#so I've had to practice

[boomkawaiiboom]

I want to elaborate on this! So Neil has practiced this a lot. I've practiced it, in the sense that I speak in front of 60-70 people a couple of times a month.

Here's what I've been taught:

1) Learning to speak/present or whatever in front of audiences is not a process of learning not to be nervous. It's learning that being nervous is not a problem. Because, and that's point

2) those feelings you get when nervous - quicker heartbeat, heightened senses, tingling - they are your body helping you perform better than normal, giving you a shot of something extra. It's not a symptom of your body shutting down. And therefore

3) when practicing this, try remembering afterwards that no, your body did not ahut down on you. Stumbling over your words does not count as a shut down, that's just how speech works if you're not very, very well practiced. I still stumble over words, but I get back on track by taking a deep breath and starting that sentence over.

Being nervous does not mean your body is going to shut down.

And lastly, a practical tip:

4) ask someone in the audience to be your buddy while you're talking. They can be a friend, colleague or just a random person who seems nice. Their job is to be placed somewhere at the middle of the audience, and be looking and smiling at you at all times. That way you have someone to focus on when you're not looking at your notes, meaning you won't have to flit your focus around.

In my organization this has been institutionalized so that all of the people at the middle table of big assemblies know they have a special responsibility to look the speaker in the eye - because it helps!

And remember: practice does not make perfect - practice makes improvement. Don't go for perfection, cause then none of us are ever going to speak up.

Hi Mr. Gaiman,

Just got out of your reading of A Christmas Carol and we (my mom, aunt, and I) absolutely loved it! We also loved the little poem at the end. I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

1.) Is A Christmas Carol your favorite Christmas story and if it isn’t, what is? 2.) How did you learn to speak for long periods of time without stumbling? It was very impressive, especially to someone like me who tends to get very nervous when speaking in public.

3.) To that last point, do have any tips for dealing with anxiety before talking in front of people?

Thank you again for the fantastic performance and I hope you have a Merry Christmas!

1) I think my favourite Xmas story is O. Henry's Gifts of the Magi

2) I guess it's what I do.

3) I was terrified tonight before it started and just as terrified while i was doing it if I stopped to think. You do it anyway.

[screwpinecaprice]

Of course they'd be jumpin on a pile of leaves, it's basically mandatory.

[thewanderingmask]

so yea

1-2 months of on and off effort later IT'S MY FIRST EVER HERMITCRAFT (by which i mean exclusively tango tek) ANIMATIC

IN WHICH A MAN TALKS ABOUT BINARY FOR ALMOST 3 MINUTES (it's based actually. and was really fun to animate)

[mad-as-a-box-of-frogs]

Oh, Banner, I love you, man!!!

Marc Spector in What If... The Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers? [6/?]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Shout out to all artists who had to work without any strong direction or instruction.

I wish you a merry “the client likes it anyways”

[mazken]

brush test slash rendering practice with ayem

[weaverofink]

A Clara portrait because I love her so so much :) dialogue from the last episode of season 3

image without dialogue below:

she :)

[prettymediocrewizard]

[indornaga]

The Transitory Nature of Identity

it's natural for one's identity to shift, to reimagine itself through the years, especially as one begins to understand themselves more as they age.

we talk a lot in the community about "what if the id is temporary--!" and there's a lot of folk who are scared that things *are* transitory, when it shouldnt be a scary thing!

it feels a little like baring my soul, but i want to share my identity progression with y'all as an example that even those who seem to have figured their shit out, only look that way because they've had time to get a grasp on who they are!

(cut because it's long lol lots of images)

before i was daski, i was Sewreel. a wolf/dragon hybrid shapeshifting goddess of destruction. for reasons that are way too long for this already long post, we Split--she was her and i was me, and yet we were the same person, an alter ego if you will. and yet, you can see where while i've always been a dragon, a canid, a shapeshifter, and a goddess in some faculty, the form it took was very different!

this is the very first iteration of me as daski, i'm the orange canid.

due to a change in how my phantom limbs felt, i changed what "i" looked like, sort of rapid style.

..tbh i dont remember why i started using the kyuubi form, other than i liked it? lol

in amongst the stumbling through forms i enjoyed being portrayed as, i found the one that y'all might be most familiar with: the destructor dragon, the serpentine goddess that led me to finding the alterhuman community.

who, even then, went through some "form finding" to figure out what felt like me!

but i didnt stop there. the signature on most of these you see is based off of my incorporating the odd instincts of wanting to be fluffy with being a noodle

during all this time, i was still messing around with other forms as well, ones i didnt realize until later that were incredibly important to my identity.

i still cant believe how close to an indoraptor i got with this one. it's incredible.

i tested out my affiliation with water as a dragon, as well

Until we get up to today!

the ultimate culmination and understanding of where i've come from, and what i've found i've liked through the years. you can physically see how each transformation has lent itself into the next iteration.

each and every step of the way has been important, and while i may not currently identify with the steps i took to get here, they were all intrinsic and important stepping stones to understand how and why im me. i thank each form for the comfort and understanding that it gave to me, and i would be less of myself today had i not had each and every one of these forms as a part of my journey!

[aseuki]

YOURE this comets defense system? What makes you so important. You look like just another Astral to me. - Dawn

The comet awaits. A challenge has been issued. Beware the star's eternal...

@kirbyoctournament

[jerrythebug]

This is how my first try at drawing Booster and Beetle went. I was redrawing comic panels and such, it was great fun!

[redgoldblue]

that's agent sugar pink liquor liquor lips to you

(inspired by this post and this vid)

[franky-y]

some drawings of my fav guy

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The funniest cultural difference is seeing people freak out over traditional jewish practices (such as the practice of separation in marriage after birth and similar)

Maybe it's because I'm autistic, but the biggest thing that would get me to marry someone is if we were prescribed times to separate from each other physically. You're telling me you and your partner are glued to the hip???

[sysig]

An eye for a life, unquestionably worth it (Patreon)

[serpentface]

Question about Couya! Since she is a bastard what are the reasons about her being brought into the main family by her father. Was it genuine care for his child or a way to save face politically/socially? Is her birth mother alive? Do you think she would have had a better life growing up anywhere else?

This is in large part due to how cultural perceptions and legal punishment of adultery varies between male and female citizens, looped into the very strictly patrilineal kinship system.

By legal definition, the word for 'adultery' applies only to situations where a man has an affair with a married woman, or a married woman has an affair with any man. Other forms of affairs (eg a married man having an affair with an unmarried woman) are wrapped into a broader set of sexual misdemeanors and aren't often charged or punished in practice, and the punishments are comparatively minor (if an unwed woman's father pursues charges, the man in the affair is likely to just pay a fine). On a social level, extramaritial affairs in general are certainly not Approved of and seen as lowly and dishonorable, but the average response is significantly less harsh/more willing to entertain Nuance with men than with women.

In this society there's differentiated shades of bastardry depending on the contexts of the child's birth, as well as a distinction for 'nameless bastards' (has not been claimed by their biological father or maternal grandfather, or claimed in adoption).

a) A child born to an unmarried woman via an unmarried man: non-issue for father, potentially serious social harm for the woman (especially if she has never been married and expected virginal, much less severe as a widow or divorcee). The child will not be notably disadvantaged in of themselves (their status will depend more on whether they are claimed and thus provided the social security of a family patriarch), the father will experience no hard disadvantages in claiming them.

b) A child born to an unmarried woman via a married man: mild sexual misdemeanor for the father carrying levels of social shame, even more serious social harm for the woman (often framed as not just loose but a manipulative Seductress of a married man). The child might experience minor to moderate social disadvantages, the consequences of the father claiming them are purely social and will not typically be severe. (Couya is this)

c) A child born to a married woman via an unmarried or married man: both man and woman have committed a crime and can be severely punished. The biological father can technically claim the child but will be disincentivized from doing so. This is the form of bastardry most comparable to the conventional definition, in that it is heavily stigmatized and has effects on concerns of kinship and inheritance.

In addendum to this, if the adulterous wife's legal husband claims the child, this may be punishable if determined to be active concealment of adultery (which is also a crime), and has EXTREME social consequences either way. (Either you're a cuckold too stupid to notice that your wife has been skipping out on you, or you're a MEGAcuckold adultery-accessory willingly rearing another man's child after being horribly shamed by him).

(This is separate from adoption- a man who marries a woman with an unclaimed child after the fact (whether it was a product of adultery or just a general out of wedlock birth) and claims the child is an adoptive father, he is not concealing adultery or being cuckolded.)

A child born in an affair can be considered an heir to their biological fathers (descent and kinship is fully patrilineal and on a Basic level it doesn't matter who the mother is), and can very smoothly and legally be claimed when the affair was not considered criminal adultery. The concern on that front is social perception rather than material legal consequences or kinship issues.

Couya's birth mother was an unwed servant working as a housekeeper for her father Saizen, so the Crime of adultery did not take place. It would be considered a minor sexual misdemeanor, and the woman's father was not about to pursue charges against a nobleman who could Ruin him (and had also formally expressed that he would claim the child, which meant he would not be saddled with a nameless bastard granddaughter). So the concerns here were entirely social.

The affair might have started beforehand but the pregnancy that produced Couya occurred after his wife's third viable pregnancy ended in the premature birth of a underdeveloped boy deemed necessary to euthanize (and tbr would Not have survived either way). This was after Livya Haidamane had a couple early term miscarriages, two viable but very difficult pregnancies wherein one child was very weak and sickly for the first several years of life, and struggled to conceive every time. A lot of people are going to be at least a little sympathetic to a married man having an affair and claiming a bastard in this context. It's definitely ideal and practical to have more than two children, and his wife (while not outright infertile) clearly could not reliably bear healthy children. (The average response is going to be "Well he shouldn't have done it but like, I get it")

Couya being claimed by her father was a mix of genuine care and saving face. Initially it was MUCH more the latter than the former. Saizen made attempts to hide the servant's pregnancy and to keep his own wife out of sight during the late term (to prevent the baby appearing after his wife had been seen Extremely not pregnant). But there's some levels of care involved, he could very easily have fired the pregnant servant and had nothing to do with his bastard and she would have no recompense whatsoever. The choice to keep and claim the baby and ensure its entrance into the world bore as little social scrutiny as possible is an act of care for his own progeny.

This was Not an act of care for Couya's birth mother (beyond the fact that concealing her pregnancy would benefit her in hiding that she is not only Not a virgin prior to marriage but had a child). She probably would have been about 17-19 at the time and was fired a few months after giving birth, and most likely never saw Couya again after this point (if she did, it would most likely be in the context of seeing her as an adult Odonii in public and noting her to look Scarily familiar). She has an Okayish chance at still being alive, she'd be around 50 (and a person who survives the high infant mortality and birth casualty rates stands a good chance of hitting their 60s), though she could very well be a casualty of the drought+famine.

Whether or not Couya's life would have been better is kind of a mixed bag. She had an awful fucking childhood in large part because her adoptive mother Livya Haidamane hated her. (Livya was ultimately a pretty horrible person but not just like. An Evil Bitch. She had A Lot going on and Couya was a living breathing insult to her and reminder of like, every one of her dashed hopes and dreams). Couya is also autistic and presented very intense symptoms as a child in a society that is Not equipped for a mass-understanding and support of cognitive differences. But she still did have an immensely privileged life with profound physical/economic levels of security inaccessible to the vast majority of people in this region, including her birth mother. Saizen also actually Liked her and cared about her, he just wasn't a routine physical presence in any of his children's lives.

Had she been left with her biological mother, she would be in a very disadvantaged situation as a nameless bastard to an unwed mother. Her biological grandfather may or may not have been willing to claim her, and her mother would have great difficulties in finding a husband (which is ultimately necessary for the security of women in this society). I think her mother was a relatively kind person but not like, a perfect angel. She would probably have complicated feelings about her bastard daughter, especially one whose very existence materially disadvantages her and was very, very difficult as a child. So this probably would not have been a good situation for Couya either.

If you broaden the question to ANY other family completely divorced from the circumstances of her birth, yeah it definitely could have been better. But in her case it's like either "Life of grotesque socioeconomic privilege but in an abusive household" or "Life of profound socioeconomic disadvantages in a household that Probably wouldn't have been this abusive but certainly wouldn't be healthy". There wasn't really a good option for her.