"stop making [media] your whole personality"
ah... okay. yes. so.
first off:
there's this neurodivergent thing, where you use an interest as a filter for processing the world.
for some people that is called a "special interest," for others with different needs it is more of a "hyperfixation;" there are far more variations than i (or the field of psychology) know how to describe now. if you want to understand the difference there are people who can explain those variations better than me. but i can tell you what it feels like.
you discover something.
it doesn't matter what it is; you find something that speaks to you, something you can connect to, and it becomes a bubble of safe habitat from which you can rest from and explore and connect to all the other parts of this strange chaotic world.
a source of joy. a source of illumination.
it's like you're a person who has lived all their life in dark caves and you find something that glows.
these interests can be anything.
(literally anything; i personally derive meanings that you could never imagine from ✨ drainage ditches. ✨)
but very often, they are stories. tv shows, books, movies, comics, songs, podcasts, minecraft improv streams, cartoons, web serials, whatever
these things are:
tangible. you can hold them in your hands, replay them, turn on the subtitles, take screenshots, read the sheet music
and yet
real. they form a genuine connection from your (isolated, untranslatable) internal world to other (formerly unknowable) people and the rest of the universe
they create meaningfulness
and they exist because humans find these incredibly effective soul-deep ways of communicating to one another.
now, appreciating stories, that's not a neurodivergent thing. that's a human thing.
the point of relevance here is that experiencing an extreme love for stories is a neurodivergent thing.
it's a very common neurodivergent trait which often gets mocked, portrayed as childish, and used as a pretext for infantilization and bullying.
(and it is also a trait of young people in general, to take stories very seriously in a way that looks silly to adults, and that is something that many people (regardless of age) try to bully out of each other.
what good is that doing anyone?)
"stop making [x] your whole personality"
listen, you. get down off that goddamn embankment and climb down into this ditch with me. dip your toes in this oily water. watch the stars and city lights ripple into constellations you've never seen
now look me in the eye
you need to understand that no matter what lowbrow, cringey, problematic or otherwise not-to-your-tastes drivel you might be complaining about today,
you are talking about the phenomenon of creativity
you are talking about a transcendent catalyst of human emotion
and yes that includes the overmilked disney franchises, it includes the formulaic shippy fanfictions, it includes whatever brightly-colored cartoon this website is obsessed with this year (and will be having incredibly dramatic meltdowns over next year), it includes the cheesy action movies and the fanservicey anime and the badly-designed video games and the milquetoast tiktok "literature", it includes the indistinguishable scribbles of some random five-year-old and/or famous fine artist and/or precocious elephant
i get it. you care about real life and touching grass and shit. you have taste. just take the stilts off your horse for a second, okay?
i know you're probably sick of "let people like things" discourse
i would just like for you to stop for a second and take a deep breath, and let the stench of whatever is in this mud puddle wash over you (yeah i know, ew, but you'll be fine) and consider
what is so bad about having a cringey personality, anyway?
and maybe you will think better of making "stop making [some silly moment in the universe] your personality" into your personality and maybe you will come off as a little bit less of a snob/ableist/ass and maybe you will have a slightly better outlook on life among humans.
that's all. yeah you can get out of the gutter now. thank you for coming to my ted talk—
ooh wait, look, a bottle cap
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people dont write wheatley mean enough, ive decided. like, he's an asshole. that's a huge part of his character. YES he is also pathetic and a fucking loser who i could drop kick.
that's why he's an asshole.
he's mean and self-centered and uncaring because that is how he has always been treated.
he frequently calls you brain dead, he throws out the idea of turning you in to GLaDOS' so he can live, he spends a full minute insulting children and calling manual laborers stupid - because that's how he's been treated. he was made to be stupid, he was abandoned by his creators because they didn't care, and then he's insulted time and time again by being called a moron when, if you actually look at the game from his perspective, he's the one who's did all the work!!
he has been kicked, insulted, almost killed and ignored his entire life no SHIT he's more than happy to turn those exact same actions onto other people without any sort of care for their feelings. no one's ever cared for his?? so why should he??
people either have him as a stammering uwu little baby who's either completely helpless or a creep or they make him super over confident when he's neither. yes, he stutters and yes there are times he's embarrassed but that's because he overthinks and has a hard time putting things into words. he is fucking terrifying, yes, but it's not because he's confident. it's because he's willing to do anything just to prove he can.
wheatley is so mischaracterized it hurts and it makes me so upset. this game has been out for ten years and i need my guy to be seen as the actual nuanced character he is.
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until last year i stayed friends with a grand total of One (1) friend i knew in high school and now. i have finally stopped talking to that friend. it is sooooo so nice to romanticize longevity and history and wow they have always been there but there's a point where it's like.
it is so embarrassing so i haven't talked about it because it's really like, fully pathetic, but i saw them the first time recently bc i hadn't seen any rl friends bc i had a years long slump where i just kind of took up space at home and i was embarrassed about it but i got my life together again last summer and i was like okay, i can respond to the question "how are you doing?" without breaking down into tears, and my friend did express interest in seeing me again and i really wanted to see them. so i saw them a while ago and i had fun and i was so happy and i was so grateful to still have this connection after all these years, after all the ways i've been and my colorful history, and i just. their birthday was about a month later and really extremely uncharacteristically of me i remembered, and i ordered them a weird little personal birthday tchotchke off etsy and got them a michaels gift card and hit them up like. happy birthday we should hang out soon on the day of and it was all very nice. i didn't expect something soon nor did i care too much. but a couple months ago when twitter was gonna implode i followed them on insta (even though i deleted my personal insta because i know personal instas only teach me things about people i don't want to know) and as a consequence of that i learned that my friend was not able to see me because i was not invited to their birthday thing. which was with a friend of theirs i kind of know and an old close friend from high school i lost touch with but asked about and sjdfhsdf. literally expressed interest in the time i just saw them.
DO YOU KNOW HOW PATHETIC THAT IS........JUST EVERYTHING ABOUT IT..........LIKE I AM A KICKED PUPPY. I AM 24.....I HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE............I AM A UNION MEMBER........AND I GOT REALLY EXCITED ABOUT MY FRIENDS BIRTHDAY AND I WASN'T INVITED TO THE PARTY...........
and you know there are probably actual reasons. i burned bridges with people in high school that they liked more than me, and i am too mature to care about who likes more than whoever now, and it is too insane to hold things from high school against them now that i am 24 and have regular cardiologist appointments. but it is also like. how many times do i have to die. i have grown past so many things the last three years that i thought i could never overcome and i can't, i don't want to, grow into someone who is mature enough to hold someone who's been important to me since i was 14 at arms length so it doesn't hurt when they inevitably drop me. currently, i commute an hour in the wrong direction so i can be on the same train as a work friend and i am aware the energy is insane but it is my energy and giving it and getting good things from it is like. this is better for my personal development than whichever way the other direction goes.
and it's like i don't even blame my friend from high school for how they feel about me because i was insane in a bad way in high school and i've done enough it's like. whatever. but it's like, also, when it's like, yeah this was half of the two people who permanently messed you up to the point people still are like "hey i didn't see you there. come over and say hi next time" when i avoid them because they're talking to someone else, who watched your friend group make a group chat and hang out together with everyone except you and didn't say anything and you were grateful they still threw you the bone to hang out one on one and it's like. i'm not. i don't really hold it against them, it was years ago, i don't think about those people anymore and yes i am still weird in many ways but for other reasons as well, but there is like. a very huge lack of pattern recognition and failure to learn and it is absolutely. my fault. when you put it like oh the person who killed me a thousand times throughout high school and college still has the power to kill me now and sometimes will? VERY OBVIOUSLY I AM THE PROBLEM.......i can't play high school anymore i have to play Being At Work and Surviving Capitalism Despite Everything, Did You Know I Am 24
anyway i decided to just quietly softblock my friend on everything, unfriend on discord, remove myself from the situation when there wasn't really an inciting event so i could just kind of fade out. but i did just find out that my friend did notice, and blocked me on twitter without saying a word -- which you know, is fine and understandable, because i did do all of that first. but what a metaphor you know. that is what the years of friendship are, and that they have stacked up this much to still hurt me is my fault. but hopefully for the last time.
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He still cares abt Lamar (link)
.....
............ MA. R Q U I S E.
OKAY THIS . THIS IS CUTE. BUT I HATE THIS. BECAUSE IT IS CUTE. ARGGHH HOW DO I EXPLAIN THISSS.... okOKAY listen i am so. i am studying this like a researcher does a bug in a jar. A Petri dish growing mold. A banana. NO ONE IS SUFFERING MORE THAN ME CREATING MY OWN NARRATIVE IN MY HEAD ABOUT NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!
he still loves him of COURSE he still loves him, which is CUTE but. BRO HAS DONE SELF-SABOTAGE!!!!!! AND IS PUTTING /ALL/ THE PURPOSE ON THE ORGANIZATION !! it doesn't MATTER at this point who did what to who and why... what MATTERS is that self-sabotage has occurred, and hollywood still loves lamar. HOOWW can i EXPLAIN this MAN like!!!! HOLLYWOOD doesn't think he's good enough for Lamar, no, he KNOWS that. But he can't live with Lamar knowing that because he's afraid LAMAR will leave him when he's TRYING and can't even convince him to stay or not trade him at his best. HOWEVER, if he convinces THE ORGANIZATION to trade him 'JUST OUT OF THE BLUE', then that's UNDERSTANDABLE, that's a BUSINESS decision, then the ORGANIZATION is the villain! AND NO ONE WILL HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING!! except HOLLYWOOD ! super easy choice, genius plan!!
... except maybe hollywood is less fine with knowing than he thought. Maybe the plan went too well. So well that the real problems went unsolved. Even if it was a bad plan, Lamar would still believe his every word anyways. He always does. He's always in Hollywood's corner. but no one's in Lamar's.
Moving, spending all that time away from Lamar, it didn't change a thing. He still thought of Lamar, Lamar still thought of him. Still thought of him too well. Hell, he didn't even worry when Hollywood spent almost all his off-season training with his old college QB. Because he has that much faith in His wide receiver. His wide receiver that averages 10+ dropped passes a season. His wide receiver that left him for that old college QB. Lamar blames the organization because HIS old wide receiver did, his FRIEND. And now Lamar's getting turned on because of his friend. . . So maybe the plan came with more problems than solutions. Lamar didn't hate him, at least.
But he should.
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