#I just can't see how it was a good idea

[lime-lorelei]

people who love fantasy and hate isekai vs wilbur soot

#the more i think about it the more i hate it #I feel like one of the best parts of the dream smp is how the characters are somewhatmoldable #none of them have concrete backstories #so they can be interpreted in different ways #but now that Wilbur has one all of that is gone #knowing that he is separate from the world the rest of the characters were raised in makes his arc feel off #it makes the story feel a bit useless #I just can't see how it was a good idea #like if it had to be a crack ending why couldn't it have been Tommy I'm not gonna kill myself I'm just moving to Utah #it feels more like he's running away than forgiving himself and starting anew #no hate to cc!wilbur #it just kinda irks me #like he apologizes to everyone and leaves forever? #I assume forever #I wish it was more of a 'I'm leaving for Utah' but he comes back every once in a while #idk maybe I'm being silly #it was fine at first #but the more I thought about it the worse the implications got #dream smp #dream smp analysis #mcyt #cc wilbur critical #c!wilbur critical #critical #wilbur soot #c!wilbur

[sergle]

AROUND (time): 30 minute window before and 30 after. BEFORE (time): the specified time is the absolute cutoff, bordering on late, so arrive somewhere in the hour before. AT (time): be punctual and be there or be square at the time. BY (time): something STARTS at the time specified and arriving at the exact time does not count as late. This is my take. I am not taking criticism at this time.

no dude bc I think you lowkey nailed it

#EDIT: JUST BC I ANSWERED THIS ONE DOESN'T MEAN I WANT A FLOOD OF ASKS ABT THIS i just think this queen was onto something #since it can't be improved on i don't need other definitions of on time for various phrasings of timed plans #At and By sound kind of the same but i think i'm seeing the divide. kind of. maybe #like By would be good to arrive early but At has absolutely no benefit to showing up w 30min to spare bc you'll just be waiting #I think is what the vibe is #but your Around is just as forgiving as my Around and i'm glad for that bc what the hell is this 10 min before 10 min after bullshit!! #do you have any idea how short 10 mins is!! #it could take 10 minutes to literally find my good bra... #sergle answers

[carlyraejepsans]

Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

#uf being one of those! the story is centered on certain characters (mainly asgore) behaving very ooc #so as a stickler for canon I don't have much interest in it #but there is a very clear visual idea and motif in the redesigns that ties every character together very efficiently #and also fucks like a rabid rhino #so i can appreciate its visual/aesthetic aspects instead #i mean you can't understate the impact that good *artists* specifically had on the proliferation of aus back in the day #good writing is almost inseverable from good characterization because dialogues and characterization ARE an integral part #of what makes writing good. while good art (as much as it too is tied to its own conventions) is free-er from the bounds of accuracy #as was as being easier & faster to consume. writing has to be read first. you can just look at a piece of art and go ''wow that looks sick'' #without thinking about logical details/accuracy #you can show a pic of sans to an artist who's never touched the game and they might draw you the most gorgeous piece of art you've ever seen #it's significantly harder to do for writing #swap aus are a fun design challenge to see how you'd incorporate different aspects of some characters visual signatures into another #it's a game of translation of sorts. but if you want to treat it like a story well... the matter becomes a lot more complicated #answered asks #au tag

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

FEM NIGHTMARE DESIGN

i wanted to post both my pre corruption and post design version at once so here you go!

they might be subject to change in the future, but i don't think i wanna go overboard with detail for nightmare's passive form; cause not only would her fancy princess clothing be stolen or ripped and torn ages ago with all the bullying and blood staining it, but also the twins have to change their clothes every once in a while to clean them or at least when they get too small to fit, so the outfits have to be replaceable/easy to mend and sew back hhh xD

also no crowns for this version of mine, but a crescent moon hair clip turned necklace for night, and a sun clip turned belt for dream! her design coming soon (hopefully :'D)

#my art #my redesign #utmv #nightmare sans #nightmare!sans #dreamtale #dreamtale au #passive nightmare sans #dreamtale nightmare #corrupted nightmare sans #fem!nightmare #alright hoo boy finally!!! it's her it's the lady the queen in the flesh<333 #posting this at two am might be a bad idea if no one sees this....but at the same time aughgh i can't WAIT til morning to show her i CAN'T! #i'm sorry i just want to see night wearing suits and ironed pants and all the fanciest cool clothing ever once she gets outta her universe #boots with heels cause she's a shorty<333 and cause they're pretty on her like omgg #the whole silhouette is so good y'all idk how i managed to make it look alright when my poses are always so stiff hhhh xD #also i didn't wanna make the purple too saturated cause purple and blue fabrics were always expensive back in the old times #like REALLY expensive- so even if it is fiction i kinda expect her to not have lots of spare clothes lying around :'D #okay okay imma shut up goodnight y'all<333

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

#by the way a lot of this draws on ideas inspired by 'letters to a young poet' by rainer maria rilke if you're interested #that's a formative text for me as an artist #it won't teach you how to write but it will teach you how to think perhaps #and once you know how to think. well. life is just pretty good #and i can't say the writing gets easier but when life is pretty good i find myself enjoying it a lot more #this word vomit was prompted by the question 'how do you write real people and real interactions' #because that's like — i'm not trying to be pedantic but— #that's kind of just 'how do you write literature'? #because that's all literature is. what are human beings? how do you write a person? how do they interact with each other? #like shoutout to the void if you know for sure how to write real interactions then please for the love of god tell the rest of us #because i think most of all authors in history have just been giving it our best stab #'this is how the world looks for me. is it how the world looks for you?' #so my advice on that score is: try to see how the world looks for you #and then try to share it with me #don't worry about whether it looks the same for me. it won't

[cerise-on-top]

Hank, Sanford and Deimos with a Reader who does Handcrafts

Gonna post my old MadCom stuff since people seem interested in it! I didn't write too much back then, but I'll post it anyway and hope for some MadCom requests as well! What the title says! Reader knits, crochets and embroiders in this! The format is different from how I usually write, but that's because I wrote this months ago, if not in 2022! I don't remember when, but it's been a while since I wrote this!

Hank

If you get his attention while doing one of your crafts, expect him to just stare at you for a while. He knows what knitting is, since you can use those needles to stab someone with enough force, but he never really cared much for any of it. So, seeing you do those small, but precise movements has him somewhat curious. If you beckon him closer to check out what you’re doing, he will approach you, taking your piece from your hands and gently examining it, before returning it to you.

While he won’t join you that often due to his occupation, Hank will lie down next to you from time to time, watching you work until he falls asleep eventually. Doing so next to you, especially when you’re knitting or doing embroidery, takes a lot of trust on his behalf, so it’s a rather rare occurrence, but it might happen. Still, sometimes even Nevada’s most wanted can’t resist getting some sleep in.

If you give him a scarf or anything of the likes it might seem like he doesn’t like it at first. As he only grunts in acknowledgement and doesn’t wear it, it might seem disheartening at first glance. But rest assured, he’s well aware that him wearing it would only get it covered in blood, and he wouldn’t want your creation, that you put so much love into, to get sullied like that. Hank does keep it somewhere hidden where only he can find it so that it won’t get stolen as well, he truly does treasure anything you give him.

Sanford

He has helped his mother crocheting every once in a while when he was young by holding her wool for her. Sanford always thought it to be really cool how you can make something so beautiful out of something as simple as wool and yarn. Much like he did when he was younger, he’ll hold your yarn for you, making it more comfortable to knit or crochet for you. Unlike Hank and Deimos, he will try to learn it as well. It seems relaxing, so why not? But by no means is he a master. Due to his strength, he will likely rip the yarn and wool apart from time to time and come to you for help.

In order to relax and unwind a bit, he’ll likely come to you and ask if you would like to practise your craft for and with him. Having you around in and of itself already makes Sanford happy, but just getting to spend time with you without having to worry about being killed by the enemy makes it all the better. If you let him, he will hold you close, lean into you, put you on his lap, anything you’re comfortable with.

Please give him a sweater. Because he’s never wearing a shirt he gets cold fairly easily. He’ll cherish it dearly and wear it whenever he can, and whenever he knows it won’t get ripped. Another thing he’d be very happy with would be a piece of embroidery. It reminds him of better times and gives him hope, especially when your piece of art is something pleasant and sweet to look at. Because of that, he will put it up somewhere in his room where he can always see it. Even if Deimos makes fun of him for it, he will simply lightly jab at the smoker, all the while smiling at it.

Deimos

He’ll lovingly call you a grandma for having hobbies like these. Even while doing embroidery, where you stab things thousands of times, he will snicker at you whenever he catches you doing any of these things. Though, he doesn’t mind that sort of thing at all since that means you’ll be sitting still for a while, meaning you’ll give him a chance to unwind with him. Deimos will wrap his arms around you, leaning onto you or just cuddle into you in general. No fighting, no getting hurt, just watching you do the same movements over and over again.

Despite possibly calling you boring, he does have great respect for your craft, since he can’t do any of it. It’s too tedious and he can’t sit around for long enough doing something like this. It’s simply not exciting enough. But the moment you give him his first sweater, he will think it’s the most awesome thing to ever exist. Proud as a peacock, he will flaunt and taunt his new piece of clothing, especially to Sanford and Hank, declaring just what a great lover he has.

Present him with a plushie and his mind will be blown. He always thought knitting and crocheting are just for woolly hats and sweaters and scarves and all. If he sees you made him a tiny grunt, he will simply lose it, run around the Status Quo base and show everyone what you’re capable of. It doesn’t even matter to him whether or not it looks good. Your hands are magical to him and absolutely everyone has to know just how cool and epic you are.

#madness combat #madness combat x reader #hank j wimbleton x reader #sanford x reader #deimos x reader #I miss Madness Combat so much y'all have absolutely no idea #I am foaming at the mouth absolutely feral waiting for episode 12 #I desperately need these funny grunt creatures back in my life #I know I said I'd be playing the OG MW games this weekend but in lieu of me getting back into madcom I might replay M:PN #and rewatch the entire series! I could force my friend to watch it with me again! #it'd be the third time I'd be watching it with someone else #I actually talked nonstop for over an hour about Madness Combat to my ex at one point and he didn't even stop me #I had so many theories about it all that seemed to make sense to me but I since forgot them unfortunately #Also did anyone else see the 2B plushies or was I hallucinating those? Because I can't find them on Makeship... #I actually own the Hank Sanford and Deimos plushies #Only 2B is missing at this point and I want him so so bad I love him #I actually had a White Hank plushie custom made as well because she's my absolutel favorite #oh boy I've been rambling here but it shows just how much I love Madness Combat! Such a good show! Phenomenal music too! #I need to give Sanford a hug after all he's been through :(

[bonefall]

How do you know about glass children?!? It's like you go out of your way to incorporate and see disabled people and it's so nice to be seen!

I actually didn't until someone asked me if that's what I was doing with Bumblestripe and Blossomfall! I just. perfectly wrote the dynamics and feelings associated with Glass Children for B&B and learned there was a name for it LMAO

I'm interested in types of abuse and dynamics within families, how pain passes down between generations. I write a lot about it and like to listen to people's experiences. It's complex and nuanced, but somehow, it's all similar. Pain isn't that different between people-- how they react to it is.

People say, "Listen to disabled people/abusive victims/marginalized persons" and I think some folks don't know what that means. What that means is; seek out people's individual experiences and learn how they describe their own lives, in their own terms. How they interact with their family, what annoys them, the language they wished people used, day to day tricks that make their lives easier.

For Jayfeather I just did a lot of that. Took people's input on how to do the warrior training arc, what they wish was more common in these stories, and what to avoid.

And for how his relationship is to Brambleclaw... well, honestly, Brambleclaw is my special boodle boy and no one understands him like I do✨✨ This man is a terrible father and a toxic mate✨✨✨He never should have had power over kits or Clans and Bad Bramble Dad is actually incredibly interesting as a continuation of the TNP characterization and segways nicely into the sorts of bad choices he makes as a leader✨✨✨✨✨

That man plays favorites with his children just like his own dad did, lathering affection on whoever pleases him most, he is incapable of doing an accurate self-reflection because the idea that he might actually, truly be like his own father is so painful that he can't confront the idea and becomes defensive at the very thought ✨✨✨

#Jokes aside I really don't mean shade to the majority of the fandom that would have preferred Bramble be unproblematic #In fact I agree he's absolutely unrecognizable from his TPB characterization #but also. Bramble's abuse is actually profoundly interesting. The way he's petty and can't handle the idea of losing control #And GOOD GODS it's so rare to see people hit the sweet spot #People either make him an inhuman monster or remove the abuse entirely and like... I get people wanting to rehab their comfort character #Or create a huge villain to be cathartically torn down #but i am a fucking Obelisk. Alone. crying that he's actually fascinating the way he is #and his biggest problem is that the writers don't realize that he IS abusive #It's just framing I swear that's the problem. please god why does no one else see how interesting he is #bone babble #tw abuse

[kirisclangen]

Zelda

She/her, 65 moons, cis molly

#Zelda (cat) #<- so it doesn't go in the fandom tags of the game lmao #Loner #honeyclan #<- the save file she's from. I'm gonna say she lives nearest to them #warrior cats oc #warriors oc #kiri’s clangen #clangen #She also doesn't have the chest spot on her sprite but I thought she looked better with it so. Y'know #I made her fur so massive but I need it to be known that the rest of her is massive as well. She's jut very large #also I HAVE RETURNED TO THIS BLOG!!! Can't say how regular activity here will be but I'm queueing this on thursday to go up on friday #and I've got three more finished cats to go up the three days after that. We'll see how many more I draw before the queue runs out #I'm doing hermit-a-day-may over on my main blog and I'm coming up on the end of the schoolyear so I may be mostly swamped until summerish #but I'd like to pick back up with posting these during the summer. I have some ideas for a comic that I'd like to do but I haven't written- #-it out yet becuase I want to get these designs done first and I think I'm about halfway through all the cats I have? across 5 different- #-clans two of which are very large so. Mass extinction events will be on once I start playing moons again!! #anyways sorry for rambling but I'm very proud of my next few designs. I think I've found a good method for doing them quickly. It involves- #-using actual reference images for the poses lmao #EDIT I lied I'm not even close to halfway #I've got 66 out of 181 done meaning I have 115 left #jesus fucking christ ITS FINE it's fine it's just a lot. not a problem though #I can pick up the pace after this next month or two #it's chill

[sage-lights]

thinking about amangela angst during the filming of the "love is blind" video...

angela is high off the energy of the cast and the fantasy of marrying amanda, but she watches as amanda slips the plastic ring onto her right hand and not her left (because her left ring finger is already occupied by her real wedding band). then boom, it's the most brutal crash down to reality ever, and angela has to carry on the video with the same energy level as before the realization. only now she's also hyper aware of how none of this is reality. they're all just playing pretend 🤕🤕🤕

#angela giarratana #amanda lehan canto #amangela #love is blind #smosh games #smosh rpf #this silly little idea slipped into my brain and now i can't stop thinking about it #like there's so much you could do with the angst of angela pining for amanda but amanda's married #and so angela's stuck seeing her every day at work and she dies a little every time amanda's husband is mentioned #but she wants to seem like a good sport and a good friend so she follows amanda's husband on ig #but it's just so brutal #(on a completely different and more grounded in reality note the fact that angela is the only cast member to follow amanda's husband is #so cute and just shows how close amanda and angela are!) #smoshblr

[yellowocaballero]

At this point you've written at least four different roleswap AUs, so I was wondering if you had any thoughts or takes about how a roleswap AU should be? - someone who's planning on making a roleswap AU

Please don't remind me. I'm embarrassed about this. I know I need to write other things. I don't know why the AU concept is so incredibly fun to write. I can't explain it. Roleswaps are very easy to write and a lot of fun and involve being a freak about everything. Who wouldn't write 10 of those bitches.

But yes, as someone whose roleswap AUs are like 9 out of her 51 fics, I feel qualified to talk about this. These are just my own opinions and takes, and other people might do it differently - if you write roleswaps too, feel free to add in your two cents!!

Before sitting down to write literally anything I always figure out the rules of the story. Writing is little more than a nonstop series of decisions, and if you abide by the rules of your story or characters then your decisions will be coherent and cohesive. By rules I don't mean worldbuilding - I mean the internal logic of the story and the characters. "X character will never explicitly say how he's feeling" or "the leads have to both win and lose every encounter".

I find establishing writing rules for roleswaps especially important - it's figuring out exactly how the roleswap works. Here are the ones that I find important, and kind of the process:

Decide what is swapped. Is it more of a universal swap, personality swap, backstory swap, chronology swap, or alignment swap? No matter which one you choose, all of these things are probably going to change anyway, but there has to be one central point for each character that guides your decisions. Are you actually swapping the narrative role in the story, or are you just changing it? You have to be really precise and have a very good idea of what exactly is swapped, and it has to be consistent throughout the story. It can't just (just) work on what you'd like to see, it has to be exactly the same between characters.

Decide the point of divergence. Sometimes that point is pretty abstract (She's a teenager in the 90s instead of the 20s). Sometimes it's much more specific, just one moment (He developed his superpowers at this moment instead of that). The point doesn't have to be immediately obvious, but you should know it - I did a backstory swap ages ago, and it seemed like a complete change, but like 150k in I dropped that a character dropped out of the police academy instead of completing it and that her entire life changed from there. If the swap is more abstract, then maybe it's just a series of smaller decisions - character A has these seminal points in his story, and I'm swapping him with character B, so here's what character B did during these seminal points instead, and how it changed him and his narrative.

Decide who the character is. This might be more personal, but for me, I think of the character as...there is a central tenet of them, of who they are as a person, that does not change no matter what. That's three or four traits of who they are, that you will not change, and that's what makes their swapped life their own instead of the OG dude's. But there's a lot of traits and behaviors around that core personality that's the result of their environment, backstory, and experiences. That's what should change. It's about figuring out how these essential traits + what is swapped + the point of divergence = an entirely different character and story. The roleswap you'll end up with will be a combination of all of these things: how the essential aspects of a character mix with what's swapped to create an entirely new environment and set of behaviors, which cause a chain reaction to create something new. As a writer, you sit down and say, "I'm keeping these parts of the character, I'm swapping out those parts, this new mix changes these points in their backstory, this results in this new person".

This is more of a guideline, but it's the most important to me: your characters have to be recognizable as the character. The reader shouldn't go, "this OC is making some weird choices". The reader should go, "I don't know how, because he's the exact opposite of his canon self in every possible way, but somehow he still feels like my favorite character". This is why you isolate those basic traits before changing the rest - so long as your character is still who they are deep inside, then they still feel like that character. And that's the fun of the story. You're selling something insane, and the reader is buying it.

It's a lot of really heavy character work. You have to really understand the characters you're writing - the less I get the original character, the more issues I'm perpetually having. I tend to fly fast and loose with characterizations, but when writing roleswaps I have to refer back to canon and the source material a lot ("In canon he did X thing, with his newly different backstory how would that decision change?"). The more you're rooted in canon, then the funkier and more divergent you can get.

Personally, I like to play a fun little game I call: how exactly opposite can I make this character until he stops feeling like this character? I Sometimes my goal in writing is "how deeply can I ruin this story". This is not a good game and people should not play it. I find that the lazier I get about getting in touch with the canon character, about keeping track of the canon decisions, and about following these guidelines, then the more difficult a story is to write. If you structure a story well then it's easy to write, and roleswaps are pretty easy. Thanks for the question!

#my asks #my writing #ok I have no idea how to politely say this #so ill say it in the tags where the rude words live: #if you only think about fanon characterizations when figuring this stuff out #or if you write a characterization based on their role in the relationship dynamic #then youre not gonna be able to do this stuff well #if you write a good guy as a bad guy then you have to #honestly engage with their flaws and their terrible decisions #you can't just swap one archetype for another #and people work so backwards in characterization that. ajksldfjsadf it's 9am too early for salt #sorry I was thinking about my tma roleswap while writing this and #its giving me tma fandom trauma flashbacks #never been in a fandom so completely uninterested in any of its characters. at all. it was insane. #anyway the way im seeing ppl write vash im getting the impression that #people aren't registering that he's the biggest compulsive liar in anime #he is nonstop lies. all of the time. stamp's closer to deflection but. pure lies this man. #i read ppl writing vash and im like MAN you bought what this guy was selling hard huh #anyway roleswap vash has a bridge to sell you and gaslights to girlboss

[kit-screams-into-the-abyss]

turts in skirts :}

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise donnie #rise leo #rise raph #rise mikey #not enough turts in skirts art on the internet. i am being the change i wish to see in the world #using my artist powers for good #i don't know much about fashion i just drew fits that Vibed #figuring out donnie and mikey's getup was so easy #raph's was a bit more difficult but also easy #and then leo's was ??? i have no idea why this guy gave me so much trouble?? #redrew his dress like 6 times and recolored him an equal amount of times #it worked out in the end. happy with the result :) #especially mikey's!! with the patterns and colors and stuff #don't question how the clothes fit on with the shells and all. don't do it #edit: i can't believe i wrote my own username wrong. eh it's close enough #kit does an art

[postmail]

A strange, dead, white whale washes ashore; the local schoolteacher is dragged out to see it by the younger of his students, who want to know if this is the mysterious 'Moby-Dick' he's told them all so much about.

#alto art #moby dick #me: i need to figure out how to draw ahab #also me: hehe ishmael comics go brrrr #ishmael moby dick #ishmael #herman melville #literature #firealpaca #i just realized i made moby dick too small... fuck #hey look dont worry about it. they put him in the dryer and he shrank. okay? #i cant draw whales but that can't stop me #i like this one actually. gradient go brr #its like i can see the flaws and im aware of them but somehow i dont care. i still think it looks good. its a weird feeling #ive had this idea for AGES you dont even knowwww #i hope you can tell what im going for/ whats going on in this one #edit: FUCK I FORGOT POST-CANON ISHMAEL TATTOOS. ARGGHHHH #WHY DOES THIS KEEPS HAPPENING

[corfisers]

i really need to finish this one day

#one of my fave ideas but i keep getting stuck or starting over. third time's the charm hopefully #anyways. posting it as an excuse to rant because i'm losing my mind over this rn for no reason #incoherent but i just need to Talk or my brain won't shut up #you ever think about how fucked up it is that aoi feels guilty over what happened. i do. i think about her a lot #he can't even look at me. we aren't even blood related but he still had to go to jail because of me. i still love him #in reality none of it is her fault. it shouldn't be about doumeki in the first place. baby girl you were 15 when it happened. #you can say that yashiro is cruel in his dismissiveness (on the surface) of doumeki's trauma but you can see where he's coming from #you got a glimpse of what your sister was going through? of what i went through? and now you're sooo guilty over it? and who does it help? #doumeki's so focused on his own feelings that he ignored aoi when they were living together. “saves” her by pure chance #proceeds to focus on his guilt and ignore her again. if yashiro didn't get involved she'd be sitting in the rain for god knows how long #yet she still loves and to some degree idolizes him #yashiro and aoi both saying that doumeki isn't the type of person to be a yakuza too. doumeki's good doumeki's better than that #and then ch 24 happens. where yashiro says that he's going to throw up and doumeki's response is “i probably won't stop even if you do” #“guess i am like my father after all” and yashiro still goes “you're not. you're pure and im the problem” #(touches doumeki's face. rare gentle gesture. he's gentle afterwards too before leaving. man.) #he's not cruel enough to repeat what he said in the earlier conversation and he doesn't actually believe it anyway #but i wish yashiro was cruel there. it shouldn't have been about doumeki and his feelings. again. #something about yashiro throwing a knife at another person and it flying back at him huh #for all the talk about how doumeki supposedly romanticizes yashiro it really is the other way around. always has been #which is a whole other conversation but yeah. everything about aoi and yashiro in relation to doumeki makes me so fucking sad #but this is also what i mean when i say that aoi doesn't haunt the narrative per se but still has this weird presence? #she's in the parallels. she's in the brief but important mentions. she's in the “your sister was lucky she had you”. #wips tag

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

#This is a problem which is magnified in Britain I think as we also have to deal with the Hangover from Protestantism #As seen even in some folk who were raised Catholic but still imbibed certain ideas about the Middle Ages from culturally Protestant schools #And it isn't helped when we're hit with all these popular history tv documentaries #If I have to see one more person whose speciality is writing sensational paperbacks about Henry VIII's court #Being asked to explain for the British public What The Pope Thought I shall scream #Which is not even getting into some of England's super special common law get out clauses #Though having recently listened to some stuff in French I'm beginning to think misconceptions are not limited to Great Britain #Anyway I did take some realy interesting classes at uni on things like marriage and religious orders and so on #But it was definitely patchy and I definitely do not have a good handle on how it all basically hung together #As evidenced by the fact that I've probably made a tonne of mistakes in this post #Books aren't entirely helpful though because you can't ask them questions and sometimes the author is just plain wrong #I mean I will take book recommendations but they are not entirely helpful; and we also haven't all read the same stuff #So one person's idea of what the basics of being baptised involved are going to radically differ from another's based on what they read #Which if you are primarily a political historian interested in the Hundred Years' War doesn't seem important eonugh to quibble over #But it would help if everyone was given some kind of similar introductory training and then they could probe further if needed/wanted #So that one historian's elementary mistake about baptism doesn't affect generations of specialists in the Hundred Years' War #Because they have enough basic knowledge to know that they can just discount that tiny irrelevant bit #This is why seminars are important folks you get to ASK QUESTIONS AND FIGURE OUT BITS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND #And as I say there is a bit of a habit in this country of producing books about say religion in mediaeval England #And then you're expected to work out for yourself which bits you can extrapolate and assume were true outwith England #Or France or Scotland or wherever it may be though the English and the French are particularly bad for assuming #that whatever was true for them was obviously true for everyone else so why should they specify that they're only talking about France #Alright rant over #Beginning to come to the conclusion that nobody knows how Christianity works but would like certain historians to stop pretending they do #Edit: I sort of made up the examples of the historical people who gave me my religious education above #But I'm now enamoured with the idea of who actually did give me my weird ideas about mediaeval Catholicism #Who were my historical godparents so to speak #Do I have an idea of mediaeval religion that was jointly shaped by some professor from the 1970s and a 6th century saint? #Does Cardinal Campeggio know he's responsible for some much later human being's catechism? #Fake examples again but I'm going to be thinking about that today

[goldkirk]

as I'm going back over my past history and items and journals and years, I come across all sorts of things, like the pencil I saved from that so-precious memory from second grade, and a pair of flip flops I've been missing for two years, and (tw for murder/crime/killings) the modern-high-school-AU-kidnapped-by-a-serial-killer story I wrote in late high school jdfsjdfsjkjlksfd

#i can't wait to find out what red flags I didn't see in my own self back when I last read this thing in 2015 hfdhfdhjsfd #also. there's gonna be like a good sentence here and there and then CRINGE. the whole rest of everything is just me still trying to copy th #breathing pace (essentially) and ways-of-describing-things of mainstream authors like I thought I was supposed to #so this'll be somewhat painful but also god what a joy and a gift and an honor and a delight to get to hold this close to my heart #and witness it with understanding and empathy and slow reflection and care like my past younger self deserves #i'm so lucky i'm alive to be here and do this #i'm so grateful i'm headed towards welcoming back and embracing the last little girl i was that still felt a lot of things #so excited for her focus and precision and tenacity and constant curious joy and movement to be back someday #i'm afraid people won't like the me i was before rule after rule and then dangers #but my god it'll feel so good to be the fully-flowing energy machine and dance and conduit again how will I have enough bother to care? #people who are good to each others' nervous systems cumulatively feel better and better #if i'm not good for you and yours then you really truly SHOULD go elsewhere and find someone who makes YOUR self feel right and light + war #anyway now that i wrote an essay in the tags as usual [nervous laughter] #personal #add to journal #words n rhythm #WHY DID I FEEL CAPABLE OF UNDERTAKING A STORY LIKE THIS #cradling my past self gently but also BANGING my HEAD against the WALL lmao #i'm proud of myself for writing and sharing this and its creative ideas. even if i don't like it now or feel ashamed or see mistakes. #anything. it mattered that it came to me and it mattered that i explored it and it mattered that i poured myself through it to help shape i #and it mattered that I left it on the internet so that now it still exists. i'm going to honor this story no matter what current me would #objectively think about it if it was written by anyone else. #this is a gift i give myself now. #this is a lot of what I learn and learn to do #trauma evolution #mosswrites

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Over The Garden Wall but instead of Wirt and Greg it's Grant and Paeden that's it that's all I needed to say thank you

#dndads #I don't how much of the dndads fandom has seen otgw- but if you haven't I'm making you #it's one of those shows that pulls you in and you come out different y'know- it shifts your soul slightly to the left #also Grant and Paeden being kind of like brothers is an idea I rotate around a good deal I just think they could be very funny #so ok ok I think Sarah would be Terry? Could also be Yeet cause of the athletic shit but she's much more like Terry methinks #and Grant/Terry pretty cute but I think that's an especially good context for them #WALTER IS GREG'S (so Paeden's) FROG #the president yeah you know the one #Beatrice is tricky cause I could easily see her as either of the twins #but lowkey also Nick? but I guess she should be one of the oak boys cause well #birds #BUT THEN SEPERATELY LIKE #ah I suppose it would be weird to have some of the kiddads be kids and some be older (?) but nevertheless #I couldn't help but think that (adult) Lark would make a GREAT woodsman #and like he thinks that it's Sparrow's soul in the lantern #AND BEAR'RY WOULD MAKE FOR SUCH A GOOD BEAST #people need to draw him with the branch antlers they do they do #also I can't for the life of me remember the horse's name #but that's so Ron like it has to be #for all I know like none of you have seen this show but this is so real in my head I had to talk about it #otgw #grant wilson #paeden bennetts