#but i can't force myself to finish things any faster

[noturprobiem]

This is a part of a crossover fic I'm writing, a meeting between bingqiu

The fic will be mainly focused on hualian, but the idea is that Xie Lian, Shen Yuan and Lan Wangji are researchers and their men are supernatural entities

I will need a lot of time to finish the whole thing and this passage might change a bit, but I think it works on it's own right now. It's a bit spooky, too!

Report by: Shen Yuan

On: Entity A0518

I must start by asking you to not allow this information to leak. My report can not be seen by Shen Qingqiu, under any circumstances. If gege finds out, he will endanger himself or others in a misguided attempt to protect me, and there will be casualties. Thank you.

Several years ago I was forced to get rid of an entity, then known as F0518. It was a creature capable of creating illusions, but not trapping people inside. It used the form of a teenager and claimed to be fourteen years of age. However, it looked just like A0517, which gege spent years hunting and running from. They had some history I'm not aware of.

When the entity turned eighteen, gege became convinced that it was hiding its dangerous power and manipulating me to then use me in some nefarious plot. He had some odd ideas about its feelings for me which I won't repeat. He was going to destroy it, but I couldn't let him kill something that resembled a child so much. So I pretended to do it myself, wounding it, but making sure it can survive after a long healing process. I realize how irresponsible that was, but there is no use in disciplining me, as he found me already and will make sure that I know I made a mistake. 

Which I don't regret. He was a child.

Yesterday, I was going home late, and turned to a dark alley I know very well. I can avoid every obstacle there blindfolded, which is why I was very confused when I bumped into something. I thought it was a dog at first, but upon further inspection, it turned out to be a small child, standing in the middle of the road and crying. I crouched to ask him what happened, but the kid didn't answer, just grabbed my sleeve and started bawling. Children were always my weakness. I spent several minutes trying to calm him down. I tried sign language, but it didn't work, the kid just got scared that I was trying to shake his hand off my coat. So I scooped him up and left the alley, to at least get a good look at his face and check if he had anything to identify him by. As I walked, my heartbeat slowly gathered speed. The alley was too long. I knew it was supposed to end already, but blamed the fact that I now had a passenger for the tricks my mind played on me.

With a creeping suspicion, I turned left at the end of the alley, and I didn't know where I was anymore. I couldn't let the child feel that something went wrong, so I stubbornly kept going straight ahead. I've been through encounters like this before, they were usually just inconvenient, but not dangerous. The senior Luo Binghe made my paths to gege's house longer just to annoy him sometimes.

As you can guess, I was slowly realizing who caught me this time. It's been three years, after all. I didn't want to run, because it would scare the child, so when I saw the light, I just walked faster. I knew it was a trap, but hoped that I would at least be able to get the kid out before anything bad happened, and that could only be achieved by letting Luo Binghe have his way. He can't tolerate when things don't go as he wanted, and it might partially be my fault.

When I reached the light, the child turned his head to face me. There was something unnatural in the way he moved, in the speed and angle. He looked at me, unblinking, no expression on his face.

“Shizun,” he said. “I miss you.”

I dropped the child and made several steps back, but running was useless in the realm controlled by him. The child's body shifted, as if his bones were breaking and growing and rearranging under his skin. I took another step back, but tripped and fell. For some reason, Binghe put a blanket under me before I hit the ground.

He looked just like the senior one, standing in front of me. He was even taller than when I last saw him, which I didn't think was possible, dressed in several layers of a black old-fashioned hanfu, with long curly hair and a handsome face. Not sure if it's important. Entities aren't usually handsome, from my experience. 

The darkness around us turned into an interrogation room, which he sometimes used as a joke when I tried to ground him for something. Didn't expect this room to horrify me, but the gray walls made me feel trapped. The light was dirty and yellow, blinking from time to time, and it made my eyes hurt, the air was stuffed and dusty. The blanket stayed, though. I can't fully understand his actions, even now. 

“Aren't going to run? Good,” Binghe chuckled, leaning on the table. “Let's talk like adults, then.”

I didn't have the energy for this. Walking this much wasn't very good for a chronically ill body like mine, and I was already tired after work. So I said:

“Just kill me and we can all move on."

He threw a chair at the wall, and it shattered into pieces.

“You were the one who tried to kill me!” He screamed.

Suddenly, the illusion was broken, and I was left standing in the middle of the alley, completely alone. Nothing odd happened since then.

If I disappear, I beg you to burn this paper before gege can find it and murder everyone involved.

#mxtx #mo xiang tong xiu #mxtx svsss #svsss #scum villian self saving system #svsss au #svsss fanfiction #bingqiu #luo binghe #shen yuan #shen qingqiu

[diezmil10000]

2023 art summary + thoughts on my own art progress under the cut!!

(template by HedgeCatDragonix on deviantart)

so i've been doing this for 10 years :P

i'm not posting these pics in high quality, they're somewhere on the internet if you want to scavange for a bit. i didn't start taking art seriously until late 2015 and i honestly don't like looking back at old drawings. i still like my 2022 art summary but it wasn't until this year that i'm proud of all my finished artworks.

my art journey is complicated. i'm not one of those artists who can say they've been drawing for all their lifes. i used to trace pokémon in my school agendas but that was it. around 2013, a couple of friends invited me to their Skype server where we used to draw each other's ocs and make art memes and stuff - it was fun and cringe in the most positive way i can say it :] i didn't know shit about art and i took pride in drawing on MS Paint with a mouse just because it was hard.

(all of my drawings until may 2018 were made with a mouse)

when i was 15 yo i got into Love Live! and i decided to get better at art because i didn't want lesbian fanart to be made only by creepy cishet men. at some point i watched this video from Sycra and it rewired my brain. i understood that i needed to actually practise and understand what i was doing, and that i wasn't going to improve just by observing. its follow-up video also helped me a lot, i remember watching it on the day it was posted jskhfdjdfd.

and so fast forward until 2021 approx. i spent all of those years practising drawing in my traditional sketchbooks, so my improvement was steady. the only problem, and in retrospective i see it as a Big Problem, is that i was grinding mindlessly. by that i mean that i copied artists i liked and i drew again and again stuff i was bad at, but i didn't think too deeply about it or analysed my own art to look for faster ways to improve it. i also don't take feedback well so i didn't ask for it either, which further slowed down my progress.

on top of it, that just made me better at drawing, not at illustration. i firmly believe that a good drawing is hard to ruin but i could have made my illustrations way more interesting if i had started going wild with colors and effects way earlier. i don't exactly regret my choices because at the end of the day it's just my hobby, and i've been praised for drawing a lot and for challenging myself to practise drawing traditionally, so i want this to be read as introspection rather than complaints!!

the reason why 2021 was a big change in my art is because in november i did this monstrosity:

i got an Android tablet to be able to draw in class and took the challenge alongside my friend Nico, who also did their own Huevember. hola si estás leyendo esto Nico, aunque lo dudo :) i can't say that any of the drawings made me better at anatomy, or composition, or colors. i can't say that they solidified my knowledge, either. but they planted a seed in my brain that would fully bloom in late 2022, which is the seed of hating the finished result of some pieces so much that i forced myself to improve.

everyone has their own motivation to get better at art and i've always thought that mine was a healthy one (i want to draw more lesbians, that's all). however, i've had a very solid 2023 and now i don't cringe at any of my pieces, plus i can notice any mistakes they have without wanting to delete them from existence - and i could only get there because at the end of 2022 i told myself i wouldn't make any more ugly illustrations. like, period. i didn't want to get anxious every time i had to look back on my own art.

i also learned that no ammount of compliments from others would magically make me like a piece i see as mid at best. of course, i appreciate every single nice comment i get (genuinely, i get very happy knowing that other people love my work), but gratitude doesn't fix a skill issue.

so, late 2022, many things happened. first i got cancelled on twitter over a drawing of my beloved mizuki from project sekai (this info will be relevant later). then i spent a whole month doing this other monstrosity that is to this day the best thing i've ever done. i haven't peaked it (yet):

this comic actually made me improve and solidify my skills. it wasn't a class assignment, or a collaboration, or anything more than a headcanon i shared with a friend - it was pure brainrot over Revue Starlight and it made me put all my cunt into it. this was also the point at which i started filling in blacks with the bucket tool instead of picking a very dark color, which is a big part of my current style :3

the thing about people cancelling me is that i had to distance myself from fandoms and eventually change accunts, which also affected how i perceived my own art. even if i draw for myself, at the end of the day i still draw characters that are loved by many people, so i disabled comments and stopped interacting with other artists of my fandom circles. that led me to go on hiatus at the start of 2023, knowing that it was time for a fresh start (my art accounts were 5 years old anyway).

that period of time made me think a lot about my finished pieces. since i wouldn't post them until i had a new account, i would stare at them for longer than ever or make small changes even if days had already passed. letting my mind rest from illustrations i had been working on and knowing i could change them whenever i wanted was a big step forward.

i realised that for the past years i had been in a hurry to post my drawings as soon as i was done with them instead of appreciating them. that was a turning point for my mindset. this was also past the time i decided to stop making ugly art, but i hadn't really taken any measures to get better. so i changed the wording of the challenge: i can make ugly art but i can't post it if i don't like it.

it doesn't sound epic, but for some reason it worked. every time i was in the middle of making a drawing that looked kind of ugly, i changed it until it looked right. not perfect, but good enough to avoid cringing in the future. some times i had to redraw it from scratch with a more interesting pose. some times i needed to add a background or a graphic element to make the characters pop. and somewhere on that period, i went wild with colors and effects, and a lot of times that saved a piece that would otherwise be boring.

i have to thank Revolutionary Girl Utena and Revue Starlight for making me experiment a lot during my hiatus. both pieces of media, one being the daugher of the other, give artists so many visual metaphors and interesting topics to work with. the revstar brainrot had been there since the junnana comic, but rgu was something i had been meaning to rewatch for a couple of years and it hit me like a fucking train. it also made me create one of the comics i'm the most proud about:

then i got into homestuck and my art got. well. stuck!! >D< but it was okay because i wasn't making ugly drawings anymore. i was putting into practise a lot of things i had been learning or experimenting with, especially regarding colors and character interactions. and the yuri was delicious hmmmmmmm.

the rest of 2023 was very linear in terms of art but not so much in terms of fandoms (?). which is fine, honestly, but i was also glad to get back into Fire Emblem: Three Houses in late that year because when i first got into it in 2019 i didn't have the skill to draw everything i wanted to draw. and i still haven't drawn all the yuri scenarios that i've been cooking in my mind, but i have until forever to do it!!

so for 2024 i want to study some stuff i feel i'm still lacking in. i think i've always had a good eye for composition, but i've never actually pushed it in my finished illustrations - they depend a lot on the poses because i've always been prioritising drawing over everything else. that needs to change this year.

i also want to get better at drawing characters from extreme angles. i've always felt like my poses are a bit flat and i think i can study photos taken with wide angle lenses to improve at that.

and of course i still want to draw faster, which is something i've always struggled with. i think i have a good rhythm of "producing" art (excuse me for the poor wording), but i'm still too slow for the kind of artstyle i want to achieve, which includes having a looser lineart and less details in irrelevant areas of the drawings. i think that overdoing the lineart actually hurts my illustrations, because everything ends up pulling the viewer's attention with the same energy. i also think messy artstyles are neat.

i promise i'm not crazy and i don't hate what i do. in fact, it's precisely because this year i managed to make some pieces with that kind of feel that i know where i want to aim. special mention to the junnana comic because i haven't been able to replicate that lineart ever since.

examples:

as for the stuff i like about my current artstyle, i definitely want to keep the way i color!! and by that i mean the method i have for applying filters that make my colors pop. i could maybe play more with textures too.

i also like the way i depict intimacy, and people have praised it too. thank you for noticing. it's the yearning that's doing it, not me. but i don't think i'll ever change the content (?) of my art, i eat breathe and speak in yuri. if anything, there are still some ways of conveying feelings that i haven't been able to draw because i lack the skill to do so, but i'll keep trying ;)

i honestly didn't expect this post to be this long. i've been writing for hours now and i'm not sure my thoughts are coherent for anyone that isn't me. i also can't grasp the idea that some people know me from fanart i did in 2016 while others started following me last month, time is wild and it's an extra dimension of complexity that i don't know how to account for when i write stuff like this.

but again, as i do with art, i've written this for myself. it's been nice to put my thoughts in order. i think i've only talked about art in depth with like 5 people and it's always been in casual conversation. no creo que estéis leyendo pero Nahia y Henar os amo y he aprendido mucho de vosotras.

thank you for reading until the end if you have. i hope you have not only a nice day but a nice year. let's meet again in the future.

#my art #i guess¿? it's literally my art but nothing new #art explanations #<- art tag for when i explain art /srs

[lazar-codes]

09/11/2023 || Day 107

Personal Chatter (aka I ramble a bit)

Still looking for jobs, and there are still none to be had. Any time I think I haven't applied to a job in a few days, I check and there's literally nothing new. What makes it feel worse is that my current part-time retail job cut hours like crazy, so I'm only coming in once a week instead of the 4 days I'm available. It especially sucks because I do want to spend my day working, but instead I'm at home attempting to program but I'm running out of steam. Not to mention it gets dark so early now; I used to love that as a kid, but as an adult it's just depressing. I think the only thing that's keeping me sane is the fact that I go out to play Magic on Thursdays with people, and I have ASL class on Wednesdays. It's nice to have scheduled weekly events. Hell, I've even been forcing myself to play video games for an hour or 2 every evening to help me get through my games, because even though I like playing video games, it takes a lot of energy for me to start a play session. The joys of being an adult 😂.

But some good news! I have 3 pages left in my sketchbook and I'm so excited to finish it! I've been drawing only in pen in this book for 3 years, so I'm so ready to start a new one and be able to use pencil and actually take my time with drawing instead of just pumping out sketches. People say that sketching in pen will improve your art faster and enables you to draw faster, but I realized I really like getting sucked into a sketch and take my time with it, which I can't really do with pen.

📺 : The Haunting of Bly Manor (rewatch)

🎮 : Mass Effect Andromeda

📚 : Fight, Magic, Items - The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Programming

LeetCode

I've been doing 1 problem per weekday for a week now! Yesterday and today I did some medium-level questions on Strings/Arrays which took about 2 hours each. Yesterday I had to look at other peoples' answers, but today I managed to solve it by myself. Am I in the top percentile for time and space complexity? Absolutely not, but I solved it, so I still consider that a win.

Hobby Tracker - Log # 4

I feel like I'm bored out of my mind. I know I said I was gonna focus on doing a full-stack project this month, but I still haven't done the desktop design for the project and I can't bring myself to continue designing. The good news is that I "finished" the mobile design, so I can instead pivot and just create a mobile app instead if I so choose, and I just might...or just do mobile-view first and get all the functionality done, then move onto desktop.

#codeblr #studyblr #100 days of code #programming #coding #lazar blogs

[pynkricee]

Are You Sure Part 3

As Im sliding him in and out of my mouth i could feel him shake from the movement of my mouth. Im thinking in my head that this moment is everything to me, especially since that fact i'm not use to doing this. I look up as his face as Im pulling him out, slowly licking his tip, smiling as i do so.

"Is... this okay?' I say as i pull him out of my mouth. "Im not use to doing this.. Gojo."

"You.. you're doing a good job." He said grabbing the back of my head, softly pullin me up by my nape. Pulling me to his face, he licks my top lip in cat motion, sofly pushing me on the bed pulling off the rest of my clothes. Literally ripping them off. I could feel my pussy getting wet from him being so dominant. At this moment i needed him so badly. "You ready?'' He says to me pulling my legs open.

"Yes Satoru."

"Satoru huh?" He slides his hand up my chest to my neck, wrapping his hand around my throat while his other hand was on my breast caressing my nipple. He puts his lips up to my ear. "You sure you're going to be able to say the name Satoru when Im fucking you?'' He said with a sly but evil and sexy smirk on his face.

"Is that a challen''...( I gasp out loud as he slowly slides his penis inside me before i could finish what i was saying.) Dammit he was so big in me that he caught me off guard, making me leak all over his manhood and his stomach which made him moan. Arching my back as he moved faster, his grip became tighter around my neck as my movement matched his.

(Gojo Panting) "Still can't.... speak." He said moving his hand from around my neck to the back of my waist, pulling me off the bed, my legs still wrapped around his waist and him still inside me. (FUUUUCKKK... HE'S SO STRONG) I think to myself.

Walking to the hotel window, he presses my back to the glass fucking my harder than before, my juices leaking all over his legs. Both of us panting hard and sweating from the emotions we were feeling as well.

"Sato..ru" I lift my head up from the side of his face, forcing my tongue into his mouth gripping the back of his hair pulling him into me. His tongue matching my movements as he suddenly pulls out of me.

"So.. you finally said my name..(panting softly).. NOW say the whole fucking thing." He said flipping me around, my breast now pressed up against the hotel glass. He started fucking harder than he was when i was turned the other way, My pussy melting for him right there and then. Grabbing my hair from behind wrapping it around his wrist, as he was thrusting me from behind. He moved us up my ear licking it, breathing heavy in my ear..

"FUCK GOJO...I cant.... I CANT HOLD IT ANY LONGER!" I yelled my pussy beginning to throb with him speeding up.

" Say my name...Rayla. Please.. I wanna (panting slowly) I wanna hear you." He said wrapping his hand around my neck with his head leaning against my shoulder as he finally started hitting his climax, holding me close.

"Gojo...Satoru....." I whispered to him hitting my climax as well, us leaking together. I could hear him smirk that little smirk of his feeling like a big hero. But...he was my hero.

I slowly pulled him out of me and turned around to face him. " You know i can't take it when you say please like that."

He lifted my face up with his finger. "Hmmm.. I know." He said giggling licking my lips. "I love you."

"I love you too..Satoru"

#gojo #gojosatoru #gojo and pynkricee #gojou satoru x reader #gojo x reader #jujutsukaisen gojo #gojojjk #jjk gojo #jjkpynkricee #jjk pynkricee #gojosmut #gojosimp #gojo simp #satorugojo #satorulove #gojolove #gojo love sotry #Spotify

[sapphire-weapon]

honestly i don't think the leshley/eagleone fandom is that small (and there's quite a few people in the ship's discord server, i forgot how many though). there's definitely demand for some content, but not enough supply. i find that on ao3 (but maybe i'm wrong), leon/ashley fanfiction gets hits faster than, say, cleon ff, even though they're a major ship. i'd say it all comes down to the weird shame surrounding leon/ashley: there's probably people who are interested in the ship and the content related to it, but very few people actually dare to engage with it, esp if they have aeon mutuals or if their acc is a bit too public

you know, i actually said this to someone earlier today re: the supply/demand thing. my posts don't get zero engagement; you guys are definitely out there -- and, in fact, i get more regular traffic than an aeon blog who basically does the same shit i do (ask-based meta with sprinklings of actual content here and there). and that's actually a little nuts when you think about it, considering how fucked up my schedule is and the fact that i post when the vast majority of people in US timezones are deadass asleep.

but the difference between aeon fandom and eagleone fandom is that aeon fandom has creators. we... don't, really. the reason why i'm basically the only one in the eagleone tag is because... i'm the only one making eagleone content on tumblr, currently. even people who are still making art of leon and ashley aren't tagging it as any sort of ship at all (at least, for the most part); they're just drawing leon and ashley. same thing with gif makers -- the gifs aren't being made with the ship in mind, per se.

without more creators, it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves. no creators means no content. and no content means dead tags.

i just don't know how to encourage people to create more, unfortunately. :\ i can write every damn thinkpiece in the world defending the ship and making it Feel Acceptable to people, but at the end of the day, i can't force anyone to create anything.

hell, i can't even force myself to create anything, most times. you know, i actually started a new little ficlet today at work because we were so dead that i only had two shows. do you think i'll finish it? I GUESS WE'LL FIND OUT.

it just sucks, man. it sucks to know that we're all out there, but that we're too afraid to form an actual community.

[arainmorn-art]

Ooooooh gosh. Watching Enola Holmes now. I'm only on the first hour, ugh. Right after THIS SCENE. It was so cringy and laughable I can't. This scene is a pure mindless power fantasy. I'm trying to tell myself that it's just a movie for teenage girls, I shouldn't be nitpicky, the tone of the movie is not serious... but I'm reading the Youtube comments under this video praising the scene and I want to talk about it. I'm a girl, I've been doing martial arts (mixed aikido) for three years and let me tell you this scene was bad. You know... I hoped this movie would be about outwitting your opponents, using your brains as your biggest strengths as a girl in a Victorian era. But whom I was kidding, we have a Netflix girl power movie, so let's get rid of any common sense.

First of all, that man was clearly not trying to kill Enola with those gently tossing and barely punching the air around her he did. One of the first things my sensei and his sensei told me is that no matter are you a man or a woman you have not many chances against a person who really, really wants to kill you. Not just frighten and rob you, kill you. Even very well-trained people now that. And they want to tell us, that a 16 year old girl having just lightly sparring with her suffragette terrorist mom in the garden could stand against an adult hitman? For how long Hollywood and Netflix will tell teenage girls and young women this type of lie? Oh boy. Let's take a look at the Enola's fight. This stunt on 1:30 might look impressive, but it's a garbage. It reminds me of throw from aikido for competions, which is not for real street fights, it's for show, so it makes a good base for stunts.

Yes, the uke (attacker) clearly knows when and how to jump to minimize the pain when the force is applied to his wrist and elbow joints, but the thing is the seme (defending) applies the force to unbalance the opponent and then throw him (my English is horrendous now, I know). Seme also never gets on his opponent's line of fall, he needs to stay in the control of situation (at least in aikido). But I keep rewatching that moment in the movie and I can't fucking see the moment where Enola would succesfully unbalance her opponent to do this throw. She kicked him with an elbow in his lower ribs, which is not a bad move, but not enough to desorient him with pain or to get him to bend over, it was not a solar plexis. And then SHE FUCKINGS JUMPS. She does a fucking flip with her 40 kilo ass to not only fakely throw him off balance, but to make him jump up and then land neatly past her, not on her, because she literally dives under his falling body with that move. Props to the actor to fall so carefully and not hurting Millie. Ugh.

Second, a man can crush woman's airpipe and skull with his bare hands, and usually easily outrun her. Men generally are stronger and faster. It's just a man design, they are built differently. That's why female and male sport competions are separated. Buuuuuut "Enola Holmes"'s executeves want to tell us, that a half-drowned girl in a dress and a corset was SO fast, that an adult fit man without a dress and a corset had to JUMP to hook her leg with a cane and stop her. Alright, she dodges his next strikes, though honestly I hardly find it believable, but then he takes her and throws against the wall. In such situation an air quickly leaves your lungs and you 're not likely to recover quickly, you also might have a concussion. Besides the drowning that's another point where our heroine could be done. By the way, the drowning was a bit more convincing, but then they pulled that eye-rolling gotcha moment with tricking and winking. It still was possible not because the heroine is smart, but because the attacker was stupid and indecisive. And he keeps being like that. As soon as she was on a ground everything could be finished very fast like in these brutal first seconds from Lucy's video:

He could kick her in the stomach, in the face, crack her skull with his boot, break her ribs, broken ribs would pop her lungs, there'd be internal bleeding, noone is here to save her - it would be over. And since he also has a knife, oh geeeeeee. Why. Why the killer must be so confused about finding out she wears a corset, when HE IS IN THE RIGHT REACH TO PULL OUT THE KNIFE FROM THE CORSET AND SLIT HER FUCKING THROAT. The adrenaline must be pumping, even a semi-realistic burglar would not wait for Enola to unbotten her dress to show him a corset, for fuck sake. Ah, yeah, if he would be still stupid enough to not slit her throat right away he would say "Thanks for letting me know!" and stabbed her holding the blade vertically, not across.

This scene is not only child-friendly, it is very girl-friendly. Very clean (with a tiny bit of dirt to add some grittiness), very careful so main heroine wouldn't get any hits in the face as the face must stay pretty, very naive as if her fight mistakes, which were praised for making the fight more realistic and the character not Mary Sue, would not be deadly to her and also if the killer was not hardly dumbed and slowed down, oooh, with a little bit of pain on the actress face so you could worry for her and all this jazz. And gooooooooooooooooooosh how cocky Enola is here it's infuriating. At the end of this scene she was not outsmarting her attacker, it was a very dumb luck that he threw her in the barn with explosives. Honestly, to make this scene both more realistic and smart they should have create a thriller Alien-like scene where the protagonist must use her wit and knowledge (which are so often mentioned in this movie) to actually outsmart the hitman. What about her knowledge in chemistry? Or for Netflix writers it is only "Ha-ha, nerds do boom-boom with chemicals!"? Fine, do something more with explosives. Do something with her knowledge in physics. Do something other than using brute force! Because you clearly can't do it too!

Ugh, I'm tired and frustrated now. And I can't imagine why would they call her Sherlock's sister aside from marketing reasons. Marketing worked, I'm watching it. I hoped to look at Henry Cavill's Sherlock having Henry's charm and beauty and Holmes's intelligance, but this is not a Sherlock but a random quite dense dude from any other story and there's a microscopic amount of Henry's performance. And nothing of it is smart. A character's intellectual ability is directly related to the intelligence of the writer. And I can firmly say this whole mess is a popcorn pew-pew show in Victorian costumes, and not anyhow a Sherlock Holmes story.

Let's move on.

#my post #martial arts #enola holmes #rant post #fighting #melee combat #combat #Youtube

[alelelesimz]

splatoon 3: side order ~ ale's 2024 game reviews II

oooooh guess who finished side order (like, actually 100%)! me baby! and yes i've technically been playing splatoon 3 since 2022 and this is for games i finish this year BUT side order is a totally different game mode so it counts :p also it's my review i make the rules

spoilers ahead! although if you've paid any attention online there's no huge spoilers going on.

i finished the tower on my 4th run i think, i'm not that good at this game okay. but i did finish it on the day it released! i got a bit sad because i thought it was too short but then i realized you're supposed to replay this a bunch of times and the story keeps going! so it ended up lasting a couple weeks for me. it could've been faster if it wasn't bc i needed to finish my catalog before the season ended, but hey that's better i think!

i like that the game forces you to do a run with each weapon, cause otherwise i would've done only the shooter and MAYBE the roller. but it was fun! i hate chargers and splatlings, but once you learn how to use the chips and get a bunch of hacks, it becomes easier even with weapons you suck at. also i love overpowering Pearl, it's fun.

the game itself is absolutely gorgeous. i found myself staring at the ink before starting almost every level. i'm a sucker for glittery pastel ink are u kidding me!!!! the design of all the characters outside KILLS me like what the hell they're all SO adorable i want one of those jellies in real life. also cypher's design rules.

the world is so pretty too, i love all the backgrounds in the levels (and that they reused animal crossing fish ugh!!!!), the outside of the building, THE LOBBY????? i can't start a run without running around with the cool lights and music!

i LOVEEEE that we got so much Acht! i was already obsessed with them before the dlc, like their design and persona was such a cool concept for me, and now we get to hang out with them and learn about them before getting sanitized omg i love it so much. also we love an enby in a nintendo game

i also love Pearl and Marina so much, fight me all you want but they're truly the superior idols of splatoon. i love that nintendo let them be so incredibly fucking gay in this game. yeah yeah it's not said out loud but i've never seen two characters more in love than those two bitches. good for them

oh and i fucking love Smollusk wtf. why is it so adorable????????? specially at the end aaaaa him and small fry are my sons

the only things i didn't like about the dlc are that they kinda teased something going on with agent 4 but then there's nothing about them? we have a palette and the clone thing looks like them and then there are a couple mentions here and there but that's it? i would've preferred if they don't mention them at all instead of this. i also would have liked a little cut scene once you finish all the weapons. i was a bit disappointed once i finished eight's palette you're just done with it and well. that's all! smollusk is now friendly and nothing more :/

aaaanyways i really enjoyed myself with this dlc! i'd say i enjoyed it more than return of the mammalians which i still haven't 100%. i've seen people say octo expansion was better but idc cause i never played it! so side order gets 4.5/5⭐️ from me :D love u splatoon

#ale’s 2024 game reviews #splatoon 3 #side order #splatoon side order

[songmingisthighs]

I hateeee reading fics that aren't finished bc I get impatient lol so now you've announced the end of genesis I've started reading it and after the first ultrasound scene I'm tearing up my God I'm so excited for this

I've read all Ur ateez smaus so far btw and I think Ur an amazing writer and very funny its always such a good time

also I really admire your motivation and how you always finish all your fics, I would love to write again esp for kpop but I worry I will lose motivation and leave people (including myself ) hanging

LMAO sorry it must've taken so long for me to finish but yeaa i totally get it. it sucks waiting but you can't force things to move faster so you're just there like

oo i hope you go back to writing !

the only reason i was able to do daily updates was because i do it in smau format and i save my chapters first before releasing the series and that system works better for me because there are a lot of media aid. but before any of that, you try writing for yourself first and be kind to yourself, remind yourself that it's okay to pace yourself out and find what works for you. even now i envy writers who can post written fics like @nateezfics @napofamoon @bro-atz @kitten4sannie etc etc and those writers both motivate and intimidate me

hopefully you can find your resolve!

#smt answer #anon ask

[faintprojection]

Darth KOTOR Post Mortem

While they're still being posted, I finished drawing @darthkotorcomic a little over a week ago. While it might not look like it, this was a deceptively challenging project for me and I find myself wanting to talk about it. So... here we go.

The comic was a challenge I set myself because I was finding the experience of a dark side play through of KOTOR 1... unpleasant. But mixed with these odd moments where the game didn't feel like it was reacting appropriately to the things it let your character do. I wanted to see how it worked out, but I needed a reason to push through. Making short comics riffing on the experience ended up being that reason. But there were a few non-obvious obstacles here.

First, color blindness. I've got some moderate red/green color blindness. At the very start I'd planned to stick to black and white to dodge this, but very quickly decided that wasn't going to work. I tried to compensate by using a color picker to get colors from screenshots, but that had its own challenges. I assume there's probably some color weirdness in the result. Not much for it.

The second is I'm one of those people who can't really picture things in their head. Which means I struggle to picture what it is I'm trying to draw. Even trying to draw a character or scene from reference the moment my eyes leave the reference it just tumbles out.

Third, I am both untrained and unpracticed. I've fiddled with programs like GIMP and Inkscape off and on over the years, but I basically haven't tried to draw since I was a teenager, and even back then I wasn't drawing much.

And finally, I have a habit of getting caught in revision loops with anything creative.

With those in mind, here are the strategies I used to get this done.

First, breaking big problems into smaller and smaller problems until a big, unmanageable task became a lot of small manageable tasks. In this case, that meant making drawing characters, drawing scenes, and posing characters in scenes separate problems. There are probably better tools out there, but I knew I could do this with some very basic vector graphics tools so that's what I did. Hence, the character template.

Inkscape doesn't do character skeletons so no arms or legs to fiddle with. Also no mouths or eyebrows. I figured I could do a decent range of expressions by manipulating the hidden rectangle you can see in the color block version, which ended up being mostly true. I never did find a good way to convey an eye roll.

The second thing I had to do was time boxing every task. I didn't use a rigid timer or anything, but if I spent more than a few hours working on any individual character or scene I'd stop, look at what I had so far, and if it at least vaguely looked like the thing I was trying to make I'd stop and move on. I just accepted that this was going to be a bit of a sloppy project. The goal was for a thing to exist, not for that thing to be perfect, or even good.

With that in mind, I also didn't spend much time writing any individual comic. I'd play the game until I had 3ish events pop out at me and spend a little time riffing on those moments before making whatever I'd come up with. Then repeat the cycle.

The last thing was actually sharing the comics here. Making them public forced them to be done. Which helped maintain forward momentum.

The result of all this is... fine. I ended up making 45 comics in 35ish days, heavily weighted towards the end. I don't know that I got much better at drawing in that time, but I did get a lot faster. Some are more amusing than others. Some characters never looked quite right. I need to work on posing (especially eye lines since Player is slightly shorter than everyone else). If I could go back I'd probably find a different way to do the dialog bubbles. And I have mixed feelings on the early choice to have Player and Bastila speak in different fonts than everyone else.

But at the end of the day, goal achieved! A thing exists. I hope it amuses you.

#kotor #star wars #post mortem

[stennnn06]

hey sten. i’ve been an admirer of your writing for years now. and i would like some advice from you. i’ve been in a writing slump for awhile. at first it started as not having any ideas. but now that i have some sense of what i want to get at, it’s all scattered and everything overlaps each other. that’s where i’m at right now. i keep my writing in a journal because i feel like I get everything out quicker, hahaha. i know i have my plot down and my main love interests (wlw btw hehe) but I can’t seem to get the in between narratives flowing. and i hate forcing myself to come up with things. any advice for me on how to stay motivated? because i’ve been fighting so hard to continue writing and now that i finally have an idea i’m all over the place, hahaha. ty kristen ❤️

aw thanks for sending!

haha i feel like i definitely relate to this, especially with my original stuff. fanfic too, sometimes, especially when the ideas are churning faster than i can process. im no expert, because i think my writing process is truly chaotic HA but a few things that have helped me:

-writing the outline, so i have the framework of the plot and adjusting it as necessary. i like having at least the framework down as my base and this is where i just write anything down that might be relevant: bits of dialogue that MIGHT go in a scene, bullet points, notes about what i'm trying to say, a scene starter, a cute idea, whatever. i refer to it often (even if i deviate). its a living outline and i adjust it consistently throughout the process but its where everything 'lives'. this takes weeks sometimes but it helps get all my ideas on a page

-eventually i move on to actually writing the story. i used to HATE the first draft but now its my favorite because its a free-for-all. i write the scenes i want to write without worrying about starting them in a pretty way or what order they'll appear in. i go in ATTEMPTING to put them in the order i think they'll be in, but i know realistically it may shift. i also let myself dive in to what i want to write and watch the scenes take shape without worrying about transitions or sentence structure. it helps get the story out, even if its painfully bad.

- i try to force myself to stick with a direction i want to go with the story (especially in the early stages) unless i get a significant way into the draft and realize i DO want to change the back story or an event or go in a different direction because its going to impact the rest of it. i'll then archive what i've written and save it on another page so i don't lose it, and fill in the gaps OR start the draft over on a clean page. i think most people say you need to finish the entire first draft before making that change, but for me - its how i stay motivated. i can't finish something that i know is broken so fundamentally haha.

-dialogue! i happen to be a big dialogue person. i like writing snippets of dialogue, text conversations, emails, whatever between characters in order to get their voices down. and more often than not, my outline has dialogue all over it that i can see fitting into the scenes. i think this makes the narrative piece easier (for me) and helps me figure out how we get from A to B to C. once the dialogue snippets are written, i can start to see the scene take shape -- i can see if a character should be pacing, or holding a glass, or doing x,y,z. then suddenly, a setting! action! a scene!

i hope some of this helped! i'm sure your story is going to be great!!!

#writing is hard

[emmybeearts]

Day 12: Glitch

I was hoping for some miracle delving into this sinkhole myself, but finding Lily in this state breaks my heart more than I thought it could break. I know I couldn't fix them and there was no way I could carry them out of here. Even if I did, that crazed cultist would just throw them right back down here again. I know I can't survive on this planet without their help, I need them. The only way to fix them is to get them back to the ship; the ship that's on the top of a mountain miles and miles away from here. I didn’t want to feel helpless. I needed to do something to help, anything to help.

I gathered up every last piece of Lily I could to try and assess the damage. I wanted to see how much I could feasibly fix; Sadly it didn’t look like I could do much of anything. So much of Lily isn’t… how do I put it… it's not machinery. I expected everything to be hydraulics and servos, actuators and gears; I expected them to be more of a machine. 

Instead, they have a titanium endoskeleton onto which synthetic-rubber attachment points connect plasticky pouches full of viscous, orange gel to the frame. It's more reminiscent of organic musculature than anything I would call mechanical. There were still wires, at the very least; I know what wires are. Millions if not billions of hair-like, silver filaments must have intricately twisted and connected to every muscle in their body together, but at that moment all I saw was shards of fragile metal tarnishing on the floor of a dim cave.

As I was bringing the pieces together I began to notice small movements. Despite the frayed connections, I watched as the scattered puddles of gel reached for the silver filaments like ferrofluid to a magnet. As I brought the pieces closer together, the gel engulfed the wire and pulled it inward. It wasn’t everywhere, however. It seemed that only certain gel was collected on specific wires. In that moment I knew what was occurring; Lily was pulling themself back together. 

It was a gruesome puzzle; having to arrange their mangled body parts in hopes they would form a connection. I was fortunate their body was so surprisingly organic in construct. This was more akin to performing a reverse dissection than any kind of engineering I know of. I did my best to put everything back where I believed it belonged, but something was wrong. While the smaller internals were tricky enough to find the connection, through trial and error I was able to brute force my way through the process. The connections that I figured would be more obvious, like their femoral head into their acetabulum, would not make any connection at all. 

Fortunately, having the bulk of the work finished, the connections became much stronger. The gel could reach from farther and farther away and could pull heavier pieces together faster. Soon enough, the repair process started to snowball. One pile of gel would pull a part close enough for another pile of gel to also interact with it. This runaway effect began to happen faster and faster as more and more parts were forced together; the silver filaments each dragged into their respective module of fluorescent orange gel. The gel clumped together to form individual agglomerations around their wires which then thickened as a fine skin formed around the surface of the gel. 

The individual pieces mattered less and less as larger, more organic structures began to form from the gelatinous mass and arrange themselves accordingly. It was easily one of the most disturbing things I've seen. Little by little everything came together, but the concerns with reassembly I was having before were now much worse. Their skeleton was much smaller and significantly less humanoid with far more branching connections than I initially expected, as the musculature then twisted and formed around it turning their body plan into more of an eight point star. 

Gel that was adhered to the metal plates finally began to pull themself into position as their final form became more and more clear. Eight limbs connected to a central mounting bracket. On one side lay a bulbous mass that had once been their core. This was, I believe to be, effectively the pressure control for all of the gel-pouch muscles; the main chamber that allows for the regulated pushing and pulling of the hydraulic muscles. On the other side, all of the circuitry and logic neatly constrained within a slightly damaged black box was pulled inside, what had once been, their chest cavity. 

Eventually all of the pieces stopped moving. What lay before me was still Lily but they looked very different. No longer a humanoid, they looked like the robotic equivalent of a spider. I felt myself freeze up yet again, powerless to do anything once more. The only thing I could do was sit, wait, and think as their body finished ultimately repairing itself. 

As I waited I speculated as to why it took the form of a spider. My working theory is that, on Earth, they needed to fit in and look acceptable to the creatures of Earth; more specifically, they needed to look acceptable to humans. Their body is only a construct built around the L1 program and so it can look like anything. They took the form of a human so we would be most comfortable around them. But humans are not the dominant lifeform here on Atria we are just visitors. Something must have glitched along the way of their repair process as they did everything in their power to resemble Atrian life. 

This manifested itself as a spider due to the fact that the majority of animals on Atria have eight limbs. However, any scans of Atrian life are immediately vaulted and kept protected by the Cohab Institute, even the scan Lily made themself. In their glitched state, they no longer had the permissions to pull from the restricted files as their state could damage the vault itself. The only datasets from which they could pull were of Earth animals, of which, very few possess the eight-limbed body plan of the Kyurall, as well as a means of efficient, terrestrial locomotion. Hence, a spider-like appearance. 

It took a few hours but soon enough they came back online. I watched as they looked around with a newfound fascination and intrigue. Everything seemed to be new and exciting to them as they interacted with the world around them like a curious puppy. They no longer seemed to be able to communicate, but they did still seem to understand me for the most part. I was simply so relieved to have them back, I didn't care that they came back different. 

These past few days have been so nerve racking and exhausting. I didn’t know how Lily would come back, or if they were going to come back at all. The worst part of that time was just how lonely everything truly became; just how deafening silence can really be. But that doesn't matter anymore, they're back. Lily is currently in power down on my lap. Fortunately, there really isn't much reason to fully set up shelter while in this cave so I'll just lie here and let them rest. Tomorrow we face the difficult decision of where do we go next.

[End Transcription]

#Myart #creature design #character design #scifi art #robot #scifibruary 2022 #repost #spider tw #arachnophobia

[eyestumblin]

today on breath of the wild...

After an actually indescribable amount of goofing around, climbing up walls and mountains, blowing myself up, side-tracking up/down/over/across the map, poking my nose where it didn't belong, and blindly running past countless obvious objectives, I at long last made my way into the heart of Hyrule castle to do my heroic duties, relieving my old allies of their hundred year wait.

I reached the throne room faster than anticipated, though I'd crawled around (and up, and under) the castle in a few previous trips. Unlike those times, I was determined not to procrastinate a single day longer.

This week we played a lot in anticipation of the sequel release, so I was able to hunt down and collect the final memory locations and watch each of them in order. Most I didn't remember at all- some I hadn't seen in years. I felt more for the hopes of the champions and for the frustration and pain Zelda was going through in her journey. I also (reluctantly) read the diary she left in her room at the castle and was tickled that Link disclosed his reason for not speaking. "He felt everyone's expectations and the need to bear them silently." It was nice to learn about these characters in a different way than previous games.

The story fresh in mind fortified me to finally face the sincerely upsetting amorphous blob of evil gestating in the castle's crown. With overpowered weapons, armor, and food I was able to faceroll my way through the fight. There was one terrible shock; when teleported out of the castle, none other than Dolly herself was waiting for me. A devastating horse accident from earlier in the week had me on full alert for the worst and ready to panic about being suddenly forced to pit sweet, easy paced, 2 spur Dolly in her fancy showgirl feather adorned bridle against a behemoth, world-ending incarnation of rage and destruction. Thankfully it was fight meant to be won without suffering and as we circled Ganon in the home stretch, I told Sana, "Dolly was never meant for this, but I am so proud of her."

And then... at last, the story was finally concluded.

Although there are a lot of memorable highlights, I can't imagine trying to summarize roughly 100 hours of gameplay I haven't written about across the last five years. Covid kept us apart, I moved states and there have been all kinds of life events that resulted in not being able to play. Sometimes it was tough to be patient- I'd be thinking about quests, curiosities, the endless new discoveries on every horizon. Going months or even years between sessions could make it difficult to remember what I was doing and game mechanics or controls, basically how to play at all.

I have 0 regrets about any of that. I'm just extremely grateful we were able to pick things up and continue this journey to its end. BotW began as an adventure with my dear friend and it has been a very special experience to share every harebrained thought, clumsy failure, lucky shot, delightful discovery, and quiet beautiful moment with her from start to finish. Our time playing has kept me feeling close by no matter how far we are in time and space.

BotW is a great game- everyone already knows that. I'm looking forward to someday playing the sequel, and for now I can delve back into my save file to continue exploring the many mysteries still uncovered. Usually I review media but instead this is really about my deep, heartfelt thanks to @sanachanto for her infinite patience, all the gentle hints that never spoiled anything, and for enjoying my adventures as much as I did. BotW: friendship is the greatest treasure/10

#botw #mild spoilers #long post

[funkymbtifiction]

Hello, I absolutely adore your blog.

Will you help me figure out what my MBTI type and Enneagram are?

I identify strongly with the enneagram type 4w5 (also 9w1 and 6w5 to a lesser degree), the feeling of being different, weird, broken, seeing others being happy and fulfilled but being unable to achieve it for myself, the constant searching for the thing that makes me special but being unable to find it; however, I can’t seem to figure out which MBTI type I am...

ENFP 9w1.

The only thing I seem to be most certain of is that I use Ne-Si, but I can’t determine the order. [...] I am too easily influenced to be an INTP (I don’t know what I think or believe; it’s also why I thought I might be a 9). I often move from ideologies, philosophies and perspectives and try them but never really commit to one. As soon as I think I’ve found the one, I must move on in search of something better, something that will definitely be the solution to my problems or the one answer to all of my questions (about morality, society, the world, philosophy, psychology, life in general) but I can’t stick with one. I do revisit particular perspectives or ideas that fascinated me, but I move on from them again.

This is Ne-dom. It fits no other type, and also strongly 9. You might even have 7 as a fix (an inability to stick with anything is very 9-7).

I find brainstorming and coming up with ideas quite easy though I have a habit of over-complicating things. Approaching a project, I see so many possibilities of what it could be; I have grand visions of the finished project, but when I start and see my skills (or reality in general) don’t measure up, I get pretty discouraged, and I lose motivation.

ENP and also 9ish (giving up if it's too challenging).

A feature of Ne-dom I think I recall you mentioning is that they pick up skills much faster than others. For me, it highly depends on if I’m interested in the subject or not. If I am interested, I advance very quickly, I become obsessed with it and want to experiment with it all the time, but annoying reality gets in the way. When I am not interested in something, there’s nothing in the world that will make me do it (“or except my mum, she is often on my case about getting on with my university work). I get so tired and drained when I even think about it.

Fi/Te. Can't force yourself to do anything unless you care about it.

When I like something, I am the unstable force; however, when I don’t, I am the immovable object. It gets pretty frustrating when I have to deal with the important real-world things that I don’t like.

9 and 1 gut type energy / solid wall of immovability, but good at completion when you power through it or feel motivated.

From what I’ve written, it seems I may be more Ne than any of them, but I’m not extroverted. I keep to myself often and avoid talking to people online and in person because I don’t feel confident in my conversational skills.

Withdrawn type (9). Also, ENPs aren't particularly extroverted in a stereotypical manner; we are excited about thoughts, ideas, and philosophies, but not necessarily stimulated by other people.

I spend a lot of time collecting information on how I can better myself, but I never put it to use - hence why I think I might have a 5w, but I think I’m too emotional and in touch (drowning) with my feeling to be one. I guess I have some elements of 1, I am pretty 1-ish in my desire to be perfect and produce things precisely as I imagine them, but I lack the work ethic considered a strength of the 1...

This also suggests 9w1 -- collecting information about self betterment and the desire to do it, but not feeling energetic (not wanting to push yourself / exert that much effort to get it done) enough to commit to it. Also, being a perfectionist and hard on yourself / giving up rather than deal with it not being "good" enough or "matching what I saw in my mind."

#submission #typing #question

[ghostmarmot]

Around the Stairs

I can't believe I'm here doing this, but nothing else has worked. All the spells I cast, all the spells I asked others to cast for me, even reporting what she has been doing has done nothing. Damn her!

So now, here I am, about to break into what I really hope is a deserted office building to do some stupid ritual to get her out of my life. I'm absolutely embarrassed, but I'm so desperate that I'll do anything to get rid of her. She cost me my job, killed my dog, and is trying to force me to pay rent even though she has changed the locks and none of the police will let me in to get my things. Stupid small-town princess bitch. I never would have moved there to date him if I'd known about her.

I looked at the clock while asking myself if I was really going to go through with this. 11:53 pm. I had to get a move on if I was really going to do this, so I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, flipped a coin, and went by the feeling in that instant of what I wanted. Thankfully the coin wasn't important, because it went clattering off somewhere unseen in the interior of my car. I couldn't tell if that was an omen or clumsiness.

Honestly, I think the part that really sold me on this was that I had already broken into the building last night and left a door unlocked. It was amazing how many doors of office buildings I had looked at before I had found one that I could push out of the way with a knife. I couldn't card a lock, but knives worked. Too bad I had to leave it outside for this ordeal, but no weapons were allowed. No electronics, either outside of the start point.

I had decided to set up behind the receptionists desk in the entryway. I had to hope that no one would see the light or anything odd from outside, but there didn't seem to be any watchman or security. The five candles in a circle were easy to set up. The instructions online didn't specify what kind they had to be, so I had raided a drug store for their jar candles. They were all scented and I wondered what the reek was going to be from a blend of cheap vanilla, clean cotton, and white lily candles was going to be after a few hours. But dawn was around five and a half hours from now, so I needed candles with long burn times and the 'game' said that it would be failed if one of them went out. The start point created, I lifted the wall mirror and called myself an idiot yet again, before throwing it down. The crash was so much louder than I had expected and the broken glass scattered so much further than I had expected. I cringed at the noise and nearly forgot to light the taper before running off through the center of the candles and broken mirror.

I had to be moving the whole time, so I set an easy pace. Besides, it was hard to see by the light of the one candle. Supposedly, something would appear in the building after I finished climbing up and then running down all of the staircases. There were just three, but I needed to have more than two since you couldn't use the same staircase after you just used it. By the time I was done, I was thankful I had chosen a building with only three floors. Still, after a while I got used to the creepiness of the deserted building and had figured out how to keep the candle from blowing too much in the wind generated by my walking and started following different paths around the floors. The game had said that staying on one floor for too long would make the thing find me faster, so I was wandering aimlessly around. Honestly, once I got over how spooky it felt to be where I wasn't supposed to be, this was easy. It wasn't until sometime after two AM that I thought I saw something in the reflection of a glass sidelight for an office. I froze and looked at it again, but there was nothing reflected except myself, an expression of fear on my face. I sighed and shook my head at my folly before continuing on.

I thought I saw something again, a few times over the next hour, but I was exhausted so it made total sense. On my next trip through the ground floor I stopped at the start point for a moment to get an energy drink and something to eat while walking. I hadn't wanted to drink too much, but I had accepted the fact that I wouldn't be able to get through the night without using the bathroom a couple of times. I didn't like it for some reason, not just because the game had said that if you stayed still longer than thirty seconds the creature would locate and charge at you, but also because there was something both creepy and depressing about using an office bathroom by the light of a taper candle. One which, I have to say, I had no way of putting down. It was those moments when I just wanted to give it up, pack it in, and go home.

The later it got, the less the reasons I was doing this seemed to matter. I knew it was exhaustion and a lack of sleep talking, but it all blurred together into a morass of feeling sorry for myself. Still, in the flickering light of the candle in the bathroom mirror or the glass windows next to some office doors, it started getting harder and harder to accept that I was alone. Then, I started hearing footsteps at the edge of my hearing, so faintly that I knew they were conjurations from my exhausted mind but impossible to dismiss all the same. But I wasn't allowed to turn around. That was one of the rules. Never turn around unless you are in a corner, and never look in the glass shards at the start point.

It felt like I was trudging slower and slower with each circuit. Strangely though, time seemed to pass slower and slower, too. I kept looking up at the clock above the start point and wondered if the batteries were dying or if I was so tired I was forgetting what time I had last seen it. The footsteps were louder now, and seemed closer. I dreaded the next time I had to use the bathroom, but it was unavoidable, especially with the growing fear running down my spine. The air felt cooler, and I knew that was probably a response to the adrenaline, but it just made me more afraid. Eventually the time had come, and I entered the bathroom, leading the way with my candle. I could see it shaking in the mirror , but without enough light, it just looked like someone else was carrying one across the room from me. The first time the other candle went out, I jumped, before slowly realizing that the mirror must have ended. Still, I couldn't stand looking in the mirrors and did my best to get out as soon as possible, but I resolved not to go in there again.

When I left, I could have sworn the footsteps were even closer and were coming from down the hall from me rather than out of the bathroom. I told myself I was being foolish, but it didn't stop me from getting more afraid. I kept hearing it and I tried my best not to look in the windows. Eventually, I did, a few times and I saw something. Its form was indistinct but seemed to be glowing darkness in a blob. I was startled into running, but eventually, I broke through the fear. Maybe the false dawn had something to so with that, maybe I had been so scared for so long that I just didn't have any more fear in me, or maybe it was my brutal exhaustion, but I had become totally calm. I was floating above the lake that was my emotions and, no matter how the wind and waves raged, nothing could touch me where I floated. Still, I kept trudging around the building until long after dawn.

Eventually, I blew out my candle and laid down in the hall, letting my exhaustion wash over me until I fell asleep on the floor. When I woke up, it was late in the afternoon and I felt out of place. Then, I sat up in horror. The candles downstairs! I had fallen asleep without blowing them out. I was sure that they must have burned out by now, but how irresponsible of me! I made my way downstairs carefully, making sure no one had come in while I had been dreaming. I didn't see anyone and, to my surprise, a couple of the candles were still lit and guttering in the pool of melted wax. I blew them out, capped them all, and then started sweeping up the broken mirror shards. After I had cleaned up everything I had brought and left, I turned my cellphone on and checked it.

That bitch! But I breathed through it and tried to see the bright side. At least she was letting me come get my stuff. She said that anything left in the house after tonight would be burned, but it wasn't like I had brought more than I could fit in my car in the first place. I guess, looking back, something had always felt suspicious about him. I managed a civil reply, if not too polite, and started to drive over.

When I got there, there was a party in full swing. It seemed like all of her friends and those wanting to suck up to her were packed into the house and her back yard. That bastard was also there, billing and cooing with her, but at least had the decency to clear off when I walked in. I went back to my room, avoiding her, and saw that someone had kicked in the door to my room and then gone through everything I had. As I packed, I kept track of everything and thanked my lucky stars that we were both completely different sizes. Only a few things had been broken and most of them had no sentimental value. The bedding was a complete loss and I couldn't believe someone had done that, but the only thing I had lost was the comforter. All the rest that bastard had bought. Ugh. I couldn't believe that not only had he cheated on her in one of her houses, a rental property her was there to fix up, he had moved me in. Honestly, not that I was leaving and able to get my stuff, I wished them both a long relationship. They were both trash.

I had moved everything I wanted out of my room and left the rest for her, including the creepily wet toothbrush and shampoo and conditioner that didn't look how it was supposed to. The last thing I needed were my knives. My father had bought them for me as a graduation present before he died and they were very dear to me. The only problem was the drunk trash in the kitchen made a big deal about it. How she was “scared” to have me around knives, and how “violent” I had been when we had met. She even called her brother on the phone, feigning tears, to get him to come in his cop car to arrest me. I got angrier and angrier and so I got stubborn. Those knives meant more to me than any of the other stuff I had brought put together.

I kept reminding my self that I could do this. Getting angry in a small town where most of the cops would take her side, no matter if she was standing over my corpse, bloody knife in hand was a really stupid move. But she was chopping on the quartz countertop with my knife and I knew she was chipping the blade with how hard it was slamming down. And she was saying shit, her and her trash friends, and I could barely hold on. Then I felt the air cool, heard footsteps come up behind me, and was calm. I was perfectly, completely calm, flying in that space above the wind and waves of emotion. Something must have shown on my face because she tossed the knife down on the island and walked away, bitching that it was too dull anyway. So, I picked it up, walked forward and, utterly calm, slid it between her ribs. And look at that. She was wrong again. It wasn't too dull. It was just sharp enough.

Pandemonium broke loose, and everyone was running and screaming except for a few jock-types that decided they were going to stop me. But they took one look at my smile and they ran for the hills. One of them even threw his girlfriend towards me to stop my nonexistent charge at him. I laughed. This whole town was full of trash. Calmly I drifted through the remains of the party, collecting my knives. When I saw my cleaver had been used to try to chop wood, I almost felt anger again. But the cool air stroked my skin and I decided it wasn't worth it.

I was in my car driving away when a cop car came racing towards me. But there was no fucking way I was staying in this town another damn minute. I dodged them and just kept driving out of town. They had deployed a tire damage strip on the old bridge out of town, but I refused to stop, although part of my mind wondered that they could afford that, but not afford the training that nepotism was wrong. Still, my calm was with me as I crashed. I thought I saw it, when I blinked my eyes, staring back at me. Had I won the game, or lost it? I would have plenty of time to figure that out.

#concrit welcome #short story #fiction #horror #writing #not good enough to submit #not terrible #mediocre

[justiisms]

*taka looks absolutely exhausted as he rubs his tired eyes before shaking his head, desperately trying to keep himself awake! it's well past midnight and only the light from his desk lamp is on while a novel is laid out in front of him, although taka isn't absorbing a single thing he's reading. it's only when he hears someone come into his room that he'll slowly glance over at them, the poor boy looking as if he'll fall asleep at any moment*

"I can't go to bed yet... I have to make sure Uncle Phanty comes back from his mission safe and sound..."

Bobby would normally be asleep around this time, but he had quite a lot of documents to take care of on his laptop. "Ahh, so sleepy... I can't wait to be done with this." But he was definitely going to need a strong cup of coffee to help him push through, faster. As he got up and exited his bedroom, on his way to the kitchen....he saw the glow of Kiyotaka's desk lamp from his room. "...?" He stopped in surprise. He knows he doesn't leave that on when he's asleep... but it was also so unlike Taka to still be up this late. That's why he was shocked when he poked his head inside, and saw him sitting at his desk. "Taka...?"

As he walks further inside the room and Taka looks towards him, he could see just how tired he looked. "Goodness, my boy, you look like you could pass out, any second! Why are you still awa...ah?" He trails off as Kiyotaka explains himself. And what he hears, makes his heart sink. "...Taka...."

All too well... he knew that feeling. It was why, in a way, he's glad he had so much work to help distract him; because otherwise, he'd also be worrying so much, if his brother is okay... "......" He kneels down to eye level, and rest a hand on his shoulder. "...I understand that feeling very well. As skilled of a spy he is, he is not invincible. It could take just that one enemy, that succeeds in outsmarting him, and.." But he shakes his head of the thought, not even wanting to imagine it.

"... I'm sorry: that was my paranoia talking. That boy....has survived things that would sound unheard of, to. He loves to play around a lot and drive everyone crazy, but if there is one thing he takes seriously more than anything, is his job. He would never allow himself to even have a 1% chance of getting tripped up, nor especially making a careless mistake. That is what I remind myself of, to ease the worry in my heart. And I hope..it eases the worry in yours, too. That's why you don't have to worry too much, my boy: I can promise you with absolute confidence, that he will come home safe and sound. I will probably still be up finishing documents, anyway, ahaha. So don't force yourself to stay awake...even if you're doing so because you want to see for yourself he arrives safely, I know he'd feel bad, and would rather you sleep, too.. but it would still mean a lot to him, how much you care. Now come on: I'll turn off your lap and place a bookmark in the novel, while you walk to your bed. You wouldn't want to greet your Uncle Phanty in the morning looking super tired, after all, right? Haha!"

He chuckles, a soft smile now on his face as he pats his back, before standing back up straight. "Let's believe in him like we always do. That he will come back home from a successful mission, safe and okay...!"

#AHHH MY HEART.... #Taka really is the sweetest... #Phanty would wouldn't want him to force himself to stay awake like this if he knew but!! #it'd touch his heart he's got someone waiting for him at home #wanting to make sure he's safe and okay like this! 🥹 #Bobby answers;; #essenceofjustice

[heart-ur-art]

hello, out there ~

pls excuse my lack of pfp, header or anything of the like, i promise this is a blog by a human and not a bot account.

i don't remember when i made this blog, but i had originally created it with the intentions of not only trying to help other artists slow down and appreciate all the hard work they put into their creations since the surge of 'hustle culture' is forever prominent on social media platforms these days in order to have any hope of presence and consequently, i feel causing artists to feel less value in the work they accomplish, sadly, but to also help myself be more aware of and actually celebrate the advancement of my own skill and hard work that i put towards my art and hobbies.

unfortunately, as is quite apparent by this empty blog that's been floating around in my list of blogs for some time now, i think i've hit more of a wall in my creativity than was previously known.

i've always struggled a lot over the many years (probably close to around 15 now) that i actually have tried to actively improve my art skills to work towards specific goals in that i struggle in knowing exactly HOW to practice art, as far as good fundamental/foundational knowledge is concerned, but i also... pretty much only have WIPs and next to no finished pieces of art (and this is also true for many other hobbies i do; hardly anything ever gets finished).

it's incredibly demotivating and disheartening, especially with the new modern day expectation of artists (or creators of any kind, really) to churn out art as if they were machines and seeing people's quick improvements and new discoveries of skills. i constantly feel behind in the art world. and yes, i'm aware that it's not a requirement to put out art in this manner for hobbyist artists; slow artists are valid and can be very successful and fulfilled, too. but i think we've all felt the pressure to create more and more, faster and faster than before even if it's just for validation purposes.

and it's almost become a requirement if you wish to have any hope of obtaining any monetary compensation for your work (which, i have hoped to obtain even small scale as extra funds for years when i was abled enough to work, but even more so now that i find myself at a higher needs disabled status and unable to work + mostly home-bound and would like to sell my art skills for even a little bit of financial independence after being forced to move back in with my parents for unforeseen personal reasons). i think this is why i tend to find myself crawling back to sites where things WERE slower years ago when i first started to get into the art world.

as is also the motivation for wanting to create this blog. to encourage us all to remember, it's okay to take our time and experiment and learn at a pace that's enjoyable again and just share our achievements in pure enjoyment for creation and less for the sake of getting stuff out there as quick as possible or the first to jump on new trends/popular content for the numbers.

so i guess we start here. in a position of where i find myself unable to create despite.. wanting to on an almost daily basis.

im often wondering how so many people ARE able to create daily, how do they stay motivated and focused? what keeps them inspired to always have ideas to put down on canvas?

this is especially the case for anyone who is of any neurodivergencies that affect energy, focus and motivation and are able to create consistently because this is seeming to be a very significant struggle with myself (i'm assuming has always been but have only more recently discovered that i'm VERY much ND) as of late.

i'm certain i'm not the only person out there feeling this exact same way or very similarly. so, please, i invite anyone interested in taking a breather away from social platform expectations and growing more peacefully in skill to join me in trying to discover how to achieve this.. together.

i can't say for sure what exactly i have planned for this blog and how we can all come together to bring more genuine joy back to creating, as i often have many ideas, but i tend to be quite lost as to how to follow through with them. maybe we'll figure it out along the way.

anyone of any skill level and any medium of art is welcome to join. (i will say up front, i do not consider any ai made anything to be a self-made art-form as it is imitating works of real human artists, so that is not an acceptable 'medium' here. you're welcome to pick up a pencil, stylus, brush, sculpting material, whatever if you'd like to actually participate and learn a skill from this space)

i suppose what i'm asking of this first post is.. how is it that YOU create? how or what do you do for practicing or warm-ups? what do you do on days where there's less focus or motivation for drawing or creating? what inspires your work?

very interested in others' creative process, and please those who deal with road blocks from neurodivergent disorders, lemme know how you work around them in order to do what you do ~

feel free to reblog this with commentary or tags explaining, drop a comment on this post or i'll even open the ask box if preferred to respond that way (no anons for now; i've not had great experiences with anon asks in the past)

please remember to always be kind, to others and to yourself. wishing you happy creating ~

#hearturart #art #digital art #traditional art #art skills #creative #creativity #learn to draw #art community #artist community #learning #neurodivergent #adhd #actually autistic #sorry i'm just putting tags relevant to my nd disorders that play a role in preventing me from drawing