#ante--meridiem

[ophthalmotropy]

Top 5 themes to base characters on

The cycle of violence for suree. Keep on going. I'm sure if you hurt enough people you'll retroactively erase the victimization you endured.

The ultimate meaninglessness of the world and our actions in it, and how people cope with this notion.

The violation of being defined by somebody else.

Sunk cost fallacy. If you quit now it will all have meant nothing.

The fear and desire to leave the metaphorical womb and all the complications thereof—growing up as an analogy for achieving a higher level of existence, stunted development, the desire to die as a fear of the adult world.

[autogeneity]

Hey! I've decided to take up your recommendation of learning a martial art now I'll be in one place for long enough for taking classes there to feel worth it, and I was wondering if you had any advice for how to pick one. I could just stick with taekwondo since I already know some but I feel like trying something new might be more exciting & therefore more motivating. (Also taekwondo probably wasn't the best for me bc I am not very flexible and there were a lot of high kicks, I only picked it bc it was what my school had available)

awesome!!

sadly I know very little about other martial arts. my initial decision-making process looked roughly like googling "martial arts near me" and checking on places with a decent rating to confirm it's not totally bullshit, lol. and then trying out like, two. my current reasoning is that once I have established some level of competence in my current art, only then will I look to expand my horizons.

vaguely remembered impressions: kung fu is probably bullshit. jiu-jitsu is potentially more practical than most, but involves a degree of very close physical contact that freaks me out. a limitation of many striking arts (karate, taekwondo, etc) is that they don't have a lot of stuff for very close combat or ground fighting, which you need irl. but the advantage of that is I don't have anyone's ass on my face every day so I'll gladly accept it

stuff with weapons sounds very exciting tbh but I never looked into it because there's none near me

anyway I would recommend exploring on youtube and reddit, probably. youtube for seeing what they're like and reddit for opinions in relation to various properties you may be interested in (or wish to avoid).

also most places offer a free trial class ime. probably finding a place with a good vibe that you feel (relatively) comfortable in and good instructors (competent but also not dickheads. unfortunately there is a very high prevalence of dickheads) is going to be more important than the specific art. I think a lot of the core skills gained, especially for beginners, are very transferrable.

[felixcosm]

Very late to this I think but are mutual bingos still going?⭐

Very glad we're mutuals <3 I live for your academic posts and Matt-blogging (may it rest in pieces)

[charonean]

4, 10, 42 for dnd asks?

Thank you! I'll answer these for my dear wizard Liam.

4. If they could learn one spell that isn’t available to them at present, which spell would it be?

- Right now he would love to learn Animate Dead or this reskin of Fireball that I have (affectionately named Boil; he is a blood mage after all).

10. How often do they lie? What situations cause them to be dishonest?

- He lies fairly often, though mostly by omission. He enjoys being the one in control of a situation, and the way he does that is often with information and playing with others' emotions.

42. What are three words they would use to describe themself?

- "Smarter than you" He's a real pretentious teenager

[adaharablack]

ANTE MERIDIEM — CHAPTER 12: CAT. RAT. DOG.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy, Remus Lupin & Draco Malfoy, Regulus Black & Draco Malfoy Additional Tags: Good Draco Malfoy, Seer Draco Malfoy, Canon Rewrite, Pre-Slash, Hogwarts Third Year.

Or; Draco Malfoy comes back to Hogwarts carrying the gift of a seer and the weight of a legacy on his shoulders. With a killer on the loose and the world quickly growing darker around him, he learns to take the future into his own hands. 

[artblockastor]

Sketch for a short video I might put onto my YT channel? 👀

-also yeah I’m having Steven Universe brain rot rn what of it-

[ID: a pencil on paper sketch of two young women. One is tall and white with freckles and long, brown hair, and the other has blonde, curly hair, but you can’t see her face because her head is turned to the brunette. The brunette smiles down from a tree, her hair and dress flowing in the breeze, and the blonde looks up at the brunette from a swing hanging from a tree branch above]

[pav-anne]

must be 'live

and I'm breathing

lost in time

i'm fine

[2bloved]

bunch of random art ive made the past like 2 months i forgored to upload anywhere so surprise random art dump of my ocs + my boyfriend's oc

[jokerlennon]

literally god do you remember adam pascal......

[ophthalmotropy]

Hi Dae! Sent a similar ask to Vi but I thought you would also be a good person to ask. A friend has enlisted me to help her find good books and movies and we are now at the stage of searching for more general/meta advice on finding (high-quality) books/movies on particular themes that are too hard to concisely describe for a straightforward search to yield much. If the question is too specific, any general description of how you pick books/movies for your to-read/to-watch list would be great, and if that's also hard to do then top-of-your-head fantasy/sci-fi recs are also much appreciated. Feel free to ignore this if you're too busy or don't know how to answer of course!

Hi! I'm happy that you thought of me, but I don't have a lot of advice because there's a lot of serendipity involved for me. Taking the latest novels I've most enjoyed, for example, I discovered Solaris because I watched Tarkovsky's film adaptation—and I discovered the movie because my high school professor mentioned it in class in 2020. I similarly read Crash because I watched the movie first, and I started reading Arlt because of a scene written by him that I heard read aloud on the radio by pure chance. So I guess my first real piece of advice is to keep your eyes and ears open?

I can't really speak on finding books on specific themes because I feel that they find me most of the time, but sometimes looking at which artists are friends with each other helps (Cronenberg and Clive Barker were like that to me), or seeing which filmmakers adapt which books (Cronenberg led me to Ballard and Burroughs). Tumblr parallels compilation posts aren't bad either.

Tumblr is a source of book recs to me too. I got a good percentage of my current TBR just by following Vi lol, and when I see a quote I really like I normally add the source to my TBR too (same with gifsets and movies). I also like to browse through bookshops even if I don't have money atm, just in case something catches my eye. Those two sources plus what my professors mention make up the bulk of it, but since I started logging my reading on The Storygraph (kind of like Goodreads) I also look at what it recommends me from time to time. The algorithm can't quite nail your preferences, but I do find stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise. You can also search for recommendations filtered by genre and mood there.

For movies, aside from seeing gifsets, I sometimes discover them through the actors in them. Very rarely, I click on Letterboxd's "films like" feature out of curiosity and find some interesting films.

I don't know if that was helpful, but as for sci-fi book recommendations, I can give you off the top of my head Solaris by Stanisław Lem (a psychologist is sent to a station that orbits around a planet covered by a vast, possibly sapient ocean), Crash by J.G. Ballard (a group of car crash fetishists explore the relationship between the human body and technology), and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (political intrigue set on a planet populated by hermaphrodite aliens). In terms of fantasy, His Dark Materials is a series for children that I still find a lot of value in as an adult.

For movies, my first recommendation is Cronenberg's early body horror films (especially Videodrome, Crash, and The Fly) plus Crimes of the Future (2022). I also recommend Poor Things (2023) (describing it as a female Frankenstein's monster does neither character justice, but you get the gist), Primer (2004) (convoluted time travel movie), Pan's Labyrinth (2006) (dark fantasy set in post-war Spain), and of course Solaris (1972). I also rather liked the Alien prequels (as well as obviously the original films, but those are better known).

I hope this was somewhat helpful and good luck!

[autogeneity]

#I think the existing concept for this might be like 'notes'?#not like tumblr notes like the thing a notebook is for.

Ah, yes, zettels!

*guy who's only ever seen a zettelkasten voice*: ...

(you are of course entirely correct. although unlike your zettels I would say generic 'notes' or 'posts' are pretty far from atomic — being somewhat meandering may even be a property)

[context]

[felixcosm]

I still haven't listened to the grotto yet but does the grotto's matt also die in a car crash? because that's. sdfghlksdjhljasjkdh truly the name is cursed. (re your recent post)

Elaborating on that might be spoilers for the second episode but there IS a Matt and he IS involved in a car crash!

[porciaenjoyer]

MY PLAN. read war and peace. work. post my art for once in my life. read hamlet

[hannahcao]

from Ante Meridiem

[adaharablack]

theodore nott, pansy parkinson & draco malfoy in ANTE MERIDIEM

“And what did Pansy think of that?” Theo asks, cautious.  “Pansy thinks that Draco is insane.” Pansy said, on her own behalf.  Theo quirked a smile. “Theo agrees with Pansy on that topic.” “Draco thinks that people who talk in the third person should be burned at the stake.” Draco said, snatching the book from Theo’s hands.