#just keeping trying strategies

[finefiddleheaded]

Something I've noticed that's been helping me a lot lately is shifting the question from "what can I handle right now" to "what would make me feel better right now?" It makes me stop and honestly assess without pressure of Productivity. Sometimes the answer really is 'lie down in the dark under the covers' but quite often I'm finding if I detach my well-being from my productivity the answer is usually a list that looks like: eat something I can picture, drink water, consume salt (for my dysautonomia), take a shower, take my medication, put in earplugs for sensory overload. Some days it even includes 'go for a walk' or 'go to the library.'

For me to get here its required some previous experience with doing those things and knowing what works for me when, but it's made a huge difference. I've been regularly stopping mental spirals and sidestepping executive dysfunction walls that would have kept me in bed all day.

Also once I start taking of one bad it lightens the variety of bad feelings and helps me maybe target some other things that would now make me feel better.

That said, I have never been able to make myself better through brow-beating or berating myself about healthy habits or what I Should Be Doing. It started with the phrase "be kind to yourself" and I built from there. Taking a moment to answer the question "what would make me feel better right now?" with honesty (and patience/acceptance if the answer is that lying in bed would be the thing that would truly make you feel better right now) is an extension of Be Kind to Yourself.

Idk, thought I'd share in case it helps anyone.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

thinking about a whumpee on a forced march through rough terrain

hands tied in front of them, on foot while their captors are mounted, sleeping out in the open, forced to beg for adequate food and water

maybe they're barefoot, a captured royal in silken robes

maybe they're in a torn suit or soldier's uniform

maybe they were stripped at the start, increasing the exposure to the elements, the humiliation

are they a terrified mess from the beginning, or do they try to endure with dignity? how long before they're stumbling, barely putting one foot in front of the other? how long before they fall?

[ashestoashes7]

Andrew Minyard would count cards.

[cordyceph]

went to bed and woke up in a cold sweat realizing that claudia's play, the birdie one, is both a direct analogy for her story and also foreshadowing of her death WHILE ALSO nodding to pauls death

claudia'a single minded, desperate drive for freedom eventually lead her directly to her death. she was "nailed down" by lestat (by LOUIS, actually- lestat only kept her for him.), and tore herself free at the loss of her 'foot,' being a stand in for the personal pain she suffered for freedom

no matter what she or anyone did, she was going to die painfully, because she was so desperate to be free that everything was suffocating. lestat, louis, romania, the coven. the only thing that didnt rot in her mind was madeline, because... there simply wasnt time. madeline was fresh and new and, given time, would have probably suffered the same heel-turn claudia gave to everything.

of course thats because she shared louis' hopeful outlook. being free of her parents? would fix everything. when it didn't? maybe if she had louis, it would be worth it. but its not, lestats still here, louis is still in love with him... killing lestat, thatll fix it, and she and louis will be happy in romania, right, the homeland for vampirekind? not quite, so better try paris, the city of love. that doesnt work. the coven, though, will give her what she wants, right? she'll be happy with other vampires?

the only person who makes her happy is? a modern version of lestat? a weird white woman she met on happenstance, who has little to no care for societal norms or faux pas. a blunt, kind of funny, kind of sad woman who lost her family but has a capacity for enduring because what else is she going to do? die? no, she cant do that. she had no friends because she was weird and offputting and had dangerous rumors, no hangups on loving claudia, no hangups on dying or being a killer.

that's... just lestat. without the immortality and the specific traumas, of course, but like. claudia's most beloved person was a funhouse mirror of her most hated. which really speaks volumes for what they could have had, because it wasnt just a clash of personalities. it was lestats bpd clashing with hers and both of their attachment to louis clashing. if lestat had been better at sharing, if louis had been better at loving both of them, if claudia had been less angry at the world for nothing but existing? maybe they could have been a good family. a happy one forever, just like they all wanted, but were unable to give each other

[picaroroboto]

Managers

[chussyracing]

you don't need enemies when carlos is your teammate. the poisoned chalice alex is going to receive. i can't wait

recycling my own meme from first day of break when we got the carlos to williams announcement

[ageless-aislynn]

Nowwwwww, I facetiously mentioned at the bottom of this post about the Halo: Reach achievement:

To do that, you have to go under or close to par time on pretty much each level ON LEGENDARY.

I have beaten Reach on Legendary but it probably took me closer to 30 hours than 3 because I did my slow, methodical strategies to get through. I did the par time achievement by running past everything I could on Easy. Can I combine the two successfully?

I decided to give the first level "Winter Contingency" a try (after watching some Youtube vids on getting this achievement, of course 😉). Par time is 15 minutes.

That was my third try, the first was 16 and some minutes, the second got it to 15 and some and then that one got under the par by 32 seconds! I should note that this is considered one of the easiest levels to do on Legendary and the guide I watched by the ever-awesome Halo Completionist did it under 12 minutes and you're going to need every spare second you can scrap together to give you a buffer for some of the long, difficult levels. But still!

It's silly, I know, but I feel so proud of me! I'm an old lady (well, middle-aged, if I'm being generous 😜) playing Halo with shaky hands but I made under par time on Legendary! 🥳🥳🥳

PS - Tried it again and got 13:55!

[triangle-strategy-notes]

Gustadolph, Thalas, and Erika Concept Art

Concept/reference art for Gustadolph, Erika, and Thalas! Translation notes and image id under the cut.

Translation notes:

"Will you kindly keep your illegitmate hands off of me?!" was probably more directly translated like, "You're a bastard, stop existing in my vicinity." But it was a question and also used some polite language, so I changed the wording around a little to suit that.

"Hair tufts, eyes, and lips are all in the same place" was one I felt pretty uncertain about and ended up going a lot off of context. It definitely seemed to be saying something about hair, and was probably saying something about lips and eyes, but there might have been something about eyebrows or something else in there too.

"Wham" was a mimetic word that meant something more like "violent; holding nothing back."

Image ID:

[id: The first two out of the five images are the full Japanese pages of concept art for Gustadolph, Thalas, and Erika. The first page has their official canon portraits. In the third image, which is a translation of the notes on the first, there is an illustrator's note that reads, "Gustadolph is a beautiful yet terrifying man with long, silver hair. Personally, I find that his design puts me at ease since he has more of a restrained royal look instead of the typical stylish villain look. (Tatsuaki Urushihara)" and another illustrator's note that reads, "I remember thinking the three Aesfrost siblings were spot on from the first rough draft. Erika has a cat-like quality to her. (Yasuaki Arai)"

The fourth and fifth image are translations of the second page. The top half of the page is titled "Commander of Country B" and has several images of Gustadolph. One has a caption pointing to his ruff collar that says, "bird feathers." Another two notes next to his face read, "He's beautiful but rather cold…" and "He's overflowing with dangerous charisma." The second half of the page has pictures of Thalas and Erika. It's titled "Commander of Country B's Younger Sister and Brother". There is a drawing of Erika having thrown Frederica to the floor. Erika's dialogue reads, "Will you kindly get your illegitimate hands off of me?!" and there is a note next to Frederica that reads, "Liberty gets hit and falls down." In another drawing Thalas is holding a sword, both he and the sword spattered with blood. His dialogue reads, "I suppose even the lowly masses have some red blood in their veins…" There is a note between the two of them that reads, "The character sheet said they were an unlikely duo, but since I had already done 'Consortium Merchants' and 'C1 and C2 House Heads,' I decided to draw them as twins." Another note between mirroring portraits of Thalas and Erika's reads, "Hair tufts, eyes, and lips are all in the same place." There are also some small copies of the word "whisper" between them. There is an illustrator's note at the bottom that reads, "Erika and Thalas's setting and plotline never changed much, and even in the trial version they had a nice, simple bully feel to them that made them easy to design. (Tatsuaki Urushihara)" /end id]

[unnonexistence]

trying a new writing strategy: to-do list style outline

[ultra-violetra]

so I wanted to say that since I'm really enjoying this event, I will likely continue to post about it, including analysis. I want to talk about the game mechanics and strategies but it's been so hard to do without people thinking you're talking about the discourse. I think as a community we all need to be a little less jumpy about this event, because I've seen posts of people being afraid to talk about the team their watching because they don't want to be dragged into discourse. I think a lot of genuinely lighthearted posts about a fun event are being misconstrued as something malicious

all of my posts are made with the spirit of friendly competition. a lot of other people are posting like this too! people should be able to do this without getting accused of hating ccs or being unfair

i've been posting a lot about red team, specifically because that's who i've been watching the most. i watch pretty much every english speaking qsmp member, it just so happens that right now i have a sub to foolish so i've been watching him so i don't have to deal with ads. because of this, i will probably continue to talk about red team the most. i'll talk about blue and green teams when i watch them! if i had the time to watch vods from every team and do a complete strategy analysis, i would. but I don't have that time. i genuinely don't care which team wins, but that doesn't mean I won't be rooting for certain teams on certain days. like on day 2, red team going from barely visible on the score bar to winning the day was an amazing underdog story! of course i'm going to root for them! and for day 3 I was rooting for green team because i want to see fitmc tryhard!

at the end of the day this is a fun event. it's fun for the ccs so it should be fun for the fandom. and if you're scrolling thru tags and getting upset/annoyed/angry at people posting about a friendly competition, you might need to reevaluate yourself

[windor-truffle]

It occurred to me the other day that Asbel is the only party member without *any* sort of spell artes. I guess friendship really is his magic 😅

[arbitrarygreay]

More evidence that Alder would have done gangbusters focusing on espionage: Petra notes in 2x4 that "Intelligence does often have a hard time keeping track of the General's comings and goings." Literally the person in charge of keeping track of information and shit says that Alder and her Biddies were giving them the slip all of the time over the decades. It's like the inverse of the Marshal being able to hunt anyone down, Alder is able to slip the leash when she wants. Which kind of goes against the popular fanon of Alder being stuck in meetings and in the unavoidable public eye all of the time, and finding it a burden. It turns out, Alder not only made a habit of getting around surveillance, but the other side of that coin is that what publicity/propaganda/speeching/posters/etc. she did do was of her own desire. If she didn't want to be a public face, she could choose to avoid it all. (To where when Nicte forced her into the Warding Circle and Petra appeared to make announcements with Silver instead, it was notable by everyone, a duty that Alder relinquished reluctantly.)

[carouselofswift]

.

[iceeericeee]

I wonder how many tags i can add on to this

[gayfrenchfry]

Ok so I'm working on my Edward scissorhands costume for Halloween and you know what I just thought of???

Edward scissorhands drag/burlesque performance????

The leather? The suspenders? The potential to use the scissorhands to cut off clothing?

[makerofmadness]

SHE HAS AN ACHIEVEMENT DJDJDJJDJDJDJDJDJD