#like i'm sure they do have people with many many useful skills

[marzipanandminutiae]

Do you have any advice on making a living working in historic preservation? I feel like every opportunity in the field (ex. Local historical societies) is volunteer work, which I do, but I also need money!

:)

:) :) :) :)

I am so sorry but you've hit upon the main employment problem with this field: it is wildly underpaid. Especially if you want to do something with museum content/collections/preservation rather than admin.

The issue is, this system (at least in the US, where I live) started out in the late 19th century being run by people who had a lot of free time and a LOT of money already. Married upper-class women, rich men- often gay, interestingly enough -with academic turns of mind, etc. They didn't need the money, so they built a structure designed to function that way. And for many years a lot of this work continued to be done by volunteers.

Except then people came along with the audacity to want to make a career out of it. Without enough generational wealth to not need payment! Oh no!

So now there are not enough full-time jobs in the field for people who want them, unfortunately. They're out there! But you might have a hell of a time getting into one.

I'd say to look for bigger orgs over small ones, or small orgs in big cities. We love a tiny house museum in the middle of nowhere, but they often have the smallest budgets in a world of small budgets. Also, consider starting out part-time and trying to work your way up (just make sure the org has full-time employees first). Making connections is paramount- I've only had part-time museum jobs so far, but I never got a single one just by applying online. You can, but it helps a lot to have someone say "hey, the Fancyman-Spinsteracademic-Wepromisewe'rereckoningwithslaverynow House is hiring; want me to put in a good word for you?"

Alternately, learn some hands-on preservation skill like carpentry or horology (working with mechanical clocks- PLEASE learn horology if you go this route; all the horologists are 80 and they keep dying) could be a way to get specific talents that historical site museums can't function without and will therefore pay for when the budget allows. In cities with lots of historical architecture that they actually care about preserving- so not NYC, apparently -there are often independent companies that specialize in different aspects thereof. Historical window repair, historical plastering, historical brickwork maintenance, etc. Trying to get hired by one of those is a way to go into preservation without working in museums. Private auction houses or antiques dealers can also be an option, if you're more into the Collections Objects side of things.

I don't mean to make it sound bleak. My eight-year career in museums has been entirely part-time collections/interpretation/admin jobs stitched together, and while I'm sick of the "underpaid and relying on my parents to pay for my insurance" aspect (yes, I freely admit it; I'm a lowkey continuation of the Can't Work In Museums If You Don't Have Family Financial Support tradition and very very lucky to be able to do what I do, and yet even I'M frustrated and tired and over it), it is deeply fulfilling work that I consider highly worthwhile and important. And there ARE avenues to make a decent living in it!

I just want to explain the phenomenon you're seeing and give you realistic expectations.

Best of luck!

[tyrannuspitch]

there really is something(tm) about thor and loki (plus val, heimdall, sif) being literally all that's left of asgard's ruling class after ragnarok. no other warriors or politicians, just them. (i guess we don't actually know this to be true, but asgard gives off a very strong impression of being sharply stratified...)

like. kind of... stripping down to the truth of their society. the idea that the king rules absolutely and alone is a myth. he needs his warriors to maintain control. if the people decided they don't want to be ruled by the house of odin any more, practically speaking, they probably wouldn't be able to stop them.

but also just. beyond that. distillation. the royal family is now two people. the culture/society they know, what they think of as asgard(tm) and as home, is only a handful of individuals. hmmm.

and this would all have been fun to explore if we'd been given a chance. but before we get there, they take it even further. the house of odin is only thor, in the end.

[minakoaiinos]

Several things about the **** and **** drama is how many people have hopped out to go omg so is the lady we have decided is the only big bad villain responsible for planting all of the hate against insert group/idol here when I watched in real time for all of those examples their own fans jumping on their favorite idols for things that were clearly just scraps of bad rumors they just completely made overblown THEMSELVES under the guise of trying to look 'critical about their faves'

[lesbianbucky]

you guys know that tiktok audio about homosexual audacity and thinking you can do anything with no prior experience? "no i've never done that but i'm gay so how hard could it be?" that's me right now having almost no knowledge of computers but wanting to build by own pc

[medicinemane]

I just think that the main barrier to being good at a lot of different things isn't about that you couldn't be good at it, it's about time, and it's about affording equipment and materials

It's gonna be a lot harder to find the time for even one hobby if you're working full time, and make no mistake, there's a real problem of getting what you need to actually work on stuff

[absentlyabbie]

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

[angelltheninth]

Arcane Characters Make Food for You

Pairing: Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Maddie, Ekko, Vander, Silco, Sevika, Viktor, Jayce, Mel x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, established relationship, domestic fluff, kissing, making food, teasing

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters

A/N: I already wrote this on my old blog but now is a good time to re-write it.

Jinx knows how to cook pretty well, surprisingly enough. Or maybe not so surprisingly given how she's always the one making things and experimenting. However that also means she might make some really weird meals.

It's something you'll have to deal with if you're with her and might have to develop a strong stomach. She already has it because she grew up in Zaun and ate a lot of different things. For you she wouldn't recommend some of them yet and she will try her best to make something that you'll like. And she won't get too offended if you don't eat her cooking right away.

"I made ya some breakfast, ta-da! It's a little sticky but don't worry, eat your fill and I'll clean up the mess later. Don't look at it like that, it might not look pretty but I promise ya it's so good. I could eat this every day. I hope I'll get to eat it together it with ya every day, sugar."

Vi doesn't know how to cook because she never had the opportunity to learn. The first few dishes are bad, like really bad, almost burn the toast and eggs type of bad but Vi she isn't the kind of person to give up. She'll keep trying until she gets it right.

There have been times where she did burn things and she won't let you eat it since it's not right. She wants you to have the best of the best, even if she didn't. Might get a little distracted when you're in the kitchen with her so she prefers to cook by herself even if you're there with her. Regardless of how many times she gets it wrong she at least wants to learn to cook your favorite.

"Yes, this is burned toast but this time it's not my fault, it's yours. Well you're the one who walked in here looking all cute and distracted me. One kiss is all it takes if it's from you, sweet stuff. Sit down and let me do this right and if you do you'll get something sweeter than this."

Caitlyn knows how to cook really well. She did grow up with people doing the cooking for her however she was curious and wanted to learn how to do it on her own. She's a very hand-on learner, now she can use some of her skills to make you happy.

She gets up really early anyways so she might as well make breakfast for the both of you. The first time she brings you breakfast in bed she thinks your reaction is cute, the way you stare at her, eyes wide and drooling over the food. For her it's not odd to have breakfast in bed. And if you stick with her you'll get used to her pampering you. Be sure to tell her how the food tastes.

"Good morning, darling, I brought you something. See, I didn't just brag about my cooking skills, this is me showing you I can cook. Showing off? Suppose I am a little bit, it's not my fault you didn't really think I would bring you breakfast in bed."

Maddie can cook some dishes but she can cook them well. Her skills aren't anything impressive but they don't need to be because she can get take out too. But she is more than happy to share what ever she makes with you.

She falls back on take out more often than she would like to admit. However not when she invites you over to her place, then she will put her best foot forward. A lot of that is because she wants to impress you hard, but it also gets her to work on her skills either way she wins. She keeps looking at you very intently while you take that first bite. Thankfully she doesn't seem to do a bad job if your smile is anything to go by.

"I'm not weird for watching you eat, it's called being smitten, gorgeous. Anything you do is interesting to me, you know that by now. This isn't empty flattery. I already got you to eat my cooking, I don't need to butter you up at this point."

Ekko isn't the best cook out there, he will be completely honest with you. While he does know the basic things you can't really expect anything fancy. If anything he focuses more on the dish being filling than tasty.

The thing about him cooking for the two of you is that he can only do it on his free time, which isn't a lot. Therefore he wants to make it a bonding activity. A cute date of sorts, mostly in the late evening when the rest of work is done. Sometimes he will try to surprise you but its hard when his living space isn't that big and everyone knows everything in the Firelights. The gesture counts.

"There wasn't much time so it's pretty simple, but at least it's your favorite, Firefly. No, I actually finished the new project, I had extra time to kill. Please, don't thank me! It seemed only right for me to make you something after you cheered me up this morning."

Vander knows how to cook really, really well. He kids to raise, and he was on his own for a very long time, he had to become a good cook. Plus he makes awesome drinks, being a good cook was a bonus skill for him.

He's always the first one to wake up and start the day in the Last Drop and he always makes breakfast for everyone. Not just breakfast but every meal, his kids need to eat a lot, there's always a little left over for later. Even if he feels a little sleepy himself he at least wants to put something on the table. It's the dad instincts in him. And husband instincts, hopefully.

"Don't ya even think about sneaking up on me right now, darlin'. I've got a pan full of sizzling hot oil in my hand, I don't want it all over us. Hugs are fine, I always love ya being close to me, but keep your hands to yourself. We both know ya get handsy in the morning."

Silco didn't know how to cook before he adopted Jinx, since then he's had to learn. It wasn't easy but now he does know a lot and he can impress the woman he's dating. Now when you stay over you can expect good for for your date, and good food when you wake up.

When the dating gets more serious he lets you help him cook, but until then he pretty much does it on his own. Jinx will go nowhere near the kitchen alone, not after that one explosion. He does have a list of recipes that he makes the most. And a few that he made up. Sometimes ingredients are hard to come by so he needs to improvise.

"Pass me the flour would you, love? This time I will follow the recipe, yes, the last time there was a bit too much sugar in there. I know you liked it but it's not the healthiest thing now is it? Fine, call me a worried dad, I know you think it's attractive."

Sevika isn't able too cook that well, she never was, she always liked others cooking for her though. However when you tease her about it she takes it as a challenge. And you know damn well that she doesn't back down from a challenge.

Curses a lot when she messes up, though you can bet that she's not gonna let food be the thing that beats her. When you walk into the kitchen it's a mess which will take a while to clean up. But at least she managed to make the dish this time and it's quite good. For her hard work you give her a very passionate kiss and that just makes her wanna work harder. That's the best reward she can ask for.

"One kiss for at that work, doll? I think I earned myself a little more than that, maybe you on the table instead of all this food. Yeah, I know it's gonna get cold, you're right. Can't let all this hard work go to waste, but when we're done we have to work all that food off."

Viktor doesn't have as much time to cook as he could if he worked a bit less. Not that his skills are award worthy but he can make a few things, at least in his opinion. Give his cooking a chance.

When he was a student in the academy he had to learn how to make quick meals and that is where most of his strength is. Just very simple dishes but he knows how to make them well. There are times when he himself forgets to eat so he makes sure he gets a good meal when he can. If you're part of that that's even better. Having you eat his cooking makes cooking more fun.

"If you think cooking this is so easy then you make it will you, beautiful? Ah so now you like it, I see how it is. I'm just kidding, I love making food for you when I can. But if you want to make it yourself please let me do a taste test first. I promise to be brutally honest, just like you are with me."

Jayce has absolutely no skills in the kitchen unless you need him to fix or build things in there. He knows this too and will admit it right away. Trust him he is much better in science than in cooking food.

That being said he will join you in the kitchen when you cook. He takes an interest in it because the way you cook makes his mouth water. When he learns about what your favorite food is he wants to lean how to cook it. However he does this in secret because he wants to surprise you. Sure enough he's able to get the biggest smile out of you when he presents you with your favorite meal.

"I learned it secretly, all for you, babe. Well I am quite good with my hands and I enjoy working, that was just another excuse to learn. Of course I don't have an ulterior motive for it! But if I did... and if it was kissing... would you kiss me for doing a good job?"

Mel is actually an amazing cook and knows a ton of recipes. Including your favorites of course. Do you really think she'd invite you over and offer you nothing to eat?

It's been a long time since she had to cook for anyone but herself but she's not bad at it at all. She has high standards when it comes to good food specifically because she holds herself to high standards. It doesn't matter how simple or complicated the meal is. When she invites you over and offers to make you food you better believe you're eating good that night. Not strictly food either.

"Beloved, slow down a little, the food isn't going anywhere and neither am I. We have all night. Every time I make food I do so because I want to enjoy a good meal, and you should too. And please be careful, I don't want you to choke, on the food that is."

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.

[hedge-rambles]

Ok so a lot of real world surgery training starts with cadavers, because you kinda need to start training surgeons on a "patient" who is already past the point of being totally fucked up by beginner mistakes. So, consider: All fantasy healers are trained necromancers, at least to some degree. Because the first steps in learning to be a healer involves practicing on dead bodies. No one is allowed to just jump straight into knitting together flesh and bone on a living person because sweet merciful gods, no! Do you know how wrong that can go?! You're starting on a lamb shank, before working up to a donated body, long before anyone will let your magic within a mile of an injured human being.

And depending on the kind of necromancy we're talking about, how different is it calling back a passed spirit to its former body vs. being a healer who can grab that soul and tether it in place, to stop it wandering off before they're done fixing up the meat-suit?

Sure there's a clear difference between setting a bone and reanimating a long-dead corpse, and the general public knows this...but what healers know is that it's more complicated than that. They know there's a grey area, between "healing" and "necromancy". There's a place where it's...hard to really say whether it's one or t'other. To those in the know, the big secret is that there isn't really a difference, it's all part of a continuum. Is restarting a stopped heart healing or necromancy? When you're holding onto a bucking soul, trying its best to dive from this world to the next while you repair its broken body, is that really just healing? Or is that just a very pre-emptive form of necromancy? What if you snatched that soul back just seconds after it left the body? What if it was minutes? Or an hour? Where do you draw the line?

Fantasy healing, blood magic and necromancy.

It’s been bugging me for a white that these three tropes, often placed far apart in magical ideologies, really belong together. There’s only a fine line between life and death. Why is blood always portrayed as an evil thing when it’s really a very useful thing?

It’s bugged me for a long time that healing spells in D&D 3.5 aren’t necromancy spells. Bodies are just bone and flesh and skin, it’s the same set of skills to knit broken pieces back together whether those piece are still living or already dead, it’s just the living still have some homeostasis going on.

If you are learning to heal, people or animals, anatomy training can leave you with this idea (which is not entirely false) that you can take a body apart like its made of Lego. It’s just parts and systems. Just bits.

Sometimes you look at those parts in isolation, sometimes as a whole. Working with bodies and parts, whether alive or dead, is very, very similar and in my mind it only takes a small jump from working with the living to working with the dead.

And poor blood gets such a bad reputation. Blood is great, blood is useful. Blood is key to all healing processes in the body. It carries information, it’s key to life.

Sure, too much blood outside the body can be a problem, but too much of anything can be a problem. Nobody complains about a fireball being inherently evil but blood just seems to carry a connotation with it.

I feel like these aspects are all part of the same spectrum, and only tiny steps away from each other.

Then again maybe I’m the character that turns into the well intentioned villain in the fantasy novel.

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[lastoneout]

It really is kinda awful how many job listings will just straight up lie to you about what you "need" to be able to do to screen out disabled applicants. Like fucking Safeway will be looking for a cashier and the listing is like "you ABSOLUTELY MUST be able to stand for 8+ hours a day, NO exceptions" as if you can't do everything required to run the check out line sitting down. Old Navy is like "you must be able to understand body language and facial expressions and make eye contact" like sorry dude I think autistic people can sell t-shirts just fine without doing all that, like honestly what the hell does understanding facial expressions have to do with telling someone where the clearance section is. Don't really think the customers at TJ Max are going to go full Purge mode if one employee can only perform a task requiring fine motor skills 15 times a minute instead of 30, like idk maybe you don't need the lines to move thst fast actually. Maybe everyone can chill out and wait a second. I think the people at Starbucks will be okay if the barista isn't great at multitasking and can't make small talk with every single customer while also running the drive through and making 15 different drinks.

It's such horseshit, none of these job require these things but they can just lie and say they do and disabled people will clear out because we know it's just a big neon sign saying "crippled freaks need not apply", even if that sentence is followed by some fake ass fluff about you being an equal opportunity employer. Like you would not be insisting your underpaid cashiers be able to "make eye contact and understand body language" if you cared about not discriminating against disabled people, that wording specifically is straight out of the DSM-5, what you're doing is fucking obvious and pure goddam evil.

The best part too is then you get denied for SSI benefits because you "can" work, they don't actually care that every single job listing is tailor made to tell us to fuck right off. The potential to be able to work and actually being able to be hired are too different things entirely but sure. I can work. If I find an employer that doesn't care that I'm in a wheelchair and can't make eye contact or life heavy objects or that I need to only work 4 hours a day so I still have the energy to take care of myself outside of work and also have to take 10 days a month off for doctor's appointments and unpredictable health flares. And also crucially does NOT require a fucking degree or drivers license. Find me a job like that that and I'd be overjoyed to work.

But trust me, jobs that can accommodate me simply do not fucking exist, and unfortunately for all of us that is very much by design.

[kleefkruid]

Every fun post on here that encourages people to have hobbies/be creative always gets an avalanche of "Some people are poor Karen" type reactions and respectfully, you're all super annoying. I've never lived above the poverty line and this is a list of hobbies I have that were cheap or entirely free:

Read books: Go to the library, lend a book from a friend

knitting, crochet, embroidery: Get some needles from the bargan store and ask around, people have leftovers from projects they'll happily give you. Thrift stores also often carry leftover fabric and other supplies. And talk about your hobby loud enough and an old lady will show up and gift you their whole collection, because there are way more old ladies with a closet full of wool than there are grandchildren who want to take up the hobby.

Origami/paper crafts: get some scrap paper and scissors, watch a youtube tutorial

walking: put on shoes open door

pilates/yoga/etc: get a mat or just use your carpet, watch a youtube tutorial

Houseplants: look online for people that swap plant cuttings. There are always people giving out stuff for free to get you started. If you're nice enough you'll probably get extra

gardening: You're gonna need some space for this one of course but you can just play around with seeds and cuttings from your grocery vegetables.

aquarium keeping is a bit of an obscure one but I got most of my stuff second hand for cheap or free and now I have a few thousand euro worth of material and plants.

drawing/art: You get very far just playing with bargan store materials. I did my entire art degree with mostly those.

writing: Rotate a cow in your head for free

cooking: again one you can make very expensive, but there are many budget recipes online for free. Look for African or Asian shops to get good rice and cheap spices.

Join a non-profit: Cities will have creative organisations who let you use woodworking machines or screen presses or laser cutters or 3D printers etc etc etc for a small fee. Some libraries also lend out materials.

candle making: You need some molds (cheap), wick, two old cooking pots for au bain marie melting and a ton of scrap candles, ask people to keep them aside for you.

a herbarium, flower pressing: Leaves are free, wildflowers too, ask if you can take from peoples gardens.

puzzles: thrift stores, your grandma probably

Citizen science: look for projects in your area or get the iNaturalist app

And lastly and most importantly: Share! Share your supllies, share your knowledge. Surround yourself with other creative people and before you know it someone will give you a pot of homemade jam and when you want to paint your kabinet someone will have leftover paint in just the right color and you can give them a homemade candle in return and everyone is having fun and building skills and friendships and not a cent is exchanged. We have always lived like this, it's what humans are build to do.

And all of it sure beats sitting behind a computer going "No stranger, I refuse to let myself have a good time."

Anyway I'm logging off bc I'm making some badges for a friend who cooked for me and then I'm going to fix some holes in everyones clothes.

[grison-in-space]

Has Biden actually done anything at all? There's evidence going around and I think it's compelling, the alternate to voting is instead doing actual social work and participating in protests and organizing political action, which is a good idea i think

1) Yes. Inarguably this has been the most effective progressive domestic administration since I have been alive, and I'm in my thirties. What in the fuck are you talking about? It's not perfect, but it's better than we've seen in fifty years: Obama tried, but Democratic Congressional organization was just not yet used to working with a completely obstructionist GOP Congress in the wake of the tea party.

Even in terms of foreign policy, this is also pretty much as good as US involvement gets. Sorry. Our foreign policy has been shaped by monsters for decades, and that's even without dealing with our huge and active branch of Christian doom cultists. There ain't a candidate in the world that could stop the entire accumulated momentum of geopolitics with a snap of the finger, and I'm not really willing to pretend that Biden is particularly notable for not managing to fix Israel/Palestine relations.

2) In your own words, anon, what precisely does organizing political action entail without participating in the political process? Do you think that abstaining from the part of the gig where you, the citizen, get to say which official gets the job somehow makes your opinions matter more to your elected public officials? Have you ever organized to get so much as a municipal one-time library project budget expanded? Are you perhaps only skilled at political argument with people who already agree with you on the Internet?

What is your leverage, and could it reasonably be described as "extortion" or "blackmail" or "political corruption?" Because those are pretty much the only things on the table that can work more effectively to drive an elected official than a disciplined coalition of political allies (who can be purchased with, you guessed it, votes) or a reliable bloc of voter support. Your vote matters less than the ones you bring with you, sure. Do you think that not voting yourself somehow helps people organize to drive more votes? Have you perhaps replaced your complex reasoning skills with a rapidly dying jellyfish?

3) Holy passive vagueness, Batman! "Evidence is going around." What a masterpiece of a sentence! How it suggests everything while providing nothing! What evidence? Who collected it? Who is talking about the evidence "going around?" Who is listening? How many of them are there? What did they think before? The more I think, the more questions I have, and damn if they ain't predisposing me to be even less charitable.

Like, this is so catastrophically poorly supported that I have to confess that I not only believe this is probably an ask in bad faith (i.e. by someone who is expecting to piss me off or otherwise engage with me adversarially, probably spammed to a whole host of blogs at once with no expectation of response) but I actively hope that it is. The alternative is to have to grapple with the reality that some people are so uncomfortable with the responsibility of moral agency that they're willing to release useful levers of legal and social power just so that they never do anything problematic with that power. Much better, of course, to wash one's hands of anything that might have the stink of responsibility clinging to it. Might fall from the membership of the Elect if you actually get yourself all muddy by doing things, I reckon.

I don't even believe that voting is the only lever we have when it comes to our elected officials or that votes are necessary to secure change, and I am certainly not talking about the presidential ticket alone when I talk voting. What I do believe is two things: one, that voting is a potential lever of power on the emergent chaos of the society in which we live. And two, that anyone telling me to leave a lever of power on the ground without a damn good reason is either incompetent, malicious, or both.

[xitsensunmoon]

My first ever comic con! And first cosplay too. Of course it's gonna be my boy :] Ramblings about the process are under the cut(Let me know if?? You would want me to elaborate with process images for any of the steps?)

The costume took me forever to make, as I've never done any machine sewing, sculpting, fabric dying or spray painting before but learning all of these was so fucking fun!! I never realised just how many different skills go into making a cosplay but it was so worth it!!!

Almost all of the clothes(except the hat) were purchased first as bases, but all of the detailing was added by me. All of the fabric used was originally just scraps that I was given for free so I needed to learn how to dye and dye all of the stars, they were originally white.

The sewing machine was its own beast that brought me tons of frustration from the lack of skill and knowledge (it was devastating to find out that 95% of fuck ups were my fault and not the machine's lmao). But as a result, a hat sewn from scratch, all of the fur trims, embroidery on the corset, stars and the collar(which is very hard to see on the pictures unfortunately) was all added manually. The stars and the stripes(on the back of the cape) were attached using heat-and-bond adhesive (I WISH I knew about such thing just when I started working on this. It would save me so much time and nerves.)

Then I found out about polymorph(mouldable plastic) and it has become the next thing I wanted to learn, to sculpt the claws and the fangs(yes, they're handmade jfksjs). The claws I then primed and painted in trillion coats because I wasn't satisfied with the colour of the spray paint. The fangs I moulded to my own teeth and then stained with tea to match the colour of my teeth :)c

As for makeup, I used Mehron Paradise water activated paints. At first I wanted to try to save money and bought myself Snazaroo instead, which unfortunately turned out to be a waste. Snazaroo didn't hold on my face for longer than 2 hours, cracking and peeling awfully. Mehron on the other hand survived 11 hours of me smiling, talking, emoting and such and didn't even crease at the smile lines(I'm actually shocked about that). It obviously works like any other makeup which means your skin texture and wrinkles won't go anywhere but Mehron's elasticity pleasantly surprised me. It did obviously smear from sweat and saliva(if you're eating and licking your lips) but if you don't touch the skin it just dries again, self setting. But if it's dry it's fully smear-proof. Highly recommend!

And last but not least, I've decided against painting my hands as it was very risky that I will stain everything I touch at the smallest hint of sweat. So instead I got myself gloves-tights(? Not sure how they're called but it's made from the same fabric as tights) and painted them with normal acrylic paint(did you know you could dye fabric with acrylic paint? I personally didn't), then heat set with an iron and voilà, they're reusable, my hands are not stained after an exhausting day and I don't stain everything I touch. It worked wonderfully which honestly was a surprise as I was really sceptical that acrylic paint will somehow stay in place.

I think this whole thing took me minimum of 6 months with big-big breaks for my school and life in general. But I'm really proud! This project taught me so many new skills and I couldn't have been happier about learning new knowledge, even if it sucked to fail in the meantime.

Everyone at the con was really nice and gave me a large confidence boost even tho it was my first time and I had no idea what I was doing. Taking photos with other people was really awkward/new for me as I hate cameras so I really had no idea how to pose/behave in front of one. But that's okay I think. This whole experience definitely made me want to do this again, so I think that will come with experience. Thank you for reading this far, hope you enjoyed this little summary :)

[birdofmay]

And again, as always: It would be nice if you guys could stop making this about yourselves. Whenever we post about our particular experience, people who normally can speak, but used to struggle with it, or struggle under certain circumstances, add on something to talk about themselves. This eventually leads to people talking about something completely different, and ignoring what the post was about at first. Make your own post. We are constantly spoken over even in online spaces, and that's especially unfair because we struggle to communicate even more than other autistics. Don't derail posts about people who never learned to speak from the very beginning and won't learn it ever. That's unfair.

Sometimes I see people on here who want to be good allies to nonverbal autistics, but at the same time don't understand nonverbal autism at its core.

Most of us, who are nonverbal "from birth", struggle with language, to communicate, and to understand complex concepts. That's why we never learned to speak at all, ever.

But their strategy is to "hand us the mic" and ask "What are some misconceptions about nonverbal autism you'd like to discuss?" and expect us to respond.

"Misconceptions" is an abstract concept. Most of us can't just come up with an answer; my mind, for example, goes completely blank when I read this.

I wanted to talk about allies assuming that our brain works similar for at least 2 weeks, but it's only now that I am able to write something. 2 weeks!

Sure, there are autistics who can't speak due to apraxia, and who don't struggle with language otherwise, apart from the "not being able to speak with their mouth" part. But that's rare.

Even my ability to express myself well is rare. I am not your average nonverbal autistic. I am very skilled compared to the rest of us.

One thing about "never learning to speak" is that most of us really really struggle with language, and with understanding big words and topics. Not everyone, but many of us. That's why most of us aren't on social media.

Whenever I write "educational" posts, my inbox is flooded with follow up questions I just can't answer without help. Because most of the time I don't understand the text. I regularly have to close my inbox because people assume that I can process the text and respond like everyone else can. But having these abilities is an exception within autistics who never learned to speak from the very beginning. It seems normal, but those people just are the loudest. Because they're on social media and love to participate in discussions.

Most of us can't do that.

I'm glad that I made some speaking friends here who made an effort to understand us thoroughly, and they now often repeat what we think and want "but louder". Listen to them, most of us can't advocate for ourselves. They're not speaking over us, they're helping us to communicate without draining our energy.

And for everything else I have some posts linked in my pinned post because I can't just participate in discussions.

[dailyadventureprompts]

So, from a worldbuilding perspective, wizards have schools, right? It's an easy 1:1 to go from the idea of people who gets their magic from study to the cultural touchstone of academia, and that helps us figure out what institutions and cultural norms are like in our setting.

Correspondingly, clerics have temples, place where their connection to the divine was fostered among a community of fatihful who share their devotion if not their magical gifts. If you were in a d&d world and needed someone with cleric skills, you'd head toward a temple.

But what do Sorcerers have? They're usually presented as one off oddballs or magical oddities but if power exists it's a logical consequence of worldbuilding that there's going to be institutions dedicated to preserving and refining that power.

I'm going to argue that Sorcerers have dynasties, an extended family who share the collective potential for inheriting the magical gift of their powerful ancestor(s). Dynasties would likely be closely tied to the reigning power structure, extended privileges and patronage the same way that noble families are in exchange for their marital support. If you were a ruler in a d&d world, having Battlecasters on hand to shore up your powerbase is just as important as having cavalry and footmen, so you want to make sure the people who are capable of passing down their magical gift are having kids so that their heirs can support your heirs.

This puts a sorcerous dynasty in an interesting position depending on how people in your world think that magic is inherited. Is the gift recessive? Do you breed for it or follow your heart? Are you having too few children or too many? How does that factor into material inheritance? What do you do with all the children who don't show signs of being able to do magic? What if the gift skips a generation or two one of THEIR children show signs of sorcery? Can you let them marry into other families knowing you might be giving away some of your power? Could you use that as a political bargaining chip? How do you handle bastards? What's your stance on monogomy? How do you handle fertility issues? Is the magic waning over time or is it just diluted or are none of your heirs just not living up to your potential? Is there some unadvised ritual or alchemy or dark pact you can make to restore greatness to your line or awaken dormant potential? Does intermarriage with other magical practitioners of different disciplines strengthen or weaken the chance of inheritance? Is there a way to bend politics in your favour to ensure you get this infusion of new blood? Is that baseborn adventurer with the sorcerous gifts a threat to your power or a potential spouse for your firstborn?

All these are brilliant adventureseeds that I don't think I've seen explored all that often. There's only a specific type of player and a specific type of adventure that are concerned with court politics/brigerton style affairs of the nobility, but making those nobles into spell-slinging-sorcerers make them FAR more relevant characters for the background of an adventure.