#at least this time the tending was easy

[victorluvsalice]

-->With the trash sorted and Smiler having grabbed their share of the greenhouse produce, it was time to take care of the rest of the farm chores:

Smiler went and took care of the chickens -- spreading feed, collecting eggs (5 normal ones, hooray!), chatting to a couple of them to keep attention good, the usual -- then joined Victor in the greenhouse to brew up a fresh Sadness Alleviation Lotion. Once that was done, they took Victor's spotted heart frog and tried to breed it with their regular dirt frog to get a spotted dirt frog (both so Victor could use it in potion-brewing and so they could add one to their own collection) -- however, the first attempt only resulted in another dirt frog, so that got turned into a plasma pack. Just have to try again later! They also put out the living room fireplace, because, uh, we don't want a fireplace just randomly burning in this house. I don't think Alice would approve.

Alice, for her part, was put on cow duty -- refilling Moory's feed, cleaning her off, and telling her a joke before milking her. I'm not sure how well the joke went down, judging from Moory's expression in the screenshot, but, uh, Alice tried! And Moory didn't kick over the milk pail when she was milked, so that's something. Alice also emptied out the outside litter box because that was looking NASTY -- I guess having three cats means it DOES fill up quicker! I should upgrade the litter boxes to the zappy kind at this point, they have the cash for it...

And Victor, of course, was banished to the greenhouse to harvest all the remaining produce and tend the plants. XD However, today he actually got a little help -- not only were the bots out and assisting with the watering, weeding, and spraying for bugs, I had Alice and Smiler join him to do the same once they were done with their own chores. The more hands on deck, the better! :D They got everything sorted in good time, and Alice even got the honor of planting the one new plant they'd gotten from all those seed packets the gnomes left around -- a bell pepper! So now they have peppers to offer for sale along with all their other various veggies, fruits, and flowers. :) There was even a little time for flirting and chatting as they finished up -- which I'm sure the trio appreciated, as I have been working them HARD lately.

-->On my end, once all the produce was actually harvested, I went back into Build Mode and started moving around all gnomes that had wandered during Harvestfest -- I sold the duplicates, then put the three "normal" gnomes and the one alien gnome in the four corners of the greenhouse, the pool floatie gnome in the wheelbarrow out front, and the Grim gnome next to Toothy the cowplant. You know, as a warning. Still no sign of my old bunny gnome, though -- I think the game may have deleted it while trying to move it out of its wheelbarrow home. *grumbles* Ah well -- maybe I'll get a new one during a future Harvestfest!

-->Oh, and before the gang finished up and headed out to the store, I had to get this one last picture of the kittens being cute by the scratching post. :D Look at how teeny they are! So adorable~

[thankchaosforspellcheck]

I wonder if Gil and the rest of the folks that grew up on the Wulfenbach airships have to make, like, a conscious effort not to use the Jaeger accent while speaking since there are just SO many of them on the ships.

I mean, Von Pinn definitely would have done her best to train it out of them if she caught them doing it, but Gil has canonically used "hokay" while talking to one of the Jaegers, so I think it's pretty likely that there are still occasional slip-ups here & there.

[zeynatura]

O:!

Blade 🥺

Yes Edmond is pretty, as always

But Blade 🥺 sweet baby angel~

I'm glad he's getting more playful happy vibes SSRs

[aquilamage]

[Image Description: a set of five edited bug fables screenshots from the pre-battle zommoth encounter. The first is the same as in-game, Kabbu saying "W-What is that!? Something's coming!" The second is of zommoth appearing on screen with its sprite edited to be various shades of pink and yellow, wings the same pattern as Leif's (but still with the purple blight magic stuff in the chest area.) The next three images have the sprite edited in the same way.. The third image is of Leif's saying "...Wh, Rkejrm-m-Muse!? Kjdrira, mebsrgr...!!!" The next is Kabbu saying "Muse!? Leif, that's..." The final is Vi saying "T-That doesn't make any sense!" End ID]

I thought about one of my fucked up and evil au ideas for five minutes again, so I decided to spend like fifty hours making a thing about it. Basically what if Muse went back into Snakemouth later to try to rescue Leif or at least bring back his body and got caught by the roaches.

Putting just the edited sprites under the cut if you wanna see those without the lab mood lighting:

[icewindandboringhorror]

Apparently I can meet my goal of roughly 400,000 words in 6 months if I just somehow write at least 2,200 words a day ghbjh... Almost 2,500 today... huzzah...

[sysig]

Very important to implement a goof-off break (Patreon)

[isa-ah]

sometimes I forget how bad my black outs used to be when specific other alters fronted but I just found an entire sketchbook cover to cover full of art and ocs I don't recognize in a style that's hardly mine from my last really really low point a number of years ago. wild. who's shit is this lol

[dutybcrne]

From a very young age, Kaeya held such a fondness for handholding. Whether it was his father clinging tightly to him to make sure he didn’t get lost, Adelinde’s gentle, grounding hand closed over his to comfort him whenever his nerves got the better of him, Crepus’s rough-palmed, firm yet comforting grip as he brought him back home, or, as it was most often of all, Diluc’s warm, yet at times uncomfortably tight hold as he dragged him anywhere, everywhere, determined to always keep Kaeya close and eagerly show him all there was to see, Kaeya treasured the gesture greatly.

Of course, being as shy as he was, initiating it himself was always the harder part. So much so, he would tend to hold pinkies, rather than outright take a person’s hand in his own. Eventually, it would become his most common way to go about the gesture of affection.

[caffeinatedopossum]

Suddenly realizing I've had seizures before :0 but this was just the first one where someone who knew what it was was there to witness it (my girlfriend)

That's so cool and definitely not terrifying /s

[cr0wc0rpse]

secret: I have this really major crush on this guy but I’m scared cause idk if he feels the same

Oh man, I wish I had any good advice because for me personally, when I’ve had Major crushes and they last a While, I just straight up tell the person. But those situations have been with someone I was already close friends with, and idk your situation, but like. I find it easier to admit a crush if you’re good friends w someone. The worst that can happen is they don’t feel the same, and that usually puts feelings to rest, or helps, and you can move on. Or just allow the feelings to happen now but just let them slide, yknow? Regardless. No need to take action, do what’s comfortable . Sending you good energies about this tho !

[gothmods]

My mirrorverse neurodivergent take is i like when staff make small talk because i have pretty boring days and the tendency to thoughtspiral over minor upsets so any and all good interactions are vital in keeping up the retaining wall of my mental stability and also generally nice because life gets a bit isolating

[salsflore]

⠀

[north-wilkesboro-moonshine-cave]

holding bitch sessions with my friends in this program wherein i make itemized lists of complaints about my roommate and then read them aloud like a pettier and lamer martin luther who couldn't even summon the nerve to start a fight with my roommate

[startle]

i wanna know more about your ocs so bad. kinu and wyne…. who are they!!

I REMEMBER YOU SENDING AN ASK ABOUT THEM ONCE ... i'll go ahead & FINALLY answer as shotgunned as i can in this one, especially since as of writing this, their concepts are much more (disclaimer: not fully) realized than months prior ^__^;

cut for LARGE paragraphs:

⟶ first, is wyne! ('when', she/they) she's an amnesic, water-dwelling ghoul, once a human woman from 1300's wales whose life was cruelly taken from her - at the hand of a trusted friend, before she could naturally expire from septicemic plague. despite her current state of being, alongside her trauma still subconsciously influencing her lifestyle -- she's vibrant & warm in personality, alongside being very diplomatic, & can freely admit that it's not always easy maintaining that attitude, but won't let herself be needlessly dissuaded. though her luck runs stale, & being afflicted with severe illness becomes something of a cycle to wyne; being something of a travelling environmental biologist, she's one day attacked by an animal diseased with a plague-like parasite & subsequently becoming the begrudgingly willing labrat of a mysterious back-alley doctor titled " the fixer ", of whom is also cryptically nonhuman. where mutual interest in wyne being a morbid medium of science & medicine shows itself, she is slowly accepted as fix's lead nurse -- eventually, accepting his hand in marriage as their origins of being are unveiled, & the mystery of their deep-rooted security in one-another is answered. (spoiler: fix & wyne, while not lovers in their human life, grew up as fairly tight-knit childhood best friends in a trio, facing fatal betrayal at the hand of their third link - fix's first best friend & lover, samuel - which resulted in both of their respective transformations. reuniting centuries later they don't remember a thing initially but, obviously, develop a new relationship dynamic. when their memories begin to return, the truth of samuel's actions are realized, & they find out he still lives on, the two physicians & their whole posse set out to put the plague -- & its progenitor, to eternal rest.)

⟶ then, we have kinu! (key-new, they/them, she/her selectively) an eclectic, glamorous & spunky vampire, the only childe of their subspecies' progenitor - who is their adoptive dad, no less - that's lived to tell the tale of fully-adjusted vampirism. having once lived a tumultuous human life: being a half ainu & half romanian person in 1970's japan kind of .. speaking for itself, immigration to the united states in young age after being apparently orphanized, falling into one bad crowd after another as they'd grown from adolescence to adulthood, up until their violently impulsive siring in 1991 . after taking a small handful of years to simply .. go through the motions of lost humanity - & now needing & ultimately wanting to restart their identity anew, they travel from their roots in southern california to the northern californian coast, finally dropping ship in mid-90's san francisco. from there on, the decades are spent becoming something of an underground artist in niche music & fashion scenes, alongside hoisting themselves to something of a coven leader role -- in lieu of kinu's dad totally disappearing after his siring of them. after years of being in the Borderline Symptom Loop, inviting a new & unprompted roommate - a demon named adam, brings kinu the kind of support system they'd absolutely need: someone with equal parts warm patience, brutal accountability, & encouragement of self-sufficiency. but naturally, even something so nurturing & vibrant has to come with its .. well, horrible shadow - something of an evil counterpart, whom long schemed a plan to break apart & control the two. it's the ultimate challenge for both adam & kinu's superhuman fortitudes more than ever - especially, the sustainability of kinu's own survival defense mechanisms, then eventually, their inhuman biology as a whole.

admittedly, my vision of their human life still feels really hazy (i guess just how kinu would feel trying to remember it) but, having been born in 1972 japan & being half ainu, half romanian - things for them were nothing short of unstable, oppressive

i don't know At All how to close this off, other than with this meme i made about the two:

[sysig]

You say “Jump” I say “Forget it” (Patreon)

[jawnwicks]

Some of the most important parts for me:

“Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.”

"Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction."

"Smalltalk is a social script of exchanging trivial conversation about non-personal topics in order to pass a brief period of time together.

This sort of conversation is about figuring out whether you want to get to know each other better, so it's kind of a behavioral test. It's assessing "can I have a pleasant, brief conversation with this person?" because people usually want to know if the answer to that question is "yes" before they share more details of their lives."

"If the person speaking responds to your sharing of personal information with a request for more information (asks about your sister) or by sharing some of their somewhat more personal information (roses are blooming) they might be interested in continuing to gradually share more information. If they respond with more smalltalk, they probably aren't interested in becoming closer friends ... [but] maybe at some point they'll share something with you and it'll be your turn to decide if you want to get to know them better."

"Once you've seen someone several times, you will begin to know little things about them. ... If you want to become friends with them, ask them about these things and offer information in return. Start casually and don't pry for more information, and be sure to share about yourself as well. Eventually you will get to the point that you can have a comfortable conversation on topics of shared interest for at least a few minutes."

"If they agree to meeting up for the thing, they are interested in continuing to develop the friendship. If they don't want to meet up then continue at the same level of interaction as before and perhaps later on down they line they'll ask you if you want to plan a meetup."

"Once you have hung out on purpose a few more times you've got two choices: set a regular meetup, or hang out elsewhere. Setting up a regular meetup is the relatively casual option here; it keeps things in the same location and keeps the context of the friendship the same while still increasing interactions and intensifying the relationship. You can have perfectly good, if somewhat casual friends, who you see regularly in one place and rarely outside of that place."

"Hanging out in a new place changes the context of the relationship; suggest a hangout in a place that makes sense for the mutual interests you've learned over the previous months of getting to know the person."

"If you’re talking about the weather as in the first example, but you mention where you grew up and what the weather was like, that can be inspiration for the other person to also talk about where they’re from! But, unlike with a question, if they don’t want to share that information they can usually dodge it without having to make it extremely obvious that that’s what they’re doing."

Wait, so you said that you can learn to trust others by building friendships, but how does one go about doing that? Wouldn't someone I don't know be creeped out or annoyed if I suddenly walked up and started talking to them?

Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.

It takes a long time to make friends as an adult. People will probably think you're weird if you just walk up and start talking to them as though you are already their friend (people think it's weird when I do this, I try not to do this) but people won't think it's weird if you're someone they've seen a few times who says "hey" and then gradually has more conversations (consisting of more words) with them.

I cheat at forming adult friendships by joining groups where people meet regularly. If you're part of a radio club that meets once a week and you just join up to talk about radios, eventually those will be your radio friends.

If there's a hiking meetup near you and you go regularly, you will eventually have hiking friends.

Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction; if you go camping with your radio friend, that person is probably more friend than acquaintance. If you go to the movies with a hiking friend who likes the same horror movies as you do, that is deepening the friendship.

In, like 2011 Large Bastard decided he wanted more friends to do stuff with so he started a local radio meetup. These people started as strangers who shared an interest. Now they are people who give each other rides after surgery and help each other move and have started businesses together and have gone on many radio-based camping trips and have worked on each other's cars.

Finding a meetup or starting a meetup is genuinely the cheat-code for making friends.

This is also how making friendships at schools works - you're around a group of people very regularly and eventually you get to know them better and you start figuring out who you get along with and you start spending more time with those people.

If you want to do this in the most fast and dramatic way possible, join a band.

In 2020 I wrote something of a primer on how to turn low-stakes interactions with neighbors and acquaintances into more meaningful relationships; check the notes of this post over the next couple days, I'll dig up the link and share it in a reblog.