#but this late there's nothing available

[keldae]

I'm so upset I could cry.

[burning-academia-if]

Hello, I blinked and March was over. Another busy/hectic month in regards to Real Life things + I got pretty sick at the end of it (because being sick in February wasn't enough lol). With that being said, here's what I did get done:

Wrote 16.1k words (Chapter 2 total word count: 27.4k )

Started editing/coding in the start of Chapter 2

Did some more coding/tweaking for stat pages

Fixed some variables in Chapter 1 + added piercings and facial hair options to character customization (these will all be added when Chap 2 releases)

Posted Rhea's bday art

With that being said, I thought Chapter 2 would be a max of 30k words, but all the small branching and flavor text in this chapter is really adding up lol. Of those words written, most of it went towards the Lars/Student Warden path. I did however write one of the three endings, and one of two of the RO pov ending scene variants.

With that said the Rhea/Student Government path should be a lot shorter since it's more straight forward, and once that's done, all that's left is a handful of smaller scenes/variants to finish up and then Chapter 2 will be done! I'm guessing it'll end up being between 40k to 50k words in total. I'm hoping to finish up the writing in April and then code everything in to release it by late May! This is obviously very tentative, but unless the universe decides to cause mayhem once more, that's what I'm aiming for!

Lastly, here's another little preview for the confrontational MCs this month (ft Lars):

[fideidefenswhore]

reading alison weir's new novel; she's adapted and altered the primary source material she's clearly using in a way that is...um. something?

[hungee-boy]

honestly if you live in a blue state and can afford a decent home and all your meds/food/utilities i want to hear NOTHING in regards to us in red states

i live in greg abbott's red texas. you know, the largest state that borders the most vilified neighboring country and receives the majority of latino immigrants + has a huge black population + a lot of arab and asian immigrants

i will not tolerate blame put on the people in red states who are constantly harassed and belittled because of their race, origin, religion, gender, and economic status

you want someone to blame? blame your party who did nothing to get people out of poverty, did nothing in response to police violence and killings, did nothing for palestine/lebanon, did nothing in response to abbott and desantis' vitriolic anti-latino racism and policies

democrats did what they do best, follow the right-leaning trend and lose to republicans

[letthebookbegin]

.

[thethingything]

increasingly noticing aspartame showing up as an ingredient in drinks that aren't sugar free and given that we can tell it's in there even if we haven't checked before drinking it because it makes our mouth feel weird and gives us a sore throat and makes our stomach feel pretty not great just in general, we're not particularly thrilled about this development

[decimatlas]

bar exam in 8 days. i am so scared lmfao

[unproduciblesmackdown]

i mean this amongst the material where we were Ever supposed to be at all on the same page about axe & wendy's nightmare quasiromance including that it was after the vicious pettiness stalking & relationship sabotaging from axe that we got the warmest & fuzziest rather than wendy finally reaching a breaking point, or know that it's not great if prince goes around taking advantage of young employees his kid's age but we would never disrespect that person by calling them a victim and also we can't even think too badly of him until he outright confirms (rudely!) he feels entitled, and then we also will actually do nothing about this save for eventually saying actually it looks bad if his wife also has sex outside the marriage, which would defy his entitlement

[kikuism]

the amount of books i’ve gotten from the library is actually stressing me out help

[sonknuxadow]

not gonna lie it is kinda bugging me not knowing When the sonic frontiers update is going to happen. because i wanna play it as soon as possible. but i dont know when that is

[pepprs]

cool so the fire alarm just went off like 30 mins and we all thought we were going to die but it turns out one of the alarms was just defective 🤪 so now it’s almost 6am and ive slept for 4 ish hours and now i have to sleep on the couch because my sister is panicking in our room and i have to be awake in an hour anyway so i might as well not even sleep lol. and my throat hurts from screaming which is going to make it hard to tell if my throat hurts from possibly having covid 🤪🤪🤪🤪

[rose-tinted-nostalgia]

God, I regret this already.

[scientia-rex]

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[autumnrory]

oh god i need open library back

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I think the reader's response to this post is probably going to either be "That's incredibly minor" or "Holy shit YES I'M ALSO PROUD", depending on people's personal experiences with academia, but:

Today I am incredibly proud of one of my students.

In the interests of disguising identities, let's call them Ceri. Ceri is one of my third year undergrads (meaning their final year, for anyone unfamiliar with UK uni systems.) They transferred to us last year, and within two weeks I was giving them the contact info to get to Student Services and get themself screened for ADHD; they have some mental health struggles, but I clocked pretty quickly that they STRUGGLE with procrastination, and punctuality, and attending 9am lectures in particular. Naturally, as is the way of my people, it took them a further four months to remember to go to the screening. Lol. Lmao. Rofl, in fact.

But, they did it eventually! Their screening lit up like a Christmas tree at the ADHD section, and they got a free laptop and optional one week extensions and a study support worker named Claire. This has helped tremendously, and although mental health + until-then-unsupported ADHD meant their academic profile had slid sideways somewhat, with the new tools available and a couple of resits they passed the year and hit this year running.

Until, that is, the last fortnight.

Now, I take them for a Habitat Management module that has two assessments: an academic poster presentation before Christmas, and a site-specific management plan in May. Naturally this means we are at that happy point in the year for the poster presentations. I give out the briefs at the start of the year, so they've had them since October; I've also been periodically checking in with them all for weeks, to make sure they don't have any major burning questions. The poster presentation was to pick a species reintroduction project, pull the habitat feasibility study out of it, and then critique that study; Ceri chose to look at the hen harrier reintroductions proposed for the southern UK. All good.

Which brings us nicely to today! Ceri's presentation is scheduled for 2.30. At 11am-1pm, I am lecturing the first years on Biodiversity, while Ceri is learning about environmental impact assessment with a colleague I shall call Aeron. This means we are separately occupied during those same hours.

Nevertheless, Aeron messages me at about 12.

"I think Ceri needs to see you after your lecture," he writes. "They're panicking, I genuinely think they might cry. I'm worried. Are you free at 1?"

I say I am. At 1, I get lunch and sit in the common area; Ceri comes to see me. To my personal shame, imagine all of the following takes place while I stuff my face with potato.

Now: this part is going to be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has ever tried higher education with ADHD, especially unmedicated. It certainly was for me. All I can say is, I never had the courage to take the step here that Ceri did.

"I have to confess," they said quietly, and Aeron was right, they were fighting back tears. "My mental health has been so, so bad for the last fortnight. I've left it way, way too late. I don't have anything to present."

"Nothing at all?" I asked.

"I've been researching," they said helplessly. "I found loads on the decline of the hen harrier. But it wasn't until last night that I finally found a habitat feasibility study to critique. Generally... I've been burying my head about it, and it just got later and later. I thought I should come in for Aeron's lecture, and I should at least tell you."

This part is a minor thing, right? But honestly, I remember being in the grip of that particular shame spiral. I never did manage to tell my lecturers to their faces. I just avoided. I honestly can't imagine having the courage it took them to come in and tell me this, rather than just staying home and avoiding me.

"I think..." they said hesitantly, "I know I can submit up to a week late, for a capped mark. I think I need to do that, and apply for extenuating circumstances. But then I'll have both Aeron's assignment and yours due at the same time."

Which meant they would crumble under the pressure and likely struggle to pass both; so me, being as noble and heroic as I unarguably am, stopped eating potato and said, "Let's make that plan B."

(It was good potato. I am a hero.)

So, we made plan A: I moved their timeslot to 4.30, giving them three and a half hours. The shining piece of luck in this whole thing was that this was the crunch time assignment - if it had been Aeron's, they'd have had to try and write a 3000 report in that time. But for me, all they had to write was an academic poster, and those things are light on words by design. We found them a Canva template, and then we quickly sketched out a recommended structure based on the brief: if it's habitat feasibility, look at food availability, nesting site availability, and mortality risks in the target release site. Bullet point each. Bullet point how well the study assessed each. Write a quick intro and conclusion. Take notes as you go, and present the poster itself at 4.30.

"You think I should try?" they asked doubtfully, looking like I'd just asked them to go mano-a-mano with a feral badger.

"If you run out of time, so be it," I said. "But your brain is trying to protect you from a non-existent tiger. That's why you've procrastinated - it's been horrible, and you've been shame spiralling, and your brain is trying to shield you from the negative experience; but it's the wrong type of help for this situation! So while you're sitting there working on it, hating life, every time your brain goes 'This is hopeless, I can't do it', you think right back 'Yes I can, it just sucks.' And you carry on. Good?"

"Good," they said. "I'm going to mainline coffee and hole up in the library. Enjoy your potato."

And then, of course, I had to go and watch the other students' presentations, so that was the end of me being any help at all. I spent all afternoon wondering if they were going to manage it, or if I would be getting a message at 4.25 telling me they'd failed, and would have to submit late and hope for an EC.

And Tumblrs

Tumblrs

Let me FUCKING tell you

They turned up at 4.15, fifteen minutes early, wearing a mask of grim, harrowed determination and fuelled by spite and coffee, and they pulled up that poster and started presenting and yes, okay, I'll admit their actual delivery was dramatically unpolished and yes, they forgot to include the taxanomic name for the hen harrier on the poster and yes, fine, I admit that there were more than a few awkward moments where they lost their place in their hastily scribbled notebook but LET ME FUCKING TELL YOU -

They smashed it. It was well-critiqued, it had a map, it had full citations, it had a section on the hen harrier's specific ecology and role in the ecosystem, it had notes on their specific conservation measures. They described case studies they'd read about elsewhere. They answered the questions we threw at them with competence and depth. There was analysis. All that background research they'd done came right to the fore. They were even within the time limit by 15 seconds.

You would never have known they'd produced it in three hours, from a quivering and terrified mess fighting the bodily urge to dehydrate via tear ducts. After they left, the second marker and I looked at each other and went "So that was a 2:1, right?"

I caught up with Aeron downstairs and he was beaming. Apparently Ceri had seen him on their way out, and had gone over to talk to him. Aeron said the difference between the Ceri of this morning and the Ceri of then was like two different people; in four hours, they'd gone from their voice literally breaking as they admitted the problem, ashamed and broken, to being relaxed and happy and smiling.

"I reckon I've passed," they apparently told Aeron, pleased. "Maybe even a 2:2. There's things I wish I'd had the time to do better, but I'll be happy if I passed."

They won't know until late January what they got, because we're not allowed to release marks until 20 term days after hand-in, and the Christmas holidays are about to hit. But I'm really hoping I can be there when they're released.

But mostly, I'm just... insanely proud of them. I cannot tell you how happy I am. And I know, I know, obviously this is not a practice I would want to see them do regularly, or indeed ever again, and it only worked because they were fucking lucky with the assignment format, but like... when life is just punching you in the face, and you hit a breaking point... isn't it nice? That just this once, you pull off a miracle, and it's fixed? The disaster you thought was about to ruin you is gone? To get that relief?

Anyway. Super super proud today.

[rambling-robot]

i want to play board games. i want to play card games. i want to sit at a table where we're all in unity and competition. i want to debate the rules. i want to yell about whether a play is legal. i want to have snacks and conversation and a motive. i want to spend hours laying down words that we'll inevitably have to pull out the dictionary for. i want to say, "if i remember this correctly, because it was shown to me once over a year ago and i never learned the rules to the real game." i have no idea how to play poker, i don't think anyone does, but what i wouldn't give to learn with my friends.