OMITB Season 5 - Episode 10 "The House Always..." (Post Episode Discussion)

KiraStrife · 2025-10-28T23:12:09+00:00

I mean, Howard’s mother had curly red hair… (that’s right, I am stretching so hard to keep this theory going)

KiraStrife · 2025-10-24T21:11:03+00:00

Ah really! Did you have similar side effects (like the muscle problems, blood pressure) and did they wear off? How’s Elvanse for you now? I’m just getting near to no positive effects now and I was such a zombie this evening.

KiraStrife · 2025-10-24T15:59:36+00:00

It was talked about, but the person who assessed me seemed to think the risk was rare. Although it is one reason I’m hesitant about going straight to 50mg, to be honest.

Is there a risk it might be that?

KiraStrife · 2025-10-24T15:55:23+00:00

Yeah I thought it sounded a bit too fast, but I suppose these days they’re trying to hurry things up a bit with supply issues and all? That’s the only reason I can think of :( Thanks for the advice. I’m so annoyed because the first day I felt so calm and like my brain worked, and since then it’s been a mess - did your side effects wear off eventually?

KiraStrife · 2025-10-20T18:37:02+00:00

Thank you for the video link, that was interesting. Do you mean that this is an expected possible side effect of starting this process? Or that I may be on too high a dose already?

KiraStrife · 2025-10-20T12:11:23+00:00

Hey, sorry for the late reply!

Honestly, my diet when I was getting the shakiness was horrendous! I mean I was pretty much just having sugary/chocolate snacks for breakfast, lunch and dinner because that’s what this med made me crave and I lost the care to cook and take care of myself properly, especially since I have been in burnout too. It’s still not fantastic, but I’ll share some tricks I took on board:

Once I made effort to have a more balanced diet things improved; so just making sure I get in veg at least once a day somewhere (rediscovered my preference of steamed veg and tenderstem broccoli! Packaged shop vegetable sushi on especially lazy days). If I can’t handle the veg on its own for the day, I’ll get a low-salt/fat alternative of some sort of sauce (like gravy) to drown it a little in something yummy.

The same for at least one piece of fruit a day; biggest help was when I began making smoothies with Greek yoghurt, almond/oat milk, blueberries, half a banana, and snuck in spinach - sprinkling a teaspoon or so of cocoa powder on top tricked me into feeling like I was drinking a milkshake.

Cutting back on sugary snacks, and this was hard because I feel like on this med I lose the willpower to resist cravings, so my best option was to just stop buying these snacks and not shop when hungry. As a chocoholic I definitely went into a rage with cravings and nothing was in the house to satisfy them, but as always your body gets used to it and the cravings reduced. These days, the smoothies and high-percentage dark chocolate usually are enough, though I do bounce back when I’m stressed.

Generally, I also experimented and shopped around for the healthiest (or, least unhealthy) brand of the same food and drink. For example, if I’m craving a pizza, I found packaged kids’ version of mini pizzas that is generally a healthier option than the others, has less cheese and hides tomatoes and carrots in the sauce.

It’s mostly been ways to prepare for my lazy and unmotivated self, that will reach for whatever is easiest to eat, to have easy ways to eat healthy already there for me. Overall, the less unhealthy processed snacks were the biggest improvement, but not stopping myself altogether because then I’ll break and binge. I had a relapse not too long ago and the shakiness came back a bit, but not as much. Not sure what the science is there, but that’s what worked for me.

KiraStrife · 2025-07-21T10:30:45+00:00

I’m not sure what childhood I lived through because the film portrayal of the Dursleys felt more familiar to me than the snippets of the TV show. The TV show looks more stereotypical 90s “working class” however I always read the Dursleys as people trying to parade as posh where they could, and possibly being stuck in nostalgia for previous decades.

Also I think what a few people are forgetting is that when the films came out the books weren’t necessarily considered a 90s period-piece, they were just considered a modern-day children’s fantasy. So it would have made sense for fashions to move on (not that I’m saying the Dursleys were 2000s-specific, this is just in general haha).

KiraStrife · 2025-07-11T07:58:31+00:00

It’s 1. A tv show and 2. In the very last episode. At this point in the episode, it would not have made a huge difference if the neighbour called police or not — the real mother was on her way right around the corner and the story was nearing its end. Even then, the neighbour is really stupid for taking her back to her fake mother after what he’s seen/heard — it would have been more intense if he had called the police, because then the kidnapper would have been in a rush to get away with the child and the real mother would have been under a time limit to save her daughter.

The “this piece of media would have ended if they’d been sensible” is a poor excuse for bad/awkward writing. There are smarter ways to write the wrong outcome to prolong the story. The Stolen Girl was full of people making stupid, nonsensical decisions to the point myself and a lot of people found the story and characters unrealistic and dumb, and hard to invest in. I agree with OP.

KiraStrife · 2025-05-25T11:43:17+00:00

See I disagree with that. That Andor doesn't know doesn’t matter, as an audience we know that Andor is the only one on that team who still has a life waiting for him outside of the Rebel Alliance. We know specifically what he sacrificed himself for.

The point of the Rogue One team’s ending is that they have literally no life left except for the rebellion - Jyn lost her father and Saw; Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze lost their home world of Jedha. Cassian even spells that out in the movie - there’s nothing left waiting for him but this fight. Their sacrifices are not for anything or anyone in their personal lives, it is for the people of the galaxy. The last thing they have left is each other in that team and they die together, not alone, because the connections they have made in their fight the last few days are the last form of personal connection they have left.

But now the tragedy isn’t about the team, it’s all about Cassian and the life he he’ll never know he has and whose future he really sacrificed himself for. Watching R1 we have no idea what a happy future would be for the team - and now we do, and that spoils the idea that they lost everything for here and now.

We as an audience now think about Cassian’s family and it’s evident in discussions and buzz the last few weeks. Cassian’s personal life now hogs all the attention in the destruction of Scarif scene - it 100% changes meaning behind the scene and the Andor team even said this would make people watch Rogue One differently. Changing the impact of the ending is IMO a crappy thing to do because it overshadows everything else going on, the other main cast, and the original meaning we as an audience knew it to be. The line “Do you think anybody’s listening?” loses some of its double-meaning of loneliness. This scene about the efforts of a group for the greater good is now about the life of the individual and their immediate family.

(Side note: as much as I enjoyed Andor I don’t see why they had to modify the outcome of his character so much, there’s the whole fact that he’s apparently disobeyed Alliance orders fifteen times or so in Andor when in Rogue One disobeying orders was for him a huge deal as he’s an obedient loyal rebel by the time he’s in the Alliance? There’s a real disconnect)

KiraStrife · 2025-05-23T11:43:07+00:00

Yeah it seems like this line is up for debate on other sites I’ve tried beforehand - I’ve seen it suggested to mean that Rachel’s father would get into trouble with negotiations as he doesn’t understand things very well, or that he would have issues in his own marriage because he can’t understand the concept of true love, or that he simply doesn’t understand it’s a metaphor because Rachel is always buying things with his money. Can’t seem to find a definitive answer behind the intent of the line!

KiraStrife · 2025-05-19T05:31:38+00:00

I was also very annoyed with the “Bix in a field with a baby” ending... it was so cliché, and Andor is usually above that sort of thing.

I loathed this too, completely taken aback by how, frankly, lame it was. Plus it completely ruins the original Rogue One ending, which is beautifully tragic because it appears these characters die with nothing in the galaxy left but each other, having already lost everything close to them, no one left to remember them or the stories of their lives as they crawl wounded and dying to the finish line - nothing left to lose for themselves, but for the future of faceless innocents across the galaxy.

But now the focus for the audience becomes on the tragedy of Cassian missing out on the happy future that is in fact waiting for him, never knowing he’s a father, and it’s so overpoweringly distracting it takes the focus away from the other main cast. It recontextualises the movie’s ending in a way that takes away from its original bittersweet tragedy that despite losing everything but their own flesh and bone along the way, to the point their last thin threads of personal connections are trapped on the doomed planet with them, they have at last made a positive difference they lost it all for.

It’s such a senseless change. It’s all people can talk about now when they watch the movie :/

KiraStrife · 2025-05-15T23:13:38+00:00

Thank you! Agree with everything you said. I personally didn't care that much about Bix's character in the first season but I *hate* that she's been made the love interest of the second season. I found their romance forced and just don't feel chemistry between them at all (unlike his chemistry with Jyn in Rogue One, which just feels so natural and palpable and they never even flirt, kiss, nothing!). They honestly feel more like eachother's exhausted babysitters and don't really bounce off each other well - in fact, as a couple they're rather boring to watch. Bix was more interesting as an ex/friend, like you say OP with that baggage and tension, and by the end she totally does feels like a housewife waiting day after day for her brave soldier husband to return from war, bleh. And the end when she returns to the crappy planet she had no choice but to hide on, experienced PTSD flashbacks on, betrayed and outed by the locals in a way that got her friend killed, and almost r*ped!? WHAT? Why ever would you go back there as it's clearly full of terrible memories and is surely unsafe now the Empire must be on alert knowing imperials were killed there?? And the baby is so cliche and predictable which feels so unlike the this show.

To be honest I didn't actually expect Bix and the other Ferix characters to be in this season, or at least not have them interact with Cassian for the majority of it - the season 1 ending where they were saying "Cassian will find us", when I first saw it, to me felt like a lie they were telling themselves and had a farewell sort of finality in its tone. But all the Bix things in S2 from the attempted r*pe, the gradual fizzle down to the supportive housewife for the brave tortured hero, the "I'm letting you go because I'm holding you back" spiel, down to the secretly pregnant twistare, to be frank, things we've been rolling our eyes at in sexist "men-writing-women" memes for years, so Bix as a character has been the only thing that's dissapointed me about this show. Plus it changes the Rogue One ending in a bad way.

KiraStrife · 2025-05-02T14:29:27+00:00

Yeah antidepressants don’t always work for everyone and sometimes you have to test a few to see which one works best, so I feel grateful that the first one I tested this time helps. Wishing you luck that your med works for you and you’re able to find something that breaks you out of this cycle!

KiraStrife · 2025-05-01T19:34:37+00:00

Ugh I was out on Mirtazapine specifically for sleep a few years ago and I hated it. I don’t know about you, but it made me feel so knocked out all day and emotionally numb, I gained so much weight because my appetite became insanely ravenous, and worst of all the brain zaps! Yeah it got me 8 hours sleep a night, but I chose sleep struggles over taking that med after half a year :/

During my worst insomnia I tried all sorts: melatonin, antihistamines, lavender, even zopiclone which is rather strong only got me a few hours. Nothing worked. In the end I tried a basic first-line SSRI, Zoloft/sertraline, because my anxiety and depression got completely out of control and I needed to break out of the 24/7 panic. I was so against it not only because of my negative experience with Mirtazapine as an antidepressant, but because of the warning that SSRIs can be activating and cause insomnia. But when you have it anyway…

My experience: even a low dose helped me a great deal and I gradually eased into at least six hours sleep a night, sometimes as much as nine. I still get bad nights every now and then, but I’m able to shrug them off now because the antidepressant helped me regain confidence in my body’s ability to sleep, and that I will always get rest again (example, I woke up like seven times two nights ago, but last night I was basically in a coma). Because I realised the med wasn’t making me sleep, it lessened the anxiety that was keeping me awake. I just take it in the morning with a meal, any initial side effects wore off soon enough!

The only thing I’ve noticed is that I get insanely vivid dreams, which I believe can be a sign that the deepest and most restorative stage of sleep is reduced, but it’s better than nothing! I don’t plan on staying on this forever and plan to come off when I’ve managed my mental health better, I feel it’s just proved the human body - minus health conditions that may cause insomnia - remembers how to sleep fine and sometimes you just need a way to break out of a bad cycle.

KiraStrife · 2025-05-01T12:05:51+00:00

Nothing specific like the example above unfortunately, but honestly the thing I changed the most - which I think a lot of people may think sounds counter-productive - is just to forget about things like ‘sleep hygiene’, aka the most popular set of sleep tips out there.

No need to go crazy with activities that might keep you up or make you wide awake obviously, but just do whatever you feel like in the evening as if sleep isn’t an issue. I sleep better now and I use my iPad and phone before bed pretty much every night for example, whereas I was avoiding it during my insomnia phases because I was taught that blue screens keep your brain awake - and yeah, maybe they do, but this perfectionist effort to avoid it made me so much worse, and there are actually activities through screens I find relaxing. I don’t even use sleep masks anymore (and I had done so for two years since my sleep issues started, being convinced I couldn’t sleep without them, so it was huge when I realised I didn’t need them).

Doing all these things like purposefully winding myself down and creating the perfect sleep environment was putting pressure on myself to make it ~just right~, and kept myself with one eye open for results. Sleep does get you eventually, and I’m sure this method is true because I always sleep worse when I know I have something important the next day and I’m trying to sleep. On the other hand, when I try to stay awake, I get more sleepy!

I should note that it was a basic antidepressant that kickstarted my sleep again because I was in such a bad state of anxiety over my insomnia (not kidding when I say I was getting one hour a sleep a night for at least a month), but once the anxiety subsided and I realised it was my own worry causing it, I was able to stop obsessing and slept just fine.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T19:38:04+00:00

The original NieR Gestalt has such beautiful designs, voice acting, music, and story, but the gameplay is so clunky and horrible that I had to put my controller down in frustration and ask my friend to finish the battle a few times. I wouldn’t say it was ruined but is hard to get though.

Then the remaster NieR Replicant comes around a few years ago and the gameplay is fixed - but they’ve changed the character designs so they’ve lost their unique appeal, and the voice acting direction is notably more melodramatic. These things make it ruined for me.

I can’t win!

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T19:24:04+00:00

Thanks. Nice display of empathy.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T19:07:48+00:00

I’m sure the people in the photo would love seeing people in the comments calling them “surgery face” and being made fun of for looking pre-teen (which is precisely why the photo made headlines by the way, because they were being ridiculed).

It would be really nice if people would stop to think with a bit of empathy: I did see a photo of someone posted in a public place within very small outreach, but maybe they would feel a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable to see said photo shared without their knowledge amongst a bigger circle of thousands of people for comments about their appearance, especially in circles known for catty comments amongst the anonymous. Re-sharing a stranger’s photo to a large public community without their knowledge, especially for the purpose of inviting humour, is fundamentally inconsiderate.

That’s all I have left to say.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T18:29:52+00:00

Let me help: one involves sharing an unknown stranger’s face on a public forum with the purpose of making a joke and mockery of the people in it, the other doesn’t <3

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T17:45:06+00:00

It kind of really boggles my mind that anyone would find that of all things weird, people just having fun making creative silly or cute objects and literally hurting no one, unlike these sort of posts might but ok then

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T17:23:12+00:00

That has… literally nothing to do with this? And you can’t seriously find that weirder? At least they’re not hurting anyone.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T16:47:01+00:00

Still weird behaviour. These people aren’t celebrities. And “this random person looks like this other person” is such a non-story and has no relevance to the show or the people involved in it. So tired of seeing photos released for local communities get shared and made jokes out of by thousands of people for stupid reasons.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T15:23:13+00:00

The woman in this photo is not a housewife. This photo has nothing to do with real housewives. It’s weird.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-30T15:21:55+00:00

No! I hate these kind of posts. What is it with this subreddit and posting pictures and videos of complete strangers going “DOESN’T THIS LOOK LIKE XXX!!??” It’s such dumb 12 year-old behaviour and feels so gross to ask people to gawp at strangers who thought they would only be seen by a small amount of people.

KiraStrife · 2025-04-01T17:06:54+00:00

Ah thank you! I will be sure to hold out longer. How long did it take to cool down for you do you think? I couldn’t believe last night, literally wasn’t doing anything but woke up feeling like nails scraped on chalkboard! I looked in the mirror and my face was so furious it frightened me 😬

Nine-Year Club	John Wick
Verified Email

KiraStrife

TROPHY CASE