jimmie-citron

[jimmie-citron]

If there's one thing no professional interior designer can ever truly emulate, it's maximalism. Sure, you can put together a bold and loud-coloured room with daring patterns and a creative colour scheme, and a cute and quirky gallery wall with a fun and funky theme to it, but a real maximalist home always has some element that is simply fucked up. Like the ugliest goddamn piece of furniture you've ever seen, some piece of decor that makes you wonder why the fuck would anyone want that in their house. Your eyes land on it and your instant reaction is "thanks, I hate it." And it's at home in this household, it literally could not fit in and look like it belongs anywhere else.

That's the spirit of maximalism. Someone's instinctive talent of locating the most hideous kitchy porcelain hippo lamp that anyone has ever seen, and going "ooh, your place is in my living room."

And miraculously, somehow being correct.

[jimmie-citron]

Gee, I thought these people were the ones who were like “If you don’t like it, you can just move to a blue state.”

And now they’re mad the guy is doing just that?

You can’t oppress and discriminate against someone then be mad when they take their highly useful skill elsewhere.

[jimmie-citron]

furious that i am not a playable character in this game

[jimmie-citron]

I should note, I hate the soulmates "we would fall in love in every universe" trope for the aforementioned "where's the tension and interest and really anything worthwhile" reasons. However, "we would find each other in every universe" fucking rips. We would interact meaningfully in every universe but sometimes we are lovers and sometimes we are friends and sometimes we are bitter enemies and sometimes we'd simply both be in the same HOA.

[jimmie-citron]

my collection of "weird social practices that are too funny to be considered rude"

[jimmie-citron]

Me, after forgetting to cut the top off an onion before dicing it: “Aw dammit”

The Gordon Ramsey that lives in my head: “Don’t worry there, this mistake isn’t going to ruin anything. No need to be too hard on yourself”

Me: “Wow, that’s…not what I was expecting”

Gordon: “Of course, you ought to know by now that I don’t shout at cooks just to do so. I do it because the people in hit television show Kitchen Nightmares are putting their services out into the public and claim to be good enough to have the title of head chef. You’re just some guy in your twenties making beef stroganoff for yourself and your roommate. I’m kind of a dick, yeah, but I’m not gonna scream at you for a minor mistake like this”

Me: “Oh….well…thanks”

Gordon: “You’re welcome…cunt…”

[jimmie-citron]

You're mine, I'm yours. You're the laughter to my jokes, and I'm the joke that makes you laugh. You're the fire in the wick of my candle, you eat me up, and I make you dance. You are the blood blooms in my thorns, and I'm the thorn to your side.

[jimmie-citron]

What will the end look like? Will we disintegrate in a blaze, or curdle? Will we fight to keep together or fight to the death? Will we simply drift like corpses in a river? What will we have said to each other, what will we have become? Will there be an end?

The end is the end, it will come if it must. But I will have had you, and you, me. We will have been a solid formation before melting into thin water. We will have been a spectacle deceased and decayed in an enclosure, a fossil. The blaze will have been fireworks. And curds and whey have their uses.

[jimmie-citron]

I'm in love. I know it. I know it when I smile into the night, half in bliss and half in heartsickness, wholly in delirium, Chela on loop in my head and an acute ache to bring you to live with me in the sunsets of every part of the world in my chest. I know it when I smile into uncertainty, fearing I have given too much for so little, fearing if I couldn't be enough, fearing if I might be. I know it when I smile into the everyday, the mundane, the motions of life.

And when you smile at me?

I'm in love. I know it.

[jimmie-citron]

Once there were four children

[jimmie-citron]

actually the fact that odysseus knew he'd be gone for 20 years makes the gears in my brain turn. You kiss your son goodbye knowing you will miss every milestone of his. He will be a grown man and will not remember you. You will be a father only by title. Your wife will lay alone in your wedding bed, she will wake and see the side you've slept on is empty. You won't hold each other for a long, long time. Your parents may not even be there to welcome you back. You know you will return, but the war stretches on and on. Your comrades fall. Your ships are on fire. Your best warriors are nothing but ashes in an urn. But it's eventually over, you can go home. But still, there's more time left. First it's a storm. It's winding up in strange lands. It's hunger. It's temptation. Your men grow weary. You have twelve ships and then you have one and then it's only you on a single timber. You know you will return, but everything has gone so horribly wrong that you can't help but wonder if the fates fooled you. Everyone you know is either dead or are living again. You are the only one stuck in between. Neither dead or alive. You sit on a beach staring out to the sea from the moments the birds sing til the sun dips over the horizon. Every day is the same - you sit on the stones and weep, you trek the shores, during the night you're in her bed. Your skin is cracked and sunburnt, your beard long and tangled, your hair etched with more and more silver hairs. Your eyes are dull, sunken. Your bones ache when you walk, your breath is shorter. The sun rises and sets. The waves wash away your footprints. You are growing old but the island is the same. You are left behind. Your home will change and you won't change with it. In fact, everyone will change, but you will not recognize what's different. Some of the lines under your eyes will be the hauntings of war, while your wife's will be from the sleepless nights of buying you time. You flinch when you see each other. You expected to see someone else, and she expected to see no one at all. You could once hold your boy in your arms, but now it feels like he's the one holding you. The trees in your orchard have grown taller. Some of the houses in your kingdom are empty. The children that sat on your knees now have their own children on their own knees - or they lie dead, by your own hand. Who are you? Who is your son, your wife? You will get to know each other, you will change together eventually. But there will still be something off, like a brick not fitting quite right in the foundation. Off like a living man among the dead, someone who wasn't fated to die, but was supposed to die a long time ago. A dead man among the living. You will not belong, even though you are the father of your son, the husband of your wife, the son of your father, the king of your land. There will always be something missing, something aching.

And you are willing to let it all happen when you lift your baby son from the field, away from the plow.

[jimmie-citron]

Tell me a soft memory

[jimmie-citron]

It annoys me unreasonably when you want to ask people "what bird and what mammal would make the worst gryphon" as a fun thought exercise, and people with no joy and no imagination always interpret it as "a gryphon that sucks, is physically impossible, and would hate being alive", and - being predictable and lacking in imagination - always, always answer with "a hummingbird and a blue whale lol".

Like come on. Why do you have to suck the fun out of everything. Why not use a fraction of imagination and delightful whimsy. Imagine the combination of a mouse and a sparrow. That creature would be merciless, burtal, absolutely determined to get into your trash and has the power of both wings and hands to do its will. Or a crow and a cat - that thing is smart enough to fuck with people and not afraid to do it. Imagine the ungodly shriek of the noble fox-seagull, also determined to get into your trash.

A gryphon that is a combination of a kangaroo and a cassowary. The only proof we have of a loving god is the fact that those things do not exist. If hell is real, it's full of them. That thing can't fly, but it will run you down, it will kill you, and you will look stupid the whole entire time you're dying.

Why would the first thing that pops into your mind at the words "the worst gryphon" automatically be "a gryphon that hates being alive". Can you not picture a gryphon that fucking loves being alive, and has both the power and the will to make it everyone else's problem.

[jimmie-citron]

growing up was realizing that the man who left a snide comment on my Lord of the Rings fic when i was thirteen was right, that i was sensitive for having gotten offended, and had some things to learn from him--and i did learn some things worth knowing.

i had only posted the first chapter, which, looking back, would have better served as a prologue. the gist of it was my character was of marrying age, but didn't want to settle for anyone in her village, and might not even have been interested in finding love. she wanted adventure. a Belle type. and the comment was wondering why there was a "harlequin" story in the fandom.

growing up a little more revealed to me that a) there is nothing wrong with indulgent fanfiction, like any with harem themes. not everything is going to be to your taste, because the fandom does not exist for you solely; b) it was the prologue. such quick judgement of the fic's content is unwarranted. i was a love-stricken teen who thought about Legolas all day, every day, and the story was to be about him and my main character only; c) literally no one asked for his opinion. i wasn't the type to ask for "constructive criticism" because i felt i didn't need it. yes, i was sharing my work, but not for it to be shat on. i feel it's uncalled-for and disheartening, and although i had taken the fic down and uploaded a new one with the prescribed changes, i never picked it up again after that.

growing up a little more is realizing the nuances, realizing that even if i may have been cringe, my feelings as a teen were valid, and realizing the importance of gentleness.

and growing up still is realizing that man may have just genuinely been baffled by this piece with zero original LotR characters in it, and chuckling about it, years after.

[jimmie-citron]

It's a good thing to bear in mind that just because someone is correct doesn't necessarily mean that they are right. For example, it's true that in order to maintain consistent work, you've got to have a consistent routine. A good routine consisting of good habits is as vital to consistent work as building a sturdy foundation is important to a house. It doesn't matter how good all your other plans are - no foundation, no house. This is correct.

However, a sturdy foundation requires solid ground to build upon. And sometimes, some people just don't have that. Sometimes you've just got a swamp for a brain. You can try to build foundations, over and over again, but that isn't going to work. All your fine stonework and masonry is just going to go to waste, sinking before it settles. and you've tried doing that so many times that you know that it isn't going to work. The rocks just disappear.

And people who don't understand what the fuck you're even talking about think you're lying. Solid stonework house foundations don't just magically disappear on their own. So they tell you to try again, accusing you of being lazy for being unwilling to keep doing work that you know is futile and achieves nothing. You cannot explain what the problem is to people who have never experienced it, and people who don't understand the problem can't help you.

But just because you can't do shit their way doesn't mean that you can't do shit. Problems nobody else has require solutions nobody else does. If you've got to build a house on a swamp, you've got to put that thing on stilts.

[jimmie-citron]

My counselor once told me to make sure I wasn’t doing things to distract myself from the boredom rather than try to sate it. I feel its one of the most important things he ever said to me.

When I’m distracting myself from the boredom, I read or game excessively so I don’t feel the emptiness of boredom. It’s a short term thing, and it only staves the boredom as long as I’m doing the thing.

When I’m sating myself from the boredom, I pursue things I am genuinely interested in and so find myself feeling fulfilled and happier for a longer period of time. Even if I stop doing it temporarily, I don’t immediately fall apart as I would with the distraction.

[jimmie-citron]

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.