#anyway. there's other factor going on in my life. my health is not great and im thinking about doing intensive care for awhile

[that-wizard-oki]

I've had it in my head for awhile (like that I want to do some sort of fan comic (like, multi chapter/'book', done over several years sorta comic) for W101.

I have various Idea's that i'd like to do (like it would rock to maybe do a comic interpretation of the game itself), but if I were to hunker down and really do at least one of them, it'd be about Morganthe's life/story of course. It's just the one I'm most passionate about, the one I think would make me most satisfied if it was the only comic I ever did since it would be a pretty big undertaking and likely done in my free time, which is often limited lol.

Also, it goes without saying that i'm uhhhhh a bit of a perfectionist (me, an artist? a perfectionist? what a surprise!) so the idea of my art not being up to par with my expectations is also off putting- and I KNOW... i know.... i know that regardless of what art I'm able to produce, It shouldn't matter really. Who cares if my anatomy is janky or the perspective off- as long as the story is impactful and something I like (as of course even just a handful of others enjoy), that's what bottom line i think matters to me most.

All this to say that... I have entertained the idea of /writing/ some of this stuff. I thought maybe scripts would be nice, because... the issue tho is that I get caught up in the details, which would serve well for like, fanfic writing. But again, I'm also SO image based that I fear my words alone will not be enough- at least, enough to satisfy my own creative desire. Though writing does feel more approachable- like a good starting place.

*kicks rocks* anyway, i just got the thinking cause... well as of late my desire to engage in art/creating something has felt very... not there at all. It could be partly that I have an Art Job, but, as much as I do love my job... I think the reality is that I miss being able to create entirely for me. I think that's what I really liked about Wizard- the world & characters inspired me to think creatively in a boundless way.

And again, LOVE my job, and I have been given opportunity to express many ideas, and some of which have come to be, but I think I've also come to realize that... idk, I don't think I like the uphill battle of putting my all into something I don't even know is going to be greenlit/accepted/etc (this is nothing to do with KI specifically, more so how draining it feels to me personally to pitch certain things im /very/ passionate about, and trying to be realistic about how much of my time effort and energy i feel is worth to do that).

Anywho. Lots of random thoughts, no real conclusion, just had it on my mind. But overall it's been difficult for me to feel the Magic that wiz usually proves me, creatively speaking. Honestly even thinking about playing the game makes my head hurt, which also saddens me a good bit. I'm still in Novus lol.

Not to say I don't feel excited or that "magic" feeling at all, far from it. It's just. Further and fewer between at times.

[mayfay-analysis]

Danny's Medical Complications

Or: I had an idea and it won’t leave (and unfortunately I can’t do dialogue to save my life)

It started simple enough, a quick visit to Frostbite for a general checkup. And then it kept going. New machines, techniques, people, and an increasingly worried yeti was starting to freak Danny out a bit. Eventually it all went away and Frostbite set him down for A Talk.

See, Halfas are hella rare for a reason. The conditions needed to form them are really rare yes, but they aren’t the Main problem. No the main issue is the Disparity. Ghosts are beings of emotions, sufficient stress, emotional/mental harm, lack of ecto, and more can all lead to death. And Halfas crank that up to 11. They have a human side to take care of that’s constantly changing and growing, a higher ecto requirement to fuel their higher base strength, and a myriad of other minor complications that haven’t been properly studied cause Halfas are rarely found and usually don’t form ghosts on death

Say what

What do you mean “don’t form a ghost” they’re already half way there!

And there lies the problem, they’re halfway there. Ghosts are pretty static. they might change yes, but it’s usually due to major events or over the course of eons. And how do they decide on what they’re gonna be? By dying of course! Once the body dies its ghost is formed based on the current life situation and they move on. Simple, quick, easy. No complications here no siree!

Enter Halfas

They already died, and while infant ghosts and experience some major changes as they settle it’s nothing to the degree humans do. And as time passes the static ghost half and changing human half can drift, wobbling on that line between life and death. And once it gets to extreme? They fall. If the ghost half starves or dies the human half experiences Major health complications, leading to death shortly after. If the human side dies they try to form a ghost using all the ambient ecto the ghost side has been feeding on, leading to the ghosts death in most cases but if not they’re practically two different beings and fusing them will kill both anyways.

Good news though! With all the combat and rediculously high ecto levels Danny was exposed to to form his other half, his ghost side has stayed pretty adaptable! The other ghosts didn’t realize they were fighting a literal infant thanks to the high ecto levels he had (and the knowledgeable ones that Did had other reasonings the meant a little smack down they totally wouldn’t lose was an acceptable trade off for them). Horrifying, he will spend the next century finding all sorts of animal pelts, boxes, music tracks, etc landing on him in the middle of the night. But it has a silver lining! Thanks to not being allowed to settle Danny can still shape his ghost form to a degree. And Clockwork, brilliant old man that he is, has an Idea on how to fix this.

Great! Lay it on him Clockwork! What’s he gotta do? Get de-aged and die? Ha Ha! You sure know how to make a good joke old man-child, now what’s the real way?

Oh

Oh no

Danny Can form a ghost on death, but it’ll require dying while as mentally and physically similar to how he was when the portal closed. Problem there, he’s changed. He’s changed a Good Bit. Luckily Clockwork can handle the physical aspect but Desiree needs some extra time for her end. See, she Can change brain chemistry and whatnot, but it takes time to become permanent. A quick fix like her usual work is fragile (lies, it’s still stupidly powerful but forming a ghost relies on the persons deepest core, and that takes time to settle in to Desiree’s magic). So they just have to de-age Danny to an appropriate age where once he hits around the age he was when the portal closed Desiree’s magic will have settled, molding his personality/core to as close as they can be.

And then he has to die.

Doesn’t have to be as extreme as the portal incident was (in fact new factors like major doses of ecto would be a Very bad idea, his malleable ghost side is already pushing the limits with the minor variation he’ll already have) but it Does need to be in an area with high levels of ambient ecto, preferably his new hometown to match his current life’s lack of geographic movement.

He’ll also need to have his ghost half locked away to a degree. He’ll still need to be liminal of course, that long term exposure to ecto is needed to fuel a ghosts transformation, but proper ghost powers are getting put away unless Clockwork thinks they’re needed (and if it Does get to that point he’s getting pulled out for a second try anyways).

So where to put him? Well Gotham of course!

Clockwork…. Why are you like this (it’s all for the good of the timeline. And Lady Gotham owes him a favor he prepared just for this)

From there if he ends up in the Bats care (Nasty Burger explosion, Ghost Jazz, or simply not having anyone capable of properly raising him knowing he’ll die at 14) it doesn’t take long for one John Constantine to notice the Heavy Infinite Realms influence on the small child and drag the big bat away for his own Talk (double angst if he’s able to recognize the specific brand of Time Magic indicating a death prophecy). If he ends up under Jazz’s care then it might take a bit longer, but she’ll likely end up tied up in Bat business and from there it wouldn’t take long for a Very stressed Jazz to accidentally reveal something (or a child Danny not realizing “I know when I’m going to Die in excruciating detail!” is Not something you share with strangers, especially not ones as paranoid as the Bats).

Also for loose threads I imagine Ellie is unstable because her ecto is cloned off of Danny, while her human half is its own person. That large disparity usually leads to death (as seen in the other clones) but she’s able to force it off with sheer ecto strength, using the ecto shots as fuel to Force her body to stay together until they reach an inevitable conclusion or potentially meld together like Dan does).

As for Dan he’s not Properly a Halfa. I never watched the show so I don’t have all the details but I understand he’s some kinda mix of future Danny and Vlad gone evil and destroying the world. This mix Might be able to last longer than a regular Halfa would due to the insane amounts of ecto he has in his system. And as time passes the mixed ghost halves Could be unstable enough to sort of meld with his human parts, creating something of a Highly unstable ghost-human hybrid (seperate from Halfas since this is a blending of the two, not a distinct line between two halves).

That wouldn’t work with Danny cause it requires a second ghost mixing with him And the two somehow not destabilizing during the years it takes for the blend to settle. And the Ellie route is out since that requires So Much fine control and vigilance over a Very long period of time to slowly manually shape the ghost half to better fit the human half, rather than the other way around like Danny’s doing.

[chiisana-sukima]

Hey so this post just came up on my dash and its an interesting perspective for sure. I was wondering if youd feel inclined to share your thoughts on it but no pressure ofc feel free to ignore.

https://www.tumblr.com/zudilio/648738136098275328/the-thing-is-that-i-miss-the-early-seasons?source=share

Yeah, I saw it on my dash too and considered reblogging with comments, but it's three years old and the OP has said in other posts that they're a "Sam ignorer", so I figured they wouldn't be appreciative. Also, to a certain extent, "they should've given the plot points I don't like to the character I don't care about" is just a matter of taste, so there's not a ton to say about that part anyways.

As far as the "Sam is like John because at the start of the show he's driven by anger and his need for revenge" part, my thoughts on it are here, and @ardentpoop and @aliusfrater have excellent meta here as well.

Leaving aside the piece where I think the OP is wrong about Sam though, I do agree with them that Dean's character arc was mismanaged, and I sympathize with them and all the other Dean girls (gn) who got stuck with *waves vaguely at spn in general*. I agree with OP that Dean isn't an inherently angry person. I don't believe inherently angry people exist, but even beyond that, I don't think the intended reading of spn is that Dean's story is about anger. Gamble said at some point very early on that on the inside Dean is a frightened little boy who never had the chance to grow up, and I do think spn carries that thread through the seasons pretty well all the way to s15, where it attempts (with not-great success imo) to resolve it.

Unfortunately, I also think that spn's failure to resolve Dean's character arc satisfactorily was inevitable, and that the things that attract many fans like OP, who identify with Dean, are the same things that made resolving his issues impossible given the set-up. Just as Sam has a realistic case of poorly-controlled, chronic dissociative/classic PTSD (with psychosis during s7 and some CPTSD-like features) and doesn't have the resources to manage it beyond bare-bones survival, Dean has pretty realistic untreated, chronic CPTSD/BPD without the resources to even begin to manage it in a way that doesn't destroy his own life and the lives of the people around him. Dean's violence stems ultimately from his childhood environment, sure, but the person he is by the time we meet him in s1 has severe attachment issues, difficulty regulating his emotions, poor distress tolerance, black and white thinking in a job where black and white thinking results in victimizing people based on factors they have no control over, and most of all, no real concept of boundaries whatsoever. The cause was for sure his childhood, but the present of spn is just a very symptomatic adult. His mental health issues--and Sam's too--are the kinds of chronic illnesses that never go away and that people struggle with over their entire lifespans.

I don't want to be overly negative; many people with mental illnesses this severe do learn to manage them well and live full and happy lives (I am, within reasonable limits, one of them). But it's hard. And longstanding, deeply-rooted patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and behavior don't change without community resources, considerable effort, and for most people, years of trial and error. Spn's main premise is, for some wild reason, that the problems Sam and Dean encounter are metaphorically equivalent to real life problems normal people encounter all the time, but that in the spn world, all of the resources real world people have available to help them are impossible to access, except guns and torture. It's s13 before spn manages to get Sam and Dean into ONE SESSION of therapy with someone they can tell the truth to, and by then, we get this:

Dean is being a lot less unrealistic here than one might think, and yes, this picture will end badly in real life too.

Since the finale, a lot of fans have said things like "Dean deserved to go to therapy and get better" or "spn thinks if you have trauma, you should kill yourself about it", but deserving is fake. We in the real world live in a The Good Place universe. There's no fair calculus for who "deserves" anything. Everyone both deserves health and happiness and love and a comfortable life and also deserves nothing because there are other people who have nothing.

And unlike ours, the spn universe is not a The Good Place universe. It's worse. The writers of spn are and always have been profoundly ungenerous. The whole universe is built on victim-blaming and bullshit calculi of what crimes deserve what punishments and who should or shouldn't mete them out. In the spn universe, Dean is lucky. He had not one, but two BPD favorite persons, and he treated them both like shit, and they still both loved him and wanted to be with him and will be with him in the afterlife, presumably continuing to have the same intense, volatile relationships they've always semi-tolerated.

I like to pretend that maybe Sam, Dean and Cas can all read The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook on Heaven's version of archive.org and take it to heart, or that maybe Sam grew some boundaries in the years he lived without Dean that he can insist on hard enough and long enough for Dean to get a reparative relationship out of, and they can all after-live happily ever after. But the Dean that was alive during the 15 years of spn hadn't done that work yet, and the outcome he got was--if one subscribes to "deserving" as a concept--better than what he "deserved". If you hit your partner, you deserve to be left. If you hold a gun on them, you deserve for it to go off and kill them by mistake and you never see them again (although of course they don't deserve to die). It doesn't matter who the "angry" partner in the relationship is. Any sane person in this universe or the spn one should be angry a lot of the time, because both universes suck. Not to beat a dead horse with a flowchart but:

image source

The violence is the bastard. The emotions are not.

[mayfay]

Danny’s Medical Complications

Or: I had an idea and it won’t leave (and unfortunately I can’t do dialogue to save my life)

It started simple enough, a quick visit to Frostbite for a general checkup. And then it kept going. New machines, techniques, people, and an increasingly worried yeti was starting to freak Danny out a bit. Eventually it all went away and Frostbite set him down for A Talk.

See, Halfas are hella rare for a reason. The conditions needed to form them are really rare yes, but they aren’t the Main problem. No the main issue is the Disparity. Ghosts are beings of emotions, sufficient stress, emotional/mental harm, lack of ecto, and more can all lead to death. And Halfas crank that up to 11. They have a human side to take care of that’s constantly changing and growing, a higher ecto requirement to fuel their higher base strength, and a myriad of other minor complications that haven’t been properly studied cause Halfas are rarely found and usually don’t form ghosts on death

Say what

What do you mean “don’t form a ghost” they’re already half way there!

And there lies the problem, they’re halfway there. Ghosts are pretty static. they might change yes, but it’s usually due to major events or over the course of eons. And how do they decide on what they’re gonna be? By dying of course! Once the body dies its ghost is formed based on the current life situation and they move on. Simple, quick, easy. No complications here no siree!

Enter Halfas

They already died, and while infant ghosts and experience some major changes as they settle it’s nothing to the degree humans do. And as time passes the static ghost half and changing human half can drift, wobbling on that line between life and death. And once it gets to extreme? They fall. If the ghost half starves or dies the human half experiences Major health complications, leading to death shortly after. If the human side dies they try to form a ghost using all the ambient ecto the ghost side has been feeding on, leading to the ghosts death in most cases but if not they’re practically two different beings and fusing them will kill both anyways.

Good news though! With all the combat and rediculously high ecto levels Danny was exposed to to form his other half, his ghost side has stayed pretty adaptable! The other ghosts didn’t realize they were fighting a literal infant thanks to the high ecto levels he had (and the knowledgeable ones that Did had other reasonings the meant a little smack down they totally wouldn’t lose was an acceptable trade off for them). Horrifying, he will spend the next century finding all sorts of animal pelts, boxes, music tracks, etc landing on him in the middle of the night. But it has a silver lining! Thanks to not being allowed to settle Danny can still shape his ghost form to a degree. And Clockwork, brilliant old man that he is, has an Idea on how to fix this.

Great! Lay it on him Clockwork! What’s he gotta do? Get de-aged and die? Ha Ha! You sure know how to make a good joke old man-child, now what’s the real way?

Oh

Oh no

Danny Can form a ghost on death, but it’ll require dying while as mentally and physically similar to how he was when the portal closed. Problem there, he’s changed. He’s changed a Good Bit. Luckily Clockwork can handle the physical aspect but Desiree needs some extra time for her end. See, she Can change brain chemistry and whatnot, but it takes time to become permanent. A quick fix like her usual work is fragile (lies, it’s still stupidly powerful but forming a ghost relies on the persons deepest core, and that takes time to settle in to Desiree’s magic). So they just have to de-age Danny to an appropriate age where once he hits around the age he was when the portal closed Desiree’s magic will have settled, molding his personality/core to as close as they can be.

And then he has to die.

Doesn’t have to be as extreme as the portal incident was (in fact new factors like major doses of ecto would be a Very bad idea, his malleable ghost side is already pushing the limits with the minor variation he’ll already have) but it Does need to be in an area with high levels of ambient ecto, preferably his new hometown to match his current life’s lack of geographic movement.

He’ll also need to have his ghost half locked away to a degree. He’ll still need to be liminal of course, that long term exposure to ecto is needed to fuel a ghosts transformation, but proper ghost powers are getting put away unless Clockwork thinks they’re needed (and if it Does get to that point he’s getting pulled out for a second try anyways).

So where to put him? Well Gotham of course!

Clockwork…. Why are you like this (it’s all for the good of the timeline. And Lady Gotham owes him a favor he prepared just for this)

From there if he ends up in the Bats care (Nasty Burger explosion, Ghost Jazz, or simply not having anyone capable of properly raising him knowing he’ll die at 14) it doesn’t take long for one John Constantine to notice the Heavy Infinite Realms influence on the small child and drag the big bat away for his own Talk (double angst if he’s able to recognize the specific brand of Time Magic indicating a death prophecy). If he ends up under Jazz’s care then it might take a bit longer, but she’ll likely end up tied up in Bat business and from there it wouldn’t take long for a Very stressed Jazz to accidentally reveal something (or a child Danny not realizing “I know when I’m going to Die in excruciating detail!” is Not something you share with strangers, especially not ones as paranoid as the Bats).

Also for loose threads I imagine Ellie is unstable because her ecto is cloned off of Danny, while her human half is its own person. That large disparity usually leads to death (as seen in the other clones) but she’s able to force it off with sheer ecto strength, using the ecto shots as fuel to Force her body to stay together until they reach an inevitable conclusion or potentially meld together like Dan does).

As for Dan he’s not Properly a Halfa. I never watched the show so I don’t have all the details but I understand he’s some kinda mix of future Danny and Vlad gone evil and destroying the world. This mix Might be able to last longer than a regular Halfa would due to the insane amounts of ecto he has in his system. And as time passes the mixed ghost halves Could be unstable enough to sort of meld with his human parts, creating something of a Highly unstable ghost-human hybrid (seperate from Halfas since this is a blending of the two, not a distinct line between two halves).

That wouldn’t work with Danny cause it requires a second ghost mixing with him And the two somehow not destabilizing during the years it takes for the blend to settle. And the Ellie route is out since that requires So Much fine control and vigilance over a Very long period of time to slowly manually shape the ghost half to better fit the human half, rather than the other way around like Danny’s doing.

[gotham-daydreams]

how resistant would y/n be to them being brought back to the manor? would they try and escape again? and also; to what extent with their freedoms be taken away? will they still have any privacy at all?

Pretty resistant all things considered!

I did mention in another response to an ask, that how hard their resistance is does heavily depend on how the kidnapping itself goes, but for simplicity purposes, let's assume that it doesn't go very well and not only is the reader very awake- but very capable of fighting back.

Granted, in the same response I also said that Y/n has a higher chance of running away if they can help it, and should the opportunity present itself. So, again, for simplicity's sake let's say that while a slip up did happen- the Batfam was able to recover fast enough before Y/n could get away, and thus was able to successfully kidnap them. (Even if there was some difficulty.)

Y/n, in this scenario, is very prone to trying to escape- and their attempts can range from a variety of things depending on how desperate they get, and how long they're able to hold onto that hope of escaping.

An interesting factor to consider, however, is also the toll of how their failed attempts take on their mental health, and how much of their sanity they may lose- if any.

These attempts can range from your usual sneaking out, and trying to be as quiet as possible, to.... other ways that put their health more at risk. Even if it isn't necessarily "escaping", it is some for of it, yes?

Ah- but let's not go into detail about that.

Anyway! What kind of freedoms would be taken away?

I think it really depends? Kind of like my whole thing with the kidnapping, and how many variables play into that, along with how said variables can heavily affect how Y/n can react, if at all — this also does tie into that a bit.

I believe the extent that the reader's freedom's being taken away, and what limits they're willing to put up at the start, could and very well does depend on the situation leading to this moment.

Was the Batfam desperate? Did something tick them off? Did they capture Y/n because they just couldn't wait any longer, or was it because the Batfam believed their life was in such great danger that they needed to bring Y/n to the manor to protect them right now?

Depending on the answer to those questions, among a few other things, the restrictions can either start relatively tame or just be outright horrendous at the start. To which, I say "the start" since later behaviors and actions can always change these, but we'll get to that in a bit.

So! Since we're going with a situation that caused the Batfam to be a little sloopy in their kidnapping, but were quickly able to recover from ot since Y/n still got captured, let's say that they were a little desperate and just got antsy. Not being able to wait around for much longer, amd thus the kidnapping was impulse, but they managed regardless.

Considering that we're also talking about the reader from the "Not [ ]" series at the moment, I'd say that they would be a little loose, but not too loose on Y/n's restrictions. If you know what I mean?

They understand Y/n's feelings and anger, so they're willing to let a few things slide- and maybe even a one or two escape attempts depending on who catches the reader, and how the attempt was done. But not much else.

Some resistance here and there is fine, but if it gets too out of hand then they'll resport to punishments. Which is generally more freedoms being taken away, as none of them really want to hurt Y/n, however- manipulation and such should very much be expected later on, as they are pretty much willing to break the reader's mind and reconstruct it to their liking. But you didn't hear that from me.

As for privacy? Nonexistent, sorry!

Again, the Batfam feel as if they've spent enough time away from the reader, and so they will be around Y/n as much as they can. Individually or together, it doesn't matter, someone is hanging around somehow.

Usually, again, this would be something that could change depending on Y/n's behavior, but let's just say that they're pretty set on escaping.

The more Y/n tries to escape and the more dangerous said attempts become, the less they're left alone. Thus, the more freedoms are stripped from them.

No internet. No communication with the outside at all. No leaving the house. No going anywhere without anyone, at least not without someone going with Y/n and or telling someone about it. It could even get to a point where Y/n can't even go to the bathroom without someone at the door, or them basically not even having a room anymore. As no one trusts them to actually stay there, and so either regular sleepovers happen, or Y/n constantly goes from room to room. This may also happen because maybe Y/n was able to mess with the cameras and such, so now the surveillance is much more personal.

Not that the Batfam is necessarily complaining, but it does still hurt seeing the reader trying to escape so much despite its 'perks'.

They begin to look for other methods to snuff out Y/n's attempts at escaping before they can even start, and just other ways to show that this is their life now, and they're not leaving ever again. Y'know, the usual stuff.

However at some point they just really crack down on the punishment. Maybe it was a particular attempt, or the Batfam notices/realizing that they're punishment of taking away each amd every last right and freedom Y/n has slowly, isn't exactly hammering in the message, they resort to other means.

They begin to use isolation as a punishment. Not wanting to harm Y/n too much physically, as they do still have a need for them to have all of their body parts in tact for the most part. Seeing as the Batfam wants the reader to still be able to play music for them. So... if they can't break Y/n physically, they'll break them mentally.

The Batfam will make it so that the reader loves them, and care for them- and that Y/n is basically the closest they can be to the person they were before all the trauma. Before the neglect.

Even if in the end, Y/n is still a shell of themself, as long as the Batfam can hardly tell the difference, does it really matter? As long as everyone is happy, should they really care?

It hurts at first, of course, especially since Y/n tried to fight back so hard when they were first locked up in a bare guest room, and it only got harder with time, but at least they did eventually begin to see progress this time!

It's no secret that the Batfam is super manipulative when they want to be, and this moment does clearly show it.

Through the door they still talk sometimes, and perhaps it'd bring comfort at some point, that's the problem.

They leave Y/n alone, by themself, in a room where the only thing to do is to listen to their own thoughts- but now, also occasionally accompanied by one of them. They voice their thoughts and feelings, maybe even chastising Y/n for their behavior, and as much as the reader doesn't want to listen- there is nothing else to listen to. Nothing else to do.

Maybe they try to ignore it at first, who wouldn't? But with time, even that begins to fail them.

No matter how they cover their ears of create a loud enough noise to even block themself out, it's like the voices of the Batfam begin to slowly seep in. They shout too, forcing the reader to hear them at times, or purposefully playing noises in Y/n's room practically made to drive them absolutely mad until they finally listen. Until they give in- or at least hear that little voice of their's that they've been tryinf to sneak in.

And y'know what? It works.

Eventually, voices that Y/n could only associate with discomfort, pain, annoyance and cold began to make them feel warm and seen. So loved and cared for even if they never felt such things from the Batfam before.

They don't want it, this feeling. They hate it! They try to scratch it away as it seeps into their skin, and they hate the way they begin to perk up and brighten at the sound of any voice from beyond that damned door. Even going as far as to physically restrain themself from moving any closer, just so that they could hear the voice more clearly and feel more of that warmth-

But it works. Of course it does.

Tldr: Y/n would be pretty resilient and resistant. In this particular scenario they would try to escape quite a lot! And to ensure that all goes well, the Batfam is willing to take away every freedom they can, and maybe even some rights, if it means getting their desired outcome. The only thing really off the table is physical violence, but nobody said anything about using psychological torture as punishment.

I hope this answer your questions! If it didn't, I apologize as I am writing this at midnight so it may be a little all over the place (I'll edit it a bit in the morning). If you'd like me to clarify anything or have another question, feel free to send in another ask!

[ed-recovery-affirmations]

Can being overweight be healthy?

This is a complicated question, anon. My go-to question is: over what weight? We know now that the BMI scale is largely inaccurate and does not take into account height differences, muscle training, breast size and other factors. I also know that many people have different ideals of what's a normal or "ideal" size.

I'm not a doctor. I do know personally know many people whose natural weight - as in no dieting, but no overfeeding - set them as being considered fat. I also know that a lot of those people ended up feeling shame for this, and spent lots of time putting themselves through restriction, various crash diets, and a traumatic level of hatred toward the bodies they lived in. Many of them did lose weight doing this, but at great cost to other aspects of their health, such as their hearts, gallbladders, brains, stomachs, and GI tracts. Would it have been healthier to leave well enough alone and stay fatter? I think so.

But I also think that health can be really complicated and a lot of people end up having to make choices as to what aspect of health they must prioritize. So, for example: say you need a medication that has a side effect of weight gain. Do you accept the weight gain, or do you deny yourself medication that you might need? Say that you used to be a runner, but then you got a permanent knee injury and gained weight from being less active than usual. Do you prioritize treating your knee, or do you keep running on your injury to maintain the same weight? Or do you give up something else, like restricting a favorite food, for no other reason than because you feel you must retain that body shape at any cost? Say you have recently given birth to a baby, and the pregnancy caused you to gain weight. You want to breastfeed, but you're struggling to produce enough milk when you diet. Do you focus on the diet? Or do you focus on your journey with your new baby? Now say you are diagnosed with an invisible disability. Your doctor advises you against heavy exercise because it would be dangerous, but your natural weight is bigger. Do you choose to exercise anyway and risk the consequences of further disabling your body? Or do you think that you should have to restrict your food intake simply because you have a disability? Now what if you also have a comorbid diagnosis that impacts your GI tract, limiting what you can eat already? (Yes, some people are in the situation of having multiple disabilities.)

Do you think that people with these conditions should have to disclose all of their personal health history in order to be accepted for being fat?

(How many people disclose these personal things, do you think, and are not believed anyway?)

If you live with these conditions, and are making the best decisions you can for your own health in every given moment, do you think that it's a healthy choice to accept a co-occurring hatred for your own body at that given time? Do you think it's always the healthiest thing to pursue thinness?

Life is not simple. Managing one's body needs will not always come down to a series of simple choices. It's always going to be a balancing act where each individual needs the liberty to choose what THEY are going to prioritize to live well. And it won't be easy for everyone else to tell, at a glance, what those carefully-selected choices looked like for that individual.

I'm someone who is not fat, but who does have a chronic health disorder. Am I more healthy than a fat person who does not have the same disorder?

All you can do, anon, is focus on the choices that are right for you. That might mean giving up restricting if your body feels better when you don't, even if that comes with significant weight gain, just as an example. It might mean you've spent so much time hating your body that preserving your mental health means avoiding dieting or diet culture. I can't tell you what the right choices are for you as an individual; I can only tell you to listen to your body's cues and use the information you have available to you in order to set your balance of choices as close to "correct" as you possibly can. Nobody else could understand your process for this, nor could you understand theirs if you don't live their life. And that means nobody else gets to judge you, or your body, at a glance. Loving it properly means taking care of it to the very best of your ability, and yes, sometimes that might mean letting it be naturally fat. And I think there'd be a lot fewer EDs in the world if we weren't always so afraid of that.

I hope this helps!

[greensagephase]

let's think with a little imagination: if Miguel were real and he would have married you. And if he had said that after marriage he would start a football team with his own children, whether their children were girls or not. At the same time , if he said that he wanted a child very much, what would your reaction be? or would you have accepted? (imagine, you are living a happy life with Miguel, he cares about you and a few children🥺)

Anyway, I hope you're having a nice day !!! 🫶🫶

Hiii, nonny!! Thank you so much for the ask!! (I'm sorry for my long response btw!!)

Omg, first, I’d be so happy if Miguel were real and he married me! 🥹 But okay, so, what you’re saying is Miguel and I already have some kids, but he asks about the possibility of having another one because he wants a big family… Honestly? I’d have to think about it based on different factors. I know this is just imagination, but I’m being realistic here. 😭

As much as I love Miguel and would love to have kids with him, there would have to be a limit, just because of the toll a pregnancy takes on a body. From the actual 9 months to the birth, whether that’s a natural birth or a C-section, it all takes a toll on the person carrying the baby (and I say person to be inclusive since I know there are individuals who can get pregnant but don’t identify as a woman ((:). I don’t speak from experience since I don’t have any children (thankfully 🙏🏼 I’m not mentally nor financially ready for that; also that would be teen pregnancy /j (yes I’m 25 almost 26 but…🫣)). The closest I have to a kid is a fur baby named Rufo (he’s a doggo🥺), but anyway, I’m a bit knowledgeable on this as a woman, and I’d have to say no after a certain number of kids for my own health. I wouldn’t want to end up dying and leaving my kids motherless due to trying to have another child !! :((

So… really it depends on how many kids we already have (the most I’d have is four and that’s already one more than I’m comfortable with tbh)!

I do want to add that I think Miguel would be a very, very considerate man on top of being educated. He knows the risks and changes - everything that happens with the person who is carrying a child, and I don’t think he’d put his partner at risk for another baby after already having several, especially if the doctors are recommending against it, even if he really wants another one. So, that’s another thing to think about. I believe he’d be so happy and thankful for the children you and him have already, even if it’s not a whole fútbol team, hehe!!

Sorry for the long yapping session! I’m just being realistic with myself. Also, I’m scared of childbirth, so idk how many times I could go through it 😭 unless Nueva York is real and we have the super advanced health care and medicine, we’re sticking to what’s recommended on our current Earth.

Thank you so much for the ask, nonny!! I actually sat down for a bit to think about this one just because it’s Miguel. Any other man… immediate no. 💀

I hope you’re having a great week so far and pls take care!! 💖

Alondra❤️

[twocubes]

I have a tarot reading request about my work + social life situation. I am basically burnt out from my job to the point that I'm unable or unwilling to accept even thanks or praise. Most of it relates to my manager, who has an imprecise yet emotionally blunt and at times exacting manner of communication that feels tailor-made to make technical discussions nearly impossible (I am a software engineer, and a fairly sensitive person. He is a military veteran who believes strongly in doing the fastest thing that works, and has been known to critique people to their face openly in group settings.) So I know the "correct" thing to do is grind up my LeetCode and start job hunting … but that would mean sitting down with a traditional data structures & algorithms text when I feel like I would much rather invest myself intellectually in my pipe dream of learning mathematics / getting, someday, to participate in the new univalent foundations of mathematics (maybe even as a programmer.) At the same time, the usual outlets I might have of getting to go for long walks / socialize on weekends feel increasingly out of reach, since I live in the outskirts of my city and the public transit authority there has been cancelling the trains for shuttle buses for most weekends, for what is going on 2 years now (at least since after the pandemic.) Having to ride buses instead of just hop on a train on weekends, for promised signal improvements that feel like they will never come, is slowly killing any sense of spontaneity and connection with casual human society outside of work for me. And even thinking about moving feels impossible (I have a housemate, my sibling, who I love dearly but I'm just not sure I want to commit to another 3-5 yrs. of cohabitation with.) Every direction in which I might reasonably turn for some vision of life outside of the cramped, artificial one where our company is super great! and everything is super exciting! despite the burnout and the constant reorgs and the whole new managerial clique we just got that's in charge of everything now, and, and, and … feels increasingly closed off. Would love any interpretation you could offer.

thank you for volunteering your fate to be decided by our still experimental divinatory process, here at dorothy twocubes' 24-hour bad advice hour™! as always, i must remind you, that this should only be taken seriously if it's good advice; otherwise, it's a joke, haha, why would you take it seriously? anyways let's get started

you seem to have some idea of what you want, and you seem to need advice regarding what to do next, so i will try with that mainstay, that good old spread that everyone likes and uses, Sun Tzu's five factors that decide battles. also i haven't done this in a while and this one i used a bunch before so maybe it's appropriate idk

alright.

Purpose: ONE OF FISHES, reversed Purpose here means what you're trying to do, your goals. If you were like, a leader of a group, it would be the reason that other people follow you. What keeps you going as like, an entity. FISHES are to do with your social position in the world, where you are relative to others in the way that it defines who you are. ONE is to do with something being complete, filled, all there, enough. that sort of thing and it's reversed

Landscape: ONE HALF OF HEARTS, reversed Landscape here means the environment you're navigating. Where you are relative to other things and other people in the sense of like, obstacles or resources or... yknow, things that must be practically considered HEARTS are to do with perpetuance; with what it is that sustains, what allows something to continue to exist. health, both literal and metaphorical ONE HALF is to do with stuff being incomplete; things that are started but not finished, things that are there but not sufficient, partialness and it's reversed

Climate: NINE OF DIAMONDS, reversed Climate here means transient stuff that affects the landscape. The mood of the world, the weather. The way the world is changing. DIAMONDS are to do with what you value, what gives your life purpose, meaning. What fulfills you. and it's reversed

Doctrine: OMEGA PLUS ONE OF DIAMONDS, upright Doctrine is what you are trained to do, what your standard operating procedures are. What you can do without having to learn to do new things. OMEGA PLUS ONE is to do with utopia. While OMEGA is to do with your ideals, that which you pursue without particular expectation that you might ever attain, OMEGA PLUS ONE is to do with the world that you might imagine if you attained your maybe-unattainable ideals. and it's upright

Leadership: EIGHT OF DIAMONDS, reversed Leadership is the strategy you chose, given all the other things here. EIGHT is to do with networks. Stuff being connected to stuff that is connected to more stuff. and it's upright

In addition, there is an arithmetic relationship between the cards:

8 + 1 = 9 this suggests that we should think of our interpretation of 9 as being a more direct consequence of the coordination of 8 and 1

I read these cards thus:

You are in a situation here where, in principle, your social position is fully secured, but your desire here is to leave this security.

The world you live in is one where people are struggling to support themselves and what-makes-them-themselves, and at the moment people are overall having to make hard choices regarding the pursuit of those precious things that make their life worth living.

You have the ability already, without having to learn it, to do what you think you would do in ideal circumstances.

So, given all this, the cards are suggesting that you should reach out in pursuit of what-gives-your-life-value and work with others; friends, acquaintances and acquaintances-of-acquaintances. In particular, the hard choices other people are making may give you some form of opportunity to change your social position.

...

Anyways, that's my reading. Maybe these cards make sense to you in some other way? Maybe this is helpful? Maybe it isn't? Either way, I claim no responsibility :p

Thanks for this opportunity to further test our experimental variant on the classic card-based rpg solitaire "cartomancy". i would be happy for feedback or a tip, but, it's also absolutely fine if you'd rather not. it's your choice, and we respect that.

[owlets-outlet]

habits you should have, regardless of beauty standards:

we all know that sex sells, and if youre like me, you refuse to be a part of it. the issue is, many of the habits that are advertized to be for the improvement of your looks, are actually really important for your health as well, often times even life saving. if youre like me, you might be unaware of this and deliberately NOT participating in them as a protest against beauty standarts, which might actually be hurting you. let me tell you which! (long post)

1. wearing sunscreen:

unless you have a lot of melanin, you should wear sunscreen every time the uv index is 3 or higher, to protect yourself from skin cancer.

why does society tell us to wear it?

i always hear 'sun exposure gives you wrinkles, freckles, sunspots, etcetc' and went 'well i dont CARE, fuck you' and never wore it.

everybody tries to sell sunscreen as 'antiaging'. its crazy how thats the biggest selling point, and not the fact that sunscreen protects you from getting CANCER.

heres the thing, you SHOULDNT care about getting wrinkles! theres nothing wrong with them, no matter how 'premature' they are!

why you should actually wear it:

you should care about skin cancer though. asides from melanoma, which has very low survival rates, other skin cancers, while not as deadly, can then spread to different organs and *cause* other deadly cancers.

okay, im new to sunscreens, what should i do?

well first, let me say that mineral vs chemical doesnt really matter, as long as the spf is high enough. the general rule is the higher the spf, the better.

if i were to reccomend a sunscreen, it would be beauty of joseon. it has gone viral, and while i do think its overhyped, i think its a great basic. its pretty cost efficient, not sticky or smelly and doesnt burn my eyes.

you should apply spf if the uv index is 3 or higher, which you can check the levels in your area on any weather website. if youre staying outside for longer than 2 hours, you should reapply.

you dont have to wear suncreen indoors! your windos block most uv rays.

your face needs at least a quarter of a teaspoon to be fully protected. of course the amount varies depending on the size of your face, but usually two fingers are enough to protect your face:

to save as much sunscreen as possible, try to stay in the shade and and cover your body when going outdoors!

before you go to sleep, you should remove your spf by double cleansing!

2. working out:

why does society tell us to work out?

the most common answer is: to lose weight. the get a 'desirable' body shape. to get a 'healthy' body shape.

there are many scientific papers that talk in depth about how your weight isnt indicative of your health, so i am going to spare you, and i certainly dont need to go in depth about how nobody should conform to societys beauty standards.

another thing worth pointing out is that often times, exercise cannot actually give you the shape you want. there are many factors to this, such as genetics or hormones, but the fact is, exercise often just wont help you archieve the ideal body shape anyway.

why should you actually work out, then?

many reasons!

-being in shape (metaphorically, not literally) will make moving around easier and you'll get less tired perfoming your daily tasks.

-working out improves mood and helps with brain fog

-increases energy levels (ironically)

-good for cardiovascular health, digestive health, good for bone heath: that means that as you age, you are more likely to retain more of your mobility than if you didnt work out, and your body will in general be happier

-sometimes it helps you socialize, participate in community etc.

how to get into working out?

now, this is the fun part: there is no wrong way to go about this!

you dont need to do a specific type of working out! in fact, just pick whatever suits you!

you can run or go for walks. dance in your living room or attend dance class. shadow box. go to the gym to box.

lift weights or do at home calisthenics, do chloe ting workout videos, climb trees, go for a bike ride, whatever!

just keep moving! you should workout a few times a week :) you dont need any fancy equipment or clothes.

3. eat healthy

now, this one may be different definition of a healthy diet than youve heard of: you shouldnt eat less, but more. the biggest adjustment to your diet shouldnt be removing things but adding things.

you should eat a lot of vegetables, as well as proteins, sugar and fats.

you can keep your fries and a burgers, but you should add a salad as well!

maybe you grew up believing that you dont like healthy things, like fish or collard greens, but you might be living in a lie :D

i reccommend trying new recipes, you might be surprised!

a good diet will have similiar effects to working out- its very important to nourish your body so that it can work properly.

[freckliedan]

I never knew your lore!! What was it like dating in a triad if it's sth you're comfortable talking about. Especially with someone you obviously loved a lot. What were your feelings for the other person? How did you even manage to communicate enough to be able to do that? Was it complicated at all? Was it fun/hot? Sorry if it's a lot but I've had someone proposition this to me and I just was so confused I didn't know better and said no. Now I regret it bc I feel so attracted to these people and would honestly love that (but more in a friends with benefits kinda way)! But I'm not in love with either so that made it easier for me to consider it at least? If I were, idk how I would handle it bc I'm quite insecure/easily jealous person

it's not lore i've talked the most about! but i've been increasingly open about poly stuff on here and i love the people in my life very much so i'm happy to talk about it! under the cut tho, bc this will get long.

when i was dating in a triad w/ my ex, they were actually the newest addition to the relationship—the third person is art, my now husband! and we all have different genders now than we did at the time we all three dated.

in a lot of ways it was very cool and wonderful being in a triad!!! like. they to this day are two of my favorite people in this world. it ruled loving them and being loved by them and it still does though the forms have changed.

me & art were best friends for a couple years before we started dating in 2014, & when our relationship changed to dating it was very much a case of "we're best friends and want to be in each other's lives forever, we just also want to kiss & probably have sex someday about it & to belong to each other".

(probably someday on the sex due to. we were 18 and had both never kissed anyone before. we took it slow).

ex has been one of both of our other best friends since that same point in time, & we dated him from 2017-2018. it was a very similar start to our dating relationship w ex—we already were best friends and wanted to hang out forever, we were just adding more to the relationship we already shared.

and we all had a great dynamic when all 3 of us were spending time together, but also each had individually strong relationships? me and art hung out just the two of us, but so did me and ex & ex and art. adding a new dimension to it all was the easy part?

we spent a lot of time that summer walking dogs and camping and fooling around and laughing together and getting stoned.

& yes it was very fun and hot. i shan't elaborate. but there was a point in time where i'd EASILY had more threesomes than anyone else i knew.

it was sometimes complicated and hard but not because it was hard to have that much love in our lives? i am the opposite of a jealous person and had mostly worked thru the insecurity i felt in the first few years of me and art's relationship/did not see his relationship w our ex as something that could replace what he and i have bc we're all very different people so was not insecure abt it.

it was just. a difficult time in all three of our lives individually? none of us were in a good place with mental health, & largely due to factors outside of our control. i'm not going to get into art & ex's sprcific struggles, but i was being medically neglected, freshly had gone no contact with my mom, & was just out of a toxic/abusive living situation.

(& my ex roommates were also COWORKERS of me and art. yes they treated me like shit at work bc art was full time in classes and only in like once a week. and then ex started working with us too.

one of the ex roommates had also been friends with us since high school and was our ex's ex. i had known the other ex roommate since i was 7 or 8 and she was the assistant manager. they were homophobic to me the whole time i lived with them and started dating after i moved out)

(yes the drama went fucking crazy but i have literally always maintained the moral high ground).

ANYWAYS. i think i was in the best place mental health wise of all three of us at the time. insanely enough. with that incomplete list of hell going on in my life.

but i was the only one of the three of us who had strong social support outside of our group of three, & i was the one who realized that our individual struggles were making it hard to communicate at times & that it was hurting all of us.

so i was the one who realized that if all 3 of us wanted to stay in each other's lives, we needed to break up with ex.

which sucked! a lot! it really hurt ex, but being newer in the relationship than our established dynamic was also hurting him.

he and i both walked away from the breakup feeling like it was uniquely our fault because we wanted too much. it has been amazingly healing to have maintained our connection & been able to process our breakup like. with each other. bc we both went into future polyamory w approximately the same baggage LMAO.

we moved in with each other a little less than a year after our breakup & lived together for almost 4 years! and we'd been living out of each other's pockets for the two before that—art & ex lived w their families like a five minute walk apart and i spent most of my time living out of my subaru btween the two of their homes.

so like. i don't regret it. i will spend the rest if my life loving both my husband and our ex so much it goes beyond words, no matter what form our relationships take. we would probably still be together if our relationship had started under literally any better of surrounding circumstances.

after our breakup i spent some time as a lesbian and that overlapped with ex's gender veering into man so attraction stopped there? though who knows what the future holds.

idk! i would rather my husband adopt a dog with ex and be the cool step parent that never actually takes on a parental role for the dog. i wish we were neighbors/lived near each other rather than states apart bc in a dream world ex and i would have keys to each other's homes and would just get to hang out doing our own thing in one another's room at least 3 days a week.

there's no one size fits all for poly relationships & there's definitely Other friends i want to/do blur the lines btween romantic and platonic with at this point in time.

no other triads currently happening in my life though and idk if it will happen again?

no sorries! & i'm nor sure how helpful this ramble will have been but i appreciate the chance to talk about my experiences bc it's not something that comes up a lot but it means a lot to me and has been such a significant part of my life.

if the proposition was on the table before for you, and it's something you do know you'd be down for & that you're prepared to communicate a lot about, is it for sure off the table now? if it's something that might still be possible for you and it's something you can talk about w the people in question then have that conversation!

worst case scenario, it's an awkward conversation where yall realize you have different expectations and wants out of a triad and that that means it's not something that's going to happen.

best case scenario, you get to have some fun and sexy new experiences?

i'd say it's worth it to try! & if jealousy and insecurity are a concern for you, they might be for the other two in some way, too. i think talking about whether it might come up for you guys and how to proceed if it does as an up front thing would peobably be a smart idea?

for real though! if it's something you want amd that the other two people were down for in the past, i hope it can be an option again in the now too. good luck anon and thank you for listening to me run my mouth.

[alarrytale]

Ok, perhaps I took it too seriously. I've seen a lot of people hinting at alcoholism or say things like what your anon said, that he "could be an alcoholic" because of vodka. To me that's a strong statement that lines up closely with flat out saying he's an alcoholic.

And I guess we just disagree! I don't think Louis has dependency, I think he enjoys it frequently but I don't think he misuses it. Like anyone who regularly consumes substances, he is of course at risk of unhealthy or addiction problems. But many people are able to keep a healthy relationship with alcohol throughout their lives. And you're right, there are many functioning alcoholics out there. I still don't see that with Louis.

Also I don't necessarily think 2 drinks a day is great, but that's still considered ok by the highest medical authority in my country. I know it's not the same everywhere but I didn't feel comfortable speaking about the policies in other countries. And yes I was brief on talking about what is addiction vs. use vs. dependency, I was trying to be brief. Addiction is considered biopsychosocial. We do not and cannot know how it might relate to Louis.

I too worry about Louis, as I worry about all the 1D boys. Louis has survived a tremendous amount of loss and of course I wonder how he is really doing. I'm not seeing him do things that are red flags. That is perhaps because my lived experience with alcoholics, people who do have alcohol use disorders, has been severe and scary and devastating. It is indeed so very hard to watch people you love go down dark paths. Louis is so different from what I have seen that I struggle to group him into it all. I also don't think as fans we should be diagnosing anybody. I was very concerned about Liam in the months (and even years) leading up to his awful death this week. And it was so hard knowing that I had nothing to offer him in terms of help, so I tried to be compassionate and have grace for him and hoped that I was wrong.

Hi, again anon 🧡

It's okay that we see things differently. I think we both agree that if Louis has a troubled relationship with alcohol, we only want him to seek help, get better, without judgement or without us loving him any less for it. I'd be immensely proud of him for taking control of his life in this way and prioritising his own health and wellbeing. Addiction is a disease and so life ruining. But there should be no shame in anyone admitting to having an troubled relationship with alcohol or an addiction issue. I'm so sorry you have had to witness people around you stuggle. You must have felt so helpless.

For me, making my risk assesment, it's not about taking what the medical authorities says is an okay amount and running with it. Because that's based on the average person, not persons with a predisposition or family history of addiction, particularly alcohol, who's got trauma from losing family members and friends, is a public person under scrutiny, is living a double life because he's closeted and came out of 1D with low confidence and a fragile mental state. A person with these risk factors needs to be more careful with alcohol than the average person. There are so many celebrities dealing with addiction issues due to fame and mistreatment by the industy. Just being a celebrity is an added risk factor.

I agree that we as fans shouldn't diagnose celebrities, we don’t have enough information and insight to do so anyways. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore signs of things not being right and not express our concerns. If you don’t see any signs of concern, then i understand. I personally would hate to miss the signs of my loved idol stuggling and believing everything is fine, until it's very apparent that things are far from fine. It's not much we as fans can do to help either way, but by showing compassion, care, concern and love i hope it will make things easier for them to want to get better and healthier 🩵

[kenthenugget]

How Batching Comics Saved My Life

Jesus its been...quite a while since I last posted onto any of my tumblr accounts. Its not that I didn't forget that I had an account here, its just that I've been busy with school and my drawing Crescent Blue. Meaning any free time I have is limited which results in me neglecting like half of my socials. Comics and college has made doing social media difficult. That and I wasn't sure how to handle 2 out of the 3 tumblr blogs I have. But I've thought that I had use this specific blog for text blog posts, along with drawings I'm working on and stuff like that. Most of it will be a lot of writing type stuff like this so this should be fun. Anyways, onto the topic I wanted to talk about.

I've been drawing Crescent Blue for coming on 4 years now. And those 4 years were spent drawing its first Chapter. Its overly long chapter. I have realized the mistake I made back when I was prepping to draw it back in 2019, where 16 year old me who had never drawn a comic at this scale decided to go out adapting the opening chapter draft which was written to be the length of a double length tv show pilot (because that's how wrote scripts back in the day) without realizing the implications of how many pages I would have to draw, and that maybe I should've done more prep work to make sure I wouldn't be working on it well into college. Because I probably would've gotten burnt out with it after being stuck on it for so long. And that would end up happening when 2021 rolled around. Thanks to mental health struggles I faced through out 2020, which lowered my tolerance to drawing comics which I didn't enjoy, I had drawn a total of 28 pages by going into the new year. Feeling ashamed of that pace, I managed to motivate myself and make it a new years goal to devote more time to my comic and get faster in order to complete my first chapter. This manifested in a couple of ways, from illustrating backgrounds in graphite as to avoid inking them and potentially screwing them up, to manning up and move to drawing it digitally as opposed to traditionally (I did not have access to photoshop or a good drawing tablet when I had started so I did what I had always done and use paper, pencils and inking pens/brushes. However, I would get my XP Pen Artist 12 for my 17th birthday 2 months later, and I would be able to use photoshop at home by early 2020). But what I mostly did was focus on drawing pages more, moving onto the next one after finishing the last one without taking a break. Basically muscling my way through with the expectation that I would eventually get faster. This did not work, and here's why.

This one by one approach isnt bad on paper, and there are plenty of artists out there that drawing comics this way and don't have any issues. For me, the issue I found with this process was that it didnt lend itself very well to spend. Not all pages are created equal, taking longer or shorter to complete depending on the complexity of the drawing. In my experience, there were pages that took only a couple of hours to complete, and others that took days to get done, and this isn't factoring in stuff like school. This aspect brings up the problem with me muscling through pages. There are times where I dont want to work on my comic, and often times after I would finish a page, I wouldn't have enough motivation to get to the next one. But in my attempt to not spend years drawing my first chapter, I would force myself to draw pages even when I didn't want to. This results in numerous cases of burnout and art block, which can cripple you and slow you down, defeating the point of muscling through it all. One notable instance of this I can remember happened in February last year.

By July of 2022, I would've been drawing Chapter 1 for 3 years and as my new years resolution, I wanted to get it done by that time. I had made great progress in 2021, catching up to page 75 by the time of new years, and I felt confident in my ability to get it done that year. That hope was shattered when I did what I had done with one of my pages and complete a future page ahead of time. Said page was the last post I made on this blog which I've actually completed a few weeks ago. The numbering for that page is 148 (was probably lower last year as I did end up adding pages during that time thanks to rewrites). And at that time, I had just passed the 80th page mark. It was then that I realized the implications of what I needed to do in order to get Chapter 1 done that year. I would've had to draw more than double the amount of pages I had drawn in 2021, and given the way I was drawing comic pages at the time, I knew deep down that wouldn't be possible. But not wanting to admit it, I tried muscling through the pages I was working on, hoping that if I pushed myself beyond my limit I would miraculously become faster and more efficient. But that didn't happen. The stress caused by my realization and the refusal to accept it caused me to become more and more agitated, which caused me to make errors and not draw as well as I would've wanted. Said agitation also clouded my thoughts and made drawing more and more difficult as soon as I knew it. I had burned myself out.

I think I've done a good job at laying out why this method didn't work for me, and if I was still drawing comics this way, I would not be finishing my first Chapter this year. And at this point, I would like to take a moment to shout out @the-underground-beauty. If it hadn't been for her, I not have found out about batching and I wouldn't have been even close to ending this long ass chapter. I was in a discord call with them and other art friends I knew, and I talking about ways of becoming faster at completing pages. They explained that they batched multiple pages instead of drawing them one by one like I had. Like, you would do the layouts for one page, then you would do the layouts for the next page, same goes for sketching and inking. This makes it so that instead of dumping all of your energy into one page, you're spreading that work into multiple pages and thus, become more efficient. Now you might be wondering how this would be better than my old method. Wouldn't working on multiple pages at the same time instead of going one by one be worse? In my experience, it's the complete opposite.

Along with the upsides I've mentioned above, its also very flexible in regards to inking/coloring. In the past, I found myself getting board with pages and wanting to move onto the next one but couldn't because I had to finish the one I was working on. I don't need to worry about that with batching. I can go in chronological order or skip pages to come back to them latter. This can be very handy when it comes to complex pages that would take a lot of time to complete. If Im not feeling up for it at that moment, I can just skip that one and come back later once I feel ready. It also points out the most time consuming part of drawing comics, sketching. Inking is one thing, but when you're doing a lot more work when doing the sketches. And depending on what the storyboards call for, the sketching process for a given page can take a pretty long time and a lot of energy. But with the batching process, the energy I would've spent finishing said page with inking and shading/coloring can be better spent on other pages. This means that I would need to worry a whole lot when inking as most of the hard work was done prior.

Batching also helps with putting what you're working on into perspective. Throughout most of my time drawing my comic, I found it difficult to view the pages I'm working on as being apart of a much larger story, rather than on a page by page basis. I would spend so much time on them that I would view the page I was working on as being its own separate thing, unrelated to the pages that came before or after. Batching, in a way, solved this issue, because now that Im working on a part all at once instead of going page by page, it helped me view what I'm working on as being pieces of a story, rather than being their own thing. I felt that the pages I was batching had more unity to them than the ones before it. Its difficult for me to describe this feelings, because I would always get it when finishing a part and rereading it. Pages that would take weeks to complete took more a couple of minutes to read, despite the specific pages taking so much time to finish. I haven't had that feeling after adopting batching as my new method of drawing comics, since every page all at once.

But how has it worked in practice? Well to see if batching was effective or not, I decided to batch the remaining six pages of what would by episode 7 on CB's tapas page. I got those done in a week. And 2 months later in May, I began work on pages 95 through 105 and this was the true test to to see if batching could really be effective for an entire part. I got it done with in a month. The after that wasn't as successful, but I mostly contribute it to external factors that had nothing to do with batching. At the start of this year, I decided to ditch the part by part method and go at the remaining 67 pages of Chapter 1 all at once. At the time of writing this, I'm still not finished with this Chapter yet but I don't expect it to be for quite long. I anticipate on wrapping it all up around June of this year. So with all this being said, I think I can conclude that batching comics has been way more effective in terms of speed. Over a 100 pages over the course of one year, way more than I had in the past with the old method. If I hadn't switched up the way I had been drawing comics back in March of last year, I don't think I would've come this far! Now I am aware that batching might not work for other artists, and that's fine. But if you are in a place like I was and want to get pages done quicker, I suggest giving it a try and see if it works for you or not :)

[feline-evil]

Its da freaking new year baby

I mean it turned new year like 13 hours and thirty minutes ago for me i was just busy and didn't post here at the time. Anyways.

2023 has been A Lot for me! On one hand my wrist issues finally fully caught up to me and it's one of the first years i've not been able to draw as much during which has been. Very hard. It's been a year of health issues and my body kinda failing me in a lotta regards so it's not been great on that front. But it's also the first year i got to meet my boyfriend in person, twice!!! And realise how much more beautiful and kind and loving life can be, and how much i wanna survive onwards and upwards and do wicked gay shit with that man in future years, it's the year that being so loved has given me the courage to make BIG FUCKING RISKS and plan for BIG FUCKING CHALLENGES in upcoming years, and thats awesome. I couldn't be the man i have been this year without him, i really couldn't. I'm so grateful to finally have a partner and friends and love and gentleness, it is something that was so sorely missing in my life and it is something that's keeping me going even in the darker months.

It's also the year i took risks in other stuff too, which i never could've done without my bf's support, and now i've been able to work on so many things for The Hotel Podcast and thats fucking AWESOME?? I GET TO MAKE STUFF FOR THE SHOW I LOVE?? I did the artbook and we got to do the second calendar which ruuuuled, i made a postcard, i've done some other stuff ;), i made a 3d background and learnt some video editing for it; i've accomplished so much even against my body and wrist failing and i feel so so proud of that, and no matter how things go i wanna keep trying to do more. I feel like i'm finally showing what i can do. I hope people can see how much effort and will goes into what i do, i hope it pays off and that you enjoy it!

I wish i could say i left this year on a high note due to all that good that's happened to me and i mostly am absolutely. But in all honesty i also went to sleep last night filled with a palpable dread, this past week i realised someone close to me has, without getting into it to a degree i'm not willing to share online, gone down a pipeline to become a person i'm not comfortable with while i've been busy elsewhere. I went to bed knowing that either 2024 would have to be a year of potentially risky confrontation, of running, or of begrudgingly resigning myself to making sure i isolate anyone i care about away from. This. So thats a shadow hanging over me at the moment, and is one that has soured my week a little. I don't know what 2024 holds in regards to sorting this, it's a little scary.

I am going to be 27 this year, in February! And as i get closer and closer to thirty i realise that (while time isn't running out for me, for any of us) i really would like to move on into thriving rather than just surviving the years, and that part of that thriving needs to be transitioning and becoming independent from my parents. Of course the former is complicated due to the fact i am not able to be out to everyone in my life and even just starting the path to transitioning would out me and potentially destroy a part of my life that has been there for 26 years. There's also of course the fact i live in the uk and transitioning here is going to be a ten year waiting list if i'm even lucky and they deem me trans enough to transition l o l. So as you can imagine, thats complex and hard to figure out! On one hand i should start the process asap BECAUSE its such a long process here, but on the other hand i don't know how to handle my own safety and comfort in regards to being out to those i currently am not, and i'm not sure how my mental (and honestly physical) health would handle the fallout. The latter is complicated of course due to being broke, uneducated, physically and mentally unwell and a myriad of other factors; we don't live in a world where you can afford a home or to feed yourself anymore! So! Yknow!! Unlikely i'll be moving out anytime soon!

What i am doing at least is trying to thrive where i can, like dandelions growing in cracks the pavement may be unyielding to me at this moment but i can find the soft dirt inbetween; transitioning and independence may not be possible right now but i can continue to do my work and try to succeed there, i can make my room better for me (which i have done with finally getting a new bed after the one i had since i was a child grew no good), i can spend more time doing what i love out the house (visiting places, seeing my boyfriend, ect ect), and i can take what i can when i can. Maybe i'll try to learn to drive this year! I'm not sure i trust myself on the roads, but maybe i can learn to. And all of this is progress towards those final goals, even if i can't so much as step on the first rungs of the ladder towards them yet. I also take solace in knowing that for every dark cloud over me that makes my life feel so uncertain and hard to make it through there is incredible sunshine too; that even if the year is hard and cruel as they so often are i will still be loved i will still have friends and i will still get to smile. And that even if i can't accomplish big goals, a lot of small goals accomplished over many many bad years will build up, and one day i'll be free. And that's something.

My first hope for 2024 is THAT MY HEALTH GIVES ME A BREAK, NO MORE HEALTH SCARES PLEASE, and that perhaps i'll be able to even get some answer's and help for my physical health. My second is that my courage pays off and i succeed at flying alone for the first time to the states to be with my love! My third is that the year is kinder, and that i can make more art, maybe even regain some of the independence i had when my wrist was ok enough to let me do art as a job. My fourth is that i laugh a lot, and smile and have joyous moments with loved ones and indulge in what i love with unabashed and unashamed joy! And my fifth is that i get to do good for others, because even if i can't get out, even if i have to survive instead of thrive a little longer, i can at least try and help when i can.

Happy 2024, my chest hurts, my joints ache, but i'm still kicking and i will continue on forever. Bastards aren't getting free of me yet, i'm persistent. I haven't even ridden every rollercoaster in the UK yet.

[streettealee]

Hi, no pressure at all btw, but are you planning to continue your fic titled 'the rain (it rains every day)'? I love that one but, again, no pressure if you're not planning to

Hi there! I'm so glad you love the fic (and thank you for the ask!) It was an idea I had for ages that I finally messed with after some summer research for it, and it holds a special place in my heart as someone with a Greek background getting to explore that culture from a more personal lens (not saying I am the most authentic, as I am an immigrant grandbaby in another country, but I also am not one to water down mythology or modernise it too far, unlike quite a few folks these days). That being said, there is a vague plan to continue, though I would need to immerse myself in all the story and ideas I had again, which can be tricky since I have a habit of fixating on one story and world at a time, only to deviate randomly to quickly blurt out other ideas and then move on. At the moment, I've been focusing on my original works, which I post about over at @laylaraptis.

Anyway, fanfic has become a bit of a standstill at the moment. I had a great spurt around about a month ago now where I started writing to work through a lot of emotions I had from my personal life, and I felt the pressure of the upcoming second semester of university starting up soon. I believe I updated 'soft hearts, electric souls' during my first week of study before I got swept up in my coursework. I'm studying law, so it's a heck of a lot of work. I have to keep a schedule of my daily tasks to ensure I keep up with everything, while also keeping in mind that I need to rest and take care of myself and juggle a social life and other responsibilities. Writing (and even commenting on the works of other fan authors) often feels like more work added on top of that and my time has become, I guess, a bit more precious to me? Additionally, I got tired of a lot of TLH commentary that I kept seeing, as well as TSC in general. I more consume these things than participate in many discussions these days. It gets exhausting, a little depressing, and even somewhat boring. It got to a point where I felt like I would rather spend my time working on something far more detailed (knowledge-wise because it's something I created and therefore I know all aspects of it by technicality, whereas I do not know Cassandra Clare's mind) and within my sphere of control that I've been meaning to do for years, than spend another minute investing all my left over energy while I'm studying into fanfic of someone else's work -- especially because I have my own to work on, you know? (Please note that I do not scorn fanfic -- I love it and still read it, and I will always support other writers choosing to do what they love. Fanfic can sometimes be better than canon, and it has my full respect. My own choice that I prefer working on my novel rather than doing fanfic for the moment is a result of a bunch of factors.)

I've also been very unwell lately (think of health as like a number line, with neutral at 0, positives going up the healthier I am, and negatives clearly being the opposite. I dipped well below the negatives.) Within the span of six days, I completely exhausted my body, had multiple illnesses going on simultaneously, and was struggling just to stay awake and get through each day. I won't go into further detail as it deals with some health topics that some might find distressing, but basically, I'm still on the mend for the next three weeks just to try and reach that neutral 0 again. And from there, I still need to work up the positive side of the number line. Because of this, I've barely had time to even work on my original pieces.

So, that was a long way to say: the future of the fic 'the rain (it rains every day)' is kind of uncertain, and I apologise for that. My main fic, WBITHOM, might end up being definitively discontinued simply because I feel like I put a lot into it and the pay-off hasn't been great. I was writing, not just for myself, but for an audience. My old writing partner was someone I relied greatly upon to gauge reception, and yet I think they inadvertently also lead to me being disappointed in how little folks think about what I write. I like to do a lot of symbolism, for example, and a lot of foreshadowing (I'm always worried it comes off too heavy and obvious), but they very rarely picked up on the purposeful decisions I make in writing, and I felt like I was being too serious about something no one else took seriously, if that makes sense.

But now I get to write for me, in private, with no chapter updates to anxiously wonder if people are going to comment on or read at all, and it's been quite nice. Lonely, at times, but nicer somehow because it feels more self-inflicted. I get to work away and just post snippets and background information and progress updates and just enjoy myself. Plus, I get to explore not just Greek culture, but other Balkan cultures too in my original writing! With characters already made to fit! I'm not working with CC's characters and trying to balance fandom expectations. My characters are my own and I know them far better than I could anyone else's. Granted, I am still in early stages of this current draft, and I expect I'll stray back to the comforts fanfic offers eventually for a break, and 'the rain (it rains every day)' is at the top of the update list since everything else has had its time and this one was always scheduled next. But for now, all my fanfics are on hold until further notice. Any content produced from me will be found on @laylaraptis for the next 140-odd days (I've set a deadline for myself, which you can read more about over on that blog).

Hope this was an okay answer to your question 💀 I am very aware that I ramble a lot.

[lunaescribe]

As someone who has had to be medicated regarding my mental health for years-it's great seeing the popularity of neuro-divergence acceptance and even celebration, plus head canons. But, I'm also a little taken aback and wary how much autism, ADHD, and other diagnosis are getting thrown around as personality descriptors at this point for characters-even friends & celebrities.

Not because there is anything wrong with having either-but it seems to be the internet's new catch-all of personality explanation like "Oh he's a taurus" or "His myers briggs is..." or "bottom behavior" etc. A definer that can explain behavior and group individuals together/or relate them to fans, which not always, but often gives the person applying the diagnosis a closed door on behavior.

If this person/character/myself has ADHD then that explains the short attention span during reading a book. Case closed, join the ADHD club that's how you are, get medication or learn to laugh about it. It's rather fatalistic & dead end to me as someone who is medicated for my mental health. It ignores all the societal/environmental & other identity factors that could go into a person's behavior because ND diagnosis are seen as internal, random, and a finale state of things.

What if that book is from a college major or career you're no longer interested in? Or that the room you try to read in is so dimly lit it hurts your eyes? Maybe you're so stressed about your family or home life that relaxing enough to read feels impossible? My experience as an immigrant learning to read at a young age was very hard and I remember being constantly anxious I was so stupid, and that rhetoric is still there every time I read-even if it isn't a conscious thought.

Anyway, my point being can we not turn mental illness/neurodivergence into the new astrology or top/bottom behavior definer? We should keep talking about them and looking for REAL good rep in the media-but we're really flattening characters and even worse ourselves and friends when we act like Victorians going "Ah yes that woman has a melancholy disposition that's why she's always sad" rather than exploring our actual lived circumstances.

[alexenglish]

it’s so stupid to try to express myself on twitter, i need unlimited word count and an edit button, anyway --

unpopular opinion: while i do understand why it happens, i do hate how persistent the wj erasure is within transformative fandom spaces and especially with canon fic writers.

like you really have all these fucking huge emotions baked into the skz lore that people just skitter around, ignore, and then try to replicate in post-disbandment fic like they’re happening for the first time when the fear, the betrayal, the angst is already there and already existed long before. and no, it’s not the same when a member leaves/is kicked out (still unclear, personally, because i don’t care lmao) at the start of a group versus if, hypothetically, a group is disbanded further down the line. but my own personal thing is like, so few people even factor in the fact that they lost a member to how anyone might feel about disbandment further down the line.

i don’t really read disbandment fic for this reason because it feels like it would be a factor, right, in the great referential canvas of life as an idol -- the emotions of losing one versus losing everyone, depending on what the reason for disbandment is. is skz a ‘done when their contract is up’ group, or are they a family? are they trauma bonded through circumstance, or does none of that matter in their story? were they just like everyone else, or were they singularly special in a way that is deeply unshakable? is 8 fate, or is it just like 9 but one less? and on, and on.

like the course of their future and art was changed by a singular decision that resonates through their entire group - already! it already happened! the anger, the fear, and, above all, the grief. it all already happened. like sure jisung went on hiatus because of general mental health, but he also went on hiatus because of mental health after a devastating blow to their team’s line up and the haunting idea of ‘nine or none’ being a promise they couldn’t keep. and hyunjin going on hiatus during a scandal and chan reassuring fans anyway he could that hyunjin wasn’t gone - maybe because once upon a time, hyunjin broke down on an 8 person stage and begged, on his hands and knees, for stay not to leave them. like... god! god it MATTERS.

& hnngh: not being able to ever confront that and fans never doing the same. and like okay, bang chan, is i hate to admit actually not about who everyone thinks it’s about? or is it about exactly who everyone thinks it’s about? (2019 retrospect voice) are you angry? are you enraged? do you feel a terrible urge, deep inside, to rerecord all your songs to exclude the person who - for lack of better words - betrayed your team? most importantly: are you sad? are you grieving? are you hurt by someone you didn’t think would hurt you in this way? i’m sorry for your loss, leadernim.

and then! for everyone, collectively, to go to reshoots and rerecordings and to pick up the slack and to push through and forced to move on like it never happened. given no chance to mourn. from one thing to the next. - at least 1d got to talk shit about each other in public! - and fans replicating that easily. and some, refusing to see it for what it is, a scar in the heart of the story they are still telling. and some, pretending like he never belonged and he never mattered when he was hand picked and there was obviously an emotional impact so great it chased their heels, chased their muse - into their music, into the way they leaned into each other and started loving each other with more purpose. the IMPACT.

anyway. all that to say: no one HAS to confront that, people have drawn their lines and comfort levels, & i respect it. you can’t force a story. if it’s disturbing or painful, why bother, but i think... oh, oh there is SO MUCH there!