#don't mean to sound like excuses

[ilikecarsandlike4people]

Hi, just wanted to pop in and say sorry for no art lately. I'm trying to work with my PT to find ways to keep working with less strain. Right now I have a couple of commissions under me and I'm trying to work on those as best I can (I know the wait times are a bit longer right now and I do apologize for that).

I'm trying to get my studies, work and sick leave paper work done, and I'm hoping I can get government aid to afford my meds, since my living benefits will be cut by 80€/month due to government re-working the student benefits act. I am still working somewhat full time at the school and with the children's social services. It doesn't really pay much but the little extra income is necessary right now.

I really want to get back to art, I see all of the wonderful art this community makes and it inspires me to no end. So thank you for sharing all of that.

I hope tomorrow brings more answers, I hope tomorrow is brighter.

Love you all, and hope to see you soon Tuomo

[lazylittledragon]

right now i'm very torn between "taking critique is important as an artist and it's not an attack on me personally" and "people commenting about my same face syndrome under my posts upsets me an unreasonable amount and i wish they would stop doing it"

[mantisgodsdomain]

More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.

Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.

Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.

[youwillfindilluminating]

my pms-addled, type-A brain is like - you know what would make you feel better? creating a document with timestamps of every single one of steve harrington's scenes throughout all four seasons

[reminiscentrainclouds]

You guys ever feel trapped? Yea I'm well-acquainted with the feeling of being trapped.

[girlthativealwaysbeen]

so tired of being a shitty bandaid for my parents' loneliness. like have u ever considered you passed your curse to me and some days i feel so lonely it's like i can't breathe around the emptiness in my chest????

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

okay but

this looks so 70's, it's no wonder i loved them when i was 15

70's vibes have just been with me forever

[claire-starsword]

new post in the shining force tag :D

it's a post being haughty towards other games for sexualizing female characters :|

not to be mean but some people in this fandom are way too bold in looking at the master monks and claiming it's not as sexualized as everything else, especially when the meeting with sheela is also Like That. I understand that there's nothing explicit in the english games but i still recommend some caution about this kinda topic, especially when you wanna straight up brag to other people about it

(actually consider not bragging at all about that! respecting women is supposed to be the goddamn standard and also about caring for women, not to give you a point in stupid fandom wars or whatever)

[langwich]

attention language learners with an interest in art and/or computers!!!

i've been looking to incorporate language-learning into my hobbies, namely digital art, but because i'm not pre-equipped with the right vocabulary to articulate specific aspects of my interests, i end up googling things like 「描き方」 and getting rudimentary articles about how to draw a circle.

i've been using medibang paint pro for about seven years now, and i've been learning japanese for almost three, but for some reason it never occurred to me to change the language of my art software? so i tried it out, and i have a feeling this is seriously going to change the game for me. hopefully this post will help others!

although i'm speaking from my own experience with my go-to art software, i'm sure this can be applied to other software and websites-- like canva, picsart, wix, ibispaint x, word/google docs, or anything else you use regularly for your digital/online-oriented hobbies.

in the past, i've tried changing the language on my phone and social media apps, and while i was exposed to the language outside of my regular learning materials, i found myself not gaining a lot of new vocabulary. i think this had to do with the fact that a) i wasn't studying every button i clicked because a lot of my motions were committed to muscle memory, and b) especially with social media apps, i was too distracted by the addictive elements and content, so that tore my attention away from gaining anything new linguistically.

by contrast, digital art is a slower process, and it involves more delayed gratification; the same can be said for hobbies like graphic design, coding, writing/typing, etc. plus, i'm always learning new things about medibang paint pro and other digital software, so it requires a conscious effort to find, read, and select the right brushes and settings. after all, not doing so would be disastrous :'')

i think that being able to interact with art- and computer-related vocabulary using software that i'm already familiar with is incredibly beneficial. i'm being constantly exposed to the vocabulary-- which will help with retention-- and i'm also learning words through images, context, and my own recollection of each button's location.

the added benefit of medibang paint pro in particular is that it was originally a japanese art software (made with mangaka in mind), so it has a very active japanese art community. the main hub is full of other artists' works and tutorials-- which i skipped over for years until i realized the potential it had for reading practice.

this goes to show that when it comes to looking for language-learning resources, creativity is important! with a more sophisticated vocabulary, it'll definitely be easier to find articles and websites that are more relevant to my interests. i would absolutely recommend that other frequent computer-users try this, and if anyone has any insights to share, i'd be very interested to hear them!

some art- and computer-related vocabulary i found:

取り消し と やり直し -> undo/redo

レイヤーの追加 と レイヤーの削除 -> add/remove layer

ガウスぼかし -> gaussian blur (my favorite tool for lineart)

名前をつけて保存 -> save as...

色相 と 彩度 と 明度 -> hue/saturation/brightness

かかと -> heel (from the high-heel tutorial pictured above lol)

even if it's rare or technical terminology that i might not encounter everyday, it's still interesting to learn :)

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

I'm pretty sure this as a trend is mostly over by now, but would anyone be interested in me doing that evil art style thing? Like would anyone offer descriptors of my art and enjoy seeing me try and avoid them / do the opposite?

I might do that for 400 followers, unless people have other things they might be interested in as a 400 follower milestone thing

[seithr]

Randomly remembered the half-reason i call my oc-verse by the name it has while laying in bed. One-half of the reason i still knew, but I had forgotten what had truly, really cemented it jointly until now

(it was a song from my favourite band I haven't listened to in a while.)

(the song fit so well at the time, still does, that i needed to hold onto it for the main protagonists forever, by partially naming their story in reference.)

Does this explanation make any sense? Does anyone know why I'm tearing up remembering this. Aahh

[thekimspoblog]

Demon trying to feed on my insecurities: "You're a bad driver"

Me: "Of course I am. I hate driving. Going 80 mph surrounded by tons of metal is nerve-wrecking. I try to do it as little as possible. Of course I'm bad at it"

Demon: "You're a bad writer"

Me: "Well that part's simply not true. I never claimed I was the greatest author of my generation, but when I put pen to paper I know what I want to communicate and I usually do it well. If someone isn't impressed with my work, that's unfortunate but they're entitled to their opinion"

Demon: "You're a bad leader"

Me: "Well I don't know about that! I mean there was that one time when... Ok look just because people don't see me as an authority figure doesn't mean... 😠 You know you can be a real asshole, demon!"

[dbphantom]

you know if you guys voted for stretch armstrong i probably would have shut up a lot sooner tonight

[bluehairperson]

I don’t want to start drama but I’ve seen some concerning posts floating around about how distasteful and disappointing it is to see certain creators “support” Dorian and I hate to break it to you guys, but if you’ve ever interacted, shared or created anything regarding The Arcana you are supporting Dorian yourselves.

Being in the fandom alone is supporting Dorian by creating engagement, publicizing the game and being part of the audience they’re trying to target.

And even if you were to delete your whole blog and everything you’ve ever posted to enjoy the original game in private you would still be supporting Dorian by bringing traffic to the app they now own.

The one and only way you have to stop supporting Dorian, if you care about it so much, would be to distance yourself from the series entirely and go join another fandom. Never play the original game ever again and never interact with any fan creation regarding it from now on. 👋

[corvid-language-library]

@ocs-and-chapters dw most of my first week of 2024 was looking for more textbooks for Japanese.

I do love a good textbook! Let us know if you find any you like :) I'm still working with Minna No Nihongo atm (going through all the chapters in order which means recapping some very basic stuff rn, but I can't bring myself to just skip chapter lmao). I have Nihongo Somatome N4 too which is a good overview of N4 grammar, plus Japanese Tutor from the Teach Yourself series, which is... uhh. Well, let's just say I was disappointed.

[statementlou]

OH I really need your opinion about Louis being so emotionally intelligent, I think it's barely even talked about it here

ARE people not talking about it? What a funny thought! As a post-hiatus fan, I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as something of a newcomer, even though it's been years now, so it's weird to realize I've been here long enough to see patterns and trends come and go and come again. It's even weirder the way trends in fandom can be completely forgotten and erased when the boys, in contrast, eternally exist in all times at once, everything they've ever said considered to be equally valid to their current lives whether they said it 12 years ago as teens or just yesterday as whole ass adult men! Anyway my point is, there was certainly a time when Louis' emotional intelligence was discussed a lot, AS IT SHOULD BE. For sure so much when Walls came out it was... those LYRICS!! Yes, without that gift he's still gorgeous and smart and embodies a unique and bewitching gender presentation and has a beautiful and captivating singing voice… I guess there are a lot of other reasons people might like him. But to me the thought of that not being the top of anyone's "why Louis" list is bananas, it feels so absolutely central and necessary to understanding what makes him special!

It's certainly a lot of what makes his songs resonate with people- he's a skillful lyricist, he could craft clever little twists of phrase and metaphors regardless, but it's his emotional intelligence that sets him apart imo. He describes it as honesty, and yes- the willingness to be vulnerable and reveal your feelings is special, but what I don't know if he even really realizes is that for so many people it's not just an unwillingness to open up honestly like he does, it's that they are genuinely unable to identify and understand and name what's happening inside them like that. I think it comes so naturally to him that maybe it can be hard for him to recognize that that experience isn't universal.

I really appreciate that you used the words emotional intelligence specifically, I love that phrase; I think framing it as a form of intelligence is correct and important. It's a skill set that is dismissed as "feminine" and so less important or easier to access than intellectual intelligence, but it's none of those things. And it's a minority of people who, like Louis, are both intellectually and emotionally very very sharp. I'd say it's a reason he was been able to stay such a good person in the face of things that can easily ruin people (being rich and famous from a young age, trauma and loss), and it's certainly what enables him to be so good at his job. It elevates his songwriting above the ordinary, but also it gives him the tools to do the dance of giving the public something to connect with and making it feel like he's completely open and present without actually giving away too much, which would be absolutely impossible without emotional intelligence- if you don't know your own boundaries or can't intuit on the fly what people respond to, it simply falls flat and seems forced. We've been seeing him exercise those skills close up and in person over the last few days in the signings, making everyone feel special and held and like they got a personal special moment without actually telling anyone anything much or going overtime or getting sucked in to any weird interactions! Again, something that would be nearly impossible without those kind of people skills.

It's actually really funny the way the discourse recently (speaking of changing tides in fandom) has been focused on the idea of Louis presenting himself as masculine (is there a relationship between that and the lack of chat about his EI? hm), when I feel like in the past he was the most feminized by fandom, and not because of his mannerisms or look, but because of his willingness to embrace his emotional intelligence- to cry/ talk about crying openly, to share readily about his feelings and be vulnerable, all these things coded as feminine. He himself has said that he doesn't think he's anything special in this regard (or especially feminine, I think is part of the subtext to that) because Northern Brit men are just like that. I'm from the US so I'm not the one to really respond to that, but it seems to me that does contain some truth- I have seen a willingness to cry openly, to talk about vulnerabilities, etc, in other men with public personas from up there- but I think that again, what we're saying is that's he's showing more than just that, that we're talking about his emotional intelligence quotient being unusually high, which is not a regional characteristic, but a personal one.