#this is completely irrelevant to anything i just wanted to put it out there lol

[unknownteapot]

no one asked for this but this is how i see my moots:

1. @sage-lights

2. @babychosen

3. @shesmore-shoebill

4. @lilac-hecox

5. @okiankeno

6. @ammnd

7. @xxsuicidalravenxx

8. @vangoghschair

9. @poppyfamily

10. @mynephewmarriedajaguar

11. @devils-reign

12. me in case you were wondering

i can explain why you are those very specific images to me in detail if you'd like to hear me yap feel free to dm. also i know i wasn't able to put all my moots up there so if you weren't tagged and wanna know how i see you just send me and ask <3

[misc-obeyme]

I love your fat Mc headcannons so much!!! As a chubby person with low self esteem they are honestly really comforting, If you feel like if I’d love to see you write for the datables too.

Okay, considering I got two requests for this, here it is, part three with the dateables!

(And while I did not include Luke of course, I do think he would be confused about a fat MC having low self esteem. He doesn't get it, but he gets it bothers you and I think he'd just go out of his way to hug you because you're so squishy.)

I would also like to say that I'm really happy that these headcanons have been comforting. I've come a long way in my own self esteem and body image journey and I think that's the only reason I was able to write these at all. It's one thing to say these fictional characters will love and accept you the way that you are, but it's been my experience that real life people will, too. At least, the ones that matter do. The rest can fuck off lol.

Anyway, thank you for the request, lovely anons. I hope you like them!

dateables x fat GN!MC - NSFW MDNI

Warnings: discussion of weight and body image, suggestive content

Diavolo

He knows there's something causing you to have some low self esteem, but he isn't sure what it is at first. He observes that you just have this sort of discomfort sometimes. Eventually he just asks Lucifer because he can't figure it out on his own. Mostly because your body size seems completely irrelevant to him and he doesn't know enough about how such things are viewed in human society to understand why you might feel that way. Once he knows the truth, though, he has conflicting feelings. He wants nothing more than to reassure you that it isn't something you even need to worry about, but he's also outraged on your behalf. He's normally very fascinated by human world culture, but this makes him angry.

Diavolo will chat with all the brothers about this aspect of you. He wants to make sure that he isn't contributing to your insecurities at all. He makes sure your RAD uniform fits well and is designed so you're comfortable with how revealing or not revealing it is. He makes sure all the desk chairs at RAD can accommodate you. And he will act swiftly and decisively if he hears anything about rumors or students making fun of you.

If you're in a relationship with him, he will go out of his way to reassure you about your body. He wants you to know that he loves it, just as he loves everything else about you. There is nothing wrong with it at all, MC. He seems to understand that you need to hear him say it. That you need to hear him tell you that when he looks at you, all he sees is perfection. Considering how tall he is, you might actually be able to wear his clothes, too. But if it turns out they fit you just right or are really long but tight around the middle, he's going to think it's the cutest thing ever. He might deliberately buy clothes that are too big for him and then have you wear them so you'll feel like you're drowning in fabric.

But there is no doubt that he prefers when you aren't wearing any clothes at all. He won't let you keep the lights off during sex, he wants to see every part of you. Covers you completely in kisses, lingering over things he's heard you complain about. His favorite thing is to put your legs on his shoulders - he loves to see your whole body shaking beneath him, the way your legs clench against him. He's going to make sure you aren't capable of thinking at all, let alone thinking poorly about yourself.

Barbatos

He knows, of course. He knows exactly what you're dealing with. He can tell if you won't eat too many of his pastries. He'll make your favorites in an attempt to get you to at least take some home with you. He notices the way you move, how you avoid certain types of chairs, the usually over sized clothes that cover every inch, the way you avoid reflective surfaces. He notices all of it. He sees everything. He does his best to redirect you when he thinks you're struggling with something related to this, but he won't say anything to you directly. He's also really good at derailing other people who may say something they think is harmless, but isn't. Just easily changes the topic.

Barbatos takes it upon himself to make you stunning outfits for nearly every event. Any time you need some kind of fancy outfit, he is ready to make you something perfect. It fits you exactly right every time. Somehow, when you look in the mirror, you actually think you look good when you wear what he's made. How did he even manage to do that? He's pleased with himself for making you something so nice, but the way it makes you cry upsets him. He knows you don't often feel this way when you look at yourself. He knows that you cry because it's so rare for you to love the way you look. But it still fills him with a simmering rage that he somehow hides behind his usual smile.

In a relationship, he's going to touch you subtly all the time. Puts his hand on your back, circles his arm around your hip, any opportunity to touch you, he takes it. It's so gentle and nobody else notices, but you are hyper aware of the way his fingertips are always ghosting across you. When you're alone, he'll say everything you need to hear. He will tell you that he loves you for who you are in your entirety - your heart, your mind, your body, all of it. Because each of these things make you who you are and he loves you. Your body is perfect because it belongs to you, MC.

His favorite thing to do is wrap his tail around one of your thighs. Pushes one or both of the tips between them, sneaking it in where you might think it couldn't possibly fit. Considering how he can hide the entire tip of it between your thick legs when you're sitting with them together, he'll do it in public on purpose to rile you up. Then when he gets you alone, he apologizes so sweetly while he undresses you. Takes his time with you, kissing and touching, slowly burying himself in your heat until by the time he really gets going, you're both desperate and moaning.

Simeon

He doesn't notice unless you spend a decent amount of time with him and then he realizes that you're insecure about your body size. He doesn't know why and he doesn't feel like he can ask you directly, but he can definitely tell. So he takes it upon himself to shield you from anything that he thinks will make it worse. Deliberately tells you how good you look almost every day. You probably catch on because that's a little overkill, but it's sweet so you don't complain about it. Unless it comes up in conversation, he will not ask you about it. You can tell him yourself when you're ready.

As soon as Simeon understands exactly how you feel, you notice a subtle shift in the way he acts about it. There's a sort of underlying anger to the way he will defend you now, the way he will attempt to protect you from things he thinks are causing you to feel bad about yourself. He's angry about it, but he keeps it under wraps, hiding it behind his smile and serene personality. If you're prone to joking about your size as a defense mechanism, he will not like that at all. He frowns and tells you not to talk about yourself like that, even jokingly.

Being in a relationship with him is all of the above, but more intense. You find that he will actually scold you about being down on yourself, though he always follows it up with kisses. He's far more intense and unforgiving of anyone or anything else that causes you discomfort. You'll find he also just takes over feeding you. He's constantly bringing you meals and snacks that he's made. He's worried you won't eat properly. If you want him to, he will sit and eat with you if that's something that helps you feel better. All you have to do is ask him and he'll do whatever he can to make you more comfortable. Just leave it to him, MC.

He always seems perfectly calm and restrained until he gets you alone in his bed. He likes to dress you in lingerie - don't worry if you think it won't fit. He gets it custom made, but you'll never find out exactly where he goes for that. You highly suspect certain clothing-making demons may be involved, but you're far too embarrassed to ask. He just loves to see you only partially covered so he can run his fingertips along the edges of the cloth, teasing you for way too long before finally giving in and ravaging you. He can't stop telling you how perfect your body is when he's inside you.

Solomon

As a fellow human, he understands immediately why you might be self conscious about your larger body. Solomon has been through most of human history - he's seen all the trends. He knows how bad this particular one happens to be and how long it has persisted among humans. He watches you to see if you decided to try anything drastic - like using a spell or a potion to make yourself thin. He's ready to jump in and stop you if you so much as look it up. He doesn't want you to hurt yourself, but he also wants you to realize that you don't need to change.

Take the opportunity to tell him how you feel. Tell him about why it's so tempting to use magic to change yourself. How different your life could be if you did. He will listen, but he'll also talk you out of it. In the end, it's his expression that changes your mind. He makes some good points, of course, but the way he just looks so upset at the idea really makes you think you probably shouldn't do it.

Don't tell him that you're insecure in a relationship with him because you are asking for trouble. He'll know already of course, but if you say it, it's all over. He's going to say stuff all the time about your size and how perfect it is. He's going to constantly touch you and tease you and get you to do things you would normally never do. If you react dramatically to anything like that, he'll only laugh and do it even more. He likes to show you off, too. Takes you out places especially if he thinks the demon brothers will be there. Keeps an arm around your hips the entire time.

Similarly, if you say you're too fat to do something sexual with him, he's going to do it anyway. You might even say that you're too fat in general and then all bets are off. Saying anything like that to him is going to make him crazy, so you can be sure you will not be sleeping at all that night. Very deliberately chooses positions that you seem uncertain about due to your size. Spends a night just kissing and touching every single spot on your body. Reassures you constantly because even though he just wants to make you feel good, he knows how important it is for you to hear him say it, too. You're stunning, MC. Don't you know how much he loves you?

part one with the older brothers | part two with the younger brothers

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[rewritingcanon]

[jegulily] worse than jegulus but somehow less annoying idk how to explain it

dude this is so real! like it's hard to explain but it captures those feelings perfectly. like it is worse in a sense that it directly romantically connects an oppressed woman with her oppressor and that's gross, but it's also less annoying because of how fandom acts, they at least try to act like they don't completely erase Lily? I guess? so it's more palatable to 'see' rather than the complete erasure or demonization or downgrading that happens with jegulus, though you can still tell that she's treated like a third wheel and the lesser one in that poly and the only posts you see about the ship not working cause one of them feels like they don't fit in are always about Lily lol. but in the end both still bad in a sorta same way, cause they both only serve one character, Regulus irrelevant Black and that's it, they only exist for one character, cause neither James or Lily or their fans gain anything from these ships, they're both deliriously happy with each other and don't give a flying crap about the new twink of the month and don't 'need' him in their ships. yet still one of those camps is at least trying to fight the misogyny allegations while the other is just blatantly misogynistic.. so like there are layers and levels to the badness and annoyance here lmfao

im literally dying over “regulus irrelevant black” and “new twink of the month” because thats exactly how these new death eater babygirls feel to me all the time and we seriously need to retire the image. and i really said “idk how to explain it” and then you came and explained it perfectly.

it sucks because i do wish there was more love for polyamorous ships in fandom in general but did the popular had to have been jegulily?? youre also completely right about how jegulily shippers (from what i’ve seen) are mostly regulus fans, because the whole ship does seem to center around him in some way. it’s so funny how often lily would feel shoved into the ship absentmindedly when in reality the third wheel would be regulus. and there would be a third wheel in this scenario because canon lily and canon james wouldnt want to touch regulus within a ten foot pole. lily, who dumped her childhood best friend over his prejudices against muggles/muggleborns (that extended years of her having to look the other way) would want to voluntarily put herself in a relationship that could so much as entail the same sort of bullshit. james, who joined a whole ass war to defend the rights of the oppressed and had probs a million bitching sessions with sirius over how shitty his family was (including regulus) would want to date said character? mmm uh huh okay. fanon is getting out of control its time we curb stomp a lot of it.

ive yapped too much too long im not gonna even get into the jegulus part. it makes me too maddddd

[doctormage]

ok I have my veilguard thoughts. I put both things I liked and didn’t like here. it’s not a complete list and I reserve the right to add more as I think of them. godspeed

narrative thoughts

shouldn’t have been surprised but was genuinely floored by how racist they were about the qunari. my god.

like I think it might be worse than inquisition. they literally distorted their voices and hid all their faces. deeply insane

also very disappointed that the culture with the most potentially interesting approach to gender (the qun) was just pigeonholed into being like all the others’. esp bc the trans companion was literally qunari. what happened to roles in the qun being their genders, like….

and on the note of racism/orientalism, what the actual fuck did they dress Isabela in. why are all the lords of fortune armors like that. gun to my head I could not have predicted this

almost no reference to the long standing conflict and prejudice bw tevinter and the qunari. and almost no reference (outside codex entries) to Actual Fucking Slavery in tevinter. all very bizarre

I think a lot of shit got ignored because they were trying to make the game as marketable as possible to players new to the franchise. which I logically understand but hate in practice, bc how are you gonna decide this game is “character driven” and then make almost every character from the previous games, including our choices as the player characters, irrelevant

I mention this in the immersion section but it’s relevant here too. all the stuff that got left behind or unmentioned made the world feel small to me. the world building and lore are, imo, important and load-bearing components of this franchise. I’m still thinking on how they could’ve done it differently, or what missing pieces were most crucial, but for now I’ll leave it at that

appreciated that characters’ feelings of anger and injustice (like Harding about the titans or Neve if you didn’t save Minrathous) and/or weirdness and guilt (like Bellara and Davrin about the evanuris) were respected and discussed. I won’t say everything was perfectly handled but it’s miles away from the shit we’ve seen in previous games

I’d been afraid they were gonna completely rehabilitate solas as a mostly good guy and I’m glad he was still shitty in a lot of ways LMAO

I’m still mulling over his ~penance~ of holding up the veil w his life force or whatever but I do appreciate that they weren’t just like “ok the evanuris are gone and the veil can stay up and everything’s fine now” about it

wait brain blast this goes PERFECTLY W MY SOLAS/ATLAS PARALLELS (1, 2) ACTUALLY HELLO!!! HELLO

gameplay thoughts

wasn’t in love w the combat system but I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. I felt very limited by the amount of abilities I could have usable at a time though

enjoyed that both play styles for a mage (staff vs orb+knife) had viable ranged and melee components. also the orb and knife combo was just cool in general

I like the companion-specific abilities instead of just class-specific, makes them feel more important as a person than just a function

wish I could actually switch to the other companions tho. wouldn’t really do anything but still wish I could lol

that said I do like the very specific ability branches for the companions too bc it makes my life easier lmao

as mentioned previously, I miss armor crafting terribly 🤧 feel like pure shite just want her back xx. anyway. I wore the exact same armor literally the entire game and just kept upgrading it

didn’t love the da2 style “you can’t put your companions in just ANY armor” thing but didn’t hate it either. I appreciate the dedication to the vibe

the hero of the veilguard armors everyone got were really cool (tho I didn’t love bellara’s. sorry my love xoxo) and I’m interested to see what they look like if you pick other choices for their personal quests

unsurprisingly I wish there’d been more stuff to loot and collect out in the world but that’s just who I am. Picks Every Single Elfroot In The Hinterlands Gang rise up

moving around was kind of annoying but I think again that’s just personal preference. plus I’m a fog of war enjoyer (satisfying to clear a whole map of it yk) so do with that what you will

the way the maps were set up isn’t badly but it did kind of discourage me from exploring the way I did in dai, sort of how exploring felt like a huge bitch to me in da2. so it would’ve been nice to have more incentive to explore other than like, a rarity upgrade for a weapon I never use from a chest that took me 15 minutes to get to lol

already said this but I’ll say it again: bring back 4 person parties I miss my friends

really enjoyed how the banter was place based and REALLY really enjoyed how they would be like “what was I saying?” and repeat it if banter was interrupted by combat or something

no fancy party quest or level!!! v disappointing. we had so many options. we even had 2 parties in the game and they were both lame :(

very much wish they’d made it clear that completing certain main quests will lock you out of others. I only missed one companion side quest bc of this but it haunts me

honestly. extremely unpopular opinion but I never minded all the dumb little fetch quests in DAI lmao. I love you quarries I love you logging stands I love you astrariums. I don’t love you ocularums but that’s bc you’re made of tranquil skulls. fucked up

immersion thoughts

way, WAY fucking better at taking your character’s background into account regarding dialog (both in conversations and in cutscenes) thank god

it felt…..small? I wasn’t expecting it to be set up like inquisition with a bunch of big open maps per area, but it felt a little stretched thin. might just be me though

this also sort of ties in w the stuff in the narrative thoughts, about how a lot of historical conflicts and issues (including SLAVERY!!!) were barely touched on at all. the intranational problems add depth to these places as much as the international ones

(btw isn’t the “black divine” supposed to be kind of a conspiracy theory??? is it not meant to be heretical and shit?? that tevinter has their own secret divine and they don’t respect the authority of the southern chantry??? this was not addressed at ALL?????)

some of the areas felt very removed from like, the rest of the country they were in, if that makes sense. eg, the rivain map was weirdly isolated to me and I’m like. where do people live. lmao

the gender stuff is. weirdly handled. as excited as I was to have the opportunity to play as a nb rook and to have a canon nb companion, it was extremely immersion breaking to hear them all say “non binary.” there are a trillion ways to go about this without making it feel like a weird anachronistic DEI seminar

could not fucking tell you how long the events of the game take. ik this isn’t a huge deal to everyone but it is to ME lol

most decisions felt like it made sense that rook was the one making them. or at the very least, it made sense in context and wasn’t just like “hey Cole, you should be more human/spirit.” for example I liked how the way you talked Harding down is what solidifies her narrative one way or the other; we’re not straight up telling her what to do

loved the companions’ book club and notes and conversations. legitimately so endeared by it all. I wish what conflict there was had felt more serious so that the resolution felt earned, but all in all I really enjoyed their dynamics

the golden/black city being arlathan is just. not fucking discussed after we discover that!!! like we all just decide not to completely disprove andrastianism and then go on our merry fuckin way I guess!!!

other thoughts

Solas doesn’t like raisins 🫶

I fucked hard with the solas and felassan memories, and the various notes from felassan you could find

I was never a huge fan of the “ancient elves were spirits that took physical form” theory (though not for any particular reason) so it makes me sad to know my tweenage solas musings are decidedly debunked 😔

mythal fragment stuff was weird. wasn’t a fan

what happened to solas’s elf army. lmao

also what happened to the foci/orbs. aren’t those titan hearts or something. didn’t we discover this in trespasser

where is solas going once he binds himself to the veil??? the same place he put the evanuris? couldn’t he just…..make it different lmao like he created it. I get being all martyr-y and masochistic abt it to atone for his mistakes or whatever but if he’s bringing lavellan can’t he make it suck less?? 😭

feels like we got a LOT of old questions answered (yay!!!) and not a lot of new questions to think about (sad)

THE MUSIC WAS LACKING IM SORRY. I AM STUNNED THAT HANS AND LORNE DID ME LIKE THIS BUT YOU KNOW WHO WOULDNT HAVE DONE ME LIKE THAT IS MR TREVOR FUCKING MORRIS

major choices

dalish veil jumper elf mage rook

romanced bellara 🩵

saved treviso, which hardened neve and blighted minrathous

lucanis spared illario (just to see what would happen tbh. the answer is basically nothing)

gave the griffons to the dalish

softened(?) harding? idk I picked the “remember who you are” dialog that got her the child of the stone relationship title thing

taash embraced rivaini culture

emmrich revived manfred

bellara saved the archive

made a deal w the threads

davrin ultimate sacrifice :( I didn’t know :(

neve kidnapped by elgar’nan :(

redeemed and saved solas. happily ever after w my lavellan as god intended. sorry

idr where I put everyone to help w factions while fighting elgar’nan but everyone survived the final battle (except davrin obv who died before. RIP my absolute king im so so fucking sorry)

[destiny-in-the-universe]

The Nine Realms: 1/? [RC9GN Brainrot]

well, here we go again lol-

i did allude to this a while back and was originally not going to do this until later because i'm struggling to make sense of what is basically just fanon interpretation, but the brainrot is killing me all over again- hence why this chaotic post now exists. rc9gn was an amazing show with so much potential which means i want to explore a lot with what happened post-season two because oh my god why, but to spare irrelevant rambling, i figured we could talk about the nine realms and my thoughts of what we might've been able to get in further seasons (this show better come back, istg)

fair warning: this post is a bit informal and fairly long, so if you don't want to sit around and deal with my brainrot rambles- well, i guess this isn't for you? and so we commence!

first of all, the nine realms are meant to get harder and harder for the ninja as the seasons progress- we know about the land of shadows which apparently isn't even the worst out there; the way i see it- the land of shadows is dealing with threat and fear, more so conditioned terror than anything truly dangerous. well, the sorcerer could've been a bigger threat if the show had been allowed to be a little more unhinged- (he did wipe out an entire clan meant to stop him, and they had to be at least a little op, so- i'm sure his power in rc9gn could've been stronger)

the land of shadows is tied to monsters- creatures that seem almost primal in comparison to other dangers; personally, i do believe that it's mostly just an open realm where these monsters, which are more like hounds you could say, exist but at the end of the day they can easily be defeated because as i said- land of shadows is about fear and likely primal feelings but of course, there are other realms

which brings us to the second realm- i genuinely would like to believe it's tied to one of the "core elements", or in simpler terms: fire, earth, wind, and water. i'm still trying to decide which element (though at the same time, i have an idea but that deserves its own separate post-) and that now the ninja would likely have to face a completely different set of trials- but i'm getting ahead of myself: i did a bit of digging into japanese folklore and myths, and decided the yokai should become a more prominent theme in rc9gn

i feel that in the case of the shadow warrior, while he probably didn't originate from this second realm- that he still will become a potential major antagonist (alongside with the idea that the sorceress could come back-), but the second realm deals with oni- now to briefly explain, oni are essentially demons in japanese myths; they're creatures that would be a far greater foe than a mere stanking, but let me get right to the point

i don't know why i'm struggling to articulate my thoughts so much, but the second realm is also a place where unrest happens- the creatures there are hungry and if they're released, well, i can't say that would be good for anyone huh? but to put this into more perspective, the realms have specific adversaries that get tied to a lesson the ninja has to complete (which will not get breached yet-)

i will say that my thought that each realm correlates back to the norisu 9 will continue happening, but let's back to just the second realm-

the second realm is not as seemingly empty as the land of shadows appeared to be; oh no, this is now home to monsters which will come after you on a second's notice- it's an ominous threat where things are watching your every move and almost like something is tailing you and will bite if you get too close; it leaves you on guard, and this realm is whispering into your ear but the only way out is to take on these threats head on and not find yourself looking in the wrong direction

the shadow warrior would be a smaller adversary in comparison to the danger randy would face in the final arc but i like to imagine that the shadow warrior was a source of dark magic that, while it had the potential for good- it still had just as much of a capability of being used as a source of wrong. of evil, to say the least but again, we'll talk about that more later

second realm is all about keeping your eyes set for danger, and the oni are not something to be reckoned but would randy be able to take them head on?

i swear, creating original lore can be a little painful but once this becomes a little more coherent- well, i'll send a new post where i can talk about this in better detail. until next time!

[hubristicassholefight]

Hubristic Assholes fight round 1 part 3b

Macbeth (Macbeth) vs Adam (Nier: Automata)

Propaganda below cut (Beware spoilers!)

Macbeth

Witches say he shall be king, so with Lady Macbeth’s help he murders his way to the throne, then backstabs his only allies for fear of them plotting against him. According to the witches, he can only die if the forest marches to his gates, so he’s good to go! Until an army carrying a forest of branches arrives at his gates. a classic

macbeth was too caught up in being manipulated by his hot wife that he failed to notice his declining mental state or the fact that treason is, in fact, Not Good; scottish white boy breaking it down ne’er-be-cleaned style

Adam

He fucked around and found out! Adam was a humanoid machine created in front of androids 2B and 9S. He nearly died to them another guy came out of the stab wound but that's irrelevant to his hubris lol. Connected to a network of machines, he became fixated on humanity (which has "fled to the moon" thousands of years ago), and more importantly, their emotions. He started copying the BIBLE, going "hm yes I'll name myself Adam my brother can be Eve ig, oh lookie here apples make you smart, we don't need to eat but let's eat those" and just like. Buddy. I'm not even Christian or Jewish or anything but I don't think that's what the Bible meant. Anyways, he wonders how androids feel emotions, so, as one does, he kidnaps 9S, just kinda puts him through some good ol' psychological torture, and then stabs him and sort of crucifies him, leaving him alive Now onto the hubris! He leaves 9S there, so when 2B finds 9S, Adam tells he he wants to see HATE firsthand. He disconnects from the network, making him completely mortal, and decided he wants to see 2B fight him. And, obviously, she does, bc she is PISSED. Aaaand Adam promptly gets stabbed and bleeds out on the floor. Fucked around and found out lol;

[ohraicodoll]

Hiiii so basically I’m obsessed with your Red series,God you so talented and I’m amazed how good you capture her emotions and just her hard shell, soft inside persona. Bravooo

And I had this little thought and idk just wanted to know your take on it like what if Maria did something wrong like idk Red caught her cheating on Tommy so Maria begs her to cover for her so Joel and Ellie are not banned from Jackson and she does but it gets like twisted that Red cheated and Joel is hurt and breaks up with her so would Red be torn between saving her relationship or saving Joel and Ellie? (Idk if that makes sense but I’m just really into this angsty/martyr storyline) feel free to totally ignore it if it doesn’t make sense tho or if it feels too off character for Red

Hope you have a nice day xxx

Thank you so much! 😭🥰 I'd chalk everything up to ⭐trauma⭐ but pretty sure I just have an overactive imagination and put myself directly in the character's mindset. I can cry on command by just imagining scenarios lol. I don't think it's tooooooo out of character, but I don't think Joel and Ellie would ever get banned simply because there's no logical reason for it. They pull their weight and don't cause trouble. Maria, while important, isn't solely in charge as there's a council plus they have a tether to the community through Tommy. Red, on the other hand, has been causing trouble so everyone would be on board if the decision was made. Maria has just been the main vehicle to pass that information along. Now if Red caught Maria cheating? Honestly, I don't think she'd do anything because while she's getting along with Tommy, she has no interest in them. Her mind would just categorize it either as irrelevant information or leverage. Joel would probably not believe if Red was cheating because she's not really capable emotionally of doing that, but he probably would be extremely upset that she knew about Maria and didn't say anything. Because Joel actually does have an interest in Tommy's happiness and Maria cheating means she hurt his family. Would it be enough to break up? Probably not, but also Red doesn't even realize she's in an actual relationship right now. So she'd probably be extremely upset at her for upsetting Joel, think all she does is hurt people, and disappear out of Jackson for a while which would upset Ellie and then upset Joel. They'd probably have to go drag her back and basically have a "Hey, I'm upset at you but you don't have to go to these extremes just because of that and you aren't kicked out, get back home you idiot," talk.

And yes, Red completely has a martyrdom complex with a healthy dose of self-destructive tendencies.

[sureuncertainty]

okay so like how do you set boundaries with an internet friend that you don't wanna be friends with anymore? this is no one here, this is someone i know via instagram and I kinda just realized is actually a dick to me? all the time? and i don't wanna talk to them anymore much less have them edit my book (which they offered to do and I stupidly already said yes)

I don't wanna block them without saying anything, i literally have trauma around being blocked for no reason BUT like is that worse than like? just ghosting them forever? cause that's what I've been kinda doing already

this person CLAIMS to like my book but they've also given me stupid super nit-picky and mean spirited criticisms on it that make no sense that are literally like suspension of disbelief things (also they tried to say that it was "unrealistic" for Cain to not be arrested for tax fraud, which like. buddy you're european and you have no fucking idea what CEO billionaires in the US are fucking capable of getting away with apparently lol)

These criticisms were basically unprompted btw. they were like oh can i make some comments and I said yeah sure thinking it'd be something small and then they proceeded to tell me that my entire story makes no sense and kinda mock it and make fun of it and make me feel dumb

so they made me really insecure about my writing and also literally none of my headmates like them and we get that we can't stop them from reading our book when it's published BUT we just don't want to talk to them about it or have them read it for free

i asked a friend about it and they think they're jealous of me and that's why they say they like my book but are also picking it apart and idk if that's true but I don't think they're like... PURPOSEFULLY being an asshole they just are. i literally dread every message I get from them. OH also they called one of my headmates an ableist slur which like okay fine, it's a common slur that people throw around but it was still hmmmm not great (we are not out as a system on instagram btw)

they send me videos that are completely irrelevant to my interests, they've been BUGGING me about when i'll send them the chapters of silence agenda I told them they could edit (which now will not be happening lol). also our very first conversation was them trying to tell me that studying titanic history doesn't matter WHEN I WAS LITERALLY GRIEVING AFTER THE SUBMERSIBLE DISASTER LAST SUMMER AND VENTING MY FRUSTRATIONS ABOUT IT. and i did snap at them that time and we worked it out and both apologized for making assumptions which was fine but still. like i almost blocked them the moment they sent me that message and now i really really really wish I had bc I feel like i'm in too deep

we also have several mutuals in common and i would worry that if I blocked them on everything, they'd ask one of our common mutuals about it (or a mutual would share my art or something) and they'd realize that I have them blocked, and then i'd have to like. explain myself. and i don't feel comfortable telling those mutuals about it bc i DO NOT want to be that person that's like 'hey jsyk you're following this person who is Problematique' bc i DESPISE when people do that

anyway yeah i just don't know how to handle it and any advice would be appreciated. idk how i've been putting up with this person's bullshit for so long like dear lord i kinda felt like i yanked the wool off my eyes today and realized how fucking awful they are to me

[beheworthy]

I understand that you appreciated enough things about Love & Thunder (as in Jane's scenes, Thorjane, etc) to consider it canon, but what are your thoughts on the Thor2 deleted break up? I can't help but prefer them breaking up because of the long distance, or Jane being so overwhelmed that she "couldn't imagine a life with him" after everything, than what we got in canon. Maybe my opinion would change if I watched the movie, not sure, but I'm interested in your take on it.

*takes a deep breath* Buckle up.

1. I appreciate you saying whether I'd consider anything canon or not. Buddy, my acceptance is irrelevant. Anything Marvel puts out IS canon, regardless of how we feel about it. That's the whole entire reason I can't let this shit go. Because he's CANONICALLY drilled into the ground by Marvel with nowhere to go. And it depresses me.

2. I hate both break-up scenes because I simply don't want my OTP separated. Period. But if I have to validate any one, I'd go with Thor4 because at least its idea was understandable, the issue was its failed execution. The Thor2 breakup makes no sense and regresses their characters. The two reasons you present that the movie presents:

a) Breaking up because of long distance is such a bastardization of their magical relationship that transcends realms that I just cannot. He's not a coworker or a one-night stand she tried to have a relationship with and decided it wasn't working out. He's the Prince of the paradise in the clouds that's advanced to her realm by a millennium. He's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as far as boyfriends go lol. And his mother died to protect her. Why? Because she had all but accepted her as her daughter-in-law.

You don't just break up with THAT because of long distance, that's unbelievably simplistic.

b) Jane being overwhelmed that she "couldn't imagine a life with him" is also against her character because she is such a zero self-preservation inquisitive soul that was so fascinated by Asgard's advanced technology, she would be at home on Asgard. She would want to be with him and explore his magical world she's studied about her whole life.

And ok, she was so overwhelmed that she would dump him. For what? To return to her boring 9 to 5 life and do theories of the phenomenons she could do practicals of on Asgard. That makes no sense with Jane's character.

Or she was so scared by the challenges of a life with him (even tho she was ready to die saving him a scene ago) that she just quit? That's not the Jane I know either. She takes challenges head-on and is not a quitter.

The ONLY reason she would break up with him is for him - like I said in my theory that Odin made her do it.

3. Even from a story-telling perspective, it was a terrible choice because it resets every character to their factory settings, rendering the development of Thor1 and 2 completely pointless. Jane becomes a meaningless person forgotten going forward. Thor and Odin are chilling in Asgard with nothing to do and Loki and Frigga are dead with their sacrifices for Thor and Jane amounting to a big fat 0. Why dedicate two whole movies to their romance only to break up because of freakin long distance?

You can't have the event of Ragnarok with Thor in Asgard. You can't have him on Midgard for Avengers movies. What is the point of this then?

-

Not to elongate an already long answer, but I always thought the plan was to make her the Queen of Asgard, the perfect foil for King Thor. Her love and quest for knowledge + kindness to help shirtless strangers combined with Thor's sense of justice and protection of his people would make them the PERFECT rulers. Do you know what I'd give for this to be Thor's final ending in the MCU?

Like, I thought she was written to be so fascinated with the stars beyond because that where she belongs. That's where she'll rule. That if anyone from Midgard in the MCU was meant to leave it and stay on Asgard their whole life, it's Jane because she's so far ahead of her time.

But I was Boo Boo the Fool. Her entire purpose in life was to die for him. Because Marvel's all about feminism.

[ohmotherwhereartthou-if]

How would the ROs react to someone telling them they could do a lot better than mc alongside some other insults for the MC? (Let's also assume the MC is already insecure)👀

Cassandra: Stunned into silence at the gall. She will look shocked for a few moments, you'd might expect her to snap but her actually will lift an eyebrow and scoff. "Such a vast waste of air; your petty comments are irrelevant, and now your very presence irritates me. Don't speak to me or about my beloved ever again." She would walk away and if MC overhead she wrap her arm around their waist and give them a kiss. "Pay them no mind my love, your the one I will always choose."

Valeria: Will laugh at first and joke, "I think your really overestimating my value if you think I am too good for someone. I don't think I'm all that great of a person for someone to tell me that." But once they start insulting MC? Will pull a whole angry latina rampage.

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!" and a whole bunch of other shouts will be released; yes, now everyone is looking and no, she doesn't care. If what they said hurt your feelings she will drag her brothers into the argument and they tend to take things too far, the offender will most likely never show their face around again after this whole ordeal.

Tomás: Fifty-fifty chance that he is either mad or annoyed, or both. Tomás would probably just brush them off and not give them the time of day, he hates wasting breath on pointless things. But if they hurt your feelings he will get really defensive and make this a public incident if you let him take it that far, he is not afraid to duel for your honour. Which is kinda outdated even in this world at this time but he is an old fashioned kinda guy and won't tolerate anyone bad mouthing his woman/man.

-

Ludovica: Ooh this is really bad for whoever is stupid enough to do this with her when she has finally found real love for the first time in her life. Ludovica has a kind heart and gentle demeanor most of the time when she is with MC, she has a soft air about her and honestly would be the equivalent of a sweet disney princess in the flesh. But all that vanishes in an instant the moment someone starts bad mouthing MC in her presence, her smile and the sweet look in her eyes drops quickly and is replaced with a cold look that would put most offended mothers to shame.

"You will cease such foul talk immediately. He/she is the love of my life, you are nothing nor will be anything to me and such, have no place to say such things about my beloved. I am the one not worthy of him/her, but I intend to fully devote myself to him/her for the rest of my life to try to make him/her as happy as they have made me. I don't ever want to hear such things from you ever again, and if I do then you are dead to me. Understand?"

If she finds out MC got hurt feelings from this she will comfort them and hold them close to her as she reassures them just how much she loves them for as long as they need.

Aurelio: His response is the equivalent of "lol and who tf are you???" He will smirk and lift a brow as he insults them back with surprisingly hurtful veiled insults, he is used to people being jealous of who he gives his affection to but he never tolerated it in the past and he isn't about to start tolerating it now.

If MC has hurt feelings from the comments he will tease them a bit but reassure them that it is them who he chose to be in a relationship with and that they have nothing to fear from what useless idiots think. (If they made MC cry he will also quietly ruin that person's life by destroying whatever finances they had and knocking them down a whole economic class bracket.)

Elio: Ignores them completely and goes about his day, to be honest he will not mention the incident unless you do or if you are very obviously upset about it. (emphasis on obvious as he is bad at reading people's emotions)

If he understands that what that idot said hurt your feelings he will just tell you that you have nothing to be insecure about and if that didn't fix the issue then he will elaborate that If he didn't deem you enough then he wouldn't be with you. And he is with you right now isn't he? It might sound blunt on paper, and I mean it still is in person when he says it but it is his surprisingly sincere delivery that makes the declaration of how he feels really sweet.

[south-park-meta]

I think I agree with it as a character regression actually.

It feels like ever since the Post Covid there’s been this like… Undoing of a lot of the character development the kids have had. And I kind of get why they’ve done it- characters like Stan and Kyle for example felt like they’d been written into a miserable wall where it was hard to approach them in new ways. And like, this was because they had built on and on with this rising action of character development for them and then just… Sort of gave up on it? And we got Post Covid to “resolve it”, and dgmw I love Post Covid but it hardly was enough to meaningfully fix the damage between Stan and Kyle’s relationship the last ten seasons or so, or their own issues that have just built on to be worse and worse and weigh on them more and more heavily.

And so like. Idk where I’m going with this. I get why they reversed it to bring the show back to feeling fresher and more like a bunch of kids going through crazy little adventures rather than the depressing reality they’d written them into. Like, I don’t hate seeing them act more naive and innocent and happy as opposed to the broken messes they’d both became (and other characters as well, though I do feel like it’s just so especially prominent with Stan and Kyle specifically) but it’s kind of frustrating at times? To see them relearn things or to have never gotten any real conclusion or closure on where their characters had been going for a long time? I’d loved to have gotten a real resolution to any of that but. Idk.

Idk if this exactly matches your perspective on this, but idk, I’ve definitely felt similar to your thoughts here! Sorry to ramble about it in ur ask box lmao

Yeah I think it comes down to Post Covid, too. They've hand waved a lot of Stan and Kyle's issues which is like fine, I guess. Like, whatever, they've never been great at discussing their problems so there's arguably been improvement by Stan admitting jealousy outright recently... though Stan's also been VERY consistent in having emotions build, dumping them out when they're too much to handle, and then not really doing anything more with them lol which...is the same thing that happened with regards to being jealous over Kyle and Tolkien.

Whatever though, I guess.

Stan in particular I feel is The Problem with the show growing. He actually HAS to be regressed quite a bit to reset the show the way they want to. This isn't something that's really true for the other boys because the catalyst to their friendship breaking apart...was Stan. Of course there were fissures, there were REASONS, but those things are irrelevant. The other kids, on a whole, were fine with the status quo. If their friendship ultimately completely broke apart into smithereens based on the Pre-Post Covid episodes, it is CLEAR that Stan is the one who's going to end it. No matter how the other kids feel or don't feel, it's Stan who's pulling the plug.

How do you keep going forward with the main character who's willing to end ALL of his meaningful relationships when you don't want to do anything but band-aid fix the problems that he's had? South Park has a major story problem and it is, primarily, there is no REAL new reason for Stan to stay friends with people he thought 'didn't like each other'. The narrative problem is Stan. Fixing the narrative problem means dialing back Stan's relationship growth, it means tamping down the depression they've been building (even in terms of situational depression regarding Tegridy this has been dialed WAAAAY way back).

Stan IS the problem with fixing things.

Unfortunately putting him in a place where things can be magically fixed also means completely jacking up his growth pretty much from around season 15/YGO.

[yeehanfrf]

Week 8 Recs: Middle of the Road

The Week 8 theme was "Middle of the Road," or those fics that are just long enough to spend some quality time with but not too long: 10,000 to 25,000 words. Behind the cut, you'll find the recs gathered from the Yeehan community, organized by rating and then alphabetically by title!

General Audiences

The Silences We Dare to Break by illune [15,500 words] Reccer comment: "This is an underrated gem that I feel not only Yeehan shippers but also Gabe Reyes enjoyers might like."

Once a year, Cole Cassidy is forced to face the fact that not all of his loved ones are resting peacefully in his memories. To his surprise Hanzo is willing to listen to his woes, if only for a brief moment.

Teen and Up

Autoclave by SaltCore [11,867 words] Reccer comment: "how much do you want your feelings hurt in under 12k words?"

Hard choices are a necessity in this line of work—Genji learned that years ago. But necessity doesn’t make those choices easier, especially when he has to watch someone else pay the price. He wants his brother and brother-in-arms in any state but dead, but it's a matter of Hanzo paying.

Blue Skies by helo572 [13,555 words]

A trip to Nepal sees Cassidy trying to keep him and an injured Hanzo safe when they are lost in the snow.

Mature

Foxhole Dreaming by fishpoets [18,569 words] Reccer comment: "some whump, lots of pining, and there was only! one! bed!!"

After Hanzo and McCree are ambushed on an undercover mission and McCree is injured, they need to hide out in a secret bunker that McCree knows of while they wait to be rescued. The prospect of a few days in close-quarters alone with McCree wouldn't be a problem, except for one thing: Hanzo's feelings for the gunslinger don't stop at friendship.

Frozen Doll by hunahuna_un [14,066 words]

"Hunger pulled Jesse towards the river, bringing him closer and closer to somethin' a whole lot tastier than fish. Though, as he'd immediately realize, it was a completely different kind of tasty."

Asked my partner for summary, hope you like it. xD

Story about Shapeshifter McCree & Winter Fae Hanzo.

Work of Fiction by sksNinja [12,609 words]

Hanzo Shimada is a reputable Japanese historian and a well known antique appraiser. He lives in finely decorated a single unit apartment. He keeps tabs on his unruly younger brother, and attempts to keep him in line.

Hanzo is a functioning and contributing member of society.

His weakness for Romance Novels is irrelevant.

Explicit

Crooked Stems by Interrobang [13,465 words] Reccer comment: "adorable and charming and, as he put it, 'the only strip club AU in which neither main character is actually a stripper,' lol."

Hanzo had made a life for himself, and quite frankly he was content with it. He was almost 40. He was tired from a youth spent in too many family meetings about too many political escapades. He just wanted to sit in a cold room with thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers and watch his florist business flourish.

He didn’t need anything shaking that up.

--

AKA the only Strip Club AU in the world in which neither of the main characters is actually a stripper. Featuring Chef Jesse McCree, Florist Hanzo, and too many innuendos.

A Man Is His Actions by etlagiapet [23,722 words] Reccer comment: "A cool take on Hanzo and Cole's first meeting! Uses the old name"

It’s been five months since Shimada Hanzo arrived at the Gibraltar base, and Jesse McCree still can’t look him in the eye without grimacing. He tries, because he promises Genji he will, but no matter how much he wishes he could forgive and forget, Jesse just can’t accept Hanzo and what he did to his own brother. He can’t tear the man away from his actions, no matter how different he is now and how long it’s been since.

Except there's more to Hanzo than Jesse realizes - more to the story of the Shimada brothers than he was privy to - and a reappearance of a mentor thought long dead throws everything Jesse thinks he knows about himself and what he believes in into chaos.

Nantaimori by ChillieBean [15,403 words] Reccer comment: "what's better than hanzo eating sushi off cass? (answer: nothing)"

It had been months in the making, and it was supposed to be a straightforward night: Be Hanzo Shimada's personal waiter, gather intel on a potential partnership with a neighbouring clan, get out without making any waves.

Cole's plans come to a crashing halt when he is asked instead to be the nantaimori—to lie naked for the duration of the meeting while Hanzo eats sushi off him.

Pine Woods by coinin [14,659 words] Reccer 1 comment: "a lovely funny fic about the duo hiding out in a curious cabin. Things get steamy, literally and figuratively."

Reccer 2 comment: "Whenever I read this, I just want to go on a winter vacation"

After a mission goes awry, Cassidy and Hanzo are forced to flee into the Finnish wilderness. Will they find shelter before they freeze to death? And more importantly, what are they going to do to stave off boredom if they do find safety?

Plan B by urgaylol [15,261 words]

Hanzo and McCree ask the age old question of "What the hell happened last night?"

Tell Me Yer Name by kylar [23,161 words] Reccer comment: "a smutty fic about blackwatch cass & yakuza hanzo"

Hanzo escapes the castle for a breath of fresh air following a particularly difficult day with the clan, and finds one in a mysterious, handsome American cowboy that instantly earns Hanzo's attention. Hanzo knows from subtle clues that his presence in Hanamura could mean trouble for his clan and himself, but that doesn't stop him from carrying on a secret affair with the charming cowboy. It's just a fling though, and he knows it will end eventually. He'll be able to put the cowboy behind him and continue on with his responsibilities and duties to the Shimada Clan. Little does he know, it won't be that easy, and the cowboy's short presence in his life will have a dramatic and devastating impact on everything that is to follow their little affair.

And that's a wrap on Week 8! Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a fic rec. Stay tuned for the Week 9 theme: "I'm Working, Here," or favorite works in progress!

In the meantime, you can also check out the Week 7 recs here or check the list of past and future themes here!

[dogtoling]

DLC Thoughts

This is continuation from a previous ask! It was going to get REALLY LONG so I decided to just make this separate post, also because I know some people are going to want to know (and not want to scroll through my whole previous essay post to find out).

So, what are my thoughts on the DLC (Wave 1 and 2)?

Honestly, not much so far to be completely real. I'm disappointed by the DLC looking like it's going to be another character-centric story in some kind of subarea or straight up mirror dimension that's probably going to have abstract platforming with (likely) reskinned Octarian enemies... again. They started doing this with Octo Expansion and continued it with Alterna, putting extremely strange and grand stories out and shoving them into some largely irrelevant pocket of the world that has nothing to do WITH THE ACTUAL WORLD or has no consequences, and I'm frustrated that Side Order is looking like it's going to be that... Again, judging from just what we've seen so far.

Of course, I am AWARE that this is a good decision for DLC as it allows the stories to be completely separate from the main game and having DLC visibly affect the world even for people who didn't play it could be confusing. And yes, I'm aware that both the Deep Sea and Alterna have EXTREMELY IMPORTANT LORE that definitely have something to do with "the actual world". But what I mean is you don't get to explore THE WORLD of the game, in favor of being shoved into some random, dead, insignificant completely new and disconnected area that ultimately tells you nothing new. As someone who is like, in love with Splatoon's world and DESPERATE to just have adventures IN THE WORLD, see other cities, wilderness, ANYTHING of the sort, it is AWFUL every single time we get a single player campaign and it somehow completely dodges expanding on the world. It makes me feel Pain inside.

But complaining aside, I'm talking about the Inkopolis Plaza hub first. Honestly? Extremely torn on it. They've made a whole wave that's essentially just a reskin of the hub you can use, I'm assuming, instead of Splatsville? It's extremely underwhelming, to be honest - I'm almost positive we are not getting Squid Jump or any of the minigames back (the minigame machine's location has been mowed over by Grizzco's new Inkopolis Plaza location), and 99% we are NOT going to be able to visit Octo Valley. And of course Battle Dojo has been replaced by the Shoal (though I doubt many people would've missed the dojo, lol). So like, really the Inkopolis Plaza wave is a rehash of a hub we already had before, with LESS content than it had before. It's not a very easy sell for a big portion of Splatoon 3's userbase from what I can assume, but at least that's not the main thing you're buying, so it's really more of a side...

And a quick note in-between, I'm really happy that they're doing the DLC in waves like many people were theorizing. It even looks like based on trailer graphics, there might be FOUR waves, which is going to be extremely exciting if it's true (because honestly I'm really underwhelmed with what we have if it's going to be... everything.)

But returning to Inkopolis Plaza (literally), I'm pretty happy we're getting it, mostly because I love seeing its progression in the timeline and it actually does bring us some crumbs of worldbuilding. We see that the train station has been rebuilt and there's now a stairway leading to the plaza, which is much more accessible than there Literally Being No Road and you had to Illegally Trespass Train Tracks and Parkour Over A Plant Display to actually get to the plaza in Splatoon 1. There's new shopkeepers, and new businesses, and familiar faces, and Grizzco has a really shitty location here. I just like seeing the game world live and move on with the times, so just for that reason I'm going to be really happy to step foot in there. It confirms that there IS still some life in that, despite what they were saying in Splatoon 2 about the plaza being a ghost town.

And speaking of life, you can probably use Inkopolis Tower as a lobby, which raises more worldbuilding questions I've briefly thought about before... but not too much because there were no direct answers. Are all the lobbies in business at the same time and are they running shared turf war matches, or is there some kind of region or ruleset split? Considering Splatsville's lobby does Turf Wars in Inkopolis, too, I think that's a solid "no" for the regional split at least now with the flying spawn points; it might've been a "yes" before. I always wondered whether Deca Tower and Inkopolis Tower were active at the same time and just running different Turf War scenes, or if the Inkopolis Tower lobby shut down as Deca Tower became active, or if Deca Tower was active even during 2015-16. While there's no solid yes or no answer, I think at least NOW it's safe to say the answer is probably... the lobbies ARE all in use at the same time. Which is cool!

In other worldbuilding crumbs the plaza gives us: yes, the Super Advanced High-Speed Technological Marvel of Transport that allows Splatlands Inklings to battle in Inkopolis despite being oh so far away.... is the train. Just like what everyone assumed it would be when it was first said. I mean, cool! With that, we get the confirmation that YOU CAN take the train from Inkopolis to Splatsville and realistically, it would probably not even be an hour considering it might be mostly crossing desert and we don't know of any other cities on the way. It IS strange to me that you would make that trip on the same kind of commuter train that does low-speed transport in the heart of the city, though, seeing as longer stretches of land usually utilize different high-speed trains. But whatever, man. We learned something, I'll take it!

You may be wondering how I've already talked about the Inkopolis Plaza HUB RESKIN for like 4 paragraphs. Jokes on you, here comes another paragraph. As for what I can pretty much already tell about it, we’re probably not getting Octo Valley (that’s a whole singleplayer campaign they’d have to remaster and I doubt they’d just port it) or Squid Jump. But there’s a few things I’m hoping we will get... those being:

1. Squid Sisters stage news. It would feel extremely strange to me if they went through all the effort to bring back Squid Sisters performing just to, uh... show us Splatsville’s news in Inkopolis. It would feel extremely cheap to be honest, but even still I kind of doubt we’re getting the OG Inkopolis News back. After all, Inkopolis News was taken over by Off the Hook in Splatoon 2, although they’re... PROBABLY not doing it anymore? Idk, we’ll see.

2. Slightly more likely: Ammo Knights SPLATOON 1 TEST RANGE. Seriously, it’s a small thing but come on!!! In Splatoon 3, there’s already like what, 4 separate test ranges (the Lobby one, Grizzco, Shoal and Ammo Knights Splatsville). Inkopolis Plaza is just a reskin, but it would go a long way to at least include all of it. The test range from the first game in the back alley is my favorite test range out of all of them just by aesthetic, and I’ll be very disappointed if it doesn’t make it. Not to mention it will just... feel extremely weird if I go to the test range in Inkopolis and the game magically warps you all the way to the Ammo Knights test range in another freaking city.

3. The Inkopolis Tower lobby. This is for the same reason as above: MAN is it going to break immersion if you have this perfect replica of Inkopolis, and then.... you go to Inkopolis Tower just to magically be transported back to Splatsville’s lobby????????? I feel like the Splatoon 1 lobby wouldn’t be an impossible expectation, because we already have a retro lobby screen in the game with what happens when you go into the kettle in the lobby building and it pulls up a menu. The ideal outcome to me would be that they’d model the inside of the Inkopolis Tower lobby and make it walkable just like Splatsville’s, but I’m not getting my hopes high... I’ve just always REAAAAAALLY wanted to know what it’s actually like and how it works.

(And I’m aware that a retro lobby would make waiting for matches boring as hell again, but maybe they could put squid jump there? Again, doubt it. But also, PLEASE.)

4. Splatoon 1 battle music. Old music is literally already in the game, it just can’t play in battle. I would love it if entering battles from Inkopolis would play Splatoon 1 music. Just anything to make the plaza something more than JUST a visual reskin!!!

I think I’m finally done with the plaza for now so let’s move onto what people probably ACTUALLY want to hear about, that being Side Order...

So, as with like every person on the internet, I also at first glance thought it was going to be a Marina origin story (which clearly it’s not). The character in the trailer is presumably Agent 8 with black tentacles, and it seems to have a black and white theme, which is cool. The teaser we got did not give us a whole lot to work with, and the assumption is that the DLC is a huge WIP, maybe even mega early in development - we literally got One Single Shot of gameplay footage and even that was just... inkopolis square.

Oh, but it’s NOT REALLY Inkopolis Square. I didn’t notice at first, but Deca Tower, despite having the same screens (just perfectly aligned instead of pointing at all different angles, in theme with Order), is actually replaced by a whole other tower underneath. By now everyone reading this has probably seen all the speculation on tumblr or twitter or elsewhere or both, so I’m not going to be parroting much of it here because to be completely honest, if it’s a character-focused story again taking place in (supposedly) a mindscape... i don’t really care lol

One thing we can say pretty much for sure; the world is not real. The popular consensus right now is that there’s a big emphasis on self-reflection, of course we all know that Agent 8 lost their memories in Octo Expansion. They never got those memories back, right? So I could see that being some sort of focus... or the focus is some new random threat that works based on shock value again and doesn’t add anything interesting to the world OR the characters. But as I said, the world is very likely not real. Inkopolis Square is completely white, the tower has been literally replaced, the ground is covered by some kind of... sand, and there’s weird corals everywhere. Considering the place is not that far from the Plaza, whatever’s happening there would definitely be reflected in the Plaza as well, which I don’t see happening.

Moving on to the corals. We’ve seen corals in Splatoon before in Shellendorf Institute! But none of them have been THAT BIG or on land. I’ve been a land coral believer this whole time and I’ve been wanting to see them (alongside other wildlife) SOOOOOO BAAAAAAAAAD, so I was extremely excited about seeing the corals! To my dismay, if the story really takes place in a mindscape, facility, or digital world or whatever, those corals don’t REALLY mean anything in the end. But at least the imagery is there?

People have already made the connection to coral bleaching, a phenomenon where corals lose their colors and become white due to varying factors, such as pollution or global warming. I actually like how this connects to the Splatoon world because corals are naturally extremely colorful, and them being washed of all color is extremely unsettling, which is pretty much an exact statement you can also say about the Splatoon world. I’m predicting that the DLC will be about restoring color to these monochromatic, decayed hubs (HOPEFULLY PLURAL AND THE SQUARE ISNT LITERALLY THE ONLY WALKABLE AREA, WE LITERALLY HAD THAT FOR 5 YEARS) and restoring them to their full color over time. It could be a perfect tie-in if we were having a memory thing going on, or a path of self-discovery.

Obviously the other connection to coral bleaching and its causes is the extinction of humans. Humans caused global warming, rising sea levels wiped them out, humans caused pollution... both of those things would cause coral bleaching and we can pretty much assume that humanity, or the fall of humanity rather, will be linked to this story somehow. Nuclear pollution was even one thing pointed out in the images (the weird black tall spike things), and nuclear war is something that VERY MUCH ALSO HAPPENED in the Splatoon timeline, prior to humanity going extinct. For the record, I have no idea how Agent 8′s mindscape, bleached coral, a mysterious elevator tower and humanity’s extinction and nuclear war are going to tie into a story together, but I’m interested to see it anyway.

Also, fossils and oil. I think it’s extremely likely that we’re looking at the skeleton of a whale in one of the images. Whales have been in a surprisingly big role in Splatoon despite being supposedly extinct and not having been outright talked about a whole lot. We see they’re still in big use culturally, and Inklings likely find them extremely fascinating: we’ve seen whale bones as a centerpiece at Shellendorf Institute and whale falls are present in Octo Expansion’s domes. Of course, we don’t have confirmation that the stuff in the concept art is oil rather than black ink (you do play with black ink, after all) but it would fall in line with the appearance of what seems to be a fossil and the theme of pollution.

Uh, also Pearl and Marina are there. It seems like at least Pearl might be helping you out in Side Order, given that there is that shot of her looking down on you in the square (?), which to me is pretty similar to the opening shot of Octo Expansion with Cuttlefish looking down to you. As for Marina, there’s not a whole lot of thoughts or information. The only notable thing I can really say about Marina’s art is that there might be a significance to the digital pixels around her. Possibly unrelatedly but maybe not, sanitized Octarians in Octo Expansion also spawned in (and out) through pixels. Not the same kind of pixels, but it was a thing that very much happened. Also Tartar might be there but that’s extremely heavy speculation so not going to say more about it.

In terms of gameplay we have nothing, pretty much. I’m equal parts worried and excited by what the gameplay could potentially be. ALL WE HAVE for game footage about Side Order is the hub world, which is Inkopolis Square except they turned the Object Materials off. All I have to say about that is... i really, REALLY HOPE that the square isn’t all or the majority of walkable area in the DLC. It would be akin to the Deepsea Metro Central Station in OE... except OE had a separate tutorial and the metro and central station were brand new areas. If the Square is all or most that there is, not only is it visually bland as hell, BUT IT’S LITERALLY REUSED CONTENT THAT WE ALREADY HAD and tells us nothing lol.

Gameplay predictions. I have no idea! The best clues we have are that yes, you have some kind of Splattershot, and yes there’s an elevator. My guess is that the elevator either takes you to stages like the Metro did, or... my other better guess is that it would take you to completely different hub worlds or larger levels. Something like that; I would love to play something that’s not just soulless platforming levels over and over again for some arbitrary goal. Even just bigger segments in-between those levels would be really cool.

Oh and I am 90% sure that we’re getting Octarian enemies again. We’ve pretty much only seen concept art of the DLC at this point in time, but given that we’re in Inkopolis and Pearl and Marina are there and Agent 8 is there, I don’t see them making a whole new slew of enemy species and types just for the Probably Not Even Real DLC side story. It’s going to be white octarians or something. I’ll be extremely surprised if not lol... with how little they had to show, I have to assume that very little of the DLC is actually done, and with how rushed Splatoon 3 seemed to be at launch I don’t have a lot of hope that there’s some kind of massive open-world extra game they’re hiding from us. Even some of the functionalities we were promised at and before the game’s launch aren’t out or even talked about yet (Online Tableturf, the jukebox is in the game but also isn’t, the keyword matchmaking we still haven’t gotten)....

Overall thoughts on Side Order. I’m interested to see what it’s going to be about and I’m very interested about the lore it looks like it might give us. On the other hand, I find it extremely underwhelming so far, just for my personal reasons of wanting to see campaigns that take part in the actual RELEVANT WORLD. Splatoon has a really bad case of telling instead of showing. I want to play through story campaigns that take place in the world instead of completely secluded abstract areas with stories that aren’t really that relevant most of the time. I want stories that are smaller in scale and importance and more focused on the everyday life and characters that the game has to offer! The world has endless possibilities for side stories like that, ones that take place in The World in the current time and help with immersion and bringing out the personality of Splatoon. And I really wish we had those instead...

Overall thoughts on the DLC? Well we don’t have it yet and we don’t know what’s going to be in it yet other than a hub reskin and an extremely non-telling teaser trailer that was 98% concept art. I’m not really excited about it to be honest, I’m feeling a lot of similar things I was feeling with RotM... as in it’s probably going to be really cool or fun, but completely miss the mark on what i actually want out of a Splatoon story. I’m more interested in the potential of there being 2 more waves afterwards because of course, the unknown is always endlessly more exciting and fascinating than something you know about if only briefly. I’m holding out hope for playable cuttlefish in a later wave (solely because it seems like it SHOULD happen, even with no prior story foreshadowing).

But of course there’s no saying that Waves 3 and 4 will be anything substantial, given that a Wave can literally be as little as just a reskin of the main hub with no actual new content. We could get Waves 3 and 4 as just cosmetic stuff, or random side content (Squid Beatz 3...?)... and of course there’s no guarantee that we’re getting Waves 3 and 4 at all! It’s wishful thinking based on very little (but likely) evidence. But hey, that’s my thoughts on the DLC!

[engagedtobefree]

I’ve been struggling the past few weeks a bit with my mood. I feel kind of apathetic, I guess you could say. My usual optimism has been a struggle to tap into, but I think it’s finally coming around. To be fair to me, this new year has been a bit rough, and I don’t think I’ve actually had time to stop and process everything. I rang in the new year in bed, sick from a virus, then 3 weeks later just as I was starting to feel better, my friend Craig died. Then two days after his viewing, I was sick with covid for the first time ever. After I got over that, I developed a UTI, which luckily wasn’t as bad as it usually is. I tend to get them fairly easily because of my bladder disorder, but of course after I was getting back into the swing of things after covid, I fell asleep super early one night with a completely full bladder, and that was that 🙃 Then a few weeks later my mom and I had to put her dog to sleep. And really, the rest of it has been me trying to catch up while also focusing on trying to improve my mental health, which is a plate full all on its own. 

Oh, and Idk if I mentioned I’m writing a poem a day this year. Me, who is not consistent with anything, struggles with routines, and has never kept a streak of anything beyond maybe 2 or 3 weeks, has written 100 fucking poems this year!! Today will be day 101 once I write it. I’m actually so glad I started this, because I have needed it to process so many things and also it’s been one of the few saving graces of this year so far. It was a last-minute decision too. I didn't really plan for it, write it down as a goal, or think too much about it; I asked for a notebook for Christmas and my mom ended up getting me 3, one of which has 366 pages, which is perfect since it’s a leap year. That meant I could use a page a day. I wanted to increase my vocabulary, relearn and learn anew about poetry itself, get creative every day, and also write more often so I have the chance to not stay stuck writing about one thing for months and months and months. I take forever to finish a poem because 1. I write inconsistently and 2. I overanalyze every single word because I want it to reflect as accurately as possible what I’m writing about and I also want it to be “good”. My poems have always been deeply personal, so the truth of how I speak through them has always been very important to me. Since I’ve started doing this though, I noticed that I can still do that without spending forever on something, and that the more I write, the more inspiration blesses me. I still have my separate book for my other stuff, but I’ve almost exclusively been focusing on my daily poems since this year started, mostly because that’s all I have time for. No doubt once I get back to my other book, I will still take my time lol, which is fine, cuz now I still have my dailies. Also I realized that it’s okay that my “good” looks different every day, and not everything I write has to be a masterpiece. I’ve always been very self-critical, and this has helped me realize that expecting only “good” material is treating myself as a machine rather than a human being. If I don’t like what I write that day, at least I wrote something, and there will be another opportunity to write again tomorrow. I will probably still be really anal about editing stuff later, but right now, writing every day has been a lot of fun. 

Okay, so now it's time to dive into my personal problems! Wooo! I’m going to start with the one issue I have been hoping for a very long time now would be irrelevant, and that’s Scott. I don’t even tag his name anymore in any personal posts I’ve vented about him in because I just want this to go away, but he has been incessantly trying to get my attention. Literally. Things ended between us a good year and a half ago, but he tried to come back last summer and I was very, very, VERY clear about not wanting to try again and just being friends. He would occasionally reach out to me but it was just niceties and nothing to really worry about, though it did annoy me when he would contact me. But ever since the new year began, he was pestering me almost weekly, asking if I wanted to hang out, commenting on literally every single Snapchat story I post, and asking how I’ve been and saying he misses me. I had legit excuses for the first month and half with getting sick 3 separate times and then my friend Craig dying, but since then it’s mostly been me going to bed before he messages me, ignoring his messages till the morning, him skipping a week in not contacting me, or me just saying I’m too tired for company, which wasn’t actually a lie tbh. I ignored the situation as long as I could before I finally succumbed to the reality that I couldn’t ignore it forever. 

Not this past Friday but the one before was the day I finally decided to deal with it. He was messaging me much earlier in the day than usual, like literally I wasn’t even done work yet, but that also gave me time to feel out what I wanted to do. He asked if he could come over and I told him yes, but then added something pretty close to “I don’t know what your expectations are, but I want you to know that everything I said last summer still stands. I haven’t changed my mind about anything. I am only interested in friendship and nothing more.” I didn’t want him here without me first saying anything to him because I knew he wasn’t going to say anything to me beforehand and I didn’t want to feel like I was caught in some sort of trap in my own home, aka my safe space. He opened my message then didn’t respond for maybe half an hour or so. When he did respond, he said he wanted to hook up with me but he respected if I didn’t want to. Then he said he did really want to be friends at least because he likes me as a person. I told him I know it’s not what he wanted to hear, but I didn’t want him coming here with some idea that something could happen, and that a friendship is really all I want. He responded back that he thought he should tell me before coming over. Okay, so I have a lot to say (vent) about all of that. First off, he wasn’t planning on telling me shit until I said something. He was going to come here and then ask if I wanted to hook up, putting me in an awkward situation when I previously established very clearly I only wanted a friendship and have not even once since then indicated that I have any interest in anything more. This leads me into the second thing which is that he wasn’t even considering what I wanted, just what he wanted. I am very intentional with showing interest. I do not flirt or lead people on. If I flirt, it means I am interested. I have not flirted with Scott since before we even ended things. I send a lot of emojis to anyone and everyone when I message, but I have not sent him any since we broke things off. I also only say someone’s name when messaging if they say mine first or if I am interested. There are some more exceptions to that rule, but if I am consistently saying your name when reaching out, I’m interested. I have not said Scott’s name in messages since before we broke things off. I know that it might not seem like much, but all of that paired with me literally saying I don’t want to try again and only want to be friends should be more than enough to indicate I’m not interested. Thirdly, of course you are going to respect my decision because you’re not going to force me to change my mind. (When he did come over that night, I had a knife and my Simplisafe alert button near me just in case. I don’t think I will ever need them with Scott but you never know.)

I wasn’t sure if he would actually still want to come over after I turned him down, but he was not deterred. Everything went smoothly and it wasn’t awkward, thankfully. He was, however, acting very differently than usual. He was friendly, engaging, talkative, and gave me a bunch of compliments. If he had done this switcheroo like 2 years ago, I might have fallen for it, might have second guessed the fact that I wasn’t being treated right and that I wasn’t happy and ignored that deep down I didn't actually want to be with him, but I’m way past that now. The way he was acting was how he always acted with everyone else except me, which in the past, hurt me a lot. When it came to me, he was often cold, distant, non-communicative, inconsiderate. So for me, him doing this now only really solidifies him in the friendship role. It’s weird in a way because I previously wanted him to act this way with me, like how he did with friends and acquaintances, because it was the nicer Scott, not realizing that if he treated me like other people, it would put me in the same role as them. But now, me actually fulfilling my wish from years ago puts me in the friend/acquaintance role by him being nicer to me. I got my wish, but it happened much later than past me wanted and in a way I hadn’t intended, and it does me more service now than it would have then. I mean, I know there’s the extra caveat of him hoping it will get him laid, but in reality, it pushes him even further away from that than he was to begin with, which was already pretty dang far. I guess in his mind, he thinks there’s a chance I could eventually want him again, or at least enough to sleep with him, but that chance is zero. If I decided I’m done with someone, that means I spent a long time thinking over the situation, how I’m being treated, how I feel about them, who they really are as a person, our relationship and dynamic, if it’s actually really love or something else, what a future with them would look like, etc etc etc. I don’t make decisions like this lightly; I look from every angle and leave no stone unturned, so when I decide I’m done, that means I’m done. For good. Forever. Scott does not know this, but as I’ve said, I haven’t given him a single reason to hope. He’s decided on his own that something could still possibly happen in the future. When he left, he told me to not be a stranger and that we should catch up again soon. I don’t plan on that, but I was happy with how things went, oddly enough. I didn’t really want to see him, but the fact that I did and that I was able to set a clear boundary made me happy, and I felt a sort of completion around the situation. No doubt he’s still going to contact me (he already has lol), but I don’t feel worried or annoyed by it anymore. I’m happy with my decision, restated my boundary with a lot more confidence than last time (not that I should have had to repeat it though), and I feel like I can look forward now without having to worry too much about this. I didn’t feel unsafe, though I figured I wouldn’t, but I wanted to take some extra precautions just in case since I do live alone.

It’s funny because a few years ago when Scott and I still worked together, I had reached a place of complete acceptance with the situation and was able to be completely content with what it was without needing any answers. It was actually during that time that I think we formed a pretty decent friendship, and that’s when I felt we did best. At the time, I thought that what I was feeling was only because of how I was able to find my peace with everything, but looking back now, I think it’s also because that was just where we thrived best together: in a friendship. I’m not going to actively work at being his friend now, especially because I know he still has hopes that I’ll change my mind (I won’t) and something will happen (it won’t), but at least right now, I don’t need to block him or cut him off, which means I don’t feel in danger or like I’m being harassed. However, I don’t like that he still treats me like I’m stupid. I know why he is suddenly making such an effort and doing a total 180 in how he’s treating me. I saw it immediately and haven’t fallen for it for a second, so the fact that he thinks I might actually fall for this is a bit insulting to my intelligence. I’m sure some of it is actually genuine, like him saying he’d like to be friends regardless, which is fine, but just don’t insult me in the process, dude. Also, if he continues to not respect my decision and tries to pressure me, I will block him and cut him off. He can be my friend, he just needs to accept that nothing more will come of it.

Anyway, I feel like I was able to work through that finally. I’ve also been working on some of the past trauma from him, though I had to put a lot of that on hold because of everything that went on this year. I know I can’t move forward until it no longer has such a strong effect on me. I think how I handled the situation now says a lot. When he tried to come back last year, I was anxious, emotional, and very uncomfortable with having to handle the situation and tell Scott I didn’t want to try again. I was still processing a lot of past trauma and while I was positive about not wanting to be with him, I was afraid of hurting him. This time was so different!! I 100% put myself first, and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt for stating what I wanted and not compromising where I shouldn’t. Growing up in an abusive household where there was a lack of boundaries and respect instilled a false belief in me that caring about how I’m treated is wrong and that attempting to do so is insulting and harmful to the other person. I do still have to deal with this from time to time, but I handle it much better now, and I hope I only continue to grow in that regard. I am 32 years old and still learning to untangle the web of lies that abuse taught me, but here I am, fucking doing it and making so much progress with it. I’m so proud of myself.

So now I’m going to unsmoothly segway into talking about Chris now. This poor guy lol. Anytime I write a personal post on here he ends up in it, and he doesn’t even talk to me. Sorry, Chris, but you’re still on my mind. Some of this is also actually relevant to what I was just talking about though so I’m going to start with that. So back in November when I had my last appointment with him, I struggled a lot. I felt I did some things fairly well, but when it came to flirting and asking if he was single, I failed. If I had to choose a physical representation of it, it would be someone falling flat on their face, trying to get up, then falling again and conceding to lay there till it was over. Chris has no way of knowing why I couldn’t. I mean, if he happened to guess, I’d be very impressed. Back when I worked with Scott, it was difficult. I was unknowingly flirting with a married man for months, who flirted back with me, and then after I found out he was married I was mortified. We ended up on friendly terms and then I developed feelings for him. We stayed friendly and I would talk to him all the time at work. He would start flirting with me again and then I’d naively think maybe something was going on, maybe he separated from his wife or was going through a divorce, so I’d flirt back. Then after several weeks of that, nothing would happen, he’d never bring anything up, so I’d ask him what was going on and he’d tell me nothing, he was married, it is what it is, this can never go anywhere. Then I’d get upset and mad that I fell for it, stop talking to him for a while, and then the cycle would repeat. There was one period where I accepted I wasn’t going to get answers (I mentioned it above) and so we were just friends and nothing more, and that was really the only good, healthy period we had. That was like the second half of 2019 up until he left in October 2020, of course with most of 2020 being working from home. Other than that, it was mostly turmoil, and mostly for me. I was 26 when everything started, and Scott was 44. I kept placing my trust in an older man to do the right thing and to not come into work and flirt with me unless he was available, but I was really naive. I talked to him because I wanted to, not because I expected anything to happen, which I didn’t want anyway unless his marriage broke off, but when he would flirt with me again, it would give me false hope that something could actually happen. I always felt such extreme guilt every time too, knowing that once more I was pursuing a married man who was leading me on while his wife had no idea about any of it. I still carry guilt from my actions during that time, because had I known from the beginning that he was married, I would’ve never looked again in his direction. I was so ashamed of myself for so long because I had a choice to say, “No, this cannot continue, I cannot trust this man unless he gives me an explicit reason that I can”, but instead, I chose to keep trusting. I chose to keep flirting. I have worked through some of that shame and guilt, but not all of it. I recognize that I did try over and over again to not interact with him and to avoid him, but his office door was literally 5 feet from my cubicle, which made it hard. To be clear, I never would have had an affair or taken it outside the office at all. He did bring that up fairly early on during a period when I wasn’t pissed off about things, and I told him I did not want to have an affair with him and he agreed. Now that I think about it, I wonder if his answer was dependent on mine though. This scenario kind of happened again after we reconnected back in May/June of 2021. Since he and his wife had separated recently, he made it clear he didn’t want to enter anything new, no dating or romantic partnership until later down the line, but he wasn’t sure about sexual, so he left that up to me to think about. When I told him no, he agreed, but I was never sure if his response would’ve been different if I had said yes.

Anyway, continuing…I felt very stuck, and it was something I brought up all the time in therapy. I didn’t know how to get unstuck. I was only a temp at my job at the time, and I didn’t have health insurance or any time off. NJ didn’t enact the statewide mandate that all employees must be given at least 2 sick days a year until the same month I was finally hired permanently, so if I took any time off, I didn’t get paid for it. (I just looked it up to confirm the date it was enacted to make sure I had it right, and apparently it’s 40 hours now that are mandatory, which is cool they improved the policy!!) I worked a second job and still lived paycheck-to-paycheck. I couldn’t afford to spend more than $20-$30 a week on groceries, which included toiletries and cleaning supplies. I had to stop paying my electric bill because I couldn’t afford it and I needed the shut-off notice to get assistance to help pay for the bill, which thankfully covered several months and also covered my past-due amounts. My apartment was old and shitty, but it was the only place that was affordable for me at the time. My first year there was $715 a month then the 2nd year was $740. It was definitely a health hazard though: the carpets were musty despite several cleanings; there was water damage in the wall and on the ceiling; the water damage on the ceiling was above my bed, which I couldn’t move anywhere else, and kept forming mold that my complex just kept painting over; the front door wasn’t fit right so there were huge gaps between the door and the frame; the water heater would switch to cold after only 5 or 10 minutes in the shower; and the heating system was so old that in the winter it cost me $200+ just to heat my tiny little 400 square foot studio apartment (it was all electric). I couldn’t interview for other jobs because that meant I wouldn’t get paid if I took time off and then that meant I’d have to stress even more over what bill wouldn’t get paid or if I’d have to eat even less than my 2 meals a day. I had to make sure my cat and guinea pig were fed before I fed myself. At my other job, I worked Sunday brunches, which were the most stressful and busiest shifts, so no other hostess wanted to partner with working on them let alone working it by themselves, which often led to me working the whole shift by myself, and I took up other shifts if I had the time or energy to. My mental health was not great and was only made worse by my life circumstances, and I had to go on a second anxiety medication for a while to stop my anxiety attacks.

I wanted to be out of the situation with Scott, even if that meant leaving to go work someplace else, but I was already doing everything I could and I still couldn’t find a way out without jeopardizing my well-being even further. Moving back in with my mom, which was something I eventually did and regretted, was not an option for me because I worked really hard to get out of the abusive household I grew up in. I say all of this not as an excuse but for context. And for forgiveness. I look back at my younger self and she was dealing with so much stress. My basic needs were not even being fully met, but I continued to show up and to handle things in the best ways I could, and sometimes the decisions I made weren’t actually good ones at all. Still though, I kept believing in people, I kept hoping for the best and trusting, and I was actually really grateful for my life at the time, probably even more so than I am now. I didn’t have much, but I had my own place, my own life, freedom, and that was always something I held onto, even during the worst of things. I tried desperately to find a way to let go of my feelings for Scott, but I couldn’t help how I felt because I kept choosing to see the best while ignoring the rest. It took me a very long time to realize Scott was not the one for me and that he wasn’t the type of person I wanted as my romantic partner. I didn’t accept him fully, flaws and all, and we were not compatible in the ways we needed to be. I wouldn’t have been happy if we did get together, but unfortunately I didn’t see all of that until after he left my work, separated from his wife, and reached out to me on Instagram to connect again and start what would eventually become a “situationship” between us. Still, I’m glad I saw it sooner rather than later and before it devolved into an actual romantic relationship. 

So when I could feel myself hesitation the first time and then shaking the second time when I went to ask Chris if he was single, it was from that past period of my life. I saw it all flash in my mind immediately: all the times I confronted Scott and the answers I got back, and all of the sureness and trust I felt about Chris was immediately squashed by those images. I wrote about a bunch of parallels in my post after my appointment with him, but I wanted to dive a bit deeper into that here in a broader sense. Man at his work flirting with me. Check. Man makes it known he’s interested, then doesn’t take it anywhere. Check. Man offers no explanation whatsoever for that. Check. Man does not willingly mention his relationship status. Check. Man is cautious about what information he gives about himself and words things so that while he can respond, he never actually reveals anything about himself or his life. Check. In someone else’s mind, those might just be indicators of someone who is reserved, guarded, private, whatever. In my mind, those checks are potential red flags. Those checked boxes come with the thoughts, “Oh no, am I going to flirt with an unavailable man again? Am I going to get caught in a similar situation that causes me a lot of duress and emotional pain? Am I going to unwillingly be complicit in some man’s selfish attempts at getting attention from me?” Chris doesn’t know any of that. I felt disappointed in myself after my appointment, and I felt like I had probably disappointed him too, though I don’t know for sure. If I had the chance to tell him why, I would, even if I had to sum it up briefly. I mean, I guess I could just say how I was in a situation with someone before where they weren’t trustworthy and it affected me more than I realized. Turns out traumatic things actually traumatize you. Who knew? 🙃 That’s assuming it’s even necessary for me to explain, since I have no idea at this point if Chris is still interested. He hasn’t brought up the date, and I have tried to initiate meeting up twice with no luck. I’m willing to be patient and wait, but I don’t know exactly what it is I’m waiting for. Is there really a possibility this can go somewhere, or am I being duped again? I didn’t reach out for 2 ½ months, but then last weekend I texted him, and it took several days for us to send only a few messages. He only responded once or twice a day, and then he did that thing again where he told me to have a wonderful day at the end of his message, then when I responded back with a bit more, he never responded back. I still don’t know how to take that. He did say he’s been getting sick like every other week, which is weird cuz that’s exactly what happened to me in the beginning of the year, so I can understand he may not be up for talking to anyone or even checking his phone at all, but I don’t know if that’s what it was or not. I don’t mind slow responses, but it would help to know what was going on and where I stand. Otherwise, it confuses me and I don’t know what to make of it.

I also don’t know if I’m being too impatient? He gave me his number last May and didn’t mention going on a date until December. Obviously, with how this year has gone just for me alone, not including him being sick and whatever else he has going on, nothing could have really happened since he mentioned the date. Maybe I’m being too hopeful? I don’t know 😕 I also don’t know if I have worked through what I needed to regarding Scott, because I have nothing to trigger it. That time of my life when we worked together was triggered only when an outside catalyst brought it up, one that placed me back in a moment that was similar and reminded me of it. The only way I’ll really know for sure that I’ve overcome all of this and am ready to step forward without the past holding me back is when I’m with Chris. There’s no one else I’m interested in, I’m rarely ever into anyone anyway, I don’t like random dating, and I have no interest in hooking up with random people, so there is literally not a single other person who can do this. I can’t know on my own; I can only do the work and hope that I’ve made progress with it and healed from it. At this point, I guess I’ll find out soon enough if I can pursue Chris without old baggage weighing me down since my appointment is coming up. I know I will still probably have some trepidations and fears that pop up, but as long as the most traumatic things are taken care of, I can push through all the other stuff.

I had my yearly appointment with the oral surgeon scheduled for the 15th of this month to make sure the dense spot in my jaw bone hasn’t grown, but he won’t be in that day so it got pushed back to the 29th. My next cleaning with Chris is scheduled for 2 ½ weeks later on May 16th. I feel nervous even thinking about it. At my last appointment I wasn’t sure what to expect since over the course of 6 months he only reached out to me 2 or 3 times, and after a while I gave up on reaching out to him because I was confused. I was determined to see him during this current time frame before my next appointment, but it looks like that isn’t going to happen. I feel like I’m going to really put myself out there and take some risks when my appointment does come around. Nothing is moving along, which I know we’re both contributing to, so I want to at least feel good knowing that I did my part, and I don’t feel that way yet. So far, I’ve relied on past trauma and doubt to take the lead more than I’ve allowed the present and trust to do so, and I want to flip that now. I have been trying not to think about everything with Chris that has been shouting “GREEN FLAG!!” at me because a lot of it isn’t logical but rather intuitive and spiritual, but I think that those places are where the answer actually lies. Overthinking gets me nowhere, so I have to stop letting it be an option. I can still be cautious, but not to a degree where it is detrimental to anything happening at all.

Aside from past trauma interfering there’s definitely been a few other things that have contributed to my lack of pursuit here. In general, I never know how people perceive me. I have always felt like I come off as unlikable, so even when people tell me good things about myself, I struggle to hold onto those things and believe in them. I’ve been trying to shift that because I know that is a belief I hold and not necessarily one that is true. I’m sure there have been people who genuinely have not liked me as a person, but with 8 billion people in the world, odds are at least some of them do or will like me. I mean, I do have friends and the one and only yoga class I teach at the moment continues to get a lot of students, so that all has to say something. I think a big part of that belief I hold also stems from childhood trauma, but I can’t remember when it started. For as long as I can remember, it feels like I’ve always felt that way about myself. So when Chris literally doesn’t talk to me, takes a whole day to respond when I reach out, and then hasn’t actually planned the date that he brought up months ago, I just assume the worst. Logically, I know there could be a whole host of other reasons that might not have anything to do with me, or maybe even something else that does, but it’s hard for me to shake off how I’ve thought about myself for pretty much my entire life. So in my mind, a quick assumption that pops up is that I’m bothering Chris when he wants nothing to do with me. I don’t want to place any assumptions or expectations on him, but untangling those is difficult and is taking longer than I would like them to. This is something that I actually personally started working on years ago, and while it might not be apparent, I’ve made a TON of progress with it. I used to be a lot worse with it, but I still have some ways to go. I know that it’s my responsibility to find peace within myself no matter what external circumstances look like. Anway, back to the other stuff. There’s also been the other things that have been taking forever, like feeling at peace with the Scott situation, which I feel like has finally freaking happened, and then personal accountability I have with other things, like my ADD, which I’m still working on finding the right medication for. I have to remind myself though that it’s okay to be a work-in-progress. I tend to be in this “Everything needs to be perfect before anything can happen” mindset (with everything, not just romance), but in reality, things will never be perfect. If anything is ever 100% perfect and nothing is going wrong, it won’t last forever. Even the bad stuff doesn’t. The person meant for me won’t care and will want to handle all our messes together. But first I have to show up and be willing to tackle all those things on my own to the best of my abilities. I think I have been doing that, but I need to expand it a bit more to everything, and not just the more immediate things. My mental health struggles don’t make it any easier, but that only means I have to be more gentle and understanding with myself while continuing to work towards finding solutions, that’s all.

I’ve also struggled with that aspect of forgiving myself for past mistakes, not just the ones I made regarding Scott but with other things as well. I wonder why I deserve the relationship and connection I desire, what makes me so great and special as to receive it, and whether I’m even worthy of someone looking at me and knowing that I’m it for them. I wrote about this in my daily poem the other night. It was about a bunch of stuff but Chris was included in it. I’m not going to post the actual wording of what I wrote because I’m not ready to share that poem yet, even though that particular section is my favorite within the whole piece, but essentially what I said was how being with Chris would be like accepting forgiveness for myself. I want that, I just haven’t fully gotten there yet, and I’m not sure whether it needs to be mostly complete before anything can happen or if it’s okay that it remains a bit of a work-in-progress if and after things do get rolling. I’m hoping for the latter. I know it might sound kind of crazy that I fear forgiveness, but that is really what it is at its core: fear. I am tired of fear. I know that it’s a survival mechanism that kicks in and so I will never be able to be completely rid of certain ones, but I can at least shift my relationship with it. Taking a page out of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic here in saying that fear will always be in the car, but I do not need to let it steer the wheel or even sit in the passenger seat. It can stay in the backseat where it holds no control. I’m afraid of making the wrong choices again with someone and of getting myself in a similar situation as before, but that fear isn’t going to get me closer to anyone; it’s only going to keep me alone and afraid. I asked myself what is the worst that could happen if I do end up in the same situation, and the outcome was honestly not that bad. At the worst, I’d block Chris, find a new dentist office, and work on healing again. I could be grateful that it isn’t exactly the same as before, that I have more agency and options now and am not stuck like how I was in my situation with Scott, and that me being deceived would only say something bad about Chris and not me. Of course I'll be really disappointed, and I might also struggle with trusting myself and relying on my gut to tell me if someone is trustworthy, but I can work through all of that with time. When I take a look at all of that, it’s really not that bad. Yes, it would suck, but I’d get through it. Even as I write this though, I don’t think any of that will come to fruition. When I question and second-guess everything, asking the “what ifs” and doing the whole comparison thing, that fear builds in my chest and I think about how I can’t do this, I must be crazy to think that I can trust that trusting feeling that I feel with Chris. But when I close my eyes and take a moment to think clearly about Chris, letting myself remember his energy - the curiosity, comfort, warmth, gentleness, brightness, and pureness of it - that is when I know. That is when the truth of who he is makes itself known. I will never find the truth of him by looking at someone else’s actions, words, and energy. I will never find Chris by looking back at my relationship with someone else. I can only find Chris in Chris. I can only find any truth about what is going on by looking at my experiences with him and him alone. That is a very difficult and enormous shift I have been trying to make, but despite the doubts that creep into my mind, I believe that I can do it and that it is possible. Yes, I have to keep in mind that I could be wrong about him, but right now I am not giving enough energy to the thought that I could be right. 

When I had last year’s appointment with the oral surgeon, I was also kind of in the same space, but it was only about whether or not Chris was interested in me. I didn’t really have much to go off of except 3 things: he did a double-take when he saw me, he was asking me questions that I was sure he was not asking everyone else (or at least with the same intention), and I just had an overall feeling. Well, okay, there was a bunch of other stuff, but I meant things that are a bit more tangible, I guess you could say. I’ve never been wrong in my life about someone being interested in me, I always just know, but I was accepting of the possibility that I could be wrong this time. I had told both of my best friends about everything, and it was kind of similar to what was going on in my head: Stacy was really supportive, said he was definitely into me, and that I should go for it, while Amanda said I could be reading things wrong, that intuition can’t always be trusted, and that it wasn’t enough to go off of. It’s funny cuz Amanda and I tend to have more views in common than Stacy and I do, but I ended up taking the more positive route, the one that Stacy supported. Amanda also is not very optimistic on the romantic front whereas I am, so this is something that we differ a lot on. I also don’t believe that intuition ever lies. For me, there’s always been a very strong distinction between emotions, thoughts, and intuition, so while I was still open to being wrong, I decided to trust my intuition more than my mind. Then when I was at my appointment with the oral surgeon, as soon as I crossed paths with Chris and our eyes met, I knew instantly that he was going to give me his number, and at my next appointment, he did. I have not been wrong about anything so far, and I’ve been trying to trust myself more, open my intuitive capabilities even wider, and I can’t do that if I’m always in my head about things. This one poem by Erin Hanson popped into my head and it feels relevant here: “There is freedom waiting for you, On the breezes of the sky, And you ask "What if I fall?" Oh but my darling, What if you fly?” I keep asking myself over and over, “What if I’m wrong?” but then there’s also a voice that follows it and asks, “But what if I’m right?” I won’t know unless I take a chance. I have always taken chances on the wrong people, and I don’t want that to deter me from trying again, because then I could miss out on the right person. I have to try. If I’m wrong, then I’ll deal with that when the time comes, and at least I can say that I tried and took a chance. If I’m right, then my life could possibly be changed forever.

I have tried so hard not to have hopes, because hope always brought me disappointment, but before, I only thought I knew, when in reality I was ignoring the actual knowing voice. This is different. I don't think I know, I do know. I've always known, and I've tried not to know. It's the opposite of how it's always been. If I trust this, it could potentially have a different outcome than all those other times too. I’ve been questioning and second-guessing and doubting, when deep down inside I’m being told to trust. I can’t predict the outcome of this situation, but I know I can trust whatever this is, and I need to lean into that without any more hesitation. I know. I know it’s safe to trust this. I read a lot of comics/manhwas in the Webtoon app, and right now I’ve been trying to read completed ones so I can focus more on current ones, and one I’m reading right now is called Aerial Magic. It’s about a young witch who can’t read spells, and she had trouble finding an apprenticeship that would take her. She applied to over 400 different places, and only 1 responded, which is the place she’s apprenticing at. While on the phone with her dad, she said she got lucky, and her dad responded that she was dismissing her hard work and that “It isn’t luck that you found the right person. It’s because you kept on reaching out and you refused to stop until you found someone who reached back.” How many people give up? How many people settle? How many people stop trying to grow and do better, or think there’s a limit to how much they’re able to improve, or believe it’s only the other person who needs to be improving and doing the work? I have never given up on myself and what I know I can have and is possible for me. Despite any doubts or perceived limitations, whether from myself or others, I’ve always pushed through. I may move slowly, but I never stop moving. All of my previous failed attempts at finding my person were stepping stones. I let those people and situations rip me apart, and then I put myself back together again, even when I didn’t want to do it. The thought that I have to has always driven me. I’ve never seen any other choice. When I looked at myself and adjusted to the newness of who I was with those pieces put back together, I realized that I somehow was more beautiful and more resilient. I grew, and while those growing pains hurt, they never stopped me. Growth is never easy, and more often than not the most growth comes from the hardest circumstances, but it’s necessary if we want to become our best selves. The growth we are looking for doesn’t come without the sacrifice of our own ease and comfort. We must go through it and heal it, and then we come out better for it. 

Also, things I’ve felt and experienced with Chris have never happened before. There’s been a lot, and I wrote about some of them in past posts, although now that I’m thinking about it, some of it I might not have actually posted. I never made my one private post public, made a second private post I also never made public and then forgot about, and I started a Google docs draft writing about a ton of stuff last year that I never finished or posted, so some things I think I posted might not be on here. Oops lol I like to have all my stuff in one place, but whatever. I know certain things I definitely didn’t write about, but there’s less of those than ones I did write about. Anyway, my point is, I’m skipping that to write about something else I haven’t yet, or at least haven’t written about in great detail. It’s Chris’s energy, and how I can sense it. I’ve always been able to pick up on other people’s energies, like the essence of who they are, to a certain degree, but mostly I just feel emotions coming off of people, especially strong ones. I’m not sure if everyone is like that? I used to think so, until I was watching some astrology reel on Youtube not too long ago and of course a bunch of grown ass men who think they’re amazing for shitting on people’s interests that have nothing to do with them infiltrated the comment section. One of the comment threads was how people don’t give off “energy” and that there’s no such thing, from a scientific perspective, which didn’t sound right to me cuz I thought science literally explained how everything was energy, but sure go off, dude, whatever. That really confused me cuz I thought I was in my head a lot but maybe there are people so disconnected from themselves that they literally do not pick up on these types of things. Anyway, people I am closer with or was close with at one point have stronger energies to me. But ummm I’ve never felt anyone’s energy as strongly as I feel Chris’s. Especially considering I have only met him a handful of times, so it shouldn’t be that way. It was actually the first thing I noticed about him. I mean, he did have a mask on, but even then, I’ve been to plenty of doctors or other health places where they wear masks the whole time, and this has not happened with any of them. I remember the two times I was there before my first appointment with Chris, he was up at the front desk with his mask on, and both times he said we had similar last names. He didn’t look at me either time when he said it, just kind of tilted his head toward his right shoulder in my direction, and I didn’t think anything in particular about him; I only remember feeling curious, but even that wasn’t something I noticed consciously until later, so I quickly forgot about it each time. At my first appointment, I remember he did a double-take, and I didn’t look at him as a natural self-defense mechanism, but when I got back to the room with him, my defense was gone. That doesn’t happen. I always remember to keep it up, no matter what is going on around me. I didn’t even notice I had dropped it when I was with Chris. When I walked into the room behind him, he asked if I wanted him to hang my bag up for me, which I declined. That’s when my first impression of him hit: he was warm and bright. Not just because of his gesture, but his whole being. I felt the warmth and I saw this glow around him. I was thinking earlier about how I am virtually unphased by a lot of things that should probably phase me. This moment - well, my entire first appointment tbh - should have been one of those moments. Even at all my other appointments, there are things I have no logical explanation for and yet, I have remained nothing but calm and collected during all of it. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it again, that is so insane haha. 

I wasn’t going to write about this other thing, but since I probably already sound like I’m off my rocker, might as well just keep going a bit longer. Okay so, Chris’s eyes. I don’t know if he believes me cuz I’ve only ever commented on his eyes after he’s said something about mine, but asdfghjkl. I lose my absolute MIND over his eyes. This is going to be so freeing to write about. I can feel it. Okay so yeah, at my first appointment I only looked into his eyes once. It was when he was shocked I said I was 30 and I turned my head to look at him. His brown eyes were wide in disbelief. In that moment, I felt like 100 different things. I didn’t look long, but when I turned my head back, I had this strange sort of feeling. Well, first, I corrected myself by saying I was actually 31, and then I remember feeling some sort of weird intensity I had never felt before. I didn’t know what it was, so I felt embarrassed and didn’t look into his eyes again the rest of my time there. Later though, I figured it out. Chris’s eyes are so deep, yet still so bright. There is a depth there that seems to go on endlessly, like an entire other universe, and I wanted to know what was there. That was what I felt embarrassed about, but I couldn’t figure it out at that moment. I had no idea because I had never felt that before. I felt like I wanted to explore everything behind those eyes. I also felt seen and understood, which made no sense to me because there was nothing to see or understand. Maybe in general, like me as a person overall, but not in that particular moment. I still feel all of this when I look into his eyes, and after my last appointment with him, a few times when I was looking in the mirror, I had to do a double-take because I kept seeing his eyes before I saw my own. I know, I sound so psycho 😭 I wish I didn’t. I wish I had some sort of explanation, but I don’t. All I have is all this stuff that has happened and all the things I have felt, and this isn’t even the craziest of it. I still haven’t written about one thing that happened because it wouldn’t be fair to not tell Chris first, though that may never happen anyway. Maybe this is all nothing. Maybe this is…fake? Not real? A blip in the universe? Well - many blips in the universe? I can’t even take any guesses because what am I supposed to even guess at? He’s still just my dental hygienist and I’m still just his patient. There’s no relationship to comment on, little progress to point to, and barely any further interaction to make this stuff feel more tangible and less like I’m a little psychopath. There’s literally nothing to even guess at because these weird little things are all that exist from this. I can’t even talk to Chris about it because he doesn’t talk to me 😑😑😑 These intangible things are all I have. They’re all that’s really tethering me to trust because in the physical world, everything only points to confusion and doubt. This is all I have. I’m either being spiritually led in the direction of something really great, or I have some sort of serious brain injury that only makes itself known in Chris’s presence. I don’t think there’s anything in-between that would rationalize all of this stuff that I’ve seen and experienced.

That brings me around to what I’m going to do. First, I have to decide what I’m willing to live with: the pain of being used again or the pain of missing out. I already know which option I’m going to choose though, and I know what I’m going to do about it. Just like this time last year, I’m going to take the approach of seeing how Chris responds to me at my appointment with the oral surgeon. I assume we’ll cross paths like we have at all my other appointments. If it’s negative, sucks for me, and the result will probably be me crying when I get home because it does not take much to make me cry lol. If it’s positive, great, I plan to make some moves during my next appointment with him. I may have lost my chance at this point, but I’m hoping I haven’t. If I haven’t, awesome, I plan to treat my next appointment with him as a pivotal point in regards to whether things progress or not. So far, Chris has really put himself out there. He’s taken chances on me and I really haven’t responded positively back to him. I mean, I guess you could say the same for me taking chances on him in regards to trying to meet up and him not really responding great, but I’m not going to count that. I’m going to count in-person stuff only. I have roughly 5 weeks to: make sure I work through any lingering potential past romantic trauma that could interfere (this is also for myself too), come up with a coping plan in case something does come up, brush up on my flirting skills so I don’t freeze in the moment (tbh idk how I’m going to do this, maybe in the meantime just keep taking mental notes of all the stuff I like about Chris and hope it helps me seize an opportune moment to be flirty when the time comes), and continue to prioritize my mental health so I don’t get overwhelmed and overstimulated by all the excitement, which will also help with the flirting aspect. That….is a small list but actually a huge load of stuff to take care of in a month’s time. Anyway!! I’m still going to hope for the best. The other stuff doesn’t have to be 100% dealt with, but my #1 priority is making sure Chris feels good and that I make it apparent that “Yes I am into you and I’m sorry I’ve been struggling so much to show you that!!”. Well, I can leave out the apology bit, but yeah, the first part gets a thumbs up. Maybe that’s why Chris hasn’t initiated anything. Maybe he thinks I’m not that interested or only in it for self-gain, neither of which are true at all. I struggle a lot. I struggle with so many things and then I suck at articulating and explaining myself. In fact, when I do try to articulate or explain, I somehow always end up making things worse. It’s better for me to just wipe the slate clean, start fresh, and then hope that if he asks about something I can explain without embarrassing myself further. Maybe he wants me to ask about our date, but since he’s the one that brought it up in the first place, I feel kinda weird asking “So uhhh our date?” Maybe I’m overthinking all of this and it really is as simple as: if he’s not reaching out, then he’s not interested or is just fucking with me for whatever reason. 

I’m tired, man. I’m tired of always being in a place of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the pain. Waiting to be treated poorly. Waiting for the betrayal. Waiting for the anger. Waiting to be told or shown how I’m not enough. I think to myself, Who will not make me flinch? This all goes way beyond Scott; a large part of my experiences with men, for a majority of my life, have not been positive. Some have even been dangerously negative. I think a part of me is always going to have some fear about being hurt until I’m with someone who doesn’t hurt me in big ways, and the little ones they work with me on and try to make up for. I will gladly give them the same in return. I’m never going to find that person unless I take a chance on them. I want to take the chance on someone who is worth it, and I feel that Chris is. I want my choices in life to reflect that I didn’t give up, that I kept believing in something higher and took the steps I needed in order to actualize that higher life for myself, even if I did so imperfectly with mistakes along the way.

I had a bunch of other stuff I was going to write about but I’ve already been coming back to this over the course of two weeks and it’s getting too long, so I’ll end here for now.

Umm Chris if somehow you’ve found my anonymous blog, which I’m hoping you haven’t, I apologize if any of this sounded weird or made you uncomfortable 😭 Feel free to never talk to me again if that’s the case. If not, see you in a few weeks 🥰

[milascenta]

26th February 18:17

I'm sorry for not posting in a while. I've not been doing very much, just still recovering. Its been pretty annoying to be honest but its starting to get better. I thought it would be a lot faster, my doctor said only a couple months at most but its been way longer. I haven't been in as much pain recently though which is good, I no longer take pain killers all the time, its maybe once or twice a day if I feel it, some days feel better than others. I still feel the stitches which I was told would absorb after a couple months too so thats annoying lol, its making this small region across my chest really tight, like to the right of my neck along my collar bone, as thats where the muscle was cut through and reattached and all that. I'm able to workout a lil more though which is good, I haven't been able to move much for so long so its good to move more and get some muscle back. Not doing anything too intense as I don't want to risk tearing or anything. But the tightness is slowly going. Stretching is becoming easier too. I need to start walking more haha, I feel more lungs need more of a workout lately, which sounds weird but as they did stuff to my lung I need to get it back up to snuff lol. Been dealing with more pc issues can you believe it?! haha, its now just like turning off my displays and my IO becomes unresponsive but the computer is still on? Like all the lights and fans and everything, so I have to turn off the power supply and turn it back on again. So random too, just watching youtube or playing games does it, so its hard to reproduce. I've looked it up and it could be 2 things, either the motherboard is starting to die or something is shorting it out or the power supply is acting weird. So I ordered a new motherboard and if it continues then it must be the power supply. That means I should start streaming again soon, I've really been wanting to get back into it as its just something I see myself doing and I want to start doing things again, creative things and fun things moving things and all that.

I hope you've been doing ok and I hope your grandmother is doing ok too, N. I know you say you want 35+ days sometimes but please please I beg you, you do not hahaha I would kill to be able to wear clothes again and not sweat through anything I put in contact with my skin haha. Its been cooler down a lil recently but we still get a 35+ day every week or so. 38 on the 29th last day of summer is going out with a bang. Hopefully winter is cooler.

Its so good to hear you getting a promotion you really deserve so I hope you feel proud cause I do. Omg dealing with less customers sounds amazing too, they're the worst hahaha. I hope its been good and you've been able to acclimate to it well. I really understand when you say you feel Stuck, though I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself, I've to realise more and more as I age that time is kinda more and more irrelevant, what's more important is that we get there, we get to do the things we want and move towards our goals we set for ourselves, I really believe you will achieve them. Though I completely understand you. I hate that I'm still aging I feel like I haven't achieved anything, I keep thinking I wish I could go back to a teenager and start again, but who knows. I think getting out of your town is a good goal to have, I don't think you want to be there forever, I'm sure where you'd go but I think you'll try out a few places before settling properly, somewhere that is in more align with your values and offers you more opportunities. I really liked living closer to the city, I love further out but idk there's just something about walking around people and down alleys and finding random things, and also I things being close. Jeeez I miss just being able to walk to something, I have to train or bus to something I want to go to its so annoying hahaha. I really get you on the friends thing too, a lot of the people I grew up with are married and either have children or are in positions to now, its so surreal to see. I feel a roadblock as well. But idk I always feel like it will work out in the end, I just always have that tiny bit of hope that like nags me in the back of my mind like the adoring fan from Oblivion hahah. Always there to challenge my distorted thinking. Which is good I think. I think we always do things in the end, we never stagnate if that makes sense. But i feel like I'm rambling a bit, i just understand what you might be thinking right now as I feel similar. In my situation I get so much outside pressure from my family to do so much, even though I'm still recovering from a pretty major surgery, it kinda makes me feel like what I want to do isn't important and that I have to listen to them even though they don't seem to understand it. I feel like my best friend understands me the most right now and you of course. Both of which I'm grateful.

Chonky's been good she had her adoption day on the 12th of January, for which I give her some raw meat in the shape of a heart, I also do the same for Valentine's day.

Also Catfish and the Bottlemen are coming back and I'm so excited for the new album, its just Benji and Van at the moment but I have my hopes for the new stuff haha.

"I think you're crazy, baby

I will see you in the next life

I think you're crazy, baby"

[jinhogwarts]

i love how kpop fans love to change the narrative once an idol is accused of doing something bad. like, they could be the most loved idol in the world, but the second they're accused of something, everyone will be like "i always knew they were bad" "i never liked them" "they were irrelevant to the group anyways"...

sweeties. babies. honeys.

it's OKAY to admit you liked an idol who turned out to be problematic. it's OKAY to acknowledge they're talented and good at their jobs while being horrible people. it's not your fault for not knowing they were bad, since that's what idols do - put up a front and a mask, do cute lil stuff for their fans, while we have no idea what is actually happening behind the scenes.

i've been seeing this a lot about lucas for the past two years, and like. let me tell you. i was a HUGE fan of him. he was my top3 bias in nct right after johnny and kun (who are my nct ults). in a way, he's the reason i got into nct in 2018 because he was so damn beautiful and charismatic and cute. and i know i'm not the only one, i know for a FACT that A LOT of nctzens who stanned in 2018 became stans because of him. and it's completely okay to admit that!!! yes, he's talented, and charismatic, and he LOOKED cute and funny and everything i like about idols. was it just a mask and he's a shitty human irl? idk, i never met the guy and i still don't know if he's just a douchebag (which i don't actually care about) or if the sa allegations were true in which case i would never support him again. everything has been up in the air (literally all the evidence i saw against him came from his antis while all the evidence i saw for him came from his fans lol so it's impossible to know what is true). for now i'm not supporting him and i am happy he's leaving nct and wayv so the group doesn't suffer anymore because of his actions. will i support his solo activities? idk. i'll decide when the time comes.

but my point is, i think it's pointless to try and say no one ever liked him and that he was never doing anything good for the group when it's factually not true. you can be angry at him and cancel him and want him as far away from the group as possible while still acknowledging how much he contributed to the group while he was still in it.