#sobriety insights

[therehabofficial]

Discover Valuable Insights with Morphine Addiction Podcasts Listen to engaging morphine addiction podcasts to gain in-depth knowledge and support for recovery journeys. These podcasts cover topics such as treatment options, coping strategies, and personal experiences shared by experts and individuals who have overcome addiction. Offering a mix of educational and motivational content, these resources are valuable for those seeking guidance or supporting loved ones in their recovery process.

[zoezozeija]

The week before: Antici-patience

Antici-patience I have the privilege of knowing when I will become pregnant.Or rather: start my journey with God. Or rather: take my vow to take care of myself.6th of June. Next New Moon. And what do you know? It coincides with my ovulation phase. Except, we all know, coincidence doesn't exist. It is all meant to be.So now. 1st of June, one week before. I am in the coffeeshop smoking my last…

[mindfulldsliving]

Recognizing Signs of Personal Revelation in Recovery

Recognizing personal revelation involves understanding its signs. Key indicators include feelings of peace, sudden clarity, and persistent nudging. These signs help individuals confirm they are on the right path, even when doubt arises.

Understanding Personal Revelation: A Guide for Spiritual Growth in Sobriety Understanding personal revelation is crucial for spiritual growth, especially during recovery from addiction. It provides insights and guidance that help navigate life’s challenges. Personal revelation acts as a compass, aligning individuals with their higher purpose and deepening their connection to God. Biblical…

[livingbeyondaddiction]

Take a breath

John 3:1–21 (ESV): You Must Be Born Again 3 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The word for spirit in Hebrew is ruach and when translated roughly means spirit, wind, and breath. These would have been recognizable words to both Jesus and Nicodemus given their background but this is a little different for us. So what does verse 8 mean? Can you see the wind blow? We can't literally see the wind, but we can see the affects of it. We see the trees as the wind blows through it's leaves and we see the grass move. We feel it on our face and we can even hear it and smell it. And yet we dont deny it's there because its presence is undeniable. And it's this same presence that is vital, imperative even to our existence and survival. Just like the wind through the trees and grass, we can see the Holy Spirit at work in our lives and the lives of those around us. We allow the Spirit to move through us and we are the fruit of the of the Spirit that moves through us. We feel the presence and others get to witness the Spirit in us like the leaves in the trees. What about breath? We can't see it or hold it but we know it's vital to our life. The breath fills our lungs and begins it's work of pumping blood through our bodies. With the same breath we can steady or raise our heart rate, controlling the amount of blood pumped through the heart from one second to the next. The spirit of a person works in this same way, only difference is would come from which spirit we are drawing that breath from. Is it the spirit of satan which leads to death or are we breathing in the reformative, regenerative, life giving breath of the Ruach Elohim? The One and Only Spirit of the Living God. May God bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you. May you draw from the Spirit and breath that gives life to all who would believe and call upon His name, and that you would seek first His kingdom.

[eowynstwin]

a wake-up call / neighbors

previous

On a cold winter's day in the early morning hours, you knock on your neighbor Captain John Price's door to make a noise complaint. - “Did you mean any of it?” he asks, voice low and deep in his chest. - ao3

Three knocks on your front door wake you up.

The sound feels at first like the thump of your own throbbing brain against the inside of your skull. Awareness comes back to you slowly, in gradiated shades of stiff joints and greasy skin. You shift, and find you’re still on your couch, still in your clothes from last night. Your eyes are filmy, sticky with dehydration—you blink several times to clear them, to little effect.

The knocking, a three-beat staccato, comes again.

“One second,” you croak irritably, cupping your forehead with your hand. Your skull might come apart, you think, if you move too much.

Your entire body feels like it is suspended from loose, tangled marionette strings as you struggle to sit up on the couch, and you wobble to that effect as you stand. Somehow, your flat has tilted at thirty degree angle, likely sometime in your sleep. You make it to the door at an oblique, having to lean on the jamb as you open it, and to add insult to injury John is standing on your doorstep like a clean, shining beacon of sobriety.

He’s in a dark shirt and jeans. His hair is casually neat, as if he’d styled it with his fingers. He looks fresh-faced, as if he’s been awake for hours already.

“That’s not fair,” you groan. 

His brows draw together over cool blue eyes. “Jesus, love,” he says, looking you up and down.

You think you should say something back. But your head is too full of ache and interrupted sleep—and the bright shock of his presence—to produce anything intelligent.

“John,” is all you say, and you sound absolutely pathetic.

“Was gonna accuse you of standing me up,” he says ruefully, “but I see that’s not the case.”

“No,” you say dumbly. The fact that he’s come to seek you out gets tangled up in the strings. “Um.”

It is so far out of the ordinary as to be dreamlike. John’s knocking belongs on the other side of your wall, not your door. His boots belong on his own doorstep, making room for your house slippers at the time of your choosing, not his.

“Am I still drunk?” you wonder aloud.

John gives that little huff-laugh of his. “I doubt it.”

You rub your face. “Have I overslept?”

“Just a bit,” he replies. “I’ll admit, when I didn’t hear you move around this morning, I got worried.”

“I fell asleep on the couch,” you confess. You put a hand to your forehead as your brain throbs again. “Oh, I shouldn’t have drank that much.”

“Love,” says John, gentle and soft, “why don’t you let me in, and I’ll make you some breakfast?”

You blink, and you’re sure now that you’re still drunk. 

John. In your flat. Cooking?

“I’m not fancy in the kitchen, but I manage alright,” he suggests further. His gaze is warm on yours, brows lifted encouragingly.

“…Sure,” you say, and shuffle to the side to let him in. If this morning is determined to be strange, you might as well not get in its way.

He gives you a small smile and crosses the threshold. 

Your flat shifts again; as he enters your living room, it seems to shrink, or maybe it’s just that John fills your home in a way no one ever has. His body, his presence, casts new light on the interior that throws its existence into unfamiliar repose. Details—the softness of your furniture, the cozy clutter of books and knickknacks spread across every available flat surface—offer unmeasured insight into who you are, more than you might ever have intended to reveal to John.

It’s only when he’s halfway to your kitchen that you realize one detail—the bright fucking pink of your vibrator, still on your coffee table—is glowing like a neon sign.

And your previous night’s activities come flooding back. 

Your body, draped over his. The scrape of his beard on your hand, your face. 

The furious grind of your mons against that toy as you pictured him taking you, drenched in hot shower water and pressed bare to the tile wall.

You are fully, painfully awake now. You stare, frozen in shocked terror, waiting for him to catch sight of it, but his head does not turn in its direction. He passes by it with no indication that he even noticed.

You dart over and snatch it behind his back, shoving it deep into your dress pocket, and grab up the empty water glass for an excuse. Then you have to put a hand to your head as your vision swims from the sudden movement.

“Have eggs?” John asks over his shoulder. He enters your kitchen. “I can make ‘em any way you like. Fried, over easy, sunny side…”

“Um,” you say, squeezing your eyes shut, “scrambled.”

You follow after him, and lean against the wall to watch as he opens your fridge. His hand engulfs more of its handle than yours ever has; the musculature of his powerful body visibly shifts beneath his clothes as he has to bend down to root around the shelves.

He is broad in your kitchen. As broad as he’d been between your legs, in memory and in fantasy.

You don’t realize you’re staring until he straightens and puts the eggs, butter, and milk on the counter. Your breath hangs suspended in the shallows of your lungs when he catches your gaze.

His brows crease again. “You look like you’re about to fall over.” 

“Um,” you say, again, because it’s the only sound your brain will reliably supply.

To your horror, he comes to you, and—oh, god—takes your face in both hands.

“You’re warm,” he says. “Do you feel sick, love?”

Your brain supplies nothing now. It is so unfair, how good he looks the morning after drinking nearly half a bottle of scotch. His features are velvet-soft, so easy and wonderful to look at that you stop feeling your headache entirely.

“I really think I might still be drunk,” you admit, sounding pathetic.

His thumbs rub into your temples as he smiles at you. “Hell of a hangover, then.”

The pressure of his fingers is an incredible relief, and you close your eyes as you give into it. You feel, if your knees suddenly gave out, that he would easily be able to hold you up like this, as if you weighed nothing. His hands are a little cool from rooting around in your fridge, and the rest of him is warm, standing close enough that his body heat reaches out to you with the freshness of a recent shower. You want to fall into that warmth, bury your face in his chest…

Your eyes fly open. You hear your own voice again—I wanted to touch you, and I wanted you to hold me. You feel, again, the echo of his body between your thighs. Your heart starts beating wildly in your chest as embarrassment, hot and acidic, pumps through you.

“I think I need to sit down,” you whisper.

He strokes your temples, and surveys your face with a gentle gaze. “Sure, love. Go ahead.”

And then he releases you, and you try to remember how to walk as you return to your living room. There is no relief to be found as you sit down on your couch, which is indented by the dissatisfied night.

“How’d you sleep?” John asks from the counter. You hear him crack a few eggs into a bowl. This is the first time cooking has happened in your kitchen with you outside of it, and the cognitive dissonance of it does not help to steady you.

“Like the dead,” you say, rubbing your sore neck. Then, you decide to lie to him. “I—I think I passed out before the door even closed last night.”

John looks over his shoulder at you, and he smiles. The vibrator sits cold in your pocket. Are you imagining that glimmer in his eyes? “Wouldn’t be surprised. You were pretty out of it.”

“I didn’t end up drinking the whole bottle, did I?”

A chuckle. “Not quite.”

“Didn’t you drink as much as me?” You try to recall, and think you can remember him matching you glass for glass. “Why aren’t you out of commission?”

“The army never cares if you’re hungover, I’ve found,” says John. “Guess I learned to stop caring too.”

You hear the sizzle of whisked eggs spreading over a hot pan, and for a while there’s only the sound of John moving a spatula around.

You watch him in your kitchen, his back to you as he stands at the stove. His long-sleeved shirt clings to the breadth of his shoulders, planes of shifting muscle underneath casting shadows through the soft cotton. The collar hangs a little low down his neck, leaving enough room for the dark hair at his nape to curl as it dries.

It makes something in your stomach twist, twinning your nervous hunger with unstable desire. It’s something that wants to walk back into the kitchen and wrap your arms around his trim waist, press your cheek between his shoulder blades.

“Want anything else?” John asks. “Could make some toast.”

“Eggs are fine!” you say too quickly.

The spatula scrapes softly against the pan again. As he turns to open your fridge, you swear you see him grinning. 

Heat blooms across your face. SAS. Of course he could feel you looking at him.

It does not take him very long to finish cooking. Space bends once again as he leaves your kitchen, as he comes to you with a plate balanced on one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. You feel smaller than you ever have as he approaches, and sets the meal in front of you on the coffee table. 

“Hope it tastes alright,” he says, sitting down beside you. He sinks into your couch cushions, far more dense than you are, and looks quite comfortable doing so. “I made ‘em how I like ‘em, but no guarantee you’ll feel the same.”

You look from him to the eggs, which are golden yellow and steaming pleasantly. “You didn’t make yourself anything?”

There is a softness in his eyes when you look back to him. You’ve seen it before—it’s there every time you hand him a new book. “Don’t worry ‘bout me. Just eat.”

You can’t protest when he’s looking at you like that, so you obey, suddenly ravenous once a forkful is between your teeth. The eggs are whipped to a wonderfully soft fluff, salted perfectly, and you think you can taste the barest hint of butter. You can’t help shutting your eyes to savor the taste.

“Good?” John asks. “I’ll admit, I’m not much of a cook, but I think I’m all right at eggs.”

Usually you like to add things when you make the same dish—potato chips, broken up into little crumbs, or a dollop of sour cream and salsa. For once though, right now you’d be disappointed by all that. 

They wouldn’t be the eggs John made for you.

The thought makes your stomach twist again. “Delicious,” you say. “Thank you.”

He watches you eat, and you try not to feel self-conscious. He seems almost—satisfied by this, by feeding you, more than you would expect him to be. But then, this has always been the case with John. You have never understood why the smallest of things you do have such an impact on him, but they do nonetheless.

“John,” you say. “About last night…I wanted to apologize.”

Dark brows crease as you set the empty plate down. “What for?”

“I got so drunk,” you say. You won’t look at him, face heating, strangling your own fingers in your lap. “You—you had to carry me home, and I’m so embarrassed by the things I said, I was so inconsiderate.”

“That’s not—”

“You must have felt so uncomfortable,” you continue, “you were so nice to take me out, and there I was acting like a lush with no self-control—”

“Darling, it’s fine—”

“And then after, the way I—I pawed at you—”

He says your name—fully and clearly, firmly—and it catches you so off guard that your words halt in your throat. You finally meet his gaze.

John’s eyes have always been windows. Portals into the truth of him, freely offered, without hesitance or fear. You think John knows himself in ways few men do—knows every corner, every crack and crevice, and refuses to hide any of it from himself or anyone else. As if he is not afraid of being seen for what and who he is; as if he has seen it all already, and cannot be daunted by it.

What you see now is undisguised. Untempered. John Price wants you. And he has no fear that you can see it.

“Did you mean any of it?” he asks, voice low and deep in his chest.

The question catches you off guard, throwing you with its directness. The only thing keeping you upright is his gaze, the steady certainty of its own intention. Strong even under the weight of suspense. 

You swallow, and take a shaky breath. “John,” you say, “I was so drunk...”

His eyes flash. John moves, leans forward, and you are speared, held in place much the same way you had been at dinner, by his presence alone. “I know. But did you mean it?”

The breath trapped in your lungs calcifies, solidifies into hard, pressing nodules of catalyzed fear and desire that trap the seeds of any response in your chest. You tear your gaze away from him, finally, stare at the empty plate on your table. He does not touch you, but you feel the phantom weight of his hand on your knee. The warmth of his body against yours.

“We hardly know each other,” you whisper shakily. It is a flimsy scrap of an excuse, even to you. “We—we barely know each other at all.”

“Love,” John says, low and soft. You turn to look at him again. His lips part—

Your phone rings.

You exhale hard, strings suddenly cut. John closes his eyes, breathes out, and then leans back again.

You retrieve your phone from where you’d flung your purse last night, off the couch and to the opposite wall where it lays on the floor. When you see the caller ID, you want to throw the phone back across the room, but you take a deep breath and answer anyway.

“Ben,” you sigh, and to your furious embarrassment it comes out as a croak.

“Hey, sweets, Liv is—wait. You sound awful,” comes your coworker—and ex-boyfriend’s—voice through the earpiece.

“Rough night,” you say, closing your eyes against sweets. You then look at John. His gaze is fixed on you.

“Oh, sorry,” Ben says. “Anything I can do?”

He could have not called. “Tell me about Liv,” you prompt him.

“Right! She’s out. Flu.”

“Oh.” You blink, and watch John retrieve your plate and glass. He takes them to the kitchen and runs the faucet low, so the sound won’t interfere with your call. 

You’re not sure how you know that that’s his intention, but you do. 

“That’s awful.”

“And inconvenient. We need another instructor for the trip.”

Can John hear what Ben is saying? He looks up from the sink, lifts one brow when you meet his eyes. There’s humor there, a kind of rueful empathy for dealing with the nonsense of coworkers.

You want to hang up. You want to answer his question right then and there. 

“When?” you ask.

“Two hours. I know! I know it’s short notice,” he says, animatedly contrite. “Sorry. But we’d love to have you, it’ll be fun! I can even pick you up, if you like.”

“No, that’s alright,” you sigh. “But okay, I’ll start packing. Just send me the details, yeah?”

“Sure, sweets,” Ben replies, “can’t wait to see you! I’ve missed hanging out, you know? Even after…everything.”

The gravitational force of John’s presence—the shift and bend of your flat around him—snaps in half. Reality asserts itself like a recurring headache. 

Suddenly you’re in your flat, phone to your ear, unshowered from last night and coated in a layer of grease. The vibrator is a useless weight in your pocket. You are a useless girl hungover in day-old clothes.

“I’ll see you soon,” you say noncommittally, and hang up.

John gazes at you expectantly from over the sink.

“Work trip,” you say, and you wonder if you sound as dazed as you feel. “Last minute, I…I need to get ready.”

John blinks, and then grins, amused. Crow’s feet gather in the corners of his eyes. “You know, I’m usually the one in that situation.”

Suddenly he is too much to look at. You tear your gaze away, look at your phone in your hands. You feel very exposed, ashamed somehow. “I’m sorry,” you say.

You hear the easy drum of John’s boots out of your kitchen, across the room, and then he’s in front of you. His hands are in his pockets, arms slung loose at his sides. “What for?”

“For…”

He steps closer to you. Your heart leaps in your chest, and you have to look up at him, unable to resist the pull he has on you.

The line of his mouth is gentle, and you stare too long at the divot of his Cupid’s bow. Beneath the soft lines of his brows, his gaze is soft, fond. More so than you deserve.

“I don’t really know.”

The long muscle in his neck shifts as he tilts his head. You swallow, unconsciously mirroring the gesture.

“John…I…”

His gaze drops—rests on your lips, and returns to yours.

“Love,” he murmurs, low and humming. “Did you mean it?”

His voice slides across you like physical touch, and every hair feels like it’s standing on end.

Yes. Yes, of course you meant it, every word. It feels so obvious to you, so blatant, and the shame of it holds you by the throat. You are not important enough to inflict upon John Price. You are trembling, meek, afraid of stepping outside your own door sometimes. What is that in comparison to him? Him, who comes home shaking off the dust of places you’ve only ever heard of. Him, who you’ve learned can swear in six different languages. Him, who has stuffed more life than you thought possible into only a handful more years of living than yours.

Of course you want him. Moths are always drawn toward flame. How could you not?

“John,” you say in your smallest voice. You hate the way it sounds—like an admission of guilt. “What if I did?”

He doesn’t move, but you see the shift in him anyway. A coiling, almost,  energy banking as he studies you, searches your face. His hands remain in his pockets. He watches you for a long moment, and you can’t possibly imagine what he might like in what he sees.

“Ball’s in your court, then,” he finally says, soft and low in his chest. “Whatever you want from me, love, you can have.”

You want too much. You can’t give enough back.

“I don’t want to ruin this,” you say on a shallow breath. “Our—us. What we already have.”

He steps closer to you. Close enough that his shirt brushes the front of your dress. Close enough that his clean, soft warmth near-envelops you, the exact same way you’d been wishing for earlier. He does not reach out, like he did when he thought you were sick. You cannot decide if this disappoints you or not. You feel shaky without his hands on you, feverish and embarrassed, and you fear desperately that he can see that as he holds your gaze, that you are completely open to him in a way that leaves no space for the truth to hide. 

“You won’t,” he says, steady and solid.  

You take a trembling breath, swallow to clear your throat. “I…”

He withdraws one hand from his pocket, slowly, and brings it upward. Feather-light, he curls his index finger under your chin, caressing his thumb so terribly gently beneath your bottom lip. You cannot help flinching, anticipatory want recoiling from the very thing it was aching for in surprise, and for a split second you are newly scared that he’ll take his touch away.

But he doesn’t. The windows of John’s eyes stay open, and there is nothing but intent behind them. You realize he knows. He knows that you’re reluctant, that you’re unsure, that you are pulled to him like a falling star to earth and also terrified of burning up in the process. 

He understands.

“I’m a patient man, love,” he purrs, and you realize too that he is excited by this, by you. “I can wait. As long as you need.”

next

[secretsnowclub]

This is the Berserk TTRPG You Need!

The purpose of a tabletop roleplaying game book is to make you want to play it. That’s rule number one. All else can go out the window for all I care. Forget layout, forget gimmicks, forget ad-copy, forget poetry. I don’t care how you accomplish it. The book should ache to be played. If its claws aren’t pulling me from the pdf to a discord group chat and forcing me at gunpoint to type “hey, is anyone free for a game soon?” then I’m afraid it’s not doing its job.

I had to sell all the pretty things on my shelves several years ago to avoid losing my home, and at the moment I sold a beautifully destroyed copy of Berserk Issue 1, I stopped giving a damn about having something cute to put on my shelf. I desire that which demands play.

It’s rare in the realm of one hundred plus page books to find something that does that. Too often you’re inundated with blocks of text describing to you the thing you’re reading. Entire pages detailing the promise of the book instead of, you know, the actual contents of the book. Waxing and waning about hypotheticals. “This book does blank. This game creates blank.” But rarely does the book do either of those things, it just promises you that it will.

Whip pan to Rookie Jet Studio’s “Red Giant.”

Expletive, expletive, expletive. This book makes me feel alive.

It’s fitting as I’m rereading Berserk right now (slowly buying the beautiful, black-leather omnibus editions as a way of healing, I think). Reading Red Giant made me think back to that beat up copy of Berserk, and to the used bookstore I sold it to, and the power of that made me want to buy a physical copy of Red Giant on the spot. If only it wasn’t print-on-demand. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I believe the book deserves better.

The layout done by Emanuele Galletto features many deep blacks and cursed reds. It’s clean and elegant, framed perfectly by Juwan Yi’s brutal illustrations. There’s not a chance that Drive Thru could do the colors justice. This is a book that demands. And for printing it demands a professional printer. It demands its own black leather. It demands an embossed red moon on the cover. It demands Corey Burns name in foil on the spine for the excellent world building and mechanic’s-driven writing. Even if he decided to put snobbish philosophy quotes throughout.

Even in that regard, the ones Burns chose to feature within the one hundred and twenty pages add to the bleak sobriety of the world. You’re diving head first into Castlevania territory. You get quotes from Baldwin, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It gave me hints of Kingdom Death and the blood-filled streets of Yarnham. This is a world where deep-voiced narrators talk about hopelessness and nihilism. It’s an edgy, gothic nightmare. The kind of anime you’d love if you were fourteen again.

The system is where the game hooked me though. It’s where this worldbuilding shines through—not in lengthy blocks of lore text, but in the character creation itself. It’s a simple, four-stat system. The kind you’d be familiar with if you’ve played any other game (video, board, or ttrpg). Along with Health, Spirit (mana), and Sanity (which functions more like Insight from Bloodborne than it does, say, sanity in Call of Cthulhu).

The archetypes are where this takes shape. Stats are assigned to you based on your archetype, and each one comes with its own special skills, much like any dungeon crawler. But it’s the packaging of these things together and the limiting of skills that makes these feel truly special. Harkening to the role-infused Troika! backgrounds, Red Giant prescribes you a piece of the world with each archetype. Simple yet evocative names that range from the kick-ass-driven Slayer to the strange-and-mystical Aegis. You might get the ability to sing a song that controls the weather, or early access to the keyword-based magic system.

Regardless of which you choose, it feels like you’re reaching into a grab bag of Red Giant’s influences and pulling out the silhouette of a legendary character. It ditches the vagueness present in a lot of modern, anime-inspired games and trades it in for specificity. And in that specificity, the world blooms.

Afterward comes my favorite section of the text: the Exchanges. These are bite-sized special traits, like feats or class abilities, that you can choose from. Each one framed as something you can just do. Without rolling! Or any other outside influence on your success! However, each one has its titular exchange. Trading abilities for health, sanity, or spirit. Some limit your exposure to daylight. One turns you into Guts Berserk himself in the fatal heat of combat.

I’m jealous of the Exchanges. I wish I wrote them. It’s a Good Idea. It is the answer to the premise the game promises you. Crafting a strange, devilish world through mechanics. Even if the first few pages tell me what an RPG is and how to roleplay and what Red Giant is, the character creation alone backs it up. It walks the walk where the intro talks the talk.

I can’t continue to only praise the game though. There are several Exchanges where their mechanical ties are weaker or missing entirely. These are easy fixes but still fixes that hold a good idea back from being perfectly executed. The character advancement feels tacked on, and the text even suggests tossing it out the window, which, if that’s the case, then it should have been tossed out the window and not left in the book.

There are several moments where the text struggles with strong language and opts for weak sentences that mosey around ideas instead of making definitive statements. The advantage and disadvantage mechanics feel like a vestigial limb, added simply because the same thing worked in other games. And over all, the rest of the mechanics outside the character creation feel like cobbled together bits from other OSR-adjacent games the writer liked. Which, if that’s the worst thing I can say? Then you’re doing a helluva job. We are a tapestry of our influences.

I need to take a moment to give a nod to the game’s use of Sanity too. It suggests you “roleplay the effects” of your depleting Sanity, but it doesn’t specify negative consequences. And in that there’s a cartoonish respect. In other games that try to use Sanity as a measure for horror, you’re often confronted with ableist language and outright disgusting mockery. But Red Giant uses it as another health pool that depletes dramatically as you face Horrors and replenishes slowly afterward. Despite any negative connotations in labeling it “Sanity”, I’m willing to forgive it for the sake of atmosphere when it doesn’t turn its nose down at me.

If you’re picking this game up, you’d be able to run it tonight. It comes with two adventures (called Scenarios) that are at least serviceable, though I would love to see a more fleshed out version of a Red Giant adventure. A Castlevania-esque dungeon crawl, perhaps. And the book boasts plenty of wonderfully horrific monsters for you to pluck out and throw at your weird, little adventurers.

Overall, Red Giant is a good example of what one writer and a very small team can do. Rookie Jet Studio funded this as their second project on kickstarter, raising thirty-thousand dollars. To its benefit, it seems like the book deserved it, and maybe even more.

You can find Red Giant here.

To support writing like this, there’s my patreon or my substack (where you’re reading this). I’m on bluesky as well, for less-words and more-posts.

[capyclara]

addiction vs. sobriety as metaphor for tennis mindset in CHALLENGERS (2024)

while all of art's attitude surrounding tennis is extremely disciplined and sort of detached outside of his relationship with tashi, patrick literally can't quit tennis like tashi suggests. he'll get insane withdrawl symptoms without it, just like he's had withdrawl pains for 13 years regarding arttashi. it would KILL him to stop pursuing, and tashi to some level understands that as another "addict" - unlike patrick, she has a second backup body in art to cope with her loss.

framing patrick's spiral into mediocrity and self sabotage as well as his relentless pursuit of his loves as being akin to substance abuse is SO SO interesting -- i wish justin kuritzkes had left the bruise on patrick's inner arm ambiguous (tl;dr: people were speculating that they were track marks, but justin disregarded the theory)

patrick is so clearly an addiction-prone character (smoking, his career, arttashi), and part of me thinks it was a missed opportunity to not expand on this, even subtextually! it would also provide some insight into why patrick is broke, living in his car, and is no-contact with his parents outside of "haha he's cosplaying being poor bc he's just too proud" which feels a tad shallow

"if" is a drug for losers, and patrick's "ifs" of achieving his dreams of winning tennis and winning arttashi are blended together theyre indistinguishable. he can't stop indulging in hope even though it makes him miserable and depressed and a loser. that's so fucking neat!!!!

[tinas1469]

@

backgrid_usa: English star Tom Holland signs autographs for fans outside Live with Kelly and Mark while promoting his new non-alcoholic beer brand ‘BERO Brewing.’ in New York City.

The actor, who is starting a new venture, also shared insights about his journey to sobriety during his interview.

📷: @backgrid_usa

[chicago-geniza]

Watched a documentary about Anne Rice and the binge-drinking years during which she wrote IWTV and Stan was like [gravely serious] "We were like Scott and Zelda. Our friends didn't think we would survive the decade" and Anne was like (my paraphrase) [throwing her head back laughing gaily] "Oh, those were good times! Staying up all night drinking, eating potato chips and eggs on the porch, watching the sun rise, then drinking again...of course the good never lasts long, you can only sleep for two hours at a time, you get gastrointestinal problems, but oh, in the beginning, it was good...and I really loved the taste of beer"

Love the insight that they were a serious penitent alcoholic x easy breezy nostalgic alcoholic couple, that's such a rich vein for my imagination to tap, especially as Anne became more somber about her own sobriety in later years

[identitty-dickruption]

please continue your complaining about addiction in fiction, you're very insightful and I love reading your thoughts

okay <3

maybe this is too much to ask for but I HATE that. so often. people don’t even try to get the comorbidities and intersectionalities right. I’m an addict who is a part of a lot of at risk groups! I’m traumatised + neurodivergent + physically disabled + queer. yet most of the time the fictional representation is a cishet white man. meanwhile in the real world, a lot of (e.g.) first nations people are labelled as “addicts” as a way to demonise them without real consideration of why or how that group might be more vulnerable to experiencing addiction. it’s just a terrible combination of things to have to see if you’re an addict in a vulnerable minority group

I don’t think all fiction HAS to get into the details of why someone became an addict, but it sucks that so few even attempt to reckon with or explore it. even something like the influence of generational trauma and generational addiction is not explored as much as I think it should be. I come from a long line of high functioning alcoholics, and that hasn’t had zero impact to the way I’ve turned out. and I know that’s the same for a lot of people

a lot of fiction also takes 12 step programs for granted as The Solution to addiction and like. number one way to piss me off. an addict joins AA or NA and then they’re cured! so long as they apologise to their loved ones, accept that there is a higher power, and accept responsibility for all of the problems in their life. there are better alternatives to AA. recovery does not have to be like that. look into harm reduction groups (SMART, for example). let addicts (both real and fictional) find pathways to recovery that do not necessarily involve 100% sobriety. a lot of people have no idea that they do not have to default to AA/NA models of addiction

I thinkk that’s everything for now but I may come back to this later if I have more thoughts lol. thanks for asking!

[life-as-gwen]

What is Sobriety?

What does it mean to be living a sober life? What is sobriety?

I know what it is not. It is not a destination or something that we achieve and no longer have to work at. Simply not drinking or not using, for an addict, seems impossible in the beginning. When we choose to get sober, we begin the battle with cravings, withdrawals, temptations and a lot of pain. Whether we fight this on our own, with the help of a physician or end up in a detox program, it is all the same. We get our drug of choice out of our systems. Then the real work begins.

Many of us have been through this multiple times. I have quit drinking more times than I can count. I stopped drinking for about 10 years at one point. I would not describe this time of my life as being particularly sober. I was a deeply unhappy and angry person. I was basically white knuckling the ride of emotions on a daily basis. I had no insight into my suffering. I blamed myself for being a bad person, difficult to deal with and just not capable of being a good mom, wife, daughter etc. I was unhappy and full of self-pity. During this time I saw my children graduate and leave for university, I went through a divorce, changed jobs and began a new life on my own. I did believe at the time that I was making it and that I was strong. Until it all came crashing down.

I hesitate to call what happened over the next five years as a relapse, because I had not been living a life in recovery, I had merely stopped drinking. When I picked up the drink again I had made no real progress and found myself in a deeper hole than I had ever been. I had no control of my drinking, no self-respect and no hope for any kind of a future.

With the persistent help of some beautiful people, I went into a 60 day rehab program, which was the beginning of something brand new. I began the painful process of facing myself, my anger, my trauma and began to learn a new way to live. A life of sobriety.

This new lifestyle is ongoing and is something that requires daily maintenance. It is easier some days than others. The tendency to gravitate towards anger and isolation is always there, just as the potential to take that drink again is always there.

While I strive to maintain emotional sobriety, it is not a straight line. There are successes and failures. The failures do not negate the work we have done and do not take away the good we have accomplished. We continue to try and move in a forward direction, celebrating our wins and showing ourselves love and compassion when we are struggling.

Sobriety is a way of living.

[commsroom]

first of all thank you so much for having this blog and sharing your thoughts!! your eiffelposting (and heraposting) has literally got me through the post w359 Grieving Process after running though the whole thing in about 2 weeks and your character insight is. well. chefs kiss. Eiffel Understander Of All Time. 2 things: 1, if it’s ok, you’ve mentioned before about an eiffel version of change of mind, and the idea has (1/2)

(2/2) literally stuck with me since and i’d love to hear your thoughts on that if you have any! 2, are there active w359 discords about bc i got a deep need to yap about all this (apologies if the first msg came through twice, tumblr's being weird)

oh, it makes me very happy to hear that!! your art is a gift, and i'm glad i can offer you something in return.

as for your question... yes! okay. the basic premise is to frame eiffel losing (and regaining) his memory as a catalyst for character growth, as a narrative parallel to lovelace's death and resurrection, rather than a resolution. i think it's noteworthy that the finale has eiffel faced with himself from first a very internal (the final confrontation literally taking place inside his head) and then a very external (hearing his logs as an outsider after losing his memory) perspective and i think the natural extension of this is, well. to confront him with himself.

one of the most key things about eiffel's character arc is that he wants to escape himself. "it's taken me this long to realize that running from everyone else means that you're alone with yourself" but, as addressed in constructive criticism, he's also running from himself. he doesn't like what he hears on those tapes, but the eiffel of succulent rat-killing tar both is and isn't the eiffel of brave new world, and i think that's what's being set up/suggested at the end.

i think viewing eiffel's memory loss as a death is incomplete, while viewing it as a "fresh start" or anything of the sort is incompatible with his existing character arc. but if you think of it as part of this pattern of eiffel trying to escape himself, and ending up still stuck with himself...? if he makes the big sacrifice, "escapes" the person he is as much as anyone can, and then finds he's still stuck with himself, still has to live as the person he is...? then, what next?

(i think this also ties in well with maintaining sobriety; addiction, self-destructive impulses and the desire to not be present in his life, etc. are all rooted in the same things.)

my concept of eiffel regaining his memory would be this sort of... fever dream "life flashing before his eyes" sequence of stepping into significant moments in his life (as a stranger) and interacting with himself, and needing to accept / reintegrating all of these versions of who doug eiffel is and has been. that the question of "am i still doug eiffel?" is one of accountability for his past but that he's always been changing and will continue to grow. i think a key part of this would be him seeing these moments through a pop culture lens / as if it's a movie and then more gradually seeing what they really are. ideally, these would be moments tied to specific songs for him; eiffel's internal soundtrack is well beyond wolf 359's budget, i'm sure, but it's a hypothetical anyway. these would be real memories, in some form, but obviously none of this would be happening for real; it's just how i think his brain would make sense of it (while he's presumably unconscious.) it's like sarah shachat said about eiffel's story in limbo: to tell that story, he would first have to make it a story.

i like this because i think it works well with eiffel's existing arc. i like it because it provides a different angle on self-exploration via memory in the same vein as memoria and change of mind. i like it because it makes a good potential parallel to shut up and listen/constructive criticism, and to mayday (eiffel alone with the voices of others vs. eiffel literally alone with himself.) it feels like a natural extension + heightened conclusion to things that i feel are already implied + set up. and, while i like where wolf 359 ended and would never want to add to it, i like imagining what zach valenti would do with a bunch of different versions of eiffel at different stages of his life interacting; i think he would knock it out of the park with material like that.

i think the real core of identity in wolf 359 is in these moments where people assert who they are, or decide to be who they are. again, in parallel to lovelace... the same way that lovelace decides to be isabel lovelace, "even if [she] never has been before", eiffel would decide to be doug eiffel, all the people he's been, the person he is now, and all the people he's going to be.

(as for discord... i think there are some, but unfortunately i don't know of any that i would personally recommend. you are always welcome to ramble at Me on discord, but i know that's probably not the same.)

[truevedicastrology]

Your Month's Magical Gem ✨💎

Ever wondered about the special stone tied to your birth month? Dive into the sparkling world of birthstones and their mystical meanings!

🗓️ January - Garnet 💗

Deep red passion and vitality

Boosts self-confidence and success

Protective energy against negativity

Symbolizes eternal friendship and trust

🗓️ February - Amethyst 💜

Regal purple for peace and sobriety

Enhances intuition and spiritual awareness

Calms the mind and promotes clear thinking

Guards against drunkenness and overindulgence

🗓️ March - Aquamarine 💙

Serene blue of sea and sky

Soothes fears and sharpens intellect

Promotes clear communication

Brings courage and calm

🗓️ April - Diamond 💎

Brilliance and unbreakable strength

Amplifies energy of other stones

Symbolizes purity and eternal love

Brings clarity and abundance

🗓️ May - Emerald 💚

Lush green of spring renewal

Symbolic of rebirth and love

Enhances memory and increases mental clarity

Believed to grant foresight and good fortune

🗓️ June - Pearl & Alexandrite 🤍💠 Pearl:

Luminous orb of the sea

Symbolizes purity and integrity

Calms and centers the mind

Eases digestive discomfort

Alexandrite:

Color-changing marvel

Strengthens intuition

Encourages creativity

Brings good luck and fortune

🗓️ July - Ruby ❤️

Fiery red of passion and power

Stimulates heart chakra

Brings courage and strength

Symbol of love and royalty

🗓️ August - Peridot 💚

Vibrant lime-green vitality

Cleanses and stimulates

Protects from nightmares

Brings good health and restful sleep

🗓️ September - Sapphire 💙

Deep blue of wisdom and royalty

Attracts prosperity and success

Protects from envy and harm

Symbolizes loyalty and trust

🗓️ October - Opal & Tourmaline 🌈💗 Opal:

Multi-colored fire of emotions

Amplifies feelings and unleashes creativity

Enhances cosmic consciousness

Brings good fortune

Tourmaline:

Available in a rainbow of colors

Grounds energy and dispels fear

Promotes understanding and confidence

Deflects negative energy

🗓️ November - Topaz & Citrine 💛 Topaz:

Golden warmth of the sun

Brings joy and abundance

Releases tension and promotes harmony

Balances emotions and attracts love

Citrine:

Sunny yellow optimism

Energizes and invigorates

Attracts wealth and prosperity

Encourages generosity and sharing

🗓️ December - Turquoise, Zircon & Tanzanite 💙💎💜 Turquoise:

Sky blue of infinite possibilities

Master healer stone

Protects against negative energy

Brings good fortune and success

Zircon:

Variety of colors, often blue

Brings wisdom and confidence

Encourages compassion

Promotes restful sleep

Tanzanite:

Rare violet-blue beauty

Facilitates spiritual awakening

Enhances communication

Stimulates insight and perception

🔮 Birthstone Magic Tips 🔮

Wear your birthstone for amplified benefits

Meditate with your stone for deeper connection

Gift birthstones for personalized, meaningful presents

Collect all 12 for a full spectrum of energies!

[miraclemagpie]

one thing that really strikes me about cdd system spaces is the total misunderstanding of the disorder we suffer from, the perpetuation of lies and stereotypes about the disorder, the focus on the suffering from the disorder, and the ways that the way these spaces can actually stand to make the disorder worse in some ways. this is just my opinion but the insistence on every alter acting with total autonomy (which, yes, must be respected) is actually antithetical to healing as a collective.

I feel like it's most clear to me in the treatment of persecutory alters. these are alters that are introjects of abusers who are recreating abuse because they believe it is the safest thing to do. I've been a "persecutory" alter and seen as a pest and was greatly punished by the system space I was inhabiting for trying to protect my system.

on an interpersonal level within the system I was acting horrendously but in the grand scheme of thing, if you were to isolate my behavior and view me as an individual part in my collective, it would have been obvious I was suffering immensely from my PTSD and then-undiagnosed OCD. but due to our lack of insight and the influence of a community who was only able to view my action in the interpersonal in-system level, I was seen instead as an abuser of sorts, as if the abuse I was inflicting on my alters was related to a system of power and not literally self abuse

parts are not meant to be killed. as if you would see someone acting hostile and erratic and (I hope) assume them to be suffering, the same must be done for an alter

now, we view our system on two levels. the first is the interpersonal level, where I might get angry or feel hurt by a part jeapordizing our sobriety. the second is on a collective level, where I put my feelings aside and wonder what support he is not getting to be putting himself in dangerous and unhealthy situations. then, despite my feelings for him, working with him to remedy it for the betterment of not only his life but mine as well

we have worked very hard to get to this point and I understand it may feel impossible to put one's feelings aside for a part who is seriously harming the system through any variety of action (or inaction) but we have found it vital to view ourselves as a collective whole rather than a collection of parts

we are all miracle, after all

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Hi!! First off, I really really appreciate your blog, thank you for providing such valuable information.

I have an ask around jobs and audhd. I have had trouble holding jobs all my life in between audhd and addiction. I got sober a little over a year ago and recently got my first job in sobriety after a period of unemployment. I am working as a special Ed teacher and having an awful time with a) the extreme demands b) lack of organization and structure at my workplace c) sensory hell around bright lights, loud sounds at school, constant visual and social stimulation, and d) working with many kiddos with similar needs as myself and seeing them struggle in a harmful environment. TBD I am considering quitting which I feel terrible about but it's taking a toll on my health in multiple ways and I feel like I've made a terrible mistake. I'm bringing this all up because jobs are HARD capitalism is trash and autistic ppl are set up to fail.

I am curious what your job experience has been like or what your impressions are about employment in a neurotypical world, if you've been able to find work that's sustainable and pays well. Or if anyone wants to chime in. Thank you for your time!!

Hi anon,

I’m personally not employed, and have never been. The idea of a job stresses me out. And I have limited income. And I’ll lose it if I get a job. And there’s no guarantee I’ll keep it.

I think @autistic-af is currently employed, so they can add some more insight and information on this, since I’m not familiar with this experience.

Hopefully you can get some more insight on this. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer much. I appreciate the inbox. And I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

[nanomooselet]

Episode One: No Man's Land

He's so fluffy. <3

Man, the fact that Vash ran out to greet all those people by name and he's not even a minute into it when the ships begin to explode is really everything about him you need to know. The first time we see his face and it's after he's been thrown off his feet as cascading destruction is unleashed around him. The face that crashed a thousand ships? Vash of Troy? My poor sweet boy.

Young children can sometimes have trouble with cause and effect, assuming events relate more to their own actions than they really do and blaming themselves. So Vash asking Rem if the sleepers will be okay... There's simply no time to explain he isn't responsible. All the dominos are being set up in Vash's little head. Nai is the one to knock them down.

And then Rem and Nai wearing identical expressions. It's not surprising that even after her death she's his most enduring ideological opponent. Every time I watch it's just more obvious how enormous the effect she had on Nai was, and how he hates it. (By the way, I keep hearing that Rem told Nai to protect Vash - but as far as I can tell that's a conclusion Nai came to on his own without Rem's intervention? Rem said she'd protect the twins herself and didn't anticipate the crash. Did I miss something?)

I've talked extensively about this part, but to recap: feelings. And look, Rem's got purple eyes! Apart from the colour motif (purple = red + blue, so it represents the unity of humanity and the Plants that was her dream) she would have had to get gene-modded for them, which is a fun detail. Rem, of all people, was a little bit vain. I dunno, I find that endearing.

"Real people don't look like that./Real people aren't such caricatures." More of Orange's composition choices making me foam at the mouth.

We don't know how long Vash has been dangling there, but I doubt it was less time than it would take for a human to die of deprivation or exposure. I really don't think Vash actually needs to eat or drink, nor does he hate being a Plant - it's himself that he hates, as a person. If anything Knives is the one in denial that he's just as human? I don't know.

Anyway personally I like to think that the reporters really are caught up in all this nonsense by sheer happenstance. No one's pulling their strings; they're out to write a meaningless gossip piece and Meryl is taking it too seriously. It's worth noting that focused pursuit of the "dangerous fugitive" (read: Vash) is apparently pretty recent, not to mention unusual.

...I'm guessing my girl doesn't play a lot of poker. Meryl's faces. <3

I've said it before, but the show doesn't cheat. Roberto doesn't pull his conclusions out of his ass; he tallies up incongruities and puts them together into insights. He's obviously experienced, but I think of Sam Vimes, a recovering alcoholic, complaining there aren't meetings you can attend for being a suspicious bastard. Roberto drinks because, too often, his suspicions have been proven right. (I suspect Roberto also suffers from a state of being naturally knurd i.e. he's short of sobriety in the opposite direction to being drunk, and has to down a few before he's on par with the rest of us. But I also think his tolerance is good and he plays up drunken mannerisms when it suits him.)

Huh, the man looks good in a tie. I wonder how recent that photo is.

Anyway, Roberto sees Vash's big honkin' gun, but Vash insists he's "not a fighter". He notes aloud that Vash doesn't look like a Plant engineer and Vash dodges explaining. Then he sees this face Vash is making, and it's scared. He's sweating. This is before the MPs barge in, so it's something about the Plant he's afraid of.

Right, thinks Roberto, we'll tuck that nugget of info away, along with how that piece in his holster sure ain't no damn novelty backscratcher. And when an opportunity arises to test the insight, Roberto takes it.

Uh, never mind what I said about cheating. (Although this is an animation cheat, not a narrative one.) I love that they didn't even pretend like he was maybe hiding it somewhere. Also hilarious, though more darkly so, is the complaint that this turn is "bad writing" because the captain was professional, as if he didn't beat the shit out of a suspect in the process of surrendering, stick his gun in random faces, and agree to a duel with deadly weapons against a bounty head he's meant to bring in alive because some random drunk asshole made slightly mean comments.

("Are you are a man, or a yellow-bellied baby who needs his mommy?" Background info implies the captain has reason to be sensitive about the accusation he's hiding behind his parents. I wonder if the dub writers knew?)

Meanwhile Vash is unwilling to fight until his opponent does something absolutely batshit that imperils everyone around him. He's also bizarrely calm about a cluster of missiles being launched and heading right for him. Roberto's right that he isn't afraid of the MPs.

"A fight should be a show!/We've got an audience, we might as well give them a show!" <- Orange says you're goddamn right about that, crazy captain dude. And it's exactly what they did.

Dweeb. <3 He probably left his ammo behind in his bag on purpose, but didn't expect the captain to do something so recklessly violent and suddenly realised he hasn't had time to restock any of his aces in the hole. Nevertheless, I suspect he's still playing up how hard he's freaking out here. The helpless and pathetic act is very much an act; it's only when he's faced with Knives that it isn't.

It's so sweet that Rosa knows him well enough to have faith he'd pull it off with a single bullet. She put a lot of trust in him. I like to think she kept a stock on hand. She also meant it when she said "a friend of Vash's is a friend of mine," so Meryl makes the throw. And she makes it good. Which all helps what's coming to be more devastating, naturally.

LOL at how clearly this is an animation/particle flex, but it's celebratory too, like fireworks on opening night. Over a decade since Vash did his thing on our screens. Here he is returning with a bang!

Wow, I somehow completely and utterly failed to realise Meryl and Roberto's conversation with Vash about Knives takes place the next day until this time around. Of course they would have had to wait until the captain was conscious enough to ride out of town. All the details I pick up and "the sun is setting" or maybe "unconscious people can't ride birds" missed me entirely. What I'm saying is that I'm very smart.

Hi Zazie!

I don't expect an answer to this question, but I have to wonder. Did Zazie wait to report to Knives until now to be absolutely certain it was Vash after seeing him draw that exact gun and do something impossible? Or does Zazie have some awareness of the fourth wall, knew when they'd cut away to show Knives, and acted so as to achieve a "speak of the devil" effect when Vash finally mentioned his full name?

Regardless, I really like the dub, but it's a shame they couldn't keep the ambiguity of whether Knives is talking about Vash or the red Plant when he says he'll rescue [someone] from the "parasites".

I do like the impression he's talking to the Plant husks (even if it's probably really Zazie he's talking to). My man's always open to constructive criticism when his interlocuter isn't capable of making any.

@tristampparty