#but I... idk... I guess I'm afraid?

[polythymia]

.

[inkskinned]

we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.

"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."

i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.

you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"

i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.

what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.

i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.

"don't make a big deal about this," you said.

this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.

"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.

you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."

the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.

afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."

[smoosie]

Your 3 part series of The South Downs Cottage are incredible!! I keep coming back to look at them, and my mind keeps spinning with all possible outcomes. It would be amazing if you were planning on part 4… is there still hope somewhere?? For the part 4, for THEM??? It’s devastating and breathtaking at the same time. Gorgeous work!

There you go !

nah jk

or am I ?

[theatreofdionysus]

I've been thinking about making an altar when I go to college, but I have a lot of conflicting feelings. I love the idea because I'm very limited in what I can do right now, but once I move into my dorm I'll have much more freedom. But it'll also be very limited still because I'll likely have to hide it in a box to both sneak it out of my house and because I have no idea what kind of person I'll have as a roommate. I just feel very bad about both hiding it in a box as well as having things for three gods in one space instead of having distinct places for all of them.

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[asmoteeth]

GUYS GUYS GUYS

I really miss getting rba art requests and asks in general.... I'm gonna be pretty busy with college homework but

Can you have a spare rba art request? 🙏 Some spare rba art requests?

[noirve]

i honestly can't tell if i like these looks or not lmao. they're kind of camp but they're also kind of bad?

[leslie-redirects-here]

[thepoisonroom]

that post that's like "learning social skills helps with social anxiety" applies to dating also btw

[babykittenteach]

Right so there's little of this I can show on tumblr. Very NSFW. Don't use cake toppers like this.

[sebille]

am I delusonal for believeing that Zenos could come back even tho the ffxiv writers are insisting on him being dead and that we've entered a new chapter of the story where they're leaving ascians and the old storylines behind? Yeah

but you know what? [ puts on my tinfoil hat ] I stay silly <3

[pepperpottes]

is it so much to ask to be able to read my own writing with someone else's eyes and brain

[pparkerized]

you're telling me they're making this harry. this fella, this silly little guy into a villain??

[daisywords]

@ me it's time to stop having a complex about doing digital art "wrong" and accept the influence from your oil painting background as a feature of your style, not a bug

[dwtdog]

yeah considering the state of the dteam's reputations if anyone had serious shit to say it'd probably have happened by now, most likely the people with personal beefs saw the beating punz took and realized they'd get clowned to death if they took their petty squabbles public like that

right like if they come out with it after george and caiti's final statements it'll just be blatantly obvious they're just trying to take dteam down

[justtasia]

MORE, MORE BLOOD PACKS AND DAYLIGHT FINALLY ARRIVED!!!

I feel a huge need to show them soooo welcome in my unboxing/showing off bad financial choices post~! <3

At first photo there's my new purchases, the second shows how it fits into my full DL merch collection:

I'm really happy that now each of my top 5 diaboys (except Shu, but he has some kind of CD cancellation curse that doesn't let me get any) has at least two CDs related to them.

In the case of More, More Blood, I bought the deluxe version, so if you are curious what it looks like from the inside, I put the rest under the cut ⬇️⬇️⬇️

The first thing I noticed about these boxes is that they differ in more than just the covers!

The sand in the hourglass is flowing more and more with each volume. In the case of my dramas it's a little ragged, but with the full collection (or at least less extreme numbers compared) it definitely looks great. Also in place where the box opens there's small family crest which is really nice detail too!

But we're all here for the contents, not just to look at a foil-wrapped box (btw I can't imagine how people can keep this things in their original obi for years. I don't have as much control over my curiosity) so here we go:

As you can see, there are two CDs: the first with the main drama, the second with the ~10-15 minute bonus "Another Story", a tin badge and an illustration card. This card has also a diaboy comment/short description related to the plot of the CD on it's back. (For me the concept is a bit similar to Daylight's "message from vampire", but I feel like those things are more like cool teaser when daylight lettrers are good to read after listening to daylight to make you cry even more)