#It wouldn't be an issue if I was being paid a bit more regularly but also had a higher income lol

[sysig]

Today: Teeth hurt, batteries are sold exorbitantly but only in person, and I think I have Tamagotchis now

[alespov]

thinking about older neighbor Leon 18+

{ tw; jealous Leon, age gap! terrible boyfriend objects being thrown, and mention of Leon getting into a fight. gn! reader, use of nickname 'princess" }

-Leon the retired D.S.O agent in need of a purpose in life, but he doesn't want to enter the agent life again. So what does he do, he opens up a mechanic shop. In the middle of a small town.

-He moved to a small suburb where he met you. His younger neighbor who at the time was having car troubles, and he wasn't one to pry but it also seemed you were having relationship issues as well.

-When he wasn't busy on a Wednesday afternoon, he made time to fix your car, while he was fixing your car. After a while he regularly started doing maintenance for your car,he didn't want you to get taken advantage of by other car mechanics. Leon had your best interest in mind. Sometimes you brought him an array of beverages and homemade desserts, as a sign of your gratitude.

-As time went on, Leon made sure to help you with other tasks. For instance, he cleaned your pool, cleaned your gutters, or helped you rake your leaves. Tom wasn't going to help you do it, Leon didn't like Tom. He had always thought Tom was more concerned about his phone than his girlfriend.

-Tom would often complain about Leon helping you so much, that you hardly paid Tom any attention. Simply because he always wanted to start a fight, Tom wouldn't do any housework or be affectionate with you. One night Tom was complaining about everything, he started to yell at you and throw stuff around the house.

You and him started arguing louder and this finally caught Leon's attention. "What's your problem, all you do is hang around with that stupid blonde idiot other there." He yelled at you, trying to intimate you. "What's my problem? My problem is you wouldn't pay any mind to me, so stop treating me like an option or you'll see how many I have". you wailed

-Tom stormed out of the house quickly, and you fell to the floor sobbing, you did truly love Tom. As of right now, you weren't so sure, all you wanted was some attention. You felt comforting arms wrap themselves tightly around you and heard sweet-nothings being sung into your ear.

-"Don't pay him any mind, he doesn't deserve you." Leon mumbed into your ear. He took off his coat wrapped it around you snugly, and carried you to his house. He sat you down on the chair so he could open the door. He picked you back up carried you up the stairs placed you in his bed, and pulled his covers on you.

"Stay right here princess, I'll take care of Tom for you."

-You didn't look over at the clock, but at some point, you drifted off to sleep. Until you heard the birds chirping and Leon moving downstairs. You got up and walked quietly down the stairs and tried to find the kitchen or wherever Leon was.

-"Oh good, you're finally up." You turned to your right and Leon was sitting in on the couch. you giggled softly and made your way to him, you hugged him and held on for a bit. You felt his strong arms wrap around and pull you closer."

"Thank you for coming to my rescue." you mumbled to him.

-You let him go and noticed his hands, were bruised. You didn't ask about it, You already had an idea of what he did.

-After that night, Tom never bothered you again, Honestly you never saw him around town or anywhere. Time flew by and you Leon got closer and eventually began dating. You were happier in this relationship, Leon worshiped you. He made you sure you were loved, he made sure he listened to you.

-So yeah you were glad you fell for your older neighbor.

| also accepting requests for Leon and Wesker|

[brightcalamity]

Spoilers about late game things:

Man, Wei is weird, isn't he? (This is a compliment) Making an opposite of a guy who is comically evil, and you get a guy who should be...comically good? I hope that's where they're going, because that's how I read him.

Quotes:

Wei:

Well, if you know my brother's birthday, you know mine. But in case you didn't, it's the 14th of Autumn. They say there was a solar eclipse that day.

So are Wei and Yan like those 7 brothers from Portia? Except instead of the colors of the rainbow, they're light and dark? Good and evil? Yan is the dark shadow that blocks out the sun that is Wei? But he's also the guy who shoplifts from Arvio? It actually makes me feel a tiny bit sorry for Yan. Like, was he capable of being any better than he is?

Our father used to always tell us, "Be hard on yourself, go easy on others." He always tried his best with Yan, but my brother... There was no getting through to him. When I moved in, I found engraved in his desk... "Go easy on yourself, go hard on others." How strange that he relishes in such behavior...

Cursed...

I was a guild commissioner previously; I'd regularly join expedition teams going in to the Peripheries. We'd always hire a crack team to fight alongside us. We were careful. Always did everything right. One excursion, my team abandoned me out there, having been paid off by Yan. That... is a story for another time...

Poor Wei...

⁠My brother did always enjoy playing his identity swapping games... Prior to this, the longest he ever got away with it was a month in middle school when I went away for the grammar rodeo... When I got back I had some choice words for him, all of which were carefully constructed semantically!⁠ ⁠ Long ago I had a true love by the name of Esmerelda. She, too, was taken from me by my brother. One day, i came home to find her furious. She claimed that I had said the most horrible things to her. I tried to explain that I have an evil twin...! But she wouldn't believe me...

This poor man....

We send Yan to jail, and we don't have to deal with him again. I can't help but think that Wei is going to be haunted by him for the rest of his life.

Don't worry about my brother coming after either of us. He's safely locked away in a maximum security prison, and his assets have all been frozen. So even if he did have some way to communicate with his shady associates, he'd have no leverage.

:( For your sake, Wei, I hope so.

Hugo:

I feel for Wei. I mean, somewhere, deep down, he's got to have some love for his brother. It must be hard to deal with family like that. People who have just completely lost their way...

I think Wei needs therapy.

Miguel:

Yes. You all are free from Yan's loathsome presence. I however, am forced to bask in it...

You made this bed, Miguel. No, I still feel sorry for you.

Qi:

The twin commissioners are a fantastic study in the nature vs. nurture issue. Of course, these two men have identical DNA, so what exactly led them to become such different people? Hypothesis one: it's the mustache.

I think this is a bias being expressed by the creators of the game which show why they only give us ugly facial hair options.

Unsuur:

With Wei around, it kinda feels like Yan is still a member of town. Except he's, like, good. Most bad guys we meet end up being misunderstood and eventually turn good. It's almost as if... The only way Yan could ever be good is if he were a different person completely. Hm...

This one is probably actual commentary, though, ha.

Venti:

I heard you got a new Commissioner! Did he increase your salary? New healthcare plan? Well, at the very least, is he providing free mustache removals?

Wait! My mustache conspiracy theory! There's more evidence!!!

Okay, I'm kind of bummed because I was searching the wiki for a dialogue line I think is kind of interesting. Like, he says Mi-an is teaching him about "fun." Like, he didn't get it before. He went to grammar contests as a kid. He reads in his spare time. I enjoy the idea of him being just so wholesome and Good that he's just as much of a weirdo as everyone else in town.

Yan also gets disappointed in you when you give him gold and he realizes you probably just found it instead of stealing it. He enjoys his evil. Getting something honestly makes him sick. The closest he comes to giving a shit is if you get to be besties with him and he says he'd try to betray you less than everyone else. He still betrays you basically just as much or even more than them (since you're pals with him).

Hm? Yes, of course, I cheat on the Builder Charts! You'd be a fool not to! Do you have any idea how hard it is to win that thing legitimately? Eh? You don't cheat? What's wrong with you? I thought you were cool! Oh, and don't even think of trying to turn me in. I'll lie!

Since he's evil in like a magic way (and a dumb way, since if he was less like he is, he'd get away with more) I bet he enjoys when he betrays you because you're pals. If he likes you, it's because of the way he sees himself in you. He makes assumptions about your behavior and is disappointed when you act differently than he would. He could have left Wei alone and done his evil, but instead he had to ruin his life over and over.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. Wei should be his bright mirror. He takes up knitting as a hobby and ends up making baby blankets and caps for cancer patients on the side. He goes on the roller coaster and there's an accident but he fixes whatever broke before anyone got hurt. You see him checking out the new woods and he's walking through it and birds and desert hares flock to him.

If you're going to do the evil twin thing, I think you need to push it until it's ludicrous.

[fentrashcat]

Tourettes Awareness Month, June 6!

Had a tic attack for the first time in a while today, and a post from thatdudewithtics (idk how they feel about tags so the post I'm talking about is here) got me thinking.

I want to talk about the frustration that comes with an unsteady disability, as well as my experience applying for disability. Today might get heavy. I'm also still exhausted despite taking a 4hr nap so I'm not sure how clear this will be 😅.

⚠️everyone with TS or tic disorders will have their own experience, this is just mine.

Disability Process

So I started my application on line, but was sent paperwork to do in person. My tics don't like paperwork. I only had one black pen and had yet to find the last one I threw the previous week (btw been almost a year and STILL haven't found it), so I was suppressing my fling tic to do this paper work. It took 3 hours to do 8 pages, the whole time fighting against my own body. Suppression HURTS. It also leads to a heavier retaliation later. The day after I did the paperwork I had a severe tic attack and had to leave work after only an hour.

After this they said I needed to meet one of their doctors. I expected this, had to rearrange my work schedule and find someone who could drive me. The day of was actually a good day for my tics, and the doctor seemed really nice and it was a good environment so while I was ticcing it wasn't extreme. I noticed the doctor focused more on my depression and anxiety, but thought we'd get to my tics after. We never did and I was a bit too anxious to be like "I'm here for my Tourette's". Ik it's kind of dumb, I need to advocate for myself better, but I just can't sometimes.

A few days later I see a file uploaded to my clinical notes at my GP. I hadn't visited them in a while so I was confused. Checking the letter showed that it was from the disability doctor, and showed that he not only barely listened to me, but that he hadn't even paid attention to the tics that happened in his office.

My disability was denied, of course. I appealed it and had to do some honestly VERY confusing online paperwork, in which I attach a copy of the doctors letter highlighting all the things he had wrong. Appeal was denied and to appeal AGAIN I'd have to find a lawyer. I can't drive, and I wouldn't even know how to start on that stuff so I kind of just dropped it. It was around this time I had issues at work so severe that my hours were cut to maybe 12 a week? I'm extremely lucky in the fact that I live in a house owned by family and my mom could cover my bills, but I know that won't last forever. The year before last I was covering my bills by paying my mom back over the month but I couldn't even do that now. I need to reapply but I know I'm not taken seriously, and I'll be denied again.

Semi-visible Disability

Tourettes is one of those things that when it's bad it's clear you have trouble, but when it's good it's almost unnoticeable. I've probably mentioned before my grandpa saying "talking to you like this, I would never know, but I've seen it when it gets bad." And that's probably the best way to sum it up.

On a low tic day people don't believe you or tell you it's not so bad, "you don't look disabled". On a high tic day people treat you Different. Either babying you or being afraid/anxious about your tics.

Not to mention the stigma around saying you have Tourettes Syndrome. Like I've been in a job interview and I usually avoid mentioning TS but my tics were acting up a bit so I had to explain. I could just feel the change in the interviewer, like they had been liking me but the moment I mentioned TS they were suddenly rushed to finish the interview and of course I never heard from them again. This happens in other situations too, but the job shit is what causes issues more in my life.

So I feel stuck in a limbo of "too disabled to work regularly" but "not disabled enough for disability" and it really really sucks. It's also frustrating knowing that no matter what I can't stop my tics fully.

Today's attack happened at my house, no obvious triggers or anything different, it just happend. I feel like I don't have control of my own body. I try my best to manage and prevent bad tics but I can't. I don't get to chose to not throw shit, or not do something painful. I just have to live with it, and it sucks. Obviously I try to stay upbeat, I cope with humor and I even think some of my tics are funny or kinda cute but it's still a disability. It still makes life so much harder than if I didn't have it. I'm tired.

Thanks for reading, sorry for today being heavy. I'm still really tired so I might be going back to sleep. Asks are open if anyone has questions.

[subdee]

ADHD anon. Thank you for your answer. A lot of what you said was very relatable. I've also had periods of my life where the ADHD seems to improve without medication. Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people seem to be what works. The ADHD gets worse when I'm using the computer regularly.

It's interesting that you recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. My dad gifted me this book with the earnest advice to read it and I never did. Maybe I should.

If you don't mind me asking one more thing: How does the ADHD affect your ability to care for a baby? I ask because my partner and I both have ADHD and kids might be a thing for us in the future.

My partner is capable of holding high ranking, highly demanding, specialized jobs. He operates on the same high and low energy states that you mentioned. He works so effectively when he's on adderall, but when he crashes it can turn into an emotional breakdown for him.

Neither of us are currently taking medication because the side effects are too disruptive to our lives. My partner recently quit his job due to mental health problems. I'm not too concerned about the financial end of this because his skills are in high demand, but I am worried about this intense emotional/energy cycle becoming a non-stop issue for his health. I also worry that he won't be able to help with childcare for this reason, even though he has an evident paternal instinct around kids and he was raised by a house husband.

I have a hope in the back of my mind that if we did have a baby, parental instinct would override the difficulties of ADHD. However, I suspect this is not something I can know for sure until it's too late to go back on the decision.

"Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people" <- This is it exactly, yes, thank you. By this measure there are a lot of people with ADHD who manage by either creating or lucking into the right environment (shout-out to the self-help book Driven to Distraction that recommended, essentially, being a dude and marrying a woman who could attend to all the details for you lmao).

About the parent thing... We've only been parents for about four months now so I don't want to pass myself off as an expert. For me, I'm on the older side (late 30s) but I don't think I could have had children any younger than this. Children really require a lot of managerial and organizational skills, especially as they get older and you have to manage their schedules for them. I never had those skills when I was younger, but I was essentially forced to develop them at work because I'm in a position of responsibility where bad things will happen if I don't do my job properly.

And the other part of that is, not only did I have to learn the skills, but after a decade of teaching I **feel** skilled and valued at work, and also in my relationship with my spouse (we've been together seven years). All of that gave me the confidence to try having a kid....

I don't think everyone has to be as old as me, but I think it helps to FEEL settled, to feel that you'll figure it out even if it's tough. And then raising a kid is a big financial commitment and job protections for new parents in the US aren't great, lolsob, so even more than the ADHD I would say that being confident I wouldn't **lose my job** if I took six months off to care for a child was the biggest factor in feeling ready.

As far as whether you'll be able to manage caring for a baby while having ADHD... it really depends on your situation and what kind of support network you have... If there are grandparents or other extended family/friend in the picture to help out, or if you have the money for paid help, then you can relax a little bit.

I haven't found focusing on the baby to be any kind of problem, though, because, well, you have to do it. You know? There's no getting around the fact that baby needs you to feed and change and bathe and burp and hold and play with them and etc etc. They can't even fall asleep on their own without you (alas)!

So whether you feel able to do it or not you just have to do it, unless again you have that great support network. I don't know about you but I personally find that a lot of ADHD difficulties go away when it's something concrete I have to do, with clear consequences if I don't do it right now.

About your partner, I don't know your specific situation but I wouldn't have a kid with anyone I couldn't rely on to help out with the childcare. Of course we all have our breaking points and sometimes RJ needs downtime and sometimes I need downtime and neither of us is 100% all the time *especially on days like today when the baby has been waking up every hour all night long (and this has been going on for weeks (and I'm almost always the person getting up in the middle of the night))* But no way I personally could be the only person caring for Baby. I need my husband to occasionally be the person who gets up in the middle of the night so I can sleep, who occasionally plays with the baby so I can have the morning off, who occasionally feeds the baby because my back hurts, etc etc. I'm sure your guy is lovely but babies take a lot of time and energy.

That's my personal two cents, and you'd know better than I would how often you'll be able to count on your guy when you need him. Maybe a more traditional split with your guy making the money and you doing the childcare would work for you guys, it seems to work for some people. Maybe he'll step up when it's clutch time, some people perform better under pressure. Really it all depends. I couldn't be the woman in this relationship though, not under any circumstances:

https://botharetrue.substack.com/p/i-cannot-handle-my-sons-crying

Anyway. It depends on your baby too, and whether you grew up around children and know how to care for them (I didn't) or whether you'll be muddling through. Some babies are easier to care for than others. Ours is good-natured but he had stomach issues and now he has sleep issues. Also he's at the age when he craves stimulation and if we don't take him somewhere interesting at least once a day he gets cranky and indignant - he also needs tons of exercise every day like Michael Phelps or he can't settle enough to eat or sleep - ADHD probably to be honest.

One thing that no one tells you about babies but that helps in caring for them - they come with a learning curve. They are actually pretty easy to care for in the beginning and the difficulty increases gradually. So you do have some time to adjust.

[ttrpgcafe]

I have Bo Burnham's "Art is Dead" stuck in my head, and I'm about to make that everyone else's problem. Bo is talking about how much the pursuit of money has ruined his passion for the pure joy of creation in his song, and I can't help but think of my relationship with ttrpgs in a similar light.

I haven't personally made anything more substantial than a cute little receipt paper rpg, but even that project broke my soul a little bit. See, for those who aren't familiar with my blog, (most of you) I run a ttrpg book club at my lgs, and for the first year and a half of its life, I did so as an employee. I would clock in for the book club like I would any other shift at my store, and a part of me was very proud that I now had "professional gm" on my resume for a third time. (A story for another time) Another, much more cynical part of me loathed the concept of a paid gm.

Now, I managed to keep my conscience mostly clean as it relates to the book club by convincing management to let me run it without customers paying on the principal that it would sell books that otherwise wouldn't have moved onto or off of our shelves. And I overcame my guilt about essentially doing 3-4 hour ads every week by telling myself that no one was required to buy the book, and if they did, they'd also be supporting the authors behind the book.

This came to a head when management decided to start charging people to attend, as I simply wasn't moving enough product to cover my hourly wage. I offered to do it for free, and they said no, because I was, at the end of the day, still doing advertising for them, and there's both ethical and legal issues there, according to them. They also claimed that it was to increase engagement, as once a person pays for an event, they're more likely to show up for it, and we were having the same problem every ttrog table has: life kept on happening to our players.

I just. Hate this.

I hate that I want to spend my time enjoying beautiful, thoughtful, deeply interesting art, and there's just no way to do that at my lgs without money being involved one way or another.

I feel like I should be very clear here: I've worked at 2 game stores in my life, and I won't name either so as not to get in trouble, but my experience at both was wildly different.

At my first, I was one of 3 employees, including both owners, and at $9\hr, 27 hours a week, I was taking home the largest paycheck of us all. The two owners had living situations that meant that they could afford to take a pay cut so that I could afford to keep working there, and our community's space could remain open and affordable. My boss would come to work in a beat up old car that he couldn't afford to get fixed, but kept paying me what he thought was the fairest wage he could afford to pay. To this day, those owners are the only capitalists I'll ever respect, because I feel like they shared my disdain for the money required to participate in the industry. Their game spaces were always free, there were very few paid events, and when there were, it was usually because there was a cost involved that the needed to recoup somehow.

In contrast, my most recent job has uniforms, an online storefront, and we regularly get asked "where are your other locations" despite not having any because we feel so corporate. My boss literally races cars in her free time, and we barely make enough to get by. I made more here than I did at the other store, and I never felt for a second like it was a fair wage. It was so obvious to me from day one that this was an enterprise built on the premise of making money, rather than fostering a community. All of our events were paid. (save my book club, until it became a paid event too) The general idea is that you aren't technically required to spend money to get a table, but you can only take tables not being used for events, and our game space regularly gets entirely filled up with events, such that there are no open tables. There's a private, quiet room, away from what *will be* a noisy, crowded game room, but only for a fee, and you aren't allowed to book it regularly (some events, such as my book club are, thankfully, the exception, but I'm also not your average customer, and the event wouldn't happen if I didn't have that room).

Whereas my first game store felt like a community gathering place that sold games to keep the lights on in the same way a church passes around a collection plate, my most recent game store feels like it has a game room exclusively for the purposes of extracting more money from the games it already sells.

All of this serves to illustrate my frustration with money in the industry. Designers will lovingly craft a piece of art that they want to share with the world, but in order to keep making a living, they've got to participate in this system that wants to give them as little as possible and get as much out of them as it can.

I have so many ideas for games that I think have genuine merit, but I don't want to produce them because then I'll either have to charge for it, thereby participating in this vicious cycle, or put it up for free, and thereby make it feel like all of my work was for nothing, because it's impossible to make a living giving things away for free.

I guess the moral of the story is capitalism bad?

[dimespin]

How well-known are Hydras outside of their native range? Because I can imagine Ani and Adler being mistaken for a sufferer of Magical Matric Malformation by people unfamiliar with with hydras while they were taking case histories. Relatedly, is MMM the term for what Ipswitch has?

Alligator hydras are semi well known outside their natural range, at least during the era I'm usually depicting. The majority of people have at least vaguely heard of such a creature existing, though a lot of them could not tell you a single thing besides that they're two headed and scaly.

They regularly shock people with their vocal mimicry for example, because not everyone is aware that's a thing they can do, even though it's an inescapable fact about them for locals who live near hydra populations.

And even then, sort of like how many animal lovers find themselves shocked to be the person telling another person for the first time about the existence of animals they took for granted as an "everyone knows about those" type of animal, Ani and Adler regularly run into people who have never heard of such a thing at all.

Most people don't know much about MMM it's considered basically a rare medical condition, people know about it only when they need to (like learning about it in medical school or because they or someone they know has it) so people usually don't jump to that conclusion upon seeing anyone - those in the know, like professionals, know that the human face is usually somewhat preserved even if other structures change drastically, so Ani and Adler don't look like the usual expected stereotype for the condition in any case.

What Ipswich has is a bit different but somewhat related. Book animals like him (the fellas that look like furries) basically have something akin to an artificial MMM but medically it still wouldn't be called that. Probably in the literature Ani and Adler would call what's going on with book animals something like "typical inherited zoomorphic magical matrix"

But the condition he acquired is separate from that, it's an acquired magical disfigurement, sort of like a scar from a burn. People with MMM are born that way, as are book animals, but Ipswich ended up with a third hand and second tail as an adult due to a work accident.

But because he was born a book animal, there's no part of his body that can just have magic purely removed to fix the issue. A similar disfigurement on a standard human may have been fixable, but they couldn't remove magic from him without basically melting him to cell goo, so he has to live with it.

(and anyone curious about where Hyssop fits on this scale: he could probably have his spell removed, but while it wouldn't kill him, he'd be worse off for it and wouldn't be able to use the ability he paid so dearly for - and he wouldn't be bright orange any more either and we can't have that)

[race-week]

hi al! what caused williams to perform so badly in the last few years? what went wrong exactly?

Hi anon.

This is a fantastic question and not really one that can be answered quickly, so grab on.

What caused Williams' fall from grace?

I mean firstly there's not really a singular cause behind it, but how could they go from 3rd in the constructors in 2014 and 2015 to 10th in 2018.

Saying that the main reason is money, they found themselves in a position on the grid as the last independent team, they were battling in a field of big manufacturer teams with massive budgets and smaller teams that had paired up with the bigger forces.

If you really wanted to go back, you could go back to the 1998 Concorde Agreement where it was written that the teams would split just 23% of F1's revenue between the 12 of them, when previously it was 85%. Most teams during this time (1998 - 2007) either sold out or folded, it was too difficult to continue as a independent team, as they were virtually making the whole car themselves and only purchasing the engine.

In 2008 there was a financial crisis, and the team struggled with a lack of investment and funding, a lot of the F1 teams suffered during this time too, Honda pulled out of F1 - not related to Williams though.

2009 came along and some of the bigger teams started to adopt the struggling teams, money was still an issue at this time. The Red Bull Toro Rosso link already existed, but Mercedes paired up with Force India and later Ferrari and Sauber.

The costs for F1 continued to rise year after year, and teams had to keep investing money to try to remain competitive. There was always new materials, better facilities, new technologies that needed more and more cash injections, and there just wasn't necessarily that for Williams. Partly because Sir Frank didn't want to sell part of the team. There were investment companies interested, but the family wanted to continue running the team as they always had done.

By not being manufacturer-owned or with an own engine division Williams found itself betwixt and between: Larger than the B-Teams, yet smaller than the major teams, all of whom have wealthy owners, be they car brands or drinks companies. Thus Williams is neither A or B-Team, yet, crucially, carries all the overheads of the former while not having access to parent company funding (i.e Mercedes F1 getting money from the car manufacturer).

Williams found themselves in a position where they had no other option than to sign pay-drivers, however even they didn't necessarily have the same 'big money' sponsors than they once had. This therefore meant that even if they could make a good car, they wouldn't be regularly fighting where they wanted.

They had a bit of a rethink of how the team was run before the 2014 season, and this paid off, 2014 and 2015 were their strongest years since 2002 and 2003. However once again things started to decline in the following few years. Then they found themselves again at the bottom of the table, it's hard for a team at the bottom of the grid to get and retain sponsors just because the cars aren't seen as much on camera. Claire said around 2018 that there was a handful of issues within Williams and that it takes a long time to turn a team around in F1, its true, a team can fall massively if they aren't constantly improving but then getting back up the grid is never instantaneous.

Honestly they didn't have the money to continue competing at the front with the teams that have owners who can give massive cash injections, F1 isn't profitable, most teams are lucky to break even at the end of the season. In short Williams found themselves in a positive feedback loop, where if they struggled one year they wouldn't get much prize money and as such, wouldn't have the funds to invest in the car and as such would struggle again. Failure fueling more failure.

It's also rumoured that Claire had ideas on how to improve the team and get that much needed cash flow, without joining forces with a bigger team, but Frank wasn't a fan.