#and that i'm thriving creatively and wh

[pikachu-deluxe]

hey, image of my beasts coming up sometime tonight in like a few hours, if not check back tomorrow in my art blog, it should be there by then

[yullalightk]

Happy birthday Mr. Puzzles!🧩📺️⭐️

So, since tomorrow's Mr. Puzzles' official debut anniversary, I thought of posting his backstory we know so far with the context and information we recieved from the recent episodes.

This will contain my theory/hc but I'll still try to sprinkle in some canon material!

The story of Mr. Puzzles so far..

Ever since he was a child, all he wanted to do was create an amusement park to see everyone having fun and entertain others! That was always his dream. But, he's father disapproved of it and called it "Childish" not only him but others called his ideas "Stupid" or "Lacked creativity" and the one that struck him the most was "No vision!"

All of his life he was unsupported by his father the only family he had left after his mother left, and was all alone. Nobody to share his ideas hopes and dreams. But! he had his TV!!📺️ It never judged him for his ideas and was always there for him whenever he felt low.

Soon after he became obsessed with the shows he watched on TV he came up with a different idea, "What if I became a movie director instead!?! My father will surely approve of this!" So, he studied and worked hard to chase his new dream. Of creating the best movies the world has ever seen!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And when he reached adulthood, he decided to leave his home and fully chase his dreams of being an actor and creating his own movies. But, his father said something that'll haunt him for the rest of his life. "You're such a disappointment."

"Wh- what?" Puzzles' head was full of questions, "What did I do wrong!?" "Isn't this dream more realistic enough!!?!?" "Is there something wrong with me?" "Will you love me more if I'm... Perfect?"

Then it clicked. That's it! If Puzzles could create the best show ever, his father and everybody who wronged him will love and adore him!!!! Then he won't be a disappointment, he will never be alone, he will.. finally... be loved.

So off he went, to accomplish his dream and finally be loved and entertain others.

He bought a studio with the money he earned from his part time jobs, and started writing down all of the ideas he had in his head. But he had a problem, he was tired. Too tired, his body was becoming weak and unable to perform infront of the camera anymore.

He took coffee everyday to keep himself awake to keep on working but, it just ruined his health even more. He started to wonder...

"Am I going to die without accomplishing my dreams?!" "Am I going to die alone??!!" "No, NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!" He couldn't die!! he's just getting started, none of his shows got picked up by the higher directors, he still hasn't made any friends!! he can't die yet, he just can't.

"You're such a disappointment." Those words stuck to him like glue and it stayed in his head for a long time, he decided to accept his fate and go watch TV for the last of his remaining days.. "If I'll die, at least it will be with you, my dear friend."

Then a thought popped in his mind. "What if-" he looked at the TV that was infront of him and thought of something. Something he was afraid to admit. "What if, I was the TV itself?" He went to the garage and took a saw and brought it on the table. And did the deed. The wires from the TV stretched to his neck to his entire body and soon there wasn't any part of him that's human anymore.

He was finally perfect.

The rest is pretty much the same, this kinda fits his story and since he watched TV as a way to cope with his trauma of being neglected, It would make sense for him to be so obsessed. I really like Puzzles' character and I am curious to see what SMG4 has in store for us! Feel free to make a fanfic based on my Mr. Puzzles' backstory, and be sure to credit me.

I also hc that the reason why he has so much power is because his powers come from his soul. Now, hear me out! I think after he cut off his head and replaced it with the TV, he actually died. But, his soul didn't give up. It wanted to thrive, to live forever, to be PERFECT. And since he's a literal TV he feeds off of some sort of energy like the 5⭐️ratings. That was his source of power to create more movies.

Ofc, these are just theories and I doubt they'll ever be canon but. It is fun to think about!

I honestly had fun making this post and I'm glad it's out. I hope to hear your theories of Mr. Puzzles' backstory! And, I would just like to say... thank you Mr. Puzzles, for entertaining us and being our best TV headed character!! You'll always be our favorite SMG4 character!

I forgot to mention this but, I do feel bad for Puzzles 'cause all he ever wanted was to create something, entertain others and feel appreciated. Still! his ways of achieving those dreams are horrible I won't doubt that but, you can't help bad for him. He's such a unique character in so many different ways, I really love his character so much. And I'll use this for my lore of The 5⭐️ rivals AU.

More of his backstory:

I also think that his dreams was very uncommon and rare and that's why not a lot of people accepted him, and his story especially is inspired by the song 'Art is dead' by boburnham. A lot of his songs fits Puzzles character honestly.

[vacate-et-scire]

Hi! In case you still take requests for the match up event ;v; (Always wanted to try one!)

I'm an Aries, INFP (but I think it's not quite accurate). I'm an introvert who can absolutely talk someone's ear off for two hours and then needs to sit in my own room in silence for the next few hours. I have ADHD, so I'm all over the place, tbh. Very forgetful, very disorganised and usually confused. I also bring up the most random stuff at the most random times. Oh, and my friends usually say I'm quite smart, I'm just a mess. I prefer calling it "go with the flow" haha

I love crafts and all things creative, like drawing, writing, building little things, making decorations for my room, you name it. I play volleyball and I'm also a big fan of musicals (and I will sing musical songs to myself on nearly a daily basis). I quite like things that challenge my brain like escape rooms or reading murder mysteries and guessing along.

Anything else... a few random bits: I'm 5'10 and I love wearing platform shoes and heels, so I'd definitely look for someone who doesn't mind that. I love penguins very much and I have a lot of penguin plushies. I'd look for someone who's supportive of how passionate I can be about my interests, who wouldn't mind listening to me talking about the most random stuff. I wanna be able to talk about silly things or have discussions about different topics. Also preferably someone who can balance out my chaos and help me be a bit more organised. Someone who can keep up with me and pull me back down to earth, basically.

Thank you so much for doing this <3 I'll be waiting patiently, so please do take your time!

Your Blue Lock Matchup: Rin Itoshi

First, let’s talk about your personality—chaotic, passionate, and full of creative energy. Rin, despite his cool, distant exterior, gets that kind of energy. He’s someone who thrives on focus, but he also understands what it means to get swept up in something and lose track of everything else. If you ever got lost in a random topic mid-conversation, he wouldn’t just humor you—he’d engage in it, offering his own sharp thoughts and making sure the conversation stays interesting. But at the same time, he’d also know when to pull you back and say, “Hey, let’s get back on track,” without being harsh. He might not always show it, but he actually finds your random musings fascinating—he just needs a little time to process before he chimes in with his own perspective.

Your love for crafts, building things, and creating decorations for your space? Rin would love that, even if he doesn’t show it right away. He’s more of a ��silent admirer” type, but you’d find him sneaking glances at the things you’ve created, admiring your talent in his own subtle way. And your brain-challenging hobbies like murder mysteries and escape rooms? Rin would absolutely be into those, especially if you’re there to keep him company while he solves the puzzles. He’s sharp, and a little competitive, so you can bet he’d want to figure things out faster than anyone else—but he’d also appreciate your ability to challenge him and make things more interesting.

As for your love of musicals—while Rin might not burst into song, he’d definitely appreciate your passion for it. You might catch him singing along under his breath during moments of intense focus, and he’d be very impressed by your musical knowledge. Maybe he’d even surprise you by knowing the lyrics to one of your favorite songs and using it as a way to show he’s paying attention to you.

Now, about your height and love for platform shoes—Rin is tall himself (6'1"), so he’d absolutely love the idea of you rocking some heels or platform shoes. He’d find it endearing and might even playfully joke about how you’re just trying to keep up with him.

Rin is exactly the kind of grounded, but also sharp, person who can match your chaotic energy. He’s not going to be overwhelmed by your enthusiasm or creativity—in fact, he’ll probably encourage it, helping you stay focused when you need to and letting you have your moments of randomness. He’d enjoy being your sounding board for all your ideas, and while he might not always be able to keep up with your level of enthusiasm, he’ll be there to catch you when your thoughts go off track. Rin would support you while also gently guiding you, giving you the space to be yourself while providing that grounded stability you need.

While Rin is great at balancing things, he can be a little distant, and his straightforwardness might sometimes feel a bit cold, especially when you're caught up in a topic and looking for more of an emotional connection. But don’t worry—once you break through his walls, you’ll see that he’s all in, and his way of showing affection will be subtle but very real.

In the end, Rin Itoshi would be the partner who keeps you balanced but still lets you explore all of your passions. He’d listen to your random ramblings, challenge you in the best way, and keep you grounded while still loving every quirky part of you. He’d be your rock when the chaos feels a little too much—and you’d be the spark that lights up his world.

[kammartinez]

By Rainesford Stauffer

“So it’s like a hobby?” Someone recently asked about my writing. No, I wanted to say. But yes, kind of. I’ve stumbled my way through this conversation many times before. Yes, I have a full-time job that isn’t related to my writing; yes, I still think of myself as a writer. Is it a hobby, a side hustle, a passion project? It’s all of those things and somehow none of them.

Yet when someone refers to writing as my hobby, I flinch, despite knowing the value of hobbies, or perhaps because it feels so unlike my actual hobbies, like baking. I know how often creative work or work by disabled people, people who are parenting or caregiving, or people with other responsibilities gets relegated to this “hobby” categorization, regardless of how people classify it themselves. Maybe it is a hobby. Or maybe it’s work someone cares about that doesn’t fit a forty-hours-a-week model.

When reporting for my second book, about ambition, I spoke to a researcher who detailed links between ambition, extremism, and passion. Obsessive passion can occur when our passions and identities are the same—the passion is all that we are. “When ambitious people passionately pursue their goals while also attending to their other needs, they are less likely to engage in extremism,” the research states. I heard about the extremism of pursuing one’s passion while reporting: in careers sucking up every hour and every thought, yes, but also in hobbies-turned-passions, like the person who talked about thriving in the competitiveness of extreme, triathlon-style races outside of his grueling medical career, and how all-consuming that was. I wondered how often I dipped into the extremism side—how often I pursued work I cared about at my own expense.

My mind flitted to all the times I’d heard about “following a passion,” frustrated by the unsustainability of that advice. “But it’s your passion” and “love of the work” often get used as excuses for exploitation or underpayment in all different kinds of fields, from writing to teaching to nursing and more—an endless list, despite the fact that rent can’t be paid with passion alone. Who can follow their dreams as work—and how and whether those dreams are compensated—is a question that gets lost amid a million backward suggestions that if you really loved the work, it wouldn’t feel like work at all. I’d smashed up against the limits of my own passion before, like when my hard-fought dream of being a dancer ended when my body screamed that it had limits, even if my passion did not, or how, when I was just starting to try to write, I wrote cringe-worthy pieces for free, as if that experience would “pay off” someday. At the same time, I now know that my passion propels me to take on work I care about, even if it means I’m overworked—dreaming of a balance I only sometimes maintain.

Once, someone asked whether I’d ever considered “really writing,” the suggestion being that pieces I reported and books I’ve written were somehow less real because they were not my primary source of income, of health insurance, of work. Nearly right after, someone else asked why I wouldn’t just quit writing if I felt I was working too much. I had no good answers.

Since I was old enough to work, I’d never only had one job, and since I’ve been writing, I’ve never only been a writer. But I’ve always wondered how that would feel. I was used to writing on the side of whatever combination of jobs I had, whether it was working for a nonprofit or working in events for a ballet company that involved a surprising amount of manual labor and, unsurprisingly, no health insurance. I’ve taught toddlers and cleaned bathrooms at a dance studio, and done admin work and random copywriting. I even make a joke about it in the book, paraphrasing When Harry Met Sally: on the side is a big thing for me. I wrote the book on the side. But it felt like the center.

If writing was happening in what some might call margins of my life, did that inherently make it a hobby—or was it actually what knit my life together?

By this point, I know many writers who juggle writing alongside other jobs, other responsibilities—other dreams, even, which is perhaps why the “hobby versus job” binary felt stiff to me. Writing shouldn’t be so unstable that one needs another job to support it. But having another job doesn’t diminish the work of writing, either.

When Neema Avashia, an educator and author of Another Appalachia, began drafting her book, she was teaching full-time and organizing to fight back against school closures. At the same time, she was going to a writing class at GrubStreet once a week and waking up early on Saturdays to write. “Sometimes I look back and I don't really understand how it all happened at the same time,” Avashia told me. “What I realized was the writing was the outlet for it all.”

From the time she was a teenager, Avashia wanted to do writing as full-time work, but she told me that it was hard for her parents, who immigrated to the United States, to see writing as a stable career, telling her that writing could be her avocation, not her vocation. “There are lots of really big questions to ask about the financial sustainability of writing, and who can take those risks,” Avashia said. Plus, as she pointed out, the publishing industry doesn’t necessarily reward those who do make it their full-time job. Even in public education, she said, “I get paid in a much more reasonable way than folks working at HarperCollins do.” (In 2022, the HarperCollins union went on strike, ultimately securing a contract that included a new wage structure and annual increases to minimum salaries at each level, among other highlights.)

The inequities in writing are vast and systemic. The publishing industry remains disproportionately white, with a report by PEN America detailing how biases impact not only who gets published, but how writers are treated and compensated throughout the publication process. Even beyond publishing, underpayment and understaffing often impact who can write, and where. Privilege and bias shape careers from the very start, with who can afford to work for free often underpinning writing-related internships. Then, there’s the layoffs and closures: “It goes down to the bedrock of journalism as a career—even as an idea or desire,” Tajja Isen, author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service, wrote recently for The Walrus. “What are journalists, both would-be and employed, supposed to aspire to now?”

Now, Avashia thinks there are points where writing might demand more of one’s time—for example, when her book came out, she shifted to a part-time schedule at work. But in some cases, her job is where she builds relationships and thinks through questions that inform her writing. “The books that moved me the most are the books where I feel like the writer is most proximate to the things that they're talking about—that they are living those questions themselves,” she explained. For example, she cites Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking as books that are about grief—but ones in which writers are living their questions from the inside, and using writing as a means of making meaning of those questions.

For her, writing is not a hobby, not work, but what she calls a “third space.” She added, “Writing has always been the way I make meaning of the questions.”

Hannah Matthews, author of You or Someone You Love, told me that she writes for the same reason she does other work: “To communicate and be in community. To connect.” She added, “I think my writing would be so hollow without all of my other work happening around it.” When Matthews began writing her book, her baby was eight months old, and she was working four days a week at a reproductive health clinic, as well as doing doula work beyond those hours. Writing happened, she said, in eight-minute spurts during the day or after bedtime, when she was exhausted.

Sometimes, she feels envious of those who have the resources to write for a living with no other jobs. Then she envisions the alternate reality in which her family could afford that, and comes back to the knowledge that only writing actually wouldn’t be healthiest for her. “I hate that money has to figure into my decisions about where and when and what to write, and I try to just write for pleasure when I can—to remind myself that it's a love and a friend, and not just another job or another obligation,” she said.

It’s crucial that there are more accessible opportunities for people to enter—and remain in—the writing field in all its forms. Whether something produces profit should not be the determinant of the meaning it holds. Writing is work, and like all labor, it deserves sustainable, equitable compensation. There are stories that go untold because someone can’t afford to write them. Talking points on “doing it for the love of the work” feel shallow when passion can’t pay bills, and even more so when millionaires and CEOs tinker with people’s livelihoods as if it’s all a game.

I think, sometimes, of that comment on “really writing,” and I wonder what it means. That if I’d really been ambitious, I would’ve “made it” by now? But then I look at all it has made. Writing has given me plenty of pleasure; it has made a community I couldn’t have imagined when I sent out my first shaky pitches. Through writing, I have found colleagues whose writing have shaped my life and my thinking; I have made friends in countless different zip codes, circumstances, and ages, who cheer for each other, share advice on writing cover letters and negotiating fees, and who have been there when I’ve needed help beyond my career, too. In the work itself, I practice skills—how I interview, how I write, how I read—that I’ll be learning and relearning anew for the rest of my life.

It’s also made me think of so many writers whose work I admire, and how they’ve written in the midst of parenting, caregiving, and other work. They’ve written in their cars on lunch breaks, in the midst of grief, while navigating a dozen other parts of life and pieces of themselves. I think of all that work has given someone, and what it has made.

I crave more: more time to write, more space, more chances to branch out. But having another job doesn’t lessen the writing. And writing as a hobby isn’t a commentary on how and whether you were ambitious enough to turn it into something else. As long as “making it” is about full-time jobs and hours logged, rather than creating meaningful, sustainable opportunities for as many people as possible to do their version of the work, we’re hitting the limits of passion—because whatever form it comes in, it’s work.

[kamreadsandrecs]

By Rainesford Stauffer

“So it’s like a hobby?” Someone recently asked about my writing. No, I wanted to say. But yes, kind of. I’ve stumbled my way through this conversation many times before. Yes, I have a full-time job that isn’t related to my writing; yes, I still think of myself as a writer. Is it a hobby, a side hustle, a passion project? It’s all of those things and somehow none of them.

Yet when someone refers to writing as my hobby, I flinch, despite knowing the value of hobbies, or perhaps because it feels so unlike my actual hobbies, like baking. I know how often creative work or work by disabled people, people who are parenting or caregiving, or people with other responsibilities gets relegated to this “hobby” categorization, regardless of how people classify it themselves. Maybe it is a hobby. Or maybe it’s work someone cares about that doesn’t fit a forty-hours-a-week model.

When reporting for my second book, about ambition, I spoke to a researcher who detailed links between ambition, extremism, and passion. Obsessive passion can occur when our passions and identities are the same—the passion is all that we are. “When ambitious people passionately pursue their goals while also attending to their other needs, they are less likely to engage in extremism,” the research states. I heard about the extremism of pursuing one’s passion while reporting: in careers sucking up every hour and every thought, yes, but also in hobbies-turned-passions, like the person who talked about thriving in the competitiveness of extreme, triathlon-style races outside of his grueling medical career, and how all-consuming that was. I wondered how often I dipped into the extremism side—how often I pursued work I cared about at my own expense.

My mind flitted to all the times I’d heard about “following a passion,” frustrated by the unsustainability of that advice. “But it’s your passion” and “love of the work” often get used as excuses for exploitation or underpayment in all different kinds of fields, from writing to teaching to nursing and more—an endless list, despite the fact that rent can’t be paid with passion alone. Who can follow their dreams as work—and how and whether those dreams are compensated—is a question that gets lost amid a million backward suggestions that if you really loved the work, it wouldn’t feel like work at all. I’d smashed up against the limits of my own passion before, like when my hard-fought dream of being a dancer ended when my body screamed that it had limits, even if my passion did not, or how, when I was just starting to try to write, I wrote cringe-worthy pieces for free, as if that experience would “pay off” someday. At the same time, I now know that my passion propels me to take on work I care about, even if it means I’m overworked—dreaming of a balance I only sometimes maintain.

Once, someone asked whether I’d ever considered “really writing,” the suggestion being that pieces I reported and books I’ve written were somehow less real because they were not my primary source of income, of health insurance, of work. Nearly right after, someone else asked why I wouldn’t just quit writing if I felt I was working too much. I had no good answers.

Since I was old enough to work, I’d never only had one job, and since I’ve been writing, I’ve never only been a writer. But I’ve always wondered how that would feel. I was used to writing on the side of whatever combination of jobs I had, whether it was working for a nonprofit or working in events for a ballet company that involved a surprising amount of manual labor and, unsurprisingly, no health insurance. I’ve taught toddlers and cleaned bathrooms at a dance studio, and done admin work and random copywriting. I even make a joke about it in the book, paraphrasing When Harry Met Sally: on the side is a big thing for me. I wrote the book on the side. But it felt like the center.

If writing was happening in what some might call margins of my life, did that inherently make it a hobby—or was it actually what knit my life together?

By this point, I know many writers who juggle writing alongside other jobs, other responsibilities—other dreams, even, which is perhaps why the “hobby versus job” binary felt stiff to me. Writing shouldn’t be so unstable that one needs another job to support it. But having another job doesn’t diminish the work of writing, either.

When Neema Avashia, an educator and author of Another Appalachia, began drafting her book, she was teaching full-time and organizing to fight back against school closures. At the same time, she was going to a writing class at GrubStreet once a week and waking up early on Saturdays to write. “Sometimes I look back and I don't really understand how it all happened at the same time,” Avashia told me. “What I realized was the writing was the outlet for it all.”

From the time she was a teenager, Avashia wanted to do writing as full-time work, but she told me that it was hard for her parents, who immigrated to the United States, to see writing as a stable career, telling her that writing could be her avocation, not her vocation. “There are lots of really big questions to ask about the financial sustainability of writing, and who can take those risks,” Avashia said. Plus, as she pointed out, the publishing industry doesn’t necessarily reward those who do make it their full-time job. Even in public education, she said, “I get paid in a much more reasonable way than folks working at HarperCollins do.” (In 2022, the HarperCollins union went on strike, ultimately securing a contract that included a new wage structure and annual increases to minimum salaries at each level, among other highlights.)

The inequities in writing are vast and systemic. The publishing industry remains disproportionately white, with a report by PEN America detailing how biases impact not only who gets published, but how writers are treated and compensated throughout the publication process. Even beyond publishing, underpayment and understaffing often impact who can write, and where. Privilege and bias shape careers from the very start, with who can afford to work for free often underpinning writing-related internships. Then, there’s the layoffs and closures: “It goes down to the bedrock of journalism as a career—even as an idea or desire,” Tajja Isen, author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service, wrote recently for The Walrus. “What are journalists, both would-be and employed, supposed to aspire to now?”

Now, Avashia thinks there are points where writing might demand more of one’s time—for example, when her book came out, she shifted to a part-time schedule at work. But in some cases, her job is where she builds relationships and thinks through questions that inform her writing. “The books that moved me the most are the books where I feel like the writer is most proximate to the things that they're talking about—that they are living those questions themselves,” she explained. For example, she cites Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking as books that are about grief—but ones in which writers are living their questions from the inside, and using writing as a means of making meaning of those questions.

For her, writing is not a hobby, not work, but what she calls a “third space.” She added, “Writing has always been the way I make meaning of the questions.”

Hannah Matthews, author of You or Someone You Love, told me that she writes for the same reason she does other work: “To communicate and be in community. To connect.” She added, “I think my writing would be so hollow without all of my other work happening around it.” When Matthews began writing her book, her baby was eight months old, and she was working four days a week at a reproductive health clinic, as well as doing doula work beyond those hours. Writing happened, she said, in eight-minute spurts during the day or after bedtime, when she was exhausted.

Sometimes, she feels envious of those who have the resources to write for a living with no other jobs. Then she envisions the alternate reality in which her family could afford that, and comes back to the knowledge that only writing actually wouldn’t be healthiest for her. “I hate that money has to figure into my decisions about where and when and what to write, and I try to just write for pleasure when I can—to remind myself that it's a love and a friend, and not just another job or another obligation,” she said.

It’s crucial that there are more accessible opportunities for people to enter—and remain in—the writing field in all its forms. Whether something produces profit should not be the determinant of the meaning it holds. Writing is work, and like all labor, it deserves sustainable, equitable compensation. There are stories that go untold because someone can’t afford to write them. Talking points on “doing it for the love of the work” feel shallow when passion can’t pay bills, and even more so when millionaires and CEOs tinker with people’s livelihoods as if it’s all a game.

I think, sometimes, of that comment on “really writing,” and I wonder what it means. That if I’d really been ambitious, I would’ve “made it” by now? But then I look at all it has made. Writing has given me plenty of pleasure; it has made a community I couldn’t have imagined when I sent out my first shaky pitches. Through writing, I have found colleagues whose writing have shaped my life and my thinking; I have made friends in countless different zip codes, circumstances, and ages, who cheer for each other, share advice on writing cover letters and negotiating fees, and who have been there when I’ve needed help beyond my career, too. In the work itself, I practice skills—how I interview, how I write, how I read—that I’ll be learning and relearning anew for the rest of my life.

It’s also made me think of so many writers whose work I admire, and how they���ve written in the midst of parenting, caregiving, and other work. They’ve written in their cars on lunch breaks, in the midst of grief, while navigating a dozen other parts of life and pieces of themselves. I think of all that work has given someone, and what it has made.

I crave more: more time to write, more space, more chances to branch out. But having another job doesn’t lessen the writing. And writing as a hobby isn’t a commentary on how and whether you were ambitious enough to turn it into something else. As long as “making it” is about full-time jobs and hours logged, rather than creating meaningful, sustainable opportunities for as many people as possible to do their version of the work, we’re hitting the limits of passion—because whatever form it comes in, it’s work.