u/pointderage

I've been playing the same brilliant but incredibly depressing RPG for months now and my mental health is begging for a break, so I'm looking for something a little less maddening.

Any recs for compelling but not depressing story games, or maybe really good puzzle games? Maybe something like Journey? Disco Elysium sounds really good, but I can't tell how heavy it is. I don't particularly want something cosy unless it's super engaging (I got really bored playing Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley), and ideally I'd like to be able to get a physical copy.

Life is genuinely bleak rn, to the point where I often feel like I might as well already be dead. The only thing that helps at all is the physical pain, but all I've done is scratch. I know that's still not good, but I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons why. It doesn't leave traces long-term (and if it did I could just blame it on my cat and even I would believe it because she's so bad with retracting her claws lol), and it snaps me out of it like literally nothing else can. I genuinely don't know what else to do if I stop doing that. (I have tried medication and I am in therapy, I assume it's either not working or not working yet. Either way I need to deal with this in the meantime.)

I'm probably looking to be told that scratching is fine in this context, if I'm being honest lol. It's just really hard to think why I shouldn't (or what I should be doing instead). Any thoughts?

I'm aware that no one owes me feedback and that the issue is largely a personal one that goes far beyond fandom.

But it really makes me feel like shit when I've worked hard on a fic and it gets almost no interaction. I write gen for a smaller fandom, so I've always expected and received few kudos/comments, but lately it's been a real drought. I'll get a kudo here and there, and not much more. I keep wondering if maybe my writing just sucks now. If it doesn't, it's not much better: it still feels super lonely.

I write for myself, yeah, but I don't go to the trouble of editing and posting for myself. If no one's enjoying it (either because it's genuinely bad or for another reason, that hardly matters - though it IS driving me crazy that I can't know for sure if my writing's just bad) then what am I doing? I might as well just keep it in my notebook and spare myself the disappointment.

I probably just need a break and another hobby that doesn't involve hoping for feedback from strangers. Whatever, I'll get over it eventually. In the meantime, though, it's genuinely depressing.

I've had really bad brain fog and dizziness almost constantly for 4 years now, but I only have neck pain/headaches a few times a week; it's more often just pressure and a weird tingling. The only thing that helps at all is ice packs (but then I haven't tried a lot of things). My GP now thinks it could all be occipital neuralgia, but she basically ignored me when I asked if it could really be causing symptoms even without pain, and my appointment with a neurologist isn't until the end of the year.

I know no one on here can diagnose anyone, but in your experience/as far as you know, can occipital neuralgia cause brain fog and dizziness even without pain? More frequently than pain?

Is there a specific word for it, or is it just "floor"? Regardless of materials?

I usually settle down pretty quickly after EMDR sessions, though I'm always extra tired, but this time everything's just too much - every sensation, every thought, every breath. Writing usually helps when I'm struggling, but this time it's not making a dent. If anything it just makes things worse.

Is this normal? In your experience, should it just go away on its own eventually? Waiting it out seems like hell but I have no idea what else I could do, and my therapist is in the hospital so I couldn't contact her even if I wanted to.

Hey! I've recently started writing fic again after a very, very long perfectionism-induced break. Doing writing exercises every day has really helped me to deal with the aforementioned perfectionism because I put very little pressure on myself when I'm doing them, it's just for me, to have fun and get some practice in.

One of those exercises turned out a lot better than I expected. I like it a lot, even though it's really quite short and mostly just character analysis (not even of the particularly unique sort). I've edited it as much as I ever edit any fic I post, and now I kinda want to post it because I like it so much, but at the same time I can't help feeling like, well, why would anyone care. Maybe I just like it because I wrote it, and it's actually a waste of time to read?

So my question is, how do you decide what's worth sharing and what isn't? I know there's always a measure of taking a risk and I'm almost definitely overthinking this, but I'm curious how other people do it/think about it.

Lately I feel like I'm going way too easy on my favourite characters when I write them. It's not that I don't know what their flaws are, but I tend to write those flaws with all the affection that I feel for those characters, and that feels both dishonest and unsatisfying. I know fanfiction is always self-indulgent, but I don't like it quite this self-indulgent lol.

This might be too vague a description of the issue, but does anyone have any tips? How do you make sure you aren't playing down characters' flaws?