#please help us in any way you can

[oatmealspet]

Over 800 TAG members marched on Netflix & delivered a petition demanding the AMPTP keep #animation jobs #union, agree to AI protections & more. Show the AMPTP that you #standwithanimation. Sign your name next to the people that make the shows you love.

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[randomalistic]

Wait you guys are actually buying Disney products I thought it was a joke

(READ TAGS FOR FULL CONTEXT Sorry it’s long dies

[moeblob]

Rey, who is in my very biased opinion, one of the funniest "girls" I have because she's just a guy, truly. Like Rey is just short for Reynold because he was recruited by a a goddess to help the hero she selected and the hero is conveniently Reynold's younger brother. So he agrees to help under the condition that the goddess gives him a female body for the other world. She's like "really odd flex but whatever" and gives him a female form and he's like "you know. I can't really blame anyone but myself for not specifying 'please don't turn me into a Lisa Frank personification'."

[wlw-webcomic-bracket]

In my professional life offline, I work with community development programs funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). One of the most important of these programs is the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, or “HOME” (not an acronym for some reason). In the last couple years, my office has contributed HOME funding to construction of around 400 new apartment units reserved for low-income families, plus conversion of a former hotel to single-resident occupancy units for people exiting homelessness and security deposit assistance for renters moving into market-rate units. I have a secondary role in the HOME program (most of my work is on a different grant, although I’ve contributed to the environmental reviews for all of our current round of projects), but I am immensely proud of what our team has done with a limited resource in a horrifically expensive housing market.

In 2023, House Republicans proposed cutting HUD’s 2024 budget for the HOME program by 67%, from $1.5 billion to $500 million.

Their proposal didn’t make it into the final bill. The President and Senate (under Democratic leadership) proposed HOME budgets of $1.8 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. The final compromise budget allocated HUD $1.25 billion for the HOME program, a 17% cut which was passed down to every local HOME jurisdiction.

I’m glad the budget cuts weren’t worse. But what this means, in practical terms, is that one out of every six people we could have helped this year gets nothing. One out of every six people who would have received rent assistance is facing eviction. One out of every six people that would have received an affordable unit priced at 30% of their income has to keep giving 50% or more of their paycheck to market-rate landlords. We’re doing what we can with local resources, but there’s only so much you can do at the local level when federal funding goes away.

House Republicans are trying to reduce HOME funding to just $500 million again in 2025. So far, the Senate has rejected this, but barring a miracle upset, Democrats are almost certain to lose control of the Senate after next week’s election. If Republicans keep control of the House, and especially if they keep the House and win the Presidency, there is nothing stopping them from gutting housing programs completely.

I understand why people are frustrated with our choices this election. I am frustrated with our choices this election. But at the end of the day, I have a duty to my community. With Democrats in office, I can keep fulfilling that duty. With Republicans in office, I will lose the best tools I have to make a material difference to the vulnerable people who live around me. The people I serve will lose their housing, or they will lose their best path out of homelessness. There is no way around it.

Please, give me the tools to keep helping. Vote for Democrats up and down ballot, and once we’ve got them in office, thank them for doing what they do well and pressure the hell out of them to do better on the issues where they suck.

Because of gerrymandering (and geographic issues in general), control of the House will probably come down to just a few dozen races. I’m not endorsing any of these candidates on a personal level - some of them are probably good, some of them definitely suck - but they are the only bulwark we have against a party that wants to dismantle everything good about this country and lean into all the most shameful parts of our history. Every election matters, but if you live in one of these House districts, your vote is particularly important:

Alaska: AK-01 Mary Pelolta

Arizona: AZ-01 Amish Shah, AZ-06 Kirsten Engel

California: CA-13 Adam Gray, CA-22 Rudy Salas, CA-27 George Whitesides, CA-41 Will Rollins, CA-45 Derek Tran, CA-47 Dave Min

Colorado: CO-03 Adam Frisch, CO-08 Yadira Caraveo

Connecticut: CT-05 Jahana Hayes

Indiana: IN-01 Frank Mrvan

Iowa: IA-01 Christina Bohannan, IA-03 Lanon Baccam

Maine: ME-02 Jared Golden

Michigan: MI-07 Curtis Hertel Jr., MI-08 Kristen McDonald Rivet, MI-10 Carl Marlinga

Minnesota: MN-02 Angie Craig

Montana: MT-01 Monica Tranel

Nebraska: NE-02 Tony Vargas

New Jersey: NJ-07 Sue Altman

New Mexico: NM-02 Gabe Vasquez

New York: NY-04 Laura Gillen, NY-17 Mondaire Jones, NY-19 Josh Riley, NY-22 John Mannion

North Carolina: NC-01 Don Davis

Ohio: OH-09 Marcy Kaptur, OH-13 Emilia Sykes

Oregon: OR-05 Janelle Bynum

Pennsylvania: PA-07 Susan Wild, PA-08 Matt Cartwright, PA-10 Janelle Stelson

Texas: TX-34 Vicente Gonzalez

Virginia: VA-02 Missy Cotter Smasal, VA-07 Eugene Vindman

Washington: WA-03 Marie Gluesenkamp Perez

Wisconsin: WI-03 Rebecca Cooke

[not-poignant]

Techniques for writing a bad drug trip:

We're going to be using excerpts from one of my own chapters here from my story Eversion to discuss the kind of writing techniques that will help make a bad drug trip more believable. In context, the character Connor has nonconsensually been given a synthetic made-up highball of drugs that gives him a horrible time, and this does not accurately reflect what bad drug trips look like across all drugs, for example sometimes throwing up on ayahuasca is a feature, and not a bug. What I'll be focusing on instead are the actual narrative techniques that indicate an affected mind and body vs. specific technques for specific drugs.

Beginning Stages:

Firstly, pre-bad-trip, it's useful to depict your character beforehand as being fully - or as close to fully lucid as possible. Have them realising things, actively thinking, describing their surroundings, and doing things in a kind of logical way - show them doing something mundane even, like walking into a room, or a cafe. In this case, Connor walks into a cafe, describes the cafe, makes some mental notes and then has a lucid conversation.

Next, most of the time any drug gives you physical symptoms even before the bad trip part, so describe those. In this case:

Seconds later Connor’s heart began to race

The needle slid free and Connor hardly felt it.

He stumbled over nothing as he passed the group of cyclists, staring at them as his heart beat harder and harder, as sweat broke out over his forehead.

At this point in the story, another character takes over, the person who gives him the highball picks up the conversation because Connor is overwhelmed by the physical sensations and doesn't feel like talking. He stops thinking about his environment accurately and starts to notice things while dropping others. His thoughts are already being affected.

This is when you can start using techniques like time skipping, forgetfulness, memory loss, or alternatively focusing on one thing a lot and a lot of other things a little.

Connor nodded, thinking that he needed to get away, that he needed to go somewhere. He reached for his phone, but it wasn’t there. Where was his phone? His vision slanted, time slipped away from him. He was beneath a tree, throwing up while Gabriel petted his shoulder and waited beside him.

Here we have a strong time skip - Connor goes from looking for his phone, in the next paragraph he's throwing up by a tree. This progression of events has no logic, except for the bad drug trip. Which means we now know Connor is being really affected by what's happening. These two paragraphs also show forgetfulness - Connor needs to get away / needs to go somewhere, but can't remember where. He looks for his phone, but has forgotten Gabriel took it from him. You don't even need the 'time slipped away from him' description, vision slanting or blurring tends to indicate to readers in situations like this that someone is being quite seriously affected by what's happening to them.

Middle Stages:

Then, he was walking, but couldn’t think past the scattered, rushing noises in his ears, looking like black jags across his vision.

He landed hard on his knees and stared down bewildered at the grass. He looked around, vision turning to brightness, cars zooming by too fast and too large, the sky distorted, the clouds inverting. He raised a hand to his head, but another hand – warm and gentle – rested at his temple, thumb gently stroking. Connor leaned into it, whimpering.

We're doing a lot of time skipping now, alongside mental symptoms.

The writing technique itself is changing. In one sentence we cover a lot of choppy subjects - vision turning bright, cars too fast, sky distorting, clouds inverting. It gives a sense of too much information happening at the same time - Connor's senses are overwhelmed.

This kind of choppy information can be delivered in short complete sentences, but I liked one run-on sentence here because it gives that sense of 'and then this and this and this and this and this' which is sometimes how it feels to have too much information coming in at once.

It's also making use of the senses. We have vision and hearing and touch all in the same paragraph. We also have 'too fast' 'too large' - things are too much. Not only that, but describing things as distorted indicates strongly that Connor's already hallucinating and hasn't realised yet.

At this point in your bad drug trip, you should not be using your regular writing style. If your character isn't thinking like normal, you might want to consider also not writing 'like normal' for that character.

(This is the same for when a character is having a flashback, is overwhelmed, or is experiencing something intense for any reason).

He took great, shuddering breaths and then pressed shaking fingers to his stomach. The knot of pain in his thigh was manifesting there as well.

Now, for the bad drug trip to truly be bad, we also have the physicality of the experience. The body comes along for the ride and it often feels like it's dying during a bad drug trip.

Huge shuddering breaths and shaking hands can indicate an overloaded nervous system, also someone who might be going into shock, or who is hyperventilating, or who is literally experiencing respiratory distress. We don't have to know what it is - one or all of them could be true! A person on a bad drug trip, unless they're a medical professional or experienced with bad drug trips, will not know or be assessing what is happening to them as it happens.

He flinched back when he saw black inching out from beneath his knees on the grass, dimly knew it as a hallucination before that awareness vanished and he pushed himself back and away.

Boop a hallucination. Connor was already hallucinating, but now he realises too. You don't need to include this. I was writing a smart, analytical character, and he does know he's having a bad drug trip, so he's allowed little moments of realisation. Your character might know more, or they might know less.

Intense / Peak Stages:

He could feel the way his body pulsed at discordant rhythms, too fast, too slow, never in sync throughout his body. The tips of his fingers were throbbing. His feet felt like stones. He looked at Gabriel’s perfect beard and thought of tearing his face off. It would be brief, brutal, bloody, but then he could just lie down.

Writing emotional distortion here is that Connor feels like behaving violently, which - to this degree - isn't normal for him. The drug overdose is making him vengeful. We know it's part of the drug overdose because the first part of the paragraph focuses on all his physical symptoms. The drug trip might make your character too terrified to function, it might make them aroused (i.e. fuck or die sex pollen scenarios), it might make them giddy. Have some emotional distortion going on on some level. Even if it's extreme anhedonia or apathy in the face of potentially dying.

The hospital was clearly giving him too many sedatives. He didn’t know how to tell them that he had no tolerance, he couldn’t take the dosages that his father was pushing for.

Now we hit full flashback. Connor now believes he's being overdosed with sedatives in the hospital, and is no longer in the present at all. He's not even 'I remember' - he's just there. Flashbacks won't happen with every bad drug trip but they are common to any bad drug trip that is hallucinatory in nature.

Connor stared up at the ceiling of his apartment, and his hands rested on the floor. His heart was beating far too fast, fluttering in his chest. He felt hazy. Every now and then he had to clench his hands into fists so tight that his knuckles ached. A compulsion. He couldn’t stop himself from doing it. He’d feel himself shake, and then he’d stop, and he’d stare upwards. He was lying on the floor.

Connor stared ahead. The corner of his mouth felt wet. He was drooling. His fingers and toes kept twitching against his will.

What Connor is describing now is seizure activity.

Connor isn't consciously clenching his hands into fists, his body is doing that. He calls it a compulsion, but it's not. Feeling your body shake and then stop and then shake again is - in this instance for Connor - active seizure activity.

Not all seizures cause full unconsciousness of the entire brain, for example. Connor doesn't know what's happening to him, but we can tell from the physical symptoms here - heart fast and fluttering, feeling hazy, physical movements completely beyond his control - that he's now in a danger zone.

If you want the bad drug trip to reach 'a normal person would be in an ambulance by now' - this is a good place to be. Focus on strange sensations of the heart, the pulse, shaking, the sensation of overheating or being too cold. If you want, look up the symptoms of shock, or tachycardia.

Aftermath of bad drug trip:

In the aftermath of a bad drug trip, be aware that it can take some time for a person's thoughts to return to normal. Don't write an instant return to normalcy once a person is physically stabilised. Often they show mood shifts that are quite profound. Even a person coming down from MDMA often experiences depression or flatness after a great night out with zero negative memories.

Normal aftermaths/ongoing side effects from bad drug trips include apathy, depression, suicidal ideation, anhedonia, flatness, lethargy, exhaustion (literally, the body physically went through several marathons), pain, and foggy, disconnected thinking (both because the brain went through something traumatic and the drugs take a while to work through the system). GI (gastrointestional disturbances) are common, from 'not going to the bathroom at all' to 'diarrhea' etc. Sometimes these after-effects last days, sometimes they last weeks, sometimes they even last months.

-

So! In summary helpful techniques for bad drug trips can include:

Shorter, choppier sentences to indicate overwhelm

Physical symptoms being 'experienced' - character often doesn't know what's happening except in special circumstances

A progression of physical symptoms.

Focus on all of the senses

Hallucinations and/or flashbacks (one usually happens with the other)

Unusual emotional affect or emotional distortion

Time skips / non-linear time jumps

Inability to think properly

Focusing on some things too much and other things not at all

Realising there is a progression, that must include a heavy aftermath (unless you're trying to be special, or unless it's one of the few drugs that can make you feel unusually euphoric afterwards and then there's still usually a crash after that lmao)

Different drugs create different, known effects, however, people will have different 'bad drug trips' depending on their circumstances.

I'm a little bit afraid this post is going to crash so I'm going to post it now! And for that anon who asked me what kind of writing I used - this is it! :D

[codenamesazanka]

AU in which Deku gets to interrogate Mr. Compress about Shigaraki

.•.

Izuku blanched. "What?"

"I said, those hands he wears all over…" Sako spoke with the exaggerated tone of an adult talking to a slow child. "…belong to his family. Told us that himself."

"Serial killer trophies?" Tsukauchi muttered, jotting into his notebook.

Sako paused, before shifting his gaze - turned icy cold - to the detective. "If you think a four-year-old is capable of that, Detective."

"Four..." Izuku choked on the word. "You mean… He got his quirk… and then…?"

In his mind, the images shot themselves at Izuku: the Decay at Jaku, spreading relentlessly... Shigaraki from the mall, four fingers wrapped around his neck, the fifth threatening to land... the child Izuku saw, crying from a broken heart... Smiling wide, as if to say there's no one he can't save...

"He was never saved..." Izuku whispered. "There was an accident, and he was never saved... Why wasn't he saved? Why did no one know, this whole time? How..."

.•.

and bam. That's pretty much half the flashback Deku sees in Chapters 417 & 418. And essentially half the save Deku does (*Figuring out why Shigaraki can't let go of his sad and lonely past*, then going to hold Tenko's hand). Now he doesn't need to launch OFA into Shigaraki to break open his psyche. Now Deku can just talk to Shigaraki and tell him he's there to hold his hand and give him peace in... Chapter 379? End the fight early.

Sadly there'd be no cool punching, but Shigaraki lives. Well, I guess Shigaraki might still stay the League's leader, so the cool punching still has to happen. And then Shigaraki lives. maybe.

[peppermintpegis]

netflix one piece live action feels a little like fanfic in that it makes sure it hits all the important notes but doesnt do all the work to make them hit which works in fic where the reader is supposed to bring all the emotional story investment from the original but doesnt work in a multi million adaptation that is supposed to be able to stand on its own or even serve as an intro to the series. it even does this in service to have more koby and helmeppo gay moments in this essay i w

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

ford: i just don’t see the point in esentuating-

stan: accentuate

ford: i know, that’s just how i pronounce it

stan: wh- so, what, it’s fine when you get grammar wrong but it’s a crime when i do it?

ford: it is when a demon is actively trying to kill us and you’re making a fool of yourself instead of helping

stan: okay, wow, first of all- rude

ford: what’s rude is you telling my entire family that i’m the bad twin while i’m covered in my own ash and soot

stan: …to be fair, i didn’t notice-

ford: do you remember what mabel said we had to work on?

stan: i- (sigh) yeah…i’m sorry, ford

ford: forgiven. and i would like you to know that i am grateful for every day i get to wake up and spend with you

stan: heh- are you just trying to match me? or is that you being honest?

ford: you know it is :]

stan: aw- <:]

[hydrossity-zone]

lookijg back on my art progress on this blog in reverse is honestly DISGUSTING what was I DOING back then. so weird seeing the changes over time how did I get better at rendering so fast last year how did I go from everything looking like its covered in vaseline in April-June to having actual Texture and subsurface scattering and ambient light and shadows just a couple months later.

Dont get me started on 2023 I was flopping around so bad from transitioning from using FireAlpaca as my primary program to csp (I still miss the simplicity of FA but oh my god I needed the more expansive brush engine so bad. Though I definitely prefer a lot of FireAlpaca’s features over their counterparts/equivalents in clip studio) <- has been happily married to FireAlpaca for almost 8 years

[edge-oftheworld]

when I was in high school there was a tendency whenever there was an attractive boy to simply fan over him. in a way that talked over everything he might say for himself and created a narrative that completely ignored, the fact in some cases, that he was really struggling—or if he was struggling, to pin all the blame on the girl he’s dating and completely ignore the thousands of other factors (no it can’t be mental illness or unaccommodated disability or systemic abuse or exploitation and if he is in an abusive relationship we won’t ever consider the factors that put him at risk for that)

and I’m not saying this fandom is like that. I get the need for privacy around some things and how in public conversations sometimes it’s a lot more respectful to stick to the positives (everyone who does that, I admire you) or even the struggles that are talked about publicly, show respect by not reading too far into them. there’s a time and place for that. but sometimes I feel like our only options are shitty and ableist gossip or totally ignoring the systemic and structural issues we know exist in something like the music industry until someone dies and then we’re looking for someone to blame. friends, there is a point where the respectful thing is to listen to what someone says and come together to make things better. and you can learn how to have that conversation respectfully. please do

[seventh-district]

sometimes it’s late at night and you’re cleaning your room and you come across a few old black and white photos of a young girl and you stare at them for a long minute wondering how on earth they got lost in an old Kroger shopping bag with an unopened pack of cigarettes and a receipt dated 2017.

and you look at the girl in the pictures sat on the floor of someone’s home you don’t recognize, smiling and playing with a set of keys and a tiny part of you feels like it recognizes her but you aren’t sure.

and you flip the pictures over hoping to find some sort of annotation that would give you context and all you find is the year 1964 stamped in tiny font along the edge.

and you flip them back over and time stands still as you realize that the recognition you feel is because she looks so much like you once did and next thing you know your hands are sweating and shaking and you have to sit on the floor because you’re crying so hard because it hits you all at once that you’re looking at your mother.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Does anyone know where I can find the good quality version of this image? It's so frustrating because when cross searching on google it'll tell me the original quality is 850x478, but I can't find a way to download it in that quality. This is another version of the image (I'm guessing it's Mayoi promo art):

But I liked the clean white background one...

[officialdump]

The cleaning team i sent is done. Other than the bodies and blood being cleared, everything is left intact.

-Member of the Chorus, Naos

fuckinghellthatgavemeaheartattack

thank you very much, mister N-Naos, Member of the Chorus, s-sir

we appreciate your e-efforts to help out, a group has been sent out to collect information on the people lost and potential clues on what the hell CloseKnit is up to

[asurrogateblog]

...sudden radio silence on social media for the last few months i wonder why

[alchemiclee]

been looking in tags for a few days now to see if anyone else found the whole high cloud quintet and related story to be a bit.....poorly written, nonsensical, contradictory, full of plot holes and loose ends, etc. apparently i'm not the only one. (and i'm not even talking about shipping stuff, because any time I saw someone mad about bad writing, someone always replies to be homophobic and laugh about failed ships. weirdos.) it could have been so good but was thrown into the garbage for the most part (IF you noticed all the plot holes and contradiction. if not, then it's a fine enough story tbh. I expect most people to see it on surface level and not read all the little hidden lore bits and try to piece it together like my autistic brain did. which is ok! enjoy it if you liked it and ignore me 😆)