#uncool/stupid/cringe/opinionated i am

[stevelives]

so sick and tired of “stop posing like a millennial/stop the millennial pause” like why do we continue to make fun of people for the dumbest fucking reasons

[yakkety-yak-art]

I’m ngl I hate hate HATEEEE the idea people have where they’re like “UGH yall were never REAL Sonic fans, you all thought Shadow having a gun in his game was stupid and now you’re all excited seeing him have it in the movie trailer!! You’re all switching up now that people say it’s cool!!!” as if Shadow the Hedgehog 2005 didn’t come out 20 fucking years ago.

A not insignificant amount of the people excited for Sonic 3 and Shadow having a gun were either kids when Shadow 05 came out or weren’t even born yet when it did. It’s very possible they have never played it, because a lot of Sonic fans haven’t, and either have no strong opinions on it or have what is a fairly common opinion of that game: it’s bad, but there are some individual bits and pieces that could’ve been good if they were executed better or in a different game.

I’ll also say that it hasn’t been a fringe opinion that Shadow having a gun is kind of cool since…honestly, kind of forever? Like, the gun thing in 05 mostly gets made fun of for being in an already bad game and because in conjunction with the rest of 05 it’s clearly them trying wayyyy too hard to be cool and edgy and mature. Admittedly, I am one of the people who was a kid when 05 came out and didn’t start interacting with online Sonic fandom until about 2010, but from my experience online and trawling through way older Sonic fandom stuff, the most pushback you would get from claiming Shadow having a gun was cool was someone telling you it was lame, actually. There’s a lot of fanart of Shadow with guns dating back years. It’s not really a controversial opinion amongst most fans and I don’t think it ever was for very long. I think people are conflating critical reviews of 05 as a whole with Shadow having a gun as its own concept.

(Also, I love Shadow with gun. But like. Objectively it’s really funny and uncool in a way that’s also kind of cool. People making fun of Shadow with gun will never be wrong unless they’re being mean to people who like it or actually think it somehow detracts from Shadow as a character, because a little hedgehog dude who can teleport and shoot energy spears from his hands holding an honest to god bullet shooting gun is incredibly funny.)

Anyways, people’s opinions can change. They can especially change over the course of nearly 20 years. The kids who saw it in 05 when it came out may have thought it was lame then and then just…changed their mind once they were older, because nostalgia and also living life can do that to you. There were probably fans who thought it was cool in 05 but were just afraid of being “cringe” online so never were outspoken about it. The people who were really young (me) when 05 came out or weren’t born yet but were entrenched in Sonic media and fandom from a young age whether they played 05 or not are also nostalgic for it or have probably always thought it was cool or funny or had no strong feelings for it at all and are just super excited to see it showing up in an official Sonic property that’s as popular as the movies. (And hey, we can be nostalgic too. I loved Sonic all my childhood and even though I only got into the online fandom in 2010, that was about 15 years ago.)

It’s just so stupid to complain about fandom bandwagoning when it’s Shadow having a fucking gun of all things. As if Shadow fans have been through the trenches doggedly defending ourselves from horrible persecution for liking Shadow with gun for decades. And I am saying this as someone who has been obsessed with everything Shadow since I first laid eyes on him. I don’t want to sound mean, but genuinely get over yourself if you think like this. Actually talk to people. You can learn how their opinions of Shadow with gun have actually changed over time and what caused that if you speak to and treat other people like they’re actual real normal people instead of projecting your idea that they’re all stupid sheeple who aren’t as cool and enlightened as you because you liked hedgehog with gun first.

[ourhero]

Back in the Saddle...

Editor’s note: be patient- I’m trying to get back in the swing of things:

While I was in therapy last week, I listed off my goals: 1. Lose weight 2. Drink less 3. Write more

Numbers 1 and 2 are currently in progress (and doing well- I’m down almost 8lbs in two weeks!), but number 3 seems to be evading me. And I don’t know why. Writing is something that has always come so naturally to me; something that helped escape and get my thoughts out when I didn’t know how to otherwise. Maybe because I felt like I needed to hide some stuff from the Internet and solely write about it in my journal (ha- that’s not a maybe; I did that. That happened). But I guess I never knew what I wanted to write about for people to read since my life was consumed by unsafe for the Internet topics (and I was worried about my image (HA)).

So, here we go. I’m back. It’s been 521 days (ugh, I just cringed) since I’ve posted here. I’ve been writing, but nothing for public consumption. I want that to change. So, I guess we’ll try again. But coming up with what to write about was hard… so I thought back to what’s been happening in my life lately and one lesson stood out to me: not everyone is going to like you.

Hear me out- I know that this isn’t a farfetched concept and that I’m sure this is something that we’ve all heard for many years, iterated in different ways, and in shareable images with cute fonts and beautiful backgrounds. The one that has come up recently has been “You can’t make everyone happy- you’re not an avocado”. Well, yes, however, you may be an avocado, but you may not be a ripe avocado (have you ever waited too long? I mean, of course, you have). But really- do I want to make everyone happy? My immediate answer is yes. But then, I had to stop and think about it another way, which led me to: do I care?

I look back at my old journals (see previous post)- mostly from middle school- and the entries are full of the same thing; “I wish I was popular”… “I wish people liked me”… “Why can’t I be normal?”. I always feel a bit sad for 7th grade Brady. She had a rough go and few people really understood.

One of the things I discovered recently (in therapy… Charlie is working hard for his money!) is that in order to be our best future selves, we have to be kind to not only ourselves now, but our past selves, too. For the longest time, I hated past Brady. I thought she was weak, stupid, and I hated that she was insecure and that she just couldn’t handle the emotions and issues being thrown at her. What a wuss. It wasn’t until I put myself back in her shoes (a scared 13 year-old) that I suddenly appreciated her so much more. A girl- barely a teenager- who struggled through mental illness so early in life. She was given pills, and therapy, and the latest and greatest diets, but nothing worked. Nothing eased the anxiety or erased the depression. She was just Brady- sad, depressed, anxious, outgoing and passionate Brady. She just was trying to get through- to not fail. To understand “normal”. A girl who, despite feeling lonely and uncool, stuck to what she loved (I’m talking playing with American Girl dolls ‘til about 8th grade). And somehow, with the help of a huge tribe, she did it- she saw the light and followed it to find her best self. Oh sure, she’d become an expert on anxiety and depression later when her friends hit those bumps in their 20’s, but she didn’t know that then.

She made sense of it eventually. Fast forward and here we are. I’m 30 and finally feeling like I know myself better than ever before. I am who I am. I am loud. I am obnoxious. I am passionate, crazy, opinionated, funny and loving every moment. And I know some people don’t like that. I know some people prefer if I didn’t so freely live my life the way that makes me the happiest. But you know what? I don’t answer to them. And they don’t know past Brady. And they don’t know what it took to get here. And so, I won’t change.

I realize that I talk about my past a lot in my writing; maybe there’s more demons there than I care to admit (that’s what therapy is for…). But, truth be told, it’s made me who I am, even if I hated it; even if at times I almost quit (catch me?). And what I’ve recently discovered is I like me. I like who I am, I like my friends, I like my life, and I am so fucking lucky. Because not everyone can say that. Not everyone came out of their personal struggles better for it. But somehow, I did.  And that’s not to say I’m perfect; but I am happy. And isn’t that one in the same?

You cannot be the perfect person. You cannot be what everyone likes. Someone will always not like you. And that’s okay.

What matters is that, at the end of the day, when you crawl into bed, you can smile and say, at least I like me.

I mean, I can. And that’s enough right now.

[champagne121212]

not to out myself as someone who's #uncool and #cringe on my pure and holy mcr thirstposting and poetry blog but. frankly i am just waiting for the cringe culture cycle to come around for twenty one pilots in the way that it has for panic at the disco. in the way that panic was a beacon of light for emo kids in the 2000s-2010s and then became Irrevocably Cringe due to brendon urie's entire personality and his rabid commercialization of the music. but now finally i am seeing a lot of people say hey actually panic isn't shitty and stupid, what it is is a shell of its former self being puppeted around by an out of touch celebrity desperate for continued relevance. and yeah a lot of that argument is that brendon has been singlehandedly dragging around the corpse of a project that used to have other talented artists in it who made it as great as it was. but i think honestly the same larger argument can be applied to twenty one pilots. another band that was genuinely a lifeline for emo kids in the late 00s, early 10s, and had a lot to say about religious trauma and mental illness and the intersection of the two. there's truly a lot of raw emotion in their early stuff, especially with the sort of plain and stark message of "if there is a god who created me and loves me then why am i suicidal, why am i suffering, why am i in agony." i'm not gonna say they were the only ones doing that at the time because i'm sure they weren't but what i will say is they had a message and a passion and a desperate need to get their pain out through their music that resonated with a lot of people. it's good music actually. and i think the same thing happened to them that happened to brendon, they lost their message in the spotlight. i don't want to pinpoint when because i don't think that's a simple thing to do, i think a lot of people have different opinions on different eras of the two bands and whether they were "still good" or not. i think it's more of a gradual process from someone with artistic vision and things they need to say to music that plays in an old navy. but i think if you were a kid during the heyday of either band who loved them and now find them irredeemably cringe, i get it, i was too. just maybe sometime when you're bored go back and give regional at best or self titled a listen. it's not perfect, there's certainly some heavy-handed writing in rab and self titled is prone to the occasional extremely long and drawn out metaphor. but there's something real in there. there's genuine care and love for the words and music.