#also I had to reformat this whole thing because the ask got deleted somehow and it refused to post

[dwtisgay]

I've mentioned this before, but what makes skephalo really fascinating is that the entire relationship is documented from the start till now, hours and hours of content and clips where they'd sit together almost daily on stream and talk and hang out because of this you can chart the progression scarily well if you are insane enough to watch all that content. Of course some things are behind the scenes and they are both very good at being theatrical and faking things, badboyhalo especially thus the skephalo issue becomes as this, what is real and what is fake in all that content?

my method with mapping them out was just brute force, collecting information over time and comparing it with other moments to see where the patterns of behavior repeat and where they break, this is a really fucking mentally insane task that I don't wish on anyone but it does explain why skephalo discussions are so lacking in the general sphere because they either draw in the same crowd as karlnap who cant pick up the subtleties (this why a lot of the popular skephalo clips are cringe) or more commonly people at first glance dismiss skephalo as blatantly fake, I know I did at first when I first joined the fandom, but over time I'd get exposed to little bits of inconsistency in their theatrics that made me go hold on? especially with badboyhalo

there are subtle progressions and phases to their relationship that I will divide using years and I will also map out notable moments that I remember

The start

they've first met at the end of 2018 in the infamous "I applied for staff on 50 minecraft servers" skeppy video, bbh was the only person who responded to skeppy because he knew skeppy was a popular youtuber and hoped skeppy making content on munchymc would popularize the server tl;dr of the video is that skeppy keeps "pranking" bbh till bbh has a meltdown and gets pissed, this video is not faked as far as I could tell, bbh did have an inkling, I think, that skeppy might do something, but due to the fact this was their first time interacting I do think his reactions are genuine in it this video blows up and really kicks skeppys brand as a "minecraft prankster" into high gear, skeppy then riding the high of that video tries to milk bad for more content by convincing his mods and admins to force them into calls together and shit like that a couple more videos of this get made and in the last video of this nature skeppy asks people to go follow bbh because he felt like giving back to bbh (and I assume also because he felt bad for harassing this dude) skeppy manages to get bbh to 100k subscribes, bbh at this point has been on youtube for almost 7 years and he hasn't cracked past 10k at the time, bbh is VERY thankful to skeppy for this to the point of crying - skeppy feels morally good about this now its never explicitly said by badboyhalo but the way he phrased things to me in the early years whenever he'd talk about his relationship with skeppy is that he felt so thankful that he would've let skeppy get away with a lot and boy did skeppy take that sentiment and run with it

2019

so with that running start I am sure they've realized they're a great pair, talked about how they wanted to handle videos and what their boundaries were going forward, right? wrong 2019 skephalo is very rough play, skeppy is exactly what you'd expect from someone who would do prank videos in that time period: 0 empathy 0 social awareness skeppy had two ways of creating content at the time, prerecorded videos and more commonly going live with a prank/plan in mind and winging it and then editing down the stream later a decent amount of the prerecorded videos are faked I am very sure of, like the pizza video, due to later inconsistencies that they'd drop but there are multiple videos and theories online about that so I wont discuss them I am more interested in the ones that are not faked and they more often than not happen to be the livestreamed ones! in those not faked ones I am very certain they've never had conversations about boundaries because guess what? they've had them live instead! in the middle of it happening! a notable prank of skeppys at the time is that he'd go live without telling bbh, join a call with him and keep streaming for hours with bad unaware that what he is saying is broadcasted to hundreds/thousands of viewers oh he'd tell bad eventually, when the time is right and the moment is funny and bad would get pissed and it would net the views and rinse repeat, there are plenty recorded instances of streams of this nature that I could find and in each and everyone bad immediately after finding out tries to calmly tell skeppy not to do that and skeppy would promise till next time, this prank definitely was one of the shorter lifespan pranks it stopped happening pretty fast but it showed me a couple of things -they never talked about the types of pranks -skeppy cant actually understand when bbh is being serious and when he isn't when they are live and it took upwards of 3+ times of bbh telling him to stop I think bbh had to tell him to stop in private and that's when skeppy got the hint I am not saying badboyhalo was completely a doormat victim in all of this, bbh is very smart he recognized that him and skeppy are growing in popularity, he knew what people wanted to see from him and he leveraged this, I think his reactions were 60/40 fake to real a lot of the time bbh didn't trust skeppy but he could trust in not being able to trust him, and he was willing to let skeppy do things like that because he figured it was worth it in the long run after skeppy did the live streaming without telling him, bbh started becoming wary of it knowing that it is a possibility with skeppy, and he'd check skeppy's channel to make sure skeppy isnt live, to circumnavigate this skeppy would stream instead on his backup channel starting a really fucking insane cat and mouse game but hey thats their entire relationship also talking about shipping and possible feelings in this time period I definitely think there isn't much to be seen, a lot of popular clips are from this period but they are just skeppy's repressed gay pandering coming into play while bad is just trying to avoid it/stay neutral skeppy was the first to tell bad he loves him to get him to soften up after a prank and bad immediately throws it in his face very coldly

amusingly it was also in this time period, after skeppy singlehandedly spawned a ship by himself, seems he got too fruity for his birches and said he was "uncomfortable" with being shipped with bad, while he was telling bad that he wanted to kiss him, that he loved him etc etc this isnt to say there was nothing there, I definitely think skeppy got a crush on bbh first

here is the clip that killed skephalo in 2019

things of note: he never joked about wanting to kiss a6d or hug him or told him he loved him not even once (also the excuse is very dreamcore, bisexual denial) skeppy has talked a LOT about kissing bad, but one of the bigger moments that is still big till this day is this clip

now funnily enough the stream where this clip is from actually illustrates perfectly why I think badboyhalo faked a lot of his reactions, the stream starts out with skeppy griefing bad for around half an hour, bbh at the time was known as "the angriest man on youtube" and he'd spend a lot of the time just having breakdowns and yelling at stream because he knew that's what people wanted from him but it definitely took its toll on him in that stream alone he goes from riled up and shouting and breaking down to quiet and hanging out with skeppy and talking with him and messing around like pals, he is exhausted after the shouting but he seems generally okay to be around skeppy for extended periods of time because he enjoys his company another stream that is always brought up to the counter that bbh wasn't faking it point at the time is his birthday stream, where the memes and bullying got so intense he starts crying

again without context it looks fake, but things of note -bbh is a very easy crier -this was a huger wave than usual of memers -bbh immediately moves on after and goes into his "shouty persona" my assessment is that he probably cried for real because it was overwhelming or tiring to him/he was having a bad day but he knew there wasn't much he could do about it a common thing bbh does is he tells people to "stop" and it just makes things worse, he is aware of this and most of the time utilizes it to his advantage (telling meme donos to stop, increases the donos) but I do think when things get rough he doesn't actually have a failsafe on how to handle things when they get overwhelming so he just defaults to asking people to stop which backfires the 2019 era in a nutshell is VERY blurry boundaries, exhausting to watch and has some of the most fascinating interactions I've ever had the displeasure to witness between 2 humans who still say they like each other , this period of time held a lot of mixed emotions from both parties they definitely were fond of each, skeppy would let bbh track his location irl fairly early on in their friendship, and then 3 months from then you'd have bad telling skeppy that he wouldn't even consider them friends

2020

okay moving on to greener pastures, 2020 has skeppy maturing and them getting closer, MUCH closer than they were before, if you clicked on any of the previous videos or looked them up in 2019, I'd like you to compare it with this shit

this was in the middle of 2020, in the dream smp so what happened in the time period between? absolutely no clue in much the same way I think if you are stuck with someone you hate long enough you can start to like them, or if you stare a stranger in the eyes for 10 minutes you fall in love - I think they just spent SO much time around each other mapping out how the other thinks and talks that they've just become comforted by each others presence

skeppy in this period still pulls pranks on bad, but they take on a "pig tail" pulling quality, bbh definitely enjoys this softer side of skeppy and encourages it a lot and they seem to have a better understanding of each others boundaries, live streams become more about hanging out than fucking with each other. The transition is very subtle and very gradual that I'd be hard pressed to point out a moment as a "Moment" sure there are things like skeppys breakdown and bad comforting him you could point to, but I wouldn't call them quintessential moments but a byproduct of their growing closeness in the odd situation they've found themselves in

I glossed over the meetup stuff in 2019, because a lot of it was non serious, the moment where bad offers skeppy to move into his house was later addressed by skeppy in a stream in which I have since frustratingly lost, he says that he was sure bbh was joking and wasn't actually serious about renting him a space or so he assumes anyways there was one serious attempt in early 2019 where skeppy wants him bbh and a6d to meetup at vidcon but bbh throws every excuse in the kitchen sink at him, while skeppy gets more and more upset as the conversation goes on, the video is privated sadly and I couldnt find clips of it but it is the first mention we have of bbh saying he dislikes planes, skeppy offers to drive him, and then bad says he gets nauseous being driven, skeppy tells him he can drive and bad says "ah shucks I am busy" basically bad tries to outright avoid saying he doesn't want to go while making up shitty lies in the process, skeppy is hurt by this and throws a tantrum the reason I bring up the meetup now in 2020 is because in early 2019 you could tell one of the biggest factors bbh didnt want to meetup with skeppy is that he simply didnt trust him but as they got closer and the lines get blurrier, the topic is revisited multiple times and each time with the same excuses or under "joking" pretenses you can tell there is a larger issue here than just bbh not trusting skeppy if you watch this clip even though it seems fake and like they are acting a lot of these issues and fears are genuine and byproducts of 2019 trust issues, skeppy still thinks bad doesn't trust him, and it is causing a rift between them I wish I could show you the 2019 clip because it is a lot less bullshit and uwu theatrics and really shows "oh wow this is an issue between them" but meetup things aside 2020 marks them as obscenly fond of each other, and can almost finish each other's sentences by the end of it, they have some issues with communication still and they default to theatrics instead of talking about it but overall its not 2019 and thats great, I'd say this is where skeppy's crush properly flourishes and his obsession with bbh starts to really kick into gear, and bbh loves and enjoys this

2021

can't start a year without a drunk stream where you ask 20k viewers if they know if your crush is straight or not what I am referencing above is the since deleted best decision any content creator could do once they get to a legal drinking age, which is stream it live! skeppy turns 21, does a drunk stream and in front of god and his people asks chat if they know if bad is gay, keeps repeating bad's name while giggling, acts like a fool around him and is generally just embarrassing with such a great start to the year you can tell they got worse in their totally heterosexual behavior, which frankly I didn't think was possible

now going back, that's a good question to ask, is bad gay? a better question would be, is skeppy? skeppy has demonstrated over the years so far an issue with hypermasculinity that he only starts to shed once he meets bad, he only does soft gay shit solely with bad and not a6d who has his own masculinity issues going on that no one cares about skeppy fucks, as I am sure will come as a surprise to some of you, he is a very successful fuckboy from the offhand mentions he tends to drop here and there, it seems to be just a girl thing but due to the influence bbh has had on him I would not be surprised if he started to consider more and that influence is very considerable, bad is soft and very in tune with his emotions, skeppy starts matching this and he also becomes really soft, and starts acting in frankly bisexual fuckboy disaster ways I wasn't kidding earlier when I said this year was much gayer than 2020, their voices got even softer, skeppy ditched the pretenses and stopped griefing and pranking bad outright, and all the content they made together that pretended to be that was just filled with so much love and adoration and respect I honestly feel disgusted watching it at times I think this is the year where bad starts really liking him back hard, and that's why the tone shifted the only way I can describe how bad talked, interacted and or did anything skeppy related was infatuation and it wasn't all theatrics, he'd manage to make any and every topic about skeppy simply because that's where his brain was constantly at this year

speaking of bad's infatuation this is the year when the egg arc was also introduced and its plotline is nowhere near subtle and it puts every other romance coded ship on the server to shame bad gets infected by the egg, skeppy sacrifices himself so bad can continue to live free of its influence, bad doesn't want to live without skeppy and thinks kissing him will free him but when that doesn't work he throws himself back again at the egg bargaining with it to give skeppy back

now if you watched this without knowing about the whole skeppy jokes about kissing thing you'll note that this is probably just pandering and you wont be fully wrong, but I just explained how skeppy went through a phase where he regretted doing the kissing jokes and how bad tended to stone wall him when he did in 2019, now compare to this, this is what makes skephalo intriguing this is also the year where the skephalo renaissance happens, mostly by bad liking unhinged kissing fanart and showcasing art of him and skeppy making out with tongue on stream - but skeppy isn't also blameless, he draws himself choking on bad's dick in gartic, amps up the flirting, and bares his heart to him multiple times etc the big elephant in the room by this point is the meetup, why isn't it happening when they are so fond of each other? how does skeppy feel about it when before he saw it as a sign that bad didnt trust him and still held him at arms length and that upset him, did they simply move on from it? is it still in the background?

how can they be this close with that between them?

you know how I said before I cant tell you a specific moment where their emotions and tones shift? well I can now, the 2021 gayness uptick happened specifically around march-may, so everything I wrote above for this year barring skeppy asking chat if bad is gay, started full force around those months the difference is so marked and stark that it just jumps at you full force I cant tell you in certain terms why, but I can put on my little tin hat and speculate it had something to do with them finally talking about said elephant! since to me that was the only thing stopping them from getting closer

around march bbh and skeppy made a deal that they would meet before the summer is over and the months ticked by with no indication of them meeting but the odd thing was, they only seemed to grow flirtier and more into each other - which you would think would negate my theory but hold on! by july (7/15/2021) bbh was actually, and every seriously considering going to vidcon and he seemed he would go through with it too and this took a LOT out of bad, he spent 4 or so hours explaining to puffy and skeppy why he was so afraid of vidcon reusing a lot of the same old things he'd say in the past, and adding in more things like how he wants to meet skeppy before they go to vidcon and if they dont they will just ignore each other at vidcon, but instead of skeppy taking it personally and getting upset with him like he usually did they were literally on the same page for once, skeppy even said that he just wants to do whatever bad was comfortable with and that there is no pressure so, my analysis on why they got so close is that, bbh finally explained to skeppy his fears and reasons and skeppy finally understands that its not an issue with him, they've probably affirmed how much they care for each other and assuaged their anxieties and skeppy is willing to wait because it seems that bad DOES want to meet up eventually

in a youtube video I have since misplaced and I am too tired to search for bad goes "me and skeppy are in agreement that our first meetup shouldn't be in vidcon and we will just ignore each other" skeppy previously would've yelled at how incredulous that is and would've been hurt and taken it personally

but now he finally understands and agrees with bad because he wants this to be perfect for him you can even see in the first clip I sent in the 2020 portion that bad mentions he wants it to be 100% at around 13:30 minutes and bad says and I quote "he(skeppy) wont accept that" it seems like skeppy finally did the meetup ended up cancelled but there has been no issues between them and they kept going strong with the gay if you want to consume any skephalo content I recommend this year as their peak, honorable mentions being "blow on my dice" ppsat, pride month jackbox, chess stream where andrea and alex ask if they are dating, ant calling them platonic soulmates while drunk and gushing

2022

so where are they now? well...skeppy is not having a good year, his merch company got bought out, he got triple cancelled on twitter and youtube and he has been feeling demotivated about his videos he literally dropped off the face of the earth and the only person in contact with him is bad and the only reason we know this is because bad is still rotten enough to go "oh skeppy told me this" or "skeppy did that!" skeppy still puts out videos with bad but they lack the charm they had in 2021 and he seems to just be doing them for the sake of doing them the mcc bodes well for skeppy getting back into content but I genuinely think he has been traumatized from ever streaming because he is actually self aware enough now and fears he will say something stupid because he does tend to blurt out and do stupid shit if you haven't watched the dnf skephalo mcc video I really recommend skeppy's pov him and bad are really cute

-------------- I could've added so many more clips for each year but that wont actually help you understand skephalo, it isn't defined by definitive moments because they are very good at showing others only what they want to be shown and a lot of their interactions are made with the mindset of entertainment first and foremost I hope I managed to showcase that just because they approach things from a theatrical perspective doesn't mean there isn't much more going on under the hood

Dnf tends to have a lot more raw unfiltered moments, where as skephalos moments are all filtered through a bullshit filter because they just have so much experience with being live for hours together and never saying what they mean ever

[eloarei]

About the process of creating a book (the not-writing part)

I was asked recently about if making a book was easy or tedious or whatever, and I realized that was actually something I’d like to talk about. I’d never done it before (and still I only have a little experience), but I’ve been teaching myself and it’s been... fun?  Behind the cut (that’s still a thing, right?), I ramble about formatting, PDFs, fonts, and some other stuff. (Also pictures, though most of them are the same as the ones I posted yesterday.) 

First of all, I had to pick a Print-On-Demand (POD) website. That was easy for me, because finding the website was actually what made me want to make the book. I used Lulu.com, which has worked very well for me the two times I’ve used it. (It has a bunch of bad reviews, but honestly I got just what I paid for both times. They apparently offer editing and marketing services; I can’t vouch for those because I only used the POD service. But personally I wouldn’t trust anyone to edit or market my book, let alone some randos on some website. They’re a POD site. That’s what they’re good at, so that’s what I use.)  It would have been almost too easy if they just let me copy-paste the text to them, but understandably they wanted a PDF. PDFs are kind of the bane of my existence, but I downloaded a template from them (for a 6x9 inch novel, with appropriate margins) and then copy-pasted my fic into it using LibreOffice. (I’m so-so about LibreOffice, but it does create PDFs reasonably well.)  From there... well, then I had to go through the process of reformatting it. I’d copied the text from my AO3, and that meant that it had spaces between every paragraph and no indents, which is how AO3 fics are typically formatted. It was a lot of Tab-Left-Down-Down-Down-Backspace-Backspace-Enter-Repeat. For 140k words, it took a few casual days.  After the bulk of that was done, I realized the indents/tabs looked... weird? They were too big. ^^; Luckily there was a setting in LibreOffice to change them all automatically. I almost cried at the thought of having to do it manually haha.  Adding data to the headers and footers came next. I chose to only add the page number to the footer, and nothing to the header. Normally people will have the author’s name on one side, and the book’s title on the other, but I skipped that for the time being. Not sure if I’ll do it for the ‘official’ release.  (Somehow my footer ended up being too small, so that’s something I need to look into.)  Next I had to pick a font and a font size. I decided to do something a little gimmicky: I have alternating chapters that take place in modern and historical times, so I chose different fonts to represent those chapters. For the historical chapters I chose “Century”, which is a serif font (meaning that it has little embellishments, like “Times New Roman”), while for the modern chapters I chose “Verdana”, a sans-serif font (meaning that it is sans/without the embellishments, like whatever font Tumblr uses).  It’s typically agreed that novels are best in serif fonts, because it’s easier to read them for a long session. The embellishments make the letters blend together into visually recognizable words, which is apparently how we read, as opposed to looking at every letter individually. However, because I wanted to be quirky, more than half of my book is in sans-serif, which I’m just hoping doesn’t annoy people.  I used Verdana size 11 and Century size 12. Even so, the Verdana still looks too large to my eye, so I’ll probably change it again.  After that was mostly aesthetic formatting, which was the actual fun part. I tabbed down I think about 10 spaces at the start of every chapter, then went back up a space or two, increased the font size and changed the font to something slightly fancier and wrote the chapter title (which for me were just “Chapter Five”, etc).  (UPON FURTHER SCRUTINY, apparently not all of my first chapter pages are tabbed down the same amount. ugh. ^^; They’re close but not identical. How messy.)  Under the chapter titles, I simulated “drop caps” on the first phrase of the chapter, because I didn’t have a good drop caps font. I just did this by retyping the whole phrase in caps, and then changing the first letter to a slightly larger font size.  Next were a few easy things: a title page, a few silly “praise for” pages of reviews I got from online readers (these probably won’t be in the “official” version; they just make me smile), a mock-up copyright page (mock-up because I don’t actually have a copyright or anything yet), a short dedications page (mine was just one sentence), and then an empty page so that the story text starts on the right, which is standard. I have bought another self-published book which otherwise looks pretty good, but it starts the story on the left page and it’s just so jarring.  At that point, the PDF was pretty much done. I added a few other little touches, like some little fancy dagger icons during in-chapter scene transitions. I ended up with the “the end” page being on the left, which, again, is really awkward, so I found a chapter that only had like two lines on the last page, and went back in and deleted a handful of words in the chapter so that it would end on the previous page instead.  THEN came the fun but agonizing part, as I’m not as much of a graphic designer as I sometimes wish. I had to make a cover. The other self-published book I bought looks really nice with a beautiful illustration on the front, but the spine and back had just tiny white text, and didn’t even include a synopsis. So I downloaded a template for a 6x9inch wrap-around cover, tossed it up in Photoshop, paint-bucketed it black, and went to work. I pasted in my synopsis in off-white sans-serif font about the same as my internal font, and bolded some of the key words for... ease of skimming and/or funsies? At the top I added a short dialogue exchange from the first chapter that I thought represented the story as a whole, chose a different font that stood out, and gave it a red shadow so it would stand out more. For fun I added some faint red blood-splatters behind the text.  For the front I chose a big bold block-letter font in off-white, then gave it a red and a yellow shadow so it would stand out. I rasterized the font (turning it into a picture), and then used the tool to highlight the letters, and splashed some red blood-splatters on them. I did the same for the spine. (Though really what I should have done was copy the logo from the front and resize it. Silly me. Now the two logos don’t match.)  I used Unsplash.com for a few free photos that I quickly manipulated into a passable cover art. Ultimately, I would like to have something either professionally photographed, edited, or drawn, but what I found was vaguely similar enough to what I wanted that I figured it’d do for now.  Maybe the last thing I had to do (besides uploading it all to Lulu) was decide on a pen-name! I ended up going with L.A.Rayborn, instead of my legal name. I used my legal first two initials, but chose my birth surname (which is twice removed from my legal name, since I was first adopted and then married). To be perfectly honest, the reason I chose not to use my legal name is mostly because I don’t want to associate my in-laws with possibly-sensitive content that they probably wouldn’t like.  SO. Then it was done, and I uploaded it to Lulu, and chose a few options on the site, such as cream pages instead of white, and matte exterior finish instead of gloss. (I highly suggest the cream for novels, but the matte is really just personal preference.) I paid them (I ended up getting it printed and shipped to me for under $20), and then about 2 weeks later I had the 400 page darling in my hands, ready to be eviscerated with a set of neon hi-lighters!  After this current round of edits, I already know there’s a ton of stuff I’m going to have to fix (and this is to say nothing of the story).  1. The font is slightly too large, but could probably use a 1.5 or maybe 1.2 spacing between lines. I’ll have to fiddle with it, and see what others do.  2. The back cover text is too close to the edges to really look good.  3. The page numbering just looks odd for some reason.  4. Figure out how to get the page numbers to stay off the copyright and dedications page, etc.  5. MORE THAN ANYTHING, I need to change the... I’m not even sure what to call it? I need to make the text space out evenly so that it creates a block on each page, rather than creating messy ridges on the right margins. I didn’t even think of this until I got the book and started comparing it to professional books I’ve read and enjoyed. It seems like a very rookie mistake. 

(lol I’m in the process of changing the main character’s name, which is why the crappy MS Paint edits.)  PHEW, that was long. But hopefully my journey was at least a little insightful. Please do let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions about how I could better format the book for the “real” printing! 

[hecallsmehischild]

Burned

“Why can’t I just move on?”

I must have asked this question dozens of times last year from the depths of depression, regret, and the constricting cycle of questions I have that will never be answered. Almost a full year ago, I ended a ten year friendship that had, perhaps, never actually been a friendship to begin with. Her absence left a hole ripped straight through me. I knew that would happen, I’d told her as much myself, though it was not for the reasons I’d always thought. I had to accept that this relationship had caused a great deal of damage in both my head and heart, and that I would never get solid answers to some of my questions. 

And yet I would still get sucked into the questions. How could she have done {specific incident}? Was {incident} real or pretense? Did she ever care? When is the other shoe going to drop? I have to understand everything that happened so it never happens again.  If I put every piece where it’s supposed to go, it will stop hurting. If I know what was real and what wasn’t, I’ll be able to forgive myself for the things that were my fault and let go of the things that weren’t. I could probably write an essay on all the magical thinking I was doing that perpetuated my need to find solid answers.

For a time, I feared running into her. Completely irrational, given the amount of states between us. And yet I’ve already decided I never want to go to the city I know she lives in again, and may avoid the state altogether if I can help it. In my head, I played out endless scenarios where we somehow ended up face to face, and I made the arguments go well for me this time. Usually this only cemented some poisonous sense of self-righteousness and deepened my bitterness. It was a futile, fruitless exercise that brought me no relief or healing.

I divested myself of almost everything having to do with her in the immediate aftermath of going “no contact.” But I made exceptions. Things that, I rationalized, didn’t have quite as much of her fingerprint on them that I liked, or things I’d sunk large amounts of time into.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

As months went by, I kept finding pieces I’d overlooked, digital or physical, and removing them from my life. But I kept a few. It made no sense that they could hold any sway over me.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

Many months ago, I finally released the last couple items that had she had given to me. But I kept the children’s books. Between the two of us, we created two children’s books, fully illustrated. She wrote the stories, I illustrated them in ArtRage and formatted them for BookBaby. The first one took me about 9 months because I was unfamiliar with what I needed to do and ran into issues that I would not carry over into the second book. The second book took me about 6 months.

I’ve never been an amazing digital artist and I haven’t the inclination to become incredible, but that much practice sharpened my skills a bit and taught me the ins and outs of ArtRage. I even researched, re-purchasing some of my favorite childhood books to look at how they laid out their text and illustrations. And though the team at BookBaby probably thinks I’m a bloody idiot at this point, I finally got through my head what needed doing in order to correctly produce a printed copy. To date I have created four distinct books (and some copies) through Bookbaby for various projects.

But, you see, these books were mine. Mine. As much as they were hers, they were mine, and I was not willing to concede this ground when I had already lost so much. I asked my husband to take the books and put them out of my sight, though, because seeing them on the bookshelf every day hurt too much for me to handle. I harbored hopes that I would be able to page through them fondly in the future.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

From time to time I would get this niggling little notion that maybe I ought to let go of the books. I promptly shoved those thoughts aside. These are the only printed books with my name on them, even if it is as illustrator instead of writer. I signed these copies to myself, like I always wanted to do. I also asked her to sign them the last time we saw each other, and I knew each bore a lengthy message I had yet to look at. I would have to look at it someday, if I kept the books. But I didn’t have to think about it yet.

“Why? WHY?!”

I had begun, in the last three or so months, to realize that most of the time period during which I found this person as a friend was not one I really wanted to hold onto. There is precious little about that time period, or the city I was in, that was good. Why hold onto these things, still? I began slow, deleting photos I’d held onto because they were of a birthday that had meant a lot to me. She had been there celebrating with us, her birthday soon after mine. The whole folder of photos went.

Seeing an older friend on facebook was working through her own, similar issue, I asked her how you forgive. I understand forgiveness to be much more about my own health than the other person’s. I don’t want the anger and poison that come with long-term bitterness, but forgiveness is such an intangible concept that it is difficult for me to figure it out in practical implementation. I asked this friend how she managed, and she mentioned that every time the person who hurt her came to mind, she would pray for God to work in their life and bless them, even if she didn’t feel anything good or positive when she prayed. Pray for your enemies, huh? Suddenly that part made a lot more sense, and I started doing that even when I didn’t feel like it. It was another step, but sometimes I still got sucked into the futile mental argument scenarios.

I had to reformat my computer recently, and as I scrambled to save the files that I wanted, I intentionally left behind the digital files for the children’s books. I would never, I realized, be able to publish them anyway, since that would require an agreement between me and her. Anyone I’d wanted to give copies to already had them. I’d sent her the digital files from the start, so she already had them if she wanted to make her own copies, but I didn’t want any more copies. So I “lost” the files.

A few days ago, I went through my facebook contacts and trimmed about seventy duplicates, deleted profiles, and people I simply didn’t contact anymore or had accepted as “friends” because I felt I had to. I DON’T have to, and while it disheartened me how many of these I had allowed access to my circle, within a day I felt lighter for having narrowed my list down closer to reality. There are still some contacts I probably should release, but am not ready to accept that. It’s okay, it takes time. I will be ready eventually.

Yesterday I wrote up a description of one of the instances with her that bothers me the most in terms of unanswered questions and brought it to a private group, hoping to find some answers. Writing it up brought everything to the surface again, and it hurt. Once again, I flailed at why I couldn’t let go. Why did I have to keep asking? Why couldn’t I just get a damn answer about all this? Why couldn’t I drop it and never look at it again? I needed to forgive her, and I was already trying to do this by offering a quick prayer whenever she came to mind, but the hurt was always there. Just waiting for a good opportunity to come out roaring, claws extended, screaming, “WHY?!”

The books have to go. I don’t know whether to attribute this realization to God gently leading me toward this understanding all year a step at a time, or my own thoughts. Make of it what you will, but I don’t tend toward letting go. I want to, but I don’t actually do it. I have hoarded painful incidents, using them as fuel, as inspiration, as defense. I have, however, asked God to lead and guide and mold me into the person He means me to be. I often fail or misunderstand, but I have asked for Him to help.

I realized I was okay with letting the books go. It wasn’t a waste. I had gained valuable skills in the process of making these books. So, last night, I asked my husband to bring the books down. In a fireplace, we built up a small stack of flat, cardboard boxes and packing paper, set the books on top, and lit the pile. In retrospect, we definitely could have restructured that pile to burn better. As it was, we had to prod and bank and flip pieces over for it to catch right, but in the end it was all a cold pile of ashes. I chose not to read the inscriptions.

Afterward, I laughed my head off at the irony. I don’t hold truck with book burnings. I think it’s a lousy way to express what you think of the book at best and censorship at worst. I never thought I’d end up doing a book burning myself, let alone burn books with my name on the cover. My husband teased I was following in the “proud Christian tradition of book burning” and I just lost it. It is so good to laugh in a situation that has been saturated with tears.

I know this particular book burning was the right thing. I don’t know if I’ll still find myself asking, “But why can’t I let go?”, but I’ve done all I can think to do for now. I have let go of that part of my past in every tangible way I can, keeping no digital or physical remnants to mull over. I’ve taken another step out from under this shadow, and I’ll keep taking steps whenever they become obvious to me.

[fuckyeahroleplayadvice]

Hey, it’s me again. I’m kind of in a tough spot right now and I don’t feel I have anyone else to get advice from so I hope it’s ok that I’m sending in another thing. I just read another submit about someone with an OC not getting enough interaction that really resonated with my current situation.

I haven’t gotten any new followers in the past few weeks on a particular blog I have a muse for (and if I have they were follow backs, but no one following me first). As such, I haven’t had any roleplays at all on the blog either. No one likes my plotting/starter calls, despite having quite a few followers. If they do like it, I try my best to be friendly and get a plot going but that always falls through before a thread even starts. Just like that other poster, it’s becoming difficult to log onto my blog and put effort into a character that can’t really go anywhere without others interactions to help her develop.

I feel like.. the current RPC is really not the same as when I first started rping, where people were friendly and communicated. My blog is currently in.. 4 or 5 different RPCs with verses and it’s just been the same treatment since I started rping here. I want to have a connection with an rp partner but it seems the feeling is not mutual. There’s times I get a solid rp partner but those are so few and far between that the lonely times far outweigh the good times I have with them (plus they end up going inactive after a few weeks or even days after contacting me).

I’m really stuck on what I should do because this’ll be like the 19th hiatus I’ve gone on because of this exact reason.

My issue is that, while I’ve gone through this before, I’m wondering if it would be too drastic of a choice to softblock 90% of my followers list. I can count on one hand, with exact urls, the people who’ve interacted with my blog in some way, out of a follower count in the triple digits. Everyone else - whatever they’re reasons are - have been following me, for months in some cases, and nothings happened.

It’s really hurting and discouraging to sign onto my blog to feel like no one cares, about me or my character. They just followed me for followings sake. But I know if I softblock everyone I’d only end up secluding myself even more — but they never interacted with my blog so I would also not be missing anything?

I just want to start fresh somehow but deleting my whole blog and redoing it.. I don’t wanna lose the things I’ve posted in the past.

I realized a lot of my issue is stemming from being ghosted constantly and not wanting to come across as pushy by checking up on the other mun. Some of the mutuals I have have shown interest in writing in the past via liking my plotting call posts. Maybe I was mistaken in treating it as a contact of sorts. As in ‘liking this post means you are interested in not only rping with me but staying committed to whatever it is we decide to write’, cause that’s honestly how I view it. I also view rping as ‘if they’re interested in writing, they don’t need to be reminded to get back to it’ Possibly my second mistake cause again I get super committed to every single one of my threads. The way I view rping could be a minority view.

Now I have about a handful or two of partners that have left me on read during plotting, or never replied to our thread if it managed to get started.

In line with the whole soft block issue, before I make any hasty decisions, what should I do about these particular people. I see them active on my dash every day and they seem to be pretty busy with their other threads. And in most cases it’s been weeks if not months since their last reply so I feel it’s a little late to ask if they’re still interested.

And what should I do in the future to prevent this from becoming an issue again? I’m already thinking of how to reformat my rules and add a rules password, but I also don’t know how to enforce it should the need arise.

If anyone reading else has any pointers to give a female OC blog, I’d greatly appreciate it!

tysm!!

To start, I do believe you’re putting way too much stock in the initial contact of others. If someone likes a post, I don’t think it goes as far as ‘I’m committed’, but more, I’m interested and want to discuss more -- it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work out or be long-term. Additionally, if people are interested in writing they don’t need reminding -- people can definitely need reminding and that’s okay! Real life gets in the way, they may have a lot of threads and things get lost. It happens, it’s common, it’s normal. 

My general rule for contacting someone if they haven’t replied after a few days is this:

After two days of no response

Hey, just haven’t heard from you and wanted to make sure everything is okay!

Three days after the first nudge

Hey, wanted to check in again since it’s been over a week since I last contacted you. Wanted to see if everything is alright and if you were interested in continuing.

Five to seven days after the second nudge

Checking in one more time to see if maybe real life has gotten in the way or if you didn’t want to continue the roleplay anymore. Either way, just let me know if you can!

If they don’t respond after that with anything at all, I kind of move on. Things happen. Often times it has nothing to do with you. 

As for the soft blocking, I agree with you 100% that you would be secluding yourself more. People don’t always follow to interact and I think that’s something a lot of roleplayers don’t understand. Some people follow to follow, or follow you because they enjoy reading and seeing what you’re doing, but have their own reasons for not interacting/roleplaying with you. This is something that should be okay, and not something that discourages you. 

Are you reaching out to other blogs, too? Are you searching for other people to roleplay with? Putting out ads, responding to memes, starters, etc. to initiate? Sometimes, if they don’t come to you, you’ve got to go to them. 

I hope I answered everything, but if not, please feel free to send another ask! Hope you’re well!