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doctorguilty · 6 months

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Baddddd bad bad bad very sad

My head hurts, the pressure makes me feel like it's being squeezed and crushed by rubber bands ... from sinus inflammation and dehydration and not eating probably isn't helping

I feel like I want to cry again but I'm trying to stop myself so I won't make the pain even worse

This is only, what, a week into dst? Not even winter yet.. Seasonal affective disorder is going in for the kill this year I guess. I don't know what im going to do because I'm so tired, physically and mentally and just tired of my life, there's no fight in me left. And no one will or can help me. I'm my family's least favorite and so i get the least help, doctors won't take my health seriously, my partner needs more time, possibly more than a year, before moving in with me with me somewhere. I can't afford to live on my own. I barely have energy to keep collecting scraps of money to show as income so I can continue getting food assistance.

I had a spark of hope for a while but it feels like it was a mistake to let myself have it. How much longer can I lie to myself and say "one more year until it gets better"? I mean, I can't. That illusion is broken. So what can I tell myself? It truly feels like there's nothing. Things keep getting worse. I tried so hard, I really did. I'm exhausted. Truly utterly exhausted.

Unless anyone out there (just like, the world not @-ing Tumblr dot com) has a spare 20 grand or something they'd just hand to me to live off for "one more year" (and then some) and detox from my miserable quality of life, surviving it barely even sounds appealing knowing that my physical and mental health I'll be another year WORSE than where it is now. And even then. There's not guarantee it ends there :''') its an estimate, an "if I'm lucky" estimate and it's not even considerably lucky to be in this position.

I genuinely don't know how I'm gonna keep living like everything is fine and normal while I continue losing steam to make money, make art, care for myself (I'm already down to roughly 2 showers a week and at best 1 real meal a day because I'm so tired), to keep filling out paperwork begging for assistance (I think I'm already overdue for my food stamp update), and watching other people in my family just be handed endless help while I'm patronized with "have you considered painting Christmas ornaments for a living" and interrogated about the validity of my disabilities (which I always fail to prove good enough)

Almost everyone around me is happier than me. Almost everyone else's life is on track and I'm at best simply left behind, and at worst I was someone they stepped on to get what they needed before tossing me to the side.

My life is not only painful and exhausting but humiliating. I don't feel like a person. I don't feel important. I feel like if i did die out of the blue, nobody would say they regret helping me more like people usually say, they'd just talk about how I should have done xyz better and it's my own fault (not a s*icide threat just being hypothetical like literally if i died for any random reason)

Most of everything that's happened in my life, I feel, has validated my chronic sense of worthlessness. Everyone says I'm not but prove it. Someone prove it. Someone put me first. Sacrifice something for me (and not complain what a burden I am on them!). For once. If I wasn't worthless, well, I'd be worth it, without strings attached.

It won't happen. It never happens. I have to dance like a fucking circus animal for people and then beg on my knees I'm entertaining enough to keep alive so I can do it over and over again

#seth speaks #neg #angry parts arent vaguing tumblr ppl its mostly irl stuff like thats the issue thats where i need the most help

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dark--eclipse · 9 months

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Donnie had been tinkering all evening. He seemed full of restless energy, shifting and burning and just waiting for the chance to claw its way to the surface. Logically, he knew that it was his powers. He knew that they were rebelling, howling and raging at being pent up and hurt like this, that they were trying to escape. The stabs of pain that went through his forehead every so often were evidence of that. And logically, he knew that he should have found some way to let them out. Bottling them up like this was only going to hurt him in the long run. It was only going to act like a rubber band being stretched until it finally snapped, and he'd be lucky if the rebound didn't kill him at this point.

But what was he supposed to do? Let it out so it could wreak havoc? Every single time his powers were allowed to run free, they hurt someone. He couldn't feed that into an incubating egg. Couldn't risk unleashing that on any villages that were nearby. He had to find a more permanent solution to the gloves. He had to keep everyone safe. Forget the promise he'd made to Bee and Theatre. Donnie could find some loophole around it.

For now, there was tinkering to do. Maybe if he pushed it to the back of his mind and just worked on tech constructs, he wouldn't have to--

"Donnie."

"AH!" He startled minutely, banging his head on the bottom of the metal construct and wincing slightly before scooting himself out to view the human that had been staying with him. "Oh. April. Hand me that wrench, will you?" He gestured to his work bag then, half-fiddling with the wires as he talked. "I just need to solve the short-circuiting issue and then--"

"No. We need to talk."

The tone of her voice left little up for discussion. Suddenly feeling the tiniest bit uncomfortable, Donnie slid out from under the construct and sat, fidgeting slightly. "Uh. Sure. No probbles. What's up."

April seemed to look at him for a moment, considering. Puffing a loose strand of hair out of her face. And then she spoke. "Donnie. What are your powers."

"You keep asking me that, and the answer is still the same." He began to turn back to his work, trying to secure the loose wires so that he could come back to it later. "I don't have any. I was born without them. We've been over this."

"Uh-huh. So, not only are you a terrible liar, because your hands twitch whenever you do it-"

"They most certainly do not."

"--but you're lying to a girl who can SENSE AURAS, you idiot."

He froze. Turned back to her with an expression that he hoped was less "deer in the headlights"-y than he thought it was, which probably failed miserably. Swallowed thickly. "Y-you can?"

"Yeah. Look, Don....if I'm overstepping, just say so. But your aura's all over the place! Raging! And Raph told me that it's BAD to bottle mystic powers up like that! It-"

April was gesturing, angrily chopping at the air with her hands, but Donnie completely missed whatever else she was saying. That single word had narrowed his view down to a pinpoint, his eyes snapping open so widely that they were nearly all whites as it reverberated around his head.

Raph told me. Raph. Raph. RAPH.

He hurriedly raised a hand to silence her, breathing stuttering in his chest. He could barely believe...it couldn't be....but if---

"Wait wait wait. R-Raph? You said....my brother was named Raph."

April stopped dead in her tracks, her head spinning towards him so fast that Donnie would later marvel at how she hadn't managed to dislocate something. "....your brother? But. Wait. Do you have other-waaaaaaaait a sec. Do you have other brothers?"

It couldn't be. It couldn't be. His mouth suddenly feeling overwhelmingly dry, Donnie swallowed, squeaking out his words. "Y-yes. Leonardo and Michelangelo. But we always called them-"

"....Leo and Mikey." April was fishing around for something in her pockets, then. She pulled out a small piece of paper a second later, unfolding it and pressing it into his hands, and Donnie stared down at it---

Oh. Oh.

"Is that....you?"

She pointed at the corner of the image that was empty. That had been torn out, hastily and in a hurry, like whoever had done it didn't consider the fourth member to be part of the family anymore. Oh, yes. Donnie remembered that picture well. He remembered when they'd taken it. Raph, smiling softly and holding up a tiny earth construct in his hand. Leo's image in the picture almost whiting out with the amount of gleeful static electricity that he was giving off, brandishing a katana made of lightning as he gave a cocky wink towards the camera. Mikey beaming as he held up a tiny ball of flame in each hand. And him, simply standing there and letting his brothers have the spotlight, sinking into the background like an eel through oil. Like a shadow.

Had he been smiling in that picture? Or had his era of self-doubt and self-hatred already begun at that point? Donnie couldn't remember. He couldn't even recall where he'd hidden the piece that he had torn out of it. It was suddenly so, so hard to breathe as he stared down at that simple piece of paper, his expression taut and skin so pale he could have passed for a ghost, and when he spoke it was all he could do to get the words out. "Where....where did you get this."

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before! They always talk about having a fourth brother who had powers and then he ran away, the way you’re out here all alone, the way Raph has—woah woah woah hEY--" April was cut off from her speech by Donnie desperately grabbing onto her, his eyes wide and frantic.

"Raph's ALIVE????"

"Uh. Yeah. Why wouldn't he be."

Okay. Perhaps that had been too much information. He simply shied away, averting his gaze as April frowned.

"....that scar he has. Is that why you-"

"April, don't. Don't make me talk about it. Please." The words came out in a rush, breathless and shaky, but he needed her to stop asking questions and just drop the subject so he could go have an existential crisis by himself--

"You know what this means, right?" At his quizzical look, April beamed, throwing her arms wide. "You can come home!"

"What?" Out of all the conclusions he had been expecting April to come to, that was not one of them. "No. No, I....I can't. No."

"You don't have to be alone out here anymore! You can-"

"No. April, they hate me. Just drop it."

"Why would they hate y-"

"BECAUSE OF MY STUPID DUMB-DUMB POWERS AND THE WAY THEY ALMOST KILLED RAPH, OKAY?" Almost as soon as the words escaped his mouth, Donnie clamped his hands over his beak, swearing under his breath. He....hadn't meant to say that. He hadn't meant to say it quite so loudly, anyway. But now it was out in the open, and April would judge him for it, and--

But she had that look on her face. The one that had convinced him to let her stay here in the first place. The one that had convinced him to open up to her and show her things about his life that he hadn't confided to much of anyone else. And when she spoke, her voice was soft. Not judgmental. Just....softly coaxing. "....Don. What happened."

He took a long, steadying, shaky breath, anger spiking through him for a moment and making his words sharp. “Fine. You’re right, I have powers. Are you happy. Did you find out everything you need. If you must know, they’re shadow manipulation, which apparently only a number of people in the single digits have and I can’t control and are dangerously powerful. And I got angry and lashed out which happens every fucking TIME I feel anything too strongly, and....it’s almost like what humans would describe as a seizure. It burns, I lose sensation and control, and then I wake up with no memory of what happened. And I hurt my brother. Badly. To the point where I didn’t know if he was going to live or not. So I ran. Like a coward. I hid. Is THAT what you want me to say?”

"....no. Don, you know it-"

"Don't you dare say it wasn't my fault." The anger spiked again before subsiding as he curled into himself, breathing shakily. “I HAVE to be out here. It’s safer for everyone. Safer for them. I know they must hate me, I could see the look in their eyes when it happened. They’ll forget about me eventually. They have to. After all, that’s what you do with monsters. You hide them away.”

Oh no. April had that look in her eyes. Like she was trying to understand. Like she sympathized. "You're not a--"

"All of my experiences would beg to differ." His gaze flashed black for a moment before relenting. Calm. Calm. He had to stay calm here.

"...but I haven't seen you use your powers ONCE since I came here. At least not the shadow ones."

“I’m not running the risk of losing control again. I built inhibitor gloves. They keep the magic from escaping whenever my emotions become volatile. I can’t risk anybody finding out that trick, though, so I stay out here. Isolated. It’s better this way.” It was like a mantra that he told himself, at this point. But Donnie had to believe it. The alternative was too terrifying to bear.

“But your aura’s all messed up! How can you say it’s better? You don’t miss your brothers?”

"Of course I miss them," he snapped, bristling. "Don't put words in my mouth. But I’m not going to let them have a reason to hate me by hurting them again. It’s better this way. I’m perfectly fine. Honest.”

Liar, his thoughts hissed at him as he sat there. Liar, liar, liar. Mustn't tell lies. They'll drag you off like the BEAST that you are.

"Donnie, you are the FURTHEST thing from fine that I've ever seen right now." April's words were sharp, confrontational, and that made his anger flare in turn as he bared his teeth, snarling.

"Can we please not do this NOW-"

April relented after a moment, exhaling loudly as she leaned back. "Fine. You don't have to come home. But you can't keep bottling your powers up like this, Donnie! It's hurting you!"

"Nonsense." He turned back to his work, flicking his goggles down over his eyes half as a way to survey what had been done so far and half as a way to avoid making eye contact with his newfound companion. "I feel perfectly fine."

"The on and off fevers you've been having would beg to diff-"

"For the love of the gods, can you please let me work?" he snapped, whirling around--though he softened a minute later at the offended look on April's face. "Fine. Sorry. I’ll....I’ll think about taking the gloves off sometime or something. Alright? Can I please get back to this?"

"...fine. But don't think this conversation's over." April neared just long enough to set the wrench that he had requested down by his side before striding out, clearly annoyed with how the conversation had gone but trying her best to hide it.

Well. Good. Let her be annoyed. He wasn't going to change his mind on how this was the right decision to be taking.

...even if he did keep glancing over at the photo as he worked, raising his hands to wipe moisture from his eyes every so often.

It was just dusty in his workspace. Nothing more.

#rottmnt rp #shadow!donnie #roleplay blog #(no replies please!)

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zachsgamejournal · 2 years

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COMPLETED: Riptide GP: Renegade

Done! I got a little addicted there. It doesn't just invoke the nostalgia of Jet Moto and Hydro Thunder: it was also a lot of fun! Though the final challenges were...cheap.

So the game is fun. I really enjoyed it. I even like how they handled tricks, with which I have become more comfortable. You basically have to do tricks to maintain your boost to even have a fighting chance by the end of the game. But Imma complain a bit:

Not Enough Levels

This game feels inspired, in part, by Jet Moto (especially the ruins level, which is my favorite for that reason), and Jet Moto 1 only had 10 levels (one more than Riptide's 9). But that was a 1996 game. I think we've come to expect more of our entertainment.

I think lacking more than number of levels is level variety. Jet Moto 1 had four biomes: tropical island, rural swamp, snowy, and met track in the sky. Jet Moto 2 upped it to include even more variety: including a roller coaster and mine-shaft.

Riptide's levels mostly look the same. There's a military base, air base, and power plant that all look the same. Even typing this, I'm not quite sure I'm thinking of three different levels. In design, the levels do have their own personality, but they don't have enough character (for me).

15 would have been a good number of tracks ;)

Bullshit difficulty

For the most part, I was able to beat the challenges fairly easily. Sometimes I needed vehicular upgrades or more practice with boost-building tricks. But by the time you get to the final challenges--the BS reveals itself.

Firstly, the AI racers are immovable. They can bump me out of the way, or pressure me out of my racing line. But I can't seem to do anything to them. That's not a horrible thing until you get to the later racers where victory often comes at fractions of a second, and most of the racers are in a pack. So fighting to get ahead, I felt bullied by a computer.

What's worse, many of the tracks feature police riders. Their speeds are seemingly unlimited: as they can catch up to me no matter. They also seemed dead set on only attacking the player. So not only am I fighting 7 racers, but I've got 2 other bullies bashing me around and no matter how fast I go or how well I race, they're always wife me: bumping me off course, reducing me speed, pushing me away from ramps to perform tricks.

I've lost hours of my life dealing with bullshit cop bots fucking with me.

Because the cop-bots disrupt one's ability to win: it removes skill and player agency to win, replacing it with random chance. Maybe I get lucky and the cop doesn't cut me off and slam on it's brakes. Maybe I get lucky and I don't miss that ramp I need to boost into first place cause a cop rams me. Maybe I get lucky and I'm able to hold a good racing line because the cops aren't bashing me from all sides.

It felt cheap.

Then there's also the AI. There's some rubber-banding happening, which often keeps games interesting: opponents never get too far ahead so that there's no hope, but also the player is never able to completely wipe the floor with other racers. I don't really like rubber banding, as it also disrupts the player's skill.

It was particularly apparent in a few "boss battles" on the highest difficulty. I would see AI racers pull away from me despite me being at full boost. But then at another part of the track the racer appeared to slam on their brakes and come to a near stop for no reason. It just looked like program behavior. Maybe it was meant to provide an exciting experience--but it mostly just pissed me off in the final stages.

I still like it though

The bullshit difficulty didn't really become an issue till the end of the game (where strangely most of the vehicles are unlocked but don't provide advantage of one another...). I could have stopped playing sooner. Who cares if I get every star in the career mode? I do. That's who (unfortunately). So I was addicted by the accessible gameplay and charming experience, but driven mad by the cheap difficulty. I still really like the game. But I need some space before I play it again.

I still need to try online mode though...

#Zach's Game Journal #COMPLETED #Riptide GP: Renegade #Android #Video Games #Gaming #Google Play

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crazed-reviews · 1 year

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Review: Spirit Riding Free "Lucky and Spirit" Doll, Horse, and DVD from Just Play (2019)

Back in 2017, Dreamworks released a TV series called Spirit Riding Free, which was intended to be both a spin-off and a loose sequel to the 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The series followed a young girl named Fortuna Prescott as she moves to a small country town called Miradero. Feeling out of place, she befriends a wild horse, whom she calls Spirit, who refuses to be broken by stable wranglers. The pair become fast friends, and go on adventures along with Abigail Stone and her horse Boomerang, and Prudence "Pru" Granger and her horse Chica Linda.

While both Breyer and Just Play produced Spirit toys, the set I'm taking a look at today is from Just Play. This set features Lucky in the outfit she wears in nearly all episodes, and Spirit. This set isn't the original set from 2017, but rather a re-release of sorts from 2019. Over the time they had the license to make Spirit toys, Just Play released a variety of sets with Lucky and her friends in various outfits, and gradually phased out the dolls in their original outfits.

This particular Lucky and Spirit were re-released along with the dolls based off of Spirit Riding Free: Pony Tales which released that year. This set seems to have two different versions: one with a DVD and one without. My set has the DVD.

I'm unsure of how much it originally retailed for, but I purchased it off of eBay new in box for $18.69 USD.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the pair!

The box was a bit beat-up, but that's to be expected as I purchased the set secondhand, and it's from nearly four years ago. Besides, I didn't plan to save it, so it's all good.

On the front, we see Fortuna (who goes by Lucky) posed reaching up to touch Spirit, along with a CGI photo of Lucky riding Spirit, and on the corner, it talks about the included DVD, which includes 2 full episodes and two music videos.

On the back, we see a description which reads:

"Spirit is a noble, powerful, smart and unbreakable mustang. The love and trust Spirit feels for Lucky makes her the only person he allows to ride him."

Next to it, there's the DVD case.

Out of the box, this set includes Lucky, Spirit, and a DVD in a DVD case.

Removing Spirit from the package was surprisingly easy, he was only attached by two plastic bands, but Lucky had one plastic tie in her head, and a rubber band wrapped around her waist under her shirt, and another rubber band wrapped around her ankles under her boots. It was weird, I had to half undress her to remove the elastics (I like keeping them to use for doll hair, hence why I didn't just cut them). The DVD case slid right out once the plastic window over it was removed.

Lucky has long brown hair, brownish-hazel eyes, and pink lips and blush. I think she bears a decent resemblance to her character in the series, but I wish her eyes were light green like in the series, instead of the almost-but-not-quite brown color they are.

Lucky's hair, despite being a bit stiff and looking coarse, is super soft! It's also free of styling product. It was quite neat immediately out of the box, but with minor handling, became very fluffy and unruly. My sister used to have a Lucky doll, and we always kept her hair in a braid or ponytail to contain it.

Lucky wears a simplified version of the outfit she wears in most episodes of the series. She has a white blouse with gathered sleeves and an orange horse decal. Her blouse has a sort of crinkly texture, I'm not sure what it's called, but I like it. She also has brown jeans (which are sculpted and painted to her legs) instead of leggings, and black knee-high boots. I think it's a decent approximation, especially with how small she is.

Her boots are the most lacking. In the series, Lucky wears her late mother's boots, which are black with orange flames and star details on the fronts. The 11 inch Lucky doll had very simplified boots, with an undetailed red flame shape on the fronts, so I feel like it wouldn't be too difficult to give the small doll that design.

They remind me of the plain boots she wears in the first episode, "Lucky and the Unbreakable Spirit", before she receives her mother's boots at the end of the episode.

Lucky has 7 points of articulation, with movement at her:

Head

Shoulders (which only go forward and back)

Hips

Knees

Unfortunately, my Lucky had a bit of a bobblehead, as well as warped legs. I managed to fix both (which I'll talk about further in another post), but I wish I hadn't needed to. Her legs are holding up fine (though I haven't handled her all that much), but they are a bit more delicate than a toy intended for ages 3 and up should be.

Strangely enough, the Lucky my sister used to have in 2018 also had a loose head, though her Pru and Abigail dolls didn't. I'm curious if this was an issue with Lucky dolls, or if it's just a strange coincidence. I may do some investigating in the future. Plus, there are a few more sets I'm interested in.

Here's Spirit! He's completely stationary, with no articulation, and a sculpted mane and tail. The vinyl hair is actually part of why I chose the set I did, I'm not fond of the rooted hair most of the other Spirits have.

I believe his mold is reused from the first barn playset from 2017. He's a bit smaller than the other horses. My sister still has her Chica Linda (The last one standing... Lucky, Abigail, Spirit, and Boomerang ended up war-torn and Pru went missing. Whether she's still kicking around I have no idea), and he's about an inch or so shorter than her.

He has brown eyes and thick eyebrows, but they aren't as serious as previous Spirits. He has a brown muzzle with a molded smile, and a white blaze. His painting is blended much nicer than earlier Spirits, who had a very stark line between his buckskin color, his muzzle, and his blaze.

He's slightly scuffed on his left side from the packaging being smushed, but it isn't too noticeable.

I do wish he had a more dynamic pose, he seems very chill compared to the stoic, serious look of the original Spirit from 2017 (which, it turns out, was sold separately). He just doesn't seem as "wild horse" to me as the original set's Spirit did, however, he's still really cute.

"I'm gonna ride, I'm riding freeeee~"

Lucky sits on Spirit quite nicely. She balances quite solidly, but the second you try to move them, she slides right off. The Spirit Untamed dolls from Mattel (which is on my list to buy and review eventually) fixed this by adding a doll stand-esque clip to the horses backs, but then you pretty much can't ever have the doll off the horse without it looking awkward, because a... stand... is protruding from their spines.

Anyways, I always felt the Spirit Riding Free dolls were too big for the horses, but with this Spirit being smaller than the others, she feels even larger on him. Most of the time, her feet hang well below Spirit's stomach, but the way she's sitting on him in this photo (like she's sitting on a chair, instead of a horse, haha) has them seem not quite as long.

Lastly, Lucky and Spirit also came with a DVD, which includes the first two episodes of the series, "Lucky and the Unbreakable Spirit" and "Lucky and the Treacherous Trail", as well as two music videos, the "Rainy Day" music video (also known as "Friends Forever"), and a music video of the cast version of "Riding Free", the series' opening song. The title screen also has an instrumental version of "Riding Free", which was a nice touch.

On the front cover, there's a picture of Lucky and Spirit (you can see how big she is in comparison to Spirit, and how her legs don't reach the bottom of his stomach), and the back has a large picture of Lucky hugging Spirit along with a description, a smaller picture of Lucky, Pru, and Abigail, and another small picture of Lucky with Chica Linda and Boomerang.

The description reads:

"Dreamworks Spirit Riding Free is a story about three best friends, the horses they love, and a world of adventure. Lucky, a gutsy 12-year-old girl, befriends a wild mustang she names Spirit. With her two best friends, Abigail and Pru, and their horses by their sides, they explore a world filled with endless rides and never-ending fun. Together they'll push their own limits and discover what it truly means to be free."

The front of the DVD has the title of the series, as well as the names of the episodes and music videos that are included.

"As long as I am here with you, I feel the spirit within me~"

Overall, I really like Spirit and Lucky. They're a really fun pair to pose together. While they're not without flaw, their good points truly shine through. A few negatives that are worth noting are just how fragile they seem, and how my Lucky had a very loose head, and warped legs (though that may be due to being in her box since 2019). Some positives are how great they look, with good sculpting. They do resemble they characters they're intended to represent, and look good posed together, with minor scale issues.

Due to how delicate they feel, I really don't think they're great for their intended age range, but with my gentle handling, they're holding up great. I do believe they're worth the price I paid, and would recommend them.

Since I purchased them secondhand, I'll mention secondhand prices. New in box Spirit Riding Free doll and horse sets generally seem range from $14 USD to $35 USD. I would pay as high as $25 USD for a set, maybe $30 at absolute most, but that's pushing it, and only if it's a set that comes up less often (like the flocked sets).

Lucky and Spirit are a great addition to my collection, and I'm really happy to have them.

#spirit riding free #spirit riding free doll #spirit riding free dolls #spirit riding free toys #just play #dolls #spirit dolls #srf dolls #doll review #dollblr

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