#which i didn't prepare for

[tardis--dreams]

Guess who's sick- again-

[moodyseal]

TOApril Day 19 – Haunted

"Am I making you feel sick?"

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[ailius-suffers-through-art]

started binge playing the professor layton games and managed to make it to last specter so have some memo pad doods

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

"Children should be dragged kicking and screaming to school and the doctor's office and grandma's house and the park" is not and never will be a pro-child opinion.

If your kid doesn't want to go to school so much that they throw a temper tantrum and scream until they go hoarse, and your response is "shut up because you have to go" the problem is still you ignoring your kids needs and you're a shitty parent.

[moderndaypandora]

I love every "Death set Dream up with Hob on purpose" headcanon, and I love "actually I was planning to throw Chaucer at you but I can wing it pretty damn well and, once I heard Hob call me stupid, I knew, yeah that's going to be Dream's boyfriend". It takes a village (or an older sister) to get Dream a boyfriend.

Now, I'm picturing the entire Endless family blindsided when Dream comes to a family dinner like "I GOT MARRIED! LIKE TWO MINUTES AFTER THE LAST DINNER--" "That was a literal century ago?!"
 "-- YEAH. WE'RE DOING A VOW RENEWAL."

Not a single sibling clocked this. Not even Destiny.

Destiny, out loud: it was an unlikely path in my book, so I didn't give it much attention 
Destiny, in his head: honestly I started speed-reading/skimming through Dream's love life paragraphs because watching him crash and burn and cause massive body counts just seemed so... repetitive and predictable?

Death: knowing our brother, I was carefully managing my expectations and was just glad he was still doing the century meetups last time I'd checked. Good for him, managing to stay with somebody for a century, that outstrips his last relationship by ... like 7 decades.  Kind of offended I wasn't invited to this wedding, kind of not planning to say anything?

Desire: At this point, I stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalalalalala" whenever I hear anything about Dream and want, either him wanting or somebody wanting him, because Death said I had to stop making fun of him for how disproportionate his Yearn to Act Ratio was, and any ammunition I can't use is just ... irritating. I figured if anything really changed, my twin would tell me about his descent into misery.

Despair: He was less miserable, but I assumed it was a fluke and he'd return to his normal equilibrium eventually. And it's not like my twin let me know he'd managed to successfully want AND obtain something?

Destruction is Sir Not Appearing In This Picture.

And Delirium had more important things to think about than her brother's sad love life, like would flying fish fired out of confetti cannons be considered birds until they landed?

Meanwhile all denizens of the Dreaming are never not aware that Dream is happily married, because the weather has been perfect for years and the throne room stained glass is some variation of Hob and Dream being lovey-dovey.

Lucienne: If I see them necking in the stacks ever again I will be forced to take action, and Lord Morpheus is aware of that fact, but we haven’t had a library flood in 103 years, so overall we’re pleased.

[beneathsilverstars]

idk it sounds reasonable to me for a teenager to run away bc they didn't want to eat their veggies!

one hopes that by the later stages of childhood a parent will have figured out which veggies and preparation styles work for the kid, and the kid will have resigned themself to what they do and don't have to eat according to their parents, and it's all settled into an equilibrium instead of a daily fight. and hopefully as a teen your palette is expanding and you're even willing to eat more veggies then you did as a child.

however, if the kid is extra picky and stubborn, and the parent is extra determined to make sure they eat a good variety (or just eat whatever the parent prepared no matter what it is), it could absolutely continue to be a regularly-repeated fight. and if something is a continued point of contention throughout childhood then it absolutely makes sense for a teen to go FUCK this, i am nearly an ADULT i am done being told to eat my veggies i am gonna prove my independence and make them realize i don't have to just sit there and let them boss me around!!

like, the childishness of the fight is exactly why a teen would run away about it.

[blueskittlesart]

Question abt drawing: been trying to attempt learning how to draw forever but I always have trouble getting over the obstacle of having to learn/study things like anatomy and shading, which then causes me to stop drawing and have a harder time picking it back up. I know it's important for improving your art and yourself as an artist but I can't help but see it as tedious and overwhelming, especially the anatomy since it's more on the science side of things and science is not my thing lol. Do you have any advice on how to get over it or work thru it?

i think there's a couple facets to this question. firstly i'd recommend you consider what exactly your end goal is in learning how to draw: do you specifically want to be able to produce anatomically accurate figures and true-to-life shading, or do you just want to be able to make something for fun that looks good to you? one of the most helpful things I ever learned at art school was that accuracy doesn't matter if it looks good. 99% of my art isn't strictly anatomically accurate, and part of that is stylization, but even when i'm doing realistic figure drawings i like to lengthen limbs and exaggerate curves in order to make my drawings look better. So if your only real goal with art is to make something that looks good and enjoy the process, my first piece of advice would be to stop worrying so much about stuff like perfect accuracy! if you use references and keep pushing yourself, the skill and understanding you're looking for will come naturally with time. before I was ever classically trained, I got pretty far just by drawing my favorite characters in different poses and situations over and over again, and that experience laid the groundwork for when classical training did become available to me. Just because you're not necessarily doing serious figure studies doesn't mean you're not getting valuable practice--what it means is that you're having FUN while you're practicing, and having fun with your art is the most important thing!!!

Secondly, you mentioned anatomy being on the science side of things, which suggests to me that you may be looking in the wrong places when trying to do more serious anatomical study. if you look up 'anatomy' or anything similar on a web search engine, you're likely going to get a lot of very complex scientific illustrations. and while those aren't necessarily devoid of artistic value (I took a class all about scientific anatomy for artists last semester and it was GREAT) for a beginner who's just trying to learn how to make a body look like a body, they're not what you're looking for. what is going to be much more helpful for you are sites like line of action or quickposes. these sites are basically repositories of figure drawing images, and you can set them to automatically switch to a new image after a certain interval of time. if you really, desperately want to improve your anatomy specifically, what I recommend is going to one of these sites, setting it to the shortest interval possible, and trying to copy the pose as closely as you can before time is up. this might sound crazy, since the shortest interval is usually somewhere between 30-60 seconds, which obviously isn't enough to get much down. but what this will do is force you to look at how these models' bodies are constructed and translate it onto the page quickly and without overthinking it. be warned, your first maybe hundred of these are going to look like shit. but if you do this enough, you're eventually going to gain an intrinsic sense for 1. how a body works and 2. the easiest way for you personally to construct a body when drawing it. even without knowing the scientific names and anatomical rules, you're going to get a FEEL for how things work, which is much more important and useful to you as a character artist.

Finally, i think the most important thing to remember is that no art is bad art, even if you're not satisfied with the end product. when you're first starting out as an artist, you're going to make things that don't look right and you're going to be frustrated with yourself because of it. i vividly remember crying over a sketchbook at maybe age 11 or 12 because I was so upset i couldn't put exactly what was in my head on the page. Skill comes with time and practice and that is a frustrating fact of life, but no time spent doing something you enjoy and are passionate about is wasted. It might look bad now but you are laying the groundwork for your future success, and someday you're probably going to look back on your past work and say "I can't believe I thought this looked bad back then. for my age and my skill level i was doing AMAZING." And as previously mentioned, it's a lot less discouraging when something looks bad if you had fun making it, so try to have FUN with your art. draw things you enjoy and are passionate about and don't worry if it looks bad. focus on the experience, the skill will come in time. you've got this!!

[imminent-danger-came]

Hot take, but I think MK is only focused on the city/innocent people mainly because of how it contributes to his vision of a "hero". Like yeah, obviously he cares, but he's so much more focused on his own life and his own friends rather than the greater good (which, valid). Like I think of instances like the end of 2x03, where they distinctly don't help clean up after Pigsy's ping-pong relapse, and the fact that we've only seen MK helping strangers TWICE in the whole show (2x05, where he attempts to stop spider queen by aiding who he thinks is an innocent girl, and those old ladies in 4x01, partly a result of his guilt over LBD), and it's just like. My mans is not his own definition of a hero ("We help people! I mean I- I help people!").

In AHIB MK steals a civilian's hover bike, and he didn't give it back (we see it show up again in 1x09). In 1x01 it's "What about my friends? The city? They're all counting on me!", with his friends notably first. In 4x02 Azure highlights "It's too late to save them! We can't risk unleashing the curse into the world!" to which MK replies "You don't know, we'd risk it for sure!". MK has already chosen his friends over the world. He'll do it again. I think of the end of s3 and his words: "The perfect world is what you make it—so as long as I have my friends by my side, this world! Is! Perfect!".

MK has spent the first 4 seasons of this show maintaining the status quo. Unlike the Lady Bone Demon and Azure, who try to bring about real change, MK is reactionary. He has to be pushed into taking action or solving problems. He's fixing what other people break rather than taking a stand himself. MK doesn't embody a typical selfless hero—which, tbh he doesn't need to, it's why I find him so interesting. He's so obsessed with being the hero and being a "good guy" that he's almost missed the trees for the forest.

Like, MK's defining moment as a "hero" who helps others (set up in 2x07) is saving Mei in 3x10. Saving his best friend. The only reason he had the determination to reach out to Mei at all was because she was so close to him. We see something similar to samadhi fire Mei play out in 4x14 with Jade Emperor Azure, and MK doesn't save him. MK let's Wukong stop him from reaching out to Azure. Azure dies.

I love this guy

[zhouxiangs]

fastest way to make me go insane would be finding out pete's powers are empathy/the ability to read other people's feelings or general emotional state by touching them, and that being the reason he hesitates before shaking way's hand the first time they meet, and why it's so important he touches him so many times and so softly and with such tenderness in their subsequent meetings. because just like jeff tries to keep out of people's future by keeping his distance from everyone, pete tries to keep out of their present.

[seaofreverie]

GUUUYYUYSSSD !!!!!

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

KIMONO MY HOUSE VINYL!!!!!!

Also funny story which is that when my brother took these to the cashier he said something like "oh... Sparks... they were here one year ago"

[miyeosin]

MIYEON ; (G)I-DLE, 'MY BAG' 230526 @ Korea University IPSELENTI Festival [ cr.DaftTaengk ]

[discododging]

It's fitting that Dan Fucks is about to become the mayor because everyone in this brain is fucking horny right now

[starlightswordfight]

they should invent a new type of autism that does not make you evil when routine is disrupted

[besnouted]

now that i can give a more coherent update, the prognosis is basically that she will be in indefinite hospice treatment with symptomatic treatment where possible. the main concern is her platelet count, because her blood is unable to clot and so even a little bump could cause big problems for her. and then her appetite to ensure she keeps her weight on and strength up

we ended up at the kindest emergency vet we've ever been to and god i cannot even begin to get into how many traumatic experiences we've had with horrible emergency vets... but they were all amazing there and the main vet took so much time to break down what was going on and keep us informed on every single test they did and then afterward wrote up a super detailed report so we could go to a non-emergency vet to continue her meds if they improve her qol

and already a day and a half later she is seeing a huge improvement in her energy and comfort, like she's doing things i haven't seen since before the lethargy first set in which i am so beyond grateful i get to see again even if i know she isn't 'getting better'

[velvetvexations]

Trans KLCK getting accidentally misgendered by one of the Bad Kids in Freshman Year because they just honestly didn't realize she was a girl and said "he" in casual reference to someone they didn't know.

Trans KLCK holding on to that as she continues to pile up on reasons to hate them.

Trans KLCK interpreting making fun of her name as transphobia, which Porter and Jace encourage.

I'm divided on if I want/am expecting Oisin and Ivy to be completely evil or not. It seems like there are now good odds they're The Actually Bad Rat Grinders, in which case maybe Oisin knows KLCK was taking things the wrong way and just didn't say anything because he didn't care/rage is the name of the game, and Ivy very much seems like the kinna person who doesn't necessarily hate trans people but is like, "what's all the fuss about?" and gets mildly annoyed when corrected about pronouns.

But if not, and Oisin and Ivy are just as much victims of Porter and Jace as the others, I can see a world where the rest of the Rat Grinders were fully behind KLCK's mistaken belief the Bad Kids are Like That.

Either way it'd be hilarious since Kristen is, I think, Ally's one and only non-trans PC so far. AU where Kristen transitions to Kris and averts the Rat Grinder grudge.

Anyway, this is not me trying to make KLCK/the Rat Grinders more sympathetic than they are in canon, I still think they have plenty going on for them to have been frustrated with and have had that frustration manipulated by trusted adults in their lives, grooming them into dealing with that frustration in the worst possible way for their own benefit. I just like this idea.