#new year ramblings

[lynxgriffin]

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone, I'm back from my vacation now, I had a really good time just spending time with my family and decompressing, and I'm ready to start off 2024 with a hopeful attitude! Thanks for being patient as I catch up with my messages and all the stuff in my inbox.

Of course, you can expect more art and comics from me this next year...already got more Eldritchrune stuff to work on, plus hopefully chapters 3 and 4 will bring us lots of new canon goodness! Also more games to finish, and other projects to get underway! And while I know I'll keep myself busy making art for you, one thing I would really like to do more of this year is just meet people and make some new friends.

Thank you, as always, for sticking around for my silly doodles...I wish you all the best and kindest this next year!

[couldbegayer]

what a weird year for me. new year ramblings under the cut.

i started 2024 off depressed and anxious. i'm ending the year depressed and anxious but now i've seen dan and phil and taylor swift.

but in all seriousness. this year was probably the most meaningful of my life so far, the year that i will look back on as the start of my "real life". i'm proud of what i've done.

in january i was just putting one foot in front of the other. i was severely overworked. i was on call at a busy hospital so my sleep was shocking. the shift work killed me and i would come home and just sit on my phone in my bedroom, lights off and air con on freezing. i didn't have the energy to have any hobbies anymore. just dissociate and sleep until its the next day and time to do it all again. after spending my early twenties getting my mental and physical health back on track, it kind of went to shit again.

it wasn't all bad. at this job i met some of my best friends, lifelong friends. but i wasn't thriving. i felt completely suffocated in my work identity, playing a role that others needed me to be, and feeling like i didn't have anything to offer outside of my job. where i was physically living, in regional central queensland (for anyone outside of aus, its one of the most conservative places in the country), was suffocating me too. it wasn't a very good place for a closeted trans person to live.

i turned 30 and instead of experiencing the stereotypical wave of lost youth like i expected, i felt inspired to get the fuck out. this life isn't serving me, i'm not happy, so let's get on with it and do something about it. and so i did the scariest thing that i've ever done. i quit my job and moved to the city to start my transition.

don't get me wrong, it wasn't as easy as that. moving didn't solve all my problems. saying goodbye to some of the only proper friends i've ever made in my entire was the hardest thing i've ever done and i haven't really made any close friends here, aside from someone i used to work with who moved here a year ago too. my transition didn't magically start. getting out of the shithole didn't sort out all of my anxiety about my family or society in general. but i faced my fear and saw a therapist and a doctor who prescribed me T-gel. i haven't taken it yet. it is sitting in my cupboard waiting for me when i'm ready.

life isn't perfect, but its better. marginally better is still better.

i wanted to share some of my favourite moments from 2024.

i went to sydney for the first time to see taylor swift! also my first concert ever. i've been a fan of hers for so long (my youtube channel is filled with edits of her songs lmao) and it was such an amazing experience. got to see sabrina carpenter live before her espresso moment so that was pretty cool too! from these videos it might seem like im uninterested BUT these are the only ones i have without my horrible singing in the background! i promise i was excited!! (this day was also pretty crazy because i woke up at 4:30am for the we're all doomed premiere so needless to say i was fucking wrecked at the end of it, but worth it!).

2. while in sydney i went on a walking tour of oxford street. i don't have any photos of this but i was completely shook seeing the whole street decked out for mardi gras. it was a surreal moment from me, after coming from a town with literal cow statues everywhere, to seeing a rainbow pedestrian crossing that wasn't defaced but celebrated. it was so surreal.

3. i turned the big 30 and had an emo themed party. i got a custom black cake but it was so shit and made me sick! i did get a refund but what the fuck

4. i went to a gay club for the first time, on chappell roan night no less! this was within a week of me moving to the city. pink pony club was my anthem at this time, for obvious reasons, so to scream this with a bunch of queers after leaving my old life behind was so cathartic.

bonus, i really liked good luck babe, okay?

5. i went to terrible influence and saw dan and phil with my own two eyes. i saw dan at we're all doomed last year but it was surreal to see the both of them together. i know i mentioned this several times, but i will keep harping on about it. i used my question card at the pre-show to properly come out to my friend as a trans guy, after three years of 'not a woman'. as luck would have it, they pulled my card and read my coming out moment out loud (and insulted my handwriting... never beating the "healthcare workers have shit handwriting" allegations). having them directly involved in my coming out moment, reading my words aloud, and them saying on breakfast tv that they love their trans fans.. i feel like it has changed me as a person. top moment of the year for me.

my self-acceptance moment aside, i had so much fun. i just wish i bought m&g tickets, they were available when i was checking out but my friend who i was going with didn't want to. i get kinda sad when seeing other's m&g photos. (mild spoilers ahead) but as the closest millennial to the stage, dan looked right at me when i cheered during his millennial outburst, so i'll take that!

so in summary, what a weird, heartbreaking, fantastic year for me. i have never been this optimistic about the new year before. i can't wait to see what 2025 brings.

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[foldingfittedsheets]

It is insane to me that timestamps are optional on this webbed site. A major context clue is just opt in so I’ll reblog something from four years ago and people think it’s happening right just now like babe. Enable your timestamps. Why are you stumbling through the world with one eye closed?

[crystal-mouse]

happy last same year as it was yesterday 2024 tuesday

todays the only/last day you can reblog this lol

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[h0use-fly]

you cannot be me

[lonely-night]

✨ 2025's resolutions ✨

[arowitharrows]

may the new year be filled with aromanticism

[shisasan]

To whoever is reading this,

May 2025 free you from all that weighs you down and no longer serves you, bringing a love that heals, uplifts, and transforms; a love that wrecks you in all the right ways. May every choice guide you closer to your truest self, to a life vast and extraordinary, full of wonder. May your heart find calm, your spirit rise, and beauty and possibility bloom in ways you never saw coming.

⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ ✗♡✗‧* ❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆

[littlefankingdom]

How the fandom portrays Bruce and Dick learning Red Hood (not knowing it's Jason) is 19-ish:

Bruce: Don't care, didn't ask.

Dick: OMG, he's just a BABY.

How Bruce and Dick would canonically react:

Bruce: He's still a teen. He's just a kid. OMG, I probably hit him too hard, shame on me. Maybe if I play my cards right, he will accept to be mentored.

Dick: Ok, so he is not a child. I can and will beat his ass.

[slightlytoastedbagel]

hi just going to. put these here. yep. ok bye

[wyllaztopia]

2025 is coming so i let my friend @kayseeye [new agdt mod and assistant!!] clear agdt's askbox

as devastating as it was to see a bunch of creative remarks and asks go down the drain - let's be real, i won't have time to answer them with how linear the story is becoming for ease of access [goodbye 500 asks... though kacey took screenshots of drawings you guys sent in our inbox!!!]

hooowever, there's also another key reason we had to clear the inbox

[^ satire btw]

very long and convoluted psa/ramble about this matter ahead! but also slightly important and i encourage you to read it if you think about using agdt's inbox as a way to vent or share things about your irl troubles

some people treat the blog's inbox as a venting area

it doesn't really make me uncomfortable, it's just something i prefer not seeing. i don't like sharing or being shared personal information especially from an anon or a stranger

this doesn't go for just agdt - it goes for all blogs you interact with: please don't make yourself vulnerable to a stranger on the internet. you are putting yourself in a dangerous spot.

if you need escapism or help, turn to a professional or someone close - going to a stranger can go horribly wrong in two ways: you make them uncomfortable and subject them to a responsibility they never signed up for, or you let someone use your vulnerabilities and personal information against you.

i can probably count like 100 or so asks of people sharing something overly personal and asking for comfort. i don't hate it, i'm not mad, i'm just worried and i hope the people who send them become aware that they should not send those asks knowing that if they're answered, they could be answered publicly with everyone and their mama being able to see that vulnerable moment in that ask.

"just ignore them, wyll! besides, you didn't have any rules abt yo blog anyway, yo!"

nah, i'd win

can't exactly ignore them when it's been almost a year of young impressionable users over sharing to a stranger who answers asks publicly [along with the fact that i hardly see people talk about this matter when it comes to rp/ask blogs.] also so they don't do this to another askblog that has another impressionable youngin running it and publicizes asks that contain personal life info.

we don't add rules to asks on agdt because we can pick and choose which ones we answer. a set of rules isn't going to stop an asshole from breaking them so i'm not wasting my time trying to enforce one. and that's not what i'm trying to do in this post either. i'm putting this out there because i don't want people making the irrational decision of making their life and weakest moments accessible to people who want to use it against them.

i'm not trying to make a big deal out of this either. i can just skip or delete asks that i know i shouldn't answer or won't be able to. but that's my side of responsibility as someone with a platform. i want to make it clear that the audience that decides to interact with these kinds of blogs should be aware that just because you're behind a screen and concealed by an internet persona, that doesn't mean you're any safer from other people using your vulnerabilities against you.

[sboochi]

Now make them smooch 🔫

(Yes I mean hiijack)

(please)

Thank you for giving me an excuse I was missing them 🥺

[accala]

Zack Fair had:

A girl who spent 4 years pining after him to the point she chased an afterimage of him (Aerith)

A girl who looked after his parents and his hometown due to sheer guilt and devotion (Cissnei)

A boy who spent 4 years trying to find him after he went missing (Kunsel)

And a boy who adopted his entire being and became his legacy after his death (Cloud)

Zack Fair was NOT playing.

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

every year i'm like "new year's resolution: just stop being mentally ill!" like it's going to work. but guys i really do think it's going to work this year