#It's a good world because you're in it

[petricorah]

scenes i loved from Real Enough to Get Me Through by @marriedzukka <333 [ids in alt]

[atalana]

so the good place is widely lauded on this site for its takes on morality and capitalism, which i totally agree with

but i think it should get more recognition for the line "all humans are aware of death. so we're all a little bit sad all the time. that's just the deal. we don't get offered any better ones. and if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. i've been there, and everybody's been there. so don't fight it. in the words of a very wise bed bath and beyond employee i once knew - go ahead and cry all you want. but you're gonna have to pay for that toilet plunger."

[yardsards]

do people who have listened to taz balance but not graduation Know that it was HEAVILY IMPLIED that lup and barry eventually adopted a lil sorcerer child who got disowned by his family for his natural necromancy magic, and they taught him how to use his powers for good and were overall great parents that he looks back on fondly

(and said child grew up to be a dimension-hopping lich, caretaker of the dead, and very sweet adoptive father of a major npc)

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Olympus

[daily-hanamura]

[bluesdeluxe]

Deniss Vasiļjevs: The Lion King | FS debut at Worlds 2024

music: "The Rightful King" by Hans Zimmer, "He Lives in You" by Lebo M performed by Kesha Shantrell and Matt Bloyd, cut by Matthias Versluis choreography: Stéphane Lambiel "This is the kind of skating that excites the skating community. No quads, but impassioned, something that ignites emotion in people. I feel inspired, it makes me want to skate!.." — Mark Hanretty's commentary.

[sualne]

kiss you in aroace, and we're both boys.

[magnusbae]

On the rare occasions when Hob is actually mad at Dream— he refuses to sleep. Coffee, energy drinks and the God forsaken awakeness pills? All fair game. If he has to inject caffeine directly into his vein, he would. Hob doesn't often get mad, but when he does, he likes to make a point. Dream and Hob match in more than one ways, really, they do. And so it is that the Dream Lord must come out of his realm personally to sprinkle sand into his lover's eyes because he'd be damned if Hob refuses his gift for more than two nights in a row. Not speaking for 100 years? Easy. Hob refusing sleep? Unacceptable.

[moonpaw]

Fighting DEMONS rn trying not to get invested in one piece to figure out wtf you're posting about!!!!

come here cyber.... we have this thang

‎

[canisalbus]

Vasco and Machete are absolutely adorable, your style is so lovely and you draw the softest beds I’ve ever seen in any art ever

.

[cringefaecompilation]

cannot stand it when i see posts saying orym could/can only ever have concrete conversations about himself and his feelings with either dorian or ashton or that they're the only people that would understand what he's going through. asides from the Women Just Don't Get It-ness of it all, like:

i rest my case

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

[astraltrickster]

Given that my post about why you are not obligated to blog about Current Events (whatever they are at any given time) is going around again, I'd like to say the same thing from a slightly different angle and state what you ARE obligated to do.

You are still not obligated to blog about ANY specific subject, no matter how serious, no matter how urgent, no matter how grave. You never will be. The impact of social media on real world atrocities has the potential to be great, but it is cumulative. No one is going to die in a ditch somewhere, barely uttering the tragic final words, "if only...if only...tumblr users wormhentaiafficionado and mothmanbutthole...posted about how sad they are...then maybe things would be different..." - nor are policymakers going to change their minds because some tweet has 749,845 cumulative likes and retweets instead of 750,000. Make no mistake, if you have the energy to be sharing these kinds of things, it can be good to do! We live in a society, it's always good to help where you can, even if all you can do is show public support for people who are hurting - but if you can't do that, for any reason, you're not obligated to. Period. End of.

What are you obligated to do?

1. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Social media accounts are not most people's entire lives. Just because someone isn't blogging about whatever tragedy is occurring does not mean they don't care. Sometimes it does mean that, sure, and that sucks - but not only are you not going to change that by yelling at them, sometimes it means they care too much. Sometimes it means they're closer to it than you assumed and need a moment to think about something else, anything else. Sometimes it means it's not safe for them to be blogging about it, be it due to abusive family potentially finding out, being at risk of getting fired and quite possibly dying of poverty sooner rather than later, or even taking very illegal direct action that they do not want to be linked to on record in even the vaguest possible way. Sometimes it means dealing with it is their day job and they're on the internet after a long and exhausting day of trying to make things better. You don't know. You'll never know unless they decide to tell you. No one owes you that explanation. You are obligated to make peace with that fact.

2. Slow the fuck down.

Listen. When bad things happen, from natural disasters, to manmade horrors beyond our comprehension, it's only normal to get scared and desperate to do something, anything about it. That heightened emotional state is very vulnerable, and because of that, there will always be people out there looking to take advantage of the chaos for ulterior motives - and no matter how good your intentions, and in fact no matter how right you are in your values and at the core of your strategy, you will never be immune to garbage-in-garbage-out. Misinformation can be deadly, even in the hands of someone who means well. You need to pause long enough to sort out the garbage. You need to learn to fight the impulse to trust every single post that tells you that your share/comment/etc. is URGENT and WILL mean the difference between life and death for someone, somewhere. Do your fact checks. Scan for dogwhistles before you end up passing around a post that implies [insert group that is marginalized in most of the English-speaking world but has hegemonic power in some other part of the world and is committing some atrocity there] is coming after you next if you stay silent. Vet charity and advice links before you accidentally send scared, desperate, and vulnerable people to a scammer - or worse, hand them over to a honeypot operation or give them a recipe for poisonous "medicine".

Or, to put it another way, you are obligated to make an attempt to stay informed enough to avoid making things materially worse. You are not obligated to doomblog. In fact, doomblogging can be antithetical to your obligation to not make things worse. Choosing neutrality in times of great tragedy and injustice is bad, yes, but you should immediately be wary of anyone who says that simply not blogging about a subject - let alone not sharing a specific post - is inherently "choosing neutrality".

So remember: breathe. Be careful out there. Mourn for the people that whatever atrocity has this or my other post circulating has taken from us or will take from us, and do your best to be kind to the people who are still alive - and remember that kindness includes using social media responsibly.

[feengoid]

Can you draw no significant harassment I'd be reallyyy happy

sir yes sir 🫡

[uncanny-tranny]

Here's the thing about politics, and ultimately, the world: you are going to be biased, and you are going to have a limited understanding of others to an extent. The key is to not deny that this exists because you will be ignorant when you are biased and limited in your worldview.

Yes, absolutely listen to multiple voices and points of view and a variety of different types of people. But know that this isn't the same as erasing all biases and "self-centered" views. Strive to do better without denying that you are fallible.

[eikotheblue]

Behold! This absolutely incredible drawing of me as a Pokemon gym leader, drawn by my wonderful and incredibly talented friend Fen @salt-and-bramble 💙💙💙

I love it so much as a work of art and as a drawing of me and I'm using it as my profile picture everywhere now.

Fen did a wonderful job of - capturing lots of details that match up with things I actually wear (the heart gems I put on my forehead, my favorite top with the boob window, the galaxy print on my favorite dresses, the color of the glowy wheels on my skates), while also adding so many delightful little things that spark so much delight in my soul (the heart-shaped pupils, a much fancier design on my gloves than I currently have, the poi-pokeballs, a lil bit of embellishment on the cleavage) and. the hair.

Gods, the hair. Y'all have to understand - I've legit never seen a picture or depiction of my hair I've loved anywhere close to how much I love this. I've gotten a lot of compliments on my hair over my life, and despite historically really hating it, lately I've been figuring out ways to get it in a state where I can appreciate it myself, which has been a slow and strange process. But when I first saw this drawing, I felt like I understood for the first time what people are seeing, when they look at my hair and tell me it's beautiful. (When I told Fen this, they said I have the curls of the ocean... ;-; this has stuck in my head, and I think of it when I look at my avatar or my hair.) And the action lines in the rest of the piece really enhance the wave vibes...

it's just so perfect ;-;