when the world gets too heavy by Cami M. '23

this blogpost was meant to be something else since i’ve been frankly living in my thoughts a lot and i’m not sure how to write about it in a refined way. i’ve been thinking a lot about innocence and love and the future and my childhood and just a whole slew of things that i can’t really fathom. i’ve been thinking a lot about my internet presence and my own just…general presence and the spaces i inhabit and my role in all of this. i’ve been dwelling on my high school self, living in the crevices of tumblr and slowly falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit holes of obsession.

and i think that’s why i’m revisiting this.

i like doing media check-ups every now and then since i think it’s healthy to share latest fixations, so i thought i’d link them here!

the heart rate of a mouse vol 1, 2, and 3 (contains nsfw/explicit content)

perhaps this will finally get rid of the whole “cami reads gay fanfic” shame i have but i recently reread throam. this is a pretty famous ryan ross/brendon urie fanfic and notably the first panic! at the disco fanfiction, if not the first serious fanfic i ever read in my life. so it holds a lot of importance.

i could go into the whole real people shipping thing and yadayadayada but i’ll just leave it and say that i really enjoy the story and don’t really care about the real-life ties that these books reference.

throam had a LOT of impact on me when i was reading it, not only because it helped me realize that fanfics were completely legitimate forms of writing, but also because i think it was the first time i ever strongly identified with an incredibly toxic character (this being the protagonist, ryan ross, throughout all three volumes). without any spoilers, the main character is an incredibly turbulent and aggressive character with a lot of questionable tendencies and morals. he struggles a lot with jealousy and insecurity and often copes with this through lashing out and i remember not only feeling sympathy for him, despite him being..arguably one of the worst book protagonists i’ve ever encountered, but also horror at the fact that i could relate with him on some fucked up level.

this would then repeat again when i identified with gene from a separate peace, who was also a questionable character (he pushes a friend out of a tree and breaks his arm out of jealousy). and then again with bojack horseman. anyway.

aside from the weird identity crisis i have with throam, these books made me feel a LOT. like a LOT. i didn’t speak to anyone for three days after i read the books because i was too busy just thinking about everything that happened and all the feelings i felt and emotions and everything.

it was a lot.

rereading throam has also made me reminisce on my high school days, where my biggest problems were who was softblocking on tumblr and who didn’t include me in their follow forever. in a way, it was comforting to just read without any inhibition for three days straight. i’ve been coping with getting rejected from my top job choice and so i felt a strong urge to bury myself in a book series and found myself revisiting throam. as i read, i found pieces of myself i had stolen from the book. the cockiness from the characters, my understanding of what relationships were supposed to be, the way that my own relationship had mimicked some of the events slightly. it felt like coming full circle, in a way.

i was afraid the words weren’t going to feel the same, have the initial weight it did seven years ago, but they most definitely did. i was floored by anna green’s writing — forgot how good it was, to be honest. and it seems i’ve been doing that a lot, worrying about my old fixations, afraid they won’t feel the same, but they end up feeling like so much more.

i’ll stop gushing about throam now to save myself some embarrassment with the fact that panic! at the disco fanfiction has made me feel this much, but hey, i try and offer as much honesty as possible on the blogs.

harry styles’ fine line

so this one’s a weird one. it is no secret that i ran a one direction tumblr for a good chunk of time, amassing a lot of followers but a lot of really good friends from the community. i was pretty…in deep in the fandom as well, subscribing to a lot of fan theories regarding a lot of things (feel free to speculate there).

a couple weeks ago i went to harry styles’ concert in boston and i experienced something i had never really.

as he came out and performed, i expected to be filled with that familiar concert euphoria, like the one i felt with twenty one pilots when i saw them just a couple days before.

but instead, i felt…disappointment? no. sadness? not descriptive enough. and then i realized: it felt like grief. like mourning. a deep seated realization within me.

as i watched harry dance around on stage, throwing kisses to the crowd and waving and singing, i became hyperaware of my longstanding parasocial relationship with him. the years i spent and dedicated to his life and his band and his relationships and in that moment it felt like a cold and somber sobering that all of that was time wasted. time spent on something we may never have answers to or clearly understand, at least not for a long, long time.

this didn’t ruin my concert experience by any means – i still had a great time. but in a way, it felt like the death of..of something. a final acceptance of the inevitable.

at its core, really, it was just the end of a parasocial relationship, but i think coming to that conclusion after all this time was really impactful and something i had difficulty grasping.

i came home from the concert feeling changed somehow, like i was letting go of something i’ve been carrying for a long, long time.

weird specific youtube videos that have shaped me in some way (?)

i was talking with raymond the other day about youtube and particularly impactful youtube videos and i showed him the very first youtube video i had ever watched.

i honestly don’t know how to even describe this but my three year old self was so amazed by the fact that club penguin could look like this (i didn’t know it was like..edited and animated i thought this was a feature you could unlock in club penguin) and then i became fixated on the series and. yeah.

i was about four? or five years old when i saw this video and this was actually the video that introduced me to fall out boy.

neat.

in addition to this super weird specific niche youtube video, this one is a little less niche. this is a reupload of theslutfox’s famous you’re gonna go far kid nightcore featuring?? rainbow dash from my little pony (mlp). a couple things as to why this was notable:

1. i was introduced to nightcore and proceeded to have an edm/nightcore phase in the sixth grade.
2. i was introduced to mlp. i was always..aware? of it but i thought this music video made it look cool and i started to watch it in secret in seventh grade.

beach bunny

i recently saw beach bunny in concert!!! like this past monday recent! it was my first more intimate concert in a while, since it was at the paradise rock club on commave as opposed to one of those big, big stadiums like td garden. it was really nice to feel the thrum of the bass directly shoot straight into my heart and see the artists up close and personal. i forgot the feeling of being smushed up in a pit, and honestly was a little worried given recent events, but found comfort in it once i got ahold of my senses again and remembered how to brace myself properly and hold my ground amidst a swaying crowd. it felt good. it felt freeing.

concerts always make me feel so steady and secure in myself, especially when i go by myself. they remind me of the person i’ve grown to be, where i was once easily pushed around at my first pit concert, thrown to the back by a bunch of rowdy kids with not a care in the world.

and i eventually transformed into the sturdy steady person in the pit, holding my ground even when people tried to sneak past or barrage through. i can really see my strength in this environment.

taylor swift

i only recently started listening to taylor’s entire discography and it hurts. it hurts with such a pain i cannot explain and the way that she writes and honestly there is a way my heart tugs when she sings ‘please don’t be in love with someone else. please don’t have somebody waiting for you.’ and i have been sobbing for days.

angsty teenage year music

i’ve been listening to a lot of fall out boy, panic! at the disco, twenty one pilots, and the like lately. i’ll just leave some albums and playlists here.

as i’ve grown older, pretty. odd. has grown to be one of my favorite panic! albums. it’s probably tied with a fever you can’t sweat out and i’ve learned to appreciate the lyricism and production a lot more with time. there’s a small part of me that hopes that brendon will one day eventually tour pretty. odd. with jon and ryan and spencer but i know the likelihood of that is…incredibly slim.

but a girl can dream.

yes this is a throam inspired playlist and it’s damn good.

anyway thanks for listening to my rambling. sorry for no proper grammar or capitalization, this was just a genuine brain dump. my brain’s been..foggy and clogged as of late and i’m hoping that this will drain it somehow.