u/OneGayPigeon

Battling through my first Linux install (notoriously technologically cursed) and am running into plenty of issues, but the most pressing at the moment is that it only has a 4:3 resolution option. I’m at the updating system stage after installing I *think* successfully.

I have a very wide monitor, and somehow the update windows and such won’t let me shrink the windows and extend FAR past the edges of the screen so I have to move the window back and forth every line trying to figure out why the updates are failing.

Anything I can do now to let me just read the screen in one go to speed up the rest of this process?

Edit: just got off the phone with my pharmacy, they confirmed to pause for a week or until symptoms other than cough resolve. Leaving this post up in case anyone searches the same question.

Hello, I haven’t been able to get through to my rheum. From what I remember, she said to pause my Rinvoq if I got sick, which I have. Is this what your docs have told you? Thanks.

To preface, I grew up in a few long term “treatment” (lol, lmao) facilities where I got to know a lot of different people with a lot of different neurotypes. I’m currently close with people with schizophrenia, BPD, bipolar 1, and various dissociative conditions. I personally simply call myself mad as I feel diagnoses have almost exclusively made my life worse, but have been medically dx’d with some high impact conditions such as DID. I also studied neuroscience and psychology at college, though I find formal research and education in this area much less accurate or important than actual lived experiences. The actually mad person is here to give you social permission, lol.

Anyway, most advice I see for constructing a Malk’s madness includes at some point that you shouldn’t take inspo from real world conditions. What I think this advice is *actually* saying, even if the person doesn’t realize it, is don’t use over the top stereotypes of IRL conditions, which to be clear I 100% agree with.

A player saying their character’s “schizophrenic” so they have to constantly yell non-sequiturs, see scary killer clowns everywhere and have to kill innocent bystanders about it, general fishy bullshit, or having a character with “multiple personality disorder” that just has one perfect innocent angel alter and an evil sadistic alter is uncreative, boring, and causes real world damage by feeding into these inaccurate harmful portrayals.

But what people end up recommending instead are usually just… accurate representations of such conditions. Feelings that innocuous things are Very Significant, hearing voices or having visions that are actually helpful and provide valuable information while being comforting and kind, feelings of being intensely connected to people around you or from afar (Madness Network, anyone?), seeing colors or movement indicating significance instead of complex persistent Hallucinations, and not shouting but having garbled or stumbling speech or verbal tics are all things I’ve seen recommended as an “alternative” to real world conditions that are all just actual real world schizophrenia conditions.

Hell, speaking as a DID system myself, I don’t even hate how Jeanette and Therese Voorman are portrayed. It’s rather crude and heavy handed, and I never love tying highly stigmatized conditions to violent crime. Most people with DID don’t have such hard binary switches (though many do), most alters don’t talk back and forth externally (no point, way more effective and quick to hash it out internally), and most people don’t have just two discrete alters, *especially* when the system formed in childhood, but it’s not at all an unrealistic representation. Extremely ‘90s edgy and theatrical, but far from implausible.

Having one alter that seems to be plugged more into the Madness Network that’s far less stable (that was at least my interpretation of Jeanette) with hard separation from ones that are more high functioning day to day is 100% how I’d play it. I and every plural person I know has a “trauma holder” that generally holds memories, knowledge, and feelings that the system couldn’t be fully conscious of while functioning on the day to day. Anyone considering making a Malk with a DID-like mental structure, I’d strongly recommend doing something very much like that.

Anyway, TL;DR, you absolutely should learn more about high impact mental conditions in the areas you’re looking to explore. Even if you don’t do a 1:1 representation (and I’m not encouraging you one way or another), you can better understand ways that the brain can glitch out or perceive different realities to make a more grounded, consistent, and dimensional personal Madness.

Also, if you like exploring madness in TTRPGs and like the WoD systems, I beg you, try Changeling the Lost. We need more players!!

If people have specific questions on this I’m happy to answer, if I can.

I really loved the UD “Vice lip bond” I got in red forever ago, but they haven’t restocked the black in ages so I’m assuming it’s gone forever. I’ve used Nyx XXL for my go to black with staying power, but I really don’t care for the matte look or feel. I’ve seen that lip lacquer or lip vinyl is what I should be searching, either black or potentially clear over the Nyx stuff, but with so much crap out there I’d feel better with recommendations.

I’m really not a big makeup person, the $25 UD stuff was the most I’ve ever spent on a single bit of makeup and I don’t want to change that unless there’s an absolutely *perfect* solution for not too much more.

Thanks!

ETA: looking for fully opaque black, I hate the sheer look in black.

I’m loving seeing everyone’s currant and gooseberry harvests lately! Most responses to what people do with them, and many other berries throughout the season, is that they make jam.

I’m slowly pivoting to edibles now that everything but the area I have reserved for it has been converted to natives and am excitedly planning what I’m going to be growing. Are you getting just a few jars and go through them all before the next season, or are you becoming queens of preserves, sitting upon a mighty throne of jars?

Anyone work with someone good? I’m not looking for someone to work with on queer issues specifically, but there’s a level of understanding that you don’t get from straight therapists that makes them not in the running for me personally.

I’ve got a pretty full bingo board on diagnoses and experiences from the AuDHD and dissociative spectrum, OCD, etc., so not looking for a specialist in any conditions. Particularly interested in people with a more intellectual approach, analysis, observation, and education vs. processing emotions through conversations, though not focused on hard diagnoses.

Thanks!

Only way I’m able to get protein down these days. Creamer keeps it fresh when I hit the “could not possibly drink another one” level.

Not trying to be a hater, love a femme fatale, love playing and watching Toreadors, but I find this overdone character voice trope *unbelievably* grating personally and just can’t push through it as much as I love everything else. I was so sad when s2 of NY by Night dropped with I believe that same player’s new character, same everything I hate after absolutely adoring s1. Couldn’t sit through more than two minutes. Recently tried LA by Night, pushed through the first ep and partway into the second, but I Just Can’t.

I can’t imagine they wouldn’t, but hoping for good news, do those characters stay for more than a few episodes? Or, at the very least, do those characters do something majorly subversive with the trope very early on?

Alternatively, got any recommendations for other decent production value actual plays that don’t prominently feature characters with this type of voice?

Is this a thing? Would it look weird to those who “know better”? My eyes aren’t trained enough on accessories that aren’t essentials like these yet to tell confidently. I generally play fast and loose with fashion rules as long as I know I can execute it well and not just look like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m definitely not 100% on this.