Sort of random rambling nonsense but you’re the person with the closest opinions to my own I think (you even have a Clarke url and she’s still my favorite ever!) so apologies if it comes off bitter and unhinged BUT. I love byler, prefer it even, as a ship because I love Will and the childhood best friends trope sucks me in every time, but the fandom is literally insane and I can’t stand it. I think it’s because I’m in my 20s and a lot of them are teens but some of the behavior is just inexcusable honestly? “El has to be independent” horrible takes everywhere, Mike HAS to be gay (which is just biphobia most of the time), Will will NEVER be happy unless he’s with Mike and never moves on, Mike only liked El because she had no hair and looked like a boy at first, etc. Don’t even get me started on the “proofs” that get so unhinged that I genuinely wonder if some of them are ok—today I saw one comparing a shot from the Suzie scenes to the last supper painting???? And even though I am neutral on mileven it’s clear that’s what they’re going with so all of this absolute byler endgame certainty everywhere also baffles me. The thing is, I find the ship adorable still, but I really wish the stans could get a collective reality check because they’re embarrassing and obnoxious and sometimes. I wonder how they could’ve watched vol2 and not realized they’re telling the unrequited love angle in canon and can just make transformative content to alleviate that in fanon. /end vent

OH ANON I LOVED THIS ASK SO MUCH, thank u for sharing how you’re feeling and i can just say: SAME, FUCKING SAME. first i’m gonna say something if u know me/my account, u should know that i was (i think i still am, i’m just on....hiatus) a hardcore byler shipper since 2016/season 1, when this ship used to be a crackship and a joke for many people, it was TOUGH back then, i’ve been loving them for years, bc just like u said: childhood friends to lovers is amazing, it’s one of my favorite tropes ever, i have many other ships like this... and just like u said i also love will, i LOVE will, with all my heart (i’m a willelsteve stan since 2016), and now about the fandom i’ll say, it was understandable having hope before vol 2, the whole mike not saying i love you to el was a bit weird to me and to the rest of the fandom, my account before and after vol 2 is two different accounts lmao, before vol 2 i was being hopeful, i made some gifsets with theories and all, i thought that the only way the story would make sense was if byler happened/mileven break up, but after vol 2 something changed, it was like if something finally clicked you know? every missing part, every doubt, every confusion i had disappeared and things became cristal clear to me, and i sit and thought about everything that happened in season 4 and the past seasons and i finally took my byler shipper glasses off and i saw how naive i was being, also a little dumb lmao, u don’t need to be smart af or understand everything about media to know that the direction byler is going is the unrequited one, byler actually never stood a chance, mike and will’s relationship was important to will for him to find out he is gay, it’s actually a little cliche i know but it makes sense, if it wasn’t mike it would have been lucas, or dustin, but since mike is will’s best friend it was him, and it makes sense will would fall in love with the first person to show him kindness and was friendly, we all know how caring mike can be with him, so it makes sense, i can talk about myself like i find out i was bisexual bc i fell in love with my best friend, and spoiler alert we didn’t work, but i will always be grateful for her because i was able to find out who i am (insert the i know what u are meme here lmao), which i think is the same for will, this is the story the duffers are telling, this is part of will’s storyline.... now let’s go to some topics:

the “el has to be independent” take: BULLSHIT, i think if u have been watching the show u should know that el, just like joyce and nancy are independent af, el was away from mike in s2 and she had adventures by HERSELF to find out who she is, to find out about her powers, her mom, etc....in season 3 she also had adventures by herself and max, and in season 4 we saw her again going back to the lab by herself to figure stuff out and get her powers back.......so as we can see, ELEVEN IS INDEPENDENT, but at the end of the day she always comes back to mike bc she’s IN LOVE with him and people need to accept that, it doesn’t make her weak or not independent, it’s part of who she is, she’s in love, female characters can be in love and independent, they don’t have to pick one, they can have BOTH. PERIOD.

the “mike has to be gay” ............sigh.......... tbh anon i’m tired of talking about this, i’ve already talked about how the byler fandom can be biphobic af sometimes which is one of the reasons why i’m.....distant from them now, so i’m not gonna speak about this again, just know that if u don’t think that mike ever had any romantic feelings for el ur literally embarrassing urself, he’s not confused or anything, mike was created in love with el.... let’s talk about mike btw, remember how i said that after vol 2 something clicked? so mike is part of this, mike has SO MUCH overlooked trauma and people don't even realize it, el’s “death” is season 1 marked him for good, and everything we are watching  now is the result of this trauma, season 2 is not the “best mike season” like people say, mike was depressed, going through pstd, he literally says to will that he thought he was going crazy, and after all that sadness he finds out el is alive again and WOW, it was like he finally could breath again, we can see in his eyes, the longing, the sadness, the relief..... and just like that he had to let her go again so she could save the world ONCE AGAIN, and he was so scared, he was crying and he made her promise to him that she would be back..... and then we have season 3, el can’t leave her house bc you know my baby girl is wanted in 65656564 countries lmao so #GIRLBOSS of her if u ask me, so mike has to go to her house to spend time with her since she cant leave her house that much or go to public places, and that makes him be distant from his friends for a little bit but can we blame him? like i know that he could manage his time better but lets not forget that hes also a kid KDJGSNJDKGNKJGNSG like he was what? 13? in season 3? do u really expect a 13 year old to know EVERYTHING? but people say “lucas can do that with max just fine” first max it’s not el, like i said el is wanted in 545645645 countries, it’s easy to manage ur time with ur friends/girlfriend when ur girlfriend can hang out with u all the time, like lucas can take max to watch movies, mike can’t, anyways you know what i mean, this is getting too long so i will link u to these posts where i talked about mike and mileven and how i think his storyline makes sense in s4 here and here, the show have been telling us about mike’s insecurity and fear about losing el for seasons now, but we weren’t paying attention....

and finally the “Will will NEVER be happy unless he’s with Mike and never moves on” BIG SIGH, i said it once and i’ll say it again: DON’T REDUCE WILL DOWN TO HIS FEELINGS FOR MIKE, JUST DON’T, it’s part of him? YES, but it’s not everything about him as a character, the whole “Will will only be happy if he’s with mike” is such bullshit bc idk if u noticed but will already lived without mike, bc he never had mike to begin with, you can't lose something you never had, if we could take away the trauma from the upside down off him we could see that will can be happy just by being next to his friends, to his family, tbh i feel like will’s storyline is about growing up, being able to love and accept himself and understand that he’s loved, he’s not a mistake or a freak, that’s will’s character, and i hope more than anything that my baby boy can learn how to love himself and finally be free, el kind of had the same stuff in season 4 too, when she finally stand up to her abuser and said she’s not the monster, ofc it’s still a working in progress bc she blames herself for max now but is still something, and i want will to have that too.

and FINALLY the “proofs” i’ll just say: LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i’m sorry jfkgnkdjnsdkjgndksjgndkgnskjgndkjgn i laugh so much everytime i read their theories, they are so unserious, they are queerbating themselves and they don't even realize that, they DO need a reality check asap.... but hey whatever makes them happy i just hope they're not assholes when none of this happens

ok i already talked too much, bottom line is: ship whatever u want, whatever u love, byler is such a sweet ship, they are cute af (the fandom is nasty tho), but we all know this is not the direction the show is going and as long as you know that....be free, u can ship non canon ships you know, shipping is not about canon or endgames, is about a dynamic u love no matter what. and we know that will has feelings for mike and like u said we can work with that, i know it’s sad when ur favorite pairing it’s not canon but what can i say? it happens, i have many non canon ships and i still adore them more than anything in the world.

(i'm sorry if there are any typos, i’m sleepy af)

well. there's a lot going on. I'm extremely tired n I'm about ready to just lie facedown on the floor and not move until life forces me to. so. I'm gonna design some ports

I said ages ago that my next step for atdao would be Making Ports Weirder so I've gotta do some idea generation and experimenting and practice

n some better Port Worldbuilding

like I've covered what the function of ports is and what big scale effect they have on the universe and what their role is in the worldbuilding and the story but

I've not gone real specific with them in terms of individual ports and what specific different kinds of malfunctions in reality they can cause

like. I do with a few?

but I can do better and I deserve to do better considering the potential there is for all sorts of avenues of weirdness

I gotta make the most of that premise, I gotta Vibe

I was tagged by the lovely @mystery-snail​ ~~

1. Are you named after someone?      nope. through all the legal names and nicknames, i’m surprisingly not named after anyone or anything. the first character of my chinese name, tho, is one character from a short poem. I’m the second to last character, so the next generation in our family will have the last character.

2. When is the last time you cried?      oh boy. is that the oven screaming? i bet it is.

3. Do you like your handwriting?      it’s almost illegible and i love it. altho, i do have a variety of styles to write in, my normal script is quite pretty if you squint really hard.

4. What is your favorite lunch meat?       turkey??? turkey avocado sandwiches are bae.

5. Do you have kids?       only the kind with four legs, a tail, too much hair, and that go bork bork.

6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you?       no. I think one of me would often try to overtake the other. I’m a shitty, high maintenance person who is petty and nitpicky af. tbh i don’t even know how my friends tolerate me.

7. Do you use sarcasm?       what’s that?

8. Do you still have your tonsils?       yep. altho i really wanted them out as a kid after watching that one episode of rugrats where Suzie gets hers out??? idk??

9. Would you bungee jump?       sure why not. i’m gonna die eventually.

10. What is your favorite kind of cereal?       uh… cinnamon toast crunch? pops? there were these little chocolate cereals that were shaped like half-coconuts i had back in ‘04 when I went to Malaysia for the first time and that cereal was the best fucking thing ever and I’ll never have it ever again.

11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?       do i look like the kind of person who is not lazy enough to do that instead of spending two minutes squeezing my feet into my shoes every time i leave the house? i think not. fuck tying shoes.

12. Do you think you’re a strong person?        i think i have a really strong character.

13. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?        baskin robins mint chocolate chip. rite aid cherry jubilee and rite aid butter pecan. all other icecreams can go home. i’m also lactose intolerant so i can only eat a little bit ;u;

14. What is the first thing you notice about people?        clothes, gait, face, eyes.

15. Red or pink?        red.

16. What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself?        despite loving all my (excessive) jiggly bits, i really wish i could do more physical things without completely dying. other than that, my nails because they’re shitty and i hate them and i get really self conscious about them if they’re brought to attention. I often got my fingers caught in doors as a kid and that caused my nails to grow weird and bent.

17. What color pants and shoes are you wearing now?         i’m wearing black pants and squirtle socks.

18. What was the last thing you ate?         a bagel.

19. What are you listening to right now?         the whir of my computer, the laundry machine, the clack of my keyboard, and my brain telling me that i need to get back to work and earn the $$$.

20. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?         uh. this is hard because i hate crayola crayons with a passion. probably black or white, the most useful colors.

21. Favorite smell?        hot, fresh laundry and baby animal smell.

22. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?        lee (my little sister)

23. Favorite sport to watch?        basketball or curling.

24. Hair color?        black like the tar in your heart bb

25. Eye color?        dark brown like when your hallway lights are off at dusk and you trip on your way to the bathroom.

26. Do you wear contacts?        i just picked up a new prescription today!

27. Favorite food to eat?        the list goes on. food that has a story/history. food from your neighborhood growing up. food that has been handed down for generations. food with good company. atm i’m really craving butter curry and roti canai.  

28. Scary movies or comedy?        scary movies i guess. but it depends on if the comedy is tasteful or not. 

29. Last movie you watched?        the last movie i watched was a 7/10 star, Uncontrollable Love (1&2). like... it was almost there. almost. but it’s hard to find LGBT movies from China/Taiwan that aren’t almost trash, so this one was comparatively good! the main couple was kind of a train wreck, but there was also a girl who played a beard for the main dude who turned out to be lesbian in the credits so that was cool since there are RARELY any lesbian characters in LGBT media for east asia. I would say there are actually more gay and trans stories than there are bi or lesbian. and women in gay films often are antagonizing and one dimensional so it was nice to see a female character who wasn’t the worst. also the bts for it was hilarious and full of fuzzy feelings and the actors really had good chemistry off screen.

30. What color shirt are you wearing?       red/maroon shirt from my alma matter

31. Summer or winter?       winter forever because fuck sweating. 

32. Hugs or kisses?       i’ve been team hugs for the better part of the last 22 years. i want to hug you. let me nestle your ear between my boobs and give you a strong squeeze. i like hearing/feeling peoples’ heartbeats? is that weird?

33. What book are you currently reading?       I’m currently reading two books! The Handmade Marketplace and Color and Light for the Realist Painter. both are boring as heck, but i like learning things.

34. Who do you miss right now?       i miss my snakes. and i miss my grandma. and i miss my dog, tansy.

35. What is on your mouse pad?       it’s a black Corsair mouse pad with a little minimalist boat on it (the logo) and a yellow line at the bottom.

36. What is the last TV program you watched?       Weekly Idol with Pentagon and if that doesn’t count, then Criminal Minds and iZombie on Netflix.

37. What is the best sound?       lee and i have a collection of good sounds, but one that stands out right now is dropping coins into a glass dish. also the sound from that vine of the guy trying to flip an egg, but the pan snaps off the handle. also the sound of ice cubes clacking together, and the sound of the ocean, and also the iPhone wha-tting message sound. those are some good sounds.

38. Rolling Stones or The Beatles?       i’ve never listened to either and i likely never will, but beetles are way cooler than some rolling rocks. 

39. What is the furthest you have ever traveled?       malaysia, hong kong, china. i’m really bad at geography, but it was a 14.5 hour plane ride.

40. Do you have a special talent?       my talent is faking it until i make it, bullshitting on the fly, and knowing a little about a lot of things, but never anything important.

41. Where were you born?       california. but the lesser known part of it that tourists never visit. i’ve never moved either. 

42. People you expect would like to participate in this survey?        @starwiind @datothebiscuit and @carry-on-my-wayward-butt tell me about yourselves~

on my fucking complexion

Oh..well I made it back. Actually, to be honest, I kind of looked forward to writing most of the day. Turns out I have a lot of shit to say. I’m like a modern day Carrie Bradshaw except I don’t actually have anything useful to offer, I don’t get paid to complain and I think I was actually called a Miranda by a friend the other day. To be fair, I don’t even know what that actually means because when Sex and the City was more popular, my mom would mute or pause the TV and look up at me guiltily because she felt like it was inappropriate for me. One of the very few times I ever saw one of my parents try to ...control? the media I consumed. Either way, I had no intentions of plopping down on the couch next to my mother and listen to some old lady on TV talk about sex toys....Nah, I just went back into my room to my beloved internet and quietly destroyed my soul and innocence with a variety of horrifying materials. But that made me the funny and dark person I am today..or it just made me depressed...Honestly, its a crap shoot at this point but I wouldn’t have it any other way because my meme game is on point.

But I ain’t here to talk about that today. I’m here to talk about something way worse - my fucking face. And now that I’ve sufficiently covered my face in 12 different slimes of varying prices and potency I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’m vain as hell. It’s some deep rooted self hatred that I will no doubt embarrassingly expand on one day in other blog post. But I am. I said it. I am vain as fuck because I don’t feel like I deserve love if I am anything less than perfect. So you can imagine my absolute panic when I started noticing some shit wasn’t right. 

It crept in real slow. I never had acne as a teen or young adult. (I guess I’m just a regular adult now and that really fucks me up) My skin was lovely and I got many compliments. I took it for granted and carelessly enjoyed something that people struggle with for their entire lives. I didn’t even wear foundation until my mid twenties. I was a lucky bitch and I didn’t even know it. 

Then the thyroid happened. Or stopped happening. In 2015, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. I swear to fuck that stupid gland has been the bane of 90% of my life’s issues. But one day I woke up and shit was just different. 

the melasma

NORMAL stuff, obviously, some skin looked a little...less tight around 25-26. So I decided I would never tan again and began religiously using skincare products and that was cool until a horrifying day in 2017 when I went to the beach. I came back from a day of swimming and my face looked..dirty. Weird. WEIRD. Except that shit didn’t come off. A quick google search told me I had melasma. I found it was hormone related, that women typically got it during pregnancy...the thyroid, that slowly deteriorating son of a bitch, had struck it’s first blow to something that really mattered to me (being a functioning human was apparently not high on my list of things that mattered). I cannot begin to tell you how many creams, serums, acids and whatnot I have tried to get it under control. It is literally the worst. It shows through my foundation, it makes me look older because of the shadowing ON top of the signs of aging that I’m already experiencing. I will literally burn that shit off of my face and then 10 minutes of careless sun exposure brings it right back.

the cystic acne 

But recently, as of April, some other shit went down that I am just not fucking here for. I always had a few clogged pores, MAYBE a pimple on my chin but I began experiencing the WORST and most PAINFUL cystic acne of my LIFE all over my chin. HORMONAL ACNE. It’s calmed down a lot thanks to some intense research and minor lifestyle changes but it always flares up every cycle..oh and it scars. So the post acne marks look like i have some amazing double chin contour going on that just makes me feel like the bees knees. 

the ...fuck I don’t know, being old AF? is that what you wanted me to say???????

So besides those two amazing things actively waging war on my face, I’ve also started dealing with seeing some serious signs of aging. I’m doing what I can, I barely drink alcohol, use sunscreen, try to sleep, drink as much water as I can and put more shit on my face nightly than I ever have in my entire life and yet...it persists. I know I can’t stop it but I mean, let’s be real, if you are here, you have seen my instagram (aka horrifying shrine to my vanity where I collect internet ass pats from strangers so my brain will release dopamine) so you may have the slight indication that my face is important to me. My thyroid unfortunately also partially to blame because it makes me unable to retain any kind of moisture. I’m a fucking sad desert of sadness, fine lines and skin flakes. I don’t like it and I regularly ponder my first world problem. How do I become more moist as a human? Am I using too much acid? Not enough? More oils? DIFFERENT OILS? Korean skincare? STRAIGHT FUCKING CHEMICALS? Should I just hermetically seal myself inside of a plastic bag filled with liquid at night and hope for the best? Do I just need to accept my fate as a person that will eventually become filled with various plastics and begin my journey? Am I a Dolly Parton or a Barbara Eden? I’m probably that weird lady with the cat face.

So I mean, beyond me complaining about this shit and you reading it for some reason (seriously props to you if you’ve made it through this narcissistic bullshit) what am I going to do about it? Well, I guess I’ll do it in list form because..this shit is getting long.

- Go to the Dr and harass them into doing a hormone panel

- Continue to take the herbal supplements that I’ve taken in the past and the new ones I’ve introduced recently and give them a decent time to work

- MORE ACID but also with some heavy duty moisturizers

- ..Exercise. That is it’s whole own bloated post.

- Better quality nutrition and possibly buckle down on real intermittent fasting (not just starving myself)

- Accept it and love myself and know that the people who are worth it in my life will love me even if I have chin pimples, wrinkles and what looks like two poorly healing black eyes? Even if I have a cat face one day? No, fuck u. I ain’t there yet...but I genuinely hope to be.