cheeky_idler (Guest)
on Chapter 7
Fri 10
May 202411:59AM UTC
Hi It’s me, writing a comment after, for sure, more than 6 weeks of silence, because, I guess, after the long conversation my social needs bar got overloaded and exploded. And all this time I kept the tabs with the comments (now probably outdated to write anything anyway) hanging in my browser and felt guilty for not replying. The more time pass, the more awkward it feels to reply, but I know it won’t get better with time because I have another case hanging from when I was 16 and still can get over the fact that the contacts are lost and I will never be able to tell that boy, that there was nothing wrong with him, it was me who was broken.
So I finally got my shit together and wrote. Because it’s important for me to let you know that I’m still here, looking forward to the updates and enjoying every chapter and your notes on the events described.
On the good side of this pause - I started and managed to write a good part of my fic. But I don’t write it from the beginning but rather random chapters I feel like writing at certain moments and it’s a bit of a mess. And I don’t have beta readers because my husband is a total muggle and busy with his job too. And I’m not really in any sort of Hogwarts Legacy community unlike when I was a teen and hanging out on Tomb Raider forums. So I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to upload it anywhere.
It’s good that you have a schedule for uploading, but do take care of yourself, sleep is very important. Maybe at least try to see which seekers of your advice are actually askholes (those who ask for advice, but never follow, and then come back to you to complain that their life still sucks) and redirect them to seek advice from people who get paid for it. That's what I tend to do lately.
I’m glad your session with the psychologist went well. How are your cats doing?
Heyo! Nice to hear from you again! Oh, don't worry about replying after a long ass time, I have the same problem too actually haha- I'll only ever be happy to hear from others if they ever reply! So, no pressure! =D
Ooh, nice! Don't worry, most people write like that, I have several whole chapters that take place in the last arc already written haha- not gonna lie, it makes current chapters take longer to write x')
And I'm glad you're still reading, my series hasn't gotten much traffic for a while, I wonder if people are forgetting about Hogwarts Legacy already, I have no clue since I'm not in any communities either heh- It's kinda sad, though I suppose if it's less of a hot topic, that kinda lessens my fear of the scale of response my HL analysis videos might get-
Thanks for the suggestions, though I'm happy to report that in that sense, I'm pretty lucky. Most of the people who come to me do actually act on the advice (well, there is one, but she's got a psychologist already so I don't give her much advice, though I do spend maybe a bit too much time regulating her emotions for her...)
Though it does put more pressure on me to actually think through my advice before giving it and put in effort to explain the rationale behind the advice so they understand what they're doing, because they will actually do it, I can't give them lazy advice, you know? They're trusting this idiot after all and I don't wanna let them down x'D I'll try to manage my sleep better, having insomnia doesn't help, but I try x')
Hehe, thanks, I'm pretty happy about it too! Ah, did I forget to mention that my cats are doing better? Oops- Well, my boy with anemia has been doing much better after steroid pills, slowly lowering the dosage now, and my girl's little lumps turned out to be benign milk glans accidentally thinking she was pregnant for some reason, and making milk with nowhere to go, rather than cancer. Whew!
Man, what a scare- three weeks of stress and expensive surgery to remove some bumps for testing... *sigh* well, at least she's my pet not my child, I think a scare like that with my actual human kid would've killed me. I don't know how you parents do it, I think I'd spend every day paralysed with fear if I had kids. Like, I love my companion cat enough to almost pass out when the vet said "cancer", I think if it were my kid, I'd immediately die of a heart attack.
Seeing my partner off to work is scary enough, sending my kid to school would require I go into hibernation till they get back. Even though my partner's always like "you're the one who can end up hospitalised without ever leaving the house, and you worried about me!?" Yeaaaah, I don't have much of a counter for that one- x'D
cheeky_idler (Guest)
on Chapter 7
Sun 12
May 202412:10PM UTC
I think reasons for reduced traffic on your story might be: - People are generally not so much into reading these days, especially reading something long. My husband shared that he knows people who only read dialogs in books if they read at all. And after youtube found out I like HL my main page is flooded with short dialog-based stories about Ominis-Sebastian-MC trio with AI generated voices. They are mostly not bad and definitely easier to consume for modern auditory spoiled by twitter and tiktok. - When looking for something else to read I sorted fics by kudos they’ve got and my general impression is that fics that have smut in almost every chapter tend to get more kudos (people are horny animals xD me included xD) and maybe get more popular for this reason. Plus with time more stories are uploaded which makes it harder for each individual one to get attention. I can't say if HL get's less popular either, though.
I don’t have a lot of hope for my fic to be noticed. It’s rather like I started to write it as some kind of therapy because I was stuck in replaying some scenes in my mind and I hoped writing them down would help to get over it and go on with something else like real life stuff for example xD. It kinda worked, but also it didn’t fully. Because now, for example, I came up with an idea that will result in rewriting a good half of a chapter and making some changes in the next ones where the case has influence. And because as a place in my mind gets free from old episodes, new ones start to appear.
Speaking about insomnia and AI generated stuff, I found a cure for myself. There was a period when it was hard to fall asleep and when I finally would at about midnight I would wake up three hours later and find myself unable to fall asleep again. Then I came across this ambience. https://youtu.be/VVtQrZVBPMI?si=1USeHr9YNWnR0Z6v With a hands-free in my ear and this on the loop I tend to fall asleep in less than 10 minutes and sleep until DH gets into bed at about 5 a.m. and takes over the mission of breathing and snoring next to my ear. But I guess this won’t make sense if your boyfriend sleeps next to you the whole night anyway.
I’m glad your cats are fine. As for fear for the cats or for the kids, oddly enough I don’t see a big difference. Lately I tend to perceive cats just like kids. I’ve never used to address myself as their mom, but two years ago I got to bottle feed and perform all other sorts of care for one week old abandoned kittens, one of them stayed to live with us. She definitely thinks that I am her mom, so… And with my youngest human son we went through two kidney surgeries and it was kinda scary but it’s not like when my cats had surgeries it was less scary. It's like when you care about somebody their species don’t matter.
Here are some things I do to calm myself down during surgeries and other such stuff: - Calculating the risks. Like if the risk that he can die during this surgery is lower than the risk of dying in a car accident while we are taking a taxi to the clinic then freaking out during the surgery looks a bit stupid. So when they worked on him I read books to distract myself. - Some esoteric stuff I used to read and believe as a teen - avoid thinking and visualizing bad scenarios in order to not jinx them. - Try to not impose additional suffering on yourself with your imagination. Do not think or try to imagine what would happen and how you would feel in a bad case scenario. Your limbic system doesn’t make a difference between fantasy and reality so whether you imagine your cat/kid is dead or if it's really dead doesn’t matter for your brain, your body gets the same stress hormones. The same goes when you expect a painful procedure for yourself - try to not think about the pain ahead, you’ll get enough suffering when it actually happens.
I remind the last point to my kids every time we wait for a vaccine shot or a tooth extraction and such. And the last time my older son realized he did suffer more in his imagination on the way to the clinic than from the actual procedure.
And back to the younger one, the most horrible thing was not the surgeries but watching your kid in pain, because drugging him unconscious until it heals is not a good idea. And that moment after the first surgery when they fixed one kidney and he got a pain attack on the other and his doctor was busy performing another surgery and the nurses wouldn’t give him even paracetamol without the doctor’s order. And having a four year old squirming and crying and pleading me to help for more than an hour for sure, I could only think how much I want to take his pain so that I feel it instead of him and what I want to do to those dumb nurses who don’t pay attention and think he is acting up.
And generally yes, fear will always be at some level. I guess all normal parents fear for their kids. Yes, I’m a bit anxious whenever they go anywhere without me. You just have to learn to live with it and keep your fear at bay, because hovering over them and locking them in a cell with soft walls won’t do them any good.
Eh, I try not to think about how purely written works are a dying art form. It's fine, it's mostly practice for the book series I've got planned and that one I plan to make into an audio book, and maybe adapt to a comic if I can find an artist, or I might draw it myself haha-
Plus, it's not like my fic is going to expire or anything, it'll be here for people to eventually stumble upon some day. If even ten people enjoy the story and find the lessons in it meaningful in any way, that's enough for me ^_^
Huh, I never considered that having a child might not be too different from the feeling I have for my cats. Perhaps I've been underestimating the grief and loss I experienced when the twin kittens that I played midwife delivering passed away.
I'd rescued a pregnant cat and didn't realise she was pregnant until I had a bloody blob on my floor. God, that was terrifying, I rushed to get a towel, soak it in warm water and massage the little lump till it started breathing, (the mom was searching for a place to nest, since I hadn't known to prepare one.)
Got a blanket for the mom and helped deliver the second kitten. I'll never forget the feeling of holding the small things, I was so scared the mom would reject the first after I touched her, but she was surprisingly okay with me handling them. Unfortunately, I didn't realise the mother had FeLV. Her kittens inherited it, and the second kitten passed away after a year, then the mother, then the first kitten.
I think I cried for weeks after each loss. Still can't think of them without crying heh. I always assumed that a kid would be a hundred times worse, I still think it would be, but maybe it's not so strange to have been so upset.
Yeesh, that got depressing, sorry bout that, thanks for the advice, I do try not to simulate negative possibilities, but it's something I've always struggled with but I appreciate it, it's always good and kind to share advice and suggestions ❤️
And although I don't plan to have kids, even if I did I'd never lock a kid up, mine or otherwise. Like I said, I'd just go into autistic shutdown while the kid's doing what they need to off in school or hanging out with their friends, getting the bumps they need and all.
I'd probably just collapse from the anxiety when they're not looking or something and maybe script scenarios in case they came home crying or something. Kids are scary man, it's so easy to fuck up without even noticing... *shudders* ha ha nope, yeah, definitely not gonna do that. Cats are more than enough. My partner and I can barely take care of each other's autistic arses, we've got tons of generational trauma too x'D
Hehe, I've heard the video you linked before too, sadly doesn't quite seem to do much for me, but thanks for the suggestion! I think it's kinda funny that the devs didn't give Seb proximity lines but asked the voice actor to snore a bunch for them xP
cheeky_idler (Guest)
on Chapter 7
Thu 16
May 202407:55PM UTC
The story with the cats is sad indeed, I’m sorry for your loss. I’ve already lost count on the pets I’ve lost since I remember myself, because we always tended to rescue animals from the streets and not all of them survive, sadly. It’s normal to cry for weeks, especially when you look after them long enough to form a strong bond. It always hurts no matter if they die young or naturally after they lived more than average. I really hope to never get to compare if losing a child feels the same as losing a pet, though. But anxiety when they are ill or in another type of danger is definitely about the same for me.
I understand your reservations about having kids. To be honest, I think from time to time that I shouldn’t have had them too, because I suck as a parent. I suck a bit less than my own parents did, and significantly less than my DH’s parents, but I’ll never be able to be the parent I wanted to be. Because well yes, I can barely get my stuff done, and now I have to teach my kids to take care of themselves but instead I keep giving them bad examples. But if everyone thinks like us, humanity might go extinct.
About the videos - you may want to check what else there is. The boys can read you to sleep, for example. Or there are ambiences that are not about any particular game or series. Also I found meditation led by Sebastian, which once knocked me out in less than five minutes at 11 a.m. xD
It looks like they made all the actors make all sorts of sounds just in case, probably. But for Ominis it really makes sense. I once caught him snoring on a carpet in the hall during History of Magic class xD
Thanks ❤️ and I'm sorry for your losses too. Yeah, my cats are all rescues too, I'm really not looking forward to the next time I feel that pain again... I guess I'm a bit like an astrologer rather than an astronaut when it comes to raising kids. I'm more into the theory rather than practical, and I already have a hard time saying no to my friends, a kid would walk all over me x'D
Oh, I have seen that exact video haha! I like the Hansel & Gretel and Snow White reads. Once, I listened to a Sebastian sleeping ambience with storm shower and I got so confused when it actually started raining (wow, that's some good rain audio... hang on... oh, it's actually raining, lol).
I even have several really good AI songs that were Thanos snapped away, this is why I download anything I like, mwahahaha- like Ominis singing Can't help falling in love by Elvis, which has clocked me a record time of '1hr to fall asleep' on average, it's my most effective lullaby at the moment. (I take anywhere from 1hr to 4hrs to fall asleep normally ha ha ha...)
I swear Ominis is such a cat, I love that toxic little thing so much- I have a comic strip living rent free in my brain involving cat Ominis perched on a wall while a tiny puppy Sebastian tries to get up to join him, failing spectacularly, and then the Keeper, a bigger wolf pup, lets Seb climb up their back so he can sit beside Ominis but he trips in his enthusiasm and knocks Ominis down with him. The Keeper ends up catching both of them (read; gets squashed by them) and the three take a nap together under a tree.
I will draw that one day. When I have time. Maybe. Hopefully. Eventually. Why am I so busy...
cheeky_idler (Guest)
on Chapter 7
Fri 17
May 202409:20PM UTC
Yeah, I'm also good in theory and frequently fail to follow my own advice in practice, whether its about raising kids, healthy lifestyle or whatever.
I saw Can't help falling in love today and totally melted. Here is another nice one https://youtu.be/qWiOxRybBWo?si=4PvrmnDwc4iyydnF which was originally a part of a story. He has such a sweet voice.
I'll look forward to see the comic, when(if) you get to draw it. In my story Ominis' animagus form is a cat xD
Oh her videos are back? Niiiice! She's got several other great songs too, kinda hilarious that they came back right after I mentioned them lol 10/10 timing, and here I was considering sending my files to you so you could enjoy them too- x'D
Oh, that just gave me an idea for a group bonding project, thanks! I'd been looking for a reason our trio would continue hanging out with Natty and the others on a regular basis xP
Comment on It's My Own Design
cheeky_idler (Guest) on Chapter 7 Fri 10 May 2024 11:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
Jaz_Lyn_Riddle on Chapter 7 Fri 10 May 2024 07:35PM UTC
Comment Actions
cheeky_idler (Guest) on Chapter 7 Sun 12 May 2024 12:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
Jaz_Lyn_Riddle on Chapter 7 Sun 12 May 2024 03:15PM UTC
Comment Actions
cheeky_idler (Guest) on Chapter 7 Thu 16 May 2024 07:55PM UTC
Comment Actions
Jaz_Lyn_Riddle on Chapter 7 Fri 17 May 2024 06:23PM UTC
Comment Actions
cheeky_idler (Guest) on Chapter 7 Fri 17 May 2024 09:20PM UTC
Comment Actions
Jaz_Lyn_Riddle on Chapter 7 Sat 18 May 2024 08:45AM UTC
Comment Actions