#I don't really get to see my friends irl often.. the last time we hung out was like. idk. when the mario movie came out? long time

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I miss y.agami your honor

[notallbloodmages]

One of my friends from ff14 passed away mid-April. I only found out because his house that we shared got demo'd this last round. He frequently logged on just to make sure it didn't get demo'd. I was already worried when I hadn't seen him for two weeks, but I got really worried then. So I messaged him on Discord, and a few days later, I got a message from his family with what happened.

It was weird telling our free company. I was sort of the only person who talked to him very often. So I got a lot of condolences and it felt..awkward.

Between the first reply and the one with more details, I hoped it was a cruel prank. Maybe someone stole his Discord info, or something. He wasn't exactly a prankster, but I thought maybe something awful happened irl and he turned mean? I dunno. I would have forgiven him probably. Even with proof I feel like any minute I'll see him log on and feel the relief wash over me.

It's weird when an online friend dies. My memory is shit, and I feel like I didn't know him at all in a way. I know he collected Miku and Touhou figs. I know he had a lot of tattoos and what style they were in. But when his family asked if I had any fun stories or anything, I felt like I was lying. I couldn't remember any single moment. I spent so much time with him doing treasure maps, fashion, deep dungeon runs, MSQ prog. And yet I couldn't remember anything. I somehow never managed to take any screenshots together. I never wrote down anything in my ff14 journal besides my garden schedule. I was able to tell them how we met in-game, because that's always going to stick in my mind.

He last logged in the day before he died. I know I was online that day, but I don't remember if I talked to him.

I didn't know what he sounded like. I never got to hug him. I didn't even know he was only a couple states away! He never indicated that he was depressed, so I never considered telling him how I would do anything for him. I would have driven there, any time, to meet up.

I feel so stupid for crying so much. Every couple hours I just...I can't stand it.

general content warning under the cut

He committed suicide. He did it the day after he last logged in. I thought, after surviving a couple already, that I would be smarter and know when someone was considering it. I thought that with how candid he always was with his feelings, he'd tell me something was wrong. It's so selfish to think I could have done anything, and also very normal. I just wish I'd kept better track of our conversations. I wish I'd made sure to write down when we hung out in a party.

He didn't have a facebook or a anything, there's no way for me to read about him unless I ask his family. No way for me to look at pictures or posts or anything written by him besides the message in my ffxiv house book, and his tattoo posts on the SA forums.

I re-made one of my retainers in his image, in his favorite glamour. I'm trying to bid on his previous house plot. I'm trying not to talk about him in FC chat, but the house came up when people were talking about last second bids. It's just weird. I feel weird in our FC now. I'm already made fun of by at least one member for being "the oversharer." Everyone already knows I'm sensitive as fuck. It's hard to act normal.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

It's honestly wild to imagine Claude growing up with no friends around his age, with so many people hating a child, and without his parents protecting him from danger. That last thing isn't even out of hate or maliciousness either, but (from what can be gathered) a genuine act of love - something that was so trust-breaking and world-shattering, know that not even his parents who DO love him (in his eyes, if nothing else) will ever protect him and that he was well and truly alone for the first ~16 or so years of Claude’s life (save for occasionally Nader). My boy deserves love 😭😭😭

Yeah. :( I can't imagine not having any form of a friend for so many friends. I mean personally, I don't consider my school friends real "friends", you know? They weren't people I relied on, trusted or hung out with often. They were just "school friends", but it was still social interaction and they were friends, but they weren't the kind of people who just last in your life. You still need people to talk to and have fun with though while growing up and I can't imagine not having that at all. :(

Also, YEAH, the way so many people actually just... despised him? As a small child? Like... I can't even wrap my head around someone hating a child because they were born with foreign blood. I mean, what kind of person do you have to be to literally try to assassinate a child? I mean of course that makes for an interesting story, but it's still horrible to think about! I've heard of instances of kids irl having to grow up fast because of life circumstances, and it's always such a sad thing when a child can't be a child.

In a way it reminds me of when Dimitri tells Byleth he "let his childish whims get the better or him" or something to that effect. His childhood kind of promptly ended when he was thirteen, so seeing him still have a childish side is kind of like, it's there because it existed at all in the past, but it was cut short and so it still sometimes pops up as if to make up for the lost time. With Claude, he's casual and sometimes goofy, and even if a lot of it is just his "fake" personality so to speak, I feel like he acts like that because he never got to in Almyra.

For sure, yeah, I think if you had someone who loved you but wouldn't protect you from danger that would really hurt your mentality as far as who to trust. Like, if you can't even trust your own parents to keep you alive as a literal small child, how can you trust anyone to be there for you? It makes his whole academy phase story a lot sadder when you see him acting like he's friends with everyone but if they were truly, honestly "friends" in his eyes, he would've trusted them more and been more open with them.

I think it's really, super telling that throughout the entire game, he never once utters a word to anyone about being from Almyra, and even if you S support him with Byleth he still doesn't let on as far as who he really is. He implies he's from Almyra in their ending, but he doesn't actually let on that he's royalty. It makes sense, but it's so sad to see that even if he loved someone, it would still take time for him to actually say something. Like, I'm sure eventually he did/had to to work with Fodlan properly, but the fact that he left and didn't even mention what his "connections" were is super telling about how afraid he is to trust literal anyone and everyone. He might not be afraid of people trying to kill him left and right, but he's definitely still afraid of trusting people.

I'm so angry he's not real LOL, I just want to pick up little boy Claude and cuddle him and put in a bed with fluffy blankets and soft pillows so I can tuck him in and pat the blankets on him and kiss his forehead. I honestly wonder if parents ever even did something like that, like tucking him in and saying they loved him and giving him a goodnight forehead kiss... I get the feeling that anything we would consider normal parent behavior wasn't something Claude ever got to experience. :(

[taylortruther]

Some of the recent discource on your blog and me not being active on Swiftie Social Media made me think again about some of my observations of this fandom so this is me putting one of those into words:

People's opinions are always affected by what people around them are saying and we often agree with a certain opinion just because it's the popular opinion in our group of friends or the section of the internet we hang out in.

I notice it whenever there's a debate about a song and especially when the song is ME! I've seen a lot of people saying they only started disliking the song because everyone on stan twitter hated it so much. I've seen a lot of people claiming that anyone who loves ME! is lying and trying to get a secret sessions. We should all criticise Taylor for ME! and for choosing it as a lead single, because we deserve good singles (I have a lot of thoughts about that) and if you don't criticse her, if you're not mad at her and if, god forbid, you actually like this song as a single, well, you're a cupcake.

And it's the same among people who like ME! because anyone who dislikes the song obviously hates happiness. Sometimes people devlope contraditing opinions because they feel like they have to go against the crowd and it applies to ME! lovers and me among them. I don't think I'm forcing myself to like the song. It's a fun song, I like it! But I do think I enhance my positive emotions toward the song because I feel like I need to defend it and prove I'm different than the crowd.

Now it's weird to actively notice that one of my opinions wasn't really my own and it was just something I started thinking because everyone else did. I disliked the song Mine for so long because I thought it was a poorly written song and overall just not a good one. Until last year I listened to it more and I started wondering why the hell I thought it wasn't good because it's definitely a well-written song with good vocals and a good production, and I realized it's because when I joined the fandom it was one of the most hated songs (at least in the section of the internet I hung out in). I decided a song was bad because everyone else did and for years I didn't even question this.

I distance myself from the fandom around album or songs releases because of that and it's pretty cool to see what I actually think when there's no pressure to have the "correct opinion".

this ask is old, and i was hanging onto it because i didn't want it to get lost in the shuffle. now feels like a good time.

i really urge anyone to be unafraid to share their honest opinions about the fandom, taylor's music, or whatever. like. tumblr is not real life. you won't get "cancelled" irl for your opinions here, even if you're bad. it's okay.