tuesday again 5/21/2024

get a load of this cat

listening

one of my favorite bands, Joywave, dropped a new album last week! it is not my favorite album of theirs but so it goes. perhaps it needs more time to grow on me. Sleepytime Fantasy kicks off my favorite section of the album. video game enchanted ice cave dream sequence music.

i must stay true to my own rules for this series (not a rec series, genuinely what i've been into the most this week) and the song that's been on loop all week is a genshin impact character's theme music (punchy wolf-coded ice cop who is the duke of the prison he. runs? administers? don't worry about it). unfortunately a bop. the character music lately has been a lot more modern and experimental than i expected? this one has a police siren drop

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reading

thank you mackintosh.

i really, really enjoyed Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott (LAMBDA award winner 1995)! @delta-orionis and i frequently ask ourselves "what if neuromancer was good?" and this scratches that itch for me. it is often difficult for me to take neuromancer's protagonist henry seriously, but this book features a pair of extremely practical dykes. it opens on the passing of a new american law criminalizing big swathes of online activity, passed despite a presidential veto. description from amazon

Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the computer nets. The hip, noir adventurers who get by on wit, bravado, and drugs, and haunt the virtual worlds of the Shadows of cyberspace, are up against the encroachments of civilization. It's time to adapt or die. India Carless, alias Trouble, got out ahead of the feds and settled down to run a small network for an artist's co-op. Now someone has taken her name and begun to use it for criminal hacking. So Trouble returns. Once the fastest gun on the electronic frontier, she had tried to retire-but has been called out for one last fight. And it's a killer.

this startled me by how fun and competent it is! i tried reading one of the author's books last year (Dreamships) and had a miserable time with the pacing and flow of information. there are echoes of the pacing issues i had with the last book-- this is a nearly four hundred page hardcover, we have a lot of Next Locations to go to, and we are going to take our fucking time getting there. a road trip book, rather than a destination book. Scott has gotten way way better at fleshing out those locations— an artists' co-op has their skylights set to amber to hide the wear and tear on everything in their central hangout space when the feds show up. i also connected with the inciting incident way more-- someone stealing a female hacker’s name and style is instantly relatable. i am riding shotgun with Trouble. i am ready to throw down with her.

it's a very physical book in many ways, bc it has three brief sex scenes, is very concerned with sensuality in both senses of the word, and overall it's like the background in an anime that’s full of dials and buttons and little blinky lights. written in 1994, fascjnating how much concepts of VR and sensory inputs have not changed, but everyone still has the equivalent of an enormous old school desktop and giant CRT monitors set up. everyone is constantly lugging around so much physical tech. the stuff that makes you better at hacking in the net is quick reactions to VR sensations, the only way to get that cutting edge sensation is to get a physical chip or “worm” in your head, and the only people who do that are the core outcasts and freaks of the internet (the gays, the women, the people of color, the all three, presumably the furries as well). from that day to this…

there's an interesting contrast between Trouble and her old partner Cerise stalking the virtual reality bazaars/being queens of the BBS undergrounds, and the danger they feel and face when moving about in the real world. some reviewers are very cranky about how negotiations on and offline feel the same but i did not feel this particular quibble. communication is communication. it is known both on and offline that they're 1) women and 2) lesbians. they're in less physical danger online but slurs can still happen no matter where they are. also, i am well used to the necessity of having to posture and peacock and be kind of a bitch to establish myself in order to get anything done in coding/hardware scenes, which is something i don't think any of the male reviewers of the day ever had to think about.

some cowboy shit goes down at the end that had me hooting and hollering, and Scott handled the hacking scenes in an interesting way-- a sort of abstracted duel? terrific "fight" scenes. very interesting at how she will move things around in order to treat scenes in ways she's good at-- like establishing very grounded locations that feel real, physical sensations, and fight scenes-- instead of just kind of slogging through a very surface level high-overview travelogue like in her last book. ive been stuck on a fic chapter for like four years and this is making me think about doing it the fun way instead of the way i thought it should be done. this may be obvious but i am an amateur and more importantly an idiot.

this was a $6/1 book special last year at one of my favorite thrift stores, a religious shop with the absolute worst vibes in the greater houston area but some of the best stuff

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watching

Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970, dir. Brava). sometimes you see a cool title on kanopy and you don't have a better way to kill an hour and a half. plus it had some guys i know from cowboys. tw for a suicide's body in the first fucking ten seconds of the trailer, which is a weird trailer choice bc u don't actually see most of the murders in the movie.

ive watched a fuck of a lot of spaghetti westerns so i feel i am somewhat qualified to tell you this is one of the worst dubs ive ever seen. the lines actors are quarter-heartedly delivering do not always make a lot of sense and only occasionally match the subtitles. i am assuming this is the original dub, bc kino lorber generally does a pretty okay job restoring things?

this is not a good movie (extremely troubled production, director swap three days before filming, made on a shoestring budget, the actors mostly wore their own clothes, etc). it is not very good at maintaining tension, because it is a film that first and foremost Looks. beautiful fucking sets, beautifully decorated. the exterior is a matte painting, a sort of frothy dream-bubble of sixties architecture. most of the interiors are apparently a real house. incredible experimental burbling soundtrack full of Weird Sounds.

sorry about the tubi interface and our old friend the activate windows logo.

there are so many fun directorial flourishes and staging, but it does get a little wrapped up in itself. this made me think of The Secret of NIMH, a beautifully animated talking-animal film that gave me nightmares as a child, where the animation tricks and sparkles and moving parts sort of all get in each other's way to produce something less than the sum of its parts. this sort of happens here. i'm going to yoink this from a review:

Bava’s eye for exquisite compositions is equally evident. One scene in particular stands out in this regard: The filmmaker shoots an otherwise humdrum fistfight through wooden latticework that breaks the action up into an abstracted mosaic effect. The fight culminates with a table being upended, which in turn unleashes a myriad crystal spheres. The camera follows along as the spheres tumble and cascade down a spiral staircase and roll across a tiled floor before plopping like so many bath bubbles into a tub. The scene concludes with the revelation of a recently deceased character caught in what you’d have to call a tableau morte. It’s a dazzlingly orchestrated sequence, easily on par with more famous Bava set pieces.

it's gorgeous! there's also So Much going on. another lovely bit of business: as each person dies they get wrapped in plastic sheeting and put in the walkin freezer. next to slabs of beef. not a subtle film, and i don't mean it as a diss, bc where's the fuckin fun in that?

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playing

i have not been doing much of anything here except listen to podcasts and work toward the two-thousand-fish-caught achievement in genshin. impatiently waiting for Clorinde to be released in several weeks. that one button needs a raise. it is So funny to see genshin characters with fucking guns. very sword and pike based societies so far

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making

every time i have tried to make one of these samplers for Me it's gone horribly wrong or been somehow destroyed so i'm making this one for my brother's upcoming birthday, bc he will have off-campus housing next academic year, in an attempt to peacefully do some fucking cross stitch and get something out at the end of it. pattern here on etsy

Allow us to introduce ourselves

Half a year active, over a hundred followers, the majority of which are veteran tumblers from that one 60k note explosion, and we still haven't properly introduced ourselves. Time to fix that.

We are Clover, an endogenic plural system. That means we are multiple people sharing one brain and body, and we aren't plural because of trauma. We do not have DID.

I am Quincy, the headmate who fronts the most. Quincy is not my real name, but it could've been, and it's an alias I've been using for a few years.

There are a lot of people on here who say that it's impossible for a plural system to form without trauma, but as you may have seen from our syscourse (system discourse (expect a lot of sys- compounds)) reblogs, they rarely cite any credible sources, and that's because they're wrong. I am not a LARPer and I do not claim to have DID. This really is every hour of my life, online and offline. If you have any more questions about plurality, feel free to send me an ask.

Though if we're talking about origins, "not from trauma" is overly vague for my taste. If we're really talking about how the system formed, I prefer "dreamgenic", because everyone originated from some combination of nightdreams and immersive daydreams which I had varying levels of control over.

The second most active headmate, Penelope, has her own blog @penelope-clover. She posts more infrequently, when she's able to front/cofront/proxy, and is currently mostly focused on syscourse, with occasional slices of life. She's my older syster.

Headcount is currently in the upper teens. Some more may be mentioned occasionally but I'd rather not have a list of private details about everyone easily accessible here for anyone to see. For the most part, all you'll see every once in a while is some colored text indicating a distinct voice.

Anyway, enough plural stuff! Now for typical bio stuff!

Fleed Reddit to come here and wow Tumblr is way better. Always happy to commune with fellow Rexxitors!

For obsession I circle between Chess, Minecraft, Geometry Dash, Warrior Cats, and Undertale. Fandoms I am on the edge of getting sucked into include The Amazing Digital Circus and Death Note. I also plan to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender at some point. Ever since our syscovery, I've consumed next to no fiction for fear of more headmates.

I have a few projects in the works but I've promised myself that I won't post them publicly until I've actually made substantial progress!

No DNI! Maybe it's just because I'm not jaded by years of wasted time with unproductive trolls, but I think assuming someone is in bad faith just because they disagree with you about something heated is bad actually, partly because I've seen what happens and how long progress takes when left-of-center people generally refuse to interact with, for example, transphobes. Relatedly, I will only block you if I think you're a bot or if you really, really fuck up.

Do not be surprised if I casually shit on something you believe in without warning.

I have an ever-growing queue set to post five times per day, and I try not to post too much more than that. I also try to keep my dash at less than 100 posts per day, which is apparently uncommon here.

Reblog reblog reblog! Not just my posts, but everyone (unless you have a good reason not to, like with this intro post). Reblogs are what keep Tumblr alive! Likes do next to nothing.

That's all for now! If you have any more questions, send me an ask and I might add it to this post!

hi sard, random question, how’d you get your tumblr name? u don’t have to answer but i was just thinking about names bc one of my other mutuals sent me a picture of emmet from the lego movie and i had to answer like yeah actually i did name myself after that guy and unfortunately that’s not a joke

i got my name through a series of events actually.

back when i first got into fanfiction, i decided to make a wattpad account. i originally wanted my handle to be sarcasticfangirl, but once realizing that bad been taken, i brainstormed and defaulted to way-to-sarcastic; spelled wrong on purpose. not the best i know but i was 13, give me a break. also sort of glad i wasn't able to use my first thought since. well. trans.

i realized at some point that i wasn't comfortable letting people use my real name online, so i decided to come up with an alias. i basically just thought of synonyms for sarcastic, got sardonic, thought it was good enough, and put it in my wattpad bio as my name

eventually a year or so later i decided that cross posting my one shots to tumblr might be a good idea, so i built up a second account. i was going to keep my wattpad handle, but i didn't. don't remember why.

over the past four or so years i've gone from sardonic to sard to sar to sardine and sarcs and whatever else people feel fit to call me. at this point it's become a part of me now, and as cheap as that sounds it makes me feel nice to know that i have a following of people that knows me as sard instead of my birth name, you know? although at this point in real life more people use my preferred name than anything else which is awesome.

anyways sorry for the text wall but yeah. the origin story of my username/pseudonym

HI it has been an eternity since i've been active on tumblr, but the search of content for smaller fandoms keeps bringing me back. the last time i posted anything and reblogged stuff was more than two years ago, so i think it's time for a lil introduction post!!

this blog is my main blog for all sorts of random stuff that i love, so welcome <3 i also have side blogs for two of my fandoms: @seeyouinthestars (the Aurora Cycle) and @onceuponaneverafter (OUABH).

you can call me crenna, like my blog name, or larissa, which is an online alias i've used for yeeeears and which most of my online friends know me by, or lili, which is a nickname i've vibed with recently. i'm 21 years old and i use she/her pronouns!

i looove books and writing, all sorts of arts and crafts, music and dance... and yes, i barely have time for all of my hobbies lol. usually, when i have free time, i just sit in my room, wrapped in a fluffy blanket and spend time on my laptop or by reading a good book. i'm particularly fond of aesthetics, fantasy, taylor swift's music, peppermint tea, fairy lights, cozy vibes, stars, my friends, and my countless fictional crushes. i'm a little dramatic, a little hopeless, but i'm also funny sometimes?

i already know my activity levels are not going to be consistent from now on either bc i'm in college, but i'd love to meet cool people and join the fun in my fandoms! lastly, my blog is a safe space for all lgbtq+ people, people of color, and other marginalized groups. no discrimination will be tolerated. if you disagree, don't interact.

welcome, nice to meet you!!

(i will definitely get a better introduction one of these days but take this for now <3)

I don't really like making vent posts but I just feel the need to talk about it

Warning for misgendering and dysphoria, if that might make you uncomfortable

A supposed friend has been getting on my nerves (not anyone who may read this, this "friend" may use this site, but has no idea what my url is) a lot lately and I'm getting really frustrated and tired

He started off as just a friend of my brother, and then eventually he became my friend somewhat. We'd all hang out, and I came out to him as queer (both that I'm bigender and bi/aroacespec) because of a question he asked and I decided to be a funnyman about it. Even told him I have a girlfriend (Liz if you see this hihiii I had so much fun watching Dungeon Meshi with you mwah!!! ♡) and he was chill with it (we live in a small, very conservative town), and he even admitted he's attracted to feminine men. Cool. Swag. Me too, buddy

Like 3 days after I told him I have a girlfriend, he admits that he has a crush on me and asks if we could ever work out. No... I have a girlfriend. I'm not interested in you, I see you as a bro. And I am definitely not what he is looking for (when the three of us have discussed the future, he stated that he is a huge family man and wants kids. Multiple. I do not even want one child because I struggle to take care of myself and am not physically, mentally, and emotionally able to raise a child, now and far into the future). He accepts that on call. And then like half an hour later I receive a massive wall of text apologizing and groveling and then a call the next day asking again if there's even a chance and I shoot him down again. And that's the end of it. He respects my answer and moves on. Whilst still a shitty thing to do, he grew up in a specific culture that encourages that and whatnot, so I'm glad that he now actually views me as a bro

He's a cisgender guy and for the most part, Identities as heterosexual (sometimes he uses another label that is queer but not a whole lot), and he's pretty repressed, but I've seen him make steps towards improving. Since the town we're in is so small, my brother and I are some of the few friends he has, all the others are either old people who stick to these toxic standards or people who want to be gangsters. I know that there's gonna be bumps in the road, but he's been trying to improve...

...in all areas but one

Again, I told him I'm bigender and to use it/its for me around people who know (him and my brother)

And he never has

Not only that, but I haven't gone by my legal name since I was 7 years old, before I even knew not being a girl was an option for me, I felt more connected to my name (which sounds more androgynous) instead of my legal one, but I started using it since before I could even talk. My brother gave me my name and I can't see myself with any other name.

Despite this, this guy has a 30% chance to call me my legal name at any given moment, a 10% chance to call me by my middle name(? HUH???) which is also pretty feminine, a 40% chance to refer to me by "Ms [legal/middle/last name]", and a 20% chance to use my preferred name. There's also occasionally calling me "little lady" or by an online alias in front of people which I told him not to do, keeping my online and real lives separated due to fear of my family learning of my gender identity and other things they wouldn't be too happy about. He also uses my name way more often in sentences than other people would (luckily doesn't just apply to me, and my brother gets the middle name treatment as well)

I've tried to nudge him the right way, with a "we're friends, we don't need to be formal" or no response until I am called my preferred name, even saying "hey don't call me those names", but I'm tired. I've been fine with being viewed as feminine (hell, I see myself as cutely fem in an androgynous way), being called "Ms [last/preferred name]", but in moderation. This is constant and more often than occasionally calling the doctor's office to get a prescription refill or registering for a program where, due to paperwork, they use my legal name. I used to be fine with she/her pronouns used by people close to me, but now I'm not even sure if I want to use them anymore or any feminine titles because they feel so wrong and constricting

So when he did it again tonight, I told him, again, in WRITING, to stop

This fucking sucks. First he says that he's fine I'm bigender and supports me, but as soon as I am tired of the misgendering (whether he forgets (he does have adhd and sometimes tries to repeat conversations from the day before which I get but. Come on. My name. You know not to use my middle name which isn't even common info, you just heard my name story from my mom) or does it intentionally, idk) he is all "I can't believe that stuff" like. Hello???

If I cut him out or get angry, my mom will know something's up, and I can't tell her why because that involves telling her of my gender identity, and while she might accept that I'm bi, she is lowkey transphobic and doesn't even thing nonbinary Identities are real. So I'm stuck, left getting more frustrated until something else happens. I can only hope my wishes are respected for once

If you don't have homemade dysphoria, friend induced is fine

Hi. I'd like to talk a little about my time on social media as an artist. I'm sure a lot of this has been said by a ton of artists before me, but I'm going to say it again anyways.

My online handle is @ commiicc. I've gone by the alias Comic for a few years now. I was extremely active of Twitter during the height of the DreamSMP fandom. My time in this community brought me many memories and experience. Both good and bad. Today, I just want to focus on the art.

In my opinion and experience the art community of the DSMP fandom was so incredibly toxic. Artists were the backbone of the community. It was said time and time again. But this held many artists to unfair expectations. The turn around on art was insane. If art was not posted directly after or the day after the stream/ event it would flop. Posts would circulate about the perfect posting times, which I would memorize, then be so sad when I'd post at those times and a price would still fail. I'd blame myself. I'd internalize it and think I just wasn't good enough. It was never my art. It was simply the shit algorithm that is any social media, but that didn't stop me of course.

And I watched so many young artists beg for followers, because validation meant everything. And we all wanted to be mutuals with the popular, big twitters because that meant we'd made it... right?

I watched followers drop and people ask if they'd done something wrong to deserve it because canceling was so common. It was usually just bots being deleted, but "what if I did something wrong" was always everyone's go to.

Going back to artists being the backbone of the community and pumping out content. I used to say how thankful I was for the community because it made me grow and find my style. But in reality, I only found my style once I stepped back and took time on a piece. I was just slapping shit together back then. I hated most of what I made during that time. It was all rushed. Because no one gave me time. I always felt so rushed to post something so it gets attention. Post something so my followers don't think Im leaving. Because if you took too long to post (more than a week) you'd start losing people. I was a small artist and craved that attention... So I forced myself to create, even if I had no ideas. It's pushed me into burn out.

I'd compare myself to other artists who somehow created masterpieces in like two hours when it took me ages to do anything. I compared myself to everyone and hated everything I did. It was incredibly unhealthy.

I've only just now started making things I enjoy again.

Even when I switched fandoms I was still in the mindset of pushing out art, so I hate it all.

Only after burning myself out can I now restart and find my style... Can I now actually create again.

And I know that's just the culture of social media. and people used to tell me "just don't care" "just don't look at the views". do you know how hard it is to be a 16, 17, even 18 years old and NOT look at that??? to be a new artist and NOT care how much attention your art gets??? when a content creator that you love can see your fanart and has actually seen it.. all humans want is validation. Social media prys on that toxic need. On that innate human need. Cause yeah, we all want to know that what we're doing looks good, but holy shit was that place bad.

And I KNOW I'm not the first person to say this. I'm just trying to share my experience and I'm putting all this disclaimer here in case... So please just check yourself and remember we're all human. Social media is kinda awful and this is literally just my blog to share long thoughts and archive who I am. My time on social media fucked me up a little and I'm just now realizing it. That's what all this is.

So yeah all this to say, I'm done posting my art on social media for now. I'm done pumping out art just for the sake of it. When I create something worth sharing, I'll post it. But for now, I'll be in my comfortable void. I'm around and always willing to chat about the art making process or just chat in general. I'm creating. I always have been. I'm just not sharing it. It's not for your eyes.

It will be when im ready.

And new artists, young artists, any artists; your worth is not determined by the views or likes a post gets. Your art is worth more than any amount of attention it gets on social media. Don't create for attention. Create because you enjoy it. Create for yourself. That's where the magic happens.

thanks for reading. sorry this is long. I'm very wordy. thanks for being here.

- Comic

invaderxeya -> sh4tt3rg1rl

Explanation under cut!!

This is... Not a new username

It's not graves-and-gardens but it's been a username I've kept tucked in the back of my mind for a few years. I originally used it as an alias for some of my Scratch art a really long time ago online, then as a display name for me on roblox for a while, and then kinda forgot about it

If it sounds "#brocken #emo im so depressed", that's because it is. It's inspired by breakcore names like Vertigoaway, sewerslvt, usedcvnt, Machine Girl, etc. because i... Just really like breakcore okay. It inspires me

Thats what spawned sh4tt3rg1rl!!! She originally was a "breakcore oc" that i drew whenever I was bored, and she looked like pretty much just a neon scene kid with blocked out teary eyes and a dripping mouth. Not exactly close to "breakcore" style, but hey, I was like 11 and obsessed with scene

Now that I've been looking for a new username I thought of this little old gem and thought

hey

Thats not a bad name yk

And I was like. IM GONNA BRING IT BACK

So give it up for sh4tt3rg1rl! Rest in peace invaderxeya, o7, you will be missed

Also, this means, yea, you can call me sh4tt3r or shatter now too

prompt: hair/haircut

Thanks for the prompt, lovely anon! With this one I decided to do something different. It happened to match a lil with a story I've been turning around in my head for some time now. It's something I might write for Christmas and it's inspired by Taylor Swift's song 'tis the damn season. So, here's a lil sneak peak! (This is an AU.)

---

The bell above Link’s salon door jingled and frigid winter air rushed into Link��s small salon, raising the skin of his arms into goosebumps. It had been snowing all day and every new customer dragged in melting snow that Link kept having to mop before it sank into the cracks of the flooring and made it warp and bubble. It was late afternoon and despite loving his chosen vocation, Link was tired and ready to wrap up for the holidays. There was only one more customer left, a new one, someone who'd used the online booking on Link’s website, something his regulars never did. Link was keeping his fingers crossed for a quick, and especially quiet, appointment. He plastered on his famously charming customer service smile and turned to greet the stranger.

The hello got stuck in his throat as soon as his brain caught up with his heart that had already picked up speed, making Link feel a bit faint. A mess of blonde curls, tall lanky frame and intense green eyes waited for him at the doorway. The man was holding his bright red toboggan with both of his large hands, worrying its edge with his fingers. His hair was longer, but he’d trimmed his beard since the last time Link saw him in person. Not that he didn’t see him on the TV and in the newsstands what seemed like every other day. And online, even more photos and videos awaited. But those Link tried not to seek out and look. Tried being the operative word.  

His smile fell and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re not Tom Johnson,” he said, his voice flat. Rhett gave him a sheepish smile and shrugged off snow from his shoulders. There was already a puddle forming under his boots. Link chose to stare at the offending slush rather than look at the achingly gorgeous man.

“No, I’m not,” Rhett agreed, his voice low and cloying. The familiar sweet tang of it filled Link’s chest with longing so deep and raw he almost had to sit down to bear it. Stubbornly, he wrapped his arms tighter around himself and kept his eyes on the floor, watching as the puddle grew, meeting the edge of the shaggy pink rug decorating the small sitting area next to the entrance.

“Sorry about the alias,” Rhett continued when Link said nothing. “But it felt like the only way to get you to see me.”

Link dragged his gaze from the floor and raised one eyebrow. “You ever heard of these newfangled things? What are they called again? I think the kids these days call ‘em tellyphones.” His voice was higher than he liked, but snarky enough to hopefully hide it.

Rhett’s apologetic expression faltered and Link watched guilt and pain flash across his handsome features. Link hated the fact that his gut reaction was to go to Rhett. He hated his stupid heart for wanting to soothe the man. His head knew better, but his heart ached to wrap Rhett in his arms and wipe away the hurt—either with his words or with his mouth, whichever Rhett would accept this time.

But there would be no such foolishness this year. Link planted his feet firmly on the floor and glowered at Rhett. After last Christmas, he’d made a promise to himself. No more. Enough was enough. This year, he was going to be strong and stay away from Rhett McLaughlin's arms—and even further away from his bed.

You wanna know something funny?

I... never meant to be referred as Faye.😂

This has never been a roleplay blog (except from this April Fools where I pretended to be a Rudolf stan I guess), my url is a reference to an italian Square Enix fansite called Rinoa's Diary (especially since at the start this was meant to be a semi-serious FE writing and meta blog, believe it or not) and the blog is themed after Faye because she's my blorbo, nothing else.

That said, I never bothered to correct anyone who called me that, because honestly I was fine with it. I never chose an alias anyway because I'm bad at names and I don't want to use my real one, so it made sense. Never called myself Faye, but if anyone called me that I just rolled with it.

But lately, you know what? Not to talk too much about myself, but I've been questioning my gender identity more and more these past years. Not getting any closer to figuring it out anytime soon, really. I do know I'm getting into traditional stuff though.

But anyway- I found out Faye is actually a gender-neutral name! It's also really cool because it means Fairy in Middle English but has its origin in a French word for loyalty (which btw, really fitting for Faye the character). Also, it just sounds cute, let's be honest.

Anyway, I've grown more and more accustomed to be called that online, and honestly? I've come to really like it!

So... yes, guess I'm officially called Faye now. Community-assigned name, if you will😂

Ey can I ask you about serial experiments lain? I watched the anime and I could use some help

I've probably had this in my darfts for years and I am answering now your question I'm sorry but here we go.

⚠️⚠️ I might include a bunch of spoilers so SPOILER ALERT and read carefully if you want to watch this show for the first time. Also TW because we might speak about topics like s*icid*, d*ssoc*ation and cults. ⚠️⚠️

Every episode is called layer 1 to 13 and those layers have also a name that is associated with the theme that is exploring the episode:

Layer 1: Weird

Layer 2: Girls

Layer 3: Psyque

Layer 4: Religion

Layer 5: Distortion

Layer 6: Kids

Layer 7: Society

Layer 8: Rumors

Layer 9: Protocol

Layer 10: Love

Layer 11: Infornography

Layer 12: Landscape

Layer 13: Ego

The first scene of the first episode, Chisa, a girl that studies in the same secondary school as our main character, Lain, k*lls h*rself jumping off a building. The death is not at all explicit as we start to see the kind of scenario that the show is going to portray: flashing lights, blurry backgrounds, scenarios that don't really make sense but they are understandable and the constant focus on cables or wires. That's where the play on words begins: the alias of the internet in this show is called the wired, which ties with the name of the layer 1, the weird. The wired is introduced to us through a chain of emails that Chisa is sending to her schoolmates after her death, saying that she found God in the wired and inciting everyone to commit s*icid* too, so they can find God. When Lain reads the email she starts to deep dive throuhg the wired to find out what is it really about. The wired sounds very similar to weird, the unknown, which keeps deepning in the misterious and dreamlike atmosophere that is being constructed. It also sounds like wires, which are all around the city. That's a representation of the collide between the real (the city) and the unknown, the virtual, the alternative or, in this case, the wired. This can also be seen in Lain, that is obviously related to line, as a connection or a bridge between the werid and the real world.

Layer 01: weird

These play on words keep going in layer 2, Girls, when Lain meets with some girls from her class to go to a night club called Cyberia. The annomalies keep going, as they encounter a catfish of Lain, a girl that looks identical to her and keeps causing problems around the club. They also find an unspecified drug, in the form of a capsule, that turns into a microchip in their hands. This ties up with the next episode, layer 3, psyche. Lain receives a microchip to enhance the potency of her computers, the ones that she has been using to dive through the wired. It was an annonimus gift from a group called the Knights. All these elements are bringing another layer to the wired: there is not only a collision between real world and virtual world, there is also a fusion between mind (psyche) and the machine. This will be touched up upon later, but mind or psyche is not only refering to the concious or the actions of the person that gets in touch with the machine, but the identity and humanity of the person that is slowly transfering into it, even in a spiritual way. That bring us to layer 4, Religion.

Here, we are introduced to phantoma, an online game made by these group, The Knights. It is used by them as a kind of "recruitment" for their mission, which is to connect as many people as possible to the Wired to begin their "ascension" to a hyperreality (the Wired). It is seen as a mimic of heaven in the spiritual sense, where your soul goes once it leaves your body, but the ascending is not through a moral doctrine, that makes you deserving of the paradise once you die. The promise is that if you commit su*c*de, you'll ascend to the Wired, and they use these microchips and techno-drugs seen in layer 2 and 3 to introduced people into the sensorial experience of the Wired until they don't even need a computer or any device to connect to phantoma, as their mind is already connected. Phantoma is a hook for young teens that are into games and get trapped until they are so merged with the server that if they lose/die in the game, they die in real life too. This obssesions and connections between the virtual world and human behaviours is a commentary on abuse of technogy and dehumanisation of human relationships, how they distort our personalities and the vision we have of other people (this is usually shown through all the catfishes that are shown like the mother and the daughter that are connected in phantoma) and the withdrawal of real life relationships, as Lain sinks more into the Wired and isolates herself from everyone and upgrades more and more her computer. This is also showing how the wired distorts human relationships and human minds, as we are been shown the split in Lain's identity through her contact with this virtual world: there is this agressive Lain we saw in the club, a passive femcel rot girl summer Lain that was shown from the begining and a new skilled and proactive and obssesive Lain that wants to endure her knowledge of the Wired. This brings the next episode, layer 5, Distortion.

The separation between the three Lains becomes real, and the three take action separated from each other. Most of the action takes place this time in the city, where "God" is talking as a voice in off to the audience (it's kinda breaking the third wall but not really because those inner speeches as narration for a scene are common in anime) about the deviance of the capitalist society, that has become purposeless and they need to trascend to the Wired (very Cult like rethoric). The active Lain is trying to stop the Knights, that are spreading these words through paper tissues to random people in the streets (kinda dumb and kinda genius) while agressive Lain is sabotaging her manipulating traffic lights to cause accidents and stop her. The contact with the Wired has split these two parts appart from the original Lain: one that is connected to the real world and the life of those who live there; and another one that is connected to the virtual world and is looking for the trascendance of humanity to the Wired. The original Lain is laying in the middle, unable to reconcile with both parts of her psyque.

Layers 03 and 04: psyque and religion

Layer 6, Kids, I'm not gonna lie, is a mess. Not because it's bad, I mean that we had like five episodes where half of it is just Lain walking around liminal semi-empty spaces with a weird soundscape and now there's so much random shit happening at the same time that it bothered me. It's not even that much action and we still have a good amount of weird cryptic dialogs but Idk the rythm here was kinda messy. The important parts of the episode are at the begining when Lain is talking to a stranger in the Wired and the mention "the next project" (she's talking to the Knights) and when Lain while hanging up with her schoolmates in the street sees herself in the sky as if she was god opening the clouds and a bunch of people adoring her and after Alice (one of the girls from her friend group) sees it she reacts like wtf is that Lain??? And it seems like no one else sees it because she acts like nothing happened after and everyone is totally fine with it. I know I'm been dramatic, it's surreal not a plot hole but idk man I didn't like that, at least act shocked. Anyways, Lain connects again to the Wired at home and we see her again walking around a dark void in silence again and someone makes an Alice's adventures in Wonderland, which is kinda fitting with the show. She starts a weird dialog in another empty liminal space that's very Alice in Wonderland like (play on words and riddles) until she ask a random dying scientist about KIDS (a hit that was given to her in the dialog, she thought it was phantoma because it traps gamer�� kids until they die). He tells her that someone learned about his experiments to create phantoma, using the PSI (a power I guess) of children. He did an experiment where he extracted the PSI from a whole buch of children to connect their mind into a bigger energy but it was unstable and all the children died. This experiment is KIDS and the Knights are using the simulation of phantoma to recreate the experiment, as all the data has been leaked in the Werid. Conveniently when Lain asks why tf did he want to do this experiment the answer is something along the lines of "I thought I would be cool" like mixing mentos with coke to see what happens. Whatever, this episode is not my favorite, but out of context it's hilarious.

In layer 7, society, the Knights are revealed as normal people: they are not an underground society (like the illuminatis or that sort of things), they're just everyday people that happened to be hackers. This touches a bit on the catfish commentary that was shown before, but distorsion of identity can become distorsion of perception too. In the lines of the cult behaviour, an idea of union and the dehumanisation and allienation from society can make everyday people become attrocious and elevate a random person on the internet to a god-like status. Meanwhile, the Knights are able to take down the local police's website (based) and some agents from Tachibana General Laboratories (they're like the Microsoft of this show but they also create the technogy that keeps up the Werid, seems like they have a weird monopoly going on) take Lain to talk to a man in an empty room and they have (again) a cryptic and weird dialog but with the difference that these men acknowledge that Lain's identity is tearing appart from the contact with the Wired and they force a switch between femcel Lain into proactive Lain (Lain from the Wired). It could be seen before but the different Lains are taking more and more control over the life of the original Lain until she feels completly depersonalized and can't remember anything about her. The purpose of this visit to a man in black in an empty space is, obviously, not explained but as they seem to be tracking the Knights to stop them they might have wanted proactive Lain as a potential source of information . In the end, she does not want to collaborate with them, as she sees them as dangerous as the Knights.

Layers 08, 10 and 12: Rumors, Love and Landscape

In layer 8, Rumors, everything starts falling appart and happening in weird dark multichromatic voids or dark long corridors or empty spaces and there's almost no dialog. Original Lain after her mental breakdown where she finds out she knows nothing about her family or herself starts spiriling into a crisis because the very little human and authetic relationship that she has, with Alice, is been sabotaged by aggresive Lain because she's a b and proactive Lain is out to stop her. After this it's revelation after revelation. First, Lain is not real, she does not know anything about herself because she's a software, so she's not a real person connecting into the Werid but a Werid product connecting into the real world. Second, the Lains that appeared on screen are representations of the id (impulsive and aggresive Lain), the ego (plathpilled femcel laying in her bed all day contamplating shy dissociated probably mitski fan Lain) and the superego (proactive Lain that's trying to repress aggresive Lain's impulses). Third, the so called God was a designer working un Tachibana General Laboratories, and was creating Protocol 7. Protocol 6 is the technology that susteins the Wired and can be used along the psyque (the microchip) to project yourself into it. Protocol 7 is the trascendance that the Knights are talking about, a technology that allows you to uplode your mind to the Wired. So God (I don't remember his name and I can't be bothered to look it up again in the wikia) basicly uploaded himself to the Wired and when they found out this at Tachibana General Laboratories they fired him but it was todo late and he k*ll3d h1ms*lf. He founded the Knights and created Lain.

Layer 9, Protocol, tbh it's so cryptic, too much nerd stuff. They talk something about the Schumann Resonance and dolphin communication with aliens and some aliens appear and talk to Lain like...I don't know anything about physics, I'm not going to touch on that topic. In layer 10, love, Lain has to face that everything she's lived was a lie (Lain is pronounced like line but also like lying) and her father is leaving her home as his work is over. The Knights are being prosecuted and killed by Tachibana General Laboratories and making it seem like s*icid*s while they're trying to erase God from Protocol 6. This episode touches on love, the different kinds of unconditional love that kept the project functioning: from Lain's father love to her, even tho he knew it was an scenario, the love that believers show to a God, that make it's existance needed and therefore mantains it alive (they basicly say that God is a product of our minds). God needs love from Lain to exists, but she refuses to believe in him. In layer 12, Landscape, when God presents in front of her and Alice, Lain deligitimazes him as God and says that God is actually herself so he turns into a monstrous creature and Lain destroys him. I haven't touched on layer 11, Infornography, yet but it's because it's kind of a transition episode where Lain is connecting to the wired and has a bunch of flahsbacks (like a 0% to 100% upload) and it's kinda cute because it touches on the love and sense of longing that she has towards Alice. In layer 13, ego, Lain erases herself from the real world so no one remembers her, using her God Status. She has a conflict between what's right and what she wants that is identical to The End of Evangelion but with a cuter resolution. She promises Alice she will visit her after she leaves the real world and when she visits her, Alice is married and does not remember Lain but she keeps by her side, as love is what defines her existance.

Okay I think that's it. Idk if there is any doubts left but probably I'm not gonna be able to answer it because this show might be my second favoutire anime but is confusing as fuck. I hope you found it helpful, even if it's three years later.

i am so very sorry for this but i need to ask: how / where can i find your cora rp blog ?

recently ive come into the ? fifth ?? resurrection of my (long time not visited) ouat fixation and cannot emphasize enough how fond of cora ive been since the first time i managed to watch this show

(its ok if it has since come to be a private matter to you though, or if it is no longer something you are comfortable with)

No, they're not private, and I don't hide them. However, I do use Cora's name as my online alias now. I've tried to wipe all instances of my real name and other identifying information from the roleplay blogs, but if by any chance you run into it there (it's a pretty distinctive name, you'd know it if you saw it,) I ask that it not be used.

There are actually three versions of the blog, the oldest of which can be found here: @sxmethingbreakingarchive. I made this blog in spring of 2014 and kept it through spring of 2016, at which time I felt like that blog was getting very disorganized and hard to manage, so I moved to a new account, which can now be found here: @sxmethingbreaking-a. That blog lasted about a year, I think, where I moved one final time to @sxmethingbreaking, which was the final iteration before I ended up abandoning the muse when I started grad school in fall 2018.

I'm linking you all three because there were story threads and verses that spread across all three blogs. Fair warning, some of the early writing on the first blog is a bit rough, and I don't really stand by all of my earliest interpretations of the character either. Some of the things I wrote back in the day were just kinda weird, I had some bizarre ships, and a lot of my headcanons changed over the years as both the canon of the show and my own personal writing evolved. I mean for context, I think Zelena had just been introduced on the show when I made the first blog. Anything I wrote post season five though (March 2016 onwards) I pretty much stand by, though some of my headcanons and character analysis got a bit...much. I was pretty obsessed and looking back, I'm not sure it was all that healthy lol.

There are navigation pages on all three blogs, though I'm not sure I really recommend using them because I don't know how organized they really are anymore. If you're interested in reading anything specific I'm happy to direct you to some old favorite rp threads, but to start I'd honestly suggest starting with anything I wrote with @villainofthisstory. She was my primary Regina and longest standing rp partner (and still a friend to this day).

To pick out an individual thread to read from start to finish, you should look into the tags on the post, there should be some formatting along the lines of ( thread | name of thread here ). Click on that, then, if you're on a web browser, go up to the address bar and add /chrono to the end. That will take you to the earliest post in that thread and you can read them in order from start to whatever the final post was. I admit, some threads never really finished.

If you're looking for headcanons or character analysis, here's the urls you want:

sxmethingbreakingarchive.tumblr.com/tagged/%28%20headcanoning%20%29

sxmethingbreaking-a.tumblr.com/tagged/%28+how+it+feels+to+be+the+miller’s+daughter+%7C+headcanons+%29

sxmethingbreaking.tumblr.com/tagged/(%20how%20it%20feels%20to%20be%20the%20miller's%20daughter%3B%20headcanons%20)

Finally, I really do not recommend trying to navigate any of this on the mobile app, it's too difficult and cumbersome and frequently just doesn't work right. Use your browser.

For the ask game, edelweiss and jasmine? (And while I'm here, thank you for always providing some much needed sanity on my dash!)

Aww, thank you! But me, sane? Your dash must be pretty wild if I look sane in comparison! ;D But really, I appreciate it! <3

Edelweiss ⇢ how’d you think of your url/username? what’s it associated with to you?

Funny story, actually - people always assume it's a Harry Potter thing. It's not. I've been using the online alias Timeturner since I was a young teenager, and back then, I had never even read or watched Harry Potter in English. So I didn't even realise that I was using the same name as that one item. Sure, it's a direct translation from the German word for it, but it just never occurred to me to make that translation (and why would it? It was a completely unrelated thing after all).

In fact, I came up with the name when I was playing an MMORPG called Aion Online. The game had just added two new classes - Gunner and Bard - and I wanted to make a Gunner character. The class had a big emphasis on the Steampunk aesthetic, which I love, and I wanted a character name that would match it - and so, after some thinking and back and forth, Timeturner was born. She became my main in that game, but I was always a pretty casual player. Never even maxed her level, in the end. I haven't played Aion in many years now, but I liked the name so much that I kept using it online!

As for Jay, it's just a nickname for my real name, which is Jasmina - and speaking of! ;D

Jasmine ⇢ do you have a movie or book you loved but will never watch/read again?

Back when the Hobbit movies were announced, I guess you could say I loved the idea of them? I'm a huge fan of Tolkien's works, and I was hoping Peter Jackson would capture the same magic he put into the LotR film trilogy. Which have their own little issues, but are still a fantastic adaptation overall.

Well.

Let's just say that now that the Hobbit movie trilogy is out, I can (and will) rant for hours about how much of a terrible adaptation they are. An insult to Tolkien's works really, and to the New Zealand actors. The problems with the movies go pretty deep, and several people on YouTube have said it much more eloquently than I can (those long video essays about the movies are great btw, can definitely recommend! The ones from Lindsay Ellis and Just Write were my favourites, if I remember correctly!), but I wish those movies had never been made. I'm more exasperated than angry about it these days, but still. They're bad adaptations, and not even good movies when considered as stand-alone works.

GET TO KNOW THE MUN.

what made you pick up the current muse(s) you have? Grim was originally a self-insert I made in February of 2020 when I first finished The Clone Wars. She was literally just how I imagined myself in Star Wars at the time and didn't even have her name yet I gave her my name at the time. When I shared her online I changed her name to my alias at the time and she continued to mostly be a self-insert. Over the years I have fleshed out and developed her character to where she isn't like me anymore. Of course, we still share my similarities because she's always meant to be a self-insert of sorts but now she's her own character. In a somewhat poetic way as Grim evolved into her own unique original character, I found out new things about myself and also grew away from who I was when I first created her. Also fun fact: Grim didn't have a last name until 2022.

is there anything you don’t like to write? Smut or anything NSFW. I'm not comfortable with writing it.

is there anything you really enjoy writing? Hurt/Comfort! As much as I love writing straight angst, I have too much of that going around in my real life right now (and for the last 4 years tbh) so I really enjoy writing comfort after something happened or just comforting things in general. I also love writing fluffier & happier things despite the fact most things I write tend to lean into angst or hurt/comfort.

how do you come up with headcanons?  They mostly just come to me. A lot of headcanons with Grim also tend to be based off of myself, because as I mentioned earlier she was originally a self-insert and even though she's more of her own character now outside of me, her roots as a self-insert are still around and important to me.

do you write in silence or do you play music? I've gotten into the habit of writing in silence, although I used to listen to music. Mostly I write in silence because when I was working on The Clone Wars Gets A New Victim which is Grim's story during The Clone Wars, I had to rewatch The Clone Wars constantly to make sure I was writing things accurately, and I couldn't do that while listening to music. It took me 2 years to finish that story so it just stuck with me now. Although I do occasionally still listen to music when I write.

do you plan your replies or wing them? I wing them. I wing pretty much everything in all of my writing unless I have a complete idea for where I'm going (and even then I tend to end up winging it).

do you enjoy shipping? Yes! I love shipping! Both platonically & romantically. Especially platonically to be honest.

what’s your alias/name?  Nova

age?  I don't feel comfortable sharing that on Tumblr for personal preferences.

birthday?  January 26th

favorite color?  Purple, black, and red

favorite song?  Grim's theme song that @padme--amygdala made. I literally listen to it everyday.

last movie you watched?  I'm pretty sure it was Nimona

last show you watched? Merlin. I've only seen the first episode so far and definitely need to keep watching but I'm enjoying what I've seen.

last song you listened to?  The Light Behind Your Eyes by My Chemical Romance

favorite food?  Idk I enjoy a lot of food. I guess I've been especially enjoying beef enchiladas lately.

do you have a tumblr best friend? Idk I've made plenty of friends through Tumblr that I also chat with on Discord. I wouldn't say anyone is particularly my best friend. They're all friends I deeply care about!

Tagged by: @valorums , thank you so much!

Tagging: @loyaltyandchaos @gwiazdowe and anyone else who wants to 😅

8/1/23

I can't begin to explain how drained I am.

I had a headache for most of the day. I just drank a cup of chai at like midnight (it's 1:15) because I realized I hadn't had caffeine all day and that's probably why I have such a bad headache. Now, that caffeine is kicking in, the headache is melting away, but I'm extremely aware of how utterly exhausted I am.

I woke up after 5 hours. I immediately put my headphones in and tried to go back to sleep. I stopped myself from trying after exactly 15 minutes. I checked my email and found messages from my therapist.

I had emailed my therapist before I talked to my former friend who offered me the graphic design commission. He replied. I read what he said as... kinda siding with graphic design and... "take what you can get"... I scanned his messages and got that message very clear from him. I replied emphasizing that design and art are not only different fields, they're entirely different workflows. I tried very hard to express how having someone go around and advertise me as a graphic designer doesn't help me as an artist, it would help me as a graphic designer. And, since the people who are looking for design are not typically looking for creative input... they're looking for someone who knows how to use software to make the thing they are envisioning... in some ways this actually damages my non-existent reputation as an artist.

I'm fucking tired of explaining this. But here I go again, on one last hoorah before I fucking finally tap out of this. Someone comes up to me and says "I'd love to help you out." They claim to "like my style", yet proceed to tell me how they avoid Instagram like the plague, when I had specifically asked them to check out my recent work before the meeting. Then, in the consultation, they have very clear ideas of what they want done and how... which leaves little room for "my style". My style, the one that he's familiar with... is realism, organic blending, colored pencil and pen work. What he commissioned... was a vector-based low-detail letterhead and t-shirt graphic for a welding company. TELL ME THAT'S NOT BULLSHIT. He doesn't want my style, he doesn't even want to take 35 seconds to google my style, or click the direct link to my portfolio that I gave him. I doubt if I asked him right now, he could tell me what my alias of over 10 years is, the one I've been using for my art for 4 years.

He claimed to want to help my career. And his way of helping is... to help himself. With a logo he needs. And "hey man, maybe people will see that logo and go 'that's pretty cool' and I'll send them your way!" <wink wink nudge nudge> Awesome. Nothing I'd like more than to do a logo for the trucking company you're doing specialty welding for. Let me see, what other projects do I have going right now... I'm doing hand-painted grip tape, I'm doing hand-made jewelry, I'm doing a hand-painted goat skull, I'm doing hand-painted customized clothing (hoodie, and soon pants too), I'm doing mini Zen gardens for artistic and functional and living home décor. Now, when you see my work, my "style"... does designing a fucking logo for a trucking company mesh with that? Are they my... target demographic?

Not only do I not know how to make logos... I don't really fucking care how to make logos. I don't. I care so little about making logos that I have been streaming and have had an online presence for my art for over 4 years and I have never once made a logo. Because I have art I can put in that spot instead.

Now... this anger, this frustration that's coming out here. This frantic need to explain and justify my position here. I found out what this is today. It was really hard for me to break myself out of it, and it's even hard to do now. I have this frantic beast in the back of my head saying "keep explaining, you're right there. Then THEY will understand. Then THEY will... help. And things will start working." It's... kinda panic. But rooted in trauma. A series of traumas that rocked me to my core; a lifetime, really. And I'm reliving it... right now. Right this moment. Those feelings, that franticness, that "I'm so close, I just have to find the right words".

It's fucking... I legit can't even put it into words. I handwrote 2.5 pages of business notes on 5 hours of sleep. I typed out monthly and weekly survival budgets, a budget of baseline survival expenses. Survival. That should've been a big red flag there.

I figured it out a bit too late, around 9:30 PM tonight. But all of these freakouts of like... It is exceptionally EXCEPTIONALLY rare that someone comes into my life and offers to help me. With fucking anything. And I was just like... "holy crap, this changes everything." And the dipshit offers to help me with shit that has nothing to do with my work, and clearly has not even looked at my work. Not only is that a bad friend, it's really a bad client. He didn't even do his research on who he was getting work done from, or quote a price first. He just dove right in and started shmoozing and bullshitting. And then shot one of my spirit animals with a .45 pistol with hollow-point bullets while on the phone with me.

So... since it's exceptionally rare that someone offers me help, I feel like I can't afford to say no. I'm in the middle of Bumfuck, Alaska, and a trade caravan is passing through. Can I afford to not stock up on food? It could be years before the next offer to help me. And then the help offer... it doesn't even fucking help my career. I, as a fine artist, art blogger, whatfuckingever the term is going to be... I'm not going to put my fucking logo for a welding company in my portfolio of fine art that I'm sending to goddamn galleries. It. Makes. Me. Look. Bad. And I'm not proud of it. It is, at most... partially my work, and most definitely not my vision.

I'm still doing the explaining thing... So yeah, I get panicked. I feel like I need to frantically explain, so they'll understand. So they'll get what I actually do. So they'll get what my career is. And then they'll go "holy shit, wow, I had no idea. That's fascinating! How can I help you?" And I'll start rattling off ways they can help me.

But... haha... BUT... They don't care. They don't. They're not a fan. "It's not my thing." "I don't like that website." "I don't have the time." "I'm not good with technology." Excuses are like assholes, everyone's got 'em and they're all full of shit.

The reality I've been avoiding is that... this guy doesn't actually care about me. He just knows I have integrity and I will get the job done, and won't rip him off... in fact, I'll probably just give it away to him for free, just like his ex-wife's S-tier tattoo design. Because of my whole monastic, people-pleasing, be-a-good-guy approach to life.

It all revolves around the idea of... support. That really meaning, at its core... social acceptance. Society (literally any person in society, ideally multiple) showing an interest in what I do and having a place for my contributions. And the reality is... I don't have that. I'm orbiting society. I'm barely even noticed. Both personally and professionally. It's rare for me to even experience eye contact.

So... when I rush to clean my whole house and mock up 6 prototypes overnight... and the dude makes up a bunch of excuses like "I don't want to look at a bunch of girls on multimillion dollar yachts pretending to be hot shit or something" as a way to exclude himself from pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking at ANY of my online media... so he can familiarize himself with what I do... The reality is very plainly, very simply... he doesn't care. And that is what it is. He is not a fan, he is not a friend, he's just making a practical business deal with an on-hand resource. And quantifying that actually, in a weird way, helps me ground and relax. It lowers the stakes, the gravity of the loss if I were to say "no".

I'm Tom Hanks in Castaway... And he's a boat that pulls up to shore, asks for directions, takes some of the castaway's food and fucking leaves. As things lie right now, he's in no way doing me a favor short of giving me money for services rendered, a service that I have never offered. That's not him doing me a favor, that's him offering me a job in a different field. But... I am doing him a favor. And it would be very smart for me to remember that I have the power in this situation.

God, I just keep sinking into that whirlpool. I wonder how visible it is. It's like I get two sentences in and I start explaining and justifying again, as though I don't already understand. THAT process. The... invasive pull of every thought stream back to that same concept... "HELP ME". And the survival instincts that come with it. "I'll be here forever." "I'll never make it." Like being stuck in purgatory. And the frantic, demeaning having to explain myself over and over to ears that are not quite not listening to me... but rather... listening to my contributions to the conversation as though I am a 7-year-old kid with a box of crayons at the grownups table at a family reunion.

That image fucking sums it up, in my experience. I don't even know how to put that into words, that feeling. Not quite humiliation... kinda degradation? Diminution? Infantilization? Oh fuck, yep, thank you Google for verifying it. That's it. Infantilization. And then I'm panicked and feverishly jawing like a 7 year old trying to tell them that Santa Claus is actually real.

The past several days of my journal has been full of this. It's clear as day. That. That's a PTSD response. I'm piecing it together. It's an emotional reliving of a life of related fucked up traumas. Really really fucked up things, that you really shouldn't do to other people, that happened to me. And when something similar to it shows its face? This happens. I can't sleep. I'm haunted for days. I fall asleep ranting to the ceiling. I wake up ranting to the ceiling. I come up with survival plans to provide a sense of security and safety.

I'm... so... tired. It's only 2AM and I can barely keep my eyes open. What this shit does to me is utterly savage. I'm so deeply grateful for the work I've put in to be able to identify it as it's happening now. And it really didn't take that much time for me to be able to go "oh fuck, I know what you are. I see you."

Where I need to be right now? Instead of the Past? Instead of the Future? Now. I need to be Here and Now. And that's what I did. I tapped out of the ambitious plan to finish the grip tape today and I decided to do some self-massage on my quads instead. I don't really know how to angle myself so my legs are relaxed to properly do it, but I did some and I feel much better for just... stopping the franticness and the freaking out... and just relaxing and doing something nice for myself. It helped.

So... I'm going to go to bed early. Because fuck it. Maybe I'll even watch a TV show in bed or something, I don't know. It's been ages since I watched a TV show or a movie. Because it's a nice, quiet, beautiful night. The temperature is not too hot, not too cold. The moon is full(ish). And one of my bean plants looks like it might actually make a full recovery! (The other sadly didn't make it. -_-) The world isn't all doom and gloom. There is peace here. Good lord, if it's one thing I'm insanely grateful for, it's that I turned my home into a place of peace, healing and inspiration. In a very dedicated way. Living in a space that nurtures life, in which I am cultivating lifeforms, has a very different feel to it.

Anyway, I'm gonna go do that. I just really felt like it was worth writing that, about catching myself in my flashbacks. Again, I had no idea that was what was happening, I was just feeling insanely strong emotions. So, that's a huge step forward. I even messaged my therapist back and apologized if I was intense and thanked him for his patience, and he knew, and seemed really relieved that I was able to figure it out myself. Good lord. That's so crazy. So much of mental health self-care is really, at its root, a very broad sense of self-awareness.

I could go on for ages. But I'm literally nodding off. Bye.

being creative on the internet as an outlet is a topic that i am passionate about & i have so much to say.. so i'll put it here.. keep reading if you want to, but its just a history of me and my connection to the internet as a whole, may crosspost this later lol ヾ(￣▽￣) \

ever since i was a little girl, i used the internet to express myself.. dress up games to tumblr, all of it, was used as an outlet. my earliest memory was playing dressup doll games on the computer & watching clips of lucky star in 240p quality while listening to vocaloid in my living room as a small small child, of course, my mom was cooking dinner during all of this, so i can smell dinner when i think of that memory.. germany, 8 pm, shes making banana pudding & tuna sandwiches for me and her while my dad is working.. its such a sweet thing to think of now that i come to think about it..♪(´▽｀) way before i discovered the bitterness of the world, the world to me was just schnuffel bunny & vocaloid..

i never had many friends growing up. i had maybe three actual friends IRL, i was severely bullied before going on to become homeschooled from third grade all the way up to highschool, which i went on to do online schooling for that aswell because quite frankly, i was terrified of leaving my house due to my increasing social anxiety along with quarantine happening about ~2 years into my school life. anyways, thats enough backstory, back to my main point.

anywho, i've been expressing myself online for a LONG time as you can tell, i first began uploading my animations and artwork to youtube in 2016..? and i went on to upload my music to soundcloud in 2018. i made a lot of online friends, and even had a partner who i met online which lasted around 4 years. which doesnt sound impressive until i tell you, we began dating in MIDDLE SCHOOL! we dated all the way until.. i was almost 16? lol..

the internet was my refuge and escape from various traumas that had happened to me over the course of the past few years, traumas i was too scared to go to therapy or even open up for, so i'd express my pain on anonymous accounts and abandon them later on. i have countless deviantart accounts that i used purely for vent art and nothing else, that i would later abandon once i realized people could probably tell it was me.

darkness aside, i have many good memories involving uploading my work online aswell, from my various soundcloud aliases to my various artist aliases, one of which would become extremely successful due to my original characters when i was 14, i later abandoned this alias for safety reasons that i won't get into here.. along with all of the fanfiction i read and wrote when i was 12.. so.. much.. fanfiction.. specifically bandom fanfiction, do you all remember bandom?? bandom was a nice time on the internet, we were all just having so much fun on those "___ is ____'s song" and "bandomconfessions" accounts.. no fear of judgement or anything, we could just write stories where we dated our favorite band member and others thought it was the coolest thing to ever grace this planet..

i feel like, without the internet i wouldnt be who i am today, okay, i will admit, i went through some edgy phases to try to fit in with the cishet white kids online since.. being me online was hard! i had to participate in edginess or else run the risk of being called heinous.. heinous things. i was a huge leafyishere fan (now that i think about it.. ew!) and frequented boards of 4chan that i'd never frequent now that i'm older and you know.. have a soul that isnt as dark as the void?

i feel like. . . . if i didnt have the internet at the age i did, i wouldnt had discovered stuff that was lifechanging to me, for example GTBSG was just purely by chance, 10 year old me poking around on soundcloud, youtube, tumblr and twitter, just looking for something, anything new to stimulate my little senses.. and i found it! that group literally and figuratively changed my life in the best sense possible. i feel like i found my calling through their music.

i think that.. no matter how bad and judgemental the internet gets, it'll always be important to me, like yeah, i hate how social media operates nowadays, and all the microtrends that results in so much waste and landfills getting bigger, but if you focus on yourself, delete tiktok, stop doomscrolling, the internet is fun, once you go back to putting in the effort to find new websites, to read peoples personal pages and shrines.. the internet feels a lot more alive again. the internet was taken over by corporations but theres people trying to take it back, even if its a vocal minority, we're still here, and those people who put in the effort mean more to me than they'll ever know.. o(*￣▽￣*)o

i love you internet, even if you suck sometimes.

Hey there! I've been enjoying your TF2 posts for a few weeks, and just wanted to ask about your blog name: does it relate to froyotech at all? I used to be huuuge into watching competitive TF2 a few years back and I just wondered if it's a coincidence or nah.

not at all actually :o!! froyo is jus short for frosty, my almost now 8 year ??? long online alias >:D and corp is jus short fpr corpse, which is my twt & insta handle (why corpse is the second word I Just Think zombies r neat) but i dont blame u !! a lotta tf2 fans think its a b4nny ref, which is funny bc confession.... i have NOT seen a full vod of his im so sorry. but tackling the ins and outs of tf2 comp is next on my to do list! .. tl;dr not a froyotech ref! froyos jus my name! but considering i talk abt tf2 a lot i can see why youd think that lol