#Introspective musings

[big-expectations]

He often wonders what he would've accomplished if the accident had never happened. Wonders how far he would travel, how many Pokemon he'd see, how many badges he'd successfully collect. But these accomplishments weren't a dream of his, they were a mere checkbox to fill in an effort to match the accomplishments of the rest of his family. His friends. And even neighbors.

Had there been no accident, would he still have found a way to fail? Would he stumble upon his dream profession, something that still eluded his imagination? How many friends had he lost by simply not traveling the globe as a trainer?

[evilbridgetjones]

"sexo, internet, funk, joy, rage, bouts of wistful nostalgia, mr booty ham sandwich, yoshi knocking over the tree at 4am, 4 bodies on one couch, grandma noodles, bok choy, 12 olives at 4am, 생일 축하 메세지, vagabundo, 3 hour facetimes with long distance besties, perfect arabic scores, waking up crying, screaming in the mirror, drinking green things, shaking all you limbs, somatic healing, taking an angry poop like a fucking sim, hibiscus tea, upping your protein, dreaming of you, watching baki to cope, haunting the halls for 3am tea, remembering the rage, marrying the rage, taking a day off from the rage to recuperate, homemade tea blends with rose (always rose), loving fully & ceaselessly, knowing apathy is the death of love even if the latter could kill you, lovesexdeath, twenty-six"

veintesexie, evil bridget jones, december 17, 2023

[jaggedjawjosh]

You asked for my trust, then marred it with betrayal, wondering why the faith was lost.

[marandsviet]

Bravery isn't about towering strength but the soft resilience that refuses to crumble under life's weight.

[moonchild-in-blue]

If you choose to look at Sleep as an allegory for depression/mental illness, the romantic and co-dependent nature of Vessel's lyrics hurt that much more.

"I hate you and you're bad for me" "I don't know who I am without you" "Please set me free" "Please don't leave me" "You're an intrinsic part of me" "I must become someone new".

Ya feel me?

[thehummingbee20]

is there anyone who prefers the darkness of the night and not the warmth of the day? you said you always loved the night scenery over the blinding daylight

but as the darkness sets in...your eyes search for those tiny balls of light up in the sky...you complain there's nothing to look at when there's no moon...a cloudy night sky is your least favourite cause then there's just a huge mass of darkness to stare at

so do you, do you really not prefer the warmth that darkness lacks? that i lack?

cause i only ever felt coldness and a void within me that i doubt it could ever be dotted with anything warm

.

.

[inthelandofv]

thank you for liking and reblogging, thank you for reaching out. I'm sorry most of you share similar pains, I'm sorry you never got an apology from those who hurt you

[tellsjokes-movedbacktomulti]

songs and quotes for the muse ☆ ( under the cut )

tagged by: stole from @spiritdreamt tagging: youuuuu

five SONGS for my muse:

scrawny by wallows: Still wear the same shoes I did back then / I'd switch it up but I don't like change / Scrawny motherfucker with a cool hairstyle / I say the wrong shit at the right times, If I'm offending them I don't mind / You don't like my clothes but you still like my smile / They might think they're cooler than me by a mile / I can still have wisdom and look like a child.

i don't smoke by mitski: I don't smoke except for when I'm missing you / So if you need to be mean be mean to me, I can take it and put it inside of me / if your hands need to break more than trinkets in your room, you can lean on my arm as you break my heart / just don't leave me alone, wondering where you are / I am stronger than you give me credit for

look who's inside again by bo burnham: trying to be funny and stuck in a room / try making faces, try telling jokes, making little sounds / I was a kid who was stuck in his room. there isn't much more to say about it / when you're a kid and you're stuck in your room you'll do any old shit to get out of it / Well, well look who's inside again / went out to look for a reason to hide again / well, well buddy, you found it / now, come out with your hands up. we've got you surrounded

seventeen going under by sam fender: I remember the sickness was forever / That's the thing, it lingers and claws you when you're down / I was far too scared to hit him but I would hit him in a heartbeat now / see I spent my teens enraged, spiralin' in silence / and I armed myself with a grin 'cause I was always the fuckin' joker, buried in their humor / God, the kid looks so sad / I see my mother

sloppy seconds by watsky: I don't care where you've been, how many miles, I still love you / show me someone who says they got no baggage, I'll show you somebody whose got no story / my favorite sweater was a present that I got a couple presidents ago and I promised that I would rock it till it's thread bare / every single person gotta couple skeletons / and there is not a single place that I would rather be / I'm fucked up just like you are, and you're fucked up just like me

five QUOTES for my muse:

“I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.” - Robin Williams

“When Mom scolded you freely, you more frequently called her Mom. The word ‘Mom’ is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong. You never stopped calling her Mom.” — Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom

"I want you to know that it is okay not to love me. [ … ] You are not the first person. I want you to know that you are not the first who found it a little too tough, who took two steps back when my jaws started snapping."

"Oh, I could call you names now. List a hundred reasons for why you were awful. But what would that do? Where would it leave me? I still loved you. I still have to live with that."

“in a dream I saw my mother with the love of her life and no children; it was the happiest i'd ever seen her" ―  Rupi Kaur, The sun and her flowers

[wordswithloveee]

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing....

[yishuns]

somewhat out of nowhere question but (out of curiousity and possibly for future reference) what are your favourite things to write/what makes you enjoy writing the most?

[vrs-culdesac]

on art

“On Art,” a piece, well, on art and its quiet impact on our lives, my love for creating, and seeking the ingredient to making art that I’m proud of.

[capricioussun]

I was really thinking about if I would ever be comfortable merging my art accounts and I don't think I will. At least not unless I did a full rebrand which I'd really rather not since I'm very happy with how things are situated now.

But I think it boils down to acceptance seeking. I've been socially isolated for a very long time and it's difficult. Even back when I first started drawing au stuff years ago, I contemplated making a separate blog for it because I knew how many ut fans didn't really like the aus. I didn't want to alienate any of the "audience" I'd already built but I also knew there would be a turning point I would just wind up barely posting on one account or the other and it would feel like trying to limp half the time on one leg and then limp the rest on the other, which would be pointless.

But with mirrorshipping (selfcest) being a much more universally contentious topic, I got worried it would only deter people even more. I certainly didn't want to lie about it, especially bc I don't associate it with prshipping the way some others do, so it's not really that im "ashamed" of it, or want to hide it, just that I know it's the kind of thing that's very likely to make some who just walked in turn right back around.

To some degree, as someone who hopes to one day make a career out of being an independent artist, it makes sense to prioritize "growth" over personal satisfaction, but on the other, I've always struggled to care about that sort of thing. Any time I've cared about "alienating" a potential "audience", it's always been more about personal acceptance. I don't want people to see one little aspect of myself or interests and judge me entirely based off of that, even though that's all anyone really can do on the internet. I don't take blocking personally, despite how the prior sentiment seems to contradict that, I get it, I block all the time too, for a variety of reasons. But if there's a chance there're others who don't really mind that I mirrorship, they just don't want to see it or have to block the tag, I don't want them to feel turned away or annoyed, and so I kept it all to a separate account.

There are a few other reasons I won't really get into, too, like how people often do associate it with prship, and how I don't really want to draw that type of a crowd to my main blog, either, but I know in my heart it's the acceptance/approval seeking that was the biggest motivator.

I really honestly wish I knew how to connect with others beyond just trying to "do things right" and hoping that earns me positive attention. I really wish I didn't always feel like my only chance at affection is to improve what I can offer in return.

[jaggedjawjosh]

Being mean makes you ugly, no matter how pretty you think you are.

[marandsviet]

The quietest acts of bravery often go unnoticed, but they are the foundations upon which empires of the heart are built.

[agentsketchbookart]

Some musings from the perspective of a second generation Vietnamese American

First comic was from July 5th, 2022

[protect-namine]

I am about to start a neji route (because I feel that I need at least three playthroughs to fully understand neji and his plays, so I can't leave him for last). so my thoughts on this may change, but for the moment, my thesis is that neji and kisa are the same kind of thespian, just in different fonts.

(I am slightly exaggerating kisa'a character here. there are hints and I do think pushing the envelope of what her character could be is part of what makes kisa... kisa. as I'll explain later, for better and worse, kisa is constrained by the conventions of being an otome heroine.)

anyway. in essence. neji turns Other Persons into stories,

and kisa turns Other Persons into performances,

while they both simultaneously run away from, avoid, or sacrifice Becoming Persons themselves, for the sake of theater

or maybe it's the other way around. something something discovery if not recognition of the self through the other... except they're both unreliable narrators so who's to say if the recognition actually takes hold, really. kisa at least is a little bit self aware. neji, on the other hand, deals with realizations of the self through writing, without actually processing them (e.g. ms robin, domina, etc).

I keep thinking about (novel) kisa closing her eyes and feeling like her sense of self would melt away until tsuki centers her and gives her theater as a way to heal from the grief of losing her mother. it happens again during tsuki's univeil performance: kisa curling in on herself and tsuki pulling her back to theater as way to help kisa move forward with her dreams. pretending to be others is more fun than being herself.

and then there is neji (insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme). but in his case, he would rather play eccentric roles, caricatures, comic relief, than be a Person With Depth on stage. neji is always either a seer of some kind (a fortune teller, a ghost who sees 10 seconds into the future) or a bit character (employee A), or... whatever he initially planned for domina. he is the mechanic behind the stage, but never the lead actor. his vulnerabilities do not need to "stolen" for the story, though others' are fair game.

kisa does not think about gender as it applies to herself in her daily life (mostly) and only sees it through the lens of acting and theater. how does she act mukai vs maiden, charles vs chicchi? the same way that neji does not think about the motifs and characters he writes as a window to himself, but rather as objects to be put on stage. rukiora is based on a younger neji, mary jane is I Am Death: Revisited (mary jane is to takihime as gashadokuro is to jacob), sissia is always meant to be the foil to I Am Death. but neji doeen't really understand that just like how he didn't understand oh rama havenna. sissia (kisa route, jack jeanne ver) is to kisa as domina is to neji.

literally kisa at her most extreme is just theater thoughts 24/7

kisa "I don't like being me; I'd rather be other people" tachibana 🤝 kokuto "I need to experiment and witness visions I can't create or I'll die" neji: this is a totally sane and Normal way to cope with abandonment and grief 👍

(it is not implied in the game, but since kisa turned to theater to cope with grief as a child, I wonder if the reason she never looks too deeply into tsuki's disappearance is because she's once again using theater as an excuse to conveniently Not Think About It. out of sight, out of mind. tsuki must be doing well, wherever he is, whatever it is he's doing.)

there is also the meta perspective of how kisa in-game inhabits a role where the player can (and is expected to) self-insert. otome dictates that protagonist kisa must be malleable to the player (who can choose to focus on a variety of relationships in her stead), and the plot dictates that actor kisa must be malleable to her stage roles (jack or jeanne, maiden or hero, flower or vessel), and novel kisa dictates that kisa must malleable to pretending to be other people because it's more preferable to being herself.

every thought she has about herself must be tied to acting, somehow. kisa's personhood is defined through stagecraft. she is the maiden, and mukai, and charles, and chicchi, and sissia. she can romance anyone in the school, of the player's choosing. she can be jack, and jeanne, and jack jeanne. don't get me wrong; kisa is her own character and has a strongly defined personality, but the story also demands for her to be malleable. a painting and a blank canvass at the same time.

neji externalizes where kisa internalizes. where kisa Must Perform™ to function and to avoid herself, neji Must Create™ to function and to avoid himself. scriptwriter neji dictates that neji must use everything at his disposal — his memories, his classmates, his obscure knowledge — as inspiration for stories. director neji dictates that he must use everything he knows about his actors — their complexes, their relationships, their weaknesses and strengths — as inspiration for stories. from the cook (mitsuki) needing apricots for a recipe and wanting to harvest honey from a beehive, to mary jane (fumi) being good at sewing and wanting an equal in jacob. suzu and sou fighting and developing a rivalry leads to jire and fugio fighting over chicchi. kai limits himself as a vessel in hasekura, and kai learns to embrace his desires as the priest. from the water/ocean/drowning themes, to rukiora being based on neji's younger self, and her family life and relationship with domina.

every thought neji has must be tied to stories, somehow. neji's personhood is scattered through stagecraft. the more you read his plays and lyrics, the more you get a glimpse of who he is. it is to the point that neji himself doesn't... really see how his stories reflect himself. ms robin being a "random" song the jazz lounge singer sings thay hasekura and ando can dance to, oh rama havenna being a so-so throwaway play that neji doesn't understand why it's entertaining. lmao. neji, please.

and this is why when problems arise, neji becomes a demanding director and kisa becomes a chameleon actor with a shaky sense of self (we don't really see this a lot because jack jeanne is not that dark of a story and kisa is still an otome heroine of an uplifting game, but it's a reasonable conclusion if you push hard on the kisa from neji's "good morning" exercise, or kisa going ham on method acting as charles. kinda wish the game explored more of that. I think a very stressed kisa can get lost in method acting, just as a very stressed neji is almost paralyzed by the fear of the death of talent).

idk where I was going with this. just. them. they have the same issues, just in different fonts. and I think that's actually what first attracts neji to kisa. kisa "steals" (to borrow neji's own words) just like him. kisa is a fountain of inspiration, an ever changing muse. and neji provides kisa with an endless amount of prompts and characters for her to inhabit. kisa does like to play pretend a lot. that's why she's in theater!

kisa and neji: Art Imitates Life people stuck in a Life Imitates Art video game

ANYWAY usual disclaimer that I'm jotting down livebloghing thoughts and I know some spoilers to neji's route but I'm only just about to actualy start his playthrough so. yeah. this was drafted all the way back in may lol, opinions may change and all that