#with apologies to watterson and dylan

[dumb-hat]

All The Nothing You Want

At one point, I had an ambition to write a big ol’ post-mortem on my FFXIV Write 2020 experience. It was my first time partaking in something like that and, fresh off it, I had a lot of thoughts about it. Now we’re a week and a day out from it, and I’m at work, and I’m tired, and man, I just can’t remember things like I used to. 

Also, like... It seems kinda silly to write a post-mortem on a challenge that I didn’t engage all that thoroughly with. I’m certainly proud of the output I did have, don’t get me wrong, but you can definitely tell the point where I lost steam. So, I guess, let’s start there. What happened?

The first week and a half of the challenge were great for me. I struggled with a few of the prompts, but it was a good struggle; the sort that makes you stretch your legs a little and test your boundaries. About 12 days in, some sorta real life stuff cropped up (and largely, not even my stuff) and it seemed like it was time to take a break. Just a day or two, plus I could make it up on Sunday, right?

As much as I had enjoyed having a steady reason to write again—something I hadn’t done in years, since college, really—the allure of taking a break was really, really seductive. I write Evander as having some pretty gnarly executive dysfunction, so it’s probably not a surprise to anyone that I struggle with ADHD. It’s definitely a case of “write what you know,” for me, even if very little of his life beyond that makes sense to me. I don’t think this is uniquely or wholly an ADHD experience, but I bet it’s familiar to a lot of people with ADHD brains: Sometimes, nothing feels better than taking a break. Even when it’s something you’ve been happily plugging away at, something you’ve been looking forward to every day, it just feels so good to let yourself ignore it for a day. And then after that, it’s just two days. And then... I stopped writing around the 12th prompt. I picked it back up on the 17, and stuck it out until the 20th. Then I fell off until the final, 30th prompt, which... I actually really liked that one. I felt like it was a pretty strong finish for me, and it worked out just wonderfully that it tied back perfectly to another piece I had already written. I wish I’d been more diligent, but I can’t say I regret the writing I didn’t do. Even without a great daily habit, I think the challenge helped me stretch my legs, encouraged me to RP more, to collaborate with people and read just an absolute wealth of great material from people I both knew well and not at all. Most importantly, it helped me find some joy in writing regularly again. Maybe if I’m lucky, or can manage to make it a priority, I can even hang onto that until the next writing challenge. We’ll see. In a way, that’s me in a nutshell: I started strong, took a break and then just settled down comfortably in the alluring embrace of comfortable inertia, and in the end, things were fine. Coulda done better, but I don’t mind.

So then the challenge ended, but oddly enough, the break from the challenge didn’t. I wasn’t kidding when I referred to it as “alluring” and “seductive.” My favorite Calvin & Hobbes strip famously reads “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” It’s made it hard to get back into tumblring, into being a tumblrer, one who tumbls, but I’m going to work on that. I’m going to quit taking that break (or maybe just take a break from it, who can say) and tackle the drafts and asks and tags and mentions and inboxes and whatnot that I put aside a little over a month ago.  Then... I dunno. I’ll write some more. That was fun and cathartic, turns out. I guess I forgot that at some point. Maybe I’ll go back and finish the prompts I didn’t for this challenge. Maybe I’ll hunt down prompt lists for the previous years and see if anything looks fun. Maybe I’ll collaborate on some fun stuff with some of my wonderful friends. Maybe I’ll make some new ones. Hey, maybe we should RP.

[severalspoons]

“Wolfwood Mood” quotes

To be updated as I find more.

God may judge you, but His sins outnumber your own. --  @afabbaeddel

“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.” ― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.” ― Bill Watterson

“An encouraged person will eventually get his drive from encouragement; he becomes more dependent. A person that never really receives encouragement learns to move out of spite; he becomes more independent.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

They're going to have to glue you back together, IN HELL! -- Demoman in Team Fortress 2

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” ― Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”- Epictetus

“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms 

I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me. --Fallout New Vegas NPC

“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.” ― Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Man can get used to anything, the scoundrel. --Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The soul is healed by being with children.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man

“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” ― George Carlin

“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” ― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face” ― Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice 

“There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.” ― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.” ― Jean Paul Sartre 

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

“There is no reality except in action.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse.” ― Joseph Brodsky

“mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.” ― Joseph Heller

“Do you know what it means to be a survivor? It means that not only do you have to live through things, you have to live with them as well. The second part is much harder and sometimes it takes the rest of your life to learn how to do it. But at least you have the rest of your life…” ― Josephine Angelini, Firewalker

“Someone has to be stoic, for the sake of, in spite of, and in the face of all those who are, not. Someone, has to be serious. Someone has to choose to forgo choice, so that there is an option left for others to consider. Everyone can't be, someone.” ― Justin K. McFarlane Beau

“Loving someone always requires you to not love others.” ― Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.” ― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“We are not defined by the things we do in order to survive. We do not apologize for them,” she says quietly, eyes never leaving mine. “Maybe they have broken you, but you are a sharper weapon because of it. And it is time to strike.” ― Laura Sebastian, Ash Princess 

“People are petty, spiteful creatures. What they can't use, hurt, steal, or control, they'll usually destroy.” ― Lorna Reid, Darkwalkers

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” ― Malcom X

“Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.” ― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival.” ― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude 

"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them." ― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.

--Maya Angelou

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

--Maya Angelou  

“Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.” ― Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

“Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.” ― Mike Royko

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” ― Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

“Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs.  ― Rachel Caine, Total Eclipse

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson  

“To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave— that was magical.” ― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.” ― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave  

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” – Seneca

I will fight you in Hell upon a mound of bones. -- @shitmygaywifesays

“As long as there’s two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead.” -- Sniper, Team Fortress 2

"If God had wanted you to live, he would not have created me!” -- Soldier, Team Fortress 2

babies cry because they are alive and that is the saddest thing to be. �� spencer madsen (@spencermadsen) December 15, 2011

Do you think God stays in heaven because He, too, lives in fear of what He’s created? --Spykids 2nd movie

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.  Or you don't.” -- Stephen King, The Stand

“The only thing that matters in the end is your own survival. It's what humans and cockroaches are best at.” ― Susan Ee, World After

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life. --Terry Pratchett, Guards, Guards!

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.” ― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards! 

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -- Theodore Roosevelt 

I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. --Unknown

if you stay alive for no other reason at all, please do it for spite. -- Unknown

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. -- Unknown Tumblr post

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” ― William Goldman, The Princess Bride 

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

...I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL— wint ( @dril ) May 22, 2012

#Yes I will put Shakespeare side by side with Dril #fight me

[desuper]

Jay z 444 mp3

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. Performed by Steve Pence and Adam Faruqi and produced by Adam Faruqi.ĬORRECTION: There are only three variant covers to this episode, not four Jen Vaughn had to bow out due to other commitments. “Magneto’s Cape” lyrics by Jay Edidin, with apologies to Marsha Norman.

An extremely poor file-retrieval system.

The many secret subbasements of Charles Francis Xavier.

In which we celebrate a milestone with a special collectible episode there may already be a Charles Xavier in your basement Onslaught lacks subtlety Bill Watterson may or may not have changed his licensing policy on Earth-616 guns should not have hair and Jay once again exercises his questionable lyrical skills. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line! Variant cover by Dylan Meconis! And a real, live, downloadable sketch variant! Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS Art by David Wynne.

Pecs as envisioned by Franklin RichardsĬheck out the visual companion to this post on our blog.

What Banshee’s sonic scream sounds like.

In which we enter Phase 2 of Onslaught Cable is a man of many purposes Onslaught gets a makeover Intentions only matter if you’re Longshot and Sue Richards will pull over this crossover event right now if you don’t behave.

Immortal Hulk and why you should be reading itĬheck out the visual companion to this episode over on our blog!.

In which Onslaught: Phase 2 does not live up to the promise of Phase 1 Hulk is not the most trustworthy individual Miles is his own best audience Sentinels know their continuity and true heroism is scored by James Horner. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here! And if you do, youll have a whole zip file of new JAY-Z music to enjoy throughout. Once you press Redeem Voucher, youll be taken to the albums track listing and given the option to download the tracks as MP3s.

The visual companion to this episode will be up later this week. Heres what you do: go to, enter your e-mail address, and the voucher code SPRINT. NEXT EPISODE: To nobody’s surprise, Onslaught.ĬORRECTION: Kristoff Vernard is not in fact a clone of Doctor Doom.

Juggernaut’s adventures in the Gem of Cyttorak.

In which Dark Beast is an unlikely father figure Wild Child remains low-budget Wolverine X-Factor foreshadows the XSE no one else thwarts Richardses on Doom’s watch the cow goes “hate” and Juggernaut fails to grow as a person.