#but I learned a lot about process and my own limits
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hello, (former) abuser friend anon back again, I just wanted to sort of answer the other anon’s question and thank you for your thoughtful and comforting response.
To answer: I do feel fully relaxed around this person, for better or for worse, and I do trust them to not repeat their behavior because I have had to be in conflict with this person (a huge part of being friends/expressing love, imho) and they have handled it calmly and respectfully and made me feel heard and supported, and I have seen them do that for a lot of people in their current community, and my new one. I don’t expect them to be perfect, and honestly I don’t expect them to never be tempted to reach for the toolset of abuse as you both have described it. But I expect them to react better and better every time they are confronted with something they find triggering, and also to handle the conflict that comes from reaching from those toolsets with the love and care I expect from my friends. I hope that’s the right thing to do and not enabling, but as you noted Dr Price said I’ve never forced their victims to share space with them, and I don’t feel very protective of this person in the sense that I think the other anon is talking about). But it’s all very complicated and if my feelings change in the future I think that’s okay too, and if they revert back to their prior self they know that they’ll lose my relationship to them. But truly from the bottom of my heart thank you both, I feel like I have gained some ease in my reflection of this relationship <3
awww thank you so much for messaging Anon. That upward, cyclical process of working through conflicts and learning new and better strategies is what recovery looks like, I think. And truth be told, as someone who has done plenty of things I regret, I've learned a lot from engaging in productive, healing conflict with people who have done their share of bad things, too. If anything, I feel more accepted when i'm around people who can own their shit and show the capacity to change than when i'm around people who either demand perfection or seem entirely stuck. In my life I've only known a small handful of completely unrepentant abusive people -- and those are the types I never want to be around. The majority, instead, have been simply really traumatized and neglected folks who reached for what limited tools they had for a very long time, and were downright relieved to find something better to do. They've wanted to keep learning new ways of dealing with things. I hope you and your friend continue to have a good time learning from one another, and it's heartening to hear that you're in a pretty secure-sounding place, should that ever change. Sometimes people take big steps backward when they're ill, relapsing, injured, experiencing loss, and so on -- and you always have the right to take your distance if that's how it goes. But there's always a possibility of us learning to work through the roughness better, and together.
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Journal - 2022 Fall Reflections - Pre-Production and The Dressmaker Project - P3
Part 1 | Part 2 | Final Photos
Puppet Time!
I'm not gonna lie, I really struggled with puppet making. So many revisions, so many re-dos... UGH it was a lot, which sucks because I really love puppet making!
Process under the cut!
So one of the first steps of Puppet building is Character Design, which I showed off in the Part 1. The orthographic drawing ended up being kind of a long shot from my final puppet, which is kind of devastating. I was going for a puppet style that I had built before - Kunal, a wire puppet from Fall 2021)
I wanted a paper head and a vaguely felted body, except this time with more fabric elements and more soft-body space. I chose to make this more distinctly felted, a decision which would bite me in the ass later.
Armature building went smoothly (I am good at armatures), and I was feeling good about the process until it was felting time/detail building time. I went for a more detail hand too - 5 fully posable fingers and a thumb that could punch in word (like the ball of your palm would) I had to remake it like twice lol.
(first and second try! I may make the fingers longer next)
Let's start with the face. I was and am dead set on giving myself the space for replacements (mouths and eyebrows) to give my girl the space to emote and maybe talk. This led to me remaking the paper of the face multiple times, using too-weak magnets to try and register features to the face, and just... multiple moments of having to peel her features off and start again. I was dead set on paper! I still am, its a material I'm most comfortable with and I wish I hadn't lost confidence with it.
At one point my professor clocked into the vibe difference between the face + the body and told me that I should stick to a similar texture between face and body. I was not about to replace the felt work I did, so I decided to felt the face. It ended up being this kinda disturbing mask of a face - I took a tan felt sheet and stabbed in the brown I wanted her to be, attempting to assemble it like I would paper and while it did its job, I really want to do it over.
The final puppet broke. Like literally the day before I shot my test shots I was putting clothes on her body (a really simple chudidar that involved me lifting her arms up high to get it on) and I heard this awful crack and before I knew it, her arm was no longer posable. I did not have the time to remake the whole armature from scratch so I just had to cope. Thankfully when I notified my professor about it she agreed that I should just use the broken armed puppet (I could still bend at the elbow, I just lost the more intense shoulder articulation that I would've had if she was ok). I'm just redoing her (and making two other puppets for the final short film).
Here is her turn around!
Next post will be my final shots hehehe >:)
#journal#reflections#process#projects#The Dressmaker Project#i think this was the most disappointing part of production#but I learned a lot about process and my own limits#so I'll consider it a win#character design
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How would Fan react when learning about the reveal? Read my fun long ramble!
I need to put this down somewhere. Here is my fun not so structured analysis!!!! this is something i think a lot about. of course I do.
I doodled a small little graph of reactions I think he would go through that I will elaborate on further in the paragraphs below. I'm not sure about the order but it'd be something like these stages when processing it - most likely.
This is analyzed from the idea that Fan did not previously predict this in any way or expect it, but I do also suspect he might know! (Which, I'll explain later for his reaction to that.)
Fan's an incredibly emotional and impulsive person, he would definitely have a strong outer reaction to the information. This may be biased coming from me since Fan is my favorite to analyze but aside from Suitcase he would probably be handling it the worst after being told about it, OR just having the most notable reaction! This is considering he was not made to be a contestant but to devote his love, identity, and purpose to the show, which makes him revolve around the show much more than anyone else - since it is a built-in interest in him that he's dedicated his entire existence to, even when he tried to build himself beyond it- he still surrounds himself with Inanimate Insanity even after his elimination. It is forever tied to his mind and interests contrary to many contestants who try to separate from the show and competition entirely.
Fan's most substantial development in Hatching The Plan was the fact that there were many possibilities out there for him to discover for himself (and that others were there for him through that change and discovery). While he recognizes this and states on Fan's Fantastic Features that he's trying to test his limit and push past his comfort zone (notably while in a safe controlled environment where this change can occur comfortably for him) he is still "stuck" in Inanimate Insanity whether he recognizes this or not. He is at Hotel OJ, surrounded by the contestants, and he is still on MePhone4's island, like any other contestant. While Fan has convinced himself that he is more than just a fan of the show and that he is improving as a person, this development is still slow (obvious, coming from a person such as Fan who struggles with it) and he is still heavily attached to the core of his personality - the core which he was built to be in the first place. His love for the show is so clearly his own dedication and passion, and it truly does feel like his own CHOICE to love the show as much as he does. Even if he was created for it, it is a part of him that he loves and puts confidence into.
I swear these earlier points play into this bear with me,
So once Fan is told he was created by MePhone4, after the initial shock dies down, he would be in denial of it, of course, as Fan would react to any new information he had not considered about the show. Some "It can't be"s and some "There is absolutely no way"s being said by him, especially if he had not foreseen this coming. An instinctive reaction coming from Fan (which would also apply to Test Tube) is immediately questioning it, wanting answers- most definitely from MePhone4 himself. I don't think he'd believe Cobs if he told him, maybe not even Suitcase or Test Tube, he'd need to find the evidence for it and piece together if this even made sense at all.
Once he starts to consider it and all the pieces fit together for him as he looks back on everything, he'll let go of that denial. That's when it first really hits him. One of his first reactions is positive. He'd find validation in the fact he was created specifically for the show, he'd be honored and glad he was an actual piece of the show- not just a viewer or contestant, he was actually part of the show he loved so much. Fan puts a lot of his confidence into being the number 1 fan of inanimate insanity, as everyone knows, and being questioned on this or having people challenge him always strongly shows his insecurity over it. But knowing that he quite literally is, without a doubt, the biggest fan of inanimate insanity- and that he actually had this purpose and that he was made for what he loved to do- that would validate him immensely. He would thrive on his notion for a while until the existential crisis started to leap in.
He'd try to be acceptant of it, and this time around he would be in denial of his own emotions. He'd try to show how well he was taking this and to pride himself in being the biggest ii fan ever, so he puts up a confident front which is obviously not normal to anyone who sees him. He'd try his best not to think about the other implications of his existence being made for reality TV. He would try his best to appear in control and unburdened to prove to both others and himself that he was taking it well. I don't think this stage in his realization will go on for long. I think this would fluctuate a LOT depending on his mood.
At one point he does start to question himself. He overthinks his existence and his emotions, and if they are genuine- what if what he feels is fake? Just generated love? What if he truly doesn't like Inanimate Insanity? What's a real feeling from him and what's a fake one?! A million thoughts that some may not even make sense but this is where the existentialism really gets to him. Every time he felt excitement or love for the show, was that even his own emotions? Was that just made by MePhone4 so he could get some appreciation for his show- and maybe he'd get mad that MePhone4 kept dismissing him. Maybe he'd wonder why he was made if he's not being recognized and rewarded for how much dedication- if it was even his own- that he put into appreciating MePhone4, a dedication that was going unnoticed or deemed annoying by him.
Something I mentioned earlier, about Fan learning to embrace new opportunities for himself and about how he was still trapped in the show. He realizes he is forever tied to the show, and all his attempts at making changes for himself and being more than just a fan suddenly feel... meaningless to him. All he was ever made for from the start was to be a fanboy of the show, and he had tried to build himself around that. But those efforts were for nothing if this is all he ever was- just a fan. That was his entire identity, he was never anything other than that. This is all that could ever come out of him. So what was the point in trying? His shell might've been the only place he'd ever felt safe in anyways- and once he remembers it, his old coping mechanisms seem incredibly tempting. Fan would retreat back into his shell. Things just seemed so much simpler if he did, he wouldn't have to deal with all this overthinking if he just stuck to what he was made for, something he already had found so much comfort and significance in. He uses his shell to cope once again, regressing, turning back to his purpose. This would be how he copes with this new information, by embracing what it taught him that he was. He'd be in this state for a while, he'd probably try to pretend he never even learned anything and creating a false reality of his own security. Being a fan is still important to him, and something he feels so deeply about that he's urged into fully embracing it again. early season 2 fan is back babyyyy!
Not sure how long it would go on for, or even how long it would take for him to go through these stages, but this is somewhat of the process I believe he'd have! I think Suitcase and Fan should have a talk about dealing with all of this. possibly. I feel like it will boil down to "if it feels true to you, that's all that matters." for Fan dealing with this. I could definitely see Suitcase saying something similar to him.
As for him reacting to it after already having theorized this would happen or at the very least suspect it, I think it would go similar to that one drawing I made. He'd be proud at first, and it wouldn't sink in as fast because his pride comes first! But to have it actually confirmed to him would then send him into that same realization as stage 3 of processing it. Something something, it goes the same after this.
Anyways i love fannnn i could talk about him for hours boy i love you i wonder if we'll even get everyone's reactions to the reveal or if they'll even tell anyone else but if we do Fan would definitely have a prominent reaction to it <- guy who loves fan saying this. look at this bias
#ii#inanimate insanity#ii fan#pankie yap#ii spoilers#inanimate insanity spoilers#fan ii#pankie ramble
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Pov: You knew slashers, when you was a child (Slashers x fem!reader)
I'm back! Well, it os a lazy post from my drafts, until I end my new idea <3
TW: no
Characters: Thomas Hewitt, Brahms Heelshire, brothers Sinclair
P.S.: English is not my native language, so lot of these words was translated by simple translator, sorry for misspells and e.t.c.
Enjoy this!
Thomas Hewitt
The transition to a new school has always been a great stress for a child, especially in the middle of the school year.
You and your parents often moved from city to city. Maybe it was their work, or maybe they just wanted to show you as many different places as possible so that your childhood would remain really memorable — you didn't know. But the constant moving was followed by a change of schools and kindergartens. On the one hand, you liked it — new acquaintances, interests and a lot of positive emotions, after all, you were a cheerful and active child — but it also brought its inconveniences — you didn't have "best" friends, you had no more than a couple of months to communicate with each of them, and multiple the change of the team has made you a real chameleon in society.
You were ten years old when you and your parents moved to Texas. The age when most classes have already been divided into peculiar interest groups, which are quite difficult for a new person to join. That's why your mom decided to bake cookies that you could distribute to new classmates. Who doesn't like homemade cakes? You actively participated in the cooking process. A little more practice, and you could learn these cookies on your own. As soon as the treat was ready — several pieces were successfully taken away by your father — your mother beautifully put it in a colored box, now tied with a ribbon. The inscription "Welcome" was painted on the lid in gold paint.
It was very hot in this area of Texas. Therefore, on your first day of school, you decided to limit yourself to a beautiful white T-shirt with some simple pattern and black shorts. The first impression is the most important, right? Your mom took you to school by car. At the reception desk, your mom introduced you and found out the number of the right office. After kissing you goodbye on the cheek, she left you to your own luck. Although you were already used to it, a nervous feeling of anticipation bubbled somewhere in your chest; your palms were sweating.
After a good seven minutes, you were standing in front of the right class, 212, clutching a box of cookies to your chest. Adjusting the strap of the gray backpack, you exhaled anyway.
Your homeroom teacher, Mrs. Sullivan, introduced you in the office. A lovely woman with curly locks hanging down on both sides of her face and freckled cheeks. Her soft figure, dressed in a white blouse and a black pencil skirt, caused a surge of strength and confidence in you. The woman lightly put her arm around your shoulders, so motherly, and asked you to tell about yourself.
"My name is Y/N Y/L," your voice trembled slightly while your gaze ran over the children sitting in the classroom, "I'm ten. I like animals and beading... Mm, my parents and I move around a lot, so I don't think I'll stay here for more than two months. I hope we'll become friends."
You ended your performance with a sincere warm smile. Mrs. Sullivan asked you to take an empty seat. Your choice fell on the farthest place by the window; a guy was sitting behind it, hunched over and staring at the street. Was he weird? No, rather unusual. He had long black hair, so unusual for a boy; his gaze was lowered somewhere on the dusty road near the school, so you couldn't see his eyes. Sitting down next to him, you quickly took out a notebook and pencil from your backpack.
"Hello?"
The boy seemed startled by your voice. He looked at you uncertainly, and you saw a face wrapped in bandages. Sad cornflower blue eyes peeked out from under the white cloth.
"I'm Y/N," you whisper, holding out your hand to the boy, "And what's your name?"
There was no response. Disappointed, you lowered your hand, now paying attention to the teacher's explanation. The woman was writing down her words on the blackboard, and you quickly began copying them into your notebook, clutching a pencil until it crackled.
There was something about this boy that attracted you. It doesn't matter if it was his shyness or isolation — you decided that you definitely want to make friends with him.
At recess, you approached a group of girls. They were dressed up like girls from fashion magazines that you often saw in kiosks by the road.
"Hi," — you said with a light smile.
"Well, hello," said one of the girls, popping a bubble of gum.
"I want to ask. M, that boy," you pointed to the long—haired boy, "What's his name? I asked, and he ignored me."
"Haha, he won't answer you. That's our little Tommy," another girl hissed sarcastically, giggling, "Thomas Hewitt is weird. Very strange. I heard that his father is his brother!"
"And he's also a terrible freak!"
You awkwardly put your hand in your hair. Thomas didn't look as disgusting as the girls described him. It's all rumors. And what to take from these children, they probably didn't even try to talk to Hewitt!
You didn't talk to this company anymore. After waiting for lunch, when all the children went out to the garden at the school, you again approached the boy. He didn't budge. It seems he hasn't even written anything since you sat down next to him.
"Hey, hello?" you waved your palm in front of the guy's face, "Thomas, right?"
This time the boy paid attention to you. There was no emotion visible under the thick layer of bandages, but you were sure that he arched an eyebrow questioningly. He's wondering how you know his name?
"You were sitting alone, so I came over. Your name is Thomas, right?" you repeated the question, finally the boy nodded, "That's wonderful! I'm Y/N, let's get acquainted."
Smiling happily, you hand the guy an open box of cookies. Golden crust with chocolate chips. You had no desire to share such a delicious thing with such terrible and tactless people. And Tommy. Tommy was different. He was timid and calm, unable to cause harm.
"Help yourself," you babble, sitting down next to Hewitt, "I made them myself! Not without my mommy's help, of course..."
You blush slightly and see Thomas's eyes narrow. He smiled! He seems to be starting to like your company.
"Can I call you Tommy?"
• Thomas has become noticeably happier since you met him. The boy began to spend more time outside the house, in your company (Luda was very surprised by this, because usually after school Tommy always came home and sat in his room).
• For your birthday, Thomas himself sewed a soft toy for you, a fox, as he found out later, this is one of your favorite animals. The toy was sewn from different, but matching pieces of fabric, a little sloppy, but quite skillfully. It made you smile. You threw your arms around Hewitt for joy.
• Once you praise him, Tommy immediately blushes a lot. It's good that it's not visible under the layer of bandages. From the moment you became friends, Thomas's self-esteem has risen a little.
• When you first offered to help Thomas change the bandages, he strongly refused. The boy just couldn't let you see his face. But when he finally gave up, Hewitt was pleasantly surprised that you didn't scream and run away. You didn't call Tommy a freak or a monster, but only sympathetically stroked his scarred cheeks.
• Over time, you began to understand Thomas without words, absolutely. You found the right answers in his movements, grunting, awkward head turning or excessive gesticulation. Even Luda was a little amazed at your nonverbal communication, but the woman was glad that her son finally found a real friend.
• Tommy often showed you his drawings. It was like the scribble of a five-year-old child, but you were always happy to accept the leaves and hang them over your bed. Basically, Thomas drew his family: angry Charlie in the corner of the paper, Monty sitting next to him in a chair, a little further away, Luda was cooking, and in the center of the drawing you and Thomas holding hands and smiling.
• It was the first time you begged your parents to stay in this city longer. Fortunately, they agreed after seeing your enthusiasm for the "strange boy".
Brahms Heelshire
• Your parents and the Healers kept in touch for a while, you can say your families were very close. You first met Brahms on his fifth birthday. He was a very well-mannered but private boy, so Mrs. Heelshire was only too happy to introduce you.
• At first, your communication did not work out. Brahms was a rude child in places, took away your toys and teased you.
• His true attitude towards you showed up when you didn't come to his house, although you were visiting the Heelshire family every Monday and Wednesday. He was seriously worried. All morning Brahms sat in his room by the window and looked at the road going through the forest, waiting for your little body in your favorite blue dress to appear from behind the trees. But you were never there. It turned out that you were just sick. That day Brahms went to your house and did not leave your bed, squeezing your hot palm.
• Your parents worked most of the time, so they were not against your games with Heelshire Jr. You stayed in their house more and more often, sometimes even overnight, and you and Brahms made noise all night, forcing his mother to swear. But still, the woman was glad that at least Brahms was behaving quite comfortably and boldly with someone.
• You were only a couple of months younger than Brahms, but you thought it was a good reason to tease you.
• The boy allowed you to enter his room without knocking, consider it a worthwhile privilege, because Heelshire does not let everyone into his personal space.
• When you were sad, Brahms brought you bouquets of flowers hastily made with his own hands. That's why his palms were green most of the time.
• Brahms makes wonderful sandwiches. He often makes them when the two of you are having a "picnic" in the garden. Although in fact he agrees to it only to admire you.
• Heelshire loves sweets very much. Very. His mom doesn't allow the boy a lot of sweets and cakes, so you secretly bring them to him from home. The boy is insanely happy.
• Brahms loves kissing. This habit, or rather the need, appeared in him because you praised the boy in this way. Has he finally cleaned the room? A kiss. Did he break his mom's precious vase during the catch-up today? A kiss! So now he can demand them for any reason. He especially likes it when you kiss him before going to bed, and Brahms falls asleep hugging you.
• You're his best friend. That's why Brahms trusts you with all his secrets. You are the only one to whom he has told about the strange and frightening thoughts that sometimes sound in his head.
"Good night," Mrs. Heelshire said, turning off the light and closing the door behind her.
You smile and blow her a kiss, covering your mouth with your palm. When the woman's footsteps recede, you exhale with relief, plopping down on the pillow with force. Squinting your eyes, you wrinkle your nose, trying to blow away the stuck strands of hair from your face. Brahms giggles and gently tucks your hair behind your ear.
The room is cool. The window is slightly ajar, letting in a light autumn wind. The curtains are swaying from side to side, taking chaotic frightening shadows.
You get under the covers up to your nose. Brahms follows your example, pressing his whole body against you, and you stroke his head.
"If I ever do something very, very bad, will you stay with me?" Heelshire whispers, looking up at you.
You look into his sad emerald eyes and laugh. He likes to put pressure on your pity, because he knows that at such moments you see him as a tiny abandoned kitten.
"I don't think you'd do anything so bad, Brahms."
"But if I do. What if everyone turns away from me. Even mom and dad. Will you stay with me?"
You pressed your lips together, frowning. Brahms had never asked such strange questions before. And how can a child who is only eight years old think about something like that after a while. Looking down at the ceiling, you turned your head, looking into Brahms' eyes.
"Yes. I'll stay."
"Honestly?" Heelshire asks incredulously.
"Honestly."
"Promise?"
"Yes, I promise you, silly boy!" you abruptly cover his face with a blanket, holding the edges on both sides of his head.
The boy was kicking, trying to get out from under your weight, while you tried not to laugh. Taking pity on his futile attempts, you took off the blankets, admiring Brahms' flushed face. Heelshire was breathing heavily, and his cheeks and nose were burning like Chinese lanterns that your parents launched on your birthday.
"I won. Again," you grin.
Brahms is silent. You sigh and lie down again, turning your back to Heelshire. Your eyes are shining with joy, and your lips continue to curve in a smug grin. You know that Brahms will not dare to do something to you in return. He always let you get away with such antics. Absolutely always.
When you are ready to fall asleep, through the chatter in your head you hear a plaintive whisper. Having opened your leaden eyelids, you groan with displeasure.
"Kiss me," Brahms whines, and you get up on your elbows, chuckling softly.
"Okay," you kiss Heelshire on the lips, "Good night, Brahms."
• "Now I've won," Brahms croaks, pressing you against the wall and spreading his hands on both sides of your head. Just like a child. Except now he's not the victim here, but you. Although was he ever a victim in your games? Rather, he always played the role of a presenter, you just didn't notice it, as if you were looking through your fingers. And who would have thought that that innocent little boy would ever stand in front of you, towering over your body by a good two heads, and grinning with eyes shining in anticipation through the black slits of the mask.
Sinclairs
Christmas is the most mysterious and magical holiday of the year; the day when the whole family gathers at one big table to properly celebrate this moment together; the day when you receive a lot of gifts from all kinds of relatives, which you sometimes did not realize; the day when all wishes come true.
You clumsily shuffled along the road, shaking your back every now and then to adjust the heavy backpack. Things inside rattled a lot, and you tried to straighten your back faster to avoid crumpled packages.
Christmas was your favorite holiday. And although your parents have been working constantly lately, you were glad that you could spend this family holiday with your friends.
You met not so long ago, only about four months ago, when you first moved here. Ambrose turned out to be a very nice and cozy city with friendly and caring people. Mrs. Sinclair, Trudy, and your mom became friends right away— their interests converged on art. That's when I met her sons, the woman suggested that you make friends with them because of their similar age. And it turned out to be a very good idea. The boys quickly became addicted to you.
Once again adjusting the canvas straps of the backpack, you quickly climb the steps requested by the snow and knock on the sand-colored door several times. On the other side, there is a fussy shuffling and dissatisfied grumbling.
"Hello," you say, smiling, when the door swings open in front of you, revealing a view of the timid Vincent.
The guy nods to you and opens the door wider, motioning you to enter. You kiss Sinclair on the cheek of the mask. Brushing off your feet at the threshold, you quickly take off your shoes and leave your backpack at the shoe shelf. Music from an old radio is coming from the kitchen, some station unknown to you is playing old songs from the seventies. As soon as you entered the room, Vincent stood at the stove again, frying something in a frying pan. Whenever Trudy was busy making figures and arranging a museum that she someday wanted to open, it was Vincent who did the cooking and other household duties. Bo was stubborn and didn't want to do "women's" work, and Lester was still too young for such a large-scale activity. The latter was now sitting at the table and skillfully sliced an apple with a hunting knife into neat pieces.
"Morning, Lester," passing by the boy, you leave a small kiss on his forehead.
"Hi, Y/N!" Sinclair winces contentedly, flapping his big copper eyes.
You sit down next to the boy and imperceptibly take a piece of apple from under his nose, throwing it into his mouth contentedly. There were already several plates and cutlery on the table. Vincent loved order, so he prepared everything in advance.
"Where's Bo?" you ask, rocking slightly in your chair, for which you get a menacing look from Vincent.
"Mom asked him to help at the museum," Lester replied, "He should be back soon."
You notice how Vincent turns off the stove and turns his whole body in your direction. The guy takes a notebook lying on the table and quickly scribbles something.
"Have you had breakfast?"
"Yes," you say shortly, when Vincent closes the notebook and puts it back, "Honestly."
Sinclair puts the hot omelette on plates and pushes you a bowl of oatmeal cookies. You happily take one piece. Vincent sits down across from Lester and lifts the mask just enough to see his mouth. You frown, noticing the edge of his deep scar.
"Hey everyone," it was heard from the threshold, when the front door slammed shut with force, "Oh, honey, and you're here," Bo walks past you, lightly touching your shoulder in greeting, and sits down next to Vincent.
During brunch, you watch Lester and Bo actively negotiate. When their plates are empty, you decide to step in.
"Since everyone is here," you babble happily, clapping your hands to attract the attention of the guys, "I want to give you gifts a little earlier than planned, do you mind?"
"Of course not," Bo abruptly pushed away from the table, "I'm all for it, babe."
Bo winked at you playfully, to which you rolled your eyes. Vincent signed something, and you looked at Lester. Your sign language was not yet good enough to understand most of the phrases, you barely remembered the words of politeness. That's why you've always relied on little Lester at times like this.
"He said: "Why are you doing this so early?"", Lester explained, innocently blinking his eyes.
"What's the difference," Bo frowned, "Sooner or later — the main thing is that she gave."
You didn't comment on the elder Sinclair's words, but just got up from the table and went to your backpack resting in the hallway. When you came back, the brothers were already sitting in a kind of semicircle on the floor. Bo sprawled impressively closer to the sofa and grinned in anticipation; Lester, in his usual manner, sat cross-legged; while Vincent tucked his knees to his chest.
You sat down between the twins and put the backpack next to you, unzipping it. You said "Close your eyes" and, as soon as the boys fulfilled your request, you began to take out colorful boxes. All packages had the same color, different sizes. Alternately, you put the gifts in front of them and allowed them to watch. Lester giggled when he saw that his box was the biggest.
"Merry Christmas," you drawled, spreading your arms out to the sides.
The very first gift was opened by Lester. The boy happily tore open the package, scattering the paper around him, and screamed when he saw the cherished surprise. A big stuffed fawn. He had a soft beige body and neat brown horns sticking out in different directions. The muzzle was cheerful, with a big nose and shiny button eyes.
"I knitted it especially for you," you babble, smiling, when Lester looks up at you with an enthusiastic look.
"Thank you!" the boy throws himself on your neck with lightning speed, squeezing your body until the bones crunch; you stroke his back.
Bo was a little surprised when he saw a set of tools under the wrapper. He loved tinkering and was well versed in mechanics; the fact that you remembered about this hobby touched the guy a little; his lips curved in a slight smile.
"Well, thanks, babe," Bo grins, patting your hair.
You're pouting a little. All the time spent in the morning combing this tangled nest has gone to waste. You are dissatisfied with blowing off a few strands that caught your eye.
The last person to open his gift was Vincent. The boy very tenderly unwrapped the package, not trying to tear it, as if stretching and savoring this moment. You watched the deft but careful movements of his fingers with burning impatience. Finally, Sinclair took off all the paper, removing it from the side, and looked down at what he saw. A large set with colored pencils. Exactly the one that the boy looked at with undisguised envy in the window of an art store about a month ago. Did you remember that? With slightly trembling hands, Vincent takes the box and turns it in his hands. There were several more drawing pads under it.
Vincent looks at you, and you see the trembling gaze of his azure eyes in the slits of the mask. Such unbelievers, but at the same time grateful. You crawl up to the boy and hug him tightly, nuzzling his neck. Vincent lets out a ragged sigh.
"Merry Christmas to you, boys," you congratulate them once again, seeing the boys' satisfied smiles.
"So why did you decide to give it to us so early?" Lester asked, clutching the toy to his chest.
"Oh, that," you awkwardly fix your hair, "Well, my parents decided to leave. To another state. We'll leave tonight. So I thought I could have some fun with you now."
There was an oppressive silence in the room. You were afraid to look up, but you could feel the disappointment on the boys' faces. Your heart was painfully squeezed in your chest, from which you gritted your teeth with a creak.
"Will you come back?" Bo broke the silence.
"I don't know. Dad was offered a job in another state. Mom just said I wouldn't be able to see you."
You looked at each of the boys in turn. Vincent's head drooped, Bo's brows furrowed, and Lester's lips tightened into a crooked thread. The elder Sinclair sighed heavily.
"We'll be waiting. All together," he looked at you from under his brows, "Just try not to come back to us."
• Vincent loves sweets; but, often, Bo takes most of the goodies. That's why you put an envelope with several edible bracelets in one of the donated notebooks. Bo will probably consider them girly and will not take them away from his brother.
• You have been knitting a fawn for Lester for about five days; the boy is very happy with your gift. Your relationship is like a brother and a scary sister. He is always ready to rely on you; Sinclair is glad that he has such a caring person, unlike the same brothers (in particular Bo).
• Trudy adores you. You could say that in these few months she began to perceive you as her own daughter. You even know where the spare keys to the back door of the house are.
• Bo always tries to impress you as a self-sufficient high school student. He saw his father's old magazines with tackles, seduction and other materials not for children, so he decided to train on you. He didn't notice how he fell in love.
• Vincent is a good cook.
• Most of Vinnie's drawings in the new notebooks are you. He will paint your portraits for many years after your leaving.
#slashers x reader#thomas hewitt#thomas hewitt x reader#brahms heelshire#brahms heelsire x reader#lester sinclair#lester sinclair x reader#vincent sinclair#vincent sinclair x reader#bo sinclair x reader#bo sinclair
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Theodore Nott Headcanons
Dedicated to this lil request here 🫶🏽
©️ obsessedwithceleste. all works posted here belong to me and should not be reposted or copied in any way or form.
It’s no secret that Theodore Nott had a rough childhood
Between witnessing his mother’s death at a young age and having a particularly ruthless father, Theo learned to be quietly reserved early on
1000% Theo is an introvert
Despite being seemingly closed off, he’s extremely observant and good at reading others and picking up on things quickly
While he may not be the best at deciphering his own emotions, he’s able to sort through others’ easily
This makes it easy for him to be rather manipulative because he knows what makes other’s tick and how to go straight for the jugular
He may be distant and off putting in the beginning, but once you get close, he’s a clingy bastard because he doesn’t let many people get close, so once you make it there he’ll basically hold you captive forever
He’s also stupid smart
(Canonically he’s able to re-create an illegal time turner after they were all destroyed in the department of mysteries so//)
And this makes him a bit of an arrogant asshole
Looks down on people he thinks aren’t as smart as him
He definitely thinks that he knows best and can have a “my way or the highway” type mindset
Probably has some type of gifted kid™️ trauma and a crippling fear of failure
Anyway, he’s super intelligent and witty and has the potential to do really well in classes
But he has a nasty habit off skiving off with Mattheo Riddle
Who happens to be his best friend along with Lorenzo Berkshire
A lot of people think Theo is the “mother” of the group, or at least the one with the most impulse control
They’re wrong
Theo is the one that Mattheo goes to with his dumbass ideas and Theo’s response is generally something along the lines of-
“Absolutely not you tosser. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right”
Queue Mattheo’s initial plan- only methodically planned out to cause maximal amounts of emotional trauma for the Hogwarts population
Theo and Mattheo are also a chaotic duo on the quidditch pitch
Theo is a chaser
Making the quidditch team in his third year is one of the only times his father showed a hint of satisfaction with the boy
Being on the Slytherin quidditch team, he’s often labeled a preppy jock
And Mattheo does help him break out of his shell more
But he’s a nerdy lil book worm at heart and likes to be holed up in the library most days
Theo also has quite the reputation of being a ladies man with rumors about his escapades swarming the student body
But really they’re just that- rumors
Lorenzo is more of the openly flirtatious pretty boy, and Mattheo certainly knows how to make his way around which is perhaps why people think Theo would be the same way
But he isn’t one to really form physical attachments- emotional or not
He prefers to fly under the radar
He may have had a fling or two, but isn’t one to kiss and tell
He has a hard time entering a real relationship
Mostly because when he first realizes he’s caught feelings, he’s convinced he’s actually just ill and stays in bed pretending to be sick
But once he comes to terms with things, he’s one determined wizard
Makes sure everyone knows that you’re off limits (possibly before you know yourself)
Definitely goes to Enzo for advice on how to woo you
With varying degrees of success
King of subtle PDA (just enough to mark his territory)
Confident and secure in his relationship, but also still jealous as hell
Will hex the living shit out of someone for breathing at you the wrong way
Finds it amusing when you get jealous though
But will shut it the fuck down as soon as he picks up on you being actually upset (probably embarrassing whoever it is in the process)
Not always the best at communicating his feeling cause he’s emotionally constipated af
But tries because he knows he doesn’t want a relationship like his parent’s
Okayyy I think that’s all for now, but I have a feeling these will grow and evolve with time sooo- ongoing (?) idk
#slytherin boys#theodore nott#slytherin#harry potter universe#theodore nott x reader#theodore nott fic#theodore nott fanfiction#theo nott fanfiction#theodore nott headcanons#theo nott headcanons
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Creator Spotlight: @chaaistheanswer
Hi everyone! I am Clara, but you can also call me chaa! I am a digital artist based in Auckland, New Zealand, with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Media Production. After graduating from uni, I moved out to pursue my art career and I’ve been a freelance digital artist ever since. I love concept art, especially character design! Creating characters influenced by my love for fantasy is what I live for. Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed my art! And thank you, Tumblr, for this opportunity!
Check out our interview with Clara below!
Did you originally have a background in art? If not, how did you start?
I specialized in art in high school and have a bachelor’s degree in Creative Media Production from Massey University with an animation pathway. For our thesis film, which I worked on with several of my classmates, I took on the role of producer, art director, and concept artist. Our short film was featured in the Wellington Film Festival Terror-Fi in 2020. After graduating, I went on to become a freelance artist, but my goal is to work for the gaming industry as a character concept artist. Ever since I first picked up a pencil, I knew I wanted to become an artist!
Have you ever had an art block? If so, how did you overcome it?
Art block is quite common among artists, and unfortunately, I too have fallen prey to the affliction. I have several ways of overcoming art block: watching movies, playing games, reading, or going out for a drive with my sister. These are just a few things I love to do to help keep my creative juices flowing!
What is one habit you find yourself doing a lot as an artist?
I tend to obsessively research about completely unrelated topics while I draw. I find learning new things helps improve my concept designs, especially in creating backgrounds for my characters.
Over the years as an artist, what were your biggest inspirations behind your creativity?
Video games and anime were my biggest inspirations! Anything with a captivating story that’ll send me to the edge of my seat, and loveable characters. I’m particularly drawn to high and dark fantasy.
How has technology changed the way you approach your work?
Technology has made a huge impact on us artists over the last few years. I used to draw a lot on paper, but since getting a tablet, I find myself searching for the undo and redo buttons and even trying to zoom constantly while I draw on paper. I used to only draw for myself as well, but after posting my art online, I now have an audience to whom I can share my art. Because of this, I am able to earn a living doing what I love by creating illustrations for clients.
What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?
I am very proud of this recent commission I’ve done for a client! Fortunately, the piece turned out exactly how I wanted it to look, and my client was very happy with the result. I am also in the process of working on a Webtoon, which is going as smoothly as I hoped it would be before its re-release!
What advice would you give to younger you about making art that's personal or truthful to your own experiences?
The best advice I would give my younger self is to never hold back! Try not to think about the negatives of creating and sharing art that you believe in. Embrace vulnerability, and don’t be afraid to dig deep into your own emotions and experiences. Always explore, and don’t limit yourself to your own bubble. And most important of all, stay true to yourself! Stay true to your values and beliefs, and never compromise your own authenticity for the sake of pleasing others. Your art is a reflection of you as a person.
Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?
@yuumei-art has been an inspiration to me since my early Deviantart days. I admire how she uses her skills to focus on environmentalism and cyber activism. @nipuni is another inspiration of mine. I found her when I was in the process of recovering from Dragon Age Solavellan hell. I admire how she manages to capture faces well while also sticking to her style. Her paintings are so beautiful and very pleasing to my eyes!
Thanks for stopping by, Clara! If you haven't seen her Meet the Artist piece, be sure to check it out here. For more of Clara's work, follow her Tumblr, @chaaistheanswer!
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[ID: tags from @batgirlissue64. In all caps, it reads: prev yeah!! The cycles of martyrisms. And!! Do you ever think about Bruce post Jason's death, getting that haunting feeling that he suddenly understands his parents' decisions with a gravity he never thought he would? END ID]
LEE YOU ARE KILLING ME PLEASE
the man who falls - secret origins (1989)
[ID: two panels of Martha Wayne. In the first panel she's blocking her son as she gets shot, her arms up and purse falling in the air. In the second panel, Bruce is staring horrified as his mother collapses near his dead father. The mugger has his back to the viewer and is looking at Bruce. END ID]
#THE PAIN OF LOSING A PARENT ONLY OUTMATCHED BY THE PAIN OF LOSING A CHILD#AND WHEN YOU EXPERIENCED BOTH. WHEN YOU SEEN THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT COIN. WHEN YOU GET HIT WITH THE GRAVITY AND WEIGHT OF#THEIR MURDERS FROM THIS NEW PERSPECTIVE. NO LONGER BEING THE ORPHAN BUT BEING A FATHER.#JUST AGAIN. RIGHT BACK TO HAVING YOUR ENTIRE WORLD DESTROYED. EVERYTHING IS THE SAME BUT NEW. DIFFERENT. WORSE.#NOT HAVING THE CHILD LENSES TO LESSEN THAT IMPACT OF IT AND THE DEAD WEIGHT OF THE CORPSE IN YOUR ARMS AND GNAWING IN YOUR HEART#like god !! grief !!!! what a fucking bitch !!!!!#im someone thats gone through A LOT of it in both my childhood years and at my current age and#it changes in so many ways. as a child these feelings are always overwhelming and your world caves in and you try to make sense of it#with the limited knowledge and life experience you have. versus as an adult you understand the nuances of it more and how grief will#just implant itself in daily things and you HAVE to go on. you cant collapse with them. your world is broken yet you HAVE to keep going#because the world wont stop despite it. you have to keep your head above the water and learn to actually deal with it#because if not you will drown. the bleeding becomes an ache and that ache settles into your bones#some days are better than others. yet each day will be followed by another. time doesnt hold still like how it used to#now tying that in with bruce experiencing his parents dying and how it changed everything about him. how theyre always dying in his head#vs carrying his sons corpse out the rubble and how he has to go save another's man child when he couldnt save his own.#the orphan perspective in processing all these traumatizing events shifting and maturing to the grieving and hurting parent's.....#i am just worddumping and thinking outloud in my tags and being annoying bdjfh#but god having THE biggest event that defined you being viewed in that new perspective and light & with new grief to influence the old...
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Concerned Sentences, Vol. 7
(Concerned sentences from various sources. Adjust phrasing where needed)
"Is everything okay? You seem annoyed about something."
"I don't know why you do this to yourself. You know it doesn't help anything."
"You need to stop reading the news. It's bad for you."
"Doing something rash isn't going to bring him back."
"No, you're not doing this! You're going to kill yourself!"
"I can take care of myself just fine, alright?"
"I appreciate this concern, but I'm not like you, alright?"
"Sometimes, I think you might have a penchant for self-pity."
"There are always unintended consequences to everything we do."
"Yearning won't make it happen."
"When exactly was the last time you had a psych evaluation?"
"You can't save everyone, no matter how hard you try!"
"There's only so much that you can do, and you've obviously reached the limit!"
"I just don't understand why you work so hard to be alone."
"To deny who you are is much more painful than confronting what you hate about yourself."
"You don't need to trust them, but you do need to trust me."
"You're desperate and scared, and desperate people make mistakes."
"Battle scars are not always of the body."
"Denial can be a very powerful thing."
"Things like this - all things, in fact - have consequences."
"You're lonely, and sometimes loneliness turns to bitterness."
"Sometimes there are scars than cannot be seen."
"The truth is, despite you're abilities, you're still just one man."
"How are you really in the grand scheme of things?"
"She's using you, just like all the others."
"Listen, I really want to keep this between you and me. Why don't you start by just telling me the truth?"
"You're a bit out of it tonight."
"You can't hide out here forever, you know. You have to go home sometime."
"This must be a lot for you to process."
"I've known you for a decade. I know your behaviour patterns and how you think. You acted very out of character today."
"You seem like you're making up for lost time."
"You've got to learn to be the hero of your own life again."
"Actually, I don't smoke. Neither should you."
"Why should an accident happen? Are you concerned for your safety?"
"This hero stuff is only going to get somebody hurt."
"You like fighting, don't you?"
"I came as soon as I saw the morning paper. I thought you might need a friend."
"There's something not quite right with you today, and I can't quite put my finger on it."
"You need to decide what you want. Stop dwelling on what you can't have."
"Do you need a hug?"
#rp meme#rp memes#roleplay meme#roleplay memes#rp prompts#roleplay prompts#sentence starters#assorted;#concerned;
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Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.
You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.
Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".
So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.
So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.
In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.
Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)
But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.
And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.
So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.
I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.
And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.
I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).
Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.
Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).
Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.
And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.
Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.
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Hello. After drawing webcomics for 10 years and making about 10,000 pages of comics, here are some things i have learned/observed in that experience..
1) making comics does not get easier.. Not really
Making comics is a tedious and slow process and with so many different facets of the experience to learn - you’ll never run out of stuff to learn or weaknesses to work on. I’m not saying this to discourage but to just give the frank reality that it really takes a lifetime to understand. Be patient with yourself and try to set healthy expectations.
2) Read your own comics after making them.
I don’t know if this is as important to other people as it is to me, but I do think that sometimes its easy to not re-read your own work and just go from your own memory of it, or maybe you’re tired of looking at it because of all the flaws. I don’t personally get sucked into the “rewrite/remake” cycle that I know is common with comics, as I sort of just accept things as they are, but re-reading my work does help me see where I have come from and where I need to go to next. I personally don’t like to lose sight of that, and I think re-reading helps ground me in the planning process of my work and gives me a better perspective on all aspects.
3) A lot of comic advice should be taken with a grain of salt, because its the person talking to themselves. (including this)
I see a lot of advice that never would have worked for me, or just simply wasn’t something I was ever going to follow. “Dont start with your big epic long stories”! Is a common one. I don’t think that’s bad advice exactly, but how many young artists are going to listen, especially if they’ve never told a story in the first place? Yes, the advice to start small and build yourself up with experience sounds great, I’m sure people do it, but if you’re an artist you’re probably not gonna be that responsible. And for me, when i tried to do this with eggshells, my house burnt down and i kinda gave up comics for a while because i lost a lot of work.
Writing short stories is still something I struggle with, its just not easy for me. I have gotten better at it but i don’t think that makes me less of a comic artist because I haven’t gotten good at that particular format, or that I jump around on my projects. Is it more impressive to have more completed work under your belt, sure. But I also think that.. Idk.. what is the advice actually saying, because with that one it sort of feels (often times) as a warning that you’re setting yourself up for failure/embarrassment by attempting a comic like that. I don’t know how to tell you this, but comics are gonna be embarrassing no matter what you do and there’s no guarantee you’ll be more successful/not experience failure by avoiding your passions. Something to think about anyway.
4) Don’t draw every leaf. Unless you really want to.
I’m the kind of comic artist that kind of doesn’t care about the art as much as the whole package of the comic. When i see a very impressively drawn panel/page, with laborious detail that is well drawn and maybe even colored ect.. That usually is kind of, I guess, a turn off for me as part of the reading experience. The thing is, when i encounter that, it usually signals to me that someone has poor planning skills for comics. It says to me that comic is probably not going to see its end or that artist is overworking themselves in an unnecessary way, that ends up concerning me about how they’re doing. Because i know how hard it is to draw comics. When an artist phones things in a bit, or has a limit on how much they work on a page, its a relief for me to see! because I understand they have healthier boundaries and expectations, and the art itself usually is less stiff too. This is all an overgeneralization, but I think with a lot of webcomic artists we are usually drawing a comic for the first time ever, so it makes sense we want to do our best and try as hard as possible - that just usually isn’t the smartest plan to put all the stock in the visual department. This also kinda frustrates me to see because most comics (professional or not) will also (generally) not reel the art in ever or make a more simple style. Generally I see it always trying to outdo itself, which leads to burn out. I personally only work about 1hr on each page i draw, that hasn’t changed in the 10 years I have been drawing comics, but i used to spend hundreds of hours drawing detailed lineart for eggshells and it didn’t even read well and i’d be disappointed with the results, feeling more lost with my goals than ever. PLEASe.. Just draw worse, its usually better looking in the end too. (because you wont have the experience to judge visual clarity until you’ve been drawing comics for a while imo..)
5) Don’t draw ahead, draw those inbetweenies.
“Inbetweenies” are the pages for the “boring” ones. They are also usually the most common KIND of page. Its the pages that are necessary, but “inbetween” the action. The impact moments in a scene, ect. You gotta draw them. They’re always gonna be there. They’re the pages where maybe, the character is walking somewhere, thinking, ect. The after impact from an action.. There’s a million examples, but hopefully you’ll understand what I mean when I say they’re both necessary pages/panels, sometimes so mundane/redundant, but also required for telling the story.. As a comic is a sequence of images. This is why, the previous advice is also important IMO- because if you really want to “draw every leaf” - maybe you should save that energy and effort for those impact moments that you want to impress the reader with.. And not for the inbetweenies, which are the foundational support, but also not the most important moments. If you conserve your energy a bit, the contrast OF that effort will also pop more. I personally find it funny when I put more effort into a page and end up tricking my readers into thinking I got better at drawing, when really i just have been able to draw better and only save it for moments like this instead of always.
Also, when I say don’t draw ahead.. I mean I draw each page at a time before going to the next one. I have no idea if this is an unusual practice or not, and I know a lot of people will draw their chapters/episodes/whatever in sections like sketch/ink/color/ect.. But I personally draw and finish page by page, unless its the thumb/sketch stage. Even then, i don’t go ahead much. I think that you can control flow/pacing better by doing chapters all at once of course, I see that as a benefit. But i also think that makes things very overwhelming and can also result in a lack of flexibility if something isn’t working. No matter HOW much planning you do- comics are always going to have an aspect of IMPROVISATION with the result you get in the end. There are way too many factors in play to be in complete control of all of them and always know the result of the reading experience. SO for me, this technique is easier and has been something that continues to get me to working effectively. Plus, rumiko takahashi said that’s what she does. And i think she has some of the best visual flow/compositions in comics. So that’s what I do.
I could write more personal advice or rules that i follow..but I think those are the ones I find are the most important to me anyway. Of course, comics are a strange medium and not everything that works for me will work for you. That’s all for now.. Bye bye…!
Oh by the way, my comics are here: feastforaking.com nastyreddogs.com https://kosmic.itch.io/ Support me on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/kosmic
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some tips for writing flow
i've had a lot of comments complimenting my writing style, most of which don't know how to explain or describe what they like about it. i never really knew either, but i've been paying more attention to the way i write things lately, in the hope of being able to understand and explain it.
a lot of this is "based on feel" with no hard and fast rules, but there's also very tangible techniques you can hopefully work into your own writing, if that makes sense? idk is this anything—
1 - sentence beats, and alternating them.
this is probably the biggest thing in my writing. i've realised my sentences can be measured in beats, based on their length and how many sections they can be broken into. the pattern changes often, and i don't have a concrete rule in how i fill a paragraph (again, i've only just put words to any of this), but it's probably the most important part of my flow. let's have a look:
1 beat: • this is probably the biggest thing in my writing.
2 beats: • i've realised my sentences can be measured in beats • based on their length and how many sections they can be broken into.
3 beats: • the pattern changes often • and i don't have a concrete rule in how i fill a paragraph • but it's probably the most important part of my flow.
it looks like a favour certain patterns, the only real "rule" i use is to construct a paragraph with various beats, and never put two side by side. whenever i'm struggling with my flow, it's usually because i've put two of the same beats next to each other and everything feels either stiff or crowded. i rarely put two side by side, unless it's for specific emphasis.
the other exception are paragraph breaks: these are a pause for breath, and allow us to reset the pattern. i often start and end my paragraphs with single beat sentences, and it doesn't feel like they're running on because there's that lovely breath between them.
2 - short paragraphs
the rule we learn in school is that new paragraphs are for new ideas. convert this to prose, and we can consider "ideas" to include the character's thoughts, new narrative tangents, and physical movement around a scene.
one of my biggest struggles reading "bad" fanfic is when paragraphs are too lumped together. crowley will walk into the bookshop, see aziraphale across the way, wander over to a shelf, select a book, then pour himself a drink all in one big chunk. i can't parse that. there doesn't have to be a new line break for every new action, but grouping the relevant ones together and breaking in between broad motions (i.e. walking across a room, acknowledging a character) can help ease readers through the scene.
paragraphs are a breath, not only for sentence flow, but for processing the action within a story. similarly, purposefully keeping multiple actions confined to a single paragraph can make them feel quicker, while breaking them up into multiple paragraphs will slow down the pacing (even if the amount of detail describing each action is the same). included some examples because i'm struggling to explain this one
3 - mixing metaphors
this might sound less flow related, but i used to struggle with it a lot as a young writer, and paying more attention to it has definitely helped clean up my flow and writing overall.
i love a good analogy, but it can be easy to get carried away, and this can bog down the prose. my personal rule is that i can get silly with my metaphors (see: the mon chéri magnet), but i can only use one at a time. no talking about the magnet in aziraphale's chest and the angel and demon on his shoulder within the same scene.
if i'm getting silly and long winded with a metaphor, i also try to limit the length of it to one or two paragraphs. paragraph 1: set up the metaphor, establish the analogy. paragraph 2: come back to the reality of the scene, then mention the metaphor once more to link it all together. if i'm feeling cheeky, then i mention the metaphor again ONCE in passing, a couple of paragraphs or even chapters later
the magnet was a fun one, because i kind of flipped how i would usually present a metaphor, with the long winded tangent coming last instead of being the set up. and even though i used the metaphor 3 times, it felt like 2 because the set up was really just a planted seed for what i'd be mentioning later in the theatre. referencing the "whispered curse in the dark" also helped tie the scenes together and keep the analogies neat and tidy in our heads
meanwhile i got a little more carried away with the space metaphor in postcards (i feel like there's probably a 4th and maybe even 5th mention during the bookshop scene), but each one was blink-and-you'll-miss-it brief that didn't slog down the prose.
4 - avoiding repetitive pronouns
we're all going to struggle with this, and i don't have a secret hack for avoiding a wall of "he this, he that, he then," and i honestly try not to beat myself up over it too much. but there are two things i check to make sure it's not getting too repetitive:
1. looking within a paragraph
apparently everything revolves around paragraphs and the breath between them lmao. i don't have a strict rule like "use the character's name once per paragraph, then 'he' for the rest" or anything like that, but it's in that kind of vein. i simply pay attention to one paragraph at a time to watch for too much repetition, and if i notice it's been one or two whole blocks without switching from 'he' to a name, i'll chuck one in to break it up.
2. paragraph starters
this is so picky. and i don't know if it does ANYTHING, but it bugs me when i'm writing and i notice every paragraph starts the same way. maybe it has no effect on the flow at all. but i like to make sure my paragraphs aren't starting with the same "he" "he" "he", and that forces me to go back and switch around the pronouns in recent sentences, so the next paragraph can flow on more smoothly.
5 - use interruptions appropriately
edit: sneaking this one in here as a final thought! i just want to mention the use of em-dashes, semicolons, footnotes, and parenthesis mid-sentence. it's common to favour one in particular, but each have spectacular uses and can add miles to the pacing and flow of your prose.
em-dash (—) interruptions, cutting off dialogue— pausing to make a point — like this — in the middle of a sentence.
semicolon (;) helps with making lists and continuing a compound sentence that doesn't really link with 'and' or 'but'; when you want to pause, but a new sentence would break the flow of things.
footnotes (¹) these should be optional additions to the text imo. you should be able to keep reading without looking at the footnotes and not lose an ounce of story. they're additive, not necessary.
parenthesis ( () ) a great way to interrupt yourself (less sharply) than with em-dashes, include longer pieces of information (like what you might put in a footnote, except more crucial to the narrative that you don't want people to miss!) and adding sass (lol) and tone to your prose.
#*taps mic* IS THIS ANYTHING#includes some bnf teasers :)#note: ADDED A 5TH POINT AT THE END AT THE LAST MINUTE#writing tips#writing process#fan fic#fan fiction#fic#rat writes#good omens fic
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Ghost trick spoiler thoughts I had while working on my most recent drawing
GT:PD SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT
Thinking about the process of Yomiel learning how to control his body again. I mean, when he took his body back from the morgue in-game, he got up and walked out pretty naturally. But what if it didn’t go so smoothly? He’s spiritually puppeting his own corpse around, and it’s probably a very different experience.
There’s a lot of bodily functions that we don’t necessarily *think* about; blinking, breathing, walking, etc.
So essentially what I’m picturing is Yomiel’s detachment from his body resulting in him being really uncanny (at least at first)
He zombie-walks at first, having to remember to keep his torso upright while manually moving one foot in front of the other. Even as he gets better at it, there’s still a stilted nature to his steps; never able to keep a steady walking rhythm.
Regaining his voice was the trickiest part. He had to learn what shapes to manipulate his throat and larynx into to formulate each sound. I feel like he’d sound like something out of the Mandela Catalogue, or similar horror content where an inhuman thing tries to mimic human voices. Once again, he gets better with practice, but there’s still something…off about him.
He never blinks, and why would he? He’s got the sunglasses on, so there’s no need to put in the effort. He never breathes, which most people don’t really notice unless they’re paying attention.
There’s a video game called Who’s Lila? that I heard about recently from a Jacob Geller video. In that game, you physically click and drag your characters facial features to form expressions, often to unsettling effect. I imagine it’s a similar process for Yomiel’s face. And without the ability to feel pain or damage his body, I can only imagine what expressions he could contort his face into without those limitations.
I like Yomiel as the cool, calculated, menacing presence that he is, but I also think the concept of what he is lends itself to the potential for uncanny imagery.
ANYHOOT; I just think it’s a cool concept to think about. Plus, there’s the added tragedy of his own body becoming such a foreign object to him, having to relearn things that were once second nature, and still not quite attaining a convincing visage of humanity. More traumatic experiences for Yomiel, why not.
If you read all that, thanks! And I’d love to hear any thoughts y’all have on the concept.
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What's the difference between nonverbal and nonspeaking?
I have posts about nonverbal autism, but none about the single topic "What's the difference between nonverbal and nonspeaking?" So this will be a handy linked blog entry for my pinned post.
All summed up: There is no real difference, it's a matter of preference. Please ask us what term we prefer and respect that choice. It's a sensitive topic because there has been a lot of discourse around it ☝🏼
Alright. First things first: Nonverbal is a medical term not exclusively for autism. In the medical field, "nonverbal" simply means that your speech is extremely impaired or fully absent. Yes, there are many meanings of "nonverbal", but this is what doctors mean. Did you know that there's nonverbal cerebral palsy too? (External link)
But let's focus on autism. Autistics who can't speak are said to have "nonverbal autism".
Discourse #1 - the mind is intact
There are many reasons why some autistics never learn to speak. One reason can be non-acquired apraxia (i.e. not due to a stroke, TBI, Alzheimer's, etc.), which leads to limited motor control. If it affects the mouth and throat only, individuals "know what they want to say", but their mouth doesn't cooperate. They either struggle to get words out clearly/don't get anything out at all, or their mouth seems to have "a mind of its own" - they say things they didn't want to say. If apraxia affects the whole body, this goes for actions too. Either they can't make their body do what they want to do (e.g. they want to point at a ball but their arm won't move) or their body does things they didn't want to do (e.g. they want to point at the ball but instead their finger points at the floor).
As you can imagine, this situation is really unfortunate when a therapist wants to test your intelligence. You can't get words out, so they ask you to show them what a triangle is. You know what a triangle is, but your body does its own thing. You point at the circle instead of the triangle, and your therapist concludes that you don't understand simple instructions. They assume intellectual disability. You're misunderstood all your life and everyone thinks that you can't learn to communicate, that you don't understand language. You're frustrated.
Luckily, at some point some people realised that these autistics CAN learn to communicate and in fact are very capable and understand language just fine. That was when apraxic autistics talked about this misunderstanding online. They talked about how they were mistreated and underestimated, that people should always "presume competence". They coined a new term for themselves: "Nonspeaking". In their opinion, "nonverbal" doesn't describe their experience and makes it sound like they can't learn to read or write. "My mind is intact, I can make intelligent choices about my life!" (External link)
Sounds good? Well, it may be surprising to know that most of us on Tumblr who can't speak either don't mind being called "nonverbal" or actively prefer nonverbal over nonspeaking. How can that be?
Discourse #2 - the mind isn't always intact
There are other reasons why some autistics never learn how to speak. Most of the time, in contrast to "nonspeaking self-advocates", we do struggle to understand language and our mind is not "intact". We have language disorders, brain damage, slow processing speed, often ID. The latter is why most of us aren't on any social media. My ability to communicate isn't average for us, it's an exception!
When the "say nonspeaking" wave reached Tumblr, I think at first most of us who are on social media liked that idea. We spread awareness about how terminology is a preference thing, that "nonspeaking" is about overcoming years of mistreatment and about empowerment. That some of us think that "nonverbal" sounds like we can't communicate and can't understand language, when that's not true. But, as I said, most autistics who never learned how to speak aren't online and therefore can't participate in this discourse. "Nonspeaking self-advocates", on the other hand, are on social media and love to participate. But they are a minority among those who can't speak.
The result? At some point it got a little ableist. The mindset "We are intelligent and understand language" turned into "You guys with ID and language disorders make us look bad" and THAT turned into speaking over and ignoring us. Or harassing even. "You have to call yourself nonspeaking, otherwise you're a bad person!" and so on. We responded "No, you say you're intelligent and your mind is intact. Good for you, but ours isn't. You erase our existence and we don't relate to your experience. We don't identify with your word." It was worse on other platforms, at some point the term "nonspeaking supremacist" was coined similar to "aspie supremacist".
Discourse #3 - free interpretation of a term that's NOT loosely defined??!
And last year, a really strange thing happened: Speaking autistics somehow mixed up the "To me personally, nonverbal sounds like I can't learn to communicate and don't understand language at all" and incorrectly informed others "So there's a difference between nonverbal and nonspeaking. Nonspeaking means that you can't speak and nonverbal means that you also can't communicate in other ways".
They took it as a fact and informed us that we "by definition" actually are nonspeaking because we can communicate via text. 🤦🏻♀️
I repeat: Most of us who can't speak aren't on social media. So this misinformation again spread everywhere because we weren't enough, we weren't loud enough. We can't ever be loud enough because, exactly: Most of us aren't on social media.
Now we weren't harassed by fellow nonverbal/nonspeaking autistics, nope, NOW suddenly speaking autistics from ALL over the world tried to inform us that we shouldn't call ourselves nonverbal - NOT aware that by now "nonspeaking" got a slightly ableist connotation in the process 😵
Here's an example of how wild things were last year...
And that's not enough: Suddenly everyone assumed that autistics who can't speak due to apraxia MUST call themselves nonspeaking because that's where the movement started. No, even apraxic autistics sometimes prefer "nonverbal", and they have every right to do so!
As things are now...
So, that's why most of us on Tumblr prefer nonverbal. Oh, and by the way:
Whenever someone isn't aware of this and makes a "To me, nonverbal means..." post, all I think is "Oh, not again, please not again", and I see this war flashback meme in my mind's eye 😅
Every "To me, nonverbal means..." post that ends with "And that's why I prefer nonspeaking" has the potential to get loud and start this harassment and misinformation all over.
Every new post that tries to define nonverbal and nonspeaking could start this all over again.
Because nonspeaking supremacists are very very loud. And speaking autistics are usually very very uninformed about us. And most nonverbal/nonspeaking autistics aren't on any social media.
#long post#thanks mum for helping me write SO much at once - it's been hours and I have no headache 😍#...yet 😅
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Peat's acting is stupendous and it's hurting my feelings
I need to talk about the bedroom scene and the fight that preceded it because it felt like I was having a mirror held up to me and looking at my younger self and in doing, so I've come to love Tongrak as a character even more than I did before.
I talked about the expressions already but I just cannot get past this one. Rak's eyes are so dead and he looks so tired in a way that I understand so deeply. He knows what's about to happen. He screened Prin's call earlier precisely in hopes of avoiding it but she showed up anyway.
I do have to acknowledge that a lot of my interpretation and feelings about him and these scenes are very much a product of my own experiences, but believe me when I tell you that having a family as fucked as his and having to deal with relatives like this drains you. You fight back because you have to, not because you want to. You don't go seeking the bullshit but somehow it always seems to arrive at your door.
I know exactly how he must be feeling because I've felt it. Because I've fought back and made sure my mask was firmly in place for as long as I needed it to only to break the second I could turn my face away.
I'm impressed that Rak didn't run from Mut and that he didn't start crying on the way to his bedroom. That powerwalk he did instead though? I know it all too well.
To Rak's mind, Mut has already witnessed far more than Rak ever intended for him to. That fight was nasty. It poked at so many wounds, touched on so many painful, intimate things about Rak's family and about him. Prin wanted to hurt and humiliate him and she succeeded.
I can confidently say that if someone I cared about witnessed that happening to me, the last thing I would want is to break down in front of them on top of it, so I completely understand why Rak's first instinct was to put distance between him and Mut. You know the breakdown is coming and the only thing you want is to have it in private.
I know people feel some kind of way about Rak's refusal to let Mut into his bedroom and essentially shutting him out but Mook tells us in episode 4 that no one is allowed in Rak's bedroom. This isn't just about Mut. Everything we have learned and seen of Rak so far tells us that he's a person who needs a safe place to hide. A place where he can close the door and know he won't be intruded upon.
Sure, it's his house and ideally he would have the freedom to break down wherever he wants to inside of it but given that Mook comes and goes pretty freely, he doesn't really have that luxury by his standards. There's always a chance she'll walk in. And he certainly doesn't have it now that he's no longer living alone.
So he goes to hide in his bedroom so he can process and feel what he needs to.
And when Mut comes after him, this happens. Mut pushed at that boundary out of genuine care and concern and he's not wrong for that. I've been on his side of this equation too and the impulse to help in whatever way you can is impossible to resist, even if all you can offer is a meal.
But I also understand Rak. God do I understand him. That need to be alone, demanding to be left in peace, lashing out when someone won't despite it being with good intentions. When you've been pushed to your limit and you know a breakdown is coming and that there will be shrapnel when it does, the very last thing you want is for the people you care about to get hit with it.
Like @bird-inacage said in their post, Tongrak is a caged animal at this point. He's feeling vulnerable and defensive and he lashes out. He doesn't want to, he tries to stop it, but it ends up happening anyway.
And he regrets it. He does. The way I see it, he couldn't bring himself to knock on Mut's door both because he'd exhausted all his nerve in the fight with Prin and because a part of him was probably worried that he'd be rejected if he did. When you lash out, especially when you don't mean to, there's always a worry that you've done irreparable damage to your relationship with whoever was on the receiving end and that you won't ever be forgiven.
Sometimes it really is something as simple as a sticky note that brings you to tears and has you sobbing into your dinner in the middle of the night.
The note and the meal are proof that Tongrak hasn't been rejected, that he's still cared for despite the way he reacted after the fight and the things that he said. We know that Mut wasn't going to reject him but Rak needed to know that as well.
And now that they had their moment in the dressing room and the issue of the money has been talked about, we're paving a way forward for Rak to be able to express what he feels without using it as a defense mechanism. He still will, and he will hurt me many more times before we're done, but we're making progress.
#this was very rambly but i needed to get it out#because i cannot hug tongrak or my younger self#peat is making me feel everything#tongrak#rakmut#love sea#love sea the series#meta
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hi Justin! just want to say I ADORE ii and it's one of my favourite shows out there; actually inspired me to start my own!
which is a lame segue into my question- do you have any advice for someone wanting to make their own show?
That's so exciting!! Art makes art!
Oh golly uhhhh. There's so so much to say in so many different departments. So. I'll keep it broad and of course anyone can ask more specific questions haha.
My go-to advice tends to be for creators to start as small as possible early on. Even if you aspire to create projects that are huge-in-scale down the line. So much about becoming a great artist involves moving through the stages of your art (whatever type it may be!) from start-to-finish, every step of the process, over and over and over again. So say in show creation, idk if you plan to be hands-on in every department or if you have a lot of help, but that could mean breaking down stories and outlining, writing, recording, constructing audio scenes and boarding, character and prop and background design, animating, music assembly, mixing, finalizing and editing, etc, over and over again. Obviously not every step may be involved in your project depending on what your goal is, but whatever it is that you do, do it sooooooooo many times.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with jumping in and making your first project something say, movie-length, or something immensely complex in scope, I do find it can, for many (not all) be limiting when it comes to learning a lot of fundamental building-blocks in craft. As well, I see a lot of people get lost in an overwhelming project, trying to focus on quality>quantity right out of the gate. But spending the majority of your time just on adding some extra polish as opposed to running through the whole process again and again can only do so much for you. Obviously, a mentality of quality>quantity is great once you have a strong baseline understanding of production. But again, I think it's a huge plus to work on shorts and teeny-projects to start.
Since the above is pretty dry, I'll add an additional fun one. I've found that a lot of newer artists will toss away the concepts that make them joyous in hopes that they can instead create something that fits an objective perception of "professional." Nothing wrong with that, but I strongly advise artists of all levels of experience to toss everything they've love about the world and other media into their work. Their favorite genres and tropes, the stupid inside jokes that make them light up with their friends that they can invite the audience in-on, adaptations of stories that have made them cry. Create the things YOU love to experience. It's fine to let go of what you think the audience wants. Cause that's not easily guessable. But what YOU enjoy is something certain to you. It's sorta like how they say, it's better to go to the gym and do an suboptimal-but-fun workout that keeps you coming every day than a perfect workout that leads you to quitting. Share your joy with the world, and someone will resonate!
Be silly, be cringe, have fun!
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I think the biggest culture shock I experienced in Finland so far is around friendships, as well as the area where I learned a lot of valuable things about myself. I might not be entirely right about this as I've only been here for a short time, but those are my main take-aways:
(under the cut to not block ur tags w my english rambling)
Trying to build real friendships takes time, much longer than in my home country. It is relatively easy to get in contact with Germans in my experience, especially if you live in a bigger city and speak the language, ESPECIALLY if you are a student and just starting out in a new phase of your life. You will naturally hang out frequently if you match well and spend a lot of time together. It might take a few meetings before people will invite u to their home, but generally there's not much distance as soon as the ice is broken.
Here I feel like people are much slower and more reluctant to open up. But that doesn't equal rejection, it's simply a slower process and you will still be able to tell the difference between being rejected and being on the path of friendship. In Germany, it's usually a lot more fast paced and there is a small window you have to catch to get into tight friendgroups. If you miss it, no chance of ever going back, vibe gone chance gone. Also people who might have found you interesting could lose interest if you wait for too long (meaning usually a month or so) to get back to them.
I actually realized that this way of socializing stresses me tf out. I much prefer a more laid back approach where you can get to know each other without time limitations (of course prerequisite is that you have the time). It is a much more sustainable, thoughtful and respectful approach to someone elses time. You're not treated as disposable, but rather as a person someone actively chooses to get to know.
Likewise, if people feel like they either do not vibe with you or if they already have a very busy social life or life in general, they will let you know and don't pretend to have time or like you. This was quite a new thing to me and felt a bit cold, but I actually really appreciate it now, as it's saving you from stressful, draining interpersonal connections. It also made me respect some people immensely, because they know their own self worth and boundaries quite well.
It made me reflect upon my tendency to be a people pleaser, and the strong yearning I have to treat my own relationships the same way as I've experienced it here. I've grown so tired of superficial connections that are placeholders for true, fulfilling friendships. I used to think being lonely was the worst thing in the world. It kind of is still awful, but what's worse is being surrounded by a bunch of people you don't really click with or can rely on, which leaves you lonely as well. I do think letting go of this is something that will slowly seep over into my own life, as it is so freeing.
I also intend on staying, or rather coming back when I've finished up all my business back in Germany (I am not really rooted to the city I live in). People who I've told about this recent development were very worried if I would be able to be happy in a country that is (generally) much more reserved when it comes to social interaction, as I need social interaction regularly. I don't really think it's that big of an issue, as I think I can balance out people's passive approach with my more active one in the beginning. I have a high social battery, so I'm fine with interacting with a few more people, before people get truly comfortable to hang out on the regular. Yet I also prefer quality interactions over a bunch of small talk meetups I don't care about. I also still have my core friends who I talk to regularly on the phone, and this has been a tradition for years already before I came here.
What I am immensely struggling with right now is trying to make sense of all the connections I made in the past 10 years. This is the 6th city I lived in the last decade, and the 8th move. All my relationships feel so spread out and scattered. I am holding on to some solely because those people were there when I moved somewhere new and I didn't have anyone else. Like back in school, when I was friends with people because they were the only ones there. It's all a bit confusing and painful right now, as my values and perspectives are changing. I think there are a lot of people moving from the friends to acquaintance category right now. I'm completely redefining friendships for me at the moment.
#is it appropriate to tag this with#suomipaskaa#also finnish people seeing this and agreeing or disagreeing or wanting to add on to this#please do tell#I am curious about this and open to hearing various perspectives#as this is my limited generalized opinion after living here for a few months
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