#when i’m journaling i’m not vague. i am specific

[maude-ivory]

last thoughts on Exit Strategy

i was talking with a friend the other day and was struck by the notion i’ve never had a dream about anyone i know (unless you count pets)

but a couple days ago i woke up from a nightmare and realized that wasn’t true. i have nightmares about people i know all the time, but they aren’t really nightmares, they’re more like flashbacks, in them current me is waking up to discover my escape and starting to build a life for myself was the dream and i am back where i started from, which is usually enough to jar me awake for real, thank goodness

but i have a very hard time with waking up from those specific kinds of nightmares, for the first couple minutes (and boy is that whole objective/subjective time thing Spot On) i don’t know where i am. i don’t recognize my room, i don’t feel anything but a sort of vague rejection of everything

potential spoilers under the cut

i found the extended time it took Murderbot to basically rebuild its brain was incredibly emotionally fulfilling and made me actually cry, not just my theatrical reaction memes.

when you come out of any trauma, emotional or physical, there is this really long period of time where you feel just sort of blank. i dunno if it’s shock, i don’t have the educational background to say that’s what it is actually but just calling it shock as a placeholder

you’re aware, sort of, you might even be semi-functioning, but the shock doesn’t wear off overnight. you sleep a lot, and the time you’re awake you don’t feel awake, you have these sort of fits and starts of the world coming into focus again, but they don’t last and that can be really frustrating, and i really liked how Murderbot was sort of tracking those milestones, x hours this happened, y cycles this happened, finally at z, I was able to do this.

i hear a lot about therapists talking about journaling, but i wasn’t really able to do that because when i sit down to try to think about how i feel i start spiraling negatively and just Feel Bad, and i wind up with a hundred pages of variations on the theme of I Hate Everything over and over again with no actual progress

what i found helpful for me, when i decided i wanted to track my progress because i didn’t feel like i was getting better but sometimes it seemed like i was (i was experiencing curiosity anyway, that was new!) was to have a big 1 year wall calendar (it was like 8 years old but it had the full 365 days on it that was the important part) i could quickly grab a marker and mark off moments when i felt… anything not horrible. And at first it was just not horrible, then slightly more alert, then more or less okay, then kinda better, then pretty alright. Hey yesterday my knee hurt but today it doesn’t. Enjoying my cup of coffee. Like the color of this sweater. It rained and the air smells good. I didn’t say what was what, just a little x in the box for the day for anything not horrible.

it’s one big thing that lets you actually see the overall picture

and gradually i noticed that some days had no x’s, but some days did, and then some days had more than one, and i could see the clusters were getting closer together.

it helped.

the other thing that made me cry for realizes was the way Murderbot’s humans treated it while it was recovering.

growing up, and then throughout my marriage, i was not allowed to have negative emotions—when i slipped (and I’m not talking about blowing up (which isn’t to say i never did) i’m talking about things like not smiling quickly enough or enthusiastically enough—i had to convince a very skeptical audience how happy/thankful/excited i was all the time), or else there was always always always a backlash and that backlash lasted days at the minimum.

Murderbot is cranky, and rude, and hostile at them—swearing at Gurathin, snapping at all of them, no thank you or even recognition for saving it in return (and this after it specifically noted it liked being recognized/thanked for when it was doing the saving), or continuing to protect it; I’m not your pet robot, I don’t want to be a human, I don’t like planets

—and they let it get away with that behavior. it wasn’t punished, or disciplined, or corrected, there were no consequences, even Pin Lee never paired the we’re trying to help you card with the so don’t talk to us like that card.

that just

physically hurt to get through

but in a good way!

.

anyway.

this series has been so high stakes back to back (and I have loved every second of it but) I’m looking forward to what I hear is a slightly slower pace in Fugitive Telemetry.

#wow this got long #sorry #sunny personal #sunny liveblogs #depression #anxiety #nightmares #tagging for the people who need to block #trauma #abuse #the murderbot diaries #murderbot #exit strategy #sunny overshares

[coyotepawsteps]

my genderqueer autistic ass having an epiphany about my general dislike for vcing (voice chatting) while in the middle of watching neurodivergent & queer tiktok compilations

usually i’m pretty okay with & prefer being in vcs with people who talk while i stay muted, and most of the time i just say that i “don’t really like talking in vcs” without elaborating on that too much but like. i’m gonna spend some time using tumblr as a way to put actual words to a lot of the deeper reasons for this feeling that i’m starting to notice! bc who am i if not a little autistic creature who wants to infodump to people except it’s a lot more comfortable to do so using a platform that feels more like a personal journal than a social media site!! i write all this for myself but i also want it to be in a space where other people can see it, relate to it, share their own experiences, etc.!

(and, with that mention of people sharing their own experiences, please feel free to reply to or reblog this with some of your own thoughts or experiences on this topic, because i’m genuinely curious how other people feel about this kind of thing!!)

i feel insecure about the way i perceive my voice as “too feminine”, i want to present online as a vague gender-fucky creature most of the time but i feel like people hearing my voice will ruin that kind of presentation. after listening to some of those “this is my voice [timeframe] on t” clips, i kinda realized that if my voice was deeper — something more neutral, or vaguely “boyish” but not exactly — this specific bullet point wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore

again a point specifically about my voice itself — i don’t think that i can really regulate the..i guess emotion in my voice? sometimes i speak completely flat monotone, sometimes i feel like i talk in a tone that doesn’t properly convey my current emotions or fit the situation, sometimes i feel like i can be way too hyper-expressive especially when i’m like. feeling really positively, like if i’m happy or excited or laughing at something. i also feel like i talk more high pitched in those latter situations which doesn’t help with the vocal-based gender dysphoria

i frequently describe myself as socially awkward. i am kinda bad when it comes to having conversations with people. there isn’t really any time at all to like, properly process what the other person has said & then reply to it accordingly while having vocal conversations, most of the time you just gotta wing it and hope you get it right. texting is a lot easier for me because then i do have that time to process what was said, and think of how to respond to it, and i have time to reread my response (and change it if need be) before sending it

this is something that i do sometimes mention in my original “i just don’t like talking in vcs” statement to people (just not with this much level of detail & explanation to it) — i feel like i express myself a lot better through writing/texting/messaging than i do speaking. ties in a lot with my emotional regulation/tone of voice bullet point; i express emotions a lot better through textual means. if i’m particularly hyper or expressing strong emotions like anger, excitement, joy, etc. then i usually write in all-caps and type fast enough that i make frequent typos. same thing for if i’m laughing at/about something i find really funny, plus with an add-on of keysmashing (there’s no good vocal equivalent to a really good keysmash). emojis and/or emoticons are really nice to use for conveying emotion wordlessly (some personal usage examples: 😭 for laughing or sometimes genuine sadness/upset depending on the situation; 😂 is also good for laughing/amusement [although i go through cycles of how often i actually use it; some times it’ll often be the only emoji i use for laughing, others i use the sobbing one a lot more and almost never touch this one, and others i rely more on text emoticons or abbreviations]; my most common emoticons are xD, :D, :), and :( with some variations depending on circumstance [e.g. >:) for a more “devilish”/mischievous use]; and, though they aren’t exactly emojis or emoticons, i frequently use abbreviations like “lmao” and “lol” interchangeably with them, with lmao being for actual strong amusement and lol being like a more toned-down “ha ha” kinda thing.) there is, of course, also the bonus of tone-tags being an option in textual conversation, although i don’t tend to use them too frequently unless i’m aware that something i’m saying could be taken in the wrong way by the other person (e.g. if i’m saying something i really mean, i won’t really use tone-tags for it, like if i’m telling a friend “i like playing games with you”; but if i’m joking around with someone while using a flat tone — like a message without any emoji usage, caps, purposeful typos, etc. — i will usually use tone-tags there, for example “i hate you so much /j”)

#autism #actually autistic #transgender #trans #neurodivergent #infodump #autistic culture #autistic experiences #autistic things #autistic problems #queer #genderqueer #nonbinary #gender dysphoria #voice dysphoria #alexithymia #alexithymia culture #alexithymia problems #idk man these tags are so disorganized. idk what else would be fitting to tag #long post #autism spectrum disorder

[pinkcupboardwitch]

genuine question, where would you recommend someone start with improving media literacy and critical thinking skills? :o

I love this question! Thank you - it really pushed me to figure out how to distill my own process, so it was very helpful for me too.

“Media literacy” is such a big topic that it can very easily get overwhelming, so I would recommend finding a specific type of media you want to practice these skills in first. This is handy because 1) it breaks the learning process up into a much more manageable goal 2) a lot of the mindsets you acquire here will be helpful once you start branching out into different media types, even if the specifics of that genre might be different.

For example, I’m a historian; I’m trained to read both historical documents and texts produced by other professional historians with an eye for particular characteristics. My personal specialty is the study of historical gender and medicine, which means that even when I’m reading texts from periods outside my own, or even modern media, I can pick up synergies of gender and/or medicine more intuitively than others. A really fun example of this is when I watched Blue Eye Samurai with a friend who is also a historian of the same period as I am, but with a focus on religion. A very obvious flag to me that Mizu is queer in some way is that they only realized they were attracted to [censored for spoilers] when they witnessed two men kissing. When I brought that up to my friend, he said he had completely missed that thread. He is, however, continually able to bring in sociological arguments that I miss, because he’s trained to see those patterns and I’m not.

A less intimidating way to approach these skills then, which are often very vaguely defined and have a reflexive anxiety about them because they feature so often in grading rubrics without being clearly defined, is pattern matching. Are you able to identify the patterns the authors are drawing on? And are you able to draw new connections between these texts that are unique to you?

Examples of specific specialties you might be interested as a way to get started could include political journalism, scientific reports, historical texts, or romance novels, to give you an example of the balance between specificity and generalization I usually find helpful. Once you have your set, start reading as many examples of that as you can. It’s more helpful to consume this material consistently, rather than amass a huge source base in a very short period of time. The goal here is to start picking up on patterns between the various examples you’re reading. Patterns of shared values, of similar ways of constructing an argument or a message, of different conversations going in between the authors of this shared space.

“Active reading” tends to get a bad rap because I think a lot of us have bad memories of being told simply to do it without ever being explained what it actually is or how to tell if we’re doing it. But it is a very useful tool. Instead of simply taking in information (that is, “passive” reading), we engage in a conversation with the information as we read. I find that the following is a handy checklist for me when I read material that’s new to me:

- What is the author’s message? How can I tell?

- Why are they presenting this message? Do their stated goals match their implicit goals, or is there a mismatch? How can I tell?

- Who is the message for? How can I tell?

- Do I agree with this message completely? With some parts of this message but not others? Not at all? Why? And how can I tell?

- If I don’t agree in part or entirely, what is my stance on the issue? (“I need more information to know my stance” is a perfectly good one to have)

(Note: this is biased towards my training as a historian. Someone trained in a different field, or even in a different method of doing history than I am, would likely have a different answer. But I find that this set is flexible enough to be used in many different contexts, not just academic ones.)

That “how can I tell” is, for me, the crux of the matter. Being able to answer that question pushes us to really pick apart the different strands of a text and helps us see the overall meaning of that text as something that is constructed, not inherent.

At first, you might need to consciously have this list next to you as a reminder whenever you’re reading your text of choice. You might even need to read a particular text multiple times, each time focusing on a single question from the list instead of juggling all five parts at the same time because it’s so hard to find those answers. That is totally fine! More than fine, it’s normal.

Eventually, as you get more and more comfortable with practicing this kind of thinking and reading, you’ll be able to do it in a way that’s less conscious and more like muscle memory. This also means that over time, it will get less tiring. Which is to say - at the start of this practice, it will be tiring, mentally and physically so. That doesn’t mean you’re lazy or stupid. It just means this is a part of your brain that’s starting a new exercise routine and is slowly building up endurance. “Learning things” is a skill in itself, and something that we can also practice and get better at. I know some very smart people who are terrible at learning new things and being beginners, because they’re so used to excelling at a very narrow sphere of activities.

This is such a long response already, but I hope it is helpful and makes sense! Just two more points for now, and please also feel free to jump back into my inbox or DMs if you have more questions about this.

Firstly, a very useful strategy I have found for getting more literate in genres and ways of thinking I am not familiar with is to ask an expert in that field to “check your work”. For me, this is scientific articles and @dr-dendritic-trees. Again, I’m a historian, I wasn’t trained to read science reports in any field, but I still want to parse the interesting science that comes my way. In the early stages of getting familiar with science writing, “checking my work” usually looked like me sending an article her way, asking her to translate it into layman’s terms, and then, armed with that prior explanation, reading the article myself to see if I could understand how she’d gotten there. As I got more familiar with the particular kinds of thinking that scientists are trained to do, I started reading the articles first, reaching a tentative conclusion, and then asking her if she agreed (example: “Their conclusion feels fishy to me but I can’t fully say why. Would you say that’s right?”). The goal here is not simply to acquire new scientific information. The goal is to practice thinking like a scientist.

(Incidentally, this approach is also why I encourage my students to use SparkNotes or Wikipedia if they’re really struggling with a particular text so they can get a summary of what’s happening. Once you know what’s happening, you can focus on the much more interesting and critical aspect: how the argument is constructed and how you can tell).

Secondly, Toulmin’s Method is another handy checklist for breaking down arguments that you can use as an alternative to or in conjunction with the checklist I provided above. I’ve taught it in my own classes and a particularly handy exercise I like to do with them is to practice going, “I agree with your X because ABC, and I disagree with your Y because DEF.” [example: “I agree with your claim because my own experience backs that up, but I disagree with your warrant because you’re falsely connecting these two elements.”]

This is so long! Thank you for asking the question and for reading all this! It’s probably pretty obvious that I care deeply about this topic*. This is a hard skill to pick up, especially if you haven’t consciously worked these mental muscles out in a while, but it’s also a profoundly valuable one, and one that greatly enriches our lives as people in a shared and communal world. I wish you the best of luck on your journey of practice!!

*for extra credit: how can you tell? ;)

EDIT: I said I only had two points left, posted this, and then immediately thought of two other exercises that are very helpful for practicing these skills! One, learn to write a précis, which is a very formal, four-sentence summary that is extremely helpful for organizing your thoughts. Two, learn to identify logical fallacies. A really central part of critical thinking is being able to recognize when others are not thinking critically and explain why.

#pink talks #media literacy #media criticism #pedagogy tag

[poetryofmac]

Top 20 Tested, Tried, True, & Trusted Tips for College Success

I dare you to try that 3 times fast! …and hi! It’s Mac Crushes Monday! The day I crush Monday into the dirt with y’all’s help! Inbox me something motivational, okay?

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this to y’all but I’m on Dean’s List at my college. I want to help other people so here I am to do that. If you find anything helpful in this post, please share it for others!

1.      Vague is a waste of time. You won’t get a good grade. I try to spend another thirty minutes or whatever adding specifics. It’s worth it, trust me.

2.      The first thing I do at the beginning of a semester is get ahold of that syllabus! Plug all your due dates into your calendar & block out scheduled times to work on schoolwork.

3.      In terms of that last tip, I plan what I’m going to work on and when. It’s like budgeting, except with time instead of money. Y’all… planning which assignments to tackle and when has SAVED ME from missing due dates!

4. I include a “safety block” in that scheduling habit. Perhaps a day on the weekend to play catch up if I skipped a blocked-out time for schoolwork during the week. Look, life and lack of motivation happens. Be prepared.

5.      Are you to your safety block at the end of the week and still don’t want to work on school with the little time you have left? Suck it up and do it. I know you probably wanted an easier tip but really, it’s what you have to do.

6.      Skip Google Scholar. Use JSTOR and ProQuest with your institutional access instead. Google Scholar, though a great resource, includes many articles and peer-reviewed journals that cost to access with no way to filter those out.

7.      Include an italicized section of “Notes” after your “Works Cited” section. This section of notes explains to my professors why I included certain features in my paper, or violated any of the guidelines, or whatever. I can do this without sending a separate explanation in an email; or worse, skipping an explanation all together. Don’t do that!

8.      Citation Machine is a website where you plug in a link or a what-have-you and it’ll pump out your citation to simply copy and paste into your paper. Tried and true. I depend on Citation Machine a little too heavily, to be honest.

9.      CITE ALL SOURCES and avoid using information from someone else’s essay you found online, or Wikipedia, etc. You WILL eventually get caught, I promise, and it’s not worth the risk of being thrown out of your college!

10.      I don’t let utilizable study tips sit in my Pinterest boards collecting dust. I use them. Shoot, some of them might’ve even inspired this list!

11.      Studying in a library or coffee shop can be very distracting. It will either motivate you or hinder you. Figure out which person you are. For me personally, doing school at home increases my focus and enhances my productivity, versus being out somewhere.

12.      Try different incentives to study and if the right incentive helps you, stick to it. Whether it’s your “Cheat Meal” being on study day after you finish, or something totally different... a hit of the reward hormone Dopamine can work wonders.

13.      If you don’t understand something, your luck will be that it will be on the exam. Don’t skip over it no matter how badly you want to. Grab Google to help you figure it out.

14.      To memorize something, I physically write it down, literally say it out loud, and quiz myself, answering out loud. For most confidence-boosting results, articulate it as impressively as you can.

15.   What kind of learner are you? Find out, then research how to succeed as this type of learner.

16.   Stay organized! Being messy may be associated with brilliance, but organization is associated with success.

17.   Aim to make Best Attendance Award. Unless you are violently or contagiously sick, do not skip. Commit to the classes and learning experience good money was spent on, and be proud that you are! Wear it as a badge of honor.

18.   Don’t miss the point: Ask questions! “Why are we learning this? What does this tie into? How can I use this in the future?” This can help motivate you to learn.

19.   Sit in the front or second row. Show the teacher you’re serious and force yourself to pay attention. A professor being able to clearly see me if I’m on my phone DOES deter me from using it when I could be taking notes.

20.   It can be hard work to come up with your own great conclusions and ideas. However, that’s what librarians, professors, and tutors are for to help you with. With their help, commit to honing new skills and improving yourself academically.

Bonus: I need mentors and so do you! Start your assignment early as crap so you can contact mentors for help when you’re in an area where you feel stuck.

#study tips #college tips #study help #college help #college advice

[focsle]

Hi there! I’ve been doing a little project on the carbon impacts of the whaling industry and decided to read the current entirety of Going To Weather in one sitting as inspiration… honestly, all you do fascinates me but I am particularly impressed with how many fully rigged ships you willingly illustrated for all that! I’m curious if there was a specific way you studied them in order to draw them or if it’s more just a culmination of knowledge? I wish I understood all those intricacies better myself but it’s hard to figure out where to start…

Oh this is very kind of you to say haha! That’s a fascinating project—I’d love to see it when you’re done if you’d like to share it!

The secret is…they are absolutely not correct hahaha. If a tall ship sailor looked at my ships they’d be like ‘that’s wrong’ which is always why I’m like ‘shhhhh don’t look too closely’. But ultimately my aim is to tell a narrative, not draw a sailing guide. Regarding all the intricacies, I’m absolutely not drawing every line because there are dozens of them and I don’t consider it that important in the grand scope of telling a story. Same goes for tv and movies set on ships—often times their rigging is very much reduced for the sake of the readability of a set. Still, I try to get things vaguely correct looking, as far as the general structure of things so here’s where that helped:

The best way to understand how a boat works is to actually go sailing. But that is certainly not accessible for people in general, especially when it comes to square rigged tall ships (though opportunities DO exist). I’ve never been on a square rigger! No idea how they work! Would like to dabble someday. I’ve only worked on a fore-and-aft rigged vessel which is quite different, but it still gave me more of an understanding of how the sails actually work and what the lines actually do. Reading and watching things paled to being able to stand there and follow the lines to see where they went, and haul on them to see how they actually functioned. So if you ever get the opportunity to do any kind of sailing, that’s the best way to learn about how a ship works. I’m not a sailor by any means, but in my first venture into this I did start to learn a lot that I couldn’t really get from reading about it.

Watching videos helps too, though it’s sometimes hard to find ones that aren’t about operating contemporary sailboats. I found this series helpful just to get a basic understanding of how a square rig works.

Looking up diagrams can help too. I sometimes find diagrams of all the rigging challenging to parse in a 2d space, but when it’s broken down into smaller pieces I find that quite helpful. The Young Sea Officer’s Sheet Anchor by Darcy Lever has a lot of granular diagrams that are very well illustrated that I found helpful.

Finding a good model ship is also a decent way of starting to understand it. It’s in a 3d space in miniature so you can see the full scope of it at different angles, which I think is more helpful than drawings. It might not be completely accurate or have every single line represented, but it’s helpful to see how the lines lead to get the basic shape of them. I have a dream one day to have a model of the Charles W. Morgan. But good ones run for….thousands of dollars. So I’ve got a little wooden one that was my grandfather’s, but it’s still helpful to have on hand.

I also like looking at the illustrations of ships that my Whalers of Olde drew in their journals. It’s, again, not an accurate diagram, but they lived on that ship and in that life day in and day out, so when they draw them they tend to get to the spirit of the thing. I use their drawings to get a sense of what parts they felt most important to render, to inform how I render my own ships to get the point across even if they aren’t a perfect reflection of how a ship works.

I’m sure other folks have a wide net of resources beyond this, but these were some of the things that were helpful to me! But I certainly don’t have a vast accumulation of knowledge about sailing and it’s very much ‘that’s good enough to get the idea across in a comic panel someone will look at for 5 seconds’ ha!

#asks #iamthemaestro

[evilmageclub]

15, 17, and 28 for ao3 wrapped!

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

glad you asked!!! i have many >:) all are about the sams. we have:

the boy-king's penance. you may recall this extremely nsfw illustration of the same name. if you want to know what this wip is about thats it . but i did literally just 4 days ago post 6k of samot getting tied up so i must restrain myself from doing so again lest i seem too specifically horny about it (although i am)

at arm's length. samothes/hadrian sad dad bonding in aubade

But Samothes can only defy ancient habits so far, so he sets the wine aside on the desk and picks up one of the lures. It leaves a thin film of sawdust where his skin is damp with the bottle’s condensation. He lets himself watch Hadrian while he savours each imperfect plane of knifework under the pad of his thumb. “I have a lathe in my workshop that could save you some time.” “Thank you.” Hadrian’s smile, though nervous, seems genuine. “But I’m not really short on time here. I do it for the process, you know,” he says, gesturing vaguely towards the small pile of completed lures. “Used to paint these a lot in Velas, with my son.”

an excerpt from the journals of the king-god samothes. i don't write first person generally, not my favourite, but i gravitated towards this as a framing device for writing about red jack's time in aubade. ymmv.

That night he was with me as I knelt oiling his blade, but his eyes stayed on the roiling storms at the sea’s edge. “My son,” he said. “He’ll be here by dawn.” I didn’t ask how he knew. I looked up and laid a hand on his broad forearm. "Don't..." it felt wrong to say don't worry, so I settled for the factual. “You can’t die here unless I allow it.” “Then I trust you’ll allow it, my friend." By that time I had finished applying the oil, so he sheathed his odachi and used it to stand. I was struck silent. It was not that I didn’t understand his resignation, but I had thought after everything I shared with him... Then again, we are stubborn, we creatures of myth. I recall the shine of blood on the blade I had repaired as Red Jack withdrew it from his victim, his maker; a younger man’s fire in that same striking face. He nodded to me, and then he urged Ace around and rode out across the sandbar, kicking up surf in his wake.

samot/arrell part 2 doomed wizard boogaloo. well the first part was samot/fantasmo mostly but in my head this is a sequel

An unveiled barb, sharp enough to make Arrell start towards Samot—not knowing exactly what he means to do, only that he's being provoked. Before he can complete the movement Samot catches him by the chin, thumb tracing his shadow-stricken jaw. “It's not your undeath that concerns me, Tutor.” To hear that name from a self-styled god’s lips is jarring. More unbalancing still is the touch of Samot’s slender fingers; light, precise, as though poised on the edge of a page. It reminds Arrell of—oh, he doesn’t finish the thought. Any similarity is superficial. Samot’s fingertips are cold, his nails long and biting as the arcs of starlight out northwest beyond the balcony.

to remake ourselves. young samsam gender symposium; also, samothes discovers bottoming

Samot leaned back to consider him like a prince holding court from his throne of cushions. “It’s very sweet how coy you act about this. You’re not weaker for wanting me inside you once in a while.” “No, but I want...” “Want what?” “To feel weak,” Samothes admitted, in a low and sultry timbre that belied how dry his throat was. “To feel like this body has things in it I can’t control, hidden mechanisms beholden to my lover. I’ve never wanted that with anyone but you.”

as well as one wip full of melancholy samsam trying to have a sexy romantic evening when they both know theyre about to go to war. some of this material ended up in false rings and my secsam from last year so who knows if it'll get posted, but theres an entire unused sex scene in there i wrote a full two years ago that i still like and want to find a place to put it at some point. and also i have an as-yet-unnamed sam(sam)/hadrian selkie au. theres no excerpt polished enough to post but i just think samots wolf pelt situation-

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

i answered this here! tldr its samothes but also both of them

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

i would be betraying myself if i didn't say false rings. structurally and scene to scene i know i have written things that are better. but it is so long it contains multitudes many of which im very happy with

#thank u for asking!!! #ask game

[ellesliterarycorner]

Getting Your Writing Organized

I absolutely hate having documents labeled “Untitled document” in my Google Docs. It makes me so sad when I scroll through Docs, and I see at least five untitled documents just sitting there. How am I supposed to know what’s in there? Do I open up every single Untitled Document to find out what inside them? The world may never know. And it’s the worst feeling in the world when I’m looking for a specific document that has the idea I came up with at 3AM to solve all of my plot holes, but I vaguely remember not giving it a name, and now I have to sort through all of the Untitled documents to find the one I’m looking for. It may be a little tedious to sort through your documents and organize them, but it’ll probably save you a whole lot of time and frustration in the long run.

Google Docs Superiority 

Sorry to all of you Word users, but I do believe in Google Docs superiority. I just love not having to worry about saving my docs because I would cry if I forgot to save something, and then I lost everything that I had written. I’m not saying that you should absolutely use Google Docs, and a lot of these tips are transferrable to other platforms, but they will be Google Doc heavy. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter wether you chose to use Google Docs, Word, Scrivener, or Pages, but once you choose a platform that works best for you, your writing system, and your daily routine, I would stick to it just so all of your documents are on the same platform. One of the reasons I love Google Docs is because I can edit things I’ve written on my computer on my phone and vice-versa, so I never feel like I’m disconnected from my writing. Some people don’t like to write on their phones, so it doesn’t matter to them if they can write on their phones. Others don’t even like to write on electronic devices at all, so having a cache of notebooks, journals, and binders is the way to go. 

My Room Isn’t Even This Organized

No, literally, I can hardly keep my room clean, but my Google Docs folders are so immaculate. When you’ve decided on your platform of choice, I would start organizing everything into broader categories. I organize my big folders by WIP, poetry, personal, and crackhead/3 A.M randomness. Here is a picture for us visual learners: 

Having these larger folders is a great way just to separate all of your documents, so you have at the very least a vague idea of what you’re getting into when you open each of these folders. Today we’re going to be looking into the folder for my main WIP: The Trials of Flesh and Flames or TToFF. 

There’s a picture of the inside of my folder. I have 12 sub-folders with different categories. One for each book in the planned trilogy and a bunch for a bunch of other things. This helps me stay organized within my WIP. If I want to work on character development, I know I have a specific character development folder. If I’m in a worldbuilding mood, I go straight to the worldbuilding and lore folder. It also helps a little bit with productivity though no amount of perfectly organized folders will help with my insane procrastination problem. 

The Death of Untitled Documents

As I said earlier, I absolutely hate having Untitled Documents. Some people have whole systems that they’ve developed with decimals and Roman numerals and all sorts of things when it comes to naming all of their documents. Every time I try to do that to level up my writing organization, I end up never able to actually remember whatever system was in place. Instead, I find it a lot easier to use super straight-forward and blunt names. I also like the blunt names because it helps me when I’m searching for any of my documents later on. I may not remember a specific system name that I had, but if a scene is about two characters arguing and I title it Character A and Character B Argue (Draft 1), I’ll immediately see it when I’m looking through my folders, so I won’t waste time looking for it. 

Does This Spark Joy?

The answer is no. Half of the time, my writing does not spark joy and I am compelled to delete everything I have ever written without remorse. No matter how strong the compulsion is though, my limited self-control pulls through, I realize I am my biggest critic, and I stop myself. Even if you absolutely hate something that you’ve written, deleting it is never the solution. As you can see in one of the screenshots, I have a lovely little folder called Deleted Chunks. In that folder are, you guessed it, Deleted Chunks! A lot of times I actually have been grateful that I didn’t delete some of my little chunks. An old scene can fit perfectly into a new place, can help get the creative juices flowing for a new scene, or can be reworked into something completely new. Even if you don’t end up using the scene, sometimes going back and reading your old deleted scenes, can help you realize how much you’ve grown as a writer!

#writers #writing #writers on tumblr #write #writersofig #writers of instagram #writers of ig #writersofinstagram #writing reference #writing references #writing tip #writing tips #writing help #writing advice

[whentherewerebicycles]

weight talk under the cut

I got really out of my food and exercise routines during the months of the job hunt + big move + adjusting to new bleh work stuff (understandable) and my weight swung up quite a bit higher than it’s been in a while. but I did a pretty focused reset of my eating habits maybe six-ish weeks ago and I am starting to slowly see some of that stress weight come off. to be clear I like my body as is and while I have vague targets for where I’d like my ‘resting’ weight to be eventually I don’t diet or calorie count and I don’t stress too much about hitting certain ~milestones or whatever the way I used to in my lightly disordered eating youth. that said I think I do want to prioritize steadily and sustainably losing weight this year, for the following reasons:

health reasons (mostly my PCOS + family risk factors for diabetes and heart issues etc)

fertility reasons (moderate weight loss is supposed to increase chances)

🤰reasons (I’ve been reading about this a lot and if it’s within my control I’d like to make a concerted effort to not put on a lot more weight than I need to sustain a healthy pregnancy, especially since PCOS makes it really difficult for me to lose excess weight once I’ve put it on)

emotional reasons (this isn’t weight specific but: I feel a LOT better and sleep better when I’m eating well and getting a good amount of exercise. since I will have to go off most/all of my meds if I get pregnant I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself in other ways!)

I don’t know how long the IUIs will take, but I have budgeted for up to 6 cycles and I think I’d like to focus my food/exercise habit-building plans on a 3-6 month timeline. gonna return to this later today to do some more journaling and planning I think! but for now I want to stop & recognize that I’ve made huge progress towards the goals I set back in the spring 2020, when I realized I needed to change everything about my relationship to food/exercise. I eat SO many more kinds of vegetables than I used to and have learned to prepare healthy delicious meals. I’ve virtually eliminated processed foods + refined carbs and sugars from my everyday diet and have figured out ways to make that feel positive rather than restrictive or punitive. I’m curious about food and interested in new foods in a way I never was before like, age 27 lol. and I’ve experienced a couple stress-related setbacks (where I relapse into old eating habits) and been able to gently reset/get myself back on track. I consistently get 5-7 hours of moderate intensity exercise every week and I’m going to work on gradually building up to an additional 2-4 hours of higher intensity exercise at the gym each week. and while the scale isn’t everything, I’ve lost between 25-30 lbs (it’s fluctuated a bit with stress) in a little under 3 years. which probably isn’t as much as I could lose with crash dieting or whatever but my goal isn’t to lose fast but to lose sustainably in a way that gradually lowers my ‘resting’ weight aka the weight my body seems to kinda settle into. that feels really good to me!!! an average of 10 lbs per year seems doable and sane and not punishing.

it doesn’t make a ton of sense to set weight loss goals given the uncertainty of babymaking lol but if it does take me a while, I’d love to try to use careful food management + more exercise to slowly shed 5-7 lbs in the next six months, just to get myself comfortably into the 160s. the periods in my life where I’ve been the most physically fit my resting weight was between 145-150 and that 150 range has always felt like a good weight on my frame. soooo just gotta keep doing what I’m doing! working on building those good habits! tuning out the noise of weight loss pressure etc! focusing on what feels good for my body and self!

#i think what’s nice about long-term things like this is just like #it helps you see that you can change your life #it just unfolds over a longer timeline than I might like but #slow and steady etc

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hey, can I ask you a question about your blog itself?

Apologies if this is half-formed, but I’ve been thinking a lot about online/fandom spaces and what I want out of them. You’ve filled this blog with so much wonderful work, but at least to me it doesn’t feel overwhelming. It doesn’t seem to want to demand my attention in an endless, black-hole kind of way. I find it “quiet” if that makes sense. Not literally, because most of tumblr is literally silent, but like…mentally. Mentally quiet.

I’m wondering if you have any thoughts or advice about engaging in one’s interests online (particularly on the—and I use the term loosely and with mild disdain—‘content creation’ side of things) without getting lost in it. Or only getting lost in the good, fun, I’m-getting-genuine-joy-from-this kind of way.

I want to get better at being able to make things (and give myself the time and space to do so) without feeling like I have to find a way to eventually monetize it or grow it until it becomes a “thing” or else it isn’t worth my time to do. I guess I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove my interests are valuable, and now I can’t stop.

Anyway, since you are probably the only person with whom I am personally vaguely acquainted who seems like they’ve done that/built a space like that, I thought I’d ask.

PS, I’ve now discovered there’s not a 500 character limit in the ask box on mobile. Sorry in advance.

hi, @clintbeifong!

first off, thank you so much for your very kind words. i am so glad to know that you enjoy my blog in the way that you described; i love the idea that it’s a nice, quiet place for you.

second, i’ve spent the last several days considering what you’ve asked, trying to come up with a thoughtful response, and after all of my consideration, i’m still not sure that i have much practical advice to offer, in terms of specific “do this” or “don’t do that” kinds of rules you might follow.

instead, what i do have are some rambling thoughts on art and its value, which i hope at least somewhat apply to the topic at hand:

it isn’t at all surprising that you feel pressure to monetize your fanworks, because, honestly, that’s how things are nowadays—everyone is supposed to have a “side hustle;” we’re all expected to be “on the grind” as much as possible; with the advent of streaming and self-publication, activities that were once solely recreational (like playing video games or journaling) can now effectively be marketed; there is very little separation between the professional and private self, when employers and potential employers have access to your social media accounts and are constantly evaluating what you post in terms of how it relates to their brand.

that feeling of “if i can’t use it to make money or gain exposure, i'm wasting my time” is part and parcel of living in a late capitalist society.

but here’s the thing: art needs time and room to breathe, and the "payoff" from making art isn't always immediate.

obviously, there are times when making art can be profitable and can help you gain exposure. but it can’t be that way all the time—even for artists who are at the top of their games, who make their livings making art.

think about it: for every one famous da vinci* painting, there were notebooks full of his sketch work—line drawings which he, at the time that he was alive, had no intention that anyone but he and maybe his students and intimate acquaintances would ever, ever see. while some of it was draft work for commissioned pieces he would later profit from, a lot of it was much more aimless practice, and, in the cases of some of his more fanciful “invention” blueprint sketches, was just for fun.

* note that i'm choosing da vinci arbitrarily here. the same could be said of any number of artists, writers, musicians, etc.

while that work was half-formed and never meant for public consumption, was it less valuable to da vinci than his finished, “published” works, like the last supper?

though i can’t speak for the man, i have a feeling that if you asked him, he’d say no.

that work was practice.

that work was fun.

and practice and fun are two things that are crucial for every artist, no matter at what level or in what sphere they’re working.

so here’s the thing: fanart can make you money.

particularly, in your case, one of your multiple talents is making—lovely!—visual fanart, which is perhaps the genre of fanwork that best lends itself to monetization.

that means, in theory, you could profit from your work here—and lots of fanartists on tumblr and other sites do just that.

but even if you don’t make money with your fanart—if that’s not something you can do or that you want to do, even if the option is available to you—that doesn’t mean that your fanworks aren’t valuable on other grounds.

when you’re drawing lovely digital comics of cj cregg and danny concannon dancing, your hand doesn’t know the difference between that activity and working on a piece for your professional portfolio (if you have one).

it all still counts as practice—maybe focusing on different elements of the art than were you doing commercial work, sure, but practice all the same. it all acts in service to you getting to know yourself and your craft, developing habits, problem-solving, refining your techniques, etc., etc.

—and it does all of those things in addition to something else, which is allowing you to have a place to play.

with fanworks—whether they be visual art or gifs or fic or meta or memes—you get to experiment without worrying what an editor or employer might think. you get to follow your muse. make things on a whim. fix other people’s mistakes. make mistakes of your own with really no consequence.

while certainly there are occasions to do those same things in art in other circumstances, as well, in fandom, that’s the reg; that’s the function.

you get to play around and make things to suit yourself.

fanwork can—and, honestly, should—be totally self-indulgent.

you want to draw a million versions of the same couple kissing? go for it! write a bizarre au that will make sense to no one but you and maybe one other person who once had the same very niche summer job you did and happens to be in the same fandom? knock yourself out!

da vinci had his flying machines, and we have blorbos and “but there was only one bed!” tropes.

having that playground will benefit you, both by giving you a mental space in which to mess around and figure things out about your art AND by enriching your brain, helping you not to burn out.

having fun is an integral part of being creative.

so grant yourself permission to do it.

it’s okay to monetize your fanworks if that’s what you want or need to do—of course, paying attention to and respecting copyright law as necessary, so you don’t get your ass sued—but it’s also okay not to or not to monetize every piece. it's okay to draw or write or gif or analyze or meme something that will net you nothing more than maybe a few notes and a sense of personal satisfaction because doing so will benefit you in the long run, as an artist and as a person.

you’re not wasting time or effort because your talent isn’t a limited resource.

if it’s something that makes you happy to do, then that’s justification enough in itself to do it.

god knows the world can be miserable enough without us refusing ourselves access to what few outlets we have for joy.

now.

all of the above said, if making fanworks has ceased to make you happy, and if doing so is now something that feels like a chore to you, then the great thing about fandom is that you also have no obligation to produce content for it.

go play on another playground for a while! reblog other people's work without making any of your own. or step away completely! get back into your favorite video game or read a book or plan a birdwatching outing or do whatever it is that gives your brain a rest.

fanwork isn’t a job, and you don’t have to do it if it isn’t gratifying. you owe no one anything with it but yourself. you can always come back to it later if you want to.

and i guarantee: even if it’s been years, the second you update that wip, someone is going to be happy to get that notification. it doesn’t matter that half a decade has passed since you last posted a chapter.

if there is a sense of quietude or relaxation to my blog, it is because, at the end of the day, i make the gifsets i want to look at, i write the stories i want to read, and i ramble out the meta that helps me to make sense of the shows i like.

of course, i am always happy—thrilled!—when other people enjoy my work.

bringing others happiness is a unique pleasure.

but, ultimately, i’d still be giffing and writing stories and meta about two geeky middle-aged scientists in love and a bunch of overworked, underpaid doctors in chicago even if nobody else wanted to look at or read them because that’s what makes me happy.

i won’t pretend that it’s always easy not to care about the “rat race” aspect of it all—in my life outside of the internet, i'm a college english professor whose specialization is creative writing, so i absolutely understand the experience of opening up a wip doc for one of my fics and immediately feeling guilty for doing so because shouldn’t i be working on something i can actually publish under my own name, that i can potentially make money off of and that will help me someday get tenure????—but i do still firmly believe that no instance of making art is ever wasted and that there is inherent value in engaging in the act of collective storytelling that is fandom, even if it's not "profitable" to do so, in the traditional sense.

i don’t know that anything i've said here will prove useful to you, but, speaking solely as a fan of your work, i wish you well in your creative endeavors.

i hope your able to find a way to get what you want to out of your creative process and be happy with how you engage with fandom (or not).

thank you very much for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #clintbeifong

[christmasintheloonybin]

i sort of like being sad in a normal way. like lamenting. wistfully. lol. like a little tear in my eye and shit thinking back to happier/hopeful times. i mean suicidal thinking and actual depression it’s fucking bleak. i mean i wouldn’t even consider depression like sadness i mean sadness sort of has something to it. there’s something good about being sad even really sad if there’s something causing it. like there’s something beautiful there. depression is totally different it’s ugly. but anyways, i’m sort of sad, but sort of happy at the same time. i’ve had some positive moments in my life, i am glad i’ve been able to have at least a few, i’m very lucky to have had a chance to do the things i have done, the short list of accomplishments even if they were eventually rendered useless and irrelevant. i am happy to have been there and done that. i’m sort of reminiscing, but it makes me sad and shit, but it is all happy memories. i mean i’m happy but it makes so fucking sad i want to cry. it’s actually so difficult to cry these days. i’ve been crying a little bit because i’ve been losing my mind feeling so impotent and helpless and recognizing that there’s nothing i can do you know what i mean. like everything feels so pointless. but i don’t like it. i mean it’s not fun and it really doesn’t even make me feel better. this is depression (ugly). if i get my feelings hurt or something it doesn’t make me cry. i mean normal sadness. becauase again theres something nice something beautiful about just being sort of, you know, “what could have been” what could have been is almost always better than what would have actually happened lol. this is a fact. if anything the end of realistic fantasy is the best thing that can possibly happen, because this scenario will never disappoint you now. so “what could have been” is really a beautiful thing, what was is even more beautiful. something specifically sad is typically beautiful. something vaguely sad is ugly. sad music is ugly. a song that you associate with a certain time/place/person - that now makes you sad when you listen to it - is beautiful. like life is great, we all have these stupid little memories, it’s like a book or a movie but it’s real, i am happy to look over it. i am actually an avid uh what do you call it. i write in my journal almost every day. well i do it every day but sometimes i miss a day. so i mean i’m not looking over that shit because it makes me TOO sad, it’s nice to have the detached false memory sadness. the real thing is too sad. but i’m glad to know, if i wanted to, in ten years or whatever even, i can look back on this it’s literally the novelization of the tv show of my life. everything important is there. and i fuck with reminiscing for real. i’ll just sit here and think no fucking joke it’s like my favorite activity.

ok enough.

[egregiousderp]

For the fanfiction writers ask, #13, 14, and 30

13) What’s the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Star Wars.

I was taught to read adult level books at the age of eight with Star Wars Expanded Universe stuff. Packed up in my box of journals is the American Girl “My Story” notebook that contains the wheelchair-bound Mary Sue I tried to make. Wheelchair-bound because my dad also had me reading Asimov’s Foundation series, and Hari Seldon imprinted on me at a young age. Captain Nemo, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and Hari Seldon were some of my earliest favorite characters and they all have a very specific “mastermind” type because that was really the only thing about me that was valued or praised.

My blog header says my Star Wars problem is old enough to buy drinks in American Bars. Phantom Menace came out when I was nine. You can do the math. I’ve been in Star Wars longer than the prequels have existed for. Middle school me was on Star Wars Forums when I could get on dial-up and see what other people were making or talking about.

I know for a fact I have a locked dollar store journal from when I was eleven that has Dragon Ball Z/Star Wars crossover fiction where Piccolo and Gohan are a Jedi master and apprentice. Honestly that probably still holds up pretty well as a concept.

Abs one of the remnants of my childhood is the humor self insert fic me and my then-best-friend (and now former roommate) wrote back and forth where we were apprentices of Maul and Kenobi respectively, then switched when we realized one of us wasn’t that bad, and the other kind of was. It remains a masterpiece, and she’s read it to her husband. (My other former roommate.)

None of my early works exist in an internet capacity probably. But the first thing I did online works for was probably Yu-Gi-Oh. In the early, no-filter, possibly create your own geocities site if you’re real dedicated, post on your livejournal days.

The one reassuring thought I have every time something I write for gets popular is that at least it will stay pretty safely buried except with a select few people that I then become friends with and follow across fandoms as their interests wiggle around.

14) What’s your favorite fandom to write for?

At risk of sounding trite: “uhhhhhh…whatever one I’m currently in?”

I come back to things as I feel like coming back to them, and have long since set aside any ideas of becoming a “real writer” (ie: successfully monetarizing my interests.)

This is a joy and vague connectivity exercise.

If the people I’m buddies with are acting up and trying to consume and smear mud on one another for fun and dubious internet cred, then it takes the joy out of the thing for me and I find another thing, keeping only the people I like and glancing at what they’re doing from time to time like I’m reading the morning paper.

I’ve “come back” to Star Wars about three times, seeing people around me excited and happy to play with the concepts of it.

I’m “currently in” Naruto, and am fairly happy seeing people play with different concepts in that.

Basically I find a work I like and it lives in my brain, unfolding ideas, and if I’m lucky, I find and connect with people who also have different things unfolding in their brains, and we talk excitedly, and become friends. And then when they find another thing they’re excited about, I go “oh. Looks interesting.” And check it out.

I’ve Uh. Held on to @marquiseoniongirl for almost twenty years like this. Across several social media platforms.

Apparently I’ve given her a My Hero Academia problem most recently. (It’s been a few years now.)

30) Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

I’ve had a pretty set M.O. from the moment I started working online and that M.O. has never shied from angst.

“Suffering is the only thing that makes a moment of sweetness a real relief.”

Multiple fics of people holding one another in the dark probably indicates something there.

#Skuun answers #I had to look back at Greyson’s @-ing me to find the original questions

[kyaah]

sorry i haven’t been active i actually have a queue of 70+ posts and just haven’t started it despite coming on a lot and briefly interacting with mutuals

i’ve been going through a lot a lot mentally and with my family, specifically my mom and i “butt heads” and that’s been getting to me immensely, the way she talks to me and treats me in general no matter how well i think we get along and have fun and converse while i live here at home

it always comes back to a battle, how i’m wrong and cursed and that i’m doomed with the curse because she and i are so alike in many ways, apparently

well a lot happened a few days ago and though i try to journal and try to not speak about it online, however vague like right now, though i try to be mentally sound, i lost and proved her right

it was like we mimicked a previous fight a couple years ago that we had and she hates that i ever hurt myself yet she dares me to do it, then she’ll humiliate me by asking me to undress in front of her and/or my dad, just to check if i’m alright

i passed her test three or four nights ago but right after, i decided to cut myself just 3 times on my thigh, even after writing it out and venting to my girlfriend and my girlfriend explaining why i shouldn’t do it, obviously because she cares for me but proving my mom right

i really am just doomed i guess… i’m already deluded enough into thinking my suicide attempts give me answers to a longer life and that i need to decipher clues in my daily life to find a greater purpose this a reason to go on living to begin with; i see things sometimes and i’m reminded of when i was on tumblr as a kinnie at 17-20 i really did believe i had dimensional powers and that there was so much truth in who i was, where i came from, why i was spurned then and i lost everything (in my fictional life)… it would just make sense that if i had dreams, they revealed the deeper conscious and that deeper conscious would be memories, whether here or another world, right? there’s a reason we’re all here and not there, wherever our there happens to be and wherever we see, i think i seem like a miss weston chandler when i talk about these kind of things haha

but anyways, my girlfriend even talked to me saying that destiny is an idea and nobody really needs to fulfill one, we live to grow and spread love where we can, which is true. i remember trying to explain our thinking and she brought up how i would possibly feel if she attempted and succeeded for the same reasons i am planning to in a few years, obviously i’d feel bad, beyond bad, but even though my circumstance is different and i need to be at the right place and time to kill myself even if i know i won’t die, that sort of thing happens for a reason, right? i’d be so much more than heartbroken if she decided and attempted and succeeded, but it would do something for me i think, and i just couldn’t bring that up because she doesn’t understand or believe in that word, i wouldn’t want to offend her by having her think she’s a piece of my strange puzzle. i didn’t want to and couldn’t possibly begin explaining how my old brother in law was murdered and how i accidentally delivered the news started me on a different line, and how his murderer killed himself so young (17) to get out of the consequences rather than find clues to his reason for being through facing that, at such an age it could have been a huge breakthrough and maybe he would change and gain a better life later on—he deserved to die, but i think failed suicide attempts are huge. but i don’t want anyone to think they’re pawns in a game, it can feel similar to a game, but everyone’s lives’ rules can be so different from person to person, that’s what our free will and right to live gives us

we’re getting ahead of ourself, i don’t expect the average user to believe or me read to this and get it understand it, i know that it’s a lot and looks like “psychobabble”… i just felt like typing all of that, i don’t want or need a response from anyone about any of that because i know they won’t get it anyway

what i’m trying to say is i’m guilty and cut myself, i relapsed after maybe 4 years and i am 25 turning 26 this year

i just don’t know what to do, i’ve hit a wall and genuinely i know the answer is to get out of this house where my mom plants things in me and replants it and it hurts, but i’ve hit a wall in learning how to drive which would lead to me making further discoveries in happiness and finding clues in the world outside of home/work and would literally save my life getting me out of here

i’m just worried about where i am at right now, there’s a popular youtube video about a fight that went on in my store and there were police called and i’m in the video near the end holding a little girl down, i received a compliment saying that i helped her a lot and saved her from getting beat like her mom by my coworker who now is facing jail haha… i think the brush off of being involved in a fight regardless of what i did and that video being online, it just scares me… what will that attract, you know? my big manager said he’s glad i was calm at least (though i was shaking a little when i went back to register and was asking other customers if they were alright) a different manager said he’d like me to branch out since a new CSS position is up now that my coworker (that was her position before she was provoked and fought) is not working here anymore

anyway i think it’s just been very busy in our life and i am trying to make sense of it and we feel so bad i cut our leg, no matter how easy it was and how it didn’t hurt really, it’s just healing up strangely? i’m so embarrassed though, i truly am. i don’t want to think about if my mom is going to follow through on checking on me periodically because she might call someone on me if she sees new cuts no matter how small, which, good for her i suppose, i can be out of her sanctuary :(

my girlfriend was right in me cutting myself would be proving my mom right, they were right and i was wrong, but more than that i feel embarrassed to see her this weekend because there’s no hiding my thigh from her and it’s just the timing, did i really have to cut myself after she told me i shouldn’t? it’s like i disrespected her and did it against her wishes sigh it takes everything in me not to call us a retard in front of my girlfriend not only because she doesn’t like the word but she certainly doesn’t agree with me putting myself down in any manner period

and also i lost my wallet at a club two nights ago drinking and dancing with randoms, everyone was very polite though it was a country style club and i’m thankful the staff had it and got ahold of me, now my sister has my wallet… although she cannot bring it back right away -_-

i’ve locked my cards and still have them locked even though i know it’s safe and sound in good hands, maybe this will teach me to curb my spending haha

rilakkumaUS has released the bright fluffy sherbet colors on their amazon and i really want them so much, girlfriend told me to only get one, but i can’t not get the whole set even if i “won’t want” them somewhere down the line and i would still have “only one to see if i would still care about having them all later” as if that isn’t fucked up to say, how can someone not get a full set of anything? that’s how you create loneliness regardless of the object is alive or not… i have one pair of the LINE friends skechers and have had them for many years but have never worn them because i don’t want to knowing that i don’t have the other pairs (is that weird? lol)

#hihi #suicide and murder-suicide and self harm mentions also my crazy psychobabble #whatever…i’m getting ready for work now

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - Gauntlet of Shar + The Nightsong

Very nearly done act 2!!

Spoilers below the cut.

Did I ever mention that as I play, because I’m a fucking nerd, I’ve been writing down short little notes and journal entries from my tav’s point of view? What they were thinking and how they reacted in certain scenes? I highly recommend it if you’re also a fucking nerd, because it’s been fun.

The last loose end to tie up before the Gauntlet was completing Halsin’s little shadow curse quest. I think I might have skimmed too much info from Halsin’s introduction back in act 1 or something, this whole plot point and Halsin’s connection to the shadow curse and what Thaniel is exactly is a little vague and strange to me. Sorry buddy. I know it’s not your fault you have so much exposition to dump all the time… you really do seem like a lovely guy with your honey and your ducks. “Little” shadow curse quest, “little”, man the fight by the docks was a pain in the ass, even with Shadowheart’s spirit guardian spell helping out.

The design of Shar’s big temple is definitely…… distinct. I am not sure if I can say I personally enjoy it, it feels weird to me, this kind of modern, minimalist, sleek almost like I dunno giving me bauhaus vibes or something, in the middle of this otherwise very medieval world. Though I do not personally prefer it, I do appreciate that they went with a bold and distinctive choice. I bought the DLC pack that includes the art book, but I haven’t gone through it yet because I didn’t want to see art for areas I hadn’t visited yet. When I’m all done the game I can’t wait to go through and check out the design work.

I know it’s a bit ironic for me, a consummate and obsessive savescummer, to say this, but once again: don’t be too afraid to fail dialogue checks, a lot of the dialogue has interesting outcomes if you fail.

Anyways, the actual Gauntlet… was I the only one who found it kinda… anticlimactic? I was disappointed the trials weren’t harder. Even the library of silence was weirdly easy (I was able to snipe that black hole thing undetected from the doorway and vaporize it before the fight even started, removing the silence condition, and then it’s just mopping up). The only really challenging encounter I’ve found in this area at all was the fight right before Balthazar’s room, because it was tricky to take out all the black hole things in one round, and everything else has been solidly myeh. I was SO excited to have to fight copies of my party, but I snuck everyone into sniping spots and basically finished everything off before they even had a chance to fight back, because the HP was so low. (I mean was that supposed to be the point? We were specifically fighting our past lives, was it supposed to make me contemplate how much more powerful I am now, or how sad it is to basically slaughter my past self?...) I mean I *am* playing the game on easy mode, maybe these challenges are more significant on higher difficulties. Or, as much as I say I was disappointed, maybe I would have been frustrated if it was harder, because at this point I kind of really just want to hurry up and finish the Nightsong stuff so I can fight Ketheric.

I read online and found people discussing the self same trial and how difficult it can be. They were even listing all these tips for how to make the fight easier, like unequipping all weapons and armour before you enter the room to make the copies weaker. Like. I dunno. I *AM* playing this game on the easy setting, so maybe it’s different, but like, yeah. The copies had a FRACTION of my hit points, they were two levels lower, and they all had lower stats. I sniped them from hiding spots, and I was able to kill every single copy before they even got a turn in battle. I dunno man. Maybe it’s an actual fight on higher difficulty levels. Maybe this is one time where playing on easy was a bad choice.

So far I have found two hidden areas that are only accessible via a featherfall jump from a higher platform, am I missing anything else?

And I finished all the Nightsong stuff. Now I’ve freed the hot aasimar lesbian, hooray! Once again, another writing issue: I read a plaque that said to the effect of “spill the blood of Selune and become a dark justiciar” or something, and my journal updated to declare that we had discovered from plaque that the Nightsong is not a relic, but a woman trapped in a cage! Em no we did not discover that. I love this game so much but it does make me just ever so slightly sad that act 2 has all these rough little edges on it. I wish they had had the time to smooth things out just a LITTTTLE bit more.

I was very surprised to see that Shadowheart will decide to spare Aylin all by herself, without you stepping in to say anything. I wanted to see the dark justiciar option first, then reload and spare Aylin, so I decided to just stand back and watch and I picked the “do nothing” dialogue options. I was surprised to see her throw away the spear. It actually took some effort to convince her to go through with it. Good for you, Shadowheart. That’s really interesting. (I wonder how it goes with Astarion’s choice with the ritual) Holy smokes that fight with Balthazar though. I almost got a TPK because I was being really fucking stupid. I forgot, stupidly, that he is undead, and it just didn’t occur to me to get Shadowheart to turn undead. So he kept casting cloudkill on our asses. Once I stopped being stupid it was a pretty standard fight. Holy smokes.

My oldest kiddo has played all the Dragon Age games and she’s been telling me about how the games are similar and how they’re different - I wish there were changes to BG3 companions when you romance them, like how she mentioned they get different outfits in Dragon Age. Maybe a romanced companion could have something added to their tents at camp. Like some flowers for Shadowheart’s camp, wine and books for Astarion, I dunno, just some little token that’s implied you put it there, something like that. Actually that makes me think too… I once played a game where you could kind of make friends with all the residents of this village, and as you made better friends with them, their houses would get decorated with greenery and lights outside as your approval went up. It would be neat if, as you gained approval even with unromanced companions, it would cause their tents to change and be improved. Or what if there were specific items you could give all the companions as gifts? Like the way you can give Shadowheart the night orchid and the shar statue. What if everyone had special items somewhere hidden in the game? It’s selfish I guess - this amazing game that already has so much detail in it, and I’m just thinking about MORE things that I want? But it WOULD be neat…..

My act 1 map is gone now so I can no longer visit the tiefling graveyard I set up at the monastery. Sigh. Next up is storming Moonrise with the harpers, and I am SO SO CLOSE to being able to free my sad old man from the dungeon.

#bg3 #bg3 playthrough #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers

[amor-und-psyche]

Project 50 - Introduction

Yesterday, I decided to start Project 50 - a 50-day-long challenge geared towards learning a skill, establishing habits, and improving your life. During these 50 days I will work on learning Python for data science.

Why I’m doing this

I have really struggled with procrastination while finishing up my thesis and am now almost done with my Master's. I thought this challenge would be a great way of transitioning into work life.

The Rules

There are a bunch of rules that I have altered a little to suit my situation right now:

Wake up before 8AM

Do your morning routine and 1h of no distractions.

Exercise for 1h per day (I will do 20 min)

Read 10 pages per day.

Dedicate 1h to learning a new skill.

Follow a healthy diet.

Track your progress in a journal.

I have made some changes and specifications:

My morning routine is 10 minutes of meditation, skin care, stretching, and getting dressed.

I will use the Forest App for 1h of no distractions.

I will be more lenient with the exercise since I am on vacation with my mom rn. Yoga, pilates, and stretching are okay, and I will walk a lot instead of doing high-impact workouts.

10 pages of reading are specifically for self-help and self-improvement books, not books for fun or learning the skill.

A healthy diet is really vague, so: At least one fruit per day, three glasses of water, no binging on sweets, having tea and fruit first when I want to snack.

What I will learn

The skill I want to learn is Python coding (which I’ve already worked with) specifically for data science. I will use a book called the Python Data Science Handbook to learn some techniques. The book covers NumPy, Pandas, machine learning, and visualizations. I will read and work on code from this book for at least one hour daily.

Would be curious if any of you have experience in doing Project 50 so if you have any advice please drop me a message :)

Thanks for reading & happy holidays!

#studyblr #dark academia #project 50 #study inspiration #python coding #data science

[petite-ursus]

I don’t really make personal text posts on here so much these days. I’ve gotten really good at writing in my journal instead. Posting things online started to feel so vulnerable and unnecessary a few years ago. The internet isn’t really good for balancing authenticity with respectfulness towards any involved parties when I’m still in the midst of processing what I’m really feeling. Like, how much can I vent while still keeping it vague?

I showed my girlfriend a draft of a message over the weekend and she immediately demanded I rewrite it. She called what I wrote initially... enabling... leaving doors open, not staying true to my expressed desires. She pointed out how (in her experience) whenever I hear from or about this person I’m unsettled at best and a slight wreck at worst for days. She asked why I was even allowing myself to be accessible, and told me how much it upset her to see me affected the way I am.

She was right and I edited the message, and honestly she still wasn’t wholly satisfied with what I wrote... I love her, I appreciate her support and even just her existing is a reason to stick to my “expressed desires” because to do otherwise would... honestly be disrespectful to her... Even so, even though of course I know she’s right-- I mean, I was right when I made this decision two years ago--  and even though eventually I will hopefully get to where she wants me now-- dispassionate and concise... understanding the correctness of the separation, does not stop me currently from feeling such grief around the finality of this.

I didn’t leave because the love stopped. I left for the love and respect of everyone involved but one in particular. I could have gone around and around forever for that tie we seemed to have. Trying to figure out how to make the relationship fit and work... But that was me, and some other adults who got to decide what situations and dynamics they stressed themselves out with. A kid can’t decide. That had to be more important, It remains more important.

The fact was... two years ago I heard some news of a latest rupture... I heard it and I thought I’d weather through it as we had in the past... but I kept remembering being specifically told by this person that ruptures seemed to happen most when I was around.. I kept picturing this kid.... I couldn’t see the cycle of upset which I was (ostensibly) tied to ever resolving into real stable happiness because in almost two decades it never did. We had a destabilizing affect on one another. The reasons why... I had to let go of dissecting them and I had to remove myself. I agonized over it. I cried over it. I made like... an 80 song playlist on youtube processing it... Cried over it a million times. I wished I could undo it... but I was right. The proof is in the last two years of growth on all sides.

Closing the door means all parties can really move forward to better ends focus on real fulfilling and healthy relationships without the exciting but ultimately unhealthy swings of highs and lows and obsession, and I know everyone will be fine-- better than fine, we’ll thrive. I already am so happy with my life, and  so are they and that makes me so happy...  But the future it will also never be any of the versions of what I wanted it to be for so many years. Hard doesn’t even scratch the surface because the tie is still there.

The body doesn’t know the difference between mental and physical anguish and grief, and so I feel it... but it all fades eventually and it really will be more than ok, it will be good. It’ll be great.

#personal #I'll probably delete this soon #shannon rambles

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

I have a question that you totally don't have to answer if you don't want to, about DID. It's something I've considered as a possibility for me, even though I don't dissociate as much anymore. When you're just going about your life in the front, do your alters talk to you/each other? These days it feels more like my body is a house with like four people in it who just won't shut up.

It depends, really. I generally have amnesic barriers between the others, as in, I (Salamatullah/Ciarán) don't remember what happens fully when other folks are fronting. Sometimes I'll have vague recollections, but its more like remembering a dream rather than something I did with my own body. Sometimes there's less barrier, sometimes we're just "blurry", which is when we kinda don't know who we are lmao.

Overall, we don't really communicate directly much. Keeping something like a journal or using apps that allow us to leave notes for each other helps, sometimes the others will have a little knowledge of me and my thoughts. (example, I might be thinking about telling a friend something specific but then someone else switches to the front, they might be able to recall that I wanted to share something with a friend). There are times when I would say the others are close to the front, almost like a pre-switch state when I might get some vibes or talk to them. Or I can tell like, "oh X wouldn't like this" or "oh X is/would feel [blank] about what I'm doing right now". The alters themselves can communicate, I'm not entirely kept aprised of how and what they communicate, but I am aware of it (mainly via messages/videos/notes left by the others) But overall, there's not much direct communication with us, amnesic barriers pose difficulty to that and we're still working on better communications. though some systems get to the point where they communicate better, I'm not the only example of a system. Folks with OSDD can have less amnesia and less distinction between alters.

Aside from alters, though, I do have almost a running commentary in my brain of various people nearly 24/7. Where they're not alters, they're just people my brain conjures up for me to talk to and keep me company, but that's not related to my DID imo. I think that's more akin to maladaptive daydreaming or smth on my part. I also have yknow things like intrusive thoughts, hallucinations, and just Brain Scrambling due to various non DID mental health issues (not that I'm claiming that's your experience! I'm just sharing all of my experiences with brain people/voices/etc).

If you are considering if you might have a dissociative disorder, this masterpost (its a gdoc) has lots of resources including screening stuff, such as the DES (Dissociative Experiences Scale) which is a self-questionarre that measures your dissociative experiences. Which can be compared to the average score based on various disorders. And if you feel you can safely, I would recommend bringing up dissociation with a professional. That's not always possible or safe, I'm far too personally aware of that, but the little I've been able to discuss bits about dissociation with a professional has been helpful sometimes.

STONE ADDENDUM: Salam had this ready to post but now I’m here too so i (stone) thought I could idk say smth. uh. so like being a system is kinda like having roommates, where your brain/body is the apartment. but more of a situation where you and your roommates have like, completetely different schedules or w/e. so you communicate like via text and leaving notes around like “hey can you take out the trash when you get a chance” or “landlord (derogatory) called and said X”. and like. maybe u get a chance to talk briefly when like they’re coming home from work and ur just leaving. sometimes tho like, as an alter or w/e i can talk with the other folks esp cuz like, sometimes we front together and stuff. which i guess in the apartment metaphor is like a roomate inviting over a friend while ur out. but yeah amnesia is a bitch and kinda is a wall between us to keep like, idk all of us from talking at once or w/e.

#Eldritch IT Speaks #Eldritch IT Answers #stone.txt #do we have a system tag? #the primordial system #idk if we use that but there #idk if salam wanted to edit this more but i dont feel like i should edit it