waffling abt not being the girl whose only personality trait is Big Shuu Tsukiyama Fan!!! as much these days (or something) (also i love you mayor winddancer 😍)
i feel bad admitting this but. i haven’t been thinking or posting about shuu as much as i used to for these last 3 months, and i feel better for it.
(long ass waffle under the cut. be aware.)
perhaps waxing poetic over nothing, perhaps am being so silly, but. recently have been obsessed - all consuming everyday 24/7 on the trot obsessed - with the zootopia 2 horse mayor, right? and i’m still very much very ill and very much not living my life the way i want, very much nowhere near where i want to be, still getting nowhere fast, still not being myself or anything really. but i feel like i have a lot more clarity, i feel like i’ve been making realisations about myself and the person i was pre-obsession and present day. (stay with me here) so even though i feel no better, i feel as if i have made crucial revelations about myself integral to getting somewhere.
that’s all to say; i still love shuu. he is still so dear to me, and i still intend to write stories about him and make art or stuff about him, to think excessively about him, buy too much merch and dedicate too much time to him. however. not overthinking about him as much, worrying that by thinking about a different character that i’m ‘losing’ my love of him, not overthinking every post or every comment or being nervous in a community that i have tried to distance myself from, not having to think abt the stupid or cringe things i’ve done in his name or bc of him - not making a character into my guardian angel who i’m forever indebted to - it’s been really really nice.
i think i put too much pressure on myself to write or draw things about him - that the reason i loved those things was either because of him, or some kind of qualifier that showed my love for him was real, that if i couldn’t do those things i was useless and boring. whereas now i still struggle to function, to live anywhere in reality, to be who i want to be, i have realised that he was only ever a contributing factor to my love of these things, why i wanted to do them - why i want to make art, to write, and so on…yes partly because he is a ‘muse”, i guess, but i don’t need a muse to enjoy those things.
i don’t think i’m making sense - but this blog is not for sense, not really.
i just think that gaining some distance from shuu - not being the girl whose only notable quality is ‘big shuu tsukiyama fan!’ - has been good for me.
i mentioned the zootopia 2 horse at the start of this because that’s where this sort of transition started - i don’t think i’m replacing one unhealthy obsession with another, this is different. yes i’m not normal about him, but maybe going through the premature phase of this kind of obsession again, now 21 years old, not 12, has allowed me to see that a lot of issues weren’t because of shuu per se, but because of how i carried myself about him. i hope that makes sense.
being obsessed with something new, in a way that i haven’t been able to push down or contain, that i cannot put down for five seconds because i’m missing out on Precious Shuu Time - it’s challenged me a bit. i’ve had to confront myself on a lot of things, because shuu has been so integral to my life for so long, and the idea of not having that sort of anchor has been so scary for that time. letting go of that a bit, prying my identity away from the Shuu Girl, not having to dedicate everything to him; has meant that i feel a lot more like i’m in the process of becoming me, not just the girl on twitter that posts abt an anime character and cries as her life passes her by. it’s also nice to obsess over a character you don’t really know much about yet, but also a character that isn’t Just Like Me, fr fr, y’know?
the zootopia fandom too - it’s nothing like the tg fandom, and that’s the only other fandom i’ve gotten deep in. it’s also kinda small, but so different; if i used tumblr more maybe i’d post to it. it’s really nice to be kinda an outsider in it. i have a teeeeeny circle of winddancer moots on twitter, and it’s nothing like i’ve had before. everyone feels so nice, all excited and hanging on every screenshot or factoid abt z2. there’s not that sort of competition or pretension or irritation i felt with the other fandom - no stupid cringe socially anxious unhinged events from the past or grown women who started beef with me wandering around (not salty abt that last one…i swear) - it’s nice. it’s nice to have something different, where i don’t have much history in. it’s not as serious, and feels more grown-up, weirdly, but only probably because i’m not 16 anymore.
i know replacing one obsession with another isn’t the answer, and i don’t think i’m doing that. i feel like i can get to a place where these characters are just an autistic hyperfixation or hobby, not something all-consuming, that’s all i am and all i think i have.
a lot of why i clung to shuu was because of being so ill, and so fucking lonely, and i don’t blame myself for that. that saved my life - shuu did save my life, and that’s sort of the problem. when you have lived so horribly for so long, when you have been so traumatised for so long, so afraid, isolated, and anxious; it is understandable to cling to something, and to cling to it still even when your life is no longer in a place where trauma is occurring. the issue is that i’ve been clinging to something like i’m still being abused - i’ve been still in survival mode - when the danger has now long since passed and it’s time to put that energy back into me, - and by me, i mean me, not the shuu tsukiyama fan, and not ghostalope or gunkbaby or whatever user either.
i don’t quite know where i’m going with this, i guess the tldr this is basically; turns out unhealthy obsessions are unhealthy and it took a new unhealthy obsession for me to realise that my coping mechanism was kinda overkill and that’s maybe why everything has been so hard. oh, and not being on social media. yeah, that’s probably part of it too.