#even Russell too struggles with his disability from time to time and gets frustrated with it. its just shown lesser than Handy's | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tarysande · 4 years ago

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Hey, I see you reblogging adhd stuff every now and when. I hope you're ok with me asking, how long have you known you have adhd? I am currently wondering if I have it and am sups unsure what to do about it.

I’m always okay with people asking about things I post!

Of course, because of the ADHD, I’m not always great at answering ;)

I’m especially willing to talk about ADHD because I know my journey to getting a diagnosis doesn’t follow the stereotypical path, and I’d be thrilled if my experience ends up helping other people out there.

My family doctor was the first person to ever mention ADHD to me. I was 36 at the time. Maybe 37. I’m 40 (wtf) now, turning 41 in a month (haha, wtf). I’ve had depression most of my life. At the time, I was deeply frustrated because my depression was well-managed, but I still couldn’t focus to save my life. When my doctor asked if I might have ADHD, I laughed and said, “With my grades*? Yeah, no.” *I was a straight-A student from elementary school through to the end of my BFA. HOWEVER, at uni I had a handful of ‘lower’ grades: a B-, a B, a B+ in classes I found A G O N I Z I N G L Y boring. I was also never a disruption in class—mostly because I entertained myself by writing novels and reading under my desk and listening to music by keeping my earphones under my long hair. The key was to answer a question in class right away, thereby diverting the teacher’s attention and leaving me to my own devices for the rest of the time.

The focus issues continued unabated. Months later, a good friend of mine who was also diagnosed with ADHD as an adult brought it up again, and this time I did a lot more research. And ... yeah, puzzle pieces started clicking together. A lot of them.

I brought it up with my doctor, and she sent me to the one (1) psychiatrist in Vancouver who was a) covered by provincial healthcare and b) would deal with a potential ADHD diagnosis in a patient of my (advanced) age *stares into the camera like it’s the office*. He was a Real Jerk, but I did his bevy of tests and he reluctantly agreed that I matched all the criteria except that I had never done poorly in school or been a nuisance in class**. **these criteria are ridiculously outdated, often don’t apply to girls (or those who have inattentive-type or mixed-type ADHD), and should BY NO MEANS exclude anyone from an ADHD diagnosis. If, like me, you’re what they call “twice exceptional” (where being intellectually gifted can often mask the struggles associated with ADHD, autism, physical/learning disabilities), it’s EVEN EASIER to slip through the cracks.

The psychiatrist upped my anti-depressants, which helped, but still did nothing for my focus. By the way? ADHD, especially in adults, is FREQUENTLY comorbid with other conditions like depression or anxiety. It’s almost like ... when your brain doesn’t do what you know it should do, WANT it to do, TRY TO MAKE IT DO, and you feel like a failure who’s not living up to her potential ... it makes you REALLY DEPRESSED!! Who knew?? After almost a year, I finally brought up the focus with my family doctor again, who was like, “Okay, let’s try some things, then.” Finding the right dose of ADHD meds is ... trial and error. And it’s exhausting. And sometimes you think you’ve figured it out, but you haven’t. I still haven’t landed on the BEST POSSIBLE solution for me, but I will tell you this: the difference in unmedicated-ADHD-Tara and medicated-ADHD-Tara is like night and day, even when my meds aren’t optimal.

To give a very specific example, I’m a freelance writer and editor. My income from my first (medicated) year of running my own business full(ish) time was almost three times that of the unmedicated year before. This year, even with COVID throwing a lot of wrenches in a lot of gears, I’ve remained booked three to four months in advance, my focus is better, my self-worth is better (i.e., I charge what I know I’m worth), I’ve stood up for myself, I’ve *gasp* started planning(???). I’m not rolling around in piles of money, but I’m above the Canadian median.

I also speak to my therapist every two weeks (she’s wonderful—and she’s online, which is both cheaper and more accessible for me). I’m slowly understanding the value of meditation (if you have the Calm app I HIGHLY recommend Jeff Warren’s How to Meditate 30-day program. I’m on day 13. There’s no BS or vagueness; I love him.) I made an effort to change my diet and spend more time moving around outdoors. (Exercise is even more important for ADHD brains, it turns out.)

Now, none of this has been a magical cure-all. I’m in the middle of struggling with med dosage at the moment, which is freshly irritating. Even medicated, there are good days and bad days—which is totally normal. I just finished an editing project that nearly destroyed me because it was SO boring and I couldn’t get out of it (because I’d ADHD-procrastinated too long). Learning how to function in the neurotypical world with an atypical ADHD brain is WORK. There’s also a lot of emotion—grief, anger, frustration, joy—as you process the new information and mourn the time you spent lost, underachieving, “failing.”

One really great, really accessible resource is the YouTube channel How to ADHD. For people who want to dig into the science, I recommend Russell Barkley (HE IS SO SMART) and Ned Hallowell. There’s also a ton of information on ADDitude. Anyway, this is a lot of information, I know. There are some good self-tests on the ADDitude site. If you think you have it AND IT’S IMPACTING YOUR LIFE***, bring it up with your doctor. Know that you might run into some resistance because most ADHD meds can be (and are widely) abused, and people with actual ADHD get caught in that crossfire. Even though it’s hard because of ADHD’s effect on emotions (TOO MANY!! TOO STRONG!!), be prepared to face some scrutiny. *** they’re always going to ask about how it’s negatively affecting your life.

#asks and answers #adhd #adhd resources #tara talks adhd #adult adhd #hope this helps!!#Anonymous

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stompsite · 7 years ago

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Can Violence Be Okay?

As some of you know, I’m basically gonna die real soon unless I can get heart surgery, but that’s expensive. I make money by writing essays about games. If you like my work, please share it around, because personally, I’d like to keep on living. If you wanna support me, I’ve got patreon, ko-fi, and a critically acclaimed game out. I’m also looking for work as a designer or writer, so if you know of anything, let me know, please? I’ve worked on well over a dozen AAA and indie games doing everything from emergency script rewrites to helping devs improve their investment loops. I’ve put a lot of time into the 29 years of my life so far, and I’d like it to pay off, lol. But seriously, my mortality is distressing, so if you know how I can get my heart fixed and put a roof over my head, I want to hear from you!

Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games. I’ve written about it at length before. I’ve talked about some of my problems with the game (doing the right thing in D2 feels like an easy choice compared to D1), but I mean, man, I still love it. When it first dropped, though? Man. I had A Problem with it.

Dishonored 2 was so good until I got to the end and got an ending that didn’t match up with my feeling of where I was at when playing the game. There I was, being the best Corvo I could be, running around trying to save my daughter Emily, realizing how bad things had got in Karnaca while I’d been away, and wanting to do my best to keep everyone safe and improve the empire.

At the end, the game told me that Corvo ruled the islands with an iron fist. What had happened? Why was it doing this to me? I didn’t ghost every level, but I certainly approached things non-lethally where I could.

Turns out that the game doesn’t like it when you kill monsters.

I mean, sure, if you kill, like, a rat, the game doesn’t seem to care, but if you kill a witch, the game gets mad. Apparently, the game considers witches to be people. I did not--I felt the game had led me to believe that witches weren’t actually people. So when I made the choice to kill them, the game saw it as Corvo choosing the path of violence… but that’s not the decision I made.

Let’s rewind a bit.

One of my favorite story archetypes is about people without power who, through cleverness, ingenuity, and grit, overcome those with power. It’s not just about being an underdog, it’s about being underestimated, devalued, even downright abused. It’s about the defiance that comes with that, and overcoming the expectations someone has.

I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve always liked these kinds of stories. It frustrated me to watch my wealthier peers pick on the poorer ones. It insulted me when I was essentially told “wow, it’s remarkable that you’re so intelligent for someone so poor” after I won a scholarship. I had to protect two disabled students from one of the richer students in school because he wanted something they had and they didn’t want to give it to him. I have watched people with power hurt and abuse those without. Heck, I’ve been at the mercy of people more powerful than me before. I don’t like that. When I can tell someone’s struggling with the power dynamics of a group, I do my best to help them feel more comfortable in that space.

One thing I liked about the first Dishonored game is that the Empress, Jessamine, is portrayed as a good person who wanted to do right by her people, but she was actively sabotaged, and eventually murdered, by the nobles whose power she threatened. That kind of story is alluring to me; getting justice for Jessamine and delivering Dunwall from the powerful, punching up like that… that’s awesome as heck.

It was kinda weird when Dishonored 2 shows up and indicates that maybe Dunwall didn’t actually improve that much after the nobility was killed off/not killed off (I was mostly nonlethal the first time). D2 never really confronts this head on, at least that I can recall. Instead, it feels like two different stories. There’s the personal story of “someone hurt your family and took your home and you should take it back,” and then there’s the idea of “you’re fighting for justice for people who are downtrodden by the people who took your home.”

These are both great, but after the fact, it did seem kinda strange that Corvo, literally the dad of the Emperor, as upper-class as you can get, is playing the part of the underdog (or Emily herself, who I haven’t played because I wanted to hear Stephen Russell’s voice again). Like, there’s this implication that he and Emily haven’t really fixed anything at all and maybe kinda betrayed Jessamine’s legacy with that? I dunno. It’s really the only criticism I have of Dishonored 2 anymore, and I mean, the game’s still a 10/10 for me. It’s one of the only games that can grab hold of my attention and actually distract me from the pain I’m in.

Arkane has done such an amazing job with their games; I get to be someone else for a while. I can block out the health problems for a while and just fall into another space and experience relief from my awful life. I will never be able to thank everyone there for making such pure and wonderful games.

So Dishonored 2 has this kinda odd relationship with privilege and power and how it contextualizes its protagonists, but then along came Death of the Outsider, which solved this problem by letting you play as Billie Lurk, who, for my money, is the best protagonist in Dishonored history. I love playing as Billie. I love that she’s not an upper class person, just a normal person with cool tools and powers.

Anywho, back to the violence.

So, one thing I love about Arkane games is that they have amazing gamefeel. It’s like saying a drink is smooth, right? Like, it just feels right. I’ve never played an Arkane game that felt bad (maybe Arx Fatalis does, but I’ve never played it!), and I feel like, with every successive release, they only get better at making great gamefeel. Buuuuuuttt… it feels like since Dishonored, every Arkane game is a test. You can’t just do what feels good; you’re taking a test.

When the witches came along, I’m not gonna lie, it felt good to let loose. They’re just as powerful as I am, so it’s not like it’s an uneven playing field.

But… that wasn’t my first reaction. I’d encountered the witches before in The Knife of Dunwall and The Witches of Brigmore, and they’re portrayed in those games as unequivocally bad. Still, for Dishonored 2, I was trying to play stealthy and nonlethally, so I decided to knock them out at first. When I found out I could take their powers in one mission, I decided to try that, and then figured that when Corvo stopped Delilah, he’d probably arrest them or something.

Then, an unfortunate bug occurred (kudos to Arkane for fixing it really quickly! I think they had it solved in a couple days or something amazing like that) where some of the witches were dying when I was trying to render them unconscious. I couldn’t get the nonlethal option to work.

But I wasn’t that concerned, because I felt the witches needed to be killed.

Why?

Because they’re horrible, and I think they seem closer to Vampires--supernatural monsters--than people.

I mean, listen to their dialogue. Look at what they do to the people they kill. They even backstab each other--one of their idle dialogues is about stealing from another. Another is about brushing her sister’s hair so she can gain trust and then stab her sister in the throat. The witches are hostile too--it’s not possible to approach them peacefully. They react to you like you’ve just invaded their vampiric crypt.

The mechanics don’t really leave room for interacting with them sympathetically; there’s no chance to talk to them, work with them, or anything. You can knock them unconscious, but it feels weird, even unconscionable to do that to people who are talking about stabbing each other in the throat.

I’m okay with knocking someone out when the heart says something like “He wasn't always like this. One of his works still hangs in a museum,” or “If he looks sad, it is because he mourns the child he lost,” but I had to look up a list of the heart’s lines about the witches because I couldn’t think of a time when the heart ever said anything good about a single one of the witches.

So, they have magical powers, want to do nothing but kill us, and they’re even happy to kill each other too. Read some of the notes--it’s indicated that they’re sadists. They take delight in killing anyone and everyone. The environmental storytelling seems to indicate the same thing; nothing good comes of a witch’s presence.

When I first did my quick gut-reaction post about Dishonored 2, I fumbled to articulate why Delilah bugged me. I felt like the game tried to excuse her at every turn. She had a bad life. She was a bastard child and treated poorly. Given my propensity for liking underdogs who were underestimated and mistreated, you might think I’d like her too. But I saw what she did. I saw what she’d chosen to become.

Many of the witches are contextualized in this way. I think the actual target of the museum mission--sorry, I’ve forgotten her name, it was 18 months ago--has this whole long backstory about being a rich lady who was going to get married off to a man she didn’t love who was kind of a shitty person anyways.

In reading all of the lines in the game that the heart has for witches, most of them are about enjoying drinking blood, murdering families, and abusing children. One woman struggles to remember the person she was before, but that reminds me more of a vampire’s thrall than anything else, and the game never does anything with that. No “please, I don’t want to do this,” or anything.

They became witches, and are now visiting a far greater violence upon the Empire. As one of my friends pointed out--and I’m inclined to agree--the Empire kind of deserves it, at least in Dishonored 2. It’s not a good society. I mean, it’s weirdly forward thinking in some ways, right? Like literally all of the romantic fiction I’ve encountered in the universe is LGBT stuff. But then in other ways it’s a mirror of the 19th Century British Empire, abusing people and nature in equal measure. Like I said, Jessamine seemed to be trying to fix those things, but she died, and Dishonored 2 indicates that Emily shirked her responsibilities to be a better Empress.

But.

I mean.

Literally all of the heart dialogue we have for them paints them as bad people. The nicest person we have is one who despairs because it’s easier to hurt people with each passing month.

One of my friends has argued that these were all women who were mistreated or whatever, but the heart doesn’t tell us about that. It isn’t saying “her husband used to beat her, so she relishes the power she has” or anything. None of these lines speak to a culture of misogynistic violence. Instead, we have a woman who “spent a month killing those who had slighted her.”

Slighted.

Not abused, beat, hurt. Slighted.

There is, as far as I’ve seen, precisely one person who was a victim: “Beaten and abused, she was barely sane when she heard the coven's call. Now she does the same to others, wielding her power like a barbed whip.”

I’ve been abused. It’s not something I like to talk about at length, but I was molested by an adult male (thankfully not my parents!) at the age of 11. I was abused by an ex who wanted to destroy me the way her mother had destroyed her, and those actions included gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and a ton of other things I don’t really want to talk about. I’ve been physically and emotionally abused for my genetic shortcomings.

I learned, a very long time ago, that almost all abuse comes from people who were abused. I’ve met people who are very angry, and I’ve heard people say “ah, well, it’s okay for them to lash out, because they were abused, so it’s only natural.” Heck, I’ve been one of the people who lashed out. It was only an emotional outburst, but it remains one of the worst things I’ve ever done. I will never stop regretting it.

I understand wanting justice. I understand wanting someone to hurt for what they did to you. I still have nightmares I don’t talk about. I’ve sat with friends who’ve had it so much worse than me and done everything in my power to give them what comfort I can.

But the witches are different. They chose power. And they chose vengeance. Should we justify that? Would I be justified if I started murdering everyone who looked or seemed like the people who had wronged me? Does anything excuse the murder of a bunch of academics in a Karnacan museum? The witches speak with sadistic dialogue. One of the notes left behind by someone trying to hide in the game’s final level makes it abundantly clear that their behaviors are monstrous.

So. Uh.

Look at Gary Oldman’s Dracula.

Dracula’s whole thing is actually super sad, right? Like, the love of his life died while he was out fighting bad dudes. She was tricked into committing suicide, so he renounces God and gets cursed into becoming a monster. His origins are tragic. It’s unfair what happened to him. But I mean, he still murders people and stuff. Dude’s gotta get stabbed in the heart. Sure, it’s cool that his wife got reincarnated as Mina Harker and all, but his whole kidnapping her and trying to turn her into one of his thralls is still bad.

The reason that killing Dracula is good is because Dracula has power and he is a monster. These witches have power and they are monsters. They hurt people--not just the ones who deserve it, but the ones who don’t. In the Brigmore witches, it sure as heck appears to be that they’re preying on the poor. It’s not like they’re out there fighting a revolutionary war against the nobility, and that their magical powers tip the scale. No, they’re killing everyone, even like… public works dudes. It’s an indiscriminate process. They’re killing people they don’t even know.

What makes them not monsters? They have power, and they use that power with cruelty. Dishonored’s world is not a good one to live in, but there is nothing the heart has for us that says that these women were victims. In many cases, they were perpetrators before they got their powers.

Corvo may be kind of a shitty ruler, by seeing a ton of problems during the time of Dishonored 1 and not addressing them leading up to Dishonored 2, but he’s one of the only people who can actually fight a witch; I think the only people actually capable of fighting them are the creepy religious zealots who enjoy torturing people for fun (why didn’t Corvo shut that down?).

So I was thinking about all of this when I killed the witches. They weren’t human anymore. They were indiscriminately murdering anyone who stopped them. Their leader, Delilah, had been portrayed in two stories already as a monster, and while her backstory was tragic, she took that tragedy and used it to excuse being a murderous monster, who ruined the lives of everyone she met, regardless of who they were.

I would have had a much harder time squaring off against a witch who was using her powers to put a stop to her abuser. Like, I, personally, would probably not hunt down the man who hurt me as a kid and put a sledgehammer through his brains, but I mean, in a game, if a witch went to murder a man who molested her, I definitely would be treating her like a person.

These witches, I felt, after listening to them talk, listening to the heart, and watching them act so casually around the bodies of the people they murdered, weren’t out for justice. They weren’t trying to fight back against an oppressive and cruel society. They were monsters. When a witch is wandering around talking about going for a swim later or wondering how the new girl’s doing, it might seem fine, but to be so casual as she walks past a pile of bodies… that’s monstrous. Murder is not a casual act.

Corvo (or Emily, if you played as her) is the only person who can stop the witches, even if you reject the Outsider’s gifts and play without any powers at all. They outclass everyone else, and they kill for the thrill. Someone has to stop them. It’s urgent.

A friend of mine got really upset with me for killing the witches. He said that these were women who’d been mistreated and society deserved to burn. But I mean… if you’re a random guy in a library, are you gonna be able to stop a squad of guards who throw innocent people in prison, kill people’s dogs for meat to sell, or murder innocent people? What about a groundskeeper? What can he do?

The game does not, as far as I can tell, back up the assertion that the witches were victims given power. There is no justice--they’re psychopaths who tortured children and animals, who murdered families, who relish in the carnage. The few women seen as good are losing those memories. Their existence as witches is a tragic one at best, and they’re so reminiscent of horror characters who lose themselves through possession or vampirism that I don’t know how to justify refusing to stop them.

A cop once told me about how he fought a man on PCP. The man had beaten his partner unconscious and was trying to choke him to death. Apparently this huge guy didn’t even feel their tazers and they weren’t supposed to shoot him. This cop ended up in a knock-down, drag out brawl with a man who wasn’t feeling any pain. He ended up bashing a pyrex bowl over the guy’s head so hard it shattered before backup arrived. He told me “if I could have shot him, I think I would have.”

To me, this brings up the question: is it possible to be violent in a game for a constructive purpose? There’s that old quote, misattributed to Orwell, that says something like “we sleep soundly in our beds at night because there are men who visit violence upon those who would do us harm.”

I must admit, I’d love future Dishonored games that involved dismantling the monarchy and trying to find a better, fairer government. I’d love to visit Pandyssia and dismantle traditional colonialist tropes. I’d like to grapple with questions about the ethics of violence, because that’s a subject that interests me on a personal level.

But I must admit, I was surprised when Dishonored 2 did everything to portray its witches as these inhuman, incredibly powerful beings, and then punished me for trying to protect the weak from their unbridled power. To me, my actions were heroic, because I was fighting a corrupted and almost unstoppable power in order protect the innocent. This is a game that let me save Aramis Stilton, a man who had fought for workers rights and was destroyed by the Duke for it.

(as an aside, I love Stilton; he grew up poor and earned his wealth honestly. He earned everything he had, so of course the nobility didn’t think he deserved it, because rich people think the only honest way to have money is to receive it from one’s parents. He never forgot where he came from and tried to do right by his workers, so the nobility destroyed him for it. Restoring his mind through time shenanigans is one of the most… most right things I have ever done in a game. I felt fortunate to be given that option)

I think, if the witches were human, if they were victims who deserved better, then the game should have supported that through its mechanics and narrative. But the heart--which, last I knew, told the truth--told me that they were monsters, and those that weren’t had lost their humanity and were on their way to becoming monsters.

I would love other ways to solve problems. When the heart tells me that this man beats his son so hard his bruises last a month, I want to put a stop to it. But what can I do? My only verbs are “knock out” or “murder.” Should I knock out a monster that rejoices in slaughter? Or should I put it down so that it won’t kill again?

Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I felt that the ending only considered whether I had performed violence, not whether that violence needed to be performed. In my own life, I went through hell and chose not to come out of it a monster. I don’t know how to justify these women performing child abuse, animal abuse, and murder. Like vampires, they are monsters. No matter how tragic their origins, they prey on the weak and defenseless. I don’t like violence, but I think maybe there are times when it’s an unfortunate requirement. They might have been powerless at one point, but in the game, their actions showed they did nothing but punch down. Personally, I think we should punch up or not at all.

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