#sorry this is a really personal post

[soothingmelody]

Video Essays, Jealousy, Melancholy and Lies

Have you ever found yourself living a lie?

This question has been stuck in my head ever since I started therapy earlier this year. And I don't mean it in some grand way of being a kind of double agent or stringing an elaborate web of lies to trick your childhood friend into playing sudoku to save your past self from burning down in an incinerator, but... Something much more mundane. 

I guess I should start from the beginning, cause otherwise the title of this post won't make too much sense. 

It is interesting how much we can experience through communication. Be it a Discord message, a Tumblr blog post like this, a tweet or a meticulously put together video essay, finding out about other people's experiences has been one of my favorite things throughout my life. I find people endlessly fascinating. I love it when people talk about their lives and their life experiences, so to me, the long winded, sort of pretentious format of the video essay is right up my alley. 

So, this morning, while enjoying a bowl of instant-ramen with some haphazardly cut green onions and a creamy eggy broth, I was watching this one video essay that one of my good friends had recommended to me the night before. Said video essay was about the appeal of Elfen Leid and the video itself, I found quite entertaining and very interesting. But, it did leave me feeling a tinge melancholic and I realized that this is far from the only video essay that has had that sort of effect on me. 

Growing up in Ukraine, a land ravaged by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of uncontrolled capitalism, where you could easily find syringes behind a children's playground and your average neighborhood screamed "Half-Life 2 Level", I was a pretty quiet kid, despite my extremely extroverted nature. I do think a lot of these issues start here, which is why I wanted to mention this. I was bullied from a pretty young age, disregarded by people I found important to me and disregarded by people I called friends. To me, it was always a feeling of being not "cool enough". I wasn't into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I wasn't into Transformers, being "girly" for a "boy" such as myself was seen as disgusting, was met with slurs and even more bullying. And in this environment, I was just a quiet kid, with a big heart, who'd sit at the back of the class and draw his funny Sonic the Hedgehog comics.

All of this is to say that I grew up in a pretty cynical place, where cringe culture was way more commonplace and I could only find respite in the internet, mainly the russian Sonic forums of the era, where plenty of judgemental people remained still. That cynicism has really seeped through me and followed me through so much of my life. There were so many times when I would do something that felt natural to me, that didn’t hurt anyone and I would be shut down even by people I trusted the most and I would once again retreat into my own shell. 

This constant environment led me to not really participate in many subcultures actively in fear of being seen as weird and cringy, this constant environment led me to not stand out to much, to not take opportunities that would’ve led me to a more interesting life and left me with barely any skills to express myself, besides music or art. It made me afraid of my own queerness that I had to come to terms with and understand for many many years, dealing with my own toxic masculinity, finding out that I was not really straight or that I am not even truly a “man”.

And now looking back, when I am more mature and have changed and grown so much, that I finally managed to open myself up somewhat and “be cringe and free”, honestly, there is a strong melancholy there. There’s a regret. I wish I’ve done so much over my teens that I sadly cannot turn back anymore. To please those people that were holding me back, I gave up so much. That I am having my self indulgent phase when I am in my early 20s and not my early 10s. And I am still a work in progress, I have no idea if I am still living some sort of lie, cause that is stuff you admit to yourself down the road and figure out with hindsight. But I am happier today. But, for how sad this all may sound, I wanted to tell you, the reader, that it is never really too late to change and open up a bit.

It is however interesting, that even with all of this said and this regret that I do bear, I consider that my experience was still rather valuable. I met many people, I developed in my own way and now I love who I am. Maybe that regret, a desire for a better teenage life is yet just another lie, me trying to conform. But, that will be for future me to decide in hindsight. 

If you relate to anything I’ve said in this little self indulgent post, please remember, that no matter what, if you are not hurting anyone, you should be free to do whatever you want and nobody has the right to take that away from you. If they laugh, let them, you are the master of your own life, so go and be cringe. Go buy that anime figurine. Go write poetry. Go ask out someone you like. Do something that will make you happy today and maybe you won’t be stuck writing long Tumblr posts. 

Stop living a lie. Be yourself.

[notherpuppet]

@/coma_0423’s cursed cat alastor will bring you happiness ♥️

Lulu scolds the cat

[bluegiragi]

i drew johnny "soap" mactavish as phreak (the original design) from overwatch.

bonus (just for fun):

[lucabyte]

there's a stranger who sleeps at the foot of your bed

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Look what we've become.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[lazylittledragon]

taking all my american followers by the shoulders. listen to me. just because you have a more promising candidate now doesn't mean you just assume it's going to be fine and don't bother voting. assuming trump wasn't going to win is how you got here in the first place so you go out and fucking vote for harris and give everyone a fighting chance.

also if you're still in the 'they're both as bad as eachother' delirium, please take your head out from between your cheeks and consider that your options are an imperfect president and the literal worst person alive who is going to get masses of people killed. i've said it like this before, but it's like deciding between maybe getting food poisoning or definitely having a brain aneurysm. take your pick i guess but don't be surprised when you drop dead.

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[turtledotjpeg]

[anastacialy]

guys, i think the hermits are going to accidentally start a prank war again. because just like last time, a game of telephone has begun. first, false made iskall's build into ''false beans,'' her shop from the previous season. however, to give herself plausible deniability, she signs it with "love, Joel. x" due to his username, smallishbeans.

next, iskall sees this, and completely believes it. he thinks it was joel who pranked him, and as he says to pearl while showing off the sign, which he kept even after tearing the prank down, "joel gave me a kiss." in his most recent video, he pranks joel by sending him loads of anonymous messages in order to completely spam and fill his inbox, preventing him from getting any more mail, with notes such as "thinking about you. x"

of course, joel is going to have absolutely no context for this, because he didn't make the initial prank. so who is joel going to assume sent him all those messages while he was away on holiday? well, i have a guess.

etho.

[songforten]

can anyone explain to me at what point rose tyler was "unbelievably stupid". was it when she was inventing transdimensional travel

[royaltea000]

POV they just told their da shixiong on you

[daily-odile]

nuh uh (papertrail au)

[minionsuncle]

What if we were twins and we had to fend for ourselves growing up until we went on a space exploration mission that put us in a 100 year loop and when you died I was forced to forget everything about you for years?

[beartitled]

Mini post real quick, bc noticed something interesting💥-

Book of Bill discussion may contain spoilers

I know tags are usually enough, but ya know just in case

Okay this is a speculation corner 👀

While I was colouring a new comic I noticed that the cage in the series was blue

Some ppl theorise that the fact that bill was red, while angry, represented his father

The parents roles can be swapped of course, bc we’re not really sure about who’s red, who’s blue (as far as I’m aware)

My personal headcanon: dad - red, mom - blue

But like

What if

The cage represents mom cipher 👁️👁️

An overprotective parent, who isolated her son “for his own good”

Hm???

There are probably ppl who already noticed it, but I just wanna feel smart for a second 😈

Oki back to colouring ����

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

[lightnersdream]

i've been thinking about exactly why people portraying one of the other crew members successfully killing Jimmy as a "for what you did to Anya" kind of thing rubs me the wrong way a bit and it's because like..... this is just another form of taking agency away from Anya, in a way. it's kind of framing her as some meek, shivery woman-thing who's entirely at the mercy of the men around her, either to hurt her or save her.

(i understand these are mostly for wish fulfillment on the audience's behalf because everyone would like to see Jimmy pay for his crimes. whether or not this is the intention of the person writing it isn't really relevant, characterization happens with or without intent. i feel like it misses the point by portraying it as an 'ideal ending'.)

because... Anya is a capable person. she takes things into her own hands when she can. it was partially(?) her idea to get into the cargo,

(before he interrupts her.. remember when she interrupted Curly in the dead pixel segment?)

it was her idea to get the code scanner from the cockpit,

it was her idea to get the medication from behind the foam.

(the chance to do these things herself is not given to her.)

she'd been keeping Curly alive for months in a critical state somehow, her psych evaluations at the start are only so useless because Jimmy refuses to take it/her seriously and Curly is obviously biased when he puts it into his own hands. he's known him a long time, like he said. "I'll just put good for that one."

there's not a lot of material to work with because of how the game is framed, but it's there. we are working with two very biased perspectives and neither one lends Anya what she deserves

there's significant changes in how she speaks post- and pre- crash, and depending on who she happens to be talking to. i recommend re-reading her dialogue, because the difference is drastic

she acts the way she does around Jimmy because he has tangibly done horrible things to her, is actively hostile, and physically could not escape him by any means. she can't take away Curly's agency herself, in my eyes. you have to remember that Especially in the post-crash segments of the game, it's entirely from Jimmy's POV, and he obviously does not (and has never) thought very highly of her or treated her with a shred of respect

i've seen a general idea that she can't bear to hurt other people for any reason, but that doesn't really track to me. this is the real point of the post by the way

it seems based on the parts where she says she struggles to give Curly medication. "It just hurts him so much, I can't stand the noise." "It makes me nauseous."

it's not really the same thing as, say, hurting someone in self defense

this sounds like she did want the gun itself. this never felt worded like someone who would refuse to, at very least, threaten Jimmy with a gun, with violence. if she had been given the agency to make that decision on her own. she wasn't though

she still tries to reclaim some of it even as she's denied it

by the end she's still trying to keep that gun out of his hands

i think some people overly soften her, for similar reasons the game itself is trying to comment on. she's not a tender victim who couldn't cause pain to another out of the softness of her soul, she's a person who's had every last bit of agency ripped from her repeatedly until she couldn't take it anymore. that's the point. that's why framing her that way, "needing" someone to save her, is odd to me

she didn't need Curly to save her, she needed him to take responsibility

she didn't want to escalate things, but she's not an idiot. self defense was absolutely on her mind

but who knows im just saying shit *smiles serenely*