I’ve been on benzos for my panic attacks for the last 20 years. They’ve been sedating and miserable but have been the only thing that have done the job. Worse, any temporary lapse in them meant I’d be a quivering pile of sobbing withdrawal.

With the help of a psychiatrist, we found something else that worked, finally. An anti-seizure med, of all things. Sure, why not. Not questioning it. It works.

And after a grueling stepdown process over the course of the last year, rife with mini-withdrawals, I’m finally fucking free of benzos.

And that feels just enormously great to say.

I walked away.

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s going to be any changing minds on that board, and I was twisting myself in knots and refreshing the damn page every few minutes for several hours. That shit ain’t healthy, especially for a place that isn’t going to reciprocate.

I’d rather focus on making content here.

This means there’s probably an anime thread in your future, for which I apologize. ( Except I ain’t sorry. )

There was some confusion about Bingo earlier in the thread.

I’ve had a few weeks to sit with my thoughts, and I must say that I’m actually really grateful that this story had a concrete, definite ending. I’ve never actually seen a story through to the extent that I have with Arx. There are inevitably some loose threads that never got tied off, but not every thread really needs to be.

Every other MU* I’ve been on has just sort of fizzled out like a friendship that’s run its course, but I’m really grateful that this ended up feeling story-shaped from beginning to end. It’s not an ‘ending’ for the characters, and I’m left to tantalizing daydreams about what happened after the curtain fell, and that’s a valuable thing to have.

I haven’t had a panic attack (or even the threat of one) in almost three weeks since I started my newest medication. The absence of that is like being able to breathe again. I hope it keeps up this way.

At work all day:

“Haha, oh man, it’s gonna be so cool to do XYZ with my character(s) when I get home.”

At home:

• Cleaning
• Making dinner
• Spending time with loved ones
• Giving pet all the scritches
• Social Media
• Check in on people on Discord
• TV
• Tired

In bed:

“Wait a minute, I didn’t do the thing I meant to at all! Well, I bet tomorrow…”

3 MONTHS LATER

“Shit.”

I whinged and complained about it in the complainy threads so much that it felt like cheating not to post the resolution:

After a year and a half, I got top bid on a house. And I’m so excited and terrified for the parts that come next, but the hunt is finally over!

After one of my colleagues departed and I got saddled with a lot of extra work, I sat my supervisor down and basically told him that I knew I was being undercompensated. He said he’d do his best, because he wanted to keep the team together, and because we kick ass together (True.)

Four months went by. I started browsing Indeed and such on the regular. Pretty much resigned myself to a 5%ish increase, and it wasn’t going to cut it to stay. Last week, I finally got news from him.

Promoted. New Title - better title than I suggested. 30% raise. 30. Percent.

Remember how I said I wasn’t having panic attacks? This is the closest I’ve come to one, sitting through that meeting, because apparently my body has forgotten how to process extreme amounts of joy. Teared up in the meeting. I had to scamper away directly after the meeting and run into the bathroom and squeal into my hands.

My life feels like it’s starting to come together, all of the sudden.

I was being a shit to Derp and Reimisu, but that’s because they fucking well deserved it for trying to invalidate trauma responses. How this translated into me being a big mean bully is fucking beyond me.

Immature? Yeah, I’ll own that, but only because they were breathing down my fucking neck with their own dogpiling.

I’m frustrated as hell. Like, I legitimately just want them to realize that they’re creating an echo chamber. With pMonique, Derp, Devrex and Reimisu loitering there, a rather insidious one, at that.

Just fucking meh.

Nothing for it.

And now my fucking anxiety is eating me alive because I suck at confrontation.

Rant about the topic, rather than ranting at anyone in this thread:

I loathe the notion that receipts are necessary for any complaint to be taken seriously. Like, especially if they’re of an embarrassing or sexual nature, like… no.

In my case, I divulged those receipts with someone I trusted, they made the call along with a literal avalanche of evidence to ban someone creepy, and no one is fucking entitled to it.

Just fuck everything about that mindset. I know the natural retort is that it’s a slippery slope which can quickly devolve into witch-huntery, but consider also that it’s a slippery slope to making victimized and abused people put their darkest moments on display just to satisfy the internet’s fucking Id.

Fuck off.

Per a reddit post on /r/MUD: https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/1geyisw/armageddonmud_permanently_closed/

ArmageddonMUD has been permanently closed. For more information as to why, you can visit the game’s discussion forum and the post regarding it here: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,61081.0.html

On behalf of the ArmageddonMUD team, past and present, thank you to the players of our game that shared their time and passion with ArmageddonMUD. As we close the final chapter of this beloved world of bone swords we built together over 32 years, when we think back we’re filled with wonderful memories. Together, this community has shared epic battles, forged lifelong friendships, and lived countless stories. May these memories live in the hearts of all who walked the sands of Zalanthas.

-Halaster, Producer of ArmageddonMUD

There are some rumbles about some bad actors in staff freely sharing character interactions and disseminating RL information, and as it’s a closed codebase, some of the inner workings of the game.

Anyone have further insights?

Aw.

When you find a video game and it’s lots of fun and then you look at the patch notes and see that it’s on maintenance mode and no longer receiving updates because it failed to capture a base within 8 months of launch. Live service games live such brutal, fleeting lives.

(Omega Strikers, for the curious.)

I whinged and complained about it in the complainy threads so much that it felt like cheating not to post the resolution:

After a year and a half, I got top bid on a house. And I’m so excited and terrified for the parts that come next, but the hunt is finally over!

@Coin They will. This being a tiny crunchy granola ‘we’re your friends’ employer, it was just a knife in the gut to see them treat it like a Fortune 500 company would.

Not surprising. Just disappointing.

The company that I’ve been proud to work for just made us sit through an hour long meeting that was a naked attempt to bust a union. Fifteen coworkers or so that I thought were cool toed the company line with prepared remarks and it was freaking nauseating to watch.

Friendship ended with company. LinkedIn is my new best friend now.

Guys, please watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End [Crunchyroll]

Elevator pitch:

Where most stories end, this one begins. Frieren is the quintessential nearly-ageless elf caster who is part of the Hero’s party. Together with her companions, she embarks on a journey of a ‘mere 10 years’, culminating in the defeat of the Demon Lord. All of this offscreen, as our story begins with a celebration of that accomplishment with a backdrop of a beautiful meteor shower that Frieren bemoans as underwhelming - she knows a better spot for it. The party goes their separate ways, agreeing to meet up for the next meteor shower - in a mere 50 years.

What follows is the gradual thaw of an emotionally distant character, learning to not take the passage of time so lightly, and recognizing that every relationship she has is more valuable than she realizes, and a new journey retracing her former party’s steps with her newfound apprentices, doing good deeds, slaying demons and dragons, and facing other trials along the way.

I have an unreasonable

amount of anime under my belt, and this one’s special. I’d recommend it to damn near anybody, even non anime watchers.

It’s slow without being boring, with some of the most peaceful imagery as connective tissue.

It’s earnest without being saccharine,

it explores loss without being mopey and what it means to continue on with the memories of your loved ones always at your side, their life inspiring who you continue to be as a person - that loss is never total as long as there’s someone to carry the memory of you forward.

Its action segments have no right to be as utterly captivating or beautiful as they are for what’s sold as a ‘drama’.

And Frieren is a loot gremlin who can’t help but check every treasure chest. Every. Treasure chest. Even the mimics.

This is the best Fantasy show I’ve seen, hard stop, and it’s worth your time to give it the 3 (or 4) episode test no matter what your tastes in anime are. There’s something to like here for everyone.

(Note: Episodes 1-4 were released as a combined drop and were meant to be watched in one sitting. Optional, of course, but it’ll give you the proper impression of the show’s overall tone vs. just watching Episode 1.)

Did I mention it’s the current number one anime of all time on MAL?

Watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End [Crunchyroll]

When the flip side of executive dysfunction kicks in and suddenly every task feels trivial and you just hammer through a week’s worth of roadblocks in under an hour while bopping around in your office chair to hype-up music and taking periodic dance breaks.

@RightMeow

Unsure! But there is a Recipes thread that might be able to help?

@Cobalt

You must start to build one voxel at a time!

So, in full transparency, I didn’t care for Alan Wake II because the plot didn’t grab me and the gameplay loop wasn’t quite my jam.

But holy hell it’s a gorgeous game. The dingy interiors, the oppressive way that the woods close in on what should be ‘wide open’ levels make it feel claustrophobic in a way that really works for a horror setting. I didn’t feel relieved to be outdoors, I felt uneasy. It’s got such a cohesive art design that I really need to give kudos.

And that one level (I’ll just be vague here since spoiler tags are being a butt, but you know. The one with lots of video.) was just so out there and different that I was giggling throughout. Such a fun idea, and brings to mind similarly freaking weird portions of the Max Payne franchise.

A lot here to like.