#my school gave me access to photoshop

[guacamoleroll]

twelve hours until doom.

#my school gave me access to photoshop #their mistake #literally the first thing i've created with it #laugh #I SAID LAUGH #i'm coping #₊˚ପ notes from muse .ᐟ #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd s5 #bsd s5 ep11 #osamu dazai #dazai bsd #bsd spoilers #bsd manga #manga #bsd anime #bsd season 5

[genericpuff]

Let me preface this: I'm an architecture major

I used to be a big LO fan but obviously fell out of love of it like a lot of us did, and I know LO uses SketchUp for backgrounds. That is not an issue I have with the comic or any comic, I want artists to have an easier time in any way they can. I was always under the impression Rachel imported the models into Photoshop and drew over them like you can see in the early episodes with the sketchy lines. Well, school just started recently for me and I now have access to SketchUp for my coursework, and I made a few discoveries: 1. Photoshop cannot read SketchUp files, and while you can import them into Clip Studio through some configuring, they can be finicky and will lose parts in the importing process, so they are best used into the original SketchUp program to export as PNGs. 2. Many of the models Rachel uses are incredibly easy to find, especially if you put "modern", "luxury", or "classy" before the main part of the search. Many of the houses and rooms for example are first page results. 3. The biggest discovery: You know how we all assumed Rachel was hand-drawing all the lines over the SketchUp models and how she gave up the longer LO went on? Well, it's actually worse. It turns out SketchUp has a thing called "Styles" in it, which means you can mess with the lines and look of the model, such as making it look more like a blueprint or playing with the colors. Well, they have a lot of styles on SketchUp known as "sketchy lines", which are the exact ones Rachel used early in the comic to fit with her style, and it takes a literal click of a button to do. All she would do is pose the model, click the sketchy line style, and export the PNG. That's it. So, yeah, Rachel is so checked out of the comic that she can't even bother to click a single button to make the models fit into the comic's style anymore. Use that information however you like.

Ouhhh sorry OP, I'm about to like, undo all the work you just put into that ask. We've already known about the 3D background problem for a long while now.

First off, it's more likely LO doesn't use SketchUp but actually Acon3D, which is a website that offers 3D models both for free and at cost, which are actually compatible with software like Clip Studio. As soon as you open it up you'll likely see a lot of very familiar backgrounds that are often used in romances, isekais, and period pieces. It's literally the go-to spot for Webtoon Originals creators. Like, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if Naver was partnered with them because of how many of their creators use it.

Second, there's plenty of up-to-date evidence to support the fact that Rachel doesn't exclusively stick to one software, sometimes she's drawing in Photoshop, sometimes she's drawing in Clip Studio Paint, sometimes she's drawing in Procreate. She's undoubtedly using Clip Studio for her paneling, speech bubbles, and backgrounds, as there are built in tools to utilize and convert 3D materials into lineart, among other features that are recognizable as coming from CSP because they're not available in PS or Procreate.

Third, yes, she just uses filters to turn her backgrounds into lineart, this has been apparent since S1. The only backgrounds she's ever 'hand drawn' were the ones involving lots of nature and even those are mostly just Photoshop brushes stamped on.

Like I realize I'm probably bursting your bubble here and I apologize for that lmao but these buildings were never hand-drawn, this is not new information (￣﹏￣；) I appreciate you mentioning your own experiences with it as you're learning it though, I find once you start to learn the process yourself you really start to notice what others are doing. Even I've gone through that over the past couple years as I started to use 3D models and more advanced tools specifically for drawing webtoons.

I will mention btw, there's nothing wrong with using 3D models for your character drawing and backgrounds. The only time it tends to get frustrating is when you're reading a comic that isn't making any attempts to blend the background in with the art style.

Like, The Kiss Bet probably uses 3D models to help with perspective and laying out scenes quickly without second-guessing, but you can tell they still hand-draw over the models because they look natural and like they belong to the comic's stylization. The characters don't look out of place sitting in a living room and the living room doesn't look distracting.

But then you get stuff like Lore Olympus, Let's Play, and Midnight Poppy Land, and it becomes a bit more obvious they're not giving a shit about backgrounds lmao

I get it, WT's deadlines are cutthroat as fuck, but if it's getting to the point that you have an entire team behind you and you're literally just copy pasting video game models from Phantom Hourglass, then it's probably time to re-focus your priorities a bit. There are comics with as few as 1-2 assistants (and even in some cases no assistants at all!!) pulling off backgrounds better than this, even when they're taking shortcuts.

(Nevermore and City of Blank)

But a lot of that does come down to how WT manages its expectations as well as support for their creators. The deadlines and requirements WT puts their creators under are insane and awful in the long-term, and they're not acting with the amount of professionalism they ought to be for a platform that's trying to breakout as a major publisher here in the West. I feel like it comes down to WT loosening the choke chain around their creators, but also creating a standardized level of quality to ensure it's not suffering for the sake of quantity. The traditional literature industry has real editors and stages of quality control for a reason, whereas WT is more interested in just throwing as many series at the wall and dumping all their stock into the ones that stick.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #webtoons critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[applejongho]

hey!! I want to start making gifs but i don’t know how, are websites like ezgif frowned upon here in the gif community? do we make them in a specific software?

hi anon!! thanks for asking!

I would say that yes, ezgif is generally frowned upon to make gifs, but if that's the only option available for you then it's whatever works. People frown upon it because the quality of the gif is reduced in ezgif software (converting from mp4 to gif) and there are very limited coloring options. You also can't sharpen a gif because the sharpening software simply doesn't exist on ezgif. I want to reiterate that ezgif isn't like, the worst thing in the world, but it's moreso limiting your toolbox greatly.

There's two paths that you can take: get Photoshop somehow, either paying the enormous amount of money yearly for a subscription, getting it from your school if they offer it, or getting a cracked (not legal) version of it. There are a lot of downloads available here (Tumblr link) and in my tag called #resources.

Your second option is photopea, which is a free online version of photoshop and is similar to Photoshop. I used photopea for years until a friend gave me access to her Photoshop account, and I personally prefer Photoshop over photopea due to the accessibility, the filters available for coloring and sharpening, and the saving options (which I know sounds really stupid, but the exporting options for Photoshop are generally better than those of photopea. IE you can make the same gif from both softwares but photoshop's will just be better quality by nature because of its export, ie when you click 'save as gif'). However, photopea's usefulness and breaking down that barrier for people who want to get into gif making or editing graphics in general when they can't get Photoshop is very powerful and I'm glad that photopea exists, I recommend it highly for people that cannot get Photoshop/aren't comfortable with getting a cracked version of it because it's similar (not the same) to Photoshop.

I have an old photopea tutorial on YouTube if you'd like to use it to learn! It's old not because of the age but because I do things differently now than I did when I made the video and if I could, I would add more to the video, the biggest being cropping and aspect ratios. Here's a detailed post on gif sizing since I didn't include it in my tutorial, and here's my YouTube tutorial on how to make a gif on photopea. There are a bunch of tutorials on how to make a gif on Photoshop, I'm sure, since it's a better known software. Maybe I'll redo my photopea tutorial at some point. That's a mighty fine idea tbh.

Another big tip, if you for some reason have a software related question, you can literally email the CEO and creator of photopea at support[@]photopea.com. I've done it before lol. He's really helpful. That's the perk of a small software, the CEO is behind the support email. He has literally changed the software when I've asked, for example you couldn't upload videos with a frame rate greater than 10, and I made him change it to the frame rate of the video. Lmao.

Sorry for all of these words lol, I hope they helped and feel free to reach out again if you have more questions!

#nameless being #photopea #photoshop #gif making

[prettyoddfever]

I have a few different questions in my inbox that revolve around my perspective on being a teen in the 2000s. A few points weren’t relevant for me, but I’ll try to cover some other aspects here in one rambling post since this might be faster...

TECHNOLOGY:

There were no apps, filters, or presets back then. If you wanted to edit a picture, you had to sit down & actually learn how to use photoshop (I think some kids with Microsoft computers used Paint too but idk). Knowing how to use photoshop gave you a huge advantage on myspace and most likely made you popular in online forums because you could actually make icons, wallpapers, & stuff like neopets userlookup profile banners. The kinds of things that kids can do to pictures today with a single tap of a button used to take like an hour + a lot of talent. Also, photoshop didn’t used to have the kind of recurring payment nonsense that Adobe does now. You’d just go to a store, buy the software cd, install it, and then it was on your computer for good.

Selfies weren’t really a big thing until myspace... and a lot of people called them “myspace pictures” for a while if you turned the camera to face yourself lol. Gifs also didn’t have a name... I just called them “animations" at first.

Modern cell phones can replace so much stuff that I used to have to haul around... like my heavy Nokia phone, disposable camera, giant chunky video camera + its gear, a giant binder of cds plus my cd player & headphones, a notepad with pens, and maps I printed out from the internet. My friends would also bring their GPS, a portable dvd player for longer trips, and ipods... except we didn’t have a way to get the ipod to play in a car yet (in 2008-ish I got one of those cords that you could set to the frequency of whichever radio station was pure static and then you’d get to hear part of your song... but you’d have to keep changing the radio station on the cord as you drove because pretty soon another song would start to cut into yours).

I didn’t even get the type of cell phone that could have internet or apps until like 2013. I was def late to that party, but my point is that the few kids who had sidekicks in 2006 weren’t the norm. I had a basic flip phone, but don’t remember texting much until 2007. Most of my friends and I just used our phones to call our parents, and then talked on MSN or AIM on our computers (if you were fortunate enough to have one in the first place... a ton of kids at my school didn’t have internet at home).

I know that videos on youtube from 2006 look like they're "filmed on a potato" and really bad quality or whatever, but part of that low quality wasn't the fault of our video cameras!! It was really distressing how I could have a relatively decent video, try my best to get all the settings right to export it for webstreaming, and then it would look like a garbled mess by the time it finished uploading through whatever hell portal it went through while getting online. Sometimes the process of sharing & downloading video files also lowered the quality. So the quality of the original videos we recorded wasn’t quite as horrid as the final uploaded versions (cell phone videos do not apply to this... those were just atrocious period).

Our tvs were not super blurry & pixelated like the bad quality youtube videos you might see of recordings from 2006 lol. Have you ever seen a movie from 2002? It’s fine. I do remember tvs suddenly becoming REALLY clear towards the end of college, though... maybe around 2010? I don’t remember exactly when. I only remember spending a few months continually pointing out how clear the details were onscreen and being shocked that we could literally see someone’s pores. So I suppose there was some minor improvement, sure.

My random opinion: there was something nice about having fewer choices in entertainment and needing to wait to access something (I’m not saying that having the freedom to do your own thing on your own schedule these days is bad or anything... it’s just different). My high school friends and I had like 5 tv channels to pick from so then everyone watched the same exact shows at the same time because we didn’t know when the next rerun would be (although weekly TV guides that got delivered in the newspaper would list the names of each episode coming up on the schedule and I would highlight the ones I wanted to see). Some kids with cable would leave the tv on for hours in the hope that they’d see their favorite music videos show up. Now people can instantly access an endless range of entertainment on their own time, so some of the excitement that came from anticipation is lost (like even waiting for someone to return the movie you wanted to rent felt like a bigger deal than just clicking on whatever’s next in your Netflix list). I spent a lot of hours of my life waiting in fun lines for midnight Harry Potter book releases, but now I suppose you could just download an e-book right when it’s released. 

There weren’t verified social media accounts back then. YFly’s main selling point was the fact that celebrities were verified (that site didn’t really take off, but Brendon still had to sign up for an account in fall 2006). Without verified social media accounts, it was often really hard to tell if someone was real. There were SO many fake accounts for any & every celebrity. I legit believed that one account on Neopets was Emma Watson simply because so many other people were convinced too. There were a lot of fake myspace & facebook accounts for Ryan Ross & Brendon Urie by late 2006, but those always seemed very obviously fake to me (even if they actually managed to spell Brendon’s name right lol). Some newer fans who didn’t know as much about the guys were definitely fooled, though, so that’s yet another place where some harmful and/or inaccurate info came from.

FASHION:

movies from the 2000s aren’t a totally accurate picture of what teens dressed like… it’s more like an adult costume designer’s interpretation. 

Most kids I knew in high school just wore a lot of American Eagle, Hollister, Abercrombie, and whatever PacSun sold (like Roxy). There weren’t so many aesthetics back then. The high schools that my friends and I were familiar with (in several different states) mostly had kids who were skater, scene, emo, goth, kind of punk, the generalized preppy look that made everyone into a Laguna Beach clone, or kids who didn’t care & just wore sneakers, flared jeans, and whatever graphic unisex tshirts came with their school activities. 

Emo & scene were not the same thing. A lot of scene kids would get really upset if you called them emo. Some emo kids would be offended if you thought they’d ever be scene. Also: in my experience, emo kids were bullied waaaay more than scene kids.

I spent a lot of time at malls and was really into teen fashion magazines in high school like Teen Vogue, YM, Seventeen, Cosmogirl, Teen People, Elle Girl, etc. I just want to point out that styles changed SO much while I was in middle school & high school (2000–2007) and even more when I was in college. The popcorn shirts that I was obsessed with in 7th grade were only around for a short time. Flared sleeves were in towards the start of the decade, but that didn’t last long either. The 1960s came back briefly when I was in middle school, and then the neon 80s had a short comeback a few years later (but now I’m understanding why our teachers grumbled about how we were generalizing an entire decade with the looks of one moment lol). I can’t think of a single style that could possibly represent the whole decade of the 2000s. In 2004 I desperately wanted the flared jeans that Amanda Bynes wore in What A Girl Wants, but I wouldn’t have been caught dead in them in 2008. In 6th grade my favorite outfits were track pants that could snap off, flared jeans with flowers embroidered on them, butterfly clips in my hair, those clunky chunky brown sandals that looked like turtles, the spaghetti strap tank tops that were banned at school, a little triangle bandana thing on my head, foundation as some weird form of lipgloss, and body glitter. I fit in at that point, but I would’ve looked weird by 2002. Trends were super temporary & changed quickly. It’s not like the entire decade was into camo cargo pants, trucker hats, shirts/purses/hats/anything with your initial in rhinestones, madras shorts, platform sandals, jeans that laced up the sides, pants with flares as big as you could possibly get, colored skinny jeans, denim miniskirts with cropped leggings underneath, long camisoles with a lace bottom for layering, boleros, gauchos, striped polo & rugby shirts, that one style of adidas shoes, those velvet tracksuits, massively furry uggs, crocheted purses & shirts, jeans that looked like they were patched together, suede belts with the fringe that hung down to your knee, studded belts, etnies & vans, etc. Those things were from a range of different years. 2008/09 feels like it had way more in common with 2011 than with 2005. I thought the early 2000s had more in common with the late 90s than with 2006. I’m just saying... you can’t generalize the whole decade as a continuous look or sound.

TOXIC ASPECTS OF 2000s FASHION / TEEN CULTURE:

TW: eating disorders

Maybe movies didn’t show the actual types of tshirts that teens wore because those had a giant brand name plastered on them or were inappropriate? There was SO much sexual innuendo on shirts around like 2004. I just tried to google this and I’m shocked at how there are so few examples (I put some in this tag). I mean, it’s awesome that our culture has changed enough to recognize that those should be buried, but they were also so prevalent that it feels strange to see those shirts are just gone as though they barely existed. I’m able to find some examples of Abercrombie shirts still because the brand is popular, but those types of graphic tees were at almost every store in the mall for a season… even Kohls & Target were questionable. For a short time it was such a chore to find a tshirt that didn’t subtly say something sexual, which legit made me anxious as a high school freshman. A 14-year-old girl shouldn’t be walking around in a tshirt with colorful smiling flowers that say “guaranteed to get you up in seconds!” I hate that I was so naive that I wore that shirt to school for a long time, but I also hate that those types of shirts were created for the junior’s section of some stores. The graphics on those shirts were mostly designed to look like ads for things like tropical islands, travel, Asian restaurants, cleaning products, mountain resorts, etc… except it was usually sexual in some way if you stopped to actually read the small text. Other shirts were also surprisingly racist, sexist, and just generally weird for something that was obviously created for underage girls to wear. 

Parts of the teen fashion industry basically fostered a bitchy culture where girls hated each other and were striving for male validation. Most stores at the mall (and even Walmart & Target) had those popular attitude tees that pitted girls against each other or reduced our worth to a few physical characteristics. The Abercrombie t-shirt that said “I make you look fat” stands out in my memory (but it’s just one drop in the bucket of all the similar tees they sold). And there were SO many shirts at various stores about blondes vs brunettes that I remember wondering whether my friends who dyed their hair felt like they were switching sides in a battle lol (there weren’t many shirts about redheads, but I remember seeing one at a store like JC Penny or Sears that had some kind of flames & implied something sexual because of course).

There was even a weird trend of graphic tees that made fun of rural populations... like Urban Outfitters had so many shirts mocking states that were stereotypically redneck. Abercrombie and other stores did too. 

I still remember a teen magazine (maybe Cosmogirl?) had an article whose condescending tone was basically congratulating Rachel Bilson in The OC for eating cheeseburgers, being ok with her body/weight, and not trying to be skinny (she was probably a size 6 btw). She was legit considered “large” by several magazines back then, whereas Marissa on The OC was the standard of what was supposed to be “normal.” The media would create a culture where you needed to be super skinny to be acceptable, but then they’d blast those same celebrities for possibly being anorexic (and that shaming wasn’t done out of concern for their health… the tone was more like celebrating that a celebrity screwed up yet again). There really was no way to win.

I recently saw a current teen talking about that Senior Year movie on Netflix and how ridiculous it was that the main cheerleader girl claimed to be on an ice cube diet (as though that idea was absurd and Netflix was inventing it as a joke). That was an actual thing, though. I even remember reading the “helpful tip” in more than 1 magazine that the act of chewing on ice cubes would trick your brain/body into feeling a bit more full. I remember a couple girls who’d have cups of ice at lunch complaining about how their dentists told them that chewing on ice cubes was bad for their teeth. 

The top & middle shelves of jeans at Hollister & Abercrombie were like sizes 00-5 and then the biggest sizes were at the bottom. You had to kneel on the floor to try to find a size 9 in their limited stock, which was the biggest size some stores sold (others went up to a size 11). Way too many of my friends viewed themselves as “disgustingly obese cows” for being a size 9/10. I was legit ashamed to be a size 5/6. Our world was created through a really narrow lens of magazines & tv & movies, and we mostly saw super skinny white girls. 

Another aspect of the one-way dictation of culture was how “poor people” were very much looked down on in the early 2000s. The kiosks at the malls near me were full of counterfeit designer bags, sunglasses, shoes, etc. I’m mostly speaking for the preppy crowd here, but at a lot of high schools you were basically expected to have a small Coach bag and one of those chunky chain Tiffany & Co necklaces with the heart on it. That was just like the bare minimum (and it was embarrassing for the girls who were called out for clearly having knockoff ones… like I felt safer just not having those things than being caught looking like I wanted to, while clearly not being able to afford it). I was watching this youtube video last night (which is seriously funny btw) and the guy points out how Kate calls out Lizzie for being an outfit-repeater and then the characters in that movie look down on blue collar workers and people who might live in a trailer park. That is such a solid example of what our culture felt like back then. I’m glad that those comments seem noteworthy or abnormal now, but it’s hardly like the Disney channel invented that mindset. It was just everywhere. Like I cleaned hotel rooms throughout high school to be able to afford my clothes from American Eagle & Hollister, but that was a serious source of shame (even my mom looked down on me for that job). Sometime around 2009-2011 I started to notice a shift where it started to be more acceptable to admit that you shopped at Target or used coupons, and then shopping at thrift stores became mainstream cool and people were openly talking about their budgets, financial problems, etc. Maybe this shift was partially because of the recession in like 2008, but I really do think that a more connected society via the internet weakened the media’s ability to dictate such a narrow culture as we started to get inspiration & ideas from a wide range of perspectives. 

You know how in the movie 21 Jump Street there’s that scene where Channing Tatum & Jonah Hill go back to high school in like 2012 and it’s totally different? That was one of the most relatable scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie lol. Suddenly it was cool for teens to care about things or actually try in school? Admitting that you like Lord of the Rings or anything “nerdy” was no longer an actual risk that might make you lose friends or expose you to ridicule? Wtf I felt so ripped off. You’re not asking to be bullied if you wear your backpack on both shoulders?! I had been willing to give myself back problems because I thought that was the price of survival. I spent a lot of the early 2010s being cranky that the teen culture I had worked so hard to conform myself to was vanishing and being replaced with something that I would have absolutely loved in the first place, thanks. 

(I’m definitely not saying that everyone who went to high school in the early or mid-2000s had the same experience I did btw. This is just my perspective). 

SOME PAGES FROM TEEN MAGAZINES

Teen magazines were full of “entertainment” in the form of attacking female celebrities. That mindset definitely wasn’t limited to just teen magazines or the audience of teen girls, but I’m more shocked in hindsight by how 12-year-old girls were basically taught to judge, sabotage, and compete against each other. It seemed normal at the time, too. It fostered a culture where a lot of us were super insecure & anxious that everyone was waiting to laugh at our smallest mistake or mock our flaws. Here are some random examples of the culture we were fed in the mid-2000s. 

[dizzydispatch]

The Roof is on Fire: Part 1 (Backstory)

Content warning: dead pet, house fire

"The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire."

These were the lyrics from the song he showed me upon dubbing me "Fire King." A crudely-photoshopped image of my face superimposed onto the profile of Fire Lord Ozai became my contact photo in his phone. The nickname came after my best friend Andy and I spent a weekend up in a rural woodland cabin. After assuring me he'd be able to start the woodstove fire-- after all, hadn't our families first bonded over a shared Boy Scouts troop?-- it started to seem as though we were fated to spend the weekend shivering. "Let me try," I said.

Begrudgingly, he offered me the lighter and wad of newspaper kindling, scooting aside to give me access to the stove. It took me a while, and for a few minutes there, his smug look told me that he'd doubted my ability to do what he couldn't from the beginning. But then, I figured it out. The trick was to keep at it, starting small with sticks and brush, before easing the heavier logs into the flame and allowing them to take gradually to the flame. "Hail, the Fire King!" Andy cried, feigning a royal bow. 

The fire seemed to catch so slowly, I couldn't imagine how things like house fires got to be so out of control. After all, if I couldn't WILL the logs to catch, what did a modern house made to resist conflagration have to worry about?

I wouldn't find out for another few months.

It was a Thursday in early May. I had been hired at the Deaf school two weeks ago, and I was just starting to settle into the job. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing, but it was a job, and since I was living rent-free with my parents, I could put all of my money towards those pesky student loans. One of the perks of living at home was my dad's willingness to occasionally trade cars with me, bringing mine to the mechanic for me so I didn't get ripped off. 

That's why I didn't answer the first time my little brother called me. Or the second. I figured, he's mad because I have Dad's car. I knew he wanted to buy it off of our father, and he probably had scheduled some preemptive appointment to tint the windows or have some other modification done. But by the fifth or sixth consecutive call, I figured I'd have to address him eventually. When my coworker came  back into the room, I asked if she could handle the class for a minute. 

"My brother is spam calling," I told her. In sign language, this looked like "MY BROTHER / CALL / CALL / CALL / (eyeroll)". As I slipped out I told her: "I've just gotta make sure it's not an emergency."

In the nearly deserted hallway, I didn't worry too much about letting some irritation creep into my tone when I answered. "This better be goddamn important," I told him. "I'm at work."

"It is," he responded, just as rudely. "The house is on fire, and your cat is probably dead."

My first impulse was to laugh. "Very funny," I told him. "What's really going on?"

I felt the buzz of my phone and saw that he was trying to FaceTime me. That's when it hit me that he wasn't kidding. With trembling fingers, I accepted the request, and the first thing I saw was the blurry feed of our house, and a big red firetruck in front. 

Dazed, I sank to the ground in the middle of the school hallway. I opened my mouth but nothing came out at first, so I tried again. This time, my scratchy, dry voice made out, "Is... is everyone out?"

"The family is safe," he assured me. "Mom was at work, Dad's here with me." (And of course, the other brother was out of state for college.) "It's only Tilly they can't find."

Tilly.

I took a shaky breath and cleared my face. It was imperative that my students never see me as anything but happy or neutral.

 "Everything okay?" my coworker asked as I reentered the classroom, face a blank slate.

I shook my head imperceptivity. 

She gave me an inquisitive look. I glanced at the students, none of whom were looking my direction. Still, I shielded my hand with the other as I signed two words: HOUSE, and FIRE. Her eyes widened, and she shooed me away, silently telling me to take care of myself and leave the classroom to her. 

I nodded once and left the room. I was going to cry; that much I could feel in my gut. I sought out the office once dubbed our team's "designated cry room." But when I slipped around the corner, I was brought up short by the sight of a closed door. This meant Jen was either interviewing a new applicant, or meeting with a prospective family. Next door to her, however, the program director for the hearing program also housed at the school seemed to have an empty office.

“Hi,” I said, poking my head through the open door. “Are you busy?”

She looked up, surprised. “Not really,” she admitted, her brows furrowing.

“No meetings scheduled--” I checked my watch, "--in the last two hours or so of the school day?”

“No…” I could tell she was wondering why someone from the other program was looking to speak to her, but before she had the chance to ask, I closed the door behind me. 

“Great,” I said, collapsing into her chair. “I need a place to cry.” 

Out from under the prying eyes of students and curious TAs, I could’ve let the floodgates open, but some latent instinct allowed me to first dial the first emergency contact on my phone. 

Andy picked up before the first ring ended. “I heard,” he said. 

A silent gratitude welled up inside of me, in spite of everything. I melted like hot wax, and the tears came silently as I curled up on this strange woman’s office chair. 

“Tilly,” I whimpered. 

“I know,” he said. “We’re going to find her. Do you need me to come get you?” 

I shook my head, which of course he couldn’t hear. The voice I was able to manage was hardly more than a croak. “No.” 

Not-Jen looked at me, bewildered. She asked me the question, what is going on? without words. Her eyes searched my face, and I imagined she was wondering if either program had ever had to section a new hire so quickly. Mental breakdowns were common enough in a place like this, but only a few ended in institutionalization. I pictured, hysterically, this woman slowly reaching under her desk for a secret button, like a bank teller in a robbery, alerting squads of uniformed people armed not with police-issue .45s but straightjackets and tranq darts. The idea was so comically ridiculous that I found myself laughing through the tears, surely only reinforcing her notions regarding my sanity. 

I told her simply, “My house is on fire.” 

This broke her frozen expression, and her face melted into one of sympathy and concern. “Is everyone okay?”

Lifting the phone again, I said to both her and Andy, “My family is all accounted for. The only one missing is my cat, Tilly.” 

She made a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on, and stepped around her desk to sit in the chair beside mine. Her hand was steady on my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. 

The sob was loud and choked, and I stifled the next one, concerned the occupants of the adjacent office might overhear. Not-Jen introduced herself as Cheryl, and I let her put her skinny arms around my shoulders as I continued to weep. Andy spoke soothingly from somewhere far away, giving me updates as he got them through the steady, reliable grapevine that interlaced our families. My family was in the care of the Red Cross. The fire department had gone to a second alarm.

Cheryl tried to console me, too, telling me, “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Cats are incredible hiders."

But they didn't find Tilly until the fire had been extinguished.Tilly, my cat, the first pet that was ever only mine.

It was my mom called me next. I was in my dad's car, sitting in the back parking lot, trying to decide where to go. Home? What would even be left of it? They wouldn't have put my parents up in a hotel yet. It was too soon. I was just settling on calling Andy when my phone rang.

"Mom?"

I could hear her tears when she spoke in a broken, tiny voice: "They found Tilly."

My heart sank into my stomach. "And-- I mean, is she--"

"I'm so sorry, honey."

I don't remember what I said. Maybe I didn't say anything, and just hung up. The next thing I remember is crying harder than I can remember crying in my adult life. The catharsis was immediate and relieving, and I knew as the weeping spell wound down that I would call Andy.

When I arrived at his place, Andy's mom greeted me with a hug that seemed to last eternity. Whitney is a short, plump woman from whom Andy had inherited his ocean-blue eyes, and in her arms I felt small in spite of the six inches of height I have on her. Like a little kid whose auntie took on the roll of secondary mother without needing to be asked. She didn't make me talk, and I found it comforting to remain in my silence, a state uncommon to one as loquacious as I am. I curled up in a ball on the corner of their brown leather couch, sinking endlessly into the deep cushions as though it could swallow me whole.

I stayed there, practically comatose, until Whitney insisted I let her buy me some essentials. She handed Andy her credit card and told him not to think twice about the expense, and soon enough we were on the way to Walmart.

I picked out a toothbrush, some travel hygiene essentials, some sweats to sleep in tonight and a set of fresh work-appropriate clothes for the next day. I didn't bother to style the outfit to match my usual pseudo-gothic preferences, but simply tossed some clothes that seemed close to my size into the cart. Andy added some snacks and a gluten-free frozen dinner for that night, and a bandana. Black, with red roses, matching my aesthetic perfectly. I hadn't even thought about my bandana collection, but Andy, my best friend since the first grade, knew me better than anyone. To this day I have that bandana, the first in my new collection.

On the way home, I fiddled with the music. Usually, Andy and I would bicker about what to play in the car, but I guess having your house burn down wins you some privileges because he let me have full control of the aux.

The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

"Wow," Andy remarked. "Your Spotify algorithm is really insensitive, huh?"

"No," I said. "I picked it. I made a playlist."

His brow furrowed, and he leaned over to look, but I smacked him away and snipped something about watching the road. "The last thing my family needs is for all of us to survive a housefire only to have one of us die in a car crash," I remarked.

His eyes bugged for a second, and then we were both laughing. At the next red light, I showed him the playlist, comprised solely of fire-related songs. "If you read the titles in order, they kind of tell a story," I said. "See? Lithium and Battery, because it was a lithium-ion battery that started it. Lady Gaga's 911, because the first thing you do is call 9-1-1, and Get Low because they tell you--"

"I get it," Andy said, chuckling darkly. "This is so morbid."

"I think it's funny."

He looked at me for a moment before informing me, "Your sense of humor is broken."

I thought about that for a long time, and then suddenly I was laughing. I couldn't stop laughing. I tried to answer his demanding gaze, but I got as far as "What do you call--" before I burst out again. Andy laughed with me, puzzled, but content that I didn't seem so miserable anymore. Finally, after several false starts that dissolved into hopeless giggles, I got the set up of the joke out.

"What do you call an elusive psychic who survives a house fire?"

Andy, already groaning, generously humored me. "What?"

"A rare medium well-done," I choked out, and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, the two of us taking turns volleying all of the fire-related jokes...

"Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost."

"My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter."

"Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!"

...while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire...

And that's when I knew I'd be okay.

#The Roof is on Fire #dizzy #dizzydispatch #dizzydispatch911 #trauma #house fire #TW dead

[artandsuccess]

Online Art Classes Are The Safest And Cheapest Way to Learn

Online art school

An online art school is a facility that offers distance learning courses in the visual arts, which can be completed entirely online. Online art school courses typically concentrate on readings and lectures that impart art history, theory, or techniques while also involving students in practical work and exercises.

How online art schools operate

Students at online art schools frequently have access to a learning platform or a course management system. These platforms allow students to access updated lectures, download course-related software, access course recordings, retrieve homework, and communicate with classmates and instructors.

Learners pursuing online art school classes typically submit their work to an online drop box and may scan or photograph non-digital work to turn it in. The learning management systems used by the online art school are often where instructors give feedback on the submitted work.

Technical requirements for online art classes

The best art programs typically inform potential participants about the technical prerequisites for the online course they wish to take. The greatest art schools, however, mandate that students have access to the Internet and a computer, so even if you are not aware of this information, it is wise to keep it in mind.

You will need to either buy or download software, such as Adobe, Photoshop, Adobe Reader, or Adobe Flash, in order to participate in an online course that calls for the use of digital tools to create artwork. So, in addition to the course tuition, you need also take into account the cost of this program. You might also need to buy a digital camera, a scanner, and video call equipment, among other things.

The safety and cost-effectiveness of online art classes

I wanted to learn encaustic painting from scratch and decided to undertake the course online. This made me research the best art programs online for encaustic painting.  First, I made the decision to research the advantages of learning encaustic painting online as opposed to in-person.

My research led me to a number of online art programs provided by various institutions. In my quest, I was aware of two factors that were crucial: safety and cost-effectiveness. As a result, I read extensive documentation from the organizations providing programs that I believed matched my expectations for quality while also being secure and reasonably priced.

During my online search, I found a color & design art school online that provided an encaustic mini-course that offered the basics of encaustic painting. The course had amazing reviews from past graduates.

I made the decision to speak with a former student who had successfully completed the course to learn more about the course's cost-effectiveness and safety. That graduate was the one who gave me insight into how generally safe and affordable online art school is.

The safety and cost-effectiveness of online art classes

With more and more people seeking online learning, online art schools are increasingly getting vigilant to ensure the safety of their courses and students. That has been witnessed in many online art schools offering the best art programs. Online art schoolsdeliver safety and cost-effectiveness as follows:

Policy on the use of social media

The top online art programs will have restrictions regarding the usage of social media, even if attending an online art school may seem like the ideal time to connect with students via social media. This will cover what can be shared on social media and what cannot. The finest art programs encourage social media sharing, which has been difficult for in-class programs to do.

No public sharing of students names

The best art programs never share their student names or details on social media or elsewhere on the Internet. When they share artwork, they endeavor to blur or edit out visible names. This set of privacy often extends to sharing of students’ faces in a photograph.

Care about sharing information with students

The best art programs appreciate the fact that there may be crucial information that they need to share with their students. They are also aware that occasionally social media is utilized to publicize an announcement or act as a reminder of something crucial. Any information that can compromise the pupils' privacy is kept when they use social media. The connections, meeting IDs, and passwords for online art schools are likewise kept confidential.

Regarding the affordability of online art classes, I discovered that by taking the course online, a number of services that would otherwise be paid for by the student are eliminated. Some of these expenses include travel expenses, fees for using recreation centers, etc.

Need help with enrolling in an online art class?

It may not be easy to find an online art program that is safe and cost-effective when you require one. That is why most people spend lots of time searching for the right programs for their learning needs. You can, however, be assisted in finding the best art program online by providing your details on this page.

[theblob1958]

Kelsea Glynn

The Queen of the Tearling

#the queen of the tearling #kelsea glynn #queen of the tearling #my edits #i hope people like this because it is something ive never done before but im digging it #my school gave me access to photoshop so i am using the most of it before i graduate #i spent a long time on this cause im learning how to do things but i am really proud of it #even if no one reads these books #im basically making this just for myself tbh

[katsuwuma]

doge with a photoshop what art will she make

#my school gave me access to photoshop/other adobe apps #bc im taking 3d animation next semester #ngl i like firealpaca a lot better but what do i know #putting this on my art blog and not on my main just cos #doge.txt #not art

[hiccanna-tidbits]

okay, okay but hear me out!

Hiccanna, Moanida and Jackunzel (and maybe someone else if u want) going on a holiday trip together (it could be sea or lake or just swimming pool).

And that three couples playing "chicken fight game"~ When u have to sit on partner shoulder or ridding piggy-back and knock down or separate the other couple!

sksksks just imagine the fun and the chaos!! hahaha

Okay SO I recently watched Palm Springs so I’m just imagining The Gang going to like…a fancy pool resort in like Arizona??? SURE LET’S GO WITH THAT

I’m imagining the only resort the gang could afford to stay at is someplace out in the middle of Arizona or something

It takes a LOT of persuading to get Jack to go, because he haaaaates deserts. Rapunzel basically has to beg. Moana finally managed to bribe him with really good homemade ice slushies. (She’s used to making smoothies for Merida, so how hard can slushies be??? Just throw in some ice!)

Rapunzel offers to help Moana with the slushies, since she gave Jack SO many puppy dog eyes to get him to come. Since they’ve got two people working on them, they’re REALLY good slushies. Jack approves.

Anna also tries to convince Elsa to go, but the perpetually-single Elsa is just like “Um, deserts? Sunburns? Being indefinitely stuck with gross couples doing gross couple stuff?!? Yeah no thank you”

Hiccup tries to wake everyone up at like 6 am to go hiking because "that's when the desert iguanas are out guys!!! C'mon, we have to go!!!" Anna is only persuaded to go after Hiccup makes her coffee--she really wants to make her bf happy, but also mornings can suck her dick. Rapunzel is more than happy to go, because she loves mornings anyways!!! And oh my god, IGUANAS!!! Jack, Merida, and Moana are like "oh FUCK no" and put the pillow back over their head, shoo Hiccup away, and go back to sleep.

On their hike, Hiccup just goes "!!!!!!!" about every reptile he sees. Snake, lizard, horny toad, literally anything with scales will send the boy into an excited frenzy. Rapunzel has similar reactions. Anna could not love both of them more.

At one point, they stumble across a gila monster sunbathing, and Rapunzel is overtaken with the unwavering desire to adopt him. She gets Hiccup on board, and he tries to lure the lizard over with a dusty piece of a snake carcass he found (Anna tried to tell him he really shouldn't touch that, but he was not to be swayed and Anna ended up figuring he could just wash his hands really well when they got back). Anna finds herself in the unusual position of having to be the Voice of Reason, having to be like “hey uh I think this might be illegal and stuff??? Also aren't they poisonous???”

(I know what you're thinking. Bold of you to assume Anna knows the difference between poisonous and venomous.)

Rapunzel literally CANNOT stop gushing to Jack about all the wildlife she saw when she gets back! Jackrabbits! Kangaroo rats! Roadrunners! Peccaries! Centipedes! Jack has only mild to moderate interest in desert ecology, but loves hearing his gf gush so he listens attentively anyways. 

Anna and Rapunzel definitely hit up the gift shops in the resort town at some point, and go ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT HOGWILD buying gifts for everyone. They probably max out their credit cards. It's embarrassing, really. But Anna gets Hiccup an absolute shitton of those little wall lizard things and he nearly cries tears of joy when he sees them, so it's all worth it, really.

Moana will not leave the pool like. The entire time. The girl is just obsessed with being in the water, honestly. She gets restless, though, and can't just stand in the pool and vibe--she needs to constantly be moving and swimming around or she'll explode. Merida is more than happy to indulge her by hanging out in the poor with her, but Merida is also constantly challenging her to swim races--a very dumb idea, considering Moana is on the high school swim team and water polo team. Merida, naturally, is an extremely sore loser and is not above excessive pouting, splashing, yelling in angry Scottish, and dunking her girlfriend in revenge. It's at least entertaining for all of their friends to watch.

Jack keeps fucking taking huge buckets of ice from the ice machine and dumping them in the pool. At first he only does this because he keeps griping about the pool not being cold enough (this boy will accept nothing less than sitting in the goddamn arctic ocean), but after her figures out that it pisses off his friends, he takes to pouring said ice directly over their heads. Merida has threatened to murder him several times for this.

Hiccup and Anna's main pool activity is just lazing around on their pool floaties (Anna has a duck one, Hicccup has a dragon one because obviously), sipping cocktails, and just generally vibing. Through some ungodly mixture of pure charisma and a fake ID that Rapunzel helped photoshop, Jack manages to talk his way into getting the whole group access to alcohol. Hiccup is a sangria or Moscow Mule kinda guy while Anna usually gets a Pina Colada or a Sex on the Beach (she's aspec, so she literally will not stop joking about the irony of this). Merida makes a game out of attempting to tip over their floaties and dunk them. Jack, chaos gremlin that he is, puts aside his usual rivalry with Merida to join in. They have a surprisingly strong dunking alliance.

Hiccup and Anna try to form a syndicate of their own, and try to lounge on the same floatie so that they can protect each other while fighting off Jack and Merida together. Unfortunately neither of their floaties were made to hold 2 peoples' weight, so the one they're on ends up tipping over, spilling their cocktails everywhere and dunking them anyways. Jack and Merida consider this a Win By Default.

Moana of course loops everyone into playing water polo at some point. Unfortunately some idiot decided it would be a good idea to let Merida of all people pick the teams, which means of course that they are incredibly rigged. It's Moana, Merida and Anna vs. Jack, Rapunzel, and Hiccup, so basically The Jocks vs. The Nerds (although admittedly Anna is more of a softcore jock--she's nowhere near on Moana or Merida's level, but she's still more naturally athletic than Hiccup, Rapunzel, or Jack). Naturally, Jock Team absolutely whoops Nerd Team's ass. Jack gets salty and demands a rematch. ...Jock Team kicks Nerd Team's ass again.

Throughout all of this, no one thinks to just...rearrange the teams a little. Merida was counting on this. All according to plan.

In the titular chicken game (yes, I remembered, don't worry!), it's Merida on Moana's shoulders (Moana swims and has a lot of upper body strength, what can I say?), Hiccup on Anna's shoulders (I mean...Hiccup's a twig, and Anna HAS to have a fair amount of upper body strength from throwing busts around and punching men off boats and such), and Punz on Jack's shoulders (Jack's pretty lithe and good at keeping his balance while jumping around, so he's their best candidate for not just falling over).

Jack and Rapunzel actually manage to stay in the game longer than anyone expects--their primary strategy is “be good at dodging and staying out of the way while Merida and Hiccup duke it out.” And it works! As limber as Hiccup is, Anna's not nearly as coordinated as Jack and is no match for Moana's sturdy footing. Also, neither Anna nor Hiccup are prepared for how goddamn ruthless and determined to win Merida is. Even though they really, really should have been. I mean...have you met Merida???

When it comes down to Merida-Moana and Rapunzel-Jack, Mer feels a little bad for having to go up against Pure Sweet Punzie. Unfortunately, Rapunzel turns out to be a very hardcore fighter when she puts her mind to it, and Merida is much more evenly matched than she initially thought and realizes she must use her Full Power. It definitely helps her snap out of Going Soft when Jack starts brutally roasting Merida in particular (as per usual). Merida gets a rage-fueled Second Wave, and finally manages to knock Rapunzel over in one foul swoop. Merida and Moana are victorious!

Moana and Merida basically always shower together after a day at the pool. They claim it's because they both know how to handle curly hair in chlorine, and just like to wash each other's hair, but the rest of the gang is pretty sure that's not all that's going on in there.

One day, Anna hits up the resort town alone to buy some kind of secret gifts for her friends with what little money she has left (this girl seriously has no chill when it comes to buying presents).  She goes past this huge, fancy ice cream shop and she's like “!!!! OMG!!! I'm gonna surprise all my buddies with pints of their faves!!!” She just gets super hyped and buys everyone ice cream, getting so caught up in the thrill of it that she forgets that she'll have to like. Drive all this back all the way back to the resort in the rental car. In like. You know. 110+ degree weather.

By the time she gets back to the resort, the ice cream is, of course, goop. Poor Anna, feeling incredibly dumb and like an utter failure of a friend, just kind of bursts into tears. Like damn. This is too much. She was gonna make all her pals so happy, and all for naught! Jack just kinda shrugs and throws all the melted ice cream cartons in the freezer anyways. Once they're (partially) re-frozen, Rapunzel and Moana make slushies with them. They actually come out pretty decent. Anna is substantially cheered up.

Moana prepares some tropical fruit platters for everyone to snack on. Rapunzel tries to “improve” them by adding chocolate sauce and nutella to half of them. Sometimes it works (I mean...bananas and strawberries with chocolate and/or nutella is pretty solid). Other times it just tastes...very weird. Merida gest frustrated and yells at Rapunzel for “ruining all of her girlfriend's good mangoes.”

Jack just thinks this whole thing is so funny, and decides to swap the chocolate sauce with barbecue sauce to cause further chaos. Absolute mayhem ensures. Everyone has a bad time. Except for Anna, who apparently is just a freak who enjoys eating pineapple slices dipped in barbecue sauce.

At some point, Merida gets really drunk on appletinis or some shit and signs the entire group up for a local archery competition. Much to everyone's chagrin, it's no refunds. Naturally, basically everyone sans Merida does terrible. Rapunzel and Hiccup very nearly shoot themselves, while Jack and Anna come very close to  accidentally shooting a group of referees (although Jack might have done this on purpose). Moana gets the farthest, if only because Merida's taught her how to shoot a bow at some point. Merida actually ends up winning--although unfortunately, the prize is $20 and a very cheap plastic trophy (which Merida STILL manages to find a way to break before the trip is even over).

The rest of the group is much more amicable to the concept of going on hikes when said hikes are in the evening. Hiccup and Rapunzel are still excitedly chattering about the local ecosystems the entire time, and Jack and Anna are just kind of looking at their nerdy SOs like “<3 <3 <3″ Moana and Merida, meanwhile, are just kinda vibing in the back, passively listening in and watching the desert sunset.

Rapunzel manages to capture Mer and Mo's interest and gets them to participate more with geology, of all things. Merida just thinks rocks are cool (especially when they can be thrown at people bothering her!), while Moana likes learning about the physical history of places--how water can carve out landscapes, and all that. Hiccup and Jack just kind of exchange a look like “I had no idea that they were into rocks, but...the more you know, I guess???”

Jack makes fun of every reptile they see, mainly to piss Hiccup off. Unfortunately it has the opposite effect, and Hiccup can't help but be entertained--mainly because Jack's insults are so weirdly specific and over-the-top that they loop around to being hilarious. Seriously, he keeps saying shit like “Those are the lamest scales I've ever seen. Absolutely drab, and not nearly shiny enough to prove that nature is beautiful. 0/10.” and “Ohhhh, this fucking rattlesnake think's he's so scary, with his dumb percussion instrument tail!!! I could be more intimidating with a mean look and a large pair of maracas!”

At some point, a bunch of tourists riding donkeys pass them. Anna, Rapunzel, and Merida just absolutely lose their shit fangirling over how cute the donkeys are, thus exposing all three of them as the unabashed Horse Girls they are. Hiccup, Jack, and Moana find this extremely amusing, and definitely aren't above teasing their girlfriends about it. Hiccup asks if next time they take a couples' vacation, the Horse Gang (as Moana insists on nicknaming them) would like to go to a ranch instead.

Anna gets like. Obsessed with palm trees. Like they're just so pretty and exotic and tropical!!! OMG!!! And they definitely don't have them wherever the gang is from in this AU. (Also if griping about Elsa not having "tropical powers" is anything to go by, she DOES canonically like the tropics!) She has to take a picture of like...every palm tree on her phone. And considering the gang is in Arizona, that means Anna is stopping to take a picture like...every 2 minutes. Rapunzel catches onto the fact that Anna likes them, and paints her a picture with some when Punz has the time. Anna definitely cries when she sees it. Hiccup can't do nearly that good, but he does buy her some little plastic figurine ones in a gift shop that she can put in her room. Anna also cries about this. She just cries whenever any of her friends indulge her random fixation on palm trees. Surely she doesn't deserve such niceties!!!

Rapunzel is just. In love with the desert landscape tbh. Like the huge funky cacti!!! The shrubs!!! The desert wildflowers!!! The mesas!!! All of it!!! So of course she needs to pull out her easel and paint it. Jack walks by one day and sees her working on it and, partly just to troll her, he's like “put some snow in it!” As he walks away, Rapunzel just stops like “wait...that'd actually be such a great idea for a surrealist-type fantasy piece!!!” After she finishes the main landscape, she adds an overcoat of little puffs of snow on top of everything, and has some clumps falling off of the cacti. When she shows Jack, he just about cries tears of joy, but frantically tries to hide it. She gives the painting to him as a present at the end of the trip. He hangs that shit front-in-center in his room and cherishes it forever and ever.

At some point, Jack gets the ingenious idea that he's going to prank Merida by catching a tarantula and leaving it in her room. It's one of the harmless ones--Jack fact-checks this by offhandedly asking Hiccup and framing it as a casual interest in local etymology. Still, Merida screams far louder than is at all dignified, and also probably loud enough to wake a neighboring country. Rapunzel later has to physically hold Merida back to keep her from absolutely beating Jack into a pulp. Rapunzel also manages to get the World's Largest Sheet of Cardboard and the World's Largest Cup and somehow manages to get the damn thing back outside.

#rotbtd #rotbtfd #rise of the brave tangled dragons #the big four #jackunzel #hiccanna #moanida #jack frost #rapunzel #merida #hiccup #anna #moana #headcanons #hcs #vacation au #my askbox

[s-k-y-w-a-l-k-e-r]

might be a personal question, but why did you choose not to study graphic design in college?

To be honest, I didn’t think I had any kind of talent for it. I had a couple friends in high school who were some of our school’s best art students—they could sketch/draw/paint and that is not something I had attempted to develop at any point. My family is very musical, so my focus was on that corner of the arts world and I never gave a second thought to trying graphic design.

My path to graphic design was like... (sorry, you’re getting way more of an answer than you probably expected here)

2003-ish: I like to take photos and I want a personal website where I can post pictures of my friends and I (this was before Facebook) and so I learned Photoshop enough to crop and edit my photos into my self-coded website. 

2004: That gave me basic skills of understanding slices and frames (a perfect intersection of coding and photoshop that simply doesn’t exist anymore because framed websites are considered gauche now). 

2007-ish: Then I wanted to figure out how to make gifs so I could interact on LiveJournal and make graphics for “mood sets” (currently feeling: bouncy [insert tiny graphic of the Tenth Doctor jumping] 😂) And I learned how to make custom blog templates/themes for Blogger, but no one was on Blogger so no one cared.

2011: I picked up DSLR photography and sold my first photo (someone badgered me to buy it off of me, I had not been trying to do so)

2014: I worked in a print shop for a year and learned about color theory, Illustrator and InDesign (which I hadn’t had access to before that point), and got to know some graphic design students and an illustrator who gave me insights into the details they care about

2017: Started photography business and got deep into my first gif-making obsession over at @dv-ptl

2018-present: Got asked by the campaign I was working on as a field organizer to maybe switch over to social media management and campaign photography since I was carrying my camera to all our events anyway. Ever since then, my boss (first as a candidate and now as an elected official) has encouraged me and given me a lot of breadth in terms of professional development. I experiment a lot and to my surprise, my coworkers’ minds are always blown (probably because they haven’t seen the incredible stuff I see every day on Tumblr and they don’t seek out visual art in the way many of us here do).

It just wasn’t a direct route, and it was all a fairly slow introduction to graphic design. Being that I’m self-taught I think I have missed some basics here and there (for instance, I am not comfortable in Illustrator still but Photoshop pretty much does everything I need it to anyway...).

[jaybe11]

he music business is full of hard-luck stories, but no Austin band rose faster and fell harder than metal band Pariah in the 1990s. Like Guns N’ Roses three years earlier, they were signed to Geffen Records by golden boy talent scout Tom Zutaut. But there were no multiplatinum records or stadium tours for the former classmates at Clark High School in San Antonio.

“We were on the label for five years and have only one album to show for it,” said singer Dave Derrick. “It was a frustrating time, to say the least.”

After relocating to Austin in 1990, Pariah regularly sold out 1,000-capacity venues, but on their final show, soon after officially being dropped by Geffen in 1995, they played to less than 300 at their home club, the Back Room.

Two weeks later, the band’s bassist and driving force, Sims Ellison, put a shotgun to his face and pulled the trigger.

But in taking his own life, Ellison, who suffered from anxiety and depression for years, eventually helped save the lives of other musicians. His suicide was the inspiration for the SIMS Foundation, which provides low-cost mental health services to uninsured musicians who, because of irregular working hours, low pay, easy access to alcohol and drugs and often-volatile intraband relationships, have a unique set of psychological needs.

“Anytime SIMS sets up anywhere in the public, we have at least one person come up to us and say they wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for SIMS,” said Tricia Forbes, executive director of the foundation.

Ellison didn’t drink or smoke, but the band was his life. When it crumbled and his mates, including younger brother Kyle Ellison, went their separate ways after nearly 10 years of constant camaraderie, it was apparently too much for 28-year-old Sims Ellison. On top of that, his girlfriend of nearly three years, then-unknown actress Renee Zellweger, had broken up with him six months earlier.

“I miss him every day,” says Pariah singer Dave Derrick, who will play a Pariah tribute set Saturday at the Austin Music Hall as part of the 15th anniversary SIMS Foundation Benefit Bash. “It bothers me that most people only remember Sims as the guy who killed himself, if they know him at all. He was the sweetest guy you could meet, with a goofy sense of humor. He spent every waking hour working on making Pariah as successful as possible.”Pariah drummer Shandon Sahm, who currently plays with the Meat Puppets, recalls Sims Ellison as full of nervous energy. “He used to say, ‘If you ain’t stressed, it ain’t happening,’” said Sahm, the youngest son of Texas music legend Doug Sahm.

“If he was in a place where people knew him as Sims, the bass player for Pariah, he was totally cool,” said Derrick. “But if he was in any other social situation, he couldn’t cope. He’d show up at a backyard barbecue and pace for 10 minutes and leave.” Derrick said he never saw Sims Ellison finish a plate of food. “He would constantly stir his food, but not eat it.”

Derrick wondered if two middle school incidents forged Sims Ellison’s social phobia. “When he was about in eighth grade he bought a Mötley Crüe T-shirt at a concert and was robbed of it at knife-point in the bathroom. Then a few months later, a bully went up to him at the mall in front of his friends and cold-cocked Sims for no reason. Knocked him out just to show off,” Derrick said. “He knew that, as a member of Pariah, he was protected — no one was going to hurt him.”

The three years with Zellweger, when the band was signed to Geffen, were Sims Ellison’s happiest, Sahm said. Zellweger’s best friend at the time, her “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation” co-star Lisa Newmyer, dated Kyle Ellison, younger than Sims by three years, and the four practically lived together at the Railyard Apartments downtown.

In December 1994, Zellweger split with Sims Ellison and moved to LA, where “Jerry Maguire” would make her a star less than two years later.

Derrick said Sims Ellison bought himself a shotgun for Christmas that month.

Meanwhile, Geffen Records had decided to drop Pariah and pay the band $50,000 to dissolve the two-album deal. The band, rounded out by guitarist Jared Tuten, decided to take a hiatus after one last show at the Back Room.

“Sims was really bummed about everything,” said Derrick, “and I told him he really should get a dog. His eyes lit up and he said, ‘That’s a great idea!’” That was the last time Derrick saw Sims Ellison, who got a job at Urban Outfitters on the Drag two weeks before his death.

“Some people were theorizing that he killed himself because Renee left him or because the band was being dropped, but it was deeper than that,” Derrick said. “Being on Geffen was worse than being dropped by Geffen. That wasn’t it. There was something inside him that none of us could see. You play it back in your head, like ‘I should’ve done this or done that,’ but the truth is that we were all in shock when it happened.”

David Garza, who will serve as music director for Saturday’s benefit, is one of thousands of Austin musicians helped by the assistance program inspired by the Sims Ellison tragedy. “I was having a hard time a few years ago with a personal relationship and with my label,” said Garza, who released two critically acclaimed but soft-selling albums on Atlantic in 1998 and 2001. “I was raised Mexican American Catholic. We didn’t go to therapy — that was for weirdos. If you had a problem, you went to confession.” But Garza had musician friends who’d been helped by SIMS, which provides counseling and psychiatric services and refers clients to a network of 60 therapists and treatment centers that charge greatly reduced rates. With an operating budget of $600,000 a year (about 25 percent of which comes from KGSR’s “Broadcasts” CD), SIMS helps an estimated 600 Austin musicians a year.

Obviously, such musician-aimed services weren’t available to Pariah, whose disappointing career could be summed up by the night in early ’94 when the members gathered around the TV to watch their video for “Powerless” debut on MTV’s “Headbangers Ball.” They waited and waited for almost three hours until just before 2 a.m., when their video aired, the last one of the night.

Signed after a South by Southwest showcase in 1990, Pariah had to wait almost three years until the release of “To Mock a Killing Bird” in 1993. In between, Nirvana exploded and grunge made Pariah’s brand of glam metal obsolete.

“Pariah had the worst timing ever,” said the band’s co-manager Wayne Nagel, who founded the SIMS Foundation in June 1995 with his Austin Rehearsal Complex partner Don Harvey and Sims’ father, Houston oil engineer Don Ellison. “If the record had come out the year after they were signed, it would’ve been a whole different story.” Instead the band was forced to wait more than two years while Geffen threw all its clout and resources into the much-delayed Guns N’ Roses “Use Your Illusion” two-album project.

“Sims was saying, ‘What are we going to do? Metal’s not cool anymore,‘” Sahm said of one of Ellison’s obsessions. “We started off as a hard rock band like Guns N’ Roses and somewhere along the line we turned into Smashing Pumpkins. Still, I think we were getting better as a band by expanding our horizons.”

Geffen didn’t see it that way, according to Nagel. “Zutaut was the king of metal,” Nagel said of the A&R man who signed Mötley Crüe and Metallica before Guns N’ Roses. “He wanted the band to keep it metal.”

Treated like kings by Geffen before “To Mock a Killing Bird” came out, the band couldn’t get phone calls returned when the album didn’t take off.

Pariah met Zutaut, who did not answer an e-mail request for comment, backstage at SXSW 1990 after a scorching set at the Back Room. “He said he didn’t have time to sign another band, but that, just by him coming backstage, we were going to get signed,” Sahm said, with a laugh.

Nagel said Pariah received eight offers from labels after that SXSW appearance. It turns out that Zutaut did sign Pariah to Geffen, but he wasn’t kidding about being too busy. “It was all about Guns N’ Roses,” said Derrick. “We weren’t the only band put on hold.”

Sahm said, looking back, the band should’ve signed with Chrysalis, who Photoshopped a group photo of the band so they looked at home inside the label’s headquarters. “They loved our song ‘Shatter Me’ and were ready to put it out to radio right away. But instead we went with the big shot. Chrysalis couldn’t give us a $100,000 advance, but Geffen did.” The label also gave Pariah a $250,000 recording budget that soared to $500,000 by the time the album was finished at Madonna’s Maverick recording studio in LA. (Sims Ellison hit it off with Madonna and appeared in her “Deeper and Deeper” video.)

“We were young and stupid,” Derrick said of signing with Geffen for the upfront money. “But we were all in it together. If there was any motto with Pariah, it was ‘The band comes first.’”

The SIMS Foundation, named after a lovable, yet troubled Austin musician, was formed for what comes next.

[izukyu]

Sunday Morning.

requested by anonymous, dedicated to @brattyquirks​.

Cafuné (Portuguese) - the act of tenderly running one’s fingers through a loved one’s hair.

Sundays were the best for lazy days.

Waking up at noon by your lover’s side was a feeling in the world you simply couldn’t put into words.

A day where there was no work to attend to, or any responsibilities to take care of for the matter, was something both you and Hitoshi would never get tired of.

Although there were still people to call, and announcements to be made, being engaged was a new, yet warm feeling.

Hitoshi groaned as you escaped his embrace, slightly opening one of his eyes to look at you.

“It’s too early kitten, come back," his voice was gruff, an indicator of how exhausted he truly was.

You laughed softly—a heavenly melody for his ears—while you stretched your arms. “I know, I know, but I’m hungry.”

Your fiancé gripped your wrist softly, giving his best shot at puppy eyes, “if I promise to help you with breakfast, will you come back to bed just a little longer?”

Hitoshi’s offer was tempting, his messy bed hair practically demanding attention as it sprawled on his pillow.

“Alright, honey.”

A hum of satisfaction escaped past his lips, both appreciating the pet name and your fingers coming up to stroke his hair.

Although part of him simply wished to spoon you and laze around for the rest of the day, lounging on top of you to give you better access to his locks was much more enticing.

“Are you sure you’re not a cat, ‘Toshi?” In spite of wanting nothing more than to tease you back, he was too busy trying not to whimper in delight as you played with his purple hair.

His silence spoke for him.

Hitoshi could feel your affection with each soft tug you gave his hair.

Your fingers tangled in his hair felt amazing, even when your ring got caught on a strand of hair. Ignoring the particular harsh tug it gave his hair, Hitoshi still felt an overwhelming feeling of intimacy run through his veins.

Or maybe he just had a thing for hair pulling.

Hitoshi lost track of time as he laid on top of you, his face buried in your neck.

Your nails against his scalp drew a sound akin to purring out of Hitoshi's throat, eliciting a soft chuckle from you.

It made him smile against your skin. He loved to be the reason behind your laughter.

Hitoshi loved giving you a reason to be happy.

“Baby, are you okay?”

Your soft, slightly raspy voice derailed his train of thought. After one last nuzzle against your neck—and a kiss to that particular spot on your neck he knew made you squirm—Hitoshi pulled away from your arms.

“Sorry,” he murmured, moving to lay by your side again, “just thinking.”

Humming in acknowledgment, this time you moved to lay your head against his chest. “Thinking about what?”

“Everything, I guess,” Hitoshi sighed, his hand stroking your shoulder softly, “I just can’t believe this is all real.”

“I think I need a little bit more context, Hitoshi.”

He gulped, shifting to press his lips against the top of your head, “I don’t think I thanked you for saying yes.”

“I don't think I thanked you for popping the question, either,” you giggled, your eyes resting on the small band resting on your finger. “I still can’t wrap my mind around it.”

He couldn’t either.

It all felt surreal.

Taking you out for dinner had made his stomach revolve with the same butterflies that had haunted him when you two were still in high school.

Giving you his jacket on the walk back home left him exposed not only to the cold breeze, but also the chills his insecurities sent down his spine.

Kneeling in front of you was arguably the hardest.

The ground itself seemed eager to swallow him up, chew his shivering body, and spit him back out. Leaving him vulnerable and speechless before you.

Seeing your astonished face somehow gave him a sense of relief.

It was a buoyant beacon of light. 

His mind had morphed into a sea of solitude that had managed to bring down his heart with it. Nevertheless, your happy tears as he slipped the ring on your finger were enough to turn the cold, dark waters in his head into warm waves of kindliness.

He loved you so, so damn much.

“I promise I’ll be a great husband for you, kitten.”

Hitoshi returned the warm smile that formed on your face with his words.

“Please keep calling yourself ‘husband’,” you mumbled, a blush rising to your cheeks, “I like it.”

Eventually, Hitoshi followed up with his initial promise, dragging himself out of bed to follow you into the kitchen.

Except he wasn’t of much help, opting for gluing his arms around your waist as you picked at the stove.

“You’re so mean,” you giggled, one hand snaking behind you to caress his hair once again, “you said you’d help me.”

A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest, “I can set the table if you want.”

“Alright.”

You couldn’t help but watch as he walked away. Hitoshi surely knew how to lift your spirits in the morning simply by using one particular piece of clothing.

“Like what you see?” His teasing made you roll your eyes, although your gaze was soon brought back to the gray sweatpants hugging his waist.

“You look really good in those,” you said, turning back to the stove, “although you should probably change out of them before Aizawa and Eri come over for dinner.”

Hitoshi raised an eyebrow, coming back to his designated spot behind you after he finished setting down the plates on the table. “Why?”

“I don’t feel like dealing with Aizawa’s disappointment while thirsting over you in sweatpants.”

Your fiancé snorted, leaning his forehead against your shoulder, “I’m sure he’s already done with us at this point. I can still feel his glare when I refused to pass him the salt because I had my hand on your thigh.”

“You’re unbelievable!”

“We are unbelievable, love,” Hitoshi reached out to turn off the stove before turning you around, his hand cupping your cheek, “and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“True, true,” you hummed in satisfaction, nuzzling your face against his slightly calloused palm. “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Hitoshi felt a familiar warmth spread across his face at your bold words. The genuine love in your statement made his heart swell with love.

“Me too.”

bonus!

“'Toshi?” he looked up from his plate when you called his name, his full attention now on you, “can I ask you a weird question?”

He hummed, “I don’t see why not.”

“How would you feel about dying your hair black?”

Hitoshi choked on his food, taken aback by the sudden question, “...I’m sorry?”

“No, l-listen! - “ you giggled, more than satisfied with his reaction, “Kaminari photoshopped you with black hair, and you look exactly like Aizawa!”

“Of course he did,” he coughed, reaching for his drink, “I’m not dying my hair black.”

“That’s a shame” you leaned over to kiss his cheek, “you looked… good.”

“Just good?”

“To not put it in cruder terms.”

Hitoshi gave you a sly smirk, “alright, kitten, have it your way.”

Event Masterlist.

#listEn i love him!!! w all of my heart!!! #*lounge of charm #bnha x reader #bnha #mha #mha x reader #hitoshi shinsou #hitoshi x reader #shinsou x reader #hitoshi shinsou x reader

[dear-selena]

Sketchbook (Peter Parker x Stark!Reader): Chapter 4

Peter Parker x Stark!Reader (Female)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Summary: (Y/N) never understood science-based subjects, despite putting all her efforts into studying them. Kids at school bullied her, her father, Tony Stark, was disappointed in her, and the Avengers looked the other way. Peter Parker, her best friend, and secret crush for almost two years, was always there supporting her when she needed someone. However, since he became an Avenger and her dad’s ‘favorite kid’, (Y/N) doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be around. 

You find yourself struggling to exist with everything working against you, and instead of asking others for help, you turn to your sketchbook.

Warnings: Slight angst, a very bad cliffhanger (I’m so sorry)

A/N: Hello! I’m not dead!

School’s literally been kicking my behind, so I apologize for such a long wait. I never forgot about this story, and I never forgot about you guys. Some of you have sent me messages asking about when the next chapter would come out, and I want to thank you guys for keeping me motivated to write. 

I finally have a solid story planned out for Sketchbook, and I believe it will be an 8 chapter story. Once again, I ask that you stay patient with me as I continue to get all the chapters out. Feel free to send me any feedback as well, it helps me know what you guys are thinking. 

Without further ado, the long awaited chapter 4!  

Chapter 4: CADD

Words: 2764

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

Sighing with satisfaction, you take a look at your most recent art piece. 

A week has passed since your father took away your training privileges, and not only has he gotten stricter with you around the compound, but he was also talking to you less. He never spoke to you too much beforehand, but recently, he only seems to ask you questions about school. 

You absolutely hate it. 

At first, you would sneak into the training room late at night, and get some practice with your whip, loving the feeling of finding your perfect weapon. However, after a few nights of practice, you found your father waiting for you in the training room, sending you straight back to bed. After that, you didn’t chance it. 

School life wasn’t that glamorous either. Flash remained relentless, talking to you almost everyday about your grades and questioning why you're still at Midtown. No matter how many hints you gave him, he wouldn’t stop his belittling. When Peter saw these interactions, he’d get him to leave you alone. But you hated how you had to rely on Peter to get bullies away from you. He already has enough to deal with, and you were tired of being a problem in his life. 

While you spend more time isolated in your room attempting to study, life in the compound went on without you. The team didn’t really acknowledge you much unless you just got back from school or you were with Peter, and even then your father would ask his prodigy to leave you alone. Sometimes, when homework became too much (which was basically everyday), you’d sneak out of your room and watch what was happening around the compound, getting inspiration for your sketchbook. Everything was per usual, Bucky and Sam constantly duking it out, Natasha, Clint, Steve, and Thor all having their own matters to attend to, Vision and Wanda spending time together, and Bruce, Peter, and your father spending hours in the lab. 

When you saw Peter in the lab, you felt a stabbing in your heart, both longing to be with him and longing to take his place. Seeing Peter so focused on building things normally gave you a sense of admiration, but for the past week, you felt nothing but envy and hurt. It especially stung when you saw your father interacting with your crush, patting him on the back and smiling at him, smiling the way he’s never smiled at you. 

Life without you in it seemed rather perfect for everyone. 

Trying to shake the negative thoughts out of your head, you turn back to your artwork. Your final class of the day was studio art. The art department at Midtown was rather desolate, but the few people who were taking the classes really dedicated themselves to their craft. The teacher who ran the department, Mr. Miller, was one of the more kinder ones at the school, and you could tell he didn’t care that you were a Stark, but instead cared about your work. MJ was also in this class with you, and you’d always bounce ideas back and forth. Needless to say, this class was heaven on earth. 

Looking at your work, you actually feel proud of yourself for once. For the past month, you chose to focus on digital art, having already learned most of the adobe suite. In Photoshop, you created a digital painting of yourself. The image consists of you looking into a mirror in front of a counter covered in makeup, applying some red lipstick on your lips. However, the lipstick on your lips formed a perfect drool line that was dangling from your lips, looking like blood ready to splatter. The room in the image was dirty, and the clothes you wore were torn up. 

A perfect representation for how you felt. Trying to be seen but never looking good enough. 

“Wow, that’s insane!” You look up from your work to see Mr. Miller admiring what’s on your tablet. “May I take a closer look?” 

Sending your favorite teacher a genuine smile, you scoot back from the table you were working at, and allowed Mr. Miller full access to your work. He spent the next two minutes complimenting your technique, use of certain Photoshop brushes, and story within the image. He also gave you some pointers on spots that needed a little touch up, and you wrote down his thoughts in your trusty sketchbook for reference. 

“Hey, before I forget (Y/N), do you have a little time after school today?” Mr. Miller asks handing your pen back. 

“Uh, I normally get picked up right away, but what’s up?” 

“I’m meeting with Mr. Mortia, the school principal, to talk about some developments in this department, and I’d really love for you to be a part of the conversation. I think you’d find what we’re talking about quite interesting.” 

Biting your tongue, you try to suppress the smile forming on your face. This being the first time any teacher of yours has asked to talk academics with you, and not for poor grades! Despite the excitement bubbling inside, you try to stay cautious and calm, unsure of what Mr. Miller ultimately wants to talk about. 

“I’d love to be there. May I message my ride and tell him to pick me up later?” 

Mr. Miller gives you permission to send a quick text to Happy, asking him to pick you up an hour after school ends instead. Happy responds immediately, no questions asked. For the rest of the class, you found yourself lost in thought over what Mr. Miller wanted to discuss with the principal, and why on earth he wanted you to be there. 

Hopefully they don’t bring up any grades. 

------------ 

Walking down to the principal’s office, Mr. Miller opens the door for you. Upon entering the office, a familiar sense of dread takes over your senses. Normally, you’d be sent to the principal’s when your father was asked to come in to talk about your grades. Mr. Mortia would always try to talk to you about “other schooling options”, but your father would always find a way to counter his arguments, sometimes asking you to leave the room to have private conversations. No matter what was said, you’d keep your enrollment status at Midtown. 

This time however, things were different. 

Glancing around, you notice Mr. Mortia talking to a woman you didn’t quite recognize. “Ah! George, I see you were able to bring Miss Stark with you.” Mr. Mortia said getting up from his desk and approaching the two of you. “It’s good to see you again.” He extends his hand to you. 

Raising an eyebrow but trying to remain polite, you shake his hand. “You too sir. Is my father here as well?” 

“Oh no, we didn’t ask you here to talk about your grades,” Mr. Mortia assures, giving you a sense of relief. He then motions to the woman behind him, the one he was talking to just a second ago. “Miss Stark, I’d like you to meet Mrs. Tyrance. She’s an architect, and she actually helped designed this building.” 

Turning your attention to her, Mrs. Tyrance sends you a warm smile and extends her hand. “It’s a pleasure Miss Stark. You can call me Jasmine.” 

You shake her hand. “Nice to meet you Jasmine. You can call me (Y/N).” 

“Why don’t we all take a seat?” Mr. Mortia suggests, gesturing back to his desk. Like clockwork, everyone on the room grabs a chair, you conveniently sitting in between Mr. Miller and Jasmine. “So George, have you informed Miss Stark of what’s going on or shall I do the honors?” 

Mr. Miller nods his head. “Go for it.” 

Mr. Mortia turns his full attention to you. “Miss Stark, I don’t suppose you’ve taken any of the C.T.E. classes Midtown High offers, have you?” 

You shake your head, feeling a little more embarrassed than before. “No sir, are you talking about the career specific classes?” Teachers have definitely talked about them in class before, trying to get certain students to sign up for classes that would appeal to them. No one’s ever recommended a class for you however. You could barely pass a regular science class. How could you pass a more advanced class? 

Mr. Mortia nods. “Well, Mrs. Tyrance is here because we’ve been working on bringing some new courses into the program, and one of which would be for computer-aided design and drafting, or CADD for short.” 

Raising your eyebrows in curiosity, you look towards Jasmine, who nods to confirm what your principal is saying. “(Y/N), have you done any CADD work in the past?” She asks.

You immediately shake your head. “No mam, I’ve never even heard of CADD.” 

“Really?” Mr. Miller interjects, making everyone turn towards him. “I’m surprised, and not just because of your father’s industry,” Of course your father comes up, even when he’s not here. “You’re also a talented artist.” 

Taken aback, you blink multiple times, wondering if you were in a dream. “I’m sorry?” 

“I’m serious!” Mr. Miller says. “All the work you’ve produced in my class thus far has been some of the best I’ve ever seen. You have a very creative eye, and you definitely have the aptitude to take your skills beyond painting and sketching. When I found out about this new program, I instantly thought of you and how I feel this would be a great program for you to take and be an advocate for.” 

Many thoughts start to run through your mind. On one hand, you were utterly confused. No adult in your life has ever complimented you like this on an academic level, and hearing praise like this from a teacher felt so foreign to your ears. 

On the other hand though, you felt complete and utter excitement. Art was always an escape for you, a way to distract yourself from a life you felt was pointless. In your sketchbook, you felt like you could have any ideas you want with no judgement, rules, or privileges. You never really thought about how you could use your artistic skills for more than just fun. You didn’t even know that was an option. 

“In the architect world, we draft blueprints for buildings on computers, and it’s great because we can get as detailed as we want, and find good structure with our design and files,” Jasmine explains. “Mr. Miller has shown me some of your work, and I have to agree with him about your talent. I want to teach a CADD class here at Midtown, and I think you’ll be very successful as my student.” 

Could the smile forming on your face get any wider? 

For the next hour, you spent time discussing the implications of this new program with your teachers and principal, and how it was supposed to utilize more creative and artistic skills at Midtown. It surprises you how much these three adults valued your opinion on how to bring more awareness to art and design into the school, but nevertheless, you brought up ideas that they eagerly accepted. If you’re being honest, you’d never felt this valued before, not even with your father, and this conversation brought a new sense of life into your soul. 

------------ 

Running into the doors of the Avengers compound, you almost slam into the automatic doors. The excitement of finding a class that can help you develop skills that you’re actually good at had you bouncing in your seat throughout the ride home with Happy. Not wanting to lose the energy, you chose to wait until you saw your dad to talk about this new exciting opportunity with your father. 

As you anxiously wait on the elevator ride to your father’s lab, you can’t help but wonder how he’ll take the news. Will be finally be proud of you once he’s seen the work you do outside of school and the opportunity you’ve been presented? Sure, you didn’t build a robot or cure cancer, but you found something you were passionate about that had a potential to become a great career. Hell, you could even work alongside him if you find success with CADD. You can practically hear your father saying the words you’ve always wanted to hear. I’m so proud of you. 

That all changes when the elevator doors open. 

Instead of seeing Bucky and Sam playing games, Wanda and Vision around the kitchen area, or even your father taking a business call out in broad daylight, you see the Avengers, in suit, gathering their things as they prepare for yet another mission. With all the hustle going on in the common room, no one seems to register you entering the room. You completely forgot that your father would be leading a mission this weekend. You knew it had something to do with a Hydra base, but due to all the studying your father makes you do and the lack of acknowledgement you get in general, you didn’t know many of the details. 

“(Y/N)!” You turn to see Peter running up to you, Iron-Spider suit without the mask and a duffle bag over his right shoulder. He smiles at you as he opens his arms for a hug that you accept without a second thought. 

“Hey Peter, have you seen my father anywhere?” You ask, pulling away from him and looking around the compound. With everyone running around, you couldn’t see if he was even here. 

“Oh, he’s gathering stuff up in the lab before we leave,” he informs you. You grab Peter’s hand, butterflies erupting in your stomach, and start to drag him towards your father’s lab. You were practically running, and Peter was surprised that he had to keep up with you. “Well, it looks like someone’s excited.” 

“Something happened at school, and it had to do with my art.” You practically brag.

Peter’s eyes widen in surprise and curiosity. Before he could respond however, the two of you make it to the doors of the lab, where you see your father gathering weapons and putting them in cases for the upcoming mission. You knock on the door and your father looks up to see you and Peter hand in hand. With his eyebrows raised, he walks over to the door and opens it. “(Y/N), Peter, I see you have something to tell me?” He gestures to the two of you. 

At first you were confused, but Peter and you suddenly realize you had been holding hands the entire time. Blushing madly, you both let go immediately, practically jumping a foot away from one another. “Oh! Uh… nothing like that Mr. Stark!” Peter stutters our, embarrassment evident in his voice. You felt a pang in your chest, secretly wishing the scenario was real. 

Your father simply stares the two of you down before brushing off what just happened. “Alright Peter, bring these to the team and start loading them in the jet. I want to talk to my daughter alone for a minute.” With that, your father hands Peter two black cases. 

“Right away sir!” Peter chirps out. With that, he was off, leaving you alone with your father. 

You shake your head, trying to snap yourself out of any bad thoughts and trying to remember the great news you had to share. “Dad! Something happened at school today and I’m actually-.” 

“Oh yeah, speaking of that, I want to talk to you about school before I head out for the weekend,” your father interrupts. With that he’s walking back into the lab, putting various things away as he continues to talk. “(Y/N), you’ve been going to Midtown for almost 2 years now, and you have shown very little improvement academically.” 

A sudden wave of sadness fills your mind as you were reminded of how poor your grades were. You hate being reminded of that. Especially by your own father. “I know dad. But there’s a class I’m in that I really enjoy that’s startin-.” 

“Just because you enjoy a class doesn’t mean you’re doing well in it,” your father interrupts again, not realizing you were talking about your art class. “I feel like the longer you stay at Midtown, the worse your grades get. I keep vouching for you to the education board to keep you at school, but I’m just so tired of constantly doing that. I don’t know what to do anymore.” 

Your heart starts to beat faster. “What do you mean?” 

“I’m taking you out of Midtown. For good.” 

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

-Sketchbook Tag List-

@randomfanders-blog // @freestarlight // @depressing-as-shit // @sweetmilki // @supernerdycookietrashblr // @supermassiveblackhope // @starksthunder // @multi-fandom-headcanons // @adri1ii // @futureauthor03 // @maddie-laufeyson // @thejourneyneverendsx // @noakantor14 // @fangirlbookworm // @awesomedara // @motherhyuckerdude // @itswhiskeybitch​ // @kickstartmyheartmc​ // @deansbbysblog​ // @whatareyouhidingpeter​ // @aquaastrid​

-Peter Parker Tag List-

@sweetcoffeeblandtea // @house-arya // @jovialpeanut // @bookstoreblossom // @jackiehollanderr

-Marvel Tag List- 

@sammghgecko

-Permanent Tag List-  

@mindset-jupiter // @romance-geek // @imcharishope // @fakindob // @cutiekoa // @wowursofunny // @cals-cigarette // @supernerdycookietrashblr // @delicately-important-trash // @unlikelygalaxygiver

#peter parker #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker x reader #peter parker x stark!reader #tom holland #tom holland x reader #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman homecoming #spiderman ffh #spiderman far from home #marvel #mcu #peter parker x y/n #dear-selena fanfiction

[starswallowingsea]

My school gave me access to adobe products for free so guess who has photoshop

#gonna figure out how to use it eventually sogihaiosdfhisj #shay speaks #college posting

[nikatyler]

Felt like doing some replies the ~ old fashioned ~ way. I should be packing, but I don’t wanna. One good thing about this semester is that I don’t have classes on Monday morning, which means I don’t have to go to Prague on Sunday. But I’ll be once again going home late on Friday -_- Oh well. Maybe I could skip the lecture every once in a while to go home on Thursday afternoon.

I’m scared. Not really of what I’ll have to learn because I know that even if it’s difficult, I’ll probably get it in my brain in the end. Somehow. I’m more scared that once again, I’ll be left alone. I haven’t really found a stable friend group. I mean, I talk to some people sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a friendship. One friend that I thought I could rely on doesn’t even bother saying hello to me anymore. I don’t know what I did to him, he just stopped talking to me. But maybe it’s for the best. Even when we still talked, I couldn’t believe how judgemental he was, and I often wondered if he talks about me like that too when I can’t hear it. He probably did. Oh well, I’ll see what I can do. I hope I’ll run into someone who is kinda like my best friend from high school.

As for sims stuff, I know I still owe some things to some people and I feel bad about it. You’ll get it eventually. I’m actually looking forward to doing it too. Makeovers are fun. I’d also like to release some more sims, I have one more sim dump and then some old legacy characters I want to share, plus some BC contestants that didn’t make it. They like to get eliminated in the first rounds.

Also, thanks for the comments on my mental health update post. I’ll see how this turns out and if it doesn’t get any better (I’m kinda hoping that better weather brings better mood, it worked before), I’ll start looking for a therapist or something. No offense to my parents but talking to them about this didn’t help in a slightest. They just don’t get it. And I swear I’m not reverting back to the “I’m an edgy misunderstood teenager” phase. Even though “edgy misunderstood teenager” is an aesthetic I still live for. Whatever that means.

And thanks for the tips on the laptop post. I’ll keep them in mind and I’ll probably ask again when the time comes and I actually buy a new one.

Ahh...I guess that’s it? Replies under the cut. As per usual, they’ll probably be the shorter part of this post, but oh well.

abysims  replied to your photoset  “Let’s find Lilith Vatore some love! In my game, I’ve had Lilith in a...”

Honestly Cassandra and Lilith would be amazing (... In my Glimmerbrook Academy story Cass is actually gonna have a huge crush on Lilith so I'm voting for that, yas!)

Ooooh that sounds great! Also, I’ll have a post announcing the results of the post coming up later, either today or tomorrow, but...spoiler alert: Cassandra might have won ;)

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Simmer - Get to Know”

Lol this thing with Mermaids made me remember that when my friend and I were like 12 years old, a 6-year-old made her a "proposal" and we answered him that she'll marry him when he buys her a house by the sea in Prague

Omg sea in Prague sounds kinda cool, my faculty would be so close to the beach *-* Haha but at the same time it’s kinda terrifying, where would the sea come from? From the north? From the south? Would that mean my home doesn’t exist? Or, actually, considering my town was built on a big hill, would that mean I live on an island? And which part of Prague would be under the sea and which one would stay?

Sorry, I got distracted thinking of this AU where my country actually has access to the sea :D But we used to have it, back in like I think 12th or 13th century. We’re wayyyy smaller now.

amuhav replied to your post “Me, looking up some specs of my current laptop: you're...you're...”

If it's anything like me with my first 'gaming' laptop, the store clerk basically straight up lied to me about how good it was, and I was too young and naive to know better �� sims 3 almost burnt that thing to a crisp ������

Lmao I have a similar story with my first laptop, we were told that it has this super amazing graphic card...and it wasn’t amazing at all, as I later learned when my laptop broke.

amuhav replied to your photoset “Sims Moodboard Challenge I was tagged by @blurrypxls,...”

Oh no... don't make me want to go back to pinterest and do more of these �� They're ADDICTIVE

THEY ARE! I haven’t done much today, but I’ve spent a lot of time there all through this last week.

amuhav replied to your photo “I need to stop. This is more addictive than scrolling through memes....”

Pssst, not to enable or anything, but Picasa 3 has this nice feature where you can take a bunch of pics and it makes them into a nice collage. That's how I made mine, and then used them as my desktop backgrounds ��

I think I’ll use Photoshop, like I do for everything else, but thanks for giving me an idea for my new background! I used to have my sims or some other characters set as a background, but now that I take my laptop to school I feel a bit uncomfortable with that, so since October I’ve had this kinda boring background and I’ve been meaning to change it into something nicer, I just didn’t know what to put there. Now I do.

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “How dare you pretend you’re Father Winter?” Father Winter:...”

Holy crap, Sunset is a lot more buff than I ever realized. Those arms! ��

Yup. That’s because she has to get her Athletic skill higher for work. I think her muscle slider might be at max, actually!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Father Winter: “That’s it! You’re going on my Naughty List. Your...”

How could she not with with muscles like that?? Damn his Christmas magic!

Next time we should just call Caleb. I mean, he defeated Grim Reaper with no problem, surely Father Winter won’t be any more difficult for him!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “Okay, cool. You won’t give us gifts but I have a special one...”

Lmaoooooo, get him, Sunset! ������

He deserves it

asplashofsims replied to your photo “~ daylight”

Cute picture! ♡ I hope you feel better soon and omgg winx club, it's my guilty pleasure for sure hahah all the childhood memories��

I love Winx Club so much. It’s a little ridiculous and the plot holes are terrible (and don’t let me talk about anything after season 4, those are not my Winx D:), but I can’t let it go.

blubrich replied to your post “I forgot how traumatizing Toy Story 3 was ��”

Especially the ending! ��

YES. I remember the whole cinema was crying.

Also, Toy Story always unpacks this weird guilt in me haha. Because as a child, naturally I was like “I would NEVER abandon my toys, I’ll keep them forever!”. And now...they’re in boxes...under my bed and in the basement...some of them I gave away or to my younger sister, who then also gave some away because she’s fifteen now. I still have my plushies and teddy bears in my bed though, it would be too empty without them :D

silverspringsimmer replied to your audio post “(via...”

I love Within Temptation and they got me into heavier music later, too!

I don’t even remember how I found them. I was just bored of the music I was listening to all the time back then, so I clicked through playlists and stuff on Spotify and somehow I landed on their page, I guess. And I immediately fell in love.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your audio post “(via...”

Oh this song was the first song of this bad which I heard! It was also 5-6 years ago.though I do not listen to them often these days.

I think the first song I heard was What Have You Done, which I liked and still like very much, but then I heard this one and went kinda crazy because it just sounded so epic and exactly what my poor slightly depressed fifteen years old soul needed. In one day, I completely switched from pop to metal and it took me a few years to appreciate my old favourite music again. (I know that I say all the time that I’m a Taylor Swift stan, but actually I only really started LOVING her music again last year.)

I’ve always thought that it’s kinda funny that in my Music class, for the first semester I prepared a project about Taylor Swift. In the second semester, that changed, the old pop loving Ronnie was dead, and my new project was about Within Temptation :D But I remember that I was actually upset that day, I chose to show my classmates the video of What About Us and they didn’t appreciate it. And then after me, my other classmate had a project about some singer who had this weird song about getting high. They wanted to replay it. I was so bitter, in my head I was like “this song that I showed you has an interesting meaningful message and you’d rather listen to a song about drugs, how dare you?! You’re absolutely terrible!”

Yeah. I mean, I get it today, but I was so, so bitter.

amuhav replied to your audio post “(via...”

I recently found out they had a new album out (and Nightwish had a new single out too ��) and early 2000s emo teenage me immediately surfaced and threw money at my screen!

Ahhhh I’ve basically had Noise on repeat since it came out, I love it so much! And the video is cool too. I can’t wait to hear the whole album. Nightwish never disappoints, I hope I’ll one day get to see them live. I’ve had a few chances but then it never worked out.

#replies #abysims #tiny-tany-thaanos #amuhav #fataleromeo #asplashofsims #blubrich #silverspringsimmer

[trisarahtops-sketches]

Hi Sarah, I hope it's not a bother but I could really use some help. My instructor is basically forcing me to learn Illustrator when I just wanted to make drawings and so far I'm hating it so much, it's so unneccessarily difficult in my opinion. I've talked to him and explained that I'm having trouble with it and don't want to use it but he's insisting that because it's "industry standard" I need to know it. I don't want to work in a studio but he's still insisting. Sorry if this was too much :(

Hmm. I’m a little conflicted on how to answer this, I kind of ended up writing a whole essay…but I hope my thoughts can help you decide what’s best for you.

First of all, I totally get why you’re having trouble with it, I really hated Illustrator when I was first learning it. I definitely agree that it’s unnecessarily difficult, it’s not as intuitive or user friendly as other Adobe programs. Even now I still struggle with it. For 99% of drawings, I prefer Photoshop to Illustrator. You can definitely have a career in art without using Illustrator. Adobe products are expensive so lots of artists use free/cheap non industry standard programs and I 100% support that. I believe that art means something different to everyone. The artist themselves know better than anyone what medium they want to use.

But…bear with me, but it’s true that it’s industry standard (almost all the Adobe products are; talk about a monopoly over the art industry…but that’s another story). Illustrator’s strength is its ability to create a clean, scaling vector image. I use it a lot for stuff like logo designs, or animation assets.

But actually, the real reason I would recommend giving Illustrator another chance has nothing to do with the program itself. Not every school has access to professional, expensive art software. Some schools don’t even have art program at all. Lots of young artists would never get a chance like that. It might help if you try thinking of it a unique opportunity to learn Illustrator in an academic setting, rather than something that’s being forced upon you. Even though I don’t love Illustrator, I’m glad my school taught it because it would have been so much harder to learn it by myself. For someone like me who loves learning new things, I believe that every new program or skill you learn is an advantage. Even if you never touch Illustrator again, you still gained knowledge and experience that you never would have otherwise.

But, obviously this isn’t about me, it’s about you. If you just want to do art for fun as a hobby, then screw Illustrator, you can drop the class and make whatever art you want. But, if there’s any chance you want to be a professional artist (even if it’s not at a studio), then it gets trickier. Speaking as a professional artist, it can be a real advantage to know as many different kinds of software as possible. But one of the great things about the art industry is that there can be a lot of room to customize how you work. 

So I don’t really have a clear answer to this problem… but I hope at least I gave you some new things to think about. Good luck!

#asks #I have such a love/hate relationship with Adobe programs