Okay, how ridiculous are the comments on food shorts on FB? Literally any time a girl with false nails is making something, half the comments are about how gross she is. For...making food with long nails???

Or the people who tell girls (even without false nails) to wear gloves when they're cooking. If they don't they're disgusting and nobody should ever eat their food. Literal 🤮emojis.

Who in the actual fuck wears gloves to cook at home? How do they think women with false nails eat or feed their families? Gloves and short, polish-free nails are only necessary if you're working in a commercial/industrial environment. Because you're exposed to a wide variety of germs, you're preparing food for a longer period of time, there's a much greater risk of cross contamination and you don't want to endanger the public.

Are there actual people these days who legit put on gloves to cook for themselves in their own homes???

what's funny about booktok is they'll actually consider books with the topics they romanticize problematic if those topics aren't romanticized. if you portray something disturbing as disturbing in your book, they think you're a sicko, because they cannot comprehend why someone would write something they aren't "into". I remember watching this one booktok reviewer going over 'disturbing books'. one was a booktok popular story where the love interest sexually assaults the main character (although you're supposed to think she secretly enjoyed it because he's hot! lol) and the other was a book where a man recalls and reflects on essentially getting off on emotionally abusing women. first book with a "woman secretly wanted to be raped" narrative is, according to this reviewer, perfectly fine, but the latter, which is more of a harsh reality, must only exist for Freaks to read. it's a really strange dynamic to me.

Thinking about Danny Phantom but as found footage/analogue horror. Like, it works SO incredibly well and I'm a bit obsessed.

Inexplicably grainy FentonWorks lab footage? A ghost dissection video log that gets more disturbing the longer it goes on? Ambiguous morality? Distorted imagery? Something being very, very wrong with the Fenton's son?

The proto-portal test footage from the 80s???? followed by hospital quarantine reports describing what a fatal dose of ecto-contaminants looks like? Which is then interrupted by Ṽ̵͇͍̓̒̕l̷̛͕̜̞̬͒̔͑̾̊͊a̷̝̰͕̗͇̣̓́́d̶̢̬̳̗̻̖̄̒̓̈́͌̚̕ ̴̡̛̱̱́́͆͠ͅw̷͎̬̠͒̐́̈́̈̇̚ā̵̢̢̛͔͙́͒̚͝k̴̡̹̘̻̜͇̬̍̏̄͂̊̀͠i̸̙͋͗̄ṅ̸̢̳̻̠̦̬͌̍͐͐̅͠g̶͇̥̮̦̗͑̃͘ ̶̨̏̈́̆͠ṳ̷͉̩̮̙̄̇͜p̸̧̡̹̗͇͘ and turning the hospital upside down?

But don't worry. By then, he wants to.

(@romanromulus :D )

god you're so good at writing the interpersonal struggles of relationships between troubled and kind of shitty old men, i can't tell you how much of a refreshing breath of air reading your development/s and storylines for the characters you like are when all i see from other people is "oh they're so cute uwuwuwu" when like no there's more nuance and flavor to it than that!!!!!!!!!! god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wagh,, Thank you anon....

So far I haven't seen much of "that" but maybe that's because I've only been here one year, haha. Tho I guess I do tend to forget about a lot of the stuff I see since I always check the moral Orel tag when I'm barely awake.

people stop having disordered attachment to your pets challenge

I have never been to psych ward in my life (touchwood) but the fortnight mv (especially the starting part) triggered me.

So imagine the people who have actually been to one... How triggered must they be by the mv?

Cursed Princess Club is so good dude. Like, if I had to say, it's my comfort story, and it's not finished yet

+*. STORY TIME .*+

(below cut)

So today, after having been horsing around with my brother; being the absolute feral little gremlin that I am, I scuttled off and he called after me “Don’t you come stick your face in my window-” (there are windows inside the house between his bedroom and the living room ‘cause it used to be a porch) So naturally, I decided to come stick my face in his window, but with my techno mask on for extra shock factor, y’know? Except I thought he meant the outside ones. I didn’t feel like putting real clothes on (I was in a sports bra and pajama shorts), so I went out wrapped in a blanket- all you could see was the mask and my feet.

I start walking up the side of the house to get to his room, and this pickup slows down in front of our yard. There is no other reason I can think that they would have slowed down other than them having seen me- and I was in plain view from the road. And I’m just highly amused. That I probably just significantly confused one of our neighbors. And that this is what they would have seen.

one of the more random things that disturb me about tma is simply the existence of the gorilla skin. like..........why. what was up with that.

Finished re-reading the Gregor the Overlander series in probably 15 years and I’ve been ugly sobbing for an hour (it’s now 3:30am)

Real question is how did I not remember my favorite character dies in the end?? Twelve year old me really blocked that out huh

There were so many specific moments I remembered so clearly across all five books but my childhood comfort character fucking dying a gruesome traumatic death was not one of them 🤔

Fucking Suzanne Collins man 🧍‍♀️you read her books as kids and go hmm wow war is really traumatic 😞and then you re-read them as an adult and it’s like jESUS CHRIST

being a manga/anime stan and not living in Japan is such a weird experience—like wdym people aren’t out mourning Gojo in the streets

this is going to be a very uncomfortable and potentially triggering conversation so i suggest you scroll past if you have a lot of empathy because this isn't fun at all

also wanna preface this by saying i'm not interested in spreading conspiracy theories or "truther" claims because i feel that's incredibly disrespectful and potentially harmful to the people that need the most help. any allusions to unverified rumors will be presented as uncorroborated, not as fact (only bringing them up because i know that's the kind of rumor floating around and i don't want to seem like i'm participating somehow in dismissing concerns). because we simply don't know. and it's not our business.

i've had this bad feeling about amanda bynes for the past decade. it's the same pattern we've seen with child stars over and over again. the drugs, the mental breakdown, the conservatorship. but i pushed those nagging thoughts away. i didn't have the bandwidth at the time because i was living in an abusive household when her most public battles were happening. i didn't have the time or the emotional understanding to put towards what was happening to her even as i felt it mirrored what i was going through or what my mom was going through. then i found out about dan schneider a few years ago. i didn't really engage with the rumor and speculation about him - i was in my early 20s when this all broke and i didn't know most of the shows he'd been involved with except by the fact that my younger siblings watched them. i'd been an amanda bynes fan - hugely into the amanda show and what i like about you. my siblings watched drake and josh, icarly, and victorious. i didn't have the emotional bandwidth at the time to look into what people were saying. i knew it would upset me if i learned too much. but i couldn't stop thinking about amanda.

i heard about quiet on set from news websites. i saw the headlines about drake bell. it shook me to my core. the things i was reading were horrific and immediately put me in mind of what my sister went through as a teenage survivor of repeated sexual abuse by a man who was trusted with our care. she'd had a huge crush on drake when we were growing up. i wonder if she's heard about this.

this immediately made me think about amanda again. this time i couldn't push the thought away. i guess i'm finally ready to process the way this whole situation has felt to me.

the way people talk about amanda reminds me of how people in the 50s talked about judy garland. child star with incredible talent, far beyond her years, with incredible charm and personality and the whole world at her fingertips. everyone loved working with her. until she became erratic and had a mental breakdown fueled by drugs. (you could even argue there were parallels because both women were frequently typecast as the wholesome girl next door and not really allowed to break out of that infantilizing box.) and no one could ever think why. why does this happen.

i've come to believe that mental illness always has a cause. brain chemistry fucked up by trauma, whether that's long-term stress or a singular event or repeated traumas stacking on top of each other. the mind can't cope. i really, truly believe something horrific happened to amanda bynes. and i know people will say, well, maybe it wasn't dan schneider. she was doing fine for years after she stopped working with him. i want to make one thing very clear. trauma doesn't always manifest symptoms immediately. not everyone comes out of a trauma looking shell shocked. i know from my experience because i didn't have my breakdown until a year after my abuser was exposed and i'm still feeling the consequences to my psyche to this day. and i think it must be difficult for child stars to process this trauma. the pattern i've seen is the child star endures something terrible, gets incredible fame and begins taking on more and more pressure, then when this isn't enough to make them happy they turn to drugs. you think because they got out that it would all just go away? no. they were raised to play characters so they played those characters. there was incredible pressure to just play those characters because that's what the fans want. having struggles isn't part of the brand. it had to be especially rough on nick stars because there wasn't much separation between them and the characters they played. it was the amanda show. drake and josh used their real first names. the separation between who they were and who the character was was probably a very blurred line.

i wonder how long this documentary has been in production. tracking down these people and petitioning courts had to have taken ages. amanda was supposed to be at 90s con last year but cancelled due to illness and had another psychotic episode. 90s con itself may have been a trigger for her, but if someone had reached out to her or if she'd heard about this production...i could see that triggering her and making her relive the horror she went through. there are so many unsubstantiated rumors floating around. i can't speak to whether she was high on adderall during that interview when she was 12 (she could've just been a hyper child but they could've been pulling a judy garland on her and i don't trust these people plus she's said she got hooked on adderall when she was a teenager for weight loss but she may not feel comfortable disclosing if the studio has her under NDA). i can't verify if that side twitter actually belonged to amanda. it could be some sicko thought it was funny to accuse her boss of knocking her up and forcing her to get an abortion at 13 or accusing her father of various things.

but i get why she wouldn't speak up because people won't believe her no matter what she says. i went through something and people in my hometown still debate whether i'm crazy or lying for attention. my family did everything they could to put me under control and get me diagnosed as paranoid or delusional so they wouldn't face justice. (really don't get me started on how the mental healthcare system is used by abusers to cover up their sins.) i wouldn't put it past her parents to do that, especially considering amanda had a bad relationship with them as a teenager which sent her further into that groomer's clutches. she doesn't owe us anything because it'll start a firestorm that could retrigger her as people debate if she's delusional or scrutinize her past mistakes to determine if she's a perfect enough victim to deserve sympathy.

which brings me to drake bell. i knew he was the victim before i watched the doc but it still gave me chills when he sat down in that chair. like it felt like the air drained from the room. it was so obvious that what he went through has affected him so deeply and that he had no one to turn to. my abuser had so much community support, so many people making us out to be lying opportunistic bitches. i can't imagine having to carry that secret. i wonder if the people around him can pinpoint it in retrospect when he started being different. i want the other kids on set to know that it's not their fault they didn't know and that they had a bad opinion of him at some point. my sister and i were pitted against each other by the man who assaulted her and it's only with context later that i can see what was going on. i have no doubt that schneider employed these tactics so no one would feel comfortable disclosing what happened to them.

i admit that i cried watching the drake bell episode. that had to be incredibly difficult for him to open up about it after all these years and i hope he can get some closure and that someone starts a support group for these former nick stars.

and to drake bell himself. you were a child. you had no idea what grooming looks like. most grown people don't seem to know what grooming looks like based on how they talk about these issues. you are not at fault for what that man did to you or not knowing how to handle it. you didn't do anything to encourage this and you're not at fault.

and to his father. i appreciate that you did what you could to try to protect him. my mother had a similar experience trying to protect us from my abuser but everyone assumed she was psychotic and had her put away. try not to blame yourself when you were the lone voice of reason and everyone else insisted you were in the wrong. i do have fault to throw on amanda bynes' parents to some degree depending on what part of all this is true, but i can't find fault with drake bell's father who did try when he saw something wrong.

and i'm sorry but dan being super nice to drake afterwards seems like an attempt to make himself look better and get another hit show. i don't believe for a second that dan didn't know anything or that he had any motives beyond making his own star rise. he wanted to churn out product, and couldn't have that product if drake bell was visibly distraught.

i want to know how many people have known it was drake for 20 years and said nothing. how many people were in peck's side of the courtroom and yet still had the audacity to think this child was at fault in some way. that's vile and utterly unforgivable.

i just want to end this by saying to leave these people alone. don't harass anyone who hasn't spoken up because they may not be in a headspace where it's healthy of them to say anything. they don't owe us any explanation of why.

what is it with people (liberals usually for some reason??) and weird Freudian projections onto politicians? “We need this politician to be like a mother/father to the country” no we don’t

I think the reason the Phantom (2004) is not as good of an adaptation of the stage show as it could’ve been, is because it didn’t have the OG Pro staff involved in its development.

I could be wrong here (and if I am let me know) but it seems that the movie was entirely the brain child of ALW and Joel Schamaucher. No Hal, no Maria, and no Gillian, who we know really helped ALW reshape the stage show to be more palatable, sophisticated and romantic from his original drafts (the OG Main title music video from the 80s speaks ALOT)

But since the movie was only produced by him, it seems he didn’t really have people to bounce off ideas with, and it shows. I wonder what the movie (casting included) could’ve looked like if he allowed more creatives to come in and work with him.

Kawi and his sense of Self

I've had Thoughts jumbling around my head for a few days, ever since @waitmyturtles started watching Be My Favourite (and sped through all 7 eps - so great to have you on board!) and having read some really great posts about time travel, the idea of 'present' and 'past', truth, and Kawi's character growth (here, here, here, and here are just a few examples by @waitmyturtles, @rocketturtle4, @wen-kexing-apologist, and @ginnymoonbeam).

But it was @rocketturtle4's addition on this post that made me think more about Kawi and his sense of self, specifically the bolded part of this line:

The overall theme of being who you are regardless of the time you are in feels like it needs teasing out more.

And this might not be interesting to anyone but me, or relevant to the analysis of the show, but it's bouncing around in my brain and I need to write it down.

The above line (and all the talk about Kawi's present and past) made me think about Antonio Damasio's theory of the construction of the Self in his book The Feeling of What Happens:

The idea each of us constructs of ourself [sic]...is based on autobiographical memory over years of experience and is constantly subject to remodelling. (p. 224)

This remodelling occurs through the reworking of memories - so each time we remember a memory we craft it slightly different based on our accumulative life experiences and innate biases.

BUT what really made an impact on me about this is the following:

The changes which occur in the autobiographical self over an individual lifetime are not due only to the remodelling of the lived past...but also the laying down and remodelling of the anticipated future...The memories of the scenarios that we conceive as desires, wishes, goals, and obligations exert a pull on the self of each moment. No doubt they also play a part in the remodelling of the lived past, consciously and unconsciously, and in the creation of the person we conceive us to be, moment by moment. (pp. 224-225)

So how does this relate to Be My Favourite?

Many people have already talked about how Kawi is not a nice person (this is a great post by @respectthepetty). Why does Pisaeng like him? Kawi doesn't even like himself. And, at the beginning of the show, Kawi's Self - his identity - is built from his memories of the past and his immoveable desire of what he wanted and still wishes his future to look like. Kawi is miserable, stuck in a miserable life (of his own making), and unable to make any changes because his idea of what he wants his future to be is impossible.

But then he gets to go back in time, and his sense of self starts changing. It changes because he's remaking his memories in real time, and in remaking those memories he's being exposed to things which are gradually altering his desires and goals for his future.

And that's a huge shift for Kawi. It's almost like going through a break-up - in a break-up, not only do you lose the person you're with but the future life you imagined with them ceases to exist. So you lose your sense of identity. Who are you without them? - Who is Kawi when he's not pining for Pear? Who is Kawi when he gets and loses Pear? Who is Kawi when he dates Pisaeng?...

And it's no wonder everything is still a mess when Kawi jumps forward to his present - he hasn't had enough time in his changed past to process the new memories of his past, nor to honestly admit to himself (or realise, if he's not quite there yet) what he really wants for his future.

And this journey is such a beautiful one to watch. As his memories and future scenarios change, Kawi's sense of self changes - hopefully to a happier, 'better' person...and I mean 'better' in the sense of nicer to other people because he's nicer to himself (and vice versa) and more open to change, rather the rigidity of his 'older' Self stuck in his miserableness.

I think this is why I'm warming up to him, because he is changing, albeit gradually, and changing for the better. He's becoming more pliable in his outlook, choices, and acceptance of things he can't control. All of which will aid him in being able to see a different future for himself - like an upward positive spiral. (This is a great post by @lurkingshan which is sort of related).

I'd love to be able to connect all this with other people's takes (especially to the discourse around whether Kawi will stay in his past and live his 12 years again or jump forward to an altered present and 'fix' what he can there) but my brain has stopped here. HOWEVER, I welcome others to jump on and expand on this if they wish.

(also tagging @grapejuicegay since we've been shouting to each other in our dms about this show 💖)