#This put my ocd to rest for some reason

[nukitan]

I absolutely adore the new Impmon line. Apparently so much so I wrote a wall of text gushing about it, but I'll put that under the cut to spare those who don't care's dash.

Where do I start, there's so much to love about this gift. The punk and reptilian ascetic blends perfectly into Beelzemon with his biker look and his lizard tail/claws so if you didn't want to go with the Megidramon mega you can swap in Beelzemon just fine. I honestly like it better thematically than the Wizardmon -> Baalmon line, (even though Baalmon is cooler aesthetically) it always bothered me that Wizardmon felt tacked on and slightly out of place since it wasn't a virus. I know the X antibody forms helped fold them together more design wise, and they're an awesome line, but that still doesn't fix the non-x line for me... not that all digimon need a clean and clear through line persay, but you know.

I've seen people call it "Just a recolor" and I feel like it's so much more than that. I've always liked the regional variants in Pokémon becuase they breathe new life into old designs while still making a unique feeling creature. It's the same principle here.

And while it's sad we didn't get a full canon Beelstarmon line, I like this so much more. And I feel like Impmon -> Witchmon -> LadyDevimon already fits Beelstarmon just as much as Wizardmon/Baalmon fits Beelzemon, so I don't really feel the need for a full new Fem line for Beelstarmon.

And the connections to Guilmom are just... chef's kiss. People have pointed out that Guilmon has a good sorcer line with FlareWizardmon -> Mistymon -> MedievalDukemon that matches up well with Impmon's Wizardmon line so Impmon getting a reptilian line to match up with Guilmon is just so cool. And it makes it all the cooler that Impmon was originally going to be Takato's partner, apparently.

I feel like I'm rambling, I just wanted to gush about the Punk Growlmon. After years of the Impmon line feeling rocky and incomplete on some levels, I feel like all is finally right with the world and my ocd with its line can finally rest. I don't like remembering the dark days where the best line we had was Meramon -> Skull/DeathMeramon -> Beelzemon. It gives me war flashbacks.

Now I need a Galletmon/Dukemon and Beelzemon jogress. Give it to me Bandai.

Okay I'll actually shut up now. Thank you for reading my pointless rant.

[tantei-chan01]

So I'm not sure if you add in lore from The Beat Goes On or Trollstopia, or if your only focusing on the movies, but some very interesting things that come about from both animated series is that it really adds to Branch's adorable character and canonized the fact that pretty much everyone adores him, awkward dorkiness and all. He's very, very goofy, and I love him.

Some of my favorite funfacts from the series is that Branch goes to 4AM Raves after being introduced to the concept (originally due to a compromise because the TechnoTrolls were using his favorite hot spring for it turned to a genuine love), likes all types of music after being introduced to it, loves puzzles to an obsessive degree along with his other more natural OCD tendencies, and actually did take part in all the different Holidays and traditions of the Pop Trolls even while be was gray but did so form the safety of his bunker. Its also during these series we get the first hints the bunker meant more to Branch than what we had originally thought.

My favorite favt is the one about the rave, though. Just imagine they all get back from the events of Band Together, after JD got his rights punched out by Barb and they all take some time to rest and relax, and then the brothers are woken up by Branch trying to sneak out at like 4 in the morning (he's not used to people in the bunker and has gotten used to not having to sneak around anymore after everything) and find out it's because their adorable, mute baby brother is going to a RAVE with some technotroll who keeps calling him Dubstep.

There's a reason why I put up a poll, the result changes the storyline of trollstopia

About 2 months after Floyd's rescue and the integration of the Putt-Putt trolls, Poppy comes up with the idea of Trollstopia. After everything that's happened, she realizes that the Pop trolls are behind in many things, like medicine, education, and engineering. They've mastered agriculture, effective natural remedies (with the exception of Branch due to him being rare case), and the art of desserts but not much else. If Trollstopia works, every troll will benefit from it.

Poppy pitches this idea to Branch and his brothers (Bruce is back at Vacay Island and visits often thanks to the Flier Bugs.). They think it's a good idea, but it will take the cooperation of every tribe to make it work. Aside from Branch and JD, none of the other trolls have been in one place together for an extended period of time. Floyd rarely went to the other genres territories, Bruce has only interacted with the occasional Techno troll that washed up on the shore, and Clay's never left the Putt-Putt course. Poppy urges that this would be a great step to achieve Harmony, even if it'll be hard. Branch agrees to help with the condition that he can invite the sub-genre tribes. Poppy readily agrees, and so begins the first step of Trollstopia

[liesmyth]

my locked tomb hot take of the day is that the way Harrow’s symptoms are presented in HtN line up much more closely with religious OCD with poor insight and psychotic features than schizophrenia. She shows almost no signs of paranoia or delusions (G1deon really was trying to kill her! It’s absolutely true that the other houses would swoop in like vultures if they knew her house’s true position! Her sword and psyche were both actually haunted, to the point that Alecto could hitch a ride in her body. She is never shown in the text to hold a belief that is inconsistent with reality, IMO) and her only true psychotic symptom that we see is hallucinations, and she seems to most of the time have some idea that they aren’t real, which indicates a level of self awareness incompatible with schizophrenia. She also doesn’t seem to display many cognitive symptoms like thought block or disorganized speech and thinking. The rest of her behavior is highly obsessive (compulsive praying, wearing face paint even when nobody is around, obsessive studying, needing her food to be arranged on her plate a certain way) and is very in line with someone suffering from religious scrupulosity. As someone who has experienced both OCD and psychosis, and knows how the symptoms can overlap, this is is the hill I will die on.

I don't feel like I can contribute in any meaningful way to your points, so I'll just put this out into the world and say that I appreciate your insights!

Speaking from a #meta perspective: I know that around the time HtN came out, Tamsyn gave interviews talking about her own experiences being hospitalised for mental health reasons and implied that was what she was partly drawing on when writing HtN. I can't remember if she called Harrow schizophrenic or stated that it was her intention to write her as such, and the author is dead anyway. Plus, obviously, the fact that someone's writing was informed by irl experiences doesn't have to mean that said writing is a 1:1 parallel for those experiences, expecially in a sff setting where ghosts exists and in fact there's something that Harrow can see and nobody else can.

TO ME, the fact that people who experience psychotic episodes can recognise themselves in Harrow's internal monologue and experiences is more meaningful than whether Harrow “really” has a given specific disorder or she's just seeing ghosts. The point is that SHE feels a disconnect from reality and that she's delusional and cannot trust anything she remembers or reads. Nobody in-universe is ever going to diagnose her, you know? The series itself doesn't claim to be straight-up representation for any specific named issues — things like Cytherea's cancer or Harrow's mental state are left ambiguous and partly influenced by magic. I think the fact that readers can relate to some symptoms some characters experience is more meaningful than whether these symptoms all point to something that can be diagnosed unambiguously.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me!

[dersandmannkommt]

!! tw: ocd !!

new contamination trigger!!!!! woohoo! guess what it is?!?!

showering. yes. showering. y'know, the thing that makes you clean?...had a panic attack in the shower not even 20 minutes ago because if the water if touching me, then it's also touching potential germs and viruses and rashes, and the water will spread to non-contaminated parts of me, and spread it there, and so on. ive convinced myself that i somehow have mrsa??? i know that in less than a week, i'll be okay again, but ocd is ocd. writing these out actually help a lot; reminds me that even though my fears are valid and justified, obsessing the way i do is a bit silly.

if you have ocd, and youre still reading, heres a coping tip (this works for all ocd's btw) (currently the only thing keeping me from running to urgent care "just to be sure"). let's say theres a spot on your arm, dont tell yourself that "its not (fill in the blank), its not ____, its not ____, its nothing contagious!!" because youre only feeding into the fear. instead, imagine the worst case scenario head on. you have to. otherwise you'll just be running from the fears you obsess over for the rest of your life.

you have to imagine the worst case scenario, and then walk yourself through it all working out. like, i also have a fear of cars. ever since i was a kid, i would imagine them flipping over, me getting impaled by whatever i was holding, flying out the window, getting crushed, ect, the only reason i can even get into a car is because i imagine the worst case, and then picture everything working out. the car flipped over? im okay, a trip to the hospital and im home within a few days. or what about something like pink eye? worst case, i get it in both eyes. does that suck? yeah. is it scary? yeah. BUT people get pink eye, and then they. get. better. they wash their hands after touching their eyes, wash their pillow case, put some eye drops in, and move on with their life. i have to be able to do that. i have to be able to continue living.

so yeah, i was afraid to shower. but i did. i dont think i have mrsa. but even if i do, the sun stays warm, the earth spins, and it will heal and go away. if i have it, i will live as i did last week, but be a bit more careful, and change the bandaid out. i will have to contintue to live. just as everyone else.

if you're still reading this, and you have ocd, you'll be okay. stop getting stuck in your head, you know your brain is a little off, thats not good, but it is okay. you're okay. the earth still spins, the moon still rises. if all is not well, dont panic, because all will be well.

[jonathanbiers]

Argyle never gets frustrated with Steve when he doesn’t understand something. He doesn’t roll his eyes, or give That Sigh. He explains things patiently, if a bit abstractly, and when Steve is way off base Argyle runs with it. Is Vecna a vampire? Whoa that would be wild, man! Do you think he can’t have garlic? We could just take him out with a gnarly garlic pie, my dude!

the way you're seeing into my mind.... argyle being really soft with steve and taking the time to make sure he doesn't feel stupid when he's confused is something i've considered AT LENGTH (specifically in dms with @himbohohoharringtxn who has the unfortunate luck of being on the receiving end of Most of my argyle thoughts fdjghkdfj)

i would like to preface this by saying that i am firmly in "argyle and steve are both genuinely smart" territory. i think steve is very neurodivergent coded (i see the arguments for adhd/autism/dyslexia/ocd and as someone who might be autistic but is diagnosed with the other three....i see these arguments and i agree on all fronts) and there's also the head trauma of it all, though that's not what this is about. he's not fucking dumb, he just needs things broken down and explained to him in a very specific way. nothing wrong with that!

as far as argyle is concerned - we've literally seen him in action noticing small details no one else has(one of my fav parallels between them), which ends up being the reason the cali group finds nina and el. he's not fucking dumb either, just delivered to us as a comic relief stoner character with little dimension because the duffers need to be fucking stopped

BUT ANYWAY! you're so right! argyle would see the way steve sometimes gets brushed off and spoken over. the rest don't mean it to be hurtful and steve tries not to show that it does sometimes sting (because it's really not that big of a deal to him and it's not like they're being outright mean) but he would ABSOLUTELY "yes and-" whatever steve's off the wall question or idea was, if anything just to make him laugh, relieve some of the tension. AND IT WORKS is the thing.

it's not just, "duuuude, what if we just lure vecna into the sun? he'll be TOAST in five seconds flat, no fighting necessary. nancy, you can put the gun down, we're gonna hurl garlic cloves at him with a slingshot!" in one fell swoop, argyle is 1. making sure steve feels heard and not spoken over; 2. acknowledging steve's input and effort in a way that, let's be honest, the others don't do very often; 3. putting a smile on the group's faces for a while because fuck they're kids in a stressful situation and need a laugh; 4. putting himself in the line of fire so the others can rag on him instead.

argyle would do this when they aren't even dating yet and steve definitely would not be normal about it, he'd be smiling so big and soft and then argyle would catch his eye and smile back and they'd have this little quiet moment between them amidst all the chaos and dread.

after they're dating though? oh, they'd be INSUFFERABLE. they'd be such a pda couple, with the ridiculous pet names("what the fuck did you just call me?" "don't worry about it, my lil sweet potato pie."), and the open flirting until their friends are fake-retching, the whole nine yards. argyle is hanging off of steve's back with his arms around his waist and not even acknowledging it as he makes his argument to the rest of the group that, "no, no, listen. steve is onto something here, i just know. what if-"

and when they're alone, it'd be less of the theatrics and silliness and more of the gentle patience. they're both smart in really different ways and when argyle gets something steve doesn't and steve is getting a little frustrated about it, he'd take his hand or pull him close and just distract him with a little bit of affection to get him to cool down because he knows being frustrated isn't going to help steve figure out whatever it is. conversely, steve does the same when he's trying to explain something to argyle - though he's less likely to get as frustrated when confused, and more likely to pretend to take longer to get it than he actually does because listening to steve explain a subject he's knowledgeable about is fucking hot, can you blame him? they're just soft with each other, okay

[the-down-upside-finch]

✨️Important News✨️

I hath opened commissions!

If you are interested in commissioning me, thank you from the bottom of my heart! Please read below for more details, and then go ahead and let me know with a comment or email! (We can also chat over Discord or Tumblr DMs)

Oh, wow, you hit the read more! Thank you for your interest! Okay, here are some things to keep in mind about my commissions:

☆ These are my character price sheets! I am not currently doing landscape commissions, but if you want a scene or background, we can definitely work that out!

☆ Payment is half up-front, then the rest when the piece is halfway complete.* (I currently accept payment through Venmo, and I will have my Ko-fi up and running soon.)

☆ I love drawing OCs, but I'm not limited to them! As long as I have refs, I can draw! (And I accept both written and drawn refs.**)

☆ I tend to draw on ~900×1200px canvases, so please let me know if you have a different size in mind!

☆ I currently cannot (and will not try to) draw the following:

Extreme gore/extremely bloody content (although I am okay to draw minor scrapes and whatnot)

Anything specifically meant to be sexually gratifying -- (Basically, NSFW stuff is a no! It's just not my sort of thing.)

Mechs/other robotic machines -- (The reason I won't draw mechs is because the current amount of effort I have to put into it is not a price I want to dangle in front of people. If you really want me to draw mech stuff, please reach out to me and we can talk about it and my current pricing!)

Anthropomorphic animals -- (I'm sorry, but I'm just not good at this yet! I don't want to be unable to deliver good art.) -- (This is different than humanoids with animal features! I'm better at drawing those.)

OCD triggers -- (for me, this includes needles and insects)

If you aren't sure whether or not something is within my realm of work, please ask me! I promise I won't be mean about it.

If you want to see some more examples of what I can do, please check out this page for specifics!

Thank you for scrolling all the way down here! I really appreciate your interest.

Here are the embedded images for potential higher quality:

The additional notes on the price sheets are as follows:

Both a color-coded & black-line version will be provided for uncolored sketches!

Please note that prices will vary based on complexity/level of detail

Simple glowy effects are free! Complex ones average an extra 3 USD.

(Referencing the bust and waist-up prices) Prices may vary depending on arm placement!

Colored sketches will not be "shaded", and coloring is loose (can go outside the lines)

Uncolored clean/detailed pieces can be filled gray or left white!

Colored clean/detailed piece will include appropriate shading, but there are options to choose from!

Things to note: -- Additional characters in a single commissioned scene will have a 40% discount. -- I will default to a solid gray background unless told otherwise! -- Complicated poses, props, and/or complex color palettes will increase the price!

Once again, thank you for your interest, and sorry for this insanely long post!

*If you would like to pay entirely upfront, that is perfectly fine!

**If you don’t have colored/a lot of refs, that’s okay! I will work with you during the sketching and coloring process to make sure I am drawing the character the way you want.

[lucystark12]

i very very rarely listen to running up that hill but i am right now and it's just like holy shit YOU HAD TO BE THERE (weird reflection post that i just randomly started writing and couldn't stop for some reason about my depression lol that was supposed to be cute and lovey about my love for stranger things but ended up being really somber)

i didn't immediately watch season 4 when it came out on may 27th, because friday may 27th was the day that i came back from a week long class trip to the deep depths of northern washington (hell on earth, no mans land, if you will) and since my parents were out of town for my mom's 50th birthday, i was going straight to my best friend's house to stay over for the weekend. that i did. my best friend everly, whom i was staying with, always falls asleep really early, so at some point in the early hours of may 28th, probably around 1 am, i pulled out my phone and starting watching stranger things. i had spent the entire spring rewatching after all.

i got to where chrissy got possessed and immediately had to turn it off because i was in seventh grade and the bone cracking thing scared me to death (this was before i watched GOT for the first time, my tolerance for gore was not as high as it is now)

such began the first of many times where i'd neglect watching my favorite show for no reason. i did it with house of the dragon season 2 as well. so, a few days later i left everly's house and my grandma came to stay at my house with me while my parents were finishing out the rest of their trip.

at this point, the whole internet was already talking about running up that hill. it was that sunday when i decided i had to watch the show. who the fuck was i kidding? i loved stranger things. problem was, my grandma is and will always be the worst tv hog in the history of the world, so with a shitty disaster movie playing in the background, i put in one airpod and finally started watching stranger things season four.

this was a particularly rainy spring for portland, something that literally scarred me at the time because i was nearing the end of the worst depressive episode of my entire life, and the sun not being able to peek out of the trees like it had in late may last summer and every summer before that was something so insignificant yet something that really was sending me off the edge. i didn't realize how far off the edge i already was at the time. my other best friend had just started taking medication for her depression, which manifested very differently in ways that mine didn't. she was mad. she was resentful. between the few moments that she was the same laughing, loving girl i'd always known, she hated me and our other friends and hated herself more. my cousin likewise had depression so bad he couldn't get out of bed. he hadn't been to school in three months. i wasn't like that. i thought i was happy comparatively. i was diagnosed with OCD the year before and thought that was an explanation. it took getting a new therapist and unpacking my behavior back then to understand what was really happening. i never cried. when i did, it was violent. it came in bursts that lasted all afternoon. i started and i didn't stop until i fell asleep. i threw things, i refused to talk to anybody. i was failing math, which i've never done before. i couldn't understand a thing. i didn't even care to try. i hated myself. the only thing i ate was a bowl of craisins at school every day because i couldn't physically force myself to eat. i thought i was just tired even though i got ten hours of sleep every day. i was always exhausted. my therapist couldn't diagnose me because after years of being taught i had to be perfect, i refused to tell even her that there was something wrong. i thought i was stupid, i thought i was ugly, i thought i was worthless. i thought i was just experiencing what it's like to be twelve years old.

so, another rainy and overly misty sunday afternoon passed me by as i reached the ending of the fourth episode, and finally, the fated song that i'd been hearing all over tiktok and didn't quite understand yet started playing out of max's walkman. i watched the entire scene with my grandma barking questions at me about why i was tearing up.

running up that hill was my most played song of 2022, just ahead of africa by toto.

now i'm not going to say that stranger things brought me out of said depressive episode, because it didn't. the four months ahead of me were four of the hardest of my life still to this day, just as the six before them had already been. but i've grown a lot since then, and two years later when i was in spain alone, sick and crying, experiencing a little week long bout of similar feelings to the ones i felt when i first watched season four, the show weirdly managed to find me again.

the week before i had left to study abroad in spain i had learned that i got a B+ in math instead of an A- in math because my teacher wouldn't round up my 89.9%. it might seem trivial especially because a B+ is incredible process from the algebra i had nearly failed for the second time in the row the year before, but sometimes things like that can be enough to cause somebody to fall back into old habits and feelings. estranged from everybody and everything i'd turned into coping mechanisms for hard times like these when i was literally half the world away, i didn't know what to do. so, when i was in my dorm with food poisoning from a salad i'd eaten the night before, i decided to press on the byler analysis video that had popped up in my youtube feed. such began what i've been calling my "stranger things renaissance"- a second stranger things phase that's been going on since late june.

not to sound overly bylerish, but i've been seeing a lot of parallels between this summer and the summer season four came out. for reasons out of my control, i've been forced to spend a lot of time alone. this summer when i've started feeling lonely, i've taught myself that rather than overthink, to channel it into something else like writing, or doing something that will calm me down. now when i'm home alone and haven't seen a friend in a few days, i'm not sad anymore. i think "well damn" and then i move on with my night. i'm no longer depressed. with the help of my new therapist, i've gotten really close to growing out of my OCD. i no longer have to pray every night. i don't wake up in a cold sweat if i go to bed at 10:31 instead of a "perfect number" like 10:30 or 10:35. i rarely lock my bedroom door anymore. and no, it's not perfect yet. i'm not "cured"- i still have my crying episodes. i still have moments, even though they're few and far between now, where i feel the same way i did back when i was twelve.

but i'm moving on. things have shifted in my life. i've grown up and this show has with me. i started watching it on halloween of 2019 when i was in fifth grade and my friends and i did the "goodbye mike" trend in my basement. i watched the first three episodes that night and finished it for the first time during covid. it was with me through that hard time back in the day, and for some strange (haha) reason, it's with me now, and will probably continue to be with me until the show ends, because like as typically happens when i fall back into obsession with something i liked when i was a little younger, (the mcu, harry potter which remanifested in the marauders) it becomes more than a phase, but a part of me in some weird way.

stranger things may have its flaws and it might not end the way i wanted it to, but for the rest of my life it will be special to me regardless. i'm finally for the first time in my life older than the characters. i was seven when season one came out, eight when season two, ten during season three, 12-13 and season four, and will be 16 in season five.

so thanks, stranger things, for helping me, and thanks even more for showing her that there's nothing wrong with the many different aspects of her that she'd been led to believe were wrong. as corny as it sounds, she couldn't have done it without you 🫶

(say hi to baby lucy, because it's always more fun with pictures, and because depression can happen to anybody no matter what they might look or act like on the surface)

rip 2022 lucy, you would have loved the byler sunset pictures that you somehow would have found a way to relate to reddie and your best friend that you were highkey in love with. you also would have loved mike wheeler if i could explain who he really is to you because said in an EARLY analytical essay that "All I really gained from season four though was that I absolutely hate older Mike and that I wish he would’ve died instead of Max." in the same essay you say you wish you could throw mike of a cliff. oh the irony. (please laugh)

ps: if you ever find yourself feeling anything like what i described in this post, know that it gets better even if it seems like that's what everybody says and it seems like it never will. there were times back then when i didn't even know if i'd make it to the age i am right now, and now i'm at one of the happiest points ive ever been in my life. know that even if we've never talked before, i love you and i believe in you. my blog is always a safe place if anybody out there ever needs anybody to talk to.

[self-loving-vampire]

I don't really want to reblog your post saying this because I feel like that could be annoying but I've gotten a lot into gacha games (specifically Bang Dream, Project Sekai, D4DJ, Blue Archive, and now Zenless Zone Zero, in that order) as a 25 year old plural trans failgirl and despite enjoying them I know they are bad for me and it is my policy to not recommend them

and basically every time I find myself posting gushing over their stories or whatever I feel the need to asterisk myself with "this is a gacha game so I'm not really recommending you check it out". And like, I don't know, I feel like I should say it and it's necessary but it also feels a little tedious I guess. Like, everyone who I follow and who follows me knows this already so aah. But also then again I thought I already knew that the psychological manipulation and gambling was bad and etc and I still ended up getting super OCD over it and losing a lot of time and money to them and I would not wish this condition on anyone else. Which I guess is a more than good enough reason to continue the asterisking even if it's tedious in the same way it's tedious to say "content warning" or "spoilers for _____" or tag anything bothersome so people can filter it and sometimes you might forget to but you gotta do it anyway.

Anyway I uh. I do have like fifteen years of game playing experience prior to the gacha games where I played no gacha games. So if that counts for anything my favorite games of all time (and these are all non gacha singleplayer games) range from like,

Psychonauts (1 and 2), Milk Inside a Bag of Milk, Subahibi, killer7, Night in the Woods, VA-11 HALL-A, Tsui Yuri ~Okaa-san ni wa Naisho da yo~ (the incest yuri visual novel), Shadow the Hedgehog, if found..., Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Dishonored, Gunpoint, Jet Set Radio Future, and most importantly Senran Kagura (but not the gacha one), and many others but I'll just stop typing them now

Also I recently played the System Shock remake, which is kino and beautiful

Anyway I hope this confession is allowed. I really like your posts and your ask box has a very confessional vibe to me sometimes so I still feel compelled to it. Um, yeah. I guess, play those games. And not necessarily any gacha games. (Do that at your own risk, but also probably, really, seriously don't)

I've been trying to write a more formal essay on how gacha games can have good things in them but unfortunately still suck but ironically it hasn't yet come together because I've been distracted playing the gacha games. Hopefully I figure out that problem... Maybe with drugs or something (please)

Yeah, I don't think they are entirely bad (I still look at and reblog horny pictures from some of them often) but I wouldn't play one of those again even with full confidence that I won't fall into a gambling addiction because even putting morality and financial risk aside the very fact that they are trying to push players into it ends up worsening the rest of the game design.

Games these days (not even exclusively gacha) are sometimes deliberately made more tedious and inconvenient just for the sake of selling a solution to these invented problems. Paying to remove some arbitrary limitation or to skip a grind, for example.

The controversy around the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 contrasted with the original game highlights this very clearly. Things that used to just be a part of the game included by default are now things you have to either gamble for or play for an unreasonable amount of time to unlock. It really did not have to be that way, as demonstrated by the original game.

I think if you have been playing them and noticed all the issues it might be worth it to ask yourself if you're actually enjoying yourself on the net. Not just if the games have something in them that's worthwhile but if they are actually a fun way to pass your time. Is it play, or is it a chore you put up with to avoid falling behind or missing out on the things you do like? Would you be missing on much if you engaged with the story through youtube videos instead of playing the game yourself?

And if you do end up deciding you could be having more fun with something else, it's not like there's a shortage of other games, especially if you look into older games. Many of these are free or easy to emulate.

Looking at your list I think we have different tastes but if you enjoyed things like System Shock and Dishonored then you could maybe look into the first Deus Ex, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, or Arx Fatalis.

(Also this is a confessional now? I guess it gives people an excuse to picture me dressed up as one of those ero anime nuns even as I maximize blasphemy and apostasy.)

[a-student-out-of-time]

Teach me your massive writing nerd ways, senpai!! 😫

(For real though, hope you get better soon ^^)

//Thank you ^^

//I'm not really an expert in this department, but here's Sixteen Steps on how I oversee the Fangan writing process:

Decide on your story's theme first and foremost. What's the major conflict? What ideas are being put forward and challenged? How will your Killing Game's story, character and environment reflect these? Are you sticking with the classics (Hope vs. Despair, Truth vs. Lies), something similar but new (Trust vs. Doubt, Growth vs. Stagnation, Redemption vs. Corruption) or are you going with something completely different? All of these can and should play a role on the nature of the Killing Game itself.

When you've decided on what kind of story you want to tell, work on the characters. Your characters shouldn't just be there to die and crack jokes, they should be an active part of the story and their arcs should ideally reflect the conflicts and themes. You also are not bound by the archetypes used in canon and can vary it up however you want.

Character arcs: Have them. Even with characters whose fates are sealed and they aren't going to die, there's no reason not to allow them some degree of growth and change in the time that they do have. Their arcs can even naturally conclude with their deaths in trials or the like, which can vary from them choosing to save someone else to one final act of spite against the rest of the group.

You are not bound by the almighty outline. You're also going to need at least a general idea of where you want your story to go, but it's okay to provide yourself with a degree of flexibility. Who's going to survive? Who isn't? Why? What are the motives? Are they doing anything besides just faffing around waiting for the next murder? Maybe your ideas will change, just make sure you can smoothly integrate those new ideas without upsetting the flow and clues you've established.

Small moments are more important than big ones. Moments of characterization in the plot, like vulnerability, small confrontations, even casually-provided pieces of dialogue can do more for your characters than just having them die horribly/dramatically or them revealing something major in or after the trial. FTEs should be supplemental, not the place you dump all their best/worst character qualities.

Characters should communicate. You shouldn't define characters purely by their relationship to the protagonist or to one other character. See how many dynamics and interactions you can come up with, and how you might be able to include those into the story. Diversifying interactions opens up a lot of potential new dynamics and story opportunities.

It's okay to be a LITTLE self-indulgent. I say this because I got flak for saying writers shouldn't let their self-indulgence overwhelming their fangans. I will clarify that it's okay if you want to include something just because you want to include it, as I have in my own writing, but if you want a murder method/execution/confrontation/what have you in the story, please at least integrate it in a way that makes sense. If you don't, it's going to feel jarring at best and actively harmful and disruptive to the story at worst.

Your setting should feel like a part of the story. The place where your cast is trapped shouldn't feel like a featureless prison with setups for murders, it should have an active role in the situation and clue us into the story. Is it run-down and grungy? Unnaturally clean for an inhabited space? Is it dark? Is it colorful and lively? What's keeping them from leaving? What do they find as they explore?

Avoid stereotypes about mental health. If you're going to use DID, Schizophrenia, Autism, OCD, depression, PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, any personality disorder, etc., PLEASE do your research before you even think about writing a character with any of these. Mental health being equated with violence is grossly exaggerated; people with these conditions are more likely to be victims of violence, not the perpetrators. Please don't make a character built out of negative stereotypes just for the sake of drama or making the story "interesting." A good character is vastly more interesting than another Genocider Syo knockoff.

Idiot Plots are Unacceptable. There's a fine line between a character making a bad decision because of pride, fear, miscalculation, or any sort of understandable flaw, and them making one because the story needs them to in order for a murder to happen. Your characters can make all the right decisions that they reasonably could, and still ultimately fail. That often makes the antagonists seem much smarter and more threatening.

Do not overly focus on the rival. If you've ever heard someone say that villains are more interesting than heroes, that person is probably just bad at writing heroes. Your protagonist does not have to be boring and your rival doesn't have to, and preferably shouldn't, be the most important and well-written character in the story. A good rival challenges the protagonist and serves as their foil in some way, but that also means the protagonist can challenge them in other ways; e.g. Byakuya has no chance of solving Trial 4 because he couldn't even conceive of a situation where someone would sacrifice themselves for another.

Suffering does not equate to sympathy. Yes, a killing game would be a miserable experience, but just making the characters miserable and putting them through the wringer constantly, with no chance for them to breathe or get any kind of victory often feels more exhausting than sympathetic or interesting. This extends beyond fangans and into writing in general; if you've established that a character is never going to succeed at anything they do, people are going to emotionally check out of the story because there's no reason to get invested that something might go wrong.

The mastermind should reflect one side of the conflict. For the driving theme, whichever side the protagonist is on, the mastermind should represent the opposite. For extra thematic flair, maybe have their backgrounds parallel each other in some manner and see how their lives too very different paths as a result. If they don't, they're going to feel very disconnected from the story and like they had no reason to do this at all.

Ask yourself what kind of mastermind works best for your story. Do you want someone loud and bombastic? Quiet and scheming? Angry and bitter? A deluded paragon who thinks they're doing good with their killing game? Someone not even human? When you have it in mind, work backwards and ask how this person would then decide to become the mastermind of this killing game in the first place.

If you're stuck, try reverse-engineering. A lot of us have the outcome of a story in mind first but aren't sure how we get there, especially with murders in these games. I find the best way is to work backwards, starting with the outcome (basically the Closing Argument) and scattering all the pieces of the murder scene around to where it becomes a mystery. Motivations, of course, should be the first thing on your mind and why they targeted a particular character.

EXECUTIONS ARE NOT A STORY. This is probably the biggest hurtle I see with a lot of aspiring fangan writers, where they focus very much on the deaths and executions over everything else. Your fangan can't just be a paper-thin plot designed to get us from one execution to the other, it needs an actual story and characters to keep us engaged. Furthermore, your executions shouldn't just be spectacle, they should have a purpose in the narrative and provide character insights in and of themselves, whether it's ironic punishments or some final revelation about the character.

//And there you go, some tips for writing a fangan. Hope these help! ^^

[aidenlove]

CW frank mental illness breakdown vent. OCD to be specific. Also mention of sick pet and financial issues. If any of that is potentially an issue for you right now, scroll on by friends. Not an ask for money please do not offer.

Two days ago we found our daughters cat on the floor, listless and barely responsive and hypothermic in a warm room. It had been less than 2 hours since we had last been actively interacting with him. We rushed him to the vet and they sent us home with him in critical condition. He was full on in shock, had thrown up all the water he had drank that day and peed out the rest and was massively dehydrated, was hypothermic and seizing.

And we had to go home and....wait.

He made it through the night and has been improving since, though he still won't eat and they still don't know what happened. We scoured this house, no unsecured meds or trash, no houseplants at all because we have cats, no spills of chemicals or cleaning supplies or any of those accessible to the cats. No access to outside. No contact with strangers. This looks like a poisoning of some kind, most likely accidental ingestion of something, but we have no idea what and they haven't figured it out yet either.

He will probably be there a few more days. The entire household is worried sick about him.

I can't afford any of this. I've already paid $400 and we live on $1200 a month. The rest of however much this ends up being will be due before they will release him back to us. We don't have it. Our families don't have it. We are in a poor area of one of the poorest states in the country, no one close to us has it.

And I can't make a crowdfunding campaign.

Because my brain is very very convinced that if I do that he will die.

I *know* this is the OCD. I know how and why this happens. I know several excellent coping strategies. I have medication and my therapist's phone number and even my psychiatrist's number, I could ask for an emergency script for a dose of a stronger med.

None of that is helping. Can't do it. It doesn't seem to matter how much I know this isn't true, isn't based in reality, I cannot make myself do it. I can't ask for meds because that would make me more likely to do it and my current brain, that I am living with in this moment, considers that a catastrophic possibility.

I know higher stressors will elicit more extreme responses from my brain, especially the OCD. I know my coping strategies are good and usually work well. I know why this is happening, but none of that knowing changes the fact that my child will never see their very much beloved pet, who they raised from a kitten, ever again, if I can't sort this out. And that pressure makes it *worse*. Spiraling cycle of knowing I know better, knowing this is a perfectly reasonable thing to happen *to a person with even well managed OCD*, none of that actually helping the actual situation at hand, stress of that adding to fixation strength, repeat.

I couldn't just let him die. And he absolutely would have. He is alive and slowly recovering because we got him there in time. That was, without question, the right choice.

But because my brain was severely damaged by trauma, and my body is now equally damaged and we lost 80% of our income, that choice may have cost my child one of their best friends.

And I had a procedure on my spine the day before all this happened. I pushed more than I should have just doing the drive to the vet, but I didn't care and I don't regret it. But now I'm stuck in bed, managing maybe 20 steps at a time with hours of rest between attempts. So lots of time to sit and. Well. Spiral. The distraction game isn't going well.

I try so hard to be encouraging and positive, but right now I hate my life so fucking much. It hurts so much, all the time. Sometimes, like now, it's past the breaking point. The pieces will settle and I'll put them back together, but right now I am very much broken.

[philosophicalparadox]

Not to get depressing, but life is fundamentally so much different when you care about whether you live or die.

I just had a conversation with my MIL that brought up this topic, is why I’m posting. That and I feel like there’s definitely people on here that can relate.

But anyway — for context I have OCD, (and relevantly am immune compromised) a horrible fucking condition that genuinely cripples me, and always sort of has, but which has gotten much much more egregious since I came to live here, 3k miles away from the family I grew up with. It’s contamination OCD, unfortunately, which means that yes I am kind of a germaphobe relative to the rest of the “normal” population. (It’s far more complicated than that but at risk of making it too long…) I know far too much about far too many things, and I’m extremely cautious not to spread zoonotic diseases especially, partly because I own and rescue reptiles including an iguana (disease factories that they are) and we have rats on the premises. In short, I tend to ask that people wash their hands with a certain degree of regularity; I grew up where it was a standard thing to wash your hands before you put clean dishes away, so can’t blame the OCD there completely, but other things like washing hands after touching the trash or wiping down the couch every day because of the (unwashed for 11 years) dog that insists on laying on it, etc. are things that I commonly get ragged on for asking my fiancé in particular to do, even though he understands and does it all willingly.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t like that when I lived in that other place.

I mean, I was to a point. I insisted on cleaning when no one else did, I kept up on disinfecting relevant things especially when there were toddlers around, I mopped and cleaned and cooked to make sure there was minimal contamination because I didn’t trust anyone else to be aware enough of what they were doing not to spread salmonella (which I’ve had four times living with those people) from touching raw meat, etc. etc.

But ultimately I didn’t care to nearly the same extent. One, I knew any attempt at negotiating with these people would fail, two, I was sick constantly but was never actually allowed to rest or be ill, so what did it matter anyway, and three, I honestly did not care at all if something killed me. I didn’t want to suffer, exactly, so I did make some effort to avoid that; but ultimately I actually fantasised about being so ill I had to go to the hospital— in spite of doing that once already and being traumatized for it — simply because it would give me an excuse to rest and be by myself, away from these people. In the hospital I had the power to turn them away; at home, not so much.

I also dreamed about dying, quite often. Dying of sickness, which I very nearly (VERY nearly) did once, and lamenting how I didn’t get to go then. Dying from any number of things that didn’t require me to off myself directly (tried and failed that once; i don’t have the physical strength or willpower to cut that deep apparently). And I was far more reckless comparatively about germs and blood and icky things because I was always going to be sick with something and didn’t care if it killed me ultimately. And should it cause me so much pain as to be unbearable I had the perfect excuse to give into my desires and OD on whatever relevant medication I might have. Or some other such thing. I also lived in an AS state so if i was terminal I had the option to be euthanised by the state.

So, no, I wasn’t like I am now then. I survived because I had to, for the kids in my charge and the animals in my care. I had no other reason to live. And while I did do that, it wasn’t like there weren’t other people who could take my place in that situation, so my death, while massively inconvenient, wouldn’t of resulted in anyone else’s death or anything. Well, not any human anyway.

Now, though?

Now is so much different. I’m engaged. I have a house I can live in where the threat of being rendered homeless on a moments notice doesn’t loom over my head. I don’t have to pay for doctors — the state of NJ has the closest thing to universal healthcare found in the United States. Which means I actually get medical care. My fiancé is the best man I’ve ever known, and he’s sensitive to my needs, and he takes care of me when I let him. He understands that I’m immune compromised, that I am autistic, that I have severe ADHD, and that I physically can not be medicated for that because my body freaks the absolute hell out whenever it meets a steroid. He took me in and under his wing; we have been through thick and thin and I could not be more relieved to have found a home in him.

But it changed things. Oh it has changed things. My perspective is so much different now. I want to live for a future I want to have with him — an utterly impossible dream just five years ago. Five years ago I wanted to be dead. I longed for a sleep so deep I’d never wake. Now I can barely wait to get out of bed knowing my partner will be around to greet me. I used to positively dread hearing a front door open. Now I can hardly contain my excitement when I hear him on the porch. I’m happy to see him every time he enters a room, and it is so different.

And no matter how I try and explain this, people just…don’t get it. My (technically future)MIL certainly doesn’t. It’s so, so hard to explain how massively immensely utterly huge the difference is. It seems such a small thing if you’ve never been there. If you’ve never wanted to die so badly that you get angry that stupid runaway Porsche didn’t hit you when it came up on the sidewalk instead of feeling relieved. When all you feel is crushing disappointment that the car that did hit you in the crosswalk didn’t break your leg. When you look back on the traumatic experience that was dying of influenza and silent pneumonia with a sense of strange longing because it was the only time in your life you were considered sick enough to rest and sleep. When nightmares about catching measles as a kid turn into bittersweet dreams because your mom actually acted like she was sorry that one time she had to nearly drown you to get your fever down.

If you’ve never been there then you don’t know. I don’t normally say that, but it’s true.

But just because things are “better” doesn’t mean the issues went away. I still have OCD, but in the light of my new will to live, it’s become much much louder. The freedom to actually manipulate my environment to suit me has been a strange blessing and a curse, because now I’m much more sensitive to lack of control. I didn’t know what it felt like before, and I realize now that I don’t like it when I can’t do that, in a whole other kind of way than before.

I know now that I am autistic; I can reconcile those broken parts of myself in a healing way now, but the knowledge makes me far more aware of when I struggle to keep up the mask. Autistic burnout and OCD do not play nice together.

But all of it has repeatedly accumulated into the searing questions I’ve actually refused to engage with before: why do I care? What happened to the frigid ice bitch facade? When did it start bothering me that I might get really really sick again? What does it matter?

And in all of this, all of it, I’ve come to realise that the reason I was so different back then, in that place, was because I didn’t care if I died. I didn’t want to live.

But now I do. Now I have something to live for that isn’t dependent on me in the same way. I have a future. I have a future!! I want to scream it from the rooftops! I HAVE A FUTURE!

And I want desperately to live to see it, goddamn it! I want kids! I want a dog! I’m allowed to want things!

Is life perfect? Fuck no. I’d much rather live alone with my fiancé than this weird family-tennant situation so I didn’t have to mask at all. But it’s better than where I was, and I know we can get there! I have, for the very first time in my life, hope. Real hope.

So yes. My OCD is going to totally kick my ass about my status as an immune compromised person, and no, I do not want to get sick! I care now! I want to live!

I want to live!!!!!

And if that means I ask people to please not track rat urine into the house from the garage by washing their damn hands after taking out the trash then so be it. If it means I have to mind my Fiancé and ask him to wash his hands after eating something I’m allergic to, so be it. If it means I throw a fit at people who carelessly bring allergens into the house after I have repeated asked them not to, I will. If I have to keep my own utensils and things independent of the rest of the geriatric household that doesn’t understand these things and doesn’t care, so be it! I refuse to let go! I refuse! I’m going to not just survive anymore but fucking live! I have a life now!

I am alive now! And I’d like to keep it that way for once!

[ak-harper-loves-fiction]

Short Story About OCD

TW: s3lf-h@rm(?), sk!pping m3@ls

So, this is a short story about my character Isaac, and his struggles with OCD. He is a character from the book I'm currently writing called From Then and Back Again. Enjoy the story!

Isaac can feel the weight building on his eyelids, but he keeps writing what he thinks are equations in his notebook. The page appears blurry, and he has almost become completely numb to the pain in his arm pressing against the metal spiral. Maybe you should wait until you can find another left-handed notebook, his reason insists. However, he blows his logic off. It’s your fault for not buying a spare. This one is all you have for now. Don’t be lazy. 

He attempts to continue working, but he looks at the walls of his room, and they seem to be slowly turning all around him. He is seated on his bed, but he grips the sides of it as if he is preventing himself from falling. Isaac picks up his phone beside him to check the time, and he has to squint to see the numbers well. It is past one in the morning. Dammit, he thinks as his smooth phone slides out of his hand between his fingers. He drops his pencil and buries his head in his hands. His cold hands press against his cheeks. His arms tremble under the weight of his head. Why am I so damn weak? he asks himself. His logic returns once more. Because you had a basketball game for hours, then proceeded to come home, not eat, and do math homework for additional hours. He fights back against his head. It’s not that big of a deal.

He returns to concentrating on his paper, finally gaining some adrenaline from a second wind, and observes all the layered erased pencil markings. He analyzes the recent, unerased markings, and he seems to be doing the math right. However, he also notes that his math gets sloppy at times. He immediately clenches his pencil tightly. He erases so aggressively the already weakened page rips and his forearm runs over the sharp edge of the metal spiral, tearing his skin. “Fuck!” he whisper-shouts in pain and throws his notebook off the bed. Isaac looks down at the scratch on his arm. He winces from the burn. Your father would be so disappointed at how pathetic you’ve become, his mind scolds him. You can’t even handle a notebook. Mamá already hates you.

He gets out of bed to retrieve his math homework. He struggles to balance and his legs shake from soreness. He bends down to pick up the notebook and turns back to his bed, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees his bedroom mirror. He looks in the opposite direction and continues forward to his bed. He puts the notebook down, but he limps away from his bed. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, he begs himself, but he gazes into the mirror anyway. 

Staring at his tired, sorrowful reflection, Isaac’s brain begins to mock him: Failure! Weak! Burden! He holds his head with his hands and shakes it, trying to remove his thoughts, but they keep coming. Your eye bags are too big. You have no muscle. You’re too short. He shuts his eyes so he cannot see what the mirror is showing him and he quietly tells himself: “Stop, please.” Relentless, he cannot stop. Why haven’t you finished your homework yet? It’s too messy. You need to redo it. You barely won the game today. Clearly, you haven’t practiced enough. Your dad would hate you. The rest of your family does. Your friends probably do, too. Theo and Amber are way better people than you. You don’t deserve them. You need to do more for them. Or else, you’re an even bigger failure. 

Ignoring the pain in his legs, Isaac quickly retreats into his bed. He peers over his shoulder and examines his notebook. He grabs it and holds the ripped parts together. You can’t turn that in, he hears his brain murmur. It’ll be an inconvenience to the teacher. Do you wanna be a burden? He shakes his head. I can’t be even more of a burden than I already am. He turns to a clean page and begins copying his work from the previous change. He wrestles with how to position it. Every time his arm hits the spiral, the scratch burns. Guess you’ll just have to live with the pain. 

He continues, refusing to let the pain stop him. He writes, then erases. Not good enough. As he is erasing, his pace slows and his eyelids turn into anvils. The page is now nothing more than a white blur. C’mon, he urges himself meekly. Stay awake…a little…longer…

[netherese-blorb]

Gale, Karlach, and Feelings of Impending Doom

(cw: death, mental health, delusion)

So fun fact I have health-focused OCD that often manifests as touch aversion and delusions that I am dying/about to die. For uninteresting reasons, I've been in the middle of a pretty bad flare-up recently.

And I cannot stop thinking about Gale and Kalach.

Perfect examples of how fantasy and analogy can explain otherwise indescribable internal human experience.

Yes Karlach, it does feel like my body is running on a dying engine that could cut out at any minute. My skin does feel wrong and dangerous. It's not fair that the only place I can be truly safe is also my hell (isolation). I shouldn't have to go. I want to live.

She finds some form of treatment in Act 2 and, in all the ways that affect other people, she's fixed. Why would the rest matter? Why does everyone keep talking to me so gently? Why is it so hot in here?

Yes Gale, the specter of doom I carry has turned me into a shadow of my former self. The accommodations I compulsively seek to feel stable do feel like a costly sacrifice paid by those closest to me. I am also terrified of feeling too much joy, too much excitement, because I can't trust the tightness it puts in my chest.

He gets treatment in Act 2 as well. It's a miracle to have the ever-present swirling maw inside go quiet, but the threat of destruction still lingers, even if it no longer feels inevitable. Everyone keeps telling him "You're not going to die". They can't promise him that, but he smiles and indulges their reassurances. He owes them that much. Without them, he never would have made it past Moonrise.

[zionmantis]

I would love to hear about how the DE speaks to your experiences with psychosis!

DE seems to be an attempt to represent thinking through game/story mechanics, and I really appreciate that it doesn’t seem to just represent “normal” thought but also neurodivergent or dysfunctional thoughts. Made me feel seen, so I’d love to hear how it made you feel, if it’s something you’d want to share!

Ah, thanks for the ask! I hope my tags on your post didn't seem rude; reading back I was so worried they did <3 You made an absolutely wonderful post; I wouldn't have reblogged it if I didn't love it. I'm ADHD too, and it's so great to see a character we can relate with and to see how positive reinforcement from a person like Kim can really make a difference.

Excuse me while I ramble a bit! This is stuff I want to post about all the time but I worry people will hate it, so questions like this really make me happy because it gives me an excuse x)

One of the reasons I adore this game more than any other is that it's both breathtakingly sad as well as absolutely hysterical, and humor is how I've started approached my issues of mental illness in the past. Now, that way is not for everyone; some people don't want any sort of laughter at it, and that's completely valid and makes perfect sense, but humor is just how I've been able to adjust to memories of really bad times in my life without completely hating myself. For me, the game does a really good job of making a hard subject funny without making it seem like we're laughing AT Harry, if that makes sense, even if we think some of his antics are hilarious. I also love love love that that humor is also tackling the, mmm, less "romantic" (?I'm not sure that's the word I want to use for this...maybe "palatable"?) issues that can come with severe mental illness. Like if I remember right, there's a nonstandard ending where Harry can end up living under a bridge and throwing his own shit at people who pass by, pff.

For me it was a surprise to come into this fandom and find that not everyone sees what he's going through as being psychosis (same with ADHD; he absolutely has that, at least to me). I've seen a couple people -- I think it was on Reddit -- argue that what Harry experiences is not psychosis and is just a manifestation of his thought processes and impulsive behavior, and for me that is just...wild xD (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it's fun to discuss, I think?)

But here's the deal for me: if someone sticks their thumb up their ass in public because their friend dared them to and they think it will be funny, that's impulsive behavior. If someone sticks their thumb up their ass in public because a voice in their head told them it would make them a better detective, that's a delusion.

So what does that have to do with me? Well, for me, I have a rare diagnosis of OCD with psychotic features, and (gonna put the rest of this under a cut in case it's triggering for people to read about psychotic episodes)

mine, before being involuntarily (but needed at the time) hospitalized twice and properly medicated, tended to be things like...I would think my limbs were detaching themselves from my body, or one time I wouldn't open my eyes for literally almost two days because I thought all sharp-cornered objects would cut them. Hallucinations would involve seeing what I thought was my skin being pulled as my limbs detached and occasional auditory hallucinations of crowds in my head (where I'd then think they were trying to tell me something Important and drive myself crazy sitting and listening to unreal crowd burble noises), but none of the stuff fiction likes to show because it's easier to depict (never had voices in my head telling me to do stuff or saw a super clear hallucination of a person or monster unless you count sleep paralysis. There were occasional shadows and vague faces that move in walls which I still get when I'm extra tired, but the only times I ever thought those things were real was when my brain was telling me I was receiving otherworldly messages.) There were other things, too, behavioral stuff I'd rather not talk about because it's still so shameful for me.

I thankfully respond really well to medication, which is especially good since OCD with psychosis is notoriously hard to treat since the types of drugs for OCD vs. psychosis seem to do the exact opposite things and block one another.

Anyway, back to DE. This is a bit...shallow, but it was extremely refreshing to play a game where the main character is at least as big of a disaster as me, if not worse xD;. I FEEL SO SEEN, haha, and not only that, but it's a protagonist in an extremely popular game, and fans like him anyway??? That's fantastic. I never thought I'd see the day.

Now, why does he have psychosis -- as in what diagnosis? I'm not sure, but I don't think it'd be OCD with psychotic features like me (even if he potentially has OCD, which I'll discuss in a moment.) I'd say he probably has bipolar 1 and/or (since not unusual to be comorbid), schizophrenia, though I lean more toward bipolar 1 even though the game itself says the word "schizophrenia" out loud a couple times. (To be clear, I'm not a mental health professional, but I don't think the writers of DE are, either. I would also like to say that if anyone reading this is schizophrenic and feel that Harry is as well, your opinion is way more valid than my own and I'd love to hear from you.)

I lean toward bipolar 1 because of the obvious -- he's gone through both manic and depressive stages in the past and does so in the game with a ton of delusional thinking combined with (short-lived or skin-deep) inflated sense of self (Superstar Cop, Honor Cop, etc.) It's also well known that folks with bipolar tend to self medicate. It's less well known that bipolar often has psychotic features as well.

As for an argument for schizophrenia, I'd point toward Apocalypse Cop, that paranoid delusion (??? mmaaaaybe, haha,) about the world ending (I really only know about paranoid schizophrenia; I don't know much about the other types, so it's entirely possible Harry has one of those instead,) as well as his lack of awareness about hygiene, though that could maybe be explained by his amnesia and the fact he was on a days-long bender before the game started. The reason I'm a little bit hesitant toward it is because Harry seems too aware of his own problems and the fact that he is not experiencing life the way most other people do, (he actually questions Kim at the beginning if Kim also hears voices,) and the couple people I met in the hospital that had schizophrenia were (when still adjusting to medications or had yet to find something that would work for them,) really unable to have that kind of self-awareness.

As for the OCD, I'm not as sure of that for him like I am with ADHD and either his bipolar and/or schizophrenia, but I think there's some pretty good arguments to be made. To me, Harry's constant harping on things that no one else thinks is interesting or important is a factor of his ADHD but can *feel* like OCD, but more so when he is stuck in verbal loops, which could definitely actually be OCD rather than, say, brain damage, since he seems to be aware that he's doing it. Some of the more bullying Skills also feel SO much like OCD, the ones telling him to do things that are nonsensical and that he doesn't actually seem to want to do feels like -- just for one of my many, many non-hallucinatory, fully OCD moments in my life -- when I just had to put a lit match in my mouth because if I didn't, *everyone I love would die,* pff. (Spoiler alert: it burns and it tastes weird.) Actually, I'm just now realizing why Authority may have been one of my least favorite Skills, as funny as its situations could get (ICE COP HAT FUCK SHOW?!??!?)

Anyway, I'm sorry for such a long answer to your question, @linisiane, but it made me so happy you asked! I really appreciate your question. This game is so good for making most people with any kind of neurodivergence feel good. I think it might be the most important fictional thing (for my own well-being) I've ever found. There's so much you can say about it. In fact, I know I've forgotten some stuff I wanted to talk about, but oh well! I can always add or something later if I feel like it. If anyone has any questions about this, you're very free to ask me. I'm also super excited to start talking to more people in the DE fandom; I have yet to convince any of my friends to play it for more than ten minutes.

I love y'all so much! I mean it. This fandom is great.

[gunsli-01]

I got tagged in some tag games by @ludwigoat909- Thank you! I hope you're having a great one today~

Sorry if it took a while to answer.

I'm tagging @not-too-many-eyes, @apatchworkstar, @kayanofreak, and @peccadrome. I'd tag rainbowghostcat too but I think that they've already done this. None of the people tagged have to do this by the way.

Here are both tags games for those interested!

X X

First Tag Game

I just made one of the my milgram ocs since I found out he's guilty today. He's not stressing it much at all.

The last song I listened too was,

I was listening to it for writing reasons as well.

Second Tag Game

Do you make your bed?

I have ocd and it's the type where one compulsively cleans. I clean up dining tables at restaurants and go out of my way to put grocery carts together with the others to the point it annoys my parents because they both say someone is paid for that and it's not you.

I tend to make my bed every day and if I don't I'm usually just too depressed to but my room is neat. I once said to a guest who came over once sorry that my room isn't clean because the bed wasn't made. The rest of the room was organized and pretty spotless.

Favorite Number?

My favorite numbers are thirteen, three, and two.

What's your job?

Unemployed and the caretaker of my father.

If you could go back to school, would you?

My family wants me to go back to school for psychology. I'm not particularly interested in doing that right now but if I didn't have the worries I do then I'd like to.

Can you Parallel Park?

I can't and don't want to drive.

Do you think Aliens are real?

Yeah. I think it's a bit conceited to believe humans are the only advanced sentient life in existence.

Can you drive a manual car?

I can't and don't want to drive.

Guilty Pleasure?

I can really enjoy cliché things. I like repetition in story telling every once and a while. I guess what I would consider guilty pleasures is my fondness of romance stories that are considered trite or unrealistic.

Favorite Type of Music?

Music appreciation is one of my hobbies so I listen to all sort of music indiscriminately. I tend to like songs with good lyrics the most. However, I don't have a particular genre but the music I listen to the most is classified as alternative or indie.

Do you like puzzles?

What type? Like picture puzzles yeah kind of they can be fun. I haven't done one in a while. Crosswords are fun as well and riddles can be enjoyable. I tend to like mysteries more than puzzles.

Favorite Childhood Sport?

I was really enamored with futbol/soccer. However I couldn't play sports as a kid due to asthma.

Do you talk to yourself?

Yeah, though I try to keep that habit under control.

Tea or Coffee?

Tea I can't have caffeine it makes me tired.

First thing you wanted to be when you grew up?

A writer.

What Movies do you Adore?

The Empire of Corpses, Jack and The Cuckoo-Clock Heart

[peachdoxie]

Rambling about therapy and mental health stuff

Like idk if I'm just bad at communicating with my therapists or if they're just blinded by their preconceived notions of me based on their training and my diagnoses, or some combo of both, but like I just feel that I'm not getting the help I need because I'm being forced to do things that I feel are impossible for me to do right now, like stick to a schedule or go to bed at a decent time or do household chores. Like so much of exposure and response prevention is doing the things I find hard with the ultimate goal of demonstrating to me that they're not actually that hard once I do them instead of avoiding them, but like. Idk how to describe it. It's like my therapists are too far ahead of me. Like I'm stuck in the ocean treading water barely able to keep my head above the surface and they're like "okay it's time for swimming lessons!" and meanwhile I can't physically swim because I'm so exhausted and out of breath and stressed and I need a life preserver first to stop me from dying.

It's like. like my limitations are so high and my limits so low that I can't do what they ask. It's like I'm being told to walk on a broken leg: sure it's possible but it's so incredibly hard that I can't do anything else but they want me to start walking and I can't. Like I need something to help me walk, crutches or other accomodations, because it's so impossible to function with a broken fucking leg and yet the strategy is to just limp along until the pain settles down. But I don't think my therapists see it that way—especially my OCD therapist who kept insisting that the reason I couldn't work on my dissertation was because I had convinced myself I'm incapable of working on it, that it's all in my head, when I keep telling him, no, I want to work on it, I want to write it, and there is something else stopping me that I can't figure out.

(Ngl I'm still questioning the diagnosis of OCD vs autism/adhd burnout wombo combo but that's a separate issue)

To put it another way. I'm disabled and I live alone with my cat. Most of my life as a graduate student is entirely self-directed. Self care is extremely difficult for me. The mental load I have to take on for caring for myself and my cat is so high and it's overwhelming me all the time. I need someone to help me take some of that load off because it's too much, but my therapists want me to just grin and bear it even though I've tried to explain that I can't do that and also write my dissertation.

Like honestly I feel that I've come away from my six months with the OCD therapist in particular with more trauma than when I started because I kept being told that I'd have to fight through the anxiety and pain even when I kept saying I can't, not without the rest of my life crashing down—and this to a lesser extent with my other therapist. I feel like I'm being gaslit and told that my perspective on my problems isn't what's actually happening. I just don't know how to make myself heard and I'm so, so tired.