I came across a "cool guide" on reddit today (wasting my brain cells in my tiredness) and I thought it was important to actually tell some people about it and where I sit on this scale. This is going to be extremely heavy talk so I'm going to put it in a spoiler for anyone who doesn't need that right now.

Naturally, I feel like you should always feel like you can share with us. We'll always try to be here for you if you need to talk.
Not sure how much I want to scratch the surface on this particular issue, but I empathize with you.

Talking about mental health is good. One of the reasons I haven't been active here lately is that I've been struggling with my own mental health (not this particular issue, I'm sitting comfortably somewhere between 2 and a mild 3). I have not been dealing well with the pandemic, and I actually failed a class in spring which may affect my ability to graduate on time. So that's been rough, but it also finally got me to get myself moving in the direction of doing something about my mental health. I've suspected for years that I have some kind of neurodivergence, and in less than two weeks I'm seeing a psychologist for the first step of all evaluation process to figure out what is actually going on in my head.

I hope that you all are also getting the help that you need.

Yeah, I agree with Aaarrrgh. It is better to talk about it than not. This group may not be nearly as active as it once was, but I like to think of us as friends, and I think we all want to be there for each other, insofar as the internet allows. Speaking for myself, I don't want anyone who posts around here to stop doing so, especially for the most extreme of reasons.

In the interest of full disclosure, when I was younger, around my early 20s, I was probably around 5.5, and some days into the 6 range. I mentioned suicide to someone I cared about, and I made a promise that I would never do it, and my word means a lot to me. Around my mid-20s, I sort of made a decision to have a more positive outlook on life. Not radically, mind you. I could never and will never be a real-life Aloise Hartley, but I was pretty darkly cynical for a lot of my early adult life, and I started working on that. These days, I would say a 3 is my norm, with occasional forays into the 2 and the 4 range. I'm really not sure I know what 1 feels like...

Anyway, I'm glad you brought the issue up, and I'm glad that people are getting the help they need. As always, and to echo what Barinellos said, we're around for you, if you need to talk or vent or whatever. Obviously none of us are trained specialists, and we would not pretend to be. But if any of you feel something needs to be said, and you don't want to say it to someone near you, I'm just a PM away.

@Aaarrrgh: There's nothing I can really do, of course, but if you would like a professor's take on your situation with your class, feel free to PM me. I tend to take a different view of things like that than students do, so if you want an outside perspective, please do reach out.

@Raven: I appreciate the offer, but the fail was for an independent project, and it failed because my partner and I misprioritized our time. So there's not really anything anyone can do. I'm going to try to do the project parallel with my internship in the spring, which will be intense, but if I succeed I'll graduate on time with my original plan.

So I was going to watch Seven Samurai again tonight, but apparently I never kept the copy I had? I'm not entirely sure why, to be honest. The main reason I wanted to rewatch it is because I just rewatched the early-aughties steampunk anime reimagining of Kurosawa's famous work: Samurai 7.

It's a weird anime, overall. I don't think it's so bad that it's not worth watching, though I don't think I could recommend it without heavy caveats. It's one of those that could probably be fascinating to pick apart because there are so many things that don't quite fit.

Like, the biggest thing is how the show is (basically) bloodless. They get around the big obvious things by having all the antagonists (bandits) be completely robotic samurai, though even when real people get cut down they basically never show a speck of blood, which is really odd. It gets especially odd when the young greenhorn has a breakdown over cutting down his first enemy and he's just covered in oil.

The pacing is also... weird? I've never been able to judge pacing well, but there's just a lot of side-stories and plot threads that branch out from the actual Seven Samurai plot. The Kurosawa plotline is actually finished by like episode 13, and then there's still half the show left over for them to engage in political intrigue and overthrowing the emperor for some reason.

Oh, and it should go without saying that this being from 2004 means there's a lot of rough, and I mean rough CGI and animation shifts.

Overall an oddity that I can't help but enjoy for being a highly-flawed gem.

Samurai 7 is bizarre as heck, but it scored a lot of points with me for just how it ramps the villain up in the latter acts. He's... delightfully demented.

By my recollection, which admittedly may be hazy by now, there are still Kurosawa elements smeared over the latter half, but it does cut in a LOT of original work that seriously reframes the scenes and lines that come from the original. Probably the biggest note is how the "No, the Farmers have won" line scans completely differently because Samurai 7 is both more epic in scope and more optimistic in tone. In some ways, the read of it is completely opposite, signifying a true change rather than a fatalistic "Next verse, same as the first" sort of attitude. But at the same time, a good deal of the character motion, the isolation and proud despair, is still there even if it's for aggressively different reasons. Frankly, you're kind of reminding me that I should sit down with both in proximity and compare a lot of the stuff, as if there are elements that stick out after as long as it's been for me there are probably a lot more that could really be dug into.

The pacing for the show is the primary thing that stuck out to me, but not in a flattering way. Every episode had a purposefully methodical path, which isn't a negative in a strict sense, but every thirty minute episode felt like a bloody hour to me when I watched it, and the more the show built on that, the more I struggled to get through it because it just felt like it built upon things to a veritable tower of babel.

It was a hard sit because of some element in it's make up that just felt like scenes were padded. Which... I mean, strictly speaking, they bloody well were as it's hours and hours of adapted material that was scarcely a fraction of the length. But I suppose part of that is it felt like a mismanagement of time rather than an investment.

I guess everyone's been busy with the pre-holiday rush this week. I know I've been practically overwhelmed by work and such.

The good news is that I was able to book this Monday off, so I'll have a bit of a long weekend and then of course the two short holiday weeks.

I let a friend convince me to get a game that's been on my radar a little while: Disco Elysium. It recently got a full voice-over because it had done so well, which really helps me to play it at all because I seem to bounce off of any highly-textual game (Fallout 1*, Shadowrun Returns, Everlasting Summer, Planescape: Torment). Honestly, though, it's said friend who convinced me to enjoy the game instead of just playing it because I wouldn't really "get" what it is otherwise -- that being a "true" RPG with a helpful DM who uses your failures to further your advancement rather than failures being punished. I've been spending an hour or two on it here and there and definitely feel like I'm "playing it wrong" but it's given me a few good laughs. Like, a "thought" I picked up and equipped to help me pass a check was "Volumetric $#;! Compressor" to help me "get my $#;! together".


*Though Fallout 1 also has the dubious honor of being a purposefully difficult game with an additional time limit to push you to make risks, so dying multiple times also killed my enthusiasm for it

Yeah, finals week will do that.


I've heard good things about Disco Elysium, as well. I haven't picked it up myself, though I've been tempted a few times.

Spider man is a public menace!
No seriously, business exploded and I feel like I've been fed through a thresher.

Oof. Hopefully it'll be a short slamming?

Well, we've done in three days roughly what we would in a slow month. They're projecting a steep drop off, but it's going to roll into Xmas which is traditionally amount the busiest days of the year.

The first half of disco elysium is the most fun I've ever had playing an RPG.
I thought the second half lagged since you are cleaning up missions so there is excessive walking around the map and no more exploration. Also I resolved most of the side quest denouements in the first half. Gating more mysteries for the end of the game would have paced it better for me.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, although I am not sure I will replay it. (Most games I buy are games I sink a lot of hours into. i.e simulation games or RPGs that can bear three playthroughs - wizard, rogue, warrior)

I recently played cloudpunk, and while I'm not sure I would generally recommend it, it was the perfect game for three months of 85 hr workweek. No system to learn, few failure states, low system requirements - just deliver packages in a rainy, pixel-art cyberpunk city, listen to relaxing techno soundtrack, and watch the story unfold. Make a "moral" choice here and there.




I would likely have been bored under normal circumstances.

Merry Xmas to all!

Murray Christopher, everybody.

I kind of forgot to stop by the last two days (I only worked half a day on Thursday); partly I let myself get distracted, but mostly I pile guilt on myself for not having "something to add" beyond general good wishes. I hope everyone's end-of-year festivities have been / will be alright.

I hope everyone has a good day, whatever that might mean for you.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a merry Christmas! If you celebrate something else, I wish you Happy Holidays! If you don't celebrate anything, I hope you have a good day!

I took a plunge over the weekend -- and I had to pre-write out a few messages to some people to do it -- but I made a "big triumphant return" to that erotica group I told you all about some time ago. Due to my own issues (including but not limited to: a bit of a mental breakdown over "The Incident" with AI Dungeon; imposter syndrome; what's best described as white man's guilt; the self-feeding cycle of anxiety of already having been away for so long), I had been away for the better part of half a year if not longer (pandemic time is really messing with my sense of scale). BUT! Thanks to one good friend -- the owner of the server, actually -- reaching out and gently reassuring me and nudging me, I managed to drop in to wish them a happy holidays and got a really warm welcome, so that was nice.

Also over the past week and change I managed to hammer out about a 9-page story, specifically for the thought of "having something to show" for my return -- ignoring the fact that I know, logically, and have been told multiple times by different people in different friend groups, that I don't need to have "something to show" for being around, and that people just like to have me around to talk to.

The story in question I set in the world I've been building -- Gêma as it is now -- but obviously it was a big mental hurdle to post it to the very group whose purpose is erotica, so I don't know how much I should even say about it here. Regardless of whether anyone cares about the story itself, I did want to mention that as a small achievement since you all are basically my writing buddies and I think this is the first time in literal years that I've both finished a story and been happy enough with the writing to share with anyone.