When I was little I LOVED the taste of blues clues kids toothpaste. I'd just straight up eat it. My mom thought this was unhealthy and would take away the toothpaste if she caught me eating it. Or threaten to switch to grown-up mint toothpaste (not as tasty). I would crouch behind the open bathroom door slowly squeezing out blues clues kids toothpaste onto my hands and eating it as quietly as possible
if tumblr is trying to become twitter 2.0, they could at least steal the good ideas like completely private blogs + being able to mute accounts (bc like, there are blogs i don’t want to see on my dash / in tag search but i don’t want to straight up block them)
I think that more fanfiction should be written with the aim to tackle the original meaning of hanahaki. Because when the concept of hanahaki disease was originally created, it was intended to be a metaphor for suppressing one’s feelings.
Your feelings are this beautiful garden of flora inside of your chest. When you express how you feel honestly, you allow for it to grow freely. But when you hide how you feel out of fear of rejection, and try to make it smaller and smaller, the flowers become cramped inside of you, until you choke on your own feelings. Every flower you cough up is something you’ve felt, but refused to say.
The whole “dying” thing is intended to be more symbolic especially. You’re killing off bits and pieces of yourself and how you feel, because you’re afraid to express yourself.
It’s not really supposed to be, “The one I love doesn’t love me back, and I’m dying from it.” Rather, it’s more along the lines of, “Repressing your emotions is bad for you, and it’s better and healthier to express them freely, even when it’s scary.”
Which is to say that, one, the cure for the disease should be telling the person that you are in love with how you feel. How the other person feels about the person afflicted should have nothing to do with it, as the trope is meant to be about feeling your emotions unapologetically.
And that, two, it’s not an inherently romantic trope. Obviously, it has romantic applications, but it can be written for any situation where a character is hiding how they truly feel. This can include a refusal to address a specific trauma, a desire to indulge in something that they’re ashamed of, and even really practical things, like wanting to ask one’s boss for a higher position.
Although (as an aromantic person myself) I don’t agree with this conclusion about the trope, this application would also avoid people calling it arophobic. When the thing killing the character is a refusal to be honest with themselves, rather than an unrequited love, it’s on nobody’s hands but their own to save their life.
There are a ton of ways that this interpretation of the hanahaki disease could be applied in new and interesting ways in fanfiction, and I’d love to read what things people could come up with!
tfw you’re bothering a cat but not enough for it to MOVE so it just looks Disapprovingly at you
I would just like to point out. The ears are pointing forward. The cat’s sprawling out more as the bowl is shimmied as opposed to getting up to try and get out. That expression is hardly what i’d call disappointment.
It’s actually enjoying being gently jostled! Can’t explain why, though. Could be the soothing jiggling motions, like how we sit in a vibrating massage chair sometimes. Or maybe it just sees this as an amusement part ride of sorts. Whatever it is, i can tell the cat is very relaxed and trusting of the person holding it in the bowl. I rate this VERY cute!
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
