#old clarke is constantly in her own little world before her wife's and her oldest's voices get to her sjsnskdkek

[lexa-griffins]

Lexa: What's mommy's name?

Madi: Mommy

Lexa: What's Mama's name?

Madi: Claaaaaaaarke!!!!

Clarke, rushing in like the dutiful wife she is: you called?

In Lexa's defense..... the farm is still bigger than most houses and sometimes she's gotta get Clarke's attention via yelling 🤣

Madi now likes to yell "maaaaamaaaaaaaa" to get Clarke's attention. Although Clarke keeps telling her she is right there, in front of her, the yelling is really not necessary.

When Clarke becomes older, her hearing goes first. It goes full circle to a 50 year old Madi yelling MAMA and Lexa yelling CLARKE to get her attention 😅

[briannaswriter]

I was told I should take the high road. I should just accept that Hillary refuses to speak with me again. I shouldn’t expect answers from someone who won’t give them - has never given them. At the same time, I don’t feel like I can genuinely let this go without talking about it in a format that isn’t DMs.

This is really long, sorry? But I wanted to get all of it out because I want to be free of it, I don’t want it to keep being an ache in my heart whenever I think about it. 

tl;dr at the end. Feel free to reply, idc, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.  

I met Hillary in a group called @/heroesrpg in about 2012. While I was there, I operated under two pseudonyms: Miranda/Isa and Bea. The why for that is a long story. I have nothing negative to say about Hillary here! She was a great friend who taught me a lot about writing and challenged me to become a better writer. I don’t think I would have gotten this far without writing with her. When I left heroes in about 2013, we didn’t keep in touch. I didn’t really stay in the RP world so I didn’t pay attention to it.

In 2014, I was invited to join Ashbourne at her behest. I don’t recall the specifics of how I found it, I think it was simply me reaching out to her again and finding out she was in a group which she invited me to join, too. I ended up playing a woman named Nadeya Khan who was in a ship with her that was later discarded. Later I picked up Shiloh Morgan, the best friend of her character, Adam, and later Mira Lowell, the elder sister of her character Meyer.

I won’t lie, these dynamics were a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing them.

I was upset that my ship with Nadeya and Adam was discarded (I have a distaste for Adam and the FC Ben/edict Cumberba/tch now, I’m petty, sue me), but I think it was more sucky when all threads with them trickled to a halt. To me, it felt like my character was no longer important because it wasn’t a ship, even if a friendship dynamic would have been just as interesting. I ignored this feeling.

I was sad to leave the group, but I was uncomfortable with an interaction from another player and feeling pushed aside in favor of other ships so I made the decision to leave.

I did keep in touch with Hillary, or I attempted to, but once we were no longer in a group together, we just sorta drifted. We didn’t talk for the longest time here and I forgot her url for a long time. Frankly, I’m not sure how I found it again!

We started interacting again in about September 2018 when I think I reached out to her. This eventually ended with the creation of @lethe-rpg where we could write about old time favorite characters - and we wrote so much in Lethe’s run. Everything from romances, to long-lost parent, to siblings, to best friends, to unrequited loves. We wrote nearly twenty characters each and over ten ships in the time Lethe ran from September/October 2018 to June 2020 when it closed. Or, I should say, we wrote all of these things in theory and a lot of it happened behind the scenes in DM’s between us. When we did write things, they would frequently reach only a reply or two before we had to move onto the next one because she didn’t want to finish the one before. I’ll fully admit that I found this frustrating after a while - but I found it difficult to say no to her about anything, or to speak out against her.

Not only was she my friend, but I very much looked up to her. I considered her a mentor as much as a friend, and her approval meant a lot to me. It meant agreeing with dynamics I didn’t enjoy

pushing for a ship between my character Wesley and ANY of hers. Even if it was already mentioned to her that I had an ongoing connection with another character. If I tried to make this dynamic a friendly connection instead, it was promptly dropped altogether.

trying to get a ship between Gemma and Nate when I mentioned point blank that I didn’t want a pre-planned romantic thing with him after his other one failed.

the fact that Gemma and Lily didn’t get like any interactions completed together until I relented a little on Gemma/Nate. Any mention of them was largely forgotten. Half the time, Lily was treated like a child who hadn’t experienced any pain. Not just from Gemma, but from Gabe and from Hillary herself, who seemed to think that my young FC meant nothing compared to the history I had written for this character. Lily in general was ignored until she brought Lachlan along and prodded him into a ship with Lily. Do you know how many starters I wrote on Lily that were ignored?

the fact that Pat/Kate were the oldest ship in the group but they had like one completed thread the entire time lol.

the fact that Odette/Kate were the oldest family dynamic in the group who had like three NOTES between them.

the fact that Odette/Orion became a ship later who were just... never written. I can be honest now, I found them boring and I’m wondering if she felt the same, or if the lack of writing made me dislike them. Either way, Orion became a drain on my Odette muse, just as the lack of Kate/Odette was.

most stuff with Odette makes me sad. I feel like I had really good connections for her that... didn’t work out, and maybe I took to long to address it.

Mira/Andreas is a dynamic I blame myself on. I did feel sorta like I wasn’t getting anything written with her old ship, and I think me and the mun were drained on it, so while Mira was on hiatus and the mun for her last ship, Clark, was debating letting him go/killing him off, I didn’t mind discussing a new ship. I wanted this ship to be a slow burn, I wanted proper closer on the last one because it was a good ship and the mun is a good friend. This was handled with so little tact on her part, we were instantly hitting ship dynamics from the beginning and I found it callous. I dragged out replies just to avoid it. A shame, because I loved the dynamic, but the way it was handled put a bad taste in my mouth

she wanted an August/Delilah ship? Which I didn’t really want, but she’s really good at convincing you bit by bit that it’s a great idea. When I finally jumped onto this ship and flung myself into it, we got like two notes into it and nothing. Are you seeing the theme yet?

I got nothing against Arthur/Cora because I loved writing them, the only thing I did dislike is how rushed they were and how little I got to explore some of the Riverborn aspects of Arthur’s story with Cora. Also a pregnancy happened hella fast.

But I did have something against the Meadowes dynamic altogether: we had so many pieces of it to use that were never written. I failed sometimes on my part, but a lot of it was Hillary getting easily distracted by something else. Cora/Faolan were rarely written beyond the first reply to a thread. Gabe/Faolan were often two notes in and done. Faolan/Alistair lasted a bit longer, I was impressed. Gemma/Lily was mentioned above, but I’ll also mention how often she tried to take pieces of Faolan’s history and twist it to be her character’s pain without any consideration to previously discussed lore or connections. It wasn’t even about a connection anymore - it was about making her character the focal point. Look at how the Daniel Bisset, Aurelie, and Gabe things turned out: half of the plots were twisted to benefit Gabe’s momentum in the story, and the pieces of angst that should rightly lingered on Aurelie were shifted to the side. I didn’t even write that ship, and sometimes looking at them made me feel like a discarded sweater, but they were cute. Anyhow, this is long, moving on.

Faolan/Saby. I literally almost forgot about them, but like... Legit, I’m glad this ship ended because Saby was wholly too dependent on Faolan’s feelings for her, which he couldn’t even acknowledge because he was still in love with his two centuries deceased wife. Was this handled gracefully, did we get to slow-burn some of their stuff in writing? Sometimes. But again, they weren’t really written, and the ship was pushed and pushed, even when I wasn’t really interested in writing it because I didn’t want a ship for him yet.

Aliza/Tien was twisted out of me piece by piece, prodding at the parts of the Aliza/James connection I found uncomfortable (like the murder, like how difficult it was to plot after a point) until Tien seemed like the best answer. This was late enough into Lethe that I woke up enough to cut the ship off and drop the dynamic. In hindsight, I regret letting this even get so far.

Jonas. Just... most of the things written with him lol because he was constantly pushed onto my characters and others. Jo was hinted as a thing, Wesley was hinted as a thing, I think Nate was at one time. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that she wanted a ship and that dynamics outside of that were largely ignored.

Do you know what it was like to put your heart into a character / story that was ignored ENTIRELY because she didn’t ship with them? Do you know what its like to be excited about a friendship or sibling or parental dynamic that... stopped getting written because your friend only wrote the character for a ship and the next shiny thing attracted her attention and instead of letting the character go, she made you think the next reply was right around the corner? Do you know how many threads we wrote that didn’t go anywhere, and how thrilled I was to write them still because I thought each time it would be different?

TL;DR: if it wasn’t a ship dynamic, it wasn’t written. If it was a ship dynamic, it was sometimes written. If you weren’t doing any of those things, you were ignored.

TL;DR 2: Do not misread this, please. I understand that RL comes first, I understand that dynamics change, that you’re allowed to change your mind. But do you realize how often I was strung along, or how often I was shoved aside? How hard it was to keep a character going sometimes because their big connection was only important for about a week?

and biting my tongue when my own feelings were callously ignored

when we wrote a ship between Selene/Gabe which was later discarded for a ship with Aurelie which had a much better chemistry, but was handled with little tact for my own feelings as I received constant updates on how their ship progressed, and also how the friendship we developed between Selene and Gabe was just dropped altogether - as it was with Adam/Nadeya so many years ago - instead of revamped to fit a changed dynamic as we discussed ooc.

when I would message her and be ignored unless it was about one of our ships

like the fact that I became an admin in Lethe to help her out and eventually the burdens of handling it were on my shoulders. I don’t mind this, but when it came to asking her for help on simple matters (sending me the psd for banners when I switched computers and no longer had it, posting a bio, skimming a post so I could verify it was okay to post, plotting out future events, posting unfollows/follows for people) or asking if she could write something from an admin post, getting a “sure! I’ll do that later!” and then finding out it wasn’t done for a week until I sucked it up and did it myself. We addressed this eventually, but Lethe ended shortly afterwards. 

So. That’s how the last two years have gone, and lord knows how much I’ve forgotten. Hillary and I wrote so much over the last two years, and we definitely grew close. I thought we were beyond just writing friends, that we might have been real friends (after all, we sent christmas/birthday gifts to each other. Hell, I still use the mouse pad she gave me).

I ignored the way she ignored me if we weren’t writing something interesting. I ignored the way she didn’t care about my characters even passively until I shipped with her in some form. I ignored how it felt when entire sections of a back and forth DM was ignored if she didn’t care about the character. I ignored how she refused to write with other people because she disliked their FC, or she didn’t want to write with the mun, or she found the character boring. Half the time, she found a character boring because she didn’t bother learning about them, and the moment she did read about them, they were intriguing. I ignored how she belittled my other ships with other players because “oh I don’t think they click” or “imo that one is boring” or tried to poach those characters to one of her ships. I ignored how she made me feel like a part-time friend sometimes and her best friend other times. 

I ignored the way she didn’t help with admin problems even when she knew admin duties were taking a toll on me as people demanded more and more from me. Not even when we discussed ways to handle things on both our parts to make it easier and promptly ignored them the first chance she got.

She made me feel so important when we would headcanon things. It felt like my characters were important, and that I was a good writer with clever ideas and intriguing characters, and that writing her was reaching a pinnacle that others couldn’t reach. She never said this, I’ll give her credit for that, but I have to admit, I felt like my characters didn’t work out unless I had a connection with her.

The last few months were eye opening. I had already spent the last year frustrating from her lack of leadership as an admin, and anger for the way she ignored people’s feelings even when it was pointed out and gave the bare minimum when interacting with other people, and sadness for the fun dynamics we had discussed but never wrote beyond the posted biography. When Lethe ended, I was ready to let it go and move on, I said my peace about my admin things and letting the characters go meant a fresh start. To me, we were friends REGARDLESS OF BEING IN A GROUP TOGETHER OR WRITING TOGETHER. You don’t talk about ooc things and ic things as much as we did only to stop talking the instant you’re done writing together, right?

Wrong. She didn’t even help us close the group that she created, or helped us discuss things with members who weren’t sure what was happening. I gave her time, just short messages about random things because I wanted her to know that I didn’t hold Lethe’s end against her, that we were friends anyway. Those messages were ignored. I gave her more time and then after nearly a month or maybe two, I finally messaged her on tumblr with a brief snippet on how thankful I was to know her because she helped me as a writer, and apologized if I implied Lethe ending was her fault (which I still agree that it wasn’t entirely, it was a situation handled callously and frankly I still think people should have considered that Hillary was barely 3% of the admin team at the time since Ally and I were shouldering the burdens of everything else). I mentioned how I felt like our friendship was being ignored because we weren’t writing together, and how I had thought after nearly two years of talking that we were friends enough to chat once in a while at least, but if we are only RP friends, let me know so at least I don’t have to fucking think about it.

Do you think that got a response?

It didn’t. She didn’t log into discord to chat about it or something else, she didn’t respond to the message, nothing. She quietly unfollowed me and then blocked me. She unfriended me on facebook, I feel like that’s answer enough.

I’ve known her at least eight years and while some of those times were brief, the last two years were most certainly not. And not only does it make me angry that I’ll never know whether she just dislikes me, or whether I made her uncomfortable, or what, I’m also just... really upset that I lost an eight year friendship. There’s only one person I know longer than her and I had hoped that, if not real friends, then we would still be able to meet up in another group together someday. Now it’ll never happen again, and it devastates me. I can count my friends on one hand and I thought, you know, that she was one of them. It feels like a physical blow whenever something comes up on the dash that involves her. I feel so stupid for thinking we were friends when she showed me her priorities in Ashbourne, when she showed me in little pieces here and there throughout Lethe. I feel stupid for writing this entire thing and crying about it. I feel stupid for assuming.

And I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that’ll let me say goodbye to it because I do need to let it go, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose my ability to write because she’s been such a big part of the writing journey for me.

So here it is. Eight years of friendship summed up in however long this is and here I am, trying to let go - and still a little part of me hopes she’ll see it and reach out about something, anything. And a bigger part that’s angry and doesn’t want to talk to her ever again because I don’t want to do this another time.

tl;dr:

I miss my friend Hillary, but also she’s kind of a shitty friend who only seems to care about people when they are writing with her and I’m an idiot for thinking anything else when I’ve had eight years to learn it. Likely if she did find this post, it’ll be misinterpreted in every way until I’m not only an idiot, but also I’m a bully who didn’t give her time and space, who pushed things on her she didn’t want, who she pitied. Because it just occurred to me now how easily she can warp the truth, how she can prod things bit by bit, until it fits just how she wants things to look that’ll benefit her the most. I love my friend, but I’m done. No matter how much I miss her, I deserve more than to be the butt of whatever joke she wants to say to make this sound cool.