#i really should have been working
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Totality
Fiona made me write an eclipse fic.
Scully gently shut the door behind her, the crisp blue duffle with leather handles in her grip; the go-bag she always left in her car, just in case. It had been a just-in case, Mulder had to admit. They’d had to fly to Idaho with no time to pack, and had worked a grueling five days straight on a series of local murders with only enough time to catch maybe four hours of sleep a night and pop into a shabby JC Penneys once for more underwear. They were both overworked, overtired, and their suits–of which each of them only had two–were overworn; ripe with the scents of stale sweat and stale coffee and stale eau de morgue.
Scully looked weary as she handed over the bag to where Mulder stood in front of their rental car’s open trunk.
“How far away is the airport again?” she asked, squinting up at him as he deposited her bag next to his and slammed the trunk closed.
“Only about an hour,” he answered, mentally girding himself for what he was about to tell her. “But, I uh,” he went on, “pushed back our flights to this evening.”
Her posture visibly slumped. “You…what?”
Mulder bit his lip, hoping he hadn’t made a horrible miscalculation. He knew she wanted nothing more than to get home, slide into a hot bath and pull the covers over her head for three straight days. She’d certainly earned it.
“Hop in the car,” he said, moving to the driver’s side door. “I have a surprise.”
He was exhausted himself, his nerves shot. He was running on caffeine and cortisol, his skeleton rattling with every step. But this…she would like this. He was sure of it.
“Mulder,” she said wearily, a whine in her voice that he’d rarely had the opportunity to hear. But she said nothing more and reluctantly dropped into the passenger seat, leaning her head against the headrest and rolling it to look at him beseechingly after she’d clicked her seat belt on.
Mulder turned the ignition and the sedan growled to life under them.
“It’s a good surprise,” he assured her.
She only sighed, and they bumped out of the hotel parking lot and onto town’s main drag, the sun shining on the shabby line of depressing suburbia. Ten minutes and five stop lights later, Mulder pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a dying mall, the tires popping over stray gravel and broken glass. He cranked the wheel and the car swung over the cracked asphalt in front of a defunct Frederick & Nelson, turning in a reflex angle and stopping when the sun shone in full through the windshield. He killed the engine.
Scully opened her mouth to say something, but he reached into the inner pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a couple scraps of cardboard, handing one over before she could voice a complaint.
It took her a moment to register what he was handing her.
“Eclipse glasses?” she said, sitting up a little in her seat.
Mulder had found the black polymer lenses next to the cash register at a local coffee shop that morning, the bespectacled co-ed working it disinterestedly telling him he could have two pairs for a dollar.
The upcoming eclipse had been in the news recently, but he’d mostly ignored it–back east it would only be partial at best, the path of totality only hitting the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada. Four murders and a rough case later, he hadn’t given it another thought. Until that morning in the coffee shop.
“We’re in the path of totality here,” he explained. “We’ll only get it for about a minute and ten seconds according to the local newspaper, but I thought you might like to see it.”
A look Mulder couldn’t read crossed over her face and he swallowed.
“The next full eclipse over North America won’t be until 2017,” he went on nervously. “I can probably change the tickets back if you-”
Scully reached out and put a warm hand on his arm, cutting him off.
“I’d love to see it,” she said delicately. “Thank you.”
Despite the dark smudges under her eyes, the soft smile she gave him quieted any lingering apprehension about his decision, and he gave her a smile back.
“I figured we could get on the hood, lean against the windshield,” he said.
“What time does it start?” she asked, popping her wrist out from her sleeve to look at her watch.
“In about five minutes,” he grinned.
Scully fingered the glasses and then opened her car door. Energized, Mulder did the same.
“I ask you to avert your eyes,” he said drolly, putting a hand on the warm hood of the car before awkwardly lumbering his way on top of it, the metal plane thumping loudly under him as it dented to accommodate his weight and then popped back into place.
Scully, opting to watch, looked on primly.
Once he was settled, he held out a hand.
“Milady,” he said, and she settled her warm palm onto his, grabbing on while she put a foot on top of the tire and dexterously swung herself up next to him.
“Nimble,” he complimented her, reluctantly letting go of her hand.
She shrugged and leaned back gingerly against the windshield, mindful of the smear of desiccated bugs across the face of it.
“Here, wait,” Mulder said. He sat up quickly and peeled off his suit coat, rolling it into a ball to tuck behind her head, pillow-like.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
“Don’t mention it.”
Mulder could feel something ineffable pass between them. He coughed once awkwardly, and then pressed his eclipse glasses to his face, the sharp cardboard edge digging into the skin behind his ear.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Like a dork,” Scully said, delicately donning her own, in, Mulder hoped, solidarity.
She looked nothing like a dork, Mulder thought, eyeing the sharp lines of her face. She looked like a space girl, sleek and silver, an otherworldly beauty.
He cleared his throat. “So do you.”
Scully’s face was tilted to the sky and he turned to follow her gaze.
“It’s starting,” she said, her voice a little irreverent.
Mulder looked at the sun, dark through polymer lenses of the protective eyewear. The moon was just beginning to edge itself in front of its celestial sister; incremental, pendulous.
Lacking the pillow he’d given Scully, he raised his arms up and bent his elbows, resting his head back against cupped hands. Beside him, Scully breathed serenely. He caught a whiff of his fusty clothing and hoped his jacket had fared better in the olfactory department than his shirt.
They were silent for long minutes, watching the gradual procession of moon across sun. The day was bright but began to take on a verging luminosity, and Mulder raised his glasses up to take a look at the dark shadow of the car under them, which took on an off-putting sharpness against the dusty asphalt.
“What do you think ancient peoples made of solar eclipses?” came Scully’s voice, a little dreamy. “What must they have thought?”
It was an invitation to oratory. A small gift. Mulder smiled.
“Cultures throughout the world had wildly different theories,” he said, and Scully turned her head towards him, her eyes hidden behind the dark lenses. “Most of them, obviously, wildly incorrect.” Despite the fact that he couldn’t see her eyes, her look was encouraging.
“The sun being devoured was popular,” he went on. “From the Norse mythology of Sköll,” at this she smiled. “To Asian cultures like in Java and Vietnam that variously had creatures or monsters swallowing the sun. It was commonly held in ancient China that a celestial dragon attacked and devoured it. Here in the Northwest, the Pomo people’s name for a solar eclipse is ‘Sun got bit by a bear.’”
The bear, Mulder mused, was widening its jaw. It was getting gradually darker, and he could feel the temperature start to dip. He put his glasses back on and looked back at the sun.
“The Inca and Ancient Greek believed eclipses were a sign of a wrathful and unhappy god.”
Scully hummed. “The word ‘eclipse’ comes from the Greek word meaning ���abandonment.’”
“Right,” Mulder said, “though I think I prefer mythologies of a more solicitous nature.”
Scully raised her glasses to give him a look. “Solicitous?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Mulder couldn’t help his grin. “In Australian oral traditions, the moon falls in love with the sun and chases her across the sky. If caught, the sun plunges the world into darkness. Medicine men recite magical chants to combat the evil omen. In German mythology, the sun and the moon are married. One rules the day while the other the night. When the moon is lonely, he’s drawn to his bride and they come together to create a solar eclipse.”
She looked at him frankly. “You know a weird amount about eclipses.”
“I like to impress you.”
“Is this why you were so late getting back to the hotel this morning? Research? My coffee was cold.”
“But are you impressed?”
“I wasn’t impressed by the coffee…”
Mulder gave her a long look, the odd light turning her hair a hazy copper wool.
“I like the German one best,” she finally said, plunking her glasses back on and leaning back to gaze at the sky.
“Me too,” Mulder said.
More long minutes of silence between them with the occasional car whooshing past on the roadway. Mall security drove by them slowly and Mulder gave the rent-a-cop a small salute. It was impossible to see Scully with the glasses on, so he kept taking them off.
“You’re going to permanently burn your macula,” Scully said from beside him, not taking her eyes off the welkin of the heavens above them.
He ran his eyes over the brushstroke of freckles on her nose. She was goddess-like; as luminous as a star. If he was the moon, he’d chase her through the sky, too.
“You lose enough photoreceptors you won’t pass your next firearms recertification.”
He was tempted to tell her that in all the years he’d known her, her shine hadn’t damaged anything but his poor, lonely heart, but pulled his glasses back down and looked to the sun. It was nearly covered.
He sighed and felt her hand reach for his. His heart beat hard once against his sternum.
“You can take them off during the totality,” she said, squeezing. “And should. It’s supposed to be incredible.”
“You ever seen it?” He asked her quietly. She was still holding onto his hand.
“I missed the one in ‘79.”
“Me too,” he said.
Around them, the air had taken on a distinct chill and the light shining down had grown metallic. Next to the car, in the long shadows of the trees along the edge of the mall driveway appeared little crescents. The colors on the mall’s signage dimmed and brightened. Mulder sat up and pulled his glasses off and blinked, shaking his head. The world felt odd, he couldn’t properly adjust his vision. It felt decidedly like the moment after someone takes your picture with a bright flash.
Scully still held his hand and squeezed it.
“It’s called the Purkinje effect,” she said calmly, pulling off her own glasses with her other hand, and looking around with a wondrous smile. “As we near totality and the light dims, our eyes transition from photopic vision–which uses the retina’s cone cells to deliver full colors and fine detail–toward scotopic night vision, which relies on rod cells to detect objects in low light. When the light’s intensity dims in an eclipse, colors with longer wavelengths like red will look darker as the cones become less active. But rods are sensitive to shorter blue-green wavelengths, and those colors will appear to shine. It’s not just you. It’s the rod and cone cells in your eyes trying to make sense of the sudden dimness.”
Scully put her glasses back on and looked up at the eclipse. Mulder felt a surge of something so like love that his eyes burned.
Scully pulled in a sudden inhale of breath.
“The totality,” she said, pulling off her glasses and gazing up. “It’s starting.”
Mulder raised his eyes to the heavens. The world was dusk-like, the stars in the top of the dome of the heavens were winking on. In the bushes nearby, crickets began to chirp.
The eclipse itself was like nothing he’d seen before outside of a big budget movie. The moon was utter blackness, but along the upper edge of the eclipsed sun was a hot pink half-ring that erupted into a single bring spot along the edge of the moon’s shadow like the diamond in a giant engagement ring formed by the rest of the sun’s atmosphere.
And then the flaming plasma of corona as the moon reached complete totality. Second contact. It was a living thing. Streams of white light danced around the ring of the black moon. Scully gasped in pleasure and Mulder couldn’t help but exclaim: “Wow!”
He pulled his eyes from the eclipse itself and looked around. Along the entire horizon, all 360 degrees of it, was in full, brilliant sunset. Everything else was the darkness of post golden-hour. He turned toward his partner and locked eyes with her. Her smile was brilliant, and she held his gaze for only a moment before canting her face back to the eclipse itself.
“This is incredible,” she said breathlessly.
He had found, as the years of their partnership wound on, that their job turned them into ecstatics, subject to mystical experiences. This was perhaps the most transcendent of them all. He would remember the moment forever.
“It is,” he agreed.
A sharp flash, and Scully squeezed his hand.
“Third contact,” she said. “Put your glasses back on.”
He did as she asked, and they leaned back and watched in silence as the moon continued its journey, as the sky relit and the nighttime animals calmed, as the world came back to itself.
Eventually, Scully sat up. The light was still odd, seeming to come almost from inside her, and she lowered her glasses and leaned in to him. For a heady, divine moment, Mulder thought she was about to kiss him, but instead she pressed her cool lips to his cheek, her hair falling down to brush along the skin of his jaw.
“Thank you, Mulder,” she said, and then straightened, the cool air rushing to fill the space she’d just been.
“You’re welcome, Scully,” he said, his voice a little rough. He lowered his glasses slowly and watched her slide off the hood of the car, watched her stretch and smile to herself; a Mona Lisa grin gently stretching the planes of a face with the same faultless symmetry of the celestial bodies sliding across the sky.
#the x files#fanfic#my fic#ficlet#prompt#msr#please forgive the scientific/historical/canon inaccuracies#i really should have been working
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the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.
three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.
two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.
their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.
one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.
i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.
i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.
and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?
you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.
a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.
someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.
#writeblr#warm up#this is longer than i wanted i really considered removing that part about myself and what i went thru#but i think it really fucking bothers me that EVERY time i talk about being an artist#ppl assume i just like. had the skill and ability to drop everything and pay for grad school.#like sir i grew up poor. my house wasn't a safe space. i gave up a FREE RIDE TO LAW SCHOOL. for THIS. bc i chose it.#was it fucking hard? was i choosing the hard thing?? yes.#but we need to stop seeing artists as lazy layabouts that can ''afford'' to just ''sit around and create''#when MANY - if not MOST - of us are NOT like that. we have to work our fucking ASSES off. hard work. long and hard work#part of valuing artists is recognizing the amount we sacrifice to make our art. bc it doesn't just#like HAPPEN to us. also btw it rarely has anything to do with true talent.#speaking as someone with a chronic condition i hate when ppl are like u have it easy. like actively as i'm writing this my hands r#ACTIVELY hurting me. i haven't been posting bc my left hand was curled in a claw for the last week#this isn't fucking luck. after a certain point it's not even TALENT. it's dedication & sacrifice.#''u get to flounce around and do nothing with ur life'' is a narrative that is a direct result of capitalism#imagine if we said that about literally any other profession.#''oh so u give up 10 yrs of ur life to be a doctor? u sacrifice having a social life and u get SUPER in debt?#u need to work countless hours and it will often be thankless? well i wish i was that lucky''#we should be applying that logic to landlords ONLY#''oh ur mom and dad gave u the money to buy a house? and all u did was paint it white and rent it? huh.''
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Unsolved Mysteries.
[First] Prev <–-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#lan wangji#jiang cheng#wei wuxian#Spoilers: It was Wei Wuxian the whole time!#Once again this one was on the chopping block but I saved it for just a better comic flow.#Admittedly I do have a critique of the pacing here. Namely that we really should have ended the flashback when WWX fell.#And then gone back to present time for a bit - or even go to a different flashback.#The sense of time passing isn't as strong as it *could* be.#We get *told* three months pass and that they've been looking for WWX. But to the audience it's been...15 min.#Less than seven minutes if you count the flute playing.#This guy when through a whole aesthetic and persona shift in less time than it takes to walk through a corn field.#Guy who listened to less than half an emo album and dyed all his clothes black. And jorted all his jeans.#Timeskips can be sudden and work out just fine! I personally feel like this one would be stronger with better pacing.#Feel free to disagree with me!#In case anyone is wondering why JC and LWJ are still holding hands: 1) Haunted house episode.#2) I needed to practice drawing hand holding at some point. Might as well get the rough and sloppy ones out with these two.
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Transcript:
Machine, I just got back from therapy.
I accept I am not papa's special boy, but I'm still going to kill you.
Audio source
#gabriel ultrakill#ultrakill#authors note: we are not *so* back. but posting should be happening again?#but the almost daily posting will never come back#sorry for disappearing. nothing bad happened i just did not have the chance to post anything#part of the absence was cause i was out of state#and i now have someone sitting behind me most of the time at work#so i can only edit when there is no one behind me and i happen to have no work to do#also the whole uh not really getting new clips thing. i mean there have been a few. but things will run out if i kept posting daily#so it will be slow
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Happy Fathers Day, I'm finally on time for something!!! I don't have that much flavor this time though folks. just sweetness. that's it. hope that's cool, never too bad.
if you think this is anything but platonic then no, plz. away
#maybe no one gets this but thankfully I like looking at it so that should be enough#sorry if I'm just lathering your eyes in fluff and you weren't prepared#anyway i have some work + projects to wrap up before the end of the month + a whole outfit i had to make in a week#so unfortunately i haven't been able to pop out all of my fanart WIPs now like I had hoped#(and ill lose my photoshop account soon so I really gotta finish those)#soon. soon#fingers crossed#craziness my dudes. life is big#kuroshitsuji#black butler#kuroshitsuji fanart#fanart#sebastian michaelis#ciel phantomhive#o!ciel#dadbastian#digital art#happy fathers day#fathers day#dont mind demon dude he's just trying out some new things.....
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Can we get more of the murder drone x rain world au?
ok
#ive been working on artfight refs and also so i can have the plot in a comprehensible fashion#as much as i love bulletpoints theyre too scattered to work#yeah the yellow lizard is just from the original sketch i really didnt feel like changing anything#and just used it for the ref#its so fanficy and cringe and whatever but we all know what a very unwise woman once said#jcj has a design but no name nor ref. do you even know how little cool words begin with j#and then theres a c inbetween. what the hell am i supposed to do with that#probably misinterpreted some rain world lore for this but i dont care its headcanon now bite me#art#murder drones#rain world#i should probably give this like a special tag if im gonna keep posting about it#will i? no#god i hate character design so much#doll and tessa also have design sketches but you'll have to find me in the right places for those until im satisfied enough to make a ref#oh my god i forgot the lower back spike things on n im gonna do nothing about it except get mad at myself
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Heyo! I'm still currently working on my backlog but I also have upcoming rent to pay this week so I'm opening another batch of comms!
This time I'll be doing pokemon / pkmn OCs in the style of Pokemon Cafe Mix :)
So it would look something like this:
Only opening 10 slots for now! I'll try streaming the process for them as well if I can ^^
Slots are available thru ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/c/0451254ff4
Thank you sm!! 💛💛💛
#I should've done this earlier bc now im pressed for time lol T_T#well... it's mostly bc i've been sketching my remaining backlog#on paper#my neck hurts whenever I draw on tablet / computer so i've decided maaaybe going traditional should help even just a lil bit#my samsung tab is kinda heavy (like half a kilo) so I can't really draw on it at just any position i'd like :T#kinda wish i'd gotten a lighter tab instead 🥲#seriously tho#but anyways!! im opening another batch of comms bc my rent is due this week 🥲#also my bday is next week...... I dont really know if i'll have enough funds by then to treat myself but i'll try to work hard 😤#bam blabs
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holy shit I did NOT realize how popular my "I will remove my teeth, for I want to remain kind despite my anger" quote is. I just googled it for fun to see what would come up, a bunch of people are quoting it not knowing who its from, an artist called Kuma made an album titled that, so bizzare
#also people are misatributing the quote to kuma and the first google result for the quote attributes it to them#which is kind of upsetting but not a huge deal whatever#its cool it seems to have entered culture like that#i get very mixed feelings about those instances where something I made got WAY more popular than i expected and#people are reposting it or using it without attributing it to me#i both feel bad when stuff isnt credited to me but also good that my art has expanded beyond my reach#its out of my control kind of and other people have it now#which IS what i want for my art and how i generally think art should be#but it is also obviously causes some anxiety to lose control and really full ownership of something that is yours#i think also there is anxiety about something of mine being taken by someone bigger than me#since they can just claim it as their own and most people will know them as the origin#not talking specifically about this quote btw just any of my work#ive definetly been thinking about that hbomberguy vid lol#i hope any of this made sense im a little high rn
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swimming pools at night
killer belongs to rahafwabas cross belongs to jael peñaloza rental suits au belongs to me and @psycho-chair
#aughghghh i dunno if i like this one. i feel like a lot got lost in the process and stuff didn’t work out. falls over and dies#i really like everything about killer and how he came out but cross feels off#also i feel like the layout is crazy off too. i don’t knowww i don’t know if i like this one#but i’ve been working on it all day so it gets posted anyway. we ball etc etc#it looks better all blown up and big on my computer#armageddon art#rental suits au#cross sans#killer sans#cross!sans#killer!sans#kross ship#criller#sanscest#utmv#ut au#also yea they’re just full on in their suits. because they’re weird like that /silly/j#and cause the point is they were somewhere else and killer decided they should do this#and also they probably trespassed into someone’s back yard#and and i thought it’d be fun. so#one final comment apparently the lyric that inspired me to do this wasn’t even like. right. it said something else almost entirely wailing#but the caption for this thing stays cause i. don’t have anything else WEEPING
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How To Stop Killing Conversations
Talking is hard. People are confusing. Making friends is difficult, and interacting with coworkers is tortuous.
You want to make friends, you want to reach out, but it's hard and every time you start a conversation it dies, or limps along until both you and the person you're talking to are looking for excuses to kill it and put it out of it's misery so you can both escape the increasingly awkward situation.
As an introvert who has suffered a lot of social anxiety in my time, let me share a few tricks I've learned over the years going through hundreds and thousands of excruciatingly painful conversations until I found something that works. I've kind of distilled the process.
ALWAYS ASK A QUESTION!!!
The first thing is to always leave your partner an opening. You need to let each other talk for a conversation to get off the ground, but it's more than that, really. You need to actively encourage each other to talk. The best way to do that is to ask questions.
Here are two examples of an introduction: Example A
You: Hello.
Them: Hello.
You: Nice to meet you.
Them: Nice to meet you too.
Example B
Y: Hello, nice to meet you, how are you? T: I’m doing well, yourself?
Y: I've been really well. How are you liking the weather?
T: I'm so happy the weather's finally getting cooler, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice season. Do you like lattes?
Do you see how in Example A the conversation wasn’t going anywhere? It just kinda died, because there weren’t any openings for new topics, whereas in Example B, there were openings to keep the conversation going.
But what do you do if your conversation partner is as socially inept as you were two minutes ago and doesn't play along? All is not lost.
Example C
Y: Hello, so nice to meet you, how have you been doing?
T: I'm doing well.
Y: That's great, are you enjoying the nice weather, then?
T: Yeah. I'm glad it's finally fall, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice lattes.
Y: I love pumpkin spice lattes! Pumpkin spice anything, really. I recently got the best pumpkin spice candle at the shop down the road, have you been there?
Even if they don't leave you an opening, you can usually make one. It may be difficult, especially when they don't give you much to work with. This is where having a go-to script is a life-saver--me, I always default to talking about the weather, so when in doubt, you can do that.* The important thing right now is to keep fostering the conversation, so once you bring up the weather, segue into a question. When they answer the question, make a brief comment or observation from your own experience and build off of that comment or observation to ask another question.
"But I don't want to make it about me. Doing that's bad, right?"
This is why that questions are important. If you haven't been asked a question, you kinda have to make it about you, you don't have a choice. But to keep from being an attention hog, follow up your shared experience or anecdote with another question.
Example D
T: I love pumpkin spice lattes
Y: Me too. I had the best pumpkin spice latte the other day at the cafe down the road, have you ever been there?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again, and you aren't taking the limelight. Sharing an experience is so important, you're trying to show that you understand, that you sympathize, that you relate.**
This really is the most important element of being a good conversationalist. You have to keep asking questions.
The one other thing I will touch on is introductions. DO NOT get into turn based combat.
Example E
Y: Hello
T: Hello
Y: Nice to meet you
T: Nice to meet you too.
Y: How are you doing?
T: I'm fine. You?
Y: Me too.
This will kill any possibility of continuing a conversation. Instead, get it all out of the way all at once, if at all possible.
Example F
Y: Hi, it's nice to meet you, how are you doing?
This is good, but this is better
Example G
Y: Hi, nice to meet you, how are you liking the weather?
Don't ask how they are doing, or if you do, before they can answer, follow it up with your placeholder (weather etc.) so they have to say some thing like
Example H
T: I'm fine, and I'm really liking the weather.
or
T: Not so great, the weather sucks.
Either of those options are much easier to work with than your basic "I'm fine."
Usually, if you can get past the introduction, you can get a conversation going. And then, even if you don't end up hitting it off with the person you're talking with, you at least don't leave the conversation feeling like you've died a thousand tiny deaths.
In fact, if you get past that introduction, you may have just made yourself a friend.
Remember folks, basically everyone around you is more afraid of you than you are of them, and in this benighted age no one has been taught conversation skills, so we are all pretty much in the same boat. (Unless you were born an extrovert, in which case we are all deeply envious and would probably kill you if we didn't need you in our sad and lonely lives so much.)
Have grace for one another, and for yourselves because talking with people is difficult.
Go forth, and stop killing conversations.
*If you are one of those awful people who likes to brag about how you hate small talk and only want to talk about important and meaningful things, I have one question: Do you ever have a conversation that lasts long enough to become meaningful? I thought not. Small talk is an important skill. Develop it.
**This is how you deal with sad or difficult situations too. When you want to show you sympathize with someone going through a hard time.
Example:
Y: How are you doing?
T: Not very well. My dog died last week.
Y: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. My own dog died last year and I still miss her a lot. How are you handling it?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again. You aren't making it about you.
If y'all want, next time I can share how to extricate yourself from a conversation.
#formatting is hard sorry#but this is something i've picked up from chatting with THOUSANDS of people on language exchange apps over the last few years#and it's something i taught to some family members recently and i've seen marked improvement in their social skills since then#so i figured maybe it would be helpful to others#i had to learn it all by myself and it was so painful#if i'd had a cheat sheet life would have been better#also lately i have had to be the only one keeping conversations going WITH PEOPLE WHO TALKED TO ME FIRST#because they have no clue how to converse with other people#and it's not their fault#this isn't really taught to us#but its also a lot of work#if you're going to start a conversation you should make some effort to keep it going unless you are going to walk away
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hope you feel better soon!
I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!
#ask#non mdzs#My health journey has been: Hernia -> acid reflux -> Vocal pain due to aforementioned reflux -> chest infection.#I'm terrified to know what's about to hit me next. Please let it be something kind. PLEASE.#The consequence of living with linguists is that you'll wake up with a wacked up voice -#suddenly you're sitting you down in front of a program called something like Praat having your shimmer and jitter levels calibrated.#They gave me a GRBAS of 33012. I have a fun thing called a pitch break where a whole octave just does not exist.#My vocal pain was bad enough I ended up seeing a speech pathologist and that whole experience was super neat!#I learnt a lot about voice - to be honest I might make a little comic on it after some more research. Fascinating stuff.#For example; your mental perception of our voice modulates the muscles of the vocal folds and larynx.#meaning that when you do have changes (inflammation = more mass = lower frequency)#your brain automatically attempts to correct it to what it 'should sound like'. Leading to a lot more vocal strain and damage!#And it gets really interesting for trans voice care as well - because the mental perception of one's voice isn't based on an existing sampl#So a good chunk of trans voice training is also done with the idea of finding one's voice and retraining the brain to accept it. Neat!#Parkinsonial Voice also has this perception to musculature link! The perception is that they are talking at a loud/normal volume#but the actual voice is quite breathy and weak. So vocal training works on practicing putting more effort into the voice#and retraining the brain to accept the 'loud' voice as 'normal'.#Isn't the human body fascinating?#Anyhow; Now I have vocal exercises and strategies to reduce strain and promote healing.#Which is a lot better than my previous strategy of yelling AAAH in my car until my 'voice smoothed out'.#You can imagine the horror on the speech path's face. I am an informed creature now.#I'm my own little lab rat now. I love learning and researching. Welcome to my tag lab. Class is dismissed.#I'll be back later with a few more answered asks </3 despite everything I'm still going to work and I need the extra sleep.#Thank you for the well wishes! And if you read all of that info dump; thank you for that as well!
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I feel like a lot of people mistake comic relief or goofiness for lack of effort or caring by the creator, and that belies a real lack of understanding of like, writing and humor and art in general.
#i'm thinking about how on 4sd travis and sam talked about the work they put into chet and fcg and veth#all of whom have been treated really dismissively in weird ways#and the people who are like haha they're a dumb joke character invariably stan characters with WAY less effort put in#which is fine! you should like what you like!#but you're not grading on effort clearly so stop pretending you are! it's fine!#this is actually this blog's mission statement. like what you like but stop justifying it with blatant lies#hell for all braius is by necessity not the deepest of characters sam clearly cared enough to rewrite his spoiled backstory!#like i find it just. really...suspicious isn't quite the right word but i'm not landing on the correct one#how people jump to equate their personal preferences with thought and care and effort and quality in the absence of evidence#like man it's ok if you did a wine tasting and your fave was the three buck chuck. drink that and live your truth
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hilarious that with each new day that passes a new bit of dirt from JD Vance's past gets discovered and plastered over the internet...it's almost as if this is why presidential campaigns have always announced their running mates well before the convention...so that if glaring issues with a candidate came to light quickly there would be time to replace them on the ticket before they were officially locked in...it's almost as if certain things in political campaigns were done for a reason, donald...because the very same critical failures had happened before...but no i'm sure you and your guys attempt to recreate a fantasy version of history while ignoring all the reasons that history was a disaster will work this time...because you are built different and the 10000th time trying fascism will work like a charm...
#us politics#politics tw#i view the MAGA movement like this:#the conservatives have been desperately trying to jam a square peg into a round hole for a very long time#and they keep trying because one of these times its GOT to work! a very long time ago they heard the hole was more squarelike#so if they just TRY hard enough it will work!#failing to understand that the hole has become weathered and changed over time and the solution they are trying#will never work (if it ever did)#and then donald trump comes along and looks at the square peg#lobs one of the corners off and proclaims 'this is a triangle! THIS will work! I am so smart!'#and everyone around him is like 'whoa! this guy gets it! he's a genius and understands the problem! he's our savior!'#ignoring the fact that the peg is not a fucking triangle. it's just a deformed square now#so its still not going to work. and even if it WAS a triangle it still wouldn't work because THE HOLE IS ROUND.#it's the same damn peg but it looks a little different so everyone thinks its a genius solution that is DEFINITELY going to work#so they're all excited! they're FINALLY going to prove those idiots trying different types of oval pegs wrong!#they were right all along and it just took donald trump to see it! thank goodness he came along!#but that's just it-- he WAS just COMING ALONG. he was just walking by and saw an opportunity. he never spent time trying to make pegs#all he did was saw a crowd and took a chance to break an already failing peg even further#but because the people were desperate and it was different enough it seemed revolutionary#and now some of the conservatives--who can still see that the 'triangle' peg isnt a triangle are starting to look around#and see that elsewhere there have been some who have forced a triangle into the center of the round hole#and these people think well what if we ACTUALLY tried a real triangle?#and it does not matter to them in the slightest that it will never be the true solution to filling the hole#they just want credit for solving the problem#and so they are going to back donald trump and when the time is right put a real triangle in his hand#while the people trying ovals are busy arguing over the right type of oval#and once the triangle has been jammed into that hole...well...#it is going to be really really hard to force out#anyway thats a long and complicated metaphor and i probably should have just put it in its own post aaaaaahgh#long story short dont be a fascist triangle alright
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had a dream i was in a grimdark magical girl yuri setting, so when i woke up i made it real (and bug themed)
bonus details under the cut:
So basically, a small town was secretly holding onto a box containing an evil god, that the local group of magical girls accidentally stumbled on and opened. The thing inside it wasted no time in starting to destroy the world, and for an unknown reason, one of the magical girls even joined forces with it. The rest of the girls managed to beat them, saving the world, but ended up dying from the curse it left on them soon after.
After dying, butterflies girl looped back in time before the box got opened, and decided to keep the box for herself, to make sure its evil influence (box thing yapping at you to let her out) wouldn't get to her beloved friends. Box thing constantly draws in her allies to the town to break her out & tries to convince butterflies girl to please let her out.
Also here's a really rough relationship chart for your interest:
#oc#original character#my art#artists on tumblr#my artwork#drawing#digital art#doodle#scetch#scetched only bc im tiwed and cant be bothered to do refined stuff#theres stuff that i should go back & fix buttt its time to sleep i dont wanna#basically for extra details the small town is also rly shitass (mightve had something to do with beetles girl joining hands with the thing#to burn it down lol)#butterflies girl had a really tragic backstory so she would do Anything to protect the first nice thing she has (her magical girl friends)#box god wants to burn the whole world down in order to create something more to her liking from its ashes#also yeag it might not be the clearest but shes the one furthest to the left on the drawing. the crow one#centipede & katydid girls i will Think About#but theyre probly yuri together in secret from their dogshit town#maybe ill draw them again maybe i wont#also the girls are all young adults & have been working on this line here for a while even before the box reveal
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when your main characters start dating after years of writing so they finally get to be like this
#rare WIP preview from me#this is in like. 10 episodes. lmfao#its been really hard working this far ahead#my editor isnt giving me any feedback and my friends are very busy so it's felt quite lonely#which is fine! for my friends I mean. but its my editors job to give me feedback...#but the webtoon editors are extremely extremely extremely overworked and my series is set to end so I understand its low priority#its not her fault its webtoons fault. however. its still demotivating...#oh well l m a o#I should be much further ahead ngl LMFAO I want like 12 done but I come back in 2 weeks.#we'll see#when I get really stressed out I go full gamer mode#and usually I'll sink like 60 hours (like 5 days) into a game and then I'm good and move on#but this recent game that grabbed me is. its too much actually#bit uncontrollable ngl I think its an ADHD thing I mostly have just quit playing videogames at all#cause its like yeah being stressed cause theres too much work to do is not going to be helped by losing a week and a half to a game...#and yet.#anyways the game is satisfactory#my friend bought it for me and we've been playing together#and our shared file has. 100 hours on it. and we still havent beaten the game#we're close to beating it and it's not like we're rushing or anything#cause its fun to fuck around and zap eachother or whatever#but it's got me doing math. the exact kind of math I love to do. optimization#and its reminding me yeah in another life id have been an engineer#I'm glad I'm an artist but its always weird like yeah this is easily a path I could have gone down#'artists hate math' speak for yourself doing math calms me down! I love math!#I love math and I love business. I'm almost the perfect artist but I hate advertising so. we can't have it all#anyways theyre so fucking cute its sickening. I love them so much. I could cry#WIP#lineart#time and time again
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We ARE going to bring up Captain Amelia. You have good taste! GOOD TASTE I SAY! *aka I just rewatched Treasure Planet and got hit with, "Oh yeahhhhh... that explains a lot!"*
honestly, the Meg/Jasmine/Amelia trifecta tells you 90% about me as a person. (the rest is covered by Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Uranus and, uhhh, I'll stop baring my soul to the world now)
and speaking of Amelia, this is tangential, but like -- there's one Twst comic I have been kicking at for a while where I needed an RSA sports/flight teacher and, uh, well
someday I will wrangle this stupid comic into coherency and she'll get to make an appearance (in the background of a single panel, half-obscured by a tall hat) (but I will know she's there and that's the important thing)
#art#twisted wonderland#twst oc#my plan worked i've tricked you all into looking at my anime catgirl oc#she exists to yell at some rsa boys so she doesn't really have like. a character or story or anything. sorry!#(her name is alexandria north and that is what she considers a sporty outfit. that's as far as i got)#this is the one that is mainly about silver and neige having a mutual bluebird friend and i am having terrible trouble making it not suck#which given some of the stuff i post should tell you something about how it's going so far#(it's just kind of an incoherent mess of ideas at this point. nothing specific just ~the creative process~)#maybe the rest of episode 7 will give my brain the kickstart it needs. depends on how that goes i guess#god. the next episode 7 bit drops in (probably) just a few days.#I'M NOT READY#i have simultaneously never been ready and always been ready#i exist in a perpetual state of impatience
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