Best posts made by Rinel

Someone sent me an unsolicited message saying they liked my RP and

it’s nice

@Testament

Firstly, huge hugs/good vibes/prayers/whatever you like best sent your way. I’ve been in the ER for anxiety… a lot. Probably over ten times at this point.

Secondly, it sounds like this isn’t your first rodeo with anxiety, but if it is, here’s what you do. First, do everything in your power to curb avoidance of what is making you anxious. Avoidant behavior makes anxiety really, really bad (source: in recovery for severe agoraphobia). Second, see a psychatrist asap. If you can’t see a psychiatrist, see your primary care doctor. Be open to them about what’s happening and ask for medicine. If you have an addictive personality or a history of substance abuse, make sure they’re aware of that before they prescribe you any benzodiazepenes. Having anti-anxiety meds will help you stabilize so you can move on to the third and most important step–therapy.

You’re probably gonna have to do therapy. It sounds like you may need to do some intensive therapy. Find a specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, along with exposure therapy, is an extremely effective method of treating anxiety and depression, which it sounds like you also have.

None of this is easy. If it were, I wouldn’t be a half-employed lawyer who struggles to bill 15 hours a week and who needs her parents to drive her places at 33 years of age. It frequently REALLY SUCKS. But it’s doable. I’m making huge strides in my recovery.

You’ve got this. If you need to DM someone who has been through this shit, whether to ask for advice, chat about it, or just scream directly into a sympathetic ear, I’m here.

I’m rooting for you.

Here’s a really good “steps to protect yourself from a worst-case scenario” thread on bluesky from a person who is very reasonable about these things (rahaeli, if any of y’all use dreamwidth): https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3labvxce57a2r

If you’re in a spiral, having concrete steps to take will help you out of it.

If you need legal assistance in the States, regardless of where you are, and you don’t know where to go, reach out to me. I will help you find people who can help.

If you’re in Louisiana and can’t leave, reach out to me. I will help you myself, or find people who can. Also, like, reach out to me so I can have more friends.

I don’t care if we’ve fought like cats and dogs in the past. If you need legal help and don’t know what to do, reach out.

The issue has been addressed and is out of my hands!

My only comment on here is that Concordia is about seven cities from seven worlds that got dropkicked into an alien planet 60ish years ago, at which point giant holes in the sky opened up and started barfing out Serious Issues.

This does not conform to the Standard Model, is all I’m saying

@Wizz said in Stupid Memes:

how am I both completely blown away and yet not surprised at all by this information

I’m gonna need Brits to harden the fuck up when it comes to rats (seriously?) and geese (understandable, but you’d still WIN).

Everything after goose is just maniac shit.

ETA: having dealt with geese and cats both, I’d like to say that people are wildly overconfident re: housecats if they’re that concerned about geese

Very few people who did not grow up as girls are fully aware of this problem. These stories are heartbreaking, upsetting, and horrifyingly frequent. Threads like this help inform people largely unaffected by the issue and help inform people in these kinds of situations that they aren’t alone and that help is available.

@Jennkryst

I think you’re doing the thing I do where you try to make sure you don’t offend people by mixing in humor, but what ends up happening is people can’t easily tell what you’re joking about and what you’re not joking about, and so misunderstandings happen, and so you try to use more humor to defuse the situation, and then more misunderstandings happen, and now oh gosh things are getting out of hand

Anyway, I can understand why you’re annoyed at piecemeal changes to rules being made, and I can believe that you weren’t trying to toe the line. But what staff told you seems fairly obvious, and so an accidental misunderstanding on your part could definitely be seen as intentional.

Communication sucks.

I’m being very vague on purpose here, and I’m not going to elaborate.

I play on a game where someone is playing a minority character. The way they are playing that character strikes me as not quite right. It feels stereotyped and almost offensive. It does not feel natural to me.

I’m not a member of that minority. I definitely don’t have the breadth of knowledge to even guess as to whether the player is a member of that minority. I have very vague vibes that make me uncomfortable, and because I’m not directly affected by the portrayal I’m unwilling to get others involved.

“But Rinel then why are you talking about it here—” Because this is venting and it’s a situation where I feel guilty for any action I do or do not take and I want to vent about it.

I kind of feel bad for her insofar as it really felt like she was totally out of her depth both rhetorically and emotionally, but being out of one’s depth emotionally doesn’t mean other people should have to put up with your relentless diatribes.

I always lean towards “forgive and let back in when possible,” but in this case I think “when possible” would be “after some hard evidence indicating serious work on emotional regulation.”

My stance on MJ is that if you use it, you should make an effort to commission more artists in order to offset the harm you’re contributing to. The ability to pump out “good enough” images is a huge problem for artists, and it’s going to make art the exclusive domain of the wealthy again.

Thankfully, for now, midjourney et al are fucking terrible unless you want a human in an extremely boring pose, but given the rapidity of their development I doubt it will stay that way.

Anyway, yeah, I’m ok with placeholder art for characters via MJ (though I think @Faraday’s absolutist stance against it is more coherent and principled), but if you’re playing that character for more than a month or two it’s time to start looking for commissions, imho.

I was JUST informed Arx ended. A round of applause. Truly. It was an immense effort, and it looks like it paid off wonderfully.

Rinel’s FIRST secret was that she could access a secret room in the Labyrinth that contained a book that was being constantly updated–possibly by Vellichor? I don’t know. But I was too scared to do anything with it, and so I never did any actions, and that ended up spiralling into Rinel getting removed from the Scholars and banned from the Labyrinth. Staff was kind enough to give her a second secret, which was:

…I don’t remember. I think it was magic. She did the cleansing ritual and got told to fuck off by the Gods for her various and sundry heresies, which had a pretty profound impact on her mental health, and she ended up going down the path of the druids, for a bit, while still worshipping the Gods in her own heretical ways.

I loved that character; I loved Arx. I’m glad it concluded instead of winding down into inactivity. Stories are always better when they have an end, no matter how sad.

There will always be a little bit of Rinel Tern in me, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.

I may actually quit or get fired by my job by the end of the week. I think I’ve reached my limit as it relates to organizational incapacity. An entire application for postconviction, with not even an indexed file to reference. Just a single paper a law clerk wrote that inaccurately summarizes the situation and has no citations to the record.

We’ve had this case since the beginning of the year. I got it two weeks ago. And I’ve been told by my boss today that, because I had the temerity to request the assistance of clerks on the matter, that if I’m going to “blow the deadline” of THIS FRIDAY that I should let him know so he can take care of it.

Take care of it HOW, motherfucker, you’ve had the case for THE ENTIRE YEAR and you let an attorney spend THREE WEEKS ON IT

I’m going back to researching but holy shit do I need to blow off some steam before I kill someone

I DON’T CARE THAT IT’S OLD I WANT TO SHARE MY COMMISSIONED ART OF RINEL

It was by Halfpint! The sword-cane is beautiful.

@Tez said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

DAI burnt the shit out of me. I really did not like it. I’m waiting for wider reporting and feedback on Veilguard from people I trust. SO HURRY UP GUYS.

Much better combat than inquistion, much less mmo feel, equally or perhaps even more scattered focus in terms of setting and story, worst writing in the series by far. Really suffers from essentially no connection to prior games or locations.

Fundamental miss on so much of what made Origins and II so compelling (religion, politics, culture, how people are products of their environment). Pretty much all of your companions feel like folks from 2024 isekai’d into Thedas.

On that last note: some people are BIG MAD about the focus on trans issues, but they can shove it. The options for Rook being trans are actively good, and a subplot regarding a character discovering their own gender identity is fumbled pretty badly but is at least attempted.

Liz verdict as she nears the end: buy now if you’re the hugest DA fan ever or are desperate for even an ok game (I got it for the election), wait for a sale if you like DA and aren’t desperate for a game right now, possibly avoid if what matters most to you is a lore rich world full of interesting issues and solid characterization.

6.5 out of 10. Hurt most by the fact that comparisons to early games come so easily.

Changeling changeling changeling changeling changeling changeling changeling

I could scream with glee

@Pavel

Your car is WEAK

@De-Villefort

Firefly is principally based off of the themes and aesthetics of the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy, as a heads up

@Floof

@mietze said in Concordia Thread:

@Evilgrayson that’s nice in thought, but it’s rare that staff attention can fully flesh out to support a huge scope of classes. my experience playing a non-noble was that nobles pushed themselves into everything, or when they couldn’t they made it so unpleasant with complaints or just straight up being oocly rude that it was offputting, and there weren’t enough non-nobles to not have to engage with those folks.

The last bit about being unpleasant wasn’t my experience on Arx, but nobles being in places where they had no business being was an obnoxiously common thing, honestly. It wasn’t something that I think staff supported; it was just too much to deal with manually slamming people with huge penalties for hanging out at nasty bars in nasty slums.