#I would join the discord but I am kinda quite scared of big fandom discords and stuff

[telebeast]

Enter Vekoa, Stage Left

[ID in alt]

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Happy new year everyone 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

I know 2020 has been hard for everyone.

And I want everyone to know, suffering isn't a contest and we all suffer in different ways. But I feel I should give my year in Review. Just some things that happened to me personally.

This was an intense, and long and spiritual and emotional journey for me...

I really discovered what it meant to have community, family and what my life means to me.

But I feel I need to get this in writing cause I can remember the year with vivid detail and I will probably forget if I don't get it down.

Do I have to share this publically online to my tumblr account for a bunch of strangers to see? not really.

Do I want to?

Yes. I think so. Just from how so many people on tumblr and real life have touched me.

This is kinda long and no one needs to read this.

(idk how to do a readmore on mobile. But this is where I would add it later. No one needs to read if they don't want to.)

January/February: (and some background on the last five years of my life cause.....well. it's important.)

As people knew, I got way into Invader Zim last summer. I spent most of my waking life working a dead end job at a grocery store. I lived a sad lonely life, going straight home to a single dark studio apartment. With not many material possessions outside of games, my laptop and my tablet to my name. Half of my material loves, such as home furnishings and books were still in boxes from when I moved in. In case I ever had to move again, or get some "big screenshot or copywriter" job in the city.

....

I lived in that city in the same dead end job and apartment for five years.

No friends. No social life. I often refused to make doctor appointments or attempt to establish myself in that city. I didn't even talk to anyone in my workplace.

Work. Go online. Go to sleep.

I lived like that for five years.

I thought it was good.

Even my therapist thought I was doing well.

When I really wasn't. My main character flaw I struggle with is motivation.

I can talk to someone about very detailed plans I have to fix a problem... But I tend to never follow through.

Just because I can describe in detail how to fix my personal problems, it doesn't mean I will do it.

(I have gotten better at this but it's a major struggle)

I might have been a Zombie during the day...

But by night I was pouring my soul into my AU and my analysis.

After being so thoughly ignored or overlooked by the Naruto fandom and the Undertale fandom, I felt like I had finally found my home and was settling into a community there.

I just loved that people loved what I had to say.

Especially my AU.

It's no secret that a lot of themes in my au revolve around found family, grief, and loss.......

Fatherhood, in particular.

What it means to be a father, how much do you need to try when you mess up, how willing should a child forgive their parent, especially those that have wronged you and how much of it is factually accurate and simply a self projection of what children want their parents to be and visa versa... What amount of forgiveness and change is nessasary...is it needed?

....

It's no secret that a lot of my AU is a giant coping mechanism for my Dad's death. Espessially the falling out and growing closer with a lot of my family members throughout the years following his death. (Most of the time I keep it ambiguous to how it relates to my personal life unless I include a readmore that states so outright. I feel my au can be enjoyed by a variety of people in the fandom who don't need to know me as a person or my life story.)

My Dad passed away in 2016 in February and my family still feels the aftershocks to this day.

It's part of the reason I moved to the city, alienated myself from my family and people that loved me and refused to experience life for five years.

My entire world was Zim, and I was okay.

March: When America finally realized and started to feel the effects of the pandemic....

A lot of people got scared.

Me included.

I didn't have any streaming services or access to the news. So I only heard accounts from my mom.

I didn't understand why the store was so dead quiet and empty for a few days, then it went into mass chaos and panic in the span of two days.

It felt like Retail black friday in the worst way. Everyone was packed like sardines. Everyone was yelling. The lines at the registers bled into the clothing department.

I was witness to customers shoving others for toilet paper, being rude to cashier's and just overall unpleasantness.

At the time, I didn't even fully grasp what the pandemic was, and I feel a lot of people at the time didn't either.

I ended up absentmindedly scratching my eyebrow in front of a customer and she screamed and villanised me for it. That they didn't want groceries touched by my "unclean hands"

I ended up breaking down into tears.

The customer behind me gave me a hug and told me I was doing a great job.

But the damage was done. It was the final straw, I couldn't stop crying and I was breaking apart.

Thankfully my Boss (the one who likes me) pulled me aside and asked what's wrong.

It was then that I quit. No notice. Same day. I had to get out of there.

I was planning to move to an apartment with my sister in the summer, but my Mom offered for me to move back in with her temperarily just so I can get out of the city and away from the pandemic.

So I did.

I got scared, broke my lease a month early and quit my job of five years that gave me nothing back.

He told me, "take care of yourself and your family, I won't keep you here, do what you need to do."

So I did.

April-June:

A very eventful few months.

My mom offered for me to live at her place, but for some reason she was acting like I would live there forever. That this wasn't a temporary arrangement, and that I didn't have an apartment set up already.

This was in large part to my sister, who had lived with my mom taking advantage of her for years.

Even though my sister and I were going to move in together, I was just never sure about it cause of how she never packed her stuff or made any effort to find a job.

My mom often acted like I was lazy and not searching and was treating me like... Well, an unruly teenager instead of a woman of 29 years. She acted like I was a failure for returning home when it was her idea in the first place.

I would have just been petrified in the city.

Like usual, I retreated to my au again.... And in the spring, something eventful happened.

In may, 8th 2020:

I was invited by @rissynicole to join an invader zim discord.

Now, I've never really used discord before. I always thought it's interface is too confusing.. and I'm a member of a few other iz discords and I usually don't follow them that closely.

Rissy assured me it was different cause some friends of thiers made it and it was smaller.

Before I knew it, I was sharing memes and getting to know everyone there.

It wasn't long after I invited my partner in IZ crimes, @paketdimensioncomic who was genuinely wary of iz servers due to a bad experience with the last one they were a part of.

But soon they were sharing memes and laughing with everyone else.

My eyes were starting to open and I was able to connect to fans of my work in an interpersonal way. And I was able to discover new artists and aus I never knew about.

I was also able to meet so many others of the community and invite them to the server myself.

The moo-ping 10 server kept me sane while I was living with my judgmental mother.

Not only that, the summer was very productive for my au.

Drawing was all I did, and it was a huge break from the job as a cashier I had.

Not only that, June came, and with it, me and Ceph's first collab fic:

A result of us just going back and forth in our DMs constantly about Professor Membrane and how he changed in ETF for the better and how much we adamantly stan "trying-to-be-a-good-dad-brane" and how much of his ETF development has to be implied off screen in order for the emotional resolution in the movie to matter.

The only reason I never professed my love for Membrane as a character in the fandom before the fic dropped was.... Well....

Membrane can be a decisive character in the fandom and I was so worried people would hate me if I did an analysis on him, simply because he's not the best parent in the world. (As an understatement)

Ceph and I really encouraged each other to scream our love for the science himbo loud and proud more frequently and so often.... I actually start to see less Membrane hate posts and breakdowns then their used to be.... I like to think it's a combination of Me and Ceph's influence, along with ETF and the Quarterly's painting Membrane in a slightly more nuanced light then he was previously.

I never wrote a collab fic before and it's such a rewarding and fun and unique experience that I don't think I'll ever have again. And I love working with Ceph on our fics so much.

So much so we did it again...

July-August:

I never thought I would be one of those people who writes NSFW IZ fic... But here I am.

The Brainbrane au started.... An au of my au where Membrane and the Computer fall in love and Membrane makes him a body.

This ship was based around the idea where we joked that Membrane and Zim's Computer would have funny interactions if they ever met, under the pretense Membrane thinks Computer is Zim's parent.

Our headcanons morphed and shifted until we just full blown started shipping them.

Just because Membrane and Zim's Computer have overall REALLY entertaining chemistry.

It's a character dynamic never seen in the show or comics (yet) and I imagine thier interactions to be nothing but entertaining banter.

The fic was also born from spite... Making fun of the troupes and cliches that we found personally destestible in some questionable zadr fics.

So an angry ace and a demi-bisexual collab on a porn and end up blessing the fandom with

Compapa headcanons,

Computer being recognized as a more common used fanon character,

The ship of Brainbrane.

The fandom having a crisis of "oh God, not only are we xenophiles we're technophiles too!!!" Or "why you gotta give Zim's Computer an ass"

More android Computer designs

It was an eventful summer.

In the midst of all this, I moved into my new place, got a new job, and I was able to see my friend (who is def my platonic straight soul mate) who lives in Indiana.

She came to visit, showed me how to decorate and how to take care of my body better! Things were looking up! It was great.

September-November:

My job was at a boat store. If was approaching the fall and my hours were being severely cut.

I was getting into a rut of depression again.

I thought things were changing but the same routine I was trying to escape from was the same thing coming back.

But instead of letting it take hold, I decided I was going to do something about it... I was gonna visit a museum and go with my sister. Just... variety stimulation.

Well that didn't happen.

I talked about this shortly in my au itself...but..

My sister had a complete mental breakdown.

She stopped taking her meds, went off the deep end and was in the hospital a total of five times throughout November.

A lot of it was acting out and the perfect storm of environmental factors that made her scream and act out so she would keep going back to the hospital.

It was traumatizing for me.

I just can't explain what it's like. For her and for me to be in that position.

I'm not telling the full story and a lot of bullshit things happened I won't share here.

She got diagnosed with bipolar one and my mom expected me to be a caretaker for her.

I threatened to disown my family and move away out of state.

It was just too much for me to handle.

So much I was a nervous wreck.

I tried to pick up a second job... Cause my sister was in the mental ward so frequently and couldn't pay the bills.

But I was fired within a week cause I was so stressed I couldn't retain the basic information they were training me for.

It was an office job.

My dream.

It could have been.

I was fired from something I really wanted.

I was only there for three days.

I could not retain any information.

I was a mess.

My sister was a trigger, my mom wanted me to live with her. I couldn't live like this.... I had to get out.

I had to get out.

December:

Remember my Indiana friend?

Well the first week of December is my birthday.

My 30th to be exact.

While I did pick up a seasonal position at Target (not my first pick)

I took the first week of December off so I could spend time with her. Cause she agreed, I needed a break from this crap.

Surviving 30 years is cause to celebrate and if I had to celebrate with my sister I would have cried.

I know there was a risk traveling out of state during a pandemic...

But I needed out, I needed a friend..

And I kinda wanted to look at the place since I was considering moving there.

My friend's mom was sick so she avoided me and her daughter and got us a hotel room.

It was fun! I got to swim in a salt water pool, we talked about Naruto, I showed her the iz and su art books I brought, also Computer and Membrane tea.

I also got to meet her other friends and get crunk. And her bf who is super nice and funny!

I had a super fun birthday....

Until her mom told my friend that her grandparents had covid and that was what she had. And my friend got sick within that same day.... As did I.

I owe so much to her family.

I was an entire state away...about a ten hour drive from home.... She let me stay at her house. "The covid house" we called it.

Cause everyone (except the father. He avoided everyone and booked a hotel immediately cus he was an ER doctor) had covid within a day.

I called in, the test results were positive and I had to stay with her family for ten days quarantine before I could work again.

Which would have been fine....

If my tumblr didn't log me out perminately of my old account. @dana-chan325 .... Which really sucked cause I had a constant headache and was too sick to engage with tumblr or much of the fandom. I didn't want to make a new account when my head was in a bad fog and I could barely breathe or smell.

It's not like I saw much of my friend either.... We all slept at different hours and she had more symptoms then I did.

It was just netflix, danganronpa v3 and cry.

I was miserable, but at the same time.... Not?

I really feel like God himself was the one who pulled me off from tumblr, and my living situation.

Maybe a whole extra week feeling like a bobblehead was what I needed.

It gave me some much needed clarity on my relationships with my mom and sis and friend.

Running away to Indiana was not the solution here.

Once I was better within ten days and no longer had a leave of absence, I drove home.

I am glad I fully recovered (but from how I understand it, my dear friend is still ill. I'm praying for her)

I might have gone to work a bit too soon, cause I had an asthma attack after trying to unload a single cart in the span of six hours.

My boss lectured that my speed was unacceptable, and even though I explained the covid situation and breathing problems many times, she threatened that I'd be fired if I'm that slow again.

Que the next few days of work where they put me on register.

Instantly I was sent into a panic remembering the last time I was on the register and how that panic attack caused me to quit.

I even asked if I could go back to stocking, since my breathing had improved. My boss assured me that I was put on the register cause they needed help and nothing to do with my covid thing.

Then as December concluded and the new year began, my boss said that this was the last shift for me cause my position was seasonal and they were letting a lot of people go.

I then asked why I was on the schedule for Sunday, and he told me to ignore it and I'm free to reapply for full-time.

I mean.... They can act smart about it...

But putting your general merchandise stocker onto register after she had an asthma attack and missed working the first two weeks of December due to covid.....

Not a good look.

So once again, I'm jobless once more.

Will probably continue to live with my sister for awhile.

But I do not feel as if it's a bad thing....

I met so many good people this year....

My friend's family even gave me 500 usd to cover my rent since I couldn't work for a majority of December.

I've seen evil and good from humanity this year. I've seen acts of god, good friends and what my real family means to me as well as friends I consider family.

This year really made me look back at the person in the mirror and say,

"I deserve better."

And actually worked for it this time.

Oh and after Christmas I got a horrible yeast infection that burns over most of my body currently.

Very accurate doodle to the pain I'm in right now.

(seriously my body is a fungus.)

But hey, good news, I respected myself enough to go to the doctor about it!!

So that's progress.

I really hope 2021 holds good things for me.

Thank you to the mooping 10 server for always being there and keeping me sane,

Thank you tumblr for liking my au and everything.

AND A SUPER SPECIAL THANK YOU TO @evartandadam and her family for housing me and my dumb diseased ass. Everyone, she is an angel and I can't express how much she means to me. Please check out her art and buy her stuff on redbubble.

Anyways... Byebye 2020.

I look forward to what I can accomplish for myself this year.

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

It’s (Not) Over, Isn’t It? Chapter Three

Chapter Masterlist

Virgil couldn’t believe it. He just...couldn’t believe it. He had checked his Tumblr dash before going to his classes and was stunned to find a hastily-drawn doodle of Amethyst as some sort of flower all over his dash, coming from gayerthanyxu, but originating from none other than i-will-physically-fight-you. And he wasn’t sure whether to be more exasperated or elated that this was building up so much.

i-will-physically-fight-you had been his ultimate friend crush for quite some time, and Virgil frequently sent anonymous asks, signing them with the little devil emoji. He had been jealous of when Patton announced sherlock-deserved-better was his fandom child, but if Patton was happy that was all that really mattered to Virgil. But now Roman was also sharing the spotlight with Patton, and they’d get closer, and all Virgil would ever be was this tiny little anon, a blip in Patton’s radar and nothing more.

He had stewed in his own self-pity for the entirety of his morning classes, and now he was eating lunch, looking at Patton’s blog, and trying to quell his shaking hands and hammering heart. Because he, in a moment of weakness, sent Patton an ask saying he was worried that because of all of this, he would be forgotten, and Patton said he never would be, no matter what. But Virgil still considered revealing who he was, nonetheless. Because that, at least, would mean that Patton couldn’t forget him.

His own username taunted him in Patton’s askbox, the simple message, I am 😈, hope you don’t mind my showing my face, mocking him.

Screw it. Virgil was not one to be mocked and he had always been impulsive underneath his panic disorder. He pushed the ask button and the cheery message informing him it had been sent popped up. His heart was hammering harder now, and he wasn’t expecting much of a response for a while, so he had plenty of time to panic. Or so he thought, anyway.

As soon as he moved to his dash, he saw trashcan-icannot in an ask on Patton’s blog. But more than anything else, Patton’s response made him want to choke on his sandwich. ohmygoodness hello!!! i love love LOVE your blog, it’s so cool that you’re talking to me! please feel free to send me more asks, i love you so much (platonically, of course! <3)

Virgil thought he might faint. A grin split his face. Patton...didn’t mind! Moreover, Patton thought he was cool! He thought he just might die of happiness then and there. He sent Patton a message.

trashcan-icannot: is a message equivalent to an ask?

The response he got was immediate.

i-will-physically-hug-you: yes, yes it is! i love your blog, and all your work! it’s so good, your fanfiction brings tears to my eyes!

trashcan-icannot: oh my gosh you’re going to make me blush so hard my face catches fire. i’m glad you’re a fan, though. i love your blog more than words can say <3

i-will-physically-hug-you: well, we’re just two regular nerds, huh? this is cool!

trashcan-icannot: i never thought i would do this tbh. the only reason i did was because i was worried between logan and roman you’d forget about me

i-will-physically-hug-you: aww, i could never forget you! you were my first friend in this fandom, there’s no way i could EVER forget about you!

Virgil smiled despite himself.

trashcan-icannot: you were my first friend on tumblr, period. i never was that good at socializing

i-will-physically-hug-you: i was pretty good at making friends when i was younger but now it’s kinda hard. between transphobes and misinformed allies most of my friends are in the campus LGBT club

Virgil sighed. That resonated so similarly to his own story that it hurt.

trashcan-icannot: well, now we definitely have each other, huh? and i think we share a timezone?

i-will-physically-hug-you: gmt -5, right?

trashcan-icannot: yeah, that’s mine

i-will-physically-hug-you: yeah, mine too. this is awesome!!!

trashcan-icannot: i love your enthusiasm

i-will-physically-hug-you: i love that you’re not scared by it! XP

trashcan-icannot: why would i be scared of it? it’s endearing!

i-will-physically-hug-you: most people are scared off by my enthusiasm

trashcan-icannot: most people are morons, imho. don’t listen to them

i-will-physically-hug-you: i guess you have a point, though the way you said it seemed kinda harsh...

trashcan-icannot: eh. I’M naturally kinda harsh. it’s part of my charm ;)

i-will-physically-hug-you: you’re really funny! do you have a discord?

trashcan-icannot: ??? yes?

i-will-physically-hug-you: can i send you a link to my su server? i think it would be a lot more fun and positive with you there, and i’d love to get to know you better where i can actually read the messages easily. tumblr mobile is a pain

trashcan-icannot: sure, go ahead and link me. what’s the worst that could happen?

i-will-physically-hug-you: yay! okay, give me a second…

Virgil finished his sandwich and drummed his fingers on his laptop. His anxiety was catching up to him. Sure, people liked his fanfics and they might be nice to him on Discord, but what if they weren’t? He’d only ever used it with fellow writers before, who understood that he could be a bit of a recluse and didn’t take it personally when he decided he didn’t want to talk much that day.

The link popped up and Virgil gulped. Well, he couldn’t back down now. He clicked the link and was taken to his Discord app, where he accepted the invitation to join The Crystal Gems and saw that the server was not huge, but by no means small. There had to be about forty people total.

Responses to him joining were immediate.

Opal: Oh, new person! Hello!

Peridot: fresh blood! fresh blood! fresh blood!

Papa Patton: heya virgil! hop over into #introductions real quick and then feel free to talk as much as you want! i have class in a few minutes, but i hope to talk to you more soon!

virgilent: okay, yeah, i can do that. talk later.

Papa Patton: great! :) :P

Virgil shook his head at the emoticons and went into the introductions channel, quickly filling out the necessary information. Virgil, he/him, over 18, and the extra tidbit that he was trashcan-icannot and was a fic writer for the fandom. That done, he went back to the general chat and looked at the conversation before he had joined. Apparently they were arguing over sherlock-deserved-better’s latest meta.

virgilent: you guys know that the significance of opal’s weapon really doesn’t matter much to the overall show?

Opal: oh yeah, we know. it’s just fun to debate theories over meta

virgilent: can’t really argue with that

Peridot: so you’re trashcan-icannot huh? what’s it like being a big fic writer in the fandom?

virgilent: exhausting :P i can’t go a day without some idea popping into my head and i never have the time to write everything. you should see my unfinished docs list

The conversation continued until Virgil realized he had to get ready for his next class, but by the end of it, he was smiling. This was actually really fun. He was glad he revealed himself to Patton, now.

Dare he say...he might have even gotten a new friend out of it?