#almost like i'm oversharing somehow

[softpine]

can you please, please relate? i’m not holding up

[transcript]

[northern-passage]

me at tnps resting place: hey girl…. miss u so much (shuddering sob) i think about u everyday..

yeah me too

[vettely]

.

[kug-the-carrot]

Last Friday was one of my coworkers last day at work (transferring elsewhere) and we were chatting as typical at the tail end of a workday when somehow books and audiobooks came up. Naturally I mentioned how often I listen to my favorite series (Murderbot, though I didn't name drop the series), with my usual slightly self depreciating jokes about how people are usually shocked to learn how many times ive gone over that series

My dear sweet coworker, after a slight back and forth, very sincerely went "no, no, I get it. It's like listening to your favorite songs over and over" which,,, I've never heard before. Most people in my life outside of internet friends, including my (also) neurodivergent brother, are confused/concerned/frustrated by my fixations and get weirded out when they find out how many times ive re-watched/listened/read a piece of media I love

Getting this reaction from a coworker, the instant understanding and rephrasing in a more understandable way? I'm glad my back was to her because I almost burst into tears and had to control my expression. It meant a lot more to me than I could properly express to her (without oversharing)

This is really a non-story, just me rambling, but finding the people who don't really understand but still get it is a priceless feeling. Kinda feels appropriate that the conversation took place bc of Murderbot, famously triple A coded character who I relate to very much lol

[lumea-art]

Hey, guys! I'd like to address a personal issue which actually concerns everyone in this fandom. Please, read and react somehow🙏 For those on the bojere fanbook server, that's going to be pretty much the same as what you read yesterday. If I'm too direct or accidentally overshare, sorry, keep in mind that I'm autistic

So for quite a long time I felt secretly disliked in the fandom. I am a very anxious person, I hang on every piece of feedback that I get so it bothered me a lot. I wasn't allowed to participate in the Käärijä zine and they never explained why and I almost didn't get in the bojere fanbook as well but at least the mods were kind enough to communicate the issue

So the mods told me yesterday that people felt uncomfortable about me taking part in this and having me on the server. I felt very down the whole day and didn't understand shit until Moko and Due gave me the explanation. The issue was "radfem" in my bio on Twitter. They explained to me how my associating with radfem made them think I was potentially threatening to other people on the server, especially the queer folk. But the thing is I turned out to be quite different. I consider myself to be radfem cause I've had a lot of traumatic experience with men (SA, abusive relationship), I don't want any other women to go through something like I had to experience, I am with women, I'm fighting for our comfort and against the patriarchy. Also I am from Kazakhstan and we have big issues with women's rights here including all kinds of abuse and femicide for which men tend to not get in jail. You might have heard how our ex minister of Economics abused and k*lled his wife and didn't get in jail until the case reached the news. That's all, that's what it means TO ME to be radfem. So I guess this radfem is different to the one you're used to. I am not transphobic and I have never thought my views had anything to do with queer people. I have always been nothing but respectful towards queer people, online or irl. I have nonbinary friends who are comfortable with communicating with me. As a cis person, I may not understand something, but we tend to talk anything through in order to understand each other better, not waiting for any of us get hurt accidentally. So I suggest the same - if you need further clarification, you can ask me questions in reblog or dms and I'll answer. Also I'm open to literature suggestions to get to understand you guys better💕

Also regarding Russian-Ukranian issue in case anyone has a problem with it

Since I'm openly Russian speaking (though being from Kazakhstan and half Ukrainian myself), Ukrainians might have an issue with me and I perfectly understand why so I try not to bother them. However, some of them didn't want to leave me and my friends alone. You might have seen this big Russian-Ukranian fight on twitter in April, mostly taking place in JO fandom. The thing is that (again) people don't dig deep and assume I am pro Russian since I speak Russian and happen to not be able to speak Ukrainian or Kazakh (in Kazakhstan we mostly speak Russian). Me and my Russian speaking friends were bullied, our personal info was leaked without our permission and one of us got threatened to be physically hurt once she arrives to a JO gig we are all going to. Of course I protected my friends and myself, maybe not in the best way possible. Luckily, we were able to talk everything through with the guys and no one means to hurt anyone anymore. I suggested doing commissions for donations and I still do that if you're interested. I am pro Ukrainian and pro Palestinian and genocides suck

If someone doesn't want to communicate with me for whatever reason, just don't, what's the problem. But don't limit a person before clarifying things, I beg you. Please, I really want to be on good terms with everyone. I wish peace to everyone 🙏

[ethereal-feline]

I say I forget to post my own stuff but actually I'm not confident but have a doodle dump

Reigen: *overshares/trauma dumps about that time he almost starved to death in a cursed train/dream world*

Also Reigen: *still rolls Nat 20 on making friends...somehow*

(Don't know what to call this squad besides Food lol)

Sanji: you want one?

Reigen: no thanks, I quit a few years ago.

(My awful handwriting: "Just walked into office")

Mob: it looks like Master made a lot of friends. ☺

(IDK what the conversation is, kinda was just gonna do empty bubbles just to show there's a conversation but then I filled one and stupidly followed through lol)

[wetsnifflesneeze]

Something extremely embarrassing that happened

i am deeply embarrassed guys but i feel it is time to overshare 😭 unfortunately all these obs revolve around me 😭

this literally happened over a year ago but i have been too ashamed to talk about it 😭😭

so it was springtime and i was visiting a friend, staying at her and her partner’s place for a week. about mid way through the flight my nose started running a bit and i convinced myself it was just a reaction to the airplane air… so my nose is running and it doesn’t stop so eventually i have to get some toilet paper from the bathroom and then the rest of the flight it's manageable i just keep dabbing my nose with the toilet paper every so often

we meet at the airport and the car journey to her place is fine, then as soon as i get into her house i get sniffly again almost immediately. she fucking loves her air conditioning and making her house cold so again i'm like okay maybe it's this air. which wasn't ideal for me but i'm not the kind of person to tell someone what temperature they should keep their house at

the day after i got there she was stuffy and sneezy and said it was allergies, which i believed, she was only stuffy and sneezy and surely i couldn’t have gotten her sick in only 8 hours haha. and well after she took her allergy meds she did get better.

she was in my room one morning and was like “you have a roll of toilet paper in here” and i said yeah my nose has been running a lot 💀

i tried my HARDEST not to sneeze while around other people. i mean i'm comfortable when it's just me and her but her partner and another one of her friends were also there most of the time

it was my second day there that was the worst i was so sniffly i didn’t have any tissues on me and we were mid convo and my nose just started dripping to my upper lip in front of people (embarrassing, yes, this is over sharing. i could have left this part out). sooo many trips to the bathroom to blow my nose that day (i’m shy)

the same day as that we were all hanging out in the living room and i said something at one point and not one person understood it lmao i was that congested. i did feel a little bit bad that night I’ll be honest but just from being so congested and the general embarrassment

also that whole week her partner and i kept sharing beers and even food (their idea not mine) so i guess i didn't give off the i'm sick you don't want to drink from my glass vibes or maybe they're just really chill about it??

we were in the pool and i was holding back the urge to sneeze for like two fucking hours. it was just the two of us but idk the idea of sneezing while i was in the water felt gross and i was like wtf will i do if it's messy so yeah i just somehow managed not to sneeze but i had such a i'm going to sneeze at any moment face

it wasn’t that bad the whole time but those first couple days were uncomfortable for me to say the least i’m just not comfortable being like that around people. i guess i had a mild cold, as far as i know i didn’t get anyone sick so that’s good.

[pixlpxie]

Hi Pixie!

I'd like to thank you for your openness about sexual things, needs and fantasies, as it greatly helped me accept my own sexual side.

I've always had quite high libido, I get aroused easily and I've always been really into porn, my friends also know me to be "the pervy friend" just based on my humour and general horniness, but even though it's something I can laugh at, I still often feel shame at myself and at the feelings I have.

The feeling that I shouldn't be having these thoughts, that I am somehow flawed and disgusting, that there's something wrong with me because I am so "feral", it just wouldn't leave me alone and it was something I was extremely embarrassed by and I feared that people would find me to be some deranged sexual lunatic.

I went through sexual abuse in my childhood, and accepting that side of me has always been really hard, but you've helped me a lot - to realise that such things are normal and there's nothing shameful about them. That this is all perfectly natural, that it doesn't make me disgusting or wrong or tainted to have sexual needs, that I am allowed to explore kinks and take pleasure from fantasies.

So for that, thank you so much.

I'm sorry for the long message and oversharing, but it always goes through my mind when I see the anon hate you get, people calling you disgusting and such and how effortlessly you shoot them down and laugh at them, absolutely unapologetic.

I wish all those people realised that it's extremely important to have spaces where you can comfortably share these feelings and thoughts, that it should be normalised to talk about sex and sexual needs and that the taboo of it isn't right, especially when it comes to female pleasure. Purity culture isn't cute and women are also people with needs.

Spaces like this help people realise that they aren't wrong or broken for their natural instincts, whether they've been brought up in religious circles or went through abuse, what you're doing on your platform is important to many who thought they were alone in these feelings and feared to talk about it, because they were afraid they would be called weird and disgusting for having a functional body that demands certain things that are natural and healthy.

Thank you very much <3

Ok let me go cry real quick and ill be back 😮‍💨

I had to read this a few times because i usually cant see what i do here as something that could help people so reading this was so valuable, truly it means the world to me. First of all I'm so sorry for what happened to you, you didn't deserve any of that and I hope you are doing well know 🥺💓 you will do even better 🥹🫶🏻

Having a high libido, different sexual desires and needs are totally normal but even to this day it's treated like a taboo like you said. And trust me i know how it feels like to be that pervy friend, it's exactly like the way you described. Almost in every social group im the one who's too much, too freaky, or too 'different'. My friends are so fun and you can always talk abt pervy stuff with them sure but at the end of the day I am always the weird one because usually i know or say stuff that get them a little horrified. Its all fun and games till it starts to get to you, I had to sit down and think why I am the way I am many times because like you said, something must have been wrong with me. Because why would I enjoy things that my friends don't?

Turns out everything's fine and you shouldn't really bother knowing why. It's okay, it's normal, in fact it's healthy. So the hate I get seems so childish to me and honestly it's fun atp. Sex and kinks are natural, they're human. Everyone will enjoy different things, some will like it more plain and simple while some will like more kinky things. You're not disgusting for enjoying things that the majority don't. Sexuality is fluid and endless, you will keep exploring it throughout your entire life and be as fierce as you can while doing it🫶🏻

Like I said, I am usually unable to comprehend the effect my blog has on people but reading your ask and other similar ones make me feel so many emotions. I never thought my blog would be a safe space for you guys 🥹 Please know that you are always welcome on this blog, we can talk about anything you want and I'll always try my best to help you. And please don't ever be sorry for 'oversharing' or writing 'long' asks bc trust me it's not oversharing or long for me. I love being here with you guys and I hope you know that you mean so much to me🥹😭💓

[freeuselandonorris]

Umm hi. I am here to get some big sibling life stories and comfort from your asks again. I noticed you anwered one ask that if you knew the term you would have identify as ageosexual for years. Can you like what changed? What made you found the kink side? Why were you volunteraly not having sex for years? I am just personally really struggling with my own sexuality and letting people close is hard to figure out if I am just scared or on a-spectre. (Don't feel pressure to answer)

hi little sibling anon! ❤️

so, i've always been a very highly sexual person mentally, but to me the high sex drive (i am CONSTANTLY thinking about sex and have been pretty much since i hit puberty) is not actually all that linked to the desire to have physical sex, if that makes sense.

between the ages of 17-22, i had almost uniformly miserable sex. i was struggling with various mental illnesses and horrifically poor impulse control mixed with binge drinking, so my sex life between those years mainly consisted of, at best, drunken one night stands, and at worse - well, i'm sure you can imagine. so at some point i just kind of swore off the whole thing, thought i'd maybe just take a six month break or whatever... and that somehow turned into about eight years. and honestly, i didn't miss it. i read fic a lot, i masturbated pretty much every day, but i rarely had the desire for sex and i never fantasised about myself (hence my comment about ageosexuality).

i can't pinpoint one moment that changed. part of it was just getting more mentally healthy in general, part of it was coming off birth control that had artificially dampened my sex drive (fuck you, progesterone-only pill!), part of it was meeting a partner online and being able to develop our sex life in a way that felt doable (i.e. a lot of sexting) before we met in person. and it was at that point that i started getting into kink more seriously (i'd always known i was attracted to it - even as a kid, before i understood what kink was, i was attracted to the same stuff i sexualise now), and that was a revelation. honestly, even now i could probably live pretty cheerfully without 'standard' sex for the rest of my life (assuming i was allowed to jerk off lol), but i couldn't live without some sort of kink practice. even now, i don't actually have sex/practice partnered kink that often! it's generally about once a month. but i think about/talk about/write about sex constantly thanks to my delicious feral friends and mutuals, and that to me is a fulfilling sex life. would i welcome partnered sex/kink more often if the opportunity presented? sure. could i live without it? absolutely.

ALL THIS TO SAY (long-winded and oversharing as usual) that sexuality can and does change! for me, part of it was undoubtedly fear from previous bad experiences, but part of it was simply that i hadn't yet understood what my sexuality did consist of. and that is something that comes with time, and with being honest with yourself. of course some people know from a very young age that they're ace and live their entire lives without that changing, in the same way that some people have always known they were gay or straight or any other sexual identity. but equally, for plenty of people, it changes over time, and that doesn't make it any more or less valid.

soooo if i'm going to give you some big-sibling advice, i would say that of course you can define yourself in a way that fits you and feels good to you, but that definition doesn't have to be a one-time-only thing. you are allowed to see your sexuality as a fluid thing that shifts over time, whether that's due to circumstances or simply who you are as a person changing. if you don't want to let people close to you right now, then you don't have to (and in fact i'd recommend you don't, for a little while at least, because it doesn't sound like you're enjoying the experiences you do have currently), but you don't have to assign a definition to it if that doesn't feel right. and conversely, you can assign a term to describe it to yourself and others and then change that term in the future if it doesn't fit anymore. you can say to yourself: 'okay, i don't want to have sex at the moment', and that can be enough.

[coffeebanana]

for the director’s cut ask game:

It was hard to recall much aside from how he'd awoken a few hours earlier to find his father's body splayed unnaturally across the floor, his vacant stare somehow still bearing traces of disappointment.

The ambulance had pulled away maybe an hour ago, with no sirens to accompany its departure.

Adrien only realized Ladybug was probably waiting for a response when she grabbed his hand, pulling him back to the present with a gentle squeeze. His stomach swirled. Couldn't she have reached for his other side?

She deserved better than the hand he'd used to destroy his own father.

When he finally managed to look up, he only felt worse seeing the sympathy in her eyes. He quickly looked back to his feet, panic drowning out any response he tried to cobble together in his head.

"Has anyone told you what happened?" she asked.

Adrien almost said no—which would be the truth, technically. Nobody had told him, unless he counted the clarifications Plagg had provided after the fact, details of what occurred after Ladybug and Chat Noir fell victim to Monarch's Akuma. Part of him wondered how Ladybug would tell the story, which parts would she soften or leave out. He wondered what she really thought.

But maybe it was better not to know.

Adrien cleared his throat. "I...ran into Chat Noir outside. He said he had to go, but he told me..." He took a deep breath, continuing in a whisper. "I know my father's dead."

It was the first time he'd said it out loud, and the words came out surprisingly clear. It was only afterwards, when they hung in the awkward silence following Ladybug's sharp intake of air, that he felt like they were eating him from the inside out.

Ladybug's grip tightened. "I'm sorry, Adrien. I'm so sorry."

His gut coiled tightly with some unbearable emotion. He tried to think up something else to say, lips parting as he raised his head to look at her. But the second he met her eyes—so wide and blue and sad—speaking was a lost cause.

His lips quivered. A sob clawed its way up his throat, tugging another one up behind it before the first had even broken free. Ladybug's hand rubbed up and down his arm, and that was all the encouragement he needed to finally release the tsunami inside him.

Adrien had killed his own father.

For months he'd been suffering. Adrien had assumed, when Monarch reappeared from his brief hiatus, that he was okay. That the Cataclysm hadn't been fatal. Instead he'd had a front row seat to his demise—to all the times he cried out in pain while cooking breakfast, trying to pretend everything was fine whenever Adrien noticed.

But if it weren't for that Cataclysm, if Monarch's health hadn't been weakened, then the world might have ended a few hours ago, torn apart and rebuilt in his father’s image. With his parents and Nathalie still alive.

Fic link, if anyone's interested: Pull Me From The Embers

This is already long, so I'll put the rest under the cut 😂

Man, okay. I tried to pull up past versions of google docs to see if I had anything interesting there to inspire my commentary but nope. Either I did not rewrite this part 20 billion times, or it simply wasn't immortalized mid-edit. But I did figure out that I wrote this fic in a funky colour scheme, so that's something:

OKAY about the excerpt then. I think this is one example where I'm very proud of like...how naturally I weaved the backstory in without oversharing? Like, I feel like that's something that's always so hard to get right and I definitely trend towards overexplaining. Less is more is SUCH A HARD LESSON TO LEARN ahahaha.

But here like. My slightly more fleshed out idea of what had happened is basically that Monarch's Akuma--whose power is irrelevant because I didn't think about that part--overtook both LB and CN in this. Which is why there's a chunk of the battle Chat doesn't remember here that Plagg filled him in on. And then Monarch was dying so he didn't manage to finish casting the wish, and yeah. But since LB and CN didn't wake up in the same place in the house, they don't know identities still. I imagine they both woke up, realized the place was destroyed, and immediately transformed because they really didn't know if the Akuma was still at large. And then...Adrien probably was alone when he found Gabe's body and just sort of stood there until Ladybug showed up. And Ladybug would have been too busy freaking out to realize how out of it he's been 😭😭😭

The ambulance had pulled away maybe an hour ago, with no sirens to accompany its departure. -- this is a line I was really proud of I think. idk, in my obviously biased opinion i think it conveys what it's supposed to very efficiently.

omg ADRIEN HAS SO MUCH GUILT HERE!!! this is making me want to play with that in one of my post-s5 fics, because I haven't let him piece together after how it went down in canon yet... (there's at least one WIP I have that's gonna touch on it though if i remember correctly)

huh this ask game just feels like a lot of me rambling kjbdfkbj i sincerely hope it's actually interesting LOL

Adrien having complicated feelings about his father's death is MMMMMM SO GOOD though. I could read and write a million versions of that aaaaaaaaah.

On a less serious note, the part where Adrien tells LB that Chat basically just dipped is so funny to me because like. In my mind Marinette absolutely does not question that. Because yeah okay, for one, she's more focused on Adrien, byt FOR TWO, it's absolutely normal and reasonable for her to think Chat just had some normal civilian obligation he had to get back to. He could have just showed up to patrol two days later like "Sorry LB that I didn't say bye after we literally defeated the dude we've been fighting all year! Had to get home for breakfast yk how it is!", and she wold not have questioned it at all. ajbfksdjbf love her <3

uh........i don't think i have anything else to say at this time. But I really enjoyed writing this fic!! ladrien after adrinette's gotten together is something that has become so special to me 💞

thanks for the ask!! 💜

[hunter-sylvester]

ok so this is probably my most overshare-y ask yet (tw for possible mention of SA and transphobia!!!)

BUT your post about side-shave Hunter being the most relatable stage/moment of his from the movie hit home so hard for me that I almost started crying while casually scrolling Tumblr. Cause like. Wow. I never saw it put into words like that but *yeah*. That moment in the movie was and is always so intense for me, because the feeling of violation for Hunter, specifically violation of something as precious to his self expression as his *hair*, reminded me painfully and beautifully of my own experiences with peers violating my body (in my case, the beating up escalated to SA) because I was a mouthy queer metalhead teenager who didn't look like everyone else.

like hair is such a huge part of queer self expression (or at least it was for me) and something about that scene felt so raw and so well done and just. yeah.

I've tried to type up a proper response to this for ages now and I always fall short. Maybe it's because it's connected to something of my own that is still a bit raw, or maybe it's because I simply feel ill equipped. Maybe it's because I think the perpetrators need a nailbat to the temple, who's to say.

I am always glad when my ramblings resonate with people <3 even if it's about something I wish none of us would have ever experienced. But too many of us have. And I'm grateful you felt comfortable enough to talk about it in my askbox. Know you're far from alone, and you're heard.

This did remind me about one of the things I've thought since first watching Metal Lords, but for some reason I just never talked about it on here? Maybe I thought people would deem it "too much" idk. But going into that in depth about that in response to this directly felt wrong somehow. So I'll be posting that separately.

[7ndipity]

just found out some thing by my friend's insta stories that got me sad and mad about him bcause I though we were friends close enough for him to tell me if they're dating and etc

and yeah a while ago I was having feelings for him, and I thought he was too, we even went on a few dates last year, but I think this part of the relationship got cold (?) bcause we both didn't have time to go out on dates since he was taking college class and working. I think we did got a little far from each other since our agendas didn't coincide enough for us to keep in touch and go out on dates and etc

so when I started to go to the gym where he works I kind felt happy about it and though that our relationship as friends would be closer somehow since now we were meeting frequently, even though it didn't had that spark of the possibility of romance, I kinda like our friendship and all, it comes since the college (we both did Engineering and we had some classes together) and honestly he's the only friend I have from college that I still keep touch

I think I'm not even sad about the whole romantic between us being dead (I was already accepting that we wouldn't have a thing and etc bcause I wasn't feeling that spark between us anymore) but the fact that I thought he was a close friend that we could share anything but in the end I think he didn't thought we were close enough for him to tell me he was dating, I mean are we friends that close?? Or was I just oversharing my life with him?? He know so much about me and my life and now I don't think I know that much about him

maybe I'm the one oversharing lol maybe because I don't have someone to vent often so I just overshare things with him?? almost the same I'm doing here lol

sorry for that much venting I literally just found out about this today and I feel the need to vent it to someone or else my anxiety might attack during work time

Oof, I'm sorry you're dealing with that, honey.

Obviously I don’t know either of you personally so I can't say anything for certain, but him not sharing about his dating life doesn't necessarily mean that you're not close, some people are just more quiet and private when it comes to discussing that part of their lives. Plus, he might’ve felt awkward mentioning it since you said that you went out a few times. I still understand why you'd feel hurt about the the situation though🫂

I hope everything works out between the two of you, and if you ever need to talk, I'm always here💜

[the-gayest-tree-you-ever-did-see]

you called me a friend and that has given me the courage to step out of the anon mask lol

YEAH EXACTLY. HE SPENT THE whole day looking for his daughter and then reliving painful memories! i felt so bad for him

cheers to living life as hopeless romantics lol

I KNOW RIGHT, (studying psychiatry just for them if we lived in that universe)

JERSEY. im not kidding, i spent like a week being emotional over the jersey ending, my parents were genuinely concerned 😭

nani has a Father Face!! yes!! and i've spent an embarrassing amount of time watching his interviews, and he's SO GOOD WITH KIDS. it's so cute honestly

yay for intellectual conversations via tumblr asks!! i've been overanalysing this movie almost constantly in my head for the past 4 days so this was really fun, ily <3

fun fact: i wanted to know when you replied to my ask, so i kept having to open your account, right? so after a point i just typed "gay" onto my searchbar to find your account lol

another fun fact, i was scrolling through your desiposting tag bc it was fun and saw "saturday night fever" and. i haven't heard this song in years, okay, i didn't even remember that such a song existed in that movie. but it still instantly played in my head with A Tune, and i googled the song to see if i remembered the tune somehow or if i was just making stuff up, AND IT WAS THE RIGHT TUNE. sure brain. remember all random tunes but not the shit i study for exams.

fellow pjo fan!! hi!! and i love your opinions on taylor swift!! FRIEND!!!!!

i apologise for the oversharing but i have very recently found telugu people on tumblr and i'm Very Excited, if you need me to back off, pls lmk and i will!

welcome to the other side............................!

2. I KNOWWWWWWW they really put nani in The Most situations ever give the man a break !! they need to put every character in counseling immediately after the cameras stop rolling

3. 🥂🥂 its tough but its real

5. NO WAYYY that is so funny but also <33333

6. HE ISSSSSSS when he did krishna gaadi veera prema gaadha and played with the kids all the time...................... where can i find a man like him fr

7. awhh i love you too<33 i always love talking about movies its so so fun

8. LMAOOOOOO honestly this is the end goal and vision. my moniker is gay as it should be and the universe is right

9. RIGHT its such a sleeper agent song i never remember it Until I Do. but yeah at that point i didnt know when i could go back to india and i remembered we would sing it while running and it made me Emotionanal. but i got to go back which was nice!! different problems but it still feels good to go home

10. omg!!!!!!!!!!! we are holding hands and skipping in a circle............ FRIEND!!!

11. no youre COMPLETELY fine i do the exact same thing<333 you dont need to back off at all, its incredibly fun to talk to you !!!

[wildandmoody]

The MTV December '99 interview with Alex Coletti will always be my favorite MJ interview of all time not only (but most importantly) because it's one of the only interviews where Michael isn't treated like dogshit but also because you can see and hear just how relaxed Alex makes Michael feel just by being chill and to the point asking questions about his work process, even if the questions only center the Thriller videos and Black or White. Michael is willingly oversharing and telling stories instead of just giving one-word answers, isn't crossing his arms and legs, he's giggly instead of tense, and never has to get defensive. And a tabloid rumour is not brought up Once.

My only half-gripes are (1) Alex not matching his energy! Maybe I'm passing too much judgement bc we can't see him, but come on, laugh when he laughs! This is a gripe of mine with most of his interviews. With the questions about the Thriller routine especially it's almost like Alex has to gently stop him from rambling. I literally don't think I've seen any other interview of his where that happens. I'll consider it a half-gripe cause again, we can't see Alex so maybe he was smiling along, and his chill demeanor is what made Michael so comfortable in the first place. The other half-gripe is that the footage we have is too short. The known footage is only ~11 minutes when some of the worst interviews conducted are at least 3x that length. I know based on how the footage is cut that there's much more to it, and Alex mentions watching the Thriller videos with Michael and commentating over it. I wanna see that shit before I die.

This last point is completely my own taste but Michael's somewhat embracing his own take on the cusp-of-the-millenium (I'm hesitant to call it Y2K) aesthetic here too with the slight beard, leather jacket, bronze makeup, and bobcut, and it's one my favorite looks of his. It somehow makes him look more like his younger self than usual.

Anyway, with all that out of the way my point is it's an interview I'd recommend to fans and casuals alike because it's short and sweet, and one of his best in terms of atmosphere and only focusing on his most work, and because of that his personality ironically shines through much more than other interviews.

[cyberphuck]

So, about the story of how I met my dad and why I love him so much

@qthewhatever asked me to talk about my dad, how he became my dad, and our relationship. I thought this was going to be a fun jaunt through good memories, with maybe a few grateful tears along the way. But the story of why my dad is so special to me can't be told without the context of why my mother *isn't* special to me, and the stark difference between how he treats me, and how I was treated by her. The cliff's notes version (do they even have those anymore?): Dad became my dad kind of by accident, when Seb and I started "pretending" to be siblings in order to be able to rent a room together. Dad is Seb's dad, so it follows that since I'm Seb's sibling, Dad is my dad too. Then he just... fell into the role, because dads gotta dad. He is always proud of me, no matter what, and no matter how badly I fuck something up he could never, ever stop loving me. He cares about me and doesn't get annoyed by the ups and downs of my moods. He lets me cry when I need to. He lets me take a break when I need to. He loves me, *really* loves me, so totally and completely that even though we look absolutely nothing alike, no one who has ever seen us together doubts that he's raised me from birth. That's not what it was like with my mom. I only got so far through recounting her decades of abuse before I found that I couldn't do it anymore. I'm still going to post what I have, because I think other people should read it and maybe become comfortable talking about their abuse *as* abuse and not "I'm sure I was doing something wrong somehow, and it was my fault they were always so angry at me." Also, I spent a long time working on it. This is not a happy story. trigger warnings: child abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, mental illness, mentions of suicide, mentions of self harm, mentions of various serial killers, mentions of psychiatric hospitals, autism portrayed in a negative tone, fatphobia, and brief mentions of drugs and drug use. (this story is also not complete; it stops when I'm around 27, but I added an epilogue.)

My family had been in various financial situations throughout my childhood, but I was raised upper middle class, which was the same tax bracket that my mom had been raised in. My biodad, Ichiro (Dave) left when I was three, and I saw him once ten years later and then never again. So mom raised my older brother Nick and I by herself (except for a 3 year stint with Chris the Coke Addict Who's Dead Now) up until I was thirteen.

I'll admit I was not an easy kid to raise. I was (and still am) weird and awkward and autistic and prone to oversharing with strangers as well as long crying spells over seemingly low-importance things. Nick was also sensitive and somewhere on the spectrum, but it was me who was the loud one, the hyper one, the one who people politely said was a "late bloomer" and "marched to the beat of their own drummer" (at one point my mom told me I was "marching backwards.") I refused or forgot to eat so often that at six I became malnourished enough to warrant a visit by CPS. I was always being called into the principal's office for doing weird shit at school, like making potions out of shampoo and throwing them at passing cars or lion-roaring at boys I didn't like or whatever. When I got sick, I got VERY sick, like the time I straight up got Scarlet Fever and almost died, or the time I had a fever so high I started convulsing, or the lots of times that I had to do fasting blood draws every month because I had a very low red blood cell count and no one could figure out why.

Bottom line I was very weird. Mom was weird too, my grandparents were weird, but they knew how to "show" in public. I didn't. Nick's nickname for me was "The Spaz." Worse, I constantly craved attention and had absolutely no concept of Stranger Danger (I still kind of don't), and the year I was born, Richard Ramirez was active and killing in Southern California where my mom and Dave lived. In 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and his apartment full of chunks of Milwaukee's queer community was broadcasted all over the news. In 1978, when my mom was a young woman, Mary Vincent was attacked by a man who picked her up while hitchhiking. He assaulted her and then attacked her with a hatchet, cutting both her arms off above the elbow. She has hooks for hands now. 

To keep me by her side and not wandering around out in the open, mom told me about all this. Everything-- that Dahmer was killing and eating people, that Ramirez tortured and murdered people, and how Mary Vincent had asked a strange man for a ride and now she had no arms. There's a scene in the beginning of *A Time to Kill* by John Grisham where a young black girl is being raped and tortured by two white men. It's a page or two long, but very graphic, and when I was eight my mom sat me down and made me read it to show me what could happen to me if I went anywhere alone.

At the time, we lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is not exactly a hotbed of violent crime.

All that aside, I was a cute kid and a good-looking teenager. I was adorably freckly with never-neat red hair, and then grew into a curvy teen with long red hair and wore cute clothes. Mom bragged to people that I was an author and an artist, and she would often tell me that she loved how 'cool' I was. (cool, in this sense, meant wearing the clothes she bought me and not styling my hair in any way she found ugly. She often pointed out ugly people on TV or on the street, and say something like 'I'm glad YOU don't dress like that.') 

I was smart-- I didn't get good grades because I could never get around to doing my homework, but I scored high on tests and most teachers liked me. I wasn't one of the popular kids, but I was always the leader of whatever little gang I was in, deciding where we went and what we did, and mom loved that, too. And she really, *really* wanted me to go into medicine.

Junior and senior year was where it all started to fall apart. 

Mom's husband is a veteran with severe PTSD. 2001 - 2005 were the worst years with him; he was overbearing at the best of times and the fact that he was a boomer from Brooklyn and I was a millenial from LA really didn't help us see eye to eye. But he had a hair trigger and would back me against a wall to loom over you  and scream in your face. Nick, who was taller and angrier than me, would scream back. Once, Nick was sent to the store for parmesan cheese and came home with the powder kind in the green can instead of the tub of the fancy grated cheese, and the resulting shouting match almost ended in a fist fight.

My depression started getting really bad when I was 17. By 18, I started self-harming, and for the first time had the thought that if I died, if I was gone and were nothing, everything would be better. I also had my first hospitalization.

I'm at 21 inpatient psychiatric stays now.

Worse, I was an adult now and had not transferred gracefully from high school to college (to go into medicine, nothing else was enough for her). I didn't even have a graduation-- I tested out of school in early 2003 and the only pomp and circumstance I got was a half-sheet of paper with 'CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL PROFICIENCY EXAMINATION' printed on it. I had gained a lot of weight, partly due to meds and partly from depression and post-school downtime. She told me my hair looked like a rat's nest and once remarked to her husband, 'look at the size of her!' I no longer wore cute clothes and was not actively trying to turn my art or writing into a profitable career. 

Mom and her husband told me that I absolutely had to go back to school again, or they'd kick me out. The closest community college was two counties away (counties in California are really big). They told me they'd only take me to the nearest bus stop (still an hours' drive) and then I'd have to take a three-hour bus ride to the campus. The absolute earliest bus left at six am, which meant that I could only take classes starting at 10 am, and then had to leave by 2 pm to take the bus back home (the return bus did go all the way back to my area, but didn't run as often). 

They treated my trek back and forth to campus every day not with pride or pity, but contempt, as in "this is what you get for not succeeding." I had two more hospital stays.

After a particularly bad episode with mom's husband where he tried to force his way through a door and I had to climb out a window to get to neighbor's house and call 911, I moved out to stay with Nick, who had left about a year earlier. I was determined to be an adult and build a life for myself, but my depression and self-harming got steadily worse, and though I had several jobs and tried to go to college, every few months I'd do some serious damage to myself and end up back in the psych ward, pushing all my plans back to zero.

Nick moved in with his girlfriend, leaving me to shoulder the rent on our room on my own. I managed for about six months, but I couldn't stay at any job for long. I went to live with Skittle, where my depression took such a nosedive that a lot of nights were just spent huddled in a ball and sobbing. I felt worthless. I felt like I was nothing. 

Skittle and I broke up, and with nowhere to go, I moved back in with my mom. There were short periods thereafter that I would move out again, but basically, after I turned 23, I didn't get away from her again for five years.

Mom was never really happy with me again. I helped out wherever I could, going with her to the ranch where her horses were and volunteering to do all the dirty or hard tasks so she could have more time to ride. I did not and still do not like horses and have no interest in riding them. I went to make her happy. I wanted to do whatever I could to make her like me.

(Mom's ranch friends loved me, because I had been taught to show well in public. With them, I was witty and hard-working, and so sweet to come there to help my mom. Didn't I want to get on a horse, just once? No?)

I brought my mom breakfast and her meds when she woke up, so she could lay in bed while they took effect instead of having to hobble to the kitchen. I did chores around the house. I took the laundry to the laundromat twice a week, and brought them home clean and folded. I walked the dogs and took them to the park. 

My mom told me that I was a draw on finances. I started cleaning houses, and eventually lucked into a job cleaning weed for a hefty sum of money. I made enough money in one three-day weekend to buy my own car, which was a good thing since mom's truck was repossessed not long after. I'd gotten the trimming job in November. I sometimes stayed over at the weed guy's house so I could do two or three days of trimming in a row. In December mom told me that all I cared about was money.

Early the next year, my boss was between sales, so he was late paying me. I owed my mom two hundred dollars (I can't remember for what), and she treated me with open hatred for every day I didn't have it. Bitter and upset, I posted something on facebook to the effect of "does anyone know where I can find two hundred dollars so my mom will love me again?" Mom saw it and sent me a message: 

"you want to play this game? better not call for a while I better not see you for a while. a person must learn to keep family business private [Jaydee]."

I also got:

“Just sit there and pretend you’re not here.”

“I’m trying to reminisce about happier times, before all this.”

“You know you think it’s all about you, but I had your brother first.”

“If you don’t like the things I say to you, leave and find someplace with someone nicer.”

“Go get a shrink and figure out why you’re like this all the time.”

[epilogue: the next year, I was planning to commit suicide because I saw no other way out. Seb offered to let me stay with him in Texas; my options were Texas, or death. I pondered that for a while. A few weeks later, I got a refund of a Pell Grant from my college that they'd mistakenly taken two years earlier. Mom and her husband made it expressly clear that as soon as the money hit my account, I was to hand it over to them. Instead, I bought a plane ticket, pulled out the rest of the money in cash, wiped my ass with her husband's face towel, and snuck out with two suitcases in the middle of the night. I had left a note for mom saying I didn't want to be abused anymore and told her I was going to stay with a friend in Central California to throw her off my trail. I also told her that if she ever tried to find me, or bothered any of my friends to get information, I would put all of her secrets and records of her abuse on facebook for all her friends and relatives to read.

I didn't see her or speak to her again for nearly ten years, until this May. Then I flipped her off.]

[non-un-topo]

random ass questions about ur stories: ok I don’t remember the title but ur recent long fic that was like. the aftermath of losing quynh and they were on that island with the fun-shaped stone that Nicky found? if ur happy to share I’d LOVE to hear about like. what part of the story u came up with first. like what image/vibe/plot point etc stuck in ur head so much that u wrote a whole fic about it yk? I absolutely LOVED that fic and would love to know!! hope ur having a good day and also no pressure to respond 🫶💕

🥺🥺 Ohh friend, thank you!! I'm so glad you liked it, and I'm sending lots of love to you!! The fic in question is Axis! (you're gonna get me talking about this big baby of mine and I won't shut up lol, I'm shy but I've had a lot of caffeine and I'm excited) <33

So I actually went looking through my old docs, phone notes, and physical journals for the first idea I had of this fic after I read your ask, because I could not seem to remember?? From what I managed to dig up, it was based on vibes first. I have some journal notes on "aporia", a state of ambivalence, and liminal space. I think I started writing it in October last year, during a very weird time where my mental health was... not great. In short, and hopefully without oversharing, I thought I was having a psychotic break. Turned out it was likely the CBD capsules I was taking for my chronic pain, which had a psychoactive effect I hadn't anticipated (like 0.1mg of THC and somehow it was enough). Anyway, at that time I started writing a lot of garbled philosophical thoughts, and I'll share this one for you because I'm almost certain it's what inspired Axis: (also putting the rest of this under a read-more so I don't annoy anyone sdfghfd)

What is the present? I wonder, because the moment you put your attention on it, it becomes the past. It vanishes. We think about present moments, but they’re already gone. All that exists is this idea of ‘happening’: All that will happen, and all that has happened. Neither is tangible. Neither can be held or kept. In thinking about the future, we imagine possibilities. In thinking about the past, we revive in our minds what has already happened. The only present that exists is the imagination. The dream. That which removes us from our reality, from our position in time and space. Where exactly is that? Rather, where are our selves in that state? Do we linger? Do we go? And if so, where? How long is the length of a single present moment? Can our lives exist as this single thread, if we spend it in dream-state? Are we forever suspended, or do our recollections of the past, our imaginings of the future, tether us to something tangible after all?

Anyway, right below this is the first line from Axis: "It is wondrous how quickly things can change in a moment."

Besides vibes and themes (suspension, stasis, indecision, fear of being lost, grieving, surrendering to the will of nature, being a fixed point in a broken group, being tethered together or untethered, things happening in reverse, being upside-down, being consumed, yadda yadda), I think the first scenes that popped into my head as visuals before I got writing were 1) Nicolo standing in the valley and catching a flake of ash in the air. 2) Yusuf and/or Nicolo in a hot spring. 3) Larus' frozen lambs. 4) The argument between Andromache and Nicolo, but no dialogue yet.

I know I wanted to write something sort of dream-like, that dipped in and out of flashbacks and liminal states, and I'm genuinely proud of myself for seeing it through. The last school year I had was intense to say the least, and there was a long stretch of time where I just left this fic as one scene and a bunch of nonsensical notes. Then, being real transparent here, a couple different tragedies happened one right after the other, and I just opened the doc again. I think my nana dying slowly had a lot to do with the direction my writing took. Thoughts, feelings, general atmosphere from real life creeps into my writing every time, and often I don't even notice until the project is done and I've read it a few times.

Anyway, I'm WAY overselling this fic dfgfds. It just means a whole lot to me and I know you can tell, so I appreciate you asking about it <3 Hope you have a fantastic day. Sending love and hugs <333

A bonus angsty snippet that didn't make it into the final work, just for you <3

It happens like this sometimes: Yusuf begins. “What if we never found you?” “You did.” “But what if. Just humour me for a moment.” You do. You love this man, so you do. “I wasn’t fast enough, and you slipped. I didn’t grab you. I didn’t even pull you from the water.” “You know it is not your fault.” “Andi didn’t��� you didn’t see. I tried to jump in after you—” “And you would have been lost, too.” “No, I would have gotten you back.” There is no way to prove this. Nothing is certain. It already happened. You’re going around in circles. Yusuf says again, in a whisper, “What if we never found you?” You’re finding it hard to speak. To say anything in this moment. Yusuf presses his hands over his mouth, but it does nothing to contain his stilted gasps. He presses his words against his palms, but you hear them clear as ice: “What if we never find her?”