#oh to have social anxiety

[imsorrymyusernameishardtotype]

Sometimes i wonder "did something happen to my wife?"

And then i worry a lil and then i see she liked my posts and im like "im glad she is still alive but perhaps a lil stressed uwu"

[notnights]

Summery of an incident while in my Gangle cosplay.

I want to give a shout out to the kid who asked for my photo while I was crying & a thank you to the custodian who got help for me as well as refer to me as “scary marshmallow.”

[warmsol]

do you crave to be home playing with your sims while you’re out or are you normal

[bookwyrminspiration]

“my anxiety isn’t that bad” bitch you’re wide eyed and shaking frantically googling ‘how do cafes work’

[animentality]

you guys will see a post talking about how incels are refusing to form basic human connections because of toxic masculinity, lone wolf syndrome, and seeing women as sex objects whose only purpose is to be emotionally and sexually available for men...

and then start talking about how people with social anxiety are people too :((( what's wrong with being socially awkward?

like bro.

If you have social anxiety, and you have a hard time communicating, and you're neurodivergent, and you're an introvert... yeah ok, but why do you immediately side with guys whose entire mantra is that women aren't people and they shouldn't be lonely ever, because women should be provided to them like service dogs by the government?

I know you're socially awkward and all, but come the fuck on. unless you've been living locked in a small basement bunker your entire life, being fed chips by a robot through a hole in the ceiling, you should be able to fucking figure out.

that there's a fucking difference between being awkward and accidentally hurting people's feelings because you have perpetual foot in mouth syndrome/have a hard time connecting to people.

and sitting in your room saying slurs on overwatch and telling female gamers that they're fat ugly bitches who should send nudes.

why would you even WANT to associate yourself immediately with that demographic? why do you read something about the worst people alive, who are deliberately awful to other people, and then say oh look it's me, I'm also "not good with people."

are you THAT socially awkward?

God I hate when I'm so socially awkward that I'm a sexist.

God I hate how my neurodivergence leads me to misogyny. what a weird coincidence that neurotypicals somehow also accidentally end up there too.

God, i hate when anxiety makes me want to lash out at women for existing, that's so bizarre.

yeah, good frame, guys. good work. let's say that all the willful evil in this world can be attributed to mental illness because accountability for your own actions is actually ableism, and all people who are mentally ill should be excused for whatever gross war crime they want to commit.

when you think about it, being a racist is also a form of social anxiety because you just can't talk to anyone who's not white.

your POOR thing.

poc all across the world really need to take in account that white people only became colonisers because they were socially anxious and have a hard time speaking to people, so instead they opted for genocide.

[idolomantises]

I was watching Komi San with my sibling a few months ago and I’m surprised nobody ever talks about a character who’s running gag is that she’s chubby and everyone calls her fat but she looks like this:

[rocksanddeadflowers]

Jon, during college, going into a small coffee shop to order a drink: hi can I get a-

Martin, the barista who is a giant fan of the mechanisms and has seen them play live like three times already and has a minor crush on Jonny DeVille: are you Jonny DeVille?

Jon, his hands going up to his hips in pride: I- yes, yes I am :)

Martin, is visibly shaking from excitement desperate to ask for a photo but hates the idea of being an annoyance for asking: cOOL

[starflungwaddledee]

Hi sorry to bother you but I just wanted to say that as an autistic person Starstruck makes me want to cry. I love her so much let her live the happy life she deserves with people that accept and care about her. That “otherness” or feeling of being “incorrect” and being seen as suspicious/ostracized for it was absolutely NAILED and it HURTS SO GOOD. I just really wanted you to know that. It’s nice to see someone like me in media, especially in something like the Kirby franchise. Thank you.

ohhhhh i am SO thrilled to receive this message because i am autistic, and by extension so is starstruck, and this was entirely on purpose! i'm so happy that you feel i nailed it! thank YOU for letting me know this; it's the highest praise i could have hoped to receive!

this was intentional autistic representation by an autistic creator and i am over the moon that it's connecting with you! her inability to "have the right magical signature" and her "mimicry of the signatures around her in attempt to fit in" is explicitly a (rather ham-fisted, if i'm being honest) autistic parallel, especially towards masking.

there are obviously parts of her story that aren't explicitly parallel (she is still a little alien after all, and there's going to be Fun Dramatic Aspects that my real life autistic experience sadly lacks), but for what it's worth i'm really happy that this purposeful allegory was noticed!

thank you again so much for writing in, it means the world

[draemers]

Italy on 35mm (check out my instagram , pls , the cost of film is not sustainable)

[kandicon]

Actually I really wanna write a role reversal gerrymichael au and let me be so, so transparent when I say it is literally just bc I wanna fantasize about the tall, gangly blond man beating monsters to death

Everyone else has the same roles. Mary Keay is still Mary Keay in all her abusive and obsessive glory; Gertrude is still the Archivist.

Vaguely spiral aligned Michael who Does Not Like It. Pretends his connection is a hell of a lot looser than it is.

The only benefit (that Michael thinks of the Spiral) is how he can move around the Institute with relatively little interference and watch, after all, it is hard to behold something that is both nothing and everything and never was all at the same time.

Gerry ran away from home really young and actually succeeded. Spent a few years fucking around and learning what kind of benches are best to sleep on before applying to the Magnus Institute because that's what his dad did. He lied to hell and back on the application, but was hired quickly because of how thoroughly touched by the entities he was (thanks Mary) and Gertrude was running low on assistants. Gerry also felt completely justified in faking stuff and that he was perfectly qualified bc he grew up in a bookshop and how much different could it be (very different, as it turns out).

They first meet each other when Michael is prowling through artefact storage like it was a shopping mall, and pocketing everything he saw that didn't immediately mesmerize him. He was nervous and jumpy as all hell, even though this was not the first time he's done something similar and he's fairly certain Gertrude doesn't care, so when Gerry first spotted him from behind, he was immediately suspicious even before he saw Michael try to shove a lamp into his jacket pocket. This led to an altercation that eventually led to the lamp being accidentally turned on, Michael smashing it to pieces with a hammer Gerry had not realized Michael had, and Gerry suddenly being a lot more consciously aware of the supernatural than he was.

Gerry's mother was still obsessive over Lighteners, and she didn't make an effort to hide what she did, but she didn't actively try to educate Gerry on anything to do with the Fears. So he is fairly knowledgeable on the supernatural, but he doesn't know anything concrete about the Fears themselves and their categorization. The role of a stand by sacrifice instead of an errand boy and heir.

Michael still trusts Gertrude, but this time he knows he shouldn't and hates himself for it. Gerry wants to trust Gertrude, and she does hide him from anything Fears related and behaves around him like she did Michael in cannon, but he just feels something off about her and doesn't like it. She's just a bit too much like his mother for him to let his guard down.

Michael gets referred to by "it/its" pronouns once by Gerry as a teasing joke before Gerry fully knows what he is and is absolutely terrified by how happy the pronouns make his feel. (He thinks, maybe, that the Michael of his childhood liked something similar, too, but everything too far back is all twisted and he doesn't know what has been touched by the Spiral and what hasn't, so he doesn't trust any of it). He/it Michael ftw

At one point Michael just started putting black lipstick on himself because some of Gerry's always stuck to him when they kissed anyways n this gave them plausible deniability. Michael will never admit to the little spiral thrill it gives him when people do a double take upon seeing his face, the black lipstick contrasting literally everything else about his style.

Gabriel attempted to track Michael down exactly once, a few years before he joined the institute. He had heard about Michael's unsavory... Hobby... (<- reckless destruction of artefacts and throwing himself at all monsters and avatars he sees with a murderous rage regardless of their affiliation) but spiral avatars capable of holding a conversation are so few and far between and the Great Twisting was almost prepared, so he thought a meeting would be worth it. He showed up at a cafe Michael frequented one day expecting lovely, but tense, conversation, only to promptly lit on fire (mostly) in the back alley behind the cafe after he introduced himself. Gabriel survived, but some of his clay body still hardens unexpectedly or shows signs of firing from time to time.

Occasionally Michael's eyes will change colors and shapes, so he likes to put contacts in (he used to just use tinted glasses, but after one time of Gerry getting lost in his eyes in the far too literal, not at all romantic, sense, he decided to invest in smth a bit harder to take off and forget about). Unfortunately, this sometimes means other, very much not his original eyes will pop up around his body and in his hair as protest when he puts them in. It's not very fun to have to chase off eyes at 6am, but he does it regardless and complains the whole time about how he shouldn't have to deal with eyes when he very clearly isn't of The Eye.

Gerry: Oh hey you were running pretty late. I was starting to get worried.

Michael, not about to admit he spent an extra thirty minutes to get ready yelling and brandishing a lighter at a door that was following him around like a lost puppy: Ummmmmm I forgot my wallet. :((

[apoloniaspiegelgold]

Just found out that there is a university in the world with a research institute dedicated to my own personal nemesis. Don‘t these people know that there is an abundance of empirical evidence that his theories are complete and utter bullshit? Like????? What is this?????????

[all-thestories-aretrue]

Holy fuck y'all i should NOT be awake 😭

[zafiro-anyejo]

So so tired of people, like... trying to one-up each other. i'm not even 30 but i'm so tired of trying to fake it. please just give me a damn job it is a fucking bookkeeping job i don't even have to talk to anyone i am one of the most passive and chill people you will ever meet. sometimes i quote movies or make jokes that don't often come across as well as i want. that's all. pleaseee.

[mwagneto]

i think what's really been getting to me the past few months is the realisation that i dont relate to literally any of the mental health stuff i see anywhere. like whenever there's some affirmation or motivation or just relatable-sounding posts in general they all seem like such common problems and it's like, damn i literally dont experience any of that. and yet im still crumpling. something uniquely wrong with me

[pissfizz]

I remember why I stopped reading this fic oh my god

[masterfuldoodler]

Recently I've adopted a phrase "it's not my best work" and I've been using it in multiple situations (drawing, cooking, or social interactions) and I find it kind of helpful actually. Especially in regards to social interactions, it allows me to step away from the interaction and say, "yeah that didn't go perfectly. Maybe I could have done that better, but that'll be for next time. That was not my best work, but I know better now how to handle it." Idk it lets me feel more free to try and maybe mess up. I don't have to be perfect.