Opossum-by-night - All You Parasites, Climb Aboard. - Tumblr Blog

t-...to-...toasty s'more mushrooms.....

My family never put much priority on my comfort or happiness. I'm slow to wake up, and I grew up thinking that I hate mornings. My sister is the type of a person who is as wide awake as she'll be all day as soon as her eyes snap open, and when we were teenagers she used to wake me up on school days by tossing the dog at me (our old Tessa was enough of a terrier to always land on her feet, claws first, and could be tossed like a cat) and waking up every day having to wrestle a dog's tongue out of my mouth before I could open my eyes was Not Nice.

My family would berate me for being too sensitive, dramatic, or even downright manipulative, for being able to burst into tears first thing in the morning.

When my boyfriend wakes up before me, he takes meticulous care not to wake me up. He climbs out of bed so cautiously and slowly, gets dressed without turning on the light, and sits quietly in the dark of our one-room apartment until my alarm rings or I wake up on my own. This morning, I woke up to notice that the room was softly lit in a way I didn't recognise, and saw the love of my life quietly gaming in the light of a storm lantern.

I love mornings.

Sure would be nice if every single fucking task I try to do didn't turn into 3 more, equally stressful and difficult tasks 🙃🙃🙃 And if the one I set out to complete in the first place could actually work out like it's supposed to after I spent so much fucking energy psyching myself up to do it, instead of something going wrong and me having to start all over 🙃🙃🙃 And then not being *able* to start over and having the rest of my day be fucked because I spent all my energy psyching myself up to do the task that I coulDN'T EVEN FUCKING GET DONE!!!!!!! IT SURE WOULD BE FUCKING NICE!!!!!!!!!!

Sotce

How Bethesda fixed Vampires without realizing it

So there's a LOT of takes on vampires across media, and most of them are radically different from each other. The Elder Scrolls series has an interesting version that I haven't seen anywhere else, that incidentally fixes a bunch of lore issues with vampires, and yet Bethesda hasn't ever really leaned into any of that.

So, the issue with vampires in large RPGs like Elder Scrolls games, D&D, etc, is that a world where various elements of character building are supposed to be balanced, vampires are heavy on the upside and light on meaningful drawbacks. So in Oblivion, Bethesda completely reworked their vampires, coming at it with a blank slate:

Vampirism is a 4-stage affliction, with each stage increasing the numerous benefits of being a vampire as well as the middling drawbacks. Stage 4 brings with it all humanoid NPCs recognizing you as a ravenous monster and attacking you, basically wrecking the game. And, this is the unique part, you reduce stages by drinking blood. Being a vampire is LESSENED by doing the most vampiric thing out there, it actively makes you weaker.

And this is great. From a gameplay perspective, you vanish below ground to kill zombies/robots/whatever, and you grow stronger as the dungeon goes on. But if you don't rush through it, or if it's large, you surface having ignored your hunger for several days and have to do a whole second quest to sneak into town at night and drink blood, where the only reward is to engage with the game again. It's a drawback in the gameplay sense rather than the stats sense. And it lets game designers throw the player against weak vampires in town early on, and face dungeons full of max-bloodlust monsters later once the player knows how things work.

Meanwhile, from a lore perspective this is also great. Suddenly, it's not that vampires have to be evil, it's that they have a choice. A good person who flees their family to hide in a cave is going to starve, turning into a ravenous, uncontrolled, extremely strong monster. Someone who's comfortable sneaking around town drinking blood, meanwhile? They never lose control. They walk in the sun. They're perfectly human. Or as human as anyone can be while the blood of their neighbors flows in their veins.

And Bethesda doesn't DO ANYTHING with this. People you talk to in-game just treat it as "all vampires are evil, why would you expect anything else", when they've created a world where vampire morality is so much more interesting. The few vampires who exist in civilization that you're not supposed to kill don't really discuss their condition at all. And there's plenty of evil vampires choosing to live in caves running societies of vampires, when that makes no sense compared to basically any other way of life they could set up.

Bethesda games are a masterful disaster, in this as in everything else.

ugh why must I be always so repulsed by my own vulnerability but I find it very moving and impressive if other people are vulnerable with me????

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

So I've been looking for a small comfy chair for my hermit nook/sensory room/reading cave, and nursery chairs seem to be a promising option. However, a very large percentage (like 2/3) of the ones I'm finding are upholstered with that "teddy" polyester sherpa fabric?? Listen, I have never had a baby, nor have I interacted much with other people's babies, but let me tell you I cannot imagine a more terrible fabric to have to clean spit up or breastmilk or (god forbid) baby shit out of than that. Even as an adult it gets gross and is impossible to clean!!! There are so many other options!!! What the fuck!!!

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.

Additional Update: Turns out I forgot to take my ADHD meds this morning, lol, lmao

Havin a sad one today, gang!! Feelin real hopeless and empty and lost!! Everything is boring and un-fun but also stressful and scary!! Happy Friday!!! 👉😎👉

Jennifer Check (Jennifer's Body) // Dennis Reynolds (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

[Dennis // Female horror protagonists]

“I had a room to myself as a kid, but my mother was always quick to point out that it wasn’t my room, it was her room and I was merely permitted to occupy it. Her point, of course, was that my parents had earned everything and I was merely borrowing the space, and while this is technically true I cannot help but marvel at the singular damage of this dark idea: That my existence as a child was a kind of debt and nothing, no matter how small, was mine. That no space was truly private; anything of mine could be forfeited at someone else’s whim.”  ― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

im a hater BECAUSE i like things and want them to be good. and also because im an asshole

the first person to turn an apple to sauce... what hubris. no other fruit gets this treatment. well, except for the wretched tomato. but that's a punishment, because the tomato is morally corrupt.

shout out to whoever first realised that wearing bats and skeletons and demons and ghosts on your clothing was dope as hell and sick as fuck. i'd say i hope they got so much head but i cannot imagine a world where they didn't.

“Ah sorry I’m just dumb” (having ADHD my whole life has meant that I’ve been criticised heavily for making mistakes that come part and parcel with the condition. Even the people I love most in the world have chastised me for mistakes that I spend much of my life worrying about and trying to avoid. It’s much easier to tell you I’m just a silly guy than explain to you that no matter how much effort, how much thought, how much stress I put into avoiding these same mistakes, I will keep making them over and over again. My brain is structurally built to thwart me throughout it all.)

Update: raccoon had an actively good day today despite having to work late, and even thanked me for supporting and putting up with him being mopey all week!!!! I know my mental health should not depend on the mood of a man but when it's good it sure fuckin helps!!!! 🎉🎉🎉

Havin a sad one today, gang!! Feelin real hopeless and empty and lost!! Everything is boring and un-fun but also stressful and scary!! Happy Friday!!! 👉😎👉

Also I'm pissed off and sad that I can never seem to have a fucking normal October because some all-consuming stressful shit always seems to happen so I haven't gotten to fully celebrate my favorite holiday in like 4 years 🙃🙃🙃

Havin a sad one today, gang!! Feelin real hopeless and empty and lost!! Everything is boring and un-fun but also stressful and scary!! Happy Friday!!! 👉😎👉