#but sometimes the worry comes back

[dibrujas]

Been looking through some of my old instagram posts, and it brought me a lot of nostalgia, and also a bitter feeling knowing I'll probably never get the same amount of engagement on my art again...

[kamiraaah]

If I had to think of Fellow helping Vovó Bucchi with the sewing and Gidel helping her cook (aka cutting veggies and stirring the pot) you do to

HAH! Jokes on you anon! I also like to think about the little routine they would have!

Whether it's Gidel help with the dinner and some chores.... Fellow sewing old clothes or fixing something around the house, and even helping some neighbors! Or them doing the shopping and committing some crimes along the way, you know, common things for a simple little family~ 🤭

[missdarhk]

not sure if anyone's done this already but ares when he asks if athena is dead in god games:

[anthony-crowleys]

[jicklet]

Elemental (2023)

[ofmermaidstories]

there’s something so bittersweet and lovely about fanfic, at it’s core. it’s so impermeable, because it’s so individual. fics don’t get finished. fics get lost because they were typed out and sent to friends, in the 70s, and somewhere along the way someone packed it up in a cardboard box and their kids shuffled it to the attic. websites go down. archives get built, but then people lose faith in the story or the canon or the creator and delete them. you read it at like, 3am, and can’t remember the title months later when you look for it again.

the tiktok these comments are from was lamenting about the loss of a favourite fic—it (the tiktok) had 85k+ likes, and over 700 comments, mostly similar to these. people talking about downloading fics to read on a tablet only for them to disappear the next day. using the wayback machine and combing through results, just to find something they loved. i think it’s sweet because it’s so human—how easily we love something, and how easily we lose it. i used to print out my favourite fics, as a kid—i still have a binder of them, buried under yearbooks and the old journals i kept during those topsy turvy preteen years. i could tell you the overarching plot to a Cardcaptor Sakura fantasy AU i read (and loved; it became my personality for months afterwards) but i can’t remember how it ended, or if it even did. i finally broke down and signed up for an account on AO3 specifically to bookmark an old, old fic that i had read somewhere else, years and years and years ago and found again on AO3 only because i accidentally stumbled on the author here on tumblr (i had only found the fic in the first place all those years ago because of a playlist). i used the same shade of lipstick for years purely because a fic i really liked had the main character apply it (it was a limited edition one at the time; i bought my first one from a ebay seller in the UK at double the retail price, lmao) while the love interest watched them, but i can’t remember the name of it, only how it made me feel (and how, for years afterwards, i would wear that shade whenever i felt like the day had something promising to it).

one of the first anon’s i ever got, in the early days of this tumblr, was someone who asked me if it was okay if they downloaded surrender—and of course it was. of course it is. there was a point, during the final stretch when i was trying to write the last chapter, that i almost lost the entirety of what i had written for that fic—and i mean, it was on AO3 by that stage so it would’ve only set me back a chapter or so, but it goes to show how fragile things can be. how sometimes fics only last in tiny ways—because of the unfinished PDF file someone downloads. The patchy memory of someone’s who’s jumbling it and three other fics together. Because someone wore the same shade of lipstick you mentioned, off-hand, for years afterwards.

(this is a love letter to the silent readers; the silent savers. the lurkers. fandom and the internet at large is made of lurkers (eighty-five thousand likes. seven hundred comments). people who saved fics and waybacked them and will reread them, even uncompleted. telling each other we did a good job, that we liked this or we liked that is wonderful, and fun, and a great (and important) way to build a community and has also given me my current friends—but sometimes something you make will matter and live on in a way you will never, ever know. and it’s just how it is. it’s part of the fun and it’s part of the charm. it’s just how we work as people.)

[galacticnova3]

@onenicebugperday Bit of an unfortunate update, but not without hope.

A week ago as of posting this, Green Bean Casserole had a pretty severe mismolt. I think they fell and got stuck behind their favorite stick in an awkward position after leaving the exuviae. I only found and assisted them the next morning, but by then their exoskeleton had already hardened up. Thankfully all of their limbs are intact and functional, but, well... The situation is far from ideal, as you’ll see.

At first I was pretty worried they wouldn’t make it; they seemed to be struggling to move around due to the deformity, falling when climbing and generally looking wobbly. I moved them to a different terrarium set up for my flat headed snake Absinthe, both because of the softer substrate and the lack of skinks that might be bold and attempt to take advantage of a weakened mantis. I wasn’t even sure if food would be able to pass through their system, and they had no interest in prey at all, which wasn’t a good sign. However, with some adjustments to the layout of the temporary terrarium I moved them to, they did climb and manage to hang from the lid with some effort. GBC seemed like they were a fighter, and the day after the bad molt they accepted and ate a grasshopper, so I decided to see if I could get them to their next molt and hopefully allow them to recover.

They’ve since adapted to their new shape, and I’ve moved them back to their usual terrarium for easier monitoring and better sun access. They’re climbing and hanging without falling, eating well, and drinking water droplets from the screen lid when I water the terrarium. I’d say they’re about as close to thriving as they could be in this situation! Here’s how they’re looking today. Ignore the escapee grasshopper in the background, its jailbreak was short lived…

I do feel a bit mean for making this comparison, but…

There’s a bit of a resemblance, isn’t there?

[arihi]

I won’t go as far as to say sadness is self-obsession, but I will say that the most helpful thing my futureme letters did was create little snapshots into the past that I would read a whole year in the future and 1) hold empathy for, 2) realize that whatever was tearing me apart back then really wasn’t that big of a deal, and 3) honestly cringe a little at it. And that’s okay! Maybe I was super dramatic over this friend whose name I now barely remember. I was so worried about dropping this one uni class (that I read years in the future when I was already in law school). I was so wrapped up in myself that I couldn’t see a way out of the sad hole/spiral I flung myself into for no reason. So wrapped up in myself that I didn’t think of a me post-handling the issue. Maybe I was really sad and upset and I had a good reason to be, but maybe-not-maybe, maybe-for-real even, things wound up working out.

And maybe things I’m stressed and upset about now will wind up working out. Maybe this is a silly story or cute (in a slightly pitiful way) memory for a future version of myself. I know it’s of little comfort in the moment when you’re going through anxieties, but so much fretting comes out of stretching ourselves thin, into shapes and boxes that are really and genuinely not real, but when that clicks in your brain for the first time a lot of things start getting better.

Anyway this was going to be my Twitter post of the day but the character limit is so fucking small and here I can also ramble in the tags, so.

[gingergari]

my beautiful baby gorls

[bloodrock-lobster]

Goodreads reviews will praise a book to high heaven, talk about the clarity of each character's voice and distinctive POV styles! Hoot on and on about how the twists are insane!

and then when you open up the book, all you find is page after page of plot holes, wildly failed attempts at tension building just to be like OH NEVERMIND right after over and over, and also the worst fortune cookie sayings and "Life is like a box of Chocolate" knock offs you've ever read.

[petpetpinixy]

i truly am not trying to start something by saying this but i find it kind of funny when people say dsaf/dialtown have these exceptionally toxic fanbases when like. i dunno. all fandoms have people who suck. sometimes you can't stop them from being on the internet. shrugs

[milfbrainrot]

i feel like i type so much more than is reasonable when i do talk to people but i also don't get to socialize a ton so i just have soooo many words in me and if i'm like, tired or short on time, it is so much harder to restrain to the already-pushing-it point i can sometimes manage ;-;

[mysicksecrets]

sometimes i think about my professor that used to like lowkey have a crush on me (he was at least 55.) last semester and every time i tell my friends about the stuff he did towards me i realize how u incredibly not normal that was

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Final Fantasy IX and Kingdom Hearts parallels, since we got news for both today:) (The Kingdom Hearts Steam trailer, as well as some KH rumors, and further rumors that the FFIX Remake is happening.)

[sysig]

Always Webkinzing (Patreon)

[rosemaze-reveries]

idk if saying this means anything, but I really do consider every request that comes in. Realistically I'm not able to honor all of them even though I wish I could🥲

Even if your ask doesn't get answered, I've never gotten a req that made me think "yah I'm not writing that" and chances are it WAS built upon to some extent/I really was excited with it at one point. I start drafting something like 80% of the asks I receive but my energy is just not reliable at all🥲 plus the usual being busybusy with life