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#its extremely anxiety inducing honestly :)
oatbugs · 1 year
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the way my heart sank . lol
#tried to get on a call to study w my gf bc weve both been avoiding stuff we Have to do and its been making us anxious#but esp her bc shes been in this cycle for a while and shes struggling w it a lot . and i love her and i want the best for her#and all my friends r like u should push each other to do better even if its uncomfortable somewhat and i agree#so we were like. yh lets do stuff / get on our work tmrw even tho its anxiety-inducing etc...and then we got on a call#and this is the most like. bored/displeased ive ever heard her sound like she seemed extremely disinterested and even mildly irritated#and it honestly shocked me ??? so i ended the call bc i need to do work and it was making me sad#and im trying to listen to words more than tone but it was so extreme and such a sudden change that it literally wasnt good for me . im so#confused rn . like ik facing tasks youve been avoiding for months causes anxiety ik theres like a mental block around it that makes u not#want to deal w it or become irritated at ppl who suggest that you should#but omg?? it was so weird and like. when i said she was making me sad so i wanted to end the call she was like. ok 😐#which is a fair response ig but shes never responded to me that way b4...like what is this what is happening...#i want smn who encourages me to move forward and who appreciated that i want them to do the same#instead of staying stagnant and anxious for months. i talked abt this before on here and everyone collectively was like Be More Patient and#work through it w her etc etc (my friends said the exact opposite tho) and i have been Trying To but its making me feel actively . bad.#like. im Afraid.#to bring it up . and then when i finally did say yh lets do smth lets get thru this tgth she just shut down on me somehow#idk what else i can do#i will talk to her abt it later i just need to work rn. i had to get this out of my system first.#shes so sweet and wonderful and supportive usually. but when it comes to thsi topic. im rly shocked idk#i knew she felt bad abt it but i thought she agreed to move through it w me and i didnt expect her to direct it at me#like whatever i said shed give me the coldest ok 😐. like. again nothing inherently wrong w that but when contrasted w#the way she talks to me usually there IS smth wrong it . its jarring and uncomfortable and made me rly upset bc it felt like she was mad at#me for trying to help . idk#UGH whatever ill talk 2 her later i have to do this lecture itll help distract me
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alliddewrites · 1 year
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FAVORITE
Chapter 1:
Extravaganza
Revenant x Legend!Reader
Content disclaimer:
Not completely canon compliant,
Takes place a bit after season 9,
Mention of murder,
Mention of guns,
Gender neutral reader
Summary: You join the Apex Games, but before you can actually begin, you have to go through all the extravaganza.
Word count: 2218
Masterlist
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The Apex Games…
Out of dozens and dozens of competitors, you came out on top.
It was honestly unbelievable.
The sheer anxiety and excitement throughout the match. Except this time, the stakes were even higher. It was the last competition you needed to win to qualify to be a Legend.
To be a Legend... Your biggest dream. You have been working towards this goal for quite awhile now.
Of course, the road was rocky. It had its ups and downs, but you're finally at your destination.
You can have it all now! The fame! The money! The recognition you've always wanted!
The recognition…
The recognition!!
How could you forget about the upcoming interview?? Every winner gets interviewed after their matches!
All that adrenaline must've blocked out some important information in your brain…
The match only finished a couple of hours ago, and now you've already got to go somewhere else.
Man, this is going to be extremely tiring…
What are they even going to ask?
How personal are they going to get?
Do you have to wear your competing outfit? Or can you just wear anything?
Why didn't anyone inform you about these things??
'You're going to get interviewed.' Yeah? And what else? They said where and when, but not much else.
God… Guess you'll have to improvise!
Forge wore a suit in his interview. The one that went wrong…
You'll have to dress fancy too then!
Make it elegant, but not too over the top.
You got this!
You got this.
——————————
Okay, maybe you don't got this.
All the cameras and the lights in this relatively empty room are extremely anxiety inducing.
The banners of you in your fighting outfit are pretty flattering, but being in the spotlight right in front of them is not the most calming thing you could be doing right now.
At least the photographers notified you to stay in your armor for the photoshoot…
They also cleaned you up after the match.
Wouldn't want a competitor in a blood sport to be bloody in the advertisements now, would we?
"Starting in 5 minutes! I repeat, we're starting in 5 minutes! Everyone to their places, check your equipment again to make sure everything works properly!" yelled the director. Every single staff member hurried to their places.
Huh, he commands the room well.
As you stand on the side awkwardly, the interviewer walks up to you and asks to go and sit down in the chairs located on the stage.
"Very nice to meet you, I'm Lisa Stone.
Some staff members are going to come up here in a second to put a microphone on you, so relax and get comfortable . You don't have anything to worry about"
Well, Forge didn't have anything to worry about in the beginning either… You wonder how Ms. Stone got over that incident. Probably required a whole lot of therapy. Poor woman.
"O-Oh thank you! Nice to meet you too." you replied, trying to look as relaxed as possible. It wasn't very convincing…
You both took your respective seats.
While 2 members of staff started putting hidden microphones on you and Ms. Stone, she picked up a stack of papers and looked through them.
The interview questions.
"One minute left! Everyone better be ready, no mistakes, this is going to be live!"
No mistakes. Don't mess up.
Be as level headed and polite as possible. Can't mess this up, if you do, no one will take you seriously.
It can't go worse than Forge's interview though, right…? I mean, it was a literal assassination… by the coolest robot to ever exist!
Okay maybe phrasing it like that is wrong, but it's true-!
"Are you ready to get started?" Mr. Stone inquired, interrupting your inner rambling.
"Oh! Y-Yes, I am." came your hesitant reply.
This is going to go great…
"Good. I know this can be hard on some people but there's no need to worry." she smiled reassuringly.
At least she's not actively working towards making your situation worse, you can appreciate that.
"Starting! In 5!"
The lights dimmed.
"4!"
Well, this is really happening.
"3!"
Ms. Stone faced the main camera, you followed.
"2!"
Goodbye last shred of confidence!
"1! ACTION!"
The lights slowly came back on.
"We're sitting here tonight with our latest Legend to join the Apex Games; (Y/N) (L/N). It's great to have you here." Ms. Stone began, turning towards you during the last part.
"Thank you! The pleasure is all mine." you answered, trying your best to seem less nervous.
"So, now that you're finally here, how does it feel to have accomplished such a big feat?" she questioned.
"To be honest with you, tiring, extremely tiring."
you exclaimed, Ms. Stone giving a short giggle to your response.
"But it feels great. Surreal even! Accomplishing one of my greatest dreams, one I've been working towards for so long, is still pretty hard to believe." you chuckled lightly.
"I can imagine. It must've been pretty hard having have had to train every day for multiple competitions.
Was it nerve-racking to have your very last match be a solo match?" she responded.
"It did amp up the anxiety for that match, yes. But I'm glad the last qualifier is played without teammates. I, and many others, will then know whether I'm actually good enough to proceed or not." you say, gaining a bit of confidence back. Maybe this whole interview thing isn't going to be so bad after all.
Mr. Stone looked at you, surprised.
"I haven't heard anyone say they preferred the solo matches for the finals before. Interesting." she noted. There was a short pause while she looked down to check her papers.
"Next question… 'Why did you decide to join the games'?" came her scripted inquiry.
"I don't like getting too personal on TV, but one of the reasons was that I like guns a lot. I love to go to firing ranges to try out various kinds of firearms. I don't own any personally, but I'm very much interested in them." you answered.
You really didn't want to get into your private life and past too much…
"Another reason is that I like strategy games and working in small teams. Something like the Apex Games seemed like the perfect combination of both!" you added right after.
Ms. Stone looked at you quizzically. She probably didn't expect an answer like that.
"What an interesting motive. So the reason is 'just for fun'? No deeper meaning there?" she tried to dig deeper, genuine curiosity appearing on her face.
"Nope! Just wanted something big I can achieve that I'll also enjoy."
You know that one is a lie.
"Curious… Let's do something more fun then:
'If you were to pick a favorite, out of the current roster of Legends, who would it be'?" she looked at you, once again, very interested.
You heard somewhere that this was one of her favorite questions to ask, but even then, somehow you didn't think this far…
"Well, this will sound very weird, because most people wouldn't choose him as a favorite… but um-" you take a long pause, palms becoming slightly sweaty.
You look away from her, not wanting to see her reaction to that answer.
It was indeed a very unique choice to have as one's most liked Legend.
"It's… um… Revenant…"
.
.
.
You swallowed, your mouth and throat feeling dry.
You've never heard a quieter silence before. Not a single person was making a sound, even the director was staring in shock.
Some people were looking around awkwardly, some were staring right at Ms. Stone and you. Eyes darting back and forth.
Ms. Stone stared at you, absolutely appalled, mouth slightly open. Her reaction was perfectly understandable.
Having seen that same simulacrum murder a Legend right in front of her…
You cannot blame her.
"P-Pardon?" she gives a nervous laugh. "Did I hear that right? Re-Revenant? The simulacrum?" she asks to confirm, tone uncertain.
You nod your head slightly, still not looking at her. Well you made this situation indescribably awkward.
You should've lied about this one thing; could've said Mirage or Pathfinder, or even Loba! But no! You had to tell the truth!
Ms. Stone cleared her throat. "We-Well, that's certainly… an… i-interesting choice. Um… May I ask why… him…?" her voice was shaky, having been reminded of what she has witnessed before, right in front of her.
You take a deep breath. You really need to think about this, you can't just compliment him all you want, he's still a murderer.
Be smart. Be empathetic, she got traumatized by him, you need to choose your words right.
"Umm… I'll be honest-" everyone takes a deep breath, "-it's, um… mostly because he… uh… h-he's cool…?" you say, drawing out the last two words.
The sentence sounded just as uncertain as you.
The staff kept staring at you, now solely focused on you.
"Ahaaa… and there's no other reason, at all?" she kept prying, suspicions still clearly present.
"Yeeaah… He just… does things so efficiently, e-even if they're horrible. He was designed so well…" you say back, trying to calm her down, if even just a little. You really do not want her, and all of the Outlands by extension, to hate you.
Ms. Stone kept staring at her pages, not reading any of the sentences written there. "Mhmm… He's efficient alright…" came a quiet murmur from her.
She finally turned back towards me.
"Now, people can have their preferences, within the law of course.
I'm relieved you don't agree with what he does, even though he's your favorite." she pipes up after a brief silence, still not sounding 100% sure about this.
Ms. Stone turned towards the main camera.
"Well that's all for today's interview. Thank you so much (Y/N), once again, for coming. We're happy to have another Legend join the games." she briefly takes a glance at you.
"We'll be back with the next championship's winners real soon. Stay tuned." she finishes up, completely professional.
As the live stream ends, everyone seems to sigh at the same time. This must've been one of the worst interviews they've witnessed throughout their careers. Oops.
Note to self: don't get into weird and awkward situations next time by choosing the worst option. You really don't need to ruin your reputation before even starting in the Apex Games…
If it isn't already too late for that…
——————————
After the whole debacle, you had to meet with your new manager. He was a kind dude, avoided the topic of your recent mess up so he doesn't embarrass you further with it.
He explained everything that needed to be known before your first game; where you'll be staying from now on, training routines, schedules, gear, sponsors, how the seasons work, etc.
You also had to sort out some more paperwork before everything became completely official. You wrote your name so many times, it was unbelievable. You're pretty sure you haven't written it this many times while you were learning to write when you were just a kid!
This whole day has been extremely tiring… By the time you got home it had been late at night and you were ready to pass out and never see the world ever again.
Your new apartment welcomed you with open arms. The bed looked oh so enticing in the bedroom, but before you could get in it to finally be sent to the dream world, you had to unpack your things.
You got the biggest walk-in closet you've ever seen, to load your clothes into. The shiniest bathroom you've been in, to set your hygiene products up in.
It really does pay to be a Legend, huh? And you haven't even had your first match as one yet!
After you finished putting everything away, you went back to the bathroom to get ready for a shower.
It's astounding how high up the apartment is, the large floor to ceiling windows give a great view of the world below. The gorgeous starry sky mixed with the beautiful lights below, made for a sight to behold.
After you finished admiring the new perspective you got thanks to your new living space, you got into the shower to wash off all the dirt and stress you've acquired today. Finishing your shower, you got out of the steam filled cabin, dried yourself off with a nice fluffy towel and got dressed in your nightwear. Before going to bed however, you didn't forget to wash your teeth.
Throughout your nightly routine, you started to feel more and more relaxed, becoming less and less aware of your surroundings. All you were focused on was finally getting to sleep.
At last, you got into bed, covered yourself in the enormous blankets that laid on the mattress beforehand.
Looking around your room, you thought about how you were going to decorate the place in the future. In its current state, it all looked very generic, something straight out of a display in a furniture store.
It didn't take long for you to enter dreamland after a couple of ideas that slowly made their way through your head.
.
.
.
What you didn't notice before that, however, were the pair of seemingly floating, glowing eyes watching through your windows with clear interest…
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wrenwreakinghavoc · 5 months
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I would love to hear your thoughts on Nosk if you ever got the time to erite about it. Your artwork of it was a delight; I loved Ghost being lit up in orange. 10/10 lighting!
First of all - THANK YOU SM FOR THE COMPLIMENTS!! I haven't tried shading like this in. Months, like I said
Second of all
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WELCOME TO MY PRESENTATION
(Also thanks for the excuse to draw my Vessel sona)
Don't get me wrong I don't hate Nosk, they're one of my favorite characters in Hollow Knight and media in general. I absolutely adore the concept behind them and the SUSPENSE through those tunnels leading to the big reveal still remains one of my favorite scenes to come back to in HK. The design and concept behind them is very neat and the overall feeling of that first time you enter the arena and see that cutscene is just. Wonderful.
That said, my issues are all about the actual fight. Specifically the attacks.
Nosk has arguably one of the most interesting buildups to a fight in HK, and is in one of the most creepy areas of the game, considering the arena and atmosphere of the fight too, I was expecting this to be a hard boss. I was expecting really difficult and potentially creepy attacks. The OST is one of the most anxiety inducing tracks in the game. Yet the entire fight just amounts to them.. running around? Occasionally jumping onto the ceiling? It feels like a rip off.
Nosk literally only has three attacks and they're all easy to dodge/cheese, if they were just small parts of the fight, it'd be fine, but instead 50% of the fight is just Nosk running across the arena, which is easy to dodge with or without the use of hiding under the platform(still one of the funniest ways to cheese a fight honestly).
Nosk has a bunch of hanging CORPSES in their den, so I thought that maybe they'd have a close up attack where if you got too close it'd trigger them swiping close range, kind of like this:
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Extremely low budget explanation but STILL
The attack with screaming and the infection getting everywhere? NICE! Nosk on the ceiling shooting orange juice at you? GREAT! But the fact those are basically the only two good attacks in this fight with THREE really just. It weighs it down for me man.
By this point in the game(I mean I had to Google where Nosk was since I only saw art of them on my first playthrough since they're hidden), plenty of bosses had phases, too. I feel like the fight could've easily been more anxiety inducing if they had a few phases.
For example:
Phase one - same as current fight + close range attack
Phase two - running attack happens less, potential variations of other attacks, speed up things a bit
Phase three - more orange juice, maybe webs(since that's how the other creatures in the background appear to be captured), could potentially do some jumping version of the running attack(like jumping around the arena aggressively making them harder to do damage to without being hit)?
I'm obviously not a game designer, but I do like rambling about things and potential ideas that could happen to make things better.
The Nosk fight on its own isn't even terrible, it's just the fact that it doesn't live up to the buildup of the way to the fight and the cutscene in the beginning, let alone the absolute panic the OST makes me feel.
Oh and don't even get me STARTED on Winged Nosk. HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMETHING LESS TERRIFYING BY ADDING WINGS IM IN GENUINE SHOCK
I know I probably repeated myself a lot and this is very scattered, but I hope that you somehow enjoyed seeing me ramble aggressively about a fight in a silly bug game that I think has issues anyway.
In conclusion Nosk has an amazing concept, design, OST, atmosphere, and some alright attacks, but really could've benefitted from some more attacks/phases.
I wrote more about this fight than I did for my English essay on Thursday so I don't know what that says about me but do with that what you will
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ohnoitstbskyen · 1 year
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Reflecting on my work in 2022
As this official Hell Of A Year™ draws to a close, I guess it is appropriate to both reflect on what I've been doing this year, as well as do a bit of plugging for work which I am proud of.
So here's a list of some of the videos I made this year, along with some thoughts on their creation and how I feel about them, some self-criticism, some behind-the-scenes, and a little self-congratulation where it is appropriate.
I struggle somewhat with memory and a clear sense of time - to me, time is more of a continuous stream than a series of delineated moments. This is often frustrating - I get lost in it, and when I look back on a list of my work and activities, it is less an experience of "oh yeah, ha ha, that happened" and more of a "wait what do you mean that happened then? And before that other thing? But after that one? What the hell?"
Worst case scenario, it can be kinda distressing, honestly. It feels out of control, anxiety inducing, like I don't have a handle on my life.
... which is an absolutely fantastic tone to strike for a New Year's list of my favourite videos. 2023, woo!
The Boss Designs of Bloodborne Finale (February)
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It took me nearly three months after the penultimate episode of the series to finally put this video out. My The Boss Designs Of series is some of the best work I've ever created, at least I think so. It's certainly some of the most creatively fulfilling work I do, and some of the most challenging too.
I try to walk a line between providing a fresh perspective on the games I've played for the series, but not getting contrarian or off-the-wall just for the sake of it. With Bloodborne, I do think I managed some really good critical contributions to the readings of the game, like my reading of the Blood-starved Beast as a self-sacrificing martyr for the beast community of Old Yharnam, which was apparently quite novel, or my crackpot Parasite Theory of Bloodborne's madness.
And I do think I've gotten better and better at editing gameplay footage too, I think I've managed to learn a good balance between joke-edits and continuity and story editing. I always kinda fret on the one hand that the gameplay footage and my live commentary is too boring to stand on its own, and on the other hand that editing in too many jokes and gags would just be obnoxious and tedious to sit through.
The thing Bloodborne nails more than any other horror game I've seen is the sensation of the nightmare. And not just in its visuals or its monster designs or the surface storytelling, but in the push and pull between extremely specific imagery and story beats and complete ambiguity the moment you scratch at the surface. Bloodborne is on the one hand a fairly obvious story about the abuses of organized religion and unethical science, but then underneath that there's also this deep obsession with the violence done to women's bodies specifically, and how that violence spills out and caustically eats into the humanity of everyone who is complicit in it.
And then underneath that there's an exploration of birth trauma, where the Great Ones are parental figures as incomprehensible to the player as parents are to a newborn child, pushing you here and pulling you there and inflicting incomprehensible violations of your bodily autonomy out of apparent sympathy.
And underneath all of that... it's also about how cool it would be to transform into a werewolf, actually. The themes of self-creation and transformation and claiming monsterhood as self-empowerment are incredibly queer and especially apt for trans readings.
It all flows together in this soup of imagery and meaning that I cannot crystalize into a unifying Theory of Bloodborne, no definitive reading, no comprehensive hot take. Which is frustrating when you're trying to create a video essay, but infinitely compelling when trying to think about it.
I don't know that I managed to capture all of that in the The Boss Designs of Bloodborne finale, but I do know that I tried to, and I'm proud of that.
Melina, the Maiden - Boss Designs of Elden Ring #1 (March)
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Staying with The Boss Designs of, here's a video about which my feelings have become decidedly mixed. Not because of anything that is in the episode, mind you, but out of a certain disempowered bitterness I've developed about Elden Ring over the course of the year.
I cannot overstate how excited I was for Elden Ring, and how desperately I enjoyed finally getting to play it back in March. It's a brilliant game, an incredibly immersive world, and one which I badly want to return to.
... and then I didn't get to play the game for nine months. It was partly my own mistake - I tried recording an absolute ton of footage for episodes early, playing as much of the game as I could while it was still fresh, hoping to put out a lot of episodes of the series early while the game was fresh and Relevant In The Algorithm™, and also just out of sheer excitement. In so doing, though, I ended up shooting myself in the foot, because as I began to edit episodes together I also found myself feeling more and more distant from the experience of playing.
The pile of footage in front of me, begging to be converted into episodes, became a roadblock of work looming over me, a source of guilt and stress and frustration, that put extra stress on my mind every time I tried to make any other video and which stood between me and getting to play more of the game I have anticipated more than any other for years.
In 2023, I will get back to Elden Ring, I swear to god I will, but in the meantime I am quite happy with how the three episodes I've made of this series so far have turned out.
Also, the new intro song I commissioned from @trewatsonmusic absolutely slaps.
What's the deal with Zeri and Neon (June)
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My ambition for the What's the Deal videos has always been to expand them beyond League of Legends (and I have done videos on characters from other things), but being a YouTuber is also my job, and League of Legends is the moneymaking subject on my channel, at least for now.
Not that I resent that. For all that League deserves the criticism it gets, I still insist that it has one of the greatest casts of characters in modern gaming, underserved and ignored though most of them are by Riot Games. There's so much to talk about once you get even a little bit under the surface, and I do feel like I've been doing a better and better job at doing that in the What's the Deal videos over 2022. Zeri, for example, is a fantastic addition to the class warfare dynamics of Piltover and Zaun, especially in her conflict with Renata Glasc and the themes that could be explored through that conflict. And it's not lost of me the extent to which she was a direct response to the xenophobic attacks on Asian-Americans that have surged out of American politics in recent years, either. There is value to proclaiming that someone like Zeri belongs in the worlds of big pop culture institutions like League of Legends, even if (as always) it is the workers at Riot Games making that proclamation, and Riot Games Inc. allowing it because it serves their commercial goals.
I brought in Nickyboi for an assist on this one as well, which is something I want to do more. I want to do more collaboration. First of all because it's nice to offload work to someone else, but also because this job is fundamentally kind of lonely. I'm just a guy in his office making videos 99% of the time, and collaborating with a fellow creator feels like being part of a creative community in a way that solo work and shitposting at each other on Twitter simply doesn't.
And I am proud of the little fanfiction snippets I've started writing in the The Future segments. One of the points of the What's the Deal videos is to communicate to an audience why I'm excited about a character, why I feel like they're worth giving a shit about, and I think those fanfiction segments have done a better job at getting that across than almost all of my character design and animation chatter. Plus, it's nice to flex a bit of creative muscle in that way now and then.
Speaking of which, I still need to write that happier ending for Kai'sa and Taliyah, don't I? I have A Plan™ for that, it's just about finding the time to make it real...
The 15 Most Beautiful Splash Arts in League of Legends (September)
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This one is easily the biggest surprise of the year for me. In the latter half of 2022, I took quite a lot of sponsorships - first of all because they were offered (good lord there was a rush of them in August!), but also because I really wanted to save up and pay down debts.
One of the consequences of that was the extreme delay of Elden Ring, but another was that all of a sudden I had to get content out on a very set schedule. Most of my work is done on the steam of Whatever Catches My Creative Attention At The Time, but with a deadline hanging over my head, suddenly I had to find video ideas whether they presented themselves naturally or not.
I feared that a list-video would be a turn-off for my audience, I feared that it would be seen as shallow and tacky, like a 2010s Buzzfeed listicle. I feared that people just wouldn't be interested in the kind of art analysis I like to do, or would find it pretentious to seek meaning in what is - let's be real - commercial artwork meant to promote game cosmetics.
The benefit of a sponsorship is that the video has already made a profit, whether it does well or not, and I thought that in making this video, I was being self-indulgent and "ignoring" the desires of my audience.
Instead, it's one of the best performing videos ever on my channel, and people have cited it as a favorite among my videos quite a number of times.
Which was really... encouraging, honestly. I didn't expect it, but this video really did give me a confidence boost that the things I care about and find interesting do have an audience, even extra-nerdy rambling about League of Legends cosmetics.
Building a Better Soraka (September)
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Building a Better is a series title I sometimes regret a little bit, because no matter how much I try to explain in the videos themselves that there is no such thing as a perfect character design and that my revisions and ideas are not meant to be definitive in any way, I always get comments from people accusing me of declaring myself The God of Character Design and sitting in holy judgment over the work I'm critiquing.
To an extent, I guess that's unavoidable on the internet, but... maybe the series title was a bad gamble on that front.
I do stand by, though, that my designs have a reasonable argument that they are improvements over the originals. Arguments that can be interrogated and criticized, but valid, reasonaed arguments, not mere polemics.
Building a Better Soraka was an experiment in creating the series, as instead of working with a single artist to iterate on design improvements, I ended up commissioning more than a half dozen people for artwork and using different renditions to make my argument. It did hurt the coherency of the video a little, I feel, but it did open me up to a much more flexible way to produce videos like it in the future, which I'm happy with.
Plus, I really do like what I came up with here, and I adore the ways that @sabtherobot, @sinizade and @lekyrin executed my ideas and brought their own visions of the character. Soraka is a character who deserves a lot better than the basic design she's stuck with, and whose story can do so much more visually than Riot is willing to allow it to do.
"Not Without You" - the story of Nasus and Renekton (November)
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Of all the writing I did this year, this is by far what I am most proud of.
The video itself did not perform very well, nor did I expect it to, but the reactions I saw from the audience on this piece... yeah. That filled a very hungry part of my heart, I'm not gonna lie.
Writing a novel is a life ambition for me, as it is for many people. Actually writing it is a lot more elusive, though, in part because I struggle to feel confidence that my writing would ever hold up to the scrutiny of an audience. I struggle to feel that I would ever be able to connect emotionally with people, that I would be able to make what I feel sensible through writing.
This story proved that I can. Not to a big audience, perhaps, and I certainly don't have any delusions of genius or grandeur. I do not ever expect to be a famous or fêted writer, nor an important one. But... I do feel like with this story, I proved that I can at least be a competent one, which is frankly all I want.
And Nasus and Renekton were grateful subjects, too. Their story is naturally deeply emotional, albeit strangled by Riot's chronic indifference towards their most compelling narratives, and a lot of what I ended up exploring in there did come from a very genuine place in myself. It was nice to touch that part of my soul, and make something out of it, even if it's only silly fanfiction for a silly video game.
I am cautiously optimistic about 2023
Looking back over the videos I made this year, while I have a lot of work that I am proud of, I also see a lot of videos that I think I made less out of a desire to make them and more out of a fear of not making them. Videos that I made because I felt like the audience expected it, because the algorithm demanded it, because rent is always coming due and I am petrified of ever being broke again.
This is normal and natural, it is to some extent just the nature of the creative process under a capitalist market system where your work must always have some sort of price tag. But... I don't want to keep doing it. If I have an ambition for 2023, it is to make more of the videos I want to make, more videos that I only I can make. To give myself a little bit of a break and ease up on the self-recrimination and stress.
I have so many projects I want to get to, and being in my 30s I am becoming more and more conscious that while I (hopefully) have something like twice my current lifetime left to create the things I want, time is a finite resource, and spending it trying to please a website algorithm probably won't do me that much good in the end.
Anyway, some other things I did which I am quite proud of:
Played through God of War: Ragnarök while telling stories about the mythology of my childhood.
Ran around the world of Eorzea, accompanied by some of the funniest, silliest and most generous FFXIV players a man could dream of.
Finished a Pokémon HeartGold Nuzlocke with possibly the most nerve-wracking finish I have ever had to a Pokémon game
Reviewed every single Gen 1 Pokémon
Finished Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 1, probably the let's play with the most voice acting I have ever done. Some of it is even good!
If you've read this far, thank you so much for your time, your attention, your interest and your indulgence. Your 2023 be a good year, and may the tides of history wash gently over us all.
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ask-shane · 5 hours
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Hi, I am the anon that said i send mean asks on purpose. I just wanted to make a clarification and a formal apology and then i will stop interacting with this blog.
I need to clarify that by mean asks i meant things like saying shane has no bitches, or that he uses 738283837 in 1 shampoo. I never sent any slurs or genuine insults to this blog, and on top of mean things i also send nice things. I should've specified that the asks I sent were teasing and not genuine mean things.
I sincerely apologize for saying what I said. I had no idea the extent of the awful things people sent you and the fact that I could make you feel like i intentionally try yo make you feel bad and ruin your day with slurs and insults litterally made me shiver and feel anxious in real life. I fully understand how what i sent was harmful and damaging to someone who has to deal with toxicity on a daily basis.
I feel a lot of shame for what I did, this blog is something i check daily because i love your writing and i Love this character. I don't need you to unblock me if its even possible, i just wanted to apologize and wish you well
hi anon, mod dawn speaking. i’m gonna be talking directly to this person so please feel free to skip this if you aren’t them
i just wanted to start by addressing a couple things. firstly, thank you for apologizing so sincerely and honestly. i can tell how genuine this is and i’m certain it was a very brave decision after i put you on the spot earlier. i’ve deleted the post replying to your ask out of respect for this situation.
and for that, i am extremely sorry. i’m speaking to you with recognition that there is a person who is going to be reading this. i should’ve been more aware that i was putting you on blast in front of a lot of people. even if you were on anonymous, i can’t imagine how anxiety-inducing it was to be reading my response when you actually meant to be playful/teasing.
another thing i need to clarify here was that i did not realize that you were not the one sending me death threats and slurs. i had received a barrage of messages at the same time and had wrongly assumed the others were coming from you as well. it all happened at once, and the context of you sending that ask was shockingly related to the vile ones i received. your asks were not at all on the same level of “bad” the ones you didn’t send were.
unfortunately i had no way of telling which ones belonged to you and which ones didn’t, so i decided to address them using your ask. i made the mistake of incorrectly conflating your ask with the others.
that out of the way, i am so sorry once again, and also very thankful you apologized. please know there’s absolutely no need to feel shame for this.
i want to make it clear now that teasing (and even being somewhat mean) asks on my blog are okay. it’s fun to be provocative! there’s an art to it that i can appreciate, especially here, where shane gets glazed a lot. it is really awful that my guard happened to be high when you sent this because of what another actually unacceptable anon did. you shouldn’t be lumped in with them and i am so sorry i couldn’t discern your intention. i should also use this as an opportunity to say you have a good heart. i love that you can be playful and i thought a lot of what you said was actually quite funny. i didn’t intend to make you feel anxious or responsible for what other people did, but regardless, i did so, and it wasn’t fair of me to do to you.
lastly, thank you for interacting with my blog. now that we’ve cleared things up, i want to personally say to you that it is more than okay to continue to interact with my blog. i can appreciate a presence like yours around here. i’ll figure out a way to make sure you’re able to continue interacting (if you’d like to, of course). i am so glad you enjoy my writing and my portrayal of the character and it is honestly heartbreaking to hear i may have spoiled this experience for you. i have no negative feelings toward you whatsoever— if anything, i respect your ability to communicate with me after this (even though i’m sure it would’ve been much easier to block me and try to forget this happened)
i hope you are reading this.. i wish you nothing but the best 🤍
- dawn
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pigeon-wizard · 23 days
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so i don't know how many people have nebula on here or have watched Jacob Geller's new video on Exit 8 on there, but i have some thoughts!
(btw this might be a bit anxiety inducing, so like maybe skip over this if your feeling a bit shaky already. have a good day :3)
In the video he brings up Gang-Stalking and Paranoid Schizophrenia and as far as i know i would say they are fair was to interpret it, i haven't had any experiences with either, but while I was watching it i was just thinking "huh, this is just like my experience with OCD!"
No matter how normal the place, no matter how safe it is in an objective sense, it's still scary somehow. hell, the scariest places i've ever been in are extremely normal places, just a little darker then usual or a bit too quiet. as a safeguard you develop patterns, in Exit 8 it can be check the floor, check the man, then the doors and the lights, if the posters are normal you continue and if anything is off, you run. in my life it's been very similar in a sense, is the bedroom door closed? what about the closet door? you don't want the monsters from there to get you so better check them, and so on and so forth. its not even anything in specific half the time, it's just 'a monster' or 'a threat'.
the thing is that your just running in circles like a headless chicken, it's like your safeguards are the only thing letting you get to the 8th and final exit. and often it doesn't help to know this, you can know its all bullshit and still be scared. for years before i got actually diagnosed i was just in a loop of knowing that no monster was there and i was as safe as can be, and still scared, still repeating my compulsions. unless you put in the hard work (and it can be excruciatingly hard) to put a stop to your compulsions.
it's honestly a surreal experience but it's much better when you find a way out of it. its not Exit 8 all the time, and when you actually get to relax it's so nice.
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mizzpinkiewrites · 2 years
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Solondz deep dive/Welcome to the Dollhouse Pt 1.
the first shot in Welcome to the Dollhouse is the Weiner family portrait, in this image the father seems to be the most prominent subject. He is looming over the photograph and domineering while his wife and children surround him. I think this image of a patriarchal household really sets this movie up perfectly, particularly because Mr.Weiner is rarely present throughout the film. This is what feels like the only time we viewers really get a good look at the guy. Even when he is present he sort of blends into the background, staying out of conflict and keeping his head down exactly as he tells dawn to do later when Dawn and Mrs. Weiner have an argument, "be smart. make it easy on yourself."
The film continues on to show Dawn Wiener, the middle child, as she attends Benjamin Franklin junior high aka hell on earth. One of the best parts of this film- and what makes it so popular (90% on rotten tomatoes, huge at the box office) is that the world is constantly out to get dawn. It seems as if everyone in this movie (and in other Solondz films) has the worst intentions always. This movie operates from the understanding that at the core of every character, there is ill intent, often at an extreme level, a notion that Solondz seems to be obsessed with and that his viewers are captivated by. We want to see the scummy side, the rotten core of all suburbia turned up to its highest level to the point of parody but also as ridiculous and anxiety-inducing as real life, especially in junior high. One thing to note is that unlike most media about pre-teens and teens presently, dawn is played by (and looks like) a real child, which makes the things that occur in this movie all the more disturbing and real. I have super conflicting feelings about this but that's a wholleeee bag of worms (see The Rehearsal for complicated feelings about child acting.) So dawn survives the day despite relentless bullying, including from her would-be ally Lolita (which idk why she is named this I feel like it's trying to say something but I'm not sure what). This portrayal of bullying though extreme feels very accurate, especially the Foucauldian power-is-from-everywhere element, where everyone bullies each other and no true allyship is reliable.
She returns home to her older brother and his "band" practicing in the garage, sounding off tune and off beat, her angelic baby sister Missy, permanently clad in a ballerina outfit, dances about the driveway. Dawn lounges drinking a soda on the couch and watching TV, missy interrupts and in usual sibling, style threatens to tell on dawn for drinking soda on the couch. Dawn, in turn, calls missy a "lesbo", and naturally is tattled on and punished. Missy is the most often the subject of dawns rage, dawn even considers smashing her head in, and later she's responsible for missy's kidnapping. Dawn simply cannot stand her annoying sister, but especially resents the life of ease Missy has and will always have (and honestly she's valid). Missy is lucky and perfect, dawn is cursed. Missy is a reflection of the born-to-be popular girls and we, the rejects from birth, resent them.
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system-of-a-feather · 2 years
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On a related but positive note, in terms of final fusion, honestly a large reason we’ve gotten a lot closer and more comfortable with it is due to the general comfort with our culture and some reading and listening to Buddhist practitioners and philosophers. A lot of the principles have really helped dispel a lot of concerns, existential dread, and fear about the concept of “self” and being “independent and unique” that western cultures have and made the concept of fusion and integration as a whole a WHOLE lot less scary. 
I had to massively take a step back from it because it was pushing my healing / mental framework faster than my brain was ready, but it - in combination of a lot of processing and reflecting on how my family history and ethnicity played into our social relationships - really did relinquish me from a lot of the stress and worry about “are we actually different parts” or “what will happen to >me< if I fuse” or fear of the uncertainty that comes with fusion.
The excessive obsession with “who am I” is a really western issue based on the individualist culture. Our system internally functions in an extremely collectivist manner - both in a good way and to a fault - and combining that already strong predisposition from our childhood and social groups with general philosophical research into some Buddhist philosophies and ideologies as well as general trauma processing.... I don’t think a single part here worries about the loss of identity / individuality in the process of Final Fusion and it is honestly really really freeing and liberating.
The obsession with self and identity is really stressful, taxing, and anxiety inducing and letting that go has made a lot of system work miles easier. 
Not pushing anything cause its stuff that was helpful for me, myself, and I (pun not intended) and was helpful probably because it stems from a foundation that was preset by my family and ethnicity, but if you do want to check something out, I think it was this video that talked about this aspect of it pretty well.
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purplesurveys · 2 years
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1536
What is something you're afraid of? Getting in a car accident. It’s less being afraid of getting hurt (though this is scary in itself, of course), and more afraid of the uncertainty of how the other driver is gonna react. Is he gonna yell at me in the middle of a busy highway? Pull out a gun? Sue me even if nothing was my fault? It’s all super anxiety inducing lol which is why when I drive I’m just extremely polite and give way to everyone and brake prematurely every time I have to slow down.
Have you ever used the app Duolingo to learn a language? Yeah, that’s what I did with Spanish in the early months of the pandemic. Then I reached the verbs and found it impossible to learn, so I gave it up. I also honestly didn’t like its competitive aspect because at some point, using Duolingo started feeling like an obligation because I didn’t want to lose against other users lol, rather than actually learning as I went. When did you last hear thunder? It must have been this week. We’ve been having typhoons left and right.
What all have you put in the trash today? Pieces of paper and an empty can are what I can remember.
Do you enjoy blueberry muffins? No. If I have the choice to remove the blueberries then yes. Hahahaha
Do you prefer juice or lemonade? Lemonade, even though I’m generally not a fan of both. What did you last eat that was fried? KFC Hot Shots.
What's something you will never forget? Kimi, of course.
What's the most bitter pill you've ever taken? Lina answered this metaphorically so I will too – uhm, I guess the entirety of my breakup? I know it’s such a boring answer Robyn keeps citing it blahblah but it really served as a time of swallowing pills that I regrettably allowed to get bitterer and bitterer over time. I can tell you my life turned around to be as good as it gets once I was able to accept them all, though.
How many pillows are on your bed? I have 2 but I also have this giant Tata plushie that I keep close to me when I sleep.
What was the last text you sent? I don’t feel like checking my last text per se, but my last message overall was me asking Angela how she’s doing. Girl’s going through a bit of a crisis so I’ve been checking on her once every few hours. How many boats have you been on in your lifetime? Too many. I live in an archipelago and will sometimes have to take boats to get to certain island provinces.
Do you ever go to a lake and feed ducks/geese? No.
Did you know bread was bad for ducks? That’s what I’ve been taught, yeah. I’ve never seen a body of water with ducks before though so this whole feeding the ducks thing has always been irrelevant to me.
Do you know anyone who is a real estate agent? A co-worker’s parents are. She also tried it out briefly earlier this year but went on to give PR a try.
What was the last online review you left? It was just positive feedback on a seller from whom I bought photocards, as you do when you take part of K-pop buy and sell hahaha.
How many photo albums do you have? My siblings and I used to have several each, but my parents eventually got a biiiiiiiig ass album for each of us so all our photos can fit in that one album instead.
What is something you have recently forgot to do? OK so this technically isn’t a case of forgetting because it was my fault lol but I’ll share it anyway: having a cake delivered. So since my dad is abroad, he wanted to surprise my mom on her birthday with her favorite cake and tapped me to help out in handling the delivery (he’s in Europe, so all he can do on his end is purchase the cake). Anyway, his instruction to me was to have the cake delivered the night before her birthday -- which I completely missed out on from his messages lol -- and I just readily assumed I was gonna book a delivery on the day of.
Anyway, my mom’s birthday was today and I woke up to a message from my dad asking if I was able to bring home the cake and surprise mom the night before. I got super confused, rechecked his instructions, and that’s when I learned he wanted to do it on her birthday eve :(((((((((( I was freaking out at like 7 AM LOL and I hurriedly reached out to the bakery person (who turned out to have texted me the day before - which I missed - but never followed up) asking if they already got rid of the order :(( but fortunately they were calm as all hell and told me to relax because the cake was still safe and sound with them haha.
If this taught me anything it’s that I’m not as attentive to instructions as I thought I was, lol. But I’m glad to share the surprise still went smoothly, I did get the cake delivered today, and my mom loved it!
What's a memory you have that involves animals? Going to an eco-park in Bali and interacting with a bunch of animals. I got to hold a snake, a couple of large birds, and a tortoise which is really as close as I can get to my idea of heaven lol. In the same trip I also got to interact closely with elephants for the first time.
Would you rather plant a vegetable or flower garden? Veggies, so I can enjoy them right after.
Is yellow one of your favorite colors? It most definitely is not.
When did you last exercise? Like three or four weeks ago when I went spinning with Bea and Liara.
What color is most dominant in the room you're in? I guess white, since all my walls are that color.
What is a popular TV show or movie that you do not like? Game of Thrones. < Oooh, this is a goodie. Also Grey’s Anatomy.
How many beverages have you consumed today? Technically, four – I’ve had water, coffee, and I also mixed soju and Yakult to drink a little bit earlier tonight.
What was your favorite snack when you were a kid? I was obsessed with Nova chips. Looking back at those days I’m partly side-eyeing my mom for having allowed me to eat junk food as often as I did when I was a kid lol, and partly grateful because I don’t regret it one bit.
Is there anything currently bothering you? Yeah I guess but it’s nothing major.
What is something you love that is blue? My phone. Hahahaha.
What's a horror movie that has scared you? The Shining. Do you think Bigfoot is real? Nopes.
What's your favorite flavor of candy? Chocolate.
Do you think you could win a cooking competition? What would you cook if you were in one? I doubt I’d even be considered to join one.
How many doctors appointments do you usually have within a year? Zero. I don’t go unless something really grave is affecting me.
What last made you emotional? Thinking about Kimi.
How is your day going? I won’t count the little of what this day has been so far (it’s 1:43 AM), but the previous day was a bit crazy and different than usual. Angela’s going through something and with Hans literally on a flight to the US I’ve had to be the main person by her side. I’m just hoping for good news at this point.
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snixx · 2 years
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hi!! so uhh, i hope its ok that i share this sjsjdjsfj
i quit school tmrw and we are all having like a end of the year ceremony in church, but im having a meltdown bcs i dont have any dress/skirt/nice pants or anything to wear. and i went around the stores but i didnt see anything i liked, idk im just so stressed out, i wish i could skip it
oof bestie i feel you:( thinking obsessively about this stuff is just extremely draining and stressful. I absolutely get you wanting to skip it that's honestly me with every social event with more than ten people because it's just so anxiety inducing:') is there a dress code or something? or something in particular that makes the stuff you usually wear not feel right? or have you been able to ask any of your friends what they're wearing?
also omg wait are you done with school for good? like is this the last time you'll be doing this?
also I'm not sure how much time you have until the ceremony but honestly i feel like you should block this out and put this off by an hour. if there's anything else that can take your mind off this for a bit so you can come back to this when you're less stressed? you're probably not gonna be able to make a decision now anyway, and it's usually so much better with a clear head. and if not yeah I'm here if you wanna talk more too
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actuallyfallen · 1 year
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My thoughts on The 0wl House finale, as Hunt3r.
(Words will be censored to avoid being shown in the main fandom tags.)
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The 0wl House finale’s finally aired. As expected at this point, some stuff happened that pissed me off, as Hunt3r themself.
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(Like, they really killed off FIapjack and used that to cure my in-universe disability, only for me to be shown in the epilogue with a slightly DIFFERENT bird? Whose name is fucking WAFFLE??? You couldn't even TRY to be subtle that this was a blatant FIapjack replacement so you could have your angst AND let me still have a palisman too? Is that what we're doing??)
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But, honestly, it's a relief to have the show over with. Having a huge ID from a source that is currently ongoing is, how you say, TERRIFYING and incredibly anxiety-inducing. I was constantly worried that they would fuck something up, which, of course, they did end up doing. (See the fridging of FIapjack for no reason other than to make the audience sad and the curing of my disability.) And, since the fandom was so big, I could hardly ever complain about the direction the show took because so many fandomgoers demanded nothing but positivity from everyone.
I greatly look forward to the majority this fandom moving onto the next big, current thing. My fandomgoing experience, as fictionkind, has ALWAYS been the best when either the fandom is small, or the source in question has ended, and the only people still active in the fandom are a select group of (usually fellow autistic) people.
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I will say one positive thing about the finale itself, though, and that is this: for all of its pushing of myself and WiIIow as a romantic pair (ew, no), it didn't end up showing us getting together in any meaningful way. In the epilogue, we're around each other a lot, but we never kiss, call ourselves together, blush or (my worst fear) get married. I find this extremely funny, because the case can be made that the romantic feelings that we had as kids faded away when we grew up in canon.
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My FAVORITE thing about this is that I can finally do to M/F ships what happens to M/M and F/F ships CONSTANTLY. You and I both know that if what happened between the two of us in canon happened between two characters of the same gender, and people then tried to say that it was semi-canon or implied, het people would lose their MINDS. Because with same-gendered couples, there's usually an attempt at plausible deniability. But now that a M/F ship that got this treatment... It's finally time for me to do it right back to M/F shippers.
Is it petty, because for years upon years, I've had many of my semi-canon same-gendered ships treated this way? Oh, absolutely. But I'm an arospec fictionkin of HUNT3R THE 0WL HOUSE, known target of the writer's wrath who ADMITTED to torturing my character ON PURPOSE, and who killed off my disability aid for no fucking reason. I deserve a little pettiness, I think... As a treat. ❤️
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space-kitten-606 · 3 years
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80-90 people?!?! ×_× thats way too many holy hecc
Personally, even servers over 50 members are a little too much for me... I believe there are servers in the hundreds too which is just- maddening. Crazy. How??? How does anyone stand it hhh
The server I co-own with @/yoosung-simp has 30 members, and about 8 of those are bots lmao. And not all ~20 are active. In my opinion, 20-30 members is a decent and tolerable size. Like- you can actually partake in convos cos the chat isnt just flying by;;;
80 to 90... thats insane... 💀
[417]
Yeah....it's a ton. I just checked for accuracy and it's at 88, one of which is a bot afaik.
Of course not everyone is active all the time, I think the convos are held up by like 20-30 people, depending on the time of day.
I have the whole thing muted, just getting notifications for @'s because otherwise I'd go insane.
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mitsukui · 3 years
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late night experiences | g.w.
Pairing: George Weasley x female reader.
Summary:  learning new things is always better when it is done with someone else.
Word Count: 2,7k.
Warnings: smut! Masturbation, mentions of innocence kink.
Disclaimer: none of the pictures used in the edit below belong to me; I simply put them together.
A/N: please, leave me some feedback if you feel like it! My askbox is open for your opinions, thoughts and requests. Thank you so much for your time and attention ❤
Masterlist!
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Your last year at Hogwarts rushed into your life without warning — and so did your sexual hormones. You swore to Merlin you could feel them tingling all over your body whenever you solely looked at George Weasley, your majestic boyfriend. And apparently, he felt the same way towards you. Wondering the reason behind it all, you were quick to blame the fact that the two of you had just turned 18.
You had been together for a little while now: around nine months or so. But nothing had ever happened, and you were not quite sure why. You two had, supposedly, everything needed: steamy make-out sessions, wandering hands, lustful thoughts, privacy, and all that jazz. Yet, there you were: ground zero.
However, things were about to change even though you still were unconscious about it.
“Psst!” Your favorite quill stopped scribbling your Herbology notes. “Oi!” Your eyes gazed at the direction from which came the voice only to realize it was one of your classmates, Angelina Johnson. “I’ve discovered something last night which I thought you might be interested in.” A mischievous smirk painted her lips as you leaned in closer, already feeling eager to listen to whatever she had to say. She was one of those people who made anyone pay attention to them whenever they said something.
Her hushed whispers filled the existing silence between you two in the Study Area once more. “The boys were talking in our common room last night, and rumor has it George can’t keep his hands off of his cock whenever he thinks of you.”
Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet giggled like little girls when she finally finished her speech. You could feel your cheeks getting embraced by a deep and violent warmness. Uh-oh.
Your mind suddenly produced images by itself: George’s chest going up and down quickly as he moaned under his breath. He had his long and slender fingers wrapped around his dick and, sweet Merlin, he was big. Big and thick and veiny. His eyelashes fluttered as his hand pumped up and down a few times, precum leaking from his tip.
Heaven probably looked like that. What a lovely sight. You would give anything to actually see the great George Weasley in such a position. But, again: ground zero.
Still, the possibility of him pleasuring himself at the thought of you seemed to awake something new inside your chest and offer you a novel tingling sensation. You felt a burning flame in your loins, and it was almost as if your entire body were on fire.
You wanted him to jerk off thinking of you. You wanted his hands to get dirty from his own seed because of you.
You gulped. Snapping fingers brought you back to reality. “Girl, it’s high time you gave that poor lad some love, you know.”
The next few days felt slow and eternal. George Weasley and George Weasley’s thick dick were the only things occupying your mind. Of course, you had fantasized about him before; but it had never been that vivid. Things are always better when they are real, after all.
And you wanted to do something about it. Your soul ached for him to share his hidden and erotic reality with you. Your flesh longed to be painfully close to his. Your body and your hands desired to tease him and give him something to be unbearably hard over. You obviously would not feel in peace until you got what you wanted.
That is why the suggestion of a late night meeting in the Prefect’s Bathroom came to life. It was discussed during another of your studying session with Angelina, Alicia and Katie, being first brought on by Angelina, of course. That girl had many wild cards up her sleeve.
“I happen to know the password. Got it from a Slytherin guy, after giving him a few galleons.”
“And a blowjob, too.” Alicia responded with her eyebrows raised and a mischievous grin hanging on her lips.
As the three other girls laughed carelessly, seeming to be extremely relaxed and confident to talk about such a topic, you chewed on your bottom lip. Jittery feelings bubbled up within your veins while concern clouded your mind. You had a severe lack of inexperience when it came down to anything sexual.
Your temporary anxiety was sharply noticed by Katie, who positioned her hand over yours in a comforting act. Her fingers soothed your skin, her next words slipping out of her lips as motherly advice.
“Don’t feel pressured to do anything, honestly. George is one of the most understanding people I have ever met. But I think a little bit of intimacy would work wonders on you, both of you.” Her grip on your hand became a bit tighter, and her warmth was incredibly pacifying. “You know, just suggest going to the Prefect’s Bathroom tomorrow night. He will surely accept, once he is heads over heels for you. Get in the warm, bubbly water. Kiss him, if you feel comfortable enough for that. And just see where it goes.”
Your other two friends nodded, assuring you everything was alright and that you could always count on them for support and advice. The conversation went on for a little longer, they sharing intimacy tips and encouraging you.
Luckily enough, the next morning was one that you had classes with George. You brought on the subject in the end of the lesson, while he gathered his material quietly.
His lips opened up in a bright smile in the moment you appeared in front of him, but his expression was soon destroyed by your visible tensed posture.
“Hey, gorgeous. Are you alright?”
You sighed shortly, trying to relieve some of your internalized insecurities. The suggestion came out of your lips in a mere murmur, but he was smart enough to grasp onto all of your words. His eyes noticed your dodging gaze and your fidgeting fingers, playing with the hem of your tie. You looked absolutely adorable to him.
“See you later tonight, then. Prefect’s Bathroom, 12AM sharp. I won’t be late.”
The rest of the day felt like an eternity. Perhaps, it was the uncertainty of it all, given that there was no way to predict how the scenario would take place later on. But the time for your meeting agonizingly came, and you were forced to leave your dormitory.
The weather was unpleasantly hot, and it was hard for you to tell whether it was due to the time of the year you were going through, or to the fact you were walking towards your own doom.
You had been curious and tempted to get to know his darker and more lustful façade but, at the same time, you were ashamed of how much you craved him despite being your first time feeling anything like that. Those same novel tingles from before returned to your loins as your made your way to the fifth floor.
Underneath your favorite carmine red pleated skirt and a muggle band T-shirt, you wore a set of lingerie that had not received much attention when previously picked out, which was a simple white bra paired with white panties, covered in tiny pink strawberries. When you were about to reach your destination, you came down to the realization of how childish your underwear looked. You inhaled sharply, concluding you had ruined everything.
Eventually, you and George met, and entered the bathroom hand in hand.
Although you had heard of its wonderful interiors, seeing everything with your own eyes for the first time made you gasp. Your gaze traveled through the place, and you wished to engrave every detail in your heart. The white marble grandness awoke a sense of greatness and admiration inside you, and you almost fell to your knees right then and there.
A tad of small talk was exchanged between you and your boyfriend, until he approached you at last. His big hands cupped your delicate face, and he leaned down to kiss you.
His lips were so terribly gentle that they sent butterflies to your stomach. He showed no shyness in the second his hands roamed down your body and found your back, giving your ass a light squeeze. Unable to control yourself, you moaned and pressed your body against his.
A steamy make out moment was held between the two of you until the moment for the truth hovered over your heads. He rested his forehead against yours, and looked at you with loving eyes as his thumb ran over your lips.
“Tell me why we are here, darling.”
“It’s just that…There had been this rumor, you know?” A shy chuckle escaped your lips, and you closed your eyes, trying to block out all the filthy images suddenly appearing in your mind. “People have been saying that you jerk off thinking about me. But I’m not sure if it’s true or not, because we have –“
“It is true.” The coolness in his voice caught you off guard, and you blinked at him in a mixture of shock and self-induced accomplishment: your boyfriend touched himself at the thought of you.
Your eyelashes fluttered until your eyes were shut, and a sigh escaped your lips. Your mind knew no restrains at that moment, and the images you had been blocking out came to life all at once, violently crashing against your insides, almost like agitated waves at a beach.
Silence embraced the two of you again, but neither of you felt bothered by it. You took your time to let the sinful images sink in, and he took his time to study your face. You had been clearly affected by the truth he had just spilled out, and he secretly enjoyed such thing. He could read you like the palm of his hand, and he knew you were thinking about him with his dick out.
As he breathed heavily, fearing air would forever leave his lungs after what he was about to do, he prepared himself for what was about to come. His thumb ran over your slightly swollen lips but, this time, he parted them with a gentle tug on your lower lip. George timidly shoved his thumb into your mouth, and you, with your eyes still closed, took all of it.
Your tongue swirl against his finger, the feeling of your saliva dancing against his skin sending electrical waves down his spine. You continued on sucking him until your cheeks finally hollowed, and he pulled his finger out with a low ‘pop’ noise.
You opened your eyes in a deep frustration, but he could no longer take it. His cock was hard inside his trousers and it battled for its freedom. He breathed unsteadily and with a bit of difficulty, his mind starting to wonder how your lips would feel wrapped around his tip.
The realization that you two had never done anything before hit him hard, and he felt himself twitching while precum started wetting the fabric of his underwear.
Would it be selfish of him to think he would probably be the first one ever to taste your cunt? The first one to penetrate you, the first one to end your innocence for eternity, the first one to feel your walls clenching around him, the first one to make you cum.
George was forced to step back and groan in bitterness. He really wanted to fuck you, but he would never disrespect you or your limits. Plus, on top of that, he really did not know how he could express his urges.
“S-Sorry, darling. I-I-I don’t know what’d gotten into me, I guess I just lo-“
“Can you show me how you touch yourself?”
The question hung on air for one or two moments. You could not believe what you had just said. You were drunk on a new dizzying and exciting sensation, one that left your panties secretly wet and your clit throbbing, and one which made you ask your boyfriend to masturbate right in front of you.
So he did it. Apparently, Katie was right: George Weasley would gladly accept anything you asked him.
After the enormous bathtub had been filled with water and bubbles, he undressed and you lost all of your senses for a bit.
His fair skin carried grand amounts of both freckles and small scars. His entire silhouette was outlined by groups of yet developing muscles, but each one of them caused more wetness to pool in your strawberries ridiculously covered panties. George was so tall, his shoulders were so broad, and his dick was indeed so big.
When all of his being finally became bare in front of you, you rubbed your thighs together, the need for friction creeping inside your body for the first time ever.
You stood still exactly where you were, but he made his way to the tub, sitting on the edge of the white porcelain. He lowered his dark eyes to his throbbing member and his touch caused a relieved sigh to leave his lips. His hand moved up and down a few times until he looked at you again.
There was something different on his face. His eyelids seemed to be a tad heavier, and the sounds slipping out of his slightly parted lips were the most delicious thing you had ever heard.
George Weasley was jerking off right in front of you. He was moaning only for you. And you hoped he would cum just for you, too.
As the minutes slowly went by the two of you, you watched him quietly. However, it was impossible for him to keep quiet. By now, his moans were loud and shameless. He whispered your name every now and then, the thought of you bouncing up and down his dick providing all the fuel he needed to orgasm only for you.
That was entirely new for you. You felt so dirty, so sinful, so misbehaved, but you were living for it. You wanted more of him, and you also wanted to give George more of you. And that was exactly the reason why you said your next sentence out loud.
“Can I touch myself?”
His ears convinced himself that he had heard it incorrectly, but the way your fingers tugged on your T-shirt, and your thighs rubbed together, he knew he was not mistaken. A new rush of pleasure ran through his veins and he pumped his hand faster. Unable to form coherent sentences, he mumbled something along the lines of ‘please’ and nodded vehemently.
In the blink of an eye, both of your bodies were unclothed and both of you played with your intimacies. George’s right hand applied all the pressure that could possibly resemble your tight cunt wrapped around his cock, and your fingers helped the squelching sounds coming from your wetness to echo in the bathroom. You had never thought that so many lustful sensations could occupy your body all at once and, yet, there you were: masturbating at the sight of your boyfriend doing the exact same.
By now, you also had problems breathing and the tight knot inside your body screamed for a break. You pulled your hand away from your dripping cunt, but you remained connect to your womanhood by a very thin and almost invisible string of your juices.
George obviously noticed that tiny detail and it was too much for him. He announced he was close and, soon enough, his skin was stained by the pleasure you had given him. His eyes were closed as he felt his heartbeat increasing and the images of you still haunting his mind.
The way he accepted and let his orgasm work on his body made you move your hand against your clit faster and you followed him in a matter of seconds. Your body trembled and you could not stop whining.
You had never experienced something so astonishingly sensational.
Your pants filled the bathroom for a little while before his body finally slipped into the still warm water. The comfort offered by the setting relaxed his existence and he weakly called and asked you to join him, which you happily agreed with.
He touched your hips and pulled you closer, placing your body against his chest. With his lips pressed against your temple, he whispered a series of ‘thank you’ and ‘you are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen’.
However, his final words changed the mood completely and you hated him for it.
“That’s a nice pair of panties, by the way.”
Tag list! ❤️  @efyra​ @writingsomewrongs​ @kellsslut​ @pineapplesandpinas​ @fiction-is-the-new-reality​ @hufflepuff5972​ @amourtentiaa​ @emmaev​ @asthmax​ @anchoeritic​ @eunoia-kth​
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dog-teeth · 2 years
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Hiii please don't answer if this question is too much but I was wondering what your experience as a trans person existing is like? Rn I'm cis passing and low-key making me miserable but the anxiety of how I would b treated in the world is so so so scary so I guess is it hard? Are you treated any different? Especially the non-binary thing bc that's me too <3
haiii as always i write fucken essays so its below the cut lol
well first of all i can only speak to my own experience, which is obvs influenced by the other parts of my life like my location/class/race/sexuality/personality/etc, it difficult/impossible to distill what "being trans" is like without factoring in everything else.
but anyways, i'm extremely lucky to have had the security to come out and be open about my transness since i'm surrounded by really excellent people. when i came out i was 14 and didn't know any other trans people, and it sucked, but i feel like even in just the past 6ish years there's a LOT more visibility for trans people than there was back then, and obvs i was young and had a lot less personal autonomy at the time. but my friends were all really cool about it and my parents were chill as well, and i went to a good high school where my teachers were respectful (i got misgendered by other students but once they were aware of me being trans they usually stopped) so i honestly didn't face that much external difficulty because of my gender.
the period between coming out and medically transitioning was rough a lot of the time tho, just because of the frustration of trying to be seen a certain way and the world never seeing you that way, at times it felt futile to even try and for a long time i really wished i wasn't trans, because being trans had never brought me any joy, so i didn't have pride in it the way i could with my sexuality, as it had only ever caused me pain (whereas my queer sexuality had lead me to love, sex, community, etc). but those were internally-driven feelings, not anything specific in how i was treated except for generally living in a world that didn't see me as myself, but that's also true when ur not out. it took a lot of fighting to be seen, and learning how to make myself happy.
since coming out, though, its been really really amazing. meeting & connecting with other trans people, dating other trans people, helping other people figure out their gender identities by being myself around them, making art about being trans, etc, is very rewarding, and obvs u can do that without being "out" too.
emotionally its very fulfilling, like jesus christ medically transitioning once i was an adult was so fucking awesome. i hadnt realized how much not being visible as my gender to other people was holding me back and distressing me until it stopped. even though i had socially transitioned earlier and been respected by people around me, it wasnt until i went on hrt and had top surgery that i felt really really good about existing as a trans person, when i could exist at any time in any space in any clothes and be seen how i wanted to be seen, and felt like my body was as it should be.
i don't really get treated differently tbh, most people don't readily assume ppl are trans so upon meeting me people just think im a queer guy, and i only bring up being trans when i want to & feel ok doing so. being nonbinary some people are bad about using my pronouns but i honestly dont care much. every once in a while i have to explain gender stuff to people but again i dont mind. its def more annoying than if i was a binary trans person but meh.
there's some annoying/anxiety-inducing stuff like dealing with extended family, doctors appointments, legal documents, and situations where i feel like i have to try to be Stealth, but those are rare compared to my everyday life where i'm genuinely just vibing.
i completely respect trans people who don't want to be out for whatever reason, but personally i've found it to be very rewarding and i can only imagine how miserable i'd be if i couldn't be open about my gender.
tldr; it's hard while you're figuring yourself out, but if the people around you are generally good, it's extremely awesome to be able to be yourself and transition!
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tacit-semantics · 2 years
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Wait wait so this doesn’t seem to be an UNcommon headcanon exactly, but I still want to really get into it for anyone who might be curious. And so! This is just gonna be a rundown of why I think Ritsu has OCD, and more specifically what it is about him that makes him my favorite depiction of OCD- whether intentional or not- that I’ve seen in media.
cw for in-depth talk of obsessive and compulsive behaviors, as well as frank talk of OCD as a whole and the different ways it might present. Please keep in mind that a lot of this is based off of personal experience, so while I’m very open to discussion, please keep it respectful! I am more than willing to meet anyone who’s curious or who relates halfway, but I will not hesitate to block anyone who purposefully crosses lines.
So, OCD. Obsessive-Compulsive disorder is a distressing, relatively common mental health disorder that is based in a cycle of obsessive, anxiety-inducing thoughts as well as the compulsive behaviors used to temporarily alleviate them. These obsessions and compulsions can be anything and everything- the hallmark of OCD is simply the obsessive-compulsive pattern- though there are a number of common “themes” so to speak, such as contamination, harm, etc.
Now, the thing about media depictions of OCD- especially in media made by non-OCD people- is that most of them are going to fall into common public perceptions of the disease. This in turn means that these characters are likely going to express cleaning or checking behaviors- as in, they’re going to have clear, easily identifiable, and outward-focused compulsive behaviors. These combine to make a character who is OCD in a way that the majority non-OCD audience can understand; and while it is very important to note that OCD CAN and DOES manifest in these ways, these depictions leave a whole host of other obsessive themes and compulsive behaviors that most media, especially most media written by non-OCD people, have simply left unaddressed.
This is where Ritsu comes in. Right off the bat Ritsu is established as having a number of characteristics that people with OCD might as well (though there is, of course, no hard and fast rules): he expresses tendencies towards fixation and obsessive behaviors, he’s a perfectionist, he’s got unresolved childhood trauma, he feels perpetually responsible for anyone and everything around him, and he’s under quite a bit of stress quite a lot of the time. He’s also 13. OCD often manifests in the teenage or young adult years, though it may also manifest in childhood or, on occasion, in adulthood. My symptoms kicked up in earnest at around 15, and honestly I would say that Ritsu displayed symptoms even before the big cleanup arc.
Now, Ritsu’s first major arc is the aforementioned Big Cleanup arc, in which of course we have the recorder-licking scheme. Immediately after this event, Ritsu begins to express continuous worry, immense guilt, fixation turned to its natural extreme, and of course intense, repeated distress strong enough to spontaneously induce psychic powers. He also started confessing to other things that were dishonest/ may have been dishonest near immediately (ie telling everyone that he doesn’t have psychic powers).
So then! What does this mean! Well, the fact of the matter is is that OCD can very much manifest as a fixation on past events and what a person thinks they mean in terms of their relative morality. This can happen fast, and it can get ugly very quickly due to the OCD brain’s tendency to latch, latch, latch. In these cases it might be more difficult to discern the compulsive behaviors a person - thus this and similar sorts of OCD have earned (in some places) the designation of pure-O or pure-obsessive OCD, which is a bit of a misnomer as we’ll see in a second- but they are still very much there. In cases such as these, the compulsive behaviors tend to be mental- reviewing, ruminating, checking, confessing, etc, and chances are that a person will feel monstrous, constant amounts of guilt.
And Ritsu’s distress was familiar, as was his vulnerability. His compounded upset, his confusion, his flailing attempts at safety and certainty that inevitably only ended up perpetrating the same frightening cycle that he was trying to escape- this was familiar. Fifteen, sixteen year old me recognized myself in the sort of hazy, fog-addled way of someone who wasn’t sure what they were about quite yet, and now nineteen year old me has several more years under my belt and is able to say: I recognized myself in Ritsu, because Ritsu expresses a symptom set that could be attributed to several things but that I, though admittedly somewhat biased, attributed to OCD. The immediate confession, the impulsivity, the rationalization and the willingness to give a part of himself up just for an ounce of control- his distress and fixation versus his perceived sense of self, his lashing out. He’s upset, he’s frightened, he’s young, he’s mentally ill. We’ve all been there.
So then we get into the second half. Why is it that Ritsu, who is not confirmed as having OCD and likely was not intended to have it, my favorite depiction of OCD in media?
The simple fact of it is that in stories where characters have OCD, their OCD is often centered in their stories, and while OCD very much (and very quickly) works it’s way into every corner of a person’s life, it still gets… tiring, to see people whose narratives center their illness to the exclusion of all else. But Ritsu is a full-fledged character outside of his mental health issues. There’s also of course the fact that he wasn’t intended to have OCD in the first place, which (ironically) is what allows him to be more relatable. This gets a little messy in that OCD is still so misunderstood and stigmatized that if you’re writing a character and you say “this character has OCD,” then chances are you have to make them immediately sympathetic to avoid reinforcing negative public perception. Now see this causes an issue in that it has people avoiding the whole taboo-thoughts/ideas side of OCD entirely, which reinforces negative stereotypes and emotions and is also a different conversation.
In the case of Ritsu however, who is unconfirmed etc, it means he can be messy. He panics, he spirals, he’s disgusted with himself and reaching out for anything and anyone that gives him a sense of control even if that sense never lasts. He’s afraid in a very real way, even if that fear is presented through a lens that isn’t applicable to everyday life. His guilt is real, visceral. And he’s still sympathetic regardless! He’s an effective character! He’s memorable, he’s complex, and yeah. He’s my personal favorite depiction of OCD.
Anyways, there’s more I’m sure, but this is all I’ve got at the moment. Here’s to hoping that it actually makes sense.
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The people have spoken! How can I not give them what they want?
I'm gonna put this all under a cut, since it's a bit long, and also because it's highly interpretative/speculative and not everyone likes those kinds of posts as they can be rather subjective and, I suppose, invasive. I want to give two major caveats to my thoughts below: first is that I tend not to buy the idea that Paul was the "stable/normal" Beatle, mostly b/c I view marijuana dependency and workaholism as addictions and I take them pretty seriously. Second is that I really do love this kind of tabloid/gossip/personal account shit; I think it should be taken with a handful of salt, but I don't think it should be entirely dismissed out of hand either. I read this stuff like I'm piling up sheets of stained glass: I'm intrigued by the places where the colours blend and overlap, and ignore things that fall outside the prism. Anyway, let's dig in:
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Okay, so what I found fascinating about 'Body Count' is that it's one of the only sources which observes Paul McCartney's mental health during the period between the India trip and when the band breakup really got rolling. I think it's overall a fairly self-absorbed text that definitely has some lies and exaggerations peppered in there to make things spicier and more dramatic, but its broad characterization - as I mentioned in my first post - isn't exactly libelous or out of left field. Some elements that make me think it's generally if not wholly authentic are: Paul's simultaneously forceful and dorky seduction style, his terrible Liverpool diet and poor housekeeping, the bouts of thrill-seeking recklessness, avoidant adventure crafting, dark moods when drinking non-socially, the occasional hot and cold bouts with the Apple Scuffs camped out at his gate, and the way in which he underplays his drug habit, which is SO "in truthfulness we spent most of the filming of Help! slightly stoned":
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These details are so bizarrely specific and have significant overlap with both sympathetic and spurned personal accounts of Paul I've read in the past, so I believe Francie is just telling "Her Version Of The Truth" here rather than crafting a piece of pure fiction. The most important and revealing anecdote in the book is this one.
There's no reason not to believe this is a fairly accurate representation of something that actually happened, imo, since we know that anxious purse strings were an ongoing issue in the unusual turnover rate within the band Wings, and there are plenty of confirmed and rumoured cases alike of extended family members feeling entitled to a "piece of the pie"; this is just like, the kind of thing that happens to working class people who get catapulted into fame and fortune. And Paul in particular already had deep-seated financial anxiety for whatever reasons he'll never fully admit (as is his right, but I think his offhand claim that he "once heard some adults arguing about money and that's why" might actually be alluding to having heard some adults - y'know, like his parents - arguing over money fairly frequently). What esp interests me about the anecdote is the way Paul seems to connect the conflict b/t his dual "identities" with these financial expectations. Perhaps the CAPSLOCK emotional hysteria related in the book is puffed up for drama, but it does bring to mind one of the most revealing comments Linda ever made about their relationship, which is that Paul needed to be told he would still be loved when the cameras weren't rolling. And that's the thing: Francie caught Paul at the exact moment that the pillars of his Smile-For-The-Camera "Beatle" identity were collapsing; the dissolution of his relationships with John and Jane.
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Whatever all this could possibly mean re: the breakup of the Lennon-McCartney partnership is a post for another time. What I wanna do instead is apply the level of speculation we usually reserve for that relationship to the endpoint of Paul and Jane's courtship.
So like, Paul and Jane: I know people are resistant to this specific POV, but I honestly just don't... think it was that deep? "Not deep", mind you, doesn't mean "not significant". Paul was obviously Jane's first love (u never forget), but the feeling I get from Paul's side (as a subconscious process I mean) is that Jane's importance was primarily as a lynchpin in his London Socialite persona. He loved her family, he loved the friend group, the artistic scene dating her gave him access to, as well as the leg up he got in the class system, etc. He liked to be the kind of guy who was dating Jane Asher. But I don't know that he was the guy who was dating Jane Asher, you get me? When people describe their "great love" they accidentally tell on them (Cynthia innocently describing Paul as being pleased to have her on his arm like a trophy; John: "it was an ordinary love scene"; Alistair Taylor noting that Paul was humiliated by the breakup). Paul's a serial monogamist who U-Hauls like a lesbian, of course, so he definitely took the relationship VERY seriously, but it's telling that all of his love songs to her were either about hitting a brick wall in arguments (certainly not dreamy, fond, yearning of "sunday morning fights about saturday night"; and occasionally expressing hints of class tension too), or completely non-descript Guy With A Guitar Trying To Get Laid shit. I could extrapolate a lot about Linda just from listening to McCartney I/RAM and the Wings discography, but 'And I Love Her' doesn't tell me a single thing about Jane besides that she's pretty. It could be about literally anyone the same way 'My Love' or 'Maybe I'm Amazed' could only be about his dynamic with Linda. Some of this is obviously the natural result of getting older and gaining emotional maturity; what I'm saying is that Paul's behaviour and self-expression in this relationship does not suggest to me that it was one in which his emotional maturity was able to develop or flourish.
I want to stress again that I don't think this belittles the significance of the relationship or makes it "bad" or "fake". Like, sometimes hot people just date for a while in their teens and twenties and love each other without necessarily unlocking their inner emotional cores, usually because they don't know how to. It's, like, fine. You need to experience relationships like that as stepping stones. I simply believe that this sort of front-facing social importance being prime in the romance is a major factor in why it ultimately didn't work (and probably in Linda's reported lingering jealousy of Jane, who wasn't just an ex, but also a symbol of the life Paul ditched to build a new identity w/ her, and sometimes still pined for). With Jane, Paul was dating the "right" kind of girl (didn't put out on the first date, erudite and middle class, as serious about her career as he was, a good "celebrity" match), but the relationship often wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. Francie's observation is that by 1968 it also wasn't doing what he needed it to do either. This is the overwhelming "mood" in her affair with Paul McCartney: that he needed something very badly from a romantic partner that he just was NOT getting, and Francie couldn't figure out what it was either:
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(note that she means "queer" as in "mad", not "gay")
This was an EXTREMELY roundabout way of asking: well, what WAS it that Paul needed a relationship to do for him? And I think this is Francie's big, accidental insight. The most scandalous claim in 'Body Count' is that Paul told Francie that he hit Jane and it "turned her on".
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I personally think this is p. absurd absent any real proof to back it up, but like, what is Francie actually saying HE'S saying here? If she's exaggerating or lying, she's trying to make it believable within the psychological parameters laid out, right? It's not an expression of some secret desire to dominate women she's accusing him of, but emotional disturbance and confusion at the idea that the woman he was with might like that sort of forceful, masculine violence more than his softer, feminine side, which he was - yeah, we all know it - deeply insecure about.
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Regardless of whether specific details are true or false (and I think there's both in this story, all hyper-magnified to make it, y'know, a ~STORY~), I think what might be true is the emotional undertow of the retelling, that this all taken together is actually representative of the side of Paul McCartney she was exposed to, at a time when his public and private facades had both become unbearable to the point of cracking and the drug-fueled optimism of the Summer of Love was getting scrubbed off of everyone and everything. It's the Paul McCartney who eviscerated frogs because he was worried he was too "soft" for compulsory military service. The Paul who modelled his masculine teen behaviour off John Lennon's fake "Marlon Brando" swagger, but was actually more fond of the velvet "Oscar Wilde" interior.
What's SO FASCINATING about all this to me, is I deeply believe that one of the key factors in what makes The Beatles music so unique and compelling is that both the songwriters experienced psychological strain from the tension b/t their parochial socially-defensive "masculine" pride, and their sensitive "feminine" core, the latter of which they were able to express in the unburdened emotionality of their music. The reason I care about doing these totally unhinged psych analyses is because I do think it reveals something about the underpinnings of the music, as well as the reasons why the band was such a hysteria-inducing phenomenon (the rise of psychology, imo, is almost as important as the rise of industrialization as a defining factor of the modern and postmodern eras; mass psychology can be understood and wielded in precise ways, and The Beatles were one of the first empires built on that). The subconscious drives caused by this tension have been ENDLESSLY picked apart re: John's psyche, but Paul's "mirrored" issues are very under-discussed (mostly b/c he's still alive so people are a little more leery about putting him on the "couch" as a historical figure). 'Body Count', intentionally or not, painted a portrait to me of someone who was drowning in their own ill-fitting celebrity "suit", collapsing under the weight of "Being" "Paul McCartney". A guy who desperately needed some sort of space to be vulnerable without feeling emasculated for doing it. By 1968, there was no one in his life anymore - and maybe there hadn't been for a while, or ever - who was giving him this space.
In other words: the thing he needed to avoid going "stark raving queer and killing himself" was simply someone who would love him 'after the ball'.
EDIT: read the comments for further clarification and discussion! ;)
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