hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?
hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].
but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.
it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.
and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.
the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.
an emptiness, like you said.
but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.
you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.
he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.
but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.
how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.
the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.
think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.
i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.
but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one.
wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.
as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛
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Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?
I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.
disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.
this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.
what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.
with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.
from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.
with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)
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Honestly as far as the dog reactivity goes? pausing to work on her general confidence skills, her habits of/ability to control her vocalizations even if she is feeling big things, and just letting her brain grow out a little seems to be helping a lot. She very clearly wants to work more than she wants to yell, and it's just a matter of practicing impulse control and focus until we get there. (Also, pocket sized pouches of peanut butter, which can be offered for Look At That and licky time on the go, are a next level innovation idea one of my mentors had, and it is so handy for reactivity work.)
I really got to train her to grab something and hold it for me on cue, and ideally to pass me things: if she's holding something in her mouth, she can't yell, and my joints hurt when I bend over too far anyway so it would be genuinely convenient to have. besides if it's a frequently rewarded cue we practice all the time anyway then it's got more positive valence and will therefore be more salient and rewarding in a pinch, she clearly finds being useful almost as rewarding as getting paid.
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i am not a smart man but i am a happy one, lookee what i found in the charity shop for £60:
shes so preeeeeettyyyyy. look at that gold scrollwork and fancy faceplate! if my v quick research is correct, she is a 201K3 from 1937!
and came with a little iron box of other feet AND her original instructions:
(with the book i have identified the quilting foot, 3? hemming feet (the 3 front ones?), an adjustable hemmer, a ruffler, and ~the tuckmaker~. as well as some misc extra bits i will figure out later
just checked it and while it definitely needs a careful clean and some fiddling with the tension, she is definitely functional! even her little light works!!
my grandma would be very proud that i remembered how to thread it with zero hesitation (if not this exact model, i was taught to sew on one very very similar)
however. i am not a smart man bc this lovely thing weighs a bulky 30lbs and the charity shop is a mile away. i found a trolley midway home and stole it for a little while but still. oooooft
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28
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for pride ask thing! <3
Answers below the cut!
28) Do you experience both romantic and sexual attraction? Do you experience them the same across any gender(s) you are attracted to?
Yes, I think so? I identify as pansexual, everyone is hot all of the time lol. I think attraction to each individual person feels different, though. I am a constant case of someone who is in love with their friends. Tbh to me I don't feel a real separation between romantic or sexual or platonic attraction, what makes the most sense to me is that there are people I feel affectionate towards, and usually that just feels like a bundle of all of the above!
33) What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/want to recognize/celebrate?
gender queerness/gender non-conformity! The community we built here and the people I've met through this work really REALLY altered my relationship with my body and gender presentation. I've always been very attracted to gender nonconformity but it can be hard/scary to perform in a very cishet society. Getting to know all of you and having a very free environment for bodies of all kinds really gave me the confidence to dress how I want in public, and to get more comfy with the overlapping and layered labels I may use.
34) What are you needing most right now (what would make your life easier or more fulfilling in regards to existing as queer)?
Community with other trans folks. I'm in Texas and I've been trying to leave my entire life. I've encountered so few other trans people that I can have casual hangouts with or talk about day to day life with, or even have intimate relationships with. The closest I get to meeting other trans people in person tends to be driving hours to attend a queer event a couple times a year. It's been a big struggle for me this past year.
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Sol I gotta ask, when you read japanese, are you at the level where you can read it casually, or does understanding it still take effort? Because even though I've got the basic gist of my second language down, I still would struggle with picking up a novel and consuming it, actively translating the text in my brain takes so much extra effort than skimming words in english 🥲
If it's baby level I can read it just fine haha but longer stuff is impossible without Yomitan because there are just so... many..... kanji......... Picking up a physical novel or newspaper and being able to understand 100% of it is still beyond my skill level, but I am probably at least to a point where I could give like a vague summary of what's happening.
I'm not sure how many kanji I have memorized exactly... When I started the Begin translation a few years back I probably knew maybe 200 (what was I doing translating books at just 200 kanji?!?) and I'd be surprised if I knew less than 800 now, which is nearly a third of the recommended number needed to fully understand a newspaper (~2200). That's just kanji though, my actual vocabulary is a lot higher than that lol
I'd love to take an actual Japanese class some day... Self study has gotten me REALLY far but, like you, there are a lot of times where I have to translate it into English before it clicks with my brain, and I think I would be a lot more efficient at translating in general too if I had more professional studying. Maybe some day!!
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>be at work
>get tumblr notif
>its a poll result
>"how good is L at bowling?"
>confused (can't for the life of me remember voting on a death note poll about bowling)
>click notification
>Boss walks over just as it opens
>Boss peers down at my phone
>poll; "how good is L lawliet at blowing Light Yagami's back out"
I have been talking to my Boss about DN all week but she didn't know about the yaoi but she most CERTAINLY knows what it is I am going to kms!!!
had to show this to my friend (i am in class) and i am laughing so hard my stomach hurts (currently suffering from mild food poisoning) and while i am only a little bit sorry i do hope this does not impact your job or relationship with your boss (sincere). if it does then i will be even more sorry. however for now i am vaguely proud this is my legacy
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