I want to document this moment for myself because I think I finally came to the point of clarity I needed after breaking ties with my early pandemic fc.
The villain you hate a lot? They're dead. You get to kill them in the video game you love. Usually with your bare hands! They're dead, they die, you did it, congratulations! They're not real and cannot hurt you. Stop acting like they can.
I'm gonna put the rest under a cut bc I get really rambly these days, but I wanted to document this mental health achievement somewhere that wasn't a microblogging platform.
Under the cut, I go into some family trauma and dealing with death threats on the internet, but the tl;dr of this is that, I guess I'm some kind of freak for being able to find some internal happiness, so much so that it makes a lot of people jealous and want to steal it or destroy it because they don't think I'm worthy of it, or they're just assholes who want to destroy shit while I want to build shit. And I'm the fool for listening to every unkind narrative in hopes of finding external connection.
Perceived threats do the same chemical reaction in the human mind as real ones. Humanity has reached the point where it can simulate situations to induce mental pain very well. We opt into these simulations en masse and forget they are simulations we opt into because our brain thinks they're real.
Dealing with a fandom community that's actively hostile towards their peers has been basically my entire adult life. I got a job at McDonald's when I was 17 and I quit church because the idea of a merciful god that I should obey, in a world where I could work so hard and do my best and still get shouted down on the internet for liking the wrong pixel man, no merciful god that I should obey would allow something like that to happen.
If I had a dollar for every time I no-sold a disrespectful comment, I'd be a millionaire. Instead, I have trauma and anxiety, because I get really happy and sing my little songs and do my little drawings and write my little stories when I find something that resonates with all the pain and bullshit I've been through, but people who don't have any happiness in their own lives, who only get off on wiping the smiles off of other people's faces, ended up with a lot of power on the internet.
I think it's partially because that, we can access the internet in any state of mind these days, and I let myself be so vulnerable and honest almost all the time, I'm very looking for uplifting content about something I care about with almost no mental armor, and I feel all the damage when I read people screaming about how I should self-harm over something that's not even real, just over a hypothetical offense. These people remind me of my abusive grandmother, who was only abusive because her father was drafted into World War 1, came back a shell of a man, and brutally abused his entire family so badly that I'm feeling it 4 generations later.
The internet is the double-edged sword of connections with friends I love who are far away that I love very dearly, and also, immediate connection with people who read two words, get upset bc their worldview is as fearful and they want something to fight, and I end up reading posts that basically tell me that people like me should die. I'm not always in a vulnerable or suggestable state, but sometimes I am, and my dumb ass thinks everyone means what they say, and says what they mean, and in being a good person, I try to see this other person's point of view, even despite the death threats, because I guess that's what I'm keyed to do. Someone screams at me and I try to fix them for free. That's not fair, and not how it should work, and we're all on the same internet screaming at each other really hardcore all the time and wondering why we're all exhausted and resentful.
I'm brave for sitting up every day and looking at it. I would like more credit for enduring it. The problem has never been internal. I'm fine. I love life. I love art and I appreciate the grand ambitions of others. I love seeing good people win. I love nurturing positivity. But unfortunately, I'm jammed into the world on the school bus stops with cynical assholes who only are happy when they steal my happiness from me by putting me down. I'm fine. I'm brave. I'm just a fool for letting people take from me. I'm happy, I'm good. I've found some kind of enlightenment that others have no access to, for whatever reason, and that's why they want my tears. That's why I should stop giving them my tears for free.
Needed to spruce this up from the kinda shabby version of itself that's been hiding in my google docs forever.
I've been working on The Big Fic Where Kiryll and Varis Do It for at least 5 years now? This is probably the spiciest thing I've ever written and it's finally out of my head!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I've started to joke to myself that the reason why I don't do hard content in FFXIV is because I've been in the ongoing always-on Ultimate Raid that's called Just Being a Varis Enjoyer (JBVEU).
I didn’t know how this was going to turn out, I just wanted to practice more Varis. I honestly see him waking up like this to the reality of the world, another day in the life of his radiance, duty bound.
I'm genuinely doing a hell of a lot better than I was a few years ago, but I'm feeling some really intense thoughts lately, and it's wearing me out.
I started Adderall this week and it's a double edged sword. Reduced appetite for food means that I'm likely to get less chunky maybe. I skipped my pill day 2 and learned what crashing is like. It's wild to still have energy for anything after work, and thinking about the stuff I'm about to do after work during work is making my job a better experience, because I've got something to look forward to again.
Anyway, I'm still working through some angst over a person I let treat me badly when my spouse was sick. Sometimes things just remind me of them, and the trauma brain in me will recoil and my brain will tell me I need to scream about it.
I didn't treat myself properly by allowing myself to remain in their presence. They betrayed my trust, and the trust of my friends, because of the ego we collectively ended up growing. She was in pain, so we rallied around her, to try to habilitate her, but it ended up making her uncomfortable anyway. There were stupid and mean things said by people I thought were better, and no amount of denial about how I wanted them to be better made them better.
I had to clean up several messes and then got very little in the way of contact or gratitude back, and that also stings. These friends were almost like children. I liked and respected all of them at one point and I wanted to make their lives better, but only really one of the people I left behind gave me a second thought when I got quiet and rolled away.
I keep on thinking about a Wolfsheim song that ends with, "beyond this point of no return, hatred's flame will ever burn," and I feel that so much sometimes, but I don't want to spend the energy on hatred, obsessed with the past so much that I draw similar situations to myself without thinking about it. This was nearly FF7 House 2.
Beyond this point of no return, a flame of hatred there hath burned. A flame in truth, only stoked by shameful deeds that were provoked. This flame of hatred can be ceased, when all the pain has been released. And so I pray this spell shall break, and that one day that I may wake. To the possibility of maybe not taking back people who won't treat me or my friends right, but moving onto greater things, and maybe finding greater peace within myself.
Ended up on Twitter today for the first time in a little while and it had me reminiscing about how I spent most of the pre-pandemic years post-tumblr-exodus just absorbing the negativity and groupthink.
I let some parts of my personality get overwritten in the name of trying to make and keep friends and some of those friendships ended up not panning out. I wasted so much time that I'll never get back trying to appeal to people who I stopped being able to tell if they even wanted to be friends with me.
It was very easy on Twitter and Discord to roll over in bed with my eyes barely open and read something horrible while I was really vulnerable. Even after years of training myself to be and keep myself in non-conformity and authenticity, I drank some kool-aid and made a fool of myself.
It feels very good to find acceptance and friendship with people you like over shared interests, but I always run into problems where I'll want to love so much that I give up the love that's supposed to be reserved for myself, and to compromise barriers that absolutely need to remain in place.
I've gotten over it a little bit, but several decades of "I want to do something that will make people like me on the internet," has messed me up. I always want to be good to people, even when they're not good to me. This has led me to stay in situations where people have not given me the respect or dignity I feel like I deserve.
Short form social media shrank me and cheapened me, and I want to go back to being punk and weird af, and flourescently kind. But not to people who don't respect me.
All it takes is for someone to look at me wrong for me to curl up in a little ball and want to disappear. But I can't do that because I'm a grown-ass adult and have to at least pretend to be strong to survive at this point.
