#and now i have like. severe paranoia about one of my best friends. which is making everything like a nightmare for me

[elytrafemme]

good news: therapy finally scheduled friday morning. bad news: holy shit i am really spiralling aren't i

[death-in-a-handbasket]

Edgar anon here but I'd like to ask a question from u... What things do you think of about Philippe because the art you made had me going crazy and only strengthened my interest in him fr

Oooh okay, you have to take what I say with a grain of salt because his character comes with the Pandora’s box of racism and I’m trying not to die by mob wrath

Okay now that that’s aside, I see him having a strong sense of justice coupled with an overwhelming temper, he’s got a habit of oscillating back and forth between direct and cold when he’s working and extraordinarily temperamental when he thinks he’s close to a truth or been pushed the wrong way

one of my dear friends suggested that he carries a dire paranoia from the death of his mother and his desire to identify criminals is because first he was looking to avenge his mother’s death and then his sister’s, AKA I don’t think he’s shooting in a racial direction, at least not intentionally, but rather patterning what he thinks a criminal looks like after who he thinks he saw kill his mother so not only can he eliminate them but also remove any such thing occurring in the future by targeting those who look similar. He is difficult to work with in the sense that if I cook him even slightly wrong people will light me on fire for my sins but such is the challenge of tackling the mindset of a guy from the 1800s

I digress though we only have two letters to his name so hopefully in the future I’ll have more lore to work with

he plays at having a stable and righteous appearance so he fits in the role of enacting justice but underneath that he’s quite unstable, oscillating wildly between incredibly independent and isolated and severely overprotective and obsessive, he is the definition of hot and cold, he’s trapped very much in a black and white state of thinking

should you try and romance him you’ll be stuck in this weird cycle of him deciding what is best for you, whether that is keeping you ignorant of his business and holding you at a distance or clinging to you so hard it hurts

In the vein of being clingy I think he has a rather bad jealous streak, it especially has him acting up when someone is being too touchy and affectionate with you, it makes him more physically clingy in return because he’s feeling like a territorial asshat, this also plays into sex with you, as he vastly prefers being skin to skin with you as much as he possibly can, the closer pressed to you he is, the better. and yes of course there will be waxplay involved it comes with the man

something that me and my friends have also avidly discussed is the possibility that he would make a wax figure of either you or him and have you fuck it in front of him, or vice versa. this man would fuck a wax figure I’m sorry I hold no doubts about that

if you want to get a deeper layer of freaky (which I’m surprised no one has considered yet) you could engage in a strange threeway with him and his sister, either in a scenario where she is still alive or even when she’s a wax figure adhered to his shoulder (I like to imagine her spirit still haunts him frankly and that her bones are stored inside the figure on his shoulder) either way people need to consider freakin it with both of them because they are both hot and Christina herself is much more stable than Philippe’s moody ass, they balance out the vibes nicely I must say

that’s all for now, if you want to send me more inquiries on specifics by all means I’m happy to dissect him further 🙏

[anonymous-dentist]

GOD I LOVE YOUR AU ok question time

- who is in the federation of heros? What founded the federation? Are they powered like cellbit?

- how is cellbit one of the first few born? I feel theres a science experiment plot caught in this and he broke containment. I wonder if he found this out due to being able to scare himself, and that fear immediately projecting to others, making THEM just as scared. Id imagine hed be diagnosed with severe paranoia/etc and then like. Oh SHIT its not. That. Oh fuck.

- what was that leadup that made him a supervillain? Something so minuscule yet so big as fear, to be considered one of the high villains of the city is insane. Some people would probably laugh it off an say physical destruction was scarier than mental, until they see what he actually does.

- who did he murder?????? I wonder if it was someone who defied the "everyones fears projected back to them" ability. Someone unaffected by this, like maybe their own ability counteracted it. One of the federations lower ranked heros attacked... as a citizen... i feel theres more than meets the eye here..... but of course it ended with murder. I feel there could be done with something of luzu and his look alike there.

- i still keep thinking about breaking dawn and how forever is also considered richas's dad, and just thinking about it being kinda switched in this scenario. Cellbit walked into forevers life again an now richas has another dad to annoy the piss out of. Though i do feel him an jaiden would be at each others throats in investigation. She would totally be a foh member to me. He tries to take down them through HER.

- why jaiden? Shes probably the most visible with her apparent ability. I imagine her having hummingbird like abilities. Flying at such a fast rate it can change the force of wind itself, etc etc etc (running on coffee an headaches atm sorrie) but she KNOWS something. She knows the foh is fucked up. She knows its dictating the definition of right an wrong, but she doesnt have the power (YET!!!!!!) to kill them from the inside out.

- heros who are seen as the light amongst the city, vigilantes who are the underbelly of a growing problem/an antibiotic refusing to kill the infection, and singular villain who wants to put a stop to it for all. God. I am jn love with this au im sorry can u tell

- and then theres fucking SPIDER MAN. nobody knows who he may work for since, by the logic of q city, if your a vigilante, your working for someone else directly related to the foh, and being sponsored as such. But theres no calling for spiderman, theres even active "have you seen this person" signs around the city, marking them as a non verbalized threat to the standing of foh. Cellbits key.

- now he needs to convince his friends to help him find spiderman. For....... research. Yes. Totally. He wishes to interview spiderman in hopes to figure out "who he works for", which not really. Hes not the best at lying, nor was he really trying. He wants to crack down the foh to its rotten core.

- he even tries to ask roier for help at some point, right? He talks about the signs around the city, says its a shame that hes on a watch list- and how he swings around to actively web heros against the walls to stop them from hurting another person.

- and its convinent theyre on a coffee date (cellbit didnt even notice, roier did, an hes just awkwardly like... hahahahabah thats really weird why would spiderman stop him but also yeah i get that- why would thet get rid of MY hero <:((("

- cellbits subconsciously like. Shit. Pretty boy is pouting about the vigilante. More reason to find the motherfucker.

SORRY ITS SO LONG ENJOY THE RAMBLEEEE

WOW OKAY so let’s see:

1. It’s a lot like the Federation from the canon qsmp, but it’s also more overtly focused on ‘Protecting the City’ from superpowered threats. It stepped in to fill the shoes of the former police state, and by getting rid of the majority of police officers it both opened up opportunities for villains (and thus heroes and thus the Federation) and for heroes (see: previous parentheses.) The founder is anonymous, a “Mister Duck”.

2. I’m actually lowkey playing by MHA rules. Basically, at some point a couple of decades ago, kids started being born with superpowers. It was the more obvious ones that were discovered first, like a girl in France being born with little duck wings. Cellbit’s ability is less obvious, but his parents were constantly overly worried about him because babies and children are always very very scared of everything. Eventually he realized what was up when he was around nine or ten, but he didn’t really tell anybody because even back then he knew that he would “get in trouble” for it.

3. As for villainy, it was an accident. He needed money after his parents died (of sudden heart attacks, and he pretends he doesn’t know what that actually means), and he isn’t a very intimidating guy on his own, so he kinda… helped himself out a little. And it worked super well, so he kept doing it. And he kept doing it. And then he started going a bit overboard with it and the people he was robbing started dying, too.

4. And as for the murder, Cellbit and the hero were both civilians when they got into an argument. The hero, new to the whole thing, ended up using their ability and actually attacked him. He attacked back, notably without using his ability, and he accidentally killed them. The Feds were NOT happy about this, so they messed with the court proceedings and got him sent to prison for three years. But, hey, at least he got therapy there?

5 and 6. Jaiden is 100% working with the Federation in this au. She and Spider-Man are taking very different approaches to what is fundamentally the same issue here. I think her ability is more parrot-y, but she does work for them now. (It’s a very recent development.)

8-10. Spider-Man is a fan-favorite and the Federation does NOT appreciate him ruining their image!! And he knows that he isn’t well liked by them at the moment, and he doesn’t care because it’s fine if Spider-Man dies. He has a job to do, and he is going to do it.

11-end. And it’s a good thing that Cellbit is such a big Spider-Man fan! It’s something Roier thinks they can use to bond. Definitely. Bonding.

…Can you tell superhero aus are my guilty pleasure lol

[everyone-with-a-para]

Hi! I have several questions, if that's okay.

I very recently found out about daydreaming community, and, honestly, was in awe, because all my life I thought I was that one weird autistic child with really big imagination and finding this community was like a blessing, because I don't feel that alone now. But, surfing a in this part of the internet left me a little bit confused and the fact that english is my second language does not help.

So, first question. I somewhat lost the line between immersive daydreamings and MaDD. I am sure that all of my daydreamings are immersive, because all of my life I was daydreaming to the point of every single moment of free time. But I don't understand when immersive daydreamings end and MaDD begins. As far as I understood, people with MaDD have difficult time leaving their daydreams, because of one reason or another and use them as coping mechanisms. At which point immersive daydreamings become MaDD? What is the line? What are, let's say, particular qualities of it? If that's okay for you and isn't hard, can you explain it in detail with examples? I try to understand myself, and while I find in myself a lot of stuff, I don't want to invade the MaDD community as (somewhat) healthy person.

Second, is having DID is a requirement for any of this? Is this still okay to be in the community and not have DID?

Third, maybe not a question, but clarification, as far as I understood, "para" in daydream community means someone (character, your version of self, yourself and so on) you have connection with. Again, character, yourself or version of yourself, in which I am sure. Am I correct in it? Can people you know in real life, if you are religious, God(s), spirits and others, different kins of alterhumanity and fictional characters from other media also consider as "para"? Are there any other labels like this?

Thank you, if you will have time to answer this. It way be a lot, I am just excited to find some niche that I was having all my life actually is (somewhat) common experience and I am not alone in it. I hope you will have a great rest of the week.

Hi welcome! I remember the relief I felt when I first found this community too. MaDD can feel like such an isolating thing if you don't know others experience the same

This got a little long so answers to your questions are under the cut

1. Immersive daydreaming is defined as intense and developed daydreams that feel more vivid than regular passive daydreaming. It's often used as a coping mechanism and often started in childhood, but those are not defining features

Inherently, all maladaptive daydreaming is immersive. It becomes defined as maladaptive when it negatively impacts your daily life. This is widely up to your own interpretation, if you feel like it makes life (whether that's external activities or internal feelings) more difficult for you, as MaDD is not yet a diagnosable disorder

Personally, some ways it negatively impacts, or has impacted me in the past: emotions feeling more real for people in my head than anything in my real life, embarrassment/anxiety of letting my daydreams show on my face in front of people, paranoia regarding mind readers despite knowing they don't exist, injuring myself from acting out daydream scenes, forgetting to eat/drink/take care of basic hygiene in favour of daydreaming or just losing track of time, dissociation, derealisation/depersonalisation, second hand distress from my paras

Anything like that and more can be counted as your daydreams being maladaptive. The coiner of the term, Dr Eli Somer, has actually made a list of proposed diagnostic criteria, should MaDD ever get to be in the DSM. You can find that here

2. DID/OSDD and MaDD have significant overlap/comorbidity and MaDD has been proposed as a dissociative disorder itself (for a research paper about this see here) but one is in no way required for the other

I'm not a system, but I am very vocally supportive of them because my best friend(s) is, that and the comobidity is why you might see a little system content on my blog

3. Para is a term used by the immersive and maladaptive daydreaming communities to describe any character within a daydream. Anyone/thing that exists in real life or as a spiritual concept can't be considered a para unless they are directly part of your daydreams

There are other terms such as parame (a para you daydream from the POV of), paraself (a version of yourself in a daydream), veritbond (a para that feels more independent and has a deeper connection and meaning to you), and paracosm (a world in which a daydream takes place). A comprehensive list of all ID/MaDD terms can be found here

I hope this answers your questions in a clear/helpful way. You're always welcome to ask more!

[freakattack]

How about favorite NON obscure Mario characters?

Entry-level mario characters? We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now

ORBULON AND MONA (and their coworkers)

Truly what is there to say here. If you need an explanation for this then go look at my art blog and get out of my sight.

2. IGGY KOOPA (and his family)

As I mentioned in my yes-obscure mario characters list, i did grow up with a permanent koopaling residence in my brain. Iggy koopa was always the star of the show in my book but make no mistake, I love EVERY koopaling for their own individual merits, there is not a koopa kid I don't adore, if you like one koopaling you have to unconditionally love all of them or else they will kill you. Before warioware, this other dysfunctional squadron of jerks was my muse. Bowser and Bowser Jr. are included in this as well, but there is one specific member of the family I want to give a special shout out to:

3. KAMEK (their grandpa)

Kamek is maybe the best mario character there is. He's, and I don't use this term lightly, an icon. A trailblazer. A gay old wizard. He is bowser's overly-permissive yet loving father figure, and now bowser jr's (AND THE KOOPALINGS') overly-permissive yet loving grandpa. He is a family man. He is also the catalyst of the ultimate conflict in the mario series. Were it not for his poorly-planned exercise in paranoia decades ago, we may very well not have any mario games to play. So if you like any mario game, you have to say Thank You Kamek. Right now. Out loud.

4. WARIO

He's on this list twice because he's so nice. Wario is perhaps the most cruelly underrated character of all time. Nobody appreciates him for who he is or what he represents. I mean they do but not enough. Anyway, Wario is an inspiration. He is an asshole, yes, but he is not only unapologetic in his strangeness but also welcomes the strange into his life and doesn't let go. He is like a collector of gullible freaks, which is what I am. But he is also ride or die for them and a genuinely good friend when he's not scamming them. If Wario was the only person allowed to be mean to me I'd be OK with that.

Also, on a more meta level, I think that he embodies everything that mario can't do. Mario is the face of nintendo, the good guy, and thus he is palatable and measured in a way that falls in line with and is reflected by his games and their ever-important "brand identity". Wario, in-universe, is the heel, the cad, the knockoff mario, and he doesnt give two fucks about what people think of him. This characterization also applies to his games, which are rough around the edges, off-the-walls bonkers, and electrically creative. They are constantly innovative in a more unpolished and experimental way than I think mario dares to be, and most importantly they have the secret ingredient of Love. You can argue with me on that any way you want but if you think that an entire series of in-character diaries and blogs and staff profiles for every single Wario employee that are all funny and consistent with each other over several decades was nothing then I don't wanna hear it.

5. TEC-XX

Fanning myself. Moving on

6. BOWYER

I don't really have much to say except that he entered my life at a delicate developmental stage and promptly took a baseball bat to my brain. How the fuck was I to gloss over a deranged slobbering Thing squatting in the woods shooting everybody with arrows that he's yanking out of his skull and talking like a souped-up yoda. And then I have to kill him? Fuck off. He should have been in mario kart

7. VALENTINA

Also from mario RPG, the criminally underrated bastardess Valentina. In addition to having a baroque harpsichord leitmotif and being a walking Jimmy Buffett reference, Valentina is ALSO an evil advisor scamming a town populated entirely by village idiots, which is perhaps my favorite genre of character. I found out via the remake that apparently Dodo imprinted on her and thinks she's his mother, which actually sucks a lot because I always thought she was just his evil sexy boss. I still wish that was the case. But she is also a wretched slimeball to begin with and who am I to deny a girlboss her slime.

8. FRANCIS

I guess I should fucking put him here even though I don't like him. He is a reminder to us all that we need to calm down. And by we I mean me. He is also, barring Fracktail and none else, the greatest part of that entire game, in my unbiased opinion as a stinky bug-obsessed dogmatic Mario turbovirgin. Mario games will never match that level of hilarious vitriol for the worst parts of their audience ever again. They're not brave enough. But we are truly fortunate that they did. Because who else would readily admit that they go onto message boards to complain about games they've never played? Not me, I'd never do that

9. CACKLETTA + FAWFUL

I'm not separating them. Fawful is an amazing character but his climb to greatness could not have happened without Cackletta, the equally great and toothy villain. Look at her rocket-powered rocking chair. That's hilarious. Anyway, there isn't much glowing praise I can say about Fawful that hasn't already been said before, so what I instead will say is does anyone else remember when there was a movement of extremely passionate and confrontational people who insisted that Fawful's death was faked and that he can and will be announced in Mario Kart right now? We need to bring that energy back

10. SILLY KING BOO

I'm capping this list off with something insane that my fellow Francises are gonna wanna kill me for but I don't care. I am of the opinion that Silly King Boo is a separate entity from King Boo (real). He's just too silly. He's also worked beneath bowser as a minion rather than alongside him as a co-villain, which I think the real King Boo would scoff at. But Silly King Boo has to pay the bills somehow. As distinct from King Boo, Silly King Boo thinks little Boos are so cute, thinks Wario is scary as fuck, loves the opera, tolerates Petey Piranha, does not tolerate spicy foods, and is not actually a legally-recognized authority. Also, one time he got too drunk in a casino at Isle Delfino, but Mario was not there to fight him for that so he was just escorted out.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Attached is a grab bag of characters who deserve to be here but are not getting their own paragraph either because I have already written a lot about them in recent memory or because I don't feel like it. Here they are

[raspberry-pudding]

3/8/24

It's another one of those days where I tell myself I'm not going to smoke, but I have no idea how well I'll succeed. I made a short post last night, just vague posting and getting a few thoughts off my chest. But nothing deep.

I feel stupid for posting about my addiction, but at the same time it's the only way I know how to possibly find people like me. Who can become very addicted to weed. I don't have any friends to go to about it because they all smoke and are fine -- or at least, they convince me they aren't addicted and that it's impossible on weed. But what else would you call something that you crave so intensely you're scrapping the bottom of a bag or grinder to get one hit? What else would you call something that you can't control yourself from taking as soon as you wake up? What else would you call something that's meant to make you feel good, but after doing it every day, all day, for several years you get stuck in a cycle of giving in, swearing to go sober/quitting, and then turn around and continue doing it? Every. Single. Day. For the past two years I have sworn to finally quit smoking weed but I just can't get away from it. My body feels like it needs it and I'm miserable.

It doesn't even get me high anymore.

More below the cut for those interested, and so I'm not clogging timelines with a long post. My content isn't for everyone. Please scroll by if you think weed isn't addictive and if you argue with me you'll just get blocked. That's not what I need when I'm just trying to recover.

I miss the person I was before I started smoking. I was so productive and successful; I wrote and exercised everyday. My emotions were better regulated. I felt like I could do anything.

I started smoking a lot later than most people -- 24. And as much as I would like to blame my ex for the addiction, I'm more to blame for my own addiction than anyone else. It started when I was writing an essay on Emily Dickinson and the soul, and weed helped me a lot with writing this piece. At least, for awhile. Soon after, I was getting high every evening to work on the essay, but I'd get distracted and ignore my work. It just sort of spiraled after that.

There are a lot of good reasons why I want to quit. First of all, I want to be a better woman. I want to be the strong woman I used to me -- not this weepy bag who can't even stand the thought of driving myself anymore. Where did all my strength go? Where did all my independence and will go? I wanna be a better woman not only for myself, but for my fiancé. He's very supportive of me, and says that we all have our vices -- doesn't care if I continue smoking or if I quit and will support me no matter which I do. But I need to stop smoking for him, too. He deserves sober-me. He's not only the best man, but the best person I have ever met in my entire life. He deserves the sober-me much more than my ex deserved it, but he's hardly gotten to experience it. He deserves a woman who can do anything and be level-headed. Not the emotional wreck I am on weed.

I'm also already a naturally paranoid person. I don't know how to explain it other than ever since I was a kid I've been prone to extreme paranoia. I've always seen terrifying images in my head and I get concerned that they'll actually happen before my eyes, no matter how off the wall it is. Let me clarify, I never hallucinate (not even on shrooms or acid have I hallucinated), I just have an overactive imagination. Weed, obviously, intensifies this feeling. Sometimes the paranoia is crippling; I'm frozen in fear whether it's in bed or at my desk or in the living room. It can become overwhelming.

Third, I want to go back to school. It's nearing the 3 year mark since I've gotten my Master's degree and I haven't gotten any jobs with it. Granted, it's difficult to do something with my degree in my area and I'm a bitch about having to move. But I'm in a dead-end part time job now that's pushed me into wanting something more. Specifically, wanting what my original plan in life was -- get a PhD and become a professor. Focus my career on academia. It's what I'm good at, and it's what I enjoy doing. I've missed the college space so much. I've missed the research that goes into essays and the excitement I used to get while writing. If I go back for my PhD, I can't continue to be on this fucking drug. I can't do the work I need to while being constantly stoned. How do I know? Because I could barely balance the work-weed balance as I was finishing up my MA. Weed stifled my academic work so much to the point that I almost didn't graduate; if I go for a PhD I have to be sober. There's literally no other option. I have to take it seriously. I cannot do the work I need to while getting stoned every day.

I feel miserable and cranky every day, and the good mood I get from smoking only lasts for so long and then I become grumpy again. Yesterday my grumpy attitude ruined a nice evening out with my fiancé -- he says it didn't, but I feel horrible about the ordeal.

I'm ready to quit. I've been ready to quit for about a year now with no success. I think the furthest I've gotten in the past year is 2 days without weed. Since I started smoking, the further I've gone without is a whole month -- I really don't know (or remember) how I did it. I don't know how to start, or how to keep cravings away. I'm just so frustrated, I want my ambition back. I want my drive and energy back. I want to be even better than I was before. But I can't with this drug holding me down and making me completely numb and lazy.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. I really don't know what to do when the cravings start to hit within another hour or so. I guess the good thing is that I'm all out of weed right now, and while I could go get more it would involve going to the bank to get out cash. Hoping that prevents me from giving in today.

Maybe I'll just write on here when the cravings hit. Just write about how I'm feeling until it goes away. I really don't know. I'm just going insane with this kind of lifestyle and I can't do this anymore. I have to become sober again. The good thing is, leading up to this point, I have decreased how much I've smoked. I went from 3 joints a day to 1 joint a day recently. Quitting cold turkey scares me, but I guess I'm about to attempt it, because I really don't wanna drop $100 on something I wanna quit doing.

Again, let me know anything that's helped any of you quit if you're out there and reading. I would greatly appreciate the advice.

Iris🪻

[lgcminki]

ENCORE OF THIS CIRCUS !!! hello everyone... it's me! velv-*sound of truck passing by* and i've been here... several times before. iykyk. but today i'm here to introduce you to hwang minki... basically, hwang minjun 2.0 new and improved, if you remember that guy from years ago. he's an old trainee with a strong focus and fiery passion for dance who's admittedly... a little stuck right now! for reasons! but surely this is nothing that cannot be fixed! below are the notable links:

PROFILE ⋆ BACKGROUND

as usual, please LIKE this post if you're interested in plotting with minki, and i'll sliiiiiiiiide all the way into your dms B) here's my twitter and i have discord upon request. conveniently i still need people for TRAINEE MISSION 15, particularly for those in the MALE SENIOR TRAINING GROUP for the KITE FLYING educational video thread!! help a guy out </3

other than that, i'll have a list of general connections i would love to have under the cut!

PLOT IDEAS !

friends/acquaintances who might have known him from school, back when he was a lot more... alive. maybe you were happy (or unhappy?) to see him join lgc and pursuing the idol career, but now his drive is gone? does that make you sad? does that make you angry, seeing him wasting his chance as a senior trainee? might have known about minki's Unique Circumstances™ with his childhood friend (details in his background page linked above!)

those he met in the company, who share the same passion with him in dance and would often do covers together. until suddenly he stopped, and that makes you confused? maybe even offended? note that he joined the company in july 2020!

when minki joined, his singing wasn't exactly the best despite not being downright terrible. he has vastly improved now, mostly thanks to some training sessions with your muse!

he... collects plushies. yes, he brought his plushie collection along with him to the company. do you also collect plushies? do you think it's a strange habit to have? DO YOU KNOW WHERE PUSHEEN IS MINKI MISPLACED PUSHEEN AND NOW HE'S PANICKI—

dorm shennanigans!! he's in male dorm d. chore assignment, arguing over chore assignments, one of minki plushies got dyed a vastly different color suddenly in the washer and he wants to know WHO is the culprit!!

casual friends he would've made within the company, those he can hang out with!

this connection would have to be a debuted idol, but someone he admires! would have to be an idol with a more dance position, because that is what he is passionate about

someone, probably dance-focused, who saw minki as a rival for a while only to see minki now more half-hearted in his dance, which would piss you off!

he's prone to worrying over his friends, so maybe a friend who is a bit more on the reckless side. although lately, his worries have grown much closer to paranoia...

anything and everything! i'd love to brainstorm too and if you have ideas of your own, you better believe i want to hear everything

[donnerpartyofone]

This morning I left a long comment on a Facebook post by my dead friend's mom where she said she isn't ready to arrange a life celebration yet, and she urges people to keep sharing her daughter's memory. I had been meaning to do this for a month, but I often find Facebook too annoying to use just in UI/UX terms, and I had developed some sort of ridiculous paranoia that people would find out that I might have been the last person to speak to my friend, and that I was standing outside her apartment expecting her to let me in while she was dying. I fantasized that I would have to account for that somehow, to comb through details that I'm sure wouldn't be useful to anyone, and explain why I didn't do more when she strangely didn't come to the door or answer my texts. I still don't know what happened to her.

I reached out to the only acquaintance we shared in common, who was one of her roommates when we were neighbors. He regarded her as his best friend and has been completely shattered by this, especially as it came a year after the death of his ex-girlfriend, who who acted as their kind-of third musketeer. Privately I got a pretty good impression that he drove my dead friend nuts, but I wouldn't know if that was just a part of their "old married couple" dynamic or if they had a truly one-sided relationship. I guess you just don't always get to know how your dearest loved ones really think of you, and in fact maybe you shouldn't. He was the person I had asked to check up on her the day that she died, and he was the only person I could think to ask what happened to her, although I was afraid to. He texted me a detailed download of all the sad things that have happened to him since she died in September, and then he said he would have to wait until his day off to answer my question. I haven't heard from him and I don't think I'm going to. I'm sort of sorry I asked.

Tangentially: It struck me recently that cause of death has become the final frontier of privacy. This is fascinating to me, considering the constant state of overexposure in which most of us live. I've had several experiences in the past few years of someone dying--a casual acquaintance, a friend more than 3 degrees of separation away, a minor celebrity with a cult following in which I participate--and I just had no way of finding out what happened. These have been rare cases in which Google had nothing, not even a rumor; in the present case I was able to unearth the record of an arrest I had never heard about, but nothing about the death. Obviously if you're Michael Jackson or Prince or something then all bets are off, but below that line, if the bereaved don't choose to broadcast the cause or manner of death, then you'll just never find out what those things could have been. I'm thinking right now of another friend of mine who, we all tended to agree, had committed suicide, which was absolutely in-character for her as far as I was concerned...but at the same time, there were compounding factors that made her true level of deliberation ambiguous. I sometimes wish I could talk to someone about it, but I'm afraid it would just hurt her survivors pointlessly to hash it out. In her case, I just have to choose what I want to believe.

Anyway.

My plan that day had been to get a quick haircut before I went to London to record a commentary track for a new release of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, based on my research into the creation of its mythology. This opportunity had come by way of a strange coincidence, and it seemed to justify the grueling self-directed project I had made out of it for the past several years. As I was preparing for my trip, which felt like the climax of a long journey with this subject, I started to feel silly about never having gone to Amityville to see the house. It's not an easy thing to justify; I'd basically be traveling for a total of 5 hours just to stand in front of the house long enough to annoy whoever lives there. But it felt like something I ought to do, as part of my devotion to the topic, so my plan was to see my friend for a quick trim, get on the Long Island Rail Road to do the thing, then return as fast as possible to pack in time to leave the house at 4am the following day. When my friend didn't let me in, only an hour and a half after we'd texted, and I waited around for 25 minutes in the boiling heat in case she had stepped out for coffee or something, before finally coming to terms with the fact that she flaked on me while I was preparing for a stressful international trip, I got all agitated and couldn't bring myself to do the rest of my plan. I've still never seen the Amityville house.

But later, after I found out what had happened, I was glad I didn't go. I imagined the alternative timeline: I went to my friend's apartment for a trim, couldn't make contact with her, went to see the legendary house where six people were brutally murdered and where, according to countless books and movies and podcasts etc, demonic possession took hold--and then I came home to discover that my friend had suddenly and mysteriously died. It would have been impossible for me not to connect these things. Not that I'm so eager to believe in curses; in fact my work has mostly focused on why belief in the supernatural has been easier to achieve than the availability of help for sufferers of mental illness, drug addiction, and domestic violence. But I'm not a hardcore skeptic either, which is exactly why this story has been so meaningful to me. We can't identify true mysteries if we don't train ourselves to analyze real-world events, and the reasons why certain events attract certain monstrous interpretations. For me this kind of training is urgently important, because I'm given to certain strains of magical thinking and I have to be vigilantly aware of what motivates my behavior and convictions. The circumstantial connection between my friend's unexpected death, and my plans for that day, could have proven irresistible to me.

Even now, obviously, I am connecting my plan to visit the cursed house at 112 Ocean Avenue to my friend's abrupt passing. The connection isn't as corrupting as it would be if I had put my feet on Amityville soil that day, but the experience I am currently having tells me exactly how potent this influence could have been at maximum. All my work has been about belief, where beliefs come from, what they do to us personally, even neurologically. I'm haunted by things I used to believe and where those beliefs came from, why I was so vulnerable to them, to the point of complicity in my own destruction. I'm sympathetic to people who believe in things that seem dicey, or in things that offer a seductive reward that outstrips the need to weigh evidence and consequences. But I believe that in many, perhaps most cases, skepticism is just as much of a belief system as faith. Hard evidence always looks that way as long as hard evidence is what you're looking for, an impression that seduces you away from noticing what personal choices you are making in the curation of your worldview. And at the risk of being overly cryptic, I have come to believe that people are only capable of perceiving that which they already believe in, whatever that might consist of. In any case, if you are really paying attention, you begin to notice that you find true proof of things less often than you simply have to prejudicially choose what you believe. These days I have tried to make agnosticism into a discipline, but at the moment I am consciously choosing to believe that my friend did not die in connection with a curse. And I am consciously acknowledging the fact that if that day of my life had gone as originally planned, it could have had a much graver impact on my experience of the death.

[psybomb]

Something’s been bugging me about the I/P war, and after speaking to an Israeli expat today I think I finally put my finger on exactly what that is.

You have to understand something, right now. To the average Israeli, they do not believe there was a safe zone declared in Rafah. They believe, often correctly, that their country is beset on all sides by enemies, and that any response less that total overkill is inviting their immediate destruction, and with it the heart of the worldwide hope of their people in diaspora. The way they fight is predicated on the fact that any enemy is going to attempt to torture and kill them whether the intent is obvious, and that former friends can become deadly enemies without warning or provocation.

This… kind of makes it difficult to take constructive criticism. Especially when the above beliefs have been VERY thoroughly borne out over the past 3,000 years.

And that’s when it struck me. I have seen this pattern before, though not from nation states. Any trauma-bonded community is going to act the same way. Soldiers and police deliberately induce it in training to make sure their people respond in ways that will preserve their lives when threatened (I’ll state for the record that police should absolutely not be doing that). Gangs and mafia families, too. However, my example is going to be way closer to home for most of this site.

You ever wonder why queer communities can be bastions of hope and light with one hand, but infamously drama-filled traps on the other? Why it is taking concerted and often generational effort to heal? Same reason. LGBTQ+ communities never know who their allies are going to be day to day, and find themselves in that community at all usually on the tail end of a lifetime of traumatic experiences. When the attack comes (and it ALWAYS comes), it often comes from people who look a lot like your best friend. Paranoia is a way of life and preservation necessity, often rightfully leading to violent response.

Sound familiar? The only difference is scale.

So how do we fix this? Hah, if it was that easy to explain we would have done it by now. The first thing, though, is that any proposed answer has to have a full and clear endpoint in which their existence is an enshrined right. Jews are indigenous to that land, too, lest we forget. I do not deny that Palestinians are as well, nor that there are a lot of heinous crimes that need rectifying, but without that basic acknowledgement then neither Israel nor any Israeli (yes, including the many non-Jews who call it home) will react any more calmly or diplomatically than the ambassador who shredded a copy of the UN charter on the floor this morning. If you don’t guarantee safety and existence, it’s just genocide with extra steps, from a people who have been on the wrong end of it more than once and who often genuinely believe that their current course of action is the only one that lets them live.

I’m personally a 2-state solution advocate, though with several asterisks. The country was established as an imperial project using desperate people to do evil, and the rest of its history hasn’t exactly been a shining rise out of troubled roots… but then again, the people now living there are in their spiritual home. One they have fought for hundreds or thousands of years to return to. It needs to exist for multiple people to be able to live on the world stage, yet it needs to be reorganized so dramatically that it may not be recognizable at the end of it.

This is where we stand. And Palestinians are dying while we do so.

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

tw self harm eating disorder suicide ? mention and mostly mental health issues

My childhood was fucked up. in many many ways, yet i can never tell if it was traumatic...

mental health issues started when i was 7-8.

had psychotic symptoms (believing people could read my mind or were spying on me, severe paranoia when i was outside, believing people were going to do bad things to me and heard footsteps behind me constantly) along w disocciation to the point i saw myself in third person, almost throw myself out of a window in a second floor because i thought i was in a dream and i needed to wake up.

i never felt real, it never felt like me in the mirror, or if my parents were actually my parents, i was so disconnected.

i started cutting when i was 10, had an eating disorder between the ages of 10-12, friends would also cut, we had weekly exams/revisions? where we saw eachothers arms and to see if we had cut or not.

we would comfort eachother, we would try and ''help'' eachother (taking out sharpeners/sharp things out of our pencil cases) while we were only 11-12-13

i never felt safe

i never played with kids everyday, i never had fun everyday, i was in house, locked, because of severe social phobia.

had depression, along with tourette's which my mom was deeply ignorant about and would yell and scould me, dad was absent for some of the years, he's good now, mom too, we have a good relationship,

yet i've always felt like grieving, for mourning a childhood, because i feel like i never had one, there were things i never did like playing w friends outside school, i visited one of my friend's house, one time, andd felt awful so i had to leave, or having a pajama party, at this age i still cry sometimes and i just want to give my younger me a hug, a kiss on the forehead and tell her everything eventually will be okay, even if it now isn't.

i just, wish i were happy, i see a happy kid and i'm like, idk, why couldn't i be like that? why couldn't i be healthy? i spent my childhood in hospitals, clinics, etc etc, for many many reasons, physical and mental issues.

does this counts as trauma?

thank you.

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry about everything you've been through and please know that you're not alone. These experiences absolutely can count as trauma. You've been through a multitude of traumatic things such as eating disorders, self harm, psychotic symptoms, depression, and more. It's understandable to envy others' happiness considering the context of your experiences. In many ways you've missed out on your childhood and it's okay to mourn that.

It's good that you can somewhat envision your child self and how you would treat them, because healing the child self can be an essential step forward. If you can access or afford it, a mental health professional could best help you process your trauma and work with you along your healing journey.

I hope I could help and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[ankhisms]

have experienced what feels like 800 emotions in rapid succession on a rollercoaster today and it hasnt even really been a bad day honestly or anything im fine you know how it is

my mood swings have just been a lot stronger than they usually are since thats one of the biggest things my meds are for theyre like supposed to be a mood swing stabelizer but anyway

something that im aware is related to my more severe paranoia and obsessive compulsive issues but is less severe and more just adjacent to those is like being scared that im somehow a hypocrite about various random things or that im somehow secretly an awful horrible person who hurts people and does bad things without me even realizing that im doing that. im also aware that this very much stems from the way my abuser treated me and also the behavior of ""friends"" i had when i was younger who just now as im older i realize honestly didnt even like me and kept me around to make fun of me and be cruel to me together as a kind of group bonding thing.

which sucks because when im doing self soothing techniques and trying to calm myself down or even just approaching these thoughts and talking myself thru things it can be hard to counter the fear of "what if my friends or people i know in general actually talk together about how im an awful person and they hate me or talk together about how ive done something wrong without telling me?" with "no thats not fair or true and not based in reality" because it very much WAS reality for me. not in the sense of me having done something "wrong" in the past with those ""friends"" but like them being cruel to me and making fun of me when i wasnt around and the things i did ""wrong"" were just my autistic traits and other symptoms of my various mental things especially during that period of my life where i was completely unmedicated and had just gotten away from my abuser and was still in the awful school environment of being harrassed every single day.

anyway its really like. i know i shouldnt worry about this, rationally i know this. but just because i know something isnt rational it doesnt make my brain stop obsessively thinking about it so its like i could see someone saying "i hate when people go to the moon and jump up and down and sing the abcs" (ridiculous example bc i cant think of anything else) and i could at first go oh yeah i get that and like their post but then my brain will go but what if ive done that without realizing it and they see me liking their post and they go "ugh rey this post is about YOU and people like you and youre such a hypocrite and dont even know it" and the spiral begins. and in the end i guess all of this just goes to show that having people pretend to be friends with you only to hate you and ridicule you and pick apart every little thing you do behind your back really fucks you up.

also thinking about the ex close friend who cut me off out of nowhere with no explanation for seemingly no reason about a year or so ago now and ive continued to have kind of taking off the rose tinted glasses moments where i loved and cherished this friend so much that i excused how shitty they treated me at different times. not at all saying they are or were a bad person or that there was any abuse going on or anything like that but im just realizing that we both come from dysfunctional abusive families and we both have our own physical and mental problems and so throughout our friendship we both mightve not made the best choices or couldve handled things better and im not exempt from that. but also i realized that he would not tell me if i had done something to upset him and it would be like a guessing game for me and would really stress me out and make me feel awful

and its like. now as im older i would want to be able to talk things out and understand what had happened and be able to apologize and work on doing better. and in general thats something i really try my best on like i think in the past i would really get stuck in obsessively overthinking in self analyzing and get into moral obsessive compulsive spirals that just ended up hurting myself more than helping me grow, and anyway i always want to be able to step back and look at myself and my actions and be willing to listen if someone tells me ive done something hurtful or that i need to re-examine my behavior and beliefs, i think im pretty good at listening to people about stuff like that and have gotten much better about not falling into those spirals i just mentioned and examining myself in smaller healthier doses

but at the same time i do really get worried that people just arent telling me that theyre upset with me or that ive done something wrong or hurt them in some way. i really just want to be a good friend to people and i dont want people to be scared of coming to me and talking with me if ive done something to hurt them or to just talk about things with me in general and i dont want people to think im so fragile and mentally fucked up that theyd be scared of upsetting me by telling me id done something hurtful and letting it fester instead. i dont want to hurt people i want to spend my life making people happy and helping people and being a good friend, thats what i want most out of my relationships in life overall. i want to make people feel content and happy and safe.

but idk i just get scared. please be honest with me be upfront with me be blunt with me even i know im traumatized but i wont shatter into a million pieces if you tell me youre upset with me ill appreciate you being honest about it and ill stop whatever it was i was doing or work on it. i know im bad with social cues bc of autism and if i misunderstand something or say something inappropriate/out of my lane due to this please just tell me yknow

i really hate that my brain is like this and that having been abused and mistreated in the past has made me struggle like this because i want to trust that people arent talking badly about me or angry with me secretly i dont want to be so paranoid i dont want people to feel like they cant be honest with me or that im made of glass and that ill shatter if they tell me theyre upset with me, i want to trust that the people in my life like me and dont secretly hate me and im really trying hard but paranoia isnt something i can just magically wave away yknow its something im probably going to be dealing with for most of my life and im always kind of scared that people are going to get tired of my paranoia

despite living in survival mode constantly i still love all the people in my life a lot and i just want everyone to be happy and safe and i always wish there was more i could do to help everyone and i want everyone to be able to thrive and to be living comfortably and have all their needs met and to get all the help they need i love everyone a lot i want everyone to be okay and yeah

have also been majorly overthinking about if i want to do something that im being vague about as i ramble about it which i know is silly and its not even like something bad or negative but i just keep overthinking about the possible what if scenarios of oh what if i do this and they react really badly and cut me off and never want to talk to me again and due to this im also unfortunately like overthinking most things recently and being even MORE scared than usual of coming off as weird or being weird and making people uncomfortable but aint that just the way yknow. ill either do it or ill be a coward

anyway besides that my days been pretty decent its a lovely early autumn day. after typing this all i realized im probably feeling super emotional and weird because i just started my period lmao but thanks if you read this i love u mwah

[fuwungi]

Alright so! Here’s the updates on what’s been going on! I was going to put it under a read more/cut thing but I can’t seem to figure that out on mobile so just general tw for mental health talk, trauma, etc

This isn’t going to exactly be linear or anything either cuz my minds just been all over the place but I haven’t been doing good. Haven’t been for a while. I’ve been working on getting help for years now and im thankfully seeing my therapist on the 8th and hoping this one actually stays (cuz my last trauma therapist ghosted me). I got a psych evaluation before hand that took a bit and got diagnosed with severe ptsd and bpd and also paranoid schizophrenia. I never really took my mental health seriously or as seriously as I should becuz for years I was so used to hearing from family and etc that it’s nothing, im just over thinking, “everybody does that” but it’s clearly not the case.

Everything started getting much worse in January, my health started dipping again. I had someone I considered a close friend abandon me and hurt me. Eventually my job I had pretty much set me up to be fired, me and others have considered it’s due to the fact I disclosed my diagnosis cuz it didn’t take long after for me to be fired. And what I was fired for was literally doing exactly what one of the managers told me to do. The next day I had an ex friend blow up at me and trigger my paranoia severely. And after that my abuser outted me and tried to spread harmful lies and misinfo in an attempt to I guess have me run off the internet. A little while after the shop I was apprenticing at also dropped me for my diagnosis but not until the spent a couple weeks straight up ghosting me and ignoring me for hours when I came in (I would come in to practice and work and all of my stuff was moved without telling me, and I also still don’t have any of my stuff back, and nobody would say a word to me or even look at me hardly. And after hours of waiting o would just eventually go home, which was also frustrating cuz I would have the person I’m about to practice on with me waking too. I reached out with messages abt things but was always just left on read.)

All of this just made things worse. I haven’t been able to significantly leave my house for a couple months now ( I say that cuz I still hype myself up to do smaller things like run out to pick up my meds, etc. but if there’s a way around physically doing said thing like ordering groceries, etc I take that). Outside of that I was already having a hard time getting myself to be social or talk to anyone. I haven’t really been talking to anyone or very active since 2020 (which I’m still working on fixing cuz it’s not that I don’t want to talk or anything, I want to so badly, I just really feel like I’m unable to do it).

My psych also diagnosed(? Idk if that’s the right word) me with agoraphobia. Which also explained a lot and helped me realize some things that help me cope and navigate my way socially and in life (and kinnie stuff is one of the things that really helps with that).

So at the moment I’m just freelancing and trying my best to work on myself. After finishing the rest of my comm queue I’m thinking of taking a break from taking comms and just focusing on my own/personal art and school (going for botany and economic science).

If you’ve read through this all, thank you so much for listening. I hope this was worded okay/sounds okay. And I can’t thank the ppl who continue to support me enough.

[blujayonthewing]

Previous anon here! I totally understand what you mean i have the same issue with my own ocs. So can I ask who's your oldesr oc (you've had the longest) and who's your favorite and why? :3c I wanna hear about them but it's hard to think of specific questions! Sidenote, you inspired me to start reblogging things as inspo for my own ocs!

OH I feel you, I'm the exact same way about not knowing what to specifically ask about other people's OCs lmao it's so hard to think of good questions!

My oldest (current) OC is my ranger, Elyss!! I've been playing her for coming up on EIGHT YEARS, which is admittedly not actually as much as it sounds because the run schedules for all the campaigns I'm in tend to be pretty sparse, ahaha :') She is also still my favorite, my beloved girl... 🥺💕 That's at least partly because I've been playing her for so long and for awhile she was my only dnd character, so I've had a lot of opportunity to think about her and play her and get to know her as a character.

She's a water genasi who was born and raised in a land where genasi are essentially unheard of, so she's spent most of her life fairly rejected and lonely. She ended up (voluntarily) living alone in the woods for something close to ten years, and she has a very nature-inspired True Neutral philosophy, so when we started the campaign with the premise of 'an established group of adventures trying to stop A Bad Guy from Taking Over The World' I had to figure out why she would care about that, and one of the answers was 'well... she loves her friends,' which has informed SO much about everything about her ever since. On a practical level, it means I get to engage with the game even if Elyss wouldn't necessarily want to (eg if the paladin wants to do a dangerous stupid thing to save some villagers, I want to go with him to help keep him safe), but it's also made her really interesting and really emotionally rewarding to roleplay with. I'm fortunate in that all my fellow players in her campaign are amazing AND Elyss has meaningful relationships with most of their characters, so I've been able to explore her navigating those relationships and her own feelings... at the beginning of the campaign, she felt really strongly that her love for her companions was completely one-sided, so had a lot of Issues about needing to be unambiguously useful and never a liability to avoid rejection and losing her right to be a part of the group. Unfortunately the circumstances of this campaign have given her... really severe trust issues to the point of sometimes paralyzing paranoia, BUT she DOES now believe that (most of) her close friends actually care about her in return, so, that's something :') I guess tl;dr without explaining the entire campaign and her entire personal development, she just has a lot of complex feelings and life circumstances that are not only interesting to play and think about but that also just... make me wish for the best for her. She's had a really hard time, so it fills me with joy whenever she gets a little reprieve, I'm overwhelmed on her behalf when things are inevitably really bad for her again, and I'm deeply invested in her path toward hope and growth and a happier, more stable future 🥺💕

All that said, I've gotten to play her a lot less lately, and while she's still my favorite, the margin isn't as wide as it used to be, lol. But I dunno if I could put a finger on the definitive second favorite? It depends on who I've played and/or have been obsessing over the most recently I think, lol. Right at this second that feels like a tossup between Juniper, my druid, and Melliwyk, my wizard; I'm not gonna do another wall of text for each of them for this ask BUT-- June is basically the character archetype I have the softest spot for (sweetheart, awkward, big ol nerd) and I wanna kiss her and give her soup, and Mel is a DIFFERENT archetype I tend to be drawn to (mad science type friendly little wierdo) but she has also developed depth that I wasn't expecting and now I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about HER as well. Also, June gives me a good outlet for a lot of soft tenderness, Mel is a good outlet for me in real life being a big fuckin nerd, and Elyss is my single best outlet for just. really loving to be really good at DPS when I'm playing a game kjhkdfhjd

[rick-ipedia]

OK we'll see how long I stick with this. But I've stacked up quite the TBR so I'm taking on the Beat The Backlist bingo challenge. I'll be posting my progress as I go, as well as some short, spoiler-free thoughts on what I'm reading.

First read of 2025: When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

"Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks... To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo. But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear."

This one has only been on my TBR for about a month. Occasionally my best friend and I will have a little 2-person book club where we read the same book so we can talk about it, so we both bought this one as a Christmas gift to ourselves. It sounded right up my alley, described as "when Rear Window meets Get Out".

I'd say that description fits; the inspiration is clearly there. Overall, I thought this was a pretty good thriller. The concept is interesting with obvious parallels to IRL events. While a little slow to get to the "action", I never found it boring. It also swaps perspectives between 2 characters, which was an interesting way for us to see some of the goings-on on "both sides" of the main conflict.

Where it lost me a little was the very last chapter. The ending felt a bit rushed to me, to the point where the resolution felt like a deus ex machina because it wasn't properly set up. I think if some details had been laid out earlier in the story, it would have been a satisfying ending, but instead I just thought "wow, that was lucky I guess" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For the Beat the Backlist challenge, this book hits several categories: written in 2020, from a perspective outside my own, features a main character who doesn't follow the rules, and is very focused on horrific history. But for now, I'm choosing to count it towards the "character is an educator" space. Sydney works in a school office and is on summer break during the events of the book, but there's a major focus on her passion for learning and sharing history, as channeled through the walking tour of the neighborhood she's putting together.

Looking forward to my next read!

[talenlee]

Prime Factors

Back in April, I wanted to write an article on my birthday about Prime numbers that segued into talking about Optimus Prime. It didn’t work out, because I got distracted by a dumb number problem. See, I turned a prime number this year! At first I thought I’d do a whole thing about prime numbers and my birthdays only to find that at literally no point in my life have I ever been a prime age in a prime year. This is really obvious when you think about it, because I was born in an odd-numbered year. That means every year where my age was an odd number, that year was an even number, and vice versa. So much for that idea.

But really, you know what the real prime reason for the prime season is? That’s right, it’s really all about him, and what he sacrificed for us:

Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.

It’s supposedly, Optimus Prime’s iconic line, the line that guides his whole persona for the entirety of my life. It is the one iconic home run of the storytelling edifice that is Transformers media and in a collection of several thousand different characters, it’s rare that a single one of them has so excellently been crystallised early. Like, we’re pretty clear on how Bumblebee jams now as a friend to little kids and okay, maybe now I’m just thinking of him as the Bumblebee from Transformers Animated, but we’ve had a few iterations of almost every single character from the franchise.

Almost always, these characters are just endless reinventions on a general vibe. Transformers Prime supposedly made a tragedy of the death of this guy, called Ironhide? Who supposedly mattered? But it was very funny in the context of someone who knows the character as A Present Red Thing In Group Shots. There’s a recurrent joke for years about a confusion back in the day unto now about which of two particular interchangeable idiots were the red one.

Still, Optimus Prime.

We got that guy down pat.

It’s wild to consider that supposedly this is a guy whose whole ouvre is the idea that freedom is a thing that everyone has a right to. What does freedom mean? Freedom in what way? Freedom from what? It’s one of the most hilariously obvious signs of how at its beating heart, Transformers is a corporate product from an industry rooted in 1980s cold war paranoia, that ultimately the reason the whole industry model exists is low oil prices resulting in a boom in plastic toys that then justified their own existence and then from there, latching more and more industries onto the ever-inflating and planet-dooming exercise of oil extraction. We’re going to roast to death thanks to people making a line go up but we are free.

But I get ahead of myself, a little over my cyber-skis as it were because well, okay, if that’s the summary of his personality, if that’s his iconic line, what’s the character attached to it? Well, he’s the main character of Transformers. Whatever kind of story Transformers is, that Transformers is defined by its relationship to Optimus Prime. In the original he’s a stoic, polite dad figure who will always be at the heart of every action, doesn’t delegate because he’s the one person who solves things and people help him. In Beast Wars he’s a guy who is uncertain about his place as a leader doing his best to maintain some control over a group that don’t respect his authority. In Armada, he’s present. In Superlink he’s… probably also present. In the Bayverse, he’s… well, he’s Michael Bay’s idea of a main character, angry, cruel, apathetic to feelings and dismissive of values. And in Transformers Animated – the best Transformers – he’s an uncertain up and comer learning about what it means to be a leader by comparing himself to other leader figures including a terrorist leader.

Hell, in Cyberverse, Optimus Prime is dead.

(It’s not a big deal, Optimus Prime is dead in every universe he’s in, at least at some point)

(Heck, that’s true for every character, in every universe, especially in ours, but the point is that in every story of Transformers at some point, Optimus Prime is cactus. Dude is made to die, because it happened once in the 1980s and the entirety of male media culture these days is the process of reiterating on anything that made any money at all during that period and that’s why we have not one, not two, but three different Karate Kid reboots.)

Optimus Prime is an ad for a toy. What’s more he’s an ad for a toy that’s never been on its own successful for me. I don’t have an Optimus Prime toy and I never have. I’ve never bothered pursuing him and I don’t think of him as important to my collection. He is the Corn Flakes of the Transformers toy collector playspace. There are thousands of him and they aren’t meaningfully different from one another. If there’s any given tie-in with the franchise, chances are good it’s Optimus Prime and chances are good it’s perfectly fine.

He is and has always been important to the story, and indeed, you can tell things about the nature of the series you’re watching (or reading or playing or building commander decks around or… listening to? There are Transformers audio plays, surely), by looking to Optimus Prime. Even Robot Chicken has a clear vision of how Optimus Prime’s presence in the story is a way to express the way that all of the rest of the joke needs to be delivered.

Optimus Prime is the Mario Mario of Transformers; a sort of default main character who I immediately slide off while trying to find more interesting, more specific characters to look at. The most distinctive thing I could find about his character across all incarnations, the first and only thing that made me go: hang on, I wasn’t expecting that, was that he doesn’t like the music of Motley Crue.

And that’s fine.

I mean we can all agree on that right.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[8054yamato]

Instincts but nothing more

I feel like someone I know personally found my page. I think there is a 0.01% chance because I have revealed to that person about my Tumblr before. I did quick sneak peeks on my phone to him because I had some stuff to vent out at the time. I am able to convey my thoughts with greater clarity if I write them out than if I were to say it in-person which is why I did that in the first place.

This friend in question does not necessarily have enough trust from me to fully vent out my feelings, but I trust him enough to cough up the smaller details. I have trust issues when it comes to details about myself so you can say this friend was fairly significant. Not sure if he felt the same about me in terms of friendship level, but he definitely is someone who I can trust far more than anyone else at the time.

If you have been here long enough then you may wonder about the whole burning bridges with people. I have not completely cut all my school acquaintances off because they are all genuinely good people. I do enjoy talking with them sometimes and while I do prefer to be isolated, I did enjoy the small moments like those. However, the bridges have pretty much burnt. All it needs is a small impact to cut them off completely and that is graduation. I really do not even talk to majority of them outside of school anyway and no one were remotely close enough to warrant a best friend status.

Anyways, the reason why I say this is because my friends started to contact me all of a sudden and it was when I tweeted about pushing away friends from myself 10 hours ago. That is really fucking scary. Of all the days, weeks, and months that went by. This day was two friends who contacted me at two separate times in the same day. It made me happy that maybe I was an actual friend to them. We went on call for several hours and played nothing but games. However, my paranoia starts kicking in after our session. Now I am here wondering if they found out about my page.

On the off chance you are actually here friend, I will be out on Tuesday. Let me know.. please. This shit will be on my mind lingering until the day I die. Because now I am wondering if my interaction were mutually genuine or if it was out of pity. My mind can not rest until I figure it out and I am nearing a breakdown again. If you actually are not here, this shit will fuck me up because I will think you purposely chose not to say anything. If you are here and choose to not say anything, it will be same result. Please. Let me know on Tuesday. I am not crazy, right?

I am thinking about it now in mach speed. There is no way that 10 hours after I posted my Tweet, two of my school friends decided to contact and hit me up. I am not retarded, this is not a coincidence. I need to fucking go, I am thinking too much. I need to sleep.