context: Our show for indoor guard is based on a board game. There’s a set of card props, pretty much just big pieces of foam board, and there’s nine of us with these cards. Everyone else is on flag/sabre/rifle. HOWEVER, us cards never touch the equipment until the flag feature (which got changed so now we’re only there for eight counts and disappear again). The work, which I already mentioned that got changed, pissed a lot of us off.

actual incident: Everyone was, rightfully, sorta mad about how we did literally nothing for roughly thirty ish seconds out of four minutes. During practice, EVERY SINGLE CARD is bitching about it. Except for me. I legit just wanted to go home and never have to deal with literally everthing falling apart while I’m trying to be the “pOsItiVe OnE” but I was so drained and still am a bit and everyone is still being a bitch about everything and ISTG IF THEY DON’T GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER I’M SLAPPING SOMEONE- WHAAAAAAT WHO SAID THAT?? The worst part is…

**TW FOR SUICIDE MENTIONS AND SUCH (Zending)**

AHEM..

Okay. Here we go.

So many people in the TSP fandom think that the Narrator actually cares about Stanley/the player during Zending, but it seems stupidly obvious to me that he DOESN'T?? He doesn't really care about Stanley/the player at all during any point in the game. Everything he does that he claims is to keep Stanley safe or to keep him from hurting himself is actually only because he doesn't want something to happen. Everything he does is for HIS OWN BENEFIT, he's a self-absorbed, narcissistic motherfucker who cares about no one but himself. It's incredible to me how people can overlook that, like really??? He even says it himself during Zending, he says "Please Stanley, don't take this from me!" HEAVILY implying that the only reason he is trying to stop Stanley from jumping off the staircase is because he doesn't want the game to reset for his own happiness. And people are constantly like "ohh, he actually cares about Stanley during Zending, it was so sad to watch him try and stop Stanley, the poor thing! He must love him so much!" NO. He doesn't. He just doesn't want the game to reset. He doesn't want to go back. If the game didn't reset when Stanley died, he wouldn't give a shit if Stanley jumped off the stairs or not. Many, MANY times during the game he resorts to degrading Stanley and pushing him away, even temporarily abandoning him several times (During the Games ending, during the Infinite Hole sequence in the Stanley Parable 2, etc.), Which really shows that he does NOT care about Stanley one bit. He is willing to hurt him emotionally and on rare occasions even physically if it'll force Stanley to give in to the Narrator's own wants. He also KNOWS that the bucket makes Stanley happy, and can't deal with his own jealousy, and so he tries to destroy or get rid of the bucket many times throughout the game. He just can't deal with the fact that something other than HIS GAME makes Stanley happy, the jealous bastard. He even actively praises Stanley for stabbing the bucket during one ending of the game. I don't mention her or Mariella much, but I feel like the Curator is just a much more sensible and rational person. Though we don't hear much from her at all during the game or know much about her character, just from the little dialogue we get from her she seems much more down to Earth. She seems like she could accept the fact that she isn't the greatest being in existence, and even actively praises the bucket, ridiculing Stanley for his carelessness with it. I headcanon Mariella and the Curator as the alternate, genderbend universe of Stanley and the Narrator, and I feel like the Curator would treat Mariella with much more respect than the Narrator treats Stanley.

I’m sure there’s more I should say, and everything will be off the top of my head, cuz I’m not looking up episodes or plot points today. But here goes

McKay is introduced as an arrogant, deeply unpleasant man, who basically exists to clash with Sam, cause drama and tension, (and also make Sam look good). Then Atlantis started, and he became a main character. I think that was a really interesting choice, and overall a very good one, because it’s sets up an incredible character arc. A regular leading character (who is one of the “good guys”) cannot be as universally hateable as Rodney was when he was just a one (or two)-off character. But you can’t just scrap who he was when you introduced him, so how do you give him the kind of growth that makes him interesting and someone people want to root for? 

In many ways Atlantis did a great job of that. The show took him way out of his comfort zone, and put him under great stress, so that he had to up his game. It isolated him long term with a limited number of people, so he had to learn some basic people skills. And in doing both those things, it pushed him to the edge and showed us (and him) that McKay had bravery and a good heart and love for his friends and the willingness to risk himself for others. He’d covered all that over with an incredibly thick layer of ego and cowardice and boorish behaviour, but when against the wall, that awfulness could be broken through and the nobler side of him could start to come out. And that was primarily made possible because the show surrounded him with people who called him on his bullshit. For the first few years especially, all the main characters held him to account and made him behave and become better.

So given that I’ve praised him so much, why am I so uncomfortable with McKay?

Two reasons. There are a few important areas we did not see him grow significantly, and at a certain point the show stopped challenging his behaviour to the same extent.

First point first: ways he kept being horrible. 

He was a ghastly boss/coworker to the science team throughout. From the first episode to the last, he refused to learn his people’s names, he belittled them and mocked their ideas and used them as scapegoats when things went badly but never gave them credit when things went well. Occasionally he feels bad about that, but usually only after someone he treated badly has died a horrible death. The show clearly wants us to feel bad for these people - especially poor Zelenka - but Rodney’s never held to account for it, and never improves. Zelenka complains about his treatment, Rodney makes a snarky joke, and we move on, feeling the scientists’ frustration, but clearly just supposed to roll our eyes and be ok with it. The overall message sent is that it’s ok that Rodney treats people badly because he’s brilliant and he’ll save the day. It’d be nice if he’d treat people better, but we have to make allowances somewhere. Honestly, Atlantis probably would have been better off without Rodney, because with him there you have one really smart person getting things done but crushing everyone around him in the process, whereas with him gone you might not have that individual star, but you’d have a lot more very smart people who could actually work properly and achieve things as a team.

The other thing that never changes is his treatment of women - he’s a serial sexual harasser. He sexually harasses Sam the first time he appears on SG-1, and it’s gross, but he’s meant to be gross then. But he keeps doing it through every single season of Atlantis. Sam alone gets harassed by him so many times - even when she’s his boss! In the sunken jumper episode he hallucinates up Sam dressed a way she would never dress, behaving a way she would never behave, and the way he talks to her makes my skin crawl. And yes I know she’s not really there, and he has a head injury, but his creepiness is played for laughs. And then Sam takes over as commander of Atlantis, and then there’s the episode where they fall down the hole. First he tells Sam to flash the boys to bribe them to help - gross - and then he tries to convince Sam and Dr. Keller to strip under the pretense of making a rope out of their clothes. Again, it’s played for laughs, and it’s just fucking gross. Sam is his BOSS. Dr. Keller is his coworker. And all three of them are in extreme danger. And he is sexually harassing both women. 

That story is also my big example of how the show starts letting him off the hook. In that episode, Rodney repeatedly sexually harasses every woman in sight. He’s so desperate to puff his ego that insists he is more competent at something he has never done before than Sam the professional soldier who does things like that every day and actively sidelines her. In doing so, he also further endangers them, starting a gas fire (that Sam has to risk injury to put out), and pulling in more dirt when Sam tells him to stop. He repeatedly tries to get out of doing the actual hard work of saving them and instead spends his time being snarky and trying to prove how smart he is. And after all that, the narrative rewards him. He’s the hero, because he got rope burn but didn’t leave Sam to die. People admire him. He gets a date with Dr. Keller. We’re just supposed to shake our heads affectionately at all of his grossness and go “Oh McKay...” 

In summary, the narrative bought into the idea of making allowances for exceptional men. He’s dreadful to his coworkers, but he’s a genius who saves the day so we’ll let him get away with that. He gets pushback for treating the main Atlantis team like that, but his non-field colleagues are apparently fair game. He’s a serial sexual harasser - and here nobody is safe, not even the main characters or the soldiers or the [insert category here], because we are consistently meant to find his sexual harassment funny, or at worst an irritation on the level of bad breath. And it’s not. And finally, while the show did a good job of calling him out for the first few seasons, after that it started letting him off the hook, and buying into the glorification of Rodney McKay, no longer treating his unpleasant attributes as things to be worked on as part of a long character arc, but instead merely quirks that should be accepted. 

uhhhh you asked for this buddy

why,,, can’t I just like fuckin uhhhhhhh be happy??? like in my own skin and in my own house like I don’t understand why everything has to be terrible or unfavorable or why I can’t just feel 100% safe and loved in my own fucking HOUSE

It’s weird because I know my mom loves me but ever since I “came out” to her the first time it’s like I can feel the difference in her love for me. Like before, when I was “straight” it was normal and everything was normal, but the moment I came out to her when I was fourteen it changed and it’s been five fucking years and I’m MUCH more queer than she knows and she’ll ever know and I know, I just KNOW, if I was to come out fully to her she wouldn’t love me the same way, if at all, and I can’t take that risk where I am right now

So a friend of mine is getting married, and she asked me to be her maid of honor (or “Leader Maid” as I once mistakenly called it). I’ve never been to a wedding, let alone had an actual role in one, so this is a fairly new experience for me in general. Fortunately the wedding is fairly low key, and I don’t have to buy a specific dress or even a specific style. As far as my friend is concerned as long as we stick to the color scheme the wedding party can pretty much wear whatever we want.

I still need a formal dress though, and I wanna look hot as fuck in that dress.

Now I hate shopping for clothes, and I absolutely loathe trying clothes on in the store. Shopping for clothes is in the ‘top ten worst things that I consistently have to do in my life’ list. Normally I walk into a store, head right for the men’s section, pick out what I want, pay, and proceed to mentally repress the whole experience. Since men’s clothes tend to have sizes which actually make human sense I can be fairly certain whatever I pick will fit me without the need to try it on.

Dress shopping is a whole new beast, and as a woman who has never actually bothered to own a dress before, I enlisted some help. My two closest friends agreed to come with me and help me pick something out or at least find some options to consider.

I didn’t think this was going to be that bad honestly. I had my friends with me to make buying clothes bearable, and I’m not normally self conscious about how I look. I have pretty shitty self esteem in general but I’ve never left my house feeling like I looked bad in the clothes I was wearing. Sure maybe my clothes don’t always flatter my body type properly but I’ve never thought I looked ugly.

Boy was I in for a rude awakening.

Not only was it nearly impossible just to find something that fit me let alone in a style I liked, but each and every dress I tried on made me feel hideous. Not even ugly, hideous.

I don’t know if this was just a problem with me and my vision of what I think looks good, because it certainly could be. I am well aware my idea of ‘fashion’ tends to veer far from what is mainstream. I am also aware that I’ve got some chub in the stomach area and that I could crush the skulls of my enemies with my thighs. I might not be conventionally beautiful, but I have never felt this awful about how I looked before.

We went to dozens of stores, and each one managed to make me feel worse and worse. By the time we called it quits for the day not only did I not have a dress, but I actually felt like crying. I kept thinking to myself that there must be something wrong with me; that I had to be the one in the wrong if we could go to so many stores and I couldn’t find a single thing that made me feel beautiful or even just okay looking. Thank god this feeling didn’t stick with me long and I managed to shake it off within a couple of days but I keep thinking about it. I don’t feel ugly in the clothes I am wearing right now, but I can’t stop thinking about how easily I got dragged into this pit of despair just trying to find a dress to wear.

Maybe I’m not shopping in the right kinds of stores, sure an argument could be made that the stores we went to just don’t cater to my body type. But I would argue the opposite. No one should walk into a store, and feel ugly because they don’t fit some bullshit standard for what is beautiful. A person should be able to walk into a clothing store and find clothes that fucking fit them. Cute, sexy, and good looking clothes shouldn’t be only for people of a certain goddamn body type.

At this point I don’t really feel bad anymore, mostly I’m just angry. I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it. I still have plenty of time to find something to wear for the wedding, and I am going to be damn sure I look good. I am not going to settle for something that I feel self conscious in even if I have to sew the damn dress myself.

I guess the point of this story is that fashion sucks, clothing stores suck, and all women are beautiful regardless of their body type. It’s a fucking shame the world doesn’t seem to have caught onto that yet.

I’m not entirely sure why I decided to post this, mostly I just wanted to complain but I guess I also wanted to know if anyone else can relate? Or agrees? I dunno.

Wow, it’s been a year now since i last posted anything here. I’m still alive, if anyone is still here at all to care. Um. Last post I did was about the status of my mental health, so I guess a follow-up would be prudent, no?

So now it’s official. I have both Aspergers and ADHD. I thought it was just ADD, but no. The hyperactivity aspect is something I very much have. It’s just that it doesn’t manifest physically - it simply manifests mentally in that my mind is always everywhere at once - that my train of thought manifests more like a puppy on its first snow day than like an actual train.

I’ve been on antidepressants for 13 months now, but I’ve only really felt any real effect from them for the last month and a half as I finally got to change med type. The first type barely helped and gave me nightmares two nights out of three, but those things were small and irrelevant enough for me to it really bring it up until now. Because for all that time, I have been searching for and adjusting to ADHD meds as well, and you only want to sort through one set of side-effects at a time. Turns out I’m really sensitive to side effects, so finding the right type and dosage took a long time, and I’m not certain that the one I’m on now is the best choice still. 

I’m still on full-time sick leave for burnout, since February 14th last year. Currently it will last until the end of August, then we’ll reevaluate from there. Hopefully I can start studying again by that point, if only at 50%.

Turns out, it takes a really long time to recover from a bout of burnout that has had five entire years of buildup. 

So what am I doing now? Mostly just being useless. Restless but without the energy to do anything about it. I barely eat these days, and my sleep cycle is just completely nonexistent. See, in large part due to aforementioned double-whammy of Aspergers and ADHD, my capacity for self discipline is basically nil. With me being on sick leave, I have nothing that forces me to get up and do stuff. There is no reason other than my own health to get up in the morning.

Add to that the fact that both my current antidepressants and my ADHD meds lower my appetite. I do not get hungry anymore. I just get tremors in the late afternoon when I’ve forgotten to eat all day. I can go entire days where I am never ever hungry, and when I finally manage to make something to eat and force myself to just eat it dammit, I can barely get half the meal down.

My doctor has actually advised me to eat small snacks through the entire day to make up for it. You know, the thing that you’re usually heavily discouraged from doing? :’)

In conclusion, my daily life is kinda shit. I’m doing what I can to get better at it all, even going to group therapy every week, but it feels like a Sisyphean effort. 

I’m too burnt out to study or work, but without study or work, I can’t really recover properly. It’s one real bastard of a catch 22.

I’d move back home, but that’s not really an option. Not now that the family’s got a much smaller apartment. I’d have to live on the couch, in a living room with no possible way of real privacy. And I’m an introvert. I am really fortunate to have a family as loving and supportive as I do, and I love them dearly - but I NEED my space. When I went there over the winter holidays, just those two and a half weeks I was there was enough to suck me completely dry of energy. 

If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear them. Because I need them desperately.

So well. That’s where I am now. 

[garbling thought-vomit about social issues and the failings of tumblr as a community below. Probably best ignored.]