#this is like 75% of the way there

[dr11ft]

artblock vs trying to get keith's face right for the 193778645th time and failing again

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[latinthusiast]

throwback to aug 12 2011 when I first saw american rock band my chemical romance perform live

photo cred: me but a child

[oldvampyaoi]

A slightly belated take on this post by @sburator

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

do i ship wincest. yeah they're an inseparable pair on a narrative and thematic level, can you truly understand one without understanding the other? they're two halves of a dialectic on heroism and sacrifice. they're two points on the family trauma survivor spectrum, sometimes opposing, sometimes intersecting. they're like watching your parents who should've gotten a divorce years ago somehow stay together, against all reason. they're two inheritors of a rugged American masculinity and isolated individualism, internal and external violence springing forth. regressing to the nostalgia of frontier brotherhood as substitute for the nuclear family. they're a set of quintessential outlaw lovers. maybe true love only exists in the kind of freedom you keep when you're always moving, on the road, in your childlike bubble excluded from society, left with nowhere to burrow your roots except into each other's very being. they're the world's loneliest childhood shared between two feral dogs, one biting down on the other, unable to let go. they're the fantasy of an unconditional love so powerful it can survive the apocalyptic enormity of your own self-loathing. they're a set of matryoshka dolls, one consuming the other. journeys end in lovers meeting, but what kind of journey is it really when you've never left home: it's been sitting in the seat next to you this entire time. your haunted house is not a home but a person who'll never let go. they're an erotic fantasy of domestic horror as a sweet, sickening embrace as opposed to an all-consuming fire, a car driving off into heaven's sunset as opposed to one crashing into a tree. (wrong: they're both). so horribly enmeshed and trapped in a magnified love so destructive to the world around them they leave catherine and heathcliff wuthering heights in the dust. they're two brothers trapped in a 15 year long spiral of an abusive codependent pseudo-marriage, in part due to a network unable to let go of a successful show format, thus unable to afford them any growth that might disturb the status quo. but the implications of it all.

[definitelynotshouting]

You have synesthesia?? How does that work for you? Is this how you manage to use the word “meat” in a way that makes me go “holy shit that’s good and cool i need to read that sentence four more times” instead of “ew”?????

I do!!! Letters, numbers, and words all have colours and sometimes visual textures for me-- and while numbers and letters on their own are generally only a single colour (7 is a bright, grassy green!!! while "K" is a pale peachy pink, for example :] ), when i put them into words they often take on entirely new colours, some of which even bleed into each other like watercolour paints. Ironically, its why i use the UK spelling of "colour" in the first place-- the "u" turns what looks like a dull, desaturated blue into a smeared blue-and-purple that i find really pretty to look at :]] so when i say i like to paint with words, i kinda mean that literally 😂😂😂😂😂

But yeah, i'd imagine thats why my writing is Like That™ to some degree-- a lot of what im doing behind the scenes involves matching the colours and visual textures of a given word with all of the others in order to evoke a particular vibe or image in my writing. There are a lot of layers to how i write, but this is probably the one that takes both the most time AND is the one i happen to talk about the least WKDJWKSJEJ

[marzipanandminutiae]

Marzi's Old House Supply Kit: A Non-Exhaustive List

So you've moved into an old house! Congratulations! No, no, look at me. Look in my eyes. Congratulations. You don't need smart lighting. You don't need paltry things like "showers that don't make ungodly noises if you set the water outside a very specific temperature range" or "logical staircases." Because those people who say They Built Them Sturdier Back Then is survivorship bias are wrong, lead paint is only a problem if you eat it, and your new home is basically a tank

also it might have stained glass. so basically you win

(no but seriously the Survivorship Bias argument is just like. tell me you don't live in a city with large quantities of remaining working-class 110-year-old buildings without telling me. I do. they're sturdier. end of.)

but you might need some things to make it a bit more comfortable. here's what I've found, over eight years of living in houses built 1920 or earlier

Power strips. Depending on the age of your house, it may or may not have had electricity originally. And even if it did, whoever lived there almost certainly had fewer things to plug in than the average denizen of the 2020s. There also may have been gorgeous wall sconces that some asshole heartlessly ripped out at some point, forcing you to use the hideous hateful Overhead LightTM or plug in a bunch of lamps. Either way, you're going to need to turn that single outlet in the room into several more. Hence, power strips.

(hey, I never said this list was free of my design biases. deal)

A Good Fan. You may live in a place where retrofitting with air conditioning was commonplace in the last several decades. I do not. So a good pedestal fan can make the difference between comfort and just not sleeping at all from late June to mid-September. Weirdly, I did once look at a place that was from the 1850s and had been retrofitted with central A/C, which is vanishingly rare in even urban Massachusetts. But I digress.

A stud-finder. "Marzi, you spent years of your life explaining to tourists that picture rails existed because trying to hammer nails directly into horsehair plaster and then putting weight on them did Bad Things." Yes I did. "What did you attempt to do the second week of living in your first house with horsehair plaster?" ...shut up. I used the Poltergeist Method to find solid wood- I don't know if it's actually studs or the lath or what; I'm not a builder -to hang my Lady and the Unicorn tapestry from, namely knocking on the wall until it doesn't sound hollow. You might want to go a bit quieter and more advanced. Or, if you have a picture rail, embrace the "long visible hanging wires" look. It is in fact there for a reason!

Window screens. You are actually required by Massachusetts state law to provide these to your tenants. Doesn't mean my last landlady did. And if you own your place, live in another state, or have a similarly laissez-faire building owner, you might end up needing to Bring Your Own Insect-Blocking Shield. Just make sure you've got them, one way or the other. Because see above re: fan vs. air conditioning in old houses.

WD-40. When's the last time those hinges were oiled? Potentially before television. And they WILL squeak. UPDATE I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT WD-40 IS NOT A GOOD LONGTERM SOLUTION. Find "actual oil." Not sure what the more specific name is. Good to know!

That's just what I've found needful so far, but I'm happy to update the list as required!

And you'd better believe, if I owned my own place, this would include "the name of a preservation contractor to undo all the unnecessary ~*MoDeRnIzInG*~ aesthetic bullshit the past owners did since the End of Mainstream Western House Beauty AKA 1920 (That Brief Rococo Revival In the 1930s Can Maybe Sit With Us)"

[ducktollers]

this is for traditional artwork (like paintings and other physical mediums), not prints of digital art. also generation cuspers just pick based on vibes. if you’ve never bought artwork just think theoretically

ive been finding that with traditional commissions older people sometimes ask to have it framed and it always irrationally annoys me and i feel like “i didnt factor in buying a frame. why should i have to frame it. i made the artwork and u paid me and now its yours and however u want to display it isnt my problem. why is framing my problem. i hate frames. just frame it yourself” but also idk if thats a me problem and framing is widely expected

[r0b0t1me]

DO OR DIE

[plasma-packin-mama]

I was actually already drawing harry on skates when I got this comment from @its-a-humanriot …so I went and threw in Kim Judit and Jean. Precinct 41 Team Building Night at the roller disco!!

Bonus sketchbook page:

I think Judit would be most enthusiastic to participate, she’d dress accordingly (if only to humor Harry). Jean is still in his work clothes. Kim… Kim if you can hear me I’m sorry I drew you in hot pants and a crop top…….. the spirit of scantily clad 70s athletes compelled me…. I considered redoing it to give him a regular undershirt bc it felt marginally more in character but then I remembered I don’t care and also look at him belly.

[izloveshorses]

on va voir. if you even care.

[watchmakermori]

you get so much approval from astarion for duping the brewer in the waning moon in act 2 and that's hilarious to me. I'm just imagining my character sitting at the bar, lying through his teeth to this hulking monster, pretending to drink the horrible brew and telling flamboyant stories about fighting githyanki inquisitors, while astarion looks on with barely disguised carnal lust

[that-starlight-prince]

I don't know what the best system for selecting judges is and I don't think the current system in the US is very good but given how the general public usually tends to take a very draconian view of crime and punishment I think that direct election of judges by voters is undoubtedly the worst way of doing it.

[fictionadventurer]

The independent religious bookstore is the only place you can go on an overpriced shopping spree and feel good about it.

[youkaigakkou-tl]

I wanted to ask about the translation of Kyoto part 7– on pg 14-15 Sano thinks to himself (in your version) "Then, I'll be able to see his smile again" but in the officials, it says "If I just do that, then he should smile again". Do you know what's up with the translation difference here?

So the line in jp is "そうすればまたアイツは / 笑ってくれるはず…"

Breaking it down:

そうすれば sousureba: if i do that, in that case

また mata: again

アイツ aitsu: he

笑って waratte: smile

くれる kureru: give, do

はず hazu: probably, should

tbh both lines have the same core idea don't they? (conditional -> he smiles)

though at the time i translated this chapter i was still mostly only looking at the chinese tl and only referencing the jp for the -san's and the -kun's

the chinese tl somewhat amplifies the "kureru" part, it words it as "展露笑容" ("show (a) smile") which i think i interpreted as having way more weight on the act of "showing" which implies a recipient (and "kureru" kinda implies recipient too)

really i probably also didn't want to accidentally lose any words or nuance and rather chose to double down on it

[keeps-ache]

✦ obsession

[alt version below]