#and other things too!!!

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

okay, so Spotify Wrapped 2022 has been out for a couple days now, which means WRITE UP TIME:

-for the first time, non-operatic tracks made it into my top 101! six of them, to be exact.

-the following operas/basically operatic oratorios made their first appearances on my Spotify Wrapped this year:

I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Pelléas et Mélisande, Simon Boccanegra, Idomeneo, Eugene Onegin, Theodora, Bluebeard’s Castle, Hänsel und Gretel, Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Rosenkavalier, Jenufa, Rigoletto, Osud, Maria Stuarda, Mignon, Pagliacci, L’elisir d’amore, I due Foscari, Mathis der Maler, Carmen, La donna del lago, La Gioconda, Cendrillon, L’heure espagnole, Adriana Lecouvreur, Iphigénie en Tauride, Un ballo in maschera, Apollo et Hyacinthus, Jérusalem, and L’Aiglon (30 new works total)

-the following operas appeared on both last year and this year’s wrapped:

Dialogues des Carmélites*, Iolanta*, Die tote Stadt, La traviata*, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Giovanni*, Macbeth, La juive*, Guillaume Tell, Il trovatore, Orfeo ed Euridice/Orphée et Eurydice, Don Carlo*, Susannah, Mefistofele*, Stiffelio, Armida, L’Étoile, and Samson et Dalila (18 works)

*the operas marked with asterisks have appeared in all three of my Spotify Wrappeds thus far: 2020, 2021, and 2022.

-the following operas appeared in 2020, did not appear last year, but are back this year:

Le nozze di Figaro, Le prophète, Roméo et Juliette, Don Pasquale, and Tosca (5 works)

and here’s the finished product!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1F0sijgNaJdgit?si=9yy3ReZ8S02IoxbL5L3Feg

[writeouswriter]

[artkaninchenbau]

A h-heartfelt reunion..?

Bonus

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[aphel1on]

i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good

[teleportzz]

"bluntly honest" autism but in the sense that i absolutely cannot refrain from complimenting strangers if i like their earrings or their shirt or i think they have a friendly-sounding laugh or i think their art is beautiful or i think the fic they wrote portrays the characters so well. "bluntly honest" doesn't have to mean "mean". i love to tell people things that are kind and also true.

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[pokimoko]

I can't keep being fundamentally changed as a person by animated movies, it's just not sustainable.

[musubiki]

my favorite fields of mistria boys 🥰

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny can’t explain everything in the FNAF pizzaplex..

[merrigel]

Ludovica and Sausage I mean Luck (gif version:)

[razzafrazzle]

literally my favorite aspect of sock opera is bill calmly but repeatedly failing to buckle his seatbelt. like its funny enough that Bill Cipher of all people is putting on a seatbelt but its so funny that he keeps fucking it up. but he's still just smiling like a dumbass the entire time

[geezmarty]

you put up with what you think you deserve, and the things you want you resent

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[swordsonnet]

i'm sorry but i don't think we should call this the "autism website" when there's still posts with tons of notes mocking people who:

struggle with social skills / have anxiety around social settings

are unemployed / unable to work certain jobs

have intense or "age-inappropriate" interests

haven't had certain life experiences that are deemed universal/essential

struggle with personal hygiene

don't have any friends or dating experience

don't go outside much or at all

take things literally / don't get sarcasm/jokes

have unusual ways of speaking

generally aren't "normal"

[feralforbeanix]

He loved her immediately I'm gonna cry