Towed until it broke. Tried to go on a bike ride with Saini and her friends, but I had to take a nap to fix the radio and then I couldn't get fiveM to work. Eventually fixed it. Came back and had a bad RP day where I couldn't find anyone I knew who was available and the people I didn't know that I ran across didn't seem to be interested in making new friends or enemies. So I set up a little circuit scavenger hunt for Johanna. Though I suppose anyone might find the pages I left. 

I'm kind of okay with this. I'm exhausted. A little sick. I would not have lasted through a long talk today. Probably should have pulled out Johnson instead of Tad. Crazy how a goofy, cartoony, high energy, old man is less exhausting than a version of a farmer out of a suspenseful soap opera who spends most of his day being low energy. But Tad's constant need to THINK makes him tough. Johnson doesn't think. Doesn't matter. Now I don't have the energy for either. 

The way I see it, Tad will get better. But he might have to get worse first. Or not. And he's violent. Anything could set him off. But also, he wouldn't hurt a fly. He'd cry about it. He's probably going to die. Or kill someone. Or neither. And maybe, just maybe, it'll turn out he is telling the truth. Or made it all up. Or just imagined it. 

Uh. We'll see I guess. Or we won't. I'm going to bed.

It's the first time Tad has talked about Bertha's death.

Time line Tad has divulged since he first showed up:
1 year old: Father went back to Iowa to visit grandma. Got a letter from Tad's mother to not come back.
6 year old: Tad's first in-patient stint. I don't THINK I've said what caused this yet? Maybe. I do know what caused it.
13 year old: Tad met Doe.
14 year old: Tad came out as trans.
14.5 year old: Doe was killed. Three hunters killed.
15: Tad lost his best friend, Marcus. Second in-patient stint. Missed dissection unit in biology class.
16: Grandmother died. Tad's in charge. Tad starts dating Tommy.
17: Bertha is killed by Marcus, Terry, and Sean (Tommy's brother). All three die.
18: Tommy and Tad break up. 
24: David starts stalking Tad.
25: Tad sics his dad on David. David and his sister both die.
26: Tad's dad gets sick. Tommy dedicates the song to him on Tad's 27th birthday (though that's a detail I haven't said).
27: Tad kills his dad. Shows up in Los Santos. Has a mental breakdown.

The sleep disorders really muddy the waters on whether or not Tad is a reliable narrator of his own life (most people aren't). I know, of course. But nobody else should ever be sure. 

I had a lot of lore written before I got accepted to the server. But it's all sort of rough outlines. I tend to have to rewatch the talks when I tell a story to take notes so I'll remember the details. For the most part, the details are the same. But hopefully I've figured out how to tell the stories a little differently depending on which version of Tad is talking and who he's talking to. And why. Why is the big one. He's told the doe story 3 times now. To Saini it just came out. He didn't intend to tell her. With Jojo, he told her with the intention to give her the information she might need in order to help him. With Sneaky (who was paying close attention) and Twinkles (who may not have actually been paying attention), he would have preferred to give the bare bones version. Just enough to understand the situation. Tad's been a yapper for the past two months. But he's been mostly quiet for a decade before that. So he's sick of his own voice and wishes he had ever learned to be more concise.

The song Tommy dedicated to him:

Only way to fix it is to restart the whole computer. Can't do that. YouTube is processing. I'll be on later probably. Gonna watch a movie and chill. :)

No unknown number calls today. No Sneaky texts. No Saini talks. Bad voice box for Jojo. Tow scuffed on second job. Kept failing compulsion rolls, but they were all fairly tame. Work. Circuit. Look at how much motorbikes cost. No hostage situations.

Quiet night for Tad. How long was my mic messed up? We'll never know.

Tad had a rough night. Texted Tessa trying to warn her of danger. It came out like a threat. Because, presumably, the danger is him. But like, is it really? He doesn't know what he'll do. The conditions that he knows makes him violent haven't been met and are unlikely to be. At least not where Tessa and the clowns are concerned. But the conditions that have made him violent by proxy (getting someone else to do the dirty work) are quickly being approached. He knows he should have the control. He should be able to stop himself from doing anything he currently doesn't want to do. But he also should have the control not to text. So we'll see.

Another call from an unknown number today. But this time, they talked. May not have been the same person. No way of knowing. Tad asked several times. Dude knew Tad's legal name and phone number despite Tad not being in the Lemon List at the time of the call. Curious. He also didn't recognize the voice. (I sort of did, but I couldn't be sure. Definitely not someone speaking with their normal timbre.)

This is not successfully distracting Tad from his fascination with Tessa. However, it is a mystery for Tad to attempt to focus on while he's trying not to give into his compulsive thoughts. Unfortunately, at the moment he has very little to go on. A voice. Someone who had to have either had his number already or who had to have been given his number. Someone who claims not to know what he looks like. Tad gave information. Why not? He's been giving it to so many people. If this is someone calling on behalf of Tessa, he doesn't want to be cagey. He wants to lower some of those walls to show he's cooperating. If this is someone who is not calling on behalf of Tessa, he's curious if he can trick them into divulging something about themself.

We'll see.

Saini helped block the compulsion. But Tad killed an animal, which broke him a bit. Therapy talk with Sleep Tad? Sure. Not much different than therapy talk with Awake Tad. Weird.

Sleep Tad didn't notice Joshua lurking outside the apartments. Why would he? Fin definitely did though. He gonna skin Tad's armpits and give him another thing he thinks bonds him to Tessa?

Next video will maybe be on Friday? Unless my day job is really slow tomorrow.

Today's rolls for Tad (even though I can't log in for awhile):
Sleep: 18 Restful: Yes
Tessa obsession: Pass
Tessa compulsion: Fail (rolled a 1 on a d10).

What does that mean, exactly? Do I have a plan for when he passes the obsession check, but not the compulsion check? Yes. Yes, I do.

Videos will probably be more infrequent for awhile. I'm tired. I also need sleep! Unlike Tad, no mental breaks for me so far. I just yawn through work meetings. Things will still be posted. Just managing expectations here a bit. For y'all and for me. I'll still be RPing and recording. Just slower to posting the videos.

Sneaky really out here texting Tad stream synopses.

Tad's rolls today had him sleep horribly last night. Nightmares kept waking him up. Then, when he finally decided to wake up for the day, he kept hearing and seeing his cousin, Greg, at different stages in his life. He passed his Tessa obsession and Tessa compulsion checks, so he wasn't too worried about her today. He did fail a couple normal compulsion checks though.

Today, Tad focused on work to ground himself. Game crashed during the first tow job of the day, so I closed that. Then I started Mosley's, which I think scuffed at some point as well, but kept giving me jobs.

I'll have a video up tonight or tomorrow, depending on how fast it converts and renders and uploads. Edits shouldn't take too long. What'll be in the video?

Tad has another long chat with Saini. Concerned about his cousin, who starts flying a kite during their talk, he opens up more than he expected to. She gets two of his biggest secrets he hasn't outright said to anyone in Los Santos. I don't know how he'll feel about having told her tomorrow. Or if he wakes up without actually waking up again soon. But opening up about the big stuff that he's been hiding (rather than the big stuff he can't hide) seemed to make Greg go away. At least.

Oh yeah. During the chat, Sneaky texted. It was largely ineffectual. Tad found it interesting, questioned the motives, and is ready to see if it leads to more than sneaky giggling at him at Mosley's. He's going to give him as little as possible in response without outright ignoring him though. He's curious.  Sneaky's going to have to ramp up the crazy. Tad's former stalker used to walk into his house and watch him sleep. It's going to take a LOT a major escalation to get under Tad's skin.

One thing that Sneaky seemed to try to do was really poke at the friends thing. Sneaky has friends (one of which is Tessa). That just flew past Tad. Tad hasn't actually attempted to make a lot of friends and doesn't actually care all that much about Tessa's friends, despite having noticed who they are. He hopes that they're actually good friends and that's about all he bothers thinking about them. He's not jealous or envious.

To Tad, "friends" are often false. They usually just want something from you. They're rarely loyal. They'll toss away your 10 year friendship after one small and embarrassing mistake. Tad is taking his time to find the right friends. He may seem lonely sometimes, but he's fine with being alone. His impatience with the unreciprocated bond he felt with Tessa? That was special. It was uncharacteristic of him. And he still wonders if it was as unreciprocated as she claims. He'll test his own patience and attempt to respect her boundaries. And by "her boundaries" I mean the boundaries he came up with that are much less vague.

A makeup post for yesterday's short one.

Tad woke up briefly earlier to start some work setting boundaries. I'm not sure why I logged in for it, it was just him sitting on his apartment floor whispering to himself about his plans for that. I could have just stayed on the couch and talked to myself.

He's setting boundaries for himself to follow, as well as the conditions for lifting them. He has started worrying about whether or not he's crossing the boundaries that Tessa set because they were pretty vague and he thinks he's stupid. She said "space" and she ghosted. That's it. She never defined anything. So now he's defining things for himself. Really thinking hard about it. He has to. He can't ask her for clarification. That's obviously a boundary he's crossed once and he's still desperately trying to be good so maybe she will notice and give him a second chance. In the meantime, though, he knows he needs to notice her less. Hence sitting down and talking himself through a plan of action instead of just living in some abstract fuzzy bubble of panic.

Don't worry. Tad has calmed down at the moment, but his fixation on Tessa (specifically) will never go away. The dice made sure of that when he first saw her running. Will he be relegated to her shelf of "former" stalkers to be taken down when she feels he might be useful? Will he go down a darker road and end up dead? Or will he figure out how to replace his unhealthy behaviors around the fixation with a healthier (though still probably not healthy) reciprocated connection to her? Only time will tell.

The only boundary Y'ALL get to know about right now is that, despite liking Twinkles and Sneaky and wanting to get to know them better (which he mentioned in his conversation with Saini today), he has determined that the Funhouse Clowns and CLEAR daily associates are off limits unless they approach. Just like Tessa. He knows that means Buttons and Reina. He will be lenient with himself if he doesn't know they're FHC, but once he knows, off limits. He texted Sneaky back tonight because Sneaky had texted (seemed like a keep your enemies closer sort of text, but Tad ignored that). I worded it so it seemed like maybe he was giving Sneaky a boundary, but it wasn't actually a boundary FOR Sneaky. I want to give Sneaky the chance to violate a boundary he thinks that Tad is setting up for him. Mostly that's for me though. I want to keep roleplaying with the clowns. Tad refusing to cross these new boundaries will make that hard unless the clowns continue to try to read into everything he does and intentionally cross his "boundaries" to try to make him feel unsafe (or give him a false sense of safety) in retaliation.

Tad has never felt safe in his life. No memory of that feeling. So this is really nothing different for him. Though certain actions taken by the clowns could make it harder for him to pass the rolls listed below. If he starts taking major head injuries, for instance.

Tad thinks he's going to get stalked if he isn't being stalked already. Because if he thought someone was stalking someone he considered family, he would stalk them to make sure they were being good. And if he were Sneaky, that'd, like, probably be his thing, right? Sneaky told him as much yesterday. Hell, Tad made sure Twinkles and Sneaky knew his name and phone number, knew what jobs he was most likely to do, knew who is best friend in the city is, knew what car he drives and that he's saving up for a motorbike, and (if they paid attention) had access to his state ID (which he knows they can't get from the courthouse because he doesn't have a profile yet). He even outright said that knife has his state ID on it. He provided them everything they would need to stalk him, barring his compulsion circuits. They even know when he wakes up most weekdays. He has given them the control they were very obviously looking for without giving them too much of what they don't know to look for.

There is always the chance Tad will break his own boundaries. He did it via text ("last text" followed by "no this is the last text" and "I meant this is the last text"). He did it with the tree house (before he had even guessed it was Tessa's, he wrote to her that you don't go into someone's tree uninvited). He did it with the vehicle repairs (he told Saini he had thought of that but didn't want to touch someone else's things). Anxiety spiral. Dissociative break. Compulsion (felt like something bad was going to happen if he didn't do something for her). None of which are good excuses for bad behavior. Tad gets it. That's why he's working on it. A good day of working on "it" can give him advantage on his sleep roll I mention below.

The rolls I make every day for Tad at the moment:

Sleep roll: d20. 1 is critical failure and he roles for a parasomnia. 2-5 is a failure and he rolls for hallucination. 6-10 he takes a pill and rolls for a side effect. 11-15 he takes a pill no side effect. 16-19 he sleeps without a pill, but rolls to see if it's restful or not. 20 is critical success. That's what we had earlier today.

Obsession roll: It's a 2 sider (though I use odds and evens on a d4). He either struggles with his fixation with Tessa or he doesn't. This doesn't mean that he's going to bother her. Just that he's thinking about her when he shouldn't be.

Compulsion roll: 2 dice.

One for Tessa that increases sides every day (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 100, 100, 100, etc). He was on 4 today (rolled a 2). If he fails on any given day, it resets. He has to land on a 1 (or odds for the 2) in order to fail that roll. So every day gets easier until we hit 100. But there's always a chance we reset. And depending on how the sleep and obsession rolls go, that could be bad or not-so-bad.

One for other compulsions (like circuits). I just roll whenever I, the roleplayer, am trying to kill a little time. I determine the compulsion based on what's been happening that day.

So things could still go catastrophically. Say he rolls a 1 on sleep, then rolls dissociate, then hits a 1 on obsession, then fails a Tessa compulsion upon waking up? All it takes is a 1 on a d20, a 9 or 10 (10 is worse) on a d10, and then a d-4 to land on odds twice and suddenly Tad is abducting Tessa somewhere as easy as the apartments, food court, or hospital: three places she's likely to show up any given day. Possibly even the funhouse if I feel spicy that day. Boundaries be damned!

Tad and Saini met up today to debrief on their weeks a bit.

I think it's quite possible Tad will eventually open up to Saini about everything. So far, she's not taken anything he's said as a reason to avoid him. She is also trusting him with more and more information that, in a city like Los Santos, she probably shouldn't.

They talk about EJ and her upcoming nuptials to Edgar and how Saini feels about all of that. They talk about Saini's relationship troubles. And yes, they talk about the danger Tad appears to be in and how he tried to navigate yesterday's conversation with Sneaky and Twinkles. They get a bit touching at the end. Talking about vulnerability, sentimentality, real connections vs. surface connections.  The video will be up later today.

I've gone back to listen to a youtube mix I made when I was waiting for my application to be approved for NoPixel. Tad's lore and character was many months in the making, but most of it came between submitting that final application and getting the approval for WL.  I've been listening to the mix again for the past week. He is definitely a character who is heavily influenced by the songs I was listening to that month. It's a little trippy now that I've been playing him for nearly two months.

I made it public if anyone wants to listen. I don't believe you'll just guess anything about his character from the songs, but you should be able to recognize some traits and lore that have already shown up.