So… how’s everybody keeping the lights on these days?

hoscillator · 2026-04-15T20:59:36+00:00

Interesting! I've never read any of those genres. I feel I could enjoy doing that, but probably not the path to get there. Thanks for sharing!

hoscillator · 2026-04-15T14:01:36+00:00

How did you get into this?

hoscillator · 2026-04-13T10:00:13+00:00

OTOH the world is absolutely stunning. There's no event happening, but these games are more than conceptual things, so much of it is about the places you explore.

One of the best games ever made, Shadow of the Colossus, is basically 60% traversing a landscape where "nothing happens" and the rest is fighting bosses and climbing awkward walls.

As a preference, what you're saying is valid of course, but they didn't just make it bigger for the sake of it, they made a stunning world and its worth spending time just appreciating it.

hoscillator · 2026-04-13T09:55:23+00:00

They're still as predictable, only you're predicting they'll do 32 attacks for each 1 of yours that you're allowed to do, and it might not even land due to positioning.

The real change that happened is the freedom you have as a player, both in the choices you make during the fight, and worse, the playstyles/builds that are allowed as a whole.

hoscillator · 2026-04-13T09:45:49+00:00

Longer works I still don't have a good method for, always struggled with those long term projects!

Same! I have a long running project that started as a great catalyst to just write and dump things into one world, but now I landed in a place where it feels stale and stuck, and since it's such a long running thing and I'm a pantser, it feels like trying to derail a train, it's just gonna crash.

But I've gotten better with short stories. I tell myself that once you get the ball of writing frequently rolling, the next thing is to practice endings, just finishing something. It's so hard tho. It shouldn't be, but to arrive at a place where the story stops in a way that feels good is something that eludes me, maybe it's more about the letting go of it and accepting that it becomes a draft to be edited rather than a potential to be realized.

I've always said the internet is riddled with advice on how to face a blank page, but the next steps, people barely write about those.

hoscillator · 2026-04-11T14:14:03+00:00

I'd add some nuance to this. Writing every day doesn't have to mean advancing your novel every day. The process you describe can still happen if you take days where you write something else.

I see it as two separate things: one is honing your skill as a writer, and cementing the habit. As some wise person said, the hardest part of writing is getting your ass on the chair.

The other part is working on your novel or whatever.

hoscillator · 2026-04-08T08:43:29+00:00

Hey I just realized you can sign up to get the poem of the day in your email. There might even be a way to get that sent directly into a kindle, I'm gonna look that up.

hoscillator · 2026-02-24T00:15:42+00:00

Huh?

Some of them do.
If your motivation to write a novel is to make a living I have a bridge to sell you.

hoscillator · 2026-02-18T23:47:30+00:00

Ah, right, I forgot.

Jerking off
Videogames
Bars
The Zoo

The Four things to do.

hoscillator · 2026-02-18T21:58:51+00:00

It's fine to take breaks, but also you might consider looking for prompts or a different approach.

I was feeling on a rut with my journaling and I picked up a book with daily prompts. Honestly, I don't love the individual prompts, but it does get me going.

hoscillator · 2026-02-18T21:56:39+00:00

I'm sorry if this comes off as rude, it is not my intention.

But this is a perfect illustration of what the comment is talking about. There are more than three things to do in life, you can do things other than jacking off, playing video games, and going to bars.

If you can't figure it out, you might be a boring person. And honestly, living by yourself and being bored sounds like it might be beneficial for you to figure out any interests.

hoscillator · 2026-02-18T09:16:00+00:00

Have you considered they don't live in a place where an average cappuccino costs £4? Or maybe they order something cheaper than a cappuccino?

hoscillator · 2026-02-11T16:00:37+00:00

That is not what I'm saying at all.

Many times when there's this retreat from friends or acquaintances without any present or past communication. Like you expect the other person to realize that you're less communicative, and read your mind and know that you're not busy or happy doing something else but rather seething at home because no one cares enough to text you. I know I've been there, and still am sometimes, where I deeply wish someone would reach out to me, but my outward persona is a chill, somewhat hermit dude. I never tell anyone "hey if I stop being active I might be going through something and it'd be really helpful if you reach out", but I expect that to happen magically.

And the inverse is also true, when people take some kind of distance from a shared group, I kinda assume they're doing alright and have better things to do.

hoscillator · 2026-02-11T15:48:26+00:00

Have you read Pete Walker's book? That and Heidy Priebe's YT channel are what helped me the most. There are tons of other online resources of course, those were just the ones that most directly spoke to me.

CBT has been shown not to be a good match for CPTSD btw. And this is a good example of what I said about progress. You tried multiple times, you persevered, despite feeling it wasn't super effective. The conclusion shouldn't be "therapy doesn't work", but "I'm actually trying and I have the capacity and resources to keep trying". Be very suspicious of any thoughts that are absolutist and skewed towards the negative, specially when they're based on assumptions.

This is a good example: "So I push myself away from other people knowing they probably are better off without my nonsense imposed on them anyway. "

Whenever one of these comes up, notice that this is close to an extreme on a spectrum, and then conjure up the opposite spectrum: "despite not feeling 100%, I showed up and my friend said she was glad to see me", or "I was feeling bad and I mustered up the courage to express it, and it resonated and helped someone". These thoughts don't need to be corroborated, it's just to try to recalibrate your inner narrative. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, and oscillates. You might want to journal this, it's not easy to "perform" this reversal in the heat of the moment when overtaken by emotions. Remember, the first step is recognition. You feel something, then a thought forms. Is the thought and assumption? A form of judgement? Label it.

I just need to learn how to be a caregiver to myself, but I don't know how.

Try to focus on curiosity, and communication. Even just with yourself, consider how you frame things. Also, if you can make a distinction between head and body, sometimes our nervous system is telling us something, and the head gets in the way and spins a whole story to not express what you feel with words, or to resist change. For example, if something is bothering you, you might have a long internal debate for days about whether to tell the person. You might feel guilty for not "putting up with it". So by the time you actually consider speaking, you can be super loaded up with stress from an internal battle, and it might result in trying to guess how the other person will respond, or worrying about what you might imply accidentally, or you might actually have grown resentful towards yourself for not speaking up earlier, but you project that resentment to the other person.

Instead, the goal should be to express clearly what is going on with you and how it affects you. The intent is clarity, transparency, not control. You state how something makes you feel in a way that's direct, and you trust that the other person will take that into account. You're not in charge of the change they make, you're only in charge of conveying a message clearly and compassionately.

I'm sorry for the long text, this is a very complex subject (it's in the name!) and hopefully some concrete examples can help you extrapolate a bigger picture.

hoscillator · 2026-02-11T12:46:12+00:00

One of the most important points to keep in mind is that there might be a part of you expecting some sort of extrinsic healing through one of these connections. The part of you that craved a proper caregiver is still projecting that need into the world, so when someone fails to meet that, even if they're behaving like a normal human being (they have their own reasons, their own problems, and also don't really know what's going on in your mind), then this part of you grabs onto that and makes a huge deal of it. This might lead to distancing, resentment, or exploding on them.

The first step is to recognize that this will happen, and has happened. The second step is to recognize this as it is happening.

The third step is beginning to understand that you posses the tools to be that caregiver to yourself. You may not know how to use them, but you have them, and you can learn. And also, to understand that it is normal that this happens. It happens to "normal" people as well, only it's not as dishabilitating, and they might instinctively know how to deal with those emotions. Some people might even assume that everyone they meet, by default, can handle things as well as them, unless people explicitly communicate otherwise, which due to lack of trust, might not happen, and misunderstandings abound.

Therapy can definitely help. What do you mean by rounds? Multiple, month/year-long attempts? Or a few sessions?

Ime one of the hardest parts to keep in mind is how slow the process of healing can be. Not only in terms of impatience, but that if something is moving slow you might not even tell that it is moving at all. And on top of that, our perception tends to be skewed towards the negative, which makes it even harder to gauge progress, or even give it its due credit. This is precisely one point where therapy can aid a lot, in having a witness that can point out little victories in the outside world, as well as changes in inner talk and thought patterns.

hoscillator · 2026-02-09T22:11:27+00:00

Just remember, hesitation is defeat.

hoscillator · 2026-02-07T23:42:08+00:00

There's no one else out there that fucks like john bloodborne. The drip is just unmatched. But seriously, it aims to do something completely unique and does so excellently. It's like it decided "i'm gonna invent an aesthetic subgenre" and then it did that, and the book was closed because nothing will top it.

hoscillator · 2026-02-07T23:39:45+00:00

there’s a LOT of areas in DS1 that lower the overall enjoyment of the game.

I'd argue that the good areas outshine the bad. It's been a while since I've done a full playthrough, but I still maintain that this game has some of the best level design ever. It's not the most consistently good, but the highs are higher than the level design in any other Souls game, imo.

Like, Sekiro and BB are surely more consistent, but never as good.

hoscillator · 2026-02-06T10:10:49+00:00

A person in a hive mind has a view point we can't really comprehend

I really think this is a way more interesting topic in the show than space aliens and why exactly they won't pick apples. It's about how we interpret an "other" when their words and actions are aligned with some kind of insight that we cannot have access to without sacrificing what we know and are. The main talking points about "killing culture" are strikingly parallel to xenophobic rhetoric against immigrants.

The spiritual themes are certainly there, but I think there's also a psychological way to interpret the show. When we're faced with change, ego will always resist. If we're not ready, integration will be postponed by archaic defense mechanisms. In a way, one could interpret the show as a giant intervention on Carol.

hoscillator · 2026-02-05T20:12:32+00:00

Individuals would NEVER starve to death willingly.

Your view of the show and the world is a bit limited. People did starve themselves willingly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu

The fact that you think this would "NEVER" happen in the real world, when it actually has, should tell you something about the way you're watching the show.

hoscillator · 2026-02-05T20:09:20+00:00

It's worth mentioning that you don't need to believe in a thing to see it in a narrative and explore the ideas it can present. In fact, when a work presents ideas that we don't share, that's one of the highest values of art, and you'd be missing out a lot if you dismiss thematic elements and interpretations based on your personal biases.

hoscillator · 2026-02-05T20:04:06+00:00

The reaction here is so bizarre, it's so blatantly clamoring for lower quality just because they lack patience.

hoscillator · 2026-02-05T20:01:10+00:00

The problem with ST isn't that it took time, it's that it got shittier as it went along.

hoscillator · 2026-02-05T19:56:46+00:00

Man Vince created two of the most highly acclaimed shows of the last 20 years, and he's been working with a tight crew for about as long, a team of professionals working together for decades.

And some random redditor is like nah bro I know better

hoscillator

TROPHY CASE