#tal asks

[shark-boys]

Pink, for the following thing.

aw hehe thanks <3 u are pink as well !!

[greylunar]

just took your harry potter house quiz. just wanted to say thank you. somehow, you told me exactly what i needed to hear right now. it feels like a dam broke, like all of the confusion, and anger, and horrible sadness finally crumbled. i feel like myself for the first time in god only knows how long. i feel like you reminded me of who i am.

(I swear this beginning part will have relevance to the ask. Just stick with me c: ) I honestly have a hard time knowing what to do with the asks I get about the quiz. I made it two years ago, I was a different person back then, I never thought about how it might affect people because I didn’t think there’d people people who took it to affect. I often panic and double back, all “it’s just a quiz,” disregarding the care, time, and love for people I put into it. 500k+ have taken that quiz. Even if just a small portion of those people show up in my inbox, it’s still so strange and sometimes scary to think that, even for a moment, I was responsible for how those hundreds of people felt, and they felt enough to want to tell me about it. What do I do with that?

Asks like this make me less afraid. I may not have known what I wanted out of making that quiz, but I do know I want this feeling for you. I know that you deserve to feel like yourself and I am so so so glad that even for a moment I could help you feel connected back to that. I hope you know, you’re always yourself. You’ve been yourself, this whole time, even if you didn’t feel it. You don’t get lost or separated, it’s just sometimes the world makes it so that it’s safer to hide parts of you away. So it only makes sense that you can’t always see the full picture of yourself clearly, have that sense of completeness and presence. I hope that you get more and more days where you get to see yourself, know you’re there, know you’ve always been there. Be gentle with yourself when you can friend. I don’t know you, but I trust you with that. Take care of you for me, alright? It’ll be easier in time, to take care of you for you.

[shark-boys]

*bops you on the nose*

You're vey special kiddo!

TAL

[greylunar]

your hogwarts house quiz is Incorrect. sincerely, a disgusted slytherin labeled hufflepuff p.s. you did like 50 thousand whiny ass sleeping at last songs (and i like sleeping at last!) so for god’s sake, respect taylor swift you fucking hipster.

Hello friend! I hope you’re doing well and that you’ve found some quizzes you enjoy more than mine since asking this. I know the HP quiz is not for everyone, honestly I made it two years ago at this point and I don’t know if I would say it’s as ‘for me’ as it once was. I think it’s pretty ironic that my house quiz is what brought so many people to my blog, because the reason I made it in the first place is because I kind of hate house quizzes, I don’t think I’ve ever taken one that hasn’t gotten me wrong! A random quiz some stranger on the internet made is never going to know you better than you do, so if you think you’re a Slytherin, then you are! It’s as simple as that. Hehe I also agree with the fact I put too many sleeping at last lyrics in it, I think at the time I just thought they were an easy way to get really specific lyrics that represent a way of thinking, since the songs I pulled them for were about personality types anyways. As for Taylor Swift, absolutely no hate, the comment in the description of the quiz is a joke directed toward my roommate (back when I was pretty sure only my groupchat was going to take the quiz). She sends a lot of uquizes that include questions like “Pick a song off of Red or Evermore that Represents You” or a similar type of question with artists like Lorde or Florence and the Machine. I’m definitely a fan of all those artists at this point, or at least many specific songs, but I’m not an album person and I used to complain to her All the Time that since I didn’t know every song off the album I either had to Google every songs individual lyrics or just go off of title alone and possibly get a less accurate answer. At this point in our friendship though I’m pretty sure I could do it at least with Folklore and probably Red hehe. But I wanted to set up my song based questions so you never needed any prior knowledge going into the quiz, hence the insane amount of stupidly long lyric questions hehe. None of this is said to get you to like my quiz, the internet is a big place, if you don’t like my quiz that’s cool, there’s like a million others you can enjoy. It’s mostly just that I’ve had a few asks that touch on all these subjects so I figured I could give a little explanation. Mostly, you’re right, I’m more than a bit pretentious and it gets pretty exaggerated in the quiz just because of the format and general lack of context. Hehe I haven’t been called a hipster in a while but I do look like a guy who’d be into like. Pour over coffee. And that’s not everyone’s thing! But you know, unfortunately it’s my thing, and whatever your thing is, I hope you find a lot of uquizes and blogs that suit it better. Im sure there’s a ton of them out there.

[greylunar]

i know it’s old as hell but i just took your harry potter house quiz and knew instantly you’re a magnus archives fan. it’s the circus question immediately followed up by the words ‘i see you’ as a love declaration

Hehehe okay one, yes I absolutely am I loved that podcast I thought it was so well done and like a fucking masterclass on interwoven storytelling. Two, funnily enough (and I’m literally sorry because this is going to be long I’m just incapable of keeping my answers concise) both of those questions are based after two completely different things that are important to me. The circus question is based on an essay I wrote a few years ago on performance as an inherently queer construct (and a life long obsession with circuses), and the “I See You,” was based on a conversation about trying to exist in the world and what matters to me in a relationship as a person with ASPD. I think the magnus archives is partially so appealing due to the fact that so much of its stylistic, narrative, it’s fucking thematic choices are all inherently queer or speak to the queer experience. It makes it easy as a writer to make something based on my life and then just by reading it you know I’d like TMA. It’s part of why listening to it feels so good to me. I mean, horror as a concept is queer but the magnus archives goes such the extra mile hehe. But yes you definitely caught me, I’m a hunt kinnie and my most recent cosplay was Agnes Montague

[greylunar]

You made the softest place to lay in this whole website. I adore you in a very non creepy way. When I have a shitty day I just come here. Thank you for curating this environment, it seems stupid because it's just a little blog, but still means something real for me. It helps me cope with reality when reality is far too harsh. As I said, you made a soft place to lay. I'm glad you're back. I hope you're well.

thank you thank you thank you thank you

A while back my partner got me this book called Otherwordly by Yee-Lum Mak. The illustrations are done by Kelsey Garrity-Riley, and the whole thing is adorable, it’s a collection of different words with unique meanings from languages around the world. I’m pretty sure they have a blog on here I’ll edit this with the tag once I find it. All of this is to say this is one of the spreads in the book

Text: “Smultronställe (noun, c, Swedish) lit. ‘place of wild strawberries’; a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness.”

For a while this specific page of this book was my soft place to lay when I had a shitty day. I’m not very good at being gentle with myself all the time. On the days I was better at it, I’d flip through the book, draw clusters of strawberries or the person in the field in my notebook, close my eyes and picture lying in the grass. I’m not a very mindful person, my adhd gets me every time, but for a few moments every time I’d try and add something to the picture, the sound of birds, how the wind would feel on my face, the temperature of the grass against my skin. Carved out peace for myself like that, when I could.

I have a hard time explaining this blog to people in my life. It’s not that I’m being dishonest or portraying a fictional version of myself by any means, it’s more that I find myself curating this blog to be as close to that place of wild strawberries as I can. I just think you and I both deserve a little place on the internet where we can just breathe you know? I mean I’ve got agoraphobia for gods sake, I’m not touching grass a whole lot, so if I’m gonna be online I want to make sure there’s an anchor of a space I can go back to that’s just. Certain. Soft. Kind. Or at least as close to that as I can make it, just being some guy. I know it’s not that deep, but sometimes it is, and it is for me a lot of the time. This blog is like this for completely selfish reasons I’m not going to lie, like this is just how I want and need my blog to be you know? But I’m glad that even if I made this for myself, it can still be good for other people, and how you interact with it can make it something individual and meaningful to you if you want that too. Hope you are doing well. Thank you for the ask, it helped me articulate something I’ve been struggling to and it meant a lot. The song Black Bear by Black Bear reminds me of this. Stay safe, and be gentle with yourself, when you can.

[greylunar]

Missed you

Missed you guys too c: I honestly kinda didn’t know what to do with this blog for a while. I really wasn’t expecting to get as much traction as I did from that quiz and I kind of got a little intimidated by my ask box and psyched myself out about what this blog should look like and how I was pretty sure that the people who followed me for that uquiz was would probably not be interested in anything else I put out. But I mean, at the end of the day tumblr is just like a way to post shit you enjoy and talk to your friends. I really like the space I’d cultivated for people on this blog, and I know I’ll like it even more if I feel like I can joke around and be stupid and not always worry about creating a flawless experience for people. Hehe I know that this is a lot and not necessarily anything you asked about, but I’m pretty sure you’ve popped in my ask box a few times anon c: I hope you’re doing well. Todays a pretty good day for me. I hope it can be for you too.

[greylunar]

Hey just out of curiosity but what do you do for a living?

I am disabled professionally 🥰 hehe since my condition is theoretically one I will eventually no longer have symptoms of, I will probably one day return to the “original” plan and finish getting my degree in English and Secondary Education. Who’s to fucking say though, it’s not gonna be in the cards for a long while and at this point I’m looking at the time I spent working on a farm with ill intent. Right now though my career is sleeping, being paralyzed, playing Dnd, writing shitty songs and animal crossing. And lots of therapy lol. Thank you for asking though it’s really sweet of you to be curious and I hope you have such a good day, and if not a better tomorrow c: