actually autism posting bc the way my brain works does indeed impact my writing & an observation I’ve made over the last several years is I can’t write with characters I don’t know well which means rotating through the same few (as you know lol). I remember the evening I created jeremiah—I was in maryland & uncomfortable by the idea of writing a new character even if I was writing him from the pov of someone else… but he kind of needed to be there for plot reasons so I wrote him in & liked him so much he reappeared for a longer stretch in an additional chapter even though that felt uncomfortable too. he even reappeared in feeding habits even though it felt weird and uncomfortable to write him again but this time two years later. and then writing him in body back was even weirder because it’d been an additional two years and I was new not only to him but to literary fiction again. and then writing in his pov was uncomfortable too because that was new until it wasn’t & now I’m just really thrilled I endured some of that discomfort to get to this point!!! bc I do indeed avoid writing that feels unfamiliar (resistance to change squad riseeee) but without trying I would not have jeremiah!!!! my favourite guy!!!!! it’s reassuring to see sometimes sitting in the discomfort for a bit does indeed pay off
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Baizhu’s Room
(note: this was written without any leaked spoilers or lore in mind)
Genshin 3.6 finally gave us access to the back room in Bubu Pharmacy, in anticipation of Baizhu’s upcoming release and story quest. And I have to give all the praise to the designers and developers here, because this small room has some of the best environmental storytelling I’ve seen in a game in a while, with only a few simple details. Today is Baizhu’s birthday, so I wanted to talk about it a little 💚🐍🌿
Nothing in this room is neatly in its place. The chairs aren’t in position, everything on the desk is messy and strewn about, and some of the drawers are left open. There’s a pillow on the desk, as well. Baizhu is quite frail and sickly, so this all paints a picture of him constantly looking for things and working, both as a doctor and frantically on his research into immortality, without having the energy or care to keep everything neat, and probably often falling asleep at his desk out of exhaustion (hence the pillow, though admittedly it could be for Changsheng, but I kind of doubt it).
There’s medicine on the bedside tables, which is probably just as much for Baizhu as it (and all the other medicine in the room) is for his patients. The bedside chair indicates he likely sits with patients there a lot so as to be as comforting as possible, but again, it’s also likely for people like Gui and Qiqi, when Baizhu is the one in bed. The sole small washtub thing stuck in the corner behind the screen... just makes me sad. I don’t know why in particular... it just does.
All of this, combined with the lighting, and the new, unique song, creates a room that manages to feel both warm and welcoming during the day, but solemn, lonely, almost suffocating, and unbearably sad at night, completely befitting the person who practically lives here, and the two very different sides he has. I say “practically”, but we have no indication so far that Baizhu actually does live anywhere else -- with his low energy and poor health, and all those damn steps leading up to the pharmacy, I’m fully convinced now that he does live here full-time, after seeing the state of it, which is... heartbreaking. He puts on a smile for everyone around him who are relying on him to care for them (and he loves his job, he truly does!), but his tiny, cramped patient room seemingly doubles as his living space, and even though Baizhu may lie and try to hide his own suffering... this room itself does not lie, and said suffering is bleeding from every corner here. The music is elegant, gentle, comforting, and soothing, but also delicate, weak, mournful, and again unimaginably lonely...... just like Baizhu. 💔
If you haven’t been here yet in the game, I highly recommend you visit it at least once; the atmosphere is simply unmatched. I can’t wait to see what happens here in Baizhu’s story quest, and how it will wreck our hearts even more 💚💔
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genuinely at the point where. i know it’s unfair. but i am angry to the point of distraction whenever i read anything, watch anything, play anything, look at anything, listen to anything. i have so many desires and not the faintest idea how to act on it. any skills i once had have degraded because i don’t have any time to do anything and i get jealous and resentful that there are people who can. or else what is wrong with me that i can’t create great art in my 1-2 hours of free time a day. why am i spending most of my life at work, i still can’t support myself, and there’s people who do less than me for more money, so they have time and energy to do things. the creative drought has gone on so long that the well has been filled in. i can’t even get off from work to refill my meds.
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it's just so heartbreaking and unfair and unjust and horrifying and i need the end of the usa capitalist imperialism asap. like i've never been so serious. guys we can't keep going like this. we can't. we can't. we can't just look away and be quiet when people from other countries, when people from our own countries keep getting mistreated and harassed and killed by our governments we can't keep going like this we just can't
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