#more reflective

[ssaalexblake]

While i was giffing 13 yelling her head off in Fugitive of the Judoon i actually noticed that she actually has glassy eyes when she yells at Gat about Gallifrey not existing in her time, which is, you know. Nice.

Thanks Jodie.

[fourseamer]

thoughts on writing and growth and life

the fucked up thing about having a pattern and a brand of your writing style and your themes and your ideas for years, is that if you might grow out of it. and it can be good. i'm having a strange time. in 2022 i started my thesis and what happened was i spent the next year going crazy, getting into things i don't like, discovering new things, writing shit i would never publish to "keep myself sane" but also to try things out... and i learned about love.

sure in theory i always knew about love but it's always been kind of this thing that happens to others and is understood by others. i never liked love songs, i never thought of getting that for myself, i never... well. and i don't know that i still think love will happen to me but it could. and also if it doesn't, i guess i really truly made peace with that too.

but what it's done is now i can't stop writing about love. i have a hard time writing about things that aren't love. and it's about other things obviously, acceptance, vulnerability, etc. but i've grown to love using love as a vehicle. and i'm having such a hard time with what i'm working on because it's not about love. it's not even about like yet. it's more about expectations and how bad finance teachers can be...

and i don't think it has to be love between people. i like the aho/hintz fic i wrote and that was love of helsinki in the summer. love of shitty apartments my friends have. love of the energy in that environment. i don't even like summer, or helsinki for that matter, but romanticizing helsinki in the summer feels so easy.

i hope i'll write a crime au again some day. and maybe i'll figure out a way to make it about love too. it's never been that but i've written so many of them in my life and it feels silly to abandon my roots. maybe eventually i'll figure out a plotline that lets me hammer nails into the guys' baseball bats.

i think that's all for tonight.

[autunno101]

Makeup

I can’t see why makeup is all that important.

I get it. Wanting to be beautiful. That a little powder, lipstick, and a stick of mascara can go a long way in transforming one face into another. The right one. The one that would make you look evolved. A new face. Confidence.

Still, I find myself looking in the mirror (occasionally mind you) with no makeup whatsoever, feeling confident enough to walk out that door with no doubt. Most days, I look at myself, think “ugh, I could do better…”, then proceed to walk out that door anyway.

My mom once told me that I had a great deal of confidence and high self esteem all because I told her I didn’t care what people thought or what they thought of how I looked. I didn’t think at the time that had anything to do with confidence and self esteem, since I considered mine nonexistent.  

Granted, no one on this planet has ever said that they didn’t give two shits and meant it. Doubt always sits in its corner, its voice loud and compelling. Mine nagged me all day and all night, like I’m sure most people experience. It’s human.

Yet, I just realized, how will makeup make a difference in whether or not you're ugly or beautiful? There is no clear cut definition for either of those words that have been crafted by society to segregate the two kinds of people based solely on an individual’s meaning of attractiveness (Attractiveness cannot solely rely on physical traits, it must rely on personality too. Remember that). Which isn’t bad mind you, it’s your opinion of the world around you, specifically the people around you, like whether or not you like chocolate or vanilla. Or perhaps you do like chocolate, but it has to have some mocha whip cream on top to be anything close to appetizing.

I think, that makeup does nothing. I’ve never felt any surge of confidence wearing it the few times I have. Plus, it’s expensive and requires work for me in doing something I find completely useless. I believe society tells us we should wear it even when we don’t really want to, but over the years I’ve developed quite a, in my opinion, good habit of doing the total opposite of what someone tells me to do.

I think, confidence is all we need. I think, we should all get up, get ready for the day, and skip the makeup. I don’t need to go to my class or my job looking pretty. I need to walk in there looking ready to kickass and get shit done.

The only way to look like that, is to wear it in confidence, not in silly powder made to hide blemishes.

Roses have blemishes. It’s what makes them roses. Otherwise, we’d all complain about getting fake roses, because nothing cannot be so perfect as to not have a single blemish.

Our doubt makes us human, so does our blemishes.

[delicatefractal]

I’m not trying to convince people that you were just as toxic as me. I’m trying to acknowledge that one of the reasons why it was so difficult to make progress away from my own abusive behaviors was because you also had many toxic behaviors. That is why us taking a break was a really good idea. 

And you *had* cursed at me, called me names, and threatened me at points in our relationship. When I said “I’ll kick your fucking face in,” you were using an aggressive voice and threatening me in the dark while I was in bed. I’m not justifying my saying it, but you can’t pretend that you weren’t doing that. And you know what it's like to be triggered into violent reactions.

You are wrong about me thinking that you wanting monogamy was possessive/abusive. That is not the case. I never thought that, and I never wanted to manipulate into anything that you didn’t want to do. I tried to leave to explore a poly lifestyle last year because I knew after talking about it that you didn’t want it, and you stopped me and said that “maybe we could make it work.” How did I manipulate you in that situation, exactly? 

I know that I was manipulative at times. I know that I was abusive. But not everything I did can be chalked up to abusive and manipulation. Especially once we were on a break, I had a lot of hope that things could finally be healthy. But my hesitation was because I had unrealistic expectations for you to change things quickly. And in my hesitation to start things back up with you, I was sometimes not as kind as I could have been in order to maintain our boundaries of separation. Regardless, we tried again too soon.

And later, when we were on a break I told you that I only wanted to see you. And then when we got back together too soon, I told you I needed to have more time on our break because I had never had that before. And I wasn’t trying to manipulate you into seeing someone else to justify me doing anything. It was my mistake using the word “date,” and my mistake trying to push the idea that you didn’t need hard boundaries between friends and dates. I had no secret plans of seeing other people though. And when I actually did have that kiss, it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t thought out. It just happened. And I told you about it because I felt guilty and I wanted to tell you about it. I know it wasn’t right. I should have said that. I should not have fought to be technically right by saying ‘it was okay because we were on a break.’ I should have said ‘it is okay, because it was just a kiss and i don’t want it to be anything more and I love you and am committed to you and i would like to move on from what happened.” But I made the wrong choice, and we both said a lot of things in the heat of our emotional reactions, and I didn’t get the chance to do that.

You are not terrible. You have a good heart and you constantly try to better yourself. I have always respected that you are upfront and own up to your mistakes. I have always been trying to be more like you in that way. I don’t feel like I was given the chance to do that this time, or maybe I just squandered it.