#an update of sorts

[captainhysunstuff]

*sighs in relief* I finally got over an important drawing hurdle in The Chain (important to me anyway, lol). Feels good~. I’m aiming to get out the newest installment (chapter 46) by the end of the week. ✨Hooray~✨

[gillianthecat]

After a year of no interest I've started feeling a craving to do cross-stitch again.

so eventually this:

will become this:

(with the guidance of this:)

(The finished section is part of the big owl's belly and tail.)

I'm continuing to feel like my brain is overstuffed on BL shows, and I can't handle watching anything new. I will probably at least watch The Eclipse final episode this friday, but otherwise I will likely take a break from continuing anything or starting anything new. I did finish my rewatch of Cherry Blossoms After Winter, which was once again charming and relaxing. And seeing gifs has been making me crave Utsukushii Kare, so I may rewatch that one too.

It's been about four months since I started watching BL, so that's about par for the course in terms of how long my hyperfixations last. I do want to keep watching and writing about shows, but it's not likely to be at the same pace or intensity that I have been. I regularly manage to keep interests and hobbies for decades, I just go through cycles of intensity with them. (e.g. getting back into cross stitch after a year.)

Also, I think I watched so much so quickly, and thought about it so much that my brain really did get full, and it's starting to go on strike. The idea of getting to know new characters and worlds feels exhausting instead of exciting. And I want watching BL shows to continue to be fun, so I'm not going to push it.

But all you tumblr folks are so lovely and thoughtful, so that's a big motivation to keep returning to BL.

On the good side of my changeable brain, over past few days I've finally been able to get myself to do a bunch of housekeeping tasks I've been putting off forever, and it makes such a difference in my living space. Still a long way to go, but it feels doable instead of overwhelming now.

Although I'm reminded that any time things start to change I get discombobulated and disoriented for a while. Even (especially?) when it's good changes. Who am I? Where am I? What's the meaning of life? But it happens every time, so I know now that if I just keep moving my brain will settle down.

[morganupstead]

I just wanted to say hi. I miss my mutuals SO VERY MUCH, just because I haven't been doing much fandoming doesn't mean I don't think about you guys all the time.

Most of my daily thoughts are "omg you "blank" would literally die".

I really thought i would be watching more tv and movies but I've barely watched anything. Instead, I've been reading so many books I've consistently been 4 books ahead of my Goodreads goal which is nuts to me.

Reading romance outside with a drinky drink has been my entire vibe lately.

im also perpetually late on the summer i turned pretty bc I'm trying to sync up time to watch with my sister so I'm been dodging spoilers all the time.

I feel like I have so much to say but I also feel out of the practice of just spewing all my thoughts on my blog (somehow I don't know). Someone tell me it's fine.

Anyway, I just miss my community here, because you guys are all just so sweet. Maybe I should post about the books I'm reading so i feel like i have something to chat about. I need to remember to just check my dash once a day. I need baby steps lol.

[beautifulhigh]

On grief, feeling what we feel, and taking a step back

I’m writing this having literally just finished listening to an interview my cousin did on a radio show about grief, about the way we feel when we lose a relationship that isn’t romantic or familiaral. Losing a friendship, a collegiate relationship, having to say goodbye to someone close to you.

I have thoughts that I want to get out so they’re under the cut. Trigger warnings for death, grief, depression & anxiety, suicidal thoughts, self harm, and a whole bunch of other misery.

Part of why I’ve been feeling so lost recently is because the end of February is the anniversary of my best friend, and then her birthday is 1 March, so basically that week I end up whirling myself up into grief and solemnity and rememberance. Brina was Jewish, had meningitis, and so within the space of a week I’d gone from getting the first message that she was sick, to coming home from her funeral. It felt like, in that week, I didn’t have time to process it.

It was also the start of some epic shit at work, shit that would eventually push my anxiety into depression, into suicidal thoughts and self harm. It felt like the first domino to fall in my life: I lost my best friend, I lost my confidence at work, and it felt like I was losing everything. It felt like everything was coming for me and for a while I considered letting it win.

I’m getting to the stage now where I look back on that time and see it as something I couldn’t have changed, couldn’t have prevented. There was no way I could have stopped what happened, the sequence of events. I got help. I got out of teaching and while I missed it for a bit I don’t now. The timing of everything that’s happened in my life since I resigned summer of 2019 has been a stepping stone to get me to here.

And I mostly like here, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Losing Bri hurts, but not like it did in that first year. When I would pick up my phone to message her only to remember as our thread got further and further down my list. I remember my phone breaking and I nearly had a panic attack because I thought I was going to lose all those messages. God bless Samsung and their autoback up and transfer.

I’m getting better at focusing on her memory being a blessing. Listening to my cousin talk in that interview about grief and how it doesn’t care whether you were family or in love or knew them for three score years and ten. Losing someone is still losing someone and you still have things that were yours, that you feel like you don’t have anymore.

It still hurts, it’s going to hurt for a long time to come, and it hurts more when people don’t see and recognise that pain. For those people still in my life who see me dealing with it - or trying to - and to then brush it off or try to push it away? I can’t deal with that. I won’t deal with that. This is my grief, my pain, my sorrow and my joy. You don’t have to come and sit with me in it but if you do I’ll tell you stories about dropping radios into canals, and wrong orders at restuarants, and sneaking backstage at a panto.

At that point something kicked off at work - someone was getting upset at how I was treating them, I was upset at how they were treating me, and in the “discussion” that was organised to deal with it it became very clear they weren’t interested in hearing my side of things. They told me that I don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life and I should think about how my actions could be taken, and when I tried to say “you have a point, here’s my story” I was talked over and shut down. It made me feel like my life, my thoughts didn’t mater.

This year I spent those Serious Days™ in Los Angeles. I got to meet Emma in person and I had the most amazing time. And so dealing with them felt easier and I was happy and I was making all the memories they say you should.

Then I got on a plane and I came home and I crashed. Big style. I didn’t want to go back to work because that last day I’d been shut out of a conversation. That anxiety made me pull back and not say much and even then it felt like anything I did say was coming with a side of “oh shut up Jen”. Because I was wrong about something (even when I wasn’t), because it wasn’t my place to say something (even when it was an open discussion). Because I was shutting people out (even when I was offering up something that no one else knew or hand experience of).

I felt lost, I felt alone, and I was honestly scared because my anxiety was bubbling up and those awful dark thoughts were back in my head. Because who actually wanted me around?

I even started to lose my place in fandom: I’d express an opinion on something and have someone reply with an essay about why all my thoughts on this were wrong and rude and oh my god I can’t believe you would attack us like this do you just hate people? I’d say something and get an “well ACTUALLY” response. Even when it wasn’t, everything started to feel like an attack and I needed to do something before I, well, did something.

It’s why my parting comment before my mini semi hiatus was to be kind to yourselves. Because I want to believe that those who said and did things towards me these past few months weren’t coming to attack me. I want to believe that words on a screen without tone feed into our own interpretations and understanding of things and this is why things were not taken the way that they should have been.

Probably on both sides.

I’m literally tearing up as I write this, and for once that’s not internet hyberbole. Because I’m still not OK, but I am better than I was. I miss my friend and I will always miss her and I need to get better at sitting with my grief all year ‘round so that the week in February/March doesn’t slam into me.

If someone isn’t going to listen to me, then that’s on them. If they won’t hear my side of the story then I can’t make them. It could be they don’t care, it could be that they’re not ready to. If when I get to say to someone, “hey this thing upset me” they don’t apologise? I can’t make them. “I’m sorry if” isn’t an apology - there’s no if when someone literally tells you how they feel. If they don’t think they did anything wrong then that isn’t my fault. I need to get better at believing that and not thinking that somehow I’ve fucked up.

It still feels like it. It still feels like I’m fucking up everything I touch and so hey, maybe I shouldn’t touch things like ever and maybe I should just fuck off...

I want to try and find my space in this world. I want to take up space and not only feel OK that I’m taking up space but to understand that I am allowed to take up space. I’m allowed to like things people don’t and I’m allowed to dislike things people like (with all the usual caveats about people getting hurt etc etc but seriously - if you read this and go WELL ACTUALLY then you haven’t been paying attention to what this post is trying to say. Fuck off of you want to willfully misinterpret it). I’m allowed to say what I think and what I feel and I am not only allowed to have people in my life who will care about that and respect me for it, but I deserve that.

I deserve people in my life who are willing to listen to how I feel. I deserve people in my life who apologise without any hesitation or attempt at equivocation when they upset me, whether it’s intentional or not. I deserve to feel what I feel and think what I think and not be made to feel bad or less because of it. I deserve to have the time and space to express what I’m feeling so it doesn’t end up coiled so tightly in my body I feel like I need to cut it out.

And I want to be here. In every sense of that phrase. I really, really do. But sometimes it’s really fucking hard.

I’m trying to be kinder to myself. I can’t make people be kinder to me - and god so many of you are already more supportive and loving and amazing than I could have ever hoped - but this is where I’m at. This is what has been happening to me. With me.

I’m OK, I haven’t relapsed. I was closer than I would have liked when I started this semi hiatus and I have only gotten better as a result. I’m stabilising on my meds so there’s another good point. I know I’m kinda around but I’m not back-back yet, and listening to my cousin talk about grief and relationships this evening made me realise that if I don’t face it, sit with it, live with it and deal with it, then this will just come around and around and around like the worst fucking merry-go-round there is.

Jen

x

[justagirlinafandomworld]

This is random but-

Do you know what just resurfaced from an old hard drive?

All the OC vids I made ten, eleven, twelve years ago. And maybe one is actually done?!

I'm laughing, I'm crying, I'm swept up in the nostalgia of all the creativity I had and might look into getting a movie editing program again this year to maybe try finishing some of these.

[skeletongiggles]

Thank you all so much for the support on my art and the little comic I'm doing. The next page of "Where's My Hoodie?" will take a bit longer to come out because I already had the first two pages sketched out. I have commissions to do, and those take some priority, but I can't wait to continue this little story ^w^

On top of this, I've been writing up some scripts for other stories and filling out some lore of the Giggle!Tale universe. I think it's gonna be pretty interesting~

[lotus-pear]

happy dazai day!! lets see what the birthday boy was up to

[ars-matron]

I really need to talk for a minute about this new mobile update and how much I as a legally blind person hate whatever the hell is going on with the photos and how it's making this app nearly impossible for me to use

I'm not sure the same thing is happening on the desktop version but for those who may not know in the app whenever you tap on a photo it used to just pop up and you could double tap to enlarge it and zoom in and scroll around and all was great.

A double tap now likes the photo and it must be pinched and pulled to zoom in and out. A mild annoyance, and nothing compared to the rest of the update. If you scroll up, which I do frequently when trying to navigate an enlarged photo, it will send you to ANOTHER photo based on the tags of the post.

That's right, a completely different photo!!! A feature no one asked for and no one wants!! This isn't facebook, or instagram, and maybe tiktok but I never had that so this is a guess. When I click on the photo I only want to see that photo (or in the case of multiple photos in a post I want to be able to easily scroll side to side for those). I do not want to be taken to another post!!! Also if you scroll too far to the left you are then sent to the profile of the person who reblogged the post. I do not know why. Who wants this feature? Is it a feature at all?

As someone who only taps on a photo because I cannot see it and I need to enlarge it, this is beyond a simple annoyance. I cannot navigate the photo like I need, there's a hair trigger on whether it sends you to a new post completely or if you are sent to the profile of the reblogger. Neither, again, are things I want. this leaves me having to back track a lot, re-zoom the photo as it reverts back to normal, and hope dearly that this time I can just read the damned text before it freaks out again.

I haven't seen anyone else talk about this outside of the tags, but really this is making the app unusable for me, and I'm sure for many others.

@staff I know you guys haven't cared about your disabled community much in the past (other photo updates that stopped allowing me to zoom into gifs is proof of that) but please don't make this app unusable for me. I would rather not have to leave.

[asterwild]

PENGUINS. all of them!

(not precisely to scale, but close)

[bricreative]

I like to exaggerate their height difference sometimes. As a treat.

(Sketches I cleaned up from 2021)

[triona-tribblescore]

*cough* ...uhh, wanna go grab some seafood or smthin?

(Yo-Ho-Ho) A Ninjas Life For Me

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[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[fiendishartist2]

redraw of this post from bunnyfarm's release

kofi|instagram

[potatobugz]

objects loving objects baby!!!!

[evenmoreofadisaster]

A little teaser before we post the chapters | Soon :)

Finale is finally up

Full animatic

[squea]

since maureen handed over the farm to her sister esther, they have spent more time fist fighting skeletons than any actual farming.