#the only thing less consistent than my writing is my reading 💀

[sordidmusings]

Just a life update and opening!

Brought up because of an ask wondering if I still do stuff here so I figured I'd put out some of whats goin on if anyone is interested! Also throwing it into the void of the internet feels less guilt inducing than forcing it on specific people especially after how overwhelmed folks tend to be cuz I'm bad at metering it out and not just being like 'light jokes about struggle that don't scratch the surface or say anything meaningful' and 'here is all the dark lore' 💀 It's also been a struggle because there really does sometimes feel like theres a whole ass language barrier within your own language when you're AuDHD.

I do still do headcanons and write and draw and yada yada there’s just been quite a bit happening and I’m doing poorly at keeping up with life maintenance let alone things I enjoy 🥴 with writing especially in my hobbies I find myself discouraged in what feels like poor quality of my writing and seeing that reflected back to me because I am Weak 💀 general overview of some of the bigger problems below the cut if you’re interested but I won’t bother y’all with the whole picture! Will be more a summary/overview/alluding to things over getting into gory details. Basically a lot will be covered but I won’t force anything below the broad strokes on y'all.

The end is an ask for people to please reach out if they are struggling so please take that seriously. I offer a space with me but please find wherever in this world you are at least somewhat comfortable and have someone be there with you while you process 🤍 I will have a header above that little piece just incase you'd like to skip to only reading that which is completely fine!

CW for mental health talks, allusions to family issues, references to rape and abuse, death by suicide, and suicidal ideation.

What's Up, Doc?

Between hospitalizations (old and new issues and unfortunate near misses 🤡), my couple jobs (the days my body ain’t tryin to give up and even some days it still is means back to the grindstone. Thank you capitalistic overlords 💀), money stresses (medical debt plus just like y'all know shit ain’t the best for most everyone rn), the spring struggle (nightmares + flashbacks get worse from seasonal + anniversaries of men not caring for consent amongst other things lmaoooo), the mental health slew (diagnosed with AuDHD and most of the big hitters besides a personality disorder), and a few other life happenings and old traumas I’m doing a terrible job at everything 🤡 most of it ain’t new so I know all the proper things to do to help for everything from years of therapy and managing the symptoms and all that but dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s hasn’t been offering any relief for a long while so I’m floundering and quite exhausted.

The health issues making everything difficult and painful ain’t helping but I’m also not being the best at taking care of some of them because Why Bother 💀 Many are issues I’ve had for years that ebb and flow in severity and I’m just tired of feeling them and having to manage them. I’m sure any of you with chronic issues understand the feeling well. Those with years and years of major depressive disorder probably also understand the frustration and exhaustion and guilt with knowing you should enjoy something, you WANT to enjoy it, but your body just can’t produce the reaction it should.

I tend to isolate because I’m managing it poorly enough that the topic tends to crop up with the closer few if they ask and that goes Badly cuz, even if they think they won’t, people get uncomfy with the topics which just makes me feel Worse from guilt and sometimes frustration from it being passed over for their comfort or lack of understanding. I am lucky enough to have more recently found one person who Gets It and a beloved soul from lovely old Jersey came back into my life so the bigger problem in that situation is me allowing myself to consistently receive support from them 🤡 One’s so sweet always telling me I can call any time and the other is of the same vein and my dumbass brain keeps being like “but that would bother them” or the usual “you deserve to get worse not get help” 🤡🤡🤡. Clown ass behavior.

Also some bad coping mechanisms make my typing and communication sloppy as hell and I’m quite ashamed of that so best hide that away while it’s going on 💀 due to insistence that it’s Fine I have forgone that instinct to what feels like very Poor Result 🥴 ah the eternal struggle between needing to be Seen to fight the sense of isolation and worthlessness but also being petrified of being perceived while imperfect. Not having any of the connections really be in person doesn’t help too much with feelings isolation because I don't really have anyone around me besides parents that have literally said "why are you making us deal with this" about the intentional near death miss 💀💀💀 my immediate world feels very much like it wants me gone in explicit and subtle ways but c'est la vie. Beggars can’t be choosers so at this point I’m likely just being ungrateful 🤡

One thing making it harder to keep trying is my folks’ years of insistence that I don’t understand my own experience and I’m just dramatic and make things up. It’s an echo of many painful experiences including a whole group intentionally playing games with my sense of reality to enable their friend’s abuse (they got unconsensual nudes from him out of it so that’s worth the price of treating someone like that right?). Such is life.

One of the new things I’m uncertain how to approach handling properly is the grief and such shifting back to the forefront from the first anniversary of my childhood brother figure being taken from us by his bipolar depression. I have known people taken by suicide before but not this close to home. My childhood wasn’t the happiest but he and his family were a bright place in it. His little sister was my best friend in the whole world through my childhood and their family treated me more like family than my own. He was the best mix of a good and bad influence in an older brother figure I could’ve wished for. He fought long and hard but exhaustion hits us all, sometimes even with proper help. What eternally pains me is knowing how helpless and scared he must have felt and even worse how absolutely alone he felt. That was his last feeling in this life. I can only hope that more than anything, whatever happens next is giving him relief, peace, and rest.

Talk on reaching out below!

On that note, if any of you experience suicidality too, my messages (or ask if you’re more comfy on anon) are always open. This is an issue that’s been in my life in many forms since I was 12, so I will not shy away from you or your thoughts. Even if shared with something uncomfortable or "ugly", I find the discomfort of sitting with someone’s pain negligible in comparison to being the one in pain so why not prioritize that person in their need? It’s also negligible under the importance of truly holding space to process those hurts and stresses instead of just simple little niceties.

I am not the best at being active but if I see any of these messages especially we will truly talk. I know how insanely isolating and disappointing it can feel when someone offers support to be nice and then shoves to the next topic or barely responds because it makes them uncomfortable. It is a bitter pill we must often swallow to forgive those who think they will help for making things worse because they have bit off more than they can chew. It is also a bitter feeling that that reaffirms to us that by our very nature, we are too much to handle and are too much to deal with for sharing our internal space and circumstance. But at the same time, all of us are simply human so who am I to malign someone for making mistakes or being imperfect? So long as someone truly wants to try, there is all the reason in the world to give them grace.

Qualifications kind of???

The one good thing that has come from a lot of the experiences that I’ve gone through is that it has forced perspective on me and forced me to learn skills in holding space, validating, and connecting to others in immense pain. No one is perfect in this skill (even therapists struggle - the number who have said they don’t know where to start untangling the traumas or who have cried at it and in turn needed comfort 💀 a strange experience I know my darling at least gets too lol) but I have found in both giving and receiving that honesty and openness is W A Y more important than being perfect.

This is something I’ve watched more people struggle with than not as life circumstances has not made it so that they must learn the skill at the same time that there are resources to learn it, so I may make more posts with advice for it than the bit I go through here. I’m not a licensed therapist so this isn’t going to be a clinical breakdown of how to be someone’s therapist but I would consider my experience as a confidant, consistent reading up on psychological and related sociological research, and experience going through various forms of therapy worthy of giving solid advice. Unfortunately, co-morbidities and resistant brain chemistry really make using the skills on myself Difficult 💀 but as brief examples of experience for validity speaking on this, I’ve been to a lot of group therapy where licensed therapists literally coach you on this, guided a safe space/group for SA survivors in college, coached friends who couldn’t afford therapy through suicidality or abusive situations, and coached survivors through feelings and decisions when deciding whether or not to charge or going through the process of charging their abuser. All of which is much easier to be effective to people you know irl but the support online can be nothing to snub your nose at either. None of this is to say I'm perfect or exceptional - neither is true - just that I’ve had circumstances and experiences that afford me a bit of extra knowledge in this.

In the vast majority of cases, someone who is struggling and coming to you for help wants you to be there - your thoughts, your feelings, your perspective. They don’t want someone sitting uncomfortably and saying the occasional “sorry” they want engagement because more than anything they don’t want to be alone. In a basic example, if you find yourself freezing when someone comes to you with something you don’t know how to handle, instead of saying nothing or only short cliches due to fear of making a mistake, be honest about that. “I’m not sure what to say right now to be honest because that’s so much to deal with. I can’t imagine having to live with that all the time. Is there anything in it frustrating you the most or that you’re having the most difficulty tackling?”. This is active listening and engagement. You are being honest with where you are at so they aren’t guessing what you’re thinking, you are showing that you see how overwhelming the situation is, especially for the person who has to live with it. If you can’t handle a conversation where these issues exist, how do you think it feels to live with them day in and day out, sometimes for years or the majority of a life?

Asking questions is SUPER important too. Trust the other person to only share what they are comfortable with and don’t assume all questions are bad. Asking questions is one of the truest and simplest ways to show you care because why would you want to know more if you don’t give a shit? Asking questions is also very helpful and one of the reasons talking to others about your issues is important - it gives the person struggling something to react to and give perspective. It helps them process the issue in ways they won’t be able to do by themselves. This may make the process sound slightly manufactured but I promise it’s not, especially as it becomes second nature to know what thing to use when. Communication is a skill so advice around it will inherently make it sound more clinical than the actual process is.

People are also not a monolith so while this type of being there works for the vast majority some people may not like it. That is also where communication comes in - check in with the person on if this is helping and what isn't helpful. Make sure to adjust when you make a mistake.

Conclusion

I’m happy to hold space for other issues as well. I’m no replacement for a therapist but I’ve been a helpful supplement to many people I knew struggling throughout the years so I’m at least okay at that! Since I’m doing pretty bad functionally right now the help won’t be as consistent as I wish but I will give whatever is in my power just like these things deserve. I hope to get better soon so that I can properly offer a stronger foundation of support outward again 🤍

[razorblade180]

What're your aus? I started reading twin snowflakes way back and so far it's the only one I've touched but I'm interested in the others (life has just been busy

Basically all these aus exist because I had the random thought “what could life be like depending on which main RWBY girl ended up liking Jaune. From that, boundless changes and scenarios were born to the point that they’re all incredibly separate down to people who live and how Salem was beat, when, etc.

There’s Lasting Embers, my pride and joy for being the first I did. It’s Dragonslayer shipping. I’ve actually made three completed stories in that au that are drastically shorter than Twin Snowflakes. Frozen Blood is Adam centric, being about if he survived the fall and being saved by a mysterious woman who has an invested interest in keeping him around.

Second is called Shackles, dealing with Blake and Yang reuniting a couple years after saving the world. An unexpected visitor arrives and now the end up going on a mission involving the very subject that strained their relationship.

Third story, which I technically wrote first is Lasting Embers. This is about Jaune and Yang’s daughter, Yujin, celebrating her 15th birthday to the best of her ability when she gets the surprise of a lifetime, her mother and aunt retuning home after over a decade. I’m pretty sure this is people’s favorite story. It’s one of my earliest so it’s a tad rough in comparison to more recent works; I still love it.

Second was Twin Snowflakes but you know more or less that’s it’s about Jaune and Weiss’s kids dealing with a mysterious and chaotic problem that threatens their family; among other things.

Third is Rosebud. That’s Lancaster, which has Carmine Arc-Rose in the center of things. Originally I had planned to write Snow Flakes and Rosebud at the same time but I’m a single person and life is very hard. That being said, it has lots on one shots and a completed story story called Rosebud Prep which is essentially the Prologue that explains why things are the way they are.

Lastly is Premonition. This has the least amount of material so far, mainly consisting of a one shots or questions people had. No full blown story yet but I’ve known forever what it’s about. This au is definitely more laid back and slice of life core than the others.

Everything that’s underlined will send people to a post that has all the chapters plus a little more for each story respectively. Snowflakes isn’t finished yet so such a post doesn’t exist yet. I have quite the journey gather all those together. If I find the time I’ll try making hyper links on the chapters that’ll send readers forward and not just backwards.💀

Also…

interdimensional Moms

interdimensional Dads

Two fun little stories of if the parents of the main kids all met at a table and talked about their lives. Little bit of spoilers obviously but also insight into more things.

[esta-elavaris]

ok new fic ask game bc why not!! 📚⏰ — i kinda have my own own question to tack onto these two though and that is if you read any fanfic or if you mainly focus on writing it, and so if you do read any do you have any that you would recommend for some reason or another?

📚 Do you read your own fic?

CTW is the only one I can read for actual enjoyment/out of pride 🥲 I remain stupidly proud of that one. I think LBL was my first properly good fic, but I improved a lot as I was writing it so I wince throughout it a lot, especially with the early chapters, if I have to refer back to it for whatever reason. I've also never looked back at HTWA until literally just last night, because I'm doing a read-through to make sure I can land the thing in a decent way over the next few months, but even that one has me cringeing a lot. Usually if I'm reading something of my own, it's so I can remember what I've already done, especially if it's a fic I haven't touched in a long time 💀

⏰ Do you spend more time reading fic, writing fic, or do you do both equally?

Writing it, for sure. I used to read tonnes of it, easily outweighing the actual books I read, but at this point I have so many actual books I want to get through that I can't justify reading lots of fic unless I have bad fandom brainrot - like, deep hyperfixation style. The last one for that was the Ghost fandom, since the members of the band are characters rather than just normal musicians, so I don't feel weird reading about them. But nine times out of ten if I want to read I just go for a book.

That being said, it doesn't help that I make a point of completely avoiding reading pairings that I write (sometimes even entire fandoms, depending on whether I want to keep writing different pairings in the same fandom later on) because I don't want to be accidentally influenced by another writer to a point where I'd unwittingly copy their ideas without realising it. So the more fic I write, the less I can really read. It's definitely a bit of a paranoid move but it offers peace of mind lolol.

Buuut I did read this Haldir/LOTR fic this year - it's very, very good and it's still being updated! I'm going to reread it from the beginning soon for sure.

Thank you for consistently giving me an excuse to whitter on about writing I do very much appreciate it 💜