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Back to my Roots — Description
Being invested in a "country" character has really awakened something long put to sleep within my soul.
And to be fair i've owned up to some of it over the last couple of years, but my fixation with Wander, well...he's a lot like the people of where i come from, and it's brought me down off my high horse.
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I am from the country (somewhat).
Born and raised in Indiana, but with a fairly colorful (i guess??) upbringing that has always mixed country with city life.
And then, as you all know by now, some light introduction and involvement in seaside life.
But with all these divides, as a kid especially, the country never appealed to me.
My cousin, whom i will call "K", was raised straight up country and around farm life and loved tractors and barns and farms and vast fields and all that when we were kids.
While he was obsessing over the country, i was obsessing over the beach and more nautical things, which continued for basically all of my life!
And i love that.
The sea is where i want to be, it's a part of me.

As i got older, i got more and more proud of the things i embodied and desired in life, and have always known i felt myself a bit "too good" for redneck culture, country life, farms, etc.
And to be fair, some of that comes from the endless media humor involving "bumpkins" and country people just being idiots and inbred, etc.
Naturally, i wanted to get away from that...
I also still make my jokes, too, but i don't see that as harmful.
And having been raised partially around redneck Christian members of my family, they have values i also want to not be associated with.
It's complicated, but they're just not great people.
The hard-working value and love of family?
All good.
Everything else...?

No...
I had fun around them as a kid and even as an adult, simply because of the location and the kids in my family that i have loved, and family bonds that are hard to break...even with hatred.
Then comes the coming-of-age realization that certain groups of people are dominantly responsible for holding society back and openly advocating for the destruction of progression, that they believe in terrible and scary things, and many even want to kill people like me and my loved ones.
And thus, a further wedge was driven between myself and those things i have grown up around.

But...

As i get older, it gets harder to deny my nosalgia, and my interests.
My interests are broadening, and much of that is also because of my fictional interests (which is how it's always been).
And like it or not, much of my good memories have occurred in or around country-themed stuff.
K and i had fun in and around country life.
Because of him, i am softer for those things.
It's funny, because also as a kid i hated country music...which pretty well carried into my adult life!
Except for, as many of you know now, "Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw.
Aaaand over the last few years, a couple more country songs have grabbed my attention and invoked some deep emotions, or just have fuckin' slapped.
The older i get the more i also realize i don't have a favorite genre of music; i just love music and if something resonates with me, i will cherish it.

I'm really just vomiting my thoughts at this point, and they're disorganized because it's hard for me to articulate these emotions.
I promise though, there is a point to sharing all of this.

When i was a kid, i religiously played Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (what a bad name, i'm sorry but what the fuck does that MEAN).
If you've played it, then you know there was quite a bit of country influence, but also some oceanic influence, too.
I loved the hub world, particularly where the country area met the ocean space, where the yellow grass texture collided with the sand(?).
Where hay and seed and wheat collided with palm trees, tropical flowers, and the freedom of a vast oceanic expanse just beyond a fence line.
I have been captivated by that virtual space for years, and it's influenced me in a way that i've only allowed to blossom recently before getting into Wander Over Yonder.
And as i was entering middle school at a vulnerable and impressionable age, i was taken by many things (The Lion King both 1 and 2, the first Pokemon movie, Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, and a few others), including a very odd movie...
Barnyard.
Yes, the one with the talking cows and the main character, Otis, who may or may not have been trans
Love that for him.
God, that movie alone was so timely and opens up such a big can of nostalgia in my head.
Suddenly all manner of things begin to tie together.
Sunsets, Fourth of July fireworks, bowls of fruit, late nights alone in the den watching videos on YouTube, phone calls on the swing set during Summer, a fixation with Lucario and stories in my head about him.

There was also my Teen Titans fixation carried over from the couple of years beforehand, which i had a hard time sometimes relating to because the setting was a city, while my setting was more rundown city, and lots of country.
I remember i used to imagine Dr. Light lived alone in some rundown little house in the middle of nowhere in a huge yellowish grass field.
I remember one evening as a young kid, swinging on my swing set, imagining Raven had shape shifted into a black bear and would attack him in his home for sport and the other Titans would laugh about it.
(Hey the show taught us to be cruel to him, what can i say?)
There's so much, so infinitely much.
So many memories...

But what you may have noticed is a lot of what i've gone into detail about was fictional or in my head.

Well, i didn't have too many outward experiences growing up.
I lusted for adventures i couldn't go on, so i turned my back yard into an entire world.
My video games, the internet, media, my toys, my imagination...
It's not like it was a bad life, and i've talked about it before, but i always find myself drawn to revisit it and spit it back out into the air.
My memories, my thoughts, my nostalgia...they're so, so beautiful.
So colorful, lively, worldly, innocent.
A kaleidoscope of dream-like visions from a time now past, which i continue to use to shape me into who i am now.

So with all this in mind, what's the issue...?

Well...

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    I've always had a little taste of everything, but never a full amount of anything to feel confident about it present-day.
There was so much i never got to learn, or wasn't interested in at the time.
I was sheltered, and whenever i tried to be passionate about something new, someone was always there to shut me down.
Be it family or whatever, there was always a trigger for me to turn my back on a learning opportunity.
And sure, lots of it was also just me purely being uninterested!
I just wanted to love what i loved and not need to justify it, which was great, but as an adult i find that in today's world...you have to justify just about everything.
Few things aren't gatekept, and whenever someone with low experience in something tries to participate and learn, they just get made fun of.
Whenever it's come to even understanding how houses work, my own mom has made me feel like a dumbass and like i'm just not capable of getting it, or getting angry when i don't understand something i wasn't taught about.

I'm too weak, too allergenic, too soft and too city to live a country lifestyle.

I'm too fearful and depressed by concrete landscapes and endless silver buildings to feel comfortable in city life (even though i have a strange yet isolated nostalgia about that too, but that's a different story).

I'm too inexperienced and such a poor swimmer for sea life (also who wants to live around hurricanes?!).

And with all these things i like and know some stuff about, i still also know so little about...everything.
I love all these things in different ways and love to marry them, but in our current political and virtual landscape, people feel outsiders aren't welcome, and there's a sense of absolutism that groups of people seem to have.
At times i feel like a Jack of All Trades, but even so, i don't have enough knowledge or experience with all the things i love.
Whenever i get into something and try to stretch my understanding of it or be involved, i never feel like i belong.
I feel like a poser, like i'm stupid, like i haven't earned the right to be...anywhere.
Rednecks and countrymen laugh at me.
City people laugh at me.
Beach people would also surely laugh at me.
Then there's just my knowledge about anything, most especially animals, feeling at the end of the day like it doesn't matter.
Recently i've allowed myself to become SUPER invested in horses, and can now spot abuse in some areas with them.
But i can hear equestrians saying, "What do you know? You've never even ridden a horse. Fuck, you're afraid of them!"
I'm certainly guilty of gatekeeping as well in certain things, but when it's everything you love, it's frustrating.
Wherever i go, i feel foolish and unwelcome.
Like my lack of understanding makes me inadequate, like i'm just some dewy-eyed dipshit that tries to appropriate everything without having lived through anything.
As if it's my fault...

  But you know what...?

I'm glad for this revelation.
I'm glad that loving Wander, of all things, has encouraged me to unlock something i spent my life running from, and convincing myself i was too good for.
It's true, i am a Jack of All Trades, and Master of None.
Not even art.
My heart is as big and bright and as full as a Summer sunset, and damn near stretches just about as far across a colorful sky.

I love outer space, i love the stars and planets, i love vast plains and fields of golden wheat.
I love oddly placed barns, i love horses, i love geodes and fossils.
I love the wildlife of forests, i love woodlands, i love mountains, i love rivers and oceans, beaches, nautical sea life, beach trees and the tropics.
I love bright and exotic city nights with chaos and fun and driving fast.
I love my Spirituality, i love magick and witchcraft, i love science and evolution and the genesis of life and humanity.
I love movies and music and art and writing, i love video games and how they work, i love learning, i love investing myself in a myriad of avenues.
There is nothing i have mastered, and there most likely never will be.
But i want to know so much more.
I want to know as much as i possibly can, about everything.
I want to understand how my house works and how to fix it, i want to understand how cars work, i want to understand how video games work, how guns work and about the different kinds, how to ride a horse and not be afraid of them, how country life works, how beach life works, space works.
I want to understand all the wonders of God's work and drink it in and just love it, regardless of how much i can understand about it, or boast about it.

I'm not a city girl, or a horse girl, or a country girl.
I'm not a "salt life" girl, a techno girl, whatever.
I don't know what i am...but i'm excited knowing a title is somewhere out there for me to find.
I'm just a free spirit, a pirate!
Maybe that's just my title.
I take from all things i love and like to mesh them together into this complex web of adoration and gradual learning.
I am intelligent, and whether or not people think i belong somewhere, i know i am entitled to let my heart love what it loves -- even if i don't love the whole picture.
I'm very do-it-yourself, so since i don't often love whole pictures, i prefer to just make my own!

I don't know where i belong.
My ideal place to live and be, would be somewhere where the country and a big red party barn meets the beach.
Where sunsets are deep and rich, where stars are bright and countless in an unpolluted night sky.
Where there are woodlands to explore, to see gorgeous wildlife in.
Where a city isn't a super long drive away, either.
I want a little of everything, and i'll probably not ever actually find that.
But...
I can dream, and i can still search for those things.
I know there's someplace in this world for me.
Don't know if i'll find it, but i'll search high and low.
And most of all, i need people with me who want that, too.
Who can appreciate those things, who i can share my life with, who want my company.
I need to be careful, too; with all my loves and desires, it could be easy to find myself incapable of being happy wherever i end up.
Maybe that's the pirate in me.
(Oh funny, i could never survive as a pirate but call myself one, lmao.
Something else i can see someone gatekeeping!)
The explorer, the sight-seer, the traveler, someone who wants to breathe in...everything.
And yes, collect some things along the way.
With my maps and my journals, my treasures, my freedom.
If none of my dreams ever come true, i'll at least die a dreamer one day, and that's inspiration nonetheless.
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I don't know why Wander speaks to me so much.
He's unlike any character i've ever loved.
I feel like he's actually teaching me lessons, he's brought me back to such tender roots.
I feel inspired to let myself love everything i do, including some things from country life and aesthetics.
Not all of it, but the parts that mean the most to me?

Hell yes.
And before fellow dragon fans and SeaSaltShrimp followers say, "That glowing blue star reminds me of her work!"

Damn skippy it does.
She inspired me, too.
She's inspired me to also tap into my true self.
I tend to not go too hard on the "blue stars" thing because i worry people will compare me, but how many people have a special connection to stars, most especially blue ones?

Yeah, a lot.
I don't care who else uses it or how common it is.
This is my story and experience, this is my love and my memories and my sentiments.
I refuse to be scared to openly love anything i want to ever again.

    If you read all this, thanks for gazing upon another piece of my heart.
Wander Over Yonder, the title itself brings me to some surreal nostalgia and craving for something deeper.
He's a special character...
Gonna take my love of him and run, too.
He's definitely become a friend, and i thank him in essence for reaching all of my inner child.

Remember to Live, to Love, and to LOOT what you love in this lifetime.
Bless, Much Love.

        ---Fae FierceVulpine, Captain of Dreams

---Wander Over Yonder is property of Disney. this artwork belongs to me.---