So I know the usual interpretation of "the end is never the end is never..." is one of despair and the futility of effort, but I've also been feeling weirdly optimistic about it. Maybe you'll never reach a conclusion to the story you're trying to tell yourself. But you're going to keep telling it anyway; you're going to keep moving, even when the path takes you back to the beginning, because that's just what you have to do. Is there a point? Who knows? Who cares? What matters is that you're still continuing to play. You could quit the game, but there's just a little more to explore, or a little more comfort to be found in routine. There's a little more morbid curiosity left in you to find the answer to What happens next? And although your achievements fade away your mistakes are also reset. You still have more chances - you always will. There are still plenty of runs to be made, things to explore, narratives to follow and bend and destroy. There's no conclusion, but then again, when is there ever one? Life goes on. You just have to follow it as it goes. The end is never the end, because there's always more to do and someone to be, even if it's more of the same.
why do i keep seeing whole videos on advice for artfight from “veterans” or whatever. here’s all the advice you need:
you don’t need to draw every day
you don’t need to fully render every drawing, sketches still count and the person receiving it will still love it
you don’t need a fully polished ref sheet for every single character, having a basic one or even just a colour palette along with whatever other art you’ve done works fine in most cases
you don’t need to draw a fully rendered piece every single day do not burn yourself out or injure yourself for funny little internet points good lord
The thing I keep coming back to, with all the *gestures expansively* is that real life doesn't have peaceful epilogues.
Every single win has to be defended. Forever. I'm sorry. It sucks. The Nazis lost until they stopped losing. The US had abortion rights, and then 50 years later it didn't. Empires fall, and then they invade other countries again. Oppressive regimes are overthrown and replaced with other oppressive regimes. You will never finish the work etc etc etc. Which is why it's so fucking important to be able to acknowledge and celebrate progress, when it happens. The people who came before you didn't put in all that work for nothing, and you aren't, either. You can't save it all for the Ultimate Victory because there is never going to be an Ultimate Victory. There's no such thing as a time when everything is good, and ours shall not be the commune of Heaven.
When my nephew was four, a friend of the family passed away. The man was in his 90s and died of natural causes, and we were going to the funeral. We sat my nephew down and explained who this was, and that he had passed away, and now we were going to a sort of quiet party to celebrate him, and that there he might see the gentleman in the casket, and he might be very still, because he had died, but that everything was alright.
My nephew contemplated this calmly for a few minutes, and then said, "I think he will be very flat."
What.
It turns out that at age four, my nephew's only real context for death was roadkill, which he frequently pointed out while we were driving. He therefore believed that the only way anyone died was getting run over by a car.
The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.
not "i ship these characters" or "i want them to bond platonically" but a secret 3rd thing (I want them to be forced to interact by the Narrative bc they would HATE that)
probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.