#and i just feel. immense comfort

[ratscabies]

it's just me and my hamster against the world

[hanzajesthanza]

“what does geralt get from that friendship…”

another post examining the weight of geralt and dandelion’s friendship… because i don’t think people recognize how painful and debilitating loneliness can become.

the witcher as a deconstruction of the genre takes fantasy tropes to their most logical ends—it asks us to consider what The Lone Swordsman feels, looks into the humanity in a Cold-Blooded Killer. and it turns out he’s not cold-blooded at all.

that despite some superhuman abilities, he laments and worries and curses himself, just like any other worker of any other profession. just as the farmer is scorched by the sun, the washerwoman’s back aches, and the scholar goes half-blind studying, a witcher deals with all of the pains and annoyances and dangers of his job in a mundanely human way.

but the farmer, the washerwoman, and the scholar have something the witcher does not have—they’ll always be seen as human and part of their society. at the end of the day after enduring all of their labor, they have their wife to caress, festivities to attend, and taverns to frequent. but for a witcher? after the killing is over, what does he have? no one and nothing. not even a thank you. he is met with fear and hatred everywhere he goes, baseless bigotry and dislike.

I did my job. I quickly learned how. I’d ride up to village enclosures or town pickets and wait. If they spat, cursed and threw stones, I rode away. If someone came out to give me a commission, I’d carry it out.

so he faces not just loneliness, but being deliberately ostracized and cast out from society. geralt can’t even find a polite word in most settlements, much less a friend.

‘(…) Tell me, where should I go? And for what? At least here some people have gathered with whom I have something to talk about. People who don’t break off their conversations when I approach. People who, though they may not like me, say it to my face, and don’t throw stones from behind a fence. (…)’

this kind of loneliness is not a mere inconvenience. it’s completely altering to your self-perception and ability to see the positive in the world.

each day is not lived, but endured.

day in, and day out—forced to the most difficult and lowest labor in order to survive, and knowing that were you to die, no one would search for your body, few would miss you, hell, they might even spit “good riddance”.

in this situation, to find a friend, is not only friendship, but a rescue.

without dandelion, geralt may have drowned—drowned in solitude, amidst a sea of strangeness.

‘(…) And I’m alone, completely alone, endlessly alone among the strange and hostile elements. Solitude amid a sea of strangeness. Don’t you dream of that?’

No, I don’t, he thought. I have it every day.

because dandelion is not only a bright soul, characteristic rippling laughter and the strum of a lute, but someone who will intently listen to geralt, someone who mutually enjoys his company.

‘(…) you almost jumped out of your pants with joy to have a companion. Until then, you only had your horse for company.’

someone who doesn’t see him as strange and at the fringes of society at all, but as an utterly normal man.

and doesn’t impose demeaning, sappy sympathy onto him, but sobering and realistic “quit your bullshit” which ridicules the very thought that he should internalize societal hatred.

Do you know what your problem is, Geralt? You think you’re different. (…) [You don’t understand that] for people who think clear-headedly you’re the most normal man under the sun, and they all wish that everybody was so normal. What of it that you have quicker reflexes than most and vertical pupils in sunlight? That you can see in the dark like a cat? That you know a few spells? Big deal.

dandelion isn’t “willing” to accept geralt for himself—he already has accepted him. and to him, it’s no difficulty, it’s nothing worth discussing, because he sees no abnormality and no strangeness in him.

while others “prefer the company of lepers to witchers,” dandelion has already offered geralt to share his room and board. not out of sympathetic pity, not out of fetishizing curiosity. because… they’re friends.

and what else does this friendship save him from?

not only from others, but from himself.

worse than enduring others’ apathy and hatred is one’s own thoughts—the darkness and negativity which builds from witnessing and experiencing such behavior.

dandelion’s ability to counter and dispel geralt’s pessimism and self-flagellating tendencies—again, not out of pity, but out of friendship—is undeniably invaluable. someone to rescue you from your darkest thoughts, when you begin to spiral.

and in this darkness, all you can do is cry. you cry, beg for someone to help you, please—

Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me? I'm terrified!

to be alone, the saga reminds us, is worse than a death sentence. to be alone is to “perish; stabbed, beaten or kicked to death, defiled, like a toy passed from hand to hand.” to be alone is to suffer, and to be with someone is to save them from that suffering.

'(…) I wouldn't like anything bad to happen to you. I like you too much, owe you too much-'

'You've said that already. What do you owe me, Yennefer?'

The sorceress turned her head away, did not say anything for a while.

'You travelled with him,' she said finally. 'Thanks to you he was not alone. You were a friend to him. You were with him.'

it is true that geralt has saved dandelion countless times, helped him, gotten him out of some scrape… but to ask what did geralt get in return? are you kidding me?

did you ever consider that it is dandelion who saved geralt?

by being with him. by being by his side. by being his friend.

indeed, dandelion has rescued geralt, countless times, from the yawning jaws of endless loneliness. he’s helped him, chased away the danger of geralt’s own rumination. and he’s gotten him out of scrapes, his own insecurities and bitter helplessness.

so what does dandelion give geralt? what does geralt get from their friendship?

an amusing question. what one gets from friendship is the friendship itself. and that is more than enough.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[ickyguts]

fucked up edgy ass fanart for a concept I have (I want to do a comic for it at some point!)

CW DRUG USE:

 The idea is that on days where Flippy is particularly on edge (losing his grip on fliqpy and afraid he's gunna hurt someone), Flippy resorts to taking a bunch of his sleep aid/painkillers to sedate him.

 Fliqpy sits like this for the next few hours, confused, fucked up, and out of it.

[skitskatdacat63]

Ik two days gone isn't a huge deal to other people but it is to me, since I feel like I woke up in a completely different world. It felt wrong to come back and blog and act like nothing happened, re: current events. I still feel pretty numb and empty about it all, along with many other emotions. I couldn't bring myself to look at any social media bcs it was like rubbing salt in the wound, and it still feels like its take a bit before I'm gonna be able to truly enjoy all the things I enjoy again. I was gonna write some long post about my feelings about it all but, I feel like atp I'd rather just try to indulge in what makes me happy I guess. Thankfully the fomo of not getting to commentate on all the F1 things that have happened have brought me out of the anxious slump I was in(new driver?? GPDA??? Zhou out??? Send me posts???)

On a completely unrelated note. Anyone interested in adoption?

[this-should-do]

me when i meet with my colleges first out trans teacher who is like a celebrity with me after one of my teachers puts me in contact with her again (i had interviewed said trans teacher 4 years prior and hadnt met with her since) and she tells me tjat my teacher had so many positive things to say about me, about how i was one of her brightest most well spoken students and that she (within like 5 minutes of having been talking) immediately sees exactly what my professor had been talking about and so many super implied positives about me that i would never had known about and i dod everything in my power to avoid prying for more details but even what i heard was soso nicies

[penins]

Is it too much to ask for a jontim fic that isn't either jonmartim or just them having sex. Or both. I'm actually begging. The jmart fics out there are heartwrenching and sweet and complicated but the same cannot be said for jon and tim. Drives me mad

[bandtrees]

shes very close to my heart still

[cryptidapprentice]

i just want... burbger...

[moving-to-dreamwinged]

sometimes whe n i look a t pictures of him i feel genuinelty safe and almost at home , even. okay it think thats quite enough please forget i posted this

[abimee]

ruyan is literally so beautiful that i get ill looking at her

[baronvonriktenstein]

When your romantic prospects are

Your selfish best friend who you love deeply but who would leave you for dead for their own gain

Someone who imprisoned and tortured you but came to love you and eventually showed you a gentler side that is thawing your feelings for them

Your groomer that you don't really register as a groomer who is very gentle and kind to you and loves you very much

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

So yeah avoiding my phone didn't work and also meant I sat on the kitchen floor staring into space for about 3 hours before Alfie woke up but hey at least I didn't break anything

Them being around is helping a little but they're also struggling and it fuckin sucks bc I know we're both just. Rotating money stress in our minds

[heymacy]

Could you say more, ifyou want, about how it feels better to be over your Shameless hyperfixation?

I have been thinking for months that it might greatly improve my mental health if I could get over my Shameless and Gallavich hyperfixation because sometimes it brings me joy but sometimes it causes me to spiral downward.

of course! this got long winded because of who i am as a person so my thoughts are under the cut 💛

first of all, i don't want anyone to think that my opinion on fandom has changed whatsoever. i still think fandom is beautiful and transformative and inspiring and all the lovely superlatives. this is not me talking down about fandom at all, this is just me talking about my personal experience. i will definitely continue to engage with fandom in varying capacities as i have since i was 14 years old. that won't change. i think the main difference is that i no longer feel consumed by the show. it used to be that i would plans my days around fandom activities, think about the show/characters constantly, and spend (i shit you not) 90% of my free time engaging and creating. but it just isn't like that anymore.

i didn't necessarily do anything to make this happen, it just did. but there were definitely catalysts. for example, a lot of the shameless content we consume and engage with is pursuant to ian's bipolar storyline which, to me, is very personal and intense. being bipolar myself, it became very difficult to be constantly surrounded by content about my disease - especially when so much of that content was full of really bad takes or insensitive jokes that hurt me on a very deep, personal level. i realized that if i were to embrace my waning interest fully, to step back and give myself some space, i wouldn't be inundated with that kind of hurt anymore. i wouldn't spiral like i had been and instead i could focus that energy onto maintaining my own mental health and wellbeing. so that's what i did. and it WORKED. so because of that, i feel better.

i also feel better because now i have more time and energy to engage with new and different things. for so long, shameless was one of the only shows i watched. shameless fic was one of the only things i read. shameless gifs and metas were almost exclusively the only things i posted and shared around these parts (which made sense, me being a fandom blog and all). yet somehow, in light of it all, i wasn't enjoying myself anymore. i wasn't engaging because i wanted to engage, i was engaging because i felt a compulsory need to do so. i mean, it had been my entire life for three years, what the fuck else was i supposed to do? so i made the decision to stop, even if it only lasted a week or two. i stopped watching my favorite episodes on repeat. i stopped reading fics and deleted the ones i'd downloaded from my kindle app so as to resist temptation. essentially, i cut myself off cold turkey. then step two, if you will, was to push myself to engage with new content and hobbies, even if only to cleanse my palette. so i read new books and watched new movies and fell down random niche YouTube rabbit holes. and wouldn't you know it, it felt SO GOOD. i discovered new blorbos and watched some delightful films and started doing practical, real-world things like learning to cook and organizing my apartment. i went from feeling flat and one-dimensional, like i was only made up of one basic component, to fully formed and three-dimensional, a well-rounded human being. believe me, and please don't misinterpret what i'm saying here, i am fully aware than 98% of people that engage in fandom activities are fully formed, three-dimensional, well-rounded individuals that can engage with variety of content while maintaining that fandom/life balance. that just wasn't MY reality. still, i managed to break the hyperfixation off at the roots and i feel 5000x better for it. sometimes it's what's necessary to get to a headspace where if you wanted to engage, you could, and you could do it in a healther, more well-balanced way.

i think that if you feel your interest waning even the slightest bit, or if you feel like you're too consumed by it, or if it's not sparking joy anymore, or you're concerned about your mental wellness - take a step back. try engaging with something new and different. ask for recommendations from friends. give that new show everyone is talking about a try. pick up a hobby that's completely removed from media (i've started drawing again) and throw yourself into it entirely. or just sit there! allow yourself to be bored and aimless for a little while! it feels weird but i think it was a necessary thing for me to do. what worked for me and got me to this place definitely won't work for everyone, especially because everyone's levels of engagement and consumption are different, but i think for me it was always an inevitability that this was just a season for me. and a necessity, because i was Not Doing Well near the end of things.

lastly - and if you've made it this far i am genuinely sorry i'm so long-winded and Like This - i love you. i'm sorry that your hyperfixation has you feeling this way. i relate and understand completely and if you ever need someone to talk to about it, you can always come to me for a chat or a vent or even just a different perspective on things. i wish you all the best and i'll be here as a friend and a resource while you figure it all out!

[spearxwind]

Sorry if you've answered this before, I tried looking but couldn't find it if you did~ I'm just curious about what happened between you and BNHA? All I remember is you used to reblog fanart and now it's one of your most hated series.

I was just asking since I've seen you bring your hate for it up every now and then. No worries if you don't feel like answering ofc!

I used to enjoy the manga at first until the quality of it tanked severely and I lost interest, which is another can of worms

but specifically I find the fanbase absolutely fucking insufferable. Bnha as a whole has made having any kind of design impossible because everyone will liken your ocs to the characters in it if they share a single trait, despite bnha not having invented a single one of the tropes they use

My characters have been likened to bnha characters more times than what i am comfortable with, and it sucks ass.

and then, specifically, a bnha fanartist user with over 12k followers at the time just straight up stole one of my characters (adri), and got endless praise for sharing their "oc", antagonized the shit out of me when i reached out to them too to the point I had a breakdown about the situation

in general I have found bnha fans to be really rude to the point where I cannot separate the media from the fanbase, i dont have what youd call a good impression or opinion of it as a whole

[trouble-warning]

It's Chews-day

*nomnomnomnom*