#or people irl i've had some close proximity to <- and in this case it's always justified. i don't generally hate irl people out of nowhere

[moonchild-in-blue]

Can someone please either validate me or send me to the Corner of Shame? This is very silly but I'm wondering.

So. I was talking to my sister the other day about movies and such, and she told me of one she recently watched with this one actor. And I casually mentioned how much I hated him. Not in a "he's a bad actor" or "he's a bad person" way. Nothing to do with whether I find him attractive or not. Just in a "he looks the most punchable guy on earth and I have this irrational rage against him" way, to the point that I just can't watch movies with him without being annoyed.

My sister looked at me like I was crazy because, "what do you mean you hate the guy". And I told her yeah? That's normal? Don't you have at least one person you can't stand for no reason?

Sister was like 😬😬😬 No??? Which is wild to me, because I could easily name 50 (which I did - not 50 but we were getting close to 20 before i got too annoyed lmao).

Now she thinks I'm slightly insane (/j) (I made myself angry and may have referred to a few individuals as "stupid" and "obnoxious"), and I kinda don't believe I am the only person alive who feels this way. But also she's an incredibly empathetic extrovert, while I'm a very low empath socially anxious creechur so. There's that?? I guess ?? Idk.

Can anyone relate to this? Or am I the weird one?

Also wait. Little disclaimer: I am not generally a violent person AT ALL. Do i get annoyed and angry easily? Yeah. Do I feel like bitch slapping someone right across their stupid face? Yeah, sometimes, sure. Do I do something about it? Not really.

I can be real bitchy and extra sarcastic and petty SURE, but that's the most I'll do if I am legitimately angry. Mostly I just go to my room and cry 🥺 (crying when angry yes it me). So yeah. Before yall think I have unsolved anger issues.

[residentdormouse]

Who is your current muse, and who is their faceclaim/what do they look like? What is one item that you associate without fail to them? What is their favourite colour? Is there a song you associate with them? If not, what quote fits the best for them? What do they like doing in their spare time? How much spare time do they get? What one fact do you love about them, but might not have had the chance to share yet?

💞 Thank you for asking! 🥹💞

(Sorry this has taken so long to answer - real life has been absolutely insane for me recently. Its going to be rough for a bit still while I adjust, but I think everything is going for the better in the end. Regardless, may still be MIA for awhile.)

I'm going to answer for my new original work 'Close to the Vale' and the main character for it, Faith Lochren (which by proximity brings in a bit of Paul). I haven't gotten too far in this work (again, irl drama has been a bitch), but I have some basic concepts, a decent outline, and a couple chapters.

As for a face claim, I have been playing at Jennifer Carpenter. Maybe this will change throughout the process, but most of the shit that pours out of Debra Morgan's mouth makes me smile and gives me Faith vibes.

Her item would be a very simple rose gold engagement ring that Paul gave her. It's not coming off. You can pry that fucker from her cold dead hands, and you damn well better believe if you're doing that, she's going to be haunting your ass. Not worth it, move it along.

As for colors, the engagement ring choice wasn't arbitrary. Rose gold is a favorite of Faith's. Complement it with a bit of sea foam/teal, and a neutral taupe and she's sold. Paul knew what he was doing. He usually did.

I've only done some basic song hunting so far, but this one has set a tone for drafting the first couple chapters. Depending on where you pick Faith up at, her vibe is going to be very different. Pre-incident Faith, and post-incident Faith are different people. Same background, same make-up, but loss has tainted her view on the world and affected her actions in it. This is definitely post-incident, which is where most of the story takes place.

Outdoors was always a comfort for Faith. Hiking on back trails. Wandering up streams. She would opt to stay out there than deal with societal bullshit any day of the week. When she couldn't get outdoors, which living in the middle of the city makes somewhat difficult, she could also be found working on a good puzzle. More mental than visual though. 1,000 piece pictures puzzles with the same damn repeating pattern? Nobody has the time or patience for that shit. Riddles? Brain teasers? Logic puzzles? Yeah, she's game. Now pair puzzles, a campfire, and Paul's storytelling, and you have a combination that can't possibly be beat in her mind. (Well, maybe some drinks would sweeten the deal.) Lately, however, this has all come to a halt. After quiting her job (again), time is all she has. But the will to pick it all back up again, living that life, alone, it's non existent.

She has very little filter sometimes. Most times. If there's a problem, you're going to hear it. In most cases, with more colorful language than you would expect. Unless you know her, that is. Suffering arrogance and pretentious bullshit is not something she is about, and there's no secret about this. While Paul had a reputation for speaking his mind as well, he usually had a lighthearted mirth behind his remarks. Hers bite and/or contain a fair amount of snark. It's amazingly fun to write (and decently cathartic).

[cash4bees]

How I'm doing

So I barely know people on this platform any more, and twitter is bad for long-form stuff and I also barely know anyone on there either. But I just want to get my thoughts in order on how I'm doing, and post them in my favorite defunct comedy diary platform. I promise, this isn't super duper sad times the whole way through, in case you want to give it a read it's actually quite happy.

I've had a rough go of it for around four years, going back further than the pandemic by a while. Graduating college essentially meant hacking away my social tethers that weren't online, and everyone I had easy access to through the internet was, in contrast, busy with their IRL stuff. I had to essentially scrape by on one or two social activities in a week from 2017 to 2019. I grew apart from friendships I valued because I felt every friendship drift away simultaneously. I remember that my therapist asked me to very simply rate my mood on given days out of a hundred and at about that time it was some of the absolute pits, barely reaching 30/100 on a good day. I had a roommate who's vibes spread to me and whose lack of cleanliness ethic put a lot of at-home burden on me, I had very little if any free time to myself, and all of my friends were either gone or still hanging out with each other at grad school an hour's drive away. I was lonelier than I'd ever been, and those rank among the saddest days of my life. I left tumblr entirely for a few months there, coinciding with the exodus in general, so there's not too many glimpses into my state of mind on this blog but trust me, it was bad.

The first big turnaround, late 2018, was joining a big discord server with some of the best friends I could've ended up making. If you're on that server (which is only one of my actual followers iirc, everyone else abandoned tumblr) you know how much you mean to me, and I'm grateful to you.

The second big turnaround was splitting up with my gf of several years who had moved in with me for 3 months. It wasn't all bad, but it would be a massive lie to say that the ease with which our close proximity fostered my partner's ongoing resentment of me wasn't a major factor in my lowest moods. It also left me with time to myself and more importantly, time with my friends who didn't live an hour away. It finally felt like I could have time to be myself, and to become myself. I think if you knew me then and now you can probably see a difference. I had a very brief and very healing relationship, only about two months, in the winter of 2019-2020. Low pressure, good fun, and with no resentment toward me building up at all. It was important for me to see a relationship work like that, the way it's intended. We held each other on a few great nights before parting ways with a smile on each of our faces. They weren't ready for anything longer-term with me and I was disappointed but able to accept that. Thanks, ####, I hope you're doing well wherever you are.

I met someone else just before lockdown, quite literally having the first date on leap day. He's not a partner because neither of us are looking for a partner in that sense, but he is a friend, and the best I could ask for. It's coming up on two years of friendship with each other and I honestly couldn't feel better about it. He's introduced me to new friends, people who so quickly became close to me that it felt like we were always going to be best friends. They're all a huge part of how I made it through quarantine.

That lasts for a whole two years, bringing us to now. I don't know what exactly flipped the switch: getting a pair of cats and feeling a need to get my life together for their sake, going fully remote and realizing I have the freedom I'd lost after graduation again, making friends with their lives together and being inspired by them, or some combination. I took a LOT of action.

I got back on medication for ADHD, allowing me to do stuff like type this post out. I earned a promotion at work after roughly two years of slogging through pandemic cutbacks and furlough. Most recently, and importantly, I made an offer on a house. Things are still up in the air but the momentum is unstoppable at this point. I am going to buy a house, and soon. No more doing dishes by hand in a 30 sqft kitchen in a one bedroom apartment in a silent suburb. No more driving on a highway to see friends in the city on the regular. Life is getting better by miles, not inches.

I want to thank everyone on here and elsewhere who's kept up with me and kept me going. Even the smallest things have helped, and if you took the time to read this, even the idea of you caring enough to do that keeps me going, accelerating even. I love you all and I hope I can pass some of that help you've given me back to you.