#i literally say this as a winnie the pooh kid(i was also a toy story kid when i got older asfhajdh) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

finsterhund · 10 months

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"Goodbye Christopher Robin" is a movie that came for my fucking throat. I had been told several times that it was "extremely triggering" and to exercise extreme caution and knowing the context I fully knew what I was getting into.

I've been hyper focusing on Winnie the Pooh for the past few weeks so I finally watched it tonight and fucking christ.

There is so much shared trauma and so much is different and yet so much is the same. I remember especially as a stupid preteen I RESENTED C.R. Milne with a fiery burning passion for what felt like what was a betrayal, completely unable to separate how my trauma affected me with how his must have affected him and could not fathom how he could have "abandoned his childhood" and things that would have been my everything.

And ultimately it was because people always brought it up "oh he hated the books he wanted nothing to do with his toys he gave them away" as some edgy "childhood ruined" shit but never actually the full story. They fucking victim blamed him and acted like he was ungrateful and I completely swallowed the propaganda.

But with experience and processing of my own trauma I came to realize that the alienation was because our childhood traumas though similar were like opposite sides of the same coin and even though the outcomes of our sense of self could not have been more different in the end, the way our childhoods had been denied of us was virtually the same.

Especially the whole "people only care about a fake me that doesn't actually exist but is being forced into me" thing.

Like I was denied a proper childhood and as such latched onto the fantasy world as a source of identity and comfort while he was denied separation from his childhood and as such wanted nothing to do with it. His mental state is incomprehensible to me because it's the antithesis of mine but it comes from the same source and that is childhood trauma.

For me the fake boy was the one denied of a childhood that was made to be "an old soul" and for him the fake boy was the romanticized childhood that he could not escape from under the shadow of.

Also generational trauma just in general. His father was a more complicated and sympathetic individual than mine (who was straight up just a predator) and especially in the way the movie portrays it you can see that he's maladaptive coping through his own trauma using his son and it's just. Wow. Extremely identifiable and painful.

Also the mother acting like giving birth to this kid is enough to justify the level of control she exerts over him and the manipulation of A.A. Milne and the whole "wanted a daughter stuck with a son" thing is a gutpunch too. I try to be sympathetic towards her too because she's very clearly not coping with the fear that she's just going to lose her son like she lost her husband during WWI but she just lacks empathy for others seemingly. Like she resents her husband for "coming back wrong" when he literally has fucking PTSD.

Just fucking christ.

And then to top it all off the only healthy relationship the kid has (with his nanny) is taken away because she stands up and says she won't allow him to be exploited anymore. Followed by him needing to go to school which is like being thrown to the fucking wolves.

Canadian public school system is bad enough, I know this, it made shit so much worse.

But goddamn fucking late 20th century English boarding school is like a pit of fucking demons. The British school system is one of the worst things ever created by mankind and pretty much exists solely to abuse children.

And how in the end all his father wanted was to stop what he went through from ever happening again and his son to his horror wants to be enlist just so he can be his own person. Trauma is a cycle. It keeps happening unless it is broken. Agonizing.

Ultimately it's a movie and like the memoir of C. R. himself we are just getting one window into the past and what truly happened so I want to be careful with how I process things but it's just a lot to take in.

Winnie the Pooh (both the original books AND the Disney version) had significant meaning in my younger life with the books instilling a lot of comfort and the Disney stuff serving as an early special interest alongside Dumbo (yeah, you can't choose your autism as a toddler) and dogs and penguins.

And in the end my compulsion to revisit this and finally tackle the movie about his life was because in the end I wanted to revisit both the books and the Disney content for creative inspiration for a story I am trying to write after not being able to write for years because of trauma and grief and finding out that my brain had repressed that one 1996 Disney movie because it related with an agonizing degree to my own trauma.

The movie did not touch on how his marriage was with his cousin or that he eventually took the residual checks but only to care for their disabled daughter. Or how he went completely no contact with his mother at one point. (His mother did not approve of his relationship with her brother's child because they hadn't been on speaking terms for like a decade(?) I also vaguely remember reading that one of his parents his mother I think was the product of something similar.) Which I mean. I think that is very important to the conversation. Because once again, unhealthy relationships and the cycle of abuse/trauma.

Also at one point C.R. Milne did an interview where he spoke about the neglect and abuse and his mother "was so upset she buried a statue of him in the yard so she wouldn't be able to look at it again." Which 1. What in the fuck and 2. Why do you have a statue of your estranged son?

Just.

Fuck.

I don't even know where I'm going with this or what I hope to gain by sharing it.

Processing trauma is good and all but I'm exhausted.

The entire time my brain keeps trying to go "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THE TOY RECREATIONS. THEY'RE LIKE... SO GOOD. THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE ACTUAL COPIES OF THE STUFFED ANIMALS HOW DID THEY DO THIS YOU MUST FIND OUT" To try and pull me away from the trauma and I'm like "we can fucking wait to do that. Come on" fighting with myself.

Because yeah. Either they actually tracked down mint condition copies of the original stuffed animals or they skillfully recreated 1 for 1 replicas intended to look as close to what they theoretically would have looked like as possible.

And that's evidently the way I cope with things. Stuffed animals.

Shit man. Also my roommate has been pestering me and I'm trying so hard not to snap at him because I am going through it right now.

#text post #negative #literally went #oh boy I'm gonna feel good by getting into an old childhood special interest comfort to help me write #and instead i just got evicerated

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chocolatecakecas · 3 years

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PLEASE talk about jack and winnie the pooh i WILL cry

oh god anon im gonna try to not write a novel about this. @archervale Archie this is on you, because you just fueled the fire asfhdjahdhs. Also i am going to take this the baby!jack truthing route because I have to:

-I literally just think Jack is SUCH a "Winnie the Pooh" baby, like it's his first "thing", yk his first little "obsession". Because it's literally perfect. Yellow is definitely a Jack color, and Winnie the Pooh is just so gentle and hopeful, and the cartoons are light and silly, but meaningful and Jack would adore them. I also think Cas finds Pooh so endearing, like of COURSE he falls in love with him instantly, which only fuels Jack's love (and I mean the bees and the honey? Like cmon it's too adorable). And Cas will always watch the cartoons snuggled up with him and he even starts reading Jack a chapter from the original book each night. (Also who is later seasons Cas, if not Pooh Bear???)

-But Dean starts it all, because the bedding Dean first bought for Jack's nursery (room at the bunker) was Winnie the Pooh themed. It was the cheapest one at Walmart and the sight of the little cartoon bees on the sheets definitely didn't make him think of a certain someone. Which led to Dean always choosing to buy pooh bear themed items (blankets, clothes, bottles, toys and books of course) if they had it, because hey everything might as well match if it can. Besides, Dean actually liked the bear from what he could remember, and it wasn't like Jack had any complaints. Then as Jack got a little older Dean figured he might as well show the kid who the character is, since his face was printed on practically everything Jack owned. So he found a copy of the "Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" at the thrift store, and played it for him on the crappy dvd player Sam bought, even if he was too young to actually "watch it". And Jack loved it (well he didn't fall asleep, so Dean counted that as a win). So whenever he could, he popped it into the dvd player and would "watch" with him, even if it was just serving as background noise.

-When Jack gets to the age where he starts repeating everything he hears, he constantly just says "oh bother". But he doesn't really understand the context behind it, so Jack will usually just say it to say it. Sometimes he gets it right, like after he knocks over his block tower, or the time Cas accidentally spilled his drink. But Dean thinks its the cutest thing it the world whenever Jack races into a room shouting the phrase with a huge smile on his face.

-Winnie the Pooh of course sticks with Jack as he gets older, One time when they're all watching a Winnie the Pooh cartoon for the billionth time, Jack gets the brilliant idea to bring his favorite stuffed rabbit (Bun) to life. The whole thing was VERY cute but they obviously couldn't let Jack keep it like that, and of course Jack understood because he's a very smart boy, thank you very much. (But a few weeks later when Jack watches Toy Story for the first time, he brings ALL his toys to life and his reasoning was simply. "You said not to make any stuffed bunnies alive, you didn't say i couldnt make barbies be alive")

here are some winnie the pooh things Jack definitely has💛

#this took too long to answer bc it made me sOB #i literally say this as a winnie the pooh kid(i was also a toy story kid when i got older asfhajdh)#(i used to just repeat little phrases from my favorite movies when i was like 2ish without actual and one of them was oh bother asfhakdhsh)#i had the table and those cups/plates asjdjaja #remember jack is half angel. so he developed faster and can understand/do things faster than a regular baby can #i also dont have kids. so im going off of what I know.#cas loves winnie the pooh. theres no way he doesnt he literally loves him #anon #winnie the pooh #bec answers #baby jack truthing #jack kline #dadstiel #dean winchester #destiel

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the-halfling-prince · 3 years

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What was you favourite toy as a child?

Last thing that made you laugh

Last thing that made you cry

What traits do you like about yourself

What was your favorite toy as a child: I had still have this beanie buddie dog (I think it's supposed to be a beagle) that I named Pluto that I've had since I was, like, three. I couldn't sleep without it for the longest time, and I've still got it on my bed somewhere. (If we go even farther back in my childhood, I had this Tigger from Winnie the Pooh plush that I actually had three of. One was at my house, the other was in the car, and the third was one that I picked up in the store and put in my mouth so my mum had to buy it because duh it's got her kid's gross germs on it. I might've had another one I lost at my grandma's house. I can't remember. (Technically I don't remember any of that, this is just what my mum talks about all the time. I was, like 2) I still have two of them at least.)

Last thing that made me laugh: this Skyrim npc.

His name is Gogh and he brings me nothing but pure joy. I asked him to trade with me and he gave me an entire human skull. I walked into my house with him the first time and my character's kid saw him and says "mama, is that your pet? He's really scary" and that killed me. I could not stop laughing. Imagine you bring your friend over and your kid fucking says that. Skyrim's fucking wack. (Unrelated but on the note of Skyrim I hadn't gone to my house in a while because I was literally on another plane of existence fighting a dragon and I went back to my house and I legit forgot that I had an entire kid there. Imagine if that happened in real life. Bitch would be like "Mom, where were you it's been months I'm like ten" and I'd have to say "Girl, I was on another plane of existence fighting a dragon chill the fuck out" also I can't believe I finished the main quest of Skyrim like I thought it would be longer. I've still got all these side quests to do but like, bro, I thought that the main quest would take longer. God then after I was done with that I adopted another kid and was like "yeah just go to my house and I'll be there soon" like,,, sending an entire unarmed child across the continent lmao Sorry, I'm rambling now even though I already answered the question.)

Last thing that made you cry: I thought my bird died last night and i cried over that. He's okay tho!

What traits do you like most about yourself: okay let me think. I like my hair (met a dude today who saw a gay pin on my backpack and said "I could tell you weren't straight. It's the hair." And my best friend said my hair makes me look like, and I quote, 'an emo strawberry'. Will not be elaborating.), and my eye color's nice (though it took me forever to like my brown eyes.) Generally I'm just hot as fuck uhhh. My nose is kinda nice. Though from the front it literally looks like an entire triangle like fuckin Wirt from OTGW. But at least I'm still hot as fuck.

#ask box

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killian-whump · 5 years

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“Gremlins scared me when I was real young ... cause I thought gremlins were gonna come out from under my bed.” - Colin in one of his interviews for the rite. CAN YOU IMAGINE WITTLE 3ish YEAR OLD COLIN (I’m assuming that cause he was around 3 when the movie came out) BEING SCARED ABOUT THE GREMLINS WHAT A CUTE WITTLE BABY! SO MUCH CUTENESS TO HANDLE

Okay, this is all true, and I love you for saying it, and I love him for saying it, and I love everything about actualbaby!Colin and his cuteness.

BUT LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING.

Growing up in the 80s meant being traumatized regularly. Unlike today’s parents, parents in the 80s more or less let their children run rampant through the streets, picking them up occasionally and brushing them off to make sure they were still sorta functional, then setting them down and letting them run off again. Granted, kids in the 80s were a lot safer than kids in the 60s, who were given actual radioactive materials in their science lab playsets and had to hope they didn’t die from a mis-aimed lawn jart at the family picnic… but 80s kids were basically ALL traumatized by something at some point, be it flying across the family car every time someone slammed on the brakes or, you know, literal actual monsters and graphic violence being marketed as “good clean fun” for kids.

Which brings me back to Gremlins. Now, we’re all adults here (or close enough to it), so we all can pretty much see the humor and silliness of Gremlins. I mean, look at these goons:

This is one of my favorite GIFs, because it’s silly as shit. Look at their stupid faces. Look at the sunglasses and trench coat. Look at the popcorn and coke the one’s holding. Look at their delight. Look at the hint of further shenanigans occurring behind them (and everywhere else in the theater). Good times.

But what kind of ABSOLUTE MANIAC looks at these creatures and thinks, “These look like something children would love.”

Now, to be fair, many kids DID love the Gremlins. Some kids love monsters and creepy crawlies and scary shit. Fair enough. But Gremlins was marketed to kids and had all the usual merchandising tie-ins expected of kids’ films… so many parents thought, “This is a movie suitable for children in general” and brought their kids to this nightmare-inducer, regardless of whether said kid enjoyed monsters and scary things, or was a normal child who was about to be traumatized severely.

And we were all lulled in by this adorable little guy at the film’s start:

Cuteness and hijinx abound in the first portion of the film, and when the first two cardinal rules about the care and treatment of this little guy get ignored, the only repercussions are some adorable screaming… and then some more adorable little rambunctious furry guys:

So when the last of those cardinal rules gets ignored… I mean, no one expects it to get TOO out of hand, right? Right?

WRONG. You feed these fuckers after midnight and they turn into these horrifying things, straight out of the Aliens franchise, which is definitely NOT something kids should be watching, by the way.

Also, this seems like a good time to mention that there was never any clarification on the whole “after midnight” thing. Like, is it just the hour between 12am and 1am? Is it the entire time between midnight and dawn? Like, where is the cut-off? At what point CAN you feed these things? Technically, every single minute of the day is “after midnight” so where is the safe zone here? This seems like a more “adult” thought process, but I promise you that as a bonafide child of the 80s, this really actually did bother me a great deal at the time. Granted, not nearly as much as the disgusting pods made of slime and ectoskeletal materials did, but still enough to be a concern.

Anyway, after a short bit of the human characters being perplexed and curious about these absolutely disturbing pods in their attic and not a single one of them doing what obviously should be done at this point (hint: it involves a flame thrower and a good home owners insurance policy), these things emerge from the cocoons:

THAT IS FUCKING TERRIFYING. I am 41-years-old, and if I saw one of these things in real life, I would shit my pants and then quickly eat some more food so I’d have something to facilitate me shitting my pants again. What sane human being saw THIS face and thought, “This would be great for kids. Children would love this guy.”??? I’ll tell you who: Someone who had never actually witnessed a “child” before and likely didn’t know what the word even meant.

And notice, too, how the original trailer shows plenty of adorable little Gizmo, but doesn’t give even ONE clear shot of what the gremlins actually look like. All the better to traumatize an entire generation of young children with.

Because it’s not that Gremlins was a bad film, in fact, it’s a GREAT film. But it’s NOT something for kids. It’s not a Disney classic. It’s not Winnie-the-Pooh. It’s not Dora the Explorer. And yet…

Yes, you’re reading that right. The Electric Company, an 80s program aimed at children who were a bit too old for Sesame Street but still too young for anything that isn’t Sesame Street… apparently felt Gremlins was appropriate for its age group. And licensed products for the film included toys, clothing and linens for children of all ages. They marketed this thing to children, and it was literally a horror film. Not only did it have the Gremlins themselves in it, but it was full of scenes of violent and sadistic “hijinx” - including one scene where a cat gets blown up in a microwave.

So of course Colin was terrified by the film. The vast majority of children in the 80s were terrified by the film, then made to feel like they were “too sensitive” or a wuss because they were afraid of a children’s film. And adults and bratty older siblings felt entitled to tease and taunt the ones who were openly afraid, because everybody else likes it and everybody else isn’t scared. 80s style peer pressure and shitty marketing at their very best :P

#colin o'donoghue #gremlins #80s children #kw writes a thing #not whxmp #just childhood trauma #no biggie #anonymous #kw ask box

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bewhoyouarebopeep · 5 years

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Toy Story and Stories About Toys

I’ve been thinking about what, I guess I would call, the toy canon of literature, and why this genre exists, and what the appeal is of telling stories about toys at all.

Pinocchio and The Velveteen Rabbit are stories about what makes us “human” or “real”. Pinocchio (1883) is very much a lesson in morality, this wooden puppet needs to learn about sacrifice and responsibility to be rewarded with being human. It’s reflective of the morality of the time and of the author. The Velveteen Rabbit (1922) is also reflective of certain values, but in a less straight forward way, and likely not just because of the different authors but because of the societal changes that occurred in the 40 years between the two works. The stark morality of earlier periods had been shed, and Love as an ideal is at the forefront. Toys become real not by being good, but by being loved. In these stories toys are things that are like humans but not, or like real creatures but not, which allows them to be useful characters to tell stories about what makes us “real”. That is, stories about values.

Hans Christian Anderson’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1838) , like all of his stories, embodies a certain kind of Christian set of values, based on a passive, long-suffering kind of virtue. However, the story doesn’t use the conceit of sentient toys in the same way as Pinocchio and The Velveteen Rabbit. The toys in Anderson’s story are conscious, but helpless. In that way, they’re the perfect characters for a story about forbearance in the face of adversity. It’s still a story about human values, but not because the toys are trying to become real, rather because they are a simplified, miniature version of humans.

The Nutcracker (1816) is about a human who is cursed to become a toy. You could say that it's like the first two stories, and that it uses the proximity between toys and living things to say something about what it means to be human/real. In this case, it’s the love of another person. However, the true-love-breaking-a-curse thing is not distinct from other fairy tales. I think the thing that endures and that really captures audiences about The Nutcracker is the other-worldliness of the story. The idea that behind these familiar things there’s an entire world, even kingdoms at war with one another. Using toys in this story is a way to use the familiar as a gateway to adventure.

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) uses toys in a somewhat similar way, though the world of adventure that the toys inhabit is a lot more mundane and safe. The toys live in the woods, and get up to hijinks. But the fact that they’re toys, instead of making the familiar strange and otherworldly, makes the realm of adventure more comfortable and familiar. The stakes are never that high, because they’re toys. Friendship and is the major theme, especially the persistence of friendship. Which is also very comforting.

Raggedy Ann (1918) is interesting, because it was a set of stories released with a toy. The stories were part of the marketing. And the stories themselves are kind of an ode to why rag dolls are so great. I quoted from the introduction in a previous post, but here it is again:

What adventures you must have had, Raggedy!

What joy and happiness you have brought into this world!

And no matter what treatment you have received, how patient you have been!

What lessons of kindness and fortitude you might teach could you but talk; you with your wisdom of fifty-nine years. No wonder Rag Dolls are the best beloved! You are so kindly, so patient, so lovable.

The more you become torn, tattered and loose-jointed, Rag Dolls, the more you are loved by children.

There’s the appeal to sentiment, the comfort, familiarity, and nostalgia of toys. There’s definitely value-statements (which are in the stories themselves as well) about patience and kindness. But also... it’s a sales pitch. The stories aren’t about what makes us human, they’re about why toys are great, because they’re trying to sell toys. This is why kids love rag dolls, and this is why you should get one.

I organized this post by theme rather than chronology, but just for reference: 1816: The Nutcracker 1838: The Steadfast Tin Soldier 1883: Pinocchio 1918: Raggedy Ann 1922: The Velveteen Rabbit 1926: Winnie-the-Pooh Organized this way, there’s a clear demarcation as well. The first three all have toy characters with very human inner lives. The Nutcracker was literally human, Pinocchio is trying to become human, and the TIn Soldier has very little reference to actually being played with, he just falls in love and then suffers. The last three are about toys-as-toys. Being played with, or being friends with children feature very heavily in them. The Velveteen Rabbit does go deeper, thematically, but the rabbit is very much a toy, far much more than the first three. I would very much like to do some research into trends in story telling, into the development of capitalism and of children as a marketing demographic, and the extension of what’s considered childhood, because I don’t think that’s an accidental transition. However, I don’t have the time or resources for that.

So, I was thinking about where Toy Story fits in this. On a very basic level, Pixar chose toys as the protagonists because they were easier to animate and have them look good than humans. But there’s also the question of the kind of stories they’re telling.

The first three movies are actually far closer to Raggedy Ann than to anything else. They appeal to nostalgia, they’re about toys-as-toys rather than toys-as-something-approaching-human. And not to be cynical, because I do really enjoy the movies, but the marketing aspect must have been part of the appeal in the pitch meeting. I’ve read interviews where the team has said they were mindful that the story had to be about toys, and not about scaled-down humans. You can imagine the logic of story-building that comes out of that: What is important to toys? What are their lives organized around? So by necessity, the plots revolve around children and being played with, and then naturally the key conflict occurs when that kid grows up, through various stages. They’re about toys as an element in human’s lives. They go on adventures, but like Raggedy Ann, they always end up back at home, ready for the next play time, and aren’t toys great, and don’t you want to play with yours?

I wrote in a previous post that the cool thing about Toy Story 4 is that it subverts the framework established in the previous films. And like I said in that post, I don’t think it would be a reach to say that societal change has played into that. The first three movies had a sense of comfort, they depended on the notion of a very average suburban childhood, there was an underlying sense of stability when the toys always ended up back in the same place. But the world is not as stable as it was in 1995. While those movies are still very popular, I don’t think they would have the same resonance if they originated today.

Toy Story 4 is both a step forward and a step backwards. It’s a step backwards in that, like older stories, toy are more than just toys. They have things they want besides being played with. They don’t become “real”, but they become self-actualized. It’s a step forward in that it moves beyond the Toy Story framework, and in that it doesn’t go back to the mysticism or morality of the old stories. There’s no Blue Fairy or Nursery Magic Fairy, just the toy’s own choices that make them “real”, and the question of what brings toys to life in the first place is pointedly unanswered. Buzz developing his “inner voice” doesn’t have dire moral consequences like it did for Pinocchio, it’s a question of his personal development and growing into his role as a leader. It’s not the “patience” or “fortitude” of the Tin Soldier or Raggedy Ann that’s held up as a virtue, but rather the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. Woody does not simply accept his fate, he determines it. Much more than any previous story, TS4 is about having agency over your own life. It has something to say about the human condition, something more than the previous movies, and something different from previous stories about toys.

#toy story 4 #toy story #movies #children's literature #pixar #my stuff #long post

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shadyb00ts · 6 years

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Kingdom Hearts III Review

I never use this site but I needed some place to put all my thoughts down and this was the only place I could think of.

I’ve probably waited for this game for around 12 to 13 years. KH1 and 2 brought me so much joy as a kid, and it wasn’t until later that I played all the other spin-off games in the series. This game was the primary reason I got a PS4 in the first place and, as fucked up as it sounds, one of the things that kept me going in life. The impact of this series runs that deep for me.

Because we got inundated with a ton of gameplay footage last year, I knew I was going to enjoy this game. I had a few worries that the combat would feel clunky/floaty/stiff when seeing some of the earlier footage, but within the first hour or so of the game I couldn’t deny how good the combat feels. It’s satisfying, fluid, flashy and so much fun. I’d say the keyblade transformations offer much more variety than Drive forms ever did, cause you could use them a lot more frequently. There’s also other things like the shotlock, team attacks, link attacks, flowmotion attacks, so much stuff that you can utilize to really mix up battles every time. It’s probably the most addicting combat I’ve experienced in the entire KH series.

Another change I liked is the gummi system. I used to dread the gummi ship portions in KH2 because they were annoyingly difficult and they served as blockades to the worlds that are unavoidable. In this game, the gummi portion is instead a huge open area of space that you can explore and find treasures in. Battles can be avoided and the way to initiate them is to approach the enemies on the field, which was a huge sigh of relief for me. The actual gummi battles themselves work somewhat the same way as it did in KH2, but it’s not as busy or frenetic anymore so it eliminates the annoyance.

The Disney worlds were well done for the most part. They made the levels pretty big and explorable, and the story/time you spend within each world is elongated so there isn’t a return trip. I guess I understand why they did that but I really liked how in KH2 you could come back to the worlds in the second half of the game and experience a new story within it. In this one, once you’ve finished a world that’s pretty much it. One world would probably take around 2-3 hours to complete, depending on how much you explore. Unfortunately this game was a lot shorter than I was hoping it would be, but it’s still packed with a lot of content so it wasn’t that big of an issue. I was particularly impressed with the Pirates world; it suddenly turned into Assassin's Creed Black Flag. You get to control your own ship and explore different islands and have ship battles. I hated the Pirates world in KH2 but had loads of fun with the one in this game. I also enjoyed the Toy Story world very much, because it’s essentially a giant 3-story toy store and you can explore virtually every inch of it.

Something that disappointed me was the 100 Acre Wood. I actually loved what they did in KH2 because it spanned throughout the entire game, since you had to find the missing pages and gradually see the story unfold. However in this one, I’m pretty sure the 100 Acre Wood was just an afterthought. You go in there and it’s pretty much just 3 mini games that are practically slightly different variations of the same game, and that’s it. It was way too brief, and they definitely could have done something to make it more interesting. Sure, 100 Acre Wood was never my FAVORITE world in either KH1 or 2, but they were much more well done in those games than here because they actually had stories and a lot of creative mini games. It’s pretty clear they didn’t put much thought or effort into this world, and since it’s one of the minor worlds I guess it doesn’t matter that much, but it’s still disappointing nonetheless.

The final act of the game was a bit messy, to say the least. Light spoilers ahead.

I never really try to question or make sense of the convoluted mechanics and plot holes of the KH-verse so I just rolled with it and was along for the ride when it came to the story, but I think in this game nothing hugely significant really happens in the story until the final act. They just packed everything into that last part of the game, throwing boss after boss at you and solving plot line after plot line. It felt a lot like the recent season finale of Steven Universe; a lot of unnecessary buildup until you just throw everything but the kitchen sink in the end.

If you think about KH2′s story structure for example, it was a lot more eventful because between the Disney worlds you also visited certain worlds like Hollow Bastion and Twilight Town and whatnot to advance the main story and have things actually HAPPEN. In this game, the non-Disney worlds were basically given little to no effort. Twilight Town just becomes a little hub area that has the bistro for the cooking mini game; which you can go to via the world map or save points anyway, so essentially Twilight Town is useless cause you never need to visit it again for story purposes. The penultimate area of the game, the Keyblade Graveyard, is pretty much just a gauntlet of bosses. There’s nothing to explore, it’s just a linear path to every possible boss in the game. Fighting all of them in one place like that made it feel oddly anti-climactic.

And then my biggest disappointment: Scala ad Caelum. This was the area that was hyped up in the trailers, huge and gorgeous with cables connecting everywhere. I thought it would be the final dungeon and you could explore every inch.

Nope. It’s literally just a fancy stage for the final boss. It just breaks my heart to think about all the wasted potential. Maybe they focused all their efforts on the Disney worlds (besides the Winnie the Pooh world), so the non-Disney ones were just afterthoughts? They could have done SO much more with the set pieces in this game, like I just think back to how incredibly well-done Hollow Bastion was in KH2 and how much of the story unfolded in that area. KH2 really made good use of all the worlds and tied everything together. With this game, each of the worlds kind of just play out their own story and it feels very disconnected to everything else that’s going on.

The great thing about KH2 and the fact that you could go to each world twice is that, the first time you go it’s all about playing out the story of whatever movie it is they’re basing it on; and then the second time you come back, it’s about how that particular world fits into the bigger Kingdom Hearts story itself. It tied everything together and it made it feel like the worlds were actually connected. In this game there’s a big disconnect, and I’m very disappointed in that. Also, I don’t understand why they didn’t have any Final Fantasy characters in this game whatsoever, not even Sephiroth who I thought had become a staple.

I know it seems like this game let me down, and in some cases it did because of all the things that they could have done that for some reason they chose not to do, even after this game being in development for so long. This game took me about 30 hours to complete but I wish it was 30 hours longer. They could have added at least one more Disney world, they could have done something to make the worlds feel more impactful or connected to the overall plot, there’s just so many things they could’ve done. But even with all that said, I still enjoyed myself a lot in this game because the gameplay was enough to keep me engaged and it felt so good to actually have the game in my hands.

I’ll give the game a 8/10. I can’t believe I’m doing that because I thought I would have given it a 10, and I was hoping I’d be able to, but it just feels like there’s a big chunk of this game that’s missing and I wish they did more. Still, the things they got right they got right, and I can’t deny that I had so much fun playing it and still am with the post-game activities. I just got the Ultima keyblade recently and it’s a dream to use. I’m eager for them to add a New Game+ feature, because I want to replay it but I want to carry everything over; I’d rather not just start from scratch.

Also sidebar, if you’ve never played a Kingdom Hearts game before in your life, don’t even bother having this one be your first one, lmao. It’s a continuation and an ending to a huge story, so if this game is your first KH game you will not understand ANYTHING that’s going on or know who any of the original characters are. If you want to play it regardless, then just skip the cutscenes and tune out the story, cause from a gameplay perspective this game is a fucking blast.

#kh3 #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3 #kh #kingdom hearts iii

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ghosty-schnibibit · 6 years

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new amnesty liveblog actually on time for once! ^u^

i’m listening to this episode after having just started my third relisten of balance. just finished here there be gerblins this morning, memories :')

that fuckin heathcliff reveal is still so good two weeks later omg

oooooh new music! :0

aubrey is me with every cat

"nooo you may not pet me" i love heathclif so far omg

please no rhyming omg

this is so good holy cow

don't give away the tim curry sword duck we all love it

love the money ruffling foley work there justin

"i'm declawed" aww :(

I LOVE BEACON SO MUCH

ruchard

so beacon isn’t silvan? welp, so much for my theory about minerva being the interpreter :/

god i love duck newton so much

"it is a thing of complete ugliness" pfff

who the fuck is eliot ness? just did a google, he is one creepy mf

"i... borrowed it from a museum" n e d

thank you duck

anybody else hear that dip into taako voice there

i keep hearing this weird lil blip and i think its from the dice program they’re using

scavenger hunt :0

this sounds so freaking cool!!!

heathcliff's hitlist!

oh my god ned what the shit, what are you doing you absolute fool

"and not your... gun-gun"

"you were a nasty kid, huh?" "yep!" aubrey my baby

i love these boys so much

narf blaster

this sounds so fucking cool omg

"it was a toy for a baby" god i love heathcliff

ilu travis omg

i watched my neighbor totoro with my mom during the two weeks i had off before the summer semester and all i can picture is the cat bus

shield jacket! cool! :D

wait, shit, isn't the pine guard patch on the jacket?

sweet moon cows

this sounds so fucking cool omg

"visually loud" nice

JET PACK??? DUCK WTF

"NO LET'S MAKE A JET PACK BECAUSE NOW I'M FEELING ATTACKED" god i fucking love you heathcliff

someone make a gif of that p l e a s e

justin ilu

they have spent 30 minutes with this boy

"on a hot roll, as nobody says" i'm gonna start saying that

the rocketeer is from the early 90's, and i’m assuming he would have watched it around 10-12... so is duck like, mid-forties?

THE FLY MASTER

hmm... no mention of the mystery package in the ad break... did they already sell out? god i'm glad i already pre-ordered mine

what's up with the queue?

oh no, this sounds super sad :(

this is really fucking sad holy shit, god damn griffin D:

okay this is giving me such balance memories

whip stitch???

"thank you granddad devil" i love this

this music is amazing and this description sounds so pretty

aww vincent :D

i love this guy omg

i know griffin said he was a spectral man but all i can picture for this dude’s voice is owl from winnie the pooh and i don't know why

AWWW CUTIE

i really hope we get to learn the cute lil girl's deal soon

okay how many fucking middle names does ned have at this point???

woodbridge! i love him already

OH NO D:

this woman's voice is so soothing

aubrey my baby ilu so

so... is aubrey the avatar then???

aww, so she's a lil princess!

god i fucking love woodbridge

awww vincent you're so cute ilu. i'm very suspicious now but ilu.

NED NO

TOMMY WISEAU THE MUMMY MAN CRYPTID

god this music is cute

i'm looking at the player and there’s only 10 minutes left to this episode... you're gonna leave us on a spooky cliff hanger aren't you griffin?

"this whole arc has been one very wild day" that was the majority of the balance arcs too, we’re used to it lol

upper plate of what???

god i can't wait to see the fanart of this outfit

"literally tens of peoples homes!" bless you ned chicane :’)

so this is where the stock music comes from lol

god i love ned chicane so damn much

NED DID YOU REALLY EXPECT HIM TO PULL OUT BEACON ON LIVE TV?????

duck my baby what the fuck

god i love this cheesy stock music

oooh no what's going on

oh shit is this the thing from ned's backstory?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME GRIFFIN YOU'RE SENDING ANOTHER BRITISH GUY AFTER YOUR FATHER????? G R I F F I N

final thoughts: this was a really fun episode! love the new characters, and i can’t wait to see where this goes! also nice to see griffin’s british accent got better lol

until next right thursday ^u^

#taz #taz spoilers #the adventure zone #ghosty liveblogs taz

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axelsandwich · 7 years

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yuzuru hanyu: an exhaustive introduction

YUZURU HANYU IN 8 SECONDS: A SUMMARY

the weird goat noise crying at the end is yuzu himself basically going ‘nooo no way, no I don’t want this, that was scary, so scaryyy’

THIS IS ALSO YUZURU HANYU IN 13 SECONDS

YUZURU HANYU JUST BEING HIMSELF (PART 2)

choose your fighter

he’s happy a lot

basically the embodiment of the n__n emoji

and cute

the cutest

ever

loves nature on the rare occasions he goes outside

hitting his coach with a fan

scaring his other coach and then running away

adorable w kids

loves teaching

but also falls down a lot. very cutely.

sometimes in a stupidly beautiful way

factual info you could probably Wikipedia but are too lazy to do so: Yuzuru Hanyu is a Japanese figure skater from Sendai, born 7 December 1994 who competes in the men's singles discipline.

PSA: YUZURU HANYU IS NOT THE MODEL FOR KATSUKI YUURI FROM YURI ON ICE (yuuri katsuki is canonically based on tatsuki machida thank u)

japanese media (esp in sendai) basically filmed him growing up and called him a young prodigy so we’re lucky to get footage of chipmunk-cheeked yuzu with his (flying) mushroom hair

look at this tiny bean

he was interviewed in ice rink sendai with japan’s other figure skating gold medallist shizuka arakawa. to quote, when asked “can you become a gold medallist too?”, he said “probably”. and then he went and did exactly that.

he would get into fights with his rinkmates, used to ball up skate rink magazine flyers to hit like a baseball and basically had a 5min attention span after which he would get bored

he also remained top 5 in his class academically while competing internationally during high school and does online education at waseda university, which is one of the most prestigious universities in Japan (this kid was away the day God handed out laziness and procrastination I s2g)

he’s studying Human Informatics and Cognitive Sciences (ie. basically a massive maths nerd)

my favourite in-depth and extended interviews with yuzu are his press conferences with the foreign correspondents club in japan, he really lets his intelligence and thoughtfulness shine here in particular:

2014 post-sochi olympics

2018 post-pyeongchang olympics

2018 post-pyeongchang olympics (japanese media)

memelord mc memeface (no, I am serious)

literally can’t control his face

I could go on.........

for a long time

(this is my fave)

the duality of man

10 expressions for the price of one

‘yuzuru will also respond in english’

yuzuru was a victim of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami and lived in an emergency shelter with his family for about a week. spent the summer afterwards skating 60 different ice shows to raise money for the victims. he lost his home rink because of the earthquake and so would go to the show rinks early to practice ):

it’s heartbreaking that he’s still very affected by the memories. he’s said he doesn’t take anything for granted and is always grateful to have a rink to skate on, and the impact he had on the survivors had a profound effect on his skating

he mentioned it in his post olympics interview

if you feel like crying really really hard today, watch yuzuru visiting sendai’s disaster affected areas and where he stayed initially in the days after the disaster

he donated all his olympic winnings to helping tohoku recover

the only regular TV appearance he does every year is 24hr TV which is a charity marathon to raise money for various causes, especially for areas affected by natural disaster

“If it is because I visited them that those who suffered from the disaster can forget about their hardships for even just a moment, to me that would be something very meaningful. Therefore, at that moment, I thought that I wanted to get another Gold medal at the next Olympics.”

the reason why he’s going for another olympic medal. cry with us

gets on with nobunari oda like a house on fire and carries out shenanigans whenever they meet

nobu and ex-tennis player matsuoka shuzo have been his most zealous and purest hype men since he was sixteen, it’s the cutest thing in the world, they’re regularly worried about him, stunned by him and moved to tears by his performances

here they are reacting to his olympics programs

here’s yuzu thanking shuzo for his support by putting his gold medal around shuzo-san’s neck

has the cutest bromance ever with training mate javier fernandez (eg. when he cried bc he didn’t win but was also super happy for javi, and when he watched javi’s free skate)

gives the best hugs to javi

iconic(TM)

just before the Olympic medal ceremony, yuzuru cried after javi told him this would be his last olympics and saying ‘no I can’t do it without you’ wow I didn’t need my heart or anything today

has the cutest interactions with all skaters including his direct competitors

here’s boyang jin giggling about how he got a hug from ‘the guy who likes Pooh’

nathan chen commenting on yuzu & both of them complimenting each other

dodges media attempts to pit him against shoma uno as bitter rivals bc they are NOT ABOUT THAT LIFE

olympic gold medallist checking to make sure the olympic silver medallist has his jacket on straight and teaching shoma to wave bc he is actually just a mother

the only person who has the ability to make him lose focus: his forever-idol evgeni plushenko (now in motion)

probably the only asian boy who willingly opted for a bowl cut

who he shamelessly cheers on during ice shows

literally not capable of not being extra as fuck

here’s his pre-competition rituals aka. lipsyncing silently at a wall

he does it a lot

where every other male skater is in sensible shirts and pants, you will find yuzu standing there BEDECKED IN SEQUINS AND FEATHERS

he don’t give a fuck about your gender norms

and looks excellent while doing so

here he is, single-handedly destroying toxic masculinity

here he is just generally being Extra, with the rest of the men, bullying junhwan, bullying boyang... speed skating

tbh his milkshake seems to bring all the boys to the yard...seriously. and obviously most of the girls...

famous for his death glare murder face of hyper-competitive intensity

scariest thing is how quickly he can switch it on

there’s literally a collection of photos of yuzu - from when he was a bb to presently - eyeing the gold medal from another podium position like ‘my precious will be mine soon’ (here’s another one)

but also for being the sweetest kid ever

he is truly SUPER polite wherever he goes

hugging his competitors at the 2018 pyeongchang olympics

staying behind to answer all questions from media at the competition

CRAWLING ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES behind competitor shoma uno so he doesn’t get in the background of shoma’s interview

mr worldwide (he thanked reporters at the Olympics in five languages)

watch him say thank you in korean

JP TV basically had entire TV segments where they were like ‘OBSERVE HIS GOD-LIKE BEHAVIOUR’. It continues to this day

there’s literally a shrine with kanji similar to his name and fans pray for him there

he has three dedicated shrines that his fans make pilgrimmages to - yuzuruha and the two seimei shrines.

oda nobunari visited one and basically all the ema wishes were for him (yuzuru himself also visited the shrine to pray as well)

helping people repair the rink after competitions

single-handedly keeping the winnie the pooh soft toy industry alive.

Disney-senpai finally noticed him in 2018

he donates all the toys he gets to local orphanages and charities

gives his fans regular heart attacks

watch him save jumps that shouldn’t have been physically possible

changing program halfway through when he failed a jump to accommodate #emergencyquad and #yolotripleaxel

casually breaks world records because he was annoyed with himself

casual jump combinations during practices

casually says shit like wanting to jump hithero impossible jumps

jumped new quad when pissed off at the world team trophy It is REALLY IMPORTANT to know that the main reason for fan heart attacks is because he’s dealt with a distressing number of injuries, illnesses and misfortunes in his skating life but has somehow managed to come back and succeed in spite of them

a really scary accident that happened at cup of china 2014 and he decided to skate anyway because he wanted to qualify for the Grand Prix Final (which he then went on to win) and he really should not have been allowed to but he.......did that > <;

he then came back a month later to win the Grand Prix Final for the 2nd year in a row

he then had abdominal pain and surgery right after winning Japanese Nationals in 2014

and after spending a month recuperating, still managed to win a silver medal at worlds 2014

this is why we don’t talk about boston

important to note he skated his iconic chopin/seimei 2015 grand prix final programs WITH THAT INJURY

but then he came back and won the world championships in Helsinki in 2017

he missed almost the entire 2017-2018 olympic season he severely injured his ankle while practising the 4Lz in practice at the NHK Trophy, while recovering from a fever

is making his comeback from injury either at the pyeongchang team event or potentially yolo-ing it and going just for the individual event, we have no idea, we just know heart attacks are imminent

update: he skipped the team event and made his COMEBACK SKATE FROM INJURY after 3 months of no competitions and 1 month of prep at the individual mens event of the pyeongchang olympics.... AND FRIKKIN WON HIS SECOND OLYMPIC GOLD

he then...injured himself again for the 2018-19 season, went out and skated anyway, won the event and showed up to the victory ceremony on crutches. he made a comeback at the world championships 2019 on painkillers yet again and still managed to get a silver medal

is proficient at disappearing like a ninja and subjecting his fans to radio silence for months on end, usually bc he injured himself ))):

so his fans made him a banner

(he has some ridiculously talented fans tbh)

a helpful guide to stanning yuzu (warning: you may feel Attacked)

did I mention he happens to be pretty good at figure skating?

he’s broken the world record 16 times and counting (the video is his reaction to the first 11 (most of them are his own records)

he’s the first man in 66yrs since Dick Button to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals in mens figure skating (sochi 2014 and pyeongchang 2018)

I cannot emphasise HOW FRIKKIN #YOLO HIS 2018 OLYMPIC SEASON WAS. this was the medal he wanted his ENTIRE LIFE, which he had literally planned since he was a novice skater and had seriously begun planning since right after he won the gold in Sochi. this plan had to be adjusted due to the truly distressing number of injuries, illnesses and misfortunes he sustained during the last quad (his Olympic athlete profile has PARAGRAPHS dedicated to all his injuries - and note these are only the post-2014 ones). but yuzuru started the 2017-18 olympic season with a plan to basically break all 3 of his WRs at the olympics by recycling his Chopin and Seimei programs but upgrading the layout and introducing a new quad - the 4Lz - which he had been preparing for years. and then this plan was, once again, thrown out the window when he sustained the injury in NHK in early November, which was much more severe than he first thought. he sat out of competition for 3mths despite hoping to return first at Japanese Nationals and then to the Pyeongchang team event, but pulled out of both as well. yuzuru made his comeback from injury debut at the individual men’s event, aka. the BIG DEAL, after marching into the airport like a BOSS. we were told he had only recovered his triple axel 3 weeks ago and his quads 2 weeks ago, but post-Olympics, he’s slowly revealing that it was even more dire than that. he skated the entire Olympics on painkillers that were not working 100% which meant every jump landing hurt. and he. frikkin. WON. by doing this. and this. (it was also the 1000th medal in Winter Olympics history because destiny rewards those who are Most Extra)

seimei is arguably one of the greatest masterpieces of skating programs and yuzuru was involved in every step of putting it together

his iconic moves ; _ ;

edges, have you seen anything more ridiculous

romeo and juliet 1.0 at worlds, less than 1yr after the tsunami disaster and really launched him onto the international stage

sochi olympic short program (the thing that won him the gold lbr)

sub point: his reaction to gold

sub point: his reactions to BOTH HIS GOLD MEDALS

chopin and seimei at Grand Prix Finals 2015/16

WR for highest short program and total program score and he’s gonna bring them both back and try to surpass them for the Olympic season because he wasn’t already under enough pressure.........

hope and legacy FS at Worlds 2016/17 where he came back from 5th place in the short program to win the free and break his own world record yet again (annotated version)

broke his 12th WR in the first event of the 2017-2018 Olympic season at the ACI Challenger event with a sore knee and downgraded jump layout

hilariously, his coach brian orser was - uncharacteristically - warning everyone that his first skates of the season are like ‘first pancakes’ and to not expect too much from him before the SP

his fans, needless to say, were amused

he did go ahead and die in the free skate the following day though, and finished with his obligatory Canadian silver

Jumped and landed his first 4Lz in competition at the Rostelecom Cup 2017 (watch it clean - it’s a THING OF BEAUTY) and now has landed 4 types of quads in competition (4T, 4S, 4Lo and 4Lz). Has now said that being the first person ever to land the 4A - his childhood dream - is one of his key motivations.

just go watch all his programs lol

has a majestic jump face. it’s art. literally.

seemingly endless appetite for getting better and continually challenging himself

his favourite word: kuyashii (ie. frustrated)

one of my favourite interviews of him ever was right after his broke all 3 world records and went over 200 and 300 for the FS and total competition score for the first time at NHK 2015. “[On losing to Patrick Chan at Skate Canada & the fact he was practising during gala rehearsal where everyone else was chilling] I thought I want to improve, even here right now. Patrick was nearby and it was a really good motivation. It’s like, ‘Watch me.' I will definitely practise all kinds of jumps and I will grow for sure. I will win the next time for sure, I have been practising with that in mind.” Then 3 weeks later, at NHK Trophy, he had a different lay-out. Yuzu: This is not related to Patrick anymore. I was really fired up this time. Boyang Jin got 95 points in SP, right? When I saw that score, I thought, wow NO MISTAKES!! He gave the best of his abilities! OH YES!!!! Matsu: You didn’t think OH NO!!! You thought OH YES???? Yuzu: I thought “It’s here!!!" Since I was a child, I have never liked winning a competition when others made mistakes. Everyone skates to their best, but I still come first, above all. That is what I like. I like pushing myself to the edge—.” (translation cr: yuzusorbet) says volumes about his competitive mentality.

this is also iconic AF. ‘In your mind, what do you mean by wanting to win with a commanding lead?’ yuzuru (no hesitation and immediately): after everyone goes clean, I go clean and win. (matsuoka shuzo’s face is a MOOD)

oh, also he’s had asthma since he was two

he talks about it here

it was referenced in a movie

he got an asthma attack 2wks before the World Championships in Helsinki 2017 and still went out and Did That

the new york times did a long feature on him and it’s mostly a pretty comprehensive article if you want an overview

has remained at number one in the world standings for the entire olympic cycle since 2013 despite aforementioned heart-attack-inducing injuries and illnesses

sucks at finding suits that fit him. because he needs one imperfection

questionable fashion sense in general (generally remains stuck at ‘japanese teenage boy circa 2005′)

he wears toe socks and has been seen wearing crocs once, ho n e st l y

Good Guy Yuzuru: doesn’t wear fitted suits often because he knows it’ll kill his fans and/or will only do so if he gets paid for it tbh

unless he’s wearing under armour

he can keep wearing under armour

seriously, why isn’t he being sponsored by under armour

why

really obsessed with earphones and has like 50 pairs, many of which are custom-made and cost over $1000. he gets really excited about sound quality & bonds with sound technicians over their headphones. basically it’s the only thing he talks about when interviewers want to know what he likes to do in his spare time

that and play games in his room by himself

he’s hyper-competitive about games too

is this a surprise at this point

he’s basically a shut in when he’s not on the ice rink, in competition or at an ice show. he is not v exciting

he got really obsessed with kendama and now has like 8 of them

can’t dance but has no shame (yeah) (YEAH. you’ve been warned). werq it boi

made his japanese film debut in a bald cap, playing the young lord of Sendai which he SORT OF BASICALLY IS

get you a man that loves you like the entire city of Sendai loves yuzuru

their cheer video for sochi and pyeongchang

as of originally writing this intro post - part of the top six men in figure skating right now. probably possesses the Most Lack of Chill, being world champion, olympic champion and holder of all 3 figure skating records. we’re all drinking heavily this olympic season, not in the least because Olympic season has been a Pretty Big Disaster So Far

BUT HE WON THE GOLD MEDAL AND THE MENS EVENT WAS - FOR THE MOST PART - PRETTY DAMN BRILLIANT, especially given all the disasters that happened this season.......so I recommend watching it all. ; __ ;

alas Patrick Chan and Javier Fernandez have now retired ;;

he’s also b e a u t i f u l

um excuse me, rude

VERY RUDE

apparently not interested in sex appeal.........

‘acting’

want to research more?

here’s a recommended watchpost

a compilation of interesting interviews by tsukihoshi14

gif cr: balladestorm

in conclusion, thank you for reading and I hope you know more about this special, brilliant boy ( :

#yuzuru hanyu #hanyu yuzuru #figure skating #figure skate #yuri on ice #pimp post #I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR 6MTHS I S2G #do people even do pimp posts anymore #anyway this is for anyone who hasn't fallen into the sinkhole that is yuzu's existence #maaaybe I will do some for other skaters #i contemplated making this a powerpoint slide meme #but then there was too much to link #so you get a HUGE FUCKING LINKS MASTERPOST INSTEAD #((if i've missed anything pls message me))#in celebration of fucking AUTUMN CLASSIC STARTING THIS WEEK AD:HS:FKJSA:

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shark-myths · 7 years

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Folie A Deux

I promised to write FAD meta like, forever ago. It took longer than I planned. Here it is, at last.

Folie is anthemic, artistic; it’s cynicism and heartbreak all layered up in failing hope. It’s Pete saying goodbye to his band and embarking on a new life as a husband and a father. It’s Patrick finding his confidence as a showman just in time for it to turn to ash on his tongue and prompt him to remake himself utterly. It’s Joe finally feeling like he has a role in FOB and creative ownership of his own band. It’s Andy, um, drumming. Super well. Without any particular emotional interpretation on my part because Andy’s, you know, pretty content to just play with his friends.

Without further blathering, allow me to present, at long last: a rambling, tear-filled, official Tryst Theory ™ interpretation of FOB’s fourth-and-almost-final studio album.

I am always struck most by the quality of obstruction in the albums produced during the Commercial Success/’Sell Out’ era. Pete begins obscuring himself for the first time during Infinity on High and especially Folie A Deux: the lyrics become increasingly senseless, more about cleverness and sound that saying things plainly. But he’s so honest during this era too. He tells us exactly what it feels like to be him, to be so pulled apart and scrutinized and sad, to be sick on his own hope. To be sick and fuzzy, made of stuffing, and far away on way-too-many anxiety meds. We get lines that don’t make much sense on the surface, like ‘I’m not a chance, put a heat wave in your pants,’ and we get the self-aware aggression of bops like I Don’t Care.

In the previous era, Pete didn’t really know what it meant, yet—being Pete Wentz. Being so public. Being the face of the band, being the bad guy and the heel. What it would cost. Now he understands that anything he touches, or looks at, or says at loud is going to change. Once he does it, says it, thinks it, feels it, it’s out of his control. It’s owned by someone else. Even his private body, his private phone. Even his decision to defend his friend from an aggressive bouncer onstage. The brand of phone he carries, the girls he texts, who he stands next to in photos, the cities where he plays shows and the cities he does not. Now he understands that his life is not his, but something the public will use to hurt him if we get bored. This is drugstore cowboy Pete. This is a Pete grown so heavy under the weight of his own misery and bullshit that he can barely go on. This is a Pete preparing to say goodbye.

Which is a long way of saying: Folie A Deux fucks me up.

A little history (sourced heavily from Wikipedia):

The album was recorded from July-September 2008, beginning two months after Pete and Ashlee were married, and released in December 2008, shortly after Bronx was born. They started recording ahead of schedule, without telling the label, and deliberately limited their studio time. They wanted to recapture what they had felt during Grave, when they were racing against their drained back accounts to get the album set down. They wanted that simplicity and rawness, the feeling of being mixed-up kids half living out of a van and making music that felt vibrant and essential. Patrick told AP, “There was something really interesting about that creative process when we were starting out. The more time you have, the more potential you have for excess.” (He thought he dominated Infinity and wanted to pare himself back, reign himself in, for Folir.) They tried to emulate the process and feeling of Grave as much as possible: “first-thought, best-thought.” Joe pushed to be included more in collaboration and felt like he “owned the songs a lot more. It made me really excited about contributing to Fall Out Boy and made me find my role in the band.” Pete made an effort (this is him making an effort, okay) to keep his personal life more sequestered from the writing and use more metaphor and the conceit characters speaking lines, more like a stage musical. And, perhaps true to the feeling of Grave, Pete and Patrick fought painfully and violently over the record. It was personal and artistic for everyone. They felt it was their best work.

Fans tore them apart, of course. Booing anytime they played anything off the new record. The album undersold and public reception did not match the glowing critical reviews. They tried to say something important, to talk about society and convey real messages in their music. They were publicly rebuffed. Joe told Rolling Stone, “Some of us were miserable on stage. Others were just drunk.” The reception, the struggle, cemented what Pete had already decided to do: leave the band.

(Let’s not talk about the last song of what he thought would be their last show ever during which, instead of playing Saturday with his best friends and his me-and-Pat, he had the man who named the band in the first place shave off his signature Pete Wentz hair in a symbolic ritual of fucking morning, let’s not let’s not)

(but in case you want to)

A little cover art:

I just want you to know that Pete Wentz has the original painting of that cover in his home. IN CASE YOU THINK THAT’S RELEVANT.

This image. With Pete’s furry history. With the costumes and feeling like a zoo animal and playing the role of the heel, with the way he said in the Folie Making Of video that being perceived in media is “like wearing a costume, you’re not who you are.” With his interest especially in bears, the talk of stitches and stuffing and seams, with the Lullabye track and ‘honey is for bees silly bear’ (and Black Cards’ ‘you’re my best friend, honeycomb head’) and the whole Winnie the Pooh vibe. With the devoted companionship and singular love exhibited by Winnie the Pooh and the way he turns back into inert, lifeless stuffing when you grow too old and you forget what he really is and see him as just a toy, empty and pliable, and the way only childhood wonder and innocence can return him to life. How the cover has not just one person on it, but a bear-boy plus one: a madness shared by two. A real bear, and someone who’s just pretending, or just trying to be. What a match, what a catch.

WHAT A PETERICK MASTERPIECE THIS FUCKING ALBUM IS

The liner notes are empty, by the way. For the physical CD. The liner notes are just pictures and names of band members, then production information and thanks to ‘fans, friends, and loves.’ Nothing else. No lyrics. No record. If that’s not foreshadowing—

And now said masterpiece itself:

1. Disloyal Order of the Water Buffaloes

Okay, so let’s take a step back and imagine for a second the decision-making process that went into writing a magnum fucking opus Peterick anthem to open the album with. Are we all on the same page here? WHAT THE FUCK, were they TRYING to kill me

This album is the fucking Holy Grail of the drug use = Patrick metaphor, and we dive right into it with this one. Boycott love. Detox just to retox. DRAW YOUR OWN HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T PARALLELS. #trysttheory

For all that Pete tried to move away from autobiographical lyrics on this album, his view of himself is plain in this song: ‘perfect boys with their perfect lives, no one wants to hear you sing about tragedy.’

The line ‘fell out of bed, butterfly bandage, but don’t worry’ brings up my theories about what dreams mean. Falling out of bed and getting hurt is a clear consequence of dreaming so hard you forgot it was just a dream (or trysting with your best friend and forgetting there could be consequences, real people you can hurt and yourself included). ‘You’ll never remember, your head is far too blurry’ ties into w.a.m.s as well as Cooperstown and the idea of being blurry-headed, impaired because you’re fucked up on love or some other drug, and making choices you’d regret, if you could remember them. Making mistakes you’ll have to live with whether you remember them or not.

(Romantically speaking, water buffaloes are disloyal: Google suggests a single male water buffalo can sire as many as 100 baby buffs in a single mating season. It seems pretty obvious throughout this album that issues of infidelity were large in Pete’s mind while writing these lyrics.)

2. I Don’t Care

This song makes me think of Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) so much. Starting over again in Mexico, friends who don’t care about you, the blues-pop bounce to it and repeating riff? Sonically, they have a lot in common.

Pete may be playing on his previous reference to Closer (‘he tastes like you only sweeter’) with the opening line here—‘say my name and his in the same breath, I dare you to say they taste the same’—which is the saddest and most painful movie about heterosexuals you will ever watch, but writing that line and putting it on Patrick’s tongue? That may be the gayest thing that happens to me all night, guys, and I’m a queer girl with a bottle of wine and a long, long Friday evening ahead of me.

This song is so much a conversation Pete is having with the world about his fame and notoriety, imo. He calls it a narcissist’s anthem but I don’t think that’s it, exactly. I think—and the music video backs me up on this—it’s a coy wink at their own reputation, all the shit people are slinging about them and Pete specifically. We get a drug reference here, too: ‘take a chance, let your body get a tolerance.’

Also, Patrick is a nun in the video. Pete put Patrick in a literal fucking habit. What more do you need to me to say to prove definitely that Pete is desperately in love with him? This. Kid. In. A. Nun’s. Habit.

3. She’s My Winona

IF THIS SONG ISN’T A DISCUSSION OF HOW PETE HAD TO REVISE HIS PETERICK AMBITIONS WHEN HE FOUND OUT ASHLEE WAS PREGNANT

(There are so many suicide references in this song I want to join Pete and the band’s manager in cheering and celebrating all over again that our boy lived to 28. You can physically feel him resigning himself to living a long life in these verses.)

‘Hell or glory, I don’t want anything in between.’ I take this line as pretty directly about him and Patrick: he doesn’t care if they go to hell and it ruins the band, he wants to take the risk, because he thinks together they could be—glory. He wants to roll the dice. (Take a chance—I’m not a chance.) And ‘then came a baby boy with long eyelashes, and daddy said “you gotta show the world the thunder.”’ In other words, he wanted hell or glory, ruination or Patrick, but then along came his son. And his priorities changed. Of course they did. True love is one thing; raising your child is another.

‘We had a good run, even I have to admit.’

(And—here’s the thing—people ask me sometimes, what I think about Pete marrying Ashlee. “Do you think he married her just because it was the right thing to do?” No. I think he believed in love and family and forever. I think Pete believed it would work. I think he wanted it to. I think that’s why the trysting, and eventually the band, stopped: because Pete tried his fucking best. I think he loved her and loved the idea of a future for himself—the first time he’s ever really imagined that. The idea of somewhere to belong, a real family, one that he felt part of. I think he wanted more than anything for it to work precisely because it was so different from what he, or anyone else, ever expected for him. He said ‘I want to marry this girl’ and he meant it. He really did intend to love her forever, as best he could, and not love anyone else if he could help it.

But those aren’t good reasons to build a whole relationship on, a marriage on. And he was a mess, and in love with Patrick too, and hated and famous and fucked. He had no privacy, limited emotional maturity, a burgeoning substance problem and no sense of himself that wasn’t dependent on what the culture and the media and his fans and his friends reflected back to him and said was true. There was no way they could be happy together under those circumstances, and he’d have stayed forever anyway, I think. His interviews about that time—when he stopped shaving, then stopped showering; when he was a drugstore cowboy stay-at-home dad, depressed and giving up—he doesn’t blame Ashlee for wanting to leave. He hated himself enough to be miserable forever, but she didn’t. So of course it fell apart.)

4. America’s Suitehearts

This commercial headfuck of a song. Jerry christ, guys, someone throw me an anchor so I can drown myself. This caricature, the monstrosity and performance of celebrity, the way the band is reduced to wrestling alter egos, painted and pretend. No one’s being subtle with this song, this video. They are showing us exactly what they mean.

‘I must confess, I’m in love with my own sins.’

DO YOU MEAN LIKE BEING IN GAY LOVE WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND

DO YOU MEAN THAT SIN?

And this verse, though ostensibly about the vagaries of fame, sounds so much like him falling in love with Patrick while Patrick is oblivious:

‘You can bow and pretend you don’t know you’re a legend. Time just hasn’t told anyone else yet. I’m sorry, I just let my love loose again.’

For so many years, Pete believed his love was something he had to apologize for. 😭 😭 😭 😭

5. Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet

Okay, fuck this, I’m done

This fucking

This

UGH

Remember the paternity rumors at the time of Ashlee’s pregnancy? Look at this whole complicated, tangled-up song about infidelity and paternity and the idea of Ashlee cheating while Pete’s cheating too. ‘Keep a calendar, this way you will always know’ [who impregnated you]. ‘I will never end up like him. behind my back, I already am.’ I literally cannot

‘Does he know the way I worship our love’

6. The (Shipped) Gold Standard

do I even need to keep writing this or is the album now, itself, independently writing the tryst theory

my notes for this song just say ‘come the fuck on’

This song is about: living in LA and missing Chicago (and what it felt like in Chicago, who you were and who you were with); taking accountability for your own actions even when it does not satisfy your hedonistic urges (e.g., marrying your pregnant girlfriend and breaking off your illicit love affair with Patrick Stump), trying to remake your identity and change yourself like those are the same thing and you can get a new heart as easily as a new name; losing your luck and breaking up (‘tell that boy I’ll leave you alone now, like a stove, I’ll turn my love down); horseshoe crabs; and of course, that good ol’ famous-in-the-closet feel:

‘I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs, but I’m afraid that someone else will hear me.’

7. Coffee’s For Closers

I’m just crying by now I can’t type anymore

He’s using this whole album to break up with Patrick, to explain, to say goodbye

‘I want everything to change and stay the same. Time doesn’t care about anyone or anything. Come together, come apart.’

‘We will never believe again’

And: ‘kick drum beating in my chest again’ and that feeling, the one we’ve all felt in the pit at any show, any good one with that golden-vibe in the air, the one that makes your heart feel connected to the hearts of everyone around you, like you could be lifted on light and floating around the room, like the love is pouring out of you and rising like heat and linking up to the network of love flowing into and out of everyone else, when you feel it and know they do too and your whole body vibrates with the impossible imperceptible hum of your very atoms, your constituent fucking molecules lit up and stitched together by this, this, this. The feeling like you don’t need lungs because singing in breath and bellows enough, the feeling like the only reason you ever had a heart was so the drummer could pump it with their sticks. ‘Preach electric to the microphone stand,’ Patrick the conductor, Patrick the evangelist, Patrick the gospel of his fucking love. Pete’s saying goodbye to that feeling. Pete knows, he knows already, what he is planning to do.

Pete’s lying. Pete’s saying ‘I love the mayhem more than the love’ like all he’s really been out to do is make a mess, break hearts, take names. Like he is no more and no less than what all the tabloids say about him. (Never watch the Fresh Only Bakery videos on youtube. They are boring, for one, and also the saddest fucking Pete you will ever see.) Pete’s saying ‘I will never believe in anything again’ and he’s making Patrick say it too, because true-blue love was supposed to last forever, and then Pete got married to someone else.

‘Oh, change will come.’

8. What A Catch, Donnie

NO. NO

how the fuck dare this song even exist

So this is it. This is the goodbye. Pete has talked about how he wrote this song from Patrick’s perspective, and he recruited some of Patrick’s favorite artists and friends of the band to sing different lines in a medley of the band’s hits up to this point. This is like, the FOB song equivalent of a suicide note. (To follow this with a greatest hits album—! G O D)

The reference to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway—their collaboration, his ultimate suicide, and the way Miss Flack looked on all his destruction and said ‘I still want you back’ is absolutely a testament to the way Patrick, and the rest of the band, forgave him and took him back in after the notorious Best Buy Incident. The gratitude for the whole band and what the band has done for Pete is tied up in this song. ‘You’ll never catch us’ smacks of trysting, and there’s something to the line ‘I’m the one who charmed the one who gave up on you,’ as the speaker in the sentence in meant to be Patrick and the ‘you’ is presumed to be Pete.

‘They say the captain goes down with the ship, so when the world ends, will God go down with it?’ is both Pete’s intention to go down with the band (which he’s planning to sink, or sees unraveling already in the painful writing process—we don’t know at what point he made his decision to destroy yet another thing he loved in penance for some deep, unknowable conviction of sin) and his gesture of setting them free. The Video of Which We Will Not Speak shows this pretty clearly. Pete saves everyone and everything he’s ever loved at the bargain price of drowning himself. He does it without ever even appearing in the aired version of the video. *broken sobbing*

(The links for the full version are not currently on Youtube, but you can read about it here: http://www.mtv.com/news/1618609/fall-out-boy-release-wrong-version-of-what-a-catch-donnie-video/)

What a match, what a catch. If I say anything else about this song, and how basically everyone who heard it knew it meant the band was going to break up, I will absolutely fall apart

9. 27

OH GOOD A SONG I CAN MAKE IT THROUGH WITHOUT CHOKING ON MY OWN TEARS

NOT

So here’s a lovely little ditty about how Pete Wentz did not kill himself and die at age 27 as he always thought he would! Hahahahahaha I’m fine it’s fine I’m so glad this album exists I’m so glad I’m TALKING ABOUT IT

‘If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked.’ All three of them: Pete, Patrick, and Ashlee. And every FOB fan out there. Ahahaha. GUYS I’M NOT OKAY

We’ve got Peterick drug metaphors to rival the punch of Hold Me Tight Or Don’t: ‘I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins… Doing lines of dust and sweat off of last’s night stage just to feel like you. Milligrams in my head, burning tobacco in my wind, chasing the direction you went.’

We’ve got desperation about growing and changing and losing that which they so valued in their sound and collaboration on Grave: ‘I can’t remember the good old days. Are all the good times getting gone? They come and go and come and go.’

We’ve got the pressure of keeping your love affair with your lead singer a secret lest you risk your fame, label representation, and fortune: ‘My mind is a safe, and if I keep it in we all get rich’ right next to the dirty, hollow feeling of having images of your body stolen and used to drag your name and reputation like you had no more heart than any other empty doll and losing the value of yourself in that process: ‘My body is an orphanage, we take everyone in.’

We’ve got the romantic comparison to cosmic entities, just like in Real Ones: ‘you’re a bottled star, the planets align. You’re just like Mars, you shine in the sky.’ And that tinge of disparagement and lonesomeness: ‘I’ve got a lot of friends who are stars but some are just black holes.’

10. Tiffany Blews

This song plays with a lot of fun moth/flame metaphors that I really enjoy, while also really amplifying the isolation and quick-burning nature of fame. I think that Pete gets a sick satisfaction from having Patrick sing out the worst things he thinks about himself, that he thinks everyone else thinks about him. (Pete, I think, is the little black dress that will be faded soon.)

Interestingly, we have ‘a roman candle heart keeps us far apart,’ which is a pretty direct link to the later Fourth of July. A heart that flares, explodes, and then burns out quickly certainly would be an obstacle to building a lasting relationship, no matter how much you loved someone…

‘Hate me, baby. Maybe I’m a piece of art.’

‘Dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city’ makes me think of the Moonrise Kingdom quote in Wilson (Expensive Mistakes): ‘I hope the roof flies off and we all get sucked into space.’ It’s the opposite, basically. Hoping to fall in love and get thrown up among the glittering cosmos rather than anchored someplace dark and starless. (Aside: I love how susceptible Pete is to grand, cheesy quotes? Like when, a few days after the release of The Last Jedi, he tweeted the heavy-handed noir line ‘I want to put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.’ Like, look for that in a FOB song someday.)

11. w.a.m.s.

For the curious, Andy confirmed on Twitter that the title stands for waitress/actress/model/singer, a reference to the stereotype of people who run away to Hollywood to make it big but end up washing out and struggling as the starving artist/waitstaff type. If this idea of our boys citing bankrupt ambition does not make you emotional, you may not have a heart.

This song is incredibly relevant to the dreams meta linked earlier—‘when all the others were just stirring awake, I’m trying to trick myself to fall asleep again’ is very evocative of being in denial over the jarring reality of the end of the tryst. I think this song is about one of the last times Pete and Patrick slept together before breaking up.

‘My head’s in heaven, my soles are in hell’ again highlights that Pete’s wildest Patrick dreams are very different than where he actually finds himself; ‘let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips and get well’ is a pretty transparent request, isn’t it? Especially since pre-hiatus Pete really loved to use ‘hips’ as a signifier for sexual desire/activity. Let’s just fuck and pretend it’s all okay. Let’s lose ourselves in each other and pretend we can have it. Tell me I’m the only one, even if it’s not true. Let me get high on this memory one last time.

‘Hurry, hurry. You put my head in such a flurry, flurry’ is the urgency and compromised judgment of the tryst. ‘Oh freckle freckle’ can be read as Patrick’s forehead mole. ‘What makes you so special? I’m gonna leave you’ tells us what makes the last time so good: Pete knows it’s the last time. Pete knows he has to end it. But he’s so addicted-sick, ((stray-dog sick,)) he can’t stop. ‘I’m gonna teach you how we’re all alone’ doesn’t really sound like something a newlywed and soon-to-be-dad should be saying, does it? But there it is. How can he let go when he knows ‘how heartwarming it is inside your skin’?

The final nail in my coffin: ‘I’m a sunshine machine. I want to get stuck and be golden in your memory.’

We’ve talked about how Patrick = sunshine = gold, right. r i g h t

12. 20 Dollar Nose Bleed

Fun fact: this song is basically erotica to me ever since I wrote that recording booth smut about it! I can’t even listen to it without blushing and becoming uncomfortable. So there’s something you didn’t need to know about me that you… now know about me.

‘Permanent jet lag, please take me back. I’m stray dog sick, please let me in. The mad key’s tripping, singing vows before we exchange smoke rings.’ It is OBVIOUSLY my prerogative to interpret this as slightly depraved sexual longing, but I especially like the bit about singing vows without ever exchanging anything lasting or visible that implies commitment—this can be heard as a comment on the fickleness of commitment, or it can be heard as a comment about how deeply he is/was committed to Patrick even though they never had anything to show for it. Anything they could show for it. Even to each other.

Benzedrine is, of course, the very first pharmaceutical amphetamine (read about it here!). Many great artists and thinkers were influenced by the impossible energy it gives you, which is obviously relatable to someone who experiences natural mania, peddling his own prescription like a ‘medicine man’ (Wilson lyrics). I think the verse about Benzedrine and not letting the doctor in not-so-obliquely references the issue with medication compliance that Pete experienced and many people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder also do: the meds for this disorder are really unpleasant. They dull you out, they give you tremors, they have really strong side effects, and they take away that amazing manic spark that so many artists credit with their success. Don’t let the doctor in. They’ll take away the only thing he really likes about being himself.

‘Have you ever wanted to disappear?’ is, I think, a glimpse of the unadorned real.

The spoken word bit at the end of this song really hammers together a lot of the themes of the whole album, the whole band, personal and political both. ‘You said you’re not listening and I said I’m wishing…’, only we don’t ever find out what’s really being said.

13. West Coast Smoker

I love the hell out of this song because there are few things in life that are hotter than Patrick singing the chorus. And fuck. Patrick saying curse words. I die every time. I think this is a kink I share with Pete Wentz. I think one day Pete Wentz and I will share a circle of hell. It will be called the ‘Underage Stump Mouth Rotunda,’ and we will all be very ashamed.

We’ve got a lot of the same themes: the ease of suicide and the conviction to live, the way shows feel and how it was when they were kids, drug use and overmedicated ennui. Pete was once the son, is becoming the father, is resolving not to become the holy ghost.

‘I’m the last of my kind’ and ‘when they made me they broke the mold’ and the finality of it all. (Contrasted with the modern era: ‘you’re the last of a dying breed.’ Pete has grown up and away from his recursive self-obsession, from his own myth. Pete learning to look inside others and stop dismissing himself, and everyone else, as fool’s gold.)

‘Your eyes are blocking my starlight’ to me really speaks to the person who is keeping him from Patrick, or the people—the fans, the Public, with their eyes on his every action.

14. Pavlove

I LOVE THIS SONG

Once again, we have a drug use metaphor: ‘she’s back to the bathroom for one more,’ ‘get addicted to this,’ and of course, the endless seeking for something to make ‘my chest stir/my head blur.’ And: ‘I’m not ready for a handshake with death, I’m just such a happy mess’ shows us, for once, what Pete has to live for—not just that he’s resigned to life, but the reason for it. This song is all tied up with the heady swell of live music and self-medication, and there’s no line more representative of my experience as a bisexual person than ‘I’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror.’

‘I want to make you as lonely as me so you can get addicted to this’ seems very directed at Patrick, doesn’t it? Because this is a Pete who needs Patrick too much, thinks Patrick doesn’t need him back, is terrified. Doesn’t know how to solve his problems except to flee them. So: he flees them.

I MADE IT. I BARELY FUCKING MADE IT BUT I DID.

To sum up: Folie is an incredible, sweeping, beautiful album about the glory of Peterick and the band’s impending end, and it will break your heart. Hit me up with questions and requests, and as always, thank you for reading!

shark-myths out *mic drop*

#tryst theory #peterick #fall out boy #fob #pete wentz #patrick stump #pete wentz x patrick stump #lyrics meta #folie #america's suitehearts #prehiatus #small out boy #folie a deux #fad

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paw-patrol-kiddo · 7 years

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2017 for my regressive side

Well guys, this is it; we’re really already at the end of 2017! Hard to believe, ain’t it? Well, I normally don’t do year review thingies, bu’ I figured I should probably do one this year, mostly cause this year’s been the best out of all the years of my life- and that’s saying a lot. I mostly wanna cover what this year has held for my regressive side, also with bits of stuff that happened in my big girl life!

If ya want, I’d love if ya made one of these posts about what this year held for your regressive side and you tagged me in it! Chances are, I’ll be reading it and replying very quickly!

Anyways, time for the year review! It begins below the cut!

This year’s held a lot of things for my regressive side; a lot more than the previous years. I’m going to try and cover everything, for every month of the year!

January held my fifteenth birthday and also marked four years since I started liking diapers nonstop again, which ultimately led to me beginning to age regress. I discovered that it seems my regressive side is most active this month, something that’s really helpful to know for obvious reasons. I attempted to indulge in my regressive side discreetly to cope with stress, as I was still hiding this whole thing at the time and seldom spoke about it to Kaiya, my younger sister. I also remember that the month before, I stopped identifying as a chireb, and was trying to find a new label for myself, but was failing. This was frustrating to me.

I don’t really remember a whole lot about February! Not much that I can note, that is. Thinking about it, this month is kinda a blurry, confusing mess if that says anything; I just can’t remember a whole lot from it! I think either this month or the month after was when I gave up on finding a label and just settled on the generic age regressor term.

March held quite a bit of things for my big girl side; I began playing baseball, got my own room at last, and mourned the loss of a big part of my preteen and early teenagehood when Club Penguin shut down. Even with more privacy for my regressive side and my life in general, I mostly forgot about my regressive side around this time and moved on with my life.

April doesn’t hold a lot of notable things for agere, either. I do know that starting four months before, I started feeling other ages in my identity (I feel all the ages I regress to in my identity. Like, I feel like them and at times, that for example, I’m a 7-year-old trapped in a teenager’s body. It’s not a fun feeling) and I accepted two without a problem (10 and 11), but I continued to deny and push aside another age I felt, thinking it seemed too young. After all, I was content with my youngest being two-years-old; or so I thought.

I wanna say May started getting a bit tough. As the spring season of baseball drew closer to the end, of course, my regressive side began trying to rise from the depths. The little girl inside me wanted attention and more space. She couldn’t keep sitting back and hiding forever.

The most I could do for my little self was watch toddler and little kid shows in private, play with my toys, play children’s games online, and color. Not a whole lot, clearly, and I was still self-conscious of a lot of this. I am sure this is the time where I began feeling trapped regarding all of this.

June began to show signs of easier times. Baseball finally ended for the summer, which of course, led to the “Well dang; what am I gonna do with my life til the fall season?” moment. My regressive side, of course, took the wheel for most of the summer at this point. Hiding this was becoming very hard; I had to find some way to cope, some way to be open, anything. My little side could hardly take it anymore; this month or the next month marked four years since she first stepped into my life and you can only hide yourself for so long before it becomes too much (I had been making an effort to hide for a year or two before then).

Towards the end of the month, I finally reluctantly accepted the fact I seemed to regress to age 1 and 4 days later, I finally gathered the courage to make this blog, something I had thought about for a year, but could never do it. I told myself if I regretted it, I could just delete it, no problem; that was what I was expecting I’d end up doing.

But instead, with a place I could be little, the trapped feeling began to ease. I was scared, of course, but also relieved and very happy. In fact, I was so happy that when I went to the bathroom shortly after a brief flood-reblog, I had to happy stim for a minute or two before I could actually do what I came in there for. I gave Mom and Kaiya the link to this blog. I’m sure making this blog is one of the best decisions I’ve made this year- and I’ve made a lot.

Making the blog reminded of my love for diapers, which brought back a memory of when Mom sneakily bought some for me the summer before. Talking about it here was really hard at first and took a lot of courage, but if you can’t tell, I can do it without flinching or hesitating now. After a quick chat with Mom, I decided at last, I’d finally try them whenever Dad left the house for a few hours (shout-out to the anon who sent that ask after I posted about it, you’re amazing and I hope you had a wonderful year. We need more people like you. Also, I started happy stimming when I reread the ask before linking it here).

Also, I rediscovered Small Elephant (I received the lil guy as a gift a year before and played with him once, but never got too attached to him) around this time and idk what exactly happened or how it did, but apparently, I ended up attached to him and I still am. He’s my lil vacation/severe weather evacuation buddy now.

July was a blast! I finally tried out my diapers shortly after Dad left to help out at a vape and tattoo shop he volunteers at and by the time I finally changed out of my first diaper, I had officially decided I was wearing them for the rest of my life (not as in 24/7, but... I’m sure ya know what I mean). The only problem is that because I was used to seeing what all the a/b/d/l community advertised, I ended up developing a rash the second time I wore and had to learn how to take care of myself properly mostly by myself with the occasional help from Mom and the internet (and literally now is when I see everyone from that community talking about the proper way to do things...).

The day I tried diapers out, I tried out regressing to age 1 to see how I’d like it and well, the rest is history. ;)

Kai relearned of the diapers this month (read it once somewhere on my blog according to Mom, then I had to tell her about a sample pack on the way, and then Mom had to have a conversation with her about it in the car when they were the only ones in there) and said she was cool with it and briefly even began joking about the whole age regression thing (in a friendly way, mind you).

I told Kim, my older sister, about my regression, and she took it wonderfully, of course. I also told a friend of mine about my regression and liking of diapers, who also took it just fine and showed a lot of support for it.

I began to indulge more and more into this and I even had a friend who also age regressed by the end of this month (Rayyyyyyy~).

I went to Florida with Mama, Kai, and a former (? I don’t even know anymore, honestly) friend of Mama’s and it held some interesting adventures there, too! I took Small Elephant places, regressed at the beach twice (@ Kai, psst. Remember when I trapped you in that hug and almost sunk us into the ocean? Well, there’s your reason why), got a Winnie the Pooh book from Goodwill, and indulged in some tasty smiley fries one afternoon! Clearly, this month is one of the best for my age regression. The little girl inside was happy; I was no longer feeling trapped.

August was pretty wild. Small Elephant came with me to Georgia; I don’t think he got to come along on any adventures outdoors, however. I got a jack-in-the-box style toy with a mama kangaroo and her baby joey inside. I also regressed at some point at our cabin and enjoyed running around outside just before a storm blew through. Mom chose to tell someone about my age regression without my permission (talk about a thought to occupy yourself down the lengthy lazy river) and thankfully, that person was fine with it. I was thinking about telling her not too long before, funny enough. I’d prefer permission and a warning before telling someone, though, aha.

I got two “0+ months” pacifiers that month from Mom and literally spent 2 hours sucking on them, save for when I briefly stopped to switch; needless to say, my TMJ relapsed very quickly after around six months of absence of symptoms, aha.

My ex broke up with me (I got with him back in May), despite promising that no breakup would happen 3 days before. This was mostly a good thing, though; no more worrying about how and when to tell him about the diapers and age regression! I’ve been single since and content with it. The thought of telling my future boyfriend(s) this is terrifying, but maybe he’ll be fine with it. Maybe I’ll even meet someone who also likes diapers (nonsexually, mind you) and age regresses as well! I imagine that’s a once in a blue moon thing, though.

We also told Dad about my regression and he took it fine, something that surprised me, as I was genuinely not expecting it. Mom didn’t tell him a lot and eventually, decided to back off for a bit temporarily after mentioning that I “liked to act like a 7/5-year-old sometimes” and that I liked pacifiers and wanted one (this was after I got mine). According to Mom, he didn’t respond to the pacifiers thing and honestly, it’s still kinda scary (if it’s the no reply I think it is, I got him to do it back in October and it’s really unsettling). I don’t know what it means and I don’t think I want to know. He still doesn’t know about the pacifiers to this day. It’s wild.

September held its own adventures. I finally rediscovered an old bag of Mom’s (I mostly remember it because she had it when I was an ‘’actual’’ toddler) and what’s inside? A baby bottle I held on to for three years from when my parents had me treat Puzzle Piece as if he were a baby, thinking it’d rid of my age regression tendencies (if anything, I think this just fed it tbh). I planned to wash it and perhaps try it out or look into a new one.

This also held a notable visit from my older sister. She was told about my liking of diapers and you probably guessed it, her response was coming to my room (I panicked and ran away while she was on the way to the living room after Mom called her in there), giving me a hug, and saying, “I love and support you no matter what you do”. My sisters are great if you can’t tell, and I also mean that outside of agere.

The night before the diaper reveal, Mom noticed me lying on Kim while she rocked the recliner one evening and Mom offered to rock me someday while Dad was gone, something I accepted pretty quickly. I got Mom to rock me for the first time ever two days later. Mom also told me that Dad was fine with the rocking, hence why I was rocked literally right next to him at some point, and he even said he could rock me someday. I don’t think I could do that, though; age regression related stuff is really hard to do around him, and I’d be too worried about his back (he has a bad back).

That month, the day before the rocking part took place, I finally gathered the courage to actually refer to her as “Mommy” on here, along with “Daddy” for Dad. It honestly feels so good to do. I just find it sad I was so scared to use those words at first thanks to the kink/sters. I refer to those two regularly by those titles, mostly to try and reclaim those words as innocent, pure words I call my parents occasionally, rather than terms that are tainted with reminders of ki/nk. Mommy’s easier to use, because I’m closer to Mom than Dad (as of late, that is), and also because “Mommy” isn’t as corrupted as “Daddy”.

I got a Pooh Bear sleeper the day of my second baseball game of the fall season. It’s soft and it makes me feel like a toddler; the only problem is that it’s so easy to overheat in it (which really sucks because I’m hypersensitive to heat and can’t handle getting really hot) and sleepers take up a lot of room in a dresser.

Oh, and this month, Mom called me a nick name she uses for me quite a bit now; “My baby”. Out of all the nicknames I know, I never thought of that. I still melt when she calls me it tbh.

October was a mix, really. I don’t remember a whole lot involving this, really. Rocked by Mom again, got another sleeper, and witnessed Kaiya prove that she was okay with the whole diaper thing by insisting she was fine with it, actually going to the adult diaper aisle with us at Wal-Mart (she stayed a bit away from us, though), and when the cashier bagged the diapers up, she moved so dang fast and had them hidden in no time. I know this because I watched her load other stuff into the cart and she was much more relaxed. I did see her look into the cart at some point before we went to check-out, so perhaps she memorized what the package looked like so she could hide them? Idk if she remembers it or if she’d even want to talk about it, so... Who knows

Towards the end of the month, something began happening. I don’t know what, but it eventually led to me becoming depressed again for a little while, but we’ll discuss that in a few minutes. I discovered I was so indulged in my regression I actually forgot aspects of myself and chose to take a break for a week the next month. I came back feeling better about agere and somewhat better about myself in general. I still don’t understand what happened, but it hasn’t happened again since. Hopefully, it’ll never happen again.

November was a pretty miserable month for me tbh. Has a few good or at least neutral parts, mostly in the beginning, of course. One of these is that I discovered that I can go so deep into my baby mindset (I refer to my 1-year-old self as a baby for brevity) that I’ll chew on things without a thought and well, perhaps that other part’s a bit tmi. I also finally tried out my bottle one evening; very comforting and relaxing.

In the middle of the month, I struggled with accepting that perhaps I did need meds after all (spoiler: I definitely need them) and stress from this, a fixation on childhood trauma, and chores, which were gradually becoming stressful instead of enjoyable, began building up. I began to fall back into a depression, something I was in denial about the entire time.

It was this time that I noticed I was having a harder time regressing, something that was terrifying to me. I was scared that perhaps my regressive side was going dormant; one of my biggest fears is that I stop regressing for good and I was scared that was what was about to happen. That was, until one night, I had an involuntary episode briefly. I didn’t think much of it and went on with my night as normal once it concluded. I don’t know why I didn’t become concerned; involuntary episodes are rare for me, after all. But then, I thought I was about to have a block, so I guess that’s why I thought nothing of it.

I tried my best to cope with everything, but it was futile. One night, just witnessing the dog we were dog-sitting have an accident and having to take all three by myself while they all cried and tried to get out just made me snap, I guess. I fell deeper into my depression, began craving to be an actual baby/young toddler again for the first time in a couple of years, and briefly began having involuntary regression episodes every night. Wearing a diaper to bed and having Small Elephant with me every night for a couple of nights, drinking from my bottle one night, spending more time with my pacifiers, and easing up on everything I could helped pull me out of it.

I still don’t understand what exactly happened, but I hope it never happens again. Also, I guess this confirms that I have involuntary regression episodes when I’m overly stressed. Hopefully the next time this happens, my regressive side will keep me afloat, like it always has.

December was pretty good! I got rocked again by Mom while I was being bottlefed by her, got a new bottle and a toddler snack, and got more toddler snacks later on that day (again, Kaiya moved them to another bag quickly before Mom gave me the bag with them inside). Dad learned about the bottles and snacks and thankfully, is alright with it. I wish it was the same way with diapers. He still doesn’t know about me wearing diapers behind his back, as you probably guessed, and it will stay that way for a while.

I think I kinda cheated another depressive episode, but? It never came. I was just really grumpy and easily upset for a while, to the point of punching my bed and stomping, which I hardly do (heck, I still am as of right now, but it’s calmed down some). I wish whatever my brain’s doing would stop, because it’s getting rather annoying and I’d rather not spend any longer whining frequently and worrying about getting upset to the point of punching or kicking my closet door off its hinges or something. :’)

Christmas was great; I mostly got big girl gifts (see: My new camera) or at least neutral gifts (see: My stim toys and maybe my Pikachu necklace), but I did get a few things that appealed to my regressive side, like a set of five different Paw Patrol puzzles, a penguin plushie with my name written on its tummy (glitter and everything!), and an Animal Jam playset thing!

To end this year off, I got a sippy cup, one of my most-wanted regression items around that time. Now, if only I could actually bring myself to wash my bottle and sippy cup in the dishwasher (they’re top rack safe)... I guess I can start off the new year washing them after I listen to Bring Me to Life or maybe while I’m listening to it, hee hee hee.

As you can see, I had a pretty wild year full of adventures and experiences! You know what? Why don’t I mention some folks who played a role in making this year the best?

Mom - Mom, I think you know how you’ve helped. You’re literally a big aspect in this post. When I was 12, I thought I’d never have your support about all of this, but now, here we are. You’re my mommy and I’m your baby and I always will be. I love you.

Kai - Sis, I think you see your role here, too. I thought you’d never support me, either, but here we are. Thank you for being cool with the diapers and everything else and always being respectful about it. I love you. Also, sorry for almost drowning us that time

Kim - You don’t get on Tumblr anymore, but I figured you deserved your own spot here, anyways. You haven’t gotten to see a lot, but you’ve still been very supportive of all this. Thank you for being fine with it and loving me for who I am, no matter what I choose to do. I love you. Also, I still can’t get over the fact that you seemed to do so good with little me that one time and you didn’t even know I was regressed at the time and you literally treat me how you treated regressed me all the time, but I still can’t get over it

Ray - You were my first friend who also age regressed. Tbh, I’ve admired ya from afar for like, a year before we started talking, but I was always scared to talk to ya. Thank you for being so supportive, helping me out and offering help for things occasionally. Also, thank you again for the regression moodboard ya made in the past for me! I still think about it a lot, and have looked at it so much that I’m pretty sure I have it ingrained into my brain.

Bug - We haven’t known each other for long, but I wanted to say thank you for taking an interest in me and being my friend. You’re adorable and so sweet (and so is your fursona. I love seeing other people’s fursonas, ahhh). My bumblebee plushie told me to tell you he said hi~

Leah - We haven’t known each other for long, either, but you’ve been so sweet to me the entire time we have. Thank you for the times you’ve checked on me when I didn’t seem to be doing so well. We need more people like you. Honestly, your kindness is goals for me; I’m always wanting to be kind at all times and you’ve got that perfect amount, it seems.

All my other followers - I can’t list all of y’all, so I figured y’all should get your own honorable mention in one go~ Some of you I’ve known almost as long as this blog has been around (6 months!), some of you I’ve only recently gotten to know. I don’t know why y’all followed me, but I appreciate it. Thank y’all for following me, sticking around, and just being all-around cool. Y’all are adorable and lovely and I love y’all (and so is everyone else who got a specific mention. Yes, I love you guys, too).

I think 2017 is the best year for my age regression by far and the best year of my life in general. I’ve learned things, laughed, cried, shook from excitement and fear, grinned, and stimmed in many different ways for many different emotions. I can finally be myself without feeling as much shame. An autistic, ADHD teenage girl who is occasionally in diapers and often feels more like a little girl than a teenager sure is an interesting thing to be, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I don’t know what 2018 could bring, but I am ready for whatever it throws at me, whether it be pie (fun fact: I have never eaten pie before), problems with other people about this, or a pack of diapers.

To all my fellow age regressors, I hope 2018 brings you lots of happiness, acceptance for who you are by others and yourself, and anything you may want for your regressive side, whether it be more toys, a sippy cup, or a lot of marathons for your favorite cartoon/anime/TV show. Even if it’s hard for you right now, it will get easier; I promise.

Happy new year!! Stay little/tiny/smol.

#Chloe babbles #Warning to those who click: Get ready for The Longest Tumblr Post In History #I'm serious. I'm surprised my browser never crashed or froze while I was writing this #Anyways. Thanks to all those who were involved in this year and made it great~#I'm gonna be going quiet for the rest of the evening because this seems like the perfect way and post to end this year on #I'll see y'all next year!!! Get it?? Hee hee hee :3c

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

Text

800 questions part 8

351) Are you a gossip? No, I wouldn’t say that. A gossiper is described as someone who “casually and eagerly talks about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.” That kind of person likes to talk about everyone all the time and spread rumors. That’s not me. I can’t say I never engage in it, but I don’t go around spreading lies and eagerly talk about everyone. If I share something it’s usually something I know to be true like, “did you hear so and so is pregnant” or “so and so is dating so and so.” Stuff like that. Also, I’m more into hearing celebrity gossip stuff.

352) Have you ever cried at a film? Yeah. I’ve only literally cried during a few, though.

353) When you’re ill do you struggle on regardless or just curl up in bed as much as possible? I used to be one who pushed through and still got done what I needed to. Back in like 2012 I was dealing with something that made me pretty sick often, like actual fevers and stuff, but I kept going to school anyway. I remember feeling like absolute death and getting the chills during class, stepping outside to pop a couple Tylenol, and then going on about my day. I was dealing with other stuff as well and legit didn’t feel well, but the show went on. And back then I had to take the bus to and from school often, which meant I was dependent on a schedule that wasn’t very convenient for me. I couldn’t just come and go whenever I pleased, I had to wait around for awhile. Now? I couldn’t do that. I spend majority of my time in bed and don’t feel well a lot of the time. I don’t get shit done anymore.

354) Do you need to write down things to remember them? I use the notes and reminder app for important stuff.

355) Do you keep a diary/journal? This is it.

356) Are you scared of thunderstorms? I enjoy them.

357) Do you have any unusual fears or phobias? Yes.

358) What’s your favorite Disney movie? I enjoy a lot of Disney movies, but a few of my favorites are Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, and Toy Story.

359) Have you ever slept in a caravan? No.

360) Have you ever painted a house? Nope.

361) Have you got green fingers? No? Or are you referring to having a green thumb? In which case, also no.

362) What’s the tallest tree you’ve ever climbed? I’ve never climbed a tree. I can’t.

363) Have you ever dialed the talking clock? What?

364) Do you always wear identical socks? Yes.

365) Do you live by any motto or philosophy? Eh.

366) Do you lick the yogurt or dessert lid? No.

367) Do you lick the spoon clean after making something sweet? I did when I was a kid.

368) Do you like the sound of music? (the musical/film) Yeah.

369) Have you ever made your own orange juice? No. I don’t like orange juice.

370) Have you ever sucked on a lemon? Yeah. One of my favorite snacks as a kid around Christmastime something my mom showed me and we had every year, which was putting a candy cane (biting off both ends to make a straw) into a lemon and sucking the juice from it. Something about the peppermint and lemon juice together was really good.

371) Have you ever licked a battery? No.

372) Are you a good aim with a rubber band? I don’t shoot rubber bands around, but my aim is horrible in general so I know I wouldn’t be.

373) Have you ever played golf? I played mini golf once when I was a kid.

374) What’s the most unusual name you’ve ever come across? Hmm.

375) Do you prefer to wash in the mornings or evenings? At night.

376) Have you ever danced in the rain? Yeah.

377) Do you like long or short hair? I prefer long hair on myself.

378) Have you ever sworn at an authority figure? No.

379) Have you ever walked into a wall? Yeah lol.

380) What’s your favorite precious metal? Gold.

381) What’s your favorite precious stone? Amethyst.

382) Could you ever hunt your own meal? No.

383) Have you ever read any comics? When I was a kid I used to love reading the comics in the newspaper.

384) Where do you like to go to on a first date? A coffee shop is nice.

385) Do you prefer vertical or horizontal stripes? Horizontal.

386) Have you ever baked your own bread? No.

387) Can you believe I can’t believe it’s not butter is in fact not actually butter? Yeah. Still good, though. *shrug*

388) Can you name all 50 American states? Yep and in alphabetical order.

389) Have you ever owned a goldfish? Yes.

390) What was your favorite school subject? English.

391) What was your least favorite school subject? Math, always. I hated math.

392) Have you ever passed wind in an embarrassing situation? Nooo.

393) Have you ever played the bongos? No.

394) Have you ever handled a snake? NOOOO. I would never.

395) Have you ever assembled furniture by yourself? Yeah, super simple stuff like an end table where you literally just screw the legs on.

396) When did you last go to the beach? September of last year. I miss the beach D:

397) When if ever did you last go to London? Never been, but I’d love to go.

398) What do you do to cool down when it’s hot? I keep my fans on and I have this mister fan thing that I use constantly.

399) What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten? I don’t really tend to try and eat unusual things. My palate is not that developed. Haha. <<< lol, same. I’m super picky and boring. I eat the same few things all the time.

400) Do you have a favorite mug? My Peter Pan mug. It’s cute.

#personal #text #survey #surveys #800 questions #351-400

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cmfrtlvls · 5 years

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Jasmine G

Basic Background Jasmine, 1991

Born in Singapore, left to HongKong at 8.

Not even knowing the geography of the world.

Where do you prefer the most and why?

There are places I would rather not commit to. Singapore is still a part of my heart.

Only reason why I live in Toronto is because of school, my partner and 3 years visa in Canada.

I ended up staying in Toronto for 9 years.

The easier ones I could tell you is where I would rather not stay, because I have lived in 4 different countries in my lifetime. I have lived 5 years in Hong Kong and I would never want to live there again. Despite the face that I really like the city, however I don’t think I can’t work there, it’s too fast paced! The thought of spending another few more years there scares me because I live based on practicality.

In Singapore can reach out more to Asian writers and also english speaking.

Singapore has great variety of food, balance in nature and city. If I need a short getaway I can head out to nearby countries at a affordable price where else in Toronto going to Vancouver alone cost SGD 500 and it’s still in Canada. Everything else is very far away and it takes a lot of planning to leave Toronto.

I’m biologically build for this country, I have a family here, but I never got to go to schools in Singapore.

Perks of growing up that way

You grow up to be practical. There is no such thing as “a dream come true”

Every city has different challenges and problems. You will see all the issues of the locals 2 years later. To the point it doesn’t matter anymore which country you live in because they have different challenges to tackle. The less ideas you have the less disappointed you are.

How did you feel when you had to change cities?

It was not my choice to change countries. Especially when a 8 years old child does not even understand basic geography because where you live is all that you know. I don’t know how to think about it. Even showing a map to a child is something I cannot reconcile. Too young to feel any loss for Singapore. If my dad were to move out of the country alone, I would definitely feel the emotional impact. Instead the whole family moved together so it felt like we are embarking onto a new adventure.

Thats when I started writing. My friends in Singapore and I would exchange letters to each other. They would exchange newspaper clippings of things happening around Singapore. My favourite memory is when the Hello Kitty soft toy were a thing in Singapore. They broke another window when the Hello Kitty dolls were sold out. I eventually received a Hello Kitty doll from my friends. Even a Winnie the Pooh series! I would also send back letters to them, sharing with them how I saw snow for the first time There’s a lot of continuity and a strong social bond between me and my friends. This is literally a physical Facebook!

On School

From age 0 till 17, I was in Singapore for my first 8 years. Then in China for 4 and a half years. Then Hong Kong for 5 years. My first 2-3 years in Hong Kong I was really shy, only got really comfortable at the last 2 years of being there. So I was in 3 different schools, in 3 different countries. Times are not correct, I switched schools in grade 3, then I switched schools in

grade 8.

School was a lot more difficult as school semester in China is different. They Start in September.

I’m never really chatty most of the time because I could not find my comfort spot. I only started being comfortable in the last 3 years. I was that awkward, nerdy and studious kid. I was made fun for being isolated by my “friends”. Usually I am more sensitive than I am now.

If we were to go back in time, I went to China when I was 8 in January. China’s school system usually start in September. Where else in Singapore you start in January and end in November. So by the time I moved the classes were already formed, I was squeezed into the middle of the school system. It was very awkward and weird, what makes it weirder was that I was the youngest in the class, as I am a December baby.

I was a very studious, awkward and nerdy kid. I got bullied a lot, all the years I was in school. To some of my classmates or friends, they would say that I never seemed to get bullied. But in my experience I always felt like I am very isolated from “my friends”. Many of them are not very kind, they have very strong personalities. I was a lot more sensitive compared to most of the kids over there. In percentage it would be 50% by 100%.

So I moved from China to Hong Kong at grade 8. At grade 7 when I learned that we had to move to Hong Kong, I was so pissed at my Dad. Because at that point I felt like I finally made some real friends in China. So I was already comfortable with the environment. I was not a minority in China as there are actually a lot of Singaporeans living there as well.

Explaining why I am such an awkward kid is that in China we have a class where we have to do short plays as part of the learning experience, like recreating the scene of “Mulan”. Everyone had to participate, get into groups, make costumes and write a script. They encourage this interactive style of learning. I was really really bad at this, I’m so shy! This shyness persisted all the way to University. International school system are mostly very flexible, so the teachers come out with more creative ways to teach and have fun with the class. If you see me in this situation you would see this as the prime example to my awkwardness. In kindergarten and primary school, I learn at the desk I was not encouraged to do things that are active. All these turn of events has made me self conscious.

The funny thing that I went through when I keep switching schools is that I missed sex education classes. The school that I go to in China, they did sex education classes in grade 8. In the schools in Hong Kong was grade 7. So I totally missed it. By the time I moved there were already done. So I never learn this in the classroom with other people. I didn’t even realise that I missed the class, my classmates will just be like “ Oh hahaha you did not go for the sex ed class” And I only thought about it when school ended. But it didn’t affect me at all because there is so many ways to learn it, my parents would talk to me about it. I’m not sure if they did that on purpose, but I think they anticipated that I would miss the class.

In international schools it’s just not you who leave. Your friends leave too. Everyone leaves all the time. The class arrangement is always different every year. At least someone who is absent and some who are new. That has always been the way since I started moving. When I took my graduation photos in grade 12, we started a thing where those people who are in grade 1 would take one, those people in grade 2 take one, so we take from grade 1 all the way to grade 12. You will see a sequence of 12 photos, will almost different people. I was only in from grade 7 to grade 12. It’s quite unique in the way we take our graduation photo and we became so used to seeing people come and go.

Did you ever thought “What if my parents did not move out of the country?”

A lot of times! My school experiences was relatively quite a common experience.

What I think not many would experience is that I move around 4 different countries 14 times. Because of the nature of my Dad’s work, we constantly looking for houses to move into so that the rent would stay within the budget that was given to my Dad. The places we moved around are all expensive estates. Since we shift every 2 years, I have become very skilled in packing and unpacking. Our whole family become skilled house movers. We pack almost everything in a box, even the furnitures are being packed.

On moving around the world

A lot of people think we have very little things but in actual fact we really hold on to the little things that allow us to keep things closest to us. We are always in a new room every 2 years. If not all the places we are in will not feel like a home.

The first thing I always do is unpack all posters and hang them up. Then some stuff that people has given to me all over the years from school.

Every time whenever we prepare to move, my parents would take out the boxes that belongs to me and just say, "Whatever you can clear, please clear.” They don’t care anymore. This is the only way I have known to do all these stuff. My feelings has become very numb. It is how it is.

The packing thing is really substantial until I got my own apartment in Toronto in 2011 and I live in that apartment ever since. When I moved out of it after 3 years of living there, it is the first time I cried because it was my first time living somewhere for so long. I felt so much compared to any other houses that I moved all over the years.

Even though I don’t remember so much, I was in Jurong until I was 6. And then we moved to Bukit Panjang when I was 7-8. I only lived in that house for 2 years. Currently the home in Bukit Panjang is being rented out. We don’t have anything that belongs to us in that house now. My parents are also very attached to that place.

Ever since I left to Hong Kong, I only slept on mattresses in my own house. I don’t have a bed anymore, a proper room for 3 months. Even if that is my own home, there is no space that I can say it’s mine.

Things get left behind, lost or broken. That’s why we eventually got detached to our things years later. The first couple of times I cried when these things happen. After a while it is like “Will I live after that?”

I don’t get homesick anymore, but I when I do I never been so far away from Asia. It’s very different, when you move around Asia to moving all the way to North America. It’s completely two different continents. The way you speak, the music you listen to, the kind of art you like will all be different. When you think of all of that, how do you think of having a conversation with another person? Those are the simplest things to socialise with people, like “What do you like to eat?” “Where do you like to go?”

I didn’t really feel completely unhappy moving around so much. It created a certain type of attitude towards moving around. As long as my family is always together as we move, it was always helpful for me to cope.

How to you feel when people see you differently?

When people ask me where I am from, where your parents at, it’s such a complicated question.

A lot of people do ask me if I’m Canadian, I will usually say “Not yet” or just “No”

As I get older the less emotional I feel about these questions. It is part of a detachment.

And no I never plan to change my nationality, I’m never really defined by it. Being Singaporean has it’s convenience and perks. I want to keep the tie to south east Asia than being Canadian.

A lot of international students in Canada, they only hang out with the other international kids because you really can’t blame them for that. People will naturally ask “Why are they not integrating?”

You are already hanging out in the new city, you have to do things like study. you want something to anchor you, so you will pick friends who will support you, understand you. When you say you are homesick for this specific smell. People who don’t know have no idea they cannot help you in the way. I find the lack of knowledge bit jarring.

People come to Canada to experience Canada but some people come to Canada because they are told their whole life that they need to study this way. There is many reasons why people go out of the country to study.

I am definitely more sympathetic when I see a big group of international students gather together. However I don’t really fit that pose because maybe they only have moved around once, mostly a lot lesser than me. I had one experience when we were in Toronto, my sister join this club called the Malaysian Singapore Students Association. It never occurred to me that I should join it because I thought, “Would I even get along with the Singaporeans or the Malaysians? I don’t have a matching culture either, neither the Canadian culture” I make a lot of friends who are english speaking cantonese people. Not cantonese cantonese people, because that’s a totally different culture. In the end all our friends would be scattered all over the countries, I had 8 friends from high school who I still keep in touch over Skype and they are all in different parts of the world.

This is something that happens to me a lot here. When people say a Singlish slang, they would ask “You understand or not?” If it was me 6 years ago I would say, “Why do you think I don’t understand?!” If I haven’t live here for like a few months doesn’t mean I don’t understand, my family is Singaporean. Now fast forward I am more honest about it, by just saying “YA” or “No, don’t know about it” The truth is I have a lot of gaps. Some people would ask me about how some Singlish slangs work and I would not be able to answer it. “I also don’t know!”

People both in Canada and Singapore find it fascinating how I can switch my accent so fast within a sentence. It’s not some party trick that I use for parties or for drunk people, whenever people say things like, “Oh you’re from Singapore LAH” or "Oh can you say something in Singlish?” I just tell them “NO, no is said the same way in every language. Does that sound Singlish to you?” I don’t need to perform like a monkey just because I switch accent quickly.

The more people don’t know. You’re tired and you’re angry and you wonder why people don’t understand. Most of the time in my case. they really don’t understand. When I was in school in Toronto a lot of people came from small towns in other parts of Canada. This roommate of mine from America, she had never had cooked vegetables before. The kind of vegetables she eat is frozen cube peas and carrot. The kind that is in your pies, it’s either that rubbery stuff or salad. I was actually shocked that someone has not tried blanched broccoli or the many gajillian ways you can cook vegetables, boiled or stir fried. I just decided “Come, let me bring you to a Chinese restaurant, LET ME SHOW YOU THE WORLD.” There are these fundamental feels that you cannot bridge the experience, because a lot of these people would think that “Wow your life sounds so colourful!" "It sounds like a Princess!” (Annoying I know) And people constantly praise for my good english. Ask why do I speak such good english, sometimes that is also a good way to talk about Singapore because it is a English speaking country. They are always shocked to learn that Singapore is a English speaking country because it has never occurred to them that there will be English speaking countries in Asia.

I always believe in giving inexperience people a first time grace. This is something I want to offer to people so that they can understand and open their worlds a little bit more. I understand how weird it is from parts of my own experience.

What is your plan for the next 5 years?

No concrete plans. Make money. Do things I like that I won’t be able to do when I’m older. making more reckless or inconsiderate career choices because right now i’m the only one affected. i guess a positive way of saying it is taking risks.

my plan for the next 5 years is to take lots of risks. :D

(ps: Did 2 versions because 1 did not have any resemblance of her then)

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foundrequiem · 7 years

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tagged by @poledancingghostson (: Basically, answer the questions I added at the end, then come up with your own 10 questions and tag people.

1) If you could go back in time to see any one concert, who would you see? Anyone?? Queen probably, or The Beatles. Some older band y’know.

2) Do you have any collections? If so, what do you collect? I guess I collect mugs lmao. I bought a couple over in NYC and I just buy ones I like. Also Funko pops bc why not.

3) What was the name of your favorite stuffed animal as a kid? Ruff-ruff!! It was this raggy toy dog I had and I loved it.

4) Which Winnie the Pooh character is your favorite? Eeyore because I had a toy of him when I was younger, and he’s just too relatable.

5) What do you watch to cheer yourself up when you’re stressed or sad? Probably either vine compilations or videos of my faves singing.

6) Which is more satisfying: An ice cold drink on a hot day or a hot drink in a mug on a cold day? Ahhh both honestly, but I’m gonna say an ice cold drink on a hot day just because it’s almost summer in Aus and it’ll be so HOT.

7) Favorite part about the holiday season? Spending time with my family!! My family is a big part of my life and it’s always nice just having us all together fucking around.

8) Would you rather a small apartment in the center of the city, a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, or a mansion in the country? A small apartment in the centre of the city all the fuCKING way.

9) What’s your preferred form of public transportation? I hate all public transportation, but I’d say bus just because it’s the one I take most often.

10) Describe the best trip you have ever taken. Who was it with? Where did you go? Etc. New. York. City. It was my literal dream come true. It was with my dad and my aunt (although she was kind of the worst). We went to New York just over a month ago and it was just holy shit. It was so amazing to see all the sort of touristy things and walk around Times Square and Broadway and ahhhh.

My questions:

1) If you got the chance to hang out with any of your favourite people, who would it be? 2) Favourite time of day? 3) Favourite tv show as a child? 4) Favourite musical artist/band? 5) Do you play a sport? If yes, what? If no, what would you want to try? 6) Favourite season and why? 7) Something you wish the schooling system understood better? 8) Favourite underrated song or album? 9) Summer clothes or winter clothes, and why? 10) Dream holiday! Where, who would you go with, how long would you stay for, etc.

I guess I’ll tag @just-a-sad-invention @munchiezxx @bookstobands but you don’t have to answer any of these if you don’t want to lmao.

#this was so much effort #ahh #oh well #here you go #i'm awful at answering things

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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Disney Animated Theme Asks

Snow White & the Seven Dwarves: Which one of the seven dwarves are your favorite? Dopey and Sleepy. Pinocchio: How often do you lie? Why do you do it? I downplay things more often, but sometimes I lie. It’s generally about how I’m feeling. Dumbo: Have you ever been to the circus before? When I was a kid. I’d never go now. Bambi: Are deer your favorite forest animal? If not, which is? Sure. Cinderella: Have you ever broken your curfew when you were younger? What happened? I never had a curfew, my parents never had to set one. I was a homebody as a teenager, too. I didn’t have much of a social life. I had friends, but we just hung out at school.

Alice in Wonderland: What would you do if you fell down a rabbit hole? I mean, I do in the sense of I get caught up videos or reading stuff online all the time. I go from one thing to another. If I literally fell down a rabbit hole, well, I can’t imagine it’d feel too great. I don’t what I would or could do. Peter Pan: Are you all grown up? In which ways do you still remain child-like? Technically, yes. I’m almost 31 years old. But I don’t exactly feel grown up. I have a lot of growing up to do still. And besides the fact I have bills to pay, I don’t really feel very adult like. But then I always say how I’m so old and feel old in some ways. I don’t know, it’s complicated.

Lady & the Tramp: Have you ever shared a piece of spaghetti with someone before? No. Sleeping Beauty: What’s the longest period of time you’ve ever slept for before? Hmm. When I’m really sick I pretty much sleep all day. I mean, I get up at times to try and eat and drink, take my medicine, and use the restroom, but most of the day is spent just sleeping. There were also times when I wasn’t sick that I slept for like 12 hours or so. Then there’s the times after I’ve had surgery where I sleep full days away. 101 Dalmatians: Do you like Dalmatians? Which breed of dogs do you prefer, if any? Dalmatians are beautiful dogs. My favorite breeds are Labs and German Shepherds. Those are the dogs I’ve had and I just love them. The Sword in the Stone: Have you ever tried your hand at jousting before? Nope. The Jungle Book: Have you ever wanted to visit a jungle before? No. The Aristocats: What is your favorite type of cat breed? Black cats are cool. Robin Hood: Who is your trusty sidekick? My doggo. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Who is your favorite character from Winnie-the-Pooh? That silly, willy, nilly ol’ bear. The Rescuers: Have you ever been rescued before? From what? Well, when my accident happened I certainly was. The Fox and the Hound: Do you prefer foxes or hounds? Why? Hounds. I just love doggos. The Black Cauldron: Have you ever wanted to become a knight? No. The Great Mouse Detective: Have you ever wanted to become a detective before? I loved books like Nancy Drew as a kid and I love reading murder mysteries now and trying to figure out what’s going on, as well as with mystery shows and movies. I wouldn’t want to actually be a detective, though. Oliver & Company: Have you ever seen a lost kitten before? What did you do? I’ve seen many stray cats.

The Little Mermaid: Do you enjoy swimming? No. Beauty and the Beast: Have you ever fallen for someone unattractive before? The guys I’ve liked were all attractive to me. Aladdin: If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be? An end to this virus and pandemic, good health (mentally and physically), and money. The Nightmare Before Christmas: Do you prefer Halloween or Christmas more? I love Christmastime, but I really get into ~spooky~ season as well. The Lion King: Have you ever been tricked before? Yes. A Goofy Movie: What’s the most outlandish thing that you’ve ever promised a crush before? I don’t think I’ve promised a crush anything outlandish. I don’t know if I’ve promised one anything. Pocahontas: Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was in the army? No. Toy Story: What did your parents do with your toys once you got to be too old for them? Do you still have any toys from your childhood? We gave a lot away, but I still have my Barbies and some other things. The Hunchback of Notre Dame: How have you established your own independence? I don’t really feel like I have... Hercules: Has there ever been a scenario in which you were a hero to someone? I’m no hero. Mulan: Have you ever fought in a war or know someone that has? I’ve known some people, yes. A Bug’s Life: What’s your favorite bug/insect, and why? Ew, NONE. Tarzan: What is something you’ve discovered about yourself? Nothing good... Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Where would you like to go exploring? I want to travel all over. Monsters Inc: Have you ever scared children before? What did you do? Aww, no, I wouldn’t do that. Lilo & Stitch: Have you ever had an unusual pet before? What was it? Nope. Treasure Planet: If you could create a planet, what would you name it, and what would life be like there? Uhh. I have no idea. Finding Nemo: Have you ever visited Australia before? Would you want to? Why or why not? No, but I’d love to. Sounds and looks like a cool place to visit. Brother Bear: Have you ever gone hunting before? For what? No.

Teacher’s Pet: Have you ever wanted to be something you’re not? A functioning, happy, successful adult. Home on the Range: Have you ever been to a farm or lived on a farm before? I’ve been to one, yes. The Incredibles: What would you like your superpower to be? Teleportation. Valiant: Have you ever been delivered a message via a homing pigeon? Uh, no. Chicken Little: Have you ever had your reputation ruined? By whom? I’ve ruined my own the past few years because of the shitty person I’ve been. The Wild: Have you ever been to Africa before? Would you like to go? I’d love to see Giraffe Manor. Cars: Have you ever watched races before? My dad loves Nascar, but I never could get into it. I just find it very boring. Meet the Robinsons: What would you do/where would you go if you had a time machine? I’d love to go back to my childhood. Ratatouille: Have you ever wanted to be a chef before? What would be your signature dish? Ha, no. I’m no cook. Although, I think I make a pretty good bowl of ramen. haha. Wall-E: If you were able to build a robot, what would you want it to be able to do for you? Get me coffee and food. Bolt: Have you ever gone cross-country? To where? I’ve flown to Georgia from California, which are opposite sides of the country. Up: What is one place that you’ve always wanted to go to that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet? A lot of places in the US and other countries. The Princess & the Frog: How many frogs did you need to kiss in order to find your current prince/princess? I haven’t found him, yet. Tangled: Have you ever spent your entire life somewhere, feeling as though you were unable to escape? Yes. I feel that way in life, in my mind, and in this city. My family and I have wanted to move for several years, but we haven’t been able to. Mars Needs Moms: What would you do if you ever came face-to-face with a Martian? Uh, I’d be terrified to say the least. Arjun: The Warrior Prince: Do you have any experience with archery? Are you any good at it? Nope. Brave: Would you consider yourself to be a brave person? Why or why not? No. I’m weak and scared. Frankenweenie: Have you ever had to deal with the loss of a pet? Yes, a couple times. Wreck-It Ralph: What is your favorite video game? Have you beat it? I love Mario Bro games, many of which I’ve beat. I’ve also been enjoying Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I don’t think it’s the type of game you beat. Planes: Have you ever been in an airplane before? Where did you go? Yeah, a few times. To Georgia and back and to LA and back. Frozen: Do you prefer the ice and snow to other weather elements? Yes, and rain. I love cold weather. I despise summer. Big Hero 6: Do you have anyone in your life who is your hero? Who is someone that you look up to? My mom. Inside Out: Which emotion do you experience most frequently? Sadness, moodiness, irritability. The Good Dinosaur: What is your favorite type of dinosaur? I don’t have one. Zootopia: What is your favorite zoo animal? Giraffes. Moana: Do you ever feel as though you’ve been cursed? I don’t believe in curses. Coco: What instrument would you like to learn how to play? I wish I kept up with piano and took it more seriously back when I played. It’s been over 10 years since the last time I played. :( Onward: If you could bring one person back to life and spend the day with them, who would it be? If nothing weird happened and they’d be the same person they were before in terms of personality and such and she wasn’t sick or in pain like she was, then I’d love to spend a day with my grandma again. It’s been almost 15 years since she’s passed, SO much has happened. She and I were very close, I’d love to be able to talk with her again about things. I’d love to hear her stories again and her jokes. She had the best sense of humor. I’d love to just hear her voice and her laugh again. [a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

#personal #text #survey #surveys #disney

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