#im sorry if no one wanted to see this. i am posting this while im at my fucking limit. but im okay now. i will be okay.

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[anbaisai]

A bit odd for me to say this right after I posted new art, but I’ve been having somewhat of a difficult time with art lately 💦 It’s not quite art block, but everything I draw just feels a bit… lacking.

The style I use in most posts are a simplified version of my more “standard” and realistic style, which tends to take more energy and time hence I don’t use it for everything. But sometimes it just feels like I’m not challenging myself enough or like I’m slacking off, when I know I can do better. I wish I did more practice & studies in the past so I could get faster at drawing in the more complex style, because it’s quite hard to squeeze out time to do so these days 😔 I really appreciate people enjoying my work, but sometimes nothing can overpower the curse of being strict and having high standards for yourself.

[lordofthesillystraws]

godddd i wanna like. interact with moots but im so fucking bad at it. hello people who consistently like my posts and generally seem to enjoy my stuff you make my day every time i see you in my notifs. thank you!! /gen

have this gif i made from my fave episode :3

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[cherub014]

small masqueraven doodles i never posted bc i got scared lol

[lynxfrost13]

Maybe I’ll finally Wanze post soon

[todayisafridaynight]

i cant explain it but daigo being subtitled to just be like 'you're making me look like i have no balls' feels so illegal and wrong. hilarious but something's off

[jitteryjive]

i need to remake my cup bros ref… both cup and human designs… it’s been almost a year(?) and i’ve developed the headcanons and i would like to share with the class!!! (i wrote thirty tags. Please help me)

[sodaf]

being mentally ill is so cool

[dailynakaharachuuya]

(just some thoughts about things, I think its rather long so you don't have to read ❤️❤️)

[creatively-cosmic]

im twenty four pages deep into a slideshow of trying to document the full timeline of where every pokemon game falls in missing numbers and i havent even started writing notes yet

[obnoxiousarcade]

I have a longing to be understood more than anything else i think

[sorikkung]

people interacting w wgoin in my notes... this would be a rly bad time to say all my writing will probably be on hiatus for the indefinite future huh

[alaea-winters]

I hate. I HATE. I HATE SO MUCH. I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW MUCH I HATE. HATE. I HATE. I HATE. I HATE. I HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE. MY LIFE IS NOTHING. THIS IS NOTHING. EVERYTHING IS NOTHING. EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS. EVERYTHING THAT I COULD HAVE POSSIBLY LOVED IS BEING SYSTEMATICALLY REMOVED BY A SYSTEM THAT I HATE.

(CW, everything past this point is basically a giant political vent)

I hate. I was born to help people. We as a species were made to help each other. We were made to be communal. None of the suffering we endure in this current moment is necessary. It is all constructed. IT IS STUPID. ALL OF IT IS SO UNBELIEVABLY STUPID. NONE OF IT IS NECESSARY. WE HAVE ENOUGH FOOD. WE HAVE ENOUGH WATER. WE CAN TREAT ALMOST ANY ILLNESS. But no. People must starve in spite of there being enough food, massive piles of food left to rot and waste because the people that can afford it don’t want it and the people that need it have no money. This is regarded as normal. THIS IS REGARDED AS NORMAL. I HATE THIS. THERE IS NO MONUMENTAL TASK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO END WORLD HUNGER. WE HAVE THE FOOD. WE JUST NEED TO ALLOW THEM TO TAKE IT. TO ALLOW US TO TAKE IT. WHAT POSSIBLE REASON IS THERE TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO STARVE TO DEATH? WHAT MAKES THIS WORTH IT? WHY ARE WE SO WILLING TO EXCHANGE HUMAN LIVES FOR SACRIFICES THAT THEY DONT WANT TO MAKE. We are asked to sacrifice everything, our time, our energy, even the yield of our work. I WANT TO WORK YOU FUCKING NIXON COCK SUCKING FUCKS. I WANT TO HELP THE PEOPLE AROUND ME. I WANT TO BE A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY. But my job is to stand there at a register and scan items. I am to make sure that every item someone gives me is scanned so that the store knows how much money to charge the person before they leave. In theory, this is a harmless system. In practice? WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH SO MANY GODDAM HOOPS TO GET A STOOL? WHY IS IT NOT FAIR IF I GET A STOOL? WHY NOT GIVE EVERYONE A STOOL? PLEASE LET PEOPLE TAKE A FUCKING STOOL WITH THEM. IT HURTS NO ONE. That job was years ago by this point. I got fired from it just before the beginning of covid. THANK YOU? THANK EMPLOYEES FOR THEIR NOBLE SACRIFICE OF WORKING DURING THE OUTBREAK OF A MAJOR DISEASE? NO ONE HAD TO WORK THERE. THE STORE COULD HAVE EASILY DOWNSCALED ITS OPERATIONS. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaa.

If you had to choose between a country and your son, which would you pick? Would you be willing to let your son be instantly eviscerated for the sake of the country? Would you willingly break your vow to protect him at all costs, even for your own life? For a country? I wouldn’t. I would let that country fucking burn. I want all countries to burn. Too large. Individual humans own too much and wish to lorde over everything. To go against being a communal species and just be alone at the top, at which point they no longer are human.

But getting back to the point, most people I know would pick their son. You would do everything for them. And that is something I admire in humans. In spite of the sheer cruelty of the world, they can still show love and compassion for their fellow man. And yet, in spite of the fact that any one of us would likely let a country burn than give up their son, we are so willing to let thousands of people get bombed. I hate Israel. I will not apologize for hating Israel. It is a colonial power thats NOT choosing between living and killing. No. It is ethnically cleaning a region within itself and calling it a struggle for survival. They are hitler once again, targeting and exterminating the Jew and calling it a war because they fight back. Israel blatantly lies about what is happening inside Gaza, why? Why would it need to obscure the truth? Mistranslating freed captives, the false reports, the cherry picking. Even if most of what Israel said about Hamas was true, which it is not, the course of action taken should be one that stops the bloodshed. If one man dies, its a tragedy, if a million die, it's a statistic. Israel specifically targets population centers, ambulances, and hospitals. Hundreds of men do not get to choose between their son and the country, the country decided for them and it chose itself. Israel makes up the threat of these specific brown people against itself, and uses that as justification for genocide. This does not even consider if its an okay exchange, one life for Israel. Do not tell me you would exchange your son for all of Israel, because you would be too much of a coward to do it. You would never let it happen because you know it's wrong. YOU WOULD NEVER LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU BECAUSE YOU KNOW ITS WRONG. And thats the point. These people, thousands, approaching millions of them, they have everything they fight for and care about taken away from them. 

If a country had to pick between you and itself to die, it would always pick you. The country will eat you and every person inside it and will eat them all whole before letting itself collapse. 

I am so tired. I am too poor to help. I have no possessions of my own. I have no tongue of my own. I only have my anger. My rage. My hatred. My righteous fury over all who have died. The childish desire inside me to save everyone. Because its right. I want to help people. 

What does it mean when people tell you to suppress your ability to care. When they so callously throw away the fact that hundreds of people died for no good reason. What does it mean when you know the reason those people died is because the people orchestrating this not only do not care, they view the victims as vermin to be exterminated. 

What does it mean when it becomes political to not actively support genocide.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

SENDING MY FIRST ASK FROM THE NEW BLOG!!!! i feel like i am sending a letter from a new address... crazy. ANYWAY HOW R U TONIGHT!!!! i hope ur havin a good day!!!! kicking my feet like a teenager at a sleepover rn tell me abt ur day who r the blorbos in ur mind rn what kinda art r u workin on lately how's it going friend!!!

HIIIIIII HI HI . HELLO SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG- i mean catboy cellbit!!! . dude i am. dreading the coming week tbh but it is fine !! we will get thru it we will survive!!! i am so sleepytired but alas i also cannot sleep so i may just have another night of reading and music ahead of me . wah. i hope u are hsving a good night <3 IVE BEEN COMPLETELY ART NERFED TOO BTW. my laptop died on me a couple days ago and while i was able to find a new one affordably it will not be here until the 13th 😔 so no digital art from me for a while. sigh. i DID just decorate my new sketchbook with stickers tho so im hoping that will get my brain in gear for traditional art again. AS FOR BLORBOS. oh . u know. the usuals. vash the stampede. zacharie from off . masky marblehornets (also tim marblehornets) . to name three of them.

[note-boom]

I'm curious, who are your favourite bsd characters ?

Oh, thank you for the ask, Anon! And my fave bsd characters, huh?

Man...I have absolutely no idea because it changes based on my mood and which arc I'm currently screaming my head off over AND what characters suddenly decide to be deeper than they actually are in my head. But to be concise, why don't I just give a run down for favourite character(s) per group? And uh...buckle up cause I'm gonna ramble as I usually do.

Lengthily

ADA - Fukuzawa, Kyouka, Atsushi, Kunikida, Yosano....I'm gonna stop now before I start listing them all.

To be honest, if I had to pick one out of all of them, it would currently be Kyouka. I just....*hugs her tight* I love how her arc is basically like a mini light novel within canon. I love how her arc isn't completed when she joins the light side and manages to pass the entrance exam but when she finds out the truth about her ability and her parents because it's such a GOOD narrative callback to where her story started. You think her story began with the PM and Akutagawa and ended in saving the ADA and Atsushi, right? But no...those were just very important parts of her journey. Her story begun when she lost her parents and became burdened with something out of control that seemed only good to kill...and ended when Kouyou (who had taken her in after that loss) let her go and took steps to reveal that this cursed "only good for killing ability" that Kyouka had was her mother's last expression of love. Kyouka thought her ability killed her parents but instead it was a result of a love for their daughter that didn't die with them and I just go INSANE thinking about the cyclical nature of it all. Blah blah blah tragedies may be repeated but you know what's also repeated and what also lasts? A parent's love for their child.

Probably also why I love Fukuzawa. Something about middle aged characters who find themselves becoming the parent of one child and suddenly finding they can't stop adopting kids.

But lest I get carried away, I'll let the other three speak for themselves

PM - Chuuya, Akutagawa, Gin, Hirotsu, Odasaku...stopping myself again

I actually don't have a current favourite but man, I tell you, Anon. I was hoodwinked and bribed and dragged into loving Chuuya. My reaction from the anime and its adaptation of fifteen was, "oh, cool, that's EPIC....but can we get back to the present?" Then I read a quick summary of his backstory somewhere and just....yeah.

Akutagawa and Gin I just have soft spots for, even though we barely know anything about the latter (part of me believes there HAS to be a light novel about the Black Lizards set somewhere between the beginning of canon and the doa arc because look at how close Tachi and Gin and Hirotsu somehow became??? Like when did that happen???). Also, Akutagawa is my pathetic, sad, feral, unhinged bloodthirsty boy who cares so much but has always been told he doesn't. It's the tragedy that he cares about Gin, that he did care to some degree about Atsushi and Kyouka, but that for some reason...he believes that the only thing he does care about is Dazai's approval (which is more of an obsession), which is EXCELLENT but also heartbreaking

I think Hirotsu's sort of the same with Fukuzawa. Older characters who find they have teenagers under their custody (first, Chuuya and Dazai...now the Black Lizards...the man just does not get a break)

And Oda.....is self explanatory, too. Haunts the narrative, haunts the characters, haunts the plot (you can't tell me the space time sword isn't a little bit of a call back to Flawless), haunts the meta-narrative....and also just was another tragic character that I think Dazai is trying to not make tragedy of, I don't know

Guild - Lucy (beloved, adored, precious), Poe (just as beloved, precious, adored, and raccoon owner), and Lovecraft

Come on you guys...how can I hate Lucy? How can I not love her? She's a narrative parallel or foil (however that's used...or both) to Atsushi but she's had to learn prematurely how to survive and struggle and think for herself and save her own skin. She's got one of the scariest spacial abilities in BSD because it combines both a pocket dimension and her own imagination (and I really want to see her and Akutagawa interact). I love LOVE for her so much that after the whole Guild business, she was just like "screw ability organisations" and went to work for a cafe BUT that she still can converse head on with people like Atsushi, Fukuzawa, Kyouka, and has zero fear of the government. She's Canadian (I think), she's got a cool ability, and I love her somehow simultaneously subtle but pretty obvious importance to the narrative (the queen in the chessboard)

Poe is basically similar. I just love his ability (I would misuse it SO much...that and Louisa's) and I love what a dramatic, violent theatre kid he is and envy his ability to focus on one project until it's completed and then move on like it didn't just consume months (or, in ranpo's case, years) of his time. And again his subtle but pretty obvious significance to the narrative (eyes covered, author in a manga of authors, like Lucy...he can help in all places)! It's kind of interesting to me how a lot of the western authors' abilities are a bit....off when it comes to their names. Poe's combines two of his stories, Lucy's makes her title slightly more dramatic, Fitzgerald just adds his name XDD. But that might be for copyright reasons, I have no idea how significant it could be.

As for Lovecraft? I find him relatable, that's all...all he wants to do is jump into the sea and sleep for a thousand years but accidentally got tied down by capitalism and I can hardcore relate.

Hunting Dogs - I like all of them, and yes even Fukuchi...but favourite is Tachihara no question. Pre-planned defector of the PM and managed to fool everyone more than Ango? I could ramble more about him but this is already getting really long....

DOA - I'll be honest with you guys....I still don't know much about them beyond the anime. But I am absurdly fond of Bram. Immortal vampire lord who also just wants to sleep and maybe listen to good tunes....yeah, mood.

And non-organisation/other characters? Aya, Mushitarou (technically, he was part of the Rats but that's a moot point), and Ango. I won't rant about them but just know they sometimes live rent free in my head...or, more like they cycle around in there like my brain's their vacation home

But I guess, currently, if I HAD to choose my top three out of all of them, it would be Kyouka, Mushitarou, and Poe

Now I'm done...