Hey Kedreeva, first off I love your blog, your specific type of farmers chaos and your care for your peafowl is so amazing and brings me so much joy. But my question is, how do you make lasting friends (online or not)? I've seen a couple of the text threads that you've posted between your friends and it just seems like you've got some really awesome people in your life. And I want that, I want those friends but I don't know how to make them? Any advice on friendmaking?
Honestly? Numbers game. I have found a lot of great people to be friends with because I talk to a lot of people. I can tell you how I met most of my best friends, but it won’t be any sort of enlightening, because they’re all just normal stories.
Maz I met when she started leaving reviews on a story I was writing as a teen and we were able to joke about differences between Michigan and Australia.
Jurion I met because I started helping him with his writing and Maz and I basically adopted him because he was doing his best to learn
Chasing I met at work because she happened to be in the vet tech office when I was going in there to eat lunch with one of the techs, and she H A T E D me at first and I won her over with fandom talk
Greenberg I met through Teen Wolf when we were both excited about her version of the Greenberg character, and we wrote some ficlets and yelled at each other
Marie and Elin both came into my inbox when I asked for beta readers and were really thoughtful and nice and I continued trying to talk to them when I could until we were friends
Gina was in the Haven fandom and wrote beautiful meta and got excited when I got excited about meta and kept trying desperately to keep me from fighting people, so I did because I liked her
my partner I met in HS because we happened to be in the same local anime club that our mutual friend belonged to, and he was kind.
Dollie I met at work, she was quiet and liked fanfiction and I decided we should be friends, so I just started hanging out when I could. Same with Ahmad, he was at work and liked fish, so we just started talking and being friends.
I could go on for a while, there’s a lot of great people I’m getting to know more daily, but none of their stories are going to have any special trick to them. Because for every person above, there are ten people that I started to talk to but that didn’t seem interested in being friends, so I didn’t push it.
When Maz was leaving comments, so were a dozen other people that I loved interacting with at the time but they didn’t hang on once the story was over. When I asked for beta readers the time Marie and Elin showed up, i had five or six other people volunteer and give it a try, but they were only interested in beta reading, not friendship, so that’s what we did. I talk to dozens of people about fandom stuff, but only a couple here or there ever seem interested in much more or want to talk outside of Tumblr, so I stick to what they seem comfortable with. There are over a hundred people working for my unit at work and I’m friends with like 5 people that I’d care to see or talk to outside of work.
So I don’t have any secrets for you, unfortunately, at least not ones that are going to make one specific person be your friend. I’m patient and honest, kind where I can be, I keep clear boundaries, and I hang on when I feel like things have potential to work out. The rest is just rolling the dice as often as possible and hoping you sometimes get a 20.
