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The primary reaction this seems to be eliciting from me now is "Oh god, teenagers". Which, I think, is probably a compliment to the writing, they're managing to do a decent job depicting the kind of awkward overdramatic social dynamics that seemed all-important at that age.
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Apr 22, 2022 03:12
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I already mentioned this to you offline but yes. I'm here for your commentary more than for the game itself, and the updates can get a bit dry otherwise.
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May 1, 2022 03:24
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Falconier111 posted:But whoever heard of a screenshot LP with a set update schedule A hit, a palpable hit. (I'm in this picture and I don't like it.) I have, in theory, heard of them. Maybe even seen them. But I don't know how to do it.
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May 3, 2022 03:16
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Falconier111 posted:or, even worse, drink it straight from the bottle Especially in the case of red wine, uh, I would not recommend drinking from the bottle. Red wine (especially as it ages) often develops sediment, which you can avoid getting into the glass with proper pouring technique, but if you're drinking from the bottle everything's going to get mixed up and it'll probably end up in your mouth. It's not harmful, but it's definitely unpleasant, you do not want to be drinking the sediment. rannum posted:I can see the "this is a bit tonanlly dissonant" theory, it really does give a bit of whiplash going from the fairly serious sayori sequence directly to Spooky Goofs The timing does seem a bit off; it seems like all the characters have sort of reverted to neutral mode for this sequence, in spite of the character development that's been happening based on our route choices. I want to say this scene feels like it should have happened earlier in the narrative, somehow? (Though there's not necessarily a great place to move it to, so that might not work either.) I suspect this scene is probably unchanged between routes, and one of the reasons it's skippable is to keep it from getting monotonous on replay?
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May 10, 2022 01:32
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Falconier111 posted:
God, this hits close to home. I've said things like this before. One of the lessons I had to learn, over many years living with (treatment-resistant) depression, is that no matter how much you may feel something like this, actually saying it to someone puts them in a very difficult position and isn't fair to them. I'm not going to judge anyone for expressing this feeling, because keeping things in is its own kind of unhealthy, but it usually doesn't go well. I may very well feel that I'm a drain on people around me, and find it hard to imagine them getting enough enjoyment or value out of my company to make up for it. But that's a decision I have to let them make for themselves. Saying "I don't understand why you spend time with me, I just make you miserable" just puts them in the uncomfortable position of having to attempt to refute it, which is (a) uncomfortable, don't put people in a position they feel obligated to praise you, (b) futile, because from the position of being depressed you're not going to believe anything positive they say about you anyway, and (c) insults their judgment. It's just a conversation that makes everyone involved feel worse. (Let's not ask how many times I had to argue with my partner about this for it to sink in... it was a lot easier to convince myself to stop doing it because it hurt her than any argument that it wasn't healthy for me.) On the subject of masking, one way I like to describe depression is that it doesn't necessarily manifest as constant misery, it's more like if you imagine normal affect as a sinusoid, depression is applying a uniform downshift to it. You still go through relative highs and lows, they just fall in different places on an absolute scale. Under this analogy, say, a good day for me might rise to the level of an average day for someone who isn't depressed (and anyone who doesn't see me very often is more likely to only see me during those relative highs, because I'm less likely to go out when things get bad and my energy levels tank, and therefore have no apparent reason to think I suffer from depression). I don't even have to intentionally mask to end up with a practical outcome that looks like masking.
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May 20, 2022 02:24
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It looks like you've got some problems with missing portraits during the section where the mother is talking, there are a lot of "mom"s in the text where I suspect line breaks/portraits should be. And there's a missing closing image tag toward the end of the post Falconier111 posted:[img]https://lpix.org/4295647/bs 22 b 06.jpg Falconier111 posted:Maybe my parents were right when they kept up that 'healthy body, healthy mind' mantra. This line reminds me of an ongoing debate I have with my mother, who is always very keen to remind me that research suggests exercise helps with depression. I'm more inclined to think that this is a case of correlation not implying causation, and that lack of depression is more likely to cause exercise/physical activity than the other way around. But, obviously, I can't prove this. (As someone who doesn't enjoy exercise, I find it hard to imagine forcing myself to do something I hate would help with my emotional state. But, well, the research does say what it says.)
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May 24, 2022 02:56
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Antistar01 posted:I was about to say the same thing; that whole conversation really felt like a Public Service Announcement. I'd been thinking this too, honestly, but I wasn't planning to say anything about it. Part of this is that writing natural-sounding dialogue is difficult. But, well, most fictional dialogue isn't natural or realistic, even when it's well written. (If you don't believe me on this, pay attention to some random conversations around you and think about what they'd look like as a transcript. Or, hell, transcribe a couple minutes of a podcast or something.) Real people frequently interrupt and talk over each other, but you rarely see that in fiction. Also, people interrupt themselves! They think aloud, they stutter, they express half-formed thoughts, they start saying something then think better of it and stop, they pause and have awkward silences... there are all sorts of patterns of expression in real dialogue that we understand perfectly well, but which don't translate well into a text medium (or even into something like theatre or film). Getting dialogue to feel natural is one of those things I'd say is more of an art than a science; when I write this is definitely something I spend a lot of time trying to get right, but I don't think I have any general methodology for it besides "if it doesn't sound right, tweak it until it does", and trying to make sure the ideas flow and the characters are talking to rather than past each other. That scene does jump out as clunky and heavy-handed, though, compared to a lot of the rest of this mod so far. Tulip posted:I've actually been kind of surprised at how immature hisao is for a 15 year old. I was formally diagnosed with depression at age 10, and nobody reacted like Hisao did after I was like...12. I've gotten some like, "what do you have to be depressed about you're a white guy" but other than that it's been almost universally "that sucks dude" at worst since elementary school, let alone for high schoolers. I agree, they come across to me as more children/preteens than teenagers in a lot of this. But that could also just be a bad memory on my part, the usual "I'm an Old now and all those youngsters blend together, what even is brain development". Or possibly part of it could be the writers trying to be anime?
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May 25, 2022 22:49
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I have to admit I'm always a bit put off by the "surprise mistletoe" trope, since it's effectively using social pressure to coerce someone into a kiss. Clearly Hisao is into it here, but, well, Sayori couldn't have known for certain he would be. Or, say, that he'd be okay with doing so in front of their friends, some people have boundaries about things like that. (This feels quite a bit like a microcosm of the issues with things like public marriage proposals.) Someone has to be the "let's beat dead horses about consent" person, I guess, so why not me.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:31
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So, hm. I want to comment on a few good things, but then I'm going to be off on a rant again I suspect. Let's start with the good: (1) I was pleased to see the game actually addressed my concerns about consent issues surrounding the mistletoe thing. I'm not sure I think it was adequate, but I'll take this (especially since the characters were okay with it). (2) I am very, very pleased the jealousy subplot did not overstay its welcome, and seems to have been here primarily to show how depression and disordered thinking can latch onto something like that. Misuse of jealousy in romance stories is a big pet peeve of mine and I had been starting to worry this might go in that direction. I find the good/bad ending hinging on accompanying Sayori to therapy a bit suspect; it's a good thing the game consistently refers to it as Hisao offering (and he's clear he's giving her the choice), but I'm still a bit worried about the game going too far in condoning that. Specifically, this is because it's a common tactic for emotional abusers to insist on joint therapy, and then (through selective editing, outright lying, and speaking for/over their victim) enlist the therapist in their DARVO and gaslighting. I am probably overreacting (and, to be clear, this isn't something that happened to me personally, it's just a pattern I'm aware of), but it can't hurt to raise awareness. Now for the personal experience bit. Falconier111 posted:sometimes they give you bad medicine (I had a doctor that put me on Risperdal) I hate how many of us this happens to (and how often it seems to be "antipsychotics", sigh). About all I can offer is solidarity, for whatever little that's worth. For me it was Seroquel/quetiapine. The person who prescribed it literally did so because she thought my political beliefs and the way I described my bad experiences with formal employment were evidence of "disordered thinking"; at the time, I was so desperate for improvement that I let myself trust her (this came toward the end of a two year period of trying several different antidepressants and not having any notable success). Even my parents (who don't always have the best record of taking my mental illness seriously or being supportive) thought this was suspect and tried to talk me out of it, but I let myself be hopeful and went forward with it. As soon as I started taking it, I knew something was deeply wrong. That drug had so many ill effects on both my affect and cognition, and I'm genuinely not sure I could describe them. One of the things I'm pretty sure it did was inhibit memory formation, as I have very poor recall of that period of my life. I have found myself wondering in the years since if it did permanent damage to my cognition; for a long time even after I stopped taking it, things just felt off in some ways. I later did some research and found that bad experiences with this particular drug are unfortunately not rare (I won't say there aren't legitimate uses, but I wish I'd done the research before trying it). Once I realised what that drug was doing to me, I stopped taking it, but the whole experience destroyed my trust in that psychiatric practice and, honestly, psychiatric treatment in general. I've been very carefully rationing my anxiety meds (which do work for me) since because I haven't been able to convince a GP to refill them. Thankfully, my (non-prescribing) therapist took me very seriously when I told him this story; he was appalled, and stopped recommening patients to the practice that treated me this way. That went a long way to ensure he at least was still worth trusting. I occasionally toy with the idea of trying antidepressants again, but I can't convince myself it's worth the risk of going back to a psychiatrist (and for what it's worth, my therapist thinks I've tried enough medications to establish my depression is treatment-resistant, so he doesn't try very hard to convince me otherwise). I think what I'm trying to get at here is that "just keep trying with different therapists" is a nice ideal, but feels naive to me. Sometimes people have very good reasons for deciding to stop pursuing treatment, especially because the mental health field can be dismissive or downright abusive if you present the wrong way. I am very much not trying to say that treatment doesn't work, nor that people shouldn't try, but when it goes wrong it can be disastrous, and we need to be cognizant of that too. Edit: The more I think about it, the more I think this post might just be unproductive trauma dumping. Let me know if you'd prefer I remove it. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 00:30
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Falconier111 posted:Keep it. That post encapsulates a lot of the complexities of being neurodivergent in a few paragraphs, I’d be a fool to tell you to remove it because it’s honest. Thanks for saying so. Looking back at it, one of the aspects that troubles me the most is that I know that doctor meant well and believed she was helping me. She just apparently couldn't believe anyone could legitimately question capitalism, and therefore it had to be delusions. A lot of the time, psychiatry's goal is better described as "cognitive normativity" than "mental health". rannum posted:Natsuki because we haven't seen a lot of her I'd been leaning toward voting Yuri, but, yeah, this seems reasonable. And, uh, comfort I guess?
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Jun 8, 2022 01:25
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Bloodly posted:This leads to the question 'How was it worded?' This is a good point, because I do suspect this was part of why it went so badly, but I genuinely don't remember exactly what I said. I just remember she called it "distorted thinking" or "disordered thinking" and went straight to talking about antipsychotics. If there's any takeaway here, it's that unfortunately sometimes phrasing is very important, especially when someone is in a position of relative power over you and prone to overinterpreting. (But at the same time, it's not like we can read their minds to know what biases they might be holding either...) Like Clockwork posted:Given that back when I had insurance I once tried to express that much of my stress comes from the little tiny fact the Republican Party is actively trying to kill queer people and was given "not all republicans" as a response I'm not shocked at all. (This was like 7+ years ago, she's since retired.) This is very often a part of it, too. A lot of symptoms are the result of situational factors more than anything else, but when the situation in question is systemic bigotry, trying to get help within the system means taking a big risk that the healthcare provider is complicit in it and will make things worse. Namtab posted:I guess the important thing to note is that for a lot of people therapy and medication works for mental health issues, but unlike physical health we don’t have machines to diagnose. As such there is an element of educated guesswork based on what the patient says and how they say it. I've heard mental health professionals say this pretty much explicitly, yes. It's also the case that for a lot of these medications, the mechanisms of action aren't particularly well understood, so even if diagnostic processes were perfectly reliable (rather than the hodgepodge of symptom checklists they often are), that wouldn't necessarily make it any easier to find the right treatment. Tulip posted:The worst I've gotten, which was from a pyschiatrist who actually was fairly helpful because he managed to figure out the medication that was best for my depression (nortriptyline, of all the drat drugs), was extended musings about how men are all suffering depression because they're becoming too feminine and not embracing their hard masculine side enough. Pretty weird! Was his name Jordan Peterson? (/s) Seriously, though, I wish I were surprised. Tulip posted:The idea of having somebody go to therapy with you, outside of the context of couples or family therapy, is very surprising to me. I've done outpatient therapy intermittently since I was 10, and I've never even thought about having a friend or partner or parent come with me except for like, transportation. I wonder if we're meant to interpret it as meaning something like "I'll come with to support you and sit in the waiting room" rather than actually joining in the sessions? Because that would be pretty reasonable, but I agree it's really peculiar otherwise (when I was discussing the issues that come up in joint therapy, I should have said in couples or family therapy, those are the contexts where I've most seen that discussed). Also, I love that LeGuin quote.
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Jun 8, 2022 22:14
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There are a lot of little things here that do a good job showing the kinds of difficulties one can experience being the partner of (or otherwise very close to) a person with severe depression. I'm honestly impressed, even though it still feels heavy-handed in places. I keep thinking I should write something about that, because I've seen a lot, but from my perspective it's going to sound a lot like "my partner is a saint for putting up with my bullshit all these years" and I'm not sure how helpful a thing that is to say. It is very often a difficult position to be in, because one of the things depression does (at least for me) is make it hard to believe positive statements about myself, or to believe people value my company. It's reached the point where we've developed a kind of shorthand, my partner will frequently say something like "you know that's your brainweasels talking" when I start going into a depressive spiral. And that does help, because neither of the major alternatives (either trying to deny I'm having the depressive feelings, or agreeing with and reinforcing them) are remotely helpful. Sometimes the best way to deal with depressive thoughts is just actively noticing them for what they are (and having another person to help identify them can be a very good thing). Explopyro fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jun 14, 2022 |
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Jun 14, 2022 01:06
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:20 |
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The timeline of Sayori's recovery here feels unrealistic to me, and I think that's worth talking about. One of the things that was stressed to me constantly, back when I was trying antidepressants, is that it takes a while to even be able to tell whether they're helping (and you need to take the drugs consistently to build up the level in your system): I remember having to give each drug 4-6 weeks at minimum before reassessing. And then, if you decide it doesn't work (whether because it's not helping, or because it's having an unpleasant side effect), you need to wean off gradually rather than just stopping, which makes it take even longer to transition to trying the next one. This is an unpleasant process even if you roll the natural 20 and have a good result from the first drug you try (among other things, you still have to figure out the right dosage). Not only is this a frustrating process of trial and error, by definition the drugs change your mental state, so it's hard to properly assess what they're doing and if there's any improvement. (And then, situational factors in depression are also a thing, so you have to factor in whether the rest of your life is throwing in confounding variables.) It isn't unheard of to start feeling better very quickly, but even then the early days on a medication are a tumultuous state of flux and it's hard to tell what is or isn't a placebo effect. (I did have that experience, once, one of the earlier drugs I tried made me feel better almost immediately, it just turned out to give me such awful headaches that taking it didn't actually improve my life...) This is a long-winded way of saying that this game's presenting a very rosy, almost propagandistic view of psychiatry, and that the reality is a lot more messy. I appreciate what it's trying to do, but I also think it's worth pushing back a bit rather than letting it give anyone too much false hope.
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Jun 22, 2022 01:25
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