Had an idea for a new project a while ago: a magical girl card game!
It is literally just a concept I'm playing around with atm, no plans or anything but I'm wanting it to be centered around the characters (the magical girls!) and I want each of them to be completely unique. I'm planning to design A LOT of them, as I hope to make them into themed sets (e.g. element set, fruit set, star set, etc) so currently, I'm playing around with designs and personalities!
I love magical girl shows and grew up with stuff like Lolirock, Glitter Force, Tokyo Mew Mew, svtfoe, Winx, etc. I want it to be kid friendly, and incredibly girly while still having a diverse range of characters and I want it to be multi-media, as I hope to create comics about them too one day.
I'm very excited about this project and am definitely going to be talking about it a lot.
I'm getting kinda tired of having to put my autism struggles into words for others to understand.
I'm applying for uni and I recently had my occupational health check where I had to talk to a nurse about my needs and stuff. It meant discussing my verbal shutdowns, among other things.
Long vent below:
The guy was trying to get me to explain my verbal shutdowns like they're gonna make sense. He kept asking how frequent they are, so I answered "infrequent" but then he pushed for a specific time frame. Are they every month? Twice a month? Every week? And I was like ??? I guess once a month??? But that doesn't feel accurate because they don't work like that. Now I'm scared that that's not true, what if one month I don't have them at all and they question if I have them? Or I have 3 verbal shutdown episodes in 1 month and they think I find communication too difficult to get the career I'm training for?
He kept asking what triggers them as well. I told him usually overstimulation or anxiety but again, that doesn't feel quite accurate. It depends on a lot of factors, including what I did the day before, the general feeling I woke up with, how clumsy my morning went, who I've spoken to, how they spoke to me, etc. It's not a malfunction, there isn't one specific cause, it just happens sometimes.
I'm also someone who doesn't view my verbal shutdowns as an especially bad thing. They make things difficult, yes, because verbal communication is expected and others aren't always willing to accommodate it, but to me, sometimes I just need a talking break. It's hard thinking of words, making sure they come across correctly and then altering my tone to make sure everything is accurate to what I meant. I kinda like when I'm communicating with my phone or some cards and nobody expects me to correct my tone, make the right face or say the perfect thing. But try explaining that to a neurotypical or speaking person who thinks verbal communication is the only valid way to talk.
He then asked how I communicate otherwise. I told him written or digital communication. I have an app on my phone that allows me to communicate electronically, but I'm actually sort of embarrassed to use it. The electronic, monotone, AI sounding voice doesn't feel at all like me, it takes me too long to type on it, and I feel it draws a lot of attention to the fact I'm not speaking. People who can always speak perfectly fine don't always understand that, and think "it helps, just use it" but the amount of times I have been excluded from conversations with my friends because I couldn't communicate the same way they do has left me feeling quite anxious about it. I noticed a lot of people hold the idea that if I'm using a device to speak, I should only use it to communicate very important things, not for casual chat or jokes, which feels very excluding.
Anyway, the point of this was to vent and also say that disabilities and stuff don't always make perfect sense. The verbal shutdowns were an example, and also what has been frustrating me most recently but the same goes for stims, sensory issues, executive dysfunction, and I'm sure many other disabilities. It can be borderline impossible to explain exactly how everything in my brain and body works, and I'll keep doing my best to because it's how we get accommodations but it's never gonna be perfect.
The whole phonecall I had with that nurse, he kept sounding like he was laughing at me stumbling over my words and trying to find the most accurate way to describe things how he wanted, and it made me more uncomfortable than I already was.
When you're asking us to describe a very complicated condition we have, please be more patient and understand that it does not work in a way that will make sense to you, or even us.
The real world sucks, when am I gonna find out I'm secretly a magical princess destined to save a faraway fantasy world with the power of friendship and glitter?
Elsie is a passionate, sporty girl and is the Fire Magical Girl in my Elementals Set. She works as a camp counselor, and loves getting campers involved in nature activities, whether it be hiking, canoeing, climbing, etc. Climbing is one of her favorite hobbies.
For the aforementioned magical girl game, I decided the first set should be the Elemental Magical Girl set. It's a bit boring but lays down a good foundation for later on.
I designed my first Magical Girl: Jemimah Eyre, the Air Magical Girl! I'm not super happy with her design currently but I'll tweak it more later.
I want the gameplay system to be mainly themed around colour's, since that's what teams are usually made up of, with pinks often being main characters/team leaders, blues being the smart ones, greens being sporty, etc. It won't follow that trend completely, as that would be quite generic, but it's what I'm using as a base. The elements set will be more based off their elements than their colour.
Jemimah is a very free spirited character. She loves expressing herself through fashion, music, and her writing. She grew up going to the library because she loved that she could read anything and everything. She got to know it like the back of her hand, so when she was 16, she decided to work there as an assistant and still works there now. She loves her job, often volunteering extra time when she can to work with kids and elderly folk. She chooses to do this because she enjoys it and is very extroverted.
