Actually playing games during dire emotional states throws fuel unto my dissociation/depersonalization/derealization problems; but just mindfully sitting in my favorite place in the Temple of the Moon on a private vanilla WoW server works great for me. The sounds, music, colors, lighting effects, and water create a very zen space that helps me observe my thoughts and feelings without getting so tangled up in them. That kind of presence helps me better understand what is really going on and how it all happened.

If things are merely bad then maybe I’ll play some original Sims 1 or Rimworld on the coziest of settings. So long as there’s no nest of trash around then it’s probably okay. Eufloria in relaxed mode is a lovely RTS game that hasn’t ever caused me any problems.

Hopefully you find your way through this soon!

Thank you! As a witchy agnostic pagan with christotrauma I love your username too. Sorry for the late reply! Taking long breaks from social media is important to me. Btw grats for living rent free in my head for this long :)

If you travel by auto when wearing tight clothes be sure to mind the extra clearance needed for your glasses when getting inside! One of my trendy larger frames took a scratch that way soon after getting them. Also don’t limit yourself to just two pairs but instead get some cheap ones to change up your appearance. Accessorize :)

Wikipedia states that NGO Monitor’s focus is to “End promotion of ‘politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas’ by certain NGOs,” that they report “on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective,” and that a former online communication editor employed with the group was indefinitely banned for biased editing. Personally I’m more inclined to trust a Wikipedia article with 75 sources unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

Yeah the boot process is a mess! Debian’s noisy GRUB and unsightly boot text is an obvious and unnecessary paint point for a desktop user but very desirable for server installations. You do have some options though!

Carlo Contavalli apparently has a relatively simple work-around discussed at https://rabexc.org/posts/grub-shush. What I’ve done in the past is rebuilding Ubuntu’s source deb package for GRUB against my Debian system. You can grab it at https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/lunar/grub2. Build instructions can be found here https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/117503/how-to-compile-a-debian-package-from-source.

The great thing about Debian, Linux, and FLOSS is that you can even automate downloading Debian’s source package when it gets updated, applying the silent patch, applying Ubuntu’s compilation options, compiling the deb, and installing the deb! But yeah why can some package maintainer not provide such as an option in the repository! It’s really an annoyance for many and almost makes me feel like I’m not the type of user the Debian community desires. Like, “Wait… what? You like pretty stuff? GTFO!” Maybe its even true? Hopefully you will enjoy using Debian! Its most preferable to Ubuntu in many ways these days!

Isn’t combat just so boring? While none of the games you mentioned are familiar to me, story focused games are my main interest. My personal favorite is definitely The Wink and Kiss Part 2 for Neverwinter Nights. Its an adult romance damsel in distress bard’s tale in which there’s almost always a social solution. Whenever combat is apparently unavoidable even the nicest and most harmless character can prevail with the help of her friends! Still though, it is all based on the 3rd edition of DND, so don’t expect things to be easy!

If an old DND game doesn’t interest you, then perhaps consider The Sims 1. Its one of the best selling role-playing games of all time. The Sims is just so awesome it doesn’t even need combat to be creepy, scary, and hard! Right now that’s the game capturing all of my spare time.

There is also a really good visual-novel with enough different paths to cross over into similar territory: Cinders! Its a contemplative retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale which focuses on the player character’s own agency and freedom in an oppressive world. Perhaps its best described as being a game about the true meaning of freedom and independence.

Since you’ve already received many excellent suggestions in this thread by now you hopefully won’t mind these more unusual options. Have fun with which ever game you choose and good luck!

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There are a number of nice skeuomorphic tagged themes on pling and other icons and such also are available there. The best option might be to just abandon the trendy GTK scene and embrace good old TDE! TDE has KDE3’s Plastik theme which looks great to me! (And there is a new port available for current KDE if anyone is interested.) But the early pre-gummy version of ClearLooks would be my favorite if it existed. Raleigh is pretty nice with those classic zebra stripes! Please do let us all know what you find because there are many of us not so happy with the corporate minimalist aesthetic.