Asten

You know those days where your brain’s been a bit loud, your energy’s been up and down, and you just think…“Yeah. I deserve snacks.” This is that haul. A perfectly unbalanced, emotionally supportive mix of:🍫 chocolate for comfort🍭 sweets for serotonin🧂 crisps for stability (obviously)🥤 Pepsi Max because I’m nothing if not consistent Featuring icons… Read more

aka: If anything happens to them, I riot. Some characters aren’t just cute… they are emotionally dangerous levels of adorable. The kind where you instantly go into protective mode like:“nope. nothing bad is allowed to happen to you ever.” Here are my elite picks 💖👇 🐭 Penny (The Rescuers)The blueprint. The standard. The reason I… Read more

Hi! I’m Asten — writer, nostalgia enthusiast, and professional rememberer of extremely specific 90s/00s moments. Asten Does Nostalgia (ADN) is my cosy corner of the internet where we rewind to the era of:📺 iconic kids’ TV🎶 ridiculously catchy pop songs💻 chaotic early internet memories🧸 toys, adverts, and random cultural moments we all somehow remember Basically…… Read more

If you’ve ever read one of my nostalgia posts and thought:“Wow, that takes me right back.” That’s exactly the kind of feeling that inspired my book.💖 It’s the story behind the nostalgia — growing up in the 90s and 00s, navigating life as an autistic girl who loved pop culture a little too intensely, and… Read more

Something really exciting has been happening behind the scenes… ADN isn’t just a blog anymore. It’s slowly becoming a brand. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been designing graphics inspired by 90s/00s pop culture, autism pride, and the slightly chaotic sparkle that lives in my brain at all times. Some of them started as jokes.… Read more

I’ve been quietly working on something recently, and it’s reached the point where I can finally say it out loud. I’m writing a book. It doesn’t have a finished title yet, and it doesn’t need one right now — but it has a heart, a shape, and a very clear emotional centre. It’s rooted in… Read more

This one is very specific. And yes — it scared me. Not the film itself. Not the happy ending. The end of a Disney VHS tape. You know the bit. The screen goes dark. The music stops. And suddenly you’re not in the story anymore. Instead, there’s silence… or worse — that slightly echoey end… Read more

This one feels slightly less weird — but also very on brand. Balloons were supposed to be fun. Party-coded. Birthday-coded. Village hall–coded. But I was scared of them. Not floating gently in the corner. Not tied to a chair near the cake. The problem was always the same thing: the pop. That horrible waiting feeling… Read more

Go ahead and laugh if you want — I used to be genuinely scared of my bedroom TV. Not because of what was on it. But because of what it might do. For a long time, my brain was convinced the TV could turn itself on while I was asleep. No reason. No logic. Just… Read more

There are some fears you grow out of. And then there are the ones that simply… go quiet. Waiting. Lurking. Ready to be remembered at 3am for no reason. Welcome back to ADN Fear Files — because apparently our nervous systems were doing side quests from a very young age. Things that scared us WAY… Read more