#actually posting this now but reblogging it on queue cause we finally figured out how to post our art here

[featherbutt]

I Drew Rei!!

Did my best to draw him based on what personally imagine him as in something thats not so realistic i feel uncomfortable drawing it

[ckret2]

Not Quite Exactly Shell Shock

Guess what time it is, it’s time for Prowl Week. Written for @prowlweek day 1 prompt: “Crash”

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to port most of my autistic Prowl headcanons from my RP blog to some actual fic so here’s some “Prowl stims to get through a shutdown caused by sensory overload and his spy friends are trying so hard to be protective of him while he recovers that they almost start punching each other.”

###

"Is he in there?" Jazz asked.

Getaway and Skids, huddled in front of an inconspicuous door, looked up at Jazz warily. "Who?" Skids asked.

"Prowl."

Getaway shrugged languidly. "Don't think so. How would we know?"

Jazz laughed wryly. "C'mon. Spec Ops. You think I don't know about Prowl's hand-picked diplomats?"

They both flinched at that, but did an admirable job of disguising it. Their adjusted their postures—a shift of their footing, a roll of their shoulders—as they stopped pretending that they were casually hanging out in front of this door and revealed they were standing guard in front of it.

"He's occupied," Skids said. "He's not taking visitors right now."

"He can take one," Jazz said. "We just got out of a nasty battle, Prowl missed the officer meeting, Optimus needs somebody to set eyes on him. Gotta confirm he's not bleeding out on the battlefield somewhere."

"You can tell Optimus we set eyes on him," Skids said. "No injuries, just—stressed."

Stressed. Jazz hesitated, processing that; then nodded slowly.  "Okay. Got it. And I believe you," Jazz said. "But Optimus isn't gonna buy 'some of the troops said they saw him'—he needs an officer to lay eyes on him and make sure everything's fine."

Skids considered that and nodded. Getaway, though, planted one hand on his hip—covering a little more of the door with his elbow—and said, "He is fine. Sorry, but the big guy's gonna have to take our word for it. Prowl can't take visitors right now."

"I understand what you mean," Jazz said pointedly, "but I'm talking about Optimus. He's gonna insist—"

"Well," Getaway snapped, "I insist—"

Voice lowered, Jazz said, "Look, Prowl's a little overwhelmed right now, right? You wanna protect him, I respect that—I appreciate that—but I can handle it. I won't bug him, you've got my word. I promise."

"We've made a promise to him, and that's worth more to me than some random officer—"

"A random officer," Jazz said coldly, "who's known Prowl longer than you've been alive."

Getaway lunged a half step toward Jazz before Skids caught him across the chest and held him back.

"We're both on his side," Jazz said. "C'mon. If I don't go in there, Optimus is going to. And he's gonna try to get Prowl to debrief him."

"It's okay," Skids said to Getaway. "Jazz is fine, he knows how Prowl works too. Prowl can handle him."

Getaway remained tense a moment; then shrugged off Skids's grip, leaned on the wall beside the door, and crossed his arms and legs like he'd been casually hanging out there the whole time. Jazz gave him a wan smile and a nod of gratitude before opening the door.

The room was dark except for Prowl's biolights; Prowl flinched at the light from the hall. Jazz quickly slid the door shut and took a seat in front of Prowl's desk.

Prowl wordlessly turned his chair away from Jazz. Jazz bit back a chuckle. He knew why Prowl did it—seeing Jazz moving out of the corner of his optics, even just minute twitches and adjustments that Jazz wasn't even conscious of, would just irritate his processor even more—but it was still a hell of a greeting.

Based on what little Jazz had gotten out of Prowl's door guards, Prowl was in about the condition Jazz had expected: very still, completely unsocial, not a sound except for the extra cooling fans around his brain module loudly whirring at top speed. By what Jazz had seen of his face, his expression was completely blank, completely calm; it usually was whenever he was struggling under a crushing psychological load. He was twisting his hands around some small clicking objects that Jazz couldn't see but knew from experience were magnets. There was a lot of clicking. It seemed serious. So Jazz sat back to wait.

Whenever anyone doubted Prowl's capabilities as a strategist, Prowl was fond of dryly pointing out that he was capable of calculating the trajectory of eight hundred moving objects simultaneously. What Prowl didn't often point out was that he was incapable of calculating eight hundred and one objects (or whatever—he'd often tiredly told Jazz that it wasn't exactly 801, it was just that 800 was the maximum he was programmed to safely handle, anything over that was a risk), and that trying to go over the threshold overwhelmed his processor's capabilities. The problem was, if he saw objects in motion, he was unable to choose not to track and calculate their motion. If he saw it, his brain ran calculations. If his brain ran too many calculations, things started glitching. If too much was moving at once, Prowl's entire processor became unable to do anything but attempt to work through them all—along with the mountain of ever-growing error messages.

When Prowl had too much to process, he needed to hide somewhere until his head could work through all the calculations. Extra light added more calculations, extra motion in his sight added more calculations, trying to hold a conversation massively piled on more calculations. For some reason, calculating magnetic fields—such as the feeling of magnets in Prowl's hands—not only cut to the top of the queue of pending calculations, but rapidly deleted other items off the queue when few other things Prowl did could do so.

Jazz didn't have the faintest idea why magnets worked—Prowl had tried to explain once, got about five minutes into a long explanation about electromagnetic forces and the calculation thereof that Jazz lost track of about a minute into, until finally Prowl had to lamely sum up with "They... fffeel better?"—but if the magnets helped Prowl put his head back together when it was falling apart, that was good enough for Jazz.

Jazz wondered what had gotten Prowl this time. There'd been a lot of missiles flying around. He hadn't counted to see if there were over 800 in the air at once, but then he didn't have a processor that automatically forced him to count. Maybe it was just from trying to run tactical simulations and talk to everyone about them at the same time, sometimes that got him too. There was a reason Prowl was their head strategist instead of head tactician.

While Jazz waited for Prowl to get back to a place where he could talk, he pulled out his comm unit and texted Optimus: "Found Prowl. He's okay, just shellshocked." Optimus had a looser grasp on how Prowl's uncommon operating system worked than those who had known him better and longer did; they'd found shell shock was the closest metaphor that he could grasp. As long as Optimus knew that Prowl didn't want his brain to be doing what it was currently doing any more than Optimus did and that the best way to ensure it would stop doing that was to leave Prowl the hell alone in his office until it was over, they figured he understood enough.

Jazz had let Optimus know that Prowl didn't appear to be injured and that he'd get Prowl the notes on the officer meeting by the time Prowl said sharply, "What?"

"Optimus wanted me to make sure that you're alive." Keeping it simple and short, Jazz found, was the best way to ensure that Prowl actually managed to process the statement without adding to his already overworked processor.

It took several seconds for Prowl to reply: "Yeah."

Jazz gave him another few seconds to recover from sorting through that sentence before throwing a question at him. "Want me to leave?"

Another few seconds: "No."

Jazz nodded, sat back, and waited until Prowl was ready to say more.

###

Also crossposted to AO3, link in the post source. If you enjoyed the fic, I’d appreciate a comment or reblog!

[aro-neir-o]

Carnival of Aros: New January 2020 Roundup

You all no-doubt saw my frantic posting and reblogging of the submissions on Friday (apologies; I thought I had spread those out, but no, I did not queue things correctly).

Thank you to everyone who submitted something and also to everyone who interacted with the submissions. I very much enjoyed hosting this carnival and everyone had something interesting to say. I myself did not have the spoons to write my own piece but a lot of my thoughts and feelings were echoed in others’ pieces.

I am following the format the December Carnival of Aros host used for the roundup. There is a Short List which is an amalgamation of links to all the submissions and a Long List with commentary about what each submission covered in terms of themes or topic. The Long List is under the Read More link.

SHORT LIST

Isaac, Part One and Part Two

Briar

Annie

Maximus

Ace of Arrows

Izel

Laura

Le herbe

Sennkestra

Scoop

LONG LIST

The first post Isaac wrote covers how learning the difference between asexuality and aromanticism opened up many doors for thinking about orientation, especially how a-spec orientations interact with non-a-spec orientation. Additionally, coining the term “squish” helped explain a lot of the non-normative platonic feelings aromanticism brought with it, and so new conceptualizations were able to be shared with the whole community. The second post talks about how discovering aromanticism interacted with discovering gender for Isaac. Orientation models that work with aromanticism can be applied to gender as well, so that one’s relationship to their sex can be considered separately from one’s relationship to gender.

“I didn’t identify as aromantic immediately, and as asexual even later, but splitting what was socially tangled opened new doors to me. [...] Sharing the terminology of “squish” with other people aware of aromanticism has allowed me to express clearly my feelings and even to establish a queerplatonic relationship, though I didn’t know of the terminology yet. [...] I could realize my gender identity because I split biological sex and psychosocial gender even for identity, where they are usually grouped together.”

In their post, Briar talks about how re-closeting themself has made them approach aspects of their identity differently. They mention how the prioritization of the identities they have in their life seems to be different from most aro bloggers, and how this makes them feel distanced from the community. How many issues framed as aro-specific issues are also being taken up by alloromantic people was also something they touch upon. They also share how a poem written by their friend resonated with aro experiences, giving an in-depth analysis of each stanza.

���I’m not trying to get some sort of reassurance that I can include myself in the aro community with this. It’s more that I’ve realized that not every group or community is made up of 200% committed Ride Or Die people, even if said group is considered young and relatively smaller than more established groups. [...] When I was first trying to figure out if I was somewhere under the aro umbrella at all, I came up with a term that I felt encompassed my specific experience. It kinda, sorta has overlap with a few other terms that I’ve seen a few times (definitely not often), but I’ve honestly never felt like sharing that term would actually accomplish anything in the aro community.”

Annie submitted a beautiful piece of art that expresses feelings of happiness upon discovering the aromantic identity. How the vocabulary and conceptualizations of the aro community helped Annie craft a new self can be seen in the colourful and prideful painting. Giving back to the community and sharing these feelings of happiness and gratitude really comes through in the piece.

“I have always been kinda creative, and I really wanted do something for the aro community and for myself. I discovered I was aro a year ago, and it made me so happy to have this new label that was almost made for me.”

Maximus wrote faer post on how discovering aromanticism can help one understand romance better. Fae talks about faer experiences with compulsory romance and heteronormativity growing up, and how understanding aromanticism helped with stepping back and becoming less judgemental towards others who experience romantic attraction. Furthermore, how romance can look very different for different people opened up a whole new understanding of love for Maximus.

“Being able to situate myself in the aro identity has given me a new, and frankly better, way to address the emotions and trends of my peers. Honestly, spending years of my life assuming people were being dramatic on purpose as a way of gaining or asserting social status was not the healthiest. It hasn't been until recently that I've been able to move away from the mindset that romance is a horrible thing. It is simply a strong emotion that I don't experience. The assumption that I did experience it was always, and continues to be, the worst part.”

The post Ace of Arrows made centers on positivity and acceptance of diversity. Channeling a mutually understood frustration into positive action is one such theme covered in the post. Ace of Arrows also discusses how aromanticism as an individual preference of orientation is deeply linked to narratives normalized in Western culture - narratives that are, historically speaking, new. The post ends with some book recommendations that align with Ace of Arrows’ own journey learning about alternative relationship models.

“I often think about how “romance” and the idea of “marrying for love” are actually very recent concepts that started gaining traction in the West some time around the middle of the 20th century, and yet we act as if this is how all humans everywhere have always conducted their relationships. [...] So it follows that there have also always been people who have conducted their individual relationships in a manner that is more closely aligned to the relationships of aromantic people today than the normalised romantic narrative of society.”

Izel submitted a poem, titled “To all the aros.” The poem opens with a call to other aros who share Izel’s experiences of frustrations and rejection, and it reads as a uniting anthem against these negative feelings. Acceptance of one’s own identity and of the diversity of aromantic experiences shine through as major takeaways from this piece.

“I thought that I needed a fairytail love story in my life in order to be happy. … … But I don’t need that.Aros don’t need that, don’t we? We don’t feel romantic attraction, and that’s ok.And some of us feel some romantic attraction, and that’s ok, too. Sometimes, romance isn’t for everyone.”

In her post, Laura discusses how new doesn’t always equate with excitement and optimism. Things that are new can just as often cause us fear and nervousness. Laura discusses how Tumblr has contributed to aro activism and growth, in both positive and negative ways. Finally, Laura calls for the aro community to continue reinventing itself and continue “becoming new,” to shed the fears that come with change, and to commit to real inclusion.

“I want to see the aro community grow. I want to see it create new resources, explore issues that have never been explored before, and build a foundation for a vibrant, inclusive community that will continue well into the future. [...] I’ve been doing my best to push the aro community in new directions for the better part of two years now. However, every time I or anyone else tries something new, there are people who are afraid.” 

Herbe de provence wrote a post on how discovering aromanticism, at first, triggered feelings of denial, but then set off a chain reaction of self-reflection that ended up explaining of lot of childhood feelings. Learning about aromanticism gave Le herbe new confidence to be accepting. How accepting and curious LGBTQ+ friends increased Le herbe’s pride in the aromantic identity is also an important theme touched on in the post.

“In truth, when I learned that I was aromantic I earned so much more than just a word to describe my experience for I learned to accept a part of myself I never knew I was reppresing. [...] Many, many months after first reading the word « aromantic » this is still new for me and I sometime have to remind myself that *it is alright to be myself*. That *it is alright to love like I want*, Like I *do*.” 

Sennkestra wrote a post combining the themes of “new” and “allyship.” Being a good ally means being consistently accepting, patient, and an active listener, but it can also mean learning and growing with new ways of being a better ally every so often. Sennkestra shares anecdotes as examples of above-and-beyond allyship and also encourages others to share their own, so that allies to aros everywhere can add new and diverse actions to their repertoire. The little things can count a lot.

“Even though many of these actions are objectively somewhat small things, they show that these people have remembered my identities, taken the time to learn a bit about it, and have had the presence of mind to actively take the chance to support us when they saw an opening. And cumulatively, they all add up to a lot of support that’s made it much easier to live the lifestyle I want to live without anxiety, and given me the backing I need to continue to do active work even with audiences who might not be so supportive.”

In her post, Scoop talks about how discovering the aro community brought her new understandings and connections with people that she was missing, but it also made connecting with non-aros that much harder. Scoop also describes her struggles choosing between non-SAM and alloaro labels - both of which resonate with her but are considered completely separate microcommunities. Finally, while Scoop expresses about her excitement with involving herself in new types of activism, she also expresses her fear about being outed in these situations. What’s new isn’t always without great risk.

“One of my friends will say, every now and then, 'romance isn’t all bad' to me and I find myself taken aback every time. I know it isn’t all bad? Does she think I do? Is it bc I criticise the system? But in reality I want people to find the romance they desire. I just simply think that they deserve it in a way that is much kinder and more considerate than they often receive it. And give it. I've gotten really good at speaking aro and sometimes I'm going to need to translate that language. [...] ”

[calliecat93]

Hi folks!

So first, no my hiatus is not over. I’m not returning fully until, as I said before, probably in the Fall. It all depends on how much the world hasn’t pissed me off and I need to keep off to not worsen my anxiety/exacerbate the negative. However, a big benefit in the break is I’ve had more time to focus and plan out actual content I want to make. Some I’ve wanted to do for years now and just... never did.

So I have a multitude of projects I want to do, some being my usual stuff, some I’ve discussed before, and some that are all new. As always, this can always change, but I want the second half of my 2020 to have SOME positive benefit to compensate for the first half, so focusing on these I think will do that.

So here are my plans:

RvB Season 18/RWBY Volume 8 Reviews: These are 100% certain. I’ve taken a break from RT content lately, but these two I absolutely plan to watch and continue my reviews. As far as I know RvB’s airdate is still up in the air, but I’m aware of some of the recent info (certain cast and crew members, new characters, etc) and I’m excited! Not sure if RWBY8 has had any new developments or how COVID will affect it’s release, but I’ll accept it for the end of the year. The format I used for the RWBY7 reviews will be used for both, and hopefully with continued improvements. So even if all my other plans go down the drain, these are locked in.

RWBY Character Review/Analysis: The big thing I was planning prior to the hiatus. I have been working on them, and I feel I’m ready to start writing the posts. For now, I am keeping the focus on Team RWBY and depending on how those go, I may do more characters down the line. Still deciding on the order, but this will be something I hope to get underway weekly in July. Which I hope to soon be able to follow with...

RWBY Volume 1-4 Reviews (and MAYBE 5): I mentioned considering it before, and I think I’m ready to take it. I began reviewing when V5 was airing, and my interest in RWBY was mostly casual until about V4. So the first four volumes I never reviewed, so let's change that. The format would be slightly different as I’d bunch the episodes into arcs instead of going episode by episode (though V4’s will be different due to that season’s style). Also I may or may not do V5, which would follow the same arc structure, as a redo of my old reviews and I never made an overall review due to the negativity towards it at the time killing my interest. Regardless, 1-4 will happen and will too be on a weekly basis. I’ll assess V5 once I finish the other volumes and see how I feel about it. Pretty happy with my Volume 6 and 7 reviews still, so those are being left alone.

RvB Fanfiction: I haven’t forgotten about Griferella or my BTHB prompts. I actually have one BTHB prompt plotted out, and I am going to attempt to write/post it soon. That will hopefully reignite the motivation to resume writing. I have no real excuse for not doing it aside from dwindeling motivation due to... well, everything. But that’s no excuse, and this will be a top priority no matter if I hate the final result or not.

Now we get to the one's I’m not for sure about, but will probably do at some point:

RvB Likes/Dislikes Posts/Reviews/Character Analysis: In other words, all my RvB content aside from the main reviews and fanfic stuff. So the Likes/Dislikes posts stopped after S2 for a multitude of reasons, and right now IDK when I’ll resume. I really need to get back into a certain mindset for them. And reviews of past seasons and character stuff like I’m doing with RWBY I’ll likely cover when RWBY stuff is done to not overwhelm myself.

Disney Princess Reviews/Analysis: Yep, I still want to do this. And since I have Disney+ and access to all the films, I have no excuse to not do so. The biggest thing is these will require a LOT of research, especially the Classic Three since I need to research feminism/history stuff during the time those came out. As such, these would be on most likely, a monthly release schedule. But I’m growing more and more willing to attempt this, so you never know...

Sailor Moon Reviews: During my hiatus, I finally took the time watch the Viz dub of Sailor Moon (except Stars cause they haven’t posted it onto streaming yet, UGH!). I loved it! But... Well now that I’m an adult and not a little kid who just watched to see Sailor Moon kill the villain, I have a LOT more critical opinions about both the 90’s anime and Crystal. So much so that I want to do a new series reviewing both animes. The main issue is figuring out a format since... well, 90’s Moon is 200 episodes long. Many of which are filler. So IDK if I want to just go ahead and do them all one by one, or group a certain amount together and review it that way. I’ll have to ponder on it. Sailor Moon is a HUGE part of my childhood, one of my biggest influences, and is pretty much my gateway into both anime and into fandom life. If I do this, I want to do it well. Release schedule will depend on the format I go with. It will be reviewing the Viz dub, NOT the original Japanese not the old Dic/Cloverway dub. I want to do the movies too, R especially... but they aren’t available for streaming, so I’ll have to figure that out.

So yeah, a lot of plans! As I said though, these will all likely fall onto a weekly basis. As I’m not off hiatus, my usual reblog sprees won't be as frequent, but when I come on to queue the reviews, I may go through some tags and queue some stuff up so it’s not 100% dead. Ask Box is still closed for now, but I’ll probably turn it back on for a day or two when I post something. I’m hoping that these projects will keep the blog active even when I’m not around. Again, thank you all for your patience with me, and I hope that you will enjoy whatever I bring forth soon~

And again to make up for things, here’s a doggie~ love you all~!

[james-bionic-barnes]

Update Part 2

A Heads-Up

Okay so, again I’d like to point out that I’m writing this at 4 in the morning so it’s definitely still sincere, but no one is going to see this if I post it at the time I’m writing this so this post (and probably even some asks) will be queued, but whatever I say in them I still definitely mean, I just want them to be seen & not be lost because of the time I’m posting them. Also, I’m going to divide this up a little bit through titles just so it’s easier to skip to the important parts because I’m probably going to ramble & type a lot in this, & I do want those who care to see my explanation as to what happened. Please AT LEAST read the TL;DR near the bottom (after the ‘read more’ link, that is) so that you can avoid my stupid rambling, but know briefly what happened.

My tentative plan is to be active tomorrow & respond to messages (& to any of my friends who might be reading this, I’m sorry that I’m not responding but I don’t want to do so at almost 4 am my time.) However, I am in an area that might be possibly affected slightly by Hurricane Harvey so if I lose power due to storms, I’ll respond on my phone as much as I can, although it’ll take me longer to type out the long messages that I’d like to, but when I’m free (I’m currently in the midst of unpacking & getting ready for school) I’ll respond as much as I can, since obviously, everyone deserves that.

The ‘read more’ link below starts with my actual explanation as to what happened to me & why I was gone for so long. If you read it, or even just skim it (which I’ll understand because I want to let people know what happened, & there IS a TL;DR near the bottom), I hope you understand. But no matter what, I love & appreciate you all <3

What Happened (in as few words as possible, which is still a lot)

So about right after I hit 3k & posted how I wanted to celebrate, I stayed offline for a bit because I was hanging out with family, with full intent to get back on & host a celebration for 3k followers & continue conversations with my friends as always, and ask everyone for opinions on what I should write next. About right after posting my last post, my family got into a tight spot financially, both my parents & as well as my sister & her husband. Obviously, we were all stressed about it despite the fact we knew we were probably going to be okay. But it was a major stress not knowing if my sister was going to be able to pay for groceries or not. Eventually, we got mostly out of that, however, but my stress didn’t really go away.

All summer I’ve been packing and getting ready to move to an apartment close to where I go to school, along with my mother moving in to help me. Even though I was extremely excited at the idea of decorating my own apartment and being closer to the school campus that I love, I was (and still am, honestly) extremely stressed about it. Even though I have my mom with me, the rest of my family (my sister & her husband, and my dad) are back home. But the entire process took forever (as moving does) and I just got more stressed as time went on since I was worried about not getting everything done. That, compounded with my regular stress and anxiety just snowballed on me and made my mental health take a nose-dive. I barely did more than stay in bed and sleep, or just marathon shows I’ve seen before just to let my brain rest a bit and get away from the stress.

I had a brief good period during late July - I celebrated my birthday as well as my mom’s, and I spent a lot of time with family and relaxed a bit. But then my sister began to have issues at work - and I mean issues. She works at the entrance desk of a psychiatric hospital. She deals with visitors before they are allowed back to visit patients, and obviously, there are mandatory requirements before you are allowed back. When a particular woman wasn’t allowed back, she began to physically threaten my sister, & attacked her verbally right in the lobby while my sister’s boss just stood there. The woman has returned twice and each time threatened my sister’s life and continued to attack her verbally and insult her, as her boss does nothing to help. On top of all this, my sister is pregnant with her first child - clearly, this isn’t an environment for her to be in if she’s possibly going to be threatened or hurt. Thankfully, she’s quitting, and hopefully she’ll find another job soon, since it’ll be tight financially for her again, but we’re praying everything works out.

But the biggest personal cause of stress has been school - I start Monday, and although I am now *mostly* moved into my apartment, I still feel under prepared. Not to mention that there was a screw-up in my financial aid process so I’ve been worried about that even though it’s probably fine. Still, school is my biggest source of stress, so now that it’s starting again I’m worried of it getting too much again like last time. Hopefully, since I’m in a different environment this year (with my mother & cats in an apartment, & not in a tiny dorm), my health (both physical & mental) should be better off as I have a lot more ways to cope with it. As some of you might know, I’m physically disabled & have chronic pain, so last year’s dorm situation was not ideal for my health. But now that my living situation is different, I guess I’ll just have to see how everything goes.

The longer I was away (and obviously, I’ve only “come back” just recently, if you can even say that), the worse I felt about tumblr & getting back on - I figured that since I hadn’t posted much writing before I left, if I came back saying that I might not be able to write for a while, I’d just be met with anger. Which, I admit, is a complete discredit to my followers - all of you that I’ve interacted with have been absolute sweethearts, and completely understand. But still, my anxiety got the better of me, and it just spiraled. And I especially felt like shit when it came to the idea of talking to my friends again - since I left every one of you hanging, I just felt like I’d immediately come back to not wanting to talk to me anymore. Which, even though I haven’t been able to speak to anyone yet, I still think it’s a complete discredit to you as well, since every single friend I’ve made on here has treated me with complete & utter kindness & love. And I’ve always made it a point to be kind to people and to always work to be the best friend I can be - which, clearly, I have not been doing AT ALL. I’ll talk to each one of you, I promise, and hopefully everything can be worked out and I can finally apologize to you, too, since each one of your friendships mean an incredible amount to me and I don’t want to lose any of them.

TL;DR - Why I Was Gone

tight financial situations with my family

moving to an apartment for school

school starting soon/financial aid mess up

my sister being threatened and her job & her financial situation now that she’s quitting and expecting her first child

worry that once I came back after being gone for so long, I’d just be met with anger and every one of my friends dropping me

My anxiety just making everything seem so much worse than what it’s probably is going to be, especially when I think of coming back & talking to my friends

& my mental health has been absolute shit since I left and until I get everything worked out here, it’s still probably going to be.

Apology (& this is the last thing, I promise)

So if you at least read the tl;dr, you got a brief idea of what happened to me and why I dropped off the face of the earth again. Despite all of what happened couldn’t exactly be avoided, and that I’m still accepting the fact that I’m allowed to not be okay, even if it’s for a longer period than I would want to, I still am so sorry I disappeared. Believe me, every day I was gone I was so torn about coming back and would go to the login page but would just psych myself out since I was so scared of the backlash I might be met with due to my anxiety causing me to worry about it. I thought of all of you & would read a bunch of my favorite fanfics of all of my friends just to help make me feel better when I had really bad days. But I’m sorry I never actually responded to anyone (that is, until I start to tomorrow, but my apology will still apply), & that I feel completely horrible for, and I don’t think I can get that across in few enough words to not sound pathetic or just to not make this post any longer. But I want everyone to know that I’m sorry for vanishing like that and for any hurt I may have caused during all of this.

After seeing tomorrow (I guess later today, technically?) what some of the reactions are to this, hopefully some of my stress will be a bit lifted about the anxiety of returning back here. Once school starts (and the actual true work starts, not just the opening week) and I find my routine, I plan to figure out exactly how active I can be. At the very least, I plan to be on as much as possible & respond to everyone & reblog, but I’m not sure yet how writing is going to go. If I’m able to, I might just start off with a drabble or two, maybe a one-shot. It all depends on how much free time I have after school starts and how I’m dealing with the stress. For now, I’m back on a writing hiatus (not that I was off of one much before I disappeared) but I’ll see what happens after all this settles down.

I’m still recovering, and a few of these issues are still ongoing, and obviously, mental health is always going to be a struggle for me, and whatever happens is pretty much unavoidable - it’s life, after all. But still, I ask that everyone is patient with me as I respond to asks and messages when I can. I promise I’ll get to everyone. I just need to get back up, and it might take a bit, but I’m going to work to get better, both with figuring out how active I can be, and as well as keeping myself healthy at the same time. For the meantime, I’ll queue up a couple of asks and maybe a few reblogs to appear after this, just so the most recent thing on my blog isn’t this mess.

Regardless of how people react to this, I am sorry about what happened. But I’m thankful for each and every one of you, and I hope that everything can kind of go back to where it was eventually. It’ll just take time, but I’m willing to work toward it if you all are. The people I interact with and the space I’ve created on here for myself (and hopefully, for others, too) has always been a place of love and support for me. It’s not something I ever take for granted - so thank you for all that you’ve done. I love you all <3

Sincerely,

Kathrynn

[cinematicnomad]

blog tag

tagged by @from-nova, @woodchoc-magnum, and @skylessnights 🥰🥰

001. why did you choose your url?  i like movies and i grew up moving around the world a lot, so cinematicnomad made sense to me. also i think when i first started my blog i thought it was going to be like, way more of an aesthetic blog? and like, high-minded literature and such lol. if you go look at my very first few posts they’re all, like, faulkner quotes and keats poems etc 

002. any side blogs?  yeah, i’ve got a NSFW 18+ side blog that i occasionally reblog stuff to and i’ve got another sideblog that i only use to test gif issues (like, if a gifset isn’t showing up on my dash, i use that sideblog to figure out which gif is causing the issue and avoid clogging up my followers dashboards) 

003. how long have you been on tumblr?  lol, i’ve officially been on tumblr for a decade as of april 2021 

004. do you have a queue tag?  noooo, i don’t use the queue function for this blog. if you see me posting/reblogging content it’s bc i’m manually doing that 

005. why did you start your blog in the first place? it was finals week of my sophomore year of undergrad? so i was procrastinating working on some essays. i think i started seeing a lot of people linking to their tumblrs on a graphics forum i used to be on so i kind of followed them from there. 

006. why did you choose your icon/pfp? i think for the first few years i was on tumblr, my tumblr icon were pictures of me? but then i was playing around in photoshop back in 2013 and made this icon of dylan o’brien (i think i might have been following a tutorial? can’t remember). and i just haven’t changed my icon since ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

007. why did you choose your header?  ah, it’s a photo i took in london back in summer 2013 from the balcony of the tate modern aka my favorite art museum in the world. i honestly don’t care about my layout on mobile that much so i’ve never bothered to change it. 

008. what’s your post with the most notes?  UGH it’s a post i made where i collected a bunch of screenshots of mara wilson tweets when she started railing against 50 shades of grey lol. it was HILARIOUS but that post now has almost 950k+ notes and every now and then it goes viral again and my activity page dies. (also HILARIOUSLY that post went so viral IMMEDIATELY that mara wilson actually??? got an influx of new followers on twitter and made a couple tweets in the days after being like “oh hi tumblr” and “hey dad i’m like HUGE on tumblr right now”)

009. how many mutuals do you have?  like 90~ (probably a little more, bc i know i follow mutuals sideblogs) 

010. how many followers do you have?  ah, like, 4k+. but honestly i’ve been on here for so long i’m sure half of those blogs are dead or inactive tbh  

011. how many people do you follow? i follow around 250—anymore and i don’t really recognize blogs on my dash which i find stressful lol 

012. have you ever made a shitpost?  i mean i think most of my personal life posts are probably considered shit posts 

013. how often do you use tumblr each day?  i literally don’t close tumblr and twitter on my laptop so they’re open all day. and especially since i’m still working remotely i’m on it way more often than when i actually went into the office. 

014. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? i remember once when i was in the suits fandom some BNF found my liveblogging and encouraged their followers to attack me bc i didn’t like mike and rachel together. but that was ages ago. 

015. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?  i don’t reblog them lol. tumblr is not where i go for my news and i’m happy to keep it that way

016. do you like tag games?  i mean i’m doing one right now so....i think we can infer how i feel about it

017. do you like ask games?  i feel like this is the exact same question

018. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?  i mean @woodchoc-magnum is 911 fan twitter famous—i have a blast sending her tweets i find of people talking about her fics lol. on tumblr, i dunno, i have a couple mutuals with some big gif blogs, 

019. do you have a crush on a mutual?  i mean there are plenty of mutuals i adore but like an ACTUAL crush? no 

tagging: @crazyassmurdererwall, @tattooedsiren, @bisexualbucky, @webbgirl34, @landofalwayswinter, @lupismaris, and anyone else who wants to do this (for real! if you want to do it, feel free and say i tagged you!)