#you either die an undergrad or live long enough to see you become the professor you had an extreme fixation on that bordered on insane

[roombagreyjoy]

Feeling very very weird because some of you who have been here for years may know that I used to keep track of all the crazy shit my Spanish prof. used to say in contrast to my very nice and proper English lit. prof. (who was his partner)... and it is now, having graduated a couple years ago, that I emailed that crazy Spanish prof. not as a student but as we are now... professional acquaintances. And it got me thinking and I said oh fuck.

Now...

Now I AM the crazy Spanish professor dating the very posh very proper English lit. professor 😭 and the students may be posting about my antics on the tumbler dot com 🤡🤡🤡

[amendmade]

*  NOW  PLAYING  :  CRYSTALISED  by  THE  XX  .  don’t  look  now  ,  but  there’s  HAROLD  “  HARRY  ”  OSBORN  over  there  with  their  MOM’S  LOCKET ��!  they’re  never  seen  without  it  .  rumours  say  they  hail  from  MARVEL  COMICS  /  SPIDERMAN  PS4  ,  but  that  just  doesn’t  sound  right  …  after  all  ,  the  TWENTY  year  old  GRAD  STUDENT  has  lived  their  whole  life  here  !  if  they  didn’t  ,  surely  they’d  remember  GOING  UNDER  TREATMENT  .  either  way  ,  i  hope  they  enjoy  their  time  in  somnilia  !  /  jeon  jungkook  ,  nonbinary  masc  ,  he  /  they  .  

CLARABELLE  :  hi  harry  !  thank  you  for  coming  to  meet  with  me  .  this  is  just  going  to  be  a  fun  little  interview  .  so  let’s  start  easy  !  just  for  the  record  :  what’s  your  name  ,  age  ,  gender  ,  and  pronouns  ?

harry  osborn  .  i’m  twenty  and  nonbinary  .  i’m  okay  with  either  he  or  they  .

CLARABELLE  :  nice  !  so  what’s  your  birthday  ?  we  can  add  it  to  the  town  calendar  ,  so  that  residents  can  celebrate  the  day  if  you’d  like  !

oh  !  it’s  june  twenty  ..  but  really  ,  we  don’t  have  to  celebrate  it  .

CLARABELLE  :  do  i  look  like  an  astrology  person  ?  because  i  absolutely  am  --  what  do  you  think  your  astrology  sign  says  about  you  ?

well  …  i’m  not  really  sure  if  i’m  honest  !  i  know  i’m  a  gemini  ,  and  apparently  :  geminis  are  really  social  ?  which  i  guess  is  true  .

CLARABELLE  :  ah  ,  i  see  .  i  heard  you  have  something  that  you  always  bring  everywhere  with  you  .  could  you  tell  me  what  it  is  and  it’s  significance  to  you  ?

[  harry  instinctively  raises  a  hand  to  the  only  piece  of  jewelry  he’s  ever  worn  .  a  gold  locket  necklace  .  when  opened  ,  there’s  a  woman  on  one  side  and  an  engraving  in  the  other  .  he  doesn’t  recognise  the  woman  ,  and  he’s  never  seen  her  around  somnilia  .  but  she  has  to  be  his  mom.  right  ?  who  else  would  it  be  ?  and  even  if  she  left  him  in  the  orphanage  ,  it’s  the  only  thing  he  has  left  of  her  .  he’s  worn  it  so  long  that  he’s  memorised  the  sensation  of  rubbing  his  thumb  against  the  pattern  on  the  outside  of  the  locket  when  he  gets  nervous  .  ]  it’s  a  necklace  .  the  …  well  .  the  foster  home  said  that  it  was  with  me  when  i  got  there  .  i’ve  had  it  ever  since  .

CLARABELLE  :  that’s  fair  !  so  what  has  life  been  like  for  you  in  somnilia  ?  what  was  your  childhood  like  ,  have  you  enjoyed  your  life  here  ?  is  there  anything  you’d  change  about  your  life  here  ?

i  mean  it's  good  !  i  can't  exactly  complain  now  ...  can  i  ?  i  graduated  early  and  got  accepted  to  do  a  graduate  thesis  --  i'm  trying  to  become  an  environmental  attorney  .  my  dad  and  i  have  always  been  pretty  close  ,  he  adopted  me  when  i  was  younger  .  and  he  takes  good  care  of  me  .  and  even  just  aside  from  that  :  i  have  great  boyfriend  and  a  wonderful  best  friend  ...  there's  just  nothing  i'd  ever  change  about  it  .

CLARABELLE  :  what  do  you  have  to  say  about  those  that  say  life  here  isn’t  what  they  seem  ?  if  …  hypothetically  speaking  ,  all  of  this  was  fake  ,  what  would  your  real  life  be  like  ?

what  …  ?  i’m  sorry  ,  but  …  i  don’t  really  like  to  think  about  that  if  i’m  honest  .  i  don’t  think  it  really  does  any  good  to  be  thinking  about  existential  crises  like  that  .  i  mean  …  i  definitely  think  that  the  prospect  of  alternate  realities  is  completely  plausible  --  i  just  don’t  want  to  entertain  the  thought  .  there’s  no  reason  to  ,  really  ,  if  my  life’s  okay .  [  he  doesn’t  want  to  think  about  what  his  life  would  have  been  like  if  he’d  been  with  a  different  family  .  a  mother  alive  in  nothing  but  memories  ,  a  father  absent  from  chosen  isolation  .  a  hereditary  illness  that  took  away  one  parent  ,  leaving  him  fighting  for  his  life  .  he  doesn’t  want  to  think  about  wondering  if  each  breath  is  gonna  be  his  last  .  he  doesn’t  want  think  about  a  life  where  his  body  betrays  him  ,  leaving  him  a  prisoner  in  flesh  and  bones  .  he  doesn’t  want  to  be  desperate  enough  to  lie  in  omission  to  those  he  loves  just  because  he  wouldn’t  want  them  to  watch  him  die  .  going  under  an  experimental  cure  ,  bargaining  for  more  time  on  this  earth  .  then  ,  darkness  ?  no  .  he  doesn’t  like  this  train  of  thought  .  not  at  all  .  ]

CLARABELLE  :  so  now  here  are  some  fun  little  questions  .  let’s  start  with  something  simple  !  what  is  your  favourite  place  here  in  somnilia  ?

i  actually  love  going  on  the  cliff  side  .  when  i  was  in  my  undergrad  ,  i’d  always  go  there  to  take  a  break  and  de-stress  from  everything  .

CLARABELLE  :  if  you  won  the  lottery  ,  what  is  the  first  thing  you  would  do  ? 

pay  off  my  student  loans  .

CLARABELLE  :  who  is  your  role  model  ? 

i  actually  don’t  quite  know  if  i  have  one  ,  but  i’d  say  maybe  :  my professors  ? 

CLARABELLE  :  if  you  could  learn  any  skill  , what  would  it  be  ? 

i’d  love  to  play  the  harp  .  why  ?  it’s  just  a  gorgeous  instrument  .  and  how  many  people  can  say  they  know  how  to  play  the  harp  ?

CLARABELLE  :  what  is  a  normal  breakfast  for  you  like  ? 

i’m  that  weird  percentage  of  people  that  just  really  can’t  have  breakfast  .  i  know  ,  i  know  !  the  most  important  meal  of  the  day  ,  but  i  was  never  a  breakfast  person  .  makes  me  queasy  .

CLARABELLE  :  well  !  thank  you  so  much  for  all  of  that  ,  and  i’m  so  happy  to  have  had  this  interview  with  you  .  i  hope  to  see  you  around  somnilia  more  in  the  future  !

[outrotearbias]

@mccnhild tagged me in a few tags and 1) thank you!!! 2) since i’m apparently incapable of not talking abt myself on all platforms including what was meant to be a thirst blog for bts, but i haven’t actually like. said any concrete facts about myself lmao i figured i should actually talk about myself on here?? so this is a good opportunity to do that

uh well the first one is the bias selfie tag and everyone else might be cute enough to do that but i would honestly rather swallow a bee whole than directly compare myself to yoongi LIKE. i just. no. so i’ll just post a selfie. i almost never take pictures of myself so i really did not have much to choose from, ignore the janky lipstick and extremely yellow light lmao. i took these on the night that i went to go see burn the stage and YES i looked and felt extremely out of place #armysneedgothrepresentation

hate that these are so large but idk how to work tumblr despite having it since 2010

“get to know me” tag:

Nicknames/Pet names:  literally so boring lmfao, just em or emmy (although if you do call me emmy and you’re not a close family member i will be legally obliged to murder you). my grandma calls me milunia sometimes which is like a polish nickname for emily i think? that’s probably my only nickname that i actually like the sound of

Zodiac: this might get me killed for admitting this on tumblr dot com but i could literally care less about astrology. i’m a taurus but i don’t rly identify w it or care

Height: like 5′3.75 and yes i’m pretentious for not just saying 5′4 but that’s my truth

Last Movie: i literally never watch movies uhhh i think the last one was venom? i hate marvel movies normally but i will literally endure anything for tom hardy

Last Thing I Googled: "movies 2018″ bc i knew the last movie i watched was pretty recent but i couldn’t remember it lmfao

Favorite musician: radiohead, city and colour, alexisonfire, daughter, and this group that’s called bts i think??? 

Songs Stuck In My Head: desire by ateez, their new album BANGS and this song in particularly is so catchy 

Other Blogs: @thedalishelves is my main and @calebandnott is my semi/mostly-inactive critical role blog. i’ve had like a billion others but those are the ones that are (ostensibly) active

Do I Get Asks?: i used to a lot but all of the blogs i got a lot of asks on are either deleted or i don’t use them much anymore. i do kinda miss it sometimes but also now no one asks me to diagnose them or tells me their trauma in detail so it’s a toss up really

Dream Trip: i have a phobia of traveling lmfao so it’s more about who i’m with rather than the destination? like i don’t really care at all about seeing new places, more about just being with someone that i like away from daily life for a bit. that being said i do wanna go to paris before i die. also italy and poland to like. connect w my ancestry or w/e lmfao

Amount of Sleep: when i just let my body do its thing (which has been almost all the time lately as i don’t have classes any more and my job has irregular hours) i naturally sleep for abt 9-10 hours. and yes that’s a lot and YES it sucks

Lucky Number: i mean it’s not lucky but i have a Thing abt the number 3 in certain situations

What I’m Wearing: sweats and hoodie bc i’m at home and if u wear anything other than comfy clothes at home. i have nothing to say to u

Favorite food: don’t rly have one atm

Dream job: english professor!!! i’m nearly half way through my phd so. almost there! (if any jobs ever open up 💀💀💀 might get to fulfill this dream in about 40 years or so)

Play any instruments:  i used to play the piano and the baritone (lmfao) but i’ve long abandoned them

Languages: obvs english, EXTREMELY bad french that i can passably read, sort of write, almost completely cannot speak and definitely cannot understand. also i took a year of arabic during my undergrad but i only remember how to kind of read the alphabet. and i have a pretty sizable polish vocabulary (considering i don’t speak it) but absolutely do not know ANY grammar, so the best i could do is throwing random polish words into english sentences. so. basically just english and reading in french

Random fact: *vegan voice* HI I’M A VEGAN

15 questions tag:

Are You Named After Someone: yeah emily brontë bc my mom loved wuthering heights lmfao. in hindsight.. really indicative of how my life would turn out (both in the whole ‘i love reading and i’m doing an english phd’ thing and also the gothic tragic horror lmfao)

When was the last time you cried: yesterday about 461 times. sometimes it be like that

Do You Have Kids: yes one beautiful little tabby cat named faye, i adopted her in august and she’s 3 years old now and extremely annoying and also perfect

Do You Use Sarcasm A Lot: i used to a lot more but now i’m too paranoid abt people hating me and thinking i’m negative so i try not to

What’s the First Thing You Notice About Someone: if they’re a threat or not (either in the immediate physical sense, like seeing someone walking down the street towards me, or in the more complicated sense that i can’t be bothered getting into now and yes i’m aware this is a depressing answer)

Eye Color: dark green

Scary Movie or Happy Ending:  what a weird thing to juxtapose lmfao ig i’m a bit too much of a wimp to watch scary movies often so happy ending? i’m really not one to need happy endings in a movie/story though

Any Special Talents: I Cannot Stress Enough How Untalented I Am. anything that i’m good at is due to dedicating A LOT of time and practice to it.

Where Were You Born: toronto

Hobbies: video games are definitely my main hobby. other than like, listening to music and indulging in whatever obsession i currently have (like bts for instance) all i do is play video games. reading isn’t a hobby anymore, bc even though it occupies most of my time, it’s all for school

Pets: seems pretty redundant to ask about children and pets in one tag. but in addition to my own cat, my family also has a cat named chloe who is super gross but also i love her to death and i think she might actually be an angel. if you could not tell i am completely a cat person and plan on adopting 300

How Tall Are You: let’s go w the less pretentious answer of 5′4 this time even if it’s 0.25″ short of the truth

What Sports Do You Play/Have You Played: LMMMMAAAAOOOOOOOOOO DO I LOOK LIKE

Favorite Subject: i mean. english. obviously

Dream Job: since i already answered this let’s really get wild w the “dream” part of dream job. i would absolutely love to somehow become extremely rich through no work of my own, move to an isolated castle w a really big library, wifi, and like. idk an archery range and some stables w horses and a lot of cats and an incredibly hot gameskeeper that i have a passionate but somewhat detached love affair with. like i’m tryna live like a combination of enya and lady chatterley from lady chatterley’s lover except w/out the shitty husband and class critiques and soul-destroying ennui

HOO BOY i really wrote way too much huh. i’m too avoidant to tag ppl but if u read that whole mess i owe u my whole life thank u

[confringo-]

Letters to My Younger Self

Dear Eighteen Year Old Joey,

I’m writing to you because this is a writing warm-up before I start writing our novel. That’s right, we’re still writing. We’re still alive. I’m writing specifically to this year of our lives because this is one of the darkest years of our life. Mostly because we believe we’re going to be stuck in a job we don’t like because we have to follow what Mom says and we believe that being creative ended when we realized our voice isn’t going to catapult us to stardom. 

(Note: you’re a Leo Rising. It’ll make sense if you look it up.) 

That is all to say, we aren’t trapped. Soon enough, you’ll come into our second semester of our second year of our psychology major and you’ll have a counseling class that’ll save your life and make you realize that there’s no reason for you to trap yourself in what should happen and what you should do for the family. Screw the family. It’s still as much of a mess as you’re experiencing now, but at least you can be alone. At least you can lock your door and be left alone. Now, more than ever. 

You’re going to get a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. I know it was a huge blow when Ateneo de Manila waitlisted you and you never got that slot in the creative writing undergrad, but you’ll have to agree that if we were left to our own devices in Manila, you’d kill yourself. 

You have a master’s degree. By the time I’m writing this, it’s been three years since you earned that master’s degree. We haven’t gotten published yet. It’s been an equally tough three years since that Master’s course. My advice would be to stop writing about Derek and Nate. Only for a little while. Writing and rewriting the same story for ten years will make you lose it when people start to tear it apart. Not in the bad way. Critiques are there to help. Your professors and peers were always so gentle with their words. Writers, the lot of them. 

But yeah, it’s been tough, dude. We’ve been struggling with a lot. You had a good run after college but right now, we’re back in the same place as we were when I was your age. Except, we’re more well-equipped. We’ve got more reasons to live, or, at least, know those reasons now instead of denying them. 

(No, no boyfriend yet. either. That’s fine. We’ve learned to thrive in the loneliness and learned that platonic relationships are more important than romantic ones. We’re still living with everyone. Tatay died though, so that’s a plus lmao. At the funeral, we were sitting in the back because why would we sit in the front? And a bird shat on us and we were like “a ghost!”) 

This is all to say that we’re taking steps towards where we want to be when we realized that being an author was within the realm of possibility. We’ve plateaued and the climb has become a lot steeper. And it’s difficult. And we don’t want to go on. And I want to remind myself, by writing to you, that this can’t be the end. We wanted so much. We wanted it so much. What was it all for if not for this? What was talking to our mom and telling her that we want to be a writer for? The anxiety before admitting to it? The struggle of getting all of our documents together? The psychometrician license we got so she’d agree to the master’s degree? The best two years of our life in Arcadia University? What was it all for if not for this? If not to write a story that we’re passionate about? If not to write a story that we want to read ourselves? 

Later, we would say to people, “This story is for all the younger Joeys. The Joey in a private Christian school who had nothing like what we have now.” We would say “I want to write stories that don’t make me want to read fanfiction because this is what I wanted to see all throughout the story.” 

We need to remember what it was all for if not for creation. Not perfection. Not becoming the next JK Rowling (she died. It was very tragic.) We write to create a story that only you can make. Tropes are forever. Every story has been written to death. But not yours. Don’t let it die. We didn’t persevere this long to let it die. 

I love you. You’ll survive your college years. Your still best friends with the usual suspects. Except Hannah. We don’t talk to her anymore. Sofia’s forever. You guys will fight a lot but in the end you’ll gain a bond that no man can give you and no man can sever. You’ll meet so many good people and write so much good fanfiction. Your world is crumbling the way my world is crumbling too but since I’m writing to you...I want to remind you that it gets better. Remind you, remind myself. 

Hope is the thing with feathers. Look it up. 

Love always,

Joey, 2021.