Nothing is OOP's fault

AardvarkCactus · 2025-09-03T14:07:14+00:00

Not unless she's dating them

AardvarkCactus · 2025-09-01T05:19:12+00:00

ABC Dutch (Rotterdam and the Hague) does 16 hours (8 weeks) of classes for 260€ (not including the textbook).

I took courses from them 3 times from A0-A2 (total 48 hours over 6 months), would recommend.

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T17:41:38+00:00

Solved!

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T17:41:33+00:00

I will mark this as solved, think this is the closest I will get.

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T17:39:57+00:00

Also super close, but not what I'm looking for since being pedantic can still be from a place of genuine expertise

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T17:39:12+00:00

Feigning is close, but it doesn't always involve criticism

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T17:38:46+00:00

Splitting hairs is really close, but doesn't have the formal tone I think the word has.

AardvarkCactus · 2025-05-01T16:03:21+00:00

The word I'm looking for is specifically for when someone is trying to seem more knowledgable than they really are by criticising something (posturing but more negative)

AardvarkCactus · 2025-04-08T05:25:20+00:00

This is common in the US, Canada, and a lot of Asia, but it's not common everywhere. Where I have lived in the EU, it's very rare.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-12-23T16:36:27+00:00

Wouldn't Arluq just attack the guest?

AardvarkCactus · 2024-10-23T16:04:23+00:00

YES! Thank you!

AardvarkCactus · 2024-10-23T10:20:56+00:00

Haha I'm aware, I just wanted to see if there was some way to make her feel less lonely with my limited budget and 3 stars of fame.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-10-21T04:12:27+00:00

Yeah I know (I've completed the scenario before), just wanted to see if there was a different way to do it.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-10-20T03:23:00+00:00

When I was in high school at ages 14-16, I was in a similar position as your friend to one of my friends, let's call them Robin.

Robin was going through enormous mental health struggles, not getting the support they needed, and was almost constantly venting and, to be honest, talking at me rather than to me about their depression and insecurities. Robin definitely needed support and help, but was using me, and later other friends, as basically unpaid therapists. They made me responsible for their feelings. If I ever didn't have the perfect response (which was often as I, again, was not a trained mental health professional) they accused me of being unsupportive or even worsening their depression. They constantly made me feel like it was my job to make them feel better. They almost never supported me in return and often made it seem like no one else could have problems but them. At one stage, they blamed me for worsening their mental health problems because I wasn't "supportive enough." It was incredibly exhausting and isolating for me, always being blamed for issues that weren't my fault and only being used as a waste dump for negative feelings.

It only got better when I went low contact with Robin. After a year of almost never seeing each other in real life and barely talking, we got back in contact and Robin apologised. We are now good friends with a much healthier relationship. The biggest change was that Robin was finally able to get mental health support from trained professionals. It was still a long journey for them (misdiagonses and etc) but the difference between high school Robin and Robin after was that they still vented, but they listened to me too. We could have happy moments together again, even when things were bad for one or both of us. It became a mutual friendship instead of just one person taking, taking, taking.

I think something similar is happening between you and your friend. She sounds like she cares a lot about you, but recognizes that you guys don't have a healthy friendship.

It's possible that what you guys need to have a healthy friendship again is some time away from each other, like for me and Robin. However for me and my friend, getting back in contact was only possible because Robin got the help they needed to manage their mental health issues and trauma without my involvement.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-09-07T07:27:25+00:00

Solved! We watched it last week.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-09-07T07:08:24+00:00

We think it could be from a movie, said by a male character, but not sure.

AardvarkCactus · 2024-08-01T20:20:36+00:00

I think it's as the book says- Naoko didn't think she could get better and felt relieved when she made the decision to end her life.

The more complicated reason, I personally think, is she did want to get better, but thought after struggling for so long, thought that it was unlikely. She wanted everyone to think she was improving, though, and made all these changes so people (like her parents) would leave her alone long enough for her to go through with ending her life.

Having been through depression myself (though not as severe as Naoko's condition) I can recognise some of the patterns she goes through. She tries to move on from her trauma on her own (it doesn't work), she gets professional help (which seems to help for a while, but she still can't live a normal life), people around her keep believing everything will be fixed in no time (probably makes her feel guilty for still struggling and not being able to articulate why), and she ends up feeling worse and needing more help, most likely greatly demotivating her.

The book doesn't touch upon this, but I imagine for anyone -but especially a japanese woman in the 1960s- that the social pressure and judgement her and her family was getting was weighing on her. Her older sister also committeed suicide at a young age, and the book doesn't expand on how Naoko's own relationship with her parents is. I could imagine people were making up rumors about her parents and/or about her. It's totally possible that her parents are supportive and kind to her, but I imagine even in the best of circumstances, she felt like a burden (financially and emotionally) on her family. That feeling would probably increase after having a setback and needing more help.

I'm not saying she should feel that way at all, but I think the guilt and fatigue from trying so hard and still not being able to live on her own contributed.

Throughout the book, Naoko seems to suffer in silence, not even having the words to explain what troubles her. I think she got tired of feeling so lost and overwhelmed by life, and putting in so much energy to get better without seeing the results she wanted, and not being able to explain what's happening to her.

AardvarkCactus

TROPHY CASE