#or to feel productive with work

[circa-specturgia]

15 Questions, 15 Mutuals

Since @tryingtimi @bloodlessheirbyjacques @the-void-writes @baroquesse, @awritingcaitlin and @agrimedena-drax all asked me (some twice, if you need any idea at how bad I am at answering asks), I’ve finally gotten around to writing it down…

I'll answer it for my main WIPs, Circa Specturgia's main character, Caspian. Answers being from him in the state he's in around the midpoint, or towards the end of the second arc of the story, if I were to guess!

Cas is sitting in front of a fire, a ways away from the camp where everyone else is staying, far enough away to be out of earshot when you sit beside him. He doesn't pay you much mind, though he doesn't brush you off, instead stoking the fire, which illuminates the bags under his eyes.

1. Are you named after anyone?

I am. We were able to know for sure that the A .in my name meant Alekos once we'd met V, though after meeting Mask the first time, we already suspected that it meant something to me. Though, I don't know if I can count it as being named after someone if I'm to be that persons incarnation...

Aside from that, Blackwood... It's where I'm supposedly from, but I'd like to think that I've made that my name.

2. When was the last time you cried?

I’d rather not say. Or think about it.

3. Do you have kids?

Uh, no. Maybe I'd like to, in the future, though. If I can even really think about that right now. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if Mask can even... hmm. Maybe I should ask.

4. Do you use sarcasm?

Never. Not once in my life have I ever used sarcasm for any reason.

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Would you punch me if I said their ass?

He chuckles a bit once you do, before he straightens up, stoking the fire again.

Their eyes. You can usually tell a lot from the eyes.

6. What's your eye color?

Black. Or really dark grey? Like graphite, or obsidian. They apparently turn gold sometimes though. Whenever I do anything Antecendant. I’ve never looked in a mirror when it happens.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings. I'd like to hope for happy endings.

8. Any special talents?

I don't know if I can count my arsosteia as a talent? It's just something I can do, thought V said I have a knack for it. Kane would also– ...sorry.

He goes silent for a moment, having remembered something he'd rather have not, the fire dimming before he realizes it, and reignites the embers.

Uh, I guess Adira said once that I picked up fighting instincts quick.

9. Where were you born?

I… don’t really know. The Blackwood, I mentioned it earlier, was where I was apparently created, but I don’t know the details. If V knows, he didn't tell me. Cyril put down Layr Laiarta when sorting out my documents, so I guess that makes me a Vosiinæan on paper. I think that works for me. Maybe I'll settle down there. If I earn that happy ending.

10. What are your hobbies?

I liked reading, when I had time. The Royal University Library had a ton of books, and even if the ones on Matrixes gave me a headache I'd still take those over what we have to deal with these days.

Sparring is nice too. Both with or without specturgy. It lets everything sort of melt away, too.

11. Do you have any pets?

Do the runalongs count? I didn’t even know I could do it until recently but Mask taught me to summon them to me and they have my fire, so I guess that makes them my pets?

That said, Mask is enough of a creature themselves that I could call them my Pet…

12. What sports do you play/ have played?

Does sparring count? Adira and Cyril have us practicing nearly constantly. I don’t mind it, though. Like I said, helps me clear my head.

13. How tall are you?

6'5" or so? Cyril says I've gotten taller over the last year.

14. Favorite subject in school?

Gods, that feels forever ago... I think it would've been the the practice matches against Cyril. Or the control exercises, they were tough, but, finishing them felt good.

15. Dream Job?

He doesn't speak for a moment, looking into the fire.

I haven't let myself think that far ahead, yet.

I return the ask to @tryingtimi @bloodlessheirbyjacques @the-void-writes @baroquesse, @awritingcaitlin and @agrimedena-drax, and add on @magefaery @cherrybombfangirlwrites @verba-writing @ss-hawthorne @kainablue @wildswrites @jessica-writes22 @breath-of-eternity and @manuscriptsatmidnight!

Have fun!

[gascreates]

^^ infectious

[catmask]

it is insane how normal i am medicated like. you mean this was an option the whole time. what

[celaenaeiln]

At the dining table for breakfast

Jason: Heh.

Jason: Hahahaha.

Jason: MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Bruce: *raising the newspaper up higher*

Alfred: *placidly pouring coffee into Bruce’s mug* Did something interesting happen, Master Jason?

Jason: Alfred, I am about to have the perfect surprise for that bony a-Tim. The perfect surprise for Tim.

Alfred: *putting away the bar of soap he pulled out of nowhere* Is that so? Please do be careful not to make a mess here. The waxing was just done in the dining room.

Jason: No problem, in fact-

Tim: *entering sluggishly*

Jason: In fact…in…fact…Megamind, what are you doing here?

Tim: ……..hm?

Jason: What are you doing here?

Tim: eating??

Jason: You-why are you coming from the right side bathroom-weren’t you going to use the upstairs one on the left?

Tim: oh. Dick was already in it so I decided to use the other one.

Jason: what.

Tim: what.

Jason: No. Hahahahaha. You’re joking…nononono-god, Tim, WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?

Tim: ????????

Jason: You-

Dick’s voice thundering from a floor away: JASON!!!!

Jason: *staring blankly then running forward and smacking Tim on the head* It’s all your fault!

Tim who hasn’t slept or had coffee or know why something he doesn’t know about is his fault: ???? WHAT DID I DO?!

Jason: *running past and leaping out the window* See you later, losers. Bye, Alf.

Disappearing seconds before a blur of wet skin, white towel, and neon pink hair rushes past and follows him out the window.

Tim:

Bruce:

Tim: ……Did you have breakfast yet?

Bruce: …….Hrmgh.

Alfred: *tutting* I just had the floors done. Master Bruce, would you mind redoing them? I’m afraid I must catch the mailman before he gives treats to Titus again. He’s leaving crumbs all over the entrance.

Bruce: What about Ti-

Bruce: *glancing back to see a lone leaf float in and drop slowly to the ground*

Bruce: ………

[not-quite-normal]

hi!!!! there been news articles saying that the working conditions of spiderverse were rlly rlly bad to the point of 100 ppl quitting or someting…. sorry to be liek an annoying reporter and b kinda invasive but is this tru D:

the big article that came out, for anyone curious: https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/spider-verse-animation-four-artists-on-making-the-sequel.html

there are some aspects about the article that i don't feel comfortable commenting on, but yes a lot of animators did quit. a lot of it had to do with the issues mentioned in the article, but a lot also left because disney opened a studio in vancouver (where sony imageworks is located) and had to hire an entire crew. i don't blame people for leaving spiderverse to get in on being a part of establishing the disney vancouver studio

i will also say that some of the information going around is incorrect; we did not work 11 hours a day, 7 days a week for over a year. working 7 days a week is illegal, and though some people worked sundays, they were clearly told that they could not work the next saturday if they worked a sunday. we encouraged people to not work ghost hours, and OT was always optional (except for saturday work towards the end, but nobody was punished or anything if they couldn't work a saturday). we also get paid for OT. i was on the movie for over a year but we certainly weren't crunching that whole time. like the article said, we were idle for a long time

it was undeniably a hard movie to work on and with such a large crew, everyone had a wide variety of experiences. the anonymous animators in the article aren't wrong, but i will say that there are people that felt differently, or not as strongly as them. it's a complicated issue that doesn't have a simple solution

i just hope this doesn't tarnish your view of the movie. we worked hard on it and everyone's immense celebration of the animation is making all that hard work very worth it!

[habken]

But genuinely it’s a problem the way I overwork myself. The metaphorical candle is being burnt at both ends and has been for years now, and yet I can’t get myself to relax and can’t stop taking on more than I can handle. At some point it’s going to blow up in my face and the burnout is going to be insane

[thatoneluckybee]

Going to break into your house with pots and pans and yell at you until you reframe your thinking of productivity to include more than just schoolwork or a salary or chores and the like.

Did you do a thing? Was there a positive result for you or someone else?

Congratulations, you did a Productivity!!!

You aren’t ALWAYS going to be able to have the energy to do what we consider traditionally productive. You won’t always have the motivation.

Yeah, maybe you could have spent two hours studying for that test instead of 15 minutes. Maybe you could have cleaned the kitchen instead of the dishes. And? That’s still something!

Productivity is doing things!! Did you eat food and drink water? You did something that helped your body work! Doodled in class? You made art! Even just posting theories and memes on tumblr dot com is a thing! You thought out the post, figured out how to organize it (even if you don’t realize you did that) and you made it! And now other people can see and you DID something and you should be proud!!!

Be proud of yourself or I am going to show up outside your window tonight and scream positive affirmations louder than a cat who has just discovered her food bowl is empty.

[paimt]

loosely based on a true story

support my fast food addiction

[tabooi]

i call this one "literally what was going on with the second us tour"

[yourlocalabomination]

Best thing about being able to draw is that I’m allowed to doodle stupid things.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[chrliekclly]

“…i held him for a while and that was it…”

doodled a lil s1ish charden

[wizards-and-t]

istanbul (not constantinople)

[blockgamepirate]

I think if I could give the QSMP team one piece of advice, it would be to hire someone who's a really good and experienced TTRPG gamemaster as a consultant

That's a very specific and difficult skill to acquire (I definitely couldn't do it) but it could do so much for the storytelling and the events. Even just small things that an experienced GM could tweak subtly because they know how to direct or redirect players smoothly in the directions they want them to go, without having to force it

And they would probably be able to predict certain player reactions and prepare for them better

I mean obviously it's not all transferable to this format, livestreamed Minecraft roleplay is very different from a tabletop roleplaying game, but I think a lot of it would be, understanding player psychology, etc.

And I get the feeling that the current admin team is maybe more experienced in like video game design? or maybe Minecraft adventure map design? rather than a fully interactive medium (I mean it would make a lot of sense to hire adventure map designers for a project like this, and it definitely seems like they have people who are very talented at those kinds of skills, so I'm assuming that was a priority in their recruitment efforts)

My point is, having a different perspective would help, I think, and good GMs are still such an underrated talent

[furiousgoldfish]

Living with abusive parents made me feel like I need to be productive every day, every moment, and that's the only way I can survive. If I stopped being productive, then I was not worthy of life anymore. It made me into this hyper-stressed individual who would feel bad just from not producing anything within few hours; I'd feel guilty, ashamed and not good enough if a whole day went by without me accomplishing anything.

This lead to me burning out from everything I was trying to achieve, it exhausted me, it brought me endless days of experiencing guilt and shame from being too tired and too stressed and anxious to make or do anything. It made me sick, and ashamed of being sick. It made me compare myself to everyone who accomplished more than me, feeling small and unable to compete. It made me dismiss everything I have done as 'not good enough' because it didn't bring me that feeling that I was now someone, that I had done something important, something I could be proud of. I was proud of nothing. Nothing was notable, nothing was exceptional.

I never stopped to ask myself, for what reasons was I doing this? It was assumed that of course, this constant 'doing something' would bring me somewhere, only I didn't know where, I didn't have a goal. I just knew I needed to keep working, keep producing, or else I would be bad. What was I working for? Who was benefiting from this? I didn't even know.

I was blindly following the path that eroded my mental health, my well-being, my sense of self-value and my time and energy. I was scrambling for seconds of feeling good about myself which should have been mine from the start. I should have been able to feel good while doing nothing, while resting, relaxing, enjoying, taking it slow, caring for my own health, my well being and my emotional stability. There was absolutely no reason in that high-stress environment for me to be producing anything! I just needed to survive, but the pressure put on me to be 'useful' and 'productive' was so huge, I couldn't even see anything else past it. I couldn't comprehend that I was allowed to feel good even if I did nothing, even if I was just focusing on what made me feel better.

It would take me a long time to realize that working only had a point if you were working towards a specific goal, and if you were able to set the conditions of the work so that it doesn't destroy your health and emotional well being on the way. If working isn't bringing you closer to your goal, it means you're being exploited. Other people are profiting from your constant productivity while you're not even aware of why you're doing it. If working is destroying your current life, it's not sustainable enough to bring you towards a goal. No goal is worth destroying yourself over. You have to live in order to be there for when your goal is achieved.

And you can feel okay about yourself every minute that you're not working towards your goal. Taking breaks and letting yourself recover from work has to be a part of the normal, otherwise it's a burnout waiting to happen. The goal will not run away while you're resting. Nothing bad can happen just because you're taking care of yourself and taking it slow. It will give you more stability and make sure you can keep doing what you're doing.

[foldingfittedsheets]

I used to worry people wouldn’t like my silly nsfw stories if they followed me for cute long gay comics and now that two of my sex shop stories are blowing up I’m fretting all the new followers will get annoyed about the long gay comics.

Repeating my mantra: this is my blog and I post what I want to.