#and i'm so upset that so much of myself is going to be funneled further into just TRYING instead of fucking anything else

[valentineish]

I am so desperately hanging onto every thread of hope I can. Every possible avenue of community and in-roads with others. Whatever small ways I am capable of keeping the world moving forward.

The rage still gets to me now and again. Some post that I'll see from months ago when people were more fixated on the failings of Harris than the dangers of Trump. The optimism in the handful of diehard Trump voters that had long since bought in. The fucking circus that is most journalism blaming every minority for this situation. Every politician that either failed to keep a fascist from power, or elevated him to it.

49 to 48. It didn't have to be like this. This was not pre-determined. We knew how bad this was going to be. Fucking all of us are complicit in this mess, and it will continue to be the most vulnerable among us that pays the greatest price. There is work that must be done, but by god. Is there also so much rage.

[not-poignant]

I find myself in this position all the time, and it's further compounded by ADHD paralysis. So ways I've developed to work on this are (and these may/may not work for you!

Work on more than one project at once. My sweet spot is about 2-3 projects. I'm currently overrun lmao, but generally 2-3 projects at different paces usually satisfies 'business/financial writing' vs. 'for fun fanfiction writing' vs. 'some other third thing that annoyed me.'

Give your stories 'boundaries.' As in, if you have a really great idea you want to write but the worldbuilding is huge, or you're not ready yet skill-wise, or you just know it needs to wait, give the story something concrete: 'You will get two hours of my time on Sunday' or 'I will work on you in 2025' or 'Is there something about this distraction that is telling me that there's something wrong with my current work/s re: inspiration.'

Have a masterlist of plot bunnies. Shove all the ideas into a single document, arrange by genre or character or plot if you like. Give every idea a sentence / paragraph / page but try not to give it too much. Just enough to know that when you check in again, those ideas don't disappear and are always there.

Sometimes ideas for lots of different stories can be funnelled into projects you're currently working on. Unless the genre/s are all wildly different, often new ideas show us plots or character types we're very excited to write. The good news is that in most projects and story types, you can fold those in! This is especially true if you're working on a series.

It's good to get zen about never being able to write all your ideas. It will never happen. Some people struggle to think of ideas, but for those of us who have too many, you will never write them all. It's good to gently learn how to make peace with that, whether that's a grief process, an anger process, the sooner you accept it, the sooner it becomes easier to let ideas drift by without feeling like you have to snatch at every single one 'just in case.'

Pick two of the ideas that bother you the most, start with those. The ones you think about, make playlists for, already have a vague idea of an ending, or character names. Ideally they will be: Different genre/s and/or have a different 'feel' to each to satisfy the different parts of your brain that are ideating in this way. Now ymmv, but I am pretty strict on sticking to the stories I pick. I have what I call high fidelity to the ideas I choose, because I begin to trust that I can fold new characters and/or plots into these stories (I don't write short novellas or standalone novels for this reason, I write long serials which really suits this kind of ideation process).

Be careful of idea generation distracting you from the hard parts of writing. Idea generation for those of us who find it easy and exciting is actually very good at seeming 'productive' when sometimes it's taking us away from editing, or character work, or plot work, or worldbuilding. But on the other hand...

Enjoy the adrenaline rush and exhilaration that comes from story idea generation. For those of us who find it relatively easy, it can be extremely exciting to be in this mode. Sometimes stepping back and observing the feelings that come up with this can help a lot, like, does it feel anxious, frantic, fun, exciting, scary, upsetting, etc.

If you don't trust yourself to pick two ideas, go to that masterlist that I've suggested writing up above, and put those ideas in a jar and then literally just pick two. You will generally know in your gut if a story isn't 'right' for right now. You may also know which ideas can be combined. Some ideas will be very 'character' focused, others will be 'worldbuilding' focused, others genre, others plot. The ones that have a bigger combination of things (character and worldbuilding and ending / worldbuilding and plot and title) are generally the ones that are going to be better to start with.

As annoying as this sounds, it really is a matter of choosing your most solid idea at random, and the only way to know if it's solid is to start that masterlist and see which ideas excite you most to write and feel the most 'robust' and strong.

From there, you just pick that one. (Or more than one, I love working on more than one project at once). Until you write them down, they're all just amorphous dreams that are often fun to think about, but once you start putting them in a masterlist, it's amazing how different 'that one about the vampires' vs. 1000 words about a science fiction novel with two frenemies at the centre seem as prospective projects!

Ok, genuine question for other writers;

I am in a place where I have so many ideas I want to work on and I love them all and I can't choose so as a result I have written nothing.

I know I'm not alone in this, so I won't insult the hellscape we live in by asking if any of you have been here, but I will be wildly optimistic and ask if and how any of you got out of this position?

[cakesexuality]

I've played this game multiple times and have watched several of the dev diaries that they put up on YouTube

They consulted psychiatrists as well as people with lived experience when making the game, to make sure they were getting it right and weren't just ripping info from medical texts or copying bad representation in other media

The main gist of how Senua is treated as a psychotic character -- She's very much a sympathetic character but is living in a time before modern medicine, so most of the people around her have accused her of being cursed, and the only 3 people in her life who understood her were her mom, who also had the Sight; her boyfriend, who thought the Sight made her a better warrior; and a friend she made during her self-exile, who could at least relate to being the "odd one out" in his community bc of his trauma from being enslaved

Ninja Theory used binaural audio while making Hellblade, meaning that they had two things shaped like human ears to funnel sound into the mic like an actual human ear and it was placed in the middle of the room so the voice actors could walk around it and sound like Senua's voices were coming from all around you if you're using headphones, plus a few cutscenes were filmed with actors in front of green screens so they look just not quite right compared to the actual game graphics -- that's really just techy stuff though!!

They do show scenes of Senua being verbally and physically abused by her dad, who believes her illness to be a curse she brought upon herself by disobeying the gods, so I'm giving that warning for anyone who might find those things upsetting

Also maybe actually pay attention to the trigger warning at the beginning of the game where it specifically says it depicts psychosis and that people with mental illness should think further before playing because OH BOY I played it for the first time on a livestream and had to switch over the The Last of Us not too far into Hellblade bc it had me feeling all weird and dissociated which lasted for a few weeks (every other playthrough was fine though)

Senua's main symptoms are hallucinations and delusions, but it doesn't just stop there and they have a segment of the game that's supposed to be Senua experiencing catatonia while her boyfriend/her boyfriend's voice (I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be a flashback to when he was still alive) talks her through it, and it's difficult to see where you're going and must rely on the sound in your headphones or the vibration in your controller... not sure how exactly this is meant to be catatonia but that's what I've heard and I'm glad they didn't decide to do the typical thing of only depicting positive symptoms!!

There is a scene that I do fully believe to be Senua in a catatonic state, where she's laying on the ground motionless and Valravn is pecking at her back, but she doesn't seem able to control her body for a moment there before she can actually get up and fight him

And mild spoilers starting here so if you don't want a couple small things in the game ruined, really just about getting into the headspace the devs want you to be in, I'll put three ❤ emojis to mark the end of spoilers for you to scroll to (idk how to make a cut on mobile, sorry)

I knew going into the game that Senua's voices can't always be trusted, and yet I still caught myself having to stop and question things when they started saying my torch was gonna go out in the part of the game where you need to stay in the light at all times or Garmr will get you

ALSO they did kinda a clever thing bc they knew players weren't gonna trust the voices right off the bat or to believe Senua's mission of reaching Helheim to bring Dillion back as much as Senua believes it, so near the beginning, you get into your very first fight which has a scripted death, and there's a short cutscene of black stuff growing up Senua's arm with text saying that if Senua dies too often, the rot will reach her head (the seat of the soul) and your save file will be completely deleted... nobody has ever reported having a permadeath in Hellblade but you may end up being cautious anyway, KNOWING nobody has had it happen but the pop-up told you so it must be true!! Kind of like having a delusion that you know isn't reasonable but you believe it anyway

❤❤❤ Spoilers over

So yeah it's a good game both in the sense of representation and in the sense of actual game quality, and is super easy to knock out if you don't have a lot of time in your life to dedicate to gaming since it takes me about 6 hours to finish, PLUS it's super easy to get the platinum if you're a trophy person (or an achievement person, if you do Xbox, I guess), but I definitely recommend thinking about if you would be able to mentally or emotionally handle the content at that point in time when you actually sit down to play it

Would you say Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a good representation of psychosis? Like I know people experience it differently, but I'm also glad that they didn't like demonize the character like horror movies do with people with Psychosis.

I'll be honest with you, I've never played or seen this game, but I read the plot, and it sounds like good rep to me. I can't be certain because I don't know the details, but while she was mistreated because of the psychosis, she's also still framed as the hero and as a good person, which I appreciate a lot. I might look into this game and get back to you more in detail.