#the little contractor

[bittybattybunny]

Some more artfight mostly my bigger pieces of the year!

Two of these (the mermaids and the bottom with the Midroyahedgehog) @thepotatogremlin

@darkmedolie

@doodleimprovement

This batch defs were my favs of the year

[dragonpyre]

Stephanie Brown is to the batfamily like what Shawn Spencer is to the Santa Barbara police department

[essektheylyss]

I am once again knitting which means I'm back to the Nein rewatch and happened to be on Midnight Espionage, and truly INSANE episode. The egg dick, both break-ins, the Zauber Spire attack, and the first time a beacon is on screen in like four hours flat. Trent Ikithon is there. The episode ends with Liam and Marisha yelling, "TRUST THE PORN."

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that almost every nation had class distinctions in its accents, and you just never hear about them except for the British.

[pjshermann]

[judeaftersickness]

"You're not just my weird patient, Jude," Andy said. "You're also my weird friend." He paused. "Or at least, I hope you are."

He smiled into the phone. "Of course I am," he said. "I'm honored to be your weird friend."

(the postman, pg 230)

[praise-the-lord-im-dead]

Me: gosh trying to figure out housing feels impossible. It'd take a miracle for us to live somewhere vaguely stable

Bible reading for the day: the conversion of Saul and the raising of the dead

[envolvenuances]

and I think child modelling should be illegal I'm not even joking

[calistozom]

I'm back with my cambion and with a lil bit of completely useless information about him. And also a bit of my pain from the prev weekend. I usually spend it on all sorts of small sketches and other joys, but this time I decided to spend it on suffering and another attempt at animation (down bellow)…

So, Nazir is a devilish clerk whose distorted parody of a heart entirely belongs to the world of financial frauds, pyramids and other small scams aimed not so much at murder or robbery, but at spreading discord in society everyday life. His a very "fell in love with his work"-kinda guy, who picks up the same "fallen" servants (well, or those who can be persuaded to fall).

[theladwhoisweird]

"A Little Life" Characters Headcanons......

Willem would read fics about himself

[healingheartdogs]

I know it's been a few years since I've run my own dog training business instead of working for someone else for exploitation wages and that previously I was working in the rural south where prices are a bit different in general, but out of curiosity I decided to look at some dog training services in my area in upstate NY today and got hit with sticker shock ngl.

Most places don't post their prices so I could only compare a few (which... I sort of get since they want to avoid competition doing what I'm doing right now lol but as someone who has run a dog training business and had business marketing included in my education it's something I see as an... *interesting* choice, because most clients want to know price up front without having to contact you and wait for a response because they probably already have a budget in mind and just want to be able to quickly see if you fit into it or not, which means not having prices posted will make some potential clients immediately look elsewhere and if you don't even have some sort of price range for services posted somewhere then most of your calls and emails will just be people asking for pricing and a majority of those calls and emails will not lead to services purchased so it ends up wasting a lot of unpaid time on office work BUT THATS AN UNRELATED TOPIC, I DIGRESS) but WOWZA the ones that did have prices posted really made me realize I do NOT live in a low cost of living place anymore.

One of the popular places here that I looked at charges $150+ for ONE training session with one of their APPRENTICE trainers. It's double that price to train with one of their more experienced dog trainers for just one session.

I looked back at some of the trainers I was competing with back in FL and NC to compare as well as the dog training school I went to just to check and see if prices were getting that high in other rural areas, and nope. Most places $300 would still get you at least three - maybe up to six - private lessons spread out over three (or six, or whatever) weeks, which is the pricing range I'm used to seeing dog trainers in the rural south suffer with because of places like Petsmart setting the pricing bar so low.

I'm pretty sure I have more formal dog training education and certification than most of the employees at this place too since even their main "behaviorist" (not a protected title in the USA so anyone can call themselves that) has no certifications listed at all that I can find, so... I guess now that I live here if I ever start training again I'm going to have to rethink my pricing lol even if I don't charge those kinds of prices I clearly still need to bump them up in this area from what I used to charge in order to be competitive with these other training businesses.

[bittybattybunny]

Uhoh fish boy made her mad somehow; he's going in the ocean

[tj-crochets]

Good news: after a lot of weeks, my air conditioner is fixed!! Also good news: I caught an error in the software at work that was impacting both contractor pay and customer invoicing! Bad news: going through large amounts of data loosely falls under the purview of the department I am now sort of in charge of, which meant my department (which is me and two other people) had to individually open every single order from [specific subset of customers] since the beginning of the year to manually check if either error had occurred. Hundreds of orders, even with a few different criteria we could use to narrow it down. It's done though! I mean the error is not fixed but previous instances of it causing problems are caught and now that we know it exists we can catch future problems before they are invoiced/paid out I have done zero crafting today and I honestly doubt I will get any done lol

[fun-kytown]

I walked into a small bookstore on Friday to pick up a book I had meant to read for months. I had just finished my previous book and, because I wasn’t home and still had four more days left visiting my sister, I decided to read ‘A Little Life.’

The book was just over 800 pages and I thought that it would be a good read for the next few weeks or so.

Little did I know I’d finish it 3 days later.

I hear stories all the time of people who’ve read the book. Their grievances, their frustrations, their mourning. I hear how they cried every time they opened it.

I didn’t cry once, but I feel broken.

Maybe it was because I felt connected to Jude in some way, to his trauma, to his guilt. Or maybe it was because I myself am still unable to accept my own existence, my own pain.

Though, I also feel like an imposter. A fraud. How dare I connect myself to a character so different than I?

Ever since I was a kid, I formed deep emotional connections with characters in any media I exposed myself to. I believed them to be my friends, my family, or even extensions of myself.

So, when I finish a book, I feel a part of myself is lost. Ripped away. Destroyed.

That’s the feeling I have after finishing this book.

The pain I felt was that, given the book recorded a lifetime, with the characters growing old, I remained young. I sit here, experiencing the entire life of a man, all the while I stay 19 years old in a random week of July.

And as I was finishing the book today, I sat outside in a lawn chair, under a shaded tree. Across from me, a summer camp program exited a building to eat lunch outside.

A kid sat in the chair across from me to begin eating his lunch.

He looked at me. I didn’t look at him.

“What book are you reading?” He asked me.

I brought my head up from the page to meet his eyes.

“Oh, just a grown up book about a man’s life.” And I smiled at him, trying to hide the pain the book had brought me.

“Sounds boring,” he replied, “See, instead of reading about his life, I would just live his.”

The kid continued to eat his lunch and I sat there, unable to form words.

I looked down at the book in my hands, my heart aching for the man in the book, and looked back up at the kid.

He sat in the chair, eating a turkey and cheese sandwich, peeling the crust off the bread, dropping the scraps to the ground. He tore of pieces of the sandwich piece by piece as he kicked his legs while he sat, feet swinging in the air.

“Nah, kid, just live your own life.”

And I hope that kid’s life is as wonderful as he could ever imagine. May it not be tarnished by anything or anyone evil. I wish for all his sandwiches to have no crusts for him to peel off, and for everyday to be sunny so he can play.

I hope his life is everything he could ever wish it could be.

And I hope that it’s more than that.

[kiwibirdlafayette]

they dont know i wrote the rest of hermits/lifers/empires crew into my osmp AU just so i could write in my head a scene where sonja meets the mounders + the roomies

[pjshermann]

advertising post for my upcoming/in progress A Little Life fics bc im so excited about them and need to talk about them :D

just what the doctor ordered (title not finalized)

Fic about Andy and Jude meeting for the first time when Jude is seventeen and has a terrible, sustained episode that makes his friends take him to the campus hospital. Fic follows Andy and Jude through their relationship up until Jude's death

I won't put my child in the dark

Fic about Harold and Julia in the days and weeks and months after Jude's death. enough said about that ;)

Scones

A lighthearted, no angst A Little Life fic???? can you believe it. If you've ever watched Derry Girls you will love this one. I'm taking the scones episode from season two, and putting the Boys in the Hood in a similar situation. College shenanagins involving corpses and weed

Gnossienne

Remember when Jude said his worst nightmare would be for Harold and Julia to find out about his past through a doctors report, a photograph, or a film still? Yeah, that's EXACTLY what happens. woops

No title yet (relatively new idea so yk)

Fic about Harold and Julia meeting for the first time, with Harold finding happiness again after grieving Jacob's passing and his divorce from Liesl. First dates, wedding, and general love !