#i was already falling out of my homestuck phase when i started this thing

[cgerice]

Awww hell yeah, it totally paid off, cool points restored, thank god nobody—ah shit, ah fuck you were caught being sweet noooo

part 3 of 3

[lgalacticjayl]

Homestuck review pt.2 Beta kids

Spolier warning! And i am not finished the series yet so these are inital thoughts stream of consciousness style and just my opinion .

Lets talk about the beta kids!

First off they are portrayed pretty well in the fandom in my opinion. As being kids that kinda just got dragged into this but each taking it very differently. I Love the similarites between them with very wild realtionships with their caregivers is portrayed right off the bat but they are kids so their veiws of their caregivers are probably very different to how they actually act. As John later realizes his dad does have clowns to mock him but to try and make him feel seen.

Speaking of lets talk about John. As he is a kinda stereotypical main charcter kinda feel sometimes he definitely grows and you can see his personality in the things he is passionate about. His movies of course and his love for his friends. He really does subconscious pull the team together almost but really all of them somehow just work really well as a team anyways. John just seems like a very optimistic person and is very willing to accept most things even if he doesn't fully understand, seen in his alternate timeline where he died fighting the denizen and vriska shows him around. He is very ready to treat everyone as a friend no matter what they do. Vriska literally got him killed and he was still understanding that thats what had to happen. He just seems pretty calm in new situations but has his moments of just being a kid and goofy off, creating his pogo hammer, but can get pretty serious when it needs to be, when he wakes up on his sinking bed in the oil ocean was probably the closest he's come to like freaking out completely. He gets done what needs to get done and I respect him alot for that. His is very trusting which I personally don't love the trust he puts in Vriska as her motives are pretty self serving in the beginning. Him and Dave are fun to see interact cuz they've been friends forever and just goof around and make fun of each other but there is still a lot of respect. I do love his sibling relationship with Jade a lot. I just love good sibling representation thats not just fighting iver stupid stuff all the time cuz it reminds me of me and my sister's relationship. Conclusion John is a good boy doing his best.

Speking of Jade lets move on to her. Lovely gal at first I related to her cuz she just kept taking naps as i also can fall alseep literally anywhere. I fell alseep during a final last year for like a ten minute nap then just kept doing the test. I did actually cosplay jade as my first homestuck cosplay but only cuz I already had everything I needed. Anyway jade is a very sweet girl and I see her as very unafraid and willing to do anything almost like john, which is kinda why their dynamic works so well. The best jade moment so far is when she took off all her reminders cuz she felt she was no longer the one who knows all in the group and starts to actually share her feelings. Her yelling at Karkat is so good and like yess Jade! I love the stuffed octopi and would love to try and make them as well. Also her kinda being a furry is very fun. She comes off as very whimsical as she basically knows everything that will and did happen because she's the first to awaken in her dream but later as she doesn't know everything she seems like she's just trying her best to fully grasp this because she realizes that her dreams aren't just silly things but are very important. She also basically raised herself and fends for herself which i very strong and smart for a 13 year old and she kinda has to learn on her own. I also just love the frog aspect of the game and as a space player myself would love to breed frogs.

Now Rose another very powerful character like Jade but still very different. She seems to just soak in knowledge like a human sponge as many people do with things they are interested it. From the beginning Rose has wanted to know everything about this game and diverts in her original plan just to study more. She goes to being the most knowledgeable almost the opposite of Jade and kinda controls some major things from behind the scenes. Like John accidentally picking hammerkind her combining probably her 2 favorite items to make the grimdark needles has significant effect on the story. Her demeanor doesn't seem to change as she is still elegant and not too emotional in her speech but you can tell she got her self into some deep dark stuff like most teens getting into their emo phase but this has a huge impact on ending the game and potentially saving everyone. She feels she is the only one capable to complete the mission and tricks Dave so she can sacrifice herself something a young teen should not have to consider. She also tries to fight Jack at some point even tho she knows he will win. She is very thoughtful and planned out in every situation and I love that.

Now on to some of y'alls favorite Dave. I know a lot of gay/transmac people really conect with dave and as transmac myself i can see why but its hard to explain. Even tho he isn't said to be gay or trans his experience can be tied to a lot of things. He is very stoic all the time and I think he's been conditioned into not showing emotions cuz of Bro and he looks up to Bro as his only family figure. Like he does tey to seem cool with rapping and swords and while he succeeds and i think he does truly enjoy them he also sees them as his only way to be cool. Like for art for me I do enjoy it but I understand that there is also a level of attention i do want from it. Sorry this got a bit personal im realizing im relating to these characters too much. Anyway Dave does seek out reason for his actions and doesn't just intuitively follow them. He is actually smart even tho he has like a dumb boy persona going on but like he has to keep up with all these timelines. He also has a truly terrible moral dilemma when terezi makes him kill him and thats not something ordinary teens should have to go through. That and his grieving period when he finds bro dead are the rare times that he shows his emotions, through actions rather than words. And they are powerful moments. Hes not some emotionless cool guy hes a human child.He also has to literally mentor himself at somepoint and spends the most time in the game through time travel.

This event is traumatic for all of them in very different and similar ways and they all grow and learn so much its way more than I did at 13, It's powerful.

I will probably do the trolls next and some more characters then I would love to get into my thoughts on some specific events

[nivq87]

I tried to write a tag post last night but I had too many and it got cut off and my head hurt so I just deleted it but the tl;dr is I finally finished the candy route of the epilogues it was a lot more depressing than I thought it was gonna be

long aimless ramble under the cut

like, idk back when it was new I remember some folks saying it was like as syrupy as the route name would imply and so I inferred it was gonna get real trickstery and then it never did? I think it was about page 20/41 that I realized that it wasn’t gonna go down like that. I didn’t get very far when it was new because I still had some bitter feelings because of meat and the whole tone was just really alienating for some reason. I’ve left the tab open and pinned this whole time, and over the few couple months i’d been reading a page here and there when the mood would strike me, and it would still be just as bizarre as I’d left it, so i’d stop.

Last night I was just in the right mood for something crack and stupid and decided to brace for that kinda vibe and just finish it. Partially because I’m a bit curious about whatever the hell is going on with homestuck2 and want the context, and also because I still had at the bottom of my emails a few ao3 notices about some people’s reaction fic to the epilogues that I wanted to be able to have context for, Especially FRIENDFICTION by oxfordroulette, which already sounded conceptually hilarious, like most things she writes are.

But yeah, going in I expected it to feel like shitty hello kitty bandaid on some wounds that probably need stitches, but the whole vibe just felt super depressing and bleak. Not even just the john parts, all of them. The whole time I was absently thinking of that jane line about dirk’s detective pony edit, how it was cathartic in all the worst ways, and I could relate to that sentiment.

and while I was typing my post last night, I was also thinking about that pbs youtube think channel that was my first introduction to homestuck, and how they compared it to this novel Ulysses, because it was also just real long and on some level a chore to get through. I don’t remember my exact train of thought that got me there to that video again, but I watched the video again just now to try and remember why and:

a) lmao that novel is only 265k words, granted it’s like real dense words, some of which the author made up

b) wow would I even have got to this point in my life if I hadn’t found that channel and watched that video? it was sept 2012 and I remember starting homestuck a month later, getting caught up by thanksgiving, and idr the connecting reasons but I ended up seeking out fan art on DA, which led to me seeing fanfic on DA, and then to ao3 and tumblr, and by the time my birthday rolled around that january I was waiting outside in the cold for the lecture hall to open up just SUPER JAZZED because the serendipity gospels updated. Like, that fall and winter was a real swan dive into a different phase of my life that, if it hasn’t ended yet, sure lasted a long while. The only other medias that have held my attention so long and so consistently have been also fun garbage world of warcraft, and totally not garbage avatar the last airbender and discworld.

c) I keep having this ephemeral thought that I keep wanting to put here, but as soon as I think it I end up on a tangent thought and promptly forget it. Idk, I guess just feeling kinda nostalgic for 2012-14 era homestuck fandom.

meh, anyway this was supposed to be about candy, but like usual i got sidetracked. thinking about other things. but yeah this morning now that my head wasn’t hurting I read those upd8 fics that were languishing in my emails, and they were certainly a lot of fun. I keep feeling like I need to ascribe worth to it, like were those fics worth having powered through the epilogues, and I don’t quite know where this thought is coming from. I feel like I am pretty good at dropping medias as soon as they stop being enjoyable for me, and I guess my feelings about the epilogues are just kinda complicated. Like, maybe I should have just tapped out and moved on, but there’s still parts of the fandom that hold my interest which I guess make it not so simple. I still want to know what’s gonna happen next, but I guess my initial bitterness at it not living up to my expectations at that time just, appropriately, put homestuck on hiatus for myself.

I’m lowkey reminded that after terry pratchett died, I finally got my hands on the science of discworld books, but I have never read them, because then after I do, there will really be nothing left, and I guess the idea that there’s still something left on the horizon is a small comfort, it’s not over yet. but there’s probably no reason to hold back on homestuck because last night I was also thinking of post about how hussie has shown that he sucks at endings, and has realized that he doesn’t have to work out how to do a satisfying ending if he just never lets it end.

I really wish tumblr didn’t eat the last 5 tags on the post I made last night because now that i’m more awake and in less head pain, trying to rewrite the post has quadrupled its length, and while I think I hit most of my original thoughts, it certainly got away from me too. really wish I could remember what I wanted to put down at c).

[phasefuck-moved]

Can you tell us some about your selfship w/ Jack :0 like how you two met (can be actually how you found out about the character or an in universe thing if you have one), what you love the most about each other, and maybe your favorite thing to do together?

Boy I might ramble so let me put this under the Cut ft. suitable image that describes the mood.

I answer all ur points so- how i found jack (also how i found blands)- about my self insert- what i love abt him

So like. I’ll start with how I found Jack cos that’s always a fun story to tell. Jump back to late 2014, like November-December, FNAF fandom was having it’s first stagnant phase, and I wasn’t back into Homestuck yet. I spent most of my time watching youtubers like Markiplier and RPGMinx, anyone I found from FNAF videos basically. So like all the people that played Prop Hunt together on those channels, I found them all and watched them all. Was also a time that I watched people on Twitch when I really ran out of shit to watch. 

So it’s like, late November, first week of December, can’t remember which, was browsing Twitch for something to watch, saw Cryotic was streaming and was like “hey I know that person they don’t stream too much I think I’ll watch them”. Cry was playing TFTBL Ep1. I watched like, from the point where Rhys and Vaughn enter Shade’s lil place. And I think I went to bed before it finished. Went to school the next day and talked to a friend about it, telling them about this new game I saw, my friend knew it too so we talked about it for a while. By December 10th, I’d bought the game, and by December 20th, I had all of the Borderlands games.

So how did I actually find out about Jack and fall for that idiot? Well my stupid ass didn’t meet him in TFTBL because I finished the first episode AFTER starting the other games. So I actually met him in TPS. On Christmas Eve. I was Hooked. Because I played like, all the starts of the games before I played the endings, I still knew he was gonna be a terrible shitty idiot. 

At the time I was going through some bad shit, like I’m sure it was the midpoint between two major points of abuse in my life, so I was already diving into coping mechanisms and recently was self shipping again, so I latched onto Jack and have been really gay for him ever since. Although I never posted it on my blog until this year, as I didn’t know of the self ship side of tumblr, and due to all the discourse Jack causes, I didn’t want to cause trouble or be judged or anything so I kept my mouth shut. And now I don’t shut up about it in my group chat, annnnd now here I guess too jdshgjdsg. 

Hell my old blog you can’t find one post about me LIKING Jack, let alone self ship or anything. And I still left the fandom and abandoned those blogs due to my only friends at the time constantly insulting the games, to the point where I didn’t want to play them anymore. (Like, they were fans of the games but, in a “I hate the fact there are canon lesbians and lots of lgbt people and memes and shit in the games” so they were mad non stop and ranted at me, the 14 year old loner jdhsgjdsg.)

So yeah. 3+ Years of Jack Hell.

Anyways, I do have a self insert!!! Her name is AJ and she is the Worst. She’s super OP and super cringy but I don’t care because I’m having fun. She’s been through a lot of design changes, with one from 2014, and then a lot from January. But the overall character hasn’t changed. She’s me but too op (being a very old siren with pink tats that still looks 21) and good looking and Actually Smooching Jack. You can find the most recent drawing of her here! Her tag has some of her older art but not all of it. 

Story wise, she has an AU timeline with Jack where like, I gave him a new backstory (no wives or gfs… only me now….), but the main games plots stay the same, until her own big plot after BL2. 

AJ meets Jack at a Hyperion Science Facility on Pandora, when he’s only 19 years old, young Hyperion programmer that was only there to fix some equipment and move on. He has Angel when he’s 20, believing her to be from a drunken one night stand with a scientist at the facility, who Died p much right away. He doesn’t actually see AJ again until he’s 23-24, when hes taken over this project to shut it down. Moves AJ to where he’s living cos boi he has a thing for this girl he saw only one time. Spent like a year together and then started dating the day before Mercenary Day (aka December 24th, like how thats the day I first found Jack dsjhgjdsg). 

Pretty much from there it’s just. AJ helps out with BL1, would be present in TPS like a player character, I guess. Around Jack a lot bc she lov him. BL2 she’s mainly on Helios, like Jack, so probably wouldn’t be seen. Post BL2 she’s stuck on Helios, trapped in Jack’s Office, for seven years, had her arm cut off and all, it’s not pretty. TFTBL starts to happen, moment Rhys enters Jack’s Office shit changes because AJ is there, Rhys breaks AJ out of the office and onto Pandora. She also somehow gets AI Jack who has no clue who she is and is only nice to her to keep her alive so he can stay alive too. (We joked that she slaps the AI out of Rhys and honestly. Mood). She stays on Pandora for 3 years with AI Jack, Vaughn, and some contact with a few Hyperion people. Ends up opening a vault, finds it to be one like Eleseer, instead of knowledge it gives her power.

Then you get my lil story aka Borderlands: Infinite, aka BL8, which many people in my group chat are a part of. This currently doesn’t have a set plot, other than there being a paradox world, AI Jack is a main villain, Lilith and AJ are on opposing sides, and everyone comes back to life a little. It’s really weird.

What I love most about Jack is he is an absolute bastard. But he’s really funny and his voice is really good and I think he lives up to the handsome part of his name. Hell I even like the soul patch from TPS even though nearly everyone hates that. He’s such a nerd. An evil boi. Absolutely terrible. 

AJ wise she’s pretty much the same, he’s pretty much the first person she ever gets to know, he looks after her, plus she’s with him from way before he goes off the rails. She just so happens to sorta go off at the same time. Which is why she sticks around when he starts doin bad shit. And Jack’s into her because she’s the cutest damn siren to ever exist like how could you resist. She makes shitty jokes about her being an engineer and him being a programmer. 

Before like, TPS their fav thing to do usually involved the ECHOnet, playing games, watching movies, simple stuff. AJ couldn’t really go out much as she was depression (and also needed to be hooked up to electricity at all times. She’s weird. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere for something.) Post TPS she probably enjoyed following Jack around, bein the trophy GF, and also shooting a lot of people. How the times change.

djsghjdsg

[glisteria]

pls answer all 69 embarrassing questions

9 Embarrassing QuestionsWho’s your crush/squish?•🌺🌺Who’s you fictional crush/squish?•hmmmm fictional? rlly tackey but poussey (oitnb) orrrrrr ben from parks and rec (i picked tv characters oops)Worst joke you’ve ever told?• I cant recall any but probably something my sister saidWorst insult you’ve ever given?•Worst insult? I don’t ever insult anyone but if i tried itd come off bad and poorly thought out so idkGot any weird kinks?•Define weird? I have a few i guess (my bdsm test results are a good follow up)How did you find out about sex?•My cousin being like yo did u knowTrashiest thing in your wardrobe?•Trashiest? Uhhhh i have ripped up jeans. I have fishnets. Couple see through tops. Short skirt those count?Worst Phobia?•Uhhh does vomit count??Hentai or the real thing?•As much as i joke about hentai and jiggle physics the real thing is betterEver been arrested?•No no nooooWhat are you most selfish about?•Food i guess?Who would you let die if given the chance to save them?•Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh no one? i guess cause i mean lots of bad people but no one comes to mind that should die ??Who would you sacrifice yourself for?• Any of my closest friends (🍮🌺🎶🌑) My familySomething silly you believed as a kid?•When it stormed it was angels bowling. That you can grow a watermelon in your belly if you eat seedsWeirdest/most embarassing thing you’ve drawn?•Any of my art its horribleControversial role models?•I dunno who counts under this category. I dont even know who my role models areCringiest fandom you’ve been in?•Homestuck definitely. Still in it tho Cringiest thing you’ve shipped?•Honestly idk Ever had “an accident” in public?•Accident as in urine? yes or period? yesWhat helps you fall asleep?•Reading, Talking to people, sometimes musicWhat childish things do you still do?•oof to listen them all uhh,,,,, my parents still drive me everywhere even tho i have a license. i eat 90% of kids food like goldfish/mac and cheese/shaped foodWhat’s your age?•19 on tuesdayGrossest thing you’ve eaten?•EELHonest opinion on religion?•Someone should be allowed to believe in whatever they feel is right and not be judged for it. Freedom of religion should mean judgement and hate freeWhat does your laugh sound like?•A wheeze or gremlinHow would you describe your smile?•Uhhh too large but good i guess. it makes me eyes closeDid you go through any regrettable phases?•Hmmmmmmm my glitter phase no thnxEver dropped plans/projects and not said a word?•Yes,,,,Intovert/Extrovert?•Lately? IntrovertPersonality Type?•Uhhhhh i dunno how to answer this rllyUgliest thing in your wardrobe?•Hmmm,,,,,, i got plenty of ugly shirts. Would you wear pajama’s in public?•absolutely Weirdest thing that turned you on?•uhhhhhhhhh its urine related,,,,,,,,,,Pineapples on pizza????•no nobut if someone likes it go for itDo you use the XD emoticon?•Used toDo you have a dark sense of humour?•sometimes yeaWorst thing you ship?•Uhhhhhh recently? its kpop stuff oofTop or bottom?•Depends. i prefer to topTop or bottom bunk?•bottomPettiest thing you’ve cried over?•food 10000%Pettiest thing you’ve gotten mad over?•My friend starting a show w/o me when i said i was comingLongest time you’ve cried?•few hoursDo you touch the art in museums?•in the past yeaDo you have a fandom OC?•yes but we dont talk about the forbidden textsHow much do you believe in astrology?•somewhatHave you ever used a base for drawing?•yesHave you ever used MSPaint for drawing non-ironically?•noControversial opinion?•mayb if we stopped raising boys and some girls to think its ok to abuse/assault someone else we may have less of itAss or chest?•chestChest or genitals?•chestGenitals or ass?•assAny scars?•lots just depends on whereDo you pirate anything?•uhh,,,,,,,,games once or twiceurl for an old cringy social media account?•~PuRpLecHiCk28~Any post’s you’ve deleted and why?•my boobs and bcof anxiety and also any depression postHow long does it take you to get up in the morning?• an hour honestlyWhat will instantly turn you on?•uhhh,,,,, idk anymoreFave eye+hair colour combination?•brown/brown Have you already named your future children?•probably luna if its a girlDo you do drugs?•not rllyHow tall are you?•5’5Did you go through a “RANDOM XD” phase?•Oof yesDumbest thing you believed?•if i stuck with someone toxic itd get betterDildo of choice? (besides an actual dildo)•uhhh,,,,,, idk i guess id just want one lololDaddy kink?•nahWho could change your sexuality just by looking at you?•uhhhhh,,,,,,,,,,,🌺🌺🌺🌺,,,,,,,but also some kpop pplBara/Yaoi/Shota?•uhhh i only know yaoi so 👀 What area’s of your body are most sensitive?•behind my ears snd on my neckWeirdest dream you’ve had?•I was the surrogate for a friend and i had 9 children who all looked like ellen hello

[jadehrleyarchive]

@garbagegnostic i can see why some explaining is in order, so ill be doing my best to explain  the concept of otherkin under the cut (specifically, fictionkin) ! this may be long-winded, but bear with me!

     so first things first, the furry community and the otherkin community are two separate things. there is some overlap because some otherkin are furries, its not mutually exclusive, but being otherkin in and of itself has nothing to do with being a furry. along this concept, a furry:their fursona is not necessarily = otherkin:their kintypes . a fursona is an animal representation of yourself, whereas a kintype, in most cases, is you. 

     that being said, there are a few different ways that otherkin personally experience being otherkin. the most common one is the belief that you were this character or thing in a past life. 

     this is because of a combination of the multiverse theory and reincarnation, where we live in a hypothetical set of many universes, and in these other universes, anything is possible, including the existence of fictional characters in their worlds! this sort of follows the belief that all media is just a retelling of events that occurred in an alternate universe. for example, Gravity Falls exists in its own universe with its own rules, and its entirely possible for someone from this universe to have been one of the Gravity Falls characters in a past life, because their soul traveled between universes. 

     i like to imagine all of these universes as “bubbles” floating in something much more vast.

     the green bubble is us, in the universe that Earth is in now, and all of the other colored dots represent alternate universes of any kind - the Homestuck universe, the Gravity Falls universe, a universe where everything’s the same except George Clooney has blue skin - anything is possible. conceptualizing that, it is also possible that souls travel across universes when they die:

     this can be a bit confusing on first glance, but think of it like this: every colored arrow leaving a bubble is a soul leaving that universe, and every colored arrow traveling into a bubble is a soul entering that universe. so, the pink dot at the top represents the Gravity Falls universe for this example, and the pink arrow leaving that bubble and coming into the green “US” bubble is someone who is gravity fallskin! thus, all colored arrows entering our bubble have the potential to be otherkin, who remember what their past lives were like before they were reborn here. 

     to extend off of this, because of the nature of the multiverse theory (anything is possible), its also entirely possible for multiple universes to exist that are alternate timelines of the same universe. for example, its possible to have one Gravity Falls universe where, say, Mabel and Dipper were twins, like in canon, and then have an entirely different Gravity Falls universe where Mabel was 5 years older than Dipper and also going through her deviantART scene phase. this explains how multiple people can be kin with the same character and have different memories of the same events.

      and some people do remember their past lives! many otherkin start out with vague memories of things from their canon - like how someone else looked, or things that happened on-screen, but in first person, or even details that happened off-screen or non-canonical events entirely.  they often use this to find other people who have similar memories in the hopes that they are also souls that traveled from the same universe to this one. so when someone says, “ive found the ____ from my timeline!” it means that they have found someone whose soul traveled from the same universe as them, and they both ended up in this one together. 

tl;dr - many otherkin were their kinselves in a past life.

      now, there is another common experience of being otherkin, and that’s often called copingkin - this is most simply explained by people identifying with or as certain characters to cope with something, such as mental illness, trauma, or other experiences. people often choose characters that have had similar experiences to them, or are relatable for some other caliber, and use these characters to help construct their identities. this is not roleplaying. being otherkin is not roleplaying. 

     there is some overlap, because again, some otherkin do like to roleplay, and none of these things are mutually exclusive! 

      otherkin are first and foremost people - some have decided to take on the identities of their past lives again and fully embrace being that character as much as they can, and some have decided to acknowledge that they have memories or feelings, but ultimately, these characters are just past lives, and they get a chance to start a new life as a new person now. both of these takes on being otherkin are completely valid! neither of these approaches are roleplaying, because otherkin are already their kinselves. you can’t really roleplay as yourself, that’s just being yourself! 

so yes, being otherkin is not roleplaying - its simply another way of identity. i hope this was helpful, please feel free to ask any further questions ( i hope i didnt confuse you !!! )

[murasaki-murasame]

So earlier today I decided to bring in some boxes of my old childhood books I had stored away, to see once and for all what stuff I want to keep and what stuff I want to donate.

It’s such a weird feeling to get a concentrated dose of nostalgia like this. Wow. I’d kinda forgotten about a lot of these books, and honestly I don’t think these are even the entirety of what I read as a kid. It makes me kinda sad that I fell out of reading for so long, and then kinda fall back out of it yet again at the start of this year. I’ve at least gotten into reading manga though.

Anyway this is gonna get long and rambly so I’m gonna put it under a cut. I kinda wonder if I should even bother posting this, but I guess it’d be good to write down my feelings on at least some of them, for posterity.

I’m not gonna go over EVERYTHING I found, at least not in much detail, since there’s like two or three boxes full of books.

There’s only two series I decided to keep, for now, since I genuinely want to reread them eventually even if I know they won’t hold up. Those being the Deltora Quest series, and the Keys to the Kingdom series. I remember really enjoying both of them, though I’m not sure if I ever even finished the latter. Maybe I’ll finally get around to that. I’m kinda surprised I have the complete collections of both of them. I thought some of them were missing. I can’t really explain why exactly I want to reread them, but I do. I want to at least reread SOME of my childhood books.

I’m almost surprised at how many action-y, adventure-y books I read as a kid. Statistically speaking most of the books in general were probably fantasy, but I also had stuff like the Cherub series, which was all about young teenagers doing surprisingly dark, adult stuff as part of some sort of undercover spy/military organization, and some stuff by Anthony Horowitz. I think I always gravitated more towards fantasy, but I guess I also enjoyed those sorts of books too. Huh.

There were also some old kid’s mystery books, and some weird D&D-esque RPG book things that I think were things my dad had from his own childhood that he gave to me. I never really enjoyed them.

I also had a surprising amount of comedy book things that probably had lots of gross humour in them. I’d need to look over them again, but I can’t remember if they were a series of actual novels, or if they were short story collections. I remember having at least one short story collection as a kid that had some surprisingly good and memorable stuff in them, but I don’t know if that’s the same thing or something entirely different I don’t have anymore.

Apparently I had some weird phase as a kid where I tried to get into Twilight and apparently gave up after book two, so that’s . . . interesting. Huh.

Looks like I also tried to get into Eragon at one point. I don’t think I even got through the first book of that, lol.

I found like three random Narnia books not not any of the others so who even knows if I ever had the full set of that. I don’t really intend on rereading it, though, even if I do.

I forgot I had a few random kid’s books set in or involving New Zealand. Huh. I think there’s some I read as a kid but never owned. I wish I’d read more books like that. It’s sorta depressing how few books I’ve read that are actually set in the country I live in. I feel like I’m so used to consuming media set in either America, Europe, or Japan, that something set in my own home country would somehow feel MORE foreign than those ones.

I completely forgot that I actually have one of those first-edition versions of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief with the stupid, ugly cover. That goddamn winged shoe and the gaudy gold patterns and the stormy background image will haunt my nightmares forever. I can’t even remember if I liked the book itself when I read it, but I think the cover probably put me off reading any more. Which is a bit funny to consider, given that a few years ago I got REALLY into the series and binge-read the first two main series in a row, and now I’m a bit of a diehard Rick Riordan fan. I wonder what would have happened if I had have stuck with the series from the very start. Would I have been part of it’s fandom since the beginning??? That’s a weird thought. I’m not even involved in the fandom NOW. Well, mostly because I haven’t gotten around to reading the last few books that have come out, but still.

On the note of Rick Riordan, it doesn’t have to do with the boxes of stuff I bought in since these are already on my shelves in my room, but he also made the 39 Clues, which was basically one of the first few things where I actually got involved in the fandom for it, and even did my own weird self-insert fan-fic things on internet forums back when I was like 10. So in a lot of ways, Rick Riordan was one of the things that got me into fandom culture in the first place. It’s weird to consider. If only I had positive memories of that series that weren’t irreparably tainted by the godawful cash grab second series they put out. That sure would be great. I think that was my first ever experience with feeling viscerally disappointed and enraged at a franchise.

This is getting into slightly more embarrassing territory, but I was also into some REALLY ‘girly’ things when I was a kid. Probably closer to seven or eight or so, though. Like, I must have had some period of time of being REALLY into Care Bears as a franchise, since I have, like, several DVDs related to the cartoon franchise of it they had. I’ve also had basically a billion plushies of them over the years. Mostly as a kid, but I still keep one of my giant ones at the corner of my bed. I never really bothered to get rid of it, I guess, since it doesn’t really get in my way, and nobody goes in my room anyway. I think I’ve owned my giant one, and one little one I guess, for over a decade now. And to further put into perspective how obsessed I was with them as a kid, one of the photos of me as a kid that’s on display in our living room is of me sitting in a pile of all the Care Bears I had at the time. I’d completely forgotten that photo existed and now I’m kinda horrified about how many people who’ve visited my house might have seen it.

And then right next to the giant one I have on my bed, I have a Scalemate plushie, which I guess goes a long way to represent one of my more recent fandoms, lol.

God I have an absurd amount of Homestuck merchandise, come to think of it. It mostly comes from one single session of buying tons of stuff, though. Off the top of my head, I think I have two posters [which I think are still in storage and may have been thrown away], a Scalamte plushie, a John figurine, a deck of themed tarot cards, a Cancer sign necklace, a Breath t-shirt, a Hope hoodie, and a custom-made Breath windsock hoodie that I had a family friend made for me. I might not have ever gone out in public with it, but I have my own shitty home-made John Egbert cosplay get-up so that sure is something I can say about myself. I’m also probably going to buy Hiveswap as it comes out, and I’ll probably buy the Homestuck books as Viz puts them out, because in the end I will never truly be free of Homestuck.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I also have my original UK editions of Harry Potter, which are all super beat up and ugly now. For some reason I remember disliking the series as a child, and yet I read all of it, saw most of the movies, and I remember dressing up as Harry once or twice for Halloween. I also played a surprising amount of the video games for it. But even my mum can confirm that I was never super into it. It’s weird. I have no idea how I felt about it as a kid. It’s just a mystery now, I guess.