#never realized this size would be such a nightmare to post online

[notozthewizard]

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #falin touden #dunmeshi #artists on tumblr #never realized this size would be such a nightmare to post online #the dress from twitter with a suprise! enjoy

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Dobbear! SYAC: The Master Review 6

I am so going to ruin someone’s childhood with that now, but...

guys, it had to be done!

Dashing and daring…

Courageous and caring!

Faithful and friendly…

 With stories to share!

 Doesn’t at all apply to this one artist…

Lesbian obsessed and  each nerddom’s nightmare!

Dobby BEAR!

Whinning here and there and everywhere!

Making claims that are beyond compare…

This is our Dobby-Bear!

Yeah, if you can’t guess, around now is the time I am going to put down the kids gloves and will really dig into why SYAC is garbage. And a huge factor into this, is in part Dobson’s self insert past 2012.

The existence of the blue bear as Dobson officially calls it (or Dobbear as most people call it) is in my opinion rather baffling already in terms of design choices.

I get e.g. that Dobson wanted to distance himself of his past humanoid self inserts as much as possible. But why of all things a bear?

The fact I am focused on that may sound weird, but hear me out for a bit. For starters, I know that Dobson likes western animation. And seeing how western animation has for the longest time been dominated by anthropomorphic animals, I can understand why he would redesign himself as a funny cartoon animal.

But there are at least three things that feel weird about it. First, Dobson had made it clear in the past that he hates furries. So him actually redesigning himself as an anthropomorphic animal is kinda weird

In fact, Dobson himself acknowledges that realization in one of his strips shortly after his fursona took over.

Second, of all the animals to choose from, why a bear? This question is in so far valid, as that bears are not necessarily one of the first to go animals, furries or western animators tend to go for when designing an anthro. And before any furries or anthro enthusiasts are calling me a hater, let me make one thing clear: I like anthropomorphic cartoon and comic characters too, and am okay with most furries. As long as you don’t have a diaper fetish, are a pedophile  or hurt actual animals, you can do and enjoy whatever you like.

But I am also aware enough of furry culture to know, that bear based anthros are most of the time hyper sexualized and muscular, connecting them to how the term “bear” is used in real life gay culture. Which is okay, I think it is just a funny coincidence that Dobson choose an animal, that most furries associate with a life style that Dobson is deeply afraid of, even if he claims to be an LGBT ally.

And as stated earlier, bears are not necessarily the go to animals for animators.

Don’t get me wrong, we all know some cartoon bears like Winnie the Pooh, Yogi Bear, Poh and the main cast of TaleSpin (btw, Kit Cloudkicker fan for life). But lets be honest here; ducks, mice, rabbits, canines, felines, equines and any other “easily to domesticate” animal in the real world tends to make better for easily recognizable cartoon characters than something that can reach a size of 3 meters tops and weigh over 500 pounds.

Truth be told, the pool of cartoon bears is so small, these are the first two things that came to my mind when thinking what may have inspired the Dobbear

And wouldn’t you know? According to Dobson, the Carebears were supposedly the main inspiration for his design.

 Unfortunately, this is also more or less the most I could find of Dobson addressing what went into the creation of the character.

Which kinda brings me also to the third issue as why I think the bear redesign is weird; It is too sudden.

One day Dobson draws himself as a shaved 20 something, the next day he is a fedora wearing Carebear clone, likely created and then rejected by Care Bear villain No Heart, as part of a plot to create a mole when conquering Care-A-Lot.

… and now I need to reevaluate my choices in life, that I was able to make such an elaborate Carebear joke.

It is just a change of design that in my opinion should have been addressed either outside of the comic or in context of it. Which it kinda is, but isn’t.

See, this is the first strip with the blue bear

And then only 13 strips or so later in something called “Continuity” is Dobson more or less willing to address the change…

And he does so in a passive aggressive manner, with Persistent Pam as a stand in for those asking him what is going on, while Dobson just dismissively continues working.

On one hand, you can argue that this is just the joke. The change happened, don’t bother with it, just enjoy what is still to come. And you know, I don’t want to make a rope out of everything Dobson ever posted, including that comic.

But then you have also to account for the fact, that Dobson would eventually associate himself with the blue bear so much, he made him his avatar and icon for his comics and online accounts. In fact, that one comic I posted WAY BACK in the first Master post of Dobson reminiscing how he started SYAC?

For reasons that are a bit confusing to me, he redrew himself (badly I have to add) as the blue bear in one of his earliest strips ever. The one where he belittles the manga fangirl for drawing manga. So I have to ask, what is going on here? Has Dobson increasingly decided to reset his past? Does he want to destroy any traces of his “human” self in his work to create the illusion to any new readers, that he never was as controversial of a person as he was and that there never was a need for him to reimagine and reinvent himself? Is this 1984? And how many of you realize that this paragraph is just me going conspiracy nuts for the sake of entertainment?

But still, it is kinda weird that he went to the bother of redrawing his human self in that one background sketch as a bear. Plus, I honestly think Dobson never even attempting to “explain” the change in the pages of his comics is a wasted opportunity for some decent jokes. Like every time Dobson tries to explain why he is a bear now, something interrupts him or we only get fragments of a story that if we put them together would be as ridiculous as the entirety of “Trapped in the Closet”.

I mean, the dumbest joke idea I have in mind is that Dobson went to build a bear to get a present for a family member. Instead he was build into a bear and later on successfully sued the company, which explains why he can afford to live despite not really working on comics anymore but lecture people badly about the evils of nerd culture.

So yeah, three major things about the design choice that more or less confuse me.

But here is the thing: Confusion is nothing compared to feeling genuine disdain for the design at hand. And compared to Dobson’s earlier human designs, Dobbear is just utterly unlikable.

A lot of that boils down to the following three facts:

1. From a certain point in time on (which I will cover in more detail later on) Dobson uses his bearsona primarily as a soapboxing mouth piece to talk about “politics” in nerd culture. Or at least what Dobson perceives as politics, coming off like a condescending jackass who believes among other things that white people are inherently incapable to identify with black people…

 … or that comic book shops have radicalized nerd culture, essentially calling them terror cells.

Which btw are so inherently offensive to me, I promise I will cover these two separately. One even sooner than the other.

2. If Dobbear is not talking about politics, he will tend to be a smug asshole to other people (most of the time strawmen) or their interests in one way or another. Being e.g. used by Dobson to express his disdain for criticism…

 or to mock legit criticism he had gotten by exaggerating things.

 All while also tending to make his critics look like inherent assholes.

These two facts, combined with Dobson’s average erratic behavior online on platforms such as dA, twitter and tumblr over the years, pretty much assured such a close association between the two, that a separation between artist and creation was not possible anymore, condemning them.

And for the record; Dobson was always a bit of a whinner who liked to act as if he was a better nerd than the average comic book fan. Otherwise, we would have not e.g. gotten Danny and Spot out of it.

But as the years went by in the last decade, Dobson turned from someone in his mid 20s, desperate to be seen as a “quirky” and likable internet persona (like certain internet reviewers), into a virtue signaling, lesbian obsessed asshole who likely regrets his life choices.

… Like certain internet reviewers.

But seriously, Dobson turned into someone who would flip the lid at something as ridiculous as Cheeto flavored chicken fries…

 While also being just the worst type of condescending nerd….

All while losing his mind about politics. Especially after Donald Trump became president

And just as Dobson became a radicalized left winged jackass who saw politics in everything he consumed, so did by default Dobbear, because Dobbear was not a character with his own personality, but a mouth piece.

Something I am about to get into detail in the near future. But till then, I want to cover in the next post the following third and final fact about Dobbear that really makes him unlikable to me: The fact he can’t be happy.

#syac #Andrew Dobson #dobbear #tom preston #so...you are a cartoonist #review #master review #webcomic #comics

[faithfulcat111]

Okay, this bit is going to appear to start in a really weird place, but that is because I wrote this entire AU stream of consciousness style in my notes and just broke it into sections to post here cause it was like thirty pages. So part two!

Vanya wastes no time driving to Diego's. She can't get Five out of the car by herself, so she goes into the gym and manages to find Al who looks like he could be in charge and asks if he know where Diego is. Al is immediately defensive, wondering if this is some weird ex. Not Diego's usual type, but hey who is he to judge. When Al asks why she is looking for Diego, Vanya explains that she is his sister and she has their missing brother and needs Diego's help. Sister instantly set off red flags because as far as Al knew, Diego was pissed and fighting with both of them. Al wasn't even sure how many brothers Diego had, having only seen one around (the only sibling around actually), and only heard of the others as a group in passing. But a missing one? No wonder the kid is messed up. He agrees to help Vanya get Five into Diego's room as Diego is out right now and holy shit, that is a legit kid. Too old to be a kid of Diego's, but he almost looks too young to be their sibling. And Vanya is grabbing a couple duffle bags and abandons the keys. Something weird is going on. Al gets the kid inside for Vanya, but decides he is staying out of this mess.

Vanya waits inside. Five isn't waking and Diego takes a few hours to get back from his vigilante stuff. Al manages to catch him and says his brother and sister are waiting inside so don't throw those damn knives at them. Diego is confused, but Al keeps going, saying that his sister showed up with a kid claiming it was their missing brother and the kid looked horrible and, Diego runs into the room and stops short when he sees Five of all people sleeping on his bed with Vanya reading beside him. He is understandably not happy about Vanya just showing up and wants answers about why she and Five of all people are here. Vanya tries to explain the best she can with her limitied knowledge: Five showed up at some point, Dad was keeping him at the house cause he is sick or something due to time travel, Luther tried to contact the siblings, but could only get ahold of Vanya, Luther got Five out of the house before taking off to some important mission to the moon. Luther never saw Five awake and neither has Vanya yet. Diego needs a moment before he asks why Luther even bothered getting Five out. Vanya says that all he told her was Mom mentioned it, that Five needed family. Diego still feels like there are so many missing pieces, but you know what, he'll take what he has and since Mom wanted Five to get out like everyone else, then he is staying out.

Five chooses this moment to come back to consciousness. The two just hear a slight whimper behind them at first and turn to see Five sleepily blinking his eyes open. They stare at him for a long moment before he just screeches. Vanya practically jumps on the bed grabbing Five and holding him which promptly shuts him up. He looks absolutely bewildered. Diego steps forward, cautiously asking if Five knew who they were and where he was at. Five reaches up one hand to touch Vanya's arm and just whispers in a far too raspy voice, "Ghosts can't touch me." And then passes right back out.

Okay, their brother has obviously been through some things and is traumatized af. Diego helps Vanya navigate their brother out of the coat, startling when something falls out of one of the pockets. It's Vanya's book. Clearly it is Five's copy as a quick flip through the pages shows a bunch of equations scribbled through the margins. What stops Diego though is that this is a library copy. And the last date it was turned in was in 2019. Nearly four years from now. Vanya sees Diego holding the book and starts to say something, but is cut off by him just saying that Five definitely time traveled before showing her the stamps showing when the book was last checked in. He then says that Veggie will be looking for them, or at least Five, and they need to go. So he stuffs some things into his own duffle bag, hands all the bags to Vanya, scoops up Five, and leads the way.

This is where I stopped writing for two months because I was working on another AU and had finals and holidays, but I think I remember where I was going with this, so here we go.

Diego, Vanya, and Five take off with only a call to Eudora from Diego (who they are newly broken-up, so it takes awhile, but Diego finally just tells her he has to leave for awhile and if she can keep an eye out for Klaus, he would appreciate it) and Diego telling Al to just box his stuff up or sell it. They leave in Diego's car, although they trade it out at a sketchy car lot the next town over. Why did they take off like this? Diego knows what the evil there father figure is and Vanya quickly figured out they would have to leave to avoid him taking back Five, which is her focus. It doesn't take long for Diego to deduce that is her intentions and for his big brother instincts to take over and decide to run with them and take care of the two.

Through the initial 24 hours after they take off, Five is mostly asleep. They bring him back to consciousness a couple of times to drink something or eat something soft, but he appears to also have some kind of fever.

They end up in a mediumish-sized town in the midwest just big enough that they can disappear into. They pull the siblings trying to get away from abusive situation card with a nice old lady who manages an apartment building and lets them stay and even hires Diego as part of her maintenence crew for the buildings she runs till he can find a proper job. The old lady seems to be under the impression that Five is one of their kids, not little brother, but they can't figure out whose kid she thinks he is, because she clearly knows that Diego and Vanya are siblings and it is a whole thing. They also give fake names when signing their lease, but I'll figure those out later.

Five finally wakes up more coherent then he has been a couple days later under Vanya's careful care. He seems very confused about where he is, understandably, but especially by Diego and Vanya being there. He appears to vaguely remember being locked up by the trauma-meister, but seems hesitant to explain what happened before that. Vanya explains that Luther got him out before taking off on some important mission to the moon on Grace's prodding and Vanya and Diego took off with him as they didn't want Veggie taking him back to his torture chamber.

After a little bit of prodding, they finally get out of Five that he traveled to the end of the world, set to happen in 2019 and they need to stop it and that he was trapped there for two years. Diego and Vanya are doubtful, but they agree to help under the condition that they do it under the radar considering they need to stay hidden from Vegetable until at least 2018 when Five will be, biologically 18.

And that is the premise. There is no permanent orchestra in the town they moved to, but Vanya lands a job teaching music theory and such at the community college and giving private lessons to local kids on the side. After a month of working for Ms. Roberts (I've decided that is their landlord's name), Diego gets a much better job, working first in janitorial at the local gym and a temp trainer, before being hired on permanently. Five is a bit more trouble. People seem to freak him out in large quantities, but he is also a kid, even though he is a very smart kid. And with Ms. Roberts knowing he is a minor, they really don't want the CPS breathing down their necks and taking their technically kidnapped, but very traumatized brother away. So, Vanya finds a local homeschool coalition. It requires that Five shows up for an in-person class once a week, but he can do the rest of his classes online and that gives him plenty of time to work on the end of the world stuff. He picks the music theory class that Vanya volunteers to teach to give Five free tuition.

And the three slowly build a life in this town. Diego and Vanya seem to have silently agreed to just pretend the Book never happened so they can take care of Five. Five clearly has nightmares and freaks out at both people and being without his siblings, so he goes with them everywhere (he ends up auditing all the classes Vanya teaches at the university when he enrolls at 17 to start on a math degree, mainly because he already sat through the classes a couple of times at this point).

They don't contact Vanya's orchestra, they were miffed when she called to say she wasn't showing up anymore the day she got Five. Diego calls Eudora after about six months to check in. She picked up Diego's only box of stuff from Al that he left behind and is holding it for him and agrees since Vanya's year lease is almost up to clear out Vanya's old apartment soon. (She is just being really great, but they aren't telling her the brother they are watching is a kidnapped minor for a reason). She also tells them that she had to put Klaus back in rehap a month ago and he had seemed really confused by her doing it instead of Diego like usual. Diego won't tell her where he is though. She does agree to look into the eye Five finally admitted he has from the apocalypse and will gather all info she can find for when Diego calls back. (When he does a few months later, she tells them the eye doesn't exist, the company it is from hasn't even started making prosthetic eyes yet).

And then, Vanya's pills. Well, she realizes she is running low and since they are laying low, she can't exactly call her old therapist or psychiatrist and get a refill. So, she goes to a new one who flips at the level she is taking (how is that allowed!!!) and starts a plan to wean her off those and onto a new set of anxiety meds that would be better for her. Vanya starts to feel happier and better overall. There is complaining about the bad lightbulbs Diego always buys because one seems to shatter every two months and she always seems to know what either boys are muttering even across the room, but none of them really notice Vanya's powers. Maybe because Five seems genuinely terrified of his own at the moment and they all know they can't draw attention to themselves as former members of the Umbrella Academy, but powers are the furthest thing from everyone's minds. Diego even goes to a sort of seedy tattoo artist and gets his covered up, playing up the umbrella as a stupid drunk mistake he wants to forget and Five takes to wearing long sleeves and bracelets so people can't see his. Five also goes and sees this therapist and gets classic GAD and PTSD and goes on anxiety meds too eventually. Vanya just has SAD and over the time they are in this town, she eventually gets weaned down to an as needed pill, which she only is to take for an attack which ends up being once every couple weeks or so. Five is on daily meds. Dunno yet if this will be relevant, but to give you an idea of the starting point I have for each of them. Five also has asthma from all the ash.

#again I'm staying vague cause i really wanna write this #I'm totally picturing on of my friends as i write five in this au and i hope he doesn't get mad if he sees this #also #if you wanna suggest names for these lovely people in hiding #please do so #alias au #the umbrella academy #tua #five hargreeves #diego hargreeves #vanya hargreeves

[kpopisamood]

Queen’s Clan { 20 }

Summary: y/n is plagued by nightmares. She realizes that the more she runs away, the less frequently they haunt her. However, in running away, she’s also running straight into her ultimate demise. Will she be saved in time by those who would lay down their lives for her, even if they don’t know of each other’s existence?

Monsta X/Reader, Human/Vampire(s), Reverse Harem

Warnings: biting

Word count:

Tag list: @noonaduck @lovinggalaxies @elenaramos1 @girlwith-thecinder-blockgarden @sun-moon-n-yunho @stargazersara @luvthatleader-nim @jooheonbee @vincent-stargogh @perrshian @kurochan3 @imbxckytrash @joonsgotthejuice @mymymywonderland @2ka-tja2 @qween-of-trash @senpai-creampai @shorty-will-notice @atricksterwithwings @kapetan-poludeli-kaktus @jisusnunjoon

~~~

This was not a good idea. The last talk with Hyungwon was eventful to say the least and you were staring at his massive manor—alone. You’d told your Clanmates it was better to come at this alone; their testosterone had no place with this important meeting. But of course, they only let you do the meeti alone if they were in the surrounding area. In case anything went wrong.

Definitely not a good idea.

“Y/N, come in! Master Hyungwon has scheduled a pastries buffet to honor your presence!” Kihyun chuckled, already out the front door before you can so much as announce you arrived. He jogged to your side and offered you his forearm with a polite smile and directed you to a grand foyer with several tables of—holy shit, that’s a chocolate fountain.

Your eyes bug out of your head and Kihyun smirks at your reaction before cooing at you and taking you to the tower of molten chocolate. Sure, the other desserts around you were amazing but this fountain had to be the size of Kihyun himself. If your mates could see this—

“Y/N, I see you’ve found my gift to you.” Hyungwon announced from the entryway. He looked magnificent as before; wearing a black turtleneck sweater complete with gray dress pants and black loafers. He didn’t even have to try to look amazing and it annoyed you a tinge.

“Gift?” You asked, looking back to the overwhelming machine.

“Yes, everything you see here is yours. From the desserts to the five-tiered fountain. It can melt any sort of cheese as well, if you were wondering.” Yes, you were definitely wondering. This splendid, metal beast would be the best to have during—

You shook yourself out of your thoughts before anything could escalate. Though, it wouldn’t be bad if they did. ‘Cool down, Y/N. You’re here for business.’

“I’d like to make an agreement, first. Fountain, second.” Boom, now he knows you’re not easily bought.

“I take it you agree to my enquiries, then?” Hyungwon smiled, reaching an arm to a plate of crisp strawberries before he dips it gently into the pouring fountain. His eyes never leave yours.

“Actually, I’ve come with my own terms.” The way he brought the strawberry to his lips was almost too much. “I want us to be allies.”

He pauses for a second, mulling over your words before looking to Kihyun and having a silent conversation with him.

“What would I gain from an alliance with you?” Gone was the playful prince, stern businessman was in.

“What would you like to gain?” You ask a bit sheepishly. He couldn’t gain much, you thought. You were a new Queen who didn’t know the politics. Just gossip that the one man to stay away from was the same man you had to ally with to survive.

“If we ally, I’d be in charge.” He said simply, finishing off his strawberry.

“In charge of what?” You asked a bit hesitant. You wanted to call the shots. This meeting wasn’t going on the direction you hoped for but you knew his ego would be a hindrance to the outcome.

“If I’m your ally, I’d be your Alpha. Your Mates would have to adhere by my command. They’re yours to do with as you please, but if I’m an ally, I should hope they’d see me as your equal. Perhaps even your husband, but that’s in the near future.” Thinking of Changkyun in particular, you knew this wouldn’t fly. “Being the Alpha would also mean the likelihood of us conceiving an heir.” You could have died right then and there. Children?! This man wanted a child with you?!

“If we ally, you can come around me and my Mates. You will not command them to do any sort of thing I do not command. They are not yours to reprimand. You will not touch them let alone hurt them.” You growled out, feeling waves of anger travel through your arms. Goosebumps spread throughout your body at the thought of someone hurting your Mates.

“So you believe the words of strangers, too.” He muttered sadly. “Lady Y/N, rumors without factual evidence to back them are just ploys for those in need of attention or reassurance that their negative thoughts are validated.”

“You will not be my Alpha nor my Mates’.”

“So, have you decided which of your Clanmates will be your Alpha?” He asked quietly, approaching you and twirling on strand of your hair around his pointer finger.

“Yes.” You paused a beat. “I’m the Alpha.” With that, you surged forward connecting your lips to his and pinning him against the table, giving him a taste of his own medicine.

You broke away from him with a sigh and stated, “I will decide who gives me an heir and how many. I will decide who I marry. I am the only person responsible for this Clan and I’ll be damned if you take my Mates away from me.”

You felt a long arm wrap around your waist and tug you roughly against a hard chest. “My Lady, you don’t have to be in this alone. My King and I would never dream of taking what is rightfully yours. Isn’t that right, my liege?” His hands slowly crept up your chest, making its way to your neck and grasping your throat with just enough force to make you gasp.

“Certainly. I wouldn’t want My Queen to be upset with me in any way. If anything, I would want her to be very pleased with our alliance. What do you say, Y/N?” Hyungwon chuckled, slowly trailing his hands where Kihyun’s were before. Where Kihyun’s hands were rough, his were smooth and gentle against your skin.

“You’ll be my ally instead of my mate? Instead of an Alpha?” You managed and celebrated mentally for being able to speak without a stutter or whimper.

Hyungwon hesitated, looking over your shoulder at Kihyun before giving you a smirk. “We can start with that, if you’d like.” His tone suggested this was your call, but it felt like you were still playing into whatever plan he was orchestrating.

“Allies. Not Mates.” You stated with as much authority in your voice.

“Agreed.”

You could hear skin being ripped behind you before Kihyun offered his wrist to you.

“I will serve you as I serve my King, Queen Y/N. I will serve you until you see me and my Master fit to be your Mates. Will you accept me and link yourself to him as he links to you?” Kihyun gasped out. You could see Hyungwon grab his other wrist while he stared deep into you, seeking your answer.

You responded by grabbing Kihyun’s wrist and biting down, hearing his moan echo around the room at Hyungwon bit down to seal the deal.

And then the room exploded in a bright light.

A/N: I LIVEEEEEE! How is everyone’s quarantine going? I’m back at work after 2 months (yeesh it’s been 84 years since I’ve posted) of not working and I’m also back in school online but I wanted to drop this part because I missed y’all.

#kpop #kpop fic #monsta x fic #monsta x x reader #monsta x x you #kpop x female reader #reverse harem #monsta x

[aijee]

is this a life update or a novel?

Hi all, long time no post! Nice to meet you new followers, and nice to talk to you again for those who’ve stuck around. Just as a reminder, my blog is as much of a fic blog as it is a journal for me to sort my thoughts.

In that vein, here’s a personal update. CW for mental health/anxiety, physical pain, big life changes. There’s lighter stuff at the end!

It’s been both a long and short summer for me, after deciding to quit work and focus on my mental health. I’m a millennial twenty-something whose mind, like many, is tragically crippled with the capitalistic and individualistic values America has brainwashed me with, so I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with being unemployed and depending on my parents. I’m extremely privileged and humbled to be in a family that still maintains income during unprecedented times. I’ve been trying not to let my internalized struggles turn into this self-imposed shame for partaking in pleasures (I remember second-thinking buying a digital comic book for hours). My parents often say, “We worked hard and struggled because we didn’t want our kids to do the same. Don’t feel guilty for enjoying yourself.” Nowadays, they add that I’ve worked hard during college and my post-college job; in their eyes, I’ve more than “earned” a break, especially after losing my graduation, summers, and trips.

I constantly wonder why I impose so many limitations of myself even more during a pandemic. While being aware of global struggle is important for not becoming out-of-touch, I need to remind myself that people don’t have to earn the right to play or be happy or enjoyment. Obvious lack of nuance aside, it’s crazy to think how much capitalism—largely the idea worth is contingent (work) productivity—has deformed my sense of what’s a basic human right versus what should be earned. I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I struggle with thinking in extremes; it’s either starvation or hedonism, and the latter earns far more societal vitriol. I think my Asian upbringing has made me hyperaware of what others could be thinking of me, regardless of how accurate those projections are. I’d fact, I rarely assumed positive opinions. Outside of external validation, I realized how poor my self-image really was. Tearing myself down before anyone else could rarely, if ever, softened the blow.

For the first time, I’ve begun to think that my life is my own and no one else’s. It sounds logical on paper, but so much harder in practice in real life, I’ve realized. This isn’t a constant or ingrained thought yet, often peaking in between longer and more familiar strings of anxiety. But it feels like an important realization during a time full of sadness and uncertainty, let alone in my lifetime at all.

And then I injured my spine.

It happened towards the end of the summer, when I was starting to feel more put-together internally. I felt so creatively productive (in avenues I don’t care to share online) and even closer to family. I had a ball revisiting old shows. I ate food I hadn’t eaten in years. And this was suddenly interrupted when, while showering, I was wracked with unimaginable, nonstop pain. I nearly passed out alone in the shower and barely managed to crawl to my bedside to call my parents; I was lucky they came home early. I couldn’t stop crying for almost twelve hours. I was terrified at the possibility that I may be paralyzed or my legs would be affected. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but I was bedridden and wracked with nausea. I could barely stomach anything, not even water. I couldn’t sleep. I was never brought to a hospital, either on the fear of COVID transmission. The whole time, it was so, so debilitating on a physical and mental front. My head was a nightmare.

Like a bad habit, some of my worst thoughts centered around productivity. I worried about the work I couldn’t do. I felt shameful about canceling plans with friends. I hated being helpless and not being able to take care of myself, and felt guilty for wasting other people’s time taking care of me. And yet, if I was someone else, even a stranger let alone a friend/loved one, I’d be scratching my head over why that person would think these things. Fuck work and other life plans, getting better is the most important thing because you can’t do any of those compromised activities if you’re not at capacity! Duh. Anxiety can really a number on you sometimes and it’s awful just how irrationality fuels the spiral.

I’m grateful to be back on my feet. I’m trying to hold on tightly to that victory, to this positive point that I have worked towards. It’s going to be a challenge to do my recovery exercises daily for my 2-3 month recovery period when I barely remember to floss. Moreover, I’ll be in the middle of moving and working full-time again in the next month, alongside the ridiculous anxiety over some applications and maybe interviews for a different part of my life. But I’m doing my best to take each day at a time and celebrate the good things when they come, however small. I don’t have to ace a final exam or burn my retinas studying for them to deserve victories because, hey, again, happiness is a right and I need to stop gatekeeping myself from it.

Frankly, the injury is largely why I haven’t posted sooner. I don’t think anyone should ever feel obligated to use social media when they aren't up to it. But I actually wanted to ease back into writing before I was injured, starting with this blog.

Some other positive things:

God, I missed the Avatar (Aang and Korra) series so much. What a damn good franchise, what a damn good magic system and world. IT’S. SO. GOOD, GOD. Revisiting it all and reading the comics while I was sick was the single biggest joy that kept me going. I hope the magic lingers for as long as possible.

Even in my inactivity, I’ve received some really lovely comments on my AO3. I read the emails primarily. It really warms my hear to see them. I revisited old comments recently, too, and they’ve helped keep me going and reminded me that I am capable of putting joy into the world.

I’ve taken a liking to Youtube playlist-videos and Spotify playlists that encompass a very specific story scenario, like “dancing with the villain in a masquerade ball” or “driving around the French countryside”, etc. Japanese 80′s urban pop is SO GOOD.

Smosh has been putting out such great content y’all. I was BIG on old Youtube (Nigahiga, Smosh, Michelle Phan, Jenna Marbles, etc.) and it warms my heart to see their renaissance. Amazingly entertaining and down-to-earth content. I don’t fall squarely into their demographic anymore, but the periphery is still fun.

Food is great. I love food still. I’ve eaten a lot of good food during this break. It almost pains me to go back to living by myself and eating healthier. :’(

I didn’t realize how expensive moving was. But, after living in the same apartment from sophomore uni to post-uni work, I’m moving into a bigger “adult” apartment with appropriately sized appliances instead of the mini student kind. The possibility of treating myself to a king-sized mattress and decorations is also very exciting.

It warms my heart to see people in my vague social circles indulging in home art projects, like paint by numbers and “diamond” painting. As a kid I thought “not real art” was a waste, but by god as an adult do I not give a shit about what “real art” is anymore. If it’s fun, it’s fun. That’s that!

That’s all I can think about for now.

#aijeepost

[sinnhelmingr]

tell me about heldolin possible reconcilliation? // @usedhearts​

rubs my filthy little gay hands together. oh yeah baby talk complicated wlw to me--

So, the groundwork for this hypothetical: Our little AU for 3, where Gwyndolin is saved from her canonical fate by a daring rescue on the part of her ex-wife. The two have been distant for some decades, ranging from cool hostility to open disregard, but with that underlying air of disappointment lacing every interaction. There’s nothing to salvage, but Hel’s not the kind of person that can leave anyone to what was planned, regardless of their interpersonal issues. One fraught road trip through enemy territory until they reach safety later...

Well there’s a lot to work through. First being Lin’s lingering trauma surrounding her captivity. Her we get the first hints of reconciliation in Hel’s refusal to let her deal with it alone. Yes, Gwynevere can help, and yes, her realm is safe and offers whatever support the wayward queen requires, but no one here saw it. No one here understood what the Valley had become. Even if they have lingering disagreements, Hel is the one sleeping on the floor of Lin’s chamber rather than in her own bed, because she can’t stand to think of someone she once cared for dealing with all of this alone. It helps, in some way, because Lin does need someone there and is going through it trying to cope.

Every possible reconciliation attempt proceeds from there. Hel has gone through, well, hell and back to save Lin and is still devoted to making sure she’s safe, but it’s not romantic. It’s honestly just Hel doing what she perceives as the right thing. Whether it helps or not, or her role could be filled by anyone else Lin cared for, it doesn’t matter because she’s the one there. And like it or not, she’s not going anywhere. From this, we have a variety of options but the two I personally see working out are these: 

Lin coming to rely on that, sort of clinging to Hel even if not literally. When not dealing with any official business regarding the ongoing political nightmare, she might drift towards Hel, wherever she is within the palace. 

Alternatively, given the mood of most of their interactions post-divorce, there’s a chance it starts as resentment. That Lin can’t stand to be in her shadow, clinging to her in the daylight when her struggles are easier to bear. 

Either way, the two are at least within physical proximity to one another, given Lin’s mental health and coping skills. Which is, inevitably, going to lead to a lot more run ins with her nephew.

Hel in a lot of ways has come to care for Lothric as if he were her own, because my God someone has to love that kid beyond his brother. Someone has to care about his wellbeing. He’s irreverent and he’s anxious and he’s struggling but determined to keep going, hardly the pious saint of the royal family’s propaganda. His wit is sharp and at times cruel, and he’s unsure about a lot of things but trying to hide that fact. Lin’s going to have to, through watching Hel interact with him, accept that her nephew is in fact more than a sacrifice -- for now. I think it’s Lin showing initiative to defrost ice queen around Lothric is going to start changing Hel’s demeanor towards her as well.

Like that’s not to say Lin changing overnight to team ‘hey yeah let’s not roast a living person with autonomy who never had a chance to live!’ is what it would take. That’d be unrealistic and OOC. I think it’s just. Hel being able to see that Lin can set aside her pride or stubbornness just long enough to get to know her sacrificial lamb as a person, as something more than what the rest of the world makes him by hers and Nev’s design. Lin defrosts to Lothric, Hel defrosts to Lin. It’s equivalent.

I think that would be the tipping point to sort of lessen the feeling of obligation between them. Maybe they can finally start talking again like people who are on at least civil terms, if not outright friendly. In my head it plays a little like their initial childhood interactions where Lin is reticent but observant and Hel is the more daring of them. She leads, and for a time, to a certain degree, Lin follows. And during the course of the narrative, as the latter grows stronger, as she acclimates herself to life outside of a cage, Hel starts to back off more and more. 

Maybe Lin won’t need her so much now, maybe things will go back to normal. And instead, Lin still leaves the door open between them, as it were. Just because she’s no longer so reliant on Hel doesn’t mean she wants her gone. 

Or maybe she tries to keep her distance if she’s still fighting against certain imminent realizations. Maybe she tries to shut the door but finds, as always, Hel has a key and she just. Accepts it over time. It’s her choice whether to come and go, just as she can choose to tell her to leave. 

Another vital step in their potential reconciliation is that it not be built upon reliance or obligation -- now they can see each other as relative equals.

By this point Hel’s been doing everything short of actually saying the words to convey she’s not stopped loving Lin. Even if she doesn’t realize it, there’s no other way people can take her actions. For Lin, I don’t know if it’s that simple but we can talk it out next time you’re online because Christ I’ve been typing this so long the weekend is over and you are back at work. The vibe I get from your Lin is that even if she cares she’s daddy’s girl and stubborn as hell once she’s been hurt. She’s either unsure or unwilling to convey that she’d like to patch things up. Which is valid, she’s been through a lot, there’s so much to work through before she even thinks of romance ever again. She’s especially been through the loss of her daughter, and that bond comes before anything else.

(Sidenote for those who are not privy to our discord lore: Let’s put a pin in the fact that at present Lothric has decided his salvation lies in overriding his mother’s decision to just lock him in the kiln once he’s ‘ready.’ He’s seen how Hel can influence his aunt and said ‘Yes, of course, I have to Parent Trap them into a reconciliation and then Hel will convince Aunt Gwyndolin I deserve to live and Mother won’t have any allies left!’ All the while his primary lackey is just questioning what version of the Parent Trap he saw because that’s not the plot at all-- /j. Anyway there’s three idiots -- two princes and a physician -- out here trying to play matchmaker despite the fact none of them have any romantic experience. This can only end well.)

I feel like the real test is going to be whether distance makes the heart grow fonder. Hel’s got other responsibilities out there, and once assured Lin is in a more stable place, that others will be there for her in a way that helps, she has to take care of them. She has to be with her own people, has to make sure they are safe, keep an eye on the world beyond. She’s gone like a thief in the night, and Lin has to learn how to navigate the world without her, furthering the balancing act between them returning to normal. Hel rode off on her big black horse and no one cna say for sure when she’ll be back. She comes and goes through the kingdom like a storm, staying just long enough to cause problems but gone with the slightest shift in atmosphere. The horse comes back only weeks later. Its rider does not. Instead, perched upon that black stallion is a familiar crossbreed, tattered but hanging in there.

Hel saved her, at the cost of her own freedom. What can Lin possibly think about that?

So it’s a flurry of Lin campaigning for her sister to send a party to save Hel, Nev saying that she can’t do it yet, possibly as she is is too busy with the fracturing of her own kingdom to lend the men. All the same, she forbids Lin from going off and doing something drastic. Tells her younger sister to stay with her daughter and help Yorshka heal. She needs it. Which works bc we have that big dramatic Hel returning to the castle drenched in blood and falling cinematically into Lin’s arms. It’s the drama these wlw deserve. 

And as we know, Lin insists on being Hel’s own caretaker while she recovers. To the point she scrutinizes every move Lothric’s physician makes in checking that the newly returned Death isn’t badly injured. Lothric thinks he stays winning because now Lin’s doing the same ‘demonstrate love but don’t speak it’ bullshit that Hel is so adept at. He’s buying his physician drinks after this despite her protests that alcohol does not sit well with her--

Hel eventually recovers enough from the strenuous battle and escape to start moving around the castle more. She confesses that, despite gossip saying this was some act of passion to show her devotion, she didn’t do this for Lin. She did it because it was the right thing to do, because Yorshka was in danger, and it had nothing to do with her mother. Something that breaks Lin’s shell completely because it proves Hel is still the woman she fell in love with. She didn’t risk her life and return the one Lin loves the most as a hollow token meant to win her heart again, she did it because her conscience has never steered her wrong. 

Now try this one on for size: One day it dawns on Hel that something is missing. She tears up her room seeking it only for Lin to finally be That Bitch and hold out her exes wedding pendant -- one she found that Hel never stopped wearing, if the fact it was still around her throat when Lin stripped her of her bloody dress is any indication. Hel’s been found out. Lin’s about to start asking some serious questions.

And if one of them can finally confess at this point that whether the love stopped or never did they feel it now just as they did before, that’s not the end. That’s not reconciliation. Because the fact remains that they broke up over an act that Hel considered pure evil, when Lin helped decide the ultimate fate of Lothric. Reconciliation is going to depend wholly on how AU we want to go, if Hel and the revived Artorias are able to convince Lin that this is heinous and even if it is what her father would have wanted, it isn’t right, it makes her just as terrible as he was. If Lin can finally see to reason or at least sentiment over legacy and duty, then I can see the pair moving towards actual reconciliation and spending at least the last days of a dying world together and at peace with their ultimate fates. If not... Oof. There might be other ways to make it work once Lothric goes rogue and says he won’t be kindling, if Lin can admit that yes, that means all the cruelty was for nothing and she was wrong (like her sister does), then maybe some slowburn reconciliation could take place.

But ultimately it’s going to depend on both character development on Lin’s part, whether by choice or in spite of resistance, and Hel proving that all the things Lin has accused her of (changing, being untrue, being corrupted by heresies) are untrue. Changing and steadfast characterization in tandem. Barely even friends (after the divorce) then somebody bends unexpectedly--

#howl at the moon i'll come for you [GWYNDOLIN/HEL] #i can no longer close my eyes while the world around me dies [V: DARK SOULS] #usedhearts #THIS IS A NOVEL FSDAGSGD

[arshinquarantine]

online shopping

To be honest, I don't really care for online shopping. A million little neurons fire off in my brain when I give someone money and they give me an object instantly. Who I was with, how I looked when I first tried it on, what I felt when I first tasted it, how much of a bargain it was, the feel of seams on my fingers or the weight of deckled pages in my hands, the caution I threw to the winds or the impulse that I permitted to seize me all combine in a few seconds to inject one simple emotion into my simple brain: buying shit feels good. Until recently, online shopping was utterly devoid of any positive emotion for me. I don't like computers, and they particularly irk me when they ask me to punch my credit card number or (worse) save it. I don't like waiting for boxes to arrive or dealing with going to the post office to pick them up or the endless amounts of recycling I'm going to have to do. I also absolutely do not have the time or the will or the discipline to return roughly half of what I buy because I'm picky and women's sizing for anything is a hot mess, so piles of unwanted shit pile up in my tiny apartment taking up valuable real estate. So I generally go out of my way to avoid the whole business of it all. 

For the first few months of the quarantine, I lived like a purist, buying only what I absolutely needed to online. Unfortunately for me, I was living in an unfurnished apartment (the sum total of the furniture I owned was a mattress, a shitty dollar walmart desk, and a shittier dollar walmart chair) so I actually needed to buy a lot of stuff and I dragged my feet miserably through it all. It took me weeks to pick out basic white Crate & Barrel plates for my kitchen, another few months before I committed to a bookshelf that held only about a third of the books I own, and far too long to buy a bed frame. The worst crime of all was my sofa; when I think about how many months I lived with only my mattress or my floor to sit on, I genuinely wonder how far my propensity for masochism can truly go.  Ordering my groceries online was simply out of the question, I remained staunchly devoted to buying them in store even when I had to wait 40 minutes in line for my turn.

Soon, the early alarming but novel weeks of covid gave way to the later mundane, claustrophobic ones. After a few weeks of regularly working out, I realized that there was no world for me to emerge into with my newer, hotter body. The comfort I got from my group chats and zoom hangouts soon petered out, and I returned to cooking my usual 20 minute weeknight meals. Stuck in a new apartment, in a new city, without a car (I can't even drive so this is actually moot tbh) my world quietly shrunk to the 600 odd square feet of hastily, partially furnished space I could call my own (now shared with a sibling) and a few blocks in either direction. I wore the same clothes, called the same people, walked the same walk, shopped at the same Shoppers, made the same complaints and wallowed in the same worries, and then I woke up and I did it all over again.

And then I decided that it was time for something new, and I've been searching for newness ever since. A "resurfacing" night cream that promised to make my skin brighter. A houndstooth blazer from an online vintage store that fit like it was tailored for me. A monstera plant that unfurled leaf after leaf under my distracted care before I finally succeeded in killing it. A bluetooth speaker to fill my home with the sound of qawwalis my dad taught me to love. The boxes would arrive days, sometimes weeks after I make the actual purchase, feeling more like a gift from an unknown benefactor than something I furtively paid for. I used to dislike online shopping for its delayed gratification, but soon began to covet it for exactly that reason, like the steady cadence of a few minutes of excitement made me feel like I was accomplishing the impossible task of feeling an emotion. A cheap rug. An expensive sofa. Baking equipment. Painting equipment. Exercise equipment. Books about best friendship, books about love, about a dying earth and dying mothers, set in Syria and Detroit, Naples and Busan, some devoured, some discarded, all read in hot pursuit of staving off how utterly dead I felt on the inside. Each box that landed on my doorstep neatly filled a hole in my life, a void that never seemed to shrink.

It felt reckless and frivolous—childish even—to allow myself to keep getting things that would make me happy. It contradicted everything I wanted to believe about myself: that I was unaffected by anything money could buy, able to achieve complete inner peace by simply "thinking good thoughts", and minimalist to my core. How positively pathetic of me, I'd think, to need a "thing" or an "item" to be able to feel happiness. Even as I searched within myself for gratitude at my good fortune, my good health, I often came up empty, and the answers to all my questions seemed for lie, for however brief a moment, in whatever Instagram thought I should buy that week, silently delivered in recyclable packaging, with a return label and a promise of brief delight.

Most people my age, my peers haven't lived through an event as seismic as this. The idea that life being irreversibly changed even after this, that it already has changed feels alien to me, a square peg trying to jam itself into the round hold where my brain used to be. Life as it used to be feels right around the corner, just a week away, just a month away, just a season away, and soon, I tell myself, I will get back the normalcy of buying four americanos in three hours to keep my internet access at the cafe I've been working at, the fun in an afternoon spent mindlessly window shopping, the stupid joy in dancing the night away in a sweet and sticky club, the relief in resting my head against the shoulder of a friend, the discomfort of getting on the subway at rush hour, the ordeal of a 15 hour flight home to see my little sister.

I lost family members this year, and I spend my weekends flitting between my numb grief and a website that sells silk pyjama sets. Sometimes, I don't speak to my father for days, afraid that he might see right through my false cheer. Sending him pictures of the first snow, my meals and paintings seems enough to me. Lately I've been waking up from dreams that range from bad to fully qualified nightmares about my mom's health. I haven't seen her in nineteen months. I ruminate over where I want to live, if I want children, who I want them with, new questions that have cropped up and firmly planted themselves on my brain. I find myself rejecting the companionship of the friends on my phone. I want them here in Toronto, so we can laugh at the past, and marvel at the present, our warm bodies pressed against one another. And I crave the thrill of deep conversation with new people who remain interesting to me for only as long as I know nothing about them. Loneliness seems to run like a thread throughout everyone's twenties, I suppose, and I'm unable to tease out where the disorientation of being 24 ends and the isolation of living in a pandemic begins. But tangled up, they are stronger together and frighten me everyday, and I surround myself with boxes and yet more boxes to ward them off.

[unrelletable]

The first thing I do when I enter any kind of new environment is to check out if I am the skinniest girl in the room. If the answer to that question is yes, I then usually proceed to relax and enjoy whatever activity I am there to do. It happened while I was in school, when I volunteered for a local non-profit organization, when I worked as a waitress for two months. But also when I started my six months internship, when I looked for my current flat, and it still does when I go shopping for clothes or when I take my dog out for his daily walks. I am pretty sure that this is going to be the first thing I will make sure to be aware of when I enter the first class of the year in a couple of weeks. And I guess it is needless to say I am quite tired of it.

I have never become fully concious of this little trick my brain plays on me until one day I found out that I had gained weigth. And people around me started to make me aware of it. I am not talking about pounds and pounds, but since I had been extremely thin for almost ten years, every new kilo showed on me. Even a single one. People had been complimenting me for my shape, and I had always thanked out loud my fast metabolism for it. When actually years before I had lost a considerable amount of weight due to pretty heavy treatments I had to go through because of a bone cancer. So we were definitely not talking lucky genes back then. In order to gain that weight back - we are talking about around fifteen kilos: I was 163 cm high and right after my last treatment session my body did not weigh more than 37 kgs - it took me quite a few years. According to the medical tables, my weight was finally considered healhty for my height, age and sex two years ago. Which meant that it took me exactly eight years to go back to be in an average shape. 

But this is not what society and diet culture made me believe for the most part of those years - and still does. I can not recall how many times people had made amazed comments on how great I looked and how hard they wished their body could process food as fast as mine. I have always considered these affirmations as positive and never - even for a split second - questioned the fact that a visibly underweight body was considered the dream body by so many people. I was grateful for being so thin, and I have enjoyed fitting into the smallest pieces of clothing without the need of holding my breath or sucking my tummy in. Until I had to. 

As I said, my current weight is perfectly average. I am not either too skinny or chubby. My tummy shows little rolls when I sit, but looks flat when I stand. I still wear size 4 jeans and I have never had to buy something sized M yet. I guess I still fit into the thin category, so according to the society that glorifies thigh gaps and visible collarbones I should not worry. Just yet. Unfortunately though, the diet culture we live in began to pull its strings on me at the very moment when I realized I was no more the skinniest girl in the room. 

I do not know what came with the conciousness of being the girl who weighed less than any other. Probably the fact that I was succeeding at something, and that I would be noticed for it. I do not like being the centre of attention, but I literally loved when someone would point out how thin I was and started asking how I could manage to keep my body so fit. I have never explained the actual reason why I could wrap my fingers around my wrist and a twist them leaving out a considerable amount of space. Firstly, because I was not at a point in my life where I felt confident enough to speak about my cancer diagnosis, even though by that time I had completely healed; secondly, because I liked the fact that people thought that the shape of my body was something I had to take credit for. It made me feel as if I stood out in the crowd, not realizing that it was for a completely wrong reason. 

The actual moment of realization that I had some issues about the way my body looked came around a year and a half ago, but I would say that did not have much of an impact until the beginning of the new year. By then I had found a internship and even though I had planned to, I did not have much time to invest in working out. Everything changed with the coming of Covid and the following quarantine: having tons of free hours felt like an obligation to exercise. And so I did. 

Chloe Ting became my workout pal and the background music of her Five Weeks Shred Challenge’s videos my nightmare: I sweated for almost an hour every single day for more than a month and restricted my diet to the point where I would allow myself a treat only on Sunday. The very first weeks were the absolute worst: my tummy would groan constantly and I would feel hungry all the time. I would wake up hungry, be hungry after half an hour from breakfast, not feel satisfied at lunch and dinner, and I would literally go to bed with a hole in my stomach. The only snacks I had was fruit, and I did not eat any kind of carbohydrates apart from pasta at lunch. No bread, no biscuits, no crackers. For a good four months. Eventually my body got used to the lack of food, and started to burn calories from the inside. I lost a couple of kilos and my abs started to show, my legs became definitely more toned and I was almost completely cellulite-free. 

But all I would do, all the time, was thinking about food. I would count down the days that were left until Sunday every week, and when that day would come I binged like there was no tomorrow. Causing myself to feel extremely nauseous for the next couple of days. In case I would eat something prohibited during the weekdays, I would feel extremely disappointed with myself, as if a single teaspoon of chocolate cream would actually make a difference. I would weigh myself almost every morning and feel an ache of pain in case the scale would detect a couple of hundred grams of difference from the previous morning. My goal was to finally gain a body like the ones overcelebrated on Instagram, but luckily I did not.

Around the middle of August it finally struck me. I had listened to one episode of a podcast series - for my fellow Italians, I am talking about Palinsesto Femminista - that shed the light on the topic of body positivity and its actual mean. It took me a good couple of days to process all the amazing things I had heard on that hour long conversation involving one of the two founders of the Belle di Faccia association, but eventually it did. I was minding my own businesses trying to decide whether I was allowed a slice of bread with Nutella for breakfast and all of a sudden I found myself asking Being skinnier would make me actually happier? And the straight answer to that was no.

I would love to say that for the past month it has been a walk in the park and that I have not felt guilty eating while eating crisps or having cookies with my morning tea, but I have to reckon that there has been a change. When I work out, I do it because I like the sensation I get aftewards and not because it would get me a step closer to my dream body. Even though I still eventually think that I will go back to eat in the way I did during quarantine, I have decided that in that case I will not restrict myself like I used to. I have realized that I want to eat clean for my body to feel good, and not in order to avoid a couple of tiny rolls on my stomach. I had to brainwash myself out of the concept that what I see online is the actual reality and that it should be the norm. Every body should be valid, regardless of their weight or shape. No one should feel forced to starve themselves in order to comply with an aesthetic that is simply not realistic. I have to say that online accounts like the ones of @/namastehannah and @/danaemercer have had a great impact on my approach to exercise and reality in the past months, and in case you are struggling with the same kind of unrealistic expectations about the way your body should look like I highly recommed that you check them out. 

After six months of ups and downs in the relationship with my body image, I have come to the point that I definitely should try to worry less about the way I look. I went through something similar with the acceptance of my face, and back then not having to wear make up for half a year thanks to the fact that I had to look after to kids and knew no one in the neighbourhood kind of made me become more confident with showing my bare face. And since I had the chance to do it all over again thanks to self-isolation, I have learned to become familiar with the sleepy face I see everytime I wake up. And I have to admit that I actually started to like it. I am sure sure if I will brave enough not to put any kind of make up on when I go to classes, but we will just have to wait to find it out. Who knows.

Thus I am hoping that I will be able to go through the same process with my body as a whole as well. I am now concious of the fact that I do not have to necessarily love the shape I am in, but I simply need to accept it for what it is and all the things that it allows me to do on a daily basis. I now know that it can change a thousand times during my lifetime, or even a single day, and regardless of it, it will always be worth. Let’s be honest, most posts of flat tummies and toned booties are edited or posed anyway. So what I am going to try to do is to let go of these insanely unhealthy expectations and focus on what makes me feel good. Regardless of those around me or those who pop up on the explore page.

- body image issues and other stories

#unrelletable #unrelletable blog #blog #new blog #blogging #blogger #new blogger #post #new post #new blog post #body image #body image struggles #body image perception #body positivity #body neutrality #body positive #workout #working out #diet #do riots not diets #unhealthy mindset #social media expectations #expectations

[najikat]

Best birthday ever with the best realization.

So, I thought today would be crummy but it ended up being the best birthday ever. I got to talk and chill with the voice actor of Jet from Cowboy Bebop and get to meet Jaqen, The Faceless Man from Game of Thrones! The artist of the Goosebumps books got a good belly laugh when I ran over to him and called him the "Man responsible for my nightmares"! He was super awesome and took plenty of time talking to me about my future in art. I met an amazing crew of artists eager to show me the ropes of con-table running. One artist is so nice that she's donating me her extra con gear/setup!

I could have let a lot of things on this silly void of anonymity take away my joy today, but I ended up realizing people will always lie like insane, hurt you to see you bleed, and try to thieve away your goodness to make it look like their own. I probably give way too much care into things I shouldn't because I wear my heart on my sleeve and fret over anyone who "gets the wrong idea" about who I am and the morals I represent.

But honestly, I'm over it.

So, instead of perpetuating an endless cycle of bickering, I'm for once... Not going to respond. I prepared a massive word document the size of Kansas with a plethora of screenshots, rebuttals, and receipt slapping.

Then it dawned on me as I sat down to review it tonight. Why? What would I lose if I just move on and continue as I have been? A few really toxic people online screaming into the void "HAH! See! She has no proof and no response! She's HORRIBLE! This validates everything I say as truth! What I say must be true! See! See!"

... Uhm. OK. But I know it's not.

So, Should that really matter to me?

The healthy part of my brain is saying very tenderly "No, darling. It shouldn't.".

So what does this mean for me? Well, for one I regain control over my experience online and control over my mental health. I don't need to keep reliving abuse and continued toxicity. I don't need to keep worrying if I need to defend against more air-grabbing lies or people using me as a beating bag for others actions. My friends don't need to worry if I'm hurting and they don't need to see me slip back into a wreck of depression and handshaking anxiety. I won't be vulnerable to the damage these people cause because I won't care nor listen.

These people will always try to manipulate. They will always lie.

So, when does it stop for ME? I know it will never stop for them. Not ever. They create what they live in. What do I want to live in? Well, not like them that is for sure.

So, I'm going to do some self-care here. After 16 hours of isolation on the 19th fact checking, reliving a really horrible place and mental state, grammar correcting and obsessing over a "rebuttal" stronger than a strike from Thor’s Hammer... I'm deleting the entire thing.

Just. Like. That.

I know some people who don't know me won't believe that... and that's OK.

I know the truth and so do those that are important to me. Anyone else is just a bonus. My goal was already achieved of warning people last year and I will continue to do so as I see fit. I'm never online besides to post my art because life doing adult things offline is my priority and responsibility. I can't control anyone other than myself. I conduct myself with morals and integrity. I KNOW that.

If people who don't know me think otherwise...

Well, with all due respect... Fuck 'em.

In the end, I had an amazing birthday today. And that is all she wrote. 

TO FRIENDS | FOLLOWERS:

I understand people will want to continue coming to me to let me know about the events taking place with ex-leaders/members of Dragons Crown and their known affiliates due to our history or to ask questions about the aforementioned. This isn’t actually helpful and isn’t contributing to my mental health or wellbeing, but instead constantly dredging up a painful aspect of history I’d rather not relive. There have been multiple instances of myself and others sharing their accounts, and posting logs/screenshots all across Tumblr. I am sure you can find them in my Archive as well. I ask that if more is posted or said regarding the whole situation and group (be it further reblogs or call-outs) that it not be brought to my attention no matter how important you might find it. Anons will be turned off, plugs like Tumblr Savior will continue to be utilized, and every step has been taken to keep it out of sight, out of mind. I’ll probably be reblogging this sub-section a few times over the course of the next week to ensure visibility. Thank you, and I love you all ♥

#bestbirthdayever

[camomills]

Title: Next Time Pairing: Silica/Sinon Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 2,431 Summary: Shino visits Keiko in a snowy day. One of them has to open up so the other can, too. Notes: Made for SAO Pride Week - Day 2: Trust. I’m a bit late in posting this due to a power outtage in my neighborhood. Thanks to @thegayfromrulid​ for beta reading.

AO3 Link

-

It was snowing outside.

Keiko patted inside the tall kitchen cabinet and her fingertips gathered dust brushing against the wooden cover. Feeling the cold metal surface of the can she looked for, she grabbed it and closed the door. Following into the next room, she was greeted by a small, fluffy creature that rubbed itself against her legs and purred softly.

“Are you really being affectionate or is it just the food?” She asked her cat and almost expected an answer.

She unsealed the can with the jagged opener, sneering at the unpleasant smell oozing from the container. She dumped the wet contents on the tiny bowl that read “Pina”. The feline’s ears bristled upwards as it gracefully walked to the pot, stuffing its face with the kind of gross-looking food.

There’s my answer, she thought.

Crouching, she caressed her pet’s head, a sigh of defeat escaping her mouth.

“You really are the worst kitty ever, you know?”

The cat continued to munch on the contents of the bowl, unfazed by her accusations. Stepping into the next room and slouching on the sofa in the living room, she stared at the ceiling for a while.

A few hours earlier, her parents had once again invited her to a family gathering, and once again, she’d refused.

She hated seeing her family. They asked too many questions about her time in the floating castle, too many inquiries of years she’d rather forget. She loathed seeing her relatives and the judging stares that they directed at her, and no amount of scolding about “her growing reputation as a shut-in” could change that or convince her to go.

Unsavory thoughts of her time in Aincrad swirled in her mind, but she quickly swatted them away. Letting those feelings fester for too long tended to give her headaches, and that wasn’t the time for–

The doorbell rang.

Her heart skipped a beat. She knew who stood behind the door – they were expected, after all, and there weren’t many people who would visit her dormitory, especially at this hour.

She walked to the door, somewhat anxious. Looking through the peephole, she saw the distorted image of a girl, her black hair tied with white ribbons on both sides of her face. The girl behind the door rubbed her palms together, hands bumping into her half-rimmed glasses as white smoke released from her mouth. The harsh December winter bit into her, leggings and coats and all, and it didn’t seem like the snowfall outside would stop any time soon.

Keiko opened the door, the cold wind sending the hairs of her nape on end. Some warmth from the house’s heater escaped through the entrance. Keiko, whose pigtails were so customary both in the real and in the virtual world they could as well be her trademark, wore her hair down, which gave her a slightly more mature air than her usual juvenile looks. The one-size-too-large sweater featuring a cartoonish goldfish over her chest seemed to act as a proper counterweight to that, though.

She couldn’t help but notice how comically burly Shino looked in her three-- four? layers of clothing. Her wool muffler hid the lower half of her face and she looked like a human spring roll.

Waving a hand, the visitor greeted: “Hello, Silica.”

“Come on in, Sinon,” the shorter girl replied with a smile, and Shino obliged.

The two picked up the nasty habit of calling each other by their avatar names in real life, but at that point, they just couldn’t help it. Their time together in the virtual world made these sound much more natural to say out loud.

Closing the door after entering the house, Shino untied the muffler around her neck and placed it on the makeshift hanger by the entrance, along with her coat. Keiko went ahead to the kitchen to start heating the tea. Taking off her boots before stepping into the hallway, a noise similar to a softly revving engine distracted the bespectacled girl.

As she saw Keiko awkwardly shooing the cat away from the kitchen, she realized the source of the noise.

“Oh.”

Slowly and warily, the furry source made its way to her.

Shino stood still, watching as the cat circled around her once, then brushed its white fur against her black leggings the second time around. She felt a mix of confusion and joy from the unexpected greeter.

**

Shino’s call earlier was a bit sudden.

“Is it okay if I visit you today?”

That was her simple request upon calling. Keiko had invited her to her house once before, and had no reason to decline, but she couldn’t help but notice something off about Shino’s voice; her tired tone, the light rasping, the subtle panic embedded into it.

“Are you alright?” she’d asked.

A weak “yeah” succeeding a short pause was all Shino said. Keiko didn’t push her.

Shino often felt a bit distant, like she’d prefer biting her own tongue off to opening up. A past of hurt had forced her to build walls around herself. Keiko didn’t know how to convey that desire, or even if it was her place to do so…

But she wanted to tear those walls down.

**

“Sorry for the wait,” Keiko said, entering the room.

She quickly directed her gaze down to the creature resting on Shino’s lap.

“It’s okay,” Shino deadpanned, pointing at Pina. “This little guy kept me company.”

Keiko wasn’t able to hold back the sheepish chuckles that escaped her mouth. Shino squinted at the sudden laughter.

“Sorry, sorry,” Keiko replied, shaking her head side to side. “You just said that so seriously!”

Shino scratched her cheek at the odd explanation, the hint of a smile making a way to her lips.

“I’m surprised, too. He generally doesn’t just approach people like that.”

As if on cue, the cat ran away from Shino’s leg pillow, darting back to the kitchen. At that, Keiko again seemed oddly amused, trying to hold back her joy at that simple event.

It wasn’t uncommon for Keiko to laugh at seemingly trivial matters, and albeit she’d never admit, the dark-haired girl found joy in being accidentally amusing in this way. She never found humor to be her forte. Keiko’s promptness for laughter seemed twofold whenever Shino was around – not that the girl knew that, obviously. She just assumed that was part of Keiko’s constantly cheery personality.

Finally setting the tray on the kotatsu, Keiko sat beside Shino, a tinge of nervousness prickling them both as she did so.

The guest took hold of the cup before her, warm ceramic heating cold hands, the lemony smell of honey revitalizing her body. She raised the drink to take a sip, feeling as the hot drink soothed her light shivering and a familiar taste stuck to her tongue.

The cup made a dull sound as it was gently set on the table, a tense silence filling the room for several seconds. Keiko was the one to break it.

“So, is everything okay with you? Anything you wanted to talk about?”

Shino averted her gaze down to her cup, inviting silence once more. She swirled the contents of her mug, avoiding eye contact as she thought on how to answer.

“Nothing in particular. You mentioned I should come visit a couple of weeks ago, and today just happened to be a good day for me. You said something about a movie last time I was here?”

“Ah, I see! That uh, that makes sense.”

Her voice seemed clearer than during her call, but something still seemed off. Failing at getting a read on her again, Keiko pursed her lips.

Maybe this is none of her business. Maybe she should just watch a movie with her friend, and stop being so nosy…

Unsure or whether or not to push further, she took the laptop by the side of the table and opened it, both of them staring at the screen as Keiko tried to remember the name of a movie she mentioned in passing weeks ago.

It might be how long it’s been, or that she only brought it up because she wanted to watch it with the girl next to her, or, perhaps more likely, how worried she is about her friend right now, but she struggles with the name.

Catching a whiff of the scent of the tea again, she remembers – both the name of the movie and something else.

“You know,” Keiko started as she began her typing, “I have trouble sleeping sometimes. Nightmares.”

Shino turned back to her, shoulders instinctively tensing upon seeing Keiko’s melancholic smile.

“Ever since I had to leave home and come to Tokyo, well, I was– am, a bit scared. I barely left the house back then, and then the SAO incident happened, and then, just when I thought things would be normal again… The only school that would accept me was hours from home, and I had to move here by myself, away from my family, and they blame me for it, somehow.”

She said that with a cheery expression, along with a cracked voice that unmasked her grief.

Keiko knows this is a bit sudden, and maybe somewhat awkward, but she doesn’t know how else to get through to her.

Shino stared at her speechless for a second before nodding, prompting her to continue.

"And so every night since, I feel this… guilt that makes me want to hurl,” she continued, clasping her hands in a cute, unfitting way.

Shino felt an urge to reach out to the girl next to her to comfort her, but something inside herself stopped her, wouldn’t let her. She simply clenched her fists.

“But,“ Keiko continued, “you told me about this blend of tea, a couple of months ago, I think? And I know this is silly, but ever since I started trying it a while before bed it’s been better.”

Shino wore a puzzled expression hearing this. Keiko continued, a bit fidgety.

“Uh, well, not a lot better? Just not as bad! I mean, it’s just tea. And I mean, I know this is silly,” she stammered, “but I guess it helped. Tea sounds like one of those silly things people who don’t really… get it recommend, but there was something about it, small as it was, that helped me shuffle a little less in my sleep. So,” she sounded a bit embarrassed saying the last part, “it’s like you helped me, in a way.”

Keiko put her hand over Shino’s, amber eyes uncharacteristically piercing as she stared the sniper down, a firm, reassuring squeeze draped over Shino’s knuckles.

“Now, I get the feeling you asked to come here for a reason. Because you had something troubling you.”

A short silence followed, and Shino just stared, perhaps a little more stoic than intended.

“… And I guess, I want to help you, too?”

She thought it was a bit embarrassing making her comfort pitch following a talk about the magical wonders of tea for anxiety, but at the same time she couldn't think of anything better to say. She just figured opening up first would be the best route there.

Keiko started fumbling, scratching her neck awkwardly.

"W-well, not that it’s uh, my place to say any of that, or like you have to talk to me about anything! I’m just rambling here, really! Haha!”

Shino laughed sheepishly as Keiko’s ears turn pink through her clarification, and a small “it’s fine, it’s fine,” is all she said before going back to silence. Given a moment, she grasped Keiko’s hand in return, her calm voice breaking the silence.

“I get nightmares too,” she confessed. “And, honestly, I’m afraid of being alone with my thoughts for too long, being all by myself in my apartment.” She fiddled with her fingers a bit, as if to focus on something keep herself talking.

“I guess I just wanted to hear someone’s voice. Be with someone for a while. You were one of the first people who came to mind, really.”

Sinon thought back to a few months ago – before BoB, before meeting Kirito, before meeting Silica and his other friends, and she can’t imagine herself being so frank to someone like this. The fog in her mind that tried to close others off seemed thinner. Easier to navigate through, if only slightly.

Keiko wasn't quite sure how to react at first. She just squeezed the other girl’s hand tighter; to remind her that she’s there. She’s a little surprised Shino puts enough trust in her to tell her this – honored, in a way. She felt a prickling in her eyes that threatened to turn into tears, but she knew that wasn’t the time.

“I’m, I’m glad, that I can be a person like that for you. I understand how it can be, to feel like you can’t talk about these thoughts with anyone, but…”

She moves her face closer to Shino’s.

“… You don’t have to, you know. If you’re okay with me.”

Keiko took note of how smitten Shino’s gaze looked at her, and finally noticed their faces were almost touching. Both girls’ cheeks tinted with a faint red at that moment, hearts skipping the same beat.

Shino quickly averted her gaze from Keiko’s, who in turn chuckled at the display of bashfulness that seemed more and more common for the girl she once perceived as a cold markswoman.

A wandering hand reached out from behind Shino’s neck to her shoulder, gently pulling her closer to the girl sitting next to her. The warmth brought her a sense of tranquility.

“You don’t have to be so shy about those things next time, you know,” Keiko’s soft voice explained.

“I’ll keep that in mind… next time,” Shino replied warmly, the last part uttered with a certain longing to it. She playfully bumped her shoulder against Keiko’s.

Shino leaned in closer and laid her head against Keiko’s shoulder, making herself comfortable as they finally started the movie waiting on the nearby laptop’s screen.

They didn’t know how much time they had to be like that, hands interwoven under the heated table, cozily leaning onto each other. They did know that then, however, nothing could touch them – the swirling white cold dancing through the biting winter winds outside, the expectations of judging relatives, the foreboding loneliness of an empty apartment. That small dormitory, with its small laptop, was their bunker, offering them the chance to be together.

When they were together. Those were the moments they could allow their worries to melt away like driven snow.

#SAO #Sword Art Online #saoprideweek2019 #Fili writes #Silinon

[maximelebled]

Growing Pains - Zelda, Tony Hawk, The Sims, games and related memories from my formative years

This blog post is about my personal history with video games, how they influenced me growing up, how they sometimes helped me, and more or less an excuse to write about associated memories with them.

This is a very straightforward intro, because I’ve had this post sitting as a draft for ages, trying to glue all of it cohesively, but I’m not a very good writer, so I never really succeeded. Some of these paragraphs date back at least one year. 

And I figured I should write about a lot of this as long as I still remember clearly, or not too inaccurately. Because I know that I don’t remember my earliest ever memory. I only remember how I remember it. So I might as well help my future self here, and give myself a good memento.

Anyway, the post is a kilometer long, so it’ll be under this cut.

My family got a Windows 95 computer when I was 3 years old. While I don’t remember this personally, I’m told that one of the first things I ever did with it was mess up with the BIOS settings so badly that dad’s computer-expert friend had to be invited to repair it. (He stayed for dinner as a thank you.)

It was that off-white plastic tower, it had a turbo button, and even a 4X CD reader! Wow! And the CRT monitor must have been... I don’t remember what it was, actually. But I do once remember launching a game at a stupidly high resolution: 1280x1024! And despite being a top-down 2D strategy, it ran VERY slowly. Its video card was an ATI Rage. I had no idea what that really meant that at the time, but I do recall that detail nonetheless.

Along with legitimately purchased games, the list of which I can remember:

Tubular Worlds

Descent II

Alone in the Dark I & III

Lost Eden

Formula One (not sure which game exactly)

Heart of Darkness

(and of course the famous Adibou/Adi series of educational games)

... we also had what I realize today were cracked/pirated games, from the work-friend that had set up the family computer. I remember the following:

Age of Empires I (not sure about that one, I think it might have been from a legitimate “Microsoft Plus!” disc)

Nightmare Creatures (yep, there was a PC port of that game)

Earthworm Jim (but without any music)

The Fifth Element

Moto Racer II

There are a few other memorable games, which were memorable in most aspects, except their name. I just cannot remember their name. And believe me, I have looked. Too bad! Anyway, in this list, I can point out a couple games that made a big mark on me.

First, the Alone in the Dark trilogy. It took me a long time to beat them. I still remember the morning I beat the third game. I think it was in 2001 or 2002.

There was a specific death in it which gave me nightmares for a week. You shrink yourself to fit through a crack in a wall, but it’s possible to let a timer run out—or fall down a hole—and this terrifying thing happens (16:03). I remember sometimes struggling to run the game for no reason; something about DOS Extended Memory being too small.

I really like the low-poly flat-shaded 3D + hand-drawn 2D style of the game, and it’d be really cool to see something like that pop up again. After the 8-bit/16-bit trend, there’s now more and more games paying tribute to rough PS1-style 3D, so maybe this will happen? Maybe I’ll have to do it myself? Who knows!

Second, Lost Eden gave me a taste for adventure and good music, and outlandish fantasy universes. Here’s the intro to the game:

A lot of the game is very evocative, especially its gorgeous soundtrack, and you spend a lot of time trekking through somewhat empty renders of landscapes. Despite being very rough early pre-rendered 3D, those places were an incredible journey in my young eyes. If you have some time, I suggest either playing the game (it’s available on Steam) or watching / skimmering through this “longplay” video. Here are some of my personal highlights: 25:35, 38:05, 52:15 (love that landscape), 1:17:20, 1:20:20 (another landscape burned in my neurons), 2:12:10, 2:55:30, 3:01:18. (spoiler warning)

But let’s go a couple years back. Ever since my youngest years, I was very intrigued by creation. I filled entire pocket-sized notebooks with writing—sometimes attempts at fiction, sometimes daily logs like the weather reports from the newspaper, sometimes really bad attempts at drawing. I also filled entire audio tapes over and over and OVER with “fake shows” that my sister and I would act out. The only thing that survived is this picture of 3-year-old me with the tape player/recorder.

It also turns out that the tape recorder AND the shelf have both survived.

(I don’t know if it still works.)

On Wednesday afternoons (school was off) and on the week-ends, I often got to play on the family computer, most of the time with my older brother, who’s the one who introduced me to... well... all of it, really. (Looking back on the games he bought, I can say he had very good tastes.)

Moto Racer II came with a track editor. It was simple but pretty cool to play around with. You just had to make the track path and elevation; all the scenery was generated by the game. You could draw impossible tracks that overlapped themselves, but the editor wouldn’t let you save them. However, I found out there was a way to play/save them no matter what you did, and I got to experiment with crazy glitches. 85 degree inclines that launched the bike so high you couldn’t see the ground anymore? No problem. Tracks that overlapped themselves several times, causing very strange behaviour at the meeting points? You bet. That stuff made me really curious about how video games worked. I think a lot of my initial interest in games can be traced back to that one moment I figured out how to exploit the track editor...

There was also another game—I think it was Tubular Worlds—that came on floppy disks. I don’t remember what exactly lead me to do it, but I managed to edit the text that was displayed by the installer... I think it was the license agreement bit of it. That got me even more curious as to how computers worked.

Up until some time around my 13th or 14th birthday, during summer break (the last days of June to the first days of September for French pupils), my sister and I would always go on vacation at my grandparents’ home.

The very first console game I ever played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my cousin’s Super Nintendo, who also usually stayed with us. Unlike us, he had quite a few consoles available to him, and brought a couple along. My first time watching and playing this game was absolutely mind-blowing to me. An adventure with a huge game world to explore, so many mysterious things at every corner. “Why are you a pink rabbit now?” “I’m looking for the pearl that will help me not be that.”

Growing up and working in the games industry has taken the magic out of many things in video games... and my curiosity for the medium (and its inner workings) definitely hasn’t helped. I know more obscure technical trivia about older games than I care to admit. But I think this is what is shaping my tastes in video games nowadays... part of it is that I crave story-rich experiences that can bring me back to a, for lack of a better term, “child-like” wonderment. And I know how weird this is going to sound, but I don’t really enjoy “pure gameplay” games as much for that reason. Some of the high-concept ones are great, of course (e.g. Tetris), but I usually can’t enjoy others without a good interwoven narrative. I can’t imagine I would have completed The Talos Principle had it consisted purely of the puzzles without any narrative beats, story bits, and all that. What I’m getting at is, thinking about it, I guess I tend to value the “narrative” side of games pretty highly, because, to me, it’s one of the aspects of the medium that, even if distillable to some formulas, is inherently way more “vague” and “ungraspable”. You can do disassembly on game mechanics and figure out even the most obsure bits of weird technical trivia. You can’t do that to a plot, a universe, characters, etc. or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

You can take a good story and weave it into a number of games, but the opposite is not true. It’s easy to figure out the inner working of gameplay mechanics, and take the magic out of them, but it’s a lot harder to do that for a story, unless it’s fundamentally flawed in some way.

Video games back then seemed a lot bigger than they actually were.

I got Heart of Darkness as a gift in 1998 or 1999. We used to celebrate Christmas at my grandparents’, so I had to wait a few days to be back home, and to able to put the CD in the computer. But boy was it worth it! Those animated cutscenes! The amazing pixel art animations! The amazing and somewhat disturbing variety of ways in which you can die, most of which gruesome and mildly graphic! And of course, yet again... a strange and outlandish universe that just scratches my itch for it. Well, one of which that forged my taste for them.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened or what it was, but I do remember that at some point we visited some sort of... exposition? Exhibit? Something along those lines. And it had a board games & computer games section. The two that stick out in my mind were Abalone (of which I still have the box somewhere) and what I think was some sort of 2D isometric (MMO?) RPG. I wanna say it was Ultima Online but I recall it looking more primitive than that (it had small maps whose “void” outside them was a single blueish color). 

In my last two years of elementary school, there was one big field trip per year. They lasted two weeks, away from family. The first one was to the Alps. The second one was... not too far from where I live now, somewhere on the coast of Brittany! I have tried really hard to find out exactly where it was, as I remember the building and facilities really well, but I was never able to find it again. On a couple occasions, we went on a boat with some kind of... algae harvesters? The smell was extremely strong (burning itself into my memory) and made me sick. The reason I bring them up is because quite a few of my classmates had Game Boy consoles, most of them with, you know, all those accessories, especially the little lights. I remember being amazed at the transparent ones. Play was usually during the off-times, and I watched what my friends were up to, with, of course, a bit of jealousy mixed in. The class traveled by bus, and it took off in the middle of the night; something like 3 or 4 in the morning? It seemed like such a huge deal at the time! Now here I am, writing THESE WORDS at 03:00. Anyway, most of my classmates didn’t fall back asleep and those that had a Game Boy just started playing on them. One of my classmates, however, handed me his whole kit and I got to do pretty much what I wanted with it, with the express condition that I would not overwrite any of his save files. I remember getting reasonably far in Pokémon before I had to give it back to him and my progress was wiped.

During the trip to the Alps, I remember seeing older kids paying for computer time; there was a row of five computers in a small room... and they played Counter-Strike. I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I would forget about it until the moment I’m writing these words, but I was watching with much curiosity.

The first time I had my own access to console games was in 2001. The first Harry Potter film had just come out, and at Christmas, I was gifted a Game Boy Advance with the first official game. I just looked it up again and good god, it’s rougher than I remember. The three most memorable GBA games which I then got to play were both Golden Sun(s) and Sword of Mana... especially the latter, with its gorgeous art direction. My dad had a cellphone back then, and I remember sneakily going on there to look up a walkthrough for a tricky part of Golden Sun’s desert bit. Cellphones had access to something called “WAP” internet... very basic stuff, but of course still incredible to me back then.

I eventually got to play another Zelda game on my GBA: Link’s Awakening DX. I have very fond memories of that one because I was bed-ridden with a terrible flu. My fever ran so high that I started having some really funky dreams, delirious half-awake hallucinations/feelings, and one night, I got so hot that I stumbled out of bed and just laid down against the cold tile of the hallway. At 3 in the morning! A crazy time! (Crazy for 11-year-old me.)

(The fever hallucinations were crazy. My bedroom felt like it was three times at big, and I was convinced that a pack of elephants were charging at me from the opposite corner. The “night grain” of my vision felt sharper, amplified. Every touch, my sore body rubbing against the bed covers felt like it was happening twice as much. You know that “Heavy Rain with 300% facial animation” video? Imagine that, but as a feverish feeling. The dreams were on another level entirely. I could spend pages on them, but suffice to say that’s when I had my first dream where I dreamed of dying. There were at least two, actually. The first one was by walking down a strange, blueish metal corridor, then getting in an elevator, and then feeling that intimate convinction that it was leading me to passing over. The second one was in some Myst-like world, straight out of a Roger Dean cover, with some sort of mini-habitat pods floating on a completely undisturbed lake. We were just trapped in them. It just felt like some kind of weird afterlife.)

I also eventually got to play the GBA port of A Link To The Past. My uncle was pretty amused by seeing me play it, as he’d also played the original on SNES before I’d even been born. I asked him for help with a boss (the first Dark World one), but unfortunately, he admitted he didn’t remember much of the game.

We had a skiing holiday around this time. I don’t remember the resort’s or the town’s name, but its sights are burned in my memory. Maybe it’s because, shortly after we arrived, and we went to the ski rental place, I almost fainted and puked on myself, supposedly from the low oxygen. It also turned out that the bedroom my parents had rented unexpectedly came with a SNES in the drawer under the tiny TV. The game: Super Mario World. I got sick at one point and got to stay in and play it. This was also the holiday where I developed a fondness for iced tea, although back then the most common brand left an awful aftertaste in your mouth that just made you even more thirsty.

We got a new PC in December of 2004. Ditching the old Windows 98 SE (yep, the OS had been upgraded in... 2002, I think?). Look at how old-school this looks. The computer office room was in the basement. Even with the blur job that I applied to the monitor for privacy reasons, you can still tell that this is the XP file explorer:

A look at what the old DSLR managed to capture on the shelf reveals some more of the games that were available to me back then: a bunch of educational software, The Sims 2, and SpellForce Gold. 

I might be misremembering but I think they were our Christmas gifts for that year; we both got to pick one game. I had no idea what I wanted, really, but out of all the boxes at (what I think was) the local Fnac store, it was SpellForce that stood out to me the most. Having watched Lord of the Rings the year prior might have been a factor. I somewhat understood Age of Empires years before that, but SpellForce? Man, I loved the hell out of SpellForce. Imagine a top-down RPG that can also be played from a third-person perspective. And with the concept of... hero units... wait a second... now that reminds me of Dota.

Imagine playing a Dota hero with lots of micro-management and being able to build a whole base on new maps. And sometimes visiting very RPG-ish sections (my favorites!) with very little top-down strategy bits, towns, etc. like Siltbreaker. I guess this game was somewhat like an alternate, single-player Dota if you look at it from the right angle. (Not the third-person one.)

I do remember being very excited when I found out that it, too, came with a level editor. I never figured it out, though. I only ever got as far as making a nice landscape for my island, and that was it!

A couple weeks after, it was Christmas; my sister and I got our first modern PC game: The Sims 2. It didn’t run super well—most games didn’t, because the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 wasn’t very good. But that didn’t stop me or my sister from going absolutely nuts with the game. This video has the timestamp of 09 January 2005, and it is the first video I’ve ever made with a computer. Less than two weeks after we got the game, I was already neck-deep in creating stuff.

Not that it was particularly good, of course. This is a video that meets all of the “early YouTube Windows Movie Maker clichés”.

Speaking of YouTube, I did register an account there pretty early on, in August of 2006. I’ve been through all of it. I remember every single layout change. I also started using Sony Vegas around that time. It felt so complex and advanced back then! And I’m still using it today. Besides Windows, Vegas Pro is very likely to be the piece of software that I’ve been using for the longest time.

I don’t have a video on YouTube from before 2009, because I decided to delete all of them out of embarassment. They were mostly Super Mario 64 machinima. It’s as bad as it sounds. The reason I bring that up right now, though, is that it makes the “first” video of my account the last one I made with the Sims 2.

But before I get too far ahead with my early YouTube days, let me go backwards a bit. We got hooked up to the Internet some time in late 2005. It was RTC (dialup), 56 kbps. my first steps into the Internet led me to the Cube engine. Mostly because back then my dad would purchase computer magazines (which were genuinely helpful back then), and came with CDs of common downloadable software for those without Internet connections. One of them linked to Cube. I think it was using either this very same screenshot, or a very similar one, on the same map.

The amazing thing about Cube is not only that it was open-source and moddable, but had map editing built-in the game. The mode was toggled on with a single key press. You could even edit maps cooperatively with other people. Multiplayer mapping! How cool is that?! And the idea of a game that enabled so much creation was amazing to me, so I downloaded it right away. (Over the course of several hours, 30 MiB being large for dialup.)

I made lots of bad maps that never fulfilled the definition of “good level” or “good gameplay”, not having any idea how “game design” meant, or what it even was. But I made places. Places that I could call my own. “Virtual homes”. I still distinctively remember the first map I ever made, even though no trace of it survives to this day. In the second smallest map size possible, I’d made a tower surrounded by a moat and a few smaller cozy towers, with lots of nice colored lighting. This, along with the distinctive skyboxes and intriguing music, made me feel like I’d made my home in a strange new world.

At some point later down the line, I made a kinda-decent singleplayer level. It was very linear, but one of the two lead developers of the game played it and told me he liked it a lot! Of course, half of that statement was probably “to be nice”, but it was really validating and encouraging. And I’m glad they were like that. Because I remember being annoying to some other mappers in the Sauerbraten community (the follow-up to Cube, more advanced technically), who couldn’t wrap their heads around my absolutely god awful texturing work and complete lack of level “design”. Honestly, sometimes, I actually kinda feel like trying to track a couple of them down and being like, “yeah, remember that annoying kid? That was me. Sorry you had to deal with 14-year-old me.”

At some point, I stumbled upon a mod called Cube Legends. It was a heavily Zelda-inspired “total conversion”; a term reserved for mods that are the moddiest mods and try to take away as much of the original foundation as possible. It featured lots of evocative MIDI music by the Norwegian composer Bjørn Lynne. Fun fact: the .mid files are still available officially from his website!

This was at the crossroad of many of my interests. It was yet another piece of the puzzle. As a quick side note, this is why Zelda is the first series that I name in the title of this post, even though I... never really thought of myself as a Zelda fan. It’s not that it’s one of the game series that I like the most, it’s just that, before I started writing this, I’d never realized how far-reaching its influence had been in my life, both in overt and subtle ways, especially during my formative years.

And despite how clearly unfinished, how much of a “draft” Cube Legends was, I could see what it was trying to do. I could see the author’s intent. And I’m still listening to Bjørn Lynne’s music today.

The Cube Engine and its forums were a big part of why I started speaking English so well. Compared to most French people, I mean. We’re notoriously bad with the English language, and so was I up until then. But having this much hands-on practice proved to be immensely valuable. And so, I can say that the game and its community have therefore had long-lasting impacts in my life.

I also tried out a bunch of N64 games via emulation, bringing me right back in that bedroom at my grandparents’ house, with my cousin. Though he did not have either N64 Zelda game back then.

The first online forum I ever joined was a Zelda fan site’s. There are two noteworthy things to say here:

It was managed by a woman who, during my stay in the community, graduated from her animation degree. At this stage I had absolutely no idea that this was going to be the line of work I would eventually pursue!

I recently ran into the former head moderator of the forums. (I don’t know when the community died.) One of the Dota players on my friends list invited him because I was like “hmm, I wanna go as 3, not as 2 players today”. His nickname very vaguely reminded me of something, a weird hunch I couldn’t place. Half an hour into the game, he said “hey Max... this might be a long shot, but did you ever visit [forum]?” and then I immediately yelled “OH MY GOD—IT IS YOU.” The world is a small place.

Access to the computer was sometimes tricky. I didn’t always have good grades, and of course, “punishment” (not sure the word is appropriate, hence the quotes, but you get the idea) often involved locking me out of the computer room. Of course, most times, I ended up trying to find the key instead. I needed my escape from the real world.  (You better believe it’s Tangent Time.)

I was always told I was the “smart kid”, because I “understood things faster” than my classmates. So they made me skip two grades ahead. This made me enter high school at nine years old. The consequences were awful (I was even more of the typical nerdy kid that wouldn’t fit in), and I wish it had never happened. Over the years, I finally understood: I wasn’t more intelligent. I merely had the chance to have been able to grow up with an older brother who’d instilled a sense of curiosity, critical thinking, and taste in books that were ahead of my age and reading level. This situation—and its opposite—is what I believe accounts for the difference in how well kids get to learn. It’s not innate talent, it’s not genetics (as some racists would like you to believe). It’s parenting and privilege.

And that’s why I’ll always be an outspoken proponent for any piece of media that tries to instill critical thinking and curiosity in its viewer, reader, or player.

But I digress.

Well, I’ve been digressing a lot, really, but games aren’t everything and after all, this post is about the context in which I played those games. Otherwise I reckon I would’ve just made a simple list.

I eventually got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Mario Kart DS. My sister had gotten her own just around the time when it released... she had the Nintendogs bundle. We had also upgraded to proper ADSL, what I think was about a ~5 megabits download speed. The Nintendo DS supported wi-fi, which was still relatively rare compared to today. In fact, Nintendo sold a USB wireless adapter to help with that issue—our ISP-supplied modem-router did not have any wireless capabilities. I couldn’t get it the adapter work and I remember I got help from a really kind stranger who knew a lot about networking—to a point that it seemed like wizardry to me.

I remember I got a “discman” as a gift some time around that point. In fact, I still have it. Check out the stickers I put on it! I think those came from the Sims 2 DVD box and/or one of its add-ons.

I burned a lot of discs. In fact, in the stack of burned CDs/DVDs that I found (with the really bad Sims movies somewhere in there), I found at least three discs that had the Zelda album Hyrule Symphony burned in, each with different additional tracks. Some were straight-up MIDI files from vgmusic.com...! And speaking (again) of Zelda, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess utterly blew my mind. I never got the game or the console, but damn did I yearn badly for it. I listened to the main theme of the game a lot, which didn’t help. I eventually got to play the first few hours at a friend’s place.

At some point, we’d upgraded the family computer to something with a bit more horsepower. It had a GeForce 8500 GT inside, which was eventually upgraded to a 9600 GT after the card failed for some reason. It could also dual-boot between XP and Vista. I stuck with that computer until 2011.

We moved to where I currently live in 2007. I’ve been here over a decade! And before we’d even fully finished unpacking, I was on the floor of the room that is now my office, with the computer on the ground and the monitor on a cardboard box, playing a pirated copy of... Half-Life! It was given to me by my cousin. It took me that long to find out about the series. It’s the first Valve game I played. I also later heard about the Orange Box, but mostly about Portal. Which I also pirated and played. I distinctly remember being very puzzled by the options menu: I thought it was glitched or broken, as changing settings froze the game. Turns out the Source engine had to chug for a little while, like a city car in countryside mud, as it reloaded a bunch of stuff. Patience is a virtue...

But then, something serious happened.

In the afternoon of 25 December 2007, I started having a bit of a dull stomach pain. I didn’t think much of it. Figured maybe I’d eaten too many Christmas chocolates and it’d go away. It didn’t. It progressively deteriorated into a high fever where I had trouble walking and my tummy really hurt; especially if you pressed on it. My parents tried to gently get me to eat something nice on New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t stay in very long. I could only feed myself with lemonade and painkiller. Eventually, the doctor decided I should get blood tests done as soon as possible. And I remember that day very clearly.

I was already up at 6:30 in the morning. Back then, The Daily Show aired on the French TV channel Canal+, so I was watching that, lying in the couch while waiting for my mom to get up and drive me to my appointment, at 7:00. It was just two streets away, but there was no way I could walk there. At around noon, the doctor called and told my mom: “get your son to the emergency room now.”

Long story short, part of my intestines nuked themselves into oblivion, causing acute peritonitis. To give you an idea, that’s something with a double-digit fatality rate. Had we waited maybe a day or two more, I would not be here writing this. They kind of blew up. I had an enormous abcess attached to a bunch of my organs. I had to be operated on with only weak local anaesthetics as they tried to start draining the abscess. It is, to date, by far the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. It was bad enough that the hospital doctor that was on my case told me that I was pretty much a case worthy to be in textbooks. I even had medical students come into my hospital room about it! They were very nice.

This whole affair lasted over a month. I became intimately familiar with TV schedules. And thankfully, I had my DS to keep me company. At the time, I was pretty big into the Tony Hawk DS games. They were genuinely good. They had extensive customization, really great replayability, etc. you get the idea. I think I even got pretty high on the online leaderboards at some point. I didn’t have much to do on some days besides lying down in pain while perfecting my scoring and combo strategies. I think Downhill Jam might’ve been my favorite.

My case was bad enough that they were unable to do something due to the sad state of my insides during the last surgery of my stay. I was told that I could come back in a few months for a checkup, and potentially a “cleanup” operation that would fix me up for good. I came back in late June of 2008, got the operation, and... woke up in my hospital room surrounded by, like, nine doctors, and hooked up to a morphine machine that I could trigger on command. Apparently something had gone wrong during the operation, but they never told me what. I wasn’t legally an adult, so they didn’t have to tell me. I suspect it’s somewhere in some medical files, but I never bothered to dig up through my parents’ archives, or ask the hospital. And I think I would rather not know. But anyway, that was almost three more weeks in the hospital. And it sucked even more that time because, you see, hospital beds do not “breathe” like regular beds do. The air can’t go through. Let’s say I’m intimately familiar with the smell of back sweat forever.

When I got out, my mom stopped by a supermarket on the way home. And that is when I bought The Orange Box, completely on a whim, and made my Steam account. Why? Because it was orange and stood out on the shelf.

(As a side note, that was the whole bit I started writing first, and that made me initially title this post “growing pains”. First, because I’m bad at titles. Second, because not that I didn’t have them otherwise (ow oof ouch my knees), but that was literally the most painful episode of my entire life thus far and it ended in a comically-unrelated, high-impact, life-changing decision. Just me picking up The Orange Box after two awful hospital stays... led me to where I am today.)

While I was recovering, I also started playing EarthBound! Another bit of a life-changer, that one. To a lesser extent, but still. I was immediately enamored by its unique tone. Giygas really really really creeped me out for a while afterwards though. I still get unsettled if I hear its noises sometimes.

I later bought Garry’s Mod (after convincing my mom that it was a “great creative toolbox that only cost ten bucks!”), and, well, the rest is history. By which I mean, a lot of my work and gaming activity since 2009 is still up and browsable. But there are still a few things to talk about.

In 2009, I bought my first computer with YouTube ad money: the Asus eee PC 1005HA-H. By modern standards, it’s... not very powerful. The processor in my current desktop machine is nearly 50 times as fast as its Atom N280. It had only one gigabyte of RAM, Windows 7 Basic Edition, and an integrated GPU barely worthy of the name; Intel didn’t care much for 3D in their chips back then. The GMA 945 didn’t even have hardware support for Transform & Lighting.

But I made it work, damn it. I made that machine run so much stuff. I played countless Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods on it—though, due to the CPU overhead on geometry, some of those were trickier. I think one of the most memorable ones I played was Mistake of Pythagoras; very surreal, very rough, but I still remember it so clearly. I later played The Longest Journey on it, in the middle of winter. It was a very cozy and memorable experience. (And another one that’s an adventure wonderful outlandish alien universe. LOVE THOSE.)

I did more than playing games on it, though...

This is me sitting, sunburned on the nose, in an apartment room, on 06 August 2010. This was in the Pyrénées, at the border between France and Spain. We had a vacation with daily hiking. Some of the landscapes we visited reminded me very strongly of those from Lost Eden, way up the page...

So, you see, I had 3ds Max running on that machine. The Source SDK as well. Sony Vegas. All of it was slow; you bet I had to use some workarounds to squeeze performance out of software, and that I had to keep a close, watchful eye on RAM usage. But I worked on this thing. I really did! I animated this video’s facial animation bits (warning: this is old & bad) on the eee PC, during the evenings of the trip, when we were back at our accomodation. The Faceposer tool in the Source SDK really worked well on that machine.

I also animated an entire video solely on the machine (warning: also old and bad). It had to be rendered on the desktop computer... but every single bit of the animation was crafted on the eee PC.

I made it work.

Speaking of software that did not run well: around that time, I also played the original Crysis. The “but can it run Crysis?” joke was very much justified back then. I had to edit configuration files by hand so that I could run the game in 640x480... because I wanted to keep most of the high-end settings enabled. The motion blur was delicious, and it blew my mind that the effect made the game feel this smooth, despite wobbling around in the 20 to 30 fps range.

Alright. It’s time to finish writing this damn post and publish it at last, so I’m going to close it out by listing some more memories and games that I couldn’t work in up there.

Advance Wars. Strategy game on GBA with a top-down level editor. You better believe I was all over the editor right away.

BioShock. When we got the 2007 desktop computer, it was one of the first games I tried. Well, its demo, to be precise. Its tech and graphics blew my mind, enough that I saved up to buy the full game. This was before I had a Steam account; I got a boxed copy! I think it might have been the last boxed game I ever bought? It had a really nice metal case. The themes and political messages of the game flew way over my head, though.

Mirror’s Edge. The art direction was completely fascinating to me, and it introduced me to Solar Fields’ music; my most listened artist this decade, by a long shot.

L.A. Noire. I lost myself in its stories and investigations, and then, I did it all again, with my sister at the helm. I very rarely play games twice (directly or indirectly), which I figure is worth mentioning.

Zeno Clash. It was weird and full of soul, had cool music, and cool cutscenes. It inspired me a lot in my early animation days.

Skyward Sword. Yep, going back to Zelda on that one. The whole game was pretty good, and I’m still thinking about how amazing its art direction was. Look up screenshots of it running in HD on an emulator... it’s outstanding. But there’s a portion of the game that stands tall above the rest: the Lanayru Sand Sea. It managed to create a really striking atmosphere in many aspects, through and through. I still think about it from time to time, especially when its music comes on in shuffle mode.

Wandersong. A very recent pick, but it was absolutely a life-changing one. That game is an anti-depressant, a vaccine against cynicism, a lone bright and optimist voice.

I realize now this is basically a “flawed but interesting and impactful games” list. With “can establish its atmosphere very well” as a big criteria. (A segment of video games that is absolutely worth exploring.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever make my own video game. I have a few ideas floating around and I tried prototyping some stuff, though my limited programming abilities stood in my way. But either way, if it happens one day, I hope I’ll manage to channel all those years of games into the CULMINATION OF WHAT I LIKE. Something along those lines, I reckon.

#video games

[hoang32740946-blog]

class="title design-scope ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer" design="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; qualifications: rgb(18, 18, 18); max-height: 4.8rem; overflow: concealed; font-body weight: four hundred; line-height: 2.4rem; shade: var(--ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer-title-shade, var(--yt-spec-text-Main)); font-loved ones: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-sizing: var(--ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer-title-font-sizing, 1.8rem); remodel: var(--ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer-title-remodel, none); text-shadow: var(--ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer-title-text-shadow, none);">pressure-default-design="" class="design-scope ytd-online video-Main-facts-renderer">Creating a Workshop in a Small Place (2019) - Without having a Nightmare Finances (Underneath $a thousand)

style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-spouse and children: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-sizing: 13px; white-Room: pre-wrap; history-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);">Tips on how to Arrange Your Woodworking Shop In A little Place With out a Nightmare Price range. Click the link to create your buy below $1000 : http://bit.ly/workshopsmall2019style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-spouse and children: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-sizing: 13px; white-Room: pre-wrap; history-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);">

Discover Almost everything You have to know About Organising Your Greatest A little Woodworking Workshop

They say a man is just pretty much as good because the resources he chooses to employ. This assertion is especially legitimate. Aside from skill, your craftsmanship is largely based on the resources you employ. When you don’t learn how to choose the proper resources, there is a larger problem in the palms. Owning been a woodworker with the previous fifteen or so a long time, it really is Risk-free to mention that I've found and performed everything. Getting started was pretty hard for me. I needed I had someone to guideline me as a result of every single action of just how, but I was not Blessed. I had to learn the hard way, generating many problems in the method that Price me 1000s of pounds even though setting up my workshop and growing my business enterprise. A Review of Greatest Little Shop Guide.

When I very first purchased and read Ralph's guideline, I actually wished I had this ebook fifteen a long time in the past.

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Here's why:

Among the greatest problems I made in the past was overspending on resources. I had been buying poor resources and various times I wound up overspending on resources I actually didn’t will need. It is possible to’t blame me even though; any individual searching for good quality resources with a price range will tell you the working experience is like strolling with a minefield. It's because there are quite a few factors you might want to take into consideration. I immediately discovered that purchasing from major box retailers for example Home Depot, Amazon Walmart, Lowes, plus the like was not a good suggestion. That is especially when hunting for a one cease buy your Software connected desires.

And as Ralph mentions, the "paid out" testimonials and suggestions make acquiring resources a guessing video game. It's because more often than not, these "sponsored" testimonials are paid out for with the producers on the resources on their own!

The online sellers also often provide, outdated refurbished resources pretty much as good situation resources to end up getting dissatisfied after a handful of makes use of. Then There may be also the risk of buying an excessive amount in terms of amount and rate, not expending plenty of as well as buying resources that just ****. This working experience is heartbreaking because you just don’t reduce dollars, You furthermore may reduce your valuable time. It will get worse any time you go throughout the working experience many times. I Pretty much quit my enthusiasm and never ever got started out using this type of passion.

Equally as I had stated previously, Once i started out out 25 a long time in the past I needed I had someone to guideline me as a result of setting up my shop. I realize there are quite a few other woodworkers who are in an analogous scenario right this moment.

Here's why I really advocate Greatest Little Shop to any individual setting up shop This is actually the vital reason why Ralph produced the last word Little Shop Guide to assist you to create a totally practical tiny shop with a price range. And it clearly shows while in the ebook.

There are lots of guides out there on shop set up but A lot of them Will not target price range - which can be in my opinion considered one of The most crucial factors.

Let's be honest, you'll be able to create any shop you prefer For those who have a endless price range! Although not any individual has that luxury - surely not me. So the tips and tips is helpful and very realistic for shop setups with a price range.

Ralph involves all the lessons he has discovered the hard way and his key purpose is to save you through the agony on the demo-and-error process of setting up shop. As a result, you may no longer really have to make bone-headed problems or squander any extra money buying the wrong resources

Click the link to create your buy below $1000 : http://bit.ly/workshopsmall2019style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-spouse and children: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-sizing: 13px; white-Room: pre-wrap; history-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);">

That which you Can Expect To Find While in the Guide:

The guideline contains six modules which include:

• Software Assortment

Quite a few woodworkers reduce some huge cash in the course of Software selection. The guideline will show how to find out the resources you would like before you get started buying them. In addition, it contains a hand-Software and electric power Software browsing record, and a brief listing of significant pneumatic, portable, and stationary resources plus in which for getting each one of these resources at discounted price ranges. Additionally, you will get to learn the way to keep the resources in top condition.

• Place Assortment

Uncover the attainable home workshop Areas plus diverse layouts On this guideline. Additionally, you will get Tips on how to divide your private home workshop into diverse parts.

• Lighting, Electrical power, and Soundproofing

You may know everything about energy and lights in a workshop which includes diverse layouts and cost. You’ll even be enlightened on how to soundproof your woodworking shop by approximately 70 p.c for below $five hundred.

• Additionally, you will understand Cooling, Heating, and Air flow, as well as, how to cope with dust in the workshop. You will find recommendations on safety likewise.

This guideline is ideal for you if you'd like to learn the way to create a totally stocked practical workshop. style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-spouse and children: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-sizing: 13px; white-Room: pre-wrap; history-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ek5soqyqlw https://rson54079833149.tumblr.com/post/184808401920/class-title-fashion-scope-ytd-online

#Setting up a Workshop in a Small Space 2019

[actualbampot]

Skewed

A/N: I’ve been writing crap fanfiction since the dawn of time and not once have I posted any of it online. Be nice, this is 3/4 years old. If it’s your cup of tea, enjoy or whatever.  What if Raven didn’t save Yang in the ‘No Brakes’ episode? Warnings for mild/moderate torture, blood, YangxNeo, Baked Alaska

The cracking thud of Yang's heavy body dropping to the floor was a sickening sound.

Pain blossomed out over the narrow of her vision followed by a loud whimper. How had this happened again?

Oh yea.. heterochromia

That was Yang's first thought at the time, her clothes, hair and eyes. All of them alternating between sickly sweet colours of pink, chocolate and vanilla, betrayed by that sudden shift of her innocent smile curling into a cruel and knowing smirk.

Those eyes. Had they been really changing?

At first Yang thought the pumping adrenaline was simply making her lose her focus, that she was just imagining it. Her opponent had been landing some lucky shots and throwing her off her game.

But when her face and body began to sting, when her arms were heaving towards the girl and hitting only air, Yang dreadfully began to realize that this pint sized monster was just toying with her, her small frame moving with such fluidity and grace that Yang could only snarl at each dodge and parry, and in response her opponent flashed a toothy smirk solely in mockery.

Come on. Hit me

She’d remained silent throughout, though the words may as well have been written all over her features, and in a flare of rage Yang was carelessly throwing all of her strength behind her hooks. The familiar sight of red bleeding into lilac becoming more apparent with each swing, drawing a silent chuckle from the short girl, hand resting over her lips for effect.

Yang was having trouble recalling the exact moment her body hit the floor. She remembered throwing all her body weight into a jab- so sure that this time it would hit and wipe that smug expression of hers to kingdom come.

However the girl had parried, sending two kicks in quick succession square underneath her chin with enough force that her body collided harshly with the steel wall of the train carriage before unceremoniously hitting the floor.

Stars of pain broke out along Yang's skull and she found herself squinting up at the lights through a dark tunnel of vision. She tried to move but everywhere throbbed in angry and exhausted pain, even Ember Celica felt like dead weights on her arms.

How had this happened again? It was getting harder to recall.

-Oh yea, heterochromia.

'Concentrate Yang. Stay awake'

The familiar click of heels scraping metal flooring approached over her body. The sound trapped a lump of dread in Yang's throat and within moments her dazed but desperate eyes were locked with another pair.

The brawler held in a whimper when the small terror blinked away the brown and cotton candy pink eyes that had been taunting her thus far, replacing the former with a pale, almost eerily transparent silver.

Yang could only watch as her hand lowered down to the handle of that wretched parasol she wielded. Attached to the handle the girl unsheathed a long and deadly pointed needle from the umbrella’s spine, and within moments Yang's expression creased in terror.

The smirk that had been nothing more than a frustrating distraction was gone, replaced by a manically wide grin of intent that only matched the sharpness of her needle.

In an act of self preservation Yang’s body kick started to life, bringing her arm back to throw a last ditch and desperate punch.

It was met with a heeled boot slamming down into her bicep. The heel drove her arm back down to the floor with the harsh point almost puncturing her skin. Yang hissed in pain, and before she could try to retaliate she felt the same searing pain as her opposite arm was cruelly pinned down in a similar fashion.

Above her the girl shifted her weight back onto both heels and carefully squatted lower to Yang's body, only stopping when her hips hovered a few inches from Yang's chest. The weight tore a cry of pain from the huntresses throat and to her horror, Yang watched a faint redness bloom along the girls cheeks, her teeth tentatively catching her lower lip in unadulterated thought.

She was enjoying this.

'Don't- My teammates will- DON'T-'

Pain ripped out along Yang's shoulder and chest and nothing could have suppressed the cry that tore from her throat mid sentence.

Neo buried her needle inch-deep, her eyes lighting up in delight as Yang desperately writhed and twisted underneath her.

Yang's head was swimming, her chest rising and falling fast and dangerously close to hyperventilation. She need to do something. She needed her team. Needed Ruby.

Meanwhile Neo drank in the sight of this towering hot-head coming undone. She sharply tilted her head and twisted the needle in unison, escalating cries of pain deepening the pink blush she already wore.

More.

A small bud of blood rose to the surface of Yang's skin when the needle slid out with ease, red blooming beneath her jacket.

There was no warning when the needle punctured for a second time, and Yang's jaws clenched hard enough to shatter.

'F-FUCK-' leather tight against her mouth cut her cuss short. Neo twisted the needle again, her lips parting and closing wordlessly at the vibrations of Yang's muffled screams against her gloved hand.

This was too much. She couldn't breathe, couldn't find her voice to try crying for help. White began spotting the girls' vision, feeling that at any point her mind would snap like a taught thread.

And this terrifying, beautiful little nightmare was winding the string tight around her fingers, forcing her desired responses from Yang with every single pull and tug.

Yang watched as Neo's small pink tongue darted across her lips, then pursed as if trying to contain her excitement. The needle eased further inside, flesh offering little resistance against its razor sharp point and the girl above her forced her weight down.

More.

Yang's eyes snapped wordlessly wide as needle found its mark, puncturing through the other side of her shoulder into the floor beneath. A shudder coursed up Neo's spine, the sensation of Yang's raw screaming against her palm making her fingers tingle in delight.

What felt like an eternity passed for the younger girl before Neo's leather clad hand finally slid from Yangs mouth, allowing her to heave in agony and panic. Her gulps and coughs of air were close enough to mingle with the hot breeze of her captors short and excited breaths.

The blondes heart felt like it was breaking through her chest in fear as Neo's gloved thumb traced patterns on her soft lower lip, parting her own in unison with Yang's when sliding the needle further down.

Neo drank up her opponents cries with bated breath relishing the heat emanating from her body like a wildfire.

Just as she'd expected, the younger girls aura was weak and untrained and couldn't compensate against intense pain, but in turn it fueled her fiery semblance to its limits. Heat defiantly rolled from her body in waves, those red pools of hurt and rage coupled with heady scent of blood and sweat almost causing Neo to lower her lips and close the few centimeters left between them- Almost.

Her stretched and manic grin continued to push the limits of her blushing cheeks. Abandoning the needle that held Yang down, her hands found the brawlers hot and dampened face, thumbs tentatively catching her tears.

'M-my team...' Yang rasped out between the scorching area that separated their lips 'W-will find you down h-here.'

Neo cocked her multi toned head as if urging her to continue speaking, feeding gloved fingers up through those gorgeous blonde tresses.

'..T-they won’t let you g-get-'

A rip cut her short. Neo sunk tight fists into the helpless girls' hair and tore her body up from the floor.

Yangs agape and wordless scream could never be matched by the girl above her. In a single blink one silver and one chocolate eye lidded over with heavy desire as she slowly dragged Yang's quivering and flushed body up the length of the needle.

Neo could only appear to suppress a moan of delight that would never be heard as she wrenched on that glowing golden hair of hers to brush their lips together.

'..S-stop' The word barely passed as a whisper, repeating brokenly until the plead died out on Yang’s tongue.

The beautiful monster above wrenched her head back, tilting her neck at a sharp angle to expose the length of her throat, one hand freeing her hair to tug her annoying scarf aside before pressing the hot skin flush against her lips and teeth.

Yang felt like she was going to die. The girls mouth left hot trails along her neck, biting and sucking possessively as if proof of her existence wouldn't be validated enough by skewering the girl to the floor like an animal.

Her body shivered despite her semblance, and somehow the pain became a background drone, the only thing she could differentiate between being the stiff rattling in her bones, and Neo's warm lips and breath trailing from her neck to her jaw, her shockingly hot tongue mixing against the dampness clinging to her skin.

Something hot was curling a knot in her stomach, a sensation hiding beneath the surface of the pain.

She was sure she was dying, but her semblance continued to burn life into her heart until her chest felt like fire. Somewhere deep down, Yang knew her body was betraying her.

Neo's weight shifted and the blonde felt the throb of relief when her heels dislodged from her arms and moved away, the shorter girl instead sitting perched on her chest like a throne. It wasn't long before she realized the multicoloured girl had shifted her attention, leaving Yang's skin simmering with the absence of her mouth.

Neo reached behind her to where the girls legs lay motionless. She couldn't feel a hand against her clothes, rummaging until she moved back with a scroll in hand. HER scroll.

The blonde squinted through hazy vision to focus on her sisters face on the screen and somewhere in the background a familiar ringtone was playing. Neo's next smile was one of endearment, her finger toying across the glass where Ruby's mouth was displayed before swiping to accept the incoming call.

Sharp elbows were propped on her chest hard, and the scroll was held to Yang's ear, playful eyes silently observing, Neo's small pearly teeth catching her lower lip to suppress a smile that made Yang feel sick.

'Yang the train is coming close to the end- are you ok? We need you up here! Yang?'

Ruby's voice carried clearly across the speaker and the fiery blonde swallowed down hard to control her breathing.

She kept absolutely silent, the sound of the rickety train should have been the only noise playing on the other side. No. She wouldn't lead Ruby down here, not with Neo waiting and with no way of defending her sister.

The girl above her shifted with a soft tut of disapproval, reaching for her needle and bending.

'Yang are you there?! Yang!'

The moment went white.

#rwby #yang xiao long #neopolitan #baked alaska #I originally called this kebab #rwby2 hiatus was a dark time

[screamingintp]

more about my mc

this is a mess, please don’t read it unless you’re interested in what i come up with when i’m sleep deprived and creating my first rp character

https://character-resource.deviantart.com/art/Big-Ass-Character-Sheet-Updating-167182524 but i cut out a buncha shit

welcome to hell(or the place in which I can’t capitalize for shit and curse too much and am vague but that’s honestly my personality in general)

Full Name: Mark Knox

Meaning: Mark, derived from Martkos(Roman), related to the war god, Mars. Knox, derived from cnoc(Scottish), meaning hillock.

Origin: made it up on the spot because planning is for cowards

Signature: illegible letters - MKX

Gender: male

Orientation: pan(i wrote pam and don’t regret it)-aro

Blood: three-quarters pure, half blood father

Birthday: 6-6

Deathday: (May not have one yet)(oh gee, did you not expect me to have a day of death?)(well, i don’t)

Astrological Sign: Gemini(fun fact: Draco’s the only Gemini on the wiki)(why is this relevant)(astrology is weird as all hell)

____

Immediate Family: Jacob Knox(brother)

Distant Family: Shay Knox(mother), Clark Knox(father)

Parenting: non-existent

Upbringing(morals and ideals): considering he was raised by a person only a few years older than him, during the period of Voldemort’s rule, he is less screwed up than he could’ve been. However, he still possesses a rather vague and undefined sense of right and wrong - using his logic to bypass any sort of regrets if it blocks him from his goal

Infancy: (dropped at birth is an option and i’m living for it)

Childhood: that one kid who lit ants on fire and was ‘rebellious’ (you know that post about america being the asshole kid with neglectful parents? That’s the one)

Adolescence: canon

Adulthood: never. He hasn’t even gotten taller

____

Species: hooman

Preferred Hand: ambidextrous(he keeps injuring his hands)

Facial Type: like a face, why is this - oval, i guess

Eye Color: dark brown

Hair Color (Self Explanatory)(it isn’t when his hair is grey/silver/white)(the kid probably bleached his already pale hair)(he probably likes the smell of bleach)

Hairstyle: fringe-up

Complexion: blushes easily, relatively smooth unless you look at the cuts and bruises and scars on his arms, back and legs

Body Type: ectomorph

Build: skinny arms and legs, he isn’t the most physically fit and regularly damages his body due to his complete lack of care for his own safety

Height: 65 in

Weight: 120 lb

Shoe Size: (Shoe size doesn’t matter)(goddamnit i forgot this was an innuendo)(keep it pg, please)

Birthmarks/scars: no birthmarks, and has tons of ugly marks all over him, none of them particularly remarkable

Distinguishing Features: the contrast between his eye color and hair color - but other than the hair, he doesn’t have a memorable face

_____

Health: as healthy as a wizard without impulse control and emotional support could be

Energy: swings from highs and lows without any pattern

Memory: remembers the small stuff, the negative parts - forgets about major ideas or lessons

Senses: heavily relies on eyes, can’t taste for shit

Allergies: (Self Explanatory. May be optional.)(i mean, i would put animals, but we have transfiguration)

Medication: needs some, doesn’t take any

Phobias(irrational fears):

Symmetrophobia(fear of symmetry, an unnatural-looking but normal occurrence, which isn’t debilitating, but causes him stress and uneasiness)

Siderophobia(fear of the stars, the idea that there’s so much out there that he doesn’t know of is pretty awful and, again, while it isn’t going to freeze him up, it will cause him to become upset)

Addictions: none yet

Mental Disorders: undiagnosed

______

Style: couldn’t care less about appearance  - he wears the school robes most of the time

Mode of Dress: doesn’t have a particular taste, as long as it’s passable, it’s fine - tends to wear a size or two larger

Grooming: somewhere in between messy and neat

Posture: he displays an air of aloofness and confidence - almost condescending in stance

Gait: quickly and efficiently - it’s brisk at his slowest

Coordination: not physically fit at all, he’s too reckless for that - exercises to the point of exhaustion without realizing that it’s detrimental to do so and has limbs flying all over the place

Habits and Mannerisms: taps his foot or fingers when excited, nervous, or anything that deviates from his usual ‘cool’ facade

Scent: earth, smoke, and grass - faint but noticeable

______

Mood: ‘calm’ - probably plotting though

Attitude: he’s charismatic and charming until you dig deeper

Stability: hA

Expressiveness: can act like he’s wearing his heart on his sleeve but can never fully give his true thoughts

When Happy: smirks - invades personal space and slows down

When Depressed: smiles - talks louder and speaks faster

When Angry: (trolls online is an option and if that isn’t Mark, i don’t know what is) smirks - wide eyes and tense hands

______

Friends: Rubeus Hagrid - but not really

Enemies: Rita Skeeter - but not really

Bosses: Filius Flitwick - but not really

Followers: not even himself

Heroes: Filius Flitwick - “short people are closer to hell and he’s gonna whoop my ass if I do anything stupid”

Rivals: Ismelda - “for most edgy teen”

Relates to: Dumbledore - impersonal but seemingly close, full of contradictions and ulterior motives

Pets/Familiars: does his jar of bug bodies count?

______

Wardrobe: mostly consisting of Hogwarts robes, formal robes, and the identical grey-blue sweater and jeans

Equipment: carries a wand and a pencil(but not paper, because he has problems)

Accessories: a single dangling silver piercing on his right ear(family tradition)

Trinkets: carries hair ties on his wrist all the time(why? He doesn’t even know)

Funds: his family is relatively well off, being a respected branch of purebloods

Home: almost like his personality, warm and nice on the outside, cozy on the inside, but dead silent and empty when no one looks - not large but not small either, seeming normal by all accounts if you don’t look into any of the rooms(jacob’s windows are taped shut and Mark broke through the locked door that connected their bedrooms)

Neighborhood: the woods

Transportation: running because stamina apparently is infinite in this world

Collections: bug bodies, herbs, and lighters

Prized Possession: his wand, after seeing Jacob’s broken one

_____

Lovers: yeet

Marital Status: yeet

____

Experience: works in the three broomsticks in his off time to get experience and money, nothing serious

Organizations/Affiliations: changeable, he doesn’t plant many roots or make any long-term promises

______

Education: i mean, Hogwarts. But is it even ‘education’?

School: (What was their school like?) bitch this is Hogwarts

Social Stereotype: “least favorite cursed student”

Intelligence: mostly interpersonal, linguistic and logical

Extracurricular Activities: would do theater if given the chance

_____

Morals: don’t exist - but he honestly has a problem with reasoning his way into committing seriously wrong deeds

Crime Record: hasn’t been caught yet ;)

Motivation: adrenaline, change - nothing truly meaningful or satisfying

Priorities: knowledge, humans, self

Philosophy: gen z nihilism

Etiquette: usually practices ‘correct’ etiquette - does not give a fuck if his behaviour offends someone though

Influences: everything and anything he finds intriguing

Traditions: tries to run away from them, always moving and staying ahead of the past

______

Career: spell-inventor or wand-maker/seller

Desires: uncertain

Accomplishments: undetermined

Biggest Failure: failing Jacob

Secrets: his manipulative side, his genuinely mean streak and the fact that he regrets having those traits

Regrets: a shit ton of things

Worries: Jacob, being nothing in the grand scheme of things, being a hypocrite, betrayal, a shit ton of things

Best Dream: having a greater purpose

Worst Nightmare: dying alone and being left behind as a ghost

Best Memories: finding his brother’s secret room, meeting Billingsley

Worst Memories: losing his brother, lying to his teachers, accidentally calling Chester: Jacob

_______

Hobbies/Interests: explore the wilderness, identify flora and fauna, observing other people

Skills/Talents: pyromancy, charms in general, debating, acting, singing

Likes: mint, sharpies, fire

Dislikes: himself, close-minded people, pity

Sense of Humor: sarcastic, self-deprecating, relatively dark

Pet Peeves: the guy scratching his quill the wrong way in the front row whenever they write essays

Dreams/Nightmares: doesn’t dream usually - when he does, it’s usually flashes of color and abstract black and white shapes

Quirks: can’t sit on the fucking couch correctly

Understands: how people think, the reason they fail, mistakes

Can't understand: quidditch, values, structure

Closet Hobby: burning shit(though that isn’t really a hidden thing with him)

_________

Strengths: charismatic, diplomatic, quick-witted, inwardly caring, able to understand his flaws, patient, logical, able to read other people

Flaws: lies often, manipulative, lazy, lenient, passive, harsh, inconsiderate, enjoys pushing people’s buttons, doesn’t understand people

Perception of others: beautiful, incomprehensible, vast

Instincts: wants approval(deems it irrational)

Lures: leadership roles, secrets, problems

Soft Spot: innocence but not ignorant, optimism

________

Ability: capable if he puts his mind to it - employs unpredictable and risky techniques instead of having a fear of consequences

Weaknesses: stubborn opponents - he expects change and gets caught off guard when someone seems set in their ways

Patronus: non-corporeal

Boggart: fire(irony i guess is easy to use when you don’t have anything else)

Wand: spruce, phoenix feather, 12”, springy

Amortentia: lime, smoke, sharpies

House: Ravenclaw(that post about the kid wanting to be put in Ravenclaw since ppl will trust you but got in Slytherin)

_____

Favorite Color(s): grey, blue

Favorite Animal(s): swedish short snout

Favorite Drink(s): coffee and soda(probably together because he can’t function like a normal person)

Favorite Genre: mystery or myths

Favorite Subject(s): charms(Flitwick is the man) and divination(where you can bs your way through anything)

Least Favorite Color(s): black, white

Least Favorite Animal(s): flies

Least Favorite Drink(s): does soup count? Because he does drink it in a cup

Least Favorite Genre: manuals and biographies

Least Favorite Subject(s): flying(impulsive idiot) and care of magical creatures(he’s a screw up around animals)

________

Languages: english and he taught himself some Latin

Voice: average in tone, a bit nasally, rather forgettable except for the speed

Greetings and Farewells: doesn’t

Ask your character "how are you": yes.

Character tries to compliment: you have eyes, your name is ___

Tries to insult: passive-aggressively drags a person

Expletive: damn(dam)(loopholes, my friends)

Laughter: snorting, definitely not normal

Tagline: ___, yeah?

________

Reputation: other than the whole ‘brother’ problem, is relatively well-liked

First Impressions: charming, confident guy

Stranger Impressions: a bit loud but not strange

Friendly Impressions: goddamnit Mark, shut up

Enemy Impressions: please keep talking so we’re allowed to punch you in the face

Familiar Impressions: ah yes, the hair pops up from time to time

Compliments from others: bright, energetic, optimistic, honest

Insults: dangerous, unstable, chaotic

Self-Impression: am shit

_________

Compare to: forest fire(destructive and necessary for change)

Symbols: flames, ashes, duality

#you guys are wonderful people who don't deserve this disappoitment #but i am a disappointment so what can we do?

[tilleys89-blog]

Chapter Two

This place is a disaster.  

I do this to myself.  I just really, really hate cleaning.  

I’m not sure if the importance of picking up after yourself was ever fully ingrained into me as a child.  It’s a discipline that I wish I had at this very moment though, because this place is fucking nasty.  Clothes are everywhere.  Dishes are in the sink with food still on the plates.  A month’s worth of mail is sprawled out over the kitchen counter.

Other than my inability to clean up after myself, I really like my house.  It has good feng shui.  

I should probably learn what that word actually means.  Wait, is it one word or two words?  

I retrieve my phone from my pocket and do a quick search which reveals that it is two words.  Also, it apparently means that a designated area is balanced with energy.  

In that case, my apartment does not have good feng shui because I need to clean it.  I’ve upset the balance!

Maybe it’s not a bad time to clean.  I don’t really have anything else going on right now, after-all.  I could text Michelle back, but honestly, I really don’t want to. The nightmares from last night have traumatized me.  That fucking bat, man. Son-of-a-bitch, where’s everyone at when you create a good pun?  

I should probably just delete the app.  I mean, if Michelle is any indication of how the rest of the girls are online then count me out.  Plus, the logo for the app is ridiculous.  It’s a butterfly sitting on a heart.  Not like an actual heart, that would be weird, but like one of those illustrated hearts.  The typical heart drawing.

Oh, hey, I got a match.  Don’t you just love it when that happens?  Oh, I’m going to delete you!  No you’re not, here!  You just got a match, bitch!

Well, hello there, Rachel.  Oh, she’s cute.  Aw, look, she even has a horse.  Her bio is a tad short, but that’s not too uncommon.  Damn.  What the hell is she doing swiping right on me?  I mean, I know I’m handsome, but shit.  Kidding!  I look like Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite if he had elephantiasis.  

Maybe she’s a bot.  

Should I say hello?  

No.  That’s too boring.  According to that one article, from that one post, from that one author, I should be original.  Have a good opening line.  Be charming. Be clever.  Be everything that you are currently not.  

You got this.  

Eye of the fucking tiger.  

Okay, how about this:

“So, I guess we’re married now?  Is that how this works?” I type.

That’s original and funny, right?

And, send.  

Oh God.

What did I do?  

She’s too pretty for such ridiculous lines.  I should have just said hello.  

You fucking moron!

I should have just deleted the app.  Saved myself the embarrassment of not receiving a reply.  

It’s fine.  I’m fine.  We’ll see what happens.  Meanwhile, I’ll just see who else is on here.  Alright fingers, let’s get to swiping.  I crack my knuckles, like a tool.

No.

No.

No.

Yes.

Fuck yes.

No.

No.  

Match!

Would you look at that.  

Okay, here’s your opportunity to come up with a better opening line.  Be clever, dammit!

Oh, hey, there’s a GIF option. What should I search for though?  

Got it!

The Titanic sinking after striking the iceberg is a perfect representation of breaking the ice.  You clever bitch you.  

Send!

Okay, that’s enough for now.  Too much more and I’ll be drawn in.  What else should I do, though?  It’s my day off from work and I have nothing to do.  

I could text Brian.  Dammit, no, he’s having a date night with the wife.  I don’t want to interrupt them.  

Nearly every fiber in my being is telling me to clean my apartment, but I really don’t want to.  Not yet.  The mood isn’t right.  That doesn’t make any sense.  Fuck it, I just don’t want to right now.  This couch is too comfortable.  

Maybe I could make a pizza?  Oh, that’s right.  I’m on a FUCKING diet.  

A response?  From Rachel..  

“I mean, duh!” she replied in the message. Well, that doesn’t sound like a generic bot response.  Which is promising.  However, I honestly wasn’t expecting a response.

Now what the fuck do I say?

This is too hard.  Abandon the mission!  

“Fantastic!  This was much easier than everyone makes it out to be.  Wasn’t stressful at all.” I nervously type out.  

No.  Let’s change that.

“Awesome!  This was much easier than everyone makes it out to be.  It wasn’t stressful at all!” I slightly alter.  

Too many exclamation points.  

Oh, just send it already you pussy!

FINE! Send!

Oh, God.  It wasn’t right.  I fucked it up.  

Okay, so, worse comes to worst, she doesn’t reply.  Or, even worse, she does reply.  I talk to her for a while and we set up a date.  She realizes that my profile pictures are in fact me, and that I’m not a creepy, fifty year old pervert, but that I used editing software to heavily alter my pictures to make myself look better than normal.  

I need to smoke.  I can’t handle this right now.  Anxiety is going to be the death of me.  

If I smoke, though, I need to hide my phone.  I mean, I don’t normally like to text anyway, but right now I may be stupid enough to try to have a conversation and that does NOT need to happen.  

Okay, I’ll just charge it in the bedroom and I won’t feel compelled to go in there for a while because the couch will be too busy devouring my physical body.  

Speaking of devouring, I should legitimately prepare some sort of food if I’m going to smoke.  Good thing I bought grapes the other day.  To the kitchen!

As I walk into the kitchen, I immediately get punched in the throat with the scent of old food.

Fucking dishes.  Or is it the trash that’s overflowing?  Why am I this way?  I’m a disgusting son-of-a-bitch.

They both just pile up.  I’m the only one here, and yet, they continually pile up.  I’ll deal with it later.  For now, I have to smoke.  

I open the drawer beside the refrigerator and retrieve a small, wooden box.  I open it to discover its contents.

Grinder?  Check.  

Weed?  Check.

Bowl?  Check.

I open the refrigerator and reach for the bag of grapes.

Grapes?  Check.  

The only thing I don’t like about smoking is the paranoia.  I’m already a paranoid person, so it just amplifies it ten-fold, but man does it feel amazing.  I also don’t like how cold it is right now.  I hate having to go outside to smoke, but I don’t want my apartment to smell like weed.  Honestly, it’s amazing that my family still has no idea that I smoke.  I guess since I don’t smoke regularly, it hasn’t really affected my motor functions.  Is that something a pot-head would say?  

Whatever.  Let’s just pack this bowl.  Not too much though.  I need to ration out what little I have left.  

I open the bag of weed and pinch off a bit, around the size of a dime.  I seperate the grinder, placing the small amount of weed in the center before closing the grinder.

This is where I always get fucked up.  I end up grinding it too much and it becomes a powder.  That isn’t going to happen today though.  I have learned the error of my ways!

I twist the grinder five times and seperate the grinder again.  The weed is no longer a clump, nor is it a powder.  It’s perfect.

I dump the weed from the grinder onto the counter and begin to move it into the bowl, making sure not to leave even the tiniest amount.

Fuck!  Lighter!  Where the hell did it go?  I begin a frantic search.  I look in the nearby drawers, slinging papers everywhere.  I move the box of cereal from the top of the refrigerator, checking to see if it is behind it.  It isn’t..  

A-ha!  Found you, you little fucker.  I keep putting it in the cabinet above the stove for some reason.  

Okay, now I’m ready to smoke.

I grab the bowl, and the lighter, and proceed outside onto my porch.

Jesus, it’s cold as fuck outside.  

Living in the south is so confusing.  One day it’s warm and the next it’s fucking twenty degrees outside.  

I like it here though.  It’s quiet.  The Bible humpers can be a bit annoying, but for the most part, I can tolerate them.  I have nothing against religion, in fact, I used to be religious, but I really hate the people who push their agenda on you.  As long as they don’t do that, I’m great.  I would love to have to an actual, intellectual conversation about religion.  Unfortunately, no one around here seems to know how to do so.  I guess you could say the south doesn’t have good feng shui.

Ah, shit.  That doesn’t work.  It only works with furniture and shit.  I think that’s right.  Phone is too far away to check.  

I place the bowl to my mouth and light the weed.  I inhale, feeling the smoke burn as it engulfs my lungs, then I exhale the smoke towards the porch light.  

This is good weed.  

I can tell that it’s going to be a relaxing high.  Which is great because I don’t know what happened with the last batch but I was jumping off the walls.  Like, seriously jumping off of them.  Nearly broke my fucking leg.  

Oh, shit.  Don’t cough, you pussy.  You have trained for this!

I let out a hoarse series of coughs.

Fucking Hell!  My lungs!  

I take another hit, because I’m a badass.

Jesus!  Too big of a hit.  Too big!  Oh, damn!

I continue coughing, like a little bitch.

Okay, I think I’m okay now.  

I continue to smoke.  I smoke pretty quickly during the winter season, mainly because it’s too cold to be outside for too long.  Plus, the neighbors may get suspicious that I smoke and call the cops.  

They wouldn’t do that though.  Would they?

And, shit, I think it’s cashed.  

Dump the remnants over the side of the porch.

Wait.

Is it possible for the remnants to grow overtime?  Like, what if there is actually still a bit of weed left and it’s enough to grow into a plant?  Which sounds great in theory, but what if someone discovers it and reports me?  Shit.  No.  I can’t dump it here.  It’s too risky.  

I could flush it!  Genius!  Smoking always makes you smarter.  That’s why Benjamin Franklin smoked so much.  

I turn towards the door and walk back inside the much warmer house.

I should probably clean out my bowl before I forget.  

I walk into the kitchen, taking in the milky tan color of the walls of my house.  I never really noticed how beautiful the walls are here.  They’re actually quite stunning.

Fucking dishes!  I’ll just move them to one side of the sink.

I move two of the plates from one basin to the other, making room for me to clean my bowl.

That’s better.  

I begin to scrub my bowl under the flowing warm water with a nearby cloth.  This is an amazing bowl.  I’ve never had any other bowl, but I feel like this particular bowl is far-better crafted than most other bowls.  It just seems to work really well.  

Okay, bowl is rinsed.  Weed is still on the table.  Grinder is set beside it.  Everything is zen.  Got my grapes.  I’m ready for the couch.  

I walk out of the kitchen and into the living room, standing directly in front of the couch.

“Do your thing, couch.” I say, plopping down, immediately stretching out with my head on one end and my feet on the other.

Such a magical feeling, really.  Lying on your couch after a good smoke.  You just feel one with the couch.  

What the fuck am I saying?

Shit.

Did I lock the door?  

I did.

Didn’t I?

Is that knocking?

No.  It’s just the heat turning on.

Ah, the warmth feels great.  Luckily the vent is right by my face, so I’m getting all the warm air.  

I had tension that I didn’t even know I had.  My neck feels amazing right now.  My head doesn’t feel heavy.  It’s a peaceful feeling.  

Did I lock the door?

Wait.  I just asked that, didn’t I?  That was like, five minutes ago, though.  Man, I hope I did.  

I struggle to lift myself from the couch just enough to get a glimpse at the door..  My vision is blurry as shit right now.

I didn’t!

Shit.  I can’t believe someone didn’t walk in.  

I quickly sit up, fighting the vertigo and run to the door.  I lift up on the lock.

There.  Locked.  

Right?

I mean, I see that it’s locked, but I should probably pull on the door handle to make sure.

I give the door a series of pulls, testing the durability of the lock.  

Yeah, it’s locked.  

What if someone came in while it was unlocked?

No.  No one came in.  You would have noticed.  

Don’t be paranoid.  Eat your grapes and relax.

I walk back to the couch, reach into the bag of grapes, picking a few as I do, and lay down.

I should really stop smoking.  I always get like this.  It’s not worth it.  

NO!  

Stop those negative thoughts.  You’ll have a really bad high and you don’t want that.  I’m just going to close my eyes and ride the wave.  I should turn on some music, but that requires me to get up and get my phone from the other room.  Is it worth it?  Sure, it is.  Then I can actually lay in bed and go to sleep.  

Okay, one, two, three, and up!  

Standing is hard!

I’m going to collapse on my bed when I...wait.  I never went to my bedroom.  Shit, my phone was under me the entire time.  

I have a message.  What do I do?  Should I read it?  If I do, I’ll be tempted to respond, and I do NOT need to do that.  

I’m not going to respond.  

I’m just going to put my phone on the table in front of me and just relax.  Relaxation is my friend and I’m hanging out.  I place the phone on the table in front of me.

Okay, so maybe it won’t hurt to read it.  

I grab the phone and unlock it.

“Was it a good wedding?  I don’t remember.”

What the fuck is she talking about?

Oh!  Shit!  That’s right.  I said the thing.  Yeah, I can’t respond to that right now.  Back on the table you go!  

How do I even respond to that?  I can’t even begin to formulate the words for that kind of thing right now.  Like, I guess it was good?  I could type that.  No.  Formulate your thoughts when you’re sober, man!  

Doesn’t remember our wedding?  I laugh at your forgetfulness!  You were probably too busy being blackout drunk!  

That’s not bad, actually.  I may have to spruce it up a bit, though.  Okay.  Come here, phone.  

Let me up, couch!

After struggling for a minute, I sit up and grab my phone from the table.

Gotcha!

Okay, so, let’s see here.  

“Wait, you don’t remember?!  I was banking on you to remind me how it went.  Guess we were too wasted from the open bar.”

There.  That should work.  Should I put an emoji?  No, emojis are stupid.  Don’t be lame!  

Send!

Okay, back to the table you go, and back into the couch I go.  

That wasn’t too bad of a response, right?  Nah, it’s fine.  You’re fine.  You’re just freaking out.  It’s natural.  Everything is great.  

Okay.  I should really go to bed.  I need to sleep.  I’m not mentally prepared for this.  

Last time, couch.  

I push myself up from the couch and walk towards my bedroom.

I gently place myself onto my bed and pull the covers up to face because it’s fucking cold.  

I shut my eyes and prepare for glorious sleep.

Wait.  

Did I lock the door?

#story #novel #chapter #chapter 2 #new chapter #writing

[rdpshop]

Using a WordPress Autoresponder Plugin

Learn some advantages of using a WordPress Autoresponder Plugin. You have no restrictions like with online services and no monthly fees. Free autoresponder plugins are also available, find out which works best for you.

Why Do You Need An Autoresponder

As you progress in the internet marketing business, you will come to realize that you will need a list. The real money is in your email list that you will accumulate over time. In order to get a list, you have to have the tools to collect email addresses.You can purchase list or pay to use someone else's list. There are online autoresponder services, however for newbies, it can be expensive. When people first start out, they struggle with getting a good branding with a good website. Most that start out don’t have a budget to put into a monthly expense for an Autoresponder service. Using a WordPress Autoresponder plugin is actually a less expensive option. NOTE: There may be terms and acronyms that are foreign to you or just not clear. Visit my page, Internet Marketing Acronym Glossary for clarification.

My Reason For A WordPress Autoresponder Plugin

Many Autoresponders offer first month deals, often free. However, it can take most newbies at least 3 to 4 months to start seeing an income. This puts newbies into paying for a service that isn’t giving a return of investment, (ROI). With a WordPress Autoresponder, You can customize response pages and have limited to no restrictions. Many paid services have set rules or functionality limits. However, the main rules are for spammers. This also applies to a plugin autoresponders. The benefit of a WordPress Autoresponder, you can create emails and response pages with an HTML editor. You can even use page builders to fully customize the look. Paid services give you tools and templates with limits. You can only build with what templates they limit you too.   My Search Criteria I began looking for a free WordPress Autoresponder plugin due to a tight budget. There were many that didn’t actually do what I wanted. The majority I found, were very limited. If it collected emails, it was into a file with no reply features. The plugin needed to collect their addresses and send a thank you for signing up, without them having to register to my site. I wanted the ability to send a series of emails over a period of time after signup.

A crucial must have function would be, to have the ability to integrate with an opt-in box. An opt-in box is the best way to capture leads, (email addresses). There are free Newsletter signup plugins but they do nothing but just capture the address in a file. However is they have no other functionality. So my goal was to find an Autoresponder that would collect email addresses, send an instant reply. Have the ability to use "double opt-in" to reduce spam or fake email addresses. It also had to send out a series of timely follow up emails and allow me to use my choice of opt-in boxes.  

The Autoresponder I Found

I found a WordPress Autoresponder Plugin called BroadFast, it was available in both free and paid versions. At

the time, it was only a one time payment of $37, with a one year support. Later they became Arigato and the program increased in features and technology. It now has the ability to create emails in Text and HTML or both at the same time. It comes with a bounce management and trackable links. Setting up a list and campaigns are incredibly easy. Arigato vs Online Services I have tried a few of the big names for the promotional month free trial. Trying to figure out how to setup their list and campaigns is just a nightmare, let me tell you why.

You create a list, it is an empty list, but basically a place to collect email addresses. The next step would be to create a campaign. Campaigns house the auto response email swipes. In other words, the emails that go out on a timed fashion after someone is collected into the list. The whole process is very simple, well until you get on the online autoresponders. With most of the online autoresponders, they require you to setup the campaign first. This is usually done through wizards that follow no logic. You have to do it in the order they want. The lay out is so confusing, it creates a longer learning-curve on how to use it.

I am not saying don’t go with an online service. But, if you have never ran an Autoresponder before and not sure how the process works, Arigato might be easier to understand. With Arigato, the process is very easy to understand and it just works. The Arigato support is excellent, they respond same day and know their program. Suggested Autoresponder Service One of the best of the big name Autoresponders to try, is Aweber. One of the features they have I love is, it can send your campaign messages in . This is a great feature because there are still email clients that cannot receive HTML emails. This means you are losing potential buyers.

Arigato Pro

You will never find find a better WordPress Autoresponder Plugin than Arigato. It does all that the big named Autoresponder can do. You can schedule newsletters, import or export email list. Manage your bounced email addresses and get the reports you need to track your email marketing. Using the provided code or short code, you can create subscription opt-in’s anywhere on your pages you

want. You can place an opt-in anywhere in the content of a post or page. Combining Arigato with another plugin called Thrive Leads, you can create beautiful opt-in boxes, forms or widgets. Integration You get fully responsive sign up forms that work on any device. This WordPress Autoresponder Plugin integrates with Contact Form 7, Jetpack Contact Form and Ninja Forms. It really doesn’t require any top level of technical knowledge. Even a novice WordPress user can manage this plugin. The support is great, they always respond inside of a work day, there are videos that show you how to set it up and use it. The best part is that there are no monthly fees and it is yours forever.     Quick Autoresponder Overview As I mentioned above, create a list. Give it a name, usually to the name of the  product, newsletter or post to send out. You can import email addresses into the list if you have one. The nice part about having an Autoresponder plugin is, you don't have to worry about import/export limits set by your paid plan of your service provider.

Of course you want to stay ethical and not spam people. Hosting providers will not allow you to send out more than a 1000 emails a day. It is considered spamming for if you send 1000 emails per day. After you have created a list, you will proceed to setting up a campaign. You will give your campaign a name, usually the same or similar to your list name. The campaign is no more than a container for you email swipes.  Email swipes are the sequential emails that will go out on a schedule after subscribing.   Newletters An autoresponder is also setup to broadcast a newsletter. Newsletters are emails sent to everyone on a list. As a list grows from collecting emails from opt-in boxes, you can later use that list for newsletters. This also applies to what I mentioned above about the limit all autoresponders. No more than a 1000 emails per 24 hours. Autoresponders can be set to how many emails you want to go out per hour and per day. The limit is 100 per hour and 1000 a day. Do not exceed this limit, your domain may be marked as spam and you just destroyed your business.  

Conclusion

For the most part, setting up an Autoresponder is the same no matter if you are using a WordPress plugin or using an online service. There are just different procedures between the programs. Some are easy and makes sense and others are cumbersome. When first starting out on a budget, I recommend going with a plugin. Once you have accumulated a decent size list and making some money. Invest your money into a big name autoresponder. The only drawback to having an autoresponder loaded into your site, is the resource. If you have slow hosting like Hostgator, your site could take a speed loss. It would be something to check out and measure. When I first started using a plugin, my hosting was Hostgator and it did not effect it. My websites were just so slow, I couldn't rank in search engines.   Pros and Cons Pros: With Arigato or any other WordPress Autoresponder Plugin, you can do with it as you want, and set it up the way you want. There are no monthly or annual fees, you buy it or use a free one, it is yours forever. You have access to the HTML code which aids in creating many opt-in forms. Shortcode is provided to allow you to place opt-in forms anywhere you like, in a widget, page or post. Your Hosting Provider sets the limits to outgoing email broadcast. Email Bounce Management You get open rate, active emails and unsubscribe reports. Arigato allows you to send your messages in both Text and HTML at the same time. Arigato allows HTML messages. You can design your own emails or templates with an HTML Editor and send out some fancy pages. There is a free HTML Editor you can use called HTML5. Another option is this free WordPress plugin Elemenator that creates beautiful pages.   Cons: To keep support for Arigato, you do have to pay for it once a year. However it does comes with one year support and free upgrades. There are not that many form templates to choose from like you get with most online services. Daily outgoing email limits are set by your hosting provider. However, online services also have their limits. If your Hosting is of a lower standard, you could be limited too much. If you want to tweak things beyond what comes out of the box, you do have to have a tiny bit of technical knowledge. Although nothing beyond simple instructions or watching a YouTube video can’t solve.   Site Index Read the full article

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