an unnecessarily detailed account of the person behind the little lists.

♡ — a note before we begin

i love my boyfriend. like, a lot. genuinely, stupidly, embarrassingly much. he's one of those people where sometimes i just stop and think god, i really love you. i don't really know where i'd be without him, and i'm not sure i want to find out. he's my baby and i love him so much. if you're reading this, hi. i love you. that's it. that's the observation. moving on before i get even more embarrassing.

𝔦. — first observations

i'm probably a lot quieter than people expect me to be. if you meet me for the first time, there's a pretty good chance i won't say much at all. i have a fairly severe resting bitch face, i'm not naturally very good at inserting myself into conversations, and i tend to wait until i feel like there's an actual reason to speak rather than forcing myself into one. i think i'm difficult to get to know, although i don't necessarily mean that in a please don't get to know me way. i just don't let very many people past the surface. there are only a handful of people who genuinely know me properly, and once someone does make it that far, i'm almost a completely different person.

when i'm comfortable, i'm loud. i'm annoying. i'm clingy. i'll follow you around, talk at you about something i just discovered, send you something completely irrelevant because it reminded me of you, insult you affectionately, and generally try to exist in your immediate vicinity as much as possible. i'm very physically affectionate with people i trust, too. someone who only knows me casually could probably come away thinking i'm distant, uninterested, or awkward, while someone who actually knows me is probably wondering when i'll shut up. i don't think the first version is fake and the second version is real, either. they're both me; one just requires considerably more trust to access.

𝔦𝔦. — social behaviour

i like people i can riff with. someone says something, i say something stupid back, they make it funnier, i make it worse, and suddenly we've been talking for three hours. i'm naturally drawn towards people who make me think oh, you're cool, usually because there's some tiny point of connection — a piece of media, an interest, some weird object they're wearing, anything that gives me an excuse to talk to them. if i notice something i can relate to, i'll actually have a reason to approach someone; otherwise, i'm probably going to wait for them to strike the conversation first. once i'm comfortable, though, i can talk and talk and talk without really noticing how much i'm talking.

i much prefer having a few people i'm genuinely close to rather than a huge circle of friends. i've never been particularly good at big groups, and i find them exhausting to keep up with. i like being able to actually know someone rather than constantly wondering where i fit into a crowd. one of my favourite things about friendship is being able to rant about something completely ridiculous and have the other person understand why i care about it, even if they don't care about the thing themselves. i want people who can listen to me go on about some obscure piece of media for twenty minutes, tell me when i'm being stupid, and still be on my side afterwards.

i think i'm also quite sensitive to being deliberately ignored. being quiet doesn't mean i don't want to interact with people, and there's a big difference between someone not knowing how to approach me and someone deciding that because i'm quiet, i'm not worth approaching. if someone gives me a reason to feel comfortable around them, i'll usually meet them halfway.

𝔦𝔦𝔦. — the hearing problem

i'm deaf, although i don't always wear my hearing aids, so depending on the day you might not immediately realise it. it affects how i interact with people more than it probably looks like from the outside. conversations can be exhausting when people speak quickly, mumble, talk over each other, or continue speaking at the same volume after i've asked them to speak up. one of the most frustrating things is having to ask someone to speak louder and then having them continue exactly as they were before, because at that point the conversation has effectively become me trying to reconstruct what they said from context.

i've gotten pretty good at pretending i'm following along when i'm not, which is not necessarily a skill i'm proud of. it also means i appreciate people who make an actual effort to communicate with me rather than treating my hearing as an inconvenience. good hearing-loss representation in media means a ridiculous amount to me for basically the same reason: seeing something that reflects even a small part of my experience can make me feel genuinely represented.

𝔦𝔳. — the rabbit-hole problem

i think this is probably the most important thing to know about me: i like rabbit holes. i don't really want to know that something is cool. i want to know why it's cool. give me the terminology, the history, the weird exception, the obscure example nobody talks about, and suddenly there's a very real possibility i'll disappear for several hours and come back with an unreasonable amount of information.

that's probably the easiest way to explain my obsession with ants. they're tiny, but they're ridiculously complicated. different species have completely different behaviours, social structures, adaptations, appearances, relationships with other organisms, and ways of living. you look at an ant and think tiny little bug. i look at an ant and think wait, what species are you? why do you behave like that? what's your colony structure like? what's your latin name? and suddenly i'm three hours into an article about something i'd never heard of before. i love classification, observation, and collecting information. when i was keeping ants, it basically became a personal research project; i kept notes about colonies, recorded observations, and genuinely enjoyed watching tiny changes over time. i still have a little notebook for insects now, and i'm trying to get more into beetles because apparently i need another rabbit hole.

𝔳. — the same disease, different outfit

gundam is basically the exact same interest wearing a giant robot costume. i don't just want to know what the robot looks like. i want the model number, the variants, the different iterations, the mechanical design, the history, the little visual differences between versions, and then i want to build one. there's something incredibly satisfying about taking something complicated and assembling it piece by piece until it becomes a finished object. i like the physical side of collecting just as much as the information side of it. i want to know what i'm looking at and have one sitting on my shelf.

i have a particular weakness for epyon. i don't know how to explain it. i just fucking love epyon.

batman scratches the same part of my brain in a completely different way. i don't only like batman as a character; i like batman as a world. batman lego, batman vehicles, batman trinkets, batman stickers, batman skylines, batman batcaves, batman construction figures, alternate designs, gadgets, villains, side characters — all of it. there are decades of continuity, hundreds of interpretations, ridiculous amounts of merchandise, and an endless supply of tiny things to discover.

𝔳𝔦. — things i could probably get dangerously interested in

if i had unlimited time and energy, there are a frankly alarming number of subjects i could disappear into. taxonomy is probably near the top of that list. i know the basic classification system, but i'd love to understand the actual process behind it — how species are described, why scientific names work the way they do, how taxonomic revisions happen, and how scientists decide whether two populations are actually different species. i'd also love to learn more about sound design and field recording, particularly the process of taking tiny environmental sounds, manipulating them, layering them, and turning something ordinary into something completely different.

then there are the obvious potential disasters: insects, parasites, deep-sea organisms, fossils, extinct organisms, microscopic life, bizarre evolutionary adaptations, experimental aircraft, prototype vehicles, unusual aircraft designs, military engineering. basically anything where i can look at something and think that's weird. why is it like that? i'm particularly susceptible to subjects where there is a ridiculous amount of specialised terminology and absolutely no reason for me to know any of it.

𝔳𝔦𝔦. — media consumption

with films, i'm especially drawn to strange people being painfully human. i like character-driven stories, melancholy, loneliness, identity, alienation, restrained emotion, surreal or dreamlike elements, unconventional relationships, and films with a very specific atmosphere. i like finishing something and thinking oh. that was about way more than i thought it was. i'm particularly fond of films that don't explain every emotion for you and that let the atmosphere do some of the work. i like people who are a little bit fucked up but still sympathetic, relationships that are more about being understood than grand romantic gestures, and stories that leave me thinking about them hours after i've finished.

with games, i'm much less picky about genre. i'll play basically anything if i end up liking it, but i have a particular weakness for games that let me become obsessed with the process of playing them. dead cells is probably the clearest example: tight combat, replayability, different weapons and builds, weird little interactions, environmental storytelling, a distinctive world, and lore that you have to piece together yourself. i love games where dying doesn't feel like you've wasted your time because you've learned something. i love the one more run feeling. i like worlds that are dark or slightly grotesque but still manage to be funny or cute, and i love gradually becoming genuinely good at something because i've spent enough time understanding how it works.

some of the things that have stuck with me particularly hard include omori, the silver case, boy meets maria, march comes in like a lion, dead cells, limbus company, library of ruina, persona, and disco elysium. omori probably sits closest to the centre of that particular collection of things that have stayed with me, although they all occupy completely different little corners of my brain.

𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦. — sound

my favourite artist is nujabes. i tend to gravitate towards music that's atmospheric, mellow, nostalgic, warm, and slightly melancholic. i particularly love instrumental music because vocals can sometimes distract me when i'm studying, and i like music that feels textured rather than music that feels like it's trying to prove something. i want something i can study to, travel to, stare out of a window to, or listen to late at night without having to do anything else.

i'm especially fond of japanese jazz, jazz rap, trip-hop, ambient hip-hop, older instrumental hip-hop, and anything with that hypnotic quality where repetition makes the music feel deeper rather than boring. i think i'm much more interested in feeling than technical showmanship.

𝔦𝔵. — instruments

i play alto saxophone, piano, and i'm currently learning drums. i started piano when i was young because my parents made me, and eventually stopped after a few years. the saxophone was different. when i found out i was losing my hearing, one of the first things i thought was essentially well, i've always wanted to play saxophone, so i did. drums came from a similar place; i wanted to learn another instrument, but i wanted to get comfortable with saxophone first.

i'm still very much learning all of this, but i like having something physical to practise and gradually become better at. there's something satisfying about being able to hear or feel a difference between something i couldn't do before and something i can do now.

𝔵. — collecting things

i collect things that probably don't need to be collected. gundam, lego, batman things, pochacco things, hirono figures, dvds, and now cds apparently. i have somewhere around eight hundred dvds, give or take twenty, which is probably more than anyone reasonably needs. i also collect the completely random objects that somehow become important to me. i have a rock i've kept for years even though i don't remember where it came from, and i don't really know why i kept it in the first place. i'm nevertheless emotionally attached to the rock.

tiny objects are especially dangerous. i love tiny versions of things, tiny figures, tiny creatures, tiny trinkets, and things that are cute enough to be ridiculous but slightly unsettling at the same time. i also have a habit of giving things extremely specific names even when there is absolutely no reason for them to have one.

𝔵𝔦. — miscellaneous observations

i'm violently a night person. late evening is probably my favourite time of day — when it's properly dark outside, but it isn't yet at the point where i should have gone to bed three hours ago. my favourite season is autumn, my favourite colours are mostly black, white, muted colours, pink, and especially light blue, and my favourite smells are rain and anything clean with a slightly woody smell. my favourite food is chicken pilau and my favourite drink is coke zero.

i will always stop to look at a weird insect. always. if there's a strange lego display, a particularly good gundam design, an unusual vehicle, or basically anything with an insane visual identity, i'm stopping to look at it. i also have a water bottle that is essentially decorative equipment. i carry it around. i just don't necessarily drink from it.

𝔵𝔦𝔦. — rituals & clutter

my routines aren't particularly organised. they're more like little rituals that have somehow become mandatory. i have specific things that need to happen in specific ways, like spraying one particular body mist exactly eight times in exactly the same places before i go out. my plushies have to be arranged around me in bed in a particular way because i turn around constantly and need something on either side of me. i don't necessarily think about these things as routines until something interrupts them and i realise how weirdly specific they are.

my room is simultaneously a disaster and completely organised. there is stuff everywhere and an outsider would probably assume something exploded, but i generally know where everything is. it gets cleaned, it becomes cluttered again, and i like it that way. i also bite my fingernails constantly because i don't like the feeling of having nails. apparently my feet have been granted an exemption from this policy.

𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦. — academic findings

i'm a planner when i need to be and a figure it out when i get there person when i don't. university forces me to be the former; basically everything else is the latter. i'm also exceptionally talented at procrastination. me and procrastination are locked in mortal combat and procrastination is currently winning.

still, i'm proud of how far i've come academically and personally. i'm proud that i did as well as i did during my first year when there were plenty of opportunities for me to doubt myself or give up, and i'm proud that i've built up interests and an identity that actually feel like mine. i think that's probably more important to me than i realised at the time.

𝔵𝔦𝔳. — things currently under construction

i'm trying to get better at taking care of myself without waiting for motivation to magically appear. i'm trying to communicate instead of silently building an entire courtroom case in my head and letting resentment accumulate, especially when i'm hurt or jealous. i'm trying to become secure enough to actually say when something is wrong rather than expecting people to somehow figure it out.

i've also become much less interested in forcing myself into neat categories. career, personality, identity, whatever. i've spent enough time having other people expect me to have an answer that i've reached the point where i don't really care anymore. if i don't know yet, i don't know yet. i'll figure it out when i figure it out. i don't think i owe anyone a category just because they expect one.

i'm still figuring out what parts of my personality are genuinely me and what parts i've learned because they made me feel safer. i'm still figuring out what i want my future to look like. mostly, i think i want to become someone who is secure enough to be honest without losing the curiosity and weirdness that make me feel like myself.

𝔵𝔳. — final observation

i think i'm happiest when i'm curious. when i find something weird and tiny and specific and suddenly realise there's an entire world underneath it. when i learn something nobody asked me to learn. when i find an obscure insect and learn its latin name, discover some ridiculous piece of gundam terminology, become obsessed with a fictional character, build a model piece by piece, listen to music late at night, or show someone something i've found and watch them actually understand why i think it's interesting.

i don't really want to become less weird. i just want to become secure enough to stay weird without feeling like i need permission.