Tag: FEELINGS

Clearly I need to reset my expectations re: writing

Because (AGAIN) I’ve written something with my only intention being “This makes sense for the character. This is how they would feel, based on their history,” and it’s turned out to be really close to my own issues when that hadn’t occurred to me at all.

Sorry, Fictional Guy. Turns out I don’t know how to deal with people expecting things from me either.

So, relatedly, I have way too fucking many feelings about Big Fluffy Dog Guy, and not romantic feelings, but “I don’t feel how you want me to feel, I’m lying to you, I’m leading you on, I am awful”-type feelings. Like, a really excessive amount of feelings that don’t really have anything to do with him. I am going to do my very best to behave like a responsible adult when I talk to him, but my brain is kind of imploding.

I’m wondering whether I should call this a subset of the general “I don’t like to disappoint people”/”I just can’t do the thing and how can I explain that” problem, or whether I actually have a specific issue about this re: relationships.

FEELINGS AND INFORMATION

Okay so Sparkly’s friend from here? Yeah I was right in my speculation about why he said that and why he was so cagey. I’m pretty sure, anyway.

Things about this guy (whom we can call C):

  • He has the same problem I do where he struggles with talking and it comes off as being frustrated (as pointed out by the mock trial coach. I sat in on a practice a few days ago.)
  • Wow he has even worse “expressive language” problems than I do, he just doesn’t get as frustrated. In the context of learning correct trial procedures he was able to get away with straight-up asking “I don’t know how to say that. How do you say it correctly?” (despite having heard other people say similar things multiple times, and presumably having read about it too if he hasn’t been completely slacking) and then proceeded to repeat precisely word-for-word what he was told.
  • When he’s nervous he talks non-stop which (previous to the above) I was going to call “language problems and coping with them the opposite way I do”, which, maybe still makes sense? I’m not sure.
  • He was telling me about his hobby (he collects vintage action figures and does youtube videos about them) and maybe this is reading too much into things but I sure felt like he was carefully riding the line between not saying anything and excitedly saying EVERYTHING AT ONCE in the stereotypical way.
  • He mentioned having studied no he did say being taught about how to read body language and didn’t explain the context.
  • We were talking about Responsible Roommate being sensitive to gluten, and he mentioned autistic people being put on gf diets. And I said that I hadn’t heard of any evidence for it and I was suspicious of easy answers like that, and he seemed a little surprised.
  • He apparently thought the vaccine thing was true.
  • He has a lanyard with the puzzle piece pattern on it, in his car.

Obviously I don’t actually know, but the picture I’m putting together has me going “Oh, God, that poor guy.”

Edited to add: Apparently he is EXTREMELY SENSITIVE about his hats. Personally I don’t understand how people can prefer having stuff over their ears to having too much noise, but apparently some people do, so this might be a thing.

—–

Sparkly, you better not be weird to him about this.

Poor Sparkly and her gender, oh my god.  Poor Sparkly.  “I feel unwomanly and unmanly”, she says.  So I try to get in both “You are great the way you are” and “If you want to be different that’s okay”. 

Sparkly, this is where it’s a good thing that I’m less cautious/more open-minded about these things.  You never need to worry about me judging you or getting insecure or anything like that.  I will love you and support you however I can through all your tough feelings and whatever you decide to do about them.  So don’t worry about that, at least.

I’m sort of in an awkward in-between place for writing about this.  It’s not remotely over or settled, but there’s a lot of backstory that I have to explain before I can get to where I am now.  But I think I should write about it.

When we first had sex, Sparkly and I tried doing oral.  It was interesting but not orgasm-producing for me, and I really didn’t like giving and stopped after barely doing anything.

And I did my best not to be hurtful about it but apparently Sparkly has been feeling really hurt all this time.

Sparkly is worried that she’s upset me or made it worse by telling me how she feels, but it’s actually okay because she’s upset but not about what my jerkbrain is worried about.  She’s not judging me for not liking it, or expecting me to get over that.  She’s never done anything like that, and I’m really grateful.

Today in things Minty read ten years ago but can’t stop thinking about

Abarat by Clive Barker. (Apparently there several sequels now but I haven’t read them.) I am just so frustrated about the thing with Candy and Christopher Carrion.

On the one hand, it’s arguably a cool situation from a feminist point of view, in that it subverts the normal course of events where a woman is expected to love and redeem the male villain/antihero.  But it irritates me for various reasons.

  • She didn’t just reject him.  She left him to drown.
  • Author wants us to believe that dark doesn’t mean evil and that being from the night islands doesn’t make you evil.  Except that apparently for Christopher it does.  It’s hard to argue with “she caught a glimpse of his soul/true self/whatever and it was full of monsters” but why the fuck are we letting anyone be inherently evil in this setting?
  • The one big, specific evil thing she thinks he’s done?  Not him.  It was his grandmother, who has manipulated and controlled him for basically his whole life.
  • He may want it for confused, misguided reasons (see also) but he consciously, explicitly, wants to be on her side.  He wants to be redeemed.  Why not take him up on it and make him prove it?  It might not actually work in the long term, but at least he would no longer be obsessively pursuing you, which would be better for both of you!

Mostly I’m not upset with Candy as a character but with the author taking the ridiculous cop-out of “his soul is full of monsters and grossness”.  If we’re going to discuss abusive and stalker-y behavior (and let’s discuss what he’s doing and what was done to him), let’s actually discuss it, instead of handwaving that she Just Knows that he’s evil.

I have strong feelings about religious music.

And all the responsive-reading things and prayers and stuff.

I’m telling you about this because I went to Sparkly’s “baccalaureate” (a church service to go with graduation).  Because Sparkly’s college is Catholic, it was extremely long (I was there for 2 1/2 hours, because I came early in order to get a seat) and there was a lot of music and a lot of responses that the congregation was supposed to say.

And the people sititng near me totally slacked off on all of it.  The woman next to me gave me funny looks for actually singing when the leader person gestured to the audience.  And it seemed like the percentage of people in the whole room who bothered to sing or speak went down as the service went on.

There was supposed to be a part where all the friends and relatives were blessing the graduates– with someone at the front reading a bunch of blessings, and it said in the program that we were supposed to say “Amen” after each one.  But she didn’t even really give us time to say it, and nobody did.

 

I am not Catholic and I wasn’t raised Catholic so I don’t have any familiarity with any of it– I didn’t know any of the music, and most of the responsive things were different from anything I’ve done before.  But, two things:

— There are a lot of musicians in my family.  Ever since I could read, it was just assumed that I would sing in church.  I’ve never thought of not singing as an option.  Boundary Girl once said something about feeling self-conscious about singing in church that was just completely incomprehensible to me.  At my parents’ church everybody sings, including the ninety-year-old ladies who could be better described as croaking instead of singing.  It doesn’t matter whether you sound good.  That isn’t the point.  The point is the action of singing, of joining your voice with everyone else’s, of focusing all your attention on the words and the music, and doing it to praise God.

— You can’t not participate because you think it’s silly.  Everything becomes awkward and silly if people aren’t willing to put effort and sincerity into it.  And even really silly things can be important and meaningful if you put in the effort.  I also have strong opinions about what types of religious music I like (basically, all my favorite things were written before 1900) but I never refuse to sing anything.

My experiences with music are as close to believing in God as I get.  I’m incredibly frustrated and disappointed that so many people at the baccalaureate decided to have an awkward experience of mumbling and listening to the choir and taking pictures instead of an actual religious service.

I grew up among people who you truly cannot beat for actually saying Amen, out loud and all together and sounding like they mean it.  I wanted to give Sparkly a proper blessing and a proper prayer and, y’know, give some indication of “the community supports our graduates!” besides it being written in the program?  But no.  They made it a thing to sit through instead of a thing to participate in.  Apparently the people around where Sparkly was sitting actually sang, so that’s good at least.

I was looking through photos on Facebook and

So in [fan organization] most of us just dress up as “random person from [fictional universe]”, but there’s one woman who cosplays as the main character, and she is just so beautiful. (She doesn’t really look like the character, apart from being tallish, but that’s okay.) And she has an AMAZING costume complete with actual medals, I have no idea how she got them, but they’re amazing.  I got to hold the case for the fanciest one.  And she’s actually a really nice person. 

So what I’m trying to say is, she is awe- and squee-inspiring.