[mollymerula]

hello 2026!

it's been a while since i really talked on here! you might have noticed that i kind of disappeared from the face of the earth for a little while. the reason is that as a repulsed aroace person, i feel extremely alienated and isolated by fandom almost 100% of the time, and it got to be so painful that i cut myself off completely. unfortunately this caused problems too! i miss seeing art and talking to people. recently i came back and cleared out my drafts from maybe 1,700 posts down to 100 something, so that was nice :) here's an update about a lot of things!

i hope it doesn't seem big-headed of me to presume that people are interested in all these details about me, but i still see urls in my notes every week that i recognize from years and years ago, so i think you all deserve a little bit of an explanation and recap of things:

i've been dealing with long covid severely for about 15 months and, to a lesser extent, before that, back to january 2020. after my most recent bout of covid last fall, it got indescribably bad. i've been having weekly acupuncture treatments for this for about a year now and they have helped immensely, along with improving my overall digestion and sleep patterns and blood curse cramps, which is amazing.

i still have a long way to go for healing, but when i think of how i felt a year ago, the difference is absolutely huge. i'm very very lucky to have caring and supportive supervisors at my job who let me take medical leave for this, and i'm now back to working my position full time again and it feels so great to get stuff done!

i went to my favorite anime convention this year all three days (last year i only made it through most of the artists' alley in one day before crying uncontrollably for the rest of the day from fatigue and depression) and had soooo much fun. looking forward to another one in january!

i started on antidepressants a few months ago! i should have done this ten years ago, but now is the second best time. this has cut my suicidal ideation down from all day every single day to almost zero, which is an immense relief!!

starting on prozac also coincided nicely with my general outlook on life getting a little better this year. for a long time i've been falling into the trap of cynicism, which is what can happen when you have a heart that feels a lot and you live in a very overwhelming world with lots of cruel things in it. recently, finally, i've found my way back to myself and realized that the best thing i can do is try make a difference wherever i can. i will probably be making a lot of flowery posts on this theme in the coming year LOL

things that made an impact on me this year: the serviceberry by robin wall kemmerer is such a good read. this poem by wendell berry (cw animal death, but a very sweet and comforting poem) has brought me so much peace and a new mantra. i finally saw kimi no na wa and cried my eyes out while unpacking the film afterward because i loved the theme of not necessarily romantic!! love and the film touched something buried deeeeeeeeep within me in regards to self love so i'm excited to explore that more (will probably be writing about this as well LOL).

and, as always, kimetsu no yaiba continues to grab me by the brain and heart. i have seen the new movie 5 times so far and am unspeakably excited for the next one 😈 thanks tanjirou for leading me back to myself! i could not be more serious about this.

my relationship with my art is not great. i've been drawing a little the past few years, but barely posting anything for a few reasons. i have very little self confidence and put way too much stock in strangers' opinions. i keep hoping something will click and i'll be back to drawing all the time and feeling good about it again. i hope that i can get there, or at least closer, in the coming year. i kind of want to completely overhaul my style so i'll probably play around with that a lot.

my goal is to work on different aspects of art and improve a lot by the summer so that i can draw a lot of strangers' ocs very nicely for artfight 2026 :)

accomplishments this year: watched all of one piece, saw a luna moth for the first time, started getting out of bed before 8 am, started getting IN bed at 11 pm, am eating three meals a day

i've been playing prehistoric kingdom, which is such a good return to the golden age of zoo sims, and playing peak and plateup with my cousins and sisters and laughing sooo hard, which is exactly what i need. also trying out every survival crafting game i can get my hands on, so taking recs for those. i love valheim the most so far!

as the year comes to an end, i'm surprised to find that for the first time in a very long time, i'm actually excited for january 1st instead of hiding from it and pretending it's not happening so i can avoid hoping for anything at all. i have a slightly healthier relationship with myself than i did at this time last year, and a lot of years before that. it's not perfect but it is progress!

so thank you to everyone who has stuck around, and to new followers too! i want to continue to make this blog a place to share things that make me smile. i hope 2026 treats us all as well as it can!

always happy to answer asks, as long as they are sfw and not ship related, send whatever you'd like :)

-molly 💜

[fmaweekly]

Announcement: FMA Weekly Reread

Hello everyone!

Lately I've really been missing the huge burst of FMA enthusiasm that was prevalent on Tumblr around 2015-2018. If you were there, you probably remember how many gifsets, fanfics, art pieces, meta posts, edits, roleplay blogs, liveblogs, shitposts, and general musings you could find in the tags every day as people shared their love of this story that has become such an iconic marker in manga/anime history.

Wouldn't it be cool if we all read that story again...together?

This blog will be hosting a weekly reread of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, one chapter per week, beginning some time within the next couple of months (exact date yet to be determined). In the meantime, anyone who wants to can help out by spreading the word! I hope I can reach as many people as possible before the reread starts, so lots of people have a chance to be involved from the beginning.

The general idea: Each week, we will read one chapter of the manga and make posts, art, gifsets, anything inspired by it, tagging our contributions with #fmaweekly! Easy!!

For now, you can follow this blog for updates on the project, send in any questions you might have, and reblog this post if you want to let others know what's coming up.

The start date will be June 17, 2026! Please look forward to it!

-Molly (@mollymerula)

[caydencrypted]

the wisdom ive learnt is that becoming part of a friend group 1) takes a long time and 2) involves a lot of feeling awkward and left out at first. there’s nothing terrible about this but if you grew up chronically lonely or have any kind of trauma relating to social isolation this likely feels Really Wrong and activates danger signals. but both fortunately and unfortunately it’s just how becoming close to new people works most of the time

[caydencrypted]

another thing that was not intuitive to me as someone who grew up an autistic loner: basically everyone on the planet is starved for connection all the time and almost everything people do is an attempt to reach out to another. most seemingly illogical interactions and behaviours can be explained by this. you have to take as many of these invitations as you can. even if you're wrong you still attempted to bring more warmth into the world

[anphivenas]

(wrinkled and dying from laying eggs) tbhhhh dubstep was better in 2009 (lays another egg) there has honestoy not been another producer like Benga (stress from that last egg makes me go blind) my eggs , where are my eggs

[creepymutelilbugger]

The bar for what a normal post is on this site is so fucked compared to everywhere else

[orteil42]

given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that

[mollymerula]

mixing my half-and-half 1:1 with heavy cream to create three-quarters-and-one-quarter

[stjohnstarling]

I think the battle is long since lost on what the “-coded” suffix means, but I (old movie guy specifically invested in queer coding) seem to be unable to let go of how annoying I find the fuzzy popular use of the term. This is probably a flaw in my character.

[stjohnstarling]

Coding is intentional, it’s a way of communicating indirectly with the audience through a shared language of signs. That’s why it’s called coding, because it’s communicating in code. It isn’t when a thing reminds you of another thing.

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[minmos]

the goldfinches a5re turning yellow again fuck yessss

[minmos]

he goes from brown to yellow when it's time

[cryptotheism]

he goes from brown to yellow when it's time

[hometownrockstar]

I'm glad my post is making people feel more open to trying artfight but i still feel like people overthink artfight in general, like i suppose i'm not exempt from it since i also worry about making my attacks perfectly polished and perfectly accurate to the design. but it IS just glorified art trading. here's some pointers and what it's like if you wanna try but are nervous: it's ok to only do revenges (drawings in retaliation to an attack you got) if you're too shy to attack first, but there's no guarantee people WILL be attacking you first constantly so keep that in mind and set your expectations at a reasonable level. Nobody on there is expecting perfection, just bare minimum effort, so don't half-ass it everytime and people will still appreciate what you can give. The fancy stuff people do like making borders for their attack icons and fully decked out bios and refs are optional, not mandatory. its fine to draw attacks for rando strangers if you like their oc, just focus on drawing whatever catches your eye thats the fun part of it for me. If you wanna practice do what I did my first year and attack/revenge just your friends to start.

[shitpeoplesayintf2]

[ah-muiii]

He so small…only need one popcorn……

[chillyfeetsteak]

wheeeeee wahooooo lalalala

[memeuplift]

[dgeometric]

I brought 2 cans of Dr. Pepper to a friend's party and we poured them into a saucepan to make hot Dr. Pepper, but it turned out we didn't like hot Dr. Pepper so we decided to keep it on the burner and reduce it down to Dr. Pepper syrup and then mixed that with soda water to make reconstituted Dr. Pepper, which it turned out we also didn't like

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[mollymerula]