Day 5: Singing

Sonic 06 is 18 now, and now that we're both legally adults, I think I'm gonna suck it up and actually finish the game

Solaris get ready to hear boss music

Gotten a little obsessed with Shadow surviving until Silver's timeline and adopting him so I made a future!Shadow design

He's still looking young with the power of immortality and a 21-step skincare routine and at this point he's just going through the motions until he realizes he made it to Silver's time and he might as well go find this child cuz he's bored

So, I wrote a dadow fic. I'm a sucker for found family, and dadow is underrated.

ENJOY.

Rainy Day

Reblogs and thoughts appreciated

Consider following for more art like this

Okay as someone with severe comment anxiety this is an absolutely perfect basis for the way I receive comments too. You'll have to do something truly special to piss me off and all I want is to know I made people feel good :)

(I know the difference between "wary" and "weary" but my subconscious and phone don't seem to know and my brain never catches it ever when spell-checking and I live in fear)

not to be controversial bc I know this is like…not in line with shifting opinions on fanfic comment culture but if there’s a glaring typo in my work I will NOT be offended by pointing it out. if ao3 fucks up the formatting…I will also not be offended by having this pointed out…

‘looking forward to the next update’ and ‘I hope you update soon!’ are different vibes than a demand, and should be read in good faith because a reader is finding their way to tell you how much they love it. I will not be mad at this.

‘I don’t usually like this ship but this fic made me feel something’ is also incredibly high praise. I’m not going to get mad at this.

even ‘I love this fic but I’m curious about why you made [x] choice’ is just another way a reader is engaging in and putting thought into your work.

I just feel like a lot of authors take any comment that’s not perfectly articulated glowing praise in the exact manner they’re hoping to receive it in bad faith.

fic engagement has been dropping across the board over the last several years, and yes it’s frustrating but it isn’t as though I can’t see how it happens. comment anxiety can be a real thing. the last thing anyone wants to do is offend an author they love, and that means sometimes people default to silence.

idk where I’m going with this I guess aside from saying unless a comment is outright attacking me I’m never going to get mad at it, and I think a lot of authors should feel the same way. ESPECIALLY TYPOS PLZ GOD POINT OUT MY TYPOS.

Hey guys, you'll never guess what I'm working on!!!

Okay yeah it's that same dadow fic that went silent for half a year too long. But! I am working on it. Chapter 4 currently.

It's almost finished, not quite, but almost. I just want to assure you guys that I'm not ditching it or anything. Chap 4 was just a significantly more ambitious than I realized when I first decided to go the direction I did. I don't regret it at all, I think this chapter will turn out great, but it was quite the steep incline in difficulty.

If you're like me and want more Shadow as Silver's dad then please, please go check my fic out! I think it's shaping up nicely, and if it's not your cup of tea then no hard feelings!

There will be more explanations of why I disinte-vaporated for months in case you care

So my health is quite the rollercoaster, it's constantly up and down and the answer to "how are you?" depends on what day or week or hour you're asking. But generally speaking, things are getting way better. I can eat, I can sleep, I can go to school consistently, so my disappearing can be attributed to a thousand different things at any given point, but one of the more recent/significant ones is just burnout.

It was just really bad story burnout.

I dream almost every night. And every night there's a new story. My mind is so overflowing with story concepts that my subconscious leeks them into my dreams so that I feel like I told the story I want to tell.

One of my dreams was about a creature that showed up one day on national geographic and as time went on they got more prominent and started attacking the city Godzilla-style.

Another one featured a little girl who was given a locket with a vengeful spirit inside, and she must try to contain it by fighting her curiosity.

One was a Journey to the West style story, with similar writing cliches and story structure that was built to mimic the Monkey King's episodic adventures. And it worked. It felt like it could've been ripped straight from the book I grew up on.

Horror game type stories, musicals, apocalyptic survival circumstances, dating Sims I can sequence break. So when my dreams up and ghosted me, it was terrifying.

Apparently the spotty sleep and constant studying was rougher on my brain than I thought, and I just had to give it a rest. So I gave my mind some space, a couple weeks, and it recovered exuberantly.

I still don't fully know what the deal with that was, but I'm going to work with it instead of against it.

So I'm back! My fingers aren't malfunctioning, my brain is back so get ready for some more dadow fluff!!!

I don't know why I feel the need to share this, maybe it's because it's been on my mind and it's 2:41 am and it's currently the "time is sludge... Again" part of the insomniac experience, but I want to talk about this. (This talks about my experience with happy stimming under the cut)

It was several years ago when I saw this comic of someone's happy stimming. She, like, waves her arms around and builds up this lovely yellow hue, and it's sparkly and then she expels all of it as at once and- it's truly a wonderful comic. I don't know where it is now. But it really captures the right feeling. And it was so cool... But I was kind of... I feel bad using strong words like "mortified" but that's the best way to say it.

Because Stimming was one of the many, MANY things I have in common with our lovely autistic community. And we're entering a world where people are starting to be able to be who we are and act how we feel, and I knew from the moment I saw it, that something was wrong. I didn't have a happy stim.

Most people who stim are forced to stop because humans are so bad at appreciating the abnormal, and that never happened to me. I'm lucky! But I didn't have a happy stim. And I knew I was supposed to. I immediately knew that. Knew it about me, me as a person. I knew it. There was a hole in me that was taken and I didn't know why! And it was terrifying.

And I kept thinking, And and I kept digging.

I knew about physical stims. With your hands and your feet and your hair. Most of my stims were those. I'd bounce my leg under a table, I tap the pads of my fingers together with my thumb if I was a specific kind of anxious, I move the bones in my wrists back to where they're supposed to be to try and fix things instinctually.

All of those were to get less anxious though. And my mother was always so open to things like that. So willing to learn about every diagnosis and piece of information that needed researching.

I knew about vocal stims. While most people were forced to stop for more crummy society reasons, that wasn't the case for me. I just... Didn't have any? I enjoy talking, I enjoy singing but they weren't... That comic. They didn't have the yellow feel-good-ness. They didn't have The thing.

I like swinging on swingsets. The momentum is nice. I think that counts as a stim but I usually did it to help, wouldn't-cha know it, anxiety. Help me sleep at night. It wasn't the thing.

In my house, you didn't listen to songs on repeat. My mother would lose it. You didn't loop songs in the car, it'd drive her batty. She'd probably have a panic attack. So I never thought of it as a thing? It didn't occur to me. When I got my own pair of headphones, I wouldn't drive her crazy by listening to anything on loop, I could go forever if I wanted. But I didn't. It wasn't a thing and I was apprehensive about it, that's not a thing we do. Don't to it. Even when my mind got loud about playing things on loop, I tried not to let it overcome me. That's not a thing. People don't do that. And I'd long since settled with the dismal answer of never knowing what the stim was. I hadn't even thought of checking because sounds like asmr hurt like sandpaper on my brain.

But recently, I don't know, something changed? I reeeally needed to hear this song again. So I went to the instrumental. And it was great there. I went to the vocal only, it was just the goodest sound. I went to covers and back and eventually I just let it play. I really let it smoosh into my head and memorized the instruments and felt them. It was like following a groove in a table by tracing your finger across it. It was just. The thing. I actually lost sleep because I was enjoying myself so much. I was so happy!

I talked with my mother about it. "I dunno, I really really wanted to hear that song over and over? it has a BAGPIPE in the second verse! Who wouldn't want to hear that!?"

"yeah, I could never do that. I guess my misophonia is too strong for that."

It was so eye opening. Misophonia. It was her misophonia, she'd never used that word before. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. Listening to this song on loop isn't bad, it's just a me thing.

And that's when I realized that I'd found the thing. I'd finally found my happy stim. I've decided to not cry about it, but this was such wonderful news. It's needlessly specific, and I don't know why my kid mind had labed "no looping" as Gospel? I mean there's a button for it and everything. But it's my thing.

I may never have some visible stim that people will see but I have my thing and I'm so beyond society possibly judging me.

I am on ADD meds, have overstimulation issues, anxiety, truly frightening physical disabilities I fight all beneath the surface. And I play the songs that have the thing about them on loop for five hours at a time. And I think I love me for it.

Whoever you are, you're you. You're more you than anyone else. That is something beautiful. You like Fanfic, go for it! You like art? Go for it! You like flapping your hands? Go for it! You like judging Disney for its questionable decisions as of late? Try not to kill them too much. They only mostly deserve it.

Being you is a gift that you should cherish, and reward yourself by being you. Not someone else.

For those that read this whole thing, the song in question is I've Had Enough of You from Billie Bust Up, a video game musical that's currently in development. Listen to all the stuff that's out so far, every song I've heard knocks it out of the park. Listen to it on loop if you want! I think we've established that listening to songs on loop does not, in fact, summon Satan.

Happy Stimming! (why does that sound like a holiday now?)

I'm posting this now cuz I'm getting a surgery first thing in the morning, and recovering from that will have me all out of whack, so here's something to chew on while I remember how to move!

So…sonadow generations am I right

The dadow continues! I'm in too deep now. Chapter 2 is out and chapter 3 is on the way!

I have nothing else to say other than pls read it I need validation