#{ katie ;; interact.

[amiscreations]

✨you built the castle, but I rule over me✨

More art on my Instagram!

I'm still slightly in shock at the response to my Gwen piece, so here's a (kind of) matching painting of our very own High Priestess, The Lady Morgana✨

[goldiipond]

this balloon smp bit with holly and val has been plaguing my mind for days

[slugtowns]

siblings

[goldkirk]

I don’t know how to explain any more clearly that it doesn’t MATTER if it seems legitimate to you. You have got to fact check every single headline and post and claim on the left just like you need to do on the right.

The left is NOT immune to misinformation and rushed reporting. And the more emotionally polarizing or shocking the talking points, sound bytes, and headlines are, the worse it is and more frequently it happens.

Learn to verify through multiple independent sources. If you can’t do that, you can’t trust it.

If you have to wait extra hours for the real information to come through vetted channels—NOT just one individual somewhere everyone links to, and not just one single media source either, EVEN if it’s a major news network—thats just how it has to be. What news outside of genuine local disasters near you TRULY needs your outrage and post-sharing in the next hour specifically?

Misinformation works best by not seeming like misinformation and by fitting in with the rest of what you already expect to see. It doesn’t help anyone to not be able to recognize and avoid the stuff.

[mousemannation]

i just know alex and katie r sooooo sick of being used for fanservice by tennis media but i eat it up every fucking time it’s honestly embarrassing for me

[herotome]

Congrats again to Warden for winning Herotome's first official popularity poll!

If this post gets 50 reblogs I'll release the shirtless version.

Credit to my friend Fae, a talented writer and true visionary, for suggesting I add Katie~

[violetsandshrikes]

How do you even end up in these situations? Not in a bad way, but the idea of talking to people in public like that little girl with the makeup or yelling back at that lady is so terrifying, my social anxiety could never, but I wish I could?

Hard to pinpoint. I think for context, you have to know that at 18, when I was first starting out in university, I had such bad social anxiety that I couldn’t stand in a crowded lecture theatre to go pee because the idea of people looking at me was so scary to me. Medication didn’t help, and therapy worked up to a point. I sympathise, because social anxiety is literally the devil. It made my life so hard, and I remember being really frustrated with people around me who could just…do things.

Things that personally helped me:

• Majority of my friends are major extroverts. I find having extroverted friends, at least a few, is really helpful because the majority of the time they’re happy to bring you along to whatever they’re doing, they basically act as social lubricant (introducing you to people and vice versa, softening the scary parts of initially meeting people) and you can learn a lot by watching how they interact with other people and conduct themselves.

• In the same vein: joining any sort of hobby group, or group that has at least semi-frequent meetings. Easier said than done, I know. The good thing about this is that with similar or shared interest, again, you shave a lot of that awkwardness off of first meeting people and trying to establish initial contact.

• Similar but not quite the same: volunteering. Volunteering helped me a lot, because volunteering groups and movements tend to be an incredibly diverse mix of people. Especially older people, people in retirement, quirky old women, etc. A lot of these people in volunteering won’t even blink if you are a little shy or socially awkward at first, and much like extrovert friends, are great to observe and see how they do it. Plus, I find regular volunteering really helpful for confidence.

• This might be controversial but: I worked a shitty retail job for 3 years while studying, because I financially had to. If you’re young, you can physically handle it, and you’re in a good place to do so, even some casual or part time work can be a game changer. I’m not going to lie: 9 times out of 10, these jobs suck. The general public can be a nightmare. However, you are quickly forced to adapt. I view it almost like in the Sims, levelling up charisma, because you have to deal with people. In the right kind of workplaces, it’s also an okay place to meet other people and socialise more.

• I wish I could remember what she said to me word for word, but my mother had sat me down in my later teenage years when my social anxiety was at it’s height, and broken down some aspects of what I was doing. A lot of the time, I was curled in on myself, eyes down, head down, frowning (if not outright glaring), and generally giving myself a very hostile aura. At the time, I was pissed about this advice don’t get me wrong. Once I started actually using it a few years later though, it worked. She had pointed out that the vast majority of people are actually pretty friendly or genial in their day to day lives, and it really pissed me off when I realised she was right. I smile at pretty much everyone - most people, even people who look hostile or angry, smile back. I would say an easy 80-90%. I hold doors open for people, I say please and thank you, I ask cashiers and things how their day was. These little social interactions cannot be taken for granted, because yeah, sometimes someone is in a bad mood, or not interested in engaging, but the vast majority of the time people respond positively, and that feedback is an incredible tool for building social ability. This is pretty much how I’m able to strike up conversation with random strangers now - once the little interactions got familiar and stopped being scary, the idea of turning and talking to a stranger in an aisle becomes less of terrifying task.

I say this about a lot of things, but again, I think a lot of times, people mistake social skills for something inherently innate, and not a skill you can build much like a muscle. It’s especially really hard for those of us who suffer/have suffered from social anxiety, because there’s a whole other mental health aspect to it, but even trying little things if you can will pretty much guaranteed help you feel a little more secure.

(One of my best friends since early teens is autistic, and has always struggled really badly socially. Around mid-university, she began to transform into a social butterfly; she’s involved in so many committees, groups, parties, events. People love her. I asked her curiously once how she’d facilitated that change over coffee, and she shrugged and told me she basically decided to project the same energy as a golden retriever or Labrador, and go from there lmao.)

[fecklesheckleshacklesschmeckles]

can recommend for fans of reece characters being Put In Situations! :)

[androidcharles]

I think this Burt is a little too quirked up for this Burt

I'm surprised he didn't burst into flames the minute he started interacting w/ him.

Also there's a small subtle reference if you can catch it. The hint is that @capturecharlesau's Burt's mug says "I miss video games"

[onceandfuturelesbian]

merlin, talking about his celebrity crush: he’s hot, shut up.

arthur: you’re hot, shut up.

merlin: what?

arthur: what?

[oh-meow-swirls]

i think this was funnier in my head.

[babiedragons]

pov: me when ive felt too big for too long and its all rly stressful

[thecuddlymuffintop]

Old Lady Katie recently released her newest video on Kentucky Route Zero, which I provided voiceover.

If you want to learn more about the game (spoilers ahead if you haven't played it yet), please feel free to watch.

[goldkirk]

okay, wow, I’m not publishing that ask, anon.

I need you to understand that online activism only reaches people who are also online.

And it only reaches people who, in our current algorithm-based internet, are actually shown that content.

When you do online activism that’s not something concrete like a petition, you’re spreading information and awareness. That’s super important.

But it’s also like, step one of twelve, and unfortunately it’s where most of us just stop. We share information and news and share guilt tripping posts and we say things should be different and we tell other people that things are terrible and we carry on and most of it makes no real-world difference at all.

I don’t know how to tell you that you have got to do local, real life activism if you want to make any change.

You have got to pay attention to your school boards and judges.

You have got to campaign for local candidates.

You have to encourage locals to run for office, or run for office yourself.

You have to volunteer your time and energy for real local causes and groups.

You have to get acquainted with your local news sources so you know who to reach out to when word needs to be spread about something important.

You have to call and contact and petition your local officials, you need to put up flyers where your actual community will see, you need to get aquatinted with local resources so you know where to direct people who need them.

You have to actually do activism irl. That is how you make change happen.

Any time you spend arguing with online users about activism and not doing enough could be spent actually making a difference in your literal real life community, or helping the people who do.

[kaylazer]

back on my bullshit (meeting men im in love with). Ben Schwartz is so kind and tall :-) I didn’t totally freeze like when I met the Jonas brothers but the selfies we took are blurry so 😔

(at least I have these bc I told sam to record the whole thing heheheh)

[misiahasahardname]

can’t think of any original content? redraw some screenshots!