I told one of my friends I'd compile a list of fanfics for them, and then decided that, actually, I should just make a post about it because rec lists keep fandom alive. And also these fics are good and people should read them. First half of this list will be NSFW w/ the non-smut focused fics in the later half.
Split into stupid categories chosen by yours truly under the cut.
MY SUB!TOP ILYA AGENDA
Fics that feature Ilya being a service top/sub top. A lot of them have puppy play because lets be real, Ilya is a puppy.
Dog & Leash by a_good_soldier
ball and chain by anonymous
you're so pretty when you take control by Little_White_Lie
careful, i bite by auutumnie
Drive It Like You Stole It by monstersinthecosmos
better whip me if i misbehave by evilrussianprincess
GETTING KINKY
Fics that are kinky but not sub!top Ilya. My favorite of these are the ones where they're creating D/S dynamic out of their own beautiful minds.
i'm waiting for it (that green light, i want it) by sevendawn
aching, aching, aching, and alive by verbaepulchellae
Compatible by jewelledfoxes
i know most people do by some1_around
all you suckers just wanna be me by sargeantwoof
fair play by cutshot
CANON-COMPLIANT
Fics that read as canon-compliant, imho at the very least. Silly goofy fun times for the most part.
The Best Game You Can Name (the good 'ol hockey game) by ARustySpork
corner of the world by berrycluv
how do you feel? by exogenesissymph
wanna get stuck in your head by peculiarblue
Vibes Are Not Data by GlitterCity
A Fierce and Blazing Thing by Annewolfe87
FICS THAT HIT
These fics emotionally devastated me in some way or another, and now I shall inflict that upon all of you <3
the limitations of maddocks questions by viviolet
Til They Retire Your Number by technicallyverycowboy
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you're certain your posture doesn't suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
tbh i think the funniest phenomena that's been happening in the last couple years is "youtuber, having gone too deep into the research hole, has been made an investigative journalist against their will"
this guy started out poking fun at australian politicians and ended up investigating the firebombing of his own home, during which he uncovered connections between the same politician he was making fun of + major organized crime
JasperDasper started out just curious why everything had suddenly become about trans people and questioning some of the sources used in a book. He came out of it, 4 years later, with a 5 hour long video that connects all transphobia to less than 60 people. (I'm not joking. literally every single transphobic rhetoric and bill passed is because of these 50 or so people.)
If you wanna watch it I cannot recommend it enough; I just warn that it covers a LOT.
It’s so significant too that this narrative was collected by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the greatest authors and anthropologists of her time. She was shunned by the “gatekeepers” of both of these professions, largely because of her Blackness, her womanhood, and her uncompromising commitment to honoring and showcasing both in her works. She died penniless and alone in a state-run institution in 1960. All of her works had gone out of publication by then. It took more than a decade before she was rediscovered. A young author by the name of Alice Walker had come across her work and was deeply inspired by it. “In 1973, after an exhaustive search, Walker came across Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Fla. She purchased a headstone for Hurston’s tomb and had it inscribed “A Genius of the South.“”
It is through Zora Neale Hurston’s pioneering sacrifice, and the acceptance of that inheritance by Alice Walker that we have found this missing piece of our history. Without the courageous and unfailing work of Black women, we wouldn’t have Cudjo Lewis’s story. We are slowly regaining a narrative that’s been hidden from us, one that continues to be lied about. Trust Black women to lead the way.
Now I'm wondering what people who never have children do with their time. I know some people find that a loaded or insulting question but I'm 100% serious. For 20 years I've been busy with soccer, volleyball and basketball games and practices. Birthday parties, piano recitals, etc. School stuff. Trips to farms, zoos, parks, museums and theaters - and yes, I know you can do that stuff without kids.
We're entering a new phase of life and I'm not ashamed to admit to feeling a little lost.
I’ve got a long flight upcoming so planning to download some fic to kindle to keep me entertained - what would you (or the community!) say are the best ‘must-read’ most absorbing long-form fics?
Hi - I'm not sure what you've read so far, these are long...and popular... so maybe you've read them before. You can select fics by length on our tabs:
Under 200K Under 210K Under 225K Under 250K Under 275K
Under 310K Under 410K Under 475K Under 650K Under 850K
Under 925K
Here are some I have enjoyed immensely. ~Jen
Hell and High Water by mmerainbows
Kurt counted the days even though no one else did anymore, and for what, he didn’t know. His dad died eight years ago, and he had no other family to speak of. His days were monotonous and thankless as he hunted for the community he lived in. Long gone were the days when he could dabble in music and fashion because that world no longer existed, and without those things - who was Kurt Hummel really? Until the day an emergency transmission is received and what Kurt is forced to reconsider what is existing and what is truly living.
~~~~
Lord of the Manor by divinelady91 (17 parts)
Blaine is the mysterious lord of an estate in the English countryside, rumored to have been inherited under mysterious circumstances. Announcing his intention to marry, he comes to the Hummel household, it is assumed, to claim the eldest Hummel child - Rachel - as his spouse. Once upon a time, her younger brother, Kurt, had been in love with Blaine, and he thought Blaine had feelings for him as well. Sure that those feelings have been thoroughly forgotten, and with his own intention to marry another man yet to be made known, Kurt helps to prepare his sister for the loveless match that awaits her. But what happens when Blaine arrives and tells them that they have all been mistaken?
~~~~~
Westerville Abbey Verse by @hkvoyage
Blaine is the second son of the earl of Westerville, and is considered the spare heir. After his 18th birthday, he attends the London Season to fulfill his duty of finding a wife. He soon realizes he is more attracted to the new footman. Kurt, who has just arrived at Westerville Abbey to work alongside his father, becomes equally as smitten with the earl’s youngest son. Will Blaine and Kurt be able to overcome their class differences in 1910s England? Will their forbidden love survive WW1? A Downton Abbey inspired historical Klaine AU.
and follow up: Life in the Big Apple
~~~~~~
Sonder By @gleefulpoppet
Kurt is one of the most respected and talked about men in the fashion industry and business world. His app Style•Revolution is the fastest-growing app in history, still rising after three years. Recently, he moved the company to Seattle to be at the heart of the newest technology epicenter in the United States. Yet, with all his success, experience keeps teaching him to be wary of people’s motives who want to be close to him, and he wonders if he’ll be alone forever. Or maybe this city has plans for him that he can’t imagine when his gaze locks with a mysterious, honey-hazel-eyed busker.
~~~~~
The Symphony Verse by shandyall
Blaine has spent most of his life feeling like the only thing people notice about him is that he stutters. He’s working hard to overcome his (mostly self created) roadblocks when he meets Kurt in an online class the summer after his freshman year of college.
~~~~~
Crowded House by kellyb321 (ff.net)
All of your favorite Warblers and a few new faces, too. Follow our boys as they start their lives in NYC, each couple facing their own challenges, heartbreak, self-discovery and redemption. Stick around as they realize support, acceptance and most importantly, true love can all be found in one big Crowded House. Heavy on the Klaine and Niff.
~~~~~
A Political Romance by By @yadivagirl
Blaine is the son of a conservative politician. He’s not allowed to have a boyfriend but he falls in love with Kurt. However, something about Blaine isn’t quite right. Something dark and slightly twisted.
Rated M for language, smut, gay sex and dark themes.
Sequel: A Legal Romance
~~~~~
Beautiful Mess by WildHurricane
What do you say when your very straight friend tells you he wants to know what it’s like to kiss a guy and all you want to say is “kiss me”.
Kurt is secretly in love with his best friend Blaine. He’s recently figured out he’s gay, but hasn’t told anyone. Especially not Blaine. Or his girlfriend.
Blaine is confused and in denial about why he wants to kiss Kurt. He’s not gay. He has a long line of girlfriends to prove that.
Both are scared what it will do to their friendship if the other finds out.
~~~~~
Bound For Glory by Cleverboots (Amberlovesocean)
Kurt is assaulted after singing at a school dance and is left for dead, thrown aboard an empty train car at the railroad freight yard to hide the crime.
He wakes up to find he’s been tossed off the car somewhere in an Oregon logging camp, 2500 miles from home. A curly-haired kid named Blaine finds Kurt and protects him by hiding him in his cabin and teaching him how to survive.
Note: Part 1 of the Glory series
~~~~~~
Solid Gold by @ @heartsmadeofbooks
Ten years after breaking his engagement to Blaine, Kurt’s life isn’t the fairy tale he once hoped for. Forced to leave New York, he goes looking for a second chance, not expecting to find it in the town he always wanted to run away from, or with the man whose heart he shattered.
~~~~~
All The Other Ghosts by rainjoy
It’s a big city for one more lost soul in a mask. Superhero AU.
Note: Read and download the pdf HERE or EPUB or read on LJ
Sequel: Grey on LJ or download the PDF or EPUB
Third in the verse: Gloves and Masks (PDF)
4th in the verse: The Other Ghost - available on LJ
NRK is celebration a decade of Skam (😭) with a nine episode podcast. You can listen here
I'm collaborating with @kosegruppie who will be posting my translations and make subtitled videos with them. Make sure to follow them here on insta for all the latest!
Below the cut you'll find the transcript of the first episode (I've skipped a few summaries, the radio hosts watching the show etc, but all cast and crew interviews are there!). Enjoy!
From 03:50
Torkil Risan: It’s hard to measure that kind of thing, but Skam has to be Norway’s biggest tv show success. It was a small productio with low budget, had unknown actors and no traditional marketing. But the show would go on to break streaming records, set the agenda for public debate and take part in changing the language both in Norway and abroad. It would change the lives of many young people and entertain hordes of adults, and not only in Norway, no. There were people using their free time to translate the Norwegian episodes to a steadily growing international audience. Episodes were downloaded both illegally and, well only illegally really. But whatever. People all over the world were watching Skam. Skam has, up until this point, nine international adaptations, with Sram in Croatia as the latest one - it came out in October 2024. And all of this, that is the Norwegian original version, is created, written and directed by one person - Julie Andem.
JA: It became very difficult after a while to film and keep the storylines secret, because we were recorded wherever we went. Especially the outdoor scenes. Like at Nissen there were suddenly hordes of fans from all over the world when we were supposed to film, so that made it a bit difficult.
TR: And you can’t picture what it would become like when unknown 16 and 17 year olds get cast in a new show at NRK.
JA: Before these actors got their roles, at the last round of auditions, I had a talk with each one of them where I said: “I don’t know how big this show will become, it can become nothing, but it might become big. And if it becomes big and you become famous, you give away part of your freedom - the freedom to be anonymous to people. Today, when you’re on the bus, having a bad day, no one bothers you. But after you’ve become famous, people will walk up to you and want to talk to you and you can’t get away from that. When I call you next week and give you the role, if I do, I’ll ask if you’ve thought that over, and what you think of it - because you have to think that over now.” And I said that to each one of them before they got their parts. And then I think it was Josefine who said, we talked later about what I had said, that she thought “that lady is delusional. She’s making a small P3 show”. My talk went in one ear and out the other.
JA: It’s hard to imagine things like this for people that haven’t experienced success like that, and what it demands of you afterwards. And the freedom you lose to be anonymous. It is a really difficult pressure and it can be challenging. We thought a lot about it throughout and one of the main reasons that we ended Skam when we did, was because of that pressure on the young actors.
TR: Is this an ongoing conversation with the cast?
JA: I always think - there’s no one outside of it who understands what we experienced with Skam. So the best ones to talk to, always, about these things are the cast and the production team, who understand it and have the same feelings.
TR: That Skam also changed the lives of those who created it, we’ve established. I am curious about how Julie Andem, who has no clue how big the show is going to become, created these characters?
JA: As I remember it, I did loads of research with the target group to understand what that group, girls in Norway aged 16, needed, what stories it needed. And I think my goal was to develop 10 characters who could fit into a universe about them. That’s where I started. And the plan was that all the characters would develop in a way that they could carry their own season. So all of them were developed as main characters. I created them before the seasons, before the storylines.
TR: In September it’ll be ten years since Skam was released. It was released more like an event than a traditional tv show. Short clips could be dropped at any point during the week and people in the show posted on social media. It was Mari Magnus who was responsible for these digital updates.
MM: All the characters, even if they don’t have open accounts on social media, have a bunch of email addresses. I have a box full of sim cards and burner phones. Everyone had a facebook account. They were private, but it was so that it would feel a little real if you searched “Isak Valtersen”.
TR: Someone else that became well known to the audience, was media professor Vilde Schanke Sundet. She saw the format as unique enough that she had to start doing research on Skam while it was still possible.
VSS: I binged the entire first season one night. I remember laying in the cosy corner at home, watching on the ipad. I went to bed at 2:30 am and thought “now I understand what they are talking about”. I was interested in analysing it the same way researchers have been interested in analysing multimedia storytelling - how the story is built, how you make the different components, what it is NRK wants with this show, what it is trying to tell. And you become so drawn into the story that the ability to analyse goes a bit up and down through the different seasons.
TR: What makes Skam different from other tv shows?
VSS: There’s both things that make it very different and things that are very similar. Because the dramatic curves are similar to other dramas we know of. It’s love triangles, good vs evil, the struggle to find yourself, all things similar to the high school/coming of age genre. And it’s well made, but that’s not what’s groundbreaking. The groundbreaking part is how the story is told. You're doing it real time, so if you’re following the blog it will appear very close. You never know when something is coming. It’s unpredictable, it drags people in. It’s based on the needs of the audience. They did loads of research when developing the show and it appears closer when the setting is a Norwegian high school than an American one. That makes it different and innovative. I think all the fans know they are fictional characters, but they feel much more real because we are not sitting down in front of the tv to watch, they are just there in your everyday life. It’s much more at the top of your mind than other things you watch and put behind you until the next episode is released.
TR: The way Skam was created made it special. But that was not the most important part for Morten Hegseth.
MH: The format has been given too much credit. It was a good format to post clips in that way, but the reason it was so good was that the content was amazing. It wasn’t the publishing strategy that made Skam an international phenomenon.
(Skip to 13:26)
TR: Before they created Skam, the show creator Julie Andem and a few others made in depth interviews with young people in the target group. And the challenges Eva has in season 1, was pretty common with the group.
JA: What is that life like? When you’re coming from secondary school, where you have a friend group and a familiar and safe environment and you’re thrown into a new universe. Everything is starting over and you have to find your place again. But she starts out as a girl who has become totally dependent on her boyfriend. She’s been thrown out of the friend group because of the choice she’s made to be together with her boyfriend, with Jonas, and that makes her dependent on him.
TR: A successful way to independence is to become friends with a confident, stylish and cool new girl, like Noora. That, despite being good in Spanish, isn’t as crazy about russ as the other girls Eva start’s to hang out with - Jente-Chris, Vilde and Sana, who has concrete plans to fix a spot on a russebuss. And there you have our girl gang. Do you, the listener, think they are cool? Are they supposed to be cool?
JA: Socially, in school, they are not a cool group. That’s what the first storyline is about. The Pepsi Max gang are the cool, pretty girls and the other girls are not so cool. But I think they are very cool.
TR: What about the boys, aren’t they cooler?
JA: Yeah, they do at least have cooler references and masks. I’s more important to them to be cool. So they might be “cooler”.
TR: To actress Lisa Teige, it was a bit like starting a new school - moving from Bergen and start working as an actor in Skam. How much of Eva is really in Lisa?
LT: In the beginning I felt very different from Eva, because she went through very different things, I thought at that time. But things like finding friends in high school, I do identify with. I didn’t have that boyfriend drama, at least so early on. But looking back at it now, I would say I see myself in a lot of the things Skam talks about. I’ve also been in girl drama, had partner problems and the vulnerability in finding new friends. But back then, I felt the need to be like “No! I’m not going through the same things as Eva right now”. But really I did eventually go through those things.
TR: And like Eva, Lisa did find some good friends on Nissens’s school yard.
LT: I remember I noticed they were a few years older than me. I thought they were incredibly cool. That was my first thought “shit, these are cool people with experience”. It felt very cool to be part of that group. And I have so many good memories from the set with all the girls together. Especially because there’s a lot of humor surrounding the Vilde and Chris characters. They improvised many funny parts and we were laughing so hard on set. The dynamics of the group was really good.
TR: But Bergen, where Lisa is from, and Oslo are two different cities and they have different accents.
LT: Some things were difficult for me, as someone from Bergen. Like when I was supposed to say vors (pre-game) for the first time, which I had never said before and I don’t think I had ever been to one. And they said vors in the Oslo dialect and it was so difficult for me. I had to call mum and dad back home to ask how I was supposed to say the word.
TR: Eva is also one of the characters who is making out the most in the show. And here both Lisa and actor Marlon Langeland, who plays Jonas, got thrown into the deep end from the start.
LT: We had a workshop before filming, where we got to know each other and we played some games, as warm up. But to start kissing that person is something totally different. I remember dreading that quite a lot, because we were making out the first day of filming.
LT: And that’s the kind of thing you dread a lot, but when you first get going it’s very mechanical in a way. You don’t think about what you’re really doing and it’s like “can you place your hand there”, “turn a bit that way” and “make the kiss a bit more intense, because it looks good on camera”.
(skip to 27:19)
TR: Mari Magnus mentioned The penetrators, the coolest russebuss at Nissen.
MM: Penetrators has a song, that’s on Spotify and I don’t know if it has been said before, it probably has, but *whispers* it’s Tarjei.
TR: That’s rapping?
MM: Yes.
TR: So they guy singing lines like “Penetrators cums on your face, the weather report says flooding, it’ll rain cum”, that Tarjei Sandvik Moe, who plays Isak. Tarjei went to Nissen himself during this time and managed to sneak in several references to actual things going on in the school. And to blur the lines between the fictional and reality was one of the show’s goals. To make the show as real as possible they had instagram accounts and could start chatting with each other on friday evenings.
MM: It was a Friday evening and Julie was probably at work and we posted a photo on Jonas’ account, a Big Smalls reference, that he tagged Isak in. And we are logged into one account each, one on Isak’s, one on Jonas’. And we decided to have some fun in the comment section, hoping that maybe three people would see it, but that these three would have such a weird experience that they in school on Monday would say “You won’t believe what I say on instagram on Friday”. So Isak and Jonas drag Eva into it, but Eva is on a russebuss. And the audience is so cool, there are fans playing along and commenting things like “I saw you in the cafeteria today” “what did you get on your maths test?”. This is week two maybe, and those things we could do a bit more strategically at the start to get the engagement going.
TR: It’s a bit slow in the beginning, but interest in Skam grows quite fast. So to chat as the characters on instagram becomes too difficult, there’s too many others taking part in the conversation. And some audience members were more engaged than others. One of them was Julian Dahl, who was very active in the comment section. Active enough to get mentioned in the show.
TR: You’re living alongside these characters and sometimes that creates problems. Because Eva wants Jonas and Isak to go with her to the revy-party but they can’t. Why not?
Isak: We can’t
Jonas: Why not?
Isak: The tickets to Kindred Fever.
Jonas: I had totally forgotten that.
TR: You’re excused if the name Kindred Fever doesn’t ring any bells. They had a mini hype right around the time when this was released and they happened to have a concert the same day as the revy-party.
JA: The only reason we picked that concert was because it was Oslo that day. We just thought what band could they possibly be interested in that’s playing in Oslo that day?
TR: To make the right references is hard when you’re making a show. How do you know what 16 year old boys are saying, doing and would post? Sometimes Mari Magnus asked the actors to do it themselves.
MM: In season one we sent Isak, Eva and Jonas out on the town with some phones and told them to make some content as if they were a friend group eating burgers in town. And they came home with loads of nice stuff we could post.
(Skip to 33:40)
TR: I’m at your disposal - you can ask questions about the show and leave your thoughts and tips. There’s many easter eggs and symbolism in Skam that might be fun to dig deeper into if we come across it. There’s a messaging function on NRK radio. You could for example ask, like I asked Julie Andem, why is the show called Skam?
JA: We had loads of suggestions and we hung big sheets of paper at the auditions where they could write suggestions for the name of the show. And we got a lot of strange ones and Ingvild Marie Nyborg, who was on the team, came up with Skam and no one of us hated it, so that was the one.
TR: Do you remember any of the ones you hated?
JA: I remember “the 99:er gang”.
TR: I’ve found some questions the fans are wondering by sneaking around in some of the many Skam online fan forums: Like, who in the Skam universe is Lisa Teige?
LT: During the auditions I very much wanted to be Noora. Especially when I was 16 I thought Noora was super cool. But I do feel closest to Eva. I recognize myself in the insecurity and the fun parts and being someone with principles. It’s a boring answer, but it is Eva. That’s why I got to play her.
i will reblog my fanfics there, but i won't post anything there "first." probably? i guess we'll see? watch this space? but FOR NOW, it's only a place for me to shove my fanfics. you can follow it if you want.
asks are off because i don't necessarily want to use this as my Fandom Blog.
i'll try and go thru my archives and reblog some fanfic there, watch this space
i guess theoretically i COULD use it as a "everything fanfic, all drabble requests" blog but idk. it seems like i'd have to ask a lot of people to follow that blog and that seems annoying for us all
chriscolfer: DARREN WON A TONY!!! 👏👏👏👏👏 And then he left it with me completely unattended! 😂😂😂 Congratulations my friend! I’m so proud of you and can’t think of a more deserving person! ❤️ @/darrencriss @/maybehappyending [posted June 9, 2025]
if you are lost in the rut, i am begging you to read this essay by Sasha Chapin suggesting what, essentially, my take, are potential jump-starts back into living life in real time. like actually experiencing experiences
do it now! don’t lose months, years, or decades! there is a life beyond doomscrolling, and it’s finite (sorry. sorry. i know okay)
Ok I found this genuinely helpful today, having recently been dealing with long-term stress and a creeping amount of anhedonia. There are several brilliant ideas in here, I highly recommend giving it a read.
It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.
It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.
I think people want to help the environment in small but tangible ways, which is hard right now because of.. well... because of The Horrors. And being able to say 'wow! I helped this creature cross a dam' makes you feel good.
I also think that most people can relate to a small, helpless creature trying to get from one place to another and there's a FUCKIN WALL in the way.
But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.
Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:
Foldit (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
Bioblitz, an event where citizens identify as many species in an area within a period of time
Species Watch (animal species)
BOINC’s Compute for Science
Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects
Label trees in aerial photos
Count cells in fossils and modern leaves
Digitize Atmospheric Data
Count penguins
US-based Citizen Science Database
eBird (bird identification)
Merlin (bird identification by sound)
iNaturalist (nature identification)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Feeling dirty and grimy for extended periods of time is extremely draining on the mental well-being of humans. Psychological studies prove it is detrimental to our self-esteem and contentment. And no wonder; we are animals--homo sapiens, a kind of ape--that instinctively places high importance on personal grooming. Like monkeys and cats and birds in a zoo, one of the best ways to make us feel sad ... is to make us feel gross to ourselves.
So here's an easy saying from my therapist/zookeeper:
"If you feel like you hate the world, eat something.
If you feel like the world hates you, get some sleep.
If you feel like you hate yourself, take a shower.
Clearly, I don’t mean all nostalgia. There are times when we look back on something and go “Yeah, that was awesome,” and reminisce in that space for a bit before returning to the present.
That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about persistent nostalgia that comes with a sense of yearning; the kind of nostalgia we continuously turn towards for relief from the present. This kind of nostalgia is a form of unprocessed grief.
There’s a lot I can say about nostalgia of this sort. For one thing, many people don’t recognize that it IS unprocessed grief. For another, it seems to reflect a specific phenomena.
There was a study floating around here at one point about fans of baseball. When researchers asked fans of different generations when the game was at its finest, the fans all gave different dates, but those dates all correlated to the time each fan was about 12 years old. Interestingly enough, this is also the age most people seemed to have been when they experienced the stuff they’re currently nostalgic about.
Why is this? I think it’s because 12 is a sweet spot in our cognitive development. We’re old enough to track the goings-on of the world around us, but still too young to really pick up on the nuance, complexities, or problems behind everything. Unless we’re someone who went through some complicated stuff at that age, we experience the world exactly the way it appears to be, which makes it feel untarnished and “pure” in character. But as we grow older, we become increasingly aware of life’s imperfections, which creates an illusion that the world is steadily marching into a state of decline. That’s when we start turning towards nostalgia as a source of comfort.
I remember when my generation (the millennials) would talk about how we didn’t want to grow up to be the kind of old folks who got entrenched in conservative thinking, who waxed poetic about the good old days and criticized anything new and progressive. Only, we thought this attitude was the result of aging itself. Now that I’m older and watching my peers chase the highs of bygone experiences, I realize nostalgia is probably the culprit. When people make a habit of longing for the past, they grow bitter about the present, resistant to any new changes made to the world, and get stuck in familiar patterns of thinking. Conservatism is just the eventual byproduct of this process compounding on itself.
Now here’s the good news! This kind of grief is no different from any other kind, and can be processed the same way—by moving through it and letting ourselves feel the loss fully (and there are plenty of books and youtube videos on the subject). Once we’ve processed it, we can fully orient ourselves to actually being in the present.
“But that sounds bad!” you say. “I want to get away from the present!” Well, I’ve got good news about that too—even though things are pretty dicey right now, all time-periods have had their chaos. And because the world’s always had its chaos, it means we could always find the means to navigate it.
I think one trick to handling what appears to be an increasingly-complex world is learning how to use an increasingly-complex mind. Remember, what we perceive as the world unraveling as we get older is just our brains picking up on more stuff.
The catch is that our society doesn’t actually teach us how to use this greater, adultier cognition, which involves things like “how to manually resource our mental faculties,” and “how to care for and guide the inner child.” But this field is still pretty rough, decentralized, and mostly found within niche pockets of society, in the realms of cognitive therapies and spiritual mindfulness practices and the like. Unfortunately, this means I can’t point to specific methodologies yet. Society at large still thinks of the brain as a machine that runs on automatic transmission, rather than a stick-shift that carries the collective experiences and opinions of its ancestors.
But even with this state of affairs, having awareness that this kind of nostalgia = grief is half the battle. That alone does us plenty of favors.
One final thought I’ll leave you with: We can’t process grief if we’re busy being containers for all the world’s hardships. You must take breaks from all the bad that’s happening, and you must try to do so by seeking a source of pleasure other than nostalgia. Find a new experience for your inner child to be fascinated by. I know that seems like a lot to do, but it’s about teaching the inner child that gratification can be found in new experiences and not just in old ones. That alone will safeguard you from the plight of having a bleak outlook for the future.
baratheonpilled
2087
prguitarman
amandla
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
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