#i've been here since early 2020 or late 2019 so it's more than 3 years but who cares

[billsbae]

Introducing myself after 3 or more years being here because why not?

┌── about me ──┐

ೃ⁀➷ hello i'm victoria

ೃ⁀➷ my native languages are polish and italian, i'm also learning english and spanish

ೃ⁀➷ i live in poland

ೃ⁀➷ my pronouns are she/her and i'm bisexual

ೃ⁀➷ i like to write and read

ೃ⁀➷ i'm a coffee lover

ೃ⁀➷ i love astrology and i'm also into zodiac signs

ೃ⁀➷ my favorite music artists are taylor swift, olivia rodrigo and phoebe bridgers

ೃ⁀➷ my favorite music bands are queen, the beatles and ac/dc

ೃ⁀➷ i'm an infp

┌── my fandoms ──┐

ೃ⁀➷ the marauders

ೃ⁀➷ harry potter

ೃ⁀➷ dead poet society

ೃ⁀➷ bbc sherlock

ೃ⁀➷ taylor swift

ೃ⁀➷ it (2017)

ೃ⁀➷ percy jackson

ೃ⁀➷ greek mythology

ೃ⁀➷ avatar the last airbender

ೃ⁀➷ and probably a lot more but i can think about them now

┌── my ships ──┐

ೃ⁀➷ starcheaster/jegulus 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ wolfstar 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ partyvan 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ rosekiller 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ pandalily/redpanda 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ dorlene 【 the marauders 】

ೃ⁀➷ anderperry 【 dead poets society 】

ೃ⁀➷ knarlie 【 dead poets society 】

ೃ⁀➷ andalton 【 dead poets society 】

ೃ⁀➷ dragonseeker/drarry 【 harry potter 】

ೃ⁀➷ chosenking/rarry 【 harry potter 】

ೃ⁀➷ linny/redmoon 【 harry potter 】

ೃ⁀➷ fremione 【 harry potter 】

ೃ⁀➷ johnlock 【 bbc sherlock 】

ೃ⁀➷ jercy 【 percy jackson 】

ೃ⁀➷ pipabeth 【 percy jackson 】

ೃ⁀➷ zutara 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ zukka 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ sukka 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ mailee 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ yuetara 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ azutara 【 atla 】

ೃ⁀➷ and a lot more

[thefinalwitness]

i slept all day and im still severely hurty but i think. we're getting there. o|–< im including a readmore to catch up new ppl who are curious bc ive found being open about my chronic pain has helped inform others to their own so!!!! i like sharing

i've had a gradually worsening chronic illness since 2019-2020—it's hard to say for sure when it started, but my physically demanding job at a retail store slowly went from perfectly doable to 'i cant even survive a four hour shift without multiple episodes of hiding in the bathroom just to let some of the pain subside'.

i ultimately had to quit that job in early 2021, and at the time had a writing job that i thought, surely this will be okay! i was wrong. it was so hard to work as consistently as was needed of me. i spent so much time just writing and then sleeping so i might recover fast enough to do more writing. i was ALWAYS late on deadlines no matter how hard i tried.

eventually that job closed down in general, so naturally i lost it, but i know in my heart i would have had to quit within 6 months otherwise. that was late 2021. i've been unemployed since, with no disability because despite ongoing, regular visits with doctors, we dont know WHATS wrong with me, therefore i do not have a diagnosis, therefore i cannot qualify for disability in my area. yippee!

so that's the backstory! i started pain meds last fall and theyve helped A LOT. i can have fun sometimes! i went to pride this year for the first time since 2019!! there's definitely still something wrong, and lately i do believe it's still worsening (at a slower rate than before i was getting treatment at all), but i've gotten through a lot of the guilt for being 'an unemployed, unproductive human being' and have learned how to be kinder and patient with myself. it's not my fault i'm sick. it's not my fault 'my best' doesn't look like other people's. my family loves me not for what i can do for them, but because they just love me.

it's hard to feel your ability to Do Things slip away. how i cant go to amusement parks anymore bc the trip would wipe my ass out for weeks. how i cant even go to a barbecue next door some days bc everything just hurts too much. the simultaneous RESILIENCE you build, the tolerance for your own pain that makes you second-guess if it's even real. it took me so long to realize what i was feeling was NOT normal, that most people don't have to RATION their activities, their chores, their BASIC HUMAN MAINTENANCE to make sure you don't screw yourself over for tomorrow by being in too much pain to move.

today was bad. i had a really stressful day yesterday, and woke up in so much pain it was literally all i could do to sleep. couldn't eat, couldn't go to the bathroom, couldn't sit up, could BARELY speak. it was like my body was screaming at me, "we should be in a COMA right now, we should be UNCONSCIOUS, this is not something humans were designed to consciously endure." and that's WITH 6+ months medical pain management. it genuinely scares me imagining what this would've felt like today if i WASN'T on my meds.

i'm still very in the woods, but i'm trying to make the most of my situation! i'm open to questions if you want to learn more about this, as one of the biggest things that made me realize i needed help was OTHER PEOPLE being open about their chronic condition. it's not pretty, by any means, i've left out the grossest realities here, but i think it's important to share, in case i can do for someone what those people did for me.

thanks for reading!!!! i appreciate being heard on this too. it's scary, i still worry people will think i'm lazy or a crybaby, so it means a lot when people take the time to try and understand.

<3

[potential-fate]

Check in tag

I was tagged by @sicksadsim, thank youu!

Why did you choose your url?

uhm. honestly it's really old. basically just took my normal gamertag from when I was a teen and added "-sims" to the end lol.

How long have you been on tumblr?

Okay, so I've been on tumblr in general since like 2007. But I've had a simblr.... probably since like 2012? I took 3 years off though, and then recreated this as my main blog since I didn't really use the others. So this one specifically only goes back to the beginning of 2020/late 2019.

Do you have a queue tag?

Yup. I think it's just "queued". I queue almost everything so I don't overwhelm people with my posts. I think it's currently set to 10 posts a day?

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I think I just moved here when everyone else did in the early 2010s. I used to do sims on livejournal, and when people started moving here, I was like "oh I already know how to use that website!! and I liked that I didn't have to port my images from a photo-hosting website.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Eh, it's just my pfp on everything. Nothing crazy. Figured it's easier for people to tell who I am on discord and stuff if it all matches.

Why did you choose your header?

To be honest I am not even 100% sure what my header is.

What's your post with the most notes?

LMAO, much to my disdain, the most that has the most notes is a nonsims townscaper post 😂.

How many mutuals do you have?

hm... I'm not sure honestly... like probably quite a few. maybe like 50-70. But maybe like 10 that regularly interact with my stuff and me with theirs though?

How many followers do you have?

just over 400 currently.

How many people do you follow?

a little over 300 right now.

Have you ever made a shit post?

oh probably. It was probably a text post having to do with the premades too.

How often do you use tumblr each day?

More than I'd like to admit lmao.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

..... not on simblr? and it was a personal argument when I was still a teenager lmao. so I'm not sure if really counts if the beef was outside of tumblr and just spilled over onto my blog.... and idk who won lol.

How do you feel about 'you need to reblog this' posts

Tbh I tend to ignore them. I'll reblog meaningful things, or to help out people I know personally, but I also tend to curate my blog for only sims specific stuff.

Do you like tag games?

Sure. they're fun. I like the ones that are sims specific especially! I'm normally really slow at answering them though haha.

Do you like ask games?

Sure

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Lol this feels like a "ooh look who I know!" question 😂 but fr I don't really know what qualifies as "famous" on simblr. Probably @plumbtales if I had to guess who most people know?

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

What does this even mean? like a fr crush? or just a "wow I really wanna be friends with that person pleeeeeeeease" type crush? 😂 if the first, then no, I'm happily in a long term monogamous relationship so nah. if the second, yes. obviously there are people I follow who I would actually die if they decided to follow me LOL

[oversizedbats]

*jazz hands* 1-20 😏♥️ *finger guns*

LMAOOOO GIGI

1, 12, 19, 20 are here so I guess I'll entertain you and answer the rest here. But since you decided to be a menace I feel I need to put it under the cut

Ask game if anyone else wants to play but i'm answering all of them now i guess LOLL

2. top 5 books of all time?

AH um ok so it's going to be one of the ACOTAR books (could change depending on the day but it basically just flips between ACOWAR and ACOSF), A Rogue of One's Own (you already know how near and dear that one is), Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (the best portrayal of loneliness I've ever read and came to me at a time when I really really needed that), Beartown, and Fangirl.

Subject to change wildly

3. what is your favourite genre?

Flip flops between Fantasy and Romance. Right now I'm solidly in my romance era but it comes and goes between the two.

4. what sections of a bookstore do you browse?

I LOVE the endcaps and themed tables those are absolutely my favorites but I usually skim the romance aisle and general fiction as well

5. where do you buy books?

I mostly get my physical books from Barnes & Noble & Book of the Month. A ton of the books I read are from Libby though so I don't own nearly as many as I've read.

6. what books have you read in the last month?

Since April 15th (my birthday <3) I've read

House of Hollow

The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

The Dinner

Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover

The Atlas Six

The Bromance Book Club

Teach Me

A Good Girl's Guide To Murder

And I'll probably finish Gild today

7. is there a series/book that got you into reading?

There have been a few over time as my reading habits have fluctuated. The Warriors Series was a big one that got me into reading as a kid, Divergent got me back into it in my early teens, ACOTAR and Throne of Glass didn't really get me into reading since I was already into it at the time but they did make me excited about it again after that excitement had kind of faded for a bit (like late high school).

But the thing that got me MOST into reading again was COVID LOL. I was too busy (and also clinically depressed lol) for much reading in 2018/2019, I read 18 books in 2018, 36 in 2019, 77 in 2020, and 100 in 2021 lol. So even now that I do have to leave my apartment again I'm still reading more than I ever have before so that's stuck around (honestly though it's probably also bc I found my bookish people on the internet <3)

8. what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

BAHAHA oh my god this question. I don't remember the title but we had this picture book where there were a bunch of stuffed animals in a classroom that taught themselves to read from the posters on the wall LOL. It was kind of meta bc it was like a book about learning to read but I loved that book and felt SO accomplished when I could read it to my parents instead of the other way around so that was probably the earliest memory I have of reading a book (although to reference Nick Miller maybe I just memorized the words LOL I don't remember). For chapter books the earliest I can remember is either a Junie B. Jones or Magic Treehouse book but I don't know which one I read first

9. when do you tend to read most?

On weekends bc i have a job >:( so weekends and evenings. I also try to read a lot when I'm at the airport/flying or riding in a car.

10. do you have a guilty fav?

Not really, I feel like I try to avoid the idea of "guilty pleasures" in general so nothing comes to mind. Like. Maybe ACOTAR bc I acknowledge it's kind of a dumpster fire these days but I still wouldn't classify it as a "guilty" fave obviously.

11. what non-fiction books do you like if any?

I do enjoy non-fiction from time to time! I absolutely ADORED The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer they both are so special to me. I've also read some really great memoirs like The Glass Castle and I'm really looking forward to Jennette McCurdy's memoir coming out this year.

13. do you have a goodreads?

I do and some of you have found it. I don't write reviews on there so have fun guessing how i felt about a book from my star review only LOL.

14. do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

No. I used to dog ear like SUPER tiny but I don't anymore bc there are too many cute bookmarks in the world for that. I don't write in my books either, I tried that as well but it didn't feel like it added anything to the experience for me. The farthest I've gone recently is tabbing a book and that was only ACOSF and that was only so I could get back to my favorite parts faster LOL

I'm very much a "a little wear and tear is fine but I'm not going out of my way to make this look beat up" reader so no marking or dogearing and no spine cracking unless it happens on it's own. I try to respect people who purposefully beat up their books but I also sometimes i feel like they do it for outrage bait on tiktok LMAO

15. recommend and review a book.

I don't feel like writing a review but the last book I recommended to someone was The Wall of Winnipeg and Me so we'll go with that (i recommended it to my boss <3)

16. how many books have you read this year?

32 right now, will be 33 before the end of the day since i'm almost done with gild

17. top 5 children’s books?

Gah I don't even know. I liked Warriors, Little House on the Prairie, Harry Potter, Magic Treehouse & Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a Youth but I don't know if i would say they're in the top 5 like bold of anyone to assume I remember who I was as a child LOL

18. do you like historical books? which time period?

I obviously have a recent soft spot for regency romances <3. Other than that I do read historical fiction but I don't tend to gravitate towards any particular time period.

there's the end of the list, hope you're satisfied gigi

[beautifulduckweed]

2021 Reading Roundup

I am incapable of NOT leaving this sort of thing to the literal last minute, but here it is, my reading roundup for 2021.

In 2021, I read 114 novels and 101 pieces of fanfic, of which 3 were what I’d consider novel length (>50,000 words). Here’s a summary snapshot. It’s kind of bananas by my standards; between 2010ish through late 2019, I went without reading much of anything. Some years I’d read only one book, and it’d be whatever Naomi Novik published that year.

In 2019, I read 28 books.

In 2020, I read 102 books.

In 2021, I read 101 fanfics and 114 books.

How much I read in 2021 can’t compare to my voraciousness in my teens, when I’d plow through a 400-page novel every other day (I’m not exaggerating; I have my old reading logs from the 90s, I don’t know how I fuckin’ did this on top of all my homework and marathon phone calls with my friends), but I've read more this year than I have since my early 20s.

Because I’ve been out of the reading loop for so long, I read very few books published in 2021. My m.o. always has been “find an author I like and tear through their backlist systematically until I’ve annihilated everything.” This year, I added “paw my way through AO3 to satisfy my cravings” to my toolbox, which: I know. I KNOW. I’ve used AO3 before for non-book fandoms, and I don’t know why it took me this long to go, oh, shit, maybe I can use it for books and authors, too?

The neat thing about having a reading log in a spreadsheet like this is I can slice and dice my analytics all sorts of ways, and I can track fanfic on the same sheet. So without further ado, here’s everything I read this year that a) new to me (so I’m discounting all of my Loretta Chase and Laura Kinsale re-reads) that was b) rated 9/10 or higher:

Professionally Published

KJ Charles wrote by far the most books I rated highly this year; I rated a whopping 11 books of hers 9/10 or better. They are, in sort-of descending order of favorite-ness:

Any Old Diamonds The Spectred Isle The Will Darling trilogy (Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, Subtle Blood) Jackdaw The Magpie Lord The Henchmen of Zenda A Flight of Magpies An Unnatural Vice An Unsuitable Heir

The order for the top five (seven, actually, since I cheated by grouping the Will Darling trilogy into one) is honestly pretty arbitrary; it’s truly difficult for me to pick my for-real actual fave out of that list. If someone held my feet to the fire I will likely blurt out Any Old Diamonds, but for real, I love all of these so very much; all of these characters live rent-free in my head all the time, even though I've only written fanfic for the Will Darling books and Jackdaw so far. As soon as @etoilesombre gives me a good Stephen/Crane prompt, though, I'm ON IT. (I also want to write Jerry's POV for Any Old Diamonds, as well as fill in his missing backstory, but god only knows when I'll get to it.)

Cat Sebastian wrote the second-largest number of books I rated highly, with four titles. Again, in descending-ish order:

Two Rogues Make a Right Tommy Cabot Was Here Peter Cabot Gets Lost A Delicate Deception

It’s hard for me to describe how much I love Two Rogues Make a Right and Tommy Cabot Was Here. They make my heart hurt in the very best way. I turned around and immediately re-read Tommy Cabot as soon as I finished it because I tried to move on to another book and just...couldn’t.

All the other books are a mishmash of various authors with one or two titles, but three in particular deserve a special mention:

C.S. Pacat thoroughly rotted my brain with the Captive Prince trilogy. Prince's Gambit was the only book that received a 9.5, but oh my god. The story as a whole is such a doozy. I'm still not over it. I'm writing tens of thousands of words OF A SOULMATE GOOSE AU for Christ's sake. What in the fuck. What the shit. How did a bitchy golden prince and a big-hearted himbo king steal my heart and my mind so thoroughly???? I finished Kings Rising and immediately started over. I've lost count of the number of times I've re-read certain scenes from Prince's Gambit. It's a problem.

Tamsyn Muir straight-up murdered me with Gideon the Ninth. What the hell is even that book. That series. Having my heart obliterated after finishing Harrow the Ninth was what caused me to shovel through AO3 for book-related fanfic for the first time ever, because I needed something to tide me over; I was literally pulling my hair and almost literally gnashing my teeth. And then I read Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, and, fuck. I'm fuckin' obsessed with the way she writes.

Jess Whitecroft doesn't get nearly as much attention as she deserves, IMO. I had a Kindle Unlimited trial for two months, and I spent almost the entire time burning through her backlist. More than any other author I've read, she writes characters who are messy in ways romance novels tend to shy away from: sex workers, addicts, people who deeply do not have their shit together. She makes them work. My two favorites of hers are These Violent Delights, which was a college teacher/student romance I really didn't expect to love but did, and In Bloom, which is a deeply sweet story about a slutty himbo bartender who falls in love with his best friend, a trans woman who used to be a drag queen.

And now, a list of all the other books I loved most this year:

Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore Graceling, Kristin Cashore Any Way the Wind Blows, Rainbow Rowell Paladin's Strength, T. Kingfisher For Real, Alexis Hall

God, this ran long. A post about my favorite fanfic tomorrow! It's, um. A highly idiosyncratic list, overwhelmingly dominated by astolat and weatherfront.

[bisluthq]

I think it's interesting that you've got this fairly hard stance of "shawn m*ndes is a homophobe" when it seems a lot more likely that he's literally just... gay. (or maybe bisexual) 😬

I mean the dude literally had a panic attack while he was watching love simon in the movie theatre. he had to leave the movie theatre early, and then he went back to his hotel room and stayed up until 3am, reading fan tweets about his new song to calm himself down and ended up crying his eyes out. I can't tell you how many times I've done things like that

he accidentally included himself in the lgbt community in an interview once and then realized and sort of had a deer in caught in headlights look on his face.

he has a pink triangle mug that he drinks from at Q&A sessions

he's been rumored to have had a thing with nick jonas, john mayer, and niall from 1D. the niall rumor has the most evidence though out of the three, and a lot of people think something might have actually gone on there

also, I don't think he's as homophobic as he sounded back then bc there have been incidents like the time when he was in a club with niall and a couple of other guys, and a guy walked past and shouted, "best gay club ever!" at them, and shawn just smiled and laughed. he didn't look bothered at all. I feel like that rolling stone article was mainly him being an idiot and also his team's attempt at guilting people into not calling him gay anymore

some of his song lyrics are pretty sus and can be read as pretty gay, whether that was the intention or not. like "I wonder if I'm being real, do I speak my truth or do I filter how I feel? I wonder, wouldn't it be nice, to live inside a world that isn't black and white?"

he said he felt like he needed to be seen with a woman publicly so that people wouldn't think he was gay, and then 💥 BOOM 💥 next thing you know, he's getting papped with camila everywhere

and there are a lot of things about that relationship that are extremely sus. I don't really have the energy to mention them all bc I don't really care about them enough, but I've seen a ton of stuff pointed out by other people, and they've slipped up countless times too

also about why they would be doing it: even on the chance that he's straight, shawn and his team have been trying to get rid of his gay rumors for a long time. and most of the general public still thought he was gay and just bearding during almost all of 2020. it's only in the last few months that people have finally started saying "okay, maybe it's real and shawn is straight if it's gone on this long"

there was also this blind that was posted on laine gossip back in august 2019 (so 2 or 3 months after it first began)

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.laineygossip.com/what-they-know-in-advance-blind-riddle/57429/amp

which basically said that one of the two members of sh*wmila was secretly working on a huge project behind the scenes and that the producers had been told that the other one had agreed to make appearances in it, and they had promised the producers 100%, without any doubt whatsoever, that they could guarantee them that would be no change in their relationship status until the project was released 12 to 18 months later. that led to a lot of skepticism on the relationship's authenticity from people working on the project

sure enough, about a year later, shawn eventually announced that he'd been secretly working on a netflix documentary. it was released in the time frame that laine gossip gave (the next 12 to 18 months), and camila was in a few scenes, and sh*wmila was used as promotion for the documentary a lot (like in the trailers and stuff). it was only released a few months ago in late november 2020

I've seen fans of theirs saying they think they might wait until the 2 year anniversary to "break up" which is like... may/june/july 2021. somewhere around that time, I can't remember exactly. and camila has a movie coming out around that time too, so it'd make sense to do it around then

like they've got a lot of publicity from this, the laine gossip blind was proven right a year and a half later when shawn surprise announced his documentary, and it's only bc they've stretched it out this long that a lot of people have finally stopped saying it's just PR. if they'd stopped it back in late 2020, a lot of people were still saying it was fake back then

I don't actually like shawn btw. I think he seems like a nice guy based on the stories about him from deuxmoi (if they're true), but he kinda annoys me and I think he's a very bare minimum guy that is only as famous as he is bc he's white and male and somewhat conventionally good looking. I don't think he's that talented, and some of his dumbass comments bother me sometimes

that being said, I do feel empathy for him bc he really does seem closeted, and he hasn't made any stupid comments on being gay since late 2018, so I think he might have realized he sounded like a harmful idiot. I do think he's closeted, and there's a lot more evidence to point towards that than towards him being a straight homophobe

Okay but in December 2020 she said being called gay caused him damage and was frustrating:

(Source).

In 2019 he said being called gay is hurtful:

(Source).

And here’s a great take from a gay man on why this shit’s fucked up:

I’m sorry but I’m not gonna be like “Awww maybe he’s gay”. He says he’s not. He does damage by denying it in the way he does.

Sure he could be in Narnia. I’m not Shawn.

If that’s the case, he should get some therapy and/or stfu.