#I don’t make a ton of art for ME (because college) so this was pretty fun! And it also got the guy named starscreaming to draw

[starscreamingg]

Haha big robots amiright

(Click for better quality! :D)

[hwasoup]

Tale As Old As Time

Playlist !!

art credit: Marbipa

OMG GUYS IM SOSOSO SORRY FOR SUCH A DELAY, COLLEGE REALLY DEVOURED ME IN THE MOMENT. AND TUMBLR REMOVED THE OPTION TO MAKE THE TEXT YELLOW...SO THE COLOR WILL NOW BE ORANGE. However, this is a double update week bc I owe you guys bc of your amazing patience with me!! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter

like always don't hesitate to lmk if you would like to be tagged:')

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warnings: talking objects, borderline assault, Canis Lupus

word count: 3.3k

Chapter 4: Dinner is served

However, in the village’s small tavern….

“UGH, WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS ?!” 

“Uhh Ben, chill out here you’re drunk.” Eddie says, while trying to take away his beer. Ben looks at Eddie extremely furious and annoyed “So? don’t you see that- that woman has messed with the wrong MAN ?!!” Eddie winces at his words a little and says “erm…. sure…let's say that she did.” Ben, who was moping in front of the tavern’s fireplace, takes another swig of his beer. “Dismissed, publicly humiliated, How DARE she! Nobody says NO to ME!” he says in a growl. Eddie sighs and rolls his eyes a bit and cracks his knuckles. “Well, you’re not a bad person... And besides forget her, you have tons of admirers in this tavern anyways” he says with a remark. Ben groans “Ugh, EDDIE LISTEN... My rustic cabin, my latest kill roasting itself on the fire, the children playing with the dogs ...and a pretty wife rubbing my feet…And what does Y/N say?? she says NO” he says throwing his beer into the fire.

The flame bursts a bit startling Eddie, but he proceeds to maintain his composure. “Listen to me ben…listen to the tavern…they’re all here because they’re admirers of you...” One man yells “NOBODY BITES LIKE BEN OR CAN WIN AT CHESS LIKE HIM” 

Another man yells “HE CAN EASILY WIN SPIT CHALLENGES” The tavern eventually comes together as they spew out all of their favorite qualities of ben. Especially the women, all of them gushed over his blonde hair, his brawn, his charm, and even his chest hair. (for some reason) Ben’s mood lifts and he smiles as he cheers along with the tavern of the glorification of his achievements and assets. People get together and eventually dance and drink as a small trio plays some music to add more to the cheerful atmosphere. Ben sits beside some ladies and brags about the number of eggs he eats in the morning. “TEN CHEERS FOR BEN RILEY !!” the tavern yells After a while of just fooling around, with a brightened mood Ben sits back in his lavish chair and looks at Eddie “that was very fun, thank you… but how come not a single woman has approached you?” Eddie chuckles and simply scratches his hair “well…I’ve been told I'm either too bored or too clingy .... I have no idea why though...” Ben just stares at him and clears his throat, looking back at the crackling fire.

Suddenly, the joy got sucked out of the room when Mauricio came waddling in tattered clothes, unruly hair, and barefoot. “SOMEONE, PORFAVOR QUE ME AYUDEN!!” The people in the tavern whispered to each other as they stared at him. Mauricio runs towards Ben and other customers in the tavern as he yells “SHE’S LOCKED IN A DUNGEON, EL LO TIENE CAPTIVA !!” 

A man asked, “but who?” Mauricio looks at this man with his eyes filled with fear “...who?... WHO?? MY DAUGHTER Y/N< WE HAVE TO GO SAVE HER NOW !!” Ben raises an eyebrow and looks at Eddie as he tries to stifle a laugh, not believing his words. He gets up and approaches Mauricio and pats his back “calm down Mauricio, now tell me… who is it that has Y/N locked in a dungeon?” 

“UN MONSTRUO! A BEAST !!” 

Crickets could be heard in the entire tavern as it went silent… 

The entire tavern bursted into laughter at the idiocy of his words. 

“Lemme guess! He’s a huuuggee BEAST.” 

“HE’s got an UGLY MOUTH WITH TEETH” Mauricio in his fears nods his head vigorously as he confirms each person’s questions about his so-called ‘beast’. He looks around and trips and falls on the wooden floor “Will you help me?” he asks with tears in his eyes.�� Ben rubs his chin as he rolls his eyes as he decides to say something sympathetic to him “alright, alright, Mauricio relax, we’ll help” Poor Mauricio looked up with hope in his eyes as he thanked Ben for his courage to step up and help him. It didn’t last too long since he shortly got thrown out of the tavern by the owner due to his “madness.” 

Little did he know that Ben was already devising a plan with Mauricio’s plea for help…that may or may not have to do with marrying his daughter.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the other hand in the Castle..

After what seemed to be a few hours after that nasty confrontation with Miguel, A starving Y/N emerges from her room. She looks around as to see if she would see Miguel, but she ultimately decides that he has very much retired to his room. Wherever it may be. As she walked down the halls, she didn't notice the sound of giggling coming from behind a curtain.

“Miles nooo, stay away” 

“Ok but I just wanna hug, Gwen” “Miles, the last time you hugged me, you literally burned my feathers” she says with a sigh. Miles sighs and just pouts “It’s not my fault you got turned into a feather duster, ok?” Gwen rolls her eyes and chuckles at his antics. Miles then looked up as he heard the sound of footsteps and his flame burst a bit more “Hey look !!” he says pointing at Y/N “she emerged !!” He left Gwen in a hurry as he quickly hopped his way to Y/N as he followed her to the kitchen. In the kitchen, Peter was putting Mayday to sleep in the cupboard. Once she fell asleep, Peter closed the cupboard only to spot the cook, who was angrily huffing his stove top with fire as he whined over his cooking going to waste. Peter sighed “shh, come on I just put the little one to sleep, it’s been a long day.” Lyla however hops in and sighs “Honestly, I think she was just being headstrong, I mean...Miguel did say PLEASE” Peter sighs and says, “Really Lyla? you know that Miguel has a temper…and if he doesn’t control it, things won’t work out for him.” 

They were interrupted when Y/N walked in. “Hey, you showed up, a little late but that counts!” Peter says. Lyla turns around and greets her “Hello, I don’t think we properly introduced ourselves, I'm Lyla, you already know Peter of course, and in the back over there trying to get everyone in check is Jess and-” Miles butted in the conversation as he smiled at Y/N “and I’m Miles, nice to meet you senorita” he says wiggling his eyebrows. Jess waddled over smiled at Y/N “If you need anything to make your stay more comfortable just tell us honey” “Well ....I am hungry,” Y/N says with a sheepish smile. Peter grins and starts directing the kitchen to quickly cook something up for her. Lyla escorts her to the dining room, while Jess sighs “ok, but we have to be as quiet as possible, or else Miguel will flip. Miles just hops around happily as he says “aw come on, we gotta get Pav here! Actually, Imma go get him” he says as he hops off out the kitchen. 

A little while later, Miles came back with a large piano, “come on Pav, you haven’t played for someone in forever!” Pav smiles as he warms up quickly playing his keys “yep i’m all good” Jess walks in and spots him “Please…play quietly” Pav looks at Jess with the biggest stank face he has gave her “oh no yea..sure..softly… are there ANY more tasteless remarks to my artistry?” Jess says no and walks off back into the kitchen. In the dining room, Y/N was quietly sitting until she saw Miles come up to the table with a smile. He signals to Gwen who’s hovering over the window with a mirror to create a form of stage lights. Pavitir is playing his tunes, and Miles looks at her and smiles happily “It is our pride and pleasure that we all welcome you here tonight. Stay seated in your chair as you relax, enjoy what you see, as the dining room proudly presents…. your dinner!” Y/N smiles in amazement at all of the food that has been placed on the table, she had never seen so many foods from different regions in such a long time. If she had to be honest, it was better than the cooking she had seen from the local restaurant back at the village. She was handed a napkin by Miles, and she took it and placed it onto her lap to catch any food that would hypothetically stain her dress and fall to the floor. Each dish was kind enough to explain to her what each dish was. She had some gray stuff, Beef ragout, Chilaquiles, Asopao de Pollo, Arepas, Mofongo, Congri, Tequenos, Tostones, Pupusas, Camarones al ajillo, Quesadillas, and even Enchiladas. She had never tasted such a culinary cabaret in her life before. As Y/N ate, she chatted with Miles for a bit as he told her how it has been 10 years since they had a guest like her. She chatted with Gwen a bit and found out she’s the feather duster that snuck into her suite while she was busy crying to collect the dust that was piling up. She learned that Lyla is actually a relative of Miguel and learned about all the staff as well. Y/N found herself creating a friendly bond amongst the staff as she happily ate to her heart’s delight. Peter came in after a while on his serving cart with some tea for her to drink “one lump or two?” he asked. Y/N giggled “Just one please” She takes a cup and sips it as she sighed in content as the soothing flavor of the tea. 

After Y/N ate her fill she clapped in awe “this was wonderful, please give my compliments to the chef!” Jess smiled at her from a distance and looked at her minute and hour hand. “Oh dear, look at the time…it seems to me we should all get some sleep” She approaches Y/N and tries to escort her back. “Oh, but Jess…after such a meal, I can’t just go to sleep, besides it is my first time in such an enchanted castle...” Jess nervously laughed and looked around trying to divert her attention, “oh why who would say such a thing..I mean-” Lyla hopped in and heard what they said “Yyyyyeeeaaa…. totally not enchantteeeddd” she says to Y/N. Jess turns around to look at l

Lyla and muttered “it better not have been you” Lyla looked at her in shock at her accusations and was definitely going to retaliate until Y/N diffused the situation. “Oh guys please…I figured it out myself...” she says with a smile. She then gets up from the chair and approaches the door “I hope you both don’t mind If I look around, if that’s okay” Lyla perked up and hopped to her “wanna tour girlie ?” “AH AH AH…. we can’t let her... She might you know... go someplace else?” Jess says sternly. Y/N giggles as she looks down at Jess’s frown “aww come on, I bet you know a lot about the castle…how about if you tell me all about it?” Jess sighs as she gives in “alright then...”  —----------------------------------------------------------------------------

An hour later…

Jess was happily giving her knowledge of the castle, adding her expertise and explaining how old the castle truly was. She gave some stories on how she lived in the castle, as well as her years of service. Y/N looked around in awe as she marveled at each painting and each intricate design of the castle. It might have looked scary at first, but now that she’s taking a closer look. The castle itself is truly beautiful.  They passed by a hall of empty armor, each head turning around to take a peek at Y/N, finding her curiosity quite charming. Jess heard the squeaks of the rusty armor and turned around and with a silent hiss “Turn Around”

She looked back to her direction and noticed that Y/N was nowhere to be seen. Jess wanders around until she spots her trying to go up the west wing. “Lyla damnit go stop her !” Lyla notices and hops as quickly as she could to stop Y/N from going any further, Jess running along behind her. The two eventually reach Y/N and stand in front of her making halt gestures. “What’s up there?” she asked. Sheepish smiles were both seen on both women’s faces as they try to make up some excuses.

 “Oh nothing there just storage, Rubbish, Dusty, Boring, absolutely nothing in the west wing” Lyla says Y/N chuckles as she was able to trick them and says in a coy voice “Oh so THAT'S, the west wing” Jess groans in frustration and looks at Lyla “nice going idiot...” Y/N keeps on staring up the stairs as she wonders what Miguel is truly hiding in the west wing.  The two women then started blabbering as they started to try and convince her to go and see the library. She nods and slowly follows them until she notices that they sped so quickly that they were almost down the hall. She took this opportunity and quickly tiptoed up the stairs and into the West Wing.

The more she went up the stairs, the more she noticed how the hallway had cracks, claw marks, shattered mirror pieces, and broken gargoyle statues. Y/N looked around a little concerned and debated if she should stop. However, her curiosity got the best of her nature, and she kept on going. She eventually made it to the top and walked down a hall to two double doors. “This must be Miguel’s room” she whispered to herself. Y/N looks back behind her just in case Jess followed her but didn’t see anyone. With a deep breath she slowly opened the doors and walked in to see an almost dilapidated room. Everything was broken or at least about to shatter. “Probably from his anger issues” she says softly to herself. After walking inside and looking around she spots a portrait, she slowly approaches it to see claw marks on it. She couldn’t make out who the man painted in the portrait is, but she could tell that he was handsome, but what struck her the most was his piercing crimson eyes. 

She then turned around to notice the window completely open and a table with a mirror and a beautiful glowing rose. Amazed at its beauty she took the glass encasing off of the rose and watched how it sparkled, it was mesmerizing. Y/N then reaches a hand to touch the rose but stops as she feels a shadow loom over her. She looked up and gasped in shock to see Miguel.  He angrily huffed at her and snarled as he quickly made his way to reach for the rose’s glass encasing and protectively covered it. Miguel then slowly looked at Y/N with such rage in his eyes and blocks her from the rose “Porque Viniste” Y/N slowly stepped back as she raised her arms to protect herself from harm without realizing. “I’m..I’m Sorry” she says softly. Miguel growled and rolled his eyes “Sorry? I warned you to NEVER COME HERE” Y/N flinched and moved back even more “I didn’t mean any harm; I Apologize if I offended you” Miguel enraged clenched his paw into a fist “DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE?” He takes his anger on a broken chair and punches it. “I- No, Please, stop” she said worriedly. 

“LARGATE DE AQUI” 

Y/N didn’t hesitate and ran out as quickly as she could. Miguel raged and punched anything in his sight that was breakable in his room. His eyes widened as he realized he scared her off again. His heart ached at his own actions, and he lowered his head in shame feeling just awful about himself and worried for her...

Y/N on the other hand has made a run for it and somehow found her coat as she was running down the stairs. Miles was playing chess with Pav and spotted Y/N running “HEY, Y/N!! Where are you going ?!” Y/N looked back at them and fearfully said “Promise or not, I can’t stay here for another minute!” She left the castle and, in a hurry, looked around for the stables and found her dear old Felipe, despite the heavy blizzard that was occurring outside she managed to saddle him up and rode him away and out of the castle grounds into the black forest. 

After a while of horseback, she realized that she had no idea where to go, everything was covered in snow. Felipe whinnied and panicked as he fidgeted left and right where to go. Y/N tried to calm the horse down but gasped in terror when realizing there was a pack of hungry and vicious wolves ready to hunt them for their next meal. Felipe regained his control and immediately turned back to the castle’s direction to run away from the wolves. Y/N grasped tightly onto the reins and tried maneuvering Felipe through the woods. The wolves nipped at Felipe’s legs, and he would only run faster. Y/N was hyper focused in getting away that she didn’t completely register the frozen lake in front of her. The two fell in with a splash in the icy water, Y/N kept on holding onto the reins and Felipe quickly swam to the other side, the wolves still following behind. Eventually the other half of the pack caught up to both Y/N and Felipe in the front and spooked them, Y/N fell off the horse’s back and Felipe’s reins got stuck onto a tree branch. 

Y/N quickly got up from the snowy ground and found the nearest thick stick that she could find and stood in front of Felipe to help protect him. She swung the stick left and right, battling the canines on her own, but the stick was split in half when one of the wolves' sharp teeth gnawed into it. Y/N stood there in shock not knowing what to do..she was about to get eaten along with her beloved horse. A wolf leaped out of nowhere and took a bite of her coat, throwing her off her balance and making her fall to the ground. She screamed in terror, as another wolf leaped at her ready to bite. Until she heard a loud thud from the wolf’s body and a loud roar. She looked up and saw Miguel who stood beside her and protected her with his large body on top of her. He then jumped away from her leading the wolves far from her reach and fought them on his own, he scratched, bit, he harmed, and almost killed. 

The wolves, intimidated by his dominant presence, whimpered and scurried away from him.  Miguel let out one final growl until he looked directly at Y/N, his eyes showed relief that she was fine, but quickly rolled behind his head as he weakly fell down onto the cold icy ground. He was bleeding with many bites and scratches from the wolves. He panted heavily as the pain from his wounds slowly enveloped him. Y/N was going to take advantage to run away but stopped…she would be no better than a crude human to leave him out there. He saved her life…and she owed him. She slowly walked away from Felipe and kneeled down to Miguel and whispered. “Hey, I know it hurts…but you have to help me...” 

She was able to somehow get Miguel to stand up and mount the horse. His body however limped on it as he was too weak to sit properly on the horse. Y/N bit her lip in worry as she took off her coat and wrapped it over Miguel’s wound. 

Y/N slowly united Felipe’s reins from the tree branch and slowly led him back to the castle.

With the beast on his back.

taglist: @cupcakeinat0r , @miguelhugger2099, @mcmiracles, @xxsugarbonesxx,@codenameredkrystalmatrix,@deputy-videogamer,@lxverrings,@miguelzslvtz,@itsameclinicaldepression,,@ricekrisbris,@loser-alert , @thedevax, @uncle-eggy, @m4dyy, @freehentai, @synamonthy, @razertail18, @s0lm1n, @badbishsblog, @faimmm, @keendreamknight, @texanadmirer, @stargirrls, @itzsab

[garmanarnarr]

Rickorty Week Day 6: "Say You'll Marry Me"

college-aged Morty | 2.8k words | Rated M, language, vomit, suicidal ideation, rock bottom Rick Sanchez

@rickortyweek

Morty throws the trunk of his dad’s station wagon shut with a thump. 

“You sure you don’t need to bring my Ninja smoothie blender, Morty?” Dad asks, for a second time, standing on the driveway beside him with his arms crossed over his chest. The August morning is hot and clear. Gene’s sprinklers are going hard on the lawn next door. 

“I think it’ll make you really popular with your roommate. You said they’re from California, right? They must be healthy. There’s a little more space behind the driver’s side–”

“N-nah, I’m good, Dad,” Morty says. He goes around to the passenger door to do a last check of his overflowing laundry hamper and make sure his video game console box made it in. He doesn’t want to forget Bonestorm III. All told, he doesn’t really have that much to bring, though, and the car’s only half full. He wears pretty much the same clothes all the time, and doesn’t have a ton of books or movies or anything. His booby bikini girl poster is rolled up in the footwell of the backseat and one or two of his robot figurines he just couldn’t part with are packed into cardboard boxes. All the advice listacles his parents found online for Summer’s freshmen year of college said that bringing something from home was important, so the idea has been passed down. 

He reaches into his pocket and palms the little evil intent detector that Rick had made for him a few years back. A tiny credit-card sized piece of metal that reads people’s brainwaves and vibrates if they’re planning on hurting him or torturing him or whatever. They’d used it on an adventure, a rare heist –Morty can see Rick’s eye roll– but he hadn’t had the heart to throw it away. He’d gone back and forth for ages on whether or not to even bring it. He still doesn’t have to, he tells himself; he has hundreds of miles of highway driving ahead of him where he can just chuck it out the window and let it get crushed on the side of the road. He tightens his grip. 

His mom comes out of the garage, checking her watch. “We gotta get this show going,” she says. The garage feels weirdly empty until Morty realizes it’s because Rick’s ship isn’t in it. Hasn’t been there for a while. He pulls his hand out of his pocket and starts loading the last few bags. 

“If we don’t leave soon we won’t make it to our motel until, like, eleven, and lord knows what we’re going to find in Fresno after sundown,” Mom says.  

Dad follows Morty as he transfers a final trash bag of gym shorts and shit into the back seat. 

“What– what about my George Foreman Lean Griddle? Or, my Slap Chop? You never know when you’ll need onions in little cubes, those always make me cry….” 

Dad sniffs, then wipes away a tear, even though he’s trying to look like he isn’t. Oh, God. He had volunteered to drive Morty first, of course, before being overruled. 

Morty turns back and gives him a small smile. “I’m really fine, Dad. But thanks.” 

“Oh my God, I’m sorry, just give me a moment, son.” 

Something in Morty’s pocket buzzes. His hand flies to Rick’s detector, for a second, until he realizes it was the other one. He pulls out his phone and opens it to check his messages while Dad tries to get it together. Two are from Summer, who’s been spending her senior year of college in London with the textile arts department of her school doing fashion stuff. 

dont let dad cry all over u little bro 

cuz hes gonna

The newer message is from his girlfriend, Anne.

status report mortimer

Morty finds himself looking for some kind of message from Rick– which is stupid. Rick doesn’t text. 

He texts Anne: 

finally leaving lol 

She responds immediately:

call me when you guys stop for the night? 

Morty’s heart clenches fondly. They’re going to different schools to study different things in different parts of the country— newly separate time zones– and it’s going to be hard, but he likes her a lot. Enough to give it a shot. He winces as he remembers Rick’s deadpan dismissal when Morty had mentioned that he and Anne were going to do long distance over dinner a month or two ago. D–didn’t take you for that much of an idiot, Morty. As soon as she gets there she’s gonna be getting allll sorts of co-ed dicks in her mouth. But I guess you don’t mind sloppy digital seconds?  

Ofc i will, he types. 

Nobody’s heard from Rick in two or three weeks. Morty had kind of expected– well, he didn’t know what he’d expected, but he’d really thought that Rick would do him better than this. All he does is talk about how stupid Morty is all the time; maybe he’s pissed at being sort of wrong. He’d been straight up shocked when Morty got his acceptance letter in the mail, the packet fat in Morty’s hand as he raced down from his room to show everyone. While Summer screamed, and both his parents had cried, Rick had stared at the letter Morty was holding, hard, then sipped his beer, then turned back to the TV. N-nice one, Morty. A real cool sixty grand a year investment, there. 

“Let’s go, Morty,” Mom says, opening the passenger side door. “I need some coffee if we’re gonna do this.” 

Finally, Dad wipes his face. After taking a few deep, calming breaths, he walks over and sweeps Morty up in a hug. 

“I’m proud of you, Morty.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“We didn’t think you’d make it, but you did. Of course you did. And that’s what matters.” 

“Bye, Dad,” Morty said, leaning into the hug. “I–I love you.” 

“I love you, too.”

Morty doesn’t realize how much he misses the sound of a portal opening up until he hears one right behind them. Dad jerks back with a frightened twitch. 

“What the hell–?”

Rick doesn’t so much step out onto the driveway as fall. He looks to be in a really bad way. Maybe as bad as Morty has ever seen him: scraggly and torn up, not even really standing up straight, too drunk for his body to cope with the flat, even keel of the pavement. One arm of his labcoat is missing, ripped off at the shoulder, and Morty’s thankful to see that the arm beneath is intact. Skinny, and maybe there are track lines, there, faint in the bright sunshine, but intact. There’s dried vomit crusted on his sweater. 

“M-Morty, oh, God,” Rick moans. Morty feels a sinister shiver run over his shoulders and up the back of his neck as he watches Rick try to shield his eyes, blinking rapidly into the hot light. “Christ. Fuck.” 

“Dad?” Mom asks, poking her head out of the driver’s window. 

“Rick? Here to say goodbye to Morty?” Jerry asks, cautiously. Morty watches as he scooches himself to stand between his son and Rick, a little bit. A surprisingly brave move. 

“Isn’t that w-what we’re all doing?” Rick asks back, taking a step forwards, then falling to one knee with a lurch as he loses his balance. “Saying fuckin’ goodbye— goAAUUGhodbye to Morty? Because he’s going away f-f-forever and never coming back?”  

Rick’s drunken stare pins Morty to the side of the car, which had been parked outside so long while they packed that the metal is starting to get hot. The words sound like a taunt, but Morty can hear the truth there, a hard kernel in the middle. 

“Hi, Rick,” he says, trying for indifference. In his pocket, he squeezes his hand around the detector. 

Rick narrows his eyes. “R-R-Rick and Morty. One thhhhousand fuckin’ years. What, whatever happened to that shit, huh?”

“Dad–” Mom’s getting back out of the car. 

“So I’m going to school. Big whoop,” Morty says, annoyed. Everything about this is annoying: Rick disappearing whenever he wanted then showing up just in the nick of time fucking shit faced like he’s trying to bail out the Vindicators. “You’ve been gone for, like, three weeks, Rick. And you didn’t feel the need to tell anybody about that. N-not that I would expect anything else at this stage. So, you know, whatever.”

“Three weeks?” Rick’s struggling to stand back up, now. “Three weeks?”

“You’ve never owed anyone anything in your whole goddamn– your whole stupid life, R-Rick. Not my family, not me. Not even Mom.” 

Rick’s expression is foggy and drunk, but underneath, Morty can see he’s hurt.  

“I think you should go, Dad,” Mom says in her stop-doing-this-right-now-or-you’re-fucked voice. “I don’t care if you portal out of here, or crash on the sofa to ride out your hangover, or whatever, but just. Let us leave.” 

Somehow, Rick manages to get one leg in front of the other so he can advance up the driveway towards Morty with halting, wavering steps like a zombie in a horror movie. The detector in Morty’s pocket buzzes. Dad looks back and forth between them, scared. 

“Three weeks, Morty?” he grinds out, again. He’s close enough now for Morty to see how bloodshot his eyes are. “I’ll give– give you three weeks. Y-you know what happens when you go to college Morty? You have four years to get too fuckin’ big for your idiotic little britches.” He grabs one hand around Morty’s bicep, grip crushingly strong. Morty can smell his rancid breath across his face, agitated, huffy. “And then you, you go and think you can do goAUUGHd, good things for the world, or whatever, you get those little aspir– aspirations in your head, Morty, you get these fucking ideas in your head–” 

“It’s already been years, Rick,” Morty says, trying not to turn away. “Doing whatever, well at least, pretty much whatever, I-I guess, you wanted me to do.”

“– and you don’t even know how stupid these i–ideas are, until, boom, you’ve lived your whole sad-ass pathetic-ass life doing jack fucking shit. Goin’ and bein’ a techbro office slave narc or some shit. I just can’t, I just can’t ffffucking– oh fuck—” 

Rick starts to throw up pretty spectacularly all over the ground, and the side of the car, and on Morty’s sneakers. 

“Oh my god, Dad!”

“Oh, Rick that’s just disgusting!!”

Morty just stays quiet until Rick seems finished and he slumps against the car, moaning. He watches as Rick slides down until he’s half knelt, half crouched by the front bumper, the vomit running down the gentle slope of the driveway to touch his shoes and the spread hand on the ground that’s keeping him from falling on his face. He makes a sound when Morty comes closer, a sort of whimper. Morty gets down beside him. Unable to stop himself, he puts a hand on his grandpa’s back and starts rubbing little circles as Rick groans, spitting out a wad of bile. There are a lot of different colors in the vomit, ones Morty can’t recognize even though he’s pretty familiar with Rick’s binge habits by this point. 

“Fuck youUUGh. Fffffuck you, Morty. I– I mean that. So much. '' Rick’s staring at the ground. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his hand. Morty wonders if maybe he’s going to be sick again. 

“Yeah, fuck you, too, man,” Morty says, but there’s no heart in it. He just feels sad. He wishes– he doesn’t know what he wishes. 

“F-forever. Fuck you, forever,” Rick mutters quietly, almost to himself. Little dark spots show up on the driveway beneath his head, and Morty realizes he’s crying. Or maybe it’s post-vomit drool? It’s hard to see his face. 

“M-Morty, Morty listen to me,” Rick says. He sounds defeated, almost confused. As old as he really is. 

“I’m listening, Rick.” 

“I’m gonna do somethin’ stupid. Sooo, so stupid.” Rick’s still staring at the ground. 

Dad’s shadow has crept next to Rick’s foot. “Rick, I really don’t think–” 

“Whatever you’re about to do, think twice before you traumatize my son,” Mom says. Then she pauses and adds: “More.”  

Morty keeps rubbing circles across Rick’s knobby spine. “What, Rick? What– what’re you gonna do?”

“Say you’ll.” Rick chokes a little. 

“Say what?”

“Say you’ll marry me, Morty.” 

Morty blinks. “What?”

“JeEUGHsus Christ, don’t make me say it again.” 

Morty’s body is a live wire. His hand scrunches the back of Rick’s coat tightly. “No. Say it again.” 

Rick stares up at him with watery eyes. 

“Marry me,” he says, quietly. Pathetically. There’s some drool and left-over throwup clinging to his chin. 

There was this one adventure they’d gone on where Morty had mangled his leg so badly that his shin bone had actually broken the surface of his skin. Burst right through below his kneecap, like a jagged, bloody tooth. It was screamingly painful– Rick actually had to knock him out until he was able to fix it with some nanobots. Morty realizes that this is the same as that; that this is some core part of Rick, torn through all the heaped layers of nihilism and drugs and whatever else poisons who his grandpa is. This is the exposed bone. 

When Morty looks up at his parents, he can’t read the expressions on their faces. 

“I– I’m not a good person, Morty,” Rick says, grabbing weakly at Morty’s t-shirt to get his attention again. Like he can’t bear to let Morty look anywhere else. He sounds like he’s really losing it. “I’m a horrible person, Morty. Say– say that you’ll marry me. God, I’ll blow my fuckin’ brains out if you don’t— let’s just g-g-get out of—oh my God—” 

Morty’s pocket vibrates. He doesn’t know if it’s the detector or his phone, and he should care, should be terrified, but he doesn’t. 

He isn't.  

— 

Turns out, Shoney’s is a regional chain.

Morty doesn’t realize this until they reach the last one at the edge of the state, just before they cross the border. ‘Last Shoneys for the next 24,800 miles,’ says the sign at the exit. There’s a graphic of an arrow reaching all the way around the globe, back to the little point on the map they’re driving through. Morty has traveled the multiverse with Rick, to places billions of light years away, so far away time doesn’t mean anything at all, but somehow this is already the longest trip he’s ever taken. Like that one scene in the Lord of the Rings where Sam crosses the corn field. If I take one more step, this’ll be the furthest from home I’ve ever been. That was a really good movie, Morty thinks. 

His mom throws the car into park. She’s had to adjust the driver’s seat to be closer to the steering wheel because her legs are shorter than Dad’s, and change all the mirrors, too. She drives way faster than him, swerving lanes to cut around traffic like a maniac. Maybe that runs on her side of the family. 

“Food?” she asks, simply. Morty nods. He twists to look over his shoulder. 

“Rick?” 

Rick stirs in the back seat, thin eyelids fluttering. They’d made space for him by shoving over a bunch of the boxes to one side and moving some to the trunk. There aren’t really that many, anyways. He’s wearing a clean pair of pants and a t-shirt that belongs to Dad, which helps, but he still has an undernote of puke and sweat. 

He makes a hungover-sounding groan. He still hasn’t opened his eyes.

“You want Shoney’s?” Morty asks. “L-last chance.”

“Shoney’s, you say?” He cracks an eye open, gaze flickering around to look up at the building they’re parked at. “Didn’t know they had them out here. O-on earth, I mean.” 

Mom watches him silently in the rearview mirror. Rick just looks at Morty. 

“Y-you know what, fuck it, sure,” he says finally, popping open the car door and getting out. The sun is even hotter, here, and scorching air blows into the car when he slams it closed. Mom and Morty do the same, one, then the other.  

Together, they go inside to eat lunch. 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not befriending my partner’s new friends?

So I (21 nb) didn’t go to college, but my partner (22 nb) did and graduated last spring a little after we met-we’re both pretty outgoing people and I have a fair amount of my own friends, but because of this and their involvement with the local art scene, they have much bigger social circles than I do. When we first got to know each other, I met a lot of their friends and really gelled with them and became friends with them in my own right as well. Recently though (like the past 2 months) they’ve befriended a handful of people who seem to really dislike me. These people haven’t done anything cruel to me, but they avoid me at group gatherings and seem to go out of their way not to talk to me or engage when I try to reach out the same way I did with my partner’s other friends when I met them. We’re also polyamorous, and I know my partner is dating/sleeping with two of them, which makes me kind of uncomfortable given how they treat me, but isn’t something I want to bring up in our relationship.

At first when I mentioned it to shared friends, they suggested maybe the new people are just shy/socially awkward and don’t understand how to interact with people. This seemed plausible to me, but it still made me uncomfortable, especially because these people also frequently loudly discuss how much they don’t like bands/artists/movies that they know I really enjoy. I tried harder to engage or invite them to parties and stuff like that at my apartment to get to know them better, but they never responded or told me through my partner that they were too busy (which is again plausible-we all work a lot and our schedules don’t always line up). I don’t have a ton in common with these people and I don’t think my partner and I need to get along with ALL each other’s friends, so I recently decided to stop putting the effort in to get along with them. I did eventually bring it up to my partner and basically just said I didn’t think I fit in with them very well/they didn’t seem really interested in me. My partner blamed themself for it at first, but I made it clear that I didn’t feel they were at fault given that they’ve introduced us all and haven’t been particularly sketchy in terms of trying to hide me from their friends or vice versa-we Have all spent time together. I was satisfied with just having made my feelings known and thought things were fine, but now my partner is mad and saying that I haven’t given their new friends a real chance and that I don’t care about their (the friends) feelings because I’m not engaging in the kind of things they like to do/am putting down their interests. I have said a few times in front of these people that I didn’t like certain genres of fiction that they’re into and things like that, but I wasn’t trying to be mean and didn’t think they would care given how they talk about my & each other’s interests. It didn’t occur to me that their feelings might be hurt because again, they haven’t talked to me any of the times I’ve tried to start conversations or say hi, so I assumed my opinion wouldn’t mean much to them. That being said, I definitely did feel uncomfortable with them in a way that might have come across, and recently I have stopped trying to say hi and have been avoiding seeing them/have kind of given up on trying to get to know them at all.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[thelamb1429]

Soul Train

Eyeless Jack x GN! Reader

<3

This is part of a larger series i’m working on. For now i’m just gonna post lil snippets of the fanfic just to sort of get a feel for how i want the story to go.

This is also probably poorly written/has a lot of grammatical errors because i’m currently pretty sick right now so i’m writing with a scrambled brain atm. I’ll be back to spruce things up when i feel better!

STORY INFO/WARNINGS

Reader is gender neutral

This isn’t necessarily a oneshot, but i don’t know if i plan on posting chapters here on Tumblr when I should probably just post the whole story on another platform so that my art isn’t drowning under tons of stories lol

This part includes: Mentions of death, mentions of death regarding a parent, descriptions of panic, slight mentions of murder

Every single last ounce of oxygen seemed to be sucked from your burning lungs at full force, leaving you on your knees, coughing and retching while the silent vehicle raced down the tracks. Car after car flew over the metal just a few feet from where you knelt. The moment you could breathe enough for your vision to fade back in and your ears to slowly stop ringing, all you could see as far as your eyes traced down the railroad tracks was a never ending train. You sat there for about a minute, but it seemed like the train wasn’t ever going to end.

Nina looped an arm under yours to help you back onto your feet, and you were so out of it that you couldn’t even feel the pointy accessories on her arms and hands poke into your skin. Despite the train in front of you both not emitting a deafening whistle, the rustle of metal on metal was enough to block out any words she tried to get into your head. Everything in front of you moved in slow motion as the weight of the situation set in.

Jack was probably dead now.

You could have saved him.

He probably died thinking that you would get there in time to help.

Once again you went limp in your best friend’s arms, to which she stumbled and struggled to catch your weakened body. Nina eased the both of you onto the grass as the train finally passed and the red glare of the warning lights went dark. Her eyes looked past the tracks onto the dirt road beyond, as if to try and manifest the best case scenario. She wasn’t an optimist by any means, but she knew how much Jack meant to you. You two had been friends for years now, long before you went off to college. While the decked out girl holding onto you had never even met the guy, she felt a cold chill eat away at her spine as it rushed through her nerves, making the rapidly beating heart in her chest speed up with the anxiety caused by the both of you panicking.

But she'd known death much closer than you had. You had lost many loved ones, but her little hobby brought her up close and personal with it several times a week. For once, Nina felt a determination to lead that didn't scare her off. Calling the shots wasn't something that she liked to take charge of, but this was the perfect moment for her to take the lead, to do something helpful for you. She didn't have many friends, especially none that could understand her and handle her like you did.

Maybe helping you get to Jack could help you both strengthen the bond that was weakened by the argument from the week prior to the crisis at hand.

Determined to help, Nina once again hoisted you up and looked you in the eyes.

"[Name], I know that right now you're pissed at me. And I lied to you, I deserve your anger right now. But if we have any chance of getting into that forest and saving Jack, we have to get up and do it now. That cult— or whatever the hell they are— they're dangerous and Jack has no clue.

You love him, right? Then we need to get to him and get him back into your arms, safe and sound.

So take a deep breath and get up already! I can't find him on my own. I don't even know what he looks like!"

Nina pulled at your arms, groaning with the force of exertion she put out as you seemed to stay in place, frozen from the terror of losing the only man who you'd ever considered to have a shred of humanity in him. The only man who befriended you with no ulterior motives. The only man you knew who treated you as an equal.

You weren't gonna lose him. You had to stop mourning for a death you couldn't even confirm.

Much to your best friend's relief, you started running off past the cleared tracks, leading the way towards the countryside where the forest began. Cold, bitter air nipped at both of your bodies and filled your lungs, causing your throats to ache with the icy chill that seeped into you both as you inhaled air.

Contrary to popular belief, Nina was not good at running! She was used to cornering her victims in locations that allowed for her to easily escape and march back to her hidden little cabin in the woods at a leisurely pace. When she wanted to run, she ran pretty fast, but it was obvious that she wasn't used to running for so long. Since she was trying her best to help, you attempted to slow down just a bit so that she could catch up.

After five minutes of running down the road, Nina had to stop to breathe. She gasped for air as he chest heaved, trying to get more oxygen into her burning lungs. She looked up at you, taking in the panic evident on your face when she collapsed. Her mascara ran down her face just a little when her eyes watered from the excessive running.

"Go— you..you need to find him. I'll catch up, just go", she wheezed out as a cough wracked through her body.

The encouragement was all you needed to take off running once again.

Maybe it was the adrenaline in your body that kept you going, masking the ache in your chest and your legs from the constant sprinting you were doing. Maybe it was the fear that if you didn't suck it up and run, that it would be too late. Whatever it was, it caused you to keep running so fast that it felt as if you were gliding through the forest around you.

You had no idea where exactly he was. In fact, you were going in blind. But there was something deep within the core of your very being that seemed to yank you in one direction before leading you towards another.

All you could do was repeat a silent prayer that you hadn't said in years. Not since your mom died.

All you could do was pray to whatever higher being that could exist to let Jack still be alive when you find him.

Credits for the dividers i used go to poicelain and kgymz!! <3

[crowleywowley]

HEAR YE HEAR HE, I have written more stupid ass modern au headcanons. Y’all know the drill by now.

Btw if u wanted to read any of the other silly headcanons I’ve written you can do that here , or here , or here :D and here and here you can find the ones I’ve blown up @blanche-elizabeth-devereaux ‘s inbox with!!

Anyways see you under the cut 😈

-Charles and Arthur both like old man ice cream flavors

Pistachio, butter pecan, etc.

They have to buy a special tub for when Jack or Isaac are at the house because they always complain (as they should.)

-Arthur enjoys dressing up the dogs for Halloween, or at least attempting to

Charles doesn’t care for it but he has to admit that the bat wings are pretty cute. Ok just one more picture heheheh.

-Sometimes when Arthur doesn’t necessarily like a piece of art he made, he asks for Charles’ opinion, only to be all dramatic like “YOU’RE JUST BEING NICE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO”

-I see Charles being very particular about how his laundry is folded and god bless Arthur but he does not do it correctly

-They love a little evening stroll around the neighborhood :’)

-When Charles goes on a morning run he makes a point of being non-threatening to any women he passes

He’s like “goooood morning!!!” Just so they aren’t spooked by this big ass dude sprinting past them

-John and Abigail didn’t have a full on wedding, just a sweet little courthouse ceremony

Arthur held it together until he and John shared A Moment afterwards and they both cried :’)

-John and Arthur are both the dads who do that thing where they toss the baby in the air and catch it and the baby goes crazy for it but every single time they do it Abigail is like PLEASE STOP

-speaking of babies Good Grandpa Dutch™️ bawled like a baby at the birth of every single grandkid

He’d never say it out loud but he cried the most when unnamed Marston daughter was born

He spoils all the grandkids but something about that little girl….. the sun rises and sets on her :)

-Dutch and Hosea have a sick ass pool at their house that’s mostly for the grandkids but those old men love floatin around too!

Abigail brings those little sinking toys for the kids to play with and keep them occupied, John absolutely plays with them too and is like “babe look I got one!!!”

-John and Abi are retired emo kids, argue with the wall on this one

Jack makes them feel ANCIENT when they’re like “hey bud whatcha listening to?” And he’s like “oh just this old band, My Chemical Romance”

-Arthur, John, and Abigail (and at one point, Eliza) have been to tons of concerts together

Arthur was the cool older brother who was in college and soooooo mature (he was not), John and Abigail were seniors in high school and they would all go see shows together

It made Hosea so happy to see his boys getting along and having fun together :))

As always if anyone wants me to keep going I will. And even if u don’t want me to I probably will. I love this silly comfort universe muahahaha😼

[cnwolf-brainrot]

How do I get my au to become popular like yours

ALRIGHT, I’ve got a lot to say here!!

FIRST OF ALL, THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE I CAN GIVE: Don’t write for popularity. Seriously. I know that’s cheesy, but I’ve tried it before and it’s just draining and fruitless. If you’re writing an AU, or a fic, or anything random related, you should be writing it because it’s something you wanted to see. When starting Weapon by Name, I wrote the first five chapters with no intention to post it at all, it was purely because I wanted to read it. We have the canon writers to give us stuff that’s written for popularity; if you’re writing fanfic, you have the freedom to cater to the audience of you, so embrace that!!

That being said, I do think I have an idea of some factors that have brought Weapon by Name to the position it’s in. So, here’s what worked for me!

CONCEPT

If you’re making a Marvel AU, something that I’ve noticed is that AUs that are more grounded in canon tend to do better. For example, I actually wrote a IronDad and SpiderSon fic at one point, which theoretically should have done well because that was a super popular dynamic. However, the fic was a Peter Pan AU, and had a ton of additional worldbuilding that I think made a lot of people skip over it. On the other hand my GotG fic where the only change to canon was that Floor lived ended up doing pretty well. I think I’ve noticed that as a trend; people seem to like AUs that are close enough to canon to be easily recognizable, probably because this makes them a bit easier to initially grasp and get invested in. Things like “Civil War BUT Hulk is there” or “Daredevil BUT if Matt lost his powers” are more likely to get hit then stories that are so heavily AU that the characters look more like OCs. This can change based on the fandom you’re in, but I think it’s relatively true for Marvel AUs!

CONSISTENCY

Once you have your idea, you want to establish consistency. If you’re consistent, that means you’re reliable, and that means people will come back to your story. WbN has slowed down a lot now that I’m back in college, but during the first month or so I was putting out a new chapter every two to three days and I think that is a huge part of the reason that it started to gain a following. It gave people a reason to check back with the story, and to do so frequently. A big thing that helped me with keeping consistency was to establish an editing buffer; I’m actually writing the story about five chapters ahead of where I’m posting it! This buffer gives me time to ensure quality, cohesiveness, and also gives me an update to fall back on if I really need it!

TIMING

This is where I got flat-out lucky. I had no idea that the X-Men fandom would get such a resurgence when I started posting WbN. I started posting it because X-Men ‘97 had rejuvenated my love for the characters, and I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. That initial wave gave the story a bit of a boost, and then by the time Deadpool and Wolverine came out the fic had ten or fifteen chapters; the perfect amount of there being enough to read, but not too much to be overwhelming. I think that’s where a lot of the attention came from, and that was just pure luck with the timing.

INTERACTION

Now while timing may have gotten some interest, interaction is where you go from “interest” to “community”. If you want people to interact with your work, interact with them! Reply to any comments you get! If you get fan art, link it in the story! If someone reaches out to you, respond to them and chat (I got out of my comfort zone and replied to a few direct messages that I got as the story gained interest, and holy cow I’m so glad I did because I met some of my favorite people on the internet)! The reason that Weapon by Name got to a moderate level of “popularity” is because people started talking about it, and the more that people talk about it the more people it will reach. Your audience is important and valuable, so make sure you treat them as such, no matter if you have two people reading your story or two hundred.

Speaking of, you have to keep going no matter how “popular” your AU is. That’s why it’s so important that you write something you want to read, because there is always a chance that you do everything right and then your story is still lost to the depths of the internet. I’ve had that happen more times than I can count. However, you have to keep creating; you never know when someone might find your story, and if you have a good amount of content out then they’re more likely to stick around. Most people would be more likely to click on a multichapter fic with ten chapters than one with only one. You have to love your story, and you have to keep writing; worse case scenario, finish it because you want to see the ending, even if it never gets “popular”.

There are other factors to what goes into a “popular” AU, of course. I do think that quality matters, and I do think that WbN’s quality is one of the reasons people are coming back to it. The way you present your story (through tagging, description, summary, etc) also can be a huge impact on whether or not someone will check out your work. Style matters, voice matters, character choice matters… but at the end of the day, this isn’t something you should be writing for hits and kudos. This is fandom. You should be writing a story for yourself. Don’t get discouraged by a lack of hits or attention. Just keep creating; you never know when things might work out in your favor!

[boag]

can u talk about why u left school and how u feel about it all now?

Okay LOL

I did really well in school until I was about 11/12 and things started to get harder and harder with my mental illness and neurodivergence and everything and my grades got worse and worse and it got a lot more difficult for me to focus and feel motivated . I didn’t have a ton of friends but I had a handful of good ones even though it got harder to make friends and maintain friendships as I got older. After middle school I applied to go to this technical high school for their performing arts program and I got in. It was a county-wide school and none of my friends went there and there were only a couple kids in the whole school that I’d met before. There were a few kids I was friendly with but I only had one close friend while I went there who I would only see at lunch and I got bullied really badly by a lot of my classmates and my anxiety reached all time highs and I was miserable and suffering all the time and my attendance kept getting worse and I was pretty much failing all of my classes and it got to the point where I’d be late for school like usual and my mom would drive me there but just seeing the entrance to the building would throw me into a full blown panic attack and I couldn’t make myself go in and she would have to drop me off at my grandma’s house so she could go to work.

Idk I was very misunderstood by my teachers and my peers and didn’t know how to try and fix it and I was suicidal and self harming and had patterns of disordered eating and I ended up getting put into partial hospitalization for 3 months of my freshman year and then again for 3 months of my sophomore year and I didn’t attend school at all during either of those periods and didn’t attend school nearly as much as I was supposed to the rest of the time.

Because my school was centered around its career preparation programs they had this policy where you couldn’t go there anymore if you failed your program’s main class more than once and my sophomore year I was about to severely fail drama a second time. I had barely any credits at that point and if I’d transferred to a different school I would’ve pretty much had to start from scratch at 16 years old and I also just didn’t think school was good for me at all so I stopped going and dropped out on my 16th birthday. I definitely have a lot of regrets and wish I’d gotten to have a real high school experience and maybe go to college but I really don’t think there was a better alternative for me so I’ve mostly just accepted it by now.

[kkbardd]

hello! i haven’t sent an ask in a while because schoolwork has been piling up infinitely :[ , but your recent posts have been really interesting to me! i really liked the room sketch one, I can’t exactly explain why but there’s something so indescribably human about it. i love spaces that looked lived in, that have personality, and I think that your room (current one? made up? old one?) has done a great job of showing that. and I’m not very good at giving advice— I can hardly follow it myself, but if you don’t know something, don’t know what you want to do, try things. it’s okay if you don’t like them. i recently found out I’m more competent in languages than I thought! i can already read and understand simple sentences in german.

there’s always more to yourself than you’ll know, I think, but the world is kinder than people think. If anything, everyone is still very new at this. we’ve never lived before. do the things you like, branch out, don’t become less of yourself for other people. everything has a place, and my best advice is to treat life as you would a vacation. do all the things you can while you’re here. build a life that makes it worth it. (sorry for the long ask and my rambling, or if this is overstepping in any way. i just read what you wrote and kind of related to it in a way. thank you for continuing to create art, it brings me a lot of joy! :] )

hey isopod!!! thanks for the ask & I wish u good luck with ur school work!

Thank u so much for the compliments, im really glad the vibe of my room was conveyed in those doodles. i absolutely looove drawing my room! It’s extremely small (a renovated utility closet) and just barely fits a bed + my desk but its packed full of the things i love. It’s very lived in and I feel like it reflects my character well.

when i drew that page I was in my senior year of high school and pressures to decide my future were overwhelming. I never thought much about it until then and I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do. The only thing I felt I had going for me was art but I didn’t want to turn my only hobby into a job I hated. I remember going through a master list of majors on random college websites and one-by-one asking myself if I’d be okay doing it. In the end I had nothing. I was really crushed about it and felt stuck. This was right after the covid quarantine too so focusing in school was difficult & I couldn’t bring myself to apply for scholarships. I started skipping classes, smoking weed, and pushing off my assignments. All of this only made me feel more miserable, of course, so everything seemed pretty bleak at the time.

But luckily I had the support of my family and especially my mother. She would always remind me that “we have option”, “we always have options”. Because I did! This was a fresh start to try my hand at a totally different experience than what I’ve done so far. I ended up choosing my major on a complete whim after hearing my aunt had a job in an adjacent field. I was pretty sure I’d drop out after a semester, yet here I am about to graduate soon & I’m having a ton of fun!! (Hell, I’m 10 hours out in the middle of nowhere right now for my Field Methods class!) It’s not that I had a knack for Geology that I just never tapped into, or that i secretly had a passion for rocks this entire time; I just found something that seemed like an okay fit and grew interest from there. I think that a small level of commitment like that is more than enough to get you going. I had a ton of ideas in my head about how I needed to have a perfect fit major that would connect every dot I’ve laid out in my life thus far, but that’s not true at all. Life is much more messy and unpredictable than that.

But enough of my rambling!! That time of my life may have been stressful but I’m very grateful that I went through it! It changed how I viewed problems and it taught me to always look for other options when everything seems helpless.

Thank u so much for ur encouragement, I really appreciate it <33 I completely agree with everything u said!! Life is an ever changing experience & often leads u in unpredictable directions!

[neocoffeecafe]

thank you to @daydreamingyuta for tagging me, love !!

get to know me !!!

do you make your bed? hehe no i dont. it’s always ready for me for bed, though !!

what is your favorite number? i’m gonna be honest i dont have one !! as an nctzen i do naturally go ballistic when i see 127, but i don’t have one specifically !!

what is your job? i work in a restaurant ! i am the expediter, the person who takes out the food. i really enjoy it, and i would recommend it

if you could go back to school, would you? yes! i am actually working for college to do some basic classes and to take art classes

can you parallel park? living in a small town where most of the parking is parallel, ive gotten pretty good at it

a job you had that would surprise people? nope! my job at this restaurant was my first and i am still employed there :)

do you think aliens are real? i like to believe that farther away our galaxy there are other civilizations just like us, alternate realities could even be real too. theres just so much out there the possibilities are endless! but yes, i do believe they can exist just not on earth

can you drive a manual car? LOL i can hardly drive an automatic

whats your guilty pleasure? causing trouble in online games to make people angry LOL

tattoos? NOOO but i want to get some so badly !! i want to get three cardinals on my back for the three men in my life that ive lost. my uncle, grandfather, and my other grandfather that i never could’ve met but wished i would’ve. i want to get stars on my knuckles and i want to get a saturn somewhere, unsure where, i was thinking my shoulder area ! i was also thinking about getting a tattoo of luxray, my favorite pokemon. but i would like to get tons of tattoos in the future !! i’m just super nervous because i have the worst pain tolerance ever

favorite color? i have more than one! blue, black, white, silver, and rose gold are my favorites !!

favorite type of music? i literally listen to anything and everything !! genres honestly dont exist to me anymore, if i like what i listen to i will like it and save it if not i wont ! i have over 7,000 songs on my liked songs and still counting !! i have a playlist for new releases/comebacks and new music in general, it’s SOOO outdated and i am VERY behind on it but i will literally listen to anything

do you like puzzles? yeah i do ! my favorite is word search

any phobias? OH MY GOD YES I AM SCARED OF AIR ATP !! insects, dark, thunderstorms (i love them but at the same time i’m terrified I KNOW IM WEIRD !!) theres more i just can’t remember them atm LOL. AI AND ROBOTS !! i HATE ai and robots

favorite childhood sport? t-ball LOL

do you talk to yourself? yeah LOL teachers in the past have made fun of me for talking to myself while doing things, sometimes i think better talking to myself

what movie(s) do you adore? NIMONA !!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE THAT MOVIE i watched it for the first time like a month ago and i’ve seen it about seven times

coffee of tea? OK SUE ME !! both. i love red diamond sweet tea and drink it religiously, but i say yes to both because i do like coffee, but it has to be doctored up… a LOT. i like getting the starbucks glass caramel frappe thing and the mcdonads caramel frappe. it has to be that type of coffee, i don’t like any others

first thing you wanted to be growing up? i’ve always wanted to be an artist! always always. my goal is to now become a concept artist, for video games specifically. preferably character concept design !! for companies like riot, hoyoverse, even nintendo, etc.

hmm i wasnt sure who to tag so i closed my eyes and picked two lol! @phoxphenex and @mrkis !! no pressure you don’t have to !!

[rottenbrainstuff]

Haha I just saw an Instagram post complaining about how we went from beautiful masterful renaissance paintings to Jackson pollock paint splatters.

You know what guys, I don’t even LIKE a lot of contemporary art that much ok? I don’t, yet I still find myself defending it all the time and that makes me mad, don’t make me have to defend this stuff I don’t even like.

To boil it down extremely, extremely, extremely simply:

1) once cameras were invented and became widely accessible, art was no longer stuck having to be strictly representational, and artists began to get more and more experimental with how art could be used to express feelings and ideas, instead of just a strict representation of reality. Artists like to explore boundaries and limitations. Every new movement was shocking when it was first a thing. Those impressionist water lilies that are so popular everyone knows them nowadays: people hated that when it was new. Van Gogh? The art movement he was a part of was literally called “the wild beasts” (fauvism) because people thought it was so ugly and crude.

2) the old masters you are probably thinking about learned painting as a trade, like a guy going to a technical school to become a mechanic, and most of them started learning it as children. Most of those paintings you admire so much were never created to be the artist’s personal expression, they were mostly hired by wealthy people to paint something that showed off the wealthy person’s wealth, either “look, I can afford to hire someone to paint this giant ass painting” or literally “look, I hired someone to paint this giant ass painting of myself standing in front of my massive land and wearing all my expensive accessories”. Those were the first vanity selfies! Back in the day you had to pay someone and wait three years for it. Lol. As that one popular post going around tumblr says: if we had people quitting highschool and going to painting school as teenagers, then having every one of their expenses paid by rich people so they can just sit and work on a painting for three years, you’d have beautiful stuff like that.

3) there ARE still beautiful representational paintings being made, actually! You just aren’t seeing them because you’re not going out to a variety of shows, you’re only seeing the famous controversial works that everyone likes to complain about. For instance JUST off the very top of my head, every year my city has a big western uh festival I guess and there is a showing of western artists and sculptors making art with western Canadian themes. I have never seen so many beautiful paintings of landscapes or horses. Tons of them. Probably at least 50 artists. Just in my small area of Canada. They’re still there. Why aren’t you trying to go out and see it? Why are you just looking for the weird avant-garde stuff to complain about?

4) perhaps most importantly: it’s not being made for you. That sounds rude maybe or overly simplistic but like that’s the best I can explain it and do try to wrap your head around it: the weird-ass art that’s a banana duct-taped to the wall: that’s not being made for you, you’re not the audience. You know, those old portraits, they were meant to be looked at and admired by a large audience of people, but this new stuff, it’s really not going for the same thing at all, it’s not made to be appealing to the general public as a pretty object of decoration. It’s got a WHOLE different thing it’s trying to do. I’m not defending the weird stuff and saying it’s all awesome and you’re just too stupid to understand it, trust me I went to college with some of the most insufferable artistes you can imagine and I know exactly the process and the intent behind all of this and guys I don’t necessarily like it either! I don’t. I’m just trying to explain. It’s different, it’s a whole different animal, it’s like complaining that you don’t like action movies when you went to see an action movie: you’re just not the audience. I know action movies are dumb and loud, they’re supposed to be like that, that’s how people like them, and it’s not a tragedy that we don’t have people making black and white silent movies anymore… it’s just different.

Whether you think this stuff is worthy of being displayed in large museums and having tax dollars spent on it, my friends that’s a totally different conversation that I’m not having here, and I don’t necessarily disagree with you there: I just, look, I spend four years and a lot of money learning art history and I took an honest to god class about how to look at contemporary art, and it just makes me feel tired when people make these dumb “kids these days” posts about why we don’t have renaissance paintings these days, implying it’s some sort of fault of degenerate or lazy artists who just don’t want to paint good anymore. That’s all I’m saying.

Ok?

[mushroom-music]

hey imma answer all these here so y’all can get to know me a bit better!!

Arthur Parnassus, Crowley, Jon Sims, and Remus Lupin, mostly :)

LIGHTER

if it’s warm enough, yeah! I live in an area where the weather is frikin CRAZY so it could be warm in the middle of winter or we could get a cold front off the lake and have it be 60 F in July. in general though, I do like to.

MOTHMAN. I fucking love mothman and imma make a shirt with them on it

Brown <3

because I was desperate okay ??

my hair is too short for either, but when it was long I preferred hair ties.

idk like 4? Mostly half empty ones though

I don’t drink coffee (I think the taste is nastyyyy) but I do drink tea! and I like hot tea better ofc, but room-temperature tea is underrated, still has the flavor and everything.

I mean, if it’s a nice rich person who advocates for minorities and gives back to their community than nahhhh they don’t deserve it. Most rich ppl tho, absolutely

Drawing, archery, reading scientific papers on ECM/EMM, crocheting, reading <3

a tired day :) Fridays always are but I think it’s Finn’s be a good day too!!!

this morning (like 50 minutes ago) I had an oatmeal :D

holy FUCK yes I love petrichor it’s one of my favorite scents right up there next to bergamot and my friends’ hair

of plants, yes :) of my dice set, yes (I’ve named them)

nope!!

EXTREMELY nearsighted. horrible vision, I would die without glasses

uhhhh literally just shampoo/conditioner as needed, my hair does it’s own thing but looks okay most of the time bc it’s fluffy

totally yessss!!

Pop (midwesterner yay)

the idea that everyone always expects perfection from me because of my intelligence :(

a tired one :/ (idk rly know what this one means, but I’m smart ?? Ig?? And also like to art)

love it, best kinda weather

probably reading or listening to music :)

lotion !!

going to my dream college (it’s a while until I could but I’d love to)

like maybe 7? Still tired tho bc ✨chronic illness✨

nope :)

HOT. HOT TUB TEMPERATURE.

no, not allowed to eat there

bedroom pop and Midwest emo

no, unless ur talking abt beach towel bc then yes

a hike in the forest to find cool fungi and categorize them

oh like a ton. some examples being Ruler of Everything, When He Died, Good Luck, Babe!, Be Nice to Me, Against the Kitchen Floor, This Charming Man, and Art is Dead

Eastern Time Zone (US)

none, actually!

Pretty much no one (all my old friends fixing dumped me)

Zoap’s lavender oatmeal bar

Sometimes, mainly in winter

no :(

(tea actually) mostly just black, but sometimes with cream or sugar if I’m feeling emotional

YouTube !!

i like them! nothing too spicy but I do like them.

this annoying kid in my class named Patrick >:(

mostly I think so

probably Elf

”okay!!”

as a sip test, when I was 13. as a whole drink, never (am minor)

no unfortunately :(

yea absolutely!! I love getting tagged in random fun things by my moots and friends :D

here’s weirder asks

who is/are your comfort character(s)?

lighter or matches?

do you leave the window open at night?

which cryptyd being do you believe in?

what color are your eyes?

why did you do that?

hair-ties or scrunchies?

how many water bottles are in your room right now?

which do you prefer, hot coffee or cold coffee?

would you slaughter the rich?

favorite extracurricular activity?

what kind of day is it?

when was the last time you ate?

do you love the smell of earth after it rains?

are you a parent? (all answers qualify)

can you drive?

are you farsighted or nearsighted?

what hair products do you use?

imagine we’re at a sleepover, would you paint my nails?

do you say soda or pop?

something you’ve kept since childhood?

what type of person are you?

how do you feel about chilly weather?

if we were together on a rooftop, what would we be doing?

perfume/body spray or lotion?

a scenario that you’ve replayed multiple times?

about how many hours of sleep did you get?

do you wear a mask?

how do you like your shower water?

is there dishes in your room?

what type of music keeps you grounded?

do you have a favorite towel?

the last adventure you’ve been on?

is there a song you know every word to by heart?

what’s your timezone?

how many times have you changed your url?

someone in your life, other than a relative, you’ve known for 10+ years?

a soap bar that smells good?

do you use lip balm?

did you have any snacks today?

how do you take your coffee?

an app you frequently use besides this godforsaken site?

what’s your take on spicy foods?

you get a free pass to kill anyone, who is it?

can you remember what happened yesterday?

favorite holiday film?

what was the last message you sent?

when did you first try an alcohol beverage?

can you skip rocks?

can i tag you in random stuff?

[no-one-of-consequence]

Recurring Themes

As I have been looking over everything I want to write about here, I am noticing that a lot of the subject matter is pretty heavy. However, I also have many humorous stories to tell as well. I thought it might be best to structure future posts to include a mix of both instead of simply info dumping a ton of dark and heavy baggage into a post and calling it a day. Make no mistake, that heavy stuff will be prominently featured, but I don’t think it needs to be the whole focus. After all, if anyone I know ever ends up reading this I would hope they get to see both sides of my life. The light and the millennial gray.

Upcoming and recurring themes:  (1) Tales from 2020: There is a popular meme format that has been going around lately, and for about the past 3 years (starting in autumn) I always see posts touting things like “It’s almost 2025 and I still haven’t even processed 2020.” My initial reaction is always “OMG I totally agree”, but then I never did the work of processing it. So, why not actually write about it and tell the stories from the most mixed bag of a year I have ever experienced. Examples: A childhood role model walks out into the desert to die. This was the year I was finally able to invest in my 2nd child. A year that strained every relationship. A year of contact tracing, death threats, and uncomfortable phone calls. The discovery of my 16-year-old half-brother. Feeling protected by the community I served. Falling in love with school nursing, despite the pandemic. The bond of shared trauma and new lifelong friendships. Nurses eat their young, and rejecting the culture of trial by fire. And many, many, more smaller moments of light in the darkness.

(2) Formative pre-nursing experience: As stated in the initial post, I am a Nurse. It was a long journey to get here though. My journey in particular to get here was much longer than most. I already had one college degree before transitioning to this field, and my previous degree had no STEM credits. Because of this, I had an elongated nursing assistant run. Being a nursing assistant was a world all its own and I always tell people it was the best thing I never ever want to do again.

Examples: The two patients who left their mark on me as they died. Ghost stories (Help! The killer potted plant, and the piano concert from heaven). The 104-year-old teacher who was still teaching. Wisdom shared by patients. Concrete examples of true unconditional love. Poop stories (It comes with the job, but they won’t be as gross as you imagine.) Why the Bulb Fields by Vincent Van Gough is my favorite piece of art. Appreciation for good mentors who lead from the front.

(3) Trail marker: Stories that fall into this category will be the stories that are the dearest to me, and have impacted my life in some major or irreversible way. These will be stories that caused a perspective change, and they will usually be a millennial gray.

Examples: Working for my favorite boss and learning how to lead relaxed. Botching an interview but getting the job anyway. Studying for the NCLEX, and state-based memory. Becoming a homeowner, and the parallels of home repairs to self-reflection and inner work. Summer of 2011 and how my Korean friends changed everything. The birth of each of my children. Our wedding, and the darkness surrounding it. Going no-contact with my father in-law and the subsequent order of protection. The importance of acknowledging failure, and refusing to become stagnant. The neo-nazi and the horse.

(4) General appreciation posts: These will be just as the category name suggests. Just a section of things to really geek out over and show love to.  

Examples: Any fandom I appreciate. Magic, the gathering. Pro-wrestling (Non-WWE). Anime. Fantasy. Sci-fi. And other general nerd stuff.

(5) Chasing the Omega Physique: In my present day, life is a lot easier than it has ever been (:Knocks on wood:) and I finally have time to devote to real and tangible physical fitness. I have been going to the gym for many years, but nothing tangible has ever come of it, and I've never been able to lose the weight I want to lose, or develop the lean muscle mass I have always dreamed of having.  What I mean by the Omega Physique is complicated, and it will be explained more thoroughly the first time this segment occurs. 

But here is a hint:

This is just a preview and I am working on my first real entry coming very soon. I hope anyone who finds this, enjoys the things to come. Sincerely,  ~ (Z) 

[cheolism]

for me, i was always aware of kpop but no groups really caught my attention until mamamoo but i didn’t really follow up with them until i got into ateez and started finding about more groups

the testing went okay, there were news reporter at the place i was taking the test and was praying they won’t ask me about how it went cuz i’d probably bawl my eyes out. the results don’t come out until the 27th which is pretty nerve wrecking but i think it’ll be fine, after that (hopefully) the next time i send an ask i’ll be a uni student woohooo honestly why’d no one ever say about how hard it is to choose a major 😭😭 losing my mindddddd

HOW DO YOU DO IT

OMG!! i was wondering abt you!!! i'm happy to see you back !!! <3

i didn't really know abt kpop until 2016. i'm not sure if i even knew it existed?? that's so cool that ateez was your first group!!! what was your first comeback w them???

and omg!! yay uni!!!!! i hope for positive results omg!!!!!! i wish i could tell you that there's no use in worrying because that won't help, but ik that's just a load of bullshit and you'll worry regardless lmao

i also applied to a uni!!! and i'll also reveal some of my backstory lmao so!! at 18 i chose a program that would open doors to a job that offered job security and good money and healthcare and all that jazz!!! but the program!! fucking made me extremely mentally ill. the time i started writing on tumblr was one of the darkest points in my life, and it was. very bad! i won't go into details!! but i tried to stay in the program because, at that point, i had put two years into it and i knew my family really wanted me to go through with it. i knew it was the best option for me and my skills.

but during july a few things happened. my grandpa fell and broke his hip and that like. idk? snapped something into me? and it made me realized i needed a job where i felt fulfilled as a person, where i was able to do the things that i love. so, without telling anyone in my family, i dropped out of my program and got with an advisor and made plans to switch into the liberal arts department and focus on getting an english diploma. i told my family everything after i had solidified the plans (don't do this!! i didn't do this on impulse. i did tons of research on the requirements for an english bachelors and the best way to do it and what everything i would need to do, etc. i don't do big steps impulsively, no matter what it seems like). and this spring i will be finishing up one half of my degree and come autumn i will be at uni beginning to do the second half of my english bachelors and getting a teaching certificate!!! i'll also probably try to do a minors in history.

all this being said: you don't know what you want to do. at 18 i went into the first program knowing i didn't want to do it but trying to bear it because it was the best path to try and get myself into a better financial and social standing than my parents. but it wasn't until literally four months ago? that i knew for sure that i couldn't do the program and i wanted to do something i loved.

i don't know how college works in your country!!!! and idk if you've already been going through college!! but i strongly recommend just getting the general things out of the way before you even think about worrying about what you want to do. through doing general coursework you can get an idea of what you like to do and what you're good at. i really believe in getting all the facts of something before you make a decision, and i recommend getting all the facts about who you are, what you like and what you love, before trying to commit to something that'll last a lifetime.

[goddessofliteratureandsarcasm]

There’s this thought that’s been percolating in the back of my mind. I’ve been doing my usual rounds of looking at fandom meta and shipping discourse, and I’m starting to wonder. Other people have done a really good job of explaining the connection between purity culture and this new generation of fans, who seem to want to sanitize everything, so I won’t go into that. But I was looking specifically at shipping discourse where one side’s major argument was that their pairing was canon. And it got me thinking, why is that such a weird argument to me? I basically grew up in fandom, it taught me a lot about how to read media and what a compelling argument looks like, so why doesn’t this one ring true?

And then I realized I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction in my spare time about millennial burnout culture, and the overachievement culture that’s been driving high schoolers into burnout before they can even get to college. And then I thought about the phrase “ teaching to the test”, and then it clicked. Teaching to the test when I was growing up meant that your teacher was essentially coloring inside the lines, that they had a pretty good idea of the kinds of things and questions that were going to be on standardized tests, and that they stuck to those concepts because school funding was becoming more and more based on student testing results. But, and I’m speaking as an elder millennial here, back then we still had free time. Not tons, but enough for a hobby or two of our own preference that didn’t make it onto our college application list. And kids now just don’t seem to have that. There’s increased pressure about school, and not just for the ones who want to go to Harvard. There’s increased pressure about extracurriculars, and making sure that everything you do is optimized for your college application. And every other spare minute is taken up by doomscrolling and optimizing social media.

That’s insane! Fandom has been my hobby since I was 11 years old and had unrestricted computer access. As long as I wasn’t on “chat rooms” no one gave a damn what I was doing on the internet, and, of course, the first thing my nerdy ass did was look for what I now call fan content. And I wasn’t alone! One of the top five students in my graduating class introduced me to deviant art when we were 13.

But now kids don’t have or give themselves free time to let their brains play. And in the process of “studying for the test”, they’re not giving themselves the opportunity to come at media from the direction of “what if?”. What if things were different? What if that character didn’t die? What if that letter didn’t fall into the wrong hands? What if they all just packed it up and moved to New York and opened a coffee shop?

You can’t ask questions like that when you’re studying for “the test”, the test that will determine your entire course in life, or at least you and everyone around you thinks so.  You’ll get points taken off if you don’t know exactly what happens, so you learn to hold up the original piece of media as sacred without questioning it. Oh sure, they’ll talk about what makes an old novel problematic, but they won’t move past banning it to reimagining it. And the same goes for the media that they consume as fans.  Cannon is a sacred text, not a starting point.

I don’t know, it’s just a little sad to me that alongside purity culture these kids are losing their sense of play. Fuck knows I need it.

[jxthics]

howd you get started with commissions? i’m starting college soon and need the extra income but i don’t know how to start building a “presence” online

hi! this is a really good question but it requires a very, very long answer. i will do my best to split it up into sections and break it down to the best of my ability, but i am not a very articulate person. so if anyone reads this and has any further (specific) questions please feel free to ask!! thank you!!

to answer the question directly: i got into commissions in a really stupid way and no one should get started with commissions the way i did. i'm not going to go into detail, but i was in a really bad situation and i had to pick up work so that i would stop doing different things for money. i was underprepared, and i made a lot of mistakes, some of which i'm still trying to unlearn to this day. i didn't have any better options, but damn.

that's why i'm going to split up some things i wish i knew at the start of taking commissions For You! i've been taking them steadily for a little over 5 years now, a little over a year and a half fulltime if my math is right, and it's been a long series of trial and error. hopefully some of these tips will help you avoid those same mistakes and prepare you for starting commissions!

-

SOME HARD QUESTIONS: so commissions are a really great way to make money off of your art but it is a job. especially in the current hustle culture model and the way that art is undervalued, i feel like this gets really overlooked. it's not a side gig, it's a full job with a ton of demands, and a really, really taxing one at times. i've seen a lot of people - myself included - underestimate the amount of work that comms take and end up eating the cost later. a lot of the "scams" you see online are genuine people who are just insanely overwhelmed and unable to fulfill the demands of the job, and end up just taking money and ghosting people. you don't want to be that person, i don't want to be that person. so don't be that person.

but like pretty much any job it has requirements. especially because you're self-managing, it has a lot of very unique ones. i am not listing these to discourage anyone from taking commissions; this list is to make sure you are actually ready for this job. note that art skill is not on this list - anyone at any level of ability can take commissions. these are soft skills you need for this job, how good you draw is not one of them.

some questions for you, before you start commissions. these are for you to think about and answer to yourself honestly: - can i make myself available to people? i consistently reply to messages? will i avoid messages, or hide from people when overwhelmed? am i able to make my work schedule and turnaround time known to people (i.e. a visible queue), and stick to that? can i send messages regularly enough for progress check-ins, wips? if people ask me unexpected questions, will i be willing to answer them? can i respond to messages in a sober and clear-headed way that will make sense to other people? will i resent people for contacting me, especially when i'm overwhelmed? if i have delays or unexpected hiccups, will i be able to communicate those without shame? - can i maintain a professional relationship with clients? what about if they're pushy, or verbally abusive? what if someone develops a parasocial relationship with me and will pay me for friendship via commissions? (this happens a lot.) if someone breaks my rules, can i tell people "no" without being aggressive to them? am i able to enforce boundaries to be respected, or am i a bit of a doormat? can i keep up boundaries when money is involved? what if i really, really need that money?* *i will admit this gets.... really hard, especially if you need to pay bills, but it's easier after you've taken commissions for a while. sometimes you don't know the answer to this question until you're in this situation. - can i manage a reasonable workload? you are setting your own hours. can i organize, and be aware of how much work i have? can i keep a slow and steady pace without eating into my other responsibilities? do i have enough time to set aside for this amount of work? if i do commissions, can i still find enough time for college/work/sleep/chores? can i consistently set aside that amount of time without overworking myself or burning out? are commissions going to be a strain on my body (i.e. wrist issues)? can i pace myself while still getting commissions done within a reasonable timeframe? again, what if i really, really need the money? - is my art consistent? if i'm having art block, will i still be able to fulfill commissions? am i comfortable at my skill level to produce art that may be somewhat out of my creative comfort zone, or is the type of work i can do severely limited? (note that i mean things that may be challenging to draw, not things that make you actually uncomfortable. do not take a commission that makes you uncomfortable.) does my style change a lot, or will people generally know what they're getting from me? can i make my work around the same quality almost every time? will things like frustration with clients, overworking, stress, etc make my work worse?

think of this as a list of challenges that you need to be able to overcome - if you take a good, honest look at this list and realize you can't do one or more of these things, try to figure out ways around it! for example, i have pretty severe ADHD and i didn't start getting medicated for that ADHD until this month, which means i struggled with meeting deadlines without burning out. when i started taking commissions seriously, i had to learn how to manage my workload through a shit ton of scheduling and planners so that i don't do too much. i would not take commissions if you can't meet the requirements for these questions - you're going to run into glaring problems fulfilling commissions if you can't do the things on that list, because that is what doing commissions requires of you, every time.

if you can't do these things yet, but you still want to do commissions, that's ok! that just means that's not for you right now. i'd heavily encourage you to save this ask for when you know you're ready. all of the things above are things that can be worked around - like i said, i jumped into this unprepared. i have failed in some way or another at almost all of these, or seen people i'm close to who are also artists fail at these. these are obstacles that can be accommodated or worked around. come back to this later!

if you're good to do commissions though, let's move onto actually getting commissions.

-

TRACTION: i'm using this as a catchall term for getting people to see your work, getting people who will buy commissions from you, advertising. these are different things! sometimes really good advertising doesn't hit your target audience, sometimes people with tons of social media traction who get tons of attention on their art do not get many buyers, sometimes people with very few followers get a lot of buyers. ideally you'd have all of these things going really well for you, but especially if you're starting out with no online presence, you probably do not have any of these things. i'll try to break them into the three different things and what works for me.

social media traction (getting people to see your work): i'm gonna be honest, this part does not matter. don't worry about algorithms, don't worry about posting times, do not pander to an audience. DON'T WORRY ABOUT NUMBERS. if you're putting out work that is only for the sake of getting seen and getting money, other people will be able to tell. the only thing i'd say that matters is posting finished work consistently and frequently - if people can see that you can complete a lot of work, people will be more likely to commission you. but like... i make enough off of commissions to pay my bills, and i post whateverthefuck whenever i want, which is usually "shirtless guys that i find hot because i'm gay." most of what i do right now is OC art that i straight up refuse to explain, and i post as soon as i finish stuff, which is pretty often in the middle of the night. i also don't have a lot of followers - as i post this i'm hovering right around the 2,000 mark on tumblr, around 1,900 on instagram, and 2,500 on twitter. most of my recent art doesn't break 200 notes, and i can count on two hands how many times i've broken 1,000 notes on a post this year despite posting near daily. like... i am not someone you'd probably look at and think "damn this guy has enough of a following to pay his bills with his art" and that is because it means So little. when it comes to social media attention, fall in love with your art and then make a lot of it. do things that you're passionate about. be extremely self-indulgent. you WILL find your niche of people so long as you are doing it consistently and authentically. trust me.

advertising: this comes down to the advertising posts themselves. you need the posts to be clear and legible - avoid handwritten things, find a good font that is clear and stick to it. i heavily recommend fonts that video games use for their text because it's made to be readable while usually adhering to a certain aesthetic. you can have the prettiest post in the world but if it's hard to IMMEDIATELY read, you're going to lose people's attention - think about how long you actually spend looking at posts if they don't immediately draw you in, especially with current social media. you are trying to be a very loud voice in a lot of other loud voices and you need to make sure yours makes sense. inversely, you want your posts to reflect the type of work you do in a way that is nice to look at - this isn't a resume! make it look good, clean it up, make it clear that you are an artist. trying to strike this balance is really hard and it took me a while to hit a point where i was happy with it. contact friends to look at it who will give you honest feedback, especially if you know any graphic designers. if you have a specific style you tend towards in your art (like gritty or gloomy or soft), having the colors and text kind of reflect that also helps in my opinion and looks more like you have your shit together. i make my commission posts generally reflect my carrd info so that it feels cohesive. don't overload too much information in your post - make an extended page with do's and don'ts and any other important information, and link back to that. this is just a blurb to get people to Look at it.

client traction (getting people who will buy commissions from you): so i'm putting this one as a different bubble from advertising and social media traction because even though both of those things HELP, you need some other stuff. like i said earlier, having a lot of attention doesn't mean you're getting comms, and having your advertisements take off doesn't mean you're getting comms either! in my experience at least, something like 1/4-1/3 of your commissions are going to be from people who come back and repeatedly commission you, and the other 3/4-2/3 are people who haven't commissioned you before. sometimes these people don't even follow you and just thought your art was cool! these come up a lot especially if you're doing stuff like flash sales. so with this in mind, client traction is partially showing that you are a reliable and consistent person through social media, and partially showing that you can do good work through doing the work for them! good commission work is usually ones where you have clear communication, you're flexible to the client's needs, maintain a professional relationship, and the work you give them is good! when it comes to reliability and consistency through social media, having easy to find commission information is going to help. try to keep your social media usernames the same across all of your platforms - that way when youre on something like insta or tiktok where advertising is discouraged, they can find your twt/tumblr/whatever and look into your commission information there! also, keep your prices posted. my prices are readily available on my extended commission information -- its the same image i post when i'm advertising commissions! -- so that when i put up advertisements, people already know what they're getting. this is important especially if you want people to buy higher priced commissions from you, as people aren't going to drop $100+ on your work on a whim. posting times when you're going to open commissions also helps a ton! basically just being easy to find and easy to anticipate. s'professional.

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PRICING

i swear i'm almost done but a lot of people underprice their work. not only is this awful for your health and time, but it's also going to make it harder for you to sell comms. even if you don't have a large following, if your work is too underpriced, people will not buy it from you. it's a concept known as paradoxical value or the paradox of value - when it comes to things that are luxury items (fancy food, arts, crafts), if it doesn't cost a certain amount, MOST* people won't buy it. think of it like $2 gas station sushi -- even if you do buy and eat it, you're probably not going to be surprised if it's not quality, and you're probably going to at least buy it from the grocery store for $12+ if you're looking for something quality.

*i say most because you will get clients because you're underpriced but a lot of them aren't going to be good ones. people who are attracted to work just for it being low are most often really pushy or difficult people. this is where you end up with bad clients who are hard to work with. i used to get treated like shit by people who commed me whenever i posted cheap commissions and ever since i raised my prices people have been treating me better. bad self worth attracts people who will take advantage of it.

so like.... you need to be pricing for reasonable wage. look up what retail jobs are paying hourly in your area (because the minimum wage is usually less, we're ignoring min wage) and use that as your basis. for every type of commission you take (flat bust, flat half, flat full.... etc etc etc), draw about three of that one type by varying complexity, minimum, and time them. take the average time of all of those three and multiply it by your minimum wage. that's your minimum price.

formula is:

(minimum wage) x ([ {commission type one} + {commission type 2} + {commission type 3} ]/3) = your minimum price

that minimum price might seem like a lot, but it is the amount you would make at an hourly retail job. if you price under this you are making less than in a standard job for something that is a specialized luxury field. that's bad.

adjust your prices every 6 months based on your ability, your experience, your demand! i had to bump my prices recently because i have to work slower due to an arm injury, which means my average time is way longer.

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i tried to keep this as short as possible and ended up writing for almost two hours i'm so sorry.

if y'all have any specific questions related to this, want solutions for better ways to manage commission problems, or just want to know something about the commission side of things, don't hesitate to ask! i'll get back to it as soon as i've got a minute. i actually need to go back to doing comms right now lmao.

stay safe, take care of yourself!