kihyunnie

[deerest-deer]

thinking really hard about logging into my old tumblr acc after being gone for like a year and a half cause i stumbled upon a post that led me to my old mutuals and i teared up a lil </3 but also i feel so ashamed i left without saying a word to anyone aaaa

[kdwg]

Medicine Pocket x Reader : “Isn't it good to be a dog?”

i wrote this at 1.4 China sever, I know Medicine Pocket here might be ooc, i didnt know Chinese, everything i knew abt Medipoc through using ggl translate their story. MediPoc in my fic using he/him pronouns (in game Medicine Pocket said i can call whatever pronouns i want for him so...)

---English Version---

Medicine Pocket finds you very annoying. He doesn't know if it's because of all the drugs he's taken recently, making your baseless babbling deafening. “Like a fly”, that's what Medicine Pocket bluntly told you, unfortunately you didn't even bother and continued to cling to him like a horseshoe crab.

Today is even more so, Medicine Pocket is almost drowning in a sea of ​​reports, dense numbers filling the mind, and even reprimands and reminders from sources above, even, one must say, Medicine, who had always ignored public opinion, was now exhausted as his brain was constantly repeating the cruel and disdainful judgments of some of the researchers who had chatted in the kitchen a few minutes ago. I don't want to pay attention, but somehow people always pay attention to how others comment on them. Medicine sighed, he raised his hand to rub his temple very roughly, threw the pile of papers on the table, he slid off the chair and lay on the floor. Closing his eyes, feeling the darkness weakly trying to cover itself in the bright light, he wondered where you were now? Honestly, sometimes listening to you talk silly is more entertaining than having a very social and fake conversation with a co-worker. You've warned him so many times, so many times that just by remembering it, he can see the image of you angrily waving your index finger to remind him that no matter how much he hates people, he can't call them assholes, then step on their foot and leave.

“Hey, what do you think?”

Medicine was startled from the impending sleep. Seeing your appearance, he was a bit surprised. Medicine didn't respond and simply looked at you with wide eyes.

“What's wrong, did you fall asleep?”

You were a bit confused when you asked two questions but still no scolding to kick you out of the room was uttered.

Medicine lay half on the floor, his upper body raised, looking at you in bewilderment like a puppy that had just met its owner a few times. You tilted your head to survey the situation. Could Medicine have tested something strange on himself again?

“Medi?”

"Yes?"

You walked closer and crouched down to Medicine's level. The eyes are still normal, the skin is a bit pale, the lips are not pale, overall you can evaluate Medicine as being fine.

“Give me your hand.”

You spread your hands. Without hesitation Medicine Pocket placed your hand on it, you took off his gloves trying to find something unusual, but everything was fine, the temperature remained stable and the warmth of his skin made you feel strong. The heat in the room also gradually increased. You gently squeezed his hand. When you raised your head, you still met his dreamy eyes from before. You couldn't help but giggle, breaking the silence:

“Are you a dog?”

Medicine was silent for a few seconds, he looked away from your face and then shifted his gaze down to the five fingers embracing his hand. His eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully, he really took it as a serious question. Medicine stroked his chin and sighed softly and answered without any excitement:

“Isn't it good to be a dog?”

This time you couldn't stop yourself from laughing out loud, oh my god, what were you thinking? You reached out with your other hand to pinch Medicine's nose. Instinctively, he angrily glared at you and coldly pushed your hand away:

“Don't laugh.”

“Why do you think like that?”

“See if I were a dog, everyone would definitely love me. I also won't have to find a way to please anyone, not to mention I'll be very cute.”

“You've always been cute.”

You wrapped your arms around Medicine's neck, this time he didn't pull away, he let you bury your face in the crook of his neck. Medicine Pocket does not have the scent you like, on the contrary, it is very unpleasant to smell, but it sticks to him for so long that the smell of antiseptic and rubber soon becomes an indispensable part of his daily life.

Medicine felt itchy when you whispered under his throat, he felt your warm breath stick to his skin, it was so annoying that he couldn't stop.

“What's wrong, does this great scientist care about what other people say?”

Whenever he gets caught talking about something, Medicine tends to react violently and deny it, but when it comes to you, he simply stays silent, indifferently avoiding your gaze. This time too, you didn't get his answer. You raised your head to look for his eyes, but Medicine looked at you. It's a look of boredom and acknowledgment, somewhere a little sulky, indicating why you haven't pampered or comforted her yet. “It's no different than a puppy that forgets to be petted.” That's the first thought that pops into your head. You leaned forward, your hands cupping Medicine's face, gently placing light kisses on his cheeks.

Medicine still didn't seem very satisfied, his ten fingertips wrapped around your hand, his eyelashes drooped down in a state of confusion, he tried not to look into your eyes but in the end he couldn't resist. Medicine remembers the words that want to be buried deep in the throat:

“Do you think like them?”

Your two noses touch, you smile:

“Of course not, if talking to them makes you feel that bad then just step on their toes and leave.”

“You call them stupid?”

“They deserve it.”

Medicine Pocket let out a dramatic sigh. After that, he kisses you.

---Vietnamese Version---

Medicine Pocket cảm thấy bạn rất phiền phức, anh không biết có phải do đống thuốc bản thân vạ miệng uống gần đây khiến những lời lảm nhảm vô căn cứ của bạn làm đinh tai nhức óc. “Như một con nhặng”, đó là điều Medicine Pocket đã thẳng thừng nói với bạn, tiếc rằng bạn còn chẳng bận lòng mà tiếp tục bám lấy anh như sam.

Hôm nay còn hơn cả vậy, Medicine Pocket gần như chìm trong biển báo cáo, những con s��� dày đặc lấp đầy tâm trí, và cả những lời khiển trách nh��c nhở từ những nguồn chi phía trên, thậm chí, một người phải nói là luôn bỏ ngoài tai dư luận như Medicine giờ đây cũng mệt nhoài khi bộ não của anh đang liên tục lặp lại sự phán xét coi thường ác ý của một số các nhà nghiên cứu đã tán gẫu ở nhà bếp mấy phút trước. Anh không muốn để tâm, song con người một phần nào đó luôn chú ý về việc người khác bình phẩm mình ra sao. Medicine thở dài, anh đưa tay lên day thái dương hết sức thô bạo, ném đống giấy lộn lên bàn, anh trượt khỏi ghế và nằm dài trên sàn. Nhắm mắt lại, cảm nhận bóng tối yếu ớt cố gắng bao trùm trong ánh đèn sáng chói, anh tự hỏi bây giờ bạn đang ở đâu? Thành thật mà nói, đôi khi nghe bạn nói ngớ ngẩn còn giải trí hơn là có một cuộc trò chuyện hết sức xã giao và giả tạo với đồng nghiệp. Bạn đã dặn dò anh rất nhiều lần, nhiều đến mức chỉ cần nhớ lại anh có thể thấy hình ảnh bạn cáu kỉnh vung ngón trỏ nhắc dù anh có ghét người ta đến mức nào cũng không thể bảo họ là thằng lỗ đít, rồi dẫm vào chân và bỏ đi.

“Này, em nghĩ gì đấy?”

Medicine giật mình khỏi giấc ngủ sắp ập đến. Thấy sự xuất hiện của bạn, anh có chút ngỡ ngàng thái quá, Medicine không đáp đơn giản chỉ tròn mắt nhìn bạn.

“Sao thế, em ngủ quên à?”

Bạn có chút bối rối khi hỏi đến hai câu mà vẫn chưa có lời mắng mỏ đòi đuổi bạn ra khỏi phòng được thốt ra.

Medicine nằm nửa người trên sàn, thân trên nâng lên ngơ ngác nhìn bạn hệt như một con cún mới gặp chủ vài lần. Bạn nghiêng đầu dò xét tình hình, Medicine không lẽ lại tự thử nghiệm thứ gì kì quặc lên bản thân nữa rồi?

“Medi?”

“Vâng?”

Bạn tiến lại gần và cúi xuống ngang tầm với Medicine. Tròng mắt vẫn bình thường, da hơi nhợt nhạt, môi không tái, xét về tổng thể bạn có thể đánh giá Medicine vẫn ổn.

“Đưa tay cho chị.”

Bạn xòe tay. Không chần chừ Medicine Pocket đặt bàn tay lên, bạn cởi găng tay anh cố gắng tìm kiếm một điểm bất thường, song tất cả mọi thứ đều ổn thỏa, nhiệt độ vẫn ổn định và hơi ấm từ da thịt anh khiến bạn cảm thấy sức nóng căn phòng cũng dần tăng lên. Bạn siết nhẹ tay anh, khi bạn ngẩng đầu lên vẫn chạm phải ánh mắt m�� màng ban nãy, bạn không nhịn nổi mà bật cười khúc khích phá vỡ khoảng lặng:

“Em có phải là chó không?”

Medicine im lặng vài giây, anh hết nhìn vào khuôn mặt bạn lại chuyển tầm mắt xuống năm ngón tay đang ôm trọn lấy bàn tay mình. Đôi lông mày anh nhíu lại đầy nghiền ngẫm, anh thực sự coi đó là một câu hỏi nghiêm túc, Medicine vuốt cằm khẽ thở dài trả lời không một chút hào hứng:

“Là chó thì không tốt sao?”

Lần này bạn không thể ngăn được mình cười thành tiếng, ôi trời suy nghĩ gì thế này, bạn đưa tay còn lại véo mũi Medicine. Theo bản năng, anh cáu kỉnh lườm bạn và lạnh lùng gạt tay bạn ra:

“Đừng có cười.”

“Tại sao em lại suy nghĩ như vậy?”

“Chị xem nếu là chó, mọi người chắc hẳn sẽ rất yêu quý tôi. Tôi cũng sẽ không phải tìm cách để làm hài lòng bất kì ai, chưa kể tôi sẽ rất dễ thương.”

“Em luôn dễ thương mà.”

Bạn vòng tay qua cổ Medicine, lần này anh không gạt ra, anh để bạn vùi mặt vào hõm cổ anh. Medicine Pocket không có mùi hương bạn thích, trái lại còn rất khó ngửi, nhưng bám dính lấy anh lâu đến nỗi mùi thuốc sát trùng và cao su sớm trở thành thứ không thể thiếu hàng ngày của bản thân.

Medicine thấy ngứa ngáy khi bạn thủ thỉ dưới vòm họng, anh có cảm nhận được hơi thở ấm áp của bạn dính vào da thịt mình, vô cùng phiền phức đến nỗi không thể dứt nổi.

“Sao thế, nhà khoa học đại tài nay lại để ý đến người khác nói gì sao?”

Mỗi khi bị bắt thóp chuyện gì, Medicine thường có xu hướng phản ứng dữ dội phủ nhận nó, nhưng nếu với bạn, anh chỉ đơn giản là im lặng, thờ ơ né tránh cái nhìn bạn. Lần này cũng vậy, bạn không nhận được câu trả lời của anh, bạn ngẩng đầu để kiếm tìm đôi mắt anh, nhưng Medicine nhìn bạn. Đó là ánh mắt chán chường và thừa nhận, đâu đó có chút hờn dỗi ra ý rằng sao bạn còn chưa nuông chiều, an ủi mau mau đi. “Không khác gì một con cún con quên được vuốt ve.” Đó là suy nghĩ nảy lên đầu tiên trong đầu bạn. Bạn dướn người, bàn tay ôm lấy khuôn mặt Medicine, nhẹ nhàng đặt những nụ hôn phớt lên má.

Medicine có vẻ vẫn chưa hài lòng lắm, mười đầu ngón tay của anh bao bọc lấy bàn tay bạn, lông mi cụp xuống hết sức thất thểu, anh định không nhìn vào mắt bạn song cuối cùng không cưỡng lại nổi. Medicine lí nhỉ những câu từ muốn chôn sâu dưới cuống họng:

“Chị có nghĩ như họ không?”

Mũi hai người chạm nhau, bạn mỉm cười:

“Đương nhiên là không, nếu nói chuyện với họ khiến em cảm thấy tệ như vậy thì cứ dẫm vào chân họ rồi bỏ đi.”

“Em chửi họ là đồ ngu?”

“Họ xứng đáng.”

Medicine Pocket thở dài một cái hết sức kịch tính. Sau đó, anh hôn bạn.

[fiapartridge]

🌊 will smith ur fav

i love u he's my fave boy ever

You saw him everywhere. Every newspaper, every post on Instagram, every poster strewn across stone walls haunted you with pictures of the man who could’ve been yours if you had just let him in.

“What’s happening, Y/N?” Will stood at your doorstep, his hands tucked away in the pockets of his black coat, the cold air engulfing his red nose in a hug. “Please, if something’s happening, you can tell me.”

You shook your head, your eyes willing themselves not to fill with tears. You hadn’t answered his calls, or texts, or emails, or DMs, or anything. You completely shut him out and he had no idea why the girl he was beginning to fall for was icing him out. You didn’t even give any warning signs. You just—stopped trying.

Truth be told, you saw the comments on Instagram. The comments left in your DMs and the way you had to private your account because you were tired of being compared to more beautiful girls, getting called a slut and a puck bunny, that you weren’t pretty enough for him. And a large part of you knew that that was true. He must be blind, right? Something must be wrong with his brain to look at you rather than the millions of prettier girls that walked across campus clad in his jersey and having no hesitation to tell him that they should be together.

Which brings us to the inevitable question: if the relationship was going so well, if you felt like you could trust him, like he could be the one, why the hell were you icing him out? 

You were embarrassed. You were embarrassed that their comments were getting to you, that they were true, and that if he saw them, maybe he’d think they were right. Because why was he with you? It just didn’t make sense—to anyone.

“This was a bad idea,” you whispered, hiding yourself under the hood of your hoodie, willing yourself not to look at him but rather the wooden floor beneath you. 

His brows pulled in. “Don’t say that.” He wanted to see you, to see that pretty perfect face he had grown to love so much, but you wouldn’t let him. You were scared that he’d see the millions of flaws you saw on yourself. His hands dipped out of his pockets, trying to pull your hands to his, but it was as if you were like water, slipping out of his fingers like they were the last thing on earth that you wanted to touch. “Baby, please. Please just look at me,” he pleaded. 

Your tears managed to escape as you sniffled, running the back of your hand against your wet nose and back into the expanse of your long sleeves. “I can’t do this. You shouldn’t be with me.”

You knew that this was the best thing to do, even if you hated every second of it. You knew Will was tearing himself apart right in front of you, but it was the best thing for him, too. No more you, no more hate comments, no more bad press. He could go back to how he was before you, the way things should’ve stayed.

“Just let me in, okay?” his eyes were red and this was like torture to you. You didn’t want to hurt him, which is exactly why you were doing this. You saw the way his shoulders slumped after every game, the way he closed himself off to the boys whenever you were near, the way the team side eyed you at every social event. You were the problem. And the only way to make the problem go away was to subtract the numbers. “You’re not telling me everything, I know that. We can work this out, baby. Come on.”

You bit your lip so hard you swore you drew blood. “I’m sorry.” And you knew your next words were gonna hurt the both of you, but you also knew that it was something both of you had to hear, no matter how badly it was gonna sting. “But I can’t do this. I don’t want to be with you, Will, and I think you should leave.”

He felt his heart beat out of his chest. There was no way you were saying that; not after everything that’s been going so well. Had he been imagining it? The laughter, the kisses, everything you told him—had it all been some sort of lie? He doubted everything, but at the same time, he knew you. You hated liars almost as much as you hated spiders. So why were you doing this? Why were you wrecking everything you two had created these past couple of months?

“Baby,” he stepped closer as you mirrored his movements, taking a step back and watching his hopeful spirit die. “Everything is nothing without you. You’ve gotta believe me. If there’s something happening you can tell me—you can tell me anything, okay?”

“I don’t want you anymore.”

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/27/2024

this is the longest ive ever been unemployed and media is only doing so much to beat back the horrors. so let’s talk about the media instead of the horrors

listening

Come Up For Air by We The Commas, off i think one of the autogenerated spotify indie mixes?

sort of a rollicking modern little surf rock thing, they describe themselves as "surf and alternate rhythm and blue" which is pretty bang on imo. they're all brothers (their last name genuinely is Comma, which i salute as a fellow weird last name haver), and cite john mayer (i don't really hear it) and the beach boys (yes i hear this very much) as some of their influences. a song i had on loop for an entire forty minute drive and did not get tired of. spotify

-

reading

three books that MUST go back to the library tomorrow bc their autorenew is up and i was emotionally unable to get a library card without tooling around and getting a stack of books a month ago.

thank you philip.

i really only liked the Carmilla adaptation by Amy Chu, bc it really gets at what i didn't realize was the heart of the original 1872 lesbian vampire novella: a toxic gay housing situation you have fallen into and can't get out of bc your area is so so so expensive and housing is so so so tenuous. i have read the original but not in a while, this is an excellent modern adaptation centering around a nyc social worker in the late seventies that presupposes no knowledge and intertwines the original novella in the form of a stolen rare book. (nonconsecutive pages)

i don't have much to say about the DC young adult comic about the circus career of one of the Robins (Dick Grayson). i didn't love the loose artstyle and am not in its intended age range plus it had a bit too much therapyspeak, but it did have a clever use of a very limited color palette.

let's yank the amazon description for the detective novel, which i grabbed bc it vaguely pinged something in my brain about one of the fallout 4 sidequests and i've picked books up for worse reasons (SPOILERS):

Jacob Rigolet, a soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction—his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of black ink at master photographer Robert Capa’s “Death on a Leipzig Balcony.” Jacob’s police detective fiancée, Martha Crauchet, is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. 

i simply fucking hated this authorial style and tone and ditched it two chapters in. i don’t currently have the patience for reading about a clinically insane mother and hate crimes against Jewish people. despite the fairly dark premise, the first two chapters veer into cozy mystery with very short sentences, which do not a noir make. now, it does not advertise itself as noir or neo-noir, but as an homage to noir. it is for me unbearably smug. in my most unkind heart of hearts i want to say it's like if wes anderson tried to make a noir. this is a book that wants you to know it has read other noirs. yes thank you ive read several others, that’s why im reading this one, stop reminding me of better books i could be reading.

there's some weird descriptions of womens' bodies in here. chandler (my beloved) is certainly guilty of this as well, but he lavishes a sort of equal opportunity eye on the men in his mysteries. cf the infamous daniel lavery description.

when i read a chandler description of someone’s physical appearance there’s a fruity bisexual aftertaste in my mouth. Howard Norman, below, saying a woman takes great care of herself puts my hackles up. i understand the difference between an author and a character believing something and i don’t want to read a book where either the author or the character have this sort of pitying condescension towards a woman’s body. im feeling extremely terrible about my own body right now due to the various maladies, and another sort of breaking point for me is when an author repeatedly describes "naked breasts" (exact wording) pressing against someone's torso. it feels so juvenile. that's the sexiest thing you can possibly think of??? that's the sexiest way you can think of to describe an early mornign moment of intimacy???? augh i read the NYT review and it gets worse.

shut the FUCK up. i left my apartment at 1130 PM to go put this book in my CAR. i don't want it in my HOUSE.

-

watching

Bullitt (1968, dir. Yates, free on Tubi). the baddie in this is Robert Vaughn (who i know from cowboys), a guy i fucking love to see. i can take or leave Steve McQueen but he does such a killer job parallel parking in this movie and i wish all driving movies made their leads parallel park. shockingly realistic hospital, morgue, and police work scenes, apparently was one of the big films to popularize blood squibs. also love to see a haunted man splash water on his face and stare into a mirror.

if you asked me how long the famous car chase was i would have said like 2:30? substantial but snappy. no!!! eleven minutes!! (video a bit trimmed). also a rare movie that makes a foot chase through an airport as exciting as that eleven minute car chase!!!

the mob dodging plot was a little hard to follow, but i was operating on like four hours of sleep and a rum and coke. this has got to be a tremendous movie to watch when you’re home and sick on the couch huddled under a blanket. i mean this as a compliment, as someone who watches Escape from New York whenever i feel very sick

-

playing

really wanted to get to 69 shrines before writing this post and finally did it. all the little divine beasts walking along the loading screen are SO cute i've never gotten all four before

all the divine beasts are unlocked and the champions laid to rest! im feeling some type of way emotionally speaking about all of them telling link IMMEDIATELY that it wasn't his or zelda's fault they died

rudania has the worst boarding mission (in order of ones i most enjoyed it's camel [SO fast and SO fun], bird [lots of time to think and plan and aim], elephant [did not make me do a tedious stealth mission but i am bad at locking on to rapidly moving things behind me, much like in real life], and lizard. the lizard stealth mission is simply unpleasant). however, my brain really clicked with the puzzles in rudania: i had to consult a walkthrough once for an optional chest. in order of interior beast puzzle enjoyment for me it's lizard, bird, elephant, and camel. really got stuck for a long time on the waterwheels with the elephant before consulting a walkthrough.

the yiga clan stealth mission was not as hard as i thought it would be. i don't know why i put that off for two real life weeks but i will not learn my lesson and i will never improve. this boss battle was just silly.

the vah naboris interior puzzles were not fun. idk what it was about them or my brain that made me have such a bad time, but i spammed revali's gale and skipped a lot of chests bc i was not having fun. this is why god invented the walkthrough but sometimes. shit is just too fiddly.

i did succeed on the thunder ganon boss battle first try, but i came in with extra hearts from mipha's grace, used another mipha's grace in the fight, went through five fairies and seven hearty simmered fruits that were 5x durians (which gives you 20 extra hearts or some shit). fucking nightmare. i was stuck on one hit left on ganon for like five minutes bc he got stuck in the very fast flurry attack cycle. unpleasant. deeply grateful it only made me smack him with the magnesis pillar once bc that was also really fiddly with my poor reaction time + poor fine motor skills + previously mentioned ancient controller with some drift. in order of boss battle enjoyment i think it's lizard (made me think and kept me on my toes a little but i did have to look up how to break the shield), elephant (you can just kind of tank it), bird (same), and camel (extremely not fun).

this was WITH a fully upgraded gimp suit btw. that shit (ganon) just hits hard.

shrine shenanigans:

crowned beast very fun, i have one or two of kass' songs left and then i hope i get to see him back in rito village with his family??? a little nervous bc i went right to the jungle spring without hearing his song first so idk if that will. count??? or softlock me.

the MOUNDS of failed cooking attempts around this shrine on the grasslands side of the gerudo barrier mountains were SO funny.

unlocked all the spring shrines. what a fun mission. what a fun climb.

went to my FAVORITE shrine!!! going into what you think will be a normal cave and discovering it is DEEP with a BIG WHALE INSIDE is top three video game whale moments (the other two are diving with the whales in ABZU and meeting the last whale in the first dishonored).

other bits and bobs:

eggman rocks???

this quest was really cute and i wish there was a corresponding quest for the guy hanging around the broken heart pond, but it always makes me laugh whenever a dragon shows up in the background of a screenshot. a really great touching moment but watch out for the elemental orbs rapidly approaching us

also made me chortle. get it together barta.

i wish the helm was upgradable but i think making me kill a molduga in order to borrow it is a pretty fair trade actually.

-

making

i originally had a really long thing here about litterbox trials and tribulations but i have decided to spare you all. you're welcome.

many balcony improvements, including putting up trellises and installing bird spikes to hopefully keep a very persistent orange tom off my balcony and away from my girls.

there are a goofy number of obstacles in the way of me making a proper planting diagram (sketchbooks buried deep in closet. flung the seeds in a box on a shelf i need to find my stepstool for. can't find pencil sharpener) so for the second week in a row that's not happening. however, sprouts.

baby italian lettuce blend

bush beans in the front and cucumbers + sweet peas in the back.

[seiya-starsniper]

WIP Word Search Game

I AM 8 BAJILLION YEARS LATE WITH NO EXCUSES (that's a lie, I was sick so haven't written too much lmaoooooo) but thank you so much for the tags @five-and-dimes and @hardly-an-escape

My words are cold, warm, soft, hold, hurt and book, scare, red, hip, tree. Let's see what we've got!

Putting this under a cut because it got long!

Cold:

From an Untitled Dreamling Forced Marriage AU

Dream wishes he had tried harder to convince Robert to open their marriage. Then maybe he could have had someone else’s child, and taken the fall for an affair and run off, out of this cold, loveless place. But Robert had vehemently refused him even that small comfort, and Dream now finds himself hating his husband for it. Now he was trapped forever, with no escape. 

Warm:

Continuation of Untitled Portrait of a Man (I Want to Obliterate Me)

“Hey,” Hob greets warmly, breaking Dream out of his reverie and forcing him to reboot his brain. “Hob,” Dream says, cringing internally at how breathless he sounds despite Hob being the one breathing heavily at his door. If the other man notices, he doesn’t comment on it. “It’s bloody hot outside,” Hob replies. He runs a hand through his sweat soaked hair and Dream has to clamp his jaw shut before he blurts out something stupid like “it’s bloody hot inside too”.

Soft:

From the Untitled sequel to A Dream for a Viscount

He wakes to sunlight filtering through the windows, soft and gentle. Hob is snoring peacefully next to him, a rarity as he is normally an early riser while Dream prefers to sleep in. Dream’s last night of heat had been his most fervent, and he blushes when he remembers how desperately he had begged for Hob’s knot, had even begged the alpha to stay inside him until they both fell asleep. 

Hold:

Continuation of Untitled Portrait of a Man (I Want to Obliterate Me)

Dream doesn’t expect Hob to show up for their final session. He has every right not to. When he had left Dream’s apartment last week, Dream had buried himself in his work and his sketches. He obsessively stalked the man's social media accounts and downloaded dozens of photos to use a reference in case he needed them to finish his project. In case Hob decided to not come back. The photos don't hold a candle to the real thing though.

Hurt:

From the Untitled sequel to Break Me, Shake Me

Johanna explains to the group gathered who Dream is, and why he’s agreed to help them. Though many of the group regard him warily, as they should, they all fully accept that he's yet another person that's been irreparably hurt by Roderick. Dream wonders what it is they see when they look at him. Roderick has not left him with scars, nor starved him. But there must be something in his expression because Dream catches more than a few pitying glances. 

Book:

Continuation of Untitled Portrait of a Man (I Want to Obliterate Me)

“So are you going to let me see what you've done so far, or do I need to wait for the finished product?” Hob asks, settling himself back on the lounge and looking far too comfortable. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get dressed, much to Dream’s chagrin. It’s not that he minds Hob’s company, but he’s so horny he might actually explode if Hob doesn’t dress and leave soon. “When I have something worth sharing, you will be the first to see it,” Dream replies, more curt than he'd intended. Hob doesn't seem bothered by his shortness though, he simply huffs in amusement before he stands and walks over to where Dream is sitting as he finishes some additional lines on his sketches. On instinct, Dream pulls his sketchbook close to his chest when Hob is close enough, and when he looks up, he finds himself staring at the most brilliant amber brown eyes he’s ever seen. He almost tells Hob to sit back down just so he can sketch them.

Scare:

Not found in any of my WIP documents (but I'm sure that'll change soon enough!)

Red:

Follow up to SnowBaz Dreamling shenanigans, requested by @bazzybelle

“ ‘m not drunk,” Morpheus insists. Hob snorts. “Sure, sure, and I had the queen of England over at my place this summer,” Hob jokes. “I’m serious!” Morpheus insists, huffing and puffing out his cheeks like a small child. It’s absolutely adorable, if not absolutely terrible for Hob’s balance. Morpheus’s cheeks and lips are both flushed cherry-red from the cold, the most color Hob’s ever seen on the other man since they met. It was a really good look on him. A very tempting look. “Pretty sure your boyfriend would agree with me,” Hob replies, reminding himself that no matter how cute and tempting Morpheus looked, Hob wasn’t a homewrecker. Even if Baz would have thanked him for him and written him a check for enough money to pay the rest of his rent and tuition for the rest of the year.  Morpheus furrows his brow. “Boyfriend?” he asks in a confused state. “What boyfriend?”

Hip:

From the Untitled sequel to Break Me, Shake Me

“What do you like, baby?” Hob asks again. “Tell me, I’ll give it to you.” Dream wants to say, look at me. Tell me you can't live without me. Instead, he places a hand on the alpha’s chest, pushing him back and off of him until Hob is sitting on his ankles watching him, his eyes never leaving Dream’s. Then Dream turns and presents himself, bracing on his elbows and knees as he spreads his legs as wide as he can manage.   “Take me rough, just like this,” Dream whines. “I want to feel you so deep inside me, I forget everything else.” Hob growls and grabs him by the hips, before the alpha finally, finally does what Dream’s been fantasizing about for weeks and sinks himself into the omega’s cunt. 

Tree:

From Chapter 3 of Set the Night on Fire

“You need to leave,” Dream says, his voice low and dangerous as he hears the adventuring party  advance further into his territory. By his estimates, they would be at the bottom of the trail leading up the mountain in an hour.  “What? Why?” Hob asks, sitting up and now fully awake. Dream does not explain further, he simply grabs Hob by the waist, careful not to squeeze too hard on the soft human’s body, before he dashes out of the cave and jumps from the cliff, taking off into the chilly morning air. “What the fucking hell!” Hob yells as Dream carries them high above the trees, and as far away from the fast approaching humans as the bounds of his curse will allow. He cannot allow the humans to see Hob. He cannot allow them to think Hob is aligned with him. If they do, they’ll kill him, and Dream would not be able to stand it if he loses another human companion.

tagging @pellaaearien @bazzybelle @arialerendeair @blueberrymffn @beauty-of-nyx @tj-dragonblade @bruce-wayne-simp @delta-pavonis @lostelfwriting

Your words are: blue, rich, sky, jacket, and heart

[neuroticbookworm]

Soulmate Skepticism vs Romanticism in La Pluie

I am a soulmate skeptic. I don't believe there's one person destined for each of us on this planet.

I'm also a staunch pessimist on matters of romance and love. I constantly conduct a cost-benefit analysis in my head for every romantic relationship I see in my life. "It doesn't make sense" is almost always the first thing that pops into my head when I see people in love.

Do I sound an awful lot like someone from La Pluie? Why yes, it's our resident Soulmate Skeptic and Slenderman wannabe, Lomfon! That must mean that I liked him immediately, right?

Love is not a competition that you can win or lose. It's something you feel and share. There are a million things in and around love that can be made sense of, and added up like a math problem, like interests, hobbies, morals, desires, and fears, but the feeling of love itself is not logical. And I hate the part of me that can't get over that fact, and I'm working on it.

That's why I was initially so wary of Lomfon. I thought the show was gonna let him run amok and then teach him a "lesson" about love, after all the destruction is said and done. And then, episode 8 came around, and Lomfon became the character with the most potential for growth in the coming episodes, and I was so excited to see how the show would take him on this journey.

How do you teach a skeptic to believe? You give him a situation that he cannot logic his way out of, aka, two potential soulmates. This is the story I expected to play out last night, but of course, they subverted this expectation because this show is made by people who are much smarter than me.

Episode 9 is crafted to make skeptics believe in spontaneous, head-in-the-clouds love, rooted in coincidence, but the target is not Lomfon, but me. And possibly you. And all of us, the audience.

I'm going to take a broad, but confident guess that the people reading this piece are non-believers when it comes to soulmates. It sounds too good to be true and so fantastical to ever happen in real life.

Soulmate trope exists for a reason. It's comforting to think about a person who exists right now who might cross paths with us on a random day and change our lives for the better. When life is cruel and relentless and we long for better times, we wish we could reach into the future and get a hug from the person we haven't even met yet, but who will someday mean everything to us and more. When life is kind to us, on a warm sunny day, we could be hit with sudden melancholia for a lover we have not loved yet.

In La Pluie, Patts and Tai wanted to defy their destinies at different points in the show. And they did, in their own way. In episode 8, they decided to be with each other not because they could hear each other when it rained, but because they like each other and choose to be together.

The show constantly puts the soulmate trope under a microscope and analyzes it, criticizes it and subverts it. But episode 9 was different. It leaned into the trope. It established a connection between Patts and Tai that was completely circumstantial and could end abruptly at any given moment. And it did, with the death of Patts' grandma.

I've been wondering since last night: why take this detour? And I believe that the show knows its audience, know that our cynical brains would get extremely excited by a piece of media dissecting the idea of fated love and commenting on it. How choice matters more than anything else. And I see episode 9 as its attempt to nudge us in the opposite direction, ever so slightly. Because while the Rainverse of La Pluie can bring many complications to the love lives of the main characters, real life is much, much worse.

In the sport of modern dating, a clear mind with sound logical abilities is the key skill required for success, according to all the self-proclaimed relationship experts on social media. Our guts are not to be trusted anymore, since we are all traumatized and will automatically seek a shitty relationship because that's the one that feels familiar. Love-bombing is a manipulation technique, you must read about it and be aware of the ways to spot it. Do you know what Negging is? The red flags, green flags, and beige flags? Every action, every gift, every romantic gesture might have a sinister intention behind it.

Finding love is an exhausting process. Yes, it is important to be informed and safe, but in the process, we tend to forget the beauty of the very thing we are trying to find. The beauty of love is not singular in the choices that we make. Mature and time-hardened love is beautiful in its strength and choice, yes, but budding, fledgling love can also be beautiful in its spontaneity. And while finding your perfectly compatible person can feel pretty amazing after hours of meticulous swiping on apps, so can the knowledge of finding out YEARS later that your lives were ever so briefly intertwined in the past and you didn't even notice it at the time.

Emotional maturity and compatibility are necessary to sustain love, but spontaneity, silliness, and sometimes, happenstance are the ones that sweeten it. The show appreciates the skepticism about destiny and fate, but it also makes sure to never position itself against romance. Against the possibility of life surprising us in the moments we least expect it. Because while we strive everyday to make some sense of the chaos life throws us into, it might not hurt to let our heads float to the clouds, every once in a while, and see the beauty in chaos.

[biopanik]

The Morality of Fandom Activities

This might as well be an essay, so apologies for my long asf post. Just a few heads up: this is in no way talking about people who support incest irl and MAPS. Those are extreme cases that I'm not qualified myself to talk about, I only know that I don't want them on my page 😭

I stopped having a very active social media presence when I was finishing high school. For me, this was a huge deal, because as the token weird queer kid all my life, Tumblr and fandom culture provided a safe space for self-expression, developing my writing skills and exploring myself. Fandoms usually play a huge role for teens, since their interactions and their experiences shape their mindsets into the primary form their adult brain takes. Whenever I look at my old posts, I can see the points where I was maturing, I could see my opinions change very clearly without always connecting old posts to significant life events.

What is very important to take into account is that I was in ALL the "red flag" fandoms, even some niche ones. BNHA, Homestuck, RWBY, Okegom, Voltron, you name it. I was into it, I had Instagram edits of it saved on my phone. As a result, I am familiar with all kinds of fujoshi, yuri bros, proshippers, etc. I'm not here to inform you about my entire digital footprint though. I'm here to discuss fandom morality. Fair warning, I will be referring to a bunch of dark themes vaguely.

I want to start by saying I understand the appeal of a toxic ship. A ship that is straight-up problematic given the context of the story. Be it because the characters are abusive to each other, a very big age gap or them being blood relatives - I get it, even if I'm one of the people who's easily repelled by this shit. I get why Junjou Romantica, for example, became so popular. The big body proportions, the "forbidden romance" trope, the guilty pleasure, I get it. I understand how nerdy young women would fawn over yaoi because they craved a soft male touch. I understand the south park proshippers because they inserted their younger selves into the characters and imagined scenarios where their own fucked-up childhoods would make sense.

My experience with Funamusea helped me understand that things that are taboo can be appealing in a fictional form. There were a lot of issues because the horror used in Funa's games was centered around sexual battery and assault. To me, that made perfect sense. Funa games are packed to the brim with gore, war, mental abuse, and disturbing characters. Of course, there would be SA in such a fucked up setting. Rape is a horrifying thing that no one should face because it is a subcategory of violence. VIOLENCE IS SOMETHING NO ONE SHOULD EVER COME ACROSS. Therefore, why is it that people who write stories containing this trope receive so much hate, but 1940s war aus for example get praised? Why is FMA a pacifist masterpiece and not torture porn?

For "glorifying" real-life horrors? Triggering people? Let's broaden this.

Think of your favorite slasher film. Your favorite best-seller horror book. Do you think that the people behind these stories are freaks and murderers? Psychopaths are capable of fitting in anywhere they want, even fucking churches. So it is useless to assume creators are moral instigators for their VILLAINS. Now let's think about Colleen Hoover and Sara J Maas (or as I like to call her, Sara J Ass). Their "love" stories are super popular because of the immense marketing that they have received, despite profiting off romanticized harmful content. Backlash is still minimized in contrast to anime niche, because they are backed by million-dollar industries and the fact that they conform to the norms of a straight story. Although that, is a topic for another discussion - how problematic characteristics are "musts" in irl relationships.

Lastly, I want to talk about the so-called community saviors who want to protect these platforms. Those who want to build a safe environment so that no predators infiltrate our sacred grounds where we discuss Persona 5 ABO dynamics. A lot of them are oftentimes victims of this sort of abuse. I myself have come across groomers. But tbh 15yo kids who reblog Shiro X Keith are not really the enemy? Anyway, that's a little besides the point. I want to directly talk to these people right now, hear me out: you are hypocrites. You only pretend to care about Tumblr communities but do not hesitate to accuse someone of abuse (any kind) and tell them to end their life. How are you protecting anyone like this? How are you a positive role model for the children partaking in fandom activities when you show clearly that you wish death upon someone. VIOLENCE IS SOMETHING NO ONE SHOULD EVER COME ACROSS, I re-iterate and you possibly agree, but YOU ARE STILL VIOLENT, and justify it by being "virtuous". How are you any different from @\hivliving? Her actions will forever be engraved in her victims' heads, even if she was humiliated in the end. Then again, it would have been better for her to write a shitty low-quality fic about Hamilton having HIV or whatever the fuck, if looking up basic things about HIV was so difficult. After 7 years in & out of fandoms, there's one thing I'm fine with, and that's bad fics.

Ultimately there is so much more I want to say. I might cover this topic on my bestie and I's podcast sometime (soz it's in Greek). The bottom line here though is not about keeping a neutral stance on problematic media. It is to enjoy whatever the fuck you want just because it makes you happy. It is to differentiate what's a wolf in sheep's clothing from what's a sheep. It is to accept that kids will ALWAYS lie about their age to access all sorts of NSFW. God knows I did so. It is to recognize them and realize that their creators and fans are most likely not going to act out every bad thing that occurs in said story. Because if that were the case, with the rise of all the Yeagerists, we'd have so many bitchless college students trying to start little rumblings of their own, and the world would be a much funnier place.

Now go outside and spread your moral philosophies to people outside your Discord server

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD (& comorbidities) culture is feeling entitled to favors and special treatment from others but.. when you finally get it you feel empty and unsatisfied. Or sometimes it feels like you’re being patronized and humiliated. I don’t understand, I should be happy when people are giving me special treatment. But I feel oddly patronized, it feels like they’re treating me like some child or pet. Especially if I ask for the special treatment, etc; it feels like they’re doing it out of obligation or pity and not because they think I actually deserve it.

For example, I know a lot of fellow narcissists enjoy being the center of attention, etc, on their birthday. I hate it for some reason. This may be due to the fact that I have had a lot of traumatic experiences on birthdays and holidays and ‘vacations’, so I’ve come to associate negativity with them. I want to be alone on my birthday. I feel defensive and belittled when people try to give me gifts and attention, especially on my birthday. It feels like they’re attempting to use me or like they’re secretly insulting me. It’s weird, because I am a narcissist, I qualify for NPD, but (probably because of comorbidities) I don’t relate to most narcissists. There are some I have found that I relate to, but I still feel very alienated and alone.

I know I’m able to get supply because I’ve gotten it before, but most supply that works for other narcissists doesn’t work for me. I hate it, it feels like I’m cursed to never be happy. Supply has to be hyper specific for me, but because it’s hyper specific—I can’t always get it. It has to be worded a certain a way, at a certain time, from certain people—and it makes me seem like I’m entitled. I suppose it would make me entitled, but I don’t enjoy not being able to get quick and/or easy supply. It’s weird that egotypicals assume that I choose to, let alone enjoy, being entitled like this. It would be nice to be happy about small things and achievements, but it’s as if my brain is holding me back. And when I do finally achieve something I still feel so empty because nothing is ever enough. The high I get from it is so fleeting and short lived that sometimes I can’t even process what I’m feeling until it’s already gone, and then I’m back to feeling miserable all over again. I don’t want to have high expectations, I’m sick of egotypicals assuming that I choose to have these outrageously high standards. Because, they’re not just for other people—but very much for myself. None of this is a choice for me in the end, but egotypicals just love to parade around saying that narcissists choose to have self esteem issues (sarcasm).

I don’t why I can’t believe people when they praise me or compliment me. I want to, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something in the back of my mind telling me that I don’t deserve it. That clearly they must be lying out of pity, because that’s how unloveable I truly am. There’s this feeling, or thought, that insists people are lying or that I am underserving all the time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want praise, I still very much need it. But I just can’t for the life of me believe them. It feels like they’re all lying. Like they’re all talking down to me. They’re all lying to me like how someone might lie to a child about how great their artwork is. It feels like they’re giving me a participation award out of pity for not being good enough. It feels like they’re trying to manipulate me just to absolutely crush me once I finally accept/believe their praise. If I believe it, they’ll take it away from me without a second thought. And that’s because they never thought I deserved it to begin with, they’re just following their silly social rules. They resent me and disgust me and hate me, but they’ll pretend like they care. And then they wonder why I never believe them.

.

[a-dream-deferred]

so i started going to the gym for the very first time and i have some Thoughts to share:

for context physical activity has never been my strongest suit nor my cup of tea. the lowest grade i've ever received in my whole life (all 12 years of school and 2 years of uni) was in PE lmao

so naturally i was not exactly looking forward to being in a gym. but my mental and physical health has been suffering lately so you gotta do what you gotta do

suprisingly the gym was a much less intimidating environment than i anticipated. yes there were people who looked super buff and experienced, but there were also all other kinds of bodies and ages and levels of fitness. and no one seemed to pay attention to what the others looked like or what they were doing, so my social anxiety settled down and let me be

observation 1: it's amazing how music can make exercise go from pain pain pain discomfort embarrassment shame to pleasantly dissociating and imagining yourself as a fictional character of your choosing

observation 2: isn't it kind of dystopian that gyms are simulating the kind of physical activity that is normally meant to be done outdoors? running, walking, jogging, cycling, even rowing. if i could walk or bike to places instead of having to ride in a car i wouldn't have to resort to a gym in the first place, but the roads are not designed for that and the weather is too hot

this brings me to the reason i absolutely hate modern exercise--it just feels so fake!! and meaningless!! and aimless!!! rationally i knOw there are many benefits but it's like there's this primeval part of my brain that's like. if i am not escaping or hunting or racing, then why am i running? i am not even moving from one point to another, how strange. why am i squatting or bending over if i'm not picking something up? what are these weights that i am lifting - if it is not a jug of water or a sack of grain, then why am i carrying it?

afaik in pre-industrial times the poor got their exercise in the form of physical labor while the rich had their leisurely sports like horseback riding and archery. gyms on the other hand divorce physical activity from both usefulness AND entertainment, making it a very unpleasant experience imo. it takes a lot of mental effort to remember that exercising is going to help me in the long term when in the short term it just feels like time wasted on pain and getting nothing real done.

observation 3: i've seen many individuals who someone could easily look at and say "oh that person is overweight/obese, they must not exercise at all" but then you see them lifting heavy weights like it's nothing, doing intense workouts without running out of breath, etc. meanwhile i with my "normal bmi" am struggling to do basic stuff. so yeah fatphobia is definitely not about health or fitness or whatever

observation 4: the kindness of strangers <3 that's it that's all there is to say

[48787]

I've learned just how much I appreciate "Decentralization" Not the shitty fucking crypto bro "Yooo dude if we just do the fetishization of capital harder it'll surely be decentralized, surely we just need to do it harder bro" kinda shit But the idea that like, even if the systems that maintain the standards that maintain social power/value of certain things we care about goes under (Whether through bankruptcy, lack of resources, lack of userbase, etc) I will still be able to maintain the personal value I find or have already found through relying on those systems. So it would be better if those systems were more easily able to be opted out of to make that transition smoother if/when it happens and so I can maintain my own personal standards!! (Not fetishizing individualism, just saying that I am an individual person who wants to be able to force my own standards to be applicable to my own life. This very much is in support of giving power to the workers forced to use these systems the power to more easily destroy the systems they work within if they need to and force their own social standards to become the new system. All my posts are attempts at corrupting your mind with commie brain washing, you must understand this because once you do you might begin to accept this as well)

I've been thinking about swapping from Discord over to Matrix for a little while now for this exact reason but didn't know just how far reaching it applied. It contextualizes why I wanted to swap over to firefox much more aptly rather than just doing it because I simply hated chromium. I wanted more. It also makes be better appreciate tumblr, and why I felt so able to actually commit to a social meda for once. It's because the blog is my own and I always have the export button right in front of me. If I don't like my blog, I can make a new one. If I don't like tumblr I can leave tumblr and still have my blog (just without the value of being able to reach a wider audience... which I didn't even want to begin with!!! I just wanted an audience and I already have that with my friends and current mutuals!!! I don't care about audience growth, I'd rather deeper entrench the social investments I already have made in the social entities I enjoy). And since I'm no longer worried about this being my entire being (No longer fetishizing social media), I am no longer worried about this being my own shot at having a blog, I can take more risks!!

I can see posts my wife sends me where she's like "I don't know if I can reblog this or not" and say "No you totally can if you want, in fact I want to so I'm going to reblog it right now" and it pushes both me and her to be more honestly depraved with each other, which is lovely!! It lets me show off that honest depravity with people who are okay with seeing it more easily too!! It's just super liberating and I would only be able to feel this way if escape was possible and I have a safety net insuring I can make sure that net continues to exist and continues to widen. Sure, it requires a certain amount of tech literacy, a certain amount of economic literacy, a metric shit ton of political and class literacy, and at least one other person willing to help me, but hey I have all those things so I know my net will work for me!! Anyway, this was just more agency-posting. If you are empathizing, sympathizing, or are envious I'd recommend starting by figuring out what you want your safety net to capture, why you want that to be able to be captured, what happens if you're wrong (not if you're wrong, just what would happen first), and then whether or not your current net actually does or doesn't already capture what you want it to so you know where to put your focus into!!

And if you want advice for where to start on that I highly recommend at least skimming Das Kapital (Or just Capital or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy or whatever you know it as, labels are meaningless beyond the meaning we want them to have, as long as you know that I'm talking about Marx's economic analysis book that's fine) and coming to an understanding of what value is and what money is and how they are not linked. That's what allowed me to get this far, and I think if more people were able to not only unlink their personal value from money but also take steps to limit their own desires and pursuing of capital to better focus on their "real" value more and more people would be able to be "this far" as well!

[northwest-cryptid]

Something I don't often speak up about is that I suffer from very severe paranoia. I genuinely hate it, my logical brain and my emotional brain are constantly at odds. The times I've been wronged it's easy to reinforce the bias as a sort of "see I told you!" It's hell to say the least.

I feel like a lot of the time in media paranoia is sort of treated as this "always watching your back" with your eyes darting from one person to the next constantly anxious of everyone. I know it very well can be that, but in my personal experience with it; it's not so noticeably pronounced like that. It's far more like a voice in the back of your head constantly asking you "are you sure about that?" It doesn't feel malicious, it feels like it's concerned for you.

To put things into perspective, I was raised in a cult; I can't say for certain whether or not everyone reading this has had first hand experience with a real cult. So to give you an idea of how hellish this was, consider that I was once taken to breakfast. A normal family outing; except it wasn't. It was a chance to train me on the ideology I must follow if I wish to survive. I was seated so I could watch the door, I was almost immediately asked "a man walks through the door with a gun, where do we leave through?" This was a trick question, there was no right answer; because I was to understand that I had failed if I let the man with a gun walk through the door before I had left the building.

The waitress came to the table and took our order, I was then asked how tall she was, what color were her shoes, did she tie her apron in the front or the back, what color was her hair; if she was to pull a gun which hand would she use? I was probably around 8 at the time. You likely believe this is hell for an 8 year old, but it's worse when you understand this wasn't the first time. This wouldn't be the last time either. We'd be out at the store, shopping for dinner; and I'd be asked what the random man who passed us was wearing. I'd be out on a walk and asked whether or not the man on the phone across the street was right or left handed.

I learned from an early age not to ask why this information would matter, it of course mattered; because everyone was out to get me. Every single person in the world was to be seen as a threat, as someone who wished me harm; as someone who wanted me dead. I was not allotted privacy at all, if I was conversing with people online it was suspected that I could be developing thoughts of my own as to how the world outside of the cult actually worked.

Now I've managed to distance myself, yet the ideology that was conditioned into me is still very much there. I befriend someone, they stab me in the back; and I tell myself "I should have anticipated this." Then I befriend another, but this time I keep my guard up; it makes it hard to stay friends with me for long and they leave me behind. It's hell to believe my only thought towards that is "they must not have been able to use me for what they wanted, so they moved onto another target." I don't believe these things, they're thoughts that come to me for a moment and then being pushed down by my logical thinking brain.

It's hard not to reinforce a belief that people wish me ill when I've existed so openly on the internet for so long. The internet does not allow for someone to make a mistake and learn from it. When someone screws up they're called out, posts are made about them; they are to be witch hunted until they have no standing within their social circle and must find another. This has happened to me several times. Sometimes I'm able to learn from it, sometimes I'm not; it depends greatly on the situation and whether or not I was actually in the wrong. There have been a great many times when I've been a victim of manipulation, deceit, and generally made to be "the bad guy." These sorts of things always make it a struggle to break free from the paranoia that grapples my mind and says "keep yourself safe, don't trust anyone; everyone wishes you harm!" I know that's not true, there's good people out there; I know there's good people out there.

However the truth is this only means I put trust in those I already know can be trusted. Those who have stuck by me, given me the chance to do better; actually wished well for me. It's hard for me to meet someone new and put any level of trust in them. Meeting new people triggers a sort of anxiety response where I must analyze every word, every action; down to the way they address me or else I fear I'll stumble and be burnt for it.

Trust me when I say I don't want to live like this, but being someone who primarily exists online, it's difficult to shake the feeling that a good many people don't actually want good for me. I literally got an anon earlier asking me about my streaming, and I cannot properly explain how it was worded so nicely that I flagged it immediately as someone wishing me harm. Wanting information so they knew where to direct their attack. I went through every word of that ask, punctuation, the decision to use anon; all of it. Desperately trying to figure out if this was someone who genuinely wanted to support me or someone who wishes me harm.

I hate myself for being like that, I'd feel awful if someone read through my messages like that; and obviously it has nothing to do with the person. I literally don't even know who it is, but the fact that they ask information of me is enough to set off alarms. I've been reading, writing, and rewriting a response to that ask several times. I've been trying to find the words to explain myself, then thinking it's better not to; I don't want them to feel as though I think poorly of them; I don't. I just fear for myself, I fear people want to hurt me, I get hate every day for poor word choice or "saying the wrong thing." It's hard to believe anyone would truly want to support me, which is insane because many people do!

I still need to figure out how I plan to answer that ask, on the one hand I want to be open and transparent and give them the information they're asking for. They've not done anything wrong, they've not asked me too much; I'm just on edge because it's coming in at the same time I'm getting a lot of hate. On the other hand I fear that if I do that and it turns out they DO wish me harm, well then it's just reinforcement that yea; I'm a fuck up and everyone's out to get me and I'll get burnt one too many times for trusting people.

Of course if I ignore it, the idea that "nothing bad happened because I didn't give them the information they wanted to hurt me with!" Would be so easily reinforced, so it's a bit of a catch 22 in this case. The insane thing is, the idea that this person genuinely means well and just wants this information because they genuinely DO want to support me feels so slim that it feels like I'm taking a massive risk in giving them information I already have openly available on my blog here. I always post when I'm going live, I link to my streams a lot. It just feels odd that they ask me about if I work for a company, that they don't know I'm poor and struggling to even make money to pay the rent thanks to my disabilities. It feels like they know just enough to understand I'm a Vtuber but not anything else, that reads as suspicious to me. This is how a paranoid brain works, this is why I hate being paranoid. This person hasn't done anything wrong, this person has sent me a very nice well worded ask simply wanting information. Yet here I am hours later racking my brain for how to respond in a way that isn't rude; that doesn't show my paranoia, that doesn't make them feel like it's their fault. Because it's not their fault!

Anyways, sorry for rambling. I haven't eaten much today and I'm sure that's not helping my decision making. I'll get around to answering that ask soon.

[kingkatsuki]

I didn't really know who to send this to and was just going to let it rot in my brain, but you commented on the lurker situation and it got me into a weird rabbit hole and made me kinda realize something a little tangential but I think still relevant. Maybe I'm old, but it seems like the attitude around fandom has shifted in the past decade or so from a collective of like minded people sharing and creating together, to a creator/consumer relationship that mirrors influencer culture. It's all transactional now. And that makes me sad tbh. Like participating in a community is so much fun and lurkers or those who just consume without engaging are really missing out, but also I hate seeing fan work creators getting treated like content farms. If you write or create art, nowadays that seems to define your fandom identity, it becomes your (unfair) barrier for participation and validation, and you're ostracized or forgotten and replaced if you can't continue to clear that hurdle for whatever reason. There never used to be this huge gulf between fandom creators and the other members, in my experience at least. It's like people now think they only have 2 options: be a creative person and provide a steady stream of free content (for an audience that expects/demands it from you) or mindlessly consume and only ever watch to the sidelines. But it's not true! Participate! Be a hype man! Curate your favorite fan content! Do something! Fandom is supposed to be more socialism, not capitalism! And maybe try to see the writers/artists as fellow fandom members first and content creators second. Like, you'd probably be frustrated too if people who you thought were your friends expected you to always be the only one to put in any effort to the relationship and then just ignore you if you asked for anything in return. It feels bad.

Nah, in a way I kinda feel the same. Sometimes I think I must be old because when I was younger and writing was primarily on quizilla/ff.net/LJ fics always used to have lots of comments, people would comment on each individual chapter and there were always bookmarks/faves etc.

In a way I want to say the shift in fandom has meant that people are more inclined to be lurkers now, or sites like tiktok/twt have made it easier for people to lurk. Or it could be that because there are more websites and years worth of content that it’s now easier to find fics and consume them mindlessly without worrying where you’re going to get your next fix.

But then there are sites like wattpad, and I know that everyone seems to hate wattpad for various reasons, but honestly I feel like the way their site works is ingenious. It gives people who read fics the ability to comment on each paragraph of the fic, enabling them to almost “live react” as they read through. And then you can still leave a little comment at the end or discuss in the comments with other readers/the author. And if you go on there now, you’ll see the sheer number of comments some fics have.

I also think that if you’re in a smaller/niche fandom you’re more likely to get more meaningful responses/engagement for your content. I used to write for Z Nation for example, which is an extremely small community and I got maybe 10-50 notes on a fic but more than half would be people commenting or simply interacting with me? Because people were grateful to find fics for their fave fandom? Whereas Bakugou there’s a million Bakugou fics so why should someone bother interacting with anyone when they can just scroll to the next one?

So it’s websites like that which make me think it’s partly that fandoms and the way we receive content has shifted, but I also think it’s people being selfish and ungrateful too. Because they just want to mindlessly consume and they don’t think about the living, breathing person behind the screen.

But for me personally, I’ve made some of my best friends by commenting on/reblogging their fics or just talking to them? So it’s like why wouldn’t you want to interact with people who are the same as you? Who enjoy the same things? Or why wouldn’t you want to do something so simple (and free) that could make someone’s day?

[essskel]

I think my point was not as 'fare' to Roche and Ves's character, since they were created in the second game. I was trying to make an argument on how Cdpr's writing is dogshit, so I should show the other example, but in the game where they make their original appearance. Sorry for disturbing you again, english isn't my native language, so it's really hard for me to articulate my thoughts properly. I put more brainpower into sounding smart. But anyways, back to the point.

In tw2, there's one thing that absolutely fucking destroyed my brain with how stupid it is. And that thing - is the genocide of vrans. The devs really said: "The elves are oppressed and all, but we kinda made them too good, we need to make the situation more grey. Hm...UH YES, let's make them guilty of genocide!! They're actually as bad as humans! See, player!! Don't feel too bad for them!"....why, Cdpr, WHY?! Sapkowski shouldn't have sold his books to these morons...

So yeah, I really-really doubt, that Cdpr wanted us to perceive Roche and Ves as some kind of metaphor.

Okay, I hear you, and I'm never going to come on here and defend CDPR's writing as a whole. They treat women like hell, they've tried to equate genocidal military forces with minority freedom fighters (your example with the elves), they've been explicitly racist with the way they framed the Ofieri people in hearts of stone, there's antisemitic tropes used in the added vampire lore from blood and wine, and on and on, sometimes stuff just literally doesn't make sense, I could go on forever.

They're a corporation, they selling a pop culture franchise product, of course it's a mess when it comes to social commentary sometimes.

But there is still a team of professional writers behind it. They're aware of concepts like archetypal characters, mirroring between two story lines or people, theme, metaphor, tone, and social commentary.

continued with sources below:

You mentioned the Bloody Baron in an earlier ask, I agreed with you, I also can't stand his quest. I think it's badly written, it reads way too much as a centrist stance on domestic abuse and that's useless, he'll never be a sympathetic character to me. And yet here's an interview with Paweł Sasko who wrote the quest:

The roots of Family Matters can be traced back to Sasko’s childhood, growing up in a poor village in the Polish mountains. “I saw families destroyed by alcoholism and violence,” he says. “I saw parents fighting with each other and beating their kids, but they were also in love and loyal to their family.”

“The Baron was created as a parallel to Geralt,” says Sasko. “They’re two fathers who have lost their loved ones; two men with blood on their hands; they both have personality issues; they’d do anything for their families.” (Link to full article)

The whole interview is really interesting, I still think it's a bad quest, I think Sasko failed to write the nuanced story that he set out to tell, but regardless, he was trying to tell a story. He considered real life examples, he attempted to created a character parallels, he approached social issues, cultural links, he DID want us to view this character as a metaphor for something, something from his own community and childhood - and I really doubt that he was the only writer at the studio who at least tried for similar depth, or that the Baron was the only side character who was written with similar considerations in mind.

Here's story director Marcin Blacha on the writing choices in the witcher games:

“We want to talk about serious problems, about complex situations, about things that, sometimes, make the player uncomfortable. Choices must then be crafted in such a way that they do not simplify the world, but instead, have the player think and interpret it.” (Source)

Again with this emphasis on more complex levels of storytelling and the inclusion of heavy themes. When they write a character who does something super racist like a militarized hate crime, it's safe to assume that yeah, they're probably trying to address or at least touch on racism here, or misogyny, or nationalism, or something kinder like the difficulties of fatherhood. Maybe you disagree with the way I interpret a certain character or story line - good! normal! - but the writers still intend for us to interpret, to discover our own real word links, to challenge our own views.

Here's a link to a (way too long) presentation by two quest and level designers from CDPR about how they approach narrative and tone in a video game -> If you jump to minute 32, they discuss how even something as benign as choosing where to place food items was done with a narrative in mind, with the intention of enhancing setting, atmosphere, relatability, ect.

There's also a great interview with CDPR writer Karolina Stachyra who talks about how she got hired, why she loves the witcher, how some scenes (specifically in hearts of stone) pay homage to classic polish literature, and she also says: "We make sure to establish [the characters in TW3] as real people, so they are not just there to advance the plot." (source)

I'll stop cause this is getting long, but there's also this interesting interview with writers from TW2.

What I'm trying to say here is, yes, CDPR has a lot of bad writing going on, I'll never defend that, but there is a still a clear attempt at genuine storytelling - a process of narrative, framing, metaphor, ect. I fully expect you or anyone else to disagree with my personal opinions of what a character may stand for, but do you really believe that these characters therefore were meant to stand for nothing? I'm sorry that there's a language barrier here, I hope I'm addressing the core of your ask, but this the best response I can give you right now.

disclaimer: really don't want to excuse any of CDPR's failings either. I'm not saying: aw, but at least they tried, that's better than nothing! And actually, in a lot of cases, the intent makes things worse. When they do something like approach the harsh realities of misogyny in military settings through Ves' character but then just write more misogynistic shit by having her enthusiastically jump into a sexy cutscene with geralt.....yeah now you guys made it WORSE???

[dontyoufinditstrange]

Guts (Spilled) Lyrics That Alter My Brain Chemistry

all-american bitch:

"i pay attention to things that most people ignore" "i am built like a mother and a total machine" "i feel for your every little issue i know just what you mean" "i make light of the darkness, i've got sun in my motherfucking pocket" "i know my age and i act like it" "i don't get angry when i'm pissed, i'm the eternal optimist" "i scream inside to deal with it"

bad idea right?:

"i know we're done, i know we're through, but god, when i look at you" "fuck it, its fine" "i only see him as a friend, the biggest lie i ever said" "i know i should stop, but i can't" "i'm sure i've seen much hotter men, but i really can't remember when"

vampire:

"how's the castle built off people you pretend to care about?" "i loved you truly, gotta laugh at the stupidity" "i used to think i was smart, but you made me look so naive" "bleed me dry like a goddamn vampire" "you're so convincing, how do you lie without flinching?" "what a mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked up little thrill, can't figure out just how you do it and god knows i never will" "you can't love anyone cause that would mean you had a heart" "i tried to help you out, now i know that i can't, cause how you think's the kind of thing i'll never understand"

lacy:

"did i ever tell you that i'm not doing well?" "it takes over my life, i see you everywhere, the sweetest torture one could bear" "i'm losing it lately" "i feel your compliments like bullets on skin" "like ribbons in your hair my stomach's all in knots, you've got the one thing that i want" "try to rationalize people are people but its like you're made of angel dust" "you poison every little thing that i do" "i just loathe you lately" "i despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell for you" "i despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you"

ballad of a homeschooled girl:

"feels like my skin doesn't fit right over my bones" "i made it weird, i made it worse" "each time i step outside, its social suicide" "everything i do is tragic"

making the bed:

"another thing i ruined i used to do for fun" "another perfect moment that doesn't feel like mine" "another thing i forced to be a sign" "sometimes i feel like i don't wanna be where i am" "i'm so tired of being the girl that i am" "i'm playing the victim so well in my head" "i tell someone i love them, just as a distraction" "they're changing my machinery and i just let it happen" "i got the things i wanted, its just not what i imagined"

logical:

"i'd put myself though hell for you" "i fell for you like water falls from the february sky" "cause id rain don't pour and sun don't shine, then changing you is possible" "you lied, you lied, you lied" "i know i'm half responsible and that makes me feel horrible" "i know i could've stopped it all, god why didn't i stop it all?"

get him back!:

"do i love him, do i hate him? i guess its up and down" "i wanna get him back, i wanna make him really jealous, wanna make him feel bad" "cause then again i really miss him and it makes me real sad" "i want sweet revenge and i want him again" "when i told him how he hurt me, he told me i was trippin" "i wanna meet his mom just to tell her her son sucks"

love is embarrassing:

"now it doesn't mean a thing god love's fucking embarrassing" "just watch as i crucify myself for some weird second string loser who's not worth mentioning" "my god how could i be so stupid?"

the grudge:

"took everything i loved and crushed it in between your fingers" "my undying love, now i hold you like a grudge" "and i hear your voice every time i think i'm not enough" "i try to be tough, but i wanna scream" "i say i don't care, i say that i'm fine, but you know i can't let it go i've tried, i've tried, i've tried, for so long" "it takes strength to forgive but i don't feel strong" "i fantasize about a time you're a little fucking sorry" "i try to understand why you would do this all to me, you must be insecure, you must be so unhappy" "i know in my heart, hurt people hurt people, and we both drew blood but man those cuts were never equal" "i try to be tough, i try to be mean, but eve after all this you're still everything to me"

pretty isn't pretty:

"there's always something in the mirror that i think looks wrong" "when pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do?" "i try to ignore it, but its everything i see. its in the poster on the wall, its in the shitty magazines, its in my phone, its in my head, its in the boys i bring to bed, its all around, its all the time, i don't know why i even try"

teenage dream:

"got your whole life ahead of you, you're only nineteen" "but i fear they already got all the best parts of me" "they all say that it gets better, it gets better, but what if i don't?"

obsessed:

"i'm starin at her like i wanna get hurt" "i can't help it, i got issues, i can't help it" "oh god she makes me so upset"

girl i've always been:

"i have captors i call friends" "i got panic rooms inside my head" "i get down with crooked men" "but i am the girl i've always been" "you say i'm cruel beyond my years" "i got wrapped up in the game again"

scared of my guitar:

"so why's there a pit in my gut in the shape of you?" "maybe i'm just overwhelmed, maybe i'm confused" "once you let the thought in then its already done" "so i'll lay in your arms and pretend its love" "i make excuses, my friends know the truth is i'm not as alright as i claim. i say that i'm fine, i tell them all the time as they watch all the light fade away" "what if i never find anything better?"

stranger:

"i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete" "i can't even remember what made me lose all that sleep" "you're just a stranger i know everything about" "you know i'll always think of you, i'll love you til the end of time, you are the best thing i'll ever keep so far out of my life" "there's nothing left for me to sing, i screamed, i cried, i did the whole thing, and i loved you mad but it doesn't matter anymore" "and if i'm not enough for you, you're not enough for me"

so american:

"he's like a poem i wish i wrote" "oh god its just not fair of him to make me feel this much" "i'm gonna marry him if he keeps this shit up"

[anagramtransitory]

All these old men with huge personalities and overbearing opinions and judgments about every little thing and obvious implicit sexism in their belief in the ability of women to do certain tasks and their belief I will totally sleep with them if only they can interest me enough, when really they’re just walking across a stage madly back and forth in an empty auditorium where I’m the only audience member-just ranting lists of opinions that are final and correct and not up for debate because he’s right about everything and my job is to be quiet and I hate it and am definitely not interested

These big personality old men are, to me, in all things they do, violent. There’s something violent about the way they do everything that makes me want to snipe them down the moment they walk into forest or dark dead end alleys. And they DO walk in forest and dark dead end alleys, and they bring their whole personality with them, not letting anything ever get a word in edgewise or add to the stream of thoughts in their brain a single image or new idea. Nature can’t. The big blue sky can’t. I can’t. No one can, at least not young women!!!

To be clear; I fuck with big personalities heavy. If you’ve got a big personality I Am Listening 👀🦻I am the one person in the back of the class watching the teacher everyone else finds too ___, too something, and I’m always like, whenever I see and meet these people, “hallelujah, the lord be praised, finally, a little fucking soul in the joint, thank god- I am listening, whoever you are with the big personality!!” And I’m super not afraid of anyone, but these men make a social living off of intimidation tactics and blocking out the sun to force plants to pay attention to them- that they’re dying because the are blocking the fucking sun is obvious and silly to bring up to these people while they’re doing it- they’re like yeah, dude, did you hear gravity still works and this is still 2024? No duh I’m blocking the sun, it’s my right, I am so cool and I am so loud because god made me so cool and needed to make me a person able to take the things I deserve (and to take them by any means necessary is implied but is also seen as so obvious they don’t think to actually say or think it out loud- why would they think in words what they do in every single tiny action they ever take- you don’t need words for the obvious and the constant.) “Haha, women are ditzy. LOOK AT ME. LOOK HOW MUCH I TAKE UP THIS STAGE. LOOK HOW LOUD I AM. I SCREAM INTO YOUR EYES WITH MY EYES IN ORDER TO COMMUNICATE AN ORDER: PRETEND TO LIKE ME AT ALL TIMES. YOU MUST.”

And my cheech and chong stupid ass gets out from under the table where I was hiding and using as a shield and as a way to ensure more space between them and I while “we” (while he) talks (and is rudely interrupted by me, who insists on saying things lamely and then trailing off as I watch all the things I care about go out like a small dull flame in their eyes- like a beautiful rare scene a tourist just drives on by and only cares to glimpse for a second and doesn’t consider it worth a stop, worth more than a glimpse and half a second to allow it to exist in their eyes and reality, before it’s gone again to them, as if they’d never heard of or seen it before, when they absolutely have, they have been given every opportunity to stop. I rudely insist on interrupting a genius at work while he’s impressing anybody that’s listening, any warm body will do.)

And I learn to just stay quiet and try to calm his opinions down as fast and efficiently as possible. These men will hear something like Burger King signs are going to become shades of black and white only and lose all the color in their fast food sign. And these men…I can literally imagine having to wrestle a pistol out of their hands having heard the news. Any news, like that, and I can totally see them going and doing something really foolish. And boring. Did I mention boring?

When these men in particular (but also anyone at all who exhibits this behavior) talk to you and you become a prisoner and you feel strangely humiliated, and strangely, used and interchangeable with anyone else, especially those with an equal amount “to offer” to these people in their eyes (aka you and someone else of the same age race sex culture socioeconomic status and power level- you two could be identical in his eyes for all he cares- the point is that he’s getting the praise after bragging, you (whoever you are) are a small dot on a larger map than the map you have, and the dot he placed there to represent you actually is color coded to mean “place/person to stop in at for as long as I want and do anything+get anything I want, because if they don’t they’ll have to sacrifice their own peace, and they’d rather give me anything I want down to the letter”- it does NOT mean “this is where I saw this person who is as equally important and relevant to me as I am relevant and important to fundamentally to myself. This is where an equal, with interesting things to say that I heard and had one thought at all about, was, the last time I saw them.”

I am stupid and empty and I belong to him, everything either does belong or should belong or be at the behest of him. Both these men thought that. They go silent when I speak but they are not interested. All I’m doing is interrupting the important person who is so right about everything in this conversation after all. Which I am not allowed to do. I owe it to him to sacrifice anything at any time of mine for his convenience and happiness and ease and his ability to feel smarter and better than me and everyone else. I am enslaved and I can never get out. Because I am not fighting old men I don’t care about, I just want to end them like a problem once you find the single and easy answer, and the answer is: they leave and be silent forever the world we all have to share with one another. Please make them stop talking. By using deadly but low key violence.

Everything else is meaningless to these people. They…they look at the job we do together and see a way to do every little task and action possible in a violent way-in seemingly infinite variety and pattern or lack thereof, for absolutely no reason. They are just like this the entire time they are conscious and awake and alive, all their lives. They are just horrible and somehow can walk around a large piece of furniture like a bull running at you horns down and you’ve got no time and are gonna be gored in public as much as the bull can (and wants to. Crucially, this is all on a whim, this is all chosen deliberate behavior they decided upon after all this time on this beautiful earth chock full of lessons in humility and the worth of silence with yourself alone and of the genuine power of politeness and civility and kindness when made a fundamental habit of all you do/are. No, this is the way they have chosen, because fuck me, that’s why. They’re like: because fuck you, that’s why, haha. To my face. And I’m like haha. I’m not hurting my hand on some old dude’s face that’s hardened into feeling like really thick ceramic plate that my bones slide off of as they make contact with the skin-slidey-mushy-stubbly broken hollow old man skull. What a waste of a hand is all I’m saying. They totally do need to be thrown off a cliff by swinging them by a huge man holding their legs in a circle and then really getting some spin on them before they are launched over the cliff edge fence like a dog toy. Fuck these guys. Please. Make them suffer but don’t make me do it. It’s like fighting a dragon to save a princess but fighting the dragon just means first learning then beating the dragon at a game of chess- which they teach you in such an unpleasant way you wish you’d been eaten, and which cannot be avoided as chess is the way society has chosen to find a polite alternative to violence around the problems the dragons constantly create and inflict on others. So you have to avoid destruction and violence and be nice instead and learn and master and become a champion of something complex that you are supposed to play with another whose mind you consider an approximate equal to your own, but which is instead played against at a dragon who is so loud violent obnoxious and rude (at the very least) and enjoys it, that you start to think all kinds of second thoughts about kindness and social cohesion and conversation and homicide over petty grievance like you’re a toddler or in an old western saloon and somebody said the wrong thing on accident. They make wounds worse and more septic and terrible and self-defeating in its healing/mending tactics the body is employing, by making the body doubt itself and pause and have to stop all autonomic functions while the smart man tells you how to be oxygenated and moisturized automatically, by listing things the body already did but in a way that makes it sound like a new thing you were too stupid to do before he had the good fortune of showing up in your help-needing situations. You have to stop and get going over and over again. A traffic jam where they insist on using that situation to force you to learn to dissemble your car engines and parts, and learn how stupid you are that you don’t know how to put them back together (the exact opposite of what you just did dissembling it, dummy, haha), and to stand there, while everybody is just sitting in what once was a car engine, while he sits on the tool box you need and refuses to move or let you say a word while he tells you something completely unrelated to anything he just did to the situation and to you, but rather, is about a time where he did something praiseworthy. And you’re like “you told me to stop my heart and lungs until you explained to me what to do, that was 3 minutes ago, I’m basically dead” and they are not too worried. No need to worry- they saw an identical version of you over there somewhere. So what’s important will get attended to. He will wish your dying body in its last seconds to “have a nice day”. And walk away.

[rikus-random-life]

Wedding Rant

10 days to go until my wedding and... I have already had enough! I want it to be over already!

People have an idea of what a wedding is supposed to be. They have an idea of who is supposed to be invited. They have an idea of what you're supposed to wear. They have an idea about every aspect of it, and if you don't stick to the socially accepted conventions, people retaliate. And will try everything in their power to change your ways. It's driving me crazy!

No invitation card? How dare you? No wedding clothes? You can't be serious? No party? What on earth are you thinking? No honeymoon? Ridiculous!

Shut up! And let me plan my wedding the way I want it to be. (For as far as that's possible...)

I'm already forced to have a ceremony I don't want or need. Where's the option to sign a piece of paper and leave!? I don't need your stupid speech! I don't want to exchange rings! I don't want to kiss in front of other people! I don't want to fake a smile and pretend I'm having fun when I'm not!

Fun fact, Social Anxiety and Weddings don't go well together!

Yes, I want to get married! No, I don't want a wedding! Why is it so hard to understand!?

Anyway...

Since we only have a simple ceremony at the city hall, we are allowed to bring just 14 guests. Which is just fine with us, we wanted to keep it small anyway. The initial guest count left us at 15 people though. (That's a list of only parents, siblings, and their partners. Can't really cut anyone out.) But, before even checking if all our potential guests were available, my fiancée had already arranged an exception to allow a 15th guest... Since then, we've learned that two people who were originally included in the count won't be there, so we are at only 13 guests. Fine, no problem.

And then it began... the quest of other people (that means, my fiancée a.o.) to fill up the open slots! More specifically, since we can, let's invite your grandmother too. Don't get me wrong, she is great. I love her. But... she was not on the original guest list. And I never considered inviting additional guests if someone could not make it.

Add the fact that any mention of the wedding already leaves me drained and nauseous! And the potential extra planning and arrangement that could arise from inviting my grandmother...

My autistic brain cannot handle it! There is not enough computing power left to deviate from the original plan and invite additional people. Doesn't matter if my fiancée would completely take care of the matter, my brain cannot handle it!

And I know it doesn't make sense! I can't give any good reason why I don't want to invite my grandmother, so people keep asking, keep pushing, keep driving me more and more insane!

Should I just give in? Give the go-ahead and pray I need not think about it anymore? Just accept I'll have an additional guest? It's still lower than the original count...

I just feel like, if my grandmother is there, the fake smile I'll have the wear that day must be even deeper. The wedding will instantly become even more exhausting.

Not sure why I feel that way...

I'm not going to enjoy the wedding, I have made my peace with that (I think). I will most likely try to forget the day as soon as I can. Because I will feel absolutely miserable throughout it! (And people will hate me for it.)

Every time I put it like that, it feels like I'm forced into a marriage I do not want. But that's not the case. I do love my fiancée dearly and I would love to call him my husband. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I just don't want a wedding!

Everyone around me seems to be much more excited about the wedding than I am... Which is really making me feel even worse for dreading the day. For feeling I will hate every moment of it.

The rational part of my brain tells me I am overreacting and the day won't be as bad as I think, but... that still doesn't change my stress hormone levels are rising with the day and I'll be feeling like shit until it's all over and my brain is either convinced it was indeed overreacting or I confirmed it was indeed as bad or worse than I thought.

So, for now, the first order of business is to sort out my dress. The one I ordered is not exactly as I hoped it would be. A bit more see-through than expected, so I'll have to find something to wear under it. And the skirt doesn't have as much volume as I'd like, so I'll have to add some tule/organza to the existing underskirt or create a separate underskirt to fix that.

Then I must decide what to do with my hair. Get the clips I need. After that, I have to decide on the design of my homemade wedding cake and get the ingredients.

Only after that, I may have some CPU left to decide on inviting an additional person!!

Until then, everyone, leave me alone!