Dion was here

Look, I love y'all. I know you don't want to participate in so-called "drama" because you think it's messy and shit. I get that, I do. But here's the deal. Cowbuild and her cronies are making the whole patreon method of dealing with the sims look bad, and that affects YOU guys too.

Because of these bad apples, there are some people questioning if patreon is safe. Especially because Anto is involved, and he USED TO BE EARLY ACCESS.

I have OCD. one of my themes is called “scrupulosity”. what this means is that I constantly obsess about the moral value of my thoughts and actions. because I was raised Christian, this is often connected to the Bible, but it doesn’t have to be.

so a line of thinking that really angers me is the idea that there is such thing as a “problematic” intrusive thought. this rhetoric is wrong for three main reasons:

intrusive thoughts, particularly in OCD, are ego-dystonic.

this means that our brains tell us things that go against our values. someone who loves animals will probably get thoughts about hurting animals. someone who cares about inclusivity may get intrusive thoughts about slurs. someone who is very religious may get intrusive thoughts about sinning in some way. etc etc

your intrusive thoughts do not reflect your values. this means you cannot call an intrusive thought problematic, because that would imply some kind of moral weighting to the thoughts.

you cannot control your intrusive thoughts

I repeat: you cannot control your intrusive thoughts. it is wrong to judge a person for something they cannot control. someone cannot be in the wrong for a thought that they didn’t choose to have. end of story.

thoughts are thoughts

people with OCD often struggle with something called “thought-action fusion”. this means that we assign the same value to a thought as we do to an action, or that we can’t remember if we’ve actually followed through with a thought or not.

so it really doesn’t help when people from the outside world reinforce this perspective! thoughts are thoughts! they have no moral value! they’re just things that happen in your head and don’t have the capacity to hurt anyone. thinking and doing are different things, and you cannot treat someone like they’ve done something if they’ve simply thought about it.

in conclusion:

no thought is a moral action

intrusive thoughts are uncontrollable and often taboo

be kind to people who experience intrusive thoughts!

a compilation of all my planned good omens studies/recreations to commemorate finishing this project! they’ve been a great learning experience, and a bit of a trip down memory lane, though i must admit the monet ones are probably my favourite.