Allegra 🐦‍🔥

Saving this for later; the thread is a summary and this research has a lot of compelling implications!

Thanks! Sometimes I want to quote Arrested Development: "there are dozens of us!" but I think there's more than that by now, and we're just connecting the threads of a global community at this point.

Yessss absolutely! I love "d&d made me _____" and referenced it very (very) obliquely somewhere in there.
For me, hilariously, it's "opera made me queer" because that's the media I was consuming as a curious teenager. So even there, there's overlap.
I'm curious if therapeutic larp will evolve.

Still reeling from the whiplash of going from voting for a female president, to realizing a majority voted that me & the gals probably shouldn't have bodily autonomy.
It really is about shared humanity. Til people stop denying it, anyone oppressed won't be able to stop fighting. But it's exhausting.

7/ audience (usually) so you can try ideas regardless of what coplayers/director/etc. would want or think. And therefore there's even more room for exploring theory of mind.

That's why I do acting, larp, psych, games, and probably why there's a remarkable overlap among people who do all 4.

6/ what represents your character, in any way, so there's even more freedom for different experiences: e.g. learning about yourself by having the option to make choices you might never think of IRL due to your own biases. There's narrative freedom: go back & try a different way. You're your own

5/ Video games (generalizing but bear with me bc there's a word count, I can't go into every game) let you play a character and even repeat their experiences making different choices on different playthroughs. Also, vidya plays with time in ways larp/theatre can't as easily. And your body isn't

4/ Performer/larper, psych becomes interesting to you because you want to connect to not only your own characters but the people (characters) around them. And you probably want to understand and manage your own reactions to what your character goes through, too. Tossing in a 4th dimension: gaming.

3/ Larps examine it in more improvisational ways: "If my character came from background X, and this larp starts at point Y, what would they do between now and whenever this larp ends (aka point Z)?" Thus acting/larp are appealing to psych-minded folks, and if you think about it long enough as a

2/ Character study is applied psychology: "Different people think differently" -> "What do THIS person's thoughts look like?" Scripted performances examine that in a very controlled (prewritten) environment: "What must my character be thinking to get from the first to the last page in this way?"

Here's the explanation (more or less):
Acting and larp both involve imagining what it's like to be another person. Psychology is most effective & beneficial when you practice theory of mind, i.e. operating from the understanding that each person's experience is unique. 1/

Heck yeah! I think all those things have a lot in common at fundamental levels, even if it's not obvious on the surface.

... rather than feeling like I'm always scraping by at the minimum level to survive. If I can take a deep breath and look around, I can see that's not actually true, but I still fear that relaxing for even a moment would be too much, and I'd lose everything. The fears can be debilitating.

The comorbidity with anxiety and depression definitely doesn't help. I've found my way into a community that's really positive and good, but I still feel like my foundations are shaky at best — I had to teach myself so much of how to be an adult, so it's hard to feel like I have space to play...

My ADHD makes me feel this in a big way. I described it recently as the feeling of hitting a wall whenever I start to gain any momentum. I'm not sure how to break that pattern; I'm a product of my early environment but responsible for making change for myself now, and the wall keeps coming back.

Speaking of dopamine-deficient brains, I wonder how years of unmedicated, undiagnosed ADHD affects risk aversion. Did I stop taking risks because I'd forget one crucial detail and suddenly have a crisis of confidence about my overall ability? Research can't actually answer this yet, so, I speculate.

We all deserve this, I think.

How much do you know about ADHD? What you're describing sounds more like narcissism; they are not the same.

Hi, I'm Allegra, and I'm here for:
🎭 larp
🎶 opera
🧠 psychology
🎮 casual video gaming

I often feel uncomfortable being all of those in the same place, because I worry certain communities won't be accepting of my place in the others. But I'm trying more self-acceptance, so here we are.

objectn't.

Forced myself to finish this project last night to have the momentary relief of getting something off my bench. Might still add something to it, but the crochet is definitely done. Guess I make cozy collars now?

Those are good ideas and things I do already whenever I can. I'm stuck in the mindset that makes it hard to get rid of things at all because I can't count on affording to get them again, though, which often stands in the way.

The costumes can stay. The good clothes can stay. The small mementos can stay. 10 years of old cables that I might need someday? Poubelle.

While my ntwrk here is small, it feels like the perfect place to sh1tpost.
Ever think about throwing away half your possessions just so you don't have to think about them? I do. All the time. But thanks to capitalism I also think that no ROI is basically criminal, so I don't. Materialism is a trap.

In case anyone needed to hear it, trying to focus on long term goals (eg. college graduation) while dealing with imminent threats to safety and personhood (see: early Jan. in the US) is extremely difficult and feels like I'm working against my best interests by doing it.
So that's my November. Hbu?

Thank you for this supportive anecdata 🙏
If I'd been in my first two years after last week's election? F*ck it. Table flips. Departure. Going feral. Now I still *want* to do that but am weighing it against how close grad status feels... except I keep hitting delays. It's infuriating.

Who's going to do the 1st research study on how living in "interesting times" affects college graduation rates, & whether there's an interaction w/ # of years you had left when things got "interesting"? I'm in 4th year & hanging on for dear life; if I were 2nd yr right now I might've just quit.

Hello, world. (Not a robot, just stressed and laconic.)