#wanting to be alone is also valid

[everwen]

In case anyone needed to hear this today:

It's okay to be attracted only to men.

It's okay to be attracted only to women.

It's okay to be attracted to both men and women.

It's okay to be attracted to everyone.

It's okay to not be attracted to anyone.

You're only human and you're doing the best you can, as long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else, just do what makes you happy, be with who makes you happy.

It's okay.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bare skin, bare feelings.

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[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[clairedaring]

MY STAND-IN (2024) | 1.03

[hyacinth42-blog]

“You know, if you break up with Sveta, meet a gorgeous girl and break Sveta’s heart again, I’m obligated to throw you into the center of the Atlantic Ocean.”

....What does this mean Vicky? He's not allowed to date anyone pretty ever again???

[dimonds456-art]

Maladaptive daydreaming.

[strawglicks]

me seeing aromantic is trending and getting excited and then finding out its bc of discourse

[andthebeanstalk]

Uh-oh! You are like, SOOO awkward!!

You're so awkward that it is occasionally mildly uncomfortable for people!

You're so awkward that sometimes people are confused by you and then there are awkward silences!

You're so awkward ...... that ultimately no one is harmed!!

Oh damn!!! What a vile crime you have committed! What an unforgivable thing it is to make a fellow human briefly confused!

Why, if *I* were ever briefly confused and kind of uncomfortable as a result, I'd be devastated.... by the absolute net zero change in my happiness and health! - From which I might never recover!! Yes indeed! No punishment can ever be enough for you!!

So you better absolutely hate yourself for it.

Better be SO MEAN to yourself about every single missed social cue so you don't forget your horrible crime! Meaner than you'd ever dream of being to someone else for the same thing! This is YOUR responsibility!

Better accept that idea that bullies carry like guns in holsters - the idea that people who have trouble with social cues should suffer. Better carry on the burden they placed on you. Aid the cause of the callous by enforcing shame and suffering upon yourself extra hard; try your best to do their work for them. They're very busy.

Better not recognize that you need patience and kindness to heal from your trauma. Better not find out that it was trauma rather than personal weakness filling your head with self-hating thoughts. Better not find out it wasn't your fault.

Better not find out that awkwardness is not inherently harmful or unkind, and, in fact, the people who act like it is *are the ones enacting harm and being cruel.*

Better not get righteously angry when you realize just how much unnecessary damage this has done to you. After all, if you get mad, you might realize you deserve better. You might even feel brave enough to DEMAND better! You might build boundaries that keep you safe! You might make other people think they deserve to feel safe too! And we obviously can't be having that, so...

Better not show yourself even a little kindness a little bit at a time.

Better not make a habit out of it after all that practice.

Better not get confident.

Especially if you can't first wipe out every trace of awkward. (And you probably never will. Because people who experience absolute social certainty at all times tend to be insufferable assholes that enforce the status quo. And you just don't have the stock portfolio for that.)

Better not be confident and awkward because then you might confuse and delight people

- you might accidentally end up making other people feel less shame for their social difficulties

- you might make isolated, traumatized, and shy people feel like they deserve to be included in social situations

- you might even make them feel they can be themselves around you

- you might start loving the effect you have on a room

- you might enjoy conversations more

- you might forgive yourself and bounce back from shame more easily and frequently

- you might come to enjoy some of those moments of harmless confusion you cause because NOBODY expects the Confident Awkward, and that can genuinely be an advantage in social situations

- you might stop apologizing so much.

- you might find that socializing is like a video game: it requires practice but also a safe space for it to be fun and positive.

Or if you can't become assertive and confident, better not remain awkward and shy and quiet, and then love and forgive yourself anyway!

Why, it would be carnage!!

In either scenario, you run the risk of finding out that it's not your fault that safe spaces full of kind people can be really hard to find, create, and nurture. You could end up building a skillset that helps you do those things!

- You might realize that it was never your fault that it took so long to like yourself.

- You might realize that you were always worth talking to, even when you didn't like yourself and communication felt impossibly difficult.

- You might realize that you'll still be worth talking to even if communication becomes harder as you age and/or experience disability.

- You might know that you deserve to be heard even on bad days when words come slow and blurry.

You might discover that you were always deserving of kindness, first and foremost from yourself.

So. As you can see, it's FAR too much of a risk to take to cut your awkward self some slack for your many heinous and harmless crimes. Better to just leave it there.

[spectrumlife99]

A more personal story about a big struggle of mine...food.

I've talked a little bit about how I hate food before on this blog...but now I think it's time to go in-depth about it...even though I usually HATE talking about it, and I'm really nervous and anxious about making this post, but I'll do my best.

Ever since I was little (like, two years old when I was taken off the baby bottle and had to move to solid foods, which, actually, I have NEVER drank milk since the baby bottle was taken away because it was nasty and I no longer needed it to survive...and I STILL to this day hate milk and find it gross), I have had MAJOR sensory issues with food, causing me to be extremely picky and particular about what I eat. I have issues with the look, smell, taste, texture, etc. I also hate things on my plate touching each other, and as a kid I had to have everything on separate plates/bowls because I wouldn't eat if anything on the plate touched each other. I still hate that to this day though, with a lot of work, I have been able to move past the "everything on separate plates/bowls" thing. I do still try my absolute best to keep everything a good distance from each other though.

I am also very particular about even the same types of food. For example, I only eat certain specific brands of certain specific things, and if the brand is wrong, even if the food itself is the same, I will always notice just by smell alone, and refuse to eat it. If the brand is not the safe brand, I will not eat it. If we don't have a safe food or the right brand of safe food, I will choose to go hungry rather than eat, because it's just too much for me to eat a non-safe food/brand. My diet is extremely limited...I would say that 99% of all foods in this world are way too overwhelming for me, and I know for a fact that I can count the number of foods I will actually eat on my fingers...and everything on that list is bland, except for a couple VERY SPECIFIC flavors of VERY SPECIFIC kinds of candy. It has to be bland because I can't handle anything that's spicy (even if it's only a tiny kick or a pinch of seasoning, it will still feel like my mouth is burning and my stomach will start feeling bad), I can't handle bitter things (bitter things will immediately trigger the gag reflex), and I can't handle sour things (sour things, aside from being overwhelming in taste, make my mouth really irritated and that really hurts), or things that are too sweet (I can handle mild sweetness but if it's anything even the slightest bit over mildly sweet, I can't handle it, it triggers the gag reflex). If I could survive without eating, I would never ever eat a thing because I hate food and eating so much. I usually only eat one meal a day, that being supper, because my family always makes sure to have safe food for me in the house for supper specifically. And if we have takeout or go to a restaurant, we always make sure that the restaurant has one of my safe foods beforehand, otherwise I won't eat.

I have gone multiple days in a row without eating anything, because there was nothing safe around. This was back when I was in my early teens in the psych hospital. I was there because I needed a medication adjustment, they had to take me off everything and put me back on everything again slowly, as well as change some of the meds because I was struggling with severe anger issues and aggression, there wasn't a day that went by without me exploding on someone and physically hurting them or myself back then...so I was in the psych hospital for about a week and a half. The teen ward was like a dorm at a university or something, there was a common area, and two long corridors of rooms, with the girls on one and boys on the other. Now, the food situation there was...less than ideal... especially for someone like me. We had a choice of what we wanted to eat, but to actually GET to choose, we had to wake up at the designated wake-up call time...which was always really hard for me since I am not a morning person and I also had nightmares that woke me up and made me really anxious and panicky basically every night. So, as you can probably guess, I always missed the menu choices, meaning I always ended up with something random. That was not good, because it was almost always something that wasn't a safe food. The worst part of it was, there were multiple days in a row of this, and by the fourth day in a row of me not eating, one of the nurses did the worst thing possible for a person with severe food sensitivities...the nurse force-fed me...and continued to do so everyday after that. It was like torture, and every time after being force-fed by the nurse, I would go right back to my room, head right to the bathroom, and proceed to get rid of it by gagging myself on purpose to make myself throw up. The food sitting in my stomach made me nauseous as it was already so I just had to get it out of there so I could feel better. I never told anyone about it though because during my entire week and a half there it was so traumatic I was basically rendered mute, barely saying a word to anyone. I know that they were just worried about me and wanted to make sure I survived while I was there, but they definitely could've done it less...aggressively...

This wasn't the first time I was force-fed either. As a kid, with my OT, I did a type of feeding therapy called Feeding Team. It was supposed to help me learn to try new foods...but it didn't work. Now, the person who force-fed me there wasn't my usual therapist. My usual therapist never did that, she just sat there with me and reminded me that if I didn't eat the food of the week, I wouldn't be allowed to do all the other stuff...the stuff I liked doing in OT. Multiple weeks just consisted of me just sitting there the whole time because I just wouldn't...COULDN'T eat. But my usual therapist never threatened to force-feed me or anything like that. So how was I force-fed there, then...? Well...it was when my usual therapist wasn't there, and I had a substitute...a couple substitutes weren't the most patient and after it became clear I wasn't going to eat, they would pick up the fork or spoon, gather some of the food on it, and shove it into my mouth. I would immediately go running to the bathroom after that and proceed to, once again, get rid of it all so I didn't feel sick anymore with the food sitting in my stomach like that.

No one, absolutely NO ONE in my family knows that I've been force-fed before. They also don't know about me purposely getting rid of the food I was force-fed every time. I have only told my talk therapist and a best friend of mine who understands what having food sensitivities like this is like...and only brought it up in the first place because I've been thinking about this for a while and having nightmares about the force-feeding where I wake up feeling sick and like I need to get rid of the food I was force-fed in my dream...so it's been really bothering me a lot lately. And I'm one of those people who HATES anything to do with throwing up. If someone around me is sick with a stomach bug or flu and I hear or see it...I freak out and have full-on panic attacks over it, and when I have the stomach bug or flu myself, I try to keep everything from coming out as long as I possibly can.

And food unfortunately is something that can make me really sick and trigger the gag reflex from just the look and smell alone...which is why I always stay away from the kitchen when my family is eating their meals, and waiting until everything they had is all cleaned up and put away before I can finally have my own safe food for supper...I do this pretty much everyday, as it's very VERY rare for my family to have something I can eat alongside them for supper. The only thing that really comes to my mind that I eat with them is pasta...my mom makes it plain and makes the sauce separately because she's allergic to tomatoes and I don't like sauce. I completely cover my plain pasta in the (what I like to call) "cheese salt" type of parmesan cheese because that way it tastes better and it's not greasy. One of my younger brothers (who also has some food sensitivities, but he's not nearly as problematic in my parents' eyes as I am because he eats a lot more things than I do) does the same thing, and we often fight over the parmesan cheese because of it.

I used to have to sit at the table with everyone during holiday meals, which felt like torture, but now I don't have to do that anymore because I just can't do that without feeling sick and losing my appetite at the sight and smell of all holiday food. The only thing I eat on holidays is plain rolls...which is just bread. Everything else is way too much for me. So I wait for everyone to finish and clean up, and then I have a safe food, just like basically every other day.

On Easter yesterday I didn't even eat supper at all because I just wasn't hungry. I have a hard time noticing when I'm hungry or not, so that plays another part in me not wanting to eat, because I don't feel like I need to. I've been put on an appetite stimulator medication because my one meal a day is not enough for my family and support workers and it makes them worry...even though I'm totally fine with one a day but that's just me. It worked for a while, it didn't change anything I actually ATE but it made me feel hunger a bit more...though now it's stopped working and I'm back to one meal a day. I get really tired of my family constantly judging me for being picky, berating me for never eating anything, telling me I'm being difficult, and saying things like, "There are people starving out there, you should be grateful for what you have and eat!" When they say those things, it does not help at all! It instead just makes me really upset because I literally CANNOT HELP IT! I didn't ASK for this, I didn't ASK to have so many food sensitivities...and it drives ME just as crazy as it drives THEM! I wish I could eat more things so they wouldn't get so mad at me all the time but I just CAN'T!

You know how people will expect you to just toughen up and eat what's in front of you...? Yeah...no...that doesn't work for me. If there's nothing I can eat, nothing that's safe, I will not eat a THING until I have a safe food in front of me again, even if it takes multiple days...the longest I've gone without eating was four days. I am so glad my parents don't force-feed me though, like the nurses at the psych hospital or the substitute OT person did...because that means I haven't had to intentionally make myself sick to get rid of the things I was force-fed in about a decade now. I am so afraid to tell my family about those incidents because they have never heard anything about it from anyone at all and I always keep traumatic memories and things that happened to me to myself for years at a time, until I can't take it anymore and I just break from the stress, but I am working on it now with my talk therapist, so I hope I'll be able to say something eventually.

Anyway, I guess what I want to say is, anyone else who's autistic and struggles with food sensitivities, I see you and I feel you. You are not alone. I used to think I was alone in this until I met my best friend who struggles with this stuff too. It was so validating for me to finally have someone who understands what this is like, and I hope my story can help some of you feel not so alone either.

[gayemeralds]

Whats your honest opinion aboutnthe fandoms love for sonic and tails brotherly bonding biven that canon is not as strong on that regard

sorry for waiting like. months. to answer this question i’ve been pondering the best way to answer this for literally. months.

i guess the thing is i’ve never really thought about the domesticity of their relationship? a lot of fan things that depict them as brothers are very domestic, the little interactions between them living together and all that. sonic brushing tails’s fur. sonic telling tails to eat his vegetables. them shopping together. things like that. like, i do think they are brothers, and that they view themself as brothers, but i guess i don’t see them as conventional brothers? i’m not quite sure how to articulate this. like they ARE brothers, and they care about each other, and have a different sort of relationship than knuckles and sonic, and sonic and amy, and sonic and cream. but i wouldnt say they’d be anything like ed and al from fma. hm. it took literally thirty years to hear sonic call tails his brother in a game.

like, when i think of them, i’m inclined to think of my sister and i’s relationship. we’re about six years apart, no siblings in between. we love each other a lot, but we don’t see each other a whole lot, because we’re just in super different parts of our lives. i don’t live with her, but i’ll crash on her couch every once in a while. i don’t see her often. i am excited to see her when she visits.

so like, i think sonic did raise tails, in a sense. i think sonic probably took care of him when they first started hanging out and tails was literally just four years old. but sonic’s independent by nature and older by a good chunk of years, and i don’t really think he’d actually enjoy taking care of someone. sonic CARES and loves tails but i would not say he’s a nurturer, and he doesn’t want to be tied down. so once tails got a workshop, assumedly around sonic adventure (at least, a stable one), sonic ditched. i don’t think the two of them live together. sonic’s literally homeless and loves to wander the world for like, months on end. i don’t think sonic and tails do chores together. i don’t think sonic’s at tails’s workshop for long periods of time. maybe to crash on his couch and read a book every once in a while.

sonic visits, yeah, but i also think there’s just long periods of time where they don’t see each other. early sonic games from adventure to the “dark” era of sonic games indicate they don’t see each other for long periods of time (”long time no see!”) and when they do see each other, its often because of a new scheme from eggman or a danger to the world. like, sonic 06- they didn’t even plan on meeting each other, they just happened to cross paths.

i don’t know if this particularly makes sense. i just don’t really see them being particularly domestic together. neither of them are conventional people, and sonic especially is the type to enjoy alone time and adventuring; tails is a little more inclined to stay in place so he can work on his new machines, traveling usually for research or to help sonic. they’ve got different motivations and hobbies so i think they don’t actually spend a lot of time together. it’s probably similar to how much time sonic and knuckles spend together, since knuckles is almost always stuck on angel island with the master emerald.

(plus, if we consider the timeline sega’s been trying to tell us, where every game seems to happen in the span of a year, and tails has always been eight and sonic’s always been 15, or something similar, where tails isn’t a literal toddler when they meet, i really don’t see them doing anything domestic together at all. sonic’s always on the road and tails is off doing inventing or occasionally helping sonic out. if tails wasn’t four-ish when they meet, i don’t really think sonic would... like, take care of him the same way a “parent” would. amy rents her own house in station square, and she’s like twelve. it seems to be the norm, at least in our perspective, that young mobians are allowed to be left to their own devices; like, we still don’t know what’s up with charmy and the chaotix. sure, he could ahve been adopted by vector i suppose, or are his parents just super chill with him hanging out with a bunch of detectives? lmao. and besides, tails is a pretty smart cookie. he really can take care of himself, and sonic would just leave him be since he seems “old enough”, at least in the sonic world, to do so.)

[waterfallofspace]

What sneeze trope or snezario do you think is sorely underrated/would you like to see MORE of on snzblr?

Okay I... have two different answers to this!!! (technically four but shhhhhh <3)

Underrated: - Smoke blown lightly into the face of someone who is just so sensitive/allergic to it~ (not that it doesn't get it's fair share of acknowledgement, I mean it's not gone, but like... I don't see enough!! of it!! for how hot!! it is!!) - Someone who is practically allergic to their partner because their partners interests/lifestyles are just soaked with their allergens. (picture with me, someone with such bad hayfever and animal allergies, just head over heels for this farm/country loving partner. Every day their partner gets home and has to shower immediately, smirking as the telltale fits begin since... I mean... allergies or not, they just look so good all roughed up and dirty- how can you not wanna kiss them?? or someone who works at a flower shop with a partner with horrific pollen allergies, perfume store, pet store, the list goes on~)

Want To See More Of:

This is it's own thing because.... well it's not lacking. But I'm just such a sucker for any type of situation where they're close together, and one just.... j-just has to sneeze... so bad.... but for whatever reason (whether a game, to please the partner, hiding, or to taunt them) cannot do so. And so they hitch, and they holdback, and they build up, and eventually they stifle because it's just too much- and slowly the tickle grows, and grows, auhguehuhg- (bonus points if they muffle/stifle these against their partner, though in my mind there's uh... a lack of mess <3)

And honestly in a little selfish/my own opinion one, I always love to find one with a real itchy allergy scenario, where there's not a lot of focus on the mess aspect..? I mean Waterfall Is Not A Fluids Person is pretttyyyy well known in my friend group, and while I completely respect people who are into that, I definitely start melting when they have their heldback, hitchy, desperate fit and stay pretty dry throughout~

This was a bit long, but thanks for asking!~

also omg welcome to "waterfall doesnt know what a 'trope' is the saga" bc what is a trope and what's just a thing guys i have no idea ;-;

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

trying to lay out my interpretation of why brad and judy are simultaneously awful and really goddamn sad, beyond just having lost their baby under traumatic circumstances as already-traumatized autistic young adults with zero support system left but each other, is wild because it includes in full seriousness the word 'sheepnado'

[goldenpinof]

@ anons about Phil and next tour: i'm not airing that, at least now

[roachemoji]

.

[xxlethal-lunaxx]

If anyone relates to this even just a little bit, then I'm so sorry.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

still love this line, still love this line coming from sylvain, still love the fact that it is always sylvain who talks abt being at dimitri's side, still love the fact that he gets these lines and in every route in both games is actually shown doing what he preaches and always being at dimitri's side, sometimes literally.