#also for context I've been friends with these people since we were in elementary school and we all independently became tumblrinas later

[jellybeanium124]

I love talking about fandom with my fellow tumblrinas who are not in my fandoms. was talking about how in tua I was pissed they got rid of the sib's tattoos/scars/lost limbs and was like "thank God that'll never happen in ofmd bc there's no time travel shenanigans" asdhbfsgkjdnlh can you imagine 😂 man what would a time travel episode of ofmd even look like lmao

[browzerhistory]

anyways Personally i don't think it's possible to meaningfully separate the self from the body/world and thinking of them as independent entities can create serious issues in later lines of thinking.

i say this as someone who has several 'selves' (system) but all of us have been undeniably changed by our body and the environment it's in. we wouldn't be who we are now without the very specific conditions and events that shaped our bodies and personalities.

it can be argued whether someone is more predisposed towards certain traits and activities from birth, but even then, the way you're raised and how much access you're given to those activities, as well as how much you're allowed to express those traits, matter deeply in shaping the person you are.

it's why i struggle with "what if you were born a different sex/richer or poorer/in a different country/etc.?" type questions bc the answer you'll get from me is inevitably "the person in those circumstances would be so fundamentally different and unrecognizable when compared to me that i don't think it'd be fair to say they would still be me." you know?

take a relatively small example, like if my parents decided to enroll me in a different kindergarten than the one they did. i would never have swapped schools in elementary, which kicked off my anxiety disorder hardcore but also made me gain wonderful friends who i wouldn't trade for the world, and unique experiences that shape the way i adapt to situations today.

or say i went to physical (heavily masked) school during the 2020 school year instead of taking online courses. i probably wouldn't have fully split into a system and i wouldn't have missed my best friend's last year of attending the same school as me before moving away. but i also wouldn't have rediscovered one of my oldest, most beloved special interests, nor would i have met the short lived but wonderful community online that helped me realize i was trans.

what i'm trying to get at is that the popular concept of the Self or the Soul as this immutable, eternal force that drives a person's actions and is predetermined before they're born really doesn't line up with reality. not only in the context of how much your environment changes you, but how much you can change you. humans are creatures of habit, sure, but you can make and break habits with relative ease most of the time.

(i started crossing my z's in third grade because i thought it looked cool. i stopped listening to an artist i used to adore because he said some shit things and i've barely missed his music. lately i've been making an effort not to step on certain floor tiles in the hall just because. i know most things aren't this minor or easy to change, but it's just an example.)

as far as theories on the self go, mine is a pretty easy one to spiral on. especially since, before i started thinking harder about it, i thought there was this Special Thing that made me Me and no one could take it away, so when i considered the possibility of my me-ness not being inherent to my existence, it freaked me out.

but as i thought about it more, i found the thought really... comforting, somehow? maybe it's because i'm trans and a system but the idea that there's the True You you have to want to be (and if you're not then something is wrong with you) feels really restricting. people are always changing, even moment to moment. it's not a bad thing to be constantly changing, that's just what being alive is like.

which brings me to another point (that i probably should've made earlier but whatevs) that also lines up pretty well with my political views: nobody is doomed to be a bad person forever, even if they've done bad things in the past. (i could make a whole other essay on the ways punitive justice just Doesn't work and how annoying it is to see in leftist spaces all the time, but i'll breeze past it for the sake of this post not becoming a novella.) my point here is that while yes, vengeance and punishment for harmful actions does feel great and can very occasionally help, the sustainable and humane way to approach harm is through restorative justice and rehabilitation (for lack of a better word).

nobody is born evil and nobody is doomed to be evil and hurt everyone forever. this is true both in the sense of restorative justice, where the person who did the harmful action(s) can be trusted and expected to change their behavior, and in the more personal "you are not bound to suffering for all your life" sense. if you break your arm, do you set the bone or cut the whole limb off?

the concept of the self, when wielded as a tell-all unchanging revelation of a person's "true nature of violence/harm" can be and is used against already marginalized and oppressed groups to justify that oppression. this is a more political gripe, sure, but it's one of the reasons i think my theory holds up better. saying "people can't change if they've done bad things..." is a very good way to get people to accept "...so anyone who does a bad thing should be locked up forever/socially isolated/killed/etc."

idk. it's probably a Capitalism thing - something something making a product of yourself and products have to be consistent - but the attachment to a One True Self really grinds my gears in a way that i haven't been able to put into words until recently.

i understand the desire to have something that makes you fundamentally You no matter what, but the way i see it, it'd take one tiny change in your past to turn you into a completely different person. that doesn't mean you're not real or that nothing you do matters, it just means the world is as much a part of you as you are of it. it's worth thinking about sometimes.

(also please talk to me about this more i could go on for hours about the idea of the self and our relationships to our bodyminds and etc)

[msvorderofoperations]

Been a bit, but I've got a new dream journal.

This one was fairly mundane, but was still interesting. It started with taking a flight to California for reasons I was not terribly clear on. It definitely involved going all across the state as part of a tour, but other than that I had no idea why/how I gotten involved with it. I say this because I have not been able to afford travel/vacations for a very long time. What made it interesting though was that the group I was travelling with was people from a lot of different parts of my life. There were people from high school, elementary school, and various communities on the internet I've been a part of.

Soon after leaving the airport, we got on this strange rapid transit conveyance that was basically a raised, glass-bottomed train line with very small (like 4 people per, max) climate controlled cars. It was both fast way to get from place to place and also a very effective way to show off local sights. This was reinforced by going past a bunch of film sets and permanent structures built into the shallows of the ocean. I think in the context of the dream we were heading to San Francisco, but it was an island a fair ways offshore rather than a peninsula.

As we went further across the water it became clear that we were approaching a theme park of some kind, as we got to see a bunch of rollercoasters and other thrill rides that utilized the fact that they were operating over the open ocean. One that stood out was an inverted (as in you were seated dangling below the track) rollercoaster that had the conceit of trying to escape an enormous octopus or squid. This was accomplished by having fibreglass tentacles breach out of the water towards the cars whenever the track dipped close the the water. It looked very impressive but even in the dream I was thinking that they must be able to throw an absolute shit-ton of money at it to make sure it is maintained properly. Soon after, as we were approaching a station, there were even projections on the ground to make it appear as if we soaring over things like the grand canyon, the trench on the Death Star and other impossible vistas. As we pulled into the station I noticed with some mild embarrassment that the whole time we were over projections I had been tightly holding onto a friends hand. Mercifully neither my friend nor the dream dwelled on this for too long.

As it turns out, the station is in the heart of a Disney theme park (though pointedly, not Disneyland proper) and the train is being taken out of service because there is a concert happening at the park that would interfere with operations. I think it was Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa, which would have been a hell of a show but alas we were not able to attend. As would most likely be the case, this particular Disney attraction was mostly indoors but to do their thing of hiding line ups it meant there was a lot of blind corners and unintuitive pathways. Also, since we were technically not paid entrants, we did not have full access to the park. This meant that while it was kind of cool to kill a few hours at a Disney park, we only had access to a small section of it and we had to pay for theme park pricing for everything rather unexpectedly. Additionally, COVID was still on my mind as I was stressing about being stuck in a place where people from all over the world had gathered and none of them were masking.

As I explored to not let the stress sink in, I noticed that this park in particular seemed to have an emphasis on more niche Disney properties. Like, there were stalls all over where one could record part of the lyrics to the Powerline songs from A Goofy Movie, which would then be played over the parks PA system. There were also attractions based on the animated shows from the 90s and early 00s like Doug, The Weekenders, and similar. It soon became apparent that I needed to try and track down some proper food, not just fried/sugary snacks, as the last thing I had eaten was breakfast on the flight and it was now after 3pm. Compounding this issue, the train that we had taken here and would have to leave on was not going to back into service until 11pm, so we were expected to be there for a WHILE.

So as I was trying to find a place that had something approaching a full meal, I remembered that I hadn't had chance to get spending cash fully squared away. I planned to do it once we had arrived at the hotel we were all staying at, but that certainly wasn't in the cards now. I was not fully without financial means, however. I had credit cards that would be accepted (though there would certainly be issues of fees), and I did have a single American hundred dollar bill. It was just a question of who if anyone would be able to break a hundred in a fast food kiosk or similar.

As I was searching through my wallet to find the C note, I realized I had accumulated a frankly absurd number of claim checks, transfer forms, and other associated bits of paperwork from travelling to a different country. And since they made searching my wallet such a hassle, I had to figure out a different place to keep them for the time being. As I was working on this, I ran into another person from my group (an actor from a sketch comedy troupe I follow online) who seemed to have a much better handle on the low intensity chaos that we were dealing with on the way to our final destination. He was vlogging, had a whole checklist of things he was going through that we could do in our time spent at the park. I asked him if there was anything like a reasonably priced sit-down restaurant in this part of the park. He explained that there was, but it was a pain to get to, owing the convoluted layout of the space.

I thanked him and then started to make my way when it became readily apparent that the concert had begun. Even though this part of the park was nowhere near the outdoor music venue, the lights were dimmed significantly, and all of the sounds of the attractions and the PA system were made quieter. Owing to the fact that the venue was outdoors, I could pretty clearly hear both the music and the crowd. Rather abruptly as I was trying to navigate these strange passages in the dark, with a susurrus of a distant concert going on I woke up.

[elmaxlys]

Dreamed that I was back in uni for a master MEEF. Once again there were a looooot of familiar faces, from as far back as elementary school. There also were new faces tho, like my new worst enemy that I didn't register the name of but I dubbed Clémence for some reason. Treated me like trash when I just asked her for a tip like accused me of being impolite (untrue, I had started my sentence with the marques de politesse) and basically said someone so useless had nothing to do here. So I looked at her like 🤨. But then! Haha. Revenge (slight). The professor had come and would call all the students and place them in the amphi according to their grades, basically. And when I was called, before Clémence, i was put in the 3rd rank. Then Clemence was called right after and put to sit right next to me so I could look at her with a smug look like see? I was better than you (I am made of salt but I'm not usually that petty, she just REALLY pissed me off) So she looked pissed, of course. And then introduction class started and the bitch started sprawling on the table and pushing me. It's so narrow in there I was pushed right onto my other neighbor, a nice and silent lad, H, which missed me off EVEN MORE. It went on for the two hours the class went on. Then at the end of the class, for some reason, my bag had been thrown into an impossible place to reach and I had to ask the prof that had come next, who was super tall, to get it for me. He was nice so that was fine, but I was a ball of pure fury by that point.

Then it all got better because I found some people I knew from middle school. Started talking etc it was fun, and then they saw another of our former classmates, A, who was there with his little brother. For context, I had a squish on A since elementary and it went on all the way to high school when I met another guy to have a squish on (way more questionable, that one, but that's not the point). And there was a rumor back in middle school that A liked me. Never knew if they were true, and I never pushed to know either. We weren't exactly friends, which was my problem. So anyway I see A and my eyes go all sparkly and luckily my friends are the ones who hold the conversation because I have nothing to say except damn it's been a while huh. Then focus shifts on the little brother and he's gotten SO TALL so we joke about that and he's the first one to, and it's all fun, until it's time to say goodbye and A me fait la bise. Lips suspiciously too close to my own. And he looks straight in my eyes and I smile bc what do want me to do in that situation except pretend it never happened?

And then I wake up and I am very much aware that in one week I've dreamed twice of meeting A again and flirting with him and it going a little too well...

For the stats: regular me, pretty sure the teacher called me legal name and my friend called me Elmax (which doesn't make sense since I gained that name after middle school but well.)

[i-luvsang]

i've started brainstorming for some fics and i wanted to ask for your insight for one of my plot ideas. i'm trying to write some sort of one-sided enemies to lovers where the love interest 'hates' reader due to some sort of misconception. li sort of ignores reader when they're in the same room and like rolls their eyes and reader has no idea why the li dislikes them. my issue is that i don't rlly have inspiration for what the misconception would be. i tried looking for prompts or thinking about examples from shows where i could take inspiration from but i sadly can't find anything. so that's why i'm here!

for the misunderstanding itself i thought of doing something where the love interest thinks reader wronged them in the past and holds a grudge against them for it. perhaps li thought reader tried to sabotage them or made up a rumour abt them but it was someone else (but obv li isn't aware of that). so far i think that's the most fitting for the trope i want to go for. do you maybe have any fitting ideas? anything is welcome i just wanted to hear your input — 🎧

hiiiii omg but i love the way this sounds so far!! enemies to lovers has my whole heart eeee. i will do my absolute best to help you!!

i think you could definitely run with the idea you've described about li thinking that reader did something bad to them indirectly, while in fact, it was someone else. this can be a good place to start because it can create even more drama hehehe. for example, if li thinks that reader has done something, but it was really someone else, that probably means that someone gave li the wrong information, likely on purpose. that means the so called informant probably was trying to screw reader over. this could be for different reasons; maybe the informant views reader and competition (they like li and want li not to like reader). this could mean that previously, li was interested in reader, but changed their mind when the informant told the lie about reader being the one to hurt li in some way or another. plus that means that the informant was probably the one to hurt li and framed it to be reader. this leads to a big reveal about not only reader not being the one to hurt li, but it actually being someone that li had trusted and that's like. big oof lol rip li trust issues that i made up that they have in my head.

and if you were struggling with what the actual misconception could be like whatever it was that hurt li. you mentioned a rumor; maybe informant(who could also be called the antagonist atp) spread the rumor that li has been doing something regarded as shameful in the environment (at school, they're actually paying someone else to stay one of the top students, or at work, they actually sucked up to their boss to get their most recent promotion). that kind of thing could (temporarily) ruin a reputation, so antagonist would frame reader for spreading the rumor and then would actively defend li to get on their good side. then obviously the one sided enemies thing ensues.

and lastly if you're still on feeling this route of things, i'll do my best to think of something else for the misconception for you! if we kinda wanna take a sillier look at it, li holds a grudge against reader from like early elementary and it was probably something really small and unimportant plus! it was so long ago that li doesn't actually remember why they hold this grudge lmao. but since they hated reader since second grade and made up this rivalry thing (basically in their head lol) they never stopped disliking reader. idea two.. maybe they're rich old money people and their families have a rivalry and that mindset was instilled in li, but reader's parents never cared about it so reader doesn't even know about it. idea three! the misconception stems from li overhearing reader say something out of context that sounds bad (sounds like they're being mean about li or one of their friends etc etc). aNYWAYS idk couldn't think of anything super solid for other misconceptions but i hope at least one little thing in here can help!! <33 lots of luck and lmk if you need any more help with writing!

[pageofheartdj]

Aa if you dont want this ignore but this is like some insight from a gen z kid about that post you reblogged about limited freedom and stuff about our generation? Idk if you remember ejfbje

But like for me because of covid the last year of high school pretty much was online. We didn't do any graduation or prom and never got any send off into college/university. And because lockdown was taken more seriously where I live my college ended up being online for both years (I graduated a year early).

That means college was spent online in my room doing all my classes and lessons never really getting to know anyone and never meeting my teachers or classmates. To this day I've never met anyone I went to college with.

We also didnt do any graduation. Just got the stuff in the mail and told I'm done. Theres no sense of community, no clubs or outside of class activities. Theres no hanging out, no social interactions, the closest thing to talking to anyone is someone asking if there was homework, despite group effort to interact with each other through discord.

I now have my first job in my field, and it is online. I've never been to our office building, never met any of my coworkers. I'm working at home in my room and it's been practically the same since grade 12.

Obviously not everyone is experiencing that, but for perspective everyone that graduated in my year and in some other programs too experience very similar stuff. We never had any of that teen into adulthood development. Just thrown in without any chance to experiment or make friends or develop more social skills or life skills. Since the pandemic lots has closed down, malls are empty, and good luck finding anywhere to make friends that isnt online, or anywhere to hang out that isnt lonely loitering, expensive, or a bar (where, at least for me, it is hard to get there, hard to justify the prices, and overall unpleasant because people arent too interested in becoming friends).

Theres also barely any social community events unless you are religious or dont have a 9-5, which I do. The isolation is something a few friends I had since elementary school have talked about, and it's getting painfully obvious.

But yeah, theres all these things talking about freedom of school and college and all that, but what do you do when all that time is spent in your room because it is all online and everything is closed? My job is online and I can barely afford to rent a single room and I'm making decent enough money. It's hard to relate to older generations when they talk about being this age because theres basically nothing the same other than doing homework. Plus parents because of covid get far far more time and reasons to pressure you into staying and monitoring you.

Idk, that's just like some extra stuff to say, because how that some things have been online online is now an option in some colleges. And that means some patents can pressure their kids into doing that instead of getting to leave because how else will they get the money to survive and do school? It sucks having so little freedom, and it feels like theres nothing to do about it because there is no sense of community. Everyone is isolated and where I am at least, talking to someone you dont know is considered highly rude and possibly threatening, regardless of the context (unless it's to people at their jobs about things they do).

Idk, makes me wish I was born a decade or two earlier sometimes. Anyways sorry for the rant

Yeah I knew covid fucked up so many people. Social interactions are SO important for development and so many kids and teenagers were deprived of it. And internet is NOT a good substitute. It's just bonus.

It can't teach boundaries or stuff like that, in fact it messes with people's perceptions. They treat users as things and not living people. They constantly form parasocial relationships, because there is no one else to properly connect with and they don't know how to even make normal friends.

Not to mention the world in general became more paranoid.

Where I live it wasn't this bad for the longest time. A decade ago I could have easily just. Walk into my school for nostalgia trip and there was NO resistance whatsoever. I walked around hallways, chatted with teachers I used to learn from.

Also in the context of the families, it's pretty individual since many countries treat families as big communities where it's fairly normal for kids to keep living with parents.

I don't even know how to help this generation, they desperately need some actual human interaction. They need to make mistakes and learn from it and internet is the worst place for it because it remembers everything and so many people can see it and abuse it.

[gettingthewordsout]

People Are A Lot

If you've known me for any amount of time, you'll find I don't care for people. I am super picky about the people I choose to be around. I genuinely used to be more friendly, but when you're taken advantage of, that ends.

Yes, that means I also have trust issues. I simply stick to not enjoying other humans.

Growing up, I was bullied.

A lot.

I had very few friends, no kids my age in the neighborhood, and I was weird anyway because my parents were "old." (Context: my mother was 34 when I was born, my father was 40. Dad was often confused for my grandfather.) My parents weren't friends with any parents (again, only kid my age in the neighborhood), so I just stayed fairly solo. I was a tomboy, so the friends I did have were usually nerdy boys. I was more like them than the girls in my class.

If you want to take it way back, bullying probably started in daycare, but that's an entire can of worms in itself. Throughout elementary school up into college, I wasn't liked by my peers. Teachers loved me, but to other students, I was too smart, weird, ugly, had glasses, I looked like a boy (I've been misgendered since '87 y'all), and as I got older, I was called slut, made fun of for my physical appearance, implications made about my genitalia, the list could go on.

I don't like people because people didn't like me.

I was in advanced music classes- didn't really fit in. I was in advanced English, maths, etc. Didn't fit in there either. I was in senior government class with kids I'd known since kindergarten and they didn't know my name. The teacher was my elementary school gym teacher and HE remembered me.

I graduated high school in 1999 and I've never been invited to a class reunion. There's a handful of us who are just forgotten. University? I wish I could forget it. Thousands of dollars in student loan debt from graduating in 2004. I'm no closer to paying it off now than I was then.

I'm smart. I'm creative. I'm a writer. An artist. I should have nurtured my musical side more. People don't believe me when I say I have a Bachelor's Degree in Communication and theatre. I really do though.

I was picked on a lot. Students, family, boyfriends, spouse, etc. People just aren't that nice to me. I would love for someone to observe a human interaction with me and "friends." Not once am I asked for input. Or my thoughts. Or my feelings. It's always take. Take my time. My money. My love. My concern. My peace. When I do get the rare chance to vent to someone, there's not a lot of listening. It's more of a 'I don't want your bad mood' kind of thing.

So, I cut people out of my life. Family- no problem. Hell, as a rule we don't talk to more than half of my mom's side of the family. Friends? What friends? I work with people. I'm their boss. I'm at the bottom of everyone's list, so don't expect to be at the top of mine.

I enjoy being alone. Just me and my cat. I miss hugs. I miss affection. I miss a kiss. But let's be honest, no one wants to give me any of that without taking something from me. My needs are low. Even in my day to day life, a hello can go a long way.

There is no hello.

I've given myself freely for 40 years.

I turn 41 in a month.

I am no more the doormat.

You didn't like me before, you're going to despise me now. I'll wake up and choose peace every day.

My peace.

Mine.