Mel

they/them, 30, multi Fandom trash and occasional rants

[ungroomedcat]

I feel backed up with unsched tears and irritation and some amount of guilt. This week has been a terrible nightmare and so soon after my brother's near death only two years ago. It's not over yet. I'm sitting in the hospital alone watching my unconscious father breathe through a tube with a dozen IVs plugged into him, blood draining from his lungs and chest and his heart pumping with the help of drugs. Every time he wakes, he doesn’t remember where he is. He does not remember who he's seen or what's been said to him, and it's heartbreaking to think this may be his life from now on, after he leaves the hospital. Because he will leave the hospital. He is such a fortunate, strong and loved man. Despite all his flaws and trauma he's given us, he is my father, and this has been shattering me. He was dead for an hour. Dead for an hour.

I still can't wrap my mind around it and I was not there when he collapsed. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for everyone who was present to see that. Dear god. I'm so exhausted. I'm a little bitter. I haven't slept in days. I begrudge my family members who don't offer more than just coming to see him for a few hours. Bring us food. Take turns to stay with him in the night. Help my sister out. The woman will have to take him in for who knows how long and it's going to be so goddamn expensive. Of course I'll help out, I just wish other people were more willing to do it also. I'm so tired. I'm looking forward to going home tomorrow, and I feel so guilty about that, because now my sister and my mother will have little help and it's going to be so hard on them. It brings me back to my brother and that kills me too. Man. I'm so, so tired. My family's all at my sister's having dinner, and I have now volunteered to stay back for half the amount of time because from the ten+ people here other than my mom and my sister, no one wants to actually stay and do the hard work.

[quelmdn]

"I long to be that complete"

[anaincir18]

Just because it's ordinary doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

He is canonically handsome. Accept that. Girl-fail but that doesn't mean he's not eye pleasing. It can be true at the same time dear those binary thinkings.

[frightfullytreeish]

dear everyone on tumblr who needs to host images elsewhere (e.g. to embed on ao3 etc), please give squidge a go!! it's free, it's nonprofit and it's geared towards fandom so nsfw images won't get deleted!! and please stop using imgur if you can because they blocked the uk rather than acquiesce to the fucking internet safety laws, which I can't really hold against em but it does mean all imgur pictures just show up as big purple boxes now

[blogquantumreality]

Squidge! Holy blast from the past, Batman. The last time I remember even looking at that site was... eons ago.

( Oh, what was I reading? The Quartz Key. Yes, it's m/m. )

[beatrice-otter]

Not only is Squidge still around, it's expanded and grown! It is still run by the same guy, though now it's a nonprofit with a board and everything, and while they maintain all the old squidge sites as static archives, they have a new multifandom archive using the AO3 code at squidgeworld.org. They also host podfics and fanart.

For those younguns in the crowd, back in the day erotic fanworks--especially slash--was not welcome very many places. Walter was willing to host it, and has been a haven for NSFW fanworks since 1994. The various archives and so on hosted at squidge.org were never very large, compared to lots of other archives, but they were a necessary part of the fannish ecosystem, and I'm really glad that there is now a structure in place to keep the whole system running beyond just "Walter's a great guy willing to donate lots of time and money." Walter is a great guy! but like. it's good to have other people to help out and keep things going in the long run.

[ungroomedcat]

I am beginning to change my perspective on a lot of things and it is life-changing. I am beginning to see that for years I have seen myself and desired, whether consciously or not, to be *small*. To blend in the background, to let others make choices for me, to please. I have always known I have low self confidence, but I had never seen it with such clarity. It's in the small things like during a meeting at work when I'm the subject matter expert and people see me that way, they believe what I say, and it always surprises me. Like I can be bullshitting out of my ass and these people will believe it. It's empowering to realize, and I need to learn to believe in myself too. Even if I'm wrong, even if I don't know, even if I'm uncomfortable. Face it, own it. You are a grown ass 30+ woman, it's time to stop hiding.

And that too, is bad thinking. I have this expectation, this way of always comparing myself to my peers. I think I would benefit from therapy. From continuing to expand my social circle and getting out of my comfort zone. I'm no longer satisfied hiding behind this shell of meeknees and politeness. I crave to be free. Able to speak my thoughts unashamedly, able to speak up with a firm voice. It won't happen overnight. But it will happen. I see it. I'm changing up the kind of person I am into who I want to be.

It all begins with cleaning my house tonight.

Kidding, but that's part of it too. Clean even if I don't want to. Push through. Push through.

[ungroomedcat]

Yesterday I was feeling incredibly guilty for not allowing a friend to use my house when they were visiting because I wasn't comfortable with it since I would be out of town, and while talking aboit it with another friend, she told me, "don't feel bad, it's your house. You're allowed to have boundaries." I don't think anyone has ever said that type of thing to me before. I didn't let that friend cross that boundary and I was feeling like I should have. I was feeling sorry that she spent money on a hotel. But we are all adults here and responsible for our own choices, I'm not responsible for her. We aren't that close. If she finds me rude, so be it. Let me be rude. It's who I am and what I'm comfortable with. Inconveniencing others is secondary to my what's important to me. It's ok to have boundaries. It's ok to say no. It's ok to be rude. I'm allowed to be rude. I'm allowed to be rude.

[ungroomedcat]

I am beginning to change my perspective on a lot of things and it is life-changing. I am beginning to see that for years I have seen myself and desired, whether consciously or not, to be *small*. To blend in the background, to let others make choices for me, to please. I have always known I have low self confidence, but I had never seen it with such clarity. It's in the small things like during a meeting at work when I'm the subject matter expert and people see me that way, they believe what I say, and it always surprises me. Like I can be bullshitting out of my ass and these people will believe it. It's empowering to realize, and I need to learn to believe in myself too. Even if I'm wrong, even if I don't know, even if I'm uncomfortable. Face it, own it. You are a grown ass 30+ woman, it's time to stop hiding.

And that too, is bad thinking. I have this expectation, this way of always comparing myself to my peers. I think I would benefit from therapy. From continuing to expand my social circle and getting out of my comfort zone. I'm no longer satisfied hiding behind this shell of meeknees and politeness. I crave to be free. Able to speak my thoughts unashamedly, able to speak up with a firm voice. It won't happen overnight. But it will happen. I see it. I'm changing up the kind of person I am into who I want to be.

It all begins with cleaning my house tonight.

Kidding, but that's part of it too. Clean even if I don't want to. Push through. Push through.

[lavenderfoxboy-deactivated20240]

i wish there was more it/its positivity that wasn't just "hell yeah look at you go funky little goblins/otherwordly beings/freaks/objects"

[oupydogcity]

this is really important actually i wanted to link one of my fav tweets on this subject :>

[ID: A tweet by Lemon (synthesighs) that says, "When ppl Who aren't familiar with them encounter "it/its" pronouns, they usually assume diminutive connotations. Little things are "it". A rock is it. A pencil is it. They rarely consider that "it" may refer to a mountain or music or the sun or love." /end ID]

[2129888]

love letter to fitzy's hair

[edgar-rain]

Ah, right, I’m also a fan of Berserk and Vinland Saga… So here are some random sketches. I’d like to draw more of them, but for now, it is what it is 🥹

[dykefitzchivalry]

Fitz immediately after finding out about Amber

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #14,395:

Sharing a meta theory with reasons from canon as for why it would work and would make sense, never saying that it HAS to be like this but that it could work due to such and such reasons.

And yet somehow people take it as a personal offence, because they headcanon the opposite due to personal preference.

That is great that you vibe with B more. I just said that A would make more sense with the information we have from canon, not that you have to now follow A.

[ungroomedcat]

Sometimes the "headcanon" is completely nonsensical and contradicts the canon, and the people that support it have the audacity to get mad. It's not about interpretation vs interpretation at that point, but having piss poor reading comprehension and fundamentally misreading the text.

And arguably worse, having an interpretation so shit that it breaks and reduces a character to stereotypes that fit a small and often western box, and erases all complexity the author so painstakingly built over dozens of chapters. Example I recently ran into: people headcanon an old man as trans when his entire life has been about accepting himself, who grew up believing he was undeserving of love because he was a man, that men can't be treated gently, whose father told him again and again he should have been born a woman. But fans: she hates being a man! Trans!

Learn to read for fucks sake.

[bloodraven55]

this part also looked and sounded fucking incredible god they really put their entire heart and soul into this episode and it shows

[miaabobriha]

Sometimes I miss his cat eyes

[ylissean-brynhildr]

the michihara manga makes me want to call reinhard and kircheis every homophobic slur in the book -📚

[ungroomedcat]

I met a fellow berserk fan at a con who was not a griffith hater nor a griffith bambification stan. Just a fan. We had a nice long chat about how amazing of a character Griffith is and his relationship with Guts without getting heated one way or another, and it was so great. One hardly meets people irl (or in the internet outside of tumblr for that matter) who can think critically about this series and specifically about Griffith.

Other people's comments about Griffith went like this (I was carrying around a large, lovely griffith print I had just purchased):

"You must have a lot of guts carrying *that guy* around."

"Just answer this: do you agree what he did was fucked up?"

"Oh no, not that mother fucker."

"I wanted to cosplay Griffith but my partner said it was rage bait."

[emilicorail]

??? 😮

[meropaline]

Various screenshots of the interior and exterior of Ucchan's from the original Ranma 1/2 series. Took these because I get obsessive with accurately describing locations in fanfiction.