remind myself that I matter. I spend more time outdoors.

As you find the ability to relax, you'll be able to focus better on the things you can do to be resilient. Things I have been doing to improve myself and make me a better helper:

Staying on top of my medical appointments and any preventive care I can do

Working to be physically healthier overall to mitigate future medical issues

Getting all my paperwork in order, including passports

Tweaking my financial budget

Researching what estate & family documentation needs to be done to protect my relationship in case my marriage gets dissolved

Brushing up on job skills, getting new certifications to stay competitively employable

Stocking up on my medical and general emergency supplies, especially for bad weather events

Getting in the habit of mindful purchases, curbing my habit of impulse shopping

Selling things I don't want or need anymore to have a little extra money and be able to move house easier, if need be

Building a habit of fixing/maintaining my possessions instead of trashing broken things

Canceling online subscriptions and quitting social networks that make me feel in danger

Getting my personal and any queer-related files out of the cloud and onto redundant solid state drives

Downloading / printing out queer resources and buying queer art that may be banned or monitored in the future

Enjoying physical media again and hunting for old favorites

Keeping in touch with queer friends and allies and making plans in case people (even myself) need to flee

Being visible when I can and knowing when it's best to lay low

Allowing myself the luxury to dig into things Old Me would have saved for "special" events -- aka, wearing the nice clothes and eating off the fine china as an everyday thing

Shutting the fuck up, especially online, when I think my words could be used against me

In a way, I am trying to simply become a better version of myself, one who is calm & self-sufficient, mindful about his actions, and available to help those in need. It sucks that the driving factor is fear, but I intend to use that fear as a catalyst to be stronger and survive.

There is a lot to be done, but there was always going to be work, new regime or not. But please, start with that burnout article so you can jump into your own plans with new hope and energy. ❤️

[espanadiarywriter]

Hope is an act of resistance

Well, it’s been quite a week hasn’t it? I feel like that time Rob and I came back from Christmas vacation in Florida and our friends asked us how it was, and we answered “What do you want to hear about first, the robbery or the hurricane?” (Okay, it was actually a tropical storm, but we were in a canoe, so it FELT like a hurricane.)

I’ll admit I’ve been glued to the news. I don’t watch TV news, so I’m definitely doomscrolling. I’m reading not just about the riot at the Capitol but also the vaccine roll-out. I read that as of last Friday, about 30% of the vaccine distributed in January has gotten into people’s arms. I wish that we had a federal roll-out plan so each health care organization did not have to decide how to become efficient at doing this. Every human vaccinated is one step closer to hospitals that are not overwhelmed and a health care system not on the brink of collapse.

I am still unspeakably mad at how people are willfully ignoring the danger of this disease. The fact that the federal government once again completely absolved itself of all responsibility, this time for getting the shots into people’s arms, is absurd. And the refusal of large numbers of front line staff to get the vaccine is also a reflection of the challenged public health response. We had months to plan a media and communications campaign targeting at risk populations with information about vaccine safety and side effects. (And it’s not just countering the C-19 deniers; we know certain messages work well for messaging to populations about preventive health care.)

Instead the massive effort of organizing a mass vaccination was pushed to the very hospitals and state agencies that are running on empty with no reinforcement. So rules vary state by state, hospital by hospital, and county by county. On Wednesday, while the country was in the midst of a violent act of white supremacist terrorism, I received my first dose of COVID-19 vaccine at OHSU. I am incredibly proud to be working for a health care organization that has been vaccinating ~150 people an hour seven days a week (~12,800 as of January 8th ) and is now trying to double that number and rolling out vaccination clinics to high risk groups in the community. I consider myself part of the test run of how fast, safely, and efficiently can OHSU put arms in chairs and deliver doses. And as soon as they have openings for non-medical volunteers to help, I’ll be able to sign up. (Someone needs to sit at a desk and point people to the right line after all.)

Honestly, I thought about not saying anything public about my vaccination—because the media has had a field day with the decisions about vaccine roll-out. But I also am a) not in charge, and b) so proud of the work that has gone into OHSU getting through their front line staff (who are now receiving Dose #2) and figuring out how to ramp up the doses administered daily. They are working with the state to coordinate outreach to essential workers and high risk groups outside the organization. They told me to sign up and help, and I signed up. The people working the clinic were so professional and efficient and giddy about each person getting a dose. Even if news of my vaccination gives one person hope they will get theirs sooner, or one person who is doubtful about safety the confidence to get the jab (as the Brits say), then it’s worth sharing my story. (Yes, my arm still hurts. No I didn’t have any other side effects.) It’s really easy to criticize, but ultimately there should have been a federal mobilization to distribute vaccines and without that, let’s support the organizations who came up with a plan and are executing it. (OHSU has distributed 70% of its vaccines and now has staff ready to outreach to the community and Kaiser has done 24% but with better PR—which is better? I’m not making that call. And it doesn’t matter, both organizations are trying with very limited federal support.)

Which brings me to my next point: the sheer gross incompetence of the executive branch has been staggering.  Something has been haunting me since Wednesday, that there’s a dangerous American notion that someone’s uneducated opinion is equivalent to someone who is an expert. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it is literally killing America. This is a cognitive paradox where people who have no knowledge of something overestimate their knowledge or ability in an area. So people who do not know a thing about health or immune systems, judge a vaccine to be unsafe because they saw a YouTube video about someone having a side effect. It’s tragic.

Ultimately, this is the heart of what is happening on a political level. The lack of respect for people with actual expertise in government has lead to the shambles of this political administration. And now even the incompetent people are leaving. Not to digress too much, but what kind of a statement are you really making if after months of blatant election falsehoods it takes a literal armed rebellion to make you leave Trump’s cabinet? You aren’t winning any awards, sorry. What did you think he meant when for weeks he was telling his armed supporters to descend on Washington? He has been stoking white supremacy since before he won the presidency. (I hope people who weren’t Jewish noticed all the Holocaust references on the t-shirts of America’s dumbest insurgents.) But I digress.

Hatred and fear are the product of years of sowing doubt about science, expertise, and good governance. If people doubt the real facts, then you can make up whatever facts suit your political position. The political situation at the federal and state levels in this country are in dire need of repair. But I’m going to circle back to the hope that I started this blog post with. The people in the room giving vaccines were all volunteers, and they and hundreds others are going to volunteer to distribute them to as many people as possible for as long as it takes. Is it going to be perfect? No. But it’s going to get done even with an uneven start. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that hundreds of other volunteers got out the vote in Georgia and took back their franchise that was being forcibly suppressed. One person can make a difference—each volunteer matters. Maybe you are like me, paralyzed by doomscrolling. But I’ve made a commitment to help support vaccine distribution in whatever way I can, and I’m grasping to the hope that change will come. Maybe it will come in fits and starts, but I can see it on the horizon.

[chrimsone]

This blog has really become some weird journal of mine, eh? What, I've realized I'll never have the social skills to get a group of people to call my own here. So might as well throw some long-winded mind-dumps out into the void. Someone might listen, don't really care if they do.

I've tried lots of things. Verbal words don't work. My mind doesn't work right in translating thoughts to the tongue. I'm lucky to have a better time typing out my brain-think than nothing at all. I've tried many a therapist. None really stuck. Just as we maybe would have gotten somewhere, something would happen and I'd just never reschedule. I've just given up on the route now.

Now on paper I tried a few. I used to draw out some feelings. Sometimes they'd be good but once I realized I just shouldn't draw I haven't tried. The bonus though is I don't cut anymore because of that. Blood really is the prettiest medium. Text is the closest I can get. I have a plethora of notebooks. Some well used, others only a few pages. The unlucky ones have many pages torn out. And the majority are completely untouched. Several books have attempted to become journals of mine. One sits to my left, a taunt to try and keep up. Otherwise, Docs carry a lot of vents. It's mostly annoying and I want to delete them. Not fun glancing at some of my saddening words when I just want to find an old story I was working on. There might be more things I've tried but they were inconsequential enough to not be worth remembering.

This came to mind recently because I had a chat with my clanmates. I've been avoiding interaction to prevent my complaining of my job. It's retail, these last two months are the worst time to be working retail, and it's most of what I can think about. Hell it's triggered a depressive episode multiple times. Can't do shit but sit and stare at the menu of my browser or steam. If I'm lucky I'll doomscroll enough of Reddit to hit either a sub in a different language or some obscure kink I haven't blacklisted yet. That's the most I amount to nowadays.

I want to write, you know I had plans to participate in NaNoWriMo? I couldn't even break 1k words on my attempt. I haven't looked at any of my other stuff. I try to think about it, and the same sentence loops in my head over and over and over and over -- as the anxiety of my next shift paralyzes me.

I spent a good chunk of this summer and fall just reading fics. Sometimes reading for the story. To see what people can do with an idea, or franchise I find interest in. I learned some things about media I'd normally never care about just because the premise of the fic seemed interesting. Learned the horrors of lust, but that's just a me thing. I tried to read with the intent of learning about writing.

Have I mentioned it before? I'm terrified to pursue a career in literature. I'm scared I'll find out I have some stupid gene that prevents me from even trying to get a good footing. I'm scared of what I might do if I ever find out. This is the last thing I'm clinging onto for some kind of future, and all that's left is hope.

So I look at how people write. I try to figure out what they do. Do they write in present or past tense? Is it better to do one over the other, or is it just preference? What habits does an individual form? How often do they repeat that?

How do I look like as a writer compared to them? Is my tense fucked up? I find myself writing in past tense, am I not supposed to? Are my patterns too obvious? Do I fall into habit too quick? Are my characters too similar? Does what I write even make sense?

I've been reading a bit again. Not much though. I feel guilty? Inferior? Frustrated. The source material has so much potential, and this is what people do with it? Hurt. I want a friend. I reached out, but all I received was a mere brush of contact. I feel alone in what remains of my passion. I try to connect with the friends I already have, but to them it's nothing more than a mere hobby. A consideration at most.

I don't tag these so I hope it doesn't show up on any radars to be honest. But I finally gave myself time to watch some of the Mandalorian. I've been wanting to, kind of. I never had any interest in Star Wars, a silly childhood trauma caused me to denounce the franchise, and by the time I no longer feared what I had, I didn't care. When the show was announced, my interest was piqued one way or the other. I always liked people who kept themselves masked up. I had no idea until what? Two years ago? But now that I've made the connection it's easy to say when that fascination pokes through. It happened with this.

I watched the first episode late at night. I had my phone on some shitty mobile game to keep my attention on. I wholly expected to not be interested. Catch onto the plot, find it boring and just watch to satisfy my niche.

Did you know that a beskar ingot disappears from Mando's hands in-between cuts in that first episode? I thought it was a CGI error in the beginning, but the way they handled the prop felt too real. So somehow in filming they forgot to tell him to hold the ingot during a set. It's only in like, the bottom left corner, barely noticeable. But I did.

I woke up the next day fully expecting to binge what I could. I watched the next two episodes after. And I loved them. The direction enamored me. It felt like something I would want to write. I desperately want to see the script for the show. How they planned out such amazing episodes. The action was entertaining, I thought to myself while watching how I could try to translate that into words. If I could.

In the opening of one of the first three episodes, I noticed a bandolier on his shin. I thought to myself, 'strange, that's not a very convenient place to stash your extra bullets.' and chalked it up to character design and left it there. Except, it wasn't I'm pretty sure, later in the same episode, he's kneeling, and using those bullets on his shin for the extra-charged sniper shot. Whatever that thing is. It all clicked and I fell in love.

And then I watched the fourth episode.

Something was off right away. He was talking a lot all of a sudden. Using more words than necessary. I thought, 'oh it's just to communicate with a child! They're still learning social skills so it's good to be thorough', but it never stopped. I noticed the show fell back into the monotony most shows have. I finished feeling gross. I didn't like the direction the story had went. I didn't like the shift from visual story telling to so much dialogue.

Would that opinion translate well to text?

The increase of work stress stopped me from really watching. I accepted that I probably won't get back to the show until after the Black Friday week. That was fine.

But I learned, the first three episodes weren't well received. It baffled me. I bet people were saying 'why not condense all that into one episode and get on with it?' I can see that complaint, and if it weren't written so well, maybe I'd agree.

I write like that. A lot of detail in a small frame of time. Those first three episodes had the style of something I would make. I'm obviously not as experienced. But I recognized the care to the small bits most overlook. Now I'm apprehensive about even finishing the show. I'll never get those three episodes back from the sounds of it. I'll never get the slow burn, minimal dialogue, action and establishing shots. It's something the people don't like.

Guess if I ever got my foot somewhere, I could change that.

One last thing before I end this month's message. Still related to writing. I applied to work for Bungie. To get out of the job I hate, and work for something I love.

At least they gave me a response.

I think that added to my depressive slump lately too. I just don't have what it takes. All I have is what? Four shitty fics posted to the public? All but one being from when I was sixteen. Everything else is in my head, with only a few being lucky enough to even get a rough draft somewhere in one of my notebooks or docs. Wonder If I'll ever get to work on a story for real.

[rosesloveletters]

*sat staring into space or doomscrolling for a few hours on tumblr, early morning, I got time, but you know my to do list*

*sat thinking of Father and how hard he always works, and of Mama who never stops*

*sat thinking of Papa and the way he always seems to know more than he says until something makes him snap and then it all comes pouring out in devastatingly destructive ways*

*stands up, locks bedroom door, braids hair*

“Come on, Erika, for fuck’s sake. Whose daughter are you, again?”

Spoken harshly, with anger towards myself, but damn if it isn’t motivating😭😭😭😭😭 I’m sure my parents wouldn’t necessarily… approve of my self-talk, but they’d understand.💕💕💕

At least throughout the day I can text my sister and speak with her about 👀important👀 things!!😭💕 the four of you are gonna get me through these next days.💕💕💕💕

Erika🥺💕

I definitely do not approve of your self-talk either; my sister should speak to herself as kindly as I do🥺🥺 that being said, it's easier said than done & I recognize that. Sometimes only we know how to properly motivate ourselves & sometimes just what we need is a little tough love from time to time. it's easy to slip into the same routine in which you sit & doom scroll or waste valuable working/studying time; I know this from painful experience.

your parents work so hard all of the time, but sometimes I look at it this way because I too have a parent f/o who works so hard all the time that often makes me feel resentful of myself for not working equally as hard all the time: our parent f/os work that hard so we, as their children, don't have to. I've always kind of held onto the sentiment that it is a parent's responsibility or, at the very least, it should be their desire to make their child's life easier than their own. I try to think of it being this way with our f/o parents as well, so that the feeling doesn't become so overwhelming because why would our parents want us to have to go through the same experiences as them if they can prevent it? they know the level at which they elevate themselves to & as parents I'm sure they'd want their children to have it a bit easier than they might have.

I could be wrong and I would like to say that I don't mean this to sound like we shouldn't push ourselves at all or ever have to work hard, but what I mean is that they wouldn't want us to always feel as though we have to hold ourselves up to unnecessary standards like they do or might have done.

Oh, darling, I love whenever you text me about important things! It doesn't matter what the conversation is; if it's from you it is automatically labeled as important💕💕💕 you get me through each day as well & I love how involved in each other's success we are because that's all I'd ever want for you is to succeed at all you wish to do or to try. I love you so much, Eri!

[finsterhund]

tired and weak

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to bounce back.

I don’t know if I’m stable or functional right now.

I am no longer spending days weeping, getting the violent psychotic meltdowns or other overtly physical symptoms but I don’t think I’m okay.

But I can’t keep myself shut up not doing any of the things I like to do online because isolating myself is not helping me. I only did it because my psychotic episode was causing me to hurt my friends. I did this for them, but it’s not helping me beyond cutting off things that my psychosis could latch onto. It is more than capable of doing it on its own.

I am coming to terms with how my situation is not healthy, it is not sustainable, and it is not safe.

I feel that I am not safe and I do not have anyone I can trust. That my environment is unhealthy and is continuing to retraumatize me and that I am not receiving adequate care.

I am unable at this time to tell how much of this is delusion and how much is that people in my life are actually a danger to me. Psychosis is like that. But things have been getting clearer on many relationships and issues.

My roommate told me that he is going to be writing a letter to the landlord to try and convince them that I need to get my service dog and if that works I wouldn’t need to take it to court. But I can’t tell if that’s just an empty promise. I feel like I am being told what I want to hear in an effort to keep me under control. That I am being satiated just enough so I don’t get violent or kill myself. But that my environment is never going to improve in its current state.

There’s been a lot of empty promises. And with my psychosis makes the already difficult issues impossible to navigate.

I am very disabled. I know I type really well and talk a big game, all bark and no bite though basically. Truth is I am unable to take care of myself. And with covid and me being high risk I don’t know if I am capable to put myself into a new situation/environment where I can thrive at this time. I am at the mercy of whoever I can find as a guardian. This is not healthy, and is something that I cannot yet find an escape from. All that it seems I can do is hold on and wait until an opportunity presents itself, to submit to the freeze and fawn response until I’m able to make my move. A move I will need support that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around to make.

Obviously “cringing and waiting” isn’t something that severe mental illnesses are going to be play nice with. And this is why I am unstable.

I must stress that I am not an independent. I am not functional in society as an independent. And even with my service dog this may stay the same financially. I am stunted, slow, whatever gentle word you want to call mental retardation. And that on top of debilitating mental disorders and trauma disorders prevents me from functioning on my own.

I cannot have a job. I cannot leave the house by my own. I have a learning disability surrounding numbers, time, math, etc. I am slow enough that it is extremely difficult for me to go about daily adult tasks that most people take for granted. My physical body being shit just ads to that and makes me slow in an equally useless and infuriating way.

It is very easy to take advantage of me. And the combination of me being a dependent when combined with that is dangerous for my health.

I will be making a doctor appointment for the explicit purpose of getting a note to try and pressure the landlord. I know that once me and my service dog are a working team more opportunities to become more independent and to get myself out of this situation will be presenting themselves. But nothing can happen immediately, yet at the same time I am suffering from things not being resolved immediately.

I am living in a way that is constantly exposing me to stress and pain. And I have acknowledged I need to get out of it but don’t yet have the means to know how.

I do have friends who may be capable of helping, but the virus has put a roadblock on that help for now.

Things like moving, programs for people with disabilities, hospital visits, etc. have all been made impossible by the virus.

I have ruled out moving back in with my mother. Even though she has improved and I definitely see her as a victim of abuse and living with undiagnosed mental illnesses of her own it just is not safe for me to live with her.

The only thing I can do now is make the effort to try and protect myself from the things that are hurting me emotionally that I am currently incapable of getting away from.

And trying to push towards my dog.

Everything else is waiting for things to be capable of changing.

I have pinpointed what I believe triggered this week’s psychotic break. Residual trauma from the first Christmas spent knowing the holiday killed Zippy, combined with frequent exposure to traumatic stimuli and unhealthy power dynamics, financial and social stress, as well as an increased lack of support regarding being invalid.

I am not in a healthy situation.

I began to sniff out bad people with the intent to keep track of them to make sure they weren’t planning to hurt me. This is the same maladaptive strategy I have been using to make sure my birth father wasn’t planning to kill everyone at my mom’s house way back when. In reality, exposing myself to the evil culture of bad people is not helping me psychologically. And I am powerless to actually kill them like I wish I could. But I felt like I had some level of control knowing their every move after I have no control in the situations I am spending my daily life in. It’s like drinking a poison so you can ignore a gunshot wound. I wish I could treat the wound, but drinking the poison makes me forget about it for a while. Both are unhealthy, but the act of creating a new problem makes it easier to ignore the initial one that I have no ability to change. At the cost of my rapidly fraying mental stability.

My environment is not one that I can control. And it is not one that I can currently fix or leave.

For my safety I am not capable of going into detail about certain people and their effect on my health. Being a dependent means that this directly can threaten me at an already vulnerable time.

I need to get out of my current situation, but am incapable of doing so. This has caused an extreme amount of stress to build up to the point that my antipsychotics weren’t enough to keep me safe. I was told that even being on anti psychotics you can still experience episodes and down periods. Which is scary to think about.

But I have no avenue to change this situation at this time.

I do not know if I am fit to hold communications with people right now. I will not be returning to social groups until I am told explicitly that it is okay to do so. By my primary care physician, by my psychiatrist, and by the people I socialize with themselves. But I will now state that anyone may come to me with the explicit understanding that I don’t know if I am rational or mentally safe right now. You will be communicating with me at your own risk and understand that I may still be experiencing heightened amounts of unreality and delusions.

I am no longer experiencing violent symptoms. I have made the steps to prevent myself from doomscrolling and keeping tabs on my abusers. But I understand that I am not above the possibility of lapsing back into doing this.

I am now on my pain meds again. Being off them for an extended period of time was likely contributing to my psychological pain despite these meds themselves not being addictive, the relief they give me might have been.

I am currently only with 3 dolars in my bank account and 5 dollars cash. I will be getting paid in 12 days. I should have enough food to last me this long. It is stressful, but I was already anticipating this situation to happen at this time.

I am extremely sorry for allowing my delusions and sickness to hurt innocent people. It was not my intent to cause pain to others. Whilst I would like to explicitly remind people that my mental illness directly influences how I perceive reality and this can make it impossible to tell if I am justified in my actions at times, it still doesn’t make up for the pain it may cause in the process.

Friends have expressed pain at me saying that I am not recieving help and nobody is helping me despite them trying to support me online.

Please understand that I appreciate the energy you are sending my way, but I am explicitly venting about my living situation that you nor I have any way of fixing. In the future to help my friends not feel like I am ignoring their attempts at helping me I have created this disclaimer that I will be putting on posts about situations that online friends cannot help or change. I hope this will alleviate the pain of your efforts not solving my problems.

I appreciate everything people try to do for me, even if my mental illness makes me not see it at the time. I understand it is very difficult to be close to someone who doesn’t perceive reality properly all the time, and I may not always show it when I am being helped due to one issue being immediately replaced by another, but I do appreciate.

I have been told that despite me being clingy that I tend to push people away and isolate myself when I am hurting. This is because I was abused and treated badly for expressing clinginess. This included targeted stalking when I was still a minor. My brain had it beaten into me that if I was clingy towards people they would hate me and not want to be my friend. As a result I experience clinginess by violently wishing I could be close to them while trying to hide that from them and give them space. If anything this presents itself as persecutory jealousy. It is something I am trying to stop doing.

I also apologize for friends trying to do things with me, encourage me, socialize with me, and me being too exhausted to appreciate or join in. This is equal parts my distress at my living situation, my mental health, and my physical health. I spend most of my life far too exhausted to consistently socialize except for manic periods where I am desperate to do so. Again, the solution to this issue is post-covid changes to my living situation and the resources I have access to.

The point that I think sums this up though is that I cannot keep living like this. I will continue breaking down, I will continue having episodes, and I will continue lashing out. Violence is and always has been my answer to fear in situations I cannot change or leave.

I don’t know if there’s a way to fix this during covid, but I KNOW there isn’t an immediate way to fix this before I get my service dog.

Additionally: I do not want to be institutionalized, being trapped in a psych ward when you are not explicitly a danger to yourself or someone else will only make you worse, and calling police for “wellness checks” on disabled people who have ugly/scary mental illnesses will get them killed. Please understand that the system itself will not help me. I need to find a different solution. This unfortunately does involve jumping through hoops that I cannot at this time.

Again, I would like to state that I will be trying to return online, but I will not be engaging with people who haven’t explicitly come TO ME until my doctor, my psychiatrist, and those people themselves, let me know that I am allowed to do so. Please be advised that I may not currently be in a safe place mentally.

I will be trying to interact with art and media that I enjoy with minimal social contact with people outside of those who have come to me and are okay with that. Stressful things i will make every attempt to ignore.

[lyntendoswitch]

At the tail end of 2020 I discovered the video content of Tim Rogers who has inspired me to also voice my game opinions in an unnecessarily verbose and personal way. I don’t recommend clicking on the read more, but if you’d like to read a little bit about the best games I played this year, go on ahead.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch 9. A Short Hike 8. Disco Elysium 7. Personal 5 The Royal 6. Persona 3 Dancing In Moonlight 5. Vestaria Saga War of the Scions 4. Ring FIt Adventure 3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2. Hades 1. Animal Crossing New Horizons

2020 found me with an unprecedented amount of free time. I spent most of this year working for the government (a job with a very small brain effort that left me with evenings and weekends free to do whatever the hell). Additionally, I spent most of the year in quarantine with video games as my true, real friend and life companion. Compiling this list gave me more titles than ever to choose from, so I feel better about my list than ever. So here are the best games that I played this year.

Before I get into the top 10 I want to give 4 honourable mentions.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim This is the most recent game I played since making this list. I loved so many things about this game - the soft art style, the harsh music, the convoluted crazy plot. I love the aesthetic of this game and loved the characters - I believe it is rare to have an anime game where none of the characters irritate you. I even loved the combat, although I did not think I would. Something about shooting so very many missiles is so satisfying even when you don’t exactly know what is going on in the screen. The final battle in this game was definitely my favourite moment in this game - it was stressful, it was engaging, it was so extremely fun. The tragedy of this game comes down to personal taste. All time travel stories with complex timelines are bound to fall apart eventually, because no writer can keep all the threads together in a logical sense. 13 sentinels had so many story beats, plot twists, betrayals, and sci-fi tropes crammed into their storyline that I knew halfway through the story that there was no way they would be able to resolve all of it in a fulfilling way. I was, unfortunately, right - the ending explanation for all the chaos is, in my (correct) opinion, extremely lame. However, I certainly had fun on the journey.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses: Ashen Demons DLC I did not place this on my ranking since it is not really fleshed out enough to be considered its own game (unlike in previous years, where I have confidently but the Splatoon 2 Octoling Expansion as a separate title from Splatoon 2). However, this blog is, above all else, a Fire Emblem stan account, and I will not NOT talk about Fire Emblem. I do not care for the Abyss house. I think the characters are too close to being plucked out of the Fire Emblem Fates universe for comfort, and I mean this to be as profound an insult as possible. These characters are gimmicks above all else. I also do not care for the expanded lore that the sewer city brings to Garreg Mach. The idea of a centralized church school army is already so unstable, and to have a population of rat people living under it makes the whole foundation of the world crumble a little. However, the story and gameplay of the Ashen Demons DLC added something that the base game did not, which is challenge. (As an aside, I play on normal mode and am aware that there is challenge available to me if I wish for it.) FE3H offers you so many characters, so many paralogues, so many opportunities for training and stat increases, that eventually plot missions become completely boring. Ashen demons limiting everyone to new and interesting classes, limiting your available units, and preventing any sort of training made the chapters fun again. I found the chapter where you were supposed to outrun a golem before some gates closed fun as hell - it was my favourite part of the entire side story. 

Kentucky: Route Zero I played this game in February, and I remember not liking it at any point. It is confusing, disorienting, and lacked a clear goal. However, it has now been 10 months and I still think about it constantly - both the vignettes presented in it, and the way it made me feel. The Besties podcast made an excellent point about this game when they said that no one who plays this game ever compares it to other games - only books, movies, or paintings. The whole game is so fascinating and sticks with you - the wretched circle of a highway, the horse funeral. My favourite part is the live performance you attend at a run down diner with your party of four as the only audience. It is so quiet and contemplative and melancholy, and the scene is absolutely perfect. Kentucky Route Zero might be my favourite high concept artsy abstract artwork ever.

Blaseball As with everyone, it is difficult to call Blaseball a game. As the website says, it is a cultural event that I am so happy to participate in. I am so happy to have found a piece of media to fill the aching void that left by Homestuck when it ended, then re-opened the wound with their awful post-epilogue novel. I deleted my Twitter account this summer because I was tired of being angry and doomscrolling. And then, after Chris Plante on the Besties told me about Blaseball, I happily remade a Twitter account that only followed the official Blaseball account, the devs, and the numerous RP accounts. The quality of life improvement that having simulated, pleasant, hilarious social media to check every day is indescribable. It helped me cope with a rough life transition. Thank you, Blaseball. My favourite moment of 2020 is the 11pm boss battle of Shoe Thieves vs The Shelled One’s Pods.

And now....... The List.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch The start of 2020 was incredible because games journalism websites were churning out endless top 10 lists for both the end of 2019 as well as the end of the decade. I religiously picked through all of these lists and wrote down a list of 30 best indie games of this past decade that I missed out on for whatever reason. It was my first and last experience with a backlog - previously, I would simply impulse purchase games I really wanted to play, and I would not rest until the game is beaten. Having a backlog of things to try stressed me out endless and it dampened the impact of almost all of these quirky 1-6 hour indie experiences. However, not even the stress of meeting a self-imposed quota could dampen the impact of What Remains of Edith Finch. Exploring this house and playing through its various scenarios was so fascinating and beautiful. For me, the most impactful moment of the game was playing as the little girl who became an owl who became a sea serpent. That was when I realized I was not playing something that I would be thinking about for a very long time.

9. A Short Hike A Short Hike was the very first game I played off my backlog list of Best Indie Games. And boy, is it ever. This game takes 2 hours to finish but is absolutely saturated with heart and the exploration makes those 2 hours feel like you have been on a much longer and more fulfilling journey than you believed possible with so few hours. It is Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda combined, condensed, and polished into a beautiful pearl. I was so instantly in love with the characters and loved doing the little side quests. I also loved getting totally lost because I wanted to see how far I could swim and ended up on a different part of the island. The most impactful moment of this game is its finale, which I won’t spoil, but it is absolutely incredible.

8. Disco Elysium Many people more eloquent than me have said great things about Disco Elysium, and they are all correct. As someone who loves character building and creating a character to roleplay instead of playing as myself in a game, I have never been more enabled to do just that than Disco Elysium. The mystery was so cool, the mechanics are exactly what I like, the exploration is great. The one drawback of this game is that I literally cannot remember a single song from it. Maybe it had an amazing OST? Every game that is released nowadays has to have an amazing OST. There is so much reading in this game that the music really has to be unintrusive, and so it faded right into the background and out of my memory. I love that you could create your own persona in the game, but that you find your identification later and discover who you were before. Also, I would die for Kim Kitsuragi. The finale of this game also kicks ass - I will not spoil it but there is a moment that is so quiet and intimate that it took my breath away. What an amazing experience.

7. Persona 5: The Royal In 2017, I did something that is not the deciding factor, but definitely contributed to, my being sent to hell after I die. I was in an unhappy relationship and really wanted out, but my boyfriend at the time had a PS4 and I did not, and I really wanted to play Persona 5. As such, when he got the game and I borrowed it, I tried to finish it as quickly as possible so that I could give it back and break up with him. To my dismay, Persona 5 is upwards of 80 hours long, and I was burned out long before it was over. I finished the game with such resentment in my heart that I could not fathom why anyone would like it. As someone who is older, wiser, PS4-er, and in a better mental state, I decided to give P5R a try. Playing the remake at a much slower pace and really contemplating the story and characters made for a totally different and much more pleasant experience. I finally was able to shed my dislike for these characters who held me hostage 3 years ago and really appreciate them. Additionally, the new content they added to the original was SO good. The new music in Mementos makes that whole section bearable!! Akechi’s entirely reworked social link!! Maruki is one of Atlus’s most interesting characters, and the final dungeon was so so so interesting!! I am profoundly sad that I can’t recommend this game to anyone because 120 hours is just prohibitively long. Most impactful moment: when Akechi joins the party and he is like, totally feral, lol

6. Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight Every once in a while my palms start to itch because it has been entirely too long since I’ve played a rhythm game. This palm itch feeling sunk me deep into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy back in 2017, and this feeling forced me to impulse buy Persona 3 Dance. I am furious that I liked this game so much, because I know it was created simply to extract money from fools like me. The story was so blatant about it! “It’s a dream, ok? We’re all dancing because it’s a dream and none of this matters. Go play a song, idiot.” I’m not even angry at this - I almost respect the hustle. Additionally, it was so wonderful to hang out with the Persona 3 crew again. I did also play Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, but since I had already spent a hundred and twenty hours with the phantom thieves, there was no feeling of being reunited like with P3D. Also, in my mind palace, I consider P3D to have “actually happened”, and P5D to be the money grab hustle. S.E.E.S. is a cohesive unit. If Mitsuru Kirijo says it is time to dance, then dance we shall. I cannot be made to believe that Ryuji, Futaba, or Makoto will be compelled to dance even in a dream. Finally, having Elizabeth as your velvet room attendant did wonders. If there is a line between being a loveable eccentric and being annoying, Elizabeth tiptoes just around the former, whereas the twins are squarely located in the latter. The remixes in P3D also all kick ass (Burn My Dread Novoiski Mix? Deep Mentality Lotus Juice Mix?? Neither had any right to go as hard as they did), and I loved how they personalized the dance styles to the characters’ personalities. Even if this game was a money grabber, it was still made with love and respect for the series, and I loved playing it.  Most impactful moment: That first king crazy ranking on all night difficulty... god damn

5. Vestaria Saga: War of the Scions I had mentioned earlier that I appreciated the FE3H DLC for adding challenge back into 3 houses, but then I played Vestaria Saga and I realized I simply did not remember what challenge actually was. Vestaria Saga, the game by Fire Emblem’s creator, is the hardest Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played. This game honestly rules - it closes its door to the waifus of modern fire emblem games and is a return to form with political intrigue and smart tactical decisions and well-rounded characters. Every single chapter has these wonderful and deeply stressful plot twists and you always have to scramble to get all of the objectives complete without dying. There is a moment in this game where the main Lord, Zade, scolds princess Athol for being so reckless, how he had to force the army to fight a losing battle to rescue her, and look at how exhausted everyone is. He gestures to his army, and for the first time in a tactical RPG, I felt it. In all the fire emblems I play, my units end up being able to dodge and tank any hits they receive, but in Vestaria Saga finishing a map was a stressful, long, and sweaty process. I loved every second of playing this game - it is so rewarding in its gameplay and so rewarding in its story. Most impactful moment: the kiss!!! And how all of them face consequences immediately afterwards!!! I adore this game.

4. Ring Fit Adventure Ring Fit Adventure is the most fun I’ve ever had with a gimmicky fitness game. This game finally understands that they key to continuing with the game and building good habits is the ability to unlock and equip beautiful athleisure clothing. I actually got gains from Ring Fit Adventure, and I know this because I stopped playing it for a month, came back, and was unable to finish the reps at the difficulty I set for myself. This game make gym stuff so genuinely fun in a way that no one else has been able to do. I also really like the feel of the ring con! I have a few moderate complaints about it (a fitness game will never be perfect, unfortunately): you always start reps on the same side, and if you kill enemies then you don’t get a chance to try the other side at all, the motion sensor on yoga poses is wack, and FUCK the robot baseball minigame game to hell. Despite this, I absolutely adore this game and what it stands for. I may never beat the campaign, but it will always have a place in my heart. Most impactful moment: the first fight with Drageaux

3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake I was so so so curious about the hype surrounding this game that in the month before its release I manically played through the original Final Fantasy 7 so that I would have enough background information to be able to play and enjoy the remake. I was very glad I did. FF7R kicks ass. It is my favourite Final Fantasy game ever, and maybe it will always be so. I take a lot of issue with most FF games because they get too cosmically big and ridiculous and nonsensical by the end and that ruins the immersion of the story for me. Since FF7R only covers the Midgar portion of the original, it is forced to create grounded characters and a grounded, smaller scale story. And it is AMAZING. I loved every single minute of this game. The OST is incredible, and the art in it is absolutely unbelievable. I love how they incorporated random encounter enemies in this more realistic version. Also the dialogue!!! The way these characters banter with each other is so life-like and true to character that it boggles my mind. Even the NPC side conversations - never has a city or town felt so alive and filled with people than in FF7R. The ending of this game filled me with PRIMAL fear for the future, but it is so clear that the team making this game loves the world and its characters so much that I cautiously say I trust them to take the story further in the later remakes. Most impactful moment: Cloud saying “bring it on bitch” to an enemy made me black out laughing

2. Hades I generally stay away from rogue-likes and from real-time combat because for a game-liker I SURE am bad at video games. However, everything Supergiant Games ever makes seems tailor made for me, so when Hades came out of early access I bought it, and then I didn’t stop playing it until 80 hours later when I had unlocked everything ever. This game is SO good. The voice acting and storytelling is phenomenal. They did a spectacular job blending the story with the core gameplay elements. They made dying in a rogue-like fun and rewarding. The music is (as always) transcendent. I cannot say enough good things about Hades. Most impactful moment: a tie between the first time you watch the sunrise after your first successful escape, and the romance social link between Zagreus and Thanatos

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons Of course... Death Stranding may have prophesized the pandemic, but Nintendo created it to sell copies Animal Crossing New Horizons. This game saved all of us. The experience of having so many people I knew playing the same game all the time for the entirety of March and April was so incredible. I have plenty of quips about ACNH with relation to old games in the series (I loathe crafting, I loathe printing out Nook Miles Tickets one by one, and I worry that the sandbox landscaping feel of this game makes me less inclined than ever to actually talk to my villagers), but while they are all valid criticisms, they certainly did not stop me from pouring 350 hours and counting into this game. I have loved slowly, carefully crafting my island into a replica of Garreg Mach. I have loved collecting furniture and making turnip money and completing the museum. There is simply no other game that can be 2020′s game of the year. Most impactful moment: checking your mail and having one of your friends mail you an item that reminded them of you