#mental meandering

[rosielindy]

Current rabbit hole… looking for election maps and landed here for a while. Getting better at creating good visualizations is an active goal. Such a great skill to do well.

[contessavermillion]

Have you ever felt hollow, uneasy and unfinished. And you do everything you can to ease the feeling, to soothe it, to calm it. And you tell yourself there's something coming soon, some event, some person, something, that will ease that ache, fill the hollow.

And so you work and live and wait, knowing that wonderful, magical something is coming and that, with its coming, it will bring you completion and satiation and peace. And you know this because it has come before and left you whole. Briefly, wonderfully whole.

And then it comes. It comes and is wonderful and glorious and magical and beautiful. And you are happy. Truly happy. But... You notice the hollow, endless, numbing hunger is still there, gnawing at the edges of that magical something. And that's never happened before. The something has always obliterated the hollow before. But you are determined. You are committed. Positive thinking. Only good vibes. Etc. Etc. It will work again. It will fill you again. It has to.

And then your wonderful something leaves, moves on to elsewhere. And you still glow, happy, but that hollow, that hunger, that ache, is still right there, standing right beside you, familiar in the way it hurts.

And you realise that this darkness is a part of you now, perhaps never again to be banished. And you look at it, really look. And you no longer see a monster inside you, beside you. You just see yourself, wounded and shadowed. Yourself without the sunshine. And you think, maybe, that that's ok.

[sexybritishllama]

‘wow i can’t believe so many people misinterpreted lolita as a romance’ is like the most basic take of all time but i’ve finally actually read it and it’s like wow. yeah i really cannot believe anyone took that away from the book. i genuinely expected the pov to be more unreliable and obscure how fucked up humbert’s actions were through romanticism and the prose (which IS beautiful) but like. you do not need a degree in literature and expert level critical analysis skills to see how incredibly fucked up everything going on is

[outeremissary]

This was a originally for a daily prompt list where the prompt was "trust issues," but I feel like I lost the plot a little on the vibe of that list overall. But god I love drawing those weird plants

(version from the original post before I changed my mind about what looked more Decent lmao)

[fortunaestalta]

[mizzyislost]

how much are you tipping?? (he spills your drink everywhere and critiques your order)

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

I have come up with a question.

Who I'd your favorite Genshin character and why?

By reading your fics I can't tell if it's zhongli or childe.

zhongli by leaps and bounds actually

i do love childe don't get me wrong; i just love zhongli far more

as for why, i wouldn't know how to word it in a way that wouldn't take me any less than writing CN took me LMAO the reason why you might think childe is up there among my favorites (he is, he's just not as close to the top as you might think) i'd assume is probably because of the fics, yes? but the thing about the fics is while i've already mentioned i'm not exactly projecting onto childe nor, god forbid, using him as a self-insert for the author – i am more or less of the opinion that the way childe would love zhongli in a story would more often than not align quite well with the way i myself love zhongli as a character. (which is why i find bgtea's eoos and jouicifer's npc so interesting) so like- the reason why childe is usually the main pov character for my zhongchi fics is because i get to write how much i love zhongli as a concept via the lens of a character who would also love him in a similar fashion; only i also get to spice it up with childe's own character quirks, bc i think he's fascinating as well, just in a different direction. that might be why i've yet to write a zhongli pov zhongchi: not as easy to write about how much i love the character's concept if he himself is the pov, and i feel like zhongli's way of loving childe as a concept wouldn't be able to fill a fic the same way it does the other way around. not that he doesn't love him! i just haven't figured out how to write that pov for that long yet. if you're curious, i'd have to say my current favorites list goes kind of like this: zhongli way ahead of all the others, then wriothesley and neuvillette around the same realm, then navia, then kuki, then baizhu, then childe, and then like- in no particular order, furina, clorinde, diluc, jean, qiqi, xiao, xingqiu, chongyun, beidou, fischl, thoma, ayato, layla, yanfei, yaoyao, dehya, shenhe and most of the others. also to the side there'd be alhaitham, separate from the list, bc i love him but i also detest him in a particular way. i guess pity him is a better word, watching how the fandom treats him feels like taking physical dmg. if you're thinking of a particular artist like an outlier you're probably wrong, but i'm not going to point fingers bc why would i do that. (i do have a handful of characters i dislike but in the spirit of not being an asshole i'm just not going to list them)

anyway- yeah that's pretty much it;; maybe one day i'll make a zhongli pov zhongchi and it'd be a bit clearer what i mean by that, but you know me, i don't control the inspiration ToT

[mystical-one]

Allotted bob dylan posting time. I want to make an old man themed top trumps deck/series. Like Pokémon cards but for old men and they'd have like date of birth/number of studio albums/number of live performances/number of #1 hits etc etc. Also check out these awesome images I'm enjoying right now

[ashleeofjupiter]

Monster is fully like ‘here we fucking go again’

[nyan-bynary]

I kinda disagree with humanising characters to the point of going "this thing happening in the story would not be what they want" bc that's not a real guy they don't really want anything. like yea I don't think a character like gojo would WANT to live in a world where he's no longer the strongest but I think that breaking his character down and building him back up like that would've been an interesting move? it certainly would fit him thematically, finally allowing him to move on in a way he never could have and all

[austencollins]

Getting out of the 'burbs and going downtown is so fun, but I went with friends from the city and ow my legs. We all know I walk at a steady suburban pace stop making me hoof just so we can start waiting at the light a little earlier. 🥲

[toucansafari]

My gamedev work is going pretty great to compensate for my atrocious personal life u_u

[velnica]

What got you into writing about the bard boys? Love your works by the way! :D

Oh this is a great question and I apologise in advance if this sounds like a meandering trip down memory lane, but I have not actually reminisced about this in so long!

I'm gonna have to rewind to 25 April 2022 when I finally finished the Stormblood Bard quest. I practically inhaled both the HW and SB portions, and I was excitedly talking about it to some uninterested friends. I started trawling AO3 for all their fics, tried talking about it to other FFXIV players (which ended nowhere, as I was decidedly not in shipping spaces yet), and then I nearly gave up because no one wanted to talk about them as much as I did 😭

No, I did not go into Tumblr or Twitter yet because I was a dum dum and I could have skipped this initial heartache if I had lol.

ANYWAY someone in a lore channel I was in said that their initial tiff in the Nine Ivies look like two jilted lovers getting annoyed at each other and then an idea started forming. What if they were jilted lovers? What if they had met each other but subsequently avoided the others due to reputations, or unwillingness to commit, or whatever else? And then the smut writer in me started cackling; what if they had a one night stand and they remember it?

Before I knew it I had the first draft of Breathe In written in my gdocs. I posted it and then bam! there was no way to go but onwards. I started finding fandom spaces for ffxiv shipping, and then I found people who also ship the bard boys and the rest, as they say, was history.

To me this is really the story of how an interest that was fed and nourished can grow to be something that elevates my life. I enjoy the act of writing/creating itself and in the boys I found a subject that I want to explore through many scenarios which is I think just a match made in heaven. I also would like to think that they're cheering me on from between the lines, encouraging me to keep unfolding their stories in my own way and I think that's a really sweet thought that will keep me going in this niche space for a very long time 💖

[pink-squirrel]

So something I've wrestled with about my own personality is my willingness to be aggressive.

This used to lead to a lot of toxic behaviors, mostly because I didn't properly recognize it (and also needed therapy).

But at this point I am starting to recognize it more and trying to understand it (rather than push it aside and ignore it).

And I do think I am not an initiator of aggression in most things, which I am pleased about. And I believe most of my aggression stems from a want to stand up for myself, my family, and my values. And that seems reasonable. So I'm a bit like a family Chihuahua that is really loving but willing to go all out at people who might hurt me or mine.

In seriousness, I do think that with this understanding I can further temper my aggressive responses to be more measured and appropriate. I've always been concerned that my actions could put myself into a risky situation that places me or my loved ones in the path of harm. But I believe that with awareness (and maturity that seems to only have hit now that I'm in my 40s) I can actually start to appropriately harness my anger and passion.

[reminder-that]

Memes are memes and all that, but these days I do genuinely sometimes dread finding people who like the same things that I do, especially characters, because there is nearly no chance that they have a conversable view of the subject.

Not so much in the way that their base morality or mental ability is garbage and thus their view/interpretation/extrapolation of the subject is similarly garbage or at least objectively flawed, as these people really should just not be engaged with at all (for numerous reasons) and it's hard to mourn for something that never even had promise to begin with.

But in the way that they start from the same solid base point, the same good or at least understandable interpretation, but then their headcannons just shoot off in such a different direction and take the subject to such a wildly different or at least critically different endpoint (even when the headcannons are entirely or mostly valid) that we can't really say more than a sentence or two before we're talking about two different things.

[cherrysdoc]

10/21/24

Warning-talks of struggling mental health

Ahhhh finally, today was the last day at my sucky customer service job!!! I feel alive again lol.

Here’s a quick recap of the past week—

Last week I started my training for my new job (assisting the elderly/disabled folks). It went a lot better than I thought it would actually. They’re gonna pay me more than I thought they would which is honestly a huge blessing. My husband and I aren’t doing the best financially since he lost his job, so I’m so glad to be starting this new job. And like I said in my last entry, I’m excited to spend more one-on-one time with the people I’m working with and getting to know them more personally.

My husband has a job interview coming up, so fingers crossed it goes well. He’s been working hard door dashing, doing school and working on his YouTube channel. And being a good house-husband lol.

Last week, my parents came up to visit me and my sisters who live around. I can’t help but feel that they might be disappointed in me. It’s not they’ve had the highest expectations for me since I started having my mental health issues—I think they must be glad that I’m just still alive.. but still, I have this need to make them proud of me. Sometimes it really hurts me when I think about it, so I’ll stop that train of thought lol.

I can’t believe it’s 10 days until Halloween! I’m excited even though I don’t really have any plans. I feel like Halloween has become less and less exciting over the years. I feel that way about a lot of holidays as I’ve gotten older. I suppose it’s just the childhood wonder just worn off. Everything used to keep me up at night just because I couldn’t wait to wake up the next day.. I wish I could still feel like that.

This post sort of became a bummer the more I wrote lol, but I am looking forward to what the future holds in store for me. Things are on the up and up for sure.

Love from,

Cherry <3

PS We watched ‘The Love Witch’ this past week. I’ve watched it so many times, but I’m still obsessed with that movie ahhh