#im aware im not articulating myself very well here

[crossthread]

Hot take? Unpopular take?? Imma try to get somewhere with this point but like. I really think reading fanfiction inherently increased my standards for literature.

Cause for a while now I've only solely read fics in the past few years, like probably finished like two published books a year maybe (even though if I count my fic reads I'd easily be in the 100s from word count alone) and like. Recently got into the YA side of booktok, tried reading several of the most popular ones cause i kinda miss published books, and I just. side eye that shit?? Best example is ACOTAR. Read like 4 books in that series. Kinda get why it's popular cause the overall the main plot points (hot romance and kinda Mary sue protag) are good enough to get you into it but like. I genuinely had to force myself to finish it?? I have no idea why this is so popular.

Cause literally when I hold the ACOTAR up to my top 20 fics. Nothing. Not even my top 50 fics. Cause first off the plot is good enough but it's not something I've never seen before either. Same with characters. The writing style?? Straight up nope. Like. Is this really the standards for a good story?? There's so many good authors that write excellent smut and plot and characterization and just FANTASTIC writing style and overall quality of work and just. I don't get it.

I'm assuming this is a me thing, because I tried going through several YA novels and just. The quality of writing reeeally leaves a lot to be desired. The best thing I can come up with for the reason behind me feeling like this about YA is that the last time I was reading insanely, I was a teen, and now I'm in my early 20s so there's a good possibility that the same things don't intrest me anymore. But I keep circling back to the level of writing cause like. Idk. Just. I feel like while the plot and characters for a lot of these novels are good, what falls short is how it's written??? Like wtf.

[toastsnaffler]

weekend melancholy is starting to kick in >~<

[cripplecharacters]

oh yeah another question abt intellectual disability: what do people with moderate id speak like? i assume they wouldnt be perfectly articulate but i know making them talk like cavemen would be bad too. i do want it to be clear that they have language difficulties, but im not sure how to do that realistically. so what kinds of grammar errors are actually common? would it make sense to have them mix up words with similar pronunciation, or have difficulty discerning the differences in implications between words with similar meanings (like "pretty" vs "attractive")? do people with id ever 'imagine context' the way people(well, me) do when half-asleep where the brain mishears a statement as something completely unrelated? would spatial and situational awareness be impaired? also this is kind of a different question but if you can give advice on what to do with game mechanics for an id character in an rpg, that would be nice! i already have the stats figured out for every character and theres no stat that i think would be strongly affected by id but in terms of depicted fighting style and other mechanics maybe thered be some stuff informed by it (i cant do anything too complex though, im using rpg maker vx ace). idk! im spitballing here. main thing i need to know is how to write dialogue for a character with id ^_^

Hi! We have a post somewhat about this that you might find useful, I'll try to go over the other questions below!

Keep in mind my ID is mild (and on the milder side of that) so my answer will be all second-hand knowledge from talking to people with moderate ID in my SPED years.

A lot of it will depend on what condition causes they have. People with Williams syndrome have very “normal” verbal skills majority of the time and you can't really tell in my experience. On the other hand if they're autistic you can potentially guess from the tone of the voice e.g. they speak in a very loud and monotone way. People with Down syndrome are very likely to have a speech disorder, someone with cerebral palsy might slur their words, etc.

A lot of people with ID might be less talkative than your average person (there's definitely exceptions). So your character could use shorter sentences, simple sentences (in the grammar sense), prefer to use other forms of communication for things that don't require speech (e.g., nodding instead of saying “Yes, I agree”, or doing a thumbs up, etc.), or have to be prompted to actually answer/take part in the conversation.

I personally don't recall ever hearing the “mixing words with similar pronunciation” in someone's actual speech, maybe unless they learned the language from reading rather than hearing it? If that's the case, then ID could affect their speech more than if they didn't have it, otherwise I'd assume that the character might have brain damage or is maybe hard of hearing and simply mixes them up because they can't recognize/hear the difference between them.

Mixing words based on specific meaning makes much more sense in my opinion (probably because I do that myself lol). Synonyms or words that might make sense in one context but not the other are the worst. Your example here is great! When someone has ID they might take away the wrong meaning out of a word and use it incorrectly because of that. E.g., their parents used to take them camping to a forest with lots of bugs, they don't like bugs, they can later call something “foresty” to mean “with lots of bugs” even if it doesn't have much to do with an actual forest. This might make more sense for a character with more severe ID (or if they're just young) but using “attractive” when you'd normally say “pretty” makes sense for someone with moderate ID in my opinion.

Something that can also affect speech of someone with ID is word repetition. Not really in the echolalia sense (though it can be that too) but just using stock phrases that get repetitive over time. I try to edit it out from my posts but you can still kinda see it. For some people it will be ending most sentences with the same word, for someone else it will be starting two paragraphs with the same three words without realizing even though they're right next to each other or overusing “maybe” and “if” to start sentences.

As for the “imagining context” while mishearing something, I'm not sure if I know what you mean by it so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I don't do it lol

Situational awareness is definitely impacted for all people with ID but to different degrees. I don't know if it's part of the diagnostic criteria but it might as well be. When the person's ID is mild it might look like someone who's just kinda unaware of what goes around them, maybe don't recognize that they're doing something that could end up badly. The more severe the intellectual disability the more obvious it is, the person might elope (wander off) and not be able to find their way back, not be able to use cooking utensils safely because they don't recognize the risks in real time (not really in the “not realizing that the knife is sharp” way if they have moderate ID, more like “not realizing that you need to be careful when putting things on hot oil or you can get burned”), assuming that people are automatically safe to be around, things like that.

Spatial awareness doesn't affect everyone, but one of the biggest comorbidities of ID is dyspraxia, which does affect it a lot. There are people with mild ID with severe dyspraxia, and severely ID people with no dyspraxia. It varies.

Unfortunately I have never played any RPGS and I'm not really familiar with the mechanics. Here's an old ask about intellectually disabled characters engaged in combat, hopefully it's useful?

If you want some real-life resources for hearing how intellectually disabled people talk, I really recommend this playlist. It's a bunch of interviews with people with Down syndrome and you can see that they're all very different from each other despite having the same disability.

I hope this helps! mod Sasza

[biosblades]

I’ve seen whispers of various accusations, but I’ve just found out from their latest post dump that prismatic bell is a genuine violent Zionist. So I decided to do a bit more digging and it literally took me like 10 secs to find the receipts exposing ableism, racism, terf rhetoric, and other hateful behavior.

I honestly used to reblog a lot bc I feel like when they do make a good point (even broken clocks ig… or they do a really good job masking their bigotry as progressivism and sometimes that results in a few genuinely progressive stances) they’re very well articulated, but a lot of the (extremely well founded) accusations are also for spreading misinformation so I’m not trusting shit anymore. If it is something I know for a fact they’re right about I’ll just do the work to articulate it myself

Anyway I know Im like the last person to know about this but sorry to anyone who knew and was subjected to them because of me and here’s a formal warning to anyone who still wasn’t aware of who they really are

[spacelazarwolf]

the post in that last ask also seems, like.... to miss the point of misogyny? like cis men are not expected to do housework or be emotionally aware but they are not infantilized for it. in fact it's not seen as an inability at all, it's seen as rationality. cis men are actually presumed to be more competent than their counterparts of other genders. so like... how could this be a mirror of perceptions of cis men when those perceptions... don't actually exist? how could it be equivalent when it's the exact opposite of the way people see cis men?

idk i feel like people forget that the majority of the world doesn't see things the way people who are involved with activism do. like outside of activist spaces people don't see cis men as incompetent for not being able to do housework or be emotionally aware because they're not EXPECTED to. idk how to articulate myself well here but it seems like they are projecting a feminist understanding of cis manhood into transphobic behavior, when the reality is that the majority of transphobic behavior comes from people who are also sexist. it just seems very detached from the reality of transphobia. it's like people forget what it's actually like outside of their internet bubble

(and im not even a trans man. im trans but not a trans man and like didjdk god it's just so???)

seriously!!!!!!! people get so stupid when trying to justify their hatred of trans men and it’s embarrassing!!!!!

[donnerpartyofone]

i find you unimaginably cool and ive expressed to you before on anon the sentiment that i feel a deep kinship towards you for how you speak so candidly abt your own stupidity (pls dont take that as me calling you stupid) bcuz i feel exactly the same way abt my own stupidity and hate when ppl try to talk me out of it but ANYways i just saw your post abt writing a novelization of splice and i am literally reeling. i love that weird ass movie so much and i think writing a novelization of it is one of the most off the wall and amazing things ive ever heard of. i hope that you will share when it is published bcuz i cannot wait to read it. pls know that someone out there understands you (or at least understands you as best as someone can thru this parasocial lens of tumblr and how you choose to share yourself there) and that someone out there thinks you are basically what i hope i can be when i grow up. thank you for sharing. thank you for articulating yourself as well as you do (i too have the itch to tell you you are not stupid but bcuz i know how it is i wont do it but besides that, i think you are one of the clearest and most well articulated writers ive ever encountered online or elsewhere). sorry, this all feels insane to type. im off two tallboy ipas and i just think youre great.

Dearest Correspondent,

Oddly enough, just the other day somebody liked an older post of mine, and when I clicked on it to remind myself of what it was, the next post down was your last message. Anyway, thanks! The whole novelization business is really funny. Do people even know what they are anymore? I didn't know anybody still made them until I was hired to do SPLICE. I used to get them from the drugstore sometimes when I was a kid because my parents were very uptight about what I watched, but they wouldn't be caught dead restricting anyone's reading habits. During my initial conversation with the SPLICE publisher, we kind of bonded over our memories of the CHILD'S PLAY 2 novelization, of all things, that seemed to help me a lot in addition to my ideas about what SPLICE should be like on paper. I tend to think of novelizations as just another piece of merch, but when you write them, I don't know, like you really have to live out the movie in your mind over and over again to figure out what the characters are experiencing physically, environmentally, how their emotional experiences affect their bodies, etc. You have to fill in the blanks of what they think and sense just enough to make your transcription convincing, while staying within certain bounds to honor what the filmmaker meant to say. SPLICE started as kind of a lark for me, and then almost immediately it became extremely personal; when I was nearing the end of my first draft I thought, "OK, well, I guess everyone is about to find out how insane I am." I was afraid it just sounded "crazy" and wouldn't be what the publisher was expecting. But after I turned it in, the surprise encouragement I got from actual-Vincenzo Natali was pretty amazing, so maybe it's good! Maybe you really CAN'T tell how crazy I am, and it's just very entertaining. You'll have to wait and see.

Parasocial relationships are tricky, huh, especially here on tumblr dot com. The best thing you can do for yourself is just be very aware that they are happening within you, a test you seem to have passed. I think a lot of us come here seeking understanding of our weirdest parts, but the more you put out there to find the people who get what you're saying, you simultaneously get a lot of reminders that most people have no idea what you're talking about. There will be people who seem to hate you because they've misunderstood you, and there will also be people who love you but whose interactions prove that they have absolutely no idea what you're communicating. I recently culled a bunch of followers because they were just creating a lot of noise, even though they may have meant well, and I was losing the clarity I needed to keep doing this. I started to see every post as a worrisome opportunity to find out how poorly people can possibly read me, and suppressing the urge to re-explain myself every day was becoming exhausting. And ironically, around the same time, I was briefly mutuals with one of my favorite bloggers ever, and just as I thought we were becoming chummy, they unfollowed me. I didn't freak out, actually I just unfollowed them back because I was concerned about being annoying, but I did have all kinds of Thoughts about this event. I have spent a lot of time reviewing what my projections were about that person, and what my personal investment in their narrative says about me. I think there could be something good to get out of this audit, even though the whole episode is sort of embarrassing. But Tumblr definitely gives you a lot of opportunities to examine your own filters, clean them out once in a while, and get to know yourself a little better--even if other people seem to be getting to know you a little worse! You just have to stick to your own course and see what comes of it.

Uh. What the hell was I saying. I don't know! But I appreciate your messages, I feel "gotten" by them. Some of the follower upheaval recently did involve the way that I process my experience of my own stupidity out loud on here--like I know that sometimes folks are trying to be helpful by contradicting me whenever I sound "negative" (read: realistic), but being told (by strangers) how to feel about yourself and that you're wrong about your own experiences is actually really awful, confusing, frustrating, and undermining. So I don't mind being reminded that my signal is coming through for at least some people. I hope you're doing good this holiday season. I wonder what beers you had, they sound fun!

Good tidings to you,

C

PS Isn't "on here" a weird phrase? I always feel like a primate when I say it, but I have yet to find a different phrase that conveys the same thing as accurately.

[littol-bun]

i love being an age regressor ૮ᴖﻌᴖა ♡⁠ tonight it feels very affirming and comforting. I've kind of always had to look out for myself and be my biggest supporter, and there are a lot of strange ways this feels like a second chilhood at times.

like i regress to being younger, but I'm also a girl now in a completely different place with completely different circumstances/social circles etc. yk?

but when i feel rly small and my reality feels so big, it makes me happy that older me is there for me to make the important decisions and guide us there :3 it's like i am holding my hand through this, i haven't had an adult rly look out for me like this and it's so nice to have one now!!

i don't have to be scared of big changes, I'm doing good and I'm here for me and i can take it easy. i have someone who is helping me ♡⁠ i have someone who is keeping me safe. they work hard so i can be little ^.^ thanks big sis hehe ✌🏾

ouggghh im not little anymore but (⁠｡⁠ﾉ⁠ω⁠＼⁠｡⁠) ♡⁠ yeah. when i am little i can still like.. function as an adult n talk to ppl n stuff. but it's also like, well like i said before ig 0:

like im smaller but different‚ subtly. still me‚ but someone else since I'm like.. a teen?? that i never was. my childhood was nothing like my adulthood so this rly is a whole new thing little me has needed to learn 2 navigate emotionally/mentally.

but as i become more aware of when I'm in a little headspace and not, the difference in perception stands out to me a lot more. i can't articulate it very well... oughh. this is giving me very specific questions, but on that note — i am happy to feel so safe and looked out for when I'm little 😌💕 i used to feel scared and helpless but it's different now. we're doing this together 👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏾 i got ya lil sis

[blazingstar29]

i really told my self i wouldn’t ever think about gender because if i did thinks might change and i don’t know what i’d do if they did or how i’d even try. because i like being me, but ‘me’ doesn’t necessarily feel like anything. i play into the ‘girl’ labels because i find them fun. horse girl, car girl, gym girl, country girl, nature girl. but i think maybe my identity is more tied in to the action than the gender. i ride horse, i like cars, i work out, im country, i camp.

i don’t think i particularly find myself wanting anything to change, except how i look. but growing up midsize, true midsize, has really affected how i perceive myself so that doesn’t help. i’ve also found that looking nice or attractive ties in to looking feminine and i approached that in my self a few years ago.

the cereal post on gender really makes sense to me. it’s too late to change, and i’m not particularly upset by it, but something else might be nice. but there’s always lunch, i can do something different then. i don’t want cereal.

i think the best way i can articulate it right now is that i like being me, being unrestricted in my movements both internally and external (if that makes sense) i don’t want to feel bound by a part of my self. i already feel that with my sexuality. but if you are to ask me what ‘me’ is, i wouldn’t know what to tell you. im just me. and because i present a certain way and people view me a certain way, i can get away with a lot of stuff people who feel like this wouldn’t, and that’s a privilege i’m aware of.

i think something else as well is that my peers who are not cis all present similarly, and i know that they don’t represent the entire non-cis population but i at the same time, i think i always felt that ‘of course i’m cis, i don’t don’t dress like that aesthetic’ (wrong word but i don’t know how to describe this). and there’s nothing wrong in the way they dressed, but it wasn’t something i would style myself and i think the lines got blurred for me between gender and style as the style was very common with my friends.

i don’t really have anywhere else to talk about this, which is why it’s going here.

[brotherfrog]

more ramblings this time about class. excuse my Paul Auster-esque tone, I’m reading him atm and I’m having fun

when you grow up working class but find yourself surrounded by middle class ppl in adulthood it can be jarring sometimes be in conversation. when I went to university - a very good English uni in the midlands that typically attracts middle class southerners, on account of it being northern enough for the housing to be cheap, but not so north as to pose a linguistic barrier - my classmates were often surprised to here me answer “here” when they asked “where are you from?”

I found myself on a weekend away not too long ago with educated, financially comfortable women, and the topic of true crime - of which we all enjoyed - came up, and consequentially prisons. the state of them, how awful it would be to be in prison. yet when I mentioned in this conversation how a relative of mine had done a long stay, and a few other relatives short stays, and began to recount their anecdotes, it felt like the atmosphere shifted slightly

I was 19 yrs old, chatting to some new friends in their twenties, both from the south, about the museums in London. I told them I had never been to one. They couldn’t believe it. Well, I explained, London is quite far from where I grew up. But it’s not too long on the train, they said. You could be there and back again in a day. What I found harder to articulate was that my family was not the type to do day trips into London to visit museums; London museums was not something even on my agenda, not in my vocabulary, until that conversation

if I do say so myself, I’m a well read, articulate person of moderate intelligence. the working class people I meet, who I almost always feel more comfortable and more myself around, often accuse me of being posh, without knowing my background. to the left leaning middle classes, if they learn of my more conservative politics, im just another Tory wanting to stay in power. without knowing that people like me, and my family, have never been in power, and quite frankly have no interest in it

It’s weird, being in this camouflage state of class. I sometimes feel the need to play up my accent, make it more common and incomprehensible to non-locals, in order to prove my background, and prove my allegiance and love for the working classes of my country. But it’s the same accent that I have to downplay to be taken seriously in a corporate or academic setting. And then, after a few drinks when the accent is naturally stronger, I’ll be playfully teased about by my middle class friends.

running in these two separate spheres, I feel excited when I get to spend time with people with interests in high art and academia, and can talk earnestly and intelligently about those topics; and then I feel floored by their lack of self awareness on the individual economy of the majority of their countrymen, viewing a “reasonable cost” as something I would never pay for in my life. At the same time, I feel invigorated when I get to spend time with people from my home town, where I don’t feel like I have to perform to a higher ideal of decorum, people who are very much focused on the here and now, their local communities, their friendliness and selflessness; but then feel alienated when they say something off colour, or make an uneducated racist joke.

Im stereotyping massively here of course, for the sake of trying to put words to my thoughts. And there’s no conclusion to this as there often isn’t in my rambling posts. Just that, I suppose, it’s my opinion that class is the biggest divider in my country, and it’s weird to be caught in the crosshairs of it

[dancedance-resolution]

p

i am so acutely aware how much money i am spending on these college classes. i do not need to be doing this; i am choosing to spend money on my education. so i don't want to waste that money or this opportunity; i don't want to shortchange myself here. which is part of why it sucks extra hard that i'm falling so behind and doing such a shit job! i've paid $2000 this semester to learn the definition of synecdoche and be so fucking overwhelmed that it's taking a toll on my physical health woohoo. i am getting nothing out of these classes right now because i cannot apply myself. and i don't know fucking why. my adhd is so unmanageable right now even when i was able to take my meds it feels exactly how it felt when my pmdd was affecting the adhd (though i'm not having the mood swings to the same extent as i was with the pmdd). so like what the fuck gives. i dont have a leutal cycle i am on the patch, and the patch has been working so fucking well. maybe i'm depressed but i don't think so? maybe i'm burnt out but i had two pretty significant breaks recently so again i don't think so. AGH what the fuck is wrong w me i want nothing more than to be engaged with my studies and learning everything i can but i just. Can't. i can't keep my living space organized or clean, i can't do basic fucking hygiene regularly, i havent even been crocheting for the past few days. the only bright spot was that insane little burst of Must Write that led to ch 1 of pants allergy fic and the stamps moment early last week. maybe i need to intentionally be more autistic. intentionally tell myself this is designated rocking back and forth and thinking about nothing time. i dont fucking know

i have a bunch of stockpiled 25mg zoloft pills so maybe i'll increase myself by 25mg daily. exercise doesn't seem to be the answer bc i did 8 minutes of very moderate exercise and immediately vommed and it wasn't even hot.

maybe i shall make an appoitnment with one of the guidance ppl at school except i always become unable to articulate anything the second i'm trying to get help. fuck if i know

update i made an appointment w the mental health service their soonest available isn’t until next tuesday which is whatever, its not nearly as long of a wait as it could be etc im grateful, but i am so terrified bc like. do you realize how much shit i will be behind on by tuesday. i’m already overwhelmed with everything that’s overdue rn LOLOL

[corpsentry]

january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

[fairycosmos]

about the screaming post and the anon before, i get it it's so frustrating because i don't know how to talk about what i'm feeling and it's so difficult when someone dismisses my concerns and just says im overreacting or just oversensitive. i recently went to a therapist and she was very nice and all but she basically pinned all of my probelms on the covid lockdown and basically said there's nothing to see here lol. how do i tell a woman who's almost always grinning that sometimes i want to kill myself and maybe affirmations and drinking more water is not going to fix it. idk i just feel so weird and it makes me question if im just making shit up. sorry to dump this on u i just wanted to get it out i guess. thank u for being so amazing and cool <3

i hear u completely. it’s really weird how uncaring so many mental health professionals are and how they’ll do absolutely anything to minimise your mental illness in order to minimise their workload. i am so so sorry you’ve had that experience and i really hope you can find a therapist who you’re more compatible with soon. it can definitely take a few tries to get it right in that regard (unfortunately.) but the most important thing to remember is that you’re not making things up at all. there’s a reason you reached out for help in the first place, there’s a reason you don’t feel well. you’re self aware and that’s a positive in terms of recovery. i know it’s really hard but try to do what you can to keep advocating for yourself, because you matter and so does your mental health - and there IS a lot of support out there, or at least there should be, and if you need to demand it then demand it. you’re not always going to be stuck with this exact feeling, especially not if you can find a good therapist. side note this sounds like such a basic tip but if you struggle to articulate your feelings, writing down and outlining what you want to say beforehand can help take some of that pressure off because it means you’re not being put on the spot. also it’s mad that they’re really pinning everything on the lockdown. its been hard for everyone but suicidal ideation is not a normal side effect of the pandemic and it’s so shit that they made you feel that way. you’re not in the wrong here - i really hope you’re able to find someone who actually validates ur concerns in the future. im proud of you for getting help in the first place because i know that must’ve been really hard. honestly, it’s so exhausting. like this whole thing. when i eventually kms i don’t want anyone to say they didn’t know i was having a hard time. ive been hurting for fucking ever LMFAO. and literally nobody listens to me, that’s how my lifes ended up looking like this - other than my own faults ofc. anyway im sending you all the love in the universe ok. you’re not overreacting, know that! x

[wherestoriescomefrom]

Hey, I have an academia aesthetic tumblr((not Desi, it's kinda exclusive , I do talk about my desi identity but mostly i post yk English/Italian photos)) , and I post, about my academics their, what I'm reading and learning (mostly stem). I do like cottagecore as well.

So, I read your post and I do not understand it. I am well aware of the casteism and I am not ignorant but I don't understand that what's wrong with this.

I just happen to like aesthetic, fuck colonisers but their architecture be good, yes, so is Indian architecture but I'm just liking that more these days so what is the problem.

I'm privileged, very, but I feel like a piece of shit since your post, I do not understand.

I am acknowledging it that so many people do not get to study and I'm not romanticizing it, I'm just talking about my life, and how I read and love to read and it is indeed a celebration of a "privilege" but what do i do? Not do this? Idk man? Idk

man i regret making that post. okay i reblogged it lately with more of an explanation, and here's the pull quote: "okay i was. in a mood the night i wrote this and i just wanted to say that i wish i had framed this with less anger and more gentleness. this was more of a personal rant, which has made it into the circles it speaks of. but for what its worth: i don’t actually have a right to be angry over this. i am UC, and as such, gentleness should come with my privilege. most of all, i wanted to apologise because this post makes it look like im not a part of this culture, which isn’t true. it isn’t as if i haven’t made posts about bollywood, or uncritically used the word “desi.”

i know this kind of online culture gives people joy. i have just seen too much of it which engaged uncritically, without acknowledging the wide wealth of history that is not uppercaste or north indian. (i think seeing another reclist with jhumpa lahiri on it did it for me. i’m sorry, i really dislike her as a writer… for personal reasons). i just wanted to express my problems with the version of india this kind of aesthetic produces, and provide context for my thoughts."

secondly. i know i'm not obligated to tell you what this means, but here goes nothing. often times, i feel, as UC people, we have a lot more access to global rhetoric. as such, being on very american spaces like tumblr, we get to talk to people outside of the mainland about our aesthetic, which is more often than not UC. the aesthetic that is used here makes me deeply, deeply uncomfortable mostly because of the sheer amount of labour that it glosses over. who do you think built the mughal buildings? do you remember the old story about the taj mahal, that shah jahan cut the labourer's hands after it was complete? for that matter, who do you think stitches the elaborate lehengas, the detailed zari work, and everything else it entails? it isn't us. we don't even pay a fair price for it. what makes me angry is that while there is more and more of an awareness of the inherent colonialism in dark academia, there is just not the same amount of awareness for casteism in indian academia. especially when brahmanism literally means that others don't get to study. idk, you can listen to Anurag Minus Verma's podcast on this, or maybe Buffalo Intellectual's. both good.

the aesthetic wouldn't even bother me so much if it wasn't for the rec lists. look, as upper caste people who have global audiences on tumblr, people pay attention to us. we're articulate, soft spoken, savarna. when i see reclists that regurgitate the same five indian authors as the be-all and end-all of south asian writing, i don't like it mostly because i know some non-indians are going to find it and think the same thing. it feels like such a disservice to the VARIETY of GOOD South Asian writing out there!!! i don't want to self promote, but here. i wrote a reclist a few weeks ago.

lastly. i don't actually care. you can engage with this aesthetic if you like, you can choose not to after this post, you can choose to engage with it more critically, do whatever you like. my intention was never to make people feel bad about what brings them joy. i don't think i was ranting for any reason except for my own, and i wish i'd either a) been gentler in what i was saying b) hidden the criticism from people who like leaning into this kind of online presence.

i don't care in the same way that i don't care about dark academia as a whole. it's imperialism, but it affects me very little as a mainlander. same with #desiaesthetic. it's more for nris than it is for me, and i can assure you, no one living in india actually cares either. i don't wanna say im involved in politics, but as someone with some experience of just student politics and indian academia, it's not like any of us sit and get mad at desi dark academia moodboards. as such, engage with it in whatever way makes you happy. me ranting to myself shouldn't affect your happiness, because you don't know me, and i might be a terrible person for all you know. who am i to pass judgement on what you do? i have no horse in this race. i do not make moral judgements on how you should engage with your media, that's entirely up to you.

i hope this answer made you feel better, genuinely. i don't want anyone to feel bad about the things i say, it was never my intention to do that. rest easy, sleep well, enjoy what you like in whatever way you like it.

unironically, love,

[donnerpartyofone]

man i hope this isnt weird and i know its a little weird but ive followed you for a while and feel a deep kindred spirit with you. i know its only parasocial and we arent mutuals so its all good but like some of the things you post resonate with me so deeply and you articulate things abt yourself that i also feel abt my self but you articulate them better than i ever could. also we have very similar hair but i usually weird mine buzzed but when it grows out it looks a lot like yours and you rock it in ways i never feel confident enough to do. idk i just saw your post abt being a bad person but not in the ways ppl think you are and thats like something i think to myself all the time like i wish ppl who think im good knew i was bad and ppl who think im bad knew how wrong they were abt the ways im bad. and things youve posted abt being a stupid person and having ppl be like "youre not" resonate too bcuz its like im painfully PAINfully aware of my own stupidity and bumbling thru like but my loved ones dont want me to think that way or acknowledge it but i think there is something truly liberating in knowing i am inherently dumb in a lot of ways and to a lot of things and i have to work harder to live a good life bcuz of it. idk. im doing a bad job of explaining myself here. but anyways. i just wanna say thanks for putting your thoughts on this website for me to follow and keep doing you, bcuz youre doing it great.

Well I hope it's not weird for me to post this, I suppose it is anonymous after all; it feels kind of private to me but also I am also having a freakishly difficult couple of weeks and it was meaningful to hear someone say "I know what you're talking about." (I think you are speaking very clearly btw) I feel like a lot of the rhetoric society uses to address people who have depression is devised by people who don't suffer from it, like there's a lot of language about how "you're not alone" and a lot of idealizing talk about how great the self-denigrating sufferer appears to others, and that's nice and all but it kind of dismisses the individual's own personal experience of themselves. A person is more complex than their need for extra hugs or attention or something, and a person's perception of themselves/experience of having to be with themselves is not contingent on the perceptions of others even if the external impressions are positive. I don't know, I hate to shit on supportive behaviors but a lot of them are basically dismissive of a person's status as the de facto expert on themselves; I don't really think it's ultimately helpful to make people feel like they don't know what they're talking about, about their own selves. It can be maddening actually, and idealizing talk in particular has a way of suggesting that things have to be great for them to be at all acceptable. Which is really oppressive to tell the truth.

Interlude: In grade school my best friend's class had to do this exercise where they made acronyms of of their first names using various personal qualities, and the teachers gave her shit because for the letter A she used Adequate, and they thought this was, like...bad and had to be corrected.

Anyway I have always written very obsessively and I think it's related to wanting to be understood. Which is not the same thing as wanting to be appreciated, or wanting to feel not-alone. I think I just want someone to say they know what I'm talking about, instead of telling flattering lies or suggesting that something is wrong to say or dismissable just because it seems negative or painful. As if discomfort is automatically invalidating. Someone asked me recently if I journal and I laughed because I've done it all my life, and also because I actually have a SACK of journals under my bed, one regular one, one for dreams, one that's about my dysfunctional relationship with money and materials, etc. And then there's my various blogs of course. I have a couple of semi-pro writing projects going too that I hope I get to announce soon. But it's really all about just the fantasy of articulating something so carefully, preferably in ink (or "ink"), that no one can possibly pretend that they don't know what I'm talking about ever again.

It's funny that we wear our hair the same. I used to wear it half-shaved but my hair grows so fast, it gave me a lot of anxiety. But on that note I must say that whatever pictures of me you see are like 1/1000, I find it very hard to take a picture I'm satisfied with and I often just wind up feeling embarrassed, but ultimately I think I'm just trying to fix some positive mental image of myself even though I know we're all different people at different hours of each day. I dunno. Actually it becomes problematic because a couple of people are always telling me how "photogenic" I am and then I'm like WHY DID IT TAKE ME THREE HOURS TO GET THIS ONE SHOT THEN, and they refuse to believe me when I explain how many pictures I throw out. They think they're doing me a big favor by pretending everything is effortless for me. I have especial problems with my hair, probably every picture you see of me was anxiously snapped at some exact moment when it was behaving! So don't worry, I'm having a really hard time with my appearance basically always. Pictures other people take of me are mortifying, and I'm always like FUCK, that's what they think is a good, representative photo of me? Uh oh. Pictures I take of myself are usually taken in an emergency in fleeting, ephemeral moments where I suddenly look ok to myself.

This morning I went to the church where I've been going since February, a beautiful place full of eccentric older people I have fallen a little in love with. Sometimes I'm tempted to actually convert to Catholicism, like maybe that would be the gothest thing I could do, but I know that I will always believe in abortion and the right to suicide and I'm not too sure about hell or the historical Jesus or papal authority. I just really like it in this specific church. This morning one of the oldest ladies who goes on the weekdays like me introduced herself, she was very sweet and she was wearing hoops that were styled like chains, I don't think she realized they were bad bitch earrings, they just looked nice on her. She said it was nice to see "young people" getting involved with the church, and I wanted to tell her I turned 42 last week, but I might still be the youngest person there! When I met some of the other folks last month they told my husband that he looked like Geraldo Rivera, and then remarked that they thought we were too young to be aware of Geraldo. I told them we're old enough, we're just packed in our own oil. Anyway this is my big excuse to post selfies I was struggling with, I feel more conflicted about them these days, but I guess I'm still compelled. Thanks so much for your understanding, and have a good night!

[t4tvglow]

response to the warning post under the cut.

EDIT [11:19 PM 12/10/21] i'm not planning to discuss this with anyone who isn't involved, as both myself and the creators of the document agree that that was never the point of making it. the point is one i fully recognize, and i have been spending the last few hours talking to the person who created the blog and the post (as well as some others), and i was given this to put up as some proof that it IS being resolved as we speak.

[ID: a discord screencap that reads: "im purple the only mod of the shantymanwarning blog and the situation with ron has been largely resolved and while forgiveness is still a bit far for a lot of the people involved we all recognize he plans to take accountability and continue improving behavior in the future" /end ID]

i am still posting the apology that i had issued to all of them all a while ago for full transparency, and so it can be linked in their document. no one wanted this to blow up in the first place, and so i think we would all appreciate being able to collectively move forward and leave as much of this behind us as we can.

one apology i am adding above the rest now that i have been made aware is directed at those who have had testimonies to share through asks and tags. i don't know who all of you are (i have no intention of snooping) but i am sure that what you've shared is legitimate and i'm sorry for whatever aspect of my behavior has caused you harm. hopefully the rest of this post can at least give some peace of mind to those of you who still deserve some.

here goes nothing.

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TL;DR - i am genuinely about to take responsibility for most of the things in that document, as i am fully aware that i’ve been people i’m not proud of. any contesting i present is generally going to be just correcting facts (like my eye color) and pointing out that specifically one of the accounts given is verifiably lacking some important context and truth.

in no way is my explanation of those things to detract from the responsibility i am taking for the rest, or trying to distract from the discussion, nor does it take away from my apology. if any response to a particular topic feels incomplete or like i missed something, it is accidental, and i’m more than willing to address anything i missed if you just bring it up to me. i’m trying to touch on everything.

as another disclaimer, i’m probably not going to be very articulate right now, but i’m going to try my best. i’m sure i’ll be confronted about this again in the future and i’ll have sat on it enough to word myself more cleanly but i want to make a few things clear as i go. i understand how it looks that the clarifications are one of the first things to be said in this post, and i just want to point out that that’s solely because i tackled this chronologically while i was reading.

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i can and will absolutely confirm that all this time ago, no, i wasn’t a particularly stable and healthy person and while i don’t remember a good chunk of the specific things i might’ve said and done, i know i’m not proud of it and that i owe people apologies beyond what i can verbalize.

i do have to clarify that the testimony given about blue’s departure from the server is not entirely honest. i don’t believe this is an intentional act of malice, but rather a result of honest misremembering and stress. either way, i’m just going to clarify so it’s out there, but i’ve since spoken with one of you guys and smoothed this part out on my end.

if you want to ask someone for that information, feel free to message @/irradiatedsnakes or @/ofdreamsanddoodles. it’d be understandable not to believe me, but hopefully the integrity of others can stand.

i’m going to include the message that ren sent them to kick them out of the server, which clearly states that it was on behalf of two heavily uncomfortable people of color within the server who aren’t even me.

[ID: a discord screencap that reads: “alright so. i want to preface this by saying that this is not a warning, and it is not up for debate. at the same time, none of this is intended to attack you, call you a terrible person, or anything else of that nature. our highest priority is member safety. i also apologize for being fairly stiff -- i'm currently co-con with an alter who generally takes over when things require this level of frankness and clarity. 

 after having been approached by those impacted the mods of the gaybeehood have all talked and elected to remove you from the server. i'm sorry to do this so abruptly, but in the mind of the mods there's not any reason to wait. all of us would like this addressed sooner rather than later, for your own benefit as much as ours.

the reason for this comes back to the public discussion of snuff films as a special interest, and the conversation you and [pink square] had about it. [pink square]'s experience as a black person heavily informs how the subject triggers them, and when they approached you about that, they felt dismissed and like their own traumas were being disregarded -- they explicitly stated that tagging does not actually change the fact that someone in their circle takes interest in something so deeply connected to violent antiblackness, and among the mods, [red square] felt similarly when it comes to anti-indigenous racism. they shouldn't have to use their traumas to justify their discomfort, but regardless being dismissive of that is deeply inappropriate.

https://vampirecrabs.tumblr.com/post/649743953685528576/milfgerrykeay-the-what-elaborate-i-thought-youd this post is also a part of the issue. it's racially charged for one thing, and for another, talking so openly and casually about child death. two asian children being taken advantage of and killed is not a quirky story to post publicly.

at the end of the day, the biggest problem here is insensitivity to our members of color and other members who have survived traumas connected to the fetishization and commodification of violence. i understand that because of your own traumas it may be something done in effort to cope with things, but you are not the only one who has survived things that relate, and those people feel unsafe after this. because the safety of our members is important and because of how much this triggered people, we elected to take immediate action.” /end ID]

this is the actual reason that they were removed, not because i randomly decided i didn’t like them anymore and wanted to make fun of them. i actively didn’t think i was the right person to handle it, because i admittedly didn’t really know what to say and i wanted to actively avoid the risk of falling into old patterns that are outlined later on in the document, and in this post.

this much, however, is a neutral statement: blue’s testimony is lacking information that came up afterwards. this is not their fault! they couldn’t have known before they left (though there is a whole post about that, too, and we know they read it because they approached someone about it to share their own story with him. i’m still going to give some level of benefit of the doubt and just explain it here.) 

the age gap RP thing in particular has been already brought up as having been something i was abused and gaslit into and through. i have a bunch of evidence of conversations with seraf that expressed Why i never was okay with that, trying to make it Not happen, and the way i was steamrolled by him. some of it even happened in public and others can also verify that.

the other person who pointed it out was not wrong! i’ve struggled with thinking of a way to apologize to THEM for ages. the things seraf did were abhorrent and i am not the only person who saw it happen, or who suffered it, including blue. seraf actively preyed upon my abuse history and recreated a situation i spent three years dying in, so i’m not going to "admit” to that situation being my idea or my preference or some kind of secret vice when i was in agony the entire time and i am still not okay after everything he put me through.

what i will admit to fully is the weakness of still engaging with him. i’ll admit to rolling over and compromising my principles. by trying to protect him, i was putting forth beliefs i do not hold and never did, but that no one could know that when all they see is my defense of someone i thought was my friend. the foot i put forward was a bad one, and my desperation to remain in HIS good graces doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, i still let it happen.

though to be clear, no inappropriate content took place that could even be remotely described as pedophilia. i DO have every single receipt from that entire time, as well. he even knew i was dubious about RP in general (because i’d quit after all the other stuff in here) and curated that experience to be just as traumatizing as things that happened to me when i was a teenager myself.

but blue could not have known what conversations took place after their departure from the server, so, again. this is just me stating what happened, not saying that part was intentionally left out. i just want you guys to know that, and that you can ask about it if you need to, as well.

--------

so, while this specific event did not go the way that the other ones cited in this document did, those WERE very honest and i am going to confirm them. and the clarifications about blue’s account still involve an apology! it’s not “all lies,” it was just omitting some things that should be said. there are still things here i owe them a serious apology for and i am doing so now.

with the girlfriend bit: i’m sorry. the way the story was presented, it looked like you were feeling miserable and betrayed and wanted out. i responded according to the information i was given, as did everyone else who was part of that, and i’m glad that you two worked it out. i am aware of my propensity to cut things off and disappear, and that’s not something i should advise others to do. i’m sorry for falling back on that when i should have just stayed quiet when i didn’t know what else to say to you.

i also don’t remember the flying you out to new york comment either but i’m pretty sure it was one of those “just what you say” things that all of us were resorting to after being made to feel helpless and even complicit, too. i was not serious about that, i was literally just lost on things to offer you as comfort when you were not taking a single person’s advice. you were never obligated to, but what else could anyone say? so actually, in this vein, i’m sorry for “just saying” that.

the “cult following” thing is. also a lot. considering i do not even remotely go into anything with that intention. i would be far more content to stay in my private corner of things and not engage with the majority of people, and in that space i’ve done a Lot of work on myself that pretty much anyone who’s been there through it all can verify. i don’t consciously take advantage of people who want my approval, it scares me SHITLESS when that seems to be the case. 

but i will say that seeing it laid out like this gives some perspective that i had clearly not considered, and i won’t diminish the impact it must have had to lead up to this. i am going to better examine how i conduct myself in groups based on this, because it’s the last thing i want.

you guys don’t have to know how much i have changed over the course of all this time or where i started in order to make the comparison, i won’t sit here and tell you all of that in detail, because it doesn’t matter. what is evident is that i still have a long way to go. whether the kicking of blue from the server is being honestly relayed or not, THIS has credence and i’m going to address it. 

i’m very intimately aware with the things i’ve done wrong, and like we have all said, intentions don’t matter when the result hurts. but if you’re approaching this as you said, with the sole intention of bringing this to an end, then i am going to say thank you for at least stating that you don’t think i did this with intent to cause harm and i hope that you believe me now.

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but now to the other stuff.

i will take full responsibility for the things that happened 3-4 years ago because i do not know, like, or respect my past self enough to pretend that i didn’t hurt people, whether intentionally or otherwise. 

i’ll say it as many times as i have to, to be sure that it’s clear where i stand and that i’m not fighting with you. you have made sincere claims, and i am confirming the ones that i can, apologizing for them, and vowing from the bottom of my heart that the guy in these stories is not here anymore. not in this way.

okay just got to green’s. hi. yeah no that relationship was the worst mistake i’ve ever made in my life and to this day i’m sick about it. i’m not even going to defend myself there because it genuinely keeps me up at night and i refuse to justify it, we all made a lot of excuses to act like it was okay but it really wasn’t comfortable for anyone (including me!) it was most of us being stuck deep in borderline hell where we attached to validation we got from each other and that’s no excuse on my part as the older party.

i had my own experiences dating with that age gap (where i was the younger) that weren’t terrible compared to even smaller ones where i WAS hurt by the older party, and i think i just had the idea that i wasn’t like them and i meant well. this is obviously flawed logic and it does not matter at the end of the day, because we were in different stages of life and i did the wrong thing by allowing it to continue. 

that is something i would give anything to undo, and i know i can’t, so i’ve just moved on and let those people move on far away from me because it is no one’s job to oversee someone else’s growth after they’ve done them wrong. i make every apology for that that i can. 

also, looking at these screencaps of things i said, yeah! i won’t pretend i didn’t used to talk like that, and it disgusts me to see, too. i’m not gonna say i have not been toxic before, that i have not talked behind people’s backs before, and that i have not made poor judgment calls when it comes to the standards i’ve held people to. these are all things that have been wrong with my behavior before and i have been actively working on in places that the people who made this document haven’t been able to see, so they couldn’t be expected to know. that doesn’t mean i’ve perfected it, either, it just means i’m aware and i’ve been trying and there are people who can corroborate that.

the bakugou edit: yeah no that was fucked up 100% on my part and i was not yet educated enough on things that i should have been. this was three years ago, and it is not at all reflective of my views and behavior now. i own up to these things, i regret these things, i DID make that mistake of an edit and i never have again because i learned from it. i can see now as well that the way i handled it was poor, the one message to green about the passive aggressive re-editing doesn’t contain a mention of the colorism involved because i don’t think i had been conscious enough of it at the time to see anything but what felt like a personal dig that was unrelated to my ignorance. i see now and i don’t think i can even voice exactly how sorry i am for that, how disgusted i am with myself, and how you have every right to be pissed off for that despite how long ago it was. all i can do is swear that it’s something that was left back there.

[the blonde haired blue-eyed thing has been corrected and removed, which i appreciate. i won’t linger on that except to say that my home life is not accessible to you guys and there’s no real way to know what my connections even are.]

i don’t remember Playing Underlings Against Each Other considering i don’t fucking want underlings but if that’s what it amounted to, then i’m actively sorry for making you feel like i wanted that from you. not “i’m sorry YOU felt that way,” but “i’m sorry i made you feel that way.” i am not blaming you for this feeling, i am saying that even though i didn’t intend for it, clearly this must have been the result, and only i can take ownership of that. i’m sorry.

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next one.

“which made it much easier for him to whittle away at all of my friendships and isolate me enough to where I began to really rely on him. Was this intentional? Maybe not, but his intent doesn't really matter when his actions cause this much harm.” 

you are right, this was not even remotely within the realm of my intentions and you’re also still right that my intentions don’t matter. i didn’t know near enough about your personal life outside of the internet to even be aware this kind of impact could have taken place, but nonetheless, i recognize the damage now that i am aware of it and am truly sorry. you were too young to be made to feel this way. it shouldn’t have ever happened, and i never should have spoken about you the way i did.

“Ron doesn't seem to know how to set healthy boundaries in most of his relationships, much less so when it comes to those significantly younger than him”

this was true of me at this time, yes! i never learned healthy boundaries from my parents in ways i’m not going to detail here, but it does mean i’ve had to make a lot of mistakes to learn where to place things and when to pull back. i genuinely make efforts to put up barriers between myself and younger people these days, and cut off conversations before there’s a chance to expect friendship. i’ll answer a question or two when approached, but i don’t ask about personal lives or give harsh advice or carry on private conversations. i tell people to their faces that i am not comfortable talking past a particular professional threshold and that’ll be the end of it there. blue is the most recent person i’ve spoken to out of all of you and wouldn’t have seen that yet, either, as i doubled down on it even more after their departure and largely because of it.

all in all, i know you guys can’t have any way of knowing it, but i do often ruminate on “the bnha days” as an incredibly dark time where i was not the person i want to be, i did and said things i’m not proud of if i can even remember them. and that’s not an excuse, i know you’re all aware that i have genuine amnesia and it does make it harder to actually recall stories like this. but because of that amnesia, i will never say these things just never happened. these things clearly happened, and i’m ashamed of it to this day. you don’t have to believe me, but it’s very true.

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on pink’s now, and i honest to g-d only vaguely remember this situation. what i can take full ownership of without question was my reckless oversharing and how that must have warped the environment. it was unacceptable, full stop. i don’t Do that anymore, if it’s any consolation whatsoever. i never meant for it to result in this kind of a feeling towards me, i don’t know what i meant, i just. was not well, and was not behaving well. that is on me, i should have done better, and that’s what i’m trying to do now. any sharing that’s done in the current server is something everyone does, it’s always in spoiler marks, and everyone has a personal channel that can be muted and avoided by whoever decides they don’t want to engage. another thing that’s gotten even more strict since blue left and can be backed up.

as for the insistence on purple’s status as all of That, i seriously do not remember near enough about it but i am pretty sure that after it was all over we did look back on this and go, “yikes.” at ourselves. the things we found had been alarming but we had been the ones lacking context and compassion, so for that accusation, i’m just as sorry. approaching anyone to give those apologies felt unwise at the time, and i don’t have the audacity to even hope you’ll accept it now. i just have to say it regardless. we were wrong.

the HARASSMENT i can say i had NO direct part in, i don’t encourage people to Go After others in that way and i’m incredibly sorry that anyone has done that under my name. it was not under my instruction. i genuinely have not ever sent someone on a witch hunt like that, i swear. any celebration of bullying in here is. truly filthy behavior that i’ve very much left behind. 

also, the other server blue mentioned that made fun of pansexuals and asexuals was largely driven by a need to impress seraf, which led to another count of betraying not only my own beliefs but my own history as someone who’s on the aroace spectrum, too. still can’t blame him fully for it, obviously, but i was molding myself to him in particular and it led to me doing shit i will vocally denounce to your faces. the people who were in there pretty quickly had a discussion about the sorts of people we became in his presence and what we no longer wanted to partake in, and it’s since become entirely inactive.

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hi, orange. once again, ownership fully taken for that relationship that never should have taken place. your discomfort makes all the sense in the world and i’m sorry for putting you through that, and everything afterwards.

the voice calls were originally because people wanted to hear stories and so i really thought it was like. fine. but yeah, looking back? toxic! harping on old drama is never healthy and i was not in a place where i could distance myself from that maladaptive behavior. i haven’t done voice calls like that since, and generally sit out now when others start one.

also i sincerely do not remember chucking the r slur much less defending my usage of it but i’m not gonna pretend i just didn’t, that’s vile and you have every right to be pissed about it. no joke seeing that put a pit in my stomach and i can’t believe myself, but i believe you. and the way i cut people out was horrendous and it was not excusable. i can see how it would scare someone into trying to keep my approval, even if i wasn’t aiming for that.

as for our relationship. i don’t. remember it being this driven by me but looking back, it uh. yeah, wow. i genuinely was not perceiving any of it this way, or as this unbalanced, or myself as pulling strings like this or Deciding things for anyone, but if that is how you all felt about it, then it must have really been this way, and it’s disgusting. seeing it framed this way is sickening because it’s just. appalling to think i could have managed all of this horrible damage without even realizing it. that does nothing to absolve me and that’s not what i’m looking for when i say that i didn’t realize, i just. really didn’t, and it does make it worse imo.

i DO remember the breakneck speed and how fucked up that was, and it’s just another piece of a massive period in my life that i could not regret more if i tried to. it was unhealthy, it was concerning, it was wrong, and i was letting a lot of my instability guide me in ways that are my fault, and i’m truly sorry.

and the breakup, as well, was. actually the real scummiest way i’ve ever treated someone, yep. i don’t remember the video call but i don’t doubt it. i had been overcome with a discomfort i couldn’t explain and i didn’t know how to express it in a healthy way, and i treated you abyssmally. as for the money, i Seriously Forgot about that agreement at the start i cannot express to you how much i literally did not remember that and i’m glad you reminded me when you did. i know i paid you back already but i’ll happily extend more your way if you need it, i’m not kidding. if there’s even just a material way i can make that up to you then i will do it with zero hesitation.

also the execution joke was also inexcusable even if i didn’t mean for it to be sincere because yeah obviously the way i was behaving and how you were feeling was bound to make that joke become far too real and i am sorry for that. i don’t want to repeat the words “genuine” and “sincere” too much but i lack other words to capture exactly how much i mean it when i say that, and when i say i’m sorry for everything. nothing that happened between us was okay on my part and you deserved better from me, without a doubt. i hurt you, and that’s on me.

g-d those screenshots. yeah, even without remembering the specifics i’m not going to deny a word that was said here, it’s all ugly. the things i shared and said there are as horrible as they look and no amount of context changes that. i don’t Do This anymore, this person i was is a metric for who Not to be. orange, i know you don’t see any of that because blue is your most recent account but just. the person in these things is someone i hate just as much as the rest of you do.

jesus the wedding planning shit jhbkn yeah i have no fucking idea what i was thinking. i make an active point to just not DO that, i’ve not done that in a single relationship since, and i bring all of this up early in new relationships specifically to state who i am and who i was and what i do not want to let happen ever again. my current partner can attest to that and i have screenshots, as well. 

i didn’t forget about this as a whole event even if these details aren’t as clear anymore. i am upfront about it and i want to give people the chance to walk away from me without judgment. i don’t try to erase this part of my history. i’m ashamed of it, and i have grown away from it in ways you guys have no way of seeing and that’s not your fault, i’m just saying that it’s true. this was three years ago. that doesn’t mean it’s not important, it just means there are things you don’t know and couldn’t be expected to know.

if what you fear is me repeating history, i want to ease that in any way i can, with as much proof as i can get you.

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white, i remember you. that very dark fight scene does still haunt me and you’re right that i should have just called it off far sooner instead of letting it continue, only to then cite it later as something only you did to be upsetting. i was the adult, i was responsible for cutting it off, and i should have done so instead of continuing because i knew you were looking to vent. this was a moment of trying to help that became twisted beyond recognition and it falls on me, absolutely.

let me state very clearly now: you are of course not a pedophile, and i never should have let my own panic about a situation that startled me escalate into anyone using that word to describe you. you were a teenager and your sense of humor was your own thing to cultivate over time. i am pretty sure (?) i was going off of someone from that server telling me that it made them upset and uncomfortable, and in my mind i must have thought i was protecting them, but by saddling you with that label i was not helping anyone. this part is hazy to me, too, but i will take ownership of this. i’m incredibly, deeply sorry.

and on a more private note, too, i’m sorry for how i treated your writing in general. i had no business being so callous and talking behind your back like that. you deserved encouragement, and i can only hope you’ve continued to write and grow and enjoy yourself without my judgment.

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and that’s the end. okay.

there are other people who both knew me at this time and did not know me at this time who can cite the active growth i have been striving for and it’s not your obligation to forgive me, or any of that, but just. 

be aware that i take you seriously, i am not making excuses, and i have not repeated this behavior. 

in the case of blue’s account, seriously, it’s 100% possible to not know the whole truth about the seraf thing because they were removed from the server before him, and a lot of the entire server’s reflections of him came after the freedom of his absence. i didn’t even realize how badly he had been hurting me until he was gone. that’s still not me trying to shirk blame, that’s just a fact that can be read and remembered by people who are not even involved in this.

regardless of seraf’s influence on me in terms of RP and how hard i fought him about that, and regardless of how blue left the server, other things that happened were clearly hurtful and were not intended at all, either. i genuinely wanted to help you, i didn’t want anyone to worship or depend on me, its always scared the crap out of me any time someone did, and it made me feel like i had some kind of responsibility that i couldn’t uphold from my position not only as a person on the internet but as an adult with limited information. i never should have tried to do it anyway, and should have just kept a distance. this is distance i keep now as a rule. it shouldn’t have taken this long to instate that, but please know it’s instated.

whether i felt pressure doesn’t matter or end the conversation because you (all of you) felt pressure, too, and for that, i’m apologizing to you all sincerely.

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to more accurately explain where i stand these days: i keep to myself and my singular server now, most of my days are filled with irl errands and doctor’s visits, and i aim to write my one fic to completion before just fading off in general. this site has been a terrible place for me since i got on it Way too long ago, and it has only really resulted in pain, chaos, paranoia, and experiences that i can neither escape from nor take back when it comes down to having hurt other people, too. i don’t enjoy talking to people on here, i actively avoid kids, i don’t Pursue people younger than me (my current partner is older), i arrange stricter boundaries in my server (that, again, you wouldn’t know because they went up after blue’s departure), and i will never pretend that i was never a toxic person who did things i shouldn’t have. i wasn’t aware of the gravity in a few places, and so i am thankful for seeing it laid out in a way that i can both understand and address going forward.

i’ve been operating under that whole saying of, like. “go become a better person far away from me.” that’s what i’ve been trying to do, and will keep trying to do.

thank you, also, for removing the “blonde haired blue eyed” thing because it is an actual misremembering. i’d like to take honest ownership of my own mistakes regarding that subject as myself.

so. again, thank you for giving me an opportunity to better see what my lingering faults are, and the harm i’ve caused. i hope that nothing i’ve said in this response here is out of turn in the sense that it looks like i’m trying to dodge something, because i really am not. this is my honest attempt at claiming my past self and putting him in the ground, and acknowledging all of the pain that you have been put through because of me. 

i’m more than happy to give you all any apologies and evidence you have deserved from the start, and i only hope that you do whatever you need to do in order to heal and keep yourselves safe in the now.

[death47lyagushka]

hey tumblr, so i know that i've had this blog for... 7 years now? man it's been a long time. and i know that despite gathering like 500 peeps in my following just for reblogging bullshit and hopping on fandoms and whatnot, i think i see like maybe 20 url's in my activity, so i dont know how many will see this; not like it's something too important for the internet or anything, i'm writing this post more as a... reaffirmation? i guess?? for myself more than anyone.

so i dont know how many people actually check bios and descriptions, but i've had it up there for a while that i use he/they pronouns. tumblr is a shitshow as it is and since i use it mostly to browse the tons of posts and fanart to make time pass, relatively recent discoveries made me write that in my own bio as much as i started refering to myself with masculine pronouns in my own language(romanian is a gendered language so anything neutral is out the window).

anyway. at some point in the last... two years?? i think, more out of a joke than anything i realised that whenever someone reffered to me with feminine pronouns it would literally make my skin crawl.

long story short because i dont want to blabber on for too long is, after years(more like my entire life) of debating, gradually experimenting with gender nonconformity and countless internal battles,including life-long dysphoria,

last week my own brain put its foot down, so to say, and i realised i that i'm transgender.

so i wanted to write it down here as well?? like coming out to the internet even though i know really well that its not that much of a big thing, at least for myself? this blog is a pretty personal space to me more because i can fuck around laughing at shitposts like i do with my own friends, and ive been part of this "community" for a long time, so i just felt like putting it here as well.

its still weird to say it out loud, but i feel the best when i refer to myself as a boy, and to be honest the signs have been there my entire life, but due to me not knowing what dysphoria was in the first place and having other personal issues to work on i just went with "im not like other girls" to "gender is stupid and i dont have time to even think about this,whatever" to recently buying binders and something feeling a bit more... better despite the countless responsibilities i have.

i came out to my group of best friends last sunday as well and as expected, though it put me through a bit of anxiety just to type it out(i was in the bus home from work, actually telling them face to face would first put me through crying to even articulate it) they took it very well and were really supportive. we were, i guess of now, a group made entirely of girls/nonbinary femmes, with me having been the butchiest of them all, but being included on the femme spectrum has been bothering me for... enough time now.

anyway, before this post gets too long after babbling so much, tldr i'm a trans guy and i feel like this label fits me the best. its a bit ironic since trans rememberance day was just yesterday i think and the realization hit me during trans awareness week.

everyone have a nice day i have to finish breakfast so i can work on my homework :D