#functioning anyway

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #440

Ohh. Sephiroth. I am spiraling today. Despite the best efforts of a friend in this space trying to encourage me, I'm still spiraling.

...I assume there's too much adrenaline in my system to think clearly. And perhaps a few too many shots of R's chocolate-cherry moonshine, too. And given that the shot glasses in my house (inherited, and almost never used) contain twice as much volume as the shot glasses at R's house, and given that it only took two shots at his house to get my brain all wiggly, I'm sure you can imagine the state I'm in right now.

...It was not my best decision. To be sure, the goal was not to get into an altered state, but rather, to distract myself from the fact that my brain is on fire by flooding my senses with a strongly-flavored thing, and that was the most strongly-flavored thing in the refrigerator. Which, I suppose, isn't much better as an explanation; I'm still running away via sensory stimulation instead of facing the emotions swirling around in my skull, which... isn't ideal.

I have pinky-promised never again to consume anything containing alcohol while under the influence of adrenaline. I believe firmly that a person is only as good as the integrity of their word, and so, if I make a promise, I treat it like a contract or... maybe more like a geas (geis...?) – a terrible, unacceptable thing to break, punishable by immediate termination of the relationship by the person I made the promise to.

I didn't do anything stupid, so don't worry; I mostly just played Hades. Though admittedly, at the moment, I am still wanting to shove my face full of the Belgian chocolate cake from the nearby dessert place, and also far too much cheese, and also all the garlic, and also, oddly specifically, crunchy baked chicken skin, strongly spiced. Though I'm not gonna do that right now, because my stomach is already full.

Overall, I think it's a combination of factors that has led to my current state. My sleep schedule has been all over the place. I've not been keeping up with my hydration. My mother texted me last week (in which she, once again, insisted that nothing that happened was her fault because she was poor and stressed and etc.; this is my surprised face: 😐). I had two interviews (Friday and today). My shoulder was stabbed full of holes. The thing with J's sister happened. And, given that some muscles that were trying to protect my ribs have relaxed (due to the “stabbing full of holes”), I left work on Saturday in more pain than usual after lifting trays and boxes. And for the last several days, I've had mild intestinal distress (which means what little water I have been getting hasn't been absorbed well...). It is only Monday.

The last 6 days have been messy, and despite my best efforts to remain chipper and upbeat... I think I must be pretty tired.

Nonetheless, I functioned today. I went to a job interview for a position that I don't think I would fit very well in. It would, essentially, involve being part of a call center team who works with people claiming unemployment benefits. Or... essentially... working with people who are scared because they don't have a steady source of income and then call with problems that they likely wanna yell at the nearest human about in order to feel powerful and in control of their lives.

I think that even if I do get this one, I won't take it; I don't do very well with phone conversation thanks to audio processing delay. And I don't do very well with being someone else's personal verbal punching bag, either. The whole arrangement really doesn't sound like a fun time. And... judging from the interview questions, I don't think I have the qualities they're looking for, anyhow.

J and I stopped for Eggcellent on the way home.

Then when I got home, I made baked chicken leg quarters with the usual asparagus and mac-n-chz. This time, though, I put that black garlic seasoning on the chicken.

...I'm a little sad to report that, after baking, the black garlic seasoning tastes more like vegetable bouillon than like black garlic. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad at all, but... I'll have to put on some actual garlic powder with it next time.

J's sister called J sometime after that, supposedly by accident. They had a conversation about the vile things she wrote to J via text. Apparently, she had a hard time understanding why J would feel upset about the fact that she called him a piece of shit, among other similarly ugly things. They spoke for a long time. J essentially was only asking her to be forthcoming about her discomfort (i.e. “When you said abc, I interpreted xyz; is that accurate? If not, what did you mean? And if so, don't say abc ever again, please.”) so they can have a rational discussion when a conflict arises. But it seems like none of his words were getting through; his tone became increasingly exasperated as she, seemingly, tried to poke holes in the validity of his very simple request.

...It's not unexpected. M, J, and I all come from abusive families. We all have been abused differently and with different details, but... we all have C-PTSD. We make our relationship work by being very forthcoming about our feelings, and by holding ourselves accountable when we inevitably make mistakes; we work to correct our destructive behaviors and communication methods. We put effort every day into managing the scars and the conditioning that our respective upbringings left us with.

...J's sister does not do the same. And that's probably largely due to the fact that she still lives with her abusers. You can't learn new habits or defy your conditioning very well if your body is pumped full of adrenaline all the time. All the same, she seems committed to her narrative that J and I are both malicious, horrible people, so... I don't really know what else to do for it but keep my distance.

Notably... I noticed today that when I got “in trouble” (I didn't really get in trouble; M and J just thought my course of action was unwise and asked me not to repeat it, which is reasonable and fair) for drinking R's moonshine while upset, I noticed a significant reduction in my anxiety related to the presence of adrenaline in my system.

...I can't help but wonder if, at this point, my body is so accustomed to receiving to punishment in response to being misunderstood that it can't quite stop producing adrenaline until the "punishment" occurs. I wonder if, in the space between my perceived mistake and some kind of reprisal, my body remains in tension, on the lookout for said reprisal, so that I'm not taken by surprise by it when it comes, as what used to occur in days past. Hm.

...I wonder if there's a way to fix that. I'll ask my therapist when I see them tomorrow. Or... I'll try to anyway. But I've already got so much to talk to them about, between my mother's text and this thing with J's sister, that I'm not really sure I'll be able to get through it all in the hour that's allotted to me. They're one of the few people who interacts with me in good faith that I am a non-malicious person, and their wisdom gives me lots and lots of perspectives and interpretations to consider besides my own; having only monthly visits with them has been hard.

Nonetheless, I have to figure out a way to not get bent out of shape whenever I am misunderstood by emotionally available people. I have to figure out why I get so bent out of shape in response to that in the first place. I... this... it can't continue.

…

...But even as I am writing this, interacting with other people at all still seems like a treacherous thing that only ever leads to me getting misunderstood and hurt. Maybe I'll feel differently once the adrenaline clears from my system. I'll hope for that outcome.

Suppose I should go to bed. And drink water, too. Though not necessarily in that order.

...I'm gonna be okay, all right? Just. The week has been exceptionally weird, and I've fallen down just a little. But I'm not gonna stay here. Despite the fact that other humans seem terrifying to me right now, I know I've got some good people in my corner, with hands ready and waiting to lift me up. I just gotta get my head back on straight, that's all. And I will. And then I'll be back to normal.

I love you. Stay safe out there. I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

[anbaisai]

Epel looks so miserable when you send him to self study help 😭

[stemmmm]

the scene people keep screaming about from chapter 5 of theseus' guide

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[cup-o-stars]

Happy B-Day to the Corasante!! ❤🕯🎂🕯❤

(Featuring way too many drawings)

[analog-television]

So like. Not what you'd consider "cold" just in general, but rather specifically for where YOU live (for example: 6c/43f might be considered "cold" if you live in Florida). I see a lot of Tumblr users defending the cold on here, so I'm wondering what temperatures they're actually talking about. For me anyway "cold" automatically translates to be anything below freezing - but I'm not fully convinced that 90% of Tumblr is Actually yearning for below freezing temps.

(My ideal temperature range is around 10c-20c, but a bit below 10c can be nice and refreshing as well. Above 20c depends on what I'm doing - and anything above 25c is too much.)

[mikoworks]

Curly mood

[archfey-edda]

Hey what if people you outlived could leave behind ghosts of themselves but they would be imperfect and incomplete and ignorant of how their story ended, would that be fucked up or what?

(Don't worry, returning to the funny in the next one)

Guard comics - < prev | next > (also, the ao3 colletion)

[plutonicbees]

imagine ur tim drake, it's the anniversary of ur mother's funeral, christmas eve, and you're absolutely shitting ur pants bc you let your teammate feed you the crabcakes they made

you're absolutely going through it, and then u find out that doomsday (not the villain) is coming in the form of a meteor. u try to call batman and he's off planet. u call up nightwing's team and they're dealing with their own battle. there's nobody to help so you and your team go to fuckin,, fight an evil meteor. one of your friends is writing a will. you're all ready to die (you're ready to reunite with your mother).

and then fucking santa comes and waves hi and your team tries to tell him to watch out and then the evil meteor crashes into his sleigh and fucking explodes him and the reindeers in a glorious gory death

man. what are you doing next christmas eve.

[wombywoo]

geared up ⚔︎

[bloggingboutburgers]

Had a bit of a "community heartbreak" last week, yet another one in a life-long series (though it'd been a while), so I malfunctioned for some days, took exactly one painkiller, and then finally tried to make sense of stuff that hurt me over the years and that I kept being clueless to for a ridiculous amount of time, so that maybe, hopefully, it could save some people in cases similar to mine some confusion and hurt

[pizzat-i]

something's a bit fishy about this man

[secretly-a-trekkie]

cant save everyone

[remxedmoon]

(you worked yourself to death.)

yeah i wasn’t kidding when i said these would be coming soon. <- haha funny joke marshall. so!! remember when i said that this post would be coming out last weekend? guess whose tablet broke a few days after saying that! so sorry for the delay!! this is long overdue. here’s a link to the drive, as always! everything in this part of the update should be in the miscellaneous folder (outside of the menu icons, which are in the menu folder. wauaua).

unedited versions below the cut, plus some notes. fair warning 90% of this is just ui stuff lol

so! all of this was already done by the time i posted the enemies. the delay isn’t *entirely* because of the tablet issues, i just managed to get distracted by making: even more redraws! i’d say new update soon but after what happened last time i shouldn’t jinx myself. but! almost All of the art for the initial mod release is done!!!! exciting!!!!!!

please be nice to me (silly) this is my first time doing frame by frame animation in… give or take 5 years? i followed the original animations pretty closely, so they don’t look Awful but i am Aware of the jank. i’m not an animator!!! they’re Good Enough for my purposes.

hey did you know that the original teleport map is slightly off center. did you know that. that’s not the case for the redraw for the record but it did make things a little harder. despite that, i think you can tell i was having fun with the dormont part of the map. i would’ve put more detail into the house, but we never really get a more detailed look at it??? and i didn’t want to make assumptions. so that part’s just traced from the original 👍. anyways shoutout to the clocktower being Curved for whatever reason

outside of those, all of the added art is actually just spritework. i didn’t know this at first, but there’s a TON of copies of sprites from the icon set. Basically Everywhere. so those are added now! and should work properly! also added a few sprites that were Missing from my original batch. not going to put them all here, but a few Important ones (which i actually had to make new art for) are the rock paper scissors cheatsheet, the Larger versions of the craft signs (used in the calamité fight and. probably somewhere else idk), and the craft signs for the tutorial kid fight!

aaaand i think that’s it! for stuff from this update. yeah no there’s more coming buddy. my tablet already broke one time this week there’s no way it’s happening twice. i’m not working on portraits Just Yet (though the temptation has been There), but i’ve got the title screens, a few backgrounds, and the ending cgs done! along with a few other assorted cgs sketched out. because im out of my fucking mind. so, uh, see you soon!! enjoy!!

[clever-and-unique-name]

A simplified version of the thing I feel like goes on in my brain.

Blank version under the readmore if you want to be a bit silly+introspective with your own "settings"

[likesdoodling]

Was listening to music after studying today, so I figured I'd draw some tiny maglors to round out the day :)