#Brain health activities

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Severance AU: Get me out of here.

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis' last question when interrogating zara's corpse -- whether illario also asked her to kill caterina -- is so telling. because if illario had done that, I actually do think lucanis would have killed him. (his standards are predictably wild and hilarious in a dark sort of way. listen I can forgive you for killing me that's fine understandable even but there's a limit to everything illario.) which is why he saves that question for last: it's the one thing he really does not want to know the answer to. because if the answer is yes, it's going to need action from him that would be so psychologically catastrophic that nothing the ossuary could do to him would compare, that would have been the end of him too, I feel, even with rook and the team there to try to catch him or pick up the pieces. I love how if you pay attention you can trace out the underlying hurt/logic already here, before it gets spelled out in inner demons. the logic lucanis' brain operates on is very sad and very consistent the whole way throughout the game.

[theswedishpajas]

Based on my favorite gif lately

[benoits-neckerchieves]

Me when I go to bed each night and am alone with my thoughts again

[fehck]

[hyperlexichypatia]

The evolution of the word "rawdogging" to mean asceticism is genuinely so fascinating to me.

About 5 years ago, in January of 2020, "rawdogging" had one commonly-accepted meaning -- having sex without a condom. It was sometimes used in other contexts, but the metaphor was for having sex without a condom. That is not a particularly ascetic activity.

When COVID broke out and people started routinely wearing masks, people started referring to going maskless as "rawdogging," and this made sense as a logical extension of the concept -- a recreational interpersonal interaction without benefit of a protective barrier to reduce disease risk.

Then, this tweet went sort of viral.

It's from 2019, and maybe it was going around widely then, but I didn't start seeing it and variations everywhere until 2020. I would argue that the concept gained usage and cultural currency in the context of the maskless usage of "rawdogging" and a general cultural focus on disease risk and barriers.

Rawdogging-as-forgoing-drugs is a little bit more metaphorically removed from the original rawdogging-as-forgoing-condoms meaning, but the structure of the concept holds up -- drugs and therapies can be a barrier or a protective layer between the self and experienced reality, sure. That checks out. It's clever, and it's intuitive, and it evokes the "going out there with no layer of protection" sense.

But what's fascinating to me -- as a cognitive liberty absolutist, who believes that the distinction between "medicinal" and "recreational" drug use is largely arbitrary and at best situational -- is that the framing of "no therapy, not taking any prescribed or illicit drugs" provides a rhetorical bridge for "rawdogging" to leap from "forgoing a protective safety barrier" to "forgoing a recreational activity." It's all a barrier between the self and reality, whether it's considered "necessary" or "unnecessary."

This bridge of "rawdogging"-as-sobriety, and forgoing of potential enjoyment rather than potential safety, allowed the concept to be picked up by the "dopamine fast," anti-pleasure, hedonic Calvinist culture. From there, the door was wide open -- if "rawdogging" means "no relief from suffering" rather than (or in addition to) "no protection from disease", then "rawdogging" can mean not reading on a plane, and if it can mean not reading on a plane, than it can mean any kind of ascetic self-denial, until it gets picked up by Christian writers who completely omit the sexual meaning.

I wonder if something in this shift is "rawdogging" evoking the word "dogged" and differing connotations of dogs -- dogs-as-horny and dogs-as-loyal-and-hardworking.

There's probably something in there about gender, too; about how "rawdogging" was a term largely (but definitely not exclusively) by and about straight men having sex with women, and terms for condomless sex more common in the queer community, like "barebacking," don't have that crossover appeal, and how rawdog-asceticism is masculine-coded, because it's about being enough of a Manly Masculine Real Man to not need any sissy airplane reading, while feminine-coded cult-of-suffering culture is more about relentless reflective self-policing.

Or something.

The important thing is that a term to refer to wild, reckless, fucking like an animal is now used to refer to austere, somber self-denial.

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[blastdamage]

if i've accomplished one thing this year aside from [redacted] it's that i have almost completely gotten rid of my terrible habit of grabbing my phone and doomscrolling whenever i'm bored. i achieved this by opening a book or a zine and reading that instead

[heybaetae]

hi

[eldritchmochi]

folks, dont do this. like, one, my a/n on coping skills thru the last like five updates make it abundantly clear that i am going to Major Medical Bullshit and if there is ever a good reason to put a creative project on hold, its to recover from almost dying several times in a short span

but also, there is never any reason ever at all full stop, to include a line in ur fic comment to this effect. if you assume something isnt going to be updated ever again, you keep that to urself before slapping it at the author is a damned good way to ensure it doesn't get touched again. its passive aggressive and shamey, and while i dont think it was the intent of the commenter to read that way, it still fuckin sucks. the rest of the comment was lovely appreciation for my smut and characterization. it could have easily started with "i gotta say" as the lead in instead of the above and it would have made me excited and joyous to touch this project again now that im starting to feel like a whole human again, after, you know, almost dying a lot

and instead im just frustrated and mad

so dont do this

[astramachina]

this week has been a goddamn nightmare. trying to get any work done is close to impossible and i'm THIS CLOSE to start screaming about it.

[curufiin]

Fine one more introspection

[maretriarch]

im kind of a mom against weed i dont think its good for your mental health i think thats a big cope. getting so high you're dissociating through and emotionally numbing yourself isn't treating your mental illness, its abusing drugs. nobody says this about alcohol curing their depression even though it's used in the same way to cope and has (overall ) the same negative effects

[shrikeseams]

.

[creepyscritches]

Ouuugh fuck yes the opthalmologist said I appear to be a strong candidate for LASIK :3c gotta coordinate with my other doctors for their opinions, but just this year my eyes finally stabilized enough to even HAVE these conversations in the first place!!! It probably wouldn't be something I pull the trigger on for at least another year, but very exciting to not be eliminated as a candidate bc of my autoimmune stuff :') it was also super cool as always to learn how providers explain some of these conditions + procedures on a patient level then a clinical level. Eager to talk shop with the opthalmology SME on my team :3