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I've been writing and re-writing this post for the last few hours... I'm just going to stop caring about how I word things and let everything loose.
My last long term relationship completely ruined my life. She verbally and mentally abused me for three years and convinced me that I not only deserved it, but that everything was my fault. She turned all of my friends against me, leaving me completely alone and isolated. She crippled me socially. I've only recently started actually talking to people in private again, and I still have panic attacks over it.
She manipulated me so much using my excessive guilt complex, making me believe dozens of horrible things about myself that I can't shake, even though I know they're not true. I'm far more paranoid about everything than I was before, even going as far as thinking that my family is trying to kill me because I've been such a colossal fuck-up and failure. She convinced me that all my problems are meaningless and that I'm faking my depression to use as an excuse for my horrible behavior.
And to think I want to be a therapist someday! I suppose I'm better off knowing that my advice is completely fucking worthless and wrong, then! There's nothing I want to hear more than the implication that people who listen to my advice are going to be more likely to kill themselves!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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POST-WRITING EDIT: I apologize for this post being hard-to-read disjointed rambling.
Warp wrote:
People try to find out the history of the victim because they want to learn to recognize the symptoms. If we don't look at the victim's past, we will never learn.
While I understand your point, I don't think looking into their history is the way to go about learning about it. In my experiences both helping people through their depression and having it myself, I've learned that attempting to figure out their past on your own usually leads to more trouble down the line. It's hard enough for people to talk about their experiences in the first place, the last thing anyone wants to hear after they bare their heart and soul is "Oh yeah, I know". If you try to understand someone's sorrow from an outsider's perspective, you're never going to connect with them. You have to understand it from their perspective.
You can look into their past all you want, but it's rare that you'll actually find anything. I kept my depression hidden for almost half my life, and the only reason anyone in my family found out about it was because I slipped up in the worst way possible and was forced to tell them, and even then there's still a thousand things I'm hiding.
Everyone suffers differently. Something that works for one person might not work for another. This is why I urge everyone to provide a safe and caring environment for people who they suspect are depressed or hiding some sort of trauma. That's not to say treat them as if they're weak and pathetic and in constant need of attention, because they're going to feel guilty. It just means treat them like they're someone that matters to you. You shouldn't be blatant about it.
If you have to look into anything regarding them, look into their symptoms and disorders, not their past. Depression is so horribly misunderstood, even by people trained in psychology and therapy, and learning about it and what it can do to people will help you come up with ways to help those people. The rest of it is all personal.
Not that most people will be able to help anyway. After all what can you do? Even if you do recognize some symptoms and begin to suspect suicidal tendencies, what exactly are you supposed to do?
You listen to them. You try to understand their pain. You stay with them and refuse to leave. You accept them for who they are, regardless of how they feel about themselves. Honestly, it doesn't really matter what you try... The important thing is that you try in the first place. Even if you don't think it's working, keep trying. Giving up only hurts them more than you've ever helped them.
Like I said before, everyone suffers differently, so the following most likely won't apply to anyone else, but something I've always loved to hear from my friends was the question "What can I do to help?" I liked being considered, even if I never had anything to tell them. Even if I did have something for them to do and it never worked, there was always something so nice about them putting me first in this situation, and not offering their advice or telling me what I need to do for myself.
If you compliment them in any way, you have to back it up. You can't just give them a compliment randomly and expect them to take it. If you have reasoning behind that, it'll be easier to get it through to them, because they'll start to realize that these are things you actually think, not just things you're saying to make them feel better.
A few things I can almost safely say will work on everyone, though: Reassuring them that you'll always be there for them and that they'll be okay someday... Telling them that it's okay for them to feel the way they do, and that you won't think any differently of them because of it... And backing that up by not treating them differently because of it. Most importantly, you have to want to help them. You have to feel like their problems will never burden you, and you have to make them feel the same way. Part of loving someone (or something) is accepting every little "flaw" they have while still loving them (or it) just the same, if not more. If you start to feel like these flaws are a burden to you, you might want to sit down, think about everything, trying to figure it all out in your head.
You don't have to be someone's safety net forever. Eventually they'll be able to go out and build it on their own, talking to more and more people and learning to overcome their disorder.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Please stop saying things like this. I know they're not your words, but I'm saying in general that this isn't right.
I'm saying this from the suicidal person's point of view, because I've been in that situation more than once: Even if you talk to someone, that's not a guarantee at all that they'll listen to you. It's not a guarantee that they'll understand you or even attempt to help you. In my experience, I've had people shy away from me, or people try to tell me to "be happy" without even bothering to help otherwise. I've had people refuse to speak to me because they didn't want me to "bring them down". I've even had people tell me to just go ahead and do it.
If you want to prevent suicide, you need to provide a safe environment for the suicidal person. You need to let them know that they can tell you anything, you need to let them know that you care, you need to take the steps to understand what they're going through. It's not their job to tell anyone how they feel, and it's not their fault if they don't. Suicide leaves nothing but a victim, and you never blame the victim for what happens to them. It's our job to give them the chance to talk, to let them know that we'll listen, that we'll stick around and support them.
This is how we should respect her death. Not by digging up her past or commenting on who she is or simply paying our respects, but by keeping in mind that we need to be the one taking the steps to prevent tragedies like this in the future.
If you think someone close to you might be depressed or having suicidal thoughts, build that safety net for them. Don't make them come to you. Go to them.
If they build up the courage to come to you, all you need to do is listen and understand. There's no advice you can give someone who's depressed. They don't want advice. They don't want to be told what to do. They just want to be cared about. They want someone to be there for them no matter what. If they get to a suicidal point, they need a reason to live. You need to be that reason.
...I highly recommend not looking anything up about this if you're at all sensitive about suicidal thoughts and transgender issues. I feel fucking sick to my stomach after seeing the way she was treated in the days leading up to this.
She's the main reason I had the courage to talk about my gender identity on the forums. I only wish I'd had the opportunity to talk to her once... At least she's in a much better place, now, away from all the fucking disgusting people in this world that lead her to this.
...Thank you, Rachel.
// J.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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cwitty wrote:
Are there even 1000 NES games? Wikipedia claims that there are 826, and judging by the titles in the list, some of those wouldn't even have a concept of dying.
GoodNES lists about 22,000 ROMs, though I'm going to safely assume that the number of actual different games is about a tenth of that.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Tangent wrote:
The sentiment I'm getting from people is that if he had submitted this a week or two later, there'd be no hurt feelings at all? Or if it had been someone more established originally submitting it, it'd be just fine? These seem silly, particularly for a game this short.
...
I'm not even sure why "maybe someone's feelings might be hurt" are even entering into it though.
You don't care about peoples' feelings being hurt? That's shocking, coming from you. You've always been so nice and caring and kind to people in the past. It really breaks my heart to see you say that.
Sarcasm aside (as I've run out for the day), why shouldn't it matter? This isn't just some "new TASer" for one thing. exposure is a Nico TASer, and we rarely see Nico TASers show up here, let alone stick around and submit their runs. I don't think the timescale had anything to do with it either: For me at the very least, the most deplorable part is the fact that so little was implemented, and none of the improvement comes from Spikestuff himself, yet in this submission he's taking all the credit. Plus, the "improvement" is most likely an emulation error anyway, meaning that it might not be valid at all.
If exposure was given co-author credit, and really I see no fucking reason why anyone would refuse to do so unless they're a gigantic asshole, then no one would be complaining. As far as anyone's concerned, all of the improvements in this movie are exposure's.
There's also the issue in the original run that if it DID have a bunch of known improvements and sloppy things like blank trailing input, it should have been rejected to begin with, especially, again, for as short as it is.
Again, the "known improvement" is likely an emulation error, and there were no other improvements aside from that. The run wouldn't have been rejected for having blank input at the end, either. Also there's a possible reason for the blank input: Japanese runners usually time to the end of the credits instead of stopping the time at the last action needed to reach the credits. I'm not sure if that's what was done in the first submission, but it's just there as a reason.
Spikestuff wrote:
I should've done what happened to me when it was my early times of TASVideos that was less harsh than what I just pulled.
This isn't really an accurate comparison, though I agree it was much less harsh. What you did here is basically plagiarism, what RachelB did to you was just a straight improvement. This is basically "Hey, this improvement missed something that was in the published run! What a great opportunity for me to take all the credit for it, instead of being someone with a lick of common sense and letting the author know about this improvement!"
But that doesn't matter anyway since the improvement is an emulation error.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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solarplex wrote:
As much as I would like to agree with you, he reflected himself poorly by submitting with absolutely no information and not posting back since submission. I appreciate newcomers and their attempts but this was sad to see get posted. Try harder next time Exposure and good luck!
Judging from the game, the lack of information, and Mister's post in this thread, I'm assuming that exposure is a Japanese runner with no knowledge of English. A lot of low-content submission texts on good runs tend to come from non-English speakers who either don't realize what's being asked of them or are unable to adequately explain themselves in English.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if exposure was driven away by the """""improvement""""" run on the workbench, since that's a legitimate poor reflection of character.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Why didn't you submit this under your own name without giving credit to anyone else? Arbitrarily improving a run and just posting it in the thread isn't the way we do things around here anymore, apparently!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Can we take a moment to appreciate the beautiful irony in someone nicknamed "exposure" submitting a run and having it pushed into obscurity like this?
EDIT: But seriously, give Exposure top billing if you're going to pull shit like this.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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It just hit me that if we were to move to a system that was based on movie ratings after publication, we'd need to do more to promote rating movies in general, else we're just gonna keep piling run after run into a single category, which would eventually lead to situations like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Myst DS being in the same category.
If this four-tier system were to be implemented, would we go back to using ratings as our system of judging submissions?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
