I'm just vibing, bro

Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.

And at the same time, there were still things missing.

Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.

That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.

And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.

You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.

Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.

That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.

And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.

At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.

That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.

You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.

And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.

But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.

The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.

And sometimes, you have a string of fandoms that are Actually Pretty Good. And the danger of this—the very great danger—is that when you have a string of Actually Pretty Good and even Actually Amazing obsessions, you start to believe that maybe you have taste. Perhaps you are now immune to the indignities of losing it over something mostly bad.

And frankly, it’s starting to really get on my nerves when people read “I think this thing is good. I wouldn’t change a thing about it and frankly I don’t even think there should be more canon added to it, but I am still going to write thousands of words of fic, make a cosplay, and draw fanart” and then completely misunderstand and respond with “yes I agree—I like things that are good too. But I never feel the transformative/creative fandom instinct for them because they are too good.”

compelling worldbuilding (invites interaction with the setting)

interesting gimmick (see: daemons, drift compatibility. subcategory of compelling worldbuilding)

shipping bait (duh)

original character bait (in-universe categories/factions and design elements that make it fun for people to create their own characters)

compelling narrative (invites interaction and tweaks to the storyline: AUs and fixits and so on)

basically anything that invites interaction and recombination. but fandom also has a sort of multiplying effect: the larger the interactive audience of fandom is, the more likely it is to generate ideas and works that draw in more participants. so:

drifter: cowabunga pizza party

meanwhile, the operator:

This is getting out of hand!

Referenced image under cut:

so,

in ffxiv there are dragons

and this one particular country has been in a war with them for 1k years

also, these dragons can fly and breathe fire, you know, normal typical western dragon things

so poll time

which of these 2 weapons do you think is used for said war

Gun:

Spear:

now i am doing this in good faith and hope like hell you won't google the game

you'll just pick an options based off personal beliefs of what wizard rednecks would pick to fight dragons

oh, and also, do not give the answer in teh reblog tags, please and thank you

Bartholomew

Dolores

Norman

Harold

Magnolia

Names that are normal for babies but weird when you're old:

Maddison

Tanner

Skylar

Mckenzie

Logan

Names that are normal for old people and normal for babies:

Elizabeth

Mary

Michael

Finnegan

Peter

Names that are weird when you're a baby and weird when you're old:

Radish

Kerosene

Australopithecus

Anthill

Hedgemony

Names that are weird when you're normal:

Balthazar

Romulus

Clandestia

Persephone

Kremulon

Names that are normal when you're weird:

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.