Maybe It Was An Adventure Masterpost

hi hello i’m squido and i’m studying to be a clinical psychologist! one psychology fun fact is that the way we conceptualize the adversity we face has an overwhelming impact on how we respond to it! because of this, i’m out here expounding on the beauty and power of stories where characters face hardship and grow from it and might even be grateful that it happened—i know i am for some of the harder moments in my life. this is a masterpost of everything i’ve said on the subject for those who want to see more uplifting content about rising above our circumstances :D (yeah this is all linkeduniverse because i’m an addict sue me)

The Post That Started It All - screenshots of the boys having good times on their adventures. a beta version of...

This Pile of Art I Did - maybe it wasn’t wanted; maybe it hurt. but maybe? maybe it was beautiful; maybe it was fun; maybe it was an adventure. and maybe that meant something.

This Post I Made - spiderman presentation meme with a bunch of stats about the prevalence of PTSD in response to traumatic events and how it’s not as high as some might think

This Screenshot from Skyward Sword - “It seems every time I bump into you, you appear stronger and somehow more confident. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up, Link.”

These Screenshots from an Article About Spaceflight - people can and often do grow from adversity and experience positive psychological effects from living through difficult/stressful experiences

This Post With More Science Articles In It - because growing from hardship is beautiful and possible and we need to stop acting like it isn’t!! i will throw hands!!!

This Art I Did - drawings of my favorite boys looking happy with quotes from canon about how much fun they had

This FIc I Did- where legend isn’t actually traumatized from koholint and loves adventuring

This Other Fic I’m Working On - in which four and wind have an ADVENTURE!

do you ever think about shadowhand essek thelyss at 1am and how the cast asked matt during the campaign 2 wrap up if he was supposed to be a major antagonist and matt said no because he was "meant to be an antagonistic force in the world" like he was never even meant to be an antagonist, just a force, because his actual personhood was so deeply unimportant from the very beginning, and that he was invented with the sole purpose of making the world a worse place and was never supposed to matter beyond the ways in which his actions harmed others and then he saved the world not because he was a good person but because the mighty nein loved him so much that they bent the narrative around him and he became a character whose personhood mattered because they decided that it mattered and it was their love and nothing else that not only changed him but made him a person that could be changed at all and more than just an antagonistic force in the world, but an antagonist, who could grow and ultimately come to love them back and—

HI I'M DOING INCREDIBLY JANKY PSYCH RESEARCH ON TUMBLR WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

basically i'm doing a paper and trying to really dissect and understand the experience of having and coping with depression. while i've thought about this, i've sort of been extrapolating off my own experiences, but i just realized i have no idea if anyone other than me has had this experience:

do you ever feel depressed emotionally and physically, but not cognitively and like, morale-wise? like you have no energy, and are really sad, and nothing seems interesting or can hold your attention, and you're just kind of a lump who wants to curl up in a ball under a desk somewhere and melt into the floor.

but at the same time, you're not like,,, deeply existential or mentally spiraling or having self-hating thoughts about it. like your internal monologue isn't depressed, too. somewhere in the back of your mind, you're sitting there like "hey, man, i know it's rough right now. just hang in there, okay?" maybe your brain produces the thought "what's the point?" and you go "dude. no. there are so many points. don't talk like that."

i'm sort of imagining an army that's been losing a war but still has high morale, if that helps at all. like you're not winning. you're not okay. but in a sense, some part of you is okay, because you still have hope. in short:

i couldn't have as much specificity/put as many options as i would have liked so please feel free to elaborate in the notes/tags if you want, but i know it's personal so no pressure. also don't worry about if you're Officially Diagnosed or not—if you have a reasonably strong suspicion, go with it for this.

THANK YOU EVERYONE ILY!!

OH HI HELLO YES PLEASE THANK YOU AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

for the record, fanart is always always always allowed, encouraged, and cherished dearly! i have a special folder where i keep all the fanart i've ever recieved, no matter how "good" it is (yes there are literal stick figure drawings in it i'm not even kidding).

i've never met or heard of an author who doesn't go insane with happiness over fanart, let alone one who actively discourages it, so unless you hear otherwise, feel free to assume that all authors want fanart :D

BUT YES THANK YOU AAAAAA YOU CAN POST IT HERE AND TAG ME OR DM IT TO ME ON DISCORD (or @ me on the LU discord. i check discord more often than tumblr, but i should still see it either way)

i, like every other fic author in existence, love getting comments from people who enjoyed my work. i don't care if your comment is "late" (that's so weird to me like it's literature—do you apologize to homer for being late to reading the odyssey?) or "unintelligible" (late night commenters, english language learners, people who feel like they "just aren't that good with words", believe me, i entirely understand what you mean and appreciate it immensely), or anything else that you feel might make your comment 'not good enough'. i love all of the comments i receive and i am eternally grateful to all of you for your continued support.

and yeah, i've read fics where i felt like adding a comment would be doing the fic a disservice because there was nothing that could be said that wouldn't cheapen or patronize the magnum opus i'd just witnessed. in instances like this, that is exactly what i say in the comment: "there's nothing i can say that doesn't do this work of art a disservice. thank you for writing this."

actually, now that i think about it, there are a bunch of ao3 comments i've gotten that i still haven't replied to because i felt any thanks i could give would be inadequate. i should really get around to replying because i want them to know how spellbound they left me. i love you all, have i ever mentioned that?

all of that being said, i would like to make a public service announcement!

at least under default settings, ao3 authors do get notified every time you edit a comment. i've accidentally hit send too early before, or realized i forgot something i wanted to say, i get it, i really do. i have edited many comments in my day.

but you don't have to do this. really, it's okay. most of the time i honestly can't tell what the difference is. i'm not going to think worse of you for having typos in your comments because i guarantee that there were more in the fic you just read sfkljghsl

also these edits were over the course of twenty full minutes. i got another email while writing this post and had to update the image. please do not spend 20 minutes agonizing over your comment and changing the capitalization and adding a few words. it's okay, i promise. i love your comment, and i'm very very grateful for it, regardless of how "polished" it is. i'm not your english teacher in disguise.

tl;dr, i love you all and i hope you don't feel anxiety or a compulsion towards perfectionism in my ao3 comments section. i won't judge you, i promise <3

SJFKLDKJFGKSJDFGLSDKJFGLSDKJFL EHEHEHEHEHE YES!!!! I'M SO SO SO SO GRATEFUL I WAS ABLE TO SPARK JOY AND INSPIRE AND ENCOURAGE YOU!!!! if you ever need more encouragement in any of your creative endeavors, i am just a discord or tumblr away and always happy to see what you've got going on and help you get out of your slump. God bless!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU THANK YOU AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i don't have words help skfjhgslfkgsdkf i'm just so very blessed to have people like you in my life!!! i've never felt unappreciated in this space and i have people like you to thank for that so thank you so so so so much to everyone who's shared their God-blessed talent for making this humble creator feel loved.

i hope your week to come is just as lovely as you've made mine!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH THANK YOU WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH SFDKLGJSHDFLGKSJGSKDFLK i'm so so grateful i've been able to create stories that mean something to you!! and i'm also very happy to see that my ever-present desire to punch legend is contagious sfkgjhsdlkfg

i hope your week to come is as lovely as you just made mine!!!

this is the best game

ah!! thank you!!! this summer has been a gently undulating rollercoaster that regularly alternates between "hnnnnnnnnnnng i miss being okay aaaugh my brain is full of bees" and "oh! everything's actually just... okay! heck yeah!! i feel good!" right now i'd say my head is full of jellies and they are blooping and blorping around. i'm not quite sure what that means either but i don't think i could put it any more accurately if i tried.

as i have for the past two summers now, i've been addicted to sewing, so i have capes and floofy pirate shirts and petticoats galore and i will be flaunting ALL of them next semester, thank you. i've had a digital artblock for some reason, so i've been doodling on paper lots, and i think my writers' block is less writer's block and more "ehhh i'll do it later" (doesn't do it). my goal is still to have the next chapter of hfwkadwm done by the end of the summer, and i think i can make that, because i've knocked out most of my low-hanging-fruit-projects so before too long the next chapter of that will be the next lowest hanging fruit sfkghf.

thanks so much for checking in aaaaah you all are so sweet! i love all you guys so much and am wrapping all of u up in big cozy weighted blankets :D

Girl and Dog

(for context, my little sister's running a D&D campaign where one of the characters is learning to read. because we are supremely extra, we wrote an entire children's book for this character to learn to read with. then we fell way too hard in love with it and now it is 3k words (oops). BUT YEAH IT'S REALLY CUTE AND WE WORKED REALLY HARD ON IT so we wanted all of you to be able to read it too :D)

This is Girl. Girl lives with Mom and Dad. Girl and Mom and Dad live in the town. 

The woods are next to the town. The woods are very big. Mom and Dad tell Girl to stay in the town. But Girl likes to see new things.

“I want to see the woods!” says Girl. 

Girl wants to get set for the trip. Girl gets all her cool stuff. 

First, Girl gets her best bag, to put the things she finds in it. Next, Girl gets her shiny rock, to make new friends. Then, Girl gets her magic stick, to hit mean things. Last, Girl gets her big green cape, to show how brave she is. Her mom made the big green cape for her, so it will keep her safe.

With her best bag and her shiny rock and her magic stick and her big green cape, now Girl is set to go to the woods. 

Girl steps out of her home. Girl goes out of the town. The woods are tall and green and pretty. Girl will see the woods! Girl takes her first step into the woods. 

Girl sees lots of new things in the woods. Girl sees a huge leaf and a funny bug and a rocky hill. Girl is very happy and goes to see more things.

Then Girl sees a gray dog! The dog is big and looks very soft. 

i will extol the benefits of donating blood to my dying days but by far the funniest is that, after my fourth time donating blood yesterday (meaning i've lost a half gallon in the past half a year :0) i've noticed that i'm feeling the aftereffects of it less and less every time, which then means that THIS interaction is now possible:

friends on the sidelines of the fight: "oh no! they've lost too much blood!! there's no way they can fight on in this state!"

anime protagonist covered in blood, spitting yet more blood out of their mouth, gritting their teeth: "you're forgetting one thing"

villain standing over protagonist, sure they've won: "and what is that"

anime protagonist, grinning, and there's a spark in their eye: "i'm a blood donor"

villain, gasping, and stumbling backwards: "no! it can't be!"

protagonist, standing up: "i shrug off far worse than this every other month. it's going to take more than that to keep me down!!!"

villain, getting stabbed by protagonist: "noooooo!!!"