Trixie the Tumblrite

>Trixie scrolls through the rows upon rows of posts on her Tumblr.
>The same thing as every time; no re-blogs, no notes, nothing.
>With a pair of clouding eyes, she seeks out the homepage for her blog. A couple of clicks of the mouse is what it takes to accurately select the little icon correctly with the cursor over it.
>Now the girl is searching through the sidebar for any notifications, anything that had happened when she was away. At the same time, she thinks up the new ideas for her next post or two, maybe more than that if today turns out to be another bad day.
>So far, Trixie is following 23 Tumblrs, which is 23 more than the number of other Tumblrs that follow Trixie.
>She doesn’t say anything this time… just looks at that one big zero on her screen. She then proceeds to go to her dashboard to see what everyone else has posted.
>All of these magnificent works of art. Some of the most unimaginable things Trixie has ever seen. No real words to describe the difference between them and the things that Trixie has done.
>Can’t bear to look at the page anymore, click back to the dashboard. Trixie open up her own drawing program and begins scribbling down whatever she can.
>There had been many many times when she could have practiced, and took time into learning how to draw something that didn’t look like chicken scratches for a change. Trixie had seen that opportunity for many years time and time again, but she never took it.
>And to this very day, she still understands why.
>Spending so much time sitting down and going over all of these drawing techniques, all of those confusing instructional videos, all those graded assignments, all of those things that turned the girl away from wanting to learn. The problem was the aspect of learning.
>It was always so tedious and boring, planning a seed of disdain in Trixie’s heart whenever she ever heard the phrase “Learning how to draw”.
>Trixie saves new document after new document, unrealistically waiting for some notification.
>Trixie still doesn’t know why she does it, but she clicks on the little icon with Twilight’s picture on it. She stares at the screen ad the images load, knowing what terrific and terrible things await her. Perhaps it some sort of self-punishment, but that’s still too far from a definite answer for Trixie to put her finger on it.
>It turns out that Twilight likes to write about as much as she likes to read. If anything, that does make perfect sense.
>Now, it was one thing when Trixie found all of the people online who were better than her at art. At least she had a semi-decent excuse for not being at their level. Being terrible at art was pretty much something that Trixie had come to terms with for a while, despite it mostly tearing her heart apart on some days anyway.
>But this… this is completely new.
>What Trixie notices is something indirect… at least to the original thing that Twilight had done.
>A short story. Having been finished not too long ago.
>All of that praise… all of those positive things Trixie has seen before… now seemingly all happening at once. All of those positive things she wish she had seen when people viewed her work.
>All of those things Trixie has never seen in response to something she did that wasn’t just her sock-puppeting from her phone.
>Everyone loves Twilight’s story… and Trixie knows exactly why. For years upon years, Twilight had read, and read and read. Knowing what people love to read.
>And Twilight has written, and written and written, gaining all of the experience she can get. Breaking her plateau long before Trixie even started trying to be good at anything. And all that makes Trixie feel is trapped.
>Trapped inside of her own limits that she wants nothing less than to put up with.
>The limits that Trixie holds no patience to slowly lift away from her day by day… week by week… year by year.
>No.
>Trixie doesn’t want to wait. She wants the praise now… that praise that she sees being beamed towards Twilight. It’s right there in front of her face, and she can’t grab it.
>The girl picks up her laptop and throws it across the room.
>With a soft thud the laptop lands on the surface of Trixie’s bed, still blaring the bright light of the screen in her direction. the light hurst Trixie’s eyes still, but not as much as what the light shows hurts her heart. Trixie can still see what people are saying about Twilight’s work.
>How much they adore her, how much work Twilight had put into her creations.
>It revs up a deep seated disdain within Trixie as she walks over to the bed to pick up the laptop once more. Everything inside of her is screaming to turn the computer off before she does something she’ll regret.
>Trixie folds the laptop closed and turns the light back on in her room. The relative brightness that almost stings her eyes gives her a good idea how long she had been sitting in her chair facing the screen with the darkness surrounding her. If anything, the sudden influx of light brings a gradually prevailing moment of common sense.
>The creaking sound of the chair soothes Trixie as she sits back down into it and lowers her shoulders. She breathes a lot more slowly and takes another glance at the laptop still on her bed.
>She can no longer see what she read on the screen, but she can still feel those words. Her hands ball up in to fists as she imagines Twilight reading all of those positive comments. All of that praise and feedback that Trixie had wanted to hear about her work for so long.
>The laptop is placed back onto the desk and Trixie hops onto the bed where the closed laptop used to rest and drifts off to sleep in silence.
>She has to see Twilight at school tomorrow.
~
>After Trixie makes it to school the next day, she has already repressed what she saw on the computer screen the night before.
>Whenever she gets close to seeing Twilight in the hallways or in the classrooms, she looks away. It’s moments like these when Trixie questions why she doesn’t stay away from computers more often. Given how much they tend to cloud her judgement with so much angst and envy.
>The teacher talking in class starts to become drowned out by Trixie’s imagination and short attention span. The girl scribbles tiny sketches onto the paper in her notebook instead of what she’s supposed to memorize.
>But that doesn’t mean that she’s not studying.
>Trixie still tries to think up a few clever things to say on the lines of the paper. She tries to put together rhymes to construct poems or possibly song lyrics. The girl thinks through her entire vocabulary as the whiteboard in the front of the classroom becomes crowded with more and more mathematical equations.
>But nothing the girl writes sounds like it’s deep enough in meaning.
>For some reason, Trixie jumps ahead of what she sees on the paper before her and imagines people reading her work. She imagines their reactions reflecting the feedback she had gotten in the past. The responses that insist to her that she did a… “great job”, but in the end, her work was really just mediocre to them.
>It isn’t hard to see the league in which Trixie’s work lies, at least through the girl’s overanalyzing eyes.
>But how she sees her writing is nowhere near as damaging as how she sees her drawings.
>The disgust only amplifies as Trixie can fill words of her own into the blank whenever she sees whatever it was she draws on paper. Mostly through how much, to put it lightly, different the physical result turns out to be in contrast to what Trixie imagined in her head.
>Once pencil hits paper, the fate of Trixie’s dream of becoming an artist mirrors the fate of the transition from imagination to marks of graphite on paper. Trixie watches that fate seal upon her over and over again until the end of class.
>Not a single note of the class’s subject has been taken.
>The paper itself is tossed straight into the hallway trash can by Trixie’s trembling hand. Of course, it takes a couple of throws to toss each ripped up piece one at a time.
>”Hey.” A voice startles Trixie as she walks away from the disposal of her failure.
>That voice couldn’t be anyone other than Twilight, and Trixie’s knuckles turn white and her cheeks turn red once more.
>Trixie almost starts off by making up an excuse not to talk as she goes along abruptly replying when Twilight continues.
>”Are you alright? You look a little tense.” Twilight wears a cheerful expression on her face that taunts Trixie as she turns to face the girl.
>The rest of the mane six standing behind Twilight examine Trixie’s nearly crouched stance, noticing how she had angrily chucked something into the trash can. Of they had seen it, then there’s no doubt that Twilight had as well.
>”T-Trixie is fine…” Trixie steps further away from the trash can to draw attention away from it. She gets ready to walk away.
>The mane six exchange a few glances.
>”Are you sure?” Twilight steps ahead of the rest of her friends, who apparently happened to be here at the same time as Twilight addressing Trixie.
>”I’m fine!” Trixie shouts into the opposite direction as she hastily walks away.
>The group of friends brushes the incident off as nothing without even taking a look at whatever it was that Trixie threw away. The school day drags on and nothing else happens.
>But the day itself must continue after Trixie makes it back home.
>And the first place she goes to is the computer. The girl sits down into her seat and watches the screen light up in front of her.
>She opens up Tumblr immediately and sifts through her newsfeed.
>It’s almost like an addiction, watching all of these posts appear on her screen one by one just to see if they’re anything else she can get mad at. There’s really no valid reason for Trixie to do it that way, as she’d rather stay in her own little world where she is the one at the top of the game.
>Where that first place trophy sits atop her palm.
>But she looks for the work by others that get more praise than her. She’s not exactly sure what part of her possesses her to do this. Perhaps it an urge screaming at her to take in what the more successful works of art — drawn or written — look like. And what the difference is between them and the things Trixie has made.
>But the problem is, Trixie already understand this difference, and she sees it over and over again as the images pop up in front of her.
>That shading… the line work, proportions, everything about it screams one thing: practice.
>Practice practice practice.
>And each time the word rings inside of Trixie’s head, the more upset she feels in her heart. Practicing is… that one thing that Trixie is vehemently not willing to do. And the girl isn’t even sure whether or not it’s her fault that this is the case.
>After finishing up her internet browsing for part one of the afternoon, Trixie turns to her backpack and pulls out her homework. The grim reminder of what it was that gave her the negative mindset towards practicing.
>School feels like a prison, almost. At least to someone like Trixie, who doesn’t really know what it’s like to live a life of physical torture or anything like that. And while that part isn’t really something she needs to consider given that everything is relative, the main issue that stems from this still remains.
>Trixie has developed a deep disdain towards learning.
>School had made learning a chore for the girl, giving her a schedule and obligations to complete dull but still difficult assignments in order to not “fall behind” everyone else. Trixie never chose to do any of this, and while she’s grateful for at least learning how to read and write along with basic things, all of these complicated math and science classes are becoming so painfully undesirable. And the fact that they’re mandatory only make the feeling towards it worse.
>Trixie wishes that there was a better way to live out her younger years, but the system itself already has how she spends her time planned out, apparently.
>And it sure as hell isn’t fun.
>To be honest, Trixie wants to become a magician when she grows up, or at least an illusionist. Along with being a poet, novelist and artist. It quite a stretch in terms of hopes and dreams, but after beginning to see all of her peers slowly let go of their childhood dreams, Trixie refused to change with them.
>A seed of fear for her own future was planted into Trixie’s heart whenever she heard about career choices and what OTHER people wanted her to do when she grew up, and how different those things were than what she wanted.
>And their excuse: “Too bad. It’s just the way life works. Get used to it.”
>That’s it. No reasonable explanation, no more of that “follow your dreams” nonsense they drowned her in when she was in elementary school. None of it.
>Now, it’s nothing more than a hideous message along the lines of “This is the list of dreams you’re allowed to reasonably have and nothing more. Follow one of them through working your youth away in college or you’ll end up poor and frowned upon by society. We won’t tell you this directly so you can’t call it out, but we’ll surely imply the living hell out of it.”
>Isn’t career day a load of crap?
>It’s the coalescence of all this angst that drove Trixie to grow such a deep despise towards learning. Too many connections between the idea of learning and the system she went through were made. It was eventually engraved into her mindset. Trixie would be a fool to assume that the resistance to practice wasn’t all in her head.
>It very well may be, as everyone does have their own opinions and ways of viewing things. So there’s no way any of this can be true, right?
>Of course, with Trixie being the type of girl to browse Tumblr most of the day, her world views are enriched in the eyes of some and bastardized in the eyes of others.
>Before she types another message in to the posting field, Trixie notices a new message in her inbox. The accompanying picture is something she immediately recognizes.
>It’s always right net to the work Trixie wishes had come from her mind instead of someone else.
>[Hey.] Twilight’s message reads only one word.
>Trixie goes to her own page before answering the message.
>Maybe it was something Twilight saw on her blog that caught her attention. Maybe it was something that Trixie had said in the past that would have gotten Twilight asking questions. Trixie starts to see what could have done this as she looks at her most recent post.
>[Thank you all so much for the 0 followers!] The message is self explanatory, along with the face that posts like this one span further into the past every week.
>It must have been forever since Trixie started posting these whenever she noticed her follower count remaining at zero.
>Twilight sent another message. [I saw what you threw away today.]
>Trixie opens her inbox once more and reads the message over and over again countless times. She stops when her mind accepts that this isn’t some sort of a nightmare.
>And now the girl is trying to think up her damage controlling response by the time Twilight sends yet another message.
>[I noticed the things you said on it… and it made me think that I should probably talk to you sometime.]
>After looking back into her memory, Trixie finds herself hardly able to remember what it was she wrote on the paper. All she knows is that after she reached the point where her drawing was flawed from the ground up (which might as well have been right when the pencil hit paper), she started to vent regarding how terrible her work never stops being.
>Trixie remembers writing at least tent times more than she drew.
>[It didn’t mean anything.] Trixie tried to hold back the urge to type strong words, dragging herself through this awkward confrontation.
>[Alright.] Twilight answers after a minute or so.
>After the message comes in, Trixie feels a door beginning to close. A door that had unexpectedly opened when Twilight had first messaged her over this website.
>There were so many thing Trixie could have said about Twilight’s art. So many things she could have asked, especially pertaining to the drawing process. All of that previous hatred for learning disappeared in Trixie’s head when she saw Twilight herself, that glorious internet artist, novelist and who knows what else message her.
>[Wait.] The message is all typed up and sent before Trixie’s conscience realizes it.
>[Hm?]
>Now Trixie has to think up something to say in order to follow up on the potential mistake she just made.
>[Are you saying you won’t mind if I kind of go off on a tangent about something?]
>Trixie imagines Twilight spending a few minutes to question the way she worded that. She’s probably looking at her message right now and thinking to herself about how overly-dramatic whatever Trixie has to say is. It’s thoughts like these that makes Trixie wish she could… help it, to be honest.
>[Sure I don’t mind.] Twilight’s message comes in a lot more quickly than Trixie had anticipated. Trixie is nearly startled by the message notification suddenly appearing.
>After getting her green light to explain what Twilight had apparently seen on the paper, Trixie does not hesitate to try and explain herself.
>[I’ve always been terrible at drawing and pretty much anything involving art. I’ve always found the process to be extremely hard and painful thing to do because I’ve hated learning things ever since I had to go to school every day and learn about things I don’t care about…] The sound of trixie’s keyboard echoes across her room.
>After Trixie finishes her massive paragraph on text, she presses send right after she notices Twilight send something else on the other end. As Trixie reads what Twilight sent, it becomes apparent that Twilight had already built her own inference based on what Trixie had written on the paper that she threw away.
>[If it’s something about art, don’t worry. I can give you a few pointers on how to improve. Starting out is always the hardest part, I know this from experience.]
>Trixie imagines Twilight reading the paragraph of complaints over the next five minutes after the messages were sent.
>After this, another message comes in.
>[It’s okay to run into difficulties at first when learning how to draw. But it’s important to enjoy doing it no matter what. If the process seems a little bit difficult for you, maybe you should just practice the process itself without any real drawings behind it so it doesn’t get in the way of you having fun.]
>[Well the problem is that I have a hard time understanding the process. I’ve tried and tried so much but it just never got better whenever I would try and draw something on paper. I’m sorry you had to see whatever I said about that before.]
>Trixie feels a knot in her stomach at first when she sees Twilight’s next message come in, at least at first.
>[Feeling frustration is completely natural when something doesn’t work out. But it’s okay, that’s where you reach out to other people for help. That’s one of the major things friendship is for.]
>Twilight starts typing some more as Trixie interprets what the last message form her had insisted. A rant about friendship has become a lot closer to this conversation now that the idea of asking for help has come into question. Trixie remembers all of the times she had heard Twilight go off on a tangent about friendship when she was at school.
>Every time someone would bring it up, Twilight would include how friends could help eachother learn things together and correct each other’s flaws and weaknesses.
>And that is exactly what Trixie sees posted next.
>[It’s actually all about practice, really. All you have to do is look over the process and get an idea of how to do it. You can even do it completely wrong at first if you want to, because then you can figure out what not to do and look forward to the things to try next.]
>Trixie remembers all of those years she had spent hating the very act if practicing.
>[I can even show you how I learned it. It took me a long time to learn it, and it was really difficult, but I got the hang of it after a while of working hard.]
>Working hard.
>An eruption of rage silently fills Trixie as she sits in her chair, feeling the need to do what she did with her computer last time. Working hard and learning only make Trixie feel worse about herself, given that they are two of the last things she is willing to do.
>Things that complaining has eased Trixie’s thoughts away from.
>[I’m glad we had this talk. I’ve always wanted to teach someone else how to draw! : 3]
>The word “teach” is something Trixie never wanted to hear.
>She doesn’t answer Twilight, just considers shutting off the computer and shields her eyes from the internet. But the messages come in more and more, further displaying the vast knowledge that Twilight has on art and likely other things.
>[We can start on line-art and sketches and what makes them different for starters.] Twilight begins. [It’s really not that hard once you get used to it.]
>Get used to it.
>Now in an uncontrollable fit, Trixie goes to her settings page and clicks “delete account”. It’s hard to click directly on the button with the tears accumulating in her eyes.
>[Trixie? Are you there? I’d love to help you!] Twilight’s message itself seems as though it’s reaching out a theoretical kind hand towards Trixie through the screen.
>Trixie is not used to people caring this much. She reminisces on all of the time she had eaten along at lunch, vowing to herself that she was going to be a famous artist or writer someday.
>That would have made everyone in school regret ignoring her when they got the chance to know her.
>But now that success would not be Trixie’s own, not if somebody else taught her how to do it.
>And the process?
>Trixie wants NONE of that difficult bs. There is no time for waiting, no time or patience for practicing. In Trixie’s mind, having discipline is overrated. The last thing Trixie wants to do is LEARN.
>The Tumblr account is terminated in a matter of seconds. Twilight’s messages had gone unanswered. All of them.
>Trixie chucks her laptop across the room, causing it to snap in half on impact with the wall. If someone had discovered her IP address, the information they got would be useless now.
>After crawling back into bed, Trixie lies on her side and cries herself to sleep once again… not having learned a solitary thing.
>Tumblrites, man.
End.