#and probably a script for antidepressants

[seventytwoowls]

Of course you have tickets to The Narcissist Cookbook US tour. And pronouns.

[phagodyke]

was brave and talked to my doctor abt my period bs + she said it might be endometriosis without me even having to bring it up... 💀

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

(I have been trying to write this post for a while, but it keeps coming out like a sob story, and it is really not that deep jkfdgkj

So I am just going to say it, bc you guys know I love to ramble for ages, and I need some opinions

1 year of this blog is tomorrow (or today depending on how long I take to write this kjldfg), and I really do appreciate you all being here - if you have been here since the beginning, or just followed recently - if you've sent an ask, liked, reblogged, shared with a friend, theorised, made fanart, or followed me to my art blog and watched me make (and continue to make) a billion clones, anything; thank you

I made this blog on a whim, only like a week after getting into Pizza Tower, and I had no idea it would turn into what it is now

Of course, in the beginning there were a lot of actual posts, like with backgrounds and multiple characters, and I'd post several times a day if I could - and while I was having fun, it was not ideal - I'd frequently post at 7am after spending all night working on a post then I'd pass out, I'd forgo eating or showering just to draw, and I had wrecked my wrist several times, and continue to push pass the pain just to post

It wasn't just hyperfixation, it was obsession - much easier to realise that in retrospect

I was also medicated at the time, I had been on antidepressants for 3 years, so around April (I think) I ran out of meds and was unable to get more due too third party issues/unable to get in contact with my doctor/etc (and unbeknownst to me at the time, the last two packs I had were expired) - so I am sure you can imagine the sort of affect suddenly going cold turkey on the med that make you not wanna die has on a person - I was not doing great to put it lightly

But I still wanted to continue - so many people had praised me on the frequency of posts, and how excited they were and all this validation - I couldn't let people down! (Also I was, and still am, a disabled shut-in loser with no friends, posting is like the only social interaction I had/have kdfgkgfd)

But I think I did - I intimidated myself out of drawing main posts with how much work they were, started the intermission even though I said I shouldn't, had no script or direction and that I was not 100% invested in to try to motivate myself back into main posts, and it was just easier to draw silly ooc posts than do the thing I really wanted to do instead

Of course, this is not any of you guys' fault - I have always had this issue of starting something, it getting way bigger than I can manage, crashing and then just unable to get going again - I have so many unfinished comics, half-done projects and abandoned askblogs it's not even funny - but it's also like, not the end of the world, if I don't finish things I start for fun - sure, I'll feel guilty as hell for a while, but life moves on

So that being said, I would still very much like to continue the story here - I have been working on some stuff in the background (I even updated Pep's reference in the last few days, with a ton of new stuff), but I still don't think it's gonna be soon - I am doing somewhat better than I was, and I actually have an appointment for with my doctor finally (I will probably have to do some reassessments since they can't just put me back on the meds, after not having them for almost a year, and then I'd have to probably get reaccustomed to side effects etc), so despite it all I am still here

I am not sure if I want to continue the intermission with Bean and Fiend at this time - I know a few folks enjoyed it (mostly bc Fiend kjsdfkj) - but as mentioned previously it was unplanned, unscripted, and I was quickly not feeling it, as I am sure some of you guys were too - the intention was for Fiend to give you guys another hint to the main story, but getting to that point was not fun - I might do a poll on this in a separate post

I also mentioned a while back that I would be cutting down the Big Post into smaller posts, and posting as and when parts were done - but once again, do not expect these soon - (although there is a very late Valentines post coming hopefully soon)

And I think that should hopefully be it for now - I know this is a huge post, and probably still a bit sob story-ish, but oh well - I also know that the hype for Pizza Tower had unfortunately died down significantly, but I'm still working on PT stuff on my art blog @smalltimidbean if you wanna see more silly things (and maybe some lore for here hehe)

It is also the first now, so happy birthday Pep

Okay, thank you, and see you later)

[oncetherelivedaboy]

Will my crash out ever end??? Probably not in any real sense, at least not anytime soon.

But my doctor is putting me back on an antidepressant and I have a script for as needed anxiety meds. We may also soon be returning to the antipsychotic I was on for a few months, but then my dad died and I kept forgetting to take them so stopped. But that’s only if things don’t improve with just one daily driver med.

I’m both looking forward to and also not looking forward to returning to the numbing embrace of SSRis.

[ragingtempests]

tara's spending all that time collecting artifacts for gale when he probably just needs an effexor xr script and a referral to a therapist... (and the artifacts, tbf, we don't need him leveling waterdeep but i feel like antidepressants and therapy would help this man).

[zapsoda]

sorry about my obsession with pathologizing in advance. anywyas im obsessed w his medications being namedropped in the script i have them written down on a sticky note on my desk for reference whenever i need it. hes on a couple antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiety meds, tranquilizers, and benzedrine (amphetamine) (not sold anymore afaik) lol. the amphetamine could have been prescribed for depression, that was common practice for a long time, but i cant wrap my head around that personally. if i saw a guy who was very skinny and had severe insomnia i would personally not give him say adderall for his depression i would go with anything else probably. which makes me think... adhd 🥰. idk how common it was for amphetamine to be prescribed for adhd at the time though like no fucking idea. i know it had been studied that it was a decent treatment loooong before but most of what ive read indicate that it became more mainstream in the 2000s.

[eiffelradio]

episode 6: do you want to continue is shockingly…something…and that something isn’t necessarily ’good’…okay im just going to fire off a bunch of my thoughts in no particular order

main character has mental health issues, a history of family abuse, and is on antidepressants/possibly antipsychotics? wow, thats interesting, i hope they expand on this and craft a compassionate narrative about coping and recovery

oh…the medications are actually just to “neuter” him and keep him agreeable…WELL there goes my initial thought, but maybe this will turn into a compelling story about medical abuse. so im not writing it off immediately

that said the way in which the story alludes to warren’s abusive father comes off as…strange? i guess i just need to wait to learn more, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way

not a fan of the gleeful and unserious tone with which clive & karen/bryony greet warren and gordon. i guess the inappropriateness is the point but that doesn’t make it feel any less grating

this podcast shines for me when it’s *just* Warren and Gordon talking, but thats only because I’ve learned how to differentiate their voices (and i admit they have distinctive speaking styles). gets really muddy when more voices are introduced

uhhh not a fan of all the cursing in the script? not because i hate cursing, it just feels like filler in place of actually interesting or funny dialogue

i very well might be the one with brain rot here but its kind of funny they wrote out warren’s wife as Secretly An Evil Scientist because it feels like they did that so you can ship warren/gordon guilt free. feels like too much of a coincidence that this episode and last episode have jokes about the farmers thinking they’re a couple and then now his wife isn’t actually his wife. im probably the weird one for thinking this though.

overall im interested enough to keep going . these are just disconnected ideas

[shwoo]

I think going to the US took even more out of me than I thought. Maybe it was not being able to decompress for three weeks straight. Or eating food I probably shouldn't have, because the things not on that list are so restricted. I also took less medication than I should have, because the GP wrote the dosage kind of low on the doctor's note and I didn't notice in time to get a new one, and I was very worried about customs.

I thought I should be fine after a few days of rest, but I've been very apathetic since I got back. I eventually managed to make a doctor's appointment and increase my antidepressants, and then I... I guess I played over 80 hours of I Was A Teenage Exocolonist in the span of ten days? Not counting the time spent going through the game files for more precise information. Which was also a lot. I'd never played this game until last Thursday.

The compulsion seems to have faded now that I've finished the best-outcome, high-stat, maxed-relationship run I was trying to achieve. There's still some cards, endings, and achievements to get, and I do want to do that, but I don't have the overwhelming desire to be playing or analysing it at all times anymore.

I've obsessed over settings and characters before, but I know what that feels like, and this wasn't that. It's like I really, really wanted to solve the puzzle of how much stuff the game mechanics would let you accumulate over a single run. Turns out you can save everyone, max out their relationships, and get their best ending, and end with very high stats as well. I think the Vace therapy thing might be bugged though. I'll have to look more into that. Maybe it was janky because I triggered it from a different conversation than last time? Usually you wouldn't have his affection up high enough by that point.

But I actually feel a lot grounded and motivated than I did before, and I started feeling that way while I was still obsessing. Maybe that was what I needed to destress? A week plus of life sim minmaxing? I don't know, I'm still figuring out how my brain works. I liked and got invested in the actual fiction of the game as well, which helped. It's a good game. I recommend it. And the script files are just sitting there in plain text! I love it when developers do that.

So if I've got my mood sorted out, maybe I can figure out what's making me sick when I'm at home. Is it the dust? I bet it's the dust.

[theemptybloggercometh]

A few months ago, as part of a routine cardiology appointment I had a consultation with a nurse about diet and lifestyle. Now I don’t know what the nurse’s thought process was, but it seemed very much like she had taken one look at me and one look at how I was around the same weight as I was two years ago and decided that I wasn’t doing anything to be healthy. I will freely acknowled that over the past four years my diet hasn’t been the best. Recently though I’ve recognised that I’m an emotional eater especially with dealing with stress at work which started when I was a newly qualified nurse then continued later on working through the pandemic then later still being nurse in charge. Realising that I emotionally eat is helping me figure out if I genuinely want chocolate and cakes or if I want them because I’m stressed. I’m also trying to eat more fruit and veg and moderate my portion size.

But the nurse didn’t ask me about any of this. Instead, she suggested that I eat at a regular time which I’ve been doing since I changed jobs. When I was working on the ward though I often had to postpone my lunch, very rarely got a dinner break and, especially in the last year, sometimes got home late.

Other suggestions she said I could ‘simply’ do yet these were anything but such as taking up swimming again. As I explained, I used to get ear infections and this contributed to making me reluctant to continue. The nurse said that I should use ear plugs yet the thing was I did use ear plugs all those years ago and still ended up with ear infections (although I grant that that ear plugs might have improved in the intervening twenty years). I also mentioned dysphoria as something which put me off swimming when I was a teenager. The nurse didn’t even attempt to discuss this; maybe she just didn’t know what say, maybe she didn’t want to say the wrong thing, maybe she felt uncomfortable discussing something I clearly knew more about than her or maybe she genuinely thought that as I was on hormones anything related to my gender was a thing of the past. While it’s been a long time since someone challenged me or even looked at me funny for being in women’s bathroom I still feel like using a women’s changing room is a whole other level. There’s something a little “hmm” at best about telling someone with dysphoria that their body is wrong. I’m not saying the nurse was transphobic but she could and should have been a lot more sensitive to how discussing my body might make me feel.

I also mentioned how my antidepressants and hormones are known to cause weight gain (the corollary of which is these meds might make losing weight more challenging). I mentioned all these things to no avail; she had her lines prepared and she wasn’t about to go off script so in the end I just sat there nodding and occasionally saying that I’ll take her up on her advice like getting an app to monitor my calorie intake. This was a lie. This is probably the worst thing I could do as I’m pretty sure I was well on my way to developing an eating disorder in my early twenties when I felt really ashamed when I had eaten more than the arbitrary target I had set myself. There’s a reason why I will never own weighing scales: I’m not prepared to give my brain another opportunity to obsess about numbers and let them control my life. I knew that if I talked about this I wouldn’t be listened to and by disagreeing I would probably be labelled as a difficult patient.

As I left the appointment I was of course feeling angry but I was also disappointed. This is not how we’re taught to care for our patients. This is not how we should be caring for our patients. This is exactly the opposite of good nursing care.  

[trendfag]

first antidepressant i got was generic lexapro escitalopram but i didnt take it all when i first got prescribed it so when i finished it i had to make a dr appt again and so called with my mom and she talked and she was talking and when she said the name of thw drug i swear to god she dropped the es and just said citalopram. so i was like oh i guess thats how its pronounced. so whoever answered the phone wrote citalopram and when i went to the doctor well i tried to say escitalopram but witj the es kinda quiet because i wasnt sure and then my doctor was like “was it lexapro or citalopram bc i have down that i rxd you lexapro” and i said “well you said lexapro but the bottle said (es)citalopram” and he was like ohh insursnce probably. ok here is your citalopram script! and then i took it and got citalopram and almost killed myself

[sugoi-and-spice]

2 6 and 13 for the ask game?

2. Has your writing changed over time?

Most definitely. I mean, I started writing fanfiction when I was like, 13? On Quizilla and then FFN -- so improvement since then obviously goes without saying.

If we want to go off of fanfiction I'm actually willing to show people, well yeah - even then, super different. I ran a Sports & Shounen anime imagines blog before this one, started it my senior year of high school back when I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed lol -- so the content was pretty dang vanilla.

Now, I'm a jaded working professional on antidepressants with a whole-ass screenwriting degree -- so the way that I write and the things that I like to write about are drastically different, lol.

6. If you plan, what does your planning process look like?

Hoooo, boy -- do you have an hour? Lol

Yeah, I'm a big planner. Outlines are my bread and butter, although the beginnings are a little more free form. I'll usually get an idea and start writing a couple pages (or chapters, if I'm already planning for it to be a long fic) to see if it's actually a viable idea I want to commit to, and then once it is, I'll take some time to outline it.

As mentioned above, my education and professional background is in screenwriting -- so I tend to take an approach that's pretty similar to different stages of a script or story bible.

First I write a brief, broad premise of the whole story. It's not particularly pretty writing, much more like a Wikipedia summary - just kind of a way for me to determine the beginning, middle and end.

From there, if it's a long fic, I'll expand it into a Beat Sheet. I map the fic out chapter by chapter with about a paragraph or so summary of what happens in each one. It helps me a lot to know what exactly I'm building to and to not start with a blank page every time. If I have ideas for dialogue in that scene, but know I'm not going to get to that chapter for a while - I'll usually throw some of that in too.

Here's what Play Nice looked like at that outline stage:

From there, I'll go through and track the different Plotlines and make sure they all get the time and beats they need to arrive at a compelling resolution.

You can also probably tell that, by this point, a lot of plot points have been fleshed out and locked in, and look a lot more like what was actually in the chapter than in the original, vaguer outline. I'll usually do a lot of character and theme work during that time too - writing out backstories, wants and needs of the characters, etc, etc.

And then that's what I work with. I don't behold myself to the outline completely or anything. Sometimes plot points change, get rearranged between episodes, or get cut altogether. Sometimes scenes last longer than I expected them to or I get some new ideas that I really love and I have to add more chapters. But having a roadmap like this really helps me stay motivated, keep track of where I am and what I'm trying to say with the story, and, maybe most importantly, stay on course towards the ending, even if I take a couple of detours.

13. Multichapter fics or one shots?

Haha I guess multi-chapter fics, but I do like both. A lot of the time when I'm writing a one-shot, I get way too invested in the idea and want to expand it into a multi-chapter (lookin at you Play Nice and Burnt Bridges lol -_-)

[morgue-xiiv]

hey, might i ask how you got the dialogue data from the DE files for fayde? i'm a beginner and i wanna do something like fayde for the german version of the text. but i am clueless where to begin? i can handle data once i have it but i have no clue how the game data is structured and how to extract something from it. could you point me in the right direction? i don't need a step-by-step thing, just a starting point. but no worries if that's not possible!

I'm working on multilingual support for the FAYDE but it's coming slowly because I got covid, then really depressed, then took antidepressants that fucked me up. I've played a bit of DE in DE and it's beautiful. Lovely language wish I wasn't shit at languages.

I used this thing to get the files, I can probably give more detail some time I just. It's 4am and I am so bad at life. You prbably got this far in the god, 2 weeks, I didn't open Tumblr. search "lockit" to get the localisation files, and the biggest script will be the overall game data. There's something called disco courier that might help extract things but I've never tried it cos I made my own json - sql converter in Ruby

[jacketpotatoo]

Dear Evan Hansen Movie: Review (spoilers)

It says review but trust me, it’s more of a well worded rant than anything. Taken from my Letterboxd

Where do I even begin.

Okay, I enjoy the original musical. I have listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count and I've watched a bootleg of the original Broadway run, as well as many, many animatics. I was one of the people who saw the trailer and went oh crap - Kaitlyn Dever from 'Booksmart'? Amy Adams? From the people who brought you 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' and 'The Greatest Showman'? This must be in good hands, Ben Platt looking way too old for the role aside.

Haha.

Something that makes the musical actually work is the fact that it acknowledges the morally squicky situation and constantly calls Evan out on his bs. They allow you to sympathise with him while making it clear that hey, Evan is in the wrong here.

THE FILM CLEARLY DOESN'T GET THAT.

Instead, Evan is portrayed as the victim and they spend little to no time dealing with the moral and ethical complexities that makes the source interesting in the first place, even when that would be totally something that could be done with more emphasis on film than on the stage. They cut out 'Does Anybody Have a Map' - a song that sets up (arguably) the emotional core of the musical which is the mothers and their relationship with their sons and family. They cut out 'Good For You' which is (and I don't know how to emphasize this enough) SUCH A CORNERSTONE IN THE PLAY. It's the song where Evan has to face the consequences of his actions head on. But noooooooo. All we get is zero fricking resolution with the side characters that the film wrote pointless songs for to accommodate and Evan and his mum NOT talking things out realistically and lashing out like humans. I cried while watching that 240p bootleg of 'So Big So Small'. I felt nothing here. Instead, all the emotion the stage offered is put up in a blender of terrible sound mixing and hilariously bad VEVO music transitions.

Speaking of that, my gosh was the editing awful in this movie. The stupid, stupid quick-cuts during 'Waving Through A Window', the asinine repeated shot of Evan falling down the tree, THE ENTIRE 'Sincerely Me' I MEAN WHAT WAS THAT?? The whole film visuals felt like the Nexus ad in WandaVision. Y'know. The dreary antidepressant advertisment. Except one was ironic and the other was completely genuine. 

The thing with adapting Dear Evan Hansen into a movie in the first place is that it's a low-key kind of musical. Most scenes are confined to 4 walls and include very few people just conversing with each other. It works fine on stage but when you're shooting 50% of your film in the same location and all the shots are either framed similarly or are straight up comical, it's going to be a problem. It was visually, either uninteresting or plain bad.

I didn't think the performances were terrible, aside from Ben Platt (oh we will get there). I liked Kaitlyn as Zoe (I will admit, I am biased), the others were... alright. They were passable. I blame it on the direction and script because they're clearly good performers.

And now we get to Evan Hansen himself. The 'too old' thing has been talked about to death but it genuinely takes you out of the film as you can't suspend your disbelief that he's playing a teenager, especially when his peers actually do look like teens. Ben is also overacting so much. When in theatre, the exaggerated slouches and ticks work because he's on the stage. Most people are far away. But on film when everything is close up, his stuttering and shaking come off as so forced. I genuinely don't understand. I've heard great things about him in The Politician and he's fine in the Pitch Perfects so what went wrong?

The only thing I sort of maybe liked was them getting closure with the video of Connor playing the guitar. But then, they went and got Jared to look sad for Connor when he literally has been doing everything to propel his social status and has no emotional stake with Connor, only with Evan for using him. WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN CLEAR IF THEY INCLUDED 'Good For You'.

I have calmed down since writing this and all I feel now is numb. I listened to songs from the original Broadway Soundtrack after the movie as it auto played on youtube and felt. Now I’m just upset that people would probably never give the stage version a shot anymore. Thanks movie. *sigh*

[deromanus]

just started seeing a new doctor who is young and iraqi and like just moved to the us and got her license to practice here. i am literally one of her first patients at her first family medicine practice. it is so refreshing to work with a doctor who is not completely jaded by the us medical system. like every visit i've had with her so far she has sat and talked to me for like 30-45 min and is genuinely interested in helping me... she's helping me go off my antidepressants for the first time in 10 years .... and a bunch of other unnecessary medication i've been prescribed by doctors who were too lazy to help me in any way other than just writing me another script

like i'm sitting here thinking about the time i went to a doctor in ny who straight up told me, "I can't help you because I don't know anything about your rare condition (aka: i'm not interested in doing the work to learn about your condition). but here's an $80 cbd cream we sell in our office, that will probably help! when do you want to schedule your next appointment?" not to mention all the doctors in fl who tried to just prescribe me opiates for pain and move on.... like yeah get your 18 yo patient with a chronic pain condition hooked on opiates that's really responsible medical practice.......

[weabooweedwitch]

I maxed out my dose of my antidepressant and I finally got ahold of my psychiatrist and she's changed me to a brand new script and I'm just looking at the new meds like.... why even bother. If I'm walking around on autopilot waiting until something makes me upset enough to send me over the edge, why would I delay that. God. Even in elementary school I sussed out that this would all be pointless, that I'd grow up and be unhappy working a job i don't like for shit pay and no job pays enough anyways and rent is too high everywhere you go and im also disabled with chronic pain

just yesterday I was cleaning out some of my stuff and throwing it away during a depression episode and I found a notebook with an old suicide note in it from years ago, from before I even made this blog, probably. And nothing has changed since then. I was reading it just, kind of in shock, because I realized I still felt the exact same way that I felt when I wrote that letter, and it's just another horrible reminder of how long I've been sick

I just don't know. I'm getting out of bed and I'm trying to stay productive and I'm Attempting To Live Life, but. It feels like I'm just always waiting for a sign that it's finally time to go.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Thank you for still being here and speaking up. It helps me cope. I'm constantly fighting with different stages of grief and anxiety and thinking about how to change what happened in the finale to something satisfying that doesn't betray Dean's character and is less incest fond. I'd sign a fucking petition right now. To write an actual script or fic, I'd probably need some antidepressants. Thanks for still being here.

*hugs you tight*

I’m not going anywhere! Each other is all we have and it’s so important. When I made this blog I didn’t have friends. I think I’d already finished going to classes so I didn’t even have my university acquaintances anymore. Not that I ever really talked about myself with them, not really. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about my depression. I was very depressed. Then I made my blog and my life started changing. I met people who understood me. I met people I could really talk about myself with. I’m still not great with opening up and talking about myself but there’s nothing I feel like I couldn’t mention to my friends now.

Which is sort of why, at the end of the day, the finale will not matter. Now it hurts but in a year, five years, twenty years? It will still hurt that we didn’t get what we deserved and needed from the show, obviously, nothing can replace that specific need to sa satisfying conclusion to something we cared about so much, public visibility, representation, validation, seeing that we matter enough to be catered to by mainstream television. But we’re still getting something - something else, but not less valuable - that we deserve and need, from each other. It’s not the same, obviously. But there’s infinite value in connecting with other people who feel and think similarly to us and with whom we can support each other.

I know this is what gets said every time we get hurt and disappointed by this kind of stuff, and sounds like rhetorical fluff, but that’s what I can do...

p.s. it’s probably hypocritical of me to tell people to go to mental health professionals - I mean, I did try and got burnt, twice - but if you feel like you’d probably benefit from some support like antidepressants... it’d probably be a good idea to consult a professional about it. You don’t need to be at your lowest to get some, they can be the difference between feeling meh and feeling okay :)

p.p.s: you know what I am excited about? Seeing Jensen’s next moves. I’m not expecting him to get a pitchfork and hunt CW executives down, but he’s already made some pretty telling moves, which means he can, and wants to, spill salt without being unprofessional or anything. Knowing that Jensen is on the same boat as us, basically, is a source of comfort for me. I wish none of us were in that boat at all, but knowing that we’re not alone on it, that Jensen himself feels not okay about Dean’s ending... it is validating.