Alora Fane

So much for a productive and relaxing break!

I had a long list of things I wanted to do, like composing a piece of music and/or drawing every day, planning some ideas for new games (whether I actually ever make them or not), 'social' stuff like at the very least engaging with Reddit communities, replying to some messages, going in my own Discord for the first time in eons, etc...

I didn't do any of that!

Instead, I spent most of my time worrying about the 'hall' and the dog that I had to look after. Or it's more like... hm, I saw ∞ this on Reddit the other day ∞:

It's a tweet from someone with ADHD, which I (probably??) don't have, but there's a lot of overlap between mental disorders. My anxiety means that even tasks or appointments that objectively only take five minutes or less to complete will consume a whole day if they're unavoidable, because the whole time before them is spent in anxious anticipation about somehow missing it, regardless of how unlikely that is, and the whole time after it is spent in recovery mode after the toll the prolonged stress took.

So even though I had to do a paltry amount of 'work' - if unlocking doors and putting a handful of tables out or away would count as such - maintaining the hall, that still managed to consume way more of my mental energy and focus than it really should have.

Plus the dog - a shih tzu my parents inherited a few months ago when its elderly owner died - was also needy, either for food or attention, and I felt like I couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes without it pestering me in some way or another.

How could I possibly cope with life alone - or, god forbid, employment - if I'm so frazzled by even a tiny amount of responsibility?!?!?

...Or at least that's the way things were for the first week or so. After that I suppose I got into a routine, somewhat, and both I and the dog calmed down a bit. I suppose it's hardly surprising that going from one routine with minimal responsibility to one with even a slightly bit more - like going from lying in a hospital bed for months back to your job - would be a system shock, and there'd need to be an adjustment period. I hope that if I ever need to find a 'normal job', while it might be traumatic!! to transition to, eventually I'd just get used to it. Maybe.

(I still didn't achieve anything that second week though.)

I'd rather just keep making games, but I'm always seeing stuff that fills me with doubt about that ever working out... is how I was going to start talking about some r/gamedev (maybe?) thread I thought I'd saved the link to... But apparently I didn't, so I can't even remember what it said! Something like how someone hadn't done enough marketing and his game was a huge flop because of it? And how having 1000 Twitter followers and like 500 Discord members was the bare minimum!! amount of exposure you'd need to have any hope of financial success. Something like that. Hardly the first thing I've read - or written about - to that effect. Will having made MARDEK help at all? I always wonder. But I suppose I won't find out until I get to the promotion phase.

It's interesting, though. I have a friend who lives in some European country, and she recently told me about how the amount she's earning for a job she hates is less than I'm getting each month from Patreon and MARDEK sales (which haven't died down in many months). Mixed feelings there; gratitude for what I have, but also frustration and sadness that so many people toil through work they despise and they don't get paid as much as they really should for it. Though obviously relative cost of living is a huge factor, and she probably earns enough for her country while I still fall behind in mine. But it's such a weird amount that I'm earning, since it's lower than what I'd get for a full-time minimum wage job, probably, but much more than I'd get from benefits or 'jobseekers' allowance'.

Bleh. Even on my 'break' I can't help thinking about stuff like that. I still haven't moved out - obviously - and every time I think about it, I just start worrying about money, whether I could even afford it.

While just checking for the link I thought I'd saved somewhere, I did see that I'd saved ∞ this one ∞, which is a thread on the forums for the game Kingdom of Loathing - which I never played, but which was big around the time I was most active, so it's nostalgic to me - where they're talking about some drama involving the creator's abusive relationships or something, I don't know. I haven't exactly read it in much detail.

First thing I noticed: do people still actively use forums these days? Maybe they do. Maybe Fig Hunter Would still be active if I'd maintained it. I wonder.

Also, seems like every time I notice some old dev-type guy being mentioned, it's in relation to some historical sex abuse or something. Same story over and over, just different details. And - as I'm sure I've written about several times before - it always scares me, since my own past's hardly spotless (what with all those farmyard orgies I incessantly had during my glorious youth). Whose is, though? Who hasn't bummed a few reluctant goats one wild weekend or several?? I often wonder what skeletons lurk in the closets of those who most vocally condemn these ABSOLUTE MONSTERS!! Do most people live completely squeaky clean lives, completely free of sin? I'm sure they'd all be fair and perfect saints were they to find themselves with any admirers.

(Not to say I approve of whatever any of these people have done - I don't know the details - it's just the mounting of high horses that arouses me. I mean rouses me. Irks me. The farm's not even there anymore, don't worry about it.)

Well that was irrelevant. What else?

I'll need to get back to work tomorrow, try to get something done. I suspect that'll take time to get back into, too. I hoped I'd be coming back to it refreshed, but I felt more stressed during this 'break' than usual, so... well, we'll see. I'm eager to get to the point where I have some more up-to-date images and videos and stuff that I can use for wider promotion (seems pointless to update them now if they might change later, since it takes longer than you might think to make them).

I should also do some of the 'social' stuff I've been avoiding, over the coming days. Hmm.

Oh, I did finish Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, at least. I'll write a "short" post about that when I have the energy, whenever that might be. Then I'll need to start on something else. Always the hard part, making the decision about what new thing to play! So many options...

9 COMMENTS

Maniafig222~3Y

I've been remarkably bad about commenting on these lately! I've been reading them all, but sometimes I have periods where I don't really compose any comments.

Speaking of your Discord, I did notice recently that only people with the "trusted" role can post images, I think those with the Patreon roles should be able to do that too.

I don't have it quite as bad, but that "not being able to do stuff because there's an appointment later" thing is familiar to me too. Rather annoying! Things like that are why I prefer to have appointments as early as possible, so I am free to do what I want the rest of the day.

500 Discord followers sounds like a nonsense number, I've been in discord groups of successful games with much fewer people in them. Discord numbers are always going to be much, much lower than twitter numbers because it's a much more involved platform.

Interesting to hear MARDEK still has sales. I guess the game had more of a tail than expected?

The link to that KoL site is broken for me, and when I searched for stuff myself I found some stuff from 2019 about the ex-wife of a developer accusing him and being corroborated by others. Dunno if that's the same thing you are talking about or not.

Presumably most people throwing around accusations haven't outright abused others. I'll freely admit I've made mistakes in my life, but when I look at these accusations I see horrible behaviour of an entirely different scale.

A very recurring trend in these allegations is that there is a clear and definite power imbalance between the accused and the accuser. Bosses and managers mistreating employees, or celebrities grooming fans. Complainers who are easily replaced or ignored, and accused who are too lucrative or popular to be besmirched.

It's easy to say that everybody makes mistakes and whatnot, but if only those free of sin ever cast stones, nobody would ever be casting any stones. And some stones really need to be cast, otherwise it's carte blanche for people to abuse others and just get away with it.

That's very convenient for the people who already have power and authority, why would they want to rock the boat and the status quo? That's exactly how you get situations like at Blizzard, where an employee committed suicide after sexual harassment, and everything was done to try and put it under wraps. It's in the best interest of these kinds of toxic work cultures for people to be as skeptical as possible of accusers, and assume nothing less than the best faith from the accused.

The only way to stop things like that from festering is to expose it. It doesn't matter if the person making the accusation is a hypocrite or not, what matters is that these problems need to be addressed, and there needs to be actual pressure for them to not just be ignored, because companies and businesses aren't going to do it on their own free volition. Abusers in positions of authority are going to keep abusing others, that's why these allegations so often have others joining in to corroborate their similar experiences.

I often see people say mantras to assume the best of others, but then immediately assume the worst of anyone who doesn't assume the best of others. This kind of enforced meekness where everything is fair and equal and problems will just solve themselves if people would just stop being so annoying about pointing out problems.

Is it fair of you to say these people with their accusations are sitting on a high horse? What if there are indeed victims, what if the points they raise are valid? What if you were victimized and people said you and the people standing up for you were exaggerating, making things up, sitting on a high horse? That exact thing has happened on Fig Hunter, people sticking up for you got accused of just being your toadies and whatnot, people delegitimized your pain and downplayed the times FH users crossed the line. It wasn't fair to you and your experiences.

Anyway, I guess I wanted to get that off my chest. I see these sorts of situations a lot, and have seen people extensively arguing it from both sides. More and more I find myself agreeing with the side that will keep doggedly asking for accountability and consequences, over those asking for infinite patience and ever-growing mountains of evidence as the trails of victims keeps getting longer.

I've been remarkably bad about commenting on these lately! I've been reading them all, but sometimes I have periods where I don't really compose any comments.

Speaking of your Discord, I did notice recently that only people with the "trusted" role can post images, I think those with the Patreon roles should be able to do that too.

I don't have it quite as bad, but that "not being able to do stuff because there's an appointment later" thing is familiar to me too. Rather annoying! Things like that are why I prefer to have appointments as early as possible, so I am free to do what I want the rest of the day.

500 Discord followers sounds like a nonsense number, I've been in discord groups of successful games with much fewer people in them. Discord numbers are always going to be much, much lower than twitter numbers because it's a much more involved platform.

Interesting to hear MARDEK still has sales. I guess the game had more of a tail than expected?

The link to that KoL site is broken for me, and when I searched for stuff myself I found some stuff from 2019 about the ex-wife of a developer accusing him and being corroborated by others. Dunno if that's the same thing you are talking about or not.

Presumably most people throwing around accusations haven't outright abused others. I'll freely admit I've made mistakes in my life, but when I look at these accusations I see horrible behaviour of an entirely different scale.

A very recurring trend in these allegations is that there is a clear and definite power imbalance between the accused and the accuser. Bosses and managers mistreating employees, or celebrities grooming fans. Complainers who are easily replaced or ignored, and accused who are too lucrative or popular to be besmirched.

It's easy to say that everybody makes mistakes and whatnot, but if only those free of sin ever cast stones, nobody would ever be casting any stones. And some stones really need to be cast, otherwise it's carte blanche for people to abuse others and just get away with it.

That's very convenient for the people who already have power and authority, why would they want to rock the boat and the status quo? That's exactly how you get situations like at Blizzard, where an employee committed suicide after sexual harassment, and everything was done to try and put it under wraps. It's in the best interest of these kinds of toxic work cultures for people to be as skeptical as possible of accusers, and assume nothing less than the best faith from the accused.

The only way to stop things like that from festering is to expose it. It doesn't matter if the person making the accusation is a hypocrite or not, what matters is that these problems need to be addressed, and there needs to be actual pressure for them to not just be ignored, because companies and businesses aren't going to do it on their own free volition. Abusers in positions of authority are going to keep abusing others, that's why these allegations so often have others joining in to corroborate their similar experiences.

I often see people say mantras to assume the best of others, but then immediately assume the worst of anyone who doesn't assume the best of others. This kind of enforced meekness where everything is fair and equal and problems will just solve themselves if people would just stop being so annoying about pointing out problems.

Is it fair of you to say these people with their accusations are sitting on a high horse? What if there are indeed victims, what if the points they raise are valid? What if you were victimized and people said you and the people standing up for you were exaggerating, making things up, sitting on a high horse? That exact thing has happened on Fig Hunter, people sticking up for you got accused of just being your toadies and whatnot, people delegitimized your pain and downplayed the times FH users crossed the line. It wasn't fair to you and your experiences.

Anyway, I guess I wanted to get that off my chest. I see these sorts of situations a lot, and have seen people extensively arguing it from both sides. More and more I find myself agreeing with the side that will keep doggedly asking for accountability and consequences, over those asking for infinite patience and ever-growing mountains of evidence as the trails of victims keeps getting longer.

Tobias 1115~3Y

I often want to write blogs about stuff like this, but these days it feels too risky to talk about anything that might upset people, lose me supporters, especially paying patrons, so I just keep it to myself. Maybe it was a bad idea to even briefly mention this here! I've been wondering whether to reply to you at all for that reason, but I'll at least explain what I was thinking.

With things like this, most people take a kind of... what would you call it... maybe 'social justice' stance - though that term has unwanted connotations here - where they essentially join a virtual mob to denounce certain behaviours because they're concerned about the way parts of the world are run and how people are harmed by that. Things like misogynistic work environments, or billionaires underpaying workers, or oil barons exacerbating global warming, that kind of thing, which is fair enough.

I feel like I'm too much of a distant onlooker to really have much to say about any of that though. It's probably terrible that it's happening, but it's so far removed from my actual experience or influence that I just don't really feel much need to talk about it. Or maybe I just feel too ineffectual.

I'd consider the Blizzard thing in that category, but what I was getting at here, and what gets to me when I see it, is when it's some solo creator - like an indie dev, youtuber, or streamer - being publicly chastised or worse for their abusive misbehaviour either in their private romantic relationships or involving their fans.

Since I have social anxiety anyway and I'm terrified people will judge me negatively - and that there'll be awful negative consequences of that judgement - plus I've actually been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse in the past via Fig Hunter etc, my mind sees these people whose roles aren't massively different from my own, and my demons!! are convinced that if that happened to them, it'll happen to me too. And it's scary.

Especially since most of these issues revolve around either emotional or sexual abuse, and I've committed both of those sins myself in the past... kind of.

The only relationship I've ever had could be called abusive in hindsight, not because I had any desire to abuse anyone but because I'd been so poorly socialised that I didn't know how to deal with that kind of connection... though thankfully her and I have talked since then and she has no desire to take me down!! or anything like that, and we're on amicable terms. From what I've learned over the years, it seems that many young relationships are 'abusive', especially when one or both parties were poorly socialised or have mental issues, but most people 'get away with' being poor partners because they don't have a myriad eyes scrutinising their sins.

I also had that 'best friend' in university, who - to my great shock and confusion - accused me of sexual assault before ghosting me, which I still think about all the time since I always naively thought that meant rape, and nothing I ever did even came remotely close to that. That whole thing's soured my sympathy for others making similar accusations, honestly, because it makes me wonder how bad the abuser's behaviour actually was.

It's so easy to see situations as black and white, as some cold-blooded predator knowingly and sadistically taking advantage of some poor, vulnerable victim. But real human interactions are often not so clear-cut.

A lot of these guys - the solo creators - probably spent their school years as lonely losers, the sort who the opposite sex shunned. Then they make something, and suddenly find themselves with an adoring audience, many of whom approach them privately, and some of those are young women. It's less a case, then, of these guys actively hunting prey, and more a case of resisting an urge, which most people would claim they could easily do, but an awful lot of them wouldn't if the situation actually presented itself to them. There are many enlightening psychology experiments about that.

I don't mean that all men have an urge to rape, to be clear. I imagine that in most cases, the guy would consider himself as incapable of rape as any of us. But things happen one step at a time, through successive rationalisations and building beliefs. "She clearly likes me a lot, so if she likes my content and sought me out for a conversation then she's also sexually interested in me..." Maybe.

I think a lot of my feelings about this also come from my naivete, though. I've always tried to be as good a person as I can, and even slight missteps fill me with extreme shame and guilt, while other people I see online gleefully do things I'd never dream of and don't seem nearly as crippled by such negative feelings. So maybe these other guys actually have done far, far worse things like actually, knowingly raping people who they knew didn't want it, and comparing my own imagined fate to what I see happening to them isn't very valid. I don't know. Just another manifestation of that guilt and shame and general fear, I suppose.

I also have a psychology degree, so I'm way more concerned with understanding why people act the way they do than I am about condemning them for doing it. It was like that when I was essentially 'studying' the incel communities for a while; I wouldn't defend their behaviour or attitudes, but I was interested to know why they had them.

Under the right circumstances, most of us could become monsters. Tons of ordinary Germans became Nazis. Were they just innately evil? The well-known Stanford prison experiment comes to mind, where average volunteers were assigned roles as either prison guards or prisoners, and the researchers were shocked by the degree that all the 'prison guards' were abusive of the 'prisoners'. One of the biggest take-aways from the Psychology course I did was understanding how little of our behaviour is a free choice.

So... I don't know if saying that makes anything better or worse, or maybe none of it's new to you anyway. I don't want to seem like I'm approving of or supporting harmful behaviours! I'm just so consumed by my own guilt, insecurities, and self-loathing that when I see monster hunters, I wonder when they'll come for me too...

With things like this, most people take a kind of... what would you call it... maybe 'social justice' stance - though that term has unwanted connotations here - where they essentially join a virtual mob to denounce certain behaviours because they're concerned about the way parts of the world are run and how people are harmed by that. Things like misogynistic work environments, or billionaires underpaying workers, or oil barons exacerbating global warming, that kind of thing, which is fair enough.

I feel like I'm too much of a distant onlooker to really have much to say about any of that though. It's probably terrible that it's happening, but it's so far removed from my actual experience or influence that I just don't really feel much need to talk about it. Or maybe I just feel too ineffectual.

I'd consider the Blizzard thing in that category, but what I was getting at here, and what gets to me when I see it, is when it's some solo creator - like an indie dev, youtuber, or streamer - being publicly chastised or worse for their abusive misbehaviour either in their private romantic relationships or involving their fans.

Since I have social anxiety anyway and I'm terrified people will judge me negatively - and that there'll be awful negative consequences of that judgement - plus I've actually been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse in the past via Fig Hunter etc, my mind sees these people whose roles aren't massively different from my own, and /my demons!!/ are convinced that if that happened to them, it'll happen to me too. And it's scary.

Especially since most of these issues revolve around either emotional or sexual abuse, and I've committed both of those sins myself in the past... /kind of/.

The only relationship I've ever had could be called abusive in hindsight, not because I had any desire to abuse anyone but because I'd been so poorly socialised that I didn't know how to deal with that kind of connection... though thankfully her and I have talked since then and she has no desire to /take me down!!/ or anything like that, and we're on amicable terms. From what I've learned over the years, it seems that many young relationships are 'abusive', especially when one or both parties were poorly socialised or have mental issues, but most people 'get away with' being poor partners because they don't have a myriad eyes scrutinising their sins.

I also had that 'best friend' in university, who - to my great shock and confusion - accused me of sexual assault before ghosting me, which I still think about all the time since I always naively thought that meant rape, and nothing I ever did even came remotely close to that. That whole thing's soured my sympathy for others making similar accusations, honestly, because it makes me wonder how bad the abuser's behaviour actually was.

It's so easy to see situations as black and white, as some cold-blooded predator knowingly and sadistically taking advantage of some poor, vulnerable victim. But real human interactions are often not so clear-cut.

A lot of these guys - the solo creators - probably spent their school years as lonely losers, the sort who the opposite sex shunned. Then they make something, and suddenly find themselves with an adoring audience, many of whom approach them privately, and some of those are young women. It's less a case, then, of these guys actively hunting prey, and more a case of resisting an urge, which most people would claim they could easily do, but an awful lot of them wouldn't if the situation actually presented itself to them. There are many enlightening psychology experiments about that.

I don't mean that all men have an urge to /rape/, to be clear. I imagine that in most cases, the guy would consider himself as incapable of rape as any of us. But things happen one step at a time, through successive rationalisations and building beliefs. "She clearly likes me a lot, so if she likes my content and sought me out for a conversation then she's also sexually interested in me..." Maybe.

I think a lot of my feelings about this also come from my naivete, though. I've always tried to be as good a person as I can, and even slight missteps fill me with extreme shame and guilt, while other people I see online gleefully do things I'd never dream of and don't seem nearly as crippled by such negative feelings. So maybe these other guys actually /have/ done far, far worse things like actually, knowingly raping people who they knew didn't want it, and comparing my own imagined fate to what I see happening to them isn't very valid. I don't know. Just another manifestation of that guilt and shame and general fear, I suppose.

I also have a psychology degree, so I'm way more concerned with understanding /why/ people act the way they do than I am about condemning them for doing it. It was like that when I was essentially 'studying' the incel communities for a while; I wouldn't defend their behaviour or attitudes, but I was interested to know why they had them.

Under the right circumstances, most of us could become monsters. Tons of ordinary Germans became Nazis. Were they just innately evil? The well-known Stanford prison experiment comes to mind, where average volunteers were assigned roles as either prison guards or prisoners, and the researchers were shocked by the degree that all the 'prison guards' were abusive of the 'prisoners'. One of the biggest take-aways from the Psychology course I did was understanding how little of our behaviour is a free choice.

So... I don't know if saying that makes anything better or worse, or maybe none of it's new to you anyway. I don't want to seem like I'm approving of or supporting harmful behaviours! I'm just so consumed by my own guilt, insecurities, and self-loathing that when I see monster hunters, I wonder when they'll come for me too...

Maniafig222~3Y

It's taken me some time to get back to this!

I wouldn't have commented on this blog if I didn't want to see you reply to my post! I do believe you are sharing your views in good faith, which is why I wanted to comment to give my own context on this subject. I also commented in part because it's a subject I see often and sometimes it's good to get one's thoughts spelled out to solidify them.

I've actually been playing West of Loathing, which is made by the same team as Kingdom of Loathing as one's suspect, and when googling it I did come across more stuff about that incident that got you to write that part of the blog in the first place.

Two things about that particular instance is that it's not just some random solo indie dev, but a developer who is part of a rather accomplished team of developers, whose allegations were in part corroborated by other people on the team. It's fundamentally different from your own situation in many ways, I think.

I do think there is a difference between bad and rocky relationships and outright abusive relationships that get people accused with allegations and such. When someone makes allegations of being a victim, it paints a huge target on their back too, internet crusades target these people as well, following them around and calling them liars, sending them death threats and the like. Those hate mobs are also pursuing their ideal of social justice, though they would obviously never call it that. Anyway, I don't think it's something someone will do unless the situation was that bad or they're mentally unfit to estimate the results of their actions.

I can't comment much on what went on with that 'best friend', I vaguely recall your blogs from the time, but it was never clear to me what exactly happened and I suspect neither you nor her want to publicly talk about specifics.

When it comes to sexual assault, I see it as somewhere between sexual harassment and outright rape. For me the border between harassment/assault is physical contact and assault/rape is penetration (be that forcefully penetrating or forcing someone to penetrate). I'm sure different people would put the boundaries in different places though. One person's harassment might be another's assault while someone else might say it's completely innocuous. I'd like to think nothing you did constituted as harassment, let alone assault.

I think you are inserting your own narrative a lot into this matter. I think we all do, to varying extents, as I often find myself annoyed at presumed heteronormativity in these discussions, being gay. That's something that always strongly colours my perspective on these matters. For example, these allegations aren't even always about people of opposite sexes, I've seen men accused of grooming boys as well! And a lot of these stories don't necessarily involve any sexual misconduct at all, there's many different forms of abuse after all.

I think a lot of those public figures were probably quite popular with both sexes growing up, they're often magnetic and charismatic people, which makes it so difficult for people to know what to think when an allegation is made, since it conflicts heavily with people's image of them.

Anyway, I don't think you need to say it's just probable that some of these people are just that bad, history is full of terrible atrocities and humans horribly mistreating and dehumanizing other humans with the flimsiest of self-rationalizations, so it'd be hard to believe that didn't happen anymore.

Many Germans did become Nazis, as did many people outside of Germany. And on the flipside, a lot of people in similar circumstances, both German and not German, decided to resist. I won't say those who became Nazis are innately evil, but everyone who has ever become or ever will become a Nazi is making a terrible mistake.

If it happened to me under whatever circumstances then I'd also be making a mistake, and I can only hope it never comes to that. It reminds me of someone I saw while sitting in the train wearing a jacket with the text "Nazi punks fuck off" on it, and I couldn't do anything but appreciate the sentiment.

It's good to understand how people get to those sorts of places to prevent it from happening to other people and, where possible and feasible, deradicalize them. But it's also important to have people who are willing to stand up and do something about it when these people are victimizing others. I'll gladly cheer for a Nazi getting punched in the face regardless of how they got to be a Nazi, because I know Nazis would be happy to put a bullet in my and your heads in their ideal world if people let them get away with it.

And of course the role of victims in this shouldn't be understated either, it's important that there's also people who tend to their feelings and needs, to have systems in place to help them recover. I often see it happen that people will focus on deradicalizing while ignoring all the things they can do to help the people the radicals they're focusing on are hurting.

Of course with most abusers it nowhere near that extreme, but I still believe it's good for people to call out abuse. Overall I think we should all be more worried about the people those monster hunters are going after than the monster hunters themselves.

It's taken me some time to get back to this!

I wouldn't have commented on this blog if I didn't want to see you reply to my post! I do believe you are sharing your views in good faith, which is why I wanted to comment to give my own context on this subject. I also commented in part because it's a subject I see often and sometimes it's good to get one's thoughts spelled out to solidify them.

I've actually been playing West of Loathing, which is made by the same team as Kingdom of Loathing as one's suspect, and when googling it I did come across more stuff about that incident that got you to write that part of the blog in the first place.

Two things about that particular instance is that it's not just some random solo indie dev, but a developer who is part of a rather accomplished team of developers, whose allegations were in part corroborated by other people on the team. It's fundamentally different from your own situation in many ways, I think.

I do think there is a difference between bad and rocky relationships and outright abusive relationships that get people accused with allegations and such. When someone makes allegations of being a victim, it paints a huge target on their back too, internet crusades target these people as well, following them around and calling them liars, sending them death threats and the like. Those hate mobs are also pursuing their ideal of social justice, though they would obviously never call it that. Anyway, I don't think it's something someone will do unless the situation was that bad or they're mentally unfit to estimate the results of their actions.

I can't comment much on what went on with that 'best friend', I vaguely recall your blogs from the time, but it was never clear to me what exactly happened and I suspect neither you nor her want to publicly talk about specifics.

When it comes to sexual assault, I see it as somewhere between sexual harassment and outright rape. For me the border between harassment/assault is physical contact and assault/rape is penetration (be that forcefully penetrating or forcing someone to penetrate). I'm sure different people would put the boundaries in different places though. One person's harassment might be another's assault while someone else might say it's completely innocuous. I'd like to think nothing you did constituted as harassment, let alone assault.

I think you are inserting your own narrative a lot into this matter. I think we all do, to varying extents, as I often find myself annoyed at presumed heteronormativity in these discussions, being gay. That's something that always strongly colours my perspective on these matters. For example, these allegations aren't even always about people of opposite sexes, I've seen men accused of grooming boys as well! And a lot of these stories don't necessarily involve any sexual misconduct at all, there's many different forms of abuse after all.

I think a lot of those public figures were probably quite popular with both sexes growing up, they're often magnetic and charismatic people, which makes it so difficult for people to know what to think when an allegation is made, since it conflicts heavily with people's image of them.

Anyway, I don't think you need to say it's just probable that some of these people are just that bad, history is full of terrible atrocities and humans horribly mistreating and dehumanizing other humans with the flimsiest of self-rationalizations, so it'd be hard to believe that didn't happen anymore.

Many Germans did become Nazis, as did many people outside of Germany. And on the flipside, a lot of people in similar circumstances, both German and not German, decided to resist. I won't say those who became Nazis are innately evil, but everyone who has ever become or ever will become a Nazi is making a terrible mistake.

If it happened to me under whatever circumstances then I'd also be making a mistake, and I can only hope it never comes to that. It reminds me of someone I saw while sitting in the train wearing a jacket with the text "Nazi punks fuck off" on it, and I couldn't do anything but appreciate the sentiment.

It's good to understand how people get to those sorts of places to prevent it from happening to other people and, where possible and feasible, deradicalize them. But it's also important to have people who are willing to stand up and do something about it when these people are victimizing others. I'll gladly cheer for a Nazi getting punched in the face regardless of how they got to be a Nazi, because I know Nazis would be happy to put a bullet in my and your heads in their ideal world if people let them get away with it.

And of course the role of victims in this shouldn't be understated either, it's important that there's also people who tend to their feelings and needs, to have systems in place to help them recover. I often see it happen that people will focus on deradicalizing while ignoring all the things they can do to help the people the radicals they're focusing on are hurting.

Of course with most abusers it nowhere near that extreme, but I still believe it's good for people to call out abuse. Overall I think we should all be more worried about the people those monster hunters are going after than the monster hunters themselves.

purplerabbits148~3Y

It's a shame that the break wasn't as restful as you wanted. Its interesting how different disorders seem to resemble each other. I have ADHD and Depression and I have noticed some similarities to Autism in some aspects, but the way how they are similar are really superficial since the causes come from different places. For ADHD and the example you provided, one of the suspected causes of ADHD is the lack of dopamine receptors in their brains. When normal people complete a task, they get a dopamine hit as a reward for completing the task, but for ADHDer's they recieve a smaller reward of dopamine after completion the task because their brains can't pick up all the dopamine they should recieve. A way to increase the amount of dopamine recieved wiuld be in add stress to a situation, because when you complete a more stressful task, you get more dopamine. For ADHDer's they would delay a task to give themselves stress so that they can get the "normal" amount of dopamine for completing the task. Hence why they wait all day for the thing at 1PM.

Since I don't have anxiety, I can only go off what I read and learned from other people. The way how I view anxiety would be like how your brain is like a car that's engine is on and the keys are in ignition. The brain is ready and raring to go at a moments notice at the expence of always spending "gas" at all times. That spending of energy can lead to spending time just waiting for something happen and so it ends up like your example.

Since I don't have anxiety, I can only go off what I read and learned from other people. The way how I view anxiety would be like how your brain is like a car that's engine is on and the keys are in ignition. The brain is ready and raring to go at a moments notice at the expence of always spending "gas" at all times. That spending of energy can lead to spending time just waiting for something happen and so it ends up like your example.

Tobias 1115~3Y

I remember studying something like that about ADHD on the Psychology course, but it's a shame that I've forgotten so many details of everything!

That's a very apt description of what the anxiety's like, and it's frustrating since it's all so unconscious, not really under my control at all, as is the case with mental issues in general.

phsc57~3Y

So, I actually have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, and I relate to that to an extent, the irrational like sort of fear that things will go wrong, even some really small and minor things, and you know how I deal with that? I just do them (with a lot of planning before! so I feel secure), even if I am extremely uncomfortable and think it will suck, it generally does not and even if it does, in a few days I'll forget it (thank you human brain!), and if I don't forget it, generally there is a good reason for that right? that is how the brain is supposed to work or something???
That tweet is rather relatable to me because I am someone who likes to plan my entire day and be sure about things, so I will not commit to doing something that will spend a lot of time before, pretty obvious, but there are a few... lifehacks I found to deal with some extremely stressful stuff, such as having a really weird sleep schelude to spend time sleeping before like one or two hours before an activty I have to do, while this has negative impacts it makes my day feel way better.

Also when there is something I can do later, while I naturally want to do it later and procrastinate it, I just do it, it is like turning the "fuck it" mode, and after things go right it gets way better.
Since I've been doing this for a few years of course my anxiety is way more controlled now, but a few years ago it was really bad, not THAT bad but still bad.

But see, anxiety is actually not that bad, there is a line where I physically cannot do some things out of fear, and this line is actually good! Like I'd like to go and do some really fucked up things which I don't because of anxiety! and it also makes me overthink basically all situations which often gives me an advantage in them and makes me sort of confident in my plan when the time for such things actually comes, it is very interesting.
There is also another weird thing with anxiety, in situations basically everybody is anxious, I generally am anxious but way more controlled than others, because I am used to feeling anxious, this only really works alone tho, when other people are around for some reason I get way more anxious and this is very irrational but I generally am better off alone and don't really like teamwork and such, maybe because of this but it works really well.

But in situations other people break I perform super well, and I think that happens because of anxiety, so it ends up being kinda good?

Anyway the key with anxiety I've found is that, experience is key, doing anything for the first time will make me extremely, EXTREMELY anxious, because not knowing something really bothers me, and having to do something I don't know anything about is probably the thing I hate the most, but after doing it for three times it generally is way, way better.
I think my life choices also helped me with dealing with this, from the military to some hobbies like competitive gaming or playing very complicated music live, very stressful situations that after I get used to I perform extremely well.

Anyway, I had a shih tzu back in the day, died around two years ago, every time I think of something like that I try to remember that quote, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" or something, if you ever feel lonely animals have really helped me, there is not much that can go wrong right?

Also employment is not that huge of a deal, I also sort of feared it before but after you get a job you realize it is not that huge of a deal, because you will be doing basically the same thing everyday so it is very predictable and it sort of gets very comfortable.

Also about payments and such, I'm in military service and I don't even get paid, fun right? I also cannot legally get a job because of this, even more fun right? and the interesting part is that there are so many people who are way, way more fucked than me in my country, because at least I am from a middle class family right, a lot of people who are in the exact same situation as me have to spend a lot of money with transport and other things for military service, but are from poor families and they also do not get paid and cannot get a job, super cool!

About forums, people don't really use random forums that much anymore, Reddit sort of took over, only very few people, which is sad because smaller forums in my opinion were more fun than these big anonymous community ones.

Anyway, try to get out of your comfort zone! turns out the world out there is not that bad after you're sort of forced to face it, so maybe try to put yourself in a situation that forces it? I mean naturally that will probably come, after you see it is not that bad you might be able to force yourself to do more things maybe? I don't know, but well, good luck I guess?

Also when there is something I can do later, while I naturally want to do it later and procrastinate it, I just do it, it is like turning the "fuck it" mode, and after things go right it gets way better.
Since I've been doing this for a few years of course my anxiety is way more controlled now, but a few years ago it was really bad, not THAT bad but still bad.

But see, anxiety is actually not that bad, there is a line where I physically cannot do some things out of fear, and this line is actually good! Like I'd like to go and do some really fucked up things which I don't because of anxiety! and it also makes me overthink basically all situations which often gives me an advantage in them and makes me sort of confident in my plan when the time for such things actually comes, it is very interesting.
There is also another weird thing with anxiety, in situations basically everybody is anxious, I generally am anxious but way more controlled than others, because I am used to feeling anxious, this only really works alone tho, when other people are around for some reason I get way more anxious and this is very irrational but I generally am better off alone and don't really like teamwork and such, maybe because of this but it works really well.

But in situations other people break I perform super well, and I think that happens because of anxiety, so it ends up being kinda good?

Anyway the key with anxiety I've found is that, experience is key, doing anything for the first time will make me extremely, EXTREMELY anxious, because not knowing something really bothers me, and having to do something I don't know anything about is probably the thing I hate the most, but after doing it for three times it generally is way, way better.
I think my life choices also helped me with dealing with this, from the military to some hobbies like competitive gaming or playing very complicated music live, very stressful situations that after I get used to I perform extremely well.

Anyway, I had a shih tzu back in the day, died around two years ago, every time I think of something like that I try to remember that quote, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" or something, if you ever feel lonely animals have really helped me, there is not much that can go wrong right?

Also employment is not that huge of a deal, I also sort of feared it before but after you get a job you realize it is not that huge of a deal, because you will be doing basically the same thing everyday so it is very predictable and it sort of gets very comfortable.

Also about payments and such, I'm in military service and I don't even get paid, fun right? I also cannot legally get a job because of this, even more fun right? and the interesting part is that there are so many people who are way, way more fucked than me in my country, because at least I am from a middle class family right, a lot of people who are in the exact same situation as me have to spend a lot of money with transport and other things for military service, but are from poor families and they also do not get paid and cannot get a job, super cool!

About forums, people don't really use random forums that much anymore, Reddit sort of took over, only very few people, which is sad because smaller forums in my opinion were more fun than these big anonymous community ones.

Anyway, try to get out of your comfort zone! turns out the world out there is not that bad after you're sort of forced to face it, so maybe try to put yourself in a situation that forces it? I mean naturally that will probably come, after you see it is not that bad you might be able to force yourself to do more things maybe? I don't know, but well, good luck I guess?

Tobias 1115~3Y

It's great that you've developed strategies for pushing through anxiety that sound like they're working for you, but sadly it's not that simple for some of us. Personality, upbringing, and circumstance make a huge difference.

A few years ago, I felt like I'd tasted spiritual enlightenment and that my mental issues were a thing of the past. I got very much out of my comfort zone and made major life changes, which led to me making friends, embarrassing myself, finding out I had brain cancer, and attempting suicide twice.

So it's not as if I'm starting from square one. I've tried stuff in the past, I've just unfortunately fallen back and I'm currently in the process of rethinking things.

penguintoastfishfrog10~3Y

Hey. long time lurker, first time commenter. Although I did used to comment fairly regularly back in the tamingthemind days, under a different name.

Sorry the last couple of weeks have been stressful for you, sounds tough. I think I probably have ADHD so yeah, I fully appreciate that little tasks that SHOULD be easy can pile up and be completely overwhelming.

I'm glad that MARDEK sales are still going strong! While you're not earning as much as you'd like or deserve based on how much work you put in, it's still good to hear that it's bringing a somewhat regular income for you. Long may it continue (and, hopefully, improve).

I've just recently got back into MARDEK, it's just been sitting in my Steam library for over year but it's been great fun to dive back in. There aren't that many games that I loved playing as a kid/teen that I still love just as much today. MARDEK is in that elite category for me.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that I am still really interested in and excited for Atonal Dreams. I can imagine it must be hard to work so hard and feel burned out on a project and not even know how many people are interested. So I just wanted to say that there are probably plenty of lurkers like me who don't say much but continue to follow your blog posts and be interested in the work you're doing.

Hey. long time lurker, first time commenter. Although I did used to comment fairly regularly back in the tamingthemind days, under a different name.

Sorry the last couple of weeks have been stressful for you, sounds tough. I think I probably have ADHD so yeah, I fully appreciate that little tasks that SHOULD be easy can pile up and be completely overwhelming.

I'm glad that MARDEK sales are still going strong! While you're not earning as much as you'd like or deserve based on how much work you put in, it's still good to hear that it's bringing a somewhat regular income for you. Long may it continue (and, hopefully, improve).

I've just recently got back into MARDEK, it's just been sitting in my Steam library for over year but it's been great fun to dive back in. There aren't that many games that I loved playing as a kid/teen that I still love just as much today. MARDEK is in that elite category for me.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that I am still really interested in and excited for Atonal Dreams. I can imagine it must be hard to work so hard and feel burned out on a project and not even know how many people are interested. So I just wanted to say that there are probably plenty of lurkers like me who don't say much but continue to follow your blog posts and be interested in the work you're doing.

Tobias 1115~3Y

Thank you! I'm glad that MARDEK has been able to add something to your life, and I'm especially glad to hear you're interested in Atonal Dreams! I do often worry that people aren't, which makes it difficult to trudge through hours of work on it every day, so hearing this does help!