#get out your guitar day

[alliterative-endlessknot]

Happy #NationalGuitarDay! The guitar is a fascinating instrument, both culturally and etymologically – and the story of its name tells us a lot about its history, as we explain in our video on “Guitar”.

[cuoredimuschio]

okay, but where's my steddie AU where steve wants to learn to play guitar to impress a girl he's infatuated with and he remembers that munson kid was always hanging up posters for his weird band at school, so he hikes out to eddie's usual dealing spot behind the track and asks (with far less groveling than he really should have) if eddie will teach him how to play, and obviously eddie says no because why would he want to help king steve, but of course, steve offers to pay him, $20 a week, and well, that's the kind of get-the-hell-out-of-this-shithole-town cash eddie really can't afford to refuse, so fine, he'll teach steve to play and they'll spend inordinate amounts of time together tucked away in eddie's room and they'll start to see that they have more in common than they thought and that they kind of had each other all wrong, and eddie will put his hand over steve's to help him get the placement for a tricky chord and it totally won't awaken anything in either of them?? where is it??

edit: i started writing it

[zhongrin]

this is super random and unprompted but.... one of my fondest memories is when i was in high school and became super unwell from a PE class, my friends literally had to drag me to the infirmary. it was also a class right before lunchtime, so they bought food from the cafeteria for me. and when i couldn't eat any of it, they bought me hot tea with extra sugar and stayed with me throughout recess to make sure i was ok.

i miss them.

[talkorsomething]

I have Got to get more transgender

[velaryoncoffee]

I need to vent about the hotd fandom

Feel free to ignore if you don't wanna hear someone complain.

I created this blog this week because being on Twitter has been absolutely draining and leaving me in some of the most dejected moods I've been in years. It's not all bad; I've found lovely people in the Lucemond community who love sharing ideas and stories and artwork and edits with each other and they've made me feel very much at home.

The issue is that as official content runs dry I believe a lot of people have taken to creating drama as a source of entertainment and community activity... And they do that by constantly instigating tribalistic fights with "the enemy faction" by insulting characters (and sometimes ships). And as someone who loves all characters, this means I've had to watch people shit on everything I like, absolutely fucking everything, for the past few weeks. It felt silly at first, it didn't bother me or touch sides, but over time it has started to become too much, especially as sassy quips turn to insults that you can tell come from deeply rooted contempt.

My fellow Lucemonders will insult Aemond whenever it's hateo'clock, despite him being half of the ship, if not the driving force behind the ship to begin with (and at this point in the series also being one of the few who actually mourned Lucerys the most). My fellow team black folk will insult Aegon II for the crimes he did in S1, talking about us fans of him and other team green characters like we're unintelligent or built wrong for enjoying these parts of them and analysing their characters in a sympathetic, and in my opinion, a holistic and less biased manner. My fellow team green folk either don't bother getting involved at all, or they're even worse, sending out absolutely abhorrent criminal accusations over the relationships and headcanons we prefer to write and draw. I've had people mass qrt me and my mutuals with godawful things, sometimes resorting to death threats and blatant homophobia.

In pettier/less serious situations like with the character hate I've even tried to engage in friendly discussion to see if I could foster a more proactive and calm environment in my circle, only to get absolutely nowhere. It was as if I'd been talking to a brick wall.

Nobody wants to truly get along. Nobody wants to truly hear other people's opinions. Most, to some degree, are incredibly mean spirited and everybody interprets each other in bad faith. They'd rather throw insults and remain in their incapsulated communities where their side is GOOD and the other side is BAD. There's nearly no real analysis that doesn't involve the other side being bad and irredeemable to some extent. And when you try to write analysis, but someone's fave looks somewhat in a bad light, they attack you for it, as if that character's flaws don't make them that much more interesting as a fan.

As someone who is at their essence team green but loves all characters, and whose favourite ship is mostly populated by team black folk, I end up seeing insults from both sides of the isle. And every single fucking time, from every single person involved, they're throwing insults at things I like. I almost never get involved but I often feel caught in the middle catching strays. They insult characters I like. Literary genres and tropes I like. Relationships I like. THINGS I like and give me happiness and comfort. It's like trying to talk with a friend, but every time you want to tell them about your interests they tell you flat-out it's shit and they refuse to be sympathetic or constructive.

It's been very difficult to navigate this, as someone so starkly in the middle. I have a lovely community on discord that are always peaceful and sweet, and I hope this website is somewhat better. I know it will never be perfect, people are way too passionate and tribalistic across the board in this fandom due to the inherent characteristics of the source material, but I've never struggled this much in a fandom in all my many years online.

I have no conclusion to this, only a warning that I am going through HRT and I'm currently in my testosterone peak, so maybe this is all just a momentary mood swing, like PMS for T-boys. If so, it is what it is; if not, and it ain't what it ain't. Thanks for reading.

[thekidsare-not-alright]

..

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: August 13

“Headstone" by Brothers Osborne

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

I’m a musician and I recognize the need for practice BUT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST DOES EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE HAVE TO PRACTICE THEIR INSTRUMENTS AT EVERY HOUR OF THE DAY

I’m trying to get shit done and the constant noise is sucking the life out of me. The man finished the whole upstairs himself for his instruments and didn’t even think of soundproofing for recording purposes. I haven’t even found a place yet and I’m already looking at soundproofing.

[silasbug]

i have no idea what happened or how it happened, but i can finally play bar chords!!!!!

i am so fucking excited. i know it's nothing special but this is a big deal for me because my fingers are short and that shit is painful, but i can actually sound the chords!! and i can switch to them with relative ease, too!

i'm going to be an absolute fucking menace now that half of the songs i want to play are actually playable for me, ha. hahahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHA.

[biteurhip]

Seeing the effort put into my brother’s birthday after getting nothing but a $20 gift card from my parents for my 18th and forgot to get a cake. It’s okay I didn’t want anything anyway

[faaun]

WARNING: The penalty for trespassing on the railway is £1000.

[lynksease]

nb asked but Im also a little bit ticked that my dad brought his guitar back upstairs In Front of Me because I’ve been having fun playing for the last two weeks. literally just to spite me for daring to defend my mom and like call him out. and its one of those things where I knew he was going to do it anyways and its so laughably childish that he WAITED until I woke up that morning to take it away. like I literally see right through your drama dude and I’m over it. I’m still bummed but its not even worth being genuinely upset about. I can buy my own damn guitar in time and fine I wont ask for any favours again

[fortunefavorsthebrave-dude]

only got one more case to sum up for the aj outline then it’s on to scriptinggggg

[the-gray-goat]

Yes, it happens.

Please, if you are at the start and noticed it, take it very seriously and try your best to cut it out. It became an addiction and an obsession, and it literally destroyed my life.

I lost more than a decade to it, and thanks to it, I will probably lose what is left. It is not funny or quirky. It is miserable, I won't ever get those years back, and whatever else years I decide to live suck because I built nothing to go off of.

And then you go back to daydreaming because your life sucks more than when you started with it years ago.

And differently of being addicted to drugs, if you ever share about it with people or ask for help, nobody takes it seriously.

And let's be honest, it is shameful. Out of all the things to get addicted to?

At the same time, while you can avoid drugs in your house. And keep junk food out of your house if you over eat or something, there is no running away from your brain.

After one point, you won't be able to stop, even if you desperately want to.

Not even professional help could help me.

Do not make the same mistake I made.

Live life.

Just one step each day is enough, keep moving, after years things will build on one another and you will have something as long as you keep putting in the work, while daydreaming will bring you nothing but bitterness and emptiness.

Effort and failure may hurt, and the rewards might not ever be as interesting as the ones in the dreams, but at least they are real, and pain beats feeling nothing.

I just saw a thing that was like if you fantasize too much you’re releasing enough dopamine that you won’t be motivated to actually do anything or live your life because the fantasy feels almost as good with none of the effort and it can essentially become an addiction that messes with your ability to perform daily tasks or maintain/develop real relationships……………… awkwardddd

[clockworkcrow]

thinking about harvey stardew valley and being a rural country doctor with a caseload like:

guy who won’t accept any diagnosis except “you have consumption and need to go to the seaside for your health”

woman who asks what gemstone he would prescribe for her UTI

guy who spends half the day trying to give himself a concussion and the other half trying to blow out his hearing on his guitar

two people who have struggled with alcoholism for years but reject all of his resources for it UNTIL someone gifts them alcohol biweekly for a year straight and suddenly their lives turn around

guy who will not stop mailing people bombs but in a friendly way and like this just isn’t on the PTSD screener??

guy who won’t stop asking him vague but increasingly bizarre questions about the safety of truffle oil

woman who EATS ROCKS

and also there’s a fucking wizard. what’s up with that. how often do you think the man goes “why did i get an MD why didn’t i just train to be a wizard i didn’t even know that was an option” while performing emergency surgery on this one farmer who won’t stop picking fights with ACTUAL MONSTERS

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: December 6

"Your Body Is A Weapon" by the Wombats