So, about my contract ending? Work just called and they want me back permanently starting from Tuesday, same hours but less days (just 4 days a week) to cover evenings which works out pretty good for me, leaving me free during the day!

TLG Outlanders Jumanji AU that i have suddenly become obsessed with :) buckle up

i'm mainly basing this off of the 2017 movie, with elements of the 2019 one too

wema, tunu, dogo and kijana are playing when they find a hidden cave, they go in and they find lots of weird paintings on the wall and the floor. ever the inquisitive one, dogo steps into a circle in the middle and they all get sucked into... Jumanji?? or maybe in the TLG universe it's called Mchezo

the adults look for them. the leaders (plus kenge and sumu) and the idiots (plus mwoga, nne, tano and neema) go in two groups to search since the kids were missing for a while. the leaders find the hidden cave first as sumu noticed it in his small size. they get sucked in, and eventually the idiots find it after them

they turn into human versions upon entering the world. yeah they're pretty freaked out lmao

the premise is that they go through trials to "prove" themselves, at the risk of their 3 lives, to get to the final task of saving the kiddos. i'm thinking each of them get a task focused on their skills but all of them are at the will of it, aka any of them could lose a life in any trial

i think the Strengths & Weaknesses bit would be funny. kiburi has no weaknesses, he says smth like "I'm too good to be weak 😏" and then 'Pride' pops up hfgdhdh. tamka's weakness would be cake because i think it'd be funny. nduli's is picking up cool rocks. i would say goigoi's would be sleeping but he'd lose all 3 in an instant. the list goes on

reirei is mad because she gets the boring map-reader job lol, despite that she saves everyone's asses so

i imagine sumu is like Milo, he gives them the information in a really deadpan tone lmao. it's like "... Oh no..." "Spit it out, will you?!" "... Mandrills. We should go" and he just continues spilling knowledge while they're running for their lives lmao

you know how in the second movie Bethany/Milo is a horse? yeah nne and tano are straight up just themselves- they're hyenas but realistic, like they didn't change 💀 they're just there doing hyena laughs and absolutely savaging people in the fights

the ostrich scene from the second movie would be funny. maybe the hyenas are the drivers 👀 NONE of them trust their lives with janja, chungu or cheezi but somefuckinghow.. they don't die

in a trial where the leaders are really trapped, guess who sneaks in and saves them? Ushari!!! that was actually all of their reactions as soon as he spoke and they knew it was him. shupavu hugs him on impulse and then gets awkward about it lol, they're happy to see him

ushari explains how he didn't actually die when scar was destroyed but he escaped the volcano and happened across the hidden cave. he's been trapped ever since and obviously presumed dead. he's been stuck with 1 life because he needed the others to complete the rest of the trials :(

there's a dance fight where kiburi has to defeat the guards without being all guns blazing about it. literally the same as the scene with Martha. it's so funny at first bc he doesn't know what the fuck to do - i hc him as demi, he can't flirt with someone he doesn't know😭 - but when a song (prolly rap?) starts playing he beats their asses easy

little did they know the exact same thing was happening on the opposite side of the building, just with the idiots. tamka, nduli and neema also get their cool moment of beating people up, dance fight style! it's mainly tamka because he actually DOES have a strength in acting :)

the leaders and the idiots enter the building at the same time and it's an "Oh Shit!" spiderman pointing meme moment lmao. from this point on they do the trials together

the vultures fly the helicopters. you can imagine how well that goes. it's just like in the movie where something immediately breaks 😭 i think it'd be cool if kenge was the one to fix the helicopter, giving him a hero moment! imagine it

"Kenge, you did it! :D"

"Guess I did"

"Um... Oops"

"What Janja?"

"I dropped the jewel 😶"

"YOU WHAT?!?!"

janja loses a life in that scene from the rhinos 😭 do i wanna traumatise mzingo that much? idk. i just feel like that is such a janja thing to happen. fridge's character is janja-coded lmfao

"YOU PUSHED ME OUT THE HELICOPTER! >:("

that scene where fridge pushes spencer off a cliff? yeah that obviously happens. i'm thinking reirei and janja squabbling. would be funny if janja pushes reirei off impulsively and he just stands there, in shock, waiting to get yelled at when she respawns 😭

there's one of those Step On The Right Pieces trials. kiburi is being all cocky, steps on the wrong one and loses a life- bro gets absolutely humbled lmao. i think the skinks would be good at that trial for some reason

some random trial ideas: a "sleeping lions" type trial for goigoi. a "follow (copy) the leader" trial for mzingo. a food temptation one for the idiots??

jasiri definitely has a trial where she helps someone or shows that the "bad guy" NPCs can be good or somethin. that's probably the last trial before the finale

at the last trial they all work together to save the kiddos! it's really wholesome at the end because they saved the kids, they actually achieved something, they worked together, AND they got ushari back! :)

bonus:

based on the second movie, i was considering a different version of this au where janja purposefully enters the game to prove himself and it's more of a lesson of how it's not just about his strength, but the strength of all of them

janja just thinks he ain't good enough, especially not being leader of his clan anymore, but it's through working together when the others come after him that he realises that ain't true. just an extra thought i had :)

might make a follow up post because i came up with this in an afternoon just for fun 😭

Am I the AH for refusing to be friends with someone who flat out hated me?

From ages 22-26 I was friends with R 29-33. R had only worked once in her life which was mcdonalds for 3 months to buy anime merchandise her grandma didn't want to buy her. R's grandma is in her late 80's now just for reference. R's granny had married a rich military dude who was on his 3rd marriage or so then died, so she got all his assets which included like 5 houses, 3 were being rented out which is how she'd get her income. So R never worked and just sat at home getting into internet fights. My friend had invited her into our discord and I'd be civil with her despite knowing how shes been with others. I was working full time for shit pay and going to school full time too. R was very, idk how else to say it, but she always demanded our attention. The other people in the server were 5 from ages from 16-22, we never used how much older she was against her, but she really didn't acknowledge or respect alot of us were in school. Many times we'd had to tell her to step back and set boundaries with us. It did result in people leaving the server. So, in summer of 2019 R decided to go to college. She got alot of financial aid and said her goal was to become a therapist cause she was everyone's "mom". That stuff wasn't even remotely true, she was always a total bitch to everyone. R unfortunately didn't understand that going to school means having to put the work in. She was more interested in spending the financial aid on gacha, anime merch, and other stuff. She lost her financial aid after the spring semester of 2020, and refused to talk to her school about the pandemic stress and other shit. During this time, she tried making me do her assignments and I kept saying no or only helped a little. I had my own assignments, school, and I was stressed. Well, when she lost her financial aid due to academic probation, she blamed me. When the pandemic hit my school did this thing where you'd get partially refunded your semester depending on how you did. I was so thankful for that since I barely scraped by to pay for school. R was so fucking nasty about it. I didn't tell my friends that to gloat, I actually said that before she lost her financial aid. She said I didn't deserve it, cause people like her struggled more. Which is fucking weird since I'm a first gen POC and made a few bucks above minimum wage where I live. I didn't even enjoy my time at school cause of the stress and never having money. So she kept harassing me for getting government aid. I wasn't eligible for financial aid! My parents weren't even eligible for food stamps and we always fucking struggled. But I didn't deserve help, who cares if R is a cis white woman in her 30's that only worked once for a few months, she has it harder. Then R left our server when the pandemic started getting nastier, alot of us struggled but we stayed close in the discord. Then one day I reached out to R in late 2021 to say happy birthday and she said "whose this? New phone." I was hurt she didn't keep my number, but whatever. In 2022 she reached out to me for gossip cause I broke up with someone. Then now in 2023 she reached out cause she wants resources to be a vtuber. I'm sorry, she was shitty to me, I've been struggling, and she reaches out for that? Idk even know how I'd be able to help her with that. I told a friend from our old server and she told me how she had been doing R's assignments for school, but stopped cause she was getting stressed cause she had her capstone class that semester. So wow. R basically didn't do shit for school and gets pissy i get some financial relief. I then had another mutual friend tell me how R had told them she sent me a gift and I didn't send her one, one year. Uh? I tried. I ordered something online for her, and the company sold out, but kept my shit on back order. So R got it like a month late, it was a Christmas gift and I explained it to her, sent her screenshot of when i placed the order and sent her an Amazon gift card as an apology. So she bad mouths me for something out of my control?

I've been getting "hey" messages from R lately, and idk. I'm so done with her.

What are these acronyms?

I need to vent; another tangent

I'm watching a video that is making me cry.

So there's a video I just found that was made after Dan Howell came out - back in 2019 or whenever it was - and there's a lot of videos online of Dan answering fan questions on live videos between 2013 and 2017 or whatever where people were constantly like "are you gay?". He used to get those a lot. There's also one video from a live where he is talking about how much he didn't like himself - if you know you know. His story when he came out really hit home for me - still does - but my mind completely forgot about the "I hate everything about myself, ask anyone who knows me" thing until I watched this video. Just, thinking back on a lot of that stuff, a lot of shit Dan has said has really hit home for me.

And I would like to say that Dan is a very aesthetically pleasing person to look at. Like he is a very gorgeous human being. And I'm not sure why but it's just really hitting home and just full on punching me in the face that Dan hated himself so much for so long and a lot of it was because of this thing that he had no control over. And through his childhood, he was told that this thing is a bad thing. As a person who has gone through the fear of questioning one's self, I'm thankful that I never dealt with that. I had people who supported me for who I was and never told me that I couldn't be this thing because it was bad. And to see this guy come out of nowhere - just sort of rise out of the ashes - and be like, "I'm here." But still hate himself so much and try to supress a part of himself and yet have all these people just hounding him and pointing out this thing he hates about himself.

As a part of the phandom, I was never one of those people. I will say that with confidence. I just kind of kept to the shadows, as I do today. I didn't care if he was gay, straight, an alien, a worm - my point is it never mattered to me. And it still doesn't matter to me someone's sexuality. But it just hit me tonight, hard, that the incredible Daniel Howell hated himself for so long over something he couldn't control. And people were constantly hounding him about this thing he was trying to hide about himself... and now he's happy. I mean, happy enough to be who he really is. He's been dealing with depression for a long time, I know, but he's able to be here and be queer.

The recent gaming channel videos have been getting me. Dan has been laughing - genuinely laughing. And just being himself. And it brings me a lot of joy. I just really fucking love Dan.

If I ever get a chance to meet @danielhowell I just wanna tell him how proud of him I am. I've been watching Dan and Phil for, god, 10 years now and I remember a lot of these moments that Dan has had on his livestreams. I was there. And it's only now just hitting me. It's been 4, almost 5, years since Dan came out. And as a fan of his: I'm proud.

I'm so very proud of him and his journey to self acceptance. I love Dan so much, and maybe it's because I've related to him a lot in my life, but I absolutely love Dan - and I will say this as many times as I need to. He's an inspiration. And I wish I could tell him.

Yey! Silly vent because I feel like shit!

Read under the cut if you want the juicy ass details

So basically, I gotta let this shit out.. its fucking me up a bit rn.

I met this dude around the start of 2021 on tiktok AND HE WAS SO TALENTED AND FUNNY but he always said he wasn't. Anyway time skip a lil..

We started getting into a few arguments near the middle of 2022. And they where just small disagreements then they gradually got worse and worse every time it happend. And it especially got bad when I made another friend on tiktok who loved doing art related things and drew my old persona back then.

And HE WAS NOT HAVING IT and he said quite alot of bad things to me. Did I stay friends with him? Yes I did. Did I also block the nice guy just trying to be my friend? Yes. I blocked them out of fear of loosing my best friend.

And near the end of 2022 we started dating because things had gotten a better.

Oh how I was so wrong. Everything just went downhill when he left high-school. He always needed attention. He got mad at me because I couldn't set an alarm BECAUSE he was up at 10am and I was up near 1pm. So I forced myself to do so mutch bullshit for him. Like draw him art as an apology and it drained me do badly I could hardly do my own personal art.

I didn't even have personal art at this point. Every time I fixated on something it was what he was fixating on because he'd get mad at me and argue with me if I wasn't.

But everything was calm when it was around April in 2023 and we where finally getting along like an actul couple because of a game called final fantasy. We where obsessed with it for months! And then around June or July I re discovered transformers.

I have never felt as happy in a fandom since 2019! Like holy shit the fandom is so sweet.

But I kept it a secret from him he still doesn't know. Then at some point I made this tumblr to get my stupid little urges out and now look at where I'm at. I haven't been this happy in a LONG while.

And just st the start of 2024 my ex got into an argument with one of his friends and I offered to talk to them. so he agreed and I spoke to them.

Im so fucking glad I did.

Because without their help I'd still be fucking miserable. They gave me the confidence to dump that bitches ass and I honestly feel like a weight has been taken off. Because it honestly felt like a chore every day of my life just talking to him.

And my other friend on discord had helped me out to. Including you silly fuckers on discord/tumblr. If your even reading this... if you are why are you still reading this?

But anyway. I just needed this off my chest. Because it does hurt a little spite how good i feel but I just have an off feeling. I haven't put down everything that happend while I was with my ex and some things might be in the wrong order or time but at least I'm forgetting it?

Just. I love the transformers fandom so mutch mutch really helped me pull through...

Fuck I'm ranting. Uh. Bye!

Also a big thank you to Avery and rex for helping me feel better (rex I've only known you for a little bit but jesus christ I fucking laugh my ass off because of you) jesus I'm sappy as fuck. (and avery your so fucking cool. You helped me alot.) And belyyvolks (I've had alot of fun messing around about ironhide XD) I'm not tagging because I don't want alot of attention on this post.

Hope you don’t mind any ‘On The Bound’ lore questions but how do you think Mark would react to all the excessive bodyshaming Seb went through in the Ferrari era?

don't mind at all! i don't know how much more of it will get posted, if ever, so i'm happy to wordvomit on them anyday :)

rough timeline is that seb gets knocked up towards the end of the 2013 season and has the 2014 shitshow delivered in a completely different way due to an awful pregnancy. it's vague, i haven't rlly workshopped it or anything, so let's say that somehow, magically, ferrari find it in themselves to knock on her door and ask her to drive for 2015. and somehow, magically, seb says yes.

the thing is like. by the time the bodyshaming comes around, seb's already been crucified a million times over for how she looks, especially when she was carrying and gained weight. so it's not necessarily new comments that have her feeling like shit; it's the fact that they're coming out of the mouths of people she's trusted for years.

in 2019, she walks out of maranello feeling--confused, more than anything. because the conversation she overheard didn't sound mean-spirited. it was just a voice floating over from down the hallway, lighthearted as it remarked how she was a little fat before sweeping onto something else. like her body shape was the weather, sunny one day and cloudy the next.

she doesn't tell mark, not at first, even when the comments get nastier about her hair, and how it's not as voluminous or thick as it was when she was in her twenties. they're all arguably objectively correct observations, anyway. her body hasn't been the same since she gave birth, even if she's still fit--her lower stomach is a little flabbier, and her tits are a little droopier, and her ass makes finding a good pair of jeans just that much harder.

mark adores her still, though. he worships her and fucks her just as hard as he did when she was a lanky thing, and his opinion is the only other one she really puts stock in when it comes to how she looks. (the first, of course, being her own opinion.) it's easy to forget what anybody else is saying when he can't keep his hands off her, when he treats her like the sexiest woman in the world.

but then the nicknames start, and it's worse than the passing comments that are largely hidden from her. again, they're not necessarily mean. they might be read as affectionate, from a certain point of view. even so, seb can't help looking at her body in her white fireproofs and thinking that white doesn't do her curves any favours.

she doesn't even notice how bad things have gotten until it's 2020, desperately trying to find another team to take her on, and she's acutely aware of the way her thighs chafe under her ferrari-branded skirt. she doesn't think they chafed so much before, or at least she didn't notice it, but they feel rubbed raw now and distinctly, unattractively bulky in the short skirt. britta never seems to suffer from the problem--then again, britta's thighs never seem to touch, an idea that glides through seb's mind calmly before landing in some dark abyss at the edge of her consciousness.

it's mark who's the most concerned and can see everything for what it truly is. mark, who's been running dogged behind the scenes trying to keep the kids occupied while they struggle against the tide of the pandemic, just so seb doesn't need to worry about them in addition to everything else. mark, who's noticed the way seb doesn't linger on her appearance in the mirror for longer than a brief glance when she used to be so vain. mark, who's done all he can in his limited spare time to tell seb in his words and actions that she's the love of his life. she always laughs him off, but lately, she hasn't even been laughing--and she's so tired, like the entire world has fallen onto her shoulders. only the kids seem to ever coax a smile out of her.

when she finally admits that she might have overheard some people saying things, mark looks just about ready to set the entire country of italy on fire. he asks for specifics, but she can't give any. he asks for names, times, places, and she can only give a rough idea, because she's not--counting every instance she's felt a little bad about how she looks. she has thicker skin than that.

mark's rage almost makes things worse. while it's nice that he feels defensive on her behalf, she just wishes he'd stop pressuring her. she's facing enough stress from every other aspect of her life, and she doesn't need him chasing after ghosts that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. he gives up, because he can't stand to hurt her, but it doesn't stop the dark shame that seems to emanate from his wife like milk gone sour, and it doesn't solve anything except the immediate issue of seb wiping tears and snot furiously from her face.

aston martin is supposed to be a fresh start. it is, for the most part: new team, new factory, new friendships to forge, and new goals to chase after. they fumble almost immediately in their eagerness to show her off when she goes for her first seat fitting, however, and mark's dread only grows. she'd gone in trusting that they wouldn't take or release photos. they release the most unflattering photo a camera could possibly capture instead, and britta messages them almost immediately to turn their devices off.

seb doesn't falter until bahrain 2021. while the world erupts into a frenzy about track limits, she sits quietly in her new driver's room with the heels of her palms pressed against her eyelids, tucked securely against mark's side and feeling old. she doesn't know when she lost her ability to drive. she doesn't think she did--the machinery still feels like home to her, but she doesn't think she can keep blaming the car. it can't possibly always be the car.

it's like mark's deepest fears about the bodyshaming become true, because it's spread like a fungus and sown doubt into seb's mind about her capability and worth. that's the pitfall of shame, isn't it? that it goes from being a spot of embarrassment to everything you are and have ever been.

he doesn't save her--only she can do that, given time--but he holds her tighter, and whispers every sweet encouragement he can think of until she stops hiding behind her palms, at least. if he can't be her lifeline, then he'll be her anchor, and he'll hold on until there's nothing more of them but dust floating in the wind.

Personal Vent: The Internet Has Just Been Sadder Lately

A lot has been on my mind lately about the landscape of the internet in my view. A lot of it stems from me looking back at the past and how it contrasts with how I experience the internet today and if you know me for anything, it's that I fucking hate looking back at the past. My actions & inactions? Shit. Terrible. Fuck me as a young, stupid, naive human being. How other people have treated me? Varies completely across the range from some of the most kind-hearted & generous people I've ever met to people who know nothing more than complete spite, hatred & villainy. The overall landscape itself? I couldn't tell you the difference between wholeheartedly welcoming communities and people who are more than ready to shoot you down, dismiss you or think of you as lesser than them, outside of their superiority & elitist cliques.

I guess the reason why I title this post after the whole internet being sadder lately is sheerly & solely due to the fact that I am seeing it all now more than ever. I am looking back at over a decade of me exploring & investing myself in this overall online space and I am using the detriment of hindsight to realise just how toxic it all can be.

Some of y'all are too fucking good for the internet in its current state. Twitter is now a radioactive wasteland that everybody dreads being stuck in and finding no way out. Me and some of the people I know close to me are lucky enough as we are, but if you're looking for clean, spotless, perfect alternatives, then just give up now & settle for the fourth best thing. Not that one. No, not that one either, that's got cryptobros involved. No, that one's not secure either.

Oh my god, Twitter used to be such an okay place. There used to be these memes like "mutuals, like this post and I'll send an anonymous compliment" or "hey, look at this fun chart or joke I just made" or some bullshit like that; It was bullshit but it was fun! I used to have so many fun & insightful conversations in replies & direct messages that in hindsight were not all that fun or insightful at all and we were all just dumb & stupid. Now a third of those people are inactive or just gone from the face of the earth, another quarter are moving on to other platforms I don't even wanna be on, another third of them are still with me on the platforms I've moved on to and yet they are equally as drained of their enthusiasm & happiness as I am and the remaining twelfth, bless them all, they are still young, vibrant, happy & full of energy and I'm so happy to see them in my life, but they feel so much smaller altogether than they used to feel in the grand scheme of this fucking world wide web.

Then there's just the fact that the world itself is in a far worse state than it was exactly five years ago! In 2019, we did not have the coronavirus pandemic, we did not have wars mercilessly killing several thousand Ukranian or Palestinian civillians for no real fucking reason, we did not have billionaires being as loudly shitty as they have been lately, we sure had abhorrant & hateful right-wing influencers & political figures, but they're not swarming in droves like they have been lately and we're seeing more hatred, abuse, violence, negligence & dismissal worldwide in the public than ever before.

And now there's an extra layer to all of this that I really don't want to blame on fellow zoomers and the coming gen alpha, but I'm seeing a lot of people take in the communities they're joining at face value, seeing the toxic, negative energies & events they were known for in the past that were really powerful five years ago and that we're really trying to move past from today, and they're just getting ready to absorb that energy and unleash it onto others when even the slightest wrongdoing is noticeably committed. I have never felt this unsafe joining & frequenting other communities since either 2018 or 2020 and I've had to resort to making my own community / friend server multiple times even though it still makes me feel like I'm trapped in my own bubble these days. (Join LikesMusic, link in pinned post.)

After writing all of that, I just don't have a hopeful conclusion here. I am very well aware that it always gets worse before it gets better, but everything has just been much worse & worse & worse the more time passes on and the littlest betterments are thankfully present, but I'm still waiting for a point where we all just begin to soar and learn from how bad all of this has gotten and how we can just be fucking good again. I hope that one day, I can just walk into a community, immediately feel welcome & unintimidated and just grow into it organically like I used to almost a decade ago. I am hopeful for all of that, but I don't have that much hope at this current point in time. (Not to mention my body has been feeling like shit the past several weeks.)

so my self-image is weird bc like. there's the way I see myself and the way (I think) others perceive me

and the last bit makes things especially confusing bc being audhd makes reading other people really fucking difficult and some of it just doesn't make sense to me

like as an example I try my fucking hardest to like... track how well I've passed depending on how I look and sometimes that shit just doesn't make sense to me??

rambling and photos under the cut

like, okay, 2013, the year after I came out when I finally had my first Boy Haircut and got a bunch of Boy Clothes bc I was obsessed with passing

and as far as I can tell, I did pass reasonably well

then skip ahead to 2016 when I finally got a hairstyle I liked FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE and had started experimenting w dressing more fem again and started T aaaaaaand I stopped passing

and even w my voice changing I still got "she" A LOT, consistently, no matter how I had my hair or how I dressed, masc or fem and even after top surgery in 2018 right thru to 2019 where in the first part of the year my hair grew out bc I couldn't afford to get it cut AND bleached (and was too afraid to bleach it at home) until I just got tired of being misgendered at work and got it cut w my natural hair colour and then SUDDENLY I PASSED PERFECTLY. NOBODY HAD A FUCKING CLUE WHEN I WENT TO UNI - this was also the skinniest I've been in my adult life, I still wore a mostly dark colour palette and didn't really have any facial hair yet

.....and then I went back to blond (and also started parting my hair rather than brushing it over) in 2020 and started getting misgendered again?? that was when i started really moving towards more pastel in my everyday wardrobe but a lot of the time I was def still more on the masc end of the spectrum, and also finally started showing a bit of facial hair (or, at least, a neckbeard) and also putting weight back on

and that just continued p much consistently since, no matter how I dressed or had my hair and at this point I genuinely have no idea how I'm perceived in the everyday - I've gone through several hair changes, my everyday wear is p much entirely pastel these days, I have fairly visible facial hair which I often emphasize w eyebrow powder/pens and I'm p chubby again and I can never really tell what I'm gonna get?? I've had days w shorter hair, no makeup and a darker, more masc outfit and gotten "she", but then I went out the other week in a full pastel outfit w a skirt and makeup and my pink/blue hair that's gonna hit my shoulders any day now and got an affirmation from somebody who thought I was a girl just for a second and then realised I'm not which. BLEW MY FUCKING MIND, THAT NEVER HAPPENS

and obv I try not to let how others, particularly strangers, perceive me dictate... well, anything, but at the same time it's disheartening to have spent a decade figuring out who the fuck I am, doing affirming things like hormones and surgery and dressing in ways that make me happy and then repeatedly get feedback from most of the world that it doesn't matter who I am, I look some kind of way so I must be something else

and especially when I don't actually know what the thing I'm doing "wrong" is!!! is it my hair?? my clothes?? my weight??? height?? the way i talk?? the way i stand???? I HAVE NO IDEA

i don't really have a point w this, it's just something i think about a lot and it puzzles me

I posted 1,075 times in 2022

That's 380 more posts than 2021!

589 posts created (55%)

486 posts reblogged (45%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lostinmcyt

@masterbaited

@jestbee

@alittledizzy

@scoops404

I tagged 938 of my posts in 2022

Only 13% of my posts had no tags

#mc - 598 posts

#jane answers - 231 posts

#dnf - 170 posts

#dream - 96 posts

#dnp - 81 posts

#gnf - 56 posts

#atsoop - 42 posts

#dnf fic - 41 posts

#dreamnotfound - 38 posts

#dteam - 28 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#dream was like here is where u dud an awesome play and fished some pearls and george was like yeah well here is where i died multiple times

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I choose to believe they're getting the entire howell-lester clan together for Xmas, somehow I think Adrian and Cornelia might get along?

80 notes - Posted November 28, 2022

#4

Oh noo hope you feel better soon and it heals fast!!

I'm thinking about sapnap. How devoted he is to them, how much he loves them. He moved to dream and drove from Texas to Florida with one day notice and when George said he was lonely in London, the next day he renewed his visa :(( they all have such a strong bond, they choose eachother over anything else..

Sapnap is ride or die. Dream once said the thing he loves most about Sapnap is that he "has never once doubted that Sapnap is [his] boy and will have his back through anything". And you can see it.

Like, however much Sapnap and George have a sibling-like rivalry, Sapnap would go to war for George if he asked. (And he might, knowing George).

He was "just the cameraman for now" and made sure George and Dream were both okay during their meeting and was happy to take a back seat and that in itself is fucking amazing.

And it's not just dteam. He and Karl have a tax that if you cross one you pay the price of having crossed the other by default. He defends his fans in valo lobbies when people try to talk shit. Hes allowed to rio the shit out of his friends but if anyone else tries it he'll kill them with a glance. Heck, even for all the ways he has a tendency to get caught up in trying to seem cool, he's never once rolled over on his friends or what they do and the game they play even when it would have been easier to do so.

Sapnap is ride or fucking die.

83 notes - Posted November 22, 2022

#3

i like how phil sits next to dan when they eat rather than across from him

If I had Phil Lester in the house I'd sit next to him too

104 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

#2

I cannot shut up about how Dan was in that video. Like, it had such good vibes. Relaxed, mature, comfortable?

The persona as we know it was gone, remember when he seemed so angry all the time? It's just so so sooooo nice to see him happy and proud of a thing.

After everything he's been through to come out the other side like that. You love to see it

189 notes - Posted May 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

All the sunlight of our past (COMPLETE)

Phan, E

Tags: Exes to lovers, canon divergence, secret identity

Summary:

YouTube is a mess.

Phil's been struggling with it for a while and has just taken a job as a video editor to make ends meet while he figures out whether he still loves it anymore.

Dan's channel has been dead ever since he started working at BBC Radio One and the two haven't seen each other in years.

During a chance meeting in 2019, Dan gets papped coming out of a gay club and his life is sent in to turmoil. He blames Phil, because it had been his idea to go there in the first place, so they're straight back to not talking.

The only recourse Dan has to salvage his career is to return to his YouTube channel after all these years and make a coming out video on his own terms. What he doesn't know is that Phil is the editor he just hired to help him with it.

Notes:

Written for @oldschoolpbb with accompanying art by @snekydingdong

[Read on ao3]

195 notes - Posted May 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

pride.

i love pride. i love queer history and making sure we remember the trailblazers who came before us, the lives we lost, the lucky ones who made it against all odds, the protests and riots and fights. i love the celebration of queer lives and queer happiness and queer art like drag.

but there are things i struggle with too. i started to think that maybe i wasn't straight when i was 13, in 2016. at the time i sort of thought to myself that i was just saying that bc it was cool at the time, everyone was gay or bi, it was trendy. i didn't think much more on it, especially since i had never had a crush on anyone and thus had no evidence for being gay or straight either way. i remembering being heartbroken and horrified after the pulse shooting but i didn't think much of it, or felt like i was forcing it. i didn't feel any connection or community with the lives we lost, i wondered if i was just pretending to.

i stopped thinking about sexuality completely and didn't address it at all, even in my own mind, for years. i think i was maybe 16 or 17, so 2019-20, when i realised. i was in this weird sort of relationship w another queer person that was never defined, so we were never dating, strictly just friends but flirty and romantic and basically all of it without a name (this is no longer happening - for the best jfc). i realised i would never be straight, and despite being involved in queer culture, community and art for years by this point, i had a complete emotional breakdown like i had never experienced before.

i never labelled myself. i still haven't. i probably could, but i hate the idea of it. i hate all of it - the concept of coming out, having to tell people, people needing to know something that has nothing to do with them. i understand how it forms people's identities and experiences and i celebrate that completely and wholeheartedly, but it never has been and probably never will be my way. i won't come out. i can't come out. and i don't fucking want to. even queer isn't really a term i want to use to describe myself, but there's this desperation from all corners that u have to know for urself, even if u don't tell people yet. with this assumption that one day u will.

my family aren't homophobic. my sister is gay and my parents support them. my best friend is gay and trans. most of my friends are queer. it's not fear of judgement, at least i don't think so. it's just privacy. i want to be left alone.

this is all well and good except for the fact that one of my friends seems intent on figuring me out. she was on her bullshit back in like 2020, trying to subtly press my best friend to see if he knew (he does, but ofc didn't tell anything). and she's also one of my best friends but i don't want people knowing. it means nothing. only recently she's started up again, saying how she loves my "disregard" for it and "she's gay and not and there are not", making assumptions about me to another person while at the same time acknowledging my desire for privacy. speculating about me. i have never ever given her a label, never dated anyone, never had any crushes, and yet she tries to anyway.

it's just exhausting. and sometimes it's hard to enjoy pride when shit like this is going on. like - i'm not upset. at all, actually. i genuinely don't feel anything other than like, mild annoyance at the analysing and scrutiny of myself that clearly goes on when i'm not around. it used to bother me more but now ig i'm just kinda tired, in an eye roll "whatever" kind of way.

idk what the point of this is. just sucks that all stories are dramatic coming outs with supportive or scarily homophobic reactions, or life in the closet tragedies. some people are just in the middle. some people struggle or "hide" (hate that but whatever) for no good reason. it's not the prettiest pov ig.

Idc about queen but I just wanna know why you hate those two guys did they do something shitty lol

oh man. thank you for this ask. (putting this at the top because the rest of this post is going to be some fairly personal ranting: brian may has said some wack shit about gender and cancel culture, and roger taylor has a girlfriend half his age, in case you want some slightly more valid reasons to be put off by them aside from the inane screaming of a mentally ill college student.)

some important context to why i give so much of a shit (and why i'm so happy to answer this) is that i'm some kind of undiagnosed neurodivergent, and queen has been my special interest as long as i can remember. in the past several years it's lied fairly dormant, but forming a real personality has not changed the fact that i'm ready 24/7 to ramble about queen, and have been my entire life. also as a bit of a qualifier, moments before seeing the post that prompted this ask, i had just seen that back in september the mercury phoenix trust (charity in freddie's name to fight hiv/aids) partnered with some artist to release a freddie mercury nft as part of his 75th birthday celebration. that had already made me a little livid. so freddie mercury has this iconic quote that people use a lot, and was at the beginning of this promotional video. "you can do whatever you want with my work, but never make me boring." in the years since his death, a lot of the content that's come out has been tagged with this quote, implying that look! look at this cool new thing we're doing with freddie's work, name, and image! this isn't boring! freddie would love this!

except reader, i'm bored. the "never boring" box set released in 2019 seems to have not much new, just mediocre remixes of the same collection of solo work we've already heard in full, and a glossy hardcover book of photos and quotes. and they keep cranking this shit out. a $90 replica of his statue in montreux. a branded monopoly game. not to mention all the merch they were able to crank out to promote bohemian rhapsody (2018).

and listen. if freddie mercury were alive today he'd probably be taking the band on its fourth retirement tour, making all kinds of celebrity appearances wherever they could afford him, and selling out six ways till sunday. that in and of itself is not the problem here. where i take issue is that queen's surviving members and everyone on their fucking promotion and marketing team has been milking this shit for years, every year with seemingly less and less shame, and they have the audacity to claim that all of it is in freddie's name. that he'd sign off on this. it just seems crass to me. honestly, i think if it had been anyone else in the band, anyone who wanted to keep on going would've kept making music as usual, but the postmortem "tributes" wouldn't have been nearly as egregious.

john deacon was right to jump ship when he did. he's the only one i haven't lost respect for over the years. i'm just tired of all the cloying attempts at new "content". brian and roger could have just as easily sat back, rereleased some new shit here and there at big milestones, and let the decades of accumulated royalties flow in.

it just feels offensive to freddie's legacy to me. i don't know. i don't have a good way to end this. there's still more i could say. i probably don't have the right to be so upset on his behalf, i'm just some guy. fuck everybody who makes millions off of freddie mercury's life, work, and tragic death.

I just don't know what to do anymore.

Every time it seems like I'm getting my life on track, when things are getting better, life just beats me with a hammer

In January I had decided 2024 is gonna be my year. My job was going well, I was exercising and going to therapy regularly.

Then I had a seizure in March and was hospitalized. Was diagnosed with a form a epilepsy and got put on new medication. I got a leave of absence from work while i adjusted to the medication. First one was awful, made the bad thoughts worse, the second one was better, but as I get closer to returning to work, the bad thoughts are spiraling again.

I smashed my face this weekend. My nose bled so much, got a laceration on my chin that needed stiches, and fucked up my jaw. It was my own fault too and i feel so fucking stupid. One of the worst parts was my fucking stomach and throwing up shit tons of blood. I'm such an idiot and I just wanna curl up in a hole and die I'm trying so hard to not let my thoughts go back to my 2019 mindset, but it's so hard. One bad thing after another, universe hates me, I don't want to be here.

I feel like a lazy piece of shit too. It's almost been 3 months since my hospitalization, but I haven't done anything except watch movies and shows. I've been trying to draw and play games, but most times I'll just stare at my screen trying to decide what to draw/play. But there's also so much else I could be doing, I could read or write or play my ukulele or learn a new skill. But here I am, doing nothing. Time is passing way too fast, all the days blur together.

I'm scared to go back to work. I'm scared I'll be treated different, or that it'll be too much for me. Fuck, I'd been talking to my therapist about how I'd been burnt out right before my seizure. Seems like my body decided to take a break for me. I know HR will help and I can probably start part time, but even that is scary. I don't know why it's so scary. I guess I've been having more thoughts about what I actually want to do with my life, but the more I think, the less I'm sure. I feel like I've wasted so much time. I'm not happy where I am. But I don't if I'll be happy anywhere.

I also feel very lonely. I have my family and I love them so much and they're always supportive. But I'm also home alone a lot and I don't have many friends. Just two friends really, and one of them doesn't speak to me often. Other one is in another state, and I've also never felt a very strong connection to them.

I want to find another true friend, someone I have a connection with. I want to find love. I want to find happiness.

I don't know if I ever will

ok so now we're down to 17 days.. hahahahah. literally have a countdown on my phone and it's getting so fucking close. almost 2 weeks. and there's the canada day long weekend and stampede shenanigans that i have to get through first. but it's getting closer and closer.. and i feel good. i dont feel anxious. it almost doesnt feel real that june is almost over. that i've been living in my place for almost 3 months. it somehow feels longer, idk.

but everything just feels right. i'm not anxious or worried or scared. im just tryna live my life one day at a time and balancing my budget and eating well, having fun with my friends, and enjoying the summer. planning planning planning for the weekender, for ADE. i'm keeping myself busy for sure. but basically everything is sorted. i obviously keep going through the spreadsheets making sure all our hotels are good and there's no better deals. we just have the one hotel in brighton i need to cancel once chris and his lady confirm 100%, but they're like 95% a yes, so that'll be an easy one.

ugh and im so excited to see liam in london, i havent seen him since what, 2019?! fuck, like, i KNOW i'm going to london because the flight and hotels and everything are booked, but it really has NOT sunk in that i'll be flying to london in exactly 1 month. my head is so filled with brandon and the weekender and camping and our road trip, london just doesn't even feel real. fuck, it's going to be such an amazing trip, the whole thing. and i love that i don't have to say goodbye to you after the weekender, we get to travel back to london together and have another 5 days of bliss. i'm so fricken glad it worked out like that with anjunabeach brighton, AND i get to see maya too. what an amazing 17 days. fuck, i live for this shit. i'm going to be so fucking broke LOL but so fucking happy. i'm going to spend 0 money in august and i will also be emotionally fucked up but i am fucking here for it. fuck. me. up. brandon.

I built a home for us inside my head

Because it's the only way we'd ever be together again

I built a home for us inside my head, imagined a life where we were normal happy people, not broken and scar(r)ed. Where we were free to just be. I cataloged every single time you did something that made my heart stutter, made my body feel warm and light and gave me butterflies, and replayed them. And when the moments stopped coming, I made more in my head. Imagined you'd touch me like that again, imagined you'd laugh with me like that again til our sides ached and our heads hurt

It HURTS. Missing you. Remembering you. Letting go of you. So much of you has been grafted onto me. Like I was sitting in a burning room and I'd given up, and without you even realizing it you pulled me out and held me tight and my bubbled and burning skin latched onto yours and never let go.

They say every 7 years your skin is regrown, the cells dying and falling off and giving way to a layer that hasn't seen the world yet. Hasn't been touched yet. When I was 22, it was 7 years since the last time he'd hurt me. When I was 22, I was sitting in a bed next to you and wondering if I was in a dream.

I touched you 14 days ago. Before that it had been 2 months. You used to call me back. But I haven't heard from you since your birthday. 14 days ago. And I keep wondering if I have to reset the clock, anymore. If I can be 31 and say "it's been 7 years since he touched me, and that's okay" the thought alone makes me sob, makes me sick, makes me want to scream.

Why did it have to be so hard? Why couldn't we have just loved each other? Why didn't we do it that day in 2019, when I told you I was falling for you? Brushing my teeth in your bathroom and blurting it out around a mouthful of toothpaste. Why didn't we start then?? You said "You don't think I feel something too?" Indignant. Furious that I'd suggested we end things. And I didn't know what to do. What to say. So I never brought it up again.

Will I be 31, and wishing you were still there? Still next to me in bed? Still driving in your stupid Ford focus?

How do I stop this? How do I pull the plug on this overflow of love and anger? How do I stop the unrelenting stream of thoughts and desperate delusional fucking desires? How much of it was in my head, and how much of it was real? Not the love. I know now, too late, that in your way you loved me.

My head and my body are still not my own. You live here. I still look for your car everywhere I go. I wait for you to call me. Wait for you to walk into my job. Waiting waiting waiting. You had me at my prime, and you had a hand in tearing me down. And on your birthday, as some kind of gift to yourself, you came to look down the well as I sat at rock bottom to say "I didn't push you down. I didn't even see you fall." I begged you to at least throw down a ladder, and you watched me beg and you said "I'm sorry. I need this ladder." And you fucking walked away.

I don't know what's more pathetic.

That I'm still sitting here, at the bottom of this well, looking up as the sky seems to get farther and farther away and telling myself "any minute now. Any minute now he'll come back with a ladder."

Or that while I wait, my hands are digging my grave. Digging me deeper. Sifting through centuries of mud and shit and bones and I'm not even really looking. My hands are digging my grave, and my eyes are watching the sky. Waiting. Hoping.

I lost my best friend in 2019, and I haven't been the same since. The reason it happened was all my own fault, I had become psychologically abusive and manipulative, it hit a point she had enough. It was necessary, I had to stop. For the first time in, maybe, my entire life, had I felt I had fallen so low I needed to reconsider who I was and what the fuck was I doing and why.

Turned out I had huge ego problems and temperament issues that I never knew how to handle and that was the main source. I tried apologizing to my friend, and for a while, she accepted it, and I was determined to change for the better and not fall into my previous pitfalls.

But perhaps I didn't deserve that second chance: she decided that no, the damage was already done, things just couldn't go back. It was time to end things for good.

You can't repair a broken glass.

A couple of years later I found out she had written about me: apparently she wiped out any positive memory she had and just wished me the worse.

Again, I cannot blame her.

I've struggled with friendships and relationships since: I had a different friend who also decided she had enough, after one of my outbursts of anger. I was not given another chance this time... to be fair, she was extremely dismissive of others' emotions, never even gave me a chance to talk things out. I was really trying this time, but I let the emotions carry me again.

So any time I make new relationships I'm always trying to restrain a lot, emotionally, maybe that's for good, but also makes me feel somewhat detached.

Or maybe I've matured, I don't know, it's been long since I've had an outburst or hurt someone, I guess that's good.

But part of me always fears losing someone again, and that if I let my emotions show themselves too much it will only ruin things. Even if they're not the negative, harmful kind.

I sometimes still see myself as the monster that hurt his own friend out of jealousy when she did not deserve at all on top of all of the shit she had to deal with.

I remember it began with a sense of protection, which became possesiveness... what a fool I was.

I've talked to a friend about it and she says the only way for me to move on is to stop shitting myself and forgive.

I don't know if I can forgive it, but I think it's been long enough to just not let go of it.

It's hard to let go of something you're guilty of and the consequence is permanent, it feels undeserved. But I have no other choice if I truly wish to be someone better.

She may wish me hell: but I don't.

I may not see you ever again, and that's for good, I know you don't want to.

I just want you to be happy, wherever you go, whenever you end up in. Find whatever fulls you and enjoy your life as you really deserved. I'm sorry I was not the friend you needed, I am really sorry for all the pain I caused, and I am aware apologies cannot mend that.

I'll never stop working on becoming someone better, I'll never forget the things I did and I'll never pretend I was innocent. I will carry that weight with me. I don't need to see you again. I do cherish our good memories together, and I hope you continue to make good memories with whoever you cross paths with on your life. I don't care if you wish me hell. I will never want that for you.

Four years already, feels like yesterday when I felt the stab. The realization of what I had done, the desperate attempt at fixing things, the anxiety, the crying.. and yet I know I've grown since then and I got a lot more to grow too.

It won't be the last time I remember this, hell I know this to be true. But if this is the last time I write about it directly, maybe it's appropiate to say: Goodbye.

My mental health has been in the shitter since the new year and I'm blaming all the shit that's happening in the US right now. I'm just so scared and tired. It's getting really hard just trying to get through the day. I haven't been this bad since 2019, even then I still had some hope. Some hope for a future and a happy life. It's crossed my mind to just ya know, not be here anymore. But who's gonna look after my brother who just came out as gay, the bravest thing any young queer could do right now. Who's going to fight off the government from my nephew, who's under threat of being taken away from us just because we're native. Who's gonna kick a creep in the balls when they try to stalk my mom and sister through Walmart. Who's gonna keep my family together when we don't have money for food,medicine,bills. I've got too much responsibility to just jump ship. So either people start fucking these assholes up so we can all have some peace or I'm gonna lose my mind.