#probably my favorite project this year

[ananinidraws]

This was a school project i made this year, for my animation class. I was pretty proud of how it came out so i wanted to post it here as well <3333

It's just a cute lil story between two long distance partners meeting for the first time <3333

I'll expand on details in some reblogs with more concepts for these characters uvu

[da-janela-lateral]

Unstoppable force meets immovable object, more known as "absurdly long and complex music liker" meets "won't listen to any music".

[the-cosmos-withinus]

Just a couple of Horrible Old Men trading dresses

[rotisseries]

"I can see will appreciating all types of music genres" well I cannot. peace and love<3

[amplexadversary]

I should not be bitchy when my fandom is getting a new release.

Unfortunately I am an immense pessimist and get disproportionately resentful if I feel someone else's (wrong) preference is gets more or better attention than mine.

That said. I am probably going to be sorely tempted to set myself up for disappointment and put G's anniversary project into a dick measuring contest with Wing's.

If wing gets more dialogue, more art, OR I see more of it on my feed, I'm going to be unbearable to be around.

[arolesbianism]

I don't play limbus company but I have been informed of the Don news and am now rotating her violently in my brain despite only knowing second hand information about her. Depending on how her story plays out I might have to read limbus story stuff because just the concepts behind her character is making me go rabid why must she be so good she's banana blond

[gilfrespecter]

Listening to coinstar by the growlers and thinking about mel so hard I get nauseous

Ridiculous stream of conscious in the tags apologies but not really

[calicotisane]

Sometimes I remember there are still so many like 13-14 year olds out there who are addicted to the Caretaker and make their own hours and hours of ambient drone and plunderphonics in imitation of Leyland Kirby and they're just fucking addicted to it and love it so much and it makes me feel calm and peaceful within

[payphoneangel]

Vinny's 2023 fics!!

I'm so proud of all the writing I did in 2023!! I learned so much that I'm so excited to apply to my projects for 2024 <3

Not Whole, Not Holy Rating: Explicit Word count: 2,752

Moody, quiet, and introspective, this piece explores endverse!Cas and endverse!Dean finding a little bit of solace in each other among their crumbling world. Best described by the tag: Not hurt/comfort, not hurt/no comfort, but some secret third thing.

A Midsummer Night's Dean Rating: Teen+ Word count: 16,948

A wild ride of a casefic loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Featuring love potions, Dean having chronic foot-in-mouth-disease, Cas being SO down bad it's dangerous, and Sam wanting to be literally anywhere else but here. I've been told this fic has made people laugh so hard, it has awoken children and brought concerned family members a'knocking on doors.

Innervate A series currently containing two fics, with a few more additions planned! This series follows Cas' developing relationship to his body and how he navigates through the world with it. It's full of fun science and anatomy, alternate angel lore, and LOTS of UST between Dean and Cas (don't worry, it will get resolved... eventually lol. This is a series-long slow burn)

Check out Prelude as a sampler for vibes (full disclosure-- this was a WIP for a LOOOOOONG time so while this fic was uploaded in 2023 the writing is far older than that)

Then for a more cohesive story (and tbqh way stronger writing), pop on over to Ask Me Why My Heart's Inside My Throat

Spellbound Rating: Explicit Word count: 4,764

A one-shot exploring the Master/Apprentice relationship of Sam and Rowena. Let's be real here. They have insane magic sex and I feel like not enough ppl talk about it. EYE barely even scratched the surface with this one. The quickest summary I got for this one: Sam's cardinal virtue is that when a hot woman speaks, he listens.

Long Black Cloud Coming Down Rating: Gen Word Count: 3,540

Taking place prior to s1, teen!Dean has to act quick and think fast when Sammy suddenly comes down with a fever. He can't let his thoughts race too far though, or he just might start believing that whatever's going on is more than just a fever and a snow storm.

[wow-an-unfunny-joke]

HOLY FUCK I CAN PROJECT MY EYE THING ONTO DAZAAAAAAAAAAAI!!!!

Okay: Hi, I’m Robin, my eyes are fucked up! Im almost always seeing double esp when im reading or doing things like that, this causes trouble because obviously. My eyes don’t talk to eachother like they’re supposed to and one eye is better at everything than the other. The solution to this is that I cover one of my eyes while im reading (I always cover my left eye, but technically I’m supposed to cover both eyes interchangeably or smth, I’m actively making the problem worse lol)

WHAT IF THIS IS WHY TEENAGE DAZAI WEARS THE EYE BANDAGES????

[jaxflipped]

hi guys I'm like maybe 35% awake rn/???? I love jax did you guys know that

[katzirrart]

I apologize for the dead air here lately. I've been exclusively posting to P*treon about sketch pages. Which has been nice to talk at LENGTH about - and to use regular graphite pencil again?? Very weird, but nice.

I've really been struggling this past year with my art, and I even tried to revisit Ask Xigbar to PUSH through my burgeoning art block but... it just started to feel like a chore again. Especially when that's the blog I DO notice numbers most... 8+ hours of work... 100 notes... doesn't feel good on the ego. Even when I try to ignore it.

Social media is kinda exhausting for me, I miss communities and being active in fandom WITH people and having a good time, but being driven by engagement and interaction blows... I miss just... talking to strangers and having conversations, honestly.

I miss throwing art into the abyss and someone now and then commenting something to warm my heart, or sending me an ask and feeling something about it and ENGAGING WITH TALKING ABOUT AN AU OR SOMETHING... I love my AUs but I only share like 30% of them?? I also just miss... genuinely feeling like I cAN'T STOP DRAWING. Like I just have an ITCH to scratch!!

So I just... I've razed my style to the ground!! I'm revisiting fundamentals, I'm relearning anatomy, structure and getting some fluid back in my art. I'm applying learning, and I'm just trying to enjoy art again and reinventing my style some. I'm trying to get back to a point in my art I miss, where I think I was happiest, and most productive. Which will benefit my original stuff as well.

Might be a few months still for studying but... ya'know. At least shit will be interesting.

[orcelito]

When you get this ask you have to answer with 5 of your fave songs, and then send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers!!

Awwww thank u !!

In terms of Absolute Favorite songs... I think the #1 spot still belongs to Capricorn by Xan Griffin

Even after Years, it still hits something deep in my heart. I have cried to this song before, which is saying something for me. It's just... really special to me.

Hard as Fuck to give a ranking for another 4, so here are 4 songs from some of my favorite artists

Non-exhaustive list. Idk if these could be counted as my top favorite songs Ever, but that's such an arbitrary classification and can change depending on mood/general state of being/etc. So here r just a lot of songs that I love very much from some of my favorite artists. Yes.

[gutttings]

ohhhhhh when was the last time anyone actually gave a shit about what ihave to say. or cared at all about the things i like. the pain in my heart is strong today

[iknityounot]

(Long post, sorry y'all)

A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.

In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.

She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.

Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.

After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:

DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn't care. I set it aside and later took it home.

Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose Ends Project was going around. It felt like a sign--I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother's blanket. But they might be able to help!

So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother's crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.

Over the next couple of months, my "finisher" emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.

At the end of August, the blanket was done!

I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom's. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)

She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said "your grandma would love this". To which I replied, "yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago". But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me--she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn't. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it. 

She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.

And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away--these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn't heard about Loose Ends.

Five stars, absolutely worth it!

(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)

[superiorsturgeon]

out of curiosity, why do you like sturgeons so much?

A chance to info dump about my favorite fish…?!

I grew up in the Great Lakes area of North America, where fishing is pretty popular but everyone knows that fish populations aren’t anything like “the good old days” when people took out huge numbers of fish while messing up their spawning sites. I got pretty into fishing when I found out that I could catch bluegill in the surrounding farm ponds, and once in a while my family took me to an isolated fishing cabin for vacation, but for years I never encountered a wild fish bigger than a kilogram or two.

BUT THEN…

I found out about sturgeon! They were HUGE fish that had once lived in the rivers and lakes all around my home, and better yet, fish almost exactly like modern sturgeon had existed all the way back in the Cretaceous period alongside the dinosaurs, and they STILL EXIST TODAY!!! The fact that small numbers of these huge dinosaur fish still existed made them seem almost like a real-life lake monster/cryptid, except that we had proof of their existence!

Furthermore, there’s just nothing else like them. Sturgeon get big. Like, REALLY big. The record for the largest sturgeon was almost 11 meters/24 feet long, which is colossal for freshwater animals. They have armor plates of bone running down their sides, and at the same time they don’t have bony skeletons. They also have a crazy mouth structure, which allows them to actually pop their jaws out like a tube and suck up food. And on top of all of this, the adults are absolute tanks. I’ve seen skin nearly 8mm thick, and it’s so tough that people make leather out of it, and they occasionally lose fins or even entire gill plates and just keep on swimming! (I found out about that last one when I tried to wrestle a big female out of a river and my hand went straight into her gills. She didn’t seem that bothered by it!)

For a long time I filed sturgeon along with Alligator Gar, Giant Mekong catfish, and Yangtze paddlefish as a semi-legendary fish that may still exist, but I was never going to see except possibly in an aquarium, until I enrolled in graduate school. For those unfamiliar with grad school in the US, it typically involves both high-level classes as well as an independent research project the student designs and carries out with help from an experienced professor. When my mentor asked what kind of thing I wanted to study, I tossed out “sturgeon” as one such possibility, expecting to hear that I would probably have to limit myself to more common/accessible species.

I was blown away when she said “Actually, I think I know a guy…”

For the next several years, I got to ride along collecting wild adult sturgeon, gathering eggs, and raising the baby fish in a lab and in a hatchery. I was holding something that I had thought of as a semi-mythical lake/river monster in my own hands! I got to see a river choked with giants as big as 2 meters long, and I got to hold a 5-centimeters mottled baby whose armored scutes were still sharp and possessed the little arrowhead shape and big black pectoral fins that remind me of Mickey Mouse ears! In the video below you can even see a little heartbeat! (Don’t worry, this little guy was returned to the tank soon after to recover from his anesthesia!)

Sadly, I didn’t find anything super groundbreaking in my research, but my experience DID land me a job working in sturgeon aquaculture! If you’ve ever had caviar that wasn’t poached, it probably came from a sturgeon farm, and if you want to see a lot of big fish up close, this is a good place to do it! I probably personally handled more individual sturgeon than there are wild fish in several sturgeon species. In addition, while the wild broodstock I mentioned above might reach 2 meters and over 50kg, the sturgeon I dealt with at the farm would easily double that, and there were a LOT of them! I got to see sturgeon behavior that had never been recorded in field guides, and even a few crazy one-in-a-million mutations like the infamous “ghost” sturgeon!

I even got the opportunity to cook my own sturgeon meat (Yeah, I basically turned into the Touden siblings from Dungeon Meshi except for sturgeon instead of RPG monsters). I got pretty good at making smoked sturgeon, but the meat is also good on the grill or baked, and people have been cooking them in various ways for centuries.

My favorite part of the job was physically wrestling the big fish! Sturgeon are easier to grab than other fish with the right know-how, but a human-sized fish often has its own plans for the day and won’t always cooperate. I was pretty good at moving the adults by the time I left that job, but it was still a wild rodeo every time!

Even more exciting was how we spawned each new generation of sturgeon. In the wild, they form massive spawning runs in big rivers that in the past would be enough to tip small boats, but in a lab or farm we have to use other means. I’ll spare you the details, but I am one of a small number of people who have surgically extracted eggs from a live sturgeon and sutured them back up to swim another day.

The tldr of this essay is that sturgeon are a big, crazy-unique fish that have been around a long time, and I’ve spent a lot of my career handling and working with them. There’s just nothing like them for a fish nerd and they’re damn cool!

(Clip art not mine, I think @sturgeonposting drew or shared it!)