#and yeah ive talked about specifically my neurodivergencies and not my physicalities in the past but thats the thing

[zero-a]

i need to talk about my physical health issues more cause im always so tired, so nauseous, and my body hurts all the time not exactly in a sharp pain kind of way (although it does do that sometimes as well) but in a slow dragging way that i can only assume is due to my chronic fatigue and, combined with my neurodivergencies, it makes it so difficult to function the way i want to

i wanna get good grades so i can get good opportunities in this hellsack country so i can get out of my house as soon as possible and stop triggering my szpd everyday but how do i do that when my adhd, chronic fatigue, nausea, and bad eyesight make it impossible to process anything except the most digestible of information (sometimes not even that)

ive been experiencing all these problems since i was a child cause i learned early on that, despite doing their best, parents generally cant be trusted to take care of you -- theyre only human after all and humans are flawed and can put your life in active danger or even just strife and i dont want that

i cant rely on myself but at the very least i know him and i theorize that this is most likely why i developed dpd cause, aside from the fact that my parents think themselves better the way that only parents to their children do, if i didnt develop some kind of dependence to the people who were supposed to care for me it wouldve been far too painful otherwise like my disbelief in my own ability to be a functional human being is the only thing keeping me from tearing my heart out which is only getting enforced by my health issues like a shitty feedback loop

[wormssss]

so. basically. tl;dr i ffuucking hate school it sucks and it doesnt. do ANYTHING but make things worse . anyway.

the schooling system like. it sucks for me specifically in a few ways idk abt anyone else. for starters; neurodivergency literally at all makes it so hard to function in a classroom environment. its so loud? idk if anyone else gets that in their classrooms but you can hear my class of 23~ from the bottom floor of the 3 story building and that’s considered quiet. as well as like, i cannot function in a classroom without my friends? im out at school and like.... everyones.. transphobic obv why wouldnt they be, and its not in like a..any avoidable way. if i sit with the guys they’ll refuse to talk to me and deadname me all period adn if i sit with the girls theyll laugh at me every time i fucking breathe idk, but the school still thinks putting me in a classroom with kids that visibly hate me and see me as a CRINGE ENTERTAINMENT IRONY MACHINE is like a good idea? and a good way for me to make friends? i dont know if its my luck or if they’re deliberately doing it, but, next term for example i have drama and cooking as classes. two of my friends also have cooking ....but they dont have me in their class. they’re together. but im not in their class. im on my own because other than them and the girl who already did cooking these past two terms (so she cant do it next term) i have.... no other friends. so im definitely in a class of complete strangers! and the way they have this school, you have no choice but to work with someone else in a cooking class...... you are paired with someone in the same mini kitchen and its a disaster but i digress.

also, like. school goes for 6 hours. by the time you get home and get changed and get settled, its sunset so you can’t go out and do anything. you can’t go to the park or climb a tree. youre stuck inside. your family is like groggy from work or whatever and doesnt want to talk to you. you have no energy to get online and talk to your friends online. or theyre asleep. so basically at least for me i get... no time to actually talk to my friends, for example i havent had an actual conversation with piper in like... two months i swear. we’ve forgotten how to talk to eachother and that actually goes with all of my friends. by the weekend we’re still awkward because we havent spoken in months so we can’t really even talk. and because of this rigid like, routine you have to have to actually be able to go to school at all (wake up 7. eat. get dressed. go to school. come home. get changed. eat. shower. go to bed. repeat), i actually like.... find myself. forgetting Everything. i dont know what it is about strict routine where i cannot be myself (my school has a strict and ugly uniform), but it makes me ... completely forget everything slowly and my memory decays. my time blindness gets worse to the point where i dont know what month it is on a regular basis and like... i ditch a lot? because of this? maybe if the schedule didnt make me dissociate and forget everything i wouldnt ditch constantly and like. actually go to school. but like my attendance is... im not at school 25% of the time because i physically cannot go every single day and attend to that rigid and exact cycle that doesnt even teach me anything

doesnt even teach me anything? i dont ... learn anything from school. they like. reteach the same meaningless part of a subject every single year. every year in religious studies in october i learn about the rosary and we spend a lot of the period praying the rosary and i like. ok. cool. its a religious school yeah but what am i actually learning from this. and every year in social studies we learn abt the waitangi treaty but the way they teach it is so whitewashed and utopian and its fucked and they teach it the same way every year around the same time. and anzac day. and in math im not going to use any of those skills you teach me, i dont care about algebra or anything because thats not really going to actually help me in my life im an artist for fucks sake teach me about managing my own finances! teach me how to do taxes! teach me how to function in the society i live in! teach me the important things that ill sink under or die without knowing i want to actually know important things but by cramming so many unimportant things in my brain all the time i forget the actual important things, i fucking failed basic addition and subtraction last year, i’ve forgotten division and multiplication past the 10 times table, but i can vaguely read an algebra equasion BUT FUCKING ALGEBRA EQUASIONS WILL NEVER UFCKING GET ME ANYWJERE!!!!! and it makes me so fucking angry i want to learn and function and KNOW

and the way they tightly bundle everyone to being one conforming individual who dresses like everyone else, is at the same intelligence level as everyone else, is a catholic like everyone else, does not question authority as everyone else or does not question themselves like everyone else or think like anyone else OR BE DIFFERENT THAN ANYONE ELSE makes me want to FUCKING THROW UP. there are so many hopes and dreams that i remember watching from primary school to now sink into a hopeless pit of stereotypes and basic conformity, people who used to be nice are suffocated into being horrible people so that theyre liked by their peers or get anny attention from the school at all, guys who used to respect women (god forbid) suddenly becoming horrible to anyone of any slightly different gender identity but you can actually see on their face how weird it is to them, waves of 11-14 year olds getting nose studs that get infected and they’re forced to have them taken out by the school, kids trying to do their makeup to look like SOMEONE to BE AT ALL DIFFERENT FROM ANYONE ELSE are put right back in their place and told to take it all off and their parents are called and if youre caught with the wrong jacket your parents are called and youre told youre too poor to wear what the school provides yet THEY DONT EVEN LET YOU WEAR WHAT THE SCHOOL PROVIDES WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS 70 DOLLAR HOODIE FOR WHEN YOU WONT LET ME WEAR IT WHILE IM SHIVERING I DONT SEE THE POINT OF ENFORCING SUCH TIGHT POINTLESS SMALL BOUNDARIES OF WHAT A PERSON CAN BE WHY IS IT SO LIMITED? are we not allowed to do anything? you cant even have one strip of hair dye yet a teacher can have a full head of bright purple hair what’s that about? you can have antisemetic pins on your senior year blazer jacket but the second you put a pride pin on there youre called to the principals office and asked why youre promoting this to kids

you try a speech on trans rights and they dont even pass you and pretend its because you got over the time limit but you didnt, you timed it yourself for your friends you didnt get over the time limit and you know it but you didnt even place in fourth you placed last out of 6 or 8 and you wonder why that is because every year in the past you soared into first so whats that about???? in my speech i said be yourself and dont be afraid to experiment with your gender lightly and they told me to take it out because its seen as too much and i said what the fuck? that’s the most important part of my speech, i want to promote acceptance in others and the self and they said take it out or you cant present your speech. they actively suffocate any sort of self expression or nonconformity of any sort you have to be a plain cookiecutter boy or girl and thats it you cannot be anything else, for nearly 6 months theyve fought me and my mom about my hair but if anyones being hurt by it its me because it draws more attention to the kid you can call slurs, are you hurt because im actually expressing myself? are you hurt by my little sharp stud earrings and my industrial piercing and the embroidered cuff on my shirt? are you offended by the heart on my belt or the platforms on my school shoes because the last time i checked none of these were illegal things to have at school

this kind  of got a lot angrier than i meant to make it but ive been . really angry abt this for the past year idk. i really just wanted to write this because i ahvent spoken to piper properly in months and the way we talk now seems like when we just met but i cannot carry a conversation anymore because school knocked the wind out of me all over again and the sudden inability to talk to any of my friends online makes me want to scream until my lungs give out im so tired

[vincent-frankenstein]

different anon, but heck yeah u should definitely infodump about lucid dreaming!! im really interested in it

aaaaa okay !!! uh hold onto ur ears yall im abt to talk em off lmao

so !! if u didnt know, lucid dreaming is basically when you become aware that you’re dreaming while youre in a dream. once you’re aware, you can take control of the dream in literally any way u want — u can do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone, all with the knowledge that nothing can hurt u and nothing can stop u

its a fascinating concept and, the feeling when u actually become lucid for the first time? its better than anything else in the world. its the most invigorating thing u can ever feel, i think. but actually becoming lucid is, ,, , , hm. a time and a half. 

putting the rest under a cut bc, hooooo boy this is gonna get long

first things first! you absolutely have to keep a dream journal. forgetting ur dreams is all well and good when ur not trying to accomplish anything in them, but if you become lucid and then wake up with only the vaguest memory of what you actually did? thats painful.

u can either go all out and get a fancy journal and write them down physically each morning, or u can do what i do and just download an app. i personally use the app Dream Catcher, which lets u tag ur dreams for easy organization. just get in the habit of writing down your dreams every morning, and if you really, really cant remember anything, just write down that you didnt dream anything that day. you’ll train your brain to remember your dreams better

secondly! reality checks! are absolutely imperative! the idea behind them is that, if you do something throughout the day that “proves” your reality, eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams as well. for example, a common thing in my dreams is that i’ll have extra fingers, so i check my hands a lot throughout the day. 

it can’t just be a casual thing, too. if all you do is glance at your hands and b like “yo looks normal, we gucci”, then you’ll do the same in your dreams even if you have Weird hands. trust me, Dream-You is an idiot, you gotta be obvious with this stuff. take a few moments, look at your hands, count out your fingers, and really think to yourself “am i dreaming?”

try to get in the habit of doing that at least 15 times a day, and eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams too. 

now, if you just stick with doing those two things — which is what i’m doing right now — your chances of becoming lucid will raise astronomically. even just those two tiny things can train your brain into realizing when the world around you is real and when it isnt. you can also attempt something really easy called a MILD — a mnemonic-induced-lucid-dream — which can help your chances even more without upping the effort 

whenever you go to bed, just take a few moments — even just five minutes can help — and just. lay there. and think to urself, again and again “the next scene will be a dream” or “i will become lucid in my dreams tonight” or something similar. get ur brain really focused on lucid dreaming right before you fall asleep and chances are, those Vibes will bleed over into ur dreams and you’ll become lucid

practice those three things consistently, every day, and pretty soon you’ll start becoming lucid. it takes time, though! dont be discouraged if you end up not becoming lucid for the first few weeks, or even months. sometimes your brain just needs a bit of extra training

that’s what ive been doing for the past year or so — bc damn do i Not have the energy to actually put in too much effort — but!!! there are other techniques!!

my personal favorite is the WBTB, or wake-back-to-bed method. with this technique, you set your alarm for roughly 5-6 hours after you go to sleep so you’ll wake up inside of one of your REM cycles, specifically one where your dreams will be the most vivid. dont do anything, just roll over and go right back to sleep. 

you can even use a MILD along with this, repeat whatever mantra u usually use as you fall back asleep. you should start to see hypnagogic imagery — blobs of color and vague shapes floating before your eyes. just observe them. at one point, they’ll start forming more familiar shapes, and places, and maybe even people — and there should be a moment, a snap, where you go from observing these images to actually being in the scene. you literally build the dream around yourself, its magical

i have read that WBTB can cause sleep paralysis, but i’ve never personally experienced any problems with it, aside from the fact that im always tired the next day.

another thing that could severely increase your chances of being lucid but also involves Effort — meditation. specifically mindfulness meditation. the act of bringing full awareness to your Existence, honing in on just Your body, Your mind, Your breath, will make you a more aware, mindful person, which in turn makes you more perceptive of dream signs. also, the ability to clear your mind and center yourself with a moment’s notice really comes in handy when the dream becomes destabilized and you have to take control

if ur an adhd lad like me — or neurodivergent in any way, really — the idea of meditation can be,,,, terrifying. honestly, i havent meditated in like six months now, because it really wasnt?? doing anything for me?? mostly because im absolutely incapable of sitting still for that long without Something to stimulate me

so! loophole! guided meditations. having someone else guide you through the process can make it a bit easier to focus. just find one that works for u on youtube. there are even guided meditations made specifically to prime ur brain for lucid dreaming!

so thats how you get lucid. now for when youre lucid

at first, lucid dreaming is going to be extremely hard. dreams fall apart very easily — if you get too overexcited or if a dream-character looks at you the wrong way or if you cant seem to do what you want to do, your lucidity can fade and you’ll either go back to being your normal dream self or you’ll wake up. dreams are volatile and hard to control, and even harder to master

thats where meditation comes in handy. youll have a much easier time controlling your dreams if you can look at the world around you, take a breath, center yourself, and know that you can control it. that being said, you can absolutely learn to take control without ever having meditated a day in your life. its all about your mindset!

you have to go into it with confidence. the key to controlling your dreams is knowing that they’re your dreams. you cant forget that you’re in control. thats why i feel like learning to lucid dream doubles as a lesson in self-confidence — you have to learn to trust yourself, trust that you can handle any scenario thrown at you and come out on top.

if you can achieve this mindset, you can literally do anything. ive had maybe 50 lucid dreams since i started learning about them — which… is honestly a really low amount, but. i havent really had the time/energy to really throw myself into it  as much as i want to. but just in those dreams, ive flown, ive shapeshifted, ive met my sides, ive teleported to vast, gorgeous lands and seen some of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. anything is possible in a lucid dream; thats why its so worth it to put in the effort

but when youre first starting out, itll be extremely hard to maintain that mindset. like i said, Dream-you is dumb as shit — you’ll forget youre dreaming, you’ll be unable to control anything, you’ll wake up before you manage to accomplish anything. more often than not, the dream will destabilize, which is Not Fun

if the dream starts to destabilize — basically, if things start going fuzzy or vague, if you suddenly cant see, if you can feel ur body in bed, basically anything that points towards you waking up — there are ways to fix it. literally just spinning around helps for some reason? spin around, fall down, run ur hands along anything u can find and feel the texture, or just demand that the dream stabilize itself. most of the time, thatll work

and if it doesnt, dont be discouraged. theres always another night to dream

so basically: start a dream journal, do reality checks, mmmmaybe meditate if youre up for it, and your dreams will become like. at least 10x more interesting. trust me, try flying: its literally the best feeling in the entire world

its just !!! such a huge, incredible thing, and its so fascinating to learn about too. all the different ways you can train your brain, all the different things you can do, all the studies done on the subject. i suggest reading about Steven LaBerge or keith hearne. hearne led the study that proved lucid dreaming existed in the first place! he got a lucid dreamer to signal to him that he was conscious while asleep using REM (rapid-eye movement), because lucid dreaming happens during the REM state. also, robert waggoner’s book Gateway to the Inner Self is really fascinating too!

hm wow i really went ham here lmao

thanku for giving me a chance to infodump im very happy rn

[strawberryybird]

Me sees the character songs post, immediately wants to know what character songs you have for the characters and why.

ok so. welcome to the rabbit hole that is my music taste and what is my no.1 most frequently done activity.. plastering emotions i have for fictional characters all over my music taste. I restricted myself to ¾ songs for each character & then to Edie, Hubert, Dorothea, Lysithea & Byleth because otherwise we’d be here all day (and those are the Primary Daydream Candidates rn)

under a rm because as im sure we’ve all seen.. i just don’t fucking stop.. also i got weirdly deep about some of these topics. i don’t know how to tag it. tread careful?

Here are some songs.. welcome to my (notoriously bad) music taste. alsoi go in Very heavy handed about it all. i make only a few apologies:

Edelgard:Everybody wants to rule the word - tears for fears. (ucan go with Lorde’s cover but i prefer the original bc im like that.) i meanit’s pretty heavy handed but it’s such an Edelgard song it !!!! fuels my ficwriting. if it’s not so very Edelgard’s relationship with twsitd then idk whatto tell you. plus it’s an iconic song

Medicine - daughter. (daughter is My Favourite Band. Ever. I cannot articulate how much ilove their (and ex:re’s) music!!) anway. this is a hegegard song & i don’ttake constructive criticism. I’ll reiterate this better in other descriptions,but please don’t take my inclusion of a song about such a topic as adevaluation of it in any way, that’s not my intention. The reason I go so feralfor Hegegard is because im no stranger to watching someone you care about hurt themselvesin a way you can’t stop, and that’s what the AM ending evokes in me. Hence: asong I love that one can read the same story in. And then the lyrics ‘You couldstill be / What you want to / What you said you were / When I met you” just !! parallelsEdge of Dawn’s lyrics about regret & overall I’m very feral about this.

(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - blue oystercult. this is PRIME Edelgard telling freshly-awokenbyleth she’s been waging war for 5 years. also !!!! “Seasonsdon’t fear the reaper / Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be likethey are” >>> “The Edge of Dawn (Seasons ofWarfare) (フレスベルグの少女～風花雪月～,lit. Girl of Hresvelg ~Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon~)” .. the link is tenuous but coincidence?? is it, fuck.

Seneca - Novo Amor. this is another one of those songs that could mean something different to everyone. very easy to project onto, is novo amor. I like the story of being prepared to run and break ties at any given moment, but ending up - emotionally or physically - in the same place one always was. apart from the glaring tie of how Edelgard returned to garreg mach, this song is a lot of me trying to repatriate Edelgard’s lack of emotional arc in the game by saying . well. this song. 

You can call me Al -  paul simon. am i projecting edeleth thoughts onto my favourite song? it’s morelikely than you think!!! but also i like the chorus and all the exasperating ‘call me el’jokes i can make.. i may be half writing a fic based on this song.

Dorothea:Agnes - glass animals. so i have significant emotions about edelthea at the best of times !! and this song !!! really bloody hits it home !! yes I knowit’s got a really heavy and real subject matter and I’m not trying to devalueit or minimise it.. but the story - about watching someone close to you hurtthemselves/get hurt, and doing so in ways you can’t stop them from - is adamn real one. And a Lot of why I love Dorothea’s character in the gamebecause she’s the one who can’t stop her friends from getting hurt – through exposureto warfare .. or  stopping Edelgard becomingthe monster at the end of the story. Even though she’s one of the healers onthe beagle’s team. And I feel that.

Ex’s and Oh’s – Elle King. So you know that one spn fanvid featuringthis song about all of dean winchester’s relationships? That, but for my flirting Queen Dorothea Arnault. (and I have the dumbest most fun little headcanon thatonce Dorothea and Sylvain derailed a lgbt+ society meeting whilst Edie wastrying to go over the budget by blasting this song and dancing on the table.The idea makes me laugh)

Hold My Girl – George Ezra. The whole thing about wanting just that onemoment to cherish the people you love for one moment more before you have goout face the world? If that’s not the timeskip’d Dorothea Arnault Aesthetic, Idon’t know what is.

(Call Me Out – sea girls. On a much lighter note, this song is fueling the later half of mydrafts of road trip au. And it’s literally because of that one verse. im gayshut up.)

Hubert:Red Right Hand – nick cave and the bad seeds. Is it on the nose? Is itheavy handed? Oh u fuckin bet but that won’t stop me!!! A) it’s a good song. ItIs. B) I like narrative songs. C) Any ‘red right hand’ symbolism in Anycharacter has me love them immediately and also plonk this song in the middleof any playlist about them. sure, the artic monkeys version might be a bit more on hubert’s brand.. but my mileage varies about it lmao

I had fortress by bear’s den earmarked for Hubie, as I think it’s easilyread about boundaries and a one sided intense relationship & that’s! Hubiebaybee! But I can’t possibly cover unhealthy relationships without shoving thealbum Hospice by The Antlers into every which way of it. It’s by no meansdirectly translatable to Edelgard and hubert’s relationship and it’s arguable ifI should even mention it in the same sentence as a bloody fictional character… that beingsaid, I’ve been having emotions about:Shiva – the antlers. This song specifically reads to me to be a really goodarticulation of my own thoughts about Hubert’s perspective of Edie getting experimentedon. heavy but damn. I like that. I just see a lot of what their teen years togethermust have been like in Shiva.

Time – Pink Floyd. Ok so.. it’s like Hubert in parallel bc I think thissong is a lot about searching for a purpose/reason or a quote unquote bloodyred path in life. And I may have been listening to it when I watched Hubert/DorotheaA support & now it’s just permanently associated with it bc it complementedit so well. And I like it. So . it stays. It’s very much a beagles song to meas well.

Lysithea:The Beautiful Dream – George Ezra. Ok so I read this Edelysithea ficwith this on repeat bc the title reminded me of it, and then I stuck it onrepeat because it worked too well and now.. im crying.. and i like the inflection of Lysithea’s bitterness over the titular lyric. (but also, it remains one of my steadfast edeleth songs.. sorry lys)

Secrets (Cellar Door) – Radical Face. Another Edelgard&/Lysitheasong!! I really like their relationship ok. And given the song itself can beread straight or an allegory for whatever you particularly want, but the storyis just too on the nose for me not to mention it here.(also general advocation of listening to the whole of radical face’s musicbecause I’ve loved it for years now & the work is beautiful.) (also it’swonderful for fe awakening projection. Or ur own.)

Oh Children – nick cave and the bad seeds. there’s a million different interpretations of this song, but to try nail a few onto Lysithea.. there’s the harry potter use of making/finding a light in the depths of tragedy & i love that for Lys. there’s the whole ‘the kids aren’t alright’ theme and it’s various depths. and i like narrative lyrics to plaster my large fictional-character-caused-emotions onto, so make of this one what you will.

Marianne (and Lysithea too if you like)Bad Blood – Radical Face. Ok so. This is one of my favourite songs in bloodyexistence, and it’s so loaded with meaning & it has a metric tonne of it. Icould wax lyrical about how much I love Radical Face’s work. I don’t want myinclusion of this song (specifically this one) to in any way devalue it. Butmusic is ofc incredibly subjective, and so is my reading of a lot of threehouses – in case it’s not bloody obvious by now. There’s a Lot of stories onecould take from Marianne’s character (and none of them are More Valid^tm thanany other), and I do see a very personal story in her – as I do in this song. Hgghhghive just spent 10 minutes trying to find an impersonal way to talk about twovery personal and relative stories, which naturally doesn’t work. That, and theway I read her story is Real Fucking Dicey for tumblr.com. so if this song is about accepting rejection because of parts of yourself so deep they’re in your blood, i think.. y’all can see.. where my neurodivergent gay self is going with this..

Byleth:Something to Believe In – Tom Walker. Yeah. You’re bloody welcome. If this isn’ta completely on the nose Byleth song, I’ll eat Dorothea’s hat.

Don’t Let the Man – Fatboy Slim. ~ And the sign said green-hairedpartially possessed emotionally void mercenaries need not apply for aprofessorship at the country’s most prestigious academic centre… ~

Emigrate - Novo Amor. this just fucking Got Me in the ‘actively choosing crimson flower’ feelings. im an emotional wreak but its aight. the lyrics just matched up too well for me to let it go !!!

Alps - Novo Amor. this hit me in the ‘i miss the gremlin child sothis’ feelings one day and now it’s permanently stuck that way.

Make Them Gold – chvrches. (this is very much associated with awakening’sfuture past kids and also the Carmilla series in my mind But!!) I love a story about‘if we’re all falling, we’re going down together’ and the magical power of teamwork, and how it brings out the best in people.. & that’s what this song& Byleth kinda bloody stand for ya know??

woooh.. oh my god . i need another cup of tea.