🌊🔥

Level 2: We shouldn't treat mental health facilities as objects of horror because it stigmatises mental illness.

A few years after finishing it, I was talking to a friend who had just played it. He was saying how he dumped all of his orbs (game currency) into upgrading his minimum health pool and how he wanted to start over with a different build.

I stared at him. "Wait, what?" He repeated- he dumped all his orbs into increasing his minimum HP and just tanked a bunch of stuff.

That was when I realized that you could upgrade your minimum health. I had not noticed that you could spend orbs to do that. I spent them on everything else OTHER than upgrading my health bar. I literally spent so so so frikkin long beating the game with MINIMUM. HP. I WOULD HAVE HAD SAVED SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY IF I HAD JUST FRIKKIN NOTICED THAT INCREASING MY MINIMUM HEALTH WAS EVEN AN OPTION. NO WONDER I HAD TO REDO THE SAME FIGHTS 20 TIMES. NO WONDER EVERYTHING WAS SO. DIFFICULT. I COMPLETELY just missed a crucial element to gameplay and specs and I basically played the game entirely incorrectly, exerting WAY more effort to get the same results as anyone who actually took time to examine the obvious upgrade options.

We're getting there little by little, sure. But it's a road.

And on the other hand, I wrote my biological father a letter a few months ago calling him out on the shit he was saying to family about the trans people who are his kids and grandkids, and he tried to lie to my face about it while saying "it's just my traditional ways."

My FIL is in frequent contact with all of his children and is visited by them regularly. My father's grandkids haven't spoken to him in years, and 2/3 of his children don't talk to him at all. My mom respects our names & pronouns, even if she doesn't "get it" or whatever,* and I text with her pretty much every day.

It's Granddad's choice whether or not he wants to be lonely.

Changes in this part of the brain were previously used to previously used to argue that women are the ideal primary caretakers of children in all cases. And apparently, it’s false. The reason they found these changes in women was that women were already the primary caretaker in almost all cases, not because there’s something inherent to women that makes them better parents.

The mirror replied "To whom?"

"The miller who made the flour for my bread," the queen would say, or "Whoever spun the thread my shawl was made of".

The second time, she says "To the King," and she is pleased to see herself once more.

The third time, she says "To the Royal Advisor," and is once more satisfied to see herself.

The fourth time, she says "To the scribe who takes the King's letters." She is shown the man's wife. And she seethes, but quiets herself, for it is only right that a man loves his wife.

The fifth time, she says "To the Court Wizard," and is shown the man's departed mother as he remembers her from his youth, radiant and smiling and warm and larger than life.

The tenth time, she says "To the Stable Master," and is shown the fastest horse in the stable, majestic and free as the wind even in captivity

"To the baker," she is shown the man's daughter, young and adorable and full of joy and laughter.

"To the artist who did my portrait," she is shown a painting of a woman done by the man's teacher, who he still looks up to now that he is well established himself.

"To the Royal Knight," she is surprised but not displeased to see the castle's entire guard force in the middle of doing drills.

The one hundredth time she asks the mirror, and it asks her "to whom?" she once again says, "To me." And she does the same the one hundred and second, and again and again and again.

i feel like the problem with this question is best illustrated by a conversation i had with a friend a while back, where i said something like, "i feel very safe with you because you don't do subtle hints and you are always very straight-up with me about what you are thinking and feeling."

You telling me these gelt aint crunchy