#(and also trying to juggle work and classes tbf)

[ruthlesslistener]

Quick update on the progress of Until Dawn Shall Break: fic isn't dead! I'm just currently obsessively picking away at the next two chapters and rereading the fic to capture any plot holes I might have missed because I'm a paranoid perfectionist and my dumbass past self didn't leave anything in the outline for the last few chapters other than 'figure it out'

[stvlti]

11 Questions

i was tagged by @privatekururugi, @espiadimonis, and @transguynoriaki a while ago. each gave me a set of 11 questions to answer, so i will answer these 33 questions. i’m not gonna tag anyone in particular, but if you see this do feel free to have a go at any or all of these sets of 11q’s.

from @privatekururugi:

1) Do you have any specific diet you go by? (Vegan, Gluten-Free, Paleo, etc.) i used to be pescetarian, but then the deficiencies it gave me caused some pretty bad dental / gum problems, so i started eating a bit of lean chicken and pork on the side again... (yeah i know supplements exist, but even my nutrition major of a friend thought a pescetarian diet won’t yield deficiencies, and also supplements are fairly expensive. get off my case)

2&3) Do you have any siblings? If so, how close are you? nope, i’m an only child

4&5) What’s your favourite book and why? (I might want to read it lol) hmm. i still really like 1984, it was the first dystopian classic i read and the concept of Newspeak, tampering with historical authenticity on such grand scales, etc. just blew my mind. so even though i still dislike its weakass character-writing (p much anyone besides Winston has no personality, no distinct personal motives, etc), it’s got a soft spot in my heart. next to that i also liked A Clockwork Orange for the philosophical discussion of the nature of right and wrong (although in hindsight the story is a bit didactic); To Live by Yu Hua (the ill-fated episodes and tragic ends are made all the more absurd by the subtle and simply narration style, but it really is a humbling and informative experience for us readers of a different era and socioeconomic background); and of course, my favourite fable, A Little Prince.

6) Would you describe your personality as dominate or submissive overall? what the fuck kind of question is this. well i’m opinionated as heck, so i’m not submissive “personality-wise”. and that’s all i’ll say on the matter because i’m p sex-indifferent lol, if that’s what this question was trying to get at.

7) What are your dreams usually like at night? oh man. i usually don’t dream normal dreams; as in, most dreams i have is either one big adventure / story, or some bizarre situation that would have been questionable at best, fucked up at worst, in real life context. when i start dreaming about mundane everyday life problems or situations, like failing a test or being stuck with a friend i’ve cut off from my life years ago, that’s usually when i’ve got some kind of stress going on in my life.

(i’ve been trying to restart my dream journal tag actually, but i got stuck on my second entry trying to recall the specifics lol. maybe i should release entry #3 from the drafts first.)

8) Is there anything you’re currently anxious about? well, yeah. my future. my job prospects. being homeless once my parents decide to sell their house off for retirement because the housing prices are through the roof here. pick one.

9&10) Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Will you be contributing anything? we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving!

11) Whose your favourite Death Note character (if you have one)?  Light Yagami, even though he’s a slimy fox.

from @transguynoriaki:

1. What kind of music do you listen to?

hmm, i only listen to really slow music or something dark or rock-ish, nothing in between!! muahahaha!! 

okay that’s generalising it; i do love The Honey Trees and The Novembers, which are on opposite ends of the “slow” spectrum (one’s dream pop, the other’s infused with shoegaze and other distortions + some screamy vocals and loud noises at times), with Lana Del Rey and her decadent sounds smack in the middle lol. but yeah i certainly have a taste for the more atmospheric stuff, so aside from the fuzzy feelings of The Novembers’ stuff and the grandness of Lana’s string instrumentals i also like the darker chill vibes you get from The Neighbourhood, some of The Weeknd’s older stuff, etc. 

and I also really enjoy MCR, Muse and the like - i.e. dramatic sounds, that’s the good shit to me haha.

i also like more conventional pop acts like Lorde... and my fave local singer, Ivana Wong, of course!

2. Do you prefer to keep your living space neat and tidy or do you like a certain amount of mess?

i do prefer order and routine in my life, sadly if i can’t do that on a structural level you think i can do that with my desk?! lol. in an alternate universe, maybe.

3. What was the first ship you remember really shipping?

hmm probably TerraxBeast Boy from CN’s Teen Titans. i was lukewarm / indifferent to other canon pairings i’ve seen in media up until that point; but i guess i was more persuaded by the storyline than their characterisations as looking back there are glaring trust issues in their relationship (and that’s an understatement)

4. Do you have a certain show or book series that holds a lot of nostalgic value for you? If so, what was it?

hmm, i guess Courage the Cowardly Dog? (i was a weird kid but shush) and Teen Titans of course. as for books, hmm... ASoUE is definitely one of the ones that just takes me back to middle school. i even bought the Beatrice letters files thingy. tbf the whole Lemony Snicket universe did teach me a lot about cryptography, which i guess if me or a friend of mine were to do an L rp and solve cases it would help a lot (*cough* not saying that’s what’s happening right now because i’ve got other stuff i’m investing my time into. i guess my friend’s gonna make themselves scarce as well hahaha *cue Mariah Carey’s i can’t read gif except it’s L*)

5. What is your favorite type of food?

Italian and Japanese are my fave cuisines! i guess that means i love richly-flavoured foods and creamy stuff. ooh, love those sauces.

6. Was there ever a fad or activity from your childhood that you could never understand or get into?

i wasn’t a gamer at all. we didn’t own a single console and i wasn’t allowed to get a handheld. the most i had was a Tamagotchi. so i guess it’s not so much i never got that ‘fad’, just that i was never given the opportunity to discover the really good games. i’ve only ever played a bit of Mario Kart or Cooking Mama on my cousin’s NDS so yeah. didn’t see the appeal in the more light-hearted games like that.

(now that i’ve played Undertale i’m kinda wanting to explore more PC games though. i heard Papers Please is good, and PJ (@kickthepj)’s been recommending Hyper Light Drifter a lot, and the art looks amazing, so yeah... too broke to get them though... and even if i had the money and time to play them i’d be allocating it towards other stuff you know?)

7. What’s your favorite time of day?

well i got 2 fave time periods. the first one’s the witching hours between midnight and early morning, when the world is quiet and you could do anything and nobody would know. the other one is early morning, just after sunrise, and the air is clear and slightly chilly, and it’s also really quiet but you can just hear the birds tweeting somewhere.

i’m more likely to be awake for the first time period described here though... ._.

8. What’s your favorite type flower and why?

hmm i'm not really a flower person. i’m just gonna steal Luke’s answer and say cactus flowers haha (well i do like cacti, they’re some of my favourite plants; i even named my IG/Twitter and Pokemon Go usernames after the plant; also some of you might remember that i had a pet cactus for 8 months)

9. What’s your favorite cliché/trope in fiction?

lovers running out of time...

10. Did/do you do any extracurricular activities when you were in school and what were they?

(wow Luke that’s a lot on your resume!)

i did bits and bobs throughout school, but perhaps my longest commitment was my Clarinet lessons. started when i was in Year 2, carried on until i obtained a Pass in Grade 8 ABRSM certificate in Year 10. i had to quit and give up on a diploma there because i was starting the IB diploma programme in Year 11...

this commitment is only rivalled by the dance classes i took. i did ballet from a young age until i was about 12~13, quitting just before en pointe shoes were introduced; i had also been in Chinese dance lessons from Year 1, so after quitting ballet i just focused on that until Year 10 as well (again, quitting to focus on my full-time diploma).

i also did Taekwondo as a child and obtained a black belt qualification by age 12. i quit once i did though, because again i couldn’t afford to juggle so many commitments the older i got and the more demanding my studies became.

perhaps the proudest extracurricular i’ve done is in my senior years of high school: i started and chaired the student committee as the editor in-chief for the school’s first student-ran and seasonal (now monthly) publication. it’s not student-ran either anymore because i guess the kids that came after the classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016 just dgaf about slightly more demanding extracurriculars that require organisation as long as they can earn their credits elsewhere (yes i’m salty, i’m allowed to be okay, it was my brainchild but apparently kids these days don’t care about having their voices heard if it means having to negotiate diplomacy with the adults in charge. god, how do they expect to survive in uni or in a workplace?)

11. What’s your favorite piece of work that you’ve ever created and what about it do you love so much?

hmm. i think for sure the prose poem i wrote about Light’s death in the anime. idk, the flow and the imagery is just a good concentrated example of what i could be capable of given the right tone and context. (of course, i’ve been trying hard to branch out in genres and forms, so that sort of language isn’t always applicable. but yeah, it remains my fave as a showcase of my best writing abilities ^_^)

and from @espiadimonis​:

1.If you could have one piece of death note merchandise of any kind, what would it be?

oh man! i’ve been pining after the Hot Topic official DN poker card deck for quite some time! i’ve checked Blue Banana while i was in the UK, but it’s not available there, and it’s not at Tokyo Toys either (they do sell a DN playing card deck, but it’s a lot cheaper in design :/)

2.What’s your favourite 3D animated movie?

does Lego Batman count? if not, then i guess Zootopia.

(there’s a reason these 2 are listed in my bio fandoms list like...)

3.What superpower would you like to have?

i used to always choose levitation / flying, but lately i’m not so sure. i’ve heard a lot of compelling arguments for other powers haha.

you know what, i’d trade for something as simple as better control of my own brain. i don’t care about mind control over others; i just want to be able to harness the best parts of my lightning fast thought processes and out-of-the-box thinking on my best days without being constantly tripped up by executive dysfunction like that on a metacognitive level.

4.Favourite piece of clothing?

my soft furry hoodie, which i’m wearing right now! <3

5.Who’s your favourite Sailor Scout?

i don’t have one, sorry! i was 4 when it aired on TV, so i don’t remember much from those years except the Sailor Moon t shirt i got courtesy of my aunt because it was all the rage back then... i’m sorry, but i have more vivid memories of Pretty Cure and Sugar Sugar Rune!

6.Do you prefer potato chips chocolate?

it is a good combo for sure! we are talking about Royce’s chocolate potato chips, right? (if you haven’t tried it get some next time you or a friend/family goes to Japan! we can buy it locally from like Citysuper or something, but i doubt they export it to any countries beyond East Asia haha)

7.What song makes you feel melancholic?

oh, Six Billion did last week. it left me feeling cold all over. an effect from the combination of the layered vocals and the instrumentals i guess. (is it in minor key? i’m sorry i can’t tell anymore, it’s been far too long since i’ve had any musical training. but if it’s in minor key it would explain why.)

there’s also some of the stuff off The Novembers’ catalogue... mostly 終わらない境界 from To (melt into), which was my daily commuting soundtrack at a time when i had brainfog on a regular basis, so yeah, anxiety and all that fun stuff :/

8.Which dn character would you invite to Spaceland(the amusement park)?

Sayu or Matsuda? they deserve a lot more than the hand canon dealt them. hmm maybe Rem too? but she wouldn’t be able to interact with a lot of the stuff there :/

9.What’s the funniest movie you ever watched?

i guess The Lego Batman Movie? i’m sorry i know i keep bringing this film up, but it’s comedic genius for a “kid’s movie”.

10.You can only choose one pokémon! Which one do you choose?

Blissey was gonna be my go to answer. she’s a tank, have you seen her? but is she really my fave mon? debatable. idk man. i really liked Vulpix/Ninetales as a kid... but dark and ghost types though!! okay i can’t choose, next question 

11.What made you happy recently?

i went to another poetry event last night and i met up with a friend i haven’t seen since September :P

[mystt]

so all of my final grades in are officially In for the semester and i honestly feel kind of bad for bragging BUT im rly proud of myself so im going to do so under the cut. included also is a general life update that is way too long but this is all stuff i feel i need to put on the table for yall

i four-pointed all of my classes and considering the state that ive been in all semester i honestly feel so good abt myself rn. (tbf, some of these classes i just barely 4 pointed. one of them i managed to get by literally .07% but at this point i rly just dont care). some of u guys will kno that these last 4 months have probably been some of the worst 4 months of my life in terms of mental health .every part of my body is telling me to be done with school. there was a period about three weeks ago where i was seriously at risk for being withdrawn from multiple classes (meaning id have to take another semester) for having too many absences. ive gotten less sleep this semester than probably any single period in my life. making sure that i got the grades that i know i can get has been a huge strain on myself and on my family who’ve had to deal with me basically never being available. if u were someone that i previously talked to on an even semi-regular basis, i hope this post can give u an explanation - NOT an excuse - as to why thats stopped happening. 

i wouldnt do this last semester again. all of this stuff combined isnt worth what i got out of it, honestly and truly. i dont even know how much ive grown as an artist during this time because as u guys can prolly also tell ive barely had any time to draw for myself. all of my creative energy was poured in to these classes. i did some great work this semester, yeah, but ive also done some truly embarrassing work as well. 

but, at the very least all of the sacrifices i and the ppl around me had to make weren’t wasted. i will be graduating suma cum laude tomorrow, actually. i will be wearing my gold tassle with pride. the last two years of my life have been...insane. good and bad. ive met some of the coolest people ive ever met and seen some truly amazing artists grow and develop. its been a honor, and i dont regret getting my degree overall. its just been this last semester that has been a living hell

what next? im going to focus on becoming an actual adult instead of a 20 yr old teenager. i need to learn to drive, get a job (id love for it to be in my field but considering where i live? very unlikely. but we’ll see), and overall increase my independence from my parents. i need to give myself a few weeks to see where i am and then talk to a psychologist about handling my mood swings, depression, and anxiety. i need to try to rebuild the friendships that have dried up to basically nothing over the last 3 months (expect messages from me, ppl i have on skype!). i need to start saving money so that in fall 2018 i can move to detroit to study at the college for creative studies so i can get my bachelors. in the meantime i need to continue to hone my craft so that i wont have lost a year of progress between then and now.

but...for now thats it. i wont be, on top of all of that, having to juggle the work of 5 classes, administrative bullshit, and end-of-the-year requirements at the same time. my stress load has been over halved between today and monday. i think the most important thing is that i need to remember how to be a human being again

[parthzlife]

@gloomybluebella  Okay, here’s the deal.  

First of all, just a disclaimer: I’m not doing this to be a desperate attention seeker and fully expect this to make up for me annoying you and Sammy so much earlier. If she doesn’t feel like talking to me, it’s fine. Just try to keep in mind the gist of what I’m about to say as best as possible, that’s all. 

So why did I suddenly drop everything and vamoose out of the Internet land for a minute there? Well, I don’t really have a straightforward answer to that question, but for the sake of being concise, I’m gonna try and condense this down as much as possible, so, here we go. 

My short answer to that is that I was REALLY unhappy. And by that, I mean something much more profound that the normal melancholy that we all get from time to time. 

So going right off the bat, this whole thing started around late May/early June of 2017. I came across some plush videos on YouTube starring Peach Daisy and Rosalina, and decided I’d have a look at them. And things seemed fine, at first, but then things changed when I saw that they hadn’t uploaded in almost a year, and that, in the comments, some people were begging them for more videos and calling them “the best videos ever”. Which concerned me, to say the least.

A short time after that, I realized there were a lot more people on YouTube uploading the same sort of things, and so I decided to watch those, hoping that it would solve the problem and that there’d be nothing else to it. But, lo and behold, it did not work. Over the next month or so, I started having similar issues with other people on YouTube, G+, and DeviantArt, and I began to feel a nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right. This feeling slowly, but surely, persisted over the next 4-5 months, and, needless to say, I didn’t want to admit that there was even a problem. 

Around Halloween of 2017 is when it all came to a hit for me. I was constantly dealing with trolls and angry rants on a regular basis, a lot of people (particularly Princess Peach RPers) were manipulating me for attention, and a lot of the comments I was seeing on G+ were just filled with cringey Princess Peach fanboys who acted like people had no life outside of RPing. Not to mention, I was also struggling with my classes at school, which disrupted my ability to function normally during that time, and well into the holiday season. That was the last straw for me. After that, I felt like I had no foundation, and I just felt....completely lost. At this point, one could reasonably categorize what I was experiencing as depression. I had trouble concentrating on things, my hobbies and interests were no longer fun for me, and my body was constantly pumping out adrenaline and cortisol from being in a constant state of stress. It was a pretty devastating and awful place to be at in my life, and it did not stop. 

I took a break in December, and made it a point that I would try and use any means necessary to distract my self, as much as possible, to avoid it altogether; and manage my responsibilities in a way that was well-suited for me. And it worked, for about the first 6-7 months of 2018. But around July or August last year, something else came up. I was feeling overwhelmed from juggling multiple responsibilities, and having trouble maintaining a consistent schedule. And because of that, some of the same issues I was having earlier began to resurface as a result of me being unmotivated (e.g. people spamming lewds and constantly complaining about stuff). Eventually, I noticed that Sammy was uploading content, and, partly because I hadn’t seen her upload anything since the first few months of 2018, I was missing a lot of the sights and content I was visiting earlier. So I decided that, maybe, browsing her content and occasionally commenting once a week (maybe even less than that depending on if and what she was posting) would help take my mind off of things. And true, she has depression and her interests and mine aren’t exactly the same. However, I didn’t necessarily want to dismiss it completely, because, I like to think I’m open to all possibilities, and tbf, at the time, I was really ready to just be done with the whole thing. So there’s that.

Around late February/early March this year, things finally did start improving (for real, this time). However, there was still sorta one problem which I hadn’t addressed yet. And after a lot of self-reflection, I can honestly say this is most likely what started this vicious cycle in the first place. So like I was saying, people were manipulating me and their followers for attention, and when that happened, a lot of their “fans” would almost automatically jump on this bandwagon of getting negative and assuming things without having an original opinion or understanding what’s going on (e.g. “Don’t leave! We still care about you!”, “Ignore the haters!”, “Where are you? Please come back! It’s been too long!”, *cries*, 😭, “For the last time, Waluigi doesn’t deserve to be playable in Smash! How many times do I have to keep repeating myself?”, etc.). Basically, I ended up falling into that mob mentality, and I think that’s really why I got so carried away with wanting to make sure Sammy was okay, but not really stopping to consider if I was going about things the right way or not. 

As soon as I finally took that to heart, I knew that a decision had to be made, and that I could no longer dodge it. My parents pulled me aside and asked me what was up. I hadn’t really talked about it with anyone, because it wasn’t really something that could be resolved just by getting advice from a friend or loved one, and I was just too uncomfortable to talk about it with anyone. But I reluctantly agreed, and I told them exactly what was going on. They basically said something along the lines of, “Hey, it’s okay, everyone goes through a rough patch from time to time, you always have options, and you don’t have to let these things cause you distress.”. 

So after that, I started forcing myself to talk to friends I’d known for years. I began having casual small talk with them and had some discussions about how things were going with them, and that was really special to me, too. But the first 2 weeks were ROUGH, to say the least. It was incredibly difficult to take my mind off of the stressful situation I was dealing with, or even focus on the things I enjoyed at the time. I didn’t want to look at my YouTube notifications anymore. I didn’t even want to look at Tumblr or Instagram, or even anything Mario-related anymore. But I sort of knew that was coming, and so I just braced myself for 2 weeks. I knew I wasn’t gonna instantly find relief, and that it was gonna take time, so I just sort of dealt with it, and that was that. 

But after 2 weeks of talking with people about how I was feeling, contemplating my options, and later actually finding value in my life again, I just started to feel better. By the third week, I no longer felt completely stressed all the time, and I was able to relax and actually laugh, and enjoy time with my family and friends, and I didn’t feel depressed anymore. 

Which brings us to now. After some more discussion with my family about how I was feeling, and realizing that I could be happy just by avoiding certain things that I knew were emotionally stressful for me, I finally started having urges to be creative and pursue my normal interests again. And that’s where I’m at, now. 

I wanna also mention that, deep down, I’m actually a really open-minded person at heart. Yes, there have been times when I’ve felt sad because people disagree with me or people whose content I enjoy don’t upload for a long time. However, despite what my past actions might suggest, it’s not all that I think about 24/7, and it still doesn’t rule my entire life. If you prefer to focus on school/work, or if you wanna show love for Waluigi, post silly yet inaccurate memes, or express your LGBT pride, then, more power to you, go for it. What bugs me is when people just constantly spread negativity to the point of overkill, and in turn, cause other people distress and anxiety. Especially when it shows that they can’t think for themselves. So that’s that. 

And that’s pretty much it. I’m active again, and I’m happy to feel creative again. Sorry that this was too long, I just really wanted to get this out and explain how I was feeling. And, if nothing else, I hope this at least cleared things up a little bit. So with that, I’m gonna end this post. Again, I just hope this was a bit helpful.