#im also very very bad with articulating my thoughts and not a popular blog so i think even if i put my foot down really hard on it i would

[cute-pluto]

honestly so glad a lot of people agree. baby jaiden was weird. and bad. infantalizing. every time i have Opinions that go against wider fandom i always feel like im going insane but turns out its because im a adult women and i can sense it.

[rabbityshen]

not sure who this post is for.

i think i just needed a way to get out some of my brainworms about genazo and some of the observations i've made about it as a movie and fandom phenomenon that's big in japan but basically not at all here. it was originally gonna be a pitch post on my Main, Professional writing blog but it came out kind of too.....silly for that. which is why the grammar and capitalization are generally proper and the tone is more formal (and has images). i wrote most of it back in august/september but have edited it so it's relatively current to right now.

it's mostly a bunch of rambling and info tidbits about genazo. cant imagine who would be interested in it, except genazo fans, but then it's also written as if to be read by ppl who don't know what genazo is. again, very confusing post. my bad. if u wanna read it go ahead, but lol (lol).

but if ur like "what's genazo?" well then this the post for you. maybe.

edit: added some more fun images for myself 😊 and some (spoilery) CWs for the movie at the very end

They say honesty is a virtue so I might as well start off by saying that my curiosity about this movie was not sparked by the anniversary productions being made for Shigeru Mizuki’s 100th birthday or through keeping tabs on the latest anime films coming out, but because I saw fanart and I thought the main character, Mizuki, looked hot.

After some sleuthing, I tracked down the source material and was surprised that it was from a movie, Kitaro Tanjo: GeGeGe no Nazo (which I'll shorten to GeNazo), part of the GeGeGe no Kitaro franchise.

If you don’t know of GeGeGe no Kitaro or Shigeru Mizuki, I’ll pause here to give a little bit of background info. Shigeru Mizuki was a mangaka born in 1922, who made manga at the same time alongside other influential artists like Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider). Mizuki would ultimately become famous for GeGeGe no Kitaro (which I'll shorten to Kitaro from here on out), a manga series following a yokai boy named Kitaro and his adventures. Kitaro is on par with Asto Boy in terms of being a national icon. He’s credited with popularizing yokai stories for the modern masses, his imagery becoming what people would most associate with the classic folklore. Besides the 2023 movie, there was an anime adaptation that aired 2018 - 2020, which was also a 50th anniversary production based off of the first anime adaptation that first aired in 1968.

I had some passing, bare minimum familiarity with Kitaro, as much as anyone who’s liked anime and manga for decades would have, and I had never seen a character from it who looked like Mizuki. Clearly, the movie wasn't a straightforward adaptation, even if it was taking one of the manga chapter titles as its own (“The Birth of Kitaro,” which shows the origins of the eponymous character). Not only that, but the promotional material was fairly bloody and dour, obviously aimed at a more mature audience than the usual child demographic the franchise was geared towards, as with the 2018 Kitaro anime. The character design for Kitaro on the movie poster was very similar though, so I figured they likely shared the same continuity.

(i don't have enough relevant images to adequately disperse throughout this post so im just adding random screenshots of mizuki for enrichment and personal indulgence 🙂)

Since the anime series had been officially licensed and subtitled by Crunchyroll, I assumed the same had been done for the movie but that was not the case. It had been released in Japanese theaters back in November 2023 but as of April 2024 at the time, there was (and still is) nowhere official and legal to watch it with localized English subtitles. I had little interest in Kitaro otherwise so I shrugged and decided I would let my shallow interest taper off. It did not.

Instead it plagued me for months (my friends can testify to this). I can't exactly articulate why; The heart wants what the heart wants I suppose. So I finally caved in and found…other means of watching it. I'm not sure if I expected that to sate the brainworms already festering in my head, but basically the opposite of that happened. Now having context for what I was already seeking out on Twitter, new depths of investment were opened up. And that's when I discovered this movie was quite popular.

Now granted, this is still in relative terms. This was the year that other animated hit films such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Boy and the Heron came out. Even other anime franchise films such as Case Closed: Black Iron Submarine and Spy x Family Code: White were much bigger domestic and international hits from around the same time. However, while GeNazo never reached the status of being the #1 movie in Japan for the week, it was one of the top five grossing movies for four consecutive weeks (and in the top ten for a consecutive 11 weeks), making over two billion yen (~$17 million). It was also selected to be shown at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the Countrechamp category. A new version of the film called the “True Version” (真生版), which contains redone cuts and rerecorded dialogue (but no changes to the narrative), as well as bumps up the rating from PG-12 to R15, was released a few weeks ago.

And when you zoom in closer from a fandom subculture perspective, its popularity is undeniable. The doujinshi made for the GeNazo fandom and sold through the retailer Comic Toranoana is not only numerous, but has dominated the female-targeted section rankings for months (both “All Ages” and “Adults Only”), alongside doujinshi for much more internationally popular series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Slam Dunk. (Another way to compare this, Kitaro has a total of 2500+ listed and Delicious in Dungeon has a little over 40 items listed.) In the 2023 poll for yumejoshi (similar to the concept of “self-shipping” fandom) to pick their favorite characters for the year, the two main characters made it to the top twenty (Gegero at #15 and Mizuki at #9), even though the movie was released quite late into the year. Then in Animage’s annual Anime Grand Prix, GeNazo was voted as the top favorite anime for 2023, with Mizuki and Gegero also voted as the top favorite characters. At COMIC CITY SPARK 19, a popular Tokyo doujinshi event held last week, GeNazo is the third most popular fandom represented (above other fandoms including Haikyu!! and Honkai: Star Rail). Several months ago, a film concert event was held and it must've done more than well enough if they're holding the event again for two days in November.

So obviously, I was very much not the only one infested with brainworms! But in comparison, no one over in English-speaking anime fandom circles knows anything. On Archive of Our Own, there’s a tag for “GeGeGe no Kitaro (Anime)”* that only has under 50 works in English when accounted for the movie’s release. (In comparison, there are over 2,500 works in the tag for “ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon” in English when accounted for the anime’s release. For possibly a more equivalent comparison, there are a little under 200 works in the tag for “Bang Brave Bang Braven (Anime)” a show that did receive an official English translation and was ranked second in the Anime Grand Prix.) Every time I peek into Japanese fandom, I feel like I’m stepping into a parallel universe. The gap is striking.

Anime has never been more accessible to foreigners, specifically Americans. Piracy still reigns supreme in terms of frugal personal finances, but it's less convenient and full of pitfalls, requiring some sophistication in navigating platforms and torrents. As a thirty year old with a full-time job, the low-risk convenience on its own is worth the money of subscription. It’s also easy to think in the age of streaming and simulcast—with plenty of titles getting licensed but then instantly buried under the oversaturation of Content and lackluster efforts at marketing—that we have legal access to everything, or at least everything notable. But similar to this year's cult hit Girls Band Cry (until the official English language translation available through Hoopla and, soon on November 6th, Crunchyroll as well), GeNazo fell through the license cracks. 

I shouldn't be too surprised though. While Kitaro is an iconic series with a deep cultural legacy in Japan, its popularity in the USA is much milder. In my experience, people who do know about Kitaro tend to regard it as a piece of classic manga history rather than engaging art or storytelling in its own right. As an older, episodic children’s series fundamentally focused on traditional Japanese folklore, its potential appeal to international audiences is less universal and it's less likely to be taken seriously by manga fans invested in more serialized storytelling. So it is a shame that this movie isn't licensed and officially localized. Tomohiro Harafuchi, the director of Mizuki Productions, said in an interview at the Annecy Festival that he hoped that screening GeNazo there would “inspire the international audience to discover these universes” since Kitaro is less well known outside of Japan. Especially since it stands out as fairly unique work among the other Kitaro movies, series, and other related media.

At this point, you might be wondering what GeNazo is actually about and what my pitch is for watching it besides Hot Anime Guy.

The version that's short and to the point: A nice horror mystery with some decent fujobait and anti-nationalist themes.

The version with a premise like you're reading the back of a DVD case: Mizuki, a salaryman working for a blood bank during Japan’s postwar era, is tasked with visiting a remote village. He hopes to curry favor with a powerful family whose patriarch has just died, causing a power struggle, as well as find out the secret of the miracle drug that they manufacture. Along the way, he meets a mysterious man searching for his missing wife. Violent, strange deaths begin occurring however, and Mizuki soon finds himself wrapped up in a disturbing conspiracy he never anticipated. Find out the twisted origins of one of Japan’s most beloved characters…

My actual, extremely condensed opinion: A fun 3/5 stars movie that I'm kind of ambivalent about.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” you may be wondering, “You wrote all of this about a movie you rated 3/5 on Letterboxd?” The answer is “yes” and I wish I had a better one.

That'll be for another post though, since I can't discuss it without really getting into spoilers.

Note [possible spoilers]: Content warnings for GeNazo include gore, war trauma flashbacks, non-graphic and referenced incestuous CSA, alcoholism, child death.

[elaichoi]

gasp 🔴 live viewing of soulmates au unfolding irl

yes in fact i am (confirmed)

to be fair i haven't been on tumblr that long i joined somewhere btwn jan-mar of this year and so i don't think ive experienced many of your themes (blog profile wise), but i remember stalking the tags and it was easy to spot what works were yours based on the header edit, it stands out and is v eyecatching among other stuffs in the tags ^_^

mhm i think your style is very deviantart fs hehe,,, NAUR FR they r the ogs i used to want to be them so bad. for reference i started getting into kpop around 2/2.5 gen,, i was an admin on a facebook snsd fanpage and posted like png shadow/swirl edits 😭😭😭 simple times

hell i'd love to! i don't think i'm mentally there i fr lack the creative capacity, its in very rare circumstances do i see something that i kind of envision and edit in my head and ill usually screenshot it to keep the idea there but i even more rarely ever jump into starting the edit.

yes it is! i still have and use it, it was the 'it' app for photo editors back then me thinks, kind of like the ae of photo editing... at least from my viewpoint on the ig fanpage editing scene. it was the hotter sister to picsart lmaoo

see soulmates au!! we couldve crossed paths but we didn't!! until now!! 😾

omg wait stop it cus i used to love reading imagines n shit on ig but im pretty sure i stopped because i felt like it wasn't a popular content type esp since its a photography platform. i browsed the tags for imagines n stuff but it was meh,, i only followed ONE imagines account 🥲

wait so to clarify, u also edited on ig alongside writing?? imagine if we crossed paths on the algorithm dats crazy 😭 you're the cool one i wish i could be skilled in both literature and art ?? i simply do not have enough brain cells for that ^_^

canva on phone is my enemy‼️ at least the last time i used the mobile app,, bc i now use it only on desktop, sometimes on ipad... cus u alr cannot see the layers i cannot be doing anything complex bc i will def tap on the wrong layer and thats annoying -_- the patience u have ㅠㅠ well assuming the app is still like that idk maybe it changed

HAHAH i used to draw before like pencil paper shit so i thought i could do it digitally....and after years of not drawing on pencil paper too 💀💀

u are so much more articulate than me goodbye thats embarrassing 4 me T_T

soulmate does exist <3 look at us being prime example!!

actually i think ive active with my account within the time frame as well, probably feb-march i think, but before that i didn't care about the account that much but like slowly started make headers im a tryhard ( only after i stopped obsessing tumblr themes bc i couldn't figure it out) ARE you fr?? like u could tell my works in the tags of my header?! dude that's so,,, that's like such a huge compliment that I've got something that makes someone go ah yes it's that same. author like it feels so fulfilling, YOURE REALLY BUTTERING ME UP ILYSM!!! thousand consentual kisses!!!!

YOURE SO COOL WTH YOU'VE BEEN HERE SINCE 2/2.5 GEN PLS THATS SO awesome ive been into kpop since mid 2017 so most of my groups like og ones were third gen but I listened to 2nd gens too and SNSD my beloved!!! genie was my introduction of kpop tbh and replay by shinee is what made me stay so i can say im a child of 2nd gens too lmao but holy shit I want YOUR PLAYLIST!!!!!!!! GIVE ME SONG RECS!

tbh i get you i only edit for my headers or blog too tbh like usually if there is no purpose you don't really feel like editing bc it's like what are you even gonna do with it? and you've said that you've always posted them so maybe the fact you don't have anywhere to showcase your art has you feeling like that too?

"hotter sister of picsart" this is so real bc all the hot editorson Instagram ( the western artists collage style specially) all used superimpose and thr fact they used to pay for it too.

bro like imagine if we did cross paths i think i was more active on ig during 2019-2021? imagine if we had ever crossed paths since we both worked on kpop lmao, okay but if you like posted your work under #kpopgfx im pretty sure i have came across at least once!

did kpop have imagine accounts? i knew a lot of dating door accounts tho lmao but then again i was stuck in wattpad, and that's all the delulu you need lmao.

lmao yeah i always wrote with my works, most of my edits were based on stuff i wrote basically like love stories based on songs, certain ideas (was BIG on mythologies and all the other things.) but really fr tho i wonder if I actually ever saw your work tho because i never had the guts to interact with other editors.

lmao im the same with canva but on laptop i for the life of me cant do that plus i just use it get pngs and other stuff also when i want to do masking lmao. i usually collect shit on there and then manipulate those on my own app.

bro that is insane that you used to actually drawing like as someone who can't draw a single straight line this is so cool to me i really wish i could draw tbh

articulate and me? lmao im literally all over the place but it's so sooo fun to talk to you!!

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[irregulardiaryposts]

16:35 01/03/2021

so. its now march!!!!! march is an okay month. but it also means its been a year since corona really kicked off and thats proper weird to think about. it feels like absolutely fuck all has actually changed but yet im a very different person yk. i played minecraft for 10 hrs last week. im addicted to it. this time last year i was kinda sick and we thought i had corona but since testing wasnt really available i just had to stay home ages. it was horrible but to think that was a whole YEAR ago is absolutely fucking wild. 

anyway back to minecraft. i absolutely love it. its such a simple game and you can truly play however you want to. like. if u dont want to bother beating the enderdragon or doing any serious grind stuff, you can literally just fuck about doing whatever you wanna do... u wanna build a little cottage in the woods? yes. u wanna pick lowers and decorate and build cute farms? yes. u wanna explore a vast and expansive world filled with literally endless possibilities and find pets and loot and different biomes and blocks? yes. you wanna mess around with ur friends? yes. u wanna do pvp or multiplayer games? yes. u wanna meet new people? yes. u wanna play by yourself and become exceedingly rich? yes. u wanna do all this and comforted by the melodic tunes and beautiful landscapes? yesssssssss. it literally has something for everyone but people get so pissy about how others play its soooo annoying. like so what if someone wants to go into creative and cheat or they wanna play on peaceful or they have keep inventory on? they are playing the game in the way they enjoy the most, the way that makes them happiest, makes them comforted, allows then to enjoy playing it. coz i bet if everyone was made to play the exact same way and there was no way to customise your experience, it would not be nearly as popular as it is. it probs wouldve died out if people werent enjoying it because they got frustrated by it, or too scared to lose their things to progress in the game, or too anxious to play because its scary and they dont know how to beat things. or if people play solely in creative and they enjoy that the most and wanna try survival, they dont deserve to get made fun of coz they want to ease their way into harder things. or if someone just wants to build or just explore or just tame a million dogs, as long as they are happy they are already enjoying the game to the max, they dont deserve people being like “ if u play without X youll enjoy it more coz thats the way we play it” like fuck off it would be like if a hardcore players was like “play in hardcore or ur stupid” ppl would get mad because thats not the way they want to play it and they wouldnt enjoy it as much or at all as the hardcore player does. and dont even get me started on this whole bedrock vs java bs. this its such a waste of time like??? who benefit from this argument? because its silly java players think they are automatically better than every bedrock player because they have java. 

like obviouslyyyyyy java is better and im sure a lot of bedrock players would rather java, but u cant lie and say that a lot of og players didnt start on bedrock and then upgrade to java, because as kids u cant really afford a proper pc but everyone has an xbox or an ipad lol. like they literally forget that they probably started playing on bedrock too. and its so stupid because yes while bedrock is a little shit in comparison to java, ITS STILL THE SAME FUCKING GAME just be glad were not fucking fortnite players jesus its pathetic. yes this is essentially a minecraft post and what fucking about it. i told u im obsessed with it. 

i should talk about something else. perhaps my crippling procrastination? its absolutely abysmal how shit at school i am now. i get two unconditional offers and suddenly i think i dont need to do a single bit of work (its kinda true tho) i only have three classes and in doing 1 and 1/2 of them. im not even bothering studying for prelims/exams whatever the fuck because im hopeless. theres no point because even if i do end up doing the exam and i fail theres absolutely no consequences because i have 0 shame. ill walk out of an exam i failed with my head held high because i know uni will be so much better - ill only have one subject, one i actually enjoy and want to do work for (only somewhat tho, my procrastination problems still carry through, im actually doing this instead of a 15 min thing for class but whatever) ill have a reduced working day, i can focus on just one subject, ill have other things to work on too like a part time (scary) and car (exciting) and ill get to meet new people that also want to learn spanish and are interested in it too, and i want to make more friends and i want to be more independent (moving out??? hopefully but also scary) 

i cant believe im actually at a point in my life where im actually interested in the future and want to live to see it (lol yeah) like i wonder what 13 yo me would think. even 15 yo me. i wonder how 20 yo me will look back on this. hi me if ur reading. do u have a s/o?? or new friends? how many new experiences have u had? are u comfortable in ur life? struggling ? happy? i hope ur happy coz u deserve to be. i deserve to be. i hope u have a good time reading these. i dont know if ill ever forget about this blog or not. what was i talking about tho. procrastination. its horrible, I hope u get that fixed pls tell me u do. also please tell me u get better at typing.  this has accidently turned into a speaking to ur future self thing. ill stop now. 

im a very good procrastinator. and my ability to actually focus on stuff has been getting comical. idk if its the pandemics fault or mine or schools but is a bloody issue and it needs to get better. i guess its coz i just have absolutely 0 energy do do what i need to or it just absolutely does not interest me to do it and i know theres absolutely no consequences to it looool. 

every now and then theres a day where i feel very unproductive and lazy and it feels like how it used to. a sort of growing annoyance at myself and feeling like a slug. idk some days i feel teleported back to like almost 4 years ago and idk what to do about it. i used to have a coping mechanism (?) where if i felt bad about stuff id just shower, wash my hair and put on new pjs and do something i wanted to do. it kinda put me in a clearer headspace and allowed be to get out of a slump for like 20 mins. u could call it self care or whatever but it genuinely was like washing the bad thoughts away and starting anew (is that the word) like i was able to think more rationally and get back into the semi real world but i was also doing it because i never used to have a proper shower routine, i used to go days without showering or getting out of bed for much and it kinda feels good to have this little reboot thing where i just shower to get me away from straying back there. 

idk. am i articulating well enough. ive written a lot i think. is there any more updates? nothing really apart from my growing disinterest in all things school lmao. anyway until next time i suppose (will probs be either never or like june lol)

[lcncasters-blog]

hey everyone!!! i’m d, i’m 23, and i use they/them pronouns. super hyped about being here so i’ma just get right into it

so kai is my fave character and kinda notoriously The Worst while also being The Best, so i’m warning y’all before we even go in that he’s actually so sloppy and wild pls proceed w/ caution. i’ve been playing him for over 4 years. that being said, he does have a fuck ton of information, so while the bullet points are going to be as condensed as i can possibly make them, you should really check out the appearance section (or you can just look at my sidebar which is wonderful artwork of kai one of my close friends did for me --- give them love on their art blog nialls ok SO talented) of his STATS FRAMEWORK and then if you really hate yourself i have a DEVELOPMENT TAG too with a bunch of headcanons (feel free to RB the rebloggable ones from me btw)

LOUIS TOMLINSON? no ⏤ KAI LANCASTER, the DEMIBOY is TWENTY-THREE and was born with a GOLD soul, and now has a GREY soul. i would describe HIM/THEM as EXUBERANT + BRAVE, yet CARELESS + IMPATIENT. KAI spends HIS/THEIR time PLAYING AT SMALL VENUES WITH HIS ALT ROCK BAND AND WORKING AS A NANNY and has lived in seattle for TWO YEARS.

TW FOR TERMINAL ILLNESS/CANCER, SUBSTANCE ABUSE MENTIONS, ABLEISM, & MENTIONS OF SELF-HARM/SUICIDE.

kai was born a gold soul into a pretty posh, old-money typea family in manchester, uk. like i’m talking on his mothers side they’re all doctors, lawyers, scholars, etc, etc, and on his dad’s side entrepeneurs. his parents themselves built a fairly large business from the ground up together that now goes by the name of lancaster industries. their current biggest venture and pretty much what they’ve built the whole of their fortune on is a chain of luxury hotels that you can find basically in every major city in the world.

he had 3 younger sisters who he essentially raised considering his parents were too busy to be around during their childhood. only two of them are still living, his youngest sister having passed a couple years ago at the age of 7 from leukemia.

his mother is literally the devil? kai always hated school/struggled in it for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which were his not diagnosed adhd and his dyslexia, which he never got the help he probably needed for. he’s always kinda just thought he was extremely stupid, and that idea was reinforced by the way his mother always used to tell him the very same thing. “think harder, kai. use your brain.” is a phrase that’s essentially been reinforced so many times in his head, he p much hears her voice ringing in his ears every time he gets so much as vaguely confused now.

that being said, despite how he struggled in school, he was always a very vibrant, kind, charismatic, and magnetic young person. he tends to draw people into him with his silly nature and upbeat attitude, and he’s kind of the Eternal Optimist, so he was fairly popular when he was attending. to say he has eccentricities would be putting it lightly, and he’s loud, never seeming to run out of things to say or fail to command the interest of the room.

anyway things with his mum only got worse in his relationship with her when he barely managed to complete his a levels by the skin of his teeth (and with an absurd amount of tutoring), and then refused to go to the university of her choosing. she p much wanted him to “get his shit together” so he could take over the family business someday, but i am not kidding when i say kai would wilt away and probably legit just die if he had to work in a place like that forever – and that’s assuming he even got through business school in the first place.

his father was always a push-over and sort of was absent/bent to her will when he was around, so he didn’t bother to defend kai when his mother decided 2 cut him off from everything and essentially ex-communicate him once she realised he was refusing 2 be manipulated and forced into shit anymore.

that was at age 18, and by that point he had plans to move out and travel to london with his best mate anyway, so he was basically like “peace out” and got the hell out of dodge. he still harbours a lot of guilt for abandoning his younger sisters, particularly so considering his youngest one fell ill so soon after his departure.

he lives, breathes, and sleeps piano. music as a whole is something he’s passionate about, having taken the time to develop his somewhat unorthodox voice, but the way his fingers fly over the ivories is a living art form more than it is anything. it’s how he communicates, how he speaks his deepest truth and just like? put those feelings out there into the world that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to articulate in the common vernacular.

so what he wants to do with his life is to just? talk to people? through his music? to play for them and the be in front of a crowd every night and to feel the energy of them, to command them with his presence and to exist with them in that way. he almost gets high off of it? he’s been playing small shows since age nineteen with his band, but since he moved to america he obvi hasn’t had them and has been on his own.

SORRY I’M REALLY TRYING TO CONDENSE THIS so ok basically he was in love w this girl from the time they were 14. they lost their virginity 2 each other, they were on & off all through HS, & then through to age 20 after he moved away and all that. she was v v ill and struggled with mental illness and kai tried his best 2 take care of her, but he was always in over his head despite his dedication to like making her feel OKAY. she needed help that he could not give 2 her, and they ended up breaking up & him letting her go at the end. she died soon after that, and it remains unclear 2 him whether or not it was a suicide. it was officially ruled as an “accident”, but he knows different and yeah i mean. essentially like.... the most “smudges” on his soul kinda came from his sitch w her bc he was always coming and leaving and dropping her and returning when she needed him and like. he TRIED but he just COULDN’T? anyways

after that he got involved with this boy who was a substance abuser, addicted to H to b exact, and for a while he thought that he was getting better and they were building off of each other, building a healthy life together. the fact he called kai his “new addiction” was probably never a good thing, but kai didn’t recognize that at the time. they got engaged eventually, and kai was 100% convinced that he was the actual love of his life after caro. of course, in the end, it wasn’t built to last, and when it went bad, it went really bad. kai eventually felt like there was a chasm several miles deep between them, and he had no hope of getting to the other side again. he broke it off, broke the guy’s heart, and made his soul even darker.

THIS NEXT ONE IS KINDA AN OPTION CONNECTION OKAY SO IF ANY1 IS INTERESTED PLS PLS LMK!!!

kai has been posting vids on YT of him covering songs on his YouTube for like actual years, and when he was around 20 he met this person via the comments section on one of them. they seemed to be quite the fan of his interpretation of some of the songs he chose to play. they ended up talking more and more as time went on, exchanging contact information, and grew very very very close.

that was the start of the LDR that is what brought him to america/to seattle in the first place. they were together for about eight months and had seen each other in person three times for a total of about 3 weeks before he made the decision to get started on his visa and move to the states. the moment he was able to, he crossed the pond and moved in w them!!

strain on their relationship was created when at first kai was unable to find work and contribute to the bills and the household funds. they lived in a tiny flat, and going from barely seeing each other to having each other all at once and all the time was a lot. on top of that, kai was homesick and restless and felt trapped because that’s what kai does and it’s not okay and it’s totally wrong and he cheated on them soooo there’s another tick against his soul ig. within six months of his arrival, they broke up, and kai moved out.

he couch surfed w some friends he’d met 4 a while, and eventually found a decent paying job as a nanny for a well off family.

he plays live shows at small venues in bars/clubs and still seeks to make a living as a musician but it’s hard out there and plus his soul aint exactly the prettiest to look at any more. i mean he doesn’t have a DARK DARK grey soul, it’s more a lighter grey, not quite silver, but definitely not storm clouds.

he’s still working on getting his full citizenship though he’s v v v close 2 it & has been lowkey getting help from his cousin w paying for the process so!!

THAT’S BASICALLY IT

last but not least IM REALLY FUCKING SORRY  ICOULDN’T MAKE THIS SHORTER I JUST HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS AND fEELIGNSA

SEND ME AN IM OR LIKE IF YOU WANT TO PLOT!