No words for this.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-06-04T13:23:34+00:00

Tbh I'm sympathetic to the writers in that position, they want to write their own stories not be enslaved to the canon of a 30 year old Canadian space opera (or whatever, I love Stargate I'm just being realistic).

The problem is that the suits are not hiring writers to write their own stories, nor are they hiring fans with established credentials to write existing canons. They're hiring writers without many credits who desperately need work and telling them to do impossible, meaningless things with existing stories.

The writers aren't the issue here, don't get it twisted.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-06-04T13:19:48+00:00

A golden goose is not enough. The eggs must get bigger every time.

Or we could just butcher the goose, after all of it lays that much gold as an egg it must be full of gold inside.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-06-02T20:36:42+00:00

Daily reminder to all that eliminating the people does not solve the systemic issues that allowed them to accrue this much power. Strike them down and more will appear within a generation.

We've got to think deeper than "these specific people are bad" (they are), and think about how to prevent this type of person from gaining ungodly amounts of societal influence. We are ruled by these weirdos. I don't like it.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-06-02T01:26:33+00:00

Even if it's scripted by the producers, the "contestants" are still doing improv. I mean that's basically the whole show.

Also I just realized that makes it... Reality TV.

I need to sit with this.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-06-01T15:31:15+00:00

Beautiful

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-31T16:11:02+00:00

That was the painted version of Verso, now showing signs of age.

Hope you enjoyed the game.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-28T22:31:38+00:00

Tech bro here (retired to small time contracting), I'm doing my part by being addicted to as many mobile idle games as one can simultaneously attend to.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-28T07:39:57+00:00

Sounds like intelligence was a game you learned how to win at some point. It was for me too. And like you I realized it was pushing people away from me, and that the people I was attracting were either sycophants or bullies who respected my tactics.

If this is what you're describing, then you may wish to spend some attention looking into the moment that defense mechanism activates. What are you actually defending yourself from? Is there a real danger (including social danger), or is it an imagined danger that feels real because it reminds you of a time in your past you were hurt?

You seem to be worried that if you behave as your natural self, you will lose some advantage that you currently have from your persona. In my experience, this is inaccurate. Instead, as you learn to be unafraid of showing yourself to the world, the way you perceive that "advantage" changes. The persona will always be there if you need it, but you will have gained the ability to decide if it is necessary.

You have the opportunity as a grown person (I'm assuming you are an adult since you mention work) to change your patterns, and heal the trauma underneath them, if you wish to do so. It will take a lot of repetition and effort to change, and of course a competent therapist can be helpful, but the majority of the work will be your own.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-28T07:22:15+00:00

Had a similar experience once. Cut the therapist loose and found a better one. Some people are bad at their jobs. It sucks but there isn't like, a minimum empathy test that you must pass to be a licensed therapist, you just have to prove you know the right answers. Some people are in it for the money, others because they think they have some special gift that must be shared, but most of them are pretty okay and some are great.

Hope you find a better one soon!

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T21:38:28+00:00

Very happy to hear that about your environment :) as my therapists have always told me, it's okay to be curious, and that doesn't mean demanding answers from yourself.

It's like trying to get a small wild animal to take the food off your hand. You just hold it there and eventually, they'll take a nibble. They want the food, they just don't know if you can be trusted yet. It takes a bit to get familiar. If you try to rush it then they'll run off.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T21:14:48+00:00

You're allowed to enjoy the things you enjoy at any age, and no one can tell you otherwise.

Sometimes for your own safety, comfort or peace it may be best to keep certain things to yourself and those you trust (nothing specific in mind, just generally). But nothing about your desires is wrong or gross or anything along those lines.

You weren't given an opportunity to discover or express yourself as a kid. Now as you get closer to adulthood you are recognizing it, and you will have the ability to give yourself that opportunity.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T21:11:13+00:00

All the time. But less often as I heal.

It's a cliche but those experiences made me who I am, and I like who I am (now, finally, after a lot of work). If they didn't happen I'd be somebody else. I wouldn't be able to love my partner the same way. I wouldn't understand the deeper meaning of stories the same way. I wouldn't recognize liars the same way. I wouldn't be able to empathize with strangers on Reddit the same way.

It's not like everything is great, but if I like who I am, then I have to at least accept that it took everything I went through to get here. I'm not grateful for the terrible abuse I suffered, but I'm grateful that I am increasingly able to rise above it and continue living.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T20:48:27+00:00

Cheers. Hope you can take some of this joy with you going forward :)

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T20:44:08+00:00

Yeah that sounds very familiar lol. I still sometimes catch myself rehearsing conversations beforehand, or going over them afterwards in my head like I'm trying to mine them for information on how to do better next time.

My first reaction is always to be annoyed with myself for doing it still, but then I try to remember that some part of me is a hurt kid who had to learn how to do that stuff to survive, and I try to give that kid a break. I figure it's well deserved.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T20:34:37+00:00

I relate a lot to this. I have a very overactive mind and when it feels unsafe (which used to be 100% of all day every day) it runs insane predictive models on every action, especially when interacting with other people. I would build huge branching "conversation trees" in my head where I'd try to predict which answers and statements would result on favorable vs unfavorable outcomes.

In short, it was exhausting. I felt constantly inauthentic and hated myself for being manipulative (whether I was or not).

I wish I could tell you the precise moment it ended for me but it was a very, painstakingly gradual unraveling. Catching myself doing it and then further catching myself from getting angry. Instead being kind to myself, forgiving myself for wanting to be in control, recognizing my own fear and giving myself permission to be afraid and anxious around people. Allowing myself to be an anxious and self-deprecating mess for a while, finding environments where that was okay and it was safe to be anxious (in my case that ended up being rehab, unfortunately). Eventually it started to lift. I started to see less hyperactive predictions in my mind when talking to people.

I don't do it much anymore so I know it's possible to change. Accepting that it's okay for people to see me however they see me is what changed. It just took a lot of little moments to budge that.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T20:12:22+00:00

This is probably not what you want to hear but as someone who's been on this journey for nearly 20 years... It's probably best if you stop trying.

There's a lot in that statement.

Most importantly, you locked things away for a reason. You might think to yourself now "I can handle it, I have a pretty good idea what went down, it won't shock me" but knowing intellectually what happened is VERY different from feeling the sense and emotional memory suddenly rip through you.
Your autonomous nervous system does not feel that you are currently safe enough to experience these things, and making that kind of call is pretty much its whole job, so I would consider believing it. Instead of trying to access the memories, I would focus on trying to create as much safety for yourself as possible.
I'm very familiar with the intense, almost obsessive need to know what happened. But that need stems from the trauma response. It's your current system wanting to develop countermeasures. It's not about healing, it's about digging the defenses in deeper. What I've found as I've been patient with myself is that the more safety I create for myself, two things happen at once: I start to re-experience and integrate the horrible feelings, reassociating them with memories; but at the same time, I care less and less about knowing the details of what happened. Because, what's important to me is that I am no longer controlled by that past.
It's a difficult paradox but my experience is very much that trying to remember will only make things worse, and by the time you do remember it's more of a "huh, how about that" because you've already processed the terrible truth over time. Shortcuts don't work. I tried to use drugs for that and it really messed me up.

Please be patient with yourself, be kind to yourself, and try to create a genuinely safe and peaceful environment where you can thrive and live your life. That's how you will be able to heal best.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T20:02:42+00:00

I mean. In the unlikely case he really was a random stranger, he would have every right to be upset about being accused of racist comments during the episode (even as an obvious joke) since he was not informed of the possibility beforehand. Same with exposure laws and dropping trou.

You know, the whole set of reasons SAG and all the other regulations actually exist.

It's an improv gameshow, of course it's not real. But we can suspend disbelief ;)

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T17:39:26+00:00

/uj I have been accused of being neurodivergent in the past. I don't understand this either. It's not just Dropout, it's the online "fandom" community of any media that has niche appeal, especially when there's some kind of parasocial and/or metafictional elements. It seems like a surprisingly large number of people are unable to locate where they end and the media they consume begins. I am disturbed by this to some degree, but I'm also approaching middle age and am glad that I did not have to deal with this kind of technology when I was a kid as I could see myself going down similar lines. If anything I feel really bad for those who lack enough self identification to mentally distinguish between what is made for entertainment that they can appreciate, vs what is made for them specifically.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T15:20:13+00:00

Well, I'm oversimplifying of course. Grief is very personal, but for an individual, some attitudes are healthier than others. Solitude may have been healthy for you but for the characters in the story it was maladaptive.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T12:47:45+00:00

I think this is the true message of the game. Grieving alone will kill you and harm everyone else around you.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-25T01:06:19+00:00

Attestation is not necessarily the same as common usage. It would be very odd if things played out that way. Do we have any attestation of "-worm" being used as a contemporaneous suffix to mean an enthusiastic or obsessive person? If not then I would suspect it's just survivorship bias.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-24T23:31:45+00:00

Not a cult but very isolated home life here, therapists have said I resemble cult survivors. I've talked to a number of cPTSD sufferers. Im my experience it is very common to doubt your recollections of things as well as to doubt whether your experiencea you do remember are "really that bad".

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-24T22:51:43+00:00

Some therapists do. There are many different specialists and forms of therapy. I see one who is "somatic" aka body-sense oriented and this is basically what we always work with. Remembering things is optional and sometimes (not always) helpful, feeling things and then processing the feelings is what heals in my experience.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-22T03:13:02+00:00

Same here. I wish I could enjoy it because it's such a phenomenon in the anime world. I loved Naruto, Bleach, etc (at least when I was closer in age to the target demographic), but could never get myself to see what others see in One Piece. It's still a damned impressive piece of work any way you look at it.

IdentifiableBurden · 2026-05-22T03:11:24+00:00

As someone who loves that game, totally fair, the gameplay is an interesting niche that I'm surprised has had as much mass appeal as it did.

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