#i dunno i have problems

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[ratcandy]

had a conversation with my mom and now i'm curious

If unsure, go grab yourself a pencil and compare to these examples:

"Correct" ways to hold a pencil:

(if you didn't know there were names for these, yea I had no idea either until I started looking stuff up lmao)

"Wrong" ways to hold a pencil:

I'm mostly curious as someone who has always held her pencil wrong. No matter what teachers/my mom ever did to try and teach me (pencil grips, elastic bands, etc) it just never worked. I wanna know how universal this experience is hdKJH

(rb for sample size, etc etc, the usual)

[front-facing-pokemon]

[vanlegion]

[sysig]

I think the world is so wonderful... (Patreon)

[whoturnedgravityoff]

i made a soul eater au!! jaiden and roier are like maka and soul, but mariana and slime are just them because i don’t think they fit any roles in the show tbh

[exasperatedoctopus]

Do you ever have a ship that you prefer to look at out of the corner of your eye? Like, reading stuff focusing on them is fun, but there’s a special sort of joy that comes from seeing them do unhinged things at each other in the background of some greater narrative.

[nobody-did-nothing-wrong]

Has anyone else noticed that Ares lines in God Games mirror a lot of Eurylochus doubts throughout the earlier sagas? Especially the line about Scylla, and how it follows Aphrodite’s calling him a coward for spiting the Cyclopes. I just think it’s an interesting series of events. And it does stay tonally consistent - he’s a warrior of the mind. The important thing is looking at a situation and deciding the best course of action based on intelligence, not just killing everything in sight OR being motivated exclusively by lust/love. It’s a fun comparison between Ody/Athena and Eurylocus/Ares.

[eugene-da-potato]

Thinking about possible fanfic/au idea, where Paper after the end of second season decides to leave Hotel for a while to develop his own self-identity outside of his life with OJ, and OJ, living without Paper for the first time in almost a decade, realises how codependent with him he actually became and how much of his mental state were tied to Paper being by his side. Both of them learn to live without one another and find their own separated support systems and when Paper eventually comes back (because, still, all of his friends live here, duh) we're both self-sufficient but still appreaciate each other's positive traits and now are able to form functioning healthy relationships...

Yeah I think about them a lot

[puppypawprintce]

anyone else out there think severus is just a chronic pain haver. i know the dark mark pain is real, but i feel like he might be miserable in more ways than just mentally in other ways

[crimeronan]

I did the equivalent of mentally rising from my bed like a vampire rising from their coffin yesterday as I was trying to sleep as a thought struck me; There's a high chance there's a verse of the PrincessLuz AU where Belos *doesn't* kick the bucket early or pre-story start, and for Reasons Luz and Hunter has to make a run for it from the castle (Belos is about to kill Hunter and Luz gets a good hit in before they book it. Or Hunter walks in on the Nightmare Dinner Scene and they make a run for it. Many options.) and Belos proceeds to spin a heartwrenching, complete bullshit lie how the Golden Guard has lost it and abducted his beloved daughter and who knows what he will do to her. Not directly stated but highly implied that Hunter is now Kill On Sight.

Meanwhile Amity, at undecided rate of knowing Luz+Hunter well but knowing Hunter would rather break his own bones than purposefully make even a scratch on Luz, is watching this all unfold like "uuuuhhh, Doubt™". And if she has the luck of running into them, well she can't kill Hunter! For reasons. And Luz seems to really not want to go back. Maybe one of the scouts she's with is about to hit Hunter and she just- moves without thinking. Knocks the fucker out and oh that sure is a choice she can't take back. Fuck guess she's a deserter now.

At the castle we have the separate but synchronised freaking out of Darius, Raine, and Lilith, who are Losing Their Minds over them being out there and actively being hunted down to be brought back to the saw trap that is the Emperor's Castle. Possible team-up after Darius and Raine see how hard Lilith is spiralling and she lets something slip?? But also laughing over the possibility of Lilith swallowing her pride and going to Eda for help. Maybe with some pressure from Darius and Raine. Eda opening the door to three Coven Heads, one being her estranged sister and one her ex, and she wonders if the appleblood she had yesterday was spiked with something.

MMM YES YES YES EXCELLENT CONCEPTS. poor amity rapid-cycling between "luz is clearly fucking Terrified of belos and i'll be damned if i drag Anybody back to their abusive parent" and "oh titan. i just chose HUNTER over LILITH".... poor girl. im love her.

a while back there was a timeline where luz hunter and vee ran away several years pre-fic-canon... i could see events unfolding here similarly. "okay, we'll be found on the isles, we either have to sneak through the castle portal or eda clawthorne's portal so we can hide out in the human world" <-three people who don't realize Just How Out-Of-Place a group of scruffy obviously unhoused teens will be in suburban connecticut.

[ochrearia]

Only Colder

I don't feel all that good. Again. This will happen often I think when it is cold. Or maybe I'm just stressed. But my body hurts. It's not suffering in cold like YS is but. Something to be said here too I guess, about some things written. But. I don't know. Tired. And I don't have motivation to be a person or. Ask.

BFs in this one-shot: Yourself (YS)

Disappearing without a trace would still be easy. It would. YS knew mentally he wouldn’t be able to do it because his angelic instincts would kick in and actually stop him from choosing to stay gone for too long. He had responsibilities now. It was just a miracle that every winter before this he’d managed to avoid doing anything stupid.

But that was where the miracle ended. YS was no stranger to having shitty winters, because they were always shitty for a cold-blooded being like him. And now there were firsts he had to accept. First winter without his wings to help him attempt to keep warm.

First winter without her.

YS was never really one for Christmas. Or any holidays, really. Halloween was okay, but he didn’t partake in it this year anyway. The holidays in these last two months were off the table though. Drowned out by the constant that was the cloud of negativity accompanying the cold.

It was cold. Really cold. He didn’t like being cold.

But he couldn’t sit here and lie, saying he didn’t think about disappearing in a snowstorm in the middle of the night every once and a while. A thought that got more common when the months of snow actually came around. But now it was ten times worse with what happened between last year and now. Scary how things could change so fast.

YS was cold.

He was shivering under his blankets. He hadn’t realized how much having his wings actually helped during these months in his constant battle against the cold. Now they were gone, and he was realizing the absence of the extra built-in layer was hitting him hard. And he was woefully unprepared for how sharp the cold’s bite was on his scars. Scars that YS never gave a shit about letting properly heal to begin with, so it was definitely his fault they were still raw.

The warmies plushie that Cyber had given him was currently being squeezed to death in his arms. Grasping to whatever tiny source of heat he could, but it was fading fast and not sticking. It was cold. How was he supposed to even attempt to sleep with this shit going on? Cold days he could at least somehow salvage if he was lucky, but cold nights? He might as well get in the grave himself and die. This apartment didn’t have the greatest heating system, it didn’t reach very high temperatures. Nothing warm enough to help.

Her red glow on his nightstand drew his attention. If only he could stop shivering.

“I’m not… I’m not doing it.” YS mumbled in response to her light. “I can’t. I can’t do that. I can’t pull anyone away from their own lives for this stupid shit. Majority don’t even know and I don’t want to have to explain it all.”

Her glowing flickered in frustration.

“It’s the holidays, my dear.” YS let slip- god, he hadn’t said that in so long. He was getting too used to her being like that, as if that should be considered normal. “I won’t pull them away from the people they love during a season like that. I was the one who removed my wings. It’s my problem to fix. Or experience the consequences of.”

He sighed, turning his eyes to the dark ceiling like he’s done so many times before. It never got any easier. Despite it all, sometimes it really just ended up not being worth it. But every time YS had that thought cross his mind, it was immediately drowned by incredible guilt, because how could he ever think that when he had so many people in his life to care about now?

People he was sparing from this. It was some hour of night, the sun had been gone for at least a few hours. They should all be asleep by now, or at least trying. Or will be soon. Didn’t matter, YS wasn’t going to derail that. He wasn’t going to become a burden because he couldn’t handle a little bit of cold.

She was getting even more worried.

“I can’t.” YS repeated with a shake of his head. Even his body was starting to tense to the point of pain, because he was stressed about being so damn cold. But that still wasn’t a good enough reason to be a bother. “I’ve lived through every winter before. I’ll do it again.”

Apparently he had something to prove. There was no benefit to suffering alone, but… he was scared. Paralyzed by his own mind. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t reach out, so afraid of being a bother, or inconveniencing anyone because he needed something. He couldn’t. Couldn’t ask. Couldn’t need. Some things just weren’t allowed.

Like how his angelic instincts would keep him from doing anything stupid and permanent, there was something else in his body that kept him from asking for help.

YS could daydream about what would happen if he did, though. Nice things that he could only hope for. Biff and Beef wouldn’t let go of him until he had to actually pry them off of him, that was for sure. Boyf would probably do that too. Beefer he knew had some sort of water power that involved hot water, YS wondered if he could turn his apartment into a sauna. Or just… lie on top of him in dino form and squish him in warmth- though Beefer may be cold-blooded too. Huh. He’d never asked…

Peacock would indulge him. Maybe pull some silly, sentimental shit and envelop him in his own wings. That would be a nice thought. Bee would probably enable the snuggles too, because most of them were similar in that regard at least. Physically affectionate. Blue as well. Blue… confused him. YS still didn’t understand how someone could just not know they were an angel. Had he just never seen his own wings? Did angels in Blue’s world not have to deal with this cold shit? That would be nice.

Most of them were physically affectionate. But not all of them, probably. YS wasn’t sure. Cyber seemed partial to him, clinging like no tomorrow, but seemed stand-offish with everyone else. BJ he had no real clue about. He was a bird, maybe? And also apparently not really alive? That guy was also confusing. He’d effectively perched on YS a few times but that was all. Not really too much to go off on.

Bash… YS frowned. Bash wasn’t like that for people he didn’t consider close. There were only a few that Bash was close to and he was very much not one of them. He couldn’t force that and wouldn’t. Suppose it sucked to even have a list of his people he wouldn’t ask even if he could. But… He couldn’t rely on everyone, surely. And he didn’t want to burden anyone to begin with. So really, he wouldn’t ask anyone. Can’t.

Hah. Brooke wouldn’t even consider it. Which, in all honesty, maybe he deserved that anyway. YS had hurt him first. Their first meeting was the most disastrous thing possible. He hated existing sometimes, remembering that him being alive managed to actually hurt someone else.

But that was the cold talking, wasn’t it?

Sure. Yeah. The cold.

YS was on his own. That was okay. He hadn’t earned any company anyway. The only company was the cold, and he was trying to get rid of it. So being alone it was.

The warmies had lost all its heat again. It was cold. YS was still shivering, and she was still glowing with concern on his nightstand. Well. Guess he should do something about this, huh?

YS steeled himself for the sharp bite of the air outside of his blankets. It wasn’t much warmer under them, but still something he could feel now being exposed to the open air. Shivering and still trying to conserve any heat in his body, he pushed down frustrated, defeated tears as he brought the warmies with him back to the microwave.

Maybe the twelfth time would be different.

[ezlo-x]

i'll ask here cause i think yall will give me the answer but-

I'm considering upgrading Clip Studio to the 2.0 version. I was looking around, and it said that you're required to have internet to use the program. Tbh I didn't trust the answer cause it was from reddit and going to the clip studio website I was still confused cause idk if they meant the app clip studio where you download assets and such or the art program itself. So i just wanted some clarification on that

[cutiecorner]

[nientedal]

"Zira" "Azi" "Az" SIGHHHHHH

is anybody else irritated at the widespread fandom nicknaming of Aziraphale and fucking nobody else? is that just me? because it really feels like a "oooh [wince-hisses through teeth], no, that's too long and weird. that's too hard. i'm gonna call you This instead" situation, and i do not care for it. it pissed me off when i was writing good omens fanfic thirteen years ago and it pisses me off now. you care enough about everyone else to get their names right, all the unusual demon and angel monikers, but oh no, Aziraphale, oh that's ten whole letters, that's way too long. oh you're not gonna bother to type all that, no, his name is just Zira now.

and like, he's not real, so this super duper does not matter and isn't deeply and incredibly shitty the way it is when it's directed at real people. but it still rubs me the wrong way every time i see it. that's not his name! why is his name not good enough for you to take the time to type out the way you do for everyone else! ugh.