#self isolation reads

[free-my-mindd]

This is how you move on

[vitruvianmanbara]

Nana x "Where is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism" by Fujimoto Yukari (tr. Lucy Fraser)

[sunnykeysmash]

Man of words

[thingsinlife990]

Days at home where you dissociate from the world 🧘🏽‍♀️💤

[danothan]

finally finished flash rebirth vol 4 after a year+ of stalling and…

myeah that shit was scary. like tearing up, heart drop, pit in my stomach-scary

yes even his pathetic ass line. ESPECIALLY his pathetic ass line

[p2ii]

forgot to post abt this panel but god it absolutely breaks my heart. I love when kaworu's 'ethereal easy-going' composure is broken through and we get scarce bits of the lonely boy unacclimate to being treated like a person underneath.

[fancyfade]

U may be like "why do you always mention Tim hitting damian in anger (not provoked by violence/ not self defense) when talking about the tim vs damian thing?" And like. I don't really wanna "poor little meow meow" my fave, if this was something fandom used to prove tim is secretly victimizing damian i would be sick to hell of it, but any of Tim's less than ideal actions are barely acknowledged. I just want fandom to approach the character interactions with the full context and nuance, and not decide that there's some evil 10 year old causing everything.

Like a lot of the point of red Robin 2009 is that tim is genuinely wrong*. He doesn't tell dick all the evidence he has for Bruce being alive, he isolates himself from his friends and people who want to help him to team up with a supervillain, who (surprise) is just using him in his fight against assassin- hunters.

The climax of the first 12 issues is tim realizing he can no longer isolate himself and relying on the people he previously pushed away

*however I don't think Yost intended this to be read as wrong, but like... the reader can use critical thinking and their own judgment

[ace-and-ranty]

Not to start the same rant I wrote out months ago, but I will say it again:

El didn't have to undergo character development TO make friends.

She had to undergo character development BECAUSE she made friends.

[absensia]

There is a cost for resurrection, even for a vessel such as Charlotte. As a vessel for the primordial void, Charlotte's body undergoes a supernaturally rapid decomposition after death, decaying so completely and so quickly that in a matter of a couple scant hours, there will be nothing left of her whatsoever. What took a mere fraction of a day to break down, however, will take ( at least ) a few days to reassemble. ( To date, the shortest amount of time it's taken for Charlotte to return is 49 hours; the longest absence was 8 days. )

In the time between her complete decomposition and her reappearance in our reality, the vessel we know as Charlotte must be reassembled, rather painstakingly, by Khaos itself. Just as it did when it first created this vessel, Khaos brings together the fragments of a being: personality traits, memories, stories, and eventually, the physical form, too. Piece by piece, it reassembles the killed and obliterated doll and then, once it feels she is once more ready, like on that sunny day in June all those years ago, it reintroduces this vessel we know as Charlotte back into this reality, this world, this life. As such, it appears, for the most part, that while she may not be totally invincible or capable of auto-resurrection on a god-like level, Charlotte has no real reason to fear death. If she dies, she can be almost certain that she will be back to cause more trouble in no time. But resurrection does not come without a cost and this is a fact Charlotte has become increasingly aware of the more she has gone and come back, gone and come back. . .

"There's never enough...to fill the hole up again." To make a long story short, Stephen King's Pet Sematary revolves around the resurrection of dead things ( animals and people ) and how sometimes, dead is better, because nothing that comes back to life ever comes back exactly the way it was before. There will always be something missing, something wrong. Charlotte's resurrection, at the hands of Khaos, is not an exception to this idea. Each time Charlotte dies and comes back, she may seem mostly intact and to be picking up exactly where she left off, but she is not, in fact, the same. With each "respawn," the vessel will be adjusted and changed based on what the Void deems necessary, but mostly (!) the process of reassembly itself means that there will "never be enough" to make Charlotte exactly as she was again.

Just as a "wound never [seems] to fill in completely" despite being considered healed and healthy once more, the resurrected vessel will, by nature of chaos and decay, contain less and this is the cost of resurrection. For better or worse, there remains a heavy consequence for dying and so, as comical as it sounds, Charlotte has learned to take dying more seriously. With each resurrection, there runs the risk of her losing memories and perhaps some of her humanity, but most assuredly, she loses more of what makes her her... More specifically, with each resurrection, Charlotte grows colder, steadier in a way, and while she may seem more or less the same on the outside ( as Khaos wants to maintain her likeness and essence ), by and by, if you look closely, you won't find the same spark in her eyes that she has now to set her apart from the cold abyss of the primordial entity that resides inside her. Like a wound, Charlotte never heals completely. There is never enough to fill the vessel again. But if there is not enough of her to come back after death, then what must fill the vessel upon its return is obvious: absence. Absence is the cost of resurrection.

[sulasnsleep]

“and while everyone else is moving on, i remain standing in the same place—alone. isolated from everyone else in the world.”

— sulasnsleep

[scary-monsters]

some thoughts on parental loss, isolation, self-sabotage, etc etc. not a necessary read but. just where my head has been lately.

march and april are very difficult months for me, every single year. my birthday approaching always manages to send me into a cycle of nauseating anxiety, and april is the anniversary of my dad's passing.

i miss my dad more than i have in years, and i'm not entirely sure where that's coming from. he passed away suddenly in his sleep, without any warning, back in 2011, just weeks before my high school graduation. i remember the morning of his death more than i remember than my grad ceremony. it's a common thing to say but: i am my father's daughter. i look in the mirror and i see him looking back at me, and the older i get the more clear it is.

i see the good things: someone who values laughter and laughs often, someone who shows love for people through actions, someone who loves music, someone with a creative spirit who constantly yearns to make things, someone who loves animals, someone who believes strongly in individualism

but i see the bad things too: someone who isolates themselves to an unhealthy degree, someone who feels this inherent fear over connecting with people, someone who doesn't ask for help even when it's critical, someone who struggles with emotion regulation, someone who harbors a lot of resentment despite trying not to, someone who aches for the numbness that comes with alcohol

he was an alcoholic, and i don't feel bad saying that because he would've openly admitted that to anyone who asked. he said it to me many times during our nightly "bonding" sessions during the last couple years of his life, which was essentially both of us on our own computers doing our own thing while he drank and drank and drank and told me to be quiet about it, keep it secret, and proceeded to say horrible things about my mom and me and my siblings. but i was expected to sit there and listen. i was raised to be his "best friend", i wasn't his daughter. and i have worked very hard to forgive him for that, but it still stings sometimes.

some days i want nothing more than to yell at him, now that i'm older and i have a voice of my own and i understand how unfair his treatment of me was. other days i want nothing more than to cry in his arms because despite being scarcely physically affectionate, my dad gave some of the best hugs i've ever felt in my life. i will never forget the two times i can recall him hugging me, those memories come back to me when i'm at my lowest, and i replay his voice saying "i'm proud of you" over and over again in my head.

i see more of him in my personality every single day, and it scares me. i remember how openly he talked about wanting to die, how he told me exactly what songs he wanted played at his funeral just months before he suddenly passed. it was as if he knew it was going to happen, but he was always at peace with it. unfortunately i see those thoughts and feelings in me lately. i have written letters, countless times. i know exactly what song i would want played at a funeral, though admittedly i wouldn't really want one in the first place. i am at peace with the idea of not waking up one day. but that scares me.

ever since the holidays last year, i've been pulling back more and more from everyone around me. and i don't know if people notice, i try not to think about it because it sends me down a thought spiral that only makes me feel even worse. truly? i don't think people would notice that much if i died, it's not as if i'm very present in people's lives as it is. i simply don't have the energy to be. i have little faith in my ability as a friend. i look at everyone around me, at the friendships they've cultivated, at the bonds they have, and i wonder how it is that people can so easily find connection with others. my entire life it's felt like a battle. on the rare occasions that i do feel like a part of something, it fades after a few months and i feel like i'm back at square one, like i have to restart. that cycle has followed me my entire life.

and that's sort of where i am right now. i don't feel at home anywhere. i don't feel important. if i were to look at myself from someone else's point of view, i imagine that i'm the person who's special when it's convenient. someone who exists to build up other people, to help them move forward in life. and that's not a bad thing, in fact i love having a positive impact on people or helping them when i can, but when i've been used up and i'm not useful or interesting anymore, i feel like i'm often tossed to the side. i have always felt replaceable. i've been told i'm lackluster, that my personality is nothing special, that i'm one-note, that i offer nothing. and i am starting to latch on to those words more and more every day.

but back to my dad: something he frequently told me was that i "don't need people" and that "they will just use you and hurt you" and i fully believed that for most of my life. it wasn't until i was in my early 20s that i started to realize how lonely life was, so i tried making friends. but my toxic traits came to bite me in the ass, every single time. whether that was the period of time where i was an undiagnosed bipolar neck-deep in an explosive manic phase, or frequent phases where i simply backed away from everyone out of self-preservation, until i was ultimately forgotten. i fear i'm reaching that point again, and it's so frustrating because i have done so much internal work. for years. and it's like those words keep coming back. people will hurt me. maybe i've always been meant to be alone. i don't like that reality, but again: the older i get, the more i feel myself becoming a loner who craves connection but fears it so deeply that it doesn't seem worth it anymore.

in an ideal world, i would be a faceless artist who creates things for herself and anyone else who likes it. someone who doesn't necessarily need anyone, doesn't desire connection, is satisfied with being by herself all the time. but the truth is that's not what i am. i crave connection so much it makes me sick. but i don't know how to get it. i don't know how to feel secure in any of my relationships with anyone. maybe i'm not capable of it. i'm one of the weakest people i know in terms of emotions, i have to be handled so delicately and it feels so unfair to expect that sort of delicacy and care from anyone. i never saw it growing up, i was surrounded by silent rage that festered until emotional blowups happened, and i was expected to fix things, i was expected to mend those relationships. i was a child. and i still feel like a child. i still feel like that girl that's constantly on high alert waiting to take care of other people so i'll feel at least some semblance of worth. all while i fight to ignore my own wants and needs. i am just so tired of feeling so worthless. i want someone to take care of me for once. and i'm afraid that's never going to happen, that maybe my dad was right all along.

[fellhellion]

tbh i don’t even think miguel’s breakdown rant about miles’ existence as “anomaly” spiderman causing the death of 1610 peter is even about peter, or even quite abt miles. it’s about the idea that somehow 1610 peter could’ve shut down the collider if it weren’t for miles, even though miles’ presence didn’t actually affect peter’s death in any way. it’s about the idea that peter could’ve prevented a reality - that is, anomalies getting slingshotted throughout the multiverse - that miguel feels like he’s buckling under the emotional burden of (”And all this time, I have been the only one holding it all together!”). But even that’s not quite it, it’s about the fact that Miguel has been sitting on the resentment of feeling like he’s utterly alone in this burden, when in reality he’s not. When he created a structure designed to help share that burden between people who should understand it the most. But he won’t - can’t - ask for help bearing the emotional burden because it’s not even quite about the anomalies, it’s about Gabriella. But you deserve to suffer for it, you deserve to hurt. You dwell and grieve her and a mistake you won’t forgive youself for over and over again, all while hiding away and refusing to confide in the people who care about you how badly you’re spiraling, all while a part of you resents them for not knowing, even as they couldn’t know. 

[renniezhea]

I don’t want to waste away years loving the life of another person, I want to love my own life unconditionally. I want an apartment decorated with stars and moons and I want to be surrounded by books and leaves. I want fall scented candles to be lit on the kitchen counter while I make my morning coffee. I want a cat to be the first face I see every day. I have loved and I have lost and ultimately I would much rather be alone than spend the next several decades being destroyed all over again.

[anti-gravity-insanity]

Something something so many horror movies base around high schoolers, I think there is a cool potential for a movie that the horror is a representation of the capitalist hellscape awaiting those teetering on the verge of adulthood. Or perhaps the horror itself is falling into completely separate paths from those you have spent the majority of your days with, in the same building, in the same structure of classes and homework and activities together, slowly everyone gets picked off and away, a group, a class, a whole generation whittled down until you realize you are alone with your horrors not because you have survived but because that was how it was always going to be. At its core much of horror can be boiled down to a gross aberration of the norm, a disruption of what “should be” or what always has been, or what one expects it to be. And no group is primed more in these concepts than teenagers, rung through their institutional learning, filled with hope or dread over their future, and inexperienced in the uniquely adult isolation that comes with legal independence in an individualized American culture.

Anyways, what if the real monster was the 20s you enter along the way?

[non-un-topo]

Wish there was an elixir that wasn't alcohol that you could take that just makes you write/draw and not care about the quality of your work or about what your potential audience might think

[curiosity-killed]

It is! Possible! That I may be being too hard on myself! Again!!!