BrockLanders
Member
- Aug 8, 2020
- 444
- 1,180
I was going to interact with the post last night when I read it but didn't want to get started. Thanks for addressing that. While I have been lucky enough not to have panic attacks myself, I grew up with a sibling that was schizoaffective, a mother that had panic attacks when withdrawing from the medication she was abusing and then running out of, and had a 4-year relationship with a beautiful and tragic woman with borderline personality disorder. I feel like I've seen most flavors of panic attacks. You've hit the nail on the head.
Sometimes you can see it coming, but the vast majority of the time it comes out of left field... because you're not in their head to know what the impetus is. My mother was a mess and it was hard to understand at the time... so a lot of what my sister went through was reactionary. They would fight. Like literally fight. There was a lot of hyperventilating, lots of screaming at the mirror turning into sobbing, and lots of rocking in place that I witnessed. I spent a lot of time refining my "talk down" technique through trial, error, and receiving a lot of Indian burns and face screaming.
Much later, my girlfriend was exponentially worse. Once, I was getting the silent treatment all evening after we ate out, lots of staring off into space, sudden deep breaths and ragged exhales and getting up out of my lap and running to the bathroom. Later that night I wokef up to my girlfriend holding a knife to her own throat telling me she was going to "do it". It took a while to deal with that in the middle of the night. Why do it? She thought I was going to leave her for the waitress because I kept smiling at her and thanking her when she brought us things.
We were both servers at the time. :/
No rhyme or reason. No explanation fits all. Sometimes they just "are". All you can do is be a rock and hope they don't crash into it. Or leave.
I'm a fresh reader that put this VN away and then picked it back up after viewing the opening cutscene last year. I just finished a "say yes to everything and end up with Victoria" run. I've said it before here. The improvements you've made make the difference between the new work and the original attempt look like *night and day*. You've taken an average VN and applied thoughtful artistic intent to it. The only characters that feel "extra" now to me are the coaches, and you dialed that back plenty as far as I can tell. I really appreciate how hard you've obviously worked to improve and the script absolutely shows this. While there may be quibbles from some as you've acknowledged, I can appreciate what you're trying to accomplish.
Mental health is not an on|off switch to pull.
Choices have consequences.
The best way to show others who you are is to tell them what you see.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
Also, damn you for making me choose between these beautiful LIs lol
Keep it up. Make your art. We will adapt to your vision. I told TD1900 the same thing. We may not all like all of it, but it will be yours. At least we'll feel something. It's what defines art after all.
Cheers.
