#i think we became mutuals in like 2018? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

am-i-the-asshole-official · 13 days

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Was I an ahole for warning mutual's friend about his past? 🫶

I had a mutual in a big fandom circa 2017-2018. She was kinda sweet but shy, sometimes really bitter at people so I didn't get too close but we chatted often. Now my fandom had a big incest/ pedo shipping problems and she was one of the few people on my tl who were loudly opposed to it. I don't think she sent hatemails but she ranted in tags or her own posts often. Saying this because we had a few older fandom friends who were much more vocal and she followed their words like gospel. So the conclusion was like a betrayal.

Some years later I felt her slowly ghosting me before she finally left fandom and deleted her account. Then she came back after a few months in a new persona, totally new fandom, going by they/them, no attachment to their previous fandoms, like a new person. I don't know if they meant to hide their past or not. They contacted me and we became moots again.

Then after maybe a year I noticed that we were no longer mutual, we sort of ghosted each other as our interests diverged more so no big deal.

About 4 years since then I found myself getting into the thing they were last into. I accidentally stumbled upon their popular posts and decided to reconnect. They were going by he/him now so he was very nice and welcoming. He told me to chat with him and ask anything I needed to know, recced good blogs etc. We chatted frequently as it seemed like he was a completely different person, no longer shy or bitter, very openly into shipping and smut, happily engaging with dead dove content in the new fandom. This one also has canon incest, so I asked how he coped, he said he lost his mind in the old fandom he just filters the unwanted things out.

Now I don't know, how he changed that much or became friends with incest shippers, how he could be so casually okay with this when he was vocal about supporting survivors before. Then I saw him reblog posts shitting on sex repulsed people and some about BPD too. It wasn't hard to figure out why he changed so drastically.

I got really angry that day and accidentally sent a message to one of his "proship" mutuals how he really used to be. That guy saw my message, then blocked me, then my moot also blocked me without a word. I have regrets but I don't know what to do. Am I wrong for wanting him to not be friends with incest shippers? I miss him and I don't think he shipped them but he still joked about shipping them and being annoying. The last fandom harassed me a lot over not liking brother brother incest so I only have bad feelings. I don't think incrst shipping should be banned or anything extreme I just think they should have a separate platform so only they can see it.

#aita #am i the asshole #incest cw #ship discourse #misgendering cw

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alexbkrieger13 · 1 year

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this is cute ☺️

ann-Katrin Berger met Jess Carter when she joined Birmingham City FC in May 2016. Despite being teammates, they didn’t speak much during the first six months. “At the beginning, I thought she was arrogant, but as I got to know her, I found myself really drawn into her character,” says Ann-Katrin.

At the time, Jess was living at home with her family in Barford, Warwickshire, but was keen to spread her wings. “By 2017 I wanted to move out, and found out that Ann was looking for a housemate,” says Jess. “In February, we moved in together in Solihull.” They quickly became great friends, sharing their passion for football and films. “Jess was chilled and there was no drama at all,” says Ann-Katrin. “We like all the same TV shows, so there’s never any fighting over the remote.”

Although they built a strong friendship, Jess hadn’t considered the possibility that there could be more. “I had broken up with my boyfriend when I moved in, but as far as I knew I was straight,” she says. That summer, Jess went away for training, and the pair missed each other’s company. “She’s a naturally flirty person, which is the opposite of me,” says Ann-Katrin. Wondering if it could mean she was interested in something more than friendship, Ann-Katrin planned a night out for them when she returned. “A friend encouraged me and I thought, if I didn’t try, I might not get other chances.”

In August 2017, Ann-Katrin took Jess out for the dinner date she had planned, but Jess had no idea it was meant to be romantic. “When she used the word ‘date’, I thought she meant as friends. Even when she paid, it didn’t click, because she’s one of the most generous people I know.”

Mutual friends asked Jess how the evening went, but she still didn’t think romance was on the cards. “Ann-Katrin has all the qualities I’d look for in a partner, but I’d never dated a woman before, so I hadn’t really thought about it like that,” she says.

A few days later, they were relaxing at home when Ann-Katrin took a risk and initiated a kiss. “I was quite nervous because I didn’t know what her reaction would be. I always knew she was quite an open person, and she’d never ruled out being with a woman. At the same time, I heard her talk about guys, so I wasn’t sure.”

nitially, they didn’t speak about the kiss, but when it happened again a few days later, they had a frank discussion.

“I definitely sensed something was shifting, but it wasn’t until we kissed that I really thought about things in a different way,” says Jess. “Ann is not a serial dater, she needs to be emotionally invested. So for her to kiss me was a big thing. I cared about her so much as a friend, but I wasn’t clear on romantic feelings at the start.” She told Ann-Katrin that she wanted to give things a go, but couldn’t commit quickly. “I wasn’t sure if it was a phase for me, and didn’t want to lead her on,” she says.

Ann-Katrin may have been more certain about her feelings at first, but Jess quickly caught up. “It developed really quickly and naturally after that,” she says, and within months they had told each other “I love you”.

Not long after they became a couple, Ann-Katrin underwent treatment for thyroid cancer. “I was scared it would be too much for Jess, but she was so supportive,” she says. In June 2018, Jess moved to London to play for Chelsea. Ann Katrin joined the club in early 2019, and the pair now live together in London. When sport was paused during the lockdown, Jess says Ann-Katrin motivated her to carry on training: “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Ann.”

In this year’s Uefa Women’s Euros, both women were in their team’s squad for the final – Jess for England and Ann-Katrin for Germany. “There wasn’t really any direct competition because we are both really chilled people,” says Jess. Ann-Katrin agrees: “I’m happy for her success.”

#aw so cute #jess carter #ann katrin berger #chelsea fcw

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koolkat9 · 8 months

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Ok. No joke. Never heard or seen A N Y England x Germany ship ever in my life up until now. The way my jaw dropped when I saw your page. (Not in a Bad way tho🤤) BUT PLEASE ELABORATE CUZ I NEED TO KNOW. SO WHY ENGLAND X GERMANY?

We're definitely one of the smaller ships here, but we at least have 200+ fics which is more than some of my other ships have. But anyway...

So I guess I'll start with what first got ME into GerEng. I've shared it before, but I love telling this story! So the year is I think 2018? Yeah 2018. Dreamtalia has just been fully released and the creator and her friend are doing a lp of it. Now this is the first hetagame I got into, and although I've seen the whole story at this point as the whole game had been shared on the creator's channel though part of it was like barebones, only sketched screenshots if even, but I loved the game and this creator and her adlibs were always entertaining. Keep the entertaining adlibs in mind.

So I'm watching the lp and there is a part of the game where your party of characters split up. Ludwig and Arthur, who at this point have been butting heads are paired together and shenanigans ensue. Now, canonically to the game, if I recall correctly, they bond a bit, a foundation for a friendship that is shown a bit in the beta of the sequel. But, the creator and her friend started adlibbing because at one point Ludwig offers his hand to Arthur when they're overcoming some obstacle and them holding h became a running subplot all completely adlibbed. At this point I was a hard Ger//Ita shipper and usually the game would have Ger//Ita undertones, but I started to get invested in the GerEng plot line and I was coming back to the lp every time they post to find out what happened next for the "handholding buddies."

Gosh this is already long and I'm not fully done my story and I still need to talk about my fav parts of the ship...shit...Okay 2019 an alternate small scale sequel releases for Dreamtalia based on the the bad end of the game and the GerEng subplot. This is where I really got into the ship and led me to searching for fics and fanart. Because after Dreamtalia I didn't think of GerEng again. Didn't think I would. But then this sequel came out and it got be hooked. And then I started writing for them and soon replaced Ger//Ita as my OTP.

Okay putting the second half of my favourite things about GerEng under the cut because this is already long.

Okay, first things first. I just find it so appealing that these two stubborn lonely men find each other. They're similar which does cause them to butt heads sometimes, but it also means they understand each other. They've been through similar things, have similar poor coping mechanisms, but through their relationship and trying to prevent the other from isolating and wallowing in guilt, they've started to stop themselves from doing it too.

And it's a mutual thing. Arthur is there for Ludwig following the World Wars as Lud is faced with his anxiety, PTSD, guilt and he's facing this all alone because either his loved ones have been forcibly ripped from him or he pushed them away. Taking a page out of another GerEng creator's book who I'll talk about in the next paragraph, Arthur comes along is like "Here. Music. Also human interaction."

Then once Ludwig gets in a better place, Arthur starts to spiral, faced with his crumbling empire and losing his status as a world super power. He feels he has no purpose now and being an empire made him feel untouchable, without it, he feels vulnerable. But Ludwig is there, basically uses Arthur's own advice against him with some of Lud's own experience.

Now of course there was so much more that went into both of their healing journeys beyond just each other, but their relationship both when it was platonic and romantic was an important stepping stone. And it just makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Going back to their similarities, it's not all hurt/comfort, doom and gloom. They love to bake. I think they share some similar music interest since their was a period of music exchange between the two countries following ww2. Teethhoarder, an amazing artist and fic writer knows a bit more about this and covers it in their fic Are Friends Electric and also give a good run down on their ask blog. Their stubbornness actually can be beneficial because Ludwig doesn't take Arthur's shit and pushes back. And their bluntness has it's perks too because both of them, especially Ludwig need things told to them straight. And they're both not big into PDA, completely content with just simple handholding.

Then there is the history. Christmas Truce 1914 where German and British troops declared a truce in honour of Christmas and celebrated the holiday together. I as well as many other shippers see this as a jump start to their relationship, the time where they got to know each other as Arthur and Ludwig instead of the British Empire and the German Empire. Then there is the whole music exchange. There is also another historical period that I think contributes to their relationship, but I don't like touching that era when Lud is involved...

Also canon...though not necessaryily with overt romantic undertones like early Ger//Ita or Su//Fin or Fr//Uk or nowadays Ger//Fra, they have their sweet moments in canon like them having tea together. Or sharing rations. Or the Christmas Truce. Or how that one episode where they're all sharing their horror movies and one of the fun fact pop ups say Germany and England work on horror movies together or something. Then there is that one time Arthur is helping Ludwig with his work persumeably. Or the time Art was fretting about Ludwig working in his games. Oh here's that strip:

Also just this is just funny to me, Lud not knowing how to compliment his bf:

Anyway...I think that covers everything...I mean I have so many headcanons, but these are the main things. You ask "why GerEng" you get a whole fucking essay...

#hetalia #hws #hws germany #hws england #gereng #engger #geruk #I should have added citations for shits and giggles #but it's late and i wanted to type this out before i went to bed #even though it won't post until tomorrow

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floralcrematorium · 7 months

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I don't know if youve answered this before, but what made you come back? I'm not that old in the fandom, maybe half a year and it's so interesting how that fandom changed and how it used to be.

Thanks for the ask! I'm gonna be real with you, it was an accident. This is about to be a loooooooong ass post so I'm putting it beneath the cut:

It happened steadily in July. A very slippery slope.

I left in or around 2018 just because I lost interest. A friend in 7th grade introduced me to it in early 2014. I had been running my Instagram account since Summer of 2014 with my best friend (who at the time had been my partner, and by 2018 we had broken up) and our other friend. We'd all moved on and the account became dead. It wasn't a good account, but we'd amassed 1.1k followers during our tenure. Those were the days of if you wanted to post a comic, there were no Instagram slides. You had to post it all individually. The account was deleted in 2021? I think? 2020?

So come July 2023, I was poking around in my old Google Drive and found some of my old Hetalia stuff. Which included a fic with the aforementioned friends. It uh. Is not good. I reread it and oh boy is it a product of its time (we were probably 13-15 when we wrote it) and it was a 3 way POV that we all wrote with self insert characters. It was basically Heta characters get thrown in the setting of Outlast but with the plot of FNAF. Yeah. So uh. Not much to defend there. I jokingly went to my friends like "Hey, what if we rewrote this but not horrible" and we genuinely thought about it! For a night.

But for me it wasn't one night.

I kept thinking about it.

And one thing led to the next, I was revisiting old Youtube videos I liked and reread a fic I used to like.

I think what really did me in was listening to the character songs again and a couple of hetaloid covers. I was doing artfight and listening only to Hetalia music while I drew.

I genuinely did not really use my normal Tumblr before floralcrematorium came to be. I have an entirely separate account for personal stuff and art (I will not be sharing it) and it got to a point where I was seeking so much Hetalia stuff that I figured, why the fuck not, and eventually made an account. I also eventually made my first A03 account (I was on Wattpad and FFN back in the day) because someone wrote a CanUkr fic where Mattie had overexerted himself and was in the hospital and Katya and Alfred were going to kill him because he kept insisting he could work (I CANNOT FIND THIS FIC AGAIN, I FOUND IT ON TUMBLR ORIGINALLY, PLEASE HELP IF THIS RINGS A BELL!!).

And uh, so here I am!

I draw Hetalia stuff on occasion (I should... draw more considering that's what I went to college for but whatever) and have a couple of ideas for illustration series in my head.

I've got a lot of fic ideas I want to write. I have a literal list on my phone. I think about it in bed, at work, and little things remind me of Hetalia all the time.

I've gotten back into RP (I used to use Shamchat and Kik).

I've met so many cool people and I've been having a wonderful time being back so far. When I was originally in the fandom, I consumed a lot of content, but as far as mutuals went it was just me and my two friends. Meeting so many new people has been absolutely wonderful.

Hetalia is really the only fandom I've been in. I've liked other media and consumed fics/enjoyed art/bought prints (COUGH RWBY), but Hetalia is the only media I've ever had fan accounts for. It's the only media I've so deeply entrenched myself in that I feel comfortable writing fics. My walls used to be covered in Hetalia -- both official wall scrolls and shitty art I'd made myself (I have pictures I can attach at the end of the post). I had... so much merch. When I was 14 I only asked for Hetalia related things for my birthday. Every now and again I get that "am I doing the right thing?" ick because of the negative fandom reputation and reactions I'd get from people when I would admit to having liked Hetalia in the past, but I don't care about that now. Genuinely, fuck that. I like this piece of media whether I want to or not. I'm not going to be a self-hating Hetalia fan like I was in 2018-2021/22. I've come back to the show with completely different... motives? Idk what the right phrase is here -- I'm here to explore the characters of these little freaks (looking at you, Francis), I love all of the fanart I see, I like the exchange of historical and cultural information/resources.

Sure, I'd consider my fandom niche to be humanverse Francis and FACE fam, but I genuinely enjoy exploring outside of my corner of the fandom. I try to spread myself out -- I want to consume everything. I want to be exposed to everything.

Hetalia is one of the single most impactful pieces of media in my life. Without it, I wouldn't have my best friend, who broke up with me for APH Austria in 2015. The friends I ran the Instagram account with and I are all still in contact. I talk to one much more frequently than the other, but they are both so near and dear to my heart and I can't believe that this silly show is what got us to where we are. The youngest of us is about to graduate college a whole year early. I met her when she was 11 and I was 12 or 13? I couldn't be more proud of her, of the three of us, and it's been so fun to have these occasional nights where we (okay, just me) get tipsy and go through old fandom media/watch the dub and go ooooof. I was in a really bad place when I was originally into Hetalia. Coming back now feels like coming full circle.

The old fandom had plenty of its own issues, and the fandom now certainly isn't devoid of issues, but now that the fanbase has shifted to an older audience and I actually have like. Social skills. I love talking to other people. I like creating. I like thinking about these stupid characters before I go to bed.

My single favorite thing about the Hetalia fandom now is the care put into historical work as well as the exploration of portrayals of the characters. Because Hetalia lacks a plot and Hima is constantly retconning things, everyone has their own interpretations of everything. Everyone has their own version of Francis Bonnefoy, Yao Wang, or Alfred F. Jones. And that's so cool!!! You don't see that anywhere else.

I know I'm typically a pessimist on main, but I'm genuinely glad to be back. It's weird to be back. I've had mixed reactions from irl friends that I'm back.

But who the fuck cares?

I'm having fun, I'm making friends, and I can't believe there are still people here.

I genuinely hope I'm here for a while. I have so much I want to write. I want to draw all of the things my skill level was too low for back when I was a teen.

CRINGE IS DEAD AND I AM FREE.

The following images are certainly about to destroy any cool perception anyone has of me, if they even do. I was... certainly a teenager, is all I have to say! I am,,, thankfully not like this anymore. I hope.

Here are those pictures of my bedroom circa 2015 I promised:

DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT THE LIVE LAUGH LOVE.

That drawing of Russia with Neko-Talia Russia? Yeah. Uh. I did that for an art project in the 7th grade for class. I also did a ceramics piece with the mochis, that I've since lost. These images scream "I'm 14 and like Hetalia in 2015."

I used to have little hearts with all the ships I liked in them (I think that's AusHun in the picture on the left?). I also had "I love you" written in like 20 languages on index cards taped above my headboard.

Also a literal timestamp I found in my old emails with the friend who got me into Hetalia:

Being a young teenager in the old fandom certainly,,,, was something. I would not relive that, but by god would I do ANYTHING to get my favorite pieces of fan media back from that time. There was a video called "Hetalia What Did You Do To Panda" which was a bunch of clips from the anime with Katie Herzig's "Hey Na Na" playing in the background. Every now and then a dub audio clip would interject with the song.

I also really miss this one very specific Character Theme Songs video that had Poland in the thumbnail. Mein Gott would play between each song and I could tell you most of the songs that had been assigned to each character.

I would do ANYTHING to get those videos back. I miss them so much.

Anyway, if you read this whole thing, thanks for reading??? I am very Cool And Normal about the things I like, unfortunately. It's nice to come back to Hetalia and like... be a normal person about it.

All I've got to say is, when I like something, I like it a lot.

#floralcrematorium ask box #floralcrematorium is so normal and cool #ne ne papa echoes in my nightmares #soph's public diary

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daz4i · 1 month

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Sepia, tangerine, void :)

ohoho thank you!!!! ^o^

omg i think we became mutuals back in like 2018 through sp. and we're still going strong today baby 💪🤝🔥✨️🖤

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90s-html-lesbians · 1 year

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Watching Overly Sarcastic Productions and thinking about immortal roommates tonight... Ava's origins are extremely murky and will remain so, but if we want to imagine something, we might imagine Minoan Crete, which would put the time of her birth at around 1900 BCE or even earlier (an absolutely mind-boggling number of years ago). Ava will never confirm it in so many words, but she'll make references/jokes to bulls and volcanos every now and then that make Bea go 👀👀👀. That's if we want her origins to be semi-based in real history and not something completely out there like the Kaktusverse or something.

whoops, only just now saw this and this, and to answer the latter rq because i feel it might be weird to answer it now but it feels ruder to not, but fav genres are mostly like first person shooters, + street fight esque hames, RTS gamex & platformers

haven’t and don’t play many games, so fav games would probably be spiderman ps4/2018, minecraft, super smash bros, kotor, & command and conquer generals + earthworm jim 1 & 2. not a fav but diablo 2 is immensely fun

i keep meaning to branch out, i wanna try more of the what’s it’s name, a tier or w(e games like bioshock, skyrim, mass effect, god of war, assassins creed (bc defo agreed on the hot women + the historical setting is defo interestujg), portal

or something

also pls do elaborate on the skydrim modding 👀)

anyway back to the program

Ava: how do you know i was around when the minoan crete was around

also ava: *has a bunch of misc random bull & bull themed paper weights & knick knacks & plushies scattered theoughout the apartment esp on ava’s side of the bedroom*

also ava: beatrice, lilith, you won’t *bull*ieve it- beatrice & lilith: you got arrested again didn’t you?

GL-18200

real ava origin is that she just spontaneously started existing out of nowhere /j

she’s literally older than the universe itself

no but more seriously i feel a bit like: (see below meme) because i don’t know too much about it but am 👀👀👀 regardless

also what’s the kaktusverse? 👁️

ava & lilith and probably later on bea defo got up to so much crimes because whenever they got caught by local law enforcement *mushroom voice* you cannot kill me in any way that matters

some random bits

keep meaning to mention but 1) lilith was the daughter of a military leader

lilith pre vampirification was like, briefly a military leader, mostly through coercion because the forces she was commanding, b4 she cane into command, were loosing badly, the town (probably lilith’s hometown) was almost destroyed and while they already had vv few competent peoplr let alone leaders among them (tbf they really didn’t have a need for em, but then the town was ambushed), even the few were either injured or dead so when they noticed lilith still being alive, and thanks to knowing about her dad + thx to lilith’s dad, knowing that lilth had showed a good amount of aptitude in fighting and military strategy shit, they coerced her (probably through threatning some friend or family of hers) into helping “just to fight off the invading forces” and so they did

but the forces wanted lilith to help them invade other places to “recoop looses” and what not, so that wasn’t the end of the coercion

lilth ended up faking her death so she could get out of the deal without putting her friend/s and(or family at risk, but it also meant she couldn’t return home to keep them out of danger

And then not long after that, like a year or two later lilith became a vampire

i think ava lilith & beatrice all probably need to skidaddle off by themselves every so often (to varying ampunts and degrees obv), and while ava & lilith are mutually aware of that and did the majority of the communication shit over it a while ago, beatrice isn’t on the same page

So a bit into beatrice formally moving in with ava & lilith, she just kinda gets antsy, in large part because the mental gymnastics of convincing herself people don’t care or don’t care very much, are at an all time high and in all honesty, while it might seem counter intuitive ava & lilith’s near constant prescencex are making it worse

but beatrice can’t manage to make herself say that until one day she ends up turning full tail (literally) and just is like 🏃‍♂️

lilith finds her a bit later at some mcdonalds or some fast food place (thanks to the becoming a werewolf stuff, beatrice has a lot bigger appetitie that she’s still adjusting to which means there’s a good few times where beatrice unwittingly finds herself suddenly feeling weak from not enough food and so ends up just having to go with the closest source of food she can find that won’t take her a bunch of effort to eat pr like poison her or anything ((ava & lilith, but esp lilith because she can relate makes sure to watch out for how much food beattice’s had in a day and do shit like keeping snacks on hand, eyc to try and minimize these incidents))) and just sits with beatrice until she’s ready to talk

beatrice & lilith are probably often the best at talking each other out of whatever dumb mental gymnastics they’re doing now because of how similar they are

also lilith & beatrice are, depending on who you ask surprisingly chaotic, they’ve accidentally gotten involved in a few disasterous shenanigans (which is a lot different from purposely doing so)

lilith started courting beatrice but completely forgot to mention so poor beatrice is vv confusedly flustered to death several times over by lilith

also ava 🤝 lilith 🤝 beatrice: god’s sleepiest soldiers

ava wants to spend time w lilith so she (im)patiently waits until nightime but she also wants to take full use of sunlight so she also is awake during the day, which, esp since ava gets tired a lot quicker than the average person means ava quickly learns to take several naps during the day or else be knocked out cold during the most inconvenient of times

sometimes those naps happen during night so lilith often decides to just nap w ava when that happens, and they never really change that system, so basically they’re vv used to taking naps several times a day, especially with each other so not napping would throw them off their rhythm and also they’re probably so used to the routine that they begin feeling sleepy when they see the other taking a nap, regardless if they woke u literally just an jour or so ago

Fantasia

#warrior nun #ava silva #sister beatrice #lilith villaumbrosia #fallenhaloguard #avalilbea #ava x bea x lilith #immortal roommates au #sister lilith #ask #the-darkness-does-not-bargain

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oswlld · 1 year

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Eight (8) Shows to Get to Know Me

tagged by @talays-portkey ♥ ty for tagging me and having me walk down memory lane for the past few days (spent too much time in all the tags microdosing on my upbringing)

DISCLAIMER: i wanted to showcase defining eras in my life/made an impact in a substantial way; i’m also recommending an ep to watch with each one, which isn’t part of the tag format but imma do it

i. LOST (2004-2010)

this was my whole world for my entire hs existence and into my early college years. half of the shows listed here stems from my first love of the ensemble cast, their interwoven yet clandestine storylines, and the mystery box. at my first sdcc, half of the cast was present when they debuted p1 of the series finale (you’d think i was dead the whole time fksfsk;lv)

the jessi special: The Constant (04x05)

ii. Fringe (2008-2013)

yes, i faithfully followed jj abrams into another insane show. i think it actually altered my brain chemistry, rewired something in me, devoured a piece of me. once LOST was over and Fringe brought in the alternate universe, i dove in head first and never resurfaced

the jessi special: Making Angels (04x11)

iii. Doctor Who (2005-Present)

i think it was technically winter 2010 when i started binging this show because s6 was my first time catching it live (was young and naïve, i caught it on bbca lol) ive been on hellsite for almost two years at the time and fully became a fandom blog, so it was inevitable i would love this series. i think it was the first show i made gifs/edits for???

the jessi special: The Doctor’s Wife (06x04)

iv. Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013)

oh look, my dna makeup shifts again. i actually started watching this show the week leading up to Darcy Day and can still vividly remember the migraines from binging 8-10min eps times 60ish worth of content. this show got me into writing my first fic, running an rp blog, creating instrumental playlists, making a DWxLBD blog, AND eventually flying my ass back to CA to meet the cast and beloved mutuals at VidCon

the jessi special: A New Buddy (ep56)

v. Orphan Black (2013-2017)

happy international women’s day to this show and this show only! i think of all the shows listed here, this is the first time since LOST i caught all the eps in real time from the very beginning. this was filling the hole Fringe was about to carve deep in me. but if you cut me open, you will find the beth-shaped hole that nothing/no one has been able to fill and likely will never fill til the end of time

the jessi special: The Collapse of Nature (04x01)

vi. Shadowhunters (2016-2019)

im willing to admit that the reason i got into this show was because of the wedding kiss haha i saw the clip, signed the adoption papers on the spot, and went on to write a 100K+ wip series. admittedly, i confess that this was a DNF and never finished the last season... i abandoned my boy.gif

the jessi special: Of Men and Angels (01x06)

vii. Sense8 (2015-2018)

a show about eight children than i gave birth to, that i raised on my own, that i will defend on my death bed and beyond??? that show sense8?? yes that show sense8. fun fact, when they did the screening of the finale in Chicago, the cast ended up sitting three rows behind me in the theater and i could hear them talking in between scenes the entire evening. wish i could bottle that feeling up

the jessi special: I Have No Room in My Heart for Hate (02x07)

viii. Bad Buddy (2021-2022)

and we finally made it to the current decade! its nov 2021, im fresh off leaving my previous job and still getting situated in my new position, yet this show was a siren calling to me in the dark mist of my life. i ended up saving the binge watching for the week of my bday and my whole life shifted again. it must have been so alarming on the outside, seeing me go from making 1-2 edits a month to 1-2 edits a day for almost THREE MONTHS. the fact that i still cont to avg two edits/week since then... oy lol

the jessi special: Ep10 (shocked pikachu.jpg)

and ill also throw some honorable mentions too: Chuck, The Good Place, Vice Versa, Twenty Five Twenty One, Once Upon a Time, and Elementary

now tagging @pranink, @icouldhyperfixatehim, @noxclara, @curious-earth (no pressure tho!)

#tag meme #tagged #this is jessi #i am a tree and these are the most defined rings #the ones people would study and say 'tf happened in this era'#now i feel obligated to make an edit for fringe #its the only show of the eight listed that i have never made something for #made a few LOST edits maybe two remakes ago #theres still some LBD edits in the archive tag #now all the new mutuals since bad buddy ended know me on a molecular level

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daffodilsfortomorrow · 1 year

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2022 has truly been such an interesting year for me, personally and professionally. I just wanted to say thank you to all of my mutuals for this amazing year. I have never been a part of an online community in any degree until I made my first tumblr blog in late 2018, and even then I became active and properly started interacting with people only in late 2019. This blog, all my mutuals and louis have helped me and kept my spirits high even during some pretty desperate times. I dont think I can properly express how important 2022 has been for this tiny part of the internet because this year has been in the making for literal YEARS. So I just wanted to say thank you so much! you guys have no idea just how much joy and happiness I experienced just from being present here.

I didnt make any art, write any fics, make archive-type posts, honestly, i didnt make any substantial contributions in that aspect (which i am hoping to change because it looks like a lot of fun), but just the idea of being here and watching someone who we have all been rooting for succeed feels so wholesome. I read a substack article about how the author felt when she was watching New York Marathon, about how the collective happiness the audience felt when cheering on those who were running, and how she burst into tears from wholesome that experience was. I could understand it completely without even having to employ any efforts for imagination, because we were all here supporting and cheering on someone who many people were convinced would fail.

2022 is a year I will always hold close to my heart bc it was the year I ran out of a meeting because I couldn't stop laughing at all the funny antics the band got up to during the portland 2 show or because I stayed up all night/woke up early morning to watch a shaky live stream of louis getting his shirt ripped off in latam. it's a year i actively sought for and got happiness, so hank you, thank you, thank you.

#idk how many of my mutuals will see this because no one is awake right now rip #but i just #thank you guys so much you have no idea how much being on here with your guys means to me

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cosmicrhetoric · 2 years

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tagged by @briarhips for my top ten films....i rarely do tag games but ive been watching too many movies lately so ty bestie. in no particular order:

The Handmaiden (2016): holy grail film. went thru a period of time where every time i got high i would put this on cause i knew i would enjoy it....despite it being a very bad movie to watch stoned. like fr dont do that

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): new fave movie full stop. everything abt it is perfect id watch it a million more times stephanie hsu oscar nom when

Pride & Prejudice (1995): i know. i know this is a six episode series. but not the way i watch it. there is something so comforting to me about that ugly ass pink satin they use in the title credits....i literally put this on when im bored

Om Shanti Om (2007): shut upppppp

The Philadelphia Story (1940): it was hard picking just one katharine hepburn movie but her performance in this is unparalleled.....esp cause i think its funny that whenever they try to remake it it's always bad. shoutout to sylvia scarlet and stage door though.

Mississippi Masala (1991): no words for how much i loved this. sarita choudhary and denzel washington are you fucking joking

Star Trek: The Voyage Home (1986): the one with the whales. feel good of all feel goods. also spock is there and he wears a little headband.

Us (2019): my fave horror movie of the 2010's for the pas de deux scene alone

Veere Di Wedding (2018): this movie is objectively mid but kareena kapoor says 'fuck' in it and like. inner child healed from that alone but also for the first time in my life i understood why white girls were sooooo obsessed with bridesmaids (2011) type films

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989): im not kidding this is Cinema like listen to the score. movies with a yes and type plot and no villain. also there's a scene in the second one where bill n ted are sitting on their couch watching star trek and when i watched it for the first time i was with my own bestie (tagged below hey man wazzup) sitting in exactly the same position. knowing that any other night we wouldve been watching star trek too and that moment was so crazy for both of us that we became lifelong fans

tagging (no pressure 🙂): @bronskibeet @drybranmuffin @treedryad @jillianajones @brechtian @pastelrabbits @celestialkindliness and any and all mutuals who want to go for it

#ty..........i do these so rarely would like to formally apologize for the ones ive been tagged in and havent done #but i Just rewatched the voyage home its been on the brain

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bittermause · 1 year

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End of the Year Review: A Three Year Act Edition

My birthday is ten days away, so I felt it appropriate to write another one of these End of Year Reviews before then. I decided to summarize the last two years since I didn't bother to do so after 2019. The motivation to do this came from regretting to not record and keep any of my previous EoY posts from 2018 and earlier. As I get older, those said years became a blur to me, which is unfortunate. But I digress, let's start things off with the glorious year of...

2020

The year when Covid went into full swing around the globe, but also the year of brand new beginnings and a year full of insane luck and precise timing. In 2019, literally the day after Christmas, I was offered a job as a 2D Animator for a unique Cybersecurity training firm in CA. After a brief moment of panic and my best friend convincing me to take a chance with this new venture, I agreed to move out west at the end of January, and start my new job in February. For first two weeks I stayed at an AirBnB close to my job, and eventually moved into a makeshift studio space attached to a family home that belonged to a fellow alumni's mother. I never imagined I would finally leave Michigan after 35 years of personal pain and misery, to have a job that actually paid a livable wage that was also synonymous with my career path, and be able to leave behind an environment that put me in a constant state of stress and depression. For the first time in ages, I felt truly blessed. In the Spring, my best friend and I started getting re-acquainted with an old mutual friend of ours that we seldom spoke to in years. We ended up spending weekend nights having three way calls, discussing creative projects and talking about life in general. Never thought I'd re-connect with them in such a way, but now we have a much tighter friendship bond than we did in the past.

2021

After being able to save a lump sum of money thanks to the low rent cost and full on public transit reliance, I finally acquired a car. It didn't take me long to get re-acquainted with driving on the road; not having to deal with the iconic pot holes and rough weather worn terrain made travel cakewalk. I took my time to discover some great local haunts, like GraphAids and Record Outlet. However, in October I realized that my body was out of shape, and when I weighed myself for the first time in forever, I was hitting 231 Lbs. I took it upon myself to start a weight and task log in order to keep track of CICO, and exercise again. ( I was rotating between DDPY, Ringfit and the mini-elliptical) I also acquired a nutritionist to guide me in making better decisions for my diet. When November rolled around, I came to the conclusion that I needed to move out of the little studio space and into my own apartment. While it helped me save a great deal of money, the space was tiny, I missed having a stove, and a washer and dryer nearby. My landlady was oddly avoidant on giving rent history to my soon-to-be apartment management, but come later December I was still able to get approval for a unit. That same month, I announced the end of my long running web comic The Shufflers. It was one of the hardest decisions I had to make, but a necessary one. I still think about whether or not I can pick it back up again, but only time can tell.

2022

No doubt, is perhaps one of my favorite years living out in CA by far. I moved into an upper level apartment, got promoted to Production Supervisor at my workplace, I traveled to Colorado Springs to hang out with my friend, got to visit The Academy Museum with my workmates and explored the Studio Ghibli exhibition, and roamed a little bit around my new city and found some neat shops and restaurants. Along with it's pleasures, also came with great internal struggles; even though I left my old life two years ago, some of the excess baggage was still clinging on to me, and my perception of self was still very unhealthy. I started receiving therapy in June twice a month, in order to help me untangle my past grievances with myself and to help me pull away from the people that caused it. These sessions have been a real eye opener, and keeping a journal based on each one has greatly helped. One of the hardest challenges I've ever faced so far was convincing myself that I am worthy of self love and respect, to undo the belief that I am an unlovable, creep-ass overweight toad, and stop hiding my honest feelings and insecurity behind a goofy ass mask. While it's been a painful journey, the self-discovery was worth it.

Plans for 2023

I'll be continuing my self-improvement goals throughout this year. Since last October, I went down to 202 LBS. Next year I'd like to hit 175 or less. (Ideally I should be aiming for 135 as the ultimate end goal, but that won't be likely for another year and a half). Outside of that, the other goals I'd like to achieve are;

Continue making Animated shorts.

Get contacts, particularly ones I can wear if I decide to go swimming.

Get my hair professionally colored. Been thinking of doing a red violet or dark purple.

Re-work my wardrobe more

Continue exploring and go to more events.

Work on an actual comic project again.

So far for all the goals I've set in previous years, I was able to attain them. I hope that I'll be able to continue that trend in the next year.

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aviculor · 2 years

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Halloween Ends made a very bold move by taking all the franchise's driving questions- Michael's motivations and his thoughts and why he never speaks and why he keeps returning to Haddonfield- and saying none of them mattered. He was just some random guy who was good at murder. There will be more random guys who are good at murder, and this one was not special. Putting him on a pedestal only disrespects the survivors of his violence and the families of his victims.

And that's all well and good and giving a strong moral indictment against True Crime. But what I didn't like was demonstrating this by making Michael a side character in his own movie, devoting 3/4 of the runtime to another random murder guy's start of darkness. After everything we saw Michael do and endure and walk away from in 2018 and Kills, in Ends he's been reduced to a frail old man who needs an accomplice in order to kill people. You might say that all his injuries and his age finally caught up with him, but that's not a very enticing narrative. Laurie being resigned for a mutual kill and Allyson saying "fuck that" and saving her and helping her finish off Michael because they're family and they love eachother and Laurie's not alone anymore- that's compelling. There should have been more of that.

But I can't even criticize the thematic direction they went in, because what kind of asspull would they have done otherwise? Do you think they would have revealed that he was supernatural all along? Would you have wanted him to suddenly start talking? No, having him finally go down and then destroying his corpse in such a ridiculous display of overkill that it almost comes off as paranoid and hollow is pretty much the only way they could have ended the trilogy. The issue I have is with the execution, that they devoted so much of the runtime to the parable they were teaching where it was almost exclusively about this entirely new character who was never seen or heard of before now. This random guy who became Laurie's friend and Allyson's boyfriend and the only person Michael ever connected with. Doctor Samuel Loomis rolling in his grave over that one.

But speaking of that though, an idea I had after watching Kills was that Michael "The Boogeyman" "The Shape" Myers should have been depicted as a product of his imprisonment if they were really spinning Halloween into having a social message. Think about it: a kid raised from age 6 in a mental hospital, treated as a depraved killer instead of a child. His birthday is October 19th, he turned 6 not even 2 weeks before that day. He was barely out of being a toddler. He basically had his first coherent thought last week. It's entirely plausible he stabbed Judith because he was imitating what he saw in a scary movie as a Funny Halloween Thing because it's Halloween, not even marginally understanding the ramifications. His parents only appear in the cold open of the original film and are never mentioned anywhere in the new trilogy. As far as we can tell, they abandoned him and the only person Michael had since his incarceration was Dr. Loomis. His psychiatrist. Who gave up and wrote him off as irredeemably evil and better off dead when he was fourteen. The fact that I went into Ends having already thought about all this, it made a few gears turn while watching Corey go down his slippery slope. The whole idea with Corey was that after what happened- a death that he was unwittingly responsible for- he was rejected by the people of Haddonfield. He lost the support of his community. He was never allowed to atone or heal, only to have his life become an unending reminder of the pain and guilt. There was no hope of forgiveness or rehabilitation because the people around him wouldn't allow it. To make a long story short, he turned into the monster they saw him as, and in doing so he became a second Michael Myers. He literally put on the mask and everything. So there's an argument to be made that the road we watched Corey go down actually was supposed to parallel the one Michael went down. Which would not only support but canonize my hot take.

The theme of the trilogy- especially Ends- was about healing from past trauma. About community. About family. About moving forward into the future. When you think about it, Michael is someone who was denied all of that since the age he started using the potty like a big boy. If you ascribe to my theory, then the filmmakers did explain Michael. It would actually explain everything. He resents the town that threw him away. He mourns the ordinary life that was stolen from him. He sees everyone else as unworthy of the peace and happiness and kinship that he was denied. He spares those who he sees himself in, who have also been cast aside (children whose parents left them with babysitters, adult Laurie at first, Corey). He knows no one legitimately cares about him or what he has to say, so he doesn't bother saying anything. He gave up on society because society gave up on him first. That's who Michael Myers is.

But the truth, as I mentioned in the beginning, is that even with this grand manifesto he keeps to himself, he's not unique. He's not the first, only, or last person to feel this way. Laurie might have recognized the darkness when writing her memoir, but she never thought about where it came from. As long as the concept of a happy, idyllic suburb exists and as long as upholding that ideal is treated as more sacred than the actual people who live there, there will always be those who get shunned and isolated. There will always be those who don't get love and support when they need it most. There will always be those staring out at the rest of the town through a window. There will always be those who the townsfolk would toss into an industrial shredder after they die just to celebrate them finally being gone.

That's the secret meaning behind Halloween Ends.

#halloween #horror #halloween ends #halloween ends spoilers #halloween spoilers #he spoilers #discourse #wmg #michael #michael myers

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evilwriter37 · 2 years

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How did you and your partner get together (don't have to answer if it's too private)

What's your favourite song?

What weather do you like?

Well, we met in college at a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) meeting in college. I thought they were cool at first. They looked super punk and were crocheting a stuffed moose.

Turns out... we hated each other. We did not want to spend time together or see each other. I thought they were too much and they thought I was annoying.

However, having a mutual friend forced us to hang out together, and we started finding the things we didn't like to actually be endearing, and started understanding each other. Now, I think they're the coolest person ever. No such thing as too much! We started dating in October of 2018, so we're coming up on our 4 year anniversary. That's also when I met their husband, and we became good friends very quickly!

Now, this is the happiest relationship I've ever been in. I love my partner, and I love my polycule. It's incredible, and I can't wait to move in with them.

Sorry for the rambling! Hm, I can't really pick a favorite song. I listen to way too much music to be able to pick a favorite. I can't even pick a favorite album! Agh!

As for what weather I like, fall weather for sure! Let me wear jeans and hoodies, and have hot drinks! Let me enjoy the crisp cold! I thrive in the fall, specifically October.

Thank you for asking!

#asks

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josiebelladonna · 1 year

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so.

i’ve been thinking about this for the past week or so, and i don’t really know how to say this without being completely and totally blunt with it as i usually am, anyway.

i’m going on hiatus again. i don’t know how long i’ll be away—it was either that or deleting, and i decided not to do away with deleting because i lose everything otherwise but i need to get away from here.

between the shitbrained updates staff keeps inflicting onto us and i really don’t know if it’s just a me thing and people on here are genuinely repulsed by me, or if there’s something happening collectively that i’m not okay with because it happened while i wasn’t paying attention but… i’m finding myself more and more pissed off by tumblr and this current generation that’s on here at the moment.

i’m so sick of everything being so detached. i’m so sick of everyone being offended rather than curious. i literally hate the word “mutual” now because of this site—it’s especially weird for me because that word didn’t exist in the first year or two i was here. we all knew who our friends were and we all addressed each other by name, we didn’t have these fucking stupid posts that are a dime a dozen watering down the whole neighborhood feel of it all. there was a joke about tumblr, back around 2011-2013, where if you an account on here, you were considered “forever alone” because you were a nerd: you shared things you loved, you were curious about things like sexuality (back when they genuinely allowed nsfw content, no less), you spoke your mind no matter how caustic your opinion, and you were kind of safe here to boot. you were considered “forever alone” because you either got it or you didn’t.

it came to a head around 2014/2015, and i started seeing a serious pushback in 2016, how closing yourself off to other experiences and new people is toxic, something i absolutely do agree with, but the thing is it immediately started to warp itself and dumb itself down, a long slow process that came to the absolute dumbest conclusion of “mutuals”, whatever the fuck that’s even supposed to signify. it’s such a vague term, like what the hell is it even supposed to mean? what degree of companionship are we talking about here? someone clarify this for me.

“they’re not my friends! they’re my mutuals!” i consider teababe on here and brambles on instagram as my friends and not once do i have to refer to them as that. bro, i remember following people on here and we became facebook friends: i remember people on here genuinely meeting up with each other and sending each other things—like actually sending things, making gifts and mailing it to them. i never see that anymore: i could not tell you the last time i saw that. nate peck and eric peterson are my mutuals on ig but i don’t feel comfortable calling them that, especially nate, because quite frankly, i value them more than that.

plus, it was coupled with that fucking election cycle: everything became political almost overnight. with the blatant politics everywhere you turned and people complaining about every little thing comes lack of finesse. with lack of finesse or subtlety comes lack of imagination. things started to get dumbed down really quickly and it was getting on my nerves just as quick.

i wasn’t here for all of 2017 and most of 2018, but i could only assume that those old bloggers just moved on or they too went quiet and their posts started going quiet as well, going down into the tags to the point of being buried. you get new blood in there who grew up watching tumblr from the sidelines and they don’t know what to do with it, especially once the nsfw ban came about.

so gone are the days of being calm and collected and civil about things, and now you have so many bloggers who are just not interested in culture, or don’t even seem to understand or care how tumblr is supposed to work. in hindsight, i should have realized that things were quite different on here than they were in 2013 when i saw the green druidess complaining about some bad review with the line “community? what community?” i remember she showed it to me, too: the way it sits in my memory was it almost felt like a parody, like the person was just fooling around (kind of like what i do) and just trying to get a rise. i remember actually saying, “oh my god, i really hope this is just a joke. it looks like a joke.” but i remember telling her that if something does offend you that much, say something (and boy, did that get warped or what). but that’s kind of how it was back then: we knew about shit going on but we knew how to have good fun from time to time even if it was inflammatory because the world does indeed suck. i remember thinking that 2013 was the worst year ever, and then 2015 was, and then 2016, and then 2017 happened and you realize that i quit doing that shit.

yes, even in 2020, i never said that once, because you learn to laugh at your pain. you learn to laugh at a world that’s been going straight to hell for the last 20 years, because… look at it, it does seem genuinely ridiculous at times.

the first half of the 2010s, when i showed up here as a scrappy troubled 20-year-old bouncing around stem school and into a community college, was quite literally the best time to be on here. when i came back from that 2 year vacation, i had a sense that things were different, especially when i started seeing less art and nsfw content (this was right before the ban, too, like a few months before), and i had to dig around for smutty fanfic. 2019 came along with the green druidess and her “raunchy side” and i feel like that was the “…oh, dear” moment. the moment i realized that tumblr is not what it was 5, 6 years before, and you’re having to make a disclaimer for your own sexuality now—not good for someone like me who constantly grapples with that part of life, and especially over that summer, too. don’t get me wrong: 2019 was a fun year from what i remember, but it gave me a bad feeling.

the pandemic happened… we all know what happened there. three years later, looking at my thirties, and i’m back at square one and wanting a place where i can really be myself. a place that was like tumblr circa 2013 or 2014, even though that time is history now. instagram, for what it’s worth, has done wonders for me, but there’s a reason why those of us who had witnessed it remember it so fondly.

don’t get me wrong: there was a ton of shit back then—and i mean, a lot of shit—but given the choice, i will gladly take that era again over whatever trash this current era of tumblr is. that era was just a lot more entertaining and fun to think about. people didn’t gloss over everything, calling their perfectly natural sexuality their “raunchy/wild side” or be vague about someone or something to the point of sounding so fake and corny: that’s the thing, i could probably forgive her corniness if she wasn’t so damn fake and glossed over shit. if she was actually being real, she’d use words like “anxiety” or go into her past in more elaborate detail, but instead glosses it over with running from a past demon and “being real” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to quantify.

and it’s a problem i see all too often on here now, people being too afraid to address each other by name—their real name, too, not just their handle—and go absolutely batshit with the block button for anything that they don’t like, sealing themselves off from anything that can challenge them or help them grow. and as a result, people on here almost don’t even seem human anymore, just a bunch of robots spewing out generalities and i get nothing out of it. this shit started going sideways a long time ago and it was only a matter of time before the whole echo chamber phenomenon started catching up with us and cemented by something like tiktok.

thing is, i’m usually in a really good mood during the day—and i’m in an even better mood when alex is involved—but it goes away once i get on tumblr now. it wasn’t always like this, either: i used to look forward to coming onto here. now, i actually worry about posting a smut fic or a drawing on here because it’ll either get bupkiss or someone is going to claim that i’m somehow not real because they failed to get to know me and instead relegated me to the level of ~mutual~

one place i’m thinking of going to is dreamwidth because like ao3, it’s made for creatives by creatives. another is fetlife, given i’m trying to feel better about my kinks without worrying about someone complaining about the mature label on a drawing i made or a chapter i wrote: i’m also not hot enough for onlyfans. yeah, don’t get me started on how my face has been treated on here: i was never tagged to post selfies whereas all of you were with the claim that “we’re all beautiful!”, and when i did post a pic, most of you ran for the hills. thanks for joining me in my feeling good, you ugly boring hypocritical fucks.

my other option is to just stay with instagram and ao3. no need to start something new when i can utilize what i already have. as for now, that’s just what i have: my ig is badmotorartist and my ao3 is josiebelladonna. i’ll hang out on the side blogs, too, my art blog (badgalnirvhannah), the fever in fever out blog, and my healing blog (theghostandthehealer), although… if i’m being honest, healing, a natural process, has almost become the poor man’s blogging, like no one seems to realize that you start a healing journal for a reason—i started that blog because the snow back in february was starting to get to me and i knew there were other people in my position (plus, you have people in new york and the northeast feeling down about the lack of snow they got this winter, the reverse effect)—not because you think it’s cool or aesthetic.

more testament fans are out there and this is where the “I don’t know if this is just a ‘me’ thing” mindset comes in. for example, type o has gotten hella popular the last few years, and the anthrax tag has grown a lot since the green druidess and i were at it. you would think it’s happening with testament but… not really. i see more metallica fics repeating the same lore over and over again (i was observing this last night, too: not a single “jameson” or st. anger era fic mentions devin townsend, either, and i don’t know if that’s a good thing or utterly pathetic) but love for these five men is minuscule at best.

and *grits teeth* don’t get me started on ai. i feel like i’ve said everything i needed to say about it because i know i’m just going to be repeating myself, and i doubt people will listen, either, because what i have to say is not punchy enough. who cares if it’s for the greater good, it has to look and sound good. what more can i say about this and that’s not going into the pervasive discouragement and feeling of worthlessness that i think i’m always going to feel but… i’m not even touching that.

something told me i was going to have to leave tumblr at some point, but when was another question. and i think i just found my “when”. maybe somewhere down the line, i can figure out how to archive this thing because i’ve been here almost a decade now: i don’t want to lose everything.

again, i don’t know how long i’m going to be away from here, but i can’t be here anymore—by the way, if there’s an uptick in fics on here, i’m not at all going to be surprised, because that literally happened when i went quiet for those two years, and it sort of happened again when i threatened to leave back in 2020. i get it: i just am not likable. why do you think i struggled with self-love for as long as i did.

you know what will surprise me is people missing me on here. like, seriously: i will be surprised if someone straight up tells me they miss seeing me on here, given the damage i’ve done.

a new chapter of as the seasons grey is dropping some time tonight, i’m gonna keep updating my fics, and i quite literally promised alex a handful of trio drawings, too 😅. i’m a culture person: i want to live and learn and explore the world. i’m also a very earthy person, very sensual and very emotional and very sentimental and i hate how we all treat each other.

#tumblr hiatus #text

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noodlecontuco · 1 year

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impostor syndrome, love languages and other issues

Lately, I've been thinking about my own desires and how I thought I knew what I wanted. How did I went from crying over the fear of not making friends to complain about the ones I've got? Now, I know I might seem like an asshole to you right now, but give me a chance to explain myself. Then, if you want to, you can keep on hating me.

Last summer, I went on a full-on crisis over the fact that I find it so difficult to make new friends. Over the last months of highschool, my closest friend group was falling apart. We were all trying to make it look like it wasn't, still hanging out together and so, but truth is, we were about to start a new chapter of our lives. And they were all going to the same place, while I had to move to another city. Besides, I was experiencing the fallout of one of my longest relationships with my best friend at the moment. That's when I began to worry (too late) about the fact that I didn't have any more friends than those three. And that was the moment the anxiety hit.

"What if I don't make any friends?", "I have such a hard time talking first to someone I don't know, what if no one talks to me during the first week of college and then, before I can notice, everyone has their friend group and I get left out?", "How is it that you make friends anyway? I sure as hell don't know, I haven't done it since I was twelve" etcetera, etcetera. I made all these questions to my therapist. She said that I should stop worrying so much, that things would develop at their own pace and that I would definitely make some new friends. The idea of not getting along with anyone in a classroom full of people that shared my passions was unfathomable, right? It was stupid to think like that, I know it now. But at the time, I was terrified. I felt like I was walking around in a dark, empty room, with my hands tied behind my back and my eyes covered. I spent the worst summer ever since 2018. I was alone with my thoughts for the entirety of the three months that you're supposed to spend with friends.

I ended up developing some kind of excessive attachment to a group of friends, all younger than me, that used to be my secondary friend group since I was 15. One of them specifically became my best friend, but she doesn't know it. I never told her. I don't want to make her think that she owes me something, because she doesn't. I'm fine with just loving her from the distance, thinking fondly of her whenever I hear someone talk about their best friend. I never told her because I know it isn't mutual. And it's okay, she has her own best friend, and so does everyone in that friend group. They are my first option, but I'm not and I have to learn to live with that. I have. It might seem like I'm complaining, but I assure you I'm not. It even feels better this way. Bittersweet, but better nonetheless, because lately I came to the realization that being some people's best friend is too much of a hassle. And that's how we get to the central subject for today.

Fast forward to the present, I'm two months in into the whole college experience, and I have made friends. On the second week, a girl and me started a conversation with another student over the subject of her shirt, that had a cool print on it. We all became friends, so I started to hang out with them more. And more. I suggested going to the theater together once, and getting together for a study session another time. I did this because I needed to do these things anyway and I figured that they would also find it useful. And that was my mistake. One of these girls became too attached to me. Right now, I think I might be her best friend in college. She has gifted me three cans of Sprite just because I once said I liked it. She has given me at least two paper hearts she made herself. She has gifted me a bar of chapstick because she saw my lips were cracked. Take note that she has bought all of these things right in front of me, also, which makes it even worse. Fun fact about me: I hate "just because" gifts. I probably have some kind of trauma when it comes to money, but I don't like other people buying things for me for absolutely no reason. I am very proud of my economic independence (hey, at least I got something good out of the trauma, right?). So, all of these gifts felt... Not right. But the worst part is that this girl has said to me, verbally, that she appreciates me a lot. And I can't brush that off with an awkward "ahh thank you!"

Two months. Only two months. She's sitting right next to me as I write. And I don't know, maybe I'm used to other kind of love, a kind of love that you don't see, so it might not even be love at all. I don't like this kind of love that she gives me. I'm uncomfortable with it, I'm physically and psychologically uncomfortable every time she names things she likes about me without me asking. And the noose tightens around my neck when she asks me to say things that I like about her because I don't know her too well to tell. She sees things in me that I'm not able to and I. Don't. Like. It.

I came to the realization that I'm fine with keeping everyone at arm's length. With having someone to talk to and no one to share a philosophical conversation with, at least until I find the right person, because I'm sure she's not. And yes, you might say that, considering the amount of effort it takes me to make a new friend, I can't afford to be picky, but I know for a fact that I don't want ANYONE to depend on me.

This has already happened, not so long ago. I let someone get too close. I should have told them that I didn't feel the same way earlier, but I didn't, and I'm pretty sure I hurt them even more than if I had just rejected them from the beginning. But if that's what I have to do with everyone that gets close, then what's my destiny? Am I so determined to keep this "I can do it alone" facade that I can't see the fact that I will actually end up alone? And it's so hard to explain to anyone else who is not me. Because if I put it in words, they would think that I'm doing it because I'm scared of getting hurt again. Even my therapist said that to me once. "Are you sure that you're uncomfortable with him getting attached or is it you the one who doesn't want to catch feelings?" At the moment, I didn't know what to answer. How do I know what my subconscious mind thinks? Maybe that is the reason, but the only thing I sure as hell know is that he made me uncomfortable. That she makes me uncomfortable. It's not even their fault. It's their way of showing love that I'm uncomfortable with. Why do they have to be so serious about how much they like me? Why can't they be like me? I do tell people I like them, don't misunderstand. A lot of people around me think that physical contact is my love language, but they're wrong. Physical contact is how I answer when people tell me nice things, because it's the only non-verbal and immediate alternative to words of affirmation and God knows I'm not good at talking.

When I want to express love, I normally do it in quality time or acts of service. Once in a while, you might even hear words of affirmation leave my mouth, but in a harsh, sometimes even blunt way. To make you feel like you don't need to answer. That I'm just telling you because I saw that part of you that I liked and I'm acknowledging it. Never in the way of complete devotion. That's too much responsibility to put on someone's shoulders.

Maybe it's the fact that I compare every single relationship I have now with what I used to have with my former best friend. I used to complain that she never showed she cared about me. Yeah, I know, I just can't be satisfied.

So, we circle back to the main question; what the actual fuck is wrong with me? Why does simple appreciation makes me feel so anxious, so guilty that my throat starts to close until I can no longer breathe? Why can't I stop believing that they're all lies? I don't deny that some people may actually believe I'm as cool as they describe me, but I know that it's not true. And no matter how much people keep on trying to make me believe the lie, I am simply not able to. None of my accomplishments feels real to me. Not even the biggest ones. Everytime I think I have accomplished something big, my brain tells me "Maybe you won only because the rest of them were mediocre. That doesn't make you good. That makes you good in comparison, which is totally different".

Yeah, my brain is a bitch.

The only good thing about it, it's that it pushes me to try even harder to earn what I think haven't earned yet. I only fear that I end up giving up on life for the stupid reason of not being enough for my own standars.

Let's hope we don't get to that.

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21/05/23

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