#the story is still in progress and the idea is subject to chain idk but I am really excited to use these three characters again because K1T

[imagination-confusion]

So... Murder Cat with soon to be Murder Dog and Murder Bird Drones.

Murder Cat has the depression and trauma.

[heshoes]

Twin Telepathy

❝And I never thought it would be true that one day I'd have to live without you.❞ In which a connection started at birth remains strong until the bitter end.

Warnings (BC THIS ONE IS TRIGGERING): ⚠️ angst, main character death.

Idk the word count but this one is short

Main Characters: Harry Styles, Edward Styles

There is no smut in this one my loves. I wrote this like 5 years ago and I’m posting it here now. I hope you enjoy and reblog let’s talk about it after you read.xx

5

Age five is when Harry and Edward noticed that they were identical. Age five was the time of development for secret languages, tricks, and pranks pulled on parents, grandparents, and even the teachers at primary school because they could get away with it.

They would even switch classes sometimes.

Harry was always good at maths. He progressed at counting blocks and telling time where Edward was a bit more fuzzy in the subject. However,  Edward could always read and excelled in primary school literature despite the fact that he would throw a tantrum anytime his mum would pull him away from the television in order to for him to read her a bedtime story.

“What time is it Harry?” Their mum would ask knowing full well what the time was herself,  as she took her seat behind the two curly headed boys on the floor who sat helplessly too close to the television. One because he really couldn’t see all that well, the other because he wanted to be close to his brother.

“I’m not Harry! I’m Ed.” Harry laughed cheekily as he told a lie while his brother squinted to look at the cartoon characters on the telly screen.

“Well, Ed,” His mother spoke playing along with his game, “What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock! Time for bed?”

“Thats right!” Their mother laughed, “When did you get so much better at telling time Edward?”

“Uh-oh”

“That’s right, Harry. Uh-oh.” The boy laughed in his mothers arms as she began to tickle and he began to squirm. Edward found it amusing, and because his brother laughed so did he, feeling the same exact joy that his brother did from the top of his head down to his tiny toes. Rushing for his mother in order to save his brother from the tickle monster, Edward pulled Harry from her arms, and for once he didn’t put up a fight when his mother asked him to read to her after he and Harry were dressed in their pajamas.

•••••

10

Ten was the age of growing into your face and the ever present awkward phase that everyone has to go through. By age ten, Harry had to wear braces and Edward wore a pair of glasses thicker than should be allowed. Their pranks didn’t work as well as they used to when they were younger due to the physical tell all’s that adorned their faces, but it didn’t make the boys any less close together. If anything it made them stick together more. Age ten was also the age in which they were constantly bullied.

As the boys walked down the hallways books would be ripped from their hands or feet would be purposely stuck out in order for one to trip. When Edward fell and broke his glasses, Harry had decided that he had, had enough. Edward was angry, furious even, but because he could barely see he couldn’t do much about it. Harry, however, could and the anger that Edward felt radiated off of his twin in hot streams.

“Apologize!” Harry shouted at the much bigger boy, standing his ground though he was much shorter.

“For what?” The boy challenged in a much more condescending tone. He knew what he had done and he was proud of himself for it.

“Apologize to my brother or I’ll– I’ll...”

“You’ll what brace face?!”

“I’ll kick your ass!”

The crowd in the hallway ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the use of Harry’s language as he stood in between Edward and the boy who was much taller. Edward had since put his broken glasses in his pocket as he squinted, tugging at Harry’s arm to get him to walk away from the situation, but Harry wouldn’t budge.

Harry wasn’t prepared for what was to come. As the boy lifted his fist to connect it with Harry’s jaw he was cut short. Before any contact could be made, the boy who was much taller was seated forcefully on the ground holding his bloody nose in his hand, looking up at Edward.  Edward looked down on the bully while flexing his hand open and closed hoping that if he shook it hard enough the pain of breaking someone’s nose would go away.

Harry looked at his twin with shock in his eyes and a smile on his face as Ed continued to shake his hand while all three of the boys were escorted to the principal’s office.

“I thought you couldn’t see?” Harry whispered to his twin  in hopes of a quick explanation.

“I can’t see things that are far away, but that fucker, he was pretty close.”

Harry and Edward both began to laugh as they sat patiently in the principals office for their parents to collect them for their suspension from school.

•••••

15

Fifteen was the age of rebellion, girls, and more argument’s between the boys than usual. They had since grown into their faces and their own personalities and though they were still close, they didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Harry had gotten into sports and school, while Edward had gotten into bands and trouble. The one thing that they did both agree on at the moment however was going to Tash Fraser's birthday party. Although she was two years their senior she had still sent the boys a personal invite. She was turning 17 and this of course would help boost their popularity for the year.

They were already high on the food chain at school for boys of only fifteen years old, and since they had grown into their faces and out of their braces and glasses, they had become rather attractive aside from the baby fat that they still had here and there.

“You ask.” Harry spoke, shoving Edward towards their parents room and grabbing the newspaper out of his hands, disturbing him from his place at the table as he read while flicking his brand new tongue ring against his teeth. Harry didn't care if Ed was angered by his rude interuption. He was older after all even if it was only by two minutes. Edward should do as he said.

“Why would I ask?! I just got off of punishment. I’ll be lucky if I can go anywhere. If I ask, dad will take one look at me and say no. No doubt I'll go anyway, but I'd rather do it without having to sneak. Leave me alone and give me my shit back! If you wanna go so bad you ask asshole!” Edward pushed his twin back, both of them equally aggravated by the other.

“We won’t be able to go anywhere if mum and dad hear you cussing! Fat chance on sneaking out with your big mouth!” Harry spoke aggressively above a whisper to his brother, making himself be heard.

Edward pulled his tongue ring between his teeth, playing with it and making Harry cringe before he nodded his head up and down in agreement.

“So what are we going to do?” Harry asked as if he were fresh out of ideas though he really didn’t bother to think of any.

“We’ll make them breakfast.” Edward spoke quickly, thinking on his toes much to Harry’s approval. And so they did, buttering their parents up with toast, pancakes, tomatoes, sausage, and bacon in order to get a simple, “alright” from their mother and father.

“You have to be home no later than one thirty!” Their mom reminded them as they headed out the door, riding with a mutual friend in order to make their way to the party.

“We’ll be home by twelve.” Harry yelled back jokingly earning a slap to the back of the head from his brother.

As the night went on, the music grew louder and the illegal activity had gotten more out of hand. Drinks of the alcoholic kind had been passed around, and though both Harry and Edward had one or two, neither of them dared to get drunk, knowing full well that their mother would be up waiting for them to get back.

“It’s one fifteen.” Harry spoke looking at his silver wrist watch that Edward had gotten him as a gift on their thirteenth birthday. “We should get ready to leave soon.”

Edward nodded his head in agreement as he looked around the crowded room for their friend. Hoping that he was sober enough to take them home. When he spotted him and told him that he was ready to go, their friend agreed to drive them even though Harry had notice the stumble in his step.

“Nuh uh, Edward. He’s drunk out of his mind.” Harry spoke to his twin, but was ignored as soon as the words left his lips.

“I can’t get in trouble again Harry. He’s fine we just live right up the street. It won’t take us long to get home. It’s fine.” Edward began to walk towards the car, but as soon as he took a step Harry pulled him back.

“Ed no! Why don’t you ever listen?!”

“Harry! If you want to stay here and get in trouble with dad because you’re not home in time then fine! Stay! I’ve just been freed and I’m not gonna be grounded again over something as stupid as this! I’ll see you when you get home.”

Harry let his brother go tired of arguing back and forth. There was no arguing with Ed and no point in trying to get him to think clearly when he had gotten an idea of his own.

Twenty more minutes passed before Harry had found a sober soul in the party who was willing to take him home. He hadn’t been drinking again, but he had the worst headache that he’d ever had in his life and it felt like it would split him clean in two if he didn’t get home and lie down. As they got in the car they traveled down the road only to see that it was blocked, a sudden panic started to set in. Harry’s head pounded worse and his mouth went dry and before the police got the chance to turn them in the opposite direction, Harry saw the car that Edward was in wrapped around a tree as if it were a flimsy piece of  aluminum foil.

•••••

20

Today Harry was twenty and though this was considered to be an age of a milestone in life, he didn’t celebrate it in the traditional way. Harry hadn’t celebrated any birthday since fifteen because he saw no point in it. Instead of throwing a party or hanging out with friends, every year since after his fifteenth birthday, Harry would go to the cemetery in Cheshire so that he could be close to his brother.

Today was a day of remembrance.

As Harry sat against the cold granite headstone that represented Edward, he thought of the time that they spent together while he was living. Harry was thankful that he was in a fairly secluded area because he would talk to Ed and tell him about the things that went on in his day and as he thought about his brother, he would laugh out loud when he would remember a prank that they pulled when they were younger, like when Harry dressed up as Edward for an hour at school just so that he could take his maths test for him. Their mum was so proud of Edward for passing with flying colors.

Or when Edward would run into Harry’s room and pretend to be him when they were supposed to be sleeping. Harry had a girlfriend at the time and would sneak out of his room at night to go see her, where they would make out under a tree. Harry realised that he had never thanked Ed for that so he did it now. A simple “thank you” left his lips before he fell silent and his eyes began to water. Because this was a day of remembrance, Harry would also remember the day that he lost his best friend.

Harry remembered the waiting.

Waiting in the oddly cold  room at the hospital with his mum and dad as doctors rushed about doing everything they could in order to save his brother.

Harry remembered the tears.

Tears that rolled down the faces of his family and himself as he rocked back and forth in his chair with with his hands clasped together tightly, saying a silent prayer that Ed would somehow walk out of the emergency room with maybe only a couple of stitches here and there.

Harry remembered the screams.

The deafening screams that came from his mother, his father, and himself when the doctor came out of the operating room and said that Edwards heart had given up and that his poor body was too weak to put up a fight.

Most of all, Harry remembered how he already knew that Edward was gone before the doctor came to announce it. His head had stopped hurting and his stomach was in knots, but he could no longer feel that strange connection that he and Edward shared since before he could remember and since age five, the age that he and Edward realized that they were identical.

Harry sat against Edward’s tombstone and allowed his tears to fall uninhibitedly, ridding himself of the pain that he felt everytime he thought about that fateful day. And though it hurt that he no longer had Edward around physically, he wasn’t sad anymore because he knew that he was there in spirit. The feeling that Harry felt was more overwhelming  because everytime he thought about it, he could barely believe it.

He never thought it would be true that he would have to live a day without his best friend, his brother, his twin.

[stray-tori]

TPN S02E02 - initial thoughts (anime-only)

^^^ viewing with my friends

__________________________

. More thoughts:

I loved how ep2 used a similar sequence of shots to immediately bring our minds to conny's shipment and further connect us to Emma's association / state of mind.

+ waterdrop of death continues, glad to have it back 

.

. “Humans outside”

I also talked about this in the video, but I find it interesting that we’ve heard two different insights from Krone and Sonju. “Humans on equal footing outside” vs. “there are no humans outside of the farms”. I really emphasized the “equal footing” thing in video, which also still does seems weird to me, and I can come to the following conclusions:

Krone just thinks they’re equals because they’re higher up the hierarchy than she is, but in reality even the top of the farms are oppressed by the demons as well.

for some reason, even after being heavily outnumbered by demons, humans found a way to be close to equal footing --- I mentioned breeding the humans for them in the video, and I still think that could be part of it but I also had a different thought: it’s interesting that it’s 1000 years - sad, my 2000 years theory didn’t hold up - because that implies 1000 years of technological advancement (phones, the camera, electronics are clearly a thing) still happened in the demon “world” (and we’ve never seen demons use them, they seem to be a human thing). The highest up the hierarchy we’ve seen happen to be the scientists. That’s why I think it’s plausible that humans are smarter than demons (cue the fascination and desert of smart people) and they provide technological advancement and food, and in exchange the top of that chain in the humans can “co-exist”. But we haven’t seen a lot of demon society so it’s hard to say if they’re just not as inventive as humans. And even if that WERE the case, I don’t think that’s enough to call it “equal”, it’s still a massive power difference. Though apparantly, SOMEHOW, the struggle used to be equal 1000 years ago, so- like I think “We’ll kill you” is still something that’s likely to be the winning argument even if there was the chance to be on equal grounding again.

But now that I’m thinking about it, even taking the “equal” thing away, it’s still contradicting. Krone specifically talked about the humans delivering goods, which are technically “outside” and still “in the farm (system)” - but they are definitely not on equal standing. So I don’t think she means the other working parts of the forms.

So I just wonder if there are humans who are benefitting from this system in some way for damning others. Hello ominous guy from the OP.

He doesn’t seem too oppressed, going to be honest. 

It’s possible I guess that the demons wanted to make sure that there wouldn’t be an uprising by having humans “on their side” and the higher ups, not concerned for the humans further down the food chain, agreed, thus making it a deal and “equal”. Since they can’t kill every human because they’re their precious food, so it’s a good idea to keep them in check and not have them hate them actively, but I think demons could still stop a human uprising??? It might be unnecessary drama though.

But even then, you can’t really say they keep up a good relationship with the higher up humans to make people further down cooperate, since they are driven by existential angst (become a mom or die). They know humans will cooperate them if you threaten them with death.

So I’m just really confused what makes the higher ups so different.

inb4 it was just Krone’s subjective knowledge and I make a fool of myself but again, ominous guy from the OP seems like he’s really enjoying this (assumingly high) standing he has.

I’M JUST CONFUSED.

I don’t understand politics, clearly.

.

. The Promised Exposition

[someone talking about how it was portrayed boringly]

yeah, I imagined some sort of visual to go along with the exposition bc the music sounded so fairytale / telling ish but then again, the anime never really showed things that were explained; and let the viewer imagine it.

So now I really have no idea if it's like... actual geographical separation (#more walls time) or like,, parallel worlds?? I feel like taking away the visuals kind of leaves more room for interpretations, and imagination but I still agree that it's sad they don't really play with imaginary things. it's kinda grounded in LA techniques in that aspect I feel.

About the reveal itself: I didn’t expect the potential solution to be revealed so soon, and it was different to what I expected. I’m still a little confused on how the demon vs human fighting was so balanced?? did demons use to be more like Sonju and Mujika, because then I can kind of get it I guess? Like humans have a chance then.

Or where they all just dumb dog demons bumping against trees because then I get it too pff-

Either way, as touched upon higher up: The demon world seems to have some classical human inventions. Does that mean that

a) the demon world just happens to have the people in it that made those inventions?

b) someone else invented them and there’s a similar technical progress in the “human world”? 

c) there’s no crossing between the worlds (according to Sonju), so it can’t be that the inventions are from the human world, I think. I wonder if we’ll see it and how different it’ll be from the demon world’s humans inventions.

.

The more I think about it, the more interesting I find this potential solution. It still seems a little too magical, but the setup is already magical and as my friends pointed out, it’s not just a matter of “go over there and be safe”.

Breaking the promise could start the demons being enraged at it and breaking it too, and the hunting could re-start.

Maybe it could be missed or just not noticed if just our group left, but Emma has learned nothing from her compromise in S1 and now plans to take EVERY CHILD, apparantly, probably soon to be replaced with every human. And that’s definitely not going to go down well with the demons.

I wonder if the eventual conclusion will be to save a small group of people, paralleling S1′s conflict. Save everyone vs. saving those you can right now and coming to terms with the sacrifices you made (which technically, hasn’t happened yet. For Emma it’s not like she gave them up, she’s going back for them. But as this story is being setup now, I think it’s highly impossible to take every human/every child). Which has pretty dark implications! You might get out, but the cycle will just start again as long as any humans exist in the demons’ world; the suffering will continue. Escaping already likely endangered the humans in charge of the farms, who likely won’t (or can’t in case of the implants in the moms) escape even if there’s a big scale rescue operation (plus good luck with getting everyone while having all demon forces on your back).

But I feel like that’s a more likely resolution than fighting a rebellion against the demons, which would likely have no end and no satisfying resolution. Obviously I’m not really sure where this story will lead and what will have to be done in order to cross over.

If it breaks the “promise” and figurative “wall” between the worlds, it could be damning all of humanity. So I guess the alternative resolution would be that they stay in the demon world, to not risk that, and do their best living a good life there, and also.... probably coming to terms with not being able to save everyone.

It’s also definitely not as satisfying from a storytelling perspective, but there’s a lot of interesting conflicts and dangers being setup.

.

. Sonju

Yeah it was sweet how he was like careful being like "i can't leave this around the kids", and being like "it's hard to say this" when he had to tell them about the rule to the promise or later when he asked Emma if they should not do the gupna thing this time. Like he's honest and direct but still caring and that's sweeto

.

. Mom Gilda

The scene with Emma and Gilda was amazing, it was so funny, but even then the art actually did look intimidating, which I felt they struggled with in S1 sometimes (Emma holding Ray’s hand telling him to never do it again was just like “pff-”) but this was really well done.

It just heavily parallels Isabella trying to tell Emma to become a Mom so that’s??? an interesting thing, that kind of threw me off for a bit.

But maybe that’s just confirming that Gilda is indeed the mom.

i feel like the art in general improved a bit tbh. Obviously with nature and fantastical elements there’s a lot more to MAKE look pretty but idk, it’s just nice! 

.

All the stuff surrounding this was so sweet too, Jemima is too precious and panicky Ray as she’s crying is just adorable udshdjs. Also Lani and Thoma being like “can’t leave him alone for 2 seconds, keeps trying to die” is a big mood but also RIP Ray.

.

. RIP Ray

Speaking of RIP Ray......

:>

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia! I'm a huge fan of your work and deeply enjoying FFS rn, it really shows the love and care you've put into this world and characters and it's an amazing read 🥰🧡

Idk if you've actually answered this question before or if it's a bit too much? So feel free to skip it. Do you have any advice on how to write a therapist and sessions with them? And to go along with that, a therapist&patient relationship that doesn't feel inauthentic but that's a healthy one?

I've had to visit both psychiatrists and psychologists a couple of times along my life, which has almost always been a positive experience to me, but when I get down to business and want to write a character going to therapy, I fall into a bunch of the psychoanalytic clichés US films have hammered us down with, even if I'm not from an Anglophile country!

Thanks a bunch in advance!! Ilu, have a nice start of the year🧡✨

Hiya anon!

I have a few thoughts about writing therapy sessions so I’m just going to put them down in no particular order.

Firstly, I don’t actually think it’s always a good idea to write therapy in stories, and a lot of the time I avoid writing it even when a character is actively seeing a therapist. This is particularly true in The Wind that Cuts the Night where all we see of Alex and his therapist are snippets, and nothing more than that, because therapy sessions would slow down the pacing, focus and value of the story.

Where possible, characters don’t see therapists, but talk to people in a way that is therapeutic, usually with love interests or members of the ensemble cast (Augus and Fenwrel in The Court of Five Thrones, Jack and Eva in The Golden Age that Never Was, Jack and North in From the Darkness We Rise/Into Shadows We Fall, Cullen and Cassandra, Cullen and Bull in Stuck on the Puzzle). All of those characters need therapy, but writing therapy sessions tends to slow down the pace of a fic pretty dramatically, and even I had misgivings about writing Efnisien’s sessions with Dr Gary at first because I’m acutely aware of the fact that:

1. Therapy sessions can be draggy and boring 2. They often take away important emotional realisations from other characters, ruining potential hurt/comfort and character relationship development moments with your actual cast / love interests 3. Fiction is meant to be fiction, not reality. 4. A lot of therapy sessions are actually not that interesting to sit in or write or observe, which is why writers do often find themselves falling into certain cliches while writing them to make them more interesting. Even I cut out huge chunks of sessions to get to the more interesting parts, lol. 5. You can write a character going to therapy without writing the therapy. You can just choose to have the character remember bits and pieces of the session later as it’s relevant to their life. 6. Therapy is different for everyone, and some readers (myself included) don’t enjoy reading it when the therapy is a kind that doesn’t resonate or feel right.

So you really need to ask yourself why you want to write therapy specifically, because a lot of the time it gets boring or - as you point out - falls into cliched territory. Writing a character going to a doctor a lot in detail for regular injections is boring. Writing them thinking about how they have to do this in brief while their love interest is sympathetic to them getting those injections is more interesting. Writing a character suffering from an illness that they need regular injections for, with their love interest comforting them? Interesting.

Falling Falling Stars is a unique fic in that Efnisien has no one before he meets Arden, except for Dr Gary and Gwyn. If you’re writing an FFS style fic, writing therapy sessions might be appropriate. It might be worth really thinking about the kind of fics you want to write, why you want to write therapy, how that will affect your pacing, etc.

If you’re still dead set on writing therapy sessions, then I have some suggestions re: writing more realistic/healthy therapy and how to find that knowledge yourself, and I don’t really know how to shorthand some of it:

1. Get books on therapy that are designed for the therapist. These are often expensive, but sometimes libraries stock them - and university libraries in particular will often have photocopy abilities (or you can just photograph the pages you need) because these books look at how sessions should be structured. Books with case studies are ideal, since they often show dialogue chains between the client and therapist. Books that obviously deal with the mental illnesses you’re planning on writing about are the most ideal.

2. With a view to this, learn about different therapeutic modalities (for example are you trying to write psychology or psychoanalysis or both? Are you writing social work? Are you writing cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy, expressive therapies, narrative therapy, transcendental therapy?) Be aware that different modalities have different session structures and learn what they are. Wikipedia is your friend, but your closest friend will be actually acquiring textbooks on the subject. This is a pretty significant financial barrier at times, I’ve been collecting books like this on psychology since like 1997.

3. Learn about your character’s mental instabilities that require them to go to a therapist and then look up the most recommended forms of therapy for your character’s specific issues. Will they suit your character? Why/why not? Will they have a therapist who realises and switches modality if it doesn’t suit? Or will they be lucky and find someone who helps them straight away?

4. All therapy sessions have a structure to them. And therapy often has a narrative arc through the course of therapy over many sessions. They should generally have the attempt at a beginning (greeting / setting up the problem to be discussed), middle (highlighting the source of conflict or inner conflict) and end (helping the client to focus on less stressful things, possible homework assigned, and potentially talking about future work/sessions). Learn this structure. Even if you’re not writing the whole session, you need to know where in the session you’re writing, beginning/middle/end will be different tonally. Structures will be different per therapeutic modality, and a therapist that knows many different modalities (like Dr Gary) will often be using slightly different structures each time depending on the character’s mood/issue.

5. In a healthy therapist/client relationship there will be the ability to discuss boundaries, grievances and the therapist won’t be revealing much about their personal life at all (unless anecdotally it’s super relevant and even then it will be deliberately vague). This is one of those things that will - in many cases - make for more boring sessions on the page, depending on the ‘client.’ For example, if you’re writing someone seeing a therapist for the first time, it might realistically take months or years before they start showing progress or trust. That’s not interesting (there’s a reason ‘therapy fiction’ isn’t a genre), so of course it’s tempting to shortcut into more dramatic moments.

*

I would say if you’re finding yourself leaning towards more cliched or dramatic forms of writing re: therapy, your writing brain may sense that the entire scene/s may not be suited to the story, and is trying to find a way to make them more interesting to yourself and the reader. If that’s not the case, then a lot more research is needed! It’s time to sink many hours into actually understanding what you’re trying to write. This doesn’t matter as much if you’re writing unrealistic or unhealthy therapy, but it’s 100% necessary when you’re trying to write healthier therapy depictions.***

Also a couple of sessions of experience is a start, but you might want to watch or find a way to watch more therapy sessions, because you’ve missed out on experiencing longer arcs, different modalities etc. (This is where my hands on experience with 19 therapists since 1995 is actually really helpful, lmao - I’ve had close to like 800~ sessions by now, with good and bad therapists; I cannot pretend that hasn’t given me a knowledge base that most people don’t share). You can still learn that stuff via research, MedCircle on Youtube is a good place to start, since it offers 30 minute snapshots on what CBT and DBT sessions will look like etc. and has some great playlists.

Most fics I’ve read don’t do a great job of depicting therapy, but the Babes!verse series by @rynfinity has probably some of the most realistic and still really interesting sessions I’ve read as an ongoing arc. The series is long, because it needs to be re: what it’s dealing with, but it’s great, and I definitely recommend looking at another example of how an author tackles these sorts of scenes. Out of the Mouths of Babes / The March of the Damned are the two intertwined series.

I apologise if this sounds discouraging overall, or daunting, but I just want to stress there’s a reason that I’m often not writing therapy in my writing, as anything more than the occasional scene with a non-therapist, or snapshots that are reflected on and that’s it. Falling Falling Stars is the exception to the rule, and unless you’re writing an exception to the rule as well, it’s really worth reflecting on the first six points I wrote - it’ll save you a fuckton of time and research. And if you go ahead with it, I wish you well! :D

*** Also disclaimer: But I still am writing very indulgent therapy that is not beholden to being either a 100% healthy or 100% realistic depiction. The fact is, real therapy sessions are pretty boring for observers except for maybe ten or twenty minutes in the middle at times.

(ETA: It’s just occurred to me that therapy fiction does exist, esp. in the mass media, but that it is - afaik - all unrealistic, dramatised or unhealthy. But if you want to watch a great show - I highly recommend In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne, just by aware that it is depicting, for the most part, unhealthy dynamics which are more character studies than anything).

[thevagueambition]

5 video games! :D

okay I AM going to ramble way too much about each of them haha ;;

the top 3: 

Disco Elysium: I firmly believe the innovations of Disco Elysium are going to affect the future of non-combat-focused RPGs quite a bit. It captures, better than any other video game I’ve played, the non-combat elements of pen & paper roleplaying. It’s so responsive to how you choose to play your character and the idea of thoughts as essentially euipment that gives affects your stats... it’s fucking brilliant. It’s the exact sort of game I love, mechanically, and of course story-wise it’s also very well-written -- if also VERY Old East Bloc Depression(tm) in its disillusioned marxism and the occasional sort of failed ironic sexism -- and the way it used an outside character to motivate the player to act in a certain way/to work as essentially a morality meter and how well that works because everyone loves Kim is also just... brilliant. I love Disco Elysium so much. Even if you don’t normally play games, please play Disco Elysium. The first time I played it I died 2 minutes in because I had put my endurance stat so low that when I failed a roll to grab my tie I died. I love it so much. 

Dragon Age II: The Dragon Age series was a huge part of what got me into gaming in a more... shall we say deliberate sense. I had always played games growing up, but mostly either as a social activity or on a handheld. Dragon Age: Origins was my first “serious” game, so to speak, and I love it a lot to, but Dragon Age II is the one that really owns my ass. I know part of it is when I played it and its role in me figuring out my sexuality -- Dragon Age II is just a group of Disaster Bisexuals with an asexual dad friend and a straight mom friend thrown in for colour -- but certainly also both as a story and in terms of how it did dialogue I also really love it. There’s a real feeling of cammaraderie with the characters and the fact that you essentially play as a refugee is a really interesting way to be positioned within the world. I think, more so than the other Dragon Age games, in making you take on a specific role within the fictional society, you get to roleplay in a much more meaningful way imo since where so many RPG characters are positioned a bit outside society because they’re some sort of chosen one, in Dragon Age II, Hawke is, at least for some of the game, Just Some Weirdo, subject to the same societal rules as everyone else. 

Frostpunk: So, shifting from RPGs to citybuilders, Frostpunk is my favourite citybuilder/management game. My brain finds these types of games incredibly soothing, balancing production with what is needed, managing production chains, setting things up just so... it’s the exact sort of thing that occupies and quiets my mind. Unfortunately, a lot of games like this run into issues in the end-game because at a certain point there isn’t really more to build towards, or maybe building towards it goes so slowly that it ceases to be interesting, etc... Frostpunk escapes those issues by being campaign-based, with a set amount of time to get everything up and running smoothly, with various events and goals throughout. I don’t know why, but a lot of other citybuilders just feel annoying when they set specific goals or use a campaign approach, but for Frostpunk it really works. Actually, where the endless mode is usually the better one in citybuilders, in Frostpunk, the campaigns are definitely better. Maybe it’s a difference of where the focus was put, idk. Frostpunk is also an Old East Bloc Depression game lol, idk if those hold special appeal to me or if it’s just a coincidence. 

Other two:

Sunless Sea: It took me a long time to actually get into this one since it has a pretty steep learning curve and is very unforgiving if you fuck up (ie a roguelike). Still, the core mechanic of sailing around discovering different ports, picking up different goods, progressing different stories... it works.  It’s interesting, how in the beginning so much of your energy is focused on learning to bring the correct amount of fuel and rations for a trip, but once you learn it/have enough money that you can overstock, the focus becomes an entirely different one. It essentially becomes planning out voyages, I found myself sometimes writing down what my plan was between sessions since accomplishing things often takes quite a few trips to different ports. I like the world, as well, the sort of ... absurdist take on a steampunk-ish, Lovecraftian-ish setting. It was super satisfying, finally having discovered most of what there is to discover in it, although given that the discovery of new places, characters and stories in the world is sort of what drives it, it also means that I’m not super likely to go back to it any time soon. 

Darkest Dungeon: Listen I just like some good turn-based combat. This one is actually similar to Sunless Sea in terms of 1) being a roguelike 2) having Lovecraftian-themes, although Darkest Dungeon certainly takes itself a lot more seriously than Sunless Sea does. I think the really cool thing about Darkest Dungeon, though, is how it makes you really care about these people you’re sending into battle by giving them little quirks, letting them experience stress and having them react to that, etc. It’s not actually, from a purely mechanical standpoint, disasterous when you lose one of them, but often you’ve beome very emotionally invested in your favourites and it truly DOES become a thing where you hurry to flee if you’re doing badly because you don’t want to lose them.