#I got lazy with background rendering tho

[cosmically-kissed]

I was not going to draw something for every game’s soundtrack he remixed, so just did the one I have played💔

(Writing with a pixel brush is so fucking hard)

[coycowboykoi]

Cringetober day 7 : Crossover

I got kinda lazy to render this one cause of the background and my other prompts, but i might come back to it when i have the time. For now, heres a Gravity Falls x Invader Zim artwork :p this is also the first time i drew dipper!! I accidentally made his face look too much like Dib's tho 😓

[ko-ogun]

got lazy w the background—

I need to improve my rendering w/ the hair and clothes tho 👀

[dead-lights]

pathfinder -> tess the psychic, keisha the oracle, flora the sorcerer, ethren the wizard, and maria the druid

i was feeling nostalgic about my old tabletop group and couldn't sleep last night, so I made pathfinder versions of some premades. ADHD is giving me some trouble today and i forgot to take my meds until it was too late, so i got a little carried away while i was supposed to be doing other stuff >.>

This isn't really a workable party - aside from Maria they are all extremely squishy - but my partner is willing to DMan adventure with them, or at least a few encounters. tabletop groups are fun, but we do really enjoy just having him DM while I play multiple characters.

seriously this party definitely needs stronker friends tho just oh dear. A psychic, an oracle, a sorcerer, a wizard and a druid??? Tess, Flora, and Ethren are untrained in all armor, Keisha is only trained in light armor, and Maria is a good and loyal friend who would never abandon her party even though her medium armor and larger health pool might otherwise save her. They're all super dead, is my point.

very long under the cut - just me copypastoing parts of the rulebooks with info about their character builds. i might post actual character sheets later idk i'm kinda lazy and haven't filled out anything past level 1 for them.

tess // half-elf psychic (the one who sets shit on fire with her brain)

background: magical experiment (resistant skin)

At some point in your life, powerful people performed magical experiments on you that changed you permanently. You still bear the marks, as well as the abilities. The experiments rendered your skin tougher and resilient to cold and fire damage.

idea here being that Tess was badly injured in a potion making accident, and received an experimental healing procedure to save her life. hence the lack of eyebrows and vampire skin.

class: psychic

You rely on your collection of psychic cantrips as a mainstay, choosing where and when to amplify them for maximum effect. You weave your more conventional spells into the fray where more complex magic is needed, unleashing your mind's full potential in a blaze of power when the time is right.

you can play psychics as either an int- or charisma-based class. i went with int for Tess to represent her genius trait. i don't like dealing with spell slots, so I tend to favor cantrip-focused casters like psychics or dnd warlocks rather than idk wizards.

conscious mind: the oscillating wave

At the heart of all things is energy. Though it may change its form or resting place, it is eternal, fundamental, the purest of building blocks. Your powers let you shift energy - either concentrating it in a single point to explosive end or freezing objects by plundering it away - in an endless oscillation of temperature.

translation: her whole thing is setting shit on fire. also ice. very untamed of her.

subconscious mind: precise discipline

Determine intended outcome. Align thoughts. Identify and resolve distractions. Manifest. Intentional focus is the key to unleashing your abilities, whether that's because your power naturally tends to precise, discrete effects, or because you've adopted strict discipline to ensure your mind can change the world only when you intend it to. Your thought components are calculations you make to determine the forces you need to call upon. Perhaps you mentally weigh the mass of an object against the force of gravity to levitate it or you might determine exactly how much energy is needed for an object to combust. Calculation components tend to impart ordered visual and auditory effects to your spell manifestation, such as regular tessellations of light, mathematical spirals, or harmonic tones.

this is meant to capture her perfectionist trait. i also gave her the "natural ambition" feat just for good measure.

some spells associated with the oscillating wave go from powerful to devastating if you can cast them at melee range, replacing d4s with d6s and d10s with d12s. Psychics are squishy as fuck and there's only so much I can do to mitigate that, but I'm working on a build or strategy that will make at least occasional melee attacks feasible bc tess deserves to burn the world to the ground if that's what her heart wants :D

keisha // human oracle (the one who can kinda temporarily turn people into werewolves once she hits level 10, ish)

background: false medium

There are people in this world who possess the ability to pierce the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead, allowing them to communicate with spirits. You… are not one of them. But you know enough about the occult, as well as cold reading tricks and various practices from local religions, to scam your way into people’s coinpurses. Unlike a through-and-through charlatan, there’s some real occult methodology behind your flimflam, but that’s likely cold comfort to the people you swindle. Whether you decided to take a more righteous path, were caught and pledged to make it right, or still slip in a few “séances” between adventures, you’ve taken to an adventuring lifestyle as you move from place to place.

the idea of Keisha as a grifter-truned-oracle is very appealing to me. while she does have powers now, they have nothing to do with contacting the dead - she's more fortune teller than medium. doubt that will stop her running séances to earn a quick buck tho.

class: oracle

Your conduit to divine power eschews the traditional channels of prayer and servitude—you instead glean sacred truths and great mysteries embodied in overarching concepts, whether because you perceive the common ground across multiple deities or circumvent their power entirely. You explore one of these mysteries and draw upon its power to cast miraculous spells, but that power comes with a terrible price: a curse that grows stronger the more you draw upon it, which you might uphold as an instrument of the divine or view as punishment from the gods.

mystery: cosmos

Celestial bodies great and small exert influence on you, giving you sublime cosmic power. Perhaps you see the glittering stars as a divine blessing, or perhaps you feel drawn to the infinitely dark spaces between. You might uphold deities who represent the sun and the moon— or you might draw power from dark entities from beyond the stars.

curse of the sky's call

Your body is drawn toward the heavens, making you lighter and less substantial than you should be. Your eyes glow with starry light, and your hair and clothing float and drift around you.

flora // changeling sorcerer (the one with the asshole mom)

I think making her the daughter of a blood hag is a good alternative to making her a vampire. she could always take the vampire dedication at a higher level, but i like her as a changeling hanging with Tess and Keisha.

background: magical misfit

You don’t understand folks who claim that magical talent is some sort of burden or great responsibility; you’ve always used your magic to cause trouble and to escape the consequences. Whether becoming an adventurer is your attempt to make amends or just a new way to make some mischief, you’re excited to see where it takes you, and you still delight in using your skills to get out of trouble.

class: sorcerer

You didn’t choose to become a spellcaster—you were born one. There’s magic in your blood. Self-reflection and study allow you to refine your inherent magical skills and unlock new, more powerful abilities. The power in your blood carries a risk, however, and you constantly face the choice of whether you’ll rise to become a master spellcaster or fall into destruction.

heritage: changeling // bloodline: hag

Your mother was a hag. Your eyes' heterochromia is the most obvious signifier of this parentage, but you likely also have a slighter build, paler skin, and darker hair than most members of your other parent’s ancestry. You gain the changeling trait. You also gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low light vision.

ancestry: veil may

Born of a blood hag, a fiery blood drinker hidden behind a false skin, you have one blood-red eye and the ability to slough off your appearance in an instant.

I gave Flora the self-assured, genius, and mean traits in-game, so for this I put her in a charisma-focused class and boosted her int score, as well as giving her some mean spells. I played a smart warlock focused around intimidation in my last dnd campaign and think that sort of playstyle would work really well for her.

ethren // human wizard (the one with a real job)

class: wizard

You are an eternal student of the secrets of the universe, using your mastery of magic to cast powerful spells. You treat magic like a science, cross-referencing the latest texts on practical spellcraft with ancient tomes to discover and understand arcane magic. Yet magical theory is vast, and there's no way you can study it all. Most wizards learn through formal schooling, with their curriculum informing a specific rubric, although particularly driven researchers sometimes piece together their own theories.

arcane school: civic wizardry

You've learned that the fruits of arcane studies—like any other field—should ultimately help the common citizen. You’ve learned the humble art of construction, of finding lost people and things, of moving speedily among buildings and moats—yet these same arts can be turned to demolition, and the constructs you animate to build bridges can just as easily tear them down.

the civic wizardry thing comes from some specific headcanons I have about ethren - namely, that he was involved with the building of the tunnels under Forgotten Hollow/Glimmerbrook/Moonwood.

i'm strongly considering rebuilding him as a druid - i really like the association of mischief/charisma, untamed/intelligence, and practical/wisdom, so I don't love having him in an int-based class. i can have him kinda multiclass to let him keep some of the civic wizardry stuff. that would also let me rebuild Maria as a witch, since he could take over healing duty.

maria // human druid (the one who gets to wear real armor)

characters can become werewolves starting at level 2, but I think Maria would spend a little more time as just a spellcaster before taking that step - I thought about making her the oracle rather than Keisha because of the lunar aspects of Keisha's mystery, but decided against it because I don't want maria in a charisma-centric class. if i decide to redo Ethren as a druid, i will probably make Maria a witch instead - it's an intelligence-based class that focuses on the use of a familiar, so it seems kinda perfect for her as a familiar-owning untamed spellcaster. I'm not unhappy with her as a druid, though, and she can get a familiar like that too. and i like seeing her in scale mail!

class: druid

The power of nature is impossible to resist. It can bring ruin to the stoutest fortress in minutes, reducing even the mightiest works to rubble, burning them to ash, burying them beneath an avalanche of snow, or drowning them beneath the waves. It can provide endless bounty and breathtaking splendor to those who respect it - and an agonizing death to those who take it too lightly. You are one of those who hear nature's call. You stand in awe of the majesty of its power and give yourself over to its service.

druidic order: untamed

The uncontrollable call of the natural world courses through your body. You might have been raised by a wild animal, or you might have come to reject the artifices of cities after growing up in one. Now, primal magic grants you the ability to wear the form of an untamed creature.

background: astrologer

Astrologers look to the stars for signs and portents, using their positions in the heavens to chart courses for those living beneath them. As the celestial spheres move, so does fate itself. You studied the stars and learned to divine your path based on their guidance. Whether the stars directly called you to a life of adventure or you use the stars to guide your wanderlust, you're living out the stars' guidance in a life of adventure.

the astrology thing ties in with her mooncaster stuff. dnd druids have the option of the circle of the moon subclass, which I do like better than the untamed order she joined here, but ya know - this is pathfinder, she gets pathfinder powers.

[neopuff]

hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!

hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol

ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:

(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)

1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:

(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)

2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there! 

2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:

3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)

I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up

when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested

4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.

Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.

5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine

(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)

6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects

6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.

So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.

7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.

8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:

This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):

Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary

These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol

9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol

And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.

Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!

[chunibtaro]

So uhhhh I drew a lot of RWBY this year... only two of these are non RWBY and tbh I could have just as easily put something RWBY for June Template

Retrospective under the cut bc it’s LONG 

RETROSPECTIVE January: First piece of the year! I still like this piece and I think it shows how much I improved from the original version of it. Also I just like looking at it bc it's soft content of my rare pair. I do think I made the rose look photorealistic which looks... bad esp with all the other more stylized flowers, and I got lazy with the bleeding hearts by just drawing one set and flipping them. Emerald's hair also could look better. February:  I made this around GNG week, which was a fun, good time, long before the server imploded on itself. I got really lazy with the backgrounds, obviously, but I do like the poses in this one, tho it helped that I based it off of screenshots from Young Justice. I also just really like how Merc looks in this one. March: March wasn't a very prolific month for art, I don't think I produced much besides this and one comic piece for GNG week. I'm not sure why exactly, I can't find any specific reason why I would be unproductive that month. I'm gonna just assume I was drained from work all the time and didn't have the energy to put out good art, and also I was getting into a slump bc all my art was starting to look same-y. This piece isn't very good, but I chose it because I did it without a reference, and at this point that was going out of my comfort zone. It's obviously not super dynamic, but at the very least you can tell I intended there to be motion to it. April: This also wasn't a very prolific month for art, not as bad as March, but for the same reasons. I was also really starting to feel burnout from the RWBY fandom, specifically wasps and conflict within the GNG server. This was also when the Art vs the Artist meme was popular, and I realized I didn't want to do that meme because my art was too similar and boring, which also brought me down a peg. Though I put out a few good chibis in April, I chose my Mercury redesign bc I was really proud of it. I could never get the Emerald redesign to mesh quite right, but I can say I'm really proud of how Mercury's came out. May: May had me bounce out of my art slump and in full force trying to expand my skills! Specifically exploring painting. Although May was about as prolific as April, what I did create I put a lot into. It was difficult to pick between this and my app of Edison, because I'm really proud of both, but in the end I went with this commission of Mercury because I pushed myself to try and use an interesting perspective for the piece instead of my usual stand still and face the camera pose. Because I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, this was one of the best things I made all year, and may be my favorite piece of the year. June: TIME TO STRESS OUT ABOUT CONNECTICON! So if you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed I made a lot of posts at the beginning of the year low key throwing shade at myself for drawing my oc's instead of more "important" art. Well, that important art that I was procrastinating was con merch, and con was the second week of July, so I really had to get my ass in gear to finish merch on time (spoiler, I didn't finish a lot of it on time). This piece and July's piece are both posters I made for Connecticon, and while I like July's much better, that doesn't mean I find this piece bad. I really should have known that no one at con would realize it was a goonies reference tho -_-; I also lost a lot of love for this piece after season 6 of Voltron, which I watched while I was about 60% of the way through this piece, so I had to force myself to finish it. July: I love this piece!!!! Don't get me wrong, I know it has flaws, but look at it! The lines are so crisp, the colors look good, Roman and Merc's expressions are mwuah chefs kiss, and I just love all of them!!! ... except for Neo. I really didn't do her justice in this piece, her hair is too fluffy, her head is way to oversized to the point that she looks like a bobblehead, and her eyes are too close together. Really if you take out Neo's head that whole problem goes away. I also love all the tiny details I put in this one, from emerald's chaps to roman's rose to Neo's lace parasol. You can tell I was way more passionate about this piece than I was about the Voltron piece.  August:  pretty sure this is when I quit my job cashiering, and thank god bc customers suck. If I was going off of sheer popularity, Chibi Pyrrha would have taken this slot no contest, and while I love chibi Pyrrha, I don't think it was the best of the month. I chose this little princess and the pauper au doodle because I tried a year ago to draw these two dancing, and it looked like dog shit. It was flat and ugly. But this has motion to it, and even looking at it now makes me feel warm and happy inside. It's just a good cute drawing of my otp. September: My piece for the RWBY tarot project! I have a lot of mixed emotions about this one. on the one hand, I love how mercury looks, his expression, the lighting, the visceral gore from his legs (ESPECIALLY THE VISCERAL GORE ON HIS LEGS) and the hands of the undead, all look stunning and I don't think I could be more happy with how they turned out. And then we get to the background. The caduceus isn't the worst thing ever, but it's severely lacking in quality compared to the rendering on mercury in front of it, and a lot of it is clearly pixellated from me trying to stretch and squash it just right. And the fire is a hot (no pun intended) mess. It's flat, incoherent, and doesn't lead the eye anywhere. It's a shame too because I wanted to do more with it, but I a) didn't have enough time or patience to figure out what I needed to do to fix it and b) didn't want to go outside of my comfort level, so I gave up and decided to be satisfied with what I had. October: October was another good month for art, I made a turnaround sheet for Moss, painted a full body (and slightly lewd) Rudy, and made a decent attempt at inktober. Ok, so I got like 2 days in, but I improved a lot on inking from last year! Fun fact! this piece was originally going to be fan art of Lindsay Jones, but after I did some thumbnails to figure out a pose, I thought it would suit White Diamond better, and I could also sell it as merch. I love this piece. I think I captured the sinister mood well, and conveyed the story I wanted to without any dialogue (at least the notes on Tumblr make me assume I did a decent job, lotta people really wigged out lol) I really worked hard to get the lighting right on this one, and I think it shows. My absolutely favorite thing about this piece funnily enough, is Amethyst. I think I just did a great job drawing her and I'm proud of myself ok. Stevens bubble and my trouble figuring out how to get WD's leg just right are the only things that I dislike about this piece, but I might go back and fix those. November: IM SO PROUD OF THIS COMMISSION!!!!!! I worked so god damn hard on this chef's kiss poifect,  and it really shows. I started using a new brush at this point, the Ojing series on Clip Studio Paint, which I recommend and have been using a lot since. I've also been using this shading technique since drawing this. I love how it sort of fades out but it's still really crisp. I also love all the little details that give this piece character, like her shoes and the stripes on her jacket. This piece really takes a lot of the stuff I learned over the year and combines it into one piece, and I could not be prouder of it. I have absolutely no problems with this one, though I do find the weapon a bit plain, but it's what the client described. December: AND NOW IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!! I had been working on this piece since August, going back to it every now and then and getting frustrated. I'm really glad I came back to it and finally finished it, since I love this pair and I put a lot of effort into it back in August. However, I'm also really glad I completely overhauled a lot of it, specifically the flowers. Though I'm not 100% happy with the mums in this one, they look a thousand times better than the mums I had originally sketched back in August, and were part of the reason I had such a hard time finishing this for months. I also thought it would be nice to end the year on the same note it started; with a flower couple. I've definitely learned a lot since January, and I hope to continue growing in 2019! 2019 GOALS!

Work on backgrounds for the love of god

Draw more stuff that isn't RWBY

Perspective

Make more speed paints and post more to youtube in general

[guardiandae]

You know you are an adult when you get excited about buying a vaccuum cleaner... lmao. 

but in my defense, the vacuums today, even the cheap ones, are so much cooler than the shitty ones back in the day. also I would like my floor to finally be clean and my mom keeps going, “vacuums are so expensive” bitch I just spent $20 on a vaccuum it’s not hard.

ANYWAY here’s my life update:

got my hair cut, finally. It looks so much better now. no more staring at crazy split ends all day.

I found a quiz site, WHOOPS, and I’ve been quizzing myself for like a week now on African countries and now island countries because I realized I don’t know them. I don’t think they’re all sticking but my brain has been going, MOZAMBIQUE. DJIBOUTI. every day. So I now know recall MORE countries than I used to. It fuels my obsession for puzzle games + I’m learning, so. This is a step up from mind-numbing griddlers, at least.

I’m also reading A Song of Ice and Fire... it’s stupid how, for the longest time I was super intimidated by the idea of getting into these books, knowing how thick they are, how many there are in the series, and how many CHARACTERS there are to follow. I remember when I first started watching the show, I was super overwhelmed by the characters being introduced. Particularly when the Red Woman came onto the scene I was like, “The fuck is happening now??” And maybe watching the show first helped a lot with that, but like, I was really suspicious when I first cracked open a book and was like... “Is this the novel or just a screenplay???” I remember having to read so many books that were written with excruciatingly BORING detail, or such lovingly rendered descriptions of background scenery or pure daydreams that had nothing to do with the plot, that I’d get totally bogged down in the purple prose and lose track of what the hell was going on. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves of writing to this very day. But GRRM doesn’t do that, not even remotely. I thought that my writing was really simple, but GRRM’s might be even more spartan. But that only makes sense to keep it succinct and move along quickly when he’s laying out this whole huge world with several kingdoms and houses that all have their own unique cultures and beliefs and at least a dozen different major characters whose stories need to be told. I’m totally enchanted. and the FORESHADOWING, HOLY FUCK. The foreshadowing is intense, I’m kind of glad in a way that I already know what’s to come because it’s literally like the way I wrote Distance, where after you know the ending, there are so many things that take on a different light that I would’ve never even noticed, seriously. I posted them on twitter but I should maybe make posts here because AAAAGGGGGGHHH!!!!

I’m also starting to read up on beekeeping... I’ve been interested in it for a while mostly in the sense that I appreciate beekeeping (see beekeeper mumen for example) but the spring seeds came in and I was like, I want bee-friendly flowers, and then that led to, WHAT IF I BEES? and I’m the sort of person that... I had to RESTRAIN MYSELF from buying a beekeeping starting kit (BECAUSE I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT TO DO WITH 3LBS OF LIVE BEES.. @MYSELF: DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE BUY BEES ONLINE JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN) and yeah like so anyway now I’m reading about bees and even if I decide it’s not for me (tbh I’d probably be like, “YEAH BEES” until I got to the point of trying to set up an actual fucking hive of bees and then scream and run away because BEES? and also bc I’m an idiot that thinks everything sounds awesome in theory until real life happens. BUT WHO KNOWS MAYBE I’D LIKE IT???) but anyway EVEN IF I DECIDE AGAINST THE IDEA at least I’ll have learned some stuff?

oh yeah btw I slammed the button and ordered that pricey fitbit fitness tracking watch and I really like it. I’m kind of gradually easing into more and more fitness? which feels like a “I’m being lazy” thing but honestly maybe that’s a better approach, to build up habits over time instead of overloading myself with extreme changes and then going “nope”? Basically I’ve been learning that exercise can be hella fun, experimenting with different exercises that I like and also experimenting with healthier foods to bring into my diet. btw if anyone told me a few years ago that today I’d be buying almond milk, coconut oil, organic food, and yelling, “HOW MANY CALORIES?! FUCK THAT” in the middle of the grocery store at my ex-favorite foods, I probably would’ve decked them.

alsooooo so I can’t remember if I posted about this but I know I told a few people that I studied the gay aesthetic™ hard and took notes (I wish I was fucking kidding, I literally gotta study this shit I don’t understand social things and fashions) and decided to expand my wardrobe accordingly. I’m feeling out what works and does not, and today I was FEELING IT when I got myself in the mirror. it’s that men’s pocket undershirt, I fucking swear, and I have had that all along but I never wore them by themselves I always wore them to work under my stupid work uniform. WELL NOW I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT. plus my ace ring and bracelets were good choices. today I bought better shoes as well, and dodged a bullet because like... ugh I have the worst instincts and at first I almost got these tall zippered ladies boots that were on sale like... yes they were a squeeze but??? but I was like... I think they make my legs look stubby plus the store was closing so I was like, TOO INDECISIVE FOR THIS. I ended up getting a pair of skateboard shoes on clearance and also some nice looking men’s boots instead and it cost me the same it would’ve for that one pair of boots plus get this while I was leaving the store I saw this Incredibly Straight Woman walking in with the tall zippered boots and I was like, THANK GOD I DIDN’T and then I saw ANOTHER Incredibly Straight Woman with the same boots and I was like TODAY I HAVE BEEN SPARED A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH. Like yeah gay girls can pull that off too yes but 1. not me. I’d have to get skinny jeans or leggings for that look and it’s so not me I can’t, I don’t know why the fuck I tried to go down that path 2. those tall boots weren’t even the original Aesthetic™ that I had studied for, like, I suck so bad, someone dress me bc I make bad life choices. 

but yeah, I bought two new pairs of shoes, I bought a grey shirt bc I observed that the holy grail of casual gay girls was just a plain grey shirt (much like the unrealized glory of my pocket shirts... but grey guys... I love grey...) I hope it’s a good choice tho bc you know, some cuts look great and some are like... the fuck. a VACUUM CLEANER?? ADULTING WIN?? some nice FOOD STUFFS???? lettuce-y things, even????

so now I need to do some things that I’ve been putting off..

-do my taxes (I’ve been raring to but my internet was too slow..) -pay rent -call my bank -find a local doctor -book an eye appointment -schedule a permit test -clean my fucking maybe?? that;’d be nice??? 

-maybe part with some of these clothes that just give me bad memories now... I still have so much stuff from high school and stuff that I don’t wear and stuff that I’m like ‘will I ever fit into this again’ and it’s like... like seriously for YEARS  I did not buy myself a new WARDROBE I had like enough clothes that would fit and so many old ones like, I was punishing myself for gaining so much weight and seriously it didn’t help me at all it felt so much better to just go ahead and get clothes that fit me and half of my problem is I’m poor af so I’m like, ‘but I spent money on this’ and I don’t wanna throw it out but now I think I’ll be happy when I get rid of these big clothes when they, hopefully, no longer fit me in the near future, so like... I should just toss these old bad-memories-clothes and burn them, seriously... @ me I’m talking to you asshole, burn the rags. clean your room, clean our your wardrobe, and cleanse it with fire.