#it's. it's literally catnip for me. how did I ever think this would be under 5k

[takaraphoenix]

It is both funny and frustrating to me how predictable my unpredictability is becoming.

(My fic.)

(It's running away.)

(I'm running after it.)

[hismercytomyjustice]

Definitely DID NOT just finish editing this week's chapter.

That would be crazy. You're crazy.

...but I am very happy with it, and very curious what folks will think...

And also extremely sorry. ╭( ๐_๐)╮

As I believe I said before, I have good news and bad news.

Good news, I fixed the problem I was having with Cazador.

Bad news, I fixed the problem I was having with Cazador.

He came across as too...nice (?) in the first draft. No, maybe permissive is a better word?

...I certainly don't think he does anymore!

Blah blah more OCD shit under the cut.

This chapter literally sent me into a 2 month long spiral that ultimately made me realize how much my OCD fucks with my writing, fanfic and otherwise. Which is why I bring up my OCD so much in relation to this fic.

Only took me ten fucking years to realize it! (ᇂ_ᇂ |||) But hey, we got there eventually!

I felt so fucking stupid/embarrassed venting to my therapist about my struggles with voluntarily writing fanfic. It's the same way I felt venting to her about the agonies I initially experienced when I decided to start taking piano lessons. It's not life or death! I didn't have to do either of those things! And yet I was so fucking upset about both. And wouldn't ya know it, turns out both were like catnip for my OCD!

I won't even begin to pretend I don't still have issues with my OCD and my writing. One of my super fun writing related obsessions lately is the deep seated fear I've gone into a fugue state and accidentally plagiarized other fics I've read. This was particularly bad with my latest Night Vale fic and my Hazbin Part 3 fic.

So, what's a person with OCD to do? Reassurance seeking and checking, of course! As I explained to my BFF the other day:

So obviously I spent hours googling Night Vale fanons and skimming/searching through Night Vale and Hazbin fics and other fics I'd previously read to make sure I hadn't accidentally copied someone else!

FUN FACT! I've read over 100 Hazbin fanfics alone! FUN FACT, IT IS PROBABLY (thanks for the qualifier, OCD) LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CHECK ALL OF THEM.

AND I AM ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT! That is MAJOR NO NO OCD behavior. It is a lapse. It is choosing to engage in a compulsion. Because, as they so succinctly put it at the OCD Conference I attended, a compulsion is a choice. The whole point of treatment for OCD is to quiet your obsessions and to learn how NOT to engage in your compulsions. OCD doesn't go away (unfortunately), but it can go into remission. Digging into a lapse/engaging in a compulsion ultimately pushes you closer to a relapse and further from remission.

But try telling that to yourself in the moment! Because my OCD thinks it is imperative to engage in the compulsion. Because otherwise I have to sit with the doubt/uncertainty/fear and try not to let it fester. It is so much easier in the short term to spend hours on checking and reassurance seeking. And, even worse, it makes you feel a little better in the moment!

But, as my friend so aptly said in the screenshot above, "something tells me you would just replace the thing you silenced with something new….."

Abso-fucking-lutely I would! And I did! I checked the fanons and fanfics I was most worried about, but I didn't check all of them! Even if I had, what if I thought I had and I missed one, the one that I actually may have accidentally copied? Or what if AO3's reading history isn't perfect and I checked everything and it left one off, the one that I actually may have accidentally copied?

To engage in a compulsion is to become the OCD equivalent of Sisyphus. Did you get the boulder to the top of the hill? Congratulations! Oops, looks like it rolled back down again... But this time it'll stay at the top of the hill for sure!

Right??? Right???

I did ultimately realize I was in an OCD spiral and made myself stop checking. Do I still want to? Absolutely I do! I want nothing more than to go through everything I've ever read with a fine tooth comb because otherwise I have to live with the doubt/fear/uncertainty. I have to accept I may have unintentionally been influenced by someone's work I read and loved, which would absolutely fucking devastate me because I would never do that kind of thing on purpose. It's against everything I believe in. It's cruel and it's wrong and oh god what if I did it accidentally and I'm cruel and wrong and a horrible fucking person?! This is it! This is when me and everyone else finally finds out I'm a horrible fucking person who can't write and whose only good ideas actually came from someone else!

My therapist would say something at this point like "But what if you didn't do that? What if you actually did come up with your ideas all on your own?" Or "It's possible. Anything is possible. That doesn't mean it's likely." Or "Even if you did, it's obviously not something you'd do on purpose."

Meanwhile my OCD brain is just like "We have to come up with contingencies for if you accidentally did do it and how you'll respond and fix it." And "It's just a matter of time before someone else finds what you missed when checking. What are you going to do then?" And "If it did happen, you'll have to give up writing forever and destroy your tumblr and forever hide from the justified mob consisting of the entire internet who will rightfully hunt you to the ends of the earth."

So, yeah. Needless to say, I STILL DESPERATELY WANT TO GO BACK TO CHECKING AND REASSURANCE SEEKING. But I'm going to try not to. And thank goodness I have therapy tomorrow because this shit has been living rent free in my head (in the bad way) for literal weeks now.

I keep trying to remind myself I can either continue compulsing or I can just keep fucking writing and hope for the best.

And yeah, my therapist did mention last session that I should probably ask my doctor about upping my antidepressants. Why do you ask?

Fuck it is mortifying to write all this shit out. And, ngl, my OCD is just like "Well, at least you have timestamped proof you didn't plagiarize anyone on purpose! But, y'know, no one will believe you anyway when they ultimately find the evidence you couldn't and confront you and run you out of internet town!"

...so yeah, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor for later this week to talk about upping my antidepressants... Because goodness gracious. It's not just about this. I'm still struggling with burnout (and maybe a resurgence of depression) and OCD in other areas of my life. It just so happens this latest spiral has been taking up a lot of real estate in my head lately.

[theheightofdishonor]

what are your favourite ships of all time and why?

oooh this one's been sitting in my inbox for a minute bcuz thanksgiving but also this is the worst question to ask the poster child of indecisiveness.

Like i've been sitting on this for a couple days and I still don't think I could accurately make a list because I've just seen/watched soooo many things and could never even remember most of them. AND my tastes change so rapidly.

But, with the acknowledgement that this could never be accurate, and that i'm just saying the ones that occur to me as I type-

kageyama/hinata (haikyuu!!) <- obviously, dunno if I need to answer why because my blog has slowly become a homage to them over the past couple years but it's because I love how they're soo connected in a myriad of ways- their personalities, their pasts, their desires, the themes that dictate their lives, even their names- it's all connected, it all leads them back to each other. Won't lie, I don't necessarily care about them in like a romantic/shipping way? and i'm moreso just obsessed with their dynamic as is- no matter the flavor of it.

percy/annabeth (PJO/HOO) <- they're not like an otp per say because pjo is one of those fandoms where I like pairing up random people and seeing what dynamics arise but percabeth is just an og yk

pat/pran (Bad Buddy) <- literally introduced me to thai bl and will always be unmatched; the story and the characters are impeccable but the acting and chemistry just push it to the top yk, the way they look at each other, the way they react in each other's presence, they bewitch me

view/nanon (Midnight Museum) <- listen listen, they're on screen for 5 seconds yes but consider this was the best chemistry nanon's ever had with a girl at that point and it was MY girl at that. + weird mannequin dynamic that initially reminded me of the pygmalion myth (one of my faves)

Jake/Amy (Brooklyn 99) <- they're classic and perfect

Picking a teen wolf ship is soooo hard so cheating and declaring a tie between stiles/theo, stiles/malia and scott/kira <- if you were on my blog around a certain time, you would know I was obsessed with steo for around two years I think? Still love the toxicity tbh. stiles and malia as a canon ship kinda suck but the potential of them that lives in my head is godtier. Kira's my favorite of scott's canon love interests and I think they're fucking adorable and I think there was just so much they could've done with her s4 arc and with them.

sirius/james (Harry Potter) <- I think I read a lot more for drarry than I ever did wolfstar and I really do have a couple hundred hp pairings I could rise up from the casket but this one's withstood the test of time best. I still like their dynamic. (The theme of this list is clearly unfaltering devotion, if it's not clear yet - catnip in a dynamic to me)

speaking of - wen kexing/zhou zishu (word of honor) <- UNHINGED. the two smartest people you know are also the dumbest, I also just like ships where one person annoys the other person into falling in love with them (see: peraltiago)

starfire/nightwing (dc) <- out of the two main ones, clearly the superior nightwing ship. I think they really tried to understand each other despite how different they were, I think they really helped each other. I wouldn't put them beside each other now but like, I still love them

Kat/Patrick (10 things I hate about you) <- THEE ship, THEE movie, their dynamic is just really cute to me, enough so that I can look past one of my most detested tropes of a relationship being started under false pretenses- like I normally HATE when one half of a pair is actively lying to the other for the majority of their relationship but with them, I find myself not minding all that much

yuuri/viktor (Yuri on ice!) <- I was watching this as it aired back in 2016 and if you were there, you'd know that they were a cultural reset. I'm also drawn to how much work these two take to function as a couple just because of how their personalities don't align. Yuuri's insecurities and anxieties always causes him to see rifts in their relationship where there isn't any, makes him want to run away while Viktor's semi-bad at communication and opening up about his feelings and specifically about getting through to Yuuri. It's a bad combo but they love each other, they want to be together so they keep trying to learn how to make it work anyway. And from yuuri's pov, it really is a classic trope of "idol falls in love with a fan who happens to be an average nobody" (tho viktor absolutely DOES NOT see it that way lmao)

Jess/Jules (Bend it like Beckham) <- as a south asian, Jess is everything to me and thus this movie is everything to me. And these two were so goddamn queer, I was actively losing my mind watching them fight over a boy because they were so clearly into each other.

Ellie/Aster (The Half of it) <- I think this was the first movie about queer girls that I watched that was explicitly queer so these two mean a lot to me.

Wil/Vivian (Saving Face) <- Another Alice Wu film that actually came out a solid decade before thoi but I didn't know of til later. They're very realistic representations of being queer asian women in America and the way that they had to deal with their family and their community and their opposing approaches to being queer while also being determined to hold onto each other - in hindsight it also reminds me a lot of my relationship with my wife

Tinn/Gun (My School President) <- the closest i've come in like shipping a pair in a bl the way other people ship pairs. Like I love pat/pran but like that's about 1738295 different things while here, I just think tinn and gun are cute as FUCK. I watched every episode 3 times as it came out. Makes me grin just to think about them for too long- what makes them a good ship though- it's cute, it's funny the initial dynamic set-up and every evolution after remains compelling, it's just such a sweet depiction of a high-school first love/romance and the awkwardness and weird communication and everything that comes with it. It's so sweet that like this is absolutely not the type of dynamic people associate with me generally but what can I say.

This one's real recent, Murali/Venu (Varshangallku Shesham) <- literally only two other people have watched this (on tumblr) but listen those bitches are GAY. The entire movie was me looking around to see if anyone else was picking up on what I was picking up. The tumblr crowd who like RRR might like this one if they tried tbh, plotwise different but like RRR, this one's also got a strong bromance, great soundtrack and is a period piece. Anyways, point is, they're kind of obsessed with each other, notably far more than they care about their respective love interests who both get like 5 minutes of screentime total, despite having terrible communication in their most critical moment, they also understand each other better than anyone else in the world (godtier if frustrating combo). The ending also has them looking like newly-weds buying their first house. I've watched this movie three times and I plan to add it to my yearly rotation so

Demitri/Anastasia (Anastasia) imma just presume you know this one and move on

Reki/Lenga (Sk8 the infinity) <- another pair that simultaneously understand everything and nothing about each other but are so in love that you can't help but love them too.