#but still its gonna be a rough one

[pooka167]

I have to be on a train in 6 hours and I went drinking with my housemates and some other friends and all my not quite sober no longer drunk brain can think of is how hungover one of my housemates (who accidentally had one too many tequila shots) is going to be when I have to get them up in about 5.5 hours. The poor dear

[deoidesign]

Wearing your boyfriend's jacket

[ganondoodle]

you know when you have an idea for a drawing and it just wont let you rest until you at least sketched it?

... yeah

....

demise and hylia (humanoid forms) sleepy cuddles o((>ω< ))o

[teacolouredink]

Hey long time no post! :D It's been a hot minute for sure lol but I'm back in full swing this weekend for grand festival 🩷💚 I decided to take on the ever so ambitious (for me lol) project of drawing all the idols over the next few days omg.. Am I ever gonna get to playing turf wars?? ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡ anw the squid sisters are up first YAYY!! And hopefully Pearl and Marina tomorrow, fingers crossed I can keep this going!!

[front-facing-pokemon]

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

oooo it's been a while since the last snippet :]c it's another fantasy au one where I'm! Putting! Barnaby! Through It!

a minor warnings: implied/referenced major character death <3

 No one eats dinner, and Frank won’t stop tapping his spoon against his bowl. Tok tok tok it goes, over and over again.

Poppy made a simple stew from their provisions, but only Eddie and Sally make an attempt at tasting it. Their halfhearted ‘it’s good’s don’t pierce the pressure weighing down on them all. Barnaby swears he can taste it, thick and cloying. 

Already he keeps catching himself looking for Wally. Where is- he starts to think, and then he remembers the moment Wally fell with a spear piercing his chest, and the grief rises so fast it nearly drowns him in a heartbeat. Barnaby can’t bring himself to try and hide it behind anything but a stony mask. In any other situation he might try to put some levity into the group. Cheer up the sad and empty faces staring into their meals. 

He wouldn’t be able to think of a single lighthearted thing even if he wanted to. He doesn’t.

Tok tok tok-

Shuffling from Howdy’s tent has everyone glancing over at it, and Frank’s spoon stills. Howdy briefly woke up while Poppy was cooking. All he did was sit up, look at everyone, then pitch to the side and vomit. They got him into a tent before he passed out again, mumbling something about puppets. Frank made a comment about how Howdy was supposed to be a bit out of it, not at fae-drunk levels of hazy. Eddie had muttered back a dejected apology, and after that the camp was silent until Poppy’s announcement that dinner was ready. The spoon continues tapping when the shuffling stills.

Tok tok tok-

Since Eddie and Sally saying that dinner is good, there hasn’t been a noise beyond the occasional sniffle. It’s a good thing Julie isn’t trying her stew - it must be disgustingly salty from all the tears dripping into it. 

Tok tok tok-

Barnaby sighs through his nose and puts his bowl down, sick of looking at everyone’s misery. He would say that he’s going to go sleep, but he has a feeling that none of them are getting a wink tonight. 

Tok tok-

Before he can stand, Frank blurts, “We shouldn’t have attacked it. It was a mistake.”

“Please don’t,” Julie begs.

“There’s no need to rub salt in the wound,” Sally says firmly, her stew starting to sizzle from the rising heat in her hands.

“Not right now, Frank,” Eddie mutters. 

Frank visibly bristles, and he launches to his feet. “I refuse to pretend not to have seen what I did! The truth is a terrible thing, but someone needs to say it. Wally lied to us.”

“Frank…” Barnaby warns.

“We shouldn’t have attacked the demon,” Frank barrels on, ignoring him, “because there was no need to. It didn’t eat Wally until the end because the demon is his patron. Wally was never a wizard at all, he was a warlock-”

Barnaby lunges with a deep bark that echoes against the trees. The crickets symphony falls silent. Frank trips backwards over his seat, staring up with wide eyes as Barnaby stalks around the fire, growling. Eddie and Sally slowly stand, inching between him and Frank. 

Barnaby stops, snout bunched and canines bared. He jabs a claw at Frank. “Don’t you ever say that again. Ever.”

Frank’s mouth flaps uselessly for a moment. When he speaks, it comes out as a whisper, “I’m-”

“If you end that with right instead of sorry, I’ll make damn sure that you are.”

Frank wisely keeps his mouth shut. The crickets continue chirping.

Barnaby glares at him until Frank looks away. Barnaby straightens his vest with a sharp tug and strides away from the fire, towards his and- his tent. Just his, now. Murmuring breaks out at his back. He yanks the flap open, grabs his pipe and herb pouch, and heads towards the forest. He pauses only to listen by Howdy’s tent, waiting to hear proof of life before continuing on.

Once he can’t see the firelight anymore, Barnaby chooses a random tree and sits heavily in front of it. Rough bark digs into his back through his vest. A night bird hoots overhead. Crickets continue to make their music, but Barnaby wishes they would shut up for good. 

Light from the full moon pours through the branches to provide just enough light to see by. Barnaby holds up his pipe and quickly puts it to the side to take off a grimy glove. The heart-pad and blue fur underneath contrasts vibrantly with the dust-grayed rest of him. After a moment he removes the other glove, wincing as the leather drags over his injured knuckles. He turns his paw over and scowls at the dirty black edges of the red-raw scrapes. He should have punched harder. He hopes it scars, even though he knows it won’t.

The gloves themselves are scuffed up, but not beyond use. Barnaby folds them into his pocket and gets to work lighting his pipe. He packs it and instinctively opens his mouth to ask Wally to light it for him. The words die on his tongue as he turns only to see dark forest. Empty woods save for the tiny blue lights of night wisps floating on the breeze. 

Barnaby stares into the darkness with yawning dread. He keeps looking. How long will it take him to stop? How long until Wally’s face starts to smudge in his memories, until his voice is gone and Barnaby doesn’t even remember what his smile looked like? How long until Barnaby only thinks of him in passing? 

He doesn’t want to reach that point. He desperately does. 

Will it hurt more or less? Does it matter? He wants it to ache until he dies.

Barnaby frantically fishes his sparkrune out of the herb pouch - only there for emergencies, when Wally or Sally isn’t there to light it for him. It will wear down to a nub within the month. He strikes his thumb claw against it, and sparks fly expertly into the bowl of his pipe. It takes a moment to catch. Barnaby lifts the bit to his lips and takes a drag before enough smoke forms for a lungful. 

Maybe he should have grabbed the stronger stuff. If he breathes enough of it, maybe he’d be able to see Wally. 

But Barnaby doesn’t get up in the end. He sits against the base of a tree and hugs himself, the pipe’s intermittent glow betraying the shine in his eyes.

[angelfoodscake]

hmm…………

[royalreef]

@infernalpursuit inquired: how does your muse react when they're scared? does it change, depending on what is currenly scaring them?

(( Oh, absolutely it depends on what's currently scaring her!

The thing you have to understand about Miranda is that she's less of a person, in the sense that her personality and reactions are organic and naturally occurring, and moreso that she's someone who has been so intensely groomed and micro-managed and pushed in such a specific direction that a lot of the way that she is is entirely on purpose.

Her personality isn't really a natural product of her birth nor her circumstance in the same way someone else's personality might be. It's more like... There's no way that people can go through something like what she had gone through and not turn out in a very similar way to her. It's a designed process in this way, something that very intentionally obliterates any other chance to be anything else, and makes becoming this highly specific mold of a person into a life-or-death matter, something that you can't will or whim or nature your way out of. Miranda is the way that she is because she's been intentionally ground down and shredded into the person that she is. She doesn't really have a concrete sense of self. She doesn't even really know who she is. She's not supposed to, she's just supposed to be a means to serve a singular purpose and a singular end, and all she even can comprehend doing is that purpose.

Fear is a major part of this process, this total obliteration of any other mere possibility, but I also feel like it's a little disingenuous to call it fear in the same way most people would relate to it. It's the kind of fear that's so big and bone-deep and constant that it stops really feeling like fear at all, the kind of thing that Miranda herself has a very hard time of realizing that she's feeling even when it's particularly bad.

It might be more accurate to call it getting locked into a constant state of flight-or-fight. It's a constant existential threat where Miranda is sincerely and totally convinced that she could die at any moment and anyone could hurt her as much as they wanted, constantly living solely in the very present and unable to think of what even a short distance ahead in time would be like, because she just never feels comfortable or secure enough to stop thinking of the right now. She's what happens when the fear has been intensified strongly enough that it never dips below what would be debilitating for anyone else, and thus has become wildly detached to her own body, physical harm to her body, threats to her own life, or any escalation of fear.

This is, in fact, one of the things that I worry about disappointing roleplay partners with at times! Because their muse will act scary or try to frighten Miranda, and it just doesn't work. She just doesn't respond to the situation in a measurably different way than how she normally does, because she's under so much constant stress and strain and terror that it's not really any different to her than how everything else already is.

The only real times when she starts to show it, in fact, are places where her aversion and fear of them have been specifically cultivated. Miranda is a tool, and a tool doesn't break under expected strain, but you do have to be able to sharpen it and make sure it remains useful. You do have to take it apart to do maintenance on it, make sure it's working. The points where Miranda starts to actually, sincerely, show her genuine fear and terror, are during these points and in these situations where her aversion of them can be used to punish her and make sure she's being redirected in the proper direction.

In which case, Miranda's fear response is also highly specific and the only real option that other people who have gone through it come out with.

Mostly, she freezes up. She starts fawning hard. She lets it happen, over and over and over again until the object of her fear goes away, because it's going to be easier if she doesn't fight back or resist. She starts disassociating, disconnecting from her body and her thoughts, forgetting where she is or what's happening to her, because then she doesn't have to be present to register it and the memories are easier to repress later. She starts to people-please, trying to make the object of her fear happy and content them, because doing what they tell her to do and making them happy makes it not last as long. If she just does what they want her to, then they won't hurt her as much. If she just listens when she's told, then she won't get punished as much.

The end result is that she's very... robotic, in a sense. She does what she is told, to the letter. She will do what she is told, and she will not fuss or cry or cause any further problems if it also hurts her as well. She will be good, because the only choice other than being good is total obliteration. They should tell her what to do. They should make her do what they want her to do. It's okay that she's not there, or it's hurting her. It's even better if that happens, in fact, because then it's not as bad. She will not mention it after the fact, she will not hold it against them, she will not upset them again. She will be good. She was designed to be good.

Which, again, is part of why Miranda's fear response can be so inappropriate sometimes... Because she's been cultivated this way, because other people punishing her is so ingrained into her mind as a fundamental way of being, very often she will pick the seemingly much scarier or painful option over that cultivated social fear. She will happily hurt herself for someone else, and she will not be afraid of it, or be very upset at all. She will happily do many frightening things and deal with things that anyone else wouldn't be able to, because she's already locked into a permanent state of terror, and the only exception would be what happens if she doesn't do this. She's a tool. The only thing a tool has to fear is not fulfilling its purpose.

It's why she keeps doing increasingly dangerous things, too, seemingly without regard to her own life or death. Fear is an adaptation which allowed living things to avoid situations and things that were dangerous to them. Because Miranda's fear is constant and always at its peak, she doesn't register minor fluctuations to it, nor does she have it to try and get her to avoid things that might or will hurt her. It's also why her pain response is so bizarre and detached, and doesn't take very many efforts to avoid pain in general.

It also means, too, is that the potential for other people accidentally setting off or triggering this particular type of cultivated fear is very high, basically intentionally so. She has to be easy to control and redirect as needed, after all. If someone else gets close to her, gets her in an intimate situation similar to how she was cultivated to respond to punishment, then she can very easily get locked into a loop that they didn't know they were setting off. She's not in the state of mind to notice contradictions or try and correct herself, let alone notice if something is wrong, so nothing she can do can stop this from happening beyond general discouragement from those situations.

It just also means that it can be rather upsetting for other people when they notice that Miranda's immediate fear response, in wholly out-of-proportion situations, is to just sit there and take it without protest, even to the point of seemingly not reacting to someone nearly killing her if they do it in the right way.

[sucktacular]

I miss the days where existing online was a fun thing for ppl with social anxiety to make friends on instead of like Life 2.0 ya know

[gentaroukisaragi]

Ultraman Blazar's Salutations From Episodes 1-5 (ft. Bazanga, Leviera, and a sleeping Dorgo)

Episode 1 as well as the rest of the series can be found on youtube for free with eng subtitles and an eng audio track if that interests you

[Video description: Ultraman Blazar, a colossal grey humanoid alien with red and blue markings on his body, and blue markings on his face, performs his signature salutation in several different places and times. This salutation consists of raising his arms up to the sky in a circular motion, and bringing his knee up before stepping into a lunge and scooping his arms down and upward.

From episode 1, in a city at night, the camera watches from below, as Blazar performs his salutation and his markings flash red and blue. The shot cuts to a wider one, showing off the buildings and Blazar's opponent, Bazanga, a prawn-like Kaiju. After his salute, Blazar moves his hands into a guarded, fighting stance.

From Episode 2: Blazar stands against the bright blue day sky in a small fishing village, with much shorter buildings. He faces the camera directly as he does his salutation, and the camera zooms in on him as he does it and his markings flash red and blue once more.

From Episode 3: Blazar is framed in a head and shoulder shot and smothered in smoke as his colour time, a big round spot on his chest that is normally blue, flashes red. Once more he faces the camera as he does his salutation, before flying off, kicking up dirt in his takeoff.

From episode 4: The camera pans over a cityscape, with a highway at the front of the scene. Once more it is night time and Blazar faces off against a monster among many many buildings. The monster is Leviera, a sea-angel themed kaiju whose face is open to reveal flashing yellow lights as Blazar does his salutation from the side. Leviera is aggressively ready to go.

From episode 5: Blazar stands behind the sleeping kaiju, Dorgo, who looks mostly like a hill of dirt in this shot. He performs his salutation, and immediately begins to push the sleeping Kaiju back to its proper resting place. The shot switches to one of Blazar from behind, as he continues to push Dorgo back into place, among the green hills and mountains of the Japanese countryside. With a thump, Dorgo returns to his resting spot, and Blazar turns to face the camera as he jumps up into the air to fly away.

End video description.]

[batz]

-

[thecoolertails]

going through my massive backlog of unposted art and. look at this shit

for context the second pic was literally supposed to be an alternate version of tails where he never met sonic (that’s why his tails are twirled up to look like one tail and hes like all feral and edgy) (also ignore the fact that the design sucks lol). these are both from june btw (20th and 22nd). i dont think we knew about Nine until late october or something like that

i remembered coming up w the alt tails idea and i think i mentioned that when that clip with Nine and his backstory came out, but i completely forgot that i made that tails doll one. im like psychic or something lol

[februaryberries]

rlly dwelling in the Not Having A Friend Group rn. like I can talk to people and I have ppl I consider my friends but they r from all different areas and aspects of my life. and I don't talk to any of them regularly anyways. ppl are lucky if they hear from me once every few months, and idk how to like. not do that, bc also when everyone is kinda at the same level of distant, how do I pick who to reach out to? it's not that I like that person above all the other ppl I haven't talked to either. and like my definition of friend has changed bc I'm not close w ppl anymore

RAHHHHHHHH I'm feeling the loneliness and the isolation (that I have brought up on myself) extra hard tonight.

[camotherogue]

sneak peek of a guy. hello creepypasta fandom

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

yeehaw just wrote over 3k and i can't publish Any of it without miles of fantasy au context

[thatoneweird014]

i frequently reread comments people left on my fics on ao3 a lot and I get really happy because a lot of it is people being like "OMG YOUR WRITING IS AMAZING?!?" and "aaaa i love how you write them :"))" and one hand it makes me feel good because damn I did that but then I look at the latest fic in my notes app and think "welp ive lost my touch this is nothing like my other writing and everyone's gonna be like 'woah this guy fell off' " and uh yeah

:")