#idk i guess this just hits too close to my experiences (trauma? am i allowed to call it that?)

[freezerbreak]

ight so tonight was a night 😐 /neg

[ihavenoconsistentname]

Ignore me while I spill out some of my triggers randomly I don't know I've never actually like,, said all of them?? I'm not doing it now for any particular reason I'm just rambling a lot right now so this is adding to that I suppose, plus I guess I like getting things off my chest in random text posts you dont have to read all this if you dont want and it could have triggering elements so I'll try to tag whatever triggers I feel like I might wanna tag just in case and if theres any I missed tell me

So yeah random triggers or things I just generally dislike because of past experience or some sort of effect they have on me (by the way I'm not 100% certain of why some of these bother me they just do I dont wanna say its trauma because I dont think anything here would be considered trauma-worthy?? In my case, that is);

Anything about needles going into skin or veins,, aaaaa,,, anything with talking abt that makes me feel uncomfy and last time someone made me think I would have a needle stuck in my vein for a blood test I had a panic attack (my boyfriend kinda told me I was a pussy for getting so worked up about it :( dont do that to people pleaaase,, different people are uncomfortable abt different things even if you dont see it)

Loud noises aggravate me if its multiple people being loud and obnoxious when they shouldn't be or just don't need to but it's only bad if I'm in a space that isn't too vast and that I can't just leave like a classroom where people are being loud. I wouldnt say that itself in general is a trigger but;

Sudden loud noises and repeated ones like banging on a desk or something can be a trigger for me, loud noises like that make me jump and mess with my anxiety plus I have paranoia so if it's truly out of nowhere I might feel anxious (one of my classmates bangs on desks a lot and its loud plus he sits near me in the two classes where he does it often and it really bothers me)

People showing me too much affection or showing it in a certain way when I either don't know them well enough or they just have a totally different personality than what I'm used to/comfortable with,, it makes me feel uncomfortable if a person like that would touch me at all or do something like send me a lot of heart emojis (example of something someone has done and I felt really uncomfortable because they did it a LOT)

People pretending to hit me or making it seem like they will, this one is more of a trigger because my grandma used to hit me for no reason (idk if you would consider that abuse?? I never describe it as that because I dunno it doesnt really seem like it) so sometimes if people make sudden movements near me I get scared that they were gonna hit me and if they actively try to hit me/act like they will it can give me a panic attack (like I said with the thing about my grandma plus my sister has threatened to hit me a lot so I've always been afraid of that)

People touching me when I either tell them not to or they don't get permission and they arent someone I trust or am close to,, one hug might be okay but after that I won't feel comfortable with it (another example of something someone has done!! I told someone not to touch my hair and they did anyway, I'm only okay with my very close friends doing that!!)

In addition to the touching thing, people touching me in certain areas like I dont want people touching my face, hands, chest area, or anything like that unless they've gotten my explicit permission, someone once put their hand on my chest and tried grabbing for my binder when I told them I was trans and do I even need to say how that crosses the line??

People I'm not friends with calling me certain things, not just things that could be insulting but also pet names or calling me a child,, someone irl referred to me and Alic as "children" and yeah we basically are I guess but I dont want people calling me that, only my friends can call me that?? But other than that you would need my permission to call me certain things if we arent close or friends, you are allowed to call me stuff like kiddo or a non-threatening "kid" if you want, it wont bother me, you just cant like call me random things and expect me to be cool with absolutely anything

Drunk people,, I guess that could be a bit of a trigger because of a couple things; a) my sister and her friend were drunk once and her friend repeatedly tried kissing me and I was so damn uncomfortable with it and felt violated, I still feel that even if it was like, I think last year?? I dont remember, but b) one time my sister was drunk (again) and she picked up a knife and starting coming near me with it and I started panicking telling her to stop but she kept following me with it and I was honestly afraid she would stab me, it wasnt a big knife but I was still afraid

This one is less general but when people upset teachers,, my first period teacher Ms Hamilton has her daughter Catherine sub for her when shes out and a few students make her mad a lot by not doing what they're told and she yells really loudly, which is a bit of a trigger for me circling back to the loud noises bit, I'm really afraid of when adults yell around me even if it's not yelling AT me, partially because loud noises scare me anyway and also I think it's because my dad would yell at my sister a lot because she would argue with him and that always made me come close to breaking down because I couldn't get out of the area where it was happening

Something that makes me uncomfortable is people who will try to text you often every day because I'm so bad at socializing and barely ever have good responses so when they text me too much I feel too obligated to text back and it stresses me out, only one person has done this (they also violated my touch boundaries and did the uncomfortable affection thing) and I ended up just ghosting them after a while because it was too much for me, I know that's weak but I work differently

Trigger for my paranoia is unsettling images that are just an overly creepy visual, some things I cant even describe why they creep me out, but it easily can trigger my paranoia and I hallucinate sometimes seeing creepy shadows and those things can add to it or give me anxiety so yeah I cant be sent creepy images like that,, not like gore stuff I can look at that it's just a certain kind of unsettling

Random thing I dont like sometimes is adults telling young people to act their age because typically they say it to people who are like 13 and 14 and at that age you cant expect them to be very mature yet?? Plus some of them actually do act more mature and then other adults will try to argue that they're just kids so they dont actually understand when they're speaking logically so what the hell do you want, for them to act their probably immature age or for them to act older?? Pick one and stick with it instead of adjusting it constantly for your own arguments or instead of saying act your age just say not to act like a kindergartner or not to act like a dunce or to behave better

[sonodaten]

Mmkay now I’m done with Another Story, full thoughts under the cut

Jesus, that was a fucking gut punch to the feels. Like, I’m floored. I can’t even begin to sort through what I’m feeling about it, and that’s not in a good way. But before I get into that, I wanna get something out of the way first:  it’s a captivating story, and it definitely adds a lot more to better round out the story that we, as readers, know from playing the other five routes and the two secret endings. And it does all of this while providing a different perspective for the reader to better differentiate it from the previous stories, so it feels fresh but familiar enough for new and veteran players alike. It provides more of a backdrop and development with V and the others characters so that you can get a better sense of what V’s relationship to the characters are, which you didn’t really get in the original stories because V was more a side/supporting character than a main character. And some of the new CGs are stunning (especially the one of V from the Good Ending).

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say that this initial playthrough was done very intent on “romancing” V, meaning that I generally avoided (when I could) options to get hearts with other characters.

As for the specifics . . . I just can’t quite describe how I feel about it, but a general feeling about it is slightly . . . sad? Bittersweet? Like, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve struggled with mental illness (depression, anxiety, ASD) since I was 13, and I only recently (at 21) started seeing a therapist about it. So, obviously, I know that what Ray (hacking, attacking, coercing/kidnapping/holding MC against their will, trying to make MC take the elixir/drug), Rika (emotional/psychological abuse of V, blinding him, drugging people against their will, etc.), and V (emotional/psychological abuse with his obsession with Rika, hiding the truth about Saeran/Ray from 707) was wrong. The fact that they were mentally ill does not justify their actions. But at the same time, it makes me feel . . . bad that only 1/3 of them got an explicitly happy ending and that no matter what you do, one always dies. IDK, I’m just kind of sick of seeing all these antagonists being explicitly/coded as mentally ill and being written off as “unable to be saved/helped/must be destroyed.” Though I am happy that V got a happy ending at the end of all this. I guess that’s where a lot of my conflicted feelings about this story comes from. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story. I feel like it was definitely worth the 300 hourglasses. But reading Ray’s final messages . . . and Rika’s final messages . . . given how closely they mirror feelings and thoughts I’ve experience just . . . hits too close. Really hindered me in being able to immerse myself and enjoy the story because it was just so jarring and unsettling to read.

If Cheritz is planning on doing more routes, I’ve seen that the most popular ones being asked for are Vanderwood, Saeran/Ray, and Rika. Out of these three, I feel like Vanderwood is the most unlikely. They (because I’m still confused about which pronouns Vanderwood uses/prefers) aren’t involved in or have any stake in the RFA/Mint Eye/anything really beyond 707′s involvement, so telling a story that follows them wouldn’t really give Cheritz the opportunity to open up the story any more.

A Saeran would be interesting, though, as it would give Cheritz a way to really flesh out Mint Eye beyond what we’ve learned about them, and give readers an inside perspective (via Saeran) to Mint Eye. The way they’ve painted Mint Eye (moreso in V’s story) is an organization that has a worthwhile and understandable goal (helping those who have suffered abuse and other traumas move forward in their life and find happiness), but seek to achieve it through less than legal or acceptable ways (drugging people to make them feel happy). In truth, I would really like this to be fleshed out more because the way it is now just sets off too many “metaphor-for-antidepressants-actually-being-bad-for-you” flags to me. I’m fairly confident Cheritz wouldn’t do something like that on purpose, and I think an opportunity to dig more into Mint Eye and get more of what’s going on underneath the surface that we see as a member of the RFA would really help with this. That, and Saeran needs help and I want to help him for reasons that I stated above. For this to work out cohesively, I think it would be best to go the same route as V’s story and set it before the original routes. However, even if Chertiz did make a Saeran route and decided to place it somewhere else along the timeline, I’m fairly confident in their writing that I would at least give the route a shot before making a sweeping generalization about it. Heck, I’d be happy if we got the same beginning as Another Story, just with the option to pursue a Saeran/Ray route after Day 4.

Now, a Rika route would be more difficult given that the main premise of all routes (give or take some specifics for each story) is that MC is replacing Rika as the RFA’s party coordinator. Again, a route with Rika would give Cheritz the opportunity to give us more insight on Mint Eye and a look at V and Rika’s relationship from Rika’s perspective when she does not act as an antagonist (or, at least, not completely). Like I mentioned above with Saeran, if Cheritz were to choose to do a Rika route, it would have to be set prior to the original stories. One thought I had was possibly having MC come into the RFA just before/just after V faked Rika’s death or around the time Rika starts to really put together/build Mint Eye. This would allow for a clearer look into Rika’s original motivations and work that went towards starting Mint Eye, and would be a better point in the storyline for MC to intervene/prevent Rika from building it and seeking help for her trauma and abusive behaviors. I don’t have the timeline worked out perfectly yet, so I’m unsure exactly where Saeran/Ray would fit into a story like this.

TL;DR: The V Route is def worth the hourglasses for the story telling, but I’d say do so with the knowledge that it contains references to domestic abuse, trauma, violence, and allusions to/mentions of suicide.