#this probably isn't good for my mental health

[caught-tumbling]

I've been hospitalized and I've worked in mental health so I have some suggestions

1) You will see things that you don't understand. That's ok. As long as the behavior isn't harmful its fine. Unusual sentence structure, unusual requests, unusual movements, unusual associations, etc are just how some people function. So if you don't understand why someone is doing something try to just take it in stride, try not to laugh, stare, or look disgusted. When I was hospitalized a patient had a compulsion (I think) to shout their full name whenever someone said their first name, then they always looked embarrassed. So the best staff members just pretended it didn't happen which didn't stop the behavior but at least the patient was more at ease because they weren't being shamed.

2) People in psych wards often have a very dark sense of humor. Gallows humor gets us through. People will casually throw out the most upsetting and traumatic anecdotes as "funny" stories. You don't have to laugh along, just don't be too surprised. One benefit to being in a psych ward is a level of understanding most people don't have outside. People can drop a joke about the most horrifying shit they've survived and no one freaks out, they just laugh and share something equally messed up. That dark comradery was a weirdly healing part of my recovery. Sometimes as a staff member you'll have to intervene if people start looking uncomfortable but in general you just gotta shrug and move on.

3) Compassion, compassion, compassion. The difference between a good stay and a bad stay is compassion. Treat every patient as if they were a loved one. My worst stay the staff treated us like dangerous cattle. They didn't speak to us except to give orders, they ignored people in pain and distress, they refused every request just because they could. My best stay the staff ate with us, they played card games with us, they offered a hand to hold when someone was scared, they treated us like human beings. Just sitting with someone for a while can be huge.

4) Please report things. PLEASE REPORT THINGS. If a patient is harassing another patient, report it. If a patient is harassing an employee, report it. If a coworker is being cruel or neglectful towards patients, report it. If your reports do nothing then escalate it. I've reported patients, nurses, doctors, teams, even organizations both as a patient and as a professional. I've called the police. I've gotten people fired. You will need to do that sometimes. It sucks and is a little nerve wracking but you need to advocate for people's safety. The reports I made as a professional were taken way more seriously than the reports I made as a patient. The system is set up to dismiss patients so employees need to be more proactive. Please be an advocate. Some of the people you'll work with don't have any support outside the hospital, those are the most vulnerable people you'll probably ever meet and you won't always know who's in that group.

5) Talk to the patients. Avoid phrases like "I understand what you're going through" and use phrases like "I know this is hard" or "I'm here to help." If someone is having a hallucination or delusion that's upsetting sometimes it's better to work with the delusion than to deny it completely. If someone is worried there's bugs in their food just saying "no, that's ridiculous" won't help. But saying "I'll check to make sure there's no bugs" can help immensely. Some people will be scared of you due to anxiety, medical trauma, other trauma, or paranoia. You can't always change their mind. But you can show signs that you are a safe person. Little stuff like getting them an extra blanket, asking how they're doing, including them in their treatment plans, etc are vital but overlooked.

Help Me Train Nurses About Psych Stuff

I do a presentation at our hospital aimed demystifying mental illness and the people who live with it. The talk is for medical-surgical nurses, so specifically staff that does NOT work psych who feel ignorant about treating that population. A lot of the people I'm talking to are also young and still developing the foundation of their nursing practice.

If you've ever been in the hospital as a psych patient (or a psych patient navigating the medical system in general), what would you want the hospital staff to know based on your experiences? What advice or insight would you give?

I'd especially love anything about positive experiences, things that helped you, what someone did that improved the situation, stuff like that. In addition to saying what not to do, I'd love to give staff actionable things they CAN do instead.

[dogtoling]

General life- and blog update , since I assume at least a few people might have been wondering where I've been and what i've been up to recently. I obviously haven't been posting or drawing much this year in general. This will probably be an important post if you care about stuff on this blog, and I already rambled on Sheezy, but that site isn't very populated yet and it's also very good at hiding journals so let's just ramble again...

The summary of this post if you hate reading: I'm heavily considering just stepping away from Splatoon. That decision obviously would affect this blog (mostly, my OCs, which is kinda most of the blog at this point). I don't think the blog itself will go anywhere, and I'll probably use it for something in the future... alternatively i'll cherry pick stuff from here into an archive for people who like the worldbuilding.

Longer post under cut:

So what have I been up to this year? The answer is quite simple: NOTHING. Like, actually absolutely nothing. Aside from Art Fight, this has probably been one of my worst art output years of all time, which is really frustrating. That's between my horrendous mental health and depression chasms this year and a complete lack of both focus and inspiration (which can also get chalked down to the depression to a degree, yeah). So the very real reason to why there hasn't been much activity on this blog this year is because I just haven't Done Anything in general.

Now because I know there will be a few people who think "that's fine! you shouldn't judge yourself based on productivity!" you're right! I also agree. However the issue for me specifically is that most (if not all) the time I spend NOT drawing or creating, I spend sitting around wishing I could start drawing or creating, because that is like the 1 thing that keeps me sane on this freaking earth. Unfortunately coming up with OC scenarios in my head doesn't really result in output I can feel fulfilled by in any form as much as I wish it did, lol.

Now; The Issue. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you spend 9 months trying to finish like a dozen OC pages that you COULD do in a week or 2 if you wanted to, then there's probably more than just the problem of executive dysfunction (even though that's at least 60% of it for sure). Obviously my other major problem is that I live by imaginary rules and structures that make sense, but aren't actually useful at ALL in reality and are more than a hindrance if anything (the mental to do-list in my head that says i can't do X until I've done Y doesn't do very much if task Y takes 10 months and I also don't want to do it, and it also has no structured ending).

How does this tie into stepping away from Splatoon, you may ask. Well, the issue is that I have foreseeably fallen out of love with the series. Which isn't exactly news lol. Currently, I'm not even sure i will get the next game, if and when the time comes. Yes, the loss of interest is also expected, given that Splatoon 3 has ended and every fandom has this kind of downtime and lukewarm in-between-titles period. But the truth is that modern Splatoon (almost 10 years old!!!!) is tangibly different from the way the series was back when I fell in love with it. That was Splatoon 1, and while the series has improved in a lot of aspects and is thriving, it's grown in a direction that I just don't really like. Splatoon 3 had the most freaking horrendous, immersion breaking story mode they could've done, then they followed it up with a DLC story that was pretty cool but also compounded a lot of my fears about the series' future and played into every single thing i do not want Splatoon stories to be - fully character focused, random fucking villain, mundane event that's unrealistically world-threatening just because a kids video game needs a scary climax even though it's immersion breaking AGAIN, the whole thing taking place in cyberspace and thus offering basically no worldbuilding even though there is SO MUCH WORLD. I COULD GO ON.

The gist of it is that nowadays, rather than playing Splatoon and being inspired and excited at what comes next, I mostly find myself dreading what dumbass plot they will do next to throw a wrench in the otherwise good stuff. And when that's like THE main approach I have to what's supposed to be my favorite series, it is HARROWING. I can't even really blame the game for this; the story is NOT its selling point, the developers probably do their best to get the bits to us that they really want to tell, and at the end of the day the game is unfortunately a product. Worldbuilding for Splatoon is fun to a point. It's less fun when in order to actually write or create something coherent, instead of filling in the blanks, the blanks are 90% of the freaking thing. At that point you're just better off making something of your own instead of being anchored onto an IP that gives more problems than answers and occasionally shoots you with like a machine gun. Working in the realm of Splatoon is frustrating because more often than not, the questions I have ARE NOT MINE TO ANSWER, and the likelihood that the specific-ass questions I need answers to will ever be actually addressed is really low.

Tying this back to my OCs. Obviously I love my OCs more than I love myself which admittedly isn't that high of a bar but you get the point. The problem is that I spend a lot of time mulling over worldbuilding that, again, frankly isn't mine to do. Because if I want it to be Splatoon, then it should be mostly accurate to how Splatoon is! But the problem with that is that there's really not THAT MUCH worldbuilding in the series that you can work with, and most of the core game mechanics are just abstract enough that it's actually horrendous to try and come up with workarounds and ways for things to make sense that don't require just constructing a full knockoff version mirror dimension of the game and saying fuck everything that's in place here because Inkopolis Plaza literally has no roads in or out of there and I have no fucking idea how that's allowed when your only option is to jump the fence (or, nowadays, take the train which also isnt connected to a street as far as I remember). Between the face value issue and the lack of REALLY IMPORTANT worldbuilding, like - I will always come back to this - THE INK TANK'S FUNCTION 10 YEARS DOWN THE LINE - there's a goddamn ocean of plot holes and things that end up being obstacles to creativity rather than inspiration. I feel like I'm pretty solidly at the point (and have been for a while) where hanging onto Splatoon is really only contributing to creativity block and frustration with lack of freedom and the ability to actually do things.

So I guess those are my reasonings that I've put together just sitting here for the time being. The TL;DR is that I wish I could just do stuff without Splatoon's canon getting in the way, which is a really stupid problem to have if you're making Splatoon OCs. I feel this frustration extremely strongly every time I have to work with actual bigger aspects of the world; we still don't have an Inkopolis map, we don't know what the world around Inkopolis looks like, we don't know what the wilderness is like aside from Just Normal Forest and Desert and very few snippets as to what modern wildlife MIGHT be, I still don't know how the fuck the Inklings teleport to the goddamn arctic ocean to play a turf war at Shipshape Cargo co. These are all actually really important things if you're trying to establish a setting in any kind of storytelling that's outside of immediate city bounds (and even there, you need to know the layout of the city and its important areas). Also a fucking mutant bear and a baby salmon and a squid not wearing suitable gear went to space and fought on a rocket in space. These are some things that would give me peace of mind to not have to deal with in my own writing, probably.

So where do we go from here? Unsure. I haven't really made a decision on this front yet, though right now I'm leaning more towards actually going ahead with trying to do my own thing. That will result in obvious design and setting changes for my OCs whenever I get around to it. This blog probably won't go anywhere (again, unless I impulse delete it during a mood swing like i've almost done on like three separate occasions this year), but it will probably get less use, and I will probably end up making a new blog to post about whatever I end up doing once I get to a point where it feels like it makes sense. There's a chance that I will delete this blog and put all the interesting stuff on an archive blog for the people who are here just for the worldbuilding. My actual true passion for a long time now hasn't even been Splatoon anymore, it's just been cephalopods. I'm kind of done having Splatoon get in the way of the cephalopods, as thankful as I am that it introduced me to them...

If you read this to the end heres a treat for you = 🍪

[fluffomatic]

Alright, so I've been gone for a while again.

I'm really sorry for disappearing again with no warning. My physical health hasn't really been getting better, which has been making my mental health plummet. To say I haven't been doing good is an understatement, I feel like I have more bad days them good at this point. I'm working on it slowly, I'm trying to get out of it again.

For the time being, I'm taking a break on commissions, meaning they're officially closed, as are requests of any kind. I'm gonna try drawing again with no strings attached. I feel drawing for myself can help pull me out of this funk. To those who have ordered a commission, I will get to it, I promise, but it's gonna take a while. I'll try to get back to them quickly, but I need a break before I start resenting art again 😅

In good news, the new Dragon Age came out on Halloween, and I officially finished it today. It's probably why I came back here cause I don't have that to put all my time into anymore, lol. Luckily, that game made me want to draw again, so fingers crossed. I already have headcanons and stuff for the characters, and I can't wait to introduce you all to my Rook!

Again, I'm sorry for going on an impromptu hiatus, I'll try to post about it if it happens again so I don't leave you all in the dark. I know my heath isn't great right now, but I am trying to get thorough this no matter how much pain I'm in. Advice to anyone experiencing any pain, get it checked out quickly, cause it can and will get worse. Don't let it get worse.

[pinkdreamcollectorsworld]

In regards to 9-1-1

I know a lot of people had a lot of mixed reactions to the recent episode, along with certain interviews that were dropped in the following days. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I'm not bothered by any of it. Because I am. I feel like I kinda got bitch slapped by the universe 😅 (and tim) (what the fuck tim) Whatever they had going on was nothing short of just plain lazy writing and shitty planning for certain plots.

That being said, I am so happy for chim and Maddie. I'm happy for Eddie and the fact that he's finding his joy again. It's good to see.

What I'm not happy with, is everything surrounding Buck and Tommy. The breakup to me felt kinda random, and the random line from Maddie about Abby "turning people gay" wtf?? And the whole conversation between Buck and Tommy in the loft. I'm not gonna dive into it because I'll just get kinda peeved all over again, both with Tommy's lines and Olivers interviews, it's just sad to see.

Ik there are people leaving the fandom, and show and there's some who aren't. I was gonna quietly slip out of the back door because getting into discourse with other people isn't my jam. But I wanted to be honest about where Im at.

My mental health hasn't been great lately. It hasn't been great last week with the election either. But before that I would have almost weekly bouts of anxiety about what direction the show was going with bucktommy. On top of that, It became harder to filter out discourse around the actors and show in general as well. So as you can guess it's been pretty stressful. Mix that with seasonal depression and you've got yourself a mess.

What I'm saying is I personally am taking a break from watching the show, probably until it returns in March since that's when hiatus ends and I won't be interacting at the same level as I was before within the fandom(still gonna lurk tho) because of how my mental health has been affected.

I had different little projects planned out for Bucktommy but because of the breakup it's kinda up in the air if I ever will get around to finishing them.

(lou has me in the divorce btw, and no I'm not elaborating I shouldn't have to)

Take care of yourself guys 💓

[jiraivampdoll]

jirai to me...? this won't be for everyone. some of these might seem too surrealist to be about anything but I promise they very much are deeper than just "trippy dreamscape". if you love abstraction (like me) you'll probably know these movies. if you don't enjoy the bizzare, I've included some here that are straightforward. cw for gore, suicide, abuse, rape and exploitation. much love fellow landmines, take care of yourself please. though i personally loooove watching movies that hurt me because it's how i feel alive

TAG (Real Onigokko or Riaru Onigokko) 2015 is a subtle movie about rape, sexual exploitation, lack of access to abortion and suicide. these are themes and not overt depictions, but it is VERY graphic (gore)

it had to be subtle because it is taboo to talk about. it is a wild adaptation of a book (Riaru Onigokko) and is hardly related to the book and therefore the other film adaptations of the book as it's interested in exploring a different thesis and was targeted at the sort of men who enjoyed the original novel & movie adaptions. it's sort of surrealist and therefore confusing, but it is definitely talking about very important shit.

Perfect Blue (Pâfekuto Burû) this movie created Black Swan. Black Swan is a Westernization of Perfect Blue. I have SO MUCH to say about this movie, PB is one of my top 3 fav of all time, but I refuse to clog this post up with too much babbling. cw for rape depicted. this movie is about dealing with trauma via dissociation, not a choice (as it isn't) but as a mechanism for surviving horrific events.

Paprika (Papurika) 2006. if you can't handle Perfect Blue, please do not watch Paprika. it's PB on hardmode. Paprika is about the psychiatric institution and it's politics, as well as trauma (dissociation) repressed memories and the ideal self vs the actual self. if you like SEL (Serial Experiments Lain) you may enjoy Paprika. it is very abstract (like PB) but still very on the nose.

Pearl. This movie wouldn't exist without Perfect Blue, but it is a whole separate beast. It's SO good. this is about dealing with an abusive mother, with allusions to an incestuous father. as someone with both & as a result, many mental health conditions, Pearl feels like a VERY BPD & maladaptive daydreaming disorder character. some argue that she's not, it's all interpersonal/interpretation, so if she isn't to you, that's cool.

Black Swan. the Perfect Blue adaptation you've seen everywhere on tumblr, and likely even seen. it's a tamer version of PB and less surrealist, but still dealing with the same topics and even some new ones (sexploitation in ballet, repressed homosexuality) as a former ballet dancer, I really love this movie. it speaks to me.

Hard Candy. this movie is everything to me, but a bit too much for most. cw for pedophilia, child sexually exploitive material, sexual abuse of children and suicide. this is a revenge film. as a victim of CSEM and childhood sexual exploitation and abuse, I love this movie. it's so fucking satisfying.

please feel free to send me asks or DMs about movies, I'm a huge movie watcher as I love analyzing the themes in art. to date I've seen thousands of movies. international, Hollywood blockbuster, indie, horror to slice of life, I love movies and I collect them as a hobby. if you want a more thorough dissection of these or any other movies I recommend, drop by and chat because I have so many movie recs that aren't really jirai but are adjacent!

jirai media recommendations (feel free 2 suggest more)

some r still ongoing btw

-Young Adult Matters

movie (2021)

tw: sh, substance abuse, bullying, violence, gore, prostitution, death, sa, homelessness, sexual content, abuse, profanity, unwanted pregnancy (prob more im forgetting)

-Tomorrow I’m gonna be someone’s girlfriend

manga (2019-2024) and tv show (2022-2023)

tw: sh, profanity, sexual content, violence, substance abuse (again prob more im forgetting)

-Kairiki Bear

musician

song suggestions: darling dance, bug, failure girl, villain

-Isana

musician

song suggestions: Menhera Janai Mon!, Loved Smoothie

-Sensitive Boy

manga (2022-2024)

tw: sexual themes, sa, sh, violence (prob more i still need 2 read it ngl)

-Sentimental Death Loop

video game (2023)

tw: death, partial nudity, sexual themes, profanity, sh, suicide, violence, gore,

-Needy Streamer Overload

game (2022)

tw: sh, sexual themes, violence, substance abuse, blood, profanity, death, cults, vomiting (prob more that im forgetting)

-Strawberry Painkiller

musician

song suggestions: Bloodsucking Dreams, Grave Skull, Thousand Knives, Sugar Truth, Pharmakeia

-Candye Syrup

musician

song suggestions: idol of death, sweet suicide, C♡S.I.S

-Hookah Haze

game (2024)

tw: death, terminal illness, stalking, substance abuse (its just hookah im pretty sure but still gonna include the warning lmao)

-Magical Girl Site

anime (2018) and manga (2014-2019)

tw: bullying, violence, suicide, abuse, blood (prob more i havent finished it)

feel free 2 suggest more! out of all of these i suggest young adult matters, kairiki bear, nso, and strawberry painkiller the most!

[the---hermit]

11|11|2024

I am not in the best mental health place at the moment, and it's fucking up my sleep of course. I feel so tired an unmotivated when I get up, it's not good. I have started working on the materials for a new class today. I decided that I will be starting with my history of political and social institutions class, since I have a bad feeling that it will have less exam dates than the other class I was planning on taking in January. I did email the professor to ask for the exam dates, but as I am writing this, he hasn't answered yet, so I am just going with my gut. Studying for this class will be a bit weird because I have to study some materials I worked on in my past degree, which means I am already in possession of a great set of notes I wrote. I decided that my work for this class will start with rereading and rewriting the notes I wrote in the past. Writing in probably the main part of my study method, so I feel like this is a good way to get back into the materials and topic without wasting time. If I were to only reread the notes it would be way less productive, and rewriting the notes isn't a task I dislike, I actually do like sitting down at my desk and hadwriting my informations with arrows and colours. It's also a task that does require focus but not too much brain power, because since I was the one writing the notes in the first place the material is exactly how I like it, direct, with short sentences and a structure I easily get into. Ideally I'd like to finish the rewriting by the end of the week, but I am not sure yet I'll manage. After doing that I might do a quick reread of the book to get a fresh view of the general thing, but honestly I think it will be a last minute decision. In the meantime the professor will hopefully answer and I'll have an actual plan for the winter exam session.

productivity list:

read first thing in the morning

emailed professor

started rereading and rewriting political intitution notes (I worked on the entire first chapter of the book the notes refer to)

duolingo

📖: The Adventures of Amina Al Sirafi

[lilasbutterflygarden]

WTF

Someone stole my Amazon package!

I bet it was Marinette!

[analogue-dreamer]

Heading out for a late night drive to clear my head,, blast some music, sing/scream/shout my heart out to the lyrics and just enjoy the cool air on my face…Have a good Friday night all ✌️🏼🤓

[aromanticbastards]

the process of getting therapy that my insurance pays for is stupid enough that i want to kill every single fucking person involved in designing this process

(suicide mention tw for the tags i didn't get to put that as the first tag so now it's here)

[mypeggableromance]

.

[robinsnest2111]

wondering if being constantly misunderstood/misinterpreted for most of my life is the driving factor behind me trying so hard to make people understand that the stuff I feel bad about/responsible for ACTUALLY WAS THAT BAD/WAS MY DAMN FAULT even if everyone says it wasn't...

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

in 2024 I wanna stop hearing about betterhelp

[piplupod]

once again i get annoyed that i am so different from the average person because ppl make assumptions about me that are so untrue and get on my nerves HGSDJKL yesterday in the kitchen the lady was talking about how she and her husband are starting a hobby farm and i brought up how i'd love to have a sheep farm and looked into the logistics of it a year or two ago (before realizing how unattainable it would be lol i do not have the money to start that. plus now i am unfortunately disabled in a way that would make it nigh impossible to run). and immediately she said to me "oh you'd have to be okay with butchering the sheep though" expecting me to get all uncomfortable and i was just like "...yeah? i know? i actually do a bit of taxidermy work at home, and have looked into working in the funeral industry in the past" and she was so surprised and intrigued by the taxidermy stuff hdsgjkl like......

idk i just get frustrated when ppl automatically assume that i am unable to do smth or that i'll be put off by smth and then they act on that assumption in their behaviour towards me. i know it's nothing personal but i do feel like oftentimes it is misogyny-based since I am read as being a woman by anybody who knows me in any capacity more than just Strangers and less than "you are someone I feel wholly safe with" (because then i'd share that i am in fact not a woman lmfao). and it just irritates me because I feel like if I were a man then people wouldn't bring up the whole "oh you'd have to KILL animals !!!" whenever i talk about how i've always wanted to work on a farm, or they wouldn't assume I'm afraid of bugs, or they wouldn't assume I am grossed out by dead things, etc etc etc. i just hate the differences in behaviour and assumptions.

[barkingangelbaby]

venting so much i ran out of tags lmao

[elegomez]

was constantly angry. unfollowed a couple of people. no longer constantly angry. unfollowing is truly the best medicine.

[connectionterminated13]

How old was mike when he died? What happens to evan in this au? (Death swap au)

Is henry death too? I was searching through the tags but you know how much tblr loves to hide posts

Michael was 16 when he died in 1986

Evan still got his head chomped on. He then spent most of his childhood in and out of hospital and intensive care. The bite and long hours alone only worsened all of his inherited mental illnesses Which William exploited. In the present day at 20 William and Evan work together on the whole we're gonna find immortality through killing children thing.

Evan always feels incredibly bad after they do a murder but rationalizes it as progressing science and generally making things better for people.

Nope Henry is alive and well! He still had his depression after Sammy died but Charlie was able to pull him out of it easier and stayed with him once her mother left. In the present day he's doing fine and doesn't know what his business partner is up to at all