#permanent daydream

[lostinheavensworld]

i’m kinda worried that i spend 90% of my waking life not grounded in reality. like i’m either imagining scenarios, constantly, for most of my day, even around other people i’m imagining myself surrounded by DIFFERENT people or living a different life. that or i’m absorbed in shows/games/reading. i’m never me. thats too fucking lonely. but i’m a little worried that this has been the way i’ve always been? like … am i lacking some sort of development by my absolute inability to accept loneliness? and if i’m honest, when i’m having breakdowns, constantly living in a fantasy world only makes my breakdowns worse, because i cant even pretend to not be alone then. i cant even imagine people coming to comfort me. it makes me feel so incredibly alone that i spiral even further. so really, i alresdy know its not entirely healthy of a hobby to entertain … but i cant stop now? i mean… i’ve literally been imagining fictional characters being with me throughout my daily life for as long as i can remember. i mean i have VIVID memories of being in my seventh grade history classroom and having my then comfort imaginary characters sitting in the empty chairs around me. like it has happened for SO LONG and now that my depression has gotten so incredibly bad and now that i’m back home from college for the summer … it is legitimately all i do. all i do is imagine myself with other people being someone else. i literally struggle to grasp my actual reality and know who i really am and how i really feel, because i have gotten so incredibly good at convincing myself theres other people with me and i feel something else and i am someone else. and its not in a schizophrenic way … like i know theyre not real and i dont hear voices or see people really … its just. theyre there. in my mind theres a person standing over there. and i’ll talk to them. i’ll laugh at inside jokes. i’ll interact like its a real person that i have history with and i dont think that its what i should do? but im also so scared to tell anyone ? because i feel like i sound fucking crazy. and i’ve already been to a mental hospital once in the past six months and i’d rather not go back. no matter who the therapist, psychiatrist, or even fucking friend is, i do not mention that i’m constantly living between two realities. but im really starting to consider it might be harmful to me long term, if it isnt already harmful. i know daydreaming is normal but i mean .. it is all of the fucking time. for years and years ive existed in perpetual daydreams, various realities that i construct that comfort me and protect me from the reality of the life i’m living. and its not like my life is even so fucking terrible. but when im in the second reality i can pull myself out of my depression. i can pretend theres another person there, pushing me to get up or take my meds or eat or something. and i get it done. and it helps. and i feel like i sound insane but im just. im just worried. and no one’s gonna read this and im screaming into the void but fuck. am i crazy? do i need to talk to someone about this? did any of this even make any sense??

[soopersara]

For reasons that have everything and nothing to do with the most recent chapters of I&S, I've been thinking a lot about a time travel AU that I will absolutely never write.

Specifically, I want a time travel AU where little-kid!Zuko (age 9-10) travels forward in time and meets angry-teen!Zuko (we're talking like... the Book 1 egghead version of angry-teen!Zuko here). I know that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but the way I envision this playing out is:

Teen!Zuko and kid!Zuko meet, and after a healthy amount of confusion, figure out that they're two different versions of the same person. Kid!Zuko is... not thrilled to be stuck on a rickety old ship with a much grumpier version of himself, but hey! Uncle Iroh is here, and he's got lots of board games and even more free time, so it could be worse. Teen!Zuko, meanwhile, is having a bit of a crisis as he gets slapped in the face with several realizations all at once.

Realization #1: A warship is not a good place for a 9-10 year old boy to live, but there's literally nowhere else in the world where kid!Zuko will be safe. For as long as kid!Zuko is stuck in this timeline, teen!Zuko has to look after him.

Realization #2: Oh, shit. No one has seriously fucked up kid!Zuko yet. His life obviously hasn't been perfect, but this is pretty much the peak of kid!Zuko's sweet-and-innocent phase.

Realization #3: ... as fucked up as teen!Zuko's life has been, he desperately doesn't want to be the person who fucks up kid!Zuko's life.

Cue teen!Zuko scrambling to get his shit together so that he can be a reasonably healthy and stable guardian/big brother figure for his younger self. He starts working on his temper and trying to take Iroh's advice more seriously, and while things don't always go smoothly (kid!Zuko definitely picks up some vigilante tendencies from teen!Zuko. There may or may not be sightings of a tiny Blue Spirit causing trouble up and down the Earth Kingdom coast), teen!Zuko eventually figures out what he's doing. He puts in the work to become a decent role model, he deals with some of his own shit (and his outlook on life improves), he grows to see kid!Zuko as the little brother he never had, and he generally doesn't fuck anything up too badly.

Basically, looking after kid!Zuko teaches teen!Zuko self love (but with extra steps! I don't think grumpy-teen!Zuko could ever learn anything the simple way 😂)

All of that growth makes it harder and harder for teen!Zuko to ever envision himself returning to the Fire Nation. After all, if he wouldn't put his younger self through the pain of going back there and dealing with Ozai, why should he put his present self through that? And on a related note, kid!Zuko definitely has questions about teen!Zuko's scar and banishment. When teen!Zuko reaches a point where he's able to think about the Agni Kai, he can't imagine anything that kid!Zuko could ever do to deserve that kind of treatment, which leads teen!Zuko to question whether he deserved it. And as teen!Zuko starts to come to grips with the fact that he's probably never going back home - certainly not if it would mean putting kid!Zuko through the same pain that teen!Zuko experienced there - he has to start considering what other options he has for the future.

Kid!Zuko may or may not accelerate teen!Zuko's redemption arc even more by befriending various members of the Gaang and dragging his 'big brother' along to meet his new friends/disappearing for a few hours with his new friends only to be 'rescued' by teen!Zuko who is... very surprised and very awkward about it when he realizes who kid!Zuko is hanging out with.

There are obviously lots of time travel AUs out there already, but apparently this one is just going to live in my brain for the forseeable future 😂 As much as I love the standard "post-redemption!Zuko meets Book 1 Zuko and mentors his younger self to accelerate his own redemption/drags himself kicking and screaming toward redemption" time travel AUs that I see around the fandom, I think I'm just hungry for a time travel AU where pre-redemption!Zuko doesn't know what his future could look like. To me, there's just something really appealing about the idea of a time travel AU where his redemption gets accelerated not because he knows his life will get better if he becomes a better person, but because he wants to be someone who his younger self can be proud of.

[karda]

the people who moved into the house added railings to my balcony

[acircusfullofdemons]

sometimes I wonder if having the daydream doc is worth it. there's a lot of overly specific terminology & media that isn't about madd but gives off those vibes and a bunch of other useless shit in there.

and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that cares about preserving all this info. and tbh no offense to anyone out there but I think maybe I am. which is okay obviously, this keeps me entertained and I feel like I'm doing something important even if in the grand scheme of things I'm not.

but then I look at everyone who's expressed gratitude over the doc, those who have found words for their experiences and. idk. I guess if it helps even one person out there it's worth it.

[kijosakka]

i have so many hypotheticals for dramaturgy u dont even KNOW (i am going to sit here and go through them though)

so this is all coming up because i was considering a tiny detail about the initial cast relations on island (then turning into this whole. mess.) and wanted to do a little thing where i explore hypotheticals to this au that aren't necessarily 'canon' to it,,

CAST RELATIONS: in my rehash post of island and covering the casts' reactions to noah acting Like That, i say the feeling of uncanny detachedness was immediate. but it could also? not be?

maybe he just comes off as shy at first, or especially standoffish -- perhaps the sense of detachedness is a mounting realization that 'oh this guy is kindof Weird As Hell' instead of an immediate bad sense,, this effectively would not change the cast relations or dynamics at this point, but it would provide more exposition opportunities for cast members to try striking up anything at all with him and getting shut down immediately as opposed to (unintentional) ostracization from the beginning.

^ and also, conflict exploration. not during island, but during his shift in WT, there could be the issue of noah knowing these people already tried and he shut them down each and every time, so what reason do they have to give him yet another chance? (is it worth the emotional risks and potential hurt and no gains, etc etc)

PHOBIA FACTOR: as it is, 'canon' to the AU noah gets eliminated during dodgebrawl (which is necessary for his general character), but phobia factor is a lovely little 'consequences of forgetting about the cameras' if on a much smaller scale.

now,, im ngl this sounded a lot more fun than it is actually going to be. because the simple answer is just that noah lies. put in this position -- if his onscreen character is forced to have depth, then it will be fake for his own peace of mind.

^ the only thing that would potentially happen is that it would, in a way, isolate him from his castmates further, simply because his reaction,,, Isn't. the fear among the cast as they face their greatest fears is shared -- except for noah. because its not genuine. his reaction comes off as flat (and even then the response that he is showing is further, repeated theme, uncanny valley. to have never seen this guy fearful performing some facsimile of it? Weird.)

SIERRA / WT PAN-OUT: ok,, sierras role here is very closely connected to the other idea mentioned here -- a wt hypothetical season play-out,, thing. while not 'canon' to the au for the simple fact that noah has Little to No development in this and thats the point, im spilling all my 'what-ifs' and might as well include this one.

theres actually,, a shocking number of moving parts to this. to summarize: tyler is eliminated in noahs place in london (mostly to keep numbers even), and thus takes his place witnessing the Kiss.

^ im not sure why tyler would be eliminated honestly. havent thought that through. however i do have something mapped out (kinda) for the trajectory of the love triangle,, being that noah doesnt do Anything. it boils over eventually, obviously, since duncan and gwen both know that he knows, im thinking around picnic at hanging dork? (elimination-wise, between london and picnic [*greece & area 51] cody is eliminated, sierra is Struggling but i do need her here for future plot purposes)

[*greece; noah volunteers before duncan in the scavenger hunt and along the way kiiinda talks with gwen?? just a little, just kinda nudging her in a direction away from any Dramatic, Exploitable behaviors]

^ so noah says nothing, right? he doesnt want to get involved in this Plotline, but he can get duncan to spill. so he does that -- talks to others, sometimes points over at him, and through the two challenges and the time between ends up freaking duncan out enough that he confronts noah post-picnic (theyre just outside the plane getting uhhh idk drinks. its Hot.) while the cameras arent rolling. the cast is around though.

duncan spills it all by himself, noah has a little moment of 'i didnt tell anyone, but you just did' -- courtney is pissed, but duncan is downright furious and gets all in noahs face, to which he responds much like he did at the very beginning of island: he doesnt.

he says something to the effect of 'if youre looking for a reaction, im the wrong person to look for it in' (or he doesnt say anything -- this is a work in progress) and Leaves. i also do like the mental image of noah spilling whatever drink he has down duncans shirt to force him away in a manner that doesnt make noah reveal any (perceived sense of) vulnerability via stepping back himself.

not much else on that -- just that post-challenge i also like the idea of noah being physically close to owen after. idk to what ends,, owen just wants to Comfort (< see also, noah can have a little breakdown in the showers or smth. a tiny one. its been far too long having to keep this all up and being close and not even properly involved in some of the drama of the show is making him crack whether he shows it or not)

^ and (im ngl i do imagine gwen being eliminated here? again, semantics r lost on me in favor of the Numbers) now,, sweden comes: duncan definitely believes anything with noah is nuked, so sucks up to owen and alejandro both in similar ways. basically like how canon went, etc etc noah is back to fading into the background.

however post-sweden offers up duncan&noah interactions. say duncan has had time to cool off and now wants to know why noah didnt say anything; noah deflects, bc of course he does, but does talk duncan into a kindof realization of just how much the show itself impacted his relationship with courtney -- not at the moment, but later it would serve to duncan to characterize noah a little better (and by a little i mean a lot); being, he's keenly aware of the cameras and the audience.

niagra brawls,, everything most goes, save the pairing are changed a bit: heather and alejandro, owen and blaineley, duncan and sierra, and courtney and noah. < courtney and noah win immunity (note: courtney definitely carries him across). post-challenge, noah point-blank tells courtney that hes sorry and that he shouldve come to her immediately.

^ courtney,, appreciates the genuine apology. she asks him why he didnt -- noah is, for once, honest, saying it was mostly a selfish reason and he didnt want the fallout. (smth smth he can truly hold sympathy abt the situation, knowing just how badly the presence of cameras can Fuck Things Up)

now. i swear ill circle around to sierra eventually but i need to talk about blaineley really quickly. so dramaturgy right?? noah is In The Business. i had it in the very original post of this (rb, covering cast dynamics) that noah did not like blainely. i renege. bffs. absolute shit-talkers together.

^ the point of that is that noah talks her out of the alliance with chef. im not actually sure what that does bc i still intend for blaineley to be eliminated post-china (aswell as courtney probably idk?? could be switched with duncan) but maybe she also has smth to say about how detached noah acts?? (see also the little scene concept thing of chris pointing out just how unnerving it was seeing noah act so lifeless)

also: noah wins. the china challenge. master of keeping a Flat Face. (note: he definitely does vomit immediately after. sick for Hours)

the semantics kinda fizzle out from here, but in essence noah floats his way to the final three à la cody style (does not want to be there also) and on the way kinda bonds with sierra? < that brings up another little correction ill rb onto another post at some point; sierra, while initially holding the intrigue as opposed to dislike of noahs detachedness, does in fact grow to find it unnerving. seeing him through a screen? really fun! being around him? ...not so much.

^ sierra, through noahs Magical Advice Powers That He Has In This Pan-Out For Some Reason, does earn herself advice from him about her obsessiveness or whatever. havent thought about it too much and actually propped sierra up as me having way more to say about her than i actually do,, but they do bond. they get a little bonding.

also: plane explosion. theres a little scene here that lives in my head wherein heather, frazzled from the explosion and having voted against alejandro, kinda blows up at noah? lashing out at him etc etc,, noah, par for the course, doesnt react -- mostly. he does just get up and leave, and both heather and alejandro get to hear one tiny little intake of breath that sounds vaguely like he might be crying. but he is Gone. (he breaks down around the interns instead, and fully resolves to himself that this is the final three and he was definitely making third place)

anyway beyond that i think it would be funny if the tiebreaker was actually heather and alejandro and noah some how finagles his way out of being tied up to be the first person to hit the water. thus taking himself out of the game and promising a 'dramatic finale between rivals' like hes very aware chris was gunning for.

^ this is,, tbh idk how 'canon' any of this will be?? if ill keep this as a loose outline and just change noahs character and dynamics,, idk idk. its getting late i cant really think and my god this is so so so much longer than i intended.

[cipher-the-sidhe]

Woe! OCs without context be upon ye!

[allthedesiredusernamesaretaken]

... memory lane ...

Permanent Vacation | 1980

directed by Jim Jarmusch

[goldendoodlerlockerlove]

Do you have tutorial videos on how to draw like you do ?

Awww!! Omg, I’m actually so honored that you want a tutorial from lil’ ol’ me!! I’ve mentioned this before, but art wasn’t my first medium of creativity, writing was, so I’ve always been a bit insecure about my art. I’m definitely more confident in it now that I’ve had a lot of practice, but I still need to break out of that mindset of comparing myself to other artists, pffffffft.

I actually have a tutorial that I made for @babsvibes on how I do my coloring and lighting and shading that you can read here:

https://www.tumblr.com/goldendoodlerlockerlove/734849537728004096/all-right-because-babsvibes-asked-me-how-i?source=share

I don’t have any tutorial videos, but I can also offer a bit of extra advice here. Just putting a pencil to paper can help a lot, especially if one is in art block. It can really help with pushing through that tough spot of feeling like you can’t draw anything. Just getting anything sketched can really make a difference. Using actual paper to draw some things can really help you improve, there’s just something about using a physical medium once in awhile that really gets the creative juices flowing.

Looking at other artists’ work and supporting them can also go a long way for inspiration. I know for a fact that I’m as good an artist as I am today because of all of the incredible artists I’ve gotten inspired from.

A couple other things I can say is that coloring your lineart, if you do lineart, can make a huge difference in making your art look nicer. And turning on stabilization was an absolute game-changer for me. It made making lineart so much faster and nicer.

I hope you found at least some of this helpful 🫶🏼 I’m not great at giving art advice, but I tried!! 😅

[flamboyant-king]

Im all over with the drawing today nyaha

My friend said draw a majestic Cammy pin up, but theyre just vibing

[wewontbesleeping]

actually paper rings x stay stay stay is an interesting mashup to me, because both do this really common taylor swift thing where they romanticize what are ultimately very unhealthy/toxic relationship dynamics and fit them in really neatly in ways that make them sound so perfect. like the romcoms that make you think "if this was real life, she would take out a restraining order on that man, not marry him." i threw my phone across the room at you. no one else is going to love me when i get mad. before you, i only dated self-indulgent takers who took all of their problems out on me, and i'm still trying desperately to sort through the damage they did and learn how to love someone in a healthy way. but i'm with you, even if it makes me blue. no one else is gonna love you when you get mad. everyone leaves me! i leave everyone!

[phosphorus-noodles]

^ cursed with fanfiction thoughts. btw

[izvmimi]

if i keep thinking about how tsukasa and senku are clearly best friends who never had the fortune to meet in hs and despite being extremely different are very much the same i’ll start crying

[wereshrew-admirer]

marrow creek

[scattered-winter]

the urge to get a matching tattoo w someone ,,,,,

[jojotichakorn]

i think it's kinda sad that in my maladaptive daydreaming scenario that i have had for almost a decade now, i explained away the fact that no one's ever liked me romantically as gods placing a curse of never finding my true love on me

[humdrumgolf]

[a prose-soup about creativity procrastination/ depersonalisation/ object permanence/ maladaptive daydreaming]

The space between the lights.

Mostly I am alive at night. With my people asleep, my jobs asleep, possibility awakens. The white hot drone of life in the daylight dims to a static hiss. The round bulbous orange lum of the streetlights hover in a row like will’o’the wisp. Weak and echoey phosphorescence that makes the world shrink to a street, to a window. My eyes stretch and yawn into the darkness, grateful. The sun’s been put out like the big light. In my next house I won’t bulb a single big light. I’ll live like an urban fox, drenched in a drizzle of lamplight, I’ll walk through patches of house that never talk above a shadow. I’ll tread lighter, softer, with purpose, my feet will grow roots with each step. I will propagate my space.

When Dawn’s first seep of sun bleaches the black it already feels too late. I’ve missed the cues and I’m so behind. Exposed by a pale, insipid breath that soon glares to a sustained holler. The big light turns the ground to shards. My steps are staccato and foreign. My house is a brittle course of ceaseless need. Sometimes my feet don’t even meet the sneering floor. I hold myself taut above a bed that only moments ago held me in the dark; soft and sweet- the big light turns it rigid and self-conscious like the first flush of teen love, afraid to hold my hand in the corridors.

The possibility at night feels immortal. In the silence and the half-light I can savour my humiliating dreams. Wishes that taste sour when eaten from the washing up bowl, desires that feel cheap amongst the laundry become gilded confectionary that coat my tongue as I whisper to myself like a promise,

‘You could be…’

In the envelope of the AM’s my wings can reach with feathers I clipped during sunrise.

I’ve never been able to hold my own face in my mind. It won’t settle to itself, always cringing and angling where it slips and demurs in reality. In my mind my features are cubist; bold and sustained with snapshots of movement. The realist mirror in the morning warns of a startled, fleshy thing, suspicious and sweetly curdled.

I like the cubist face in the dark. She can wear the heavy features of my dreams with ease. Corrugated expressions of passion sculpt her correctly. The passions of the milky mirror-face look wild and desperate, they overshadow her words, make them alarming and absurd and I pity her and force her back in my mouth.

All the nights of my life I have dressed my bedsheets in longing for the cubist face, so when she slipped into the glare of the big light I almost didn’t catch her.

As I held myself to the wrists in brown greasy water, she shimmered on the surface like oil.

When I turned my curdled mask to the window above, she was there.

I stood in silent commune with her for a moment,

‘These are not your hours. Wait for me in bed.’

But she wouldn’t relinquish to the milk.

And with her came dreams.

And with her came promises.

But hers were not gilded sweets, devoured in clumps and then shut away with shame in their tin.

Hers were soporific enticements to oblivion.

I had poured so much of my milk into her carton that she had saturated through the screech of daylight to hold me firm in her world.

I could no longer see myself.

She had eclipsed me.