Oh. Something else funny. There's an underwater scene in Supremacy which clearly was filmed in a tank, so my stupid fucking brainrot decided I had to tell Cakewife about the SSW crash. Then in the credits it said UK studio and I was all "!!! was it Pinewood!?" but couldn't find that out. Then Ultimatum has an underwater scene too and the credits actually did say Pinewood this time and I fucking lost it 🤣 Can't escape the farm soap now that I'm in it!
This is redundant to posts I've made before but... Listen. If you told me this time last year that I would actively be following Emmerdale, I wouldn't have believed you. I mean, I was forcefully making myself not look every time it trended this time last year because I knew I would get obsessive about it again like I was before Ryan left* and the thought was, "you can't do that again, it's been 6 years and you've been fine not knowing, you're never even gonna watch it so it's just weird." But then the willpower just crumbled in October and I got sucked in bad and with being well enough to actually watch things this time around, it was just
The cringe (I don't know why it feels so cringe, it just does, I still actively battle it [part of my battle strategy is posting!]) decided if I was going to watch it, it had to be in incognito mode so No One Would Know. Then I decided fuck it, I'm a fucking adult and can do whatever the fuck I want and keeping it secret made it feel gross, so I told Cakewife I had been watching the old Aaron stuff and was gonna continue watching it and pick up the current stuff and liveblogged to her about it all, then decided fuck it even further and started doing liveblogs on here and here we are 🤣
If you told me this time last year that I would be at all in the fandom, even sitting out here on the very edge like I am, I would have laughed at you. Hearty belly laughing.
Here's a thing. I've never been particularly loud about the things I enjoy. Like. Ever. I feel like I'm the kind of person who can be read like a children's book, you can see everything about me easily (I've been informed that's not true—I don't really believe it most the time sometimes though). I feel sometimes that being loud about the things I like is annoying because of it. It feels unnecessary and obnoxious. But I'm trying to lean into that instead of away from it. It's not like it's a quality I dislike in other people! Case in point, it's part of why I love my wife, she's very loud about and proud of the things she enjoys and I find that endearing. So why can't the same be true for me? I don't know. But I'm working on it. Hence the fucking essays (whether as posts or in the tags), I guess.
Then there's the fact that my social anxiety is so bad that even online interactions are difficult for me. You're telling me that I willingly engage with other people that I don't know about something that I like?! And that something happens to be something that, for whatever reason, feels cringe to me specifically to be public about? Unbelievable.
That's the power of the farm soap though, ain't it? I'm glad I just...let myself take part in it all. Watching the show (old AND new), liveblogging, sending people asks (under my own name and not just anon even!!!), commenting on posts, going off in the tags of things where other people can see it, doing my own little (or not so little, once I finally get the PICS thing done 3 billion years from now) essays and shit. It's been good for me.
Aaron specifically is dredging up painful things, but it's not... It's something I can handle, and it's something I'm willing to look in the face now instead of just acknowledging that it happened and not looking too closely at it. I've never allowed myself the...I can't think of the words right now, but something like benefit, I suppose? Rage? Pain? of digging that bullet out of the wound. And that's not to say I ignore it, that I pretend it didn't happen, but I've never given myself the space to acknowledge actually how fucking bad shit was because all I've ever focused on was the fact that it could have been worse instead of the fact that it never should have fucking happened at all. And I've always had the mental strength to do it, just...never felt a reason to, I suppose. Never felt I had the option to, either, I guess, due to life circumstances making me feel like I needed to keep in contact with the person it'll make me unable to tolerate. I've carried that bullet around near my heart for something like 28 years—it's gonna come out now, though, thanks to a certain grump and his big blonde menace (affectionate) that loves him.
Maybe not everything, but some things come to you when you're ready for them, or when you need them most. I feel like that's Aaron for me. He's been on my radar since 2015, he was the reason I started paying attention when the show would trend back then, he's how I got invested in any of this, he compels me and he always has done, even just in gifs. I'm so fucking glad I knew about him back then, because I wouldn't have even noticed Emmerdale or Robron trending again last year if I hadn't, and then I would have missed out on something I've genuinely really been enjoying but also one of my biggest comfort characters of all time.
I've said this before, somewhere, but it was like the universe going, "Hey. Remember this. You'll need it later." And it was right. I've never had a comfort character quite like Aaron before—maybe that's why I feel a bit cringe about it all. The closest as far as level of intensity would be Sam Vimes, but he's so beloved by so many people it's a very different experience. It's really actually quite hard to put into words, but Sam Vimes is my alcoholism** because my brain never fucking shuts up and my cynicism and my anger with the systems and my sense of justice that can't be lived up to; Aaron is my trauma and my pain and my rage and my love; they're both my devotion and my protectiveness, just in different ways. I am them and they are me type shit. And it's not even projecting, it's just...right there.
I think letting myself enjoy the show and engage with it has also helped me to enjoy sports again. Time helped, those wounds don't bleed as often as they used to, and actually having the ability to watch things is a major factor that can't be discounted, but letting myself enjoy something that no one else I know enjoys kind of opened that gate. It helped facilitate the same Bilbo reaction. I'm extremely grateful for that, because holy fucking shit have I missed it. The farm soap has granted a piece of me back, a much bigger piece than I ever realized, and that's astounding to me.
I don't fucking know where this was going or how we got here. Probably something about how it makes sense that I'm suffering from brainrot because, actually, Emmerdale means a lot to me when I think about it, although I never would have believed it. Instead of the road going ever on and on it's just the fucking neverending stream of my thoughts. Thanks for reading all this if you do 💜 Appreciate you taking the time to read my fucking rambling 😅
*When Ryan left I figured that Danny would leave too, not knowing how soaps worked really and thinking that if one of the major people in a couple left then the other would as well, or that he'd have his scenes cut so significantly that he wouldn't really be there since every time they trended it was as a couple, but I think I also couldn't stand the thought of Aaron being with anyone else. It's hard to say for sure about that last. But anyway, I thought that Aaron wouldn't feature (more fool me) so I didn't think I'd need to keep up with it anymore and deleted my Tumblr entirely. I wasn't actively back on this hellsite until last year.
**Much like Vimes I don't fucking drink because one drop is too many. I've been sober 14 years in December. Yes, that means I was only 21 when I got sober. But I'm about three million in my brain, I had been drinking since I was 10 or 11 and heavily since I was 17, and I realized if I didn't stop I never would. So. You don't have to be old to be an alcoholic and I don't understand why people don't understand that.
