wild for to hold

(Full disclosure, I left a version of this post as a comment on Markiplier's Youtube channel. No idea if he'll ever see it – probably not, with the flood of comments he gets every day – but I just had to let out my feels.)

We watched Markiplier's Iron Lung on Tuesday, while flabbergasted and delighted that a local theater was showing it. I walked out of there totally stunned, with a 1,000 yard stare. What a massive accomplishment. What a thing to witness!

I started watching Mark's videos in 2015, in my mid-twenties, while going through some extensive shit irl, and like many of his viewers I've gotten so much joy, laughs, escapism, scares, and cozy safe feelings from his videos. The Outlast Let's Play was the first game I watched, it still has a super special place in my heart and I re-watch it regularly. (Outlast 2 can fuck off.) It was partly through Mark's videos that I realized I actually really like horror!

And now here we are, and I just watched one of THE best horror movies I've ever had the pleasure to see. And he was in it! And he wrote and directed it and poured his heart and soul into it for three freaking years! Honestly, I almost feel like I watched a close family member achieve this fucking epic feat. That's too parasocial, I know, but I caught myself grinning through the first few minutes of the movie like "that's my younger brother up there!" hahaha. :D

The scares were so good. The humor was understated and well-delivered in a way that 100% fit the atmosphere. The cosmic horror was executed so perfectly, revealing just the right amount of detail without giving it a fully visible face, that it felt like Mark's been personally studying Lovecraft in a dark cave for 100 years.

( Random favorite moments, cut for spoilers )

I am freaking blown away by how much I loved this movie. Like… what a masterpiece. I knew it was gonna be phenomenal, but I didn't expect it to rock my shit this hard.

Mr. Mark Iplier, the man that you are. <3 I am so extremely happy that I got to experience IR on the big screen! If I could afford it, I'd go see it a second time and a third. What a terrifying, haunting, and so very human work of art.

Okay, on a total whim - and inspired by celli - I just decided to try GYWO again in 2026.


GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

I've decided to try out the Habit thing this time. Previously I had only done word counts. I pledge to do at least 180 days of writing in 2026! Eeeep scary! :D :D

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells → I've started reading Artificial Condition and it's so good! I always thought that ART was short for something sophisticated and sci-fi, but no, it just stands for 'Asshole Research Transport'. I love Murderbot so much. I've gotten to the point where it looks like MB will be interacting with another team of humans. *rubs little hands together with glee*

We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer → One of the best horror novels I've ever read!! Apparently it started out as a r/NoSleep story, which makes sense. It sort of has that vibe. I found the beginning a little slow, but once the weird newspaper clippings, forum posts, and transcripts showed up, I was hooked. If you're into doppelgängers, alternate realities, and the Mandela effect, I highly recommend it.

I Saw the TV Glow → I thought this was gonna be a funky teen horror movie, and oh boy. Oh dear. It's been a while since a movie has left me silent with a thousand-yard stare like this. Actual trans people have written much better analyses of it than I ever could, but ohhh my heart.

K-Pop Demon Hunters → This movie was SO FUN!! The music is not usually my thing, but I really enjoyed the soundtrack. The animation is lovely! I'm seeing a lot of OT3 art of HUNTR/X emerging from the fandom too. *chef's kiss*

Kill All Your Friends by MCR → (link) this song is fantastic. I've been seriously sleeping on it. Impeccable vibes, Black Parade era lyrics, it's been my constant companion for a week now!

Goodbye Seoul → (link) a pre-apocalyptic dystopian mystery game I play-tested at Gamescom. It's about this girl Rion, who lives in a world that's gone to shit because of an impending mankind-ending asteroid impact in 6 months, and is given a mysterious device by a dying soldier that might save her. I'm not usually into pixel art, but this game is beautiful. I'm very stoked for this game to be released.

The Umbrella Academy → I've finished watching S3 and chose to give S4 a pass, which I think was the right choice for preserving my sanity, haha. Still filled to the brim with feels! I want to start another rewatch soon. Also, I have probably (not really) read everything in the 'Five needs a hug' tag on AO3. This old man hurts so good.

Also: we have a Hollow Knight: Silksong release date! September 4!! Which is also our moving day!!! Hahaha kill me. :'D I fervently hope that we will actually be done with all moving-related things by then (right now, it doesn't look like we will be, but... I'm holding out hope). I play-tested the game at Gamescom, after waiting in line for 3 hours. Ouch. Never doing that again. But it was a lot of fun, and somehow controls even crisper than the original Hollow Knight did. Which I didn't think was possible!

I dreamed of Number Five from The Umbrella Academy a fortnight ago, and now I'm rewatching S1 & S2 and my brain is being eaten alive by feels. I haven't seen S3-4 yet, and since I have heard many terrible things about the series finale, I'm a bit worried, but I'll definitely at least watch S3 once I'm done with my rewatch.

It's been quite a few months since I was really obsessing over a piece of media, and it feels so nice to have proper blorbos again!

I love Five a normal amount. I'm surprised Aidan Gallagher isn't utterly ripped from carrying the whole show. What a fantastic character, and such stunning acting skills from someone who was literally 14 when they started filming for S1. What. When I was 14, I was failing math class and starting to write Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction.

Anyway, so naturally, I've been perusing AO3 and reading everything I can get my hands on. Normally I'm not that picky about fanfics, but it seems that with Five-centric stuff, I am! So far, I have found only one series I like, and the rest was kind of meh. That never happens to me. But I constantly find myself going, 'He would not say this. There's no way he'd do that. He would not fucking say that.' Ha. I can see where this is going. I'm gonna dig up my old post-S2 AU fic that I started writing in 2020.

My writing server is doing a July camp event! It's a lot of fun! We all get points for completing different tasks each day (start a new scene; edit one page; reach your daily word count goal, etc.) and then get to play around on a "world map" Excel sheet based on which things we did. It's just a large expanse of green squares, and when we've got enough points we can set up a tent, till fields, grow trees, and such--by inserting emojis into the green squares. It's kind of Stardew Valley-like, but with writing. I love everything about this, Our admins are amazing at coming up with this stuff.

My July writing has started slow, on account of all the TUA fangirling. Also, we had our first big heatwave this week. 39 degrees (102F), in houses built to store and preserve heat, with no AC! It was... not fun. But I had a Discord date with my girlfriend on Wednesday, which made the so-far hottest day of the year infinitely better!

I've got a ticket to see In Extremo, yet another German folk rock band, on June 15! I have been listening to Erdbeermund (Strawberry Mouth) to prepare, haha. Something about the lyrics tells me they're not talking about the opening in someone's face, you know. I hope they play it, it's easily one of my favorite InEx songs. Fun fact: There is apparently beef about this in The Scene(TM)! The song is based on a poem from the 1930s in which some dude was thirsty, and Subway to Sally, another German folk rock band, were the first to create a musical version of it in the 90s. InEx's version is from 2007. The vibes are so different though that I wouldn't call it a rip-off. StS's version is much more romantic and less horny.

The only personal beef I have with InEx is that they once did a cover of Vänner och fränder (Friends and relatives), a Swedish folk song about a woman who does not want to marry her fiancé and instead runs off with another man. And you guys, their imitation of Swedish is so abysmal. It's not just their pronunciation, which is admittedly bad, but they straight up leave words out of the lyrics that change the meaning of the song. Smh. I doubt that was intentional. They probably just didn't bother hiring an actual Swedish speaker to help them out. >_>

Anyway, my reaction to finally seeing this band live, after 20+ years of enjoying their music, will probably be, "Omg they are so old." They've been at it since the 90s. Also, this will be my third (!) concert this year!

This week has been kind of stressful! I had to prepare around 80% of my Swedish presentation, as well as a long homework assignment I'd forgotten about, and the combination of those things kind of wiped me out. Yesterday I went to the city with my roommate & we went shopping for a notebook and a pen for me, since I want to keep a journal at the outpatient program that's specifically for that, and not a mix of other journaling stuff thrown in. Today I woke up with a headache that can't decide if it wants to be a migraine. I really need to take it easier.

I have been obsessively reading Steve/Tony comicverse fic. Still making my way through old favorites and discovering new fic by favorite authors that I haven't read yet. I'm having a lot of fun. :D

I am trying to make friends on Tumblr! I've followed two other Steve/Bucky shippers who are currently in CATWS-related hell like me & they both seem very nice.

Other than that, I'm attempting to prepare my part of a presentation for my Swedish class and the novella we're analyzing, Ur funktion (Out of Order) by Karin Boye, is so hard to understand omfg. I had to look up every second or third word on some pages, I swear. Talk about getting thrown in at the deep end. But it's fun!

Today I've gotten a lot of things done thanks to caffeine. I went out for groceries, did a load of laundry, and spent like 3 hours in the Steve/Bucky tag curating my queue. Time well-spent, I say.

I have been up to several things! One is that I went to a Versengold concert last Friday, and it was amazing. Versengold (literally "verse's gold") is a northern German folk rock band that's been around for over 20 years, whom I discovered in ~2018 or so, and whom I've loved ever since. They are so cool, you guys. They are also all huge dorks. Their name is a pun--the German idiom "Fersengold geben," literally "giving heel's gold," means to run very fast, but they changed exchanged the F for a V to keep with their theme of writing songs. I find this very clever and it makes me really happy.

Anyway, they came to Cologne (Köln) and I was there with bells on. With about 3k people in attendance, it might have been the biggest concert I've ever been to! MCR in 2022 might have been bigger, I'm honestly not sure since that was open-air and this one wasn't, so it was easier this time to get a feel of how big the crowd was than at the MCR concert. Anyway, it was awesome. I stood close-ish to the front and had a blast. They played so many of my favorite songs, and a few songs I wasn't that familiar with yet, and the audience was wonderful. We cheered and clapped and sang our hearts out. Such a wonderful experience!

The real MVPs were my concert earplugs, a special set of earplugs I purchased way back in 2019 to help me attend rock concerts despite my very sensitive ears. They filter out all harmful frequencies from what you're hearing, but still let you listen to the music. I have no idea what sorcery they've been infused with, but they work. I can still hear people talking to me when I wear them, and the music sounds fine, if perhaps a tiny bit muffled. I love these things so much and there is no way I would have survived this concert--or the MCR concert!--without them, haha. I pulled one earplug out of my ear a little, once, to check how loud the volume really was, and yep I shoved it right back in. :D

The other thing that's been going on is that I am deep within my MCU feels again. Which mostly means Winter Soldier feels. And Steve/Bucky feels. Yes. I rewatched Captain America: The Winter Soldier last week for its 10-year anniversary, and it is still so freaking good, ahhh. I love it to bits. I cannot believe that the Russos made TWS and then went on to fuck things up so thoroughly (imo) with all the other things they did. Just. How. Anyway--I have been picking at my old fic ideas again, and reading tons of older fic on AO3, and generally having a blast with this ship and the feels.

I have discovered that I have a mighty need for more Winter Soldier fic--not necessarily Bucky Barnes fic. I am craving post-movie fic where the Winter Soldier does not remember his past, but still aims to take down Hydra and--perhaps reluctantly, at first, since he doesn't remember his past life--reconnects with Steve. It's all Sebastian Stan's acting; I am so fascinated with the obvious, glaring differences between Bucky and the Winter Soldier persona that's been forced on him. The potential identity compartmentalization of their combined existence is *chef's kiss* to me. And I want the Winter Soldier part to get more attention and love, damn it. He's been through so much, he deserves love and comfort even if he doesn't remember. Fight me. (No, don't, I'm weak AF because I haven't kept up with my running schedule.)

I also have a big soft spot for Shrinkyclinks (non-serum Steve/Winter Soldier Bucky). Adkjshkdf. The utter dichotomy between their characters makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I've read several "the Winter Soldier is on a mission, Steve stumbles across him & for some reason does not die horribly, so Hydra kidnaps Steve for shits and giggles and he and the Soldier form a connection" fics and low-key want to write my own. The aaaangst!!!

I am normal about this ship.

I am ridiculously excited about the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer that came out this past Wednesday. I've been watching it over and over again & trying to come up with theories as to what it all means. Of course, in true FromSoft fashion, it's cryptic and filled with horrors. I love it.

Some speculation

Messmer and his whole deal are intriguing. I wonder if he is perhaps some version of Melina, since they share the Weird Eye Thing and also the fire motif. He's got to be a sibling at least, with the M name and the hair. Maybe he's the one who's been connected to the Smoldering Butterfly all along, not Melina as we all thought. I wonder who he's talking about when he mentions "one so bereft of light." Is it the Tarnished (i.e. the player)? Who knows? Fascinating stuff.

I love the concept of an entire shadow realm behind 'hidden' in the Lands Between, containing a whole world of its own where apparently the Erdtree is fucked up. Very nice.

Of course the most riveting part of the whole trailer is Miquella. Omg. We are going to see more of him! I am 99.99% sure that IS him at the very end there, and the Haligtree! The summary said something about him abandoning his body and his powers to live in this shadow realm-thing! I really wonder what's up with that.

What I love most is the implication that perhaps Miquella is... not as lovely and pure as he's been made out to be so far. I've said for weeks that his powers of "compelling affection" in others sound scary AF, and if he were so inclined he could probably use them to wreak great havoc.

My roommate and I's headcanon seems almost plausible all of a sudden: What if Miquella has been pulling the strings behind the scenes all alon? What if he engineered his own kidnapping? What if he somehow compelled Mohg to do the deed, or struck a deal with him, or something like that? I think we can take it as a fact that whatever Mohg tried to break Miquella's curse of eternal childhood, it worked (to some extent), since the "withered arm" we see in Mohgwyn Palace is most definitely in the shape of an adult. Maybe that was Miquella's plan all along.

Like. Yes. Give me a Miquella that's radiant and kind, but also terrifying in his power, and in his own way as much of an eldritch horror as the other Empyreans. *chef's kiss*

Also IS THAT A SNIPPET OF MOHG'S THEME right when the Roderika-looking girl casts her (apparent) huge Bewitching Branch-related spell. Omg. I may be imagining that, but ooomg.

Except, I'm pretty sure that in order to play the DLC you'll have to have killed Mohg, since it appears to start at the Palace in his boss arena. :/

It is going to be amazing. I have marked June 21st in my calendar and will camp out on Twitch and watch others play the DLC as soon as it drops. :D

Current MohgMiq WIPs and ideas:

• fIRST KISS FLUFF
• Miquella being protective (I love a trope that turns expectations on their heads)
• old man first-time sex

Watching: various things! Game of Thrones, for one--I started my rewatch with S1 and I'm surprised by how many things I still remember at least vaguely. Also, The Killing, with the roommate. One of the best crime shows I've ever seen, ahhh.

Reading: William Gibson's Count Zero (on Audible).

Listening: Unbelievers by Vampire Weekend

Playing: nothing right now! Smh. I need to buy a controller so I can get started on Lies of P.

Making: way too many knitting WIPs. Off the top of my head, I've got:
* a cowl
* two pairs of socks
* an unidentified number of sweaters (I legit can't remember how many there are--this should worry me more)
* two scarves
Oof. I wish I had several extra sets of hands.

Feeling: VERY RELIEVED. I had a phone call earlier today & a bureaucratic problem I had just vanished into thin air. Well, not quite--I still need to do some paperwork, but the issue is not nearly as life-ruining as I'd thought it would be. So I have just been in a puddle of relief the whole day.

Planning: some general home/life improvement shit. I want to get some higher-end cleaning supplies, for instance, and I'd like to get around to reorganizing our spice cabinet soon. I've also wanted to get into meal planning for ages.

Loving: listening to more music. I've been making an effort to use Spotify more and so far it's working out great.