#2022 ended when june started tbh

[mrdyketator]

i have been having such a bad like. 4 months honestly

[respectthepetty]

Well well well well!

I have seen you being asked about your fav TW BL dramas. but I’m here to ask about…… your top 10 (or however many you want tbh) BL thai dramas!

Teeheeheeee!!

Ps: can someone else pop up and then ask you too Korean BL dramas? *wink*

Anon, I think YOU will have to come back and ask about my top Korean dramas because after people see this list, they will realize how trashy I truly am and never seek a response from me again. I've already written about my Top GMMTV Actors, my Top GMMTV Pairs, and my Top Five Taiwanese BLs, but this requested list will really show people that I am a dumpster fire, so let me present my

Top Ten Thai BLs

Before I start, I need to list my personal preferences since I have watched over 150 Thai BLs (if not 200), with a third coming from within the past year and a half alone. A show must meet at least two:

Don't bury the gay (MANDATORY!)

Be gay. Do crime! aka "Eff the police" (literally or figuratively)

I'm a messy bi, and I'll cry if I want to

Adulting is hard like my sexual attraction for you

Vice Vers(a) - Flipping the norms and changing dynamics

Next, I need to establish some ground rules:

The series must have completed prior to June 1, so Step by Step, Be My Favorite, La Pluie and other running shows cannot be considered.

It had to be marketed as a BL, so 3 Will Be Free, The Warp Effect, and Great Men Academy cannot be considered.

I could only pick a pair once, so most of GMMTV shows couldn't be considered if I picked another show the pair was featured in.

It couldn't have hurt my queer feelings, so My Only 12%, Until We Meet Again, I Told Sunset about You, and 180 Degree Longitude Passes through Us were cut for rubbing salt in real-world wounds.

A third of the final list had to be BL shows that aired prior to 2022.

Narrowing it down with those two filters, here are a dozen shows that didn't make the cut with a brief reasoning:

The Eclipse - pair already picked

Triage - the gay died each time the clock reset

Ghost Host, Ghost House - not within my personal preferences

Never Let Me Go - aired in 2022. Sorry Jojo!

My School President - pair already picked

Secret Crush on You - aired in 2022

Bad Buddy - it knows what it did to me

Together with Me - pair already picked

Lovely Writer - not within my personal preferences

A Tale of Thousand Stars - pair already picked

Between Us - it knows what it did to me

My Ride - not within my personal preferences

One more thing before I give you the list -

Honorable Mentions

To Sir, With Love

I was raised on soap operas and telenovelas, so this lakorn was seventeen episodes of blissful drama, yet served one of the best pairings and family members of 2022. It was also a historical drama, so the ending being happy was unexpected, but much appreciated.

Destiny Seeker

All the shows on my list have color coding, but this show wins every color-coding award I can give. As a self-proclaimed color demon, this show fed my soul and my heart with its color exchange between two great characters who were just trying to unify the Pretty Boys and the Jocks in a tale as old as time, yet more colorful than ever.

Now, the actual list

Top Ten Thai BLs

#10 - Dark Blue Kiss

Pete and Kao went from a bit toxic in This Kiss series, to a solid couple trying to navigate the difficult situation of having one person in a relationship still in the closet. The reason was realistic as well - career. Kao coming out could have not only hurt his future, but his mother's job as well, and the socioeconomic difference between Pete and Kao was front and center during these discussions. Mix all of that with the addition of Sun and Mork and their dynamic of light enemies to lovers, and this ended up being a surprise favorite. It also had beautiful cinematography at a period when the production value of BLs was being elevated which is greatly due to director/screenwriter Aof and cinematographer Rath.

#9 - Big Dragon

If someone would have told me during the first episode that I would like love this show as much as I did by the end, I would not have believed it, but here I am, in love with this show. It started off with two idiots being at their peak toxic level, yet ended with the softest men in love. The cinematography was beautiful, Mangkorn and Yai had a natural chemistry when teasing each other, and the music was good, so good that I actually listened to the lead sing his love confession…twice! Mos and ISBANKY made me excited to see what else Star Hunter has in store, and that was a door I had closed long ago. Big Dragon 2 when?

#8 - Bed Friend

Much like Big Dragon, I showed up for a raunchy series about fuck buddies, but ended up witnessing two men work through trauma and showed that with support, healing is possible. King was the biggest green flag that has ever graced my screen, and the way Net's big brown eyes portray lust, love, and devotion is a skill that only matches James' embodiment of a sex kitten. I watched them in Catch Me Baby, but Bed Friend brought an entire new level of chemistry from them that balanced the heavier aspects of the show in a way that any other pair would have squandered. Because of NetJames, this show will remain in my tops for years to come, and makes me even more excited for Love Upon a Time.

#7 - You're My Sky

We, collectively, did this show dirty. As BL fans, we did not appreciate it enough, and still don't. Because it came out in 2022, a year stacked with excellent BLs, it was pushed to the sidelines when it should have been at everyone's top for any number of reasons like the pairings were solid (childhood friends, senior/freshman, pseudo-enemies to lovers), the plot was consistent, and the cinematography was beautiful. We have a few sports-related BLs which do a great job of discussing the connection between toxic masculinity and male-dominated sports, and although this series didn't lean all the way in, it gave us a glimpse of what men must sacrifice in order to be considered the best in such an environment, especially when it comes to love.

#6 - Not Me

Every character is shippable with every other character. That is the power of this series. Yet, because I’m petty, I’m still holding a grudge not about GramBlack (Eugene/Gene, really?!) BUT that ToddBlack did not happen! In a show that was queer in several aspects (marriage equality, society’s disapproval, found family, etc.), it was strange that it didn’t deliver on the Black front examining how power dynamics, socioeconomic inequality in regards to privilege, and performance of masculinity affect queer experiences (all possessed by the ToddBlack pairing), but what it did deliver was a great premise about fighting back against oppression (labor discrimination, educational gaps, monopolies), which is why even though the ending was shaky, it still deserves a top spot for existing.

#5 - KinnPorsche

As much as I wrote about this show, I’m shocked it isn’t #1, but sitting through the final episode’s credits believing what I believed about Vegas left me feeling a certain type of way that I’m still not over. It had all the elements I love: Be gay, do crime, messy tears, vice vers(a), and the cinematography was perfection. Symbolism and foreshadowing were intertwined into every scene, so watching each episode was an experience and the aftermath was devouring hours of meta analysis. This was the first series I was excited to watch live unmuted and at normal speed, and I liked each pairing, plus rooted for others who were never going to happen (Big & Chan, Khun & everyone), which made this a fun journey even after the final credits finished (World Tour, anyone?!).

#4 - Love Mechanics

I LOVE MESS, and this show gave me ten glorious messy episodes of the messiest mess. Much like the chokeholds VeeMark excelled out, this show had me by the throat (implication intended). I was shocked when it was announced En of Love: Love Mechanics would be remade and extended from four episodes into ten. I liked the original, but the basic plot (drunkenly having sex right at the beginning – how very Together with Me of them) did not sit well with me the first time around, yet once I saw the remake’s trailer, I WAS SOLD! Look at the angst! Look at the pining! Look at the chemistry! Look at the same steps and dorm from Together with Me! I could write forever about this show because it is better than the original, it was so similar to Together with Me that I had to squint to make sure it wasn’t, and the happy ending with Mark’s tears, although never doubted, feels like a personal win, which is why it was my number one of 2022.

#3 - Manner of Death

MaxTul own me. Every couple I watch gets compared to MaxTul and the chemistry they bring. Together With Me is a favorite, but when Manner of Death aired, it spotlighted the evolution of MaxTul in the most beautiful way imaginable. The dark plot of drug and sex trafficking was difficult for most, but both of these characters' commitment to finding the truth in their own way while taking on the ACAB attitude even towards the one police officer they did like was a buffet that just kept serving me. I was truly worried because of the nature of the show that a happy ending wouldn't be possible, but not only did the show end with vows being exchanged, but the promise of another season as well. TRANSPLANT WHEN?!

#2 - Moonlight Chicken

This was an adult show and toes the line of being truly queer media rather than a standard BL. I felt seen every time Jim sat silently examining his life and his choices. His hesitation to open his heart again to another person after being hurt in such a realistically queer way in a country that doesn't have marriage equality almost made me cut this show due to hurting my queer feelings. However, if I was willing to give up three pairs (FirstKhao -The Eclipse, GeminiFourth - My School President, and EarthMix - A Tale of Thousand Stars) for this one show, I knew it had to included. Aof working around the grief of losing a parent while examining gentrification and generational trauma all through a queer lens is a feat most would fail at, but this show shines, literally and figuratively thanks once again to cinematographer Rath.

#1 - He's Coming to Me

I must end where I began - Aof, the director and screenwriter, changed the Thai BL game with this one, and hasn't slowed down since, which is why two of his other pieces are in my top ten, and several others are featured in my short list. Cinematographer Rath has also made his mark on this list, and it all started with this one for me. No other BL series has stuck with me the way He's Coming to Me has. Not one element of this show doesn't work. It's cohesive. It's emotional. It's everything to me. I cannot give this show enough praise. It created a unique magic in eight episodes that hasn't left my heart for four years.

And probably never will.

Now, who wants to ask about Korea?

[wraithsoutlaws]

Then & Now the (x: perfect drug) edition:

Inspired by the fandom to look back and celebrate the boys' journey as well as my own in terms of vp.

March 2021, ps4.

I never created Dagger with the intention to ship him with anyone, but by the time I got here on his file it felt strangely natural. He was still a very fresh oc but things began to click immediately and genuinely felt like it was meant to be. The development of him as a character began to happen side by side with this silly little ship and both ended up becoming really personal and special to me.

It's hard getting decent shots on ps4 with anyone. It's especially hard when it's a minor npc with extremely limited screen time available! You have no idea how many times I went back and played these two quests trying to get something interesting. Honestly I'm really grateful for my time on ps4 not only because it helps me appreciate what I can do now a little more, but I think a lot of my growth happened here, stretching the limited resources I had available.

July 2021, ps4

Learning how to work within the confines of totally vanilla photomode, getting creative with base game poses and skipping time to find the best natural light, etc. I'm still proud of these pictures, they capture an intimacy that I think is really special, and at the time were some of my favorites I'd ever taken, and even now I can note the growth between these and the first ones I'd taken.

April 2022, laptop

The first pictures taken on my laptop and my first time posing them with AMM/setting up a scene. I might like to retake these some day. I'm more critical of them than I am of my ps4 pics tbh but they're still an important part of my journey. Over time I noticed red lighting had become my comfort zone, or more specifically, a crutch! So I've tried really hard since then to improve on that and push myself in different directions.

February 2023

It took me almost a year to feel comfortable enough with posing to attempt some goddam kisses. I'm still not very good at these but at least I improved in other ways. Honestly, I struggle with these two at times because they aren't your typical outwardly loving, cute couple, and I'm usually very strict with myself to keep them as in character as I can. That can make it hard to think of couples poses/ideas, both cute and spicy, but. they can be lovebirds as a treat.

May 2023

Only recently have I begun to feel a strong sense of style in my own work. Playing with lighting and scenes, and trying to jam as much personality as I can into these slice of life pictures is really important to me and is one of my favorite parts of doing this. They can be sweet together but it's important you see the other side of that (the blood, the knives, drugs, etc. Also Dagger resting his ashtray on Dum Dum is one of my personal favorite quirks). I really try to put a lot of their life into pictures like this. I want to convey all the parts of who they are together, even if nobody else notices.

June/July 2023

Its pretty hard to articulate how important these two have become for me over the last couple years. I've been playing this game since release and haven't had this sort of steady inspiration or creativity for years. Even on the bad days, just thinking about them is enough to get me through as silly as it sounds. I've grown so much not only in VP but my own art (something I had all but entirely abandoned until I picked up this game). They've provided an outlet I've been searching for for a very long time, and I'm really grateful for that. It's kinda wild looking back at where it started, and seeing how far it's come. Sometimes I still struggle with my perception/the worth of my work but I can't deny the happiness its brought me either.

Including a couple other character ship pics under the cut c:

I'm always a little insecure about my ship pics specifically, I'm very bad at comparing myself with others! But I put a lot of love into these and I can see the improvement when I look at them over time. Regardless of anything, they were all made with lots of love and I hope that comes across.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

im so sorry to send you this but im confused. i thought izzy hands was obviously homophobic while i was watching the show but now people on the internet are telling me that calling him gay and homophobic is a conspiracy theory. i want to trust my instincts on this as a queer myself but they say it so much i think im starting to believe it. i know literally none of this matters but its genuinely bumming me out. maybe we all just have slightly different definitions of homophobia?

I would love to answer this for you. Your instincts are correct. Izzy is gay and homophobic. You should trust your gut on this because it's important for you be able to identify guys like Izzy irl if you're someone who might be on the receiving end of homophobia.

What happened is that back in June of 2022 everyone fully agreed that Izzy was one of those repressed gay men who's internalized homophobia rotted his soul and became externalized. We wanted to put him in a jar. We all interested in how this weird little freak got this way. Then everything changed when the canyon formed. Since then it has been a mad dash to beat the allegations. Unfortunately an actor has validated them in a way that makes me really wonder about him frankly, because he seems to be operating under the impression that people are saying that Izzy is a "homo sex is sin" Style homophobe when nobody was saying that, what we were saying is that Izzy is incredibly weird about and hateful towards feminine men and he believes that Stede is corrupting Ed with his foppishness, which is still homophobia it's just a different brand of homophobia than the religious right's obsession with the mechanics.

Tbh tho I don't actually care about that actors' take because he's not a writer, he has a history of not being very good at reading the subtext given that he fully didn't realize it was a gay show for half the episodes, and David Jenkins has liked multiple metas on twt about Izzy being a homophobe so I'll trust that lol. The only consequence that Con O'Neill being publically wrong has had for me is that people occasionally do an unearned victory lap when he says something.

But also I low key sometimes feel incredibly unsafe knowing that there's a substantial group of people who claim to be queer and against homophobia but who can't understand that the whole subplot with Lucius in episode 5 and the thing with Ed in episode 10 is laced with bigotry against feminine gay men. I don't think admitting that means you have to think it's his only motivation or that it's contradictory to the read of him being attracted to Ed and Lucius or with the concept that he's mostly just power hungry, but it does sort of mean that I have to move through the world knowing that there are people in my own community who would fully blame me if something happened to me. I don't fucking like it. That's why I get so upset about this so publicly. It's like so what happens if I get attacked but the guy calls me a namby pamby or a bitch instead of a faggot. Are you gonna be like "well we don't know~". It's just an uncomfortable thought. I don't understand why they're so desperate to beat the allegations either, like he's fake. People who have experienced things like what Ed and Lucius went through at his hands are real. The argument that gay people can "do something to (someone)'s brain" is written into legislation trying to ban trans people from public life. Nobody wants you to stop liking Izzy we just want you to stop saying shit that's harmful

And I don't necessarily think that everyone who chooses to put more emphasis on Izzys obsession with Ed wouldn't be able to identify a hate crime, I just have seen more than one piece of meta that goes "Izzys not homophobic he just thinks Stede is a mincing fop who's corrupting Ed with his frilly whiles there's nothing homophobic about that" and I just have to block them for being homophobic themselves because what else do I do with that? When I vague post about this shit I'm talking about specific ass things that I've seen that have made me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe not generic canyon trends. I just really feel like we need to calm down about Izzy. Like you can feel empathy towards a gay guy that hates himself and write a bunch of fic about him getting laid without deciding actually he did nothing wrong and everyone who can see that that's not true is making shit up to oppress *checks notes* people who like a fictional character. I don't get why that's so hard to do.

[bots-and-cons]

That time of the year again...

This is pretty much purely a vent post, so if you don't feel like reading, don't. I'd like to start with saying that I'm in a larger scale okay, and this too will pass

I remember writing a similar post around the same time last year. I guess this is going to be a repeat thing, at least for the next couple of years. My grandma died in June 2020, and I honestly don't remember much from around that time, probably because of the depression and general bad times. I found an obituary from the first of July that year for my grandma, and I'm pretty sure the funeral was somewhere in the middle of June. It honestly wasn't as hard on me as I had imagined, probably because even though she was alive, she had been gone for a long time already. That of course doesn't mean it wasn't hard or that it didn't make me really upset for a long time after she passed. She was one of my favorite people in the world, and I loved her dearly.

Two years later on the first of July in 2022 Technoblade's passing was announced by his family on his YouTube channel. I had started watching him in 2019, which was the time I was badly depressed, suicidal and actively self harming. I was still in high school back then and would be until the end of May in 2021. It was a bad time for me and his videos were a big source of laughter, which was a rare thing for me at that time. I don't remember much from that time tbh, but I remember watching the potato war videos and having a genuinely good time, even if it was only for that 20 minutes. I originally heard about Technoblade from my younger brother, and we also bonded a lot over his videos. His videos brought us closer as siblings and we talked a lot about a new video whenever one was published. Techno's videos and streams helped me through a lot of tough times, which is probably why his passing was so hard on me. The two years since his passing, I always get recommended tribute videos and memorial stuff like animatics people have made around this time of year. I've been crying my eyes out for pretty much every night again for about the past week. I've just not been having the best time recently.

Another thing I've been thinking about because of the anniversary of Techno's death is that I'm going to be 24 in a bit under a week. Techno died when he was 23, he was so young. I don't really know how to articulate how I'm feeling about this, but confusion is probably the best word. I don't know how to feel, how am I even supposed to feel? The world isn't fair, it doesn't matter how amazing of a person someone might be, cancer doesn't discriminate. Shitty things don't care how old you are or how much good you've done, they will come all the same.

Anyway, I guess I'm just feeling stressed and kinda sad. My summer courses suck and I hate that I took them in the first place, it's just constant stress, and I'm annoyed all the time. I'll survive, even if what I'm currently feeling sucks ass ＞﹏＜

[littlest-bugz]

Resolution ; A Sigh Of Relief

a [polyfrag] DID system's experience with resolution (functional multiplicity)

please do not bring syscourse to this post. this post is about our own personal healing journey and is not intended as advice or professional info

TWs: Isolation [heavy], abuse [heavy but not in depth], self harm mention [brief], suicidality mention [brief], unsure of other triggers

In Mid June of 2022, I was diagnosed with DID for the first of two times. Flashback to 2021. I had been in and out of therapy, in my teen years, but after researching my symptoms to try and find a proper care plan for my mental health, I ended up self diagnosing myself with BPD. The view I have always had on therapy and self diagnosis is that it doesn't take a real diagnosis to get the help you need, just use the resources that help you regardless, so I wasn't really hesitant to self diagnose myself [after research obvs]. After i self dx, I decided I would find a trauma informed DBT therapist, since I saw DBT mentioned often as treatment for people with BPD. After a while of researching, I found exactly that in my first therapist as a young adult. She was an amazing mental health professional tbh. She taught me skills that still have use today, and helped me grow, so so much. However, a year into therapy, she asked me to consider the possibility of having DID, and she asked me to reach out to my [potential] alters just to see what would happen. Ofc, I did exactly that. I made a dinky little journal for anyone to write in, as long as they used a sign off or different colored pen. That was when the flood gates opened, alters expressing themselves in the journal, and system awareness was achieved for the second time in our system's history.

Yes, you heard me, for the second time.

The first time system discovery starts for us actually starts sometime in October of 2016 [when I was 12-13]. It was the peak of my abuse, and because of that, I attempted to create an imaginary friend to have someone who knew me, just,,, period tbh. I wanted someone to know me down to my own memories because I was afraid of being alone, and I was tired of having my trauma further ignored and disregarded, even encouraged, by the adults in my life.

I was a deeply, deeply isolated kid, and had no one in my life i could trust or depend on until I was into my late teen years. I didn't have any real friends [and was, instead, abused by my peers], didn't have a family that actively cared about me, the church i was going to had and was abusing me profoundly, and the partner I had treated me like less than human. It was abuse coming from all angles, all facets, of my life. I could not escape the abuse no matter where I turned, so I turned inwards. I wanted someone, anyone who could understand me and listen, especially someone who knew what was happening to me for a fact and wouldn't gaslight every experience I had.

That's when I ''created'' 💙, but mind you, I didn't actually create him. He was, actually, his own whole dude before I ''created'' him, and he was NOT someone who would comfort me gently like I had wanted him to be. He was, instead, a sarcastic, blunt guy who only comforted me when things got actively tough. At that time, he had even fronted more than once to prevent stupid decisions I did, and it actually marked the first period of concerning black out amnesia. HOWEVER, through ''creating'' 💙, I got in contact with more of our system members [specifically 🎸,🧣,🌵 and 💤, who all are active members to this day, still fronting from time to time]. Our communication flourished back then, and everything was well documented, down to journal entries I had written about 💙's ''creation''. We had drawings and journals, which were all thrown away or deleted in 2019.

Speaking of, our communication with the system fell apart in 2019, shortly after the body's birthday [which is usually very traumatic for our system]. It was a complete host change brought on by the CEO of our system that ruined communication. It left that new host, 🐛. Confused, and without any memory of our life before then, 🐛 forgot everything about the system. Literally down to the name of 💙. All communication was cut, and all prior knowledge of our system was disposed of because our journals and drawings were thrown out by an alter who was heavily influenced by the CEO. CEO did not want us to know we were a system, and he had been dormant for years at that point. At least until he [somehow] got triggered and saw what was going on. 🐛 was the alter that later got in contact with everyone in 2021 and got us diagnosed the first time. Thankfully, the supposed creation of 💙 was what made communication pick up again smoothly, and we were, once again, a tightknit group of alters sharing a body. We're still like that, for the most part.

Our upbringing heavily impacted how we go about our recovery process, and how we will continue to recover. So when we entered therapy with a DID specialist, we had already radically accepted our systemhood after being diagnosed once. We have a very much 'your opinion of me doesn't matter to me' type of thinking, at least in regards to anyone other than a medical professional. Ofc, DID specialist was like 'yeah, I can tell lol' and diagnosed me shortly thereafter. After being diagnosed with DID a second time by the specialist, we were asked what path in recovery we wanted, and to think and talk about amongst ourselves. The big question every recovering system faces. Did we want to pursue final fusion or not?

Overwhelmingly for our system, we wanted to aim for resolution [aka functional multiplicity]. HOWEVER, there is nothing wrong with final fusion. A lot of people actually fear monger about it amongst the CDD community. So let me say that again: Final Fusion is NOT a bad thing and is a valid way to recover. Just because it is not our path doesn't mean it isn't someone else's. Here are two posts that give some decent info on Final Fusion: [post one] [post two]. I can find more if need be, but that isn't what this post is about. This is simply to reaffirm that final fusion is nothing to be scared of, and a 110% valid path of recovery. Our experience doesn't align with final fusion, but since I mentioned it briefly, I thought I would talk about it for a second.

Fusion moment aside, We have, since mid 2022 for sure, felt like we don't have a solid host, and we have always felt that way because of the cycle of hosts. The body holds a good number of us, that's for sure, and because of how many of us there are, we have no solid one host. There are frequent fronters, sure, but nobody is a host in the traditional, typically talked about sense. For this reason, we feel that we have no core alter [which we don't, unsurprisingly], and we found it unfair to each other that we take away our freedom to express ourselves as alters. Like yeah, we are parts of a whole, but there was never a 'core' individual. There was never an 'original'. We were pretty much destined to form DID. It is what it is, but because of that, we feel we don't have an alter from which all the others split from. I'm just a collective of parts that never even had the chance to connect to each other. Most of us feel so individual from each other because we were a highly partitionary system with no memory sharing or knowledge of each other. I honestly think if what happened in 2016 didn't happen, I would've only known my system through the 2021 diagnosis, and it would not have been as easy to pick communication back up. Things are wildly different now in regards to amnesiac barriers, but when we did find each other, we were our own people expressing ourselves through different [covert] means.

Due to feeling so separated and individualistic, Resolution was, ultimately, the best decision for our system, and since having made this decision and began recovery, our life has actually become something worth living, if that makes sense. I mean Internally and mentally. We function together as a team, and it's a great thing to witness tbh. It's taken a lot of hard work with a lot of disagreements in system, but for a life time ahead of me, it's worth it. I'm finally starting to love all of me, all of us. It's been hard, so incredibly hard, and we still don't always get along. There are still disagreements, votes that spark heated discussions, but that's just what happens when you're sharing a body with so many folks.

Of course, u see me use I/Me pronouns because we all acknowledge the body and the role it has in our collective life. When I say I, when I say me, it is the acknowledgement of the body's role in our life. The Body is the part of us that makes us whole, what we live through, and what makes us a team and family [in-sys family members at least because as a whole we don't see each other as family]. We are so incredibly grateful for the body and the collective Identity we live through. It is a sigh of relief to finally have come this far into our healing where things are finally getting better for us. I'm healing all parts of me, and I am authentically myself by being a system. We love the life we live finally. Even if we're still living with abusers, we know that once we're out of here, it's the final step to our trauma recovery and what will make us free to be ourselves.

Trauma is bound to happen again in my lifetime, re-traumatization will happen too. I'm young [for an adult at least], and, like I mentioned briefly, I'm still in an abusive situation. For this reason, we are learning to cope with day to day stress, as well as preparing our coping tool box for future traumas. At this stage in our healing, we have attained near entire co-consciousness, and have learned to share daily and important memories or notes from alter to alter, subsystem to subsystem. Sometimes its just one fronter and the CEO or the whole Crew and Co., yet CEO makes sure things get to everyone. No longer do we live our day to day confused on what's happened, what our past is and who we are, if we've eaten, taken our meds, showered, if we have an appointment ect. Now when switches happen, things are not confusing, and smooth with no sort of amnesiac barrier. Afterall, a good 97% of us are co-con in some capacity, and even then, we're able to memory share day to day memories. It's like whoever is best equipped to deal with a situation fronts.

Some of us don't want to share our trauma memories with each other entirely due to it's intensity, so we instead talk about it amongst ourselves and make peace with our trauma that way [with the help of our therapist]. It's like group therapy lol. Most of us are just content with the knowledge of not fully knowing everything, and having worked in trauma recovery for years now, our past traumas affects our day to day a lot less [any disruptions now are from the collective disorders we have and our living situation]. The peace that comes from being okay with not knowing is relieving, and the alters who hold the bulk of the trauma have started to work through their traumas.

Sharing trauma memories in our system can cause body and other kinds of flashbacks, panic and extreme distress, and can even trigger self harm and suicidality in some of our alters. Almost always, with trauma memories, its more than one alter getting triggered. I like to think of it like sculk sensors from Minecraft [minecraft moment]. When one is triggered, nearby alters in front and co-con get triggered like a wave effect, but it has a lot to due with similar types of traumas or being fragments of the same trauma. It doesn't stop it from happening. What we've done is worked on helping trauma holders cope and making them 'unstuck' in the trauma. Memory Sharing with trauma was once, and still is to an extent, dangerous for us, but the memory sharing via talking with each other, rather than give up the memories themselves, has caused us to even out and begin to work through the actual trauma, work through everything we have been through. It may sound flawed, but it works for us.

After having achieved a grasp on resolution, we've taken notice to our collective disorders and experiences, like our psychosis symptoms [from an unknown origin] and OCD. A lot of what we thought were persecutors ended up being our OCD, so things got quieter in that way. This helped us to work on those mental health problems and cultivate a further sense of peace. We also were able to start to work on other therapy methods that cater to our flavor of personality disorder. Achieving Resolution to even the degree we have has been phenomenal, and it only gets better from here once we reach full resolution.

None of this is to say resolution will or should be your path in healing, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. This is our experience with our healing journey, and nothing is the same from CDD system to CDD system. I just wanted to post and ramble about my progress because I am proud of myself and our progress!!! Obviously, I am not a representative for anyone other than myself. It's just so nice to be able to actually see my progress, see our progress. I also feel like I don't see many people talk about late stage DID recovery in any way, resolution or final fusion. Honestly, its even nice to just label our progress as being in late stage recovery. I'm glad to be me, as a system, while also dancing my way down the path of healing [lol].

Not sure if anyone is curious, but I'm always open to answering questions about my experiences with resolution as a polyfrag DID system. nothing intrusive about trauma, but I'm down to talk about the aspects of resolution and stuff. Just know I'm not a psychiatrist or other professional, and I don't speak for any other system but my own.

[wigglebox]

Queer? In my John Winchester?

It’s more likely than you think! 

Sorry — but not really. 

So, it’s 2022, there’s a Supernatural show on, and I am sitting at my desk wondering how to actually start talking about a queer reading for a character that many don’t like the idea of being queer.

No I’m not talking about Dean Winchester — I’m talking about John. 

I remember waaaay back when in Ye Olden Times of June 2021 when the show’s script commitment was leaked, myself and a few others on Tumblr tossed around the idea of “Omg what if they make John queer, he’s in a relationship with another guy, and then heaven forces them apart because he has to be with Mary.”

And that wasn’t out of a desire to just have a slash ship. Those happen regardless, all the time, with little to no warning and little to no reason sometimes. Shipping happens. Shipping doesn’t have to be canon, doesn’t really have to make sense, and is a personal thing between you and your AO3 account. 

From my perspective, I had been wondering if they’d do it simply because the meta symbolism comparison — whatever — would be so great for Destiel and that ship’s journey. 

And, I still stand by that, and if anything, even more so now that I’ve had more time to think about it and see the characters on my screen. 

While watching 1x04 of The Winchesters, Masters of War, even mid-episode, Twitter and Tumblr and likely your Discord servers were all ablaze with “What was that look that John just gave Carlos in that uniform? Millie? What?” and especially after this tweet:

Just gonna do one of these while I’m at it: 

Anyway —

But for me, that wasn’t the only moment my brain starting firing when it came to the possibility of John and Carlos. 

First of all, since we know where John and Mary are eventually going to end up, this show can’t hurt me. I’m already expecting to be hurt. It’s not queerbaiting, it’s not anything like that. Also, especially now, very much not queerbaiting. Coding is not baiting. But regardless, I had gone into this show fully expecting to just start shipping everyone for everyone just because why not?

But after 1x04 I legitimately will be paying more attention to John/Carlos. 

For me, the most interesting thing about Destiel was that it kinda was born organically. Cas wasn’t meant to be a character that stuck around but the chemistry was too good to get rid of him, and the story just made sense with him there tbh. It was over the years and years that these two were on screen together in which it went from “Yay, a slash ship that’s not with his brother!” to “Oh my God are they going to make this canon? It makes the most sense!” 

The thing with Destiel is that since it was organic, it was born outside of the narrative. Cas was the first one to “make it up as we go,” he exists outside the narrative. 

The whole thing when it comes to Chuck Won theory for me is that Cas is a threat to Chuck because he exists outside of the narrative and kept trying to get Dean to go along with him — subconciously of course lol. [Side note, this is why I don’t believe Cas is in heaven, because if indeed Chuck won, Cas wouldn’t be there. Cas is ‘real’, he’s ‘truth’]. 

Destiel is a pairing, a love story, outside of the actual story while directly influencing the narrative that Chuck is trying to dole out to us. 

It was a brat, the suits/Chuck couldn’t control it, and once it started rolling down the hill, no one could stop it. 

Destiel was the character pairing that broke the narrative. 

Now, when it comes to The Winchesters, we have a bit of a thing going on here don’t we? We have four characers: Two young women, two young men. This is actually prime fodder for a shipping free for all. 

Carlos already expressed his once crush on Mary, Latika [to me at least] is kind of crushing on John, and John and Mary, we know, wind up together regardless. 

However — John and Mary are the narrative. That’s The Plan TM. That’s heaven’s outcome, that’s Chuck’s outcome, that’s the thing that needs to happen for the story to play out how they want it to. John and Mary don’t have a choice in this. 

But, they both still need a relationship outside of the narrative for contrast. 

The thing with Supernatural is that we never had Sam or Dean have ‘narrative compliant’ relationships. There was no need to have them hook up with someone to make children who are destined to bring about the apocalypse or whatever. That was all on them. That was supposed to end with Sam and Dean. 

But The Winchesters has a narrative couple, even if they don’t know it yet. For me, John and Mary still seem like just friends, they all do really, and while sometimes they’ll have talks in the van or heartfelt speeches to each other already with piano music softly playing overhead — it still doesn’t feel like romance. If anything, in 1x03 with John’s words about Mary and having to save her, it felt more like we’re inching more towards brother co-dependency than not. 

Since we have a narrative couple, and we already know what that is, we need a non-narrative couple. We need John and Mary to seek relationships with others, and probably get a little farther with it than just one date. We need something outside of the narrative that’s threatening to also take John and Mary along as well. John and Mary need their Cas, because they certainnly aren’t Dean and Cas to each other. 

“But Jen, why not just have John with Latika?” 

Because I said so! No, just kidding, because Carlos makes more sense to me in this case. 

It’s been clear to a lot of us watching that Carlos really captures the attitude and spirit of early seasons Dean. A little over confident, likely compensating for something. Withholding emotional stuff, maybe a little cavelier in his love life, and hell we even got a “why does paper even beat a rock” reference in 1x04. 

But in 1x04, it feels like Carlos was also set up with Cas parallels. 

Carlos was in the Navy, he was in the service, just like John. Dean and Cas were also ordered basically to “fight” by their fathers, and were essentially soldiers of their own corners of the narrative. 

But, Carlos isn’t a soldier. He’s a medic. He’s a healer. First thing I thought of was “Oh, Cas healed people and Dean all the time.” That’s one of the things I associate with Cas a lot is just healing, both physical wounds and emotional ones. 

I find it interestingly fasincating that Carlos was put in contrast to John like this. Dean and Cas to me were on the same level whereas Carlos felt like almost the polar opposite to John. He didn’t illegally sign up for the war while underaged, he wasn’t really looking for a fight, and he did none of the fighting but instead helped those who were wounded in the fighting. Whereas John entered the war underaged, was a Marine, and likely saw so many atrocities unfold before him including the death of his friend Murphy. 

The Destiel parallels didn’t end there for me. 

It seems like we’re test driving John with the different characters. He’s with Mary, alone. Then he’s with Latika, alone. And now he’s with Carlos for most of the episode, alone. So it feels like it’s almost like I’m watching The Bachelor lol. You have the winner who was engineered by producers to be the pick at the end of the competition [Mary], the one who actually was in it to find love with the Bachelor [Latika] and the one that the Bachelor actually fell in love with [Carlos]. 

[I’ve never seen this show lmao I’m actually modeling this off of Flavor Of Love but shh don’t tell anyone]

Obviously, my saying John is in love with Carlos is literally just me saying that. Literally no proof of that right now. I’m just saying if we’re going to throw some tropes in there, that’s where I’d slot him in. 

So getting back to Destiel parallels — I found the jungle space that John and Carlos wound up in so interesting. It really reminded me of Purgaytory. Yes I’m spelling it that way. 

When Carlos stepped on the mine and said John’s name like that, like Murphy did but also just like that, idk. Struck something in me. But I also found it interesting that he was in there at all. All the other people that this god killed were on their own. But now it’s both Carlos and John, and the god is using Carlos to try and like, convince John to do what it wants John to do. 

Obviously, we know that despite his claims otherwise, John did wind up doing what the god wanted him to do and did in fact kinda give into his inner demons, which we saw play out the entire episode as John struggled hard. 

For me, John needs someone who’s going to tempt him away from the narrative, away from going down this bad path of running instead of confronting his inner demons, and away from the narrative pairing that will eventually be with Mary. He needs someone who will help steer him away from all of this, because the narrative has to have something to rip away from him. And progress would be that thing that the narrative strips away. 

And to me, yes I wouldn’t mind it being Latika either but I’m aligning her more with Mary at the moment. So for me, it’d be Carlos. Another ‘brother in arms’ [see what I did there], someone who does understand the trauma of seeing what he saw, and experienced more or less what he experienced. Someone who is that beacon of hope and light [even though I’m sure Carlos has his own issues obviously] that would make John want to confront his issues intead of run from them. 

So, when I see fun Destiel parallels to John and Carlos I like them, but I’m also thinking about the meta narrative implications of this. A queer ship, for outside of the narrative, that will wind up getting the axe in order to serve the narrative. Because isn’t that what happened with Destiel, and Dean’s right to reciprocate being taken away from him [literally. the final monsters ripped people’s tongues out and he never said Cas’ name after that phone call in 15x19]. 

To mark a full tragedy and degradation of John Winchester, it’d be great to me anyway if they do the same with him. 

Now —

I know post-episode there were some loud dissenters and those who aren’t happy about this concept that John could be queer, especially if it’s more upfront about it than Dean ever truly got a chance to do. 

And for that, I understand, however I’m choosing to view this as a good thing because if they can slap on as many callbacks to Destiel as they can with these two, but knowing that with these two it’s going to fail while with Destiel more or less succeeded*, I’m choosing to call a win a win. I also don’t believe symbolism, meta, and story for The Winchesters should be sacrificed because of decisions made for a separate show that began in 2005 and tried its hardest to deliver undeniably queer Dean in its 15 year long run. 

*Dean never go to say I Love You back, however I’m a continuation believer, and I also think the metaphorical silence was pretty loud.

A lot of folks choose to see adult John as homophobic, a headcanon/fanon trait that I can 100% understand where folks come from. However it’s not canon that he is, and it’s never been implied in the show either. Therefore, I feel like that point of debate is one I don’t really take all that seriously, because it’s someone’s personal reading of a character, and not tangible canon. 

A queer John Winchester would I think give us the chance to add more fuel to the Destiel fire, while also giving us the chance to grieve a love story that could have been, and grieve a person that John could have been instead of the one that he became. Queer people aren’t always good, kind, reasonable, and understanding. Sometimes they can, indeed, grow into being terrible people. 

The Winchesters is ultimately a tragedy. No one is going to win at the end of the day. It’s like watching a run away train and being unable to stop the characters from making the choices that we know will lead them not to safety but to mortal danger. 

But if they can give us peeks into what could have been, that’ll make it so much more tragic in a way that really resonates with us. 

[baekslight]

Every month of 2023!

Tagged by @baekhyunnybyun! thank you bex ♡

rules: link your favorite and/or most popular post from each month this year <3 (it’s totally fine to skip months!) and tag some CCs you love!

I want to start by saying that I didn't even go into 2023 thinking that I will be going back to giffing after I stopped in like 2012 or something. Ended up deciding one day that I really miss it and since I wanted to create a space for more Baekhyun content I thought I'd give it another go. My list will be starting from May since I started posting gifs from there <3

May

The second gifset I posted and I didn't even expect it to get that amount of notes because I wasn't sure whether it looked good or not lol

June

my CBX gifset reached over 300+ notes which was the first gifset do that well (i never expect that my sets will go viral or whatever so as long as people enjoy it i'm happy tbh)

July

this cream soda MV gifset got almost 500 notes which is already mind blowing to me tbh. so thank you to everyone who enjoyed and shared <3 this month was really busy since EXO had their comeback i made so many gifsets lol i just wanted to mention some favorites that i really enjoyed making as well: baekhyun in the gown, album photoshoot and one of my favorite kyoongtube videos from 2022 from my favorite moments with baekhyun series i started (and need to get back to i promise i will!)

August

most popular this month was my baegle line set hehe they are so cute TT my personal favorite is this take you home gifset bc no one gets this song like i do (it was my 2nd top song of 2023 in my spotify wrapped)

September

baekhyun in the gym got the most amount of notes in september!

Oktober

when chanyeol included baekhyun in his music video for good enough! that was such a good surprise ♡

November

i didn't have as much time to make content as the end of the year is the busiest time at work. but with 260 notes my seasons greetings set was the most popular

December

the year is coming to an end and this month (like november) was so busy at work i spent almost all my free time resting hence why i didn't post as much as i would've liked my recent baekzreal set got a lot of notes which makes me really happy :) thank you folks!

tagging (no pressure to do this. i just wanted to show some appreciation for y'all): @exo-stentialism, @dazzlingkai, @tipannies, @byunvoyage, @baekhyunnybyun, @exocean, @minsoek, @monwillica, @baekonbaek, @bethereforme, @dokyunqsoo, @pinktaeyeon, @petitbaek, @crazy-form, @jftk, @dinoboos, @jaennie, @suuho, @amaranth, @kokaibop

[writing-for-life]

Thank you for an amazing 2023!

About metas, fics and sparkly things…

This won’t be short, but you wouldn’t expect that from me, would you? 🤣

I’ve been on Tumblr for just a bit over a year because I needed to get off my family’s back after my three decades long Sandman brain-rot got worse again due to the Netflix series. I hovered around a handful of followers for months until things exploded (I still don’t know why tbh, I think it was one particular meta that kicked things off a bit), and I somehow ended up with hundreds of followers, which might not be much to some, but it’s a lot for me.

So to all of you I’d like to say: Thank you for being here. I don’t always manage to stay on top of things because my notifs are a mess and I lose track, plus I have a rather busy life and can often only write in batches and then queue, but each of you is appreciated, even if I accidentally forget to get back to you or if we aren’t mutuals.

I’ve made such lovely connections over the last year—my interest in The Sandman definitely does not align with the main focus that shan’t be named, and I’m glad that you folks are out there. You probably know who you are.

Now to the obligatory “your posts wrapped” thing—and I’m only doing it because I need to make a point (of course I do 🤣).

News and art

My by far most successful posts have been casting/shooting news and pretty pictures (two examples are linked). And I’m grateful for all the reblogs and likes of those, but apart from curating them, they’re not really me. They’re someone else’s work.

Meta analysis

Then you have my metas, which make up the bulk of the other posts that are doing quite well (you can find all of them in my pinned post).

Even if it wasn’t my most “successful” one (what does that even mean?), this one meant the most to me:

I love writing metas, whether they cover literary concepts, psychology, music or art because I’m a permanently brain-frazzled multi-hyphenate who has to talk about everything that won’t leave her alone.

I also love when you’re sending me asks btw. For the latter, I hope they pick up again in 2024 because they really nosedived since I switched off anonymous asks (which I won’t change, soz) after some people just thought it’s good sport to be an arse about my not being here to pray at the altar of the ship. I guess we have briefly covered the ugly side of Tumblr, too, then.

Writing

But what I'm most proud of when I think of all the things I've done in 2023 is my fiction and poetry. And that's both a happy and slightly sad thing to address.

My 31 Haikus for Sandtober started as a bit of fun, but they’ve developed a life of their own, and people seemingly liked them. The post also contains a bit of my fan-art:

I still intend to turn them into a hardcover at some point, but I won’t be able to create all the artwork myself, so if you’re a fan-artist and want to know what I’m thinking of, please get in touch (I’ll still talk about this in more detail at some point though).

The other thing I’m incredibly proud of is “The Light of Stars”.

I started it as a NaNoWriMo project in 2022 (I always use NaNo to do something that is less stressful than my professional writing projects), wrote it in a bit more than a month—and then did nothing with near 80,000 words until June 2023.

And then I thought “Fuck it,” and published it on Ao3. It’s a canon x OC fic, and this is where it gets a bit sad. Because for most of us writers, these are never the posts that get most engagement (the ratio is really something like 100 : 1 — 500 for a shitpost, 5 for an average writing post).

On Ao3, it gradually picked up because I published chapter after chapter, and I think I can say that it’s done fairly well over there in terms of engagement for an OC fic, and above all how people engage with it. Because it’s a bit deeper despite being romance, it deals with heavy topics like grief, and I’m so glad to have touched a few people’s hearts with it, and that it was meaningful to them. So much so that you all convinced me to write a sequel.

But here’s the thing: The general engagement with writing, especially non-explicit, non-ship, non-readerY/N on Tumblr is very, very low.

Writers who write canon x OC are still struggling to be heard through the noise (it’s not just me, I’ve had many conversations about this, so I’ll just say: I’ll speak for many of us). There are basically hardly any events for us to participate in (most of us only ever do so if we shift to canon one-shots, poetry or metas. If we don’t: Again, no one cares), and fandom often actively chooses to ignore us because “all OCs are self-inserts, ew.” Which is patently not true, and I could go on a long rant now why many canon x canon fics are very obvious self-inserts, which I won’t.

But even if all OCs were self-inserts, even if all characters were—so what? All writing is to a degree based on self-insertion because it comes from our brains—it’s not a bad thing. But apparently, it becomes a bad thing if the character is an OC, heaven knows why.

So if I had one wish (I’m allowed one, right?) for 2024, it would be that people engage more with OC fics and include them more in community events. That fandom, which prides itself in community, includes writers who don’t write for (the main) ship/s a bit more, especially if they don’t write smut (which I personally even do professionally, but I don’t want to have to do it in fanfic just to get engagement). I’m not holding my breath because I know that’s not where fandom’s oft single-minded focus lies, but a girl can dream, right?

And with that, I want to get to my proudest accomplishments of them all:

Being the curator queen of the sparkle realms:

Being one (arguably the main) instigator of the maddest crack ship that has ever graced (?) the face of the earth, spawned the most unhinged discussion (much truth in it though 🤣) and even NSFW fanart. I promise I’ll write that fic about Murphy and his Cool Hat:

Have a lovely 2024!

[madebysamael]

It's breakdown time again.

My mental health hasn't been great for a while. Tbh, it started tanking after I worked as a vendor selling my handmade jewelry at pride shows in June.

Which went great!! I had best-selling shows and people were really excited about my art. It was awesome.

And then I had to go back to work.

I work full-time, at a desk job in a corporate office. The company is in an industry often used to represent soulless antagonists in movies. My job itself is a specialized position that requires a lot of mental labor. Finding time and energy to create is a challenge, even in the times where things are balanced.

And lately it's been really tough, because the work that needs doing is what I, a person who suspects myself to be on the autism spectrum somewhere, find hellish: I have to navigate bureaucracy and act as a diplomat. I have to coordinate projects between different people and act as a liaison. Most of my job isn't doing anymore, it's figuring out who I need to reach out to, and when, and how do I phrase this so I don't offend anyone? It's inefficient, circular, and often requires me to dance with office politics.

I'm. So. Exhausted.

So, after dragging myself away from the laptop where I've been sending emails and updating spreadsheets all week, I was so excited, because last weekend, I got to escape to my favorite fantasy world: Good Omens. To a life in color, to an eternity ever after.

You all know what happens.

It opened the floodgates. I started losing focus at work, couldn't remember where we were at on projects, who I was waiting on, who I needed to contact - hell, I couldn't even remember to bring my lunch.

I was thinking about GO, but not about the story itself. Instead, it was about how, best-case scenario, it will be 2+ years before they get their happy ending. About how leaving them in limbo for so long fucking hurts.

About how 2-3 years is a long time. Long enough for Neil, David or Michael to have an accident, an illness. About how it would never be the same if they had to recast, or if someone else wrote. Imagine GO without Michael's microexpressions, without David's face reading like an open book even with glasses on. Without Neil's love for the world he shared with Terry pouring out into every single frame of it.

2-3 years is a long time. Long enough for me to get in a car accident, to develop cancer. I already had a cancer scare in 2022; luckily, I was fine. One of my best friends got lymphoma around my age. She, luckily, is also fine now.

But one of my other best friends, who had a heart attack, just a few years older than me... He's in a wooden box in his wife's living room.

And his 10-year wedding anniversary was on July 27, 2023. The day GOS2 was released.

So here I am. A week later, trying to keep it together and failing, thinking it's just a fucking TV show, it shouldn't matter so much...

But it's never just one thing. Every pain carries the weight of all the pain that came before it. I'm carrying the weight of Karl's death, of Steph's cancer, of the family members I've lost that would take too long to list here, several before even David's age.

And I'm struggling to even draw now. Or make jewelry, or sew. The creative pursuits, the things that are supposed to make the rote office job worth it, the things it supports... I feel no joy for them. Even simple things like screenshot studies are excruciating, taking far too long. My problem-solving skills are completely drained at work, and that makes drawing so much harder.

I see so many others creating beautiful things from the pain and getting well-deserved recognition for it. But the ideas aren't coming for me, and even if they were, where would I find the energy?

I don't know how to dig myself out of this spiral. It's so very tiring, and so very, very lonely.

[dragongirldg]

Hellooo there how are you

anyways if you want you can use this post to infodump on whatever you want

Info dumping huh? Well then.

I have been the biggest fan of this one ship for as long as I remember. Back in high school, I developed an interest in Homestuck. I obsessed over John Egbert specifically.

As I read fanfiction and looked at fanart, no ship sparked. I didn’t really care. I would read and yeah it’s cute and blah blah blah not my OTP.

Then the worst thing could have happened.

I looked at a crack ship and then I was fxcked. The more I thought about it, the more I loved it. Karkat who? Dave who? Dirk who? Sollex and Eridan who? Literally everyone that’s a common ship WHO?

It didn’t stick with me.

Want to know what stuck?

Caliborn.

I had this idea of Calliope getting to John first and then breaking up for one reason or another.

Then Caliborn and John date or live together for other reasons.

Calliope doesn’t really come into the equation anymore or show up in my daydreams.

I don’t why, but I thought it was adorable if John just got bothered by Caliborn at every turn. They’d bother and fight and just it was cute how much they antagonized.

Then I started developing my trans Headcanon and June eventually makes her first appearance without her being June. It’s only recently (late 2022? - 2023) that I heard the name June and went from there.

I would draw and write fanfiction after fanfiction adding and subtracting details.

June stays 8ft tall and Caliborn is slightly shorter by a few feet or inches.

Caliborn gets rid of the half shaved hair look for short curly hair.

I couldn’t stop doodling John all over my school work to the point my science teacher recognized him when I gave her a little quiz. She had a bearded dragon in the classroom and I loved holding them during class :3

(Don’t ask about the things I did in highschool)

I had a ton of ideas and a lot of them were problematic tbh so I’m still curving them out of my head for far better ideas.

No matter what fandom I became a part of John/ June x Caliborn never left me. I didn’t want to really read fics anymore since no one writes my ship.

Does anyone actually do pixies and Crocker and Harley and Egbert family dynamics? Do they ever have them interacting like a big extended family?

If I had the urge, I’d write my AU ideas more. (I’m kinda stuck at the moment, work burns me out to much and too often that I don’t have motivation to get through the one? Shot I have)

I am going to attempt to redraw this political romance fancomic I drew a long time ago to update it with my newest version of John/ June. That means she will be June. If I could find the notebooks I had.

With my inability to write I’m stuck with lackluster chapters and get nothing done. I need some form of energy boost for my creativity. It’s at an all time low at the moment, being used for other fandoms.

Like this Transformers AU that got me in a chokehold.

Optimom AU (I have a whole blog on it if you want to send asks and stuff)

Optimus becomes the mother of Soundwave, Sari, and Bumblebee. The seeker teens think of Optimus as their mother and there are like 9 of them. Not to mention the others that kind of sees Optimus as a mother figure.

Basically Found Family Trope :3

It’s more complicated than that and I have several fanfics and fanart (which is now found in the Blog)

The messy Age thing with Sari, it’s because I plan of having her die at some point (trauma) and I can’t in good conscience do that to a 3-5 year old (it’s by electrocution).

Yeah it’s messed up, but the world of Transformers is equally if not more messed up and morally grey :3

At least Ariel (Black Arachnia) and Sari get to become extensions of Unicron and Primus!

Sentinel redemption and Ultra Magnus retiring to become Optimus’ father.

There’s a lot to the AU I’m not going in to in this post but yeah!!! That’s it!!!

Honestly I could go on, but then the post will never end.

[3-1pool]

Next up, the weather--wtnv reference??

not intentionally!! i was never really into wtnv tbh, but from the little i know about it might kind of work as a reference tho?

in my heart this fic is called library fic... basically it's an au where seb works at a library in a small town! but there's something Weird going on with the weather....

There’s something strange going on with the weather.

Sebastian’s been noticing it for a while now, the way it will change at the blink of an eye, from rain to sun and then back to rain again. Or the thick fog that sometimes rolls through their tiny town and then clears away just as quickly. And then there was that random hail storm the other week.

It’s June. It should not be hailing in June.

He can’t wrap his head around it. The obvious answer would be climate change, but even that is starting to make less sense as time goes on and the weird weather persists. What’s even more frustrating is that no one else seems to be too bothered about it. 

He’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

he of course doesn't work at the library alone! there's kimi and there's lily (and lily's boyfriend alex who doesn't work there but is there whenever lily is) and then. there's also charles:)

And then there’s Charles, who- well. 

When Charles had first started, Seb thought he was a bit. Weird. Awkward, in the way he always laughed at the things Seb said, even if they weren’t jokes, and when Seb did tell a joke it would go right over his head. He’s warmed up a bit, since then, found his footing. He’s a good guy, really, even if he sometimes makes Seb question his own sanity.

(yeah it's a cheb fic. are any of us really surprised?)

((there's also lewis who's a primary school teacher who brings his class to the library every tuesday and brings seb some organic honey from his husband valtteri's farm))

but yeah. there's something up with the weather. it changes almost as if on a whim. it'll be a a grey and rainy day and then suddenly the clouds will part in a matter of seconds and the sun is shining and the birds are singing. i'm not gonna tell u what is actually up with the weather in CASE i finish this... i do love the idea & the little universe i've created inside my head.... have a last little snippet!

He gets a notebook. On the first page he writes Weather Watch, and then immediately scribbles over it, thinking it sounds a bit silly. This isn’t silly; it’s a very serious investigation into a very serious problem. He opts for just writing down the date instead, and then the time. 

24th of June, 2022

08:12: Partly cloudy. 19℃. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He brings his pen up to his lips, chewing on the end of it as he considers what else to put. It had rained yesterday, but he’s not sure he should be including that. He hadn’t paid attention to the temperature or the timing, and he doesn’t want the data to be compromised. 

“What’s that?”

Seb jumps at the sudden voice, the pen slipping out of his fingers and cluttering to the floor. He looks up and sees Charles standing on the other side of the desk with the book cart.

[unforth]

I managed to completely forget I posted goals on Tumblr last January (I knew it was on a Discord, where I was pointedly ignoring it since...yeah. well. about that.) but I found it while looking for something else, and I might as well take a glance back.

Goals I set for 2022:

Personal Goals from 2022:

Get My Back Fixed: victory, to the extent that victory was possible. I had back surgery on Feb 7th, and that fixed the primary issue (spinal stenosis caused by a herniated disc). My arthritis still exists and flares every couple months but my doc already told me that's just gonna be the rest of my life. Since that part isn't fixable...well, at least the surgery helped.

Keep Losing Weight: I was up and down throughout the year, and ended up pretty much exactly where I started, at about 180.

Exercise: I maintained a regular stretching/exercise regimen, including a fair amount of walking and even a little jogging, from March through November. I slipped in November, but I started again last week, so...yeah.

Study Chinese: almost 100% success! At least I didn't fall down in every regard, lmao. I study for about 45 minutes every day, across 3 apps. I finished Duolingo's core curriculum and have a streak of over 450 days going atm. I bought a year subscription to DuChinese so I could practice reading and it's really helping my vocabulary. I didn't manage to do much of any translation but eh, I'll take it.

Community Goals from 2022:

Encourage Others to Create: I ran May Trope Mayhem again, and really stepped up the creation/publishing end of my business. I'll take it. I didn't manage to do anything with the kink memes and I've been waffling on just shutting them down tbh.

Keep Up the Destiel Archive: basically a complete fail. Like, the archive still exists and I answer asks and DMs and send people stuff but I've done basically zero upkeep/expansion/work on it.

Duck Prints Press: we managed 3 anthologies (two are technically not published yet but they will be in like a week and a half and all the work was done in 2022 so I'll count it). We didn't manage a novel, but we did publish a novella and like 20 short stories, so I'll call it a win.

Creative Goals from 2022:

Post Every Day: I managed about two weeks, and haven't written anything for myself since June, so yeah, uh. Yeah.

Work on WIP: nope

Make Progress on The Long Road: ...I thought about it on and off, does that count?

Post One Art Piece a Month: I might have technically actually succeeded at this? but not in way I know I intended when I set the goal and honestly, whatever.

Fibercraft: I didn't manage to cosplay anything - we don't really have the money - but I've definitely been doing fibercraft. I did a mess of crocheting last winter (and need to finish those projects now that it's cold again), and I did a lot of cross stitch over the summer and fall, and I'm currently working on a quilted wall hanging, so. Yeah. I'd call this one a success.

So...definitely a mixed bag. My kids ended up needing a lot more of me than I was expecting, especially over the summer and fall when I'd expected things to ease up, so that didn't help. And the business growing is just eating the entire rest of my life. I've definitely semi-intentionally decided to give up on some of the side projects and step back. Like, I don't like that I'm not doing anything on the Destiel archive, but I've basically come to accept it and I don't expect it to change. In my post last year, I wrote "I sacrificed a lot of my personal creative goals to make the business a success and ya know, I'm basically okay with it." And that really resonates, cause I'd absolutely say the same thing is true of this year. The business IS doing well - we earned more money than last year, and from far more diversified sources. I didn't earn enough to take a paycheck...again...but we're also less in the hole for 2022 than we were for 2021, and it really truly feels like things are moving in a good direction and that the work I'm putting in is accomplishing something. 2023 looks bright in that regard.

I'm honestly trying to move away from big declarative ambitious goals. They just make me feel like I've failed. So I haven't put tons of thought into my 2023 beyond "keep doing the things I'm doing that are working, and try to add in a few things that I haven't been succeeding at but would like to. So, with this entire post plus that in mind, my goals for 2023 are...

Personal Goals

Continue Exercising: I slipped on exercise in November and December. It was definitely doing me good before that so I'd like to keep it up. My goals for a while have been 10 to 20 minutes of stretching/Yoga/floor exercises 5 or 6 days a week, and a minimum of 2,000 steps a day every day, and I hit that very consistently until mid-November, so I think I can resume it now that the holidays are over and the kids are heading back to school on Wednesday.

Study Chinese: just. keep it up. I'd really like to work on a translation project this year. I've been eyeing the Tian Guan Ci Fu manhua (I own volume one in print), continuing my translation of the 2ha manhua (which is online), and/or poking at the Lie Huo Jiao Chou manhua, which is on the Bilibili app and has been taunting me from my favorited comics for ages. But if I just spend another year like I spent 2022, drilling HSK 1 through 3 until I've got them down pat and continuing the slow vocab expansion through DuChinese, I'll take it. It's getting the job done.

Community Goals

Figure out what to keep up and what to step back from: I really haven't been able to do a good job on everything, and I've put some balls down and can't say I'm terribly interested in picking them back up. I'd like to make more of that official in 2023, so I don't feel like I'm being pulled in as many directions, and so that the changes feel intentional and therefore More Okay instead of semi-accidental and accepted with resignation.

Art Sideblog Goals: I'm pretty behind on maintenance of cnovelartreblogs especially; I'd like to really get that organized, and to finally launch the Discord I've been building on-and-off for almost a year. I'd also like to get my backlog of things to blog under 10k, but honestly that's probably ambitious. I had it down a lot this year, but it's surged up since the twitterpocalypse and the holidays (though I'm still well ahead of where I was at the start of 2022, so that's something).

Duck Prints Press:

have 4 anthologies in the works (we already have two in the works for 2023; I expect those two to publish, and I'd like us to have 2 more in the pipeline even though they likely won't publish until 2024)

publish at least 52 short stories (a minimum of one a week)

publish at least 4 novels (I've got two in progress so I'm pretty optimistic on this one)

$40k+ in gross earnings

take a paycheck (even if it's only for royalties on sales of my own work)

publish one story a month of my own work

Creative Goals

Read 12 Books for Leisure: I set this goal in 2022 and while I technically hit it (Goodreads says I read like 70-something books), I only actually read 11 novel-length books because I wanted to. The rest was either manhua, or stuff I read for the Press. So, I've set my Goodreads goal as 72 works, with the understanding that at least 52 will be those short stories I'll edit, and I'm also considering signing up for a book bingo that a friend participates in on Dreamwidth. I don't think I'll have trouble meeting this goal tbh; even if I just read the Seven Seas danmei pubs, which I absolutely intend to, I'll probably hit it (considering I'm several volumes behind on both MDZS and TGCF...). Even if I don't, I'll be close like last year.

Write Something Each Week: I made a list of prompts for myself and ships I want to write for, and I want to try to write something for each prompt each week (in whatever order). Even if I don't finish a single one of them. Even if I hate it all. I just want to keep going on it. I also want to write one short story suitable for publication each month, probably pwp kink fic. (Week 1 is Hualian/were-creature, and I did work out an idea I don't hate...)

Fibercraft: I started blankets for the kids last winter; I'd like to finish at least one of them. And just. Keep making things. It's good for my brain. Much better than the like 6 weeks I spent this year rotting my brain with Merge Dragons at night. *sweat drop*

Anyway, I wouldn't say any of these are resolutions, since most of it is stuff that's already going on. It's really more "I've got the boat sailing the direction I want, now let's just...keep that up..."

Also, it'd be really nice to not be fucking exhausted all the time. That'd help. Just saying. *weary sigh*

[fagdykefriendship]

thinking about my girlfriend sorry for being gay. like. sorry this got long. read more if you want to learn how we got together

ok we met in? around 2021? like we met but we didn’t talk to each other. i remember i was surprised that she knew my name once when she asked me for help. in the 21-22 rowing season i guess i was around her a lot in groups but didn’t really talk to her. she was super quiet and i was also pretty quiet. i did take notice of her mostly bc she also followed ro ramdin on instagram and was quiet and mysterious

then in late 2022, my friend’s friend maurice decided he wanted to make her talk more so he just basically started talking at her and she responded and thank god for maurice tbh. i started being around her more in smaller group settings and talking to her. i found out she was super funny and also easily embarrassed

by 2023 we were friends. still mostly hung out in group settings. i started hanging out with her and one other friend, so a very small group. we texted a lot the three of us but i still wasn’t one on one with her that often since we were both awkward

with the third friend in our group becoming more busy, and planning to move, she and i ended up hanging out one on one a few times. also texting one on one. we got closer and then she came out to me and the other friend as trans. she and i got a lot closer after that talking about trans stuff

i gave her a bunch of my old dresses and that was kinda the Moment for me she was twirling around in one of my dresses and she hugged me and i was like ohhh shit we are not unpacking this right now but i think i would kill for this girl

then in like. mid-late june we were talking a lot. it came time for pride, me and her and talla went together. she and talla slept over. talla clocked real fast that i liked her. talla told me that she definitely liked me back. honestly without that i doubt i would’ve told her

then like a week later. last day of june i was over at her place. it was really late at night. it was like 1am and officially july. my best friends in the fagdyke groupchat were telling me to just tell her. which i did. for the first time ever! because i’m a chronic straight girl liker but i’m healing.

and then she was like oh i like you too and i could not believe her. until we kissed. and her cat meowed at us bc her cat hates gay people. and now we’re together. it hasn’t been that long but also she and i are just very similar i always feel like i’ve known her way longer than i have. she was my best friend for like 4 months and now my girlfriend for almost 1. that’s crazy

she told me that she realized she liked me when i told her she was pretty over text. which i had done intentionally and when i sent that text i had to put my phone down and breathe deeply. gay people are so dramatic

and even though she’s really shy in general even with other friends i feel like she’s opened up so much to me. she’s a complete different person from when i first met her. first of all she’s happier. transgenderism does that. she’s a lot more open and vulnerable. she’s affectionate. she verbalizes things better. also her hair has improved. i love my girlfriend

[half-doomed]

rules: share your 12 favorite songs from this year (one from each month or just your favorites overall) and tag 12 people!

So @smileandasong tagged me in this quite literally 2 years ago and i never finished it but I always liked the idea (and I found the abandoned draft of it recently) so I'll do it for 2022!

january: silently screaming by bad suns

This album came out in january so it only makes sense for a song from it to be january's song! It also perfectly captures the vibe lol

february: bone bag by superet

We saw superet open for idkhow in february so I was really getting into them around this time!

march: come on home by franz ferdinand

I really don't know what I was listening to around march but I know I was listening to this band a lot more this year! And i think it started around march ? Idk this month was a blur tbh

april: american dream by weathers

I started getting into weathers around this time! (We saw them live in may!) This song is also a huge mood because I was extremely disillusioned with my job (and I'd end up finally leaving in June)

may: what a day to lose my mind by dbmk

I started getting super into dbmk again because we saw them live (and met them) in may! They also started releasing new music around this time! (Which everybody should go listen to)

june: parade by joywave

You can literally see exactly when i started going feral over joywave lol. I got obsessed with them immediately after the hellvetica tour was announced. And then, along with idkhow, they completely dominated my spotify wrapped for this year.

july: thelma + louise by bastille

I was starting to get into bastille by association with joywave lol. Plus a lot of joywave friends I had made were also into them! They're also a slightly spring/summer band to me

august: hang em high by mcr

I was getting really into mcr around this time because we saw them during this month and again in september! I almost went with a different mcr song but they played this one at my first show 🤠

september: mad iqs by idkhow

September was hellvetica month!!!!!! No thoughts only mad iqs

october: simple by de'wayne (feat. idkhow)

It's a feature so it doesn't count as a repeat artist. This song came out this month! And so did his album!

november: genius of love by tom tom club

I got really obsessed with this song for a short period of time

december: goodnight socialite by the brobecks

Because apparently almost all my other top songs were actually christmas songs?? But truly one of the Most songs of all time ever

Tagging @vanweezer @girlmikeyway @comfortingdecay @fangs-frthmmrs @goodbyetommyyy @intheblueglow @aftercoffees @cyncity2000 @softnsquishable @ofalltheginjoints @voluntaryvictim @purgatoryhips if you want! Sorry if I double tagged you!

[visceravalentines]

I posted 4,555 times in 2022

That's 4,555 more posts than 2021!

533 posts created (12%)

4,022 posts reblogged (88%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@vincent-sinclair-deserved-better

@elytrians

@ace-of-hearts-and-spades

@myers-meadow

@bloodlst

I tagged 2,432 of my posts in 2022

Only 47% of my posts had no tags

#bo sinclair - 345 posts

#asks - 280 posts

#vincent sinclair - 241 posts

#michael myers - 222 posts

#art - 171 posts

#house of wax - 122 posts

#lester sinclair - 100 posts

#anon asks - 71 posts

#tcm - 62 posts

#jason voorhees - 51 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#he agrees to pose nude for you and you can barely finish the piece and by the end he looks noticeably different 👀 than when you started

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I wish you would write a fic where….

Sinclair bros. gang bang tbh

Alright Nonnie, here we are. I've been wanting to write something like this for a while but the maximum number of people I've ever had sex with at the same time is one (1) so it was kind of daunting to tackle three at once (heh). It got away from me a little bit on the buildup but I hope you like it! Happy to write more like this in the future so if you want me to give it another shot, lmk.

The Sundress

Poly!Sinclairs x Hinge!AFAB!Reader

This morning you decided to wear a very particular sundress.

See the full post

739 notes - Posted June 29, 2022

#4

A Matching Set of Spoons

Poly!Sinclairs x GN!Reader

Some nights, the Sandman skipped right over Ambrose. 

See the full post

748 notes - Posted June 7, 2022

#3

Wow!  My first real smut fic!  We’ll pretend I haven’t been mortified about sharing it for a whole week.  MINORS DNI.

Spoils of War

Michael Myers x AFAB!Reader

Halloween in Haddonfield brought out the worst of mob mentality every year, but this night had been unprecedented.

See the full post

976 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#2

Michael Myers is the human equivalent of a cat and you can't change my mind. Here is a collection of tiny fluffy blurbs proving my point. I hope you enjoy!

Michael Myers x GN!Reader, no content warnings besides the man himself

He’s ignored you all day.  You’ve tried to engage him in a movie, a walk around the block, even tried to entice him into the bedroom.  He dismissed you every time with a blank stare.  You finally gave up and started working on a project you’ve been putting off. 

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995 notes - Posted July 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Fireworks

Dad's Best Friend!Dilf!Bo Sinclair x AFAB!Reader

If there was one thing your parents did right every time, it was their big summer bash. 

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1,366 notes - Posted July 4, 2022

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