#ppl come to my house sometimes but even that is an anomaly so

[the-brainrot-central]

People inviting you to their house is so weird and generous, like….you want me here? In your home???? AND your gonna fucking feed me??? Like I’m your very own child visiting from far away in New York City or perhaps a foreign country???? All because we’re FRIENDS and you ENJOY MY COMPANY??? This is so magnanimous and altruistic that it’s bordering on almost suspicious bro, like what do u want from me 😭

[key2earth]

hi hello & happy happy opening! i'm blue & this is xie ziying, local night terror edward cullen haunting the halls of sua! art student, red hall girl gang stan, & proud owner of a pretty pair of pearly whites that she's putting to dentist unrecommended use outside of regular class hours! here's a barebones profile & more info / plots under the cut, pls like to plot or ask for my d/scord & i’ll be there! 💗

*tw for discussion of blood is marked out in the intro with brackets!

info

addressing these first: her teeth r sharp & she drinks blood... the vamp allegations r true. ( /hj. u will see )

anyway!! she mostly lived a fairly normal life, insofar as having 3 outta 4 ( now 2 out of 3 ) of a family being anomalies would be normal? has a big bro in huitian but their abilities are as different as they come, so the anomaly gene sure is abnormal!

she's always been the black sheep of the family, but only in the way that someone who's unconditionally loved can act out? like deciding to play the violin when you come from a family of pianists, before abandoning that all together, & being the sibling whose teachers keep calling... but the point is. she's grown up being loved by her family, & that sense of self & safe harbour has pretty much tided her through what would otherwise have been some awful memories

those & her chompers it's hard to fight someone if they're willing 2 mike tyson u

speaking of teeth... they're sharp i'm not kidding! has nicked herself many times, but this was also how she figured out how her ability works. pure trial & error & teething pains

so how do those powers work? ( tw blood mention ) basically, a lil sip of blood gives her a power up! if it's her own blood, she gets physically stronger with enhanced condition. if that sip comes from someone else, she adopts/transforms into one property from them, though she doesn't get to choose which! ( tw end )

she's completely fine with her ability & down to use it when needed or entirely unnecessary, though the fact that the fun half of her power is a random grab bag is sometimes to her detriment. she knows this because she's gotten someone's sleep deprived mental state once when she wanted their cool colour-changing irises 💔

at sua bc they had really effective advertising & her grades + power combination was bad enough that she was applying to any college that might take her in. swears she didn't mean to tag along w huitian but she did apply to sua... so...

art student, which means being on her sixth can of bacchus at ass o clock & permanent eyebags, having the worst style intentionally & calling it avant goth

applied to be evo's treasurer but doesn't believe in 'the cause' or wtv that is. she j wanted to mooch money off them. its working!!

personality deets she's got that libra sun ( i see it i like it ) taurus moon ( i want it i got it ) scorpio rising ( goth ariana )! we're starting off goth, but she's unsrs about it. only emo 4 the aesthetics. might be a stoner gal & attends all the house parties when they have good greens. very chill & laidback, lowkey doesn't care about anything until it comes to her art or her ego, then her secret perfectionist self rears its big head! likes a good puzzle but would never help someone else solve one even if they were struggling. lives mostly in the twilight hours & naps thru class. could be spotted on your roof today!

chara inspos are sunny baudelaire, himiko toga if she had a loving family, vampire vibes really

plots

writing that intro has emptied my brain & i only have the usual suspects: besties, enemies, fwbs, exes! red hall hot girls & ppl she's pissing off at evo bc the funds keep disappearing

will update more but i love a brainstorm too we should do that 💗

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

hello ! i was wondering if you could provide your unfiltered thoughts about the whole “paul doesn’t really need you/only makes any effort when he needs something from you/was not a good friend to the other 3 because he was emotional repressed” disk horse that’s been going on these past few days? not that necessarily agree or disagree with either side but as always i feel at a certain point people start to really strew away from the original discussion and bring their personal experiences into it. which yes is definitely part of diskhorse but then you end up having ppl talking over one another and missing the point entirely because now their trying to defend their own experience or dislike/like of a person…of course i come to you for your nuanced takes. cheers !

p.s. idk if it’s just me, but i used to think it was john who ppl had the most polarizing feelings about on tumblr, but honestly there seems to be something about paul that gets everybody from both sides so worked up about lol.

Ah geez. (not @ you anon, just at the fact I saw the disk horse and was like Ok <3 at some of it)

Okay unfiltered thoughts so like, disclaimer, maybe I'm wrong about some of this.

I think people are kind of into deifying these people to a weird degree where Paul not socializing in specific ways is read as inherently cold of him, when the reality is that the commitment John asked of him was… Big and on Very Specific Terms. Like, maybe pause for a second and imagine your bestie was like "you should live within a 5 mile radius of me actually", like don't get me wrong I totally get why John wanted that; he was afraid of losing Paul + he couldn't deal with being mobbed the way Paul could + he was Depressed™ and often didn't have the energy to leave the house, sometimes even get out of bed. I understand wanting your loved ones nearby but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable demand. Same goes for things like dropping acid. It's a mind-altering drug, it's not a game?

I think it's relatively undisputable that Paul did not always treat George fairly but I don't think it has all that much to do with him being too closed-off and a lot more to do with them having quite different perspectives on the world + Paul not being able to recognize George's merit as an artist in his own right. There is that anecdote where George was angry about Paul not taking George's hand during a trip but I'm sorry like either a) George was angry about something else and just gave a bad example or b) he literally had no reason to react that way about Paul being terrified because of a fucking drug-based hallucination. Like. (lol thinking about the line from Lavender Haze "And you don't read into my melancholia" maybe this has nothing to do with you George. He IS TRIPPING ???)

I also don't understand why Ringo was brought into the discussion because I've never heard Ringo complain about Paul being too cold towards him; granted, Ringo has been relatively conflict-avoidant his whole life, from what I can tell, but it's a bit Hm to make assumptions about his reasons for having a relatively short fallout with Paul when he didn't really give any. (Like, people don't read nearly as much into GEORGE and Ringo falling out a few years down the line)

Also it's weird to me talking about "needing" because in the end… That's the only reason anyone does anything with someone. John "needed" Paul to be more open with him, didn't he? In the end relationships are a give and take not simply coexisting.

Is Paul a closed-off individual? Absolutely, but it really isn't to the degree he's made out to be (in the sense where it borders on like, sociopathic), I think it's more that he happened to be surrounded by people who weren't and he's perhaps kind of an anomaly in showbiz because of that. There's also this reverse survivorship bias where people who fell out with Paul are far more likely to talk shit about him than people who remained on good terms with him for years are to praise him publicly. There's also this thing were people seem to forget John basically dropped like 90% of his friends post-75 (though somehow him doing this to Paul is considered an exception – also, like Paul, [coincidentally?!?!?!?!] this happened when he settled down with his kid [LOL coming back with my nuclear family take I will never actually formulate in full ig]).

I think that's all I've got for now. I can elaborate on some of it if you want though.

[equalseleventhirds]

ok i was gonna make a shitpost about the beholding possibly being the second-youngest fear (after the flesh) and that’s why it’s such an asshole and gets bullied all the time (and i may yet make that shitpost i just got distracted)

BUT while thinking about that i started considering the web, bcos it always struck me as sort of an anomaly among the fears? not bcos manipulation isn’t a major fear a lot of people have, but because spiders in particular are not generally feared for their manipulation (in my experience, which i know may not be everyone’s, but listen...)

most of the ppl i have met who say they’re scared of spiders are more afraid of them the way the guy in arachnophobia was, with the horrifying idea that they’re going to crawl on you, or that they’re all around infesting your surroundings, or that they’re gross (sounds like corruption). sometimes (mostly from horror movie type arachnophobes) in a more hunt-ish sense, that if they become giant they are predators and will eat you.

this brings me to another point: we’re actually told that most of the fears don’t latch onto specific symbolism. leitner (motherfucker that he is) tells jon when he asks about bones: ‘you’re thinking too literally. examining the physical categorisation, but ignoring the meaning of the thing.’ he explains that bones as a symbol can be multiple fears, that they’re not limited by the physicality.

but the mother of puppets, apparently, uses spiders always. even in statements that could be plain manipulation (web development) we get spiders spiders spiders.

and no one else uses the spiders. the corruption flat-out avoids them in spite of being the domain of all creepy crawlies. the hunt doesn’t use them at all, even tho they’re really very good at hunting (some spiders trap, some actually do flat-out run out and catch food, and both of those are v good hunting techniques). they have eight eyes, and the eye won’t touch them. being wrapped up in web could be buried... you see all the things u could do.

in fact, not only do the other fears avoid using any of their symbolism, but the other fears are afraid of the web, more than any of their ‘enemies’ among the others. jonah says you can only hope the web doesn’t get in the way of your plans, because it plays its own game. peter seems convinced it likes the world as it is (and, reading into that, that it’s way more powerful than he is lol). it eats jane’s worms. and the one time we see someone try to go up against it... look what happened to agnes (even before she was bound to gertrude, she was tied too deeply to the house).

jumping topics for a second: real life spiders aren’t that manipulative. yeah they use webs, but only as much as other animals trick and trap prey (and they do, spiders aren’t unique in this). some of them use camouflage to either hunt or hide (did u kno some spiders look like ants just so they can live with ants and avoid predators isn’t that NEAT sorry i got sidetracked), but so do plenty of other animals. they don’t puppet their prey around when it’s trapped in the web, either--they just wrap it up to eat later. yeah there is one spider that plays on other spider’s webs to make them come down and then eats them, but that is a very UNUSUAL spider that most ppl don’t know about, and also it just eats other spiders? come on.

BUT do you know where we get a lot of ‘spiders & webs as manipulation’? stories. it’s present in literature (mostly as metaphors for humans, but still), poetry, folktales... some mythologies. not all mythologies, of course, but there are some that show spiders specifically as tricksters and manipulators (vs some that show them just as weavers, or just as big gross monsters, or not at all).

it’s important to note, though, that as tricksters specifically, a lot of spider mythology does not make them evil. the trickster archetype in mythology is usually canny and clever and mischievous, but rarely fully evil--and often helping the people who tell those stories.

why do i bring this up? WELL. in the architecture of fear, smirke says he thinks the fears were brought about by some ancient civilization, for an unknown reason--but perhaps to harness their fear for their own use.

(and far be it from ME to say that robert smirke was right about something, i talk so much shit about him being wrong all the time, but... well, this was far later in his life. when he’d realized some of his mistakes. when he was no longer sure that he was correct about the fears, about the rituals. when he’d finally started re-examining his original excited, informed-by-fucking-rayner theories, and accepting that he might have been wrong. so we’ll let this one ride.)

now, if i was someone in an ancient civilization looking to harness and use powerful fear monsters, i might want some insurance. i might take a look at my gods and spirits, for one that could help. for one that was not clearly all lawful good and would have stood out. for one that could, maybe, work from the inside to keep the fear monsters in check, could intimidate and manipulate them for MY benefit, and was known to be canny and clever enough to do it. and i might tie the related symbolism in very deeply with that one power (especially if i knew the powers tended to change symbolism) so that no one else could use it, and so that it would always use that symbol and remember what it was supposed to be.

i’m saying the mother of puppets, although certainly not GOOD or NICE and definitely still a fear, might have originated in an attempt to control and balance the other fears, a very long time ago.

[bobcathoneybee]

i think i already knew. i just wonder when it started. a bunch of other questions came to mind after we hung up. but of course he’s not going to share details, and wasn’t sure if i wanted to know, but i had a feeling, esp after the NYE plans comment. i also noticed that he has this look on his face in one of the screen grabs. like one of those fleeting subconscious facial expressions that came to the surface for just a little bit. easier to read with screenshots. 

keep personal finances to self; anything with money to self really. that’s key. many ppl can come out of the woodwork if they know too much. 

pls be safe. you know how a lot of ppl are with... being/claiming they’re being “safe”

-----

-is that my scarf (that i got you)? YES! i wore it on sunday, but you didn’t notice. how were the cookies? the strawberry one was really good, what was the other one, wasn’t sure what it was bc the flavor was a little light.

in no particular order, as i was about to get off the phone to finish dinner. and no wonder he didn’t immediately go to the microwave when the food was initially heated through.

-i wanted to talk to you about something. it’s not something we’ve really discussed after we broke up so i’m not sure how you would feel about it. im sort of seeing someone.i didnt know if you wanted to know or if you didnt want to know or how this would affect our friendship. what i wrote in the card is true. you’re my best friend and the best person in my life. what about gio?! i duno what to do with him, he even moved down to florida!

-we’ve always worked so well together. you get me. you’re the only one i still talk to as often as i do. *thinking (until she replaces me). that’s bc you’re the grumpier version of me! LOL i guess that is true

-i think i sort of knew tho, especially after you made the comment about not having to tell me anything when i asked (about the friend group it was), like whoa okay i’ll back off...was not expecting that reaction from you. yeah i realized that i probably should tell you

-i dont talk to any of them like that, we’re also not as close and i dont keep in contact with them, one bc shes married and that would be weird. I didnt speak to her much after we broke up. didn’t you wish each other happy birthdays and holidays stuff? they let you know they’re moving or their sister got married, the major life events? yeah

-after this past year, my intent was to eventually get back together. what i want to know if that’s even a possibility (or if that door is completed closed). i think there could be a possibility, but i dont want that to prevent you from seeing other ppl and figuring out what you want. 

-look, i’m probably going to be alone at 65 okay? don’t you think you’re just making it a self-fulfilling prophecy? yes, but still. 

-you dont even like people! i know! you dont know how exhilarating it is to just shut off your phone for the weekend and not talk to anyone. yeah, but now you’re going to make time for her. *pause, that’s true

-i didn’t want to feel guilty about not telling you and not being upfront about it. i respect you too much not to give you a heads up. i want us to meet ppl and figure out what we want or dont want. i dont know if this is going to go anywhere; it’s been slow-moving but i wanted to let you know. 

-i wasn’t sure if i wanted to tell you bc i didn’t want to see you cry. 

-you know you would say things like i’ll stop smoking WHEN i have kids (not if, when). i know i had to work through that myself too (about not having kids or getting married). i know but with all the weddings and kids the last few years... i think you needed to figure out what you wanted.

-it’s actually kinda hard dating (her) sometimes, it’s not the same. bc you can’t have chicken feet around her? LOL yes

-you just understand me so well. but i also dont want you to think i was using you to help me with measurement plans (for pitches) LOL. (this kid helps me with so much too.)

-you introduced me to new things all the time! you didn’t even like going to these places. i always grumble bc we have to leave the house but i still go when you suggest new places to check out (bc theyre usually always good!)

-i thought you were dating already. huh how do you mean? from the boat noodles comment. when i asked you about how you heard about it, you said some guy. LOL oh it’s bc i didnt know what it was and wanted to know if you knew/had it before. so did you go get it? no! it’s in astoria, why would i go to astoria?! was he asian? yes. it was one date. they’re so good! i shouldve had my mom make you some (when we were still dating) *side eye lollll sheeesh i tacked on that date with another appt i had in the city and it was on the way home! OH 

-in case you’re on a date and such, i wouldn’t want to be calling you all the time. lollll my dates are probably on weekends, when you dont talk to me... oh that’s true

-how did you guys meet? app? NO i would never put my pictures up there. okay i’m assuming neighbor friend during one of your brunch gatherings. (assuming she’s brunch girl as nickname or something brunch related). don’t you have friends (who can introduce you to ppl)? NO everyone has a SO and we don’t go out bc covid, we’re on apps! it’s just A LOT of talking. i’m literally trying to pick the best of the bunch at this point. ah i was afraid you’d say that (picking among the bunch)

-ALSO THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE KNIVES! (superstition) OMG YES IT DOES. i purchased a knife set for jacob back then too bc his knives sucked and look what happened! LOL do you replace his actual name with jacob now? YES bc it’s funnier!

-you just need to lower your standards back down bc i’m the anomaly in your dataset! i’m wayyy up there at 1000, but the norm/avg is prob way down there so you’ll need to adjust. are you padding yourself up?! YES! but i’m awesome! it always happens that way. sheesh. 

-ugh now i feel tied to my job even more. after the last big purchase? yeah. are you having buyer’s remorse? YES!

-my head hurts so much. it’s not as bad as yesterday when i felt like i had to go to the hospital. i was thinking about calling an ambulance. omg did you do the head squeeze?! that didn’t work at all! it felt like a large knife repeatedly stabbing my head. you know that area i press on behind your neck at the base of your head/skull, that area between your neck tendons and the one going up the sides, press on both points and push upward. i think you need to lift your head a bit from your neck *POP POP do you hear that?! IS THAT A KNOT?! ugh the massage place around the corner hasn’t opened. i think they’re done. it’s the only one i trust bc my mom went there so  i know for sure they dont offer happy endings. LOL i dont think they do that where you are

-you should go see cindy. your health should be the one thing you prioritize this year. does she make house calls? yes she does. sometimes goes to brooklyn and used to go to UWS for friends. i wasn’t sure if you wanted me to stop seeing her (bc she’s your friend and our PT). i would never make you do that. shes the only one who seems to help you. besides, her office is closing, the guy is being sued for not paying rent... oh what?! yeah but try to see her twice a week, i’m not sure max once a week (once a month) is really doing anything for you.

-do you think i can just get surgery to fix this? LOL no! she said you weren’t a good candidate! see her more often. but she says what i’m doing now is more preventative (so it doesn’t get worse). it might be fixed. my mom’s PT/tui na people made that ball (from using mobile phones) behind her neck go away. try to see her twice a week! your health is very important.

-should i take another advil or aleve? what did you take first? advil, then take another advil. i mean i took it at 10am this morning. oh! okay then you can switch to aleve. hmm 2016 or 2018? can i still take it? probably, it’s less effective tho. okay i’ll take 2018. 

-ive been taking heart burn meds. what are you lying down immediately after you eat again? ...noooo....? uh huh. you are, aren’t you”? either on the chaise or the bed? ..no..... if you’re gonna do that at least wait 30 mins and lay on your left side bc you know the of the stomach right? there’s that cup to the left for the acid to stay in so it doesn’t potentially open up the end of the esophagus iike when you lay on your right? ... maybe you should look this up on google! LOL other ppl don’t eat as much as i do! it won’t work! just try! ok fine.  

-it’s been awhile (since we broke up) and so i think it’s time. im here if there’s anything you’d want to share (about anyone you’re dating), we can always talk about it. *thinking sheesh why would i want to tell you that (it’ll make you even better for her). 

-i meant it when i said i’ll always be here for you

-i miss you a lot. i love you. *even tho i didnt say it back during FT, was still in some level of shock, i love you too.