Today’s deck is The Good Tarot… as opposed to…?
Yesterday’s and today’s have the curious detail that they’re ones I bought at bookstores here. I felt like the selection in them was a bit limited but it’s definitely curated.
This one isn’t BAD (it would be such irony if it was), it’s just not my style, I prefer decks that glide better when shuffling and that I can shuffle without making hand gestures like I’m trying to play nine keys apart in a piano… and you’ve seen how long my fingers are, imagine trying to shuffle this with average lady hands.
Today’s reading feels like a continuation of the one from a couple of days ago talking about new creative endeavors. This one is talking about how I might be moving away from creative blocks.
This is relevant because “block” is basically any obstacle rather than just usual creative blocks.
So remember how I said yesterday I felt on the verge of a tantrum? Yeah, today my body just refused to move out of bed even though the alarm woke me up proper at the right time.
However, being rested (and thus discarding the “tantrum is just me being tired” possibility), I decided to actually listen to my body. I don’t get stress-nauseous too easily, I’m always stressed after all, and it takes something special to push me to that edge.
So then I start negotiating with myself. Eventually I reach the compromise that I’ll cancel the trip to free myself from that stressor, but make phone calls to make sure that whenever I do need to go I’m not missing any papers and such.
And some of you might notice the curious way I frame things like “negotiating with myself” and such. You might be thinking I’m being figurative but uh… no.
Any of you ever heard about plurality? I don’t really have different personalities inside of me, I’m more of a weird conglomeration of copies of myself within me overlooking the self-conscious self that I actually am.
If I had to describe the me that’s me, the me that feels things directly as “me”, I’m a self-conscious anxious creature that simultaneously thinks of itself as worthless without being in service to others AND a an unbearable load to everyone. Someone that others have called kind while in my head I was just hoping to not be more of a bother by breathing.
Then, after my whole self crumbled into nothing because it was clearly built on fragile foundations, it’s like my brain decided “listen, we cannot continue this way so I’m gonna take measures. This here is you and he’s going to perceive you the way you perceive your friends. From now on if you’re not gonna get angry that something happened to you, you’re gonna get angry like if a friend told you that just happened to them.”
I haven’t felt “myself” since then… or rather, I’ve never felt “myself” ever, and that episode just made me face that fact. I’ve always felt my identity very fragile. There’s this story my mom told me of how I was able to read out loud fluently at age 6-7 but then one day I come back home reading stilted… because every other kid in class was at that reading level and I didn’t want to be the odd one out more than I already was.
I vaguely remember that, but even if I didn’t I could believe the story. It’s not like I’ve never had a personality, it just felt very… thin and fragile when out in the world, I’ve always felt like I’m piloting a body with other forces within me that I was scared of (people often thought I was inexpressive because I was just scared of my emotions running rampant). The solution ended up being very proverb-worthy: A single twig can be snapped, a bundle of them cannot.
If people are usually a ray of white light that can be refracted by a prism into different colors, I’m more like a bunch of colored lights with the same goal of producing a beam of white light in sync.
I wonder how much of that comes through to others without that context… People have also called me introspective and/or observant and I wonder sometimes how much of that is inherent and how much of that is me just… being unable to take The Self for granted all my life.
Cutting the story short, that part of me that’s less self-sacrificial was going “do you feel that nausea in your stomach? You know you’re gonna be absolutely drained by the end of all this, you’re already so drained in fact, and yet you insist in putting yourself through that? I’M the one that’s gonna go through the consequences” and so my body decided it was going to refuse giving me the energy to get out of bed until I found a compromise where I don’t get obliterated.
And you know what? It was right, it’s always right.
Some of you might be thinking of Dysco Elysium and you’d be right, but the piece of media that hit me hard with that was Prisma Illya and it’s part of why I love it so much.
I mean, I was already being sold on it on the merit of being more character-driven than lore-driven and the fact that it’s one of the few pieces of Fate media nowadays that doesn’t rely in excess on the crutch of historical figures in the creation of new characters…
…and then the Chloe arc hits, where a part of Illya (that’s technically FSN Illya but let’s not get more sidetracked) that was sealed away rages against everyone for denying her existence and seeing someone else live her life. Eventually she makes peace and effectively becomes the big sister figure of the group.
Between that and the FFXIV DRK questline being one of my favorite pieces of media (topping FFXIV as a whole for me, though not because FFXIV is bad), or hell, even the bits in early Bleach with Ichigo’s hollow, I’ve definitely had a predilection for “inner enemy is actually your inner friend” narratives all my life, which is definitely one of those “how did I not notice before” sorts of things.
“Fer, are you trying to justify liking Prisma Illya because of that instead of all the racy loli stuff?” Like hell I am, that would imply I deny liking the racier loli stuff as if my email icon hasn’t been Illya’s face when Chloe is kissing Miyu for over 10 years now.
I’ve had the pic for over 10 years, not… you know what I mean.
I’ve replied to life-changing business while my emails have this representing me, who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?
Sidenote, one time in 2019 I bought a Chloe doujinshi in Toranoana and the clerk was like “you can’t leave the country with this” and that’s good advice but I do wonder where the need to clarify came from.
I mean, I’m obviously a foreigner so he assumed I was just travelling but the fact that he felt the need to point that out to me… there’s a story there.
Back to the… well… not initial point, but the point right after it with plurality, one interesting thing I noticed that I don’t know if it comes across while writing the blog is that whenever I’m annoyed at something or about something that happened to me, I tend to refer to myself in third person like “but Fer can’t have it easy so this happened” or something like that.
One detail I do know happens is that I tend to use very sassy language when referring to myself but it’s notably not really self-deprecating, it’s more like… how I talk with people I’m comfortable with. And dunno… no bigger point ’cause it’s self-evident why I brought it up.
Back to the actual first point though, I honestly ended up doing nothing because again, my brain completely fried after everything. Also I got acid reflux all day and I can’t tell if it’s from that stress winding down or the ear antibiotics hit me.
Finally I go shower, fill my soap dispenser and uh…
…if I had a nickel for every time a toiletry or bath supply has broken this way this year I’d have two nickels.
Later, idly sorting some stuff I noticed I forgot to undress Sol and uh…
The goo all over the torso is a water-soluble paint remover. For those that don’t know, vinyl dolls are weak to color transfer, and the darnedest thing about color transfer is that it’s not like a paint stain, the color is… wait for it… transferring to the vinyl.
The result is that removal requires a bunch of paint remover to slowly seep into the part, it’s not something that a magic eraser and the like can take care of.
It’s not my first rodeo with this sort of thing, thankfully.
Oh yeah, the other darnedest thing about color transfer is that it’s a lottery. one day you can have the same outfit for a week no problem and the next you get stained for daring to use it for one hour.
Generally the rule of thumb is to test if the fabric rubs immediately and to make sure strong colors like black and blue aren’t putting too much pressure into the part.
Later I decided to head to Karaoke and alas this one didn’t have ports for the personal mic, at least in my room. Moreover, despite being a Jankara, the cosoles were Joysound? I might be thinking about Big Echo insted though, I think Jankara doesn’t do the branded console thing.
I didn’t record myself because of the microphone stuff, but this time I actually remembered a really weird singing cheat I have.
For some reason, I sing better with my eyes closed.
I don’t know if it’s inherent nerves, or focus or what, but the moment I close my eyes to sing I swear to God I improve way more for some reason.
It’s actually a bit of my natural state, honestly. Whenever I sing and try to relax I end up either closing my eyes or leaving one half open for the lyrics. It’s not a deliberate “I will close my eyes and focus” it’s almost like my body’s natural stance singing has me with my eyes closed.
By the way, this is irelevant in the long run, but this post and today’s girl profile (this time for Ichigo!) was already done and then I had a… 4-5 hour nap. I mainly got out of bed because I completely forgot the ear antibiotics so I’m pushing this out before hopefully filling in the other 3-4 hours of sleep.
Hopefully…