#i should show my tumblr to my psychiatrist (crazy)

[sophiethewitch1]

also, my daddy issues take form in disliking masculine/fatherlike figures on sight so i think that's why i get physically ill when i hear about daddy kink

[cryptwrites]

i wrote this for a creative writing class so now you can have it. also my professor DOES know my tumblr. hi

CW:

To start off, the story - no the account - I am about to tell you is in no way a confession of guilt or a weight off my conscience but I need to know I'm not crazy or-or alone. I have to tell someone what happened at the Porter house..

The Porters live in a classic two story house just on the other side of town. They have… had two small children, Whitney and Jackson. Their lives were normal? I suppose? As average as they could get there.

Mr. Porter was a bastard of a man. He had rotting anger inside of him that he had slowly let consume over the past few years. Now, he never showed his anger, not to his wife and not to his kids but Mrs. Porter knew, and if she knew, the children knew. Eggshells were always walked on around their father, you could tell those kids did not fear him but certainly did fear what he could do if he ever stopped muzzling his anger.

I don't know if they ever saw, but I suppose they must have… sometimes when I would go out to get the morning paper or just to get a breath of air I could see him. Just staring. Not at anyone or anything in particular anytime, no. The subject of his gaze shifted with every day that I saw this, sometimes it was his wife… other times it was his kids. Sometimes it was a squirrel and once… it was me. He would stare with an unbroken gaze for minutes (hours?) at a time. Nothing would even happen for him to go back to normal, he just… did. Carried on like nothing else happened.

I’m not the only one who could feel it. This… off feeling to Mr. Porter and his house. You walked by and you felt depressed. Even without knowing what they were like, the house was sad. I bought my house at a lower price than anything on the market because the realtor couldn't sell it no matter what they did. I wasn't thrilled about this gloomy aura that followed me around the block but… I’m a college student who couldn't afford anything else.

Anyways, Mrs Porter was a fine woman, she was friendly but she was sad. But one day, Mrs Porter discovered she was pregnant. All the neighbors got these little flyers taped to their door announcing it. I didn't even know they were wanting a third child. Could they even afford it? Regardless, Mr. Porter began working on the nursery. He worked on this damn room day and night. I live on the other side of the street and I couldn't sleep at night from all the hammering.

Mrs. Porter started to show up less though. I thought that maybe the pregnancy was getting the better of her. I mean, she was an older woman, and the pregnancy might have just been a little harder on her now. But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. That damn nursery still hadn't been finished and Mrs Porter was nowhere to be seen. The hammering now just had become a customary part of life, something I only noticed when I was trying to work or study. Other than that, it blended it with the other mundane sounds of life.

It was only at my neighbor's barbeque - Cher. A sweet guy who I honestly have considered asking out two or three times. Anyways at this barbeque I mentioned the Porters and how if he knew anything about the nursery or has heard anything from Mrs Porter. Cher gave me… this weird look. Half way between concern and pity. He asked if I had been sleeping well. I laughed at this and said “Obviously I haven't been sleeping well. There’s a man hammering together a room throughout the night.” Cher didn’t laugh though. He told me I should go talk to them and then wrote down the number to his psychiatrist. Pleasant.

I didn't think much of it, Cher lived two houses down, I mean, maybe he just didn't hear the incessant hammering throughout the night like I did. But I did take up his advice, so I went over to Porter's house the next day. Now, I don't know why but knocking on that door made me more anxious than I had felt in a while. Every knock took a considerable amount of effort but eventually, someone answered.

It was little Whitney. I asked her where her mother and father were. She looked at me confused, so I asked if I could speak with her father. She shook her head and went to get him. Waiting there, at that house, it felt like I was being watched. I mean neighborhoods like that tend to be very nosy so maybe I was being watched - but this, this felt wrong.

Eventually, Mr. Porter came to the door. He was wearing the exact same clothes he had been wearing the last time I saw him. I asked him how he was, how the nursery was coming along and how Mrs. Porter was. He gave me fairly generic answers of courtesy but paused when I asked about his wife. He offered to go and get her. I told him it was not a problem if she was in too much pain to walk. He laughed at this. Told me “We only just found out a few days ago. She’s more than fine to walk.” he walked away with that - presumably to get his wife - but he left the door wide open. I just stood there… had it really only been a few days? That can't be right. I had gone through an entire semester's worth of classes by this point, there was no way it had just been a few days.

Mr. Porter eventually came back and asked to borrow my phone, noting that his had died. I didn't even think about what he was asking before my phone was in his hand. He dialed a number - I, I don't know what the number is. I’ve tried calling it numerous times, but it just goes to a deadline. - he spoke on the phone for a little bit, giving his address and the name of his wife before handing the phone back to me. I asked him what it was. He said he had called the police. I asked him why. “Ms. Porter isn't here.” he said. He went back into his house without a word being said. He told his children what had happened. They both just looked at him. Whitney and Jackson did not cry. I don't know if they were just too shocked to cry or if they just… didn't. I just stood there, looking into this house and… I could swear I heard the hammering start again. Eventually the police arrived, they questioned Mr. Porter who didn't really have much to give, they talked to the kids, who were quiet. And they talked to me, who was as helpful as I could be with my now warped perception of time.

“He’s been in the house. With the children.” I told the officer. I think about it now, and I don't think in those days… months? That I ever saw him or any of his family leave his house. Not that I was looking too closely but I hadn't seen anything. The police couldn't find anything or any evidence of a crime and so they left. Mr. Porter and his children reverted back into the house, still leaving the door open. I don’t know how long I stood there, just staring into this house but I know that by the time I turned to go home it was fully dark. The hammering did stop that night, I could see them all around the dinner table silently eating. Once that was done, he led his children to bed and then went to his own.

I woke up the next day and went back over to the house - I don't know why? I just felt like maybe I owed something to the poor man. I knocked on his door, Mr. Porter answered. I asked him how he was, if there was anything I could do to help and if the children were at school. He paused at this last question again, stating that the children were on the porch. Playing. I pointed out to him that young Whitney and Jackson were nowhere on or near the porch. Mr. Porter could not say where they were. He expressed utter confusion. He once again asked for my phone, I once again gave it to him. The police did not believe him this time and arrested him. But they were forced to let him go as there was no evidence of his involvement, and was brought back home.

The neighbors avoided him, but they had always avoided him. The police would make periodic checks on the poor man but all he would do is work on that damn nursery. The hammering became louder and more violent. One evening, after several weeks of this, I walked over again. I wanted to check on him I guess. I knocked on the door, he answered. Looking the exact same he had the last two times. He greeted me, and welcomed me to his home. I hesitated, but eventually walked him. He offered me a cup of coffee, which I accepted and he offered to show me the house. I didn't really want a tour of the gloomy house I found myself in, but my mouth had other plans and agreed.

He showed me around and I soon learned that Mr. Porter no longer went to work. He did not make breakfast or dinner, he did not sleep. He just worked in the nursery. They were always a strange family, and he was always a strange man and something strange was bound to happen to them eventually, but this was not strange. This was sickeningly ordinary. Not for your whole family to go missing. That's not ordinary, but for this family, it seemed like the most ordinary tragedy that could have happened.

Eventually, we got to the nursery. I opened the door. It was heavy and hard to open, but eventually it moved. I stepped inside and everything about this nursery was bright. It was ordinary. It didn't have the gloomy feeling the rest of the house had. I stood there, looking at it for a second before turning back to Mr. Porter, but there was no Mr. Porter to look back too. I searched the whole house, calling out his name and there was no trace of Mr. Porter. So, like he had done many times before, I opened my phone and called 911. When the police got there, I told them my story and showed them the nursery. But when I opened the door to it, there was no longer a nursery. Just an old spare guest room.

Evidence was searched for, and evidence was not found. The Porter house stands empty, with all of the family’s things still inside – furniture and clothing. Even the food, rotting in the refrigerator. The Police arrested me, thinking maybe I had hurt the entire family, but of course could never nail me for anything because I didn't do anything.

This is not a confession. This is not a plea. I do not know what happened in the Porter house but I know that what happened was far from ordinary and much too ordinary. Something is wrong with that house. Something. Is in that house. I fear that something is in my house. If there was anything to be learned from this, I… refuse to learn it.

[scoups4lyfe]

YOU ARE BACK!!!! YAYYY!!

What's up? How's your health now?

HEYYYYYY

Well, I’ve finished my treatment for the kidney infection :D.

I have another doc appointment this Thursday and psychiatrist appointment on Friday LOL!!!

For now I’m also taking acid blockers to help with my digestion / internal inflammation.

Mostly my biggest L has been nutrition—

I’m doing my best to be healthy and what not but my body nerfs me in some type of way — appetite, digestion, blah blah blah

Tldr;

I lost an unhealthy amount of weight because I can’t digest anything and I could barely eat anything for like a week;

My sis told my mom she thinks I should be institutionalized because she’s afraid I’m going to die from malnutrition 🦆.

Anyways, things are starting to … hopefully, get better ❤️‍🩹.

I’m actually ABLE to eat so >:].

Go stupid go crazy 😛

I feel the need to state here— I don’t have an eating disorder (in the traditional sense). About a year and a half ago I was suddenly unable to eat: wheat, peanuts, egg whites, milk/anything with lactose 🤪

That’s like. Almost every food ever. LOL.

Most things are made with wheat flour, or eggs or blah blah blah.

So completely changing my diet had me fked up for 6 months; I adjusted — but then my health continued to worsen, and in July we finally learned I had an intestinal infection called H. Pylori—all of July I was treated for that.

The first week of august was okay….and then I slowly started to worsen, more and more and more, until the Nov 1st ER trip <33. Where they told me I had a kidney infection. (And as stated before, I just finished treatment for that.)

Anyways; I LOVE food I LOVE eating; but bro. Do you know how much it fvcking SUCKS when it genuinely hurts to eat? When I am constantly fighting against having no appetite, and the constant nausea after like 3 spoonfuls of food—do y’all know how desolate and desperate that can make a person? Blah >:O

Right.

Half the problems I’ve had with productivity in November can be directly correlated with low blood sugar making it so I can’t think worth of shxt 🫥👻

Mentally —

I think I’ve been okay? I mean whew. Literally last Monday to Wednesday I went through the WORST fvcking paranoia. Y’all would not even BELIEVE— 😩

This Friday I’ll be reconvening with my psychiatrist on what we should do (med wise 🤪).

So yeah — those are the basics of my situation.

(Lmao just now realizing idek if I even told y’all the extent of my intestinal and digestion issues 🥸.)

While I wasn’t on tumblr, I was going stupid and crazy on PPT. The bipolar ppt got like

80 fvcking slides

I’m not quiteeee finished with it yet; but I’m close. I (of course <33) plan on pasting the PowerPoint here—as well as my essay and research and sh*t

And with that

I plan on posting a compilation of my journal entries relating to bipolar / to further show (literally) what the mind / thoughts of a bipolar person is like; etc etc etc

And — of course <3; I made sure to edit all the important / private info out, so fr it’s just reading basically “anon” diary / journaling entries LOL!

Yeehaw y’all

❤️‍🩹✌️

[wishihadneverbeenthevillain]

gosh, i hate when i wake up late and don’t take my meds because look at this bullshit… it’s 9pm and i’m hyper as fuck, posting like a crazy hyper person non-stop, not having done any of the shit i should’ve done today, already having cried over it, being impulsive as fuck and ordering food more than once in a day and not being able to sleep and masturbating several times and watching a bunch of different shit but nothing until the end because i can’t focus on one thing and keep pausing everything and basically having done a thousand things but nothing at the same time… 😩 and also… lacking emotional and executive functions more than usual… having crazy mood swings depending on what im thinking about— thinks about all i didn’t do and had to do? “omg i’m gonna kill myself”, watching a show and eating food and scrolling aimlessly through tumblr “omg i love life dude” lmao i’m too fucking hyper goddammit, i should’ve known… even with my meds yesterday my psychiatrist was like “your adhd seems to be out of control, here’s another medicine to add to the meds you already take that should start helping with that in a month or two” and did i buy the meds?! no because i can’t seem to do shit because i’m failing so hard at life right now, i have so much to figure out sos but before i start spiraling again and crying and wanting to die, i’ll order crepe and watch a different show or something and hopefully sleep before i drive myself crazy and tomorrow when i take my meds i know my adhd will still be out of control because it has been out of control BUT hopefully it’ll allow me to at least figure things out… i mean… i have to go to work in the morning and afternoon and then school at night and then my internship later at night but somehow i have to figure out how to also… buy tickets for a concert that will start being sold tomorrow, buy my freaking meds, and finish my thesis project because i need to have it done by tuesday morning sos, OH LORD PLEASE HELP ME okay see i’m already spiraling again, no fun, crepes it is sos

[troidatoi]

Day 1 - 8/23/2023

Hi Tumblr!

I had one of you in high school but deleted it after college. I decided to make another just so I have a place to rant and vent about things that make me sad or angry or just things in general. I do journal but I'd like to use it for more positive things and manifestations or whatever. I turned on all the privacy settings so hopefully no one finds this. lmfao. I know all posts are public but I don't really know anyone in my life that has Tumblr anymore. I kind of just needed a place to fucking vent or rant. Today's Kobe's birthday so I'm trying not to be so angry today. (lol, sorry Kobe.) Okay so here goes. I just needed a way to let out my frustrations and so I was like why not Tumblr? I'd mainly be talking about my health and probably my frustrations with life in general.

Growing up, I've always been a big ass kid and you can tell and it showed in my pictures. Been bullied a lot for it from everybody including family. Had a kid threw a rock at me when I was little and said he hated fat people. My parents took me to a weight loss doctor where I cried my eyes out. I guess I always sought food out for comfort. I'm also an only child. I've always wanted to try and better my health but didn't know how, didn't really have the resources or money, and I was constantly surrounded by food. I kind of wish my parents had let me figure out how to do it on my own. I turned into this person with low self esteem, low confidence, hating what I looked like everyday, hanging out with my skinny friends back then was torture for me because I was constantly comparing myself to them (I know they loved me, wished I loved myself as much as they loved me). I hated that I fixated on the way I looked but hey that's what society has programmed us to do. It's easy to be like love yourself blah blah when you're not in the position of constant self hatred. I've tried calorie counting, diets, seeing a nutritionist (which helped a little only to later realized that it wasn't sustainable for me and I developed an eating disorder.) Although I'm pretty sure I've had an eating disorder ever since I was little and now I feel like shit every time I eat food or get scared to eat. I think the only person who I really saw results with and was sustainable was my personal trainer. (Shoutout Michael!) Hopefully, I can come back once I find a job again. (Can someone please fawking hire me already?)

So yeah going on a tangent, apologies! I started running when lockdown hit and I loved it but I also developed hammer toes and it hurt so much to walk and wear shoes. I went to a podiatrist and they were like get orthopedics and I was like okay but they were so expensive even with health insurance and I'm like okay well fuck this so I got surgery and I was so fucking miserable. lmao. I couldn't do anything and didn't leave my bad. It hurt so much to eat that I lost so much weight and I got so sad like crying for days. I realized I needed help if I didn't want k*ll myself so I called the hotline at midnight and it was nice actually. I've heard bad stories but thankfully the person I talked to listened to what I had to say and he brought up the Dodgers. lmao. And he was like maybe I'll see you at a Dodgers' game. I hit up a therapist the next day, a week later hit up a psychiatrist and was prescribed sertraline. (An antidepressant). The weight loss was crazy because I've never been that thin and I wasn't sure how to feel because it was deadass depression weight loss. I was happy with the weight loss but sad about how I lost it. I had so much loose skin that I also decided to do a tummy tuck, skin removal and thigh lift surgery and the recovery was such a pain in the ass but I felt so good and clothes actually fit. I should have probably waited till the next year because I took so much antibiotics that I found out I have leaky gut so I have to stay away from gluten, diary and processed sugar for the time being. (Hopefully cause my gawd I miss eating bread.) I have so much bloating, inflammation, joint pain, brain fog, acne breakouts, tingling sensations, pain on my sides and the list can go on. I went to my primary care doctors and a neurologist and they didn't really help much. Finally went to a holistic doctor and she figured out what was wrong with me and I know it's going to take awhile for everything to heal but I just want to stop feeling like this. (I also had surgery in 2013 to get an ovarian cyst removed and I didn't know I had it because everyone called me fat and they told me the cyst was making me bloated as shit.) I'm trying not to be resentful and look at the past but it's hard because there's so much trauma. Felt like my family didn't love me if I wasn't skinny.

My therapist said I should stop blaming myself but I can't help it. I know things are going to get better and I'm doing my part and putting in my best effort to heal and follow the treatment plan. I know I'm being impatient but for once in my life, I just want to be healthy again and enjoy food without being scared to eat it. Luckily, a healed gut is attainable so I need to keep fighting for it. I know it's going to be worth it in the end. I'm also paying so fucking much for this holistic doctor like I better have the strongest gut in the world and lose 100 pounds so that when I turn to the side no one can see me.

I am also in a lot of credit card debt and I know I'll pay it off once someone hires me but the job market is so fucking hard right now. Probably need to sell feet pics or find a sugar daddy to afford my lifestyle. (lmao jk, kind of) The way I applied to so many jobs the past week and a half is crazy. Just have to trust the Universe and believe and manifest.

Right now, I just really want to focus on healing my gut so I can eat yummy things again, getting a new full time job with higher pay and being surrounded by my loved ones. One of those things where I so badly want things to get better and it feels like no matter how hard I try, things seem to be moving slow. But they're moving, I guess? lmao.

I just want the best for me and it's going to happen because I deserve it and I said so and what I say goes. I hope you try your best to love yourself through this process and to know that things are going to be so amazing for you that you're going to wonder why you felt like this. The setback is stronger than the comeback. Remember that.

And one more time, Happy Birthday, Kobe. I miss and love you 24/8. <3

[psychoticen]

05.07.2023 | Berlin The (Female) Body as a Canvas

Extending upon the previous article, the body or flesh can become a canvas for expressing and exhibiting pain. This comes from the fact that I use to, in moments of elevated emotional turmoil, pick at my skin, particularly my arms. A skin-picking disorder (also known as excoriation disorder) is a form of self-injurious body-focused repetitive behaviours, where people compulsively scratch, pinch and dig at their skin in ways that cause physical damage (scarring) and psychological distress (guilt after picking) - despite it being a coping mechanism to relieve internal tension, especially when one feels out of control or unsafe. Several psychologists have posited that it can be a result of repressed rage felt towards anxiogenic partners or parents. For me, last year, I had an intense 6 months of picking at my arms. When it would heal, I would go at it again. It was triggered by on-going incidents with two individuals who I confronted to have a discussion about past abusive experiences. Instead, I was met with stonewalling (them shutting down and refusing to engage), gaslighting (them denying and telling me I’m crazy), and deflection (diverting it like a boomerang back to me). 

Nepo-baby Tallulah Willis, daughter of American actors Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, shared that her “skin becomes the vessel of all [her] heightened anxiety/fear/depression". For example, a cause of one skin-picking episode was “moving stress — feeling out of control so zeroing in on something I CAN control, thus fingernails met face.“ Willis also acknowledged that the healing process isn’t linear (like mine). Hollywood has even showed excoriation disorder in the film Black Swan, being a symptom of Ballet Dancer Nina Sayers’ anxiety and OCD. In the film, she lives with a controlling and narcissistic mother. Now, I don’t know what sort of environment Tallulah grew up in or the company she surrounds herself with (her parents divorced when she was young), but it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to say she probably has some internalised anger being expressed through her skin rather than towards who/what it should be or onto an actual canvas.

In the infamous novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), the portrait of the narcissistic Dorian, painted by character Basil, represents his inner and true self. As Dorian’s soul is degraded and corrupted, its evilness shows up on the canvas as the portrait becomes uglier, while his physical flesh appears healthy and youthful. The portrait acts as a ‘vessel’ for all of Dorians corruption, so he keeps it locked and covered in his home. Several years pass and Basil comes to see the portrait. Horrified at what it or Dorian has become, Basil beseeches Dorian. In turn, Dorian retaliates and kills Basil. Dorian decides to destroy the only evidence remaining of his sins, stabbing the canvas with a knife (which kept him immortal). The house servants awaken to find a decrepit old man stabbed in the heart, while the portrait beside him beautiful again.

In modern society, people who have a Dorian Gray ‘archetype’ deflect, which is a psychological defence mechanism that protects them from experiencing uncomfortable emotions such as guilt, shame, and accountability. Thus, individuals close to Dorian Grays can over time become their canvas for their sins. This can be expressed through a skin-picking disorder and exhibited as scars, defiling themselves in the way the portrait was defiled by Dorian. All the while, the Dorian Grays try to save face. With a skin-picking disorder, the body really is keeping the score and is a very evident expression of somatised trauma that should not be looked at with disgust, but rather, compassion. As one user on Tumblr wrote, “a girl becomes a woman when her fantasies of violence are no longer focused inwards, towards herself, but outwards”.

[isa-ah]

Heeeey, I don't mean to bother you but I just...I've recently connected with an alter of mine and I don't know what's going on

She's like...I'm still in my body when she's taking over so I control my movements but it's like I'm speaking through her, it's like her personality is overshadowing mine

That scared the shit out of me when it started because she was really cold, hateful, mean and manipulative towards people I loved. And really mistrusting

No one really understands what's going on and it's like a lot of people think I'm imagining it or are suddenly scared of me, thinking I'm possessed or crazy

And I really want to talk this through with my psychiatrist but he hasn't been all that understanding in the past. He often changes a diagnosis or adds things without telling me that I then detect on a sheet of paper he gave me for a doctor appointment. Or he doesn't believe me that I don't take drugs and that that wasn't the trigger for my bipolar disorder. Or he just tells me I should lose weight?? Like, if I lose anymore weight I'll get a hole in my stomach??

I'm just scared he'll be like: oh that's just your ptsd. Or you have a psychosis. We're just gonna up your dosis and you'll stop imagining things

So I'm just really scared. I've always felt kind of out of place in the inside since a certain age. Like I wasn't fully whole anymore. The more trauma I suffered the more split I felt. And in my past there have been some blackouts where important, heavy moments are missing and once it was several days

Now I don't have blackouts anymore. I didn't think much about it because I thought everyone had these feelings and blackouts. And now I'm coexisting with a part of me. I've always pushed these parts down, because I am this huge perfectionist and I was afraid of people thinking I'm not normal or that I'm crazy

I can't communicate with her and I may even have other alters too that I can't reach

I just don't know how to handle the situation without help and I'm so afraid they'll just laugh in my face. All I know is that she showed up when I've been in a heavy phase full of despair a couple of weeks ago.

And now she's always there when I can't cope with a situation and takes over. But she still let's me be there, let's me control my body. It's more like in my mind her personality is more present and her thoughts are suddenly so strong that I act out on them. I know I'm not fully myself then but through her I'm rather numb and don't really mind.

And once or twice I have simply let her take over because I couldn't handle what was happening at all. And it was so relieving to hide behind her and feel less emotions. She's like this shield, protecting me not matter what. And...for the first time I've felt like a part of the hole inside of me was filled. I've felt like I belonged, like I was finally not alone anymore. I don't want to lose that but I also don't know how to communicate with her. Or how to convince others that I'm not faking. I just want to be whole. Connect with those parts of mine. Feel her embrace around me and feel safe, comforted. She helps me be more confident, take care of myself, put myself first, feel more free again. She protects me.

I don't know if I sound crazy right now...I just needed to write this down. I don't know why she urged me to write you out of all the people on tumblr because she's really mistrusting of other people.

Please don't feel pressured to answer this.

- H

ive been chewing on this off and on and talking to my fiance and my take away mostly revolves around;

1. your psychiatrist sounds like a piece of shit. you need to find someone who's going to meet you in the middle and let you voice your concerns. look for someone else.

2. trying to talk directly to a therapist or psychiatrist about thinking you have DID or OSDD will almost always get you shot down bc of the stigma and disbelief around them. instead, make space, let yourself and your alters operate normally in front of them, and when they pick up on it let them drive the conversation. it SUCKS but :-// lo and I have both experienced being laughed off the stage for trying to talk about our systems.

3. if your alter is lashing out at people in your life there's almost certainly a reason. alters are a defense mechanism, they're to keep you safe and operational while removing your trauma from your conscious mind. if she's treating someone like shit you need to step back and examine that relationship bc from where I'm standing it doesn't sound particularly healthy or supportive.

4. as for where to go from here interpersonally, you can try notes? i don't have memory gaps, it's pretty fluid to communicate with my system (which is why I assume what I have is OSDD and not DID, unlike my fiance who's formally diagnosed with DID) so you'll have to be a bit creative with it. notes, journals, even talking aloud when she's around can help. giving her space to express herself will also ease the tension somewhat; Bentley has his own clothes for instance, and whenever bulldogs really upset I'll set him up somewhere he can vent and rant until he feels better. shit like that.

PS. lo said if she's an angry alter in general, egg therapy could be good. rage rooms, breaking things you buy for that purpose, or setting her up somewhere she can vent it out. smtn constructive to channel those feelings into bc the only way to get over them is to feel them.

but y'know that's just from 2 people who haven't rlly had any formal help with learning to live w this kinda thing. reaching out in other spaces might be helpful, just be sure to vet them first bc misinformation is CRAZY bad about systems and how they work :-(

[mst3kproject]

The Equinox

'Aleczilla51297′ appears to have made a tumblr purely for the purpose of telling me I need to review Equinox and Godzilla vs Hedorah.  I decided to do Equinox first because I’ve already seen Godzilla vs Hedorah, which is one of the preachier Godzilla movies but does have that hilarious bit where the big guy flies by using his atomic breath as a rocket.  If Equinox turns out to be a #fuck this movie entry, then Godzilla can act as a sort of a palate-cleanser.  And so, without further ado:

Something blows up, a woman called Susan dies, and a dude gets run down by a driverless car.  My Dad would feel vindicated – he finds the whole idea of self-driving cars untrustworthy.  The victim, whose name is David Fielding, ends up in a mental hospital, where he tells his story to a psychiatrist.  Seems that Dave, his pal Jim, Jim’s girlfriend Vicky, and Vicky’s friend Susan, headed up into the mountains for a picnic with their old teacher Dr. Waterman. These people are all idiots.

The four young people arrive to find Waterman’s cabin destroyed and a creepy old man living in a cave nearby, who gives them a locked book. Because the characters don’t know they’re in a bad movie, they don’t realize that the book is clearly the fucking Necronomicon, and decide to crack it open and read it while they eat their KFC. To nobody’s surprise, they’re soon being chased around the countryside by dumb stop-motion monsters.  At the end everybody’s dead but Dave, who’s in the mental hospital waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy that said he would die a year and a day after the original events, but that’s not a spoiler because it was the opening scene.

Let’s go over the shit that happens when these four clowns arrive at Dr. Waterman’s.  The cabin’s destroyed and the park ranger who discusses it with them says his name is Asmodeus.  Does that sound like a signal you should get the hell out of there?  No?  Okay, how about when they find a castle they can’t remember being there before?  Still no?  Well then, on their way to the castle (which later vanishes behind a wall of invisibility, probably because they couldn’t afford interior sets), they come across a cave with Green Goblin laughter echoing out of it, and weird velociraptor footprints all around.  Would you leave, or would you light up some torches and go check it out?  What about when you find a partially-mummified corpse in the cave?

The whole first ten minutes of the flashback that comprises most of the narrative is a litany of things I’m pretty sure anybody would flee from in real life.  I don’t believe much in the supernatural but if I saw all that I would be sure that multiple crimes had been committed and that I wanted no part of it.  The characters of Equinox, however, insist on investigating themselves, and continue to make stupid, stupid decisions for the entire run time.  Yes, let’s all go in a group to check and make sure the monster is dead.  Let’s hang around and bury the bodies ourselves instead of getting back to civilization for a police report and a good stiff drink.  Let’s collect the picnic stuff before we leave because that basket cost at least $15 at Wal-Mart.  It’s the kind of movie where you start to get annoyed that the characters aren’t dying fast enough.  When we finally get back to the opening shot I mainly felt relief that the movie was almost over.

The MST3K movie Equinox most reminds me of is The Day Time Ended: there are people in the middle of nowhere and, for some reason, a bunch of random stop-motiony things happen that never actually add up to a story.  Stuff comes and goes without serving any purpose other than to be creepy.  Who was Crazy Cave Guy?  I at first assumed he was the missing Dr. Waterman but Waterman turns up later and immediately dies, so what’s going on with this other guy?  What’s about the cave mummy… who was that?  Was the man who showed up to snatch the book actually Dr. Waterman or just a demon in his form?  Why is there a random graveyard in the middle of the woods?  Why does the psychiatrist have a creepy monster mask on his wall?  What’s up with Asmodeus apparently trying to rape Susan without even unbuttoning his pants, and later possessing her so that she does the same thing to Vicky?

Dialogue specifies that Dr. Waterman was a geologist, which seems an odd choice for somebody to be translating ancient documents.  I mean, there’s no reason why a geologist can’t have a side interest in ancient manuscripts, but when a movie takes the trouble to tell you something like that there’s usually a reason why.  Geology is never important to the plot, even tangentially.

It must be said that Equinox makes slightly more sense than The Day Time Ended, in that we’re actually given a reason why these events are happening.  Dr. Waterman had acquired and translated the Necronomicon and could not control the demons he summoned (I am convinced that Sam Raimi saw Equinox when he was around twelve and thought, shit, I could make a better movie than this!).  A huge tentacle creature destroyed his cabin, and then there’s the sabre-toothed ogre, the giant green caveman, and of course, the devil himself.  These creatures have a motivation: they are determined to get the book back, whether through force or persuasion.  The events could still happen in any order, but it all has a common core, rather than being just a collection of Concepts.

In capable hands this story could be made to work (see previous parentheses), but sadly none of the hands involved in making Equinox were remotely capable.  The acting is abysmal, mostly just people standing around awkwardly reciting their lines. All the dialogue was then dubbed over in post-production, which makes it even more stiff and awkward.  There’s a bit where a guy reads a letter as if he has to sound out each word.  The direction and music are bland.  Even the costumes are awful.  You’d think it would be hard to fuck up costumes in a movie set in the present, but it looks like everyone just turned up to set in their street clothes and they went with that.  Good costuming can tell us a lot about characters but the outfits here say nothing. Also, both Vicky and Susan are blondes in blue shirts, and once Susan’s hair falls out of its bun they’re basically indistinguishable.

The characters have no discernable personalities.  How they react to things changes from scene to scene, with nobody’s motives clear.  The only thing that remains constant is Jim wanting to leave while Dave always wants to stay and take care of something or other.  Stuff happens that could result in character development but none of it is ever followed up.  The most notable example is when Dave feels terrible guilt over having apparently killed Dr. Waterman, but this is forgotten a few minutes later and we never even find out if the dead man were really Dr. Waterman.

The effects are uniformly bad, but not usually enough so to be entertaining in themselves.  The castle is an obvious matte painting and the stuff on the other side of the portal, whether it’s Hell or the Dark Dimension or I don’t even know, is just the same spot in the woods with an orange filter over it.  There’s a stupid spinning thing used to represent Asmodeus exercising assorted dark powers.  The devil and the sabre-toothed ogre are both stiff and shitty stop-motion puppets.  The animation is surprisingly competent for a movie with the budget of Jr. High drama club, but they’re still not good.  The one exception is the giant green caveman, which looks dumb but is quite convincing as occupying space and interacting with the characters.

One might expect that this movie would be about the temptation of evil.  The monsters in it are summoned using a book of dark knowledge, and in trying to get the book back Asmodeus offers Jim anything he wants – money, prestige, women, you name it.  Problem is, there’s never any sign that the main characters are in fact tempted.  The crazy guy in the cave wants nothing from the book except to get rid of it.  He passes it on to Dave and Jim with evident glee.  Dr. Waterman’s interest in it, according to his notes, was purely scientific.  He summoned demons just to see if he could do it, but he doesn’t appear to have gained anything thereby except the knowledge that it works.  The main characters never even attempt to use the book, even to get themselves out of this mess, they just run around trying to keep it out of the hands of the monsters.  I’d say it’s like if every character in The Lord of the Rings was book-Faramir, but only a colossal nerd would use an example like that.

Honestly, I think this movie was about the wrong characters.  Dr. Waterman’s process of discovering the book and learning to use it, only to realize he’s unleashed things he cannot control, would probably have been a much more interesting story.  The characters from this film could have shown up at the end to fish the book out of the mess, with the implication that they will be its next victims.  This would have been a much better way to explore the ideas of temptation, making a Faust-like character out of Waterman as he is tempted not by riches or fame, but by knowledge and power.

Equinox is not quite #fuck this movie bad.  In order to earn that tag, a film has to be unwatchably dull and/or morally repugnant. I didn’t have any trouble sitting through Equinox but I also didn’t really enjoy the experience.  As movies about demonic forces go, it’s pretty bland and nothing much really seems to happen.  I guess that means I have to forgive Aleczilla51297 for sending it to me, but I’m still looking really forward to a Godzilla film or two.

[fimflamfilosophy]

Characters: Tearing Each Other Together

After the world-sweeping success of my previous article (forty notes on Tumblr, wow!) and being driven out of my house due to mold for the second time in two months, I think the time is right to add another essay to the subject of character design and writing. But what’s left to say after having definitely solved the entire process of character writing the last time?

Well, suppose you can figure out the emotional state of one person. That’s well and good, and oddly harder for people than you might imagine. And I think the reason it’s so hard is because in virtually any show you’re not going to be given a character in a vacuum to learn that process from. They have some story, something they’re trying to overcome, and other characters they’re bouncing off of, and the actual process of conflict is more complicated than knowing who your characters are.

Hate, Love, or Indifference, It’s All A Struggle

So what’s the essence of a story? There’s some motive that’s trying to be achieved. A conflict. And I can’t stress this enough. Conflict. Because it’s one thing if you say your main character is a kid who wants to be the best Poke’mon trainer and completely another to have that be a concrete objective with a satisfying story and conclusion. Wanting to be the “best” isn’t actually conflict. It’s a dream. Being forced to travel the known world to acquire eight gaudy pins that probably cost twenty-five cents each to manufacture? That’s conflict.

And not only do you have to travel the world, you do so with a shrill red-head who explicitly hates you because you trashed her bike, and a sex-starved pervert whose life dream is to make Poke’mon mate with each other for a living. And that’s important. Without Misty and Brock, Ash’s journey is a lot less interesting for a lot of reasons. Misty calls Ash out every time he messes up, and aside from being on a watch list, Brock is a helpful older character who tells Ash, and therefore the audience, what’s what.

But let’s back up, because people understand the benefit of Brock and Misty at a basic level, but when you’re starting off, how do you know who those people should be? Well, every show, from sitcom, to comedy to drama, does its best to balance personalities against each other so there’s always some sort of conflict possible between them.

Now, “conflict” doesn’t mean they’re trying to kill each other. It could mean they’re falling in love with each other. Maybe it means they don’t have much in common but have to work together over long hours in isolation. The idea is simply that there’s something to overcome between these people. Misty thinks Ash is stupid - that’s a conflict which is often leveraged to push Ash forward. Brock, however, has a reactive role in the show, only functioning in conflict when a womanizer who grovels at the feet of ladies Ash is already helping anyway.

It’s odd because if Misty were older she would be set up very well as kind of an “opposites” romantic torture device with Brock. They’re even depicted as professional equals, which would have made their levels of expertise and experience more balanced. Had they been closer in apparent age, a “will they won’t they” romance would have fit adequately, with Brock’s constant hitting on other women serving as a major, hopeless, long-lasting roadblock to a serious relationship between them; it would work especially well because Misty is established to have an inferiority complex to her prettier sisters. It also might help explain why Brock hung around so long. But as it was, Brock’s main contribution to the inner dynamic was to act as a mediator, caretaker, and mentor.

But circling back to Brock’s dream of Poke’mon husbandry. Well, on the meta level that’s why he doesn’t leave. Because it’s not a motive, he’s not taking steps towards it, and it’s not going to happen, it’s just a dream. Until it does happen, anyway, and then they wrote him out of the show - but we’ll dig more into this later.

Balancing Imbalance

The best place to look to see good conflict set ups between characters are popular sitcoms. Consider the show “Frasier”: it ran for eleven seasons and revolved mainly around the personal spats of Frasier, his brother Niles, their dad, and the dad’s caretaker, Daphne. Frasier was arrogant, Niles was insecure, Dad was an earnest roughneck, and Daphne was well-meaning. Frasier and Niles were also elitist pricks at times so they couldn’t even always agree where to eat together, much less with their father who was happier having a burger with ketchup.

Every episode had some central motivator; an ice fishing trip, a joint investment, an awards ceremony - but these things were just catalysts to the main conflict, which was almost always something between characters. We’d seen it time and again, that Frasier and his Dad would come to blows over differences in taste. Niles would try to court Daphne while torn by his commitment to his failing marriage, over and over. But the pithy banter and the way they resolved it would always be new, so people watched this show, episode after episode, for over a decade.

And the simple beauty of it all was that each of the characters had something to do with each other. Whether it be filial obligation, lust, sibling rivalry, friction between introversion and extroversion, or taste in food, they always had some source of conflict to make a show out of. Niles and Frasier were both psychiatrists, but from different schools of thought and different working environments, so they even had chances to butt heads academically and professionally. It was rich with writing opportunities and it’s not any wonder it lasted so long.

Another sitcom, “New Girl”, which was about a group of roommates, had a good dynamic set-up between two characters, Schmidt and Nick. Nick is a messy slob and Schmidt’s a type A neat freak, creating a really obvious source of conflict to work with. But then they had a third character, Winston, who they lampshade as the token black guy. 

Now, the joke that Winston is the “black friend” has pretty much no legs, so in the early seasons you see him acting as kind of a third party mediator, or maybe a wild card, and it winds up being funnier when Winston is unhelpful. So as the seasons went on, Winston gradually lost his damn mind. He becomes a cop and meets a woman so that he’d have some character growth and dynamic, but also develops into a man who would burn a building down as a prank. The writers had no idea what they were doing with him and he gradually flew further and further off the handle.

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Winston as a character. Aside from being funny in the show, watching the writers gradually unglue him from sanity was its own meta comedy above that. I knew they were doing it on accident, but having such a good time with it that it was just going to keep getting worse. In fact a major component of the finale for the whole show is an insane thing Winston does. They wrap the show on the note, “Winston is crazy”. And it all happened because they didn’t figure out what Winston’s conflict was at the start. He didn’t have a source of conflict with anyone, so the man became a living breathing embodiment of conflict in general.

Your Story Ends With the Conflict

Now, the catch is, in any type of fiction, whether a video game, a roleplaying session, or a sitcom, the story ends when the conflict does, because if the conflict is over there’s nothing more to tell! It used to frustrate me to no end back when “My Little Pony” was popular and the other nerds on the internet used to ask, “How many times must Fluttershy learn not to be shy, or that being shy is okay? When will she overcome all that she is and eliminate the core element that creates conflict for her?”

The answer should always be that the character will learn their damn lesson when the show ends or when they’re written off it. If you are sick of seeing a character and don’t want to see them any more, the best thing to do is close out their issues, because once they have no conflicts, they have no story, and there’s no point in doing a show about them. Asking Fluttershy to stop being shy is asking to say goodbye to her, because she's a cartoon and her job is to entertain kids by being neurotic and yellow.

People think they’re so smart when they say they’d solve all a character’s problems if it were them. In the finale to the first season of Poke’mon, for example, Ash decides to gamble his whole championship run on Charizard, who’s a self-absorbed bitch of a creature that ultimately throws the match and leaves it an open question whether Ash might have won if he’d left the team primadonna sitting on the bench.

Some viewers see that and complain it’s the dumbest possible thing Ash could have done, but it’s probably one of the single most brilliant things the Poke’mon writers did in the grand scheme, because think about where it left us. Ash didn’t achieve his goal of proving he’s “the best”, but it feels like a fluke and if he got another shot, he might make it all the way. This gave the show a gateway to more episodes with Ash still having something to prove and a dumb mistake indicating he still had a lot to learn. Because he didn’t win, his story hadn’t ended.

In some cases shows can end characters just by addressing some dream goal they’ve been expressing since the first season. In the case of Brock, they intentionally removed him from the show by introducing him to some girl who was willing to work with Brock in the animal husbandry business. He’d been traveling all this time, his dream opportunity fell into his lap, and he was gone. What reason would he have to refuse, and why would anyone stop him? And of course, Brock’s dream job was incompatible with the central plot elements of the rest of the show, so that was it!

The Format Informs the Conflict

If you want to write something but you aren’t sure when it’s going to end, you need a concrete, long-term conflict that’s not just going to go away. For example, in “Scooby Doo and the Thirteen Ghosts”, there were thirteen ghosts. By design, that show should have ended after Scooby Doo found all thirteen ghosts. It actually ended earlier than that because it was cancelled, but you get the idea. When you have a finite goal, your run time is going to be finite as well.

At least in theory. In “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” they establish at the beginning of one season that everyone’s magic powers were based on the Tarot. Now, I don’t know the Tarot off hand, but as the show went on I knew that sooner or later they’d run out of Tarot cards, and in my mind I assumed the season would be over when the Tarot ended. But then I got a good chuckle when a guy showed up and his powers were based on a totally different theme, because I knew the writer had realized he’d stumbled into something good and wasn’t ready to end it. He invented a cheap excuse to keep going! And I think if “Scooby Doo and the Thirteen Ghosts” had been successful they’d have managed to unleash a whole lot more than thirteen ghosts because Hannah Barbera was not exactly a studio with a lot of shame.

Character conflicts like those in sitcoms are a great way to have conflict perpetually, because people don’t really change that much and there’s no reason why most of the fundamental friction shouldn’t be there indefinitely. But of course, character-driven conflict is going to be secondary in an event-driven show. “Jojo” actually does have a lot of character conflict, but the plot is primarily about the battles and the journey - if all the fighting ended Jojo’s characters probably couldn’t carry a sitcom, at least not without some serious hard work, a little genius, and a touch of elbow grease.

For event-driven conflict, you’ll want to establish a target - a moving target if you don't know when the story ends, and that can be pretty difficult. Old action shows and comics used to do it by having a rotating cast of villains, so that after one was defeated another would show up tomorrow, and it was assumed these guys regularly broke out of prison, or they escaped in rocket pods, or whatever, and they’d be back later with a new goofy scheme. In these cases you tend to find reactive heroes; they patrol the streets until a lunatic in tights and a garden-themed hat shows up and transforms everyone into people-shaped topiaries somehow.

For active heroes, you need to establish something that requires a lot of structure, like Ash’s journey to win the Poke’mon League. In every country he visits, they all have this asinine rule that you have to go to eight unique locations and kick the ass of someone who disadvantages themselves with an easily-countered mono team that all have the same exact weakness. You can’t be accepted into the League if you haven’t proven you own a water Poke’mon to utterly flatten the fire gym! Let’s be real, this nonsense is probably designed intentionally as a money gate - most people run out of cash before they qualify. Either way, it ends when Ash wins the league, and he lost the league so the show could keep going.

For roleplaying games, the same rules apply. With your players, you’re either going to establish a reactive goal - an adventuring guild hires a bunch of colorful salarymen with silly accents to go to a dungeon as part of their nine to five job - or you need players to set an active goal for themselves and keep the realization of that goal beyond their reach until you’re ready to end the game.

The Active Hero Acts

In my younger years, I learned to roleplay in almost exclusively player-driven games where we were expected to come up with our own goals and pursue them ourselves, but I’ve discovered that is stunningly rare in most roleplaying circles. Your typical D&D player likes to play the salaryman with a funny accent who doesn’t have to worry about the venturous part of adventure. His boss told him to go to the Cave of Everlasting Wonders and Torturous Screams, recover the Sword of Bad Portent, and then hand it over to the department of magic items where they’ll file the paperwork to get it delivered to the patron that wanted the sword for some reason. No need to have your own motives.

But what if you want to play a crime fighter who actually, you know, busts up all the crime? Clearly you can’t just wait for crime to happen passively - you’ve got to go after people. Act instead of being reactive. Purse snatchers are small time and in a more grounded setting the guys you’ll catch by being passive are just grunts being hired out by someone - usually kids in a lot of cases. You have to seek out the bosses.

Making an active character to fit into any setting can be challenging, and I’ve seen quite a few pitfalls. I think one of the funniest motives is always “the guy who wants to go home” due to its obvious failure condition. A lot of stories are about everymen who just want to get out of trouble, but those stories end when they get out of trouble! In many books, movies, shows, or roleplaying games, you’re almost always going to find opportunities to send that guy home, and you’ll have to either conveniently ignore it, switch motives and decide not to go home, or end the whole story with going home. These characters only work where the story is happening to them and it's all out of their control.

I’ve also seen my share of the “quirky genius inventor/scientist”. When someone designs a character mistaking a dream for a motive. They dream of building a better mouse trap, you see. That’s their inner conflict. And while this is a real world conflict, it’s difficult to make it a good story because actual science and invention involves a lengthy quantity of controlled experiments. You breed hundreds of fruit flies, expose them to nicotine, and try to isolate the gene that causes nicotine resistance. It can be fascinating work at its level but sometimes the most exciting part of your day is when you give yourself a steam burn cooking the fly food. The “quirky scientist” in fiction is usually more of a mentor, and if he insists on staying in his lab doing his work then he’s not even a main character - he’s a guy who explains fruit flies to the audience and then is never heard from again. Other times he’s the asshole who invented the story’s whole problem.

I once played in a game with “the quirky scientist who wants to go home”, and man was that a frustrating ride. The game itself was about occult magic and demons, and for most of the game the scientist was experimenting with teleportation magic to go home and was focused on that above the goal of finding and eradicating demons (the game’s premise). And when he finally met a boss demon that could teleport him home to his lab, he went! We wound up retiring a character who, to be honest, was barely even interested in the main subject of the story. Had he been in a film or a show, they’d have cut the character after the first draft because he served no purpose and wasted screen time.

So how do you make sure your character has a working, proactive goal, in a nutshell? Establish a goal that can be achieved by the character within the framework of your story through action by leaving his house (or after burning his house down so he can’t go home), and then make sure the goal is big enough that it will take many broad steps to get there - those steps need to be concrete and visible, not things that would happen off-screen. Most importantly, tie that goal into the main premise of the story, so that reaching the end of the story generally may achieve what the character wants.

If You Aren’t Trying, It’s Not A Trial

Okay, I understand that last bit probably requires more unpacking. But think of it this way. There’s a writing structure referred to as the “Hero’s Journey”. Basically it goes like this: the hero is forced into adventure, he meets friends and goes through trials, he hits his lowest point, he is reborn into a better man, he ends the conflict, story over.

What I’m talking about specifically right now are the trials. The “wacky inventor” is usually presumed to do all his research off screen because most media likes to focus on the results of the invention and the conflict. But if you were to focus on the trials of a scientist, it’d actually be about procuring research grants and potentially materials. You wouldn’t watch a show about a man who checks gene A-235 for nicotine resistance in flies, then goes on to A-236, then A-237.

If I were to write a story about a researcher, here’s one thing I might do: the researcher fails to find what he’s looking for in gene A-235, and when he goes to seek a grant to look at A-236, he finds one of his colleagues has convinced the university that the protagonist’s research is a dead end. Hearing this, the researcher realizes he’s about to lose his lab, so he writes a bit of a lie into his report on A-235. He says it may prevent cancer.

Now, the protagonist is, deep down, a good man. He thinks this will generate some buzz at the university and get him more funding, but he’ll do a follow-up and show the data doesn’t hold up. After that he’ll ask for money for A-236 and everything goes back to normal. But disaster strikes. His article, which was only supposed to show up in an obscure research journal, gets picked up by a major news network and winds up being spread all over. Suddenly he’s “the man who cured cancer”.

And as he’s trying to figure out how to navigate the issue, another researcher comes out and says that under peer review, he was able to replicate the results. He too shows that A-235 cures cancer! Now the hero isn’t sure. He becomes a celebrity and simply lies about his research because he has no real data, but try desperately as he might, in private he just can’t get the results the peer review insisted were there.

He struggles and struggles, coming to blows with his colleague who’s scrutinizing his research notes. Throw in a love interest who’s impressed with what this guy did, and actually I think I’ve just described the plot of some movie I saw a long time ago about faking cold fusion. I think Albert Einstein was a supporting character in it. In my version the twist would be the peer reviewer was also trying to get a grant by lying. Point is, the central conflict of the film certainly isn’t the scientific process, it’s all the crazy crap that happened on the way from point A to point B.

The story is in the trials. If nothing changes, if the character doesn’t have to change their way of life or go through anything special, it’s either not a story or it’s not your typical story. There are plenty of experimental films or well-regarded books that can make a certain banality become interesting. Stories that explain the simple struggles of day to day living for people on hard times. But the trials, the palpable challenges, that’s really the meat of it all. When you think of what your character should be doing throughout the story, he should be going through these efforts, these steps, these trials, all in the name of whatever his broader goal is.

Where You Start Affects Where You End

It also matters quite a lot when and where characters are introduced. A lot of tales follow some basic notes, and one of the more common elements is “crossing the threshold”, which prevents your characters from going back to their life before the adventure. It’s used because it compels the characters forward, as they have no other direction they can go. It can be anything: the character’s home town is destroyed, the character commits a crime, he accepts a contract, his mother dies - so long as it prevents him from going back. It’s especially useful in roleplaying games where you really need everyone to be driving forward.

In one such roleplaying game, I got in a spat with the guy who wanted to run the game because I was trying to make a leader character, but the game master wanted to base his game around a movie he’d seen with a single main character. He’d elected another player to be that main character, and explained to me he’d be starting the game after that character had already crossed the threshold and had begun his journey. This meant that everyone else were supporting cast and could go back to their normal lives at any time, because they were coming willingly from where they were and not really facing any drastic changes to their personal status quo.

I eventually resolved not to play in that game at all, because none of the character dynamics I wanted were going to work. It was supposed to be a “wannabe” superhero game, with the premise that everyone wanted to be heroes, except one player had already started the journey and it turned out another had already reached the end of that arc and was going to play a character that had been a hero going on years before the story began. There was no plan to really reconcile the narrative clashes.

If that game were to work as it was, without me being present, then the person playing the pre-established hero would have needed to take the mentor role. The other players besides the main character would have needed to be comfortable in auxiliary roles, and the group would have to play as though they were part-way into the story. Still learning to be a team but well past the initial stages of a plot, and they’d all need to think up reasons to be in this group individually on their own, because the threshold had already been crossed and they didn’t cross it together.

The friend running the game was actually dismissive of my advice here, arguing that I was overcomplicating everything with a meta analysis of narrative and structure when all we need is a basic drive to play, and I don’t think he realized he’d set himself up with a much more complicated game and less cohesive premise by going about things as he had.

The already established hero couldn’t be the mentor because a mentor character had already been created as an NPC. The auxiliary players weren’t really informed at the outset they’d be auxiliaries - especially not me who’d wanted to play the team leader. The player who’d been designated as the central protagonist didn’t want to lead or be the central protagonist. It could have worked, but it would have taken a lot more planning and many more concessions than a typical game.

In a more recent game, I’ve got another bit of an issue with the start misleading the general goals of the players. It’s a sci-fi game, and first, one player is doing “the quirky inventor scientist”; his current stated dream is vaguely to create transhumanist technology. He also wants to play the leader, so he established himself as the most important man nobody has ever heard of. He has spies in every major institution in the known galaxy and is a genius beyond comparison. He’s currently based in a rusting pirate ship in the middle of the space boonies doing nothing with his life save being the most important man.

Meanwhile, I set up a disgraced military officer with a revenge quest against his own nation. But the pirate crew my character joined turned out to not believe in structure nor leadership and they killed their last commander to have a system of “democracy”. My structure-minded character has tried to take the lead and drive us forward, but he runs into general deconstructive resistance and the “quirky scientist” wants to be the leader, but hasn’t yet expressed self-motivated goals.

It’s not exactly my most harmonious game and there’s quite a lot going wrong here, but here’s how it could have worked: first, establishing that the crew of the pirates respects no leadership places the entire crew in the precarious position of being “chickenshit” at the outset. That kind of incohesiveness is why a band of rogues gets easily defeated; it’s not the behavior of scrappy men of action, but hopeless men of inaction. A corrupted “democracy” collectivises failure while awarding success to whoever actually has the most power in the group structure - it protects the weak leaders from responsibility and disincentivizes good work by allowing those same men to reap rewards while offloading the burdens to those lower on the ladder. In essence, “If things are screwed up, blame the democracy. If things are good, I did it.”

What should have happened was the “quirky scientist” should have been in charge to start with, because otherwise he has no reason to be on board the ship. He’s the most powerful man in the galaxy, after all. If it were because he was financing the pirates to go on raiding and salvage missions relevant to his research, then it would make sense. He’d have a purpose and a position of leadership just as the player wanted. It would also establish the pirates have some command structure and a level of respect for it that allows them to function.

And the power struggle between the disgraced officer and the scientist? Perfectly reasonable character conflict that would drive actual, meaningful roleplaying and story. The scientist may bankroll the operation but the officer is the tactical talent and the two pull in opposite directions, as power-hungry men often do.

However, the opportunity to start with a sensible and meaningful social dynamic has passed, and on top of that the “quirky scientist” keeps his galaxy-wide power a secret, so it’s all kind of messy and “badly written” in the sense that most audiences would be generally rooting for the crew to fail, and they’d find the grand reveal of the scientist’s galactic power to be frustrating and unrewarding because it’s more of a plot hole than anything. So close on so many counts and yet so very far, and the opportunity to pull it together eventually is present but a more challenging and uphill battle than getting it right at the outset.

In The End, Did We Even Learn Anything?

Creating a character is easy, in my opinion. Creating a working story with a group of self-driven characters can be a lot harder. This is especially true of roleplaying games or of cooperation with multiple writers, where you need to be on the same general page with a committee. It can help a lot to establish the exact conflicts at the beginning, but as can be seen with Winston from “New Girl” or the later seasons of “My Little Pony”, what you have can morph beyond your control as things go on.

Sometimes you never had control in the first place. Sometimes you lose control because you conclude the original conflict of your story and struggle to find a new one - the brand is too successful to let go. Maybe an executive comes in and injects an idea that throws the entire balance of everything totally out of whack and now nothing works. Sometimes your friend thinks story structure is overrated. It’s a difficult juggling act.

So at the end of this essay did we even learn anything? It depends a lot on what you’re trying to do and what you wanted to learn. If you’re the more typical Dungeons and Dragons group, you don’t need to think much about this. Just make your characters and passively react to activities handed out by Dungeons, Dungeons & Co - your conflict is event-driven. Are you writing a sitcom? Well, balance a tangled web of conflicting character habits and write the ensuing disaster. Want to make a complex film about a group of highly motivated, proactive people with sophisticated individual goals that ultimately converge while still respecting their rich, conflicting, inner politics, and do all that writing as part of a team? Well, good goddamn luck, but with the right start and enough care you can make it happen.

[glorygalory]

hey everyone i just wanted to say that i’m schizophrenic!!!!! yeah wow felt bold might delete later. was gonna wait until mental health awareness month or day or whatever but i’m just feeling coming out of the schizophrenic closet if u feel me and telling ppl right now. everything got really weird after the onset of my schizophrenia. i had my first psychotic episode/ my schizophrenia onset when i was 19. I WOULD NEVER HARM A SOUL INCLUDING MYSELF during these episodes and the ones i have. at first i honestly believed some of the delusions were real. it was honestly horrifying at some times and just insanity. i n s a n i t y . like tbh if i were to describe it it would probably make some of you uncomfortable or look at me in a different way. but i have anxiety too and a type of thought you can have is mind reading where you think you know what people are thinking/ would think when you don’t but i think i know that it would. i was put in a straight jacket and a small padded room. i thought SOOO many crazy things were SO real that SO aren’t true at all. i could describe them but i’ll just leave it at that. i saw things that were not there. i’ve been through the works. but it was at a level that was AWFUL while it happened but now that it’s over wasn’t so bad compared to how bad it could’ve been. EDIT: it actually was awful. it was the worst. it was really really really bad. but it IS over. and now that the onset/ 1st psychotic episode has happened i would say... it was a wild ride and it’s gotten so so SO much better with medication (like seriously so much better) but i still go into states. when i’m around another person, (most of the time) the hallucinations and all delusional thoughts go away. i’m just really focused on the conversation and external stimuli. when i’m alone, i’m still ok. to be honest, i talk to Lord Jesus Christ instead of talking to myself now about anything i’m worried about and anything else. my hallucinations are words. i see words. like as if someone is showing me them. sometimes worse. way worse before meds. but yeah, it’s not awful. i just wish i could feel alone with myself again. but it’s just what it is. i’ve learned how to handle what i see. i don’t have voices really. or really hallucinations. i see words. idk. schizophrenics are partly unattached from reality. i am and i understand where the psychiatrists are coming from when they say that. the delusions, they’re weird for me at this point. like, i’ll have a strange thought about something not in this physical reality and it’s a delusion so i believe it’s true when it comes in and then i check it and i’m like wait... that’s not true. but at the same time i’m like it could be because it’s not about this physical reality. i can’t prove or disprove it. (so i might as well ignore it!! says my wise mind) i’m starting to realize that i should ignore it it least. i never really do anything because of the intrusive delusional thoughts. i don’t take them too seriously. i mean i ask LJC if he can help me if it’s a worrisome thought or delusion. i pray sometimes. but back to being unattached from reality i do understand. for me it’s delusions and the words that make me partly unattached from this physical reality. it’s hard to focus. i’ve been trying to get the right meds to help me focus for a while. but yeah. was gonna post this on fb but i think i’ll just leave it on tumblr. the ppl that check my tumblr can read it. meds help. idk, i’ve grown a lot since i was 19 but there’s still a long way to go. i deal with it. i really do. it’s very hard just to be like people without schizophrenia in some ways and i’m not like an average person in some ways. i still have symptoms even though i take meds but they are way down from back then. and i have grown so much. and i am so blessed in so many ways. and i’m a bada** warrior for how far i’ve come. and if u r struggling with schizophrenia, know you’re not alone. i’m here if you ever need some advice or anything. and it does get better. so so so much better. and you’re a bada** warrior too. peace. peace ✌️

[rapperkookz]

Paralleled Love - 1

Descendants of the Sun-like AU with special agent!female reader and doctor!jungkook

Song Y/N worked as a special agent for the Korean government, much like a Kingsman or James Bond film. To the outside world, she worked part-time at a dog cafe, but when her skills are needed, she lives a double life stopping notorious murderers, infamous gangs, illegal drug dealers and arms traders.

Jeon Jungkook worked at Haesung Hospital as a member of BTS - the VVIP medical team. He is the youngest surgeon, but one of the most skilled doctors in the hospital.

What starts off as a simple stitch, turns into a love story as memorable as Romeo and Juliet. Fate has a cruel plan for Y/N and Jungkook which marks similarly to her military soldier brother and his doctor wife: full of laughs, tears, love, and blood.

A/N I have never written a fic on tumblr so this will be a first for me rip. I just rewatched DOTS so I figured why not? Hopefully you guys will give me lots of love :) All rights go to the directors and producers and actual real life people being mentioned in this fic, it will be similar but also not really to the drama, I am not stealing plot, not to worry :)

Song Y/N

Jeon Jungkook

BTS - VVIP Medical Team

NCT - Special Agents

ch. 2

ch. 1 - Your POV

It happened to your brother and now it’s happening to you. Rarely do you ever speak with your older brother, solely due to the nature of both of your jobs, but after attending his wedding with your now-sister-in-law, you and him bonded over his love story. Being on break, encountering a gang of hoodlums, and meeting the doctor that eventually became the love of his life. They broke up and after 8 months were reunited by fate in a third world country far away from home for volunteer work. 

You, too, were on break after half a year of harsh winter training in Siberia. Seeing that your brother was spending time with his family, and not deployed somewhere for the military, you spent some time catching up with him. There were differences between both of your jobs, but essentially were more than likely the same. He took the role of a special forces major, doing top secret work for the Korean military. You were a special agent, also doing top secret work, but for the Korean government.

“Doesn’t it worry you? leaving your family?” you asked as he rocked his son to sleep.

He gave you a smile, “Always, but I’m good at my job, and that includes-”

“Not dying” you answered, “I know that all too well, Joongki oppa.”

“your work is more dangerous than mine” Joongki answered, “I’m at least protected by the military, the government doesn’t protect you that much, y/n.”

“It’s a risk I take,” you said clinking your glasses together before taking a shot. You winced as you leaned against the couch. He noticed your discomfort and motioned for you to turn around, “Shit, did my stitches open?”

“Yeah, your back is bleeding.” He said, “let’s go to the hospital, you need professional care.”

“You’re only using this as an excuse to see Hyekyo unnie, aren’t you?” you chuckled getting up, holding your nephew as Joongki grabbed his coat. The two - technically three - of you drove to Haesung Hospital, acting careful as to not stain your brother’s car with blood. Walking inside, you let your brother deal with the receptionist, coincidentally timing your arrival so that Hyekyo was eating dinner.

“Oh? what are you doing here?” she asked, a smile automatically on her face upon the sight of her son and husband.

“y/n needs stitches,” Joongki answered, giving her a kiss on the forehead, before you handed the sleeping boy to her.

“You don’t have to do it unnie, I don’t want to take your free time giving me stitches,” you said.

She touched your arm affectionately, “I’ll make sure you’re in good hands, y/n. Is your wound from work?”

You nodded, knowing that she already knew the kind of work you did since it was similar to your brother’s. She called to her colleagues, asking if any of them were free to stitch you back up.

“I have to do my rounds, but Jungkook can do it,” Jinki answered.

“Perfect, can you take y/n to where he is?” Hyekyo asked and he nodded, “just come back here when you’re done y/n”

“We won’t be going anywhere,” Joongki agreed. You diligently followed the doctor around the hospital, stopping in an empty ER room, where he paged his co-worker.

“You need me, hyung?” a boy said walking in the room, he looked youthful enough to be around your age.

Jinki nodded, “this is Hyekyo’s sister-in-law, she needs someone to restitch her up, can you do it?”

“Of course,” he said grabbing a new pair of latex gloves from the box on the table. Jinki bid you goodbye before going to do his rounds. “Your shirt is all stained miss-?”

“y/n, Song y/n,” you answered taking off your shirt, leaving you in only a bra. The doctor coughed, unprepared for you bold action, “I don’t know your name, doctor?”

“Jeon Jungkook,” he answered kindly as you laid face down on the operating table. He blew a raspberry at the sight of your wound, a large gash painted your back diagonally, the stitches that held it together previously now stained with fresh blood. You winced at the sting of the disinfectant that he used for cleaning your back. “May I ask what happened for you to get hurt this badly?”

“I was on a run and I fell down some stairs and my back hit against a pole,” you said calmly, the lie slipping off your tongue easily. You didn’t get this gash from a run, you were on a mission trying to stop arms traders and during a face-off with them, you were pushed against the brick wall. “Is it that bad?”

“It’s not pretty” he chuckled, “I’ve seen a patient come in, once, being impaled by a tree,”

You scoffed in disbelief, “That has gotta hurt.”

The both of you engaged in simple conversation as he stitched you up, the atmosphere comfortable and easy to be in. Jungkook was a surgeon. There were 7 in his ‘skilled’ group: 4 surgeons (trauma, cardio, neuro, and ortho), a psychiatrist, an anesthesiologist, and a pediatrician. He was also, indeed, your age: 27 years old. “When are you free next?”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” You teased folding up your blood-stained shirt and wearing your sweater. You didn’t miss the blush that formed on his cheeks as he coughed and put his glove-free hands in his coat pockets, “I’m kidding, what for though?”

“To uh-to um check in your wound, make sure the stitches hold,” he said, trying to act composed, “but um I mean, if you’re free to get lunch afterwards, I would be up for that too.”

You smiled, “I’m looking forward to it, I can come next week.”

“Perfect, around noon.” He agreed and the two of you exchanged numbers. He walked you back to the cafeteria, where Joongki and Hyekyo were waiting for you, “I’ll see you next week.”

“For my appointment,” you grinned and he nodded before going back to his work. Your brother gave you a smirk, “Oh don’t start, he did my stitches.”

“That’s how our story began,” he said nudging his wife. You rolled your eyes, sitting across from them.

“He’s one of our best new doctors, Jeon Jungkook,” Hyekyo commented, “top of his class, he’s totally your style y/n.”

“Unnie, I don’t have time for a relationship” you whined.

“You say that now, but then it happens,” she said, “Look at your brother and I.”

“And now we’re married and have a son.” Joongki agreed pinching the boy’s cheek lightly. As you were about to argue against them, your phone rang.

“717, report to HQ, immediately.”

“Copy that,” you answered hanging up. You looked at your brother and sister-in-law, familiar but worried expressions on their faces. “I will see you, hopefully soon.”

“You have to come back for your appointment next week,” Joongki reminded, to which you responded with a playful punch to the shoulder. After saying goodbye, you drove your car to the government building. Passing by the regular office workers, you stood in front of the elevator and pressed the up arrow 5 times, placing your watch in front of the well-hid scanner so it would know your destination was under the basement level.

Exiting the elevator, the black and white interior of the “top secret cove” - as you like to call it - came into view. You bowed to your colleagues, walking into one of the meeting rooms.

“717, what do you know of a Lee Junmo?” your superior asked, eyes trained on the monitor framing the side wall.

You bowed your head, “Lee Junmo, head of Power Alcohol. He’s a very well-known public figure,”

“Power Alcohol is lacing some of its cheap beer products with poison, in order to target the poor and addicts,” she said looking at you, “it makes consumers sick to death unless they buy an expensive medicinal cure.”

“Ma’am, that makes no sense,” you scoffed, suddenly feeling self conscious with the alcohol you drank previously.

“From the look on your face, I’m assuming you were drinking before coming here.” She said with a chuckle, “lucky for you, the poisoned beer hasn’t sold yet, nor should it ever be placed on the markets. You need to stop its production.”

“Why, may I ask, is this happening?” You said in disbelief.

She cracked her neck, sharp eyes noticing the blood-stained shirt in your pocket, “Lee Junmo has a superiority complex and genius idea that putting poison in alcohol will help the population problem. Completely stupid. What happened to you?”

“My, um, my stitches reopened from the Chinese arms incident.” You said.

“Well certainly, you’re not doing this alcohol spree on your own. I was gonna send in 205 so he could have more time in the field, but you’ll need more experienced hands since you’re injured. Call 802 to accompany you. After that, you’re off for a month, until you fully heal.” She said dismissing you. You bowed and dialed your fellow agent’s number, informing him of your new mission.

“Crazy Alcohol guy? I’m so in.” He said nonchalantly, “I’ll meet you at HQ, y/n.”

Not even 10 minutes later did 802 show up, the two of you getting dressed and geared up for your trip, “Minhyung, you might need to be doing most of the action stuff. I can barely fight as it is,”

He nodded and went over the plan with you. Sneak in the production building, delete the files of the ingredients of the beer, and burn any current alcohol. “So basically, we’re setting the place on fire,”

“And making it seem like a fuse accident,” You answered getting the keys to the government vehicle. “As protocol goes, no more using our names from this point on, in case we get infiltrated.”

“You got it 717,” he nodded as the two of you entered the car. You connected your watches so to have each other’s gps at all times and to communicate through ear piece, not only with yourselves, but also with the government. The building was about a two hour drive from the city, in a rural area towards the southernmost tip of the country. The place was bordered by lights, a huge POWER on the front of the building.

You parked a good half a mile away from the place, “Alright 802, I’ll shut down all the cameras so you’ll be good to go. There’s an emergency side door on the west side, a complete blind spot to any cameras, you can get in through there. You have exactly 30 minutes to find the blueprint, delete it, and get back out here before I set fire to the building. We need a good distance as to not get any trace, there’s no people here for at least 10 miles of this place.”

Minhyung nodded, giving you a fist bump of good luck, “don’t tear your stitches out.”

“That’s the least of my worries, if you need help, I’ll run to you in a heartbeat,” you said, “now go, We’ll be monitoring you the whole time.”

“802 starting mission,” he said exiting the car and disappearing to the side. You followed him through the computer screen attached to the car, your heart beating in adrenaline. 802 otherwise known as Minhyung or Mark Lee was a fairly trained agent in the NCT unit. You often worked with several of their members, since most of your missions can’t be done as a solo operation, unless you’re calling for a death wish. 10 minutes gone by smoothly, Minhyung made his way in the building undetected and was now currently looking for the alcohol information.

“You have some company, to your left,” you said, “after you’re done with them, keep heading straight, there should be a heavily guarded room, I’m assuming it’s in there.”

“I see it.” he said taking down three more guards. You waited for him, bouncing your knee up and down, itching to go out and get some part of the action, “I’m on my way back, get the explosive ready.”

“802 wait! Vehicle approaching the entrance, you have to find a back exit, I’m heading south.” You said stepping on the pedal, “HQ, we need to leave as soon as 802 is back in the vehicle, send fire to my coordinates as soon as I say the word.”

“717 you better hurry,” they said from your ear-piece, “The bomb in your car is detached, the one set for your coordinate is ready.”

“Where are you? I’m out of the building!” Minhyung said

“I see you, right in front of you,” you said stopping the car in front of him. He got in quickly and you sped off, “alright fire.”

“What happened to a good distance away?” he asked catching his breath.

Your foot pressed on the pedal to go faster, heading straight with no clue how to get back to the city. Minhyung set the gps back to headquarters, getting ready to press the autopilot button as soon as the place was on fire. “Bingo, press it.”

You relaxed and leaned back in the seat, giving him a pat on the shoulder, “Piece of cake.”

“Mission complete, files and evidence destroyed, 802 and 717 are heading back to HQ.” You said.

Minhyung cracked his knuckles, looking outside comfortably, “When I get home, I’m gonna go to the bathroom and take a nice warm bubble bath,”

“Usually girls say that,” You commented.

“Boys can treat themselves too, y/n, don’t be so old-fashioned,” he said hitting your arm, “I’m gonna take a nap. Tell me when we’re back.”

Narrator’s POV

“-everyone out of the way! Patient coming through!” A doctor yelled running through the hospital and towards the OR, grasping the gurney that was being rolled along with him.

“Vitals are unstable, he’s in v-fib!” A nurse yelled putting her hands on the patient’s chest to try and get his heart to start beating again. Grabbing the two paddles, the doctor told the nurse to page the cardiac surgeon, stopping the way to the OR momentarily.

“Clear!”

“Pulse is back.” The nurse said.

The doctor paused for a brief moment of relief, pushing the gurney forward once more. They reached the room in a matter of minutes, the doctor scrubbing in quickly to meet his co-surgeon who was already inside and examining the patient. “Doctor Jeon, what’s your course of action?”

“The patient has multiple gun shots to the abdomen with no exit points, only entry. The heart is barely under control, I’m afraid a bullet might have scathed one of the ventricles,” Jungkook said, “Doctor Kim, you fix the heart while I get the bullets out.”

Taehyung nodded using a scalpel to open up the patient’s chest, immediately did blood start oozing, “I need some fresh blood, quick before he bleeds out.”

The two young surgeons worked diligently, fixing any complications before it escalated to something fatal. Jungkook put down his instruments at the extraction of the last bullet, cracking his neck with a relieved sigh, “Everything looks good, can you close Doctor?”

“I can finish by myself, yes. The rest are looking for you in Yoongi hyung’s office. I’ll come by once I’m done here.” Taehyung said without looking up. Jungkook exited the OR and removed his gown and gloves, washing his hands thoroughly before heading up to the Psychiatry Wing. Opening the door to Yoongi’s office, his nose was flooded with the scent of noodles.

“We ordered you some black bean noodles,” Namjoon said handing the youngest an unopened bowl. Jungkook thanked him and immediately began devouring the bowl.

Jimin smirked, “Slow down there, Jungkook. You don’t wanna choke and die before your date next week.”

“How do you know about that?” Jungkook asked taking a sip of Yoongi’s water.

The boys started clapping his shoulder, teasingly. “I was doing my rounds and I talked to Doctor Song and she mentioned something about her sister-in-law and Doctor Jeon scheduling an appointment next Friday for a checkup and lunch.”

“I need to make sure her stitches are healed,” Jungkook said innocently, shrugging his shoulders.

Jin laughed, “Please, you haven’t had a date since the nurse from dermatology stalked you after dinner and a movie.”

“She did seem a bit off, you know?” Namjoon commented, “When is Taehyung coming?”

“I’ll eat his noodles if he doesn’t show up soon.” Hoseok agreed.

Jungkook chuckled, “We just finished a surgery, gun shot victim. His name is Na Jaemin if I’m correct, I wonder what idiot gets himself shot here in this area. There were 6 bullets in his body, one barely missed the heart.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Taehyung confirmed walking in and taking a seat next to Jimin.

“Tell us more about your date, Jungkook,” Yoongi said getting the attention of the group again.

“Hyung,” Jungkook complained for a moment, “Her name is Song y/n, she’s absolutely beautiful, wow. I thought my heart was going to explode when I saw her for the first time-”

“Disgusting,” Jin said hitting his head with a folder, “If you give her that line, I hope she throws up in your face.”

“Now that’s disgusting,” Yoongi said, “just eat your food.”

A/N and that’s the end of ch. 1! Pls give me feedback it’s greatly appreciated :)

[angelblumes]

(food ment) Hello you!! Yeah there's too much abt will graham that makes mentally ills go crazy, I can relate to the empath thing so much, i think you should be able to talk abt it on here I really think the hate on here was from white cishets who will go 'im such an empath 🤪' and then be massively racist and homophobic/transphobic, just a generally bad person and ofc not all of them would be white cishets . It is genuinely a problem for me also! I feed off of everyone's emotions which helps me be a better person I think but also I live in a very dysfunctional household/ have a very dysfunctional family lol which makes it .... very hard to deal with. Ok! Um I've went to the beach, it was so lovely, I love going when falls beginning but its still warm enough to swim😌 its gotten cold very fast tho this fall, im already in a hoodie. I've been waking up b4 12 pm which im really proud of myself for but ofc once or twice I gave myself a lil break but! it didn't really set me back much😁 I've found my perfect coffee recipe 😋 we are going back to homemade meals since its starting to cool down 😌(we don't have ac and the oven will heat up the entire house if its on) my therapy has been going well and I've been trying not to self sabotage. I really haven't been deadnamed either which is surprising but whats even more surprising, I haven't really cared when I did get d-named 🤟 you are one of the people I check on when I come on here just to see how your doing 😊 one of my favorite online ppl . And... one more thing um I also got two vape pens as a gift, very exciting and it'll help me alot, its more cost efficient and honestly alot easier in most ways. I hope you've been doing well!!!❤❤❤ and if you haven't been, I hope it gets better for you. Im sending good vibes out to the world to you 😗

hi!!! missed u!!! ive been doing ok!! better mentally but the physical 😳😐😑😐.... but no literally tho like my empathy is either super high or super low and a lot of its bc my family is emotionally insane like i cannot empathize w them w/o losing my marbles LOL. i had another appt w my psychiatrist! new adhd meds wahoo! tell me ur username comeonn pls i'll feel bad if i'm not checking ur blog too😭💔. im jealous its still hot as fuck for me. in the 80s. im having these awful cramps not even period ones its.... so much worse. idk what's happening 🤣 itis a little frightening. i worry my kidney exploded or something. planning a trip to baltimore!!! its not my idea at all btw but im excited bc its where hannibal lives in the tv show HELP... and we're goin to these fancy restaurant w three course meals and guess what im getting..... the chesapeake chicken.... hahahaha.... like the ripper..? get it? get it? :) and lastly umm... i forced my friend to use her tumblr and follow me on here muahaha. wishing i culd force everyone in my life to watch hannibal🙄🖕

[mf-fairy-princess]

Problematic and Proud: Instagram Artist Beebosloth

Alright, I tried posting this to Reddit but that whole website is fucked so. Tumblr is crazy toxic and I want absolutely nothing to do with this website lmao, I just know if it’s posted here, it will show up in google search results. 

Alright, so there's this artist on Instagram. Nothing new and unique there. In fact, there isn't really anything special about this particular prick at all. Rather, he more-so represents a larger cancerous growth within Instagram; entitlement, and toxicity.

I know, I know, "Hey dumbass, that's the entirety of the internet." Yeah, you're damn right it is. Does that make it any less gross? Any less pathetic? These humans are still humans, they know what they're doing.

So what exactly is Beebosloth? Unless you've come here from googling the name followed by some key-word synonyms of "problematic," you're probably unfamiliar with his presence on earth. @Beebosloth (Stan Osipov) is a pretty general artist on Instagram, pumping out at least one sketch a day; his works are namely skeletal, usually black and white, usually accompanied with an odd little strip of slogan text which rarely fits the image subject. People have gotten his works tattooed, he's almost up to 300k followers now, etc etc, he's doing alright for himself.

If there's one thing that millennials and gen-Z kids' insane internet vigilante rampages have taught us, it's that successful people can be, and often are, problematic as all hell. Beebosloth is no exception.

I had been following the artist for close to 3 years, giving him general support through likes on his posts, but also going an extra mile in standing up for him for 2 problems he had been facing repeatedly as an artist. First, due to the general popular aesthetic of his art, his works were getting reposted a lot, often without credit. There would even be imitation accounts which would post nothing but his art, essentially pretending to be him. I repeatedly took it upon myself to give them the ol' trollish finger wag, in an unlikely hope they'd better their behavior or at least let passersby know who the real artist was.

Another problem he was facing was Instagram support; (Ooh what a surprise, when has that ever happened to anyone)? The way he went on about it had us all believing that Instagram would never punish those who committed these unethical acts. And that was the entirety of the problem at first; not punishing other people who had done him wrong. He made several posts and stories complaining about this, usually enticing his followers to go out and do his bidding in this regard. Then . . there was an incident, and the first instance that really alerted me to Beebosloth's behavior.

This is a man who spends half his posts whining because he refuses to learn how internet-related copyright laws work. Even though with the sheer amount of trials and failures he's experienced, he should be an expert on them by now. A dude who claims every 5 seconds that he's getting his work stolen . . . which is why this next part is such a kicker.

I wish I could remember the time exactly, (but unfortunately I'm not pursuing a degree in problematic Instagram artists, and these details have just really just slipped my mind). It was March; I believe of this year. I scrolled through Instagram like normal, came upon a new post by beebosloth, and noticed that this one had about twice the typical amount of attention attached to it. Osipov had posted a doodle of a skeleton arm, holding up a ticket which read "1 WAY TICKET TO HELL." Pretty simple, pretty basic. And the next picture on the slide was the exact same thing, only this time, it wasn't in his style. I believe he also included screenshots of an incredibly petty argument between him and the other artist, in which she accused him of stealing the design from her. - In the caption he's ranting, he's raving, Instagram copyrighted his version and removed it. He does something else too . . . .

Now, these images are the exact damn same, I wish I could find her original work but it has really just disappeared. After what Stan Osipov does next, it wouldn't really surprise me if she deleted her Instagram to cut out the toxicity of this whole situation. And here's the most important part to consider of all of this; not beeblosloth's cruel, immature, reaction, not his history of sending his followers to spend their own personal time being terrible to other users on his behalf, this-

The artist who claimed Osipov had stolen her work- posted it first. Actually I believe she posted it a few weeks before beeblosloth ever did. And keep in mind- the only feasible difference between these two photos is the art style. They are exact same in every possible detail. Now, unfortunately, at the time I was a member of beebosloth's cult following. I really made up any possible excuse to believe that somehow, regardless of how impossible and ridiculous it would be, this girl was lying about beebosloth just ripping her off majorly. Even though- she kept the matter private, between themselves. Beebosloth was the one who posted their screenshots, made this a "let's get everyone involved and invoke the wrath of my followers" thing.

In the caption, (or maybe in a new post), Beebosloth then goes on to beckon everyone to draw this image, he starts a #drawthisinyourstyle challenge. He also, of course, incites his followers to go send hate the the original artist. I will admit I stupidly wanted to believe beebosloth was the original artist, and maybe there was some justification to him posting the screenshots, but that part, I didn't like. That was totally unnecessary, even if he was somehow telling the truth.Can we just step back and assess how insane this situation is?

Osipov casually rips off another artist

He gets caught, called out in private, and the image is removed

He reposts his imitation image, as well as the original one, the original artist's details, the screenshots from their private conversation; he tells his followers to go send hate to the original artist because she hurt his feelings by calling him out.

He starts a competition encouraging everyone to rip off her image in their own style. In turn getting dozens of results, making a considerable chunk of the Instagram art scene focus all negative attention on the original artist. "Well if I can't have it, I guess everyone can." (It's almost impossible to find left over images of the challenge, but I remember there being dozens upon dozens of submissions. I will post one I managed to find, as well as the original rip-off by beebosloth.)

And me and his other followers were totally blind to this insane, ridiculous, behavior. I find that all of my red flags that make me dislike people and their actions boil down to a very simple act: Being shitty to another human when they're not doing anything harmful. That's exactly what Osipov was doing here, and I just kind of let him convince me she was the perpetrator.

-- The remainder is an explanation of why I personally snapped out of this and realized he is just a really sleezy dude, it gets a bit petty, read at your own discretion. --

I kept following him after this for months, sending likes to those stolen general commercial T-shirt slogans slapped on a sketch of skeletons doing basic little things. And then one day a few weeks ago, an image crawled across my feed whose incredibly vague message just didn't sit right with me. The image, as you should be able to see here (if I've successfully posted it), contains a scene of someone trying to post something on instagram, and there is an error message which reads "Oops, nobody gives a shit about you or your selfies. Post anyways?"

First reaction: YIKES, who has Stanny got a vendetta against today? The username of the poster was "dumb bitch" to boot. I honestly couldn't tell if he was attempting to shame someone specific, people who just enjoy posting their selfies, women on Instagram, the message was so unclear and the caption wasn't a help to say the least. Actually the caption was . . . The only possible relation the caption could have had to the art itself, was . . . no actually I really can't find a damn thing to relate the two. It had the same weird aggressive energy as the image, but it was essentially an uncomfortable and unwanted pep-talk? No . . . what in the fresh hell would you call that caption?

Anyways, I just assumed the caption didn't really have a direct relation to the art image, as that was something he'd done before and is pretty typical on Instagram. But I still had a problem with the message of the image itself; essentially teaching people to feel bad about posting their selfies, and holding some sense of superiority to those who dare share an image of their face every so often. How incredibly boring, and my reaction posted in the images explains why this personally pissed me off. And if there I talk like someone complaining in an Instagram comment section, well . . . I wonder why.

His reaction - Oh man his reaction, you could not have killed someone's loyalty to you faster if you used their pet in your omelet. I mentioned how I was confused at the caption in the end of what I was saying, and I guess that's the part that offended him?! I haven't a clue how, but he starts in: "The fact that you don't understand leads me to believe that you are still very lost."

. . . . WHAT?! bahahaha! Where the hell did that come from?! My mouth fell agape. First of all, I didn't understand his caption for the shear fact that it was vague and unrelated to the image. Secondly, beebolsoth, where in the shit did I say anything about being lost and remind me when I paid you to be my psychiatrist.  He goes on in this ridiculous narcissistic tone, making totally wild claims as if he's known me my whole life and can speak to my personal character, and my mental state. What a creep. Is he playing The Rewired Soul here? I didn't know, I didn't particularly care. The mild entertainment I received from viewing his images wasn't worth being talked to like I've just told freaking Sigmund Freud I don't like the taste of lima beans. After receiving some darling, and for some reason, racist hate from his cult followers, I unfollowed him.

But really, isn't that just one of the cringiest feelings out there? Realizing you've been doing back-flips for someone who would treat you like absolute dirt just for the fun of it? Well, now this experience is documented. Hopefully the true original artist of the "One way ticket to hell" piece is doing alright. And the next time Osipov does something weird and horrible, people can come here, and know it definitely wasn't the first time.

[itshaejinju]

For those who want to hear my side:

Hey everyone,

I hope all are enjoying your weekend.

I want to express my side of the story and then I want to move past it and go about my day.

So first we are going to discuss the donated money which was after conversion from their native money to USD was, $150, $21 and $60. (We will discuss the other money later.)

When I first had talked to Moosh about the money I told her I would use the donated money for insurance and therapy. Each time we spoke about the money I always said I was using it towards insurance and therapy. My bank account was closed so I had to get a new one. The insurance I had found after taxes was almost $200 a month but it was including vision, dental and was good. But with what I got for donation I wouldn’t be able to afford to go see a therapist.

I had set up to buy it but with with the way my bank card wasn’t active yet I couldn’t buy it. It was pending in the shopping cart to get it. So when I got the card and activated it I couldn’t find the page that I had the expensive insurance sitting in the shopping cart. I knew if I typed in google search the item the link I used would have showed up as used so that would be it.

When I did that I saw something that caught my eye and curious kitten I am I looked. And I found out that it offers the same things as the expensive one did minus the vision and dental (that could be added extra if you wanted too) but it had a few restrictions of what doctors I could see. But over all it was just as good as the expensive one with the deductible and copay and was only $55.88 after tax! So I was like well that is good! I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before when I looked the first time around or even the second to be truthful. Like I looked several times for the insurance. And I didn’t see this link like it looked fake and all so that is probably why I was like no to good to be true. But after finally looking and checking it out I was like this is legit awesome!

That means I could afford more than just the insurance that I could go pay the copay and see a therapist. As I had told her several times I was going to use it for therapy and insurance. I had contacted one therapist already but she wasn’t taking new patients at the time. (Still have not heard from the other two I called.)

As it’s crazy to buy the insurance but then be unable to afford to use it.

And this money is in a separate account than the main bank account too so no worry of anything taking what belonged solely to insurance.

Insurance here in the USA for most is by the month I’m not sure how it is elsewhere. You have deductibles, copays, need references to see some doctors, restrictions and such. And getting insurance does not mean seeing a doctor or therapist will be free either that your insurance pays for it all. You got a deductible to meet and then the copay which is like $30 for what I got. So I would need that remaining money for the therapist to pay them, as my insurance would cover the bulk of it but I still have to pay for some. (The therapist as far as I know of can’t prescribe medicine but refer you to a psychiatrist that can.)

With the little I had I was doing my best to ultlize the money I got. Because I wanted to at least get two visits to the therapist out of it and two months worth of coverage. You could not select it to buy more than one month at a time with it just a reoccurring billing to do each month to keep the insurance.

I tried explaining this to her about it all. I got attacked the moment I did that I was a liar and a scammer and I was a horrible person. So wouldn’t listen to what I had to say.

I gave back the remaining money that Moosh gave me I know she didn’t want it back and I know she calls it dirty money. That I returned it because she caught me in a lie. I never lied once to her I always told her what was going on and what I intended to do with the money. I returned it because I did not want to associate with it or the implication of it all because I was getting hate for going out of my house to enjoy some fresh air. I never spent the money for anything but insurance and the prospect of getting a therapist visit.

I still support Moosh and her writing. She is a fantastic writer and a overall nice person. I know she and others have blocked me and said bad things about me. I have never been anything but nice to people in this fandom helping in anyway I can. Be it family issues and someone needs a shoulder to cry on or a voice of reason I’ve helped. Wanted help because you were stuck in your fic? I’ll help! Beta read something send in my way! Want help with building your oc? Sure ask me stuff I’ll help. Want to shoot the breeze because you are bored? I’m here. I always try my best to read all the fics I’m tagged in and leave actual comments about what I liked in the story. Being supportive as possible to everyone. I’m like this in chat, discord, my blog, Facebook, in person. I like to help people it makes me feel better to solve someone’s problem. Or at least point them in the right direction! Because I can’t solve all problems but I can at least help.

I don’t despise anyone at all. I hope that maybe one day Moosh (and those who blocked me before even hearing my side) and I can start talking again.

As for the other money that I got from people when I first opened the Ko-Fi account. It went to my cell phone, credit card bills and groceries. I bought one frivolous thing which was the Gladiolus tank top. Why?

I was only able to bring three bags worth of stuff with me when I left Florida. And you know what? Not many clothes made it. Ruby has been fantastic and letting me wear her clothes but she’s a lot taller than I am so her clothes are bigger on me and I don’t feel so confident wearing them. You know?

So I found that shirt on sale and for the site and all so I was thinking about it and I had been wanting it for a long time. So I bought it on sale.

Also that previous money was meant to help get me back on my feet. Helping with bills and such. And several people I talked to that gave me money told me I should use however I felt like with it. That they gave me the money and I can do what I want with it. I ended up using it for bills and groceries anyways and just buying that shirt for my own personal needs. I bought the cheapest groceries possible dollar general stuff. I haven’t bought any fancy foods. Any fancy eating I’ve done has been bought by Ruby if she got a bonus from work.

So I hope this clears up anything for you guys. I hope you understand what I’ve said. I’m going to not write for a while, I know I have match ups, requests and Family is Forever chapter is due Sunday. But currently I am too depressed and upset to write. I will return later and catch up. I will be in tumblr chat and I’ll read what I’m tagged in. I will always support everyone no matter what they believe unless they specifically don’t want me to talk to them or deal with them. I will understand totally. It will hurt but if you don’t believe me or care to associate with me any longer I will understand.

I’ve never been anything but kind and supporting to everyone here. I’ve never had any bad words or thoughts towards others. I don’t hate anyone here at all. I appreciate all of you for what you contribute to the community of FF15 and what help you have given me, emotionally and financially.

I adore all of you. I hope you guys have a good weekend. I hope you understand what I have to say.

Thanks, Jin

[niconicotastic]

Let’s start with a fic. I love Baby Doll, but I am far more interested in the woman she is rather than the child she acts like. So I explore that in all my writing of her. I even played her for a time on tumblr. I miss it, honestly. 

“Baby don't wanna, noooooooo NOOOOO....” The tiny innocent child-like voice of one Mary Dahl AKA Baby Doll disturbed the silent halls of Arkham Asylum as she was carried to her cell kicking and screaming. It was a chilling sound heard in the halls of such a place. The attendants weren't even sure what to make of it.

“You sure about this, Jerry? She sounds just like a little girl.” Roger scratched the back of his head in confusion. He had two little girls, both sounded and looked almost like this one and they were dragging this one to a cell; it just felt wrong and left him with an ache in the pit of his stomach.

“Yeah, don't worry; she's like in her 30's. Remember that show? She was the kid. Did that till she was 20 or so. It's pretty creepy. Got the shortest end of the stick compared to any of them I think.” Jerry was trying to be gentle with the child-like actress, but it was hard not to just let her go considering her size. Her Arkham uniform didn't even fit, not at all. They had found a shirt that fit; even then it was still baggy on her slender shoulders.

“Baby wanna go hooommmee, helppp meeee...” She stared at Roger; he seemed softer hearted than Jerry, her eyes betraying her age, darkly lined and crystal blue. Roger turned away from her pleading gaze and put his key card into the cell door to open it for Jerry.

“Yeah...I guess so.” Roger wasn't sure how he felt at all now, but his stomach still hurt

“Come on,” Jerry settled the now docile doll into her cell; she seemed to have stopped trying and resorted to crying softly on her bed. “I'll get you some coffee. She'll be fine in there.” And the men walked away leaving the small woman to ponder her fate.

And ponder she did. She was in the asylum for a reason she figured. But why? Hadn't she just been giving people what they wanted from her? Hadn't she just turned into what they had wanted? A child that never seemed to grow any older. Who was always perfect and sweet and pleading, cloyingly so. She sat up on her little cot bed looking around the dank and depressing room, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of a small, well-manicured hand. Her curls had lost their bounce and spring without maintenance and she figured eventually her manicured nails would go by the wayside as well.

Why couldn't things just work out the way they were supposed to? She had been wrong, there was no doubt about that now, but then her taste in men had often been questionable. Not that any of them had ever reciprocated, ever. Croc could have been different, he was; he had used her, used her brain because he didn't have one.

The little thing lay back on her bed, staring up at the empty pitch black of the ceiling. When that proved too unsettling she rolled onto her side, curling into the blanket and clutching at the pillow. The dark had always scared her, it was empty and it made the loneliness that much harder to swallow.

Loneliness was something she should have been used to by now. She had always been alone; she couldn't recall happy memories of childhood unless you counted the TV show. She didn't anymore; it was a bad memory, rotten to the core. It had certainly never helped her. Her parents had left her to agents and nannies; it was easier to deal with her when she wasn't around. She had no idea where they even were now; no doubt living on her broken fame, they knew her when she wasn't crazy; probably writing a book about what it was like raising her, regardless of the fact they had nothing to do with it from the time she was 10 until finally she wasn't their responsibility anymore; until she flopped.

Even flopping she had done on her own. Everything in her life was a single person activity. She had acted alone, she had planned and plotted alone and now...now she was in her cell, alone. Mary wondered if maybe a psychiatrist could cure loneliness, make it not so hard to bear, but she supposed that was a bit much to hope for.

[cosmosogler]

the other day on the phone mom told me that dad’s feelings were hurt because i didn’t say goodbye to him enough when i left.

ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. 

i woke up this morning. i wish i could remember my dreams a little better. it feels like there’s something that keeps happening over and over and i can’t ever remember what it is no matter how many times it happens. 

maybe it’s just that feeling of deja vu more than actually experiencing the same... “thing” in my dreams night after night. the ones i’ve written down only had a common thread of feeling, like, resigned. tired. quiet.

i’m not sure how to say what i’m thinking right now. i’ll try to work up to it i guess.

the internet was out all morning so i didn’t get to bum around on tumblr or check my emails. i filled up my water bottles and put them in the fridge. i’ve got seven water bottles stored for the ~2 projected days of the hurricane. that should be enough. i don’t think the power or water would be out for that long. and if it is out for that long, the storm will have passed by the time i’d need to leave the apartment.

my sister isn’t willing to send over ANY gamecube games for the console here. so that plan is a bust i guess. i keep forgetting i can’t really... well, i can always expect for her to do what she wants.

oh. the governor just closed every school in florida. tomorrow. through monday. current projections put the hurricane directly over my town. as a category 3.

welp! i am SUPER glad i decided to bring all my textbooks home today *just in case*. i’ll have something to do for the next four days.

haha my comments in the grad chat won the honor of being the first-ever liked text message in our channel.

guess i don’t have to worry about going to bed exactly on time tonight then. i’ll keep writing.

i taught for four hours straight today. i’m upset at how many dumb, careless mistakes i’ve been making. i tell myself i’m doing the best i can and then i just... forget things. they don’t even occur to me until it’s too late. the absolute worst though was when the student from my third section who doesn’t speak a lot of english came in. i called him by the wrong name. there were two names on the roster i recognized as chinese and i... picked the one i remembered calling him last week. so not only was i wrong this time, i had been wrong last week when i’d been talking to him. jesus christ. i examined some of my priorities and tendencies to rush into things after that for a while.

i apologized twice and also tried to call him by the right name a couple times while talking to him about the lab afterward. he did pretty good this week though.

after that i don’t really know what i did. i guess i must have had a snack. i’m kind of drawing a blank on what happened between 2 and 4 though. maybe i just watched youtube videos in my office... i’d meant to read but i never really got to it. i did eventually buckle down and find and call a dentist, and get all my other medical paperwork sorted. i did Actual Work until near 6 even though none of it was schoolwork. i waited a half hour for the bus and then when i got home i made cauli tots.

cauli tots are like tater tots, but with cauliflower instead of taters.

snoopy was a little more receptive to playing today. i was so proud of her when she batted at the toy i was waving in front of her. 

then i watched youtube videos all evening!!! like a punk!!!!!!!!!!!

suicidal thoughts are weird. to experience, i guess. like i am continually bombarded by the realization that i am currently sitting in some kind of mysterious box with light coming out of the top. and i am looking at a couple pieces of metal with a glowing thing. and then i think, “wow, i am really good for nothing, i am really unhappy, i am really not a good person to know, i am really just going to be a sad irredeemable lump for the next 20 years just like the last 20 years.”

i just. i guess when i realized i was going to die someday (at ~5 or 6) there was a kind of relief? in knowing i could do it myself, maybe? maybe i am misremembering my years before christian school. i know i was experiencing symptoms of depression before christian school. but i didn’t have those words so i wasn’t really... looking for those symptoms or recognizing that they weren’t the same as what other people were experiencing throughout childhood.

there’s a certain sort of resignation you get when at an early age you think, “something’s really wrong with me.” and then you’re proven right over and over and over. heart defects. depression. being Pretty Gay.

i know none of those things are “wrong” but as a kid different is always wrong.

taking the physics prelim. “no, you don’t understand, i felt REALLY bad about how i did on this test.” “you’re fine! everyone was nervous!” “no, you really don’t UNDERSTAND.”

i was right.

i keep telling myself i’m not stupid like someday i’ll believe it but i keep getting reminded over and over again how stupid i really am, how many stupid careless mistakes i make, how little energy i can commit toward being not stupid and dumb and bad.

like, “kill yourself” is such an easy thing to think. it’s so disorienting to actually think it though. to get from 

“i complain about everything even though that never fixed anything” ->

“i needed help and no one came, why can’t i recognize and react to these patterns, complaining is useless but i do it anyway” ->

“complaining is annoying AND i can’t trust people, i’ll never have close friends” ->

“i want to die.”

dying is fine! they’ll just write me off as selfish anyway!! i’m turning into one of those CRAZY crazies who can’t/just WON’T get better!!! 

i don’t like the way the world kind of warps when i get those thoughts. words stop meaning anything. feelings stop meaning anything. the way the scab on my finger knuckle hurts when i bump it doesn’t mean anything. 

writing all these journal entries, spending 40 minutes spewing all my thoughts everywhere on a blog every day... it looks like i am doing a lot of hard work examining myself! but it’s not hard work. it’s fake work. it’s fake. i can’t get better because i’m not working hard enough to change. i can’t do better at physics or therapy or whatever the hell until i start putting in real work instead of fake work.

and i’m stupid because i can’t tell what the difference is.

i’m... seeing the new psychiatrist in 11 days. they will probably want to change up my meds. but i’m tired of wanting to just sleep all the time. well, i mean, i want to sleep all the time anyway, but with meds this ineffective i can push away that feeling and keep going! “keep going,” i say, as i talk about how i very specifically do not want to keep going. 

i was trying to figure out how to explain my depression to taylor and luis in the office today when luis asked what i had, that i was getting accommodations. i wanted to say “it used to be worse but now it’s kind of settled into a casual nihilism that i think is funny and charming but it mostly just makes everyone worried.”

i say it used to be “worse” but i’m not sure what worse means here. like the feeling was a lot sharper five years ago, sure. it was a lot more painful when it got bad. my grades were somehow even worse than they are now. i didn’t want to talk to anyone.

i guess it was worse then. now it’s just like, oh, this again. guess i gotta get up and Face The Day; nothing better to do.

that’s the worst, i think. my group therapist at the hospital pointed it out. “why are you here?” she would ask. “eh, nothing better to do i guess,” i’d answer and kind of half-smile. she’d express concern at my lack of commitment. maybe that’s what really killed my ability to get better using that therapy in the end. 

everyone else participates and sometimes doesn’t come if they don’t wanna. i come every single time but don’t really participate. i fake participate. i mostly only share things i know don’t matter that much. i put my foot in and hope that’s good enough, that maybe the pool will swim for me if i show up wearing a swim suit.

isn’t that what i’m really doing? i’m having trouble breaking down what’s going on there. i can’t tell. i can’t tell what “real” effort is and what “fake” effort is. i guess fake effort is, like, playing it safe? only changing things i feel comfortable changing? 

but like... how am i supposed to make changes i’m not comfortable with? i think about this stuff all the time. i feel that i should be able to adopt healthier coping/boundary strategies without fundamentally changing the way i approach interactions with other people. that feels like something i shouldn’t change, not just something i don’t want to change. how am i supposed to become the person i want to be if i don’t like the way i am changing? 

i mean i don’t like the way i am changing either way but going for it deliberately feels like a betrayal. 

i’m so stupid. i keep asking mom for advice or comfort even though i know 100% that i am not going to get it from her. she has maybe said one useful thing to me in my life and i don’t think it’s something she also thought was actually useful. maybe i still want someone to just tell me what to do and mom was such an effective all-consuming eldritch helicopter parent that i just look to her EVEN WHEN I DON’T WANT TO. i mean, i don’t even like other people’s parents! i don’t like other people’s parents BECAUSE of my parents!! and i still keep going to them???

i don’t know what to do. i want someone to tell me what to do so i don’t have to figure it out myself. i’m so tired all the time it feels like i’m never going to figure it out. i can’t tell if i’m an effective problem-solver for little problems that require improvisation or if i’m just really good at googling stuff and following those directions, written by someone else. every problem i solve i feel like i should attribute to someone else even when i never actually asked for help or looked anything up. i can’t even remember any examples off the top of my head. i don’t think about them. i just do them.

i said “i” a lot today. i always talk about myself. even though this is my journal and is specifically meant for me to talk about myself? i feel like i’m doing something wrong. even using “i” statements when being honest and direct with people feels like... i’m being selfish by talking about myself. even though that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s what therapists teach you to do to communicate effectively.

i promise i was this miserable this afternoon. i didn’t “ruin a good mood” i had tonight by focusing on just the negatives. i just plain feel bad!