#… I don’t want to be alone anymore

[pois0ncandy]

i want to be loved so badly

[peachyealfie]

I wish I could skip to the happy me,

where everything is good,

even if it’s not what I dreamed it would be in this moment now,

it would be,

my own fairytale,

I just wanna skip the hard and the pain,

but then how would I grow,

i don’t know

-Ealfie

[icantbeanyoneelse]

I don’t know if it’s because I’m drunk, sick or sad, but today two people came and comforted me. A woman who was so comforting and hugged me, and a man who was so strong but so soft. They held me as I cried. I asked them to take over, they didn’t, but they held me up so I could keep going.

[my-catsface]

When Minecraft first added horses, my brother and I dropped everything we were doing to play it.

We booted up the Xbox, opened a new world, and I waited diligently for his controller to pair for split screen. When it finally did, we set to work building the shittiest, ugliest, most lopsided stable ever. We didn’t add beds, because it wasn’t a house. It was a stable, we knew that. But we added stalls for the horses and an outside area, because of course, the horses should have sunlight.

When we found out they could jump over blocks and run faster than other horses, we set out to make the most elaborate obstacle course we could imagine. We raced against each other over and over again, using different horses and different rules until we were finally bored, hours later.

This post is going to be exactly what you’d expect. I am generally not a person who devotes lots of time to stuff like this. Other people have said better things about the quality of the Minecraft movie trailer (why is everyone backlit?), or how it doesn’t make sense (why are all those piglins normal in the overworld? Why are they even attacking?), and others have already shared their personal thoughts like I’m about to do.

But I have memories and experiences that belong to me, and I want to put them somewhere. I’m aware this won’t reach very far, it won’t change anyone’s mind, and it isn’t exactly full of revolutionary takes. But it’s mine, and I need to say it. And here seems as fine a place as any.

The only game my brother and I ever really played with each other was Minecraft. We’re about as different as you can imagine, with different interests and different ideas. But when we were both much much younger, we loved to play Minecraft together. Of course, that makes sense! Being young kids, we didn’t exactly have an allowance to spend, so our gaming options were in the hands of our parents. They didn’t agree on much, but each of them knew what Minecraft was. They knew it was safe, and they knew it was something we could share (IE: they didn’t have to buy twice), and so it was added to our collection.

And because we had no one else to play with but one another, and nothing else we could really play together, it was always Minecraft we turned to. Different as we were (to the point there are jests between us about being swapped for someone else at the hospital (my money’s on him)) we could find common ground on the same game. I liked to play creative and build houses, but he liked to mine and thought creative was cheating. To compromise, we turned keep inventory on and he would collect materials so I could build our house. We didn’t even know there was a wither. We didn’t even know there was an ender dragon. When we finally finished a house, the game was over for us.

But we would always come back to it. Always build a new house, maybe in the desert or underground. Always rush to our Xbox to play a new update until we were properly bored again.

Eventually, we learned there were worlds built FOR us. It started simple; we found a Christmas map with a giant tree and a massive workshop, and marveled at how beautiful the world was. But of course, there was already a giant house built, so what was there for us to do? We couldn’t built one here, it might ruin all the other houses. Ah, of course! We’ll just live in this one, we thought. So we mob proofed as much as we could, and explored a place we couldn’t even begin to comprehend was made in Minecraft of all places.

Eventually, when we explored it all, we wondered what to do again. We couldn’t just exit and start a new world, we’d just be going back to the exact same place. So we made a story.

He was supposed to be an elf. But he had a frog skin so he couldn’t be an elf. He had to be a winter frog. It made no sense, but it didn’t have to. I was supposed to protect all the “reindeer” because otherwise the winter frog (who we decided was very mischievous) would release them. Naturally, I, armed with a blaze rod (the only thing that could melt the winter frog), would search up and down the place as he would jealously hide his part of the screen, and when I found him, I would hit him. When he made it to the roof of our giant house, he would declare he had won, set off as much tnt as he could, and then we would have to load a new world to play it all again.

I look back on that story, and I think it’s stupid. I think it’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done, and as a self-acclaimed writer, I should be ashamed. I’m not. It’s stupid, and it’s childish, and I was a stupid child when I played it. But more importantly I was a stupid child having fun with my stupid brother in our stupid game. And we loved every minute of it. I’m not ashamed of it because it’s nostalgic, because it’s a memory of joy that I hold as close to my heart as I can.

Only a few years later, when my brother and I could finally play on separate systems, we discovered the ender dragon and the wither. Maybe we knew about them before, but we had never beaten any kind of boss before and we were under the impression that those sorts of things were much too hard for us.

So when my brother came to me with a radical idea to beat those bosses, I was doubtful and so… excited. What if we DID beat them? What if we beat a DRAGON? I was instantly in. He had a plan, but he wanted backup, and of course we were each other’s number one choice. Thick and thin. Still are, I suppose, but back then we didn’t realize we could stand up without always making sure the other wasn’t actively falling down.

He agreed we needed creative mode for this. He said it would be hard, but he knew what to do, so for the first time we should use creative mode to get all the items we would need. Nobody ever wants to work something up in their head and then have it all fail in the end, so we made sure it wouldn’t.

I manually enchanted our sets of armor, our diamond swords, our bows. I stacked our gear neatly away with as many “super gold apples” that could feasibly fit in a chest, and declared us ready. We each took our gear, and set off towards… the nether. We could get blaze rods from the inventory easily, we knew that, but we were excited to test out our new gear. We never had a reason to enchant before, so how exciting would it be to test everything out? I discovered my favorite enchantment in the entire game was fire aspect.

When we got our rods (and our pearls) we put them together and shot an eye of ender into the air. We diligently followed the trail we were making on foot (because that was just how you did these sorts of things), and when night fell we didn’t just sleep or skip it. We pulled out wool, made some honestly really ugly tents, and put our beds under those. When we woke up, we left our tents there and kept moving.

The thought was that anyone else who had this world after us would find the tents and be able to use them. We had a pretty rudimentary (and quite incorrect) idea of how Minecraft world seeds worked at the time.

Eventually, we got to the spot where all the eyes stopped. My brother dug down. I jumped in the hole he was digging, but he made it pretty clear that I had to stand in the corner of the space or he’d hit me with his enchanted pickaxe and not be sorry about it.

The fortress was a maze. It was dark and there were mobs everywhere and it looked like a glitch of a structure. But we never gave up. We knew what was waiting for us at the end (pun quite intended). When I found the library, I walked right through it and kept moving (for what use are books to a soon-to-be-dragonslayer), and when I found the portal, I called my brother’s name over the shittiest microphone the world had ever produced, and teleported him over.

He set to work on filling the portal, and I set to work on dealing with the annoying silverfish. A spawner destroyed and a gate created, we readied ourselves. We didn’t place beds down because we didn’t expect to lose, and we didn’t jump in right away, because we didn’t expect to win. Eventually, one of us worked up the nerve.

The end, as many of you know, is an odd place. It is light stone and it is dark skies. It is filled with pillars that aren’t buildings and there is an alter of a stone that cannot (ordinarily) be broken. We knew what the end looked like. We thought it was something new to be there.

I remember staring off into the distance. I remember mentioning how small the end was, considering we had treked at least twenty times its size in the nether and the overworld combined just to get there. I also remember how panicked my brother was at the realization there were endermen LITTERING the place that you were absolutely not allowed to look at.

After dealing with the endermen my brother looked at, we were finally ready for the real fight. We heard the dragon when we got there, we could see it fly in and out, we were very aware of its healthbar looming ominously at the top of the screen. But we knew the dragon had to wait, too.

We aimed, missed, then aimed again at countless pillars until we saw the satisfying explosion signal our first few victories in the war. We knew the ones in cages had to be handled differently, though. We had to march up there and take them out ourselves. The only issue? I forgot to pack blocks. We had stacks of golden apples and tons of junk picked up on the way, but we had thrown most of what we got away in the lava under the portal to clean our inventories.

So, mid fight, we mined. Tunneling underground to avoid the wrath of the dragon, we mined until we each had a stack of end stone (because that would surely be enough), and then climbed. Once we reached the top of an obsidian pillar, we hacked away at the iron bars until the floating core was exposed to us. Without any hesitation, we would strike at one. As end crystals do, it would explode, and then it would throw us off of our platform.

Seeing as neither of us were particularly good at water bucket clutches (at the time we weren’t even aware that had a name), we simply fell to the ground, and let our enchantments eat the damage. It felt powerful. The same blow and the same height that would easily kill us before were nothing to us now.

When all of the crystals were gone, we turned to the dragon. It had seemed almost passively disinterested in us as we struck at its crystals, but we were sure it would be mad once we took out the final one. Instead, I thought it was scared. It ran away constantly and never stayed in one place for too long. That made sense to me. That was good game design. Of course it was scared, there was no chance it could beat us. There were two of us, one of it, (hundreds of useless endermen minions) and no way back.

I don’t remember who got the final hit. I guess it didn’t matter. It’s not like there was an achievement to tell us with all of the creative we had slipped in and out of (but never for the final fight). What mattered was we had done it. We won. An achievement that’s so lackluster today it means almost nothing. But to two kids with terrible headsets and elementary school the next day, it was everything we had hoped for. The dragon went down easily. Not because the boss fight was easy, no, it went down easily because we were that skilled at it. It wasn’t a bad fight, it was exhilarating.

We looked up how to collect the egg. We knew you could do it, we just didn’t know how. My brother clicked on it a few times, and it teleported enough for us to realize we were doing it wrong. With the fight over, we agreed creative was fair game again. I dug a big underneath the egg as my brother supervised up top to make sure it wouldn’t teleport away if we didn’t both look at it. I placed a red stone torch two blocks underneath the egg, and then mined up.

It fell with grace. The moment it landed on the torch, it popped away and slid into my inventory. Excitedly, I flew up and dropped it to him, then pulled a NEW egg out of the creative inventory for me. One for him and one for me. We both got one, because we both did the fight. Not our fault the game only tried to give us one.

We jumped into the portal after. At the same time, just like how we entered the strange realm in the first place. That was my first experience with the ending story. The message from two strangers to me, the player. Me, who explored this world, sure, but countless other worlds like it. Me who knew all the crafting recipes by heart and knew rotten flesh would always give you hunger but raw chicken would only give it sometimes.

I love story games. I did then, and I do now. I love when something makes me feel some way, when something carves its place into me and establishes itself as important. I think Minecraft did that long before I experienced its “end,” but I think that was the moment I realized I loved this game. It felt like everything I had done meant something, every action culminated into where I was there and then. I also thought, when it concluded, that my brother—who preferred action and fighting to stories (yet another difference between us)—would have skipped the ending of the game for being cheesy.

He didn’t.

When my brother and I could buy (with permission) a world from the Minecraft store, we would have to agree on what it was. The first one we bought was the Greek mashup pack, because he loved the hydra skin and I loved the harpy one (it added WINGS, what wasn’t to love about wings in Minecraft?) and we both loved greek mythology. Not that we were well versed in it, of course. When we loaded that world up, we experienced that Christmas one all over again. Years on, and it was the same feeling. There was a beautiful new world for us to explore, there was beautiful MUSIC we had never heard before, and there were countless hidden secrets we could find.

But we eventually ran into the same problem. We couldn’t build a house, there were already houses here! We couldn’t fight the enderdragon, it would mean leaving this place behind and that would just be pointless. Besides, we had done that already.

So, eventually, we made another story.

I won’t go into detail about this one, but you can imagine it was about the same as before. We made up something dumb, and played our hearts away following it.

I am not a kid anymore. I am not easily blown away by the ocean monument or amazed that the moon changes form in game. I don’t laugh aloud when a villager “hrrs” or burst into tears when I lose all of my stuff in a cave.

I dont think the stories I made with my brother over Minecraft are anything important. But that’s not what my point is. None of this is really what my point is.

My stories weren’t good, but that doesn’t mean Minecraft can’t have a good story. In the early days of maps and pumpkin headed men and signs that told you where to go, there were countless wonderful stories. Hell, even now there are countless wonderful SMPs made by communities, and most of them are created for the express purpose of telling. A. Story.

And they’re beautiful. Some SMPs are only between friends (and perhaps they’re short lived sometimes), some SMPs are beloved by hundreds or thousands (or perhaps millions) of people.

Most SMPs inspire artists and animators and everything beyond and between to make things. Beautiful things, from the soul and the heart and the nostalgia of creating. They’re things made with love, for love. The Minecraft movie is made of money, for money.

The biggest argument FOR the Minecraft movie is that it’s meant for kids. I understand. I understand I am not its target audience, and if I am, then something has gone horribly wrong in the nostalgia bait department. But honestly? I don’t even think it’s marketed to kids. Kids arguably love a good story. I would know, I very much was one. I think it’s marketed to parents much like mine, who know the name Minecraft and know it’s safe and figure it’s a fun thing to take their kids to.

And I think that sucks. Because there could have been something better.

Minecraft is not a story game. It’s a sandbox. And the best part about a sandbox is that it can be anything you make of it—which means that, ironically enough, you can turn it into a story game. I think modders probably display that the best (the create mod would’ve blown my mind back then).

But that’s unrelated. The point is that Minecraft can be anything. But to make it into anything good, you have to really love it. You have to spend time developing what you want, be it your story, your resource pack, your mod, your challenge, your lovely world, your book(s), it doesn’t matter. You have to love whatever it is a lot, and you have to want to spend time on it to make it. Like I said before, the Minecraft movie was not made with love in mind. It was made with money there instead. I understand why. I understand every action that was taken for it, and I understand that it is not going to be a detective pikachu, a sonic, a Mario, or even a fnaf movie.

It’s just going to be another stereotypical “bad videogame” movie. And I think that’s a shame, because there could have been something beautiful there. There could have been something that makes someone sit in the theater with their brother and remember a horse race or a Christmas game or a valiant fight. There could have been something that reminded me a lot of when I had nothing to do but waste time with my favorite person in the world and build the ugliest house imaginable.

But there’s not. That’s okay. I understand. But I don’t want to see it. I love stories, and I love Minecraft, and I love the feeling of being a kid.

That movie will have none of that for me.

[adelinamoteru]

“jason doesn’t know what he wants” no, he does know what he wants. he wants the joker dead and he wanted bruce to be the one to kill him. but bruce won’t kill him, will never kill him, and now jason has to figure out how to reach the same end goal when to him, there’s only ever been and still only is one clear path to it.

its not that jason can’t figure out what he wants, he can’t get what he wants. he has to think about what to do now, how does he grapple with this situation now. how does he let himself fall back into his father’s arms when the only thing that will make him feel safe and comfortable enough to do so is off limits?

[l3irdl3rain]

I’m sure I’ve told you guys before about my coworker at my part time warehouse job that hates Duncan but I had to work with her again tonight and she was on her bullshit regarding him again.

I would like to clarify, this doesn’t upset me. I mean it does in the sense of “I can’t stand her and she’s a bitch” but also it’s fine. She can think what she wants to think. What matters is that I know Duncan is happy and I love him.

BUT ALL THAT TO SAY! It is so funny to me that she is a grown woman and this is who she has beef with. He’s just a little fella. Girl you are so dumb to be beefing with a cat.

Anyways he’s mad in this video because I stopped him from trying to eat Gertrude’s breakfast and gave him a bath.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know it’s been talked about ad nauseam, but I think one of the things that got lost in the discourse about TTPD and the muses and whatnot is how one of, if not the core trigger points of the album is the yearning for commitment and perhaps even more poignantly, motherhood.

The reason she was so susceptible to falling for the “conman’s get love quick schemes” is because she was grieving that imagined life with the person she had long assumed would be the one to give her that. What has been beyond clear in several albums, let alone interviews etc, is that those plans for building a family were very much real and top of mind for years, and she kept holding on and shifting her world in service of making that happen. And when whatever happened happened that pulled that rug out from under her, it left her bereft not just for the relationship that had once been her world but also the imagined family she had been hoping for and sticking out the hard times for.

And that’s likely why she was swayed by and trusting of the promises of someone who knew her history and knew how unmooring that loss was to her. It may have been partially about the person himself or lust or whatever, but the core issue was the pain of giving up the dream, and sublimating that dream into this new opportunity in front of her, because she was so desperate to hold onto the last scraps of that imagined life she wanted so badly. (And I don’t mean desperate as in pathetic or negative, I mean as in fighting within the last ounce of energy and hope she had.) It wasn’t rational and it wasn’t love, it was grief, not just for a relationship but even more so for the family it represented.

So to me the core issue of TTPD isn’t just the Joe vs. Matty or whoever of it all: it’s Taylor and her yearning. She wanted a family badly and a life that was theirs and was processing losing that in all kinds of ways. It’s all over the album in overt and subtle lyrics. It may not have been grieving a literal death but I’d bet it felt pretty darn close.

And I’d also bet that’s why we’re seeing… what we’re seeing now.

(I have so many more thoughts about womanhood and motherhood on TTPD but that is another post being worked on piecemeal in my drafts… this is just a little Saturday morning post-zoomies reflection)

[honeypleasejustkillme]

i’m trying my hardest to not act how i feel

[urdreamgirls-dreamgirl]

being home w my family has put me into such a state of hyperawareness that i’m genuinely on the verge of a meltdown for the most part of every day and i want to diiiiiiieeeeeeeeee

[stinkypeanutbutter]

SpOiled for uehhfhh uhh neck crackalackin ?

OOOO MOVES MOVES GET EM OOO GET EM BEAT EM DOWN !!!!!!!!

KAPOW !!!!!!!

[oddberryshortcake]

GET ME OUTTA HERE

[nicolibbyquotes]

“Other lives, other existences, it didn't matter. They were polarities, and wherever they went, his half would always find hers.”

- “The Atlas Complex” by Olivie Blake

[tauforged]

Are you okay?

in the grand scheme of things? yeah i’m chillin. what happened isn’t Serious serious. it was just weird. like i’ve been iffy about saying anything because i don’t wanna kickstart it into a major ordeal again but it’s just like. a couple weeks ago? at this point? i think? i got upset after someone id been following posted what essentially boils down to rape fic. i was really in my feelings about it in the moment because it honestly triggered the fuck out of me and i definitely lashed out a bit but it was late i was very tired and stressed out and ultimately not really thinking about the consequences of my actions, just ranting about something that really upset me. the blowback i got in response has been INSANE and kinda sobering. 90% of the other wf bloggers i know of and had up until that point been mutuals/friendly with all blocked and cold shouldered me overnight. i had at least one person combing thru my sideblog and alt twitter for dirt on me so they could send anons about how much of a hypocrite i was. i’ve been extremely cagey about posting anything personal at all, even stuff that isn’t at all related to what happened, because im suddenly aware that my blog is being checked up on frequently and anything i post can be taken as a slight and used to justify saying some really cruel and heinous shit about me. so much has happened that i don’t even have the words to explain in a neutral manner right now, and i don’t want to put anyone individually on blast either because i honestly don’t even have it in me to feel spiteful about it anymore. i’m just very tired. a lot of bridges got burned right out from underneath me and now im feeling kind of stuck and isolated.

i don’t post about it often because i’m aware of how easily it could be used against me, but to be entirely frank; i’ve struggled with paranoia around being stalked/surveilled as well as moral ocd and all the baggage that comes with both for a very VERY long time, and this is just all like. the perfect storm to trigger serious episodes. i’ve been really hot and cold lately and stressed beyond belief. i’m convinced there’s someone out there checking up on me and talking about me behind my back, but i can’t do a damn thing about any of it aside from continue trying to mind my own business and hope that everyone who’s stuck around thus far is doing so for the right reasons and not just out to get me. trying to redirect myself onto what usually helps me take my mind off these things isn’t really working because it keeps circling back around to huge reminders and i’m having a harder than usual time escaping those mental loops lately. trying to forcefully will myself into being Okay has been really tiring and i think i’m just gonna have to let myself be. not okay. for a while.

it’s a lot of stress to come out of video game fandom posting on tumblr, yeah, i know, and ultimately none of it matters. but it’s still a really weird situation. feels unsafe and precarious. i’m trying very hard not to completely and totally isolate myself and retreat into a bubble because to be frank i do really need to put myself out there and interact with people more, it’s just been blow after blow lately.

to answer your question - i think im gonna be fine. this whole thing has for sure done a number on my physical and mental health (not that i was a beacon of health and wellness before either) but i can say i’m certainly not going anywhere and i dont want to let this whole thing ruin something i love and that means so much to me. im in a weird place right now and will probably be kinda squirrelly for a while…. but ill be alright. i appreciate your concern 🫂❤️

[surrealsunset]

the sun always shines on TV

[lynxfrost13]

Do you guys think Holt and Storch Sieben ever hatefucked

[gardenofnoah]

“you shouldn’t need anyone else” yes you should actually. you need connection. you need someone to watch a movie with and to go grocery shopping with and to eat leftover pizza with. you need someone who celebrates you on your birthday and remembers the kind of books you read and who knows about your mom. you need a safe place to put your heart. i am so sick of individualism. we do need people