#last time i wrote this much on a tumblr text post about my illness i was trying to catch my breath the entire time

[cextra-loz]

Today I was able to stand for a new limit of 50 minutes when my physical symptoms are at their most minimal in a controlled environment. So we know 50 is the max now we're trying to reach 1 hour. I feel like I could've reached an hour with how I was feeling but the muscle endurance in my legs wouldn't have let me. I'm reaching a weird stage in my progress where its been so long since my body has had to support my weight for that long the blood pooling in my soles irritates and hurts like hell the days afterwards so now i'm rubbing the my feet like i've worked a hard day to prevent the inflammation from impeding my progress. I feel tho if I can reach that 1 hour limit I can reach longer times with practice. Its been years since i've stood for so long i'm really excited to keep practicing and hopefully keep improving. Last year around this time I was barely reaching 35 maybe 40 if I really really pushed- during my least symptomatic hours. Those extra 10 minutes might not mean much but since the beginning of my illness I never imagined i'd be able to make it to 30 let alone 50. I felt pretty good this session too which is the most important part, I feel like its the lack of muscular stamina that held me back rather than cardiac endurance. Anyway update is over, if I reach that 1 hour time it'll be a happy day I cannot tell how long it'll take me to reach that time but with some more practice I think a few weeks or months at least i'd imagine maybe even sooner. I'm so happy lets go! Dreams do come true at least 4 me ehehe!

[ludic-nebula-collective]

Eyebrow-Raisers

Hello. I've been questioning quite a bit about myself recently and finally decided to make a side blog to do a little more digging into whether or not I'm a system.

I know Tumblr isn't the end-all be-all for something like this, but it helps to get second opinions from people that may share similar experiences. Plus, I don't trust Dr. Google lol.

Under the break is a master post of everything I've experienced that's made me raise a brow. It's long and detailed, but I wanted to explain everything as best as I could. (TW: IFS mention)

My Experience

➺ This started in about May(?) of last year (2023). I had an alternate Discord account to move things between my phone and laptop easily and to leave notes for myself, and I had the urge to personalize it for other use. Pretty much as soon as I did, I started seeing it as its own person, to the point where I felt the need to use we/us pronouns.

➺ I've had severe dissociative symptoms for at least over a year now. Sometimes during a dissociative episode, I would recognize the name of the alt account over my own, but I was too convinced that I was still myself to notice much else about it.

➺ This kept happening for some time until someone talked me into trying IFS therapy to help cope with the symptoms. I was at an all-time low at this point and only agreed because I was frustrated and out of options.

(If you are unaware, IFS is a form of therapy that separates aspects of yourself into individual "parts" to work on. It is a highly controversial practice that you need a therapist to walk you through to do properly, which I was not aware of at the time. I also highly recommend researching Alsana Castlewood before deciding if it's right for you.)

➺ This person guided me through IFS for a couple weeks, during which I made about 10 "parts" to work with. They all had individual names, pronouns, and appearances, but were all me with specific stronger traits, if that makes sense.

➺ I knew IFS would only make my original symptoms and questioning worse, and I was proven right almost immediately. Whenever I would speak as my "parts," it felt like I was not mentally present. They spoke for themselves, and at times, it was like they were piloting my body despite how heavy the dissociation made it feel.

➺ It's been about four months since I stopped practicing IFS, and since then I've still felt like I'm not entirely alone in my body. I don't hear any of my "parts" anymore, but they still rarely influence some decisions. For example, I can't call something my own because I associate it with one of them too much.

➺ In these past few months, I've had one more experience. I hyperfixate on specific characters sometimes, which came to a head a couple months back when I heard one in my head. I remember thinking to myself that there was something I didn't want to do, and another voice in my head told me that they would. I felt like I got hit with sudden dissociation as soon as I heard it, too.

➺ This also happened over text. I was typing out a vent about this character, and I ended it by saying, "Hey, if you see this, just know I mean no ill will. I hope you're doing alright." Again, I was hit with a strong pang of dissociation, and it was like someone else wrote a reply: "I'm good, thank you."

➺ In both of those instances, I still felt like I was somewhat present, but I wasn't in complete control of my actions. It immediately felt like I was faking it, especially in the second example.

➺ I've also mentally asked myself if there were others present on two separate occasions. I didn't get a response the first time, but I did the second. I felt a pressure on the top of my head, almost like someone was pressing down on it, and I got both a name (one I hadn't heard before) and a voice change. I was still somewhat there, and I had to force my body to move so I could write about the experience.

➺ I have very severe memory problems (and have for most of my life), so while I don't recall any childhood trauma, I would not be surprised if I did experience it. That also means I might not have everything here, so I'll update this as I remember more experiences.

➺ I believe one of my possible alters and I have co-fronted before? I dissociated so hard that I very much did not feel like myself, but I was so preoccupied and out of it that I didn't write about the experience at the time. I don't remember much about what happened.

I know this is a long read, but this has been bugging me for some time. I appreciate everyone who has made it this far. Any comments or ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.

[manythoughtmanyprayers]

since we last spoke, i have been trying to keep myself as busy as i could, be it at home or hanging out with friends, so that i could distract myself from the voices in my head and from thinking too much about it, about us, about you. because the wound is still very fresh, despite me acting calm, im still sobbing on the inside, because its never good to end a connection you had with someone you like, no matter how shity it couldve been, it still hurts like hell.

but after last night, the first time i actually sat in front of someone who i knew wouldnt judge me for still hurting and feeling down about us, and finally said "despite how much i want to punch him, i still like him and those feelings aint going anywhere, no matter how much i hurt on the inside", i allowed myself to think about it, about us, because i knew that there was at least one person who knew about how i trully feel and understands how i feel, someone who gave me validation to do so.

the first thing i did today was turn on my phone, open tumblr and read everything i wrote about you, which is all but one post, since i only created this account to be free to write about us, about you, about how you make me feel, good or bad. because really, i had no other place to speak freely about it with no judgment and no criticism. there was no way to talk about this with my friends or my mum at a certain point, doing it publicly on social media was totally not a choice, and telling you all of these directly was something i was always very much scared.

while reading everything, from the most recent to the very first post i did, i couldnt help but tear up and feel this nostlagic, warm feeling inside of me. because despite the bad posts, i still stand for everything i said. from me feeling insecure and thanking you for helping me with that, to me wanting to be babied by you, to me being a corny son of a bitch because of my feelings for you. they are still alive inside of me, i still stand by all of it, it hasnt changed at all. and never will, no matter how many fights we have, no matter how long well stay appart, no matter how much people try to change my mind.

last night, when i was telling my godmother about how much im hurting but feel like i need to keep it all to myself because of all the background noise, she said "dont listen to peoples opinions if they are not willing to help you how you actually need". yes, she said she was relieved that our situationship ended because i would no longer hurt like i used to, but she was the only one who actually saw how much i was fighting and saw that there was potential, and that it just wasnt meant to be for now. she is the only one who saw how im feeling and is willing to help me with that, and is not just focused on making me forget about you because of all the bad shit that happened. she saw how much i care about you still, and is willing to put all the shit behind and help me understand how im feeling and work it it, instead of just desregarding my feelings like everyone else.

that little sentence she said made me realise that its ok for me to still care about you, to still like you like i did all this time. that, despite the bad shit that happened and the rage i feel, its ok to have feelings lingering and to care for you, still has much as i did while we were together. i still want to see you, talk to you, know about your days and nights. i still want to hold you, during the day and during the night, to touch you and smell you. i still wonder if youre tired, if youre eating well, if youre drinking enough water, getting enough sleep. i still want to help you in anyway i can, be it for yourself, for college, for work, for anything you need me. if you need chocolate in the middle of the night, ill still get my shoes and jacket on, and go all the way to your house to give you some, even if its raining.

i wonder if you come here often. whenever you would mention my "little texts" i would always feel amazed because i honestly thought you would forget about it as soon as i gave you the link. i never thought you would actually remember this exists, and that you would actually read what i wrote. will you still come here while were appart? or will you refraim yourself from visiting? youre always welcome, no matter how we are.

i hope we can become friends again, at least, so i can wish you a happy birthday, i will be devastated if the day comes and ill have to stop myself from doing it (i know i can always do it, with a simple happy birthday text, but it would not be the same if were appart, it would feel much better if were on speaking terms again, we will see).

[go-learn-esperanto]

Survey answers until now:

This was so fun. There are a lot of answers and that's pretty pog! I'm not gonna include everyone but I assure you I've been reading all of them.

Edit: the resolution was awful. Sorry about that. Updated version now! :)

Now the text answers my beloved <3

Here are some of my favourites!

Mumza. On accident.

How do you cosplay on accident? 👁️👁️

Phil and say it's Urahara

200 IQ play right here

none but i wanted to tell you its not much better. im going as a Supernatural character smh

We really are on Tumblr.com

im doing rivals duo with my friend =]

cc!Ranboo basically. now it just sounds weird. I mean who dresses up as irl celebrities and not the roles they play? man. it just sounds cringe now

I'm gonna throw on a green hoodie, say I'm dream and call it a day B)

Put a plastic plate on it too and it's complete

I have a half-made Ranboo cosplay, but I'm also too old lol

DO IT. I don't care. Even if it's just for you to wear at home. Do it. Nobody it's too old to dress as things they like!

tubbo :D (not 2 self promo but ill be posting pics @starbug.png on insta 👀)

Check them out! :)

There's a bunch of Wilbur/Ghostbur cosplayers. I love you and the Grisn cosplayer very parasocially.

Also the Mumza cosplayers

I got my ex into mcyt a day or so before we broke up because he started to ignore me > - >

Well... That's.

Figured out one of my besties is into it bc I saw a sketch of the Llama Line by L'Targay

One of my irl friends is an OG dsmp fan, she was there the very first stream. It’s just fun to talk to her about stuff.

A group of 17 year old boys called me cringe at the publix selfcheckout bc of my quackity shirt and i laughed so hard that they got confused like. its not bullying if theyre right

This one. This one has to be my favourite. That's the spirit.

There is a girl in my class who I talked to very little. We were supposed to do an assignment based on a hobby we liked, so I chose MINECRFAT. After I presented this, she approached me after class and said she liked my presentation. She showed me some of her dsmp drawings, like the realistic ones based off photos. She fucking amazing at it and they’re incredible

i was having a rlly bad day at school and in maths class(my last hour of the day)my teacher started playing jump in the cadillac and i just started crying

I really don't want to laugh at your suffering but damn that's hilarious from the outside. I hope you're doing better now tho 💜

i showed my mom a ranboo video and accidentally reviled that i stole almost his every one of his speech patterns

In class, a guy compliments my Ranboo hoodie. I look at his hoodie and he’s wearing a Wilbur one. I compliment his as well. A girl nearby stands up and looks at us. She is wearing a Quackity hoodie. Somehow the universe has placed three Dream SMP fans together in the same class. The best part is you would never know we were fans without our merch. We could be anyone. We walk amongst the living

That makes me want to buy merch so bad

last night I wrote penis smp fanfic while sitting right next to my mom who doesn't think I swear. she could have looked at my screen at any time.

Asked “does a historical speech from a minecraft roleplay count?” For a kinetic typography assignment

Wrote a lyrical analysis on the l’manburg theme for a school project

o7

the reason i didn't answer "mumbo jumbo" to the philza's wife question is because mumbo jumbo is too busy being a gay whore in last life. he's gay married but also flirts with every man he comes across

True. Absolutely true.

I literally saw an anti vaxxer on tumblr talking about how it's bad that Tommy and tubbo have to get vaccinated just to see each other irl

!! i have a VERY IMPORTANT FACT: niki nihachu <3 also dsmp women in general,, hannah niki puffy tina collab when pls give it to me its all i want in life,,,,,, also unrelated but im in a musicy mood listen to romance by yoasobi and watch the video trust me its stunning :]

Watched it! Really cool visuals! The music just brings me back to my VOCALOID fandom fase (not that is possible to love the VOCALOID fandom completly though. I definitely haven't.)

I’m making a Wilbur soot animatic based on The Fall by lovejoy and I hope I can get it finished by the 16th !!

Good luck!!! That's awesome!

im in this hellhole more than 1 year how am i still alive akpqpqlajwhoq give money

I have exactly one irl friend who watches dsmp n I'm the one who got her into it >:]

Evil >:]

"Im not gay I just can't read" - Jack Manifold

i just want to know why ranboo was at the red banquet, dressed up and wearing a blindfold . w h y

i can't wait for big lore to come back djfjdkkf

Same

Why must life give its hardest battles to its weakest warriors

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Please help okay so the problem is "Let P be the set of all people who have ever lived and define a relation R on P as follows: for every r and s that are elements or P, rRs <-> r is an ancestor of s or r =s. Is R a partial order relation? Prove or give a counter example." It's definitely reflexive ince when s=r then s=r which is true. It isn't symmetrical since that would be weird as hell, I mean a grandparent cannot be the grandchild of their own grandchild that would fuck up the family tree even more than the DSMPs but like, how do I prove that mathematically? Like, if rRs and sRr then r = s but "if person A is either a grandparent or the same person as person B and person B is either the grandparent or the same person as person A then person A is person B" just feels like a weird sentence.

69

Just did the Komaeda checklist for c!Wilbur...

I don't wanna know. (I kinda do actually)

Catch me dual-wielding Hermitcraft and the Dream SMP… call me Hannah Montana cause I’m the best of both worlds

Same. Same. Call me Ariana Griande because I'm a-grian with you.

i just saw a post. soon, we will have enough tommy father figures for a mamma mia! au.

Months before I got into DSMP I had an internet friend interested in it and I was like "lol, nice, but could never be me" because I had gotten out of my 2016-2018 MCYT phase not that long ago at that point and didn't think I'd go back... Well...

ldshadowlady is a goddess amongst us all and we should recognize her as such.

True

HMMM well i messed up my eyeliner which has made me quite sad

Mumbo Jumbo could steal anyone’s wife

I always talk about wanting to bake bread again but I keep procrastinating. Same goes for writing fanfiction and stuff too. I have countless abandoned fics across all of the platforms I'm on, plus about ten that never made it out of Google docs or pure writer. I think I have a bit of a problem lol

I can assure you're not the only one. 👁️👄👁️

We all suffer from the procrastination problem. Don't put yourself down too much ok? You're doing that for yourself and if you don't feel like doing it then you don't feel like doing it. 💜

Wilbur with wings is unappreciated especially when you consider all the cool headcanons you can have for what they'd be like after his revival like skeleton wings or phantom wings or only wings DreamXD can see. Also ghostbur w/ blue melting/ evaporating wings *longing sigh*

That's pretty cool!

I figured out I was fine with any pronouns by brainstorming self insert dream smp fanfic

I have a huge crush on quackity

This one broke me and I don't know why. Every time I look at it I start laughing my ass off.

I got into it because of Woe to the People of Order

Oh, woe to thee, ye people of order

I hope your homes continue to smolder

And that you never rise again

And woe to those that called me a friend~

That's a badass way to join a fandom

I just miss Ghostbur man

Don't we all? (っ.❛ ᴗ ❛.)っ Have some blue

[ljbrary]

2021 fic review 🤠

tysm for the tag AB!! @anxiety-banana 😊

now sit tight while i overshare 🥰✨

total number of completed works: 18! wow i know thats not a lot in the grand scheme of things but its more than i was expecting considering last January i was proud of myself for posting 2 fics 😭

total word count: on ao3, 65,292! but thats not including wattpad or wips ive done this year, so hold on one moment.... 

oh... oh wow... i have more words in wips than i do in posted works and it comes to about a whopping 67,271 words but thats not including stuff in my notes app or on paper because im too lazy to go through that lmao

but anyway that puts the rough total at... 132,563 words holy crap i need to get a life-

looking back did you write more, less, or the expected amount of fic this year?: MORE DEFINITELY MORE LAKSDJLJDS,F i didnt really expect to write at all really so yeah definitely a lot more

your own favorite story of this year?: dont- dont ask me to choose something i am the most indecisive person i know- especially when all the options are bad ones

okay in all seriousness id say weighted words hurt more than loaded fists (if you know how to use them) because its three of my all time favorite things: rex and ahsoka brotp, pure and unrefined angst, and modern aus. 

did you take any writing risks this year?: um id say posting my writing to begin with? considering im mortified of people finding out about this lmao (eg. this summer when my older brother sent this text to me after finding my wattpad, tumblr, and ao3: “so I just found out you’re a fucking nerd. the jig is up.” with a screenshot of my tumblr page and i wanted to either kill my brother or myself but unfortunately chose to do neither and just panicked by digging up blackmail to hang over his head 🤩

do you have any fanfic goals for the new year?: idk, nothing too big probably, but i really really really want to finish some of the wips im super excited about, like this angsty modern au one shot i started like last feb/march featuring anakin and ahsoka that i have sitting in my google docs with no discernible plot yet and 16,110 words 

most popular story of the year?: in terms of kudos/hits, lean on me (but let me laugh, first). basically, ahsoka purrs in her sleep, and everyone finds it very amusing (except for her). ill be honest i dont like this one; i dont like the writing but ig people seem to like it well enough?? somehow the only angst-free fic i wrote is my most popular and idk how that tracks but it does ig

in terms of how people have received my fics, ive been told by people that they like it’s not good grief (but it’s better) which is just anakin and ahsoka post wrong jedi arc (and angst, per usual)

story most under-appreciated?: id say weighted words hurt more than loaded fists (if you know how to use them) because its pretty much at the bottom of my stats on ao3 for both kudos and hits yet it if i had to choose one i like the best it would probably be that one

most fun story to write?: OOOH DEFINITELY MY CRIME AU SERIES JSKDHFS

trust goes both ways (or neither) its not the most glorious of writing but hey it was so so so fun to plan and write and- oh hey author look! its not done yet! (im sorry i promise i havent forgotten about it skjdhfdsljfk sorry AB @anxiety-banana 😭)

most unintentionally telling story?: idrk what this question is supposed to mean in all honesty but maybe im just dumb but im still gonna pretend i know how to answer it

maybe when there is nothing left but us (and of course it had to be you)??? because its my first fic on ao3 and yeah i guess thats kind of self explanatory. its basically an order 66 au where (spoiler alert), rex sacrifices himself for ahsoka to escape, and in the process maul tags along -- uninvited, as always. 

biggest disappointment?: myself

sorry i couldnt help it it was asking for it.

i guess id say the road to hell is paved with good intentions because i planned it all out and then never worked on it again which sucks because its totally something i want to read but ig thats not happening anytime soon 💀

biggest surprise?: all of them. im not kidding. none of them were planned and all of them were the product of both poor life decisions and even poorer executive functioning skills.

but maybe i’m not here to save you (you will save yourself)?? because its a six of crows fic and id only written star wars stuff until that point, which was in fact like four weeks ago so-

no pressure tags: (sorry if youve already been tagged haha) @ashgryff @ahsokryze @lynnpaper @hannah-schooler @dashedwithromance and anyone else who wants to do it!! 😊

[justcallmetar]

I haven't wrote a text post on Tumblr in a grip lmao but HNY niggas

I just wanted to reflect on my 2021 because I feel like it was probably the most interesting year of my life. I learned a lot about myself as a human being. Like so much and Im still learning which is cool. Always moving forward. I hit the one year mark staying in Indiana in my own place. I fought mad battles of depression, sleepless nights, tears, etc. Was in a serious relationship and did not end well which is normal. Im not going to be the typical person to say that it was toxic or a shitty situationship. It just did not work out like everything else and we both learned from it. I honestly never experience a heartbreak in awhile but I openly admit it was my fault. Not going into detail but whatever. I felt like I made the right decision. Besides that it was also mad shit going on lol. I was lowkey raw dogging life mentally, financially, like all the ways. I definitely don’t regret the trips I made when I wasn't suppose to, bought the dumb shit I did, etc. It seemed like this was the first year I truly experience adulthood at such a late age (in my opinion). I met so many cool people from basketball in this weird ass area of the midwest. I played so much fucking basketball dude lol. It was awesome. I would say basketball kept me sane throughout this entire year. It wasn't really gaming, or photography or whatever else I had going on. It was just the people and basketball. Definitely appreciate everyone I met and still talk to from the summer. I took a lot of walks, hiked, traveled a decent amount around here. I spent a lot of time alone man....and im cool with that. I never been by myself so much until I moved away from Ohio. I tapped into so much of myself just by being alone at the apartment, going to the gym late at night shooting around blasting music, spending nights at the office doing work, streaming when I didnt have internet. Its been such a weird but humbling experience. Im just on this bitch rambling but I dont care. Its just been awhile. Im like sitting in my chair typing this shit on my cracked MacBook hooked up to my monitor damn near about to cry because those days and nights I honestly thought I wasn't going to make it. Yes.....you read it right my g....I thought about it a lot. It doesn't help that im drinking while im typing. But anyways Im thankful for my students at my new job, the people I met, and everyone that deals with me back home. I could keep typing but I think this is a good part to leave at that. But this is just a small part of my year. A lot of experiences, a lot of emotions, a lot of loneliness, a lot of everything. Just dark and light. A lot of contrast or whatever?? I guess. Well fuck it, ill just finish it. One very important thing I learned this year is that it is okay for people to not like you. Its okay to cut close friendships off. I lost a decent a mount of people this year and Im not sad about it. I always thought people come and go anyways. Shitty way to think but its whatever to me. I was just really tired of people not realizing what the fuck was going on, people being stupid, im being thrown under the bus, people being hypocrites, etc. Very tiring. Lowkey tired of being the person to get dumped on but thats been going on for a VERY LONG time. Shit since high school. Definitely met someone just like me but me and her didnt last long which again is my fault but whatever. She lowkey understood me. Not being checked on sometimes can be a big “fuck you”. I noticed people only did such thing if I tweeted some super sus shit or I just stopped communicating lol. Mad annoying. I wish I talked to my oldest brother, my parents, and my grandfather more. Well I lowkey have a long list of people I could've talked more but ya know how shit goes when its been too long. I need to learn how to give people their flowers before its too late. This tequila is beating my ass lmao. This is lowkey refreshing but I know im all over the place. lol this shows you how much I express myself. Niggas know I hate talking. Never was like this. Im getting sleepy. Work in progress still. 

[uncloseted]

i related to effy an unhealthy amount when i was only 13 when i first watched it, but at the time i wasnt doing drugs, homewrecking, doing anything that young lol. however i was extremely mentally ill but undiagnosed, and so confused but i found solace in effys character because of how similar i felt to her. flashforward to being 20 now and im a nic addict/borderline drug and alcohol addict that forgets to take my prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics. i cant tell you how many events of effys life have mirrored mine now 7 years later, both the pretty but mostly the ugly. it all feels like a joke to me, and the thing is of course it wasnt effy the fictional character that did this to me, it was the fact that i was genetically and epically set up to do this to me for as long as i existed and i saw myself in her too young. everyone ive ever met and started to befriend has fallen in love with me, has found me beautiful, and then seen my flaws and hated me even if they didnt tell me to my face. ive been a horrible friend and partner and im flighty and unreliable and destructive. i never saw effy, or a person like effy, find a happy ending and im afraid even when im at my manic highs i will never find a lasting happiness and will always accidentally self sabotage until i die. what im trying to ask is, how can i save me? i know its dumb to ask a random tumblr user but ive been following this blog since i was 13-14 and since you know effy through and through, you might know a little about me. its a long shot. (i’d also like to say this isnt a cry for help and im safe/not actively suicidal so i dont want you to feel like theres any pressure like that, but i did use this ask box as a free therapy session.)

I'm a bit biased, but I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a random Tumblr user at all. I'm happy to be a free therapy session when you need one, and I'm really touched that you've trusted me with your thoughts and feelings for so long. Hopefully I've been some help over the years 😆

Coping with mental illness can be really, really hard, but the good news is that with the right tools and support system, you can absolutely recover. It sounds like you already have a psychiatrist in your life, which is a great start. If you've having trouble remembering to take your medication, it might help to set calendar reminders on your phone, set up text prompts to remind you to take your pills, to link taking your pills with something else you do every day (like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast), or to reward yourself for taking your medication (for example, putting a piece of candy in your pill box that you can eat after taking your pill).

If you don't have one already, a therapist might also be a good idea. It can take a while to find the right therapist for you, so schedule a few appointments and see which therapist you "click" with. A therapist can help you work through any reluctance you might have towards taking you medications, as well as helping you come up with day to day strategies that help you achieve your goals and helping you work through the beliefs that you hold about yourself and the world that may be holding you back.

Moving on to talking about addiction for a bit. I strongly believe that addiction doesn't come from some type of inherent lack of willpower or moral failing, or even really the drug itself. It's the need to escape reality. And that's actually supported by scientific literature; most famously, the Rat Park experiment by Bruce K Alexander. Practically, we've seen that same thing in the aftermath of Portugal's decision to decriminalize all drugs. They took the money they were using to keep drug users in prison, and instead invested that money into reconnecting people who struggle with addiction to society. Their goal was to make sure that every person who struggles with addiction has a reason to get up in the morning and has a support system within the wider society. And it actually worked- injection drug use is down 50%, overdoses and HIV infections have massively decreased, and rates of addiction decreased as well. It's much easier to quit when you have something motivating you to keep going.

Why am I telling you all of this? I guess what I'm trying to get at is in order to recover from addiction, I think first people need to understand what the reality is that they're trying to escape. What can be done about those issues? Who's in your corner trying to support you, even if they're not doing the best job at it? Where else can you get the social support you might need? What are you passionate about? What would make it feel worth it to get up in the morning? I think instead of focusing on the drugs, or the alcohol, or the cigarettes, maybe we should focus on solving the root problems that make those attractive options. That's one of the reasons a therapist is a really good idea; they can help you figure out what those root problems are, and provide resources and tools to help you fix those problems.

In terms of practical, do it yourself advice for dealing with addiction, there are a couple things you might try. I did a whole post on evidence-based ways to set goals and follow through on them here, so I won't rehash it in this post, but basically:

Try to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. For you, this might be something like "My goal is to have only one drink a day (measurable and achievable) for week (time bound) so that I can be more reliable for my friends (relevant)".

Instead of trying to quit something, replace it with something else. For example, "when I feel like smoking, I'm going to do ten minutes of learning Korean instead". Learning something new is easier and more exciting, and so new habits are easier to maintain that breaking old ones. Find a new hobby that you've always wanted to do or that's exciting to you, and try to focus your energies on that to distract yourself.

Identify any obstacles (such as environmental triggers) that you might run into, and develop contingency plans for working around them. This might be something like, "when I drink coffee in the morning, I want to smoke, so I'm going to switch to tea instead." If you can, get rid of all environmental triggers that might remind you of your addiction or trigger a craving.

Get someone else involved. Tell a friend about your goal and have them check up on you. Your fear of disappointing them will help you stay on track.

Put money on the line. Give money to a friend with the understanding that you'll get it back at a set date if you've achieved the goal you set. Tell your friend that if you fail, they should donate the money to a group or cause you really hate.

Write down the reasons you want to quit, and put them somewhere you know you'll see them. Whenever you want to engage in an addiction behavior, read through that list first.

For bonus points, add to that list your contingency plan for when you want to engage in an addiction behavior. These may include ways to redirect your attention or distract yourself until the craving passes.

76% of people who wrote down their goals, actions and provided weekly progress to a friend successfully achieved their goals.

You might also try an addiction recovery app, such as these, or doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy worksheets on your own if you can't access a therapist right now.

There are also some things you can try in order to improve your mood. As much as I hate that this is true, consistent exercise has a huge impact on mood. If you can, try taking a 20 minute walk outside, 3 times a week. Other (boring) things, like making sure you're getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night and eating regularly, can also make a big difference in mood. Some of you might know that I'm a little bit obsessed with the free Coursera class "The Science of Well-Being". It has a lot of great evidence-based tips and tricks for how to build happiness, and I highly recommend it if you're trying to live a happier life. These include things like journaling, meditating, noting things that you're grateful for, helping other people, and having regular social interactions.

Finally, a few philosophical thoughts. One of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is dukkha. Basically, this is the idea that suffering is an innate characteristic of existence in our world. When I was younger, I never liked this concept, but I think now I kind of get it. It's impossible to be happy 100% of the time, and that shouldn't be our goal. Suffering is the comparison by which our lives gain meaning. But we can do our best to minimize our suffering and the suffering of others, and ride the wave of suffering when it does come. And each time we ride that wave, we can learn techniques to manage it a little bit better, and to make it easier the next time. We will sometimes sabotage ourselves out of fear, but we can learn how to do it less frequently and for the consequences to be less dire. We can learn how to forgive ourselves for our flaws and what we've done in the past, and learn from those mistakes so we don't do them again in the future. It's also okay to backslide, to struggle even after you've made progress. You're never back where you started, because you've always learned more and experienced more.

I know I've thrown kind of a lot at you in this post, and I don't expect you to try all of it or for all of it to work, but hopefully something in there is helpful to you. You can get through this. You can save yourself, but please, also remember to let others help save you. You don't need to do this on your own. And just like I have been since you were 13, I'm always here to give a free therapy session and to lend my support ❤️❤️❤️

[rivetgoth]

I had this friend I met in the Hetalia fandom in like 8th-9th grade who was like, a lot older than me (I was like 12-13 when we met and she was like 17 or so), and we were REALLY close for a really long time, we'd talk and call every day and it got to a point where she was really dependent on me in this awful way where she would like constantly threaten suicide if I didn't answer her texts fast enough and shit like that. She was really rich cuz her dad was a doctor and one time she bought me an entire fucking Xbox One (I did not ask for it like... I'd always been a PlayStation gamer LOL) because she didn't have anyone to play Halo with her. My family still has it and uses it as a DVD player/Netflix machine.

Anyway the really batshit thing about this person (BESIDES the fact that she was like, definitely a pedophile who loved shota and frequently sexted me after she'd turned 18+ and I was like 14 and she also had both a bestiality and incest fetish that she'd talk to me about constantly — I was a kid I had no moral concept of anything and just liked being edgy and feeling mature) was that she was like. A chronic liar who constantly faked identities. And for years after cutting off contact with her I would look back and realize that she had faked even more than I had noticed at the time. The thing is, I knew for sure she wasn't lying about her home life -- Her address, what she looked like, her dad's profession, her age, her house, her pets, etc, were all things I had proof of. But when I knew her she was constantly remaking her Tumblr to escape drama she'd start, and she would constantly make side blogs under pseudonyms and pretend it wasn't her (sometimes it would be random shit like aesthetic blogs under different names or ask blogs for characters or smthn, other times it was like, callout blogs for people she had gotten into drama with where she would pretend to be someone else defending her). I assumed back then that I was always going to be in on it, because she would always tell me whenever she made one of these fake accounts, and sometimes she would encourage me to make a new account too as a sort of roleplay thing where we both pretended to be people we weren't... Until I learned that she wasn't always telling me. Every so often, I would become mutuals with a new account who would start messaging me about my interests and strike a conversation with me. Then something would slip and my "new mutual" would admit that they had actually been my friend all along... Which should have made me immediately cut contact because that's weird as shit, but I was young and she was a close friend, so I would just sorta accept it.

She ended up being like, horrifically transphobic. She got run off her blog twice for being specifically transmisogynistic, first insisting that she was allowed to headcanon canon trans women as feminine men and then on her next blog insisting that lesbians couldn't be attracted to trans women. I was still young and closeted and she was one of my closest friends and was constantly messaging me that the situation was making her suicidal and she was just wording things wrong and totally supported trans people and people just weren’t giving her the benefit of the doubt and she was still learning so I tried to just stay out of it without losing her. Then... I came out as trans lol. She stopped replying to me when I first came out and then made a bunch of vents on her tumblr about how much it upset her and about how “using he/him pronouns for AFAB people is triggering” for whatever fucking reason. She told me her “best IRL friend” who she had introduced me to once on Skype but who never logged in again after and who refused to ever do a group call or anything (definitely another fake account) said that it was irrational for me to expect my friends to respect my pronouns so soon after coming out and that I shouldn’t be upset if I get misgendered. Then she apologized but told me my name and pronouns would never fit me. As you can imagine, as a little baby trans kid who was closeted from my family and terrified of even having come to terms with being trans, I didn’t really have a great defense.

Soon she started being really woke like 2014 style Tumblr SJW to save face, she came out as nonbinary and told me in private it was because she felt bad when people called her cis during discourse (she absolutely wasn't nonbinary) and she coined a "new sexuality" that was "attraction only to people you perceive as feminine, regardless of how they identify" -- what this actually meant was "attraction to cis women and not trans women." She ran an aroace help blog despite not being aroace? And made a bunch of pride flags that I still see around sometimes to this day. She would start fights a lot and try to out-woke people and got into a bunch of drama with other SJW types of the day, got into a bunch of drama with TumblrInAction and Mogai-Watch and shit like that, and she claimed for a short while that she had a headmate (FWIW I totally believe DID is a legitimate thing but like. Trust me on this one.) who was transphobic and that it made her so sad, she told me that it was actually that headmate that had been transphobic before, and every so often her headmate would front out of nowhere and misgender me and use really abusive language like calling me a cunt or a bitch or whatever. She started making these "intersex nonbinary" OCs who she would constantly make porn of under the guise that they were representation for LGBT people who were just like, extremely fetishistic cuntboys and dickgirls (they were “intersex” to explain why they could be “girls with natal penises” or “boys with natal vaginas”).

At that same time, she somehow always managed to have these random, very sporadically active trans women mutuals who were apparently amazing friends of hers, who shared some interests with her but also would defend her when people brought up her past, with these long-winded “Well, I’m a trans woman and I think what she said is perfectly justified and everyone makes mistakes and she’s always been a good ally!!” Then one day some trans woman received an ask from her account where she claimed to be a “black trans woman” (she was, of course, a white cis woman) and she freaked out and claimed she had “been hacked by TiA or 4Chan to make her look bad” — I realize now she had just been sending anon messages pretending to be things she wasn’t and forgot to hit anon LOL. Late in all of this she also got into a bunch of hot water for being really antisemitic and saying she didn’t trust Jewish people because they were just like Christians and like, 5 seconds later she came out as Jewish and wrote this whole long sad vent about how she had had internalized antisemitism and then started going by a random Hebrew name LMAO.

In the end the final breaking point was when I found her secret TERF blog, where she had been making posts for months about how trans men are just insecure women who are trying to escape misogyny by stepping on the backs of “fellow women” and using me as a fucking example, and also saying that me not coming out as a trans man had been “basically rape” since she had been SEXTING me when she was 18+ and I was 13-14+ and that it was traumatic to know someone she had trusted was secretly identifying as a man LMAO. She was also obviously saying all sorts of transmisogynistic things, but also had these really bizarre fetish posts about wanting trans women to fuck her...? I confronted her about it and she literally fucking out of nowhere told me that she was in the emergency room with a mysterious illness that might kill her and she was allowed to have her phone but due to privacy laws couldn’t send a picture as proof. While “in the hospital” she deleted the TERF blog and her personal blog. I had known her for literal YEARS at this point (we had met when I was 12-13 or so and by the time we no longer spoke I was a few months from 17), and I was completely stunned to fucking hear this person trying to pull “I’m in the hospital with a deadly disease” at being confronted for some shit like that LMAO. I made a post about it on my public and another “trans woman friend” of hers logged in to vehemently defend her by saying that there’s nothing wrong with AFAB women being untrusting of trans people because female oppression is uniquely traumatic and that there’s nothing wrong with women expressing their sexuality by sexting minors as long as the minor consents and that I was the real predator for “hiding that I was a man” (remember, I’d been a 13 year old closeted trans boy), before never logging in again... 😭 One of the last times we ever talked was when she demanded I refund her for the fucking Xbox and I refused.

Anyway, the long-term aftermath of that is that a few people online (in some random cringe areas of the internet) who archived some of her antics still think that I also wasn’t a real person, since they caught onto how much she lied about too, so they think I was also a sock puppet and I have no interest in clarifying and making myself known to those people LOL. I have no fucking idea where she is now, she deactivated everything after her being a TERF came out. There’s like, so much more to that I could say because I knew her for YEARS and, like I said, she was one of my “closest friends.” Her parents had wildly expensive pure bred designer dogs that she would make Vines of. She wrote Beatles real person fan fiction. For her birthday one year I made her a shirt on Zazzle with an inside joke about one of her OCs... does she still have that? Either way, she was easily the most batshit person I’ve ever known closely online and I will forever associate the Hetalia fandom with people like that.

[bellamyblakru]

HEYYYYYYY i’m so excited to respond to ur ask it made me so happy to see u in my notifs and i’m so excited for u for ur milestone! anyways i kinda want all of them but i decided to cut down to 🥺 :)))) 👀 pls rant i will read it all and ☕️ for morgwen andddd manon from the tog books. <3 <3 :*

HEY AMY!!! i hope you had a lovely day today🥺thank you for the ask💞

🥺- for my mutuals, ill talk about why i follow you and why everyone should be as well

omg im pretty sure i met and started following you like the day of that bellamy scene™️ because i remember thinking how fucking horrendous that episode ended, and, at the same time, how amazing that night on tumblr was aksnakaaj. so that night, tumblr was a fucking disaster and chaotic and funny asf. i remember texting @tkstrrand the entire ep (bc she couldn’t watch it for some reason) like how boring it was/how she wasn’t missing much blahblah and then when the death scene happened at the last fucking second, i sent her about a thousand separate incoherent texts in the span of like two minutes LOL tumblr was in shambles and i made a few posts about how fucking dumb the show was—one post i made i told my few new followers to fuck the 100 and just watch merlin and you texted me about it!! we have literally so much in common (with merlin, atla, the 100, tog!!!) that when you texted me about how you felt about that scene compared to merlin’s ending, my thought was like “this blog is so kind and we feel the same way and i need to follow asap.”

you are literally so sweet and lovely to talk to🥺that night™️ may had been disastrous, but i can look on it with a lighter heart because we met because of it!! every time we talk i always smile so much (and dw, i know i still have to get clone wars for our boy anakin👀👀)

dude, everyone should be following you because your blog is incredible, your tags are superb, and you are literally one of the sweetest people i’ve met on here😭💞 i adore you.

👀 - and ill tell you a parallel from merlin or the 100 that still fucks me up

this post for merthur still FUCKS ME UP by @camelotsheart

THE EYES. THE GIFSET’S BEAUTIFUL COLORING. THE EYES. EYES. I CANT. THIS GIFSET HAUNTS ME. parallels, man, i fucking love them.

☕️ + send me a ship/character/movie/book and ill give you my opinions on it

my opinions on morgwen:

I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I SHIP IT WITH MY WHOLE ASS SOUL. dude, their potential as a ship is incredible😭i fucking love them together. i wrote them as a side pairing in my first multi-chapter merthur fic and i adored writing their interactions and dynamic sm. if morgana was going to be with anyone, my first choice will always be gwen. i also read them as a pairing in fics all the time because the pure power-couple potential is insane.

hot ☕️ here™️: i think if someone was to bring morgana back from the brink of hatred, it should have been gwen (not merlin). so, like, i could definitely see merlin telling her about his magic and whatnot and maybe that would have stopped her from going dark side...but...i didn’t think merlin should have (ekk probably an unpopular opinion).

see, i love merlin with my entire heart..and tbh telling uther fucking pendragon’s ward that he had magic was just too much of a gamble—especially with arthur’s life on the line, which literally became merlin’s sole purpose in life (another matter for a different essay™️). i understand his need to keep it a secret from her even more when the large reptile repeatedly got into merlin’s head that she was bad news from the jump (also another matter for a different essay™️).

SO. that leaves two options for our miserable magical gal: arthur or gwen. now, i honestly believe arthur wouldn’t have hurt her if he was told. and i even think he may have became more sympathetic to the magical community because of it—especially when he saved mordred wayyyy early on that cemented the fact that arthur was not uther. but i can also understand why morgana wouldn’t tell arthur, and it’s pretty much the same reason merlin didn’t tell her about his magic: the risk was too big and she didn’t want to gamble her life with an unknown reaction.

now we get to the main point: gwen would have been the best option for her. whether it is platonic or not, gwen was always there for morgana. gwen is such a kind, loving soul, and she deeply respected and adored morgana—you can tell by the way she smiled around her in the beginning seasons, how she would get her flowers, how she would worry about morgana’s wellbeing. even though gwen was morgana’s servant, she cared for her in more ways than were required and it showed. they were best friends. the entire incident with gwen’s father, which was horrendous, might be the reason gwen would be rightfully upset about the subject of magic; however. she knew her father wasn’t magical, she knew uther was a tyrant, and she knew morgana’s heart. someone is gonna tell me that if morgana had explained to gwen what happened, how her magic was innate, how morgana would never fucking choose to have magic anywhere near her shithead guardian (who probably would have killed her imo if he knew bc you know the whole “fire will purify” bullshit), that gwen would hate her??? I MEAN LITERALLY WATCH THE LAST EPISODES AGAIN. when QUEEN GWEN realizes that the whole time it was merlin saving everyone’s asses, and she connected all the dots, her face showed nothing but pure understanding and acceptance.

gwen was such an underused character. her fucking potential arcs could have been phenomenal (again, LOL, another matter for a different essay™️), and the way canon made morgana use gwen was fucking gross and im not a fan🙃 but fuck canon. i ship them and i love them to pieces ✌🏻thank you for coming to my talk✌🏻

my opinions on manon mf blackbeak:

oh boy, where do i start? i would die for her...is that too extreme for the starting place? i fucking LOVE manon blackbeak dude. oh my god, so, remember when her and aelin fought for the first time in QoS? i remember jumping up from my lounging position with my hand over my smiling mouth because i love both of these badass hardcore women with everything i am. i mean, aelin owns my ass (she is probably my favorite character of all time rn) but manon hits differently. her storyline at the beginning was so bleh, but, man, did it escalate fast to “holy shit” to “i fucking love her” to “oh fuck im sobbing.”

the only thing i will complain about with her character in canon was the fact that my girl was straight???? excuse me?? she has been alive for fucking forever and she is straight? no. i cant accept that. tbh i ship manon and elide🥺 (i also ship dorain and chaol oops). but her character development was everything and i cant think too long on what happens because i will start crying tbh sksjsmakks

okay wow im so sorry for, uh, spilling every thought i had into this. it legit took me like a day to respond 😔

i appreciate you so much. thank you🥺💞

[novantinuum]

Writer tag game

Tagged by @parallelmarvel (OMG I looked at your AO3 and realized I see you in my comments all the time and you wrote the fic with all the letters sent to Greg’s parents and aUGH hello :O)

Author Name: Novantinuum

Fandom(s) you write for: Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Doctor Who, Tales of Arcadia

Where you post: AO3, crossposted to tumblr.

Most popular one-shot: Shattering Atlas. (SU corrupted Steven theory fic I posted back last October. Please heed those tags, ahah.)

Most popular multi-chapter: Hollowed Moon, by far. (Good lord I need to get back to that.) That fucker has over 2500 kudos, and I don’t know how, because it’s not even over 9K words. I blame September’s Spinel mania. XD

Favorite story you wrote: Oh god... in terms of writing? I’m still super fond of The Hybrid in the Hourglass. It’s a super niche ship fic for Doctor Who, so most followers here probably don’t have much interest, but I’m still super happy with a lot of the descriptive work in it.

Story you were nervous to post: Shattering Atlas, since it is incredibly dark, and I was unsure how that would be received by my audience. 

Also, I was a little hesitant at posting another Doctor Who fic, Loving the Sunset, because it contained (albeit super wrapped up in metaphoric description) the first and at the moment only love making scene I’ve ever written.

How do you choose your titles? I either pick a meaningful word straight outta the text of the work, scour through song titles/lyrics, or cry for three hours as I string phrases together until I find something that sounds good. Titling is my least favorite part of writing stories. I am currently attempting to title something as we speak, and it’s not a fun time. Rip my brain.

How many of your stories are complete? 39 on my AO3. I have an additional 18 on my ancient ff.net account that are also complete. One of them is actually a 132K word longfic! (I, however, will not be crossposting those to AO3 because the writing is far below my current standards.)

In progress: 

Crack the Paragon (my current SU longfic project)

Contact (multichap wherein Steven’s gem gets cracked, whoops.)

Hollowed Moon

Taste of Ordinary (an old SU WIP that only has one chapter out, but I’ve recently decided I want to pick it back up.)

Coming soon: 

Uhhh, I have a ficlet with Garnet and Rose and an egg? I might post that tomorrow. Everything else is at various stages of progress, but definitely not far enough along to be claimed as coming “soon.” I work slow, unfortunately. The woes of mental illness.

Upcoming story you’re most excited to write: I will always be excited to make more progress on Crack the Paragon, because I desperately want to get to a number of scenes in the chapters to come.

Now if I can only... turn that excitement... into will to write... ;D;

Do you accept prompts? Not at the moment, no. 

Top five favorite authors: 

AbelQuartz writes the most immersive stuff and uwu ;w;

hueue’s (spooksier) AUs slap

infriga’s Aid To Navigation has me g l u e d to my screen

fanfoolishness writes consistently stunning stuff a a aaaa 

loveluckylost writes the Best Lars, no question

Tagging: all y’all I cried about above, if you ever want a fun writing meme to do, @infriga, @abel-quartz, @fanfoolishness, @loveluckylost, @spooksier

[licenselesswriter]

1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44. And if I could send more, I would.

Inspiration and Reading Asks:

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction? Started reading when I was 12, started writing it, when I was 14, so reading, 19 years ago, and writing 17 years ago.

2. How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both? I’m a 33.3% reader, 33.3% WIP machine, a 33.4% writer, and 100% mess, I usually spend my time doing an absurd amount of WIP that comes out of thin air, like, I can be eating an apple, boom, Bori WIP, a cup of coffee? Boom, Roro WIP, breathing? Boom, Lucaya WIP (that last one happens the most)

3. Are there any fics that inspired you to write what you do? It’s called Unfaithful (EN), it’s on fanfiction.net, and honestly, it’s so well written, that I had nausea 3 times while reading it, the pain was so palpable that I felt ill from it.

4. Link your three favorite fics right now. Right now, and in order 1 - Unfaithful (EN)  2 - Twenty Nights  3 - Perfect 

6. How do you find a new fic to read? Where do you primarily read fanfiction? Fanfiction or AO3, and have an excel doc with my favorite ships, then I go to the random number generator, putting 1 as the minimum and maximum the number of the last ship I added to the list, then hit random, and read about that ship, keep things fresh.

7. Do you prefer to read short fics or long fics? Both.

8. How often do you reblog/comment on fics that you like? When they are on Tumblr, a few times.

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community. I’m sorry, but I don’t know if they have Tumblr, so, amirmitchell, snowdrifts, and Onde Tu Esteves

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for? Fandom: Game of Thrones, love all those modern universe AU I have to say. Pairing: Lucaya (Not a surprise) Character: Lucas Friar, Portgas D. Ace, Roronoa Zoro, or Prince Zuko.

Fanfiction Writing Asks:

11. How do you come up with your fic titles? Coffee, food, and usually, Spotify, all that, sometimes, make my brain work into having titles about the things I want to write.

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic? I do outlines, in 5 stages, so a pretty big one. 1 - I write in my notebook, what I want to write, like a general idea. 2 - Post it on my walls and door, to give the story some structure. 3 - Notebook outline the arch of the story. 4 - Outline every chapter on word. 5 - Reduce that chapter into mini arches to write faster.

14. Do you have a personal word minimum that you hold yourself too? Why or why not? I do (now), I usually don’t post anything that is less than 2900 words, Why? because we must not forget that writers not only write for people in the fandom, they mainly write for themselves, and I love to read something among that word count because that’s long enough to keep me on the hook.

16. Do you research for your fics? If so, how deep of a rabbit hole have you gone down by accident when researching? I do research for my fics, how deep? I can give indications for divorce paperwork in the state of New York, even if you want or not to go scorch the earth with the “fault” rule, I can give an appropriate value to an apartment or a house in New York, Texas, Nashville, and San Francisco, and I can do taxes on those states too, and I know more about how high school classes work in the US than in my country, even when I went to those classes, and I’m from Santiago, Chile, you know, in South America, like, the last country of South America

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback? I don’t, once I finish writing something, I run away, and watch anime for a few hours, or work (Yeah, sometimes I write on my lunch hour)

18. Do you have a WIP that you keep telling yourself you’ll eventually get back to, but deep down you know that’s probably a lie? I do apologize to “The Games we Play” I have no idea how I outlined your 26 chapters, but I’m still on chapter 2, and I’m sorry.

19. Do you edit your fics after you write them, or do you prefer to just hit post and run (because it’s someone else’s problem now)? Sometimes I do because sometimes, I write things wrong.

20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process? That happiness I get when I’m in the Zone, and I write something that makes me say “Fuck, that was good”

21. What’s your least favorite part about the fanfiction writing process? I call it “The Deep White”, also known as writer’s block.

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write? I don’t write it anymore, because I was banned from a forum for writing it, but I love to write a bad ending, like “Killing the main character that I make you love for 30 chapters in the end” ending. I’m evil, I know, sue me.

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write? The “Good girl trying to change the bad boy,” I hate, apologies, I DESPISE that trope, it’s not cool, first, to be with someone abusive, and second, to try to change someone because you think you’re so almighty that you will change him (or her)  because of love, bs, I SAID BS.

25. Do you listen to music as you write? If possible, link your writing playlist. I do, and of course, it’s named “Writing Shiet” because my brain can only process decent titles for fics (Says the guy who once named a fic “No Title”) Here’s the link 

26. What’s your biggest distraction when writing? Anime and Manga.

27. Do you like to give your readers some warning of what might be coming or just slap them in the face with content at random? I don’t usually do it, but when I do it, I do it cryptic, like “You might be surprised, but this, I called in the beginning.”

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)? I ignore it, If I can ignore good advice, ignore something that gives me more stress it’s an easy cake.

29. Have you ever written for an exchange or event of some kind? Which one(s)? Did you enjoy it? I did but didn’t submit, I wrote for 2019 fictoberfest on Tumblr, but never send a shit, I did enjoy it tho

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words. "Well, we're still not in Texas," he says, implying something not PG-13 at all. "My God, in what did I turn you?" Maya teases him before getting up and grab his hand, pulling him up. Lucas grins at her, "On," he replies, making Maya flirty hit his chest

31. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones? I love writing Lucas and Maya, and honestly don’t know if it helps me or not LOL.

32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from? 1 - From November to June CH3 A few hours later, Maya heard a knock on her door. She takes a peek through the magic eye on her door and saw Lucas. She grabs her phone and fastly texts him. She was able to hear the 'ding' of his phone, and spying through the magic eye she saw his reaction. "Ok, first of all, I'm not that, second, my mother is not that, and third, I'm not gonna put that there, that's fucking gross, and probably deadly if you consider the size of my hands." he defends himself. 2 - Ten Duel Commandments CH2 Maya smiles at him, "Since you're all Texan cowboy goody-good boy, I imagine you would relate more with the honorable Lord Stark," she teases him. "Says the woman who read three books in a row and texts me at four in the morning," he replies before pulling out his phone, "R+L=J," he teases her, reading her text. "That's private, asshole," Maya recriminates him. 3 - The One Who Stayed CH18 "Then, I have less... GET OFF ME FUCKER!" Maya screamed, punching the person who grabbed her arm, "Holy shit, Lucas." she says, looking at the person she just hit. "Noted, never approach to you by surprise." Lucas says on the floor, "Well, this makes me feel more confident about you being here alone." he says before start laughing.

33. What do you like writing better: one-shots or multi-chapter stuff? Multi-chapter, unless, it’s wedding fics because I love weddings.

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is? None.

35. How much has writing fic changed your life? Not much, but has made me happier.

36. Are there any fics or fandoms you’re embarrassed to have written or been part of? The Glee Project Fandom.

37. Give an update on your current WIP - if you don’t have one, give a sneak peek to a title or idea that you have and would like to write. "Shawn called him, and he assures him that if you try something inappropriate, he has a shotgun," she adds, making Lucas's face go pale. "Well, guess like father, like son," he comments, making Maya show unexpected interest in his words.

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)? As I explained in the outline question, pretty tame if we count that I have my outline process numbered LOL.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on? That I try to make it real, I try to make people feel something when they read.

41. What’s your most popular fic (with the most notes on Tumblr, most hits/kudos on ao3)? Tumblr? The One Who Stayed Fanfiction.net? Ten Duel Commandments

44. Rant about something writing-related. Please, let’s stop glorifying the “Bad Boy” character, he’s an asshole, allow me to explain, Bakugo, fucking asshole, he’s just a bully with an oversized ego, no, he’s not a tsundere, no, it’s not cute, that shit is abusive, and it really makes me want to punch people in their nose when the romanticize that bullshit.

Done

(Told ya I was bored)

[maq-moon]

My mental illness & fandom

So this is a long time coming from me. Almost a year, really. I want to be clear up front: this isn’t a call-out post. It’s me explaining my (and possibly others’) behavior. It’s partially an apology, too. I know tumblr is like... the worst place to talk about mental health, but this is where the people I care for-- the people to whom this applies-- will see it. I’m so nervous that I’m actually shaking, but I think it has to be said. I won’t feel right until I’ve explained. So, off we go!

I’m crazy. I use that word because I have to laugh about my mental health or I’ll cry about it. There’s a laundry list of diagnoses (when I see a new doctor I ask, “Would you like them alphabetically or the order in which they were diagnosed?”), but right now we’re going to focus on two. I have PTSD (no, I won’t say why) and BPD. BPD is currently being bastardized in the media. Crime shows love to have their perp or unsub suffering from undiagnosed or unmedicated borderline. I won’t rant about how the mentally ill are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than to commit them.

The central thing with BPD is “black and white” or “all or nothing” thinking. Everything is one extreme or another; no middle ground exists. There are also attachment issues. We tend to get attached to people fast. Add the “all or nothing” to that. We could, hypothetically, meet a new person, have one or two good conversations, and think, “Wow, we’re great friends!” while the other person is thinking, “Meh, maybe I won’t answer their next text.” (This is where the media stereotype of stalkers/obsessed killers comes from).

I get this way. I’m very sociable and chatty and, if others are to be believed, downright charming *wink* I also attempt to cover my insecurities with humor. I’m incredibly insecure and want to avoid talking about a significant amount of my life, so I joke a lot. I’m generally positive with everyone I meet. Why shouldn’t this new person want to be my friend?

Because of me. Because of PTSD. As much as I get attached, as much as I want this new friend, I can’t trust them. As soon as a conversation turns serious, I get uncomfortable and push new people away. Sometimes friends will physically push the new people away for me if they see I’m in distress.

Which brings us to our title: fandom. Should be lots easier since it’s online, right? Nope! Have you ever heard of parasocial relationships? Most people haven’t. I learned about them when David Bowie died. A parasocial relationship is basically a one-sided relationship-- like why you’re sad when a celebrity dies. They didn’t know you, but you felt that you knew them in a way. That’s why the prefix is para. Here’s the connection. A person with borderline gets involved in fandom. Suddenly they’re surrounded by new people. Blogs, Twitter, the AO3 comment section, Discord servers-- they all serve as a way to interact with new people. And interaction means attachment.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have made actual friends in fandom. I go out of state a few times a year to visit someone from my Harry Potter roleplay days. I know it’s not impossible. But I don’t know when it’s a real relationship and when it’s parasocial.

You may be thinking that it’s like this for everyone. We’re all navigating the Internet and faceless kinda-friends. Well, yes. But I’m acutely aware of how having borderline makes me act and how it affects others. I don’t want to be that clingy weird lady. I don’t want to over-share and make people uncomfortable. So as soon as I feel a rapport building with someone online, I do what I do in real life: shut.it.down. I don’t ghost one person, I quit the Internet (all or nothing, remember?). I don’t want to give myself the opportunity to fuck up a friendship, so I stop myself from forming one. And I don’t think about how that affects the other person, because PTSD has me focused on my own well-being.

BPD and PTSD are one hell of a combo, right? Come closer, stay back! Ugh.

I asked my therapist once how to tell if the people online were my friends, if they liked me as much as I liked them. She said that a good indicator would be someone going out of their way to ask how you are or just saying “hi”. I realized my fandom friends weren’t my friends, and it was probably my fault. I quit the Internet for much of 2020 (when I wanted to come back, my computer broke. w e i r d). It’s hypocritical of me to make assumptions, though. After all, I don’t send random “hello how ya doin” messages. I keep quiet out of fear of my mental illness. I don’t know why others are quiet. I jump to the worst conclusion, though: none of them like me. And that’s me. That’s not a reflection of any community I’m in. All of my fandoms are full of lovely people. People I like, and who I wish I were brave enough to let like me.

I said way back in the first paragraph that this is a sort of apology. I’m not apologizing for having mental illnesses. Genetics and experiences did that and I stopped being ashamed a long time ago. I do want to apologize to a great group of people (while being vague enough that hopefully only they know who they are?).

Last year, I feel like I invited myself to your event. It was open, obviously, and I had a great vacation around it, but I still feel like I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. Zero blame on all of you; it was me assuming we were friends. The person I brought with me kept trying to get me to actively invite myself to things you were doing the next day. You weren’t talking to us, but she heard two of you discussing Indian food and kept pushing me to jump in; I’m not that rude. I talked to each of you for a few minutes, and then… Then I was afraid that the borderline would “kick in”. I was afraid that the only reason I had driven so far to meet you was because of borderline-induced parasocial relationships. A few weeks later, I did a fic swap but ignored everyone. I didn’t talk. I wrote, but I didn’t interact. I’m sorry for all of it. I won’t blame BPD; that’s a cop out (I have borderline, not “I’m borderline”). I was just very excited and very afraid and very insecure and even more very afraid.  

I’m used to not being liked. I’m what you would call “an odd duck” or “a special snowflake”. I’m weird, basically. But it’s one thing to be disliked for your weirdness and another to not know why you’re disliked, or even IF you’re disliked. That’s the beauty and the horror of the Internet, I guess. You can do you, but there are no boys asking you for tissues the day you’re wearing a Wonderbra. Er, an imperfect analogy. You don’t know what people really think! There’s no body language, no inflection. The only way I can think to tell if someone’s sort of my friend is if we’re mutuals. Some of my very favorite people aren’t, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t sting—but it’s me. It’s me and my idea of friendship, which is arbitrary and changeable, and it’s my brain playing tricks on me, and it’s me trying to outsmart a mental illness.

So… yeah. 1300 words on my brand of crazy. I hope maybe I cleared some things up (eleven months later). I guess if I had to tl;dr this thing, it would be that if I’m following you on a social media platform, if I go back-and-forth with you in comments, and so on, I probably want to be your friend and have been self-sabotaging. I’m not trying to put any onus on you. I’m just letting you know.

With love,

Mac        

[icysilence]

Hell, it's been a really long time since I logged into this account, right? Ahah....

I probably don't have an excuse, but I still owe at least some explanation to the people I've been talking to here, because going nowhere... just rude? Okay, let's go. (I don't even remember how to work with text on Tumblr, what can I talk about lol)

This post may look like a total disaster and im sorry, i don't really remember how to formate lmao

Kinda a lot of text below, so yeah 

If I remember correctly, my last visit was around March 14-18 – at this time I had to pass my coursework – my final work in 3rd year of college. But these dates became a stumbling block in the whole story – we were quarantined and we couldn't do anything about it. In Russia, the number of people infected with coronavirus began to grow sharply, and our college had no idea what video chats were lol.

The next couple of months after that were literally hell – people started buying up all the products, the mask regime and the fear of infecting their relatives, there's not much to talk about. Or is there?

 I don't remember mentioning it anywhere, but I'm a Medical college student, and who is needed most during an epidemic? Doctors, nurses, anyone with the idea of holding pills in their hands. And although our College gathered people at will, I signed up to be a volunteer and work in the Red zone – where patients with coronavirus lie. Not that I like to help people in principle, but I needed to know what the disease is, to know how it goes. As they say – the best defense is an attack, yes?

And so I worked for a couple of months. But then something happened that I least expected – I myself fell ill with the coronavirus. It would seem that here I am with my friends running around the stadium, which has been converted into a hospital, helping patients of different ages, smiling and helping them emotionally survive this nightmare, but... here I am lying, and they are running around me. Worried.

I will not go into details about how the disease occurred, probably, there are already many articles on the Internet "in the first person", I will only say that it was not very fun. I was treated for a month. On the calendar, meanwhile, it's mid-July.

And it seems that studying is over, I am also healthy (relatively) but at home everything was not as smooth as I thought. Repairs, family fights, whatever.

And now, September. It seems that the number of infected people began to fall, and we went back to college. But I realized that this is my last year, I have to write a diploma, pass a professional exam, and in General a lot of things.

However, growth took off again, and the College decided to start gathering students for work in red zone again. So I signed up. But this is what will happen in the future.

 And so, in short, I went through hell and beyond, although it might seem that I had a lot of opportunities not to disappear so quietly, so everything is much more complicated.

So that….

If this fandom is still alive, and if at least someone remembers me, at least 1 person who is ready to write with me again, I am ready.

If not, then I killed myself with such a sharp loss, and it will be my punishment, I think. I will also answer all the questions, because I think I wrote this text quite incomprehensible, so yeah...

[hydrospanners]

fic masterlist: swtor

at the request of literally no one, i’ve created a masterlist of all my swtor fic. first is a chronological collection of all the swtor fic i’ve written in my “canon”. it’s broken up into snippets of time relative to the events of swtor. aus and gift fics are at the end. this is more for me than anything else, but if you have a bunch of time on your hands and want to read some fic--enjoy!!!

i am the most self-indulgent author known to man so there are numerous fics that don’t feature any canon characters in any significant way. i’m not sorry, but i did mark them with an asterisk for everyone’s edification. i also wrote actually vaguely descriptive descriptions instead of whatever bullshit i put in the descriptions on ao3. all links go to ao3 because tumblr was not designed for reading and it shows.

53 fics below the cut... what a trip, y’all.

backstory these fics are about things that happened before the opening of the class story. 

* a very velaran life day - snippets of different life days in the velaran family history. no canon characters in it yet, but maybe this christmas i’ll get to some fics that aren’t solely about my own ocs.

* the shape of things to come - the story about how rea finally joined the jedi at the ripe old age of sixteen.

* a dimming star - the first steps on rea’s jedi path. they aren’t fun ones, lads!

* necessary sacrifice - like three years down the timeline and still no canon characters! rea continues to struggle with this whole being a jedi thing, and it continues to struggle with her! this one features a haircut as a symbol of a turning point in the story.

bars and stripes - canon characters??? in my fic????? its more likely than you think. this is a shameless ripoff of an episode of m*a*s*h masquerading as doc backstory. does it have cameos and/or mentions of other healer companions? maybe!!!

prelude these are fics set during the prologue of the class stories, everything that happens between the start and completing the capital planet missions. 

* memories - rhese? do you finally get a say in all this??? this is the moment rhese and rea finally see each other for the first time since they were recruited to the jedi, set at the very start of the class story.

attachments - kira and rea talk about rhese. that’s it. that’s the fic.

act one all the stories set between killing tarnis and beginning preparations to capture the emperor (everything after coruscant ending and pubside balmorra starting). rip orgus. one day ill finish all those wips about how sad it was when he bit it. in the mean time, can i interest you in some gifsets?

lessons - now rea’s padawan, kira reflects on how bad rea is at teaching, though maybe without as much clarity as i just implied.

a tangled web - so stupid it’s basically crack, kira has to rescue rea from an embarrassing situation.

of flowers, failure, and the virtues of friendship - kira and rhese start to bond over the shared torment of having to be around rea. rivals to friends (one day i’ll write the “to lovers” part that comes after).

act two all the stories during the time when the knight is prepping for the assault on the emperor’s fortress and then assaulting it. everything between pubside balmorra starting and breaking free from the emperor’s fortress after that super successful plan to bring him in alive. great job jedi!

filling the table - is that shipfic????? the reason i started writing swtor fic in the first place??? this is rea being thirsty disguised as me sewing seeds for the eventual doc x rea romance. pazaak themed for some reason? (doc x rea)

when the wicked play - this is me being obsessed with the translation of video game violence to vaguely realistic circumstances posing as doc feeling some kind of way about rea murdering a whole bunch of dudes who wanted to hurt her but weren’t powerful enough. not primarily romantic but definitely some setup for their relationship.

night shift -  everything is doc x rea and nothing hurts. rea’s got work to do but who can work when there’s a horny mustachio’d doctor trying to persuade her back to bed??? it’s not love it’s just good sex!!!!! honest!!!!(doc x rea)

these nights never seem to go to plan - rea isn’t yearning for affection, she’s just too tired to get out of doc’s bed after so much boning. okay maybe this is about slightly more than good sex after all... doc x rea TENDERNESS.

somewhere we’ve not been before - this is the good shit lads!!!! doc x rea!!! first dates!!!! shenanigans!!!! honest to goodness falling in love between all that fucking that do!!!!!!!!!!!! (doc x rea)

no better taste - a sequel to the last fic featuring the morning after!!! some post-horniness introspection!! tenderness!!!!!! hints of yearning!!! god i miss the days before the mind control and the carbonite when the problems were normal things like commitment and abandonment issues. (doc x rea)

heart - rea sends doc a rocking “thanks for the great sex” gift!! rhese is disgusted by every part of it! this is comedy folks!!!! (doc x rea... i guess)

interruptions - rea takes a work call while she’s boning doc. that’s the whole fic. i think this was my first spicy fic?? i can’t remember. (doc x rea)

* where you go to rest your bones - sibling tenderness!!!! their relationship is super complicated, but rhese is reminded that underneath all the bullshit rea really does love him a lot.... it’s both sad and not sad at the same time. schroedinger’s sadness.

gifts - the crew tries to plan a gift for rea, but what do you get for the woman who’s banned from everything?? so dumb it’s basically crack and i’m not sorry for it.

crapshoot - the crew takes bets on what rea’s next Bad Idea TM will be. she shows them you can’t predict chaos. basically crack but i don’t care.

spoonful of sugar - vignettes about the jedi knight crew dealing with sickness. almost entirely comedy and/or fluff. doc x rea content is present and rhese x kira content is suggested.

a little eggstra - grocery shopping gone awry, based on an old tumblr text post. hella stupid, yet hella fun. doc x rea is in the background.

to break our bones for kindling - you thought we were just having good times??? you’re a fool. doc’s job is to heal people and rea’s job is to break them. sometimes they have work-related disagreements!!! be sad with me. doc x rea.

* when a problem comes along, you must whip it - i can only stop being stupid for so long, so here’s the story about how rea came to possess her lightwhip, the stupidest weapon known to man. these events do not go well for rhese.

things unsaid - a dumb doc x rea drabble about stupid shit rea says when she’s been mortally wounded. if doc were to just let her die, no one would blame him.

* the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one - a bit of a character/relationship study about what rhese is willing to sacrifice for love of his sister, no matter how complicated things are between them. a second chapter about what rea sacrifices for rhese is in my wips and will be completed... .eventually. 

lovesick - doc x rea ship content. my interpretation of that one conversation where doc’s like “hey would your jedi powers tell me if im going crazy also do you love me? check yes or no. i will not elaborate.”

* the things we left behind - oh no lads.... we’re building up to the fortress shit.... our good times are over. rea does some underhanded shit to make sure her brother doesn’t go on this mission to capture the emperor cause the plan does not seem like a great one.

act three wow wasn’t act two fun??? so much silly nonsense and love. now get a drink assholes it’s Time To Be Sad. act three covers everything in the class stories after coming back from that super successful assault on the emperor’s fortress (great job jedi!) to finally stabbing the bastard in the dark fortress and hoping that gets the job done at last. (spoilers: it doesn’t!!!!!) aka stories from belsavis to the final assault on dromund kaas.

everything we left there - it’s trauma time!!! rea’s fucked up from the fortress and feeling the pressure (thanks for the prophecy scourge!!! love that!!!!) so she hurts people she cares about to protect them. it’s her signature move!

the only thing that’s real - rea continues to be fucked up from what happened on the fortress but hey... at least she isn’t fucked up alone??? sad doc x rea content.

into the jungle - the gang is on belsavis and no one is having a good time! since rea isn’t herself, doc tries to pick up the slack and reassure kira that it’ll all be okay! it goes about as well as you’d expect.

interlude now that i’m looking at it, there are some serious gaps in my fic coverage. anyway, sad hours are over, the emperor is (kind of but not really) dead and there may still be a war on but things are looking up! this covers everything between the emperor’s death and the beginning of kotfe, including forged alliances and the shadow of revan.

hands too hungry - doc finally takes rea on that honeymoon she didn’t really care about in the first place! tragically, rea is way too horny to be impressed by what an amazing vacation he planned for himself them. peak rea x doc content.

no kind of romantic - it’s doc and rea’s one year anniversary but they are both working on opposite sides of the galaxy. sad! it’s doc x rea fluff disguised as angst.

a little help from a friend - rea and theron are worst/best friends and i recycle romance tropes into annoying friendship ones. this is the least sexy sharing body heat fic you’ve ever (not?) read. bite me.

retirement - rea has some feelings about her very violent, stressful job and how it interferes with her husband doing things that actually help and heal. doc x rea content.

the dreaded kotfe content these are sad hours!!! this is everything from arcann’s invasion on, cause i’m not breaking it up by post-carbonite storyline you bastards. i don’t know why i’m being so hostile no one asked me to do this.

every doubt we had - after watching what may have been his sister’s death by exploding starship, rhese is having trouble sleeping. no one is more surprised than him when seeks out doc for comfort! doc & rhese brothers by marriage solidarity. carbonite angst...

love is a waiting game - rea’s been MIA for six months since the ship she was on bit it and her crew is finally making some changes. doc is sad about it. doc & rhese brothers by marriage solidarity again. doc x rea angst.

waiting - some time has passed and now rhese is the sad one again!!! grief is so funny isn’t it??? hahahaha haha hahahaha why is no one else laughing? doc & rhese brothers by marriage solidarity yet again.

the greatest distance - rea’s back baby!!!! oh but this isn’t a celebration. she’s taking a tour of her long lost ship now that all the people she loved aren’t in it. it’s a sad one, fellas. 

* when the stars are the only thing we share - rea tracks down some people from her past to help her track down her brother since he went missing while she was having a nap. no canon characters were used in the making of this fic.

leave her sleeping a little longer - rea has a dream and wakes up missing doc even more than she was before. sad hours. doc x rea angst.

take back what the kingdom stole - after theron pulls some Shenanigans (you know the ones) his friendship with rea is in peril. they both break character and actually talk shit out for once.

a wish your heart makes - rea dreams a dream. so does doc. it’s a wet one. this makes it sound lighthearted but actually it’s angst with a side of porn. doc x rea supreme spicy/sad content.

overserved - back to crack baby!! rea gets drunk and acts a fool based on a joke made in a discord server. this is the best shit i’ve ever written.

thrusting back into my skin i feel anew - the band is back together again and everything is fine!!!! just kidding -- actually people change a lot in six years and rea and doc are having some trouble fitting back into the marriage they had back then. doc x rea angst but with a hopeful ending!

non-canon fics i’ve written a couple of things with my dumb characters that are too stupid even for me to put into their canon story or are otherwise aus. these are them, listed in no particular order.

the lies we tell ourselves - a sadder (yet possibly more realistic) take on the ossus reunion and what follows. a bit experimental. doc x rea angst au.

archiban frodrick’s kennel - a romance au where doc is a vet and rea has a pet with a health issue, inspired by my own stupid dog whom i love very much. doc x rea. spiciness suggested but not detailed; sorry horndogs.

fallen - a fun au where rea’s shittiness as a teacher and everything being bad leads to kira falling to the dark side... its angst lads.

the new recruit - rusk’s squad adopts a kitten. that’s the fic.

cruel - ever wonder how things would have turned out if rea was never smuggled off eriadu and got plucked up by the sith?? no??? well i have and i wrote about it. the self-indulgence never ends.

fill my lungs with sweetness - a gift fic for @hoiist; flower-themed vignettes about doc expressing his love for hoiist’s knight, vii. this is some real soft shit, lads.

remember me, love - another gift fic for @hoiist; this time some ossus-flavored angst about doc seeing through vii’s eyes in his dreams. what he sees is not comforting!!! all aboard the angst train--choo choo!!

[thefairygodmotheryoudeserve]

Thank You, Dear Last Night’s Mental Breakdown.

| Barista!Han Jisung Au |

 💌  Requested? Yes --  @jone-00​

🌸  Genre: Fluff, a hint of a hint of Angst. As much angst as a Strawberry flavored La Croix has Strawberry.

✏️ Word Count: 2,600

!GIFS ARE NOT MINE!

T/W: Mentions of a mental breakdown, doesn’t go into detail.

A/N: Get ready, you bean. We about to enter some emotional and fluffy territory. Bring yo shades-- to look cool AND to make sure people can’t see you crying.

Also I’m sorry if this secretly sucks and I have no idea. Leave your thoughts so I can improve and know what’s good and what isn’t! I read all feedback and they all are important to me! <3

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You breathe out, the light sunshine kissing your lashes as your eyes flutter open. The buzz of your alarm fills the air.

Your eyes glide softly to the dress you hung up on your bedroom doorknob. The early sunrise sets the warm shadows of your room across the lightly pleated skirt. The fabric’s rosy pastel-pink hues are cast onto the white paint of your door.

You breath in, and out again. Let’s begin.

You had a mental breakdown the night before. They aren’t an irregular thing for you, but you wish badly they are. After crying, trembling, and crumbling slowly for hours, you stopped suddenly. You clenched your fists and stared, determined, into your very own eyes through that mirror.

I’m not going to let you fall apart like this anymore. I can’t-- I won’t.

So you stood up, breathing shakily. Scared, you started making preparations for what you were determined to be a better tomorrow.

What can I do that would make my younger self proud? You jot down ideas that would suddenly come to you as you set clothes out, put trash in a bin, and tried your best to write reminders.

“Making your younger self proud” has always been a way to measure how happy you are with where you’re at in life. You saw it in a newspaper, or maybe your mother heard it-- it might have even been a popular Tumblr text post, who knows! You just know it’s been your compass to point you in the right direction for about three years now.

You have an emotional attachment to the things you went through as a child, and if you could go back in time and just hold her, and tell her everything would be okay, you would. Doing things that would make younger-you smile is your way of doing that.

I’ll go to the cafe in a pretty dress that makes me feel happy, you wrote carefully. You remembered as a child dreaming about romantic cafes and old books. You sighed, releasing pent up air, feeling your muscles relax, little by little. If I did that, I think that would make my younger self proud...

By the time you made it to your bed that night, it was only 9:12pm. You fell down in your bed and closed your eyes, feeling your space. Your favorite-but-forgotten dress that now hung there on your door; the sneakers you once bought yourself and have finally decided to wear; the alarm clock that, for the first time in three years, was set for 6:00am; and a notebook full of ideas to return to the person you never were but always wanted to be, that sits on your bedside table.

You fell asleep, muscles relaxing. You, melting into your bed, almost becoming one with it.

* * *

Fast forward to where we started-- you are sitting upright in bed and staring at your dress. It seems to stare right back at you. Can you really do this, Y/N?

“Can I do this?”

Yes. I will.

You swing your legs over your bed, and you feel the fear begin to fall away like an old skin being shed from a new body. Suddenly, you feel light and happy, slipping on the bright-white wedge sneakers. The dress glides down your body, the fabric sending shivers up your spine as it falls into place.

As you pull the zipper up the side of your torso. you think about what you’re going to order when you get to the cafe. I haven’t been there since my mother came to the university to drop me off. I miss her... what did she order that day? I hope I can remember once I get there.

* * *

The jingle of tiny bells above the door tickles your ears as you swing the glass door open. The cafe is mostly empty, other than a mother and her child quietly sitting in a booth by the window. Succulents and aged books lined hanging shelves on either side of the room. The hanging lights gave the cafe a soft industrial feel, and the glass pastry displays made the room that much sweeter. Mom had chosen this cafe because she said it felt like a secret place that only few knew about... She liked how special it felt because of that. You smile softly at the thought of your mother. I think ill come here more often. I miss her.

A boy from behind the counter snaps his head up to look at you, his blond bangs tossing lightly as he does so. “W.. would you like something?”

You snap out of your daze and realize how long you’ve been just standing there in the doorway, staring at everything. You lock eyes with the boy.

“Oh! Uh-- yeah, I’m sorry! Ahm...” You stutter.

“Don’t worry about it!” He waves it off.

You brush your hair behind your ears and walk to the counter. You quickly read his name tag. Jisung.

His bright smile puts you at a light and airy ease. Maybe I wasn’t as awkward as I thought I was being...?

“Have you been here before...?” He tilted his head to the side like a little kid, eyebrows raised curiously.

Wow. That was attractive.

“Um, kind of... i’ve only been here once. When my brother-- mother!-- brought me... yeah, haha..”

Sparkling conversationalist.

...Wait-- don’t insult yourself! Be positive, Y/N!! You can make your younger self proud today!!!!

You open your mouth to speak, but you don’t know what to say, so you immediately shut it again.

Why is talking to pretty boys so hard?

NO! JUST GO FOR IT! F L I r T !! WHAT DO YOU WANT IN LIFE, HAH?

“...So anyway, that’s basically all we’ve got at this cafe right now.” He looks at you, smiling patiently.

Wait, has he been talking to me this whole time? Agh! I haven’t even been listening!

“Oh! I forgot, we also have--”

“Do you come here often?”

Well. You just made things worse, didn’t you?

“What?”

CODE RED CODE RED CODEREDCODEREDCODEREDCODEREDCODEREDCODEREDCODEREDCO

This is not a thing that makes your younger self proud, Y/N. This is the opposite.

YOU JUST ASKED THE BARISTA IF HE COMES HERE OFTEN. YOU NOW HAVE PERMISSION TO RIP OFF YOUR ANKLES.

You watch in horror as he stares at you, frozen to the touch, with those eyes.

“Oh! Did you ask me if I come here often? I thought I didn’t hear what you said at first. Yeah-- I work here actually! Thanks for asking!” I smiles, oblivious to your failed flirting.

“Oh, um. S-sure thing!”

Mission... not abort..ed?

Well-- This means I don’t ever have to think what happened ever again! Wonderful.

You aren’t sure if he’s actually dumb or if you just suck at reading him-- but either way, there’s no escaping the situation now. Unless you’re willing to literally sprint out of the cafe and run all the way back to your apartment, lock the door, and cry in the shower.

But, unfortunately for everyone else, you aren’t willing to do that.

“Um, when my mom came here, she ordered something really specific, but I can’t remember what it was called or anything...,” You say hesitantly.

“Yeah-- Don’t worry at all! Do you remember what it looked or tasted like at all?”

His enthusiasm encourages you and you feel brighter. “Yeah! Uh, it had strawberries in it, and a special kind of cream-- I think? And then there was this special topping she got on it. It was green? The topping? Sorry if that sounds totally dumb, but I just now that it-- they-- were green, I guess, haha!” You feel your heart start to beat faster the more you talk to him. Why am I nervous? and stuttering?? It’s just a drink, jeez.

Suddenly excited, his eyes squint with a wide smile. “Ooohhh! Were they mint spirals, maybe? I love those soooo much!!!”. You don’t even know what those are, but that isn’t gonna stop you from nodding excitedly with him. It would have been hard not to. When he smiles you kind of just want to join on the thrill, I guess.

You notice a whisper of heat brushing against your cheeks as he turns to the chalkboard behind him and points at a meticulous drawing of a fluffy pink drink. “Did it look like that??”

Excited to have found your mom’s favorite drink, you nod, a big smile leaving your eyes in the shape of giggling crescents. “Yes! Yeah! That’s exactly it, I think!”

His sunshine-smile turns half shy. “Great! I’ll get that just for you then...,” He softly says. He turns his back to you as he hurries around behind the counter to concoct the drink.

Were his cheeks flushed like that this whole time?

... Whatever...

You carefully sit down at one of the pretty little cafe tables closest to the counter so you can be ready to grab your drink as soon as it’s ready. You have maybe a few minutes, so you pull your notebook with the chestnut leather cover out from your purse. You open the middle of the book to where you urgently wrote down the ideas the night before.

things that would make my younger self proud of me:

- keeping a journal

- keeping my body clean

- wearing the clothes that make me feel peaceful

- waking up at a time that makes me feel happy

- wearing the clothes I’m scared others will judge me for

- going to the cafe in a pretty dress that makes me feel happy

- talking to people I feel like talking to but am scared to

- going on a cute date say sike rn

Smiling to yourself, you use a pencil to put a check next to the third-to-last one. You thought of scratching it out, but you didn’t want it to be gone from your precious list completely... you feel you’ll be coming back soon. You like how it feels.

Nevertheless, you are glad you’re here. You’ve gathered the courage to come here when it’s been so hard for you lately! You look down at your lap and give a sigh of relief. Closing your eyes, you take in how it feels to be here.

It’s different, but warm here. It smells of both exotic and familiar flavors. The lullaby effect of the fluffy low-fi music overhead mixed with the gentle metallic sounds of Jisung working behind the counter is somehow comforting. You lift your head and peak over at him slyly, watching as he leans against the mixing machine. He seems to be waiting on something.

You watch almost in shock as he slowly peeks over his shoulder to look at you, making quick eye-contact on accident. You smile instinctively-- not even knowing why.

He turns his face back to what he was doing as soon as this moment happens and you notice a smile he’s hiding and the blush that’s growing on his face. You turn your body to see more of his turned-away face from where you’re at, and as you do, you spy the massive smile he’s desperately trying to hide. Oh dear, he’s adorable.

Bubbles rise in your stomach and your lungs seem to fill with cotton candy as his undeniably-cute, blushing self hits you all at once.

-- o h. Oh n o.

You lean back in your chair again, suddenly very worried.

No? No. No!

It always gets bad once I get crushes on people.

You make an immediate promise to yourself to not at all drop any hints that you kind of want to mayhaps hold this almost-stranger’s hand. Flirting is fine when you don’t actually like the person-- once you genuinely develop feelings, it’s absolutely not a good idea anymore. Everyone knows that. Good, cute things with crushes only happen in fan-fiction and Wattpad stories.

Sike.

All of a sudden, you notice the sound of clinking and whirring has stopped from behind the counter.

“Am-- uh-- am I interrupting you... at all, or something?”

Reality crashes into your view again as you tilt your head up and to the side to lock eyes with Jisung. Ah.

“W--what?”

“Ahm, you just looked kind of... really worried about something.” He furrows his brows, confused. “Anyway-- here’s your drink!”

“Oh-- thank you! Yeah, I was just-- thinking about something! Haha!

He sets your drink on the table and pauses for a moment. “By the way, your dress is really pretty, I think.” Jisung Blush: Activated. “Don’t mean that in a weird way! I just thought you maybe might like to know...”

🎵 KISS KISS FALL IN LOOOVE 🎵🎵🎵🎵

“Oh, thanks! I actually tried this morning, haha!”

“Oh, yeah? Well I think you look great. But you already know that, i guess, haha..” Jisung Confidence: Boosted-- Reason: Compliment Accepted.

You feel your ears heat up as you avert your eyes, looking down at your drink. “Thanks again! It’s funny because I didn’t even have an occasion to dress up for. I just sort of did it to treat myself, I guess.” You smile softly, proud.

“Isn’t that enough of an occasion? I think celebrating yourself is a worthwhile thing.” He sits down across from you, muttering something about how nobody is going to show up to the cafe in a while.

You look up at him, smiling in agreement. “Right? It really helps to take care of yourself. I think it’s one of the best ways to pick yourself back up from something hard.”

He tilts his head like he did before, but this time with worry. “Are you going through something..?... Oh, you don’t have to answer! I pry without thinking first sometimes...”

“No, no! It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it to others, it’s good for people who need to hear it...” Why do I feel so comfortable with telling him about this..? I’m sure it won’t do any harm. He’s being genuine after all...

“Well, if you really do feel like telling me, we won’t be having customers again until about 10:30-ish. I’m all ears!”

Your heart said: Oof.

As soon as you start explaining the night before and all that lead up to it, he leans in, his hands cupping his face, intent on every word you say. You tell him about all the stress, issues, and fears-- both self-inflicted and otherwise-- that are holding you down lately. He nods and listens, asking clarifying questions.

You notice how his reactions remain compassionate when you talk about the hard things that are happening because of your own mistakes. A feeling of warmth and safety sets in after you finishing your monologue. You apologize for taking so long-- maybe thirty minutes?-- but he immediately tells you it’s all okay.

“No, please don’t say sorry!! I really am grateful when people share what they are going through with me... It helps me to connect with them better and find ways to help them feel better. Don’t be sorry.” He softly smiles and gently asks if you are all done.

“Yeah-- heh-- i’m done. Thank you so much for listening! I’m really grateful I have-- had-- someone to listen to me...” You rub your eyes worriedly, afraid you might have started crying at some point while telling him the whole story.

He stares down at the table for a moment, quiet. “Hey, wanna be random?”

You giggle. “Always.”

“Wanna go on a date?”

“What?”

“I understand if you don’t want to. You seem to be working through a lot of things right now... I don’t want to--” Jisung Blush: Reactivated And Intensified.

“Yes.”

“WhAT?”

“Yeah!.. I think that would be awesome.”

Jisung is suddenly beaming, which makes you instantly happier. Dang, mirror neurons are so cute.

[cosmicallynightmarish]

Important Notes on the Speaking of Nightmarish Visions:

I will publish this on my own blog, now; it developed into something quite long yet again, and so I will save our eyes the pain of reading ramblings italicised.

Adding on to my last post, though not in a way that requires that be read to understand this post, I have a few things to say on the speaking part of Nightmarish delving. Advice on a word to begin, more generally, then, on the importance and practice of always speaking. As I said, this is quite long, so I shall put it neatly under here.

There is a checklist of sorts at the bottom regarding things to look for in visions, one that may be of use to anyone seeking visions. In fact, if you can distill the essence of universal eyes from the blood of the Nightmare, this may all be of some use.. But I am here to talk of my experience with Them. After all, what are Nightmarish visions, but potent mixtures of information to be dissected and rearranged into useful knowledge? Apart from pure fun, of course.

Advice, yes.

First, to get it out of the way, the thought that sparked this post: Do not label things “incomprehensible”, simply speak on as much as you can, chase the ropes as far as you can possibly go, until you hit a wall of absolutely no information. It more than likely will not lock the gate in front of you if you do label things as such, at least not permanently, but it may very well prevent you from progressing. All that there is can eventually be comprehended by the mind since we all exist beyond this human brain. If another human can sustain consciousness and project themselves into the Astral, then you are able to wrap your mind around the deeper Nightmarish concepts. It will take time, but to label things as off-limits is to deepen the divide between you and the truth. It is better to stop talking, or make note that what you wrote may be off, than to say “No, I cannot do this, the information is impossible to ever understand.”

Second, to get back to the more general advice: When it comes to speaking, every detail is important, every detail speaks of something. Like reading tarot cards, if you find that you cannot decide or distinguish two details from one another, there is a large chance that there is a reason behind it that is not related to your skill. Tarot cards may be not obviously or definitively picked from the bunch, may be hard to distinguish between which card you should and you should not pull out, and that may mean that they are similar cards, give similar emotional responses, etc., or it could mean that the deck is reflecting your own or your client’s inability to express yourself, and so on. Simply put, tarot cards refusing to come out easily may mean that the information they represent is refusing to come out easily, not that you are not skilled enough to pull them. In the way of visions, take as an example seeing a figure whose hair is hard to distinguish from the rest of the house they are in, which would be seen in the background. Is their hair really the colour of rich wood, or are you simply not seeing correctly? Is your vision filling in a blank where the hair should be with the background's colour? Write it down regardless: “I cannot distinguish their hair from the background, because they seem to both be the same colour, and there is no line between them.” Note that that line is three pieces of information, not one. It gives you the indistinct/ill-defined/not entirely present nature of the person, it gives you the hair colour, and it gives you the fact that there is a specific connection between their hair and where they are. There is a high chance that it is shown to you like this on purpose in the vision to say, for instance, that this person is in a state of Communion with the world, that they are not fully attached to lucidity, that they have a deep connection to this house, that they passed before what you are seeing took place - and as such are supposed to be dissolving into the background - and so on. Just like tarot cards will give you the wrong card if you understand it in a way that gets the information across, such as giving the Death card to mean literal death to someone who believes it means such and will not look it up, the Nightmares do not only give you clear, explicit information. It is more important that you get the complete message, even if the means through which you get it is seemingly incomplete. The gaps in the Nightmare of Mensis speak in absence, your visions will too.

You do not need to dissect and label all the information now, you do not need to understand why the hair blends with the background, you do not need to "get it", you need to be the medium through which your future self may see what you have seen. A vision with a lacking detail has diminished worth, and, if it is lacking a key detail, it can be literally worthless. There is no worth to a vision of “a man within a house, wearing white robes”, when you come back to it and that is all you have to go off, but there is worth to a vision of “a man in a house, wearing white robes, whose head is blank of any details (or perhaps I cannot see them) and whose hair is as rich as the wood around him, specifically the wood beams, not the house itself, almost as if his hair were the wood itself. He is not fully defined beyond his white robes, as his hair, the other vibrant detail of this vision, is blurred into the background; only his robes seem to actually be in the picture.” The first example is a man in robes a house, something utterly mundane and quite common for Yharnam, nearly worthless information by itself. The second example is someone who is connected to wood, possibly trees, who is likely not present in the scene literally, and whose white robes seem to have more of an impact on the world around him than he himself does - likely, that means whoever he was personally is gone now or simply less important, and whatever group those robes were from and whatever outward acts he performed in those robes (or for the cause they represent) has lingered strongly in the world. It also tells me that if I see another image of someone whose hair is blending into the background, that they are somehow related and a key may lie in their intersection, and that if I see another person in white robes with that colour hair, they may be the same person.

Third, carrying on from that: Visions will not last forever. There is a sizeable chance that you will retain images you receive from the Nightmares, to a certain extent, after they are witnessed. However, like all memories, they are destined to fade. Even if they weren’t going to fade, once you begin to have similar visions or visions of the same place and people, they will begin to get muddled within your mind’s space; and if you begin to explore what you have seen in your mind - by walking through it or dissecting it - or in art through putting it to paper, those explorations can, and likely will, overwrite the original visions. That is not even mentioning the fact that some visions are on loan to you, and will be taken back once you have received the message or moved away from that connection, something that has happened to me numerous times, making it so you can no longer see any of what you were shown. Oh, and things that aren't meant to be spoken can be wiped from your mind if you attempt to speak them publicly whilst receiving them. Again, something I have experienced. Incidentally: You need not take this as a terrible thing, a failure, sometimes this is but the only way They can ask you to keep it quiet. Continuing on, your records of visions are your library of Nightmarish information, are your personal reference book for Nightmarish symbolism surrounding every entity and every place and every concept, and there is no use to incomplete records in the Nightmare. The knowledge that you saw a pentagram vividly is nearly useless compared to the knowledge that you saw a pentagram vividly when you looked at a picture of the Moon. The Nightmare is symbolic and richly layered, and as such, one missing detail can render something absolutely worthless. Do not panic, now, because even I get perhaps half the details - and I am the one writing this post, as if I were some authority - but the best thing you can do is write down everything. Take this post not as a warning, not as something negative, but a long, long reminder that “I will remember this, I do not need to write it down” is said by all, and works for none. I am of the Shards, we do like to extend talk.

So, all that is well and good, but what do you write down? An example checklist of sorts follows, not everything here needs to be checked off, and your own intuition will tell you what you do not need to write down, but if you struggle with identifying information to be written, this may help:

Context:

What were you looking at when you saw this, or before you saw it?

Was it brought about by listening to a certain song, or watching a video, or hearing a bell, or something similar? Check the name of the song (if it was a song), on the off chance it is related.

If it is caused by staring at something too long, leaving lights that morphed into something different, what was it that was originally burned into your retinas? I have seen text form into lines on water, an image that was very significant in a channelled vision of the Moonside Lake, for example. This is not always relevant, but may be, either now or in the future.

If you see something significant upon returning to reality, such as a related post here on Tumblr as soon as you are done, note that down.

Your Feelings:

Is there unease in the scene? Does it feel celebratory, awkward, uncomfortable, happy, peaceful, etc.? “I feel like I’ve walked into a room where everyone was awkwardly silent”, “the house itself feels like it is looking at me, and I shouldn’t be here”, “the river feels like it is mourning”

Speaking of - should you be looking? Is anyone looking back at you? Someone looking at you is vital information, indicative, possibly, of their Communion. “I feel as if I shouldn’t be in this place”, “I feel someone looking to me in the crowd, and if I turn around, there is someone who stopped walking to look right at me”

Do you know this person/place/thing personally? Are they familiar? - “I feel like I know them from somewhere”, “they remind me of my father”, “I feel like I would’ve gotten along with them as a child”

Are you present in the scene, either in an external body you can see in the scene or looking through your own eyes in your body? “I see myself/myself in a past life on the floor over there”, “I feel like I am a small spider on the wall looking down”

On feeling as if you shouldn’t be there: Do not continue looking if it is a serious enough feeling. Genuine apologies, if someone has spotted you, spoken through the vision to them before you leave will likely go a long way. People in crowds, anyone looking towards you with wonder, etc., likely should not be spoken to, but you may nod or otherwise present a calm and loving energy, it is up to you. They are quite possibly waking up and beginning to see presences in the world, and as such will likely be seeing just a glimpse of you or your energy or such, it is fine. When you approach certain people to gain information on them, however, and they stop you or you feel you have stepped into a room with them, that is the time to back out and apologise. I have made a post on this here, but to give a quick example: I would avoid looking at the Queens, Great Ones, and the Nightmares' consciousnesses directly, as these are near-guaranteed to see you looking at them. People in Communion, and the Nightmares Themselves, as well as things that live or otherwise dwell in the Subcutaneous/sub-Lucid Layers.

People:

Can you tell how old they are? “I think this is Master Willem, but he is unrecognisable in how young he is”, “this is something that took place in Bloodborne, but this person is much older/younger in this vision than they were in canonical content”

How are they feeling? Right now, but also in general? “They feel like they have been on a downward spiral”. “they feel like they are close to giving up”, “there is a sense that they are close to snapping violently in this scene” “it feels as if their fist is clenched tight, though I am not sure with what emotion”

Are they real, a lucid person, or are they an illusion? “They feel like background figures in a dream”, “two people stand out in the crowd as real, while the rest look more blurry”

Do you know who this is? Are they a person you are familiar with, a character, a deity, for example? “This person looks nothing like them/a bit different to them, but I am quite sure they are _____”, “this human figure feels like (inhuman character)”, “this is ________ as a child”

Are they human? Are they changing form? 

Are they presenting in this vision in one way so that you recognise them or learn something about them, when in reality they are not this form?

Is someone motioning to something, or outright trying to show you something?

Lacks of Detail:

Is someone having thoughts or emotions regarding something or someone else in or outside of the scene?

What is their expression like? Oftentimes I will be given a separate vision that is just their face to see the expression, not necessarily congruent with the original vision, perhaps a different expression entirely, but it speaks to their mental state or hidden feelings.

Speaking of, if you see a separate vision of their face, are they haloed by anything such as robes, hoods, and so on? This is also a good opportunity to look at their hair, for anything like freckles or unnatural skin, scars, etc.

Is anyone half present, blurred into things?

Is anyone lacking a face? A body part?

Is there a solid floor, are there solid walls - including behind you? “This place appears to be real, but it feels like behind me is just a long tunnel into the Nightmarish depths”

Is something supposed to be there, but it is absent? “There should be a key here, I feel, but there’s nothing there”, “this is the Grand Cathedral’s altar, but there is no skull upon it”

Uncertain Detail:

Is a detail, such as stars, difficult to pinpoint, as if it may be on two different things at once? “I can’t tell if there are stars reflected in the lake or if they’re just waves”, “the fire seems like it may be surrounding the person, or it may be inside their silhouette symbolically instead”

Is it hard to tell which of two (or more) things is in front of the other? 

Does someone feel as if they’re walking out, or otherwise wanting not to be seen? “There’s a silhouette here with less detail than everyone else, and it keeps fading away”

Environmental:

Is there a part of someone or something that could be two different things at once? “I can’t tell if their hair is sticking up or they have horns”, “I’m not sure if they’re holding a staff or a snake”, “the chalice could be either on a table or a decoration on the wall”

Is something changing when you look at it, or when you try to see or judge it? When you address it perhaps? When you say that it is one thing, and therefore it changes into something else?

What time is it? Does time even exist here? “This place feels detached from linear reality”, “the sky seems to say this is sunset, but it is descending into an unnatural time/something unnatural”

If you are listening to music now, in reality, do any of the voices or sounds feel as if they are a part of the scene?

On that, is there any music or sound coming from the scene itself? Laughter, external carriages driven past, music (happy? Sad?), babies or children making noise, crying?

If there are sounds, can you pinpoint the source? Does it feel like it is coming from someone lucid, or from the Nightmares Themselves? “I hear crying, as if the Nightmares were weeping for them”, “there is laughter coming from someone walking in the walls”

Basically, it boils down to this: If you feel it, write it down. If you feel you’re intruding, write it down. If you feel like the wall behind you doesn’t actually exist, or that there are horses outside, or that every star in the sky is staring at something despite not having eyes, or the air feels heavy, or that you are a family member of someone you’re seeing despite not knowing them in reality, that the Red Moon is present despite not being there in Bloodborne, that you are with someone you have never had a connection with looking at something utterly absurd.. Write it, it is all useful. Just do not write that you cannot understand something definitively or that it is incomprehensible. “Incomprehensible” is a great big brush for a piece of art that is to be made of intricately small words: It is to be used only when you are absolutely certain it is needed, and, even then, it likely is not, not unless you are painting the background upon which you wish to transcribe the tiny details.

These questions - this checklist, the ever-looming need for More - can become overbearing, heavy, too pressing. I'll put my answer to that fact like this: There is a reason I do this. When you begin addressing, you begin seeing. When you realise that person in the house in those white robes may be blurring into the house itself, suddenly, you realise it isn't simply you, he has no face. You realise he has no face, and suddenly, you feel something odd, he feels as if he has no face because he is slightly.. Disillusioned. With what? What is he doing in this house like that? Well, he seems like he has to be here. You realise he feels disillusioned, and suddenly you are aware that that is why his robes stick out so much, he is presenting them to cover something - oh, no, that is wrong, it is not pretention and pretend, he is trying to cover something up not to trick, but like bandages cover a wound, cover shifting skin. What is he hiding? Well, that will be yours to uncover. I have rather invented my own vision here, but I have woven it with what I know of this figure, and who that figure is will be your information to discover. When you shed light upon a scene you shall see more, luckily for us, Light and Consciousness are the same, at least in terms of what the game suggests.. It is all a great game of pulling at strings. Be as a cat, revel at the way the yarn unwinds and extends then splits into more strings then more strings again, then be as your owner and roll it up neatly and away for your records. Endless fun. All for free.