#still have tiny violins going for myself but i’ll be done with the self pity party when i wake up it’s fine

[sharkieboi]

i don’t have anywhere else to say it cause no one else really knows the situation well enough but

shot my shot with a friend last night and got very politely turned down and everything is fine but also just bury me in a hole 🫠

[ofstvtches]

ROCKY LYNCH,  MASCULINE NB,  HE/HIM & THEY/THEM.  —  looks  like  SAMHAIN SKELLINGTON is  attending  AURORIA  UNIVERSITY  in  auradon.  they're  the  TWENTY  year  old  child  of  JACK & SALLY SKELLINGTON,  which  means  they're  from  THE ISLE.  heard  they're  NURTURING  &  GENTLEMANLY,  but  can  also  be  INFLEXIBLE  &  SELF-PITYING  ;  we  all  have  our  bad  days.  people  normally  associate  them  with  SEWING NEEDLES REPAIRING A BROKEN DOLL , A BAG FULL OF BANDAGES, TRYING SO HARD TO BE TOUGH WHEN YOU’RE SOFT , SOFT HAIR HELD BACK WITH A BAT-SHAPED PIN.

                    ❛  when you saw that little girl , and she was in the sandbox                            and she was crying , and you gave her your toy truck and                            I told you we couldn’t afford to get another one. you said ,                          ‘ she should have it because she’s sad. she’s sad , mommy. ’ ❜                            playlist. pinterest. to listen as you read.

lol u guessed it it’s me , again , by unpopular demand - i am so sorry. third muse already bc i can’t keep myself away from playing absolute CINNAMON ROLLS so that’s what u can expect from sam w/ a pumpkin spice twist. bc nightmare is my absolute favorite movie and ... halloween, motherfuckers. so as usual this will PROBABLY end up long bc i love writing sam so much so yeah , more below ! 

HISTORY 

So as we know , Jack & Sally were sent to the Isle w/ the rest of Halloweentown for trying to steal Christmas ! And unlike Christmas , Samhain was not born in Halloweentown. In fact , he wasn’t even born - he was made. 

Magic wasn’t a huge thing on the Isle - but a resource of science was Dr. Finkelstein , and despite the limited resources and technology on the Isle , the couple begged the mad scientist to create another child for them. And from Sally , it took a lot of convincing , but Jack was able to talk him into it. 

It took even more of an effort to pull off , again considering the state of the Isle. But a good few months into the project and Jack & Sally were greeted with the cries of a tiny ragdoll baby boy. Keeping up with the holiday themed names , he was named Samhain - Sam for short. 

He grew with multiple touch-ups from the doctor to simulate an actual boy growing up - every year , a check-up making him taller , stronger , etc. And in that process he started to look more and more like his mother , with her big eyes and stitched smile and patchwork clothes. But he grew up loved by his brother & parents - though it never quelled the fact he always wanted... more.

He was loved , he was coddled , and as sheltered as a child could be on the Isle. So , much like his mother , he took a habit of sneaking out frequently and trying to fit in with the other Isle kids , even though he knew he didn’t. 

He just wanted to fit in. That was it. And it started off with him wearing large hoods and heavy clothes to hide the stitches on his body as well as masks to cover facial stitches. And while some other Isle kids found him odd and sticking out like a sore thumb , some found him cool. Some found him interesting. But nobody really knew what he was hiding - and it added mystery to someone so NICE , because Sam’s overall sweetness could rival that if sugar’s. 

Curiosity only reached dangerous points though when Sam snuck out on night to camp out with friends - and when everyone else was asleep , one removed his mask , and of COURSE did Samhain immediately wake up. He didn’t stay to see the reaction of the other when revealing his stitches , too afraid that he’d be seen as scary or repulsive for what he was. And he ran. He ran back home , locking himself in his room , and those friends he routinely hung out with . . . well , he didn’t talk to them much after that. Because what if they knew , now ?? What would they think ??

Villain & Auradon kids coming together was a new chance for Sam to try and fit in - be more in his element. He was immediately acquainted with a magic-practicing individual ( could be an AK or a VK - this’ll be a wc ) who struck a deal with him to offer him glamours so he could look less scary. Of course , these glamours would have to be applied and would wear off until the next application , but it’d make him feel more comfortable - even though he WOULD technically be hiding who he is.

While Christmas , the elder sibling , would be sticking around in Auradon Prep , Samhain would prefer to move immediately to Auroria University to try and figure out who exactly he wanted to be , and how he could do that. Currently he’s majoring in Nursing , given he’s always had a rather NURTURING and charitable nature - never turning down someone else’s request to help.

CHARACTER & FACTS 

So lemme get this one thing out of the way bc if I don’t I’ll be itching about it - but all my resources for ( the love of my life ) Rocky were made by me , and while they’re all from multiple eras from both R5 & TDE , I imagine Sam to resemble how Rocky looks around the post-Louder , Heart Made Up On You & Sometime Last Night eras ( basically from like 2013-2015 ). Here , here , & here for some references. I’m nOT DONE GIFFING THOUGH bc frankly I find giffing him therapeutic.

Now I don’t have a drawn reference or anything for this next part so we’re gonna have to use our imagination here but unglamoured , Sam basically looks like his mom in terms of the fact he’s a little ragdoll baby. Putting on a glamour doesn’t change his appearance much save for the fact the stitches disappear and he looks more human. 

The glamour is an enchanted bat charm he wears around his neck that can also be used as a hairtie. And it has to be refreshed every so often , so he has to keep going back to whoever provided him with it so it doesn’t lose its effect.

He still has a backup mask just in case , and he’s been practicing with makeup if need be.

Personality-wise , the best one can describe Sam as is sweet and polite. I included tht Stranger Things quote at the beginning 4 a rEASON bc he’s honestly such a sweet kid and will give anything to anyone.

And also bc I imagine Sally as Joyce mom-wise so yEAH bt I digress.

He knows his manners and treats everyone with the UTMOST amount of respect , which makes it extremely easy to get along with him . He’s also maybe a tad bit too giving for his own good , since it’s incredibly easy to use that to one’s advantage and he’s so inclined to believe people have the best intentions. An optimist , even if it’s to a fault. And then when he gets hurt he just sits to the side feeling sorry for himself like “ :’’’(. ”

Now when I say he’s inflexible , I mean that Sam is a very ORGANIZED person who likes things to be done a certain way - like , he can never do anything without a plan , and if even something slightly goes out of what the plan pertains of , he panics. He’s a goody-goody and he’s afraid to break the rules , which is why he’s still hesitant to even do things with the friends who are more “ bad ” than he is.

Everything has to be done BY THE BOOK and if it isn’t then something is bound to go wrong and Sam’s too worried about that happening.

He’s also incredibly insecure about his appearance but I think I’ve hammered in that fact enOUGH ALREADY

But if he takes his glamour off in front u that’s like. A Major sign of trust. So beware.

Again as I mentioned he tries to hang out with kids with the lesser reputations because :

1.) He wants to give them a chance

2.) He wants to make sure they have a friend to look after them

and 3.) He’s so used to trying to fit in with the other Isle kids that he’s trying to be ‘bad’ himself but it never works out bc he’s so sweet and he can dress in skinny jeans and leather and shit as much as he wants but at the end of the day he’s still Sweet Lil’ Samhain. 

One thing he’s always had a fascination with would be angels - he’s always believed in them , always though he’s had his own guardian angel watching over him somewhere , he’s always loved the idea of them. He has lots of angel decorations around his dorm as well as ornaments and stuff for the holidays. It’s also pure irony that he just so happens to be just as angelic in nature.

He’s also a big holiday person like the rest of his family and loves helping to decorate for events and stuff !!

One of his greatest talents is his ability to play both the piano & violin , and he’ll often do that if there’s a piano in common areas or so on. He’s also a talented singer , but he’s so used to putting that to the side , making him lack confidence in his voice.

i v much encourage u to listen to the song i linked i find his voice so....soothing.

Like his mom he’s also very good at cooking , sewing , etc. !! Often has to stitch himself back together if he gets hurt - you know , Sally style. 

More basic facts are that his final height clocks in at 6′4 , he’s homoromantic homosexual , and identifies as masculine non-binary who doesn’t really care how you address him. He’s very chill. And sometimes he has to walk with a cane of sorts if his stitches are loose or if his legs are feeling especially weak.

but yeah that’s it on that end !!!

WANTED CONNECTIONS

So obviously - the person who provided him with the glamour. Only requirement is that ur character’s good at magic or something of that sort.

AND ALSO - I’d love the person who initially removed his mask !! Sam didn’t stick around to see them react to how he truly looked , so it’s all up to you on how this character feels. But he’s avoided them since that scenario.

Also , his group of friends around the time that scenario happened on the Isle. Maybe they’re a little more rough around the edges than him , but this group was always tight-knit. And then Sam lightning mcghosted bc he wasn’t sure if now they knew what he really was.

Ppl who think his whole sweet thing is fAKE bc we know it isn’t but it’s so easy to THINK it is.

Also would love some folks he routinely cares for maybe in the aspect of like. Bein their shoulder to cry on. Patching up a wound. Just being There for them. 

Folks who in general just wanna know more abt him bc he is kind of a mystery !!

Would lOVE sb who his glamour wears off in front of and he begs them to keep his secret but instead they want him to try n be more comfortable w/ himself and who he is. Bc he’s a cute ragdoll let’s b honest he just. Doesn’t see himself that way. 

Ppl who Sam crushed on at the Isle and deffo broke his heart bc life just b like that sometimes 

Also present day folks who r just ready to break his heart bc again thats so easy to do

also once more i’m open 2 ANYTHINNNNNNG sam is my Baby(tm) and i’d lov any plots thrown his way !! will probs make another wc page for him like i’ve done w/ luke and am in the process of doing w/ trixie !!

[absurdfuture]

'How can I complain?'

An essay about mental health by musician James Blake, from It’s Not OK to Feel Blue (And other lies).

James Blake 09 OCTOBER 2019

It’s especially easy to poke fun at the idea that a white man could be depressed. I have done it myself, as a straight white man who was depressed. In fact, I still carry the shame of having been a straight white man who’s depressed and has experienced suicidal thoughts. And still, when discussing it with most people, I will play down or skirt around how desperately sad I have been; instead I emphasize how much happier I am now. I emphasize the work I had to do to get to a better place, and how it was hard work and fruitful work, and how I empowered myself by doing it. I usually focus on how I regained control and an enthusiasm for living (‘Nice one, mate!’), not on how I lost it. That is the last of my defensiveness.

I remember doing an interview with the New York Times where the interviewer asked me why my childhood was painful, and how I got to such a dark place in my late twenties. I told him, ‘You know, other kids, bullying, etc.’ – and instantly regretted my brevity. He said something like, ‘Right, so a pretty standard childhood then.’

Fuck. After all this public talk of depression and anxiety, and many albums of expressed pain, I felt exposed as a fraud, but I was relieved not to have shown my cards and revealed how pathetic and weak I must have been when I was younger. Maybe he was right. He’d probably been through worse and wasn’t complaining about it.

I picked up a resentment towards other people from school. My parents were very loving and supportive and, unusually for my generation, still together. I went to school completely unequipped to deal with certain kids who were taking their fractured and in some cases abusive home lives out on me. I know that now. I was ‘too sensitive’, and I never learned how to act. I was a baby who’d been kept away from germs, and now I was getting ill from anything and everything. (I should say now that I have many happy memories of childhood, especially of my parents and of certain friends who I could count on, and that my inability to focus on those positives probably didn’t help.)

During my school years I spent thousands of hours walking on my own with headphones on or playing piano in the practice rooms, often going there first to cry in private and then occasionally with a mind to play. I was addicted to video games from the age of twelve, rarely going out to socialize. I had a few ‘best’ friends over the years who, looking back, I didn’t know well. But I’m grateful for having had them.

I put girls on pedestals and worshipped them, but only ever remained their friend. I fell in love many times and it was never reciprocated. I had no automatic right to them of course, but they kept me around for years and allowed me to be bullied and humiliated by their friends, accidentally betraying me out of awkwardness. I resented their understandable, youthful inability to know what to do with a sensitive boy who made them laugh and feel good about themselves, but whose body they did not want.

Boys would see my sensitivity as weakness and, while I was sharp and quick-witted, I wasn’t sporty, which was my first mistake with them, I think. Again, I didn’t know how to act. I wondered for years whether I had some behaviour disorder. I still wonder. In any case, year upon year of capricious bullying and humiliation followed.

These feelings of betrayal, persecution and rejection I kept to myself. In the crude gender stereotypes I was aware of at that age, I thought I had the sensitivity of a female but in a male’s body. I joked my way through it and made sure nobody ever saw me cry. I remained a virgin until the age of twenty-two, because I was awkward and unable to be natural around women. I was afraid of the vulnerability of sex after so many embarrassing attempts at it. (The song ‘Assume Form’ is, in part, about finding the ability to feel safe during intimacy.) It seemed to me that it had taken my success as a DJ for women to pursue me, and then I distrusted them for their sudden, transparent interest, so I pushed them all away. Slowly the face of every woman morphed into the faces of the girls who I felt had betrayed and humiliated me. And the face of every man became a bully who would underestimate me and try to kill my spirit.

Becoming relatively famous, my persecution complex turned into a self-serving narcissism, and my obsession with proving my worth to people who’d underestimated me was now being rewarded financially. To those ends, my first emotional language – music – had been the vehicle. I wanted to show everyone what they’d missed out on for all those years.

To some extent I succeeded in that, but I became so self-obsessed and isolated that I wasn’t the success I seemed to be on paper. And so the chasm grew between my alias – the guy with the ‘Pitchfork best new music 8.0+’, with the uncompromising and flourishing career, who seemed in control of everything – and the man-child who for many years was hurting, spiralling, never leaving the house, wasting away in an ego prison, refusing to collaborate, allowing himself to be bled financially and taken advantage of by his friends and their extended family, playing video games and smoking weed fourteen hours a day and not taking any care of himself what-so-ever until he was in a black depression, experiencing daily panic attacks, hallucinations and an existential crisis. I was asking questions like ‘What is the point of me?’ and saying I didn’t want to live. I became afraid of the growing fog of war outside my house because of what I knew people expected of me if I entered it: a normal interaction and, even more impossible, a new album.

I wanted people to know how I felt, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to tell them. I have gone into a bit of detail here not to make anyone feel sorry for me, but to show how a privileged, relatively rich-and-famous-enough-for-zero-pity white man could become depressed, against all societal expectations and allowances. If I can be writing this, clearly it isn’t only oppression that causes depression; for me it was largely repression.

I’m still not sure I fully believe I am entitled to be depressed or sad at all, because I’m white and cisgender and male, and life for people like me is undoubtedly the easiest of any group. But my privilege didn’t make me want to stick around, and it makes me feel even more embarrassed for having let myself go.

When the delusional mental force field of whiteness finally popped (the ‘psychosis’ of whiteness, as Kehinde Andrews puts it, which most white people are still experiencing – I was still able to reap the now obvious benefits of being white, straight and male but without the subconscious ability to ignore my responsibility to the marginalized), I started having the uncomfortable but rational thought that my struggle was actually comparatively tiny, and that any person of colour or member of the LGBTQ+ community could feasibly have been through exactly the same thing and then much, much more on top of that. A plate stacked until it was almost unmanageable. For me it became embarrassing to mention my child’s portion of trauma and sadness.

Combining that thought with the normalized stigmatization of male musicians’ emotional expression in the media, I felt like I must be the ‘Sadboy Prince and the Pea’.

But my girlfriend verbally slapped some sense into me, saying it does not help anybody, least of all oneself, to compare pain. And that was good advice to hear from someone who’d been through what she has. I can only imagine how frustrating it was for this Pakistani woman to watch me – with all my advantages in life – self-sabotage and complain like I have. Fuck.

And then you look at the statistics: according to the Yale Global Health Review, ‘in 2015, the crude suicide rate [in the USA] for white non-Hispanic males aged 40 to 65 was 36.84 per 100,000 people – more than twice the rate in the general American population’. If it wasn’t already clear that we have more than enough representation, we’re huge in suicide too.

Given this, I think it’s worth examining why many privileged white men can end up feeling they have no legitimate claim to pain, and then never deal with what they can’t lay claim to.

Even while writing this I’m visited by the thought ‘Who even cares? There are much bigger problems in the world than white men who feel sad.’ (This is a bloody laughable thing to write your first piece on – get some perspective, arsehole, and put away your tiny violin.) But you know what? I’ll continue because I think we need to advance the conversation around mental health for everyone, and it’s the only experience I feel qualified to talk about.

From systemic toxic masculinity (‘Boys don’t cry’, basically) and an ostensibly homophobic fear of sensitivity being beer-bonged into us by our friends, family and the media from as early as we can remember (‘Chug, chug, chug!’) to the slow realization as we get older that the world is actually stacked towards our success, we end up thinking that our individual psychological decline is shameful.

I believe it is psychologically dangerous for our egos to be built up as much as they are; for the importance of success to be so great; for the world to open its doors more to us than to others (most of us willfully ignore that those advantages exist, though we feel them deep down, and subconsciously know that it is unfair and that we must capitalize on them).

It is dangerous for us to be made to feel we can do anything and be anything, to gain an understanding of women as a resource rather than a lesson in empathy and love – and then find in all our capitalistic and egoistic fervour that we have neglected to take care of that other muscle that enables our survival: the mind.

I for one felt like Donald Trump, starting with $413 million and ending up broke and lying about my tax records. Maybe then it’s no surprise that so many disaffected white men identify so deeply with him. (It should be noted that I absolutely don’t.) That and our shared love of doing anything we want and saying whatever we like without consequence to ourselves.

That shared love has rightly led to a debate about what white males are entitled to say and do. I believe we’re entitled to no more than anybody else, which at this point requires a lot of listening and rebalancing. I also believe everybody is entitled to pain, no matter how perceptibly or relatively small that pain is. I don’t want the shame around depression and anxiety in privileged people to become worse any more than I want it for the marginalized. Because without addressing that pain we end up with more cis-gendered white male egomaniacs who bleed their shit on to everybody (and some of them will write albums about it).

James Blake's essay is from It's Not Ok To Feel Blue (And Other Lies), a collection of writing about mental health, curated by Scarlett Curtis.

[thedaywebuiltthefort-blog]

Confidence

I am having a crisis of confidence.

It’s been going on for near enough thirty-four years now so I’m hoping that eventually, it’s just going to go away of its own accord. I have tried to shake it; unfortunately, nothing I’ve done appears to work. At this point, I’ve pretty much adapted to it.

I’ve always suffered from confidence problems. This might come as a bit of a shock to people who have met me. On the outside, I do come across as a reasonably self-assured person. On the inside, it’s a very different story.

You see, there are two different versions of myself.

There’s the version of myself that exists inside my head – the version that’s effortlessly talented, interesting and always has something witty to say. That version of me looks great in spandex. That version of me would know exactly what to do in a crisis.

But then there’s the version of me that I see in photographs, videos and when I look in the mirror. That version of me feels like – at best- a marginally adequate bag of flesh flailing and snorting through life. That version of me looks like a potato in spandex. It tells inappropriate anecdotes at formal gatherings and always fails to deliver the punch line.

Part of me believes that my lack of self-confidence stems from childhood bullying. I don’t want to make it a sob story and I don’t want anyone hearing tiny violins playing. It happened, it was rough but it’s just a part of the rich fabric of life. That, however, doesn’t take away from the fact that from a very young age, I had all of my failings laid bare. All of my insecurities used like tiny weapons of mass destruction.

A big part of it, however, is just my nature. I’m someone who needs validation from others. It isn’t very enlightened of me, but I’ve never pretended to be an enlightened person. I’m working on it.

Anyway, ever since I went to college (many years ago now) I decided that regardless of my insecurities, I would always attempt to push myself out of my comfort zone. Let’s face it, that’s where the best things tend to happen. I’ve been talking for a while with an old friend about working together on some creative projects. We’ve been back and forth, making and cancelling plans for a long time. Last night we actually managed to meet up to go over plans for a sketch video that he’s got planned.

Right up until about an hour before we arrived, I was still trying to think up a valid excuse as to why I couldn’t make it. Not because I don’t want to be a part of the project, but because my anxiety tells me that I’m probably going to ruin it. First off, it requires me to act and I am quite honestly the worst actor on the face of the planet. That isn’t me being insecure. There are some things you can see about yourself that aren’t about self-pity; they’re just cold hard facts.

Secondly, it meant walking into a room with a group of people that I either didn’t know or hadn’t seen for years and letting them see my general awfulness. I did have a couple of glasses of wine (which later proved to be an unwise move seeing as how I’m training for a marathon) and that did help. For the first few minutes, I was absolutely overcome with nerves, sitting in awkward silence with people who incidentally, were great, feeling like an absolute muppet.

We go through the script, chat a little and have what I think is quite a nice evening. The whole time though, all I can think is that I’m definitely not as interesting, talented or cool as these people. I’m sitting there feeling like a pretender. My poor husband went to sleep last night listening to me woefully lamenting how absolutely terrible I am.

The truth is that I’m probably always going to be my own worst critic. I’m always going to be plagued by these feelings that I’m not good enough. But the thing about confidence is that if you let a lack of it stop you from doing things, you’re going to miss out on what could be some of the best experiences of your life. Yes, you might try something and truly be terrible at it.

But if you convince yourself that it’s not worth doing something just in case you’re not instantly amazing at it, well, you’ll never know, will you? I’ve had many brilliant ideas over the course of my life that turned out to be absolute steaming turds. I’ve failed at more things than I can count. I’ve humiliated myself, injured myself, made terrible mistakes and guess what, I survived it all.

You can survive failure. You can get over the embarrassment. You can’t change something that you haven’t done. It’s all a matter of choice. You can let your insecurities stop you from doing things or you can accept the fact that you can try something and take the chance that it might not turn out the way you envisioned it. You have a comfort zone; zones have barriers which can be torn down. As Chris Martin so eloquently put it – if you never try, you’ll never know.

So yes, it is hard for me to walk into a room of absolute strangers and make conversation. I’m awkward and weird. It is hard for me to put myself out there and feel like all my flaws are on display. But I’ll do it anyway.

I don’t think there’s an Oscar in my future, and I don’t expect a call from Hollywood. That’s OK. If they still want me to be a part of the project, I’m one hundred percent on board. I’ll do as I always do, as I’ve done for years. I’ll tell my insecurities to pipe down and get over it. I’ll step outside of my comfort zone, try something new and be the best worst actor I can be.