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mashbits · 3 years

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i have many feelings and probably unpopular opinions/views on the bee duo-las nevadas conflict today so here we go, all characters mentions are c! only!

(mostly c!tubbo analysis i’m sorry)

while yes, quackity has every right to be suspicious of the outpost especially when it really was designed to spy on his country, tubbo also has every right to build there. because quackity never specified he was going to expand on that land. more so, tubbo had every right to be suspicious of las nevadas and want to see what’s going on, because he himself knows just how incredibly dangerous new things on the smp can be.

tubbo obviously wants to trust quackity and believe there’s nothing sketchy going on in las nevada’s, but there’s so much history between them that’s left some serious, albeit unnoticeable, tension against quackity (and most of the server)

he himself said that it was quackity who took part in tubbo’s execution. while many tend to just blame schlatt and techno, most people forget that quackity had so much to do with it as well. while yes, tubbo has forgiven him, who’s to say tubbo isn’t still effected by it. we all know how horrible he is when it comes to expression his emotions/trauma, and his nonchalant attitude towards his own life may come into effect as well.

as well as, while tubbo was president, it was quackity who took charge and bossed tubbo around the most. HE spoke over tubbo, and HE was the one comparing him to schlatt, their shared tormentor during the manburg arc. quackity had to have known how much that would hurt. quackity also suggested execution ranboo just before doomsday, an example of how he had no problem executing tubbo before. quackity is known to manipulate tubbo and put words into his mouth, with how much “i trust you, BUT (insert negative)” quackity threw. quackity also tried to leave l’manburg on doomsday, which obviously hurt tubbo even if he did come back. tubbo standing up to quackity when he felt entirely justified building onto an apparently unclaimed piece of land wasn’t tubbo having any negative intentions or violent thoughts, it was only a teenager who was tired of being bullied and walked all over.

tubbo has every right to be afraid of what quackity in las nevada’s could do. building a spy outpost and calling it a cookie stand is how tubbo, who’s known to go to the extremes when feeling threatened, is entirely justified. because tubbo is afraid of his own projects getting griefed, as demonstrated in the past, him making the outpost so secure is, in tubbo’s traumatized mind, entirely justified. and i agree.

quackity is in his every right to be suspicious and untrusting with the outpost, but he is in no way innocent of tricking people himself. tubbo’s river compromise was completely reasonable.

as well as, i truly believe if quackity had tried talking to the bee duo before instantly starting to build a wall against the other wall, the conflict wouldn’t have been to negative. tubbo felt threatened by the immediate distrust and assumption that they were out to harm las nevadas, when he just wanted to keep an eye out and stay close to people he’s afraid of, to avoid someone else getting hurt. quackity feeling threatened by a supposed cookie store in territory he didn’t officially claim, where the wall wasn’t even being built directly towards las nevadas, felt a bit too extreme.

also, the way quackity would say things like “i’ll ALLOW you to keep the farm” “if you’d asked permission first” and bringing up so much politics, law and terms felt like an adult undermining a child, like he didn’t actually respect tubbo as a person. i’ve noticed a pattern of certain adults treating the minors of the smp as adults who should take the blame for problems that aren’t even their own and then treating them like clueless kids who don’t know what they’re talking about when it’s convenient for them. quackity during tubbo’s presidency, while treating him like a child, put all of the pressure and decisions on him instead of owning up to his own issues. quackity just doesn’t sit right with me, he and wilbur both being extreme manipulators and picking/choosing when they want to treat one of the kids with respect feels incredibly shitty. ALSO also, the fact that quackity kept bringing up jack manifold and associating all of his actions to tubbo also feels very uncomfortable. judging a person by association is toxic and biased, especially since quackity only believed jack manifold to live in snowchester- a place that has been, and tubbo has made this very clear, somewhere that people can go to relax and live peacefully, and conflict-free. tubbo let’s anyone build and reside in snowchester not for money or profit or power, but because he knows there are people on the server who’re tired of feeling threatened. tubbo is in no way responsible for the actions of others associated with him or his home. quackity really liked forgetting that foolish and puffy lived there as well, both of which he trusts (or manipulated into joining las nevadas, moreso foolish, as i’m not too sure where puffy lies).

speaking of foolish, i am :D not okay :D bc i love foolish, he’s my sweet shark god but with how carefree he was about giving away all of snowchester secrets to quackity when tubbo clearly trusted him and welcomed him with open/warm arms, it hurted :’D if quackity finds out about michael because of foolish, and in turn something happens to michael, i will lose it-

i’m not entirely sure what quackity is planning with las nevadas, especially since he’s trying revive schlatt as well, but it isn’t anything good. tubbo has every right to be suspicious. quackity obviously believed that he would be able to take over the conversation and sound like he was in the right/being fair the entire time, and speak over tubbo like always. he tried to as well, and tried to put words into tubbo’s mouth yet again. for someone who’s so obsessed with not repeating history, he definitely loves to let it control him. i’m proud of tubbo for standing his ground.

people assume history will repeat itself, but it only will if you let it take over. quackity wanting las nevadas to not see the fate of l’manburg is going to be its downfall, because quackity didn’t actually learn from history. he’s letting it control him.

#mcyt #tubbo #/roleplay #dream smp #tommyinnit #dream #ranboo #las nevadas #lore #quackity #foolish gamers #foolishg #michael beloved #character analysis #i have feelings

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flying-elliska · 3 years

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Shadow and Bone Season 1 Review

Ok so I got distracted by a need to watch all of Ben Barnes' filmography (lmao) but here is my review : It was really fun to watch and it was clearly made with love which is already the main thing with YA fantasy, which is often turned into a soulless moneygrab when put on screen. The actors were GREAT. I did think that the Crows suffered from being mashed up with the Shadow and Bone story, but they were still a highlight. I also think it was a bit rushed, esp. when it came to Alina's training. The costumes were beautiful, I want a kefta now. Plus the crossover fanfic interactions btw the SaB characters and the Crows were just pure joy. Also Milo, obviously <3 I'm in hyperfixation mode so here, have an essay :

The "Shadow and Bone" Characters :

- Jessie Mei Li !!!!!! She really made me like Alina so much more than in the books, she absolutely is the 'human embodiment of literal sunshine' and she was a joy to watch. Her character's arc is cliché but her acting is so expressive and endearing, I really felt for her all the way through. (maybe I'm biased bc Jessie talking about her ADHD and seeing her thrive at the same time is like!!! i love them they deserve all the best.) I like that they made Alina more proactive - even though she does make some stupid decisions... but I just don't understand people who put that down as bad writing, like ??? have you ever met a real person who only makes wise, good decisions ?? a character like that would either be at the end of their story or just in the background because that makes them static. The things with the maps in the beginning does a good job of illustrating how she is just this one girl making rash, erratic decisions out of fear and loyalty and doesn't have a sense of the bigger picture, caught in the tide of bigger events. It works for her character. When it comes to the choice of making her half-Shu, I do think it really makes sense re: her character feeling like an outsider but I do understand the criticisms that the microaggressions felt too relentless and one-note. I am really looking forward to them introducing Tamar and Tolya and hopefully connecting to them over her heritage in a more positive way.

- Mal in the books was one of the most annoying YA characters I've ever come across, so I really liked that they made him much more of a loyal, devoted friend. I found his relationship with Alina cute, it really gives us the sense that these are two orphans who found a home in each other, childhood best friends (and potential sweethearts) separated by war, two army grunts and ordinary people caught up in the wheels of power and war that usually crushes people like them, it's a great way to introduce the dynamics of their world and it's a trope that always makes me emo. It felt a bit too one note to me, though, and too heavily on the nose, like Mal's only personality was his attachment to Alina (and his resentment towards the Grisha) and too much of her emotional arc also relied on him. Them hitting us over the head with the meadow scenes felt like pure telling instead of showing and it ended up being super repetitive and kind of annoying. I am willing to like this pairing, but I wanted more scenes of them just having conversations about things and really understanding why they like each other beyond the whole childhood friends bond that we're asked to accept exists at the beginning. So I hope there's more depth there in next seasons.

- Ben Barnes!!!! Just jksdfhgkdjghdf. I'm not a big villain stan usually and I hated the Darkling in the books but DAMN his performance is just amazing. They managed to make him more sympathetic and human while at the same time making clear the stuff he does is deeply horrible. There's the Magneto-aspect of 'well clearly his methods are fucked up but he's addressing a terrible injustice nobody is doing anything about' that makes it very tempting to root for him ; and again, well, like, Ben Barnes is so hot and charismatic it feels uncomfortable (which I guess is part of the point lol). His loss of humanity is, up to a point, understandable, brought about by despair, loneliness, grief and a sense of powerlessness - living so long he starts to see other people as disposable, losing so many people he stops caring, seeing over and over how hate never seems to stop, etc. It's a logical explanation for going insane.

But the hunger for power is also very much present as a motivation and this ambiguity is there constantly. Does he maybe come to genuinely care for Alina or is it totally bullshit ? I think he does, he's just so fucked up that it comes out as possessiveness and a need to control her. He wants Alina to be his equal but he's incapable of treating her that way. It's tragic, in a sense, but the show doesn't excuse his actions either. Like his monstrosity is a product of this world full of injustice, yes, and that warrants some compassion, monsters are always a symptom of their environment in some ways and dehumanizing them completely is an excuse ; but at the same time, he sabotaged his own cause anyway the moment he started to treat other people like things, as he does with Alina, because that just perpetuates the cycle of violence and hate. At some point he started feeling like he was the only solution and he was owed power for his sacrifices, and he's using his cause as an excuse. When Alina came to him, there was a possibility for redemption, taking down the Fold, and it's a test because there is finally someone on his level of power. But instead of seeking to remedy the power imbalance between them, he made it worse, by lying to her, manipulating her, etc, and the antler collar is the ultimate sign of this.

I love those scenes towards the end (the antler-based body horror has big Hannibal vibes, so messed up). I like Alina telling him they could have had this, that she had compassion for him and his cause, that they could have worked together, and he's the one responsible for screwing it up and this time his claim that he's the misunderstood victim ("Make me your villain") appears delusional and self-serving instead of somewhat justified. The almost-lovers to enemies vibes, the sense of lost potential, and the angst of the whole 'oh you could finally have been loved by people, too bad you fucked it up !', very juicy. There is this fundamental idea that power/respect/love is not something you are owed no matter how good your intentions are or because you're strong or you have suffered or you're willing to commit horrible drastic actions, you have to keep proving you deserve it, and trying to claim power without responsibility of care turns you into a monster. The thing with the stag was an excellent metaphor of the fact that there's things you can't take, they have to be given to you, and the wonderful power there is in understanding that is what allows Alina to harness the stag amplifier's power. This is really when she escapes his grim utilitarian outlook and a different way forward and owns her own power fully on her own terms.

Anyway I hope Alina gets to beat the shit out of him at some point that would be very sexy but I'm also looking forward to see how their arcs parallel and diverge from each other as Alina starts to grapple more with the implications of her power and the harsh dilemmas of war and her own dark side. I want to see him become scared of her, and I feel it will be more visible than in the books where he just has this cold aggressive facade all the time. This one feels a lot more openly emotional which is just a lot more interesting.

- As for the other characters ; Zoya mostly made me sad. The actress has the perfect vibes but I'm not sure I love their take on her character so far, it does make sense in terms of the later books - that she has internalized prejudice regarding her mixed-race heritage, that she is jealous of Alina because of how hard she's fought to get where she is and Alina kind of takes it away from her, etc. But I would have liked to see a bit more of her being badass and sharp-tongued in a clever (even if mean) way instead of spending most of her time being rejected by men and being racist towards Alina. I did like the ending though, of her actually seeing the monstrosity of the Darkling in action and the mention of her aunt. And her brief bonding with Inej was great, just because it was badass but also maybe because it could be a part of Zoya learning to accept her Suli heritage in turn, maybe not right away but in time, when thinking of that part of herself, she won't only think of her parents' ruined marriage and all the pain it caused, but also of that badass and brave acrobat girl who went toe to toe with these really scary monsters without even having any powers and !!!!!

- Also Leigh's cameo was so cute and as an aspiring writer this is just such wish fulfillment

- I honestly think that having the Crows there actually made the S&B story better ? Not only in terms of the much needed levity breaks but also in terms of themes. For instance, Matthias and Nina's story gave us a really raw and visceral view of how the Grisha are hunted. And Inej's relationship to Alina really gave us a sense of what Alina actually means to people who believe in the Saints in a way that doesn't feel just like 'ugh those superstitious people' because we know that Inej's faith is part of what makes her who she is and a person with morals, and something that saw her through the worst moments of her life. It feels so special that she got to meet Alina and given a sign that maybe the world is not completely shitty. And Alina's kindness towards Inej really gives you a sense that she might be, or become worthy of that belief in time, or at least that she wants to, that she's figuring out her power to really touch people's lives might be a good thing, and that she's starting to accept this responsibility more fully. And her arming Inej is a nice parallel to that. I'm very emotional about this scene, because one of the first things we see of young Alina is her taking out a knife to defend Mal from the bullies, because she's protective and brave, but she's also aware the world is a shitty place, and so her giving that knife to Inej is a sort of spiritual transmission and recognition of sorts, that she trusts Inej with that fighting power, that she'll use this knife to defend herself and her loved ones and not abuse it. It's so interesting. And a counter point to the Darkling's fucked up relationship to power that Alina might at some point get afraid she'll replicate. That you could see Alina trying to gather followers and using people's admiration for her like he did but instead she sets them free and empowers them. It's great. And I feel that when Inej takes to the seas, she'll think about Alina. (I do hope somebody tells her Alina's not dead at some point though god). Girls giving each other knives is my spirituality, honestly.

- And I also noticed an interesting parallel between Kaz and the Darkling in terms of being two emo dudes who like to wear black, are prone to violence and have a thing for two very powerful women they think are special and want to have at their side, but of course, they go about it in very different ways. The Darkling comes at it from a place of power while Kaz comes from a place of utter powerlessness, first of all, and he understands why it's important to set Inej free. Him spending the entire season trying to earn enough money to pay off Inej's indenture is the opposite to the Darkling putting that collar on Alina and while I do have issues with how the show portrays him, I do love that. Love is about setting the person you love free !!!! And that confrontation scene was so powerful, when Kaz tells the Darkling Alina was tired of being a captive ! Drag him !

- As for Genya, I liked the actress and her chemistry with Alina, but I'm not sure they did a great job of making her arc very clear, for instance what it means for her to get that red kefta, her relationship with the other Grisha, etc. Her and David are already very cute though. Also very much looking forward to see where that goes.

So yeah I think they did a great job with this bit actually, I enjoyed a lot more than I think I would and even though it is a very tropey story, there's plenty of depth there too.

The Crows :

- I'm a bit more nitpicky about this because I care about these characters so much. I think overall the problem is that the SaB story in the books happens on this massive scale with enormous stakes, and that next to that the Crows' issues feel less important ; it's like their impact is distorted by the gravity of the much larger story. Like for instance, Kaz in the books is very much at the center of everything, this larger than life trickster figure who knows and controls almost everything by sheer cleverness, and he has this sense of allure and mystique that can't happen here, and so his aura just shrinks. On top of that they're not on their home turf. Being introduced to these characters before they've reached their full levels of badass is weird - there is a reason why prequels generally happen after the main stuff, because they count on the love you have for these characters at their full potential to make you interested in their story when they were less badass and interesting. So I had several moments where I was like 'oh this feels wrong'. Tbh the idea that they would even volunteer to kidnap Alina in the first place, what with Inej's backstory, feels kind of wrong, esp since they had no idea of what would happen to her if they succeeded.

- But I still enjoyed a lot of it though, especially the fact that they were this force of chaos in the midst of this bigger narrative that's a lot more self-serious. The bits with the train, or the circus acts were very clever. A lot of the best moments in the show happen when they come to disturb the other plot in unexpected ways. I'm still dead over the whole 'Alina jumps into their carriage' scene, that was fucking gold. The team up at the end !!!! Alina and Kaz making a deal ! Inej stabbing the Darkling !!!! Them stealing the Darkling's carriage !!! They don't give a shit that the story is supposed to be super dramatic it's great.

- Jesper is the one character they completely nailed from start to finish and he's probably my favorite part of the whole show. He's very funny without being reduced to the role of comic relief ; he's just so! damn! cool!!!!!!! I honestly feel this is a thing they actually did even better than in the books, or at least Six of Crows where I felt Jasper kind of disappeared behind Kaz and they insist a lot on his flaws and issues. So before we dig more into those problems I love that they gave him time to be this ultra badass who saves the day several times ; while at the same time, hinting at further developments like his powers or his gambling issues. Kit Young is just perfect, confident without being arrogant, a bit cold when it comes to crime while at the same time being so obviously caring with Inej - I loved their friendship, that was so sweet. My main criticism is that they should have made it clearer he was bi because there are already people calling him gay and that's very annoying. I know some people had a problem with his hookup and like...I can see it's a bit of a cliché...the charming badass bisexual adventurer....it's a trope I kind of love though lmao and the scene itself felt kind of cute and fun. He's not the only person who is shown to have an active sexuality and he's also not the only queer person around and we know he's going to have a more substantial romantic arc later so eh. On a larger note I loved the little casual hints of completely normalized queerness - Nadia thirsting over Zoya, Fedyor and Ivan, Poppy, etc. Having grown up with fantasy where queerness was either completely erased or very tormented and problematic, this was refreshing as hell.

- Inej and Kaz...my faves... They have a kind of relationship which feels so rare and unique in terms of what exists on TV and while I don't feel they entirely replicated it, the core is still there - the mutual respect and building of trust, the longing, the repression, the trauma, etc. One thing I really like is their arc around faith - in the books, Kaz is dismissive of Inej's faith in ways that often feel really shitty and I like that he learns to be more respectful of it. It's very much linked to hope/survival ; Inej keeps this token from her parents and she hopes to find them again ; Kaz tells her it's no use and she'll survive better if she gives up. He believes Alina is a fake, while Inej wants to believe that myths can come true and there is hope for good things in the world. Kaz comes to accept that Alina is the real deal and, out of respect for Inej's faith, to stop pursuing her. I loved the bit about Inej struggling to kill as well - it's the dilemma of what her survival and that of the people she really cares about are worth in such a shitty world - her compassion is a good part of her but so is her survival instinct, and that's the part Kaz represents - that even after she's been through hell, broken in unfathomable ways, even if she gave up all hope and faith in the world, even she becomes dangerous and ruthless to survive, she will still deserve dignity, and to be treated better. And meanwhile she is willing to break her principles, which she holds so dearly, to save him, when he's never had anyone who cared for him like that - enough to keep him alive. That bit in the church !!!!! God !!!!!! Bye !!!!!!! And then him basically calling her his own version of a Saint, that he doesn't believe in miracles but he does believe in her !!! It's very emblematic of their whole arc ; he empowers her to survive in a ruthless world and loves her at her most dangerous ; but he loves her laugh too, he finds her a ship and her parents, he honors her capacity for love and hope even when he can't share it. And she sees that he's capable of doing better, that he's worth caring for. This whole thing kills me honestly and I can't wait to see where they take this next. I'm not mad they're a bit more soft and obvious than in the books, Kaz would just have come across as an an asshole otherwise.

- That said, there are bits of how they introduced their backstories I don't like. I get that making it so Inej was still tied to the Menagerie gave them a very powerful reason to want to kidnap Alina beyond greed so that they wouldn't look like very shitty people. But in the books Inej is terrified by the idea of simply seeing Heleen or the Menagerie and the way they have her interact with her feels weirdly casual and dismissive of her trauma. Also, in the books, the fact that Kaz had to convince Per Haskell to buy Inej's contract through a lot of effort, that he wasn't the one holding that above her head either, made the power dynamics more palatable. I especially disliked the scene where Kaz says he won't free other girls because just Inej is special, it makes him look like he has the power but he's just too much of a callous asshole to do it, and that he just freed Inej because he liked her which is absolutely not what their relationship is about at the start, it's a lot more about seeing Inej's dangerous side behind a facade of powerlessness and relating to her, in a sense, and this scene made it all feel cheap.

- Also, what was that about Inej having a brother ? Not a fan of that either. I'm afraid they're going to make her story all about finding what happened to him, and that's 1) too on the nose similar to Kaz's story and 2) it kind of cheapens her own arc, a female character realizing that what was done to her was wrong, reclaiming her own power and dignity and then making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else, harnessing her personal experience to save strangers, that's so powerful - making it about a family member at first, especially if it's about revenge, it's so much more simplistic and unoriginal and the perspective really annoys me.

- Also not a fan of Per Haskell not being there because he's a very important part of Kaz's evolution, so I hope he shows up eventually - and the way they introduced Pekka Rollins was kind of like...weird and out of place. I just found the Crows' introduction scenes stilted and not as cool as they should have been - well, Jesper and Inej were very cool, but we needed to see Kaz in action first, we needed to see why he's such a menace before we see him flounder later, and I just...I don't know exactly but it didn't work for me. Also this is a very petty thing but I wasn't crazy about the Ketterdam sets, I know this is probably a budget thing but in my head it looked like this incredible mix of Amsterdam and Venice - specific locations in the book directly remind me of parts of Amsterdam I know very well - and instead what we got felt like this very generic London-ish fantasy setting....so boring. Also a lot of scenes that felt to exposition-y. I don't mind that Kaz was a bit softer than in the books, like many people have said some things work in books and don't work on a screen, and you need to make the character's inner dynamics more explicit. But I do agree that, at the same time, he should have been more ruthless towards people outside of his group. Loved that scene where he faces the Inferni though, and how well they illustrated his disability and aversion to touch.

- I don't have that much to say about Nina and Matthias ; I'm still not super sold on the whole 'haha misogyny!' thing and I dislike that so much of Matthias' change of heart relies on the fact that he finds Nina hot. But I did think that the actors had enough chemistry to make their scenes together interesting and cute ; I loved the waffle scene. Even though it's disappointing that they didn't find an actress who was more clearly plus size for Nina, I still think Danielle does a good job bringing her bold, unapologetic energy. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Crows as a whole team.

So yeah, even though the season didn't feel like a perfect, coherent whole, it was just a lot of fun and I really hope they get renewed. In particular I feel like tying the first trilogy to the Crows' story could create such interesting parallels in terms of themes, about power, the cost of survival, hope, trauma, etc etc

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix #grishaverse #six of crows #leigh bardugo

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bbq-hawks-wings · 4 years

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Really long ask - Part 1: Hi, sorry for this long rant, but I just wanted to vent since I saw this latest story posted on AO3 and I am restraining myself on commenting on their story so I'm just letting my anger out here about it and other issues regarding fan-depiction of Hawks. It's vaguely related to your post on how DabiHawks or Dabi+Hawks stories make it all about Dabi and always made Hawks out to be the one who starts the problems in their relationship or is the one trying to get Dabi's

Content warning: passing mention of r*pe in a fanfiction.

LOOOONG post under the cut.

(Cont.)

Dabi's attentions when it's canon that it's the complete opposite. This latest story that came up in my feed was about Hawks "harassing" Dabi (who apparently has a backstory of r*pe) and Twice helps Dabi works out his feelings. Among the hoards of tags condemning Hawks, they decided to use "Hawks is very uncool in this fic heads up" so that's another one to add to my filters. I think I also have to block the "Dabi Needs a Hug" tags too bc he's always woobified like heck.

I really want to read stories where Hawks interacts with Twice since they have a bond/drama with each other, but people have been adding Dabi and either making it seem like Hawks has been gaslighting Dabi in their "relationship" or with Twice. I can acknowledge stories where Hawks feels guilty for what he had to do or Twice being anger/betrayed over Hawks' actions since that is actually what happened; but I will not stand for Dabi claiming Hawks took advantage of Twice or Twice and Dabi having feelings for each other with Hawks in the way bc Dabi is a) the one who let Hawks in b) knew Twice is gullible and c) used Twice as bait. Even in the stories that are cute/causal+funny, Hawks is always the one who gets threatened with fire, harsh insults, or guilted into compliance but the seriousness of the first 2 are always brushed off and the third kinda makes me want it that Hawks doesn't have friends bc most people write him as a bad friend who only cares about his own problems (especially the ones that write Hawks like a celebrity/night club person).

On writing Dabi, his issues always take priority over everything else, his family loves him, and the lov is always chill with him. He's usually written as the fun asshole/caretaker (bc of his big brother status or ablity to cook). Those factors aren't bad by itself, but it's extremely irritating when the writers/artists can give that level of care to Dabi, but just reduce Hawks to a meme who is a workaholic for the government/scared of punishment & not bc he really cares about the people he saves/helps. It's not like I hate the DabiHawks pairing, but the majority of the content (esp the recent ones), are frustrating to read & Hawks' character is usually written in bad out of character extremes. I am really mystified that I'm praying for canon content rather than fanmade most of the time.

Phew! After the back and forth it looks like we got to the end of that! (Or did we?! *Dun dun DUUUUN*) If not, though, feel free to keep the asks rolling. Lol Foxy and I are usually pretty happy to receive as many asks as people want to send even if it takes us a while, individually, to get to it. Now to finally address what you sent.

I find myself in a weird place when it comes to OOC fanfic because on the one hand people can write whatever they want, and I don’t really have a place to criticize them; but also when they blatantly and willingly misinterpret a character so they have grounds to bash on them it also leaves me acutely uncomfortable. I don’t think I’d call it “problematic” as much as a squick? Like, if they’re willing to blow past all the obvious proof to the contrary about their claims of a fictional character just because they hate them, then are they willing to do the same thing to a real person? Usually, those kinds of thoughts are pointlessly extreme, but we know those who unironically and/or unapologeticly call fans of the heroes “bootlickers” so... It’s like, ooc vent fics are also fine; and if you want to rewrite a character to fit the narrative scheme you’ve set up that’s cool as long as its tagged (“ooc [character]” or something) and/or just mention in the a/n that they knowingly and willingly mischaracterized them for the sake of the fic. Just. Don’t. Claim. It’s. Canon.

And speaking of canon, as much as I’m sure Horikoshi knew Hawks and Dabi were going to end up shipped I think it’s obvious that he never was going to canonically write them ending up together, yet here comes the “canon must validate my headcanon” crowd calling him a bad writer because the author had some bigger narrative goal in mind than having two pretty anime boys kissing.

And the worst part to me is, I feel there’s a distinct slice of the DabiHawks crowd missing out on some of the possibilities of this ship by intentionally mischaracterizing them. Like, the aesthetic equal/opposite draw of the ship is phenomenal as it is and I don’t even ship them, but I can see a wide range of possible fics based solely on the principle that they are canonically incompatible!

At the end of the day, Dabi is a dime-a-dozen edgelord - that pain in the butt OC that so many newbie D&D players make that they think is so deep and dark and mature, but is about as cookie-cutter as they come. It’s not that this kind of character is unsalvageable or a hopeless Gary Stu character, just that they don’t often come across as compelling in and of themselves or that they need more than just selfish hatred to carry them through a series. Two kinds of edgelords that can be done well are the “Out of the Ashes” edgelord and “I’ll Pull You Into Hell With Me” edgelord. The first kind recognizes there’s more to life than their sad backstory and getting even and thus choose to aspire to more noble causes - think Joel from The Last of Us. The second recognizes they’re actively doing wrong and come to embrace it - being more concerned with getting what they want than taking the moral high ground - think Frank Castle, aka the Punisher - and even these darker, “unsaveable” kinds of edgelord antiheroes can have redeeming qualities such as meeting and helping a young hopeful and telling them, “I know I’m on the road to hell, so if you want to save yourself you’d better not follow me.”

Dabi actually has what he needs to become the second type right now (assuming he’s Touya) and could even evolve into the first not unlike Kratos from God of War, but that potential can’t be fully recognized until you admit that he’s fundamentally self-centered and a bad person as-is. He may have the tragic backstory complete with justifiable hate at his genuinely abusive father, but rather than using that as fuel to see that never happen to anyone else like it did him - he just wants to get even. He burns people alive, knowing well he’s participating in the same destruction that his father committed to make him what he is now. He doesn’t recognize any of the merits of hero society and is only concerned with burning it to ash. He could use what happened to his family to incite compassion in his heart and take others under his wing, but instead he uses people as a mean to his own ends. He isn’t even proper grimdark - he’s just your run of the mill egotistical megalomaniac with a punk aesthetic.

And that’s still a good character in the grand scheme of things, maybe just not alone! Moreso, it’s a good villain and EVEN BETTER when you put him next to Hawks who is at his core:

Fundamentally Hopepunk!

Hopepunk is about being good and kind as an act of rebellion against a cruel and unfair world no matter how bleak it gets or how badly you’re beaten down. Despite his own cruel past, Hawks still has a heart to help others for no other reason than to help them, he constantly changes the odds to save as many people as he can when he’d be given a pass for letting the cards fall where they will, and not only is his aim to “help others” but to make sure that there’ll never be need for heroes again. He’s an active rebel against the system fighting with kindness and goodness, fervently looking and listening for the next opportunity to do good.

In agreement with you, Hawks and Twice are interesting to explore because while Twice is an optimist looking to make the world a better place, he’s still a step or two removed from Hawks’ worldview because Twice refuses to let go of the “family” he found for himself while Hawks is willing to sacrifice himself for others. That dynamic is so interesting, and it’s what made them so initially compatible and subsequently heartbreaking in canon.

And it’s such a disappointment to see this unwaveringly earnest character reduced to “shitty fratboy” so often. For a lot of people newer to his character I can understand the confusion, but there really isn’t an excuse if you’ve been reading the series, and the possibilities for fics with this canon personality are just so much more interesting to explore, especially with Dabi as his sort-of opposite.

For DabiHawks to work well, you have to recognize that something has to give in either of them. Some of the juiciest, most angsty content is when you have two characters grow close together over commonalities only to be reminded that despite everything else they share, that One Thing will always keep them from truly being able to see eye-to-eye. Either Dabi has to grow past his hatred and relearn compassion and empathy, or Hawks has to lose grip of that hopeful vision he has and fall into despair. Both options are good to explore, but both require the acknowledgement that Dabi’s view of the world is fundamentally bleak and selfish, especially compared to Hawks’. For a supposed revolutionary out to change the world for the better whose a diamond in the rough with a heart of gold, that’s not exactly on-brand; and at the end of the day the issue is that some are unwilling to admit that what they wanted Dabi to be is likely not going to happen and they love that fake version Dabi more than they love what Hawks actually stands for which is why Hawks always gets the shaft in the end.

I still personally hold a bit of a grudge against the DaiHawks ship as a whole purely because, as you said, Dabi always seems to take priority over Hawks instead of letting the two build a dynamic together. Hawks is always the one who has to give, and the torture porn some have made him go through to “make the ship work” is downright disturbing to me. Even at its height DabiHawks content completely flooded the Hawks character tags on Tumblr with some of the same problems that have persisted to this day such as emphasizing their aesthetic as opposed to their dynamic and rampant mischaracterization.

Anyway, that’s my long-winded response. What do you think, @autumn-foxfire?

#long post anon #autumn-foxfire #let's talk hawks

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amelialincoln · 4 years

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Really been loving your fics, we needed more Amelink writers! Thought I'd ask for one if that's alright? So I'd love to see Link proposing to Amelia in a really rushed and imperfect way after he spent the week talking to people like Meredith, Jo, Owen, Webber, etc about hiw they got engaged. He tries to plan something perfect but messes it up somehow and Amelia obviously just laughs and says yes, idk I just wanna see stressed Link, hope this is enough to go off :)

We Find Love

“How did Derek propose?” Link found himself blurting out. Meredith peered over at him. He could see the confusion in her face, despite the surgical mask covering most of it.

“Are you thinking of proposing?” She asked turning back to her sutures.

“Maybe...yes. I think so,” he waved his instrument filled hands awkwardly, obviously flustered.

“Derek proposed in an elevator,” she put simply.

“Why an elevator?” Link asked.

Meredith shrugged. “It was just kind of a special place for us,” he tell she was smiling from her eyes. “It seems so silly now but honestly I was so in love with him that he could’ve done anything. It was perfect.”

“I know me and Amelia haven’t been together for that long, just with the baby on its way...not that that’s a reason. I just—”

“You don’t need to justify yourself,” Meredith interrupted. “When you know, you know.”

“Exactly,” Hayes’ chimed in. Link looked up to the peds surgeon, who he wasn’t aware was following the conversation.

Link placed his lab coat and scrubs in his locker before turning to leave the attending’s lounge.

“Hey,” Owen greeted him as he entered the room.

“Hi,” Link responded.

“You waiting for Amelia?” He asked as he went to open his own locker. Link nodded. “I just saw her get pulled into a surgery. Might be awhile.”

“Oh,” Link responded, as if on cue his phone buzzed with a message from her. “Great.”

Owen chuckled. “The life of two surgeons in a relationship.”

“Hey, how did you propose?” He asked. Owen raised his eyebrows, not expecting the question.

“Uh, which time?” He answered awkwardly. Link shrugged, hoping he hadn’t hit a sensitive spot. “Well my first proposal I just proposed to Cristina on the couch in our living room. It just seemed right and she wasn’t really into the romantic stuff,” he chuckled as if recalling an old memory. “Uh, with Amelia, well she actually proposed to me.” Link shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not aware of this story. “We’d both had past relationships and didn’t really want anything big. With Teddy, it was an on call room. I guess I’m not really the romantic type.” He shrugged. Link recalled Amelia’s story about their honeymoon troubles and believed it. “Are you thinking of proposing?”

“I guess so.” Link grinned.

“Well you’ll be the forth guy to propose to her.” Link tried to hide his surprise. “Weren’t aware of that one? She’s a handle that’s for sure and definitely a runner. That’s why she came to Seattle in the first place.” Owen clapped a hand on Link’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

“What’s up, you look stressed.” Jo slid into the cafeteria seat beside him. “What you got there?” Her eyes widened as she caught sight of it. “Atticus Lincoln, is that a ring box?”

“Jo, shut up,” he shushed her frantically.

“Wow, Shepherd did a number on you. It’s like we’re back in high school,” Jo teased, shoving a spoonful of jello into her mouth. “Yeah, I know it’s nasty. I forgot my lunch,” she explained, replying to his confused look. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he answered defensively, not exactly sure why he was being defensive. “I’ve been trying to get advice.”

“Well it’s not like this is you or Amelia’s first marriage. She probably isn’t expecting anything.”

“I know,” he sighed. “What did Alex do?”

Jo grinned. “He’d set up this whole little romantic dinner and I was going to break up with him.”

“What?” Link exclaimed.

“Yeah, I was all about ultimatums back then. Me or Meredith, all that shit. Anyways, it was sweet and small and perfect.”

“So you didn’t break up with him?”

“No, I figured that once I was his wife he’d have to choose me over Meredith.” She shrugged. “Turns out I like her more than I was expecting to. If you want to talk to the big romantic people you could talk to Jackson. Maybe not the best way but he called of April’s whole wedding to confess his love to her. Arizona proposed to Callie and then they got in a car accident. Less romantic, more catastrophic.

“Who are—”

“And then Teddy proposed to her first husband because he was her patient and didn’t have good health insurance.”

“What?”

“Crazy times happened at this hospital before you came around,” Jo patted his arm. “Look, I know you want to do something nice but she’ll love anything you end up doing.” And with that she headed out of the cafeteria, jello cup in hand.

The next night Link raced to Meredith’s, knowing that Amelia’s shift ended only an hour after his. Maggie had told him to set up at Meredith’s and that he could tell Amelia that they were having a girls night to throw her off. Link was pretty sure Amelia didn’t need ‘throwing off’ but he agreed knowing that Maggie most likely wanted to see Amelia’s reaction.

“What do you mean you aren’t already married, aren’t you having a baby?” Zola asked as Link was frantically setting the table for two. “Mom says that you get married first and then the baby comes after.”

“Well in most cases.” Link answered, glancing over at her. “Hey, Zola stop picking at those flowers.” Referring to the bouquet he’d bought on their way home.

“Sorry,” Zola shrugged. “You’re just making her dinner? What else?”

“I don’t know,” Link mumbled guiltily. “What do you think I should do?”

“I dunno,” Zola answered. “That’s your job.”

“Right,” Link sighed as he tossed the salad and placed the bowl on the table. Suddenly, he heard the front door open. “Do I kneel now?” He asked Zola.

“How am I supposed to know, do I look married to you?” Zola replied. Link decided to kneel, his heart thumping in his chest. His shaky hands reached into his pocket.

“False alarm,” Zola giggled as Meredith entered the room.

“Oh wow,” Meredith laughed. “I’m so flattered.” She mocked fanning her face.

“Shut up,” Link grumbled. “I’ve been trying to get this right all week and I can’t figure out anything to do justice to how much she means to me. I wanted to plan out this big romantic gesture but that just seems dumb and I don’t want to wait any longer. I would marry her right now if I could. I’ve been carrying around this stupid ring all week trying to find a time to give it to her that seemed right but I’m so worried that I’ll screw it up that I back out every time. Like how do I ask her to marry me and sum up all the million things I love about her into such a short amount of time?” He ran a pathetically shaky hand through his hair.

“That’ll do,” Amelia’s soft voice enters the room, her hands circling the swollen bump that recently formed on her abdomen.

“I was about to tell you,” Meredith grinned.

“Are you kidding me?” Link balled his hands in frustration. Meredith grabbed Zola by the hand, the little girl’s eyes wide as if she were watching a special on tv, and dragged her out of the room to give the couple some space. “Amelia, I wanted—”

“Link, this is perfect.” Her eyes scanned the room, softy lit by a couple of candles on the table. A bottle of sparkling water was sitting in a small bath of ice and she smiled as she saw that he’d made all her favourite pregnancy cravings. A sharp aroma drifted through the room and Link seemed to noticed it too.

“I burnt the chicken,” he nodded in disappointment, not even bothering to run to the kitchen in an attempt to salvage it. “This is a nightmare.”

“This is not a nightmare.” Amelia shook her head, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. “You are absolutely perfect in every way, Atticus Lincoln.” He tried to conceal the blush that was overwhelming his cheeks, feeling like an idiot. “Now do you have a question to ask me or...” she bit her lip with a smile.

“Oh. Yeah!” He knelt down on one knee and glanced up into her deep blue eyes before removing the lid to the little velvet box in her hand. “Amelia Shepherd, from the moment I met you I haven’t spent a day without the thought of you entering my mind. You amaze and inspire me to be a better person and a better surgeon.” He paused as he saw tears begin to build at the edges of her eyes. “You make me so excited to be a father. I mean very scared...but also very excited and I would love to spend the rest of my life raising this child, and maybe other children,” he tried to hide his excitement, “with you. I wan’t to wake up beside you every morning and fall sleep with you in my arms every night. Amelia, will you marry me?”

“Of course,” she answered without hesitation. “And I would reply with the same answer if you’d asked me on our car ride to work or in the middle of surgery.”

“Would that have been better?”

“No, you loser,” she rolled her eyes as he slipped the ring on her finger. “Now come here and give your fiancée some kisses.”

“Do you say that to all of us?” He teased as he fulfilled her request.

sorry this is super shitty but I feel the need to write any prompt im given haha (that makes it sound like i dont like writing prompts but i do!!!) plz keep sending them bc they keep me motivated<3 and thx sm for all the support on my recent fics.

#amelia shepherd #greys abc #amelinkfanfiction #amelinkfanfic #amelinkfic #amelink #atticus lincoln #greys anatomy #jo wilson #meredith grey #owen hunt #teddy altman #maggie pierce #zola shepherd #derek shepherd #merder

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ssaalexblake · 5 years

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" #13 is already scary club!!!!! #she's just more emotionally mature than men 1 through 12" THIS, I am fully into this and agree!

Yeah, I mean, the first run through of season 11 I ended up focusing more on her chipper side, so I deliberately watched out for anger and personality faults on my second go through, and really, it’s all there in Whittaker’s performance. Especially in Resolution, which isn’t surprising considering what the bad guy was, it was also, strictly speaking, the first proper barometer we’ve had to measure thirteen’s reaction to something we’ve seen the other doctors react to.

I just have a lot of very jumbled thoughts about the actual narrative, where i think they’re going with this, and kind of… Weariness?? At the logic behind wanting a ‘snap’ from 13 just to prove she’s angry?? I ended up using this as an excuse to vent stuff i’ve been trying to say but am bad at putting into words, oops.

I mean, 13 was Clearly not in a good mood over that Dalek. Compare her reaction to seeing Tim Shaw again to seeing the Dalek again and that’s brutally obvious. She blatantly mocked Tooth face, and regarded him so little that she just marched off away from him and pretty much forgot entirely about him while trying to put those planets back where they came from, even After she realises that Tim Shaw pretty much slaughtered the inhabitance of a handful of entire planets she still totally disregards him.

Which, frankly, is kind of terrifying in itself considering what he did to (potentially) many billions of people, and says a lot about the doctor’s view on casualty counts, but not currently my point. In the end, she doesn’t even end up doing a single thing about him, and just leaves him in the stasis pod that it’s Very unlikely anybody will come across ever again considering the planet messes with the brains of whoever walks on it, even time lords!

Aaaaaand compare and contrast to Resolution, 13′s entire frame of mind in the whole episode was in crisis mode, she did not let it get one over on her, but she was Clearly incredibly more worked up in this episode, which, contrasting with the previous ep, is kind of jarring.

She’s erratic, frantic, at times perversely entertained, accidentally changed the entire tardis colour scheme to red in a fit of temper, takes out time more than once to taunt the dalek (and uhm.. she does this and it gets away and the next scene is of it slaughtering a bunch of soldiers), oh… And that thing where Ryan’s dad was like, about to get spaced and die horribly with the dalek and she just froze and did absolutely nothing about it. I mean, in the same episode she controls the tardis with a clap of her hands… which i will assume was just her doing it telepathically and being weird about it, which means she really doesn’t get to use ‘well i was holding on myself’ excuse to get out of That one, and this is among other things which i’m sure i’ve forgotten.

More importantly, i can trace the above things back to moments in previous episodes, like, perverse glee??? Demons of the Punjab. Anger??? King James just had that effect on her even when he Wasn’t actively being a sexist asshole, she didn’t like him hitting too close to home. Threatening? Kerblam’s ‘if i ever find out you’re lying’. Taunting? she legit taunts Krasko into straight up throttling her. Sacrifice one for the good of the many? Kerblam, you could easily view Charlie as her first proper kill. It all has roots, didn’t come from nowhere.

I’ve spoken before about how she’s deliberately tempering her anger, and how it all roots back to ‘laugh hard, run fast, be kind’, but i feel like that’s kinda made it seem to people that she’s not scary just because she’s not being openly ostentatious about it?? When in actuality she’s just performing intense amounts of emotional labour in a genuine effort to improve herself, and it’s not gender based because canonically this utter disaster had no clue how lousy they’d been to their female companions or anybody else until some very blunt life lessons… in an episode in the back half of the season, so canonically we legit Can’t write her previous behaviour off on any kind of female socialization.

And while I feel like we are heading to 13 crashing and burning, you know, figuratively (but she’s still the doctor so i won’t rule out a 50% chance of literal crashing and burning), bottling isn’t a super idea either and she’s probably going to combust, i’m justminorly uncomfortable with the insinuation that the base line of all anger is the explosive outbursts the doctor is prone to. I’m not against her snapping and having a classic doctor outburst, pretty sure that’s where they’re heading because she’s slowly but surely gradually losing ground with the image she’s trying to project and the only time we’ve already seen her called on it (king james) she… Did not react positively.

I just have issues with the insinuation that to be the doctor she has to act out their worst qualities when we can see them in her clearly without her doing so just to Prove she’s the doctor. She’s already angry and arrogant, it’s there in the show, it’s just… Angry outbursts aren’t good? And having the storyline framed around her snapping actively being scary and bad for both her and others is more where my head is at, I think i feel like this is where it’s going, for it to be a breaking down moment rather than framed as something liberating, i just don’t feel comfortable with the grandeur surrounding it potentially happening in a liberating fashion.

I mean, from a gendered perspective, women having to temper reasonable anger is bad and oppressive and i understand the bad optics of it and wanting it it happen for the very reason of avoiding that, but also? Men Not having to bother to temper violent angry outbursts is also an awful thing on the list of shitty things about patriarchy, but that doesn’t just mean everybody should be able to have angry violent outbursts, it means nobody should, it’s not about stooping, it means work on self improvement if you do do this and stop, not ‘hey everybody gets a free pass to be an explosive scary jerk’.

The discussion around this all often makes me uncomfortable in the ways we treat violence and anger. I’m not a fan of loud/cold/threatening outburst kinda people, real or fictional, which is probably why my favourite Who characters are almost never the doctor. But I Do recognise they’re finally making an effort these days, and I do recognise and appreciate it in 13 and it makes me like her a lot more than a number of the other doctors. They’ve reached a stage where they’re actually working on it, methods aside, i respect that I can see all of the doctor’s questionable qualities within her but i can also see some kind of attempt to actively work on them. That is laudable.

I mean, ok, maybe Not the best story to go with after 12+ men and suddenly one woman, but it Did start with 12 and Capaldi whose presence bought age and wisdom to it, Whittaker is just following the thread, really. It also Probably wasn’t purposeful that it ended up like this??? Considering new management and writers etc etc, but i also very much feel like s11 was a groundwork season and even in that i can see the fascade slipping away episode by episode, in resolution she even tells them one of her deepest shames, at the time with little context, but if any of them think back on it, they’ll Understand.

(disclaimer: I don’t have anything against anybody who wants a snap (if written well, i would also enjoy it, i like angst), i just have an issue with our cultural relation to violence in certain circumstances and this narrative kind of creeps towards the idea that if you’ve had outbursts before that you can’t stop yourself the next time and I don’t like that as a message, i don’t dislike any of the doctors, i just like the companions Significantly more 90% of the time, and yes i would very much like to be able to show anger as a woman without being demeaned for it, but there is a difference between being looked down upon for being justifiably angry, and thinking it’s ok to let your anger take control of you and scare others. Also: Not all emotional labour is bad, i have to write this bc i’m publishing on tumblr so yeah. )

#danni watches doctor who #this Got Away From Me #and u didn't even ask a question im sorry lol #also #all i can think of abotu her trying to return those planets in the finale #is the monsters inc 'put that thing back where it came from or so help me'#and her doing the little dance #oops?#aaaand i added a disclaimer bc the last time i wrote an opinion on this show i got rudeness #and the time before that actually #but honestly i think it's gonna start caving round her ears soon #me: i can't wait!!!#also me: don't hurt me Or them Chibnall they're perfect angels who don't deserve it #i hate publishing opinions on this site but also i'm sick of the frame of mind #that means i don't so i'm #publishing #doctor who #also i feel like this would have more meaning if i'd Watched the end of 12's run instead of just read about it all #i don't have binge watch kind of time #tho

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realdeadlovin · 3 years

Text

and the long rambly email, so far.

Hey brian. I don't know if I'm going to send this but I guess part of me just wants to know that I did my best to explain where I'm coming from even if nothing comes from it, I won't look back and be like well maybe if I'd explained myself more... idk. It feels futile bc in my experience it just feels like if you have decided some piece of information or feedback is threatening or uncomfortable to you, you will just refuse to hear it or acknowledge it til the end of time. which makes it utterly impossible to work through what should be simple conflicts. I talked to MC about your visit today. she said something like, "I know you aren't someone who is freely vulnerable very often, and as someone who also struggles a lot to feel safe with vulnerability I can really understand how hard that was." I dont know brian, I guess thats why I wanna clarify that it wasn't that you weren't "emotionally available" bc like I said I really wasn't asking for or expecting anything from you. i was just expecting you not to actively throw it back in my face and make me feel like I would lose you for showing my feelings in front of you. I mean, I didn't actually know to ask that, because I hadn't really considered it as a possibility. I felt genuinely shocked. I couldn't imagine ever responding that way to you if the situations were reversed; it would feel so awful and cruel. when i was passive aggressive for a second while you were having anxiety I immediately felt so horrible. if anyone else in my life acted that way towards me, well, it's a moot point because no one else who I keep around in my life would dream of it. my therapist spends all this time trying to convince me that the people I love aren't going to abandon me if I let them see how I feel or let myself have my emotions in front of them but I guess she doesn't know you. i spend $100 a week trying to work through that shit so idk, pay me. I know alcohol plays a role in the whole thing but I also feel not into like using alcohol as a catch all excuse anymore in my life, obviously I still drink but its not a good excuse for being shitty to people you care about, or at least for not taking responsibility for it. If you want to explain where you were coming from or your perception of the situation go ahead, I will listen. slash read and consider. maybe my memory is off. I just want to say that like being able to identify why you acted shitty doesn't justify it. youre an adult and should be able to take responsibility for yourself when youre feeling insecure or whatever. you dont get to just lash out at people without consequences because you were feeling bad or anxious. I don't think you hurt me because youre like "hurting parker is just my idea of a good time." and even if I had been mad about something you did, which I wasn't, I don't understand how that really makes it okay either... If youre not a person I can feel safe like, crying in front of, telling you that I"m not mad at you but some hard feelings about sex were coming up for me and I was just processing it but it wasn't about you.... without you actively making me feel like shit for expressing that and like you would leave me as a result... how can i feel safe trusting you or like I can be myself around you? I mean especially as someone who is supposed to "love" and "care about" me sooo much who I've known forever, not some stranger... like if a tindr date said they were leaving bc I was crying, sure. but I think some tindr dates would be nicer than that. but you? I just don't know how you don't see that. as a side note I guess it did honestly feel hurtful that you lavish so much love and affection on me from afar and then so instantly feel certain you dont feel that way actually when were in person. i know you shrug it off, and I can't say I'm exactly mad about it cause I guess you can't help it, but it does make me feel like all that love wasn't real and theres something wrong with me or something you dont like when you actually have to be around me. you tease me about saying that 5 days seemed "daunting" to you but it did actually make me sad that we talk on a constant basis and then like the idea of seeing me was so hard. i mean obviously in retrospect you were "right" to be nervous or something but yea I guess I just like I feel some rejection when it comes to you especially seeing you "in person" which feels hard and disconcerting when u go back to being all like in love with me once you're gone, yea idk and just have this whole time struggled with feeling alternately like some rejection and then also like really intense validation. but so it goes. i guess thats just saying that even if this visit hadnt be like Bad Bad bt had just been lackluster it would have felt weird to go back to talking how we had been. but, who knows how this visit would have gone if that night hadn't happened, I know things were weird and off/awkward with us all weekend largely bc I didnt tell you how I was feeling but then also didnt know how to relax around you or be normal and yea that felt like no "spark" but maybe there wouldn't have been anyways, I don't know. I wish I'd said something sooner, also I hope you can understand why I didn't or was afraid to and who knows how the weekend would have gone if I had... maybe not any better, I dunno. but yea not texting you right now still feels hard and sad. I've wanted so badly to text you throughout the day. I know we have leaned on each other too much in order to not feel lonely but yeah so now I feel really lonely especially with sophie gone, I just felt soooo alone after you left. seeing you cry when I dropped you off made me want to take everything back and say I dont actually feel this way, I love you and of course you wont lose me, maybe I overreacted, etc etc just wanted to walk everything back. but I don't think I'm overreacting and idk I don't think that pretending everything is fine will fix anything... idk brian, i love you and I care about you and I can't imagine you not being in my life, although I guess you weren't really there for a bit. but sometimes people are friends for a long time and then they stop. I don't think I want that and I know you have been there for me in a lot of ways as well. I just dont know.. how do we interact in a way that isn't like codependently leaning on each other but isn't like distant and surface level either? I know you've said it was hard talking to me a ton after the last time we split , I know this sitch is different too but I dunno. I dunno how to find the right balance esp when I really am struggling to trust you in any sort of deep way. you also seemed to have this attitude of like "well I can't take it back now" and thats true but people/relationships do heal from hurt all the time it just takes a certain kinda work I don't feel that I will get from you.. happy to be proven wrong though.. I'm reading an article about "reforms" in the local sheriffs dept, they are getting body worn cameras and straight up saying the cops want them bc they think they will get the off the hook more often than not *~*~*I talked to kyle last night, cried some, anyways he hates you now. jk ish. definitely was like "wow fuck that guy." which wasn't actually what I had intended to convey. It's hard for me to talk to other people in my life here about anything with you because idk, your behavior sometimes is just so unreasonable and unkind on its face people always get so like against you if I actually tell them things you say to me and such, and then I feel like I'm actually in this position of just like trying to defend you and be like "no but he can be really great though and I really love him" and such. I've been in that dynamic before in "relationships" where I don't feel I can tell my friends about what is actually going on because then they will absolutely not support me being with that person and yea it's not great. I know that I know you better than they do and that you're really a very caring and loving person but its hard to reconcile that sometimes with your thoughtlessness at other times. I guess this is what you were talking about earlier in this whole thing.. about how far we've drifted apart, I guess in terms of who we surround ourselves with and such. I told kyle youre someone I've known and loved for long before I started having the current standards I have for people in my life. but, I'm also really deeply grateful you're in my life, and I'm glad to have had you come into my life when you did and to have stayed in it all this time.I felt so much better and less alone after talking to kyle and that helped clarify how much I was freaking out because of missing you versus how much i was freaking out about being alone. it was nice feeling like I could cry around someone about something that was hurting me and have it actually create intimacy rather than drive them away, as it should, so that was validating and healing in a way, like yea im not crazy. I don't want you to not be in my life. I want to continue having a close friendship with you that isn't like awkwardly not addressing unsaid things or like surface level and yeah like i want that trust back blah. and maybe I fucked that up by restarting things romantically when maybe we were on our way towards that again. arms sore like from adrenaline day 3 lol I'm getting pretty sad not talking to you or knowing how youre feeling. it's become less urgent because I don't feel lonely/alone anymore per se. getting a lot of comfort from kyle thats maybe weird/ co dependent in its own way, hes been staying in sophies room, making em coffee and breakfast in the mornings / walking me to work etc. yesterday had agood therapy session, then played cards with some rfiends, then met kyle at owls club and hung out with him and some nurses, then kyle stayed over and we talked until we were both falling asleep on the couches, tonight im maybe having dinner (sex? who knows? I think I dont want ot, I barely want to hang out with him at all it feels like a chore) tonight. still nothing physical with kyle, I wonder if cuddling may imminent, but idk.well so what im saying is when yo ufirst left I had this panicky feeling that I couldn't tell if was about fear of being alone or about missing you and the lsat few days I have felt better and less alone, and I sitll miss you, in a not urgent way but in a, I want to hear how you're doing and I want you in my life, way. I dont know brian. I feel I'm sort of processed what happened and I am mad indeed but as long as we know we can like never be involved romantically lol i can forgive that you have a lot of unhealed shit and act poorly a lot of the time in relationsihp idk. blabla. and not being involved romantically,well, it doesn't seem healthy to be so dependant on talking constantly so I don't think we can go back to that. but regularly, I would like.I dont want to not talk to you.

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darkmatterxafricanempires · 6 years

Text

There’s this older dude in my life, never met him he’s more of a mentor-figure. Was introduced to him through an uncle, he’s like a family-friend uncle (black ppl you may be familiar, random adults introduced in your life from childhood and beyond and they’re your play uncles and aunties more so out of respect versus a familial obligation).

Anyways, he’s a nice guy, we only chat through what’s app, he’s a professor at a university. I’ve been kind of lost on what I want to do for a career (had a plan, saw plan through, did not like end game...twas public relations, and it just wasn’t my jam).

I talked to him on the phone first, he suggested public administration, lots of transferable skills and fulfilling job opportunities. I check out some programs, and do some research and I’m like cool, I think I’d like this. Mentor-uncle helps me with my application, revising, editing and making suggestions. I apply to the program and I get in.

FF about a year later, (present-day ish) the program is near the end and I’m still unclear on what to do professionally. I know what I don’t want to do, but my exact vision is unclear (it’s not that it’s unclear, it’s just unconventional, and I’m still conceptualizing how to execute it).

Mentor-uncle doesn’t live in close by, he’s about 5hr drive and 1hr plane ride away. He’s visiting where I live for a board meeting. My mother suggests I meet up with him to discuss more career aspirations, I’m like “nah.” He’s done a lot to help me, but I feel like he doesn’t have much to offer me now.

He reaches out to me directly and lets me know he’s going to be in town, I already knew this of course, but I felt obligated (guilt induced by being child of immigrant parents, whatever) so I offer to pick him up from the airport, grab a bite to eat, and drop him off at his hotel.

Kinda going above and beyond, I know, but he really helped me w/ my shitty application, and I’m 92% I would not have been admitted to my program without his help. So it’s my own way of saying thanks, and balancing the playing field, and repaying this debt to him I’ve created in my head.

So everything’s set, I’m gonna be his uber driver for a lil bit. Signals get slightly crossed, he’s arriving at an airport that a lot further out of my way but closer to his hotel. I’m running a bit behind (leaving from school which is north-er, his airport is downtown a lot more south), so to avoid missing his check-in time he calls a cab, and takes that to his hotel. Annoying (bc I arrive the airport 5mins after he leaves) but understandable bc he wants to secure his room.

He asks me meet to him at his hotel instead, we can grab dinner and part ways from there, cool. Meet him at his hotel, for the first time in person. All is well, he’s nice in-person. He grabs his stuff we ask the ppl at the front desk for a suggestion, bing bang boom. We end up at this cute 24-hour cafe restaurant. Dinner is relatively nice, he’s a middle-aged, well-educated african man, a little self-involved and pompous but not obnoxiously so.

Not to toot my own horn, but I have a great sense of humour, a lot would say I’m funny in fact. And I can be a little bit of flirt, but more in a compliment you on a random aspect of your life kind of charming way, like some pg-13 flirting maybe G, not the AA and/or rated-X kind. Unless I’m trying to go that route yaaaaaa dig 👀👀.

Anyways, dinner was IMO quite platonic, plus mentor-uncle has a wife and a kid back in the motherland, so there are no romantic or sexually driven thoughts or feelings running through my head at alllllllllll (plus I’m maaaad gay, so nah).

Red flag #1

I think (there may have been others, but I’m not sure). I’ve parked my car right across from his hotel, in a green p (toronto slang for a paid parking garage, not really slang bc that’s what they’re called). We walk past this green p and continue onwards to his hotel (retrospect: should’ve taken that moment to just say bye, go to my car, and dip home)

We’re walking into his hotel, my internal dialogue is on overdrive (I’ve done my good deed for the night, there’s really nowhere else I see this evening going). We get back to him room, I go sit down in one of the 2 chairs by the tv and he lays down in his bed. (red flag #1.5)

Red flag #2

he says, “why don’t you come and lay down with me and we can talk here.” I’m like, “Nooooo.” Pretty insistently, because, no. He keeps probing, saying it’s a king-size bed there’s plenty of room for the two of us to just lay down and talk. I’m still very strong in my no’s and I say I’m fine where I am.

So admittedly I should’ve taken this opportunity for to make a swift exit, clearly he thinks this evening can end with us in bed, and there’s no way I’m letting that happen. So there’s bit of a silence and I’m thinking of all the ways I can leave abruptly without being extremely rude (and I hate it so much, that I’m concerned with being rude, when he’s being the penultimate rude boy inviting me to his bed to “talk.”

Red-flag #2.5-3

He gets out of his king-sized to sit in the chair next to mine, by the TV. He doesn’t read too much in to my rebuttals, instead shows me the agenda for his board meeting the next morning, *yawn*. He’s wondering what’s on TV, it’s late-ish, we’re watching Stephen Colbert with Anna Wintour and some next guy looking at ancient catholic artifacts, in relation to the met gala.

Whatever, it ends we’re now watching James Corden. He’s got Zlattan on as a guest, some really famous arrogant european soccer player. So I’m just plotting my polite exit strategy in my head, and after some fortune teller segment, I’m like “So I’m going to leave now.” He’s all like “it’s sooo late, you don’t have to leave. Just the spend the night, I’ve got this king-size bed...there’s plenty of room” etc. And again, I’m like “Nooooo that’s fine, I’m going leave.”

He’s really pushy on me spending the night, I’m equally pushy saying no that’s fine. He goes on to say, “So you’re really going to leave me here all alone, all by myself.” Some super manipulative bullshit like that, and I’m like “Yes, yes I am going to do exactly that.” The vibes were never threatening or violent, just persistent, creepy and overbearing. So he accepts my answer and was like, “Can I least get a hug since you’re leaving me.” And I know sooo many women, probably even some men even have dealt with this reverse-psychology mindfuckery. And again, I should’ve declined but I felt bad, strangely guilty even though I had no real reason to be.

I obliged gave him a hug, I was super tense. And it was pretty short, then as we’re exiting the room, he asks for a real hug, I again stupidly oblige, still super tense and it’s this horribly long uncomfortable hug where he proceeds to feel up my back and sides. And I’m just horrified, feeling so frozen and gross, but perfectly able to end this one-sided grope session. I can see our reflection behind him in a mirror, and I look disgusted with him and myself for continuing this for no good reason.

He pulls back, looks me in the eye and leans for a gross closed mouth uncle kiss, I tense up, and deer in headlights just allow this unwanted kiss to happen, my mouth scrunched up in utter disgust. He pulls a back again and repeats, and again I just allow this to happen. “Whyyyyyyyyyyy!!???!?” I’m screaming at myself in my mind. Finally this awkward ass embrace ends, I feel even more disgusted, again with myself for non-verbally consenting to this shit through my inaction. And with him, at thinking this was okay at any point in time ever.

He gives me a smile, I know I’ve got some kind of grimace-y forced smile on my face, and I’m super expressive especially in my facial reactions so theres no way I look okay/content/happy.

So he walks me to my car at the green p, and insists that we need to see each other again before leaves. I, still being the well-mannered, respectful, “gracious” young lady, say “probably not, but we’ll see” bc we’re both busy the next day, and he flies out the following morning. In my mind screaming at myself, why are you still keeping up appearances with this fucking piece of shit garbage face man.

We say our goodbyes, I speed off and that’s it for our encounter. I’m driving home, sad AF, just really really really disappointed in myself for letting it even get that far. So i’m just casually crying and driving home and that’s the end of that tale.

I just felt so stupid, and gross, and just like I got played. And I’m just so upset with him for even trying that bullshit on me. Our exchanges have been the utmost of platonic, and for him to suggest or assume anything otherwise is just so predatory and gross.

I suppose I’m really thankful because this whole situation could have sooooooooooo much worse, like a lot worse if he was a violent man. But strangely (and fucked-upedly), if he was more aggressive I would have felt so much more justified in acting more brash, maybe being more of a bitch, and really actually standing my ground wholeheartedly.

I dunno this happened just last evening, like just over 24hrs ago (May 10th), so I’m still processing but I do feel a lot better about the whole situation, but still uber gross.

This is a super long post, so 3 cheers if you made it through. 🙃

I journaled about it too the night of and that kind of helped. And I debriefed with my dad the following morning. He was surprisingly supportive and very understanding. I love my dad, but he’s the same guy who believes men should have multiple wives bc what’s a husband to do for sex after wife #1 has a baby...

But he made me feel better when he told me he hates when ppl especially men do things like this, and take advantage of women/the situation. With everything going on with the #metoomovement you’d think men in positions of power would be more cautious, he even stated this.. Although, he did ask me if I gave any signs or signals to encourage his behaviour (and I ran through the entire situation myself in my head, several times, thinking the same. Did I give off any vibes or behaviour to promote this? And I truly didn’t. Besides being friendly, naaaah. Which is still no excuse for him at all).

My dad said I should confront him, and tell him how he made me feel. I just wanted to block him and pretend like he never existed. I found a happy medium and told him via what’s app, that he made me feel extremely uncomfortable and said that it was in no way my intention to lead him on if I had. He tried calling me back immediately after a few times, but I wasn’t ready to talk, so I ignored the calls.

I tried calling him back several hours later (roughly 11ish hours later) bc 1) I’m kinda petty AF and wanted him to stew in his feelings like I had for hours 2) bc I did deserve an apology and maybe just some perspective on WTF he was thinking and where or what was he acting from.

He didn’t pick up and I’m high-key super grateful he didn’t, bc although I’m not horrible at it. But confrontation isn’t my strong suit.

TL;DR: mentor figure betrays trust through unwanted sexual advancements and suggestions

#text post #sorry for the tldr #tldr i know #personal post #super personal post #abuse of power #mentorship gone wrong #disappointed #tw harassment

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sweetsweetamber · 4 years

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23.06.2020

Emailed this to a friend earlier today.

I have been putting off even beginning to allow myself to process my feelings on this since I found out Zac Hanson was a raging racist, transphobic, sexist piece of shit. The problem is he keeps doubling down on his stance and making it so much worse, instead of letting me delete him from my memory and never have to think about him ever again.

This is so different to when multiple women came forward with allegations against Jesse Lacey. Like the second I found that out I never listened to Brand New ever again. Done, deleted. They were one of my favourite bands too, like the same level as Fall Out Boy, MCR, Panic and anything Andrew McMahon does. It hurt, mostly because I used their music to help me get through dealing with shitty men doing similar things to what Jesse Lacey did. But I haven’t really thought about them since, and I only miss their music sometimes. Maybe one day I’ll be able to listen to it without feeling disgusted, but that time is still a long way off.

I am also not the kind of person to idolise celebrities really? Not since I was a kid, anyway. Like all my favourite bands now, I have no idea about their personal lives beyond probably the mid 2000s. I have no clue what their kids, or wives names are, or even how many kids they have. I don’t even know all the names of the people in the band sometimes! I don’t feel connected to them as a person, I feel connected to them through their art, their music, their lyrics. As well as the fandom, the fans, the concerts, and the things I experienced in my life while listening to their music.

Anyway, here’s a brief timeline of what lead up to the main blowout to help put things in context:

May 25th-27th: George Floyd was murdered and Hanson posts normal content on social media with ordinary fan comments

May 28th: Protests against police brutality happen across America, Hanson shares a post about the rocket launch. A handful of fans (mostly Black and POC) express their hurt and frustration with Hanson in the comments

May 31st: Hanson posts advertising a livestream with an organisation that provides mental health support to musicians. Fans comment pleading with them to do the right thing, other fans start absolutely dog-piling those fans and tell them to stop “attacking” Hanson

June 2nd: Black out Tuesday. Taylor posts a black square and a few people comment asking him to actually say Black Lives Matter. The main Hanson account posts nothing.

June 3rd: Isaac posts on his account that “racism is wrong!” to very mixed reactions. Still won’t say Black Lives Matter.

June 4th: Zac posts about recording a podcast. He responds to a few comments about why he won’t say Black Lives Matter, it turns into a shit show and he deletes all the comments.

June 5th: The main Hanson account makes a post advertising their shitty yearly island vacation but it got blown up with backlash in the comments so they deleted the post. Zac makes a really fucking weird instagram text post, that says “Racism is wrong, but simply saying I denounce racism in a post will not save the life of the next young black man who comes upon it, or the next victim of reckless brutality”. The main Hanson account posts a photo with the one black hand in it they could find and still refuse to say Black Lives Matter.

This is where I jumped in and commented “Open your purse” and got completely torn apart by racist fans. I spent hours fighting back and supporting another indigenous Hanson fan who was also getting hurled tons of abuse in the comments. It was genuinely hard to try to calmly engage with these people who were spewing paragraphs about how Hanson don’t owe us anything and to “stop forcing your beliefs on them”. Whew. I think I blocked like 60 accounts, and had to change all my instagram settings to keep me as protected as possible without having to go private.

I knew Hanson fans were terrible. I found this out while in line for their first concert, when everyone was obnoxious assholes who wanted to brag about how many tens of thousands of dollars they’d spent following the tour (no one in line with me in the mornings were locals or even from New Zealand). The more money you spent, the more of a fan you were in their eyes.

This put me completely off ever going to their yearly fanclub island retreat which had been on my bucket list for at least a decade. The thought of being trapped on an island with Hanson and hundreds of complete assholes put me right off for life.

The funny thing is, I always met the nicest and most amazing fellow Hanson fans in line for other bands concerts? But the second concert I went to really solidified my opinion of Hanson fans being the most entitled assholes ever. I should have known it was only a hop skip and a jump for them to slide over being to racist as hell.

I eventually ended up deleting my original comment because a week later I was still getting angry racists coming at me for a fairly mild but sassy post. Which is hilarious because when Gerard Way made a similar half-assed post on his instagram, nearly every comment was “open your purse” and sarcastic “we stan a king who does nothing!!”. The next day he was like, I fucked up, here are some links and resources, we are redirecting the MCR store page to links to donate etc. There were probably some fans getting angry at the “backlash”, but if there were any I didn’t see it. Just insane to see the difference between two groups of fans for bands that I like(d).

On June 6th, a whole lot of Zac’s personal social media accounts got leaked, including a Pinterest board, youtube account and instagram account. He then he publicly confirmed they were all his because he’s a fucking idiot.

A few days later I got sent a link to the r/PostHanson subreddit, which had screengrabs of all of Zac’s pinterest boards. Seeing all those ridiculous and incredibly offensive “memes” was like a punch in the gut.

I had not kept up with this dude's personal life at all, I have forgotten his wife's name and lost track of how many kids he has after the first one. I just figured he was probably conservative because homeschooled + super religious + getting married quick and churning out babies. I’d never really heard or seen Hanson take a political stance on anything, but I didn’t really follow them too closely.

Apparently it was known to fans that Zac was SUPER INTO GUNS and played airsoft which is basically paintball crossed with modern military reenactment?

His pinterest page was completely full of stuff he’d pinned about guns (so many guns) and second amendment memes, that said things like “an 18 year old is too young to buy a gun, but a 5 year old is old enough to decide its own gender?” and one with a picture of a man and a woman with the caption “I told her guns make me feel uncomfortable, she said we should both see other men” which he added the comment “So true” to. The worst were the ones that were supportive of George Zimmerman.

I felt frightened, disgusted, and upset.

On June 8th the Hanson instagram account finally posted (with comments turned off) saying Black Lives Matter.

Since then, Zac has really just…. doubled down on being a shithead. He’s been posting as normal on his main account, blocking fans and deleting even mildly critical comments, liking the most disgusting comments that racist fans have been posting in support of him - one comment he liked was a fan justifying Zimmerman murdering Trayvon Martin. Also replying to some critical fans, making a ridiculously long comment where he thinks everyone is mad at him for being a second amendment nutter which genuinely made me more upset, angry and scared. He truly is the most dangerous type of white person: uneducated, ignorant, arrogant, and with a massive platform to spread his fucked up views. As someone else summed up so perfectly in a comment on one of his posts:

Too stubborn to look inward and see how their own actions, thoughts and behaviours are problematic. No desire to actually hear out marginalised voices. Instead, they'd rather create their own narrative, they want to play the victim, feign being attacked, deflect from any of the issues brought up, and will do anything BUT hold themselves accountable. Instead, they block black people and other POC (Rule #1 of what NOT to do right now), and will "like" comments of other uneducated ignorant white fans who are blindly loyal to anything he says and also don't care at all about marginalised and underrepresented people. Because it's all about HIM. The Poor, entitled, white man is feeling attacked. Zac, you are less than a man. Your development, somewhere down the line, was truly stunted.You are so brainwashed, so self righteous and so far gone, I don't know if you are even salvageable at this point. You would rather be in your bubble, clutching your guns and "liking" comments on your page that are defending the murder of black children than taking the bandwidth, introspection and WORK is takes to actually evolve and be a good person. As a black woman, at least I know now not to waste another dime of my money on you. Now go do what you do best and block another black voice, or write yet another tone deaf and ignorant response to make POC feel crazy (ie: "I'm sorry you are feeling hurt", "I love you", etc.) SAVE IT. That's more deflection bc YOU as the white man are CAUSING the hurt. If you want to love black people, start with explaining to all of your black fans why you believe a young, innocent black child named Trayvon Martin deserved to die because he attacked George Zimmerman. You were man enough to post it. Be man enough to defend it and stand BY your actions.

So I’m not entirely sure where that leaves me or where to go from here. I feel completely blindsided by the boy I picked as my favorite member when I was 12 grew up to be an abhorrent racist fuckhead. I saw in the subreddit support group someone said it feels like someone died and we are all in mourning, which sounds strange but it really does. The Zac Hanson I thought I knew is dead. He never really existed in the first place, or maybe he did for a short while before all the hate wormed its way into his heart.

I also believe that the type of music you choose says a lot about you as a person, and so much of my identity in my preteen and early teen years are wrapped up in Hanson. Both them as individuals as much as the music - I think that's why I can’t separate them because there has never been any separation between the two for me. I first heard Hanson on MTV with their music video for Mmmbop and decided I was in love with Zac before the song was over. I don’t think I can ever stomach listening to that song ever again.

Everyone makes mistakes, has racism to unlearn etc, but Zac hasn’t even bothered to lie and give us the PR answer of “I’m listening and learning etc”, even if he isn’t. He doesn’t even want to seem like he’s saving face because he truly thinks nothing he said or did was wrong, and that is the most horrifying thing of all.

I don’t know how to move past this. It's very easy to think, “people are flawed so you shouldn’t idolise them” but I can’t just snap my fingers and remove this weird 23 year old bond I have that is a mix of intense love and nostalgia? Like there was genuinely a point at age 13 where I actually truly believed: if he could just come to NZ and lock eyes with me at a concert we would fall in love and get married. Which sounds wild but it's how all 3 of them met their wives so it actually was a pretty solid plan.

I immediately took down my signed photo of the band that I had on the wall though because seeing it didn’t remind me of the happy memory of seeing them in concert for the very first time, it just reminded me that Zac is an awful person and his brothers are probably the same and just better at keeping their views private.

I always wanted to get my Hanson tattoo covered and redone but now I think I’m just going to get it covered. A lot of fans are selling or throwing out merch, but I don't want to do that so I've just packed the few things I have away so I don't have to see them for now.

Thinking about the time I met Zac makes me feel sick. It used to genuinely be the best day of my life that I could think about if I was having a shitty day and think “Hey, remember Zac Hanson hugged you”. I’m just so angry that he has tainted so many amazing and happy memories with the hateful rhetoric he is spewing now. I know over time it will hurt less but everything just hurts a lot right now.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk lmao.

#personal essay

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teacupesque · 4 years

Text

I've been isolating a lot lately, like doubly so with the whole pandemic thing and so being a really lonely loser I go over to a friend's house to watch kipo the day it drops cause why not. I only expected like 3 other people to be there sides my partner and I but no, a shit ton of folks show up to play board games instead of watch kipo for whatever reason.

[[MORE]]

This girl, who works with my partner, has a history of ramping up reactions to 11 and blasting it on social media. She also v petty, and likes to talk bad about people in a passive aggressive manner. My partner has been staying home, and was worried about his co-workers being shitty to him when he gets back for staying home during a pandemic. I've been hearing about this concern for like, a solid two weeks.

So I fucked up and griped at this girl that she could take her attitude elsewhere when she made a snide remark about being the only one working. This wasn't true, all of our friends work currently cept for my partner so I snapped at her thinking she was being nasty. She just said what then up and left. I really don't care for her passive aggressive nonsense most times anyway, I just don't say anything.

Like, cool, now she's embarrassed but at least she literally took her attitude elsewhere. I did feel bad for causing her to leave so I tried to apologize via text the next day after a sleep so I'd have a clear head, but emphasis on tried bc apparently I donked up so bad it caused her to have a mental break or something.

She starts calling me names and saying I'm horrible, she took what she said out of context, and we're not friends and like cool, that's alright and expected if a way too aggressive.

I didnt yell at this girl with my comment, just had a rude tone. She started harping how I yelled at her and how I'm terrible. I know I texted bad somehow, I should have put something like I know your probably didn't mean it that way or something but I hardly talk to anyone and didn't know how.

She then texts a very long text about random emotional stuff, like no one cares about her and she has to work with her previous roommate, now abuser, and boo hoo pity her, her life is terrible and my partner was a terrible friend bc he didn't want to take sides. (I don't know the whole story, frankly it isn't my business, there's literally nothing I could do about it, and I wish well for her but I barely know her besides some very awkward previous encounters) it's really, really, long and there's more nonsensical private stuff in it.

It wierds me out that all this came from my one gripey interaction with her. I tell her to see a therapist, this is just about one interaction anymore, leave me alone please and mostly am confused for the next couple of days. I'm STILL confused.

So I do the next dumb thing: I put it on an advice forum to get outside feedback and maybe understand a little better.

People being terrible people empowered by anonymity, start telling me how heartless and stupid I am for even texting this girl or going out during a pandemic at all. One kind person reworked my text to point out how to make it sound less robotic and accusitory, which I super duper appreciate. It makes me want to read about how to write with more emotion and empathy so this never happens again!

But literally everything else is a sea of downvotes for asking any questions, callinh me self centered and dumb, a stupid bitch, petty, what have you. Eh, I deleted the post after a night, and hid it so I wouldn't get any more notifications on it and hopefully that's that. I did take to heart the self centered thing, I really shouldn't have gone out at all. I also need to work on my texting and talking skills to I seem assertive and not aggressive because I obviously need to improve on that.

I am however still upset that this girl starting ripping into me and then dumping on me. Like, hey, I'm going to hit you and then ask you to carry my burdens even though I don't know or care about your well-being. She ended the long text with something like, I'm telling you this because no one asks me how I'm feeling. She didn't ask me for consent or about my feelings before spewing all of that? Like, hypocrite??? I don't know you??? It's manipulation into getting free therapy from someone even remotely friendly to you and I've seen it before. This time the anger was justified at first. But like, people need to stop venting to me. Especially if they don't ask first.

I had to do that for my whole family forever and then random people in college. I don't tolerate it now and I do not care if it makes me seem cold. Ask me first. If a person starts talking at me I say this is making me uncomfortable and I'm not the one you should be talking to about this, how about seeing one of the counselors or something. At least if I post it here, no one has to read the whole thing! It's obvi a vent post! There's a choice! Im still tired and hurt, I shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around everyone. One comment shouldn't cause people to completely unravel. How do I keep attracting these freaks.

ONE comment or interaction shouldn't make a person collapse or be so upset so fast, particularly a mundane response to something. Please go to therapy if that's you. Learn to regulate emotions. Don't go outside, write in a diary or do some coping exercises until that's under control a bit because this happens way too often to me specifically.

Many times in college I'd ask for a pencil, go through a group exercise, or to pass the salt and then get someone's tragic life story. Please stop using random people as free therapists!!!!! Please for the love of goodness!!

#vent post #tomatotalk #apologies

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lemonyandbeatrice · 7 years

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okay. I’ve been going back and forth for six months about whether I should make this post or not. but I really want to be upfront so I can stop letting this impact me the way it does.

so. let me talk about my “ex friend”, Gabrielle formerly known as attoseconds.

prefacing this with the fact that I really don’t give a fuck if you’re friends with her or not. but I also am not here to talk about the pettiest of bullshit & listen to the like... insignificant reasons why someone might hate her. also apologies in advance to anyone on mobile because this is long.

we became friends April 2015 but didn’t really get close until the fall. part of what made us seriously talk was the incident around the IW/DS (whom I have nothing to do with and have never wanted anything to do with). I talked to her for hours that night and became friends with two girls related to the incident.

I’ll get back to that later.

I realized January 2016 that I liked her, at the most unfortunate time to be honest, as she was dealing with a major personal tragedy and I was dealing with some other life tragedies at the same time. so I made a tag. I made a tag, I told her how I felt, I made it clear that I didn’t expect anything, and I asked her which phrasing for a tag she liked better, with the option of two lyrics. so she chose the lyric which ended up becoming the tag “person: we are a desert island.” when we met for the first time in March I didn’t expect anything, nor did I make a move on her or anything. we shared a hotel room. we hung out all day and she helped me get through a panic attack because she was a good friend and that’s what friends do.

June 2016 I asked her out and she said she needed to think about it. over the course of a week we rabbit-ted several times, and after a full week I had to ask what was going on, because we had started kind of acting like girlfriends and we needed to be clear with each other. this was the night before I came out and she said that she was in a rough place and that I was about to be in a rough place. “so this isn’t a no, or a yes, it’s a maybe. let’s wait to see.”

so we were still friends. she was one of my best friends. she supported me, I supported her, we had disagreements and petty fights like friends do, but we really tried to be there despite everything going on in our own lives. I saw her again in July and again, we hung out all day and I met Chewie and her sister and while I flirted, like I always do, I double checked with her.

one thing you can ask basically any of my friends about is the fact that as flirtatious as I am, I try to make sure that I’m not making them uncomfortable. I asked her this multiple times and she’d laugh and promise she was okay.

things progressed in the same way. I’d joke about breaking up with her, she’d joke about breaking up with me. we’d “end our friendship” over sad headcanons and bad opinions and ridiculousness and the fucking disaster crown. I continued to use my tag - and I tagged everything without using her name a single time. I had friends think the tag was about someone I went to school with because I wanted to protect her identity.

November 2016 I realized we’d fallen into the pattern that I’d fallen into with other people: we were basically in a ldr but we weren’t officially girlfriends. so I asked her again what we were doing because I was starting to get really upset. and when I got the same answer - she needed to focus on friendships and it was still a maybe - I distanced myself from her. I told her I needed distance to get over her. we didn’t talk for two weeks until I felt ready to talk to her, bringing us into December.

and here’s the thing: she did the right thing. she told me exactly where she was and that was the 100% right thing to do. I stepped back so it wouldn’t ruin our friendship. I have never pretended that she was wrong and even though I was angry and hurt and every single feeling you feel when things like that happen, she did the right thing. I continued posting things under the tag.

my birthday is February 10th. all of my close friends know that I hate my birthday for multiple reasons. I’ve cried on my birthday the last six years straight and have been triggered on my birthday for the last three years. I don’t wanna get older, I don’t want to be alive, and this isn’t new information.

everything was fine. everything was fine and on February 9th me and Gabrielle talked. the last conversation we had consisted of me telling her to do her homework (which was a v normal convo, us yelling @ each other to be good students).

so. my birthday. woke up crying, went to school miserable, had a nonstop awful day. I visited my sister the next day and I still hadn’t heard anything at all from Gabrielle. I sent her Potential Breakup Song because I was angry and bitter and petty.

was that the right thing to do? who knows. was I wrong to want a close friend to remember my birthday, especially when I’d been talking about it to her all week? no. I wasn’t. it had nothing to do with the feelings I’d previously had for her, it was all about my friend hurting me.

the last message I sent her was three weeks after she ghosted. at this point she still followed me and she’d attempted to send me a text but it didn’t go through. I talked to my therapist to make sure I wasn’t being as bitchy as I wanted to be.

Okay. So. It’s been twenty days since we’ve spoken, and I’m really upset that you haven’t responded to anything I’ve sent you. Actually, I’m sad and angry. That fact that you texted me two days ago and then didn’t respond when I pointed out that I couldn’t see your text made me more upset because I’ve been going the last two weeks trying to figure out what I did wrong. Because this isn’t like you, Brielle. And this isn’t like our friendship. I was trying to be emotionally honest and upfront about my feelings because I care about you and I’ve tried to give you space because obviously you didn’t want to talk to me. But I’m hurt that I got radio silence instead of even a “I can’t handle this right now” or “I can’t respond to this right now.” Something other than total silence.

before we get to What Went Wrong After This, I want to be clear that I would have been more okay with her telling me to fuck off. I tried to fight for the friendship, and if she didn’t want to be friends with me? fine. she didn’t need to justify herself.

so. I’d soft blocked her because she was still following me, blacklisted the shit out of her, used a new tag completely as I tried to deal with all of this. I didn’t go on her blog. I didn’t use her name. I eventually called her my ex girlfriend because honestly? what we had was in the inbetween and what I was feeling was specific to what I’d experienced in my other relationships.

April 2017. I made some post in the personal tag and came back from work the next day to two mean messages. an anon (one of the only people who figured out who I was talking about) warned me that I shouldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt, but I did. April 2017. I made a post abt how a co-tutor went by Gabbi but was named Gabrielle and how it threw me off bc I hadn’t heard that name outloud. I got another mean message.

I got a heads up that she made a post calling me gross, leading to that particular message. and it killed me, it really did, because all three anons made it out that I was simply mad that I liked a girl who didn’t like me back. I am open about having bpd - I don’t pretend that I don’t exhibit the behaviors or that I’m not terrified of abandonment - and while again, she was allowed to end our friendship, the way it happened really fucked me up. I stopped talking about it on here. I couldn’t function that entire day. I’ve never hated someone who didn’t abuse me more than I’ve come to hate her.

remember how I mentioned the IW/DS incident? and how I said we’d get back to it? yeah. here’s the thing abt that incident and what’s happening now.

during that incident, two teenage girls showed Gabrielle what was going on. which is fine - they made that choice (as she reiterated several times). but she was 27 as this happened. they were 15. I became friends with both of these girls who were really fucked up over this and I firmly argue that while it was not okay what IW/DS individuals said abt them in connection to Gabrielle, but it also was not okay for her to leave them out to take the fall. it doesn’t matter that they chose to come forward - the responsible thing, as an adult, is to watch out for our younger friends when bad things happen.

as I became closer to them, there were nights when the four of us would rabbit. they joked that me and Gabrielle were K/rrasami and Gabrielle never said anything to stop them. we joked that me and Gabrielle had adopted them as our daughters. this was common and I’m glad that one of the girls reminded me of this because I felt like i was losing my mind. because here are two options:

Gabrielle liked me back and has been lying about it.

Gabrielle didn’t like me at all and just liked the attention I gave her. so instead of rejecting me when I gave her the chance to, she feigned any potential attraction and strung me along instead of being a fucking adult and just telling me she wasn’t interested.

I have gone onto Gabrielle’s blog exactly twice since we blocked each other. both times were to read the specific posts that gave me the hate.

first post

It’s really fucked and damaging to realize a friendship was conditional and based on someone’s romantic interest in you and you become a bad person by rejecting them.

Absolutely positively dead the friend zone attitude.

there has never been a situation like that since I was in like... fucking high school. I did things because we were friends. that’s what friends do. immediately after that post she reblogged a post abt how people with bpd need to make sure what they’re doing isn’t manipulative and blah blah blah, which is a good post but a pretty shitty portrayal of me right next to her saying that I was mad abt being friendzoned. friendzone? I’ve had lots of crushes on friends. the only other one that went badly was with a girl who was lowkey homophobic & emotionally abused me until dropping me.

a lot of posts in ‘x: let’s call it what it is not what we were’ deal with me having bad anxiety over the entire situation and being overall sad and confused. people were free to blacklist it - and once again, one of my best friends didn’t even know who I was talking abt until everything fell to shit.

I had a vague idea of the second post but no one let me read it because they were scared that it’d take me over the edge. I finally read the second today.

You know what’s really uncomfortable?

Someone you turned down continuously referring to you as their “ex” when you never fucking dated and suddenly acting as if you’re some monster because a) you didn’t have an interest in them like that b) entirely petty and childish reasons. Especially when you have publicly left this person alone and not said a fucking word about the BS they’re spreading.

I’m nobody’s ex and am not a bad person leave me the fuck out of your narrative.

here’s the thing. here is The Thing.

Potential Breakup Song was petty. but why the fuck did it take me blocking her for her to not follow me anymore? why didn’t she unfollow me in the three weeks it took for me to send that final message?

she’s gonna call me petty and childish when she get mads that people interpret her favorite characters differently? and that was a reoccuring thing that happened in our friendship so I stopped bringing it up?

me being fucked over by Gabrielle and being angry and expressing that anger over that while also reiterating that no one should stop being her friends over this is me, what? what? we still have mutual friends. we had friends that stopped being her friends over this goddamn post and friends who think I’m a bitch over this but I never told my friends not to talk to her. I have one friend who follows my private who I met through her.

I call her my ex because the “we’re dating but not” is bullshit. the only difference between what we did and being girlfriends is the fact that we never used the words. I need labels I am someone who needs to work through things

my narrative. what was my narrative? she forgot my birthday, I was hurt, I was mad, I saw every flaw in our friendship on her end and mine, I started hating her.

don’t for a goddamn second believe that I’m mad about being friendzoned. don’t for a goddamn second think that I was creepy for needing to deal with my shit on my blog (as I have done since 2010 lmao) because that’s not even what was fucking happening. and don’t for a goddamn second let her convince you that she wasn’t either lying to y’all or lying to me.

I tried, I really tried to avoid it coming to this. but the only way for me to heal and move on is for me to be honest. and since this all was started on this fucking site anyways, here we go.

I will not pretend to be perfect. our friendship was never perfect. and you’re right, she doesn’t owe me anything. but I respected her enough at a point to keep her name off her blog. this is the only time I’ve called her by name in either tag. the power imbalance in our relationship was never the age difference - that’s an imbalance in some of her other relationships but okay - it’s about the fact that she was a big blogger and her reactions to me led to me getting hate. as if she didn’t know that could fucking happen.

so yes, I hate Gabrielle. I think she’s a lying cunt. I think she has a lot more in common with people that she hates than she realizes. I think people 10+ years younger than her should be careful because people that young should be treated as younger siblings, not close friends. I think she needs attention that she can’t fully give other people and there’s nothing wrong with needing attention (hi there) but there is something wrong with lying in the process.

but I’m doing this so I can move on.

I love girls. I’m not letting this make me feel bad anymore. I wanted to be friends with her forever. I truly cared about her as a person.

I wish she’d done the same for me.

#person: we are a desert island #x: let’s call it what it is not what we were #she's been unblocked so idgaf if she sees it at this point #I'm not responding to anonymous messages about this and I don't care if you think I'm a bitch but I absolutely refuse to be portrayed #in a way that makes it out that she's a perfect angel who didn't do anything fucking wrong in how she handled ending our friendship

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sldkfjskdfjlsdk · 5 years

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31419

throwback thursday

it’s actually thursday

putting you here

---

you’re a liar, case 1. a few weeks after he cheated with you, summer 2018:

Hi Shirley

My heart is so heavy and I want to start by saying I’m sorry. I want to be as honest as I can with you and my heart wants to make so many excuses but I want to own up to what I did and I wronged you and I’m sorry. I cherish you and my heart breaks when I know you’re struggling with something and I always wish we were in closer proximity somehow so we could spend more time together and know each other more deeply. I have always believed if we grew up together or lived near each other we’d be best friends. I don’t know exactly what Shinu told you but I’ll try my best to give you context in terms of what had been occupying my mind at the time. After school got out and Bryan and I had broken up, I tried cutting contact to start building my self worth or whatever. I broke a few times and ended up calling or texting because I missed him or to tell him to stop snap chatting me and whatnot and we ended up meeting when I went to LA and it made it really hard for me. He was being so good to me and I felt like I lost something I would never get again. Like he was the only person capable of loving me for being me. But the day after I came from LA he sent me a long, almost frantic text telling me that out of sadness he flirted with another girl while we were still together. I found out through her that throughout summer to he’s tried hitting her up and doing things with her all while trying to convince me we’re right for each other. I understood that it was out of sadness but I couldn’t help but feel like since this was happening to me for like the third or fourth time that it’s because of me. And it just made me sad. And I felt like I was at square one with building my self worth again. So fast forward to what happened. I was in a really vulnerable place with what had happened and I looking back I think I just wanted to be wanted by someone I knew didn’t want me. In the moment I thought I was acting a certain way because I was too sad to care about consequences but I was really afraid. The more time passes the more it hurts and especially the guilt towards you. I’m so sorry for letting things happen between us knowing you have feelings for him. I can’t say exactly how you feel but since it happened with me I know how it made me feel and that overwhelms me because I know how upset it made me. It’s because I wasn’t thinking. It’s because I let other things blind me in a moment and it’s triggering me a lot more violently as time continues. I understand if it’s difficult for you to talk to me, or if you want to stop, or if you want to talk more. I don’t need you to forgive me, but I want you to know I’m truly sorry. I wrote this when I was really sad and soon after it happened and it might be hard for you to read but if you want more insight to how I’m reacting to this you can read my blog post, I’ll leave it at the bottom. But as a disclaimer, I’m broken. I know I’m broken and I know it’s not going to be forever but I am so repulsed by intimacy at the moment that I can’t imagine myself loving someone again and that’s a very non-Emmy thing to feel. When I talked with you last briefly about Shinu I truly felt in that moment like I’d be okay but I think this triggered me a lot or maybe when I remove myself I start to feel that discomfort again. If I could say honestly, I felt hurt by Shinu and you having feelings for each other. I know I can’t do anything about it, and I know neither can you guys, but for some reason I felt a sense of betrayal in it. All three of us are really broken and when I first found out that you guys liked each other I felt very wary and uncomfortable with Shinu being intimate/vulnerable with someone, especially when that someone is a someone I cherish deeply, after the experiences I had with him. And now that sense of dread has returned and I am afraid for you to be vulnerable with Shinu and now that fear has become concrete and I wanted to be honest about it. I know he has been there for you and helped you in a lot of ways and you guys have become dependent on each other and I just wanted to be honest and say that it makes me feel anxious and dull sad. The last thing I want you to do is anything out of obligation. I hope you can be honest with me about how you feel and i want to support you in whatever way I can. I love you Shirley and I’m so sorry.

---

after my birthday, 2018:

More came up

I touched you again and thinking about it makes me want to hurl myself off the earth. I got what I wanted, you kissed me, not the other way around but God, I feel like shit. It just reminds me again that I was never it for you. I will never be it for you. I will always be the girl you will settle for because you think it’ll make her a little bit happier. Why is it so hard for me to accept that after everything you still will never be attracted to me? It was so scary for me to touch you. I pretended like it was because I wanted it but I was so fucking scared. And I felt so cold. I felt so cold through all of it. Putting my fingers through your hair I felt cold. Touching your face I felt cold. It was so evident that I would never have you. It’s so weird, the fact you let me touch you made it so clear to me the nature of our relationship and the fact that I will literally never have you like you have me. I think this incident triggered my repulsive reaction to intimacy and I think it’s really because it frightened me. Before this, every time we got intimate with each other in the midst of me “knowing” you didn’t like me felt justified because I refused to believe you had no feelings for me. It lasted all of senior year because I thought you’d come back to me somehow and it’d be like that one day at six flags again, or like the beginning again. I kept saying okay even through the time you said you have sex with me because it’s fun because I held onto the chance you might love me like I loved you. It was always this time, this time, this time he’ll understand me. This time he’ll actually love me. This time he will be with me because it’s me and not because it feels good. Oh, but this time. I acted like I was so in control but all it was is me becoming good at not seeming scared. This time it was perfectly clear you have no feelings for me. This time I knew it was you letting me. It’s almost funny how scared I feel now because there’s no more shroud of maybe’s when it comes to your feelings about me. I always coped by convincing myself I wasn’t alone but right now I feel so by myself. I’ll never understand intimacy with someone you don’t like. I think that’s why I feel like I can’t be intimate with people anymore because I feel too scared to like someone new again. Because I’m so convinced I’ll never be the only girl for someone else. I feel uncomfortable that she doesn’t know. It makes me feel sick. I’m guilty. Is it the same as her continuing something with him after I told her what happened with us? Not really, but that’s starting to make me uncomfortable again. This whole fucking thing is a trigger and you should’ve never kissed me and you should’ve never got into bed with me and I should’ve slept over somewhere else.

---

sometime during summer, 2018:

You know I wouldn’t tell you and Shirley to stop dating bc it’s unfair to me

I still consider you my best friend but you can’t expect us to be close when you’re with someone else and that’s how it’s going to be for me

Do you understand why now

When I spend too much time with you I hurt too much or I start to get feelings for you again or both and both is kinda what happened over summer before I realized I was alone

I felt very let down by Shirley

December vs now

You mean too much for me to be friends with you

Loving you was always a choice and always my first choice and it was always and easy choice

Being hurt by you not loving me was also a choice but I never realized it

But the only way I could not be hurt by you was to not be associate with you or to not have expectations from you and to not talk to you

This summer I really realized and understood that you care

But you gotta understand that it is a very unfortunate situation for me and it hurts for me to be in the picture

If you don’t get why

Think about what happened over summer

We literally just smoked whenever we hung out

And then we kissed

And that felt so shitty shinu

Everything about that night felt so shitty and that’s just like a culmination of my sad and I just got worse until YI

But you know how you like hugged me

That wrecked me the most because I felt like you really cared when you hugged me

Everything else felt so empty and pitiful but thinking about how you hugged me made me sob for weeks after

Seeing how you have such a deep effect of me made me realize I’m infringing on something in your relationship with Shirley and my well being

Why does it affect me so much?Why does it all hurt so much?I think everything leads back to how you were my first everything and ultimately the fact we had sex

That in itself has left such a deep, painful scar that can’t really mend itself when our lives are so entangled, especially having to be your friend while your affection is aimed at someone else

I think my heart feels like I poured out so much, but he stopped showing me affection because he wasn’t attracted to me anymore? I would’ve chose again and again to make things work with you but I wasn’t allowed that choice because your love was based off attraction to me as a girl, attraction that didn’t exist for half of the year we were regularly having sex

Yeah ouchies

After YI I realized the devil was lying to me in the sense that he was telling me I was always gonna hurt because I can’t not be your friend

But I realized like hurting is not my destiny and it’s definitely not what god wanted my life to be surrounded by

So I chose freedom for myself and that meant to cut it clean as I left and for me to be more intentional when I’m home

And looking back to last year, I didn’t even have to try to talk to you often at the beginning of the year I just wanted to talk to you and to maintain our relationship but you were the one who said you didn’t have anything to say to me and we stopped talking because of that

Is that different now or something? I thought for you if I’m not there you don’t feel as close to me anyway so I didn’t think it’d matter to you that we didn’t talk after I left

Took the enneagram again and realized how accurate the negative sides of my type is and I think our entire relationship was so damaging because being unloved or feeling

---

you fucking stupid BITCH, emmy you stupid fucking fake ass bitch who lies to herself and blames herself for things that happened to her

but it is your fault, you didn’t love too much, you hated too little

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what-the-everloving-fuck · 6 years

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Josh has been at work all day and Jordan is still down in the basement and even though I don't mind usually, I would like my own space. I have no privacy.

And he's doing this this thing where it sounds like he's imitating Josh when I give him a massage (hes always like "ugh" and "ow" like I'm hurting him but I really have to work it out of him) and pulling on his arm/shoulder and twisting his back while he looks over at me on occasion. Since I'm not looking at him he'll looking at me longer (I can see it out of the corner of my eye). I know he's not trying to make me uncomfortable but I can't even be with my boyfriend bc he's always down here, or basically Joshs entire purpose at a family function is to babysit his brother, and Jordan is so starved for affection and attention that he's become a third wheel. Vanessa has all her kids to watch and their Mom always has some reason to push him off on Josh. And if he ever actually falls asleep down here and we still live there it's not gonna end well bc he snores so damn loud and won't do the sleep study (also Carol waited till they needed to turn in the machine to try, then wanted Josh to do it) so I know I don't be able to sleep at all.

And even with three days off, Josh STILL can't get any time to play his game or basically do anything until after midnight. When he's working 2 jobs and every single day he can justify not having time even if it irritates him. When he only works 2 closing shifts and a double....its a little more difficult to figure out where his time goes when he has no time for himself unless he stays up till 5am, which fucks with the next day. And so on and so forth.

I basically told Josh that we aren't going to last if things don't change bc there's things I need and want and none of it's happening and I've been patient but I'm losing my patience bc I feel like I'm the only one trying to do anything in this relationship, and he's given me none of the things he promised. He seemed to understand. So well see.

I think he realized that when he bought Madden, since it dawned on him that part of the money he owes me is bc I bought it while he was injured, and in the past year he had no apartment (But i did bc he wouldnt move out, so my rent was 4x his), 2 jobs, but still hadn't paid for any of that, nor any bills this month, but I'm constantly fronting him money, and being made to look like I don't do anything to help him. I saved up money to move, he insisted on paying to fix the bike bc transportation first would be best, and since then hasn't saved anything else AND my bike is broke again so I've literally wasted the last six months bc he won't stop drinking or buying pedics...and now I'm stuck, bc I can't save money like this. With someone who barely acts like they want me or has time bc he's prioritised everything else over getting his shit together over me, and it shows in how he treats me. So they're not going to treat me well bc they aren't gonna treat me better than he does. So I can't leave, and I'm basically at the mercy of his family not getting shitty bc the only person I have is unreliable at best, using me at worst, and completely within the comfort zone of having everything he thinks he wants without working for any of it. I think I saw some understanding, but it's not over. Which is fine, as long as it starts.

And I'm in this spot bc I believed and trusted in him. And I'm not trying to resent him or regret this, and I do still love him. But shits starting to go south, emotionally, for this relationship.

So figure it out Josh

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monicugh · 6 years

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i just feel some of the closest people in my life are taking my happiness personally and i’ve been crying about it a lot lately

for once i feel like i finally met some huge fucking goals that i’ve set for myself and or have wanted to reach for a very long time. in a lot of ways, i’m the happiest i’ve ever been, and it’s really shitty that some important people in my life just can’t be genuinely happy for me. i’ve been a people pleaser to the extreme for most of my life, and it made everything a living hell. i wasn’t putting my wants and needs first. I was suffering and i thought that, should i start going the other route, that would be selfish and bad. i mean how could i deal with the crushing guilt of making myself a priority??

well now my mental health (knock on wood) is better than it’s been in a looooong time. my therapist is amazing. with her help, i’ve been trying to set boundaries with family members that i never would have set before. she’s trying to help me be more assertive and stand up for myself (something i’ve always had a very hard time doing and still do tbh) in all aspects of my life. i’m just not going to let anyone let me feel bad about it. i honestly and truly do not think i’m doing anything wrong. despite massive push back from some people, i’m standing my ground on this, because i’m realizing that i need to be the most important person in my life and not feel guilty about it. that doesn’t mean i can’t still sacrifice things for other people. that doesn’t mean i can’t be kind or understanding. that doesn’t mean i can’t have deep, meaningful relationships, it just means that when push comes to shove, i refuse to throw myself under the bus anymore

for example, i understand it makes my sister uncomfortable when she can hear my bf and i have sex. i DEFINITELY don’t want her to be able to hear, and i don’t want her to feel uncomfortable. i only get to see him once a week. we have sex as quietly as possible. noises are kept to an extreme minimum on purpose. like if a position is making a more audible skin on skin slapping noise, we stop and change it. everything that’s said is said in a whisper or quiet as possible voice. the one thing i can’t do much to help is the sound of my bed, and even then i’ve been trying to do things that make the bed quieter. we are both making an extremely conscious effort to not let anyone know what’s happening. is this ideal? absolutely not, but i understand that i don’t live by myself, and i can’t be screaming or anything. do my bf and i both much prefer feeling uninhibited and does he massively prefer when i’m vocal af? totally, but we save that stuff and other activities that make noise for hotel nights that are few and far between. am i making sacrifices? yes. do i think i’m making them for very valid reasons? yes!! i’m not complaining, i get it. there are boundaries. it’s incredibly valid and reasonable that you don’t want to hear someone else having sex. but in turn, if i’m doing all of that and someone still hears a bit of it? honestly? too bad. put on some headphones, listen to some music? idk but i refuse to feel ashamed about it.

I can’t wait until everyone’s asleep, bc my sister stays up all night. i can’t go downstairs to the guest room bc apparently now squirting is a part of my sex life (and not something i can really control at this point) and i’m not gonna risk fucking up the guest room bedding and having to secretly wash it all every week. ofc i can’t tell her that, she’d freak out even more. frankly, it’s none of her business why i can’t really go down there. that, and i fucking hate the basement. my room is my comfort zone. and sex is spontaneous, it’s not like we turn toward each other and are like “would you like to? okay we will start now.” and i realize that is my flimsiest reason of the bunch, but still. i know she doesn’t hear it every time. i know she doesn’t. she said she hears it around once a night every time he stays over but we’re doing like 4 times every time he’s here, so point blank, she’s just not hearing it all. and i feel like she specifically listens for it too which makes me feel uncomfortable. it costs exactly $0.00 to mind your own business.

this is my first boyfriend and we’re still in the honeymoon phase as far as i’m concerned so ofc sex is going to be happening often. i wish we could go to his house instead. i wish i had my own place (and hopefully this summer i will), but until then, this is me trying my best to fully enjoy my relationship and keep the peace at home. this is my compromise. i had roommates. i lived in a dorm and an apartment. sometimes you start hearing certain noises, and you just think hmmph they’re fucking rn aren’t they? guess i’ll listen to some loud music or something and move on with your life. sex isn’t gross or shameful. it’s a part of life and if i’m trying to have silent as possible sex and you still hear it, we’re gonna have to meet halfway somehow.

i end up anxiously waiting for a string of demeaning texts from my sister every time after we finish. i check her blog the next day to see if she wrote a mean post about it. when she doesn’t, i breathe a huge sigh of relief and am happy that i didn’t disturb her that sunday. i feel like she’s been so hostile towards me for the past few months that i’m scared to talk to her bc i assume she’ll start throwing insults and i feel like she has a very hard time with seeing things from someone else’s point of view, especially one v different than hers, and constantly having to justify my thoughts/actions/opinions is exhausting. she’s not willing to have a conversation. so many times she just attacks me instead, and then i feel like i’m on the defensive which is not a constructive way to resolve any issue.

and then there’s the passive aggressively attacking my relationship. “i don’t understand why people want to have sex all the time. that’s not the only part of being in a relationship. it’s like have an actual real conversation sometimes wow.” as if i don’t talk to my bf every single day about so many things other than sex!!! that is not what our relationship is built on! it’s about emotional support, closeness, companionship, shared interests, emotional intimacy and vulnerability, etc. but i shouldn’t have to justify that to anyone ever.

this new thing, having a boyfriend, is not the only thing i care about in my life right now. i still deeply care about my friends and family. i still have hobbies and interests outside of it that i’m still 100% fully invested in. it’s not the only thing i think about. i have to censor myself so i don’t talk about how happy i am too much. i try not to bring him up, but i want to bc it’s a very exciting thing in my life right now. and when i do bring him up, i worry that i’m doing it too often or annoying the people around me. that’s so fucked up. i shouldn’t feel like i have to keep my happiness to myself as to not “hurt the feelings” of the people around me. i wish they could share my joy instead of pushing against it. i’m changing and growing a lot as a person, and i feel like some people want me to stay stuck where they are instead

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